phenomena vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 57 another side on indonesian history of communism through leila s. chudori’s pulang adria vitalya gemilang vitalyaisme@yahoo.com english department, sarjanawiyata tamansiswa university, yogyakarta abstract at present, 2014, indonesian people learn to exercise their political right in the biggest people party, which is held every 5 years, the presidential election. observing the debate, the campaign, and the supporters, one can learn that indonesia has reached a progress in their political life. the progress is achieved through complex process that only some experienced. back in the 1960s indonesia experienced an uprising which caused turmoil of its government. indonesian learnt two versions of its story, one which was officially broadcasted since 1966 and one which is only stated implicitly through some literary works. reading leila s. chudori’s pulang, there is another side that indonesians comprehend about the life of the so called communists by the new order regime. it sees the life of the people who are accused of murder and communism. the depiction is far from judging and framing their political agenda, it shows the reader how their life, as human, affected by the event. culler (1997) states that literature is the noise of culture as well as its information, and it is a writing which requires readers to be engaged in the problem of meaning. thus, one can learn the history of a nation through its literary works. pulang is considered particular in its publication because it needs a 6 year process and its first publication was in 2012, the time when indonesia has achieved a different level of democracy since 1960. first, this paper discusses how indonesian history, particularly on its political turmoil in 1965, 1968 and 1998, are read and written by indonesians. second, it discusses how the present social context influences the discourse of the novel. keywords: communism, history, new historicism introduction in 2014, indonesia held the annual people’s party, the presidential election. the election resulted in the appointment of joko widodo as the next president. in the process and after the election, the political events which determine the future of indonesia for the next 5 years continue. there are new policies established, new members of the house of representative (dpr), and perhaps more on new controversial laws. after 69 years of independence, the nation still evolves and in the process, and the people learn democracy and political life. despite the recent political condition, indonesian people have gained their awareness in their political rights. compared to the political condition during the new order regime, there have been many changes and development. indonesian people are aware of their roles in the course of their nation. in the advance of the internet and the freedom of speak, nowadays indonesian people have easier access to news and information. history is written in many versions and it is in the hand of the readers to decide which one is factual. a new regime was born after the old fell and in 69 years of independence; indonesia has seven adria vitalya gemilang 58 presidents recorded in the history. among the seventh presidents, one has reigned for 32 years, the late soeharto. his regime ruled after soekarno’s fall in 1966. as the history was written by the winner, indonesian generation who was born during suharto’s reign and was not equipped with critical thinking believed in the propaganda. only after his fall, the texts published revealed or stated the “real” history. the purpose of this paper is to discuss how history in 1965, 1968 and 1998 are read and written by indonesians. the discussion of the history is limited to the history surround soeharto and the communist party of indonesia or partai komunis indonesia (pki) based on the government’s version. the specific years are chosen because pulang is focused on the history of indonesia in 1965, 1968 and 1998. after knowing how the history is presented and perceived, the paper will focus on how the recent social context influences the discourse of pulang. new historicism new historicism is a method which is based on the parallel reading of literary and non-literary texts. the term was coined by stephen greenblatt in 1980. new historicism places a literary text within the frame of non literary text. using new historicism, one should be able to read the literary text as a co-text and use the text and the co-text as expression of the same historical moment (barry, 1995: 173). furthermore, this method supports the liberal ideals of personal freedom and accepts as well as celebrates all forms of differences and deviance. new historicism considers the issues of state power and its colonization in the mindset. it sees how literary works are influenced by the historical and cultural context at the time of production. thus, this method is used to understand how the history of communism in indonesia is presented from the eye of leila s. chudori. soeharto and partai komunis indonesia to be able to read and understand pulang as an indonesian, one must acknowledge the history of indonesia during the soeharto’s regime or the new order regime during 1966 – 1998. the discourse which is shared within the mental construct of an indonesian who was born in the era, can only be understood by those who learn history only from the government version or the new order regime. under the soeharto’s regime, indonesians have limited access to information and limited freedom in all aspects. history was learned through history books which were published by the government, and there were also limited literary works published regarding to the history of indonesia. the history known was the history of the winner, soeharto. here, the discourse was made only from a single text. most indonesians share the same history that soeharto was the one who saved indonesia from communism (pki) and the opposition was left alone with a negative branding. partai komunis indonesia (pki) was lead by d. n aidit and bold with its efforts on the wealth of farmers and laborers. pki was blamed by soeharto as the one who threatened national stability, and soekarno was defeated by soeharto using soekarno’s relationship with pki. in 1965, soekarno implemented a doctrine called nasakom in indonesia. it means that pki was allowed to participate in every aspect of the nation. pki’s influence grew stronger. pki was mentioned to have eliminated their competitors by using the power of soekarno. history recorded that pki tried to overthrow soekarno by killing eight officers and a daughter of a.h nasution. the reason of the killing was mentioned by pki through two vital communication media in indonesia at that time. the killing was directed to the generals who planned a coup. two days later, pki was defeated and the government seized controls of the nation’s security. aidit as the leader of pki was pronounced dead on november 24, 1965 (notosusanto, 1985). years after the coup, people learnt its details through movie and history books in school. since 1965, pki becomes a symbol of terror and brutality. no one dares to have a relation or known as a member of pki. a year later, soeharto was declared the second president of indonesia through supersemar and indonesia was ruled under the next regime, the new order. vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 59 indonesia in 1965, 1968 and 1998 on history books’ version indonesia consists of various tribes and has some history of occupation. this has made a complex situation to define an indonesian. as stated by mangunwijaya (1999), the reason of becoming an indonesian is not a matter of skin color or ethnic face. furthermore, he quoted soekarno’s statement that it is the desire to unite self. the variety of tribes and occupation makes it difficult to describe the origin of indonesia. as the nation develops through time and history, indonesians also develop. becoming an indonesian means that one needs to be ready for changes. the changes of leaders always resulted in the changes of policy and it is the desire to unite self to specific things which define the identity. if the nowadays indonesian generation is more attached to western culture, they become a generation that easily consumes western and eastern culture at the same time. in order to be able to read a text as an indonesian, one should learn and be aware of the history which define the context of each regime. as a young nation which only got its independence 69 years ago, indonesia has seven presidents. each has left a specific mark in the history of this nation. the political events in 1965, 1968 and 1998 are closely connected to soekarno and soeharto. 1965 was the year when soekarno lost his controls over indonesia because he was considered to have failed in handling the coup on september 30, 1965 or known as g30s/pki. pki as the accused of killing generals who were told to have planned a coup on soekarno was disbanded along with its civil organizations. here, soeharto, as the major general, succeeded in giving a label to pki and declared himself the savior of national security. d. n aidit as the leader of pki was pronounced dead two days after he was caught (notosusanto, 1985). in 1968 soeharto was inaugurated the second president of indonesia. by the power vested in him, he continued to eliminate pki to its roots and established his power inside and outside indonesia. soeharto reigned in indonesia for 32 years and were demanded to resign in 1998. the process of his resignation is one of the dark periods in indonesia. indonesia has a tragedi trisakti on may 12, 1998. habibie (2006) stated that the tragedy started when the staged rallies by the university students of trisakti were blocked by the security apparatus and killed four students. the tragedy became the trigger of larger riots on may 1315, 1998. the riots affected several aspects and left a tragedy on tionghoa race in indonesia. tionghoa people suffered great loss in spiritual and material things. although there was no official claim from the government on the event until now, many shops owned by tionghoa race were burned down and burgled, and tionghoa women were reported to have been raped. 1965, 1968 and 1998 read and written by indonesian culler (1997) states that literature is the noise of culture as well as its information. it is a writing which requires a reader to be engaged in problem of meaning. literature allows one to experience history, and it pushes the reader to see things from the author’s point of view. reading indonesian history from chudori’s point of view also means knowing the other side of the history. literature played a significant role in the readers’ construction on identity. pulang is a combination of history and fiction which is narrated by one of the witnesses of the history. it means that pulang enables the reader to experience history from a particular point of view, “the communists”. pulang has several major characters, they are dimas suryo, lintang utara and segara alam. dimas suryo is a reporter who is forced to stay in paris after he fails to go back to indonesia. dimas is described as a literary man, he has a great interest in the development of literature, yet he fails to decide his alliance between lekra and manikebu. he is the father of lintang utara and the husband of vivienne deveraux. after several unsuccessful efforts to make a living in paris, he succeeded in having an indonesian restaurant in paris. as a man who loves to cook during his youth in indonesia, adria vitalya gemilang 60 dimas made the restaurant a symbol of the fight for identity. lintang utara is described as a beautiful young woman who needs to finish her thesis by doing a research in indonesia. after being equipped with knowledge of indonesia from the story of her father, her lecturer, and her friends, she flies to indonesia. lintang is a mixture of indonesian man and french women, a mixture of beauty and mind. her research in indonesia is actually her journey to find her identity. her bad experience of being known as dimas daughter leads her to search the truth of their identity. segara alam is the son of surti anandari, dimas suryo’s ex-girlfriend. alam is a man who grows without a father. his father is hananto prawiro who died after being arrested without trial. alam’s childhood memories are full with alienation from his surroundings. as the son of a man who was accused of a member of pki, he learns to be the best among others so that his teachers will not question more about his identity by seeing trophies that he gets. they are related because of the history and their stories are bound together as the victims of the horrible events on september 30, 1965. dimas is depicted being deeply homesick and lonely because of the exile. though he has a beautiful wife and a beautiful daughter, he cannot escape from the past. his struggle to survive in paris has cost his health. lintang sees her father as someone who is trapped in the past, unwilling to be happy with all his achievements in paris. lintang, as having a cynical and pessimistic father, grew up into a girl who is sensitive yet driven by her ambition to know her identity. depicted as a student of sorbonne university, lintang is a modern woman who is educated, passionate and well mannered. lintang falls in love with alam, a young man who graduated from the faculty of law, yet laughs at its discrepancy. alam found a non-governmental organization for the minority who is treated unfairly. alam grew up with a vengeance toward the government and his surroundings who labeled his family a pki, as a person who has no god, cruel and cursed. chudori stated in pulang that she is indebted to the late sobron aidit, a step brother of d.n aidit who is exiled in paris and the late umar said, a senior journalist who is also exiled due to his task as a reporter in aljazair on september 30, 1965. both of them are the founding fathers of koperasi restoran indonesia in paris. chudori stated that one chapter of her book, empat pilar tanah air, which describes the restaurant tanah air, is inspired by the interviews with sobron aidit and umar said. the struggle of being marked as a communist is depicted in every aspect of life; education, social, economic, and political life. each of her characters describes the negative effects of the coup. dimas and his friends in paris are alienated socially, economically and politically. alam and his best friend, bimo, suffer from the official version of the history. they are described as boys with pressure from their environment as the sons of communists. they were mocked and beaten because they were the sons of “communists”. through the narration of young alam, chudori criticizes the sole version of history without giving the alternate versions of the event. reading pulang, one could tell that chudori does not try to justify pki as the innocent, soekarno as the hero, and soeharto as the villain. she merely asks for the full version of indonesian history surrounding the coup so that there will be a complete and honest version of history (chudori, 2012). the present history i am interested in analyzing pulang after knowing that this book needs 6 years in the making and is written by a journalist of tempo, one of indonesian weekly magazines which is temporarily banned because it was considered a threat on the nation stability. its first publication was in 2012; the year when indonesia has celebrated the freedom of speech and comes in an era as so called as a reformation era. of course my main interest lies in its topic, may 1998. personally, the event becomes one unforgettable memory because i witness the tragedy. i was in solo at that time, so i saw the mass loot and burn shops or buildings. i felt the terror, as my mother and neighbors wrote the word “pribumi” to protect our house. growing up under soeharto’s new order, i was educated vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 61 as a student who learns that pki is an evil party which killed innocent people. i spent more than five years watching a movie about the coup on television every time we celebrate our independence day. only after soeharto’s fall, i learn that there are other stories hidden under the makeup reality. studying literature, i learn that literature is the voice of the era. chudori here presents the suffering of family and relatives of those who were called eksil politik. in an era which emphasizes the freedom of speak, there will not be a resistance from the government regarding the topics. it is not a taboo, but it has its charm when indonesia people are questioning history. it comes in a safe political life. although pulang tells about the communist’s side, it does not try to give an absolute belief in the readers’ mind that pki is innocent. it reconstructs the readers’ mindset on the family members of the communists who state that they are also the victim of soeharto. chudori as a journalist presents the book in a time when the society has learned that history is written by the winner. it is safely and easily landed on the hand of the readers. it does not need to compete with the government regulation, or to be afraid of banning. indonesia has grown into a better society; it has a critical mind which is open to all possibilities. reading pulang, one is not questioning the claim of the author on her statement that the book is inspired by one of the eksil politik. it also means knowing the history of the victim. chudori’s profession in the new order’s regime is also object of repression since soeharto strictly monitored media and literary works. pulang is easily accepted because the regime has fallen and the witnesses or the victims who hides and burry the stories have emerged one by one as democracy is upheld higher. references alisjahbana, s. takdir. indonesia: social and cultural revolution.jakarta: dian rakyat, 2008. print. barry, peter. beginning theory. new york: manchester university press, 1995. print. chudori, leila s. pulang. jakarta: kpg, 2013. print. culler, jonathan. literary theory: a very short introduction.new york: oxford university press, 1997. print. habibie, b. j. detikdetik yang menentukan jalan panjang indonesia menuju demokrasi. jakarta: thc mandiri, 2006. print. mangunwijaya,y. b. pascaindonesia pasca einstein. yogyakarta: kanisius, 1999. print. notosusanto, nugroho. 30 tahun indonesia merdeka. jakarta: pt. gita karya, 1985. print. oetama, jakob. “kebebasan pers dan demokrasi,” in pergulatan intelektual dalam era kegelisahan, sidhunata, ed. yogyakarta: kanisius, 1999. print. phenomena vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 75 levỳ’s minimax strategy in translating a popular article: theory in practice deta maria sri darta deta.darta@staff.uksw.edu english department, satya wacana christian university abstract translation is not merely a process of changing meaning from source language into the target one. it stretches far beyond to produce the result. to translate means to communicate; it conveys the message through language. as an act of communication, it touches other areas of disciplines, one of which is culture. thus, in line with levỳ’s proposal, translation is a decision process. this article would like to explore the process of translating an article taken from popular magazine “reader’s digest canada”. it shows the application of levỳ’s minimax strategy in coping with the problem of translating cultural aspect found in the text. the article concludes that some considerations need to be deeply thought before deciding the best way or choice to translate a text into the target language. keywords: translating culture, minimax strategy, translation shift introduction translation is not only an act and result of transferring meaning from one language to another; it is also an act of communicating. as being the act of communicating, translation, which is closely connected to language, cannot be separated from other disciplines. because language is one of the products of culture, it carries the cultural background which is not always equivalent from one culture to another. finding the equivalent meaning to replace the meaning from the source language to the target language is not always easy. as jacobson says that everything can be translated to a certain extent (hatim & munday, 2004: 15), translators should try their best to find the equivalent meaning of the source language to target language, but of course there is limit in translation. the limit can be in translating idiomatic language which is sometimes very cultural. moreover mona baker says that translating cultural aspect of a text is one of the problems commonly emerged in the translation process (2011: 18). once the translation process is done, the effect starts to appeal. if a cutural aspect is successfully translated, it will make the message conveyed effectively. however, if the translator could not find the right equivalent, the new text might lose its cultural context that identify the source text. translating is a decision process as proposed by levỳ (hatim & munday, 2004: 174). it means that in the process of translating, translators almost always face some choices. they have to decide which strategies to use, which style to maintain, which words that are equivalent. i have also been through this kind of decision process in my attempt to translate the articles that i chose. the discussion of this decision process will be further explained in the part of ‘procedure in practice’. this article will analyze the translation result of articles under the title 8 crazy mailto:deta.darta@staff.uksw.edu deta maria sri darta 76 things you’ve never experienced taken from “reader’s digest canada” september 2010. there are eight short articles under the title, but i did not translate all eight articles. i chose only three articles among the eight; i chose them randomly, without any purpose. but, accidently i got two articles written by the persons who got the experience themselves, and one article which is written by the person whom the story was told to by the real person who experienced it. i took the articles because i would like to try to translate articles based on lived experience, to see the way writing style might be different from one writer to another. i also would like to test myself, whether my style of writing influence the process of translating different writing styles of lived experienced articles. after translating those three articles, i found that i translated some parts of the articles with ease, but also there were some difficulties that i faced, especially in translating some idiomatic expression and contextual situation. i have to go in and out of dictionary, surf in the internet to find the equivalent that suit with the indonesian context and culture. the analysis of the process of translating and the translation result will be the focus of discussion of this essay. the essay will discuss the procedures conducted in the effort of translating the articles based on the theories studied, and then it is followed by the analysis of the procedures application to see how far the theories can be put into practice. it is followed by the discussion of any shift emerged during the translation and then it is ended by a conclusion which also gives some suggestions. the procedure in theory there are several theories used in the attempt of translating the three articles. this part of discussion will be divided into three parts. the first part will discuss the translation strategies and which strategies to be used, the second part is about levý’s minimax theory and how to apply it, and the last part talks about the necessity of knowing the text type, genre, and discourse. a. text type reiss in her article text-types, translation types and translation assessment taken from hatim & munday (2004: 183 – 185) distinguishes three types of text based on her analysis of three basic types of communication situation. those three types of text are informative, expressive, and operative. an informative text aims to convey plain communication facts including news, knowledge, information, argument, opinions, feelings, judgments, and intentions. while expressive text is a result of a creative composition where the author shapes the content through its form. and the last type is operative text which aims to stimulate behavioural responses. b. translation strategies there are some translation strategies suggested by hatim & munday on their book translation: an advanced resource book. the first thing is form vs. content. we need to see how far the form needs to be maintained. if we are about to translate a poem or an advertisement, we really need to consider the form, since it gives a certain effect on the meaning or content of the source text. there is a famous paradox by savory as cited by carl james on his article reprinted on hatim & munday (2004: 195): a translation should read like an original work, and a translation should read like a translation thus, the difficult task of translators is when they need to maintain the effect of the source text in the target text but they also need to maintain the target text as a result of translation not a recreation done by the translators. the second is literal vs. free translation. literal translation deals with word to word translation, avoiding the translators’ interference of the meaning of the source vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 77 text. this strategy might be needed when we translate bible. but we need to be careful when we use this strategy since it might raise ambiguity when the meaning does not exist in the target language culture. free translation is not completely safe either, because the translators’ interpretation can ruin the real message. thus, we need to be very careful in deciding whether we need to use one strategy strictly or dynamically. c. levý’s minimax strategy levý in the article entitled “translation as a decision process” as reprinted on hatim & munday (2004: 174 – 175) – and it has been mention in the introduction – that translation is a process of deciding. this makes translators have to choose among a certain number of alternatives. according to levỳ, the translation theory tends to be normative in giving the translators optimal solution; while in the actual work of translation, it is very pragmatic, the translator must find one possible solution that requires minimum effort but resulted in maximum effect. the term used is minimax strategy. the strategy will make the translators to investigate the text before translating. first, the translators must know the stylistic of the original text, then to know the effect of the stylistic of the source text to see whether or not to preserve the style of the original text. the last step is to investigate the audience or the readers of the target text to know to what level the audience or the readers might require the preservation of style in order to understand the target text. the procedure in practice this part discusses the application of the procedure provided in the previous part, started by the analysis of the source text used in this essay. a. the analysis of the text type the articles are taken from reader’s digest canada. they are under the title “8 crazy things you’ve never experienced”. as i read the articles, i found that they are written based on true stories. therefore they are considered as informative text. another consideration to put them under informative texts is because they give information, knowledge, and fact about what had had happened to them. i could not find any behavioural stimuli, although i found that in some articles, the writers used their creativity in conveying their feelings. but still, conveying information is the main communication purpose. in translating this particular type of text, according to reiss (hatim & munday, 2004: 184), it is considered successful if the translation guarantees direct and full access to the conceptual content of the source language. thus, the source text should be translated in full, without unnecessary redundancy. this is connected to the controversy whether or not additions and omissions in the target text are allowed in the informative type of text. ignoring the controversy, i think additions and omissions in translation cannot be avoided; even though in translating an informative text, where we have to deliver message as it is. sometimes, it is not possible to avoid additions and omissions if we need to clarify certain information which is not common in the target language culture. in fact, these additions and omissions may become useful tools to make the translation result or the target text can read naturally and not awkward. an example of this situation is when i tried to translate the article ‘how it feels to ...be buried in an avalanche”. an expression of “wow, something is happening.” is found on page 81 of reader’s digest canada; i could not find the indonesian equivalence of the word ‘wow’ there, because if i replace it with ‘wah’, it does not feel right. because ‘wah’ is an expression of wonder, while ‘wow’ there is not only wonder but confuse also (in that particular situational context there). therefore, the word ‘wow’ is omitted – i did not translate it. another example taken from the same article is when the writer tried to describe the speed and force of the snow. deta maria sri darta 78 the speed and force of the snow felt strong but not violent (81). i translated into ‘kecepatan dan kekuatan saljunya sangat kuat namun tidak keras (kuat namun tidak merusak)’. i added more information to show the difference between the word ‘strong’ and ‘violent’, because i could not find the exact equivalent words in bahasa indonesia. additional information was also put in the attempt to translate the description of feeling like: ... “it felt like being in water up to your knees, then suddenly being hit by an overhead wave.” i translated it into “ rasanya seperti berada di pantai dengan air sebatas lutut, dan kemudian secara tiba – tiba dihantam ombak yang melebihi kepala.” b. the strategy used in the choice of translation strategy form vs. content, first i gave more points on the content, since to my consideration the form does not play big effect on the process of conveying message in target language. but then when i have finished translated the three articles, i found that there was some how different style of writing that should be maintained. the three articles are all written based on lived experience, but one was written based on the true story retold to the writer by the one who experienced it, and the other two were written by the persons who experienced it. thus, the style is different. i felt like i have to keep each specific style that was used by each writer. the first and the second articles were written by the same person, but the first article was written based on the retold story and the second was her own story. although they were written by the same author, they had different style. the second article was felt more ‘alive’ compared to the first. the last article was quite a different style. it was more direct, full of expression of feelings, a little bit cynical, and had more idiomatic expressions that hard to find in the indonesian equivalent. although i maintained the form a little bit in terms of the writing style, i gave more weight on the content still. the idea of those three articles was to describe what extraordinary experience they had. this was what i had in mind during my attempt to translate the articles. while in term of choosing which strategy to use between literal vs. free translation, i cannot help to stand in between, since i wanted to stay safe in the process of translating. as i finished analyzing the type of the text to translate, and found that those three articles were informative texts, i had to do literal translation to avoid missing the points of information that should be translated. but i also used free translation in some degree. it was used to keep the dynamic of the texts so that they can read. if i only used literal or word by word translation, the translation result or target texts would be too rigid and difficult to keep up with. it is because there were some idiomatic expressions that i could not find any direct equivalent in bahasa indonesia. the example of such idiomatic expression found in the second article. it is written: ‘i told myself to breathe and finally got it right’. i could not literally translate into: ‘aku berkata pada diriku untuk bernapas dan akhirnya aku melakukannya dengan benar’. it is because such expression is not common in indonesian culture. thus, i replaced that with: ‘kucoba tenangkan diri, kuatur pernapasanku dan akhirnya aku tenang.’ this expression is more dynamic and common in the target language culture. another example is the term ‘stonelike hands’. it is odd if we translated it into ‘tangan seperti batu’. i tried to use ‘tangan sekeras baja’. c. the application of minimax theory the application of the minimax theory was actually done unconsciously before i started to translate the three articles. the first step is to analyze the style of the source text. as stated earlier that i found the articles had different style of writing. then i applied the second step that is to see whether the style should be maintained or not. if it gave effect to the understanding of text, then the style should be kept, but if not then the translators are free to use their own style of writing. vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 79 while applying the second step of the minimax strategy, i kept in mind about the text type. the articles are included as informative texts, where should be translated as they are without any redundancy. i came to conclusion that i had to keep the style in such a way that the target texts still show that they are informative texts. when analyzing the audience of the target text, which is the last step in minimax strategy, i considered that the target audience of the reader’s digest in indonesia is different to those of the original audience. people in common will not read this magazine in indonesia, but i dedicate the translation to indonesian young middle age people who love to read. i tried to use everyday language as natural as possible to meet the audience. when it comes to the idea of preserving the style or not after analyzing the audience, i could not help to fall into confusion. it is because at one point, the style does not give a significant effect to the understanding of the text, but at other point, the articles are considered as informative texts, especially about lived experience. but, finally i decided to keep the style but dynamically. the translation shift in the attempt to have a smooth translation result, some shifts could not be avoided to take place. to analyze the shift that occurred, i used the procedure listed by vinay and darbelnet (hatim & munday, 2004: 148 – 151). there are seven procedures listed by vinay and darbelnet, but i did not use all of them. the common thing that i used was borrowing. this was done when i could not find the exact equivalent word in bahasa indonesia, for example the word ‘transceiver’ and ‘raspberry’. although i borrowed the term, i gave additional information to explain the term. in that case, i added ‘alat pelacak’ for the transceiver and ‘buah – buahan perdu’ for the word raspberry. another common procedure used was equivalence. i used this when i found a certain idiom that is odd if translated literally, for example the word ‘stonelike hands’. that expression is not common in bahasa indonesia, therefore i used ‘tangan sekeras baja’. another example is the replacement of ‘his face was a mask of blood’ into ‘wajahnya bermandikan darah.’ the shifts happened were mostly on the level of text. i did not change the genre or the discourse of the text. the shifts occurred because the different cultural background between english and indonesian that make some of the expression cannot directly translate. as far as i analyzed there is not any negative effect on the shifts. i got the impression that the shifts happened are helping the target audience to understand the information conveyed (but yet, i have not yet tested this translated articles to be read by any target audience, except myself). shift is also happened on the grammar aspect. i could not transfer the tenses indication into bahasa indonesia, since there is no significant change of tense in bahasa indonesia. thus, the sense of activities happened in the past is not successfully translated into the target language. but this shift, i consider, does not give any significant changes in meaning, since it is not common to have tenses markers in bahasa indonesia. mostly, throughout the translation process, gains are more cultivated than loss. that is because i tended to add more information to explain a certain situation, rather than omit it. but, of course, i also did omit some words as had been explained on page 4 under the sub title the analysis of the text type. conclusion after practicing to apply the theories of translation in translating several articles from english into indonesian, i come up with some conclusion. translating is a dynamic activity of transferring message from one language to another, which changes from time to time. the translators’ knowledge and experiences, which are formed by practices, play an important role in the success of translating. the theories are there to help in exploring the world of translation especially deta maria sri darta 80 for ‘a new comer’ in the translation industry. but theories of translation are in line with the act of translation itself, that is subject to change. thus, the theories are not fix and rigid rules for the translators to obey, but they must be wise in applying which theories suitable for having their work done. it is important for translators to stick to the purpose of translating; therefore they can maintain their best to have their job done successfully. there are many examples of translation results especially in translating cultural aspect that show the importance of a careful decision in the process of translation. translating literary text, for example, will make a certain cultural aspect be invisible in the target text as well as be perceptible in the target text (2012: 140). the analysis confirms levỳ that translation is a process of deciding. during my attempt to translate the articles, i had to face many choices; the choice of what kind of text, what strategy should be used, what kind of style, what kind of audience, etc. those kinds of choices forced me to make up my mind. i had to decide most of the time. thus, i agree with levỳ to say that translation is a decision process. the general wisdom in translation, which says that the translators should always translate into their mother tongue or ‘language of habitual use’, should be wisely considered. since in translation there are many other aspects than merely transforming one word to another word in other language. when we deal with language, we must also deal with culture. if we are familiar with the language, we should also familiar with the culture of that language to make our job in translation lighten. references baker, mona. in other words. new york: routledge, 2011. print. sri darta, deta maria. “world literature and its effect on cultural aspects”. proceeding: unnes eltl: english language teaching and literature in relation to culture. 2012 pp. 139 -143. glodjović, anica. “translation as a means of cross-cultural communication: some problems in literary text”. facta universitatis. vol. 8 no. 2 2010 pp. 141 – 151. hatim, basil & jeremy munday. translation: an advanced resource book. london: routledge, 2004. print. hatim, basil and ian mason. the translator as communicator. new york: routledge, 1997. print. “8 crazy things you’ve never experienced”. articles in reader’s digest canada page 80–87. september 2010. (www. readersdigest.ca). web. october, 25 2010. roucek, j. s., and r.l. warren. sociology: an introduction. new jersey: little, brown and co., 1963. print. wellek, rene and austin warren. theory of literature. binding: paperback, 1977. print. http://www.readersdigest.ca/ http://www.readersdigest.ca/ phenomena vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 81 word formation: a morphological analysis viator lumban raja english department, santo thomas university abstract new words are required not only to increase our vocabulary but also to create new sentences. new words are acquired by the process of word formation which can be done in several ways. one of the most commonly used ways to form new words is affixation either through prefixation or suffixation. confixation or infixation is hardly ever used and is evidenced in the indonesian language. other methods of word formation include coining, clipping, blending, acronym, and compounding. a difficulty arises when one has to decide which morpheme comes first, if he encounters a word with bound morphemes at both sides, since the two bound morphemes are not simultaneously attached to the root. confixation occurs when morphemes are bounded both ends of the root simultaneously. confixation can be seen in the indonesian language. key words: word formation, bound morphemes at both sides what is word? words have a pivotal role in communication both in written and oral form. without words, communication is almost impossible because a sentence, a group of words which is semantically acceptable and grammatically correct, allows us to communicate effectively. without communication, life could cease to exist. so important are the words we use that we have to select them carefully when we talk. diction or word choice is an important factor to consider before we talk or write. we try not to hurt other people with words we use when talking or writing. words can be viewed from several aspects. if they are seen from their internal structure, they can be classified into simple and complex words. simple words are those which cannot be further segmented. for example, water, is a simple word because it cannot be further divided. whereas complex words are those which can be further divided. for example, watered, is a complex word, because it can be further segmented into water and {-ed} as a bound morpheme. if words are viewed from their class, they can be grouped into content and structural words which altogether form the parts of speech. content words include noun, verb, adjective and adverb. structural words include conjunctions, prepositions, articles, numerals, pronouns, and interjections. but, what is a word really? it is not easy to give a precise definition of a word because what seems to be a word to the speakers of one language many not be a word to the speakers of another language. for example, amo in latin, for most of us it seems like a word but actually it is a sentence which means i love. words are the minimum free form that is the smallest form that can occur by itself (aitchison, 1978: 3). thus, a form that can stand by itself is called a word. the form book for example is a word because it can occur by itself. richards (1985: 311) gives a similar definition that a word is the smallest linguistic unit that occurs on its own in speech and writing. the form “a” in english is a word although it consists of only a letter. however, {-s} in “books” is not a word despite the fact that it is also a letter. the word undesirable is a single word but has three morphemes. if the most elemental units of viator lumban raja 82 meaning are assumed to be the words of a language, then {un-} has the same meaning in unlikely, untouchable,and unchangeable as it has in undesirable because they all consists of two units of meaning: {un-} + desirable, likely, touchable, changeable (fromkin and robert, 1974: 103). however, {un-} is not a word because it cannot stand by itself. although it constitutes a certain meaning, it can only be meaningful if it is attached to another word. therefore, a word should be distinguished from a morpheme. a word must be a morpheme, that is a free morpheme, but a morpheme is not necessarily a word like in the example above “undesirable”, {un-} is not a word but a morpheme, a bound morpheme, which never occurs on its own but it is always attached to another morpheme. so, “undesirable” is one word but it has three morphemes. bauer (1983: 12-13) shows the difference between word form and lexeme. the word form “shot” is a form of the lexeme “shoot”. likewise, the words “shoots”, “shooting” and “shot” are all the from the lexeme “shoot”. in other words, it can be said that the words, shoot, shoots, shooting and shot are all subsumed under the lexeme shoot. todd (1987: 49) states that we can isolate four of the most frequently implied meaning of “word”: the orthographic, the morphological, the lexical, and the semantic word. an orthographic word is one which has a space on either side of it. for example, he had a book. there are four words in this sentence because each has a space on either side of it. a morphological word is a unique form which considers only form not meaning. the word “table”, for instance, is one morphological word, but “tables” are two morphological words. a lexical word covers the various forms of items which are closely related by meaning. thus, take, takes, taking , took, taken, are five morphological words but only one lexical word. this is really similar to what bauer (1983) defines as lexeme and word form. a semantic word involves distinguishing between items which may be morphologically identical but have a different meaning. the word table , for instance, can refer to a piece of furniture or to a schedule. thus, they belong to the same morphological word but they are also two semantic words because they are not closely related in meaning. how is a word developed? we will have a limited number of sentences if there are no new words produced. this means that not all our needs can be expressed by a limited number of words. new words can be developed from existing words or invented due to technological advancement. according to akmajian, et.al (1991: 21-24) new words can be formed by coining and compounding. whereas rachmadie 91985: 48-67) adds that words can also be formed by blending, clipping, and through acronyms. but the most commonly used way used to form new words is affixation. 1. affixation affixation is a process of attaching an affix to the root either to the left side or right side of the root. when an affix is attached to the end of the root or to the right side of the root, it is called a suffix. for example, free + {dom} - freedom. when an affix is attached to the front of the root or the left side of the root, it is called a prefix. for example, {dis-}+ continue  discontinue. prefixes and suffixes are affixes attached to the bases or to various combinations of the morphemes (wardhaugh, 1977: 84). wardhaugh further states that english does not use infixes, the nearest equivalent being the kind of situation that occurs in the plural of man  men. in general, suffix changes the category of the word, except those of inflectional morphemes. whereas hardly any prefix changes the category of the word. {dis-} + continue (verb)  discontinue (verb) good (adjective) + {-ness}  goodness (noun) free (adjective) + {-dom}  freedom (noun) leep (verb) + {-y} sleepy (adjective) {un-} + true (adjective)  untrue (adjective) from the examples above, it can be seen that suffixes change the category of the word, while prefixes do not. however, there is a prefix which can change the category of the word, that is the prefix {en-}. {en-} + danger (noun)  endanger (verb) {en-} + rich (adjective)  enrich (verb) vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 83 this is the only prefix which can change the category of the word, other prefixes do not change the category of the word they are attached to. nevertheless, the process of affixation is the most commonly used way to form new words. 2. coining or inventing words coined words are those words which keep entering a language. the speakers invent new words to name previously nonexistent objects that result from technology, such as xerox, klenex, kodak, laptop, computer, e-mail, digital, etc. in other words, coining words is the creation of new original words by writers, inventors, scientists, and others who are in need of a term to express a certain meaning or to name a product like coca cola, pentium, camera, tip-ex, laser disc, etc. some coined words like radar and laser were originally created as acronyms, radio detecting and ranging, light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. but people quickly forget such origins and they become new independent words. they do not realize that such words are in fact the result of acronym but since they are already familiar with them they do not regard them anymore as acronyms. 3. clipping words clipping is the process of shortening a longer word. it occurs when the long word has a very common use and the shorter form results because it is simpler and more easily understood. these clipped forms are usually appropriate in informal conversation but some of them are also used in standard english. pub  clipped from public mag  clipped from magazine dorm  clipped from dormitory pro  clipped from professional there is no exact rule of how to clip longer words. in general, only the first syllable and the first phoneme of the second syllable are taken as a clipped word if the word consists of two or three syllables. the clipped word “dorm” is taken from the first syllable and the first phoneme of the second syllable of the word dormitory. however, this is not always the case. sometimes, a word of four syllables is clipped into two syllables or one only. for examples : composition  compo professional  pro advertisement  ads cafeteria  café dormitory  dorm from the examples above, the word composition and cafeteria are consistently clipped, but not with the other words in spite of being four syllables. in the word composition and cafeteria, the first and the second syllable are taken to form the clipped word, but the rest are not similarly treated. in the word professional only the first syllable is taken to form the clipped word as if it were a word of two or three syllables. the word dormitory should be clipped as “dormi” like the previous examples of composition and cafeteria. but people say “dorm” instead of “dormi”. therefore, the process of clipping cannot be applied to all words in the same way. 4. blending words blending is the fusion of two words into one, usually the first part of one word with the last part of another, so that the resultant blend consists of both original meanings. for example: motor + hotel  motel smoke + fog  smog breakfast + lunch  brunch the word motel is used to mean a hotel for motorists, smog is used to mean smoke and fog, and brunch is used to mean a meal taken instead of both breakfast and lunch. again, the process of blending does not follow an exact rule. like clipping, it is formed according to the speaker’s ease, meaning easy to say and easy to recall. here below some more examples of blends. radio + telegram  radiogram biological + mechanic  bionic viator lumban raja 84 american + asian  ameranesia medical + care  medicare mono + rail  monorail turbo+ propeller  turboprop cheese + hamburger  cheeseburger from the examples above, it can be seen that there is no exact rule in forming a blend as shown above. it seems that practicality becomes one of the factors taken into consideration to make a blend. 5. acronym an acronym is the result of forming a word from the first letter or letters of each word in a phrase. this process happens because the name of the phrase is too long to say, therefore the speakers create a shorter way to say the phrase. for examples: aeronautics and space administration  nasa test of english as a foreign language  toefl very important person vip world health organization  who teaching english as a foreign language  tefl acronyms usually name political, industrial, and social institutions, not single or compound words. they usually consist of a long phrase which is then made into an acronym and formed into a word. however, some acronyms have already become permanent entries in the lexicon of english such as radar (radio detecting and ranging), laser (light amplification by stimulated emission or radiation), and scuba (selfcontained under water breathing apparatus). people have forgotten that they are acronyms, instead they regard them as new entries in english. besides the long phrases which are made into acronyms, there are some short phrases as well which one made into acronyms. down payment  d.p brought in dead  bid delivery order  d.o ante cenam  a.c (before meals) god bless you  g.b.u air conditioned  a.c post merediem  p.m over dose  o.d ante merediem  a.m road traffic accident  r.t.a these kinds of acronyms are now used a lot in text messages, and everybody understands their meaning even when seeing them for the first time. the phrase “by the way” is made into btw, and “god bless you” into gbu. words are clipped irregularly such as “thanks” becomes thx, “you” becomes u, and christmas becomes xs. 6. compounding compound words are formed by combining two or more words into one unit with a perceptible meaning. for examples: class (noun) + room (noun)  classroom green (adjective) + house (noun)  greenhouse sun (noun) + bathe (verb)  sunbathe pick (verb) + pocket (noun)  pickpocket, cut-throat hit (verb) + run (verb)  hitrun cut (preposition) + cast (verb)  outcast these compound words can be made of many combinations but the most frequent combination is those of noun and noun. this is the largest sub-grouping of compounds. many types of semantic relationship can be isolated within this grouping (bauer, 1983: 202). it can be difficult to decide whether a combination of words is a compound or simply a noun phrase. the criterion taken to distinguishing between the two is the stress. if the stress is on the first word, then it is a compound. this is not difficult if the combination consists of a noun and a noun – like movie star, classroom, ticket agent, etc. but when the combination consists of an adjective and a noun like deep structures or dancing teacher, it can result in a different meaning. when the stress is on the left, deep structure, then it is a compound word which refers to a part of transformational grammar. when it is a phrase with the stress on the right or on the second element, the meaning is “a structure which is deep”. likewise, “dancing teacher, when it is a compound vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 85 word with the stress on the left, it means a teacher who teaches dancing. whereas when it is a noun phrase with the stress on the right, it means a teacher who is dancing. however, these cases are quite rare, and only those with the –ing form can result in difficulty. one way to decide whether a form is a compound or a phrase is through its meaning. if the meaning can be unveiled by a relative pronoun, then it must be a phrase. on the contrary, if the meaning can be unveiled by a preposition, then it must be a compound. for example, dining table, it must be a compound since the meaning is a table for dining, not a table which is dining. some, however, can be confusing like dancing teacher, hunting dog, flying planes, etc. 7. bound morphemes on both sides in english there is no so-called confixes like in indonesian. confixes are affixes which are simultaneously attached to both side of the root. thus the word, disagreement, does not undergo the same process as the word kebenaran in indonesian. {ke – an } in indonesian is called confix because it must be attached simultaneously, not one by one. ke benar an ke benar an x  ke benar an x the description in the middle is the correct one because the confix {ke – an } should come together to the root “benar”, then we have kebenaran. there is no “kebenar”, then suffix {-an} is attached, nor “ benaran”, then prefix {ke-} is attached to it. because of the existence of confixation in indonesian, words are not formed by adding a prefix then a suffix or vice versa. on the contrary, confixation is not found in english. it is sometimes difficult to decide which affix is attached to the root first if a word has affixes on both sides. look at this example below. dis agree ment x the process of confixation is not used in english. both affixes are not simultaneously attached, but they are attached one by one. the problem is which is attached first, the prefix or the suffix. (1) a. dis agree ment or b. dis agree ment (2) a. dis grace ful or b. dis grace ful if we are faced with successive peripheral constituents on both sides of the root, we have two ways to analyze, (1) by analyzing the meaningful relationship, and (2) by studying the structural parallels (nida, 1949: 89). by meaningful relationship it can be decided that in (1a) {-ment} as a modifier of disagree, meaning “being disagreed”, or in (1b) {dis-} + agreement, meaning “no agreement”. likewise, in example (2a) {ful-} functions as a modifier of “disgrace”, meaning “full of disgrace”; or in (2b) {dis-} + graceful, meaning “not graceful”. whereas by structural parallels, we have to compare various types of combination with {dis-} and {-ment}, and {dis-}{ and {-ful}. the prefix {dis-} mostly occurs with a noun and a verb, and the resultant combination remains such disagree, discolor, disrespect, etc. they remain as verbs since the prefix {dis-} does not change the category of the word. although the prefix {dis-} may viator lumban raja 86 occur with a noun, it is not productive like {dis-} + harmony  disharmony. whereas the suffix {-ment} occurs with verb, and the resultant combination is a noun such as agreement, repairment, attonment, endowment, employment, etc. the suffix {ment} changes the category of the word to which it is attached. likewise, in example (2a) the suffix {-ful} occurs with the noun and the resultant combination is an adjective such as careful, tasteful, beautiful, handful, etc. in other words, the suffix {-ful} changes the category of the word to which it is attached. therefore, by doing structural parallel analysis, the most acceptable analysis is the alternative (a) not (b) although the alternative (1b) indicates a noun like “agreement”, but that is not acceptable because the noun “agreement” is a complex word, not a root. the prefix {dis} + noun is not productive, except with “harmony” as shown above. if we tolerate the alternative (1b), then we might have other combinations of {dis-}such as disshipment, disemployment, discommandment, etc which are all rejected. likewise, in example (2a), this procedure is acceptable, and (b) is not because disgrace + {-ful} becomes an adjective, that is the function of suffix {-ful} to change the noun into an adjective. if we employ procedure (b) {dis-} + graceful, it still remains adjective, but contrary to the prefix {dis-} which is always attached to a verb or a noun and never to an adjective. take another example, “disrespectful”, the root’s precisely boundbase “respect”, must be a noun, not a verb. if it were a verb, then the prefix {dis-} is attached to it, it is still acceptable, but suffix {ful} is never attached to a verb in order to change it into an adjective. the suffix {-ful} is attached to a noun to form an adjective. therefore, we have to use the structural parallel analysis to decide which morpheme comes first if we have successive peripheral constituents on both sides of the root. conclusion the coverage of word formation in english is quite wide. one of the most widely used ways to form new words is affixation, comprising prefixation and suffixation. whereas coining, clipping, blending, acronym and compounding have their own rules in forming new words. since confixation is not known in english, one has a difficulty to determine how a word with bound morphemes on both sides of the root is formed. a question may arise which morpheme is firstly attached, the prefix or the suffix. the prefix and the suffix cannot be simultaneously attached because confixation is not available in english. references aitchison,jeans. foundations of general linguistics. new york: rinehart and winston, inc.,1987. akmajian, adrian. et.al. linguistics: an introduction to language and communication. third edition. cambridge: the mit press, 1991. bauer, laurie. english word formation. cambridge: cambridge university press, 1983.. fromkin, victoria, and robert rodman. 1974. an introduction to language. new york: holt, rinehart and winston, inc., 1974. nida, eugene. morphology: the descriptive analysis of words. ann arbor: the university of michigan press, 1949. rachmadie, sabrony. buku materi pokok: vocabulary. jakarta: depdikbud, universitas terbuka, 1985. richards, jack. et.al. dictionary of applied linguistics. london: longman group, ltd., 1985. todd, loreto. an introduction to linguistics. essex, u.k.: longman group, ltd., 1987. wardhaugh, ronald. introduction to linguistics. second edition. new york: mcgraw hill, inc., 1987. phenomena vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 1 informal indonesian and the spirit of pluralism soepomo poedjosoedarmo english studies, graduate program, sanata dharma university abstract this brief paper deals with the emergence of the informal style of indonesian, especially from the point of view of its motive, its function, its form and the effect of the vitality of the local vernaculars. it is the result of long observation and participation as a citizen of indonesia, who speaks javanese as a native speaker and who has spoken indonesian from the time of its inception keywords: diglossic, informal indonesian, code-switching introduction when i was a pupil of sekolah rakyat (elementary school) in wonosari in 1941, i learned malay (bahasa melayu) as a subject. in 1945 indonesia was declared independent and malay was chosen to be the national language of the country with the name bahasa indonesia. indonesia became diglossic, using indonesian for official, national, and modern matters, and javanese or any other vernacular for unofficial, regional, and traditional matters. in 1947 i started junior high school (smp, sekolah menengah pertama), and indonesian became the medium of instruction. i was amazed that most of my teachers were able to speak indonesian fairly fluently. in 1948 very often student leaders from gadjah mada university visited us, informing us of the political situation of the country, and preparing us for the student mobilization to fight against the dutch soldiers in case of the dutch attack. the student leaders were good at delivering speeches in indonesian, and that very much amazed me, too. we used indonesian to talk about school subjects and to have deliberations in student organization meetings. in informal occasions, however, we used javanese with our school friends. then from 1950 to 1953 i studied in sga (sekolah guru atas, senior teachers’ school in yogyakarta. the teaching staff and the students were not only javanese. quite a few were from outside java. there were two students from aceh, eight students from west kalimantan, two students from manado, one student from makassar, and one student from bali. we lived in an asrama (hostel) next to the school. outside school we talked in javanese with our javanese friends, but we had to use indonesian when talking to the non-javanese friends. i did not realize that this was the beginning of informal indonesian for me and for all of us living in the hostel. informal indonesian came into being. the speakers of informal indonesian inter-ethnic friendship did not only occur in the hostel of sga. there were several sga’s then, and there were also state universities such as gadjah mada, the university of indonesia in jakarta, and itb (institut teknologi bandung, bandung institute of technology) that enrolled students from various provinces in indonesia. there were also government offices that employed officials from various different ethnic origins, private businesses with various employees from different islands, political activists who fought for the unity of the country, and religious leaders who wanted to spread their faith throughout the country. they too soepomo poedjosudarmo 2 became friends and used informal indonesian when talking informally to each other. thus, the rise of informal indonesian signifies friendship between various people from different ethnic groups in indonesia. nowadays informal indonesian is also used by friends of the same ethnic background and has even spread to many children of educated people and has become the medium of communication in their family. for example, in java to avoid the hesitating choice of the polite level (krama) or the nonrespectful level (ngoko), new acquaintances or colleagues decide to use indonesian rather than javanese. indonesian can be a solution for those who feel too polite using krama, but too rude in using ngoko. further, as an instance, the sons and daughters of my nephews and nieces in yogyakarta use informal indonesian when talking to their parents and do the same thing to their grandparents. the grandparents complain but they cannot do anything to make their grandchildren talk to the parents and grandparents in javanese. the grandchildren learn indonesian from their kindergartens. such a phenomenon and such a complaint do not seem to occur only among parents and grandparents in yogyakarta or in java. it has occurred in many other towns and provinces. the form of informal indonesian the form of informal indonesian is just like standard indonesian with several exceptions. the forms of the two styles of indonesian are a little different because, first of all, if standard and formal indonesian is meant to be used everywhere in indonesia, informal indonesian is usually more limited in its coverage. formal style of speech observes the rules of prescriptive or normative grammar and standard dictionary, while informal speech contains many elements from outside the grammar book and the dictionary. formal speech is used nation wide, whereas informal style of speech is used locally. formal speech is learned at school, while informal speech is developed casually outside formal schooling. informal speech is heavily influenced by the local vernacular. each ethnic group may have its own specific informal indonesian. all linguistic variables of the vernacular may appear in the informal speech. it can be phonological, morphological, syntactic or lexical. sometimes the system in the speech level may also affect the form of the informal style. in the case of pronunciation, the influence can be seen in the form of the individual phoneme, syllable structure, or prosodic pattern. for example, the informal style of indonesian used by the javanese may contain such javanese phonological features as the contraction of diphthongs and syllables and javanese prosody. the contraction of diphthongs /ay/ and /aw/ into /e/ and /o/ (sampe, arrive; kalo, if), the contraction of /c∂rv/, /c∂lv/ into /crv/ and /clv/ (brani, brave; slalu, always), and the even stress for the first and second syllable (sla-lu, bra-ni) frequently appear. javanese affixes such as 0, n-, ke—an, ke—en may be used instead of indonesian ber-, men-, terkena…. or terlalu… (kerja, to work; ngambil, take; kecurian, stolen by thief; keberaten, too heavy). javanese syntactic patterns such as the split of the subject into some sort of theme plus the subject, and also the subject following the predicate may also appear. for example pak hari itu, anaknya cantik-cantik, or pak hari itu, cantik-cantik, anaknya (hari’s daughters are pretty). inverted sentences may happen in statements, questions, and commands. for example bu, sudah habis, nasinya (mom, the rice is gone), mau diapakan nasinya ini? (what are we going to do with the rice?); masuk dulu, kamu ((you) go in forst). inverted sequences within an informal discourse may also happen. the items presented in formal speech, which is usually well-ordered, may occur in inverted order or even in disorderly sequence in informal speech. as for the lexical items, javanese words such as celeng (boar), tawuran (mob fighting), kenes (flirtatious), and many others are used. in connection with the sentence pattern, very often sentence particles such as dong, deh, sih, ya, lho, kok, and kan are used. for examples, jangan mbolos ya (do not cut classes, okey), jangan gitu dong (do not do it like that, please). secondly, if formal and standard indonesian is meant to convey messages vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 3 clearly in a brief and compact way, informal speech does not have to always be very clear and brief. a speaker may express a vague or even an unfinished message to his interlocutor, yet the latter knows what the speaker wants because the latter knows the speaker very well. the interlocutor knows the speaker’s background, his temperament, his present condition, his preoccupation, and his aspiration. corrupted words, corrupted affixes, unfinished sentences, dangling sentences, unfinished discourses, all can easily be comprehended by the interlocutor. the deleted sound(s) in the word and the affix(es), the deleted phrase or the clause in the sentence, the omitted sentences in the discourse do not seem to bother the interlocutor. the followings are some examples of corrupted words. they are almost always used in such forms that they seem to have become the accepted informal forms. corrupted words are, e.g., aja (only) for saja, udah (already) for sudah, gitu (like that) for begitu. corrupted affixes are, e.g., 0 for ber (intransitive verb preffix), nfor men (transitive verb prefix); so jalan (to walk) for berjalan, ngambil (to take) for mengambil. corrupted sentence is e.g. telan dulu baru ngomong (swallow your food in your mouth first, then only you can talk) for telan dulu makanan di mulutmu, sesudah itu baru kamu dapat berbicara. corrupted discourses are for example the shouts of food venders or shoe repairers in the street to attract the attention of perspective customers, such as te for sate ayam, saya jual sate ayam. silahkan beli sate ayam saya; sol sepatu, sepatu sol (shoe soles, sole shoes) is the shout of a shoe repairer who invites the customers to repair their shoes and sandals. on the other hand, in informal speech, time is very often not very important. for example, to make his message clearer, a speaker can make his utterance very long by adding cumbersome illustrations. to give emphasis, a speaker may repeat the phrases, clauses, sentences or discourses that he wants to emphasize. he may repeat twice, three times, four times, and even more times. for example telan dulu, telan dulu, telan dulu, baru ngomong (swallow the food first, swallow the food first, swallow the food first, then you can talk). very often a speaker adds his message with irrelevant information or even seemingly unrelated utterances. thirdly, if formal and standard speech should be accurate, informal speech can be a little ambiguous. instead of using accurate words and idioms, a speaker often uses terms that are too general in nature. they may have a lot of different meanings, and are of more highly frequent of use. for example, instead of asking for telur dadar (omelette) or telur ceplok (sunny side up) or telur orak-arik (scrambled egg), a husband may just say makan pake telur saja ((i want to) eat (rice) with just egg). the verb makan (eat) in an informal speech can be used to mean many different things. for example remnya nggak makan (the brake does not work), bapak itu makan anak tirinya (that man rapes his own step daughter/child), kakinya patah dimakan paiman (his leg was broken because he was kicked hard by paiman). in terms of the sentences, informal speech is usually not expressed in long complex compound sentences as in the formal speech. they are usually in either simple sentences or coordinate sentences using such a connector as dan (and), tetapi (but), or setelah itu (after that). fourthly, if formal style of speech is business-like, informal speech can be emotional. informal speech may contain lexical items that express various kinds of uncontrolled feelings, such as anger, sadness, burst of happiness, pain, and worry. interjections (e.g. aduh, goodness gracious), shouts (e.g. ee, hi), screams (e.g. emoh, don’t want to), moans (e.g. aduh biyung, gosh), cries for help (e.g. tulung, help), and the like can be found in an informal speech. further, if formal and standard style of speech should be objective and distant (formal), informal speech can use intimate vocabulary or intimate expressions. the speaker may use kin terms such as pak (dad), bu (mom), or terms of address such as dok (doctor), prof (professor), or terms of endearment such as sayang (darling) that show his wish of intimate relation, urgent persuasion, or strong plea of favor. soepomo poedjosudarmo 4 fifth, in an informal speech the speaker may also refer to such an extra-linguistic object in the surrounding using such a demonstrative pronoun as ini (this), itu (that), di sini (here) or di situ (there). sixth, if the formal style of speech uses one code consistently from the beginning to the end, informal speech can use code switching or even code mixing. this means that the speaker is free to change his emotion, his intention, his topic of conversation, the addressee he is speaking to, and how he regards his relation with the addressee. in the informal style of speech, the speaker often changes the style of speech, the speech level, the register, the dialect, and even the language he is speaking. related to code switching, while formal speech is expected to be in good sequence, informal speech one can be otherwise. the discourse does not have to start with the opening sentence and end with a closure. the opening sentence can be inserted in the middle or even at the end of the discourse. the topic sentence does not have to be at the beginning or at the end of the discourse, it can be inserted in the early part, middle part or final part of the discourse, or not be mentioned altogether. informal speech does not have to follow a certain format. the speaker may vary the order in the way his impulse dictates to him, and the effect is perceived as normal. the function of informal indonesian the informal style of speech is used in informal communication. moods of ease, informality, tolerance, accommodation and friendship surround the use of informal speech. informal speech improves personal relationships. informal speech facilitates relaxed conversations, conveyance of inner feelings, and exchange of jokes. in a joking atmosphere, friends tolerate unpleasant differences. informal indonesian seems to have the same function, especially when used by people of different ethnic backgrounds. with the rise of informal indonesian, tolerance and accommodation of differences between people from different ethnic groups in indonesia has become easier. it has encouraged friendship between people from different islands, different provinces, and different regions. in other words, the spirit of pluralism has arisen in indonesia, due to, among other reasons, the use of informal indonesian. people are beginning to appreciate differences in customs and habits. friendship and inter-marriage are now normal practice. the effect of informal indonesian on the linguistic repertoire up to 1950 the relation between such a regional language as javanese and indonesian resembles diglossia; with indonesian functioning as the h (high) code and the regional language as the l (low) code (ferguson, 1964). the regional language has its specific function and indonesian has another specific function. javanese is used for an unofficial situation and for intra-ethnic communication, while indonesian is used for an official and inter-ethnic communication. indonesian is a national language, and javanese is a regional or provincial language. indonesian is used to communicate “modern” topics such as science, national politics, and high level economics, while javanese is for traditional topics such as traditional arts, religion, and social matters. the separation of the function is clear. overlaps in the use of indonesian and javanese are rare. but when informal indonesian has become popular, the separation of the function becomes more complex. several domains of life can be conveyed in either javanese or informal indonesian. the following are charts that give pictures of the separation of the functions between javanese and indonesian before and after the emergence of informal indonesian. figure 1 represents the diglossic situation and the clear separation of the function of indonesian and javanese. figure 1 represents the diglossic situation and the clear separation of the function of indonesian and javanese. figure 2 gives picture of the division of functions after the emergence of the informal indonesian (poedjosoedarmo, 2002). vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 5 from the above description it can be observed that nowadays the linguistic situation is no longer diglossic, but rather triglossic or even polyglosic. such a phenomenon may not be described as a leaking diglossia, but rather a total split of the form and function of the h (high) code, and hence an overlap in the use of indonesian and javanese in several domains of communication. the emergence of the practice of code mixing among some speakers, especially among young children in urban areas and among good friends of middle class people, the separation of the function of javanese and indonesian has become distinct. for them the difference in function between informal indonesian and javanese is unclear. they can convey messages using either javanese or indonesian. this unclear separation between javanese and informal indonesian has prompted the practice of code-mixing. unlike in code-switching, the speaker shifts codes not because he or she wants to give a certain impression, to show that he is addressing a different interlocutor, to communicate a different topic of conversation, or to show a different relational attitude toward the addressee. he constantly switches from javanese to indonesian, and vice versa, because he does not know the different functions or the different meanings of the two languages. unlike the code-switch, code-mix is not motivated by the change in intention, wish, or context of conversation, but rather by the change in the impulsive presence of the codes in the head of the speaker. whichever code comes up in the mind, that is the one the speaker utters. and since the functions of the two codes are unclear, confusion dictates the appearance of the codes in the mind. hence mixing is a common practice in malaysia and the philippines. in malaysia people speak of bahasa rujak and in the philippines halo-halo language. the popular names suggest that everything or anything can be mixed into the language. it seems that in indonesia some people are starting to speak it. once can name such a mixture of language gado-gado language. the effect of informal indonesian on the regional language in general one can state that the vitality of the regional languages in indonesia is becoming less and less vigorous. the function of the standard style of the major regional languages (bahasa daerah) such as javanese, sundanese, and balinese is gradually shrinking because, instead, indonesian is now in use. javanese, sundanese, and balinese are now rarely used to communicate official business. further, with the emergence of informal indonesian, the function of the figure 1 the separation of function before the emergence of informal indonesian function language situation ethnic origin of p2 p1-p2 relation topic official unofficial outside inside distant close modern traditional indonesian √ √ √ √ javanese √ √ √ √ figure 2 the separation of function after the emergence of informal indonesian function language situation ethnic origin of p2 p1-p2 relation topic official unofficial outside inside distant close modern traditional standard indonesian √ √ √ √ informal indonesiane √ √ √ √ javanese √ √ √ √ soepomo poedjosudarmo 6 informal speech of the major regional languages is also gradually reduced. as a consequence, the lovers of bahasa daerah have to make an extra effort to maintain the vitality of their languages. with the reduction of their vitality, the inventory of the lexicon of most regional languages is becoming smaller. many words and idioms are fading away because they are rarely used. the younger generations are forgetting many traditional words and idioms. apart from the lexicon, the syntactic pattern and the phonology of the regional languages are also becoming poorer. many items have either merged with some others or have disappeared from use. this is understandable because the regional languages are only the informal code in the totality of the linguistic repertoire. an informal code does not have to be as rich as the standard one, because it has only to convey messages that require no maximal clarity unlike the standard one (poedjosoedarmo, 2002). conclusion the rise of the informal style of indonesian is an interesting phenomenon. first of all, it reminds us of the existence of the informal polite (madya) level in javanese (poedjosoedarmo, 1977). there are many similarities between informal indonesian and madya level, either in their forms or their functions. in terms of the forms, both informal indonesian and madya contain corrupted forms. for example, they use a lot of linguistic elements from the first code or the first language of the speakers. they do not have to be very clear and accurate. they use a lot of repetitions, interjections, and friendly terms of address. in terms of their meanings, both convey the spirit of informality, intimacy, accommodation and tolerance. secondly, the process of the development is also interesting. while in europe people are busy developing their standard languages, in indonesia people are developing informal indonesian. since the time of the renaissance many nations in europe developed their standard languages to unite their countries and to increase the prestige of their civilizations (haugen, 1969: 119-130). in indonesia, soon after malay was accepted as the national language, people started developing informal indonesian to facilitate the spirit of friendship and the acceptance of pluralism of culture. reference prihandini, asih. “penggunaan bahasa oleh siswa-siswa tk (0 kecil), tk syuhada, yogyakarta.” master thesis (unpublished). yogykarta: gadjah mada university, 2002. keprianto, catur. “bahasa tutur anak pada masyarakat bilingual: studi kasus anak umur 8 tahun pada sebuah keluarga di kota semarang.” master thesis (unpublished). yogyakarta: gadjah mada university, 2003. ferguson, charles a. “diglossia” in dell hymes, ed., language in culture and society. new york: harper & row, 1964. widodo, yulius harry. “kode dan alih kode anak usia 5 tahun.” master thesis (unpublished). yogyakarta: gadjah mada university, 2001. haugen, einar. “national and international languages” in archibald a. hill, ed.,linguistic, voice of america forum lectures. washington: united states information service, 1969. poedjosoedarmo, soepomo. “perkembangan madya”. (presented in a seminar on regional languages, held by pusat pembinaan bahasa dan sastra, departemen pendidikan dan kebudayaan). jakarta, 1977. poedjosoedarmo, soepomo. “tutur ringkas bahasa indonesia” in bahasa dan sastra, tahun iv no. 1. jakarta: pusat pembinaan dan pengembangan bahasa, departemen pendidikan dan kebudayaan, 1978. vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 7 poedjosoedarmo, soepomo. “the behavior of languages used in anilingual society” in phenomena, journal of language and literature, vol. 6 no. 1, yogyakarta: department of english letters, sanata dharma university, 2002. peodjosoedarmo, soepomo. “perubahan fungsi kode tutur di indonesia” (presented in a seminar held by diponegoro university). semarang, 2003. masykuroh, qanitah. “pemakaian bahasa anak: studi kasus di pondok pesantren anak al-amin sukoharjo” master thesis (unpublished). yogyakarta: gadjah mada university, 2003. phenomena vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 7 three dimensional aspects of the major character in oscar wilde’s vera i wayan mulyawan moelya01@gmail.com english department, udayana university abstract drama is a portrait of a real life situation and the theme of a drama is closely related to daily life conditions experienced by the character. a character is defined as an entity, human or animal, that is created by the author. a good character should be natural and lifelike, especialy in physiological, psychological and sociological dimensions known as three dimensional aspect of a character. these dimensions are very interesting to discuss since they are very important to determine the qualities of the characters in a drama. physiologically, vera is described as a beautiful young lady with beautiful eyes. sociologically, vera is concluded as coming from an average family in russia, living in a poor society, and living under tyranny. she has lived in an inn with her father before she saw her brother taken away to prison for seeking for liberty as a nihilist. psychologically, vera is seen as a loving person though she does not put love as priority. she loves her country and her brother. she wants to revenge on the king for being a tyrant. she is a brave woman. it is seen from how she becomes a nihilist to revenge for her brother and to end up the tyranny in her country. keywords: physiological dimension, psychological dimension, and sociological dimension a brief note on characters in drama literature is a part of human works in written forms through language. according to wellek and warren (1973:20-21), literature is anything in written form which contains idea and thoughts. literature is a written product of human’s activity in expressing their ideas, thought and expression. human creates literature for many purposes. one of those purposes is for aesthetic reasons and amusements. this purpose of creating literature then leads to the existence of literary works. literary works are divided into three namely poetry, prose and drama. these three parts of literary works have their own characteristics. drama has characteristics which differentiate it from the other two types of literary works. drama consists of dialogues and is performed on stage. it is interesting since the audiences can directly enjoy the story that the writer wants to deliver through visualization. therefore, it is not surprising that drama gets a lot of attention from those who love literary works but find difficulties in visualizing the idea in their minds. similar to the other types of literary works, drama is usually considered as the reflection of the society. many of famous dramas in the world have a closed relation to the condition of the society where and when it was created. drama usually portraits a real life situation and the theme of a drama is usually closed to things that human beings face in daily life, such as love, war, and family. those themes are arranged in dialogues and are played by the characters on stage. character is defined as an entity, human or mailto:moelya01@gmail.com i wayan mulyawan 8 animal, that is created by the author. a good character should be natural and lifelike. in building up a character in a drama, there are three dimensional aspects that usually contribute to the representations of the character. those three dimensions of character are physiological, psychological and sociological dimensions. the physiological dimension of a character covers the physical aspects of the character such as sex, age, and physical appearance. the psychological dimension of a character deals with, among others, the ambition, behavior, and feeling of the character. meanwhile, the sociological dimensions cover the contribution of society or environment surrounding the character. those three dimensions of character help the author convey the qualities of the character so that the audience can visualize the character in their mind. many dramas have been played and produced by great authors in this world. one of those great dramas is vera written by a famous dramatist, oscar wilde, in the 19th century. intrinsic elements of literary works in building up literary works, there are two important components included, namely intrinsic and extrinsic elements. according to diyanni (2001:44), intrinsic elements are the basic elements or characteristics of story. intrinsic elements such as theme, plot, setting, style, character, and point of view, build the structure of literary works. each intrinsic element has its own role. intrinsic elements build the structure of a literary work so that it stands strong as the product of ideas and imagination. it gives the beauty of the literary work itself and brings the literary work to the higher value, not only as the product of literature without any purpose, meaning, and message. diyanni (2001:50) states that there are seven basic elements or literature, they are: theme, plot, character, setting, point of view, language & style and irony & symbol. character and characterization a character (diyanni, 2001: 55) is defined as the imaginary person that the writer creates. characters are divided into two types, namely major character and minor character. major character is the prominent figure of the play and minor character is the supporting figure of the play. based on the changing of the character in the story, characters are divided into static and dynamic characters. a static character is a character that undergoes no change in the characteristic, personality, or outlook appearance from the beginning until the end of the story. a dynamic character is character that has permanent change, some or a lot, in characteristic, personality, or outlook appearance as the story goes by (diyanni, 2001: 60). characters in literary works convey many aspects such as the physical appearance of the character, the quality of the character, and the social life. those aspects can be seen through various methods. according to kenney (1966:34), the methods of presenting character is called characterization. an author should have an ability not only to choose what characters take part in the story, but also to choose the method of presenting the characters in the story. kenney (1966:34) divided characterization methods into five: discursive method, dramatic method, character on characters method, contextual method, and mixing method. a. discursive method discursive method is the method in which the author presents the character in the story directly through narative statements. b. dramatic method dramatic method is the method in which the author lets the characters describe themselves to the readers by their own words and actions. c. character on character method character on character method is the method to present one scaracter through other character. it means that one character describes or talks about another character in the story. d. contextual method contextual method is the method of presenting the character thruogh certain description of their surrounding condition. vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 9 e. mixing method mixing method is the use of more than one methods in presenting a character. three dimensions of character egri lajos (in hamzah, 1985:107) states that a character has three dimensions as its fundamental structure. those dimensions are physiology, sociology, and psychology. they are the elements which build the characterization in a literary work and they are bound to each other. different combination of those factors will result in different characteristics of people. roucek and warren state, personality is the organization of biological, psychological, and sociological factors which underline the individual’s behavior. it consists of habits, attitudes, and other characteristics, whatever their source, according to which one individual behaves differently from another. it is the organization of the behavior of the individual as it is developed in interaction with other people (1963:23). a. physiological dimension physiological dimension is the description of the physical aspects of a character, e.g. appearance and general health. physical appearance may effect on the character’s feeling regarding his/her surrounding, or the feeling of being secure/insecure. physiological aspects of a character are observed through sex, age, or physical appearance such as the body shape, whether or not a person is beautiful or handsome, or the color of skin and hair. b. sociological dimension sociological dimension is related to the description of the condition of character’s environment. sociological aspect can be effectively analyzed through the social life of the character, e.g. the house, the job, the education, and the social status. c. psychological dimension the last dimension of character is psychological dimension. psychological dimensions deals with the characteristics of the character, e.g. behavior, emotion, and thought. discussion on vera sabouroff in vera 1. the physiological dimension of vera sabouroff physiological aspect of a character is observed through sex, age, physical appearance such as shape of body, whether or not a person is beautiful or handsome, and the color of skin and hair. data 1 peter. has vera not come back yet, michael? michael. no, father peter, not yet; ‘tis a good three miles to the post office, and she has to milk the cows besides, and that dun one is a rare plague creature for a wench to handle. peter. why didn’t you go with her, you young fool? she’ll never love you unless you are always at her heels; women like to be bothered (365). data 2 peter. ay, ay, he was a merry lad. it is the girl that has the seriousness – she goes about as solemn as a priest for days at a time. michael. vera is always thinking of others (365) data 3 vera. they are hungry and tired. let me go to them. one of the soldiers. let the wench be, if she pays us sergeant. well, have your way. if the colonel sees you, you may have to come with us, my pretty one (368). data 4 vera. we were rehearsing a new tragedy. general. your answer are too honest to be true. come, let me see who you are. take off those players’ masks. by st nicholas, my beauty, if your face match your figure, you must be a choice morsel! come, i say, pretty one; i would sooner see your face than those of all the others (378). i wayan mulyawan 10 data 5 czar. the governor of archangel shoot on his own country yard by a woman! i’m not safe here. i’m not safe anywhere, with that she-devil of the revolution, vera saburoff, here in moscow. prince paul, is that woman still here. prince paul. they tell me she was at the grand duke’s ball last night. i can hardly believe that; nut she certainly had intended to leave for novgorod today, sire. the police were watching every train for her; but for some reason or other, she did not go. some traitor must have warned her. but i shall catch her yet. a chase after a beautiful woman is always exciting (385). data 6 alexis. i shall be there; but i shall return alone. remember, not a word about my strolling players. general. or your pretty gypsy, eh, prince” your pretty gypsy! i’ faith, i should like to see her before i go; she has such fine eyes through her mask. well, good-night, your highness; goodnight (379). data 7 czar. you must hunt her down with bloodhounds, and when she is taken i shall hew her limb from limb. i shall stretch her on the raeck till her pale white body is twisted and curled like paper in the fire. prince paul. oh, we shall have another hunt immediately for her, sire! prince alexis will assist us, i am sure (386). from data 1 above, vera’s sex is female since michael uses nominative pronoun “she” in the conversation to refer to vera. besides, peter also uses accusative and genitive pronouns “her” to refer to vera. the use of pronoun “she” and “her” proves that vera is a female. vera is a young lady seen from the data 2. peter says “the girl” and michael responds that “vera is…” it can be seen that “the girl” that is meant by peter is vera since michael directly says something about vera. peter uses “the girl” as the substitution to refer to vera. in data 3, the utterance uttered by the sergeant implied the physiological dimensions of vera. from that aspect, the reader can imagine how the character looks like. from the sergeant utterance’s, it can be concluded that vera is a beautiful woman. the way the sergeant addresses vera as the pretty one implies that vera is a beautiful woman. from data 4 and data 5 above, it is known that vera sabouroff is a beautiful woman. it can be seen from the general’s and prince paul’s opinion about vera. both of them said that she is a beautiful woman. in his dialogue with vera in act one, the general says that she is beautiful and pretty. in his dialogue with the czar in act two, prince paul also says that she is a beautiful woman. from both opinions it can be concluded that vera sabouroff is a beautiful woman. from data 6, it is known that vera is a beautiful woman with a pair of beautiful eyes. it is known from the general’s utterance when he sees vera. even though vera is wearing a mask, the general can see her beautiful eyes. in addition, vera has white pale skin, the common characteristic of russian people. this is described through czar’s utterance in data 7. 2. the sociological dimension of vera sabouroff sociological aspects can be effectively analyzed through the social life of the character, for instance the house, the job, and the education. data 1 peter. no, no, no, boy; no man could live if he took his neighbor’s pack on his shoulders. (enter vera in peasant’s dress) well, my girl, you’ve been long enough away – where is the letter? vera. there is none today, father. peter. i knew it. vera. but there will be one, tomorrow, father (366). data 2 colonel. bring me there. sergeant post your picket outside, and see that these scoundrels do not communicate with anyone. no letter writing, you dogs, or you’ll be flogged for it. now for the vension. (to peter bowing before him) vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 11 get out of the way, you fool! who is that girl? (sees vera) peter. my daughter, your highness (367) data 3 vera. let me see your face. dmitri. you will see nothing but suffering in it. they have tortured me. vera. oh, god! dmitri! my brother! (368). in the conversations provided in data 1 above, vera uses the substitution of “father” to refer to peter. in the data 2, when the colonel asks, “who is that girl” to peter, peter answers that the girl is his daughter. the girl is vera, because the colonel is looking at vera when he asks the question. both data show that vera is peter’s daughter. in data 3, the conversation between vera and dmitri shows that vera is dmitri’s sister. it is clearly seen when vera exclaims “my brother!” to dmitri. data 4 peter. has vera not come back yet, michael? michael. no, father peter, not yet: ‘tis a good three miles to the post office and she has to milk the cows besides, and that dun one is rarely plague creature for a wench to handle (365). from the conversation between peter and michael above, we can see something about vera; that she usually does some works related to farming such as milking a cow. from this conversation, we can also conclude that vera lives in an inn. this conversation is taken from the prologue of the drama. 3. the psychological dimension of vera sabouroff psychological dimension deals with the characteristics of the character, i.e. behavior, emotions, and thoughts. data 1 vera. some evil has on him; he must be dead! oh! michael, i am so wretched about dimitri. michael. will you never love anyone but him, vera? vera. i don’t know; there is so much else to do in the world but love (p. 366). this conversation is taken from the prologue of the drama. it is between vera and michael. vera’s first utterance shows her love to her brother dimitri. she cares dimitri so much that it makes her feel anxious when her brother did not send any letter. the conversation shows that vera, psychologically, is a loving person. however, vera does not put love in the first place. in her opinion, love is not the only important thing. there are many things that are more important than love. it shows that vera is a woman with a vision and this makes her different from other women in the story. data 2 vera. oh, god! dmitri! my brother! dmitri. hush! vera; be calm. you must not let my father know; it would kill him. i thought i could free russia. i heard men talk of liberty one night in a café. i had never heard the word before. it seemed to be a new god they spoke of. i joined them. it was there all the money went. five months ago they seized us. they found me printing the paper. i am going to the mines for life. i could not write. i thought it would be better to let you think i was dead; for they are bringing me to a living tomb. vera. you must escape, dmitri. i will take your place. dmitri. impossible! you can only revenge us. vera. i shall revenge you (368). data 3 vera (who has remained motionless, pick up paper now from under her foot and reads). ‘number 99, rue tchernavaya, moscow. to strangle whatever nature is in me; neither to love nor to be loved; neither to pity nor to be pitied; neither to marry nor to be given in marriage, till the end is come.’ my brother, i shall keep the oath. (kisses the paper) you shall be revenged (369). in data 2, vera gets surprised to know that the man she is talking to is dmitri. however, she keeps calm when dmitri asks her so. vera is able to control herself even though she gets very surprised by seeing her brother. when she begs dmitri to replace i wayan mulyawan 12 him, dmitri refuses. then, dmitri tells her something. vera listens to dmitri carefully and when dmitri asks her to revenge on him, vera agrees to do so. her behaviour is planned since she has already listened to what dmitri told her. in data 3, vera says that she will revenge her brother. it is seen that she is planning something after reading the note given by dmitri. data 4 vera. who are our masters? colonel. young woman, these men are going to the mines for life for asking the same foolish question. vera. then they have been unjustly condemned (367). data 5 vera. ‘number 99, rue tchernaaya, moscow. to strangle whatever nature is in me; neither to love nor to be loved; neither to pity nor to be pitied; neither to marry nor to be given in marriage, till the end is come.’ my brother, i shall keep the oath. you shall be revenged! (369). data 6 vera. ay, martial law. the last right to which the people clung has been taken from them. without trial, without appeal, without accuser even, our brothers will be taken from their houses, shot in the streets like dogs, sent away to die in the now, to starve in the dungeon, to rot in the mine. do you know what martial law means? it means the strangling of a whole nation. the streets will be filled with soldiers night and day; there will be sentinels at every door. no man dare walk abroad now but the spy or the traitor. cooped up in the dens we hide in meeting by stealth, speaking with bated breath; what goo can we do now for russia? (372). data 7 alexis. it is true. michael has told what he saw. i did pass that night in the czar’s palace. michael has spoken the truth. vera. stand back, i say; stand back! alexis, i do not care. i trust you; you would not betray us; you would not sell the people for money. you are honest, true! oh, say your are no spy! (p. 377) the conversations above are taken from the prologue and act one of the drama. the data 4 above shows the psychological dimension of vera. psychological dimension gives life to ambitions, frustrations, temperaments, attitudes, and complex of the character. psychology studies such patterns such as behavior, emotions, and thoughts. the conversation above shows vera’s thought about tyranny. vera opposed tyranny in her country, russia. though she is a woman, she is not afraid of expressing her thoughts. it shows that vera is a brave woman, belief in liberty. the data 5 is taken from the prologue of the drama. the utterance of vera after reading the paper implies the psychological dimension of vera. from vera’s utterance, it can be considered that vera has the character of faithful woman. it can be seen from vera’s statement after reading the paper from his brother, dimitri. vera feels upset and wanted to revenge for her brother. this becomes the root of vera’s ambition to oppose the tyranny and defeates the tyrant for liberty. the data 6 is taken from the act one of the drama. the utterance of vera implies the psychological dimension of vera. from vera’s utterance, it can be seen that she never give up to fight against the tyranny. it can be seen from vera’s statement to try everything that she can do to protect the people. she wants people around her to act something good for russia to stop the pressure from the tyranny. therefore, she encourages the people to react against the gloomy situation in russia before it becomes worse and more innocent people die. from data 7, it is known that vera is a person who trusts her friends. she is not easy to unbelieve to her friends. she always believes that her friends will not betray her. she believes that every person always has a good side. data 9 vera. oh, they are breaking in below! see! the bloody man behind you! (czar turns round for an instant) ah! (vera vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 13 snatches dagger and flings it out of window) conspirator (below): long live the people! czar. what have you done! vera. i have saved russia. (dies) (406) from data 9 above, it can be seen that vera is a patriot who loves her country and the people. she is even willing to do anything for her country and its people. from the conversation above, vera is willing to die for russia. she will do anything for russia. conclusion physiologically, vera is described as a young beautiful lady with beautiful eyes. sociologically, vera is concluded to come from an average family in russia, in a poor society and lived under tyranny. she lives in an inn with her father before seeing her brother taken away to prison to seek liberty as nihilist. psychologically, vera is seen as a loving person though she does not put love as priority. she loves her country and her brother. she wants to revenge the king for being a tyrant. she is a brave woman, and it is proven from how she becomes a nihilist to revenge her brother and end up the tyranny in her country. references diyanni, robert. literature : reading fiction, poetry, drama, and the essay, third edition. new york : mcgraw-hill, inc., 1994. print. diyanni, robert. literature: reading poetry, prose, and drama, compact edition. singapore: mcgraw-hill, 2001. print. hamzah, a. ajib. pengantar bermain drama. bandung: cv rosda, 1985. print. kennedy, x. j. literature : an introduction to fiction, poetry, and drama, fifth edition. new york: longman, 1991. print. kennedy, x. j. literature: an introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and writing. new york: pearson longman, 2007. print. kenney, william. how to analyze fiction. new york: monarch press, 1966. print. roucek, j. s., and r.l. warren. sociology: an introduction. new jersey: little, brown and co., 1963. print. wellek, rene and austin warren. theory of literature. binding: paperback, 1977. print. journal of language and literature journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) lestari manggong analysis of free indirect discourse narratives in the works of austen, joyce, and kingston lestari manggong lestari.manggong@unpad.ac.id english studies program, universitas padjadjaran abstract language, with the complexity of its structure, can be problematic in terms of interpreting works of literature. this essay discusses the problems perceived in the process of interpretation of free indirect discourse narratives in jane austen’s pride and prejudice and emma, james joyce’s a portrait of an artist as a young man and the dead, and maxine hong kingston’s tripmaster monkey. narratives with free indirect discourse opens up possibility of misinterpretation caused by the misconception of whose point of view the story is told. by looking at the works within the concept of narratology by chatman (1978) and prince (2003), such narratives—which apply the viewpoint of omniscient narrators—cause ambiguity to the voice of external and internal focalisers. this is due to the fact that the use of such narratives blends the two types of focalisations. the findings of this research lead to an argument that through external focalisation, the view becomes objective. yet through internal focalisation, the view tends to become subjective as it is infiltrated by the character’s view. such an argument then gives way to a conclusion that narratives with free indirect discourse gives effect to irony in the story-telling process of the works discussed. keywords: free indirect discourse, narratology, focalisation introduction narratives with free indirect discourse open the possibility of misinterpretation caused by the misconception of whose point of view the story is told. such narratives that employ the narrative technique using omniscient narrator cause the voice of both external and internal focaliser to become ambiguous as the use of such narratives blur the two. through external focaliser, the view presented tends to become objective. through internal focaliser, the view presented tends to become subjective, since it is infiltrated by the character’s perception. this essay discusses the problems occurred in the process of interpretation of narratives with free indirect discourse in the works of austen (emma and pride and prejudice), joyce (a portrait of an artist as a young man and the dead), and kingston (tripmaster monkey). at the end of the discussion, this essay shows what factors unveil the aspect of irony in the story, as the effect of such narratives in the novels. analysis of narratives with free indirect discourse detailed observations on narratives with free indirect discourse have been conducted by johnson (2000) on his introduction to joyce’s novel, a portrait of the artist as a young man (further called a portrait). they open new perspectives on the importance of misinterpretation on 10 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fictional prosaic works that use free indirect discourse. in his observation, johnson (2000) compares the use of free indirect discourse in a portrait with one of jane austen’s novels, emma. the following part shows how the use of free indirect discourse can potentially mislead the perception on from whose point of view the story is told. this eventually will mislead the reader’s interpretive understanding of the story. the examples presented by johnson are scenes taken from volume ii chapter 12, when mr. knightley and emma are both in the same room: he stopped again, rose again, and seemed quite embarrassed. he was more in love with her than emma had supposed; and who can say how it might have ended if his father had not made his appearance? (austen, 1964: 206-7) johnson sees that this part in a glance looks as if it is coming from an objective observation of an omniscient narrator. yet, if we take a closer look, we can see that the narrator here presents emma’s assumption. in relation to this, in order to understand why it is so, one can rationalise that if this part is not read closely it is as if the point of view used is external focalisation, since what is described is the gestures of the sentence’s subject (he/mr. knightley). the first sentence does show that: the lens of the objective camera eyes of the external focaliser describes mr. knightley’s gestures (‘stopped’ and ‘rose’) and also mr. knightley’s expression (‘seemed quite embarrassed’). the next sentence is not descriptive because it contains the narrator’s piece of mind. the first clause of this sentence is infiltrated with the narrator’s subjective opinion (‘he was more in love with her than emma had supposed; and who can say how it might have ended if his father had not made his appearance?’). since this sentence is put right after the sentence before that uses external focalisation which contains the narrator’s objectivity, when it is then read simultaneously, the influence of this objectivity still has its effect on the sentence that comes after. this inevitably causes the interpretation of the second sentence to be objective as well. when the narrator says ‘he was more in love with her than emma had supposed’, it potentially builds the reader’s assumption that mr. knightley has certain romantic interest with emma. what is neglected here is the fact that what is said in this sentence is—as mentioned earlier—the narrator’s subjective opinion, as the result of concluding mr. knightley’s awkward gestures, which is the result of emma’s presence in the room. the rhetorical question that comes after this (‘and who can say how it might have ended if his father had not made his appearance?’) opens up a space of expectation in the mind of the readers. if mr. knightley’s awkward gestures which reflects his romantic interest towards emma is not interrupted by the presence of emma’s father afterwards, then there is great potential that such a reflection of mr. knightley’s gestures will give result to an action that actualises such a romantic interest. in my view, such a narrative technique is strategically capable of manipulating the reader’s interpretation. the manipulation is seen when the expectation which most probably occurs in the reader’s mind is capable of causing the reader to cling on the hope that the real action of mr. knightley’s supposedly romantic interest towards emma could happen in the next segment of the plot. chatman (2003) reviews the use of free indirect discourse (which he termed as the synonym of interior monologue) in another of jane austen’s work, pride and prejudice. his observation falls on the narrative chunk at the beginning of chapter 57, not long after lady catherine (mr. darcy’s aunt, the man elizabeth bennet—the main character of this novel—is interested in) leaves the bennets residence to clarify an issue she hears about the engagement of her nephew with elizabeth: the discomposure of spirits which this extraordinary visit threw elizabeth into could not be easily overcome, nor could she for many hours learn to think of it 11 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) lestari manggong less than incessantly. lady catherine, it appeared, had actually taken the trouble of this journey from rossings for the sole purpose of breaking off her supposed engagement with mr. darcy. it was a rational scheme, to be sure! but from what the report of their engagement could originate, elizabeth was at a loss to imagine; till she recollected that his being the intimate friend of bingley, and her being the sister of jane, was enough, at a time when the expectation of one wedding made everybody eager for another, to supply the idea. she had not herself forgotten to feel that the marriage of her sister must bring them more frequently together. and her neighbours at lucas lodge, therefore (for through their communication with the collinses the report, she concluded, had reached lady catherine), had only set that down as almost certain and immediate, which she had looked forward to as possible, at some future time (austen, 1994: 277). this narrative is important because according to chatman it is at this moment that elizabeth’s bewilderment, high hope, and anger is reflected. in the narrative we can see that: 1) elizabeth is disturbed by lady catherine’s arrival, 2) elizabeth keeps thinking of lady catherine’s intention to visit her, along the urgency it brings, 3) elizabeth assumes the reason behind her engagement, 4) elizabeth speculatively thinks that the reason is because darcy is bingley’s friend and she is jane’s big sister, who is bingley’s wife, and 5) elizabeth thinks that the lucases (her neighbour) through the collins also take part in shaping the issue up to the point where lady catherine finally learns about it. what is important to be observed here is that such assumption and speculation are inexplicitly mentioned as what is thought by elizabeth because it does not say anywhere that ‘elizabeth thought.’ this raises an interpretation that it is the narrator who is speaking. thus, the absence of the use of ‘elizabeth thought’ blurs both the objectivity and subjectivity of the presupposed assumption and speculation. in other words, at the same time, such views become objective and subjective. once again, it is this factor that potentially manipulates the reader’s thought. the objectivity of the narrative causes the assumption and speculation to become almost like a fact. the use of the verb ‘recollected’ enables that, while the verb ‘had not forgotten to feel’ shows that elizabeth just ‘feels’ that way. johnson (2000), in his observation on the use of free indirect discourse in a portrait shows that joyce exploits such a narrative technique, enabling the point of view to shift from stephen’s to the narrator. in the narrative of emma, johnson sees that the speaking style of any character revealed is consistent. from here, it can be seen that the style seen in emma is austen’s. at the beginning of a portrait, the speaking style starts with the speaking style that is very characteristic of stephen’s. the use of a variety of idiolect in the characters makes joyce’s voice unidentifiable. in other words, different from austen, joyce does not put his influence as the writer of the novel. johnson also observes that the variation of idiolect needs to be included because it represents the development in the growing phase of the ‘artist.’ the narrative style changes as the ‘artist’ reaches maturity. in another one of joyce’s work, in the short story the dead, dettmar (1996) focuses on his observation at the end of the story. in his explanation, dettmar also points out that the narrative discourse in the end does not fall into the category of chatman’s free indirect speech/discourse. he argues that it is because gabriel conroy (the main character in the story) is not in the middle of making a statement (verbally or nonverbally) when he is looking out the window. thus, we cannot say that his statement is being indirectly revealed by the narrator. because of that, dettmar proposes a different term, that is, free indirect prose. 12 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) gabriel is actually doing some thinking at that point in the narration, but it does not mean that the long paragraph in the end is what goes on in gabriel’s thought. the oddity can be seen because the narrative is very well-structured and poetic, as can be seen in the following: a few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. it had begun to snow again. he watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. the time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over ireland. it was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the bog of allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark lonely churchyard on the hill where michael furey lay buried. it lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. his soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. (joyce, 2000: 176) it is impossible to say that this is a narrative that comes out of gabriel’s mind, because the speech style is different from the speech style he uses in his speech before dinner. based on this argument, dettmar calls that the narrative is gabriel’s prose which is plagiarised by the narrator. the problem in the use of free indirect discourse is also apparent in tripmaster monkey by kingston. wittman ah sing, the main character of the novel, has a list of prejudices towards chinese, and because of that, he refuses to be identified as chinese. throughout the plot, wittman emphasises that his cultural identity is america; berkeley graduate with beatnik looks, having wide range of knowledge in western literature, with a white girlfriend. the free indirect discourse used in his narrative enables the point of views to move from external to internal focaliser and vice versa. this manuver, once again, can potentially blur wittman’s objective and subjective statement. in the novel, in my observation, such potency leads to irony. the irony can be seen when wittman’s way of seeing and the narrator’s are being compared. in terms of problems in viewpoint presented by omniscient narrator, in an interview kingston points out that ‘the omniscient narrator in the tripmaster monkey is a chinese american woman; she’s kwan yin (the goddess of mercy) and she’s me’ (schueller, 2003: 18). in another interview, kingston also states: ‘wittman is working against a narrator who is trying to create him from outside’ (jannette, 1996: 146). if the narrator was indeed kingston a.k.a. kwan yin, whose role is to help the monkey on his journey to the west, then the narrator in wittman’s journey in the west who is present through and outside wittman’s voice shows irony in the narratives as a result of wittman’s prejudice that influence his perception on chinese ethnicity. an example can be seen in the following part: heading toward him from the other end came a chinese dude from china, hands clasped behind, bow-legged, loose-seated, out on a stroll—that walk they do in kung fu movies when they are full of contentment on a sunny day. as luck would have it, although there was plenty of room, this dude and wittman tried to pass each other both on the same side, then both on the other, sidestepping like a couple of basketball stars. wittman stopped dead in his tracks, and shot the dude a direct stink-eye. the f.o.b. stepped aside. following, straggling, came the poor guy’s wife. she was coaxing their kid with sunflower seeds, which she cracked with her gold tooth and held out to him. “ho sick, la. ho sick,” she said. “good eating. good eats.” her voice sang, rang, banged in the echochamber tunnel. mom and shamblelegged kid were each stuffed inside of about ten homemade sweaters. their arms stuck out fatly. the mom had on a nylon or rayon pantsuit. (“ny-lon ge. mm lon doc.” “nylon-made. lasts forever.”) 13 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) lestari manggong ”no!” said the kid. echoes of “no!” next there came scrabbling an old lady with a cane. she also wore one of those do-ityourself pantsuit outfits. on granny’s head was a cap with a pompon that matched everybody’s sweaters. the whole family taking a cheap outing on their day offu. immigrants. fresho off the boats out in public. didn’t know how to walk together. spitting seeds. so uncool. you wouldn’t mislike them on sight if their pants weren’t so highwater, gym socks white and noticeable. f.o.b. fashions—highwaters or puddlecuffs. can’t get it right. uncool. uncool. the tunnel smelled of mothballs—f.o.b perfume.’ (kingston, 1990: 4-5) as can be seen from this part, in the first sentence, the clause that says: ‘heading toward him from the other end came a chinese dude from china, hands clasped behind, bow-legged, loose-seated, out on a stroll’ is the narrator’s external focalisation. it means that it does not infiltrate the character’s voice, and as a camera, it presents descriptively what is seen on the lens. the second clause which says: ‘that walk they do in kung fu movies when they are full of contentment on a sunny day’ provides an analogy to describe the way this chinese man walks, which is also apparently the narrator’s external focalisation which at the same time, can work as the main character’s voice (wittman’s). this is so because we can sense the cynicism reflected from the stereotyping of the chinese walks: ‘that walk … in kung fu movies.’ observed in more detailed manner, without the presence of the second clause, the description of the way the man who does the chinese walk when he comes across wittman is already very clear in the first clause. yet, the second clause is still presented, and the m.o (modus operandi) is the necessity to emphasise the narrator’s viewpoint towads the china man. in the second sentence, by the power of the narrator, wittman and the chinese man almost bump into each other and thus try to avoid one another. in the third sentence, wittman halts and stares at the chinese man. in the fourth sentence, this chinese man whom wittman calls f.o.b (fresh off the boat) steps aside. f.o.b. is a term labelled to chinese immigrants who have just arrived in the u.s.a. it is of importance to notice that the use of the term f.o.b. here is derogatory, considering the person being compared is wittman, who has stayed longer in the u.s., and thus is far from fit to be called f.o.b. the focalisation of the narrative presented from sentence two to four is also external. compared with the second clause, the first sentence is loaded with cynicism, whereas the fifth sentence is loaded with negative sentiments (which is obvious from the way witman says ‘the poor guy’s wife’). next, the camera focuses on the wife, describing her stuffing sun flower seeds to her kid’s mouth. along with this, the camera’s observation then focuses on the clothes they are wearing. they are wearing 10 layers of sweaters with nylon or rayon fabric. this description also highlights the fact that they are f.o.b.s. after this, the camera’s observation moves to an old lady’s clothes, which are also the same as the wife and her kid. the next 11 sentences throw cynicism after cynicism about wittman’s observation on the f.o.b.s. the narrator, at this point, no longer has the power to control its narrative, as if wittman grabs the mike from the narrator. ‘cheap outing,’ ‘so uncool,’ wittman repeatedly says. what is important here is that in the text, wittman’s voice does not transition into a direct speech, but it becomes an indirect one, since he is still in the narrator’s domain. a more complex issue on the mix between external and internal focalisation is seen at another part of the novel, when the narrative very explicitly shows that the focalisers are both the narrator and wittman: out on the streets, wittman fitted onto his mongolian cheeks his spectacles that blurred everything, thus finding metaphors everywhere, like how a cable car looks like an animal-cracker box. some things he couldn’t tell what the fuck they were, so he’d go up to a bedevilment and have a look-see, not to miss out. like rimbaud, i practice having hallucinations’ (kingston: 44). 14 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) we can see from this part that in one domain, wittman is present as both third person singular (he) and first person singular (i). logically, the second sentence of this part can be understood as the result of the first sentence. the second sentence which shows the narrator’s internal focalisation over wittman is in itself constructs wittman’s opinion, or it can also be understood as a declaration that underlines the fact that because he uses special glasses, he can see things other people cannot see. the shift from subject ‘he’ to ‘i’ illustrates that wittman’s statement is constructed by the narrator. this indicates that wittman’s identity is a construct of some exterior force, that is, the narrator’s. but what is problematic here is that because wittman’s voice is textually non-present in direct speech and thus creates no demarcation between the narrative voice of third and first person singular, then what is seen is that both voices collide. if perceived this way, then the voice of third person singular at the same time constructs the voice of first person singular. this leads us to conclude that when wittman says ‘like rimbaud, i practice having hallucinations,’ wittman is in the process of trying to comprehend what he is going through, as presented by the narrator. conclusion: irony in the works with free indirect discourse narrative based on the observation of two of austen’s works, i conclude that johnson’s (2000) chatman’s (1978) findings on emma and pride and prejudice shows that the use of free indirect discourse causes the narrative to experience an extrapolation, meaning that the facts supposedly known at the beginning is used to draw conclusion about unclear matter. extrapolation can also be understood as a construction on judgment or opinion which does not have conclusive information. in emma, extrapolation builds the reader’s expectation, making the reader hope that mr. knightley is indeed attracted romantically to emma. the facts in the narrative only indicate that mr. knightley’s awkward gesture is interpreted by the narrator as a gesture that shows his interest on emma. in chatman’s (1978) finding, such extrapolation builds speculation on the series of causes that trigger mr. darcy’s engagement with elizabeth. the speculation built on the facts which are merely elizabeth’s guesses potentially shapes a perception that that is actually how the enjoyment comes to its form. the effects of such extrapolation reveals the irony seen when the proofs that is presented as facts are just assumption. in dettmar’s (1996) review on the dead, the irony is also apparent due to the use of free indirect discourse narrative. irony is present on the gap between gabriel’s utterance and the narrator’s. in tripmaster monkey, internal focalisation used mediates wittman’s cynicism towards chinese ethnicity. it also provides space for wittman to avoid himself from being stereotyped as chinese. overall, the series of stereotyping of chinese ethnicity is wittman’s critical view on multicultural america. we can irony whenever wittman is avoiding being identified as chinese, because it is at that moment the contrast between two cultural identities (chinese and american) are juxtaposed and compared. references austen, jane. emma. new york: the new american library, 1964. chatman, seymour. story and discourse: narrative structure in fiction and film. new york: cornell university press. 1978. dettmar, kevin j. h. the illicit joyce of postmodernism: reading against the grain. wisconsin: the university of wisconsin press. 1996. 15 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) lestari manggong janette, michele. “the angle we're joined at.” transition. issue 71, 1996: 142-157. joyce, james. a portrait of the artist as a young man (edited and introduced by jeri johnson). oxford: oxford university pres. 2000. -------dubliners (edited and introduced by jeri johnson). oxford: oxford university pres. 2000. kingston, maxine hong. tripmaster monkey: his fake book. new york: vintage international. 1990. prince, gerald. dictionary of narratology (revised edition). lincoln and london: university of nebraska press. 2003. schueller, malini johar. “theorizing ethnicity and subjectivity: maxine hong kingston’s tripmaster monkey and amy tan’s the joy luck club.” modern critical interpretations: amy tan’s the joy luck club. harold bloom (ed.). philadelphia: chelsea house publisher, 2003. 16 phenomena vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 43 the search for oral narratives of the chinese community in semarang g.m. adhyanggono department of english, soegijapranata catholic university abstract oral narratives are considered for their being out-dated, excessively glorifying and exposing the romantic past and therefore useless. yet, it is almost forgotten that in connection with the sustainability of indonesia as a nation there are many basic things needs preserving and developing. one of them is about the national consensus on racial and ethnical heterogeneity. the study on the chinese community in ‘pecinan’ (chinatown) that was conducted several years ago interestingly resulted in some “facts” about chinese culture that had been ‘silenced’ during the new order regime. regarding the fact, it is quite interesting to find out oral narratives in the community. this article is concerned with the existence of oral narratives and how they are appreciated. keywords: oral narratives, ethnicity, race, cultural diffusion, pluralism introduction lots of cultural studies point out that oral communication has become the most important means of cultural transformation. alphabet, ideogram and other modern means of communication cannot essentially change oral communication since they are merely the alternative means of communication. they all give their weight on the importance of oral interaction as the primary means of communication (goody in richard bauman, 1992: 12). oral narratives basically deal with myths, legends, and tales. nowadays, it is impossible not to say that indonesians tend to leave and put aside oral narratives. most of them think that such ‘heritage’ is impractical and meaningless to national development in many aspects of life. yet, it is almost forgotten that in connection with the sustainability of indonesia as a nation there are many basic things needs preserving and developing. one of them is about the national consensus on racial and ethnical heterogeneity. this article is based on the results of field research conducted by a team from centre for urban studies soegijapranata catholic university on the tradition of oral narratives of chinese community in semarang, indonesia. this article comprises two main sections: first is oral narratives in semarang’s chinatown and second is oral narratives and appreciation of pluralism. oral narratives in semarang’s chinatown “when and how did oral narratives start to exit in semarang’s chinatown?” this question undoubtedly leads the reader to trace back the existence of chinese community in semarang. from the interviews with the sources, the team found out 26 (twenty six) stories. these stories could be categorised: 20 (twenty) legends, 4 (four) myths and 2 (two) tall tales (tales of lying). the 20 (twenty) legends consist of 14 (fourteen) individual legends, 3 (three) religious legends, and 3 (three) supernatural legends. of the 26 (twenty-six) stories 5 (five) are of local while the rest is mainly migratory. yet, only one story is relatively intact based g.m. adhyanggono 44 on axel olrik’s super organic law (dananjaya, 1997: 25). from the interviewees, they did not precisely know when and how oral narratives exactly appeared in the community. nevertheless, they indicated that since the early coming of chinese to the archipelago (nusantara or indonesia) in 7th a.d. and the waves of migration during dutch colonial times (c.a.18th – 19th), oral narratives had also been ‘brought’. in addition, kwa tong hay, one of the interviewees, stated that oral narratives started to develop when admiral zheng he of the ming dynasty arrived in a place, which is now semarang. interestingly, his statement goes in accordance with the statement of a former singaporean ambassador in indonesia, lee khoon choy, mentioning as follows: it was told in my family for generations that the besides bringing enormous wealth and crew, great voyages of zheng he also brought along with them tales which were told to the indigenous. as a matter of fact the crew was from many different places. some of them only passed by, some others made contact with the indigenous and settled down here. they all told their tales to the indigenous and vice versa (khoon choy, 1976: 32). from the statements above, it can be deduced that the arrival of admiral zheng he induced the growth of oral narratives in semarang. yet, it cannot be taken for granted as it may neglect a possibility that chinese communities that had settled down earlier in towns of juwana, lasem, and tuban than in semarang, and that had even come before zheng he’s visits to java (setiono, 2002), might have spread out tales, legends, and myths to the indigenous. nevertheless, such possibility needs further researching. meanwhile, another interviewee, gan kok hwie saw the development of oral narratives in semarang as to be coherent with the history of chinese community in the city as mentioned bellow: there have been a lot of ‘stories’ in our community since the days we lived in semarang. a very long time ago we lived in simongan. then by the dutch colonial, we were replaced to the nowadays chinatown. as more people came and the community became more crowded, more ‘stories’ also spread out. sio hok bio temple was established in 1753. prior to the establishment of the temple, there was a pond or ‘blumbang’ (in javanese translation) behind it. at that time, the condition of the pond was still natural with its huge size, its fresh water surrounded by big trees as well as bushes. chinese people, mainly peasants, who arrived afterward lived nearby the pond and built a shrine for kwan im ting. kwan im ting was a shrine for goddess kwan im hudco. at that time, only on the first and the fifteenth days that people came to pay homage. and it was conducted during daytime, as people were afraid of big trees and the stillness pervading the place at night. moreover, there were no electrified lights as we have now. what they had were merely candles. as the density of the population increased, people were no longer afraid of coming to the shrine to pay homage as often as they wanted even at night time. then, people started to open small business there such as selling foods and drinks. not only were chinese’s sellers there but also javanese’s. during the time, there were many tales of which the most popular was that connected with the pond. it was about a mythical turtle of the pond whose apparition would bring good fortune for those who happen to see it. ever since, the shrine became more and more mythically significant. there are two important things that can be drawn from the quote; first is about simongan and second is about kwan im ting. simongan is believed to be birthplace of the chinese community in semarang. nowadays, it is situated in the western part of semarang city separated by western canal locally known as ‘kaligarang’. here is the area on which ‘sam poo kong’ or to the locals known as ‘gedong batu’, the famous temple to commemorate admiral zheng he, was built. the fact that simongan is considered as the birthplace of the early chinese community in semarang can also be found in some sources (thian joe, 1933). vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 45 the existence of kwan im ting as described above seems to have given effect on the development of ‘cap kauw king’, a name for 19 small houses in chinese-hokkien dialect. it can be seen from the condition and the density of the area and from the tale of mythical turtle. about the mythical turtle, it is quite possible that such a tale might have been ‘created’ on purpose to economically serve the benefits of either chinese or javanese sellers in the area. yet, regardless such possibility, thompson (1955) mentions that the fact about a turtle as one of the mythical animals for chinese is undeniable. unlike the previous interviewees, thio tiong gie tried to see the admiral zheng he’s expedition to java as a consequence of his duty to the imperial (ming dynasty). he thought that the imperial duty served both political and economical interests of the ming dynasty. he also underscored the idea that such duty did not give any cultural implication to both chinese and the visited areas, particularly in spreading out oral narratives from and to china as revealed in the interview below. zheng he is a mandarin, but in hokkien is the ho. so, we have sam poo kong in semarang…. yes… are there any tales or legends about sam poo kong or zheng he? no, there is no story about it. zheng he only gave us the temple as his mark in semarang. but there is a story in cirebon. long ago, there lived haji tan eng kwan, a chinese merchant, whose daughter was proposed by sunan gunung jati, the sultan of cirebon. ever since, there was a story of chinese lady of gunung jati in cirebon. yet, is there any story of zheng he himself in indonesia? to the best of my knowledge, there is none. he came here only to execute chinese imperial foreign policy. however, we must know about his expeditions. after visiting cirebon, zheng he continued his expedition with a short stop in semarang. he landed in an area known as gedong batu now. it was still a coast at that time. he anchored there and climbed a hill to observe the weather and direction before continuing the expedition to madura. when he was observing, it rained very hard. so, he went down the hill in a hurry. while going down, he found a cave. then, he decided to stay there off the rain. that is why zheng he left no story in semarang but a place where he was once there. therefore, the hill where he climbed on and stood up on was named sam po tun. and the cave where he took shelter from the rain was named sam po tong. then, it became a belief by the locals so as more people came to consider the place sacred and built a shrine to pay homage for zheng he. afterwards, a ‘kongco’1 was brought from china and was placed there. the kongco was then added with an inscription of chinese letter ‘ching’. the letters implies that one bearing it has an extraordinary quality. it is beyond human ability. that is why the idol in the temple is named sam po ‘ching’ tong. so, herein there is no history about zheng he, but a commemorating temple. yet, there are in cirebon and surabaya. from the quote above, there are two things that need to be underscored. first is the identification of oral narratives as ‘history’ or as at least having connection with history. it can be seen in the case of ‘chinese lady of gunung jati’ of cirebon. second is the idea that zheng he’s expedition does not leave any ‘stories’ about him in semarang except diplomatic mission and commerce (read also stuart-fox, 2003: 86-87 and khoon choy, 1976: 94)2. the absence of ‘history’ and ‘oral narratives’ becomes quite interesting to analyse for what thio tiong gie narrated is, in fact, a legend of a historical figure. disregard the possibility that zheng he eventually once ‘climbed up’ the hill and took ‘shelter’ from the rain in the cave, which can be the indicator of neo euhemerism (dananjaya, 1997: 60), it implies that the fame of zheng he could be the source of his legend passed down from generation to generation in the community. in addition, zheng he’s expeditions once became of the inspiration of a ‘novel’ containing fantasy of supernatural stories of the formidable zheng he (khoon choy, 1976:90). g.m. adhyanggono 46 oral narratives and appreciation of pluralism this part of the article is meant to show how far oral narratives of chinese origin are welcomed by the javanese and to what extent the javanese take part in developing them. in this respect, kwa tong hay pointed out that there are similar themes of some chinese and javanese stories. as a case in point, a legend of a goddess descends to earth and then marries a man as known in chinese’s classical legend ‘the seventh goddess’ and in the legend of peacock lady ‘rona’ in yunnan province could also be found in the javanese’s ‘joko tarub’. nevertheless, kwa tong hay doubted how the similarity might occur. then, he gave an assumption that it may occur by the time admiral zheng he arrived in java wherein his crew and the indigenous exchanged ‘stories’. yet, no single javanese is sure when the legend of joko tarub exactly appeared for the first time. kwa tong hay’s ideas may imply two things. on the one hand, he has mentioned the concept of cultural diffusion (dananjaya, 1997: 56); whether or not he realises it. on the other hand, his notion indicates uncertainty of some following questions: was it chinese who influenced javanese? or the other way round? or both of them influenced each other? such questions may lead to the possibility of acculturation (read also koentjaraningrat, 1990 and hariyono, 1994). about the acceptance of chinese’s oral narratives by javanese can be seen in the impact of chinese kungfu stories to the javanese. kwa tong hay mentioned that those stories are deeply rooted in both chinese history and oral narratives such as legends, and folktales (read also suryadinata, 2002: 207-208). the acceptance of the indigenous javanese towards those stories can be drawn from tong hay’s statement below: i think chinese and javanese influenced each other. it can be simply pointed out that in mid-60s stories such as condor heroes, which was then filmed, were tremendously popular here. then, herman pratikto, a writer from yogyakarta, wrote a local epic entitled ‘bende mataram’ on the basis of condor heroes. so, he basically imitated condor hero and brought the composition into indigenous context with its history to make it more familiarised. though he imitated condor hero, he did it very cleverly and smoothly. this is because he really was a smart and creative writer. just for example, he changed mongolian troops of yuan dynasty into the colonial dutch troops. he also transfigured a mongolian lady named ‘go cin’ into a daughter of dutch major, ‘sonni de hoop’. another writer who did the same thing, as herman pratikto was the late widi widayat. yet, in comparison to the latter’s work, the formers was far more sophisticated, smooth and engrossing. the later tended to combine his work not only from condor heroes but also from other stories. it resulted in the atmosphere of his work as being technically speaking, incoherent. however, we have to admit that the birth of indonesian ‘kungfu’ stories is from such endeavours. herman pratikto, widi widayat and then s.h. mintardjo who really composed by himself legends of javanese lands such as the legend of magelang, the legend of menoreh and many more started it. although there might have been some sort of influence from chinese legends and tales, mintardjo’s works were, technically speaking, typically javanese by plot and characterisation. and that is great! it was such a positive influence. before the time, i hardly found any javanese ‘kungfu’ stories. when i was a little boy, there weren’t such stories. such stories started to exist when i was in senior high school even. what i had in my childhood was tales of ‘warok’.3 but warok is not a ‘kungfu’ story i suppose. from the long quote above, it can be indicated that the acceptance of chinese stories lies not only on the process of imitating, modifying, and transforming any chinese’s elements to those of javanese culture and history, but also and more importantly on how they inspired indigenous writers to develop stories of their own. being inspired in this case may mean that chinese stories could be very much interesting from their plots, characterisation, or themes to be vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 47 imitated and be model or standard to make javanese stories. it really was such an appreciating endeavour to support. likely, gan kok hwie implied that indigenous appreciation towards chinese oral narratives lies in their enthusiasm to read those stories. he even gave a conviction on the matter as what he himself experienced in the mid-60s. at the times, there were a great number of readers of all strata, age, ethnics who were fond of kungfu stories. he himself saw it when he was in a train to deliver a package of translated kungfu serials books from semarang to jakarta. he observed many people spent their time reading kungfu stories in the train. such a situation can also be seen in some other references (read setiono, 2002:381-421 and also suryadinata, 2002: 212-228). furthermore, he also stated that the manifestation of cultural appreciation between javanese and chinese does not only reside in how javanese loves chinese kungfu stories and even modifies them as their own, but also in how chinese appreciates ‘authentic’ javanese tales and legends as depicted below. are parents of chinese families in semarang used to telling chinese tales or stories to their children? no, they are not. not now. but in the past, parents or grandparents used to tell stories to their children, for example tales of the three kingdoms or ‘sam kok’ and legend of the mighty monkey ‘sun go kong’. children loved them very much. the elderly indeed liked to tell stories to children. due to the fact that they lived in indonesia, it was not only chinese stories being told but also those of indonesian, especially of javanese such as ‘kancil nyolong timun’ or ‘anglingdarma’. from the quote above, it is interesting to know their very reason. on the basis of “living in indonesia’, indonesian and javanese tales have also been introduced in chinese families by means of storytelling. though such a situation mostly occurred in the past, it may justify that the existence of cultural tolerance between chinese and javanese through their oral narratives has taken place for centuries. with taking no attention to a possibility that such a condition might have resulted from any ‘external force’ or their ‘unwillingness’, making use of oral narratives from one ethnic group can be a medium to introduce the beauty of cultural diversity to other ethnic groups. if it is introduced to children as a part of their bedtime stories, it will be very advantageous to minimise any potential of racial conflicts as they grow up. imparting them with cultural awareness and familiarising them with notion that pluralism and diversity are ordinary things can be an extraordinary ‘investment’ since there lays togetherness, warmth and harmony between two individuals or more. there also lies critical thinking, moral messages and appreciation at the same time. the condition above is not to be seen as a utopia though the fact indicates that it really is facing great obstacles. taking into account of the results of berkowitz’s research, there are some factors of which mostly are external that make youngsters dislike oral narratives by means of storytelling. they are television, education, new religion and domestic economy. the accumulation of those factors results in the perception that oral narratives are outdated and paying attention to them is a real waste of time. this alienation to tradition is due to the absence of parental role and authority. for the sake of fulfilling economic needs, parents often work overtime outside the house, and it makes them think there is no need to carry out tradition ((berkowitz, 1975: 29-30). it is a critical moment and it does need an attention and actions before turning to an irony. the only way to preserve oral narratives from extinction is by introducing them through cenggi.4 meanwhile, thio tiong gie saw that stories in po te hie (classical chinese puppet) still do get appreciation from the javanese audience in semarang. he further compares what happens in semarang to that in yogyakarta where stories of po te hie have been well tailored and then staged by a ketoprak (read bandem, 1996: 26) group called cokrojiyo. one of the stories in po te hie that is ji ze jing chung kwee was translated and g.m. adhyanggono 48 adapted by cokrojiyo. it can be seen from some modification, for example: kingdom of tay tong tia with its triple “t” becomes tanjung anom; king li sen bin becomes prabu lisanpura; general che jun kwee or sin jin kui becomes manggoloyudho joko sudiro; royal prince djia tao kin becomes pangeran dono wilopo; captain jun han, who could fly, becomes cahyono while captain tok it ho, who could make way into the earth, becomes tausidono. i have personally checked it. fact that cokrojiyo often performs with the javanised chinese epics and sagas could also be found in another research. in the research, it is also mentioned the process of acculturation of chinese and javanese resulting in two kinds of puppets, namely: po te hie and sino-javanese shadow puppet created by gan thwan sing (mastuti, 2004). besides making the stories javanised and being an attentive audience, thio tiong gie thought that another appreciation of the indigenous to po te hie could be seen in their involvement as the musical crew in the performance. he even pointed out that the puppet makers are of javanese. thus, such relationship induces a sort of dependence between chinese and javanese. one may not smoothly work without the other. in addition, he mentioned that prior to presidential instruction no 14/1967; the government did officially acknowledge po te hie as part of indonesian culture. it proves that thio tiong gie was once appointed by the office of ministry of education and culture in central java to give recommendation to any new puppeteers of po te hie wanting to get legitimation. the same thing also occurred to javanese shadow puppet wherein ki narto sabdo used to be the one who could give recommendation. nevertheless, it is admitted that classical chinese legends, myths and tales are still the narrative source of po te hie’s performances. so, it seems that javanese legends, myths and tales have not been yet (or even will never be?) the narrative source of po te hie. thio tiong gie personally admitted that he had no courage to do that. the argument could be so tricky and twofold. first is because the very “soul” of po te hie is of naturally chinese, and second is because of “practical reason”. the later is assumed to have arisen from the socio-political “considerations”. these “practical considerations” may deal with the fear of negative reactions from either javanese as the biggest ethnic group in indonesia or chinese communities themselves. vis a vis sino-javanese shadow puppet itself that could be said as a syncretic art of chinese and javanese, for its narrative source, still faces similar situation with po te hie. this sino-javanese art grounds its stories on classical chinese folklores though its use of style, staging, heraldry and ranks, humble servants, except semar (read khoon choy, 1976: 105), and gamelan orchestra are similar to those of javanese. although javanese culture was of great influence, the narrative sources performed, which were still rooted on chinese folklore, were undeniable. in other words, acculturation did find its own way and form in this art. concluding remark oral narratives considered as being useless and trivial, in fact, possess a capability to be an invaluable educative medium. this invaluable thing is not the kind that ends up in material gains but enlightenment. it is a sort of enlightenment that can make people smile on the irrationality of sun go kong, sam pek eng tay, sin jin kui, sing hong loya and many more, but that can also make them ponder or brood over the depth of “the messages” implied. such a moment is less frequent and even almost forgotten in this era when people are hooked up with internet and cellular showing off their post-modernist pride. the fact that there has already been centuries of cultural exchange and understanding between chinese and javanese through “story-telling” could be made an entry point to better see togetherness, peace and harmony. that a cong may well understand anglingdarma and joko knows sin jin kui; feel proud of them, and practice their moral values should not be a dream; therefore it needs tremendous efforts and struggles from time to time, together. vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 49 references amos, dan-ben, “folktale” in richard bauman. folklore, cultural performances, and popular entertainments, oxford university press, 1992. berkowitz, m.i. “the tenacity of chinese folk tradition”. (occasional paper) no. 33, institute of south east asian studies (iseas): singapore, july 1975. choy, lee khoon. indonesia between myth and reality, nile & mackenzie: london, 1976. danandjaja, james. folklor indonesia, grafiti: jakarta, 1997. dwi woro r. mastuti’s paper on “wayang cina di jawa sebagai wujud akulturasi budaya dan perekat negara kesatuan republik indonesia presented” in national seminar on seminar naskah kuno nusantara: naskah kuno sebagai perekat negara kesatuan republik indonesia in pnri, jakarta, october 12, 2004. fox, martin stuart. a short history of china and south east asia: tribute, trade and influence, allen & unwin: new south wales, 2003. goody, jack, “oral culture“ in richard bauman. folklore, cultural performances, and popular entertainments, oxford university press: oxford, 1992 hariyono, p. kultur jawa dan cina: pemahaman menuju asimilasi kultural, pustaka sinar harapan: jakarta, 1994. joe, liem thian. riwajat semarang (dari djamannja sam poo sampe terbentuknja kongkoan), boekhandel ho kim yo: batavia, 1933 koenjtaraningrat, pengantar ilmu antropologi, rineka cipta: jakarta, 1990, setiono, benny g. tionghoa in pusaran politik, elkasa: jakarta, 2002. suryadinata, leo. negara dan etnis tionghoa, lp3es: jakarta, 2002, thompson, stith. motif-index of folk literature, vol. i-vi, indiana univ. press: bloomington, 1955. 1 kongco is an idol representing immortals or mortals with divine power to be worshiped for. 2 prof. martin stuart-fox’s idea in his book a short history of china and south east asia: tribute, trade and influence, allen & unwin: new south wales, 2003, pp.86-87. he says that one possibility of the purposes of zheng he’s expedition is to introduce and confirm chinese philosophical concept of “middle kingdom”. such concept places chinese as the “center of the universe” (chakravartin) with its emperor as “son of heaven” to which allasian kingdoms, including those of south east asian should refer. it can be deduced on how zheng he brought and distributed thousands of chinese manuscripts to those kingdoms as a way to introduce their influence and how those kingdoms should behave. read as well lee khoon choy’s the myth of sampo and his aides in indonesia between myth and reality, nile & mackenzie, london, 1976, p.94, about “poortman incident” (the discovery of chinese ancient manuscripts in sam po kong, 1925). 3 warok is a name for an individual who is expert at martial art, having formidable strength and supernatural power. warok is quite popular in mid and southern regions of east java such as tulung agung, trenggalek and ponorogo. 4 cenggi is a symbolic performance of legends, myths, or tales on wheeled-carts (now on cars) to display one of the episodes where a prominent figure/character display his/her misdeed or might. cenggi is usually performed in a street carnival. phenomena vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 95 the representation of mexican-americans’ life stages through the models in luis valdez’s los vendidos adi prasatya christianto and dewi widyastuti department of english letters, sanata dharma university abstract literature and history are interrelated. literature does not only serve for entertainment but it also serves as a historical record of certain society in certain period. through literature, many history and events can be examined. this is particularly why los vendidos becomes an interesting example. it examines mexican-americans’ history through its satirical element. the model characters in the play describe not only distinctive characteristics but also specific perception and condition of mexican-americans’ life in different periods, or stages. each model represents the reality of mexican-americans’ history. thus, at the end, this research will not only evaluated mexican-americans’ history or discrimination, but it also examine the whole life, the culture and the ideology of mexican-americans. keywords: mexican-americans’ history, models, stages introduction mexican-americans are often regarded simply as mexican, or even american alone. however, this would be an unfair way to examine them because they are not just mexican or american alone. they are something in between. it can even be concluded that mexican-americans are both mexican and americans at the same time. this community experienced different history, valued different culture and preserved specific ideology for themselves. thus, this community is a unique mix of mexicans and americans. based on this point, the researcher chooses mexican-american as the subject of the research. by examining mexican-americans in the research, the researcher would like to reveal further their life and identity as a community. for this study, the researcher is interested in the play los vendidos by luis valdez because the play itself is also a mix between literature and history. it means the play itself is a satirical historical record. los vendidos is interesting both as a literary work and a historical track of hispanic culture. apart from the entire plot and the setting, the historical aspect of the play is revealed vividly and broadly through the model characters such as farm worker, revolucionario and mexican-american. each model depicts different facts, perception and condition of mexican-american community. therefore, the researcher would like to begin from the model characters of the play. therefore, the researcher raises the issue of mexican-americans’ life stages which are represented by the models in los vendidos. the research is very significant in revealing the life and culture of mexican-american through sequential periods, or stages that mexican-americans had undergone. these stages are the result of mexicans’ migration for a better living. thus, the first stage reveals the early life of mexicans immigration such as life condition and job available. as light argued that these people were constantly exploited and they were put in the secondclass job like labors, farmers and cotton pickers (1989: 370). there were no job option other than labors and farmer because most of them did not speak english. they were uneducated and illegal. the next stage examines the mexican immigrants’ reaction adi prasatya christianto & dewi widyastuti 96 toward the unfairness in the form of aggression and revolution. this is the phase where they acted for equal right. the last stage reveals the acculturation process where these mexicans started to attach themselves as americans resulting to the existence of mexican-american people. these are the three stages that mexican people had undergone in america and these phenomena are common in race relation process. race relation reaction is a very common result in race relation, that is when two or different cultures clash each other, they will likely to react toward the situation. this reaction would vary in different circumstances like equal condition or unequal one. kitano refers this phenomenon as “racial interaction” (1985: 11). this theory is particularly interesting in the case of unequal power where one ethnic has weaker position that the other one. mexican-american, on the other hand, is appropriate to explain the situation where the inferior mexicanamericans or the minority had to mingle and live with americans as the superior and mainstream group. mexican-american, as the newcomer, had to be ready in the new world, america. this is the “racial interaction” phenomenon existed. on one side, the reaction of the superior group could be rejection, discrimination and segregation. these were what the superior group commonly did toward the minority people. they excluded people as stranger or alien. however, what particularly interesting is the minority group’s reaction toward the situation. kitano refers this as the minority’s adaptation and it can be in the form of conflict, acceptance or even avoidance (kitano, 1985: 65). their acceptance as the effort of adaptation could exist in the process of acculturation. this process will be explained further in the next theory. another adaptation of the minority group would be in the form of conflict such as aggression, race riot, strike and boycott (kitano, 1985: 72). the minority group in an unfair and discriminative situation could react negatively. they fought back and protested. the same thing also applied to mexicanamericans. as the community which was put in the lowest position in america, the community eventually revolted against the unfair treatments. this community fought for their right and they often trapped in bloody conflicts with the authority. norton explained “in the 1930s mexican-americans belied their image by engaging in prolonged and sometimes bloody strikes” (1982: 743). acculturation acculturation process is part of kitano’s racial interaction where minority group, in this case mexican-americans, tried to adapt with the condition in the mainstream, america. mexican-americans, as the result of racial interaction, tried to be accepted in the mainstream through adaptation of value, culture and ideology. this is the process of acculturation where people from certain culture try to be similar with another culture in many ways. in the case of mexicanamerican, kitano refers it as “anglo conformity” (1985: 2). from sociology point of view, acculturation is understood as “the process by which an individual forsake his or her own culture tradition to become part of a different culture” (schafer, 1986: 232). thus, it can be concluded that a person who has neglected his or her own tradition and adopts a different tradition or culture is said to have acculturated. the main point here is adaptation where people try to be one by practicing the same value, tradition and culture. however, acculturation should not only be defined but it needs to be recognized. according to hazuda, acculturation should be recognized as “a multi-dimensional process which covers language, culture beliefs and values, and structural assimilation” (http://www.rice.edu/project/hispanichealt h/acculturation.html). therefore, it is understood that the process of acculturation involved the practice of language, culture and value adaptation and structural acculturation through society’s acceptance in social structure. from this point of view, it is vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 97 possible to examine whether or not mexicanamericans have acculturated with americans. discussion in this part, the researcher will examine the three stages of mexican-americans’ life from the three model characters like the farm worker, the revolucionario and the mexican-american. each represents one significant period of mexican-americans’ life and all of them constitute sequential periods or stages itself. the idea of sequential stages has been presented by valdez from the introduction of the characters itself. for example, farm worker model is depicted of having no ability to speak or to understand english at all. the model speaks only mexican. then, it is introduced pachuco model and revolucionario model which know very limited english. however, at the end, mexican-american model is introduced to be a bilingual and educated model. here, it is obvious how valdez tries to reveal the sense of development, from not bilingual to a completely literate and bilingual model. another example is from food preferences. farm worker resembles mexican with its mexican foods preference like chile, tortilla and beans. as the other models are introduced, these models depict more complex food preferences like a mix of mexican food and american food like in revolucionario model. in fact, mexicanamerican as the last model consumes american food only. here, it is obvious that through food preferences, the sense of development or stages has existed from pure mexican, a mix between mexican and american to a total americanized version. the first stage: the migration 1900s the migration period is best represented by the farm worker model. this part will examine the common life condition and challenges faced by mexican immigrant at that time. the period began when massive number of mexican people came to america in 1900s to seek for new life and opportunity. this is because america, at that time, grew rapidly in economy and agriculture which demanded more labors. this was the mexicans’ opportunity for a better living, and this was what triggered the massive migration in 1900s (www.everyculture. com/multi/le-pa/mexican-americans.html). because agriculture demanded more and more cheap labors, the mexican immigrants became the exploited workers. this is because they were uneducated, illegal and they did not speak english. this is why at that time, almost all mexican immigrants became labors and farmers. basically, the mexican immigrants’ condition at that time was very devastating and unfair. the most obvious discriminatory action they experienced was in terms of payment. these plantation and field labors were not paid reasonable and they were even underpaid compared to other ethnic worker. take a look at the following quotation. as a result, hispanics, on average, earn only half to two-thirds of the average american income. the spanish median income is $17, 465; the national median income is $23, 618. many hispanics make up an underclass of workers who take jobs no one else wants at wages no one else will accept (light et al, 1989: 90). it is obvious that mexican immigrants’ income was very low even to the national income of american people at that time. this is because their wages were extremely low and they had to accept that with no question because they did not have legal status as labors. they were mostly undocumented workers with no law protection; therefore, they had to accept whatever offered to them, even the lowest payment none wanted to take. this unfair payment is represented by the farm worker with its “economical” feature. the model is said to be so economical that it only needs one plate of bean with tortillas and plenty of chile. the model also only needs pennies a day to make it run (valdez, 1994: 1405). it is stated that to run the model, it needs a very cheap and simple food with no cost at all. this is actually valdez’s satire toward the actual condition http://www.everyculture/ adi prasatya christianto & dewi widyastuti 98 that mexican immigrants often paid so low that they could not even fulfill their basic needs. thus, it is obvious that how cheap the model is represents and satirizes how low and unfair the payment of mexican immigrants in actual condition. another discrimination and inappropriate treatment these people had to bear was in terms of house facilities. mexican immigrants were not only underpaid, but they were also neglected without housing, health and sanitation facilities from their employers. these workers had to squeeze themselves in a very small house together. they had to live with ten or more people in one small house. it is obvious in the following quotation. sometimes, whole families of "braceros" would only get paid twenty cents for three hours of work. working families lived in small run down shacks or tents in crowded camps. if there wasn't enough room, some family members would sleep under bridges nearby. in order to survive, families were forced to move to where work was available (http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/systems/age ntsheets/new-vista/grape-boycott) here, it is obvious how insufficient the housing was. it was too small to hold many workers, but they had to stay there. they even had to stay outside in the field when the house could not hold people anymore. through farm worker, valdez also tries to reveal this condition. the model is described to be very “portable”. it means the model could be stored in any place such as old barns, old cars, or even river banks. in fact, the model is so portable that it does not even need a place to be kept. it can be left out in the field. examine the following dialogue. secretary. what about storage? ancho. no problem. you know these new farm labor camps our honorable governor reagan has built out by parlier or raisin city? they were designed with our model in mind. five, six, seven, even ten in one of those shacks will give you no trouble at all. you can also put him in old barns, old cars, river banks. you can even leave him out in the field overnight with no worry! (valdez, 1994: 1405) the last would be the challenges faced by the mexican immigrants in fields and plantations. as labors who worked as cotton pickers or fruit harvesters, the real obstacle would be the weather. this is because they had to adapt themselves in every season and they had to be ready in any condition when the harvest month came. no matter how hot or cold the weather was they had to be in the field. it was even more devastating because weather kept changing each month. summer brought its heat while winter blizzards would pile up and troubled the workers. not only that, in march and april, melted snow threatened the workers with flood that would wiped out all the crops (norton et al, 1982: 453). this was what the workers had to face, the weather. the idea is also represented through farm worker’s durability with its special features such as sombrero, a typical wide mexican hat and four-ply goodyear huaraches, anti-rain tire. the model is described to be very durable that it could work in any condition and weather with the help of its features. take a look at the following dialogue. sancho. (…)also take special notice of his four-ply goodyear huaraches, made from the rain tire. this wide-brimmed sombrero is an extra added featurekeeps off the sun, rain, and dust. secretary. yes, it does look durable. (valdez, 1994: 1404) here, it is obvious that the sombrero is very useful for the farm worker to keep off the sun, rain, and even dust. thus, it will not be a problem for the model to work under the hot sun, or to work under rain. the model can overcome that. not only that, the model is also very durable with its anti-rain tire which will help it in slippery land in rainy season. thus, it can be concluded that farm worker model is prepared with any kind of condition, weather and season, and it can work effectively. here, it is very obvious how vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 99 valdez represents the weather as an obstacle in mexican workers’ actual condition by making the farm worker model to be fully prepared with any weather condition. the model’s durability represents the necessity of mexican workers to adapt in any condition, season and weather. the second stage: the revolution and movement after 1940s as kitano argued before about “racial interaction” (1985: 11), minority group, in this case mexican-americans would react aggressively toward the discrimination and prejudice by americans as the result of conflict adaptation. after the previous period where mexican workers were discriminated and treated bad, these people reacted back and they fight back in this period. thus, in this period, it is basically reveal the struggles and the clashes of mexican to gain their equal right. they fought vigorously in order to be treated fair and respectfully. this is the period of revolution and movement which is best represented by the revolucionario. basically, in the second stage, it will be revealed the general condition during the revolution and the mindset of people toward those revolutionaries. as what has been mentioned before, revolution was basically the way mexican workers fought back through direct aggression, conflict, strikes and boycott. these people did many strikes and boycotts to show their aspiration for equal right. these strikes were often happened in the plantation or in the field. what commonly happened during strikes was that these people demonstrated and aspired their rejection toward discrimination. it resembled much a demonstration. on the other hand, the authorities and the police would also reacted back in the form of violence and abuses toward the mexican immigrants. the condition often ended bloody and brutally. take a look the following quotation. but in the 1930s mexican-americans belied their image by engaging in prolonged and sometimes bloody strikes. in united action in the san joaquin valley in october 1933, eighteen thousand cotton pickers walked off their jobs and set up “strike city” after being evicted from the growers’ camp. shortly after, their union hall was riddled with bullets and two strikes died. the nest year labor violence was frequent in the imperial valley, where police crushed a strike by burning the pickers’ camp to the ground. in this dispute and others, mexican-americans showed their determination to organized, gain strength from unity, and fight for their rights (norton et al 1982: 743). the quotation has described the chaotic condition of revolution efforts and strikes. people were fighting each other. the police even used bullets to control the situation even if they had to kill many people. this is basically the idea in strikes and boycotts where people gathered and yelled out their protests out loud. this chaotic condition is revealed humorously through the revolucionario’s volume control feature. the model is depicted of having a volume control. thus, the model can scream when the volume is increased or it can even gives mousey and small sound. take a look at the following dialogue. sancho. well, he was in all of them. listen to this. (snap.) revolucionario. (scream). viva villaaaa! secretary. that’s awfully loud. sancho. he has a volume control. (he adjusts volume. snap.) revolucionario. (mousey voice). viva villa! (valdez, 1994: 1407) this feature is a very special feature owned only by the revolucionario. the volume control signifies the actual chaotic condition of strikes commonly happened in plantation or fields. the loud scream and the aspiration yelled by the mexican protesters are tried to be represented by the fact that the revolucionario is able to increase its volume into screaming just like what happened in demonstration or strikes. moreover, another significant point is the words screamed by the revolucionario. it keeps saying “viva villa” which literary means long live the adi prasatya christianto & dewi widyastuti 100 country. this is a very common utterance during mexican revolution in 1910 to defend mexico. thus, it is obvious how the volume control feature actually represents the general condition in strikes and revolution. besides the bloody and brutal condition during the revolution, the mindset of people against mexican immigrants who fought back was also bad. take a look at the following quotation by daniels and kitano. the caucasian [and] especially the anglosaxon, when engaged in fighting...resort[s] to fisticuffs...; but this mexican element considers [good sportsmanship] to be a sign of weakness, and all he knows and feels is a desire to use a knife or some lethal weapon. in other words, his desire is to kill, or at least let blood (1985: 161). it is obvious that the struggle of mexican immigrants were regarded negative by american people. they believed that mexicans were a savage and brutal people who loved to killed and shed blood. they believed that it was their nature to revolt and kill because the mexican enjoyed it as sign of manhood. this mindset was particularly unfair for them. when they did not fight back, they were discriminated and excluded from the society, but when they actually struggled to achieve their right, they were regarded as savage and bloodthirsty people. they were always put as victim physically and mentally. this mindset is also depicted through the revolucionario. the model is depicted to be a special model which can rides horses, stays in mountains, crosses deserts, plains, rivers, leads revolutions, follow revolutions, kills, can be killed, serves as a martyr, hero (valdez, 1994: 1407). here, the model is simply said that it kills. this description tries to represent the unfair mindset as if by nature, mexican loves to kill or as if only mexican that kills people in strikes, not americans. the third period: the acculturation this part is particularly interesting because not only it is necessary to defined first what acculturation is and its parameters to recognize the process, it is important also to examine the facts whether or not mexican immigrants have done such process that made them into mexican-americans. therefore, as the process which involves culture and value adaptation of another ethnic, acculturation will involve in language mastery and culture and value attachment of mexican immigrants to america. this is to reveal that mexican-americans have acculturated, and this is best represented by the mexican-american model. the first is language mastery. the process of acculturation happens when a person tries to be accepted by the mainstream through language mastery. it means that when mexican-americans learn english as their language, they wanted to be welcomed in the new society. take a look at the following dialogue. secretary. that’s much better, but you didn’t answer my question. does he speak english? sancho. bueno...no, pero he has other— secretary. no. sancho. other features. secretary. no! he just won’t do! (valdez, 1994: 1405) here, it is obvious that there is actually a demand from the secretary to have a bilingual model, a model which understands english. the farm worker is rejected directly because it is not bilingual and the secretary believes that it will not be suitable to work among americans in the office. the demand of language as part of acculturation itself has been portrayed in the play; this was what really happened in america especially in the case of mexican-american where they employed different language. the society demanded that in order to be accepted as part of the mainstream, the person needs to understand each other through language. take a look at the following quotation. in contrast, the norms and the values of some hispanic americans have been profoundly challenged by the need to interact with the pervasive anglo world. one example can be seen in language. vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 101 hispanics have had to make their way in a “foreign” society in which english is the language of workplace, the marketplace, the school, and the political arena (light et al, 1989: 91). here, it is clear that mastering english is one of the way for hispanics to “survive” in the foreign country. this is because it was the official language of the country and it was used anywhere such workplace and market. therefore, they needed to learn english. this is what mexican-american model represents. compared to the farm worker which is rejected because it is not bilingual, the mexican-american model comes as the model which fulfills the secretary demands because it is educated and bilingual. sancho. well, we’ll just write that down. yes, senorita, this model represents the apex of american engineering! he is bilingual, college educated, ambitious! say the word “acculturate” and he accelerates. he is intelligent, wellmannered, clean– did i say clean? (snap. mexican-american raises his arm.) smell (valdez, 1994: 1409) the model suits the secretary because it can speak english fluently. here, it is obvious that the mexican-american model has follow what is demanded from it, the same language; therefore, the model has follow what the mainstream wants. this is where the process of acculturation existed that is when mexican-americans follow what happened in the society and mainstream, they have acculturated. thus, it is obvious that how the model actually fulfills the secretary’s demand represents the process of acculturation through language. the acculturation of mexican-americans through attachment or following the mainstream can also exist in the level of culture, value and belief. this is what gordon referred as “cultural assimilation” where people started to assimilate another culture as their identity (1964). take a look at the following quotations. racial ethnic groups have also gone through the same process, and some have successfully acculturated. they have learned english and the american way; they have fought and died for america and have subscribed to the tenets of patriotism and love of country (kitano, 1985: 27). it is clear that learning the language and believing the same way, that is the american way, are the acculturation itself. this is where mexican-americans tried to be similar with americans in many ways like culture, ideology and value. these people were actually proud to part of america and their attachment had grown into patriotic action itself. these facts are described vividly by valdez through the mexican-american’s patriotic feature and its political speech. take a look at the following speech. mexican-american. mr. congressman, mr. chairman, members of the board, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen. (sancho and secretary applaud.) please, please. i come before you as a mexican-american to tell you about the problems of the mexican. the problems of the mexican stem from one thing and one thing alone: he’s stupid. he’s uneducated. he needs to stay in school. he needs to be ambitious, forwardlooking, harder-working. he needs to think american, american, american, american, american, american. god bless america! god bless america! god bless america!! (he goes out of control.) (sancho snaps frantically and the mexican-american finally slumps forward, bending at the waist.) secretary. oh my, he’s patriotic too! (valdez, 1994: 1409) from the speech, the attachment to america can be seen clearly. the model feels proud to be american and he thinks americans are the best because they are ambitious, forwardlooking and hard-worker. the sense of patriotism is also obvious when the model yells ‘god bless america’ over and over. he adi prasatya christianto & dewi widyastuti 102 tries to show his patriotic sense. thus, it can be concluded that the way the model proud to be american and thinks like american is a representation of the true acculturation of mexican-americans. conclusion los vendidos, in the basis of historical issue, does not only evaluate the cultural clashes between mexican value and american culture such as prejudice, discrimination or struggles. more than that, the play tries to examine the whole life of mexican-americans in the new world as stranger through three sequential stages. these three stages which involves migration, revolution and acculturation period will eventually reveal the actual history of mexican-americans from the moment they lived in america to the end. each stage would be the best trace of mexican-americans’ life, culture, identity and value as whole. references englekirk, allan and marguirite marin. “mexican americans overview”. <http://www.everyculture.com/multi/l e-pa/mexican-americans.html> (26 october 2010). gordon, milton. assimilation in american life. new york: oxford university press, 1964. hazuda, h.p., stern, m.p., and haffner, s.m. acculturation and assimilation among mexican americans : scales and population-based data. social science quarterly 69, 1988. <http://www.rice.edu/projects/hispani chealth/acculturation.html> (15 april 2011). kitano, harry h.l. race relations third edition. new jersey: prentice hall inc, 1985. light, donald, suzanne keller and craig calhoun. sociology fifth edition. new york: alfred a. knopf, 1989. norton, mary beth, david m.katzman, paul d. escott, howard p. chudacofi, thomas g. paterson, william m. tuttle, jr. a people and a nation a history of the united states. boston: houghton mifflin company, 1982. peterson, claire and susana diaz. “exploring the united farm workers’ history”. <http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/systems/ag entsheets/new-vista/grape-boycott> (10 march 2011). schaefer, richard. t. sociology second edition. new york: mcgraw-hill inc, 1986. valdez, luis. los vendidos. an introduction to literature expanded edition. eds. sylvan barnet, morton berman, and william burto. new york: harper collins college publishers, 1994. phenomena vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 61 superiority of the native seen in the tone of the track to bralgu by bozic wongar dearty crima & g. fajar sasmita aji english letters department, sanata dharma university abstract this paper focuses on the track to bralgu, a twelve-chapter novel written by bozic wongar. the novel is concerned with the destruction and exploitation of the land and the aborigines. the novel emphasizes the superiority of the colonizer as a surface representation, and the superiority of the colonized as the representation of depth. the aim of this study is to obtain an understanding of how the tone of the track to bralgu leads readers to the superiority of the colonized. the objectives are first, to explain the steps of examining the tone of the track to bralgu and to explain how its tone can lead readers to the superiority of the colonized; second, to analyze the superiority of the colonizer as a surface representation of the track to bralgu; and third, to examine the tone of the track to bralgu which brings the idea of the superiority of the colonized. the method that was conducted in the study was the library research, for all the reference textbooks applied in the study were gained from the library. in conducting the analysis, a postcolonial approach was applied. by applying a postcolonial approach, the researcher is able to understand the broad outline of the relation between the colonizer and the colonized presented in the novel. the result of the study shows in the track to bralgu, the superiority of the colonizer is depicted through the superiority of tools and technology, while the superiority of the colonized is depicted in its close relation to nature. the tone of the track to bralgu is cynical and it brings the idea of the superiority of the colonized because its tone is examined from the colonized’s cynical view of the colonizer. keywords: superiority, tone, colonized, colonizer, postcolonial introduction long before the expansion of european power into asia, africa, or the america began in 16th century, colonialism had actually already begun and was considered as one of the widespread features of human history, as ania loomba put it in her book colonialism/postcolonialism (1998: 2). before western colonialism occured, the roman empire spread from armenia to atlantic in the 2nd century ad, the mongols defeated the middle east and china in the 13th c. those two examples of history are one of the reasons for the emergence of european colonialism, but it adopted new and different kinds of colonial practices. ania loomba gave an opinion about this modern colonialism, that it did more than extract tributes, goods, and wealth from the countries that it conquered – it restructured the economy of the latter, drawing them into a complex relationship with their own. so colonialism can be defined as the conquest and control of other people’s land and goods (1998: 2-3). western colonialism as modern colonialism gave birth to racial stereotyping and binary opposition; the ‘othering’ of vast numbers of people, and their construction as backward and inferior. bijay kumar das in his book twentieth century literary criticism: 4th dearty crima & g. fajar sasmita aji 62 edition stated that the colonial power sought to establish the superiority of the west over the east, and thus western superiority paved the way for the binary opposition that structured people’s minds into ideas of the colonized’s inferiority and the colonizer’s superiority (2002: 214). consequently, laziness, aggression, violence, greed, sexual promiscuity, bestiality, primitivism, innocence, and irrationality are attributed by the english to the ‘others’ (loomba, 1998: 95). in the late of eighteenth century, edward said contributed orientalism to postcolonial theory. the europeans tried to justify their territorial conquests by producing the images of non-european as indolent, thoughtless, sexually immoral, unreliable, and demented. for a long time, they believed that they had accurately created the images of their conquered land (bressler, 1998: 267). in orientalism, said tried to bring out the binary opposition between east and west, in the way that he changed the term east to the ‘orient’ and west to the ‘occident’, so that one cannot claim superiority over the other, and by using the term orientalism, the east will not be constructed as barbaric or degenerate anymore (bijay kumar das, 2002: 218). in conclusion, orientalism by edward said aimed to reconstruct the structure that gave a bad connotation to the east, to demonstrate the values of oriental culture and he brought the marginalized ‘other’ to the centre stage (said, 1979: 84). this makes orientalism by edward said the starting point of the awareness of being colonized. the colonizer-colonized relationship is described in abdul r. janmohamed’s the economy of manichaean allegory: the dominant model of power – and interest – relations in all colonial societies is the manichaean opposition between the putative superiority of the european and the supposed inferiority of the native (1985: 63). this manichaean division of the world stresses that the colonizer is good, has power, and controls the colony’s resources, while the colonized is bad, must be dominated, and must forfeit control over both land and labor (rajan and mohanram, 1995: 20). this manichaean division of the colonizercolonized also led to the resistance of the colonized, as bressler put it, resistance is born out of the colonized people’s frustrations, their direct and personal cultural clashes with the conquering culture, and their fears, hopes, and dreams about the future and their own identities (1998: 266). the inferiority of the colonized brought postcolonialists into existence. postcolonialists sought to articulate the oppressed consciousness of the colonized subject and also to overcome the stigma of marginality (2002: 206). there are many colonized people who struggle to regain their identity by writing back to the centre, telling the colonizer that what they did was wrong and how their western hegemony damaged and suppressed the ideologies of those who were conquered (bressler, 1998: 267-268). thus, resistance literature can be seen as that category of literary writing which emerges as an integral part of an organized struggle and resistance for national liberation (slemon, 1997:107). there were indeed the attempts of reclaiming and the regaining voice of identity of the colonized country, but many postcolonialists also influenced the colonizer constructed text of the third world, and consequently their attempts seemed useless. this condition is also justified by bill ashcroft in his post-colonial transformation. he stated that, the most tenacious aspect of colonial control has been its capacity to bind the colonized into a binary myth-… --of colonizer/colonized, civilized/uncivilized, white/black which works to justify the mission civilatrice-… --the theorists who re-write the story of europe as ‘developer’ into the story of europe as ‘exploiter’ remain caught in the binary of europe and its others. the subject of the new history is still europe (2001:21). from this perspective, it is obvious that it shows how postcolonialists were trapped in the paradigm of ‘the colonizer’s superiority vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 63 and the colonized’s inferiority’. postcolonial writings, in fact, only represent the inferiority of the colonized since they only try to attract sympathy for the colonized. in order to make this more tangible, we can compare wongar’s the track to bralgu with conrad’s heart of darkness. in conrad’s heart of darkness, the concept of the ‘colonizer is superior’ is applied throughout his work; the congo is described as the dark continent inhabited by ruthless cannibals, and the native african people are described as selfish, helpless, uneducated, exotic, lower and inferior. the heart of darkness still holds on to the constructed text of the binary opposition of colonizer’s superiority and the colonized’s inferiority. thus, the tangible difference between the track to bralgu and heart of darkness is that heart of darkness uses the old paradigm of postcolonialism that stresses both the colonizer’s superiority and the bad images of the colonized people, while the track to bralgu adopts a new insight of postcolonialism that rejects the idea of the binary opposition of ‘the colonizer’s superiority and the colonized’s inferiority’. while other postcolonial writings are still trapped in the old paradigm, “east is inferior and west is superior”, bozic wongar in his work the track to bralgu has adopted another idea of postcolonialism. it is the representation of the new paradigm of postcolonialism which believes that the natives are superior and which will obviously alter people’s mindset from previously believing in the constructed text of the binary opposition of postcolonialism to accepting the new insight of the idea of postcolonialism. thus, this is a deconstructive phenomenon. wongar’s work is different from others in the way he adopted a new kind of genre. the plot in the track to bralgu does not have a causal relationship and every chapter stands by itself. another significant element in the track to bralgu is the tone because the superiority of the native is depicted in the tone itself and leads readers to accept the new insight into postcolonialism. according to stuart hall in representation: cultural representation and signifying practices, representation is the production of meaning through language (2003: 28). representation can be divided into two; first, is the surface representation which is founded in the visual, including what is apprehended by the senses, while the second is the depth representation which means penetrating the visible in other words, it pierces through the veil of the visible to what the visible supposedly secretes (gibson, 1996: 82). as a representation, the novel is also interesting because there are two levels of representation: the representation of surface and the representation of depth. in the surface representation, the novel applies “the old paradigm”, while in its depth representation, it applies the new paradigm. tone it was romantic criticism which gave birth to the concept of the ‘author as god’, but not until the end of the 19th century, was the ‘author as god’ concept denied. t. s. eliot together with the new critics, made the importance of the author fall and the importance itself was shifted from the author to the text (das, 2002: 159). soon after, roland barthes produced an essay about the death of the author, about the impersonality of the author whose function is as a particular medium.the new critic believed that the reader should have the priority to interpret the text. according to i. a. richards in c. hugh holman and william harmon‘s a handbook to literature: 5th edition, tone is a term designating the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work (1986: 503). this definition really supports barthes’ essay which stresses that the author is only a particular medium. in order to reveal the tone of the track to bralgu, we depend fully on how the text itself leads the reader into something. tone is a more delicate matter than spoken language, for we do not have the speaker’s voice to guide us and it may convey not simply one attitude, but a medley (1999: 138). to interpret the message that the dearty crima & g. fajar sasmita aji 64 author conveys in his work, the writer uses the point of view of hermeneutics. hermeneutics is when a work of literature is seen from the perspective of the theoretical discourses, which work as the major shift in the interpretation of literature, such as postcolonial theory, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, etc. such theoretical discourse is used to interpret what a work of literature is ultimately all ‘about’ (culler, 2000: 61). there are two accounts of hermeneutics, hermeneutics of recovery and hermeneutics of suspicion. according to jonathan culler in literary theory: a very short introduction, the hermeneutics of recovery seeks to reconstruct the original context of production, while the hermeneutics of suspicion seeks to expose the unexamined assumptions on which a text may rely (2000: 64). thus, the tone of the track to bralgu can be gained from the hermeneutics of recovery, since it concerns the text and its author as it seeks to make an original message accessible to readers today (2000: 64). from culler’s definition of the hermeneutics of recovery, the writer should first understand the text of the track to bralgu, and secondly decide the context before coming up with the message exists in the track to bralgu. the interpretation of the message is certainly context-bound, or, context brings a message but at the same time, context is also boundless. meaning to say, there is no determining in advance what might count as relevant, or what enlarging of context might be able to shift what we regard as the meaning of text (2000: 63-64). since the track to bralgu is a story about the destruction of one world by another, the context of the track to bralgu is postcolonial and it is used as the hermeneutics point of view. thus, to reveal the tone of the track to bralgu is to uncover the postcolonial message that the text wants to portray. from the intensive reading, the tone of the track to bralgu can be seen cleearly in the colonized or the aborigines’ view of the colonizer. once we get the tone of the track to bralgu, it will lead to the message that exists inside the text. representation according to gibson, classical theory develops two accounts of narrative representation, which are the representation of surface and the representation of depth (1996: 81). representation of surface views language as innocent, or in other words, it conceives of language as adequate to what it represents (1996: 81). meanwhile, the representation of depth means penetrating the visible. representation of depth pierces through the veil of the visible and then captures the unseen or captures something beyond the visible (1996: 82). in representation: cultural representations and signifying practices, stuart hall gave us three approaches to explain how the representation of meaning through language works, and those are the reflective approach, the intentional approach, and the constructionist approach. for the track to bralgu, the writer uses the constructionist approach; it argues that representation can be related to objects, people, and events in the real world, and can also be related to imaginary things and fantasy worlds or to abstracts ideas which are not in any obvious sense part of the material world (1997: 24 28). obviously, this approach wants to emphasize that it is the language system which conveys meanings and not the material world (1997: 25). how the tone is depicted in the story of the track to bralgu how the tone is depicted can be examined from the text of the track to bralgu. the objects being emphasized in the track to bralgu are the colonizer and the colonized. within the text of the track to bralgu, the colonizer is emphasized through superiority of tools and technology, so that the whites can support the transportation faster, and the development of their mining operation and town. while the colonized is emphasized through their closeness to vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 65 nature, and consequently, the natives can survive in the terrible long drought by performing a rainmaking ceremony. the colonized is also emphasized through their view of the colonizer shown from the text of the track to bralgu. throughout the novel colonized people state their thoughts on or views of the colonizer. tone is the expression of a literary speaker’s attitude to his listener (abrams, 1985: 156). from this, it is obvious that the view of the natives that is addressed to the colonizer brings the tone to the surface. the white man is so rock-hungry he will soon have moved the whole island away – and such a lot of the work has been done by me, swinging a hammer. (19-20) it is about the cynicism that is addressed to the whites, since they are so mad about rocks and seem want to have all the rocks in the land, but surprisingly, swinging a hammer to reduce the sizes of the rocks, is done by the natives. i shouldn’t be in this at all; you track an animal or a snake but not a man. white fella will never understand that – he’s keen to hunt down even his own kind. (47) the native’s cynical view above expresses that white men will never understand that it is not wise to hunt down a man. what a bastard, this white man, who likes neither my voice nor my color, yet wants me to come up with a miracle that will make him a god. (66) it shows the added cynicism of the native who is aware that even though the white men do not like him due to his voice and color, they still need the natives to help them as slaves. those explanations of the expression of the natives show cynicism and are addressed to the colonizer, and thus the tone of the track to bralgu is cynical. the tone of the track to bralgu obviously leads readers to the message that exists within the text. the new insight that will be penetrated using the representation of depth, is aimed at releasing readers from being trapped within the constructed discourse of postcolonialism that stresses the superiority of the colonizer over the colonized. superiority of the colonizer as the surface representation the first story of the track to bralgu is about the black christian priest named george of riratjingu who wants to be buried in a christian way. but unfortunately he is not given a piece of land for his grave. “whatever happened to me will have no bearing on your mining operation. i only need three feet by six feet – it’ll do for the hole.” “i am afraid … we could not allow burial on the leased land.” (7) i whispered: “what about the church, there is plenty of room in the courtyard.” “one has to be a saint to be buried there. sorry, we could not bend the rules.” (9) “no, just three feet by six feet.” “do not challenge the property law: make no obstruction to progress.” (11) it is obvious that the colonizer is superior since the native is forbidden to have any part of the land. in this story, reverend george understands that even though he has served the whites as a minister preaching to and helping them, but they will not take this into account. it does not matter what you did all your life and that you preached the way it benefits them, once you die, you are kicked back to the tribal man – no, they would not let me be buried in the ground with a decent christian service. (4) “jambawal, the thunder man” starts with how their cherished customs, the tribal meanings, the sacred places, all were broken to pieces by the guns and the laws and the bulldozers of the new gods (the track to bralgu, 1992: 1). they have already cleaned the bush and bulldozed the black man’s land. they have built their houses and made their graveyard – the country i knew so well is dearty crima & g. fajar sasmita aji 66 ugly and strange. no black man now can point to a place and say: “here, at the bottom of this water hole (…), lies the spirit of our ancestors… even the trampled space where we dance to call for rain when drought was long – that has been taken by the white man. (14) the superiority of the colonizer is even clearer from the description of the whites exploiting the natives and their freedom making them slaves and of how they have successfully built their town with their superior and sophisticated equipments now they put a great sledgehammer in your hands, and bully you to swing it against the rocks from dawn till dark. when night comes and you’re pushed into lockup, you lie down without the strength to sigh or swear. (15) “the tracker” is about a native who is forced by three white men to track his own friend and one of them is carrying a gun. they don’t talk about why they’re hunting the poor bloke; don’t even say his name. (48) i wonder why they’re hunting him – what harm could he’ve done? none of them talk about that so maybe there’s nothing much to say. (49) it represents the superiority of the colonizer and the inferiority of the colonized since the native can do nothing except follow the colonizer’s orders, even though the colonized understands that the colonizer controls, rules and treats them in unfair ways. superiority of the natives as the representation of depth in the track to bralgu, the prejudices of the west which considered the east as inferior, uncivilized and barbarous, are reversed through the representation of depth. consequently, the west’s justifications of colonialization to the east as lacked all the genius of the west will no longer depreciate the east. this new paradigm can be brought to the surface by the representation of depth. in the first story george’s deep disappointment leads him to be a mogwoi, a trickster spirit, so that he can take revenge on the people who have harmed him. even if you beg and plead all your life, you are born a black, have to die as one, and worst of all you are buried differently from the way you wanted. (4) perhaps i should not be bothered any of them; the whites have their own problems to care about. after all what is the use of trying to nag, . (11) the riratjingu elders say often when a man dies, his spirits splits in three parts: one goes to bralgu to join the ancestors; another sits on the bottom of the totemic water hole and waits to be reborn; while the third, the mogwoi, they call it, wanders around tribal country. (12) i am going to be a mogwoi, …. (12) george’s decision to be a mogwoi shows his awareness that being a black is better than being a white. in the white man’s world, when death takes their souls, they only have one place to go and it will be heaven. but, in the black man’s world, the black people have three options for their death. the first is bralgu, the second is the bottom of the totemic water hole to be reborn, and the last is mogwoi, a place to take revenge. as a matter of fact, george is aware that whatever unjust treatment you get from the colonizer, it does not mean that the colonizer is superior, because in the end, he can take revenge in a more cruel way on the colonizer who makes his life uncomfortable. “jambawal, the thunder man” starts with the superiority of the colonizer who succeeds in destroying the native’s land. but at last, the superiority of their tools is defeated by the native’s superiority in his close relationship with nature. i’m glad he made it at last. since they brought me here to the island i’ve watched the sky and called to him… i vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 67 knew if i called, and waited long enough, jambawal would rise from bralgu to sweep across the sea in such a rage that when he hit the town the white man and his houses would flutter like leaves in the air. sometimes i climbed to the island peak, high, like an anthill there, and looking toward bralgu i danced and sang to jambawal – not so loud as to annoy him, but gently; just enough to remind him that he must come. (13-14) within the text, the readers are convinced that the colonizer is superior and that the superiority of their tools really helps them to destroy the native’s land. but unexpectedly, this chapter in fact represents the superiority of the colonized because of the native’s close relationship with nature. in the story, one of the natives who is forced to be a slave, called jambawal or the cyclone to come, and as a result, the town that has successfully been built by the whites was smashed down. in chapter six “the tracker”, the image of the native as uncivilized is reversed. it is a story about the whites who forced the native to track in order to find the native’s friend so that they will have the reward. “i just want to get him, and collect that bloody reward,” says glasses. (51) “i’ll blow all my cut on beer,” dreams the stockman. “it’d make a whole pool of booze you could swim in.”(52) the whites are tricked by the native, but they do not realize that the native is leading them to another way. from this story, it is tangible that the native is superior to the white. i shouldn’t be in this at all; you track an animal or a snake but not a man. white fella will never understand that – he’s keen to hunt down even his own kind. (47) we’re not following the tracks any longer, but the boss men haven’t noticed – they’re so sure i won’t go wrong. (53) all of the above stories are the reversal of the prejudices about the east that the west created. the west created bad images of the east and used them as their justification for mission civilatrice, but in the track to bralgu, those images of the east are reversed, so that actually the bad images of the east are shown to be the real images of west itself. conclusion the first objects emphasized in the text of the track to bralgu are the colonizer and the colonized. within the text, the colonizer is emphasized in the way that they own superior tools to support their mining development. this leads them to be greedy in occupying the native’s land, and in exploiting its resources as well as exploiting the natives. the colonized is emphasized as being close to nature. this is shown through the aborigines who can call jambawal or the cyclone to come, or by the aborigines who can perform a rainmaking ceremony when they are in a terrible drought. the tone of the track to bralgu can be identified from the native’s view of or expression statement about the colonizer. the tone is cynical as can be seen from the cynicism in every expression of the native. secondly the supposed superiority of the colonizer is depicted. the superiority of the colonizer can be clearly seen from the tools that support the development of their mining operation. superiority of tools also allows them to build their town on the native’s land and to make the circulation of their development news and transportation easier and faster. thirdly is on the real superiority of the colonized is depicted. unlike the superiority of the colonizer that can be clearly seen within the text, the superiority of the colonized needs deeper examination because it is buried within the seen or the visible. consequently, to bring the superiority of the colonized into the surface, the writer uses the representation of depth. the most interesting story that represents the superiority of the colonized is “the tracker”. on the surface, it shows the superiority of the colonizer in a dearty crima & g. fajar sasmita aji 68 very obvious way, because the native has to obey the whites to track his friend. but, if the visible is pierced through, it shows the superiority of the colonized in the way that the whites depend fully on the native to track the right way. surprisingly, the native is also clever, for he is not tracking his friend as the whites force him to. he leads the whites so that they will be dying from exhaustion and heat. from the surface representation, in “mogwoi, the trickster spirit”, it seems very tangible that it shows the superiority of the colonizer. but, as a matter of fact, when the visible is penetrated, the story shows the superiority of the colonized. the priest’s realization that being black is better leads him to become a mogwoi for one purpose; to take revenge on the whites who made his life on earth uncomfortable. this represents the superiority of the colonized because for the natives, the world is not a limitation. while in “jambawal, the thunder man”, the colonizer’s superiority of tools and technology are defeated by the native’ closeness to nature. in this chapter, the superiority of the native lies in their expertise at calling jambawal, or the cyclone to smash down the white’s town. reference abrams, m. h. a glossary of literary terms. new york: rine heart winston inc., 1985. ashcroft, bill. post colonial transformation. new york: routledge, 2001. ashcroft, bill, gareth griffiths, and hellen tiffin. key concepts in postcolonial studies. london: routledge, 1998. _______________. the post-colonial studies reader. london: routledge, 1997. bressler, charles e. literary criticism: an introduction to theory and practice. new jersey: prentice hall, 1998. culler, jonathan. literary theory: a very short introduction. new york: oxford university press, 2000. ______________. roland barthes. new york: oxford university press, 1983. das, bijay kumar. twentieth century literary criticism; 4th edition. new delhi: atlantic publishers and distributors, 2002 edgar, andrew and peter sedgwick. cultural theory: the key concepts: first edition. new york: routledge, 2002. fajar sasmita aji, g. “the deconstructive novels of women of the sun and the track to bralgu against the white’s rhetoric of civilization.” phenomena journal of language and literature. vol.11 no. 3 (february 2008): 156-170. gibson, andrew. towards a postmodern theory of narrative. edinburgh: edinburgh university press, 1996. goldie, terry. “the representation of the indigene” in ashcroft, bill, gareth griffiths, and hellen tiffin (eds.). the post-colonial studies reader. london: routledge, 1997. hall, stuart. representation: cultural representation and signifying practices. london: sage publications ltd, 2003. holman, c. hugh and william harmon. a handbook to literature; 5th edition. new york: macmillan publishing company, 1986. loomba, ania. colonialism/postcolonialism. london: routledge, 1998. said, edward w. orientalism. new york: random house, inc., 1979. slemon, stephen. “resistance theory for the second world” in the post-colonial studies reader. eds. bill ashcroft, gareth griffiths, and hellen tiffin. london: routledge, 1997. wongar, b. the track to bralgu. 25-31 ryde road, pymble nsw 2073: collins angus & robertson publishers pty limited, 1992. 53 vol. 22 no. 1, april 2022, pp. 53-63 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i1.3502 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. a comparative study on sentence characters of research introductions by indonesian authors in applied linguistics ameitha pratiwi, safnil arsyad, & syafryadin ameithapratiwi@gmail.com, safnil@unib.ac.id, & syafryadin@unib.ac.id postgraduate program of english education department, universitas bengkulu, indonesia abstract article information this article presents the findings of sentence characters in article introductions written by indonesian authors in applied linguistics published in national accredited and international reputable journals. this study aimed to identify sentence characters in article introductions used by indonesian authors in applied linguistics published in national accredited journals and reputable international journals. the method employed in this study was a mixed-method to describe and compare the data. this study’s total number of articles was forty from eight different journals. the results indicated that the average sentence lengths in terms of words number per sentence in the international reputable journals articles were 22.38 words, and those in national accredited journals articles were 21.84 words. also, the results revealed that the most commonly used sentence pattern in both groups of articles was complex sentences, with 414 sentences in national journals and 378 in international journals. it is followed by simple, compound-complex, and compound sentences. therefore, it can be concluded that the indonesian authors from both groups prefer to use long words and use complex sentences more often than the other sentence patterns. hence, there is no important difference in sentence characters between national accredited and international reputable journals. keywords: introduction; sentence characters; national author; a national accredited journal; an international reputable journal. received: 5 july 2021 revised: 11 january 2022 accepted: 16 january 2022 https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ameitha pratiwi, safnil arsyad, & syafryadin 54 introduction a research article published in journal is one form of the outcome of research academics in the universities and other researchers from various institutions. general director of dikti in circular letter no. 152/e/t/2012 specifies that the lecturers, academics, researchers who conduct research activities at the college must publish journal articles. besides, the general director of dikti in circular letter no. 20150/e/t/2011 on the publication policy requires that the researcher publish scientific papers or online journal articles through the e-journal. ministry of research technology and higher education (2016) explains that indonesian researchers in the field of social sciences and humanities, including the field of applied linguistics or english language education, are underneath other indonesian researchers in the fields of science, agriculture, medicine, computers, and engineering on publishing in reputable international journals. the condition is certainly unexpected because the general assumptions said that professors or researchers in english majors would not experience difficulty writing articles in english for their english language proficiency which is relatively better than researchers or lecturers in other fields of science. according to the data of dikti (2016) most indonesian academic publications are the fields of science, technology, health, and medicine such as engineering (15.14%), medicine (10.64%), computer science (10.2%), agriculture, and biological sciences (9.57%), physics and astronomy (5.39%), while publications in the field of social sciences were only (4.74%) and in arts and humanities (0.91%). the data indicates that the least publication in a reputable international journal in social sciences and humanities includes english language education (applied linguistics). this situation is contrary to people’s expectations, where english language lecturers and researchers experience less difficulty because they are mastery the language and academic writing skills more than lecturers and researchers in other disciplines. the first possible cause of low publication of lecturers in social sciences and humanities in international journals is some indonesian academic authors unaware of the rhetorical pattern and the standard of linguistic features in every section and subsection of research journal articles in english. swales (1990 & 2004) describes differences in rhetorical styles of scientific articles in indonesian and english as found by safnil (2001), mirahayuni (2002), adnan (2009), arsyad & wardhana (2014), and arsyad & arono (2016). blagojevic (2015) says that in practice, especially humanities field, the writers regularly use the first language (l1) style when writing in english (l2) for international journals. another possible cause is indonesian lecturers and researchers in the field of social sciences, especially in the field of english language education, unaware of linguistic features in their writing such as; sentence patterns, phrase patterns, specific word choices (specific lexicons), cohesion, and coherence patterns, selection of citation verbs (reporting verbs) and the use of metadiscourse markers which are often used by international journal writers as found in articles that have been published in reputable international journals. the research articles' introduction is in great demand by indonesian researchers to analyze because the introduction section is a form of a case being investigated that provides information to make the readers understand the purpose and specification in a larger theoretical framework. this section includes background information on the problem, such as summarizing the current study and previous studies. the introduction section is the most important part of the scientific text section, which is the first part that the readers should read after the abstract. related to the explanation above, the important problem experienced by the author of research articles is to write a research article. the linguistic feature becomes the problem in writing a research article which is the sentence character such as sentence length (in terms of the number of words and journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 55 term of the number of sentences) and sentence patterns such as simple sentence, compound sentence, complex sentence, and complex compound sentence in research articles. however, the study is still rarely done, especially in research articles' introduction sections about sentence characters in applied linguistics journals. as the introduction is an important part of research that will be read to know the gap of study in the publication journal, so the logic of this study is to investigate the sentence characters or the stylistic trends used by indonesian authors in the research articles introduction sections of national accredited journals and reputable international journals. many studies of scientific activities done by researchers worldwide, much of the literature have been published in english by non-native speaker (nns). publications by these scholars are often the equivalent of publications by native english speakers (nse) (buckingham, 2008). however, there is evidence from research that is the focus to the difficulties faced by nns when compiling scientific texts. englander (2014) found that the nns english writing was on average 21% more difficult than writing in their native language. this is caused by vocabulary, syntax, organization, and methodological problems. another study by weijen (2014) found that writing in english can be more timeconsuming for nns than for nse because it requires more cognitive effort in processing language. they mostly lack clarity in explaining, grammatical errors, organizational inconsistencies, and problems with the format of the thesis. dean (2000) notes that sentence length choice can help writers establish their position. mamishev & williams (2010) recommend that writers use different types of sentences to make their writing more sophisticated. moreover, the study by deveci (2019) found that the average sentence length of education research articles written by anglophone and turkish authors was 24.7. it is the average sentence length belonging to the average length by readability experts which suggests an average of 20-25 words (garner, 2000). meanwhile, journal publication guidelines advise that scientific writing should be around 12-17 words per sentence (griffies, perrie, & hull, 2013). research on rhetoric style and linguistic features of journal articles (aj) written in indonesian and english by indonesian researchers and published in indonesian journals and international journals is frequently conducted. these studies were conducted by safnil (2001), adnan (2009), arsyad (2013. a), arsyad (2013.b), arsyad and wardhana (2014), and arsyad and arono (2016). the results of this study are very important, especially in how the authors of indonesian journal research articles should modify their research articles when writing english research articles to be published in a reputable national and international journal. the research on journal articles in indonesian and english was mostly conducted to analyze the rhetorical patterns of article sections such as abstracts, introduction, results, and discussion. still, only a few comparative research studies were carried out on the linguistic features, especially the sentence character of english education research articles published in national accredited journals and reputable international journals. this is the main reason for conducting this research, namely to see the sentence characters in the introduction section of english research articles in applied linguistics published in an accredited national accredited journal and internationally reputable journal. three research problems guided this study: 1) what are the average sentence lengths in research articles introduction written by indonesian authors published in national accredited journals and reputable international journals? 2) what are the common sentence patterns found in research articles introduction in applied linguistics written by indonesian authors published in national accredited journals and reputable international journals? journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ameitha pratiwi, safnil arsyad, & syafryadin 56 3) what are the differences between the nationally accredited and reputable international journals regarding the number of sentence patterns? methodology the method employed in this study is a descriptive quantitative study to describe and compare the numerical data. this study used a quantitative method. sugiyono (2015) interprets the quantitative method as a research method to examine a population or a particular sample; data collection using research instruments, quantitative or statistical data analysis to trial the hypothesis. furthermore, the study is following deveci (2019) by calculating the average sentence length in the introduction section of research articles on the research corpus and identifying sentence patterns (simple sentence, compound sentences, complex sentence, and complex-compound sentence) in the introduction section of the research articles on the research corpus. the corpus of this research involved forty articles from reputable international journals and national accredited journals. the articles were taken from eight different journals in applied linguistics published by indonesian authors in national accredited journals and reputable international journals. the research articles were taken from eight journals, namely ijal, teflin, siele, ijole, jeels, ijeltal, joall, & linguists. the journals were categorized in table 1. this research used a checklist as the instrument containing sentence patterns. this study uses weber and brizee (in deveci, 2019) to determine the characters, such as average sentence length and sentence pattern. first, the researcher downloads the data which consists of forty research articles from eight journal sites. second, the data that has been downloaded is converted from .pdf files into .doc format files using online software available at http://pdf2doc.com. the analysis in this study was completed by identifying the linguistic features, namely, sentence characters such as sentence length and sentence patterns in the introduction section. there are several stages used in this study to identify sentence characters. first, the data is categorized into five sections (abstract, introduction, method, result and discussion, and conclusion) because this research only investigates the introduction section. second, the researcher read the entire introduction carefully. third, the researcher manually corrects the format defects such as spelling and punctuation in articles. tables, table captions, acknowledgments, and reference lists are deleted. direct quotes from participants or texts analyzed in the quantitative studies are also removed because the numerical data and the sentences in these sections are outside the study’s scope. the next stage was identifying the average sentence length in the introduction section. the researcher uses online software available at http://countwordsworth.com/wordspersente nce to compare the sentence length between nationally accredited journals and reputable international journals. the trial of this software showed that it recognized all of the periods, like the end of a sentence (deveci, 2019). after calculating using online software, the data is entered into an excel sheet. to get the results, it has been inputted into excel, the data is processed using a formula available in the excel program. table 1. the corpus of the study no. journal code national accredited international reputable number of articles 1. international reputable journal ijal sinta 1 q2 5 2. teflin sinta 1 q2 5 3. siele sinta 1 q4 5 4. ijole sinta 1 q4 5 http://pdf2doc.com/ journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 57 no. journal code national accredited international reputable number of articles 5. national accredited journal jeels sinta 2 5 6. ijeltal sinta 2 5 7. joall sinta 3 5 8. linguists sinta 4 5 total (n) 40 in the last stage, the researcher identified the sentence pattern by waber and brizee (in deveci, 2019) as simple, compound, complex, and compound sentences. the sentence pattern was identified through the result found in the research article. after that, the researcher obtained and calculated the data and input it into the table. the last, the researcher analyzed the result. this study used a co-rater to validate the result of the data analysis. in this study, cohen kappa’s coefficient analysis is used to evaluate the inter-rater reliability of the number of sentence patterns in introductions of the articles. results and discussion this part presents the research results and discussion based on analyzing the sentence characters such as average sentence length and sentence pattern in the introduction section of the national accredited journal and reputable international journal written by national authors in applied linguistics. there are 10 corpora sentence patterns taken randomly which need to be analyzed by the researcher and co-rater. after the researcher and co-rater completely analyzed the data, it was found that 276 out of 336 data was same agreement while 50 out of 336 data was random agreement. the result of cohen’s kappa value is 0.91. based on the category in the previous chapter, it can be concluded that the data agreement between researcher and co-researcher is excellent. as it has high reliability, the researchers continued the next research step. the average sentence length in introduction section the first research question aimed to identify the average sentence length of the introduction section in journal articles written by national authors published in internationally reputable journals and national accredited journals regarding the number of words per sentence and terms of the number of sentences per section. the tables below show the number of words per sentence. first, the results of reputable international journals are summarized in table 2. table 2. average sentence lengths (number of words) no national journals �̅�𝑥 international journals �̅�𝑥 1 jeels 20.86 ijal 23.37 2 ijeltal 22.36 teflin 25.50 3 joall 23.65 siele 21.06 4 linguists 20.47 ijole 19.61 table 2 shows the overall average sentence length in terms of the number of words in the national journal is 21.84, and the international journal is 22.38. the most extended average sentence length in international journals belonged to the teflin journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ameitha pratiwi, safnil arsyad, & syafryadin 58 articles introduction of the international indexed journal with 25.50 words. the number is followed by ijal articles with an average length of 23.37 words. the third average sentence length with 21.06 from the siele articles. the shortest average sentence length is ijole articles with 19.61 words. furthermore, the national journal's most extended average sentence length is joall articles with 23.65 words. the second is the ijeltal articles with 22.36 words. the third is the jeels articles with 20.86 words. the last is the shortest from linguist articles with 20.47 words. the second is calculating the average length of introduction in terms of the number of sentences per section in research articles introduction written by indonesian authors published in international reputable and national accredited journals. the results of the calculation are shown in table 3. table 3. average sentence lengths (number of sentences) no national journals number �̅�𝑥 international journals number �̅�𝑥 1 jeels 221 44 ijal 172 34 2 ijeltal 190 38 teflin 225 45 3 joall 175 35 siele 94 19 4 linguists 180 36 ijole 194 39 table 3 shows the number of sentences in the research article introductions in national accredited journals and reputable international journals. it shows that the average is 38 sentences per section in national journal articles and 34 sentences per section in international journal articles. specifically, jeels articles are the longest, with an average of 44 sentences in the introduction section. the second is from ijeltal articles with an average of 38 sentences. the third is from the linguists articles with an average of 36 sentences. the least is from joall articles with an average of 35 sentences. moreover, the longest sentence in international journal research articles is from the teflin with an average of 45 sentences. the second is from ijole articles with an average of 39 sentences. the third is from ijal articles with an average of 34 sentences. the shortest is from the siele articles, with an average of 19 sentences. the first objective of this research is to calculate the average sentence length of the introduction section in applied linguistics research articles written by indonesian authors. the first result indicates that the average sentence length in terms of the number of words per sentence in research articles introduction of national journals and international journals is very close (21.83 in national journals and 22.38 in international journals). the scientific writing should be around 12-17 words per sentence (griffies, perrie, & hull, 2013). meanwhile, the average sentence length of those research articles is included in the readability level which the average of each sentence is around 20-25 words per sentence (garner, 2000). it can be implied that indonesian authors have followed the international conventions in writing sentences in terms of the number of words per sentence. the result in line with deveci (2019) found that the average sentence length within 24.17 in the corpus of the research. furthermore, the second result indicates that the average length of introduction in terms of the number of sentences in the introduction section is about 38 sentences for national journals and 34 sentences for international journals. author guidelines in joall (2021) as a national journal indicate that writing articles should use more than 318 sentences or more. technical guideline in teflin (2021) as an international journal implies that the number of words used in the article is 218 to 348 sentences or more. it indicates that indonesian authors in national and international journals have followed the journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 59 guidelines and used long sentences in the introduction section. the choice of sentence length in the journal articles can help the writers to establish the position (dean, 2000). however, making sentences shorter or longer does not indicate a certain level of proficiency (lestari & lertira, 2013). using longer or shorter sentences alone does not help present a good writing composition. the long and short sentences should be combined to present an ideal variation of easy-to-read patterns. sentence pattern in introduction section of national journals and international journals the second result of the study is aimed to identify the common sentence patterns found in research articles written by indonesian authors published in nationally accredited and internationally reputable journals. the sentence patterns found are simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, and compound-complex sentences. the researcher analyzed forty introduction sections of research articles from national accredited journals and reputable international journals. the results of identification are summarized in table 4 below. table 4 shows that sentence patterns, namely simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences, are found in nationally accredited and internationally reputable journals' introduction section. furthermore, the most common sentence pattern is complex sentences, with 414 sentences in national journals and 378 sentences in international journals. the second is simple sentences with 170 sentences in national journals and 136 in international journals. the third is compound-complex sentences, with 106 in national journals and 112 in international journals. the minor sentence pattern used in the introduction section is compound sentences with 76 sentences in national journals and 59 sentences in international journals. table 4. sentence pattern of research articles no sentence pattern national accredited journals international reputable journals 1 simple sentence 170 136 2 compound sentence 76 59 3 complex sentence 414 378 4 complex compound sentence 106 112 the second research objective identifies the common sentence patterns found in the research articles introduction in applied linguistics written by indonesian authors published in national and international journals. this study found that complex sentences become the typical sentence patterns that indonesian authors use in the introduction section of national and international journals. simple sentences followed it as the second common use of sentence patterns. the result implies that indonesian authors in national and international journals could make complex sentences because they used simple sentences and combined with at least one dependent clause. it also can make sentences more efficient and avoid the redundant of the same sentences or repetition in writing. good writing in the scientific paper should be clearly and precisely in defined opinion to avoid imprecise words (wyrick, 2017). thus, the result of this study, in line with the result of research by deveci (2017), indicates that language learners use complex sentences more commonly than other sentence patterns to display writing ability. he also found that simple sentences were indeed preferred by journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ameitha pratiwi, safnil arsyad, & syafryadin 60 authors who were familiar with english compared to national writers to improve writing quality. on the other hand, the indonesian authors in national and international journals rarely use compound-complex sentences and compound sentences in the introduction section. according to weber and brizee (in deveci, 2019), compound sentences are used to combine more than two independent clauses or parallel sentences, and compoundcomplex sentences are multiple independent clauses and one or more dependent clauses. it is probably caused by the introduction of the research article containing more overview of the general topic, available research information, and literature, so they rarely use very long and parallel sentences. wijen (2014) observes that the sentence pattern in the introduction section is used according to the idea or thought of the author. moreover, mixing all kinds of sentence patterns such as simple, compound, complex, and compoundcomplex sentences in writing can have a good writing style (oshima and hogue, 2006). the result was in line with deveci (2019), indicating that compound sentences were used the most in the method section because the author tended to be direct and concise with information describing how to obtain results. compound-complex sentences are used the most in the discussion section. so, this is possible that compound sentences and compound-complex sentences are rarely found in the introduction section. the difference between national and international journals the last objective aimed to answer the third research question about the differences between the nationally accredited and reputable international journals regarding sentence characters. the results indicate that complex sentences are the most common sentence pattern found in both groups, and it followed by simple sentences, compoundcomplex sentences, and compound sentences. mamishev & williams (2010) imply that using sentence patterns by authors can make writing more sophisticated. it also found that indonesian authors in national and international journals used long sentences in the introduction section. it implies no important difference between national accredited and international reputable journals regarding sentence characters. the results found more similarities in sentence characters while only a few differences. the differences could be because the authors lack concentration on the writing quality caused by unfamiliarity with english (wallwork, 2016). it makes the author less meticulous with the word used (newell, 2014). however, the researchers in indonesia rarely study sentence characters, namely sentence lengths and sentence patterns. so, the results of this study are expected to provide some advantages to help the author write the research article introductions. the advantages of this study can help the author make various sentences with complexities to make sentences more efficient. combining the author's average sentence lengths can help determine whether the level of articles is made following national or international writing conventions. the last analysis in this study is to establish the differences of sentence patterns in the national accredited journal and reputable international journal in terms of the number of sentence patterns. conclusion from the results and discussion of this study, several points are concluded as follows. first, in the introduction section, indonesian authors in the national and international journals used long average sentence length in terms of words per sentence. furthermore, the average length of introduction in terms of sentences per section found that indonesian authors in national accredited journals and reputable international journals use long sentences in the introduction section. it can be implied that indonesian authors have followed the community conventions of writing and technical guidelines in writing sentences. second, the most common sentence pattern found in national accredited and international reputable journals was complex sentences, followed by simple sentences. complex sentences were consistently found in the introduction section of research articles. it journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 61 interprets that the complex sentence is an obligatory sentence pattern used in the corpus. otherwise, the rare sentence patterns found in the corpus were compound-complex sentences and compound sentences. this results can be assumed that the authors have used varied sentence patterns in writing the introduction section. third, there is no important difference between indonesian authors in national accredited journals and reputable international journals regarding sentence characters. it is found that indonesian authors in national and international journals used complex sentences more often, and both groups used long sentences in the introduction section. thus, this implies that indonesian authors in national journals probably have written following international writing standards. references adnan, z. 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(2011). steps to writing well (11st ed.). colorado state university. boston: cengage learning. https://www.elsevier.com/authors-update/story/publishingtips/how-to-overcome-common-obstacles-to-publishing-in-english https://www.elsevier.com/authors-update/story/publishingtips/how-to-overcome-common-obstacles-to-publishing-in-english https://www.elsevier.com/authors-update/story/publishingtips/how-to-overcome-common-obstacles-to-publishing-in-english https://www.elsevier.com/authors-update/story/publishingtips/how-to-overcome-common-obstacles-to-publishing-in-english https://www.elsevier.com/authors-update/story/publishingtips/how-to-overcome-common-obstacles-to-publishing-in-english 75 vol. 22 no. 1, april 2022, pp. 75-84 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i1.3525 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. defense mechanisms in emily brontë’s wuthering heights: how catherine earnshaw deals with egocentricity nur amaliyah & yeny prastiwi amaliyahnur03@gmail.com & yeny.prastiwi@ums.ac.id department of english education, muhammadiyah university of surakarta abstract article information one of the crucial things in the novel is the personality of the character. analyzing novel characters is an interesting approach in literary research. this study aims to determine the personality of catherine earnshaw, who is the protagonist of the novel wuthering heights. catherine earnshaw’s personality, egocentric tendencies, and defense mechanisms are the main issues in this research. this study reveals the character description of catherine earnshaw, the kinds of egocentrism she experiences, and how she handles it with her defense mechanisms. this research belongs to library research which applied the qualitative research method. in addition, there are two types of data sources, namely primary data from emily bronte's novel wuthering heights and secondary data in the form of books, journals, and official sites related to research. this study applies sigmund freud's theory of psychoanalytic which shows three personality structures, namely the id, the ego, and the superego. the results show that catherine earnshaw has an egocentric tendency with five types, including egocentric memory, egocentric myopia, egocentric righteousness, egocentric blindness, and egocentric immediacy. in dealing with the tendency, catherine balances with defense mechanisms in the form of denial, identification, repression, and rationalization. keywords: defense mechanism; egocentric; psychoanalytic; wuthering heights novel received: 17 july 2021 revised: 31 january 2022 accepted: 1 february 2022 introduction character is one of the main components in the novel besides the storyline, setting, theme, etc. one of the highlights of the characters in literary work is the different and unique personality proposed by the author. character is a fictional character which is one of the intrinsic elements of the novel; the author can create character traits as a manifestation of the author's personal perspective, opinions, and messages to be conveyed in the novel (baudry, 2017). moreover, in the novel wuthering heights, emily bronte highlights the psychological deviations of the characters, aspects of social pressure, mental issues, strong https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) nur amaliyah & yeny prastiwi 76 emotional depictions of the psychological state of the characters make wuthering heights filled with gothic elements in the story (gorsky, 1999). the study focuses on the issue of the defense mechanism of a certain character named catherine earnshaw dealing with her egocentricity in wuthering heights novel. sharma et al. (2019) postulate that defense mechanisms are reactions produced unconsciously by the ego because of the contradiction between the desires of the id and the reality that is considered moral values and social norms. (baumeister et al. (1998) state the defense mechanism produced by sigmund freud shows the central point in the ego's defense of instinct or desire produced by the id, which cannot admit by the ego. furthermore, piaget defines egocentrism as the incapacity to differentiate among different people's mind and self-abstinent excusing (nissa, khoirun; masturah, alifah nabilah; faisal, 2019). likewise, in the book 'the human mind; how it learns, how it mislearns’ (elder & richard, 2004), the motive of egocentric is to gain self concerns and victimize the desires, rights and necessities of others. whereas, from the point of view it can be explained that ‘seeing myself as the center does the way to get what i want’. the researcher pointed out catherine earnshaw as the object of this study. catherine is a protagonist figure in wuthering heights. catherine earnshaw's life in the novel is full of complex stories about her love story, the sacrifice of life, and her psychological problems. wuthering heights is a novel by emily bronte under the pseudonym 'ellis bell'. wuthering heights is a novel that shows a series of social, economic events and a dark romantic love story (balola & ibrahim, 2017). the dark love story, social class, and hatred are the highlights of the story in the novel. likewise, there are two facets of involvement that are built in the novel. first, the names of the houses wuthering heights and trusschross grange. both of them have contrasting stories and atmospheres. second, wuthering heights novel is a representation of gothic romance which contains emotional and sad stories (özkara, 2011). despite, emily bronte uses the weather as a manifestation of the depiction of the story in the novel, it makes the story more real and aesthetic in accordance with the clues for describing the characters and their characteristics (tytler & tytler, 2016) in order to investigate catherine earnshaw’s egocentric tendency and defense mechanisms, this study applies the freudian psychoanalytic approach generated by sigmund freud, an austrian neurologist. (syawal & helaluddin, 2018) explains the human mind proposed by sigmund freud has three conscious characteristics, including conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. later, to complete the mental state of the individual, freud also added three aspects of structural personality, namely id, ego and, superego or also known as tripartite of personality. therewith, in the approach of freudian psychoanalytic deals with literary products from the author, one of the observations is about the personality of the characters in literary work, because sometimes readers of written literature can make literary figures as role models (aras, 2015). in consort with the wuthering heights novel, the previous study is divided into three kinds, the biographical author issue, the linguistic units, and the character issue. newman (2018) has been observing death and its consequences in wuthering heights. the author found that emily bronte's background, who lost loved ones as a child, influenced the writing of the novel with the character traits of dying one by one; it also affected the diction of the writing, which tended to the words death and murder, thus adding to the emotional impression in the novel. furthermore, from the linguistics unit, there is a study conducted by dino (2018) entitled the themes of evil and revenge in wuthering heights a novel by emily bronte. the author uses text and thematic analysis and the results find that the theme of crime is produced from the tendency of revenge, the human nature such as egoism of the characters big up the series of mischief in the story. afterward, there is a study about character issues raised by balola & ibrahim (2017) that investigates the portrayal of heathcliff's character in wuthering journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 77 heights. the study uses an analytic description approach that focuses on the main character named heathcliff, who is described as a naive child at the beginning of the story but then represented as a major evil in the wuthering heights novel. the previous studies which mention above one similarity with this research is the object of research namely wuthering heights novel. however, what distinguishes this research from the previous study is the theory or approach used, the characters studied, and the issues raised in the research that has not been studied before. in accordance with the previous study, this study aims to analyze three main cases: 1) the description of catherine earnshaw’s personality; 2) the causes that make catherine earnshaw become an egocentric person; 3) the defense mechanisms used by catherine earnshaw to balance her egocentricity. methodology this research is qualitative research, which means that data is obtained through analyzing instead of statistical data. pursuant to aspers & corte (2019), qualitative research focuses on the process of making a difference with various phenomena using new concept analysis. the object of this research is the novel wuthering heights by emily brontë which was released in 1847. the researcher uses primary data and secondary data in this study, primary data is gained through the novel wuthering heights, while secondary data is acquired through journals, publication articles, theses, the internet and other sources related to novels. the data collection in this study uses notetaking technique. the steps in collecting data include reading the novel to understanding the core of the story and the problems in the novel to find issue, selecting important data in the form of quotations and narratives in novels, taking notes to collecting data, categorizing the data that is suitable for research, the last is evaluating the data and making conclusions according to the analysis. moreover, in analyzing data, it is used three techniques from miles and huberman (1994) which are data reduction which is selecting, simplifying, and focusing on the data that relate to the issue, the second one is data display including develops the study with the various valid data as the evidence, and the third is conclusion drawing and verification including to cross-check data that has been conducted so that can be coherence between results and issues. results and discussion catherine earnshaw’s background of life catherine earnshaw is described as the daughter of the earnshaw family. a family who lives in a house called wuthering heights in yorkshire, england. catherine has an older brother namely hindley earnshaw. catherine is depicted having a charming look, it is indicated in the narrative below. a wild, wicked slip she was but she had the bonniest eye, the sweetest smile, and lightest foot in the parish (brontë, 1847, p. 52-53). on the statement above, it is described physically and manner that catherine is a naughty girl, but she has a charm with a sweet smile and pretty eyes. moreover, the earnshaw family life took a bit of a change when mr. earnshaw travels to liverpool and brings home a black boy named heathcliff. it is shown in the text below. from the very beginning, he bred bad feeling in the house (brontë, 1847, p. 48). in the quotation above, heathcliff is known to have caused several problems at the house. for catherine, he is only a gypsy boy, and she does not want to share a room with him. catherine earnshaw’s social relation social relation between catherine earnshaw and heathcliff catherine earnshaw hated heathcliff when he first arrived, but they quickly bonded because their ages were not that far apart, catherine grew closer to heathcliff, and the two of them also became naughty children. after mr. earnshaw death, heathcliff was tortured by hindley earnshaw, at that time catherine helped heathcliff's work and taught him to read. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) nur amaliyah & yeny prastiwi 78 they grew up teenagers together and promised each other to live wild and rough, as stated in the following sentence. “they both promised fair to grow up as rude as savages” (brontë, 1847, p. 58). the quotation above shows that both catherine and heathcliff choose to have a wild life into adulthood. this is due to the bitter experience that has been obtained so far with the harsh treatment of hindley earnshaw, the agreement is like revenge for not obeying the rules that bind them. social relation between catherine earnshaw dan edgar linton edgar linton, the first child of the linton family, owned the thruscross grange house, a distant neighbor of the earnshaw family. catherine earnshaw becomes close after the incident with catherine being bitten by the linton family's pet dog. catherine at the time was being treated and staying for several weeks at thrusscross grange. the closeness between edgar and catherine is getting closer because edgar and his sister isabella linton sometimes visit wuthering heights and vice versa catherine also visits thruscross grange. it is indicated on the narration below. catherine had kept up her acquaintance with the lintons since her five-weeks’ residence among them (brontë, 1847, p. 84). the statement above shows that since living at thrushcross grange to rehabilitate from pain in her leg, catherine has continued to visit the house and has become closer to the linton family. meanwhile, edgar linton who loves catherine, eventually proposed catherine to become his wife. social relation between catherine earnshaw and nelly dean nelly dean is a helper to the earnshaw family, nelly is also catherine's childhood friend. apart from taking care of the home and the necessities of the earnshaw family, nelly is also a story-sharing friend of catherine, she tells everything about her problems, as follows. ‘nelly, will you keep a secret for me?’ she pursued, kneeling down by me, and lifting her winsome eyes to my face with that sort of look which turns off bad temper, even when one has all the right in the world to indulge it (brontë, 1847, p. 98). catherine will ask to nelly to give her advice on her problem. even after catherine married edgar linton, nelly also takes care of catherine's household life and also takes care of catherine when she is experiencing a mental illness. structural of catherine earnshaw’s personality catherine earnshaw’s id sharma et al. (2019) mentions that id is the origin physical needs of human which include instinctual impulses, preferences, and wishes, id only focus on achieving pleasure and reducing suffering without thinking about outer conditions. additionally, kenny (2017) states that id is the place withinside the unconscious human realm and distinct from the conscious mind. catherine acts freely as she pleases and orders others to do as she orders, as stated in the following excerption. “in play, she liked exceedingly to act the little mistress; using her hands freely, and commanding her companions” (brontë, 1847, p. 53). the assertion above represents that catherine has a tendency to need to grasp while gambling together along with her friends. acting like a mistress, ordering and hitting her pals can deliver happiness to catherine according to her id's wishes. catherine earnshaw’s ego ego serves to activate defenses as components for dodge contradictions (gelbard & bruckner, 2012). in addition, (kenny, 2017) mentions that the ego is a system that requires protection from the subconscious because the defense process produced by the ego is in a subconscious state. in this case, little catherine journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 79 speaks dirty and rude with a purpose, it is because her father is too disciplined, and catherine's ego does not accept it, she only relies on her id. likewise, when catherine returns to wuthering heights after recovering from her illness, she prepares to meet heathcliff. but after seeing heathcliff dirty and ugly, catherine laughs at heathcliff. it can be seen through the following text. ‘i did not mean to laugh at you,’ she said; ... if you wash your face and brush your hair, it will be all right: but you are so dirty!’ (brontë, 1847, p. 67). in the text above, catherine's ego thinks she should not touch heathcliff even though she misses heathcliff, catherine is arrogant and verbally belittles heathcliff. catherine earnshaw’s superego superego indicates the existence of perfection, thus, the superego works with a moralistic criterion that is permitted in society (sharma et al., 2019). furthermore, superego values are instilled in individuals through the people around them, especially parents, so that these individuals have benchmarks regarding community values (kenny, 2017). little catherine who is so naughty and wild sometimes shows her guilt by crying and apologizing especially to the two helpers at wuthering heights namely nelly and joseph, as stated in the following quotation. ...and she laughed if i told her to say she was sorry for her faults, and beg to be forgiven (brontë, 1847, p. 53-54). on the excerption above represents that little catherine with her impolite personality sometimes feels guilty for her behavior and asks people to forgive her, that is an instance of her superego. catherine also did not forget to sing a song to her father before going to bed, kiss his hand and say ‘good night’ to her father. according to nelly's view, even though catherine is a naughty girl, she never hated anyone. causes of catherine earnshaw’s egocentricity nissa, masturah & faisal (2019) mention that one element of the emergence of egocentricity is the worry, whether it is the worry of loss, worry of abandonment, or worry of rejection. people who felt abandoned will easily be fearful, to conquer this situation the individual will generally tend to take care of themselves. in their book 'the guide of the human mind; how it learns; how it mislearns’ (elder & richard., 2004) suggests the division of egocentric nature which is divided into eight types, namely egocentric memory, myopia, truth, hypocrisy, oversimplification, blindness, immediacy, and absurdity. this study has found five types of egocentric experienced by catherine earnshaw, there are: egocentric memory egocentric memory is one of the tendencies to overlook information that does not assist individual's idea and hopes, along only remember matters that support it (elder & richard., 2004). catherine experiences egocentric memory in three situations. the first is when heathcliff fled from wuthering heights, catherine thought that she was the only one who was the most miserable, whereas, it was catherine who hurt heathcliff. the second, when catherine had a fight with edgar linton, catherine felt that she was always hurt, and said she would not take revenge, on the other hand, edgar felt hurt because catherine kept seeing heathcliff. the third was when catherine had a fight with isabella linton, the only sentence that catherine brought up was because isabella called her a manger dog. egocentric myopia egocentric myopia is an egocentric represents narrow believing but pushes it to think absolutely from its own point of view (elder & richard., 2004). catherine experiences egocentric memory in three situations. the first time when catherine proposed to edgar, catherine had accepted but was still hesitant because, she chose edgar only because of the prestigious and rich linton family. the second is that catherine loves heathcliff but thinks if journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) nur amaliyah & yeny prastiwi 80 she marries heathcliff, then her dignity will demean. the third is that catherine thinks if she marries edgar linton, she can use her husband's wealth to save heathcliff. egocentric righteousness egocentric righteousness is a tendency to feel or consider that only oneself is right or has the correctness (elder & richard., 2004). catherine runs into egocentric righteousness in two circumstances. the first was when she had a fight with heathcliff and edgar linton, catherine felt that she was the only one in the right and blamed everyone for behaving like the devil and only herself being miserable. the second is when finished fighting with heathcliff and edgar, catherine tries to make the two people feel guilty by hurting her, considering they love catherine very much. egocentric blindness egocentric blindness is a tendency to disregard correctness that are opposite to the reliance of the individual (elder & richard., 2004). catherine run into egocentric blindness in two conditions. the first time when she agreed to accept edgar linton's proposal, catherine felt it was the best decision without thinking that she could hurt heathcliff. the second is when heathcliff visits thruscross grange after missing for years, catherine is too enthusiastic to welcome and too adoring heathcliff and makes edgar as her husband jealous. egocentric immediacy egocentric immediacy is an egocentric which conveys generalized feelings to be the same and overstate, so while crossing one or two pleasant or unpleasant conditions, everything will look like the same feels for the oneself (elder & richard., 2004). catherine earnshaw experienced egocentric immediacy in two situations. the first is when catherine had fight with edgar, catherine generalizes her feelings hysterically saying that edgar does not love her and does not get affection from the people around her. the second is when catherine is sick, she suddenly thinks that she is the most miserable victim of heathcliff and edgar linton. how catherine earnshaw faces her egocentric tendency maulidya (2018) conveys that one of the standards of coping with troubles is seeking out opportunities for second options, moreover, the elements that impact people in coping with troubles are incorrect moves and emotions that come up. catherine in dealing with her egocentric tendencies, controls them in two ways, the first is feelings that follow her egocentricity and the second is defense mechanisms to balance her egocentricity. feelings that follow egocentric tendency defensiveness defensiveness is a responsive behavior carried out by individuals when under pressure from outside in terms of the individual's weaknesses (stamp et al., 1992). catherine did defensiveness in two ways, the first when she was little, she denied her father who told catherine to be a good child by asking her father back. it is indicated on the following narrative. ‘why canst thou not always be a good lass, cathy?’ and she turned her face up to his, and laughed, and answered, ‘why cannot you always be a good man, father?’ (brontë, 1847, p. 54). in the dialogue above, catherine used her defense to prevent answering the question from her father, so she chose to ask the same matter back to her father. the second situation is when catherine pinches nelly's hand, catherine tries to cover up the fact by saying that nelly is a liar. anger anger is a main emotion having adjust functions connected to survival mechanisms that are psychological, biological and social nature (novaco, 2020). in dealing with survival warnings, anger provides to deppress soreness, fear, and shame. one of the times when catherine was angry with edgar linton for not visiting her when she was sick. it shows on the following text. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 81 ‘ah! you are come, are you, edgar linton?’ she said, with angry animation. ‘you are one of those things that are ever found when least wanted, and when you are wanted, never! (brontë, 1847, p. 163). the quotation above displays that catherine is angry with edgar through her facial expressions and by giving sarcasm that edgar does not care about his wife. resentment maclachlan (2010) postulates that from an emotional point of view, resentment can be interpreted as an adaptive reaction to a situation that suppresses an individual, one way to express it is to act in a certain way to release disturbing feelings. catherine run into this feeling when she felt belittled by nelly, as follows. ‘i hate you to be fidgeting in my presence,’ exclaimed the young lady imperiously (brontë, 1847, p. 88). in the narration above, catherine expresses explicitly hate at nelly’s presence when heathcliff came to thrusscross grange, catherine feels disturbed by nelly's presence. depression according to (milne r. and munro m., 2020) state that several indicates of depression such as sorrow, desperation, and lapse of interest in activities that can cause enjoyment. it deals with catherine's psyche, starting when heathcliff runs away from wuthering heights owing to catherine's words. after the incident, catherine had a prolonged fever, and doctors suggested the people around catherine not to go against her desires. this keeps on even when catherine was already married to edgar when her wish was not satisfied, catherine began to indicate depression. catherine experienced a period of emotional change when her mental illness worsen. aside, when catherine's depression began to recur, she even gritted her teeth, tore out the pillow with her teeth, and was scared to see her reflection in the mirror. when she was sick, catherine who was initially buffled turned into madness. defense mechanisms formed by catherine earnshaw freud defined the defense mechanism as the process by which the ego defends its existence by resisting aggressive impulses that invade the normative of ego (baumeister et al., 1998). defense mechanisms are also interpreted as a series of mental functioning which maintains the suffer of belief and has an effect on awareness in reality (cramer, 2000). in addition, (elder & richard., 2004) state there are nine kinds of defense mechanisms including denial, identification, projection, repression, rationalization, stereotyping, scapegoating, sublimation, and wishful thinking. in this research, the researcher has found five defense mechanisms by catherine earnshaw in dealing with her egocentric tendencies, including: denial denial is an attitude of rejection of the real facts because of an unfulfilled self-perception (warkey et al., 2020). catherine did denial when she was baffled when edgar proposed to her, at first she admitted to praising edgar and try to hide her love for heathcliff, but at last, she knew that what she did was wrong, as the following text. ‘here! and here!’ replied catherine, striking one hand on her forehead, and the other on her breast: ‘in whichever place the soul lives. in my soul and in my heart, i’m convinced i’m wrong!’ (brontë, 1847, p. 100). on the text above, it states that catherine was trying to refuse that she did not love heathcliff, she hid the fact and tried to express her belief that marrying edgar was the best decision. the second denial is when nelly advised catherine about her fight with edgar, but catherine tried to conceal her faults and maintain her self-image by saying edgar was childish and disorganized the conversation by praising heathcliff. identification identification tends to imitate the characteristics of others as one's own, this can journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) nur amaliyah & yeny prastiwi 82 increase one's satisfaction because they feel they have privilege or prestige in front of others (elder & richard., 2004). catherine earnshaw's identification is the way she dressed and conducted herself very dissimilar after she returned to wuthering heights from thrushcross grange. the silk clothes which she wore, the gesture and the manner are changed made it seem as she is part of an upper-class society like the linton family. it is proven through the following narration. i removed the habit, and there shone forth beneath a grand plaid silk frock, white trousers, and burnished shoes, and while her eyes sparkled joyfully (brontë, 1847, p. 65). in the narration above, the identification made by catherine was to show that she was not the wicked and wild girl anymore. she shows it with highlights of the silk dress and is well-mannered. repression a repression is a form of intimidating concealment, feelings of anxiety, unwanted circumstances, undesirable wishes that disturb the subconscious (warkey et al., 2020). catherine shows this defense when heathcliff accidentally hears all the bad objects catherine has said about him while catherine is speaking in secret with nelly in the kitchen. catherine unconsciously said right away that she forgot all the things she said to nelly about heathcliff. it is indicated on the text below. ‘i wonder where he is i wonder where he can be! what did i say, nelly? i’ve forgotten (brontë, 1847, p. 106). catherine, feeling lost to heathcliff, pleaded unrighteously and had forgotten what she had said about heathcliff in secret with nelly. catherine's annoying feeling made her forget what she was saying. rationalization anna freud defines rationalization as a strategy used by looking for a logical motive for an action to test reality (zepf, 2011). catherine did rationalization when heathcliff was locked up by hindley earnshaw so he could not take part in the party with little lintons, but catherine made the initiative to reassure hindley, it can be seen through the narration. i did not call her unfeeling long for i perceived she was in purgatory throughout the day, and wearying to find an opportunity of getting by herself, or paying a visit to heathcliff, who had been locked up by the master.... in the evening we had a dance. cathy begged that he might be liberated then as isabella linton had no partner her entreaties were vain (brontë, 1847, p. 7475). catherine build an alibi because at the dance party isabella linton did not have a pair. besides, catherine's real reason was to escape heathcliff from hindley’s punishment. conclusion based on the analysis that has been discussed in the finding and discussion section, the researcher concluded several conclusions. first, the character of catherine earnshaw in emily bronte's novel wuthering heights is described physically as a naughty girl but has a charming face. catherine was born in the earnshaw family, the owner of wuthering heights home. pointed from her social relationship with the people around her, catherine earnshaw indicates kind of a difference in behaving toward them. catherine has two distinct sides to show, it is like an inconsistent attitude. the first one is her wild and savage side toward people closest to her, and the second one is the charm and elegance that she does in the linton family. second, catherine earnshaw's egocentric tendencies are due to her feelings, wishes, and conception which approve herself according to her desires. this is what affects her mental condition and bad social relations with the people around her. catherine earnshaw's five egocentric tendencies are egocentric memory, egocentric myopia, egocentric righteousness, egocentric blindness, and egocentric immediacy. third, while facing her egocentric tendencies, catherine earnshaw will release feelings that will follow egocentric desires that journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 83 do not satisfied in reality, catherine earnshaw's feelings include defensiveness, anger, resentment, and depression. alongside, other efforts made by catherine include forming an ego defense mechanism to deal with her egocentric tendencies, among which the defense mechanisms are: denial, identification, repression, rationalization. references aras, g. 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(2011). about rationalization and intellectualization. international forum of psychoanalysis, 20(3), 148–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/0803706x.201. 307 vol. 21 no. 2, october 2021, pp. 307-317 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i2.3132 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. facing anxiety through ego defense mechanisms on the walking dead: michonne movie game 1fery setiawan, 2i gusti agung sri rwa jayantini, 3ida bagus gde nova winarta, 4ni komang arie suwastini fery.fbaunmas@gmail.com, *agung_srijayantini@unmas.ac.id, idabagusnova@unmas.ac.id, arie.suwastini@undiksha.ac.id 1,2,3 universitas mahasaraswati denpasar, 4 universitas pendidikan ganesha, indonesia abstract article information with the advancement of technology, a newly adopted form of literary work was found, known as a movie game. it is one of the game genres that resembles real movies that provide choices to the players who can actively determine the story, ending, and characters' action. in literary work, a character is one of the intrinsic elements that can be interestingly analyzed from the psychological perspective, including ego defense mechanisms. this study focuses on how the protagonist in a movie game entitled the walking dead: michonne faced her anxiety through her ego defense mechanisms. it aims to identify the types of ego defense mechanisms and how they can help the protagonist cope with her anxiety. the discussion was based on psychoanalysis theory, namely ego defense mechanisms proposed by sigmund freud. this study elaborated the description of the protagonist's actions when she faced anxiety through a qualitative method. the analysis revealed that the protagonist adopted the four types of ego defense mechanisms: repression, sublimation, rationalization, and aggression. it was found that aggression was the most frequently adopted mechanism, followed by sublimation, rationalization, and the least was repression. this finding indicated that the protagonist chose aggression to release resentment or dissatisfaction, especially when facing objects or other characters that create anxiety or frustration. it implies that the persistence of aggression, sublimation, rationalization, and repression could reflect the presence of continual threats in the environment from which people should survive. keywords: movie game; ego defense mechanisms; anxiety; received: 21 february 2021 revised: 3 may 2021 accepted: 10 may 2021 https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:fery.fbaunmas@gmail.com mailto:agung_srijayantini@unmas.ac.id mailto:idabagusnova@unmas.ac.id mailto:arie.suwastini@undiksha.ac.id journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fery setiawan, et.al. 308 introduction as our cultures and communities evolved, there has been a massive evolution of the styles of literature. it is shaped by various thoughts, behaviors, attitudes, and languages expressed in everyday or social life (rexroth, 2019). one of the well-known literary works is a film or movie. visually, it delivers the message of literature to the viewers. with the development of technologies and as time progresses, there has been a massive evolution in literature in which the elements were adapted into video games. a video game can be played on various devices, such as a personal computer (pc), gaming consoles, and smartphones (novrialdy, 2019). the development of technology, especially video games, could bring both negative and positive impacts. the negative impacts of playing video games are time-wasting, health problems, and addiction (hasan, 2019; setiawan, 2018). however, there are also some positive impacts when someone plays video games, such as reducing stress, forming sportsmanship and teamwork, and improving reasoning and logic skills (chandiwati et al., 2016; manggena, putra, & elingsetyo sanubari, 2017; suwastini et al. 2020). character is one of the intrinsic elements in literature that can be adapted into video games. a psychological approach may also be applied to review the existence of character in video games. the significance of psychoanalysis in any literary works is to understand how it represents the psychological experience of human beings and the understanding of the characters’ behavior (pangestu & sunardi, 2016). moreover, psychoanalysis theory can be a psychological interpretation to understand the meaning behind the character’s action (hossain, 2017). it includes learning ego defense mechanisms when facing a threatening situation. there are many video game genres, and one of them is a movie game. it is a type of video game or genre that offers the player multiple choices as the game progresses. it has a branching plot and the choices provided within a movie game that will tailor the storyline and the main character's actions (henman, 2019). ego defense mechanisms are known as the part of personality development within a person (minderop, 2010). ego defense mechanisms are helpful to reduce or prevent negative emotions, specifically anxiety, from arising within someone when he or she experiences an uncomfortable situation (khoirunisa & rahayu, 2020; martono, rosa, & azmin, 2015; santoso, 2017; syahran, 2019). it always unconsciously arises to perform specific actions to protect ones from being harmed mentally (nurtjahyo, 2016; purwaningrum & haryati s., 2016). in a survival situation, anxiety will arise because someone is forced to do something to stay alive. it is the feeling when someone feels overwhelmed by the pressuring situation, and it causes fear and worries (ulfa & wulandari, 2019; warkey, sili, & asanti, 2020). many actions or survival-themed literary works such as novels, short stories, movies, and games show the struggle and anxiety felt by the protagonist (al khoiriyah, 2019; musoffa, multazim, husna, hudayah, & dramestika, 2019; pratama & aji, 2017). they do not reflect on one's personality in general, but they affect the development of personality. freud (1896) categorizes ego defense mechanisms into nine types: repression, sublimation, projection, displacement, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, aggression, and fantasy (minderop, 2010). 1. repression is an internal process created by the ego to prevent unpleasant or threatening feelings from entering our unconscious mind. for example, an older sister represses her hatred towards her younger sister (semiun, 2006, p. 97). 2. sublimation is a form of diversion. its objective is to replace the feeling of fear or anxiety with socially beneficial activities. for example, a person who has a strong sexual desire then turns this uncomfortable feeling into brilliant ideas, such as creating a painting of a nude model (minderop, 2010, p. 30). 3. projection is placing one’s uncomfortable or unpleasant feelings on another person or object. for example, when we have to be rude to someone, we know that it is wrong and unacceptable, journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 309 but the attitude is carried out because the person deserves it. this kind of attitude is done to make us look better (minderop, 2010, p. 34). 4. displacement is a means of displacing a feeling of hatred towards someone or something else. for example, aggressive impulses may be displaced, as in scapegoating, upon people or objects who/which are not the source of the frustration but safer to attack (minderop, 2010, p. 35). 5. rationalization is to give a person reasonable motives for his or her actions. for example, a student makes an excuse that he deserves to go to a party because he constantly studies hard all this time (minderop, 2010, p. 36). 6. reaction formation is when someone acts the opposite way of what they experience or feel. for example, a mother's excessive manifestations of concern for her child may mask an actual hostility towards the child: extreme politeness toward a person may mean concealed disdain; bravado may mean hidden fear (minderop, 2010, p. 37). 7. regression is when someone acts in an uncontrollable behavior or acts like a child. for example, smoking, excessive eating, destroying things, driving carelessly, getting into a fight, killing each other, and many childish acts (hall, 2019, p. 173). 8. aggression is the act of releasing resentment or dissatisfaction shown specifically to another object or someone that creates anxiety or frustration. for example, when someone is frustrated over something, he/she will find someone as a scapegoat to vent his/her anger (minderop, 2010, p. 39). 9. fantasy is the act of fantasizing about something to reduce anxiety and also to find a solution. for example, soldiers often put the images of pin-up girls within their barracks, which symbolizes that their life fantasy still goes on when their sexual life is interrupted (minderop, 2010, p. 39). the walking dead: michonne is a threeepisode movie game from telltale games, published in 2016. the movie game was based on a comic with an identical title, the walking dead. critics praised the atmosphere in this movie game along with the action sequences and the character development of michonne, the protagonist. the trailer of this movie game can be seen through the following link https://youtu.be/fbqjyoaj7ai, and the gameplay can be seen through the link https://youtu.be/pmilfwfx2ag. this study focuses on how the protagonist, michonne, handles her anxiety through the ego defense mechanisms in a movie game entitled the walking dead : michonne, which tells and shows the protagonist’s journey during the zombie outbreak to the viewers or players. michonne was chosen as the subject of this study because her struggle to survive during the zombie outbreak was predominantly shown in the movie game. moreover, she lost her daughters during the zombie outbreak and desperately looking for them. michonne herself was not sure whether her daughters were still alive or not. she had to deal not only with zombies but also with other evil human beings. to survive during the life-threatening situation, she has to deal with her anxiety during the zombie outbreak. michonne is not an experienced fighter. she was just an ordinary mother and a businesswoman before the world suddenly turns to vain, and in order to survive, she needs to learn everything the hard way, which tortures her sanity. therefore, ego defense mechanisms were worth analyzing because grasping the idea behind ego defense mechanisms helps people understand how and why they react as it is towards the anxiety felt during a specific situation, especially when facing a threatening situation. therefore, this study is expected to be helpful as a future reference for other researchers and give an overview of how ego defense mechanisms influence someone's actions and reactions when he or she feels threatened to cope with the anxiety in order to live a balanced life. previously, five studies had analyzed ego defense mechanisms focusing on the main characters of literary works. the studies were respectively conducted by martono et al. (2015), nurtjahyo (2016), santoso (2017), ulfa and wulandari (2019), as well as https://youtu.be/fbqjyoaj7ai journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fery setiawan, et.al. 310 suwastini et al. (2020). these studies found some types of ego defense mechanisms from the main characters of the literary works to help them cope with their anxiety. repression was found in all of these previous studies. concerning the previous findings, this study is projected to connect the influence of ego defense mechanisms on a person's actions and reactions when experiencing stress by elaborating the ego defense mechanisms theory by sigmund freud with other theories related to a person's psychological condition. although the present study and previous studies analyzed a similar topic, the difference can be noted from the data source. the previous studies used novels, while the present study used a movie game as the data source. the movie game was chosen as the data source because it allows the player to be an active participant. therefore, the player could actively control and determine the story, ending, and character in the movie game, unlike movies that only present a linear story. most of the time, people consider games as entertainment to reduce boredom and fill their spare time, while in reality, a game, specifically a movie game, can also be comprehensively analyzed to give a new perspective and knowledge for researchers. methodology this study applied a descriptive qualitative method. several steps were done in this study. those steps were downloading and playing the walking dead: michonne movie game, recording the gameplay, editing the gameplay to make it like a movie, rewatching the gameplay, and the last step was observing and taking notes to record the critical information related to the ego defense mechanisms. the research design and the explanation can be seen in figure 1. figure 1 research design the data presented in this study were taken from the walking dead : michonne movie game by telltale games, which was downloaded from the following link https://store.steampowered.com/app/42957 0/the_walking_dead_michonne__a_telltale_ miniseries/. the ego defense mechanisms of the protagonist were analyzed in this study. this study used an observation method to collect the data within the movie game. in collecting the data, some steps were done such as downloading the movie game from the steam website, playing the movie game, which consists of three episodes, recording the gameplay while playing the movie game, editing the recorded gameplay to make it resembles a real movie, rewatching the final result of the edited gameplay. the last step was observing and taking notes while rewatching the gameplay to write down the vital information on the ego defense https://store.steampowered.com/app/429570/the_walking_dead_michonne__a_telltale_miniseries/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/429570/the_walking_dead_michonne__a_telltale_miniseries/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/429570/the_walking_dead_michonne__a_telltale_miniseries/ journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 311 mechanisms of the protagonist from the movie game. in this study, the protagonist’s action and dialogue were thoroughly observed. the data were analyzed by applying the qualitative method to identify how the protagonist dealt with her anxiety through ego defense mechanisms. the data were collected from the protagonist’s actions and dialogue by observing them. the analysis then analyzed the protagonist's actions and dialogue and matched it with the theory of ego defense mechanisms by sigmund freud. during the process of analysis, the descriptive qualitative method was applied. the presentation of analysis was supported by providing the pictures taken from the movie game to make the description clearer and more evident. results and discussion in the walking dead: michonne movie game, four types of ego defense mechanisms were adopted by the protagonist, as shown in the table below. table 1. protagonist’s ego defense mechanisms type occurrence percentage repression 7 19% sublimation 10 27% rationalization 8 22% aggression 12 32% total 100% based on the findings in the table, there were four types of ego defense mechanisms found from the protagonist in the walking dead: michonne movie game, namely repression, sublimation, rationalization, and aggression. aggression mainly was applied with 12 times of occurrence (32%), followed by sublimation, i.e., ten times (27%), rationalization, i.e., eight times (22%), and the least was repression which occurred seven times (19%). these defense mechanisms were used to help the protagonist face and handle her anxiety during the zombie outbreak to keep surviving. in this study, the finding of the study was used to be the basis of the discussion. the discussion focused on the protagonist's actions to face her anxiety by adopting ego defense mechanisms. people tend to feel pressure during a survival situation, increasing the anxiety within themselves because they feel cornered and threatened as their life is on edge. they need to do something to reduce their anxiety and survive as survival is their primary need during a survival situation. the analysis of how the protagonist handled her anxiety through ego defense mechanisms can be seen as follows. datum 1 picture 1 do nothing when being threatened by a gun michonne, the protagonist, tried to escape after burning the enemies' base camp by using the flare gun. she does not intend to burn it at first, but when she shot the flare gun, it exploded and burned down the place in a short amount of time because the basecamp was primarily made of wood. during the escape process, she fought and killed some of journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fery setiawan, et.al. 312 them because the enemies threatened her, and some of them almost killed her by using a shotgun. not long after the escape attempt, michonne stumbled and fell. unfortunately, when she tried to escape, she was stopped by an enemy who aimed a gun at her. when being threatened with a gun by the enemy, michonne did not fight back and stayed still. in this scene, she tried to hold back her anger and fear, so the enemy would not shoot her because the enemy would think that she was surrender. michonne also realized that her friend was right behind the enemy to tackle her down. therefore, she increased her chance of survival by holding back her anger and anxiety. repression, one of the ego defense mechanisms, was adopted by michonne because we can see from the picture above that she did not try to fight back the enemy and wait until her friend saves her. in minderop (2010), freud claimed that repression is an unconscious mechanism formed by the ego to keep disturbing or threatening thoughts from entering our unconscious mind. as seen in the scene, she needs to do something to reduce her anxiety and increase her chance of surviving. attacking the enemy with bare hands is impossible because the enemy pointed a gun at michonne. even though she has her machete with her, it is tough to attack the enemy as the machete can only be used for short-range combat. therefore, she repressed her uncomfortable feelings by not doing anything while being threatened by the enemy. she realizes that if she fought back or moved a single inch, she would be shot and killed. when the enemy approached her, she realized that one of her friends was right behind the enemy to help her by walking quietly, and she continued to stare as the enemy was getting closer. by staying quiet, she let her friend ambush and take down the enemy, thus saving her life. from the explanation above, the protagonist's repression was done because she was trying to reduce her anxiety by repressing her uncomfortable feelings when being threatened by the enemy. she stood still because she did not have any options left to escape from the enemy, which was a rational decision to make. in that situation, her friend was also trying to help her. thus, she did not do anything to distract the enemy. it would give her friend some time to attack the enemy from behind and make them able to escape. therefore, this was proof of her success in controlling her anxiety by repressing and turning it into a survival tactic to keep her and her friends survive longer. in previous studies, repression was shown by the characters to repress the uncomfortable feelings and thoughts to make them feel better, reduce their anxiety and achieve their goals. for example, in the study by martono (2016), the main character, sasana is transgender. he applied repression to forget his fear, anxiety, bitter memories, and experiences of being discriminated in the past to feel peace within him. compared to the present study, a significant difference can be noted on why the characters applied repression based on their situation. sasana from pasung jiwa as discussed by martono (2016) applied repression in order to forget everything in his past life to achieve peace without any interference, while michonne from the walking dead: michonne applied repression in order to repress her anxiety, fear, and anger to keep her from committing reckless actions that helped her to survive during the zombie outbreak. therefore, the actions of the two characters above were in line with the theory of ego defense mechanisms by sigmund freud, particularly, repression. although the characters in pasung jiwa and the walking dead: michonne applied repression with different reasons and situations, the two characters utilized this mechanism as an internal process within human beings to prevent unpleasant or threatening feelings from entering the unconscious mind. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 313 datum 2 picture 2 cutting the zip tie being held captive, the protagonist had to do something to escape from the community. when one of her friends was accidentally shot by the enemy, she quickly tried to break free from the zip tie. she came across a broken mirror in front of her and tried her best to think clearly about how she could cut the zip tie as fast as possible. she finally cut the zip tie without hesitation to break free and help her friend. based on the protagonist's action, a part of ego defense mechanisms, namely, sublimation, is shown by the protagonist. she turned her fear and anxiety into constructive action, which uses a piece of a broken mirror to break free from the zip tie so that she can help her friend who is getting shot by the enemy. freud (in minderop, 2010) stated sublimation is the act of replacing the feeling of anxiety with socially beneficial acts. after one of her friends gets shot during this scene, she panicked, and it increased her anxiety. pressured by her anxiety, she quickly acted and turned her anxiety into constructive action by cutting the zip tie because she believed it was the only way to break free. by doing so, she could cut the zip tie and immediately helped her friend. this showed that sublimation helped michonne and influenced her to think quickly, and turned her fear into a constructive or beneficial act when she felt pressured by her anxiety. the explanation above showed that the anxiety and fear that she felt became a strong will for her to survive and escape from the place that she was being held. therefore, it could be concluded that the protagonist successfully handled her anxiety and turned it into her power and constructive action. sublimation was proven to be applied when she finally managed to break free from the zip tie immediately by using a piece of the broken mirror because of her fear and anxiety. sublimation was also shown in the previous study by santoso (2017), who discussed lu xun’s short story. kong yiji was the main character in the second short story by lu xun. facing countless times of failures in a test to become an employee in the government offices, he became hopeless and powerless. these feelings increased his anxiety. he thought that he had lost in life and gave up hope. however, slowly but surely, instead of remaining sad and hopeless, he turned his sadness into a constructive action, that was to continue writing. in fact, kon yiji was a talented writer with beautiful handwriting. he managed to use his gifted ability in a positive way to change his hopelessness. as time went by, everyone loved his writings. comparing the application of sublimation by kong yiji in santoso (2017) and michonne in this study, the same purpose of utilizing sublimation as a defense mechanism was obviously shown. both kong yiji and michonne turned their anxiety, fear, sadness, and hopelessness into constructive actions. kong yiji turned his negative feelings into the action of creating beautiful handwriting, while michonne turned her negative feelings into the action of breaking herself free when she was held captive. michonne used the broken mirror to cut the zip-tie. the comparison of the characters' actions shed some light on the successful acts of the characters when choosing sublimation, one of the ego defense mechanisms. despite the different situations to be faced, it was clear that the characters applied sublimation with the same intention. both of them replaced the feeling of fear or anxiety with socially beneficial activities as the reflection of sublimation. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fery setiawan, et.al. 314 datum 3 picture 3 stating that they don't have a choice after breaking free from the underground where michonne and her friends were held captive, they hid inside a boat and tried to figure something out to escape from the island. during that situation, everyone was scared if they could not make it out alive. sam, one of michonne's friends, suggested that they should just make an offensive attack to escape from the community to keep surviving. pete disagreed with the idea at first, and then michonne replied by saying, “i’d rather not fight these people, but i’m not sure we’ll have a choice.” which indicated that she was scared too, but in order to survive and escape, they had to fight back because they had no other choices or options on how they could escape. by the time, the enemies had been looking around for michonne and her friends. moreover, one of michonne's friends had been killed. michonne thought it would be fair if they attacked the enemy directly because if they surrendered, their chance of getting killed was high. those considerations made her decision that the enemies could not be trusted any further because of their actions. her statement from the previous paragraph showed rationalization as one of the ego defense mechanisms proposed by freud. rationalization is to give a person acceptable motives for their behavior, attitude, or actions (minderop, 2010). michonne’s statement implied that she did not want to fight the enemy because she knew that by fighting them, she also had to kill them when they attacked her first, but she also had no choice. after all, if she and her friends did not escape and attack the enemy directly, they would be killed. it was the only rational decision to make in that situation. it was because michonne and her friends were outnumbered. when she felt that she was cornered in that life-threatening situation, she turned her fear and anxiety into an act of making a rational decision. then she fought the enemy directly and escaped together. she did it not because she liked or enjoyed torturing them, but because the enemy killed her friend and they were going to kill michonne and her friends if she did not do something to escape. therefore, based on her actions and motives for fighting back the enemies, it was proven that she controlled her anxiety very well and made a rational decision even though she was not quite sure about the outcomes. seen from both points of view, michonne’s decision, motives, and actions to fight back the enemies were acceptable. in line with this finding, rationalization was also found in one of the short stories by lu xun (santoso, 2017). the unnamed main character felt anxious when he realized that the wild animals he hunted were gone and he decided to eat a wild boar instead. he realized that a wild boar was not hygienic and might cause serious diseases. however, as he was feeling extremely hungry and there was nothing left to eat, he had no choice. the characters from lu xun’s short story and the walking dead: michonne applied rationalization to show their reasonable motives behind their actions. the unnamed main character realized that it was wrong to consume wild boar because it might cause a disease. since he had nothing left to eat, it made his action acceptable in order to keep surviving, while in the present study, michonne realized that she was scared but had no other choice but to fight the enemies directly in order to stay alive. therefore, rationalization was shown by both characters with the same purpose, which was to survive. the characteristic of rationalization as one of the ego defense mechanisms was strongly applied when the characters in the story had reasonable motives for their actions. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 315 datum 4 picture 4 smashed randall's face to the table during one of the scenes, the protagonist was involved in hand-in-hand combat with the enemy's leader, randall. she tried to fight him back to protect everyone from randall's harm, but he was too strong for michonne to be fought alone. he punched michonne several times until one of michonne's friends hit randall's head with a shovel. randall then fell to the ground while holding his head because of the pain caused by the sudden attack. when michonne regained her consciousness, she became furious at randall for what he did. michonne was highly frustrated and upset with randall. michonne then finally got her chance and attacked randall, smashed his face to the table several times to weaken him to be tied so that she could use him as a bargaining chip to release her friends, whom randall's minions captured. the will and action of fighting back and smashing randall’s face were influenced by one of the ego defense mechanisms known as aggression. overwhelmed by how influential randall was, she was afraid if she did not hit him as hard as she can, he would be able to take her down and kill everyone there, including herself, because randall is physically strong michonne and her friends. the adrenaline and anxiety within michonne arose, and she released it by smashing randall’s head several times to the table to weaken randall, so he could not fight back. freud claimed that an act of releasing anger or disappointment that is directly shown to another object or to someone that causes anxiety or frustration is known as aggression (minderop, 2010). she was feeling anxious, yet, she was also determined to fight randall to protect her companion. specifically, this study found aggression was applied by the main character. this mechanism was not chosen by the characters discussed in the previous studies. this finding became the uniqueness of the walking dead: michonne in terms of how the characters in the story used the ego defense mechanisms. from the scene and explanation of aggression found in this study, the main character, michonne turned her fear, anger, and anxiety towards randall’s violent actions into a strong will and power to fight him back. she chose aggression to protect all people around her. she was afraid that randall would kill them because he was a cold-blooded man. michonne thought that she had to save people’s life. moreover, randall’s aggressiveness led michonne to do an aggressive action. in such a situation, she applied aggression to calm her anger. at the same time, she also reduced her anxiety. it was also proof that she successfully controlled her anxiety and turned it into a will and power to fight back and survive. her action demonstrated the application of aggression because she was extremely furious at randall for his evil deeds. she ended up maliciously hurting him because her anger towards randall was unbearable. as obviously explained by sigmund freud supported by the example of minderop (2010), michonne’s actions reflect the act of releasing resentment or dissatisfaction. the aggressive actions were shown specifically to the ones that created anxiety or frustration. in the case of the walking dead: michonne, the main character wanted to release her dissatisfaction from randall’s evil deeds. conclusion this study focused on analyzing how the protagonist from the walking dead: michonne movie game coped with her anxiety through ego defense mechanisms based on sigmund freud's theory. based on the study results, four types of ego defense mechanisms journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fery setiawan, et.al. 316 were found to be adopted, namely repression, sublimation, rationalization, and aggression. the protagonist utilized them to handle her anxiety. by analyzing the protagonist’s actions and dialogue, aggression was the most frequently adopted mechanism, i.e., 12 times (32%), sublimation took place ten times (27%), rationalization happened eight times (22%), and repression occurred seven times (19%). ego defense mechanisms influenced the protagonist's actions to reduce or face her anxiety throughout the story. the protagonist character chose aggression that was explicitly shown to another object or someone that created anxiety or frustration to release the resentment or dissatisfaction. besides, she controlled her anxiety successfully by applying the other three ego defense mechanisms like sublimation, rationalization, and repression. the application of the four mechanisms turned her anxiety into some actions that helped her survive during the zombie outbreak. the present study is in no way conclusive on its own. further studies on the walking dead: michonne as well as on other movie games, along with the ego defense mechanism adopted by their main characters. such analyses will provide more generalizations of what ego defense mechanism mostly adopted. studies on ego defense mechanisms should also be extensively researched among students and in society to enrich the kinds of literature on ego defense mechanisms as part of the efforts to create a better psychological mechanism for society. references al khoiriyah, d. s. 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(2020). moses ’ anxiety and defense mechanisms in exodus : gods and kings movie. ilmu budaya: jurnal bahasa, sastra, seni, dan budaya, 4(1), 93–107. 318 vol. 21 no. 2, october 2021, pp. 318-327 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i2.3146 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. women as breadwinners in maureen sherry’s opening belle margaretha finna calista & wening udasmoro* margaretha.finna@mail.ugm.ac.id & udasmoro@ugm.ac.id faculty of cultural sciences, universitas gadjah mada, indonesia abstract article information there have been many popular fiction novels in the literature world that raise how women enter the economic aspect. one of them is the novel opening belle written by maureen sherry and published in 2016. opening belle represents women’s participation in the financial sector because they want a good life. this research is studied with the feminist political economy theory proposed by jacqui true. in her book, the political economy of violence against women, true explains that economic globalization has changed women’s lives becoming financially independent. however, on the other hand, women involved in the public sphere are underappreciated and receive sexual harassment or violence, making it difficult for women to participate in the economic aspect. this research uses the descriptive qualitative method. with this method, the writer takes parts of the novel in the form of words, sentences, paragraphs which explain the economic aspect and women’s participation in it. this research is analyzed through the explanations and utterances of the characters. the results of this study are: first, the participation of women as breadwinners in this novel is started as part of her life experiences and is driven by the hardships of her family; second, women are highly motivated figures so that they implement several strategies to survive in their office, namely by proving their competence, joining the gcc women’s community and voicing equal rights in the workplace. in conclusions, economic globalization opens up women’s opportunity to become the sole breadwinner in the family. keywords: opening belle; women’s participation; jacqui true received: 24 february 2021 revised: 16 april 2021 accepted: 28 may 2021 introduction in social life, women live inside two spheres, namely the domestic and the public sphere. the domestic sphere is known as activities or works within the household. therefore, the domestic sphere is a sphere attached to women. many factors construct the domestic sphere to be closely related to women. the domestic sphere also makes the women’s image changing into second sex, which values women as inferior gender to men. the most influential factor is the biological condition of women. the biological https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:margaretha.finna@mail.ugm.ac.id mailto:udasmoro@ugm.ac.id journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 319 condition of women is a gift in human creation. unfortunately, biological condition is also a factor that limits women’s movement. women’s image is attached to the domestic because women’s biological conditions are considered weaker than men. biological factors are the fundamental reasons why it is difficult for women to leave the domestic sphere. women have burdens to bear, such as bearing children, raising them, caring for their families, taking care of health needs, doing housework, and so on (moraletat, 2020, p. 8). in addition to these roles, women also experience menstrual cycles every month, making women considered as an irrational and less competent gender in society (marḉal, 2020, p. 32). therefore, women are bound in the domestic sphere because society thinks that women’s intellect and physical abilities are weaker than men (nafiana, 2018, p. 4). this situation raises the question, what will happen if women try to enter the public sphere and succeed in maintaining their existence? one aspect that encourages women to enter the public sphere is economic globalization. economic globalization integrates the national economy into a global economic system (agusalim & pohan, 2017, p. 104). the rapid development of economic globalization has many positive impacts on improving aspects, such as education, health, economic activities, social and cultural life (yasmin, 2020). economic globalization also opens up many new opportunities for women. the increase in various sectors has opened the space for women to move more freely. nowadays, women have the opportunity to participate in the economic sector actively. some women also become breadwinners in their families however, the rapid development of economic globalization has not only had positive impacts. negative impacts have also emerged, such as a stronger capitalist system. the capitalist system forms certain social classes. women, especially working-class women, also feel the negative consequences. working women are more vulnerable to the marginalization of a patriarchal culture in the exploitation of capital owners or family relationships (wulansari, 2018). besides, working women are often labelled as a form of “deviance” in the society because the ability to participate in the public sphere is a power belonging to men (adichie, 2019, p. 49). the issue of injustice that women get in the work environment is often raised as the topic of literary works. literary work is a form of recording in the language conveyed to others (metzger, 2016, pp. 20–21; puspita, 2019, p. 30). maureen sherry is a fiction writer who has recorded traces of her experiences in a novel form. based on personal experience while working as an employee at an investment bank in the united states, sherry created opening belle published in 2016. this novel focuses on women in the united states who become the breadwinner in the family. sherry describes how the working environment could be very intimidating, especially for women. women need enourmous effort than men to be approved as competent workers. the main character in this novel is isabelle mcelroy or belle. belle is a breadwinner for her family. she works at the feagin dixon investment bank. her husband is unemployed, and she has three children. this novel’s plot tells belle’s struggle to meet household needs, her three children’s education cost, her husband’s lifestyle, and paying off debts on her parents’ house. as the sole breadwinner in her family, belle works hard to pursue her goals for bonuses. nevertheless, as long as she worked at feagin dixon and held a relatively high position, belle was still seen as a mother and woman rather than a competent senior employee. she was subjected to sexual, verbal and non-verbal harassment from her boss, deductions from wages and bonuses, and often belittled performance. even her boss, king mcpherson, publicly sexually abused belle in front of male workers. king is one of belle’s bosses, and he occupies an important position in feagin dixon. therefore, belle chooses to ignore his actions, considering that king has higher parts in feagin dixon. this situation is sherry’s description of how women are in a journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) margaretha finna calista & wening udasmoro 320 condition that is tied to the capitalist system. women are often “locked up” in the system and cannot save themselves (udasmoro, 2012). based on this observation, the researchers determine the problems in this study, namely: first, how do women participate in being involved in their families’ economic growth? second, what are the strategies to enter the economic sphere? an expert discussing this issue is jacqui true in her book entitled the political economy of violence against women (2012). true said that as the economic sector develops, so does violence against women. violence against women is a significant problem in all countries and worldwide, affecting women in every socioeconomic group and at every life stage (2012, p. 4). the violence experienced is not only limited to war areas or conflict zones. even in peaceful situations, violence could still occur. the rapidly developing economic globalization provides new opportunities and challenges for women. women have the opportunity to work and become financially independent, but on the other hand, women have greater work demands than men. women do not get equal rights with men. this also makes women vulnerable to violence that occurs (udasmoro, 2017). violence could occur when women breadwinners are considered as a threat to men’s traditional roles. this could happen because women are rated as an inferior gender compared to men (ikbal, 2020, p. 200). the traditional role of men as breadwinners is one of the masculine constructions that become a hegemony in the social environment. this construction forms the assumption that men are the primary producers, while women should be at home (reed, 2020b, p. 27). if men cannot fulfil this role, men will look for other ways to maintain their masculinity. some men choose to commit violence as a symbol of the masculinity that women are trying to replace. violence by men defines as a response to women’s more challenging demands for economic autonomy independence (federici, 2020, p. 92; kristen, banuelos, & urban, 2015, p. 173). apart from physical violence, economic globalization has not fulfilled women’s rights, especially the right to live a good and prosperous life. poverty is also a form of violence (federici, 2020, p. 95). various factors influence the quality of the welfare of women who participate in the economic sector. one of them is that women are considered a cheaper labour force than men. moreover, the feminist economy political approach that true introduced in her book can be applied to this study’s focus. opening belle is a novel that tells how women could be the sole breadwinners in the family and have more competent work skills than men. the main character, belle, is also told as a woman who has a reasonably high position. belle is a woman who financially independent without help from men. after leaving feagin dixon, belle even opened a new financial office and recruited other female colleagues at the end of the story. this study aims to explore women’s participation as breadwinners in the novel opening belle by maureen sherry. this exploration activity is aimed to look at feminine strategies in the economic sector, which men dominate. this study also aims to provide a new perspective on feminism by analyzing women’s participation in the economic aspect. the researchers chose sherry’s novel, opening belle novel as a material object and true’s feminist political economy theory as a formal object. opening belle’s novel has never been reviewed, so that no relevant study could be included as a literature review. however, the researchers found several studies relevant to true’s idea as the leading theory of this analysis. the studies below are some of the research which used the feminist political economy as an approach. the studies focus on how women are vulnerable to violence, especially women who replace their husbands to become providers for their family. unfortunately, the feminist political economy approach has never been applied to related literary studies, so that there is no literary study that could be included in the literature review. nevertheless, these studies have the same significant problems with belle’s journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 321 situation in feagin dixon; women have no equality and protection in the working world. the first research is a dissertation by melissa frances johnston (2018) entitled the political economy of gender interventions: social forces, kinship, violence, and finance in post-conflict timor leste. this study’s focus is the existence of gender intervention in timor leste so that there is a domination of the ruling class, namely the liurai dato class. johnston concluded that the root problem of gender intervention in timor leste was the unequal structural relationship between class and gender (johnston, 2018, p. 275). gender intervention results in inequality of rights received by women, which affects women’s welfare. the second research is the article entitled understanding women’s experience of violence and the political economy of gender in conflict: the case of syria written by khuloud alsaba and anuj kapilashrami (2016). this research concludes that based on an analysis of the conflict in syria, there are three problems are happening (alsaba & kapilashrami, 2016, p. 12), first, an environment full of fights and many ideological differences make women very vulnerable to violence. for this analysis, alsaba and kapilashrami provide examples of isis’s abuses of slavery, especially for women; second, the risk and experience of women’s violence is influenced by the intersection of class, ethnicity, and political activism, geography/place of residence, economy, and religion. poverty is a decisive factor in increasing women’s violence. violence is committed by men when they become unproductive in economic aspects. violence is an aggressive form of male power over women; third is syrian women bound in political, social, and economic aspects. the relationship between these three aspects is detrimental to women through institutions such as religion and family, where women are prohibited from leaving the domestic sphere. furthermore, the third research is an essay written by jacqui true herself, entitled a tale of two feminisms in international relations? feminist political economy and the women, peace, and security agenda (2015). this essay describes a feminist political economy approach that analyzes men’s analogy as the head household and the masculine state. true underlines her ideas about how the state supports male domination and masculine roles as providers in the family; therefore violence in the family continues. (2015, p. 422). methodology this research is conducted in five steps. first, the researchers choose a focus for this study. in this case, the focus is on analyzing women’s participation in the economic sphere. the second step is to select a literary work that is going to be analyzed. the third step is reading the novel deeply and create problem formulations related to the topic. the fourth step is to answer the problem formulations while applying the theory to the analysis. the last one is to conclude the result of the analysis. the method used in this research is descriptive qualitative, containing data such as words, sentences and paragraphs related to the narrative of women’s participation in the novel opening belle. the data obtained for this study through the explanations and sayings from the characters. this research is a literature study and uses a feminist political economy approach initiated by jacqui true in her book the political economy of violence against women (2012). this theory is used to understand the relationship between women and their participation, especially in the economic aspects of opening belle. results and discussion opening belle offers an exciting take on woman’s participation in the economy from the point of view of its main character, belle. she experiences various kinds of skeptic perception from her male counterparts, indicating that its roots in the patriarchal system in modern society (j. true, 2012). furthermore, she experiences sexual harassment and masculine domination even though she has already achieved her office’s managerial position. however, belle challenges traditional women’s domestic sphere role by employing specific strategies to keep her contribution to journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) margaretha finna calista & wening udasmoro 322 economic exchange stable. such exchange of ideas and women emancipation in the economic sector is presented in the following discussions. the stereotypes of women as breadwinners in the work environment belle is a character created by sherry, who represents women active in the public sphere as a breadwinner. before she married her husband, belle was already supporting her ex-boyfriend, henry wilkins. belle’s situation is originally formed because belle worked earlier than henry. belle’s accomplishments in feagin dixon’s office were so high that it stretched her relationship with henry. henry has the principle that a breadwinner or doing business is a man’s job. the following is the depiction of sherry in her novel. this money for teasing men.” henry had declared to me one day, as i proudly flashed a bonus check in front of him. henry started acting like some portion of his manhood was being questioned by me. it was clear that henry wanted to be a provider. the fact that i was out earning him made him nuts. (sherry, 2016, p. 13) in the end, belle was abandoned by henry. later, belle became involved with bruce mcelroy and married. the same situation was repeated because bruce did not have a permanent job. belle’s income is higher than bruce’s, so that belle becomes the breadwinner in her family. unlike henry, bruce could accept these conditions. women’s position as breadwinners is dominated by negative responses in this novel, both from fellow women and men. at feagin dixon, belle is one of two successful women who reached her current position as a managing director (this would be later written as md). it took belle twelve years to work for her position as md in maledominated environment. even though belle has a reasonably high position in her office, she is not free from sexual harassment from male co-workers. they think that belle’s ability to compete with men is a threat to destabilize male masculinity. in social construction, men are obliged to be considered breadwinners, and therefore when there are women who can compete with that role, men take other ways to show their masculinity (udasmoro, 2017). this is in line with what true (kohli, 2015, p. 498) stated that on the one hand, the increased female literacy rate and the higher number of females in the workforce have made women capable of earning. still, on the other hand, it has disturbed the traditional gender role of men as breadwinners. apart from belle, other female characters in this novel have experienced the same thing, even worse. this because they do not have a position as high as belle, so they feel like they do not have the strength to fight these acts of harassment. in this situation, women are more susceptible to get abused by men physically or mentally (folke, rickne, tanaka, & tateishi, 2020). therefore, the form of harassment or violence that often occurs in the work environment manifests male masculinity. with this concept of manifestation, women as breadwinners often receive negative stereotypes. women’s competence is underestimated so that it could harm on women’s careers. also, women still do not have full rights in the work environment. they still suffer from unfavourable policies such as lower salaries, maternity leave, and under-appreciated work results. the author, sherry, also represents this situation in her work. anyway, the old boys are a bit pissed at fletch right now, butler’s awful, and without me there’s nobody who actually transacts business between feagin and t. rowe price so they’ve gone back to calling me, which is fine and i’m still doing all the same stuff except butler and fletch get paid instead of me. (sherry, 2016, p. 32) “have an abortion.” “wait. you were six months pregnant,” amy said. “thomas was upset at the potential disruption of his own work. he started openly complaining about me, telling people that i kept running off for sonograms.” (sherry, 2016, p. 35) journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 323 the data above is a situation that represents how women treated unfairly in the working environment. from the first citation, one of belle’s colleague who successfully manages to solve work-related problems does not get paid by feagin dixon. instead, the male workers get the full salary. here, women’s effort in the public sphere does not get enough appreciation. this form of inequality is a manifestation of masculinity in working place. the construction of masculinity makes women become subordinate gender, making women more vulnerable to men’s dominance. the second citation represents how women are subordinate gender. as stated before, women’s biological are influential aspects of masculinity construction. the bosses in feagin dixon asked one of the women employees to do an abortion. the bosses do not want to give maternity leave to avoid inefficient work result. again, women have to face inequality treatments in the working environment. this situation is the cause of the construction of masculinity against feminine identities, activities, and institutions. the constructions are often targeting or affecting women (true, 2012, p. 42). forms of women’s participation in the opening belle belle’s participation in the economic sphere began in 1990. belle, who was currently in college, took several additional classes to support her studies. belle is told that she wants to take an anthropology class in the novel but changes to a wine tasting class. it turned out that wine tasting was offered as an elective in the school of hotel administration. according to henry, knowing about wine was the most useful class the university offered. (sherry, 2016, p. 83) the above quote describes the situation when belle finally decided to take a wine tasting class. the wine tasting class was considered helpful in the future because belle realized that she needs to form broad relationships to support her work. wine is a drink that is often served at every event, especially business meetings. for this reason, adding knowledge about good wine could be an additional value for belle. belle’s participation in the economic sphere was then continued after belle finished college and was accepted to work at feagin dixon bank. in the novel, belle must work immediately after graduating from college because her father is sick from cancer and her mother has debt for the house they lived in. plus, her boyfriend, henry, was still in college, so belle also had to pay for their lives. belle started her career as a salesperson, where she had to find and convince customers to invest in or buy shares in certain companies. with the rapid growth of the global economy, especially in the united states, belle’s career has become more stable. her achievement is also supported by her competence and work connections so that belle eventually becomes financially independent. however, being independent in the financial aspect does not necessarily make belle feel that she is living well. the necessities of life, school fees, and paying off her parents’ debt make belle tied up in a vicious economic system. belle’s situation becomes a paradox. in the end, belle no longer loved her job, but she was forced to do it because she needed money to support her family (vida, udasmoro, & noviani, 2020). to keep the economy going, belle eventually invested part of her savings in stocks. sherry described belle as a smart, conscientious woman and never act carelessly, with the result that belle gets a big profit from the shares she chooses and gets a plus value in feagin dixon because she has succeeded in attracting many investors. the following quote is belle’s situation in the novel. i was able to invest for myself and put quite a bit of our personal savings account into the stock. how much? i can’t exactly remember but it was a lot. i can’t breathe: journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) margaretha finna calista & wening udasmoro 324 it’s a big car, it’s a different nanny--or it’s no nanny, it’s sitting with the pa ladies at preschool chapel, it’s something close to $3 million. . . i scream, we’re rich, we’re rich! (sherry, 2016, p. 107) the quote above represents belle has succeeded to gain profit from her investment. since belle is the only provider for this family, she has to manage her family financial. in order to maximize her salary, she put some of her funds into investment. the forms of women’s participation in this study started when belle took wine class tasting to support her studies. after graduating from college, belle has to participate actively in the economic sphere. she needs to be a provider for her family. as economic globalization has expanded, women have the same access as men to productive resources (true, 2012, p. 6). globalization has created new opportunities for women to be financially independent. thus, forms of belle’s participation in financial aspects are necessary to increase her family’s finances. women’s strategy in economic sphere although belle has actively participated in the economic sphere, belle cannot avoid the negative stigmas constructed in her work environment that dominated by men. to guarantee her career and safety in the work environment, belle applies at least three strategies during her work in the novel. first, she proves women’s extraordinary competence in the public sphere; second, she joins the community of working women who experience the same struggle; and third, she opens her network with someone who dares to talk about women’s rights in the work environment. belle’s first strategy was self-evident. as previously explained, belle is a woman who has a high position in feagin dixon. this position proves that women’s competence deserves attention and appreciation, and women could flourish without being tied to biological factors. the biological condition of women is a factor that forms a negative stigma against women breadwinners (j. true, 2015). this happens because women are considered more inferior and powerless and depend on the superior male gender to support them and their children (reed, 2020a, p. 4). consequently, belle and other female employees who are sexually harassed, received lower salaries, and difficulty obtaining maternity leave is a form of manmade law in a patriarchal society divided into social classes (reed, 2020a, p. 5; j. true, 2012). although belle’s first strategy did not significantly impact her safety in the office, belle managed to prove that she was a competent employee and could compete with the male employees. tim boylan, one of her clients, appreciated belle’s hard work, who opened her career path wider. “well, really, ms. mcelroy, i want you to know that i do remember my manners. the reason i’m here tonight is to personally thank you for probably the two best ideas in our portfolio, this ceev and ebs. if this thing works out, you’ll have made our year. let me know when you want to come work for me!” he laughs (sherry, 2016, p. 128) this quote above represents the result of belle’s hard work. she gets appreciated by tim boylan, one of her essential clients, because she shows impressive competencies and skills in finding beneficial investment. belle’s situation proves that women could have the same abilities as men. women need opportunities to prove their skills. belle’s second strategy is to incorporate herself into the women’s community formed secretly from the work environment. although belle had doubts that this community would affect his career, belle did not deny that the inappropriate actions that male employees had against women were too far for her safety. the glass ceiling club (gcc) is the name of a community of several female employees at feagin dixon formed to share complaints about unfair treatment in the office. belle is a member of the community. the gcc regularly holds lunches together to discuss how to improve a conducive work environment for journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 325 women. finally, they appointed belle to be the speaker who represents their problem. although the existence of gcc becomes backfired for them (there were several female employees dismissed and belle was forced to train a new male assistant to replace her), in the end, gcc managed to convince belle that a cultural change in the work environment was needed (fatimah, 2019). based on sherry’s description in her novel, feagin dixon is a working place that shows inequality treatments between men and women employees. true emphasizes that a globalized economy is one factor that makes women vulnerable to violence, especially some groups of women (2012, p. 9). thus, the existence of gcc is significant to belle’s effort to make a safe working environment. the last strategy is the development of belle’s character. at first, belle was told as a competent employee but chose to remain silent when she was harassed by king, one of her bosses. after being involved with gcc and kathryn, one of the employees who also experienced unfair treatment, belle becomes more courageous in voicing women’s rights in her work environment. “look, when i was pregnant here,” i start to softly explain, “i would cover my stomach when someone downstairs dropped too many f-bombs on me. i had to laugh with king when he mooed at the sight of my breast pump. i ignored the time someone taped torn panties on my screen when i came back from my honeymoon. i’m just depleted from all of this. i don’t want to hear slut jokes all day long. i don’t want to work in a frat house. i want to be paid equally. i want my input on abnormal rates of risk we take to be heard. i want this place to live up to its potential”. (sherry, 2016, p. 206) the quote above is when belle first opened her voice on women’s unfulfilled rights in feagin dixon. belle’s action is considered quite brave because feagin dixon is not used to women’s active participation. in the end, belle’s efforts were ignored by gruss, one of the bosses at feagin dixon. other women invited to speak at gruss’s forum chose to remain silent for fear of losing their jobs. belle finally realized that feagin dixon’s environment was too dominated by male power and capitalism so that women become submissive and choose to remain silent. however, what belle has done inspires other employees to act braver in protecting themselves in the work environment. at the end of the story, feagin dixon was declared bankrupt due to the united states’ financial crisis. belle also decided to leave feagin dixon and form a new office where all the workers are members of the gcc community. belle and the gcc women agreed to work together and build a new place, namely arbella financial, where their hard work will always be appreciated without fear of sexual harassment or improper salaries. they are also committed to rescuing other female workers in feagin dixon who has suffered a similar fate. we started this place with settlement money the gcc received. manchester bank set aside money for pending feagin dixon lawsuits. once they got to know the firm they bought, they foresaw litigation raining from the sky regarding shady mortgages, extreme financial instruments, and, where the gcc came in, harassment and unfair pay practices. (sherry, 2016, p. 338) in opening belle novel, women are considered as the gender that is not capable of participating in the public sphere as employees in the working environment. women have to face sustainable unsafe working experiences and do not get appreciated enough. belle’s attempt to apply three strategies into her working experience represents women’s struggle to reach gender equality. conclusion like the character in sherry’s novel, belle represents women who are active in the economic sphere. one of the main reasons women decide to be actively involved is the pressure from the family economy. belle’s situation required her to be the sole breadwinner in her family. she also had to journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) margaretha finna calista & wening udasmoro 326 replace her father’s position to pay off her parents’ house debt. therefore, belle’s decision to start her career at feagin dixon was a form of economic participation depicted in the novel opening belle. in her work environment that men dominate, belle is a highly motivated character who never gives up. she also strives to promote female workers’ equality in her office to have the same rights as male coworkers. belle’s strategies prove her work competence through her position, joining the gcc women’s community, and voicing their rights in the forum at feagin dixon. belle’s role as a breadwinner is women’s participation in the public sphere which is closely related to economic globalization’s enormity. economic globalization gives women the opportunity to become more independent, especially in the financial aspect. with high motivation, women could become the sole breadwinner in the family. references adichie, c. n. 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(2018, april 21). beban ganda dan komodifikasi perempuan dalam kapitalisme. retrieved january 21, 2021, from map corner-klub mkp ugm website: https://mapcorner.wg.ugm.ac.id/2018/0 4/beban-ganda-dan-komodifikasiperempuan-dalam-kapitalisme/ yasmin, p. (2020). dampak positif dan negatif globalisasi di berbagai bidang lengkap. retrieved january 21, 2021, from detiknews website: https://news.detik.com/berita/d5252353/dampak-positif-dan-negatifglobalisasi-di-berbagai-bidang-lengkap journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) hepie pionery & arina isti’anah 24 modality analysis in melania trump’s and ivanka trump’s campaign speeches in republican national convention, july 19th, 2016 hepie pionery & arina isti’anah pionery.hepie@gmail.com & arina@usd.ac.id english letters department, universitas sanata dharma abstract style is a distinctive feature found in language use. one example of language use is a speech. in stylistics, the use of modality in a speech can reveal the speaker’s style. subsequently, a style that is shown through the modality can reflect the speaker’s ideology. this study aimed to find out the ideology reflected by the modality of melania trump’s and ivanka trump’s campaign speeches. the speeches were delivered at the republican national convention last july 19th, 2016. there were two objectives discussed in this study. first is to find out the type of modality employed by melania trump and ivanka trump in their campaign speeches. second is to reveal the ideologies reflected by the use of the modality. a stylistic approach was employed to discuss the types of modality to figure out the ideologies reflected. the data were taken by employing population study. from the analysis, it was found out that there were four types of modality employed by melania trump’s speech: inclination, obligation, potentiality and ability, and probability. in ivanka trump’s speech, there were five types of modality found: inclination, usuality, potentiality and ability, probability, and obligation. there were two ideologies reflected by the use of modality. the ideologies found in both speeches were similar. those were commitment and self-promotion. the commitments were proved by the existence of inclination, while self-promotion is proven by the existence of potentiality and ability, and usuality types of modality. keywords: speech, modality, ideology, stylistics introduction style is a unique way of expression of language (verdonk, 2002: 3). it can be used as a distinctive marker to distinguish one language user to another. as an example, women magazines have different language features compared to men magazines. language in written and spoken form is different either. every person has different styles in delivering messages. they can be in the grammatical, lexical, phonological, and other linguistic features. for example, some people may prefer to use certain words which includes slang words, but some do not. it shows that different people have different styles. the use of style in language is based on certain intentions. moreover, it can cause effects towards the addressees. verdonk explains that by using certain style, addressees might be influenced and interested emotionally. it simply can be said that verdonk argues that language may have power that influences hearer’s emotion (2002: 6). related to the previous paragraph, it is known that language is widely used in every mailto:pionery.hepie@gmail.com journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 25 aspect in life. accordingly, language is crucially needed in politics, for example is in the form of political speeches. political speech should be made as influential as it can be because it deals with power and ideology. in some situations, members of political party tend to present a speech in a campaign to reflect power in certain societies. speech is seen as the most effective medium to present goals and purposes easily to the audiences. through speech, the speaker can deliver and show certain ideology toward the audiences. then, it must be clear how language and ideology are two inseparable things. if analyzed, a political speech reflects the speaker’s style. according to gee (2011: 7), “language is always political” and “social goods are the stuff of politics”. when language is used, the speakers should be ready to face the possibility to be accepted or denied by the society. in accordance with the fact of how vital language is, it is important for the speakers to manage the speech in order to achieve the goal. word choice is one feature that defines the style of a speech managed intentionally. in fact, some parties have their own campaign rules because they realize that the use of proper structures in speech will result the best. this slightly shows language is believed to have a strong effect to the listener or reader. there should be preliminary targets to achieve by delivering the speech. starting from the explanation before, this study focuses on the use of modality in melania trump’s and ivanka trump’s campaign speeches. modality is “the property refers to the strength with which a particular proposition or statement is endorsed” (locke, 2004: 47). the statement means that modality really influences the message implied in the sentence. it can change the degree of certainty or truth of the sentence or even the contextual meaning of the sentence. as an example taken from lilian (2008), the modality should is able to show different meanings depending on the context. she explains that should may have two meanings. the first meaning is to show an obligation to follow the rule as shown in the sentence “egalitarinism, a first cousin and natural companion of collectivism, originally meant that all citizens, without regard to class, race, sex, or any other personal characteristic, should be treated equally by the law of the land” (gairdner in lilian, 2008). the second meaning, should is also possible to show desirability as shown in the sentence “a proper federation should not allow the central powers to tax the people directly (gairdner in lilian, 2008). that is why, in accordance with the previous paragraph, it is assumed that certain purposes can be revealed from the use of modality in the speeches. the speeches of melania trump and ivanka trump on the 19th of july 2016, at the republican national convention, has been chosen as the objects of the study because melania as the wife and ivanka as the daughter of donald trump have the same important roles and responsibilities towards the victory of him as the presidential candidacy of the united states. the speeches are important because they influence the american perspectives towards the candidate of their president. seeing how crucial the roles are, how the speakers employ the language to show certain purposes or ideology is interesting to conduct. specifically, the employment through the modality used in the speeches can reflect certain purposes or ideology (verdonk, 2002). since there are two objects in this study, in the end of the analysis, the ideologies reflected by the use of modality in both of the speeches can be figured out. this study is worth to conduct because the result of the study can be used to see how the use of modality in speeches is crucial to determine the reflection of the ideologies. it will be clearer by comparing two speeches to see if later there are some differences in meaning. there several studies which are still related to this study that have been conducted previously. the first study is conducted by isti’anah (2012). she analyzed the speeches of muammar qaddafi and hosni journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) hepie pionery & arina isti’anah 26 mubarak’s political speeches. the objectives of isti’anah’s study are finding out the linguistic features in both speeches and what ideologies are revealed by the use of those linguistic features. from the analysis, isti’anah found out that high level of modality is used to show rule and obligation. however, a low level of modality was also employed by the speakers to show solidarity. another study which is in line with this study is conducted by bayram (2010). he analyzed a political speech by recep tayyip edorgan, the turkish prime minister, for the period of a debate in the world economic forum in davos in january 2009. bayram stated that a political speech is bound with certain powers, cultural and/or social background, and social status. in relation to that, by employing critical discourse analysis approach, bayram attempted to discover the social background and identified of edorgan revealed through the language use. bayram found out that what happens to edorgan is appropriate with fairclough’s theory. the political speech is actually the projection of his social background and identity. through the speech, edorgan can still reflect the nature of his society. it shows that his speech is formed by his ideology. this study aims at finding out the types of modality used in melania trump’s and ivanka trump’s campaign speeches. from the modality used, the ideologies in the speeches can be revealed. methodology the data analyzed in this study were the campaign speeches by melania trump and ivanka trump delivered on 19th of july, 2016 in the republican convention center to gain support for donald trump as one of the candidates of the united states president at that time. stylistics, which aims to find out the purpose and effect from the use of certain linguistic (verdonk, 2002: 4), was chosen as the approach of this study. by using stylistic approach, modality is seen as a feature which can show speakers’ purpose or ideology. modality in stylistics is a feature which carries ideology. to obtain all the data, sentential level of analysis was conducted to comprehend the meanings and level of the modality used. to continue to the deeper analysis of the function of modal towards the speakers’ ideology, the types of modality were categorized. the types of modal were then ordered based on the percentages. after all the sentences containing modality were analyzed and described, the ideologies of the speeches were concluded. findings and discussion 1. the types of modality in both speeches the table below displays that there are 26 modals which exist in melania trump’s campaign speech. in ivanka trump’s campaign speech, there are 35 modals found. all of the type of modalities are employed by ivanka trump in her speech. melania trump employed all types of modality, except usuality. the two highest percentages of the types in both speeches are inclination and potentiality and ability. the inclination in melania trump’s speech is 46.2%, while in ivanka trump’s is 31.5%. the potentiality and ability in melania trump’s speech is 38.4%, whereas in ivanka trump’s is 34.4%. the two lowest percentages in both speeches are obligation and probability. the obligation and probability in melania trump’s speech are both 7.7%, while in ivanka trump’s are 8.5% and 5.7%. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 27 table 1 the types modality in both speeches types of modality melania trump’s speech ivanka trump’s speech number percentage number percentage inclination 12 46.2% 11 31.5% potentiality and ability 10 38.4% 12 34.3% usuality 7 20% obligation 2 7.7% 3 8.5% probability 2 7.7% 2 5.7% total 26 100% 35 100% a. inclination the first type of modality found in the data is inclination. both speeches have similar number of inclination. from the analysis, the level used in both speeches is high and the meaning inferred from the use is determination. the sentences below are examples taken from melania trump’s speeches. (1) i cannot or will not take the freedoms this country offers for granted. (2) i know that he will make a great and lasting difference. the modal used in (1) is will. this modal is included as high level of inclination because it shows determination. the verb that follows the modal is take. there is negation not in the sentence which means that melania does not do the action to take the freedom from the country for granted. this sentence insists a commitment of future act not to take the freedom as something trivial. in fact, it is categorized as high level of inclination showing that melania trump seriously commits the act. the modal which is used in (2) is will. this modal is categorized as high level of inclination. it shows a determination and is followed by the lexical item make. in (2), melania expresses that she knows that he (donald trump) is the one who is going to change the america. the modal will is used to show donald trump’s action towards america in the future, which makes a great and lasting different. this is a high level of inclination because it shows determination or a strong willingness. the sentences below are taken from ivanka’s speech whose modality is inclination. (3) as president, my father will change the labor laws that were put into place at a time when women are not a significant portion of the workforce. (4) and he will focus on making quality childcare affordable and accessible for all. in (3), modal which is used is will. this modal is included in high level of inclination which reflects determination. this modal is followed by the verb change. this modal is used to explain the subject my father which refers to donald trump. melania trump, through this utterance, infers that donald trump strongly commits to change the labor laws if he becomes the president of the america. the explanation for (4) is almost similar to (3). the modal which is used by ivanka trump in (4) is also will. this is also high level of inclination that reflects strong commitment or desire to do something. the modal in (4) is followed by verb focus. the subject of the sentence is he which refers to donald trump. from the lexical items mentioned before, it can be slightly concluded that donald trump commits to be journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) hepie pionery & arina isti’anah 28 focus. the following information is really needed to achieve the complete meaning. if it is seen in the whole context, melania trump tries to say that donald trump has strong desire to focus on making quality childcare affordable and accessible for all. b. potentiality and ability both speeches also have similar modality. those are categorized as high level of modality whose meaning is potential. below are the examples taken from melania trump’s speech. (5) that will never change. (6) there has to be plan for growth, only then will fairness result. the potentiality can be caused by two reasons, human’s ability and certain condition besides human involvement. in (5), the modal used is will. the modal is followed by verb change. however, there is a negation in the sentence as shown in the word never. it is understood based on the context, the lexical item that as the subject of the sentence refers to the previous phrase ‘truly blessed’. by combining the modality, negation, and the verb, melania trump refers the feeling of being blessed is potentially not change at all. in (6), the modal used is will. the verb that follows the modal is result. it is similar to the previous sentence that this modal is included in potentiality. this modality is categorized as high level of potentiality that can be seen from the whole meaning of the sentence. there are two clauses in one sentence. both clauses are in cause and effect relationship. in (6), the first clause is the cause which is able to trigger something to happen. if there is a plan for growth, it can result the fairness. however, in the sentence, it can be seen that the modal is followed by the verb result. it can be concluded that the fairness is potentially resulted only if there is a plan for growth. sentences below are taken from ivanka trump’s speech. (7) and they would leave his office, as people so often do after having been with donald trump, feeling that life could be great again. (8) he will ask them for their feedback, if they think something should be done differently or could be done better. in (7), the modal which is used to show potentiality is could. the modal is followed by auxiliary verb be and an adjective great. the subject of the sentence is life. this sentence means that the officers are potential to feel that life is great again after they meet donald trump. by saying this, ivanka trump would like to say officers are potential to have a great life because of donald trump. in (8), the modal which is used is could. the modal is followed by passive verb which is be done. the subject of the sentence is he which refers to donald trump. the sentence means that by asking the officers, donald trump will be able to know what is potential to be done better. in this case, the modal is used to express something that is potential to be done better. c. obligation the sentences containing obligation in melania trump’s speech are displayed as below. (9) we should be satisfied with the stagnation. (10) the has to be a plan for growth only then will fairness result. in (9), the modal which is used is should. based on the theory, this modal is included in mid-level of obligation which indicates something that is supposed to do. the modal is followed by auxiliary verb be and an adjective satisfied. however, there is a negation not in the sentence. the sentence means that the subject we is supposed to be unsatisfied with the stagnation. supposed, based on the level of obligation, is a degree which is still negotiable. it is different if it is compared to the high level which insists something obligatory. the example of high level of obligation can be seen in (10). journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 29 in (10), modal adverb has to is employed. this modal is categorized in high level of obligation which means something that cannot be negotiated. in the other words, it can be insisted as a must. the modal is followed by auxiliary verb be and a noun phrase a plan. melania trump refers that a plan is a must in order to achieve the fairness. in the other words, melania trump infers that the fairness will be achieved only if there is plan for that. below are the examples of obligation found in ivanka trump’s campaign speech. (11) he will ask them for their feedback, if they think something should be done differently or could be done better. (12) policies that allow women with children to thrive should not be novelities. the modality which is used in (11) is should. this modality is included in mid-level of obligation. since it is included in mid-level, this modal means supposed. the sentence has he as the subject of the sentence which contextually refers to donald trump. the verb that follows the modal is a passive verb be done. the purpose of ivanka by uttering this sentence is to show that donald trump always asks them (the officers) for feedback. this has a purpose to see whether there is something that is supposed to be done differently. sentence (12) has similar modal, should. this belongs to the mid-level of obligation which means supposed. there is an auxiliary verb that follows the modal, which is be, and the noun novelties. however, there is a negation not in the sentence which, in this case, shows something that cannot be done. ivanka trump utters the sentence to argue that the policies that allow women with children to thrive are not supposed to be novelties. in the other words, it has to be a tradition and something in common. d. probability there are only two sentences in melania trump’s speech which contain probability. based on the theory, probability is the condition or state when something possibly happens. below are the sentences. (13) the race will be hard-fought, all the way to november. (14) there will be good times and hard times and unexpected turns. the modal type probability in (13) is will. in that sentence, will is included in mid-level. the modal is used to show something that probably happens. melania trump predicts that all the way to november is probably hard-fought. this modal is used because melania trump can be unsure about the future condition. nevertheless, she still has belief that it will be hard-fought. this explanation is also able to be applied in the last example, (14). the modal used is also will. this modal is also included in mid-level of probability. melania trump uses this modal to express her belief that in the future, there exists good times, hard times, and unexpected turns. however, it is still appropriate to be called as a prediction because melania trump is still unsure about something that may happen in the future time. that is, why this modal is included in mid-level type of probability. the examples of probability found in ivanka trump’s campaign speech are as follows. (15) words and promises, no matter visionary they sound will only get you so far. (16) floor by floor a soaring structure will appear, usually record breaking in its height and iconic in its design. both sentences use modal will to show the notion of probability. both modals also have a mid-level of probability. in (15), the modal is followed by verb get. then, the subject of the sentence is words and promises no matter visionary they sound. the implied meaning that is tried to be delivered by ivanka trump is that the words in the form of promises and visionary from other candidates probably make you far away from the reality. those promises and visionary are only novelties. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) hepie pionery & arina isti’anah 30 in (16), the modal is followed by the verb appear. the subject of the sentence in (16) is a soaring structure. the function of modality in the sentence is to show that soaring structure of a tower is probable to appear. in addition, ivanka trump adds that the tower is usually record breaking in its height and iconic in its design. e. usuality usuality only appears in ivanka trump’s speech. below are the sentences. (17) he would talk to them and then draw upon his extensive network to find them a job or get them a break. (18) and they would leave his office, as people so often do after having been with donald trump, feeling that life could be greater again. the modal employed in (17) is would. this modal is a mid-level modal of usuality. the subject of this sentence is he referring to donald trump. the verb talk follows the modal. that sentence means that donald trump usually talks to them. if it is seen from the whole context, the word them refers to the people who experience injustice and hardship. sentence (18) has similar explanation to (17). the modal would is also a mid-level of usuality. however, sentence (18) has different subject of sentence, they. the personal pronoun they refers to the people who experience injustice and hardship. the modal in this sentence tells us that after they meet donald trump, they usually feel relief and believe that life could be great again. 2. ideologies reflected from the use of modality a. commitment the first ideology, commitment, is shown from the use of inclination. there are 12 inclinations found in melania trump’s campaign speech. in the result of the first objective, it is found out that inclination is the most frequent type of modality used by the speaker. the percentage is 46,2%. nine of inclinations found are categorized as high level inclination. it has been mentioned that this level shows determination. it is assumed that the use of determination reveals commitment. the sentences that contain the high level of inclination reflect the commitment of both the speaker and the personal pronoun he which contextually refers to donald trump. the sentence below shows commitment. (19) i cannot or will not, take the freedoms this country offers for granted. the sentence above has i as the subject referring to melania trump. from the use of modality, it can be seen that the speaker tries to express her commitment not to take the freedom the country offers for granted. thus, it is obvious that the use of that modality is to reflect the speaker’s commitment. in the data, the speaker also uses the high level of inclination in other sentences. it is found that the speaker uses the modality to show donald trump’s commitment as a candidate of the president. it is shown from the use of personal pronoun for the subject of the sentences such as he, my husband, and donald. this argument is proven by some of the sentences containing high level inclination as provided below. (20) he will never, ever, give up. (21) he will never, ever, let you down. (22) and he will do this better than anyone else can. from those examples, it can be seen that all of the sentences use personal pronoun he as the subject. contextually, the personal pronoun he refers to donald trump. all of the sentences above also use high level modal of inclination to show determination. in (20), the speaker tries to tell the audiences that donald trump determines to never give up. it means that he commits to struggle. in (20), the speaker still uses similar subject and level of inclination. melania trump says that donald trump commits to never let you down. you, in this context, refers to the audiences, who are all americans. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 31 in (21), the subject is he and the modal used is still similar to the previous one. melania trump mentions that donald trump determines to do this better than anyone else. this, in this sentence, is the replacement of acts he will execute in the future time towards america. from the use of modality, it can be concluded that melania trump shows the commitment that donald trump will execute the acts better than any other candidates. in other sentences, it is also found out that high level inclination is used to show commitment of both melania trump and donald trump. as a wife of a president candidate, it can be seen that melania trump tries to show her involvement in donald trump’s mission. the high level inclination is also employed by melania trump to show her commitment which is shown in the sentence below. (23) we must do our best to ensure that every child can live in comfort and security, with the best possible education. (24) these are the values donald and i will bring to the white house. the subject in (23) is we. the subject obviously refers to melania trump and donald trump. the subject in (24) is also donald trump and i. the sentences above use high level of inclination. in (23), the speaker states that melania trump and donald trump determine to do the best. it shows their commitment to ensure that every child can live in comfort and security. in (24), the speaker asserts that they have the values they determine to bring. in ivanka trump’s speech, there are nine sentences which contain inclinations. they are categorized as high level. high level of inclination expresses determination. from all of the sentences applying high level of inclination, it is revealed that eight sentences have the subject he referring to donald trump. it can be said that ivanka trump tries to tell the audiences about donald trump’s commitment. the examples are provided below. (25) as president, my father will change the labor laws that were put into place at a time when women were not a significant portion of the workforce. (26) he will fight for equal pay for equal work. in (25), ivanka trump says that her father, donald trump, determines to change the labor laws if he is elected as the president. the determination shows a strong desire that can also be called as a commitment to change the labor law. in (26), ivanka trump also uses the modality to tell the determination of the subject he. in this sentence, ivanka trump says that donald trump determines to fight for equal pay and work. this modal is a high level of inclination. this sentence shows that donald trump commits to fight for the equal pay and work for all of americans. the employment of high level of inclination is to express donald trump’s commitment. however, there is a sentence found in the speech that the high level of inclination is also used to express the speaker’s commitment. it can be seen from the sentence that uses subject i and employs high level of inclination. the sentences are provided below. (27) and i will fight for this too, right along side of him. the sentence above reveals that the speaker determines to fight alongside of him (donald trump). this shows her commitment also to fight for equal pay and equal work. to sum up, the high level of inclinations is employed to project the speaker’s and also donald trump’s commitment. b. self-promotion the other ideology reflected by the use of modality in melania trump’s campaign speech is self-promotion. political speech is strongly related to how to affect the people to vote. this has a purpose to influence the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) hepie pionery & arina isti’anah 32 result of an election. this is also what is done by melania trump. melania trump delivers the speech as a form of campaign. starting from this point, one of the ideologies reflected from the use of modality is self-promotion. commonly, people will tell something good about them to build trust for others. in this case, it is seen that melania trump employs potentiality and ability to influence the audiences. based on the previous discussion. it is found out that there are 10 sentences using potentiality and ability. the percentage is 38,4%. this number is quite considerable. this type of modality has significant role to influence the audience. the explanation of the argument is provided in some of the examples below. (28) and i can assure you, he is moved by this great honor. (29) donald is the only one that can deliver it. modality in (28) reveals the notion of ability. this modality is used to show the ability of the subject i which refers to the speaker. the modal emphasizes the ability to assure you, referring to the audiences. the verb assure in the sentence expresses how melania trump is very certain of what she says. melania trump is sure that donald trump is moved by his great honor. by uttering this sentence, melania trump tries to inform the audiences that donald trump is moved by something good, great honor. it is, then, expected that people will vote the best person. thus, the notion of self-promotion can be seen through good quality figure that is projected by the speaker by telling good values of donald trump to the audiences. this also happens in sentence (29). melania trump says that donald trump is the only one who is able to deliver it. this sentence also shows that donald trump is the most proper person to lead america. it can be seen from the speaker’s utterance that donald trump is the only one who is able to deliver it. this short sentence reveals that melania trump tries to promote donald trump by telling the ability. by doing so, americans will choose him. thus, it can be concluded that the type of potentiality and ability emphasize self-promotion. ivanka trump’s speech also contains the same ideology as melania trump’s. selfpromotion becomes the ideology because there are 12 sentences contain potentiality and ability in the speech. it is also already explained in the previous part that potentiality and ability reflect self-promotion because one of the purposes of political speech is influencing people’s perspective. potentiality and ability show someone’s skill (ability) and the effect of having the skill (potentiality). in ivanka trump’s speech, the number of percentage of potentiality and ability is the highest among other types. it is 34.3%. the employment of potentiality and ability does not merely aim to inform the audiences about the speaker’s and donald trump’s skill or ability. however, ivanka trump tries to make the audiences know that donald trump and her have the capability. by uttering the sentences containing potentiality and ability, ivanka trump shows that donald trump is capable to be the president. the proofs are provided below. (30) my father not only has the strength and ability necessary to be our next president, but also the kindness and compassion that will enable him to be the leader that this country needs. in (30), the speaker employs modality to show potentiality. potentiality exists because of donald trump’s ability for having such strength that enables him to be the leader. this sentence shows that ivanka trump tries to promote his father as someone who has the ability. the last type of modality that can reveal the ideology of self-promotion is usuality. it is found out that 20% of all types of modality are categorized as. based on the sentences, the speaker employs this type of modality to show donald trump’s habit. most of the habits talk about how donald trump treats his employee. it can be seen from these sentences. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 33 (31) he would talk to them and then draw upon his extensive network to find them a job or get them a break. (32) on every one of his projects, you will see him talking to the super, the painter, the engineers, the electricians. (33) he will ask them for their feedback, if they think something should be done differently or could be done better. all the example of usuality mentioned above are included as mid-level. this level of usuality already shows something which is done regularly. in the other words, this level already shows donald trump’s habit. of course the high level of usuality will show more frequent intensity. in sentence (31), ivanka trump tries to show the audiences about her father’s habit that he usually talks to the jobless people and helps them to get a job. this sentence shows his concern about others who need helps. in (32), ivanka trump tries to say that in every donald trump’s project, he usually talks to the super, the painter, and any other workers. this sentence shows that donald trump usually pays attention to his project. he is responsible for his own plan. in (33), ivanka trump tries to show the audience that donald trump usually asks the worker about the project. it means that donald trump is not a dictator. he puts his employee’s suggestion, opinion, and thought in mind. the notion of self-promotion is still the same. ivanka trump tries to give a good projection of donald trump. she tells the audiences that donald trump usually helps jobless people. this sentence implies the meaning that donald trump is down to earth and kind hearted. she also shows how donald trump deals with every plan of his projects. it implies meaning that donald trump will do the same if he becomes the president. ivanka trump also shows that donald trump always hears the voice of the employee. it implies that he will listen to americans if he is chosen as the president. he will not be a dictator. all of the explanations above demonstrate that ivanka trump promotes her father. ivanka trump shows the good sides of her father by employing usuality to show his good habit towards lower people and project. in fact, usuality is used only to tell about his father. thus, 20% is also a reasonable number to express selfpromotion as the ideology found in the speech. conclusion the analysis shows that there are four types of modality in melania trump’s campaign speech. those are inclination, obligation, potentiality and ability, and probability. the modal of inclination appears 12 times. it is 46.2%. there are nine high levels, two mid-levels, and one low level of inclination. the modal of obligation and probability appears twice, presented in 7.7%. in obligation, one sentence is included as high level and another one is included in mid-level. all of the probabilities are included as midlevel. the last, potentiality and ability appear 10 times, presented in 38.4%. on the other hand, there are five types of modality in ivanka trump’s campaign speech. those are inclination, usuality, potentiality and ability, probability, and obligation. there are 11 sentences containing inclination in the speech. the percentage is 31.5%. nine of the inclinations are categorized as high level and the rest are as mid-level. there are 12 sentences with potentiality and ability. the percentage is 34.3%. usuality occurs seven times. there are two modality included as high level of usuality and the other five are categorized as mid-level. the percentage of this type is 20%. the next is obligation. it occurs three times, presented in 8.5%. two of obligations are included as mid-level and another is low level. the last type is probability. it occurs only twice. the percentage of this type is 5.7%, categorized as mid-level. the employment of certain types of modality above reveals that both speakers project the same ideologies. commitment is the first ideology in both speeches, seen from the use of inclination. the high level meaning of inclination found in the data display that journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) hepie pionery & arina isti’anah 34 both speakers assure the audiences about donald trump’s promise. the second ideology, self-promotion is shown by other types of modality. potentiality-ability and usuality reveal that both speakers promote donald trump’s capability and habit. references akmajian, adrian, richard a, demers, ann k. farmer, robert m. harnish. linguistics: an introduction to language and communication. london: the mit press. 2001. bayram, fatih. ideology and political discourse: a critical discourse analysis of edorgan’s political speech. vol. 7. 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(renewdemocracy. org/blog/posts/435/political-speech). january 18, 2017. http://time.com/4417579/ journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 35 simpson, paul. language, ideology, and point of view. new york: routledge. 2004 simpson, paul. stylistics: a resource book for student. london: routledge. 2004 toolen, michael. language in literature. london: routledge. 1998 verdonk, peter. stylistics. oxford: oxford university press. 2002 phenomena vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 163 transitivity analysis in four selected opinions about jakarta governor election arina isti’anah arina@usd.ac.id department of english letters, sanata dharma university abstract jakarta governor election has been a popular topic recently. people who are interested in politics also comment the election. this paper attempts to analyze four selected opinions about the election, given by those who are interested in politics, by employing transitivity analysis. the method employed in this research was critical discourse analysis which mainly focused on transitivity analysis. based on the analysis, most opinions utilized material processes to show what jakarta people expect from the governor, reflected by actor-goal, affected, and goal-recipient participants. relational process occurs in the data to attach jakarta to its labels, shown by carrier-attribute participants. verbal process reveals what the candidates assure when they win, by the appearance of sayer-verbiage. mental process occurs with jakarta as the senser. circumstances of purpose often exist in the data, indicating people’s expectation in the election. keywords: transitivity, process, participant, circumstance introduction transitivity analysis has become one of the tools to conduct critical discourse analysis (cda). this type of analysis is offered by the theory of systemic functional linguistics (sfl), initiated by halliday, to analyze a text so the ideology of it can be seen. mathiessen and halliday (1997) state that grammar in sfl refers to the resource for creating meanings by means of wordings. the occurrence of language elements creates various interpretations. in creating the meanings, grammar can be represented within metafunctions: ideational (field), interpersonal (tenor), and textual (mode). the ideational function deals with what happens in the text. halliday (2004: 29) defines the ideational function as the function that the speaker or writer embodies language in his experience of the phenomena of the real world. dijk (2008) adds that analyzing the action-process of a discourse is one of the ways in doing cda. in transitivity, clause is the grammatical unit that can show what happens in a text. inspired by those ideas, this paper attempts to apply cda by means of transitivity analysis in four selected opinions about jakarta governor election. in transitivity analysis, six processes can be categorized: material, verbal, mental, relational, behavioral, and existential. to recognize each process, a verb is the tool to determine the type of each process. material verbs mark the material process, verbal verbs mark the verbal process, mental verbs mark the mental process, linking verbs mark the relational process, behavioral verbs mark the behavioral process, and there and non referent it mark the existential process. arina isti’anah 164 each process is also composed by its participants. the material process has actor, goal, and affected participants. the verbal process has sayer, receiver, and verbiage participants. the mental process has senser and phenomenon participants. the relational process has carrier-attribute, identifieridentified, and possessor-possessed participants. the behavioral process has behaver participant. the existential process has existent participant. the table below show the summary of the meaning, participants and sample verbs in transitivity based on halliday (2004), downing and locke (2006), and eggins (2004) (isti’anah, 2012: 28). table 1: summary of six processes no processes category meaning participants sample verbs 1 material doing actor, goal elect, give, choose happening actor, affected get, exposed 2 mental perception senser-phenonemon see, hear, notice, feel, taste, smell affection senser-phenonemon like, love, admire, miss, fear, hate cognition senser-phenonemon think, believe, know, doubt, remember, forget volition senser-phenonemon want, need, intend, desire, hope, wish 3 verbal saying sayer, receiver, verbiage say, tell, pledge, express, address 4 relational attributive carrier-attribute to be, linking verbs: become, look, last identifying token-value to be, equal, signify, define possessive possessor-possessed have, has, possess, own 5 behavioral behaving behaver smile, look, sniff 6 existential existing existent to be previous studies applying transitivity analysis have been conducted by many scholars. however, those observing newspaper articles are rarely found. some have been conducted to analyze reports, media, speeches, and also literary work. one of them is iwamoto’s the analysis of warmtime reporting: transitivity (1995). iwamoto (1995) finds that transitivity analysis proves how language structures are exercised by language users to depict japan as a patient in order to respond to social demand. manan (2001) also conducts transitivity analysis in re-reading the media: a stylistic analysis of malaysian media coverage of anwar and the reformasi movement (2001). she proves how language use in media constructs social reality. the language choice in the media influence the way the readers perceive the message brought by the media. for instance, the choice of actor in the material process reveals that anwar is portrayed as not only the more powerful entity but also a “perpetrator” of crimes. opara utilizes transitivity in order to observe narrative discourse made by emecheta in transitivity systems in selected narrative discourse (2012). she finds that by applying transitivity analysis, we can see how the discourse maker depicts a character through language choice. moreover, the research also concludes that the issue of feminism can be found in the discourse. transitivity analysis also becomes the bridge to find themes which the discourse maker chose. from the research, it is concluded that the themes chosen by emecheta are dominated by positive character. naz, alvi, and baseer’s political language of benazir bhutto: a transitivity analysis of her speech “democratization in pakistan” (2012) also supports halliday’s arina isti’anah vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 165 sfl that language can be exercised to show power. the findings on the domination of material processes in bhutto’s speeches reveal her strong determination to reestablish democracy in the country. the different data in the previous studies above represent similar findings: transitivity is applicable to uncover various texts. transitivity analysis can explain why certain linguistic features in the texts are chosen. compared to the previous studies above, this research attempts to observe dissimilar data, i.e. people’s opinions about jakarta governor election. the analysis is important to conduct since the writer would like to prove that transitivity can also be used to analyze what people thought through newspaper opinion coloumns. by doing so, we can see the role of each process and participant in the data and how people construct their point of view about the election in wordings.the findings of the research can prove and support how sfl becomes a delicate theory to conduct cda. method this research applies critical discourse analysis. there are some theories underlying cda, but halliday’s systemic functional linguistics is believed to be the theory underlying it. language as a text concerns the context of situation, meaning the ideational, interpersonal, and textual function. cda also believes that as a social practice, a text is inseparable to the context of situation. hence, the relation of cda and sfl is clear. wodak and meyer (2006: 8) add that systemic functional linguistics proves to be important for the text analysis undertaken by cda. sfl is believed as the root of cda that relies on the linguistic study. young and harrison (2004:1) propose some commonalities between sfl and cda. first, they share a view of language as a social construct, looking at the role of language in society and at the ways in which society has fashioned language. second, they share dialectical view of language in which particular discursive events influence the contexts in which they occur and the contexts are influenced by these discursive events. third, both sfl and cda emphasize the cultural and historical aspects of meaning. fairclough (1995: 2) summarizes that cda has a three-dimensional framework where the aim is to map three separate forms of analysis onto one another: analysis of spoken or written language texts, analysis of discourse practice (including process of text production, distribution, and consumption), and analysis of discursive events as instances of socio-cultural practice. this research will only focus on the analysis of the written language text. the data which become the texts to analyze in this research were the four opinions about jakarta governor election. jakarta, the capital city of indonesia, holds governor election every five years. the previous election was won by fauzi bowo and prijanto. however, prijanto decided to resign from his position as the deputy governor in december, 2011. the governor election was held on july 11, 2012. there were six pairs in the election: fauzi bowo and nachrowi ramli; hidayat nur wahid and didik j. rachbini; joko widodo and basuki tjahaja purnama; alex noerdin and nono sampono; faisal basri and biem benjamin; and hendardji soepandji and ahmad riza patria. the 2012 election becomes people’s attention because some candidates are considered as the “outsiders”. joko widodo is the mayor in surakarta, alex noerdin is the governor in south sumatera, hidayat nur wahid and hendardji soepandji were not born in jakarta. besides, the popularity of fauzi bowo, hidayat nur wahid, and joko widodo becomes another magnet to pay attention to the election. therefore, people who are interested in the election give their opinions in social media such as tv, newspapers, and social networking. this paper observes people’s opinions about the election, published by the jakarta post. this research utilized transitivity analysis, adopting halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (2004). the data in arina isti’anah vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 166 this research were four selected articles written by people who have background in politics, published by the jakarta post from march to april 2012. the articles were labeled a to d. the strategy to select the clauses in the data was purposive random sampling. it is purposive since the selected clauses are included to find out the domination of the processes, thus the participants of the texts. it is random because the clauses to analyze are randomly selected from the overall data since they have the same general topic: jakarta governor election. the analysis examines forty clauses: ten clauses from each article, labeled one to ten. as the example, clause a1 means clause number one from article a. the steps of the analysis are: analyzing the clauses by transitivity, counting the processes in the data into percentage, presenting the findings, discussing the findings, and drawing conclusion. in order to ease the analysis, the transitivity identification test is needed to conduct. below is the table of the transitivity identification test (isti’anah, 2012: 29). table 2: transitivity process identification test verb category verb be/linking verb action verb non action verb trans. intrans. verbal mental circumstance np + be + np/pp/ advp there/ it + be np + be + adj. np + trans. v + o/c np + intrans. v + (adjunct) np + verbal np + mental v + np process relat. (ident, possess) exist. relat. (attrib.) mat. mat. verbal mental, behav. sample verbs is, become, own is, am, are is, am, are try, give choose, expose talk, say, tell look, think, believe findings the analysis of the data finds that people’s opinions about jakarta governor election are dominated by material processes. besides material processes, the data also employ relational, verbal, and mental processes. behavioral and existential processes are not found in the data. table 3 below summarizes the number of processes and also verbs presenting each process. table 3: percentage of transitivity analysis no processes number percentage verbs (taken as they appear in the data) 1 material 23 57.5 made, waited, changed, ask, decided, adopted, defied, replicates, elect, conducted, vote, exposed, given, challenged, haunted, work, deserve, contested, to be used, serving, face, secure, exercise 2 relational 12 30 have, is, are, include, be able, remain 3 verbal 3 7.5 remind, promise, claimed 4 mental 2 5 consider, resist total 40 100% the table above clearly depicts that material processes dominate the data, proven in the use of those processes in 57.5%. the material processes are marked by the existence of action verbs as seen in the above table. the next dominating processes arina isti’anah vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 167 are relational processes, found in the data in 30% and shown by the verbs to be and linking verbs. verbal process occurs in 7.5%. it is marked by the verbal verbs, while mental processes occur in 5% shown by the mental verbs. material processes a material process is the process of doing or happening in the transitive or intransitive clause. matthiessen and halliday (1997) propose that looked from above, a material clause construes of doings and happenings which include actions, activities, and events. in other words, the material process is an arrangement of a process and participants involved that require some input of energy to occur and when the participant is likely to undertake a change. thus, the energy flow marks the material process. there are three possible participants in the material process. the first is an actor. an actor is doing the action and realized by nominal groups. this participant can be questioned, what did x do?. as the example, “diana (actor) went to geneva (goal) (eggins, 2004: 215).” to test the actor, the question what did diana do? can be applied. the second is a goal. it is the participant which the process is extended to. a goal can be identified by asking the question, what did x do to y? what happened to y? as in “the lion caught the tourist (halliday, 2004).” the third is an affected. an affected is someone or something affected by the action of the verb in an active clause, as a result of energy flow (downing and locke, 2006). for instance, “pele (agent) kicked the ball (affected) (downing and locke, 2006: 133).” in the data, the actor is represented by some different nps, meaning to say that the data do not only involve the candidates but also the voters. the same result is also found in goal, affected, and recipient. the table below shows the summary of participants in the material clauses. table 4: summary of the participants in material processes participants realization in the data actor the city administration, the people of jakarta, jakarta’s citizens, all the parties, the political intensity, jakarta, they (jakarta voters), constituents within the party, the above candidates, the incumbent, fauzi, the winner, jakarta voters goal jakarta, the immediate and possibly long-term fate of jakarta affected the nomination of each candidate, each candidate, the incumbent fauzi bowo, governorship in jakarta, the election results recipient the constituents, those candidates material process occurs in the data with jakarta people or voters as the participants as seen below, (1) they (actor) elect the right candidate (goal) for the position of governor (circ. purpose). (2) the people of jakarta (actor) have waited long enough (cir. of time) to see if these are going to be put into action (cir. purpose). in (1), the actor is an np, they, referring to jakarta people. the actor is doing an action elect, meaning to decide or to choose by voting (cald3). the action is extended to the goal, the right candidate. in (2), the actor is also realized in an np, the people of jakarta. the process is marked by the verb wait which is explained by the circumstance of time and purpose. the circumstance of purpose indicates the intention of the action done by the actor: witnessing the promises by the candidates. the candidate also performs as an actor as seen below, (3) the winner (actor) must secure a simple majority of the vote (goal), making a runoff quite inevitable (circ. matter). arina isti’anah vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 168 the actor in (3) is an np, the winner. it refers to the candidates elected by the voters as the governor and vice governor in jakarta. the goal in (3) is also an np, a simple majority of the vote. the material process in (3) is shown by the action secure, which is extended to the goal. therefore, (3) can be interpreted that gaining majority of the votes is a must to be the governor and vice governor in jakarta. in (3), there is a circumstance of matter which functions to add more information about the clause. it is shown in making a runoff quite inevitable. this circumstance explains that there is also another possibility in the election shown by the noun runoff: an extra competition or election to decide the winner, because the leading competitors have finished equal (cald3). in (3), there is the other participant named circumstance of purpose: for the position of governor. this circumstance clarifies the purpose of the action done by the actor. the analysis in (3) explains that jakarta people vote the right person to be the governor. the lexical items right candidate refer to the person who is suitable among the other candidates. the affected participant as the only participant in the data can be seen as follows, (4) each candidate (affected) should have been exposed in a fair debate on their ideas and platform for jakarta (cir. time). in (4), the affected is shown by an np each candidate. this participant is the one being affected by the action expose. the actor does not exist in (4) because the actor is already understood by the readers. however, in order to clarify the clause, the existence of the circumstance of time is needed. it is seen in in a fair debate on their ideas and platform for jakarta. the circumstance fulfills and completes the clause so that the action expose is clear. when the circumstance of time is missing, the clause might be unclear. in the material process that has a ditransitive verb, a recipient is found. a recipient is the participant that receives the goal (lock, 1996: 75). in the data, this participant can be seen as follows, (5) the constituents (recipient) should have been given an opportunity (goal) to hold a dialogue with candidates (cir. of contingency) before the definite nominee was selected (cir. of time). the material verb give is a di-transitive verb because it requires two participants: goal and recipient. a goal refers to what is given and a recipient refers to the constituent that receives the goal. in (5), the recipient, the constituents, receives the goal, an opportunity. the actor is absence since (5) is a passive construction. another participant in (5) is circumstance of contingency, particularly purpose. it is realized in the form of a pp: to hold a dialogue with candidates. this circumstance can be checked by asking what…for? (downing and locke, 2006). the other circumstance, time, is also found in (5). it is in the form of an advp, before the definite nominee was selected. to check this type of circumstance, we can ask, when should the constituents have been given an opportunity to hold dialogue with candidates? relational processes a relational process is known as the process of being. it can be differentiated into three types: attributive, identifying, and possessive processes. the summary of participants in relational processes is presented in table 5. arina isti’anah vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 169 table 5: summary of participants in relational processes type of relational processes participants realization in the data attributive carrier the nomination process, jakarta, they, fauzi, jakarta attribute an important signal of growing democracy in indonesia, symbol of a progressive democracy in indonesia, wellknown public figures, the microcosm of indonesia, a giant in local electoral politics identifying token it, the advantage of incumbency, fauzi; traffic congestion, floods, a lack of public security and poor service value now, unavoidable, mobilize many local betawi people, the topmost concerns as expressed in public debates and daily chats possessive possessor jakartans, fauzi’s heavyweight opponents, the incumbent possessed a greater chance, popular and respected figures, little chance to make it to the second round the overlooking participants in the relational processes, carrier-attribute, can be seen in the following clause, (6) jakarta (carrier) is a symbol of a progressive democracy in indonesia (attribute). in (6), the participants are carrier and attribute. the meaning of an attributive is that “x is a member of the class a” (eggins, 2004: 240). a carrier is the participant in the attributive structure, while an attribute is the entity to which is ascribed (downing and locke, 2006: 123). thus, (6) can be understood that jakarta is attributed as the symbol of a progressive democracy in indonesia. an attributive process is not reversible. therefore, the test whether the clause cannot be passivized or not can be applied to this process. the construction a symbol of a progressive democracy in indonesia is assigned by jakarta is not acceptable. therefore, (6) is classified as an attributive relational process. another clause containing attributive relational process is below. (7) the advantage of incumbency (carrier) is unavoidable (attribute) in any election (cir. of place). the attribute unavoidable is attached to the carrier, the advantage of incumbency. those two participants are inseparable, which signify that the incumbency brings advantage in any election including jakarta governor election. by giving that opinion, people assume that fauzi bowo – nachrowi ramli have a bigger chance than the other candidates to win the election. another type of relational process is identifying process. in an identifying process, there are two participants that have equal position, meaning to say that the participants are reversible. a token is the participant being defined, while a value is the participant which defines. eggins (2004: 242) assumes that a token and a value are realized by nominal groups. all identifying clauses are reversible. in reversing the clause, the synonymous words of the linking verbs must be found. the example of identifying relational process is below. (8) the nomination process (token) is an important signal of growing democracy in indonesia (value). in (8), the token is in the form of a np, the nomination process. the other participant, value, is also an np, an important signal of growing democracy in indonesia. in order to test the sentence, token and value can be reversed as an important signal of growing democracy in indonesia (value) is referred to the nomination process (token). in the previous sentence, value occupies the arina isti’anah vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 170 subject and token occupies the object. therefore, even though the clauses are reversed, the token and value in (8) do not change. what changes is the position in the sentence, not the function. this pattern implies that the participants in identifying relational process have an equal role. the employment of a possessive relational process can be seen as follows, (9) with the upcoming election of their governor, jakartans (possessor) now have a greater chance (possessed) to demand more and push the incumbent and other candidates further to not only promise a better jakarta but also to come up with ambitious and clear action plans to improve the city (circ. of purpose). lock (1996: 138) argues that the possessive process includes relationships of part to whole and of ownership. in (9), the possessor refers to jakartans, realized in the np. another participant is the possessed, realized in a greater chance. clause (9) clearly demonstrates that jakarta people own a larger opportunity in the election. what is meant by larger opportunity is shown by the circumstance of purpose. in sum, they have more opportunity to demand and push the incumbent and other candidates to make the city better. this pattern is chosen in the opinion in order to show that jakarta people will determine the future of the city. however, they will not only choose the governor but also demand actions by the elected governor. verbal processes in the data there are three clauses containing verbal process. one of the clauses is below. (10) every year (cir. of time), the city government (sayer) promises to make various efforts to prevent major floods from inundating the capital city (verbiage). a verbal process is the process of saying. the participant who says is called a sayer. in (10), the sayer is the city government. another participant in (10) is verbiage, meaning the content of what is said or name of the saying (halliday, 2004). the verbiage in (10) is shown by to make various efforts to prevent major floods from inundating the capital city. in the verbal process, a verbiage becomes the most important participant in the process since it corresponds to what is said, representing it as a class of thing rather than as a report or quote (halliday, 2004: 255). the circumstance of time in (10) adds more information about the clause that the city government always repeats the verbiage every year. this pattern exists in the opinion in order to show us that the people in jakarta are already bored with the promises made by the government. the promise is made annually, but there is no change. therefore, this clause shows people’s dissatisfaction with the government. another clause containing a verbal process is as follows, (11) for this, some (sayer) claimed to have a formula to solve jakarta’s notorious traffic jams and seasonal floods (verbiage). the verbal verb claimed in the above sentence marks the verbal process. the first participant in the process, the sayer, is represented by an np some (the candidates). the other participant is the verbiage that becomes the content of what the sayer utters. in other words, the verbiage is the message the sayer would like to convey. the receiver is absent in (11) because the readers already understand that the message is directed by some candidates to the voters. mental processes one of the mental clauses in the data is seen below. (12) jakarta, for some (senser), is considered as a source of economic opportunities, a stepping stone to arina isti’anah vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 171 living the “indonesian dream” (phenomenon). in the above clause, a senser is the one that senses, feels, thinks, and wants to perceive. the significant feature of a senser is that of being ‘endowed with consciousnesses’, or human-like (halliday, 2004: 201). in (12), the senser is realized in for some referring for some people. in (12), the participant that is sensed is called a phenomenon. a phenomenon is the participant which is felt, thought, wanted, or perceived, the position is in a sense reversed (halliday, 2004: 203). in the clause, the phenomenon is categorized as a fact phenomenon. it can be identified as a fact-embedding because a fact-noun can be inserted before (explicit or implicit) that which introduces it. thus, (12) can be paraphrased as some considered that jakarta is a source of economic opportunities, a stepping stone to living the “indonesian dream.” the employment of a mental process in the data imply that people are conscious to state that jakarta is attached as the source of economic opportunities, a stepping stone to living the indonesian dream. jakarta is regarded as the city which becomes the model for other cities in indonesia since the center of governance is there. circumstances the occurrence of a circumstance in a clause can be realized in various forms. eggins (2004: 222) states that circumstances can occur with all processes types and usually marked by adverbial groups or prepositional phrases. table 6 below summarizes the circumstances found in the data. table 6 summary of circumstances in the data type of circumstance number percentage realization in the data contingency 14 77 to address these issues, to see if these are going to be put into action, to learn from the success of cities in other developing countries, to administer the country’s microcosmic region, to be given the benefit of the doubt, to evaluate party’s preparedness in the upcoming 2014 general election, to hold a dialogue with candidates before the definite nominee was selected, to demand more and push the incumbent and other candidates, to not only promise a better jakarta, to come up with ambitious and clear action plans to improve the city, to voice their concerns louder, to administer the country’s microcosmic region, to solve jakarta’s notorious traffic jams and seasonal floods, to make it to the second round, as there are good candidates to choose from. place and time 3 16 in a fair debate on their ideas and platform for jakarta, for decades, in this upcoming election, manner 1 7 in a clear and transparent manner total 18 100 table 6 above exposes the domination of circumstance of contingency. a circumstance of contingency covers the meanings of cause, purpose, reason, arina isti’anah vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 172 concession, and behalf (downing and locke, 2006: 156). the question what cause? is used to indicate the cause. what…for? is used to know the purpose. why? is to analyze the reason. to know the concession, despite what condition? can be asked. behalf is asked by who/what for? to know the condition, the question under what condition? can be tested. in the data, the examples of circumstances contingency appear below, (13) promises after promises have been made by the city administration to address these issues. (14) the constituents should have been given an opportunity to hold a dialogue with candidates before the definite nominee was selected. (15) jakarta voters, especially traditionally apolitical and lessenthusiastic voters, will likely exercise their voting rights, as there are good candidates to choose from. in (13), contingency refers to purpose, to address these issues, in the form of a pp. this circumstance can be tested by asking, what have promises been made for? the same type of circumstance also occurs in (14), to hold a dialogue… this circumstance can be asked, what should the opportunity have been given for? thus, this kind of circumstance performs to extend the goal of the action in the clause. in (15), contingency refers to reason. this can be checked by asking, why will jakarta voters likely exercise their voting rights? the answer is definitely seen in the circumstance of contingency, particularly reason. circumstance of place and time can be seen in the following clauses, (16) each candidate should have been exposed in a fair debate on their ideas and platform for jakarta. (17) the incumbent, fauzi bowo, has been serving the capital’s government for decades, ever since he started working as a low-ranking official. circumstances of place and time in (16) and (17) are also realized in the form of pps. the circumstance of place seen in (16) gives additional information of the place where each candidate should have been exposed. the circumstance displayed in (17) explains the time when fauzi bowo has worked for jakarta. this type of circumstance occurs there since it is assumed as important information about fauzi bowo. circumstance of manner occurs in the only clause below. (18) the nomination of each candidate was not conducted in a clear and transparent manner. in the clause above, circumstance of manner is realized in a pp, in a clear and transparent manner. this kind of circumstance can be tested by asking, how was the nomination of each candidate not conducted? this existence reveals that people question if they will face a fair election. by involving this circumstance, people are indirectly disappointed with the unfair election regarding jakarta people’s spirit to welcome the election. discussion to observe the metafunctions of language, conducting transitivity analysis is prominent to see how people represent the real world. the findings of the present study clearly support halliday’s claim that people reflect their consciousness through their reactions, cognitions, and perceptions, and also his linguistic acts of speaking and understanding (2004: 170). people are enthusiastic to welcome the election. the various backgrounds of the candidates give them new hopes since the previous governors failed to solve jakarta problems. transitivity aims at identifying the participants or things which are involved, the actions and event taking place, and any relevant surrounding circumstances (morley, 2000: 9). the existence of jakarta people as the actor in the data signals the importance of the election for them. jakarta arina isti’anah vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 173 people are chosen as the actors to reveal that they are the doers who have authority and energy to conduct certain actions. it is also realized when the candidates appear as the affected, goal, or recipient. people demand the concrete action by the candidates when the candidates perform as the actor in the data. the unsolved problems in jakarta result in people’s boredom about the election. the various backgrounds of the candidates in the upcoming election give the people new hopes so they assign their expectations to the candidates, realized by affected and recipient participants. on the other hand, the candidates also appear in the material processes as the affected or goal. it means that their existence occurs in passive clauses. this construction is found in the data since people demand the candidates to do something. in this case, the candidates received actions by the actor. the findings of the analysis, particularly in the material processes, prove that language users have freedom to convey their ideas in different styles of wordings. it means that, different participants in the clauses signify different intention meant by opinion givers. the reason why the actor is absent, for instance, reflects that the opinion givers attempt to show the same understanding about the topic to the opinion readers. another example in the data is the occurrence of single participant in the clause, affected. that type of participant is possible to occur in the initial position as the only participant since the clause would like to focus on what happened to this np. the analysis of the relational process finds that jakarta is the domination of the carrier. this finding shows that people attach jakarta to particular attributes since they consider the city as the participant that cannot be separated from its attributes. by doing so, people expect that the next governor will give their best action to solve the complicated problems in the city. the existence of attributes cannot be ignored since they are always attached in the carrier. the positive labels attached to jakarta reveal that people still respect the city. despite its unsolved problems, jakarta remains its positive marks: an important signal of growing democracy in indonesia, symbol of a progressive democracy in indonesia, the microcosm of indonesia, a giant in local electoral politics. those positive attributes are the ones related to politics and democracy. it becomes a proof that as the capital city of indonesia, jakarta is assumed as the role model of what the politics looks like in the country. the small numbers of verbal and mental processes in the data signify that people do not focus on what the candidates utter or what jakarta people feel, but they mainly focused on the material or concrete actions related to the election. the verbiage or what is said by the candidates does not often occur in the data since it is about what the candidates promise when they win. the jakarta people are already bored with the same promises by the candidates in every election. the finding of this research is in line with the findings in iwamoto’s the analysis of warmtime reporting: transitivity (1995). the occurrence of a patient in passive construction is exercised in the report to demand japan to respond social demand. in the present study, an affected also appears in the opinion columns to demand the jakarta governor candidates to conduct concrete actions to solve jakarta problems. the similar findings on the two studies clearly reveal that the choice of wordings, particularly in passives with an affected or a patient, is to demand the participant to do actions. in comparison with the findings in manan’s writes re-reading the media: a stylistic analysis of malaysian media coverage of anwar and the reformasi movement (2001), the present study also proves that language use in the opinion columns also influences the way the readers perceive the message. when the readers are arina isti’anah vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 174 involved as the actors, they are represented by what is written in the columns. for instance, the role of the actor represents the voters’ authority. another example is how jakarta is depicted as the city which has some positive labels. people who read the opinion columns will be influenced by the positive marks of jakarta, regardless its unsolved problems. the finding of this research also points out that relational processes are exercised by language users to describe jakarta. this finding supports opara’s transitivity systems in selected narrative discourse (2012). though the type of the text is different, both characters of jakarta and the main character in the discourse can be uncovered by means of transitivity. while opara offers theme analysis, the present study offers relational processes to observe how jakarta is described. the similar findings are also found in naz, alvi, and baseer’s political language of benazir bhutto: a transitivity analysis of her speech “democratization in pakistan” (2012). both studies prove that material processes can be exercised to show power. in the previous study, the domination of material processes in bhutto’s speeches reveals her strong determination to reestablish democracy in the country. the present study also proves that material processes with actor as participant can also be used to show power. jakarta people or the voters are involved as the participants who determine the winner of the election. the discussion on the existence of circumstances in the texts enriches the previous studies on transitivity. the present study assumes that circumstances are also important constituents in the text. the circumstances of contingency in the data are about what people demand for the election. they are necessary in the data because the election is special for jakarta people. the euphoria of the election does not only occur in the political campaign but also in the form various opinions, as what researched. conclusion and suggestion opinions about jakarta governor election employ material, relational, verbal, and processes. in the material process, actor-goal, actor-affected, and goalrecipient appear in the data. the variation of participant in the data is influenced by type of verbs. in active clause, actor-goal and goal-recipient exist in the data. in passive clause, an affected appears since it is the constituent that experienced the action given by the actor. goal-recipient occurs in the data with a di-transitive verb. the participant is the material clause is dominated by jakarta people as the actor. it reveals how jakarta people welcome the election. relational processes are employed to entail jakarta with its attributes. verbal process exercises the candidate as its sayer, while the mental process uses jakarta as the senser. the choice of verbs determines the process in the clause, thus its participants. in the newspaper articles, as being the data, participants in the clause play an important role to influence the readers. the readers will pay attention to the doer since some of them, jakarta people, are involved as the participant in the clause. since this study limits the analysis on transitivity only, the future researchers can observe modality in opinion columns on other political elections. by conducting modality, they can observe the interpersonal function to see how the speaker shows the relationship with the addressee(s). another area to analyze is the textual function analysis: theme-rheme analysis. a theme is understood as the initial constituent of a clause. halliday (2004: 64) clarifies that a theme is the element that serves as the starting-point for the message: it is what the clause is going to be about. thus, we can uncover the most important part of language use to be paid attention to. arina isti’anah vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 175 references cambridge university press. cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary with cdrom: 3rd edition (ed. elizabeth walter, et al.). cambridge: cambridge university press, 2008. print. downing, angela and locke, philip. english grammar: a university course: 2nd edition. new york: routledge, 2006. print. eggins, suzanne. an introduction to systemic functional linguistics: 2nd edition. london: mpg books ltd, bodmin, cornwall, 2004. print. fairclough, norman. critical discourse analysis: the critical study of language. new york: longman publishing, 1995. print. halliday, m.a.k. and matthiessen, christian m.i.m. an introduction to functional grammar: 3rd edition. london: 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contemporary research in business. 2012: 125-141. print. opara, susan. “transitivity systems in selected narrative discourse.” international journal of arts and commerce. 2012: 109-121. print. pham, hoa. “transitivity analysis of heroic mother.” international journal of english linguistics. 2012: 85-100. print. van dijk, teun a. “discourse, knowledge, power and politics.” lecture towards critical epistemic discourse analysis. 2008: 1-40. print. wodak, ruth and meyer, michael. methods of critical discourse analysis. london: sage publication, 2006. print. 42 vol. 22 no. 1, april 2022, pp. 42-52 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i1.3463 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. trauma, love, and identity development in rowling’s harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban you-shuan shiong1 & ya-huei wang1. 2* a0906623016@gmail.com; yhuei@csmu.edu.tw 1 department of applied foreign languages, chung-shan medical university, taiwan 2department of medical education, chung shan medical university hospital, taiwan abstract article information persons in the stage of adolescence are eager to know who they are. they are curious about their unique characteristics and identities and how they can start to bring about the self-realization that provides a gateway to adulthood by exploring those characteristics and identities. in this process of self-exploration, adolescents who receive encouragement as they search for an authentic identity, though they sometimes have conflicts with parents and others, are likely to develop a secure ego-identity and a strong sense of independence and self-control. by contrast, adolescents who fail to receive encouragement during the process of identity exploration, for whatever reason, may remain unsure about who they are, and hence feel insecure and confused about themselves as well as their future. the present study uses the fictional character harry potter to explore these issues in greater depth, mainly focusing on his early adolescent years—that is, when he is 11-13 years old. the study demonstrates that harry potter can manage to resolve conflicting ideas and thereby lay the foundations for a healthy ego-identity despite difficult circumstances. the study uses erikson’s and other psychologists’ understanding of the importance of self-exploration in adolescence as an interpretive lens to examine the dynamics of trauma, love, and self-realization in rowling’s harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban. more specifically, it considers how family love (or the lack thereof), mentorship, and friendship in adolescence impact harry’s mental and physical behaviors and influence the development of his identity. keywords: adolescence; identity development; love; racism; self-realization received: 18 june 2021 revised: 29 december 2021 accepted: 11 january 2022 introduction according to erikson (1963 and 1993), as an individual’s personality development course, ego development is a continuous process of individualized, self-seeking psychological development. erikson thinks that a person’s personality keeps expanding https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 43 throughout his/her life. nonetheless, freud (1950) regards that personality has been well established by puberty. based on freud's psychosexual theory of development, personality develops through a series of internal psychological conflicts between inborn instincts (id) and social expectations (superego) during the five psychosexual stages: the oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital stages. at each stage, a child would encounter conflicts between inborn drives and social expectations and manage to balance these two to reach a mature personality (freud, 1950). unlike freud focusing on the psychosexual perspective for ego development, erickson (1963 & 1993) goes beyond freud’s instinctual and psychosexual perspectives, thinking that ego development should include the process of socialization. hence, instead of using the psychosexual perspective, erickson sees personality and ego development from the psychosocial perspective. moreover, erikson's complex social pattern deviates from the freudian matrix of the triad of child, mother, and father. erikson (1963 & 1993) questions the oedipal formulation of the struggle and instead sees a power struggle in the socio-cultural reality of the family. as a basic unit of social structure, the family has played an important role in facilitating adolescent ego development. in addition, erikson (1963 & 1993) believes that personality development unfolds in a series of eight stages, each including two conflicting ideas: trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame/doubt, initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, identity vs. role confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generativity vs. stagnation, and integrity vs. despair. during each stage of psychological development, persons have to resolve these conflicts in order to develop the competencies needed to manage tasks set before them. those who successfully manage the conflicts will achieve positive self-identities, enjoying confidence and self-esteem; however, those failing to manage the conflicts will have negative selfidentities, experiencing low self-esteem, feelings of rejection, and a sense of inferiority (adler, 2013; erikson, 1963 & 1993). according to adler (2013), those who lack parents’ attention would experience inferiority and inadequacy while beginning to interact with the world. hence, to lead a positive identity, proper nurturing and care should be given to children on their way to growing up. those receiving appropriate nurturing and care would have more courage to face tough challenges and tasks (adler, 2013). though erikson's ego development covers the whole human life span, with eight psychosocial stages, he places great emphasis upon the psychosocial task of adolescence: identity vs. confusion (the fifth stage). this stage is essential for adolescents to integrate their conflicts and fears to establish a reciprocal relationship with society in the process of ego identity formation (côté & levine, 2002; erikson, 1963; 1993). during adolescence, teenagers may become confused about their self-identity and self-role. if teenagers have good interactions with their families and broader social networks, they are likely to have a positive mindset when seeking out their self-realization and identity; otherwise, they may lose their way, failing to reach self-realization (erikson, 1963 & 1993). because dealing with conflicts has been a turning point in identity development (gilleard & higgs, 2016; hitlin, brown, & elder, 2006), it is necessary to investigate how teenagers, during adolescence, learn to adapt their behaviors to reconcile themselves to a situation or a circumstance even though it is unpleasant. hence, to realize how teenagers deal with conflicts to seek a positive identity successfully, the present study uses the fictional character harry potter to explore these issues in greater depth, mainly focusing on his early adolescent years—that is, when he is 11-13 years old. the study argues that rowling’s character demonstrates how a person in his early adolescence can, despite difficult circumstances, manage to resolve conflicting ideas and thereby lay foundations for a healthy ego-identity. methodology this study mainly uses erickson’s (1963 and 1993) theory of identity development to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc1540453/#r18 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc1540453/#r18 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc1540453/#r24 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) you-shuan shiong & ya-huei wang 44 engage in a latent-content analysis (babbie, 1995) of harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban, in both its novel and screenplay versions (rowling, 1999; kloves, 2003). rowling’s (1999) narrative centers on thirteen-year-old harry, a wizard surviving his parents’ murder at the hands of lord voldemort, an evil wizard, and his third year at hogwarts, a wizarding and witching school. by examining the hidden or underlying meaning in the novel and film versions of rowling’s story, the study attempts to demonstrate how the confrontation of conflicts may serve as a crucial turning point in harry’s initiation of identity development, and how family love and other social interactions may bring a positive impact on harry’s mental and physical behaviors. using the psychosocial development approach, the study would examine how family love (or the lack thereof), mentorship, and friendship in adolescence impact harry’s mental and physical behaviors, and in that way, influence the development of his identity. results and discussion family love family environment has been a key socializing space where adolescents link a connection to the outside world and social relationships (berzonsky, 2003 & 2004; marcia , 1980). hence, those brought up in a supportive family atmosphere would lead to positive identity development and selfconfidence, resolute, and empathetic. however, those being brought up in a family with no love, attention, or warmth may deter their self-identification process or lead to a negative identity development, as harry in harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban. research has shown that children who receive warmth and affection from their parents have higher self-esteem, better academic achievement, and better communication with parents and others (basak and ghosh, 2008). conversely, those who fail to get affection, attention, or intimacy from their parents are likely to feel more alienated and experience lower self-esteem, in ways that can lead to psychological problems or antisocial behaviors, such as experiencing and acting upon feelings of emotional stress, anxiety, aggression, or hostility (ansbacher and ansbacher, 1956; erikson, 1993). children are attached to and, ideally, have a close connection with parents from birth. hence, initially, during identity development, children will intensely identify with their parents (erikson, 1993). harry’s parents died when he was an infant, and after his parents’ death, harry has no choice but to live with his “muggle” uncle vernon dursley and the dursley family. like other muggles, the dursleys are not born to wizards or witches and have no magic abilities. no one cares about harry in the dursley family, whose members show cruelty toward him. for instance, one rainy day, after harry’s uncle vernon and aunt petunia return home and unceremoniously hand him a wet umbrella, as if he were a servant, vernon is unwilling to sign a permission form for harry’s visit to hogsmeade village. he sneers, “and why should i do that?” (rowling, 1999, p. 13). facing his rude, unyielding uncle, all that harry can do is to choose his words calmly and carefully—in a manner that, by appeasing him, will allow harry to get his way. he affirms that if his uncle signs the form, he’ll “‘act like a mug—like i’m normal and everything’” (p. 14). coincidentally, vernon’s sinister sister, aunt marge, comes for a visit. glaring at harry, she speaks to him in an extremely rude tone. in the screenplay, this scene is rendered as follows: aunt marge: so. still here, are you? harry: yes. aunt marge: don’t say “yes” in that ungrateful tone. damn good of my brother to keep you, if you ask me. it’d have been straight to an orphanage if he’d been dumped on my doorstep. (kloves, 2003, p. 4-5) although he almost bursts out with the remark that it would be better to “live in an orphanage than with the dursleys” (rowling, 1999, p. 16), given what it has been like to live under the dursleys’ roof and eat at their table, all harry can do is try not to lose his temper over aunt marge’s cruel words. nonetheless, having been raised up in a cold, verbally abusive environment, marked by harsh sarcasm and even bullying, and being forced to live in a dark https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/9108#b8 https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/9108#b45 journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 45 cupboard underneath the stairs, harry definitely experiences a sense of inferiority and low self-esteem, not to mention insecurity about his abilities. family rapport and positive communication are positively related to the facilitation of adolescent identity development (arnett, 2000; erikson, 1964, 1968). moreover, those who receive family warmth, companionship, intimacy, and desirable social relationships would positively resolve their psychosocial identity (mallory, 1989). markstrom et al. (1997) also declared that moratorium would negatively impact ego development. while harry lives with the dursley family, aunt marge shows great disdain toward the orphaned harry because she has no blood relationship with him. conversely, she showers attention and affection on her nephew, dudley. she coos over him—“‘is that my dudders! hm? is that my neffy poo? come and say hello to your auntie marge’” (p. 5)—and then gives her nephew a big hug and many kisses. at the same time, vernon again treats harry like a servant, ordering him to take aunt marge’s suitcase upstairs. thus, though dudley and harry live under the same roof, they receive very different treatments. without experiencing attention, affection, or even any warmth in the dursley family, harry cannot reach a successful resolution of psychosocial development (erikson, 1985; markstrom et al. (1997). inevitably, harry's unfair and discriminative treatment causes trauma and leads to a sense of inferiority. sense of inferiority between the ages of six and twelve, children begin to compare themselves with their siblings and peers (erikson, 1993). while drawing these comparisons in such domains as sports, school performance, family love, etc., they may develop a sense of accomplishment. however, children growing up in a negative home environment or school environment may instead develop a sense of inferiority, which can accompany them throughout their lives if they are unable to manage those feelings by coming to terms with what caused them. an orphan, harry has been ill-treated by vernon and petunia, his uncle and aunt. in contrast with his cousin, dudley, who “had spent most of the summer in the kitchen,” with his “piggy little eyes” fixed on a television screen and “his five chins wobbling as he ate continually” (rowling, 1999, p. 11), harry is “rather small and skinny for his age” (p. 4). indeed, after his parents’ death, harry has never experienced love and affection, not even from his uncle and aunt, who devote all their love and affection to their son dudley. thus, all the family photographs show “a large blond boy [i.e., dudley] riding his first bicycle, on a carousel at the fair, playing a computer game with his father, being hugged and kissed by his mother” (p. 19). though he lives with the dursleys, harry has been made invisible in the house from which he feels alienated. moreover, he is subjected to even more humiliation from uncle vernon, who implies that harry is a hopeless kid when he refers to st. brutus school as “a first-rate institution for hopeless cases,” ignoring harry’s hurt frown (p. 16). living under the dursleys’ roof, harry not only has to suffer humiliation at the hands of his aunt and uncle but also deal with sarcastic and offensive words from the family’s relatives. aunt marge is one of the cruelest of these relatives. aunt marge: still. mustn’t blame yourself for how this one’s turned out, vernon. it all comes down to blood. bad blood will out. what is it the boy's father did, petunia? aunt petunia: nothing. that is... he didn’t work. he was--unemployed. aunt marge: of course. and a drunk, i expect— (kloves, 2003, p. 6) without caring about harry’s feelings, and even though harry tries to defend his dead father against her harsh criticism, aunt marge continues to berate harry. her next target is harry’s mother. harry has managed to keep himself in check up to this point, but her insulting remarks about his mother are too much for him. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) you-shuan shiong & ya-huei wang 46 aunt marge: quiet, vernon. it doesn’t matter about the father. in the end it comes down to the mother. you see it all the time with dogs. if there’s something wrong with the bitch, there'll be something wrong with the pup.... (kloves, 2003, p. 6) in a fit of rage, harry, exercising his power as a wizard, pours his anger into aunt marge’s body, causing it to fill with gas. as a result, she begins to inflate “like a monstrous balloon,” flying out of the door and floating away into the sky (rowling, 1999, p. 20). according to erikson (1963 and 1993), persons raised as children in an unwelcoming atmosphere, lacking family love, warmth, and intimate connections, are likely to develop a negative or pessimistic mental attitude. not experiencing love or affection, and enduring constant humiliation, harry considers himself to be inferior to his cousin dudley; he has also remained aloof from others and uninterested in social activities. harry’s aggressive behaviors may correspond to those described in adler’s study of how children’s aggressive and antisocial behaviors can be stimulated by a sense of inferiority (ansbacher and ansbacher, 1956). for adler, experiences of being rejected and humiliated may cause children to compensate by becoming aggressive, as a way of protecting themselves from being hurt. having been marginalized and mistreated in the dursleys’ house, harry cannot maintain a healthy and secure attachment with them; this situation leads to an identity crisis for harry, thereby increasing the risk of emotional and behavioral problems (provenzano and richard, 2006). while adolescents work through the stages of identity development to reach selfrealization, it is important to have parents accompany them through the stages, to let them know what love, or affection, is. unfortunately, if the adolescents experience violence, humiliation, or mistreatment, they may attempt to escape the recurrent painful experiences and hence choose to run away from home (schaffner, 1999). a house without love and care makes harry feel unhappy and insecure. after taking action against aunt marge because of her humiliating criticisms of his parents, harry feels that he no longer belongs to the family or their house. running out of the house, he remarks to uncle vernon: “anywhere’s better than here” (rowling, 1999, p. 20). at this point, he decides that having nowhere to go is better than staying in a place where he is not loved or wanted. with no parents with him, harry has difficulties enjoying family warmth and intimacy (ree, 2011). moreover, being verbally and even physically abused and humiliated, harry finally chooses to run away from the dursleys’ house as a last resort to escape from being orally and physically abused. adolescence and self-realization adolescence refers to the transitional stage between childhood and adulthood between ages thirteen and nineteen. in harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban (1999), harry is a thirteen-year-old boy and is thus in early adolescence. adolescents like harry want to know who they are and what potentials they may have. otherwise, using erikson’s terms again may fail to achieve self-identity and instead experience an identity crisis (erikson, 1968 and 1994). to navigate this stage, teenagers have to develop their logical thinking to realize who they are and where their abilities lie. moreover, to resolve any potential identity crisis, they have to establish their own identities apart from their parents and make sound choices for their future. it is known that adolescents’ social milieu, involving the families, the peers, and the societies where they live or whom they interact with, plays a crucial role in their identity formation and self-realization (fang, 2019). self-realization here refers to the process of adolescents’ realization of their full potential and how they are conceptualized with reference to the outside world to reach social cohesion (jung, 2016; rusu, 2019). being totally neglected by the dursleys, and growing up without being loved, harry falls into an isolated and insecure situation, which is unfavorable to his attempts to initiate his identity development and reach his selfrealization. furthermore, even though he is curious about his parents, harry has been forbidden to ask about them under the dursleys’ roof: “don’t ask questions—that was journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 47 the first rule for a quiet life with the dursleys” (rowling, 1997, p. 20). all harry knows about his parents is that they lost their lives in a car crash. however, in exploring their selfidentity, persons in early adolescence, like harry, should have opportunities to learn from their parents before then going on to establish independent ego identities. without any connection with his parents or his past, harry struggles with issues of self-identification and self-realization. when he reaches his eleventh birthday, harry finally learns about his identity as a wizard and discovers that his parents, while attempting to protect him, were killed by voldemort, an evil wizard. having made these discoveries about his parents and his past, in order to complete the process of identity development, harry must strike out on his own. with the assistance of hagrid, harry is invited to hogwarts school, and there he initiates his identity development, a journey to discover his potential and to know who he is. according to erikson, social interaction and relationships play a crucial role in individuals’ psychological development; indeed, for erikson, peers are the most important agent in resolving identity crises, and in helping manage the difficulties persons encounter as they go through the process of self-identification and selfrealization (erikson, 1994). learning about his family history enables harry to leave the dursleys’ house and transition to the hogwarts school to initiate his identity development. at hogwarts, harry makes many friends, who provide him with the unconditional love he needs to regain his self-confidence and further realize his potential. love as a form of positive social interaction needed for identity development family, especially parents, play an important role to adolescents’ identity development (trost, et al., 2020). parental support and positive parenting styles will positively impact their identity development (chang, et al., 2004). moreover, if children experience support from peer groups, they will have a strong sense of belonging to a community; such belonging affords security and enables them to prepare for their future (erikson, 1994; marcia, 1980). although harry has no experience of family love after his parent’s death, with hagrid’s help he goes to hogwarts to see the outside world, participating on sports teams, acquire knowledge and skills, and making friends. through these social interactions and activities, he learns to get along with peers, teachers, and others, in ways that are beneficial for his identity development. the formation of these friendships at the onset of adolescence significantly helps harry know about himself and build self-identity. receiving love from his peers and his teachers, he feels secure and hence can manage the conflicts involving role-confusion, among other challenges, that he will go on to confront. while harry is running away from the dursleys’ house, harry’s friend ron weasley wishes him a happy birthday, as if to say that harry’s real birth coincides with his departure from the house. ron proves to be a great help in facilitating harry’s identity development. when harry finds himself in difficult situations, ron seeks to cheer him up and helpful advice. moreover, just as harry’s mother was willing to sacrifice her life for her son, ron is ready to sacrifice himself for his and harry’s friendship. thus, while ron, harry, and hermione are searching for the philosopher’s stone, so as not to let the stone fall into evil hands, ron, who is good at chess, knows that the only way to enable harry and hermione to keep going is to sacrifice himself, by letting the white queen take him and destroy him. with harry and hermione shouting “no!” ron insists on performing this selfless act, saying, “that’s chess!. . you’ve got to make some sacrifices!” (rowling, 1997, p. 205). like harry’s parents, ron has a great capacity for love and is ready to sacrifice himself for harry’s sake when necessary. in stark contrast to the dursleys, not only ron weasley but also the entire weasley family welcomes harry, giving him a chance to experience family love for the first time since his parents’ death (khan, 2016). they also provide harry with a refuge, small but cozy; again, the love and warmth he receives from the weasleys contrast sharply with the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) you-shuan shiong & ya-huei wang 48 dursleys’ cold house. in addition, at hogwarts, harry enjoys the love and support of ron and hermione, his best friends, while dumbledore, the headmaster of the hogwarts wizarding school, and professor lupin serve as father figures. the loving, supportive environment provided by his peers and teachers affords positive social interactions that facilitate harry’s identity development and ensure that he has the freedom to make good choices for the future. hence, at hogwarts, harry experiences love and happiness, which allow him to confront and overcome his identity crisis. these positive social interactions also help harry become compassionate and kind to the people around him and learn what sacrificial love is. discrimination as a form of negative social interaction that hinders identity development although harry has good friends and positive mentors at hogwarts, there are also antagonists at the school. many of them demonstrate the kinds of bias associated with racial or class discrimination. harry has to overcome these antagonists to reach the integrity of self-afforded by a strong egoidentity. racial and class discrimination involves a set social ideology based on prejudice. according to this prejudice, certain ethnic groups or socioeconomic classes are inherently superior to others, leading the members of favored groups to look down on and mistreat the members of other, disfavored groups (stangor, 2009; zarate, 2009). as tyson (2011) indicates, those sharing the cultural values of the groups that are deemed superior tend to view groups with different cultural values as others—that is, as strange, subordinate, or inferior. in the present context, the prejudice at issue mainly involves blood composition and turns on questions of whether a person has a pure wizard blood lineage, in contrast with half-bloods, muggleborns, and muggles. harry is subjected to what amounts to racial discrimination while he stays with the dursleys, who are all muggles. uncle vernon disparages harry’s wizard origins, saying to his sister that “these people’s minds work in strange ways, petunia, they’re not like you and me” (rowling, 1997, p. 42). being muggles, the dursleys express intolerance toward wizards and witches, whom they call “freaks”; they are therefore ashamed to have a wizard in the family. for this reason, although he knows about harry’s wizard origins and his parents’ being murdered, uncle vernon keeps these facts from harry. even after harry enters hogwarts, the dursleys try to lock up his schoolbooks, to prevent him from studying magic during the summer. while being subjected to racial discrimination at the dursleys’ house, harry, like best friends ron and hermione, also encounter prejudice at hogwarts. lucius malfoy and his son, draco, consider their pure wizard blood superior to muggle blood; hence they look down on ron’s father, a wizard who nonetheless associates with muggles. the malfoy family takes pride in their “pure” blood lineage, thinking their origins make them superior to the witches and wizards who are muggles or half-bloods. at one point, when harry unexpectedly encounters the malfoys on the way to a bookstore, lucius starts insulting hermione because she is a muggle-born, a child of two non-magical parents. it is thus all the more ironic that hermione turns out to be, at hogwarts, “the cleverest witch of her age” (rowling, 1999, p. 255). yet draco, feeling that his blood purity makes him superior to hermione, humiliates her in front of others, saying: “no one asked your opinion, you filthy little mud-blood! filthy little mudblood” (rowling, 1998, p. 112). this discriminatory attitude promotes hatred and hostility, which are antithetical to healthy identity development. along the same lines, whereas harry accepts his half-blood parentage, voldemort, the evil wizard, is unwilling to embrace his own half-blood lineage. having been abandoned by his parents, voldemort retains a feeling of hatred toward them; furthermore, because of the shame he feels when he learns that his father was not a wizard, he changes his name to tom riddle to hide his origin. not being able to face his past or family journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 49 background, voldemort is unsuccessful in his own attempts to establish an identity apart from his parents; instead, he adopts a kind of counter-identity to prevent any connection with his parents. in contrast to voldemort, harry is proud of his own half-blood parentage, willing to accept that his father was a pure-blood wizard while his mother was a muggle. how a positive mindset can help conquer fear and discrimination erikson (1994) describes adolescence as a transitional period filling the gap between childhood and adulthood. if adolescents have enjoyed a sense of security during childhood, they will be better positioned to develop a strong sense of ego-identity, leading to autonomy in adulthood. in other words, those with a strong ego identity can successfully manage fear, pressure, and anxiety and establish a positive mindset through their values, attitudes, and actions. in turn, with this mindset, persons develop a stronger adversity quotient, the form of intelligence needed to face difficulties and obstacles and overcome them (stoltz, 1996). adolescents who receive encouragement in seeking for identity develop a secure egoidentity and a strong sense of independence and self-control. however, suppose they do not receive encouragement during the process of identity exploration. in that case, adolescents may remain unsure about who they are, and feel insecure and confused about themselves well as their future (erikson, 1994 marcia, 1980). with no parents, harry finds the process of identity exploration difficult in his early adolescent years, raising the possibility that he may experience an identity crisis. the death of his parents prevents harry from experiencing parental love and thereby gaining a sense of security. moreover, the abuse he receives from his aunt and uncle presents harry with further difficulties as he tries to move through the psychosocial stages of personality development. fortunately, after entering hogwarts, with the help of supportive friends and teachers, harry is finally in a position to start resolving the conflicts in his adolescence, and to learn to love and trust others. when he is being humiliated and silenced by the dursleys, harry experiences shame, a sense of inferiority, and self-doubt about himself; but ultimately he is able to face the reality of his parents’ murder, and to use a positive mindset to overcome fear and trauma and move toward the future. with a positive mindset and high adversity quotient helping him establish a strong ego-identity, harry successfully navigates the conflicts, struggles, and crises that arise in the psychosocial stages through which he passes. because of his status as a “half-blood,” harry has faced prejudice and discrimination from the dursley family and later the malfoys; discrimination of this sort can cause a sense of inferiority if a person lacks the strong egoidentity needed to overcome it. moreover, harry’s fear of voldemort and of dementors, and the trauma of knowing that his parents were murdered for his sake, represent severe threats to his attempt to establish a healthyego identity. it is fortunate that at hogwarts harry has friends and teachers who help him learn how to conquer his inner fear. the great secret of overcoming fear is choosing a positive mindset and thereby changing one’s mental attitude. byrne emphasizes the importance of thinking about what we want and instilling our ideas with as much positive emotion as possible. she claims that this combination of thought and feeling helps people achieve their desires (byrne, 2006). byrne’s account of how thoughts become things emphasizes the power of thought. it suggests that all problems can be solved through positive thinking and faith. insofar as holding on to happy memories helps foster a positive mindset, thoughts informed by positive memories will bring positive consequences, further affecting a person’s body and mind. hence harry uses a positive mindset to confront the shape-shifting boggarts, viewing the creatures as funny shapes that he can laugh at. by using the word “ridiculous” in referring to them, harry can easily repel the boggarts. in addition, while confronting dementors, harry uses an incantation taught him by his patronus, or magical guardian. as his patronus journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) you-shuan shiong & ya-huei wang 50 tells him, the incantation “‘will work only if you are concentrating, with all your might, on a single, very happy memory’” (rowling, 1999, p. 172). here, whereas a dementor is a kind of visualized fear, a patronus symbolizes a positive mindset that people can choose, in part by using a happy memory to let “thoughts become things.” indeed, the only way to defeat a dementor, a fear, is to conjure a patronus— that is, to use a positive mindset to overcome the fear. as lupin tells harry, “‘the patronus is a kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that the dementor feeds upon—hope, happiness, the desire to survive–but it cannot feel despair, as real humans can, so the dementors can’t hurt it’” (p. 171). thus, while confronting dementors, harry turns the trauma of his beloved parents’ death into knowledge about sacrificial love, which assumes the form of a happy memory. with this happy memory supporting his positive mindset, harry can finally defeat his enemies, the dementors, and overcome the trauma of losing his parents. conquering fear through love among all the positive emotions, love is the one that has the most powerful magic when it comes to conquering fear. just as harry’s parents’ love for their son gave them the power to conquer their fear of death, so the love harry has for his parents and for sirius empowers him to have a positive mindset, which in turn enables him to conjure a patronus in order to defeat more than onehundred dementors. through feeling loved, harry can develop a healthy ego-identity, and by experiencing love, he knows how to love others, and gains the confidence to fight through adversity on their (as well as his own) behalf. the scar on harry’s forehead symbolizes sacrificial love, by virtue of which harry becomes strong enough to survive abuse from the dursleys and to overcome a potential identity crisis. in actuality, it is not the scar on harry’s forehead that repels voldemort; it is, rather, the power of sacrificial love that it symbolizes. this willingness to give one’s life for someone else explains why voldemort, who does not know what love is, fails to touch harry. as dumbledore says to harry: “your mother died to save you...to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. it is in your very skin. quirrell, full of hatred, greed and ambition, sharing his soul with voldemort, could not touch you for this reason. it was agony to touch a person marked by something so good.” (rowling, 1997, p. 216) in short, with love from his parents, peers, and teachers to support him, harry is able to develop a stronger mental attitude and higher adversity quotient as he works to resolve conflicts and crises in the process of selfexploration, resulting in a positive egoidentity. in contrast to voldemort’s lack of empathy and morality, and his inability to love, harry prevents lupin and sirius from taking revenge on pettigrew for murdering harry’s parents. not killing pettigrew does not mean that harry forgives him for murdering his parents; rather, as harry says, “‘i’m doing it because—i don’t reckon my dad would’ve wanted them to become killers — just for you’” (rowling, 1999, p. 271). as strimel (2004) notes, harry’s moral sense and empathy will not allow anyone to kill anyone else, since by killing, even for revenge, lupin and sirius themselves become murderers. conclusion for reasons illuminated by erikson’s psychological model, harry could have become another voldemort, if he grew up to become a person lacking qualities and abilities such as empathy, logical thinking, and compassion— qualities and abilities associated with a strong ego-identity. although he lost his parents when he was an infant and was humiliated by the dursleys in his childhood, harry finds encouragement with the help of his parents’ sacrificial love for him and the love and support he receives from his peers and teachers while searching for his identity. moreover, attending hogwarts school allows harry to leave a negative environment and strike out on his own to discover the world and initiate his journey toward developing an identity. harry manages to use a positive mindset to turn the trauma of his parent’s journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 51 death into sacrificial love, and this happy memory, in turn, empowers him to face the future. moreover, by accepting reality and establishing an identity apart from his parents, harry can overcome trauma and achieve autonomy, finally establishing a strong, secure ego-identity. references adler, a. 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(2009). racism in the 21st century. in handbook of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination, edited by todd nelson, pp. 387-406. new york: taylor & francis. https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2019.108071 https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2019.108071 https://doi.org/10.1177/0272431619833479 208 vol. 22 no. 1, april 2022, pp. 208-219 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i1.4021 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. revisiting feminist strategies in poetry: gender, genre, and power relation sri mulyani srimulyani@usd.ac.id english letters department, universitas sanata dharma, indonesia abstract article information the patriarchal gender division of private-public dichotomy assigned to particular gender for different roles and sphere is generally viewed as an “ancient” practice in the west. however, this “ancient” gender conception that can be traced from its greco-roman and judeo-christian roots can frequently be pertinently visible in modern western world as exemplified in the notion of “woman’s place” and; it becomes the dominant gender discourse. consequently, this discourse continually creates hierarchical and unequal power relation that marginalizes women in accessing education and their full participation in public spheres. this limited accessibility to education (including language and literacy) also shapes the roles and status of women as writers in western critical and literary tradition. writing as a profession is traditionally men’s domain; therefore, the production and contribution of women writers have less privilege and space in the western canon. women writers from time to time have to struggle to reclaim their rights and place in it. this research attempts to re-examine how this (re)production of the binary opposition of private-public sphere operates in language and literature of the western critical literary tradition by scrutinizing the selected poems by the selected women writers in this research. furthermore, this research also studies and locates how women writers employ particular strategies in gendering and degendering their writings as both aesthetic and ideological expressions. in conclusion, this research argues that women writings are not “deficient” and “inferior” to their male counterpart; and instead their status and difference as writers are the result of patriarchal dominance and power relation that historically have subordinated and denied them equal public access to education, language, literacy, and literary production. keywords: private-public spheres; poetry; women writers; ideologies received: 27 december 2021 revised: 3 february 2022 accepted: 12 february 2022 https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 209 introduction: gender and the (re)production of private-public spheres “ain’t i a woman?” (sojourner truth) many scholars of the “western” worlds have formulated and defined “woman’s place” and located its position in society all the way from the greeks of the period of antiquity to the feminists of today. under the greek perspective, woman is only valued for her reproductive and domestic function to produce and rear future citizens of the state; thus, she is placed at the home as the nurturer of her children in the family and in charge of domesticities. it is indeed a very important role yet deemed as “inferior” sphere. recall that plato banned “family” from his ideal society in the republic as he deemed it dangerous for the unity of his ideal city, although in the laws, he argued that “family” was a necessary unit for his second-best city. on the other hand, aristotle did not reject “family” altogether in politics; however, he privileged the polis, the public (political) sphere, over the oikos (household)—the private (nonpolitical) sphere—which he considered an inferior institution because it had “less capacities for reason and goodness” (elshtain, 1982, p. 65). the western traditional notion of “family” and the “woman’s place” as a polarity of publicprivate spheres, political-nonpolitical domains, natural-cultural aspects, biologicalsocial aspects, still generally dominates cultural and philosophical traditions and gender discourse. however, this domination has faced various challenges such as seen in the development of feminist thoughts that aims to rediscover, redefine, rethink, reconstruct, and redo gender construction, theories, approaches, and practices. one of the key modern scholars in challenging this sexist notion is the french feminist, simone de beauvoir. but first we must ask: what is a woman? ‘tota mulier in utero,’ says one, ‘woman is a womb.’ but in speaking of certain women, connoisseurs declare that they are not women, although they are equipped with a uterus like the rest. all agree in recognizing the fact that females exist in the human species, today as always they make up about one-half of humanity. and yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. it would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened really known as femininity. is this attribute something secreted by the ovaries? or is it a platonic essence, a product of the philosophical imagination? is a rustling petticoat enough to bring down to earth? although some women try zealously to incarnate this essence, it is hardly patentable (de beauvoir, 1956, p. 13). critically de beauvoir questioned as human beings, women and men were constructed differently by the society that marginalized women. she also challenged such sexist patriarchal gender perspective and uncovered the weak ground of its conception. although this traditional gender construct is weak and groundless, it is still forcefully implemented to relegate women to their private sphere and limit their participation in the public sphere. the subordination of women in their private sphere is closely tied to their genderspecific roles and their feminine ‘qualities’ as a woman and her respective duties as daughter, wife, and mother that also limits their access to public privileges such as education and literacy. the early humanists such as louise vives and thomas moore argued for the importance of female education, but even they confined women to their private roles. louise vives, author of the influencing treatise instruction of a christian woman articulated it clearly that the goals of all instructions for a woman were “to make her a virtuous and wise wife, not a competitor in her husband’s public world” (krontiris, 1997, p. 6). only selected number of women from wealthy families could enjoy the privilege to be educated; however, their education would still have to be conducted inside their private sphere. they were home-tutored and the language of their instructions was vernacular language, not latin or greek that were considered to be journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` sri mulyani 210 “superior” language for the education of the “superior” mind and gender, their male counterpart. one of the intelligent women educated at home under the supervision of her brother, father, and husband was thomas moore’s daughter. she was also well versed in writing but had to obey her father’s rule (the so-called ‘the most liberal early humanist’) for not publishing her works for public readership. content with the profit and the pleasure of your conscience, in your modesty do not seek for the praise of the public, nor value it overmuch even if you receive it, but because of the great love you bear us, you regard us – your husband and myself – as a sufficiently large circle of readers for all that you write (krontiris, 199, p. 6). her father’s disapproval limits her talent as a writer to be only designated for private readership in her own circle of family for writing was not a respectable profession for women of respectable families. writing in private sphere became the early channel for women to express themselves. many of these writings were in the form of epistolary and confessional genre such as letters, diaries, autobiographies, and memoirs. when both groups of gender wrote these epistolary and confessional genres, their writings were already targeted for specific readership: private circle for women writers and public consumption for the men. moreover, one would be seen as inferior to the other that affirmed the superiority of men in writing profession. therefore, it is evidently clear that the absence and underrepresentation of women writers in the western literary scene are the results of this unequal power relation as a consequence of the private-public divide that is historically gender-specific. from the aforementioned discussion, it is clearly seen that the division of the private and public sphere also dictates literary production in its relation to gender. therefore, literature is not about aesthetic only but also political and ideological. moreover, even the basic strategy of writing and the way to narrate the story itself is already ideological as expressed by susan lanser in “toward a feminist narratology” (1986). accordingly, literature can become the arena of power struggles in its relation to diverse social categories including race, ethnicity, class, gender, age group, and many more. in western literary tradition, women writers had attempted to appropriate, negotiate, and even challenge the patriarchal discourse and its literary divide of private and public sphere. in the early production of novel as a literary genre in the 18th and 19th century, many women writers employed the epistolary aspects such as the key role of letters in building their aesthetic unity as well as the political and writing strategy to assert their roles and their female characters’ voice in the public sphere without violating their “proper sphere.” such attempts can extensively be seen in the works of jane austen and the bronte sisters. in the 20th and 21st century, many women writers also employ and (re)produce this public and private divide in their writings for many different reasons. one of the reasons is to trace their literary heritage and to pay homage to their female predecessor in their struggle to pave the way to gain both aesthetic and political access in literature. the other reason in (re)producing this privatepublic divide is also to challenge the (re)production of this ancient gender divide in many different aspects of our modern lives. finally, this (re)production of the private and public divide from both sides (patriarchal discourse and women writer) in literature and literary production exemplifies how literature can serve as both the vehicle of domination and liberation. thus, literature still becomes the site of ongoing power struggles to embody the embedded connection of aesthetics and ideology. in this context, therefore, feminist literary criticism is very crucial to be applied because it is both a political and literary revolution that struggles to fight the marginalization of women in society and to gain equal rights in both private and public domains. research questions 1. how does the (re)production of the gender separation of private-public spheres operate in language and journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 211 literature of the western critical literary tradition as seen in the selected poems by anglo-american women writers? 2. what are particular strategies employed by women writers in gendering and degendering their writings and how do they structure those strategies as both aesthetic and ideological expressions to challenge the patriarchal dominance as seen in the selected poems by angloamerican women writers? methodology this research is conducted through a thorough library study by employing extensive close reading to critically scrutinize both primary and secondary data. the approach applied in this research is feminist literary criticism by combining several relevant feminist perspectives. it addresses various diverse concerns of gender issues and women problems and marginalization; therefore, the selected approach(es) are plural and not singular. accordingly, the selected approaches and perspectives are not only catered to literary and aesthetic aspects but also with conscious ideological and social orientations. by doing so, those selected relevant approaches and perspectives help the researcher critically analyze the engendered power imbalances and to focus on the absence of women from the dominant discourse as well as to highlight meaningful opportunities and spaces opened by the possible existence of women’s discourse(s). results and discussion patriarchal gender construction of private-public dichotomy in the 1970s and 1980s, feminists developed the term ‘patriarchy’ to refer to the systematic nature of men’s power (schaum & flanagan, 1998, p.1). moreover, patriarchy has also been defined as “a set of social relations between men, which have a material base, and which through hierarchical, establish or create interdependence and solidarity among men that enable them to dominate women” (hartmann, 1981, p. 14-15). one of the patriarchal systematic strategies to maintain the privilege of men and the subordination of women is by creating private-public binary opposition that divides the world “into masculine and feminine spheres, and justifying this on the grounds of (natural) sex difference.” it is indeed “an ancient strategy of the male oppressor “(cameron, 1990, p. 11). this dichotomy of gender sphere is hierarchical and always for male privilege. the gender division of labour and sphere has evolved from time to time. however, whenever women are allowed to participate in public sphere such as in the labour market and become the breadwinner for their family; they are still expected to perform their domestic functions at home in their private sphere. meanwhile, the society would not expect men to fulfill both roles in their case. although today’s life experience has shown that technologies both early and modern have been able to complicate, blur, and merge the private-public divide and provide fluidity to shift from one sphere to the other simultaneously, but the dichotomy is still constantly (re)produced from time to time in relation to the gender-specific domain. the early one is exemplified in the case of photography (and later by the video) that enables the creation of family photo album to display the family private sphere to the public consumption where women generally are in charge of family’s archives. family photography, the family album and home video are powerful ways in which these rituals are captured and framed so as to offer families an audience, a kind of private/public gaze that surveys and monitors the parameters and success of the performance (chambers, 2001, p. 29). meanwhile, the recent one is the social media phenomenon that provides people of different walks of life and genders to publicly display their private lives on the internet; and gender is still crucial in differentiating this private-public display contexts. private-public divide in relation to gender and genre the gender separation of private-public sphere does not only result in the different journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` sri mulyani 212 gender roles and functions but also dictates what and how women and men may participate in education, literacy and linguistic access, writing profession and literary scene. latin had become a male, public language, which existed only within the academic institutions. women could only learn vernaculars and for centuries were denied access to the world of formal, public communication (including literature). as ong notes, until the nineteenth century learning latin meant entrance into the male educated elite. latin had become a ‘sex-linked language, a kind of badge of masculine identity (cameron, 1990, p. 42). consequently, women also received their literacy and knowledge through vernacular education. accordingly, literary genres commonly associated with women (the novel in particular) were those that took root from the production of private vernacular writing (letters/diaries) and had little or nothing from classical sources and models. therefore, “genre is a socio-historical as well as a formal entity. transformations in genre must be considered in relation to social changes” (todorov, 1984, p. 80). the limited space and genre for women to write, however, did not prevent them to produce writings that became the vehicle to articulate their voice and life stories and histories such as expressed by woolf in her tribute to dorothy osborne. had she been born in 1827, dorothy osborne would have written novels; had she been born in 1527, she would never have written at all. but she was born in 1627, and at that date though writing books was ridiculous for a woman there was nothing unseemingly in writing a letter. and so by degrees the silence is broken … (virginia woolf). letter writing would also contribute to the development of novel in the west and the early form of novel is epistolary novel. when women were finally allowed to participate in novel writing (although firstly many would have to use male pseudo-name for public approval), the epistolary aspect was still maintained as seen in the novels of jane austen and other english women writers of her time. women as writers to produce public texts indeed had just started quite late and had to endure hierarchical and discriminatory reception and acclaim. (in) the gender inscriptions in the mass culture debate … woman is positioned as a reader of inferior literature — subjective, emotional and passive —while man … emerges as a writer of genuine, authentic literature —objective, ironic, and in control of his aesthetic means (huyssen, 1986, p. 46). women were formerly known as the consumers of the so-called “less-valued” literary products. novel as a genre provides women with the necessary tool and space to voice their stories and life experience in their domestic sphere and marginalization. their silence was finally publicly broken. gender and poetry in literary tradition, the perspectives of “gender” and “genderless” are applied not equally. christiane rochefort, for example, laments the view how “man’s book is a book. a woman’s book is a woman’s book” (1981, p. 183). this unequal concept of gender and writing production is also apparent in the conception of genre. in its tradition and conception, literary genre is not genderless. to illustrate, in japanese literary history, during the heian period in japan (794-1185), poetry writing was men’s prerogative; this exclusive literary genre privilege was also conducted in chinese language, the official language of religion and government at the time. meanwhile, in the tenth century, vernacular prose, particularly literary diaries, belonged to women to the extent that the leading male poet of the day, ki no tsurayuki, pretended to be a woman in order to write a literary diary in japanese—reversal of the george eliot phenomenon in english literary tradition (wurzbach, 1969; gilbert & gubar, 1979). in 16th century england, dramatists and poets were men and elizabethan literature was undoubtedly exclusively also masculine, while women were portrayed as silent and journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 213 uneducated as imagined by woolf in her search for shakespeare’s literary sisters. poetry as one of the traditional genre trinity in western literary tradition is also clearly gendered. there were women like sappho and her fellow women who were dedicated to writing poetry on a greek island 600 years before the birth of christ, but their works and existence were silenced for a long period. poetic tradition becomes the arena of political and intellectual struggle where woman poets’ marginal status and the exclusion of women poets from the canon of tradition can clearly be seen. even until recently in the 20th century, the conception that ‘the poet is male’ still dominates the literary discourse. poetry is still viewed as a privileged metalanguage in western patriarchal culture; and women are traditionally denied this privilege because patriarchal discourse views women are not intellectually capable of producing this “most concentrated form of symbolic language – poetry” (kaplan, 1990, p. 68). interestingly, in terms of literary genre production and reproduction, w. h. auden views it in gender and sex relation: the poet is the father who begets the poem which the language bears. at first sight this would seem to give the poet too little to do and the language too much, till one remembers that, as the husband, it is he, not the language, who is responsible for the success of their marriage… (in cameron, 1990, p. 15). in auden’s perspective, it is clearly seen that the man/male becomes the key agent in the re/production of poetry; and the woman/female is merely a passive vessel. today, people regardless of gender and sexual orientation, social class and ethnic groups produce poems; their poetry writing may also articulate their lives and experience as members of the marginalized and oppressed groups. rich as a feminist writer and scholar also sees the crucial role of poetry in representing the voice of women and their life experiences: “poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relation to everything in the universe … think of the deprivation of women living for centuries without a poetry that spoke of women together, of women alone, of women as anything but the fantasies of men”. various women from various backgrounds write poems about the right to speak and write to articulate their voices. thus, in rich’s view “the desire to write imaginative poetry was and is a demand for access to parity within the law and mythmaking groups in society.” the poems selected as the object of the study in this research also display how poetry and poetry writing become the strategies of storytelling, transcending gender towards a woman’s tradition (and herstories). revisiting feminist strategies in the selected poem by the anglo-american women writers this part addresses the research focus on how the selected poems by anglo-american women writers in this research become the voices that articulate and represent the lives of women who are traditionally marginalized by the patriarchal societies and also only become the object of the gaze and fantasies of male writers in the past. the selected poems are kristine batey’s “lot’s wife,” edna st. vincent millay’s “an ancient gesture,” dorothy parker’s “penelope”,” and æmilia lanyer’s “eve’s apology in defense of women.” all the poems articulate the lives of women in patriarchal societies. these poems articulate the feminist strategies to talk back and write back to challenge the patriarchal discourse on gender and writing to rewrite history through herstories and not as traditionally conveyed as men’s fantasies in male literary tradition. kristine batey might be a lesser known american poet, but her poem “lot’s wife” articulates a very powerful statement about the private life of a biblical figure who is publicly known as lot’s wife who disobeyed god’s command and at the end turned into a pillar of salt. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` sri mulyani 214 the poem is written in free verse form without any regular rhyme and rhythm and takes her public name as the title of the poem. batey’s poem can be viewed as a revisiting, rewriting, and talking back strategy to challenge the traditional portrayal of this biblical woman as the disobedient and materialistic wife. the title of the poem and the way this biblical woman is known already suggests a patriarchal notion of naming and identities. she is unnamed and simply known as the wife of lot; therefore, her identity is attached to her marital status and her husband’s name. the first early lines of the poem already display the binary opposition of public-private spheres. lot, the husband occupies the public domain representing the nation: “while lot, the conscience of a nation, struggles with the lord, she struggles with the housework.” meanwhile, the wife is assigned into the private sphere performing domesticity. her gender roles are not only doing all the domestic chores but also performing her feminine stereotypical duties as the nurtures to take care of her children. despite this public-private domain divide, the poem interestingly employs similar diction to the roles that both husband and wife perform “struggles;” thus, the text assigns equal status on both tasks and dismisses the notion of superior and inferior rank for both the doers and their tasks. therefore, although the wife is explicitly placed in the domestic domain, the diction “struggles” attempts to prevent the woman/wife from being relegated to a secondary role. this “feminist” diction clearly bears linguistic and ideological strategies to challenge the patriarchal discourse on gender and power relation. traditionally, patriarchal discourse linguistically and ideologically privileges man’s public domain and status and in turn, demeans woman’s private domain and domestic duties as inferior rank and unimportant chores. in addition to the feminist strategy of designating equal status of both public and private domain in relation to gender and power interplay, there is also another feminist strategy in reversing the stereotypical activepassive binary opposition. lot represents “the conscience” that is related to inner feeling and inward activities and more physically passive; such trait is usually stereotypically attached to women. meanwhile, lot’s wife is more physically active performing all her domestic chores and nurturing duties. when her husband told her about god’s judgment to destroy their city, her reaction is not the stereotypical hysteric woman; instead, she “calmly begins to pack.” other stereotypical feminine traits of women (such as tears, gentleness, and nurturing qualities) are also employed but more of positive undertones to portray her empathy and love toward her children and neighbors and even the animals that she has lovingly tended all their life. other feminine images are also employed to portray her solidarity to the female bond (“she smiles blindly to the woman who held her hand at childbed”) and human bond (“on the breast of the hill, she chooses to be human, and turns, in farewell--and never regrets the sacrifice”) she emphatically has for others. the image of two women holding each other at childbed represents a strong female bond in facing the female reproductive role and process (childbearing) together and to support one another. she remembers the kindness of her fellow female neighbor and thinks about her neighbor’s safety and welfare. beside childbearing, “breast” is also another female and feminine image to portray the nurturing, loving, and empathetic traits that she has for humankind; she chooses to be human and to be one of them and among them. instead of viewing her end as a pillar of salt as a punishment, the text refers to it as “sacrifice” for her fellow humankind. by intimately portraying the day-to-day experience of lot’s wife, the poem at the same time also gives her a voice to articulate her mind and her heart. through her stories, she is no longer muted and silenced woman who is judged as a disobedient and materialistic woman in the biblical stories that deserves severe punishment and forever will only be remembered for her worldly desire and archetypal pillar of salt; instead, her side of the stories is highlighted and her being human is emphasized and not simply as just lot’s wife. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 215 in this manner, language and literature (poetry) in this case becomes the site to challenge the patriarchal gender discourse both aesthetically and ideologically. this discussion of archetypal biblical female figures is also continued in the next analysis of lanyer’s “eve’s apology in defense of women”. similar to batey’s “lot’s wife,” aemilia lanyer’ “eve’s apology in defense of women” also takes an archetypal biblical female figure as a strategy of revisiting and writing back to give voice to eve who is traditionally portrayed as a femme fatale who tempts her partner into a sinful act that eventually brings “everlasting fall” to humankind. lanyer is one of the first english women who wrote poetry during the elizabethan renaissance period. her work and reputation in predominantly male and masculine literary circle are indeed very striking and she is often considered as one of the earliest english feminists because her work also expresses women’s lives in the domineering patriarchal society. lanyer’s sympathetic portrayal of eve is also often compared and contrasted to milton’s depiction of eve as a cunning woman in his poetry volume paradise lost. although lanyer’s work was actually published first when milton just started his volume in 1667, it is evidently clear that the traditional patriarchal stereotype of eve is more widely known and accepted in both literary and cultural contexts because it is sprung from more established religious powerful discourse. her selected work in this research is a part of a single poetry volume entitled salve deus rex judaeorum or hail god king of the jews published in 1611. this volume begins with some minor poems written and dedicated to some famous and influential women in lanyer’s life and “eve’s apology in defense of women” is one of them. this poem is written in regular stanza of six, eight, and twelve lines with the regular “ab” end rhyme. the striking contrast between lanyer’s portrayal of eve and the traditional patriarchal portrayal of eve as a “cunning seductress who is also stupid and vain” (such as in milton’s paradise lost) is clearly seen in addressing eve as “our mother eve” tenderly. the female bond is clearly seen in the diction “our mother” in claiming eve as mother figure for womenkind. not only depicted as a foremother of women, but eve is also portrayed as possessing good and kindhearted nature, it is indeed a far cry from being a stupid, vain, and cunning seductress of the traditional patriarchal archetypal rendition of eve. moreover, in this poem, eve is also closely related to the one who longs for knowledge and when she is promised to acquire it she wants to share it with her partner; thus, she does not want to be the sole bearer of the knowledge. it is such intention that she has in mind, and not attempting to tempt her partner into a sinful betrayal of god’s order. in relation to the empowerment of women and biblical female figure, different from batey’s “lot’s wife” that attempts to give voice and articulate her stories, lanyer’s poem in doing so also put the blame mostly on eve’s partner, adam: “but surely adam cannot be excused … if eve did err, it was for knowledge’ sake… not eve, whose fault was only too much love … which made her give this present to her dear, her fault though great, yet he was most to blame”. sharing the gift of knowledge with adam is her only intention. after the fall, both are stripped off from their privilege as the inhabitants of the garden of eden, yet it is always eve who has to bear the burden as the sinful one and is also punished in her labour of reproducing offspring. this painful reproductive labor is then passed on to all womenkind according to the discourse. eve is no longer connected to the bearer of knowledge but only as a cunning temptress who brings calamity to humankind. in closing lines, this poem attempts to return this ownership of knowledge to eve and refers to men as adam’s boastful male descendants who stole the knowledge from eve’s hand. lanyer’s poem does not employ many particular female or feminine traits as in batey’s poem except eve’s gentle, kind, and loving qualities. there is also no reversal of gender roles and spheres, but the intention to restore eve’s reputation is evidently most important. by revisiting and rewriting the life of this biblical archetypal woman, the poem articulates her stories from her eyes, and eve’s reputation as a femme fatale is challenged. as a result, she is portrayed as a kind, gentle, and loving partner and foremother who wants to journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` sri mulyani 216 share the gift of knowledge for noble and human reasons, particularly for women, and the title signifies the aim of “eve’s apology in defense of women”. the next analysis also discusses another archetypal female figure in the form of revisiting and writing back but not from judeochristian-islamic source and instead it takes the greco-roman texts as the source of penelope’s portrayal, the wife of the greek odysseus or the roman ulysses cycle. “an ancient gesture” is written by the american poet, st. vincent millay. as a poet, her works receive various acceptances from scholars and fellow writers. male writers consider her as a sentimental poet who lacks artistic depth; meanwhile, feminist scholars resurrect her forgotten works and defend millay’s reputation as one of the great lyric poets of the 20th century in american literary tradition. millay is also the first woman who receives pulitzer prize for poetry. her selected poem in this research is posthumously published and can be found in her recent edition of collected poems of 1981 and 1991. this poem is in two stanzas that start with the same line in each stanza. it is also written through the first person point of view where the narrator “i” reflects her life experience by alluding to the experience of penelope, the wife of the famous greek warrior odysseus (or ulysses in roman mythology) who led the greeks in the trojan war and their return home in his journey (odyssey). the gender identities and sphere are clearly set in this poem. the narrator (the “i”) is a woman as seen in the word “my apron”, “weaving,” and also “your husband.” the private sphere is seen through the apron that the speaker wears that also indicates the stereotypical gender role and sphere where the speaker performs her gender domestic/household duties in the kitchen even in the absence of the husband who had gone for a long time performing his duties outside their household. meanwhile, the activity of weaving is attached to both the speaker and penelope as well. weaving has become an archetypal feminine symbol for women in western literary tradition. it symbolizes both containment and tool of liberation, passivity and at the same time also becomes the tool to articulate their voice in the domestic sphere. images of the weaving women are abundant in western literature such as seen in the greek mythology in the way penelope weaving while patiently waiting for the return of her husband, or the famous celtic arthurian stories of the lady of shallot who spends her time weaving in her tower while watching all happenings outside her castle through a mirror for she is cursed and condemned for never seeing outside world directly through her eyes, or the native american legend of the spider women who weave to articulate her tribal histories through their woven storytelling baskets. in the case of penelope, her act of weaving is intricately related to both her familial gender roles and feminine strategies to liberate herself from patriarchal pressures. in the mythology, penelope’s husband, odysseus/ulysses, struggles in waging the trojan war and continuing his odyssey to return home fighting sea monsters, nymphs, siren and other supernatural beings. meanwhile, penelope has to stay at home waiting for his return and raising their only son telemachus, and at the same time, also struggles to negotiate with her male pursuers to be their wife. weaving becomes one of penelope’s strategies to delay this marriage proposal; she tells them that she has to finish weaving first to make a funeral shroud for her father-in-law before agreeing to marry one of her suitors. this excuse is socially and culturally accepted because she performs her familial gender duty as a filial and dutiful daughter-in-law. this act together with her patience in waiting for her husband (until presumed dead), and caring for her child, also establish her as a virtuous woman in performing all her familial duties and gender roles as a good wife, mother, and daughter in law. in performing all those duties and roles in the absence of the husband, penelope has to struggle in her own way in the assigned limited gender spheres yet she still maintains to do it all without violating the journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 217 gender roles and spheres. thus, weaving as a feminine symbol in penelope’s case can be viewed as a subtle feminist strategy to refuse to be contained in yet another domination of another man (to be the wife of her suitors) without transgressing the patriarchal values and norms. with the long absence of her husband (and also presumably dead), she is socially and culturally viewed as “free to be possessed,” therefore, is eligible to be transferred from her husband’s paternal family to another man’s paternal family. her identities and existence depend upon her husband and his paternal family. through this kind of weaving as feminine imagery, the speaker of the poem links her common “destiny” with penelope’s. another archetypal symbol presented in this poem is “tears” and the act of crying. interestingly, this act of crying is not only presented as exclusively a feminine trait but also attached it to both woman and man; thus, tears and the act of crying are not merely feminine but also masculine. however, the poem also redefines tears and the act of crying for both feminine and masculine traits and in the process of redefining it, the poem employs the gender sphere as a marker, therefore, at the end, also re/genders it. by comparing and contrasting tears and the act of crying performed by the speaker, penelope, and ulysses/odysseus in their assigned sphere, the poem redefines its feminine and masculine traits and values by privileging the feminine one over the masculine act. the poem views the women’s tears and act of crying in their domestic/private sphere as a genuine act to articulate their helplessness and hopelessness in living without the presence of their husbands in the oppressive patriarchal society, meanwhile, odysseus/ulysses’ tears and the act of crying in front of his public audience is viewed as a mere spectacle and tactic to gain sympathy and public approval. thus, on one hand, the poem also implicitly suggests and conjures images of the women cry their silent tears alone in silence inside the home without the presence of others, therefore, highlighting their struggles, unhappiness, and suffering. on the other hand, odysseus/ulysses’ tears and act of crying in the presence of his audience and followers would be followed by public cheering applause and articulated gratitude for his sacrifices and well-performed duties to establish him as the national hero of the greek. this poem and its focus and privileging discourse for the woman characters over the man then becomes a crucial aesthetical and ideological space to give voice to these women and their stories that have been silenced and not recognized in the public sphere that has always privileged their male members as the heroes. the next analysis also takes the poem concerning the life of penelope and her husband written by dorothy parker. dorothy parker is an american writer who is famously known for her wits and ironic styles. dorothy parker’s “penelope” is a simple and short poem with a humorous style but conveys a powerful challenge to the patriarchal discourse of gender roles and spheres. the poem consists of ten lines in two stanzas and it takes penelope’s name as the title. it is written in first person point of view with penelope as the speaker/narrator or the “i”. it starts with the depiction of the world outside with the sun, open sky, the sea and all the grandeur of the natural world. the character “he” is odysseus/ulysses amidst his great journey or odyssey conquering all the great challenges. the next stanza then portrays the casual domestic activities of penelope the “i” in her domestic private sphere, the home. weaving as a feminine archetypal symbol is also employed here to depict penelope’s act of weaving “snip my thread” and also her other domestic household chores of brewing tea and bleaching the linen for the bed. the poem then ends simply with the establishment of her husband as a brave hero. the poem's flow of thought and stanza organization/division serves as a border between the public open space in the first stanza to depict odysseus/ulysses’ journey and adventure to the contained domestic private sphere and world inhabited by journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` sri mulyani 218 penelope in the second stanza. however, the diction/choice of words that are used to portray these different masculine and feminine activities are in the form of reversal, that is, weak verb and day-to-day diction and casual everyday terms, (such as pathway, footsteps, ride, and cut)) for masculine deeds in the public sphere, meanwhile, the strong verbs and strong nouns are used to suggest the hardships of the feminine deeds in the domestic private sphere (such as rock, rise, heed). it is not only humor presented in the poem but more of irony and sarcasm as seen in the last line (“they will call him brave”) that suddenly and abruptly cuts the idyllic domestic activities of penelope in the home. this irony/sarcasm strategically mocks odysseus/ulysses’ reputation as a brave warrior and hero by juxtaposing it with laidback and causal domestic activities of penelope. this revisiting and rewriting strategy of the poem at the same time gives the side of penelope’s life and her story no matter how at the end, it is her husband who gets the recognition publicly. conclusion all the four poems selected here written by women writers of the anglo american tradition as seen in kristine batey’s “lot’s wife,” lanyer’s “eve’s apology in the defense of women,” millay’s “ancient gesture,” and parker’s “penelope” highlight the life and experience of women who have been the important figures in the western literary tradition. by revisiting these archetypal women from greco roman and biblical sources, these women writers also rewrite their stories and experience from women’s perspectives that challenge the patriarchal rendition of these women. the act of these revisiting and rewriting is also conducted in the particular genre, that is poetry, that used to be the exclusive and privileged male genre, which traditionally bars women to express their experience in this genre. there are various strategies employed in these selected poems that attempt to challenge the patriarchal discourse on gender roles and spheres. some of the strategies present among others are the reversal of public and private spheres, gender stereotypes, and linguistic aspects in both aesthetic and ideological levels. these strategies are crucial and employed as an arena of power struggles that articulates the voice and stories of women who traditionally have been marginalized and silenced in the patriarchal societies. references batey. kristine. “lot’s wife.” cameron, deborah, ed. (1990). the feminist critique of language: a reader. london: routledge. chambers, deborah. (2001). representing the family. london: sage publications. de beauvoir, simone. (1953). the second sex. le deuxieme sexe translated by h.m. parshley, london: jonathan cape. elshtain, jean bethke, ed. (1982). the family in political thought. amherst: the university of massachusetts press. elshtain, j. b. (1981). public man, private woman: women in social and political thought. princeton: princeton university press. gilbert, sandra, and susan gubar. (1979). “infection in the sentence: the woman writer and the anxiety of authorship.” feminisms: an anthology of literary theory and criticism. ed. robyn warhol and diane herndl. new brunswick: rutgers university press. hartmann, h. (1981). “the unhappy marriage of marxism and feminism: towards a more progressive union” in sargent, l. ed. women and revolution. london: pluto. huyssen, andreas. (1993). “mass culture as woman: modernism’s other,” 1986. kaplan, cora. (1978). elizabeth barrett browning, aurora leigh, and other poems, introduced by cora kaplan, london: women’s press. kaplan, cora. (1990). “language and gender” in deborah cameron, ed. by. the feminist critique of language: a reader. london: routledge. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 219 krontiris, tina. (1997). oppositional voices: women as writers and translators of literature in the english renaissance. london: routledge. lanser, susan s. (1997). “toward a feminist narratology”. feminisms: an anthology of literary theory and criticism. ed. robyn warhol and diane herndl. new brunswick: rutgers university press, . ---. (1992). fictions of authority: women writers and narrative voice. ithaca: cornell university press. lanyer, aemilia. (1994). “eve’s apology in the defense of women” in salve deus rex judaeorum. millay, edna st. vincent. (1991). “an ancient gesture” in selected poems: edna st. vincent millay. mills, sara. (2005). discourse. london: routledge. mills, sara, et.al., eds. (1989). feminist readings/feminists reading. new york: harvester wheatsheaf. parker, dorothy. “penelope.” rich, adrienne. (1975). poetry: poems selected and new, 1850 – 1974, new york: norton rich, adrienne. (1986). blood, bread and poetry. new york: norton. schaum, melita and connie flanagan, eds. (1998). gender images: readings for composition. boston: houghton mifflin. todorov, t. (1984). mikhail bakhtin: the dialogical principle, trans. w. godzich. warhol, robyn, and diane herndl, eds. (1997). feminisms: an anthology of literary theory and criticism. new brunswick: rutgers university press. woolf, virginia. (1929 and 1966). “women and fiction” in collected essays. vol. 2. woolf, virginia. (2012). “professions for women” in the death of the moth and other essays. project gutenburg australia. 25 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 25 – 35 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.5870 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. modern priyayi and the failure of the third space in kayam’s two fictions paulus sarwoto sar@usd.ac.id graduate program in english language studies, universitas sanata dharma, indonesia abstract article information umar kayam’s fictions, “kimono biru” (blue kimono) and jalan menikung (turning road) retell rampant corruption plaguing most postcolonial states. the priyayi figuration in both stories, supposed to transform the third space of postcolonial indonesia into liberative force, fails miserably. rather than re-visiting positivist view of third space as found in many literatures, this analysis shows a reimagination of its failure. the replacement of colonial leaders by domestic leaders does not guarantee true independence since the new middle class replicate the corrupt system for their own benefits. while corrupt priyayi thrives, the protagonist priyayi figures upholding potential transformative power in both fictions are rendered powerless in this newly independent state. suwandi in “kimono biru” is an epitome of postcolonial politicians who are both politician and oligarch guarding the status quo – a system supported by money politics to manipulate the mass. mustari, his old friend in fighting for independence from colonial dutch, has to live a meagre live as the cost for maintaining his integrity. similarly, in the priyayi in jalan menikung are also divided along similar lines. sastradarsono’s posterity who chooses to be a corrupt military official (nugroho) and a business tycoon (tommi) live comfortably while those who side with the suffering mass have to live a difficult life because of their honourable idealism. keywords: corruption; new order; postcolonial received: 5 february 2023 revised: 16 march 2023 accepted: 21 march 2023 introduction umar kayam’s fictions provide a javanese priyayi’s perspective on the issues that the priyayi class had to face from colonial times to the post-independence era. they portray the dilemma of this class in adjusting to the major historical phases challenging the priyayi legacy culturally and politically. culturally, their traditional values are considered increasingly irrelevant and politically they have had to face a modern political system thwarting their traditional elite position. imperilled by their possible failure to adjust to such social changes, they respond to the challenge in different ways https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:sar@usd.ac.id journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) paulus sarwoto 26 indicating their different and often ambivalent stances. throughout historical phases of colonialism and independence, priyayi class had to negotiate their traditional role and privilege with colonial power and the idea of a democratic nation. their identity was hybridized in contact zones with colonization and democratization which has been viewed as a positive drive for decolonization: whilst assertions of national culture and of pre-colonial traditions have played an important role in creating anti-colonial discourse and in arguing for an active decolonizing project, theories of the hybrid nature of post-colonial culture assert a different model for resistance, locating this in the subversive counter-discursive practices implicit in the colonial ambivalence itself and so undermining the very basis on which imperialist and colonialist discourse raises its claims of superiority. (ashcroft et al., 2001, p. 118) this positivist outlook on hybridity or the third space is also referred to by bill ashcroft (2001, p. 2019) as “a sign of constructive cultural evolution.” in priyayi case, however, this third space is destructive for the nation. it is not a sign of constructive cultural evolution but replication of corruptive and exploitive colonial master. it is this often-neglected aspect of hybridity that this article seeks to elaborate through fictional representations of umar kayam’s “kimono biru” (blue kimono) (1986) and jalan menikung (turning road) (1999). the many studies on kayam and his works, both in books, such as umar kayam: karya dan dunianya (2004) and quite a number of journal articles, indicate his popularity among indonesians literary scholars. various angles have been deployed in recent papers, such as the feminist aspect of kayam’s priyayi narrative (mawaddah et al., 2021), politeness strategy in the novel’s dialogues (alviah, 2019), and the representation of identity and mobility in priyayi world (fanani, 2017). especially related with this article is the study on the concept of priyayi-hood by david setiadi et al. (2013). setiadi argues that para priyayi represents the development of priyayi in changing times and that the novel is an implicit criticism on priyayi-hood. he did not elaborate more of this important point and my paper fills the gap left by him and the previous researches in that it seeks not only to elaborate the metamorphoses of priyayi-hood but also the critique of kayam’s works, “blue kimono” and jalan menikung, the sequel of para priyayi, on the failure of hybridization of priyayi identity in the new state. methodology the analysis of this paper uses postcolonial approach with a particular focus on the interpretation of hybridity. postcolonial theory’s trajectories might be traced back to the early movement of négritude in 1930s, in such works as aimé césaire’s discours sur le colonialisme (1952) (discourse on colonialism), and frantz fanon’s les damnés de la terre (1961) (the wretched of the earth). however, this stream of thought did not become established and widely discussed until the 1970s after the publication of edward said’s orientalism (1978). in orientalism and his subsequent book culture and imperialism (1993), edward said can be said to have laid down a more systematic foundation of postcolonial theory. critiquing saidian concepts of colonial relation, homi bhabha (2002) argues for an analysis beyond binary opposition of colonizer/colonized and suggests cultural hybridity. this concept emphasizes intersectionality of colonial encounters and most postcolonial critics have interpreted this third space in a positivistic mode, i.e., that the hybrid space empowers both the colonizers and the colonized. while this claim is true for major postcolonial literature, such as aimé césaire’s the tempest (1969) and jean rhys’ wide sargasso sea (1966), similar claim cannot be made of umar kayam’s fictions depicting javanese priyayi. making use of bhabha’s concept, this paper analyses the negative aspect of hybridity in kayam’s two fictions in order to see how the third space has turned into a space of corruption and theft. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 27 results and discussion the first section of this article discusses how the term ‘priyayi’ has been defined and discussed by western and indonesian theorists. the second part elaborates changing role of priyayi in colonial time and the new order, the periods with which kayam’s fictions are concerned. the last section analyses two of kayam’s fictions, “kimono biru” and jalan menikung, re-enact the transformation of corrupt priyayi in the new order era. these fictions depict a further crisis in the priyayi identity. faced with an authoritarian and corrupt state system, the only options that appear to be left to kayam’s characters are to join the corrupt system and thrive, or refuse the system and perish. these two fictions show in different ways how the ‘third space’ envisaged by bhabha emerges in indonesia not as a progressive reconstruction of the site of postcolonial politics, but as a failure to find a moral centre for the emergent nation. priyayi defined priyayi is the javanese term for javanese nobility. etymologically the term priyayi may have been derived from two javanese words: para and yayi, meaning the younger brothers (of the king). this etymological speculation is in line with geertz’s statement saying that priyayi originally refers to “a man who could trace his ancestry back to the great semimythical kings of pre-colonial java” (geertz, 1964, p. 229). this concept of what constitutes priyayi develops as java’s political positioning also changes from the nineteenth century through to the new order period. in this section i will focus on the much-debated triadic categorization of priyayi-abangansantri, because discussing priyayi inevitably involves mentioning the other two categories. the dominance of this tri-partite distinction is driven by clifford geertz’s ground-breaking study of javanese society in mojokuto from 1953 to 1954, published as religion of java in 1960, which categorized the javanese into three typologies: syncretistic abangan, muslim santri, and priyayi. geertz bases his grouping on people’s occupations and religious systems of values. based on their occupation, abangan, santri and priyayi are understood as java’s peasantry, traders, and gentry respectively (geertz, 1964, pp. 228– 229). mapped onto religious structures, the abangan believe in a combination of animism and some imported values derived from hinduism and islam; the santri adhere to the orthodoxy and orthopraxy of islam more rigorously; while the priyayi, by contrast, although adopting hinduism like abangan, do so in a more subtle way. as i will explain in this section, this mixed categorization, i.e., using simultaneously occupational and religious criteria, is not tenable anymore because of the mixed categorization. a javanese of a particular occupation, e.g., a teacher might by the 1970s, say, have religious beliefs that identified him as any of geertz’s types ranging from abangan to santri, while still identifying himself as having the status of priyayi . it has to be kept in mind that the study geertz conducted was in a specific area for a limited time in the 1950s. considering the constraints of locus and time of the study it can be assumed that the research does not represent the reality of the whole java prior and after that specified time. studies of javanese society covering a broader time frame have been conducted by several researchers ever since. three names are worth mentioning here, namely koentjaraningrat, heather sutherland, and m.c. ricklefs. koentjaraningrat (koentjaraningrat, 1963, pp. 188–191) disagrees with the use of abangan and santri as social classes because they refer more to religious practices: abangan with its syncretism of animism, hinduism and islam whereas santri with its purer islam. putting priyayi in the same plate with abangan and santri becomes problematical for koentjaraningrat because priyayi’s religious practices may be distributed across the spectrum from abangan to santri and the terms priyayi abangan and priyayi santri are therefore quite acceptable. koentjaraningrat criticizes the mixed categorization that while abangan-santri embodies a vertical relation, i.e. two religious categories, abangan-priyayi is based on horizontal relations, i.e. social strata. koentjaraningrat, as cruikshank notes, journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) paulus sarwoto 28 introduces the distinction between vertical and horizontal stratification in javanese society, with geertz's abangan-santri dichotomy representing the horizontal division, and a modified occupational framework the vertical. he argues that geertz mistakenly considers the abangansantri-prijaji divisions as both horizontal and vertical, whereas it should be seen as horizontal only. (cruikshank, 1972, p. 40) a better description of javanese social classes, according to koentjaraningrat, would consist of wong cilik (peasants), wong dagang (traders), priyayi (government officials) and ndara (nobility). just like priyayi, the other three social classes may practice a range of religious affiliations, from abangan to santri. ricklefs’ research clarifies this confusion by putting the abangan-santri-priyayi distinction in a historical perspective. he points out that the triadic distinction is not wrong but ‘historically contigent’ (ricklefs, 2006, p. 35). modernized priyayi in colonial system and the new order in the nineteenth century, java witnessed the modernisation of the javanese priyayi. under dutch colonial power, the ranks of the priyayi became modernized structurally and were called pangreh praja or ambtenaar (government officials). the bupati (regent) received a salary from the colonial government and had to answer to it instead of managing independently the province under their rule. during this time the system of the pangreh praja, stretching downwards from bupati to the lowest village headman, became the extended hand of colonialism. but the introduction of the concept of a functional and powerful bureaucracy threatened many of the assumptions on which the concept of priyayi had existed. merit, ability and ambition were becoming alternative pathways to influential roles in society. the position of pangreh pradja that used to be consequent on one’s heredity started to shift; non-priyayi might become pangreh praja as well, if they had the right talents or supporters. as long as they could perform successfully in an important position and adapted to the ways of priyayi, they might be accepted as having achieved priyayi status by other priyayi even though they were often underestimated by those priyayi whose status was the result of noble birth (ricklefs, 2001, p. 168 and h. a. sutherland, 1973, p. 110). under the dutch modernized bureaucracy, becoming a pangreh praja was not the only means to gain priyayi status. education and new occupations generated by industrialization also provided new paths through which to gain priyayi status. amongst such new occupations were those of teachers, technicians and chauffeurs. indeed, notes sutherland, the structural role of being a pangreh praja is no longer the only means of social mobility: by their jobs, skills and sometimes by lifestyle and attitudes these “new prijaji’ demonstrated that the native administrative corps was no longer the only means of upward mobility, that the traditional prijaji way was not the only form of the good life. they formed a new local elite and sometimes linked the rural population to the urban intelligentsia. (h. a. sutherland, 1973, pp. 209–210) colonialism opened a new path of social mobility for the javanese peasants. with some basic education, a peasant could become a teacher and hence hope to be considered a new priyayi. the new order began in march 1966 when president soekarno transferred executive responsibility to (then) general soeharto. when finally installed as acting president in march 1967, soeharto started to take the state in a different direction from his predecessor. indonesia stopped its offensive war against malaysia, perceived as a symbol of neo-colonialism, and became friendlier to the west in exchange for financial aid. the early economic achievement of this regime by contrast with the chaotic financial situation during the years of the previous government was extraordinary; soeharto was said to have successfully built “the most powerful state in indonesia since dutch colonial times” (lipsky & pura, 1978, p. 489). journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 29 this economic success story, however, was tainted by widening gap between the rich and the poor as well as with a culture of cronyism and corruption. these negative symptoms were manifest in: monopoly power and economic privilege for a few favoured cronies in or close to the presidential circle of family and friends. it is reflected above all in the widening gap between the very rich and ordinary indonesians, the middle class, urban poor and peasantry, in terms of their income levels, assets and control over crucial resources. (hill, 1994, p. 3) the importance of priyayi class in state affairs in this period was fading. military careers became an important avenue for anyone, regardless of their social background, wishing to advance themselves in a political career. soeharto’s background as a peasant’s son from kemusuk village testifies this new condition. the dominant role of the military proved social classes irrelevant. the social dominance of the military was made possible by the doctrine of dwifungsi, or the dual function of the armed forces. the doctrine stipulated that the function of the armed forces was not limited to national defence. military personnel were also to be deployed ministerial and ambassadorial positions and in other crucial executive offices up to the regency level and were granted substantial representation in the parliament. the new order lasted for about 33 years until may 1998 when president soeharto was forced to resign amid the staggering financial recession and nation-wide student protests. kayam personally witnessed many of these massive changes in the social and political world of indonesia from colonial time to the end of the new order. born to a priyayi family, he also saw through an insider’s perspective the changes and dilemmas that the priyayi were facing in those historical phases. firsthand experience and an insider’s perspective have shaped kayam’s works to reflect on the social and political issues worth looking postcolonially. corrupt priyayi in “kimono biru” and jalan menikung the two fictions depict how the new political system created a state bureaucracy that deflected priyayi principles to serve its own ends. if the ambivalent combination of paternalism and mastery shaped the priyayi interaction with dutch colonial policy so that their paternalism could be seen as no more than the corrupt exploitation of the peasantry supported by colonial force, in the new order, the meaning of priyayi as “a man of integrity and honor” (h. sutherland, 1975, p. 58) is open to abuse because once the customary practices within which the priyayi had definable obligations were replaced by bureaucratic procedures, the priyayi needed to be able to reidentify themselves in relation to the emerging modern concepts of duty to the state or nation rather than in terms of their duty to a ruler or a group of the ruled. kayam in particular shows how it is easier for many of his examples of priyayi to just look for another ‘ruler’, since it appears to them that it is only through retaining the hierarchy they are comfortable with that they can maintain their status as an elite although it means that they compromise the ideal of priyayi principles as reflected in the following two stories. “kimono biru” “kimono biru” tells a story of two friends who have been through the revolution, gestapu, and the new order years. the main characters in “kimono biru” ,mustari and suwandi, are two ex-freedom fighters who part ways in post-independence indonesia. mustari, who becomes a civil servant working for the ministry of labour and public works, a part-time university lecturer at the university of indonesia, and a consultant to the national planning board, lives modestly. although he has had some opportunities to go overseas with government funding, such as in his present journey to tokyo, he cannot afford to buy a blue kimono for his wife. the price of 2,500 yen is way too much for his budget. suwandi, on the other hand, becomes a very prosperous businessman cum politician. their accidental meeting in tokyo not only brings journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) paulus sarwoto 30 back a lot of good old memories but also conflicting ideas and life trajectories. the roots of the postcolonial trouble in the new order are described as the unholy alliance of politician and businessman. pondering on how the new order came to power, suwandi and masturi argue on whether or not money politics is justified in power struggle. they have different principles of how a nation shall be built as reflected in this quotation: “ya, cuma waktu itu jauh lebih gampang, ndi. pilihan cuma ada daging babi. maka yang haram pun diperkenankan menjadi halal. sekarang lebih sulit. menunya lebih banyak. nggak ada lagi alasan untuk mau haram terus.” “aah, prek! tahi! munafik! filsafat picisan!” (kayam, 1986, p. 314) “yes. but it was easier then, ‘ndi. we only had pork. under those circumstances, it was possible to eat what was normally forbidden. but it’s harder now. the menu is more extensive. the same excuses no longer hold.” “oh, you bastard! swine! what crap!” (kayam, 1980, p. 184) the context of the above dialogue is an argument about how far money politics should be tolerated in order to win power in the young republic. both mustari and suwandhi are supporters of the new order regime and they agree that in times of political emergency, such as around gestapu in 1965 and the downfall of president soekarno, money politics can be tolerated. in the past, they supported and financed a students’ movement while always monitoring carefully any possible future political turns in order to defeat the communist party that was getting stronger in the early 1960s. they collected money for this political purpose from a government trading office that they turned into a markas catut (centre for corruption). armed with money that they referred to as politik nasi bungkus (bundles of rice politics), they successfully calculated every step taken by the communist party of indonesia, the army and the political parties, such as pni and nu (kayam, 1986, p. 303). this small memory in the story symbolizes a bigger reality -that financing political movements by corrupting state’s money is the foundation on which the political system after gestapu was built. there is no mention of orde baru (the new order) in the story but the setting of the time reveals that kayam must have the new order in mind when depicting the argument. the justification of corruption to finance a political movement is at the centre of the story’s strong criticism of how misguided the new order has been on the idea of national liberation. now at the time of the story, although the new order has supposedly passed that phase of crisis, the regime is still supported by figures like suwandi and has not been able to find a more accountable way of sustaining its power. suwandi believes that although they are in a new state, with the communist party and president soekarno gone, the system still needs the same old machinery. for suwandi, the status quo is always in an emergency situation that needs funding – no matter where it is from for its continuance. his view on this issue is vividly expressed: lantas! lantas aku tahu kalau mau politik harus cari uang. yang banyak, bung, yang banyak. jangan seperak dua perak. jangan cuma bisa tahan bantu nasi bungkus satudua minggu. jalan masih panjang. nasinasi bungkus masih harus terus dibeli. (kayam, 1986a, p. 313) go on! to remain active in politics, i need money. a lot of money. not just a few dimes. not just for a few weeks. it’s a long road. i have to keep on buying bundles of rice. (kayam, 1980, p. 183) nasi bungkus (bundles of rice – money politics) remains as instrumental as it had been, not only in politics but also in relation to trading. it is a multipurpose tool for rallying the masses, gaining political favour, and smoothing suwandi’s business dealings: “ah, ya. nasi bungkus itu akan selalu mesti dibeli dan dibagi kapan saja, mus. bentuknya bisa lain-lain ukurannya bisa lain-lain. tapi politik, ah, apa saja, juga dagang, juga perang semua ada urusannya journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 31 dengan nasi bungkus itu.” (kayam, 1986, p. 314) oh, yes. a man has to buy rice and be always ready to share it, mus. the bundles may take on different shapes and sizes. but in politics, as in everything else – business, war, you name it – everything depends on rice. (kayam, 1980, pp. 183– 184) armed with money politics and his feet set on the two crucial worlds of politics and business (in the story his interests range from beverages to airline and forestry businesses), suwandi has become prosperous, with powerful connections both domestic and abroad. kayam appears to be suggesting that when thinking that every aspect of modern life is based on money politics, suwandi is actually trapped in a false consciousness the idea that he is working for the betterment of his nation when actually he is not. suwandi may be said to be manipulating the idea of an imagined postcolonial nation, exploiting the idea that, in benedict anderson’s phrase “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each [community], the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship” (anderson, 2000, p. 7). if in the past they had similar ideas of building an independent state by fighting the colonial regime and then around 1965 fighting against the communist party for a better modern country independent of a dominating foreign ideology, now after winning those two battles, suwandi has expanded his nasi bungkus politics for his own interest. a tactic initially developed and maintained for the betterment of the emerging nation is now changed into an individual enterprise for personal benefits. although involved in money politics with suwandi around the gestapu time, masturi chooses to take a different turn. he prefers to work within the established system as a civil servant and lecturer, leaving the world of nasi bungkus intrigue behind. he decides to have a different role and be just an ordinary member of society who continues working in the big machine without entering into a false national consciousness which will enable him to manipulate others for his own benefit. mustari’s figuration reflects kayam’s general characterization of the protagonists in his priyayi stories. these protagonists usually refuse to support a corrupt system but keep working in it. consequently, it is people like suwandi who have more power to determine the direction of the state while person like mustari remain as just a small part of the big machine: “kau hebat. kau sekarang jadi manager mesin yang besar. aku sekrup saja. sekrup biasa saja” (kayam, 1986, p. 320) (“you’re fantastic. you’re the manager of a great, enormous machine. i’m only a cog. a very ordinary cog.” (kayam, 1980, pp. 187– 188). after gaining national independence from the colonial power and winning the battle for power over their domestic enemies, leaders like suwandi fail to establish a healthy state and he soon, in fanon’s words, “reveal[s] his inner purpose: to become the general president of that company of profiteers impatient for their returns” (2006, p. 122) rather than a politician working sincerely for the good of the state. a transformative third space cannot be accomplished because these new domestic leaders stop short of realizing that liberation from colonialism is a means to achieve social justice for the people not an end in anti-colonial movements. jalan menikung twenty-five years after writing “kimono biru”, kayam revisited the new order setting in jalan menikung (1999). published after the downfall of the new order, the novel presents thematic material suggesting that in a country whose system is built on money politics and cronyism, personal achievement is almost impossible without collusion and bribery. the result is that the state is rampant with fishy practices. in the novel almost all characters get the positions that they want by means of cronyism and bribery. even harimurti, a character with a strong sense of integrity, gets his job because of tommi’s business partner whose uncle is a retired brigadier general. kayam depicts tommi as the first priyayi journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) paulus sarwoto 32 businessman, a paradigmatic figure of social transition. in kayam’s stories, priyayi values are described as having turned in a new direction now that high status is mainly associated with material prosperity. following this new trajectory, traditional priyayi-hood is not considered important; what constitute an important citizen in the present state are not cultural values such as heredity, being refined, service for the peasants, education or technical capabilities, but rather financial power. this condition is reflected in tommi’s speech: memang kelas priyayi sudah dianggap ketinggalan jaman. tetapi menjadi orang terdidik dan terpandang dalam masyarakat, bukankah tetap merupakan cita-cita kita semua? (kayam, 1999, p. 155) it’s true that the priyayi social rank has been considered out of date. but becoming an educated person and a respected figure in the community remains our goal, doesn’t it? the idea of being ‘respected’ is now an ambiguous goal. someone who has respect is interpreted by tommi as someone whose material prosperity creates fear and admiration. in other words, being priyayi is identical with being financially powerful. in previous stories, priyayi figures are described as respected members of society because of their moral standing as well as their inherited rank. in the present setting there is no moral issue which is considered important. in such a context the references to wayang figures and their associated javanese wisdom, references which are very strong ingredient in para priyayi (1992), kayam’s previous novel, have almost have no echo in jalan menikung. there is no wayang reflection because there is no moral consideration of the kind that tradition might exemplify, endorse or even critique. in the modern setting, kayam’s paradigmatic representation of the path a character might take to achieve kamukten, prosperity, has moved from that of becoming a government official (sastrodarsono), to becoming a soldier (noegroho), and now finally to becoming a businessman (tommi). if becoming a government official was a means of social mobility for the priyayi class during colonialism, and being a soldier matched with the traditional ideal of a priyayi figure who masters the art of war, then the turn to becoming businessman might be seen as an ironic commentary on the trajectory of the priyayi. the depiction of sastrodarsono’s third generation descendant as a trading priyayi indicates a radical change in priyayi-hood since priyayi until the early twentieth century were antagonistic towards trading as a profession. being a merchant had been seen as a profession only for those who were culturally marginalized. kayam’s figuration of trading priyayi therefore engages with the modern priyayi’s world view on what is and what is not a proper occupation for their families to be involved in. tommi becoming a businessman with his suspect dealing therefore could be seen as treason against traditional priyayi values in the post-independence context. the damage to priyayi values committed by tommi can be seen as treason because although he respects and glorifies his priyayi ancestors’ merits, his life principles are against the ideals of priyayi-hood that they stood for. kayam portrays him as a greedy businessman without any commitment to justice. tommi has no issue with false consciousness; he runs his business empire without deluding himself that he is supporting the national government or the idea of an independent indonesia as does suwandi. he is a true businessman with only one purpose in mind: profit. that is why the first question tommi asks eko upon eko’s return from the u.s. is so un-priyayi: “omongomong, by the way, ko, kamu sekarang dagang apa ko?” (by the way, ko, what are you trading now, ko?”) (kayam, 1999, p. 123). kayam depicts tommi’s modus operandi in his fishy business as similar to that of noegroho during the revolution in the 1940s. just as noegroho manipulated the army supply system to exceed real needs so that he could have his share, tommi works together with the government officials to mark up the state budget for the projects he is undertaking so that they too can have their share. this is what tommi means by ‘main’ (to play) in the following dialogue: journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 33 “ah, kamu sudah terlalu lama dan jauh dari indonesia. kalau kamu tinggal lama sedikit saja di sini, kau akan tahu sendiri. kalau kamu mau ikut-ikutan ‘main’, nanti saya ajari. he, he, he.” (kayam, 1999, p. 131) “oh, you’ve been away from indonesia for too long. if you stay here a little bit more, you will understand what it means. if you want to ‘play along’, i will teach you, he, he, he.” tommi certainly learns from his father very well. the only difference is that if noegroho thought that what he did was not treason against the republic, tommi does not even bother if this is treason or not. the other postcolonial issue suggested by this novel is the role of the military once it goes beyond its proper sphere of duty, and the corruption of officials running the state. this is portrayed, for instance, in tommi’s sister, anna, who is doing business with inkopad (induk koperasi angkatan darat – the army’s central coop) in her trading business. this indicates a more serious problem in a republic in which a military institution also deals in trading. although military business helps to finance the military needs from the extra state budgets, the combination of military and business can be potentially abusive, especially because during the new order, the military were assigned under the so-called dwi fungsi or double functions doctrine. under this doctrine, the military are not only responsible for defending the integrity of the state from foreign and domestic threats but also played a role in in running the state by becoming governors, regents, and taking on other strategic positions that are actually beyond the realm of military duties. the prevalence of the military’s dominant role in the republic is represented indirectly by kayam in the pictures hung on the wanagalih regency hall: hanya di dinding pinggir-pinggir pendopo kabupaten sekarang terpancang foto-foto besar mereka yang pernah menjabat bupati wanagalih. kebanyakan mantanmantan letkol, bahkan kolonel juga ada. nyata benar dari potret itu mana yang mantan bupati sipil, mana yang mantan bupati militer. biasanya yang mantan bupati, mantan pamen militer nampak lebih gagah, seram karena kumisnya dan sinar matanya yang lebih percaya diri. yang mantan bupati sipil nampak lebih nrimo semuanya. (kayam, 1999, pp. 141– 142) large pictures of the former regents of wanagalih were hung on the wall of the regency’s living room. most of them were ex lieutenant colonels or even colonels. we could easily differentiate the pictures of the civil regents from the military ones. military regents usually looked more wellbuilt and scary because of their moustache and confident look. the civil regents look more passive. the descriptions comparing the civil and military regents are an allegory for the domination of the military figures in the state bureaucracy. the military regents are more confident but at the same time scarier (lebih seram) for the people. purely civil servants are seen as less aggressive and perhaps less effective. kayam describes wanagalih’s regent (who has a military background) as a corrupt official. he abuses his power by using the money designated for the town development for his personal use: “yaa, kok cuma seratus juta. kok pelit juga konglomerat muda ini. ah, nggak apa. sumbangan untuk perindahan kota saya jadikan proyek pribadi saja. lumayan, dua kali seratus juta...” (kayam, 1999, p. 145) “oh, only one hundred million. what a stingy young conglomerate he is. it doesn’t matter. i will use this money for my personal project instead of the development of the town’s park. not bad, two times one hundred million...” this corrupt attitude is anticipated by tommi; he is the one who provides the money so that the cemetery renovation project in the regency can be completed smoothly. he is very journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) paulus sarwoto 34 certain that the regent will never really use the money for the town development. this plot element is there to indicate corruption is a common practice that almost everyone knows about; some kind of social permissiveness has taken root. kayam uses the novel to show that the same corrupt attitude also plagues state officials in the centre of the state, jakarta. in the story, corrupt practices in the central government are testified to by endang, secretary to some directorate general whom she describes as “baik, tetapi juga egois, egosentrik, dan korup” (kind, but selfish, egocentric, and corrupt) (kayam, 1999, p. 53): misalnya pada salah satu pertemuan itu endang menyaksikan bagaimana bossnya membuat persetujuan untuk membuat mark-up atau menaikkan angka-angka sebenarnya dari biaya proyek-proyek mereka. endang diminta mencatat itu semua dalam kode-kode khusus yang telah ditentukan, kemudian memasukkannya dalam file khusus. (kayam, 1999, p. 54) for instance, in one of the meetings endang saw how her boss agrees to mark up their project budgets. endang was told to write them all in special codes and then put them in a special file. the prevalence of corrupt state officials, from those in the central government to those in the the rural regency of wanagalih, has to be seen as kayam’s depiction of the failure of the postcolonial state to build a just society. living in such corrupt state, the priyayi figures who prosper are the ones that compromise their ideals of priyayi-hood for the pursuit of material prosperity. conclusion the priyayi in these two fictions represent two contradictory attitudes to the opportunities offered by the new state. suwandi and tommi represent the corrupt priyayi who play a prominent role in the new order regime with their fishy business and close alliance with high government officials. although the corrupt priyayi have lost the traditional respect that their predecessors had as a result of their corrupt morality, they become influential in national politics because of their financial power. on the other side, the idealised priyayi figures, such as mustari, harimurti and eko, are marginalized by the political system. the dominant role held by figures like suwandi and tommi on the one hand, and the powerlessness of the idealised priyayi like mustari, harimurti and eko on the other, has paralysed the new state. this literary portrayal of the corrupt new independent state is analogous to what fanon (fanon, 1971, p. 133) describes happening in african postcolonial countries as the consequence of what he calls the ‘pitfall of the national consciousness’. the corrupt priyayi figures in the new order as represented by kayam occupy a third space where they become trading priyayi who ally with politicians. the compassionate priyayi also occupy a third space where they still retain their traditional respect from the masses, but have lost their political power. the juxtaposition of these contradictory priyayi figures also portrays the failure of the third space to be a transformative power in indonesian experience. ashcroft (ashcroft, 2001) argues the third space is where the negotiation between the colonized and the colonizer generates transformative cultural production. the domination of the corrupt figures and the marginalization of the idealised characters in these stories indicate that this transformative energy is paralysed. kayam seems to argue that third space is a means of salvation for the peasants from an exploitive colonial system, but at the same time he also indicates how priyayi traditional values fail to empower the new priyayi to become a liberating agent from domestic colonialism. kayam re-constructs the majority of colonial priyayi’s third space as a space coopted by corruption; thus, the figuration of the free will of the main priyayi, sastrodarsono, is depicted as confined within the ideology of colonialism and therefore indirectly supporting that ideology. the ideal resistance to colonialism that kayam proposes is clandestine resistance prioritizing priyayi principles of harmony and respect. the transformation that he envisages is therefore also a very limited one. such priyayi principles journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 35 fail to develop the third space of the colonial priyayi into a transforming power which might free them from oppression. references alviah, iin. 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(1973). “pangreh pradja: java’s indigenous administrative corps and its role in the last decades of dutch colonial rule.” yale, new haven. phenomena maria luisa torres reyes 20 modernity/modernism in philippine literature maria luisa torres reyes the ateneo de manila university abstract when the american colonial regime set up the philippine public school system in the first decade of 1900s, it installed a curriculum that was heavily based on the american educational system. the english literature and humanities curriculum, in particular, was heavily anglo-american notwithstanding the filipinos’ lack of proficiency in the english language in the early years. by the third decade of the american occupation, the filipinos who had been able to attend the university in the country and abroad and had developed a higher level of competence in the english language, began to produce writers and critics who had been trained formally in the anglo-american literary and critical modes. this generation produced the first filipino “modernist” writers, who would later constitute the canon of philippine literature. soon after, filipino writers in tagalog and the other philippine languages began to develop a taste for modernist writing as well and soon produced their own kind of “modernistas.” ironically, as americanization in literature developed inroads in philippine letters in the major languages, filipino writers in english and philippine languages, specifically, were to be split into two camps, the “art for arts’ sake” camp (the modernists), led by jose garcia villa, and the socially oriented camp (the socially oriented writers) led by salvador p. lopez. the first claimed to be heir to anglo-americanmodernist writers whose works they had read; the second were said to be heir to the local tradition of socially-oriented writings in philippine literature which tradition they ostensibly wished to keep alive. numerous polemical exchanges would ensue from the 1900s to the 1940s shortly before world war ii, which were published in the daily newspapers and weekly magazines. the polemics would embody the contradictions as well as the ambivalences of the filipino writers’ reception of angloamerican literary “modernism,” outline the contours of “modernism” in philippine literature, and underscore the continuing unease that filipino writers today, especially those writing in philippine languages, about “western” modernism, and the desire to go past it, resulting in the development of a complex if contradictory kind of modernism and a sense of modernity and the role of language in this development. key words: modernity, modernism, philippine literature introduction in the philippines, often referred to as the first “modern” nation in southeast asia, and the only former asian colony of the united states, modernism and modernity are inextricably linked and loosely interchangeable yet are distinctly and diversely inflected in incommensurably uneven, overlapping and contradictory ways. first, it is said that as a result of “modern” western european and anglo american hegemonic imperatives upon postcolonial societies, dominantly through the setting up of the colonial public educational system, “modernity” as a social and historical phenomenon – has weakened or destroyed traditional beliefs and practices of non-western societies as the people themselves are decimated by colonialism. however, historically, such imperatives have had to deal with existing local traditions, vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 21 languages and practices, nonetheless producing “modernities” and “modernisms” of differentiated characteristics and uneven development across the different philippine languages. this is exemplified by the diverse development of “modern” genres in the philippines like the filipino novel written in the different local languages which ranges from the integrative classic realist “modern” types to the discrepant hybrid varieties of pre-moden (traiditonal) to postmodern (contemporary) varieties. , second, it is posited that as a cultural and artistic response to modernity, “modernism” embodies cultural practices which are disjunctive of practices that fetter and habits that bridle. however, to “make new” is not simply an aesthetic response but a deeper and more sweeping reaction to the experience of modernity, embodying appropriative, as well as abrogative or aesthetically transgressive in philippine literature. this is exemplified by such writers as alejandro g. abadilla (tagalog) and jose garcia villa (english) abadilla in 1935, the tagalog writers’ group called kapisanang panitikan, organized as a reaction to ilaw at panitik, an earlier writers’ group, published a literary magazine, panitikan, in 1938. its members staged a revolt against the worsening commercialism of local magazines, rampant use of clichés and formulaic repetition of old literary forms and worn-out conventions. they demanded artistic freedom to innovate in theme and technique and led the efforts for artistic experimentation in tagalog writing. the group, which included alejandro g. abadilla, teodoro agoncillo, clodualdo del mundo, brigido batungbakal, jesus arceo, salvador barros, and genoveva edroza-matute, publicized its cause with a book-burning rally at plaza moriones in tondo on 02 mar 1940, referring to themselves as “radical but aristocratic.” the group threw into the flames literary works they considered “unfit to be passed on to posterity.” the leader of the “literary rebels” was abadilla, whose use of free verse, defiance of literary convention, and commitment for individualist, avant-garde sensibility in art and knowledge paved the way for the release of new aesthetic energies among tagalog poets. panitikan was …determined to be “modern,” in the sense that it was to diverge from traditional along lines being pursued by the writers of philippine english literature. (lumbera, 2007: 97) the poem, “ako ang daigdig,” is said to have declared a kind of poetic mutiny and social insurrection in protest of protest of hypocrisies in conventional society that had made a as he stripped his verse of rime and meter of the dominant conventional tagalog versification. abadilla was arguably a crusader for freedom, like villa, who resisted all conventional social and artistic restrictions like a personal war. assuming a mythical “real self,” he believed that individual freedom could be achieved through disengaging himself from other men. individualistic in temper, he was obsessed by the self only because he believed individuals true to themselves would usher a better society. later on, his experimentation with free verse would prepare the way for its acceptance by younger poets, who would then go beyond his theme of individualism while acknowledging his formalist innovations ako ang daigdig ni alejandro g. abadilla i. ako ang daigdig ako ang tula ako ang daigdig ang tula ako ang daigdig ng tula ang tula ng daigdig ako maria luisa torres reyes 22 ang walang maliw na ako ang walang kamatayang ako ang tula ng daigdig ii. ako ang daigdig ng tula ako ang tula ng daigdig ako ang malayang ako matapat sa sarili sa aking daigdig ng tula ako ang tula sa daigdig ako ang daigdig ng tula ako ang daigdig iii. ako ang damdaming malaya ako ang larawang buhay ako ang buhay na walang hanggan ako ang damdamin ang larawan ang buhay damdamin larawan buhay tula ako iv. ang daigdig ako sa tula ako ang daigdig ng tula ako ang daigdig ako ang tula daigdig tula ako. (1940) i am the universe by alejandro g. abadilla i. i am the universe i am the poem i am the universe the poem i am the universe of the poem the poem of the universe i am the unending i am the undying i am the poem of the universe ii. i am the universe of the poem i am the poem of the universe i am the free i am true to myself to my universe of the poem i am the poem in the universe i am the universe of the poem i am the universe iii. i am the feeling free i am the image alive i am the life without end vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 23 i am the feeling the image the life feeling image life poem i am iv. the universe i am in the poem i am the universe of the poem i am the universe i am the poem universe poem i am. (1940) translation: bienvenido lumbera villa but among english writers, unrest was pervading the literary atmosphere as well. on one side, there were the veronicans – also organized in 1935 by those who were believed to have stood for art for art’s sake, like jose garcia villa, forming another avantgarde group of filipino writers. on the other hand, there were those who urged their fellow writers in english to create a more socially engaged art, like writers salvador p. lopez, federico mangahas, arturo rotor, and manuel arguilla, who became the stalwarts of the philippine writers league. coming mainly from the university of the philippines, and elite universities based in manila, the english writers were urged to commit to great social responsibility even as they also sought for artistic freedom; on the other hand, tagalog writers, coming out in commercial publications, were admonished to raise aesthetic standards even as it was tacitly assumed that their works should also serve social ends. a powerful voice as a avant-garde artist, critic, modernist poet, fictionist, jose garcia villa is known for his technical innovations of “reversed consonance” in have come, am here (1942), for example, and “comma poems” in the anchored angel. his poems deal with angelic rebellion, the solitary genius, and artistic exceptionality reminiscent of wallace stevens, or e.e. cummings. it had been said that villa was able to do “much to establish philippine writing alongside tagalog and spanish literatures” which had obviously longer histories behind them. he introduced a new rhyming scheme called ”reversed consonance" wherein, according to villa: "the last sounded consonants of the last syllable, or the last principal consonant of a word, are reversed for the corresponding rhyme. thus, a rhyme for near would be run; or rain, green, reign." in 1949, villa presented a poetic style he called "comma poems," wherein commas are placed after every word. first, a poem must be magical jose garcia villa first, a poem must be magical, then musical as a seagull. it must be a brightness moving and hold secret a bird’s flowering it must be slender as a bell, and it must hold fire as well. it must have the wisdom of bows and it must kneel like a rose. it must be able to hear the luminance of dove and deer. it must be able to hide what it seeks, like a bride. and over all i would like to hover god, smiling from the poem’s cover. fragment jose garcia villa anchored angel and,lay,he,down,the,golden,father, (genesis’,fist,all,gentle,now). between,the,wall,of,china,and, the,tiger,tree(his,centuries,his, aerials,of,light)… anchored,entire,angel! maria luisa torres reyes 24 he,in,his,estate,miracle,and,living,dew, his,fuses,gold,his,cobalts,love, and,in,his,eyepits, o,under,the,liontelling,sun— the,zeta,truth—the,swift,red,christ. villa is known for having fought almost singularly for “art for art’s sake,” and for his insistence upon the autonomy of art from society (lumbera, 2007: 96). it must be noted, however, that against such aestheticism, some of his contemporaries writing in english believed instead in “proletarian literature” and in using the pen as a weapon for social change. in philippine literary history, this particular development towards the aesthetic, as exemplified by villa, is said to have constituted a “radical break from tradition,” as despite linguistic, generational or even linguistic and ethnic divisions, spanish writing and literatures in the various philippine languages had been mostly respectful of a more socially-conscious tradition in the long history of literature. third, while modernism is usually understood as a set of literary techniques and attitudes rooted mainly in anglo-american avant-garde aesthetic and literary movements as these had influenced literature by filipinos through american colonial education, in the philippines, modernism is a conjuncture of diverse fields of forces in the philippines, at once literary and non-literary, local and foreign, formalist and political, so that one might refer to modernisms (plural) rather than modernism (singular). in the context of the country’s struggle for selfdetermination under spanish colonialism, then, american colonialism, through the commonwealth period, and then under the japanese occupation, “non-literary” themes of nationalism and social justice understandably inflect philippine modernism/s. this is illustrated by noted writers during the commonwealth period, salvador p. lopez (english) and benigno ramos (tagalog) in whose writings modernism is equally politically transgressive. modern literature and the philippine commonwealth the tydings-mcduffie act presented the promise of freedom from colonial bondage under american “tutelage.” with the philippine commonwealth period (19351946), described by some historians as ushering in the birth of the modern nation, filipino preparations for self-government were underway. finally, independence seemed truly within reach. after being referred to only as “las filipinas” for centuries as a colony of spain, and as the “islands” as an american territory, this time, a vision leading to a unified, modern, democratic, and sovereign nation was within the realm of possibility, indeed – a country, finally, to be forged under the flag, “the philippines.” between speeches and propaganda of both the american colonial and philippine commonwealth leaderships, an image of a prosperous, progressive wouldbe-nation under a sovereign state was being painted everywhere in the media – happy, satisfied citizens living in egalitarian peace and harmony. in philippine public schools, such polemical colonial atmosphere was accompanied by the developing canon under american tutelage ranging from irving and longfellow to shakespeare, poe, and matthew arnold. in fact, the country was disintegrating into chaos, as it faced widespread unrest. in a number of provinces, the peasantry had been in revolt against the age-old inequities of the feudal caciquismo. the promises of agrarian reform in huge friar lands by the philippine revolution to which they had given up their lives, had come to naught. now, neither having land nor independence, they continued to be enslaved even under a socalled democratic system that promised freedom and equality for all, but which remained unjust and oppressive a commonwealth government that could not protect the very people from the very roots of their centuries-old oppression. thus, as they had done before, the peasants clamored for agrarian reform once more even as the struggle for independence was being waged. the muslims of mindanao, the country’s vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 25 second biggest island, as it had been for centuries, were fighting mightily for cessation as ever despite american colonial efforts at integrating them. (constantino, 1975: 342383) ramos although workers in factories had held numerous strikes within and around manila in open defiance of both capitalists and the government, bearing powerful witness to this struggle was the sakdalista movement. the sakdalistas were farmers who had been fighting for the break-up of the hacienda system and the oppressive usurious practices associated with it, which had been instituted during the spanish colonial era, only to continue to be perpetuated under the americans. this movement was founded in 1930 by benigno ramos, a noted writer in tagalog and a well-known pro-independence peasant leader, who had worked at the office of manuel l. quezon, the president of the commonwealth of the philippines. he resigned from his office when in 1930, he led a strike by teachers in opposition to the commonwealth leadership; later, he formed the sakdalista movement which was perhaps the peasant movement with the most widespread influence of the period. a fine writer himself, he established a tagalog language newspaper called sakdal which became popular among peasants. (constantino 367-370) ramos belongs to a long tradition of politically engaged writers in philippine literary history beginning with the national hero, jose p. rizal (philippine national hero but also referred to as the father of the modern filipino novel), who had led the cause of social justice and patriotism. as a poet in tagalog, despite his mastery of poetic conventions, ramos is known for being a precursor in the use of modernist poetic techniques specifically in his innovations in versification earlier on in his writings at a time when, by and large, tagalog poetry was deeply steeped in the conventions of traditional poetics, derisively referred to today by tagalog modernistas as balagtasismo. although his poems had not been as widely published as his contemporaries during his lifetime, he is currently so highly regarded by literary historians that it has been said that his poetry “ought to rank him among the major poets of the tagalog language.” but unlike the younger avant-garde poets, his later poems especially were politically purposive as these made his poems “easily accessible to the masses in whose service he had placed his art” (lumbera, 2007: 101). clearly, his modernism is both aesthetic and political. ramos’ literary creed is embodied in his famous poem, panulat,” whose tropes speak of the role of literature in the struggle for national emancipation and social justice. panulat ni benigno r. ramos kung ikaw, panulat, ay di magagamit kundi sa paghamak sa bayang may hapis, manong mabakli ka’t ang taglay mong tulis ay bulagin ako’t sugatan sa dibdib. kung dahil sa iyo’s aking tutulungan ang nagsisilait sa dangal ng bayan, manong mawala ka sa kinalalagyan, at nang din na kita magawang pamaslang!... di ko kailangan na ikaw’y gamitin kung sa iyong katas ang baya’y daraing, ibig ko pang ikaw’y magkadurug-durog kaysa magamit kong sa baya’y panlubog. sa bawat anak mo ay itinatanim ang dati mong hapis at aping damdamin, at bago mamatay, ang iyong habilin “iyong ating lupa’y pilitin mong kunin.” kailangan kita sa gitna ng digma at sa pagtatanghal ng bayaning diwa, hayo’t ibangon mo ang lahat ng dukha hayo’t ibagsak mo ang mga masiba! (1930) pen by benigno r. ramos my pen, if your only use is to cast dishonour on my unhappy country, may you break into two and may your point pierce my eyes and wound my heart. if i’d be adding my voice through you to those that malign my country’s good name, may you vanish from where you rest, that you might not serve as an instrument of death!... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wildcat_strike http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tagalog_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tagalog_language maria luisa torres reyes 26 i don’t have any use for you if the sap you secrete will give my country pain, i’d sooner burn you or chop you up than be a party to treasonous deeds. i refuse to use you to spread fragrance along the paths of men of evil will, i’d sooner have you crumble into dust than use you to keep my country down. i want to use you in the thick of battle to hold up the hero’s mind for all to emulate, go, raise up the poor who lie prostrate! go, pull down all those who rose through greed! (1930) translation: bienvenido lumbera s.p. lopez in response to the polemics of the “coterie of aesthetes” among the filipino writers in english led by villa to whom “art is a method of escape, ”salvador p. lopez insisted upon the role of the writer as “tiller of the soil, spade in hand, digging into the roots of things and planting seeds.” ...despite the fact that events in the odern world have made it increasingly difficult for artists to do their work, there are still those who fondly cling to the delusion that there is an ivory tower to which the worshippers of beauty can retire away from the madding crowd. of course, there is no such tower; only people who imagine that they dwell in one. in praise of teodoro kalaw, filipino writer and editor of the nationalist newspaper el renacimiento which was forced to close down by the american regime, lopez described kalaw’s work as “growing out of the strong spirit of nationalism and the universal aspiration for independence from america.” following the long tradition of socially-conscious literature in the country, in his essays, in the face of so much worsening social injustice in the cities and the countryside during the commonwealth period, he urged filipino writers to produce “proletarian literature” rather than “art for art’s sake.” the philippine commonwealth government’s policy: the role of language and literature in shaping modernism/s so in this defining moment, how was the commonwealth government, whose burden was to prove to the american colonizers that it was “mature” enough to self-govern, to respond to the challenges in this period of “tutelage”? the deterioration of the economy seemed unstoppable, owing to the social contradictions in a commonwealth-in-namebut-a-colony-in-fact, and to the forces of global capitalism to which it had been tied as supplier of cheap raw materials to industrialized countries like the us. the agitations were coming from all sides, - including the politically committed creative writers and journalists -so the government set out to work on a so-called “social justice program” and other state initiatives meant to address in words if not in deed, the concerns of the filipino underprivileged. manuel l. quezon, the president under the 10-year transitory commonwealth government, hoped to hold back the growing tide of social unrest by attempting to address on major fronts some of the socio-economic issues resulting from the country’s problems -including the ones that concerned language and literature. by executive order 134, delivered by radiocast in december 1937, quezon proclaimed that the filipino national language would be based on tagalog; in the same executive order, he created the institute of national language to be headed by jayme c. de veyra, a visayan and not a tagalog. paradoxically, the executive order also indicated that “the adoption of the philippine national language shall not be understood as anyway affecting the requirement that the instruction in the public schools shall be primarily conducted in the english language.” emphasizing in his speech later during the first filipino writers conference in 1940 that vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 27 “the constitution provides that arts and letters be under the patronage of the government,” quezon seemed adamant in his decision: the americans were denying our ability to run our own government on the ground that we did not have a common language… a common language expresses a common nationality. (arguilla 27-28) the political link between the issue of the granting of philippine independence by the us and the issue of national language was clear to quezon; in his mind, it was as if one were a precondition for the other: but now that independence is coming, we must realize and admit that we need a common language – a common national language. (arguilla 27). he also instituted the commonwealth literary awards on 25 march 1939 “in response to the efforts of the philippine writers league to realize the provision of the constitution…” thus, as mandated by the constitution, the philippine writers’ league organized the first filipino writers conference in 1940. this conference was attended by the most prominent filipino writers in spanish, tagalog and english of the day. at one fell swoop, quezon, in an effort to prove the ability of the filipinos for selfgovernment had also to prove that the filipinos could have a common language in which would be expressed a common experience and shared culture through literature. and this literature presumably would be modern and forward-looking, hence the title of the conference was “modern literary objectives.” thus, towards this end, quezon hoped to mandate the trajectory of philippine language and literatures, and along its path, unwittingly, some of the basic problems as well, that continue to haunt the country to this day, unresolved. understandably, the philippines writers’ league-sponsored commonwealth literary contests was “approved by the office of the president.” indeed, quezon himself said: all i can say is under my administration, arts and letters will receive due encouragement and i am prepared to ask the national assembly….. to appropriate funds for this purpose. (arguilla 30) the writers’ response: modern, modernity, modernism the discussions at the “modern literary objectives” conference centered on multiple if contradictory challenges: a. the writers in spanish were looking back. having lost the audience they used to have until the 1900s, the so-called golden age of hispanic literature in the philippines, they were concerned with the hispanic legacy. in the conference, the speech on spanish literature was evaluating the influence of hispanic classics in tagalog translation like don quixote and emphasizing the need to point out the “democratic spirit that pervades the work” as the writers continued to write in the vein of the hispanic modernistas. b. the writers in tagalog, on the other hand, were looking at the present, anxious about the state of literature of tagalog which, unlike spanish writing that has lost much readership, had the masses of readers, but did not have the quality of writing they would have desired. caught between the mass readers of tagalog novels in commercial magazines and mass audiences of tagalog movies to which the most popular serialized novels were being adopted, the “maverick” young tagalog writers were very vocal of their criticism of the older writers whose alleged passivity and complicity had caused the trend towards commercialization of literature to worsen. the young writers were demanding for the raising of aesthetic standards. the tagalog writers continued to draw from a rich literary tradition even as theybegan to experiment with the techniques learn from western modernism. maria luisa torres reyes 28 finally, the writers in english were looking into the future, faced as they were with the question of audience by writing in a new foreign language. carlos p. romulo, in his speech at the conference, asked “will filipino literature in english endure?” (arguilla 31). the writers in english were divided into ideological lines, arguing between the priority of writing for innovation in craftsmanship to be in-step with the aesthetic trends among their modern or modernist anglo-american models like walt whitman or e.e. cummings, or writing primarily for the economic emancipation of the country and social justice for their countrymen consistent with the writings of steinbeck or dos passos – in english? as the debates around these themes had been going on for some time, by 1940, these debates surprised no one. apostol as generally assumed, “modernity” or the experience of the modern has historically become increasingly associated with the modern “west.” however, in the context of the philippines’ multiple colonialism and resulting in a historical sense of oppression, philippine literature’s modernism has been a complex combination of temporalities as well as spacialities characterized by uneven development. such complexity is a result of the fact that it draws at once from indigenous, folk and popular forms and asian traditions, as it does from european (mainly spanish) and anglo-american influences. a hispanic example is by filipino writer in spanish, cecilio apostol. part and parcel of the modernismo of the writers in spanish was nationalismo, as illustrated by the works of a major filipino poet in spanish, cecilio apostol, who had written for the revolutionary anti-spanish newspaper, la independencia, under general antonio luna, and later, for well-known nationalist publications likethe brotherhood, the union, renaissance and democracy during the early years of the american regime. having read modernistas like miguel de unamuno, ruben dario, rueda who visited manila in 1914, apostol’s commitment for both nationalism and modernism is unmistakable in one of his famous poems, “al ‘yanklee.’” al “yankee” cecilio apostol siempre que la codicia rasga un giron del territorio extrano ……………………………………………………… poetas, vengadores de la conciencia universal, acaso podreis guarder silencio, la honrada voz de la protesta ahogando? ferrari !jamas! cuando la furza con la traicion y la injusticia pacta, para aplastar los fueros, los sacrosantos fueros de una raza; cuando los hijos del infame judas venden la fe jurada; cuando al gemido de los pueblos debiles contestan con brutales carcajadas; cuando el santo derecho se trucida en el festin de la ambicion humana; cuando como los yankees, a canonazos brindan una patria; no es possible callar: la patria opresa protestara indignada, y en el pecho traidor del enemigo escondera el punal de su venganza. el irredento pueblo sucumbira quizas en la demanda, mas solo a su cadaver se lograra imponer covunda extrana. !yankee! situ nos vences, con el potente empuje de tus armas, no viviras dichose, porque te odia hasta el ambiente mismo de mi patria. !yankee! si mis estrofas logran sobrevivirme, sus palabras vibraran en los siglos venideros el odio eterno del eterno paria. (1899) to the yankee cecilio apostol as long as greed tears a gash in foreign lands …………………………………………… poets, avengers of the universal conscience vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 29 can you be silent, drowning the honorable voice of protest? -ferrari never, when might, joined with treason and injustice to crush the laws and rights the sacred rights of a race, when the sons of the infamous judas sell the faith that has been sworn, when the whimper of weak peoples they answer with animal laughter; when holy right is bartered in the banquet of human ambition, as when the yankees toast a nation to the sound of cannon; silence is impossible: the oppressed nation shall protest indignantly and bury the dagger of vengeance in the enemy’s breast. this unredeemed people may perhaps succumb in the struggle, but only its corpse can be yoked by alien tyranny. yankee! if you defeat us with the powerful weight of weapons, you will not live happily, because you are hated even by the air of my native land. yankee! if my verses survive me, their words will echo in the centuries to come the eternal hate of the eternal outcast. translation: nicanor g. tiongson as such, philippine modernism has not always broken with the past nor tried necessarily to be disjunctive of tradition as it has been in the “west.” this is illustrated here by the poem “bangsamoro,” a poem by an anonymous author on the issue of the struggle for muslim independence in the philippines. in non-west, specifically, in the philippine context, modernity and modernism have taken place in uneven, multiple and even contradictory ways. in philippine literature, modernism is at once constituted by and constitutive of modernity, shaping and reshaping the experience of the “modern” in a postcolonial society in multiple ways: both as a discourse and counter-discourse of the kind of modernity that came with colonialisms and capitalism. while being itself problematic, underpinned that it is by the traditions and traditional philosophy of the “west,” modernism configures and reconfigures the articulation of the modern. such was the philippine experience during the commonwealth period. modernist writing in other philippine languages in the 1930s, in the literature of the different major philippine languages outside manila, modern developments took root as well particularly marking the growth of short fiction; yet, in almost equal measure the decade was also witness to the heightening of social consciousness among writers, given the worsening of the economic situation of the country. in quick succession, for example, in cebuano, marcel m. navarra was said to have “inaugurated” the modern short story with plotless narratives; while in ilonggo, “modernism” became an issue raised by prominent writers like lorenzo dilag-fajardo and abe s. gonzalez, who were attempting to depart from the more traditional forms which they deemed formulaic, as well as the experimentation in free verse by in the 1920s by hiligaynon poets like salvador verroya and isidro escare abeto. meanwhile, writers in the other major languages also began to incorporate new techniques and modern sensibility into their works. however, it should be noted that “traditional” writing, which came out in popular magazines and adapted into movies, as well as the writing following the spanish heritage, persisted side by side with the influx of new literary developments mainly influenced by angloamerican trends. on the university level, beginning in the 1930s, young filipino writers started to be exposed to literary modernism which highlighted the individuality of the writer and cultivated craft-consciousness, sometimes, as has been observed, at the expense of social consciousness. as expected, the university of the philippines led the way towards writing that kept up with literary trends outside the country. founded in the first decade of american occupation, up had been patterned maria luisa torres reyes 30 after harvard university in administrative structure and curricular and academic programs. only two decades of its founding it served as the center of new writing in english. thus, it has been said that the arrival of the americans at the turn of the century was to alter the course of philippine literature: particularly during the commonwealth period, new literary forms were introduced, including free verse in poetry, the modern short story, and the critical essay as the american influence came with the educational system which constituted english as the medium of instruction. conclusion recall that through the 19th century, the “modern age” had taken shape in the philippines with the rise of secularism and a “culture of literacy,” the opening of the philippine countryside with the growth of commercial agriculture and global trade, and the emergence of nationalism. at the same time, modernity has had to grapple with the facts of its own internal divisions in its search for a more just national collectivity. “modern” trends, apart from those which came from or through the united states, found their way into the practice of spanish and vernacular poets in the early 20th century. writers who were educated in spanish accessed modern trends by reading the works of such spanish and south american modernists as ruben dario, antonio machado and federico garcia lorca. despite showing a mistrust of american colonizers, many memoirs in spanish, written early during the 20th century, were also influenced by anglo-american modernist writings. in the decades following the pacific war, the presence of modern adaptations of works produced in the spanish period further maintains the spanish tradition. spanish, spoken and read only by10% of the population at the close of the spanish rule, quickly declined, however, though the spanish cultural legacy remained an important constituent of filipino culture. the installation of english as a medium of instruction in philippine schools gravely undermined spanish. by the close of the 1930s, english writing had overtaken spanish writing, the language of the new colonialists, having won out as the more prestigious medium for young writers. but while writing in spanish is scant today, the triple legacies from the spanish colonial period – didacticism, romanticism, and social realism are vigorously alive, with an admixture of western modernism. english was introduced as an “official language” and it grew in prestige as the americanization of the philippine society advanced. filipinos were connected into a world in which american and, through american mediation, western literary and intellectual traditions began to build cultural, literary and linguistic inroads. with the decline of spanish, english became an important medium specifically for the essay, the adopted language of filipino intellectuals in the 20th century; in fact, since the 1970s, there have been frantic efforts to “intellectualize”t he tagalog language as well by promoting its use in academic discourse. given the apparent contradictions in philippine society, the writers repeatedly debated the issues of ‘tradition” and “modernity” as illustrated in the discussions that engaged the tagalog writers’ groups ilaw at panitik and aklatang bayan. this debate would continue to the present, in line with the debates on the philippine literary canon and the issue of national language. literary modernity has been referred to alternatively as an attitude toward the literary world which assumes a transformative dynamic between writer and literature, or a structure involving a complex of state institutions that mandate cultural and linguistic directions. if so, then it can be said on the basis of the foregoing exposition that in the philippines, literary modernity consists of multiple, complex and contradictory attitudes or structures. filipino “modernism” and “modernity,” as the terms are generally understood in the west, may seem at once strange and familiar. owing perhaps ultimately to the law of uneven development vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 31 as much in economics as in politics in the history of relations between core and peripheral countries, imperial centers and colonial peripheries, the dynamics of “modernism” and “modernity” in the literature of the non-west like the philippines has involved an amalgam of historical impulses that amount to something irreducibly different from the western models. as sensibility, there is the intersection of the liberal individualism symptomatic of the aestheticism exemplified by jose garcia villa; but there is, too, the collective sense of selfdetermination in the nationalism of banigno ramos, and finally, there is the impulse for solidarity in the socialist internationalism of salvador p. lopez, partisan and committed to the filipino working class. as craftsmanship, there is the apparent shift from the medieval metrical romances in drama and the novel, that had dominated literature under the spanish colonial era to the “realism” and experimentation of the modern genres, or the shift from the conventions of rhyme and meter of balagtasismo to the free verse of alejandro g. abadilla. between those, there are as many other shades of “modernism” in literature as one might care to name. still, there is, too, the continuing nagging quest for the national language, an issue that certainly has always been implicated in literature – what has been referred to as “the problem of language” in the philippines. not merely a vehicle of communicating power, especially in the philippines’ multi-linguistic setting, language is itself associative of power of class, of culture. for better or for worst, tagalog has been deemed by partisans to be the most developed of the philippine languages, and hence the most modern; ergo, it deserves to be the basis of the national language, following the logic of quezon more than seventy years go. the “language issue,” rooted in the country’s colonial history, remains “unresolved” to this day, indeed. meanwhile, in languages as in literatures, in the philippines, values have been assigned for literatures and languages to be either pampanitikan (high-brow) or pambakya (low-brow), or of having pulitika but not estetika, further complicating the crisscrossing of modernities in the philippines. in the meantime, beyond spanish, english or tagalog or any other major philippine languages, literatures coming from the farther “margins” of modernism/modernity who had not been represented in the first filipino writers conference in 1940, simply continued to flourish all by themselves. in the face of the muslim filipinos’ quest for a rectification of the mistaken annexation of their homeland into the philippine republic by the united states during the commonwealth period, president quezon’s call for the landless and the jobless mainly christian filipinos from luzon and the visayas to occupy mindanao, “the land of promise,” only worsened the condition of internal colonization of the filipinos from the south by the north. although the muslim filipinos are not themselves the “first nations” in mindanao, as non-muslim indigenous peoples of mindanao had historic rights of ancestral domain, the commonwealth period, turned the land of promise into the land of strife, ever aggravating their condition of marginalization. modernism: making new as in the rich oral literatures of muslim filipinos, in the poem “bangsamoro,” written by an anonymous author, the historical cry for freedom and desire for moroland, remains the battlecry. in the poem, “bangsamoro” is at once a trope for the building of a modern philippines in which majority and minority cultures co-exist, a figure for modernity in which progress is achieved by a people united under a single flag, and modernist “making new” as it symbolizes the final break from an unjust past. bangsamoro bangsamoro, gedam imaman kanu ka intindig su agama islam so kapanlalim sa lekitanu nu taw a lumalapu wageb saguna na imbunwa tanu bangsamoro, a baninindig kanu inged maria luisa torres reyes 32 lila su ngiwa indi lugo mamagayon, mamagisa-isa apas tanu su kandaludaya palaw ataw didsan pawas kadatalan su kandaludaya ataw pakuburan people of bangsamoro people of bangsamoro, awake and make up your mind stand for our faith the oppression they did to us the immigrants now is the time to fight them people of bangsamoro who fight for our cause offer your body and blood cooperate, unite aim for freedom in the mountains even how many our enemies are freedom or martryrdom. translation by zamzamin ampatuan and nikita lauban indeed, caught between these crisscrossing lines in literature are the intersecting issues of sensibility, craftsmanship and languages in the philippines, of historical divisions of class, of ethnicity. modernism and modernity at once involve a break with the past, an affirmation of the power of the individual to create and the power of a people to determine their collective destiny, and the faith in the capacity of literature to make all that happen. but having remained an “ongoing project” in the literary scene of so many places for so long, modernism might also perhaps be a symptom of a global modernity in crisis. references abueg, efren r. et. al. talindaw: kasaysayan ng panikan sa pilipino para sa kolehiyo at unibersidad. navotas, metro manila: authors, 1981. anderson, benedict. imagined communities (london: verso, 1983. arguilla, manuel et.al. literature under the commonwealth. manila: philippine writers guild, 1940. constantino, renato. the philippines: a past revisited. quezon city: tala publishing services, 1975. cruz, isagani r. and soledad s. reyes. ang ating pantikan. manila: goodwill trading co. inc., 1984. cultural center of the philippines encyclopedia of philippine art. ed. nicanor g. tiongson. vol. 9. manila: ccp, 1994. 24-97. gonzales, lydia fer et.al. panitikan ng pilipinas (pandalubhasaan). manila: rex book store, 1982. lumbera, bienvenido l. and cynthia nograles lumbera. philippine literature: a history and anthology (revised edition). pasig city: anvil publishing inc., 2007. maramba, asuncion david. early philippine literature: from ancient times to the present to 1940. pasig city: anvil publishing inc. and asuncion david maramba, 2006. medina, jr., b.s. tatlong panahon ng panitikan. manila: national book store, inc. 1972. nicasio, paz n. and federico b. sebastian. manila: rex book store, 1965. panganiban, jose villa et. al. panitikan ng pilipinas. manila: rex book store, 1995. pineda, ponciano b.p. et. al. ang panitikang pilipino: sa kaunlarang bansa (pandalubhasaan). pasig: national book store, inc., 1979. report of the chairman of the board of judges for english in the commonwealth literary awards. n.p. http://et.al/ http://et.al/ vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 33 rubin, ligaya tiamson et.al. panitikan sa pilipinas. manila: rex book store, 2001. sauco, consolacion p. et. al. panitikang filipino (pandalubhasaan). quezon city: katha publishing co., inc. and authors, 1997. serrano, josephine b. and trinidad m. ames. a survey of filipino literature in english. quezon city: phoenix publishing house, inc. and josephine bass serrano and trinidad mano ames, 1987. wallerstein, immanuel. ‘world systems theory’ in a. giddens and j. turner social theory today. cambridge: polity, 1987. http://et.al/ 35 vol. 21 no. 1, april 2021, pp. 35 – 47 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i1.2961 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. the causative in indonesian benedictus bherman dwijatmoko dwijatmoko@usd.ac.id graduate program in english language studies, universitas sanata dharma, indonesia abstract article information in the principle and parameter approach, the indonesian suffix –kan can be treated as an inflection that functions to create a causative relation between the arguments which the verb takes. along with the treatment, the voice affixes (vc) meng-, di-, and teralso heads a phrase, a voice phrase (vcp), and a verbal sentence in indonesian, which really has the status of a complementizer phrase (cp), has a vcp as its main element. vc may take a vp or any other phrase category including a causative phrase (csp) headed by the suffix –kan as its complement. a csp can also become the complement or adjunct or a vp or another category phrase which becomes the complement of a vcp. the analysis of the suffix –kan as an inflection can explain the similarity of the pairs of sentences which are syntactically similar and have the same meaning, solve the problem of meaning which usually accompanies the discussion of the suffix, and explain the production of indonesian sentences which contain the suffix –kan. furthermore, the study may also provide insights for english and indonesian course designers to develop materials which can present the topic clearly and for indonesian and english translators to arrive at a good translation equivalent. keywords: transformation grammar; causative phrase; suffix –kan, causative relation; complement; adjunct received: 10 november 2020 revised: 17 december 2020 accepted: 29 january 2021 introduction indonesian is very rich in the use of the suffix –kan to show its numerous meanings. the various uses of the suffix may pose significant problems to indonesian learners who are learning english and use english in the communication as well as english speakers to communicate in indonesian. a thorough discussion of the suffix may provide insights to both english and indonesian course designers to develop learning materials for english and indonesian students. it may also provide insights to translators to translation indonesian sentences which uses a –kan verb in the predicate. the suffix –kan in indonesian is often analyzed as a derivational affix which functions to form new words. the suffix may form a new verb from another category or a new verb from another verb. the verbs https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) benedictus bherman dwijatmoko 36 mengencangkan 'to tighten' and menguangkan 'to cash' are said to be formed from the adjective kencang 'tight' and the noun uang 'money' respectively with the suffix -kan in combination with the active voice prefix meng. the verb membelikan 'to buy something for somebody' and mengambilkan 'to get something for somebody' are said to be formed from membeli 'to buy something' and mengambil 'to get something' with the suffix. the analysis, however, fails to capture the syntactic similarity between the pairs of sentences (1) and (2) and (3) and (4). (1) susan tidur. susan ө-sleep 'susan slept.' (2) ibu menidurkan susan. mom act-sleep-cs susan 'mom lullabied susan.' (3) ibu membeli boneka. mom act-buy doll 'mom bought a doll.' (4) ibu membelikan susan boneka. mom act-buy-cs susan doll 'mom bought sudan a doll.' sentences (1) and (2) are similar in that the meaning of (1) is contained in (2), and sentence (3) is similar to sentence (4) in that the action which mom did in (3) is contained in (4). the similarity which exists between the sentences in each pair only lies in the verb stem tidur 'sleep' in (1) and (2), and in the verb stem beli 'buy', the subject ibu 'mom', and the direct object boneka 'doll in (3) and (4). the verb in (2) is formed by adding the active prefix (act) and the suffix –kan to the verb tidur 'sleep', and the verb in (4) is formed by adding the suffix –kan to the verb membeli 'buy.' the suffix –kan occurs in various contexts. son & cole (2008) identify four different constructions with –kan. the suffix can occur with adjectives and inchoative verbs, with benefactives, as with an np as the goal of a preposition, and with ditransitive verbs. in all occurrences of –kan, sneddon (1996) identifies two basic functions, namely to mark an object as patient and to mark an object as a beneficiary. the different contexts also show different meanings. moeliono & dardjowidjojo (1988) identify four major meanings of -kan: (i) expressing an action which the stem shows like in melakukan 'to do' and membicarakan 'to discuss', (ii) causing something or somebody to become like what the stem shows like in membebaskan 'to free' which is derived from bebas 'free' and menghabiskan 'to finish' which is derived from habis 'finish', (iii) putting something or somebody in a location as expressed by the stem like in merumahkan 'to put somebody into a house or to dischage' which is derived from rumah 'house', and memenjarakan 'to put somebody into a jail or to jail' which is derived from penjara 'jail', and (iv) doing something for somebody else like in membelikan 'to buy something for somebody' and menjualkan 'to sell something for somebody'. the various functions and meanings which –kan have is the result of the analysis which treats the suffix as a derivational suffix. the analyses above and also the analysis which kaswanti purwo (1995 & 1997) give, however, cannot explain the presence of the various meanings. the analysis of the suffix –kan as an inflection can solve the problems which the analysis of the suffix as a derivation fails to solve. in the principle and parameter approach, the suffix –kan becomes the head of a causative phrase or a csp. the analysis can show the syntactic similarity of sentences like in (1) (4) and explain how the core meaning of cs, that is 'causative', can be identified in various sentence patterns. the principle and parameter (pp) approach as discussed in chomsky (1981), radford (1988), haegeman (1991), haegeman and gueron (1999), and dwijatmoko (2002; 2020) was used instead of the newer approach in transformational grammar (chomsky 1995, seuren 2004, radford 2004). in the pp approach, a sentence is analyzed as a complementizer phrase (cp) which takes an inflection phrase (ip) as its complement, which in turn takes a verb phrase (vp). different from their theory, however, the subject of a sentence is not generated as the specifier of i. following haegeman and guéron (1999) and zagona (2002), a sentence subject is generated journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 37 as the specifier of v. methodology the object of the study on the indonesian suffix –kan in this paper is indonesian sentences which has the suffix in the predicate verb. the sentences studied are generated from the internal (i-) language (chomksy, 1981) of the researcher. i-language is the language which exists in the mind of the speaker, and sentences in i-language are present in their d(eep)-structures. a dstructure is the configuration of elements which a head requires and is converted into the s(urface)-structure to meet the morphological and syntactic rules with the application of some transformation (t-) rules. (chomsky, 1981; radford,1988; haegeman,1991; haegeman & gueron, 1999). the formation of d-structure and sstructure follows the x-bar theory (chomsky, 1981; radford,1988; haegeman,1991; haegeman & gueron, 1999). in the x-bar theory, (i) a phrase of any category (xp) branches into another phrase which functions as a specifier and x' or the the intermediate level of x, (ii) x' branches to another x' and another phrase as an adjunct which comes after the head or an attribute which comes before the head, and finally (iii) x' branches to x as the head and another phrase as its complement. adjunction and attribution processes are recurrent. the data used for the analysis in this paper are sentences which contain the suffix – kan in its various functions and meanings. the d-structures of the sentences in i-language are, then, identified, and the rules which form the d-structures are explained. to justify the correctness of the rules and theories in this paper the principle of acceptability is used. a rule or theory is good or correct if and only if it produces an acceptable sentence, and any rule or theory which produces an unacceptable sentence is refuted. to present the d-structure of a sentence, brackets will be used. the d-structure of the phrase xp, the configureation below is used. (5) [xp yp1 x' [x' x' yp2 [x' yp3 x' [x' x yp4]]]] the d-structure reads '(i) the phrase xp branches into yp1 as the specifier amd x', (ii) x' branches into another x' and yp2 as the adjunct, (iii) x' then branches into yp3 as the attribute and another x', and finally (iv) x' branches into x as the head and yp4 as the complement. to ease the discussion, the sentences are numbered in parenthesis consecutively from the introduction to the discussion. thus, the sentences are sometimes only referred with their number. results and discussion the discussion in this paper falls into two major parts namely the need of a causative phrase (csp) and functions of the csp. the need of csp along with the analysis of the suffix –kan as an inflection, the indonesian voice affixes are also analyzed as inflections and head voice (vc) phrases. a vc may take a verb phrase (vp), a noun phrase (np), an adjective phrase (ap), a prepositional phrase (pp), or a phrase headed by a relational suffix –kan, -i, or –per as its complement. due to the limited space, the nature of vc as an inflection will not be discussed here. the status of cs as an inflection which heads a phrase can be seen in sentences like (6) and (7). (6) ibu menidurkan susan. mom act-sleep-cs susan 'mom lullabied susan. (7) susan tidur. susan ø-sleep 'susan slept.' sentence (6) is different from (7) in that (6) contains a phonologically realized vc, cs, and the np ibu and whereas (7) does not. the presence of cs in (6) also enables the presence of the np ibu. the np ibu does not come from inside the vcp for a vc does not require any argument (np). study (8) and (9) below. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) benedictus bherman dwijatmoko 38 (8a) ibu membeli kue. mom act-buy cake 'mom bought a cake.' (8b) meng[vp ibu beli kue] (9a) rita membaca surat dari rita act-read letter from temannya. friend her 'rita read a letter from her friend.' (9b) meng[vp rita baca surat dari temannya] in (8) and (9), it can be seen that vc does not take a specifier. vc takes the vp [vp ibu beli kue] 'mom buy a cake' in (8) and [vp rita baca surat dari temannya] 'rita read a letter from her friend' in (9). in (8) kue 'a cake is the complement of beli, and ibu 'mom' is the specifier. in (9) surat dari temannya 'a letter from her friend' is the complement of baca 'read', and rita is the specifier. in both (8) and (9), vc does not take a specifier. returning to (2), if the np ibu is not a specifier of vc and is not an element of the vp [susan tidur] 'susan sleep', then ibu is the specifier of cs. the structure of (2) is therefore like the following. (10) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp ibu [cs' –kan [vp susan tidur]]]]] csp is the complement of vc. cs takes the vp [susan tidur] as its complement and the np ibu 'mom' as its specifier. structure (10) is the d-structure of (2) or the configuration which all the heads in the sentence require. the d-structure then undergoes some transformations to satisfy some morphological and syntactic requirements of indonesian and form the sstructure. the transformations, however, will not be discussed in this paper. the ability of cs to take an np can be supported further with sentences like (11) and (13). (11) ibu membelikan rita boneka. mom act-buy cs rita doll 'mom bought rita a doll.' (12) ibu membeli boneka. mom act-buy doll 'mom bought a doll.' (13) hardi membuatkan saya kopi. hardi act-make cs i coffee 'hardi made me coffee' (14) hardi membuat kopi. hardi act-make coffee 'hardi made coffee.' sentences (11) is different from (12) in the presence of cs and the np rita. similarly, sentence (13) is different from (14) in the presence of cs and the np me. it can be said, therefore, that the presence of cs in (11) and (13) enables the occurrence of rita and me respectively, or that rita in (11) and me in (13) are an element of a phrase which cs heads. the functions of csp as a phrase, a csp can become the complement of a vc, the complement of a lexical item, and an adjunct of a lexical item. the various meanings which cs may show, which alwi, et. al (2000) give, is due to the function of the csp. complement of vc a csp can become the complement of a vc. in (15) and (16) below, csp becomes the complement of vc. (15a) ronny menghabiskan uangnya. ronny act-finish cs money his 'ronny used up all his money.' (15b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp ronny [cs' –kan [vp uangnya habis]]]]] (16a) mereka merobohkan rumah-rumah itu. they act-fall cs house house the 'they pulled down all the houses.' (16b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp mereka [cs' –kan [vp rumah-rumah itu roboh]]]]] in (15), cs takes the np ronny as the specifier and the vp [uangnya habis] 'his money – to finish' as its complement. in (16), cs takes the np mereka 'they' as the specifier and the vp [rumah-rumah itu roboh] 'the houses – fall down' as its complement. the characteristics of indonesian verbs which can become the complement of a csp which becomes the complement of a vc can be identified. the verbs habis 'finish' and roboh journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 39 'fall down' occur with a zero form of vc. they have the feature of [+zero form of vc]. study these sentences. (17a) uangnya habis untuk judi. money his finish for gamble 'all his money was used up for gambling.' (17b) [vcp – [vc' ꝋ[vp uangnya habis untuk judi]]] (18a) rumah itu roboh kemarin. house the fall down yesterday 'the houses fell down yesterday.' (18b) [vcp – [vc' ꝋ[vp rumah itu roboh kemarin]]] the verbs habis 'finish' and roboh 'fall down' do not semantically select or s-select a complemet or have the feature [-complement]. in a vp, they only s-select a specifier. in (17) habis 'finish' occurs with uangnya 'his money' as the specifier and untuk judi 'for gambling' as an adjunct. in (18), the verb roboh 'fall down' occurs with rumah-rumah itu 'the houses' as the specifier and kemarin 'yesterday' as an adjunct. all verbs which have the features [+zero form of vc, -complement] head a vp which can become the complement of cs in a sentence. of the 58 verbs with a [+zero form of vc] in the list verbs have the feature of [-complement] (moeliono & darwjowidjojo, 1998), 11 verbs have the feature of [+complement]. as presented in table 1, thirty four of the verbs with [-complement] can occur as the head of a vp which can become the complement of cs, and 13 verbs cannot occur with cs. the verbs ada 'exist' and bangkit 'rise up' in the list, for example, have the [-complement] feature. they can head a vp which can become the complement of cs like in (19) and (20). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) benedictus bherman dwijatmoko 40 (19a) anna mengadakan pesta. anna actexist cs party 'anna held a party.' (19b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp anna [cs' –kan [vp pesta ada]]]]] (20a) ucapannya membangkitkan words his act-rise up cs semangat para siswa. spirit pl. students 'his words raised the students' spirit.' (20b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp ucapan [cs' –kan [vp semangat para siswa bangkit]]]]] in (19) ada 'exist' forms a vp [pesta ada] 'a party – to exsit', and the vp becomes the complement of cs with anna as specifier. in (20) bangkit 'rise up' forms a vp [semangat para siswa bangkit] 'the students' spirit – to rise up', and the vp becomes the complement of cs with ucapannya 'his words' as the specifier. cs may also take a vp which has the feature of [+zero form of vc]. the verb baring and singkir can occur with the vc berand mengrespectively, but they can also head a vp which becomes the complement of cs. study the following sentences. (21) rudi berbaring di rumput. rudi actlie down on grass 'the child lied down on the grass.' (22a) mereka membaringkan anak itu di rumput. they act-lie down cs child the on grass 'they lay down the child on the grass.' (22b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp mereka [cs' –kan [vp anak itu baring di rumput]]]]] (23) prajurit-prajurit itu menyingkir. soldier soldier the act-run 'the soldier ran away.' (24a) mereka menyingkirkan prajurit they act-run cs soldier soldier the prajurit itu. 'they sent the soldiers away.' (24b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp mereka [cs' –kan [vp prajurit-prajurit itu singkir]]]]] in (21) the sentence contains a vcp [anak itu berbaring di rumput], and in (22), the complement of cs is the vp [anak itu baring di rumput] 'the child – to lie on the grass' and the specifier is mereka 'they'. in (23) the sentence contains a vcp [prajurit-prajurit itu menyingkir] 'the soldiers ran away', and in (24) the complement of cs is the vp [prajuritprajurit itu singkir] 'the soldiers – to run away' and the specifier is mereka 'they'. the ability of cs to take a vp as its complement is not limited to a vp which has the feature [-complement]. a verb which sselect a pp as its complement may also head a vp which becomes the complement of cs. study the following sentences. (25a) saya mengingatkan joko akan tugasnya. i act-remember-cs joko of task his 'i reminded joko his tasks.' (25b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp saya [cs' –kan [vp joko ingat pada tugasnya]]]]] (26a) linda mengenalkan saya pada linda act-know-cs i to teman-nya. friend his 'linda introduced me to her friend.' (26b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp linda [cs' –kan [vp saya kenal pada temannya]]]]] the complement of cs in (25) is the vp [joko ingat pada tugasnya] 'joko – to remember his tasks'. in the vp, pada tugasnya 'of his tasks' is the complement of ingat 'remember', and joko is the specifier. in (26), the complement of cs is the vp [saya kenal pada temannya] 'i – to know at his friend'. pada temannya 'at his friend' is the complement of kenal 'know', and saya 'i' is the specifier. both ingat 'remember' and kenal 'know' take a pp as their complement. other verbs which s-select a pp as their complement and which can head a vp as the complement of cs are aju 'propose', alih 'to change', sanding 'sit close to, ingat 'remember', dan tunduk 'to obey'. a verb which s-selects an np as its complement can also head a vp which becomes the complement of cs. in (27) and (28) below the heads of the vps are the verbs tembak 'to shoot' and pukul 'to hit', which both can take an np as their complement. (27a) ia menembakkan pistolnya ke he act-shoot-cs pistol his to udara. air journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 41 'he shot his pistol to the air.' (27b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp polisi itu [cs' –kan [vp pistolnya tembak ke udara]]]]] (28a) ia memukulkan patung itu ke he act-strike-cs statue the to kepala perampok itu. head robber the 'he struck the statue to the robber's head.' (28b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp ia [cs' –kan [vp patung itu pukul kepala perampok itu]]]]] the complement of cs in (27) is the vp [pistolnya tembak ke udara] 'the gun – to shoot –at the air', and the complement of vs in (28) is the vp [patung itu pukul kepala perampok itu] 'the statue – to strike – to the robber's head'. to become the head of a vp which can function as the complement of cs, the verbs tembak 'shoot' and pukul 'strike' have to undergo a semantic process, call it a semantic reconstruction. the verbs tembak 'to shoot' and pukul 'to strike' s-select an np which has the [+human] feature as its specifier and an np as its complement. in (27) the specifier of tembak 'shoot' and pukul 'to strike' are the nps pistolnya 'his pistol' and patung itu 'the statue' which have a [-human] feature. such nps usually occur as the complement of a pp which become an adjunct to show an instrument like dengan pistolnya 'with his gun' and dengan patung itu 'with the statue'. furthermore, the nps which usually becomes a complement functions an adjunct introduced with ke to', namely ke udara 'to the air' and ke kepala perampok itu 'to the robber's head'. similar to tembak 'to shoot' and pukul 'to strike', the verbs gores 'to scratch', hantam 'to hit', todong 'to aim a gun', and tusuk 'to stab' can also head a vp which becomes the complement of cs. the verbs should also undergo a semantic reconstruction to occur in the position. the verb minum 'to drink' and sewa 'to rent' can also become the head of a vp which becomes the complement of cs. study (29) and (30) below. (29a) ibu meminumkan obat itu pada mom act-drink-cs drug the to diana. diana 'mom made diana drink the medicine.' (29b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp ibu [cs' –kan [vp diana minum obat itu]]]]] (30a) pak hardi menyewakan rumahnya pada orang asing. mr. hardi act-rent – cs house the to person foreign 'mr. hardi rent out his house to a foreigner.' (30b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp pak hardi [cs' –kan [vp orang asing sewa rumah itu]]]]] the complement of cs in (29) is the vp [diana minum obat itu] 'diana – to drink – the medicine', and the complement of cs in (30) is the vp [orang asing sewa rumah itu] 'the foreginer – rent – the house'. the vp in (29) and (30) does not undergo a semantic reconstruction, but the np diana in (29) and the np orang asing itu 'the foreigner' in (30) do not receive a syntactic case in their base position and they cannot move to any place where they can be assigned a case. they can get a nominative case when they occupy the specifier position of vc. the position is occupied by ibu in (29) and pak hardi 'mr. hardi' in (30), which are the specifiers of -kan. the preposition pada 'at' is, therefore, inserted to save the nps, and then the new pps become adjuncts. this process may be called an np lowering. csp as a complement of vc can also take ap as its complement. the complement of cs in (31) and (32) is an ap. (31a) mereka meremehkan tim lainnya. they act-worthless-cs team other 'they underestimate the other teams.' (31b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp mereka [cs' –kan [ap tim-tim lainnya remeh]]]]] (32a) pemerintah menghijaukan government act-green-cs daerah kering itu. area dry the 'the government reforest the dry area.' (32b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp pemerintah [cs' – kan [ap daerah kering itu hijau]]]]] journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) benedictus bherman dwijatmoko 42 the complement of cs in (31) is the ap [timtim lainnya remeh] 'other tem – worthless'. in the ap, remeh 'worthless' is the head, and timtim lainnya 'the other teams' is the specifier. in (31), the complement of cs is the ap [daerah kering itu hijau] 'the dry area – green'. in the ap in (32), hijau 'green' is the head, and daerah kering itu 'the dry area' is the specifier. cs may also take an np as its complement. in (33) and (34) below, the complement of cs is an np. (33a) pak ahmad menguangkan ceknya. mr. ahmad act –money-cs check his 'mr. ahmad cashed his check.' (33b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp mereka [cs' –kan [np ceknya uang]]]]] (34a) bu martamenyekolahkan ms. marta act-school-cs anaknya di tarakanita. kid her in tarakanita 'ms. marta sent her kid to study in tarakanita.' (34b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp mereka [cs' –kan [np anaknya sekolah di tarakanita]]]]] the complement of cs in (33) is the np [ceknya uang] 'his check – money', and the complement of cs in (34) is the np [anaknya sekolah di tarakanita] 'her kid – school in tarakanita'. in (33) the head of the np is the noun uang 'money', and ceknya 'his check' is the specifier. in (34), sekolah 'school' is the head of the np, and pp di tarakanita 'in tarakanita' is an adjunct, and anaknya 'her kid is the specifier. another category which can become the complement of cs is a pp. study sentence (35) and (36) below. (35a) mereka mengekemukakan they act to front – cs pendapatnya. opinion his 'they expressed his opinion.' (3b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp mereka [cs' –kan [pp pendapatnya ke muka]]]]] (36a) polisi itu mengeluarkan policeman the act-to-out-cs pistolnya. pistol his 'the policeman took out his pistol.' (36b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp polisi itu [cs' –kan [pp pistolnya keluar]]]]] the complement of cs in (35) is the pp [pendapatnya ke muka] 'his opinion – to front'. in the pp, ke 'to' is the head, muka 'front' is the complement of ke 'to', and pendapatnya 'his opinion' is the specifier. in (36), the complement of cs is the pp [pistolnya keluar] 'his pistol – to out', in which ke 'to' is the head, the np luar 'out' is the complement, and the np pistolnya 'his pistol' is the specifier. ke luar 'to – out' as a head – complement construction is often written as a word keluar 'go out' and is considered as a verb. the last category which can become the complement of cs is a nump. the complement of cs in (37) is the nump [beberapa kelompok kecil itu satu]. (37a) ia menyatukan kelompok-kelompok he act-one-cs group group kecil itu. small the 'he united the small groups.' (37b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp ia [cs' –kan [pp beberapa kelompok kecil itu satu]]]]] in the nump, the head is satu 'one', the specifier is the np kelompok-kelompok kecil itu 'the small group'. except a preposition, all the types of the head of the phrase which become the complement of cs has the characteristic of [complement]. the verbs habis 'finish' and roboh 'fall down', the adjectives remeh 'worthless' and hijau 'green', and the nouns uang 'money' and sekolah 'school' have the feature [-complement]. as has been said earlier, the core meaning of cs is 'causative'. when a csp becomes the complement of a vc, the construction means that the person or thing as expressed by the specifier of cs does something so that the action or state as expressed by the phrase which becomes the complement of cs happens. such a meaning appears in (38) – (43). (38a) ia menggagalkan perampokan itu. he act-fail cs robbery the 'he failed the robbery.' (38b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp ia [cs' –kan [vp journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 43 perampokan itu gagal]]]]] (39a) ia menundukkan semua he act-surrender cs all penantangnya. challenger his 'he conquered all his challengers.' (39b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp ia [cs' –kan [vp semua penantangnya tunduk]]]]] (40a) ahmad menyewakan sepeda ahmad act-rent cs bicycle pada turis. to tourist 'ahmad rent out bicycles to tourists.' (40b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp ahmad [cs' –kan [vp turis sewa sepeda]]]]] (41a) pemerintah membekukan government act –freeze cs hubunganya dengan afganistan. relation its with afganistan 'the government froze its relation with afganistan.' (41b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp pemerintah [cs' – kan [ap hubungannya dengan afganistan beku]]]]] (42a) ia menjadwalkan pertemuan itu he actschedule cs meeting the pada hari rabu. at day wednesday 'he scheduled the meeting on wednesday.' (42b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp ia [cs' –kan [np pertemuan itu jadwal pada hari rabu]]]]] (43a) ia menyatukan kedua paragraf itu he act-one cs two paragraphs the 'he combined the two paragraphs.' (43b) [vcp – [vc' meng[csp ia [cs' –kan [pp kedua paragraf itu satu]]]]] in all the sentences, cs has a causative meaning. complement of additive per a csp may also become the complement of per-, call it additive or adt which also functions as an inflection. in (44) and (45) below, the csp becomes the complement of adt. (44a) mereka mempermasalahkan they act adt problem cs pertemuan itu. meeting the 'they questioned the meeting.' (44b) [vcp – [vc' meng[adtp mereka [adt' per [csp mereka [cs' –kan [np pertemuan itu masalah]]]]]]] (45a) ia mempertemukan kedua he actadt meet cs two pemuda itu. youngsters the 'he arranged the meeting of the two youngsters.' (45b) [vcp – [vc' meng[adtp ia [adt' per[csp ia [cs' –kan [vp kedua pemuda itu temu]]]]]]] in (44) cs has the np [pertemuan itu masalah] 'the meeting – problem' as its complement. in (45) cs has the vp [kedua pemuda itu temu] 'the two youngsters – to meet' as the complement. cs in a csp which becomes the complement of adt also has a causative meaning. in (44) they did something so that the meeting became a problem, and in (45) he did something so that the two young people met. complement of verb some verbs which takes a pp as their complement may also take a csp as their complement. the verbs lupa in (46) and ingin in (47) take a csp as their complement. (46a) rudi melupakan tugasnya. rudi act-forget cs task his 'rudi forgot his tasks on purpose.' (46b) [vcp – [vc' meng[vp rudi [v' lupa [csp rudi –kan tugasnya]]]]] (47a) mereka menginginkan uangnya. they act-wantcs money his 'they want his money.' (47b) [vcp – [vc' meng[vp mereka [v' ingin [csp mereka –kan uangnya]]]]] the compelement of lupa 'forget' in (46) is the csp [rudi –kan tugasnya] 'rudi –cs his task'. cs in the phrase takes the np tugasnya 'his task' as the complement, and the np rudi as the specifier. in (47), the verb ingin 'want' takes the csp [mereka –kan uangnya] 'they cs his money' as the complement. in the csp, the np uangnya 'his money' is the complement of cs, and the np mereka 'they' is the specifier. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) benedictus bherman dwijatmoko 44 the presence of rudi as the specifier of cs in (46) and mereka 'they' as specifier of cs in (47) is justifiable because cs can take a specifier. just like when a csp becomes the complement of a vc, cs can also take a specifier when it becomes the complement of a verb. the nps are then deleted in the same as an np which becomes the specifier of a vp like in (48). (48a) saya ingin membeli bunga. i want act-buy flower 'i want to buy flowers.' (48b) [vcp – [vc' meng[vp saya [v' ingin [vcp – [vc' meng[vp saya beli bunga]]]]]]] in (48) both ingin 'want' and beli 'to buy' have the np saya 'i' as the specifier, but the specifier of beli is later deleted because it is the same as the specifier of ingin 'want'. similarly, rudi in [rudi –kan tugasnya] 'rudi cs his task' and mereka 'they' in [mereka –kan uangnya] 'they cs his money' are also deleted because they are the same as the specifier of lupa 'forget' and ingin 'his money' respectively. the verbs dengar and ajar which takes an np as their complement may also take a csp as its complement. the verbs dengar 'hear' in (49) and ajar 'study' in (50) take a csp as its complement. (49a) saya mendengarkan musik. i act-hear cs music 'i listen to music.' (49b) [vcp – [vc' meng[vp saya [v' dengar [csp saya –kan musik]]]]] (50a) ia mengajarkan teori itu he act-teach cs theory the pada mahasiswa semester 5. to student semester 5 'i taught the theory to the students of semester 5.' (50b) [vcp – [vc' meng[vp ia [v' [v' ajar [csp ia – kan teori itu] pada mahasiswa semester 5]]]]] the complement of dengar 'to hear' in (49) is the csp [saya –kan musik] 'i –kan music', and the complement of ajar 'to teach' in (50) is the csp [ia –kan teori itu] 'he – kan the theory'. if a verb s-selects both an np and a csp as its complement, the np which becomes the complement of the verb is the same as the np which becomes the complement of cs. compare (49) and (50) with (51) and (52) respectively. (51a) saya mendengar musik. i acthear music 'i heard music.' (51b) [vcp – [vc' meng[vp saya dengar musik]]] (52a) ia mengajar teori itu pada he act teach theory the to mahasiswa semester 5. student semester 5 'he taught the theory to the student of semester 5.' (52b) [vcp – [vc' meng[vp saya ajar teori itu pada mahasiswa semester 5]]] the complement of dengar 'hear' in (51) and the complement of ajar 'teach' in (52) are musik 'music' and teori itu 'the theory' respectively. the complement of cs in (49) is also musik 'music', and the complement of cs in (50) is also the teori itu 'the theory'. the choice of a csp as a complement instead of a pp or an np adds a new meaning to the meaning of the verb. study sentences (53) and (54) below. (53a) anna lupa pada beberapa teman anna forget at some friends lamannya. old her 'anna forgets some of her old friends.' (53b) anna melupakan beberapa teman anna act-forget-cs some lamanya. old her 'anna forgets some of her old friends.' (54a) rita mendengar musik. rita acthear music 'rita heard music.' (54b) rita mendengarkan musik. rita act-hear cs music 'rita listened to music.' the forms lupa 'forget' and mendengar 'hear', which have a pp and an np respectively as the verb complement, show an unintentional action, whereas the forms melupakan 'forget' and mendengarkan 'listen', which have a csp as the verb complement show an intentional journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 45 action. the 'intention' meaning appeas because the forms also carry a causative meaning. adjunct of verb a csp may also become an adjunct of a verb which s-selects an np as its complement. the verb beli 'to buy' and the verb baca 'to read', for example, take an np as their complement. study (55) and and (56) below. (55a) rita membeli baju. (55b) [vcp – [vc' meng[vp rita beli baju]]] act rita buy dress 'rita bought a dress.' (56a) ibu membaca cerita. (56b) [vcp – [vc' meng[vp ibu baca cerita]]] act mom read story 'mom read a story.' the complement of beli 'to buy' in (55) is baju 'a shirt', and the complement of baca 'to read' in (56) is cerita 'a story'. a csp can be added to the vp in (55) and (56) as an adjunct to form (57) and (58) respectively. (57a) rita membelikan hardi baju. (57b) [vcp – [vc' meng[vp rita [v' [v' beli baju] [csp rita –kan hardi]]]]] act rita buy dress rita cs hardi 'rita bought hardi a shirt.' (58a) ibu membacakan joko cerita. (58b) [vcp – [vc' meng[vp ibu [v' [v' baca cerita] [csp ibu –kan joko]]]]] act mom read story mom cs joko 'mom read joko a story' the csp [rita –kan hardi] is an adjunct of beli 'buy' in (57), and the csp [ibu –kan joko] is the an adjunct of baca 'read' in (58). a csp which becomes an adjunct of a verb which s-selects an np as its complement shows a benefactive meaning. it shows that the agent does the action for the person as indicated by the complement of cs. in (57) rita bought a shirt for hardi, and in (58) mom read a story for joko. as has been discussed above, the general meaning of the suffix –kan or cs is 'causative'. the meaning may vary slightly in the context. it can show a pure causative meaning, an intentional meaning, or a benefactive meaning. it shows a pure causative meaning when a csp becomes the complement of a vc or adt, an intentional meaning when a csp becomes a complement of a verb, and a benefactive meaning when it becomes an adjunct of a verb. the occurrence of a csp as a complement of a vc, adt, or verb or the adjunct of a verb is determined by the semantic feature of the verb or the lexical item which becomes the head of the phrase with which cs is to be attached. a csp becomes a complement of a vc and adt if the verb or lexical item has the feature of [complement] like habis 'finish', roboh 'fall dwon', jatuh 'fall down', kecil 'small', uang 'money', and satu 'one', (ii) if the verb has the feature of [+pp/complement] like ingat 'remember' and lupa 'forget', or (iii) if the verb can undergo a semantic reconstruction like tembak and tusuk or an np lowering like minum 'drink' and sewa 'rent'. a csp becomes the complement of a verb if the verb can take a pp or an np as a complement. the verbs which can take a csp as their complement are only lupa 'forget', ingin 'want', dengar 'hear', and lihat 'see'. finally, a csp can become an adjunct of a verb if the verb can take an np as its complement. the distribution of a csp can summarized in table 2. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) benedictus bherman dwijatmoko 46 from the table, it can be seen that csp has three functions namely as the complement of v, a complement of vc, and the adjunct of v. the three different functions explain the three different meanings which occur with a –kan verb in indonesian. conclusion the treatment of the indonesian affix –kan as an affix which head a phrase (csp) can solve the problems which appear in the discussion of the affix as a derivation which functions to form new verbs. the theory can explain the different meanings which the affix seems to show. the different meanings appear because of the different syntactic function which the affix performs. furthermore, the theory can also explain the syntactic similarity which pairs of indonesian sentences show. for the discussion of the –kan suffix to be useful for practical purposes, further studies need to be conducted. a study on the comparison indonesian sentences with the different uses of the suffix and their equvailants in english will be useful for learning and teaching purposes, and a study on the translation of indonesian sentences with – kan may provide helps to translators. references chomsky, n. (1981). lectures on government and binding: the pisa lectures. dordrecht: foris publications. chomsky, n. (1995). the minimalist program. cambridge: the mit press. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 47 chung, s. (2008). indonesian clause structure from an austronesian perspective. lingua 118, 1554–82. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.200 7.08.002 cole, p., hermon, g., & yanti. (2008). voice in malay/indonesian. lingua 118, 1500–53. dwijatmoko, b. b. (2002). english syntax. yogyakarta: sanata dharma press. dwijatmoko, b. b. (2020). sintaksis verba bahasa indonesia. yogyakarta: sanata dharma university press. haegeman, l. (1991). introduction to government and binding. cambridge, m.a.: basil blackwell, inc. haegeman, l., & gueron., j. (1999). english grammar: a generative perspctive. malden: blackwell publishing. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.200 7.08.008 kaswanti purwo, b. (1995). the two prototypes of ditransitive verbs: the indonesian evidence. , 77-101. in w. abraham, t. givon, & s. a. thompson, discourse, grammar and typology (pp. 77-101). amsterdam: john benjamins. doi: https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.27.08kas kaswanti purwo, b. (1997). the direct object in bi-transitive clauses in indonesian. in t. givon, grammatical relations: a functionalist perspective (pp. 233-52.). amsterdam: john benjamins. doi:https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.35.06pur moeliono, a. m., & darwjowidjojo, s. (1998). tata baku bahasa indonesia. jakarta: balai pustaka. radford, a. (1988). transformation grammar: a first course. cambridge: cambridge university press. radford, a. (2004). minimalist syntax: exploring the strucure of english. cambridge: cambridge university press. seuren, p. a. (2004). chomsky's minimalism. new york: oxford university press. sneddon, j. n. (1996). indonesian: a comprehensive grammar. new york: routledge. soh, h. l. (2010). voice and aspect: some notes from malay. proceedings of the workshop on indonesian-type voice system, 25 – 35. (pp. 25 35). tokyo: university of foreign studies asian and african institute for language and culture. soh, h. l., & nomoto, h. (2009). progressive aspect, the verbal prefix men-, and stative sentences in malay. oceanic linguistics 48(1), 148-171. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831010-9069-5 soh, h. l., & nomoto, h. (2011). the malay verbal prefix men-and the unergative/unaccusative distinction. journal of east asian linguistics 20: , 77106. son, m., & cole, p. (2008). an event-based account of -kan constructions in standard indonesian. language 84, 120160. travis, l. d. (2007). bahasa indonesia: a window on parameters. lingua, 118, 1583–1602. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.200 7.08.010 zagona, k. (2002). the syntax of spanish. cambridge: cambridge university press. the functions of csp complement of vc complement of additive per complement of verb adjunct of verb phenomena alwi atma ardhana & elisa dwi wardani 62 the hospital as an ideological state apparatus and disciplinary agent as seen through the main character in kenzaburo oe’s a personal matter alwi atma ardhana & elisa dwi wardani bterang13@gmail.com & elisa@usd.ac.id department of english letters, sanata dharma university abstract this study attempts to examine the disciplining process of the main character in kenzaburo oe’s novel entitled a personal matter under the light of structural-marxism theories on ideology, interpellation and hegemony. bird, the main character, is described as an unruly character that often reacts differently from other characters in dealing with his life. however, at the end of the novel bird becomes a different person after a series of disciplining process in the hospital. the hospital has employed disciplinary methods such as panopticism, examination and normalizing judgment on bird. those disciplinary actions are largely based on the ideology of marugakae as the ideology of japanese society. in turn, the disciplinary actions are to inject the ideology of the state to bird. the shift in bird’s characteristics has rendered him one of the common people subordinated by the common system or ideology. in this sense, the prevailing system in japanese society as seen in the novel continues to exist. keywords: power, ideology, interpellation, hegemony, panopticism, marugakae introduction a personal matter tells a story of a man named bird whose wife gives birth to a sick baby so that she has to stay in the hospital until the baby recovers. as a husband and father, bird has to accompany his wife and his baby in the hospital. during the period of intensive contact with the hospital, bird is forced to adapt to the system, rules, and codes of the hospital. throughout the course of the story bird has undergone a disciplining process which results in an unnatural change of bird’s characteristics in the end of the story. this paper attempts to see how the hospital is not merely a place to heal sick people but also a place which contributes to the reinforcement of the hegemony of the state’s power indirectly funneled through the hospital system. although bird’s turning point happens when he tries to run away from reality by leaving the hospital and taking the baby with him, it can be seen that the hospital in the novel is a place to initiate the investing of state’s power on bird. power and discipline the discussion in this paper borrows some perspectives from, firstly, a french structural-marxist thinker, louis althusser and secondly, michel foucault. althusser’s theory on state apparatus is actually a modification of antonio gramsci’s theory. in the quotation below antonio gramsci mentions for the first time the existence of state apparatus. the state is the instrument for conforming civil society to the economic structure, but mailto:bterang13@gmail.com vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 63 it is necessary for the state to “be willing” to do this; i.e. for the representatives of the change that has taken place in the economic structure to the control of the state (gramsci, 1983: 244). concerning the theory of state and its hegemony, gramsci perceives it as follows: …the state is the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the rulling class not only maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those whom it rules... (gramsci, 1983: 244). thus, the state needs an instrument to maintain its power. the instrument is what gramsci and althusser called state apparatus. in althusser’s term, the state apparatuses take form as schools, colleges, universities, the armies, police department, legal institutions, and as far as health is concerned, in the novel examined in this paper, it takes form as hospital. through those state apparatuses, the state spreads and maintains power. in the gramscian thought, the state apparatuses are thought to be more repressive as they use physical power or law enforcement. however, according to althusser, the state actually has two kinds of state apparatuses. to maintain the state’s existence (hegemony), the state does not merely needs physical force (repressive state apparatus), but also ideological force (ideological state apparatuses/isas). the reason is the state needs to plant its ideology on the heads of the people so that the people will help the state to continue its power. the use of physical force in the repressive state apparatuses (rsas) is no longer the center of the state’s effort for hegemony. althusser believes that the reason why most regimes or administrations survive without any relatively harmful rebellion or challenges from the people is because of the ideological state apparatuses working for the state do the job well. the absence of potential rebellions is not because the people lack of physical power but because they do not have the will to fight as they are ideologically hegemonized. the people take for granted the norms and laws confining them as a result of the permeation of isas. this ideology injected by isas forces people to learn and know only ‘know-how’ things (althusser,2008: 9). the people just go on with their life without realizing that the daily life they live in is actually formed by the ruling class. people are unaware with the invisible norms and laws in their pragmatic daily life. this unawareness is because they are not ideologically conscious of what they are doing in their lives. ‘know how’ things are a part of consciousness injection through ideological state apparatuses to create subordinated positions and functions in the social structure. this process of conditioning is what althusser called interpelation. interpelation works by ‘hailing’ the subordinated subjects to position themselves in an unbalanced imaginary relation to the superordinate by creating imaginary representantion of reality into the mind of the subordinated (selden, 1993:130). in order to recognize how ideological state apparatus actually works, it is necessary to point out two basic distinctions between the two types of state apparatuses. the first distinction is that the rsas tend to be centralized and homogeneous, whereas the isas are less centralized and more heterogeneous. the form of isas is more difficult to define and recognize. secondly, rsas work in public realm of existence. every citizen of the state is subjected to it. its privilege is to have authority on everyone in the country with no exception. on the other hand, isa can access the private realm of existence of the people. the second distinction lies in how they function. the rsas function predominantly by violence and repression but may also secondarily function by ideology, while the isas function primarily by ideology but may secondarily involve punishment or repression. in order to understand how the main character in the novel is disciplined by the hospital, foucault’s theory on power relations in meaning finding is required. for a long time, physical punishment in the form of a public torture has been practiced. in the past, the punishment, or “scaffold” in foucaultian term, was practiced in order to maintain the absolute power of a king or ruler. yet, in the contemporary society, alwi atma ardhana & elisa dwi wardani 64 according to foucault, the scaffold is still practiced although in different forms. it disciplines the body although the body is no longer tortured publicly. however, discipline, which is the essence of scaffold to maintain power remains to exist in this system. foucault wrote in his book discipline and punish: birth of prison (1979). …a punishment like forced labour or even imprisonment – merely loss of liberty – has never functioned without a certain additional element of punishment that certainly concerns the body itself: rationing of food, sexual deprivation, corporal punishment, solitary confinement…in fact it is most explicit practices… (foucault, 1979: 15-16) prison, school, hospital and other isas have been places to enact disciplining procedures. as foucault writes in the early parts of the book, isas act out as the contemporary form of the scaffold and public torture although not in the same forms. the purpose of discipline is to maintain or invest power and to eliminate resistance. discipline exists for the sake of the ruling class. both scafold and discipline focus on the body. yet, what they do to the body is quite different. scaffold, as foucault notes, was the way to show power. it was essentially invented to relish the revenge of the king to anyone found guilty by law, by the act of treason, or any serious crime. crime, in this sense, had a personal relationship with the king for the rules in monarchy era were made by king and royal advisors. so, the rules violation was considered as the personal insult to the king directly. one important aspect in scaffold was fear. this fear was the real medium of the king in investing his power through scaffold. anger might even arouse in the midst of the audiences during the procession of dragging the criminal to the scaffold. when that happened, the king could then use the audiences’ fear. the audience becomes informed of the crime committed by the criminal during the procession as the he or she was forced to give a speech or show the instrument used in committing the crime. afterward the audience would agree with the king that he or she had to be brought to the scaffold. thus, the audience became afraid of the scaffold. they learned about the crime and would strive to avoid the same thing done by the criminal. as the audience participated in the scaffold procession, they, in fact, showed their fear to the king. they knew exactly what the crime was, thus they knew exactly what was going to happen with them when they committed such crime. to this point, the king had succeeded in investing his power through the body of the condemned criminal and eventually to the body of the audiences. in discipline enactment, this type of fear is not used. what is used in the discipline is the systematical scheme to invest power which leads to obedience. this discipline is more invisible, subtle and more difficult to be recognized by the people. the disciplining power uses the norms and laws that are abstract, yet have the ability to affect people. power in the disciplining process does not need a condemned body to create fear, but it would rather utilize norms and laws to achieve its goal. these norms and laws reform the body for the body will accept them as the guide in their behaviors. and the body, like in the scaffold system, also acts as the medium, or ‘strategy’ in foucault’s terminology, to invest the power in their social relationship. the difference is that while the scaffold system invests power through fear, discipline invests power through the obedient (docile) body. the obedient body will infect all the bodies around it and makes a kind of domino effect. discipline makes the body docile for docile body is easier to be transformed into any kind of body for the sake of power (foucault, 1979: 15-23). from the explanation above, it can be concluded that discipline is a new paradigm of spreading power. power is injected (invested) to its objects not through scaffold system with its show of physical power but through the disciplinary system. foucault theorizes many ways to impose discipline, among others are examination, normalizing judgment and panopticism. examination is the mechanism that is always present in the disciplinary system. examination is the essential practice to exercise power. therefore, examination is always found in the isas. below is a quotation vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 65 about examination from foucault’s discipline and punish; …it is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify, and to punish. it establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them. that is why, in all the mechanism of discipline, the examination is highly ritualized. in it are combined the ceremony of power and the form of experiment, the deployment of force and establishment of truth… (foucault, 1979: 184) from the quotation above, it can be concluded that the examination is the fundamental action to establish truth (discourse) on the object of power, especially to those whom power is exercised on. the word “surveillance” is one important thing in the examination. surveillance provides any information needed by the state apparatuses to build the discourse. through surveillance, power has the access to the object of power. the information becomes the basic of normalizing judgment toward the object. then, the discourse of normal-abnormal will be built up. at this point, power is then invested into the body of the object because as the normalizing judgment penetrates the body, the power follows it. after the normalizing judgment, the body that is now docile (disciplined) is completely under the influence of power. the example is the hospital system. hospital has a system called a visit. in a certain continuous period, an assigned doctor pays visits to his or her patients. during the visit, the doctor will practice “surveillance” to the body of the patient. the doctor will get the information as he or she investigates or examines the patient, and judges whether the patient is sick or not. if the patient is diagnosed with sickness, the patient is rendered sick by the doctor. a discourse then is created from the condition of the patient and afterward the ways to disciple (normalize) the patient will easily follow suit (foucault,1979: 187-194). normalizing judgment is the next step after the examination. if the examination is action of ‘establishment of truth’, then normalizing judgment is the method to force this truth. according to foucault, “a small penal mechanism” is always to be found at the center of all disciplinary systems (1979: 177). thus the discourse of truth created by the application of the examination is forced to the disciplinary objects using a system of punishment. the quotation below will explain the use of this punishment. …the art of punishing, in the regime of disciplinary power, is aimed neither at expiation, nor even precisely at repression…the perpetual penalty that traverses all points and supervises every instant in the disciplinary institutions compares, differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, excludes. in short, it normalizes (foucault, 1979: 182-183). punishment is essential in this process of normalizing judgment. its aim is not merely to hurt or o warn people. it is more than that. punishment in this sense has a political mission in order to achieve larger goals. punishment in this sense is called ‘infrapenalty’ or small penalty (foucault, 1979: 178). furthermore, it is not always in the shape of violence. it sometimes takes shape of warning, humiliation, accusation etc. the goals of this punishment are to make the punished knows that what he or she does is not normal. the punished is forced to compare and differentiate his or her behaviors with the behaviors of those who are considered ‘good’. they are forced to accept these norms called normality. then, they are forced to follow that. in other words, the punishment tries to homogenize (to make all people follow the same norms) the behaviors of the people. by judgment that normalizes, a certain system will be kept alive in the society because everybody is forced to follow the system as the system runs disciplinary system. power relation works to maintain their existence through this normalizing judgment. it keeps the structures in the society the same from time to time. therefore, the state can only survive only by practicing and maintaining this system because state needs docility. docility needs standardization for normal and abnormal. so, every state apparatuses use the same standardization of normal and abnormality to make people docile. the punishment takes alwi atma ardhana & elisa dwi wardani 66 form of a system that foucault calls ‘infrapenalty’ system. infra-penalty system works in a partitioned area and each area has different kinds of methods of punishment. for example, the punishment in school will be different from the punishment in a hospital. in althusserian term, every isa has specific methods of infra-penalty to exercise discipline. foucault perceives power not as a centralized body in a society that controls everything but rather power is like a microorganism spread in every relationship among people and between the people and the society. as a matter of fact discipline is “…a modality of its (power) exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets;…a technology” (foucault, 1979: 215), the need of an instrument capable of controlling the whole targets is at present. this instrument is what foucault calls ‘panopticism’. panopticism is the system that “…induce in the inmate state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power… (foucault, 1979, 201).” in other words, panopticism works as one of the disciplinary method that makes people (object of the discipline) discipline themselves for power has been injected to them through the disciplinary system. in a panopticon the prisoners are in a rather visible positioning. in this positioning, the prisoners are clearly visible from the central tower. thus, the illustration shows that power functions automatically. basically, the prisoners are those who are sentenced guilty for doing something wrong. prison is meant to be the place to correct them. in a dungeon, the guards have to use physical power to discipline the prisoners to make them docile. yet, in a panoptical prison, they do not have to do that for the prisoners will do the order by themselves without any physical pressure. it is because they are under constant surveillance of the central tower that they feel they are being watched all the time. with this ‘anxiety’ of being watched all the time, they will naturally become docile. this is what foucault means by ‘visibility is a trap’. in this process of making the prisoners always within the reach of visibility power is also exercised through the giving order to the prisoners so that eventually they will turn into new men for they have been disciplined. in short, panopticism has two steps, the first is making the disciplinary object visible by putting him in a visible position then monitors him (surveillance), and secondly is the giving the order to be exercised by the object (the exercise). foucault believes that modern social, economic, or political institutions (state apparatuses) work in the panopticism paradigm. …and it maybe taken over either by ‘specialized’ institution (the penitentiaries or ‘houses of correction’ of the nineteenth century), or by institutions that use it as essential instrument for a particular end (schools, hospitals)…or by apparatuses that have made discipline their principle of internal functioning (the disciplinarization of the administrative apparatus from the napoleonic period), or finally by state apparatuses whose major, if not exclusive function is to assure that discipline reign over society as a whole (the police)… (1979: 215-216). in other words, modern society is shaped by those state apparatuses. the state maintains its authority or existence by controlling over the mind of its people through those apparatuses. the state and its absolute power it noteworthy to mark what fransesco carletti said about japan in 1597,as he found that “in japan, it is difficult to do something that is unnoticed by the rulers of the cities” (nakane, 1972). such condition continues to the feudal regime of tokugawa and a restorative regime of meiji. the changes and shifts do happen yet not much. a newspaper called the times literary supplement makes the claim that walks side by side with the claim of carletti, “…modern japan’s progress is founded, ironically, on social patterns which existed centuries ago”. many countries are originated from kingdoms or using feudal systems, but after centuries of adaptation those countries that are mostly republic now leave the old system behind. japan is different. the formal system may have undergone some shifts, but the mentality vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 67 remains the same since the feudal regime of tokugawa. in other words, the government may run in a modern system, but japanese still keep their old feudal social patterns. for example, a mayor will be respected by the people of the city like in the time of tokugawa regime. people tend to treat the mayor like a samurai ruler in the past (nakane, 1972: 99). david riesman also notes that the japanese does not get the meaning (political meaning) of democracy because they never really know it. the democracy in the government remains an empty term because democracy of japan is built with the mentality of old feudalism. …’democracy’ does seem a way of doing business that combines commitment and high principle with lack factionalism and internecine conflict. people refer to organization as undemocratic if there is no harmony and consensus. thus, democracy and politics would seem antithetical. (riesman, 1967: 202) as a result, with the existence of feudal mentality in most japanese, the laws that are produced are just other forms of feudal laws which lays great power and privilege in the hand of the rulers (government) and the people just cannot do anything because they have to obey them as it is their duty to respect the rulers. this is what makes the state holds the highest absolute control over the life of the people. the state runs the country like a monarch would though there are many changes in the laws in the time of meiji restoration. robert ozaki, an anthropologist, writes about the absoluteness of the japan government’s power on their people. …under the constitution of meiji, what cannot be believed now truly happened. on the 31st of august 1935, supreme court of japan frees a case of single accident that involves a man, who is later permanently physically defected because of a fire-fighter car driven carelessly hits him. the reason presented by the supreme court is that the fire-fighter is practicing to run its official duty for his country, therefore no laws can be used to sue the state in the case of driving carelessly and single accident. thus, any fire-fighter cars in japan have official right to hit a pedestrian (107-108). ozaki in his books give many factfindings related to the absoluteness of government power in japan because the feudal mentality on both sides (the ruler and the ruled). this absolute power makes the people have no right to defend themselves and also no rights to be involved in the government. absoluteness of the government that has run for years has shaped the people of japan and can clearly be seen through the practice of marugakae. marugakae is a belief in the totality of someone to a group where he/she belongs to, like country, association, companies etc. this belief is also a heritage from an old feudal system and is still practiced today in japan. as a professor of social anthropology, chie nakane observes, …a man is classified primarily according to the group to which he belongs to (or the individual to whom he was attached); assessment is in terms of his current activities, rather than the background of his birth… (nakane, 1972: 108) mura is everything for a person. mura is the thing where a person in completely inside which means that person has to obey the master of the mura which is made possible as japanese believes in oyabun-kobun relationship. oyabun is parent and kobun is children. the term implies that relation between members of group is determined by seniority which is based on the duration of joining the mura. so, every new person in the mura will certainly be the kobun. in other words, a person is always someone’s kobun and probably someone’s oyabun. this oyabun-kobun relation is also applied among muras. there is a mura that is considered higher than other mura. for example, tokyo university is the best mura in the field of education and therefore every lecturers and students of this mura is socially better respected than every students and lecturers of other muras (universities). alwi atma ardhana & elisa dwi wardani 68 every mura has the privilege to discipline its members with its own concepts. but, if there is a higher mura, that mura will follow exactly the same standards given by the higher mura. thus, every mura always has its ‘senior’ which results in every mura following the same system, for they are under one big mura, the state. this is why japanese is homogeneous because they tend to follow or copy-cat people with higher achievement. this kind of structure of society leads to ‘consciousness of ranks’ which decides to whom they will bow and whom they will oppress. therefore, the relationship between people is based on domination, as pointed out in the following quotation …in everyday affairs a man who has no awareness of relative rank is not able to speak or even sit and eat. when speaking, he is expected always to be ready with differentiated, delicate degrees of honorific expression appropriate to the rank order between himself and the persons he addresses. the expression and the manner appropriate to a superior are never to be used to an inferior…(nakane, 1972: 31) this system is what makes the japanese well-known for their hard-working ethics, politeness, obedience etc., for those are the standards put on them. this system does not allow any rebels. they are forced to bow to the ‘seniors’. if they do not do that, they will be expelled from their mura and everyone will look down on them for they do not involve in any mura, they are considered the lowest of all. …at any gathering or meeting it is obvious at first glance which is the most superior and the most inferior persons present. the frequency with which a man offers an opinion, together with in order in which those present speak at the beginning of the meeting, are further indication of rank…in a very delicate situation those of an inferior status would not dare to laugh earlier or louder than their superior. to this extent, ranking order not only regulates social behavior but also curbs the open expression of thoughts… (nakane, 1972: 35) from the quotation above, it can be recognized clearly who holds the standards of being right or wrong. those of the superior ranks are the decision makers on one’s normality and also dignity. the freak named bird this part will describe how bird, the main character of the novel is portrayed as a physically weak, alcoholic, perverted and failed man. according to m.j. murphy information about a character is important in understanding a literary work because it can help reveal the author’s intention (murphy, 1972). the name ‘bird’ is given by his friends in high school because his physical figure reminds people of a bird. …it wasn’t only that his hunched shoulders were like folded wings, his features in general were birdlike. his tan, sleek nose thrust out of his face like a beak and hooked sharply toward the ground his eyes gleamed with a hard, dull light the color of glue and almost never displayed emotion, except occasionally to shutter open as though in mild surprise. his thin, hard lips were stretched tightly across his teeth; the lines from his high cheekbones to his chin described a sharply pointed v. and hair licking at the sky like ruddy tongues of flame… (oe, 2002: 4) from the quotation above, oe gives the readers a very clear image of the visual impression one gains in meeting bird. it is the physical code that becomes his identity. he is ‘recognizable’ and remembered in this image. he is also small and thin, “except for a punch on his belly, remained as skinny as ever…”(oe, 2002: 4). he is also described as physically different and noticeable among the crowd by his likeness to “a drowned corpse” who “slouched forward when he walked and bunched his shoulders around his neck” like an “emaciated old man who was once an athlete (oe, 2002: 4).” the visual impression of bird as a man who lacks of spirit, loser, strange is emphasized especially by his weak, vulnerable and unattractive physical appearance. his physical appearance points out his substandard condition, and vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 69 underscores the fact that he is not deemed unsuccessful, weird and unusually different from the rest of the characters in the novel. the idea of bird being not normal has already been infused in the novel from the beginning. bird is also described as a person with an unusual passion for africa. he has a big dream of going to africa. africa for him is a land of freedom. his intention to go there is shown by his initial attempt to buy road maps of africa. …”i’m looking for the michelin road maps of west africa and central and south africa”. the girl bent over a drawer full of michellin maps and began to rummage busily. “series number 182 and 185,” bird instructed, evidently an old africa hand… (oe, 2002: 2) however, bird’s passion for africa meets many challenges because it will cost a lot of money that he might have to sacrifice his family in order to fulfill his dream. …if he included the money he could pick up as a part-time interpreter, he might manage in three months. but bird had himself and his wife to support, and now the existence on its way into life that minute. bird was the head of the family! (oe, 2002: 2) bird is also addicted to alcohol. once, he passed four weeks or seven hundred hours drowned in the sea of alcohol, “…like a besotted robinson crusoe…” which becomes one of many reasons why his wife, his parent in-laws , and the people around him look down on him. …bird could imagine how his mother-inlaw would react if he arrived at bedside of his wife and new-born child, reeking of whisky. (oe, 2002: 7) his habit of drinking alcohol often leads to irresponsible behavior such as raping himiko when he is still in high school. …when i was good and drunk i took her virginity in what amounted to a rape, outdoors, in the middle of winter, and i didn’t even realize what i was doing! (oe, 2002: 72) bird is also described as an unsympathetic man whose mind often wanders around things considered as taboo in his society such as having a sexual intercourse with a transvestite or having wild imagination of killing his mistress and rapes the corpse. bird felt a surge of affection for the young man masquerading as a large woman, would he succeeded in turning up a pervert tonight and making him a pigeon? maybe i should have found a courage to go with him myself (oe, 2002: 5-6). he is also incapable of showing any affection to anyone, including his newborn baby. he repeatedly thinks that his baby is a “monster” so that he makes some attempts to get rid of the baby. he is also incapable of showing any commitment to his wife or family. he does not enjoy every contact with the hospital, the cram-school where he teaches, the university where his father teaches etc. bird cannot get along well with the norms and rules in the society because they render him a freak. he is a person who does not have a sense of attachment to anyone or is alienated from every mura and everybody. the disciplining of bird by the hospital as an ideological state apparatus as described earlier, bird is not an obedient member of a society so he is a threat to the existing order in the society. he disobeys norms and values in the ideological frame believed in the society he lives in. because of that, bird has gone through difficult time during his interaction with the hospital which runs its role as an ideological state apparatus functioning to inject state’s ideology to its people. foucault argues that there is a system called discipline that applies in the society with the state apparatuses as the motor (foucault, 1979: 15-16). there are many methods of discipline, yet in this research there are only three disciplinary methods i.e. examination, normalizing judgment and alwi atma ardhana & elisa dwi wardani 70 panopticism, to define what the hospital does to bird. to start a disciplining process, information on the object of discipline must be obtained as it will become be the base for judgment. every object of discipline will be made into a ‘case’, in the sense that the object will be examined and data or information will be gathered from it (foucault, 1979: 187). the information should be gathered from the object of discipline so that he can be qualified, classified and finally punished (foucault: 1979, 184). thus, the information gathered from any object of discipline can be politicized. the politicization of information also takes place in the interaction between the hospital and bird. following foucault’s theory of normalizing judgment, the hospital normalizes bird by forcing him to admit the power of the hospital especially in terms of giving information that bird needs. …his eyes were adjusting to the darkness in the room: now he discovered a tribunal of three doctors watching in careful silence as he settled himself in the chair. like the national flag in a court room, the coloured anatomy chart on the wall behind them was a banner symbolic of private law. “i’m the father,” bird repeated irritably. it was clear from his voice that he felt threatened. “yes, allright,” the doctor in the middle replied somewhat defensively, as if he had detected a note of attack in bird’s voice (oe, 2002: 23) the relation between bird and the doctors is one between professionals and layman. the hospital underscores this fact by making sure that the layman knows nothing and has to rely heavily on the doctors’ expertise if he wants everything to be fine. bird is also forced to admit that his position is sub-ordinate toward the super-ordinate one, represented by the doctors. the hospital’s power on the sub-ordinate is further emphasized when the director of the hospital refers to the baby as ‘goods’ instead of beginning an explanation, he took a pipe from his wrinkled surgeon’s gown and filled it with tobacco …”would you like to see the goods first? ”his was too loud for the small room…”well then, would you like to see the goods?”…”would you explain first, please?” bird sounded increasingly threatened…”that might be better: when you first see it, it’s quite a surprise. even i was surprised when it comes out.” unexpectedly, the director’s thick eyelids reddened and burst into the childish giggle… (oe, 2002: 23-24) to bird, the doctor’s choice of word reveals his condescending attitude toward him and his baby, thus highlighting the power of the hospital. ‘panopticism’ in the case of bird can be explained by taking the telephone calls from the hospital and the intensive ward quiz as a mechanism of surveillance which enable the hospital to make bird ‘visible’ by the hospital. the effect of this surveillance method is bird’s gradual behavioral changes as the result of feeling monitored all the time. in the following quotation, it can be seen how bird becomes confined by the telephone calls. …the phone was ringing. bird woke up. dawn, and raining still. bird hit the dump floor in his bare feet and hopped to the phone like a rabbit. he lifted the receiver a man’s voice asked his name without a word of greeting and said, “please come to the hospital right away. the baby is abnormal; the doctor will explain (oe, 2002: 20) the manner of which the hospital phones bird indicates the relation between bird and the hospital. the hospital runs as the commander and bird as the commanded. in this way, the power is invested toward bird. bird is forced to ‘admit’ that the hospital has the power to control him because in that condition bird has no choices but to follow the order given. borrowing foucault’s term, it is called the ‘exercise’. the hospital gives him orders to follow. bird that loves to enjoys his time by day dreaming or drinking alcohol no longer has time for it. vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 71 …all that afternoon, their attention was on telephone. bird stayed behind even it was time to shop for dinner, afraid the phone might ring while he was out. after dinner, they listened to a popular russian pianist on the radio, but the volume away down, nerves screaming still for the phone to ring. bird finally fell asleep. but he kept waking up to the ringing of a phantom bell in his dream and walking over the phone to check (oe, 2002:134) the quotation above shows how bird becomes disciplined through the process of exercising over and over. panopticism has been successfully applied on him. the effects of the panopticism are now started to take over him. he starts to feel afraid to be away from the telephone. he is no longer free but under the control of the hospital. another ‘exercise’ bird undergoes is what bird calls the intensive ward quiz when he is asked by the nurse to identify his baby. …”can you tell me which is yours?” standing at bird’s side, the nurse spoke as if she were addressing the father of the hospital’s healthiest and most beautiful baby. but, she wasn’t smiling, she didn’t seem sympathetic; bird decided this must be the standard intensive ward quiz.. (oe, 2002: 91) having placed bird, as the object, the quiz begins. at first, he objects to the quiz as he “understood that the game had been a kind of initiations into the intensive care ward…” (oe, 2002: 94). he understands that he has to able to answer the nurse because that will mean he is normal. that is why he thinks so hard to guess. the nurse forces him to answer by keeping on questioning bird “…have you guessed?...” (oe, 2002: 93). after a long pause, she asks again, “..haven’t you figured it out yet?...” (oe, 2002: 93). the continuous questions are intended to function as a normalizing judgment for him. failing to guess, bird feels that is wrong, and he feels punished for his lack of care and love indicated by his inability to guess. the quotation below shows the effects of the normalizing judgment on bird’s dignity and his behavior of day dreaming. …bird gazed forbearingly at the incubator the nurse had indicated. he had been under her influence ever since he had entered the ward, gradually losing his resentment and his need to resist. he was now feeble and unprotesting himself, he might have been bound with strips of gauze even like the infants who had begun to cry in a baffling demonstration of accord. bird exhaled a long, hot breath, wiped the sweat from his brow and eyes and cheeks. he turned his fists in his eyes and blackish flames leaped: the sensation of falling headlong into an abyss: bird reeled…. (oe, 2002: 94) how different bird now is. the old bird will burst in anger which is how he usually reacts when his dignity is violated upon. this means that the infra-penal system works. it works within the object being disciplined by correcting himself after being forced to distinguish the ‘normal’ from the ‘abnormal’. the hospital doctors normalize bird through a series of discussion about the possibility of the baby’s normal future. after the baby is transferred to another hospital, bird discusses with the doctors the possibility of doing a surgery to the baby. surprisingly, bird, being uncertain of the baby’s possible survival refuses to let the doctors operate the sick baby. the doctors’ reaction are as follows all the doctors stared at bird and seemed to catch their breath. bird felt capable of even the most shameless assertions at the top of his voice. …“will you take the infant with you, then?” he said brusquely, his anger evident. “yes, i will.” bird spoke quickly, too. “don’t let me keep you waiting.” the most appealing doctor bird had encountered in this hospital laid bare the disgust he felt for him. … “are you really going to take the baby away?” the young pediatrician asked hesitantly as they stepped into the hall. … (oe, 2002: 179) the young pediatrician also tries to disapprove of bird’s comment on his baby which he think “ doesn’t look like anybody; it doesn’t even look human!” by saying “i wouldn’t say that-“ although his tone only reflects a feeble reproof before he asks again alwi atma ardhana & elisa dwi wardani 72 in troubled manner “you’re sure you won’t reconsider?” when the brain surgeon expresses his disgust at bird’s unwillingness to defend the baby’s life and when the pediatrician repeatedly asks him to reconsider his decision, bird is once again exposed to the standard norms of what is expected from a father in his society. the guessing quiz and the reactions of the doctors are the representation of marugakae system as far as the standard of love is concerned in it. the standard of care and love ‘introduced’ to bird by the hospital through the quiz and doctor’ reaction is in fact heavily constituted with the family system in japan, marugakae. marugakae system requires a totality of a person in his mura. in the realm of family, a mura for a person is his nucleus family (nakane, 1972: 17). the baby’s only mura is bird’s family. thus, bird has the duty to guide his baby until he finds his other mura which is the responsibility of bird as the head of the mura. as a consequence, bird is made to see that lack of attachment to the baby is considered abnormal. he is not supposed to run away from his responsibility for his family. the disciplinary actions as a process of interpellation according to althusser, interpellation puts the individuals as the subjects of ideology in the social structures which can only be realized by making use state apparatuses (selden, widdowson, 1993, 130131). it is the production of individuals who are made subjects of ideology who should produce sets of norms and rules in accordance with the ideology (smith, 1984: 128-129). in foucaultian framework, as falzon briefly clarifies, it is the process of shaping normality and indirectly shaping human beings (falzon, 1999: 51-52). this process is what shapes the society. he even gives a distinction on the steps of this production of consciousness. the first is building an absolute truth or normality, taking advantages of power. the second is what he calls as ‘enhancement’. enhancement is the process of directing the individuals to the ‘new’ consciousness in accordance to the prevailing structures and norms (falzon, 1999: 48). this study will not treat the disciplining actions done by the hospital or apparatus as merely actions to discipline people but as actions that inject a consciousness in accordance to the prevailing systems and their values and norms. as falzon identifies, subjects of the new consciousness (ideology) will actively produce the ideology, or in other words, preserving the existence of certain values and norms as injected to them. after the process of interpelation, they become the agents of the state’s ideology. in relation to bird’s case, the process of interpellation results in his new consciousness which eventually preserves the continuity of the systems along with its values and norms. bird has been through the disciplinary systems in the hospital. he has been the object of the discipline. he has been put as the object of panopticism and the politics of informations as the method in examination and normalizing judgment which is intended to evoke his obedience and admittance of power. the main characteristic of obedience is the loss of will to resist and the willingness to succumb to the system or power. bird, in the earlier part of the novel is a person detached from his society and from everyone except his girlfriend, himiko. he is a kind of person who defies the system. however, after the disciplining process in the hospital he has had a whole new perspective. …he thought about that thirty thousand yen he would have to pay the hospital. he had already decided where he would get the money; and for just the instant needed for the decision, the sensation of shame was displaced by a despairing rage at no one in particular, that made bird tremble… (oe, 2002: 103) bird in the quotation agrees to pay the money though he has been through some ‘inconvenient’ treatment. he does not complain through in the way he usually does. he is now aware that he is a part of a system, a strong one, that he has not enough power to break it. bird now has a larger picture of his environment. he is aware that he is merely a small dot in many bigger boxes and every box vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 73 has its norms and systems. he understands that he cannot get outside the box. he is a part of the box. bird is also finally aware of the unbalanced relationship between him and the apparatus. the relationship between the patients and the hospital is of subordinate and superordinate one. this consciousness is injected through the disciplinary actions like the phone call, the intensive ward quiz and the doctors reaction at his decision to give up on the baby. this also triggers the consciousness of bird as a citizen. the consciousness as a citizen is not merely an understanding that he is a part of the state but also that he is the subject of the norms and system believed by the state. this consciousness is an admittance or agreement with the formal systems. bird, in this sense, has become a subject of the ideology given to him. he is a part of it and continues too reserve the ideology. thus, with the new consciousness, he is an agent of the state’s ideology as seen in the following quotation. …i’ve decided to forget about a career in college teaching – i’m thinking of becoming a guide for foreign tourists. a dream of mine has always been to go to africa and hire a native guide, so i’ll just be reversing the fantasy: i’ll be the native guide, for the foreigners who come to japan.” (oe, 2002: 214). “…”in a few weeks’ time you’ve become almost another person, that probably explains it” “do you suppose?” “you’ve changed.” the professor’s voice was warm with a relative’s affection. “a childish name like bird doesn’t suit you anymore.” (oe, 2002: 214). it is the new consciousness of bird to take a responsibility for his life and family. rather than going to africa, bird turns his dream into becoming a guide for foreign tourists. the essence of freedom has left him as africa stands for his craving for freedom and personal adventures. he also comes to says that “…all i want is to stop being a man who continually runs away from responsibility” (oe, 2002: 211). bird feels that he has the responsibility to get a job and whether he realizes it or not, he has indirectly contributed to the stability of the economic system of the state as a whole. in marugakae belief, as japanese do, two people cannot make a relation in a horizontally balance because marugakae believes in oyabun – kobun logic of relationship. as the effect, a person in a face to face relationship with other person has to take a position above or below the other. so, a person has to be as productive as possible to get a better position in the relationship. this force to be productive is run by the hospital well. bird is forced to be productive by those disciplinary actions. through the disciplinary actions bird is forced to fell remorse for his unproductive behaviors like day-dreaming or selfish dream to go to africa to seek freedom. this value of productivity is one reason he chooses, now willingly, to join in a mura again. conclusion the ideology of the state is well transferred to bird through the system of the hospital. bird’s shift of behavior at the end of the novel clearly shows the success of the interpellation process. the quotation of the happy-ending of the story represents the society acceptance or, in a rather cynical way, a celebration of the success of bird’s normalization process. the hospital, as the ideological state apparatus, works to inject the ideology believed in a country into the heads of its people in order to keep the hegemony continue rolling. the attempts done by the state apparatus force the changes in bird’s self which is initially pictured as unnatural. alwi atma ardhana & elisa dwi wardani 74 references althusser, louis. tentang ideologi: marxisme struktural, psikoanalisis, cultural studies, yogyakarta: jalasutra, 2008. print. falzon, chistopher. foucault and social dialogue. london, new york: routledge, 1999. print. foucault, michel. discipline and punish; the birth of prison. london: penguin books, 1979. print. gramsci, antonio. selections from the prison notebooks of antonio gramsci. new york: international publishers, 1983. print. murphy, m.j. understanding unseens: an introduction to english poetry and the english novel, for the overseas students london: george allen and unwin, 1972. print. nakane, chie. japanese society. middlesex: penguin books, 1972. print. ozaki, robert. manusia jepang: sebuah sketsa kebudayaan. semarang: yayasan karti sarana, 1992. print. oe, kenzaburo. a personal matter.13th ed. boston, tokyo, rutland, vermont: tuttle publishing, 2002. print. riesman, david. coversations in japan. new york: penguin books, 1967. print. selden, r. widdowson, p. contemporary literary theory. kentucky. the university press of kentucky, 1993. print. smith, steven b. reading althusser: an essay on structural marxism. ithaca, london: cornell university press, 1984. print. kennedy, x. j. literature: an introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and writing. new york: pearson longman, 2007. print. kenney, william. how to analyze fiction. new york: monarch press, 1966. print. roucek, j. s., and r.l. warren. sociology: an introduction. new jersey: little, brown and co., 1963. print. wellek, rene and austin warren. theory of literature. binding: paperback, 1977. print. 160 vol. 21 no. 1, april 2021, pp. 160 – 171 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i1.3006 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. the “super” traditional dancer: her shared destiny with common superhero widya nirmalawati1,2, andrik purwasito2, warto2, sri kusumo habsari2 widya.nirmalawati@gmail.com, andrikpurwasito@staff.uns, warto_file@yahoo.com, skhabsari@staff.uns.ac.id. 1faculty of letters, universitas muhammadiyah purwokerto, indonesia 2cultural studies of post-graduate programs, universitas sebelas maret, indonesia abstract article information being a ronggeng dancer constitutes a turning point in a life to be at an upper level of humanity. it is similar to superman who needs a special stone to be in his superiority, and other heroes with their specialties. a ronggeng, a javanese traditional dancer, should be gifted with an indang spirit believed to be the dancer maker. for srintil case, in ronggeng dukuh paruk novel, she is at a much higher level compared to the others. she is the last to live in the shift of the culture. this study aimed to reveal srintil’s superhero characteristics and what destroyed her heroism. it is a qualitative study using the heroism concept. the techniques of collecting the data were reading, note-taking, and documenting in the form of narration and dialogue taken from the novel in accordance with the research problem. the finding showed there are four criteria that made srintil a superhero for dukuh paruk’s people: how she obtained a superpower; her journey to be a ronggeng; her willingness to help others; and how she sacrifices her life. however, there were men of the super culture who destroyed srintil heroism. the indang had also prevented her from realizing her dreams, including having a true lover and having a family. furthermore, it only left her with miseries by ended up in prison and insanity. keywords: ronggeng dukuh paruk; ahmad tohari; superhero; heroism received: 26 december 2020 revised: 8 february 2021 accepted: 14 february 2021 introduction in a novel, a hero or heroine is one of the important elements in narrating a story. the word “hero” in english is taken from the word hero or warrior in greek (goethals & allison, 2012), (hafçı & aslitürk, 2017). literally, it means guardian or defender. according to merriam-webster, a hero is a person "who shows great courage, the principal male character in a literary or dramatic work, or the central figure in an event, period, or movement" (mish, n.d.). traditionally, heroes are those who bravely overcome an opponent through their mental or physical strength power (shang, 2018). they seek a virtuous https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:widya.nirmalawati@gmail.com mailto:andrikpurwasito@staff.uns mailto:warto_file@yahoo.com mailto:skhabsari@staff.uns.ac.id journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 161 manner, and willingly acts to help people and not being afraid to risk themselves, without being motivated by reward (zimbardi via (kohen et al., 2017)), (johannesson, 2015). from the definition above, we can refer that superhero in a fictional character is someone who has a super power, devotes himself to protect humans, and fight against criminals. superheroes are born from comics or cartoons, and are described as having abnormal powers, for example being able to fly, have extraordinary energy, and are always portrayed as characters who fight against criminals and crime. a similar description is as mentioned in the merriam-webster dictionary, that they have skills that are beyond human reason or logic in general (mish, n.d.). their strengths can be obtained from non-human sources, superhuman biology, or from technology, i.e. superman who comes from outer space or marvel’s hero iron man, who obtained his power from technology. a superhero was characterized by the possession of a special ability or supernatural ability through the miracles of scientific science: genetic mutation (the x-men); irradiation explorations (the incredible hulk), which differentiate them from the previous mythical heroes like hercules, hermes or heracles (winterbach, 2006), (russell, 2014), (oki, 2018) . in line with the current definition of a superhero, where he/she provides good moral examples, the shift in genre between the portrayal of mythical heroes such as heracles, king arthur, and arjuna, where they are portrayed as selfish, vengeful, and also thirst for blood (descioli & kurzban, 2008). meanwhile, modern superheroes face dilemma whether to save billions of people by killing ones, war heroes, are famous for their amount of kills. they further explain how a superhero experienced a dilemma: an innocent bystander has been injured by a criminal. should the bystander be rescued by the superhero, but let the perpetrator get away? or should nailing the suspect be the top priority? what does a superhero do if more lives are eventually saved by going after the villain but causing the bystander to die? (descioli & kurzban, 2008). as the final remarks, descioli and kurzban stated that superheroes are not heroes of war; they are heroes of morality. it is no mistake that even to save the universe, superman will not destroy rokk, that batman refuses to specifically kill but allows ra's al ghul to die, that spider-man neglects his personal life to save the green goblin, that daredevil restrains his revenge against kingpin, or that xavier turns to his friend magneto to protect human strangers. these common moral themes shape the superhero's pulse. besides showing a good morality, a superhero should also undertake a particular path which no one else does. from the process, the individual will have a certain power superior from others. the fact is one's courage is represented by the journey: journey  intention  action. the path explores one's goal creation and offers insight into the sort of hero to become (shang, 2018). gatotkaca (a javanese superhero who can fly) should be thrown into a place called candradimuka, a fire mud crater. spiderman suffered from a poisonous bite of an enhanced spider. stark spent all his time and money to design an armor or superman who seemed insusceptible, also engage with suffering himself (tembo, 2020). in case the history of a superhero making is revealed, it is always about the struggling process to which other people would not endure. with all their “super”, many superheroes are also described as normal and natural humans who have weakness in and fail to manage as flawless superhero. a superhero has their own weakness; superman is defenseless against irradiation of the planet's leftover from where he came from; or batman could not kill his enemy even when the enemy was a maniac killer; or wonder woman has a lasso that can becomes her weapon but in the same time can be her weakness (levin et al., 2019), (koole et al., 2014). batman shows changes from being likeness to mythology into with the present day morality and values of the society (barbosa & passos, 2020). he, who had been depicted in several stories ceases to be the "interventionist god" and learns to accept the fragility and shortcomings of the human condition. batman blurred the distinction between black and white since his conception in 1939 (born, 2017). in tim burton and journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) nirmalawati, purwasito, warto & habsari 162 christopher nolan's batman films, this bipolar paradigm is challenged. the conventional dichotomy of good and bad was deconstructed by reversing its polarity and stressing the fictionality of all of it. while they vary in style and process, in favour of a more ambivalent and sophisticated perspective, both filmmakers invite us to resolve the manichaean belief. another feature of a superhero that is most of superheroes are orphans (descioli & kurzban, 2008), (levin et al., 2019). superman who landed alone on jonathan and martha kent’s farm, then adopted by them and renamed after their names, as clark kent. the same thing also happened to spiderman who adopted by his uncle, ben. the wealthy bruce wayne, also became an orphan since he was child as his parents shot down by an armed gunman in an alley. in sum, no superheroes are flawless. having superpower means bearing consequences, responsibilities, and also painful hardships. heroes are not born but they are made (kohen et al., 2017). apart from the definition of what and how to become a hero in a fictional character, there is a definition of a hero in real life. everyone can be a hero and act heroically to everyone who needs help. to act heroically, there are at least four criteria: they pictured circumstances in which help is needed and they have capacity to help; as heroes in fictional stories, “real hero” also possess empathy without any discrimination; they always help in any circumstances; the last one is they have capability to help. these definition leads to the heroism concept. heroism represent the ideal of people converting civic virtue into the highest type of civic action, embracing either physical risk or social sacrifice (franco et al., 2011). heroism, in other aspects of life, is associated with substantial risk and personal sacrifice, including severe financial implications, loss of social status, potential long-term health issues and social ostracism (glazer, 1999). adding a qualities of a hero, selian, et al. who discussed the heroism in rudyard kipling’s the jungle book, employed gratitude as one of heroism acts, besides giving protection, and defending rights (selian et al., 2017). gratitude became a distinguished element from the previous concepts of heroism. they explained how mowgli expressed gratitude toward the wolf family who have taken care of him. so, heroism which mostly deal with risk and personal sacrifice, it also deals with showing gratitude. different from the previous articles which described the heroism process, heroism act and the heroic qualities, nata, et al (2020) and marcus (2018) pointed out on the costume worn by the hero. nata, et al (2020) pointed out in the costuming of black panther movie. using pierce’s theory this study suggest that the black panther costume represents the black race's life through physical shape, color, and symbolism. the costume is a product of the movement for afrofuturism, a movement aimed at advocating for the african community. the black panther outfit reflects a vibrant and competitive community in africa. black people are pictured as a noble, civilized, progressive, creative, artistic, and warriorspirited nation by the character of black panther. the picture is an effort to sensitize the public about equality and harmony between groups in terms of human rights (nata et al., 2020). meanwhile, marcus (2018) focused on the debate of the wonder woman costume, instead of her story of being admirable heroine—her heroic qualities reduced by her costume. he revealed how the wonder woman’s dress changed from time to time based on the perceptions and criticism against her costume. the changing of her costume created a new perspective on feminism as well as the new representations of which it was produced (marcus, 2018). referring to the definitions above, of course, srintil does not fully fulfill the "super" criteria. srintil is a woman character in a ronggeng dukuh paruk (which from now on will be referred to as rdp) novel written by indonesian famous author, ahmad tohari. srintil is a well-known ronggeng in dukuh paruk village. besides entertaining she is also a culturally legalized prostitute. however, for the people of dukuh paruk, a ronggeng is their heroine and dignity. even in the story, it is told that a wife will be very proud if her husband can “buy” ronggeng’s virginity in bukak klambu ritual (a ritual which ronggeng virginity is sold to the highest bidder). to the wife, by winning journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 163 the price in bukak klambu ritual, shows that her husband is rich and full of dignity. a hero perhaps the most popular of a fictional character but at the same time, a hero means sacrificing their own normal life and welfare for the health and greater good of others (johannesson, 2015). srintil showed heroism in her struggling process to be a superronggeng. she also sacrificed many things for it. however, she ended up with miseries by ended up in prison and insanity. this research analyzed srintil’s superhero characteristics and what finally destroyed her heroism. methodology the method of this research is descriptive qualitative research which aims to describe the existing reality based on concepts, categories, and not based on numbers. qualitative methods are used to analyse various humanities social science problems, such as democracy, race, gender, class, globalization, freedom, and societal problems in general (ratna, 2016). this method is used because it allows researchers to collect information about a phenomenon in a comprehensive manner. in this case, the researcher will collect, classify, analyse the collected data in the form of narrative quotes and dialogue which describe srintil’s superhero characteristics and what finally destroyed her heroism. the data were taken from rdp’s english version, the dancer. results and discussion the main problem of the people of dukuh paruk is "inferiority" which is entrenched in the minds of the people because of their ignorance in all aspects, education, social life, prosperity. dukuh paruk is synonymous with the world of rascals and evil. the only "good reputation" this village has is a ronggeng, a genuine traditional dancer who is only passed down by the secamenggala spirit through the indang to the descendants of secamenggala. so, the birth of ronggeng in srintil is a panacea for all the inferiority. the passion for life in the community rose and brightly lit. the birth of ronggeng created a multilayered effect, a positive domino effect for the pulse of paruk's life. therefore, srintil is so respected, loved, and adored by all of people in dukuh paruk village. she became an idol for them. the paruk people are willing to make sacrifices just to make srintil happy. paruk women are willing to bathe srintil, massage her so that srinthil's body remains in shape after dancing. they are also willing to sacrifice their goats so that their husbands can have the opportunity to dance with srinitil in the courtyard. like a superhero, srintil is adored by many people, including other villagers. they always miss the ronggeng present to dance and entertain them. with these features, it is fair to attach the superonggeng label to srintil. she has superpower obtained through indang, a kind of spirit that enters the body of a woman who is chosen to become ronggeng. her skill of dancing with all her moves cannot be done by anyone other than herself, as an extraordinary skill. meanwhile, srintil has also proven to be a figure capable of getting rid of the big enemies of her society, namely poverty and inferiority. srintil has clearly sacrificed her own life, to serve others. srintil heroism: obtaining super power like most superheroes who obtained their power from non-human sources, superhuman biology, or from technology, srintil obtained her power by the indang. with this indang, a girl can become a superronggeng, without which she is only an ordinary dancer. no matter how hard a girl learns to dance unless the indang spirit resides in her body, she will not be a true ronggeng. the indang nature is freely entering to any girl based on the will of secamenggala spirit. srintil is the chosen figure, after the last eleven years of ronggeng leaving dukuh paruk. in the hamlet there was a powerful belief that a true ronggeng dancer was not the result of teaching. no matter how she was trained, a young woman could not become a ronggeng dancer without being possessed by the indang spirit. in the world of ronggeng, the indang was revered as a kind of supernatural godmother. (p. 8) journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) nirmalawati, purwasito, warto & habsari 164 the fact that srintil was possessed by indang spirit firstly known by her grandfather, sakarya. he saw srintil danced and sang gaily without anyone teaching her. seeing srintil danced and sang that way, as a kamitua (head of the village) who has a responsibility to preserving the culture, he was very delighted to know that it was his own granddaughter who will continue the existence of ronggeng in dukuh paruk village. the last ronggeng dancer in paruk village had died when srintil was a baby. yet, srintil was able to dance with skill and conviction. vague feelings of lust and desire, always engendered by true ronggeng dancers, were aroused in her young audience by srintil while she danced. the sweep of her neck, the glance of her eyes, even the way she swayed her shoulders would have mesmerized any adult male that saw her. (p. 8) her ability and the way she danced made his grandfather believe that srintil was possessed by indang ronggeng spirit. for dukuh paruk, a true ronggeng is not born from teaching, but because the indang spirit enters the body of a ronggeng candidate. indang is a kind of glorified spirit in the world of ronggeng (tohari, 2012). indang is a source of superpower not only gives privileges to a ronggeng, it also becomes an inherent responsibility. as uncle ben's message to peter, "with great power, comes great responsibility." as a ronggeng, srintil has the responsibility to be ready to "serve" the community. srintil also fulfilled this obligation wholeheartedly. so, sakarya, srintil’s grandfather, immediately contacted the ronggeng shaman, kartareja. this was done because of the law of the village, that a ronggeng candidate must be hand over to the ronggeng shaman as a foster daughter. thereafter, they decided that, on an auspicious day, srintil would be presented by her grandfather to kartareja. the custom in the village for handling a potential ronggeng dancer was for the family of the candidate to give her over to the dukun to become his adopted child. (p. 13) similar to many heroes or superheroes in comic, namely superman who landed alone on jonathan kent’s farm from his faraway planet; or batman who became an orphan as his parents shot down by an armed gun; and spiderman who was left at his uncle’s house before their parents, srintil herself is an orphan because of tempeh bongkrek (a mixture of soybeans and coconut) disaster which caused many of dukuh paruk's children lost their parents. it seems that it is a common practice in narrative stories for a hero or superhero must be an orphan. not only for modern superhero but mythical heroes also experienced the same things. descioli and kurzban (2008) stated: many superheroes are orphans (e.g., superman, spider-man, batman), many undergo a period of training with a knowledgeable teacher (e.g., superman, batman), and many possess a trademark weapon (e.g., wonder woman’s lasso, captain america’s shield). but the same properties are common among war heroes. for example, achilles was an orphan, he was trained by chiron the centaur, and he killed with a special spear. being an orphan and is a kind of a gateway for a superhero to obtain the extra-power. since they are orphans they are granted with superpower to face the hardship of life. obtaining a superpower from non-human sources is not enough to save “the world”, many superheroes also possess a weapon. as it is stated above, that many heroes possess weapons. zorro, xena and wonder woman are known for their lasso. captain america with his shield, thor with his hammer and srintil is with the keris (a distinctive, asymmetrical dagger from indonesia (indonesian kris, n.d.). among indonesian, especially javanese, keris is considered possess a magical power that makes someone having a “spiritual power”. “they said that the keris is called kyai jaran guyang—venerable potion of love—and that it is a village heirloom which disappeared long ago. it is a love charm, journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 165 used as a talisman by ronggeng dancers in the past. they also said that it is because of my success that the keris came into my hands. with this keris, i’ll become a famous ronggeng. at least, that’s what grandpa and kartareja said.” (p. 42-43) therefore, besides indang, srintil is also equipped with keris just the same like marvel’s superhero or other mythical heroes who possess a special weapon as their benchmark. in short, to become hero or superhero, one must possess an extraordinary power which obtained from non-human entities as well as obtaining a special weapon that distinguish them from an ordinary person. with their “extra-power” and also “extra-ordinary” weapon, made them unbeatable when opposing to the criminals. from the above descriptions, srintil deserves to be called as a hero. the way she obtained the power and possessing a weapon to support her power are similar to those wellknown superheroes. as a ronggeng, her power is in the form of dancing ability that distinguishes srintil from other girl. her appearance as ronggeng has long been awaited by the people of dukuh paruk, because by having a ronggeng, their village has become dignified. sakarya dan kertareja were the two men who contributed to the appearance of ronggeng in dukuh paruk. both, had interest to perpetuate the existing culture in dukuh paruk village as well as the economic commodity from whom they live their life. srintil’s journey as a ronggeng the fact that srintil had super skill, and charm far beyond the average girl in her village, made her became a "savior" for her own society. she transformed from an innocent little girl into a ronggeng that all the dukuh paruk girls dream about. being a ronggeng in dukuh paruk was an honor. as a hero who helps many people, srintil rescues the rongggeng tradition which is almost extinct after nearly eleven years of being abandoned by the last ronggeng. she was the panacea for dukuh paruk. however, as what spider-man had experienced--underwent a painful journey of being bitten by the spider which gave him a superpower; or as gatotkaca who must be thrown to a fire-mud crater; so was srintil. before ratified as a ronggeng, srintil went through a process that most superheroes go through. in a process of becoming a “superronggeng” she had to take many stages. the first stage was she must dance in front of secamenggala’s tomb. she almost lost her life, when the spirit of secamenggala possessed the shaman and he hugged srintil very strongly. suddenly the cheering and clapping stopped. horrified, the village watched as kartareja embraced srintil so powerfully that the young girl gasped for breath. srintil groaned in pain, as if she felt her ribs beaking from the pressure of karaterja’s powerful arms. (p. 48) dancing in the front of secamenggala’s tomb was not enough to ratify a ronggeng. the next stage was the hardest moment for srintil. she had to lose her virginity in the bukak klambu ritual. bukak klambu or "opening the cover of the bed" is the name of a contest of which srintil’s virginity is sold to the highest bidder. this ritual according to the shaman is to inaugurate a ronggeng to be able to carry out her profession as a fully and legally ronggeng. once the bukak klambu ceremony is done, srintil can ask for payment when she performs. apart from being a dancer, ronggeng is also a prostitute. in other words, she is a culturally legalized prostitute. it seems that for this second role, the bukak klambu ritual further demonstrates kartareja's power over srintil's body. the last ritual was called bukak klambu: “opening of the mosquito net.” my hackles rose when i learned what this requirement was about. bukak klambu is a type of competition, open to all men. what they compete for is the virginity of the candidate wishing to become a ronggeng dancer. the man who can pay the amount of money determined by the dancer’s trainer has the right to take his pleasure with this virgin. (p. 51) bukak klambu is eventually an open gate for the shaman to “exploit” and earning money from srintil. as a new ronggeng, srinitl did not journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) nirmalawati, purwasito, warto & habsari 166 have a lot of choices. since srintil had to pay in return for kertareja’s “kindness” who has been educating and caring for her to become ronggeng. this kind of relation between kartareja and srintil can be called as a patronclient relation. kertareja as the ronggeng patron, who already “invest” his resources to support the new ronggeng, in return srintil (the client) reciprocates the gift by providing general support and assistance including personal favors to the patron. in srintil case, as a client she just follows what is ordered by kertareja as her patron for it is only the man who has resources and knowledge how to be a ronggeng. he even broke the custom of selling ronggeng’s virginity to only the highest bidder. in fact, he sold srintil’s virginity to dower and sulam for the sake of money. with his power, he was freely determined the “price” of srintil virginity in bukak klambu ritual no matter what it takes. even when srintil felt that she was sick during the bukak klambu ritual. “you mean i have to entertain sulam, too?” “it’s nothing to worry about, is it? you’ll be the only child in paruk to have a gold piece.” “but my belly hurts, grandma. it really hurts.” “i once experienced something like this. my beautiful child, believe me. it’s nothing to worry about. just think, a gold piece! rest now, as long as sulam is still snoring.” (p. 79) from the dialogue between srintil and kartareja’s wife, srintil was so powerless against the shaman, ki kartareja and his wife nyi kertareja. she only followed what was ordered by the shaman, because those are the steps that she must go through to become a ronggeng which was required by the ronggeng shaman and legitimized by the culture. by passing the painful bukak klambu ritual, srintil was officially legitimate as a real ronggeng who could ask payment whenever she performed which gave her wealth and fame. srintil: between morality and freedom “either you kill someone or earth will be destroyed! you have twenty-four hours to make your decision.” superman reflects, “what a ghastly choice! throughout my career i always protected life. killing someone is against everything i stand for! yet, if i don’t, those vicious aliens will blast the earth and kill billions of people!” #superman 171 (descioli & kurzban, 2008). the quotation above, was a dialogue between superman and the two aliens, rokk and sorban, who bet whether superman could kill someone or not. superman facing dilemma, whether to kill rokk or saving billions of people. in the end, superman freed rokk since it was against his moral conscience, though he knew that rokk deserved dead. as it is stated by descioli and kurzban, superman is a moral absolutist. he will not kill anyone even by killing ones he saves billions of people. this kind of dilemma also experienced by batman when he fights against ra’s al ghul and also srintil as well. though srintil did not fight against the “real” villain since her opponent was the poverty of people in dukuh paruk but she herself facing a moral dilemma. whether to quit being a ronggeng of which she exploited by, the shaman, kartareja, or continue dancing to help the members of ronggeng group whose life depend on ronggeng performance. her moral conscience was at stake as she knew sakum’s family and other members of ronggeng lived in poverty because srintil stopped dancing in ronggeng performance. yet that night, srintil could detect something different in the sound of sakum’s playing. behind the blending of the music with the night was an implied irony, the irony of a calung player who was without work because the ronggeng no longer wanted to perform. srintil smiled bitterly as she thought about sakum’s fate. the blind musician was the mascot of the ronggeng troupe. and it was not only he who had lost income as a result of her refusal to perform. three other musicians were similarly affected. (p. 158) srintil decision to stop being ronggeng had many consequences. not only has sakum lost his job but other members of the ronggeng. srintil facing a dilemma. on one hand, srintil journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 167 wanted to live normal as other woman; having a man to marry; having kids and family to go back by leaving her status as dukuh paruk’s ronggeng. on the other hand, srintil was a ronggeng whose life belong to culture. even though she could neglect the life of the members of ronggeng’s group for the sake of her happiness but as a superman, srintil was a moral royalist. she could not neglect them. srintil finally decided to dance again for the lives of the ronggeng members. srintil willingness to help is as coined by kohen and langdon (2017) about criteria to be a hero or act heroically: have capacity to help; possess empathy; help in any circumstances and have capability to help. srintil possessed those four criteria. her empathy towards the members of ronggeng group whose life depend on the ronggeng performance, drove her to quit her dream to be free from all ronggeng’s matters. her moral conscience lit forward rather than her willingness to be freed from her services as a ronggeng for dukuh paruk. srintil’s sacrifices becoming a hero means turning into a different human, an upper level of humanity as well as morality. many superheros are described as sacrificing their life, and even career to help others (descioli & kurzban, 2008). when we look at peter parker, the spider-man, or even bruce batman, they also experience the same thing; they must lose their own life. they fail to find happiness with a lover or wife where they can live happily. this also happened to srintil. as a natural woman, srintil fell in love with his childhood friends, rasus. however, it was forbidden, since she was a ronggeng. “has it ever happened that a ronggeng fell madly in love with a man?” asked one woman sitting with her friend beneath a jackfruit tree, searching her head for lice. “as far as i know, there’s never been stories like that,” her friend answered. “what’s more typical is the man being crazy about ronggeng. after all, she’s made to attract men. she can’t become attached to anyone. so, how could she fall in love?” (p. 119) everyone in dukuh paruk understand the rule of being a ronggeng. her body and even her life is not hers anymore. it belongs to a ronggeng culture. stay single and unmarried are the rules. eventhough it sounds unfair but these regulations passed down over the generation. “of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the idea of srintil marrying rasus,” kartareja said to nyai sakarya. “not if she weren’t a ronggeng wearing the name paruk village on her sash, that is.” (p. 129). the ronggeng’s rule is none other than a regulation made by a patriarchal cultural that is detrimental to women, in this case ronggeng. by spreading the discourse that a ronggeng should not fall in love, not marry and have children, makes ronggeng's body turn into a cultural body. being a cultural body creates obedient body that is always under surveillance. such as the panopticon principle proposed by jeremy bentham. this happened because there were many parties who had an interest in srintil's body as ronggeng. economic motives are one of the reasons for how the ronggeng body should behave. i had a strong feeling that srintil had begun to be haunted by the realization that nyai kartareja had massaged her in a way that had somehow destroyed her ability to reproduce. the dukun and his wife would have believed that they had to do this because the custom in paruk dictates that a ronggeng’s career would be finished with her first pregnancy. i believed that srintil had begun to regard her apparent infertility as a frightening ghost that would haunt her for the rest of her life. (p. 93) srintil’s body which becomes the body of culture (men super culture) is another form of the existence of a long-standing patriarchal ideology which she had to pay for the rest of her life. there were two males who became traitors to srintil's heroism, namely bakar and bajus. whether it is a coincidence or purposively, ahmad tohari, gave the name bakar means fire, connect to the dukuh paruk “burnt” incidents. he is the culprit who made journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) nirmalawati, purwasito, warto & habsari 168 dukuh paruk "burnt". he was the one who changed ronggeng from pride to humiliation due to the political labels. apart from being a pillar of cultural facts about the existence and life of the art of ronggeng or tayub, rdp novel was also a collective memory for the people who owned it regarding the political event of the year 1965. this incident was linked to the role of ronggeng art which was innocently led by irresponsible people to become a propaganda medium. it becomes a vehicle that is metaphorized as a group of marginalized people who are oppressed, marginalized, and even “victims” of the injustice of the rulers, who are blamed as an instrument of capitalism. likewise, the ronggeng group under kartareja's care. the kindness given to the ronggeng group made them indebted to bakar, including srintil, the ronggeng. in srintil's eyes, bakar was a perfect father figure. he was friendly, and seemed to understand many things including her personal feelings. his fatherly role was not only apparent from the generous amount of money he always paid her, but also evidenced in his cool disinterest regarding erotically-oriented matters. bakar presented srintil and her troupe with the gift of a complete sound system, the first electronic equipment to enter paruk village, and it became a source of great pride among its inhabitants (p. 249) without srintil and her group knowing, bakar used them as media to attract the masses to smooth out his propaganda. thus, even though dukuh paruk was experiencing a famine, the ronggeng group often got on stage, not in places where people in the dukuh paruk had a celebration, but at meetings organized by bakar. he was like “elders” of which his words obeyed, and was carried out by the people of dukuh paruk. the actions the people took were compensation for baker's kindness. even when he put up a board in front of kartareja's house. bakar has the power to force the group to set it. nobody was suspicious, even though they did not know what was written on the board, except for sakarya, srintil's grandfather. however, kartareja could not do much. until then, riots often occurred in dukuh paruk when srintil and his entourage were on stage. they do not want to get involved in all the riots. knowing that his position was endanger, bakar, pitted the people of dukuh paruk by destroying ki secamenggala's grave. the kindness that bakar gave to the ronggeng group as their patron made them unable to escape from bakar's power. the discourse of reciprocation has tied the group up without a fight which led to the arrest of srintil and kartareja with the label of pki (indonesian communist party) members. being in jail has turned srintil into different human. it was really a nightmare for srintil. her experienced with the “ronggeng world” that put her in jail has changed srintil’s mind. she gave up for being a ronggeng and want to live “normal” as the other woman, being a somahan woman. later she met bajus. bajus, is not just any man nor is he a love adventure. during the five months that he met her, bajus treated srintil politely and kindly. bajus was a hope, a person who will make her a somahan (a true housewife) woman, a status she wanted to carry. it has been a long time since srintil dreamed of becoming a somahan, having a man to marry, and bajus was the one. his kind and polite treatment made srintil obey what bajus asked including when bajus asked srintil to go and company him to meet his relation. srintil felt that was the way to repay bajus for his kind treatment to her. what srintil experienced was a form of unequal power relations. her obedience was a form of sacrifice for what he received from bajus. according to srintil, it was only bajus who will bring her to have a such decent title— somahan woman. arriving at the intended place, instead of having all her dream came true, srintil shaken up. bajus asked her to company pak blengur. pak blengur was a person of which bajus got big projects. he used srintil's love to him as a stepping stone to get a big project from pak blengur. srintil, who already stopped of being a ronggeng including doing her services as a culturally legal prostitute, strickly refused bajus request. "um, you’ve meet mr. blengur. believe me, he's a nice man. i'm sure that if you asked him for anything, whatever the price, he journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 169 would give it to you. he’s going to stay the night here. sleep with him, will you? spend the night with him, srin. " srintil stiffened in shock, her eyes wide. her mouth opened and her chest heaved rapidly. her hands trembled. … “no!!” (p. 426) srintil's refusal of bajus' request showed that she had complete power over her body unlike she used to be, when she carrying the “ronggeng of dukuh paruk” status. an adultery, which she desperately wanted to leave after giving up as a ronggeng, was asked by a man who has been hoped as a gateway to pursue her dream as a somahan woman. srintil's refusal made bajus angry, imagining that he will lose his project if srintil refused to serve pak blengur. “as a paruk villager, you should remember who you are. you were a pki member, a communist sympathizer! if you don't do what i say, i’ll have you returned to prison. do you think i can't do it?” (p. 427). the pki label that ruined her whole life, and made her stay in prison, was clearly visible in her memory. srintil, whom at the beginning put a big hope to live “normal” (being a wife to bajus) rather than being a superronggeng leads her to a misery. her big effort to leave her title as a ronggeng destroyed as soon as bajus asked her to do adultery. the biggest lost was just when bajus suddenly said that he will send her to a prison as pki, a prison was the hell world for her. with only a few words in a few seconds, in fact, has made a human losing her mind. bajus “kills” srintil consciousness. bajus was the man who transformed srintil from human to just a living creature. now, srintil is just only a woman without soul. a human without a soul is just no other than an animal. her soul has just been taken away by bajus, a cowardly man that ruined srintil life. bakar and bajus, selfishly turned out srintil heroism into shamefulness. both destroyed srintil’s humanity and heroism and led her into insanity. kartareja and sakarya were the man of super culture who put srintil to fame and glory but their greediness has made srintil lost her heroism. she whom at first became the hero for dukuh paruk’s people by helping them out of the poverty, in the end it left her with misery. though srintil has indang as her power, but it is under secamenggala’s spirit order, which controlled by the shaman. it is due to the rule of super culture that long lived in dukuh paruk which created by men of the high ruler, sakarya and kartareja, as the kamitua (elders) in dukuh paruk. srintil, then, is a powerless hero against the man super culture. conclusion based on the analysis above, there were four criteria that made srintil become a superhero for dukuh paruk’s people: how she obtained a superpower; her journey to be a ronggeng; her willingness to help others; and how she sacrifices her life. however, there were men of the super culture who destroyed srintil heroism. the first was sakarya and kartareja as the kamitua who have pinned that the indang spirit resides in srintil. with the indang discourse they both confirmed srintil as a ronggeng, to perpetuate the existing culture in dukuh paruk village. with their cultural knowledge, making srintil obeyed their ordered as the noble duty of a ronggeng. the second was bakar and bajus, who originally came as heroes for srintil. both, did not want ronggeng services, to fulfill men's needs, which for the residents of dukuh paruk was legal. in fact, bakar made srintil have to accept the pki label, for a mistake that she herself was not aware of. meanwhile, bajus, a man who uses srintil's love for adultery, a world that she wanted to leave as hard as she could. from the narrative above, the indang who should have brought srintil to become a hero for dukuh paruk had prevented her from realizing her dreams, including having a true lover and having a family. furthermore, it only left her with miseries by ended up in prison and insanity. her life path was just like any other superhero who failed to rule a normal life like everyone else, their true ideals. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) nirmalawati, purwasito, warto & habsari 170 references barbosa, t., & passos, m. y. 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(2006). heroes and superheroes: from myth to the american comic book. sajah, 21(1), 114–134. https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/h andle/2263/10798/winterbach_heroes (2006).pdf?seque 439 vol. 21 no. 2, october 2021, pp. 439-452 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i2.3430 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. negative politeness strategies in what would you do? tv show meidiana suyono & erna andriyanti* erna.andriyanti@uny.ac.id english education department, universitas negeri yogyakarta, indonesia abstract article information being polite is significant to maintain good communications as well as social relationship and therefore various strategies are applied to show language politeness. this sociopragmatic study deals with negative politeness strategies found in what would you do? tv show to explain the types and investigate the reasons of choosing those strategies. this research applied a descriptive qualitative approach supported by frequency of data occurrences. the data were in the form of utterances containing negative politeness strategies, sourced in the participants’ responses to the actors of the tv show. there were 106 data collected from 39 videos in the show’s youtube channel. the trustworthiness was attained through investigator triangulation, which is the use of multiple researchers in an empirical study. the findings show that seven negative politeness strategies are used by the participants in the tv show: be indirect (12), questions, hedges (40), minimize the imposition (12), apologize (25), give deference (9), be pessimistic (6), and state the fta as general rule (2). the dominance of questions, hedges relates to the options provided to the addressee to accept or refuse the speaker’s request. related to reasons, the payoffs was dominant (with 84 occurrences) because it is the basic factor the participants might think about what they will get by applying a certain strategy. the circumstances factor has 22 occurrences, consisting of social distance (14), social power (5), and rank of imposition (3). the politeness strategies in the tv show are authentic and might be utilized as learning materials for learners of english as a foreign language (efl) to raise their awareness of politeness across languages and cultures. keywords: sociopragmatics; negative politeness; what would you do?; tv show received: 29 may 2021 revised: 10 august 2021 accepted: 25 august 2021 introduction most people want to have smooth conversations to deliver what they want or what they think and there are various ways to realize it with the least possibility of hurting others’ feeling. they basically share the same perspective that respecting others is a way to https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) meidiana suyono & erna andriyanti 440 be polite for creating positive atmosphere, being acceptable by others, and avoiding threats to one’s face in communication. face is a self-image that we want other people to see in a certain way (brown & levinson, 1987; redmond, 2015). this image is influenced by the situation or context and the face is presented through the way we communicate and interact. there are two types of face: positive and negative (brown & levinson, 1987). positive face refers to a speaker’s want to be liked, admired, and approved by others while negative face relates to desire to have freedom of action and from imposition. to be polite is to avoid or minimize face threatening acts (fta) and can be done through verbal and non-verbal behaviors. the politeness strategies a speaker performs are called positive or negative based on the types of face s/he wants to save. politeness is a form of respect (brown & levinson, 1987; holmes, 1995) and functions to reduce or avoid conflicts (lakoff, 1976, siffianou, 1992) and to create balance (leech, 1983) in communication. related to language politeness, there has been a large body of research conducted in different countries, discussing –among othersthe strategies performed in various settings (i.e., alafnan, 2014; al-sobh, 2013; banikalef, maros, aladdin and al-natour, 2015; fitriyani & andriyanti, 2020; jeanyfer & tanto, 2018; jegarlooei & allami, 2018; mu, 2015; ramadhani, gurning, & sibarani, 2014; senowarsito, 2013), the markers (jegarlooei & allami, 2018; terkourafi, 2011), as well as its relation to culture (i.e., haugh & chang, 2015; huang, 2008; leech, 2005) and gender (jegarlooei & allami, 2018). this present study focuses on negative politeness strategies, a topic which is rarely discussed because most scholars researching politeness strategies included both positive and negative strategies. it deals with politeness through sociopragmatics, which leech (1983) describes as a study to reveal the pragmatic or speaker’s meanings that reflect the local social conditions on a language use. the sociopragmatic factors are related to norms, which vary from culture to culture (leech, 2005) and according to brown and levinson (1987), they consist of payoffs and the sociological variables: social distance, social power, and rank of imposition. there are four types of politeness strategy: positive politeness, negative politeness, bald-on record, and offrecord (brown & levinson, 1987). the negative politeness is the most elaborated and the most conventionalized set of linguistic strategies for fta redress. the negative politeness can be achieved through ten strategies: be conventionally indirect; questions, hedges; minimize the imposition; apologize; give deference; be pessimistic; impersonalize speaker and hearer; state the face threatening acts (fta) as general rule; nominalize; and go on record as incurring a debt (brown & levinson, 1987). different from positive politeness strategies which are to satisfy addressee’s desire, the point of using negative politeness strategies is to avoid offence to the addressee’s face so the addressee can choose whether to agree or disagree with what the speaker asks or say. showing politeness through gestures and respectful speeches can be a sign that a person is aware of others’ feeling and tries his best not to embarrass or make them feel uncomfortable. however, sometimes people fail at choosing appropriate politeness strategies due to some reasons, one of which is cultural. although some gestures or expressions are understood globally, some are different and influenced by cultures. according to lakoff in mills (2003), for instance, the politeness and impoliteness norms in american culture is changing from a respectbased culture to becoming a camaraderie culture or being friendly and making the hearer feel good. in brown and levinson’s (1987) theory, this tendency is viewed as moving from a “negative politeness culture” to a more “positive politeness culture”. jeanyfer and tanto (2018) shows that in eastern countries like indonesia, negative politeness strategy is mostly used to communicate among the society especially to people who have more power, while a mix of both positive and negative politeness is usually used to communicate to people who have less power or such close relationships. in classroom context, senowarsito (2013) shows that a teacher usually dominates interactions journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 441 vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 in the classroom by giving instructions, giving explanations, or answering students’ questions. meanwhile, the students tend to use some interpersonal function markers such as agreement, disagreement, or confirmation. therefore, the teacher applies positive politeness strategy to engage the students in the interaction while the negative politeness strategy is used to lessen the imposition and providing options. this is in line with holmes’ (2013) statement that politeness influences the choice between different address forms and that the social dimension influences what is considered polite in different situations and communities. another reason of why sometimes people fail at choosing an appropriate politeness strategy is the speaker’s educational background, age, and gender. mohammadi and tamimi sa’d (2014) found that iranian efl learners’ requests, as assessed by native speakers, are mostly partially (im)polite and therefore emphasize the need of instructional intervention and explicit teaching of pragmatics related to politeness. according to mills (2003), educational background of a speaker will likely influence the use of the politeness marker in a more formal interaction. women are more likely to apply politeness markers and speech act formulae than men (friginal & hardy, 2013; mills, 2003). similarly, ramadhani, gurning, and sibarani (2014) reveal that there are different uses of politeness strategies by male and female buyers in a traditional market. these reasons make a slight difference of the way people approach others to engage in a conversation. politeness strategies are therefore important to maintain a nice relationship between people in a conversation. the use of different politeness strategies shows the distance, the power, or the social difference between the speakers. therefore, being aware of the notion of politeness and someone’s background is really important to determine an appropriate strategy in an interaction to avoid losing or embarrassing other’s face. this study investigates negative politeness in what would you do? produced by american broadcasting company (abc). it is a hidden-camera tv show, which reveals spontaneous reactions of people when they are put in situations with ethical dilemma. this natural language phenomenon is interesting to be discussed since positive politeness is assumed to be commonly used by americans while the negative one is not. since the tv camera is hidden and the setting of this show is mostly in public places, anyone can be the participant in the communication. there have been various people engaging in the conversations and they might give numerous examples of the use of negative politeness strategy. this study has two objectives: 1) to explain the kinds of negative politeness strategies applied by the participants of what would you do? tv show; and 2) investigate the factors influencing the use of the strategies. the results of the study will contribute to a better understanding about how english speakers pragmatically select strategies to convey messages in polite ways and how social factors affect their choices. methodology this descriptive qualitative study analyzes utterances which contain negative politeness used by the participants of what would you do? tv show. this approach was chosen because it gives a deep understanding into the meanings and functions of events (vanderstoep & johnston, 2009). the results are presented in narrative or textual description of the phenomena. frequency of data occurrences related to types and factors of negative politeness strategies is reported to support the qualitative analysis. there were 106 data taken from 39 videos in the youtube channel of what would you do? tv show from late 2018 and 2019. the purpose of combining qualitative data and presenting data frequency in this present study is for complementarity (see greene, caracelli and graham, 1989), that is to yield complementary insights and strengths for understanding the politeness phenomenon. human instrument in this research was significant due to activities of determining which utterances contained negative politeness strategies and measuring if data were saturated. a data sheet was utilized as the secondary instrument to note the selected journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) meidiana suyono & erna andriyanti 442 utterances and used in the process of data categorization and analysis. the data were collected through watching the videos with the english captions thoroughly, note-taking, and fixing the appropriateness of the captions when necessary. after that, the captions were transcribed and identified to select the required data. the last step was categorizing the selected utterances in the data sheet. the data were analyzed through four steps. first, the expressions containing negative politeness were highlighted. afterwards, those expressions were classified into the types of negative politeness and the factors that possibly affected the use of those expressions were determined based on the contexts (brown & levinson, 1987). finally, the results were interpreted in accordance with brown and levinson (1987) and the relevant previous studies. the research credibility was gained through investigator triangulation (denzin, 2009). the researchers and two other scholars analyzed and interpreted the data individually and any differences were discussed to reach a shared decision. results and discussion the types of the negative politeness strategies used by the participants were linked to the factors, as shown in table 1. table 1. types and factors of negative politeness strategies in what would you do? tv show types factors total the payoffs the circumstances social distance social power rank of imposition be indirect 9 0 3 0 12 questions, hedges 35 2 1 2 40 minimize the imposition 12 0 0 0 12 apologize 21 3 0 1 25 give deference 0 9 0 0 9 be pessimistic 6 0 0 0 6 state the fta as general rule 1 0 1 0 2 total 84 14 5 3 106 seven out of the ten negative politeness strategies were found in the data. questions, hedges, is the most frequently used strategy, with 40 occurrences, followed by other types with lesser frequency: apologize, be indirect, minimize the imposition, give deference, be pessimistic, and state the fta as general rule. the three strategies not found in the participants’ use of negative politeness strategies are impersonalize speaker and hearer, nominalize, and go on record as incurring a debt. table 1 also illustrates that the biggest factor of the choice of the negative politeness strategies is the payoffs, with 84 occurrences out of 106 data. the circumstances factors occur 22 times, with spread in social distance, social power, and rank of imposition factors. following are explanations with regard to the two research objectives, all of which are with representative excerpts taken from relevant videos. a refers to the actor, whose utterances serve as an adding context. p stands for participant, whose utterances contain politeness strategies. types of negative politeness strategies in what would you do? be indirect indirect speech acts are certainly the most significant form of conventional indirectness (brown & levinson, 1987). alafnan (2014) found that be indirect is mainly used both in positive and negative politeness among journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 443 vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 malaysian colleagues in their workplace emails. differently, this strategy is not the most frequently used by the participants in this present study. the following example is from a video showing an actor pretending as a tourist who intentionally litters a city park. some of the participants who see this action decide to stop the actor. there is a participant who spontaneously tells him that there is a trash can just near him, hoping that the actor will stop littering. p: there’s a trash can right there, you know. a: oh, i don’t care. (datum 12) the participant’s utterance is actually a hint for the actor. the participant intends to command the actor to put the garbage into the trash can instead of throwing it all over the park. he forms his command into a piece of information to let the actor takes the hint and does what he is supposed to do by himself. the participant does that to respect the negative face of the actor because he just met the actor in that place and does not want to embarrass him. the hint makes the actor free from imposition but at the same time tries to suggest him do the request. in return, the actor succeeds to get the message although he refuses to fulfill the participant’s request. another application of this strategy is shown in this similar example. p: wow! you have dropped something, lady. a: if you guys wanna pick it up, it’s fine. p: no, i want you to pick it up. (datum 13) being in the same situation illustrated in datum 12, the participant in datum 13 who walks behind the actor sees her continuously throw garbage as she walks by. he shows his reaction with an exclamatory word ‘wow’ to show his surprise of what the actor just did. he then says to the actor that she just dropped something, referring to her action of throwing the garbage in the park. he uses this strategy to indirectly notify that the actor is littering the park and to avoid embarrassing the actor’s face. despite understanding the message, she responds his utterances by saying that he can pick it up if he wants. this example shows that the participant uses hints to soften his requests to the actor since they do not know each other. following is another illustration of the use of indirectness by a participant in her response toward discrimination. a: i just don’t know what to do. p: don’t worry about them. there’s stupid people everywhere. trust me. (datum 58) this example was taken from a scene where a girl is discriminated for befriending by her white classmates, acted by other actors. the participant approaches the girl and makes sure that she is alright. he even tries to comfort her to ignore the bullies. he mentions ‘there is stupid people everywhere’, which actually points to her classmates’ discriminative actions. he uses this strategy of indirectness to lessen his utterance and avoids making the other actors’ lose their face. this study shows indirectness as a negative politeness strategy among people who are not close to one another. however, being indirect is also frequently used by those who are already familiar with each other, for example as shown in teacher-student interactions in classroom (fitriyani & andriyanti, 2019) questions, hedges the use of question provides option to the addressee to accept or to refuse the speaker’s request to maintain the addressee’s freedom of action. it can also function to avoid disagreement between speakers. while hedges are used to show that the speaker is not totally sure about something. hedges refer to “a particle, word or phrase that modifies the degree of membership of a predicate or a noun phrase in a set; it says of that membership that it is partial or true only in certain respects, or that it is more true and complete than perhaps might be expected” (brown & levinson, 1978). “i’m pretty sure i’ve read that book before.” or “a swing is sort of a toy.” are examples of hedging. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) meidiana suyono & erna andriyanti 444 following example shows two female actors who try to rob a man (another actor) by pouring drug in his drink when he is in the bathroom. at the moment the participant sees what one female actor does to the drink. he chooses to keep silent and waits until the male actor comes back from the bathroom. p: do you know they put something in your drink? a: i’m sorry? p: i saw them putting something in your drink. i’ll buy a new one. (datum 07) when the actor is back, the participant carefully asks him whether he knows that something happens to his drink or not. feeling curious about the question, the actor responds to the participant by saying “i’m sorry?” to show his unawareness of what happens to his drink. as the participant already gets the attention from the actor, he continues to explain what he saw and tells him that he will buy a new drink. the use of question gives an opportunity for him to gain attention from the actor and lessen the potential face threat to the actor. an example of the use of hedge is in the following conversation, taking place in a show store where a child wants to buy a pair of sneakers but her father could not afford it. a: he’s being stupid. he’s not getting what i want. p: that’s not being stupid. maybe he don’t have it. i couldn’t get jordans and stuff like that when i was young. you’re about to get some expensive sneakers. you ought to be happy. i think you should listen to dad. (datum 11) because the child actor is rude to her father, the participant tries to stop her by voicing out his disagreement with the actor’s calling her father stupid. although he tries to opine against her statement, he considers the actor’s face. he uses hedges to lessen the possibility of face threat to the actor and to make his utterances sound like an opinion rather than a disagreement. he uses ‘maybe’, which sounds his doubt about what really happens with the dad actor. the other hedge ‘i think’ is to show that he tries to give suggestion to the child actor rather than coerces the actor. by using this strategy, he expects that the child actor will listen to him and stop embarrassing her father. at the same time, he is also able to maintain the actor’s face and does not make her feel intimidated. another example is from a scene in a restaurant, where a male black actor acts as a babysitter and is suspected of kidnapping by a female actor. she takes the man’s photos and continuously investigates him. other people in that restaurant pay attention to what the woman is doing but only some of them react to this scene. a female participant bravely confronts the woman actor and asks her to stop bothering the man actor. the female actor shows her bad feeling because she got news about a black man who is suspected as a kidnapper while he was babysitting his friends’ kid. a: it’s giving me an uneasy feeling. p: don’t you think the kids would say something if something was wrong? (datum 34) by asking a question to soften her utterance, the participant tells the actor that the kids would say something if they have problems. she wants to make the woman actor understand that she should not worry too much and judges the man because he is black. she expects that the woman actor would grab the hint and stop doing her action. questions, hedges strategy is most frequently used by the participants in the tv show. most of them ask questions to communicate politely with people they do not know. meanwhile, hedges are used by the participants to redress the possibility of being rude to the person they are talking to. hedging is also dominantly used by one of royal family members studied by pratiwi (2019). interestingly, studies show that the use of hedges as face mitigating devices relates to language proficiency and gender (jegarlooei & allami, 2018). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 445 vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 minimize the imposition “could i have your time just for a minute?” is one example of how a speaker minimizes an imposition to the addressee. the word ‘just’ has the literal meaning of ‘exactly’ and ‘only’. however, this word is used differently in the utterance and functioned to minimize the potential face threat to the addressee. the speaker may need more than a minute to talk to the addressee, however, he chooses to say that to avoid a rejection and to make the utterance less hard to fulfill. another example is a teacher’s utterance “before we start our class today, i would like to review a little about ….”, to imply that the interlocutors are not to do much (senowarsito, 2013). words other than just and a little that minimize imposition include a tiny, little bit, a sip, a taste, a drop, a smidgen, and a bit. following is how a participant minimizes an imposition towards a coach, who forces a wrestler. p: can i please talk to you for a second, coach to coach? a: what’s the matter? (datum 53) two actors act as a young wrestler and his coach, playing a situation in a barbershop where the wrestler is forced to cut his hair by his coach. because the wrestler does not want to do it, they start to argue. some of the customers in that barbershop pay attention to the quarrel, but only one of them voices out his opinion. feeling uncomfortable with the coach forcing the wrestler, the participant initially approaches the coach and asks him to have a little conversation. he uses the words ‘a second’, but the actual conversation may last longer. he uses this strategy to make the least possibility of imposition to the addressee. if he does not minimize the imposition, the actor could have easily rejected his request. the use of ‘a second’, ‘a moment’ or other similar words in a request to minimize the imposition, as also stated by (mohammadi & tamimi sa’d, 2014), shows that the speaker puts himself in a solidarity, not power, relation with the interlocutor. another use of minimize the imposition strategy is in datum 73. two actors pretend as a customer and staff in a nail salon. the customer actor talks to her friend on the telephone, mocking the staff actor for not being able to speak english. she said that she can say anything and the staff would not understand a single word she says. a: can you imagine working in other’s country for your life and not learning english? i can literally say anything right now and she wouldn’t understand. p: i’m a little uncomfortable. your conversation, it’s a little bit weird. a: i’m just saying what everyone else is thinking. (datum 73) other customers seem shocked by what the actor has said and one of them tries to talk to her. she expresses her uncomfortable feeling by saying that she is ‘a little’ uncomfortable with the actor’s conversation, which is ‘a little bit’ weird. she does it to save the actor’s face because she does not want to offend her. at the same time, she actually wants to stop the actor’s rudeness by saying that utterance. using minimize the imposition strategy, the participants in data 53 and 73 are able to save the addressees’ face. it minimizes the threat by freeing the addressees from any imposition. apologize by apologizing, a speaker indicates his reluctance to impose on h’s negative face and thereby partially redress that imposition. participants who use this strategy mostly apply it to begin their utterances before continuing to deliver their opinion. they also use it to show their sympathy towards the actors. they use apology when they emphasize that they feel sorry for intervening someone’s business. following datum was taken from a situation involving two pairs of actors acting as a lesbian couple and the parents in a restaurant and a participant. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) meidiana suyono & erna andriyanti 446 a: marriage is between a man and a woman. i’m not gonna pay for this wedding. p: i apologize but i think your parents are totally wrong. (datum 76) this couple wants to tell the parents that they are engaged, but surprisingly the parents are against their relationship. they emphasize that marriage is between different genders and force the lesbian couple to break up. some other customers pay attention to their argument but still stay quiet. however, one of the customers seems to be concerned with what happen to the couple. when the parents left the scene, this participant approaches the couple and tells them her opinion towards their situation. she shows her support for them by saying that their parents are wrong. however, she does not say that immediately. she apologizes to the couples in the first place. what makes her apologize is because she pays attention to their conversation and actually intervenes in their business. following is another example of how the participants use apologize strategy. p: excuse me? i hope you don’t mind but can i buy her whatever she wants? a: we’re actually on a budget. (datum 82) this example was taken from a scene where a group of actors act as a mother, a son, and a foster child who went to a restaurant. the mother discriminates the foster child and verbally abuses her. her action draws attention from some customers in the restaurant. one of them decides to start a conversation with the mother. he offers to buy anything that the foster child wants. he does it politely by saying ‘excuse me’ at the beginning of his utterance, which is followed by ‘i hope you don’t mind’ before stating his offer. he uses an apology so his utterance would not be too offending and embarrassing the actor. he also uses it to get attention from the actor. another example has a supermarket as the setting. a: come on, i give hundred bucks not to say anything. p: no, i mean i can’t. i just can’t. it’s just my level of integrity. i can’t. i’m not going to do that to this establishment. i’m sorry. (datum 22) the actor acts as a man who intentionally pours water on the floor and falls to scam the manager. the participant who sees his action wants to tell the manager. the actor offers some money to her to make her not telling the manager. however, she immediately says ‘no’ and then explains that she cannot take the money. she apologizes to the actor because she cannot accept his request and decides to tell the manager. the examples illustrate the importance of apologizing to minimize offence to the addressees due to the addressors’ interference and refusal. its significance in negative politeness is also emphasized by al-sobh (2013) and banikalef, maros, aladdin and alnatour (2015). give deference an address term is used to show that the speaker is aware of others’ face and tries to respect them or be intimate to them. generally, a formal address term is used in a formal situation or used for addressing someone who is not really close to the speaker, or giving deference. meanwhile, a more personal address term is used to address known relatives or close friends, or showing intimacy or equality. following is the use of address term to show deference among the speakers in an informal situation. p: wow! that’s incredibly rude. a: i just wanna make sure these children are safe. p: ma’am, i’m so sorry, this is completely inappropriate, if you have an issue can you please leave this restaurant. (datum 37) in this excerpt an actor acts as a black baby sitter while another actor as a white woman who suspects him for being a kidnapper. she repeatedly questions him, journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 447 vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 takes his photo and even asks others to call a police. most of customers were shocked when they saw her being rude to the baby sitter. she becomes ruder and continues to accuse him. her action makes one of the target participants in that restaurant expresses her reaction verbally. she started by saying ‘wow’ to show that she is shocked by her action. then, she tells the actor that her action is inappropriate. although she does not like the actor’s action, she is still able to pay respect to the actor and call her by using an address term ‘ma’am’, which is common among westerners. the use of address terms to show politeness to some extent is culture specific. huang (2008) illustrates the use of occupation, which is used as both formal and informal addresses in china but only as formal address among westerners. be pessimistic the frequency of be pessimistic as a negative politeness strategy in this study shows its sixth rank, which is lower than its rank in both english and chinese movie reviews in mu’s (2015) study. when applying this strategy, a speaker shows his doubt in delivering his utterance. he also conveys that he does not want to force his thought to be true and to avoid imposing his request to the addressee. it is usually marked by the use of question tag. a: would you believe my mom? she didn’t actually let me get these. p: well, she’s buying you something, right? (datum 09) the setting of datum 9 is a show store. two actors act as a mother and her son, who wants to buy a pair of sneakers. they started to argue because his mother could not afford the sneakers that he wants. he tries to get some support from other customers in that store and keeps saying that his mother is not giving what he wants. one of them responds to the actor and patiently talks to him. he seems unsure to state his thought because he does not want to threaten the actor’s face. he carefully says that his mother is kind because she has bought something for him. he actually tries to say that the actor should respect his mother and be grateful for what he gets. he softens his opinion by applying a question tag. following is another example of be pessimistic strategy, taken from a scene involving a participant and two actors who act as customers in a grocery store. a1: ma’am, i just saw you in the parking lot walking fine so how come you took the cart? a2: well, it was available. what do you mean? ma’am, if you were me wouldn’t you taken it? p: if i had something going on with my legs i suppose, yeah. (datum 24) one of them acts as a truly injured person and the other is faking her injury so she can use the shopping cart. they have a little argument of who should use the cart. one of them asks other customers to help them solve the problem. the customer who decides to help them is aware of the situation, in which one of the actors is lying about her injury so she responds by saying that she will take the cart only if she truly has some injury with her legs. she says this by referring to the actor’s fake injury. she wants to say that she agrees with the first actor who really injured her legs without making the other actor feels offended. state the fta as general rule stating the fta as a general rule means that the speaker does not intentionally threaten the addressee’s face but is forced to do it by circumstances like general rule, regulation, or obligation (brown & levinson, 1987). the finding reveals that this strategy is rarely used and this is similarly found by mu (2015). a: you can’t find friends who look like someone like you, john? come on. p: i don’t know what you’re thinking you’re doing but being an adult, i’m not going to sit in this restaurant and watch you bully people like that. (datum 56) this excerpt shows a situation performed by two groups of actors in a restaurant. one group acts as the bullies while the other group journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) meidiana suyono & erna andriyanti 448 acts as the victims. all of them are classmates and one of them is a black girl. they bully the girl because she is black and she befriends with a white boy. this scene draws attention from other customers who are mostly adults. one of them seems uneasy to witness the bullying and jumps into their conversation to stop the bullies. although she wants to confront them, she is aware of talking to children so she tries to make her utterance as soft as possible without scaring the children. instead of prohibiting them to bully and embarrass them, she says that she cannot let them do that because she is an adult, who has responsibility to protect children. her reason to stop them is because she follows the common thing that adults usually do. next is another example of this strategy, taken from a conversation between a participant and an actor in a restaurant. the actor, his mother, and his sister come to celebrate his birthday but his mother does not have enough money to buy food for all of them. he insists of buying more food because it is a special day for him. p: people do that when you order pizza. you know, you order and everybody take a piece. a: but i’m so hungry. (datum 32) the participant who sees this situation tries to make the boy understand his mother’s situation. she explains that they should share the food because others do the same thing when they eat pizza. she makes her suggestion sound like a common rule because she does not want to make the boy more upset. she also says that to help the mother to solve their problem. factors affecting the choice of negative politeness strategies in what would you do? there are two factors affecting the choice of negative politeness strategies: the payoffs and the circumstances factors (brown & levinson, 1987). the payoffs factor relates to the advantages a speaker will get by applying a particular strategy. meanwhile, the circumstances factor is about the situations in which the conversations take place such as social distance, social power, and rank of imposition. the payoffs the payoffs factor appears most frequently in the data, showing that this intrinsic factor influences common people or the participants in the tv show. moreover, it also affects the royal family members as found by pratiwi (2019). either consciously or unconsciously, many people consider gaining advantages when applying negative politeness strategies but still they do not want to offend others’ face and try to avoid embarrassment. following is the first example from the tv show. a: i’m not playing charades with right now, what else do you want? p: why don’t you get somebody else to serve him? (datum 28) the conversation shows an actor acting as a deaf man who wants to dine in a restaurant. another actor (datum 28) acts as an impatient waiter who harasses the deaf actor. when the deaf customer wants to place an order using sign language, the waiter seems rude to him because he does not understand what the customer is saying. a lady sitting next to the deaf customer’s table notices this scene and watches them silently. because of the waiter being more impatient towards the customer, she decides to involve in that situation. she patiently helps the man to place his order and talks to the waiter afterwards. she asks him to get another waiter to serve the man by indirectly commanding him to do something and using questions because she does not want the waiter lose his face and being embarrassed. next conversation (datum 42) happens between a grocery store staff and a customer. a: then why would you help him? p: why would you be absolutely inconsiderate of another human being especially whenever you have to be much younger than him? (datum 42) journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 449 vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 the staff is commenting an old man who pays his groceries with coins. the participant helps the man and confronts the staff. the staff asks his motive of helping the man. he directly answers the staff by also asking a question. however, his questions does not likely need any answer from the staff because it points at her rude attitude towards the old man. by using this strategy, the participant is able to show that he disapproves the staff’s action and also stops her from continuing her action. moreover, he is able to maintain the old man’s face and saves him from embarrassment. the circumstances the second factor that affects the choice of negative politeness strategy is the circumstances factor, which is divided into three sub-categories: the social distance, the social power, and the rank of imposition. giving more evidence to brown and levinson’s (1987) prediction that power has a negative correlation with politeness, this present study found that social distance is more influential than power in affecting the choice of politeness strategy. this finding is similar to alafnan (2014) in the context of email communication in a malaysian educational institute. the social distance the sub-category of social distance relates to the horizontal relationship between the speaker and the addressee based on age, gender, or closeness dimensions. a: yes, i cheated on you. you know what, she’s more fertile than you are. p: are you alright, ma’am? you’re okay? maybe you shouldn’t do this out here in public, sir. i understand but i’m talking to you. why don’t you calm down, alright? (datum 72) this conversation is performed by a pair of actors acting as husband and wife. the scene shows the husband verbally abusing his wife in a public place. since he shows a tough character and being very rude to his wife, people who saw his action choose to ignore them and only give a glance because they are afraid to confront the husband. however, one of them carefully approaches them and initiates a conversation to the husband. he intends to protect the wife and separates her from her husband. he addresses the woman as ‘ma’am’ and the man as ‘sir’. he uses the address terms because they do not know each other so he tries to respect the distance between them. besides, the participant is younger than the actors so he tries to show respect them by using formal addresses. the speaker’s lower position in term of age and his and the interlocutors’ social distance have become factors of the speaker’s tendency in choosing negative politeness, supporting one of findings by jeanyfer and tanto (2018). the social power different from the social distance, the social power sub-category is a vertical relationship between the interlocutors. usually, someone who has less power will use a more formal language and negative politeness to someone with higher power. a: hey, how you doing? – i don’t know, i don’t know what you’re trying to say. – man, i don’t have time for this. p: could you show a little more sensitivity? (datum 27) this interaction takes place between a participant and an actor who acts as a waiter. the waiter is rude to another actor who acts as a deaf customer in a restaurant. the participant, who is also a customer in that place, bravely interrupts the waiter’s rudeness to defend the deaf customer. as a customer, she has the right to ask for a good service from the restaurant and has a power to command and request the waiter to do something with the deaf customer. however, she does not bluntly ask him to do so, but uses a particular negative strategy to pay respect to his face. another following example shows the influence of this factor. a: i think this might be get her in. p: i’ll be honest with you, i’m a teacher. they look for, obviously grades but how well rounded you are. i mean i don’t think you really need to, but i don’t want to go against what your mom is saying, to be honest. (datum 70) journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) meidiana suyono & erna andriyanti 450 two actors act as a mother and a daughter in a gym. this mother wants to fake a photo for her daughter’s college application. she looks for suggestions from other people in that gym. most of them come to help her, but they suddenly stop when they know her motive. one of the participants who tries to help is a teacher. her opinion is quite different from the mother’s thought. she believes that the daughter does not need to fake a photo to apply for a university. she wants to suggest that the daughter should not follow her mother’s action. however, she is aware that she is a stranger and does not have the right to prohibit them. she even says that she actually does not want to offend the mother despite her different opinion from the mother. therefore, she adds her occupation as a teacher to her utterance to make the utterance sound convincing and powerful. it shows that she uses her power as someone who is familiar with education topic to forbid what the mother intends to do. the rank of imposition this factor is about the lowness or the highness of an imposition to the addressee’s face. the bigger the request, the higher the imposition is. a: okay, i’m going to put this on because i don’t want to catch that. p: oh come on. oh my goodness. oh my goodness. stop. stop. it’s a condition. it’s a rare condition. that’s all about it but her skin is so soft and beautiful. so why don’t you come sit over here with us? (datum 16) this example is extracted from a conversation between actors who play roles as a nail salon staff and the customer who has vitiligo. the staff does not want to serve this customer because she is afraid that the vitiligo is infectious. she continually embarrasses the customer for having vitiligo all around her body. her action makes the customer sitting next to her feel uncomfortable. she suddenly stops the staff and explains that vitiligo is a rare condition. she even shows that it is not infectious by touching the customer’s hand. she offers the customer to move from her chair and sit next to her. her request has a low rank of imposition because the addressee is able to do that although it is requested by someone she does not know. through the question instead of a direct command, the participant maintains the actor’s face and also lets her having choices. next is a dialogue showing a situation where an actor acts as a girl who wants to buy a pair of sneakers. however, her father could not buy the one that she wanted. she continually complains about her father to other customers in the store. she even says that her father is embarrassing her. a: he’s embarrassing me. he wants me to put ugly shoes. p: why don’t you get a job and get them by yourself, okay? so you get a job and you can get them yourself. (datum 10) one of the customers decides to talk to her. she criticizes her for claiming her father embarrassing and tries to persuade her to respect her father. she asks the actor to get a job and buy the shoes by herself instead of forcing her father like she did. she says this to make the actor realizes that she should be grateful that her father still gives something to her and that she should respect her father. this request actually has a high rank of imposition because the addressee is a child who is not able to earn money yet. it is a request that might be hard to be granted by the actor. the representative data show that even in difficult situations, polite language should still be applied to deliver messages and to maintain social relationship. conclusion among the seven types of negative politeness strategies found, questions, hedges is the most frequently used by the tv show participants to initiate a conversation to a person they are not familiar with. it is used to maintain the social distance between them and respect the addressee’s negative face. the use of questions does not only provide options to the addressee to accept or refuse the speaker’s request but also softens their requests or journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 451 vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 commands to the addressee. meanwhile, the use of hedges will make their utterances sound more polite and shows their hesitancy in delivering their utterances. with regard to factor, the payoffs has the highest frequency because it is a basic factor considered by the participants before choosing a particular politeness strategy. the circumstance factor can be clearly divided into three sub-factors: social distance, social power, and rank of imposition; the circumstances are closely related. the participants’ responses to the actors in what would you do? are authentic and reflect how in real life people might speak politely despite being in unexpected situations. in indonesian context, the participants’ authentic verbal actions in this tv show can be used as english as a foreign language (efl) teaching-learning materials to raise students’ sociopragmatic awareness of politeness across languages and cultures. referring to haugh and chang (2015), the english examples of politeness might be compared to the students’ l1 or l2 contexts so that they can reflect on the sociopragmatic similarities and differences of politeness in their ambient languages and the learnt foreign language. such data from the tv show might also be used to make the students recognize, for instance, particular discourse markers to show politeness. as found by jegarlooei and allami (2018), there are differences between discourse markers as hedging devices across language. accordingly, equipping indonesian efl students with knowledge of politeness in english is important due to differences across languages and cultures. references alafnan, m. a. 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(2009). research methods for everyday life: blending qualitative and quantitative approaches. california: jossey bass. https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrsll.2013.591 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.07.024 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.07.024 179 vol. 22 no. 1, april 2022, pp. 179-191 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i1.3956 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. divine parody: ridiculing america’s spiritual crisis in neil gaiman’s american gods ahmad wildan rizaq & eka nurcahyani danahmad22@gmail.com & ekanurcahyani@unj.ac.id english literature study program, universitas negeri jakarta, indonesia abstract article information one of the reasons for modern man's mental disorders is a spiritual crisis. in american gods, neil gaiman ridicules this condition by reviving religious, folklore, and mythological entities into new contexts. these entities, however, are simplified as merely intertextual references by most studies. in fact, the new contexts are pragmatically intended to parody american modernity in leading modern man to a spiritual crisis. this research, thus, aims to be a descriptive-analytical study that not only interprets such references through intertextual analysis but also uses pragmatic analysis to examine how the novel parodically portrays modern man's spiritual journey. deploying linda hutcheon's interpretation of parody, the intertextual analysis results that these mythological characters are resituated to represent marginal communities, like ex-convicts, fugitives, drifters, gangsters, immigrants, homeless, laborers, prostitutes, and relocators. while applying jung's interpretation of the relationship between mythological archetypes and psychological traits, the pragmatic analysis suggests that the hero archetype has been reimagined to caricature modern man's spiritual journey in reconciling his conscious desire with unconscious competencies that resulting disorders in his mental. the factors that influence the hero's mental stability are manifested through the trickster characters in deceiving the hero's consciousness with secular realities, while the sage characters reinforce the hero's unconsciousness through some spiritual journeys. keywords: mythology; parody; spiritual crisis; american modernity received: 13 december 2021 revised: 9 february 2022 accepted: 12 february 2022 introduction mythology is always defined in modern society with its binary framework as an irrational product of the primordial mind as opposed to the so-called modern rational thinking. in fact, as defined by jung (1964), myths, folktales, and religious narratives are a set of symbols from the collective unconscious of ancient humans that more accurately reflect the human psyche than science does. https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ahmad wildan rizaq & eka nurcahyani 180 modern humans have been indoctrinated with a mindset that no longer recognizes metaphysical power, or what jung (1970) refers to as the participation mystique, which is aimed to aid their psychic development spiritually (p.75). in modern man in search of soul, jung (1933) asserts that this spiritual problem is the cause of mental disease and psychological disorders in modern humans, as a result of a loss of a strong feeling of purpose, significance, and existence in life. whereas, most studies reveal that the psychological symptoms of a spiritual crisis include: anxiety, depression, paranoid, social isolation, lack of satisfaction and happiness, obsessivecompulsiveness, and somatization (mcconnell et al., 2006). the loss of trust in spiritualism is said to be the reason for modern fantasy literature's disparagement as a genre of 'anti-real,' too 'childish,' and deficient in 'arbitrary logic'. to tell the truth, the revival of mythology in modern fantasy has been repurposed to criticize modern man's ignorance towards spiritual assistance. so, reading mythological references in modern fantasy requires more than a simple intertextual analysis; it requires decoding the pragmatic implications of these mythological beings' recontextualization. when it comes to the list of 21st-century fantasy authors, neil gaiman is always mentioned as the top-tier and has been dubbed ‘the prince of metaphor’. his 2001 novel, american gods, is one of his works with a lot of references. american gods is a grand tale about the survival of ancient deities from various mythology that lived in the contemporary times; dressed and working as humans. the story is set in a number of american towns where they were transported to the country alongside the arrival of immigrants as their believers. they were battling their contemporaryday rivals, known as "new gods" or "gods of the modern," who are characterized as polytheistic deities with varied autonomy exhibited essentially of various modern features, such as god of media, god of globalization, god of technology, and so on. people are compelled to abandon their faith in old gods and offer sacrifices to them as a result of their presence. hence, the old gods plot a war against the new gods in order to maintain their existence. the retrieval of the interconnection between the recontextualized depiction of the past arts in the novel and the original representation in their cultural background has been the focus of previous studies that have interpreted the significance behind gaiman's creative process in reconstructing mythology. as a result, american gods is frequently regarded solely as an intertextual work replete with historical texts from various cultures. rata (2015) argues that the rich intertextual references manifested into characters in american gods are symbolically to define the essence of what shaped modern american identity. rata (2016) once again confirms that the narrative genre of modern fantasy, where the artificial old world mythology is to disclose the diversity of american identity, marked by its complexity of 'different cultures, values, and nationalities, and their corresponding idiosyncracies,' through mythopoeic reading (p. 44). while the fusion of spatial and temporal aspects in plot generation, or what bakhtin referred to as a 'chronotope,' has semantic significance in addressing socio-historical immigrant issues like homelessness, poverty, racism, prejudice, and others. another intertextual study assumes that gaiman's usage of mythology, adapted into 'the cultural/spiritual pastiche of postmodern america,' according to wheeler (2017), is to investigate the cultural dichotomies between primitive-traditional society and modernindustrial society in describing the way of life (p.120-123). thus, the structural reading of intertextuality in american gods can only answer the questions, "what is america?" "what determines american identity?" and "what are the intricacies in embracing and rejecting its determinations?" but, in these investigations, has the interpretation disclosed gaiman's political undertones? taking one example, in “the role of intertextuality in neil gaiman's american gods”, rata (2015) deploys gerard genette's intertextuality where the borrowing of mythological texts from the various culture in the novel is immediately determined because america is shaped from various cultural elements. so, the assumption journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 181 that can be admitted is the heterogeneity, multiculturalism, and poly-ethnic are what constitutes american identity. hutcheon (1985) dismisses genette's idea of intertextuality, claiming that it is structurally created in general only to be a minimal transformation of text. this means that a pragmatic procedure is unnecessary. by this denial of pragmatic interpretation, the political statement behind the fictitious realm of modern fantasy is disguised. because, if the pragmatic implications are considered, american gods is not just a definition of what is so-called america. the novel aims to redefine the truth that has been a common conception behind america which sheltered in the name of modernity to honor them as what the knowledge says as an advanced, superior, and civilized society. therefore, in contrast to previous studies that primarily only provide an intertextual analysis, this study is further intended as a pragmatic interpretation to examine how the novel parodies american modernity in leading modern man into a spiritual crisis. methodology this study deploys descriptive-analytical method. as for qualitative study, this research is conducted by library collecting data through: 1) close reading the novel as the primary source of data, and the secondary source consists of articles, books, and journals related to norse, slovakian, ancient germany, british, african, egyptian, arabian, indian, and american mythology; 2) classifying the data by sampling narrations or dialogues both from the primary and secondary sources that describe those mythological figures; 3) listing the data, which although the novel mentions numerous mythical figures, this study only focuses on those represented as prominent characters. meanwhile, the data analysis is divided into two stages: 1) the intertextual analysis aims to compare the new contexts of mythological entities to the real representation whether it’s parodic, satiric, or ironic through linda hutcheon's theory of parody to comprehend the poetics of parody in resituating mythological entities as a marginal society; 2) the pragmatic analysis aims to reveal gaiman's political statements within his play of representation through jungian analogy between mythology and psychology to apprehend the politics of parody in caricaturing modern man's spiritual crisis through reimagining archetypal functions. both results are drawn into the final conclusion by stating margins' critiques to redefine american modernity. results and discussion poetics of parody in modern fantasy: resituating mythological entities to represent marginal society parody is a literary device to evaluate reality by stressing disclamation at the dominant and proclamation on the margin. the nature is whether parodic (ridiculous), ironic (paradoxical), or satiric (scornful). thus, gaiman's play on representation in american gods refers to who these mythological figures are supposed to represent? and what to reflect? baldur, a beloved norse god, is the hero of the story. baldur had been killed in the myth, but in the novel, he was resurrected as an american ex-convict named shadow moon. gaiman (2017) describes that baldur had a 'face shone like the sun' and 'was so beautiful that he illuminated any place he entered' (p.118). 'light' and 'sun' are hence symbols of his deity. his appearance in the novel, ironically, is depicted as a character named 'shadow' and 'moon,' which characterizes his identity that had lost its authenticity and sincerity as a result of constantly depreciating self-acceptance and avoiding self-disclosure. ironic ethos, according to hutcheon (1985), is semantically identified as antiphrasis with the parodied target while pragmatically signifying an evaluation, questioning and judging the parodied target (p.53). the ironic representation of baldur and shadow, thus, aims to insinuate modern man's mental crisis, which stemmed from his desperate desire to be the standard modern man accepted by dominant values, despite the fact that they must reject his uniqueness in order to avoid prejudices, discrimination, and journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ahmad wildan rizaq & eka nurcahyani 182 stereotypes. thus, the main parodic theme in american gods is that coming to america is a blasphemy for gods. gaiman recasts the lives of deities, devils, and other mythological beings from dignified pantheons to be degraded in the same way that immigrants are. coming to america did not imply that they were welcomed as gods. it's definitely an allegory to say the existence of immigrants is not that special or even humanly ignored. czernobog, a slavic god of misfortune, got a poor job as a knocker in the beef industry, where he slaughtered cows by slamming their heads down. his representation is ironic because the process of smashing the head with a hammer was performed as a sacrifice to worship czernobog, yet he used it to survive in modern days. czernobog's ironic portrayal reflects eastern european immigrants' life in america. zong and batalova (2015) report that eastern european immigration was driven not only by economic prospects, but also to escape from religious persecution in their homeland, where the majority of them were jews, muslims, and pagans. however, demographic data reveals an irony that eastern european immigrants account for around 20% of the 10% of total european immigrants who live in poverty. while linguistic ethnographic data estimates that nearly 42% of eastern european immigrants suffer from foreign language anxiety (fla), which results in a stereotypical racial slur (zong & batalova, 2015). so, gaiman betrays the silent truth that eastern european immigrants are not afforded the same privileges as immigrants from other regions of europe. the situation is allegorized in the novel, in which the slavic gods no longer get the same right to practice their rituals as other western gods. this function is defined by hutcheon (1985) as a decentering parody that contests the dominant manipulative narratives by valuing marginal voice. living in a multicultural society like america, immigrants must be free of their hubris. it is achieved by not claiming that their cultural background is superior, and different cultural values are respected through a relative point of view rather than based on standardized judgments. because ancient tales warn that anyone who flaunts their hubris will end up as a tragic hero. gaiman adapts mad sweeney or buile suibhne, known as irish exiled king, to explore the intricacies of immigrants' homelessness. it is in line with the aristotelian tradition, which states that a tragic hero always begins as an aristocrat, with his excess dignity leading his hubris (reeves, 1952, p.174-175). the insanity eventually scared suibhne to flee his kingdom, while gaiman re-adapts the story as the king continued traveling across the west, until arriving in america in the modern age. in the modern scenario, gaiman rewrites the tragic hero's hubris as immigrants' nationalist sentiment, which turns out to be a barrier to blend into the melting pot. the exiled hero's hubris is always related to mental disease in the tragic hero archetype, such as insane, grumpy, greedy, etc. (reeves, 1952, p.176), whereas in the context of immigrants, their nationalist hubris manifests into racial stereotypes. mad sweeney was faced by irish stereotypes such as 'guinness' drinker, brutish troublemaker, 'freeloader,' and coin trick player as a portrayal of irish immigrants who still held his irish nationalism. mad sweeney even introduced himself as leprechaun, a mischievous dwarfish solitary fairy from irish folklore. mad sweeney's selfidentification as a leprechaun, turned out referring to 'race stereotyped jokes' in order to insinuatingly belittle irish immigrants. it is arguable that gaiman's creative process of resituating the lives of deity is based on their divine profession. in the modernized context, the queen of sheba is represented still as an erotic figure. but, american modernity had degraded her just as a regular los angeles concubine. the queen had to adapt to modernization by registering at prostitution sites. her portrayal is sarcastic also comical, from a queen whose image is often demonized in old myths (lassne, 1993), but she could not even fight back when the new gods chased her. the sarcastic depiction of the queen of sheba serves to satirize america's inhumane attitude toward the peripheries. when satire collides with irony or parody, its ethos implies journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 183 a deconstructive outcome. hutcheon (1985) terms ironic or parodic satire. to achieve satiric pragmatism or a disdainful correction, the ethos deploys parodic or ironic semantics (p.61). another islamic mythical being mentioned is an ifrit, one of the jinn's type. he camouflaged as a regular modern guy whose identity could still be guessed from his flaming eyes, which he hid behind sunglasses. it was only salim, a poor self-esteem muslim immigrant who feared being labeled a "cheap arab," (gaiman, 2001, p.151), who recognized him. to face homesickness while in a foreign country, fellow immigrants might be heroes to one another by building a little shared-cultural group. jinn, thus, played a catalyst hero for salim. vogler (1996) states that a catalyst hero's role is 'to bring about transformation in others' (p. 37). he also granted salim's american dream, even if it wasn't what he had dreamed for. because salim realized that the concept is a product of western collective consciousness that would not be fully realized by the eastern unconsciousness. gaiman compares how western consciousness to the myth of american dreams as a fate-changer as how westerners believe in the myth of jinn as dream-fulfillers, whereas for easterners, jinn is actually a supernatural being who characteristically share similarities to humans. “they believe that we grant wishes. why do they believe that? i sleep in on stinking room in brooklyn. i drive this taxi for any stinking freak who has the money to ride in it, and for some who don’t. i drive them where they need to go and sometimes they tip me. sometimes they pay me” (gaiman, 2001, p.156). the lust for power has become a collective topic in both mythical tales and biographical portrayals that were driven by the psychic disorder. the novel modernizes the norse allfather, odin, who was struggled to adapt to modern innovations and been rivaled by the rise of new gods; making him lose his wisdom as a gray beard, mighty poet, true one, and much wise, and to become a riddler, deceiver, treachery ruler, and even evil doer (rudgley, 2018, p.9). it establishes hutcheon (1985)'s assertion that "parody be considered pejorative in intent and ridiculing in its ethos" (p.50). gaiman's repurposing of odin's archetypes as the god to be feared alludes to the misuse of odin as a symbol of white supremacy in the west. rudgley (2018) argues that odinic psychology is misinterpreted by western consciousness as a socialist revolutionary epitome that inspired several right-wing extremist movements, including hitler's nazi party, which misappropriated the scandinavian symbol of swastika that was initially considered sacred to symbolize odin as the god of luck. (p.92). american odin, who is painted as a despotic ruler, is ridiculed for the lack of trust in his fellow gods. his divine nature as a wandering god is also repositioned, which in the myth to collect knowledge, but in today's world, he voiced scathing views about modern lifestyle. the sarcastic odin, according to hutcheon (1985), makes the parodied object's attitude to be radical, outspoken, and less mindful (p.56). odin was known to have many names. in the novel, however, odin was referred to as mr. wednesday because it was the day that shadow first met him. the naming of odin in the novel has an unintentionally comedic tone, which is linked to the anglo-saxon tradition of naming days, where the third day, wednesday, originally came from 'woden's day'. mr. wednesday plotted a conspired war with his old companion, loki, to resurrect asgardian odin's glory days. loki is undoubtedly the most well-known mythical trickster, and his tale is still popular in its alternate modern version, which mainly envisions him continuing his mischief in the modern era. bassil-morozow (2019), assumes that loki's trickster tendencies are what made him still relevant in hollywood popular culture (p.85). the resurgence of loki in modern works acts as a reminder of jung's cautions about the trickster archetypal metaphor, which shares parallels with the psychology of tyrants whose trials might result in mass catastrophe (bassil-morozow, 2019, p.95-96). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ahmad wildan rizaq & eka nurcahyani 184 while western tricksters are mostly depicted as violent, immoral, and boundarybreakers, but in non-western society, their trickster existence is hailed as cultural heroes, and some even consider them to be gods who embody self-liberation (p.15-16). they are known as antinomian tricksters or picaresque heroes by some mythologists. ballinger (1989) argues that non-western tricksters, like native american heroic tricksters, are distinguished from western tyrannical tricksters by their ambiguity. the north native american tribe known as the algonquin people regard wisakedjak's tale as a cultural hero. since the algonquin language family is an unwritten language, wisakedjak is told in a variety of spellings, but his name is americanized as whiskey jack in the novel. picaresque heroes are mostly categorized as a margin that cannot match society's standard of moral (ballinger, 1991, p.22) in which gaiman represents whiskey jack as a surviving native american relocator who lived in a mobile home at a reservation area in lakota land. urbanization had turned his character into an anti-white bitter old man. it is in relation to ballinger's (1991) classifications that characterize the marginal role to insult modern society's respectable status ideals (p.24). whiskey jack's critical attitude was reflected in his refusal to join mr. wednesday's war since he had trust issues with white men. “they’ll win,” said whiskey jack flatly. “they won already. you lost already. like the white man and my people. mostly they won. and when they lost, they made treaties. then they broke the treaties. so they won again. i’m not fighting for another lost cause.” (gaiman, 2001, p.279). picaresque heroes have become popular by portraying them as satirical agents, with contemporary society as the target of their satire (ballinger, 1991, p.22). whiskey jack's parodic representation is not sarcastic, but rather cautionary, pointing to parody tendencies as realistic rather than idealistic aspirations (ballinger, 1991, p.26; hutcheon, 1985, p.18). another trickster that is hailed as a god is anansi from african west coast mythology. anansi, or mr. nancy as its americanized name, was described as the only old god who took a neutral stance; not fully supportive and interested in the war plot while throwing satirical jokes. his trickster archetypal nature confirms hutcheon's (1985) claim that parody is not negative in ethos, but neutral or playful in purpose (p.58). thus, it is arguable that the eastern mythological values presented in the novel are essentially different from the west. if odin, loki, czernobog are represented as gods to be feared who preached about war, hatred, or sacrifice, the hindu gods, on other hand, are represented as gods to be loved who further guided morals, psychology, and the meaning of life. applying jungian interpretation of the psychic imbalance in western tricksters, hindu has previously prototyped this trait in which destructive behavior always starts with pleasure-seeking while ignoring a spiritual help (akhilananda, 1948, p.8). so, the presence of hindu entities, like kali as western tricksters' opponent seems to satirize the western tricksters' spiritual crisis that leads to their destructive behavior. gaiman also revives gods of knowledge to unravel historical confusions and taboos. precolumbian transoceanic contact claims, which suggest the prehistoric people sailed to america long before christopher columbus did in 1492, are among the conspiracies around american historical speculations. it is conceivable that gaiman supports the claim by recasting thoth, the ancient egyptian god of storytelling, as a deconstructor of american history in the character of mr. ibis. in a series of intermezzo narratives in a sub-chapter titled 'coming to america', gaiman imagines the arrival of viking explorers in 813 ad and the first migration of immigrants from ancient siberian tribes to america in 14,000 bc. jett (2014) classifies these speculations into the fact-based ones, such as vikings navigation records; religious congruence in east asia with native american beliefs; also genetic evidence as revealed in the novel, "here's a skull that shows the ainu, the japanese aboriginal race, were in america nine thousand journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 185 years ago. here's another that shows there were polynesians in california nearly two thousand years later" (gaiman, 2001, p.163); while some are subjective-based, one of them is ancient egyptian traders (p.37-62). mr. ibis claimed in the novel that his people, the nile people, sailed across the oceans for trade, which was based on facts of their contacts in south america by correlating the cultural exchange between the aztec and mayan civilizations with ancient egypt in terms of pyramid architecture, deities, and the tradition of embalming mummies. mr. ibis fictionalizes southern illinois' impersonation of egypt as a result of these pieces of evidence, leading to speculation that ancient egyptian traders may have also reached north america. "(southern illinois) was a trading post back in the old days” (gaiman, 2001, p.162). the rejection of pre-columbian transoceanic contact since it contradicts modern rationality casts doubt on ancient sailors' headway due to technological limitations: "...these people were primitives, they didn't have radio controls, vitamin pills, or jet airplanes" (gaiman, 2001, p.163). the ice age migration over the bering landmass is the only 'reasonable' option for them. jett (2014) argues that the western suspicion of the reputation of eastern ancestral explorers is aimed to depreciate the east as an inferior descent while honoring the west's ancestors as destined to be superior in terms of exploration, discovery, and conquest. therefore, the recontextualization of thoth's master of knowledge aims to challenge modern knowledge regarding the so-called american official history. "the important thing to understand about american history...is fictional, a charcoalsketched simplicity for the children. for the most part, it is uninspected, unimagined, unthought, a representation of the thing, and not the thing itself. it is a fine fiction...that america was founded by pilgrims, seeking the freedom to believe as they wished, that they came to the americas, spread and bred and filled the empty land" (gaiman, 2001, p.85). the parodic mix of historiography and fictionalization in american gods implies that the novel works as critical veracity than a nostalgic validity. it confirms hutcheon's (1989) claim that the rewriting history in parodic representation is a historiographic metafiction; "it offers a sense of the presence of the past, but this is a past that can only be known from its texts" (hutcheon, 1989, p.4). hence, parody proposes rewriting the past in fiction by reflecting current perceptions to reveal a contradictory truth (hutcheon, 1985, p.113-114). politics of parody in modern fantasy: reimagining mythological archetypes to caricature modern man's spiritual crisis the hero myth is the most universal product of human unconsciousness, appearing in all cultures. while the details differ based on their cultural background, these tales of the hero's journey are collectively known as a personal developing process of negotiating an individual's consciousness in a quest to be the whole psyche. jung introduces the process with the term of individuation or selfrealization. jung (1970) states that modern man controlled in wholly consciousness are questionable and suspect (p.75). it is portrayed in shadow who has directed readers' prejudices to question his image as a shadowy convict at the beginning of the novel. he was cryptic when asked about his past, ambiguous when identifying his racial appearance, and 'shadow' was not his real name, which he constantly avoided revealing. shadow had always expected himself to act like a normal modern guy, even if it has to distress his feelings. however, he was aware that his status as an ex-con posed a big barrier to public acceptance. he was fulfilled with anxiety about social exclusion during the last few days of his sentence. "there was a hollowness in the pit of his stomach that he told himself was simply a fear of going back to the world on the outside. but he could not be sure. he was more paranoid than usual, and in prison usual is very, and is a survival skill. shadow journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ahmad wildan rizaq & eka nurcahyani 186 became more quiet, more shadowy, than ever." (gaiman, 2001, p.15). shadow's situation is referred to as an 'unhistorical' human by jung (1970). a person who always discards his history would live in solitude, perplexity, and constantly discrediting of all his capabilities (p.75). living by suppressing inner desire could only burden a modern man when dealing with the world. shadow felt incredibly nervous and disturbingly careful about what he said when engaging with the world for the first time as a free man at the airport. the world, which is rapidly innovating, encourages modern man's consciousness to catch up, but consequently, he is more convinced to abandon his trust in spirituality. jung (1970) argues that these conditions made modern man's psyche to be more pessimistic, skeptical, insecure, and always felt lacking and left behind by technological progress (p.76). shadow, for example, felt culturally lagged by the electronic system, as though the world had evolved drastically after three years in the penitentiary. "then shadow was stumbling through the brightly lit airport terminal. shadow worried about the whole e-ticket business...anything electronic seemed fundamentally magical to shadow, and liable to evaporate at any moment" (gaiman, 2001, p.23). indeed, all those unrealistic expectations for progression have paradoxically turned people into soulless beings that no longer care both intrapersonally and interpersonally; always prejudiced and competing. thus, many of the mental issues people face today are basically rooted in an individual's inability to balance what their inner self wants with what the outer world needs. this crisis causes a toxic inner conflict which leads to an imbalance in their psychological wholeness. jung (1970) diagnoses someone who lives dependently by obeying his outer will would only surrender to let his soul flow wherever it takes him with no future, hope, or fixed purpose (p.81). shadow's expected modern life turned out to turn him into a purposeless and worthless human. “i feel,” shadow told her, “like i’m in a world with its own sense of logic. its own rules. like when you’re in a dream, and you know there are rules you mustn’t break. even if you don’t know what they mean. i’m just going along with it, you know?” (gaiman, 2001, p.83). declining spiritual help also leads modern men's arrogance to deny self-introspection. even more pitiful, they are unwisely concerned with other people's perceptions, despite the fact that modern men will continue to ignore each other's existence (jung, 1970, p.79). jung (1970) explains that to thrive in the age of secular deceptions, modern man have no other choice but to become tricksters themselves (p.76). to be progressive and competitive, his ego mandates to acquire trickery proficiency to cross the boundaries. so, regardless of massive calamities as a result of technological advancements, such as war, oppression, and natural disasters, it is the lust to catch up with progressivity that has changed modern man to be greedy, ambitious, and cynical. the tragedies of tricksters, which were forewarned by ancient man through mythology, are casually ignored by modern man, who dismisses them as mere fictitious old man's tales. the trickster's journey usually begins as an intellectual whose ego is ravenous for pleasure. trickster is always depicted as a mentally empty leader, then projects his loneliness by inviting others into a collective movement to be tyrannized, due to his contrary behavior to societal norms. loki is the most popular trickster whose tale is still popularized in modern versions that mainly continue his mischievousness to cause havoc in the modern era. american gods, with no exception, features loki using the double-edged sword of modernity under his sophisticated regime called the new gods. along with his partner, odin, who in the myth described as having the highest degree of wisdom, ironically, modern america had neglected the sanctity of his sageness in order to survive by becoming a thief, a con artist, a homeless wanderer, and an journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 187 envious vengeful whose ambitions to rejuvenate his glory by tyrannizing the old gods had failed. they planned a conspiracy to deceive and seduce other pantheons to join the war. at the end, the war was waged for them to gain self-pleasure by exploiting both the old and new gods to die in the war in the name of worshiping both. gaiman's play of ironic odin, satirizes how the mirage of modernity leads to the birth of a dictator whose consciousness drives him to rule a homogenous mass. individuals would be more easily managed and manipulated under such a totalitarian order, while the oppressive system would prevent individuals from individuation. the interests and rights of the mass are collectivized to be obligated and responsible for the group visions. american odin or mr. wednesday who no longer had any of asgardian odin's wisdom made him into a self-proclaimed leader by prioritizing the worth of the statistical numbers, “well? where are they? there should be dozens of us here. scores!” (gaiman, 2001, p.115), and ignoring the uniqueness of each old gods, “organizing gods is like herding cats into straight lines. they don’t take naturally to it.” (gaiman, 2001, p.307). although at first most of them refused to join, he used selfproficiency to terrorize fear, “you’re as forgotten and as unloved and unremembered as any of us” (gaiman, 2001, p.248), propagate prejudices, “little snot...they (the new gods) don’t have a fucking clue" (gaiman, 2001, p.55), and manipulate speculations, “firstly, it’s not madness. it’s the only way. secondly, everyone will be there. you would not want to be left out, would you?” (gaiman, 2001, p.73). the same command was also implemented by loki under his shape-shifting persona, mr. world, to organize the new gods. he programmed the reality of modern society to assume that they were truly 'the culmination of the whole history of mankind' (jung, 1970, p.76). "i want a clean world. i want to own tomorrow. i want evolution, devolution, and revolution. i want to move our kind from the fringes of the slipstream to the higher ground of the mainstream. you people are underground.” (gaiman, 2001, p. 298-299). it implies that gaiman ridicules jung's (1969) suspicion that modernization has resulted in a competition between the modern state and the modern church (religious mass) to lead individuals into statistically homogeneous masses while instilling fear, prejudice, and false assumptions against their opponents. marginal deities represented the modern church, which thought that modernity had caused people to lose faith in them. jung (1969) argues that modern churches have been oriented to win the competition and no longer teach religion as a spiritual needs, but rather allegiance, fanaticism, and communal service (p.17). odin's modern church doctrinated shadow with those dogmatized disorientations. shadow had never been spiritually provided since his house of gods was more concerned with the quantity, and odin was more concerned with homogeneity, therefore shadow was not permitted to recover his uniqueness. shadow was always more commanded regarding his devotions, responsibilities, and self-sacrifice. to ensure that individuals do not recover their individuality, jung (1964) claims that the mass must indoctrinate its members to be ideological fanatics by propagating prejudice and false assumption to antagonize their opponents. it's the damage of rapid technological advancement as a public opinion indoctrination tool. gaiman mocks this deception by personifying western media culture as a goddess of media that has always depicted the old gods as 'dangerous people,' while claiming to be the 'good side,' through her clichéd puns. in fact, modern man had been terrified by the thought that they, too, had grasped the disadvantages of those technological advancements of also leading to their tragic downfall. this is the ironic truth of modern man. this restlessness is portrayed as technical boy is discouraged by realizing that a war armed with sophisticated technologies of mass annihilation would just culminate in the annihilation of all parties. because, at his unconscious, modern man is still an archaic journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ahmad wildan rizaq & eka nurcahyani 188 man (jung, 1970, p.50). modern man would instinctively return to the 'pre-logical' state of mind to believe in supernatural existences in some things that scientific explanations could not explain. except for his own will, nothing can change a modern man's bleak life. so, he must personally activate his initiation before starting on a psychological journey. in the hero myth, initiation is triggered by the mentor's persuasion, which is collectively called the hero's call for adventure. self-introspection, according to jung (1964), can only be induced by a spiritual encounter. these experiences are prototyped through the sequence of encounters with divine figures who use their metaphysical power to find the hero's unconscious realm. as portrayed by mr. wednesday, the western god as a deceptive spiritual mentor to shadow's individuation, crusading religion as a doctrine would only impede its devotees from realization. contrarily, shadow's contacts with the eastern gods were crucial to help him accept his identity. so, jung (1969) in psychology and religion: west and east argues that there is a difference in perceiving religion according to the east and the west. "white people have some fucked-up gods, mister shadow" (gaiman, 2001, p.143). jung (1969) explains that westerners perceive religions cognitively, which has led to doubts about their veracity and relevancy in the modern era (p.480). meanwhile, easterners regard religion imperatively that has unconsciously turned into an individual need and way of life, especially in this day of secular deceptions. thus, as shown in one of the mythical characters referenced in american gods, kali, easterners can practice their religion without fear of becoming superseded by scientific dogmas. kali is the hindu shakti of maternity and war. kali is debatably conceptualized through the pure unconscious mind of the primitive indian tribes, with her representation as a savage woman. the idea is consistently worshiped by dravidians and aryans, with slight acculturation, suggesting that hindu history was founded on progress. hence, kali's image represents primal woman, drividian motherhood, and aryan iron age warlord (chaudhuri, 1956, p.125). for hindus, however, the cultural fusion embodied by kali is morally regarded as openness to development without needing to repress others or reject the former. it too has become a psyche in kali worshipers. kali was ironically recast in the story as the old god who opposed mr. wednesday's war plans. the opposing representation of her concept of divinity reveals that easterners enjoy religion without the anxieties in the modern age. the principle that science and spiritualism must accept, not deny, each other's existence is mastered by embracing religion as a metaphor for a way of living, as depicted in the figure of kali, who was unaffected by the popularity of the modern gods, which the western gods were insecure about. “the only thing that seems self-evident...is your own desire for glory. we’ve lived in peace in this country for a long time. some of us do better than others, i agree. back in india, there is an incarnation of me who does much better, but so be it. i am not envious. i’ve watched the new ones rise, and i’ve watched them fall again” (gaiman, 2001, p.119). the idea of believing in god by gaining cognition would only lead to doubts about the empirical truth of god's existence. further, it tends to regard god to be feared, whereas religions, as imperatives see god to be loved till the blessedness of his saintly concept, is embodied in the worshiper's personality. because individuals who see god as a force in human life will realize his essence through emotions, they will not judge a religion as a doctrine, but rather as their own existence (jung, 1969, p.480). ganesh, an elephant-headed hindu god, is one of the gods who has been a psyche for his followers. he is a god of overcoming obstacles and assuring success and is especially idolized by indian immigrants who are struggling in their new land. he was the only old god in the novel who had not faced troubles in america, journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 189 unlike most of the old gods, referring to the fact that many indian immigrants still believe him. thus, ganesh is worshiped not because of his existence, but of the essence of his divine symbols of building sustainable hope, which has been embedded in his devotee's psyche. following mr. wednesday's faked death, anansi, or his americanized name mr. nancy, took over as shadow's spiritual mentor to guide him from an imperative perspective. anansi is a very important african fable figure during the trans-atlantic slave trade. marshall (2010) states that anansi's tales have played multiple functions: as self-integration of african identity in claiming a new identity in the new land; amusement that recovers grief and strengthens solidarity via storytelling; and inspiration for resistance and rebellion (p.183). in the myth, anansi is a storyteller whose trickery tales have helped black slaves by adopting his tactics to outsmart, challenge, and break loose from their white masters. one of the tales mentioned in american gods is 'the tiger's death'. just as its purpose in the traditions, the tale was aimed as entertainment to melt the tension between the old gods and to ignite the spirit of the union among the old gods, "just because we are few and they are many, we are weak, and they are powerful, it does not mean that we are lost...just because you’re small, doesn’t mean you got no power" (gaiman, 2001, p.116-117). although anansi has trickster traits, for black people he is a personal god who has personally urged his oppressed folks to integrate self-independence from inhumanity. anansi was also depicted in the novel as a liberator who freed shadow from mr. wednesday's tyranny, as an evoker for shadow from the illusions of secularism, and as an advocate to reinforce shadow's selfintegration to reach his wholeness. therefore, the existence of mythologies, religions, and folklores for marginal groups is important for their self-integration in the midst of modernization's marginalization. religion functions as a conscious and unconscious stabilizer to protect its followers from the misfortunes of becoming victims of secularism, which results in spiritual emptiness. conclusion american gods is a modern version of dante alighieri’s divine comedy; narrating the spiritual journey of a man through life in a modern context. the novel parodies the paradoxes of american modernity in overestimating expectations and idolizing excessively on secular progressivity while consequently resulting in psychological disorders to its fans. gaiman americanizes a number of mythological figures from diverse cultures to represent the struggle of the american marginal community in facing competition with modernity that not only materially but also mentally alienates them. thus, his play of representation is not simply an intertextual device but pragmatically implies his political undertones through shadow's journey of individuation as a selfpurification of modern man from secular lies. after accomplishing self-realization of what had modernity lied to and fooled him into his misfortune, shadow had come to discover the reason for his depression and confusion as a failed modern man by not blaming his ego's failure, but it is actually a spiritual emptiness in his psyche. shadow's spiritual-awakening journey tells us, the so-called modern humans, that religions are believed not to be empirically proven, but rather religions are metaphorically implemented as psychological needs. because modern life is built by transferring pseudo-reality and hyperrationality that forces people to imitate and emulate, even though this disoriented way of life always misleads them confused and ends up as a victim of disappointment in excessive expectations and hopes. it also includes modernity's manipulation in stereotyping marginal identities as ex-convicts (shadow), warlords (odin, loki, anansi, and kali), immigrants (czernobog), homeless (mad sweeney), laborers (jinn, mr. ibis, and mr. jacquel), prostitute (queen of sheba), and relocators (whiskey jack), who emphasize them vicious, unprincipled, dangerous, and violent. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ahmad wildan rizaq & eka nurcahyani 190 therefore, modern identity is perceived as an unstable and rapidly mutating condition, yet precisely this condition is accountable for producing anxiety and identity crisis. this condition is exactly the opposite of the traditional society whose roles of myths define one’s identity. thus, the identity of every member of traditional societies was fixed, solid, and stable. meanwhile, in modern society, identity is more mobile, multiple, and subject to change, so the problem of modern man is in how they constitute, perceive, interpret, and present themselves to themselves and others. references akhilananda. 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(1996). the writer's journey. studio city: michael wiese production. wheeler, a.-m. (2017). the porosity of human/nonhuman beings in neil gaiman's american gods and anansi boys. indigenous creatures, native knowledges, and the arts, 120-123. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-31956874-4_7 zong, j., & batalova, j. (2015). european immigrants in the united states. migration policy institute. retrieved from: (http://www.migrationpolicy.org) 123 vol. 21 no. 1, april 2021, pp. 123 – 136 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i1.2974 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. critical interpretations of gender stereotypes in selected bangladeshi tv advertisements saheeh shafi saheehshafi@gmail.com department of english, university of dhaka, bangladesh abstract article information this paper aims at a precise critical interpretation of gender roles portrayed in the three selected tv advertisements shown in bangladesh. the analysis begins with the theoretical framework of gender roles analysis here in this paper: goffman’s gender stereotypes hypothesis which is used to identify and analyse the thematic features present in the ads. after critically examining the hypothesis, kress and van leeuwen’s systemic functional analysis framework is used to analyse the semiotic feature to interpret the signs and symbols. after that, fairclough’s stylistic analysis of discourse analysis is used to find out these features in the advertisements to search the cultural, political implications. lastly, the paper uses pope’s the rape of the lock and its cultural-ecofeminist analysis of francois d’eaubonne to connect with the above-mentioned frameworks from a contextual point of view to form the “multi-disciplinary framework” to predict the future progression of the gender representations and their implications in the coming years. results show that despite the presence of gender stereotypes, the changes in gender roles both in houses and workplaces, women empowerment, more female entrepreneurs in the working forces will bring out about a change in the minds of people about the stereotypes and make a more women-inclusive and women-friendly environment in bangladesh. keywords: gender stereotypes; systemic functional framework; discourse analysis; cultural ecofeminism; multi-disciplinary framework received: 15 november 2020 revised: 27 december 2020 accepted: 4 january 2021 introduction “advertising is our environment. we swim in it as fish swim in the water. we cannot escape it…advertising messages are inside our intimate relationships, our homes, our hearts, our heads,” says kilbourne (1999) which conforms with how advertisements ‘frame’ specific forms of perceptions and understanding in our mind (gamson et al., 1992). in our day-to-day life, we find normally man in “manly” activities and woman in “womanly” activities which are also reflected in tv advertisements. this type of https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:saheehshafi@gmail.com journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) saheeh shafi 124 representation of gender is called “stereotypical”. the ways in which the gender representations are portrayed in the advertisements have a direct connection with the social, political, and cultural associations with gender stereotypes in different levels including thematic, semiotic, and stylistic levels. bell and milic (2002) had combined content analysis with semiotic analysis in australian magazines to show gender stereotypes and their implications which will be used in the bangladeshi context to examine whether these frameworks comply with advertisements shown in the country. in this paper, the presentations and implications of gender stereotypes portrayed in three selected tv advertisements shown in bangladesh will be critically examined in terms of goffman’s hypothesis of stereotypical representations of gender roles which combine content-based or thematic analysis and semiotic analysis of kress and van leeuwen under systemic functional analysis framework and fairclough’s stylistic discourse analysis will be used to form an umbrella term “multi-disciplinary framework” to study the cultural ecofeminism to gender roles to show the identify the representations of gender stereotypes, the reasons behind the advertising agencies to portray women as stereotypical and also to predict the gender portrayal trajectories into the future in bangladesh. this study gives an insight into the underlying reasons for gender stereotypes and their implications in terms of their future projections which gives the researchers a further interpretation of gender stereotypes in the bangladeshi context which is very rarely studies to date. so, choosing representative advertisements of women’s beauty, power and carrier will be very essential to justify theories into practical fields. thus this paper ads will add value to the existing body of research on gender studies. one of the earliest known research conducted on gender stereotypes (rozenkrantz et al., 1968) critically evaluates the relationship between the self-concept of people and their “differentially valued sex roles”. the research group found that both male and female participants agreed in terms of their valuation of stereotypically masculine characteristics more than feminine ones. goffman’s (1979) work on gender stereotypes and their implications are one of the major works done in the latter half of the 20th century. till then only a handful of researchers had joined the quest to find out more about how women and men are portrayed. his article, gender advertisements of 1979 deals with it from the viewpoint of how society wants us to see gender roles in advertisements rather on what actual roles are being played in real life. bell and milic (2002) later on used the framework of systemic functional analysis with semiotic analysis in 827 advertisements shown in australia to revisit the gender stereotypes hypothesis of goffman to check whether these stereotypes are reinforced or not. they find that though there has been the presence of socially constructed stereotypes in tv advertisements, there are many instances of progression towards the portrayal of women in more professional, responsible, selfsufficient roles and men in more supportive roles in women empowerment. ann and kim (2007) used hofstede’s masculinity index (mas) in 300 korean advertisements which show the gender stereotypes such as women portrayed more in beauty product-oriented ads, ads where the setting is home, and in “recreational” roles which are according to the requirements of the advertising agencies. this is a way of analysing the gender stereotypes and their implications from a quantitative assessment. according to them, their research will help the advertising agencies to locate their target customers’ needs by using the mas index which in most cases comply with the existing stereotypes in gender role portrayals. the recent trends of gender stereotypes in tv advertisements are found in the research conducted by matthes et al. (2016) in accessing 1755 advertisements in 13 asian, american and european countries where they concluded saying that the gender of primary character or characters, voice-overs, age, the product types, setting and working roles are the factors they used to examine whether the journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-569(print); 2580-5878 (online) 125 gender quality conditions of a country influence the gender roles portrayals shown in tv advertisements or not. they concluded that although there is the presence of gender stereotypes all over the globe, the recent trends tend to be more women inclusive compared to the last half of the 20th-century portrayals by goffman. to determine and signify “gender stereotypes”, different methodologies like thematic, stylistic, semiotic analysis have been used separately for example; in dines (1995) in which only gender and culture were addressed. goffman (1969) used only gender stereotypes hypothesis, kress and van leeuwen’s (1996) systemic functional framework, and fairclough’s (2003) discourse analysis separately to examine gender stereotypes and that is why these studies were incomplete in terms of providing a comprehensive understanding of gender stereotypes. to add to this, bell and milic (2002), anstey and kim (2007) used a systemic functional framework and hofstede’s mas index only. moreover, communication and media strategies of audio-visual discourse analysis are hardly present in kellner’s (1995) work in media and culture. the existing researches dealt with gender stereotypes mostly in european, american contexts. even though matthes et.al, (2016) examined stereotypes in the asian context, the bangladeshi context is not examined at all. but this paper will provide the readers with a holistic interpretation of gender stereotypes and their implications in the bangladeshi context by connecting the above-mentioned theoretical frameworks with the methods mentioned below. therefore, by combining interdisciplinary analysis of gender stereotypes using goffman’s (1979) gender stereotypes hypothesis, kress and van leeuwen’s(1996) systemic functional analysis, fairclough’s (2003) discourse analysis, hofstede’s mas index analysis framework along with a literary contextualization using pope’s the rape of the lock in terms of a cultural ecofeminist viewpoint, a new multidisciplinary analysis framework is formed to examine from the thematic, semiotic, stylistic and literary point of view. the research question of the paper is that it deals with the main research question regarding critical interpretations of gender stereotypes (how?, why? and now what?) divided into three sub-questions into three aspects :(a) gender representations, (b) implications of gender stereotypes, (c) future trajectories of gender stereotypes in the three selected tv advertisements in bangladesh. (a) gender representations (how?): how are gender stereotypes portrayed in the three selected tv advertisements shown in bangladesh? (b) implications of existing gender stereotypes (why?): why (underlying reasons) are gender stereotypes portrayed in these ways? (c) future trajectories of gender stereotypes (now what?): are the stereotypes reinforced or there is any wind of change regarding stereotypes in future tv ads? methodology this paper will go through an extensive interpretation of gender stereotypes by combining the theoretical frameworks with the practical analysis methods on selected tv advertisements shown in bangladesh in various settings by three main methods of content analysis of the “multi-disciplinary framework” are given as follows. the thematic analysis will be done for goffman’s(1979) gender stereotypes hypothesis to determine whether the gender stereotypes do exist or not and if they do, to what extent these impact social, political, cultural, economic, and psychological aspects. the semiotic analysis will be critically interpreted by the systemic functional framework of kress and van leeuwen (1996) to examine extensively the semiotic features present in the ads to understand and justify the claims made by goffman from the symbolic analysis. alongside thematic and semiotic analysis, the third dimension of stylistic analysis is used to examine further deep into the roots of gender stereotypes using fairclough’s discourse analysis which is explained nicely by journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) saheeh shafi 126 prasad (2016). as the advertising agencies mainly use conversations of the various participants in their advertisements, it is very crucial to study these conversations from a critical discourse analytical point of view. the overall analysis is also based on (a) qualitative & (b) quantitative analysis of examining gender stereotypes. qualitative analysis using mainly goffman’s gender stereotypes hypothesis will be used to find out the underlying themes present in these ads for interpretations of gender stereotypes. quantitative analysis using mainly hofstede’s (2001) mas index to do factor analysis which will combine the theoretical frameworks based analysis with the practical on-field analysis with data collected from the three representative advertisements. qualitative analysis is used to explore the sense of the exotic in the ads where freud’s dream work and the psychological principles will be used to psychoanalyze the minds of the participants of the advertising, the owners of the advertising agencies and their potential plans or strategies, the viewers’ mind as well. the patriarchal society and the oppression of women by it are explored in terms of cultural ecofeminism which deals with the oppression against women and nature. both qualitative and quantitative analysis to give an extra contextual advantage there are literacy texts like the rape of the lock of alexander pope and alongside their theories complying with the current contextual scenarios. data collection the rationale for choosing the above mentioned theoretical frameworks and methods: each of the frameworks have been classified into multiple subframes with which newer spectacles will be re-discovered here in women and gender studies. these multidisciplinary frameworks with multiple subframes are used to provide a broader spectrum to view women and gender from the best possible viewpoints by contextualizing in different real-life scenarios. by justifying gender roles, attitudes towards changes in role-plays of women, future trajectories will eventually be developed by the multidisciplinary framework to interpret specific propositions. the rationale for choosing the three advertisements: pears soap ad, bangladesh army ad, and brac ad are carefully chosen by the author from tv advertisements shown on prime broadcasting time in bangladesh. these ads are representative of three important factors beauty, power, and carrier of women predict gender stereotypes respectively. each of the advertisements was chosen as representatives of the above-mentioned advertising categories. the language of bangladesh army ad and brac ad is bangla while pears ad is in hindi. when quoted from these three ads, transliteration is used alongside the meaning in english to maintain both contextual integrity and clarity of meaning. the words, phrases, and sentences used in these advertisements are collected by writing these down by the respective author while the ads were running on the tv screen. future trajectories of gender stereotypes: this study will also try to find out about the future trajectories of gender stereotypes by combining these above-mentioned frameworks with practical fields of analysis. finally, the paper will review the abovementioned strategies to examine gender stereotypes whether these promote or demoralize women, and will comment on the findings using the above-mentioned frameworks to predict their future trajectories and their impact on women folk. the three ads show a gradual transition from a more radical point of view towards women to a more liberal point of view. the ads also serve the purpose of gender roles presentations as each shows women in different familial, social, and national roles played by them. the three selected tv advertisements and their dominant themes 1. beauty soap “pears” advertisement (2018) on women’s beauty in this advertisement for pears golden glow soap, the main character is a young woman who is also the mother of a little school girl. the proceedings start with the little girl in her school uniform closing her eyes when she hears that her schoolmates are coming. she journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-569(print); 2580-5878 (online) 127 opens the door then also asks them to close their eyes. they are shown equipped with musical instruments. after that, she goes into her house and askes her mother to come with her to the yard. her mother asks her what is the matter. the little girl replies that they have a music competition and her mother’s face is lucky for them and she smiles with a glow. in the meantime, the background music “teri ek jhalak dikh jaye to din ban jaye, din ban jaye” is playing in hindi, an indian subcontinental language and the meaning in english is that if a little glimpse of her is seen, the day becomes a success. here, only physical beauty is considered to be the reason for the little girl’s feeling lucky, not her mother’s musical talent or blessings. blessing in conventional terms still makes more sense than beauty to be felt lucky about. it is a fantasy world created around the little girl in which she will follow her mother to be another “beauty icon” herself. 2. “brac”, an ngo advertisement (2017) on women’s empowerment this heart touching advertisement shows that how vulnerable women are struggling in getting their rights. the story begins with the death of the father of a young girl. when her mother claims to her bother-in-law about her husband’s piece of land, she hears from him that he has lost his brother and she has come to ask for lands! he gives her a packet of taka and says that her daughter is fatherless and so to take care of her. then the woman leaves her house with her daughter and makes a train journey to dhaka. that night while her daughter was reading about bangladesh and its land areas, she requests her mother to read that part and her mother read, “bangladesh is our motherland. its land area is 1,47,570 square kilometres. then she asks her if bangladesh’s land area is 1,47,570 square kilometres and where is their land? her mother is seen sewing to earn their livelihood. according to a report (international land coalition, 2014) spoken by the male voiceover, women possess less than 4% of bangladeshi land which shows that still how vulnerable women are in terms of land possession. the message of the advertising is that not only in words but also by changing our minds we can make women empowerment possible by restoring their rights on lands and all other assets. 3. “bangladesh army” advertisement (2011) on women’s carrier the beginning of the ad shows that both men and women who are young, energetic, and brave applying for the posts of bangladesh army. then the rest portion of the video shows that both are taking the challenge to overcome the obstacles in hard training to fulfil their entrance into their dream profession. the male voice over is heard saying about their dedication, hard work, and passion to serve the country directly by being a defence officer. after completing the training, they are seen in army uniforms which mark their bold stance in one of the toughest professions in the world. data analysis goffman’s gender advertisements (1979) has continued to form the theoretical basis for content analysis framework which deals with a hypothesis of stereotypes in representations of male and female participants in advertisements. they are portrayed repeatedly as participants of the ‘hyperritualization’ of women. one of the selected advertisements, the brac ad shows such traits. the pears soap ad shows some of the dimensions of ‘infantilization’. ‘the feminine touch’ shows up in the pears ad, where women touch and ritually caress the object, here the soap and themselves and also the mother and the female child. the contrast can be drawn from another selected ad of bangladesh army where both male and female officers are seen grasping purposefully the weapons and themselves while in training. an opposing viewpoint of equality shown in bd army ad can be drawn here from eagles and sczesney’s (2009) psychological research on men, women, and directors of the leading companies in europe found that only 4% percent of the presidents and only 10% of the directorial bodies of these companies are women. that survey concluded with the reasons for the stereotypical view of journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) saheeh shafi 128 gender roles as to see men as bosses and women as subordinate stuff. again the ‘function rank’ is supported by the sewing work of women shown in brac ad where stereotypically ‘feminine’ work is associated with women. this is supported by eagly and steffen’s (1984) experiment where the gender stereotypes are mostly reinforced by the participants of five different social groups where women are associated with communal (selfless and concerned with others) roles and men are with agentic (selfassertive and motivated to master) roles according to their hypothesized beliefs. the contrast is the bd army ad where both male and female participate equally in a stereotypically ‘masculine’ military training. the ‘family’ shows that the family figures tend to demonstrate a special motherdaughter (pears and brac ad) bond which is emotionally close and a special father-son (brac ad) bond which is emotionally distant. zotos and grau (2016) also support the stereotypical portrayal of gender roles according to common beliefs. they pose three questions like what? (what stereotypes), why? (the social implications of stereotypes), and now what? (the social consequences of it). women are presented in family-oriented and ‘decorative’ roles (uray and burnas 2003) (pears and brac ad), seen as young and in housewife roles where men are portrayed as independent, authoritarian, and professional roles with little regard to age or physical appearance (brac and army ad). the exception here is the bd army ad where women are as ‘masculine’ as men and shown with power, carrier, and honour (richert and carpenter, 2004). lastly, the ‘mirror’ and ‘mold’ debate, where the ‘mirror’ part supports goffman’s hypothesis (brac ad) and the ‘mold’ part is true for pears ad where the cultivation theory is in action. people’s perception of society is molded by media (gerbner 1998). human behaviours and human relationships are then termed as ‘hybrid’. contrastively the ads which follow the stereotypes, create gender identity according to the stereotyped ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ (schroeder and zwick, 2004). people’s perceptions are always changing towards women especially those who are educated and holding professional positions tend to defy the gender stereotypes hypothesis according to eagly and steffen (1984). the selected advertisements show us a gradual transition towards a more womenfriendly environment in bangladesh from a more radical point of view towards women. identify formation for women has been a significant scenario to make a bold stand and take advantage of the opportunities that come into their way to be more professional, more powerful, and more boldly beautiful. the point of raising consciousness about women’s rights has been one of the most talked-about topics of women. these advertisements will surely boost their morale for their future endeavours. the problems that they face like not having their rights on land will be eradicated only if they are educated and aware of their rights and thus empowered. overt beautification, a trap of the advertising agencies termed as “commercial reality” by goffman (1979) is used to create a perfect realization of one’s dreams. the attitudes of children towards the beauty of women is also a crucial theme that deals with the formation of a “molded” psychology for young children towards unconsciously “objectifying” themselves and making them more a “wooden doll” rather than the real-life women with consciousness about their physical and psychological beauties which they nurture not in front of the dressing tables but their school of mind as well. the good thing is that the trend towards intellectuals nurturing is increasing among women which can be traced by looking into the ever-growing number of ads showing women’s empowerment not only with beauty but also with their knowledge and skills. it means a lot to a young girl watching tv with her family where other girls of her age are shown successfully by dint of their extremely hard work and merit earned by their dedication towards their respective fields. the advertisements are still the mirrors of the society where the trend towards becoming intellectual women for girls is increasing which is shown more and more in these ads. bangladesh has become less mas-centric than journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-569(print); 2580-5878 (online) 129 before and also a more gdi or gender development index score holder which is given by united nations (un) which is visible in the ads showing women empowerment and carrier consciousness. systemic functional framework of kress and van leeuwen: critically interpreting semiotic analysis “semiotic categories” depicted in kress and van leeuwen’s (1996) reading images are used to analyse the gender stereotypes in advertisements. under the systemic functional analysis framework, according to anstey and bull (2018), a semiotic system is classified into five categories; such aslinguistic, visual, audio, gestures, spatial. hofstede’s (2001) masculinity index (mas) is an indicator of gender stereotypes in a society which deals with different variables like the main character, age, gender, settings, women’s representations as caregivers. this index divides the countries into two categories such as; ‘masculine’ countries with a high mas index and ‘feminine’ countries with a low mas index. the high mas indexed countries portray women as subordinate to men, mostly shown as holding household roles and hardly shown as professionals. they are also shown as caregivers and associated with the “other” and the “exotic” which is an important part of a psychological study of minds of people which associate women with “colonies” "the good old days," "the happy family," "fun-loving youth” (tolson, 1996) to create a pseudo-equality for women but a fantasy world of romantic dreams for men from where they get all their “needs” fulfilled. post structuralist and post modernist theories make their contributions in interpreting semiotics by treating cultural identities as “verb”, not “noun” which implies that the identities of women are evolving with the passage of time and will go towards a more comprehensive way for them. the ritualization of subordination as a stereotype for women shows them in inferior positions as in brac ad where the woman becomes landless after her husband’s death. they are shown in inferior poses, for example in brac ad where the woman is humbly asking for the land-claim of her husband in submissive postures and gestures and seen under the protection of men (the woman was under the protection of her husband and now becomes landless). belknap and leonard (1990) claim that women caress and men more grasp as seen in the pears and bd army ad respectively. women are portrayed as ‘decorative’ and ‘alluring’. women shown as infants is a semiotic device. infantilizing women is to associate women with feeble, meek, subordinate children. on the other hand, whenever women are shown in ‘masculine’ positions, they are depicted in ‘proffering’ poses for male sexual consumption (wex 1979). at the same time, women have been subjected to association with home, pleasure, exotic, nature, and the ‘colony’ which connote the exploitation of the ‘other’ and conceal the hedonistic capitalism (pears ad) in williamson’s (1987) proposal. this generation of connotative meaning is full of ‘ad work’ which is similar to freud’s ‘dream work’. it is due to commercial and political pressure. formal semiotic strategies are used to quench the thirst of the ‘hungry’ people’s psychological need for fantasy. kress and van leeuwen (1996) use ‘visual semiotic theory’ to explore the connotative meanings of gender stereotypes which are part of hallyday and hassan’s (1985) “systemic functional approach.” the narrative process (‘going ons’) and conceptual process (‘ideas’) are part of the representational dimension where there are transactions and interactions with vectors (eye lines, gestures indicating a line of force). for example, in the first scenes of ads of brac, bd army, and pears where a woman is dominated by men in the brac ad whereas women pose is strong and ‘focused’ appearance in bd army and pears ads consecutively. the conceptual process reflects women’s association with ‘nonactive’/‘conceptual’ (beauty in pears ad) as carriers of symbolic (semiotic) meaning. it is as if males ‘act’ and females ‘are’. in the interaction between participants and viewers, factors (the ‘gaze’ towards the camera or not, the ‘distance’ between them, and the ‘angle’ from which they are seen). the ‘gaze’ is more intensely portrayed in pears and bd army ads where the participants create expressions of beauty, journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) saheeh shafi 130 power, and confidence. ‘angle’ is used especially for pears ad where the woman is seen caressing soap and herself from multiple angles to focus on her beauty. the ‘distance’ is a minimum level for mother-daughter in pears and brac ads and more distance between the father-son in brac ad. so, the first pair is more emotionally attached than the second. the ‘gaze’ and ‘angle’ are the key semiotic devices for bd army ad which reflect women’s power, solidarity, dedication, endeavour, and hard work. on the other hand, the participants were seductively presented with the product (pears) so that the viewers should desire them. hall’s (1969) discussion of ‘proxemics’, the psychology of people’s use of space show intimacy, love, and attraction when it is ‘intimate distance’ or ‘personal distance’ and when it is ‘social distance’ or ‘public distance’, it shows less solidarity and more formality of relations. the mother-child and the child-child relationship in pears and brac ads show the first category and the father-son and mother-uncle relationship in brac ad show the latter. the ‘gendered voice of advertising’ shows that the male voice is associated with professional and entertaining roles while the female voice is associated with decorative roles. for example, the female voice and voiceover in pears ad, the male-female voices with the male voiceovers of brac and bd army ads show conformity with the ‘gendered’ voice due to the “stereotyped” specificity of the voices with the ads. from a visual semiotic perspective, the falling of a dead leaf and a lonely ‘dolna’ (swing) in the background show that probably someone has died. the same predicted thing occurs and the father of the girl dies and later on the mother-daughter is ousted from their land in brac ad. the setting of the background of the house shows the woman’s profession as a homemaker in pears ad and also the colour orange or golden in the dress and background match with the colour of the soap. this colour symbolically presents the woman as seductive using the soap and also creates a hedonistic impression on the viewers. the dark colour shown in brac ad demonstrates the fate of the 96% of women who do not possess their land. the voice of the ad is through encouraging enough to build awareness regarding the landless women and urges for women’s rights of land and property. the “money” becomes a strong symbol of envy and jealousy when the uncle of the young girl gives her mother only a handful of money and it eventually turns out to be a sign that they have to leave the land to him in brac ad. the background music is so 130esmerizing and enchanting that people memorize the song and the product name at the same time subconsciously like in pears ad. analysis to uncover the hidden strategies by fairclough’s discourse analysis the stylistic features of language also portray gender stereotypes according to prasad (2016). in fairclough’s (2003) analysing discourse, style is the discourse of ways of being and identity which are closely associated with the languages of the three selected tv ads that portray gender stereotypes. styles are linked to identification whereas identity is an effect of discourse. poststructuralist and post-modernist theories associate an identity with discourse. people are not only primary agents to be prepositioned with roles but also as social agents who do, create and change things. according to archer (2000), creating ‘selfconsciousness’ is essential in forming a social identity. the brac ad is showing women as primary agents who are predestined to sufferings like losing their land. lakoff (1973) termed the word “politeness device” as part of the syntactic analysis which is used by the woman in brac ad to maintain the conversation with her husband’s brother. similarly, the women in bd army ad on the other hand are changing their lots by being flexible as social agents. maclntyre (1984) explained the ‘stock’ characters which represent a culture distinctively from other cultures. here, the woman and her daughter in brac ad is distinctive of “rural exploited women” and men is “the exploiter”. again in pears ad, the woman and her daughter are ‘stock’ characters of a fantasy world of the capitalist business arena where the woman is caressing the soap and the daughter feels lucky journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-569(print); 2580-5878 (online) 131 before going to music competition just seeing her mother’s face before seeing anything else with all her mates. features like simple syntactic structure, high rate of repetition, and direct appeal to the viewers are present in all three ads. all the sentences are simple, each sentence has a part that repeats in another sentence. for example, “teri ek jhalak dikh jaye to din ban jaye, din ban jaye (ii)”, means “if i get to see a glimpse of your glimmering face, it makes my day a success (ii)”. in brac ad, there is the usage of simple sentences and multiple repetitions; for example: “bangladesh is our motherland. it’s land area is 1,47,570 square kilometers (2)”. the little girl poses a question to her mother and the country symbolically that, in their motherland where is their land? it reflects that only less than 4% of bangladeshi lands are owned by women and connotes the land grabbing men. the bd army ad also has simple structures to convey the qualities of the army like confidence, bravery, spirit, dream, endeavour. the pears ad is a descriptive, poetic, and aesthetic ad, the brac ad is narrative and descriptive and the bd army ad is descriptive and expressive. the rhyme of the background song of pears is very soothing to the ear and intensifies the meaning of the discourse. poetic language focuses more on the affective meaning rather than referential meaning. it uses overtly glorifying rhymes to entice the customers to use the product. the other two ads do it with their narrative and descriptive styles. the simple structure is a part of ‘loaded’ language according to bolinger. the words “jhalak” and “din ban jaye” have attention value so as the words “courage”, “endeavour” and “dedication” for bd army ad. use of exclamation (wow! in pears ad) and question (in our motherland, where is our land, ma(mother)?” help to decipher the hidden meaning of the context which are the colonial mind and land grabbing mind of men. all the ads have simple, familiar vocabularies. memorability is achieved through alliteration, metrical rhyme, grammatical parallelism, lexical repetition, syntactic repetition, repetition of product names which are common in these ads. leech’s positive adjectives are present in both pears and bd army ads. words like “special”, “jhalak” (flash), “100%”, “extra”, “courage”, “endeavour”, “dream”, “desire” create positive impressions on the viewers, especially the product users. here both qualitative and quantitative analyses are done to examine the gender stereotypes better and these will be used to further research by combining with it a literary flavour containing both thematic and contextual scenarios with practical fields of advertisings to implement those theories into practice and justify the future trajectories of gender stereotypes. cultural ecofeminism on gender stereotypes and its implications literary theories into practice a cultural ecofeminist study by mohammadi and kalantari (2016) shows that the exploitation of women and nature in the hands of patriarchal society can be equated with two of the selected advertisements: pears ad and brac ad. the male-dominated society equates women and nature to erode them both as inactive the “other”. salma (2011) talks about the metaphor of the british empire equated with belinda, the main female protagonist in alexander pope’s the rape of the lock. in the ad of brac, we find that the male-dominated society grabs lands belonging to women. so, even though colonialism is eroded from the earth, the colonial mindset is still present to date which is shown in this ad. westfall (1998) criticized pope for not showing any progress in the plot of the storyline in the rape of the lock where pope only showed female coquetry. the patriarchal domination is made trivial and less serious than what it is supposed to by phillips (2004) pope, donne, milton, aphra behn, margaret cavendish for downgrading women and earth by speakers eg. lovers, theologians, colonists. for example, in donne’s elegy xix: to his mistress going to bed, the female-beloved is treated as colonized lands by the male-lover: “oh my america, my new found lande, /my kingdome, safeliest when with one man man’d,” (27-28). francois d’eaubonne who coined cultural ecofeminism says that the patriarchal society defines women to preserve journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) saheeh shafi 132 beauty and chastity and men to preserve power, authority, and earth. beauty is considered a virtue itself. her physical characteristics magnify her virtuosity. “if to her share some female errors fall, look at her face,/ you will forget ‘em all.”(p.8) intellectuality and other virtues are dismissed and victimization is internalized as it is only women’s duty to protect their beauty and chastity. it is similar to brac ad where a legal claim of a woman was dismissed and internalized and she has not protested and taken any action. “she who scorns must die a maid!”, “beware of all, but most beware of men”, “weights men’s wits against lady’s hair, belinda is marginalized even though she outwitted the baron in the game of ombre and beauty(women) loses to wit(men) as if each of them is associated with exclusively to either male or female. it is similar to recurrent background music “teri ek jhalak dikh jaye to, din ban jaye” where beauty is exclusively associated with women. freud’s psychoanalytical theory conforms with illouz’s (1996) observation of “fantasy generated emotional experience” for which the baron wants to “ravish” belinda’s hair which is still prevalent in the bangladeshi context as well. results and discussion both the representations and implications of gender stereotypes in bangladesh according to the newly developed multi-disciplinary framework by the author mostly conform with the combined findings. table 1: results of existing researches on the selected tv advertisements name/s and year pears ad brac ad army ad bell & milic (2002) stereo-typical both stereo-typical and not not stereo-typical uray and burnaz (2003) stereo-typical both stereo-typical and not not stereo-typical reichert and carpenter (2004) stereo-typical both stereo-typical and not not stereo-typical zotos and grau (2016) stereo-typical both stereo-typical and not not stereo-typical table 2. results of theoretical frameworks on the selected tv advertisements name/s with year pears ad brac ad bd army ad goffman (1979) stereo-typical both stereo-typical and not not stereo-typical kress and van leeuwen (1996) stereo-typical both stereo-typical and not not stereo-typical fairclough (2003) stereo-typical both stereo-typical and not not stereo-typical 1. goffman’s (1979) gender stereotypes hypothesis by examining the most dominant themes, goffman’s gender stereotypes hypothesis is justified in terms of thematic analysis by identifying the main gender stereotypes criteria including beauty, empowerment of women in pears ad and brac ad but contrasts with bd army ad where women are associated with more “masculine” roles which means wind of change is starting to blow to show that women are treated as equal by their male counterparts in bd army. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-569(print); 2580-5878 (online) 133 2. kress and van leeuwen’s (1996) systemic functional framework the multi-disciplinary framework used systemic functional analysis to justify the thematic analysis combine with practical analysis. the semiotic features also conform with the stereotypes of seeing women as objects, at home in recreational roles and gives us an insight into the insiders’ mind of the advertising agencies and also the “imperial” mind of the male-dominated society which eventually turn into an “objectifying” attitude towards women irrespective of all classes. here freud’s dream work has worked in favour of the analysis framework to support the claims made according to the semiotic analysis. 3. fairclough’s (2003) stylistic analysis fairclough’s discourse analysis deals with the stylistic aspects of gender stereotypes and their implications by examining the discourse in the context of gender roles portrayals in bangladesh. the stylistic analysis in terms of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics as a part of discourse analysis makes it evident to justify gender stereotypes and also points out future trajectories of gender stereotypes using the same means which are used to examine gender stereotypes. 4. literary interpretation the literary viewpoint also makes the strong claim of gender stereotypes portrayal in bangladesh in the 21st century even stronger and gives an insight into the oppression of women and nature by men. using cultural ecofeminism as a tool to find out the troublesome experiences of women even in the 21st century. even though pope’s the rape of the lock is an 18th century epic poem but still it manages to examine gender stereotypes better because of its being universal in terms of women subjugation and oppression. this is also a most concerning finding that even in our modern times’ women are maybe safe from the direct physical assault but still, they go through an inexplicable amount of mental trauma and most of them have to go through this. they are being “objectified” even though they are not aware of the “hungry mind’s” psychological crimes. implications of stereotypes blum’s (2004) writing finds this stereotypical mind which reads every category according to pre-occupied ideas: “it is false, or at least misleading, to say th at jews are cheap, blacks lazy, asians good at math, women emotional, and so on,” the good thing is that the change for a more women-friendly job environment is reflected in bd army ad. due to the development of more women inclusive education system, job sectors as well as job environment, the advertising agencies are starting to show women in more positive and important roles and also a partner of men in the development of a developed bangladesh. as more and more women are getting quality education due to the facilities given by the government and ngos like brac, women have become more self-sufficient. but overt femvertising may put a brake on the development of women folk as these are the works of the “predatory mind”. so promoting women as successful entrepreneurs in different sectors of bangladesh will boost up other women who have the potentiality to go forward by building a positive mindset and attitude towards women by both men and women to make sure an inclusive world for women in terms of safety, respect and glory. so, the new multi-disciplinary framework of gender stereotypes analysis will help the researchers in this field to examine deep into the gender stereotypes and their implications. conclusion the paper will end here with two contrasting propositions about predictions of gender stereotypes in ads shown in bangladesh. zotos and tsichla (2004) say that due to the change in occupational opportunities and domestic structure, women are seen more as a professional rather than a housewife. due to the development of new opportunities for women, they are now portrayed in more independent, professional, journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) saheeh shafi 134 and self-sufficient roles. “femvertising” is using ads to celebrate women rather than objectifying them. such an enlightened woman of bangladesh is prof. niaz zaman of the english department, dhaka university who says, “if there is a wall in front of me, i will scale it or bring it down”. the positive impact is that boosts girls’ self-esteem and breaks down gender inequality (bahadur 2014). but overt femvertising without authenticity can be less effective. for example, a lux ad (october 5, 2020) shows that indian actor saif ali khan overtly praising another indian actress karina kapoor khan by comparing her “beautiful” face with the “whiteness” of the moon but the irony is in ad title “lux rose and vitamin e” to cure skin with vitamin. there has hardly been any dark coloured woman shown in ad of beauty soap meril (february 2020) where the dark colour is promoted and celebrated. the professional portrayal in a recent (march 2020) ad of lux soap shows actress mim performing an action scene with ‘alluring’ makeup, dark red lipstick, and stylish hair which is barely the case for our real-life action heroines for example women police or army who perform their action with bravery and intelligence rather than on ‘beauty’ which is used by the advertisers to allure more viewers who will mainly quench their psychological thirst of women fantasy. contrastively, the report of jones (2020) where two petitions were filed against unilever for promoting “anti-blackness sentiment” and “be light to feel beautiful” and according to the court’s verdict, it removed “fair” from “fair and lovely” beauty cream which is a bold step forward for reducing portrayal of the stereotypical “whiteness”. along with that, low mas index scores and high gdi index scores, the gender roles portrayal is enduring a positive change in the stereotypes to ‘mold’ new cultural identities of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’. therefore, the gender stereotypes shown in tv advertisements in bangladesh complies with this multi-disciplinary framework as it shows positive future trajectories change of gender stereotypes in bangladesh and will be an ideal model to follow to examine the future trajectories of gender role representations in other countries as well in future research proposals. references ahmed, t. 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(2014). snapshots of men and women in interaction: an investigation of stereotypes in print advertisement relationship portrayal. journal of euromarketing, 23(3), 35-5. https://youtu.be/mfuhyppvlcu https://youtu.be/a-vrcus3mzk https://www.thedailystar.net/an-afternoon-with-a-difference-17498 https://www.thedailystar.net/an-afternoon-with-a-difference-17498 267 vol. 21 no. 2, october 2021, pp. 267-280 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i2.3044 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. covid-19 #takeresponsibility: a multimodal discourse analysis of select ncdc’s online public health advertising campaign adetutu aragbuwa & victor o. adejumo oyearagbuwa@gmail.com, jumovictor@gmail.com department of english & literary studies ekiti state university, ekiti state, nigeria abstract article information this article examines the nigerian center for disease control’s (henceforth, ncdc) covid-19 #takeresponsibility online public health advertising campaign. this is with a view to exploring how the representational, interactive and compositional resources are realized in these advertising visuals as well as their communicative functions. forty purposively selected data samples, which were subjected to qualitative analysis, are examined from a multimodal discourse analytical approach. the analysis reveals that the narrative, transactive, action, offer, and the frontal resources, among others, are realized in the adverts. these resources interactively perform the directive, informative, reinforcing, preventive, cautionary and collective functions. thus, the representational, interactive and compositional resources deployed in the ncdc’s covid-19 #takeresponsibility online visuals discursively cohere as multimodal public health campaign strategies geared towards sensitizing the nigerian populace on the safety guidelines to adhere to in containing the spread of covid-19 in nigeria. keywords: covid-19 #takeresponsibility; nigerian center for disease control; public health advertising campaign; multimodal discourse analysis received: 6 january 2021 revised: 15 february 2021 accepted: 10 april 2021 introduction covid-19 (coronavirus disease-2019) is a novel and highly contagious viral infection that emerged in wuhan, hubei province, south china, towards the end of 2019, and steadily became a grave global pandemic in 2020 as the world witnesses its alarming spread to over 150 countries. coronaviruses are part of the ‘coronaviridae family in the nidovirales order’ and the term ‘corona’ itself stems from ‘the crown-like spikes on the outer surface of the virus’ (shereen, khan, kazmi, bashir & siddique, 2020, p. 91). this novel virus was originally named by chinese researchers, ‘wuhan coronavirus or 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-ncov)’; the international committee on taxonomy of viruses (ictv) later renamed it ‘sars-cov-2’; and who officially designated the disease, ‘covid-19’ (a shortened form of coronavirus disease-19) https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:oyearagbuwa@gmail.com mailto:jumovictor@gmail.com journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) adetutu aragbuwa & victor o. adejumo 268 (shereen et al., 2020, p. 92; world health organization, 2020). the coronavirus disease is reportedly caused by ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (sars-cov-2)’ and it spreads rapidly from human-to-human via exposure to respiratory droplets produced from the coughs, sneezes or aerosols of infected persons. its common symptoms are cough, fever, pneumonia, ‘acute lung injury (ali) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ards)’ which could lead to ‘pulmonary failure’ and fatality (shereen et al., 2020, p. 92; ahmad, hafeez, siddqui, ahmad, & mishra, 2020). the potent contagiousness of the virus across nations and its high mortality rate have, therefore, prompted both national and international public health agencies to develop various preventive measures to contain its rapid spread. a few of these agencies are the chinese centre for disease control and prevention (china cdc), the united states centers for disease control and prevention (cdc), the world health organization (who), the united kingdom public health england (phe), the nigeria centre for disease control (ncdc), the ethiopian public health institute (ephi), among others. our leading concern in the present paper is the ncdc. the ncdc is nigeria’s foremost public health institute at the vanguard of the fight against the dreaded disease. nigeria recorded her first index case of covid-19 on february 27, 2020, and ever since, cases have been increasing at an alarming rate (anjorin, 2020; osahon & memedu, 2020). in a swift response to contain the spread of the lethal disease, the ncdc, in march 2020, launched a campaign tagged covid-19 #takeresponsibility to ‘encourage nigerians and residents to take individual and collective responsibility to reduce the spread of the coronavirus disease’ (ncdc, 2020, p. 2). the campaign comprises a range of activities that showcase the ncdc’s coordinated response strategies geared towards containing the spread of the virus. these activities include recommending decisive actions on infection control and preventive guidelines, training health officials, provision of isolation centers and diagnostic materials, prompt identification of infected persons cum contact-tracing, regular updates on the infection rate, sensitization of the populace about the reality and the dynamics of the virus, among others. in actualizing these series of operations, the ncdc employs campaign tools such as handbills, banners, television and radio jingles, briefings, sensitizing playlets on tv and radio, newspaper and online adverts, bulk sms, talk shows, billboards and posters. considering the multifunctional nature of these tools, there is the need to examine the role of each in the ncdc’s covid-19 #takeresponsibility campaign. in view of the above, this paper specifically focuses on the ncdc’s covid-19 online adverts due to its multimodal nature. most studies on covid-19 have examined its pathogenesis and clinical characteristics (fehr & perlman, 2015; shereen et al., 2020); diagnosis, treatment and prevention (ahmad, et al., 2020); students’ perception on the virus and its impact on education (jegede, 2020); social and healthy responsive attitudes of the nigerian masses (adepoju, 2020; osahon & memedu, 2020); as well as extent of preparedness at national and global levels (cdc, 2020; qian, ren, wang, guo, fang, wu, pei-long & han, 2020). language-based studies on covid-19 have interrogated quantitatively or qualitatively discursive aspects such as covid-19 lexical and/or semantic neologisms, linguistic properties of covid-19 fake news; coronavirus corpora and persuasive strategies in strengthening its awareness (asif, zhiyong, iram & nisar, 2020; iqbal, aslam, aslam, ashraf, kashif & nasi, 2020; kim hua et al., 2020) as well as its pronunciation fallouts (obiorah, 2020). despite this gamut of linguistic and nonlinguistic studies on covid-19, the campaign tools of national and international public health agencies in the fight against the pandemic remain under-explored. although kim hua et al. (2020) carry out a comparative content analysis of official announcements on covid-19 in malaysia and the us and also explore parliamentary proceedings on covid19 in malaysia, their language-oriented data are basically political tools; hence, such data can be subsumed under political genre. public health agencies’ covid-19 campaign tools largely remain under-researched. in view of journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 269 this paucity, this study seeks to explore the ncdc’s covid-19 #takeresponsibility campaign tools, specifically its online adverts, with a view to examining the multimodal resources deployed in the adverts in terms of their representational, interactive and compositional meanings and how these meanings discursively cohere. public health advertising campaigns are series of public health enlightenment strategically undertaken by healthcare professionals to disseminate basic public health information to a target audience with the sole aim of creating community awareness on the health risks associated with some health-related attitudes (health development agency, 2004). these campaigns remain effective means of reducing health risks through the promotion of positive healthrelated behaviours. quite a number of these campaigns have been deployed nationally and internationally to promote health programs such as hiv/aids prevention, sexual and reproductive health, family planning, tobacco control, drug abuse, mental health, cancer prevention and treatment, vaccinations, ebola containment, etc., and most recently, covid-19 prevention and containment. some of these campaigns have been variously labelled as: the heart truth, a campaign to increase awareness about heart-related diseases (national heart, lung and blood institute, 2020); the diabetes uk/tesco public health promotion campaign (brookes & harvey, 2015); the uk government’s anti-obesity ‘change4life’ (c4l) public health campaign (mulderrig, 2017); public health enlightenment (phe) undertaken to fight ebola in west africa (otu, ameh, osifo-dawodu, alade, ekuri & idris, 2017); rapid public health enlightenment (rphe) deployed in the fight against covid-19 (lawal &, amzat, 2020), among others. public health advertising campaigns, as do all advertising forms, are most often multimedia; hence, they typically construct and reinforce meaning through the synergy of verbal and visual modes. these modes have thus become rich and viable objects of enquiry in linguists’ quest to understand the multimodality of the design structures of public health advertising campaigns on diverse health promotions. in this quest, scholars like bok (2008), oyebode and unuabonah (2013) and kahari (2013), among others, have investigated hiv/aids prevention advertising campaigns nationally. bok (2008) evaluates the effectiveness of the multimodal texts deployed in select lovelife hiv/aids prevention campaign in south africa, with a view to understanding how the choices of images and texts in the campaign cohere meaningfully to disseminate the hiv/aids prevention messages to the target audience. findings from the research reveal that the multimodal design of the campaign is sophisticated; hence, the target audience have been inadvertently narrowed down to urban, western middle class rather than the general public. oyebode and unuabonah (2013) also explore the communicative acts and the generic structure employed in some select hiv/aids advertising campaign posters in nigeria which focus primarily on people living with hiv/aids (plwha) with their relations and friends. their findings reveal the dominance of composite resources such as ‘participant representation, size of frame, social distance, angle, color, gaze, posture, linguistic resources, and so on’ in the campaign posters which foreground the significance of multimodal resources in projecting the intended messages of the posters’ producers (p. 825). following the recommendations of the who and the unaid that the voluntary medical male circumcision (vmmc) should be implemented as ‘an additional hiv prevention strategy in countries with high hiv prevalence but low male circumcision rates such as, zimbabwe, zambia and swaziland (who/unaids: 2007 as cited in kahari, 2013, p. 16), kahari (2013) uses multimodal discourse analytical approach to examine the meaning potentials of the multimodal features of some vmmc public health campaign posters for hiv/aids prevention in zimbabwe. the study aims at understanding how vmmc health campaign for hiv/aids prevention could be improved in the country. furthermore, brookes and harvey (2015) explore, via a multimodal critical discourse analysis, the semiotics of fear in the diabetes uk/tesco public health promotion campaign (2013-2014) on type 2 diabetes. by journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) adetutu aragbuwa & victor o. adejumo 270 identifying fear-inducing and stigmatizing commercial strategies in the campaign visuals, the study questions the legitimacy of deploying such strategies in public health campaigns. using also multimodal critical discourse analysis in conjunction with foucauldian concepts of governmentality and biopolitics, mulderrig (2017) examines the multimodal strategies employed in a series of cartoon government adverts in the uk government’s anti-obesity ‘change4life’ (c4l) public health campaign. the exploration addresses how the strategies are used as ‘nudge tactics’ in public health policy to influence parents and children to embrace ‘anti-obesity’ healthier lifestyles. sabihah and christo (2019) looks into tuberculosis health campaigns in south africa, the united kingdom and india via multimodal visual semiotics. the study portrays the manner in which multimodal resources such as color, typography, positioning, iconography, among others, are deployed socially to persuasively disseminate tuberculosis prevention messages. dias and gusso (2016) also investigate the brazilian blood donation campaign through a blend of visual grammar and politeness theory, with a view to understanding how the visual structures of the advertising pieces in the blood donation campaign aid the relations among the participants in the discourse environment. zhao, lyu, cheng and huang (2020) compare public health video advertisements on tobacco-control in china and australia by using corpus-based multimodal discourse analysis. without any doubt, multimodal studies on public health advertising campaigns on diverse health issues abound; however, covid19 prevention advertising campaign, the leading concern in this treatise, is sparsely researched in multimodal studies. although scholars such as nasambu, khasanda and nyandoro (2020), guo and li (2020) as well as yusuf, gusau and maiyaki (2020) have explored the meaning potentials of the visual and verbal modes deployed in covid-19 containment discourses, the data samples for these studies are not drawn from public health agencies. on the other hand, khadohi and odhiambo’s (2020) study that examines the visual resources in select covid-19 containment campaign posters used by the kenyan ministry of health (moh) is limited to kenya thereby necessitating the need to expand the literature. this paucity of research thus gave the impetus for an exploration of the multimodal properties of the ncdc’s covid-19 #takeresponsibility online campaign as a genre of public service advertisements. this article, therefore, explores the multimodal resources deployed in the ncdc’s covid-19 #takeresponsibility online campaign adverts. this is with a view to broadening the knowledge on how the representational, interactive and compositional resources are realized in these advertising visuals to reach the nigerian populace, as well as understanding their communicative import. this study is also germane considering the need to understand the ncdc’s multifarious efforts in preventing, detecting and controlling the spread of coronavirus in nigeria. methodology the data for the study comprise forty purposively selected ncdc’s covid-19 #takeresponsibility online advertising campaign encoded in english and sourced primarily from the ncdc official twitter account, nnamdi azikiwe university coronavirus (covid-19) alert and pind foundation covid-19 updates. the campaign adverts cover a range of covid-19 related themes such as daily situation reports on the number of infected persons in nigeria, preventive measures against the infection, pathogenesis of the virus, caution against stigmatization, among others. however, the select data in this study have been narrowed down to adverts on preventive measures owing to space constraints and the need for a thorough analysis. forty adverts that broadly reflect this theme were purposively selected and grouped into two: a) covid-19 adverts promoted during the total lockdown in nigeria between march-june; and b) adverts promoted after the lockdown. two adverts, labelled figures 1 and 2, were picked from the first group, and three adverts, further tagged figures 3, 4 and 5 were selected from the second. the study adopts kress and van leeuwen’s (2006) social semiotic metafunctional theory of visual journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 271 communication as theoretical base. this theory is considered suitable for the data analysis because it explores multimodality using halliday’s social semiotics. kress and van leeuwen’s (2006) multimodal approach to visual communication is set within halliday’s (1978) social semiotics. visual designs, just like all semiotic modes, serve three basic functions designated as metafunctions in social semiotics. these metafunctions are the ideational function (representational), the interpersonal function (interactive) and the textual function (compositional) (kress & van leeuwen, 2006, p. 16). the ideational function represents the world as it is experienced in reality by humans. two representational processes adopted in this study are narration and transaction. narration connects participants via a vectorial pattern to represent them ‘as doing something to or for each other’ while transaction relates or connects an actor and a goal through a transaction (kress & van leeuwen, 2006, p. 59). narration could be action or reaction. the action process must have an actor from which the vector will emanate from; however, if an image has only one participant, the participant is the actor and the structure is nontransactional but if the transaction flows from an actor to a goal, then the structure is transactional. also, when the transaction in an image is bidirectional resulting in the exchange of actor-goal roles, the participants become interactors. a reactional process, on the other hand, results from a vector formed by the eyeline (gaze) of one of the participants. in this case, the gazer is not an actor but a reacter and the object of his/her gaze is the phenomenon. reactions could also be transactional (presence of a phenomenon) or non-transactional (absence of a phenomenon) (kress & van leeuwen, 2006, pp. 50-62). participants in images could be ‘represented participants (the people, the places and things represented in the images)’ or ‘interactive participants (the people who communicate with each other through images, the producers and viewers of images)’ (kress & van leeuwen, 2006, p. 114). the interpersonal function portrays the social relations among these participants. the image act construes demand and offer relations. an image that shows the represented participant looking directly at the viewer’s eyes is a demand. the direct gaze of the represented participant forms a vector via the participant’s eyelines. in other images where represented participants do not look directly at the viewer (no direct eye contact with the viewer), the image act is an offer which merely presents represented participants to viewers as objects of observation or contemplation (kress & van leeuwen, 2006, p. 119). choice of frame size interprets social distance between participants. there are the close shot, also known as close-up, in which only the head and the shoulders of the represented participant are shown; the very close shot (‘extreme close-up’, ‘big close-up’) anything less than the head and the shoulders; the medium close shot which shows the represented participant from the waist up; the medium shot which depicts the subject from the knees upwards; the medium long shot which shows the full body; the long shot in which ‘the human figure occupies about half the height of the frame; and the very long shot is anything “wider” than that’ (kress & van leeuwen, 2006, p. 124). furthermore, an image could be frontal or oblique. the frontal angle indicates the involvement of the image producer while the oblique angle indicates detachment. the last interpersonal resource relevant in this study is the enactment of power relations via high angle, low angle and eye-level angle camera positionings. a represented participant, shown from a high angle, usually appears small, insignificant and weak. a low angle positioning makes the represented participant appear imposing and significant while the eye-level angle is a positioning of equal power relation. the textual function presents diverse compositional resources for realizing different textual meanings. these compositional resources operate through three systems: information value, salience and framing (kress & van leeuwen, 2006, p. 176). information value is the placement of elements into various sections of the image – the left-right section (the given-new relation), the top-bottom section (the ideal-real relation), and the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) adetutu aragbuwa & victor o. adejumo 272 centre-margin section (the centre-margin relation). the horizontal structure realizes the left-right partitioning in which the elements on the right are the new while the elements on the left are the given. also, the top-bottom partitioning is realized via a vertical structure: the top section contains the ideal while the lower section presents the real, specific, factual and practical information on the image. the central structure realizes the centermargin sections. the element at the center is the center, ‘the nucleus of the information’, while the surrounding elements are known as the margins which are subservient to the center (kress & van leeuwen, 2006, pp. 180197). salience is realized by placing elements in the foreground or background, relative size, sharpness or dullness of the image, color contrast, among others. framing is also realized through dividing lines meant to connect together or disconnect some specific elements of the image for the sake of achieving inclusion or exclusion in visual meaning (kress & van leeuwen, 2006, p. 177). in view of the above explanations, this treatise seeks to explore the representational, interactive and compositional resources deployed by the ncdc in its multimodal covid19 #takeresponsibility online advertising campaign. the exploration will examine how the representational, interactive and compositional resources are realized in these advertising visuals and their communicative functions in the actualization of the ncdc’s multimodal campaign strategies against the spread of covid-19 in nigeria. results and discussion the basic duties of the ncdc are to ‘prevent, detect, and control the spread of communicable diseases’ in nigeria (ncdc, 2019, p. 1); hence, infection prevention tops the list of its basic duties. with the first confirmed case of covid-19 in nigeria, adverts on preventive strategies against the spread of the virus flooded the ncdc’s websites. the multimodal nature of these adverts and their deployment as public health advertising promotions in the ncdc’s campaign efforts against the spread of the pandemic among the nigerian masses are of keen interest in this study. the multimodal resources of the select adverts at the representational, interactive and compositional levels will be examined in this section coupled with their communicative functions. figure 1 is an image with a vertical structure having its top and bottom separated unequally by a thick white rectangular dividing line. the top section, which comprises an image of a cluster of commuters, relates the semiotic landscape to nigerians in a locative manner. the cluster of orange commuter buses and commuters, all situated in a roadside parking landscape, is representative of the unceasing, disorderly and frenzy commutation system peculiar to lagos, a hyper-active commercial state in southwestern nigeria. the locative relation is realized via the overlapping of the represented participants (the commuter buses, the commuters and the roadside parking spaces) and the orange color saturation that typifies lagos commuters. this top section therefore represents an aspect of the experiential world of nigerians, specifically commuters in lagos state. ideationally, the visual structure contextually represents nigerians as commuters. figure 1 furthermore, the upper section of the visual structure is narrative due to the presence of the vector, the orange rectangular journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 273 structure that bears the dark color verbal rhetorical text (should i travel? during this covid-19 pandemic), which runs diagonally across the roof of the commuter bus. this rectangular structure, which doubly serves as the vector and the nucleus, also functions as the actor involved in the process of questioning the goal, the commuters. this actor is the most salient represented participant in this upper section due to its placement in the foreground (at the center of the pictorial representation) thereby making it more conspicuous, giving it a sharper focus and contrasting it against the low background of commuters. the goal represents the commuters placed in the background who the actor is in a questioning transaction with, which thus represents the dilemma of the actor. the commutation system presented in the image shows the high risk of exposure to covid-19 that nigerian commuters are faced with. therefore, the actor’s question, placed at the center as the most salient, conveys a strong reinforcing sense on the need for commuters to stay at home during this covid-19 pandemic. the reinforcement is further strengthened via the less salient verbal text directly below the rectangle. the visual structure is thus a narrative representation and the action is transactive. however, the transactional process is bidirectional which gives the represented participants double roles thereby depicting them as interactants. as the rectangular visual depicts the actor communicating with the goal, the commuters below, so also the commuters can be portrayed as beckoning to the actor to come and board the commuter bus. it could be assumed that the implicit beckon from the commuters serves as the trigger for the actor’s question. the bidirectionality of the transaction thus makes each represented participant actor and goal in each transactional process, although the actorship of the orange rectangular structure is placed in the foreground making it more conspicuous and superordinate. interpersonal processes in figure 1 are also visually codified. the image act is an offer as the represented participants’ facial features are not shown neither are they shown looking directly at the viewers; they are only offered to the viewers as ‘items of information, objects of contemplation, impersonally, as though they were specimens in a display case’ (kress & van leeuwen, 2006, p. 119). the placement of the commuters in the background via a distantly long shot diminishes their personal impact on the viewers and portrays them impersonally and exclusively as others. their background placement only represents their locative relation. the image of the commuters has a frontal point of view taken from a high angle which indicates that the image producer (the ncdc) is aligned with the world of the commuters and the questioner, an alignment also imposed on the viewers. the alignment thus signals the involvement of the producer and the viewers in the narrative and also portrays the representation as an insider’s objective perspective. however, the high angle of the shot makes the commuters to be seen as insignificant, powerless objects of observation. the bottom section, divided from the top by a strong white rectangular frame space, contains the image of a hand in a nontransactive offer at close distance to disseminate objective knowledge to viewers on the exigency of hand sanitizer to avoid contracting the virus. by not pointing at the viewer, the image is not inviting the viewer into any imaginary relation, it is rather presenting a model case for the viewer’s observation. however, the extreme close-up of the image, although at an oblique angle, signals the alignment of all participants as regards the object of observation. the alignment indicates that the practice of regular hand washing concerns all participants. in sum, the upper section of the visual is the ideal which portrays the image producer’s (ncdc) emotive appeal to commuters to stay at home during the pandemic. the non-salient verbal text below the rectangle depicts staying at home as the only panacea to overcoming the pandemic. the lower section is the real which contains an informative practical appeal to commuters to regularly disinfect their hands via hand sanitizer. the information values of the upper and the lower sections of the image are representationally harmonious in spite of the fact that the strong dividing frame space presents them as separate units. however, the lower section of the visual (the real), is the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) adetutu aragbuwa & victor o. adejumo 274 most salient, more catchy and worthy of attention than all the other elements. figure 2 is also a narrative representation as it depicts a vector formed by the eyeline, the direction of the gaze of the female participant in mask. the female participant is the reacter, thereby making the narrative a reactional process. however, this reactional process is non-transactional as the phenomenon (the participant the reacter is gazing at) remains implicit in the visual. the viewer is left with the task of imagining or making sense of the phenomenon, the focus of attention of the reacter. figures 1 and 2 are both narrative representations; however, figure 1 is a transactive action process while figure 2 is a non-transactive reactional process. figure 2 however, the female participant’s direct gaze at the viewers and the distance choice of extreme close-up, that shows a part of her head and shoulders, seek to establish an imaginary interpersonal relation between her and her audience. the advert producer (ncdc) presents the woman as a model and demands that the viewers enter into an imitative social relation with her. the face mask used by the woman reinforces the modelling impact of the visual as it presents the woman as a perfect example to be copied in the use of mask to contain the spread of coronavirus. by using an image act of demand with a frontal angle, the text producer directly addresses and thus includes the viewers in the narrative. the frontal angle indicates the involvement of the producer and the viewers in the narrative. this involvement signals the interactive participants’ alignment and identification with the world of the represented female participant. the low angle image thus demands an action from the viewers. with this demand, the represented participant is depicted in a personal way and she wields a power of influence over her audience. compositionally, figure 2 has a vertical structure (top-bottom). the top section (the ideal) has on its left side the half face of the woman putting on a face mask, at her forehead is the logo of the who, above it the logo of the ncdc, and beside it the nigeria’s coat arm. at the center is the verbal caption: ‘we will beat’, embedded in a red background, directly below it is another caption: ‘covid-19 together’, in a neutral color. the background of the top section is grey as against the lower section which is black. at the bottom (the real) is the verbal text: ‘play your part’, embedded in red and directly below the text is a sentence written in capitals in white color but with a black background: ‘when obi stays at home & ada stays at home, covid-19 will go home too’. the ideal projects the information value that the contest against covid-19 is a collective effort. the inclusive ‘we’ in the verbal text ‘we will beat…’ saliently captioned in red serves as a verbal reinforcement of the joint effort that must be demonstrated by the citizenry in the battle against the pandemic. the red color is also functionally committal as it commits all participants to this preventive course of action. the grey color used as a background for the top section, however, suggests neutrality and uncertainty. ‘we will beat’ in red suggests the passion attached to the commitment but the phrase ‘covid-19’ in neutral is indicative of the uncertainty surrounding the actual time covid-19 will become extinct. the real (the lower section) presents more specific details as it substantiates the ideal by attempting to allay the uncertain gesture projected in the upper section. in achieving this, viewers are advised to play their parts passionately, which the bright red color in which the phrase is embedded suggests. also, the background black color, being a color associated with death in the nigerian socio-cultural context, communicates to viewers that covid-19 will become extinct when everybody stays at home. this further suggests that the failure to keep indoors could lead to the spread of the infection and its eventual fatality. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 275 the ideal is more salient than the real in this image because it is given a sharper focus and more color saturation. however, the framing device achieved through the discontinuity of colors does not disconnect the information value in the upper section from the lower section. the rectangular red shape that houses the verbal text, ‘play your part’ serves as a harmonizing vector for the two sections to realize connectedness. representationally, the five participants in face masks in figure 3 are depicted as doing something for one another as they are all connected by the four directional arrowheads that form oblique lines which serve as distance vectors. the distance vectors indicate the physical distance being observed by the actor. hence, this image realizes a narrative representation, and the center (the male participant at the center from whom the arrowheads depart) is the actor while the four surrounding participants (the margins) are the goal whom the distancing action of the actor is aimed at. this image thus represents a narrative transactive action process. figure 3 the interpersonal process depicts an offer image act in which all the represented participants do not look directly at the viewers in spite of the close-up portrait. although the participants appear frontally, as if they are facing the viewers, their frontal positioning is from a long high angle distance which disconnects them from the viewers and also reduces the salience of their directionality and significance. they are presented indistinctly and impersonally via a medium long shot that indicates a far social distance; hence, they are mere objects of information for the viewers’ contemplation. however, the frontal angle, which signals involvement, aligns the image producer and viewers with the actions (observance of physical distance and use of face masks) of the five represented participants. figure 3 is also a combination of the vertical and the central structural compositions. in the vertical composition, the top section displays the five represented participants trying to maintain social distancing while the bottom part contains a verbal text reinforcing the need for face mask and physical distance. the five represented participants are the ideal which presents a display case to practically reinforce the information value of social distancing verbalized in the real. there is, however, no frame line demarcating the upper section from the lower. this makes the information values in both sections to run harmoniously in a continuous flow. also, the ideal and the real are equally salient, none is given sharper focus than the other. centrally, the five represented participants are portrayed with one at the center (the nucleus) flanked by four identical margins. by using this central composition, the image producer (ncdc) deploys distance vectors to practically demonstrate to nigerians the need for physical distance when in public. the vertical and the central compositions are both directive and emphatic in function. figure 4 is also a narrative as the yellow circular frame line forms a vector that connects the right section to the left. the narration is a transactive action process in which the female participant is the actor while the strong yellow rectangular frame that bears the verbal text ‘prevent covid-19 spread’ is the goal. the circular yellow line is the vector connecting the actor and the goal in the image to represent the narrative of physical distance from an infected person. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) adetutu aragbuwa & victor o. adejumo 276 figure 4 the image is positioned on a horizontal axis where some elements are placed on the left and others on the right and a yellow circular frame line demarcates the left and the right axes into two unequal parts. the elements on the right section are new while the elements on the left are given. at the right section, there is the female represented participant seen coughing or sneezing as depicted in the coughor sneeze-aerosols, represented by the small circles that surround her. cough is one of the prominent symptoms of covid-19; therefore, inasmuch as these aerosols can travel as far as 2m or more, the distance vectors (the arrows) recommend that those close to her should maintain a distance of five feet. the redness that marks the ground upon which the woman stands indicates infection: she is infected and anyone who fails to maintain the required distance from her will also be infected. therefore, this right-side new information serves to practically warn viewers. the left-side given elements are familiar and agreed-upon information for viewers. there, information on the image producer (ncdc) and some verbal reinforcements to the practical visual at the right-hand side are provided. however, the salience of the verbal text that runs from the left to the right side of the image (maintain at least 2 meters distance…) is thematic, and thus summarily projects the whole essence of the image. therefore, the new is more salient due to its sharper thematic focus. in addition, the yellow circular line that separates the left from the right serves as a vector that runs from the edge of the left corner to the image of the woman on the right to unite the two themes. the image can also be structured into topbottom. the top represents the ideal thematic information of the advert on the need to maintain some required physical distance from an infected person while the bottom merely contains some specific information about the advert producer (ncdc). the represented female participant in figure 4 also depicts an offer as she does not look straight at the viewers. in fact, the distance choice of a medium long shot from a high angle makes her appear distantly far away from the viewers. this far social distance shot presents her as an individual instance representing some samples for contemplative observation. inasmuch as the participant does not address the viewers directly through her eyelines, her visual display fails to enact any personal social relations with the viewers. her visual angle is also less frontal as her gaze is slightly turned away from the viewers. her partial frontal and indirect gaze are indications of the partial involvement of the producer and viewers with her. this partial involvement encodes the message: ‘although we are part of your world, we have to keep away from you because of your infection to avoid contracting it’. therefore, the point of view signals unequal social relation between the interactive participants and the represented participant. in figure 5, the image of the two men at the left bottom section represents a narrative transactive action process as they are connected by a vector, the directional arrowhead line. this transactive narration is bidirectional in that each participant plays the role of actor and goal as both are seen trying to maintain some physical distance from each other simultaneously. hence, the two participants are interactors observing the physical distance directive even at the religious sphere. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 277 these two males in a medium shot apparently enact no connection nor social relation with the viewers. by backing their viewers via a far social distance, the visual depicts the participants in an impersonal manner and also offers them as specimens of observation. their frontal back-view is diametrical: the frontal angle identifies the producer and the viewers with the world of the two men while their back-view detaches the producers and the viewers from their religious posture. the back-view indicates that religious groups in nigeria are exclusionary. although the back-view shot is a mark of detachment and exclusion between the interactive and represented participants, the eye level angle signals power equality between both groups. figure 5 the image also has a vertical structure. the topmost section, which is mostly verbal, is the ideal as it contains a directive: (prevent the spread of covid-19) and other verbal elements which situate the image in the nigerian context; hence, this upper section is semiotically directive and locative. the lower section is more practical and dramatic. however, this lower section has a left-right structure where the left axis contains the image of two men observing some religious rites typical of muslims. the directional arrowheads, which serve as distance vector, demonstrate to viewers how to maintain social distancing even when observing religious rites. this left side, cuts off from the whole visual by a cylindrical grey frame space, is the given which operates as a visual reinforcement to the verbal text in the upper part. the right section is the new that contains some specific information about the ncdc. however, the given is far more salient, worthy of the viewers’ attention than the new. also, the cylindrical dividing grey space is a frame line that mildly disconnects the left from the right and also the top from the bottom. in spite of this demarcation, a sense of continuous flow of information from top to bottom and left to right still runs through the advert; hence, there is no thematic disconnectedness between the two sections. additionally, the verbal text ‘physical distancing’ positioned at the center of the image is the most salient, the prominently displayed element that carries the thematic essence of the image. therefore, there tends to be harmony in the information values of the upper-lower and left-right sections. conclusion attempts have been made in the preceding sections to explore how the ideational (representational), interpersonal (interactive) and textual (compositional) resources are realized in selected ncdc’s #takeresponsibility online campaign advertisements on covid-19 prevention as well as their communicative functions. findings from the data analysis reveal that the images mostly represent narrative, transactive action processes coupled with offer image acts and frontal angles. these representations communicatively perform the directive, informative, reinforcing, cautionary and collective functions. the directive and informative functions are instructional as guidelines on how to contain the spread of coronavirus are presented for participants. such guidelines include adherence to the stayat-home order (specifically during the total lockdown phase), the use of face mask, regular usage of hand sanitizer and social distancing. the cautionary function serves to warn participants against the risk of exposure they face from non-adherence to all covid-19 prevention directives. the reinforcing function embodies verbal and visual reinforcers used in strengthening the need to adhere to all covid19 prevention directives. the collective function idealizes the notion that the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) adetutu aragbuwa & victor o. adejumo 278 containment of covid-19 in nigeria is a collective responsibility. the results above have thus confirmed kress and van leeuwen’s (2006) view that image elements ‘combine in “visual statements” of greater or lesser complexity and extension’ for meaning representation, ‘interpretations of experience and forms of social interaction’ (pp. 1-2). also, as revealed in oyebode and unuabonah’s (2013, p. 811) study that hiv/aids public health campaign posters rely heavily on semiotic resources to ‘signal the intended meaning of the producers of the posters’, so also the results in this study demonstrate the ncdc’s complete reliance on visual structures in its public health campaign on covid-19 prevention. also, the image elements in the ncdc’s covid-19 campaign advertisements are simple and comprehensible to the general public as opposed to the sophistication of the multimodal design of the lovelife hiv/aids prevention campaign in south africa pointed out by bok (2008). this study thus expands the literature on covid-19 public health campaign by complementing the works of nasambu, khasanda and nyandoro (2020), guo and li (2020), yusuf, gusau and maiyaki (2020) as well as khadohi and odhiambo (2020). in sum, this study has explored the realization of the ideational, interpersonal and textual resources deployed by the ncdc in some of its #takeresponsibility online advertising campaign on covid-19 prevention. the results reveal the realization of the narrative, transactive, action, offer, and the frontal resources, among others, in the adverts. these resources interactively perform the directive, informative, reinforcing, preventive, cautionary and collective functions which demonstrate that the representational, interactive and compositional resources deployed in the campaign relate to each other harmoniously. therefore, the informational values of these composite visuals integrate meaningfully into a unified whole; 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at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. nature through god’s eyes: eco-theological perspectives in paul schrader’s first reformed kresentia madina jelangdeka & bayu kristianto kresentia.madina@gmail.com & baladewabayu@gmail.com english studies program, faculty of humanities, universitas indonesia, indonesia abstract article information environmental crisis is one of the major issues that humankind is facing today. the crisis can be discussed through a christian perspective, as the relationship between christianity and environment has been long discussed for its complexities. eco-theology is one of the ways for christianity to bridge its teaching to the environmental crisis. first reformed, a 2017 film directed by paul schrader, is one of the films depicting the interplay between christianity and environmentalism. this paper examines how first reformed portrays the process of reconciling christianity and environmentalism. using jürgen moltmann’s ecotheological concept and kierkegaard’s concept of despair, this article discovers that while first reformed demonstrates the ways christianity could be both an ally and an enemy of environmentalism, the film’s final message leans more towards the way the church can respond to the crisis through embracing insights and values beyond christianity’s core doctrine that are more in line with environmental concerns, such as seeing nature as a female figure and the idea of harmony illustrated through a yin-yang symbolism. keywords: first reformed; eco-theology; environmental crisis; christianity; despair received: 31 october 2020 revised: 5 march 2021 accepted: 12 march 2021 introduction the environmental crisis is one of the world’s most prominent problems that require much attention. this crisis takes many forms, such as climate change, global warming, animal extinction, and pollution. the complexity of this crisis has generated mixed responses, as some perceive this as a global issue, and others regard it as the elephant in the room. nevertheless, the discussion on the connection between humans and the deteriorating planet is still popular amongst people in different parts of the world. one of the ways to view the environmental crisis is from a religious perspective. the intersectionality between religion and environment has become an ongoing https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:kresentia.madina@gmail.com journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 213 discussion ever since lynn white wrote an article titled “the historical roots of our ecologic crisis” in 1967. in the article, white examined how our current environmental crisis is deeply rooted in technological advancement, which stems from the christian dogma that nature’s purpose is to serve man. white further claimed that a religious approach is needed to overcome the threatening crisis that we are currently facing (p. 1207). this has resulted in the emergence of various new thoughts and paradigms regarding the issue, one of which is eco-theology. eco-theology springs from the incorporation of the contemporary scientific view of the natural world into traditional theological ideas (troster, 2013). troster further managed to formulate several possible characteristics of eco-theology, one of which is closely related to eco-feminism (2013). while the relationship between environmentalism and religion is quite odd on the surface level, many things could be explored, particularly concerning christianity as one of the major religions in the world. there have been many discussions about how christianity could be seen as the primary reason for natural exploitation as it promotes human domination over nature. another group of people say that many aspects of christianity could be regarded as environment-friendly, therefore creating room for solutions to the environmental crisis. despite the different perspectives, it cannot be denied that environment and religion are interrelated to one another. as the perception of environmental crisis within christianity has been an ongoing debate for quite some time, it is interesting to see how this debate is manifested in a film by paul schrader titled first reformed (2017). first reformed’s plot revolves around reverend ernst toller’s character, a minister of a small church called first reformed in new york. toller’s character undergoes a major shift of belief after meeting and counselling a radical environmentalist named michael mensana. as his interest in environmental issues deepens, toller faces other problems related to his religious institutions and his health condition. albeit the unclear resolution, first reformed offers an interesting yet complex discussion regarding the relationship between the environment and christianity. although it is a relatively new film, there have been many academic reviews on first reformed. these academic reviews and journals have proved that first reformed is a rich text that could be explored from several angles. many reviewers regarded first reformed as a film about the human and self, meaning that it is deeply self-explorative (blizek, 2018) and meditative (clark, 2018). carew (2019) also highlighted how first reformed presents the feeling of hopelessness amidst a global crisis. the film is also discussed based on its similarities with other films. lorenz (2019) highlighted the intertextuality of first reformed with two other works that are said to be schrader’s inspirations in making the film, i.e., diary of a country priest (robert bresson, 1951) and winter light (ingmar bergman, 1963). on the other hand, scranton (2019) compared first reformed to marvel’s infinity war, saying that despite the stylistic differences, both films’ endings attempt to address the current catastrophic issue that humanity is facing, which is global warming. lastly, first reformed also contains elements of buddhist-christian vision that is emphasized by ng (2019). there have been lots of reviews discussing first reformed. however, only a few academic research has been conducted on the film as a means to explore the intersectionality between environmentalism and christianity. therefore, this research aims to find out how the movie first reformed represents the position of environmental concerns within the christian theological discourse. the main argument of this research is that first reformed offers the concept of eco-theology as the solution to the conflict between environment and christianity. methodology this analysis mainly uses jürgen moltmann’s theory regarding the ecological doctrine of creation. this research also uses the concept of the trinitarian god. according to this concept, god could manifest himself through three forms: the father, the son, and the holy spirit. moltmann stated that the spirit particularly stays within god’s creation, emphasising the idea of god’s immanence on earth. in his book titled god in creation (1985), journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kresentia madina jelangdeka & bayu kristianto 214 moltmann elaborated on the trinitarian god’s concept in relation to creation. moltmann emphasised the trinitarian god’s concept by saying, “creation exists in the spirit, is moulded by the son and is created by the father. it is, therefore, from god, through god and in god” (p. 98). this statement implies that the world, which is god’s creation, is divine, for the world exists within god, and god also exists within his creations. the discussion about nature’s sacredness and divinity could only be done through the trinitarian concept (moltmann, 1985). the trinitarian concept perceives god’s nature as both transcendent and immanent (moltmann, 1985). this combination further suggests that when humans only define god as a transcendent being, it would lead to the mindset that god does not exist within nature and, eventually, to the merciless exploitation of nature by humans (moltmann, 1985). this research is done through a textual analysis. first, readings on related journals, reviews, and interviews are conducted to gather more information surrounding the film, and the topic of environment and christianity. then, primary data gathering is done through watching the film multiple times. this research is done through a textual analysis. first, readings on related journals, reviews, and interviews are conducted to gather more information surrounding the film, and the topic of environment and christianity. then, primary data gathering is done through watching the film multiple times. the chosen data consists of the film’s cinematic elements, such as dialogue, plot, and mise-en-scène. the chosen cinematic elements are those deemed able to support the thesis statement of this paper. next, the data are categorized into three main sections. lastly, a close examination on the cinematic elements are done by exploring the way in which those elements reflect moltmann’s and kierkegaard’s concepts. additional supporting literatures are added along the way to help strengthen the arguments. result and discussion the eco-theological concept in first reformed first reformed depicts a clash between the environmental crisis and a capitalism-based religious institution. reverend ernst toller, the minister of a small tourist church called first reformed, is the character who tries to bring environmentalism into his religious institution. as suggested by his last name, which means a person who rings church bells to summon the congregation, reverend toller tries to be the person who reminds the church to come together and take action on environmental crisis. at the beginning of the film, toller is introduced to environmentalism through michael and mary mensana, a married couple who are parishioners of the first reformed church. michael, a passionate environmental activist, displays a strong concern regarding the current state of the earth. this concern is manifested into the feeling of guilt over having to bring a child into a damaged world, and the thought of aborting the 20-week old baby of the currently-pregnant mary. another manifestation of this concern is a suicide vest, which he secretly assembles in his garage. later on, michael decides to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head despite having been counselled by reverend toller. he leaves toller with a laptop, a suicide vest, a mourning wife, and an environmentalist mission. this occurrence inflicts a major change of perspective in reverend toller, which unfolds throughout the film. reverend toller’s change is very subtle yet consistent. this change is slowly building up after he met with the mensana couple, all the way through the end. in the beginning, we are exposed to reverend toller’s dull, quiet, and stagnant environment through the static camera work, the film’s sombre tone, and the minimalist soundtrack. paul schrader, the director, appears to be adapting the style of robert bresson, one of the filmmakers that he examined in his book transcendental style in film: ozu, bresson, dreyer (1972/1988). bresson is said to use only “natural sounds,” and the purpose of this is to “reinforce cold reality” (schrader, 1972/1988, p. 69). bresson is also known to often limit his camera work to certain angles and movements. in his writing about bresson, schrader stated, “when each action is handled in essentially the same nonexpressive manner, the viewer no longer looks to the angle and composition for ‘clues’ to the journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 215 action” (p. 67). we can find the aspects mentioned above in first reformed. there is no prominent non-diegetic sound (sounds which come from outside of the film and act as background music), and the only sounds that can be heard are the ones made by the characters (diegetic sounds). similarly, the camerawork in this film is restricted, creating a static world where the characters have to move in and out of the frame by themselves. the absence of camera movement implies that reverend toller is living his life with a go-withthe-flow attitude, not leading or taking a significant initiative in his life. the reality has been established, toller comes around, does his business, and then leaves. toller’s life remains monotonous as the colour of the clothes he consistently wears. if we count in the static and quiet world as the reality of reverend toller’s life, it can be said that even the slightest shift in camera movements and sound can indicate a shift of reality. the moving camera is a starting point of reverend toller’s change. there is a shift in the camerawork during the second time reverend toller visits mensana’s residence, in which the camera uses the tracking technique as it follows both toller and mary mensana on their way to mensana’s garage, where they find michael’s suicide vest. source: first reformed (schrader, 2017, 00:34:26 00:34:39) figure 1. mary (front) and toller (back), and the camera follows as they head towards the garage. the next camera movement happens when toller and mary cycle around a park. the scene is shot at a low angle and uses the tracking technique as well. source: first reformed (schrader, 2017, 01:00:37 01:00:38) figure 2. toller (top) and mary (bottom), shot in low angle using tracking technique. 2a journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kresentia madina jelangdeka & bayu kristianto 216 after this scene, the camera pans, following toller and mary, as they exit the garage and enter mensana’s house. source: first reformed (schrader, 2017, 01:01:51 – 01:02:22) figure 3. mary (front) and toller (back), walking back from the garage to the house. shot using panning technique. the most apparent camera movements are during the magical mystery tour scene (01:22:49 – 01:25:20) and when toller and mary kiss (01:48:11 – 01:49:11), in which the camera circles both characters in both scenes. the description above shows that the camera mostly moves during moments shared between reverend toller and mary mensana. even though it uses different techniques, it is certain that the camera is following the two characters and making them the centre of attention. the movements serve as a clear contrast to the static world that is discussed in the previous paragraph. those scenes show that reverend toller is starting to take a lead of his life and making life follow him instead of the other way around. furthermore, toller’s life is starting to take turns when mary mensana comes into picture. this is a crucial point because as a woman and a mother-to-be, mary could be considered as a symbolization of nature, as the figure of woman and mother has been considered to symbolise the world through the term ‘the great world mother’ and ‘the mother earth’ (moltmann, 1985). hence, moving the camera during moments with mary could signify that reverend toller is leaning and immersing himself more into nature and, consequently, environmentalism. however, at the same time toller and mary’s relationship is a form of adultery in christian doctrine, as they are building their relationship out of marriage. this could also represent the complicated relationship between christianity and environmentalism as there are various 3a 3d journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 217 rejections of environmentalism by the church, one of which is based on the idea that worshipping nature is regarded as pagan worshipping (pitetti, 2015). reverend toller’s gradual change becomes more evident through the film’s narrative. his meeting with ed balq, the leader of local paper industries, seems to trigger bigger changes inside toller. the meeting, which initially conducted to discuss the 250th reconsecration ceremony of first reformed, turns sour when toller and balq get into a heated argument over a web article regarding michael mensana’s memorial, which is performed on a toxic waste site and serenaded by an environmental protest song sung by the abundant life choir. balq, displeased by the fact that the article states both abundant life and first reformed churches’ names, condemns the memorial as a political act, while toller deems it as just a nice gesture to respect the wishes of the deceased. the argument expands when the topic of environmental collapse is mentioned. balq says it is a “complicated subject,” while toller says it is just a plain and straightforward fact. a few scenes after that, through michael mensana’s laptop, toller discovers the fact that balq industries ranks fifth on the world’s top polluters published by the environmental protection agency (epa), and also the fact that balq industries gives its biggest donation to abundant life church (01:06:02 – 01:06:42). source: first reformed (schrader, 2017, 00:52:40 – 00:55:18) figure 4. reverend toller, leading michael mensana’s memorial at a toxic waste site. this seems to be toller’s turning point, indicated by his claim that he has not lost his faith while changing the words on the board in front of first reformed with the question ‘will god forgive us?’ the next morning (01:06:50 – 01:06:58). from that moment onwards, toller also shows a sense of responsibility towards his health and other living beings’ welfare, shown by him going to the hospital (01:07:35 – 01:08:11) and removing the barbed wire in the first reformed’s yard after seeing that a dead rabbit got caught on it (01:16:50 – 01:17:22). his concern with environmental crisis provokes his concern about his own well-being and others. toller is starting to recognize the relation between the environment, animals, and himself, which moltmann referred to as “integrating and integral thinking” (1985, p. 3). the realization of the interconnectedness of things can strengthen the human-nature relationship and encourage life (moltmann, 1985, p. 3). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kresentia madina jelangdeka & bayu kristianto 218 moltmann further elaborated that ‘nature’ does not only mean our surroundings but that our body also counts as nature (1985, p. 3). toller’s growing interest in nature is also followed by his strong refusal of capitalism, indicated through the parable of the rich fool (luke 12:16-23) which he reads during the sunday mass, only a few scenes after the shocking discovery about the relationship between balq industries and abundant life church. this parable is about how humans shall not be greedy like the rich man who hoards his crops. this verse also contains an important quote: then jesus said to his disciples: “therefore i tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. for life is more than food, and the body more than clothes” (luke 12: 22-23). quoting these verses, toller is emphasising his refusal of materials possessions, which have a strong association with capitalism, and eventually his objection to industries that destroy the environment. after building up through changes in camera work and narrative, toller’s immersion into environmentalism peaks near the end of the film. during this period, reverend toller is the most vocal when it comes to his newfound belief about the relationship between the environment and religion, and his words evidently contain eco-theological ideas. the first noteworthy words to be discussed are toller’s monologue at hanstown kills. after a series of unusual events, including joining a tour at balq industries and having dinner at the same place and time with ed balq and his colleagues, reverend toller drives to hanstown kills, a polluted river site over which michael mensana’s ashes were scattered. toller stands before the river, with the night sky as the background, and says the following sentences through voice-over, “every act of preservation is an act of creation. everything preserved renews creation. it is how we participate in creation. i have found another form of prayer.” there are elements of nature preservation in toller’s monologue. he puts emphasis on creation’s preservation, and that humans have to actively partake in the process of creation. moreover, by saying that he “has found another form of prayer,” reverend toller indicates that the act of preserving the earth is essentially also an act of praying. reverend toller’s perspective is supported by jürgen moltmann’s theory on the trinitarian god. according to moltmann, christians have the concept of three but one god, who is the father, the son, and the holy spirit. moltmann believes that the holy spirit stays within god’s creation on earth. this means that within all creatures lies the spirit of god. this does not mean that the spirit is merely god’s power that he distributed to this world. instead, it implies that “the spirit is god” (p. 102). this whole concept suggests that reverend toller’s perspective regarding preservation and his new way of praying have a firm basis in christianity. in laudato si’ (2015), pope francis discussed humans’ responsibilities over nature based on biblical scriptures: the biblical texts are to be read in their context, with an appropriate hermeneutic, recognizing that they tell us to “till and keep” the garden of the world (cf. gen 2:15). “tilling” refers to cultivating, ploughing or working, while “keeping” means caring, protecting, overseeing and preserving. this implies a relationship of mutual responsibility between human beings and nature. (p. 49) the excerpt above provides the basis for natural preservation. when humans preserve nature, they also preserve the spirit within, which equals the act of praying to god. even though first reformed does not explicitly show scenes in which reverend toller actively works in preserving nature, we can see that toller has grasped the idea of environmental preservation through the subtle camera movements and the narrative that have been discussed in the previous paragraphs. the second time reverend toller brings up the topic of nature and god is during the talk between him and reverend jeffers of abundant life. reverend jeffers is addressing toller’s failing health and his profound interest in environmentalism. “jesus doesn’t want our suffering. he suffered for us. he wants our commitment and our obedience,” reverend jeffers says, to which toller replies: journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 219 and what of his creation? the heavens declare the glory of god. god is present everywhere, in every plant, every river, every tiny insect. the whole world is a manifestation of his holy presence. i think this is the issue where the church can lead…. toller is emphasising what jürgen moltmann calls “the immanence of god.” in god in creation (1985), moltmann discusses god’s presence in every living being on earth through the spirit. this differs from the christian view that separates god from his creations; in other words, god is a transcendent deity. according to magee (as cited in van dyk, 2009, p. 197), this view is influenced by plato’s hierarchical dualism, which becomes the basis of the division between the material world and the spiritual world in the christian religion. this also differs from the common view on nature from the perspective of economic and technological growth, which sees nature as merely a resource for humans to use in order to maximise the quality of human life. by bringing up the idea of god’s immanence in our natural world, reverend toller is calling us into extending a similar mindset of sacredness that humans usually have towards god, to nature and the environment as well. despair as the obstacle of ecotheological doctrine during his mission to create room for discussion of environmental crisis, reverend toller is faced with his own despair. the topic of despair is discussed based on kierkegaard’s definition of despair and moltmann’s thoughts on the ecological crisis. kierkegaard’s concept, sickness unto death, is briefly mentioned by reverend toller in the counselling session with michael mensana (00:15:37). kierkegaard has long proclaimed the concept of human as a synthesis, namely “a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and eternal, and of freedom and necessity” (1980, p. 13). all these elements constitute the self, or spirit, which grants a higher position for humans as “conscious beings in relation to the divine” (walsh, 2018, p. 8). kierkegaard further explains that despair is “the misrelation in the relation of a synthesis that relates itself to itself” (1980, p. 15). in the words of grunthaler (2013), despair occurs when the self is unable to properly relate itself to god. kierkegaard’s thoughts on despair can be related to moltmann’s idea of the crisis of domination. in god in creation (1985), moltmann discussed how human-nature relationship has been destroyed by technology, an invention that derived from human values and convictions (moltmann, 1985). when we talk about the ecological crisis of modern civilisation, we can only mean a crisis of the whole system with all its partsystems, from the dying of the forests to the spread of neuroses, from the pollution of the seas and rivers to the nihilistic feeling about life which dominates so many people in our mass cities (moltmann, 1985, p. 23). the crisis of values could be seen as a form of despair. as despair occurs due to a misrelation between the self and god, and here god is understood as both transcendent and immanent, it can be concluded that humans could experience despair due to a misrelation between them and nature. this section is going to show how toller’s despair causes alterations in the course of his eco-theological mission. first reformed portrays the world as dark and gloomy, as seen through the film’s dark and monochromatic tone. the film is also set during winter to spring time, displaying dormant trees everywhere and consequently reinforcing the film’s depressing aura. similarly, first reformed presents us with characters that are caught in the middle of despair, michael mensana and reverend toller. both characters are overridden by despair, though for different reasons. michael mensana is in despair due to the disastrous state of the world, which leads him into feeling guilty for his unborn child. on the other hand, toller is unable to move on from the loss of his son in a war and the failure of his marriage that follows. toller’s despair results in a fragile faith, as he is constantly contemplating about prayer and uses his journal to aid with his inability to pray. toller’s despair intensifies after michael’s suicide, as he delves deeper into environmental causes. both characters display the behaviour of an alcoholic, a strong indication that they use the substance to alleviate their stress and anxieties. toller and michael’s conditions journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kresentia madina jelangdeka & bayu kristianto 220 illustrate kierkegaard’s concept of despair and moltmann’s thought on the crisis of human values, a form of despair and an existential crisis that seems to have no end or resolution. any effort to end this despair and crisis will be futile if its roots are not eliminated in the first place, but this elimination is almost impossible to do. the indomitable despair of the two characters has led them to believe that drastic and extreme actions might provide solutions to their problems. at the beginning of the film, michael mensana demonstrates his extreme beliefs of environmental martyrdom through the conversation below: michael. you believe in martyrdom, reverend? reverend toller. i’m not sure i know what you mean. michael. you know, the saints of god, the early christians who wouldn’t renounce their faith? the missionaries who were attacked in the fields of the lord. do you believe that they died for a purpose? reverend toller. i do. michael. well, every week, activists are killed trying to protect the environment. a hundred and seventeen were killed last year for their beliefs. source: first reformed (schrader, 2017, 00:17:23) figure 5. michael (standing), showing reverend toller (sitting) framed photographs of environmental martyrs. this belief of environmental martyrdom, along with his looming desperation are what it takes for michael to inflict death upon himself. on the other hand, reverend toller’s despair goes deeper following michael’s death. his drinking habit does not falter even the slightest and he deliberately ignores doctor’s warning about the possibility of stomach cancer. reverend toller also takes upon himself to pick up where michael left off and starts to assemble the suicide vest that formerly belongs to michael. near the end of the film, toller wears a suicide vest underneath his cassock, which suggests that his idea of fixing the state of the world is by destroying it. source: first reformed (schrader, 2017, 01:41:00) figure 6. reverend toller, wearing a suicide vest underneath his cassock. in toller’s perspective and interpretation, the vest could be understood as the ‘full armour of god’ from the verses that toller quotes in the film in minutes 01:29:47 01:30:12: be strong in the lord and in his mighty power. put on the full armor of god, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the power of this dark world. (ephesians 6: 11-12). reverend toller and michael mensana bear a strong resemblance to one another, in the sense that their immense despair has altered their perception of solution and made them opt for violence. their despair also triggers and fuels their religious fanaticism, as suggested by the way they use the concept of martyrdom and biblical verses to justify their terrorist acts. toller’s surroundings also contribute to the accumulation of his despair, as his ecotheological ideas are strongly opposed by reverend jeffers, the leader of abundant life church. the dispute is inevitable, as the outer appearances alone show the inherent journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 221 differences of the churches. abundant life has an enormous building with a purple interior and a hall that could fit 5,000 people, courtesy of balq industries. it looks “more of a company than a church,” as michael claims at the beginning of the film (00:06:51). as the name suggests, abundant life church signifies prosperity theology, a theology that believes that good fortunes are what god desires for his believers (swoboda, 2015). swoboda (2015) further explains that prosperity theology is focused solely on human prosperity and blindly believes that the earth is able to give endless supply of resources to sustain human lives. consequently, this theology poses a threat to the efforts of solving environmental crisis through the christian perspective. meanwhile, the first reformed church represents the traditional church whose mission is centred on salvation and evangelism. this type of church has the bigger potential of adopting ecological doctrine, as the doctrine has been discussed as a new way to fulfil evangelical mission (josiah & onyezonwu, 2014). by looking at its white, old dutch-colonial style building, the deserted sunday mass with no more than ten parishioners, the leaking pipes, and the broken organ, the first reformed church evokes a sense of loneliness and gloominess. the church’s physical appearance reflects the spiritually barren condition of the church, as we see that toller’s despair has shaken his faith and resulted in his inability to pray. the old and desolate building of first reformed also represents reverend toller’s chronic desperation, which keeps piling up each day due to his past traumas, michael mensana’s death, and his apprehension towards environmental collapse. abundant life’s outstanding building, on the other hand, represents a supposedly ‘good’ relationship between the self and god. this demonstrates how christians are aiming more at materialistic and worldly promises instead of their true teaching. at the same time, however, its leadership is oblivious to and ignorant of the great calamity surrounding it, that is, environmental collapse. in contrast to toller’s eco-theological thinking, reverend jeffers of abundant life possesses a strong belief in a human-centric mission. it is apparent from his exclamation when arguing with reverend toller (01:36:33 – 01:36:51), “you don’t live in the real world. do you have any idea what it takes to do god’s work? to maintain the mission of this size? the staffing, the outreach, the amount of people that we touch each day.” reverend jeffers implies that “doing something for the real world” means reaching out to as many people as possible, along with “preaching the gospel” and “building houses” for the poor in nicaragua (01:37:51 – 01:37:53). moltmann highlighted the important point that modern civilisations are strongly focused on “development, expansion and conquest.” (1985, p. 26). therefore, reverend jeffers’ statement reflects moltmann’s point about modern civilisation in the sense that reverend jeffers focuses on reaching to as many people as possible through material means, hence the strive for development and expansion points, as he emphasises “the size” of the mission. in his argument, reverend jeffers speaks in numbers or quantity, as implied in the use of words such as ‘size’ and ‘amount’, which serves as the reason that it is one of the beneficiaries of balq industries’ endowment. the decision to use the hall of the abundant life church for the 250th reconsecration ceremony of first reformed so that it can reach to wider audiences as well is another example that demonstrates reverend jeffers’ focus on physical or material gain, which puts humans exclusively at the centre of the universe. putting human causes as the only “real world” things and disregarding environmental concerns as not real have unknowingly become the custom ever since our society started to move towards modernism. this aligns with moltmann’s concept that the ecological crisis is a reflection of the human’s crisis of values (1985). the relationship between humans and nature has strayed far from the equilibrium and has been greatly focused on human domination instead, which eventually can lead to despair in kierkegaard’s concept. these opposing views of nature that come from his community has managed to further firming toller’s grip on the thought of violence as the only way to fix the situation. toller’s despair has clouded his judgement and turned him violent. it might be difficult for the audience to sympathise and relate to toller’s decision, as suicide bombing is not the most sensible solution, let alone coming from a man of god. the factors above add to the film’s journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kresentia madina jelangdeka & bayu kristianto 222 portrayal of the complexities of reconciling environmentalism and christianity. reverend toller’s despair demands that he take action as soon as possible, which results in the hasty decision to do suicide bombing because toller might not see any other solution to escape his despair other than death. however, kierkegaard has pronounced the inescapable nature of despair, “if a person were to die of despair as one dies of a sickness, then the eternal in him, the self, must be able to die in the same sense as the body dies of sickness. but this is impossible; the dying of despair continually converts itself into a living” (1980, p. 18). therefore, the choice of ending the despair with an act of terrorism and martyrdom becomes significant. those who are willing to be ‘martyrs’ are the ones who escape their “psychic pain” by sacrificing themselves to help their communities or causes (speckhard, 2005, 2006, as cited in fierke, 2009, p. 173). carrying out the act of terrorism could bring attention and influence others to continue the cause, and the death of the terrorists will not be in vain as they will be regarded as martyrs by their communities. martyrdom also enables people to make meaning and gain agency of their hopelessness (fierke, 2009). the explanation above illustrates terrorists’ thought pattern. dealing with despair through terrorism shows that toller has followed terrorist’s way of thinking. he refuses to give in to his despair, as he would be able to ‘escape’ his despair and make meaning out of his death. however, reverend toller eventually decides to call off his plan due to the last-minute appearance of mary mensana. despite this cancellation, toller still refuses to succumb to his despair as he chooses to act upon his despair by abandoning death and welcoming life in the form of mary and her love to him. the decision to embrace life in the form of mary could be seen as a form of resolution proposed by the film. embracing beyond christianity as the resolution first reformed is a film with many complexities. it seems like this film does not offer a resolution to the discourse of the environmental crisis due to its abrupt and unexpected ending. however, there are indications that the film attempts to offer a solution to the problem. this section is aimed at mapping out the resolution that this film offers through two important scenes, which are the magical mystery tour scene and the ending scene. these two scenes suggest that christianity should try to embrace ideas beyond its traditional teaching, such as philosophy and ecological thinking beyond the christian doctrine, in order to better understand the problem of environmental crisis. the first scene to be discussed is the magical mystery tour scene (01:23:02 – 01:25:19). during her surprise visit to toller’s parsonage due to sleeping difficulties, mary mensana is half-telling and half-persuading toller to join an activity that she and michael used to do called the magical mystery tour, in which they would lie on top of each other, facing each other, with full clothes on. they then would try to get as much body-to-body contact as possible while breathing in the same rhythm. toller eventually agrees to do that with mary, so he lies on the ground while mary lies on top of him. as soon as their breathing is in sync, they start to levitate from the ground. source: first reformed (schrader, 2017, 01:22:49) figure 7. mary (top) and toller (bottom) are levitating. toller and mary, still in a perfectly aligned position, are ‘flying’ above several images of beautiful, uncorrupted nature, such as the blue sea and forests. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 223 source: first reformed (schrader, 2017, 01:23:22 – 01:24:05) figure 8. mary and toller, flying above beautiful sceneries. however, when toller moves his head slightly to his right and is no longer aligned with mary, the images start to change into those of environmental destruction (01:24:19 – 01:25:19). toller and mary slowly exit the frame as the camera moves forward, and the horrendous images come into full display. the images then end in a place that looks similar to hanstown kills, the place where michael’s ashes are scattered. source: first reformed (schrader, 2017, 01:24:13– 01:25:20) figure 9. mary and toller, flying above scenes of environmental destruction. the magical mystery tour scene is pivotal in the film because it illustrates the ‘combination’ of christianity and nature and the resulting harmony. the idea that mary mensana embodies nature in this film has been discussed in the earlier section of this paper. the relationship between mary mensana and nature could also be linked with mary the mother of jesus, as her figure is seen as “queen of all creation” according to pope francis’ laudato si’ (2015, p. 175). mother mary cares and mourns for nature as she does for her son jesus, and “in her glorified body, together with the risen christ, part of creation has reached the fullness of its beauty” (francis, 2015, p. 175). hence, in this scene, mary plays the role of nature, while reverend toller represents christianity. during this scene, toller is wearing a black outfit, whereas mary is wearing white clothing. as they lie on top of each other, white on top of black, we can see an image of yin and yang, which is a famous concept of equilibrium from the eastern religion. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kresentia madina jelangdeka & bayu kristianto 224 source: first reformed (schrader, 2017, 01:22:20) figure 10. mary in white outfit and toller in black outfit. yin and yang are known to complement each other, and they often represent the opposites (brazal, 2019). the combination of yin and yang, also known as taiji, results in harmony, which consequently supports the notion that god is both transcendent and immanent (jung young lee, 1979, as cited in brazal, 2019, pp. 427-428). in her writing about the church and the concept of yin-yang harmony, brazal further stated that the church that is in harmonious yin-yang is a church that also encourages the restoration of nature to its state of harmony because “the yin and yang forces within humans interact with those in the environment” (2019, p. 432). the explanation above matches perfectly with the magical mystery tour scene because the scene showcases that, if the yin (toller, representing christianity) and the yang (mary, representing nature) are aligned, they will result in the restoration of nature to its harmonious state, as seen through the images of clean and flourishing nature. it also shows how misalignment of the two could cause horrible consequences, as seen through the images of environmental collapse. even though the ending (01:40:05 – 01:49:14) may be puzzling, it contains the element of resolution. first reformed finishes off with the ending that is probably unexpected by the audience. the film shows several scenes that lead us to assume that the film will end with a bang. however, this assumption is completely blown over during the last scenes. in the morning of the reconsecration day, reverend toller puts on the suicide vest, which has already been equipped with the components necessary to set off an explosion. toller wears the vest underneath his black cassock, creating a complete disguise of the vest and covering his intention of blowing up the church and its congregation. however, things take a major turn when toller finds out that mary mensana has arrived in the church, despite toller’s plea to her not to come to the reconsecration ceremony a few scenes before. enraged by this, toller strips out of the suicide vest, and unexpectedly wraps barbed wire around his body. toller then wears a white robe, throws away the whiskey in his cup, and pours drano, a drain cleaner, into the cup. as he lifts the cup to his mouth, toller hears someone call him, and the person turns out to be mary. toller then discards the cup, walks into the front room, and starts embracing and kissing mary. the kiss lasts for quite some time until the screen cuts into black to mark the end of the film. there are many things that happen during the ending scene. reverend toller has to cancel out his plan of blowing up the church when he discovers that mary is in there. he opts for putting on the barbed wire and drinking drano instead. it is known that christianity is familiar with blood sacrifice ceremony, as jesus himself has to suffer in order to cleanse humans from sins. toller wrapping himself with barbed wire can be seen as an attempt of self-flagellation to repent himself from his sins. the white robes that he wears afterward can be a further indication of purity and cleanness. the next moment, in which toller pours a cup of drano, can be interpreted as his willingness to drink his’ cup of misery.’ in the scenes prior to the ending, reverend jeffers says that toller is “always in the garden” (01:35:00 – 01:35:20). paul schrader has mentioned the significance of “the garden,” which refers to the garden of gethsemane, as the place where jesus prays to ask his father to take the cup of misery away from him (schrader & hawke, 2018). in the garden of gethsemane, jesus prays, “my father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. yet not as i will, but as you will” (matthew 26:39). journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 225 the glass of drain cleaner may symbolise his cup of misery. schrader also mentions that toller does the same thing as jesus, begging for the cup to be taken away from him (schrader & hawke, 2018). as if answering toller’s silent plea, the cup is taken away from toller, literally by the presence of mary mensana. the way mary brings out clarity in toller can be associated with her last name, mensana, which is similar to the latin phrase ‘mens sana in corpore sano’ (mens sana means healthy mind). mary’s presence creates further implication as god’s way to take away toller’s despair, as significant changes occur in the scene that follows. toller, draped in a white robe, walks out to the front room and approaches mary, who is wearing a dark outfit. once again, we see the yin and yang allusions here, reinforcing the message that christianity and nature are complementary to each other. source: first reformed (schrader, 2017, 01:48:16) figure 11. mary, in black outfit, and toller, in white outfit. when toller and mary kiss, the camera circles them. the room is also visibly brighter than toller’s bedroom, probably the brightest that we have ever seen in this movie. this scene gives an image that the world could be a brighter place when christianity and nature start to recognise that they are inseparable, and together they can make a significant change to the current environmental crisis. the idea of positive relationship between christianity and nature has been discussed under the term of environmental stewardship, which believes that humans are responsible to take care of nature. according to josiah and onyezonwu (2014), environmental stewardship also sees the connection between environmental crisis and moral crisis, similar to moltmann’s thought about crisis of domination. kipkemboi (2017) has also noted that stewardship acknowledges the importance of “harmony, unity, purity, and integrity” in order to respect god and his creation (p. 14). thus, the yin-yang allusion could also serve as a reminder that christianity also has a concept that emphasizes harmony between humans and nature in the form of environmental stewardship. based on the discussion above, it appears that the magical mystery tour and the ending scenes serve as schrader’s way of weaving in his idea of resolution to the difficulty of reconciling environmentalism and the christian doctrine. through the moving camera, choice of clothing, and mise-en-scene, schrader expresses that one of the ways in which christianity could help solve the problem of environmental crisis is through embracing other branches of thought which promotes harmony and equality such as yin and yang from the eastern religion, as well as the philosophy that considers women as the representation of mother nature from ecofeminism. through contextualising and opening itself to the current situation, christianity can contribute more to solving the environmental crisis. conclusion first reformed manages to shed new light on the interplay between christianity and environmentalism in the form of ecotheological concepts reflected through reverend toller’s character development. the character development is indicated through the moving camera during moments with mary, the way toller pays more attention to his health and surroundings, and the way his words contain ideas that god is both a transcendent and immanent being. despite showing a good start, reverend toller’s stance is greatly challenged by the despair he experiences, which is caused by his unresolved guilt over his son’s death and his wife who left, and the rejection of his eco-theological ideas by his church and its leaders. this despair, which kierkegaard called as the “sickness unto death,” has altered toller’s perception of things, and resulted in his desire to do suicide bombing in the name of environmental journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kresentia madina jelangdeka & bayu kristianto 226 martyrdom. however, through the yin and yang symbolism shown by the colours of toller’s and mary’s outfit, first reformed eventually calls for the church’s openness towards embracing other worldviews which value harmony and equality. first reformed has managed to open room for discussion regarding various aspects of human life during a time of crisis. further discussions about the role of the church in modern society can be done by looking at the contrasting portrayal of the first reformed church on a regular sunday mass and the reconsecration ceremony, which suggests how modern society perceives spiritual celebration in comparison to physical celebration. the role of the church is also challenged through the portrayal of fragile church leadership amidst a capitalistic society, an insightful topic for another research project in the intersection between theology and political economy. moreover, as many reviewers have emphasised the meditative quality of this film, it would also be interesting to delve deeper into the psychological side of unresolved guilt depicted by this film, highlighting the role of both personal trauma as well as despair caused by a fatalistic view of the world in the face of acute environmental crisis. it would be inspiring to explore how religious doctrines such as christianity, judaism, islam, eastern and indigenous spirituality, and their intersection with philosophy, may offer useful resolutions to various problems faced by the world today. references blizek, w. l. 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2580-5878 (online) b. endo gauh pratama & elisa dwi wardani crisis of identity and mimicry in orwell’s burmese days seen through a local native character u po kyin: a postcolonial reading b. endo gauh perdana & elisa dwi wardani endo.gp07@gmail.com & elisa@usd.ac.id english letters department, universitas sanata dharma abstract this study analyzes how crisis of identity and mimicry occurs in the postcolonial discourse. a local native character whose name is u po kyin is the focus of the study. as a native character, he holds a high ranking position for local in the british raj in burma. however, he is portrayed as a corrupt official as he accepts bribes and denounces his rival. his ambition to get the membership, an elite european club, drives him infuriated to destroy his rival’s reputation because naturally it is him who would be elected as the first local member of the club. at the end of the novel, kyin finally secures his membership but he fails to atone his evil-doings by building pagodas as a buddhist. kyin’s attitude is seen as how he manages to deal with his inferiority towards the british. he is also observed to mimic the british as his strategy to erase the idea of being colonized. there are two problem formulations in this study. the first is to find out how u po kyin suffers from crisis of identity through his characterization in the novel. then, the second objective is to understand how his crisis of identity leads him to mimic the british. this study condludes that u po kyin suffers from crisis of identity. he is oppressed conscious and unconsciously by the british. this causes his self-image to be eroded. even though he is relatively wealthier than his fellow natives, he still craves for more as he realizes that there is something more than money. he wants to be detached from his inferiority. the elite european club represents his ambition because it offers him status to be like the british. that is why he schemes to crush his rival. in his schemes, denigrating his rival means to mimic the british because he needs to differ himself from the natives. however, he is still powerless because the british still consider him as the subject of colonialization. keywords: crisis of identity, mimicry, postcolonial reading introduction the writer chooses george orwell’s burmese days to study because it represents the situations of south east asian nations as most of them were colonized. colonized nations share certain characteristics in common as proposed by loomba “colonialism … reshapes, often violently, physical territories, social terrains as well as human identities” (loomba, 2005:155). in southeast asia, there were at least three colonial nations that gained control over nations in the region and made them into their colonies (wiharyanto, 2005:113). they were british that ruled in malaysia, singapore and myanmar, french that ruled in vietnam, laos and cambodia, spanish ruled in the philippines and dutch ruled in indonesia. upon a series of agreement between the colonials, thailand was left free politically but controlled economically. thus, almost all countries in southeast asia were colonized. it is presupposed that they share 82 mailto:endo.gp07@gmail.com mailto:elisa@usd.ac.id journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) the same spirit to be free from imperialism. the novel is also believed to depict a complete situation where the colonial regime oppressed the native. another reason why the writer chooses orwell’s piece to study is because he is known as a writer, essayist as well as journalist who explicitly addresses and expresses his political issues in his work s. in his opus magnum, 1984 and animal farm, orwell criticizes satirically a totalitarian government and its instruments. homage to catalonia was written after he had taken part in spanish civil war (lee, 1969:819). these show that his life experiences apparently influenced his works in many ways. hence, he even utilized those experiences as backgrounds and argumentations for him to write a literary work including burmese days. orwell was a police officer in burma who later resigned from indian police (british police force stationed in british raj in india and burma) in 1928(rai, 1983:49). this can be seen as a sign of his rejection of imperialism. he wrote burmese days afterwards but worried upon the publication, as it would disrupt british office in india (rai, 1983:49). he proclaimed himself as the one who concerned about burmese people as he stated in one of his essays, shooting an elephant “theoretically – and secretly, of course i was all for the burmese and all against their oppressors, the british” (orwell, 1936). years after that, he finally published the novel in 1942. orwell’s attitude implies on one of his characters in the novel, john flory who spends most of his time in the colonized country, burma. flory is pictured as the friendliest and loved by the native as he respects their culture and traditions. this can be taken as representation of orwell’s personal statement towards british imperialism in burma which was unlike most of his colleagues. the focus of this study is the identity issue. the image of self that is destroyed because of colonialization is a sign of cultural denigration. therefore, the colonized people see themselves as inferior than the colonizer. this can be seen from the native characters who pursue their dreams to be ‘united’ or as if having close relationship with one of the europeans (orwell, 1950:15). the locals are longing for identity that would establish their status in the community as portrayed by u po kyin, a local magistrate who devises a plan to be the first local member in an expatriate community by all means. the pursuit of being west, the british imperialism which most the orient, those who were colonized, aim to have, according bhabha, is “a dream of the deprived, the illusion of the powerless” (bhabha, 2004: xi). identity crisis rutherford provides an example where he uses the story of lawrence of arabia as the background. he proposes the idea that when lawrence was stranded in the dessert, he faced the confusion of himself. dessert was metaphorically used as the border between the known and unknown territories as rutherford puts it “margin between the habitable and the inhabitable” (rutherford, 1990:9). then, lawrence suffers from crisis of identity as stated by rutherford: for lawrence the dessert left him neither arab nor english: ‘i had dropped one form and not taken on another’. in a more contemporary setting baudrillard has commented, ‘in the dessert one loses one’s identity’ (rutherford, 1990:10). then, the dessert is assumed to the sign of difference as a line to separate one to the other. the idea of the dichotomy of “white/black, masculine/feminine, hetero/ homosexual, where one term is always dominant and the other is subordinate, that our identities are formed” applies in the representation of the desert as a border (rutherford, 1990:10). according to rutherford, there must be an interrelationship between one identity (society) with another where power embodied as an important aspect. this means that the relationship between identity 83 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) b. endo gauh pratama & elisa dwi wardani to another identity is based on assumption of power and authority. rutherford discusses the failure of categorization of the communist party to promote the erasure of the oppression of sexuality, race and gender. the system successfully recognizes the power every dichotomy of sexuality, race and gender but it fails to eliminate “the element of practical politics: choice, doubt, strategy, planning, error and transformation” (rutherford, 1990:17). as a result, the form of oppression exists because everyone falls into polarities like white-black, working class-ruling class and no exception of colonial and colonized. then, the colonial government happens to claim to be superior as they believe they possess more power than the ‘other’. they commence to initiate the oppression against the inferior, the local natives. ashcroft offers the term ‘place and displacement’ to elaborate the crisis of identity in the postcolonial discourse. he insists that it is when the special postcolonial crisis of identity comes into being; the concern with the development or recovery of an effective identifying relationship between self and place (ashcroft, 2002:8) thus, it is important to notice the relationship between the image of postcolonial subject, the colonized in certain aspect of location. location here means how he is positioned in social structure of colonial life. one of the main causes this phenomenon to happen is cultural denigration. ashcroft indicates that there is always be a form of oppression. he explains that: a valid and active sense of self may have been eroded by dislocation, … it may have been destroyed by cultural denigration, the conscious and unconscious oppression of the indigenous personality and culture by a supposedly superior racial or cultural model (ashcroft, 2002:9). the oppression exists because there is a claim from the ‘supposedly superior racial’ over the inferior. this practice destroys the self-image of the indigenous people. though, sometimes, the devastation is highly manipulated in form of their slogan of enlightening people and support for the longevity of colonial prosperity. the result of displacement is alienation (ashcroft, 2002:9). as the image of self is eroded or destroyed, the crisis of self-image starts to appear. ashcroft provides some results of displacement. the possession and practice of ‘englishness’, also show clear signs of alienation even within the first generation of settlement, and manifest a tendency to seek an alternative, differentiated identity? (ashcroft, 2002:9) it is when the colonized begin to be alienated among their native society. it is also clear to observe that those who tend to get acquainted of the englishness suffer from crisis of identity. mimicry as it has been introduced in the realm of literary devices by the famous plato’s term mimesis, mimicry here would occupy the same qualities. bhabha explains that mimicry in postcolonial is “the desire for a reformed, recognizable other, as a subject of difference that is almost the same but not quite” (bhabha, 2004:122). it refers to the determination of the other to signify themselves as the colonizer. they may acquire certain qualities but they will never be ‘them’. bhabha formulates that: mimicry is, thus the sign of a double articulation; a complex strategy of reform, regulation, and discipline, which ‘appropriates’ the other as it visualizes power (bhabha, 2004: 123) however, mimicry also affects both sides, colonized and colonizer. the ambivalence of mimicry lies on the ‘partial’ 84 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) part of the colonial subject. colonizer is dependent upon the relation between the authoritative power of colonialism and the success of implying the power to the other, the indigenous people. partiality is seen from the position of mimicry as a strategic plan as well as menace (bhabha, 2004: 123). this means that when mimicry is employed into practices there would be some menace effect which would disturb the stability of the colonial government. for example, when the british introduced proper education to certain class of people in india, the british were afraid that the intellectuals they produce would one day turn against them. therefore, the colonized people are affected in a way that there is a group of local people who are enlightened as they receive the british education as well as they mimic the culture of the british. on the other hand, the british as the colonizer are not affected culturally. they would never consider the colonized as equal even though some of them are educated like them but still the british would be less concerned with the idea of equality. the british would consider more about how their empire is endangered as now there were some local intellectuals who were ready to criticize the british. bhabha also comments on the mimicry as a means of repetition rather than representation because the colonizer is put in the discourse of the failure of the colonial system itself. he said “… the effect of flawed colonial mimesis, in which to be anglicized is emphatically not to be english” (bhabha, 2004: 125). therefore, it is justified that colonized repeatedly practice the signification of colonial as if they (the other) utilize the practice the power of being colonial or imperial. the identity associated with the english values as they have been dreaming of would never be achieved because they are only given selected knowledge and false and also limited authority under strict control of the british. rutherford has also remarked that identity is determined based on the politics of different. he agreed with gramsci upon the idea of collective identity. gramsci believed that politics is the new of the formation of new collective identity as shown in the strike of minority’s leftist such as gay and lesbian groups. these groups are obvious fall into, if categorization is applied, left movements along with communist and feminist and other leftist. however, the strike triggers the revolutionary politics of culture resulting that “… the politically negotiable and incomplete character of identity and social formations” (rutherford, 1990:19). thus, identification of political identity as in colonial system where oppression was severe and attached to the system of colonial itself is never be nor singular neither predictable. the ambivalence of mimicry appears because identity cannot be reduced into single concept because “identity marks the conjuncture of our past with the social, cultural and economic relations we live within.” (rutherford, 1990:19). this means that an identity someone or society claim to be is consist of many layers which emphasized on the past and its relation to the present. this concept also argues any forms of fixity and essentialism because “social, political and class formation do not exist a priori, they are a product of articulation” (rutherford, 1990: 20). as a result, there is no point when everything (class, gender, and race) just happen without any correlation with the past events. what drives someone who is already attached to one identity move to another identity is human intention itself. human intention as in form of wish cannot be separated from the past events. according to freud as quoted by rutherford; “you will see from such an example how the wish employs some event in the present to plan a future on the pattern of the past.” (rutherford, 1990:21). this recognizes any events that happened in the past as determining factors to produce wishes. in the postcolonial discourse, the wish to get out of a society or identity can be seen from the oppression so that someone would wish to be oppressed no more by trying to be like the oppressor. burma under british imperialism 85 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) b. endo gauh pratama & elisa dwi wardani british annexed burma in 1885 when they captured the royal capital of last burma kingdom, mandalay. then, british exiled king thibaw and queen supalayat to india where the couple spent rest of their lives. the palace which was located in mandalay, were turned into military based. it became the center of colonial life equipped with luxury facilities such as a polo field, a golf course and tennis courts and also a chapel found within the complex of the palace since the british took it under control (larkin, 2004:29). british also had redecorated many rooms in the palace. they placed a billiard table in one of sacred rooms that was used to pay homage for queen supalayat. this provides a picturesque description about the typical interior of the club in burmese days. the club refers to the elite club, whose members are all european, where they spent most their times gathering together to enjoy home-like atmosphere by drinking gin or playing bridge and else. the club was a citadel as well as fortress to the british (larkin, 2004:29). in 1923, the british introduced a new rule which allow a small number of burmese politicians attend the parliament meeting. this rule also applied to british clubs across the country. they were forced to accept a local member. however, the segregation remained strong. larkin gave an example where: … the burmese official who was appointed acting governor in place of the british governor who was away on sick leave was denied access to the rangoon clubs (larkin, 2004:188) this evidence shows that how strong the segregation was between the british and burmese. thus, the fulfilment of the new regulation was merely to obey the rule for its sake not to accommodate the burmese of their rights. burmese officials in the british raj when the british annexed burma, they exiled the king and queen of last burmese dynasty and began to employ a new form of government. burma became the part of british india or british raj. in doing so, the british government “… had removed the respected headmen and replaced them with its own bureaucratic counterparts.” (larkin, 2004:67). thus, many magistrates and other local officials were corrupt because as long as they performed the duty as told by the british, they secured their position the government. they practiced corruption mainly by taking bribery. racism of the british towards burmese orwell believed that racism in the key element of british colonial system. as he became an eyewitness of colonial in burma where he worked as police officer, he concluded an example of racism practice done by british every day. burma was known for the extreme weather in the summer when intolerably hot sun stung one’s head like a bee. the british always wore topi whenever they went out to avoid the sun. however, the burmese never wore one. consequently, the british believed that the burmese were biologically different as they did not need any protection from the sun. this illustration sums up his idea that: you can only rule over a subject race, especially when you are in a small minority, if you honestly believe yourself to be racially superior, and it helps towards this if you can believe that the subject race is biologically different (larkin, 2004:160). the british believed that such practices would differ them from the local natives. they would feel superior as they thought because human needs protection from the heat of the sun whereas the burmese were only ‘savage’ to them. pagoda as the center of religious identity 86 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) most of burmese were buddhist when the british came to the country. today, myanmar is a country that take buddhist as their national religion. pagoda is a quintessential for burmese as an individual as well as for the country. larkin on her trip to burma to trace orwell back years ago comments that: pagoda are the center of burmese spiritual life, and every town and village has one. people visit the pagoda daily or weekly to pay respect to the buddha relics which are often enshrined there, to meditate, to give alms, or to attend the festivals held on religious holidays (larkin, 2004:77) pagoda is the symbol of buddhism where buddhist people practice the religion there. for burmese people, pagoda has immersed in their hearts as they always put the pagoda as center of everything they do, especially in religious affairs. thus, pagoda is inseparable from burmese culture because it plays vital role to burmese society since hundreds years ago. they strongly believe in reincarnation and karma. how the karma works is typical where one has to perform duty as a devoted buddhist and also they must outweigh their sin by doing good deeds. for those who are rich enough, they will donate sum of money to build pagodas. their sins would also be redeemed by the number of pagoda they build. according to larkin when she was tracing orwell back in burma in early 2000, she found out the practice of the general who donate his money to build pagodas. on a newspaper, she read that a high ranking official, general khin nyunt, gave 900,000 kyats (equal to 900 us dollars) donation for a pagoda (larkin, 2004:79). the idea of donating money for pagoda is supposed to be a religious affair to many buddhist in burma. they would do so if they have enough money. the practice was also performed by kings of burma, ‘the royal patrons of the buddhist religion’ dated years ago (larkin, 2004:78). however, burma was under junta military government for more than two decades. during this time the people were severely suffered as the army led the country nowhere but towards poverty. the army also tortured the people, jail those who oppose the government, and abusing young women (larkin, 2004:78). thus, general khin nyunt who pretend himself as a good buddhist try to outweigh his ‘sins’ by donating the pagoda. crisis of identity suffered by u po kyin 1. the characterization of u po kyin kyin is characterized in a way of showing. the author of burmese days provides vast details in comments of kyin actions rather than his own voice. however, some of kyin’s manners and qualities are observed from his conversation with another character such as his wife. most of the times, the narrator reveals kyin’s thought directly to the readers. kyin’ desires, temperaments and moral natures are observed through the description of the character by the narrator. therefore, it is noticed that kyin’s ambition remain stable and unchanged throughout the novel. from the beginning of the novel the readers are presented with the description of kyin. the narrator begins with “u po kyin, subdivisional magistrate of kyauktada, in upper burma, was sitting in his veranda” (orwell, 1934:5). after that, the narrator goes on with the description of the time and situation of the moment kyin is sitting in his veranda. kyin’s appearance is also narrated in details as seen in: unblinking, rather like a great porcelain idol, u po kyin gazed out into the fierce sunlight. he was a man of fifty, so fat that for years he had not risen from his chair without help, and yet shapely and even beautiful in his grossness; for the burmese do not sag and bulge like white men, but grow fat symmetrically, like fruits swelling. his face was vast, yellow and quite unwrinkled, and his eyes were tawny (orwell, 1934:5). 87 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) b. endo gauh pratama & elisa dwi wardani that is why, most of kyin’s manners, attitudes and qualities are observed through telling way characterization. u po kyin’s admiration of british empire began when he was a little boy. one day he saw an army of british empire marching in mandalay streets. according to history, this was the day when the british finally captured the capital city of burmese kingdom. after that, last king and queen of burma dynasty, thibaw and supalayat were exiled to india. since then, kyin has been living his life by believing that someday he would acquire the englishness. kyin is considered as a sly man. this can be observed from how he manages to excel in his career. he keeps being promoted not because of his good works but his cunning practices. when he works at the bazaar as a clerk for a rice merchant, he also sometimes steals. the way he gets his job at the government is by bribing with money he has from blackmailing someone. then when he was twenty a lucky stroke of blackmail put him in possession of four hundred rupees, and he went at once to rangoon and bought his way into a government clerkship (orwell, 1934:6). it is when the author narrates that kyin starts his career in an untrustworthy way. he does not get work because he has the ability to perform the job but he ‘buys’ the position. the narrator continues to build a character on kyin to have devilish thought and ambition. when there is an article on a bilingual patriotic newspaper called “burmese patriot”, exposing and blaming an english deputy commissioner named macgregor, kyin seizes the chance to put an indian-born doctor, verasvami, to be blamed. he says: now, let us go into this affair from the beginning. we are going to make a concerted attack on dr. veraswami, who is the civil surgeon and superintendent of the jail. we are going to slander him, destroy his reputation and finally ruin him forever. it will be a delicate operation (orwell, 1934:11). he produces an anonymous letter to be sent to macgregor in order to convince him that it is dr. verasvami who writes the article. the narrator successfully delivers the image of kyin as a corrupt official. therefore, it is clear that he wants more than denouncing the doctor. his discussion with his wife continues when he mentions what his real intention is. he says that: it is this. i happen to know that in a month’s time the europeans are going to elect one native member to their club. they do not want to do it, but they will have orders from the commissioner, and they will obey. naturally, they would elect veraswami, who is the highest native official in the district. but i have disgraced veraswami. and so---- (orwell, 1934: 143). the european club is an elite club where atmosphere of british is reproduced daily by placing bar and bridges card-game in the room. the members of the club are obviously all british and other europeans. when the regulation to elect a local native member is spread out, many rejections come from most members of kyauktada’s club. kyin definitely wants to get the membership as he believes by being the member of the club, his status in the society would be raised. more complexities in the characterization are added when the narrator creates more intrigues to the story. kyin’s plan of anonymous letters continues but does not necessarily succeed. he, then, creates a false rebellion issue in the town. this can be seen as an effort to destroy the doctor’s reputation as kyin himself said: this rebellion is the very thing to get rid of him. of course we shall never prove that he is responsible for it; but what does that matter? all the europeans will take it for granted that he is mixed up in 88 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) it somehow. that is how their minds work. he will be ruined for life. and his fall is my rise (orwell, 1934: 140). this is the time when the doctor receives support no more because his european friend had been ashamed because of the scene in the church. he then shoots himself to death. by this time a final false accusation kyin throws at dr. verasvami results in a catastrophe. the european could no longer see dr. verasvami as a doctor with a good reputation anymore. kyin finally gets the membership of the club though rejections of many european members are still around. he comes to the club rarely. when he comes, he is there mainly for drinking and playing bridge. most of the times, the rest of the members do not consider his presence at all. at the end of his career, he keeps being promoted after taking many credits from the riot at kyautada. he is deputy commissioner before he retires. he is also awarded a medal to recognize his service to the british empire. he is still greedy as before but richer by taking a huge amount of bribery alone. as he is afraid of karma he would get after making many evildoings through his life, he decides to redeem his sins by making pagodas. unfortunately, he is dead before he could do so. 2. crisis of identity of u po kyin the marching of the british soldiers in the street of mandalay symbolizes the intervention of the colonial in the burmese culture. the young kyin as a burmese does not realize the oppression because the form of oppression is unconscious to kyin. ashcroft named this situation as cultural denigration that happens because “the conscious and unconscious oppression of the indigenous personality and culture by a supposedly superior racial or cultural model” (aschroft, 2002:9). burmese culture is now denigrated as the british takes control in every aspect of life in burma. this also means that kyin’s self-image of being burmese is challenged. there are some evidences that picture kyin’s childhood who was a fan of british since then. as explained in the characterization of the character, kyin holds a high position the british colonial government system in burma. he is the subdivisional magistrate of kyakutada in the beginning in the novel. he kept being a corrupt official by taking bribe and terrorizing the locals. he then realized that there was a chance to be promoted to high level as states: now, at fifty-six, he was a sub-div isional magistrate, and he would probably be promoted and made an acting deputy commissioner, with englishmen as his equals and even his subordinates (orwell, 1934:6). this shows his burning ambition to take his chance and make his childhood dream comes true. thus, it is not a surprise when he deploys many kinds of evil plans to clear his career path in order to foster his desire to be like english man. the desire to attain the status of englishmen is a sign of kyin’s alienation within his burmese society. he puts a lot effort to identify his self with an alternative identity because he feels he does not want to belong to burmese as colonial subject. ashcroft notes this as the result of displacement. he said: the possession and practice of ‘englishness’, also show clear signs of alienation even within the first generation of settlement, and manifest a tendency to seek an alternative, differentiated identity? (ashcroft, 2002:9) therefore, kyin chooses the option to pursue his dream to ‘fight fot the british side” as he has been dreaming of since he was a child. the picturesque of how kyin wife explain the concept of hell in buddhism to kyin indicates that kyin’s wife is a devoted burmese buddhist. this shows kyin’s place in the society that he is a burmese. however, 89 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) b. endo gauh pratama & elisa dwi wardani by the intervention of the british into their culture alter their idea of life offered by buddhism and displaced by the image of the english values (ashcroft, 2002:9). they may or may not aware of the oppression as kyin also holds a position of a high ranking official in the british colonial government in burma. however, this still causes their buddhism image that crafted in their hearts scattered. they are replaced with the image of being english. they then reproduce the idea of karma in buddhism into their favor to pursue the english self. at the beginning of the novel burmese belief of reincarnation is also mentioned. after the narrator describes how corrupt kyin is, he then talks about how kyin would redeem his evil doings in his life. he would devote his closing years to good works, which would pile up enough merit to outweigh the rest of his life. probably his good works would take the form of building pagodas. four pagodas, five, six, seven -the priests would tell him how many-… and he would return to the earth in male human shape … (orwell, 1934:7) pagoda is an essential aspect of burmese religious life in myanmar until now. larkin confirms this concept when she visited burma in early 2000. she says: pagoda are the center of burmese spiritual life, and every town and village has one. people visit the pagoda daily or weekly to pay respect to the buddha relics which are often enshrined there, to meditate, to give alms, or to attend the festivals held on religious holidays (larkin, 2004:77). this shows that kyin is aware of the result of his action from the beginning. in doing so, he is also prepared for redeeming the sins of his. his act of destroying dr. verasvami is not an exception of his nature of being a corrupt official from the beginning. kyin’s acts are similar to the practices of general that larkin observes. she summarizes: like today’s generals, u po kyin, the corrupt burmese magistrate in orwell’s burmese days, considered himself a good buddhist. he believed that all the evil he had done in this life – cheating people for money … he therefore planned to devote the later years of his life to doing good works, to counteract out the bad things he had done and balance the scales of karmic justice. (larkin, 2004:78) this idea of the centralistic of buddhism and the idea of karma are not necessarily to be judged on morality basis but on cultural aspect. it means that how kyin basically is used to have a strong connection with his self-image as a good buddhist. however, now, he has to manipulate the idea of being good buddhist to suit his ambition to acquire englishness. kyin is annoyed with his life even though he is in a better situation compared with most burmese. he seems not to care about his wrong doings, and he even still craves for more. this is also a characteristic of core intention of kyin which is not to be grateful. he grows more furiously to obtain his desire. he says that: i am tired of eating with my fingers and associating only with burmans −poor, inferior people− and living, as you might say, like to feel like a miserable township officer. money is not enough; i should like to feel that i have risen in world as well. (orwell, 1934: 142) it is clear that kyin is ashamed of being burmese. he acknowledges that being burmese associates him with inferiority. ashcroft comments that “a valid and active sense of self may have been eroded” (ashcroft, 2002:8). this idea approves that kyin as a burmese self is eroded because he feels inferior. he also notices that money is not enough for him because his identity is not necessarily formed with money but culture. that is why when his burmese culture is eroded, he begins to feel inferior and questions his identity. 90 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) when kyin expresses his view on his current life, he unconsciously admitted that he is in the part of inferior society. rutherford believes that one’s identity is achieved through the polarities of characteristics. he comments that: it is within their polarities of white/black, masculine/feminine, hetero/homosexual, where one term is always dominant and the other subordinate, that our identities are formed. (rutherford, 1990:10) the desire of being the member of the club does not only strike u po kyin but also his rival, dr. verasvami. upon knowing kyin’s plans to destroy his reputation, he also begins to develop a desire of the club. the doctor believes that the only way to avoid of being accused as a proprietor to the colonial government is elected to the club. he then indeed mentions his ambition several times to flory, his british friend, when they have a conversation. he describes the club as “a fortress impregnable”. he is going to use his membership as a shield against any accusation thrown at him. there are at least three times he mentioned his desire to be the member to flory in only just one conversation. the situation which kyin has undergone is interrelated with the reading of bhabha’s mimicry concept. bhabha postulates that “the desire for a reformed, recognizable other, as a subject of diference that is almost the same but not quite” (bhabha, 2004:122). as discussed earlier, the ruling ambition of u po kyin is ‘to be the same but not quite’ grows since he is ‘a naked pot-bellied’ boy. this drives him to advance his career path by launching his dirty campaign towards his challenger, dr. verasvami. in order to support the idea that the u po kyin is in the state of feeling inferiority, it can be seen through dr. verasvami, kyin’s rival, when he is talking to flory, white man, and he says he knows that kyin launches evil campaign to destroy his reputation in front of the europeans. when, flory tries to calm the doctor down, he says that: all depends upon one’s standing with the europeans. if my standing iss good, they will not believe it of me; if bad, they will believe it. prestige iss all. (orwell, 1934:149) corresponding to this statement, flory delivers no argumentation but agreement. the europeans who always have the sentiment towards local, as discussed earlier in the context of rutherford’s idea of identity, that locals are always bad and wrong. those who could gain their respect are only local natives who have good reputation. u po kyin mentions the word of inferiority or things associate to it. it is true that he holds a high ranking official the local can attain to in the british raj system, but he cannot detach himself from the society that is denigrated. ashcroft pictures this as “cultural denigration, the conscious and unconscious oppression of the indigenous personality and culture by a supposedly superior racial or cultural model.” (ashcroft, 2002:9) the affirmation of their inferiority status is uttered by another member of the same society, fellow colonized, dr. verasvami. he has remarked that “’hanging together’, ass you call it. it iss the secret of your superiority to we orientals” (orwell, 1934:147). this statement contains the idea of dependency as well as the acknowledgment of the colonizer power and superiority. in that statement, the doctor needs flory as a white man to maintain and gain more status in order to elevate their position among the society. crisis of identity leading to mimicry of u po kyin kyin begins his life as a beggar who later climbs the ladder of success until he has a position of a sub-divisional magistrate in the british colonial government. this shows that he is placed at the margin of the colonized society. when he holds the position such as a sub-divisional magistrate he will always pursue a higher position as a deputy commissioner. ashcroft uses 91 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) b. endo gauh pratama & elisa dwi wardani edward said’s terms “a process of conscious affiliation proceeding from a desire not only to be accepted but to be adopted and absorbed” (ashcroft, 2002:4). ashcroft comments that those who are at the periphery of colonization society are going to unite and abandon their origins. kyin is undergoing this process since he dreams and decides to work for the british when he was a little boy. he then keeps the intention growing by plotting his way to get the merits of his work. kyin’s effort to mimic the colonizer, the british, is seen according to bhabha as “desire of the reformed” (bhabha, 2004:122). kyin rejects as well as accepts the idea of being colonized who is placed at the periphery of colonialization. he and other burmese are the subjects of colonialization who are excessively abused by the power of the british. however, he is benefited by having the position of a subdivisional magistrate. this gives him a better opportunity to launch another dream to be like the british socially. entering the club is a perfect ambition to him. mimicry of u po kyin the initial moment of the process of mimicry is when u po kyin delivers the idea of being the member of the european club to his wife. after she hears her husband delivers the idea, she begins to imagine what will happen if she is the wife of the member of the club. she comments that “talking to english ladies in hindustani about babylinen” would amaze for any women in her community. this amplifies that the motive of being chosen as a member in the club for kyin’s family is not only to get respected by local natives. this also articulates the idea of being the european alike. historically, when the british issued a diarchy rule in 1923, only a small number of the burmese politicians were allowed to attend the parliament’s session. this rule also affects any british clubs all over the country. most british bitterly accept the present of burmese in their clubs. however, many reject the burmese to come to the clubs. in burmese days, one of typical reason was represented by ellis. he says: it’s all very well, but i stick to what i said. no natives in this club! it’s constantly giving way over small things like that that we’ve ruined the empire. this country’s only rotten with sedition because we’ve been too soft with them. the only possible policy is to treat ‘em like dirt they are. this is a critical moment, and we want every bit of prestige we can get. we’ve got to hang together and say, ‘we are the masters and you beggars-‘“ ellis pressed his small thumb down as though flattening a grub“you beggars keep your place!’ (orwell, 1934:32) this can be seen as the evidence on how the diarchy policy that issued by british raj in burma is not well accepted in most british societies in burma as pictured by orwell in the novel. larkin has a rare opportunity to interview a burmese whose father was a district magistrate during the british colonial government in 1920’s in burma. the burmese named htin aung talked to her that his father is invited to join the local club. he mentions that his father is forced to accept the membership (larkin, 2011:189). his father does not enjoy the privilege of being the member of the club as he only visits the clubs several times on social duty not leisure time. on the other hand, this fact is apparently reversed by orwell as he characterizes kyin as a magistrate who is willing to blackmail and scheme his way to obtain the membership of the club. orwell’s intention can be seen as an attempt to provide the space for kyin to possess power as well as the ability to mimic the british by choice not by force as the policy said. kyin is described as a corrupt man since the beginning of the novel. the way he reaches his positon as a magistrate is not ‘innocent’ from the start. thus, he managed to secure his positon as he always employs 92 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) clever tricks such as receives the bribes. he also makes a private taxation system for villagers in order get more money. those who refute would be terrorized by “gangs of dacoits attacked the village, leading villagers were arrested on false charge, and so forth” (orwell, 1934:7). these terrors are motorized by kyin. in postcolonial discourse, the act of kyin terrorizing his own fellow (other burmese) is seen as an attempt to mimic the colonizer. the nature of colonizer, indeed, always includes power relation as the based on every interaction. this can be seen from the bipolarity of superior and inferior represented by the british and burmese. kyin rejects his burmese identity because burmese is the subject of the british colonialization. this corresponds to bhabha’s concept of mimicry. he says mimicry is “the desire for reform, the recognizable other”. in this case, kyin wants to ‘differ’ himself from the other, the subject of colonization. kyin does not only blatantly mimic the british but he also realizes that colonization is strongly emphasized on the element of racism. as explained in the earlier part of this study, the british see burmese as inferior race. for instance, under the ferocious heat of burma sun, the british have to wear protection for their head as they are not used to such extreme heat. however, burmese were seen off not wearing any protection. the british conclude that burmese have thick skull. the fact that the british differ themselves biologically from burmese established racist relation because they notice burmese are ‘savage’ and less human as they had no problem with the heat. another event amplifies kyin’s effort to be european like. the doctor receives support no more from flory as flory has committed suicide. kyin finally launches his final accusation to obtain his objective to get membership of the club. dr. verasvami indeed is destroyed. the europeans think that he is a scoundrel even though they have no specific reason why they should believe so. the doctor also has been labelled as the “shok de”; a burmese phrase, whose meaning equals to untrustworthy no to be exact. when a native is labeled by this, it means “there is an end of him” (orwell, 1934:283). unlike the doctor, kyin is profited otherwise. this shows that kyin successfully differs himself from dr. verasvami. the doctor symbolizes the local society while kyin is now left off to be european like because of the membership. the result of mimicry the result of mimicry is ambivalence. mimicry emphasizes its process rather than the result. the result of mimicry will not be able to produce new characteristics. in the postcolonial discourse, mimicry will affect the local natives because they will transform into the british described as ‘almost the same but not quite’. those who try to mimic the british will not get the same status as them. kyin is trapped in the illusion he has been dreaming about. in the beginning of the novel, kyin is described as a sub-divisional magistrate, a high ranking official for a local people (orwell, 1934:5). his jurisdiction includes some villages in the discrict of kyauktada. to him, his position offered power and authority among his people. this is true since he arranges private taxation scheme to benefit him himself while he also receives bribes from both sides but he solves the dispute honestly. because he solves any disputes fairly, it profits him with respect as a loyal and skilled official to the british. however, the british will not care about his corrupt practice for kyin was one of the british officials. kyin is aware of this that he keeps continuing his corrupt practices since he believes the british would not believe the accusation thrown against his own men (orwell, 1934:7). he will pile up dozen witnesses if any accusation or trial of his practices. he will always get away with it. macaulay’s example of a group translator in india provides clear picture of how the ambivalence of mimicry occurs. he comments on class structure in india under the british colonialization. they are the 93 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) b. endo gauh pratama & elisa dwi wardani colonizer, the british, mimic man, and millions whom the british govern, the common people (bhabha, 1994:87). what he means by mimic man is a group of indian who receives colonial education to be translators. the translator group is no longer included in the group with millions others but they form a new social class. however, having received the colonial education job as translators, they remain powerless. their status as colonial subject is not lifted altogether. in this case, kyin is considered in the group of mimic man in india. his position offers him a lot of privileges as a subdivisional magistrate. the british will not look up upon him neither as a respected burmese nor as a noble man since the british was understand of the nature of kyin very well. he will remain as a colonial subject. according to the history, when the british annex burma, they replace truthful of head villagers with a handful of corrupt burmese officials (larkin, 2011:67). they believe corrupt burmese officials are easy to be controlled as they let them to continue terrorizing villagers instead of protecting them. they are also trapped in the ambivalence of mimicry discourse because kyin is ‘translator’ whose power is a little compare to the british officials. kyin’s membership of the club does not change how the british members of the club judge burmese people. although, naturally, they will elect dr. verasvami, they are thankful when they finally choose kyin instead. their attitude is pictured in: in the end the other europeans came to be rather glad that they had elected him, for he was bearable addition to the club. he did not come too often, was ingratiating in his manner, stood drinks freely, and developed almost at once into a brilliant bridge-player. (orwell, 1934:285) they are glad because kyin is almost unnoticed to them because he does not come too often. so, his presence in the club is not considered as important. on the other hand, this symbolizes that kyin is successfully mimic the british because he is now able to socialize with the rest of the member by acquiring a skill to be a brilliant bridgeplayer. his significance to the club is only his privilege of entering the club. he does not represent any burmese politically and he has no power in club to express his opinion. when kyin has achieved everything more than he has been dreaming about, he fails to redeem his sins by building pagodas. this is an ambivalence result of mimicry because he still considers himself as a devoted burmese. it is the moment for him to atone for his sins as stated in “u po kyin had done all that mortal man could do. it was time now to be making ready for the next world in short, to begin building pagodas.” (orwell, 1934:286). in the earlier part of this study, when kyin begins to blackmail and scheme dr. verasvami, he was warned that one day he has to redeem his evildoings by building pagodas. unfortunately, it is not long after he is granted an award by the british governor, he is stricken by apoplexy. he is dead several days afterwards. pagodas are the center of burmese people as devoted buddhist. the idea of kyin remembers his atonement of building pagoda show that he is still attached to burmese culture. like macaulay’s example, the translators group in india who he considers them to be powerless because of selective knowledge they acquire from the british, kyin is also powerless. he could not fulfill his duty as a buddhist. this is also a sign of difference and the lack of authority for kyin. he is different than the british although he has the highest position for the local natives can get in the government of british colonial. he still has to perform his duty as a burmese and buddhist. on the other hand, kyin can be seen as an example for other burmese. kyin is a signification for burmese because they can reach such a high position in the british colonial government. conclusion u po kyin is characterized a corrupt official. he is also portrayed as an evil 94 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) character as he always finds a way to denigrate his rival in order to get the membership of the club. kyin nurtures his admiration towards the british since he was little. this shows how kyin begins to content with the idea of fighting for the british instead of burmese. although, this happens when he is child, the idea does not disappear but grow. this happens because kyin selfimage of being burmese is denigrated by the presence of the british. when he finally holds a quite high ranking local official as a sub-divisional magistrate with several villages under him jurisdiction, his ambition to fight for the british transforms into entering ‘the club’. the club represents a new signifier for kyin’s ambition to fight for the british. now, his ambition to fight for the british is replaced but the idea is still the same. the club also represents kyin’s condition as he suffers from crisis of identity. he realizes the importance of the club. in order to elevate his social status among the local natives, the club offers him with a lot of privileges. he believes those privileges will erase his inferiority status in front of the british. even though kyin is warned by his wife that he has to atone for sins by building pagodas, kyin makes his way to get the membership. his blackmails and scheme successfully destroy the good image of dr. verasvami. his presence at the club is occasional. when he is at the club, he has found a way to socialize with the british by being a good bridge-player. other impact of his presence is almost none because he does not represent any burmese to voice his opinion in the club. he takes the club a place to spend some leisure time. this again corresponds to the idea that mimicry is not a representation. the result of mimicry is ambivalence. his failure of building pagodas to gain merits to atone his evildoings signifies that he still lacks of authority. he is indeed promoted even further so that he achieves a medal of honor from the british governor. he is also wealthier than ever as he keeps doing his corrupt practices by taking bribes. however, these all do not provide him enough power to perform his duty as a devoted buddhist and burmese. he is still a postcolonial subject because he cannot fully attach himself from the buddhist and burmese tradition. on the other hand, the british also consider him just the same like other burmese as the colonial subject. references abrams, m.h. and geoffrey g. harpham. glossary of literary terms, 9th edition. boston: wadsworth cengage learning, 2009. aschroft, bill and gareth griffiths and hellen tiffin. the empire writes back. new york: routledge, 2002. barry, peter. beginning theory: an introduction to literary and cultural theory, 3rd edition. manchester and new york: manchester university press, 2009. bhabha, homi k. the location of culture. classics ed. london: routledge, 2004. gopinath, praseeda. “an orphaned manliness: the pukka sahib and the end of empire in passage to india and nurmese days”. studies in the novel, vol. 41, no. 2 (summer 2009), pp. 201-223. the johns hopkins university press. (http://www.jstor.org/stable/2402714 8). august 5, 2016. holman, c hugh and william harmon. a handbook to literature, 5th edition. new york: macmillan publishing company, 1986 guerin, wilfred l. earle labor, lee morgan, and john r. willingham. a handbook of critical approaches to literature, 6th edition. oxford and new york: oxford university press, 2011. 95 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) b. endo gauh pratama & elisa dwi wardani larkin, emma. finding orwell in burma. london and new york: penguin books, 2006. lee, robert a. “symbol and structure in burmese days : a revaluation”. texas studies in literature and language, vol. 11, no. 1 (spring 1969), pp. 819-835 university of texas press. (www.jstor. org/stable/40754032). august 5, 2016. loomba, ania. colonialism/postcolonialism. london and new york: routledge, 2005. orwell, george. burmese days. new york: harcourt, 1934. orwell, george. collected essay. london: mercury books, 1961. phyo tha, kyaw. orwell’s ‘burmese days’ wins govt literary award. the irrawaddy. november 19, 2013. (http://www.irrawaddy.com/burma/or wells-burmese-days-wins-govt-literaryaward.html). august 5, 2016. poznar, walter. “orwell and little brother”. college literature, vol. 12, no. 3 (fall, 1985), pp. 258-265. the johns hopkins university press. (http://www.jstor.org/ stable/25111672). august 3, 2016. rai, alok. “colonial fictions: orwell's 'burmese days'”. economic and political weekly, vol. 18, no. 5 (jan. 29, 1983), pp. pe47-pe52. economic and political weekly. www.jstor.org/stable/437180). august 5, 2016. roberts, edgar v. and henry e. jacobs. fiction: an introduction to reading and writing. new jersey: prentice-hall, inc., 1987. rutherford, jonathan. identity: community, culture, difference. london: lawrence & wishart limited, 1990. “why i write”. george orwell. 1946 (http://web.calstatela.edu/faculty/jgarret/3 08/readings-4.pdf). june 3, 2015. wiharyanto, kardiyat a. asia tenggara zaman pranasionalisme. yogyakarta: universitas sanata dharma, 2005. 96 http://www.jstor/ http://www.irrawaddy.com/burma/orwells-burmese-days-wins-govt-literary-award.html http://www.irrawaddy.com/burma/orwells-burmese-days-wins-govt-literary-award.html http://www.irrawaddy.com/burma/orwells-burmese-days-wins-govt-literary-award.html http://www.jstor.org/%20stable/25111672 http://www.jstor.org/%20stable/25111672 http://web.calstatela.edu/faculty/jgarret/308/readings-4.pdf http://web.calstatela.edu/faculty/jgarret/308/readings-4.pdf phenomena adi renaldi & dewi widyastuti 20 the inauthenticity of the main characters as an impact of totalitarian system seen in george orwell’s 1984 adi renaldi and dewi widyastuti ewi@usd.ac.id department of english letters, sanata dharma university abstract 1984 is a dystopian novel by george orwell that clearly describes the life under totalitarian government. totalitarianism is not merely a political system but also movement that goes beyond private, public, and political sphere. totalitarian government dreams of uniformity in all aspects of life and they pursue for global domination. in order to reach for global domination and their ideal version of state, totalitarian government does not allow freedom in all aspects of life. the pursuit of global domination requires some strategies to make the society in uniformity. the strategies applied are propaganda, terror, and indoctrination. these strategies make the main characters lose the freedom and become alienated from the self and the society. alienation and the lost of freedom also lead to inauthenticity, since they are related to each other. inauthenticity can be caused by repression from external agents in which a person cannot do anything spontaneously since he is being dictated by other people and he cannot express what they feel freely. keywords: totalitarianism, inauthenticity, alienation unlike communism, totalitarianism has its own distinguished characteristics that set it apart from other ideologies. although totalitarianism is closely related to military dictatorship, those two are different. military dictatorship is not always totalitarian; on the other hand, totalitarian is always using the military power to rule the country strictly. the distinction between totalitarianism and military dictatorship can be elucidated by exploring further the distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian forms of government (ebenstein, 1994: 79). totalitarianism is the complete control of all aspects of human social life. under a totalitarian regime there is no part of human endeavor that does not fall within the purview of the state, which is typically run by individual. the stalinist russia and nazi germany are two examples of totalitarianism. orwell depicts how the fascist totalitarian system, which is run by a single party or elite, rules the country with an iron fist complete with its high technology, concentration camps, classless society, war, and several o therstrategies such as terror, propaganda, and indoctrination to make the society in uniformity, live under fear, and obey the ruler. those strategies have several impacts, and this study aims to analyze those impacts on the main characters that lack of freedom, experience alienation, and live in inauthenticity. 1984 is a story about small-time party members named winston smith and julia who live under the thumb of totalitarian government called the party. the party leaves no freedom in all aspects of life and both winston smith and julia decide to rebel against he party. there is no creativity and freedom, because the government has made and provided the cultures that are full of vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 21 propagandas and doctrines. the party is afraid that cultures will weaken the totalitarian supremacy and give people the power to attack the government. totalitarian government would not tolerate individual creativity that threatens the conformity and obedience required from citizens. totalitarian system destroys the political and private life. thus, the main characters i9n the story suffer from lack of freedom, alienation, and inauthenticity. totalitarianism totalitarian government, like all tyrannies, certainly cannot exist without destroying the public realm of life, that is, without destroying, by isolating men, their political capacities. according to hannah arendt, there are four characteristics of totalitarianism: the leader, terror, propaganda, and indoctrination. totalitarian leader, in the center of the movement, acts as the motor that swings it into motion. totalitarian leaders are seen as “idols” which are merely organizational devices, familiar from the ritual of secret societies, which are also used to frighten their members into secretiveness by means of frightful, aweinspiring symbols. propaganda is used to win the masses, which contains in it practical lies, predictions, and ideological doctrines. in russia, stalin decided to rewrite the history of the russian revolution, the propaganda of his new version consisted in destroying, together with the older books and documents, their authors and readers (arendt, 1951: 341-342). meanwhile, terror as the execution of a law of movement whose ultimate goal is not the welfare of men or the interest of one man but the fabrication of mankind, eliminates individuals for the sake of the species, sacrifices the "parts" for the sake of the "whole" (arendt, 1951: 465). totalitarian terror achieves its most terrible triumph when it succeeds in cutting the moral person off from the individualist escape and in making the decisions of conscience absolutely questionable and equivocal (arendt, 1951: 152). any neutrality, indeed any spontaneously given friendship, is from the standpoint of totalitarian domination just as dangerous as open hostility, precisely because spontaneity as such, with its incalculability, is the greatest of all obstacles to total domination over man. total power can be achieved and safeguarded only in a world of conditioned reflexes, of marionettes without the slightest trace of spontaneity. precisely because man's resources are so great, he can be fully dominated only when he becomes a specimen of the animal-species man. therefore character is a threat and even the most unjust legal rules are an obstacle; but individuality, anything indeed that distinguishes one man from another, is intolerable. as long as all men have not been made equally superfluous and this has been accomplished only in concentration camps the ideal of totalitarian domination has not been achieved (arendt, 1951: 456-457). 1. freedom positive freedom is when one can relate himself spontaneously to the world in love and work, in the genuine expression of his emotional, sensuous, and intellectual capacities; he can thus become one again with man, nature, and himself, without giving up the independence and integrity of his individual self (1960: 120). erich fromm (1960: 222-223) argues that the realization of the self is accomplished not only by an act of thinking but also by the realization of man’s total personality, by the active expression of his emotional and intellectual potentialities. these potentialities are present in everybody, but they only become real only to the extent to which they are expressed. positive freedom consists in spontaneous activity of the total, integrated personality. spontaneous activity is not compulsive activity, to which the individual is driven by his isolation and powerlessness; it is not the activity of the automaton, which is the uncritical adoption of patterns suggested from the outside. spontaneous activity is free activity of the self. this activity does not merely mean “doing something”, but the quality of creative activity that can operate in one’s emotional, intellectual, and sensuous experiences and in one’s will as well. adi renaldi & dewi widyastuti 22 further, erich fromm (1960: 226-228) argues that the inability to act spontaneously, to express what one genuinely feels and thinks, and the resulting necessity to present a pseudo self to others and oneself, are the root of the feeling of inferiority and weakness. positive freedom as the realization of the self implies the full affirmation of the uniqueness of the individual. men are born equal but they are also born different. the uniqueness of the self in no way contradicts the principle of equality, that they all have the same inalienable claim on freedom and happiness. 2. alienation alienation from species-being means that a person is alienated from the society that he or she lives within. the roles open to the individual allowing him to relate his social community and are among the most central to his welfare and personal development, and they define his contact with social life. aside from his work and his basic living and consumption unit – be it nuclear family or more extended commune – social community is the most important potential contribution to his well-being. when his community is ugly, vast, and impersonal and through its fragmented and impotent role structure it fails to provide adequate personal outlets, the individual becomes estranged from his community (romano and leiman, 1975: 376377). the estrangement between the self and the other means that each person is equally estranged from his or her true human essence when he is not what he really could be – when he cannot love, play, run, work, spiritualize, relate, create, empathize, or aid as much as our potential allows (romano and leiman, 1975: 377). erich fromm writes that labor is alienated because the work has ceased to be a part of the worker’s nature and consequently, he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself, has a feeling of misery rather than well being, does not develop freely his mental and physical energies but is physically exhausted and mentally debased. the worker therefore feels himself at home only during his leisure time, whereas at work he feels homeless (1963: 8). john k. roth in international encyclopedia of ethics, stated that work can be self-denying activity rather than becoming the satisfaction of a need for human self-fulfillment, it only a means as survival (1995: 26). 3. inauthenticity heidegger throughout his magnum opus being and time (sein und zeit) deals with the concept of authenticity that means “to forego normal choice and to adopt those offered by the world or other people. such are the conditions under which i am abandoned in my world – to be one or the other” (kaelin, 1988: 58-59). f. budi hardiman states that dasein (being) is authentic only when he opens himself to his being by sensing his everydayness deeply. dasein will be inauthentic if he drowns in his everydayness and falls into das man (society/anonymous) (2008: 80). if dasein falls into das man without being himself, dasein will be alienated, since das man can make everything in uniformity. we read as the people read, we think as the majority people think, and so on. thus, the uniqueness of dasein can be vanished and he becomes inauthentic (2008: 130). taylor carman, citing heidegger, stated that authentic is what formally unique and particular to each individual human being. authentic, then, is what is most my own. authenticity has to do with the unique firstperson structure of existence. heidegger maintains that fear is inauthentic, not because anything wrong with it, but because it is an intentional state direct at things outside oneself; fear is fear of something. authenticity understood as resisting conformism and coming into one’s own, in turn comprises distinct element that is “resoluteness”. to be resolute is to remain sensitive to the unique demands of the concrete “situation”. resolute agents, that is, maintain a subtle feel for the situations they confront and so are able to deal with them intelligently, skillfully, with finesse (2006: 233-234). vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 23 warren frederick morris stated that selfexistence will be marked by autonomy and authenticity, not by a psycho-sociological pathology of domination by alien others. in addition, self-existence will be marked by a conscience related to freedom, not one censoring the natural desires and aspirations of each self. human needs will be more easily satisfied without fear of consequences, without the coercion of any repressive authority (2002: 269). when self-identification is uncoerced and meets the test of self-existence, it is authentic and autonomous. autonomous and authenticity cannot be separated, just as freedom and rationality cannot be separated. if the self behaves only as they prescribe and not from its own choice and conviction, its character loses both autonomy and authenticity. it may not itself be free, but live merely a shadow life dictated by the other(s) (2002: 101). james collin points out that human subjectivity is a spontaneous, autarchic center of freedom, since it underlies all its essential projects and need be under bondage to none of them. every act of this self is free; every act proposes an intentional project and hence sets a value for itself. the gaining of authentic freedom is the sole prize of life because a man is no more than the sum of his free acts (1952: 80-81). discussion on 1984 george orwell has successfully built a horrible condition of a fictive country called oceania where fear and terror are parts of daily life caused by totalitarian regime. the government in oceania is one-party totalitarian dictatorship, meaning that there is only one political party run by a group of elites. this totalitarian party, called the party, does not allow any political oppositions and sets up the iron curtain, meaning that other countries cannot interfere with the political rules and policies of the totalitarian country. the party rules the oceania with excessive force and iron fist, demanding total obedience from the society to the leader big brother, and does not allow any freedom in individual and public spheres. totalitarian government is characterized by the existence of powerful leaders or supreme power. between the supreme power and the ruled there are no reliable intervening levels, each of which would receive its due share of authority and obedience. the will of the leader can be embodied everywhere and at all times, and he himself is not tied to any hierarchy (arendt, 1951: 405). it means that the totalitarian leader stands above all. he is all-powerful and is not attached to any hierarchy. below the big brother there is only the party and the classless society called the proles. 1. the structure of the society of oceania what characterizes totalitarianism is the structure of society. there is only one leader that rules with iron fist. this leader is most powerful and below him is single party government and the classless society or proletarian. the social and government structure of oceania is pyramidal, with big brother at the apex of the pyramid. big brother is the leader of oceania. he is never seen physically, but his power can be felt in the life of oceania. big brother is the leader of the party as well as the country. below the big brother, there is the inner party, which consists of echelons and elites. the members of inner party are limited to six millions or only fewer than two per cent of the society. below the inner party, comes the outer party, where winston smith and julia belong to. outer party members are working class with excessive work hours. and at the bottom of the pyramidal structure, comes the proles. the proles are considered as inferior and subhuman with total numbers almost eighty-five per cent of the population. a. big brother big brother is the figure of totalitarian leader in 1984. in the novel, his presence is not marked by physical appearance but only through doctrines and propaganda. people can see the banners of big brother everywhere with the captions run “big brother is watching you”. all party adi renaldi & dewi widyastuti 24 members are supposed to worship and obey big brother because he is the center of life. big brother is infallible and all-powerful. every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration. nobody has ever seen big brother. he is a face on the hoardings, a voice on the telescreen (158). big brother is an imagery figure made by the inner party to symbolize an undefeated leader who is always right for the people to obey and worship. big brother is the figure in which the people are forced to love and fear. big brother is the guise in which the party chooses to exhibit itself to the world. his function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt toward an individual than toward an organization (158). hannah arendt states that totalitarian leader is seen as an “idol”. the “idol” is mere organizational devices, familiar from the ritual of secret societies, which also used to frighten their members into secretiveness by means of frightful, awe-inspiring symbols (1951: 377). b. inner party another characteristic that sets totalitarianism from other ideologies is the form of government that is one-party government. unlike oligarchic government, this one-party government uses total terror and annihilates the opposition who has different political opinion. they also use terror and propaganda to seize the absolute power. this kind of government is based on lie and fear, as winston says, and presently some master brain in the inner party would select this version or that, would re-edit it and set in motion the complex process of cross-referencing that would be acquired, and then the chosen lie would pass into the permanent record and become truth (37). the inner party is the embodiment of the government in oceania. this is where the administration, business, military activities, and other governmental business come from. we can say that inner party is the brain of the state. the inner party is thirst for power. not just power over humanity, but the power to dominate the life, whether it is political or private life. the quest for power is often brutal and sadistic. indoctrination, terror, and torture are just a few strategies to seize power. the party seeks power entirely for its own sake. we are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power (200). c. outer party the outer party is the embodiment of the working class where the members are working in the governmental departments and ministries. in the novel there is a clear clue: “below the inner party comes the outer party, which, if the inner party is described as the brain of state, may be justly likened to the hands” (orwell, 1950: 158). outer party members do not have freedom. even they cannot express their thoughts freely. winston smith and julia belong to this group and they spend astonishing work hours in the ministries. this is important to the party, that by giving them excessive work hours the outer party members could not think about themselves and their feelings. this is an effective strategy to make them as robots instead of human being in order to gain unalterable loyalty. all their efforts are dedicated to the party only. winston was gelatinous with fatigue…all the blood and lymph had been drained out of him by an enormous debauch of work. he had worked more than ninety hours in five days. so had everyone in the ministry (136). outer party members are the subject of indoctrination, propaganda and terror, where in their daily life they are being spied with telescreens night and day. this is something that the party must do in order to ensure that the outer party members have the deep loyalty that the party needs in order to reign. vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 25 hannah arendt wrote that totalitarian movements are mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals. if we compared with all other parties and movements, their most conspicuous external characteristic is their demand for total, unrestricted, unconditional, and unalterable loyalty of the individual member (1951:323). outer party members are not allowed to do something private since the telescreens scrutinize every movement and action. we can say that their life is supposed to be dedicated to the big brother and the party only. there is no privacy even in their own flats. every expression, feelings, and actions are being scrutinized. winston smith thinks that “privacy was a very valuable thing”, because everyone wants a place where they could be alone occasionally (1950: 105). in principle a party member had no spare time, and was never alone except in bed. it was assumed that when he was not working, eating, or sleeping he would be taking part in some kind of communal recreations; to do anything that suggested for a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. there was a word for it in newspeak: ownlife, meaning individualism and eccentricity (64). this is because totalitarian government can only operate through the isolated individuals. it is only through isolated and lonely individual that the party could dominate and exercise power over the people. hannah arendt writes that totalitarian domination as a form of government which operates in this isolation and destroys private life as well. it bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man. what makes loneliness so unbearable is the loss of one's own self which can be realized in solitude (1951: 477). d. the proles at the bottom of the pyramidal structure of oceania come the proles. the proles is a group of people which are outside the party circle and its number is the largest population of oceania that is almost eighty-five per cent. the government keeps the proles in ignorant and considers them as inferior and subhuman. the party keeps the proles politically uneducated and only seeks for their labor power. the proles do not know about the party political plans or direction. the proles are also the subject for propaganda and lies. as long as the proles knows that the country is alright, they will not rebel against the party, besides, they do not have enough political education and power to overthrow the party. the party taught that the proles were natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals, by the application of a few simple rules. so long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. they were born, they grew up in gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-age at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty (56). unlike party members, the proles are not the subject of indoctrination of party’s ideologies. the party sees no importance to indoctrinate them and keep them free but still under a little control. by keeping them politically uneducated (and feed them with propaganda and lies), the proles cannot overthrow the party because as in the novel stated, “being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances” (1950: 57). so it means that the proles cannot do a revolution because they are lack of political knowledge and are being continuously feed by lies. they think that the country is stable and wealth. 2. the totalitarian domination besides having a charismatic and powerful leader, totalitarian government will not be successful if they do not have some strategies to control and dominate the society. totalitarian government move upon fear and hatred. those two things are the basic of the strategies to seize power and to dominate, as well as to build total obedience and iron curtain. adi renaldi & dewi widyastuti 26 hannah arendt in her book the origins of totalitarianism formulated three devices or strategies of totalitarian government to control and dominate the people. the three strategies that are most important are propaganda, terror, and indoctrination. in the novel, george orwell clearly described those strategies to depict the real horror under totalitarian government. a. propaganda propaganda is one of the important devices to convince the society. it is by propaganda that totalitarian government can deceive and convince the people that what they are doing is right and they are heading toward great victory. in 1984, the party uses propaganda to spread the lies as well as to convince both the proles and outer party members. every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed. the possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the state, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time (156). as hannah arendt writes, propaganda is used to win the masses, which contains in it practical lies, predictions, and ideological doctrines. in russia, stalin decided to rewrite the history of the russian revolution, the propaganda of his new version consisted in destroying, together with the older books and documents, their authors and readers (1951: 341-342). it is the same that happens in the novel. sometimes, indeed, you could put your finger on a definite lie. it was not true, for example, as was claimed in the party history books, that the party had invented airplane. he remembered airplanes since his earliest childhood. but you could prove nothing. there was never any evidence (30). and the party also rewrites the history books and destroys them. the hunting-down and destruction of books had been done with the same thoroughness in the prole quarters as everywhere else. it was very unlikely that there existed anywhere in oceania a copy of book printed earlier than 1960 (75-76). the purpose of this kind of propaganda is about to convince the people that the totalitarian government is the greatest and victorious and to prove that the previous government (or any other governments) is failed or not suitable to reach the global domination. the party and other totalitarian government always make official predictions in front of the masses, and when the predictions do not come true and different with the reality, it is their job to rewrite the real records to suit with the predictions. and presently some master brain in the inner party would select this version or that, would re-edit it and set in motion the complex process of cross-referencing that would be acquired, and then the chosen lie would pass into the permanent record and become truth (37). b. terror another strategy that is important to the totalitarian government is terror. terror is the technique to control by fear and it acts as the counterpart of propaganda that always being used in daily life both in private realm and political realm. if propaganda is used to win over the people, terror on the contrary, is used to frighten and control the people. hannah arendt writes that “totalitarian terror achieved its most terrible triumph when it succeeded in cutting the moral person off from the individualist escape” (1951: 152). this is what terror is aimed, that is to seize the total domination. in 1984, the terror by the party varied but mostly it is done by the thought police. the aim of terror is to destroy the relationship between men and abolish the freedom in all aspect of life by spreading fears. totalitarian government denies the concept of individual man and only seeks to vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 27 form one mankind, and then terror is needed to keep the movement in motion. soon after winston smith wrote “down with big brother” in his diary, he fears of getting arrested by the thought police. in the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. people simply disappeared, always during the night. your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your onetime existence was denied and then forgotten. you were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word (18). this kind of terror is used to make the people obey the ideology of the party as well as to spread the fear. there is no trial and reports, and people who committed crimes suddenly disappeared and never be heard anymore (in the novel is called vaporized) without any single record to show that one once existed. terror is also used to make the people to become isolated individuals who are important for the party. by making the individual to be isolated and weak, the individual will submit their life and will give his loyalty to the party. another type of terror is the use of torture chamber called room 101 that is located in the ministry of love. since fear is the basis of terror, room 101 is the most terrifying for the people in oceania because the party uses everything to make the thoughtcriminals confess. no one ever see how room 101 looks like because no survivor ever gets out from there. the moral, consciousness, and reason of the person are destroyed in the room 101. the party claimed that thoughtcriminals are insane and not following the party’s doctrine and ideologies totally, so the party uses room 101 in order to make them sane and to make them love big brother unconditionally. it is through tortures and suffers that all the process of making them sane (they called it reintegration) can be done. “how does one man assert his power over another, winston?” winston thought. “by making him suffer,” he said. “exactly. by making him suffer. obedience is not enough. unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing (203).” this is the same condition that found in the concentration camp during the nazi era as hannah arendt writes that the camps are meant not only to exterminate people and degrade human beings, but also serve the ghastly experiment of eliminating, under scientifically controlled conditions, spontaneity itself as an expression of human behavior and of transforming the human personality into a mere thing (1951: 438), as the party believes that “it will be a world of terror as much as a world of triumph” (orwell, 1950: 204). the aim of terror is to cut the freedom and spontaneity of man, since the party sees that freedom and spontaneous act of man could weaken the party. terror as the execution of a law of movement whose ultimate goal is not the welfare of men or the interest of one man but the fabrication of mankind, eliminates individuals for the sake of the species, sacrifices the "parts" for the sake of the "whole" (arendt, 1951: 465). the party is trying to make a world of fanatics and warriors, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, and persecuting. three hundred million people all with the same face (orwell, 1950: 58). as we can conclude, the party denies the concept of individual. in this case human spontaneity and freedom is very dangerous and hostile to the party and it is intolerable crime. terror then is used to cut up the relationship of individual and the moral of one self. terror is absolutely alienating and isolating the individual, making a person loses his self and orientation to the world. c. total indoctrination totalitarian government is well-known for its concentration camp like auschwitz in adi renaldi & dewi widyastuti 28 germany and gulag in russia. concentration camp is where the endless nightmare happens, because torture, murder, and indoctrination are parts of daily life. indoctrination can be done in concentration camp, and in the novel, room 101. room 101 is just a tool to build a world of fear and treachery and torment, where there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement (orwell, 1950: 203). totalitarian domination attempts to achieve this goal both through ideological indoctrination of the elite formations and through absolute terror in the camps. the camps are meant not only to exterminate people and degrade human beings, but also serve the ghastly experiment of eliminating, under scientifically controlled conditions, spontaneity itself as an expression of human behavior and of transforming the human personality into a mere thing. under normal circumstances this can never be accomplished, because spontaneity can never be entirely eliminated insofar as it is connected not only with human freedom but with life itself, in the sense of simply keeping alive. it is only in the concentration camps that such an experiment is at all possible (1951: 438). winston smith, after being arrested by the party, is being tortured in the room 101. he was beaten and kept in a cell without food for weeks. it is because winston smith committed the most essential crimes: he wrote a diary to speak his mind, betrayed big brother and the party by joining the brotherhood (although it was a trap), and committed love affair with julia. the tortures varied from day to day but the aim is only one: to degrade human being to the lowest level and to accept the doctrines without resistance. in the room 101, winston smith gets the reintegration stages according to o’brien. in room 101, winston smith is forced to totally accept the party doctrines and ideology. the indoctrination can be found in the conversation between o’brien and winston smith in the room 101. “do you know where you are, winston?” he said. “i don’t know. i can guess. in the ministry of love.” “and why do you imagine that we bring people to this place?” “to make them confess.” “no, that is not the reason. try again.” “to punish them.” “no!” exclaimed o’brien. “no! not merely to extract your confession, nor to punish you. shall i tell you why we have brought you here? to cure you! to make you sane! we are not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. the party is not interested in the overt act; the thought is all we care about (192).” o’brien says that there are three stages in winston smith’s reintegration: learning, understanding, and acceptance (1950: 198). the aim of indoctrination of the party is not how to make a person forced to accept the doctrine, but how to make him accept the doctrine in his own free will. we are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. when finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will…so long as he resists us we never destroy him. we convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him (194). in the room 101, freedom never exists. winston smith once wrote in his diary that “freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four” (1950: 190). the party simply denies this concept of freedom. “how many fingers am i holding up, winston?” “four.” “and if the party says that it is not four but five – then how many?” “four.” the word ended in a gasp of pain. the needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. the sweat had sprung out all over winston’s body. ”you are a slow learner, winston,” said o’brien gently. “how can i help it?” he blubbered. “how can i help seeing what is in front of my eyes? two and two are four.” vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 29 “sometimes, winston. sometimes they are five. sometimes they are three. you must try harder. it is not easy to become sane.” (191). this kind of indoctrination is to fabricate something that does not exist, namely, a kind of human species resembling other animal species whose only "freedom" would consist in "preserving the species" (arendt, 1951: 438). party members ought not to feel and think, they only need to obey and loyal to the party and big brother. this model can only be made in concentration camp (room 101 in the novel) where physically and psychologically a person is degraded. 3. the inauthenticity as the impact of totalitarian system since the party does not allow any form of freedom and self-expression in daily life, it results in the inauthenticity of the self. freedom is marked by spontaneous activity, in which the self can relate what he does with the world surround him. totalitarianism sees that any spontaneous activity is dangerous to the movement, so they try to annihilate the freedom in any spheres, both private and political by using total terror and indoctrination. thus, before the writer discusses the inauthenticity of the main characters as the impact of totalitarianism, the writer will discuss the lack of freedom and alienation suffered by the main characters. a. the lack of freedom experienced by the main characters hannah arendt makes a good point about why freedom is very dangerous for the party dominion; it is because spontaneity as such, with its incalculability, is the greatest of all obstacles to total domination over man. total power can be achieved and safeguarded only in a world of conditioned reflexes, of marionettes without the slightest trace of spontaneity. precisely because man's resources are so great, he can be fully dominated only when he becomes a specimen of the animal-species man. therefore character is a threat and even the most unjust legal rules are an obstacle; but individuality, anything indeed that distinguishes one man from another, is intolerable. as long as all men have not been made equally superfluous and this has been accomplished only in concentration camps the ideal of totalitarian domination has not been achieved (1951: 456-457). from the notions above, the totalitarian government, and in this case, the party is trying to make a world of fanatics and warriors, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, and persecuting. three hundred million people all with the same face (orwell, 1950: 58). the idea in the novel is the same as hannah arendt’s theory that totalitarian government is trying to change the plurality of mankind and uniqueness of each individual “as if all of humanity were just one individual (1951: 438).” winston smith’s lack of freedom can be found in the conversation between him and an old man in the bar. winston smith wants to dig up some information about the past, and he thinks that the old man has a lot of knowledge and experience about the past, although it results nothing since the old man cannot remember anything about the political life. winston had the feeling that they were talking at cross purposes. “what i really wanted to know was this,” he said.“ do you feel that you have more freedom now than you had in those days?”are you treated more like human being? in the old days, the rich people, the people at the top___” “the ‘ouse of lords,” put in the old man reminiscently. “the house of lords, if you like. what i am asking is, were these people able to treat you as an inferior, simply because they were rich and you were poor? (71) from the conversation above we can conclude that winston smith feels there is no freedom in the life of oceania. he wants to compare the life in the past and in the present. another lack of freedom is that winston smith and julia cannot be together freely. the party forbids any relationship adi renaldi & dewi widyastuti 30 based on feelings such as love and care. the marriage is aimed only to beget children. they did not discuss the possibility of getting married. it was too remote to be worth thinking about. no imaginable committee would ever sanction such a marriage even if katharine, winston’s wife, could somehow have been got rid of. it was hopeless even as a daydream (101). while winston smith, always dreams that they were a married couple, he wished that they were a married couple of ten years’ standing. he wished that he were walking through the streets with her just as they were doing now, but openly and without fear, talking of trivialities and buying odds and ends for the household (106-107). according to the party policies, no marriage between party members would ever get permission, permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically attracted to one another. the only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for the service of the party (52). since the party forbids any relationship like marriage between party members and sexual affair, it makes winston smith wants to rebel against the party. although this rebellion is not aimed to destroy the party directly, it is only through sexual activities that both winston smith and julia can build their own world far from big brother and the party dictatorship. erich fromm in his book the fear of freedom states that positive freedom is when one can relate himself spontaneously to the world in love and work, in the genuine expression of his emotional, sensuous, and intellectual capacities; he can thus become one again with man, nature, and himself, without giving up the independence and integrity of his individual self (1960: 120). again erich fromm argues that the inability to act spontaneously, to express what one genuinely feels and thinks, and the resulting necessity to present a pseudo self to others and oneself, are the root of the feeling of inferiority and weakness. positive freedom as the realization of the self implies the full affirmation of the uniqueness of the individual. men are born equal but they are also born different. the uniqueness of the self in no way contradicts the principle of equality, that they all have the same inalienable claim on freedom and happiness (fromm, 1960: 226-228). the party denies the uniqueness of each individual. this uniqueness comes from each individual who is free to act positively. thus, winston smith experienced the lack of freedom since he could not express his genuine feeling of loving and caring to his partner. that is why winston smith feels powerless and lonely. the party forbids any spontaneous activity that comes from the heart and mind as a form of self-expression. in the novel, for example, winston smith cannot fully express his thoughts by writing a diary. winston smith thinks that freedom is when we say that two plus two makes four, but if the party says that two plus two makes five, winston smith has to follow what has been dictated to him (as happens to him in room 101). this also happens to julia that, in order to survive, julia has to camouflage by doing activities that actually she despises. she is obliged to join the two minutes hate and pretends that she really loves big brother and hates emmanuel goldstein although she really wants to laugh hard. she joins the junior antisex league though she really enjoys having sex. they are all camouflages to dodge the punishments. here according to erich fromm, positive freedom consists in spontaneous activity of the total, integrated personality. spontaneous activity is not compulsive activity, to which the individual is driven by his isolation and powerlessness; it is not the activity of the automaton, which is the uncritical adoption of patterns suggested from the outside. spontaneous activity is free activity of the self. this activity does not merely mean “doing something”, but the quality of creative activity that can operate in one’s emotional, vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 31 intellectual, and sensuous experiences and in one’s will as well (1960: 222-223). b. alienation experienced by the main characters in 1984, the totalitarian government with its terror and fear cause the feeling of alienation suffered by the main characters. hannah arendt in the origins of totalitarianism stated that totalitarian domination as a form of government is new in that it is not content with this isolation and destroys private life as well. it bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man. what makes loneliness so unbearable is the loss of one's own self which can be realized in solitude (1951: 474). winston smith experiences the alienation from the act of production. he spends excessive work hours but at the same time he also enjoys his job. he is good at doing his work and he can lose himself doing difficult task. winston’s greatest pleasure in life was in his work. most of it was a tedious routine, but included in it there were also jobs so difficult and intricate that you could lose yourself in them as in the depths of a mathematical problem (36). he likes the challenges, but this work is alienating since it is not self-affirming activity, it becomes self-denying activity. in order to survive, winston smith only obeys what the party says and he cannot disagree with the order from the party. in the novel, winston smith knows that his job is dealing with manipulating reality, meaning that he alters the real events and change them to suit with the party needs. here, although he knows that his job is wrong and he feels guilty, he cannot protest, then according to john k. roth in international encyclopedia of ethics, work becomes self-denying activity rather than becoming the satisfaction of a need for human self-fulfillment, it only a means as survival (1995: 26). in order to survive, winston smith is forced to follow the order though he actually does not want to do the job. the job is only an escape because winston smith feels alienated in the world he lives in. although he can enjoy his job, it is true that winston smith is actually alienated, for he hardly knows his colleagues; he cannot share everything he has or feels. the estrangement between the self and the other means that each person is equally estranged from his or her true human essence when he is not what he really could be – when he cannot love, play, run, work, spiritualize, relate, create, empathize, or aid as much as our potential allows (romano and leiman, 1975: 377). winston hardly knew tillotson, and he had no idea what work he was employed on. people in the records department did not readily talk about their jobs…there were quite a dozen people whom winston did not even know by name, though he daily saw them hurrying to an fro in the corridors (34). erich fromm in his book marx’s concept of man writes that labor is alienated because the work has ceased to be a part of the worker’s nature and consequently, he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself, has a feeling of misery rather than well being, does not develop freely his mental and physical energies but is physically exhausted and mentally debased. the worker therefore feels himself at home only during his leisure time, whereas at work he feels homeless (1963: 8). in his job, winston smith does not develop his mental and physical energies; on the contrary, he is exhausted, winston was gelatinous with fatigue…all the blood and lymph had been drained out of him by an enormous debauch of work. he had worked more than ninety hours in five days. so had everyone in the ministry (136). he cannot find the meaning of his work and he cannot express his emotions because all that he ought to do is just obeying the party’s will. winston smith’s job also alienates him because he rarely has leisure time to comfort himself and yet he “felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world adi renaldi & dewi widyastuti 32 where he himself was the monster. he was alone” (orwell, 1950: 23). thus, due to the alienation and the loneliness in his daily life, winston smith feels anxious. he feels powerless and helpless and he needs something to abandon the anxiety. that is why he becomes fatalistic because he could not find a way to overcome his loneliness and anxiety. since totalitarian government cannot exist without destroying the public realm of life (arendt, 1951: 474), the private life is destroyed and the community is failed to provide conducive atmosphere for the people to express their feelings and expression including political opinion. in views on capitalism, yet when his community is ugly, vast, and impersonal and through its fragmented and impotent role structure it fails to provide adequate personal outlets, the individual becomes estranged from his community (romano and leiman, 1975: 376377). like winston smith, julia also suffers from alienation because of her job at the fiction department. julia, in any case, seldom had an evening completely free. she spent an astonishing amount of time attending lectures and demonstrations, distributing literature for the junior anti-sex league, preparing banners for hate week, making collections for the savings campaign, and suchlike activities (99). julia does her job not because she likes it, but only for camouflage. by doing many kind of activities, she can act as if she is loyal to the party. actually she hates her job and cannot enjoy the jobs. c. inauthenticity as the impact of totalitarian system the concept of inauthenticity (uneigentlichkeit) was firstly brought by martin heidegger in his magnum opus sein und zeit (being and time). inauthenticity is also dealing with freedom and alienation. authenticity has to do with the unique firstperson structure of existence (carman, 2006: 233). alienation destroys the self-existence, since human being barely knows himself since he only follows the society (das man). winston was gelatinous with fatigue…all the blood and lymph had been drained out of him by an enormous debauch of work. he had worked more than ninety hours in five days. so had everyone in the ministry (136). since winston smith and julia suffer from alienation caused by exhaustive jobs, they only follow what has been dictated to them. they work as people work, they eat in canteen as people eat in canteen, they think as they ought to think, and they cheer as the people cheer. these activities of das man makes the main characters barely know themselves. according to heidegger, this is inauthentic, since human being (dasein) has to dive deeper into his real essence as human by being true to himself and not by letting himself being dictated by the society (hardiman, 2008: 80). in the two minutes hate he could not help sharing in the general delirium, but this subhuman chanting of “b-b!...b-b!” always filled him with horror. of course he chanted with the rest: it was impossible to do otherwise. to dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing was an instinctive reaction (16). this condition is caused by the totalitarian system; man loses his uniqueness and does a thing because everyone else does the same. the dangerous thing is; it is merely instinctive. in our daily life (everydayness according to heidegger), we cannot avoid to be inauthentic for sometimes it is uncontrollable, because everydayness pulls us into worldly matters that make us forget our being, making the human being alienated from his self. sometimes a person just accepts the social role offered by the society without being true to himself. thus, inauthenticity is related to our quality of being true and sincere to ourselves and with the world. to be authentic means that we can relate ourselves to the world, meaning that we do vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 33 something because we want to do something. on the other words, being spontaneous and autonomous, and we are fully responsible of our acts and the consequences. in the novel, the inauthenticity of the main characters is the result of the total domination of the party, for the party does not allow freedom in all aspect of life. the writer concludes that the lack of freedom and the feeling of alienation are the roots of inauthenticity. as the main characters experienced the lack of freedom and alienation, the main characters then feel impotence and not capable to do something they really want. freedom is defined by spontaneous activity of one self. erich fromm states that spontaneous activity is the one way in which man can overcome the terror of aloneness without sacrificing the integrity of his self; for in the spontaneous realization of the self man unites himself anew with the world – with man, nature, and himself (1960: 224-225). to speak in existentialism way, james collins in his book the existentialists: a critical study, pointed out that human subjectivity is a spontaneous, autarchic center of freedom, since it underlies all its essential projects and need be under bondage to none of them. every act of this self is free; every act proposes an intentional project and hence sets a value for itself. the gaining of authentic freedom is the sole prize of life because a man is no more than the sum of his free acts (1952: 80-81). so freedom plays a great role in human existential authenticity. if a person cannot have positive freedom (freedom to), he or she cannot fully express her/his identity, because spontaneity is all what defines a character. the main characters cannot be autonomous due to the totalitarian power that restricts the human freedom. being autonomous is a condition that sets the essence of human existence. whereas authenticity can only be defined by autonomous and spontaneous acts, totalitarianism on the contrary, considers spontaneity and autonomy as threat that need to be destroyed. totalitarianism is based on fear. only by using fear and terror that totalitarianism can operate well. this is what makes winston smith and julia cannot do anything freely. according to taylor carman who cites heidegger, fear is inauthentic. because it is an intentional state direct at things outside oneself; fear is fear of something that makes a person cannot do what he wants freely (2006: 233). in the old days, he thought, a man looked at a girl’s body and saw that it was desirable, and that was the end of the story. but you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. no emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred (97). we can see that under totalitarianism, a person cannot do and feel what he wants to feel. winston smith, actually, wants to love and to be loved unconditionally and freely without fear of getting caught. this fear of getting arrested by the thought police makes him feel helpless and powerless, and then he chooses to make a secret meeting which is far from what he wants. he has no choice and he is forced to make secret meetings because he actually does not want it. as we can find in the novel that “he wished that he were walking through the streets with her just as they were doing now, but openly and without fear, talking of trivialities and buying odds and ends for the household” (orwell, 1950: 106-107). authenticity means that the attitude in which one engages in his projects is his own. you do something as your own and not merely adopt what society offered and live the chameleon-like way of life. julia in this case, is also inauthentic since she always adopts the role of what society offered to her. she likes to camouflage although in the end she really despises the role she has taken. she spent an astonishing amount of time in attending lectures and demonstrations, distributing literature for the junior antisex league, preparing banners for hate week, making collections for the savings campaign, and suchlike activities. it paid, she said; it was camouflage (99). the life of julia is full of pretends and camouflage and therefore she is inauthentic. adi renaldi & dewi widyastuti 34 she does this because she wants to survive and sacrifice the real essence of herself. i always carry one end of a banner in the processions. i always look cheerful and i never shirk at anything. always yell with the crowd, that’s what i say. it’s the only way to be safe (93). she covers her true essence of selfexistence because she is afraid of being caught. she denies her true role as a person who likes to make love and pretend as an anti-sex fanatic. although julia rebels by having sex with winston smith, julia does not refuse to conform, she follows the norm and at the same trying to break the rules. this dualism destroys her true identity as she follows the chameleon-like life. as taylor carman states that authenticity is understood as resisting conformism and coming into one’s own (2006: 233). warren frederick morris (2002: 269) stated that self-existence will be marked by autonomy and authenticity, not by a psychosociological pathology of domination by alien others. in addition, self-existence will be marked by a conscience related to freedom, not one censoring the natural desires and aspirations of each self. human needs will be more easily satisfied without fear of consequences, without the coercion of any repressive authority. when self-identification is uncoerced and meets the test of self-existence, it is authentic and autonomous. autonomous and authenticity cannot be separated, just as freedom and rationality cannot be separated. if the self behaves only as they prescribe and not from its own choice and conviction, its character loses both autonomy and authenticity. it may not itself be free, but live merely a shadow life dictated by the other(s) (morris, 2002: 101). we know that the iron band of total terror leaves no space for such private life and that the self-coercion of totalitarian logic destroys man's capacity for experience and thought just as certainly as his capacity for action (arendt, 1951: 474). in principle a party member had no spare time, and was never alone except in bed. it was assumed that when he was not working, eating, or sleeping he would be taking part in some kind of communal recreations; to do anything that suggested for a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. there was a word for it in newspeak: ownlife, meaning individualism and eccentricity (64). in this situation, man loses trust in himself as the partner of his thoughts and that elementary confidence in the world which is necessary to make experiences at all. self and world, capacity for thought and experience are lost at the same time (arendt, 1951: 474-477). this loneliness is also experienced by winston smith. he felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. he was alone. the past was dead, the future was unimaginable. what certainty had he that a single human creature now living was on his side? and what way of knowing that the dominion of the party would not endure for ever? (23). since loneliness means powerlessness and self-estrangement, winston smith loses his orientation to the world. he cannot do something resolutely as a certain way of being in the world. on the contrary, resolute agents, that is, maintain a subtle feel for the situations they confront and so are able to deal with them intelligently, skillfully, with finesse (carman, 2006: 233-234). conclusion since the party does not allow any form of freedom and self-expression, it results in the inauthenticity of the self. freedom is marked by spontaneous activity, in which the self can relate what he does with the world surround him. totalitarianism sees that any spontaneous activity is dangerous to the movement. the party uses terror and indoctrination to annihilate the freedom. the use of terror and indoctrination are aimed to seize absolute power because for them, vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 35 absolute power means to exercise power over others. we can say that the main characters cannot be autonomous due to the totalitarian power that restricts the human freedom. being autonomous is a condition that sets the essence of human existence. whereas authenticity can only be defined by autonomous and spontaneous acts, totalitarianism on the contrary, considers spontaneity and autonomy as threat that need to be destroyed. since the main characters cannot do anything spontaneously, they can be considered as inauthentic, for being autonomous and spontaneous are the essences of human existence. references arendt, hannah. the origins of totalitarianism. cleveland: meridian books, 1951. print. carman, taylor. the concept of authenticity in a companion to phenomenology and existentialism. ed. hubert l. dreyfus. massachusetts: blackwell publishing, 2006. print. collins, james. the existentialists: a critical study. chicago: henry regnery company, 1952. print. ebenstein alan o, william ebenstein, and edwin fogelman. today’s isms: socialism, capitalism, fascism, and communism. new jersey: prentice-hall inc., 1994. print. fromm, erich. fear of freedom. london: routledge & kegan paul ltd., 1960. print. ___________. marx’s concept of man. new york: frederich ungar publisher, 1963. print. hardiman, f. budi. heidegger dan mistik keseharian: suatu pengantar menuju sein und zeit. jakarta: kpg, 2008. print. kaelin, eugene francis. heidegger’s being and time: a reading for readers. tallahassee: the florida state university press, 1988. print. morris, warren frederick. escaping alienation: a philosophy of alienation and dealienation. boston: university press of america, 2002. print. orwell, george. 1984. new york: signet books, 1950. print. romano, richard and melvin leiman. views on capitalism, 2nd edition. columbus: glencoe press, 1975. print. roth, john k. international encyclopedia of ethics. london: braun-brumfield inc., 1955. print. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) mia hall’s decision making process in her comatose state in gayle forman’s if i stay: a psychoanalytic study chindy christine & dewi widyastuti chindychristine@gmail.com & ewi@usd.ac.id department of english letters, universitas sanata dharma abstract this undergraduate study discusses a novel written by gayle forman entitled if i stay through the psychoanalytic study. the main character of the novel, mia hall, is in a comatose state after she gets an accident with her family. her parents and her brother do not survive. in this unconscious state, she has to choose one of the two choices whether to stay or to leave. her decision-making process, which the main character faces, inspires the researcher to study how mia hall’s unconsciousness is able to influence her decision making. the researcher formulates two problems for this study: (1) how the main character is described in the plot development of the story, and (2) how the decision-making process of the main character is seen in the story. the analysis produces some results and findings. the first finding is that the main character’s traits are family-centered, enthusiastic, loving, and thoughtful. the second result is that the main character’s decision making process is a descriptive model of decision making. the reason why she decides to stay in the world is influenced by her identity and the effects of her unconsciousness, in which she still has her grandparents as her family, her dream to become a cellist that she can pursue, and the people surrounding her whom she can share her affection for. keywords: psychoanalytic study, comatose state, gayle forman introduction factors of a decision making process come from human minds, which are the conscious and unconscious. in literary studies, those conscious and unconscious minds are analyzed in psychoanalysis. psychoanalytic reading is an approach of literary study which focuses on the explanations of the growth, development, and structure of human personality (dobie, 2012: 54) by observing the interaction of conscious and unconscious thoughts in mind (barry, 2002: 96). besides the conscious elements which come from the outer and inner self mentioned above, the unconscious things in mind play important roles in someone’s decision making. based on freudian psychoanalysis theory reviewed by john feist, the unconscious contains “all those drives, urges, or instincts that are beyond our awareness”, and they motivate most of our words, feelings, and actions (feist, 2006: 24). this study analyzes how the unconscious mind is able to motivate and trigger the main character’s decision making process, and one of the ways to observe how unconscious mind can influence someone’s decision making is through observing a patient’s mind who is in a comatose state. feist says the state of being comatose comes from the damage to an area of the 49 mailto:chindychristine@gmail.com journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) chindy christine & dewi widyastuti brain stem and make a person become unconscious. the reason why someone can become unconscious is because the brain stem associates with the unconsciousness in the sense of not being awake (feist, 2006: 54). shortly, a comatose state is a state where someone is being unconscious physically and mentally. when people are being in a coma, they are believed to be in the unconscious state (laureys, 2005: 899). medically, that person can do nothing. however, their mind does the other way around as it is described in gayle forman’s if i stay. although someone is in a comatose state and physically unconscious, the soul of that person is able to make a decision because of the unconscious that has been formed in the mind. the main character in if i stay, mia hall, is in this comatose state, and during this state, she has gone through a lot of matters which make her confused about whether to choose to live or to follow her family’s path to leave the world. choosing between life and death is a rarely-found choice in this life reality. human beings often take this life for granted until sometimes, the struggle to live this life in the best way is barely found. this study is to point out that characteristics formed in the unconscious mind can influence someone’s decision making process in a comatose state as seen in the main character of gayle forman’s if i stay. to do so, the psychoanalysis approach is employed to have a better understanding of the matter. based on the phenomenon above, the researcher proposes two formulations: (1) how is the main character described in the plot development of gayle forman’s if i stay?, and (2) how is the decision-making process of the main character seen in gayle forman’s if i stay? the unconscious peter barry states that “unconscious is the part of the mind beyond consciousness which nevertheless has a strong influence upon our actions” (2002: 96). michael ryan also has his definition of the unconscious that the unconscious refers to two things in psychology and psychoanalysis. the first derives from its use in recent cognitive psychology, and that means the mental processes that are just beneath conscious awareness. some of the more interesting have to do with prejudice, and they are revealed in tests that show how they shape our choices and thoughts. the second meaning derives from psychoanalysis, where it refers to the part of mind that is unavailable to consciousness (2012:45). this study focuses on the unconscious from psychoanalysis view. from this view, it is seen that the unconscious consists some repressed feelings and ideas from conscious mind. the content of the unconscious usually creates the effect indirectly in our behavior and in mental processes, and the move from unconscious to consciousness often follow the path of displacement (2012: 45). according to carl jung’s theory about the levels of psyche, there are two levels, the conscious and unconscious level. conscious images are those portrayed by the ego, which is the core of conscious mind, but not the core of personality. ego only plays a minor role in analytical psychology study, thus an overemphasis on expanding one’s conscious psyche can lead to psychological imbalance (feist, 2006: 103). because ego does not represent the whole personality of someone, this conscious level theory by carl jung is not the focus of the theory used to analyze this research. jung categorizes the unconscious level into two types, which are personal unconscious and collective unconscious. collective unconscious focuses on the roots in the ancestral part of the whole species, and its physical contents are inherited and passed from one generation to the next generation (feist, 2006: 104). because the unconscious theory used in this research only involves the main character of the story, the focus of the unconscious theory is on the personal unconscious. 50 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) in theories of personality, it is stated that “the personal unconscious embraces all repressed, forgotten, or subliminally perceived experiences of one particular individual. it contains repressed infantile memories and impulses, forgotten events, and experiences originally perceived below the threshold of our consciousness” (feist, 2006: 104). human being must have faced a lot of experiences since they were born until they become adult, and each human faces different experiences. personal unconscious is shaped by each person’s individual experiences, and therefore each person is unique. however, the images in the personal unconscious have different difficulty to be recalled, some can be done easily, some are remembered with difficulty, and some others are beyond the memory (feist, 2006: 104). decision making making decisions is done by people all the time, knowingly or unknowingly. the study of decisions consists of normative and descriptive models. “the normative analysis is concerned with the nature of rationality and the logic of decision making, while the descriptive analysis is concerned with people’s beliefs and preferences as they are, not as they should be” (kahneman, 1984: 341). these models are described more clearly in an article entitled designing for decision making by david h. jonassen. he also divides decision making theory described in the literature into two distinct conceptions, which are normative or prescriptive models and descriptive or naturalistic models. “normative theories of decision making assume that decision makers are rational people who seek to identify the optimal decision choice that maximizes utility in any uncertain situation. based on norms or standards of how decision making should be done, normative theories often prescribe how people should make decisions in the form of directives or rules” (jonassen, 2012: 343). on the contrary of normative concept, descriptive model of decision making are based on research that examines how people actually make decisions. people barely use the rational thought as what normative models assume. “rather, decisions are often made or influenced by unconscious drives and emotions as well as previous experiences. additionally, personal identities play a significant role in decision making” (jonassen, 2012: 343-344). people seldom have the quantitive comparing options, they frequently consider the possible outcomes and the effects in the future of that decision-making they have done. besides, decisions are also often influenced by each individual identity and the social expectations connected to that identity (jonassen, 2012: 344). descriptive decision making is the concern of this study. however, a question must appear “if people are not rational, how do they make decisions?”. this descriptive model is the answer because its approaches focuses on the roles of identity and unconscious emotions in decision making (jonassen, 2012: 348). mia hall in if i saty 1. family-centered in the beginning of the story, when her parents want to use the day-off to visit henry and willow, their close friends, mia hesitates to join. she prefers to go back to bed. however, when his father mentions that they can also visit her grandparents for having an early dinner on their way back home, she directly says, “i’m in” (forman, 2010: 10). she loves being together with her family, and it is shown in her monologue: it isn’t the lure of book barn, or the fact that adam is on tour, or that my best friend, kim, is busy doing the yearbook stuff. it isn’t even that my cello is at school or that i could stay home and watch tv or sleep. i’d actually rather go off with my family (forman, 2010:10). that statement shows that mia agrees to go not because of the lure to a bookshop or that her best friend and boyfriend are busy, but because she 51 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) chindy christine & dewi widyastuti prioritizes her family over anything else. this part of story is still in the beginning before they get the accident. in this part, the author uses the showing way to present the readers about the family-centered characteristic in mia hall. both when she is alive and when she is in the comatose state, mia hall is familycentered because of her focus and love is first to her family members. firstly, this part shows how deep her love is to her parents. the first evidence is seen from the way she remembers her parents. she tells about how her parents never call teddy and her as accidents, surprises, nor any other calling; how her parents appreciate every process that they have while being with her and teddy (forman, 2010: 85). the acceptance that her parents do for their children makes mia love her parents very much. then, after her family gets the accident and her parents do not survive, when she is in the comatose state, she feels empty and frustrated to face this state because her parents are not there for her. my parents aren’t here. they are not holding my hand, or cheering me on. i know them well enough to know that if they could, they would (forman, 2010: 87). how am i supposed to decide this? how can i possibly stay without mom and dad? how can i leave without teddy? (forman, 2010: 88) besides being family-centered to her parents, mia hall also cares about her younger brother, teddy. when the car accident happens, and her soul wakes up, the first thought appearing in her mind is to find teddy. ““i need to find teddy! where is he?” i spin around, suddenly frantic, like the time i lost him for ten minutes at grocery store” (forman, 2010: 17). she shows her love to teddy through her actions. when teddy cannot survive, she feels mournful. it is really painful for her to accept the reality that her little brother does not survive. i run away. i leave adam, kim, and willow and i just start careening through the hospital. i don’t realize i’m looking for the pediatric ward until i get there (forman, 2010: 159). i’m looking for him, even though i know i won’t find him. still, i have to keep looking (forman, 2010: 160). 2. enthusiastic mia hall is an enthusiastic person, especially when it deals with music. it can be seen from her big ambition to be a professional cellist. she starts playing cello when she is eight years old, and she has her first recital 2 years after she starts practicing, which is 10 years old. the researcher states that mia hall is an enthusiast because she performs in a recital only with a 2-year learning period and when she is still very young. at first, her parents also do not believe in their daughter’s enthusiasm. when i announced to mom and dad that i was going to become a cellist, they both burst out laughing. they apologized about it later, claiming that the image of pint-size me with such a hulking instrument between my spindly legs had made them crack up. once they’d realized i was serious, they immediately swallowed their giggles and put on supportive faces (forman, 2010: 22). that quotation shows that her parents are surprised when they know how their daughter is really high-spirited in reaching her dream. she is only ten years old at that time, and she already decides that she is going to be a cellist in the future. since then, her parents always support her ambition to be a cellist. they hire a cello teacher for mia hall. her name is professor christie. it is mia’s father who knows her, and she wants to listen to mia’s play first. after she does it, she offers to take over the training (forman, 2010: 24). when she grows up and she is in the third grade of senior high school, it is the moment when she has to choose where to 52 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) continue her study to the college. when her grandmother gives an idea about her enrolling to julliard, the most popular university for art, she is very excited. when her parents also support her, she fills out her application and sends in a recording of her playing (forman, 2010: 46-48). few days after sending it, the julliard school sends her an invitation letter to an audition held in san fransisco. by directly sending her application to julliard, it shows how enthusiastic mia hall is. however, she does not directly tell adam about applying to julliard because she thinks that by telling adam, she might not enroll there and pursue her ambition because then they will be distant. it is stated in so, i filled out my application, collected my letters of recommendation, and sent in a recording of my playing. i didn’t tell adam about any of this. .... a small part of me felt like applying was some kind of betrayal. julliard was in new york. adam was here (forman, 2010: 48). after mia gets the invitation letter from julliard, she tells adam about her enrolling there. mia hall is a family-centered person, and she also feels sad to choose julliard at first because she has to be far away from her parents too. however, because her parents always support her to reach her dream, she can be relieved to leave them. adam, mia hall’s boyfriend, also supports her, but mia hall does not directly tell adam the truth because she does not know what will happen to them in the future if they are apart. when adam and mia goes to a new year’s eve party, they have a discussion about their going-to-be long distance relationship, and mia becomes thoughtful about what adam says to her, “promise me you’ll spend new year’s with me next year” (forman, 2010: 207). after that party, mia goes home and her expression is different. her mom turns to her and she directly cries and releases all of the tension with her mom. mom shot me a sympathetic grimace. “i don’t know. but i do know that if you want to stay and be with him, i’d support that, though maybe i’m only saying that because i don’t think you’d be able to turn down julliard” (forman, 2010: 211). relating this trait to the plot development, in the end of the story, when her family creates a family gathering and when everyone asks mia and adam to play the music together, mia plays cello and adam plays guitar, she keeps refusing because she insists that those two styles do not fit together (forman, 2010: 226). although both of them play strings musical instruments, both of their styles are different. mia prefers classic genre, while adam always plays rock music. that is why, mia is not confident if her enthusiasm in music can be shown well when she plays it together with adam. i was a little scared of falling on my face, of not blending, of making bad music. but everyone was looking at me so intently, wanting me join in so much, and i realized that sounding bad wasn’t the worst thing in the world that could happen. so i played. and even though you wouldn’t think it, the cello didn’t sound half bad with all those guitars. in fact, it sounded pretty amazing (forman, 2010: 227) there is a development of enthusiastic trait in this part of story. when it comes to music, she is always enthusiastic for herself before, but after she remembers this event, her enthusiasm in music is not only for herself, but also for others. 3. loving mia is a loving person. she loves and cares about her family; kim, her best friend; and adam, her lover; and all of them also love her very much. when the plot is in mia’s life before accident, it can be seen that mia tries to fit in adam’s life even though she does not like and enjoy it. when adam invites her to his band play, this is what mia hall thinks 53 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) chindy christine & dewi widyastuti adam invited me to see his band play. this was even worse than school. if i felt like a fish out of water in my family, i felt like fish on mars in adam’s circle. he was always surrounded by funky, lively people, by cute girls with dyed hair and piercings, by aloof guys who perked up when adam rock-talked with them (forman, 2010: 55). although mia hall says that she feels like a fish on mars in adam’s circle, she comes to adam’s band play every time he invites her. she keeps supporting adam in his career with the band. she struggles to hold herself from the situation around her so that she still can be there for adam when he performs. the author uses the showing method to show this loving trait that mia gives to adam. when mia is in the comatose state, the person she wants to see most is adam. for this plot development, the author uses the telling method to show how big mia’s desire is to meet her most beloved one. she says, adam is the one i really want to see. i wish i knew where he was so i could try to go there. i have no idea how he’s going to find out about me. gran and gramps don’t have his phone number, so he can’t call them. they don’t carry cell phones, so he can’t call them (forman, 2010: 53). when her body is in comatose, and her soul is observing people around her, mia hall really expects adam to be there. she thinks about the ways how to contact him, but she certainly cannot do that by herself. when adam arrives at the hospital, he cannot directly see mia because she is in the icu and it is only her immediate family members who are allowed to see her (forman, 2010: 107). when kim asks him to give up seeing mia, he does not want to. he says, “i only need a second. so i can show her that i’m here. that someone’s still here” (forman, 2010: 125). by saying that, adam shows that he wants to fight for mia. he does not want mia to give up because for at least mia has someone who is there for her. he has sacrificed his band performance, which is actually on that night. if mia is not a loving person, adam may not want to struggle like that. after adam finally succeeds to see her, mia feels so happy until she wants to be one with her body so that she can feel the love directly from adam’s hand (forman, 2010: 197-198). besides loving adam, mia also loves kim very much. kim is her best friend in the school. mia hall and kim have been friends since they are in the six grades. at first everyone says that they will get along as close friends. however, they resent one another, and they have an actual fight. by the end of the fight, they laugh and become friends just like everyone has predicted. from that point on, they are inseparable (forman, 2010: 71-73). when kim arrives at the hospital, she feels very happy. it is stated that i’m so happy when kim arrives; happy to see the familiar sight of her long black hair in a single braid. she wears the braid every day and always, by lunchtime, the curls and ringlets of her thick mane have managed to escape in rebellious little tendrils (forman, 2010: 63). mia pays attention to every single thing which kim is wearing at that time. by showing that mia is a caring person, the author wants to convey that mia is a loving person. mia hall always appreciates her friendship journey with kim. it is stated that “when we got older, we liked to joke that we were so glad we had that fistfight. not only did it cement our friendship but it also provided us our first and likely only opportunity for a good brawl” (forman, 2010: 74). when they are nostalgic about the beginning of their friendship, they always laugh at it. however, when mia is in the comatose state and almost decides to leave the world, she shows a deep sadness if she should leave her best friend. i know that kim’s telling me this to try to 54 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) keep me alive. she probably doesn’t realize that in a weird way, her remark frees me, just like gramp’s permission did. i know it will be awful for kim when i die, but i also think about what she said, about not being scared, about jail being easy compared to losing me. and that’s how i know that kim will be okay (forman, 2010: 218). in the plot development, this quote is almost reaching the end of the story. it means that mia is in the critical state when she says this in her mind. she is in the moment where she has to choose between to stay or to leave. however, she still thinks about kim’s feeling at that time. she knows that kim will be awful if she chooses to leave the world, but she also believes that kim will be okay about any decision she is going to take. in this part of the story, the author shows the loving characteristic of mia hall by the telling method, which is by her own utterances. 4. thoughtful she does not decide something easily, she always considers everything well, and she also thinks about other people’s wishes and feelings. when mia’s gran and gramps just finish visiting her room, they talk about unexpected conversation about mia, and mia hears it. the conversation starts from a question by gramps, “do you think she decides?” (forman, 2010: 86-87). after mia listens to that conversation, then she becomes considerate about the comatose state she is having. if i stay. if i live. it’s up to me. all this business about medically induced comas is just doctor talk. it’s not up to the doctors. it’s not up to the absentee angels. it’s not even up to god who, if he exists, is nowhere around right now. it’s up to me. how am i supposed to decide this? how can i possibly stay without mom and dad? how can i leave without teddy? or adam? this is too much. i don’t even understand how it all works, why i’m here in the state that i’m in or how to get out of it if i wanted to. but in spite of that, i believe it’s true. i hear the nurse’s words again. i am running the show. everyone is waiting on me. i decide. i know this now. and this terrifies me more than anything else that has happened today (forman, 2010: 88). when she tries to think about how she can make a decision in that comatose state, she cannot decide directly, she considers many things. she does not want to live without her parents, but she also does not want to leave adam. it is difficult for her to choose life because she does not have any family anymore. but her love to adam is also very deep that she cannot leave him and choose to leave the world. mia hall’s decision making process mia hall and all of her family members get a car accident on a snowy day, when the schools are off and her family is planning to visit her parents’ friends. however, when they are still on their way to their destination, their car gets crashed by a fourton pick-up truck. the car is totally damaged, looking like a metal skeleton, without any seats, and without passengers (forman, 2010: 15). the moment after that accident, mia wakes up. she directly gives her effort to find her family members. mia’s father and mother pass away right after the accident. after she finds out her parents’ dead body, she directly looks for teddy’s body. she finds a body near the ditch where she wakes up. she thinks it is teddy’s body. when she edges closer, she realizes that it is not teddy lying there, but it is herself. she sees how bad her body condition is. she spins away, tries to reassure herself that it is a nightmare. she cannot believe that an accident just happens to her family (forman, 2010: 15-18). mia hall is in a comatose state. based on the definition terms mentioned in the previous chapter, a comatose state is a state of extended unconsciousness which is caused by various problems, such as traumatic head injury, stroke, brain tumor, etc. the accident which mia gets with her 55 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) chindy christine & dewi widyastuti family causes her to be in a comatose state. however, in the story, her soul is described to be alive, where she can observe the people visiting her in the hospital and the situation around her. as time goes by, mia hall realizes that she is the one who can overcome her comatose state if she wants to stay and be alive. the author, gayle forman, puts the main character into a difficult situation, which is in a comatose state where no one around her can see and listen to her directly. the researcher finds that although mia hall is in the comatose state, she is showing her struggle to overcome this state through her decision making process whether to stay or to leave. in this part, the researcher shows mia hall’s decision making process. the decision made by mia hall is that she chooses to be alive and stay in the world. as the title of the novel, if i stay, mia hall has two choices. she is able to choose whether to follow her family members’ path or not to follow them by staying and continuing her life without them. the decision making process of mia hall is very important to be analyzed because her being coma and her decision either to stay or to leave are the main conflicts in the plot development of the story. in the accident, mia is the only one who survives, but she is in the comatose state. although her body is in a coma, mia is described by the author to be able to feel and speak to the people surrounding her. however, they cannot respond to her. mia’s soul is described by the researcher as her unconscious mind. according to jonassen, someone’s unconscious mind is able to affect the decision making because decisions are based on values, in which values are related to someone’s emotions and choices. the decision making process by mia hall does not take an easy and a short process because during the moments of her unconscious state, there are some matters that she considers. those matters are the people (her grandparents, boyfriend, and best friend) who keep supporting her and her dream to study in julliard and also to be a professional cellist. in the previous part of this chapter, mia hall’s characteristics are analyzed by the researcher. mia hall is a familycentered, enthusiastic, loving, and thoughtful person. relating the unconscious mind to her decision making to be alive, the researcher analyzes that the traits of mia hall are able to influence mia hall’s decision making process in her comatose state and to choose to be alive. mia hall’s decision making process is based on the descriptive model. based on the researcher’s analysis, mia hall does not decide to be alive by using the rationality and logical mind of a human being. stated in many scenes of the novel, she loves her parents and her brother very much. in the novel, mia says, “my parents aren’t here. they are not holding my hand, or cheering me on. how am i supposed to decide this? how am i possibly stay without mom and dad?” (forman, 2010: 87-88). she is unsure if she has to choose to stay without her parents accompany her. she is also frustrated when she knows that teddy, her beloved brother, does not survive. it is stated on page 159 when mia says, “i know that all the magic kisses couldn’t have helped him today. but i would do anything to have been able to give him one.” mia hall faces a deep misery because teddy leaves her after his being in a coma, and it means that she loses all of the beloved members of her family. because she loves her parents and teddy very much and she feels alone to live without them, she will choose to leave the world and follow their paths if she uses her logical mind as a human being. however, she does not choose that decision because she does not make the decision using the normative method of decision making, but the descriptive method. according to david h. jonassen, decisions, which are based on the descriptive concept, are often influenced by unconscious drives, emotions, and personal identities (2012: 334). the researcher 56 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) applies that theory because those three elements are related to each other in revealing the decision making process by mia hall. mia’s personal identities are seen through her characteristics, while unconscious drives and emotions are seen through the action and the speech of mia’s soul. there are two things discussed by jonassen when it comes to the descriptive model of decision making, which are the identity-based decision making and the effects of unconscious. there are three questions asked by someone who does the descriptive model of decision making. the first question is “what kind of situation is this?”. the second one is “what kind of person am i?”. the first and second questions are discussed in the first part, identity-based decision making; and because the third question is related to the unconscious mind of the main character, the question “what does a person such as i do?” is discussed in the second part as the transition to the effects of unconscious. 1. identity-based decision making according to jonassen, most of the time people make decisions based on rules following identities. in the decision-making process, “people are influenced significantly by questioning their personal identities (2012: 348). in this process, people may ask some questions to themselves, the same as mia hall. when she understands that she is the one who decides her own path, she comes to this process. she asks herself the questions: “what kind of situation is this?” to have the recognition and “what kind of person i am?” to reflect on her identity and to use it as her motivation to do the decisionmaking process. she asks the first question to herself when she is in the location of the accident and when she is in the hospital. when she just gets the accident, she observes the surrounding around her. it is stated that “and there was so much noise... then, it went quiet, except for this: beethoven’s cello sonata no. 3, still playing. i climb up the embankment to get a better look at the car. it isn’t even a car anymore. it’s a metal skeleton, without seats, without passengers” (forman, 2010: 15-16). after observing the audio and visual around her, she notices that her family gets a serious accident until the car is damaged and all of her family members are not inside the car. she also observes what state she is in when the ambulance comes to pick her and her family. it is stated, “i don’t feel anything, at least the me who’s a bystander here does not. and the me on the stretcher doesn’t seem to feel anything, either. again, i have to wonder if i’m dead but then i tell myself no... also, if i were dead, i like to think mom and dad would’ve come for me by now” (forman, 2010: 30). she questions whether she is dead or not because she cannot feel anything and she thinks that her body which is on the stretcher also does not feel anything. when she is already in the hospital, she also asks the same question. the operation goes on and on. i’m exhausted by it... i start to zone out. and then i start to wonder about this state i’m in. if i’m not dead – and the heart monitor is bleeping along, so i assume i’m not – in my body, either, can i go anywhere? am i a ghost? could i transport myself to a beach in hawaii? can i pop over to carniege hall in new york city? can i got to teddy? (forman, 2010: 43) the second question, which is what kind of person mia hall is, is already answered in the previous part of this chapter. as the researcher observes mia hall’s thoughts, speeches, actions, and how the others respond to mia, mia hall is someone who is family-centered, enthusiastic, loving, and thoughtful. in this identity-based decision making, the theory states that “individuals tend to use rules of behavior from those surrounding them to predict their behavior and decision-making tendencies” (jonassen, 2012: 349). before 57 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) chindy christine & dewi widyastuti mia is in the comatose state, mia already has those traits mentioned in herself. when she is in a coma, she tends to see the people surrounding her; her grandparents, her best friend (kim), and her boyfriend (adam); to predict whether they want her to fight to live or not. because they are always there for her and they keep supporting her in her unconscious state, she starts to open herself to realize that she still has many people who love her and she will not be alone if she chooses to stay. ... and gran would’ve told me that maybe i was there as an angel before i chose to become mom and dad’s kid. but now i wonder. and now i hope. because when i go, i want to remember kim. and i want to remember kim. and i want to remember her like this: telling a funny story, fighting with her crazy mom, being cheered on by punkers, rising to the occasion, finding little pockets od strength in herself that she had no idea she possessed. adam is different story. remembering adam would be like losing him all over again, and i’m not sure if i can bear that on top of everything else (forman, 2010: 217). those statements show that mia feels difficult to leave her grandparents, kim, and adam. she says that she wants to remember them when she leaves the world. however, she wonders and hopes that she does not need to remember them because they are meaningful to her and she cannot bear the pain to lose them, especially adam, her lover. the personal unconscious theory by carl jung states that “the personal unconscious embraces all repressed, forgotten, subliminally perceived experiences of one particular individual”. the following statement is that the personal unconscious contains the repressed memories and the strong wish, forgotten incidents, and experiences seen below the life period of someone’s unconsciousness (feist, 2006: 104). that statement helps the researcher reveal mia hall’s struggle which is influenced by her characteristics in which her traits are the repressed and perceived experiences that she gets when she has not been in the comatose state. the second question of the identity-based decision making process is “what kind of person i am?”, and the characteristics of mia hall are able to relate the question to her struggle to overcome her comatose state and to make a decision to stay. as it is described in the previous part of this chapter, the characteristics of mia hall are familycentered, enthusiastic, loving, and thoughtful. her first struggle is influenced by her family-centered and loving traits. although her parents and teddy have passed away and left her, she still has other family members who encourage her to struggle. they are her gran and gramps. her gran and gramps are always in the hospital. they never leave mia, and they always check on the progress of mia hall’s body. because mia hall is a familycentered person and she does not have her parents beside her anymore, she relies her life on her grandparents. there is a moment when her grandparents leave her for a moment and she feels uncomfortable. it states that “i am a little freaked out right now. gran and gramps left a while ago, but i stayed behind here in the icu. i am sitting in one the chairs, going over conversation which was very nice and normal and nondisturbing, until they left” (forman, 2010: 86). the statement clarifies the characteristics of mia’s being family-centered because she always wants her grandparents to stay beside her body, and she enjoys listening to their conversation as if everything is in the normal condition before she is in a coma. after mia halls listens to the conversation between her grandparents and the nurse that she is the one running the show and she is the one who decides, she becomes confused about what to choose. when the plot development is almost reaching the end, her gramps comes to the icu and talks to mia hall’s body. at that time, mia is already frustrated by the situation 58 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) because she just hears the news about teddy’s not surviving, so she stays inside the icu, beside her body, and listens to what her gramps says to her “it’s okay,” he tells me. if you want to go. everyone wants you to stay. i want you to stay more than i’ve ever wanted a thing in life.” his voice cracks with emotion. he stops, clears his throat, takes a breath, and continues. “but that’s what i want and i could see why it might not be what you want. so i just wanted to tell you that i understand if you go. it’s okay if you have to leave us. it’s okay if you want to stop fighting.” (forman, 2010: 181) mia hall’s gramps gives her permission to go. he knows that it is difficult for mia hall to accept the truth that her parents and her beloved brother cannot survive, so he says it is okay if mia wants to choose to die and follow her family. after mia listens to her gramps’ words for her, her response is for the first time since i realized that teddy was gone, too, i feel something unclench. i feel myself breath.... this is the first time today that anyone acknowledged what i have lost ... gramp’s recognition, and the permission he just offered me – it feels like a gift (forman, 2010: 181182). in one way, mia feels relieved and glad because she has someone who understands the lost that she feels. her gramps also tells mia that she may choose her parents and teddy, instead of choosing the life. however, mia can also acknowledge the sincere love from her gramps. when her gramps gives her permission to go, it means that he does not want to be egoistic. he gives mia the right to decide what she wants to choose although what he actually really wants is that mia to stay. besides the characteristics of being family-centered, mia hall is also a loving person. kim, her best friend, also comes and stays in the hospital. she keeps waiting for her turn to see mia directly. before she has the chance to enter the icu, she goes to a small chapel in the hospital’s basement. mia follows her and sits on a chair beside her. by being together with her best friend, she feels calm. the calm feeling is stated in “it feels so natural the way that kim is talking to me like she always does. other than the paramedic who told me to hang in there and the nurse who keeps asking me how i’m doing, no one has talked to me since the accident. they talked about me” (forman, 2010: 67). when mia is with kim, she feels that kim is the only one who talks to her and understands her. the way how the nurses take care of mia is different from the way how kim cares about mia. because kim is mia’s best friend and she knows mia very well, the way she talks to mia is so natural, and mia feels comfortable with it. in almost the end of the story, kim is also the one who encourages mia to stay. she lists all the people who are and have been at the hospital, and she ends her talk with mia by kissing mia’s forehead and whispering “you still have a family” (forman, 2010: 219-220). mia’s other characteristics which give big impact to her struggle are her enthusiastic and thoughtful traits. in the end of the story, when mia is in the moment where she has to choose, adam places headphones on mia’s ears and plays yoyo ma’s andante con moto e poco, her favorite cello music. adam knows that mia is very enthusiastic when it comes to music, and music can always make mia feel alive, so adam plays the music for the purpose of reminding mia about her dream to be a cellist (forman, 2010: 231-233). mia has already dreamed to be a cellist since she is 10 years old. she also has applied to continue her higher education to julliard, and she is accepted. her step to reach her dream is already really close. thus, adam plays the music to remind mia of her dream she can pursue if she chooses to stay. mia’s thoughtful characteristic is seen clearly when the music is played on her ears. she flashes back everything that has happened in her whole life, and she also imagines what will happen in the future. she remembers her family members, who sit 59 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) chindy christine & dewi widyastuti around the breakfast table together while the snow is blowing outside; kim, who will walk through new york city together after they graduate; teddy, who sits on her lap and is laughing hard; her cello, which is the one her parents gives her after her first recital; and adam, who is holding her hand and playing the music for her (forman, 2010: 232). she has many thoughts in her mind. if she is not a considerate person, she will not think about too many considerations. she will directly decides based on the main trait she has, which is the family-centered trait. however, she keeps considering what she should choose, whether to stay or to leave, and in the end, she chooses to stay. after adam successfully triggers mia’s enthusiastic and thoughtful traits by playing her favorite cello music, the statement below is the struggle which mia makes in her comatose state to choose to be alive. adam is crying and somewhere inside of me i am crying, too, because i’m feeling things at last. i’m feeling not just the physical pain, but all that i have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave a crater in me that nothing will ever fill. but i’m also feeling all that i have in my life, which includes what i have lost, as well as the great unknown of what life might still bring me. ... the only way to survive them is to concentrate on adam’s hand. grasping mine (forman, 2010: 233). the statement shows that mia wants to survive. although she is feeling painful because of her family members she has lost, she wants to take the hopes of life that she still has. she struggles and tries to overcome her comatose state by concentrating on her energy to hold adam’s hand. however, she does not succeed easily, so she does another effort. i aim every remaining ounce of energy into my right hand. i’m weak, and this is so hard. it’s the hardest thing i will ever have to do. i summon all the love i have ever felt, i summon all the strength that gran and gramps and kim and the nurses and willow have given me. i summon all the breath that mom, dad, and teddy would fill me with if they could. i summon all my own strength... i picture my hand stroking teddy’s hair, grasping above my cello, interlaced with adam’s (forman, 2010: 234). after mia hall tries to summon all the energy she has, her soul is able to be one with the body again, and she successfully overcomes her comatose state. as it is mentioned above, the researcher states that mia’s soul is the representation of her unconscious mind, and the unconscious mind of mia hall is represented as her characteristics because her traits are one of the personal unconscious parts. the struggle that mia hall does is motivated by the people around her who keeps supporting her to stay. mia’s grandparents, kim, and adam motivate mia to struggle her coma condition by triggering her characteristics which are in her personal unconscious. the third question in mia hall’s decision making process is “what does a person such as i do?”. this question makes the person consider the rule which follows the choices she/he has. because the answer of this question is related to the situation or state which mia hall is in, the analysis is discussed and elaborated in the next part of the descriptive model of decision-making process, which is the effects of unconscious. 2. the effects of the unconscious according to brooks, “decisions are value-based, where values drive from our emotions and guide our choice” (2001: xi). jonassen concludes from brooks’ theory that the main drive for a decision-making process is the mind or the unconscious of a person which affects the conscious value judgements involved in decision making (2012: 349). humans decide every day. when making a decision, there are some considerations, and the considerations are mostly based on the values of the good and bad impact of the decision. those values are experienced from the decisions taken in the 60 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) past time, so it can create the emotions toward the decisions which will be taken in the future time. the decision taken by mia hall is also a value-based decision. although the decision between choosing life or death is the first kind of decision making which mia makes, this decision is driven by her emotion and her unconscious mind which are triggered by her traits. this part is related to the last question from the previous part because the answer of the question “what mia hall will do” is also the effect of her unconscious. being in the unconscious state, her identity is the only key for mia to help her consider and decide. before she decides what she will do, she looks again at the values of her life she has gathered. in the quiet corner of the icu i start to really think about the bitter things i’ve managed to ignore so far today. what would it be like if i stay? what would it feel like if i stay? what would it feel like to wake up an orphan? to never smell dad smoke a pipe? to never read teddy another chapter of harry potter? to stay without them? (forman, 2010: 164) mia hall is a family-centered person. when she thinks again about her parents and brother who pass away, she feels like she has no one. she feels like it is impossible to stay without having them with her. her unconscious mind even makes her not care about her body anymore because she says, “i don’t know exactly what’s happened to me, and for the first time today, i don’t really care. i shouldn’t have to care. i shouldn’t have to work this hard” (forman, 2010: 174). however, when she has lost her hope, her gramps comes to the icu and cries. mia hall is surprised to see her gramps cry. this can be seen in her monologue, “when i open my eyes, gramps is there. he’s crying. he’s not making any noise, but tears are cascading down his cheeks, wetting his entire face. i’ve never seen anyone cry like this” (forman, 2010: 181). she can feel her grandparents’ love to her, and she realizes that she still has them as her family. besides having her grandparents, she also has a best friend who is very loyal to her. because mia is a loving person, kim loves her very much. she does many efforts to convince that mia’s life is very meaningful because she has many people she can rely on. she lists all the people who are at the hospital or who have been by saying “your grandparents and aunts, uncles, and cousins. adam and brooke vega and the various rabble-rousers who came with her. adam’s bandmates mike and fitzy and liz and her girlfriend, sarah, all of whom have been downstairs in the waiting room since they got heaved out of the icu. professor christie, who drove down and stayed half the night before driving back so she could sleep a few hours and shower and make some morning appointment she had... and me and mom. shoot. i lost count of how many people that was. but it was a lot” (forman, 2010: 220). by doing this, kim is triggering mia’s loving trait unconsciously so that she realizes that she can give her affection to many people who care about her like the way mia cares about kim as her best friend. after considering the values of life which are related to her familycentered and loving traits that she has got by observing her surrounding, her unconscious mind affects her to make her decision into an action. mia hall is keen on classic music. her favorite classic musician is yo yo ma. when adam wants mia to struggle her comatose state, she plays yo yo ma music on her ears. this way is based on the value-based theory because the value of mia’s favorite music is able to touch her emotion and guide her to remember again her dream, and intrigue her to choose to be alive. related to her third trait, mia is a thoughtful person when she already gathers all the choices she has with each consideration. because identities are socially formed and they have big tendency in decision making, mia starts to remember 61 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) chindy christine & dewi widyastuti everyone she loves when that yo yo ma music plays. in her unconscious self, she has four strong traits which give her the reasons to stay: she still has her grandparents as her family, she has her beloved ones (kim and adam) whom she can share her love to, and she has a dream to pursue because she is accepted in julliard. by having those reasons, she has the main drive supporting her struggle to overcome her comatose state and stay alive in the world. conclusion relating it to her decision making process, mia hall has two choices. in this novel, death and life are presented as choices which mia hall has to choose. she can choose to follow her parents’ and brother’s path to leave the world or to stay and continue her life. in the end of the story, mia hall decides to overcome her comatose state and choose to be alive. mia hall’s decision making is based on the descriptive model of decision making because the decisions are influenced and made by the unconscious drive and emotions. there are two process of descriptive model of decision making. identity-based decision making as the first process is analyzed by answering two of the three questions which are about the recognition and identity of the main character. mia hall recognizes that she just gets an accident. she keeps questioning whether in this state she is dead or not because she cannot feel anything and the people surrounding her do not respond her. after she recognizes her being in comatose state, she is able to answer the first question. the second question asking her identity is related to her characteristics which are discussed in the first analysis. she is a kind of person who is family-centered, enthusiastic, loving, and thoughtful. thus, the comatose situation and those four characteristics of mia hall are able to trigger her step of the decision-making process. the second process is the effects of the unconscious. this process states that decisions are value-based. the values of mia hall’s are observed through her emotions and unconscious drives. as they are observed, the effects of the unconscious which are related to the traits having been formed in her unconscious mind are able to reveal her decision, and also to show the reasons why she decides to struggle in her comatose state and choose to stay alive. the decision making of mia hall in which she chooses to stay instead of leaving is considered a unique decision. the process how she makes her decision is supported by the people who care about her. thus, they also become the reasons why mia chooses to be alive because she still has some family members, her grandfather and grandmother, who love her very much (family-centered); she has a big opportunity to pursue her dream to be a cellist because she is already accepted in a popular music and art school (enthusiastic and thoughtful); and she still has her beloved best friend and boyfriend who never stop convincing her that she has many people whom she can share her affection with (loving). the final remark of this undergraduate study is that someone’s decision making process is influenced and motivated by the unconscious mind because everything that has been recorded during someone’s life is giving impact to what she/he does and decides. as it is seen in the main character of if i stay, the decision making process done by mia hall is influenced by her characteristics and her surroundings which have been formed in her unconscious mind before she is in the comatose state. references abrams, m. h. a glossary of literary terms. new york: holt, rineheart, winston, inc., 1981. barry, peter. beginning theory: an introduction to literary and cultural 62 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 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(http://www.jstor.org/stable/256539 18). september 5, 2016. 64 http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coma/basics/definition/conhttp://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coma/basics/definition/conhttp://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coma/basics/definition/conhttp://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coma/basics/definition/conhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/25653918 http://www.jstor.org/stable/25653918 decision making mia hall in if i saty 1. family-centered 2. enthusiastic 3. loving 4. thoughtful mia hall’s decision making process 1. identity-based decision making 2. the effects of the unconscious 163 vol. 22 no. 1, april 2022, pp. 163-178 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i1.3831 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. the effects of colonialism toward the timorese as depicted in nesi’s orang-orang oetimu catharina brameswari, tatang iskarna, monica angela nadine titaley catharinabrameswari@usd.ac.id, iskarna@usd.ac.id, monicaangelan@gmail.com english letters department, universitas sanata dharma, indonesia abstract article information this research scrutinizes the effects of colonialism toward the timorese in oetimu as depicted in the novel of orang-orang oetimu by felix k. nesi. from the perspective of postcolonial criticism, the combination of the invasion of the portuguese, japanese, and indonesian in east timor leaves changes in social structure and relations among the timorese. this study aims to unveil from postcolonial view, especially said, gandhi, foulcer and day, the destructive cultural and social effect, clash of local parties, and hidden colonial power which still exists in the timorese society. colonialism in east timor operated by portuguese, japan, and indonesia brought about physical, social, and cultural conflicts. portuguese colonialism impacted on the socio-political friction among timorese and destructive vanishing of their culture. japanese colonialism left trauma amongst them as physical oppression was often used to have domination over the people. indonesian invasion also resulted in horizontal conflicts amongst the timorese. violence and corrupt culture became new perspective in solving the problems. presenting the colonial conflicts and destructive cultural effects, the novel voices postcolonial discourse that the effect of colonialism can last long and its ideology of binary opposition and cultural justification of domination in the name of civilization can be reproduced. keywords: colonial conflict; colonial effect; postcolonial discourse received: 5 november 2021 revised: 11 january 2022 accepted: 12 february 2022 introduction as the mirror and reflection of the real life, literary works illustrate the interaction between men and society. through the lens of a literary work, the readers can see the real problems which happened around us. colonialism always becomes an interesting issue to be discussed since it is closely related to us. moreover, the theme of the novel, orangorang oetimu, is about colonialism which happens in east timor. kohan (2010) describes colonialism as a domination of one group towards another group. originally from latin word, colonus means colony (p. 68). furthermore, ayegboyin (2008) defines https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) catharina brameswari, et.al. 164 colonialism as a system and an ideology. as a system, it refers to the occupation and domination towards weaker countries by stronger countries. in terms of ideology, colonialism is used to give the benefits of the system to the colonizers (p. 33). east timor experiences waves of invasion and colonialism from the portuguese, british, japanese, and indonesian. after colonizing for three hundred years, portuguese left east timor to the new colonialism era. indonesia’s military invasion and the clash between the local groups later brought the unending grief to the timorese. they were put into the oscillation to join the fretilin, which declared east timor independent, or to join indonesia. the brutal military occupation by the republic resulted in the genocide which mostly was not captured by cameras. indonesia, which was once colonialized by the dutch, then became a new colonizer in east timor. in his novel, nesi highlights the destructive cultural and social effect, clash of local parties, and hidden colonial power which still exists in the timorese society in light and simple language. this novel is important to be analysed because we are asked to take a look at the real problem and the effects of colonialism in east timor. this ethnographic novel was selected because it contains a criticism and sometimes a scold towards the oppressors. in addition, the researchers were interested to deconstruct the issues raised by the writer through the lens of the timorese. though the author focuses on illustrating the life of the oetimu people, the events which take place outside oetimu have brought such great impacts to this region. some of them are the effects of decolonization of east timor by the portuguese, japan’s occupation, the fall of soeharto regime, and even the world cup final match. based on the issues mentioned above, this research puts special focus on the attempt to scrutinize the effects of colonialism in east timor. this issue is important to be discussed for appreciating, respecting, and maintaining the diversity of all cultures and traditions are essential. importantly, it is also a reminder to develop future generation’s empathy to understand the misery and suffering of others. moreover, this research is also an attempt to reveal postcolonial discourse the novel intends to propose. postcolonial discourse is suitable to be employed for it may illuminates literary works written by the oppressed that comes from the east (ashcroft et. al., 2002, p. 11). though many previous studies discussed the same novel, those only highlight the issue on the binary opposition, hegemony, and deconstruction. moreover, none problematized the destructive cultural and social effect and hidden colonial power which still exists in the timorese society. thus, based on the background and problem formulations above, this study puts special focus to: 1) unveil the conflicts described in the novel, 2) reveal the colonial effects which are resulted from the conflicts, and 3) find the postcolonial discourse the novel intends to propose. theoretically, this research can be beneficial to overview the theories on postcolonialism, especially the problems on destructive cultural and social effect and hidden colonial power. practically, the students of contemporary literary criticism, prose, indonesian studies, and thesis writing class can employ this research to sharpen their critical thinking in examining literary works from postcolonialism perspective. thirdly, it can be used as a way to educate and raise the readers’ awareness that protecting and giving the oppressed opportunities to speak are essential. furthermore, it is a reminder to develop the young generation’s compassion to understand the suffering of the timorese. the researchers also hope that the readers can be the agents who can expose that the study on postcolonial issue is essential to scrutinize, review, recall, and to interrogate the trace of colonialism. the effects of colonialism will stay even though the colonizer has left the colony. it is for the reason that colonialism is not only focus on the conquest of the territory but also on the occupation of minds, selves, and cultures. thus, it will control the way the people live and express their thoughts. the problem in east timor, now officially known as timor leste, will always be interesting to be discussed. moreover, there are many different perspectives which are still potential for the other authors to write. orangorang oetimu has invited scholarly discussions in indonesia. the academic discussion towards journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 165 the novel does not only highlight the binary opposition or deconstruct the issue of power relation and the domination of the ruler, but also our new offer in postcolonialism under indonesia’s authoritarian soldiers. furthermore, the snowball effects on the military aggression are always an interesting topic to be discussed. however, the other researchers’ perspective on this novel is essential as the stepping stone to start this research. the first article written by nurhidayah (2019), “hegemoni kekuasaan dalam novel orang-orang oetimu karya felix k. nesi: kajian sosiologi sastra”, has the similar focus to the second research. in the second research, hildayati and rengganis (2020) also employ gramsci’s theory to illuminate the issue on hegemony and domination. nonetheless, nurhidayah’s research employs a theory on sociology of literature to break down the social classes in the novel. using the theory, the researcher presents the division of the upper class (soldiers, portuguese, police) and the lower class (the timorese). furthermore, she finds that the domination of power uses both persuasion and violence in dominating the lower class. while hildayati and rengganis (2020) in “hegemoni negara dalam novel orang-orang oetimu karya felix k. nesi (kajian hegemoni antonio gramsci)”, describe the forms of hegemony and the place where it is occurred. the third research to review is by nisak and putra (2020) who shows how the lower social groups must live under the hegemony and the domination of religion, state, and military forces. the researchers focus on the violence presented in the novel which is investigated by using gramsci’s theory on hegemony. in line with “bentuk kekuasaan dalam novel orang-orang oetimu karya felix k. nesi”, they find that the ruled class use both violence and persuasion to maintain its power and domination. though the researchers discuss the social structure in oetimu, they do not present enough information on the theory of binary opposition. a short description on binary opposition will help the readers to get more insights on the dualistic issue. another research on the same literary work is conducted by sholikhah and parmin (2020) in “relasi dan resistensi kuasa dalam novel orang-orang oetimu karya felix k. nesi: kajian kekuasaan michel foucault”. sholikhah and parmin (2020) highlight the issue on power relation by using foucault’s theory. the researchers unveil the form the power resistant which focus on mind and body and the way to resist the dominant power. they put the data in tables and interpret them in description. nevertheless, there is no clarification which shows the reason why the researchers use the items in the tables. additionally, deeper argument and other examples will help the readers to get more insights on the research. the last research uses derrida’s deconstruction approach in analysing the novel. pramesti (2020) in “kajian dekonstruksi novel orang-orang oetimu karya felix k. nesi” finds four forms and reversal of binary opposition. they are the hero, the state apparatus, the love for the country, and the trust the people put on the church. in this article, the researcher presents the binary opposition in order to find the irony and see how the things are actually related each other. additionally, the researcher also asks the readers to see things carefully and critically for it may be their reversal. the real figure of the hero is not sersan ipi but am siki; the state apparatus is actually the criminal state; the state and the church do not protect and love their people but betray and hurt them. departing from the previous studies, the researchers propose a study which problematized colonialism in east timor under the microscope. from five discussions, those highlight the issue on the binary opposition, hegemony, and deconstruction using gramsci, foucault, and derrida. moreover, none of them specifically problematized the destructive cultural and social effect and hidden colonial powers which still exist in the timorese society. as a result, this investigation tries to full fill the niche that is still possible to be explored. this research employs the discourse on postcolonialism since the novel which describes the issues in east timor is written by a timorese. in triggering the discussion, the previous studies are used as a guideline to journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) catharina brameswari, et.al. 166 perceive all aspects which have encouraged the colonizer to conquer and dominate east timor. socio-historical review east timor’s journey to independence is long and traumatic. the country has experienced three waves of colonialism era. it was occupied by the portuguese for three hundred years, and then took over by the japanese forces in the second world war, and later lived under the indonesian forces. after the portuguese withdrew its administration in east timor, indonesia was afraid of the communist movement in east timor. using this issue, indonesia’s ruling power (new order) took the great opportunity to claim the territory as part of the country (unification). jakarta sent the troops and one-sidedly claimed the territory. indonesian military invasion brutally holds back the independent movement and caused many people died. rourke (2019) claims that 100.000 people died as the indonesian forces crushed the armed resistance and the civilians who were kept in detention camps died in famine. indonesia’s declaration towards the new province was opposed by the timorese. this is for the reason that the culture of the timorese was totally different from most culture in indonesia. rourke (2019) believes that the influence of portuguese’s culture resulted on a very different culture from indonesia. moreover, the timorese are mostly catholics and they have their own local language. due to that condition, indonesia approached the tribal leaders to get their support through patronage. indonesia gave them high position in the new social structure where the division of the area was altered identically into the structure of javanese civil administration (bertrand, 2004). consequently, this brutal invasion had invited the resistance movement from the timorese and fretilin party. to repress the resistance, the leader of fretilin party, xanana gusmão, was later captured and imprisoned in jakarta. after the fall of soeharto regime and a change of the leadership in indonesia, the timorese were allowed to vote in an independence ballot. however, the referendum was obstructed by the indonesian forces by terrorizing the citizen so that they will choose to join indonesia. indonesia-backed militia groups who had terrorised the population before the vote stepped up their attacks, aided by indonesian security forces. a three-week campaign of violence killed 2.600 people, nearly 30.000 were displaced, and as many as 250.000 were forcibly shipped over the border to indonesian west timor after the ballot (rourke, 2019). the integration effort has put the timorese in suffering since the bloody attack of indonesian forces was ordered. many of them ran away from east timor to the indonesian border and some also hid in java. the hidden motive to own the oil, the gas, and the minerals in east timor had sacrificed women, children, and innocent people. unfortunately, the truth about the genocide was hidden by the indonesian government. thus, it should be the future generations’ agenda to unveil and reveal the truth of this historical event. theoretical review colonialism existed long before the greeks, the romans, the ottomans, and the moors invaded another territory. modern colonialism is developed along with the innovation, industrial revolution, and the invention of the new region. spain, portuguese, and dutch were the pioneers in this explorative project and later followed by britain, france, germany, italy, and belgium. economics, civilization mission, and security are factors which inspire colonialism in africa, asia, and south america (mac queen, 2007, pp. 25-44). khapoya (2012) adds that colonialism is the civilizing mission. it is a mission to civilize the east that are seen as primitive, retarded, traditional, and uncivilized (pp. 106-107). thus, the european, as the superior, has a holy mission to save the east. essentially, this civilization project is used to maintained the territories and the domination of the west. here, the colonial administrative system, socio-economic relation, and culture of the colonized are disturbed (khapoya, 2012, p. 125). foulcher dan day (2008) suggest the discourse of journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 167 postcolonialism which can be used as a strategy to criticise and identify the signs and effects of colonialism in the literary text (p. 3). on the other words, it is employed to find the effects of colonialism which will stay forever in the literary works. however, ashcroft et. al. (2002) argue that this discourse occurs because western theories are proportionally failed in understanding the complexity of the problem and condition presented in the literary works written by the east. the use of postcolonialism theory is essential to illuminate the novel which recites the aftermath of portuguese expansion to the east timor for more than three hundred years. encouraged to find world’s best sandalwood, portuguese’s trading agenda shifted to imperialism which ruled and dominated the region. ashcroft, griffiths, and tiffin (2007) underline that european renaissance era has altered the system and forced the colonies as suppliers of raw materials for the colonizers (p. 40). edward said (2003) argues that western uses orientalism to elongate its domination and hegemony over the east and to maintain the binary opposition of the east and the west. based on this dogma, the colony is always seen as uneducated and needs the assistant of the master to educate them. on the other hand, the orient is also needed to maintain western’s image thus they are always stereotyped as the weak. gandhi (1998) argues that colonial domination stays even though the colonial occupation ends (p. 17). in fact, postcolonialism takes over colonial domination and its legacy (loomba, 2005, p. 16). the love-hate relationship between the colonized and the colonizer has encouraged the colonized to imitate the colonizer’s habits, values, and ideologies. indonesia also uses mimicry to camouflage, to appropriate, and in the end to fight for the colonizer. on the other hand, living in ambivalence has encouraged the country to mimic and to feed its desire to be more authentic and similar to the colonizer. in line with ashcroft et. al., gandhi (1998, p. 4) claims that postcolonial discourse is a resistance from theoretical and conceptual sides towards the effects of colonialism project which mostly forgotten and hidden but actually still exist around us. after the portuguese left, the post-colonial region did not actually get its freedom. indonesia, the ex-dutch colony, took over portuguese occupation by sending the soldiers to “save” east timor from the unstable political condition and the rivalry of the local groups. due to these conditions, indonesia wanted to prevent and stop communism in its doorstep which could be spread by fretilin followers. additionally, the new independent country tried to “help” east timor to be more civilized by changing its socio-economics systems, culture, education, and language. thus, the modernization agenda has forced east timor to live under control of other nation’s domination. this is in line with nandy’s the intimate enemy (1983) which underlines the issue on modern colonialism. by utilizing foucault’s investigation of power, he states that the new way of colonialism firstly focuses on the conquest of land and the occupation of mind, selves, and culture. secondly, the modern colonizers are the rationalists, the liberals, and the modernists who insist that colonialism can bring civilization into the uncivilized world. ashcroft et. al. (2007, p. 10) state that the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized is ambivalent because the colonized is not fully opposed to the colonizer. however, the similarity that is the result of imitating the colonizer has threatened them for this can blur the binary opposition (mcrobbie, 2005, p. 101). ashcroft et. al. (2007) suggest the inbetween space to overcome this problem. they add that it is a strategy “to create a new noncolonial identity which is a constant process of engagement, contestation, and appropriation” (p. 117). faruk (2007, p. 15) claims that postcolonial theory covers three aspects. first, it is the study on a culture which was once under the european occupation and maybe is still in progress or probably has converted into neo-colonialism. second, the next possibility exists in the resistance or counter of the colonized societies. third, it is all forms of marginality caused by capitalism. he adds that postcolonial theory is methodologically used to expose the operations of colonial power which are hidden behind their theories, attitudes, and practices that seem to have no pretensions of colonial power (2007, p. 17). this theory also journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) catharina brameswari, et.al. 168 explores the operation of power behind the practices, attitudes, and theories of a colonized society that seems to have been free and independent. in addition, this concept examines the resistance operations of the colonized society that seem obeying the colonial powers. based on the discussion mentioned above, the researchers use the discourse on postcolonialism to investigate the issue on the destructive cultural and social effect and hidden colonial power which still exists in the timorese society. methodology in this study, the researchers mainly employed the method of descriptive qualitative which used documentation as the data collection technique. there are two sources used, namely primary and secondary sources. the primary source of this research is orang-orang oetimu (2019) by felix k. nesi, a writer from east nusa tenggara. to support the primary source and to enrich the discussion, journals, articles, book review, as well as a short history, cultural, and sociopolitical condition of east timor, are be used as the secondary data. the research has four main steps. first, the researchers found the topic, sorted the literary work, and brain stormed the raw data. in this study, the researchers aim to unveil the problem of colonialism in east timor even after portuguese left the island. for the reason of building nationalism in east timor, the timorese also experience a forced modernization to learn the language and embrace the culture of their new colonizer. second, the researchers wrote the problem formulations after reading the novel. then, we searched for the secondary sources and the theory. third, we applied ashcroft’s theory and the data from the supported sources to help us in unveiling the answer of the formulated questions. the secondary data are important to see the connection between the real socio-historical context and the events illustrated in the novel. fourth, the analysis of the novel is presented in the discussion part and closed with a conclusion. moreover, some suggestions to the future researchers who want to analyse the same novel is also offered in the last section. results and discussion in this part, the answers of the formulated questions are supported by using postcolonial discourse from various experts. this part is divided into three sections, namely: (1) conflicts in orang-orang oetimu, (2) the effects of colonialism to the timorese, and (3) postcolonial discourse proposed in the novel. the first section illustrates how the characters in the novel deal with the conflict between the timorese and the society. in the second section, the effects of colonialism in orang-orang oetimu are discussed further. lastly, the researchers elaborate the postcolonial discourse the novel intends to propose. colonial conflicts in orang-orang oetimu according to barnet, burto, and cain, (2008) a conflict is a complication which happens between a character and some obstacles. the obstacles may come both from the characters themselves and the other characters, society, or nature (p. 1586). the conflict mostly told in the novel was the external struggle pitted the men against the society. in this case, it took form in portuguese and japanese colonizers, a tyrannical government, systemic corruption, and hypocrite catholic priests. furthermore, borrowing postcolonial discourse, the researchers want to unveil various conflicts which happened in orang-orang oetimu. in this discussion, the researchers highlighted three waves of conflicts, which disturbed the life of the timorese. the first conflict happened during portuguese colonization. the second conflict took place in the japanese colonization era during the world war ii. the last conflict was between the timorese and indonesian, which came out after portuguese and japan left timor island. as the result of the coup d’état in portugal, east timor faced an unstable political system. this condition caused the clash of the local groups and parties and later followed by indonesia’s military invasion. under the pretext of suppressing the communist movement, indonesia’s ruling power sent its military force to east timor. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 169 the first colonial conflict between timorese and portuguese was highlighted when three political movement collided. there are three parties affiliating to portuguese (udt), socialist timorese (fretilin), and indonesian (apodeti). they were all ready for decolonization. in the beginning udt committed to submit themselves to the portuguese government. the people were willing to be under portuguese colonialism. fretilin demanded full independence from foreign influence, and apodeti declared to join indonesia. however, finally udt and apodeti decided to join indonesia, and fretilin asked support from portuguese. portuguese was represented by julio craveiro de santos dan, a portuguese colonial administrator, and captain gustavo, a police officer. they were actually posted in east timor to manage the process of decolonization. however, udt arranged coup d’état, and conducted an operation to imprison those who stood behind fretelin. they were set free by fretilin from jail. as they joined fretelin, the conflict began to rise. julio and other portuguese were sentenced to death, while laura, juliso’s daughter was raped by the indonesian soldiers. (nesi, 2019, p. 25). then, laura was saved by am siki, a local timorese who dared to fight against japanese colonial soldiers. revenge, rage, and violence coloured the process of decolonization. the conflict was around resistance of the udt and apodeti timorese affiliating to indonesia and fretilin who declared submitting to the portuguese colonial administrator. who would control the country was the starting point of the conflict. decolonization was not an easy and smooth process. each party struggled to gain the authority, while the colonialist still had strong will to give influence upon the country. the character of am siki was the witness how colonialists, including the portuguese, did not give any respect to local culture. they forced portuguese language to be spoken, began to relocate the timorese natives from mountains to places where they could be supervised, and destroyed their rural housing complex. portuguese colonial administration and church were actually employed as a means of dominating the natives of timorese and uprooting them from their culture. the second conflict narrated in the novel was between the timorese and the japanese soldiers. the conflict was caused by the inhumanity of the japanese soldiers to the timorese, which is shown in this novel through the story of am siki, an elder who is highly respected by the oetimu people, when he was taken by the japanese soldiers along with his stallion and his mare. am siki was captured and taken by japanese soldiers while on his way to oekusi to trade forest products with the portuguese. apart from being looted and enslaved with other timorese, the japanese soldiers also shot his stallion and raped his mare (nesi, 2019, p. 37). aligned with said (2003), here, am siki, representation of the timorese, was seen as the weak while japanese soldiers were seen as the strong one. this situation enraged am siki enough that he used the power bestowed upon him by the palm tree, which he thought to be his ancestor, to kill all of the japanese soldiers. ...dan ia merasa tubuhnya lebih kuat daripada kuda. mandor yang datang untuk mencambuknya, ia tampar berkali-kali sebelum ia angkat tinggi-tinggi dan ia pecahkan batok kepalanya di batu karang hitam. malam itu ia mengamuk. ia membunuh setiap tentara jepang dan membakar habis kamp itu (nesi, 2019, p. 38). the resistance that am siki did to the japanese soldiers showed that the oppressed possesses a dual consciousness–complicit with their will, and that which is capable of developing into resistance (loomba, 2005, p. 29). the last conflict depicted in the novel was between the timorese and indonesian. this conflict was caused by the unstable political condition in portuguese and the decolonization which happened in east timor. due to this condition, australian, portuguese, and british tried to flee from east timor. moreover, the timorese also moved to the mountain to find a safe place (nesi, 2019, p. 22). indonesia’s government also took advantage on this condition to rule this region journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) catharina brameswari, et.al. 170 by using the issue on communism. this can be seen from júlio’s experience when he was taken by the indonesian soldiers. outside his house, júlio saw many indonesian soldiers stood by along the road while the others were attacking the city (nesi, 2019, p. 24). the military force tried to wipe away the communist movement and its followers in east timor. this condition also resulted in the external conflict between the timorese and several parties such as indonesian soldiers, policemen, politicians, and even the priest church. in this novel, indonesian soldiers were depicted as those who liked to abuse, taking advantage, and mistreating the timorese. it was also similar to the policeman and the politicians who liked to trick the timorese. moreover, this condition was worsened with some catholic priests who do sexual abuses to several young women. indonesian military soldiers were respected by the timorese because they were soldiers who came from java. when the timorese were gathered to watch the world cup final, nesi (2019) illustrates how no one “felt worthy enough to sit next to the soldier though the sofa was quite big for another three people” (p. 4). conversely, the soldiers treated the timorese badly and they were also irresponsible to many incidents caused by the unimog. the soldiers frequently used their power and authority to manipulate the incidents which happened to the citizens. …warga berkerumunan di jalanan, tetapi tidak punya keberanian untuk mendekat. mereka telah belajar, bahwa kerap kali saksi matalah yang dijebloskan ke dalam penjara. iring-iringan itu berhenti. beberapa orang menyumpah-nyumpahi penduduk sipil yang tidak berhati-hati berkendara. timor timur sedang memanas. tentara sedang terburu-buru karena perang. seharusnya penduduk sipil minggir jika melihat unimog (nesi, 2019, p. 149). nesi’ crude satire (2019) even shows that this incident happened because of the citizens themselves. they should have cleared the road for the soldiers who would go to the battle field. the soldiers even mentioned that the citizens who were hit by the unimog had sacrificed their lives to maintain and protect indonesia’s unity (pp. 148-152). in line with said (2003), the timorese here were seen as the weak and the soldiers as those who were strong. the story on how wildan and riko—maria’s husband and son— were hit by the unimog showed the colonial domination practiced by the indonesian soldiers (loomba, 2005, p. 16). the conflict between the soldiers and the timorese was highlighted when maria tried to attack the officer who came in her family’s funeral. maria’s action symbolised how the colonized tried to stop and fight back the domination of the colonizer. furthermore, the love-hate relationship between the colonizer and the colonized could be seen when the soldiers came to the funeral. the timorese looked at them with hatred because they had killed wildan and riko. in the same time, they were also awed because they were killed to protect indonesia (nesi, 2019, p. 150). similarly, the conflict between the timorese and indonesian police was also caused because the policeman liked to manipulate and abuse the timorese. represented by the character of sersan ipi, the corrupt policeman was described as the one who could be easily bribed by money and even confiscate the property of the citizens. siprianus portakes oetimu, known as sersan ipi, was laura’s son. she was pregnant because she was raped by the indonesian soldiers when the chaos took place. though a policeman was usually depicted as a hero who was faithful, strong, and always defended the weak citizens, sersan ipi did not have those traits. he liked to harm, take advantage, and mistreat the timorese. he even used violence to oppress and scare the civilians so that they would do anything he wanted. …jika sersan ipi muncul ke tengah kampung dengan sepeda motornya, para tukang ojek di pangkalan itu akan berdoa, semoga sedang baik hari polisi itu. sebab jika tidak, ia akan mulai mencari-cari kesalahan dan memukuli mereka tanpa ampun. …terkadang juga ia menghadang journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 171 truk pasir milik baba ong dan meminta uang kepada sopirnya (nesi, 2019, p. 58) if sersan ipi did not find any mistakes on the timorese, he would find one so that he could beat them. in addition, as a policeman who should protect the civilians, sersan ipi used his power to threaten and beat the timorese. ironically, the timorese were afraid to fight back because they might be suspected as communist followers who were against the state apparatus (nesi, 2019, p. 59). despite that problem, a policeman should be a guardian for the civilians and help the country to eradicate the crime. in addition, the corrupt politicians also took advantage of the weakness, helplessness, and poverty of the timorese. we argued that the officials were robbers who used their position to make them and their groups richer. these problems were found by maria and her discussion group when they were still studying in the university (nesi, 2019, p. 152). the conflict between the timorese and the politicians was getting worse because the javanese politicians had stolen their lands and turn the savannah into their private teak plantation. “…pejabat-pejabat korup mengambil tanah adat masyarakat dan membikin sertifikat atas namanya sendiri. berhektarhektar sabana tempat pengembalaan sapi diubah menjadi hutan tanaman industri dan ditanami jati yang akan dipanen sendiri (nesi, 2019, p. 153). the quotation above showed how the politicians had deceived the timorese to get their lands and money. by using their authority, the corrupt officials even protected each other so that the laws would not able to touch them (p. 153). on the other hand, the government’s officials were not only taken everything the timorese had but also the aid for the refugees. when the condition in east timor was getting worse, many sent the aid and fund for the refugees. nevertheless, the officials even took and cut them off. nesi (2019) also reminded his readers that soeharto and people from java were liars and likes to fabricate stories so they have to be careful (p. 216). moreover, they would also maintain the corrupt system which might benefit them in the future. the soldier even exploited a foolish young man named linus as the military spy. “…linus mencatat siapa-siapa saja yang berpengaruh di dalam pergerakan dan merekam apa saja yang mereka bicarakan. catatan itu kemudian ia berikan kepada tentara-tentara di komando distrik militer. berkat catatan itu, mahasiswamahasiswi pemberontak dan musuh negara itu hilang satu persatu.” (nesi, 2019, p. 136). linus himself was the representative of indonesia’s military organization that was corrupt and liked to manipulate the citizens. however, no one was suspicious on linus because he was brainless and was too foolish to be the military spy. in addition, linus always fooled his father and asked for money by saying that there were extra curriculars that he had to join. moreover, it was surprising that he also liked to have sex with the prostitutes (nesi, 2019, pp. 136-140). nesi wrote this novel to deconstruct the issues happened in east timor from the lenses of the timorese. he wanted to unveil how their agenda to save the timorese from communism was only one way to steal their land and natural resources. moreover, the nesi also criticised and scolded the javanese oppressors who visited oetimu to meet am siki. am siki raised his eye brows towards the government’s officers because they did not understand even the simplest metaphor and poem (nesi, 2019, pp. 84-85). furthermore, the timorese also laughed at the middle-aged woman from java who did not wear the traditional woven fabric correctly (nesi, 2019, p. 82). more importantly, the timorese were also alienated by the government’s officials because their culture was totally different from most culture in indonesia. as a result, this later caused a resistance from certain groups in oetimu. lastly, the conflict described in this part was the conflict between the timorese and the catholic priests that could be seen from maria’s action towards them. maria was very journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) catharina brameswari, et.al. 172 angry because most of the catholic priests in oetimu liked to seduce the young women. the effects of colonialism towards the timorese discussing the effects of colonialism to the timorese is essential to scrutinize the destructive effect and hidden colonial power which still existed in the timorese society. in this literary work, the researchers found the destructive effects caused by the portuguese, japanese, and indonesia colonization on both cultural and social aspects in the timorese society. moreover, this also has altered the social structure and the relations among the timorese. the arrival of portuguese brought influence as well as change amongst the timorese. culturally timorese natives’ social structure was based on traditional tribes. catholicism and church brought some changes. catholic pastors played important roles in social relation and structure for timorese, especially for the people of oetimu. in timorese society, pastors, called as “fathers”. they were considered as spiritual leaders, religious counsellors, or sometimes social figures. tribe leadership and its traditional belief at times were disordered. portuguese colonialism was associated with catholic church as it was the portuguese who brought the catholicism in timor island, including in oetimu. one of the traditional beliefs that was deconstructed was sifon, a traditional rite for a man after being circumcised who was ordered to have sexual relationship with women (nesi, 2019, pp. 202-204). the other effect of portuguese colonialism was also in the form of western spirit, especially materialism and capitalism. portuguese colonial administration also changed the social structure in the way that a colonial territory should adopt the administrative system as it was applied in the mother land. police as security institute, public servants as the administrators, pastors as the spiritual leaders, tax collectors, teachers, traders and service business providers became prominent social position. the traditional leadership faded away so that the social structure was built by these classes. oetimu young people were not willing to cultivate their productive lands. instead of planting various crops or vegetables, they abandoned them and running service business, such as motor-cycle taxi driver (nesi, 2019, pp. 57-58). religion, especially catholicism, and education from portuguese played very important roles in east timor. gaining education represented social status. the dichotomy of the educated and uneducated or the civilized and uncivilized was built and reproduced from time to time. this view was practiced when parents sent their sons or daughters in international school, such as sma santa helena. going to that school was associated with progress, modernism, and high prestige (nesi, 2019, p. 99). on the other side of the country, there were many children, boys, and girls who could not afford to go to that school. the social gap was growing wider and wider. the core of this phenomenon was the arrival of new civilization, that was portuguese. power relation between spiritual and social leaders, such as pastors or teachers and timorese people convey the trace of portuguese colonialism. church which was viewed as the civilized belief had bargaining and powerful position in that country. pastors automatically was attached with this kind of power. the abuse of power of spiritual leader was practiced to dominate and oppress the timorese people. this could be represented by the relation between pastor yosef and maria. the timorese came to recognize the characters of their colonizer. am siki saw japanese as people who loved to kill and rape “…kalau nippon bukan pedagang. mereka hanya suka membangun jalan, membunuh dan memerkosa.” (p. 47). local parents were also aware of the fact that japanese people were short, “tidak ada nippon yang memerkosa kuda. mereka terlalu pendek.” (p. 43). these acts are in line with the theory of mimicry that the issue with colonial discourse is that it seeks to create compliant subjects who will replicate or ‘mimic’ the colonizer's assumptions, habits, and ideals (ashcroft et all., 2007, p. 10). journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 173 in addition, am siki also told the younger generations about his battles with the japanese soldiers as a lesson in not doing ill to the enemies, even if they were wicked, “tidak boleh dibunuh, sekalipun itu orang jahat. ingat? tidak boleh diperkosa, sekalipun itu kuda. ulangi!” (p. 85). as a result, such words were quite effective. they were even better at memorizing the words than pancasila. furthermore, they were compelled to understand japanese, “selalu saja orang-orang timor yang dipaksa untuk mempelajari arti dan bunyi-bunyi aneh yang keluar dari mulutnya, mulai dari portugis, belanda, jepang, sampai indonesia” (nesi, 2019, p. 39). those acts are in line with loomba (2005), colonialism reshapes social terrains as well as human identities and the experience is a continuous psychic experience that must be dealt with and will continue to be dealt with long after the colonial situation has technically “over”. the timorese had to inspire one another, construct new and powerful identities for colonized peoples and confront colonialism on an emotional level as well as a political or intellectual level. after the japanese left east timor, the new order, which one-sidedly claimed east timor’s territory caused many people died and live in a despair. the authoritarian republic was a “new colonizer” in east timor which greatly affected the life of the timorese and even caused the genocide. furthermore, indonesian invasion to east timor has caused many changes in various aspects. said (2003) highlights that orientalism is the result of european political forces to maintain its domination and hegemony towards the orient (p. 203). this discourse is closely related to postcolonialism since it is problematized the binary between the west and the east, self and other, modern and traditional, and java and oetimu. the case for this context is pretty special because indonesia was once colonialized by the dutch for 365 years and now it is trying to occupy east timor after portuguese left the island. oetimu has become the most recurring image of the other and it helps to define indonesia as a superior country under the new order. in order to maintain the domination, indonesia tries to conduct a civilization or modernization project. indonesia that is the new colonizer in east timor tries to change or even erase things in oetimu that are considered as traditional. the project is used in order to maintain the binary as well as to show that indonesia has a good mission to save the timorese after the decolonization. moreover, the researchers found that there are at least three sectors that are affected, such as the administrative system, socio-economic sector, and oetimu’s culture (khapoya, 2012, p. 125). furthermore, the modernization project is also implanted through the religious sector by the catholic priests in oetimu. it is in line with said (2003) who stresses that the modernization project is used to maintain the image of the javanese people who are highly educated compared to the timorese people who are always seen as uneducated. the first sector of the modernization project that affects the life of the oetimu’s is the adaptation of administrative system. the village which was timu un kingdom in past had been taken by indonesia. in can be seen when am siki stopped by in a village after he came back from burning out the japanese military camp and killing all the japanese soldiers. he was surprised because he saw the indonesian flag instead of the japanese flag (nesi, 2019, p. 38). “lalu bendera siapakah yang tergantung itu? apakah bendera aneh itu panji kerajaan kalian?” ia bertanya lagi. “itu bendera indonesia,” jawab orangorang kepadanya. “sekarang ini kita adalah timor indonesia.” (nesi, 2019, p. 39) am siki’s visit to oetimu indicated that the village had been under the dutch and japanese colonialism. in addition, there is also a shift in the name of the village. the village was timu un kingdom or oetimu and the name had become kecamatan makmur sentosa. they changed the name of the village so that it was similar to most of the name of the regions in java island. moreover, every 17th august people would celebrate the independence day and decorate their house just like typical indonesian in general. furthermore, the government officials also gave a medal to am siki because he was seen as a national hero journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) catharina brameswari, et.al. 174 who fight for the japanese soldiers (nesi, 2019, p. 40). in line with nandy (1983), indonesia as the modern colonizers insist to modernize and bring civilization into oetimu that is seen as the uncivilized. the mastery and the usage of bahasa indonesia had become the indicator that someone who use it is educated and civilized. after indonesia conquered the land and the culture, now the timorese were forced to learn indonesian language. in the beginning of the month, the teacher will come to teach bahasa indonesia to the people in oetimu. “…sekarang kita mempunyai bahasa yang baru, bahasa indonesia namanya. jika kau ingin tahu, setiap awal bulan mereka selalu mengajarkannya.” (nesi, 2019, p. 39) according to shakib (2011), language has always been a central issue in a postcolonial context. during colonialization, the colonized is prohibited to speak in their native language or their mother tongue. they will be humiliated or even punished for not using the language of the colonizer (p. 117). in line with am siki’s story, this condition happened since the dutch came to timor island. the colonizer was reluctant to learn the local language thus they forced the locals to learn their language and create their own government system in timor. the dutch even called the locals as primitives because they could not understand the language of their master. “sebab tidak ingin bersusah dan membuang waktunya untuk mempelajari hal yang tidak mereka pahami, belanda menyebut orang-orang itu primitif, dan mulai membikin sebuah sistem pemerintahan seperti yang mereka punyai di eropa.” (nesi, 2019, p. 35) similar to the indonesian officers who came to oetimu, they did not understand the local language and even the simplest poem that were recited by am siki. the government elites from the big city forced the timorese to use bahasa indonesia so that they could communicate well with them. on the other hand, the timorese would also be the interpreters to the officials because the felt guilty for using the local language (nesi, 2019, p. 84). referring to this problem, the author of the novel presented some local terms and provided a glossary which may assist the readers to understand the local language and the story better. by presenting the local terms, the researchers argue that the author wants to show that language is actually “the product of a culture and also a symbol of mother’s culture independence” (shakib, 2011, p. 118). the love-hate relationship between the colonized and the colonizer had encouraged the colonized to mimic and to be more similar to the colonizer. from the socio-economic sector, the job like police, soldier, or government elites were seen as the noble jobs compared to farmers and palm tree tappers in oetimu. am siki did not want ipi became a palm tree tapper just like him. “bawalah dia, tuan-tuan. jadikanlah ia seorang kase, seperti kalian.” (nesi, 2019, p. 85) from the excerpt above, the researchers argue that the timorese who lived in ambivalence had been encouraged to imitate and feed their desire to be like the colonizer. am siki who disliked the government officials now was expecting their help to take care of his grandchild education. he wanted ipi, his grandchild, to be an educated man with a high social status. therefore, he asked the government officials to take ipi to the city to get a proper education in the police academy. moreover, the timorese also helped to maintain the domination and hegemony of the colonizer (said, 2003). the parents in oetimu also stressed that they need to send their children to the university because they were stupid and they did not want their children became stupid like them (nesi, 2019, p. 139). the third sector is the enforcement to imitate the colonizer’s culture. in this case, the researchers found that the indonesian officials had encouraged the timorese to imitate their culture in a form of food and medicine. the consumption of local foods such as casavas and sweet potatoes were seen as primitive and backward. the occupation of the mind and culture towards the timorese (nandy, 1983) journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 175 can be seen when the government conducted various civilization campaigns by using western discourse and religious doctrine. by using an announcement car, the officials convinced the timorese that the ancestors were stupid because they consumed corns and cassavas. “…bapak dan ibu sekalian, jangan biarkan kita mewarisi kebiasaan yang salah dan keliru itu. mari, mari kita mulai makan nasi. kita harus makan nasi, agar kita dan anak-anak kita menjadi manusia yang lebih berbudaya, lebih beradab, dan senantiasa beriman kepada tuhan yang maha esa, sesuai sila pertama pancasila.” (nesi, 2019, p. 55). from the quotation above, the researchers try to illustrate the modernization project conducted by the government. even though the farming products of the timorese were corns and cassavas, their staple food is rice. rice was seen as the food that might help the timorese to be more civilized and modern. on the contrary, the ancestors’ food did not have any nutrition and could weaken the brain. thus, the timorese would feel embarrassed if they did not eat the rice. the second cultural enforcement was the use of religious doctrine to abandon their traditional medication and believes. the usage of the leaves and roots to cure the disease was seen as an uncivilized practice which contradicted catholic teaching. loomba (2005, p. 16) also underlines that it was actually the practice of postcolonialism which took over the colonial domination and its legacy. the catholic missionary was the religious arms of the government to control and force the timorese as well as to exploit the locals. “makanya, bapak dan ibu,” kata romo laurensius. “jika kalian sakit, berdoalah dan bersabarlah dalam kasih tuhan. janganlah kalian pergi ke dukun-dukun, atau menempelkan mamahan daun, batang, akar, dan tumbuhan-tumbuhan tidak berguna di tubuh kalian. …apalagi jika ditambahkan mantra-mantra… wah, itu berhala namanya. itu melanggar perintah allah. …tuhan melihat semuanya, dan pastilah ia akan menghukum orangorang berdosa.” (nesi, 2019, p. 57). the quotation above is a campaign which was conducted by father laurensius from saint mary chapel. he employed the bible and catholic teaching to encourage the timorese to use modern medication instead of using traditional herbs. postcolonial discourse proposed in the novel this novel can be perceived as a literary work voicing postcolonial discourse, in a way that colonial traces and impacts are still can be identified in a country which had been decolonized. colonial ideology, precisely orientalism, is still pervading the people. justification of domination in the name of civilizing through religion, education, and medication was still practiced. reproduction and imitation of colonial attitude and perspective are also accentuated, especially those are from portuguese. besides, the legacy of violence and coercion force inherited from japan was also used in solving the problems. the appropriation of what is called as modern culture in oetimu was brought by the javanese people. in fact, the centre of indonesia is in java and indonesia is java (nesi, 2019, p. 215). even though the colonizers have left oetimu, there are various sign and long last effects of colonialism that can be found in the literary texts (foulcher and day, 2008, p. 3). the effects of colonialism are also illustrated by an east nusa tenggara writer, felix k. nesi, in his orang-orang oetimu (2019). nesi highlights the complexities and the problems experienced by the timorese in a simple language and through their daily life events. in line with gandhi (1998, p. 4), nesi also tries to unveil the effects of colonialism which mostly neglected and forgotten though actually still exist around us and dominate our lives. thus, in this part, the researchers present the hidden colonial power that still overshadows the timorese society. during the process of decolonization from the japanese colony, some aspects of east timorese life, such as practices, attitudes, and ideologies, were unavoidably influenced by journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) catharina brameswari, et.al. 176 colonial influences. this is in line with the statement stated by gandhi (1998) that colonial domination stays even though the colonial occupation ends. in the novel, this was shown through the character of sersan ipi. he was a police officer with the rank of sergeant and lived in oetimu village, who was also in charge of protecting the village. sersan ipi, in his day-to-day work as a security officer, frequently used violence to fight against the people he encountered, both at the police station and elsewhere. saking kesal dan lapar, ia mampir ke pangkalan ojek dan memukuli dua anak yang sedang bermain catur. “kenapa saya dipukuli, pak?” seorang dari mereka bertanya sambil memegang bibirnya yang nyonyor. “karena begitu saya parker, lu lihat saya. lu pu maksud apa, hah? lu mau nantang? lu berani lawan aparat?” (nesi, 2019, p. 62). these arbitrary practices represented the colonists’ attitude, particularly the japanese soldiers’ attitude, toward the indigenous peoples. during the occupation, the japanese army forced and abused the timorese to build roads, without being given any food or wages. …siang dan malam mereka dipaksa untuk mengerjakan jalan menuju pantai selatan. hanya cambuk yang menjadi makanan mereka. mereka bisa mendapatkan makanan bila ada pekerja baru yang datang dengan jagung. jika tidak, mereka kelaparan, dan jika ada yang lapar sampai hampir mati, ia dicambuki sampai benarbenar mati (nesi, 2019, p. 37) the colonized had been urged to copy the colonizer’s habits, attitudes, and ideologies. the practices, attitudes, and theories of japanese soldiers also reflected in the character of linus. linus was a timorese student who aspires to be a soldier willing to die in the service of his nation. in his daily life, apart from being an army informant, linus also liked to hang out with women on his campus. every day he would have different women for him to sleep with. in addition, he raped numerous women with anaesthetics. berkat ramuan ajaib itu, dalam satu bulan, linus bisa meniduri empat sapai tujuh orang perempuan yang berbeda. meskipun mengutuknya, tak ada perempuan yang berani melaporkan perbuatan linus itu ke polisi (nesi, 2019, p. 142). the habit of japanese soldiers who like to rape was reflected in linus’ action who liked to do sexual abuse to many women he met though he was a student. in addition, the researchers also found that corruption was the first hidden colonial power that is still flourished in oetimu. the practice had caused many people lived in poverty but no one might overcome this problem. in line with faruk (2007), corruption was a form of marginality that was caused by capitalism. the government officials and their network tried to get more money from the illegitimate private gain. maria and her friends had found the documents that showed the abused of power done by the politicians (nesi, 2019, p. 153). nevertheless, the corrupt system in east nusa tenggara was not easy to be diminished because it had become the culture in the government’s organisation. as part of the corrupt network, ipi did not take action against the corruptors because he had been bribed to close the case (nesi, 2019, p. 63). furthermore, the government would arrest the group that revealed or report the practice of corruption because they might disturb the unity of the country. this condition was similar to the condition when oetimu was still under the dutch colonialism that was seen as the robber by the timorese (nesi, 2019, p. 36). conclusion orang-orang oetimu is such an ethnographic novel voicing the long-lasting and destructive impact of colonialism. the invading arrival of portuguese, japanese, and indonesian people brought about sociocultural conflicts. socio-cultural structure and relation of timorese people is shifted by the new system of colonial social system. horizontal friction amongst party groups, corrupt, violence, and abuse of power escalates as cultures of the colonialist and natives collide. colonialism brought both new journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 177 perspectives of civilization and domination so that resistance from the native timorese is unavoidable. colonialism of portuguese, japan, and indonesia spread the spirit of modernism, capitalism, materialism, and oppression. language, traditional rites and habits, and economic system of the timorese are vanished. new religion, medication, democracy, and education overcome the natives’ traditional way of life. however, they do not bring timorese people prosperous and peaceful. this novel actually proposes postcolonial discourse in the way that the hidden ideology of colonialism, such as orientalism, domination, binary opposition of the civilized and uncivilized, and justification of vanishing the traditional culture under civilization justification are still practiced. reproduction of the colonial attitude also still exists. that is why horizontal friction amongst the timorese became the continuous legacy of colonialism. references ayegboyin, d. (2008). colonization in africa: the local and global implication for christianity in contemporary nigeria, dalam christianity in africa and african diaspora, ed. afe adogame et.al., continum. ashcroft, b., griffiths, g., & tiffin, h. (2002). the empire writes back: theory and practice in postcolonial literature. routledge. ________________. (2007). post-colonial studies. routledge. barnet, s., burto, w., & cain, w. e. (2008). an introduction to literature. pearson longman. bertrand, j. (2004). nationalism and ethnic conflict in indonesia. cambridge university press. bhabha, h. k. (1994). the location of culture. routledge. faruk. (2007). belenggu pascakolonial: hegemoni dan resistensi dalam sastra indonesia. pustaka pelajar. gandhi, l. (1998). postcolonial theory: a critical introduction. allen & unwin. khapoya, v. b. (2013). the african experience. pearson education. kohan, m. (2010). colonialism. in edward n. zaita (ed.). the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. the metaphysics research lab. loomba, a. (2005). colonialism/ postcolonialism routledge. hildayati, n. f. & rengganis, r. (2020). hegemoni negara dalam novel orangorang oetimu karya felix k. nesi (kajian hegemoni antonio gramsci). bapala, 07(4), https://jurnalmahasiswa.unesa.ac. id/index.php/bapala/article/view/3571 6 mac queen, n. (2007). colonialism. pearson education ltd. nesi, f. k. (2019). orang-orang oetimu. marjin kiri. nisak, k. & putra, c. r.w. (2020). bentuk kekuasaan dalam novel orang-orang oetimu karya felix k. nesi. bahtera, 07(2), 1047-1064. http://ejournal. umpwr.ac.id/index.php/bahtera/ article/view/ 6125/5802 nurhidayah, d. i. (2019). hegemoni kekuasaan dalam novel orang-orang oetimu karya felix k. nesi: kajian sosiologi sastra. paper presented at the senasbasa (seminar nasional bahasa dan sastra). http://research-report.umm.ac.id/index. php/senasbasa. pramesti, i. (2020). kajian dekonstruksi novel orang-orang oetimu karya felix k. nesi. https://www.academia.edu/44145875/ kajian_dekonstruksi_ novel_orang_orang_oetimu_karya _felix_k_nesi rourke, a. (2019, august 29). east timor: indonesia’s invasion and the long road to independence. the guardian, world news. https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2019/aug/30/east-timorindonesias-invasion-and-the-long-roadto-independence said, e. (2003). orientalism. london: penguin books. shakib, m. k. (2011). the position of language in development of colonization. journal of languages and culture, 2(7), 117-123. https://academicjournals. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) catharina brameswari, et.al. 178 org/article/article1379500755_shakib.p df sholikhah, a. & parmin. (2020). relasi dan resistensi kuasa dalam novel orangorang oetimu karya felix k. nesi: kajian kekuasaan michel foucault. bapala, 07(3), 1-12. https://jurnalmahasiswa.unesa.ac.id/ind ex.php/bapala/ article/view/34714/30864 phenomena dwi nita febriyanti 14 assimilation, reduction and elision reflected in the selected song lyrics of avenged sevenfold dwi nita febriyanti dwinitafebriyanti@yahoo.com english language studies, sanata dharma university abstract this paper discusses the phenomena of phonological rules, especially assimilation, reduction and elision processes. in this paper, the writer conducted phonological study which attempts to find the phenomena of those processes in song lyrics. in taking the data, the writer transcribed the lyrics of the songs, along with checking them to the internet source, then observed the lyrics to find the phenomena of assimilation, reduction, and elision. after that, she classified the observed phenomena in the lyrics based on the phonological processes. from the data analysis, the results showed that there were three processes found both in the first and second songs: assimilation, reduction and elision. the difference is that in the first song, it has four kinds of assimilation, while from the second song only has three kinds of assimilation. keywords: assimilation, reduction, elision introduction as english spoken by the native speakers, it sometimes undergoes simplification to ease the native speakers in expressing their feelings. that is why, it is common for them to speak english in high speed along with their emotions. as the result, they make a ‘shortcut’ to get ease of their pronunciation. the native speakers often do some ‘improvement’ in their speech to reach maximum transfer of messages with minimum efforts of articulation. sometimes they pronounce a sound to become similar to either preceding or following sound to keep the speed of their speech; or linguists call it as assimilation process. they also reduce even delete a vowel or a consonant in the unstressed position as an attempt to fasten their pronunciation in their daily speech, and it is known as reduction and deletion (also elision) process. all these phenomena mostly happen in the informal speeches such as in an intimate talk of best-friends, brothers and sisters’ discussion or even in songs, for which songs are considered as the media for the composer to share his feelings. assimilation usually happens in the double consonants. this is a phenomenon which shows the influence of one sound to another to become more similar. while for the reduction process, it can happen to the vowel which is in the unstressed position. reduction is the substitution of a vowel to the unstressed position with a weak central vowel (called schwa /ə/). van bergem (1995) describes the schwa as a vowel without target so that it is completely assimilated with its phonemic context. meanwhile, elision (also deletion) is the complete disappearance of one or more sounds in a word or phrase as an attempt to make a word or phrase easier to pronounce. one of the most common elisions in english is the omission of /t/ and /d/ when those sounds are at the boundary of words. apostrophe is sometimes used as the indicator of elision. in this paper, the writer vol. 15 no. 1 – april 2015 15 tries to recognize the phenomena of (anticipatory) assimilation, vowel reduction and consonant elision reflected in avenged sevenfold’s song lyrics. therefore, in this study, the writer tries to find the phenomena of assimilation, reduction, and elision in the selected songs of avenged sevenfold band. (anticipatory) assimilation this is a process which speakers make a ‘transition’ in anticipating the following pronunciation. the ‘transition’ here happens because of the influence of preceding sound. that is why, this kind of ‘transition’ is called anticipatory assimilation. it is supported by giegerich (1992) who defines that (anticipatory) assimilation is a common phenomenon for which a segment either fully or partially anticipates the place of articulation over the following segment (213). he also points out the characteristics of anticipatory assimilation as follows. 1. /n//ņ/ whenever /n/ comes before dental (/t/, /ð/ and /ɵ/), therefore it is called as dentalization. 2. /k/ /k/ happens when /k/ precedes front vowels (/i:/, /e/ and /a/) and it is known as fronting. 3. /m/ /ɱ/ whenever /m/ comes before labiodental (/f/, /v/); it is known as labiodental nasal. 4. /a/ /ã/ happens when /a/ precedes the nasal sounds (/m/, /n/ and /ŋ/) and the process is called nasalization. 5. /k/ /k/ whenever /k/ comes before rounded segment such as in words ‘queer’, ‘question’, ‘quack’, ‘quick’ and ‘cool’. this process is known as labialization or rounding. besides the requirements above, giegerich (1992) also mentions three other conditions when assimilation can happen in an individual speech: (1) the individual speaker’s habits in which a speaker has his/her own style and characteristics in speech, (2) the type of speech as well the rapid and informal speech appears greater assimilation than the slow and formal speech does, and (3) tempo for which it indicates the speed of speech. the faster a speaker talks, less articulatory efforts he/she does (214-215). reduction reduction is a process in which speakers reduce the ‘presence’ of a phoneme, especially a phoneme in the unstressed position, while vowel reduction is a feature of stress timing referring to the way vowels are reduced when unstressed. in reducing a vowel, speakers can either weaken or substitute the pronunciation with another sound. it is line with griffen (1998) who defines a vowel reduction as “a phenomenon in which the vowel in an accented syllable is shifted toward the midcentral position when the accent is removed from the syllable (17).” in reducing a phoneme, the speakers take less articulatory effort to get ease of pronunciation in speech, for instance: the central vowel in word ‘and’ /ænd/ becomes /ən/ [/æ/ə/] because it is in the unstressed syllable. it is line with giegerich (1992) who argues that most of english vowels are suspended in the unstressed syllables (285). van bergem (1995) also defines a schwa as a ‘straight’ articulatory path between two consonants. since a path always depends upon the surrounding environment, a schwa cannot exist as a separate phoneme, but only as a phonemic which a syllable embed. furthermore, he also proposes several core factors of vowel reduction such as stress, frequency of word’s occurrence and speaking style. giegerich (1992) mentions some examples of vowel reduction or schwa /ə/ such as in these words: canoe /kə’nu/, balloon /bə’lun/, federal /’fɛdərəl/, catalyst /’katəlɪst/ and botany /’bɒtənɪ/ (287). elision elision process happens when speakers leave or delete a phoneme out of pronunciation as an attempt to fasten and get rid of difficulties in speech. according to giegerich (1992), elision often happens before sonorant consonants which give the consonants an opportunity to be syllabic so that they will occupy the peak of the syllable. the process is called vowel elision, for dwi nita febriyanti 16 examples are button /bʌtən/ or /bʌtn/ and little /lɪtəl/ or /lɪtl/ (287). the most common elision in english words is the omission of sounds /t/ and /d/ at the word boundary: they are positioned at end of a word before go to the next word. elision is also known as the complete dropping of a sound in a given context. if it has consonants as the target, then people know it as consonant elision. for instance is the elision of sound /t/ in the word postman /poʊstmən/ /poʊsmən/ because of the speed of speaker. in the case of /t/, the preceding consonant must be voiceless; in the case of /d/, the preceding consonant must be voiced. in both cases, elision happens with any following consonant, except /h/ and sometimes /j/, e.g. christmas /’krɪsməs/, listen /lɪsən/, sandwich: /sænwiʧ/, kindness: /kaɪnes/, left foot /lefʊ:t/, but it doesn’t happen in left hand /left hænd/; left you: /lefʧʊ/, old man: /oʊld mæn/. research methodology this study will focus on assimilation, reduction and elision in avenged sevenfold’s song lyrics. this study belongs to qualitative research because it uses words as the source of data. more, it does not contain any statistical process. it is line with moelong (1989) who states, “qualitative research is a type of research, which does not include any calculation and numbering (2).” therefore, hopefully this study can give further information toward those phenomena and can help the readers to understand them easily. the source of data is the song lyrics of gunslinger and second heartbeat. to make the data sure, the writer checked the lyrics to the internet sources. those sources of data above are relevant to the data which the writer needed. she also used those sources to check the validity of the data. the steps to analyze the data were: listening to the songs, understanding the general content of the songs, transcribing the lyrics of the songs, and checking the lyrics with the internet source. to find out the phonological processes in the lyrics, the writer applied some steps. the writer observed the lyrics of the songs carefully in order to find the phenomena of phonological processes of them. she observed the words that carried the phenomena. after observing the words that contain the phonological processes, she recognized the kind of processes that the words have. after that, the writer classified them to ease the reader in comprehending the results and providing the examples of each process. discussion (anticipatory) assimilation assimilation mostly appeared in avenged sevenfold’s song lyrics. it is not only because of the amount of (anticipatory) assimilation types, but also because the singer’s style in speech. here are the cases of anticipatory assimilation reflected in avenged sevenfold’s song lyrics. no song title occurrences 1. gunslinger 15 times of assimilation; 6 times of reduction; 6 times of elision; 4 times of double processes. 2. second heartbeat 14 times of assimilation; 6 times of reduction; 7 times of elision; 2 times of double processes. nasalization this type of assimilation happens when a vowel comes before nasal sounds /m/ /n/ or /ŋ/. the writer determined the nasalization process by making the letters in bold feature. here are the examples of nasalization taken from the gunslinger and second heartbeat lyrics: (1) been; alone; been; gone; long; many; things; when; strong; bring (2) changing; in; stand; alone; been; gone; wishing; wasting; growing those examples above belong to the nasalization process since the vowels are going to meet nasal sounds as the following sound. the vowels in those words are vol. 15 no. 1 – april 2015 17 pronounced like a nasal sound which the airstream comes out through the nose. dentalization it is the process when the sound /n/ meets a dental sound such as /t/, /ð/ or /ɵ/. from the lyrics, the writer found three cases which belong to this process. the writer identified the dentalization process in the bold letter. here are some cases of dentalization inside the lyrics: (3) been through; been true; in the night (4) when they; been there; in the those examples (3) and (4) actually complete the types of dentalization in which the first example shows the rule when /n/ meets /ɵ/ in the word through, the second example represents the dentalization process when /n/ meets /t/ in the word true and the last example denotes when /n/ is followed by /ð/ in the word the. it also happens in the words they, there and the for which the sound /n/ meets /ð/. the dentalization process requires a speaker to position the tip of the tongue between the upper front teeth when he/she pronounces the sound /n/. it happens because of the dental sounds’ influence. rounding this kind of nasalization is rare to find in the lyrics. the writer only found one case of rounding process in which the sound /k/ is followed by rounded segment. here is the example of rounding process taken from the lyrics: (5) question the word question above shows the process of rounding in which the sound /k/ meets a diphthong /ʊɛ/ in which it belongs to the rounded segment. because the diphthong influences the pronunciation of /k/, the sound /k/ undergoes the rounding process. that is why, the pronunciation of /k/ in the word question is started with the rounded shape of oral cavity. fronting from the lyrics, the writer also only found one case which belongs to the fronting process. the writer wrote the letter which undergoes the fronting process in bold. here is the example of fronting process taken from gunslinger and second heartbeat lyrics: (6) keep in the example above, the sound /k/ undergoes the fronting process for which because the influence of front vowel /i/. in pronouncing the sound /k/ in the example above, the speaker needs to narrow his/her oral cavity along with the blade of the tongue raised to the hard palate. reduction this process denotes when a phoneme is reduced in its pronunciation. the writer found several cases of this process. here are the examples of reduction found in gunslinger and second heartbeat lyrics: (7) too; to; towards; matter; letters; have (8) but; can; as; of; confide; to the examples above shows the reduction process in which the vowels turn into midcentral vowel or it is called as schwa (/ə/). all the vowels above undergo the reduction process because of the speed of the speaker in speech. in that song, the singer pronounced those words in high-speed. for instance is in the word too /tu:/ in which the vowel is reduced and becomes /tə/. it also happens in the second word where to /tʊ/ turns into /tə/ as the result of vowel reduction. in the third word toward /tʊˈwɔːrd/ turns into /tə’wɔ:rd/, then matter /’mætəɹ/ becomes /’mætɹ/, letters /’lɛtəɹ/ becomes /’lɛtɹ/ while for the word have /hæv/, it turns into /həv/. the example (8) also show the process of reduction where all the vowels in the unstressed position turn into schwa such as in the word but /bʌt/ the pronunciation will be /bət/, the word can /kæn/ turns into /kən/. the vowel /o/ in of /ɑ:v/ turns into dwi nita febriyanti 18 /əv/ and so does in the word confide /kən’faɪd/ where the first vowel is in the unstressed position. in the last word to /tʊ/ the vowel is also reduced because of the effect of speaker’s speed in speech. elision this process involves the omission of a phoneme in its pronunciation. the writer found several cases which belong to elision. most of them are both the short form of a word (apostrophe is the indicator) and the elision of sound /t/ and /d/. here are the found examples in gunslinger and second heartbeat lyrics: (9) ’cause; heart's; won't; you're (10) it through; it don't; helped me; just to (11) left the; forget you; get to; left me; looked to in case (9), the elision process happens since those words constitute the short form and the apostrophe as the indicator of elision. the word ‘cause is the short form of because. while the apostrophe (’s) in the second and fourth word encode the short form of to be is. in the third word, the word won’t constitutes the short form of will not. while the apostrophe (‘re) in the example (10) means to be are in cases (10) and (11), the elision process happens because the omission of sounds /t/ and /d/ in the pronunciation. the pronunciation of the words it through /ɪt ɵru:/ will be /ɪɵru:/, while in the word i don’t, the /t/ sound will be altered by /d/ sound and the pronunciation will be /ɪdɔ:ɂ/.the words helped me are pronounced as /hɛlpmɪ/ while the words died my are pronounced as /daɪmaɪ/ then the words lend me will be pronounced as /lɛnmɪ/. furthermore, the words left the, the pronunciation will be /lefðə/ and for the words forget you it will be pronounced as /fəɹ’gɛʧu:/. it also happens the words get to will be pronounced as /gɛʧu:/ and left me is pronounced as /lefmɪ/. for the last example, it constitutes the omission of /d/ sound for which the words looked to will be pronounced as /lu:ktu/. elision is the way a speaker maintains the speed of speech in order to make their pronunciation easier. double processes besides all the characteristics which are mentioned above, the writer also found several words from the lyrics which contain double processes as its phonological process. here are several examples of words which denote either the double processes or the combination of the processes: (12) you've; (13) coming; (14) grown to; (15) don't matter; (16) and; (17) won't be. in case (13), it has double process: they are elision and reduction, where its pronunciation /ju:ev/ undergoes both elision as well as it is a short form of have and the pronunciation /ev/ shows the reduction process of /hæv/. the word (13) undergoes the elision and assimilation processes. elision since it turns from coming /kʌmɪŋ/ into /kʌmɪn/, while the sound /i/ undergoes the assimilation process, especially nasalization because the vowel /i/ is followed by a nasal sound /n/. in the word (14), its double assimilations as its process: nasalization and dentalization. the sound /oʊ/ is pronounced as nasal sound for which it is followed by a nasal /n/, while the dentalization happens because the sound /n/ is followed by a dental sound /t/. that is why the speakers need to put their tip of the tongue between the teeth when pronouncing the sound /n/. in the word (15), three processes happen there. the first is elision in which the apostrophe denotes the short form of not, while the second process is reduction in which it pronunciation is changed from /dɔ:ɂ/ into /də:ɂ/ and also /mætəɹ/ into /matɹ/. the last process is assimilation for which the pronunciation of /də:ɂ mætɹ/ turns into /də:mætɹ/. the sound /n/ turns into /m/ as the anticipation of meeting the bilabial sound /m/. meanwhile, the vol. 15 no. 1 – april 2015 19 nasalization process happens because the sound /i/ in the word making is influenced by the nasal sound /ŋ/ as the following sound. in the word (16), reduction and elision processes occur. the reduction of the vowel happens for which it is reduced from /æ/ into /ə/ and the elision happens to the sound /d/, so the pronunciation will be changed from /ænd/ to /ən/. in the word (17), it involves two processes in its pronunciation: elision and assimilation. the elision is marked by the apostrophe which represents the short form of will not and the assimilation happens in which the sound /n/ is pronounced as /m/ for anticipating the bilabial stop as its following sound. as a result, the pronunciation is changed from /wɔ:ɂ bɪ/ into /wɔ:mbɪ/. conclusion from the findings and discussions above, the writer formulated some important points as the conclusion. from the first song, the writer recognized four kinds of assimilation process namely nasalization, dentalization, rounding and fronting. while for the reduction process, she found six cases and twelve cases for elision process. she also found six cases which have more than one phonological process. in the second song, the writer found three kinds of assimilation namely nasalization, dentalization and fronting. for the reduction process, she recognized six cases and seven cases which belong to the elision process. moreover, she found four cases which involve more than one phonological process in their pronunciations. references akmajian, a. et al. linguistics: an introduction to language and communication. london: the mit press, 2001. print. bybee, joan. phonology and language use. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2001. print. collins, b. & mees, i.m. practical phonetics and phonology. new york: routledge, 2003. print. flemming, e., and s. johnson. “rosa’s roses: reduced vowels in american english.” journal of the international phonetic association, vol. 37, 2007. giegerich, h.j. english phonology: an introduction. cambridge: cambridge university press, 1992. print. griffen, toby d. “pitch, stress, and vowel reduction.” general linguistics. 1998: 17–32. print. ladefoged, p. a course in phonetics: third edition. los angeles: university of california, 1993. print. moleong, lexy j. metode penelitian kualitatif. bandung: pt remaja rosdakarya, 1990. print. o’grady, w. et al. contemporary linguistics: an introduction. new york: st. martin’s, 2005. print. odden, d. introducing phonology. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2005. print. radford, a. et al. linguistics: an introduction. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2009. print. van bergem, d.r. acoustic and lexical vowel reduction. dissertation. amsterdam: university of amsterdam, 1995. print. phenomena vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 105 language and gender: toward a critical feminist linguistics a.b. sri mulyani mulyanips@gmail.com department of english letters, sanata dharma university abstract this article attempts to map out the development of language and gender research and studies from its early stage to recent trend. the early language and gender research is inclined to essentialist view; and it subsequently changes its direction into a more non-essentialist perspective. both essentialist and non-essentialist perspectives on language and gender research are not necessarily affiliated with feminist linguistics. their research findings mostly conclude that women’s language is inferior and women are not capable users of language. in a response to such “sexist” findings, various feminist scholars across the disciplines venture to rethink and redefine gender and language. among many different approaches that they employ are two notable views, namely, the “dominance” and “difference” perspectives. one views man-woman differences in language use as a reflection of their power relation: the dominant and the subordinate. meanwhile, the other sees this different linguistic use as a result of the different ‘sub-cultures’ of their social environment (coates, 2000: 413 and also litosseliti, 2006:27). this shift toward a critical feminist linguistics is in fact informed by the current theories in critical thinking and feminist perspectives. keywords: language, gender, feminist perspective language and gender current theories in critical thinking and feminist perspectives have informed recent research and studies on language and gender, shifting from an essentialist perspective to a non-essentialist perspective that enables critical feminist linguistics to include heterogeneity, non-fixity, specificity, and reflexivity in its perspectives. research and studies on language and gender are not necessarily affiliated with feminist linguistics such as seen in otto jespersen’s research on language and gender. jespersen’s “the woman,” the most frequently quoted and anthologized article from his book language: its nature, development and origin (1922) is considered to be one of the early and ‘classic’ texts in language and gender. in his study, jespersen reveals that men and women use language differently, for example, in terms of phonetics, grammar, diction, vocabulary, and adverbs. women are seen as less capable language users than men: “in language we see this very clearly: the highest linguistic genius and the lowest degree of linguistic imbecility are rarely found among women” (quoted in cameron, 1998: 240). women’s language is also considered to be inferior to men’s language, and is appropriately fit enough for their gender domestic roles. jespersen views language from an essentialist perspective; that is, seeing men-women language difference as the result of sex and gender differences. thus, from this perspective, people use language in particular ways because of who they are. jespersen’s essentialist view of language and a.b. sri mulyani 106 sexist judgment on women’s language have been challenged by many feminist scholars, inviting various different scholars, both male and female, across the disciplines to redefine and rethink language and gender. feminist perspectives on language and gender there are many different responses among feminist scholars in their attempts to challenge jespersen’s sexist commentaries on women’s language; and these different feminist responses are grouped into two major approaches/perspectives: the “dominance” and “difference” frameworks. the “dominance perspective” sees the manwoman differences in language use as a reflection of their power relation, the dominant and the subordinate. meanwhile, the “difference perspective,” on the contrary, sees this different linguistic usage as the result of the different “sub-cultures” of their social environment (coates, 2000: 413 and also litosseliti, 2006:27). two famous responses among feminist scholars are the works of lakoff and fishman; and along with jespersen’s work, their works are also “classic” texts in language and gender studies. lakoff’s language and woman’s place (1975) is considered to be the first work of feminist linguistics (cameron, 1998: 216). lakoff’s study shows a similar result to jespersen’s conclusion that women’s language was indeed “inferior/deficient” compared to men’s language; but they have different interpretations of their similar findings. jespersen sees the difference as essentially sprung from biological determinant; on the other hand, lakoff sees women’s linguistic deficiency as the result of the power-gender relation assigned to men and women in society in which men frequently dominate and are more privileged such as in the field of education. despite her negative result on women’s language in her study, lakoff has an explicitly positive and sympathetic attitude toward women. nonetheless, lakoff’s study has been widely criticized as lacking empirical data because she based her research on her intuition, on casual and personal observations, and on cultural stereotypes when studying the languagegender relation. lakoff has re-released her book, annotating it and responding to past and current issues and debates on language and gender, and sharing her ideas with other researchers in this book (litosseliti, 2006: 31). lakoff’s study on gendered language is usually categorized into the dominance perspective. fishman with a similar perspective in “conversational insecurity” (1983) has re-examined lakoff’s research finding, arguing that women’s language is not deficient and that women are competent language users and the women-men linguistic difference is not only gender-related but also a matter of hierarchy. employing the same dominant perspective as lakoff and fishman, spender in her seminal work, man-made language (1980), criticized lakoff for using men’s language as the norm for evaluating women’s language, arguing that patriarchy privileges men to dominate and to define meaning. thus, the problem is not the “deficient” language of women but rather the deficiency of the social order (spender, 1980 in litosseliti, 2006: 32). the works of lakoff, fishman, and spender are prominent examples of the “dominance perspective/ approach” in language and gender studies. meanwhile, the “difference perspective/ approach” can be found in the works of tannen, maltz and borker, and gumperz, attempting to see that women’s language is not only different but also positive in its respect. such a view follows the theoretical assumption that ‘differences’ are the product of participation and socialization of “different male and female “sub-cultures.” (litosseliti, 2006: 37). both the “dominance” and “difference” perspectives/approaches have been criticized for their simple conceptualization of gender; however, both perspectives have a great contribution to make and a significant role to play in the development of critical feminist linguistics. women’s movement and critical feminist linguistics the different perspectives/approaches, choice of topic and focus in language and vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 107 gender studies show that there is no singular perspective among feminists in spite of the patriarchal oppression that they experience in society. as a result, language and gender is indeed a widely varied field of study. the visible similarity that these different feminist perspectives/approaches have in common is that all of those perspectives are informed and influenced by the development of critical theories in linguistics and feminism as well. this fact also reflects the inseparable connection between the historical development of feminism and the development of feminist linguistics although feminist linguistics emerged from within the linguistics discipline itself. mills has mapped three chronological waves in the history of feminism. the “firstwave feminism” is generally related to the suffragette movement in the 19th and 20th centuries. the “second-wave” feminism is linked to the women’s movement in the 1960s, resisting sex discrimination and struggling for equal opportunity and the emancipation of women. this second-wave feminist influence can also be seen in language and gender studies and research that have more focus on sexist language, issues of dominance and difference in interaction, and a positive re-evaluation of women’s language. finally, “third-wave” feminism moves toward “more critical, constructivist, and poststructuralist theoretical paradigms” (litosseliti, 2006: 23). critical feminist linguistics also moves towards this “third-wave” feminist influence, taking a more interdisciplinary approach, shifting from the concern of how women and men use language differently to the concern of how language constructs both men and women in their social interaction. the connection of feminist linguistics and the post-structural approach can be seen through weedon’s main argument on feminist post-structural concepts in her book feminist practice and poststructuralist theory (1987) and talbot’s concept of feminist linguistics (1998). weedon maps different strands of poststructuralist frameworks from different theories of various scholars such as the structural linguistics of saussure, althusser’s theory of ideology, the psychoanalysis of freud and lacan, derrida’s theory of “difference”, and foucault’s theory of discourse and power (weedon, 1987). weedon encourages feminist scholars to employ a pragmatic and eclectic approach to appropriate these widely varied poststructural theories to serve feminist needs and interests, facilitating heterogeneity, nonfixity, specificity, and reflexivity. meanwhile, according to talbot “feminist linguistics is interested in identifying, demystifying, and resisting the ways in which language is used, together with other social practices, to reflect, create and sustain gender divisions and inequalities in society” (talbot, 1998 in litosseliti, 2006: 23). following the perspectives of feminist post-structuralism outlined by cameron (1992, 1997), luke and gore (1992a), weedon (1987), and pennycook’s critical inquiry in applied linguistics (2001), pavlenko defines feminist post-structuralism as approaches to language study that strive (a) to understand the relationship between power and knowledge; (b) to theorize the role of language in production and reproduction of power, difference, and symbolic domination; and (c) to deconstruct master narratives that oppress certain groups –be it immigrants, women, or minority members – and devalue their linguistic practices (in norton & toohey, 2004: 53). in essence, feminist post-structural linguistics/critical feminist linguistics attempts to investigate how women and men are constructed from a wider perspective through language, and sees gender not as a unitary category but as heterogeneous: diverse and multiple, shifting/not-fixed, and sometimes conflicting. thus, gender as a category should be examined from a wider perspective in its specific relationship with other categories such as race, ethnicity, class, age, and sexual orientation (weedon, 1987). in accordance with the “third-wave” feminist influence on critical feminist linguistics, the writer of this paper attempts to show that currently, critical feminist linguistics with its critical and constructivist, post-structural approach that facilitates heterogeneity, non-fixity, specificity, and a.b. sri mulyani 108 reflexivity in language and gender studies has also penetrated efl and esl studies and research as seen in the works of daly (2000), micciche (2001), peirce (1995), pavlenko, aneta (2004), sunderland (1992 and 2004), and lin (2004). the feminist post-structural take on heterogeneity, non-fixity, specificity can be clearly seen in peirce’s “social identity, investment, and language learning” that attempts to show that second language acquisition (sla) is closely related to the motivation, gender and ethnic identity of learners in a particular/specific social-power relation. the poststructuralist feminist linguistic agenda (as identified/defined by pavlenko) is clearly seen in peirce’s choice of subjects/topic/focus: immigrant women in canada in their attempt to learn english and to fit to their new social environment. peirce’s focus on immigrant women also reveals her attempt to challenge the view of gender as a universal category. the major theorization of women is undoubtedly centered on white middle class heterosexual women; and is generally deemed to be universal and applicable to all women. peirce rejects such universality in gender categories and her work shows that specificity is crucial in doing gender studies. her work displays how women of different ethnicity and class are constructed differently in society through language. the specificity of women’s class and ethnic identity also needs to be properly situated in their specific social setting. the immigrant women in peirce’s study may experience different gender-power relationships in their attempt to master english if they are situated in different places other than canada. the point here is that specific location or locality does matter. the concept of the “community of practice” by lave and wenger and also the ideas of eckert and mcconnell-ginet, stated that it is not only a matter of location and people that is important but also day to day linguistic, social, and cultural interactions of the people within the community. peirce’s work also reveals the feminist poststructuralist concept of heterogeneity, showing that one immigrant woman does not only have ethnic and gender identities but also multiple, changing, and shifting/notfixed as a woman, immigrant, mother, wife, worker, and other identities attached to this immigrant woman that influence her second language acquisition. peirce also extends the concept of motivation to “investment” that includes larger socio-cultural-historical relationship involving the learners. peirce’s study is a critical examination of the interplay of gender, ethnicity, age, class, capital, and language in sla. meanwhile, lin’s “introducing a critical pedagogical curriculum: a feminist reflexive account” (2004) displays the feminist poststructural attempt to be more critical and involved by continuously self-questioning and self-examining feminist practice. lin reexamines and re-evaluates her teaching strategies and interaction with her students to better understand the problems, needs, and interests of both teacher and students and to negotiate those concerns so as to come up with a more ‘successful learning teaching experience. self-reflexivity in terms of learning strategy, interaction, and teaching materials are also be main concerns in pavlenko’s “gender and sexuality in foreign and second language education: critical and feminist approaches” (2004). pavlenko’s article discusses the relation of gender and second (l2) and foreign language (fl) learning inside and outside the classroom, particularly by using a feminist poststructuralist approach. pavlenko emphasizes the various different perspectives on and responses to language and gender within feminism itself. her decision to select a feminist poststructuralist critical linguistic perspective in her study is because this feminist poststructuralist theoretical framework not only pays attention to gender difference but also includes other differences such as gender in relation to race, ethnicity, class, and other differences. this perspective views subject as a full individual with her/his multiple social cultural identities. pavlenko critically examines fl/l2 education where gender plays a key role in language learning and teaching; and by applying feminist post-structuralism in this research, she analyzes (a) gendered vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 109 inequalities in access to material and symbolic resources, (b) the gendered nature of linguistic interaction, and (c) sexual harassment as a discursive and social practice. to capture this multiplicity and plurality of identities and differences in language and gender research and studies, pavlenko also suggests the use of postcolonial theories. similar to micceche’s study, pavlenko’s article is an interdisciplinary study on gender and language the attempt not to isolate gender in education from a larger social perspective is seen in daly’s “gender differences in achievement in english: a sign of the times?” (2000). daly’s article critically examines the intervention of political and economic interests, and media reports in appropriating and contextualizing gender differences. it points to the british government’s campaign in the 1990s to improve literacy “standards” by focusing on gender, particularly based on the different performance between male and female students in english classrooms as deeply rooted in the political and economic discourse to maintain “male dominance within educational success.” daly also reveals the key role of the media in reporting the different performance in english classrooms in terms of the binary opposition of gender performance in which girls perform better than boys. this media articulation polarizes a further interpretation of gender differences and gender performance and invites governmental and national initiatives to help male students achieve better literacy than female students. the article further reports that the national intervention and initiatives to improve male students’ educational success have been done through the “revision” of teaching materials and strategies, and of the curriculum as well as by testing and evaluation. those efforts have also been challenged and criticized because of the overtly intended programs to benefit only male students which will disadvantage female students. some research and recent studies have debunked the misperception that “girls have a greater natural aptitude for english” and reveal that “there is no essential difference in ability. the difference is in attitude.” in her conclusion, daly invites readers to examine and rethink current gender issues more critically, and to “understand them within a history of male privilege in educational discourse, which is always politically and economically determined.” in its essence, this article does indeed offer a critical perspective on the interplay of political, economical concerns, the media, education, and gender. meanwhile, micciche’s “contrastive rhetoric and the possibility of feminism” (2001) invites us to examine teacher-student interactions in the classroom in relation to gender and race. micciche offers feminist principles and perspectives as a theoretical model to elaborate and expand research on the contrastive rhetoric theory (crt). contrastive rhetoric (cr) has its roots in the united states as a response to traditional composition teachers who tended to have the assumption that their students are monolingual and monocultural (kaplan, 1966). cr comes into being to help learners keep up with the discourse structure of standard american schooled english (sase). thus, in its original intention, cr addressed “the need of individuals for whom english was not a first language—specifically, foreign students in u.s. tertiary institutions,” not only in terms of language difference in phonological, morphological, and grammatical features but also in discourse and rhetorical features such as seen in writing and reading classes. crt focus on culture and cultural difference and has also influenced the recent politicization of secondlanguage teaching. according to micciche crt is significant for l1 and l2 classrooms, however, it has frequently been applied in the l2 classroom contexts only, and focusing on students’ linguistic and cultural differences. micciche offers feminist perspectives to extend crt to facilitate the concept of teaching as “a cultural phenomenon affected by social identifications and representations”; thus, teaching is also “a politics of representation and scholarship as a form of cultural work.” the combination of feminist perspectives and crt will enable researcher to see how students perceive their teachers as a “racial/gendered subject” and how teachers conduct learning/teaching strategies as well because in this view pedagogy is not a.b. sri mulyani 110 only concerned with the interaction of students and teachers in the classrooms but also with “the process of socialization that instruct teachers on how to position themselves in the classrooms” (micciche, 2001:82). this article is a challenging invitation to undertake research on the dynamics of student/teacher linguistic and cultural backgrounds and on their gender and social identities. similar to the studies conducted by micciche and pavlenko, sunderland’s “gender in the efl classroom” (1992) also examines gender and gender construction in a prominent and salient setting: the efl classroom. sunderland focuses particularly on, the english language itself; on materials that include grammars, textbooks, dictionaries, and teacher’s guides; and finally on processes such as learning styles and strategies, and teacher-learner and learnerlearner interaction. in addition sunderland attempts to unveil “some implications of gender in materials and classroom interaction for language acquisition.” sunderland’s findings are in line with daly’s result in the attempt to show the myth and misinterpretation that females perform better in language achievement. on the contrary, both sunderland and daly’s studies reveal the disadvantaged position of female students in the classroom process, in materials, and within the english language itself, not to mention their further disadvantages in the social world at large outside the classrooms. both researchers see that the assessment of language learning in terms of gender differences (superiority/inferiority) is indeed not productive at all. instead, they urge people to examine this gender difference in a wider and more complex perspective; for daly, it should be seen in political and economical contexts, and for sunderland, this complex context must also include the influence of the environment, attitudes, expectations, social values and norms, and career opportunities as suggested by scholars such as loulidi (1990). sunderland’s applied study of gender and language is critical for scholars, teachers, and students who are interested in the subject of gender and language. conclusion in conclusion, the shift of the view of language from essentialist to non-essentialist perspectives has become the current trend and issue in language and gender studies and research. poststructuralist frameworks that emphasize heterogeneity, non-fixity, specificity, and reflexivity have also been adopted and appropriated b the critical feminist linguistics in redefining and rethinking gender and language. this perspective of poststructuralist critical feminist linguistics has also entered into efl and esl studies and research in terms of learning teaching strategies, interactions, motivation, teaching materials, and other aspects as seen in the works of peirce, pavlenko, sunderland, daly, lin, and micciche. it is evident that language and gender studies and research have moved towards a critical feminist linguistic perspective that includes heterogeneity, nonfixity, specificity, and reflexivity in the search for a better understanding of gender and language interplay. reference coates, j. (ed.). language and gender: a reader. oxford: blackwell publishers, 2000. print. cameron, d. (ed.). the feminist critique of language: a reader. london: routledge, 1998. print. daly, c. “gender differences in achievement in english: a sign of the times?” in j. davidson and j. moss (eds) issues in english teaching, london: routledge, 224-242, 2000. print. eckert, p. & mcconnell-ginet, s. “think practically and look locally: language and gender as community-based practice” in c. roman, s juhasz, c, miller (eds.) the women and language debate: a sourcebook. new brunswick, n.j.: rutgers university press, 432-460, 1994. print. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) yogyakarta modernity dynamics: a study of code-switching in kedaulatan rakyat’s weekly short stories from 2010 to 2015 fransisca kristanti f.kristanti@usd.ac.id english letters department, universitas sanata dharma abstract this research analyzes how language reflects yogyakarta modernity dynamics through the analysis of kedaulatan rakyat’s weekly short stories from 2010 to 2015. the research is aimed to find out how the city’s modernity is portrayed through language by the means of code-switching in the weekly short stories. it identifies the phenomena of code-switching in the short stories and analyzes whether or not the switch is an illustration of the city’s modernity through language. keywords: code-switch, short stories, modernity, yogyakarta. introduction language shapes society and vice versa. the way the society uses a language illustrates their way of living. sociologically, the society’s character is limited by the language they use. the more items exist in one’s society ‘wardrobe’, the more elaborative they can refer the world they live in. one might argue that the constraint of the language expressions exists within the language itself, not the society. one group of people might have the ability of referring to the world by a combination of some languages (or dialects). globalization thought of the idea of having one language in one society to be obsolete. it demands people to be able to perform inter-communal communication in the midst of the present contemporary community, leading to the emergence of the ‘global’ community. in this era, boundaries are no longer marked by the nation’s imaginary borders, as argued by anderson (2006), nor by race. globalization requires people to survive by the degree of their ability in communicating cross-codes, crosslanguages. the general concept of globalization imbeds most areas in the world, if not all, yogyakarta included. the atmosphere of globalization is vividly present in yogyakarta, especially in the past years. right after the mount merapi eruption in 2010, the city set its heart to rebuild its infrastructure for its people. however, the sense of being a member of the global community seems to have a very strong grip on the city’s stake holders and decision makers. it is visible that yogyakarta sets its heart to be the city of travel industry. the city has been preparing itself for this goal by undergoing urbanization processes for the past years. these processes were marked by the massive infrastructure development. along with the massive infrastructure development, yogyakarta’s determination to become the city of tourism industry also calls for the people’s mastery of english 17 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fransisca kristanti alongside their mother tongue and indonesian language. by opening the city to embrace international community, the mastery of english is no longer an option. it becomes a necessity. however, as the city of culture, the yogyakarta’s elderly holds strongly to the practice of javanese language. by this, the culture is more or less preserved. on the other hand, the driving forces of the tourism industry are mostly those who are in their productive age. even though the ones in their productive age use javanese and indonesian language in their daily communication, more and more people of yogyakarta use english. as the city progresses physically, more and more young people are familiar with english. english terminologies have become widely used in communication among people. a part of the reason is because of the number of expatriates and foreign students who stay in yogyakarta intrigues those who interact with them to exercise english. moreover, being the city which undergoes changes to become the city of tourism industry, yogyakarta welcomes local and international tourists, which means that indonesian and english become the language of the city in this particular context. the fundamental idea of this research is to find out whether language choice reflects modernity. however, considering that yogyakarta is a multicultural city, the object of the study attempts to focus to the people embracing the culture of the city. kedaulatan rakyat, a local newspaper, is an excellent example of documentation about the culture of yogyakarta. kedaulatan rakyat is placed in the heart of yogyakarta. established in 1945, the newspaper soon became one of the biggest newspaper in yogyakarta. the ability to stand the test of time for more than 70 years makes the newspaper becomes an integrated culture of yogyakarta. this research focuses on the short stories published weekly in the newspaper. eagleton (1983) states that literature illustrates the way the society functions. it is a reflection of a particular society in different functions, from religious to political functions. he also states that literature can be considered to be a description of history specifically. therefore, this research explores language expressions used in the weekly short stories which portray the modernity dynamics happening in yogyakarta. by identifying the language expressions existed in the texts, this research attempts to draw a conclusion whether or not the modernity dynamics is reflected in the kedaulatan rakyat’s weekly short stories within the sixyear duration, starting from 2010, the time of the historical mount merapi eruption. code-switching code-switching is defined as the use of two codes alternatively among the people who have shared knowledge of the languages. weinreich (1968) defines codeswitching as a sub-standard practice of the phenomenon of switching from one language to the other among bilingual people based on the context they were in. however, modern linguistic research finds code-switching to be systematic and it follows certain pattern which is meaningful in language use. bullock and toribio (2009) refers code-switching as the alternation between two codes (languages) which happens spontaneously within the same discourse. this is supported by haugen’s (1956) statement about the introduction of a “completely unassimilated word from another language” (40) when someone is speaking. bilingual speakers practice codeswitching not only to smoothen conversation, but also to eliminate ethnic boundaries as well as identities. heller (1988) argues that in social process, codeswitching enables multilinguals to use “a resource for indexing situationally salient aspects of context in speaker’s attempts to accomplish interactional goals” (3). context is important in the realization of codeswitching. the switch might take many forms between languages. skiba (1997) mentions that code-switching can be realized in many forms, from the alternation 18 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) of sentences to the alternation of words from both codes. furthermore, myers-scotton (1993) states that code-switching is “the selection by bilinguals or multilinguals of forms from an embedded variety (or varieties) in utterances of matrix variety during the same conversation” (3). factors of code-switching code-switching is motivated by many factors, among which are the linguistic factors and the social factors. gumperz (1982) states that multilinguals utilize codeswitching to express meanings in social context depending on the situation as well as other variables. furthermore, he claims that some linguistic limitations and social aspects motivates the switch to take place. linguistic factors of the code-switch refers to the grammatical aspects of the languages. in this area, code-switching can take place within sentences or between sentences. within the context of linguistic factors, code-switching happens when words, phrases, or sentences from different languages which have different linguistic structures without any sentence limitation occur in a single statement (myers-scotton, 1997). on the other hand, social factors and dimensions are the determining aspects of the choice to use a particular language instead of the others. social factors are responsible for the occurrence of various sociolinguistic phenomena such as codeswitching. the determining aspects of social factors are elaborated into context, participants, topic, and purpose (holmes, 2013). this particular research considers the authors, not the characters, in the short stories as the participants. the authors speak to the readers using the characters, thus the choice of language falls to the author. the set of the context is the authors as a member of yogyakarta’s community who are tangled in the city’s issues and use their short stories to address the issues which becomes their concerns. topics are not limited in certain discourses due to the necessity of analyzing all types of discourses brought up in the short stories. people code-switch for various reasons due to the attainment of certain targets. reasons for code-switching has been studied by many linguists over the years. appel and muysken (2006) lists six basic functions of code-switching based on the previous notions presented by halliday et al. (1964) namely referential function, directive function, expressive function, phatic function, metalinguistic function, and poetic function. the referential function is based on the lack reference of a certain language. when bilingual needs to refer to a particular word using a certain language, he/she needs to consider the context and concept of the words. it is very common that the vocabulary of a certain language does not carry the concept which needs to be conveyed. the speaker then has to switch code to the language which expresses the concept most appropriately. directive function is based on whether or not the speaker decides to include or exclude specific participants from the conversation. the speaker has the ability of using the terminology from a language which is familiar to the person when he/she decides to include the person. on the other hand, if the speaker decides to exclude the person from a conversation, he/she will use the terminology from a language which is foreign to the person. expressive function illustrates the speaker’s needs to highlight his/her identity or feelings towards others participating in the conversation. the speaker switch codes to emphasize his/her feelings. phatic function highlights the importance of certain parts in the conversation. the speaker use code-switches to emphasize the parts of the conversation which are important. metalinguistic function occurs when the speaker chooses to comment a particular feature of a language by using another language. finally, poetic function occurs when a speaker chooses to code-switch for the sake of entertainment as when he/she 19 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fransisca kristanti uses puns or making jokes, then he/she applies the poetic function of the codeswitching. moreover, in the sociolinguistic discussion of code-switching by malik (1994) about the code-switching phenomenon happening in india, reasons for the code-switching are presented. first, people code-switch because of lacking facility. bilinguals switch code when certain concepts in one language are not available in the other. the switch is intended to avoid misconception and misunderstanding due to the loss in translation. second, people codeswitch because lacking registral competence. bilinguals who are competent in a language and not as equally competent in other language are common. these bilinguals code-switch because they find difficulties in selecting appropriate vocabularies in their non-mother tongue for a specific discourse. third, people code-switch because of their mood change. people are in constant mood change. when bilinguals code-switch based on their mood they tend to do that because the one they choose to use takes less effort and time. the expression itself might be present in both languages. fourth, people code-switch to amplify and emphasize a point. the code-switching happens when the bilinguals decides to highlight a point in the speech. this might happen during arguments or presentations. fifth, people code-switch because of habitual expressions. some fixes phrases such as instructions, orders, apologies, and other discourse markers are common practice of code-switching. the codeswitching may elevate or reduce the strength of the speech. seven, people codeswitch because of the presence of semantic significance. bilinguals switch codes to convey important information linguistically and socially. this is used as a verbal strategy. finally, people code-switch to show identity with a group. code-switching is a common practice to mark shared values by the people of the same culture. the preservation of a certain words and phrases in their original language is used to highlight a sense of belonging within the group. data collection and analysis this is a preliminary research targeting on the identification of code-switching in kedaulatan rakyat’s weekly short stories published from 2010 to 2015 in order to see the tendency of yogyakarta’s citizen in using english as the mark of the city’s modernization. 224 short stories published in kedaulatan rakyat from january 2010 to april 2015 were collected to be analyzed. after the short stories were collected, identification of code-switch from indonesian language to others were done. then reasons behind the code-switching to each language is analyzed by applying the arguments from malik (1994) and appel and muysken (2006), the occurrence in each switching language is compared. from the findings, a conclusion on whether or not the code-switch occurring in the short stories illustrates the modernity dynamics in yogyakarta were made. findings and discussion code-switching occurs in 101 out of 224 short stories (42% of the overall short stories). the occurrence of the switch varies in number, in codes, and in structures. the switch in one short story are mostly targeting one code, yet there are some short stories which contain multiple-code switch. nineteen short stories contain multiple-code switch. the distribution of between the single-code switch and the multiple-code switch is presented in table 1. 20 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) table 1 distribution of short stories with single-code switch and double-code switch year total sc mc switch to (from most to least) 2010 25 72% 28% javanese, english, arabic, french 2011 21 86% 14% javanese, english, padangnese 2012 15 60% 40% javanese, english, arabic, japanese 2013 19 84% 16% javanese, english, japanese 2014 16 94% 6% javanese, english, arabic, french 2015 5 100% 0% javanese, english total 101 83% 17% description total: the total number of the short stories containing code-switching within the year; sc: the number of short stories containing single-code switch within the year; mc: the number of short stories containing multiple-code switch within the year. from the overall data, 83% of the short stories contain single-code switch, whereas only 17% contain multiple-code switch. the multiple-code switch all contain double-code switch which is the combination of javanese and another code. the findings illustrate the preservation of the yogyakarta’s culture since the code shifts from indonesian to javanese. overall, the data show that the original code (indonesian) switch to six different codes, namely: javanese, english, arabic, japanese, french, and padangnese. the distribution of each code is described in table 2. table 2 distribution of codes year total number of codeswitch occurrence of code-switch from indonesian to english french arabic japanese javanese padangnese 2010 58 17 2 5 0 34 0 2011 71 15 0 0 0 54 2 2012 56 16 0 11 10 19 0 2013 68 17 0 0 8 43 0 2014 32 11 2 2 0 17 0 2015 6 2 0 0 0 4 0 total 291 78 4 18 18 171 2 % 100 26.8 1.4 6.2 6.2 58.8 0.7 table 2 shows that javanese holds the highest number of the code being shifted to. the languages which are consistently occurring in the code-shift phenomena from indonesian are javanese and english. in 2010, javanese occurred twice as many as the english. in 2011, indonesian switched exclusively to english and javanese, with the 21 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fransisca kristanti number of javanese use more than three times of english use. in 2012, the trend was slightly changed by having almost equal distribution among four target languages: javanese, english, arabic, and japanese. the trend came back in 2013 and lasted until 2015 where javanese became the most used switched language. the findings show that even though the switch to english is quite significant, the switch to javanese is more than double that of english. the english vocabularies occurring in the shift were those which are commonly used to refer to concepts. the english words occurring in the short stories are the ones which are very familiar to the indonesians. the examples of the terminologies are trance, launching, soft drink, quick count, intellectual quotient, support, talk show, makeup, sound system, teleconference, breaking news, update, boarding, delay, check out, debt collector, valet parking, playgirl, meeting, dashboard, broken home, headline, off the record, bully, and trending topic. the english words listed above are mostly used to retain the integrity of the concept they carry. the lack of facility of the indonesian language to convey the particular concepts embedded in the english words becomes the main reason for this switch. since the english words used in the short stories are those which have been used by the indonesians in general, whether formally or informally, the switches do not happen due to the modernity dynamics within the six-year period. they have been frequently used long before 2010. on top of that, the english terminologies are used because they are considered as habitual expressions. the terminology of ‘broken home’ and ‘makeup’ have been used for decades in indonesia. moreover, aviation-specific terminology such as ‘boarding’ and ‘delay’ have been used in indonesian airports from the get go. therefore, the occurrence of code-switching to english from indonesian in kedaulatan rakyat’s weekly short stories from 2010 to 2015 does not illustrates the process of modernization of the people of yogyakarta. it is purely chosen for their referential function. the switch from indonesian to javanese, however, shows that the people of yogyakarta are still strongly rooted to their tradition and culture through the means of language. first and foremost, javanese in the short stories is used to highlight the sense of belonging within a group. it shows solidarity which portrays close kinship with the group. malik (1994) refers to this as showing identity with a group. words such as nduk, le, guyub, and sim bah are good examples for this reason. second, people use javanese in regards to their mood change. some expressions such as munyuk, ngeyel, ndesa, and ha mbok are shorter and more expressive than their indonesian counterparts. third, people code-switch to javanese because of lacking facilities in indonesian. most javanese words are untranslatable so when the speaker tries to use the words with the most similar meanings in indonesian, they often got lost in translation. words such as konthalkanthil, gremengan, gadhulan, nyeleneh, ewer-ewer, mengelesot, ongkang-ongkang, and gedebog contain specific concept which will not be retained in other codes. thus, it is fair to say that people codeswitch from indonesian to javanese mostly because of their referential and expressive functions. the code-switch serves extremely well to maintain original concept and expressive enough to convey emotion. conclusion considering the findings, codeswitching occurs sufficiently in kedaulatan rakyat’s weekly short stories from 2010 to 2015. however, the code-switch does not portray the dynamics of modernity of the yogyakarta’s people. instead of switching to english as the global language, the data show that the switch to javanese happens more often. from this, it can be concluded that the people of yogyakarta are still comfortable in their own culture. unlike the massive infrastructure development which 22 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) disregards the city’s culture, the people highly consider yogyakarta’s culture by preserving it through language use. references anderson, benedict. imagined communities, reflection on the origin and spread of nationalism. revised ed. london: verso, 2006. appel, rene and pieter muysken. language contact and bilingualism. amsterdam: amsterdam university press, 2006. bullock, barbara e. and almeida jacqueline toribio. 2009. “themes in the study of code-switching” in barbara e. bullock and almeida jacqueline toribio (eds.) the cambridge handbook of linguistic code-switching. cambridge: cambridge university press. eagleton, terry. literary theory: an introduction. oxford: blackwell publishers, 1983 gumperz, john j. discourse strategies. cambridge: cambridge university press, 1982. haugen. the norwegian language in america. vol. 2. philadelphia: the university of pennsylvania press, 1953. heller, monica. codeswitching: anthropological and sociolinguistic perspectives. berlin: mouton de gruyter, 1988. holmes, janet. an introduction to sociolinguistics. new york: longman, 2013. malik, lalita. sociolinguistics: a study of code-switching. new delhi: anmol, 1994. myers-scotton, carol. dueling languages: grammatical structure in codeswitching. oxford: oxford university press, 1997. skiba, richard. 1997. “code switching as a countenance of language interference unclassified material. internet tesl journal. retrieved from <iteslj.org> on 8 august 2015. weinreich, uriel. languages in contact: findings and problems. new york: linguistic circle of new york, 1953. club. harold bloom (ed.). philadelphia: chelsea house publisher. 2003. 23 phenomena karlina denistia & fr. borgias alip 50 the distribution of the agentive nominalizer of the suffixes {-er} and {-an} karlina denistia & fr. borgias alip english letters department, sanata dharma university abstract this study focuses on the suffixes {–er} and {-an} because these suffixes are the most commonly used suffixes in daily life and thus really productive. there are three problems formulated for this topic: (1) what are the characteristics of stems receiving suffixes {–er} and {-an}? (2) what meanings are introduced by suffixes {–er} and {–an}? (3) what are the distributions of the allomorphs of suffixes {–er} and {-an}? the data of this study are morphemes and affixes. hornby’s oxford advanced learner’s dictionary (year of 2000) is used. finally, the present researcher found that the suffixes {–er} and {an} are attached to certain verbs, adjectives, and nouns. the suffix {-an} are not attached to verbs. the suffix {-er} is mostly attached to transitive verbs to create three possibilities of meaning. there is only one meaning of the suffix {–er} when it is attached to an adjective, and eight meanings of the suffix {–er} when it is attached to certain nouns. for suffix {-an}, there are three meanings when it is attached to adjectives and five meanings when it is attached to nouns. there are two meanings of the suffix {-an} when it is attached to nouns. the allomorph of the suffix {-er} are –or, -eer /ɪər/, and –ier /ɪər/, while the allomorphs of the suffix {-an} are –ian /ʃn/, -ian /ɪən/, and –ean /ɪən/. keywords: morpheme, derivational suffixes, an agentive nominalization, stem, allomorph introduction english language development is growing rapidly. the most common process used by human beings for language development is affixation because most of the new words are created by using affixation. this is what bauer also said in his book “affixation in the most frequent process to form words” (bauer,1988:19). in this study, the present researcher focuses on the suffixes {–er}, {– ist}, and {-an} because these suffixes are the most commonly used suffixes in our daily life and are thus really productive. quirk argued that agentive nominalizations have the status of ““full productivity”, that they have possibility to be either ‘permanent’ or ‘temporary’ agential noun” (quirk, 1980:436). therefore, the present researcher is interested in discussing this topic because people are familiar with these suffixes. according to the function, the suffixes {–er} and {-an} are categorized into derivational suffixes to create an agentive nominalization. additionally, the present researcher hopes that by studying this topic, people can minimize their misuse in using these suffixes. part of speech of the stem attached to the suffixes verb stem there are 95 words or 60,5 % occurrences of the suffix {-er} attached to verbs. most verb stems of the suffix {-er} are derived from french word such abuser, advertise, attacker, bomber, browser, and challenger. since the suffix {-er} is the most productive, many verbs coming from old vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 51 english also can be verb stems for this suffix, such as crawler, comer, cleaner, believer, and borrower. verbs derived from latinate words can be attached to the suffix {-er} such as in the words commuter, consumer, contender, and designer. one of the characteristics of verb stems is that they are transitive verbs such as admirer, adjudicator, editor, manager, and researcher. thus, it is unacceptable to say *crier, *walker. however, it is not impossible for intransitive verbs to have {–er} as an indicator to have the agentive nominalization such as sleeper, dreamer, drummer, and runner as long as they refer to either ‘a person whose job is x-ing’ or ‘a person who repeats the activity x-ing’ or in a simple way, it refers to a habitual activity. yet, there are also some exceptions that although the words belong to transitive verbs, they do not have the suffix {–er} as their agentive nominalization such as *getter, *seer, *sayer, *knower, and *meeter unless they are in form of compound noun such as in over-seer, doom-sayer, and dignitary-meeter. in addition, verbs with the suffix –ize and – ate form such as apologizer, organizer, dictator, and animator also can be attached to the suffix {-er}. another characteristic of the verbs is that {–er} suffix is mostly attached to monosyllabic verbs. these monosyllabic verbs come from native old english words such as swimmer, seeker, seller, drinker, writer, washer, and buyer. adjective stem there are 7 words or 4,5 % occurrences of the suffix {-er} attached to adjectives. etymologically, most adjectives are derived from old english such as westerner, easterner, southerner, and northerner. these adjectives have the same characteristic that they refer to a certain part of the world. the three other words, commoner, stranger, and foreigner, are derived from old french. noun stem there are 55 words or 35 % occurrences of the suffix {-er} attached to nouns. based on the noun classification, the present researcher found that the noun stems for this suffix fulfill all noun classes. there are four noun classes based on quirk et al. those are concrete nouns, abstract nouns, countable nouns, and uncountable nouns. for the concrete countable nouns, the present researcher has the words falconer, sealer, and whaler. for the concrete uncountable nouns, the present researcher has the words rancher, commissioner, and councilor. the present researcher also has abstract nouns as the stem of the suffix {-er} such as astrologer, philosopher, and astronomer. however, the present researcher found that there are only seven abstract nouns which can be noun stems for the suffix {-er}: adventurer, astrologer, astronomer, auctioneer, conventioneer, probationer, and philosopher. therefore, it can be concluded that mostly nouns attached to the suffix {-er} are concrete nouns. etymologically, most nouns which can be stems of the suffix {-er} are derived from the french language such as villager, trumpeter, and slaver. the other borrowed words come from latinate words such as gondolier, costumier, and senator and greek words such as astrologer, philosopher, and astronomer. in addition, the nouns derived from greek are those abstract nouns which are related to some form of study. there are also some native nouns derived from old english that can be the stem of the suffix {-er}, although not as many as the old english verbs which are attached to the suffix {-er}. there are five words derived from old english: adventurer, crofter, hatter, drover, and sealer. stem attached to the suffix {-an} adjective stem there are 5 words or 6,8 % occurrences of the suffix {-er} attached to adjectives. etymologically, 100 % adjectives with the suffix {-an} are derived from latinate words. three of them are directly borrowed as english words such as civilian, valedictorian, and veterinarian. one of them is borrowed by the french first before english used the word: disciplinarian. one of them is borrowed through greek first before the english used the words such as electrician. karlina denistia & fr. borgias alip 52 noun stem there are 69 words or 93,2 % occurrences of the suffix {-er} attached to nouns. the noun stems attached to the suffix {-an} only fulfill two classes from the noun classification proposed by quirk et al. the characteristic noun stems attached to this suffix is 87% abstract nouns such as comedian, beautician, musician, and statistician. the uncountable concrete nouns can be the stems of the suffix {-an}. from the data, only 13% of the nouns are concrete uncountable nouns, most of them are related to the proper name of a country, as peters said “this common suffix generates adjectives from proper names, both personal and geographical” (peters, 2004: 36). this quotation explains that mostly, proper names related to geographical names can be the stems of this suffix such as arabian, european, and australian. there is no concrete countable noun as the stem of this suffix. this explains why there is no *bookian for ‘a person who studies books’ and *birdian a person who studies birds’ as the agent for the suffix {-an}. etymologically, most nouns which can be stems of the suffix {-an} are derived from latin such as seminarian, politician, custodian, and centenarian and greek such as academician, mathematician, and phonetician. analysis of the meaning of the suffixes in this part, the present researcher tries to find the general meaning of the suffix and the other meanings which are more specific. this is what matthews said in his book, morphology, “all morphology would be lexical” (matthews, 1991: 43). this means that basically, all morphemes (both free and bound morphemes) have their meaning and contribution toward the lexical itself. accordingly, the present researcher uses lexical meaning in this part. meaning of the suffix {-er} verb stem according to quirk et al. in a university grammar of english, the meaning of the suffix {-er} when it is attached to certain verbs is “agentive” (quirk et al., 1980: 438). meaning to say, this suffix can be attached to almost all verbs. the meaning of the verb + the suffix {er} is “a person who x-s”. table 1: general meaning of a verb +{-er} stem  noun change of meaning semantic effect vote  voter farm  farmer to show formally by making a paper or raising your hand which person you want to win the election  a person who has the right to vote to use land for growing crops and or keeping animals  a person who manages a farm a person who x-s the object there are two alternative meanings of suffix {–er} when it is attached to certain verbs which support the general meaning which is ‘a person who x-s’ the object. table 2: other meanings of a verb +{-er} stem  noun change of meaning semantic effect teach  teacher write  writer to give lessons to students in a school, college, or university  a person whose job is teaching to produce something in a written form so that people can read  a person whose job is writing a person whose job is x-ing smoke  smoker to suck smoke from a cigarette or pipe  a person who smokes tobacco regularly a person who likes to x vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 53 dictate  dictator to tell somebody what to do  a person who behaves as if they have complete power over other people, and tell them what to do adjective stem generally, the meaning of the adjective + the suffix {-er} is ‘a person who is x’ . table 3: general meaning of an adjective +{-er} stem  noun change of meaning semantic effect southern  southerner common  commoner connected with the southern part of the world or a country a person who comes or live in southern part of the world typical of somebody from a common social class  a person who does not come from a noble family a person who is x there are two alternative meanings of suffix {–er} when it is attached to certain adjectives which support the general meaning which is ‘a person who is x’. table 4: other meanings of an adjective +{-er} stem  noun change of meaning semantic effect western  westerner eastern  easterner connected with the western part of the world or a country  a person who comes or live in western part of the world connected with the eastern part of the world or a country  a person who comes or live in eastern part of the world a person who comes from a/an x part of a world foreign  foreigner strange  stranger from a country that is not your own  a person who comes from another country not familiar because you have not met the person before  a person that you do not know a person who has a/an x characteristic noun stem according to quirk et al. in a university grammar of english, there are two meanings of the suffix {-er} when it is attached to certain nouns. they state that the meanings are “a person engaged in an occupation or activity (engineer) and inhabitant of x (teenager, londoner)” (quirk et al., 1980: 437). for the present researcher, there is no generalization of the suffix {-er} + noun meaning because the occurrences of each meaning are almost the same percentage. table 5: meanings of a noun +{-er} stem  noun change of meaning semantic effect commission  commissioner convention  conventioneer an official group of people who have been given responsibility to control something  a member of commission an official agreement between countries or leaders  a person who is attending a convention a person who is related or engaged to the activity of x village  a very small town situated in a country  a person who a person who karlina denistia & fr. borgias alip 54 villager prison  prisoner lives in village a building where people are kept as a punishment for a crime they have committed  a person who is kept in prison lives in x debt  debtor ranch  rancher a sum of money that somebody owes  a person that owes money a large farm where cows, horses, etc are bred  a person who owns a ranch a person who owns x geography  geographer philosophy  philosopher the scientific study of the earth’s surface  a person who studies geography the study of nature and meaning of the universe and of human life  a person who studies or writes about philosophy a person who is the expert of x seal  sealer whale  whaler a sea animal that eats fish and lives around coasts  a person who hunts seals a very large animal that lives in the sea and looks like a very large fish  a person who hunts whale a person who hunts x drove  drover gondola  gondolier a large number of animals, often doing something as a group  a person who moves group of cows or sheep from one place to another a long boat with a flat bottom and high parts at each end  a person whose job is to move and steer a gondola in venice a person whose job is to move x bugle  bugler puppet  puppeteer a musical instrument like a small trumpet  a person who plays a bugle a model of a person or an animal that can be made to move  a person who plays with puppets a person who plays x hat  hatter armour  armourer a covering made to fit the head  a person who makes and sells hats military vehicles used in war  a person who makes and repairs weapons and armour a person who produces x meaning of the suffix {-an} adjective stem generally, the meaning of the adjective + the suffix {-an} is ‘a person who is x’. table 6: general meaning of an adjective +{-an} stem  noun change of meaning semantic effect valedictory  valedictorian connected with saying goodbye, especially at a formal occasion the student who has the highest marks or grades in a particular group of students and who gives the valedictory speech at a graduation ceremony a person who is x there are two alternative meanings of suffix {–an} when it is attached to certain adjectives although both of them basically support the general meaning which is ‘a person who is x’. table 7: other meanings of an adjective +{-an} stem  noun change of meaning semantic effect civil  civilian connected with the people who live in a country  a person vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 55 barbar  barbarian a member who is not connected with the armed force connected with the people who are uncivilized  a person who is uncivilized whose x characteristic electric  electrician veterinary  veterinarian connected with electricity  a person whose job is to connect, repair, etc. electrical equipment connected with caring for the animals  a person who has been trained in the science of animal medicine, whose job is to treat animal that are injured. a person whose job is connected with something x noun stem according to quirk et al. in his book, a university grammar of english, there is only one meaning of the suffix {-an} when it is attached to certain nouns. they mentioned that the meaning is “pertaining to x” (quirk et al., 1980: 437). in this part, the present researcher finds other meanings introduced by this suffix when it is attached to certain nouns. generally, the meaning of the noun + the suffix {-an} is ‘a person who studies x’. table 8: general meaning of a noun +{-an} stem  noun change of meaning semantic effect mathematics  mathematician tactic  tactician the sciences of number and shapes  a person who is an expert in mathematics the particular method used to achieve something  a person who is very clever at planning the best way to achieve something a person who studies a/an x there are four alternative meanings of suffix {–an} when it is attached to certain nouns although all of them are basically not supporting the general meaning which is a person who studies x. table 9: other meanings of a noun +{-an} stem  noun change of meaning semantic effect canada  canadian name of a country  person from canada a person who is from a/ an x country academy  academician republic  republican a school or college for special training  a member of an academy a country that is governed by a president and politicians elected by the people  a person who supports a form of government with a president and politicians elected by the people a person who is the member of x library  librarian a building in which collections of books, tapes, newspaper, etc are kept for people to read, study, or borrow a person who is in charge in a/an x centenary  centenarian the 100th anniversary of something  a person who is 100 years old or more a person who has the age of a x karlina denistia & fr. borgias alip 56 anaylysis of the allomorph of the suffixes 1. allomorph of the suffix {-er} a. the suffix {-or} in the agentive nominalization, the suffix -or is the allomorph of the suffix {–er}. twenty six words of the -or occurrences are found from the data. what can be seen in this allomorph is that this is an orthographical phenomenon because they have different letters but the same phonemic transcription, /ər/. native verbs derived from latin such as actor, investor, and collector use –or as their nominalization. it can be noticed also that mostly verbs that end with –ate are regularly changed into –or with final /ə/ deletion. in addition, the present researcher found that the words ending with –ate are also derived from latin such as adjudicator infiltrator, dictator, and illustrator. in addition, it can be generalized that the suffix –or occurs when the stems are derived from latin, borrowed directly by english. this explains why dieter and deserter have the suffix {-er} as their agent although they are derived from latinate words. it is because they are not directly borrowed by english, french borrowed it first before they came to english. therefore, they do not have the allomorph -or as their agent. for the phonological rule, it cannot be generalized that the suffix –or occurs when the stems’ last syllable ends with /t/ as the final consonant such as conductor /kən'dʌktər/, constructor /kən'strʌktər/, contractor /kən'træktər/, and detractor /dɪ'træktər/. it can be either an orthographical or a phonological phenomena which occur in a suffix. in order to create a phonological rule, the present researcher needs to have a different phoneme between input and output, while this –or allomorph which is only an orthographical phenomenon has the same phonemic transcription as the suffix {-er} which is /ər/. b. the suffix –eer and –ier as pronounced /ɪər/ basically, the suffixes –eer and -ier as the allomorph of the suffix {-er} have different letters but phonetically, they have the same phonemic transcription which is /iər/. there are nine words which have the -eer allomorph. it can be noticed that etymologically, native verbs derived from french such as charioteer and puppeteer use – eer as their nominalization. in order to extend the explanation, peters explained that the appearance of the suffix –eer can be generated from the meaning which is formed after the process of affixation. -eer suffix serves to identify a person by whatever item they engage within their work. a number of such words have been used in connection with military personnel, and this seems to have paved the way for its use in civilian forms of contention. this in turn may have helped to attach a derogatory flavor to words with –eer (peters, 2004: 174). from the quotation, the present researcher concludes that the suffix –eer is used when it creates four possible meanings. first, the meaning of the words refer to ‘a person who is engaged with the activity related to x’ such as puppeteer, mountaineer, and engineer. the second meaning is for ‘a person who is connected with military personnel’ such as cannoneer, charioteer, musketeer, and racketeer. the third meaning is for ‘a person who is contributive in a civilian form of contention’ such as auctioneer, electioneer, and pamphleteer. finally, the fourth meaning is to imply a negative implication such as profiteer, racketeer, (black) marketeer, commandeer, and domineer. however, volunteer and pioneer are free from any negative flavor. there are five words with the suffix -ier: costumier, couturier, gondolier, hotelier, and bombardier. all of those words come from french. this is also what peters said, “this suffix –ier appears in two kinds of english words: a few agent words borrowed from french and for a person associated with a particular commodity” (peters, 2004: 266). this quotation strengthens the present researcher’s finding that the suffix –ier is attached to english words which are borrowed from french. in addition, this suffix is also related to a person who is associated with a particular commodity when it is attached to noun stems. it is proven by the vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 57 existence of the word costumier, clothier, and furrier. in the case of charioteer and puppeteer, both words are nouns derived from old french and ending with /t/. thus, the present researcher finds that the allomorph /ɪər/ occurs under conditions when the stems are nouns derived from french, borrowed directly by english, and the stems’ last syllable ends with /t/ as the final consonant such as puppeteer, charioteer, pamphleteer, racketeer and marketeer. the present researcher creates a rule as follows: /ər/  [ɪər] / /t/ __________ the rule for the agentive suffix above is read as followed: /ər/ will change into [iər] after /t/. trumpeter which is derived from the french noun which is trumpete is the exception in this case since there is no *trumpeteer in english. the present researcher finds that the allomorph /ɪər/ occurs under conditions when the stems are nouns derived from french and the stems’ last syllable ends with /d/ as the final consonant such as bombard /bɒm'bɑ:d/  bombardier /bɒmbə'dɪər/. the rule is written as followed: /ər/  [ɪər] / /d/ __________ the rule for the agentive suffix above is read as followed: /ər/ will change into [ɪər] after /d/. for the /t/ and /d/ phonemes, the phonological rule is written as followed: /ər/  [ɪər] / c __________ sonorant continuant + anterior + coronal the rule for the agentive suffix above is read as followed: /ər/ will change into [ɪər] after stop anterior coronal consonants. convention and auction are latinate words. english has conventioneer and auctioneer as their agent. it can be generalized that the allomorph /ɪər/ occurs under conditions when the stems are nouns derived from french, borrowed directly by english, and the stems’ last syllable ends with /n/ as the final consonant such as mountaineer, engineer, cannoneer, conventioneer, electioneer, and auctioneer. the present researcher creates a rule as followed: /ər/  [ɪər] / /n/ __________ the rule for the agentive suffix above is read as followed: /ər/ will change into [ɪər] after /n/. however, english still has domineer, volunteer, and pioneer. in each case, those words are borrowed ready-made into english. thus, they cannot be analyzed in the same way as the english formations. the present researcher finds that the allomorph /ɪər/ occurs under condition when the stems are nouns derived from french and the stems’ last syllable ends with /m/ as the final consonant such as costume /'kɒstju:m/  costumier /kɒs'tju:mɪə/. the present researcher creates a rule as followed: /ər/  [ɪər] / /m/ __________ the rule for the agentive suffix above is read as followed: /ər/ will change into [ɪər] after /m/. for the /m/ and /n/ phonemes, the phonological rule is written as followed: /ər/  [ɪər] / c __________ + sonorant continuant + anterior + nasal the rule for the agentive suffix above is read as followed: /ər/ will change into [ɪər] after nasal consonants. the present researcher finds that the allomorph /ɪər/ occurs under conditions when the stems are nouns derived from french and the stems’ last syllable ends with /r/ as the final consonant such as such as couture /ku'tjʊər/  couturier /ku'tjʊərɪər/ and fur /fɜ:r/  furrier /fʌrɪər/. the present researcher creates a rule as followed: karlina denistia & fr. borgias alip 58 /ər/  [ɪər] / /r/ __________ the rule for the agentive suffix above is read as followed: /ər/ will change into [ɪər] after /r/. the present researcher finds that the allomorph /ɪər/ occurs under conditions when the stems are nouns derived from french and the stems’ last syllable ends with /l/ as the final consonant such as hotel /həʊ'tel/  hotelier /həʊ'telɪər/. the present researcher creates a rule as followed: /ər/  [ɪər] / /l/ __________ the rule for the agentive suffix above is read as followed: /ər/ will change into [ɪər] after /l/. for the /l/ and /r/ phonemes, the phonological rule is written as followed: /ər/  [ɪər] / c __________ + sonorant + continuant + anterior + coronal + approximant the rule for the agentive suffix above is read as followed: /ər/ will change into [ɪər] after either lateral or central consonants. 2. allomorph of the suffux {-an} a. the suffix {-ian} as pronounced /ʃn/ the /ʃn/ is the allomorph of /ən/ because both /ən/ and /ʃn/ occur in a different environment, as fromkin et al. (2003) called a predictable complementary distribution. one of the determinations whether an allomorph will occur or not is based on their stem’s final consonant. there are two conditions in which this allomorph occurs. firstly, it is when the stem is derived from either noun or adjective. secondly, it is when the final phoneme of the stem is /k/. there are eleven nouns ending with /k/ of all nouns having this allomorph such as: magic /mædʒɪk/  magician /mə'dʒɪʃn/, mathematic /mæɵə'mætɪc/  mathematician /mæɵəmə'tɪʃn/, politic /'pɒlətɪk/  politician /pɒlə'tɪʃn /, and electric /ɪ'lektrɪk/  electrician /ɪlek'trɪʃn/. the phonological reason why the morpheme /k/ changes into /ʃ/ is to make the words easier to pronounce. looking at the phonological environment, the suffix {-an} /ən/ has /n/ alveolar stop as its final consonant, the stem has /k/ which is velar stop as its final consonant, and the suffix –ian /ʃn/ has /ʃ/ whose features are alveolar fricative. it will be easier to have / ʃ/ which is alveolar fricative to move forward to the /n/ which is alveolar stop compared with /k/ which is velar stop to move forward to /n/ which is alveolar stop. therefore, magician will be pronounced as /mə'dʒɪʃn/ instead of */mə'dʒɪkn/. to describe the phonological condition in which the allomorph occurs, there will be segment change from /ə/ to be /ʃ/ under conditions when the stems’ last syllable ends with the final consonant /k/. the present researcher creates a rule for the /ən/ changing into /ʃn/ allomorphy: /ən/  [ʃn] / /k/ __________ the rule for the agentive suffix above is read as followed: /ən/ will change into [ʃn] after /k/. based on the data, the present researcher tries to generalize the phonological rule for /ʃn/ allomorph. the rule is written as followed: /ən/  [ʃn] / c __________ anterior coronal voice nasal the rule for the agentive suffix above is read as followed: /ən/ will change into [ʃn] after velar voiceless consonant. peters also explained that “the –ian suffix also appears in many nouns referring to roles and professions” (peters, 2004: 36). this quotation means that generally, words which are related to professions have the suffix –ian instead of the suffix {-an} for its agent. the present researcher believes that it can be vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 59 generalized that nouns which refer to a certain profession have more possibility to have the suffix –ian as pronounced /ʃn/ rather than the suffix {-an} as pronounced /ən/. this explanation answers why custodian, centenarian, and civilian do not belong to this category. first, it is because they do not refer to any profession; second, although they have the suffix –ian, it is pronounced as /ɪən/ and not /ʃn/. however, there are three words which are not related to profession but have /ʃn/ as its agent: egypt  egyptian, laos  laotian, and mauritius  mauritian. those words are related to a nationality. b. the suffix –ian and –ean as pronounced /ɪən/ as mentioned before in the first part of analysis that the stems of the suffix {-an} are commonly used for proper names (both personal and geographical), the present researcher finds that the allomorph –ian and –ean also appear in those circumstances. this is proven by the existence of the word european, chaldean, arabian, bostonian, and canadian. this is also what peters said, “because the resulting ending is quite often – ian, the –an suffix has given birth to –ian as a suffix. it is common with proper names” (peters, 2004: 36). this quotation means that somehow, the occurrences of the suffix –ian has a higher frequency compared with the suffix {-an}. one factor that causes this phenomenon is because people tend to make an analogy that it is more acceptable for proper names to be attached to the suffix –ian rather than the suffix {-an}. here are some examples on how the suffix {-an} may be simply added to the end of the stems. note that these are not the /ɪən/ allomorph since /ɪə/ is the part of the stem. there is no *russ as the stem of russian, *as as the stem of asian, and *syr as the stem of syrian: romanian, asian, persian, victorian, indian, syrian, australian, russian, and estonian. one other variant of the suffix {-an} is – ean. peters said that this suffix “belonged originally to a number of classical words” (peters, 2004: 36). from the quotation, the present researcher finds that the suffix –ean is also the allomorph of the suffix {-an}. however, because the number is limited (only for classical words), the distribution of this allomorph is not really wide-spread such as antipodean, herculean, promethean, mediterranean, procrustean, chaldean, and epicurean. for the suffix –ean which refers to a geographical name, english has chilean, guinean, belizean, singaporean, eritrean, zimbabwean, cape verdean, european and sierra leonean. from the example, it is noticeable that a country ended either -e or ea spelling as its final vowel will have the suffix –ean. these vowels -e or -ea are actually the part of the stem in chile, guinea, belize, singapore, cape verde, and sierra leone. it is enough only to attach the suffix {an} directly to those stem to have the agent for each stem. accordingly, it can be concluded that whenever there is a country having either –e or –ea as their final vowel, orthographically, the suffix –ean occur. the exceptions for this generalization are ukraine  ukrainian, france  french, greece  greek, papua new guinea  papuan, and suriname  surinamese because although they have either –e or –ea as their final vowel, they do not have the suffix –ean as their agent. however, note that the suffix –ean in eritrean, zimbabwean, chilean and guinean are not allomorphs of the suffix {-ian} because eritrean, zimbabwean, chilean, and guinean do not fulfill the requirements to be an allomorph because it has /ɪ/ (/ɪən/ for eritrea) as the part of their stem. thus, there is no vowel addition in its morphophonemic process to form the /ɪən/ pronunciation. chilean and guinean for example, the suffix {an} may be simply added to the end of the stems: chile /'tʃɪlɪ/  chilean /'tʃɪlɪən/ and guinea /'ɡɪnɪ/  guinean /'ɡɪnɪ/. vowel change is the most common morphophonemic process occurring in this – ean allomorph. the present researcher finds that phonologically, the vowel change occurs in the morphophonemic processes because the final consonant –e for the stem’s spelling is kept until the end of the process. in english, all –e spelling in final position will be dropped and become unpronounced (except for greek words). the notation is written as followed: /e/  ø / _____ # karlina denistia & fr. borgias alip 60 the rule above is read as followed: /e/ will be deleted when it is in the final position. the addition of the suffix {-an}, /ən/, which is attached to final spelling –e, /ɪ/, of the stems forms the spelling will be –ean, /ɪən/. it causes the –e, /ɪ/, spelling to be pronounced, combined with the spelling –a as pronounced /ə/ in the suffix –an. thus, the spelling will be –ean as pronounced /ɪən/. note however that several other words may be spelled either –ean or –ian, although for most of them, -ian is now the most common ending. the examples are argentinean / argentinian, aristotelean / aristotelian, boolean / boolian, caesarean / caesarian, hermitean / hermitian, and shakespearean / shakespearian. conclusion the suffix {-er} is mostly attached to transitive verbs coming from french or old english to create three possibilities of meanings. the suffix {-er} can be attached to some adjectives stem to create one general meaning. the suffix {-er} can also be attached to noun stems which are derived from french, latin, greek, and old english. all noun categories can be attached to this suffix. there are eight meanings created by these noun stems when it is attached to the suffix {er}. for the suffix {-an}, there is no verb stems which can be attached to this suffix. adjectives derived from latinate words can be stems of this suffix to create three meanings. the characteristics of noun stems for this suffix are mostly abstract nouns, proper names, and they are derived from latin and greek. there are five meanings when this suffix is attached to nouns. the suffix –or, -ier, and –eer are the allomorphs of the suffix {–er}. there are three allomorphs of the suffix {-an}. those are –ian as pronounced /ʃn/, -ian as pronounced /ɪən/, and –ean as pronounced /ɪən/ which occur in certain environment. finally, there are two items that should be examined when people want to produce certain agentive nominalizations using the suffixes {–er}, {–ist}, and {-an}. the first is to remember the characteristics of the stem if it is acceptable, and the second is to relate the word to the meaning if it makes sense. references bauer, laurie. introducing linguistic morphology. edinburgh: edinburgh university press ltd, 1984. fromkin, victoria, robert rodman, and nina hyams. an introduction to language. massachusetts: thomson, 2003. gleason, h. a.. an introduction to descriptive linguistics. new york: holt, rinehart and winston, 1961. matthews, p. h.. morphology (second edition). cambridge: cambridge university press, 1991 peters, pam. the cambridge guide to english usage. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2004. quirk, randolph, sidney greenbaum, geoffrey leech, and jan svartvik. a university grammar of english. london: longman, 1980. szymanek, bogdan. introduction to morphological analysis. warszawa: panstwowe wydawnictwo naukowe, 1989. phenomena r. widya yudha prawita & ni luh putu rosiandani 70 the impact of mores on the major characters’ life in ibsen’s ghost r. widya yudha prawita & ni luh putu rosiandani english letters department, sanata dharma university abstract this study examines the presence of mores as one aspect which constructs the social life in society as portrayed in ibsen’s ghosts. the mores as a manifestation of society’s demands become important key aspect which may give influence in one’s life in his efforts to build social interaction within the community. through the mores, the society’s expectation of ideal social situation is being projected. some problems have been formulated as follows to see the way the major characters deal with the mores and the impact that may occur in their life. firstly, it observes how the major characters are presented and what are the mores practiced. secondly, it discusses what the impact of the mores on the major characters’ life that comes out as the result of major characters’ responses toward the mores. based on the analysis, it shows that characters’ characteristics are various. the obdurate and conservative characteristic can be seen through manders while mrs. alving is presented as an openminded and critical though she seems like a doubter. being different is oswald which is more expressive, liberal and rebellious. the various kinds of characteristics above have significant role in the way a character response the demands of the society (the mores). meanwhile in the world of reality, sometimes what is considered as an ideal in mores is not always appropriate to be applied in the real condition. this dilemma may lead some people to give various responses or even behave recklessly in dealing with mores. then, consequently, whatever the response taken or shown by the people in responding the mores at last will bring a new impact in their life as an individual. keywords: the mores, society, social life introduction in this world of reality, every person was born to live side by side with other people and it will lead them to realize the need of others’ presence in their life to complete each other. it is strengthened by the common view on human which is widely known as social creature for his nature that cannot live without the existence of other humans. starting from the inability of a person to handle all of the matters in his life individually, at last, he will try to form a group that we may call as society in this modern era. society here can be said as a mass of people who lives together with common interest, activity and structural system in creating, sustaining and developing the life into a better direction and condition (neumeyer, 1953: 7). to live in society means that a person will face new various responsibility and demands to do. he is expected to adapt, to follow and to take part on the social system practiced. as widely known, in a society there must be certain regulations in many forms as the fundamental to define the acceptable behaviour (becker, 1992: 910). those patterns and demands are important in creating a stable situation in the society. so, vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 71 culture non material material ideas norms mores laws folkways for this condition, the people are obliged to practice them. there will be negative consequences for those who do not conform since sanctions are the supporters of the regulations (bierstedt, 1963: 229). every person is supposed and expected to accept and stand in the same position with the norms used since it will be very difficult for a person to make an opposition individually for his dependencies toward society. “they (people) have not all arrived at the same formula for their common happiness, but each individual must live in a group, tribe, city, or nation to which he or she belongs, and must adapt to its way of living” (gonsalves, 1986: 93). this condition that requires one’s sincerity and obedience toward the norms has possibility to create an internal or even external conflict for those who become the member of certain society. then, indirectly, this conflict may bring an impact in their life. starting from the depiction above, the topic about the impact of the mores as one sub division of the norms was chosen to show how the mores may have unpredictable influence and effect on some people. the positions of the mores which is respected and seen as something noble and has relation to morality sometimes make many people mistreat the presence of the mores. then, for the function of literary works that can be used as a media to express and represent about certain object or topic in certain era, ghosts which was written by henrik johan ibsen in 1881 will be used as a vehicle to analyze on this topic. this literary work will be the starting point of the research to see and to observe the application of the mores in the middle of the society and their influence toward the member of society seen from the presentation of the major characters. the mores the society is identical to the presence of culture as its product. the culture is often called as the result of cumulative process in the human interaction in their society or even it is used to show the level of quality and complexity of a society. meanwhile, the culture itself is already complex since it can be classified into many sub divisions. under the concept of culture, the concept of ideas and norms as the representation of non material culture will be found. under the concept of norms, the concept of mores which has contribution to create the conformity and regularity in the society is found together with folkways and laws. the interrelatedness of those concepts basically can be summarized in the flowchart below: there is an integrated system in human life. the position of culture is on the top of the flowchart. it means that culture is a big concept which covers all of the subdivision below. first, culture can be classified into two big classes. the first one is non-material culture which can be made more specific into ideas and norms while the second class is material culture. as mentioned above, the non-material culture is classified into ideas and norms. basically both ideas and norms still can be spelled out into more specific terms but the focus here is given to the norms. the norms here actually can be simply said as a conduct life for human to live in society (bierstedt, 1963: 222). the norm here is explained as an instrument of the society to control its member. in other words, it can be said that society through norms also gives certain direction and limitation or even expectations for those who live inside (maciver and charles, 1950: 5). r. widya yudha prawita & ni luh putu rosiandani 72 there will be an agreement and demand from the society for each of its members in order to create regularity or certain purpose to be gained in the society. though the norm is already defined as a standard and instrument for the people but the context of norm is still too wide. the norms can be subsumed into folkways, mores and laws. there are some differences that creates the norms is spelled out into those three concepts. folkways here are more about our customary conduct in daily life or habit (bierstedt, 1963: 226). our habit to wear good clothes, our habit to always use right hand to eat are some examples of folkways. being different from folkways, laws are norms which are more complex. it is usually only found in society with social-political organization like government while folkways and mores are found in every society (1963: 228). the next is mores. just the same with folkways and laws, a person also cannot runaway and escape from the practice of the mores. the presence of the mores as one form of the norms cannot be separated from the presence of human being. the presence of human is considered as one aspect that creates the mores. it is believed that the mores are the result of human interaction and compromise that finally shaped the common concept that can and should be accepted and followed by the member of society. moreover, the mores are also believed as one of the most important element to construct a good quality of society. the mores here is different to folkways since they are not merely about habitual conduct but moral conduct, while the mores also different from laws since they have no special agent to enforce the practice of the mores (bierstedt, 1963: 227). meanwhile, when it is traced back to the origin of the word, the mores have strong connection with morality. “mores forms the root of the english word ‘moral’, thus literally referring to any act or belief in accord with customary group expectations” (merril, 1965: 118). to the more specific, the mores also can be defined as bundle of system in which the people in certain area believed and practiced because they have normative power. besides they are also related with the social welfare (1965:117) then, indirectly, it can be concluded that mores are as important as folkways and laws. they have power and play significant role in creating and establishing the conformity and regularity in the middle of society. the power and influence of the mores are getting bigger for the negative sanctions for violating one of them is to be considered immoral (bierstedt, 1963: 229) in the application of mores, the presence of public opinion also plays important role. they have power in insisting the people to take part in the application of the mores. the public opinion here is functioned as one tool to control society’s behaviour. it means that the opinion of public may give the biggest pressure for the people. for those who do not take part, they will be commented by the public as a deviator or even immoral person as mentioned before. the presentation of major characters there are three major characters can be found in ghost, they are manders, mrs. alving and oswald. those characters live in norway society in around 19th century. each of them lives in the same social situation scene but with different characteristics, attributes and background. manders in ghosts is presented as a pastor of the parish. his position as the pastor of the parish brings him to a bigger responsibility to take care of the people in that region and be their protector. in other words, the position of manders here also represents the presence of the church in the middle of norway society. manders has responsibilities to be their shepherd. he has to be the one who teaches and shows the way of life based on christian teaching. at that time, in european countries, church with all of its structure indirectly also has the power in limiting and giving conduct in social life (mcneill, 1974: 82-83). it means that related to ghosts, manders deserves vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 73 special position in the hierarchy of the society. he may give the conduct of life to the people and as the consequence, the people see him not as an ordinary person but as the one to follow and respect. in regard to his presentation as a pastor, manders is also presented as a respectable person. then, he has to behave properly in front of the public, besides the attention from the people around on him is getting bigger. engstrand. yes, because there will be a lot of fine folk here tomorrow. parson manders is expected from the town too (ibsen, 170) his position as a pastor also brings manders to be accustomed with so many dogmatic matters. this situation may lead him as a closed-minded and obdurate person. the old and traditional views have been implanted in his mind and this condition alienates his mind from the change. those two characteristics above at last will contribute to shape him as person who will always believe and obey with something which is already definite or patent. it means that he will not question too much with something which is already practiced commonly in the society from past time. in other words, manders tends to be a conservative person as well. he will question those who try to stand outside the definite pattern. manders. can you call it cowardice that you simply did your duty! have you forgotten that a child should love and honour his father and mother? (ibsen, 198) manders. but do you mean to say that it is possible for a man of any sort of bringing up, and a young woman, to reconcile themselves to such way of livingand to make no secret of it, either? (ibsen, 186) manders. to crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. what rights have we to happiness? no! we must do our duty, mrs. alving. and your duty was to cleave to the man you had chosen and to whom you were bound by a sacred bond (ibsen, 189). ironically, his respectable position as a pastor also brings him to paranoia toward anything that may libel his name. then, manders also can be seen as a timorous person. as a pastor he has been accustomed to be respected by the rest of the society. this condition brings him to have more awareness in maintaining and keeping his reputation in front of the society to avoid any attack or blasphemy. being different from manders, mrs. alving is presented as a widow. she is depicted as a woman with her complicated experience in past life. before the death of mr. alving, she used to live under many demands and pressures. as the wife of mr. alving , she is demanded to be more careful in her behaviour. unfortunately, this condition only brings her to live under pressure with no happiness. this condition later brings her to doubt and stand on the different side with the demand of the society. in the past, she was taught about duty and she got nothing except problems and miseries from that. now, after the death of her husband, mrs. alving transforms into a woman with a new mind set. she tries to free herself from the common view. she wants her opinion and perspective in seeing particular issues to be freed from the pressure from any side. as the consequence of her failure to deal with the demand in the society in her past life, mrs. alving becomes a critic toward the common view in her society. she learns from her mistake in the past and it creates her to always question many things, include the mores, before practices and accepts them. based on mrs. alving’s perspective, every movement of a person is being limited by those regulations and it is only make the people to live in misery when they practice it rigidly. the life condition of the people becomes unnatural for the presence of those regulations. r. widya yudha prawita & ni luh putu rosiandani 74 mrs. alving (going to the window). oh, law and order! i often think that it is at the bottom of all the misery in the world (ibsen, 198) her critical thinking on particular matters also leads her to be more open toward new idea. it means that she welcomes new idea to influence her mind. she does not want to be trapped by the common views in the society. whenever she thinks a new idea is suitable for the recent condition, then there is no reason to reject it. not only stopping there, mrs. alving is also presented as a rebellious since she has courage not only to criticize or welcome new idea but also to practice it. mrs. alving. not a bit of it. it is the best thing for an active boy, and especially for an only child. it’s a pity when they are kept at home with their parents and get spoilt (ibsen, 186). mrs. alving. if i were not such a miserable coward, i would say to him: “marry her, or make any arrangement you like with her-only let there be no deceit in the matter.” manders. heaven forgive you! are you actually suggesting anything abominable, so unheardof, as a marriage between them! (ibsen, 199) besides those characteristics, mrs. alving is also presented as a self-reliant woman. the endless problems in her life create her as a self reliant woman. though it is very hard for a woman to face the confusion in the family, mrs. alving prefers to handle it herself. she keeps the problem in her family alone to avoid public attention on her family. mrs. alving. well-now, mr. manders, now i am going to tell you the truth. i had sworn to myself that you should know it one day-you, and you only! manders. and what may the truth be? mrs. alving. the truth is this, that my husband died just as great a profligate as he had been all his life (ibsen, 191). though she is depicted as a critical, openminded, rebellious and self reliant woman, the pressure from the outside and society makes mrs. alving appears like a doubter and reckless woman. the last major character in ghosts is oswald. oswald here is presented as the only son of alving’s family. he spends most of his time abroad. most of his life time which was spent in foreign country gives him a chance to learn different culture and way of life. this condition leads oswald to be more permissive toward new way of thinking. besides, the lives of artists are known for its freedom. they usually live in unconventional way of living. their nature as artists also leads them to be expressive and critical not only in doing art but also in viewing particular matters in life. his critical and open minded characteristics lead him to reconsider and question the demand from the society. while his expressive characteristic leads him to encounter his interlocutor’s words directly in front of her. there is no ill at ease when he encounters his interlocutor’s words. when something is considered irrelevant in his eyes, he will just criticize it openly. at first glance, oswald seems to be a rude person. but, basically, oswald just tries to see a matter objectively from his perspective. when the practiced more is already relevant, at least in his opinion, he has no doubt or opposition on it. manders. then what you are speaking of are those unprincipled conditions known as irregular unions! oswald. i have never noticed anything particularly unprincipled about these people’s lives (ibsen, 186). mrs. alving. it is dreadful to think of!— but surely a child should feel some affection for his father, whatever happens? oswald. when the child has nothing to thank to his father for? when he has never known him? do you really cling to that antiquated superstition—you, who are so broad minded in other things? (ibsen, 226) vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 75 besides, his experience to live separately from his parents not only creates oswald as a critical and open-minded person but also as a sensitive person. it means that oswald becomes a person who can be easily hurt and offended especially in family matters. the mores practiced the first more that can be seen in ghosts is about the importance of public opinion. public opinion can be said as the common view accepted and believed by the society in responding certain situation. for many people, the public opinion also can be used as the fundamental in the way they behave. it means that the public opinion may influence and give pressure on one’s behavior and mind to be in line with the major voice (bennet & tumin, 1952: 236). in other words, it is important for a person to consider what others might think and say before a person decides to do something. here, the public opinion that represents the voice of majority cannot be considered as a trivial thing. it is also shown here how the characters have to think not only the good or bad side of a decision but also what the people might think over the decision taken. manders. my dear mrs. alving, there are many occasions in life when one has to rely on the opinion of others. that is the way in this world, and it is quite right that it should be so. what would become the society, otherwise? (ibsen, 178) the second more is about the esteem of religious leader. the situation of norway as a country under the domination of christianity as the major religion leads the position of pastor into the higher level of respect compared with people in common (mcneill, 1974: 82-83). the respect given to the pastor also put him in a dilemmatic position. most of the people believe that a pastor is kind of person to follow for his deep understanding in religious matters. in regard to that view, then it will be very difficult for the society to see their religious leader doing mistakes. the pastor in every of their presence is demanded to show his best performance without any mistake. the society expect that every step taken by a pastor should represent and in line with the religious teaching. next is about the marriage bond. it is widely known that norway is dominated with christian people. then, when it is related to the topic of marriage, we will see that the christian values will be dominant in the institution of marriage. in christianity, especially catholicism, the marriage is a bond that may not be divorced by human because it is god himself who joins husband and wife in this sacred bond (elliot, 1990: 143). here, everyone is demanded to declare and legalize their relationship in the bond of marriage before he steps to more serious level with his mate. besides, the people are demanded to keep their marriage till death comes. there is no reason for a man to divorce his wife and vice versa. following the importance to the marriage bond is the more to maintain husband’s reputation. in line with common belief that a husband is the head of the family, the reputation of a husband also becomes the main standard to appraise the reputation of a family in the eye of the society. here the husband is demanded by the society to be the representation of a family. it means that he is required to show his best performance. he is the head of the family. so, what people think and see on him also will be applied to the whole family. his reputation and quality will have an impact to the whole family. indirectly, it also brings a new duty for wife and children to always help the head of the family in maintaining his name. then it is also can be found about the more that gives conduct about woman’s position. just like society that was dominated with patriarchal system, the woman in norway experienced the inequality between man and woman. the woman was subordinated and home is defined as woman’s proper place (hedger, 1949: 704705). a wife is demanded to give her best service toward her husband. no matter how horrible her husband characteristics, it is not wife’s part to criticize and to complaint that. she is only required to do her duty like taking care of the children and household matters. r. widya yudha prawita & ni luh putu rosiandani 76 manders. to crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by the spirit of revolt. what right we to happiness? no! we must do our duty, mrs. alving. and your duty was to cleave to the man you had chosen and to whom you were bound by sacred bond (ibsen, 189). the last more gives conduct on childrenparents relationship. mostly, people in norway believe that in domestic relation that children must respect and obey their parents (hedger, 1949: 704-705). besides, in ghosts, a mother as the representative from parents’ side is expected to be the one who gives enough care and guidance. she is expected to be the person who transmits the values and conducts of life to the children. the responsibility to raise the children up is totally in her hands. the impact of the mores on manders manders position as a pastor leads him to higher level of respect and the fact that the church has bargaining power in the society correlates with the increase of burdens in manders’ shoulder. he is viewed as the model for the people to behave and he is the focus of attention in the society. then, like or dislike, this condition brings manders in contact with public opinion. he has to create a good perception in the society in regard to his duty as a pastor since their opinion correlates to the stability of his good name. meanwhile, to keep the stability of his name as a pastor is important for manders since it correlates to his esteem of religious leader. regarding to his role in the society, there is no better way for manders to be the ideal model of the society except by making adaptation and giving support to the mores. he has to make use of the mores as his partner in doing his work in the society. by doing this action, manders will not only be seen as the morality keeper but he can also shape a good perception about himself in the society. in his efforts to do both his role as a pastor and duty to keep pastor’s reputation, he try to use the mores as his tool to give conduct of life in the society. he insists and infiltrates that the practice of mores is something that the people cannot bargain to reach the ideal situation in the society. it is seen in his effort to support legal marriage institution. his attitude toward marriage institution meets christian belief that the sexual union between man and woman outside the legal marriage is adultery (elliot, 1990: 160-162). he believes that to prevent the people from committing sin, an intimate relationship between man and woman should be legalized by the institution of marriage. manders. then what you are speaking of are those unprincipled conditions known as irregular union! (ibsen, 186) oswald. what else are they to do? a poor artist and a poor girl-it cost a good deal to get married. what else are they to do? manders. what are they to do? well, mr. alving, i will tell you what they ought to do. they ought to keep away from each other from the very beginning-that is what they ought to do! (p. 186-187) besides, manders also stands as the defender of marriage. based on his belief that no one has right to separate two people tied in the bond of marriage, manders is consistent to criticize and oppose those who want to break their sacred bond. the divorce is seen as an opposition toward god’s words. meanwhile, the opposition toward god’s words is seen as the failure of a pastor in keeping and conducting the faith and life of the people. the failure of a pastor as the shepherd of the society may give negative precedent on the image of pastor in the social life which will always in line with the decrease of belief toward the reputation of religious leader. so, manders as the pastor tends to see the marriage as the measuring rod of his success in doing the mission in the society. thus, it simply can be said that the motivation of manders to defend the marriage is only for the image projection. the importance of public opinion to uphold the esteem of religious leader like him leads manders to think superficially. the evidence of manders’ hidden motivation is also vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 77 portrayed in his response toward the more that gives conduct on parents and children relationship. here, manders insists that it is the children’s duty to honor and give respect to their parents (p. 198). the pressure given by manders above sounds illogical since he has already known the truth about mr. alving’s past which is full of wickedness. manders. can you call it cowardice that you simply did your duty! have you forgotten that a child should love and honour his father and mother? (ibsen, 198) in short, manders tends to support all of the mores because of his moral responsibility to be the perfect model of a person in his society. the demand from the society on manders to keep the esteem and respect of pastor become reasons for him to be the supporter of the mores. unfortunately this condition also shapes him to have paranoia toward anything that may ruin his name if he does not support the mores. manders. no, that is just what i am thinking of. it is almost the worst part of the whole thing. the spiteful attacks and accusations—it is horrible to think of! (ibsen, 219) the need of acknowledgement and also his self-interest to shape a good perception before the society support him to do this. he believes that it is the most effective way to get the sympathy and respect from the society. unfortunately, his response to support the practice of mores does not come along with his full understanding on the essence of them. he only understands the content of mores textually. as the impact of this condition, many of his efforts in upholding the practice of the mores are done by ignoring other important aspects such as honesty and humanity. the impact of mores on mrs. alving mrs. alving is presented as a woman with her critical and rebellious mind. her failure in past life has led her to be more critical in responding to certain matters, including the practice of mores. it is seen on mrs. alving’s belief that her house condition is not ideal anymore to raise her son, and then she prefers to deviate from the common thing. she let oswald to grow separately from his parents and this response can be seen a form of rejection toward the more practiced. besides, mrs. alving also gives her approval on oswald who sees that the irregular union as something normal (p. 186). indirectly, the approval shown by mrs. alving brings her as the one who oppose the importance of marriage bond. then, as the result of her opposition, the position of mrs. alving is being cornered. she is not only exposed as a guilty mother but also exposed as the betrayer of the more in front of her own son. this situation can be seen as the impact that she has to undergo as the result of her decision. though it seems that mrs. alving’s rebellious characteristic has brought her to stand on different side with the mores but in some cases she fails to be freed totally from them. it is seen when she still treats mr. alving as her legal husband and build an orphanage to commemorate him. actually she knows that her husband is not a man that she should commemorate. but she is aware that by building the orphanage, she can keep her family reputation stable. indirectly this can be seen as her failure to get rid of her husband shadow. this is happen as the result of society’s pressure. manders. and this is the man you are building a memorial to! mrs. alving. there you see the power of uneasy conscience. manders. an uneasy conscience? what do you mean? mrs. alving. i had always before me the fear that it was impossible that the truth should not come out and be believed. that is why the orphanage is to exist, to silence all rumors and clear away all doubt (ibsen, 193-194). her effort by sending oswald letters that explains his husband as a good and respectable man also makes mrs. alving seems like a doubter. since in one side, she hates mr. alving but on the different side she r. widya yudha prawita & ni luh putu rosiandani 78 has to make a lie that mr. alving is a great man. besides, silence when her position as a wife is subordinated by manders also can be seen as another evidence of her failure to free her own self from her husband hegemony manders. i know only too well what rumor used to say of him; and i should be the last person to approve of his conduct as a young man, supposing that rumor spoke the truth. but it is not a wife’s part to be her husband’s judge (ibsen, 189). regarding to all of those conditions, it is clearly depicted that mrs. alving is positioned in non-beneficial side. she always becomes the victim in the social life. it is very rare for the society to consider and acknowledge the efforts done by mrs. alving. everything is blocked by the hegemony of her husband. then, overall, it can be inferred that as the impact of mores’ practice, mrs. alving’s position becomes not clear. she stands in grey area. she tries to free herself from mores’ pressure, but she has to ruin her own effort since she cannot really get rid of that demands. not only that, she tries to save her son by breaking the mores but at last her effort becomes a boomerang that creates bigger distance between her and oswald. the impact of mores on oswald. oswald spends most of his life abroad alone. it means that he only experiences and shares less time with his family. the basic function of a family as an instrument to transmit the culture and belief also does not work properly. in regard to the condition above, most of the concept of culture in his mind is different with what believed by the society in his native land. in viewing the more that regulates about the importance of marriage bond, oswald also has his own opinion. his life as an artist makes him accustoms to the liberation to express. manders. then what you are speaking of are those unprincipled conditions known as irregular union? oswald. i have never noticed anything particularly unprincipled about these people’s lives (ibsen, 186). manders. but do you mean to say that it is possible for a man of any sort of bringing up, and a young woman, to reconcile themselves to such way of living—and to make no secret of it, either? oswald. what alse are they to do? a poor artist, and a poor girl—it costs a good deal to get married. what else are they going to do? (ibsen, 186) he does not see the practice of irregular union as something negative. oswald’s perspective here, indirectly, also shows his opposition toward the importance of marriage bond. he does not want the mores to limit his mind-set. though, in some cases he has different perspective in responding particular matters, but he still respect the relationship between children and parents. his intensive communication with his mother by using letter also strengthens his assumption. unfortunately, the great imagination about his father fall down into ruins after the truth is revealed by his mother, mrs. alving. this shock causes a very significant change in the way oswald views the relationship between children and parents. mrs. alving it is a dreadful to think of!—but surely a child should feel some affection for his father, whatever happens? oswald. when the child has nothing to thank to his father for? when he has never known him? do you really cling to that antiquated superstition—you, who are so broad minded in other things (ibsen, 225226). overall, it can be concluded that the position of oswald as a person who was deceived by his mother leads him to reject the practice of the mores. he cannot find any reason to respect his parents whenever there is no contribution given. as the impact, he has to lose his right to know the truth about his family condition. this confusion makes oswald lose a figure that can be a role model vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 79 in his life. both his mother and his father fail to do their role as his parents. his right as a son to get enough care and love is being ignored because of the practice of the mores. meanwhile, his open-minded characteristic that leads him to have different view in responding the mores leads him to be considered as an immoral person. at last, his freedom of mind, which is seen as the opposition toward conformity and morality, is being limited and imprisoned. conclusion in general all of the major characters in ghosts have shown quite different response between one and another. the difference on their presentation, characteristics and background make it possible for each character to have different response toward the mores. as the consequence, each of them also undergoes various impacts in their life. manders who is presented as a pastor with obdurate and timorous mind treats the practice of the mores rigidly. as the impact, he deifies the practice of the mores though it may lead him to ignore other important values in life. being different from manders, mrs. alving is presented as a widow with her traumatic experience toward the mores’ practice. she believes that her obedience toward mores has contribution in her failure to maintain her family life. for that background, mrs. alving becomes a person who stands in the grey area. her confusion in responding to the mores finally brings more problems in her life and ruins her relationship with her son. in the meantime, oswald who is presented as a critical person for his experience in living abroad also feels the impact of the mores practiced. he becomes alienated from the family and his right to get enough care from the parents is carried away for his mother’s sake. therefore, it can be seen that as long as the application of mores ignores its humanity side and stay inflexible, the people might be oppressed by their presence. unfortunately, it may lead the people to behave recklessly before finally ends in confusion and disorder in life. at last, it can be concluded that basically the presence of mores have positive purpose for the social life of the people. but, when the practice of mores ignores the context in people’s real life, they may turn as the source of problem in social life. reference bennet, john and melvin m. tumin. social life: structure & function. new york: alfred a. knopf inc., 1952 bierstedt, robert. the social order: an introduction to sociology (2nd edition). new york: mcgraw-hill book company, inc., 1963. elliott, peter j..what god has joined: the sacramentality of marriage. new york:alba house, 1990. gonsalves, milton a. fagothey’s right and reason : ethics in theory and practice (8th edition). columbus: charles e. merrill publishing company, 1986. hedger, george a.ed. an introduction to western civilization. new york: the odyssey press, 1949. ibsen, henrik. plays of henrik ibsen: art type edition. new york: book, inc. maciver, r.m. and charles h.page. society: an introductory analysis. new york: rinehart and company, inc., 1950. mcneil, william h. the shape of european history. new york: oxford university press, 1974. merrill, francis e.. society and culture: an introduction to sociology (3rd edition). new jersey: prentice hall, inc., 1965. neumeyer, martin h. social problems and the changing society. toronto: d. van nostrand company, ltd, 1953. phenomena i dewa putu wijana 8 the use of english in indonesian adolescent’s slang i dewa putu wijana faculty of cultural sciences, gadjah mada university abstract this paper aims at describing the use of english in indonesian adolescent’s slang broadly known as bahasa gaul, the colloquial variation that symbolizes intimate relationships among the youngsters. by using data extracted from three slang dictionaries, the investigation finds that most english expressions of various linguistic levels (word, phrase, and sentence) are formally and, or semantically changed to attain various communicative functions. key words: slang, expression, and adolescent introduction it cannot be denied that nowadays english is used by people from all over the world. this language constitutes an international language used by the speakers to meet the need of various communicative functions. accordingly, its influence on other languages will be very significant in all domains of usage. with regard to bahasa indonesia, english approximately contributes not less than 57% of the total borrowings. others come from arabic (18%), javanese (18%), dutch (2.5%), and jakarta dialect (1.2%) (wijana, 2009: 203). generally, the discussions of english influence on bahasa indonesia are so far mostly concerns with its usage in formal and more prestigious occasions, such as what has been done by hassal (2010) concerning the basic principles that underlie the use of foreign words (including english) by the educated indonesians and budiman (2010) in connection with the use of them as a a means of code switchings by the characters of three contemporary indonesian novels. on the contrary, its influence in casual interactions might be considered not or less important by the experts who are interested in studying english borrowings in bahasa indonesia. accordingly in this brief article, i want to investigate the existence of english expressions in colloquial indonesians broadly known as bahasa gaul (friendship language), language used among indonesian youngster for symbolizing their intimacy. even now, only a few indonesian scholars pay attention to this issue. two of them are wijana (2009) and yuwono (2010). wijana states that there are several interesting problems with regard to the use of english in indonesian slang words, and one of them is translational failures. meanwhile, yuwono who focuses his attention on swearing expressions says that the use of english is motivated by economical and stylistic purposes. even though slang can only be found in casual speech, this colloquial variation is rich of linguistic phenomena that cannot be ignored in linguistic description. in addition, from pragmatic perspective, the use of slangy expressions is exploited by the teenagers to convey various communicative functions, such as informing, directing, joking, swearing, teasing, keeping something secret, etc. thus, the use of slang conceals a lot of information on indonesian teenagers’ behaviors. as far as the use of english is concerned, there are at least three important issues to discuss related to indonesian slang. those are form and formation, linguistic process, and meaning that will become the focus of my study. the term “formation” vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 9 includes morphological and syntactical processes. meanwhile “linguistic process” covers all phonological modification, such as sound change, phonological and syllabic transposition, sound deletion, sound addition, etc. most data used in this paper come from three indonesian slang dictionaries compiled by livia (2007), sahertian (2008), dan mastuti ( 2008) and other sources. firstly, all slangy expressions borrowed from english are extracted from the dictionaries, and further they are classified and analyzed according to those three issues. finally, those data, together with their indonesian meanings, are presented as supplement in alphabetical order (see data supplement). form and formation there are hundreds of english expressions that enrich indonesian slang vocabulary, and many of them are english words which have been phonetically and ortographically maintained, adapted, and slightly or markedly changed, as shown by (1) to (6). several words have been treated as indonesian words by the speakers (1) and (2). the slangy expressions are commonly used to refer to different meaning (1), (2), and (3), and some of them only use for giving beauty (4), (5), and (6). (1) abstrak ‘wajah tidak berbentuk, jelek, tidak cakep, aneh’ (ugly) (2) sarden ‘‘istri tua’ ‘ first wife’ (3) mars ‘mahasiswa alim rajin sembahyang’ (a good and delligent praying student) (4) master ‘pakar’ (expert) (5) so sweet ‘sangat manis’ (very sweet) (6) so wot ‘memang kenapa’ (so what) in the first three examples the word abstrak (originally abstract), sarden (originally sardencis), and mars which conventionally mean ‘abstract’, ‘tinned sardin’, and ‘name of planet’ are changed to refer to facial state, first or old wife that often betrayed by the husband, and idealized student. meanwhile, there is no semantic alteration applied to master, so sweet, and so wot except a marked ortographical modification occurs in the last example (what > wot). formally the slang expressions borrowed from english may take three forms, i.e word, phrase, and sentence. these three types of slang will be analyzed below. word english words exploited as slang in bahasa indonesia may be base forms as well as complex ones. base forms are expressions that have not been undergoing morphological prosecesses. they only consist of a single free morpheme, such as (7) to (11) below: (7) affair ‘hubungan gelap, selingkuh’ (deviate) (8) ay ‘aku, saya’ (i) (9) error ‘kesalahan’ (mistake) (10) chicken ‘pengecut’ (coward) (11) kiyut ‘keren, (cute) in contrast, the complex forms consist of two or more morphemes as a result of various morphological processes, such as affixation (12), (13), (14), and (15), internal modification (16) and (17), reduplication (18), (19), and (20), compounding (21), (22), and (23) , and contraction (24) and (25). (12) cookies ‘kumpulan laki-laki’ (a group of men) (13) hunting ‘cari-cari sambil menjelajah’ (looking for and exploring) (14) joger ‘melucu’ (joking) (15) emphazise ‘ditekan, dipaksa’ (to be forced) (16) hang ‘bego, bodoh’ (stupid) (17) bondon ‘jangan dibatasi’ ({bound} don’t > do not {bind}, do not limit)’ (18) blink-blink ‘perhiasaan mengkilat yang dipakai para rapper’ (sparkling rappers’ accessories) (19) hello mellow (stupid fellow) ‘halo’ (hallo) (20) walking-walking ‘jalan-jalan’ (take a walk) (21) down load ‘boker, doyan’ (like very much) (22) crocodille tears ‘air mata buaya’ (scoundrel tears) i dewa putu wijana 10 (23) down load ‘boker, doyan’ (like very much) (24) hiv ‘hasrat ingin vivis’ (urinating need) (25) akuisisi ‘akuilah ini sia-sia’ (confess that it is useless) in affixation process, the bound morpheme might be taken from bahasa indonesia or its dialect. in (26) nyemok ‘merokok’ (smoking) for example, nyis one of the {n-} allomorphs in jakarta dialect. the base form smoke is english borrowing modified from smoke. reduplication process is totally a characteristic of bahasa indonesia because this kind of word formation process does not exist in english. in indonesian slang, the reduplication form can be a total reduplication or one with sound change. the other examples are (27) and (28). a lot of english compounds are created from word to word or literal translational process which is strongly avoided in translation activities, such as (29), (30), and (31). finally, contraction process is deliberately created by creating abbreviations and acronyms which have similarities to english words. for other exampels see (32), (33), 34) below: (26) nyemok ‘merokok’ (smoking) (27) walking-walking ‘jalan-jalan’ (take a walk) (28) hello mellow stupid fellow ‘halo’ (hallo) (29) fruit kid ‘anak buah’ (subordinate) (30) blue blood ‘darah biru, bangsawan, ningrat’ (nobleman) (31) enter wind ‘masuk angin’ (air sickness) (32) aids ‘anak istimewa dengan sejuta pesona’ (a special person with a million of wonder) (33) bmw ‘body mengalahkan wajah’ (a nice body person with ugly face) (34) coffee drink ‘komplek sepi bikin merinding’ (quite and spooky house complex) phrase phrase is any linguistic unit which consists of two or more words that does not have a characteristic of clause. all elements that form the slangy phrases are commonly english (35) to (41). however, some times the phrases are also possibly created by taking indonesian colloquial words, such as maksud ‘meaning’(42), and sudir(man) ‘personal name’ (43). (35) different river ‘lain kali’ (other time) (36) homer boy ‘cowok rumahan yang jarang keluyuran’ (boys that rarely go outside home) (37) meteor garden: ‘title of taiwan film‘(mi telor ganjen) ‘flirtatious egg noodles’ (38) not a play ‘bukan main-main’ (unserious) (39) one pack ‘perut buncit’ ( big stomach) (40) so sweet ‘sangat manis’ (very sweet) (41) car kid ‘anak suka mobil tapi tidak tahu mobil’ (guys who like cars but do not know much about them) (42) meaning of the maksud ‘sesuatu yang perlu dijelaskan’ (something important to explain) (43) sudirboy ‘lelaki yang kuliah di sudirman’ (a man who studies in sudirman campus) the meanings of the phrases might be the true or close translation (40) and (43), literal translation (35) and (38), creative translation (36), (41), and (42), metaphorical correspodent (39), and phonological correspondent of the pure or mixed english phrases (37). sentence indonesian slang sentences are generally constructed by simple sentences or shorts complex sentences. the simple sentences consist of single clause (43), (44), (45), and (47). meanwhile, to yield short expressions, the complex sentences should have undergone ellipsis, such as subject deletion that occurs in (46). like slangy phrases, the sentence may consist of an indonesian or a regional language element, such as a slight orthographical modification of javanese “donk” ‘understand’ in (43). the indonesian influence can also be badly translated indonesian sentence into english, such as (44). vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 11 (43) i don’t donk ‘saya tidak mengerti’ don’t understand) (44) don’t follow mix ‘jangan ikut campur’ (do not interfere) the english sentences are also often phonologically or ortographically deviated, such as (45) and (46) below. (45) ilopu ‘aku cinta padamu’ (i love you) (46) slow but suwe ‘pelan tapi yakin’ (slow but sure) (47) wats ap ‘ada apa sih?’ (what happen) <> whats up! meanwhile, in (48) the relation between the form and its intention sometime is merely based on the phonological similarities: (48) go back to the door ‘gobak sodor’ (name of traditional javanese game) pragmatically the use of slang sentences is exploited to carry out various communicative functions, such as directing, informing, expressing emotional state etc. in (43) the speaker might want to get clarification or explanation about what the interlocutor has said. in (44) the speaker possibly wants the interlocutor not to interfere his/her personal business. in (45) the speaker expresses his/her passion, and in (46) the speaker may seek information about what has happened to the person (s)he speaks to. linguistic process phonological differences between english and bahasa indonesia cause a lot of difficulties for the indonesian speakers in pronouncing english words. as a result, a number of english sounds are changed or replaced with other sounds that exist in bahasa indonesia. for example, the sound [sy] orthographically represented by sh is replaced by [s]. english diphtongs [ou] and [ea] are substituted by monophtongs [o] and [e]. see (47) to (49) below: (47) siyok ‘shock, terkejut setengah mati’ (schoked) (48) bondon ‘jangan dibatasi’ (bound don’t > do not bind, do not limit)’ (49) suwer takewer-kewer ‘sumpah tidak bohong’ (swear!) in contrast, to achieve stylistic goals, some sounds and letters that exist in bahasa indonesia are changed by english sounds or letters in english speling system, such as the substitution of [d] and [k] with [sh] and [ck] in (50) and (51) below: (50) oh, my gosh ‘oh, my god’ (51) backam ‘bebek kampung’ (village girl), bedes kampung (village boy)’ for yielding short expressions some english words undergoing syllabic deletions, such as (52), (53) and (54): (52) borju ‘kaya, banyak uang’ (borjuis, rich) (53) bro ‘kakak’ (brother) (54) idi ‘idiot’ if indonesian words become the target of modification, either deletion or addition, the results are english-like expressions, as shown in (55) and (56). (55) hamilton ‘hamil’ (56) ketty ‘ketiak’ (armpit) phonological transposition which is broadly known as metathesis is also found in indonesian slang. for examples the modification of pipis ‘urinate’ becomes pepsi ‘name of soft drink brand’ and i am sorry ‘pardon me’ becomes amrosy ‘name of terrorist in the first bali bombing’, doberman ‘dog species’ becomes debormen are three evidents of this phenomenon. (57) pepsi ‘buang air kecil’ (urinate) (58) i am sorry, amrosy (personal name) (58a) debormen ‘demam ngebor mengap mengap’ (gasp for breath drilling fever) < dobermen (species of dog’) finally orthographical modification, for imitating either english or indonesian, is considered dominant in slang creation. see the following examples. (59) betmen ‘berak terus mencret’ (batman) i dewa putu wijana 12 (60) kiyut ‘keren, (cute) (61) j-rock ‘jorok’ (dirty, untidy) (62) ontohot ‘bego, nyalakan sampai panas’ (stupid, heat it untill hot). (63) skul ‘sekolah’ (school) (64) so wot ‘memang kenapa’ (so what) many english words in indonesian slang are pronounced according to the indonesian manners, in which there is no big difference between the spelling and their pronunciation. therefore, popeye in (65) below is pronounced [popeye] instead of [phop ai], and blink-blink in (18) above is pronounced [bliŋ-bliŋ] instead of [bliŋk-bliŋk]. (65) popeye ‘lelaki berbadan kecil, tapi berotot’ (a small man, but muscular) english words in indonesian slang vocabulary are never totally reversed or given insertion elements, such as the process applied to indonesian or regional words (wijana, 2010, 25-27). the imposibilities are probably caused by the relatively bigger differences of english spelling and pronunciation than that of exist in bahasa indonesia. notice (67) to (70) below: (66) kewut < tuwek (old) (67) elub-elub < bule-bule (albinos) (68) (69) cokin < c + -ok+ in < cin(a) (chinese) (69) (70)nyokap < ny + -ok+ ap < nyak ‘mother’ the creation of (67) to (70) is intended to hide the speakers’ intentions. the normal order variation tuwek ‘old’ and nyak ‘mother’ are borrowed from javanese and jakarta diaclect respectively. meanwhile, bule ‘albino’ and cina are both indonesian words. meaning some english expressions have the same meaning to their indonesian equivalents. the use of english for these expressions are intended by the speakers for giving beauty or showing their english mastery. the english words in (71) to (75) below do not experience semantic alternation. (70) ay > ‘saya’ (i) (71) error ‘kesalahan’ (mistake) (72) go home ‘pulang ke rumah’ (back home) (73) home alone ‘di rumah sendirian’ (title of children film played in christmas and new year) (74) matching ‘pas, cocok’ (matched) semantic changes do not occur in word to word translation slangs. see (75a), (75b), (75c) below: (75a) blue blood ‘darah biru, bangsawan, ningrat’ (nobleman) (75b) don’t talk as delicious as your belly button ‘jangan ngomong seenak udelmu’ (do not talk as you wish) (75c) hot sick ‘sakit panas’ (fever) however, most of english borrowings in intimate interactions among the indonesian youngsters are semantically deviated for gaining various communicative goals, such as joking, insulting, teasing, directing, etc. the deviation causes several semantic relations between the english words and their indonesian counterparts. those semantic relations are simply classified into metaphor, metonymy, homonymy, and cohyponymy. metaphor metaphor is the use of linguistic expressions to refer to other things based on certain similarities (kridalaksana, 1993, 136). in language use, metaphor is exploited by the speakers to produce figurative meanings. in human life metaphor plays an important role, not just in language but in thought and action as well. the human conceptual system, in terms of which they both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature (lakoff and johnson, 2003, 3). english word big whose meaning denotes to physical concepts is enlarged for referring a nonphysical matter (76). affair which formerly has neutral and broader meaning is violated and narrowed to refer to negative behavior in husband and wife relation (77). (76) big man ‘orang yang paling berpengaruh’ (the most influential person) vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 13 (77) affair ‘hubungan gelap, selingkuh’ (deviate) indonesian youngsters recently create a lot of new metaphorical slangs by using the taste of food referents as the basis of the similarities. see (78) to (79) below: (78) brownis ‘lelaki ganteng, nama kue, brondong manis (acronym)’ (handsome male, brownies, sweet popcorn) (79) cookies ‘kumpulan laki-laki’ (a group of men) (80) popcorn ‘berondong yang ganteng dan tajir’ (a handsome and rich young person) (81) barbeque ‘istri simpanan’ (mistress) the rapid advances of information, automotive and other technologies inspire the youngsters to create various metaphorical slangs, as shown in (82) to (87) below. (82) down load ‘boker, doyan’ (like very much) (83) pentium 1 ‘bodoh, lemah otak’ (stupid, slow thinking) (84) hang ‘bego, bodoh’ (stupid) (85) cewek linux ‘wanita berkepribadian rumit, sulit ditebak’ (woman with complicated personality) (86) hunting ‘cari-cari sambil menjelajah’ (looking for and exploring) (87) cadillac ‘heroin, kokain, narkoba’ (drugs) metonymy different from metaphor, the semantic relation in metonymy is not based on similarities, but on associations. atm which means ‘auto teller machine’ does not mean ‘money’, but it is only assosiatively related to such a thing and to sense of materialism. as a proper name, the word einstein does not have any meaning. this word refers to a genius scientist, the founder of “relativity theory”. as such, this word can be associated to any clever person. the following (88) and (89) are the examples of metonymy exploitation in indonesian slangs. (88) atm woman ‘cewek matere’ (materialistic woman) (89) enstein ‘very clever person’ the other examples are (90) and (91) below: (90) popeye ‘lelaki berbadan kecil, tapi berotot’ (small muscular man) (91) mis ring-ring ‘woman who likes making phone calls’ (92) strawberry ‘cewek yang pakaiannya serba merah’ (woman in completely red) homonymy two or more linguistic expressions possibly have the same form (phonetically or orthographically) but different meaning. the relation between or among them is called homonymy (cf. allan, 1986, 150). complete homonyms have the same pronunciation and the same spelling. partial homonyms only have similarity in one respect which can be further divided into two categories, i.e homophony and homography. the first relies the similarity on pronunciation while the latter on spelling. in slang vocabulary, the homonymic pairs are intentionally created by treating ordinary english words as abbreviations or acronyms. the following (93) (to) (98) show that english ordinary words, phrases, acronyms and abbreviations have their newly created meaning(s). (93) ac : air condition angin cendela (window air) (94) aids: aquired immune deficiency syndrome anak istimewa dengan sejuta pesona (a special person with a million of wonder) (95) bos: boss bekas orang susah (ex poor person) (96) coffee drink: coffee komplek sepi bikin merinding’ (quite and spouky house complex) (97) internet: international network indomi pake telor dan kornet (noodle with egg and corned beef) (98) joker : person who is very skillful in making a joke jomblo keren (handsome single fellow) jorok keringatan (dirty and sweaty) jongos keren (handsome male servant) i dewa putu wijana 14 for obtaining amazing impressions, the speakers create one of the meaning as if it easonably relates to the other meaning(s), such as (99) and (100) below: (99) humor: humor hubungan menyenangkan orang (entertaining relation) (100) atm: auto teller machine artos tina mesin’ (money come out of mechine) meanwhile, for eliciting humorous effects, the indonesian youngsters intentionally make the association of the homonymic pairs as if they are contradictory to each other, as clearly seen in (101) and (102). (101) elit : elit ekonomi sulit (difficult economic condition) (101) pilot: pilot pikiran kolot (conservative thinking) (102) populer: popular pulang-pulang teler’ (drunken when got home) cohyponymy hyponymy is a relation that holds between generic and (more) specific concepts. in this relation words with generic concepts are called hypernym, while ones with (more) specific concepts are called hyponym. for instance, the meaning of bird covers robin, dove, sterling, etc. as such, bird is the hypernym of robin, dove, and sterling. conversely, the last three bird species are the hyponym of their genus, bird. meanwhile the relation among robin, dove, and sterling is called cohyponimy. the use of sea food in (103) below is an exploitation of cohyponimic relation because it is used to refer to ‘fried cat fish’ for gaining a more prestigious image. the genus of this cohyponimic pair is fish. (103) sea food ‘lele goreng’ (fried cat fish) it is also important to note that a lot of indonesian slangs which come from english sources are merely based on phonological similarities such as in (48). the other examples are (104) to (106) below: (104) kolang-kaling dalam gelas: palm seeds in the glass ‘calling-calling nggak jelas’ (to call unclearly) (105) sesuk tomorrow ‘see you tomorrow’ (106) meteor garden: mi telor ganjen `flirtatious egg noodle’ (title of taiwan film) closing notes the use of english elements in colloquial indonesian is rich of linguistic phenomena. the linguistic processes occurring in informal situations are considerably much more various than those of in the standard variations. this fact suggests that the linguistic investigations which concern with english influences on indonesian in the future time must not only focus on the standard indonesian, but should also be directed toward its use in more casual varieties. such kinds of investigation will give us more comprehensive understandings about how indonesians of the lower social economic class use english expressions in their daily activities together with their views and attitudes toward english which nowadays functions as an international means of communication. this brief article is not more than a data collection display. therefore, more serious studies concerning english contribution in casual indonesian discourses are considered very urgent to carry out. finally, i herewith sincerely allow any linguists or other researchers to use my data collection for studying theses issues more deeply. vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 15 references allan, keith. linguistic meaning. volume i. london: routledge and kegan paul, 1986. budiman, maneke. “bahasa asing dan kosmopolitanisme dalam fiksi kontemporer indonesia sebagai strategi redefinisi keindonesiaan pasca-orde baru” geliat bahasa selaras zaman: perubahan bahasa-bahasa di indonesia pasca-orde baru. mikihiro moriyama & manneke budiman (eds.). jakarta: kepustakaan populer gramedia, 2010. hassal, tim. “fungsi dan status kata pinjaman barat”. geliat bahasa selaras zaman: perubahan bahasa-bahasa di indonesia pasca-orde baru. mikihiro moriyama & manneke budiman (eds.). jakarta: kepustakaan populer gramedia, 2010. kridalaksana, harimurti. kamus linguistik, edisi ke-3, jakarta: gramedia pustaka utama, 1993. lakoff, george & mark johnson. metaphors we live by. chicago: the university of chicago press, 2003. lavia, natalia. kamus istilah gaul sms. jakarta: gagas media, 2007. mastuti, indari. bahasa baku vs bahasa gaul, jakarta: hi-fest, 2008. sahertian, debby. kamus gaul. edisi ke-3. jakarta: sinar harapan. 2008. wijana, i dewa putu. “inventarisasi kosa kata bahasa daerah“. panorama pengkajian bahasa, sastra, dan pengajarannya. dwi purnanto, kundharu saddhono, harun joko prayitno (eds.). surakarta: universitas sebelas maret. 2009. wijana, i dewa putu. bahasa gaul remaja indonesia dan berbagai persoalannya. pidato dies natalis ke-64 fakultas ilmu budaya universitas gadjah mada yogyakarta. 2010. wijana, i dewa putu, bahasa gaul remaja indonesia. malang: aditya media. 2010. yuwono, untung. “ilfil gue sama elu: sebuah tinjauan atas ungkapan serapah dalam bahasa gaul mutakhir”. geliat bahasa selaras zaman: perubahan bahasabahasa di indonesia pasca-orde baru. mikihiro moriyama & manneke budiman (eds.). jakarta: kepustakaan populer gramedia. 2010. data supplement common expression a abstrak ‘wajah tidak berbentuk, jelek, tidak cakep, aneh’ (ugly) affair ‘hubungan gelap, selingkuh’ (deviate) i am sorry, amrosy (personal name) aqua: ‘air kencing kuda’ (horse urine) atm woman ‘cewek matere’ (materialistic woman) ay ‘aku, saya’ (i) b barbeque ‘istri simpanan’ (barbeque) blink-blink ‘perhiasaan mengkilat yang dipakai para rapper’ (sparkling rappers’ accessories) blue blood ‘darah biru, bangsawan, ningrat’ (nobleman) bodyguard ‘teman yang mengikuti kemanamana’ (loyal friend) bondon ‘pelacur, psk’ (prostitite) borju ‘kaya, banyak uang’ (borjuis) bro ‘kakak’ (brother) brownis ‘lelaki ganteng, nama kue, brondong manis’ c cadillac ‘heroin, kokain, narkoba’ (drugs) capsa ‘poker’ car genic ‘wanita yang kelihatan cantik kalau di dalam mobil’ (a woman who looks beautiful when she is in a car) car kid ‘anak suka mobil tapi tidak tahu mobil’ (guys who like cars but do not know much about them) cewek linux ‘wanita berkepribadian rumit, sulit ditebak’ (complicated woman) i dewa putu wijana 16 cheese ‘ucapan saat dipotret supaya ketawa’ (yell to elicit laugh/smile in picture taking) chiken ‘pengecut’ (coward) cookies ‘kumpulan laki-laki’ (a group of men) crocodille tears ‘air mata buaya’ (scoundrel tears) crunchy ‘melucu tapi tidak lucu’ (unfunny joking) d different river ‘lain kali’ (other time) don’t follow mix ‘jangan ikut campur’ (do not interfere) don’t talk as delicious as your belly button ‘jangan ngomong seenak udelmu’ (do not talk as you wish) down load ‘boker, doyan’ (like very much) e emphazise ‘ditekan, dipaksa’ (to be forced) f fan kui ‘setan liar’ ( wild devil) far genic ‘cewek cantik kalau dilihat dari jauh’ (beautiful far looking woman) fotocopy ‘afdruk foto’ (frint, copy) fruit kid ‘anak buah’ (subordinate) enter wind ‘masuk angin’ (air sickness) error ‘kesalahan’ (mistake) g gangster ‘kelompok penjahat’ go home ‘pulang ke rumah’ (back home) go village ‘pulang ke kampung’ (back to village) go back to the door ‘gobak sodor’ (name of traditional javanese game) h hamilton ‘hamil’ hang ‘bego, bodoh’ (stupid) hegemoni ‘perkumpulan, kelompok’ (group) hello mellow stupid fellow ‘halo’ (hallo) home alone ‘di rumah sendirian’ (title of children film played in christmas and new year) homer boy ‘cowok rumahan yang jarang keluyuran’ (boys that rarely go outside home) hot sick ‘sakit panas’ (fever) hunting ‘cari-cari sambil menjelajah’ (looking for and exploring) i i don’t donk ‘saya tidak mengerti’ (idon’t understand) idi ‘idiot’ ilopu ‘aku cinta padamu’ (i love you) j jackpot ‘muntah’ (vomit) joger ‘melucu’ (joking) j-rock ‘jiplak cheat on exam), copy, jorok’ (dirty, untidy) k ketty ‘ketiak’ (armpit) kiyut ‘keren, (cute) kolang-kaling dalam gelas ‘calling-calling nggak jelas’ (to call unclearly) l lamborduz ‘orang yang berwajah jelek, abstrak, berantakan’ (an ugly person) loading ‘mikir’ (thinking) m master ‘pakar’ (expert) matching ‘pas, cocok’ (matched) meaning of the maksud ‘sesuatu yang perlu dijelaskan’ (something important to explain) mi telor ganjen ‘meteor garden’ (title of taiwan film) mis ring-ring ‘woman who likes making phone calls’ n not a play ‘bukan main-main’ (unserious) nyemok ‘merokok’ (smoking) o oh, my gosh ‘oh, my god’ one pack ‘perut buncit’ (a big stomach) ontohot ‘bego, nyalakan sampai panas’ (stupid, heat it untill hot). p pentium 1 ‘bodoh, lemah otak’ (stupid, slow thinking) pepsi ‘pipis, buang air kecil’ (urinate) popcorn ‘berondong yang ganteng dan tajir’ (a handsome and rich young person) vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 17 popeye ‘lelaki berbadan kecil, tapi berotot’ ( a small man, but muscular) r rofulius ‘oh my god’ sarden ‘istri tua’ ‘the first wife’ sesuk tomorrow ‘see you tomorrow’ siyok ‘shock, terkejut setengah mati’ (schoked) skul ‘sekolah’ (school) slow but suwe ‘pelan tapi yakin’ (slow but sure) slow-slow ‘pelan-pelan’ (slowly) sorry borry ‘maaf’ (sorry) so sweet ‘sangat manis’ (very sweet) so wot ‘memang kenapa’ (so what) spiderman ‘laba-laba’ (spider) stand by ‘sudah siap’ (ready) strawberry ‘cewek yang pakaiannya serba merah’ (woman in all red) sudirboy ‘lelaki yang kuliah di sudirman’ (a man who studies in sudirman campus) suwer takewer-kewer ‘sumpah tidak bohong’ (swear!) syellen ‘sialan’ (bad luck) t tips ‘uang bonus’ v vis ‘rokok, nyemok’ (smoking) voicegenic ‘tampang tak seindah suaranya’ (ugly person with a good voice) w wats ap ‘ada apa sih?’ (what happen) wak waaw ‘ungkapan kaget’ (surprise expression) walking-walking ‘jalan-jalan’ (take a walk) y your granny ‘nenek lu’ ( damn, you! jakarta dialect swearing) abbreviation a ac ‘angin cendela’ (window air) acdc ‘bencong waria’ (guy) ‘aku cinta dia cinta’ (mutual love) ‘aku cium dia cengir’ (i kiss her, but she smile sheepishly) aids ‘anak istimewa dengan sejuta pesona’ (a special person with a million of wonder) atm ‘agak telat mikir’ (think a little bit slow) ‘artos tina mesin’ (money come out of mechine) b bf ‘best friend’ bmw ‘body mengalahkan wajah’ (a nice body person with ugly face) bmx ‘bau mulut dan xetek’ (mouth and armpit smell) bos ‘bekas orang susah’ (ex poor person) bt ‘bad today, bad tempered)’ ‘birahi tinggi’ (high sexual desire) ‘becek terus’ (always muddy) c c3 ‘cool, calm, confident’ cd ‘celana dalam’ (underwear) ct ‘counter teroris (markas)’ (terorist’s headquarter) d dohc ‘dayung otot hingga cepat (becak)’ (peddy cab) g g2 ‘gay girls (cewek berbakat psk’) (a girl with prostituting talent) f fals ‘federasi anak lelaki sejati’ (a true boy federation) fbi ‘fans berat inul’(inul’s fanatic fans) flu ‘feeling lonely uh’ h hiv ‘hasrat ingin vivis’ (urinating need) m mars ‘mahasiswa alim rajin sembahyang’ (a good and delligent praying student) msg ‘main save goblog’ (safe sex, stupid!) n nato ‘no angpau thanks only’ (no money giving, only thank you) nba ‘naik bajai aja’ (just by bajaj) nf ‘night friend, perek, pecun’ (prostitute) o od ‘over dosis’ i dewa putu wijana 18 omg ‘oh my god’ omgd ‘oh my god dragon’ (oh my god) omgdpa ‘oh my god please donk ah’ (oh my god, please) p pspb ‘pren sama pren berantem’ (figt between friends) sli ‘selingkuh lebih indah’ (deviating is more beatiful) swt gtl ‘so wot gitu lo’ (so what) t tough ‘tampang ok, untung gak homo’ (good loking, and fortunately not homosexual) w wtf ‘what the fuck, what,s that for’ x xl ‘extra legit’ (very sticky) acronym a akuisisi ‘akuilah ini sia-sia’ (confess that it is useless) alba ‘alim-alim bangsat’ (religious but rascal) aqua botol ‘anak kualat bodoh dan tolol’ (an accursed and stupid fellow) b basket ‘basah ketek’ (wet armpit) bazoka ‘barudak zomblo kararasep (jomblo itu ganteng sekali)’ (that single person is very handsome)’ beckam ‘bebek kampung’ (village girl) ‘bedes kampung’ (village boy) betmen ‘berak terus mencret’ (defecate and diarrhea) bondon ‘jangan dibatasi’ (bound don’t > do not bind, do not limit)’ bucheri ‘bule ngecet sendiri’ (self dyeing albino) c casio ‘kekasih orang’ (someone`s boy or girl friend) citos ‘cilandak town square’ coffee drink ‘komplek sepi bikin merinding’ (quite and spouky house complex) cookies ‘kumpulan laki-laki eksekutif muda’ ( a young male executive group) d dashbod ‘dasar bodoh’ (that is just like a stupid person) debormen ‘demam ngebor mengap-mengap’ (gasp for breath drilling fever) delon ‘gede-gede blo’on’ (big but stupid) demokrat ‘depak monyet konglomerat’ (kick that stupid conglomerate) e ebony ‘eh bolong ni ye’ (oh, apparently you are not virgin) ‘eh botak ni ye’ (oh, apparently you are bold) ekskul ‘ekstrakurikuler’ (extracurriculary) esmod ‘eksekutif muda’ (a young executive) estafet ‘esmod tampang copet’ (a young executive with pick pocket appereance) g gazebo ‘gak zelas bo’ (it is unclear, friend!) gitaris ‘gigi tampak rapi sekali’ (neat looking teeth) ‘gigolo tak laris’ (unsold gigolo) go home ‘gondrong homo’ (homosexual long hair style) h humor ‘hubungan menyenangkan orang’ (entertaining relation) i ilfil ‘ilang filing’ (lost of feeling) intelek ‘intip toket lewat ketek’ (peeping breast through armpit) internet ‘indomi pake telor dan kornet’ (noodle with egg and corned beef) ‘international network’ j joker ‘jomblo keren’ ( handsome single fellow) ‘jorok keringatan’ (dirty and sweaty) ‘jongos keren’ (handsome male servant) k kanker ‘kantong kering’ (empty pocket) kapten ‘kapal tenggelam’ (sinking ship) ‘kepala paras tentara’ (army style head) kiyut ‘keren (cute) kobra ‘kolot bringasan’ (stupid and violent) ‘komplotan berbadan ramping’ (slimp body gang) vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 19 m macho ‘mantan cowo’ (ex boy friend) ‘mantan copet’ (ex pick pocket) masteng ‘mas tengik’ (stingky fellow) mercy ‘merasa seksi’ (feel sexy) n narcist ‘nonton atraksi pake karcis’ (watching without ticket) o opak ‘over acting’ oracle ‘ora kelar-kelar’ (will never be clear) p patrick ‘pantat burik’ (speckled buttock) ‘pria aktif cari cewek’ (a man who is active in looking for a girl friend) pilot ‘pikiran kolot’ (conservative thinking) populer ‘pulang-pulang teler’ (drunken when get home) r rocker ‘remaja oke dan keren’ (good and handsome teenagers) s simpatik ‘simpanse pake batik’ (chimpanzee wearing batik) v versace ‘ versi salah cetak’ (misprinted version) vocer ‘vodka ceria’ (happy vodka) phenomena vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 87 bridal confession in “at the altar rail” henriono nugroho english department, university of jember. abstract stylistics is a linguistic analysis on literary and non-literary texts. this article is concerned with a systemic stylistic analysis of a poem in terms of systemic functional linguistics and verbal art semiotics. the article uses library research, qualitative data, documentary study, descriptive method and intrinsic-objective approach. the semantic analysis results in both automatized and foregrounded meanings. the automatized meaning produces lexical cohesion and in turn, produces subject matter. meanwhile, the foregrounded meaning produces the literary meaning and in turn, it creates a theme. finally, the analysis indicates that the subject matter is about the planning of a marriage, the literary meaning is about the confession of an experienced bride, and the theme is about bridal confession. keyword: automatized meaning, foregrounded meaning, literary meaning. introduction in fact a text is a semantic unit and a clause is a grammatical unit. therefore semantics is an interface between the context of a situation and lexicogrammar. in this sense the semantic systems are related upwards to contextual systems but also they are related downwards to lexicogrammatical systems; moreover these semantic systems are sideways related to cohesive systems (halliday and hasan 1985, martin 1992, eggins 1994 and mathiessen 1995). the contextual systems are field (subject matter), tenor (role relation) and mode (rhetoric). the semantic systems are logical, experiential, interpersonal and textual meanings. the cohesive systems are structural conjunction, lexical cohesion, conversational structure, cohesive conjunction, reference, substitution and ellipsis. specifically, lexical cohesion deals with repetition, synonym, antonym, hyponym, cohyphonym, meronym, comeronym and collocation. the lexicogrammatical systems are complexing, transitivity, mood and theme. then logogenesis, ontogenesis and phylogenesis constitute semogenesis. actually logogenesis is a process of creating meanings through instantial system (shifting system) in the unfolding text. the shifting system is used not only by the writer/ speaker as a resource to create a text but also by the reader / listener as a resource to interpret the text; logogenetic pattern reveals coincidence between shifts in grammatical pattern and shifts in textual structure (halliday and matthiessen, 1999). in general literariness is defined as the difference between automatization or background and defamiliarization or foreground (jefferson, 1995: 37). background is also called ground, familiarization, automatization and the normal, canonical, habitual, common, automatized and familiarizing pattern; whereas foreground(ing) is also called figure, defamiliarization, deautomatization and the foregrounded, dominant, prominent, motivated, deautomatized and defamiliarizing pattern (mukarovsky, 1977). the opposition of background and foreground in verbal art is analogous to the reversal of ground and figure in gestalt psychology (butt, 1996). in other words the opposition of semantic background (subject matter) and semantic foreground (literary meaning) in verbal art is analogous to the reversal of ground (two black faces: dua henriono nugroho 88 wajah warna hitam) and figure (white chalice: gelas anggur warna putih) in gestalt psychology. the reversal of ground and figure is diagramed in the following figure 1. figure 1 the reversal of ground and figure in addition, consistency of foregrounding has two aspects. by stability of semantic direction, consistency of foregrounding means that the various foregrounded patterns point toward the same general kind of meaning. by stability of textual location, consistency of foregrounding means that the significant patterns of foregrounding have a tendency to occur at a textually important point (hasan, 1985: 95). in particular the concept of the consistency of foreground(ing) is used by hasan (1985, 1996) to propose the two semiotic systems of verbal art and of human language. the semiotic system of verbal art is concerned with verbalization (expression), symbolic articulation (content 2) and theme (content 1), whereas the verbalization is the semiotic system of human language concerned with phonology (expression), lexicogrammar (content 2) and semantics (content 1). the two semiotic systems are shown in figure 2. figure 2 two semiotic systems of verbal art and of language (hasan, 1985: 99) first at the stratum of verbalization, the consistency of foregrounding makes the foregrounded patterns produce the first order meaning. the first order meaning is also called the deep level of meaning and consistently foregrounded meaning. then at the stratum of symbolic articulation, the first order meaning functions as a symbol, sign or metaphor for the second order meaning. the second order meaning is also called the deeper level of meaning and literary meaning. next at the stratum of theme, the second order meaning creates the theme. the theme is also called the deepest level of meaning and the third order meanings. thus the first order meaning is the product of linguistic semiotics but both the second order meaning and the deepest level of meaning are the products of artistic semiotics. this article is concerned with a systemic stylistic analysis of a poem written by thomas hardy shown as follows: at the altar-rail "my bride is not coming, alas!" says the groom, and the telegram shakes in his hand; "i own it was hurried; we met at a dancing-room when i went to the cattle-show alone, and then, next night, where the fountain leaps, and the street of the quarter-circle sweeps. "ay, she won me to ask her to be my wife- 'twas foolish perhaps!--to forsake the ways of the flaring town for a farmer's life. she agreed, and we fixed it. now she says: it's sweet of you, dear, to prepare me a nest, but a swift, short, gay life suits me best. what i really am you have never gleaned; i had tasted the apple ere you were weaned." (thomas hardy) theme symbolic articulation verbalization semantics lexicogrammar phonology the semiotic system of language the semiotic system of verbal art vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 89 the semiotic system of language 1. logical meaning, logical metafunction or logical semantics logical meaning is a resource for constructing logical relation (halliday, 1994: 36) and the logical meaning describes a clause type (clause complex). in other words, logical meaning is concerned with the logical relation of clause complexes in the text, and the logical relation includes taxis (parataxis and hypotaxis), expansion (elaboration, extension and enhancement) and projection (locution and idea). in terms of logical meaning, this poem is composed of three clause complexes consisting of three main clauses and twenty expanding clauses. out of twenty expanding clauses, there are seven clauses of paratactic extension, six clauses of hypotactic enhancement, two clauses of paratactic elaboration, two clauses of paratactic projection and three embedded clauses. thus, extension is the automatized pattern because the poem is frequently realized by extending clauses. actually, logical meaning is realized by complexing and the complexing analysis is presented in table 1. table 1: complexing analysis no. notation logical relation clause 1. “1 projection “my bride is not coming, alas” 2. 2 main clause says the groom 3. +3 extension and the telegram shakes in his hand; 4. +4 α elaboration i own 5. 4 xβ extension it was hurried; 6. +5 α extension we met at a dancing room 7. 5 xβ enhancement when i went to the cattle-show alone 8. +6 α extension and then, neat night, [[9.1 || 9.2]] ah she won me 9. 6 xβ enhancement to ask her to be my wife 9.1 [[ ]] embedding where the fountain leaps 9.2 [[ ]] embedding and the street of the quarter circle sweeps 10. 1 α main clause it was foolish perhaps 11. 1 xβ enhancement to forsake the ways of the flaring town for a farmer’s life; 12. +2 extension she agreed 13. +3 extension and we fixed it 14. 1 main clause now she says 15. “2 α projection it’s sweet of you 16. 2 xβ enhancement to prepare me a nest 17. +3 extension but a swift, short, gay life suits me best: 18. =4 elaboration you have never gleaned [[18.1]] 18.1 [[ ]] embedding what i really am: 19. =5 α elaboration i had tasted the apple 20. 5 xβ enhancement before you were weaned 2. experiential meaning, experiential metafunction or experiential semantics experiential meaning is a resource for construing experience (halliday, 1994: 36) and the experiential meaning discusses a type of process (processes). in other words, experiential meaning deals with the process of clauses in the text, and the process includes material process (process of doing), mental process (process of sensing), verbal process (process of saying), behavioral process (process of behaving), existential process (process of existing) relational process (process of being) and causative process (process of causing). in terms of henriono nugroho 90 experiential meaning, this poem is expressed by twenty three clauses consisting of eleven clauses of material process, three clauses of mental process, four clauses of verbal process, and five clauses of relational process. in addition, the poem is expressed by nine clauses of past tense, eight clauses of present tense, one clause of present continuous, one clause of present perfect tense and one clause of past perfect. moreover, the poem is expressed by twenty clauses of finiteness and three clauses of non-finiteness. thus, material process, past tense and finite clause are the automatized patterns, because they are frequently used in the poem. then, experiential meaning is expressed by transitivity and the analysis of transitivity as displayed in table 2. table 2: transitivity analysis no. process tense finiteness clause 1. material present continuous “my bride is not coming, alas” 2. verbal present tense says the groom 3. material present tense and the telegram shakes in his hand; 4. relational present tense i own 5. relational past tense it was hurried; 6. material past tense we met at a dancing room 7. material past tense when i went to the cattle-show alone 8. material past tense and then, neat night, [[9.1 || 9.2]] ah she won me 9. verbal non-finite to ask her to be my wife 9.1 material present tense where the fountain leaps 9.2 material present tense and the street of the quarter circle sweeps 10. relational past tense it was foolish perhaps 11. material non-finite to forsake the ways of the flaring town for a farmer’s life; 12. verbal past tense she agreed 13. material past tense and we fixed it 14. verbal present tense now she says 15. relational present tense it’s sweet of you 16. material non-finite to prepare me a nest 17. mental present tense but a swift, short, gay life suits me best: 18. mental perfect tense you have never gleaned [[18.1]] 18.1 relational present tense what i really am: 19. mental past perfect i had tasted the apple 20. mental past tense before you were weaned vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 91 3. logogenetic process according to halliday and matthiessen (1998: 184-5), logogenesis is a process of constructing meaning through an instantial system (a changing system) when text unfolds (in the unfolding text). the speaker/writer uses the instantial system (the changing system) as a resource to create a text, whereas the listener/reader uses the instantial system (the changing system) as a resource to interpret the text. moreover, matthiessen (1995: 40) adds that logogenetic process reveals that lexicogrammatical shift (cf. butt, 1988: 83 on “latent patterning”) coincides with episodic shift (hasan, 1988: 60 on “textual structure”). textual structure is also called narrative structure (o’toole, 1983), schematic structure (martin, 1985), staging structure (plum, 1988) and generic structure (eggins, 1994). in this poem, the shifts are described as follows: shift from material process (clause 13) to verbal process (clause 14) coincides with the shift from the condition of the bride to the confession of the bride. in this poem, the instantial system of process is used as a resource for constructing meanings. finally, logogenetic process is provided in table 3. table 3: logogenetic pattern clause number lexicogrammatical shift cf. latent patterning episodic shift cf. generic structure 1 13 material process material process the condition of bride 14 20 verbal process mental process the confession of bride 4. lexical cohesion a poem is realized by a series of lexical chains and each chain has a number of lexical items. actually, this poem is realized by twenty lexical chains consisting of 54 lexical items. the lexical chains include bride (six lexical items), groom (three lexical items), we (two lexical items), material process (ten lexical items), mental process (four lexical items), verbal process (four lexical items), relational process (five lexical items), repetition (two lexical items), synonym (twelve lexical items), antonym (two lexical items), cohyponym (two lexical items), and collocation (two lexical items). thus, lexical cohesion is realized by the main lexical chains of bride, material process and synonym. lexical cohesion is realized by lexical chains, and the analysis of lexical chains is drawn in table 4. table 4: lexical analysis no. lexical chain lexical item total 1. bride bride, she, she, she, i, i 6 2. groom groom, i, i 3 3. we we, we 2 4. material process is not coming, shakes, met, went, won, to forsake, fixed, leaps, sweeps, to prepare 10 5. mental process suits, have gleaned, were weaned, had tasted 4 6. verbal process says, to ask, says, agreed 4 7. relational process own, was, was, is, am 5 8. repetition life (2x) 2 9. synonym bride = wife, sweet = gay, swift =quick, dancing = flaring, room = nest, show = circle 12 10. antonym foolish >< clear 2 11. cohyponym town – street 2 henriono nugroho 92 12. collocation farmer apple 2 overall total 54 5. subject matter field includes subject matter as one of its special manifestations (halliday, 1993: 110) and field is realized through experiential meaning (halliday, 1993: 143). field is encoded by experiential meaning and lexical cohesion (eggins, 1994: 113). moreover, subject matter is expressed by lexical chains (butt, 1988: 177) and specifically subject matter is indicated by the main lexical chains (butt, 1988: 182). thus, subject matter is realized by experiential meaning and lexical cohesion. in section 2.2, experiential meaning was frequently realized by material process. in section 2.4, lexical cohesion was frequently realized by material process. this means that subject matter is normally realized by material process. in fact, the frequent use of material processes indicates that the functional elements are actor (we), process (fixed), and goal (marriage). in conclusion, the subject matter is about the planning of a marriage. the analysis of material processes is offered in table 5. table 5: the analysis of material process. no. actor process goal circumstance 1. my bride is not coming 2. the telegram shakes in his hand 3. we met at dancing room 4. i went to the cattle-show alone 5. she won me 6. the fountain leaps 7. the street sweeps 8. we fixed it the semiotic system of verbal art 1. the deep level of meaning in section 2.1, extension was automatized, so a combination of extension, elaboration, enhancement and projection is foregrounded. thus, the foregrounding of logical relation takes place in clauses 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 18.1, 19 and 20. in section 2.2, material process was automatized, so other processes are foregrounded. therefore, foregrounding of process occurs in clauses 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 18.1, 19 and 20. moreover, in section 2.2, past tense was automatized, so other tenses are foregrounded. consequently, the foregrounding of tense occurs in clauses 1, 2, 3, 4, 9.1, 9.2, 14, 15, 17, 18, 18.1 and 19. in section 2.2, finite clause was automatized, so non-finite clause is foregrounded. accordingly, the foregrounding of nonfiniteness exists in clauses 9, 11 and 16. finally, the patterns of foregrounding are mapped out in table 6. table 6: patterns of foregrounding note: dotted lines = clause complex boundary no. logical relation process tense finiteness 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 9.1 9.2 2 4 5 9 1 2 3 4 9.1 9.2 9 10. 11. 12. 13. 10 12 11 14. 15. 14 15 14 15 14 15 vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 94 16. 17. 18. 18.1 19. 20. 16 17 18 18.1 19 20 17 18 18.1 19 20 17 18 18.1 19 16 table 6 shows that the patterning of the various foregrounded pattern points toward clauses 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 18.1, 19 and 20. it means that the consistency of foregrounding converges toward the last clause complex. the consistency of foregrounding refers to the last clause complex due to the foregrounding of logical relation, process, tense and non-finiteness. therefore, the consistency of foregrounding makes the foregrounded patterns of the last clause complex produce consistency in foregrounded meaning which is also called the first order meaning and the deep level of meaning. in summary, the consistently foregrounded meaning of the last clause complex is the deep level of meaning in this poem: now she says, it’s sweet of you dear to prepare me a nest, but a swift, short, gay life suits me best: you have never gleaned what i really am: i had tasted the apple before you were weaned. 2. symbolic articulation: the deeper level of meaning the deeper level of meaning functions as a symbol, sign or metaphor which is also called the literary meaning and the second order meaning. in section 3.1, the deeper level of meaning refers to the last clause complex because of the foregrounding of logical relation (a combination of extension, elaboration, enhancement and projection), process (mental, verbal and relational), tense (present continuous, present tense, present perfect and past perfect) and finiteness (nonfinite clauses). therefore, the last clause complex reveals that the bride says that the groom is very kind to provide her with a house, but the bride prefers a quick, short, happy marriage because the groom has never heard about her and the bride is much more experienced than the groom. in short, the deeper level of meaning is about the confession of the experienced bride. 3. theme: the deepest level of meaning the deeper level of meaning creates the deepest level of meaning which is also called theme and the third order meaning. hasan (1985: 97) states that theme is the deepest level of meaning in verbal art; it is what a text is about when dissociated from the particularities of that text. in its nature, the theme of verbal art is very close to generalizations which can be viewed as a hypothesis about some aspect of the social life of man. moreover, hasan (1985: 54) adds that the deepest level of meaning is a meaning that arises from saying one thing and meaning another. in this poem, saying one thing (the confession of the experienced bride) means another (bridal confession). in brief, the deepest level of meaning is about the bridal confession. conclusion the lexicogrammatical analysis produces semantic components and there are two kinds of semantic patterns such as automatized and foregrounded. on the one hand, the automatized pattern produces the automatized meaning, and in turn the automatized meaning produces subject matter. on the other hand, at the stratum of verbalization, consistency of foregrounding makes some foregrounded patterns produce consistently foregrounded meaning which is also called the deep level of meaning and the first order meaning. at the stratum of symbolic articulation, the deep level of meaning functions as a symbol, sign or metaphor of the deeper level of meaning which is also called the second order meaning and literary meaning. at the stratum of theme, the deeper level of meaning creates the deepest level of meaning which is also called theme and the third order meaning. in summary, there is a symbolic relation between lexicogrammar and theme in verbal art. the meanings in this poem are outlined in the following table. 94 vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 table 7: meanings of verbal art semiotics. verbalization symbolic articulation theme consistently foregrounded meaning literary meaning theme the deep level of meaning the deeper level of meaning the deepest level of meaning the first order meaning the second order meaning the third order meaning references butt, david. “randomness, order and the latent patterning of text” in david birch and michael o’ toole (eds.) functions of style. london: pinter publishers, 1988. butt, david. “literature, culture and classroom: the aesthetic function in our information era”, in joyce e. james (ed.), the language-culture connection, anthology series 37. singapore: semeo regional language center, 1996. eggins, suzanne. an introduction to systemic functional 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hasan, ruqaiya. “on teaching literature across cultural distances” in joyce e. james (ed.), the language-culture connection. anthology series 37. singapore: seameo regional language center, 1996. jefferson, ann. “russian formalism” in jefferson, ann & david robey (eds). modern literary theory. london: bt basford ltd, 1995. martin, j.r. english text system and structure. amsterdam: john benjamins publishing, 1992. matthiessen, christian. lexicogrammatical cartography: english systems. tokyo, taipei, dallas: international language sciences publishers, 1995. mukarovsky, jan. the word and verbal art. tr. j. burbank and p. steiner. new haven: yale university press, 1977. preminger, a. princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics. princeton: princeton university press, 1974. 190 vol. 21 no. 1, april 2021, pp. 190 – 197 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i1.3145 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. finding god in all things through poetry novita dewi novitadewi@usd.ac.id graduate program in english language studies, sanata dharma university, indonesia abstract article information poetry is a language of devotion. it is the melody that resonates from one’s pure conscience. being the most important and richest part of our spiritual practice, people read and write poems to help them gain understanding about themselves, each other, and the world around them. examining world poetry, mainly from america, indonesia, and sri lanka which tell about the presence of god, this article attempts to find out how god the creator is present and represented, focusing as it does on the connection between poetry and spiritual exercises. each of the seven poems under discussion is read by considering ignatian spirituality of which the core is “finding god in all things”. the selected poems show that god can indeed be found in three main spots. first, god resides in the universe. the presence of god in nature is a common theme shared by the poets discussed. second, the speakers of the poems find god within themselves. they find god through discretion. third, some of them find the face of god in that of other people because humans are created in his image. the poems open an awareness that god is present in the sufferings of others. in conclusion, poetry serves as a prayer and spiritual exercises that can improve people’s inner compassion and justice. keywords: ignatian spirituality; poetry; prayer; spiritual exercises received: 23 february 2021 revised: 19 march 2021 accepted: 24 march 2021 introduction sacred poetry of all religious traditions generally speaks of faith, that is, bringing the reader closer to the divine. poets of different faiths express their most profound gratitude to the divine throughout the time. studies on the relationship between poetry and spirituality have been abundant, especially about the great poets of diverse cultural and religious backgrounds: jalāl ad-dīn muhammad rūmī the persian sufi poet; the chinese poet t’ao ch’ien known for his buddhist teachings; laotzu the philosopher with his taoist poems, vyasa with the epic mahabharata; christian poetry in the new testament, and many more. the relationship between literature and theology can also be seen in modern poetry inspired by diverse principles in the world’s major religions. according to kubarek, islamic literature began to develop in the 1980s as a counterpoint to secular literature adopting both themes and traditions in the western https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:novitadewi9@gmail.com journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 191 literary works (kubarek, 2016). besides containing moral teachings, poetry also embodies islamic principles and creeds. poetry also occupies an important position in the confucian program and modern chinese poetic thought (han, 2013; shen, 2014; thompson & wei-ming, 1987; yeh, 1988). poets combine contents with the best form whereby the quality of the poems must be accompanied by moral qualities. here the social effect of poetry is emphasized, namely the passion for the perfection of life and the highest good in classical education which was based on confucianism. poetry also played an important role in the political, diplomatic, and cultural spheres in ancient china. in one of his books, the analects, confucius reportedly told his son bo yu that people would not know what to say if they did not study poetry (yan xiao-jiang, 2017). there have also been countless studies on the synergy between poetry and christian spirituality from the classical to contemporary literary works around the world. encounters with god in medieval and early modern english poetry, for example, provides a linguistic analysis of a few well-known poems in english literature (besserman & clutterbuck, 2007). one of clutterbuck’s findings is the nature of dialogue with god in some sacred poems which has so far been neglected by linguistic and literary scholars. the religious poems clutterbuck discussed include william langland’s “piers plowman” (clutterbuck, 2018), john donne’s divine poems, and john milton’s famous “paradise lost” (mcmahon, 2010). another monumental christian religious literary work is george herbert’s the temple published in 1633. this collection of poetry describes the reciprocal relationship between people and god. herbert shows that human is the home of god’s glory; and the human heart is where god resides (hwang, 2018). herbert is one of the classical poets whose works are often studied both literally and in dialogue between arts and theology, especially christian faith. this anglican priest at salisbury cathedral in the seventeenthcentury england is known as the most famous religious poet in english literature, partly because of the simplicity of his choice of diction and the use of metaphors in his poetry. george herbert’s influence is seen in the contemporary poet and anglican priest malcolm guite who published sonnets that neatly follow the liturgical calendar (guite, 2011, 2017a, 2017b). guite’s newest collection of poems entitled after prayer begins with a series of sonnets in response to herbert’s other famous poem “the prayer”. in an interview, this pastor, poet, and lecturer at girton college, university of cambridge acknowledged george herbert’s enormous influence on his creativity. inspired by herbert, guite’s poetry testifies as to how art and faith work together in his life. guite’s poems provide insight and connection to the bible stories in new ways. he also wrote a few scientific studies on poetry and theology such as faith, hope and poetry: theology and the poetic imagination which has received much recognition and appreciation (neumann, 2012; richardson, 2013; twombly, 2013). like guite and the classical writers mentioned above, another contemporary writer, shemaiah gonzalez, argues that poetry is one of the many ways to find god. gonzalez meets god in her daily life through the following four things. first, she calls it “touchstone” – an object that reminds us that god is here, with us, in a very personal way, for example through butterflies, flowers, leaves, trees, and so on (gonzalez, n.d.). god is also present in the second hidden place which is the voice. gonzalez has written numerous articles on silence but has come to realize that god is not only found in silence, but also in lingering noise, even crowds. the third place god is found is in the home when we are doing our daily work. here, gonzalez imitates st. theresia from lisieux who said that the presence of god is felt closest not at the time of prayer, but during her doing household chores. gonzalez has also learned from her mother-inlaw who raised six children, but she was often heard singing while she was working. even the smallest task can be of incarnational value and becomes a way to live and breathe god’s love. finally, this freelance writer from los angeles claims that poetry is the fourth place god can be found. gonzalez found many sources of data on the intricacies of poetry. gonzalez also journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) novita dewi 192 discovered a long history of various poems from various parts of the world which turned into a means of finding god’s presence. suffice it to say for now that contemplative works from time to time talk about people’s (unique) experiences. it is important to discuss an encounter with god wrapped in a literary reality so that others can feel this seemingly personal experience. this article will discuss several poems from various countries that specifically talk about the presence of god. amid hoax and hateful narratives as well as numerous information that further distance us from god’s will, the presence of reflective-contemplative poetry is duly important and therapeutic. poetry opens the complex dimensions of human freedom and intimate relationships with the creator. reading or writing poetry is an important part of daily rituals that is naturally aspirational. poetry is a language of devotion, the richest expression of a spiritual practice. poetry is the echo of a pure inner voice. poetry creates clarity, deepens, and expands continuous exploration into the deepest mysteries of life. in poetry as spiritual practice, robert mcdowell says that every religious person, even an atheist, always looks for spirituality in her/his daily life whether consciously or not (mcdowell, 2008). everyone has a desire for peace and understanding. through poetry, people gain peace and understanding of themselves, others, and the world around them. mcdowell invites us to make poetry an important part of daily rituals, aspirations, and intentions in our quest for meaning, growth, and greater peace in life. thus, for both readers and writers, poetry is beneficial because it generates wisdom, compassion, confidence, patience, and energy to show greater love for the creator and his creations. next, the encounter with a loving god is at the heart of st. ignasius de loyola and his companions (spirituality: finding god in all things, n.d.). based on the belief that god is active in the real world, this spiritual path laid down by the founder of the society of jesus helps us discern god’s presence, i.e., finding god in all things and reaching out to a diverse, gracious yet imperfect world. this spirituality is brought into a broader human context such as pursuing social justice, peace, and dialogue. being contemplative in action means that our active life feeds the contemplative life; and our contemplative life provides information about active life. it is precisely where god is present. activities to open ourselves to god and let him enter into us completely are called spiritual exercises. these activities can be in the form of meditation, chanting prayers, keeping diaries, writing poetry, creating works of art, playing music, even taking a walk to enjoy nature as long as it has one single purpose, that is, to let god speak (george w. traub, 2008). in a quiet inner situation, one can find god anywhere and at any time, just like st. ignatius’ ideal of finding god in everything and everything in god. the goal of this study is thus to identify god’s presence in some selected contemporary poems. the research question is: in what ways the poets discover the existence of god in their respective poems that serve as prayers? methodology the primary data used in this study were seven poems, i.e., “nothing is far”. “sajak tentang kau”, “di masjid besar”, “misal”, “who hides”, “kolam”, and “easter at kentucky fried chicken”. the secondary data were relevant journal articles and books to support the reading of the poems. each poem was read using three simple steps introduced by timpane (2001) that include getting the basic information, speculating the meaning, and interpreting the meaning. firstly, the researcher obtained the lowest level of poetry reading by paraphrasing each poem to make meaning clearer. the second step was speculation: what does the poet mean? the second step was of great importance because it allowed readers (in this case, the researcher) grab the clearer meaning of each poem. the third step was interpretation. here, the poem was read with ignatian spirituality, particularly “finding god in all things” at the back of the researcher’s mind. it was in this final step that the meanings of the poems can be clustered into three main god’s-existencethemes, namely in nature, ourselves, and others as detailed below. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 193 results and discussion finding god in nature the presence of god around us is clearly seen in the works of robert francis (19011987), a poet from upland, pennsylvania, who was heavily influenced by the more famous contemporary american poet robert frost. written in frost’s freestyle poetry, francis’ “nothing is far” tells of the speaker’s quest to see god in his everyday life. the poem begins with the description of god whose name is never heard by the song of birds or the rustling of the wind but is truly experienced by the poet. that god is present everywhere is clear here: “nothing is far that once was near. /nothing is hid that once was clear. /nothing was god that is not here.” the poem ends with: “here is the bird, the tree, the stone. /here in the sun i sit alone. /between the known and the unknown.” although this vegetarian poet received numerous writing awards during his career, not much is written about francis except that some liken his works with emily dickinson’s in terms of the metaphysical presence of god in nature (nelson, 1977; shaw, 1993; stambuk, 1999). the presence of god in nature is also revealed by several poets from indonesia. in “sajak tentang kau” [a poem about you] written by asep samboja (1967-2010), the speaker of the poem tries to deny the existence of god but becomes helpless because god is present everywhere. the speaker’s attempt to make a poem about “god does not exist” fails because of the continual presence of “ocean foam” and “waves” put off by the “fire of [his] soul” (samboja, 2006b). besides, there is always “the roar of your voice” that the speaker can hear by the sea. the speaker makes his last attempt by burning down his book containing a poem about “god does not exist” only to find that the green grass grows on the ground with burnt ashes, thanks to the rain that comes. both samboja and francis represent anxiety turning into faith about god’s presence. no matter how hard we try to deny god’s existence or to hide from him, he is still present, and he stays close to us. the presence of god in the universe and everything in it is in accordance with the spiritual exercises in ignatian spirituality. as explained in the spiritual exercises handbook, god created human beings and he continues to be present in us with great love. to welcome god’s love, there is nothing more glorious than praising, giving respects, and serving god himself (loyola, 1993). the objects around us become touchstones, to borrow gonzalez’s term above (gonzalez, n.d.) that always make us aware of the presence of god and his immense love. one of the main teachings in ignatian spirituality is directing one’s life as a living being to conform to god’s own purposes and will and thereby praising and glorifying his name (ad maiorem dei gloriam). francis and samboja never saw each other. poets may see different touchstones at different places and times, but their hearts tremble when they see such diverse creations as wind, waves, birds, rocks, flowers, grass, etc. finding god in ourselves that finally god is found in all creations including in the human heart is also proven through asep samboja’s other poem “di masjid besar” [at the great mosque] and “misal” [if] by joko pinurbo. samboja first asks what flowers mean if they are not sweet-smelling or oysters without pearls in them. this short poem ends with “what am i without you in my pulse?” (samboja, 2006a). likewise, in pinurbo’s poetry, god asks “supposing i come to your house” to someone who is fervently praying. the lord continues, “will you come out of your prayer and open the door for me?” (pinurbo, 2017, p. 68). there is a certain meaning assigned to the title of this pinurbo poem written in 2016. the title “misal” literally means “if”. but it sounds like “misa” to the indonesian ears or “mass/missal” in english, namely a book containing texts used in mass or eucharistic celebration in the catholic church throughout the year. known for, among others, for his one-line poem entitled “the night prayer” where he quips “dear god, please accept the birdsong in my head”, pinurbo has made use of the bible as sources of inspiration that never dries up (pinurbo, 2018, p. 41). in his own acknowledgement, his favorite verse is as follows: “in all things give thanks, for this is what god wanted in jesus christ for you.” (1 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) novita dewi 194 thessalonians 5:18). joko pinurbo obtains his poetic spirituality from the spiritual exercises 23 of the jesuits. readers of his poetry can capture with ease and create meaning for the moral messages in his various poems about events or people’s daily affairs, god’s relationship with humans, and human relations. although they come from different religious backgrounds, samboja and pinurbo both see the doubts of the religious community when carrying out their worship. many of us fall into the trap of thinking that the only places to find god are in churches, mosques, and other places of worship. when we do not expect to find god anywhere else except in sacred buildings, we may miss great opportunities to receive comfort and healing as well as spiritual growth from god himself. in fact, god is so close. the golden quote “god is only as far as prayer” is reflected critically in both “di masjid besar” and “misal”. at this stage, it can be said that the speaker in each poem finds god through discretion. discretion is at the heart of ignatian spirituality. it is through discretion that we touch the deepest part of ourselves, i.e. the space where god speaks to us. as written in proverbs 2: 10-11, “for wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you.” discretion is not only necessary to solve big problems, but a means of struggle to follow god in a better way over time. samboja and pinurbo’s works respectively depicts a person who finally found god through a very intimate and personal communication. the next poem is “who hides” written by the sri lankan poet and priest derrick mendis (1936-2016). “i seek your face with longing heart,” says the poet, “please do not hide, be my guide, with me abide” (mendis, 2008, p. 38). at this request, god answers, “through life. i guide you day by day, /draw you gently, when you stray. /with you, beside you, constantly. /tis you, my love, who hides from me”. in “who hides”, it is proven that god never hides. through this poem, the poet attests that god does not need to be sought because we ourselves have often been hiding or avoiding god. for a jesuit like mendis, spiritual exercise is the breath of daily life. in his obituary mendis is described as “a servant of the lord, friend of the poor, fearless poet against the powers-that-be, and, most of all, a humble human being who enjoyed everything and never craved for anything” (jayawardena, 2017). the question why humans hide from god seems to be answered by bakdi soemanto’s poem entitled “pond”. this poem is a monologue of someone who tries to recall the advice given by his lover as they sit together by the pond not to disturb the calm and clear water. the reflection of the sky, leaves, and dust blown away by the wind fall on the pond. the advice continued thus: “don’t disturb, you say /your heart is calm and clear /behold, you say, /the face of god is reflected /also the echoes of his word shake the water surface.” (soemanto, 2007, p. 121). the poet welcomes the advice while sighing, “ah, even our sins /betrayal and our grudges / tear his face.” this poem is in tune with psalm 139: 2 saying “you know when i sit and when i rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar”. even though the poem is multi-interpreted, it captures doubt and regret. god is present in the character’s mind when he realizes his past actions that grieve god. it can be concluded for now that poetry and spiritual life overlap. spiritual life is concerned with overcoming egoism, pride, prejudice, and so on, including insecure feelings about meeting god. poetry can be a spiritual practice or a way of life. these findings agree with the claim made by robert mcdowell above that through poetry, peace, and understanding of oneself, others, and the wider world can be obtained (mcdowell, 2008). poetry is a spiritual practice for finding meaning, maturity, and peace. finding god in others no poem is more vivid about god’s presence in others than the gospel of matthew 25: 35-40. these five important verses contain the teachings of love for caring for the sick, visiting the sick in prison, and giving hospitality to strangers. this is the real practice of justice for fellow people as well as a journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 195 testimony to god’s presence. it was also mentioned previously in matthew 18:20, “for where two or three gather in my name, there am i with them.” jesus taught us to love others as we love ourselves. the theme of “finding god in others" often appears in world poetry from time to time. before discussing the poems chosen in this study, here is an overview of several famous poems that describe the presence of god in other people’s life. mary dawson hughes is famous for her description of god’s presence in her oft-quoted haiku thus: “the finger of god touches your life when you make a friend.” likewise, the work of the evangelist john henry newman is clear: “i sought to hear the voice of god and climbed the topmost steeple, but god declared: ‘go down again i dwell among the people’.” another example, father zosima in fyodor dostoevsky’s the brothers karamazov has this to say: “love all of god’s creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. love every leaf, every ray of light. love animals, love plants, love everything.” zosima assured that humans will feel the mystery of god in everything; and once people understand this mystical wisdom, it is not difficult to recognize the value of the whole world with an all-embracing and universal love. if we believe that humans are created in god’s image, the way we learn about god is to live with love for others. in ignatian spirituality, “everything which god created out of love, must therefore be used and presented to him with great respect and love, to glorify god and love others responsibly and not attached to personal ambition”. this principle is tallied with the message conveyed by the christian pastor, writer, and lawyer lauren adams in her latest book parable of the brown girl: the sacred lives of girls of color. adams’s book is about a young woman of color who is often ignored and disrespected, to say nothing of her often-unnoticed opinions in american society in general. just as jesus himself taught using many parables, adams presents girls of color as the main characters in the story in order to interpret their struggles, dreams, hopes, and dignity. it is in these small and marginalized people that the face of god is seen. among the poems quoted by adams is william blake’s famous 18th century english poet “i sought my god”: “i sought my soul /but my soul i could not see /i sought my god /but my god eluded me /i sought my brother /and i found all three.” by quoting blake’s poem, adams wants to show that god created human beings who are different from one another to love one another. adams picked up the story of weak colored girls who are usually overlooked to show that god has used our weaknesses to prove his power. as saint paul told his church in corinth, “god chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; god chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong; god chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not— to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.” (1 corinthians 1:2729). finally, a poet remembers god as he sees the weak, poor, and suffering in “easter at kentucky fried chicken”. written by subagio sastrowardoyo, a new generation of modern indonesian poet after the 1945 cohort, this poem tells the story of a person who resolves not to eat fried chicken when he sees a baby crying in the arms of a thin woman who is scavenging a trash can in front of the restaurant. he further says: “the coca-cola burns my throat /when i remembered hollowed faces in the dark, /with a halo of green flies.” (sastrowardoyo, 1990, p. 200). known for his urban setting, sastrowardoyo also highlights poverty and injustice that occurred in other parts of the world. then, like the self-sacrificing christ, he continues, “come to me. cut up my body /and enjoy my flesh – the whitest bread/ and my blood the purest of wines /until there is left only my limp skeleton /drooping on the branch.” he ends his poetry thus: eloi, eloi, lama sabachtani – my god, my god/ why hast thou forsaken us?” even though sastrowardoyo’s poem was written several decades ago, the gap between the rich and the poor is but a grim reality that continues to occur today. therefore, this poem echoes the word of god indirectly – i say to you, verily, anything that you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do it for me, as scripted in matthew 25: 46. this is to say that the closer we get to god, the closer we get to our neighbor in need. therefore, on the basis of this love for others, god has been journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) novita dewi 196 recurrently featured in different poems from different parts of the world. conclusion literature reflects human life: success, failure, love, hate, peace, war, forgiveness, and revenge – all unfold imaginatively and creatively. literary works such as the seven poems discussed here convey noble values in addition to their linguistic and artistic resources like language style, metaphor, symbolism, and many more. slowly and thoughtfully made, poems have life in them. the poems studied can help us feel god’s presence, especially where realities in our lives are not as joyful as we may expect. this article has shown that the presence of god in nature is a common theme shared by the poets under discussion. god has left his footprints in nature about which the poets marvel. interestingly, the poets here are not instantly and initially aware of god’s presence until nature speaks to them. it is the spiritual connection with nature that the finding of god by each poet is palpably experienced and shared to the reader. it has also been discussed here that poetry can change one’s perspectives in dealing with problems such as doubts about the existence of god, mild spirituality, reluctance to meet god, and other issues of faith. it has also been shown that poetry opens one’s heart to love all creations. the speakers in the poems find the presence and call of god in the people and circumstances of their everyday lives as in dating, praying, poetry-writing, having meals, etc. from the three findings about the presence of god in nature, oneself, and fellow humans, it can be concluded that poetry is a prayer and 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https://doi.org/10.17265/2159-5836/2017.08.003 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6253.1988.tb00596.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6253.1988.tb00596.x phenomena adria indah putranti 176 resyllabification of english loanwords borrowed from indonesian language adria indah putranti adria.indahputranti@yahoo.com english language studies, sanata dharma university abstract resyllabification happens when the syllable structure of the source language differ from that of the recipient language. this article aims at observing how indonesian words borrowed by english language are resyllabified in order to match with the syllable structures of english language as the recipient language. results show that the resyllabification of english loanwords can be analyzed by applying deletion and addition rule. the result of deletion rule is the reduced number of syllable of loanwords (such as in cutch, cockatoo, cajeput, kris, prau, tombac, and trepan), while addition rule results on the addition of the number of syllable (such as in catechu, caladium, mangosteen, and pandanus). keywords: resyllabification, borrowing, source language, recipient language language and gender one of the characteristics of present day english is the size of mixed character of its vocabulary. it is due to the fact that english has heavily adopted thousands of words from other languages. in this regard, english is said to be a receptive language since a lot of words are borrowed from many different languages. it is obvious that borrowing is one of many ways to expand the vocabulary from other languages. borrowing takes place when one language -so called recipient languagetakes a word from other language -so called source language. the borrowed words are then called loanwords, which are saved into recipient language’s lexicon. during the process of borrowing, a borrowed word needs to be adjusted to the phonological and morphological structure as well as its pronunciation patterns and grammatical rules of the recipient language. this article provides an observation of the syllable structure of english as the recipient language and indonesian as the source language. as a result, resyllabification is required since the syllable structures of indonesian language are different from those of the english language. in order to do the analysis of resyllabification rules in english loanwords, data of 50 words is collected from merriam-webster’s 11th collegiate dictionary. syllabification theory basically, a syllable is a unit of speech that consists of a nucleus surrounded by onsets and codas. a word which contains a single syllable is called a monosyllabic word, while if it consists of more than one syllable, it is called a polysyllabic word. onset and coda consists of consonants, while nucleus consists of vowels (in some extent, liquids and nasals). peak and coda function together to form a rhyme. the number of segments is important in recognizing english syllables. onset has a maximum consonant number of two. three vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 177 consonants are allowed as long as it includes a sequence of three-consonant cluster, namely /s/ as the first segment, voiceless stops (/p/ or /t/ or /k/) as the second segment, and approximants (liquids or glides) as the third segment. coda has two consonants at maximum. the third segment allowed is /s/, /z/, /t/. each segment in both onset and coda constitutes one x. rhyme is essential in a syllable since it determines whether the syllable is wellformed or not. the number of x is used as the basic of this consideration. a well-formed syllable consists of 3-x position in the rhyme. stressed vowel needs to have minimum 2-x position in rhyme, thus it is called heavy syllable. conversely, unstressed vowel must have minimum 1-x position in rhyme socalled light syllable. syllabification principle most languages tend to follow these following two principles of syllabification, namely sonority sequence principle (ssp) and maximal onset principle (mop). in fact, several languages do not follow mop, but most of the languages follow ssp. 1. sonority sequence principle (ssp) the sonority of a sound is the relative loudness compared to other sounds of the same length, stress, and pitch (ladefoged, 1993). therefore, a syllable must contains sonorous element and its associated less sonorous segment. a syllable usually has a peak consisting of the most sonorous element within a syllable (vowels) which is recognized as nucleus. onsets and codas are the second and third elements of the syllable. a nucleus becomes the core of the syllable so that its presence is obligatory. conversely, codas and onsets are not obligatory. syllables are associated with peaks of sonority which is used to predict the number of syllable of english words. thus, a monosyllabic word typically has a single sonority peak, a bisyllabic word usually has two peaks, and polysyllabic has more than one peak. according to the sonority scale, voiceless plosives are the least sonorous, while low vowels are the most sonorous among the segments. the degree of sonority determined from the least sonorous until the most sonorous sounds are oral stops, fricatives, nasals, liquids, semivowels, and vowels (giegerich, 1992). a sequence of sound produced in one syllable is explained as follows. the sequence begins with the increase of sonority until it reaches the most sonorous sound in a syllable (the peak) and ends with the decrease of the sonority. the sonority scale is essential to determine the number of syllables. the word like clamp is considered as monosyllable since it employs one sonority peak. the word andrew is considered as bisyllable since it employs two sonorant segments. 2. maximal onset principle (mop) maximal onset principle is a rule which requires syllable boundaries to be placed in such a way that onsets are maximal (giegerich, 1992). this rule requires a consonant which may occupy either onset or coda goes to onset position rather than coda position. for instance, if the word metron is separated by a syllable boundary, it becomes [me.trǝn] rather than [met.rǝn] accordingly, o’graddy et al (1992) illustrates two words as an example, such as extreme and decline. according to the maximal onset principle, they are syllabified as [ɛk.strɪm] and [dɪ.klajn]. whereas the fact the incorrect syllabifications, such as [ɛk.strɪm] and [dɪ.klajn] do not violate any phonotactic constraints. it leads to the conclusion that syllabifications are prevented by a universal syllable-shape constrains that require the onset to be as large as possible. resyllabification of english loanwords borrowed from indonesian language different languages have different syllable structures since there are restrictions of permissible sound sequences in a language. syllable structures of indonesian languages observed from the data are v (such as in agar, ikat, orangutan, siamang, upas), vc (rupiah), cv (batik, bambu, teripang, tembaga), and cvc (kampong, keris, gambir, gudang, kapur). conversely, english has more varieties of syllable structure. the syllable structures of english language observed from the data are v (such as in rupiah), vc adria indah putranti 178 (caladium, dayak), cv (babiroussa, bamboo, batik, dammar), cvc (cutch, camphor, gingham, tombac), cvcc (compound), ccv (prau, trepang), and ccvc (mangosteen, kris). it can be concluded that indonesian and english have somewhat different syllable structure, so the process of resyllabification is possible. resyllabification is seen as the process of reanalysis the syllable structure of the loanwords. it can be conducted by the application of insertion and deletion rules. eventually, these rules may change the syllable structure of the source language so that the desired syllable structure for the target language can be obtained (crystal, 2008). dealing with this analysis, the syllable structure of both source and recipient language are determined. figure 1 shows that 30 loanwords (60%) have the same syllable structure of original words. it is because the syllable structure of the source language conform the structure of the recipient language. therefore, they do not need to be resyllabified. conversely, 20 loanwords (40%) have different syllable structure with those of recipient language. finally, they are resyllabified to match the acceptable syllable structure of target language. figure 1 english loanwords borrowed from indonesian languages 60% 40% no syllable changes syllable changes 1. loanwords with no changes in syllable structure loanwords with no changes in syllable structure are determined by two considerations. first, there is no phonological rule applied significantly so that there is no change in sounds and spellings of the loanwords. as a result, it maintains the syllable structure of originals and it automatically cannot alter the syllable structure. the examples are banteng [’ban,teŋ], and sen [’sen]. second, there applies phonological adaptation/ rules, but they do not change the syllable structure. the word bamboo [,bǣm’bu:], for instance, really adapts the phonological rule of the target language. it undergoes at least three phonological rules, such as vowel laxing, vowel lengthening, and vowel nasalization. the phonological rules can be explained by the following table. table 1 phonological rules and syllabification of the word bamboo source language representation (slr) /bambʊ/ → cvc.cv (2 syllables) vowel laxing vowel lenghtening stress stabilization vowel nasalization [bӕmbʊ] [bӕmbu:] [,bӕm’bu:] [,bǣm’bu:] target language representation (tlr) [,bǣm’bu:] → cvc.cv (remains 2 syllables) most of the loanwords with no changes in syllable structure constitute some phonological rules, such as vowel laxing, vowel lengthening and diphthongization. nevertheless, these rules do not change the syllable structure since they occur within one syllable. tense vowels and diphthongs are considered as one phoneme and one v. akmajian et al (2001) defines diphthong as ‘a vowel that consists of two parts, a louder vowel and either an onglide or an offglide, which together serve as the nucleus of a single syllable’. therefore, it is clear that diphthong can be seen as a smooth transition between two vowel sounds within the same syllable. vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 179 table 2 loanwords with no changes in syllable 2. loanwords with changes in syllable structures resyllabification is implemented in this category under one condition. the condition is that when the phonological rules applied to the source language change the syllable structure of the loanwords. after observing the syllable structure of the loanwords, three kinds of changes in syllable are determined. the first is the reduced number of syllable. it occurs when the number of syllables of the loanwords is reduced due to the phonological constraints of the recipient language. the second is the addition of syllable. it adds the number of syllables to the loanwords. it also happens due to the application of phonological rules. the third is the change in syllable template. this process requires the different syllable template between source and target language. changes in syllable template happen due to the application of the phonological rules of the recipient language. no source language syllable template recipient language transcriptions syllable template 1 agar v.cvc agar [’eɪ.gɑ:r] v.cvc 2 babirusa cv.cv.cv.cv babiroussa [,bӕ.bɪ’ru:.sǝ] cv.cv.cv.cv 3 bamboo cvc.cv bamboo [,bӕm’bu:] cvc.cv 4 banteng cvc.cvc banteng [’ban,teŋ] cvc.cvc 5 batik cv.cvc batik [bӕ’ti:k] cv.cvc 6 dammar cv.cvc damar [’dӕ.mǝr] cv.cvc 7 dayak cv.vc dayak [’daɪ.ak] cv.vc 8 durian cv.cv.vc durian [’dʊ.ri:.ǝn] cv.cv.vc 9 gambir cvc.cvc gambier [’gӕm.bɪr] cvc.cvc 10 gong cvc gong [’gɔ:ŋ] cvc 11 gudang cv.cvc godown [’gǝʊ.daʊn] cv.cvc 12 ikat v.cvc ikat [‘i:.kɑ:t] v.cvc 13 jelutong cv.cv.cvc jelutong [’je.lǝ.tɒŋ] cv.cv.cvc 14 kampong cvc.cvc kampong [’kӕm.pɒŋ] cvc.cvc 15 kapuk cv.cvc kapok [’keɪ.pɒk] cv.cvc 16 kati cv.cv caddy [’kӕ.di] cv.cv 17 kati cv.cv catty [’kӕ.ti] cv.cv 18 kechap cv.cvc ketchup [’ke.ʧǝp] cv.cvc 19 kutu cv.cv cootie [‘ku:.tɪ] cv.cv 20 luri/ nuri cv.cv lory [‘lɔ:.rɪ] cv.cv 21 orangutan v.cvc.v.cvc orang-utan [ɔ:’r ӕŋ.ǝ.tӕn] c.cvc.v.cvc 22 padi cv.cv paddy [’pӕ.di] cv.cv 23 parang cv.cvc parang [’pɑ:.rӕŋ] cv.cvc 24 pengguling cvc.cv.cvc pangolin [pӕŋ’gǝʊ.lɪn] cvc.cv.cvc 25 rambutan cvc.cv.cvc rambutan [rӕm’bu:.tǝn] cvc.cv.cvc 26 rotan cv.cvc rattan [rӕ’tӕn] cv.cvc 27 sagu cv.cv sago [‘sa.gǝʊ] cv.cv 28 sarong cv.cvc sarong [sǝ’rɒŋ] cv.cvc 29 sen cvc sen [’sen] cvc 30 siamang cv.v.cvc siamang [’si:.ǝ.mӕŋ] cv.v.cvc adria indah putranti 180 table 3 loanwords with changes in syllable structure no. syllabification resyllabification source language syllable template recipient language transcription syllable template 1 kachu cv.cv catechu [’kӕ.tǝ,ʧu:] cv.cv.cv 2 kachu cv.cv cutch [’kǝʧ] cvc 3 kakatua cv.cv.cv.v cockatoo [, kɒ.kǝ’tu:] cv.cv.cv 4 kampong cvc.cvc compound [’kɒm.paʊnd] cvc.cvcc 5 kapur cv.cvc camphor [’kӕm.fǝr] cvc.cvc 6 kasuari cv.cv.v.cv cassowary [’kӕ.sǝ,weǝ.ri] cv.cv.cv.cv 7 kayuputih cv.cv.cv.cvc cajeput [’kӕ.ʤǝ.pʊt] cv.cv.cvc 8 keladi cv.cv.cv caladium [kǝ’lɑ:.de.ǝm] cv.cv.cv.vc 9 genggang cvc.cvc gingham [’gɪŋ.ǝm] cvc.vc 10 gurameh cv.cv.cvc gouramy [gʊ’rǝ.mi] cv.cv.cv 11 keris cv.cvc kris [‘kri:s] ccvc 12 manggis cvc.cvc mangosteen [’mӕŋ.gǝ.sti:n] cvc.cv.ccvc 13 ngamuk cv.cvc amok [ǝ’mɒk] v.cvc 14 pandan cvc.cvc pandanus [pӕn’deɪ.nǝs] cvc.cv.cvc 15 pelangki cv.cvc.cv palanquin [,pa.lǝn’kin] cv.cvc.cvc 16 perahu cv.cv.cv prau [’praʊ] ccv 17 rupiah cv.cv.vc rupiah [ru:’pi:.ɑ] cv.cv.v 18 tembaga cvc.cv.cv tombac [‘tam.bak] cvc.cvc 19 teripang cv.cv.cvc trepan [trɪ’pӕŋ] ccv.cvc 20 upas (pohon upas) v.cvc upas [jʊ’pǝs] cv.cvc a. deletion rule deletion rule can be observed when there is a vowel deletion within a word. frequently, omitting vowels can result on the omitting syllable due to the fact that vowels are very fundamental in syllables. seven loanwords are identified as having syllable simplification which is presented in the following table. table 4 resyllabification of loanwords via deletion rule source language number of syllable process recipient language number of syllable kachu 2 syll apocope (deletion of final vowel /ʊ/) cutch [’kǝʧ] 1 syll kakatua 4 syll apocope (deletion of final vowel /a/) cockatoo [, kɒ.kǝ’tu:] 3 syll kayuputih 4 syll deletion of final sound /ɪh/ cajeput [’kӕ.ʤǝ.pʊt] 3 syll keris 2 syll deletion schwa /ǝ/ kris [‘kri:s] 1 syll perahu 3 syll deletion schwa /ǝ/ prau [’praʊ] 1 syll tembaga 3 syll apocope (deletion of final vowel /a/) tombac [‘tam.bak] 2 syll teripang 3 syll deletion schwa /ǝ/ trepan [trɪ’pӕŋ] 2 syll vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 181 the word kris is resyllabified into simpler syllable (from two reduces to one syllable) due to phonological adaptation to the recipient language. it receives stress in the initial syllable, resulting on the deletion of schwa. the following phonological rules can explain this process. table 5 phonological rules and resyllabification of the word kris slr /kǝrɪs/ syllabification: cv.cvc → 2 syllables stress stabilization aspiration schwa deletion [‘kǝrɪs] [‘khǝrɪs] [‘khrɪs] schwa deletion tlr [‘khrɪs] resyllabification: ccvc → 1 syllable table 6. resyllabification via deletion rule no. resyllabification by reducing vowel 1. σ σ r r o n o n k a ʧ ʊ σ r o n c k a ʧ 2. σ σ σ σ r r r r o n o n o n p k a k a t ʊ a σ σ σ r r r o n c o n o n k ɒ k ǝ t u: 3. σ σ σ σ r r r r o n o n o n o n c k a y ʊ p ʊ t i h σ σ σ r r r o n c o n o n c k ӕ ʤǝ ǝ p ʊ t 4. σ σ r r o n o n c k ǝ r ɪ s σ r o n c k r i: s adria indah putranti 182 5. σ σ σ r r r o n o n o n p ǝ r a h ʊ σ r o n p r a ʊ 6. σ σ σ r r r o n c o n o n t ǝ m b a ɡ a σ σ r r o n c o n c t a m b a k 7. σ σ σ r r r o n o n o n c t ǝ r i p a ŋ σ σ r r o n o n c t r i p ӕ ŋ similarly, the word prau and trepang undergo the process of schwa deletion. thus it can reduce the number of syllable. prau is resyllabified into monosyllable, while trepang into bisyllable. the omission of final vowels occurs in the word cutch, cockatoo, and tombac. these loanwords are resyllabified due to the omission of final vowel /ʊ/ for cutch and /a/ for cockatoo and tombac. this process is called apocope. these omissions of the final vowel result on the reduced number of syllable. cutch is resyllabified into monosyllable, cockatoo into trisyllable, and tombac into bisyllable. cajeput [’kӕ.ʤǝ.pʊt] undergoes the process of deletion the final vowel /ɪ/ and consonant /h/. in english, /h/ does not occur in the rhyme so that it becomes omitted. this omission makes the syllable reduced into trisyllable. b. addition rule addition rule is applied to the recipient language if there are some additions of sounds which also involve vowels. there are four loanwords falling into this category. table 7. resyllabification of loanwords via addition rule source language number of syllable process recipient language transcriptions number of syllable kachu 2 syll addition of /t/ and /ǝ/ in the middle catechu [’kӕ.tǝ,ʧu:] 3 syll keladi 3 syll addition of vowel /ʊ/ and final consonant /m/ caladium [kǝ’lɑ:.de.ǝm] 4 syll manggis 2 syll addition of final vowel /i:/ and consonant /t/ and /n/ mangosteen [’mӕŋ.gǝ.sti:n] 3 syll pandan 2 syll addition of final vowel /ʊ/ and consonant /s/ pandanus [pӕn’deɪ.nǝs] 3 syll vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 183 it can be observed that the word catechu is the result of /tǝ/ addition in the middle of syllable, caladium addition /ʊm/ in the final syllable, mangosteen addition /ti:n/ in the final syllable, and pandanus addition /ʊs/ in the final syllable. they are syllable additions occur in the middle and final words. theories say that to make a syllable, a nucleus (usually vowels, but liquids and nasals are also appropriate) is obligatory. these words consist of vowel which incorporates with consonant to create a new syllable as the addition to the original words. budiman (2007) presents the phonological rules of the word pandanus which includes the addition of sound /ʊ/ and /s/ in the word final. the following table denotes the resyllabification of the word pandanus from its original word. panadanus is then resyllabified into trisyllables. table 8. phonological rules and resyllabification of the word pandanus slr /pandan/ syllabification: cvc.cvc → 2 syllables sound addition vowel laxing vowel fronting stress stabilization vowel weakening [pandanus] [pӕndanus] [pӕndeɪnus] [pӕn’deɪnus] [pӕn’deɪnǝs] sound addition /ʊs/ tlr [pӕn’deɪnǝs] resyllabification: cvc.cv.cvc → 3 syllables table 9. resyllabification via addition rule no. resyllabification by adding sounds 1. σ σ r r o n o n k a ʧ ʊ σ σ σ r r r o n c o n o n k ӕ t ǝ ʧ ʊ 2. σ σ σ r r r o n o n o n k ǝ l a d i σ σ σ σ r r r r o n o n o n n o k ǝ l ɑ: d e ǝ m 3. σ σ r r o n c o n c m a ŋ ɡ i s σ σ σ r r r o n c o n o n c m a ŋ ɡ ǝ s t i: n adria indah putranti 184 4. σ σ r r o n c o n c p a n d a n σ σ σ r r r o n c o n o n c p a n d e i n ǝ s c. changes in syllable template the following table is a list of syllable template of loanwords which undergo changes due to the phonological adaptation. table 10. loanwords with changes in syllable template syllabification resyllabification source language syllable template recipient language transcriptions syllable template genggang cvc.cvc gingham [’gɪŋ.ǝm] cvc.vc gurameh cv.cv.cvc gouramy [gʊ’rǝ.mi] cv.cv.cv kampung cvc.cvc compound [’kɒm.paʊnd] cvc.cvcc kapur cv.cvc camphor [’kӕm.fǝr] cvc.cvc kasuari cv.cv.v.cv cassowary [’kӕ.sǝ,weǝ.rɪ] cv.cv.cv.cv ngamuk cv.cvc amok [ǝ’mɒk] v.cvc pelangki cv.cvc.cv palanquin [,pa.lǝn’kin] cv.cvc.cvc rupiah cv.cv.vc rupiah [ru:’pi:.ǝ] cv.cv.v upas (pohon upas) v.cvc upas [jʊ’pǝs] cv.cvc when comparing the syllable template of borrowed language and borrowing language shown in the table above, the changes of syllable template really exist. the word gouramy [gʊ’rǝ.mi] is originally gurameh. it makes difference in the final sound of /h/ in the source language. the sound /h/ is omitted due to the fact that there is no sound /h/ in a syllable onset. accordingly, this omission of /h/ makes the syllable template change into cv.cv.cv. in cassowary [’kӕ.sǝ,weǝ.rɪ], there is an addition of the sound /w/ in the penultimate syllable. that makes the syllable template become cv.cv.cv.cv. the word amok is originally ngamuk. there is a deletion of sound /ŋ/ in the penult syllable since english does not allow this sound to occur in the onset position. the syllable template changes from cv.cvc into v.cvc. in palanquin [,pa.lǝn’kin], there is an addition /n/ sound in the word final. thus, the syllable template changes into cv.cvc.cvc. the word rupiah pronounced as [ru:’pi:.ǝ]. there is a /h/ deletion here since english does not allow /h/ occurs in rhyme and a single vowel /ǝ/ is allowed to make a syllable with only a nucleus. therefore, the syllable template changes into cv.cv.v in upas [jʊ’pǝs], there is an addition of sound /j/ in the penult syllable. thus it makes the syllable template become cv.cvc. according to the research conducted by budiman (2007), the phonological rules of the word gingham are sound deletion of /g/, nasalization of velar /ŋ/ into /m/, and vowel weakening. the syllable template created is cvc.vc. concluding remarks resyllabification of loanwords is applied whenever the syllable structure of the source language differs from that of the recipient language. when indonesian words enter english language, the phonological adaptation is applied to adjust the phonological rule of english. in many cases, phonological adaptation results on the vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 185 change of syllable structure. thus, the borrowings have to be resyllabified in order to meet the syllable requirements of recipient language. references akmajian, adrian, richard a. demers, ann k. farmer, and robert m. harnish. linguistics: an introduction to language and communication. london: massachusetts institute of technology, 2001. print. budiman, linda valentina. “english words borrowed from indonesian languages and their phonological adaptation”. phenomena journal of language and literature. vol. 11 no. 1, june 2007, pp.33-44. print. crystal, david. a dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. victoria: blackwell publishing, 2008. print. giegerich, heinz j. english phonology. victoria: cambridge university press, 1992. print. ladefoged, peter. a course in phonetics. new york: harcourt brace jovanovich inc, 1993. print. o’graddy,william, john archibald, mark aronoff, and janie rees-miller. contemporary linguistics. new york: bedford/ st. martin’s, 2005. print. 125 vol. 22 no. 1, april 2022, pp. 125-137 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i1.3742 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. contested spaces: entanglement of chinese migration, gender discrimination, and colonial resistance in olivia ho’s “working woman” boy ertanto boyertanto11@gmail.com english letters department, universitas sanata dharma, indonesia abstract article information southeast asian colonial experiences are of immense significance yet underexposed. it entails an irony as southeast asia as a geographical entity is one of the most colonized regions in the history of humankind. this paper serves to provide an elaboration of the chinese singaporean colonial experiences during the british occupation in singapore in a steampunk short story entitled “working woman” by olivia ho. this short story is compiled in an anthology of southeast asian steampunk short stories named the sea is ours: tales from steampunk southeast asia edited by jaymee goh and joyce chng. postcolonial feminism approach is utilized as the critical framework in the analysis of the story. the analysis finds that there are three contesting themes in the narrative namely 1) the reception of forced migration of the chinese that result in their permanent residence in singapore, 2) double colonization undergone by the chinese female characters, and 3) the resistance toward british colonial power and patriarchal subjugation in the singaporean chinese society. the three themes intermingle as a linear course of history rather than an independent sub-historical phenomenon within the fiction. thus, the reception of chinese migration in the fiction is made possible by the arrival of british colonialism in singapore and as a result, discrimination and resistance of chinese women become the implication of the contact of colonialism and migration. keywords: chinese migration; colonialism; colonial resistance; steampunk fiction received: 2 october 2021 revised: 1 february 2022 accepted: 12 february 2022 introduction the distribution of southeast asian postcoloniality within the intellectual domain of postcolonial studies is positioned within the marginal lines of either minute significance or totally forgotten. this intellectual reality is not an overstatement as southeast asia as a geographical entity and an imagined-regional union is one of the most colonized regions in the history of western’s colonialism. huat (2008) maps out two major bodies which https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` boy ertanto 126 become the reason for the underrepresented archives of southeast asian experiences in postcolonial studies: postcolonial practitioners which includes anthologies editors and southeast asian scholars. in regard to the postcolonial practitioners such as anthologies editors, their roles are immense in compiling texts used in an introductory postcolonial textbook. huat argues that even if the source of postcolonial texts coming from southeast asian archive is indeed very few in practice, some texts which represent “political statements, anti-colonial speeches and social investigations of the conditions of the colonized, which embraced the postcolonial ‘political impulse’” could serve as the region’s postcolonial discourses in introductory texts and anthologies. he furthers the argument by providing an example from a five-volume anthology of postcolonial studies edited by diana brydon. the anthology ‘contains all of three entries from southeast asia, totaling forty-three pages’ within the anthology amounted to more than 2,000 pages. these three southeast asian archives, however, remain distinctively undersignified as they only make up forty-three pages out of the thousands and focus solely to the postcolonial discourses of philippines (e san juan jr’s ‘postcolonial theory versus the revolutionary process in the philippines’, vol. i, pp 358-386,’ indonesia’s bandung conference (‘final communique of the asianafrican conference’, vol. 1, pp 419-427) and renato constantino’s general postcolonial discourses (‘nationalism and the third world’, vol. 2, pp. 488-494). huat synthesizes this phenomenon as the intricate intermingle of texts and languages of the european power. the fact that textual sources from southeast asia are mainly written in the respective region’s languages instead of the european’s could be the reason why the region’s archive remains under seclusion of the studies. this demonstrates how the production of knowledge in the scope of postcolonialism is innately a ‘colonial practice’ and as foucault denotes that knowledge is never pure as it functions under the auspices of power— western power in this instance. the second role of the body responsible for hampering the distribution of southeast asian postcolonial discourses is the southeast asian scholars. huat (2008) delineates how the occurrence of cold war and the rise of capital have become the main emphasis of intellectual discourses among southeast asian scholars rather than the postcolonial ones. the region of southeast asia underwent massive anti-colonial struggles during the cold war between the capitalist world of the west and the communist east which were generally represented by the united states with its allies, the soviet’s bloc in europe and china in east asia. the word ‘cold’ in this case is problematic for the southeast asian nations that generally witnessed a heated wave of civil wars within their countries. southeast asian countries were more associated with the cold war as the contesting ground between the capitalists and the communist major power to exercise their influence in the region. the gain of independence after the second world war had given a means for the southeast asian nations to fight the remaining colonial institutions and residues. in these struggles against colonialism, communists in countries such as vietnam were part of the anti-colonial struggle. by the time power was ceded to the nation’s capital, the call for anticommunists engagement began to emanate and thus resulted in a labelled ‘communist insurgency’ and civil war between the civilians as the anti-communist factions and the communists group (huat, 2008). this communally-shared history toward the southeast asian countries has made them as the newly independent nations to vacillate in seeing their historical materiality as the history of the oppression of colonialism and the transition to the surging fright with the totalitarian form of communism. nonetheless, history can also be differently reinterpreted when the anti-communist group triumphed and took control of the nation. the history can be seen from the point of view of the first settlement of colonial power that had made the nation come into existence as what singapore’s government attempted to fabricate its nation’s history of emergence as an island of ‘a trading post by the officer of the british east india company’. after the mass defeat of communist ideology in the non-indochina peninsula, journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 127 southeast asian nations such as the philippines, indonesia, malaysia, and indonesia with the exception of thailand within the list were similarly undergoing a capitalist economic development. this economic capitalization was deemed as the mode of advancing the nations into the pave of modernization. the force of industrialization among the countries also coincided and corresponded with the shift of industries occurring in europe and america which underwent a high cost of production. the lowcost of laborers in southeast asia were thus the gasoline that ignited the export of consumer products to the developed market. huat states how the ‘rapid capitalist development’ was made possible by the ‘foreign capital driven’ and ‘export-oriented industrialization’. east asian countries namely ‘taiwan, south korea and hong kong’ became the first countries to reap the fruit from the capitalized and industrialized markets. this was followed by singapore and other nations in southeast asia which had capitalized their markets. nonetheless, the positive economic growth and rising standard of living have been proven to be the addiction that southeast asian governments have decided to dwell upon. economic growth and materialism become the gist of a success narrative of the postcolonized nations. history is then oriented and orchestrated toward the forces that could contribute to the wanted, unending growth and material achievement. historical archives which represent and recall the presumed barbaric, underdeveloped and degraded past of the region are thus overlooked in order to give way for the economic success of the present to be historically narrated (huat, 2008). by looking at huat’s proposal on the marginalization of postcolonial narratives within the history of southeast asian nations done by both anthology editors and southeast asian scholars, any counternarrative which could counterargue the established concoction of history and representation would be indispensable as an alternative mode of seeing for the region’s postcolonial discourses. jefferess (2008) postulates that canonized literary production of english literature and the colonial historiography made by the european have been the two established discourses that postcolonial studies has been aiming to criticize. the underlying of the argument posits how postcolonialism as a discipline is innately a form of resistance for the colonized subjects. literary works and its production, furthermore, become the one of the modes of resistance as ben okri announces that stories hold power to alter the lives of individuals and nations. the course of this study is to present an analysis of a multicultural steampunk fiction entitled working woman by olivia ho, a short story compiled in an anthology named sea is ours: tales from steampunk southeast asia edited by jaymee goh and joyce chng. the oxford dictionary of science fiction defines steampunk as ‘a genre of science fiction with a historical setting in the nineteenth century characterized by technologies extrapolated from science of that era, but which were not invented at that time’ (prucher, 2007). the word ‘extrapolated’ has to be emphasized in this instance as it demonstrates a ‘speculative’ nature of steampunk as a literary subgenre and the pervading victorian fantasies as the ground of orientation for the authorship of steampunk fiction. the association of steampunk and victorian esthetic is not negligible as it was in the victorian land of england that the steam engine was initially invented and later created a space for major progress in productivity and technology. in this way, the industrial revolution has become the default setting for the common narrative of steampunk arts (goh, 2017). this idea continues to pervade the steampunk establishment until multicultural steampunk is introduced. multicultural steampunk came into being as a form of resistance activism. this stream argues that steampunk does not have to rely on whiteness and european entailments for its narrative’s resources. goh (2011) states that victorian british as a setting of reference is not the only archive available as the source of steampunk narratives. archives featuring noneurocentric histories exist and the creator of steampunk should not limit their creation to the foundation of victorian england. the limited choices of historical archives for the people of color should not hinder themselves to reclaim and rediscover their histories. a journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` boy ertanto 128 way to compensate with the limited choice is to utilize the remaining clues and knowledge as the source of formation. by not relegating the non-european histories, new worlds with the absence of eurocentric frameworks can function as a counterhegemonic force to the existing ones. goh’s proposition on non-european use as the foundation of multicultural steampunk narrative reverberates to huat’s on the marginalization of critical observation of southeast asian colonial and postcolonial history by the anthology editors and southeast asian scholars. to write within the multicultural stream of steampunk means that the authorship has to deal with the hegemonic power of western anthology, southeast asian scholarship, publishing houses and general readership. in fact, it is the reception of the application of non-european historical archives in steampunk fiction that will play a major role for the multicultural establishment. while it occurs that poc authorship might be given a space to utilize steampunk as the mode of representation for their colonial or postcolonial materiality, it will remain as void spaces if it is not read and criticized. thus, reception of readership essentially proceeds as the deciding factors which might prolong or terminate multicultural representation in steampunk narrative. it has been previously mentioned that multicultural steampunk requires the presence of readership in order to make it thrive. in this particular instance, readership functions as the agent and the participant that initiates discussions and critiques for the works. nonetheless, it is also known that the fandom of steampunk has been deeply recognized with its strong correlation toward the mainstream british esthetics. to illustrate, the fandoms of steampunk popularize the term “multicultural steampunk” for signaling the difference of minority aesthetics from the culture of british victorian (goh, 2017). goh’s finding provides an interesting underlying on how steampunk is still an unrecognized space of representation for the postcolonized subjects and postcolonial issues which are heavily reliant on the realism and magical realism stream in literature. if this is to continue, the discussion of multicultural steampunk will only operate under the white gaze which according to goh (2017) can attempt to recycle and transmute racist stereotypes. therefore, active participation from the authorship and the readerships who belong to the postcolonized societies must cooperate in making sure that the distribution of multicultural steampunk can work for the sake of representing their voices. a similar study in demonstrating how steampunk comes into being as an alternative mode of representation is also presented by bergman (2013). through a list of steampunk fictions such as priest’s boneshaker, clare’s infernal devices series, she puts a greater emphasis on the female authorship of steampunk that gives rise toward the discourse of ‘feminist steampunk’. within the study, she recognizes how steampunk as a mode of representation reconfigures the gender identity and role of women in the 19th century especially within the american and victorian ideals. the heroines in the narratives are found to be significantly presented as the progressives whose voices are acknowledged. to illustrate, the common narrative in the victorian texts which underlines the ‘tradition’ of women being courted is found to be disavowed. the ‘motherly role’ and the ‘womanhood’ aspects are not limited to the mainstream definition popular in the period. this shows how once again steampunk manages to ‘radically redefine socio-cultural implications that represent both past and contemporary societies’ (bergman, 2013, p. 70). through this research, a similar idea on the reconstruction of the presence of women is also considered as the sub-part of analysis. a different take, however, is suggested as this research observes how steampunk enables to provide reconsideration toward the narration of migrated chinese women in singapore under the postcolonial light and issues. accordingly, this research has been situated as the active participation of accessing and discussing multicultural steampunk which uniquely and specifically revolves around the colonial and postcolonial history of the southeast asian region which remains minimal in the literary studies scholarship. to be specific, this research wants to explore the reception of singapore’s colonial history which journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 129 involves the british occupation and the great migration of the chinese to singapore. this paper will also introduce some readers to the southeast-asian-themed steampunk narrative, which is also a part of the science fiction, which denotes that the domain of science fiction is not limited to the literary imagination of some of the most technologically advanced countries as steampunk fiction completely reimagines the past with the contemporary capacity of knowledge and reality that one possesses. methodology the foundation of this research is conducted through the application of library research methodology. olivia ho’s short story entitled “working woman” in an anthology sea is ours: tales from steampunk southeast asia edited by jaymee goh and joyce chng serves as the primary source of data for this paper complemented with journal articles, research dissertations and theoretical books related to the research as the secondary sources. postcolonial feminism approach is utilized to examine the postcolonial and gender discourses found in the course of the short story. results and discussion chinese migration chinese migration in working woman is characterized and deals with rich descriptions of chinese characters and a distinctively well-known society called the ‘kongsi’. the encounter between a chinese female character named ning lam with the guarded abode and presence of the head of the kongsi is a significant occurrence as the story commences to dive deeper toward the migration existence of chinese society during british occupation in the island: “’weapons,’ growled the guard again. ‘you’re not going in to see the old man armed to the teeth. and throw away that stupid snack’” (ho, 2015) it is known later in the story that ning lam is the kongsi’s agent to capture the lost female hybrid which the head of the kongsi wants her to do. hybrid in steampunk fiction is generally associated with the existence of technologically advanced half-human and halfrobot persona. the fact that the abode of the kongsi as the concentrated space of power is heavily guarded and protected means that the kongsi as an association or society is of great importance. in the passage that follows, the narrative brings the discourses into a characteristics of chinese ethnic’s lively gambling tradition, under-lit and soiled spaces: “ning made her way across the gambling floor, past yelling men in singlets jostling elbows with bored housewives at the chap ji kee tables and the brassy new slot machines. the room beyond was dim and low-ceilinged; she had to stoop as she picked her way across the mess of thin copper pipes that snaked across the floor and curled up besides the shadowy figures lying prostrate on low bunks, sucking dreamily at the opium smoke lowering from the gutta-percha mouths of the pipes” (ho, 2015). it is also crucial to see how the presence of women in the passage above is presented. the wives of the sleeveless and loud men are narrated as the ‘bored housewives’. what is important to discuss with the passage is not whether women in the passage are positioned within the marginal lines that operate under the presence of confucian patriarchy. the concern is oriented more to the fact that the central place of kongsi is where the affiliation of related kinship is emphasized and nurtured. the presence of the housewives is then meant to strengthen and safeguard the existence of the kongsi. the attempt of sustaining a cooperation based on a related kinship, therefore, is done in multifaceted forms between the relationship of men-to-men, women-to-women, men-to-women and women-to-men. chinese kinship as the core of kongsi which enables it to function has been a natural structure of the society. peng (1979) states that chinese kongsi’s establishment had been placed through ‘chinese partnership and brotherhood tradition’. the sense of chinese brotherhood brought upon by chinese migrants in southeast asia was different from journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) boy ertanto 130 that of the origin of the brotherhood in mainland china. the origin of the brotherhood was aimed to topple the ruling dynasty. the southeast asian kongsi or brotherhood based society was more of a direct involvement of familial relations brought upon by the merits of small partnership in commerce or mining. the term kongsi was oftentimes misused in the early colonial era which has been argued by blythe in peng: “instead of forgetting their national prejudices, or postponing their indulgence of them till their return to china, the people of each province clan together and form a hoey or secret society. the avowed object of these hoeys is to afford mutual protection, but they are often used for the infliction of wrong, and have been found a great stumbling-block to the perfect administration of justice in the law courts of the strait” (blythe in peng, 1979, p. 103). it is after its massive growth in number that the organization of clans comes to be recognized as kongsi. peng’s statements on the unifying force of economic merits among the southeast asian kongsi(s) is presented in the short story. the head of the kongsi who is later known as ‘grandfather’ is introduced as an occupied businessman. the eccentric introduction the short story has given toward ning lam is overshadowed by the presence of grandfather who excuses the presence of ning lam as he has unfinished economic matters to do: “’you are early, miss ning,” said the head of the kongsi. ‘if you will excuse me my unfinished business i will be with you in a moment’” (ho, 2015). the course of the story demonstrates how the ‘unfinished business’ turns out to be an eery and gory exercise of power that the head of the kongsi wants to assert: “he turned back to the table he was examining. on the table lay a carved tray carrying thirty or so fingers. some of the fingers had gold rings on them and some had long scars. none was from the same hand. ning popped kacang puteh into her mouth, discovered it was a dried pea and spat it out” (ho, 2015) “’make sure you wrap them nicely before they go to penang,’ grandfather said to the waiting men. ‘i want the hakka scum who fester there to be able to tell which is whose. let them think twice before they interfere with our shipments again. no that one,” he added, pointing at a finger in the corner which had had its nail gnawed something dreadful. ‘that one is from eng siok, whom i once thought of as a son. send it to his family in keong saik, to show them he has spit on our sacred oaths. perhaps it will help them remember to whom their allegiance is vowed’” (ho, 2015) “the tray of fingers was whisked away, replaced by two cups of steaming tea. ‘forgive me the display, miss ning,’ said grandfather. ‘it is distasteful. i am but a humble businessman, trying to help my people get by. unfortunately this makes me enemies, and they have—shall i say— forced my hand.” the former passage underlies two important points with the kongsi: oaths and allegiance. peng (1979) notes how the ritual of oath-taking ceremony had become one of the crucial beginnings in the initial formation of kongsi. if it is traced from the origin of the function of kongsi in mainland china, it is known earlier that the purpose was to ‘overthrow the ching dynasty’. oath-taking between its members became vital in order to adhere the patch of cooperation for the communal purpose of the community. in the passage it can be inferred that there is a violation of oath that has taken place between the members of the kongsi. the ‘hakka scum’ are the the alleged members who have infringed upon the vow. the violated matters are also clear as the passage writes an ‘interference’ with the kongsi’s shipments. it becomes obvious that it is the economic violations that have induced grandfather to declare and assure his menacing and passiveaggressive presence as the head of the kongsi which one must be obliged to respect. oath and allegiance are thus as sacred as it has been made possible with kinship based relationship. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 131 gender discrimination and colonial resistance the discourse on kongsi is displaced in the progress of the plot as the narrative of the short story begins to incorporate the theme of gender and postcolonialism. the two discourses become an integral part of the story which make up the rest of the story. the center of gender discourse in the story rotates around the three female characters: ning lam, the chinese hybrid and khairunnisa al-jazari who transpires to be a malay woman. to comprehend how gender discrimination within the narrative occurs, the root of operation of the chinese familial system must be taken into account: confucianism. the rights of property proprietary were curtailed among chinese women and their presence in the structure of their respective families were insignificant and inferior in the domain of domestic, economy, and legal system. chinese women were mere objects whom men could put into transactions. girls of young age were offered to sell toward ‘slavery, concubinage, or prostitution’. even wives were positioned as transactional objects as husbands either sold or pawned them into temporary marriage. the discrimination undergone by chinese women was possible under the authority of men as the person in power within the family system. what made men obtain the authority was the pervading confucian beliefs held tight by chinese families. a confucian motto which denotes ‘a woman without talent is virtuous’ inhibited chinese women to progress and has created a family as marginalizing confinement. this sentiment which devalued women’s importance came across major changes as the advent of the reformist movement began to take place in the late 19th century (mangan in yang, 2014). the historical materiality of gender discrimination under the chinese-confucian family system is innately integrated within the story. ning lam as the protagonist of the story is represented as an agent chosen by the kongsi to capture the lost chinese hybrid. the choice of ning lam as a female agent is indeed thought-provoking as it works in a twofold underlying: 1) significance of women’s labor; 2) maximization of success at the expense of women’s lives. while ning lam is engaged in a conversation with the head of the kongsi (grandfather), she tries to gain more information needed in order to safeguard her mission. nevertheless, her curiosity was repudiated. it is after some enacting enforcement that grandfather tells ning lam that the hybrid she has to safe is british’s. “’... ‘the woman you are going to look for is not...all flesh. ‘so to speak.’ grandfather paused, then added, ‘more hybrid, in fact, than anyone you will ever have seen. ‘where’d you take her from?’ ‘none of your business,’ growled chee. ‘it is my business,’ retorted ning, ‘because whoever that was, they’re going to want her back. and i need to know if they’ll get in my way.’ ‘grandfather said, ‘she was government property.’ ‘ning whistled. ‘cheeky. you know i charge extra for tangling with british’” (ho, 2015). it is not stated the exact time when the short story might take place. nevertheless, the discourse can be contextualized within the setting of british colonial occupation in colonial singapore. by putting this text into the said context, it is important to see how the inception of growing chinese nationalism and kuomintang ventures in the 1910s generated fears that the development of political influence and economic power of the chinese communities could have displaced and collided with ‘british political and commercial interest’ in the colony (yang, 2014, pp. 12). by utilizing this context, the narrative of the story becomes understandable. the extra payment demanded by ning lam comes from the british’s negative sentiments toward the chinese. in this context, it can also be understood that ning lam is a subject within a double colonization phenomenon within postcolonial discourses. the term ‘double colonization’ was initially coined by kirsten holst petersen and anna rutherford in a book they edited a double colonization: colonial and post-colonial women’s writing (1986). this term was journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` boy ertanto 132 disseminated and used by postcolonial feminists in particular as a development of postcolonial studies which aims to instill a complex and holistic implication of sex and gender in observing postcolonial societies. in its essence, double colonization problematizes the parallel oppression that women suffer from colonialism and patriarchal structure. if positioned within the postcolonial discourse, postcolonial women are part of the devalued and repressed individuals whose race and cultural heritages are undermined by the colonialist ideology. on the other hand, postcolonial women also undergo oppression under the patriarchal structure which dismisses their importance of being a woman merely because of their sex and gender. in this mode of thinking, rajan & park (2005) argue that the exploration within the intersections of colonialism and neocolonialism in which the discourses of ‘gender, nation, class, race, and sexualities in the different contexts of women’s lives, their subjectivities, work, sexuality, and rights,’ are taken into account. the first instance of double colonization begins with the introduction of khairunnisa in the following narrative. the text informs how she is currently a widow. having been arranged into an arranged marriage, khairunnisa cannot be said to have successfully run an engaging domestic life with her husband during their one-and-a-half years together. people set her up as talking points as she could whole-heartedly carry on living her husband’s business. she is thought to posit no regard to the husband’s family: “khairunnisa’s life had not been very exciting since the event of her widowing. nor had it been before that, but at least having a husband to talk to from time to time made things less monotonous, even if they had not quite succeeded in transcending social awkwardness in the one and a half years of their arranged marriage. this was punctuated by two surprises: first, when an ornihopter fell out of the sky in batavia and hit, of all people, her husband trying to cross the street to a toy convention; second, when he left her the house and the toy shop in his will despite the simmering unhappiness of his family and hers. still, she had been better at it than he had ever been. she made beautiful things, and they always worked. so she shut herself up in the workshop while people talked, about her living alone and running her husband’s business without a thought for his family:” (ho, 2015). the premise of the quotation is clear in telling implicitly that women, in this case native women or third world women, are of no use without the presence of their male partners. the fact that khairunnisa becomes the ‘discussion’ among people because of her continuing to take care of her husband’s legacy means there is a pervading structure which places men above women in the discourse of gender. the passage also portrays how becoming a widow who lives by herself is a taboo that she should have avoided in the first place. thus, the presence of khairunnisa as a widow overshadows her existence as a skilled toy maker. in steampunk fictions, toy makers’ position in society is crucial as they also take part in furthering the creation of the reimagined past with their knowledge of technology and engineering. while it is previously quoted that khairunnisa has always made beautiful functional things—toys—, it is the encounter between her and the unnamed chinese hybrid that will validate khairunnisa’s expertise in this steampunk universe narrative: “...and it had been all very nice and calm, until a crazy chinese woman had come in through her back door, covered in blood and raving in a language she could not understand.” “...’no, please, be still,’ begged khairunnisa, ‘someone will hear, i don’t think you’re even supposed to be here.’ the woman stared at her, not understanding. she was immense, khairunnisa realized, hulking shoulders, had to be nearly two metres tall. she wore odd clothes, dark blue and ill-fitting, torn in places through which khairunnisa glimpsed scars lying thick on her flesh” (ho, 2015). the quoted passage starts to provide overt description of the hybrid woman within this steampuk set story. to read the ‘hybrid’ in the steampunk narrative is to see what lies behind journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 133 the character of the said figure. this paper tries to situate the steampunk ‘hybridity’ under the critical frame of postcolonialism and colonial education. mart (2011) criticizes the colonizers’ attempt to educate the natives as a means of safeguarding the exploitation done by the colonizers. the need to educate the ‘inferior’ natives is the need of the colonial settlers to obtain skilled labors. this marks a continuum from an exploitation of economic control toward the mental and consciousness control of the natives’ mind to prolong and justify the act of colonialism. in this way, colonial education paves a way for the educated natives to re-experience colonization under the western’s mode of seeing. although mart’s research is structured upon the british educational policy in colonial africa, the idea is deeply correlated with the postcolonial subjects around the globe. it is not mentioned initially that ning lam herself is also a modified human. while she takes form fully as a human, her eyes are narrated as a “european make...” by the malay native, khairunnisa aljazari (ho, 2015). now, try to position the quotation of this semi-hybrid as ‘european educated’ and the meaning would not part so greatly. ‘european make’ in this regard becomes a tangible quality which people can experience through their senses despite its largely being an imagined construct of supposed superiority. the parallel positioning of ning lam’s body parts—eye—as ‘european make’ and ‘european educated’ could come into being as the story situates its setting in the colonial period. it is within colonial times that the discourse of european qualities have always signified its importance as the civilized and civilizing force to the barbaric entailment of native’s qualities. having european qualities incorporated in the lives of the natives means having succeeded to be reborn in an enlightened fashion of european civilization. ning lam as the protagonist of the story reemerges in the course of the story as she commences to have a direct contact with the chinese hybrid whom khairunnisa takes care of. when the contact begins to occur, the hybrid is shown to have a towering body with a bizarre countenance. the hybrid is seen as a failed portrayal of a woman an artist has created. ning lam knows that what she sees is what the kongsi is eager to repossess. the calm appeal ning lam has offered turns into a series of brutal brawl between the two chinese women: “’easy now,’ she said. ‘we’re just going to take a little walk.’ the woman moved towards her. ‘this is a crossbow,’ hissed ning. ‘i will shoot you!’ a lie: the kongsi would not pay for a dead woman. ‘oh, for—‘ the woman slapped the crossbow away. ning turned to dive out of the window again, but the woman hauled her back. then she punched ning in the face. stunned, ning watched the world turn upside-down and bloom into agony” (ho, 2015). the encounter between these two women underscores how both colonization and patriarchal system has disabled the rise of sisterhood that both ning lam and the chinese hybrid could form as a resistance to the systems. hooks (1986) formulates that the space for resistance among women has existed in the first place as a result of domination that an individual exercises toward women. the domination places women under the line of margin and orchestrate the idea that it is only through the established relationship with men that women could function: “male supremacist ideology encourages women to believe we are valueless and obtain value only by relating to or bonding with men. we are taught that our relationships with one another diminish rather than enrich our experience. we are taught that women are ‘natural’ enemies, that solidarity will never exist between us because we cannot, should not, and do not bond with one another” (hooks, 1986, p. 127). it is known that both ning lam and the chinese hybrid are related to their association with the kongsi and british authority. the two systems have positioned them as natural enemies that hooks has stated. the resource of power within the economic and social domain has also been held by the two power. women are left to submission to the structural discrimination. by having women submit to the will of those in power (re: colonization and patriarchy), women inevitably have to rely on journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` boy ertanto 134 men’s presence in order to ‘function’ as a person. the curtailed economic and social mobility the woman has also dismissed the chance for social resistance. their orientation will most likely linger on making sure that the ‘sustenance’ from their male counterparts to not cease for their survival. this part can be shown with the quotation below: “the other woman (ning lam) rose from where she had been squatting in a corner. she was truly immense. closing her fingers around ning’s throat, she rasped, ‘who sent you?’ “’i actually have no idea,” said ning. ‘i’m just the delivery girl, right? i hand you over. they pay me. nobody needs to lose any eyeballs. speaking of which, can i have mine back now?’” (ho, 2015). the quotations have validated hook’s statement that women ‘cannot, should not, and do not bond with one another. nevertheless, it is in this course of story that the formation of resistance among the three double-colonized women begins to manifest. ning lam is the first character to underline that the disorder which occurs earlier is wrong as it victimizes both her and the chinese hybrid: “’we’re doing this the wrong way,’ ning went on blithely, ignoring the risk of being throttled. ‘let’s be nice. hello my name’s ning lam. what’s yours?’” (ho, 2015). the congenial offer ning lam shows to the chinese hybrid is accepted in a light manner. the hybrid asks ning lam to call her ‘ah hong’. ning lam sees that their new encounter will get along very well. meanwhile, ah hong portrays the remainder of her suspicion toward ning lam as an agent of the kongsi: “’there’ll be more like her coming,’ said ah hong to khairunnisa. ‘we ought to kill her. i can carry the body, easy.’” “’oh for your mother’s sake,’ muttered ning.” “’i would really rather not kill anybody,’ whispered khairunnisa.” “’me too,’ added ning. ‘i wasn’t going to kill anyone to begin with. i was just going to have you so that the british or whoever made you get mad’” (ho, 2015) the exchange of remarks between the three women once again emphasizes how the maledominated system has made them fail to reach a consensus. their attempt to form resistance requires a common narrative which they could share with their individual experiences. this narrative must have departed from the manmade narrative which only results in hostility among them. hooks (1986) states that the shared oppression or victimization that women have experienced does not suffice in creating a resistance to the system. she insists that women must not rely on the popular ideologies set by the culture such as men as the ‘common enemy’ or the victimized selves of the women. she exemplifies how women should create a bond which works as the goal ‘to end sexist oppression’. to achieve this women must come to terms that the popular dichotomy of men versus women should not be the thesis of their resistance. this choice is opted as the binary opposition between the two entities shows merely a reductionist underlying of women’s fight. the resistance does not only encompass women activism toward male’s antagonistic system. it also carries a transformation of women’s consciousness that precedes the resistance. hooks puts it, “working together to expose, examine and eliminate sexist socialization within ourselves, women could strengthen and affirm one another and build a solid foundation for developing political solidarity.” the transformation of consciousness between ah hong and ning lam occurs as the former asserts her identity as a fullyfunctioning person and not a mere robotic human: “... ah hong said, ‘i won’t be given away. i won’t be taken apart like a dead thing. i won’t be bought and i won’t be sold. you don’t know what that’s like’” “ning was silent for a while. then she said, quietly, ‘you’d be surprised.’” “ah hong squatted in front of her, till she was almost nose to nose with ning. ‘if you had even the slightest idea, then you journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 135 wouldn’t be about to do it to someone else’” (ho, 2015). during these conversations both come to know that they have shared and experienced discrimination. this is not to be mistaken as the limelight of the narrative. the shared discrimination opens up a space for the two women to ‘strengthen and affirm’ each of them. the solid foundation can only be founded upon trusts that must precede resistance. the exchanges of indirect discriminated past have shown to create a space for activism between the two along with khairunnisa. the transformation process comes to terminate as the three women start to experience contact with british colonial power through the native informant known as the gurkha. the gurkhas are commonly referred to as nepali soldiers who were recruited by the british army to join forces of british troops. their presence in the story resembles the likeliness of what is known in postcolonial studies as the native informant. as a native informant, the gurkha acts as a collaborator with the british colonial power in the narrative. parashar (2019) examines the identity of native informants in a research setting. the classic segregation of native informants’ identity as either an insider or an outsider is believed to be flawed. this happens as native informants posit a multitude of affinity when it comes to their identities. if it is seen in an insider-and-outsider dichotomy, a native informant can have affinity to the researched native’s ‘ethnic, cultural and even political identities’. nonetheless, as an outsider, the native informants can be seen as a separate entity which relies on his or her position as an objective researcher without any affinity to particular identities. the binary option approach has to be repositioned as the native informants are involved in a negotiation of approaches which has to be set to be relevant for the societies observed. the multiplicity of identities imposed by the native informants within the societal contact must be signified and not be structured on the dichotomy. parashar’s account on the identity of native informants becomes tantalizing to be applied in the course of the story. the gurkha man’s presence adds an intricate narrative that showcases the hyper-multicultural encounters in such a tiny place of singapore. the man poses no affinity to the three women although he is also subject to british colonialism as his insider role of a native informant. as an outsider, his role is also not overtly defined as he vacillates from being a colonized native and as british’s subordinate. he is narrated to capture ah hong in khairunnisa’s house: “’number 24’ repeated the gurkha, ‘everything is fine. i’m taking you home’” (ho, 2015). the british’s labeling of ah hong as numbered objects has induced a commotion in the setting. the gurkha is able to escape the overpowering capacity of ah hong to fight, which transpire from the expertise of british technology and khairunnisa’s skills. the story then changes its setting to the laboratory owned by the british named bradford. the native informant reports what he witnesses during the commotion that creates disbelief to ah hong’s improvement: “’but such work from a native,’ marveled bradford” (ho, 2015). despite khairunnisa’s expertise on improving the british’s supposed hybrid, she is still underlined as a native who excels the colonial’s capability. the binary of native and the colonial emerges directly as the contact between the white man power and the natives has been introduced. when khairunnisa’s body is disposed off of the table because bradford has people waiting for him (mr. stroud and mr. murchison), she sees the impaired and ‘lifeless’ ah hong along with the remaining bodies stacked in a pile waiting to be transformed into hybrid humans. the stacked lifeless bodily pieces of meat, arms, thighs, and livers are found in the cabinet where khairunnisa hides. it becomes clear that earlier khairunnisa is to be modified into another hybrid by bradford in his laboratory. later in the story, bradford’s guests, mr. stroud and mr. murchison, turn out to be the people who fund bradford’s laboratory project in creating scores of hybrid humans. the number 24 hybrid has turned into a menace journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` boy ertanto 136 while they want a tame golems—a human robot. they insist that bradford has created a time bomb rather than a fully functional hybrid. this problem makes them associate the uproar into the british governor in singapore: “...’all this uproar has got the attention of the ... shall we say more liberal factions under the governor. there’s already been talk of an investigation’” (ho, 2015). they have decided to repatriate bradford’s to the british land for his project failure. the discussion among british men reveals how the project of colonization is never a project of one’s own. it just operates under one communal flag. problems also occur among the smaller colonial community which could weaken their pursuits to exercise their power to the natives. internal conflicts have shown to provide spaces for the native’s resistance as the colonizers are engaged with the internal disputes. the climax of the conflicting actors is initiated with stroud’s shooting bradford in the chest. bradford’s other native assistant, narayan, is ordered to dispatch the hybrids including khairunnisa. seeing a fragile woman praying with blood in her eyes, narayan resists the order and tells murchison to do it himself. he tells him to do the ‘dirty work’ for himself. the classic label of incapable native reemerges as stroud gets furious of narayan’s resistance: “...’bloody natives. can’t rely on them for anything’” (ho, 2015). ah hong leaps into stroud’s figure and ‘crushed his lower jaw, then strained until it ripped free from his face’. on the other side of the place, ning stabs murchison in the eyes and witnesses his death. the bicker among ah hong and ning lam reappears as ah hong still has her doubts with ning lam. khairunnisa comes to tell them that the laboratory room is engulfed in fire and they need to depart from there. in this part of the story, the colonial power has been symbolically defeated by the formed resistance of the colonized. nevertheless, there remains the head of the kongsi who asks for ning lam’s presence. in the kongsi’s abode, grandfather has refused to pay ning lam for her service initially as she has been ‘indiscreet’. he says that the chinese hybrid—ah hong—is no longer valuable and deemed ‘worthless’. the british man who would pay ransom for ah hong has died and the whole project has wasted his time: “’you have the audacity, miss ning,’ thundered grandfather, ‘to ask for payment at this stage?’” (ho, 2015). ning lam furthers her argument by stating a mockery on how ‘the secret societies of kongsi have fallen’ as they could not pay her. grandfather is angered by her remarks as it taints his reputation and status as the head of the kongsi. he decides to provide compensation for the medical bill and wounds she possesses. ning lam demands to keep ah hong somewhere while grandfather warns her that the british will come after her in the future. ning lam chooses to work together with ah hong as an agent in the ‘market’. khairunnisa offers ah hong to have her introduced with the other samsui women—the chinese immigrants in malaya and singapore. nonetheless, ah hong declines the offer as she is yet to accept the hybridity of her half-robot body. the story comes to an end with the three women having their breakfast and sunrise on the island. conclusion the great deal of multi-layered complexity found in the analysis of olivia ho’s steampunk short story working woman accentuates how intricate the colonial material history is. the three seemingly contesting themes of chinese migration, double colonization, and resistance could not stand for itself and act as an independent subhistorical phenomenon. the three themes can only be understood through a holistic framework. the british’s embarkation to the land of singapore has shown to attract chinese to migrate and occupy the land. their occupation allows colonial discourses to emerge and resistance to follow. in the discussion, the secret societies of kongsi represent a growing power of the chinese society in british’s colonial land. its presence is juxtaposed with the pervading confucian values embedded within the chinese gender journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 137 discourses. chinese female characters as the focus of this research are shown to be the victims of both british colonization and confucian patriarchy. the character’s resistance toward the antagonizing system is thus a multifaceted resistance as the analysis finds that internal disputes in resistance and colonization are prevalent. it is through the warring internal conflicts among british colonizers that resistance could be manifested. references bergman, c. n. (2013). clockwork heroines: females characters in steampunk literature (master’s thesis). retrieved from https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses /1266/ ee, j. (1961). chinese migration to singapore, 1896-19411. journal of southeast asian history, 2(1), 33-51. doi:10.1017/s0217781100100389 goh, j. (2011). toward chromatic chronologies: using the steampunk aesthetic for postcolonial purposes. master dissertation, mcmaster university, canada. goh, s. (2017). shades of sepia: examining eurocentrism and whiteness in relation to multiculturalism in steampunk iconography, fandom, and culture industry. uc riverside. proquest id: goh_ucr_0032d_13070. merritt id: ark:/13030/m5ns5qxw. retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/80k1 j16n ho, o. (2015). working woman. in j. goh.., & j. chng (eds.), the sea is ours: tales from steampunk southeast asia. rosarium publishing. hooks, b. (1986). sisterhood: political solidarity between women. feminist review, (23), 125-138. doi:10.2307/1394725 huat, c. b. (2008) southeast asia in postcolonial studies: an introduction. postcolonial studies, 11:3, 231-240. doi 10.1080/13688790802226637 jefferess, d. (2008). postcolonial resistance: culture, liberation and transformation. toronto: university of toronto press. mart, ç. t. (2011). british colonial education policy in africa. international journal of english and literature, 2(9), 190-194. doi: 10.5897/ijel.9000013 parashar, s. (2019). “research brokers, researcher identities and affective performances: the insider/outsider conundrum.” civil wars, 21(2):249270, doi: 10.1080/13698249.2019.16343 04 peng, w. (1979). the word "kongsi": a note. journal of the malaysian branch of the royal asiatic society, 52 (1 (235)), 102-105. retrieved august 3, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41492844 prucher, j. (2007). brave new words: the oxford dictionary of science fiction. new york: oxford university press. rajan, r. s.., & park, y. (2005). postcolonial feminism/postcolonial and feminism. in henry s., & s. ray (eds.), a companion to postcolonial studies (pp. 53-71). blackwell publishers yang, w. (2014). female emancipation in a colonial context: the chinese community in singapore 1900-1942 (doctoral dissertation, the university of sheffield, sheffield). retrieved from https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/6382/1 /female%20emancipation%20in%20a% 20colonial%20context%20the%20chine se%20community%20in.pdf https://doi.org/10.5897/ijel.9000013 https://doi.org/10.1080/13698249.2019.1634304 https://doi.org/10.1080/13698249.2019.1634304 149 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 149 – 157 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.5879 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. rumah kaca’s minke’s death and its question on postcolonial catastrophe gabriel fajar sasmita aji fajar@usd.ac.id english letters department, universitas sanata dharma, indonesia abstract article information rumah kaca, or house of glass, is the last episode of pramoedya’s tetralogy of buru, and it gives “a surprise,” or a shocking end of minke’s postcolonial strives. here, he died several days after his coming home from exile. this looks surely to present the catastrophe of the native’s postcolonial hope and dream. the strategy of the colonial government in conducting “house of glass” has gone successful and minke’s death might stop any local political activities opposing the government. however, this phenomenon, i.e. the death of minke, appears as the new perspective dealing with the local indonesians, or pribumi, in undergoing postcoloniality. minke’s death is not to stop his postcolonialism, since he’s still kept it in his writings. those are to represent minke’s continuation in flaming postcoloniality to the next local postcolonialists. the novel rumah kaca seems to reemphasize the idea of postcolonialism, previously stated in the first episode, bumi manusia, that the main weapon of postcolonialism is the postcolonial brain of the postcolonialists. as the concepts of postcolonial ideologies by bill ashcroft and annia loomba, this discussion focuses on how indonesian postcolonialism, by pramoedya’s tetralogy of buru, has the ultimate power in writings, since compared to the colonial government the colonized’s technological civilization is much less powerful. in other words, minke’s death does not mean the end of the local postcoloniality, and it is a new perspective in dealing with the common concept. keywords: minke; rumah-kaca; postcolonialism; catastrophe received: 7 february 2023 revised: 17 march 2023 accepted: 21 march 2023 introduction an important and prominent event is shown in rumah kaca (house of glass), i.e. the death of the main “figure,” who is in fact the main postcolonialist hero of pramoedya’s buru tetralogy. here, the main figure means refers to the focused character of the buru tetralogy’s compiled novels, in bumi manusia (this earth of mankind, anak semua bangsa (child of all nations), jejak langkah (footsteps), and rumah https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:fajar@usd.ac.id journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) gabriel fajar sasmita aji 150 kaca (house of glass). since rumah kaca is the last episode, postcolonialism’s catastrophe is directly and obviously presented. as the representing actor of the local indonesian native in bringing the postcolonialism’s torch, by his death, minke goes to provide failure for the efforts and struggles done by the natives, and on the other hand, it becomes the ultimate victory of the colonizer, namely the dutch colonial, in controlling and imposing its hegemony towards the colonized indonesia. even, his death is about to emphasize minke’s total helplessness and powerlessness in facing the colonial power under pangemanann’s hand. pangemanann is the colonial officer who has the duty of monitoring and overcoming minke’s deeds. after the exile for 5 years in maluku, minke, in rumah kaca, had to face another reality in his life: no one was with him, and he was dumped and soaked in a very alienated condition or position. finally, he died. the novel is interesting in terms that there is the depiction of minke’s postcoloniality’s total loss. however, this catastrophic postcolonialism still hides its flame since minke’s compilation of writings does not die but continues to survive through the existence of nyai ontosoroh. in other words, rumah kaca delivers a "weird angle” for postcolonial readers in perceiving what postclonialism is in fact. here is the story of it at a glance. jacques pangemanann was formerly a police officer, but then he was assigned by the governor to control the local activists in imposing oppositional ideas and activities against the colonial government. the governor was inspired by the happenings in china. the main figure who would be keenly controlled and monitored was minke. to undergo this duty, pangemanann applied the strategy of the “house of glass” in which any kinds of activities done by minke could be inspected and supervised so that then the colonial government might undergo the necessary acts. he compiled all minke’s writings and tried to anticipate any movements and conducts due to his writings. the other prominent act was about to send minke into exile to the outside of java, to a very remote place in ambon. even all things dealing with minke’s existence were taken over by the government, including his house, writings, and also friends. the helpless and marginalized minke finally died and pangemanann thought that “rumah kaca” was really powerful in oppressing and defeating the local postcolonial activities, including the activists. indeed, like the other episodes of the tetralogy, rumah kaca is the peak displaying the physically unbalanced powers between the colonizer and the colonized. readers, who already enjoyed pramoedya’s buru tetralogy, had, in its first episode, in bumi manusia, the more or less similar catastrophic event occurs to end the story when minke said to nyai ontosoroh that they’re lost or defeated to prevent from the colonial’s plunder over their property. the colonizer has made the colonizer fall and lose everything. this end creates certainty that the colonizer is really much more powerful and superior to the colonized. however, this end has smoothly the still flame of postcolonialism by the existing figures, such as minke and nyai ontosoroh, to survive hope and future, despite the fact that they’re going bankrupt. here, the concept of postcoloniality lies not on property but on the will of the doers to survive. then, it happens, as mentioned previously, the last novel or episode of buru tetralogy re-stresses the powerlessness and helplessness of the colonized by minke’s death and pangemanann’s taking over the “position” of minke as the most prominent character of the story. ashcroft (2001, p. 1) pointed out the colonizer’s colonial ideology by stating, “but the simple fact remains that these colonized peoples, cultures and ultimately nations were prevented from becoming what they might have become: they were never allowed to develop into the societies they might have been.” here he emphasized the hidden ideology of the colonizer in preventing any conducts and efforts by the colonized people to develop. the colonizer tends to preserve any potentials and facilities in order not to enable the colonized to gain the dreams of better conditions and position. the death of minke directly proves it, and the other result is about minke’s condition which was isolated from friends and any properties. however, annia journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 151 loomba (2005, p. 16) noted that, beside colonial ideology conveying the colonizer’s domination and legacies of colonialism, the colonized’s postcolonial ideology has continually strived their contemporary resistance to imperialism and western culture. it means on the one hand, the colonizer peaks in the still controlled condition under it, but on the other hand, the colonized needs to destroy the colonizer’s established western’s power, position, and hegemony, over the colonized. certainly, both ashcroft and loomba are just to deliver the reality of postcolonialism, in which the colonized people want to a new construction different from the one previously constructed by the colonizer through imperialism. however, it happens that the fact of colonialism or imperialism conveys unbalanced powers and conditions, proving that the colonizer is absolutely superior to the colonized. the operations of postcolonialism can be in/from several aspects: physical, social, and ideological. the interplay between the colonizer and the colonized is always the main point of any postcolonial novel, including also pramoedya’s rumah kaca, or house of glass. the existence of pangemanann in “replacing” minke, as the focused and major narrator and character, and also minke’s death show how the novel provides a new angle of postcoloniality. by those two figures, even, the indonesian postcolonialism is emphasized and represented. methodology the research is descriptivequalitative study. the main data were taken from the main object of discussion, i.e. the novel of rumah kaca, or house of glass. the originally indonesian version was the main source, and the english translation was just conducted in order to deliver a similar perception against the facts of the novel. meanwhile, the secondary ones were from journals and references related to the topic. since the point of discussion is about the interplay between the colonizer and the colonized, which are common in postcolonial studies, the approach applied is postcolonial. results and discussion as mentioned earlier, two phenomena, which are important and interesting in rumah kaca, to start the discussion are (i) the existence of the focused or main character, pangemanann, who stands as the colonial agent despite his “duty” of in fact delivering postcolonial concept, and (ii) the death of minke, the ultimate postcolonial figure in bringing the torch of indonesian postcolonialism. the first, indeed, is about the strategy of the novel and how the story goes on. without relating the novel rumah kaca with the other previous novels of buru tetralogy, readers would only see the existence of pangemanann, who is dominant in the story dan superior to the other characters. as the main character and narrator, all events almost happen “in front of his eyes,” and those events are merely about minke. it means though the existence of pangemanann is dominant as the “i” and main character, minke’s role in establishing pangemanann’s internal and external conflicts is the prominent pillar of the story. tugas seberat itu dipercayakan dan dipikulkan di pundakku: jaques pangemanann…..pekerjaanku adalah pekerjaan khusus, tidak umum. di antara 48 juta orang hindia, barangkali belum tentu ada sepuluh setengah yang mengetahui tugasku. jadi memang pengalaman menarik. patut semua dicatat—siapa tahu suatu kali akan berguna? (rumah kaca, pp. 5-6) (such a heavy duty was trusted and put on my shoulders: jaques pangemanann…. my job was a special one, and not common. among those 48 millions of (the ducth) indies people, perhaps not more than ten and a half who knew it. so, it’s really an interesting experience. all had to be noted—who knows in the future it would be useful?) meanwhile, the death of minke becomes prominent because rumah kaca’s ultimate message is keenly delivered through it. certainly, the role of minke is greatly marginalized or secondary, compared to journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) gabriel fajar sasmita aji 152 pangemanann, but whatever pangemanann’s deeds are actually concerned with the importance of minke as the main flame of the local indonesian postcolonialists. in other words, minke happens to appear very crucial and ultimate for pangemanann. minke in the story finally is depicted “gone without his postcolonial victory over the dutch colonizer.” from loomba’s perspective, dealing with the postcolonial ideology in its contestation with the colonial one, the fact of minke’s death is surely to re-stress and emphasize the failure of indonesian postcoloniality and postcolonialism. ia sudah tak mampu menyewa delman lagi. ia berjalan kaki. terus berjalan lagi. kepalanya menekuri bumi. sungguh mengharukan betapa ia dapat begitu setia pada kopor busuk yang barangkali tak ada sesuatu pun isi di dalamnya…………. (578)…. dalam keadaan sakit parah itu raden mas minke dibawa kembali oleh goenawan pulang ke rumahnya dan meninggal dunia dalam perawatannya… begitulah akhir hidup guruku, meninggalkan pada dunia hanya bekasbekas jejak dan langkahnya. ia pergi dalam kesepiah—ia yang sudah dilupakan, dilupakan sudah sejak hidupnya. ia seorang pemimpin yang dilupakan oleh pengikutnya. (pp. 593-594) he could not afford to hire a cart any more. he just walked. keep walking again. his head stared down the earth. it’s very touching how he could be very loyal to a rotten suitcase, which perhaps there was nothing inside……. in his very bad sickness raden mas minke was brought home by goenawan and then died under his treatment…. that’s the end of my teacher’s life, leaving the world just his footprint and step traces. he’s gone in loneliness—he who had already left, forgotten since his life. he was the leader who completely forgotten by the loyalists. dealing with the death of minke, readers would possibly hard to understand and accept because as a postcolonial novel, the main character is postcolonialist and readers should be provided by postcolonial ideas or concepts, especially about any resistance done by the hero/es. however, the message of this phenomenon or fact is not about death itself, proving the loss of the postcolonialist, but it uncovers a different angle of the concept of postcolonialism. on one hand, physically minke has been dead, but on the other hand, his postcoloniality never dies since he has kept and preserved it, i.e. his writings, in a certain way. the story finally ends with its hidden message, when pangemanann, on behalf of minke, handed minke’s writings to madame sanikem le boucq, or sanikem, who was one of minke’s friends in postcoloniality. they are the real product, which cannot be killed by the colonizer. bersama ini aku serahkan juga padamu naskah-naskah yang memang menjadi hakmu, tulisan r.m. minke, anakmu kekasih. terserah bagaimana madame menggunakan dan merawatnya (p. 46). (by this i handed you as well all articles which were really yours, i.e. the writings of r.m. minke, who was your beloved child. i let it to madame how to use and keep them.) the existence of pangemanann as postcolonial novel in bringing the postcolonial ideology, rumah kaca depicts the “i” and main character pangemanann to likely suggest differently the concept or perspective of the ideology. the term “deconstruction” seems also appropriate to apply since it is to establish the other angle of perceiving the main concept of postcolonialism. here, pangemanann appears to represent the colonial power or authority, and even, through ashcroft’s notion about the ideology of the colonizer, pangemanann has the main duty of repressing, preventing, and also abolishing any postcolonial conducts from the local natives. “tuan tentu akan bisa kerjasama dengan tuan suurhof,” kata komandanku, kemudian meninggalkan restoran. orang ini telah disediakan untukku—tenaga bajingan ini—untuk menghadapi sasaranku di luar hukum. siapa pula dari kepolisian betawi yang tidak kenal suurhof? seorang bayaran yang kerjanya menakut-nakuti pejabat-pejabat kecil setempat dan penduduk tak berdaya, penjual seribu macam kesaksian palsu journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 153 agar tunduk pada keinginan pengusaha eropa….. (p. 16) (“sir, you will be able to mingle with mr. suurhof,” said my commander, then he left the restaurant. this man was prepared to help me—this bastard man—to deal with my target outside the law. who, from betawi’s police department, didn’t know suurhof? he’s the paid person, whose works were to threaten the local lower officials and the helpless people, he delivered thousands of fake testimonies in order they would obey all the european business people’s wills…) to specify his duty, pangemanann has to extraordinarily treat and control minke’s activities which are considered to oppose the colonial government. clearly, the figure or character, pangemanann, shifts the common pattern of thought that a postcolonial novel is about one or some postcolonialist characters to stand as the main agent of postcoloniality. rumah kaca, however, has its own way of doing it, since by presenting pangemanann, the opponent of postcolonialist characters is presented. some readers then might consider the novel colonial due to this fact. it seems the novel has deconstructed the conventional perception, especially dealing with one of the postcolonial aspects. the hero is not postcolonialist but colonialist, but it is important to note that pangemanann, as a colonialist, is in fact greatly supporting the importance of postcolonial concepts. tangan dan mulutnya tidak hemat dalam menggunakan kata-kata, sehingga orangorang pribumi yang biasa bercadangcadang menjadi segan di dekatnya. menurut penilaianku, pengetahuan umumnya sangat terbatas bila diukur secara eropa. tetapi dalam kehidupan pribumi sekarang dia dapat dikatakan titik-bakar perkembangan mendatang. belum pernah dalam seratus tahun ini seorang pribumi karena kepribadiannya, kemauan baik dan pengetahuannya, dapat mempersatukan ribuan orang tanpa mengatasnamakan raja, nabi, wali, tokoh wayang atau iblis (p. 12). (his hands and mouth were not frugal in delivering words, that the natives who only liked to plannings were shy to be close with him. in my opinion, his general knowledge was too limited, compared to european way. however, as the present native’s life, he could be mentioned as the flame for the next development. never for this last hundred years, a native, due to his personality, good will and knowledge, could unite thousands of people without hooking up to king, prophet, religious guardian, shadow-play character, or devil.) whatever he does is about “to deliver” minke’s postcolonial activities. even, the position of pangemanann seems inferior to minke’s position. its inferiority can be seen from the ways pangemanann react to minke’s activities. pangemanann does not undergo colonial oppression, as it happens to colonialist, but he is just “being oppressed” by what minke has done. in other words, the existence of pangemanann as the main character and narrator is in fact to support the importance of minke in undergoing postcoloniality. the idea or story dealing with minke is dominant and the role of pangemanann seems just to react to what minke has done previously. meanwhile, from pangemanann’s perspective, the idea or story about him shows his efforts to face and fight against minke. it means all events, dealing with minke and pangemanann, are concerned with the indonesian native postcolonialism, especially those undergone by minke. beriburibu pengikutnya, terdiri dari muslim putih dan terutama abangan dari golongan mardika (12)/(there were thousand followers, consisting of white moslem and especially the liberal moslem from the independence group). the point is surely to emphasize that minke is absolutely and totally prominent in the postcoloniality of the natives. in order to effectively and efficiently undergo the duty, pangemanann applies a certain strategy, called “rumah kaca” (house of glass). simply it’s about the idea of a house construction inside which all activities can be seen or monitored and so there would be exact and fixed deeds to act. this strategy really proves pangemanann’s quality in dealing with journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) gabriel fajar sasmita aji 154 any crimes and criminals, as his previous profession in the police department. he knows very well who “the criminal” is that he has to overcome. so, it’s a kind of his new strategy in establishing the “house of glass” (or, rumah kaca). this is not about direct and physical violence, but it is about monitoring and anticipating the higher quality of harmful acts of the colonized and local people membacai dokumen-dokumen itu aku menjadi ragu apa benar syarikat berkembang tanpa otak? benar-benar aku sedang bermain catur dengan minke. dia tenang-tenang dalam pembuangannya sedang aku tunggang langgang seperti ini (p. 198) (reading the documents, i grew doubtful whether syarikat developed without brain? really, i was playing chess with minke. he’s relaxed in the exile, while i was very burdened like this) pangemanann’s main duty is to monitor minke’s activities and to control any consequences from those activities. since minke was a journalist and writer, pangemanan has to check and read all the documents relating to minke’s deeds. every day what pangemanann did is just to read and read whatever minke has written. by this strategy, pangemanann would understand the flow of minke’s ideas, especially in his strives of fighting against the colonial government. even, during minke’s exile, pangemanann is very busy in collecting data about minke and reading all of them. therefore, “rumah kaca,” or house of glass, is to identify that what pangemanann does refers to the way how he wants to understand and completely monitor minke. however, this phenomenon seems interesting because indirectly rumah kaca puts the concept of resisting the colonizer by writings or by the works of the brain. this would add to the common concept of violence by physical contact with weapons and also muscles. it means, dealing with the story, the novel shows how the brain, through writings, as what minke has done, may appear to complete the other forms of postcolonial resistance. both, pangemanann and minke are as a matter of fact depicted as educated and wellread, and it means that the colonizer, represented by pangemanann, is absolutely serious in providing any treatment against the colonized, represented by minke. even, if it may add, pangemanann is one of minke’s admirers (p. 10). pangemanann was selected by the colonial government due to his capability proven through his work in the previous police department. waktu tugas itu diberikan padaku, aku betul-betul menjadi terbisu. sebenarnya kuharapkan orang lain yang akan melaksanakannya. tapi, atasanku, komisaris besar donald nicolson, berbangsa inggris, berkata, “tugas ini berdasarkan kertas tuan sendiri, tuan pangemanann. orang lain takkan mengerti seluk-beluk perkara. ini bukan soal pidana, bukan urusan tangkap maling. ini soal khusus, dan tuan sendiri juga yang telah merintis arah pekerjaan baru ini” (p. 9). (when the job was delivered to me, i was really dumbed. i actually hoped someone else would do it. but, my superior, big commisioner donald nicolson, from england, said, “this job is based upon your own portfolio, mr. pangemanann. no one else could understand the aspects of the case. it’s not just about criminal, not about arresting thieves. it’s very special, and you yourself has started to lead the direction of this new job.) clearly, from the quote, it is seen that to undergo pangemanann’s new post or duty needs special capability, and the selected one is consequently also special. pangemanann’s background has proven the quality, especially in dealing with a special case like minke’s activities. physical violence by oppressing people with technological weapons is not the way, because it’s about the works of the brain. the other form of technology is needed, and “rumah kaca” as pangemanaan’s idea is accepted as the “weapon” to treat and face minke. on the other hand, this concept is certainly to convey also that minke is in fact highly qualified that a certain way or strategy has to be done. as mentioned earlier, from what minke has done there are many followers from any kind of group. nuraniku tergoncang. apa harus kulakukan terhadap dia? dia bukan penjahat, bukan pemberontak. dia seorang journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 155 terpelajar pribumi yang hanya terlalu mencintai bangsa dan tanahairnya hindia, mencoba memajukan bangsanya,… (p. 10). my conscience was shocked. what should i do to him? he’s not a criminal, not a rebel. he’s an educated native who too much loved his country and homeland, dutch indies, tried to improve the country…. minke’s role and postcoloniality meanwhile, the second important phenomenon, dealing with the context of postcolonialism, i.e. minke’s death, seems to provide an event that the native efforts in establishing postcoloniality are in fain. the main figure of it finally dies in poverty and poor condition. after his exile, minke could do nothing because he had to face the new condition of having no friends and properties. the colonial government, by pangemanann’s deeds, did undergo total isolation for minke. “dalam keadaan sakit parah itu raden mas minke dibawa kembali oleh goenawan pulang ke rumahnya dan meninggal dunia dalam perawatannya… begitulah akhir hidup guruku, meniggalkan pada dunia hanya bekas-bekas jejak dan langkahnya. ia pergi dalam kesepian—ia yang sudah dilupakan, dilupakan sudah sejak hidupnya. ia seorang pemimpin yang dilupakan oleh pengikutnya…” (pp. 593594) (in his very bad sickness, raden mas minke was brought home by goenawan and finally died under his treatment…. that’s the end of my teacher’s life, leaving the world by only his footstep prints. he died in his loneliness…he was already forgotten, forgotten even since his living. he was the leader who was left behind by the followers..) in perceiving indonesian postcolonialism through minke’s death, readers might be hard to understand the fact. the conventional perception suggests that in a postcolonial novel, the main character always stands as postcolonialist and readers would be then provided with postcolonial ideas or concepts, especially about any resistances done by the hero/es. unfortunately, minke’s death directly leads readers to the empty hope of postcolonialism. the physical death of the hero means the end of postcoloniality itself. the flame of it has died together with the hero’s death, and consequently, it goes to nothing. rumah kaca, compared to the other previous novels of buru tetralogy, is really unique, especially by delivering those two “weird” phenomena or facts, as mentioned previously. however, the novel wants to also reemphasize the common concept and pattern, dealing with the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. the colonized are totally powerless, helpless, and also inferior. simply to compare minke, representing the colonized, and pangemanann, the colonizer, readers would easily find the ways which the novel depicts them differently. minke is an exexiled person, and pangemanann is the person who has brought him to be exiled and also then to be released. minke’s helplessness is surely proven by his total loss of everything after the exile, and meanwhile, pangemanann is in a high rank in his position of always supervising and monitoring minke. all that pangemanann does to minke show that the one is much superior to the other. minke’s death is a catastrophe that is probably to stop any deeds and activities dealing with the native’s postcoloniality. this fact seems to bring a similar idea, about the helplessness and powerlessness of the colonized, in the first novel of buru tetralogy. “pintu ditutup dari luar. sayup-sayup terdengar roda kereta menggiling kerikil, makin lama makin jauh, akhirnya tak terdengar lagi. …..kami menundukkan kepala di belakang pintu. ‘kita kalah, ma,’bisikku. ‘kita telah melawan, nak, nyo, sebaikbaiknya, sehormat-hormatnya.’ “ (bumi manusia, pp. 534-535) (“the door is closed from ourside. the cart’s wheels are faintly heard to grind gravels, and it goes further and further and till its disappearance. we’re nodding the heads behind the door, “we’re lost, ma,” i whisper. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) gabriel fajar sasmita aji 156 “we have tried to fight, son, nyo, as well as possible, as honored as it was.) the event depicts that the colonized is totally inferior to the colonizer, especially when minke, and his mother-in-law, nyai ontosoroh or sanikem, recognized their loss of property after the trial had decreed to return back the property as “the colonizer’s” belongings. meanwhile, dealing with minke’s death, which is keenly seen as “the end” of the postcolonialist, the novel seems to deliver its hidden message about minke’s postcolonialism itself. as talked about previously, the strategy of the “house of glass” proves the new strategy undergone by the colonial government “to attack” back minke’s deeds and activities. physical violence is impossible since minke does not undergo postcolonialism through his physical attacks on the government. what he does is just write and write. it means his writings are the problems that the colonial government must overcome. minke’s superiority over the colonial government is proven by the appearance of pangemanann, as the ex-police official, who has the duty to control and overcome minke’s conduct. minke’s educated activities must be faced by also educated deeds. however, one thing forgotten from the angles done by pangemanann is the isolation created for minke. clearly, the isolation given to minke, which results in minke’s condition of being totally isolated, by not having friends and properties anymore, is in fact not able to limit or isolate minke’s thoughts. minke has created many writings as the pillar of his postcoloniality. it means the “house of glass”, as the strategy, could only control, isolate, and monitor minke physically, but it is in fain in resisting minke’s postcolonial writings. even, minke’s power of postcolonialism over the colonial resistance is shown by the fact that minke’s postcolonial writings are continuous with the “help” of the colonizer’s ignorance. bersama ini aku serahkan juga padamu naskah-naskah yang memang menjadi hakmu, tulisan r.m. minke, anakmu kekasih. terserah bagaimana madame menggunakan dan merawatnya. (646) (by this i handed you as well all articles which were really yours, i.e. the writings of r.m. minke, who was your beloved child. i let it to madame how to use and keep them.) it’s obvious that those compiled writings were brought by pangemanann and he himself handed them to sanikem, or nyi ontosoroh, who is one of minke’s friends of postcoloniality. in other words, the death of minke is not absolutely and totally the end or catastrophe of the indonesian natives to survive postcolonialism. conclusion rumah kaca is an interesting novel and covers prominent messages dealing with indonesian postcolonialism. though rumah kaca, or the house of glass, is the strategy done by the colonial government in resisting the colonialized natives to improve, it suggests how non-physical violence is also strongly needed to anticipate any postcolonialities done by the colonized people. this novel delivers its postcolonialism even through the existence of a colonialist, who is the main character and narrator. the way how it presents the character proves that this work deconstructs itself. all colonial activities finally can be viewed as reactions against postcolonial conduct. pangemanann appears to represent the colonial government, which experienced hardships in dealing with minke, the postcolonialist. as the common pattern of postcolonial concept, postcolonialism is the reaction against colonialism, rumah kaca interprets it differently. meanwhile, the event of minke’s death does not mean that postcolonialism also ends, because his death is just physical and his main postcoloniality, coming from his brain through his bulk of writings, still exists and will be continued by the other postcolonialists. minke’s death is not the catastrophe of postcolonialism, even it could be the catastrophe start of colonialism by the colonial government. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 157 references agnes, aladesami omobola. 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(2006). literary theory and criticism. oxford: oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.24071/joll.v19i2.2144 https://doi.org/10.24071/joll.v19i2.2144 https://doi.org/10.18178/ijlll.2017.3.4.138 https://doi.org/10.18178/ijlll.2017.3.4.138 https://doi.org/10.24071/joll.v21i2.3168 https://doi.org/10.24071/joll.v21i2.3168 https://doi.org/10.36099/ajahss.2.10.7 cover luar phenomena vol 16 no. 2 vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 201 problematizing de beauvoir’s myth of woman through gender relation in david lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” pramesthi dewi kusumaningrum & a.b. sri mulyani mulyanips@gmail.com department of english letters, universitas sanata dharma abstract gender relation in society is complex and fluid. however, the complexity and fluidity are oversimplified by patriarchal systems in the form of binary oppositions. david lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is a poem portraying the complexity and fluidity of gender relation. through several levels of reading the poem, gender relations between woman and man are proven to be dynamic, yet it is still dominated by patriarchal systems. this research attempts to problematize de beauvoir’s myth of woman which represents gender relation between woman and man in binary oppositions. this research applies deconstructive method. the deconstructive method includes close reading and deconstructive reading. it is applied to problematize de beauvoir’s myth of woman through lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. the first level of reading (close reading) in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” shows that the findings on the form, diction, word order, point of view, and tone versus the findings on metaphors, imagery, symbols, and allusions are contradictory. the second level of reading (explication) shows that lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” depicts some gender relation. those are womanman relation in speaking, never being in the same domain, performing different roles in the same domain, communicating, viewing gender relation, fighting, and considering night and sleep. the last level of reading is deconstructive reading. the first level of deconstructive reading questions the “objectivity” of portraying woman-man relation. the second level reveals the discontinuity of de beauvoir’s myth of woman to construct the gender relation in the poem in binary oppositions. the universalizing context and the absence of woman’s voice in de beauvoir’s myth of woman reveal the question of the “objectivity” of the myth and how even though de beauvoir’s myth of woman stereotypes both genders unequally, woman remains the marginalized one. keywords: myth of woman, gender relation, deconstructive reading. introduction west and zimmerman define gender as something we are not born with nor have, but it is something we do (quoted in eckert and mcconnell-ginet, 2003: 10). sex, on the other hand, is a biological classification based on reproductive potential (eckert and mcconnell-ginet, 2003: 10). however, the borderline between gender and sex is often overlapping. therefore, eckert and mcconnellginet define gender as “the social elaboration of biological sex” (2003: 10). the complexity of gender has been structured in the form of gender schema in which sex (males or females) determines gender (males as men and females as women) and gender determines gender roles (masculinity for men and femininity for women) (devor, 1998: 27). through the medium of language, moreover, the idea of gender identity is conceptualized as binary and permanent (devor, 1998: 23). therefore, pramesthi dewi kusumaningrum & a.b. sri mulyani 202 cross gender behaviors are considered as “inappropriate gender role behaviors” (devor, 1998: 29). nonetheless, some persons challenge the binary oppositions of gender roles by performing “gender roles” which are not “appropriate” for their genders; in other words, they blur the gender dividing line (devor, 1989: 29). to simply determine gender representation, identity, and relation as binary, therefore, is not appropriate. moreover, devor suggests that masculine and feminine aspects are not the cause of status inequalities; rather it is the result (devor, 1998: 29). david lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is a good example of a literary work to show complexity of gender relation. it shows how through several levels of reading, the gender relation between woman and man is “dynamic”, yet in more critical readings, it is still dominated by the dominant patriarchal discourse. on the first level of reading, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” “seems” to portray gender relation between woman and man “objectively”. moreover, the poem “seems” to take side on woman’s struggle for equality. nevertheless, on the next (critical) level of readings, it betrays its first impression. as a result, gender relation in patriarchal society as reflected in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”, instead, tends to embrace gender patriarchal discourse in the form of de beauvoir’s myth of woman. gender relation in society, in fact, is very complex and fluid, but patriarchal discourse puts gender relation merely in its simple binary oppositions. this complexity versus simplicity of gender relation is the case displayed by lehman’s poem. therefore, it is necessary to question the gender relation in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. devor suggests that it is possible to refer to “multitudinous exceptions to, and variations on” gender roles due to the neither complete nor uniform training to gender roles (1998: 32). therefore, the major theme to discuss in this research is problematizing de beauvoir’s myth of woman through the complexity and fluidity of gender relation revealed through different levels of reading in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. the main problems discussed throughout this research are: (1) what gender relation does lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” display on different levels of reading?; and, (2 how does the gender relation in lehman’s poem contribute to the problematization of de beauvoir’s myth of woman? this research applies feminist poststructuralism as the approach of the study. feminist poststructuralism, not just poststructrualism, is chosen as the approach of the study because it concerns with gender issues and subjectivity (humm, 1994: 138). the approach, therefore, agrees with lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”, the object of the study which concerns with gender issues and subjectivity. in this research, feminist poststructuralism approach is applied to view the findings on close reading and deconstructive reading of lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” and correlate the findings to gender issues. furthermore, the feminist poststructuralism approach is applied to extend the findings to problematize de beauvoir’s myth of woman. according to kennedy and gioia (2002: 630), close reading is the key method of formalist criticism used to unfold a poem. close reading is conducted by analyzing a poem carefully step-by-step and exemplifying it (kennedy and gioia, 2002: 630). the purpose is to show how the combination of various elements in a literary work affects readers (kennedy and gioia, 2002: 630). as stated by kennedy and gioia (2002: 630), formalist criticism believes that various stylistic elements influence thematic elements, and vice versa; therefore, form and content cannot be separated because it will destroy meaning. gender studies according to eckert and mcconnell-ginet (2003: 10), sex is a biological classification based on reproductive potential. meanwhile, gender is the social construction of elaborating biological sex (eckert and mcconnell-ginet, 2003: 10). gender is fluid since it is social, but since it is developed from biological sex, it often exaggerates the vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 203 biological sex difference (eckert and mcconnell-ginet, 2003: 10). gender is divided into two domains: masculinity and femininity. masculinity is the accepted gender identity for males, whereas femininity is the accepted one for females. the identities are often worked as “mirror images” in which masculinity is celebrated by dominance and aggression, whereas femininity is identified by passivity and submission (devor, 1998: 28). society tends to demand the different gender performances from males and females which leads to reward, tolerate, or punish each individual for conforming or violating from the “accepted social norms” (devor, 1998: 23). those who violate the accepted gender norms are considered as “blurring the gender dividing lines” (devor, 1998: 29). consequently, as suggested by devor (1998: 29), masculine and feminine aspects are the result, rather than the cause. gender identities and roles, therefore, are likely to refer to “multitudinous exceptions” and variations, for gender is neither complete nor uniform (devor, 1998: 32); it is social and fluid (eckert and mcconnell-ginet, 2003: 10). feminist poststructuralism feminist poststructuralism is a blend of two studies: feminism and poststructuralism. poststructuralism is a form of rebellion against structuralism, for poststructuralists believe that structuralists are not consistent on viewing language on which their system is rooted (barry, 1995: 61). poststructuralists agree with structuralists in terms of their view about language: “that language doesn’t just reflect or record the world: rather, it shapes it, so that how we see is what we see” (barry, 1995: 61). although they agree on their view about language which shapes the way we see something, they come into completely different conclusion. according to barry (1995: 61), because of this view, poststructuralists agree that we enter a world of complete uncertainty since we depend completely on linguistic processing to perceive everything; there is no certain standard to measure. poststructuralism, according to humm, focuses on “how literature and its languages work within particular cultural and educational framework” (1994: 134). as a result, we enter a “decentred universe” (barry, 1995: 62). in a decentred universe, poststructuralism “deconstructs” structuralism’s belief in isolating systems form the authority and power structures that are responsible in controlling the systems (humm, 1994: 134). since this poststructuralism is combined with feminism, the study of feminist poststructuralism, therefore, focuses on issues of gender and subjectivity (humm, 1994: 138). feminist poststructuralist applies the same tool as poststructuralist to debunk the “construction”. it is deconstruction. jacques derrida, a french philosopher acknowledged by american and frech feminists for his ideas, is the one who initiated deconstruction (humm, 1994: 146). according to humm, deconstruction is the belief that universal concepts and the conventional boundaries between opposed concepts or binary opposites such as black/white, man/woman, culture/nature must be taken apart, or deconstructed, in order for us to understand the (political) processes such terms represent (humm, 1994: 146). deconstruction deals with tearing apart production processes which make the oppositions seem natural (humm, 1994: 146). deconstruction is to see that the oppositions in literary products are unstable and debatable; they can go beyond their binary limits (humm, 1994: 146-147). it is to uncover the ideological patterns that “hide” behind the aesthetic forms (humm, 147). since language is the media through which women are “deauthorised”, deconstruction is used as a tool to question how language produces male and female oppositions and how women are presented by the negative or supplementary term (humm, 147-148). pramesthi dewi kusumaningrum & a.b. sri mulyani 204 simone de beauvoir’s myth of woman according to de beauvoir (1989: 248), woman is seen as flesh through the great collective myths. woman is associated with nature: she is immanence; she reveals peace and harmony (de beauvoir, 1989: 248). she often comes up as “the privileged other” through whom man (the subject) conforms himself (de beauvoir, 1989: 248). de beauvoir divides the myth of woman into five categories. she takes the myth from five authors (motherlant, lawrence, claudel, breton, and stendhal), which she considers to reflect the great collective myth of woman. the first myth is depicted by motherlant. as argued by de beauvoir, in motherlant, man is the transcendent, whereas woman is the immanent (de beauvoir, 1989: 248249). there is a distance to separate man from woman; he is in the sky, she is on earth (de beauvoir, 1989: 248). man takes woman by taking her up and throws her back, but he never lowers himself (de beauvoir, 1989: 248-249). the second myth is presented by lawrence. lawrence, according to de beauvoir (1989: 249), considers the immanence presented by woman is absolutely necessary to support the life and power of phallus. woman, therefore, is “a warm spring”, the “deep richness”, but woman should surrender her personal transcendence to suit herself to male (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). the third myth is portrayed by claudel. woman, for claudel, should maintain life (passivity), but man should extend it through his activities (activity) (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). however, in claudel, god is the only transcendence, while man and woman are equally immanence (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). it is up to each to exceed his/her earthly state; it, consequently, needs salvation (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). the fourth myth is represented by breton. breton is somehow the opposite of motherland (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). breton views transcendence as the trigger of “war, stupidity, bureaucracy, the negation of anything human”, whereas immanence is “pure, dark presence of the real” (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). for breton, true transcendence is achieved by returning to immanence; therefore, woman is seen as revelation because “she tears him out of this subjectivity” (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). the last myth is delivered by stendhal. for stendhal, woman is seen the way man is seen: she is a transcendent, a free being (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). man and woman in stendhal, as de beauvoir argues (1989: 249), are related to each other in “reciprocal relations”. woman is simply seen as the other who is celebrated to give “a pungent saltiness” to it (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). the myth of woman in five authors summed up by de beauvoir varies from motherlant to stendhal in terms of the way they see woman. however, de beauvoir (1989: 251) claims that they are all the same in terms of seeing the ideal woman as “she who incarnates most exactly the other capable of revealing him to himself”. the myth is presented based on its benefits to man (de beauvoir, 1989: 260). patriarchal society uses the myth of woman as selfjustification through which society implements laws and customs (de beauvoir, 1989: 260). motherlant looks for “animality” in woman; lawrence asks woman to generally sum up the feminine sex; claudel considers woman as “a soul-sister”; breton pins hope on “the woman-child”; stendhal wants woman to be “an equal”: intelligent, cultivated, free in spirit and behavior (de beauvoir, 1989: 251). according to de beauvoir (1989: 251), the idea of woman, as presented in five different authors, will always lead to the same conclusions: the only possible destiny reserved for woman is always man. close reading of lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” lehman’s poem is entitled “when a woman loves a man”. “love” is associated with romance. therefore, lehman’s poem presents a romance between a woman and a man. lehman’s poem also employs “woman” and “man” as its diction. consequently, it is vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 205 also associated with gender relation. additionally, the title shows that “woman” is placed as the subject, the lover or the one who loves her beloved; therefore, the woman in lehman’s poem is the active one. thus, the focus in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is the woman, instead of the man. based on the aforementioned title analysis, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” draws its root from love poem tradition with love as its theme. however, it is also different from traditional love poems that usually depict man as the lover and woman as the beloved. thus, lehman’s poem exposes different gender relation between a woman and a man in expressing love from woman’s perspective. besides, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is a free verse or an open form poem since it is composed based on free conventional rime and meter (kennedy and gioia, 2002: 239). kennedy and gioia suggest that “writing in open form, a poet seeks to discover a fresh and individual arrangement for words in every poem” (2002: 238). therefore, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” presents a fresh and free idea because the poem does not follow conventional verse rule. although lehman’s poem takes a free verse form, it employs many repetitions as seen in the following lines (“when she says… / when a woman loves a man / when a man loves a woman”). as kennedy and gioia (2002: 241) argue that repetition creates memorable rhythms, lehman’s poem, therefore, intends to make readers easily memorize the message(s) implied in the repetition. moreover, in poetic aspects, repetition is not simply a repetition with its random use, but it serves as a poetic vehicle to express its aesthetic as well as ideological values. since the repetition in lehman’s poem always concerns about gender relation, it strengthens the voice of its gender relation, the key message that lehman’s poem attempts to convey. in addition to the theme and form, the diction or choice of words as concrete words in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is significant. concrete words point to things or particular individuals which can be perceived with senses, whereas abstract words refer to concepts or ideas (kennedy and gioia, 2002: 56). the fact that the concrete words employed in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” are used to present abstract ideas (woman-man love and relation) makes the abstract ideas presented more detailed and specific. stanza 2 “when a man loves a woman he is in new york and she is in virginia” (“when woman loves a man” 1) is a good example to explain. lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” borrows new york and virginia to present gender relation. new york and virginia are concrete words, but there is an allusion behind these two states about the history of slavery in the united states. new york, the northern state, was a state which abolished slavery (free), while virginia, the southern state, was a state which permitted slavery (enslaved) (cusack, 1991: 2). therefore, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” suggests gender relation (an abstract idea) using new york and virginia (concrete words) to present the relation in terms of the man being free and the woman being enslaved. the abstract ideas in lehman’s poem (love and gender relation) are presented using concrete words which makes it “keep returning to earth” and “makes us aware of things” (kennedy and gioia, 2002: 56). in other words, the use of concrete words to present abstract ideas in lehman’s poem is to make it more detailed and “humble” (returning to earth). besides the diction in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”, to observe the word order employed is also essential. kennedy and gioia suggest that due to the rigidity of english word order, a poet tends to invert the order to resist it and attain unusual effects (2002: 70). on the contrary, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” keeps the rigidity of english word order. there is no inversion found in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. the effect, therefore, makes lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” less complicated. consequently, it is easier or pramesthi dewi kusumaningrum & a.b. sri mulyani 206 more “humble” to grasp. the word order and diction work together to suggest “humbleness” to lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. furthermore, the tone in lehman’s poem also highlights the “certainty” and “humbleness” in the poem. it is certain as the diction chosen is concrete words, rather than abstract words. compared to abstract words, concrete words directly address things able to perceive with senses (kennedy and gioia, 2002: 56). therefore, it reduces misperception since concrete words point out something “real”. it is “humble” because of the diction, light complexity, and word order that make the poem more “grounded”. furthermore, the poem employs third person’s point of view as its speaker, which makes the poem more “objective”. lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” also employs many metaphors to compare the woman and man’s relation in the poem. stanza three is an example of metaphors in lehman’s poem. when a man loves a woman he is in new york and she is in virginia or he is in boston, writing, and she is in new york, reading, or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in balboa park and he is raking leaves in ithaca; (lehman, 2005, stanza 3, lines 1-4) in stanza 3 lines 1-4, the way the man loves the woman in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is directly compared to various associations. stanza 3 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” portrays the woman and man’s relation in three metaphors. the first one is to new york (man) and virginia (woman). the second one is to boston-writing (man) and new yorkreading (woman). the third one is wearing a sweater and sunglassesbalboa park (woman) and raking leavesithaca (man). metaphor is different from simile because it has multiple associations since it does not refer to merely a characteristic shared by two things compared (kennedy and gioia, 2002: 123). lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is dominated by the use of metaphors. therefore, it implies that many multiple meanings underlying the poem. the metaphors employed in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” are further discussed in part b. besides metaphors, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” employs imagery. the imagery employed in lehman’s poem is visual and auditory imagery. the last stanza (stanza 13) in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” presents an example of both visual and auditory imagery employed by the poem. when a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking: as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved. a thousand fireflies wink at him. the frogs sound like the string section of the orchestra warming up. the stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.; (lehman, 2005, stanza 13, lines 1-6) imagery is an attempt “to render the abstract in concrete terms”; it is the tool used to “see the mind of the poet more truly revealed than in whatever the poet explicitly claims to believe” (kennedy and gioia, 2002: 97). even though this research omits to look for the “true” meaning of lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” from the author’s (lehman’s) perspective, the analysis of imagery is helpful to further analyze the underlying meanings of lehman’s poem rather than what it “claims to believe”. the extended analysis of the imagery employed in lehman’s poem is discussed in part b. furthermore, allusion is also employed in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. historical and biblical allusions are the allusions employed in lehman’s poem. the use of new york and virginia in stanza 3 “when a man loves a woman he is in new york and she is in virginia” (“when a woman loves a man” 1) alludes the history of slavery in the united states happened in those states. vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 207 moreover, the imagery and symbols applied in stanza 6 work together as a biblical allusion to allude the fall. when a woman loves a man, they have gone to swim naked in the stream on a glorious july day with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle of water ruching over smooth rocks, and there is nothing alien in the universe.; (lehman, 2005, stanza 6, lines 1-6) allusions are applied to enrich a poem’s meaning (kennedy and gioia, 2002: 62). therefore, by applying allusions, lehman’s poem employs more multiple meanings than what it “seems” to offer. additionally, symbols are also employed in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. apples in stanza 7 “ripe apples fall about them” (1), seven and nine in stanza 10 “seven times and threatened to do it another nine times.” (1-2), and refrigerator in stanza 11 “and there’s nothing in the refrigerator” (5) are the examples of the symbols employed by lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. although the symbols (apples, seven, nine, refrigerator, etc.) applied can refer to many associations, the meaning of the symbols in lehman’s poem is restricted due to context, but mostly related to biblical context. based on the analysis on the intrinsic elements in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”, the poem “seems” to deal with gender relation with more concerns about woman since the title puts woman as the subject. therefore, the title “seems” to focus on woman than man. by analyzing other devices (form, diction, word order, point of view, and tone) in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”, the “objectivity” and “humbleness” of portraying the gender relation offered in the poem is indeed highlighted. however, by observing the metaphors, imagery, symbols, and allusions in the poem, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” attempts to relate and extend the gender relation in the poem to the gender relation outside the poem, or gender relation in general. moreover, the metaphor, imagery, symbols, and allusions in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” suggest that lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” employs multiple underlying meanings which are contradictory from the “objectivity” and “humbleness” presented by the other devices (form, diction, word order, point of view, and tone) observed in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. explication of lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” following the previous finding on theme in the first part of close reading, the keywords “woman”, “love”, and “man” in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” are associated with romance (love) and gender relation (woman and man). accordingly, the title “when a woman loves a man” suggests woman’s perspective in seeing gender relation between a woman and a man in expressing love. viewed from its intrinsic elements, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is divided into thirteen stanzas in which each stanza has different length. stanza 1 consists of 5 lines. these 5 lines employ three repetitions of saying something, but meaning another. when she says margarita she means daiquiri. when she says quixotic she means mercurial. and when she says, "i'll never speak to you again," she means, "put your arms around me from behind as i stand disconsolate at the window."; (lehman, 2005, stanza 1, lines 1-5). the first repetition is saying margarita, instead of daiquiri. the second one is saying quixotic, instead of mercurial. the last one is saying “i’ll never speak to you again”, instead of “put your arms around me from behind as i stand disconsolate at the window”. “say” indicates that stanza 1 is related to manners of speaking. the woman, therefore, is portrayed as unable to speak directly as she mentions one thing, but actually refers to another. pramesthi dewi kusumaningrum & a.b. sri mulyani 208 the woman’s manner of speaking is repeated three times. the repetitions give strong emphasis resulted in suggesting that the woman is unable to speak directly. therefore, by repeated three times, stanza 1 gives strong emphasis on how the woman’s inability to have direct speech is a part of the woman’s characteristics. stanza 2 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” only consists of one line: “he’s supposed to know that.” (1). written as one line, stanza 2 directly focuses on merely one particular issue. it, therefore, presents a strong cynical tone. furthermore, stanza 2 switches its perspective from the woman’s perspective in stanza 1 (she) into the man’s perspective (he). apostrophe ‘s’ in stanza 2 “he’s supposed” (“when a woman loves a man” 1) can stand for is, was, or has; however, following the tenses employed by lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”, which is present tense, the most essential “to be” to replace the apostrophe ‘s’ is “is”. thus, stanza 2 “he’s supposed to know that.” (“when a woman loves a man” 1) is best paraphrased as “he is supposed to know that.” additionally, according to longman dictionary of contemporary english, “is supposed to” is “used to say what was or is expected or intended to happen, especially when it did not happen” (“be supposed to do/be something”). the word “that”, refers to the previous stanza (stanza 1), so “that” in stanza 2 refers to the woman’s inability to speak directly. stanza 2, therefore, suggests that the man in lehman’s poem is expected to know the woman’s inability of speaking directly, but the fact is the man does not know. the use of present tense itself is also important in terms that it is employed to state general statements of fact, timeless truths, or habitual/everyday activities (azar, 1999: 13). therefore, stanza 2 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” strongly states that it is a fact, truth, or habit that the man does not understand the woman. it is a general fact/truth/habit that the man does not know the woman’s inability to have direct speech even though it has become a part of the woman’s characteristics. stanza 3 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” consists of 8 lines and it starts with “when a man loves a woman” (1). the use of “man” as the subject shows that stanza 3 employs the man’s perspective. additionally, stanza 3 employs many metaphors to compare the relation between the woman and man in lehman’s poem. when a man loves a woman he is in new york and she is in virginia or he is in boston, writing, and she is in new york, reading, or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in balboa park and he is raking leaves in ithaca or he is driving to east hampton and she is standing disconsolate at the window overlooking the bay where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on while he is stuck in traffic on the long island expressway; (lehman, 2005, stanza 3, lines 1-8). the first metaphor to compare the woman and man in lehman’s poem is new york and virginia. the association of new york and virginia with man and woman recalls the memory of slavery in the united states. in the history of slavery in united states, new york belonged to northern states, the “free” states of slavery (cusack, 1991: 2). on the other hand, virginia, a plantationeconomybased region in the south, depended itself on slaves (cusack, 1991: 2). thus, the association of new york and virginia with the man and woman’s relation in lehman’s poem is that the man is presented as a free human being, whereas the woman is enslaved. the history of slavery in the united states where northern states were considered “free” and became the “destination” for black slaves to be free (cusack, 1991: 2) is linked to the metaphor of the woman in virginia who needs to be “saved” and “freed” by the man who is in new york. the woman needs the man to be free and safe. as new york can be symbolized as vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 209 the shelter, refuge, and hope for black slaves in virginia, the man is presented as having a role to be the hope, shelter, and refuge for the woman. moreover, new york has the statue of liberty. according to sacks (1995: 457), the statue of liberty was the symbol of hopes and cherished aspirations which greeted immigrants once arriving in new york harbor. therefore, the metaphor of new york in lehman’s poem highlights the idea that the man, who is in new york, represents the symbol of freedom, hopes, and aspirations. it is a symbol of independence (man) and dependence (woman). the second metaphor to compare man and woman in lehman’s poem stanza 3 is boston, writing and new york, reading. whereas the woman moves to the place where the man is used to be (new york), the man has already been in a different place (boston). the second metaphor, therefore, highlights how the woman and man keep being in different places. furthermore, the activities they perform are different: writing (man) and reading (woman). viewed from academic’s perspective, writing is considered as one step higher than reading, for writing is producing, while reading is consuming. writing is an “active” activity, whereas reading is the “passive” one. the man, therefore, is seen as the one who is active and productive, while the woman is seen as passive and consumptive. the third metaphor is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in balboa park (woman) and raking leaves in ithaca (man). the woman, pictured as wearing a sweater and sunglasses in balboa park, the largest urban cultural park in the united states which has 15 major museums, performing arts venues, beautiful gardens, and the san diego zoo in it (http://www.balboapark.org/info) is portrayed to connect with enjoyment. on the other hand, the man, raking leaves in ithaca, is portrayed to work hard. since stanza 3 employs the man’s perspective, the man in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” adjusts himself in seeing the woman-man relation in which he is the breadwinner: man makes money, whereas woman spends it (gerzon, 1998: 539). the last metaphor in stanza 3 is driving to east hampton, stuck in traffic on the long island expressway (man) and standing disconsolate at the window overlooking the bay where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on (woman). the man is portrayed to mingle with mobility (driving), whereas the woman is portrayed to mingle with stillness (standing disconsolate). moreover, regatta, according to cambridge, is “a sports event consisting of boat races” (“regatta”). sport is closely associated with man, a signifier of “masculinity” (kidd, 1998: 299). therefore, regatta represents masculinity. looking at masculine world, the woman stands disconsolate at the window overlooking the bay where this “masculine activity” runs. according to cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary, disconsolate is “extremely sad and disappointed” (“disconsolate”). the woman is pictured as standing (passive), very sad and disappointed. besides, she does not watch the regatta directly. in fact, she watches it in a distance (overlooking), she watches it through the window. window, consequently, creates a distance/gap between woman and regatta (masculine world). the last metaphor, therefore, asserts how the man in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” believes that woman and man live in different domains in which he sees himself as connecting to the world (masculine world), while the woman disconnects from it. this disconnection, pictured by the last metaphor, makes her disconsolate, but powerless. stanza 4 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” consists of 5 lines. stanza 4 has a specific setting of place: a house. compared to the previous stanza (stanza 3) in which the woman and man in lehman’s poem are portrayed to never be in the same place, stanza 4 sets the woman and man in the same place: house. however, the woman and man, even in the same place, are portrayed to perform different activities. http://www.balboapark.org/info) pramesthi dewi kusumaningrum & a.b. sri mulyani 210 starting from the beginning of stanza 4, the woman is pictured to sleep and remain asleep. sleeping represents passivity. the man, on the other hand, is pictured to perform an activity: watching sport. when a woman loves a man it is one-ten in the morning, she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels drinking lemonade and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed where she remains asleep and very warm; (lehman, 2005, stanza 4, lines 1-5) additionally, the man in stanza 4 is pictured as engaging with sport as he follows the scores and enjoys the game with pretzels and lemonade. the man’s “engagement” with sport is pictured significantly different with the woman’s attitude toward it as shown in stanza 3, “or he is driving to east hampton and she is standing disconsolate / at the window overlooking the bay / where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on” (“when a woman loves a man” 5-7). while the woman is pictured as disconnecting from sport, the man is pictured as engaging with it even only through a television. sport itself stands for the idea of masculinity (kidd, 1998: 299). therefore, the woman is pictured as disconnected from masculinity (stanza 3), whereas the man is pictured as closely connected to it. thus, in lehman’s poem, sport is masculine; sport is the man’s world. moreover, by placing woman and man in the same place (house), stanza 4, therefore, emphasizes how woman and man keeps performing different activities or roles within the same domain. stanza 4 employs the woman’s perspective in lehman’s poem, whereas stanza 3 employs the man’s perspective. consequently, through stanza 4, woman and man are pictured to have the same perspective over gender roles: that woman and man perform different roles. stanza 5 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” consists of 4 lines. stanza 5 employs the woman’s point of view. the words “says” and “talking” in stanza 5 are the keywords about the theme of gender relation employed by this stanza: verbal act (communication). when she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks. when she says, "we're talking about me now," he stops talking. her best friend comes over and says, "did somebody die?"; (lehman, 2005, stanza 5, lines 1-4) in lines 2-3, stanza 5 portrays that woman and man starts to talk. then, it discontinues. instead, stanza 5 depicts that the woman’s best friend comes over. the presence of the woman’s best friend and her presupposition that somebody died, which is in fact not, suggests that the communication between the woman and man portrayed previously fails. the woman’s best friend presupposition that somebody died presumably is caused by the woman’s hard crying. therefore, the focus of stanza 5 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is the failure in communication between the woman and man. tannen mentions the communication of woman and man as cross-cultural communication (1998: 114). it means that woman and man communicate differently. the man’s silence as mentioned in stanza 5 line 3: “he stops talking” is presumably misinterpreted by the woman as tannen suggests that woman perceives “silent attention as no attention at all” (1998: 116). additionally, woman also uses talking as a means to have intimacy in relationships (between girls); therefore, she hopes that her husband can be her best friend by talking to each other as a way to have closeness due to the life shared (tannen, 1998: 114). man, on the other hand, acquires bonds (between boys) by doing things together (tannen, 1998: 114). therefore, the presence of the woman’s best friend highlights the fact that the communication between the woman and man fails that the woman needs the presence of her best friend (who understands her), instead of the man. vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 211 stanza 6 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” consists of 6 lines. it employs the woman’s perspective, but the pronoun employed in the stanza is neither she nor he. instead, it employs “they” as the pronoun used. the significance of “they” is that the woman and man are considered as one union as mentioned in “when a woman loves a man, they have gone / to swim naked in the stream” (“when a woman loves a man” 1-2). in stanza 6, woman and man (they) are pictured to swim naked in the stream. nakedness refers to a biblical allusion: the fall. according to christian tradition in dictionary of symbols, nakedness represents “the consequence of original sin and of the fall of adam and eve” (“nakedness”). therefore, the woman’s perspective employed in this stanza is also significant since eve (woman) is the tempter to adam (man). however, although the perspective borrowed is the woman, the next pronoun employed is they. the pronoun, consequently, is crucial to allude the fallsince eve is the tempter, but adam also eats the forbidden fruit. they both fall. in addition, by referring to the fall of adam and eve in the garden of eden, nakedness also represents purity and innocence as the state of adam and eve before the fall. stanza 6 line 3 contributes to give the setting of time to this stanza: “on a glorious july day” (“when a woman loves a man” 3). glorious july day alludes the independence day of the united states: 4 july. independence represents freedom. therefore, although the nakedness represents the fall, the failure of keeping the “purity” and “innocence”, it also represents freedom. failing but achieving freedom. the next metaphor in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” stanza 6 moves into the description of the sound of waterfall which resembles a chuckle of water ruching over smooth rocks: “with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle / of water ruching over smooth rocks” (4-5). longman dictionary of contemporary english denotes chuckle as to laugh quietly (“chuckle”). since it is a laugh, it signifies happiness. however, the sound of chuckling which is in a higher pitch than a laugh sounds more like temptation. it presents the idea of the temptation initiated by snake to eve which results in the fall. snake is the tempter to eve (woman) as eve is the tempter to adam (man). additionally, nothing alien mentioned in the last line contributes to allude to the condition of adam and eve after the fall: “and there is nothing alien in the universe” (“when a woman loves a man” 6). the fall “opens” their eyes and they know the good and evil (king james version, gen. 3. 5). the relation of the woman and man in lehman’s poem, therefore, is depicted as the relation of adam and eve in the fall. the woman and man are pictured as pure and innocent beings who fall for being tempted. as eve is portrayed as the tempter to adam, lehman’s poem also follows the fall by employing the woman’s perspective to affirm it. however, the falling results in achieving freedom to know good and evil. stanza 7 consists of 2 lines. stanza 7 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” also discusses the fall: “ripe apples fall about them. / what else can they do but eat?” (1-2). therefore, stanza 7 continues the biblical flow of stanza 6. according to dictionary of symbols, apples, as mentioned in line 1, signify the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which initiates the fall (“apple”). apples, therefore, is the temptation. referring to a dictionary of literary symbols, in hebrew and classical tradition, apples also symbolizes “sexual love, which adam and eve discover, in some interpretations, after eating it” (“apple”). the temptation, therefore, is more specified as the temptation of sexual love. the diction of ripe also plays a significant role. ripe apples in stanza 7 contribute to give an idea that the apples are ready to eat: “ripe apples fall about them / what else can they do but eat?” (1-2). the next line highlights the idea of how powerless woman and man against the temptation. the extended imagery in stanza 7 is that the ripe apples fall about woman and man. consequently, it is hardly possible to pramesthi dewi kusumaningrum & a.b. sri mulyani 212 resist the temptation as the ones who fall right in the eyes are the ripe ones, ready to eat. stanzas 6 and 7 depict the relation of the woman and man in lehman’s poem by following the biblical narrative of the fall. the woman and man in lehman’s poem are pictured as pure and innocent beings who fall into temptation of sexual love which free them. the temptation is difficult to resist as ripe apples which fall about them. as the fall is considered as a great ancient narrative, the relation of sexual love between the woman and man in lehman’s poem is as ancient as biblical narrative the fall. stanza 8 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” consists of three lines. it employs the man’s perspective. it starts with the man saying “ours is a transitional era.” presumably, it continues the flow of the previous stanzas (stanza 6 and 7) about gender relation from biblical perspective. however, the man in stanza 8 is portrayed to have a different view on gender relation. stanza 6 and 7 portrays gender relation as ancient and great as eve and adam in the fall. woman is seen as a tempter as eve is the tempter. woman and man are pictured as innocent beings falling into the temptation of sexual love which actually frees them. moreover, the main point highlighted in stanza 7 is that woman and man are powerless as ripe apples which fall about them. these are the woman’s perspectives over gender relation. however, the man’s perspective differs from the woman’s. the man in stanza 8 points out that “ours (the woman and man) is a transitional era.” (“when a woman loves a man” 1). transition means a process of change. presumably, the man offers a different view over gender relation from the woman’s as mentioned in stanzas 6 and 7. whereas stanzas 6 and 7 assert the powerlessness of woman and man to resist the sexual love temptation (from the woman’s perspective), stanza 8 (from the man’s perspective) opposing the woman’s perspective implies that they (the woman and man) have power to change the gender relation. power itself is closely related to masculine power. therefore, this view is delivered by the man’s perspective. the man presumably does not want to be viewed as powerless because the woman’s perspective in stanzas 6 and 7 assert that as biblical narrative the fall, they also are powerless against temptation. stanza 8 line 2 mentions the woman’s reply to the man’s perspective about gender relation. the woman in stanza 8 replies the man by saying cynically (dry as martini) that “that’s very original of you.” (“when a woman loves a man” 2). it asserts that the woman does not believe in him. her diction “original” is also significant. original refers to genuineness. apparently, the woman’s reply is based on her experience(s) with the man that he does not keep his words. stanza 9 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” consists of ten lines. viewed by its poetic form, stanza 9 is the longest stanza in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. stanza 9 also employs different perspective compared to the other stanzas. it does not employ either woman or man’s perspective. instead, it employs “they” started from the beginning of the poem. the word “fight” in stanza 9 suggests the underlying theme in this stanza: the fight between the woman and man. they fight all the time it's fun what do i owe you? let's start with an apology ok, i'm sorry, you dickhead. a sign is held up saying "laughter." it's a silent picture. "i've been fucked without a kiss," she says, "and you can quote me on that," which sounds great in an english accent.; (lehman, 2005, stanza 9, lines 1-10) referring back to the previous stanzas (stanzas 1-8) which picture woman and man as two beings who have different manners of speaking (stanzas 1-2), always be in the different places (stanza 3), perform different roles even if in the same domain (stanza 4), undergo miscommunication (stanza 5), and have different opinions about gender relation vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 213 (stanzas 6-8), stanza 9 is considered as the “climax” or “crash” between the woman and man. the fight between woman and man depicted in stanza 9 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” also involves rude words like “dickhead” (5) and “fucked without a kiss” (8), which are said by the woman. a fight is usually dominated by anger, but stanza 9 portrays the fight between woman and man differently. the words “fun” (2) and “laughter” (6) in stanza 9 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” asserts that even a fight occurring between the woman and man (because of their differences) is viewed as an enjoyment in the relation. it is not seen as a big deal. stanza 9 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” does not really mention the cause of the fight. presumably, as mentioned in two previous paragraphs, it is because the differences between the woman and man, which have been explicated previously. however, even there is no evidence to find out the “cause” of the fight, the woman in stanza 9 is the first one who apologizes. the woman in fight as portrayed in stanza 9 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is presented as understanding: she is less offensive, ready to apologize and negotiate. besides portrayed as being understanding, less offensive, ready to apologize and negotiate, the woman in stanza 9 is presented as refusing to be silent despite the fight: “"i've been fucked without a kiss," she says, / “and you can quote me on that,” / which sounds great in an english accent.” (“when a woman loves a man” 8-10). she is the one who apologizes to the man in the fight. however, she dares to speak up her mind. it is spoken with a vulnerable tone as stanza 9 shows that she is “fucked without a kiss” (“when a woman loves a man” 8); she is the one who is harmed. yet, she challenges the man, and presumably the world that the man (and the world) can have her words that she is the “victim”. stanza 10 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” consists of two lines in one sentence: “one year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it/ another nine times.” (1-2). it is the continuation of stanza 9: the woman and man’s relation in terms of dealing with the fight. stanza 10 stands for one sentence in two lines which is in fact is still the continuation of stanza 10. therefore, viewed from its poetic form, stanza 10 must have stood for a significant idea. breaking up is the main theme discussed in stanza 10. the fight as the climax in dealing with difference between the woman and man in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” results in breaking up. however, the breaking up is surely not a break-up since stanza 10 asserts that it continues into seven, then into nine, and apparently will continue. in addition, seven and nine are significant symbols. following the biblical flow in previous stanzas (stanzas 6-7), the significance of number seven and nine in this research is also associated with biblical symbols. seven is a significant symbol in the bible presenting forgiveness as jesus commands to forgive our brothers (and sisters) seventy times seven (mat. 18.22). moreover, nine presents divine completeness as christ died at 3 p.m., the 9th hour of the day, to open the way to salvation (www.biblestudy.org). these numbers, therefore, represent the interdependence between the woman and man in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” which means that although in the “journey” of their relation they break up, but they will not really break up as they need each other to be complete (full, whole). stanza 11 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” consists of 5 lines. stanza 11 employs a different “form” compared to other stanzas. stanza 11 employs two perspectives, woman (line 1) and man (line 3) within one stanza. when a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the airport in a foreign country with a jeep. when a man loves a woman he's there. he doesn't complain that she's two hours late and there's nothing in the refrigerator; (lehman, 2005, stanza 11, line 1-5) pramesthi dewi kusumaningrum & a.b. sri mulyani 214 the word “there” in line 3 also suggests a reference to the previous place mentioned by the previous line (at the airport in a foreign country). by placing the woman and man’s perspectives within one stanza, lehman’s poem, therefore, puts both woman and man’s perspectives on a particular issue. stanza 11 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” starts with the woman’s perspective, and it continues into line 2 as one sentence employing herperspective: “when a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the / airport in a foreign country with a jeep.” (1-2). based on longman dictionary of contemporary english, the verb “want” is used to say that you need something or ask someone firmly to do something for you (“want”). thus, stanza 11 line 1 asserts that the woman needs man, for she demands his presence. moreover, stanza 11 lines 1-2 do not stop only in portraying that the woman needs the man. by including some details like “at the airport”, “in a foreign country”, and “with a jeep”, the woman in stanza 11 is portrayed as not only asking for man’s presence to be with her, but also saying it in demanding tone. stanza 11 lines 3-5 portray the man’s perspectives. the word “there” in line 3 links these lines into the previous lines. thus, lines 3-5 discuss the same issue as the previous one, with the same setting of place as its reference: at the airport in a foreign country. stanza 11 line 3 starts with a response given to the woman’s “demand” in the previous lines from the man’s perspective: the man is there. compared with the word “want” attributed to the woman in stanza 11 line 1, the man is attributed with the use of present tense. according to longman dictionary of contemporary english, the word “want” can also denote desire (“want”). desire is a wish, which means that it may not happen. nevertheless, present tense offers an idea that something is a fact or habit (azar, 1999: 13). therefore, the woman and man in lehman’s poem are “attributed” differently. the woman with her desire is pictured as demanding and unrealistic. on the other hand, man, attributed with the use of present tense, is pictured as more grounded and realistic. stanza 11 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” also pictures that the man does not complain about the fact that the woman is late for two hours: “when a man loves a woman he’s there. he doesn’t complain that / she’s two hours late” (3-4). the fact that man does not complain about the woman’s unrealistic demand and the fact that he has to wait because the woman is late shows that the man is dependable. moreover, stanza 11 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” strongly suggests how dependable a man is: “and there's nothing in the refrigerator.” (5). refrigerator is a thing used to keep food. “nothing in the refrigerator” suggests a fact that one is lack of food. food itself is a basic need for a human being. refrigerator, a place for keeping food, is closely related to woman’s domestic role: nurturance. portraying “nothing in the refrigerator” implicitly shows that the woman neglects her domestic role to nurture. the woman in stanza 11 is portrayed as having unrealistic demand as airport, foreign country, and jeep represent secondary needs. refrigerator, a place for keeping food, represents primary needs. the woman, having unrealistic demand while neglecting basic needs, and the man, not minding to have his basic needs neglected, represent how dependable and understanding man is. the woman, nonetheless, is portrayed as demanding, dependent, and less realistic. stanza 12 consists of 3 lines. it employs the woman’s perspective. the keywords “stay awake”, “nightfall”, and “the day to end” assert that stanza 12 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” employs night as its specific setting of time: “when a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake. she's like a child crying / at nightfall because she didn’t want the day to end.” (1-3). according to dictionary of symbols, night can be used to represent sleep, nightmares, monsters, and black thoughts (“night”). the representation of night in dictionary of symbols is justified in lehman's vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 215 poem by the woman’s attitude: “wants to stay awake”, “like a child crying”, and “didn’t want the day to end”. therefore, stanza 12, which employs the woman’s perspective, represents a negative view of night. it is to say that the woman in stanza 12 dislikes night. the specific setting of time: night in lehman’s poem stanza 12 is also closely related to sleep. it is because night is the time in which most people take a rest after working at day. de beauvoir argues that “she (woman) hates his sleep (man)” (1989: 657). the reason is that sleeping, which mostly takes time at night, isolates or creates a distance from her lover (de beauvoir, 1989: 657). woman views that “the absence of her lover is always torture” (de beauvoir, 1989: 657). the attitude of the woman in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” stanza 12 justifies de beauvoir’s argument. therefore, it is reasonable that the woman is pictured as having a negative view about night since night means “parting” with her lover. she is abandoned. the last stanza in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is stanza 13. stanza 13 consists of 6 lines. stanza 13 employs the same setting of time as the previous stanza. it is seen from the use of the words “night” (stanza 12) and “midnight” (stanza 13) in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”: “when a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking: / as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved.” (1-2). stanza 13 sets the man’s perspective about night and sleep. stanza 13, consequently, compares woman and man’s perspective about the same issues: night and sleep. stanza 13 line 1 portrays the man’s perspective about the woman’s sleep. the man’s perspective about woman’s sleep is presented as a metaphor to compare woman’s sleep with midnight and moon. midnight is compared with sleep, whereas moon is compared to beloved. according to dictionary of symbols, moon does not have its own light; and it only reflects the light of the sun (“moon”). only if night comes does the moon shine. lehman’s poem pictures moon as the symbol of the beloved. dictionary of symbols also regards moon as having closely links with female deity in myth, legend, folklore, folktale, and poetry (“moon”). it, consequently, highlights how the diction of “moon” relates closely to represent the woman in lehman’s poem. lehman’s poem stanza 13 makes analogy between midnight-sleep and moon-beloved. the meaning of sleep to woman, thus, is portrayed to have the same meaning as midnight to the moon. the woman and man are portrayed to have different views on sleep in lehman’s poem (compared to stanza 12). de beauvoir suggests that “the loved woman, when sleep restores the disarmed of childhood, belongs to no one: that certitude is enough” (1989: 657). whereas the woman feels abandoned when her lover sleeps, the man feels secured, for it is enough for him to be assured that she is his. the man sees his beloved’s sleep as a means to reveal her childhood side: “belongs to no one” (de beauvoir, 1989: 657). therefore, as moon “shines” in night, the man views that the woman “shines” in passivity of sleeping as his reflection and extension. the rest and extended lines (lines 3-6) of stanza 13 portray the contribution of the nature (fireflies, frogs sound, and stars) to the man who is watching his beloved sleeping at night. lines 3-6 show how the man gives meaning to night and his sleeping beloved. a thousand fireflies wink at him. the frogs sound like the string section of the orchestra warming up. the stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes; (lehman, 2005, stanza 13, lines 3-6) the setting in stanza 13 is clear: night. whereas the woman in stanza 12 focuses herself in seeing night as darkness and nightmares, the man views the beauty of night. fireflies are animals which shine in the dark. “a thousand fireflies wink” (1) in stanza 13 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” means that it is not only light that they give, but it is sparkling light since they wink. while the woman merely views night as pramesthi dewi kusumaningrum & a.b. sri mulyani 216 darkness, the man is able to find light, enjoyment in the darkness. besides, the man also finds the beauty of night from the frogs sound. frogs sound are usually heard on rainy days at night. stanza 13 lines 4-5 suggest how the man is able to give meaning to the natural frogs sound as musical instruments: string, a harmonious sound of culture. in addition to fireflies and frogs sound, the man also sees the beauty of night through the stars. night is the time at which people are able to see countless stars shine. stanza 13 line 6 shows how the man sees the stars not merely as stars, but for him, they resemble earrings whose shape is like grapes. compared to stanza 12 in which the woman views night cynically, the man seems to view it in a completely different way. whereas the woman regards night as the parting time with her beloved and abandonment, the man regards it as the time to see his sleeping beloved in her beautiful passivity likes the moon which shines in midnight. moreover, whereas the woman in stanza 12 focuses only in seeing night as darkness and nightmares, the man is able to find his enlightenment at night. his ability to find nature as enlightenment is something that the woman fails to notice. summarizing the explication of lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”, the next discussion attempts to review the findings of the gender relation in more compact means. the explication of lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” shows that gender relation portrayed in the poem strongly speaks about differences in woman and man that contribute to their relation. the differences are about woman and man seeing particular issues and their differences in perceiving how woman-man relation should be. the perspective employed by the poem is a third person. additionally, the poem does not mention a specific name for the “characters” in the poem, rather generalizes them as a woman and a man. therefore, although the above explication of lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” employs definite article “the” to refer to the characters inside the poem, the poem, since it leaves the characters nameless, refers to portray woman and man in general. the next discussion is the summary of the differences between woman and man found in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” and their contribution to gender relation. the first gender relation between woman and man found in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is about manners of speaking. stanza 1 portrays how woman is unable to have direct speech. in addition, stanza 2 shows how man does not understand this disability. stanzas 1 and 2, therefore, show how man fails to notice woman’s manners of speaking which often results in misunderstanding. the second gender relation in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is about never being in the same place. whereas the previous relation about manners of speaking is taken from woman’s side, the second gender relation is taken from man’s side. stanza 3 suggests how man considers that woman and man should not be in the same place (domain). furthermore, it also includes the different way man seeing himself to woman. stanza 3 suggests how man sees himself as the independent, active, and productive being as the breadwinner who connects to patriarchal world (gerzon, 1998: 539). woman, on the other hand, is seen as the dependent, passive, and consumptive being who stands still and disconnects from patriarchal world. the third gender relation in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is about being in the same place, but performing different roles. it is seen through stanza 4. the third gender relation is almost the same as the previous one, but it employs a different perspective: woman’s perspective. whereas man views woman and man to be in different places, woman views woman and man to be in the same place, but perform different roles. the fourth gender relation between woman and man found in lehman’s “when a vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 217 woman loves a man” repeats the first one: misunderstanding in communication. stanza 5 shows that the communication between man and woman results in failure. the presence of woman’s best friend shows how woman’s expectation to communicate with man does not work. it is because the communication between woman and man are cross-cultural communication (tannen, 1998: 114). it means that they communicate differently and the difference results in involving woman and man in miscommunication and misunderstanding. the fifth gender relation between woman and man found in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is about the way woman and man seeing their relation. stanzas 6 and 7 employ woman’s perspective in seeing gender relation. woman considers gender relation as the continuation of eve and adam in the fall in which they are portrayed as powerless beings to temptation. on the other hand, man, as seen through stanza 8, disagrees with woman in terms that they have power to not refer to eve and adam in seeing gender relation. the differences between woman and man, as portrayed in stanzas 1-8, result in woman-man fight, which is shown through stanza 9. the fight includes inappropriate words; ironically, woman and man view it not as a big deal since they consider it as fun. stanza 10 extends the enjoyment found in woman-man’s fight by showing that the fight results in breaking up, but woman and man make their relation altogether again. furthermore, by employing numbers seven and nine, stanza 10 asserts the interdependence between woman and man. however, when involving in a fight, woman, as shown in stanza 9, is the one who apologizes first. woman is pictured as understanding, for she is less defensive, ready to apologize and negotiate. yet, she refuses to be silent. she speaks up her mind. after the differences portrayed by stanzas 1-8 which result in a fight portrayed by stanzas 9-10, the gender relation between woman and man in lehman’s “when a woman love a man” still continues. whereas stanza 9 portrays woman as understanding when involving in a fight with her beloved, stanza 11 portrays the opposite. stanza 11 portrays man as the one who is understanding and dependable to cope with woman’s unrealistic demand. the last gender relation between woman and man in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is portrayed in stanzas 12 and 13. the difference is about woman and man’s view on night and sleep. woman, as mentioned in stanza 12, views night as darkness and nightmares. night is seen as abandonment, parting from her beloved. nonetheless, man, as mentioned in stanza 13, views night and sleep differently. man views his sleeping beloved as innocent; she shines in the passivity of sleeping at night. moreover, man acquires enlightenment through night at which he is able to give meaning to nature. since stanza 13 employs man’s perspective, his achievement in giving new meaning to night is considered as something which woman fails to notice. deconstructive reading of lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” and its contribution to question de beauvoir’s myth of woman as mentioned in the title, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” sets a ground on exposing woman’s perspective in viewing gender relation in expressing love. the form is free verse, indicating that the poem attempts to “discover a fresh and individual arrangement for words in every poem” (kennedy and gioia, 2002: 238). lehman’s poem does not follow conventional verse rule; instead, it presents a fresh and free idea about a woman loving a man, a rare idea of viewing gender relation in expressing love from woman’s perspective. the repetitions employed throughout the poem also emphasize the focus on gender relation in expressing love as seen in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. in addition to the theme and focus in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”, analyzing the intrinsic elements in the poem in form of the diction, word order (complexity), point of view, and tone pramesthi dewi kusumaningrum & a.b. sri mulyani 218 construct the idea of how the poem present the gender relation. the diction is concrete words, meaning that the poem minds the details. even though the concrete words employed refer to abstract ideas, but they results in more detailed and “grounded”. additionally, the word order (complexity) is also more understandable and “humble” since the poem omits the tendency to invert the word order and make it more complex in order to accomplish remarkable effects (kennedy and gioia, 2002: 70). moreover, the point of view employed is a third person’s perspective which marks that the poem attempts to be “objective” in presenting gender relation in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. thus, the diction, word order, point of view in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” suggests “objective” and “humble” tones in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. by stopping the discussion in this point, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” presents a first impression attempting to present gender relation in the poem with “objectivity” and “humbleness”. however, by continuing the discussion on the other intrinsic elements employed by the poem, the discussion results in finding a niche which proves that instead of cohering the poem into a single stable meaning, the elements in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” refuse to do that, and instead, break the single stable meaning into multiple meanings. therefore, the next discussion attempts to find the discontinuities in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” which betrays its first impression. lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” puts the discussion of gender relation in its metaphors, imagery, allusions, and symbols. in discussing gender relation, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” compares woman and man in form of metaphors, imagery, allusions, and symbols. since metaphors (compared to simile) refer to multiple associations (kennedy and gioia, 2002: 123), the use of metaphors indicates that the gender relation discussed in the poem also refers to multiple meanings. moreover, the use of imagery to present gender relation in the poem suggests that the poem seeks to look what is often overlooked (kennedy and gioia, 2002: 97). therefore, it indicates that what the poem offers in its first impression is capable of being broken. additionally, the use of allusions and symbols suggest that the words employed in the poem goes beyond what they state. thus, the first impression of lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” to portray that the gender relation in the poem is “objective” and “humble” is broken down by its other elements (metaphors, imagery, allusions, and symbols) which indicates that the poem refers to multiple meanings; it does not merely refer to a single stable meaning. additionally, metaphors, imagery, allusions, and symbols depend on context to make meanings. therefore, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” also depends on context to make meanings. since context depends on each reader’s background, it is impossible to achieve a single stable meaning. the form, diction, word order, point of view, and tone in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” suggest that the poem attempts to present gender relation in the poem “objectively”. however, the metaphors, imagery, allusions, and symbols employed in the poem suggest that gender relation presented in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is contextual: it depends on context since the association between the metaphors, imagery, allusions, and symbols employed in the poem and their significance relies on the way the reader gives them meaning. therefore, the attempt to present the gender relation in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” through the form, diction, word order, point of view, and tone in the poem are discontinued by the metaphors, imagery, allusions, and symbols governing the poem. the paradox within the intrinsic elements employed by lehman’s poem shows the poem’s inconsistency of presenting the gender relation “objectively”. furthermore, the paradox emerges in the same level of reading. it is self-contradictory. thus, it highlights the disunity of lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. additionally, the use of the third person point of view in lehman’s “when a woman vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 219 loves a man” suggests that the poem employs an “omniscient” persona. however, this “omniscient” persona in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is called into question because in the poem, the “omniscient” persona shifts from one perspective (taking side on woman) to the other perspective (taking side on man). the shifting proves that the “omniscient” persona fails to present the gender relation in the poem merely in one stable perspective. therefore, the “objectivity” in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is also called into question. the paradox shows the poem’s inconsistency to present the gender relation “objectively”. besides, de beauvoir categorizes the relation between woman and man in the form of the myth of woman. de beauvoir’s myth of woman is categorized into five myths based on five authors (motherlant, lawrence, claudel, breton, and stendhal). de beauvoir’s myth of woman presents gender relation between woman and man in binary oppositions. hence, the multiple references presented through the metaphors, imagery, allusions, and symbols in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” problematize de beauvoir’s myth of woman in which the five authors construct the gender relation in binary oppositions. the multiple references in gender relation as seen in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” prove that it is not sufficient to divide gender relation merely into two clusters. after applying deconstructive reading on the first level of reading of lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”, this research continues the deconstructive reading on the second level of reading of the poem. the next discussion attempts to seek the relation between the gender relation in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” and the gender relation portrayed through de beauvoir’s myth of woman. the deconstructive reading starts by portraying the gender relation in de beauvoir’s myth of woman and seeking the contribution of the poem in justifying the myth. the first myth of woman categorized by de beauvoir comes from motherlant. motherlant puts woman in different places in which man is the transcendent, while woman is the immanent (de beauvoir, 1989: 248249). stanza 3 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” employing man’s perspective also puts woman and man in different places. stanza 3 line 1 first portrays that man is in new york and woman in virginia. then, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” continues putting woman and man in different place: man in boston, ithaca, east hampton, and long island expressway; meanwhile, woman is put in new york, balbo park, and even portrayed to stand disconsolate. additionally, stanza 3 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” portrays that woman already achieves man’s place (new york); however, man has moved to another place (boston): “when a man loves a woman he is in new york and she is in virginia / or he is in boston, writing, and she is in new york, reading,” (1-2). as a result, stanza 3 portrays how woman is always left behind man. woman moves forward to man’s stage (new york), while man keeps on moving to the next stage (boston). he never goes backward. moreover, woman and man are portrayed to not only be in different places, but also perform different activities. stanza 3 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”, therefore, justifies de beauvoir’s myth of woman from motherlant. stanza 3 justifies the myth of woman in keeping woman and man in different places. furthermore, stanza 3 justifies the myth by presenting how man never lowers himself (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). the second myth of woman categorized by de beauvoir comes from lawrence. lawrence considers woman’s immanence is necessary to support patriarchal systems and he expects woman to give up her transcendence to suit herself to male (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). stanza 4 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” employing woman’s perspective justifies de beauvoir’s myth of woman from lawrence. woman in stanza 4 puts woman and man in the same domain, but remains performing different roles. stanza 4 employing woman’s pramesthi dewi kusumaningrum & a.b. sri mulyani 220 perspective and stanza 3 employing man’s perspective convey related idea. by agreeing that woman and man perform different roles although they are in the same domain, woman willingly accepts her gender role, the submissive one. therefore, her acceptance of gender role supports patriarchal systems which put woman and man in the same domain (patriarchy) with different roles. additionally, stanza 9 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” shows that woman and man are involved in a fight. even though the stanza does not provide the reason and the party to blame in the fight, woman is obliged to apologize first. it shows how woman is expected to maintain man’s pride. hence, stanza 9 shows how woman surrenders her power and willingly accepts her submissive role which results in supporting patriarchal systems. the third myth of woman categorized by de beauvoir comes from claudel. claudel is tenderer in defining gender relation compared to motherlant and lawrence. claudel puts god as the only transcendence, while woman and man are immanence (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). however, claudel puts different roles on woman and man. man extends life (leads), while woman maintains it (nurtures) (de beauvoir, 1989: 1989: 249). stanza 3 portrays man as independent, active, and productive. those characteristics reflected through man are closely related to the characteristics needed to lead and extend life. on the other hand, stanza 3 portrays woman as dependent, passive, and consumptive. although those characteristics are not strongly necessary to consider as the characteristics to maintain life (nurture), they obviously do not belong to characteristics needed to extend life (lead). additionally, the portrayal of man as a leader is also reflected through the same stanza in which man is portrayed to be one step higher than woman. additionally, stanzas 6-8 portraying woman and man’s view on gender relation justify the myth from claudel. in seeing gender relation, woman believes that gender relation refers to eve-adam relation with the great ancient biblical narrative: the fall. referring to the narrative, woman considers woman and man powerless to change the gender relation shaped since the fall. man, on the other hand, considers man and woman have power to change the gender relation. stanzas 6-8 show how woman remains keeping the belief inherited since the great ancient biblical narrative the fall and man extends the belief by arguing that they live in a transitional era which means that they do not need to follow the belief. woman “nurtures” the ancient belief of gender relation, while man challenges and extends the ancient belief. in addition to stanzas 6-8, stanzas 12-13 also justify the myth of woman from claudel. whereas stanzas 6-8 portray the justification of the myth from woman and man’s view on gender relation, stanzas 12-13 portray the justification of the myth from woman and man’s view on night and sleep. woman maintains the view of night and sleep merely as nightmares and abandonment. on the other hand, man extends the view of night into enlightenment from nature. the fact that woman’s role as maintaining life (nurturing) and man’s role as extending life (leading) as portrayed in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” stanzas 6-8 and 12-13 support the myth of woman from lawrence. woman’s role as maintaining life (nurturing) like what claudel pictures is essentially similar to giving woman’s power of extending life to man. in fact, by accepting the role to merely maintain life (nurture), woman also supports patriarchal systems. consequently, although claudel seems to portray gender relation in tenderer way, he also justifies the myth of woman from lawrence. the fourth myth of woman categorized by de beauvoir comes from breton. breton believes that true transcendence is returning to immanence because transcendence is the trigger of non-humanity (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). stanza 11 portraying man as understanding and dependable to deal with woman’s unrealistic demand shows his respect toward woman. it asserts his belief in achieving transcendence by returning to immanence since he respects woman (the vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 221 immanent), the one who is in charge of his achieving transcendence. furthermore, stanza 13 also portrays how man considers woman’s sleep as the revelation to childhood. childhood is related to not only belong to no one, but also be innocent. stanza 13 shows how man considers woman with her passivity is stunning as midnight to the moon. he shows his reflection in woman’s passivity. the fifth myth of woman categorized by de beauvoir comes from stendhal. stendhal considers that woman is also a transcendent; woman and man are in “reciprocal relations” (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). stanzas 9-10 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” show that although woman and man fight and even break up to seven to nine times, they remain together. despite differences, woman and man are interdependent. the five myths of woman categorized by de beauvoir from the five authors (motherlant, lawrence, claudel, breton, and stendhal) are indeed justified by lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. however, stanzas 1-2, stanza 5, and woman’s refusal to be silent in stanza 9 suit none of the myths. stanzas 1-2 and 5 are about the differences in the ways woman and man speak and communicate which result in miscommunication and misunderstanding. stanza 9 is about woman’s refusal to be silent when she is harmed. the absence of portraying the misunderstanding in speaking and communicating, and woman’ refusal to be silent in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” proves that de beauvoir’s myth of woman fails to accommodate all gender relation portrayed in the poem. furthermore, although the gender relation from the five authors in form of de beauvoir’s myth of woman is justified in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”, each myth is incapable of portraying all gender relation depicted in the poem. motherlant’s perspective on gender relation that man is transcendent, whereas woman is immanent (de beauvoir, 1989: 248-249) merely covers stanza 3 which employs man’s perspective. therefore, as stanza 3 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” employs man’s perspective, motherlant’s view on gender relation is only justified from man’s side, not both sides (man and woman). woman’s perspective is absent from motherlant’s myth of woman presented in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. in addition to motherlant, lawrence’s view on portraying gender relation that woman (the immanent) should surrender her personal transcendence to support patriarchal systems (man, the transcendent) (de beauvoir, 1989: 249) fails to reflect all gender relation found in the poem. lawrence’s perspective on gender relation merely covers stanzas 4 and 9. stanza 4 employs woman’s perspective, whereas stanza 9 employs more neutral perspective as it does not mention the party it represents. lawrence’s view on gender relation in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” omits man’s perspective and it fails to cover all gender relation in the poem. similar to motherlant and lawrence, claudel’s perspective also fails to include all gender relation found in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. claudel’s perspective on categorizing man’s role as extending life (leading) and woman as maintaining it (nurturing) (de beauvoir, 1989: 249) merely covers stanzas 3, 6-8, and 12-13. differing from the previous myths, claudel’s perspective in seeing gender relation in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” includes both woman and man’s perspectives. however, it still fails to cover all. furthermore, the division on woman and man’s characteristics and their contribution to extend (lead) or maintain life (nurture) in stanza 3 discontinues being constructed as binary. besides motherlant, lawrence, and claudel, breton’s view on gender relation is not able to cover all gender relation found in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. breton views true transcendence as returning to immanence (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). breton’s perspective on gender relation is justified only by stanza 11 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. it includes pramesthi dewi kusumaningrum & a.b. sri mulyani 222 both woman and man’s perspective, but still fails to cover all. the last myth of woman by stendhal portrays that woman and man are in “reciprocal relations” (de beauvoir, 1989: 249). stendhal’s view on gender relation merely covers stanzas 9 and 10. similar to the four authors, stendhal’s perspective on gender relation fails to embrace all gender relation reflected in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” although it includes both woman and man’s perspectives. the gap found in de beauvoir’s myth of woman proves that to construct gender relation in binary oppositions is unattainable. lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” shows that gender relation is complex and fluid that to construct it in binary oppositions is oversimplified. none of the myths is able to continually reflect the gender reflection from the first to the last stanza in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. therefore, the attempt to suggest universal values on gender relation in de beauvoir’s myth of woman is debunked by lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. hence, the discontinuity of de beauvoir’s myth of woman to portray gender relation between woman and man problematizes the “validity” of the myth to “objectively” depict gender relation. the myths are indeed justified by lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”, but it shifts from one to another. it indicates how context is vital. the gender relation in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” does justify the myths. however, the myth justified relies on the context. on the other hand, de beauvoir’s myth of woman universalizes context. therefore, to construct and stereotype gender relation in binary oppositions by universalizing context is indeed oversimplified. it does not mean that the myth is incapable to portray gender relation. however, by universalizing context, the myth results in generalizing and stereotyping woman and man. besides the justification of de beauvoir’s myth of woman and its gaps in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”, the poem challenges de beauvoir’s myth of woman. as aforementioned discussion suggests, de beauvoir’s myth of woman fails to accommodate all gender relation presented in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. the ways woman and man speak and communicate and woman’s refusal to be silent are absent from de beauvoir’s myth of woman. this omission is crucial to challenge the myth of woman because stanzas 1-2, 5, and 9 present how woman does not merely accept her gender role. instead, she speaks her voice. stanzas 1-2 and 5 portray the ways woman and man speak and communicate which result in misunderstanding and miscommunication. stanza 1 portrays woman’s incapability in speaking directly. she shifts from one to another. stanza 2, on the other hand, implies that man has different manners of speaking, for he is accused as not understanding woman’s manners of speaking. hence, stanza 2 challenges de beauvoir’s myth of woman. stanza 2 breaks the disunity of the myth of woman which portrays that man is transcendent. in fact, he lacks of knowing and understanding woman’s manners of speaking. additionally, stanza 5 portrays the misunderstanding and miscommunication between woman and man differently. stanza 5 portrays woman’s incapability to interpret man’s silence. for woman, silence means no attention; however, it is a fact that in silence, man actually listens (tannen, 1998: 116). nevertheless, man fails to understand that intimacy in relationships through sharing is important for woman; therefore, she wants them as best friends (tannen 1998: 114). the different manners of communicating result in misunderstanding and miscommunication. since it is misunderstanding and miscommunication, it is crucial to note that no one to blame because they are just different. stanzas 1-2 and 5 prove that woman and man employ different manners of speaking and communicating. since they are different, it exaggerates to say that one (man) is superior to the other (woman). therefore, it is unnecessary to compare woman and man vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 223 because they are just different. it means that nothing is shared in common, so it exaggerates to compare and find who is superior to the other. by then, stanzas 1-2 and 5 in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” discontinue the construction of de beauvoir’s myth of woman which portrays that man is the transcendent, the superior (motherlant, lawrence, claudel). in addition to stanzas 1-2 and 5, stanza 9 depicts woman’s refusal to be silent. stanza 9 pictures a fight between woman and man. stanza 9 shows how woman is obliged to apologize firstly though the trigger of the fight or who in charge of fighting are not clear. woman “seems” to accept her role to be understanding, less offensive, and ready to apologize and negotiate. she keeps man’s pride to never lower himself; hence, by accepting her role, she supports patriarchal systems. by this point, woman justifies de beauvoir’s myth of woman from motherlant and lawrence. however, stanza 9 is ended by woman’s refusal to be silent even though she accepts her role. she speaks up her voice. she asserts in a vulnerable tone how she is victimized. woman’s refusal to be silent breaks the discontinuity of de beauvoir’s myth of woman which constructs woman as immanent and willingly accepting her role (motherlant, lawrence). woman indeed is incapable of refusing and changing her role, but she speaks her voice and shows how she is treated unfairly. besides the justification and challenges of de beauvoir’s myth of woman in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” along with the gaps found, the nameless characters (a man and a woman) in lehman’s poem is crucial to problematize de beauvoir’s myth of woman. the nameless and generalized characters indicate that lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” represents woman and man in general. therefore, the contribution of the poem in problematizing de beauvoir’s myth of woman also applies to woman and man in general. the paradoxes found in the attempt to construct gender relation “objectively” in binary oppositions as lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” presents are called into question. moreover, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” consisting of 13 stanzas is only able to reflect some context in gender relation. in fact, none of them succeeds to portray the gender relation in speaking and communicating and woman’s refusal to silently accept her role. since the gender relation context in real life is more fluid and complicated, the myth of woman by the five authors as categorized by de beauvoir is surely not applicable to portray gender relation in real life. the construction of gender relation in binary oppositions by the five authors is called into question. additionally, the myth of woman is initiated by five authors who are men. hence, it is necessary to question the “objectivity” of the myth since it omits the other gender’s perspective: woman. woman’s voice is absent from the myth of woman. the myth attempts to depict woman, but it is derived from man’s perspective. therefore, although claudel, breton, and stendhal portray the gender relation tendererly than motherlant and lawrence, they remain presenting gender relation in form of the myth of woman in how woman suits man (de beauvoir, 1989: 251). finally, although the myth of woman stereotypes both genders unequally, woman still becomes the marginalized party. it is because the myth of woman is initiated by men. woman’s voice is absent and the myth of woman always depicts how man is superior to woman that the myth keeps portraying gender relation by presenting how woman supports patriarchal systems. additionally, lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” loses its voice in taking side on woman. the theme asserts that lehman’s “when a woman loves a woman” attempts to show woman’s perspective in expressing love between woman and man. however, the need of employing man’s perspective proves how unattainable it is to portray woman’s perspective without seeking the relation between both genders. woman and man are proven to be interdependent. their relation is like “mirror images”; one sees her/his reflection in the other (devor, 1998: 28). since they are interdependent, it is obviously pramesthi dewi kusumaningrum & a.b. sri mulyani 224 exaggerating to claim that one is superior than the other. besides showing the interdependency between woman and man, the need of employing man’s perspective shows how woman still lives under patriarchy’s reflection. lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”, therefore, not only problematizes de beauvoir’s myth of woman, but also reflects how in attempting to pursue gender equality, woman remains the marginalized one. concluding remarks the first level of reading conducted in this research is close reading commenting on the intrinsic elements of lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. the findings on the form, diction, word order (complexity), point of view, and tone in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” suggest that the poem attempts to portray gender relation “objectively”. however, the findings on the metaphors, imagery, symbols, and allusions in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” contradict the findings on the aforementioned intrinsic elements, for the findings suggest that the poem employs multiple underlying meanings. the second level of reading conducted in this research is close reading focusing on explicating lehman’s “when a woman loves a woman”. the findings on the second level of reading in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” show that lehman’s poem depicts some gender relation underlying the poem. the gender relation represented in the poem is woman-man relation in speaking, never being in the same place (domain), performing different roles in the same place (domain), communicating, viewing gender relation, fighting, and considering night and sleep. woman and man are proved to have different views on the relation portrayed by lehman’s “when a woman loves a man”. the aforementioned findings are the answers to the first problem formulation about how lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” depicts gender relation on different levels of reading. in addition to the aforementioned findings, the next findings are the deconstructive reading findings on lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” and the gaps found in the poem along with how the gaps problematize de beauvoir’s myth of woman. the findings on the deconstructive reading are the answer to the second problem formulation conducted in this research. the deconstructive reading on the first level of reading conducted in lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” reveals that the intrinsic elements in the poem are fluid and paradoxical. therefore, the fluid and paradoxical intrinsic elements problematize the “objectivity” of portraying gender relation that lehman’s poem attempts to show. additionally, the deconstructive reading on the second level of reading reveals the discontinuity of de beauvoir’s myth of woman to construct the gender relation in the poem in binary oppositions. besides, the universalizing context and the absence of woman’s voice in de beauvoir’s myth of woman reveal the question of the “objectivity” of the myth and how even though de beauvoir’s myth of woman stereotypes both gender unequally, woman remains the marginalized one. a literary work is a reflection of what happens in society. therefore, the complexity and fluidity of gender relation as exposed by lehman’s “when a woman loves a man” is also the reflection of today’s society. yet, as de beauvoir’s myth of woman constructs gender relation in binary oppositions, society oversimplifies the fluid gender relation into binary oppositions: woman and man along with each different role. the unequal binary oppositions result in stereotyping and generalizing woman-man relation along with gender roles. this results in punishing, and in the worst case alienating whoever deviates the roles. however, woman keeps being marginalized because she lives in patriarchal society in which man has the power and authority. vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 225 references “apple”. a dictionary of literary symbols. 2nd ed. 2007. “apple”. dictionary of symbols. 2nd ed. 1996. azar, betty schrampfer. understanding and using english grammar third edition. new york: pearson education, 1999. barry, peter. beginning theory: an introduction to literary and cultural theory. new york: manchester university press, 1995. “be supposed to do/be something”. longman dictionary of contemporary english. 5th ed. 2009. bostick, 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(biblestudy.org/bibleref/meaning-ofnumbers-in-bible/9.html). june 5, 2016. “want”. longman dictionary of contemporary english. 5th ed. 2000. http://www.biblestudy.org/bibleref/meaning-of-numbers-in-bible/9.html). http://www.biblestudy.org/bibleref/meaning-of-numbers-in-bible/9.html). page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4 page 5 pheno vol 16 2.pdf (3) artikel 1 putu (arina) ed-2 (4) artikel 2 indri (arina) ed-1 (5) artikel 3 ose (hir) ed-2 (6) artikel 4 alvian & anna (arina) ed-2 (7) artikel 5 eilen & hir (hir) ed-2 (8) artikel 6 elisabeth ratih & ni luh (hir) ed-2 (9) artikel 7 munthe & ria (arina) ed-2 (10) artikel 8 rosa vania & elisa (hir) ed-2 (11) artikel 9 pramesthi & mul (hir) ed-2 (13) index vol 16 no 2 oktober 2016-1 (14) contributor's notes-1 242 vol. 21 no. 2, october 2021, pp. 242-251 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i2.3009 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. persona in social media: a case study on baim paula youtube channel aidatul chusna aidatul.chusna@unsoed.ac.id faculty of humanities, universitas jenderal soedirman, indonesia abstract article information social media enables its users to participate in creating and sharing media contents through their accounts; thus, it gives opportunity to gain popularity for anyone, including celebrity. this paper is aimed at revealing celebrities’ strategy to increase and maintain their popularity by constructing self-image through social media. videos from baim paula youtube channel are selected as the main data of the analysis, considering baim wong’s success as celebrity and content creator. using textual approach, the vidoes created and shared are analized as a cultural text which demonstrates celebrities’ self-representation in social media. the result shows that baim wong performs various selfimages through his videos contents. his prank videos indirectly indicate authenticity and honesty entitled to baim wong’s image, as a strategy to create closeness to his fans. he also construcs an altruistic persona by giving presents and/or money to his pranked targets. another self-representation is seen in videos about his daily activities with family and friends. through these videos, baim wong constructs his image as a family man. the persona performed in social media has successfully attracted more fans/ subscribers and enhanced his fame. subsequently, it generates profit not only from his youtube channel, but also from advertising agencies and tv stations that hire him. keywords: baim wong; celebrities; authentic; family; persona received: 7 december 2020 revised: 17 february 2021 accepted: 10 april 2021 introduction the development of web 2.0 technology and social media allows anyone to become famous. with the convenience provided by the technology, vlogging has become a trend and has even spawned many new celebrities from cyberspace, namely atta halilintar, ria ricis, arif muhammad, suhay salim, rachel goddard, sara gibson, anya geraldine, awkarin, and many more. starting with sharing information, images, or videos in their social media accounts, these so-called micro celebrities or influencer are now able to earn a lot of benefits from their posts. https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 243 youtube is the most popular platform for indonesian social media users, aged between 16 to 64 years, with the percentage of accessing this media reaching 88% (jayani, 2020). with the slogan "broadcast yourself", youtube has become a medium for sharing creative works through video sharing and interacting through the comment section, even benefiting from uploaded videos. profit is an inseparable aspect of using social media, including youtube. pelle snickars and patrick vanderau (snickars & vonderau, 2009, p. 11) revealed that the uniqueness of youtube lies in how the platform negotiates and navigates between the community and commerce. youtube is a media based on industry and its users. in line with snickars and vanderau, burgess and green (kidd, 2016, p. 70) said that youtube is a space for content creators, amateurs and professionals, and corporationsincluding advertising companies, forging good cooperation mutually beneficial; thus, making youtube the most important mediator in today's global media market. unlike other social media platforms, youtube is a space for its users to create creative content and share various kinds of videos, including music videos (song covers), short films, cooking videos, travel videos, or even videos of everyday activities. the success of these micro-bloggers or vloggers is apparently followed by many celebrities in indonesia who are trying their luck to become youtubers. with the status of a celebrity who is certainly well-known and even has many fans, it becomes easier for these celebrities to get followers or subscribers. baim wong can be said to be one of the most successful celebrities who also become a youtuber today, with an income of up to billions of rupiah per month and the number of subscribers to his youtube channel named baim paula as much as more than 16.8 million, in just about four years (baim paula’s youtube stats (summary profile) social blade stats, n.d.), as shown in figure 1 below: figure 1. data statistics of baim paula youtube channel, taken from socialblade.com vlogging is becoming a new form of life narrative which is documented in video form and shared with the public. through his youtube channel, baim wong shares more videos about daily activities with his family, closest friends, and the community around him. through his videos, baim wong also presents a different self-image from what fans and the public usually see in mass media or television. studies on micro celebrity or micro influencers related to fame gained through social network sites have been widely carried out, including studies on the practice of celebrating (celebrification) conducted through social networks (maghfiroh & journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) aidatul chusna 244 hapsari, 2015, p. 57), linguistic studies on the use of hashtags (#) by micro-celebrities in twitter (page, 2012). meanwhile, research on the impact of endorsements carried out by micro-celebrities or influencer in indonesia shows that emotional ties mediate authenticity by word of mouth and the possibility of purchasing products (cahyaningtyas & sutikno, 2019). another study is about the strategies carried out by micro-celebrities in the twitter room as well as interactions with their followers (rahmawan, 2014, p. 1). this study found several strategies adopted by micro-celebrities/ influencer to maintain relationships with their followers, namely stimulated conversation, audience recognition, and self-disclosure. yet, there are only few studies on the phenomenon of celebrities turning to social networking sites. meanwhile, there are more indonesian celebrities who are starting to use social media (facebook, instagram, youtube, etc) to perform themselves, such as rafi ahmad, baim wong, dedi corbuzier, luna maya, and many others. one of the study on celebrity in social media is conducted by yessica (yessica, 2017), focusing on the role of chelsea olivia as a celebrity endorser via instagram on consumer purchase interest. using a survey techniquue, the result shows that chelsy olivia’s constructed characters, namely expertise, trust, and attractiveness give significant effect on consumer buying interest. another study, conducted by sutriono and haryatmoko (sutriono & haryatmoko, 2018), examine celebrities capital mobilization in social media as a contested arena. by using bourdeu’s concept, the study shows that symbolic capital owned by celebrities becomes their power that are often converted to social and economic capital. however, all of these previous studies do not highlight the use of social media by celebrities (and their production teams) to build their persona. focusing on baim wong's youtube channel, this paper discusses how celebrities construct their self-representation through social networking sites, especially youtube. therefore, this discussion cannot be separated from the logic of social media as media that is interactive and participatory, as well as commercial. thus, it is expected to be able to add a new insight into this phenomenon, especially related to self-image construction within the mechanism of social networking sites. methodology this study uses a descriptive qualitative method as it aims at describing the phenomenon of celebrity’s self-representation in social media. (baim paula) youtube channel is selected as a case study. as stake (cresswell, 1998, p. 62) said, case studies focus on either a certain casebecause of its uniqueness, it requires study (intrinsic case study), or a case viewed as the instrument to describe an issue (instrumental case study). despite the various data may be used in a case study, this paper only used documents and audio visual material (youtube videos) to analyze the issue of selfrepresentation in social media. within the scope of cultural studies, the audio-visual material –as in the form of youtube videos, is among a wide array of cultural texts used as a unit of textual analysis approach to discuss a wider cultural issue or phenomenon (davis, 2008, p. 57). this study argues that baim wong’s success as a content creator indicates a cultural phenomenon related to the self representation in social media. thus, to investigate further, collecting data becomes the initial step of the study. data collection is conducted by doing observation the videos uploaded and shared in baim paula youtube channel. since the beginning of baim paula's youtube channel, a number of 1211 videos have been uploaded and shared, covering various themes, namely: daily activities with family and friends (family vlog), pranks, ramadan activities, charity and give away. from the various themes presented in this channel video, i chose the three themes that got the most views, namely such as prank, ping pong challenge, ramadan, sahur with bapau, qna, giveaway, and bapau vlog (source: youtube baim paula). the videos that raise these three themes becomes the main data that i analyze to see the strategy carried out by the production team of the bapau youtube channel in constructing baim wong's selfrepresentation through social media mechanisms, especially youtube. as the journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 245 supporting data, i gathered information related to baim wong from online media. the analysis utilizes textual approach by focusing on baim wong’s persona through narration and the visual image presented in the videos. concepts of celebrity and selfrepresentation in social media are the theoretical framework applied in the analysis. on the study of celebrity, marwick and boyd (jerslev & mortensen, 2018) argue that celebrities should be understood not merely as a figure, but more importantly, as a performative practice, which “involves ongoing maintenance of a fan basis, performed intimacy, authenticity and access, and construction of a consumable persona” (jerslev & mortensen, 2018, p. 158). thus, persona is important for celebrity. it has social function, namely a cultural formation that participates in the 'horizon of hope' in the daily life of young people and others. (kanai, 2015, p. 232) celebrities are considered to have this function, because they are often portrayed as ideal figures in various mass media. therefore, celebrities do not only have an entertainment role, but also serve as role models and guides for the lives of their audiences (pringle, 2004, p. xxii). concepts of self-construction by goffman is another useful theoretical foundation of the analysis. according to goffman (kidd, 2016, p. 64), in a society that strictly regulates public and private boundaries, performance is social interaction in daily communication. like a dramaturgy, identity is always displayed situationally and relationally at the basic social stages of life, including the formal and public identitywhich is on stage and the more informal and private one, that is shown at the backstage, where stage behavior is trained. the backstage is thus an inaccessible area to the audience, as it is where the important secret of a show comes from and the players may act outside of the characters they are playing. the boundaries of the private and public spheres as described by goffman above change along with the development of media technology. meyrowitz calls the middle region (middle area) a new social arena that merges the flow of information from the two previous areas and reveals some performances that were previously hidden from the audience. the uncertainty of the public and the private boundaries has made the behavior of the middle region, such as appearances on television and other media, to continue to be debated. middle region also supports discussions about authenticity and privacy in social media. social media is a commercially based platform, so that the self-display space provided for its users cannot be separated from this goal. in the end, the self that is displayed undergoes changes following this mechanism. as described by marwick (kidd, 2016, p. 67), social media encourages its user audience to present themselves and profit through the visibility and attention it receives. to increase social status, a product or celebrity constructs a persona for marketing purposes. this persona has been heavily edited, controlled, and monitored, following the commercial purposes that represent selfrepresentation. the technical mechanisms of social media reflect the values in which they are produced, namely a culture dominated by commercial interests. this kind of changes is rooted in contemporary capitalism, particularly the philosophy of deregulation and privatization known as neoliberalism. results and discussion this section discusses the video content created and shared in baim wong's youtube channel, as a strategy to build his persona. the contents become narrative texts that shape a celebrity's self-representation and generates high visibility and popularity, making him more known than ever. this paper will look at three content themes that have received many viewers and describe the persona formed as a self-representation of baim wong's figure. prank video baim wong’s popularity as a content creator can be seen in the prank videos that he shared in his youtube channel. the video where he plays the role of a crazy person has even got more than 10 million views. prank videos of being crazy have been carried out several times in several areas in jakarta and journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) aidatul chusna 246 outside jakarta. in some of these videos he also invites his closest friends, among artists and other public figures, to play a prank as crazy person. in one videouploaded on january 22, 2019, for example, baim wong pretended to be a lunatic roaming the streets and begging for mercy on the intended target, who is the public he meets directly on the street. this video has been watched more than 12 million times, and has even become the sixth trending topic on youtube (indita, 2019). various reactions were shown when he approached multiple targets; some were afraid and immediately left, but some were sympathetic by giving food or money, as seen in figure 2 below: figure 2. baim wong acted as a mentally-ill person in his prank video prank video is not relatively new. initially, it is widely used by comedians as part of their comedy content. they use hidden cameras to trick their targets, who don't realize they are part of an action that ends in shock and unexpected. the important moment in this prank action is when the prankster shows himself and explains the real situation. reaction videos like this have become a standard for various video formats uploaded on youtube, spearheaded by the fine brothers (benny and rafi), a comedian duo who even founded an online entertainment company whose popularity stems from the creation of special reaction video channels (giles, 2018, p. 119). reaction videos are very popular and are liked by young people who also make up the majority of internet users. reactions that produce emotions spontaneously are believed to have authenticity values that are not found in other entertainment genres. the spontaneity and authenticity shown in the prank videos shared by baim wong also indirectly builds his self representation in the media. by showing that the videos do not use scripts (the dialogue is spontaneous) and prank targets from the public that he meets on the streets are randomly picked, it represents baim wong’s character as a spontaneous, honest, and unengaged self. in addition, this video also shows the preparations before the prank is carried out, such as the atmosphere at his home when he is dressed up like a beggar and a crazy person. what is shared on youtube video seems like what meyrowitz calls a middle region which seems to merge the private and public aspects of a celebrity, as well as sharing some information that should be hidden 'backstage'. thus, a question raised: is the preparation part shown in the video trully a ‘backstage’part? the backstage area, as goffman defined (kidd, 2016, p. 64), is locked away from the audience, as the important secret of a show is kept here and the players may act outside of the characters they are playing. when it has been ‘unlocked’, it journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 247 becomes another stage. it is part of the stage to perform baim wong’s selfidentity. as described above, the self represented in social media is a form of persona that has been polished, monitored and followed commercial ideas. as a celebrity, authenticity and honesty are very important values to enhance selfimage as a “brand” that is liked by users. dyer (franssen, 2019, p. 315) says that fame (stardom) is shaped by "a rhetoric of honesty or authenticity, two qualities that are highly valued by stars because they guarantee that they are telling the truth, and appearing as they are" (a rethoric of sincerity or authenticity, two qualities greatly prized in the stars because they guarantee, respectively, that the star really means what he or she says, and that the star really is what she or he appears to be). in the end, authentic and honest self-construction becomes self-image (personal branding) as a form of selfpromotion for commercial purposes. altruism altruism is defined as an “unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others” (altruism | definition of altruism by merriamwebster, n.d.) it is a behaviour or quality attributed to people who centers on someone or something other than themselves. many of the videos uploaded and shared on baim paula (bapau) youtube channel depict baim wong's altruistic behavior. the popularity of prank videos not only shows the entertainment aspect, but also the nature of generosity as part of the persona that is constructed by baim wong and his production team. in every prank that is carried out, baim wong almost always chooses targeted people who are considered to come from lower economic class. at the end of each prank, he always gives a certain amount of money to the people who were targeted, so it was not uncommon for the prank video to end with a picture of the happiness of the targets who received the prize money from baim wong. the camera is aimed at the target's emotional and blissful facial expressions after receiving the money/ assistance. baim wong’s generosity even received appreciation from youtube ceo susan wojcicki in her tweet on april 14, 2020, highlighting his ‘gemas’ (gerakan memakai masker/movement to wear masks), a nationwide action project aimed at raising people’s awareness to wear masks to prevent covid-19 transmission and providing 30 million masks for underprivileged people. the tweet was then uploaded to baim wong's instagram accountas seen in figure 3, which increase and strengthen baim wong’s altruistic persona in social media. figure 3. appreciation of youtube ceo for baim wong's generous action baim wong's self-representation as a generous person strongly supports the image he has built as a celebrity. as previously described, celebrities have a social function as role models for society. the positive image that continues to be built through the posted and journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) aidatul chusna 248 shared videos is surely increasing the number of fans or subscribers of the figure. in the fasting month of this year, baim paula's number of youtube subscribers has increased sharply with an average number of views of 1 million for just one video, and has become the highest-earning youtuber in indonesia based on youtube adsense every month ranging from $ 64.7k $ 1,000,000 or rp. 970,5000 .000 rp. 15,000,000,000 (agustina, 2020). it also benefits baim wong with the increasing profit. family vlogging family vlogging is among the popular video formats uploaded in youtube. time magazine noted that the time spent watching family channel videos has increased by 90% in 2017 (eaton, 2019). as vlogging become more popular and gives revenues, many families are making it as their main income. they create video content with the entire family members, while earning enough money for them. working in a stress-free environment and aren’t restricted in certain time or hours, family vlogging becomes the main reason for these vloggers (suha, 2020). the ace family, la brant fam, eh bee family, and daily bumps are some the family channels who earns profits from their videos. in indonesia, to name the few, the similar phenomenon refers to the popularity of family channels of gen halilitar, rans entertainment, and the hermansyah a6. baim wong’s family vlogging has also become one of his popular videos. baim wong shares his daily activities with his family, closest friends, and also the bapau youtube production team. several videos tell about her household journey with paula verhoeven, from getting acquainted, having a relationship, then getting married, to becoming new parents. the video shared on december 28, 2019 about the process of the birth of his child, even received more than 8 million views (proses kelahiran baby kiano tiger wong .. youtube, n.d.). in this video, the emotions of joy and compassion are shown through baim wong and the extended family accompanying the birth of his son. this 15minute video shows quite detailed pictures, from the moment of baim wong and paula's son was taken out of the operating room and examined by doctors and nurses to the moment of baim wong initiated adzan (the islamic prayer call) while holding him gently. this video exhibits baim wong’s loving family that every one is dreaming to have. moreover, the close-up shot on baim wong performing adzan to his son indicates another important character to be shown to the audience, namely the image of baim wong as a good muslim. these two self-images, a family man and a good muslim, are the manifestation of celebrity as an ideal figure, which serves as role model and guide for the lives of his audiences (pringle, 2004, p. xxii). vlog presenting daily family activities shows the fluidity of the private and public sphere in social media. this vlog shows the closeness the celebrity wants to share with his fans, which is rarely seen in the image of celebrities in the mainstream media. presenting private activities to the public is a strategy to get closer to fans and make them part of the artist's life or vice versa. in this family vlogging content, baim wong tends to choose to build a self-image as member of the community. video contents that are spontaneous, unfiltered and more intimate are seen in many of these celebrity family videos. this type of content format is often found in the videos of influencer families who are not from the artist's family, because it accentuates their status as ordinary people with daily activities that are not much different from the general audience. abidin (abidin, 2017, p. 4) mentions several themes used by influencer families in the video content they upload, including: (1) developmental milestones, which document the development of children in the family, such as using a potty for the first time or when they lose their first tooth; (2) family celebrations, such as holiday celebrations and birthdays, which show how families commemorate special events in their personal moments; (3) errands, which illustrate how the family is managed, such as talking to a built-in camera during mealtimes or in the car while driving school, so that it looks more haphazard and spontaneous; (4) confession, which indicates that the family has private conversations or shares personal reflections, such as when parents reveal parenting mistakes or when journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 249 children reflect on increased fame. (5) reactions, which contain children's responses to current events, such as viral videos and global tragedies, to spontaneous questions from parents to children, to pranks that are done to capture children's unexpected kindness in public; (6) logistics, which broadcasts how the family manages the vlog and their involvement with followers, such as reading fan letters in front of the camera and conducting question and answer sessions (q&a). playing on social media, baim wong also adopts these everyday activity themes, to create a simple self-image and be part of the general public. he shares many videos related to his child's growth and development, such as the first time he tastes food, he has his first teeth, and his first walk. he also shared videos of celebrating eid with his wife, child and family on his website channel. what are shown in such vlog is a type of experiences that most family have and deal with in their daily life. performing the family activities represent baim wong’s figure as a member of society. he positions himself equally in front of his followers despite his fame and fortune. in addition, the light and spontaneous everyday themes not only show closeness and openness to his fans and audiences in general, but also the authenticity of self-images formed through social media. however, it is worth remembering that social media works within the logic of capitalism. the authenticity shown in the videos is part of the persona that has been adapted to commercial purposes, so that social media users also form multiple identities, by negotiating in the realm of private and public life. the intimacy displayed in baim wong's video content is part of the commodification of self-representation he does for commercial purposes. baim wong's persona, which was formed through family vlog content, has proven to generate profits not only from his youtube channel, but also from advertisements and endorsements of baby products, as well as many programs on several private television stations, with a more or less the same format, namely family content. conclusion the development of web 2.0 technology and social media encourages celebrities to take advantage of these media to increase and maintain their social status as celebrities. in contrast to mass media and electronic media such as magazine and television, mass media has a character that allows its users to become actors of production and consumption. social networking sites as a medium of communication, connection and socialization are interactive and participatory. baim wong is one of the indonesian celebrities who has successfully utilized social network sites to increase his popularity and gain profit as a content creator through the baim paula youtube channel. the uploaded and shared content depicts the personas of various identities through spontaneous, relaxed and ‘truthful’ performances. this kind of performance is widely liked because it brings the celebrity closer to his fans through authentic self-representation and seems banal, so that it shows the celebrity is part of ordinary society, like the general public. the spirit of generosity is another self-image that is very prominent in the video content he uploads. as a celebrity, good self-representation will make him not only an idol in the world of entertainment, but also a role model and guide for society. however, social media is commercial based media, so its content is intended to make a profit. baim wong's selfrepresentation is a persona that benefits him as a celebrity. the visibility and popularity of the shared video content has also increased his fame as a celebrity and has brought him very high income from the profession as a content creator, product endorsement, television program programs, and other partnerships with various companies. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) aidatul chusna 250 references abidin, c. 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(2017). pengaruh seleberiti endorser melalui media sosial terhadap minat beli konsumen (survey chelsea olivia sebagai selebriti endorser pada siswi sekolah kristen ketapang 1 kelas 10 dan 11 tahun ajaran 2016 – 2017). prologia, 1(1), 287–292. https://doi.org/10.24912/pr.v1i1.1418 phenomena tri septa nurhantoro 156 the use of taboo in djenar maesa ayu’s mereka bilang, saya monyet! tri septa nurhantoro cepta2isme@gmail.com department of english, respati yogyakarta university abstract this paper concerns on the use of taboo expressions in a literary work: djenar’s mereka bilang saya monyet!, which is about eighty. based on those data, those expressions can be grouped into their categories and degrees of politeness-impoliteness. those categories are: comparison with animal, bodily effluvia, bodily organ, mental defect, disease, torturing-rapingkilling, sexual activity, sexual-related behavior, consumption, place and verbal insult. meanwhile, the degrees of politeness-impoliteness are: euphemism, orthophemism and dysphemism. it is expected that the reader of this paper can comprehend the use of taboo, particularly in a literary work. keywords: taboo, politeness, impoliteness introduction as human, we live in a complex society that exists in the world and has diversity in its culture. the culture in a society influences the way we behave. similarly, our behavior also influences the culture. language itself is a part of society that is also interrelated to culture. thus, language and society are not independent. wardaugh states that there should be some kind of relationship between the sounds, words and syntax of a language and the ways in which speakers of that language experience the world and behave in it (2006: 221). therefore, language and culture are closely related to one another. the relation between society (culture) and language becomes the main concern of the discussion in sociolinguistics. in every culture, there is always a rule about prohibition or forbidden things to do or say, which can be written or unwritten. this rule is widely known as taboo. taboo is believed to be related to bad things. however, along with the development of society, now people feel more freely to express their expression and aspiration. indonesia has started this era since the fall of soeharto regime in 1997, the beginning of reformation era. this also affects the development of literature. in indonesian literature, young female authors like ayu utami, dewi lestari, fira basuki and djenar maesa ayu are popping up and becoming famous. they bring up controversial issues and develop them in various ways in their writings. among young female writers, djenar portrays sexual abuse, incest, pedophilia, sadism and other disruptive issues in her works. muhammad states that her literary works like nayla (2005), jangan main-main dengan kelaminmu (2004) and mereka bilang, saya monyet! (2003) are considered to have unusual aesthetic (2010: 136). this unusual aesthetic leads some people to judge that djenar is improper, unpleasant, vulgar, vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 157 taboo and shameless. as a matter of fact, her works contain taboo language that is presented explicitly within the stories. taboo has been chosen by the author to express her feeling toward certain issues emerging in the society. relating to this phenomenon, generally people now are more permissive to openness when they deal with the world of literature. however, what is taboo is still taboo. it raises the effect of offensiveness to the people who are subjected to. this paper is intended to analyze the use of taboo expression in a literary work entitled mereka bilang saya monyet! written by djenar maesa ayu. this work is already translated into english they call i’m a monkey by michael nieto garcia. in this novel, the author eventually mentions about taboo subjects. different from other authors, she uses sex and other taboo-related subjects as the themes of her story, yet she does not want to exploit those subjects. djenar explicitly narrates and depicts the story with taboo expressions because she assumes that it should be presented as it is. later on, taboo subjects become her main concerns and the way to present taboo explicitly becomes her writing style. taboo origins and its subjects the word taboo is derived from polynesian language tongan tabu, which was being noticed in the end of the eighteen century. the word tabu (in english becomes taboo) has meanings to forbid, forbidden, and can be applied to anything which is prohibited. in polynesian, taboo also refers to a rule of etiquette, an order from the leader, or a restriction for the children not to play with the elders’ belongings. this term is discovered by captain james cook during his settlement in tahiti on his first voyage around 1768 1771 (allan and burridge, 2006: 2). he observed that taboo (or tabu) is used to describe the behavior of polynesians towards things that were not to be done, entered, seen or touched. the concept of taboo does not only exist in polynesia. fromkin states that in all societies certain acts or behaviors are frowned on, forbidden, or considered taboo (1974: 289). the words or expressions referring to these taboo acts are then also avoided or considered ‘dirty’. language itself cannot be entirely obscene; the rejection of specific words or linguistics expressions only reflects the culture of given society. similarly, wardaugh (1992: 236) states that taboo is one way in which a society expresses its disapproval of certain kinds of behavior believed to be harmful to its members, either for supernatural reasons or because such behavior is held to violate a moral code. in other words, taboo can be considered as a prohibited behavior believed to insult some people or society as a whole. some expressions that are considered as taboo and may elicit embarrassment or offence to people in one language may be used naturally by people in other languages. until nowadays, the word taboo or ‘taboo language’ commonly refers to things that contain “dirty words”. the definition of the phrase “dirty words” is contextual. as allan and burridge state that the language which is counted as dirty has been derived from the belief that it communicates the essential nature of thing(s) that being referred to. they are expressed in terms for: 1) bodily organs concealed by bikinis and swimming trunks, because they are organs of sexual desire, stimulation and gratification and/or used for micturition and defecation; 2) activities involving these smd (sex, micturition, defecation) organs; and 3) bodily effluvia issuing from these smd organs (2006: 41). in addition to the expressions related to taboo, allan and burridge (2006: 1) also mentioned that taboo is a proscription of behaviour that affects everyday life, including: 1) bodies and their effluvia (sweat, snot, faeces, menstrual fluid, etc.); 2) the organs and acts of sex, micturition and defecation; 3) diseases, death and killing (including hunting and fishing); 4) naming, addressing, touching and viewing persons and sacred beings, objects and places; and 5) food gathering, preparation and consumption. in order to make taboo become more ‘smoother’ in its effect when spoken, people use euphemism. fromkin states that euphemism is a word or phrase that is used to replace a taboo word in order to avoid tri septa nurhantoro 158 unpleasant effects (1974: 280). euphemism was derived from greek ‘eu’ (well) and ‘pheme’ (speaking), which means ‘right silence’. according to hughes the most typical device of euphemism is the use of metaphor (2006: 181). for example, people may still prefer euphemistic terms such as sleep with, go to bed with, make love, make out, do it, have it away with, and so on, rather than have sex since those euphemistic terms are socially acceptable. the term dysphemism is in contrast to euphemism. it can be compared to taboo as it is used in speaking offensively. dysphemism was also derived from greek ‘dys’ (bad, unfavorable) and ‘pheme’ (speaking). according to allan and burridge (2006: 163), dysphemistic terms are: 1) comparison human with animal that are only conventionally ascribed certain behaviors (e.g. bitch, dog); 2) epithets from tabooed bodily organs (e.g. asshole, prick), bodily effluvia (e.g. shit) and sexual behavior (e.g. fucker, cock-sucker, dipshit); 3) ascription of mental defect (e.g. idiot, moron) or physical defect like (e.g. baldy, spastic); 4) sexist, racist, ageist words and other –ist dysphemism (e.g. sexist terms: tina fritz turns into freena tits), 5) terms of disrespect, in which some of them involves slurs on target’s character (e.g. bag, crank). resulting offensiveness, dysphemism is surely a subject to taboo. as it has been stated above, taboo has closed relationship with both euphemism and dysphemism. they are significant in term of degree of politeness-impoliteness of language usage (2006:1). there is one more term related to those -isms, which is called orthophemism. orthophemistic terms are those which are used in scientific purposes, such as in medic. being used as scientific terms, they are less offensive compared to those dysphemistic terms. the difference among them also lies on the people’s preference in using the terms in communication. euphemism and orthophemism are more preferred. euphemism is more figurative and colloquial (e.g. bits, have a period, etc.). orthophemism is more formal and direct (e.g. vagina, menstruate, etc.). meanwhile, dysphemism can be said to have the rudest terminology (e.g. bleed, cunt, etc.). the comparison between euphemism, ortophemism and dysphemism can be formulated as follows, discussion the part of language that is going to be discussed here is taboo expressions in a literary work. those expressions are presented variously in term of classes: words, phrases, clauses or even sentences. there are about eighty taboo expressions that are found in the novel mereka bilang, saya monyet! those expressions were not taken randomly. they are orderly selected form 10 short stories. in order to examine briefly, those expressions are presented in table 1. the table contains columns, namely number, taboo expressions, the categories of those taboo expressions and their degree. language expression less preferred preferred more formal more direct orthophemism dysphemism more colloquial more figurative euphemism faeces poo shit vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 159 the categories of taboo expressions are based on the theories of taboo, coined by allan and burridge (2006), and the degree of politeness-impoliteness (euphemism, orthophemism and dysphemism). based on the data of taboo expressions found in the novel, the percentage of the use of those eighty taboo expressions can be formulated under the charts. chart 1 shows the groups of taboo expressions based on their categories, while chart 2 presents the groups based on the degree of politeimpoliteness. chart 1: taboo expression categories chart 1 above shows that the category of taboo is mostly employed in mereka bilang saya monyet! is sexual activity. it is not surprising that the central theme employed the author is about sex (or probably various kind of sex-related themes). the sexual activity category equals to 22%. the second position is employed by torturing-rapingkilling which is about 17%. this category include three different issues, but they share similar understanding that is doing something harmful to other people and make them feel suffering or dying. the third category, consumption, covers 11% from the total taboo expressions. bodily organ is in the fourth category that equals to 10%. the next category is comparison with animal which is about 9%. bodily effluvia and verbal insult take the sixth and seventh category as employing 6% each. four categories employ the eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh positions; they are disease, sexual-related behavior, place and death. each of those categories covers 4%. the last category is mental defect, which is only about 3 % from the total. the first category shows how the author depicts sexual activity(es) in the novel. the example of this category can be seen in expression (30) menyetubuhiku and (23) bercinta dengan banyak laki-laki. both expressions menyetubuhi and bercinta have meaning of having sex with somebody. not only about having sex, this category also contains other specific issues including sexual disorientation, such as in expression (59) bersetubuh dengan hewan (having sex with animals), and incest, like in expression (51) bersetubuh dengan ibunya (having sex with his mother). the second category is torturing-rapingkilling, which can be seen in, expression (54) memotong kelamin ibunya lalu memotong kelaminnya sendiri (cut off his mother’s genitals, then cut off his own), expression (26) hyza mulai memperkosa stefan (hyza began to force herself on him), and expression (63) menggorok leher mereka (slashing their throat). the action of cutting of the genitals is torturing. meanwhile, forcing herself to him can be considered as the act of raping. probably the expression ‘to force oneself to somebody else’ is more appropriate for female as the agent of the action than ‘to rape’ (as mostly done by male). slashing throat means killing, because the patient of the action carried by the agent is intended to die. the next category is consumption. this category may include religious issues, like in expressions (9) cognac, (78) whiskey, and (79) bir (beer). those three beverages contain alcohol. as alcoholic liquid is forbidden for all moslems to consume, cognac, whiskey and beer are considered taboo. alcoholic beverage is forbidden because it may cause somebody to lose his/her consciousness, and moreover, it breaks human vital organs. losing consciousness may lead people to be more temperamental, to do crimes or other threatening behaviors. not only related to religion, consumption may also reflect sexual activity, such as in expressions (39) pengen makan kamu (i want to eat u) and expression (40) besok mau makan aku? (want to eat me tomorrow?). those expressions are used in a communication between lovers. surely, it does not mean that tri septa nurhantoro 160 they want to eat each others. allan and burridge stated that the talk between lovers is sometimes strikingly cannibalistic (2006: 194). the expression ‘eating you’ is a euphemism for ‘having sex with you’. the fourth category, bodily organ involves those of sexual desire, stimulation and gratification and/or used for micturition and defecation (2006: 41). in the novel, this category is reflected in expression (18) tubuh saya yang belum berbulu dan bersusu (my hairless, breastless body) and expression (45) vagina yang tidak lagi lentur (a vagina that wasn’t tight anymore). the bodily organs (e.g. vagina and breasts) which are expressed there should be covered, meaning that they must not be presented or in other words, they must not be stated. the following category is a comparison to animal. this comparison is based upon certain behaviors they share that are conventionally ascribed. comparison to animal becomes taboo when it brings negative images rather than positive. it can be seen in the expression (5) mengendusendus kemaluan si kepala serigala (sniffed jackal head’s crotch) and expression (49) ia berkelakuan seperti anjing (he behaves like a dog). in expression (49) the author compares human to animal, which is a dog, in term of their behaviors. in this case, the behaviors the dog has, which are being compared to human, are the negative ones. they must not be about loyalty or intelligence. expression (5) does not only about comparison to animal. it is obvious that the early action animals (dogs) do before they have sex is sniffing each other’s crotch. thus, expression (5) also relates to sexual activity. the sixth category, bodily effluvia relates to something that comes out from human/animal body (can be solid or liquid) that must be considered disgusting and nauseating. bodily effluvia can be seen in expression (33) darah segar (fresh blood). blood is considered dirty. the consideration ‘dirty’ comes up as people who have just got a contact to blood need to wash their hands before eating. the bodily effluvia can also be seen in other expressions, such as (2) kencing (pee) and (70) bersimbah peluh (drenched in sweat). verbal insult is the seventh category. it is normally intended to wound the addressee or bring a third party into disrepute, or both. verbal insult can be found in expression (56) anjing lu! (you dog!) and (57) bajingan! (sonofabitch!). the term bajingan in expression (57) is very offensive to be addressed to somebody who has very bad behaviors and manners. similarly, expression (56) contains comparison to animal. when it is used as verbal insult, it must be addressed to a very unpleasant people. dog, as it has been discussed previously, is taboo for most moslems. they consider dogs as ritually unclean and there is rule stating that touching dog’s saliva causes hadath, or impurity, which must be cleansed by the lesser ablution (wudu). however, the use of verbal insults as in those expressions would be understood differently in a conversation among best friends. the next category, disease, is reflected in expressions (22) kusta (leprosy) and (77) penyakit kelamin (venereal disease). most people consider those diseases are loathsome. they are also afraid of being infected by the diseases as they are extremely infectious. in the religious view, both leprosy and venereal diseases are believed to be god’s punishments to the sinners. according to allan and burridge, most communities in this world also view leprosy as the punishment for sin and heresy, and because of that lepers (those who are infected by leprosy) are viewed as both physically and morally dangerous (2006: 208). sexual-related behavior is associated to dirty jobs and also the ones who do those jobs. in this case, doing dirty jobs means earning money by having sex with people. this category is seen in expression (12) gigolo and expression (41) pelacur dan waria dipinggir jalan (prostitutes and transvestites standing on street). those expressions contain sexual-related behavior of gigolo, prostitute and transvestites. it is obvious that those jobs are strictly forbidden. nobody wants to have such jobs. in some countries, the government include vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 161 prostitute as an illegal job. in the point of view of religion, all jobs related to sexual desire are forbidden. in many communities, transvestites are considered as having sexual deviation. as the consequence, transvestites are hardly to be accepted in society. the next category is place. it refers to a place where people do not feel comfortable to visit. it may also refer to a place that people try not to visit because they are ordered not to do so. taken for example, the expressions (21) rumah sakit jiwa (asylum) and (76) rumah prostitusi (a brothel). latin asylum originally meant ‘place of refuge, retreat’ (2006: 216). people tend to avoid asylum as it is now referring to a recovery place for those who are insane. meanwhile, a brothel is a place that is forbidden for religious people to visit. both people who sell their bodies (for sex) in order to earn money and those who become the customers of pleasure in a brothel are sinners. they would be punished by god, such as getting infected venereal diseases. the eleventh category is related to death. it covers all things that have correlation with death and dying. almost all people are afraid of death, since then talking about it is considered taboo. the category of death can be seen in expressions (6) mampus (die), (73) batu nisan (gravestone) and (75) kuburan (graveyard). the last category found in the work is mental defect. it covers things related to mental illness. it covers an enormous assortment of conditions, ranging from mildly eccentric or neurotic behaviour to severe psychotic disorders where a patient might lose total contact with reality (2006: 213). mental defect is found in expression (20) gila (insane). because the behaviour of people who are insane does not conform to morally and socially accepted norms, it is usually viewed as threatening and strange, and is often believed to result from maliciousness of character. in most community, it is common that normal people may feel the fear of becoming insane, taking equal place with those of cancer and death. chart 2: the degree of taboo instead of the categories of expressions, the use of taboo is also analyzed based on its degree. in chart 2, it can be seen that the degree of taboo employed by the author in mereka bilang, saya monyet! is dominated by euphemism. euphemism covers 48% of the total taboo expressions found in the work. the use of euphemistic expressions can be seen in (34) lucuti pakaian kalian dan ‘garap’ saya satu per satu (strip your clothes and have a go at me) and (37) dedek saya kangen (junior misses you). in expression (34) the term garap, which is translated into ‘have a go’ is considered as more polite than perkosa (rape). however, it is a slang word, which is not officially used in formal communication as not all people have similar understanding in comprehending the meaning. similarly, expression (37) has dedek (junior) to replace penis, which obviously refers to sexual organ. euphemistic term also can be found in the category of sexual activity, like in expression (47) bercinta dengan posisi dari belakang. the term bercinta (to make love) is assumed more polite rather than berhubungan seks (to have sex), by omitting the taboo sex. the use of orthophemism only equals to 10%. it can be seen in expressions (35) penis, (43) vagina, (46) sejenis kanker ganas pada ovariumnya (a malignant form of cancer had been detected in her uterus.). the terms penis, vagina and uterus are commonly used in scientific purposes. they are less offensive, but considered too direct. in consequence, some people who are not familiar to use those terms still feel uncomfortable to state (or listen) to them. from the total taboo expressions, the use of dysphemism is about 42%. dyspemisem is considered as the rudest, the tri septa nurhantoro 162 most offensive expressions. dysphemistic expression can be seen in the category of death (6) mampus (die) and sexual-related behavior (74) pelacur (whore). the term mampus, which refers to die, is considered offensive and inappropriate to be used for honorable people. commonly, it is only used for animals or very unpleasant people, such as criminals or sinners. the term pelacur is also more offensive than wts and psk, indonesian abbreviations for adulteress and commercial sex worker. it is analogous to the comparison between prostitute vs bitch vs slut vs whore in english. there are also dysphemistic expressions in the category of consumption, such as the terms kokain (cocaine), ganja (marijuana), heroin can be made into more acceptable term narkoba (drugs). other consumption-related category like cognag, whiskey and bir (beer) are more appropriate to be referred as minuman beralkohol (alcoholic beverages) in communication in order to avoid offensiveness. conclusion the use of taboo in djenar’s mereka bilang saya monyet! is various. it can be classified into categories and degrees. the categories of taboo found in the works are: sexual activity (22%), torturing-rapingkilling (17%), consumption (11%), bodily organ (10%), comparison with animal (9%), bodily effluvia (6%), verbal insult (6%), disease (4%), sexual-related behavior (4%), place (4%), death (4%) and mental defect (3%). meanwhile, form the degree of taboo, it is found: euphemism (48%), orthophemism (10%), and dysphemism (42%). regarding to the domination use of euphemism in the work, it can be concluded that the author still tries to present taboo expressions in polite ways, though she emerges some controversial themes. in conclusion, the understanding whether things are taboo or not is important for us as human who live in a particular society. though, it cannot be denied that the use of taboo is absolutely contextual. some terms or expressions that are considered taboo and may elicit embarrassment or offence to people in one context may be used naturally by people in other contexts. references allan, keith and kate burridge. (2006). forbidden words: taboo and the censoring of language. cambridge: cambridge university press. print. fromkin, victoria and robert rodman. (1974). an introduction to language. america: hult, richard and winston, inc. print. hughes, geoffrey. (2006). an encyclopedia of swearing the social history of oaths profanity foul language and ethnic slurs in the english speaking world. new york: m.e. sharpe, inc. print. maesa ayu, djenar. (2004). mereka bilang, saya monyet!. jakarta: gramedia pustaka utama. print. maesa ayu, djenar. (2005). they say, i’m a monkey. jakarta: metafor publishing. (trans. by michael nieto garcia) print. muhammad, damhuri. (2010). darah-daging sastra indonesia. yogyakarta: jalasutra. print. wardhaugh, robert. (1992). an introduction to sociolinguistics. oxford: blackwell. print. 64 vol. 22 no. 1, april 2022, pp. 64-74 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i1.3522 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. a rhetorical move analysis of men’s and women’s suicide notes jeanyfer tanusy jeanyfer.tanusy@lang.maranatha.edu english department, universitas kristen maranatha, indonesia abstract article information research on suicide notes has always focused on proving whether the notes are genuine or simulated. there are still very few studies on suicide notes that focus on the genders of the writer and the influence of genders in this type of letter. this research aims to examine the suicide notes in two corpora—one corpus written by males and the other by females—using two different theories. swales’ movestructure theory was used to see the pattern of occurrence of the rhetorical moves to establish a generic structure of the notes in the two corpora, and bhatia’s communicative purpose theory was used to see what purposes of communication were dominant in the notes. the notes were analyzed based on the gender of the writers also to examine whether gender plays a role in the use of language, especially for personal communication. the study used a descriptive qualitative approach, in which a corpus software antconc was used to gather more comprehensive data, and linguistic theories were used in the interpretation of the data. the analysis showed that the most dominant communicative purpose in men’s notes was giving instruction while women’s notes were high on the expressing feelings move; this suggests the role of gender in determining language use in personal communication. the result of this study is hoped to add to the literature of the study of gender as well as in the broader area of discourse analysis and sociolinguistics. keywords: suicide notes; rhetorical move; gender; genre received: 14 july 2021 revised: 9 november 2021 accepted: 28 november 2021 introduction the discussion on the purposes of communication is deemed of high importance in genre study, especially in the perspective of english for specific purposes (esp) study. this is due to the fact that the texts of the same genre commonly share similar communicative purposes, which are understood by the community as serving certain public goals (bawarshi & reiff, 2010). when faced with an unknown text, or what swales (1990) termed as “occluded,” one can decide whether the text belongs to a certain genre based on the text’s https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 65 purpose(s)—to express feelings or tell stories for instance. therefore, from the esp perspective, it is very important first to identify the purpose of a text. before an individual commits an act of suicide, some would leave a personal text—a suicide note—to communicate their last thoughts (o’connor & leenars, 2004). these notes are commonly used as a source of data to understand more about an individual’s psychological state in the cases of suicide by the field of psychology. for the field of linguistics, these notes are no less valuable as they can help linguists in revealing different things, such as distinguishing between a genuine or simulated note to help in police investigations (e.g., ioannou & debowska, 2014; jones & bennel, 2007; lester, 2008) or seeing the main linguistics features used (e.g., shapero & blackwell, 2012; schoene & dethlefs, 2016; tanusy, 2017). every text aims to communicate something, and this communicative purpose is essential in determining what genre a text belongs to in the perspective of esp (parodi, 2014). swales (1990) argues that a different purpose of communication will result in different rhetorical actions, which results in a different genre. the analysis of the communicative purpose of a text is done by analyzing the moves present in the text and building the structure of the text. a ‘move’ itself is a term coined by swales (1990) to refer to a single unit in the text with a specific function of communication; for example, “good morning” can be labeled as the move ‘greetings’. according to swales (1990), a move can be realized in different ways but still serve the same communicative purpose; these are called the steps. for instance, we can label “hello” and “goodbye” in the same move ‘greetings,’ but the steps are different—the first being ‘opening greeting’ and the latter being ‘farewell greeting’. labeling the moves and steps is subjective to the researchers, especially when the texts analyzed are occluded or not readily defined. a text consists of several different moves and steps with the same communicative purpose; however, these moves can be realized differently depending on the individual writing the text (swales, 1996). this is supported by bawarshi and reiff (2010), who stated that “a text’s genre membership is not defined by ‘either/or’ essential properties but rather along a spectrum of family resemblances” (p. 45). this notion regarding how a text is considered to have the membership of a certain genre is believed to also apply to suicide notes; the purpose may be the same, but the way one structure it will be different from one another. the differences in structure and purpose may be influenced by many things, one of which is by the gender of the writer. many people believe that men and women use language differently, and this issue has been a subject of study by many people; two of the most well-known ones are robin lakoff’s (1975) research on the characteristics of the female language in conversation (e.g., using very specific sets of words, seeking approval by rising their intonation at the end of a declarative sentence, etc.), and deborah tannen’s (1990) study on how men and women use language differently because they are raised differently (e.g., men are raised to lead others while women are raised to build networks). despite the much research on the subject of suicide notes in the field of linguistics, it can be noted that there are few that focused on the genders of the writers. for instance, samraj and gawron’s (2015) study only focused on the main structure of the notes without mentioning any differences in the language between male and female writers even though their data include both genders as note writers. this is similar to roubidoux (2012), whose master’s thesis examined the use of pronouns in suicide notes; in her study, roubidoux does not use gender as one of the analysis variables. tadros and mcgrath (2004) emphasize their analysis in findings the difference between the notes written by people of different generations without taking into account their genders. this being said, there is also some research that has attempted to bring up the issue of gender in suicide notes. delgado (2012), for instance, did research on the role of relationships in suicides. the emphasis of this research, however, is more on the differences in the causes of suicides in males and females, not on the language or linguistic features on the notes themselves. in journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) jeanyfer tanusy 66 the late 1980s, a study by leenars showed no significant difference between the notes written by men and women, a finding which is supported by lester and heim (1992); meanwhile, ho et al. (1998) suggested that gender and age create differences in the notes—the one left by younger females are more full of emotions and expressions of feelings while older people tend to give more instructions and the note structures are simpler. the research mainly employs the notion of communicative events proposed by bhatia (1993) and the analysis of rhetorical moves (swales, 2004) in the area of english for specific purposes (esp), especially in analyzing an occluded genre (swales, 1996), a type of genre which examples are not readily available in public as they are mainly used for private communications. therefore, this present study aims to add to the literature of the studies on suicide notes by examining the rhetorical moves in the notes to find the similarities and/or differences in the way men and women express themselves in their last personal communications. the present study would like to address the following questions: 1. what are the rhetorical moves in men’s and women’s suicide notes? 2. how does gender play a role in determining the dominant communicative purpose(s) in the suicide notes? methodology this research employed a qualitative approach focusing on content analysis whose purpose is to identify and analyze the occurrences of certain message characteristics in a text (frey, botan, & kreps, 1999). the data were collected with the help of the computer software generally used in corpus linguistics research, antconc. this was done in order that a more accurate number of occurrences of each move could be obtained, which, in turn, helped in finding a more generalized idea of how males and females use language for personal communication. an existing corpus of suicide notes with a total number of 216 notes was used in this research. the corpus was obtained through personal communication with two fellow researchers who had also obtained permission to use the notes for educational and non-profit purposes. the corpus was then divided into two smaller corpora based on the genders of the writers to get a more accurate analysis of the language use. there were 93 notes written by females and 123 notes written by males, and they were of various lengths (see table 1). the use of two corpora allowed me to explore the repetitive occurrence of a certain pattern of communication across the two genders more accurately, which helped a lot in determining the similarities and/or differences in the structure of notes written by males and females. table 1. total numbers of words in the male and female corpora gender longest text (words) shortest text (words) total word type total word token female 662 6 2,248 15,102 male 866 10 3,158 23,176 in order to protect the identities of the families left behind and to ensure anonymity, full names of writers were blotted out and changed with the word ‘[name]’, and specific locations and names of places were coded ‘xx’. common first names of the addressees, such as ‘john’ and ‘mary’, and terms of endearments like ‘my love’ or ‘darling’ were left as it was to preserve the context of the notes since some notes contain smaller notes addressed specifically to more than one person—usually different family members and/or friends. in addition, each note in the corpora was coded differently; for instance, #10fa was a code referring to the tenth note in the female corpus, while #120ma referred to the note number 120 in the male corpus. due to the number of notes in the corpora, the collection of the data was conducted with journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 67 the help of a corpus software called antconc. the software would first generate the total number of word types (i.e., each unique word in the corpus excluding their repetition) and word tokens (i.e., all the words including their repetitions which appear in the corpus). this was done with the purpose of identifying the average length of each corpus. table 1 above shows that the male corpus was far larger than the female’s. before conducting the main identification process of the data, first, determine the keywords to use in the software. this was a necessary step as it set the boundary of each move and communicative purpose(s) (abaalkhail, 2015; connor, 2000). the keywords and terms were taken from existing lists of terms and examples used in the moves categories of personal letters (swales, 1990) and suicide notes (samraj & gawron, 2015; tanusy, 2017), for example, the word "dear” or the phrase “to whom it may concern” as the keyword to search within the move of “salutations” and “addressing recipient”. afterward, the keywords were put in the software to find the moves, ranging from a phrase to a paragraph depending on the communicative purpose(s) they serve. in determining whether each part of the texts in the corpus belongs to a particular move and not the other, i had conducted several discussions with a colleague and some students who study in the department at my institution. they were first given the texts and a checklist of moves taken from the schematic structure of personal letters by swales (1990) and suicide notes by samraj and gawron (2015). the colleague and students worked independently, and then the results were discussed together in an informal forum to reach an agreement regarding the differences in perspective in classifying some parts of the texts. for instance, there was an initial disagreement on whether to put “please don’t think of me as a coward” (#24ma) into the expressing feelings move or giving directions move; half of the discussion participants regarded it as the former due to the pragmatic meaning of the sentence, while the others considered it the latter as they saw the sentence was written in the imperative form. having found the clusters corresponding to each move, the data were further classified into more specific steps in order to see how each move was actually realized in the text. for instance, the move signing off was realized into three different steps: writing names and/or initials (e.g., anita r. or j. m.); writing valedictions without names (e.g., “love always,” “see you on the other side”); and writing valedictions and names (e.g., “yours, brandon”). this was very useful to see the realizations of the moves in their environmental context so that a more comprehensive understanding of the generic structure of the notes as a whole can be determined. the number of occurrences of the moves and steps was calculated and put in different categories. swales (1996) suggested that the frequency of occurrence of the moves in a corpus determines whether the moves are an essential part of a genre. in other words, the number of times a move appears in the corpus helps researchers to establish the generic structure of a genre. there are three categories of moves based on the frequency of appearance in the corpus. moves appearing in all the texts in the corpus are considered “obligatory moves,” or the main structure of that particular genre (joseph, lim, & nor, 2014). the moves appearing in about 75% of the text are termed “quasi-obligatory.” and samraj and gawron (2015) mentioned the third category, “optional moves,” which refer to moves that appear only in 50% or less in the corpus; this means that the presence of these moves are not determinant of a genre (for example, the moral of the story is sometimes present in a narrative, but even without it, a text is still considered a narrative when it has other necessary elements). this present study adopted those three categories with the main purpose of examining if men and women share the same communicative purpose in their notes; the two corpora are compared in terms of the occurrence of the moves. results and discussion the discussion part is divided into two sub-headings, each of which answers the research question above for ease of reading. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) jeanyfer tanusy 68 rhetorical moves of the suicide notes the classification of the data suggests that there are at least five moves that occur repetitively across the corpus (see table 2), two of which (addressing recipient and signing-off moves) are typical moves found in other types of letters, both personal and business (swales, 1990). the move addressing recipient has the highest percentage of occurrence (81.48%) across the two corpora; this suggests that the writers of the note want their letters to reach certain people in the way a common personal letter does. the addressees of the notes are sometimes written in terms of endearments only (e.g., “my darling”), but most often, they include names and other types of salutations (e.g., “hello jackie” (#54ma)). meanwhile, a lesser percentage is shown for the signing-off move (77.31%), indicating that while most notes were signed with the writer’s name and/or some types of farewell phrases, some notes end without any signatures. the move providing explanations is found in both the males’ and the females’ corpora, with the frequency of occurrence of 77.31%. this move includes smaller steps such as explaining the background behind their decision (e.g., “my husband found out yesterday about me owing money” (#19fa)) and justifying their action (e.g., “i have had enough” (#25ma)). this finding is in line with samraj and gawron’s (2015) study, which listed this move as having a high frequency of occurrence across the corpus they used. another move with a high frequency of occurrence is giving directions, which serves the communication purpose of leaving instructions to the addressee(s) of the note in regards to various things (not) to do or what possessions and belongings should (not) be given to/ taken by whom. in this present study, this particular move consists of only two different steps; this is quite different from the study of abaalkhail (2015), which divided the move into five smaller steps. on the other hand, samraj and gawron’s (2015) also showed two different steps, yet, it is different from the present study’s division as this study considers the steps from the perspective of action (do or not do something) and possession giving while they divided it based on the duration of the instructions (short-term instructions and long-term instructions). the last move in the present study is the move expressing feelings; this is also the move with a high percentage of occurrence across the two corpora. in fact, the finding shows that it has the second-highest frequency of occurrence, with 177 occurrences (79.16%). the same as the other moves, this move consists of several steps, including the expression of personal feelings (e.g., “i do not want my mother and father to think that it was anything that they did that lead me to kill myself” (#6ma)), expressing positive and/or negative feelings about others (e.g., “i love you both very much and wanted to get along with you” (#17fa); “you didn’t respect me. that was the trouble” (#15ma)), expressing regrets (e.g., “i’m sorry [the therapy] didn’t work out” (#100ma)), and expressing thankfulness and good wishes for others (e.g., “[…] and thank you for trying to help me” (#10fa)). this move category is different from samraj and gawron (2015), who classified the expression of feelings as a part of the move giving directions, and abaalkhail (2015), who considered expressing love as one move on its own, not just a step as is classified in the present study. based on the results of the frequency of occurrence of each move, it is found that there is no move that occurs in 100% of the corpus, suggesting that the corpus does not consist of any obligatory moves. however, the moves found in the two corpora can be defined into the quasi-obligatory ones as they appear in more than 75% of the texts. it is believed that the absence of the obligatory move may be caused by the small size of the corpus, which has also been proven by several other previous studies. in comparison to this study’s 216 notes, samraj and gawron (2015) also did not find any obligatory moves in their study using 222 suicide notes from the corpus collected by john olsson; the same results are seen in tanusy’s (2017) study using 44 suicide notes from a corpus collected from social media, and in albaalkhail’s (2015) study which used 86 notes. thus, it can be concluded that perhaps an obligatory move will be achieved if the size journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 69 of the corpus is larger than a mere two hundred. nevertheless, the absence of obligatory moves does not mean there is no typical schematic structure in suicide notes. on the contrary, it proves that suicide notes rely on the notion of ‘family resemblance’ that serves certain communicative purposes, which can be seen from the quasi-obligatory moves found across the corpora (joseph et al., 2014; abaalkhail, 2015; tessuto, 2015). there are several other moves that are found occurring quite repetitively in the corpora, yet they only occur in less than 50% of the texts, which makes them optional moves and thus are not included in the present analysis. table 2. moves and occurrences across the corpora communicative purposes and gender as suicide notes are a form of a personal letter, which means that it is usually directed at some individuals, it is not surprising that the first move, addressing recipient, has the highest percentage of occurrences in the notes written by both the males (75.60%) and females (89.24%). interestingly, when this move is divided into smaller steps, there seems to be a difference in how men and women address the possible recipients of their notes. for instance, most women (72%) begin their notes by using terms of endearments followed by the first names (or relations) of their addressees (e.g., “to my darling sister” #29fa; “my dearest andrew” #58fa). meanwhile, even though some men also begin with the same step, only around 33% begin with both terms of endearments and names. the men either directly say the names of the addressees without any terms of endearments (e.g., “mike” #10ma; “to: bnpd” #32ma) or they use a formal salutation such as “to whom it may concern” (e.g., #6ma, #34ma, #41ma). the way women use a more intimate approach to the recipients of the notes, despite the morbid nature of the notes themselves, show that women use language to establish a connection with others. adding the terms ‘dear’ or ‘beloved’ in mentioning someone creates a sense of closeness, which is one of the characteristics of female linguistic features mentioned by lakoff (1975, as cited in holmes, 2003). men, on the other hand, communicate in a more direct form and usually want to show that they have more power than their addressees (wardaugh, 2006), even on a personal level, which is clearly shown from the letters they write. the move expressing feelings is found to be the move that occurs the second highest across the two corpora with the percentage of occurrence of 79.16%. overall, there is only less than one percent difference between the male-female corpus. however, on a closer look at the steps of the said move, we can see that there are, indeed, some differences in the way the females and the males express their feelings, albeit only slightly. there are four steps found in the expressing feelings move; they are the expression of personal emotions, gratitude towards others, blame, and the expression of farewell and wishes for the addressees. male notes are seen to focus on explaining how they feel at the time of the writing (e.g., #2ma saying that he feels “unworthy of love”) and laying the blame—either on themselves or other things (e.g. #15ma blames his significant other for not respecting him; #31ma blames moves total occurrence in female notes (93 notes) total occurrence in male notes (123 notes) total occurrence (216 notes) # % # % # % addressing recipient 83 89.24 93 75.60 176 81.48 providing explanation 68 73.11 98 79.67 166 76.85 giving directions 63 67.74 104 84.55 167 77.31 expressing feelings 73 78.49 98 79.67 171 79.16 signing off 78 83.87 89 72.35 167 77.31 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) jeanyfer tanusy 70 the school authorities for not stopping his bullies; #90ma and several others suggest economy problems). on the other hand, while most female notes also consist of the expression of personal feelings, the highest step is the expression of gratitude towards other people (90.02%), followed closely by expressing farewell and well-wishes for others. this difference may be attributed to the way men and women use language in society. as is suggested by tannen (1990), women always try to build a network when they communicate; instead of trying to assert their dominance in a group, they want to be accepted. this communicative characteristic also seems to influence how they express themselves, even in the most intimate and personal form of communication, such as a suicide note. the third most dominantly occurring move across the corpora is the giving directions and the signing off move (both have the percentage of 77.31%). however, since the latter move can be considered a common move found in other types of letters to signify the end of it and has shown no major differences in terms of language use, this move will not be discussed further in this paper. as shown in table 2 above, the move giving directions occurs far more frequently in the male notes (104 times out of 123 notes, or 84. 55%) than in the female notes (less than 70%). this discrepancy indicates a major difference in the essence of communication of the suicide notes written by males and females. like the other moves discussed previously, the move itself consists of different steps that communicate the same move purpose. one of the steps that bear the most striking difference in the realization is the step in which the writers leave some instructions to the possible recipients of the notes to do (or not do) something. both corpora show high percentages of occurrences in this step, with the male corpus showing over 90% occurrence and the female corpus showing around 87% occurrence. the difference is the content of the instructions itself. using the word “please” as the node in the male corpus produces a list of results that, after sorting out those expressing feelings and apologies, shows instructions regarding practical things and material possessions, as can be seen from the examples below: “please contact the police to come to [xx] immediately” (#81ma) “please have me cremated – no funeral” (#16ma) on the contrary, when the same node word is used in the module of concord in the female corpus, the instructions are very closely similar to the move expressing feelings, such as the note #29fa, which says, “please never forget me, and remember that i am happy now […]”. another note leaving an instruction regarding a material possession is also shown to add a personal feeling, “keep my ring in remembrance of me and … please look after it” (#40fa). it is worth noting that despite the examples from the female notes looking like they belong to the expressing feelings category, they are still classified as the giving directions move due to the nature of the sentence structure’s an imperative— indicating request. a similar result is found when the two corpora are run through the module of concord in the software using a different node, “don’t” and “do not”. the male corpus results in a list of sentences resulting in instructions regarding material possessions and such (e.g., “i do not wish any insurance or assets of mine to go to [name]” #6ma), and the female ones are still more personal in nature (e.g., “make sure you don’t work yourself to death” #2fa). these findings may suggest that men and women have a different purpose in writing their last form of communication. to take it further, it can be said that these findings show how men use language differently from women. as has been mentioned previously in this article, women tend to focus on creating intimacy when communicating (tannen, 1990). on the contrary, men focus on asserting dominance and power in communication; they state their thoughts directly so as to be heard (crawford, 1997, as cited in simaremare, murni, and saragih, 2017). in line with the findings on this research is lakoff’s (19??) observation regarding men’s and women’s styles in requesting, which states that men tend to use commands when asking for journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 71 something to (not) be done while women usually state a request. in saying this, i do not mean to say that all notes written by men focus only on telling others what to do with their material possessions and such, and the ones by women only include personal feelings. while not that many, some of the male notes also include a request for the recipients of letters to tell their other loved ones about their feelings (e.g., “tell [name] that i love her, and it’s not her fault” #36ma) and some of the female notes tell the recipients directly what to do with their material possessions (e.g., “i would like [xx] to have my organs. my son to have all my tools and gardening machinery.” #76fa; “everything to be sold and equally dived among my sons [name], [name], [name] and [name].” #88fa). providing explanation is the last quasiobligatory move in the schematic structure of the suicide notes which also shows some differences in the number of occurrences between the male and female corpora, although the gap is not as big as the giving directions move. as is indicated by the term used to describe the move, providing explanation refers to the parts of the notes which explain things to the recipients; included in them are explaining the background on why the note writers decided to commit suicide and justifying their decision to end their lives. the majority of the female notes include a detailed explanation why committing suicide is the right decision for them to end their suffering (e.g., “this will solve all our problems” #90fa; “i just couldn’t do it anymore […] this is for the best” #1fa) while most of the male notes provide more background context on the reason why they finally decide to commit the act (e.g., “i have got too much money trouble and have lost my shack” #57ma; “when [name] and i split up i didn’t want to go on my own” #98ma). to say the truth, this result is quite surprising; holmes (1998) states that it is more natural for women than for men to talk about their problems because it is one of their ways to maintain solidarity in their circle. therefore, the fact that more men choose to explain the reasons for their suicide in their last communication is considered out of the ordinary of their nature to be seen as powerful. the high occurrence of this step in the male corpus may also suggest the instability of their mental health, which is not going to be discussed further in this paper as it is not the area of my expertise. conversely, the occurrence of the justification step in the female notes proves that women communicate to show support (hartman, 1976), in this case, supporting themselves. as priyadi and setiawan (2015) state in their research, women think of the world as a place where they can find support instead of an arena of competition. the reasoning they provide on why suicide is the right choice can be seen as a form of self-convincing that they do not make the wrong decision as they are unable to talk about this issue with other people to gain support. conclusion based on the discussion above, there are at least two things that can be drawn. the first thing is that the notes in the corpora mainly share similar moves with the same communicative purposes. this is despite the lack of available “examples” most people can access. it can be argued that perhaps these people get ideas or examples from the media like television or the internet. this establishes an understanding that a genuine suicide note has its structure and purpose. in this analysis, the notes share three similar purposes: giving reasons and justifications, voicing thoughts and emotions, and leaving instructions to the recipients of the notes. lastly, the analysis proves that there are indeed some differences in the way males and females communicate, as can be seen in the difference of the highest occurrence of moves. even in their last attempt at communication, men still attempt to display their authority by assigning roles to the people they leave behind and instructing them to do things for them. they want to ensure that all their affairs are sorted out the way they want them to be. meanwhile, the move with the highest percentage of occurrences in the female notes is the expressing feelings move. i believe that this is in line with the findings from previous research on the characteristics of women’s journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) jeanyfer tanusy 72 language, in which women are believed to be more expressive and in touch with their emotions. despite the findings of this research that can be said only to confirm what has been established before, i am of the opinion that this research still provides new insight into how language is used in personal communication across gender. nevertheless, the study is not free from some limitations. the number of data used in this study is believed to influence the determination of the generic structure of the notes, especially the obligatory moves. another limitation is the difficulty in collecting the data since suicide notes are usually private properties of the families and/or are still used by law enforcement in ongoing investigations. my analysis focuses heavily on the language of the notes without really taking into account the psychological aspects of the writers as it is not my expertise; this may also influence the result of this analysis. it is highly recommended that future research should use a new corpus with updated data instead of recycling older corpora as has been done by some previous studies; 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(2015). generic structure and rhetorical moves in english-language empirical law research articles: sites of interdisciplinary and interdiscursive cross-over. english for specific purposes, 37, 13-26. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2014.06. 002. williams, c. (2011). research methods. journal of business & economics research (jber), 5(3). wardhaugh, r. (2006). an introduction to sociolinguistics (5th edition). oxford: blackwell publishing. 148 vol. 21 no. 1, april 2021, pp. 148 – 159 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i1.3000 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. kartini and srikandi: representation of women in indonesian political discourse through metonymy muhammad adam, siti hafsah & wahyuni adam@uniba-bpn.ac.id, siti.hafsah@uniba-bpn.ac.id, wahyuni@uniba-bpn.ac.id faculty of letters, universitas balikpapan, indonesia abstract article information the representation of women in politics is one of the most discussed topics in indonesian political discourse, including political discourse in media, particularly in the indonesian context. two metonymies are commonly used to refer to women politicians in the indonesian context, the first is srikandi and the second is kartini, both are well-known figures in indonesian history and culture. this paper discusses the use of those two metonymies to speak about women politicians in indonesian political discourse. the focus of the investigation is the extent of the use of the metonymy across political parties and indonesian political level, from national to local, and the influence of the context of time to the metonymy chosen in a particular discourse. the study will also examine the characteristics that are associated with the two figures that are highlighted in metonymic use. the study is descriptive qualitative with conceptual metaphor theory – cmt as the theoretical background with ten data from news headlines that are purposively chosen for this study. the result shows that the metonymic use of both figures is extensive across parties and political levels. it is also found that the context plays important role in the use of kartini particularly during the celebration of kartini day on april 21; whereas the notions of women empowerment are not reflected from all metonymic use. thus, the text producers should not only use kartini and srikandi as metonymy just because of gender relatedness but should reflect more on women empowerment. keywords: metonymy; political discourse; srikandi and kartini;, women in politics. received: 2 december 2020 revised: 21 january 2021 accepted: 9 february 2021 introduction politics is one of the modern fields in which women initially struggle to gain position and to gain equality. lovenduski, campbell, & sampson-jacent (2002) assert there are three reasons for the low participation of women in politics and parliament, i.e: structural impediments, political institution, and political culture. in indonesia, there has been a regulation for an electoral quota for women's representation in https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:siti.hafsah@uniba-bpn.ac.id journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 149 the legislative institution. indonesian law number 7 the year 2017 regarding the general election has set that the political party must ensure that at least 30 percent of the candidates in the level of the constituency are women. anggraini (2020) agrees that women's representation in parliament has shown an improvement, where during the indonesian election 2019, resulted in the highest women politician elected as members of the indonesian house of representatives. 120 female candidates are successfully elected from a total of 575 seats which equals 20, 87%. few studies focus on political communication regarding the image of women politician, one of them is by yuniati & fardiah (2017) who study the image of female legislative candidates in media online framing and reports one of them that women legislative candidates can become parliament members in terms of complying the factors of knowledge and education, spiritualism, economy and public roles in politics. nevertheless, not many studies focus on the metonymic use describing women politicians. this study attempts to look at that dimension, by examining the use of metonymy in describing women politicians. furthermore, the study of metonymy in the indonesian political context still receives less attention compare to metaphor although the use of metonymy is common. littlemore (2015) defines metonymy as “a figure of language and thought in which one entity is used to refer to or in cognitive linguistic terms ‘provide access to’ another entity to which it is somehow related”.(p.4). one of the types of word commonly used as metonymy is a proper name to refer to a particular entity. specific characteristics and traits from a particular person –and becomes general knowledgewill make it possible to use as metonymy, in one condition, that another person or entity to be described shall have the similarity of the characteristic or trait. in indonesian media discourse, srikandi and kartini are commonly used to refer to women who have a significant role in the field that is (culturally) associated with men’s world. this study aims to highlight the elements transfer or mapping of the metonymic use of both figures in indonesian political discourse across the political level since the pervasive metonymic use in indonesian political discourse raises the question of whether or not women empowerment is fairly reflected during metonymic use. an example below: example 1: prestasi sri mulyani, srikandi jokowi di bidang keuangan (cnn indonesia, 2019) sri mulyani’s achievement, jokowi’s srikandi in financial field. the use of srikandi in example 1 above refers to sri mulyani who is the current minister of finance. her achievement and expertise in the financial field have made the media compare her to srikandi in the field. by understanding both concepts and figures, srikandi and sri mulyani, the metonymy interpreter shall arrive at the correct interpretation. a similar metonymic model in the next example, the use of kartini in indonesian media and read by indonesian readers, shall be interpreted effortlessly. since readers have a historical and cultural knowledge of kartini. example 2: “kisah dua kartini teknologi di balik suksesnya startup unicorn” (utama & berlian, 2020) the story of two tech kartinis behind the success of unicorn startup. the metonymic use of kartini in example 2 above is to describe two women who have been successful in their career in building an internet start-up industry. the relatedness is not only on the same gender between kartini and the two successful women but also the equality in the industry. readers’ knowledge of kartini is very important to gain full interpretation intended. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) muhammad adam, siti hafsah & wahyuni 150 from example 1 and example 2 above, the characteristic that enables srikandi and kartini to be used as metonymy is not only the similarity on gender but also the ability to compete and to show gender equality. srikandi and (particularly) kartini are the symbolism of women's equality in various aspects and are commonly used in discourse. the birth of cmt (lakoff and johnson, 1980) has brought a new dimension in the study of metaphor and metonymy. cmt promotes the view that metaphor is not only at the linguistics level, but lies on our conceptual or cognitive level. they agree that metonymic concepts are systematic in the same way that metaphoric concepts are and assert that same with metaphor, metonymy is part of our everyday way of thinking, is grounded in our experience, is subject to general and systematic principles, and structures our thoughts and actions. in their view, metonymy is not only primarily a referential function, but it also contributes to understanding. if metaphor is the cross-domain mapping, metonymy is the same domain or asymmetric mapping as asserted by barcelona (2004) who agrees that metonymy is a conceptual projection or mapping in a single, asymmetric mapping, with no counterpart matching. this view is also supported by radden & kovecses (2007) and use the terms idealized cognitive models (icm) as the alternative terms for frame and image schema. they assert that “metonymy is a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle, provides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target, within the same idealized cognitive mode”. socio-cultural knowledge is very important in understanding the hidden meaning behind a particular metonymy. zinken, hellsten, & nerlich (2008) assert that in discourse metaphors, knowledge associated with basic level categories is projected onto the target domain; and the conventionalization of a particular projection into a discourse practice is a socio-cultural process. we believe that metonymy operates in the same way. thus, in the indonesian context, the use of kartini and srikandi is related to the conventionalization of a projection from the two entities spoken in discourse with the same characteristics and is based on shared socio-cultural knowledge. there are several metonymy types, one of them is by lakoff and johnson (1980) who provide the metonymy models, some of them are: part for whole (e.g. we need a strong hand for this job); producer for product (e.g he drives a honda); controller for controlled (washington asks beijing for permission to send health team to the battle outbreak); place for institution (white house asks us employers to strengthen the economy), etc. whereas radden & kovecses (1999) provide a broader taxonomy of the key metonymy types which is then added by littlemore & tagg (2016) who provide each example of a creative metaphor used in text messages. whereas, adam (2018) who studies the metonymic use of bill gates reports that the richest man, the philanthropist, the successful drop-out college are some of the characteristics of bill gates that are transferred in a particular discourse on its metonymic use. this study aims to investigate the use of those two main indonesian woman figures, i.e: srikandi and kartini as metonymy to refer to women politicians in indonesian political discourse. the focus of the investigation is the extent of the use of the metonymy across political parties and across the indonesian political level, and the influence of the context of time on the metonymy chosen in a particular discourse. the study will also examine the characteristics of the figures that are highlighted in metonymic use methodology ten news headlines are purposively chosen in this study. the headlines all contain the metonymic use of kartini and srikandi in the political context. this study approaches the metonymy within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory (cmt) of lakoff and johnson (1980). cmt framework is used, as this study relates the metonymy and the entity it represents within the cognitive framework, and with the conceptual mapping, to which cmt provides the theoretical ground which further formulated in detail by radden journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 151 and kovecses (2007) on the cognitive view of metonymy. during analysis and interpretation, the characteristics of the element mapping are conducted to examine what elements from the traits of the figures are potentially mapped onto the target domain. as metaphor and metonymy operate similarly on the concept of elements transfer principle, thus, the mapping analysis is adopted from ahrens', (2014) work on mapping principle for conceptual metaphor. the results and discussion will be presented based on four aspects. the first is the extent of the metonymic use of srikandi and kartini across parties and political level, the second is the effect of context on the use of both metonymies, and the third is the use and combination with other metonymy and the fourth is the discussion of the highlighted elements to measure whether or not the metonymic use of kartini and srikandi implied the characteristics or traits that show a significant notion of women empowerment. throughout this paper, the metaphor producer and metaphor interpreter will be frequently used. the first refers to journalists who use metonymy in the news report; the latter refers to reader or audience in general results and discussion in the indonesian context, the metonymic use of srikandi and kartini in discourse is commonly used to refer to the women that play a significant role in the modern profession. it follows the type or the icm person for trait, this icm has also been affirmed by littlemore (personal communication, july 6, 2020). person for trait is an icm where a name of a person is used as metonymy because of its unique characteristics that is assumed known in general. it means that the characteristics of srikandi and kartini, which is culturally and historically understood by indonesian people, enable those two to be used as metonymy for women in their professional settings. srikandi and kartini as metonymy is not only used in the political context, but also across fields and in everyday discourse dewi wara srikandi is a woman figure in javanese shadow puppet theatre (wayang kulit) story and is famously known as srikandi (azizah & wirawanda, 2019) who has military prowess and masculinity characters. solichin (2016) asserts that srikandi has the characteristics of a strong goddess, high skill in archery, and a woman heroine in javanese wayang story that make srikandi is used as a symbol of women achievement and equality. as for the kartini, her full name is raden adjeng kartini, born in 1879, was a javanese aristocrat who became a fierce proponent for gender equality and education. asmarani (2013) asserts kartini, a champion of women’s emancipation in the dutch colonial time where most of her thought was reflected from her letters, yulius (2016) affirms that different from the modern feminist notion, kartini emphasized the empowerment of indonesian women could not be separated from the role of mother and wife. in one letter, kartini highlighted the importance of women and motherhood. “it is from women that humans receive their first education — on a woman’s lap, a child gradually learns to feel, think and speak; i came to realize more and more that the effect of the first education is not insignificant to human life ...” (in yulius, 2016). woodward (2015) describes kartini as “an indonesian national heroine, considered indonesia’s founding feminist” (p.5). in the educational field, kartini’s view and principle are also becoming the focus of study by mulatsih & putri (2020) and assert that kartini’s teacher concept and principle put moral and intellectual aspects as essential aspects in teaching. thus, kartini’s views and principles on women empowerment have been historically and socio-culturally embedded in indonesian people, and are commonly used in various discourses as a metonymy to evoke women's emancipation and is not limited only in the political sphere, but also across discourses. every april 21st is commemorated as kartini day and reflects women's emancipation in all fields. each of the two figures has different highlighted characteristics on women empowerment. srikandi’s traits are of mastering men’s skills, patriotism, and journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) muhammad adam, siti hafsah & wahyuni 152 independence, whereas kartini reflects the combination of women empowerment with still maintaining the role of motherhood. the data collected for the metonymic use of srikandi and kartini are presented in table 1 below: table 1. the metonymic use of srikandi and kartini in news headlines data code headlines 1 srikandi 'banteng' salurkan bantuan lawan covid 19, pasok sembako pakai ojol (noor, 2020) srikandi of “bulls” distribute aid to fight against covid-19, supplying to online taxi rider”. (noor, 2020) 2 sri laelasari, srikandi gerindra yang siap perjuangkan nasib emak-emak (kumparan, 2019) sri laelasari, srikandi of gerindra who is ready to fight the women’s nasib. 3 golkar selektif, satu dari tiga srikandi beringin tomohon bakal gigit jari (marentek, 2020) golkar party is selective, one out of three srikandi of beringin tomohon will (lit.) bite fingers. 4 devita rusdy ajak srikandi partai demokrat bagikan sembako.(fikri, 2020) devita rusdy urges srikandi of demokrat party to distribute basic food packages. 5 srikandi nasdem tabanan sumbang paket internet bantu siswa belajar di 'rumah aja'.(bali, 2020) srikandi of nasdem donate internet package to help students study from home. 6 peringati hari kartini, srikandi golkar manggarai bagi-bagi masker dan vitamin.(floresa, 2020) commemorate kartini day, the srikandi of golkar manggarai distribute masks and vitamin. 7 lilik hendarwati, 'kartini' yang berani terjun ke dunia politik.(ramzi, 2016) lilik hendarwati, the kartini who dares to jump into politics. 8 jelang ramadhan, kartini golkar bagikan ratusan sembako dan ribuan masker.(fuad, 2020) approaching ramadhan, kartini of golkar distribute hundreds of basic food packages and thousands of masks. 9 tiga "kartini" golkar tanjungbalai diperkirakan terpilih jadi anggota dprd. (antara, 2019) three kartini of golkar tanjungbalai are predicted to be elected as member of house of representatives. 10 aktif di politik dan sosial, kartini 'senayan' ini gigih perjuangkan nasib perempuan. (tribun, 2020) being politically and socially active, this kartini of senayan is determined to fight for women. four aspects become the point of discussion from the finding. the first is the metonymic usage across parties and political level, the second is the role of context of the journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 153 time in the metonymy chosen, the third is the combination with other metonymies that add more political sphere and the last is the highlighted characteristics mapping. metonymy across parties and political level metonymic use of kartini and srikandi as metonymy in indonesian media particularly that refer to women politicians is widely found to refer to all parties and all political level. across parties, there are six parties in data code that use the metonymy as seen from data code 1 till data code 9 that uses the metonymy to refer to the member of different political parties. it shows that the extent of the use does not limit based on political parties' platform and ideology, but also across the parliamentary level, the national level and the regional level are also found. in the national level the use of both metonymies is also found as well as in the provincial and city or regency political level as seen in data code 10 (national), and data code 3, 6, and 9 (provincial and city/regency level) data code 10 aktif di politik dan sosial, kartini senayan' ini gigih perjuangkan nasib perempuan being politically and socially active, this kartini of senayan is determined to fight for women. the use of kartini “senayan” above shows the national level of political stage. whereas in data code 3, data code 6, and data code 9 below, consecutively describe the regional and local political level of tomohon, manggarai, and tanjung balai. data code 3 golkar selektif, satu dari tiga srikandi beringin tomohon bakal gigit jari golkar party is selective, one out of three srikandi of beringin tomohon will (lit.) bite fingers data code 6 peringati hari kartini, srikandi golkar manggarai bagi-bagi masker dan vitamin commemorating kartini day, the srikandi of golkar manggarai distribute masks and vitamin data code 9 tiga "kartini" golkar tanjungbalai diperkirakan terpilih jadi anggota dprd. three kartini(s) of golkar tanjungbalai are predicted to be elected as a member of the regional house of representatives. the cross-parties and cross-region and places of metonymic use of srikandi and kartini reflect the pervasiveness and the commonality of the use in representing women politician. metonymic use based on context the examination of the use of metonymy shows that srikandi is used more frequently than kartini. the use of srikandi is not significantly affected by the context of which month the news report is, whereas when the news report is in april, particularly approaching april 21, kartini is used more frequently. kovecses (2014) agrees with the role of contextual factors in metaphor on particular occasions and range from global to local along the physical, social, cultural, historical, linguistic, dimensions. the metaphors used in discourse are selected in conformity to them. it is the same case with metonymy. we find that the metonymic use of kartini is chosen because the context is closed with the celebration of kartini day. data code 7, data code 8, data code 9, and data code 10 are used as a headline in news reports consecutively on april 21, april 21, april 22, and april 20. whereas in data code 6 below, although the headlines were used on april 21, but srikandi is still used as metonymy. the summary of the comparison between date and the metonymic use is presented in table 2 below. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) muhammad adam, siti hafsah & wahyuni 154 table 2. date of news publication data code metonymy date of news report 1 srikandi banteng 06 april 2 srikandi gerindra 13 september 3 srikandi beringin 07 june 4 srikandi partai demokrat 05 april 5 srikandi nasdem 18 april 6 srikandi golkar 21 april 7 kartini 21 april 8 kartini golkar 21 april 9 kartini golkar 22 april 10 kartini senayan 20 april it shows that the choice of the particular metonymy used is also affected by the context of time. if there are two metonymies options for a particular characteristic, the one that closest much with the context of time will be chosen. also, culturally srikandi implies traits associated with men’s world as asserted by sholikhah & masruroh (2019) who summarize some of the values of srikandi feminism that can be applied as character education for gender equality,i.e: mastering skills that associated with men’s skill such as military, archery, war, and being a leader are very identical to men; ability to defend the country; ability to perform multiple roles and; being independent and actively learning. the combination with other metonymies the persuasive effect of metonymy in political discourse will even stronger if it is combined with another metonymy that also brings particular political characteristics as asserted by pérez-sobrino, littlemore, & houghton (2019) that “complex figurative operations were perceived as more appealing” (p. 30). it can be seen from the metonymic use of kartini and srikandi, where they are used with another political metonymy as seen in data code 1 below: data code 1 srikandi 'banteng' salurkan bantuan lawan covid 19, pasok sembako pakai ojol (srikandi of “bulls” distribute aid to fight against covid-19, supplying basic food package to online taxi rider”) srikandi ‘banteng’ (bulls), refer to the women members of the pdi-p political party, which uses banteng (bulls) as the party symbol. the universal and also cultural view of banteng adds an extra persuasive sphere to the metonymy and stresses the political aspect of discourse. apart from the symbolic representation of the bulls as the political party, the embedded entailments of bulls infer strong and powerful characteristics. this brings an extra implication to the discourse and along with the metonymic usage of srikandi. same with data code 1 above, in data code 3 below, srikandi is directly followed by “beringin” (banyan tree) a type of tree that becomes the symbol of political party golkar. banyan tree itself in some cultures across indonesia signifies a particular symbol; one of them is asserted by ali (2019) who studies the ornament of the traditional house of gorontalo and finds that one of the ornament is the banyan tree ceiling that symbolizes strength and unity. therefore, for the journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 155 interpreter, reading the metonymic of srikandi and followed by the banyan tree will unconsciously trigger other additional inferences and image schema. data code 3 “golkar selektif, satu dari tiga srikandi beringin tomohon bakal gigit jari”. golkar party is selective, one out of three srikandi of beringin tomohon will (lit.) bite fingers also, an additional metaphor “gigit jari” is used. gigit jari (literally bit finger) is a gesture when one does not receive what one wants, and is used and metaphorically to describe the disappointment. in the particular context of data code 3, the disappointment refers to the selection of the legislative candidates, that out of three women politicians that are metonymically described as three srikandis, only one will be appointed by their party. the metonymic use of srikandi in data code 3 above asserts that all of the legislative candidates are women. in data code 10, the metonymic use of kartini is combined with another famous indonesian metonymy of political discourse, i.e: “senayan”, a common metonymy for the house of representatives. senayan is literally a name of a place in jakarta where the building of the house of representatives is located. its use is similar to ‘capitol” in united states political discourse. the use of the place name in the indonesian political context is also pervasive. adam (2019) reports how “cendana”, the address of the indonesian second president is used as the metonymy for the second president’s family and relative in media discourse. the additional place name metonymy of senayan triggers a stronger political sphere to the discourse, as the metonymic itself is widely used and widely known as the center of the indonesian political field, particularly on the legislative side. data code 10 “aktif di politik dan sosial, kartini 'senayan' ini gigih perjuangkan nasib perempuan”. being politically and socially active, this kartini of senayan is determined to fight for women. as seen from data code 1, data code 3, and data code 10, each has a combination with other metonymies that can reinforce the political sphere, from the metonymy of the political party symbol, until the place name metonymy that is associated with indonesian political center. the highlighted elements of srikandi and kartini in metonymy gender relatedness should not the only aspect to highlight in using kartini and srikandi as metonymy, but it should also evoke particular characteristics that are related to women empowerment. kartini for instance shall evoke more political sphere as the context in which she spent her life was mostly during the political movement during the colonialization period and fighting not only for gender equality but also as a person from a colonized country. the creative use of metonymy enables the metonymy producer to highlight a particular characteristic of the metonymy used. littlemore (2015) agrees that metonymy can highlight a given phenomenon while downplaying others that enable it to either consciously or unconsciously to present a metaphor producer perspective. the icm person for traits or characteristics in the metonymic usage of kartini and srikandi has shown that not all metonymy uses the same highlighted characteristics of the women empowerment or gender equality traits. the highlighted characteristics that are implied from some of the data do not show optimum mapping of women empowerment characteristics from two woman figures used as metonymy, particularly kartini. instead, some data shows that the traits from kartini that is transferred during the metonymic use lie heavily on the gender similarity. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) muhammad adam, siti hafsah & wahyuni 156 the ideal traits and characteristics of kartini should be one of them reflecting her struggle for gender equality. the comparison of how fewer traits of kartini are reflected from the metonymic use can be seen from data code 8. data code 8: “jelang ramadhan, kartini golkar bagikan ratusan sembako dan ribuan masker”. approaching ramadhan, kartini of golkar distribute hundreds of basic food packages and thousands of masks. the discourse in data code 8 above does not suggest any significance on the activity of distributing the basic food packages and masks as an extraordinary characteristic, figure 1 below shows that there are only two traits that can be mapped from kartini’s traits to the target; they are gender relatedness and taking the role in the political field. whereas other significant aspects of kartini’s traits such as fighting for women empowerment, politically and culturally struggle are missing from contexts. figure 1. the mapping of characterictics of data code 8 kartini – implied traits and characteristics kartini in data code 8 the creative use of metonymy as one of the persuasive tools in media discourse should also pay more attention to whether or not the criteria of the target to use a particular proper name as metonymy can be applied. otherwise, it may deduct the value of the initial traits and characteristics embedded in the figures used as metonymy as seen in the finding described in figure 1 above, that there are more elements of characteristics of srikandi figure that are not mapped onto the metonymic use. whereas in data code 10 below, there are more traits and characteristics of kartini and even the women empowerment and political sphere that are reflected from the use of kartini as metonymy. the use of place-name metonymy “senayan” has significantly added the political sphere to the use of metonymy. data code 10 aktif di politik dan sosial, kartini 'senayan' ini gigih perjuangkan nasib perempuan. being politically and socially active, this kartini of senayan is determined to fight for women’s fate. in figure 2 below, the mapping of elements from the source figures of kartini to the target figures results in a thorough transfer, not only gender relatedness, but also it implies the sphere of fighting for women empowerment, and politically and culturally struggle. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 157 figure 2. the mapping of characteristics of data code 10 kartini – implied traits and characteristics kartini senayan in data code 10 the co-text of discourse followed the metonymy has significantly affected the transferred characteristics highlighted. the use of the place name metonymy “ senayan” has also added a more persuasive impact and political sphere, as it is widely known as the center of indonesian politics. the rest of the sentence as “gigih perjuangkan” (determined to fight for) and nasib perempuan (women’s fate) has perfectly matched the character traits as intended by the metonymic use. implication of this study to metonymic use of srikandi and kartini the use of metonymy in discourse is salient and become part of everyday language in particular media discourse. examining its use in various discourses with various metonymic types in the indonesian context is a broad field to explore, particularly the types of metonymy which embedded cultural and historical variation, as seen from srikandi and kartini. the use of srikandi and kartini as metonymy in discourse particularly in political discourse in the indonesian context is very pervasive to refer to the women who take the role in men’s world. we argue that srikandi is used more frequently with more various spheres than kartini. nevertheless, a piece of comprehensive knowledge on the background of srikandi and kartini's characteristics and role in women empowerment is important to carry more characteristics on its metonymic use. this is important so that the metonymic use shall not only highlight the gender aspects but also beyond that, it highlights the struggle or the strength. in particular with the metonymic use of kartini, should be used also as a metonymy for how women fighting for gender equality while still maintaining the role as a mother and a wife. by embedding other political struggles in the metonymic use, it shall implicitly send messages to metonymy interpreters. metonymic use is not only linguistic expressions, but the socio-cultural and historical aspects are very important and should also be brought forward. the ability to interpret a metonymic use of a proper name relies heavily on the interpreters’ or readers' knowledge of the metonymic source domain. in this particular case, the socio-cultural, historical, and political awareness of both srikandi and kartini is very important to gain a comprehensive interpretation of the usage. otherwise, the only characteristics it carries is not far beyond the similar gender. furthermore, since metonymy involves a cognitive process that provides a sort of ‘short-cut” in the discourse, the similarities between a figure used as metonymy and the target that is described become the most important point to reach the intended meaning. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) muhammad adam, siti hafsah & wahyuni 158 the use of srikandi and kartini to represent women politicians in the discourse should gradually be improved by using them more to highlight other traits and characteristics of both figures by producers (journalist). it also should be conducted simultaneously, that the interpreters shall also be induced with more knowledge about traits, characteristics, and thoughts of both figures. metonymic use of srikandi and kartini can be used to unconsciously and implicitly make people aware of the gender equality and women empowerment of the two figures. otherwise, in particular to kartini, if it is frequently used out of the women empowerment sphere and gender equality sphere, it may decrease how people perceived her figures and what role he has in fighting for gender equality. conclusion this study examines the metonymic use of kartini and srikandi in indonesian political discourse. it can be seen that the use is extensive across parties and across the political level. it is also found that the context plays important role in the use of kartini particularly during the celebration of kartini day on april 21; whereas the notions of women empowerment are not reflected from all metonymic use. further study by quantitatively examining the use of both metonymies across various discourses should be conducted. also, experimental research should be conducted to measure whether or not readers can fully understand the elements that are intended to highlight in the metonymic use, to see whether they understand that srikandi and or kartini is not only metonymically used because of gender similarity, but beyond that, the gender equality that is fought by those two figures should also be understood. the implication of this study to the metonymic use of both figures is the need to raise awareness to the metonymy producers on the understanding of highlighted traits of both figures that are intended to transfer. gender relatedness alone should not the only element to transfer during metonymic use of kartini and srikandi, but beyond that, the metonymic use should reflect more on women empowerment and women equality. references adam, m. 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(2008). discourse metaphors. body, language and mind, 2, 363–386. https://doi.org/ 10.1515/cog.2007.024 phenomena antonius herujiyanto 34 on wilfrido ma. guerrero’s frustration: denouncing official culture of traditional asian family antonius herujiyanto english language education study program, sanata dharma university abstract the purpose of this study is twofold, looking into a philippine dramatic text, wilfrido ma. guerrero’s three-act play frustration, and finding the meaning of the work. the aim of bringing to bear upon it the analytical perspectives of new criticism, russian formalism and structuralism, is to highlight the belief that any approach implemented is but to reveal its covert meaning. this is indirectly agreeing with the credo l’art pour l’art and that of the so-called instrumentalism [or rather, antirealism] instead of exercising the ‘weird’ attitude of investigating the political style of pretending to appreciate and be concerned with literary works. keywords: criticism, colonialism, culture, covert meaning introduction it is admitted that more than three centuries of spanish colonialism and about fifty years of american rule have influenced philippine theater. this can be seen clearly in the folk theater such as sinakulo, komedya, tibag, panunuluyan, sarsuwela, etc. they displaced the indigenous rituals and native theater of the pre-colonial times, even as those forms integrated elements of the indigenous drama. if sinakulo is essentially based on the pasyon (the life and passion of christ) adapted into drama, and the komedya of the 19th century philippines is characterized by a lot of presentational gestures and stylized movements, then, the tibag and panunulyan are religious dramatization performed during the holy week which formed part of the overall effort to christianize the natives. the sarsuwela, which supplanted the komedya, became popular during the early years of american colonialism (1898). it revolves around the intricacies of domestic life, usually revolving around a love story which focuses on a bighearted hero and a heartless villain. in the work of balagtas, however, the sarsuwela became a political allegory with the characters representing ideas juxtaposing nationalism and collaboration. philippine literature in english, however, is divided into many types and numerous periods. croghan, for example, considers three stages through which the literature has passed: the early period, from 1900 to 1930; the middle period, from 1930 to 1960 and the modern period from 1960 to 1974. wilfrido ma. guerrero, like nick joaquin, belongs to the modern period. it is understandable why the name of wilfrido ma. guerrero should be mentioned when one talks about modern philippine drama: being a prolific playwright and influential leader of the university of the philippines dramatic club (1946-1966?) for which he produced and directed over 120 plays. guerrero studied at the ateneo de manila, at the university of the philippines, and, briefly, at columbia university. he wrote his first play at 14, and his play in spanish, no todo es risa, was produced at the ateneo when he was 15. in 1962 he organized and directed the u.p. mobile theater with over vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 35 1000 performances. guerrero teaches acting, playwriting, and directing at the university of the philippines. he has also the unique distinction of being the only filipino who has had a theater named after him while still alive: the wilfrido ma. guerrero theater, at the arts and sciences building, u.p. inaugurated on september 16, 1976. the following is but a few of what people say about him: “you capture vividly the atmosphere of the life of your people. … perhaps you could learn, if you want to, the methods of the international dramatist. i am by no means sure, however, that it would not be more useful if you aimed at writing professionally for your own country. as a matter of fact, i think that drama very much needs just now to be reborn in the context of specific cultures” – joseph wood krutch, internationally known drama critic and writer, in a letter to guerrero dated august 2, 1952, from phoenix, arizona. “guerrero’s plays have been obviously influenced by ibsen, but his writing seems to belong to no school except that which he has founded for himself … guerrero’s plays were written to be acted on an intimate informal stage by capable actors. but any reader with a modicum of imagination will digest the players lines, envisage the completely life-like characters going through their paces, and enjoy the true beauty …”– lt. fred j. archibald “wilfrido ma. guerrero is, essentially, a satirist. he likes to pick fault. and the extraordinary thing about him is that he knows what and where the fault is: he pinpoints it, shows it up in grotesque figures, gives you several healthy laughs in the process, then as you dry your tears of laughter, you look around yourself and feel a little foolish, because you realize you have been laughing at yourself … he is a caricaturist with the deft and delicate touch of a piña embroiderer … with the yellow glint highlighting of an amorsolo.” – lamberto v. avellana (from his foreword to 8 other plays) “… his comedies are pieces of very effective stage showmanship; they bustle and flare with a vitality and a humor peculiarly filipino.” – the late dr. paz latorena (from her foreword to the 2nd printing of 13 plays). “what guerrero has written, what he will write, are historical portrayals and stirring sermons. more than any other filipino playwright guerrero is the historian and moralist of this confused, turbulent period when our time-honored virtues and way of life are somewhat giving way to a new and frightening system of thought and morals.” – arsine b. arabia (from his english m.a. thesis entitled “the plays of guerrero” (1951). “guerrero’s plays show clearly that he knows his milieu, whether it be the simple impassioned life of barrio folks or the brazzy, artificial, and corrupted life of middle class society and those of politicians … . in this sense, guerrero is a filipino who speaks about filipinos for the whole world, without meaning to shun or insult them, but with the thought of showing that they are no different from all other people everywhere.” – celso al. carunungan (from his foreword to 7 more plays) guerrero has been the recipient of three national awards; the rizal pro-patria award (1961), the araw ng maynila award (1969), both for drama, and the republic cultural heritage award (1972) for literature. instead of the ‘weird’ attitude of investigating the political style of pretending to appreciate and be concerned with literary works, looking into his frustration in this study is meant to highlight that any approach implemented is but to reveal the covert meaning of the work. both the credo l’art pour l’art and that of the so-called instrumentalism [or rather, antirealism] would be, then, put ‘behind the door’. antonius herujiyanto 36 guerrero’s three-act play frustration admitting that the analytical perspectives of new criticism, russian formalism and structuralism in this study are purposedly made used to highlight the character aspects of the play. it is unavoidable, however, that the discussion would also deal with the other elements essential to any work of literature. besides its physical objects and moods, for example, ingarden at least mentions sounds, meaning of words and sentences; the objects presented; the schematized appearances and ‘metaphysical qualities.’ the setting of wilfrido ma. guerrero’s frustration is manila in 1940s. the characters are araceli, imelda, victor, dr. fernando solis, fermina, elena, geronima, rafael esteva, rosalinda magno, tony escasa, pura roco, maria rita and nemesio. araceli’s frustration began when she had to leave her fiancé, fernando, only to marry tirso to save her parents’ pride. they, then, had two children, victor and imelda. araceli’s love to fernando solis, however, never died. and so did fernando’s love to araceli. tirso’s sister, fermina, who lived together with them had never got along with araceli. she always knew that araceli had never been in love with her brother. knowing that his wife had never loved him, tirso ran to another woman, pura roco. with pura, he had a daughter called maria rita. both the love life of victor and imelda did not go smoothly either. all of this frustration comes into surface when tirso died of a heart attack. toward the end of the story, however, araceli managed to make victor change his mind to commit suicide. araceli said, “love is a gift, and like any other gift, it must not be sought after, but gratefully received.” new criticism not only did the new critics seek precision and structural tightness in the literary work, but they also favored a style and tone that tended toward irony. as a result, they insisted on the presence within the work of everything necessary for its analysis. they did not want to know anything to do with matters outside the work itself: the life of the author, the history of his times, or the social and economic implications of the literary work. in other words, what the work says and how it says it as inseparable issues. the words, phrases, metaphors, images, and symbols are expected to be examined in terms of each other and of the whole. by doing so – establishing the “internal logic” – the overall form of the work is identifiable. images, themselves totally dissociated when joined in the circuit of a particular emotion located with specific relation to both of them, conduce to great vividness and accuracy of statement in defining that emotion. so, when that “internal logic” has been established, we are very close to identifying the overall form of the work. in the case of drama, characters, as we know, comment upon themselves and others so that we can establish a tone peculiar to each and can evaluate speeches (and actions) by a kind of yardstick established by the play as a whole. the playwright’s attitude can be traced through how he or she poses his/her characters against each other and the sorts of dialogue he/she puts into their mouths. the essence of any dramatic situation is that of the conflict established. actually, there is another important facet of context: the “world” of the work. it is understood how an author imagines and creates a world in which his/her characters move and have their being. for example the author desires a fictional world that closely mirrors the actual world with which we as the reader can relatively easily identify. so, to account for the world of a literary work, we need to ask what the “laws” are that control and define the behavior of the characters. do they permit frequent violations of probability? do they justify or proceed from some idea of a deity, or do they merely reflect the disordered state of an isolated mind? are there recognizable links between causes and effects or merely inexplicable series of incidents that seem to have little or no necessary connections? sometimes we also need to ask whether the world highly restricted in time and space, expansive in space or time, or timeless? is there a highly vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 37 structured society or are anarchy and chaos prevalent? such questions, indeed, would explain the setting: we can see the world presented by the work in terms of every implication, innuendo, and viewpoint. in order to look into guerrero’s frustration, we may begin interpretation by characterizing the world of the work. the setting, we know, is manila in 1940s. it is, indeed, a world peopled by guerrero’s characters: the world of the scene of all the three acts is taking place in the luxurious living room of araceli’s house, an upper class one. it is a kind of unpleasant or rather hatred world. it was only three days ago that aracelli’s husband died. two guests, elena and her sister geronima came to express sympathy. actually, both of them are also representing those who are fond of gossip and nosing into other people’s affairs. geronima, in act i, for example, says to her sister elena: i’m always curious to see the reaction of people when they lose somebody … because i can always, tell how much a person has loved the dead person. when i see them crying and being hysterical, then it’s my guess that their love is deep and true. but then when they shed no tears and don’t even faint – ay, it seems suspicious. they know that fermina, tirso’s sister who lives with him does not like araceli. they can also feel that there is something wrong about the relationship between tirso and araceli. elena and geronimo, however, start to talk about things to establish their ‘nosy’ habit: elena. araceli and tirso were a perfectly happy couple, weren’t they? geronima. i suppose so. elena. (scandalized). what do you mean you suppose so! i’ve never heard of any serious quarrel between araceli and tirso. geronima. married people don’t always quarrel in public, you know. elena. but we would have heard! fermina would have told us. geronima. i hope you are right. hmp, but i have my suspicions! making use of the similar ‘easy-to follow’ conversations, guerrero is actually, in act i, introducing the characters: elena, geronima, araceli, fermina, imelda, nemesio, fernando, victor, and rosalinda. in telling how fermina dislikes araceli, for example, he writes: elena. the servant told us she was resting. fermina. she (araceli) woke up a short while ago. geronima. it must have been a terrible shock to her, poor araceli. they loved each other so much. elena. such an ideal couple, i always said – fermina. (smiling bitterly, without looking at them.) no, no, she never broke down. …she didn’t shed any tears … she didn’t attend the funeral … she stayed at home … the rest of the characters, indeed, comment upon themselves and others. we can easily see a tone peculiar to each character: elena is dominated by her elder sister, geronima. we cannot see a kind of intimacy between araceli and her sister in law, fermina. the dramatic situation of the play can also be found merely from the conflict between the characters: the plot of the play. when araceli had an argument with fermina, for example, guerrero is trying to expose the inciting moment. araceli asked ironically whether grief should be worn always on the outside; and then gave a comment, “there’s such a thing as bad taste.” the argument stopped after fermina broke into bitter sobs and said that both of them had never understood each other. through his characters guerrero makes the story run very smoothly. about araceli or even geronima and elena, for example, he writes: antonius herujiyanto 38 geronima. and victor is two years older, isn’t he? but araceli can’t be more than – (she stops, aghast) araceli. (cuttingly). i’ve never kept my age a secret; i am forty-three. elena. forty-three! no! geronima. i am fif(but she stops embarrassed) elena. how do you manage to look so young, araceli? geronima. yes, what cream do you use? araceli. (annoyed by the women’s remarks.) you could still get married, geronima, if you wanted to. geronima. (hurt). why, araceli – ! guerrero writes in such a way that we can easily follow or even guess what is going to happen next. what is going to be faced by imelda – she canceled her wedding and broke with rafel and was in love with tony who was a married man – for example, is signaled by the following conversation in the middle of act one: elena. this tony is a very attractive young fellow. several girls have lost their heads over him. geronima. what a fine baritone voice he has. did you hear him sing in “rigoletto”? (imelda begins to sway.) araceli. (quietly). imelda – fernando. what’s wrong? (imelda, conscious of the stares, pull herself together.) …. imelda. i’m all right, really i am. please excuse me. (imelda goes out. elena and geronima, smelling something, discreetly nudge each other.) geronima. i wonder why imelda became so upset all of sudden. (standing.) i’ll see if i can help – it is clearly put by guerrero that act one is to carry the exposition. he knows how to anticipate the subsequent actions. he is, in fact, smoothly preparing us for what is to follow. in the beginning of act two, the foreshadowing is easily seen through the talking of the bottle of arsenic brought by nemesio. guerrero makes his characters speak for themselves. the bottle of arsenic can be interpreted easily that it is nothing to do with his characters such as araceli and imelda. it would go to the weak character: victor. we can see even before reading or watching the whole play what this poison is leading to. victor has a broken heart. then, in act three, victor with a bottle (of arsenic) in hand, rushing in across the stage, followed by his mother: victor. don’t come near me, mama! araceli (terrified). no, my son, no! the bottle – give the bottle! victor. no, i won’t, i won’t! araceli (imploringly). the bottle, victor, the bottle! victor (more threatening). don’t come near me, i said! from the events stirred by the characters of the play we may grab and see what the theme of the play is. the roles of or rather what happen to the characters manage to embody the play: frustration. guerrero has ‘forced’ us to enter the world of all the characters’ enduring frustration. wilfrido ma. guerrero employs twisted idioms and a kind of gesture to help expose the inner compromises and failures of the insatiable part of society. russian formalism the russian formalists believed that critics should be able to establish a ‘science’ of literature – a complete knowledge of the formal effects, namely devices, techniques and so forth – which together make up what we call ‘literature.’ the literary aspects of a play, then, are those which concerned with transforming raw material like facts, emotions, stories … into the play. reading a play is, therefore, for many reasons: for comfort, for inspiration, for entertainment. guerrero said, “i started by reading plays … sometimes i get an idea while watching a play or a movie … the definition of the most original man in the world is the one who reads a lot.” the formalists, however, read literary works in order to discover their ‘literariness’ – to highlight the devices and technical elements introduced by writers in order to make language literary. victor vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 39 shklovsky believed that literary devices ‘defamiliarize’ our perceptions of reality. guerrero’s frustration culminates in evoking what ingarden calls ‘metaphysical qualities.’ the play’s ‘baring’ of its literary devices – in this case a mixture quality of the frightfulness (of the characters’ fate) and the firmness of the protagonist’s life: first, the characters are in difficult and embarrassing situations. in act one, for example, we can see how elena and geronima are embarrassed when they talk about age and marriage in front of araceli; when fermina has to argue with araceli about custom and tradition; when araceli mentions about imelda’s wedding and so forth. in act two we can see how imelda is in an awkward position when fernando mentions tony escasa; when fermina finds out in front of everybody that araceli never loves her brother; when fermina sees araceli and fernando are in each other’s arm or when fermina realizes that her brother is not such an angel as she thinks; or in act three when aurora happens to see that her husband, tony, has special relationship with imelda, when victor should face the fact that rosalinda does not love him, etc. secondly when the main characters such as araceli, imelda, victor, fermina face a kind of domestic difficulties: the death of tirso in act one, imelda’s canceling her wedding in act two and in act three victor and a bottle of arsenic. thirdly, the play has a happy ending: victor and imelda, like two frightened children, nestie in araceli’s comforting arms. structuralism the structuralists might also be included in those of what so called the formalists in the sense that they were also concerned with the way in which the individual work of art (or parole) was perceived differently against the background of the literary system as a whole (or langue). the structuralists, however, set themselves the task of describing the organization of the total signsystem itself by dissolving the individual unit back into the langue of which it is a partial articulation. in short, a study of superstructures or rather of ideology is what they undertake. the object is, thus, seen as the unconscious value system or system of representations which orders social life at any of its levels. one of the structuralist thoughts that is going to be used in this study, anyway, is ‘binary oppositions.’ as we know, forms of binarism have been there in human thought. in philosophy and religion, for example, we recognize subject and object, god and man, temporal and eternal and so forth. it is understandably when raman selden exposed the concept of ‘privatives’ in analyzing arthur miller’s death of a salesman. he writes that the world in terms of absence of certain qualities: darkness is an absence of light, an object is still when it lacks movement. the concept can, indeed, cover certain substantive ‘binary oppositions’ (bos): ‘woman’ – as feminists have pointed out – is defined as lacking certain male features. deconstructive critics talk about the pervasive presence of binary logic in western discourse and, needless to say, structuralists have argued the importance of bos in human language. arguing that there is possibility of discovering binary structures in texts, jonathan culler proposes what he calls “the reader’s use of bos as a means of attributing significance to literary texts.” appearance and reality, country and city, body and soul, reason and feeling, are a few of many bos which readers have employed as interpretive strategies. the danger of bos, he further explains, is that they permit one to classify anything beside the fact that we can always find some difference between any two items. there is a good example of how we might go through this unexpected thing: being tempted to align two bos and to regard them as possessing the same structure (‘homologous’) just because they are both present in a text. on the other hand, certain bos are capable of generating a whole series of associated oppositions within a text: the biological nature and divine nature, the organic and mechanical, and fancy and judgment. in wilfrido ma. guerrero’s frustration we can find in act i: antonius herujiyanto 40 geronima. we wanted to come last night, but we were afraid araceli might be indisposed. fermina. no, araceli is not indisposed at all. elena. the servant told us she was resting. fermina. she woke up a short while ago. geronima. it must have been a terrible shock to her, poor araceli. they loved each other so much. elena. such an ideal couple, i always said – fermina. no, no, she never broke down. elena. but of course when tirso died – fermina. she didn’t shed any tears. geronima. araceli didn’t weep? elena. surely at the funeral – a fermina. she didn’t attend the funeral. geronima. she didn’t? fermina. she stayed at home. elena. how strange. i remember when my husband died, i broke down several times. for five days i lay in bed – geronima. and elena insisted on going to the funeral. elena. they had to carry me home, unconscious. geronima. how strange of araceli. fermina. yes, rather. but araceli says tears are no sign of grief. both geronima and elena are shocked knowing that araceli was not indisposed; instead of having a terrible shock she never broke down; instead of shedding tears she didn’t weep, didn’t attend the funeral … . both geronima and elena came to know why araceli was “strange” only after fermina explained [bitterly] “araceli says tears are no sign of grief.” in act 2 araceli tried to inform her two children, imelda and victor after they find out that their mother never loved tirso: imelda. if you never loved father [tirso], why did you marry him? araceli. fernando and i were already engaged – imelda. you were in love with him? araceli. we loved each other deeply. imelda. and then? araceli. my father – your grandfather – made a serious slip. imelda. what kind? araceli. he had one vice: gambling. one day, he over bid and lost. imelda. how much? araceli. one hundred. imelda. one hundred! araceli. the fear of a scandal, family pride – imelda. amor propio! araceli. yes, my dear, human pride. two little words, but the tragedies they have brought to countless persons! imelda. and so-? araceli. for one whole week – i fought and struggled. finally – imelda. grandfather won – you lost. imelda knows the reason why her mother never loved tirso. on the other hand, tirso was indifferent to her. her mother has been in love with only one man, fernando. tirso, on the other hand, then, had a love affair that surprised fermina: araceli. this is fermina, tirso’s sister. pura. fermina – yes, i heard tirso mention your name very often. fermina. you knew my brother? araceli. extremely well. fermina. i didn’t catch your name – if you please – pura. pura roco. fermina. i don’t remember – he came to ask for help. fermina. for help? araceli. this is her daughter. what’s her name? pura. maria rita. araceli. a pension used to be given to them, but this has been stopped. tirso, i understand, used to give her this pension. fermina. my brother gave you a pension? araceli. maria rita is studying at st. anthony’s girls’ institution fermina. what has got to do – araceli. you don’t seem to understand, fermina. maria rita is his. fermina. his? tirso’s? i don’t believe it! araceli. this child is tirso’s. fermina no, you’re lying! my brother didn’t, couldn’t – you’ve no proof! araceli. i shall help you, of course. fermina. no, no! it would imply we approve of his immoral relationship! vol. 14 no. 1 – april 2014 41 pura. tirso, you see, never loved his wife. he told me – more than once. fermina was surprised to know that his “angel” brother went to another woman. he had even a daughter with the woman, pura roco. the worst of all was that tirso did not love his wife, araceli. she, then, regretted to have said that by helping pura roco was approving of the immoral relationship. the following is what happened to imelda toward the end of act one: araceli. what are you trying to tell me? imelda. about our wedding. araceli. you want to postpone it? imelda. no. i broke with rafael. araceli. you – what – ! imelda. i broke with rafael. araceli. when? imelda. this afternoon. araceli. but weren’t you at the modista – ? imelda. precisely. while having my gown fitted, i suddenly – decided it. araceli. but why? imelda. i don’t know, mama, i don’t know. it just came to me. the reason of why imelda decided to break with rafael is quite obvious: she would not have loved him that much. somehow she felt that she would not be happy with him. later, in the next conversation with her mother imelda admitted that there was no such an excitement, vibration and the like whenever she was with rafael … the kind of feelings when she was with tony. the similar situation also happened to victor in act three: victor. rosalinda, may i talk to you alone? rosalinda. what for? victor. i’m awfully sorry for what i said the other day – rosalinda. i’m through with you, i told you! victor. can i see you tonight? rosalinda. i have a date with sandy. araceli. please, victor – it is very clear that rosalinda does not love victor. what happened next was even worse: araceli. i want your happiness above all. victor. happiness! what happiness? damn that girl! araceli. you’ve chosen the wrong girl, victor. she isn’t worth it. victor. but i love her. araceli. look for a girl with more understanding. victor. i can’t! i want only her! araceli. you’re still young, son. put your mind and energy in your studies first. victor. she’s the only girl i want! i wish i had never met her! we can see now that victor is another victim of frustration. the following dialogue might make everything clearer: victor. i’m sick of everything – everything! araceli. your infatuation for a frivolous girl like rosalinda has sent you to the bottom. look at you now! a man, my son, owes it to himself to keep his self-respect. victor. what do you know? araceli. more than you imagine. victor. you admitted you – never loved father – why did you – marry him then? araceli. because, like you, i was a coward. victor. a coward – araceli. we often get maried to the wrong person because circumstancs – or social convention or convenience – or weakness – or plain cowardice – compel us to. then we go through life, silently and bitterly nursing our disillusions, victims of our own frustrations, hoping to escape from them and seldom succeeding – except for a few brave and determined souls. you, victor, are a man, and a man should have a strong enough backbone not to allow a shallow, worthless girl like rosalinda to lick you. victor. love – why must we love? because i love rosalinda too much, i’ve lost her. araceli. my son, always remember this, this implacable rule of nature: in every love, however mutual, one loves less profoundly than the other. victor. i found that out – to my regret the patterns of contrast and similarity between the characters turn upon certain qualitatively significant binary oppositions, antonius herujiyanto 42 which have been active all the time in the analysis above, so far. the bos are apparent in key correlation between attitude and frustration. what is meant by frustration here is feeling disappointed due to many things such as the death of the husband, love failure, unexpected behavior and so on. we can express the bos as they relate to particular characters as follows: ariceli elena reserved demonstrative araceli fermina logical emotional araceli geronima frank hypocritical araceli victor coward coward imelda tirso brave compensating araceli tirso coward indifferent those are some possible bos in the play that produce significances: following culler’s view regarding the bos reading strategies. final remarks having looked into wilfrido ma. guerrero’s frustration, not only can we see the work better, but we can also see a better picture of the play as well as the playwright. he seems to bravely but sensibly denounce the so-called official culture of the traditional asian (in this case the philippines) family: a male-imposed double-standard. his frustration is a kind of social critic, a gentle one. references alegre, edilberto n. and doreen g. fernandez, writers and their millieu, part ii. manila: de la salle university press, 1993. croghan, richard v. s.j., the development of philippine literature in english (since 1900). quezon city, 1996. guerrero, wilfrido ma. my favorite 11 plays. quezon city, 1976. ingarden, roman, das literarische kunstwerk (halle, 1931) in ewa m. thompson, russian formalism and anglo-american new criticism. the hague: mouton & co. n.v., 1971. jameson, frederick, the prison-house of language. new jersey: princeton university press, 1974. selden, raman, practising theory and reading literature. hertfordshire: harvester wheatsheaf, 1989. thomson, ewa m. russian formalism and anglo-ameican new criticism. the hague: mouton & co. torres, maria luisa f. “brecht and the philippines: anticipating freedom in theater,” brecht in asia and africa xiv. 1989: pp. 134-138. 1 maria luisa f. torres, “brecht and the philippines: anticipating freedom in theater,” brecht in asia and africa xiv (1989): 134-138 2 richard v. croghan, s.j., the development of philippine literature in english (since 1900) (quezon city, 1996), 3 3 wilfrido ma. guerrero, my favorite 11 plays (quezon city, 1976), v-vi 4 r. ingarden, das literarische kunstwerk (halle, 1931) in ewa m. thompson, russian formalism and anglo-american new criticism (the hague: mouton & co. n.v., 1971), p. 111-112 5 edilberto n. alegre and doreen g. fernandez, writers and their millieu, part ii (manila: de la salle unvesity press, 1993), p. 204 et 211 6 raman selden, practising theory and reading literature (hertfordshire: harvester wheatsheaf, 1989), p. 38 7 ewa m. thomson, russian formalism and anglo-ameican new criticism (the hague: mouton & co. , 1971), p. 112-113 8 frederick jameson, the prison-house of language (new jersey: princeton university press, 1974), p. 101-102 9 raman selden, practising theory and reading literature (hertfordshire: harvester wheatsheaf, 1989), p. 55 10 ibid., 56-57 115 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 115 – 124 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.5863 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. the interrelations of nature and woman in takahata's the tale of the princess kaguya: an ecofeminist perspective lalita tandayu & hirmawan wijanarka lalitandayu@gmail.com english letters department, universitas sanata dharma, indonesia abstract article information nature, as an essential part of human life, should be preserved to maintain a good quality of life for living beings, and literature can be a tool to promote this issue. this article aims at (1) exploring the characters in isao takahata's the tale of the princess kaguya and (2) analyzing the interrelations of woman and nature as parallel in a patriarchal society. in discussing the movie, this article employs the ecofeminist approach. five theories are applied to support the analysis: the theory of characterization and mise en scène, the theory of ecofeminism, the theory of symbolism, and the theory of patriarchy. the tale of the princess kaguya reveals the equation of women and nature and how both are devalued. the analysis of the characters reveals that princess kaguya possesses caring, adventurous, and mysterious characteristics, while sanuki no miyatsuko possesses caring, loving, ambitious, and arrogant characteristics. the analysis also finds that princess kaguya loves to play with nature. she is equated to an animal, such as a bird, and a plant which is a tree branch. women and nature are seen as parallel in the story. on the other hand, the noblemen in the story, as the masculine, are ignorant of nature as they pluck flowers and destroy a swallow's nest. this study finds out that princess kaguya experiences oppression as she is forced into a lifestyle she does not wish for and is harassed by an emperor. keywords: ecofeminism; patriarchal society; nature; princes kaguya received: 4 february 2023 revised: 16 march 2023 accepted: 21 march 2023 introduction the mistreatment of nature may lead to environmental degradation that certain countries or regions may experience. in 1977, the united nations conference discussed the issues of land degradation, where half of the world's land seemed to be categorized as 'dryland' (meadows and hoffman, 2002). furthermore, commodity production has encroached on pastoralists' traditionally used https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:lalitandayu@gmail.com journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) lalita tandayu & hirmawan wijanarka 116 territory in the sahel, gradually driving them into smaller areas (suhrke, 1994). in literature, the issues of nature have already been seen in even one of the earliest types of art that humans have ever produced and used, which is oral literature. (sone e. m., 2014). oral literature that includes folktale, myth, folk drama and legend is passed down or restricted to the so-called folk or is conveyed orally (goody. j., 2017). swazi oral literature, for instance, offers textual sites that represent various interactions between human beings, other living beings, and the environment. in the development, combined with other issues, such as feminism, tales imprinted in people's minds are adapted into other literary forms, including movies. some examples of adaptation movies are pom poko (1994) which brings the issue of nature; kuroneko (1968), which is adapted from a supernatural folktale in japan; and the tale of the princess kaguya (2013), which presents the issues of nature and feminism. a study of the interrelation between women and nature is conducted by putri and retnaningdyah (2021), using the disney movie frozen ii as the object of the study. under the ecofeminist approach, this study explores "the environmental issues, the patriarchal system that lead to natural destruction, and the role of women to repair the existing natural destruction" (p. 133). one interesting conclusion is that female characters in the movie have the feminine values to overcome the mistreatment of nature caused by the masculine. analyzing princess mononoke movie from the viewpoint of a western audience, sierra et al. (2015) see that as distant from a standard western cartoon as one can get, the movie princess mononoke has a fantasy tale with talking animals, a charming young hero, and a princess. the women in the movie show the connections between gender, nature, and technology. "princess mononoke addresses an increasingly important topic, the impact of human intervention and technology on the world we all share, in a complex and nuanced way" (p. 53). japanese anime, too, often more narratively complex than their western counterparts, frequently tackle issues regarding the intersections between humanity, nature, and technology (sierra et al., (2015, p. 54). hasija (2017) observes that in maleficent, the countryside automatically associates itself with the feminine. in the movie, for instance, maleficent heals a broken tree branch with magical power in one scene. "she watches over the forest like a lioness protecting her cubs; she knows them all by their name" (p. 88). on the other hand, the moors represent a natural, conventional feminine space. positive characteristics such as trust, kindness, and reciprocity are attributed to the creatures of the moors throughout the film. in euro-western worldviews, women and nature are philosophically and symbolically linked. ecofeminists assert the belief that a world separated in a hierarchical and dualistic manner was created in euro-western cultures, and in dualistic conceptual systems, men are associated with masculinity, the mind, heaven, the supernatural, and disembodied spirit, whereas women are associated with femininity, the body, sexuality, earth or nature, and materialism (eaton & lorentzen, 2003). the idea that women are often linked to nature in western ideology, is the sole reason for this study to include the western ideology viewpoint in discussing the interrelation of women and nature. ecofeminists also discuss how nature is often related to women. nature has been represented as a woman in two rather differing senses: 'she' is identified with the body of laws, principles and processes that is the object of scientific scrutiny and experimentation. but 'she' is also nature conceived as spatial territory, as the land or earth which is tamed and tilled in agriculture (soper, 2000, p. 141). thus, the theory of ecofeminism is required for this research to explore and discover how the object, the tale of the princess kaguya, shows the interrelation between women and nature in the movie, how they are positioned as equal or parallel in a patriarchal society that sees them as feminine and inferior. as mentioned by warren (1997), when women are seen as closer to nature, it brings them to an inferior position where their freedom is being challenged. plumwood journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 117 (1993) also supports the idea as he argues that women and nature, as well as nature as feminine, may disadvantage women, nature, and the quality of human life. therefore, this research also discusses how women and nature are both oppressed in a patriarchal society due to being perceived as inferior and feminine. the above ecofeminist studies on movies, and the insights about ecofeminism, trigger this article to examine further issues of ecofeminism, using isao takahata's the tale of the princess kaguya. in particular, this article aims at studying the following points: (1) the characterization in isao takahata's the tale of the princess kaguya characters; and (2) the interrelations of woman and nature as parallel in a patriarchal society in isao takahata's the tale of the princess kaguya? methodology the object of this study is an animated movie entitled the tale of the princess kaguya, directed by isao takahata and released in 2013. according to boggs and petrie (2008), a movie communicates verbally through conversation and visual action, where their intricate rhythms are similar to those of music and poetry. a movie also compresses or expands time and space, moving freely back and forth within its expansive boundaries, much like the novel does (boggs and petrie, 2008). the tale of the princess kaguya, is adapted from a japanese folktale. the tale of the princess kaguya, also known as the tale of the bamboo-cutter, was first narrated in the heian period (795-1185) and has been adapted and reinvented numerous times (japan house los angeles, 2021, para. 1). it is a story of a woman named princess kaguya who came out of a bamboo tree and was found by a bamboo cutter who then raised her with his wife as their child. it is finally revealed that princess kaguya actually came from the moon. throughout her life on earth, princess kaguya experiences a lot of happiness and suffering before she finally returns to the moon after experiencing mistreatment from the masculine on earth that causes her to scream inside her heart, wanting to leave the earth. in studying this movie, this article employs an ecofeminist approach. according to gaard (1993), ecofeminism emerged from various feminist activities and research areas, including the anti-nuclear, anti-labor, prohealth, women's, and animal liberation movements. this approach seeks to find equal efforts to end oppression between women and nature. plumwood (1993) states that women's inclusion in the sphere of nature has been a major tool in their oppression emerges clearly from a glance at traditional sources: 'woman is a violent and uncontrolled animal' (cato the elder) (p. 19). this study also applies several theories as the base for the analysis. they are the theory of characterization and symbolism by boggs and petrie (2008), the theory of mise en scène by pramaggiore and wallis (2008), and the theory of ecofeminism by gaard (1993), and the theory of patriarchy by walby. results and discussion the characterization of princes kaguya the movie's main character, princess kaguya is presented as a beautiful woman born from a bamboo sprout. unlike other human children, princess kaguya grows faster than them. she has beautiful long black hair, clean white skin, and a beautiful face. she turns out to be sent from the moon to live on earth. besides having an attractive physical appearance, princess kaguya is described as a person who consistently demonstrates how she cares about nature and is helpful to people. these caring characteristics are shown through her external actions. the following pictures show how she cares and is helpful to others. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) lalita tandayu & hirmawan wijanarka 118 pic 1. princess kaguya helps her father pic 2, princess kaguya bandages sutemaru princess kaguya is portrayed as having a great adventurous soul for nature. since she was a child, she has enjoyed running in the rain. she, too, enjoys playing and swimming in the water, even jumping from a high cliff into the water. she said to her father, "i was born to truly live! just like the birds and the beasts" (takahata, 2013). pic 3. princess kaguya jumps from a high cliff into the water the characterization of sanuki no miyatsuko sanuki no miyatsuko, princess kaguya's father, who believes that she was born to be a princess on earth, tries to create a situation where princess kaguya can grow up as a princess. it can be seen through the dialogue in which sanuki no miyatsuko talks to his wife about moving from the mountain to the capital so that princess kaguya can experience life with the nobles. "living with nobles as a real princess, she'll be happy" (takahata, 2013). sanuki no miyatsuke develops to be an ambitious and arrogant person after living in the capital city. he and his wife start to wear clothing usually worn by the upper class in the capital. along with these qualities, sanuki develops his arrogance, as revealed in the following conversation: princess kaguya. so can we invite my friends? i miss them so much! princess kaguya mother’s. that might be nice! sanuki. don't be a fool! do you realize how important this is? we live in a different world from hose bumpkins! (takahata, 2013) as the movie gets to the point where sanuki no miyatsuko wants to raise princess kaguya as an actual princess, it is revealed that sanuki no miyatsuko has unconsciously forced princess kaguya into a life she doesn't want to live, as he becomes more and more ambitious in living a higher class life. sanuki. his majesty summons you to serve him at court! you'll be one of his ladies. and i'll wear a courtier's cap! thanks be to heaven! princess kaguya's mother. you still don't understand how she feels? sanuki. it's you who doesn't understand! this is what i've worked for! (takahata, 2013) unlike sanuki, who is excited because the emperor wants princess kaguya to be his wife, princess kaguya does not consider the news exciting as she does not want to marry the emperor. when hearing about it, sanuki no miyatsuko becomes shocked and reveals that this is what he has been waiting for, showing ambitiousness. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 119 the interrelation of woman and nature in a patriarchal society special bond between woman and nature men and women react to environmental challenges differently, with women being more in tune with the natural world (eaton and lorentzen, 2003). the special bond between women and nature is represented by princess kaguya as the woman, and the living and non-living things (animals and plants) represent nature. as mentioned by eaton and lorentzen (2003), "some see women as "closer" to nature/earth than men and possessing innate traits of caring, community building, nonviolence, and earth sensitivity" (p. 3). takahata shows the closeness and the special bond between princess kaguya and nature from the movie's beginning. princess kaguya is known to be born from a bamboo sprout, which is part of nature. bamboo shoots in japanese culture are often referred to as the symbols of prosperity and vitality (closs, 2022, para. 12). princess kaguya, born from a bamboo shoot, is thought of as good luck and a charm of blessing by sanuki no miyatsuko who found her. later, sanuki no miyatsuko uses the existence of princess kaguya to bring prosperity and prestige to his life. the fact that the story starts with the connection between woman and nature emphasizes the special bond between nature and woman in the story. when princess kaguya was a baby and learned how to crawl, she saw two frogs jumping from place to place in her house. not being scared or trying to avoid the frogs, princess kaguya even chose to play with them instead. this fact reveals how princess kaguya has had a special bond with nature since she was a baby. the special bond between princess kaguya and nature is also emphasized when she sneaks into the bushes while crawling, and then she takes a peek from the bushes only to see a lot of baby wild boars. without fear, she goes to them and happily plays with the wild boars. according to nic (2017, para 3), "wild boars are respected and even feared in japan because of their courage and tendency to charge and attack. pic 4. princess kaguya plays with frogs. pic 5. princess kaguya plays with wild boars. wild boar is the symbol of fertility and prosperity. (nick, 2017, para. 3). how the wild baby boars in the story react to princess kaguya shows no aggressiveness to attack her, implying that the wild baby boars feel a special bond with princess kaguya. in addition, princess kaguya was born as a bamboo shoot which is the symbol of prosperity in japan. not only does princess kaguya feel close to nature, but nature also recognizes and welcomes princess kaguya warmly. the movie's setting also says a lot about this bond. as pramaggiore and wallis put it, "the primary functions of the setting are to establish time and place, to introduce ideas and themes, and to create mood" (2008, p. 92). in the beginning, princess kaguya lives in the mountain, surrounded by trees, flowers, grass, birds, and other plants or animals. when later her father takes her to live in the city, she makes a garden to fulfil her longingness for nature. however, this made-up garden differs from the natural garden she used to live in. the following picture (pic 6) says it all. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) lalita tandayu & hirmawan wijanarka 120 pic 6. princess kaguya in her "fake" baren garden. princess kaguya looks sad in the garden, and the barren nature (tree) shows the same mood. not only princess kaguya feels close to nature, but nature also feels close to her. it is visually symbolized by the fact that almost all the leaves on the tree are gone, leaving only the branches and a few leaves. princess kagaya's releasing animals (birds and grasshoppers) back into nature can be seen as symbolizing a woman-nature solid bond. in addition, birds and grasshoppers symbolize the freedom that princess kaguya is looking for. pic 7. princess kaguya releases a bird to fly freely into the sky. pic 8. princess kaguya releases a grasshopper to go free in nature. woman and nature as equals a woman is often naturalized, and nature is often feminized. the idea that nature is feminine is seemingly cross-cultural and nearly universal due to the relationship between women's reproductive functions and nature (soper, 1995). and as mentioned by eaton and lorentzen (2003), endangering nature is equivalent to endangering women. women are perceived as more in tune with nature. born from the bamboo sprout, princess kaguya is different from the other kids as she grows visibly fast. this confuses her friends, who are boys from the village. in japanese culture, the bamboo shoot is perceived as the symbol of prosperity and vitality (closs, 2022, para. 12). the boys equate princess kaguya with a bamboo shoot, as seen in the following dialogue: friend 1. she's growing fast! friend 2. like a bamboo shoot! friend 3. that’s her! li’l bamboo! (takahata, 2013) the same attitude is also revealed by prince kuramochi, a nobleman who tries to win her heart. the metaphors he uses to describe her are all natural. prince kuramochi. if i came to pass that you became my wife, my joy would be as if i had found a jeweled branch from a tree of mount penglai in china with silver roots, a gold trunk, and pearls for fruits (takahata,2013). another nobleman, isonokami, emphasizes this equation when he compares princess kaguya to a part of nature, a cowrie shell. isonokami. no! to me, princess kaguya is like the cowrie shell that swallow warms as a treasure and a charm for a safe birth. (takahata, 2013) the dialogues convey that men (represented by prince kuramochi and isonokami) see princess kaguya and nature as parallel. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 121 ignorance of nature by the men in a patriarchal society women seemed more at the mercy of their biological fate than men; they were trapped in domestic and corporeal immanence and could only achieve freedom by rejecting and transcending their woman-hood (simone de beauvoir as cited in eaton and lorentzen, 2003). things related to women, such as emotion, animals, the natural world, and the body, are valued less, while things related to men, reason, humans, culture, and the mind are valued more (gaard, 1993). the tale of the princess kaguya reveals how women are taught to possess those traits. princess kaguya experiences some oppression. for example, she is expected to fulfill her role as a woman and a princess. she is expected to act both like a woman and a real princess by her father. her father even brings lady sagami from the palace to teach princess kaguya. having no choice, princess kaguya allows lady sagami's teachings and instructions even though she does not enjoy them. princess kaguya has to learn how to write, play the koto, act as a noble, become polite and put on make-up. the portrayal of princess kaguya in the movie shows how women and nature (which are equals) are valued less in society. women are oppressed by men, just as nature is ignored. historically, in the heian period, it was common for daughters to marry into other families to confirm relationships between two clans. arranged marriage was normal then because they valued their clans' names and reputations. as a result, education in early japan focused on preparing women for marriage (edubirdie, 2022, para. 5). in the movie, princess kaguya is, forced to wear make-up eventhough she does not want to. she is even forced to pluck her eyebrows and blacken her teeth. her arguments that plucking eyebrows may cause sweat to reach her eyes and that black teeth would look ugly when she laughs are ignored. she is even told that a princess may not open her mouth when she laughs. pic 9. princess kaguya cries when her eyebrows are plucked. more obvious oppression is done on princess kaguya when she grows up. her father keeps hiding her from other people because she is a princess. her father forces her to live in a mansion, although she loves to live in the mountain. in a patriarchal japanese culture, women don't even have their own lives; instead, they are supposed to care for everyone and be moral, quiet, polite, and submissive (edubirdie, 2022). the equalization of women to nature has led to the devaluation of women and their exclusion from cultural life. it has also contributed to the devaluation of nature by making it appear more feminine (soper, 1995). this is observed in the movie when princess kaguya's admirers present her plucked flowers to show their admiration. this act exemplifies men's acts of ignorance toward nature. another example of ignorance towards nature is when prince kuramochi brings princess kaguya the branch he snapped off. the act of snapping off the branch from a tree by the men reveals ignorance toward nature, as the branch is part of nature and should be able to grow in its environment. the ignorance also comes out of their idea of equating a woman with nature. as stated, the noblemen who equate princess kaguya to a cowrie shell and jeweled tree branch, for example, make efforts to win her heart into marrying them by giving princess kaguya what they equate her to. the nobleman tries to catch her attention even though it means snapping off the branch tree and plucking flowers, which reveals how the masculine in the patriarchal society plays a part in the ignorance and persecution of nature. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) lalita tandayu & hirmawan wijanarka 122 pic 10. princess kaguya cries, receiving plucked flowers from her admirers. oppression of women by the masculine in a patriarchal society women seemed more at the mercy of their biological fate than males; they were trapped in domestic and corporeal immanence and could only achieve freedom by rejecting and transcending their woman-hood (simone de beauvoir as cited in eaton and lorentzen, 2003). because of the way that women and nature have historically been conceptualized in the western intellectual tradition, things that are related to women, emotion, animals, the natural world, and the body are valued less. in contrast, things related to men, reason, humans, culture, and the mind are valued more (gaard, 1993). princess kaguya's life shows how society values women and nature less. not only that, but men also mistreat women. sanuki no miyatsuko, without listening to princess kaguya's opinion and decision, tells her enthusiastically that the emperor wishes to marry her, so she needs to get ready for her wedding and that both of them will need a bed chamber. sanuki clearly mistreats a woman. the emperor demonstrates another instance of a man's mistreatment toward a woman. almost at the movie's end, the emperor, whom princess kaguya already rejects, thinks she wishes him to come directly to her. the emperor thinks that she plays hard to get. during the scene, the emperor hugs princess kaguya from behind without permission, indicating harassment toward her. it is clear, however, that the emperor thinks that he may do as he wishes and that princess kaguya must follow his wishes since he is an emperor. this scene explicitly shows his dominance and that he feels superior to her. the emperor. come with me to the palace princess kaguya. why are you doing this? the emperor. no woman is unhappy when i do this. princess kaguya. i will never be yours! the emperor. you must be if i wish it. (takahata, 2013). conclusion the tale of the princess kaguya takes time in the heian era when patriarchy was still strongly dominant. women were far from being equal to men. in light of the ecofeminist approach, this article particularly examines the relationship between women and nature and how this relation existed in society as something commonly accepted. throughout japan's history, marriage has been used to ensure the continuation of bloodlines, form political alliances, and increase a family's wealth (villa, 2019). education for women, therefore, also focused on preparing them for marriage. the story reveals the experience of patriarchy that happens to princess kaguya. as a woman, princess kaguya experiences an arranged marriage set by her father, sanuki no miyatsuko. she also receives pressure from her father and society that demands her to act like a princess so that noblemen would want to marry her. sanuki no miyatsuko hopes to marry princess kaguya to a higher-hierarchy man to raise his family's dignity. princess kaguya comes from the moon to live on earth, so the story goes. she possesses caring characteristics, as observed in what she does to humans and her natural environment. her father, although he cares for and loves princess kaguya possesses ambitious and arrogant characteristics. after analyzing the interrelation between woman and nature, it is observed that princess kaguya is portrayed as closer to nature than man. in the patriarchal society, there is a special bond between women and nature, and the patriarchal system creates this situation to a certain extent. women are equated to nature, and men tend to devalue both. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 123 references abrams. 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pp. 255-267 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i1.4088 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. poetics of love in henry james’s “the beast in the jungle” mohamad mosavat* & tahereh rezaei sm_mosavat@atu.ac.ir, trezaei@atu.ac.ir faculty of persian literature and foreign languages, allameh tabataba’i university, iran abstract article information may and marcher in henry james’s “the beast in the jungle” pursues an odd relationship interpreted by james’s critics as fraudulent, self-victimizing, or queer. while may is reduced to a witness to marcher’s psychosomatic complexities, an evidence reliable to justify marcher’s troubled heterosexuality, marcher is deprived of any romantic yearnings for her. this article, departing from simplistic psychosexual interpretations having ended up demoting may to an inferior position and marcher to a homosexual character, suggests the main problem of their relationship is the contrast between their love styles. in this relationship, the communication is prevented not so much by may’s subordinate silence/assent as by marcher’s narcissism. john allan lee’s typology of love helps individually explicate each character’s psychological traits and romantic advances under lee’s comparing terms of eros/ludus and storge/mania. the result of this case-by-case analysis is to prove their relationship is nothing but the obsession dorothy tennov redefines in her limerence theory based on such terms as idealization, crystallization, and intrusive thinking. after proving may and marcher as limerent lovers, each pursuing a love style fundamentally at odds with the love style of the other, this article finally, based on sigmund freud’s notion of cathexis, concludes it is marcher’s narcissism or self-cathexis that bars the doors of proper communication and mutual recognition. keywords: limerence; cathexis; love; narcissism received: 30 december 2021 revised: 28 february 2022 accepted: 1 march 2022 introduction in “the beast in the jungle,” james implicitly addresses the submissive role of a lover who sacrifices her love in an uneasy relationship with the story’s egocentric protagonist. the story revolves around this protagonist, john marcher, who ruins his chance for living in the moment in favor of his obsessive concerns over a vague, impending disaster. besides this protagonist dealing with his malady of spirit, the story features may bartram, the insufficiently loved woman who suffers an emotional privation in her relationship. subsisting first as an impoverished relative in an english stately home, then living in genteel modesty in a https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:sm_mosavat@atu.ac.ir mailto:trezaei@atu.ac.ir journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) mohamad mosavat & tahereh rezaei 256 london suburb and sharing in marcher’s forays to the theatre or opera, may is reduced to a complementary role in the scenario of marcher’s silent homosexuality. james states, “the real form” of her relationship with marcher should have been a married one, “[b]ut … the very basis itself put marrying out of the question” (1903, p. 508). this “very basis might be the virtual friendship they continue to enjoy without the experience of love. as the story unfolds, this friendship results in an unequal relationship wherein the reader remains indecisive and confused in search of textual and intertextual clues to uncover the motivations for their peculiar conjugal behaviors. sometimes these motivations are external to the characters, such as the psychological make-up of james. paul lindholdt attributes may’s inferior status to james’s misogyny and impotence by referring to his “charismatic cousin,” minny temple, with whom he was in love (1988, p. 281). viewing may as her variation, lindholdt believes minny serves “as a pattern generally for suffering and [the] selfless female love” (1988, p. 284) that, according to leon edel, is “of an inner sort” (1985, p. 77). this selfless love accompanied by the unrequited feelings that well up within james’s female characters are indeed an integral part of his stories. adverting to the “painful centrality” (mcwhirter, 1989, p. 5) of love in james’s fiction, david mcwhirter argues james’s heroines “are unable to consummate their desires in the achievement of love” (1989, p. 3). to avoid such generalizations about james’s heroines or their reduction to the signs validating readings of the male protagonist, this article endows may with the individuality she deserves to be treated with. while acknowledging what maxwell geismar identifies as the “odd love affair” between may and marcher, this article suggests may is different from james’s other heroines for what geismar contends to be the “intellectual and spiritual” companionship she offers marcher (1963, pp. 35-36). the motivation behind this paper is the reanalysis of the nuances of may’s dialogue that help to remove the inequality persisting in her unjustly biased analyses. these nuances, in teckyoung kwon’s essay, are blamed for forming a circle of deception that not only “forbid[s] him [marcher] to guess” but also “denie[s] him even the power to learn” about may’s desire (2015, p. 159). yet, elucidating the nature of may’s desire, on closer inspection, demonstrates both these characters are potential lovers whose successful mutual union is obliterated by their different love strategies and marcher’s autoerotic cathexis. this paper treats neither marcher as the apotheosis of james’ attempts at affecting a rhetoric of queer periphrasis nor may as the voluntary victim of marcher’s inexplicable passion and his seducer with her intentional secrecy and miscommunications. the research question concerns the controversial decision of may and marcher to be each other’s abiding company that can be answered in a presedgewick theoretical framework wherein marcher stifles may, thereby scuttling whatever potential they might have had for a reciprocal, fully realized love, because he sees her only in the cold light of his egotism. inquiry into the poetics of love may and marcher develops through employing a strategy that treats the content as the bearer of meaning and ratifies this view that the representations of may in critical discourses are often insufficiently evidenced. review of the literature after ross posnock’s disagreement in the trial of curiosity: henry james, william james, and the challenge of modernity (1991) with eve kosofsky sedgwick’s (1990) queer analysis of marcher, james’s critics started to prioritize may’s psyche in their analyses. james griffiths (1993) in his comparative study of “the beast in the jungle” and “the bench of desolation” analyzes james’s two female characters, may bartram and kate cookham, on the assumption that their supportive roles are misjudged in the misauthored lives of their male companions. similarly, eugene goodheart (2003), having attributed the unlived life of marcher to his refusal of reciprocating may’s love, explores what may finds enchanting in marcher’s emptiness despite the frustration of her unrequited love. kathryn wichelns in her comparative study “collaborative differences: marguerite duras, eve sedgwick, and ‘the beast in the jungle’” (2015) argues that https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&sxsrf=alekk02vgpds3aysyghgl37eunyocypcuq:1608729847684&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22david+mcwhirter%22&sa=x&ved=2ahukewjzgfhymettahwro3ekhc7xcrwq9agwahoecaeqbq journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 257 marguerite duras’s theatrical adaptation of james’s story, which presents the original story as an example of écriture feminine, puts new emphasis on may whose gender-specific viewpoint is incomprehensible to marcher. some critics, however, disprove may’s decency and virtue in possessing marcher’s consciousness. while gert buelens in his article “in possession of a secret: rhythms of mastery and surrender in ‘the beast in the jungle’” (1998) regards may’s love desire solely for an erotic relationship, lomeda montgomery in her article “the lady is the tiger: looking at may bartram in ‘the beast in the jungle’ from the ‘other side’” (2001) relegates may’s character to the monstrous, mythological figure of lamia. in response to these two analyses, carolyn tate ascribes may’s “stilted language and double entendres” to her troubled heterosexuality (2012, p. 21). nevertheless, the nuances of may’s metaphoric language, in kwon’s essay (2015), are discussed to be the reason for marcher’s failure to grasp her love, thereby leading to his troubled heterosexuality. overall, the reason why may faces such accusations against herself is nothing but her silence—donatella izzo traces the reasons for may’s silence towards marcher’s secret as well as her covert expression of love in terms of her “feminine modesty” and “autonomous subjectivity” (2001, pp. 230-1). what this paper identifies as the gap in the critical analyses of may and marcher’s lack of mutual language are the equal potentials of these characters for love that culminate in may’s secrecy and marcher’s narcissistic obsession, as complimentary and unavoidable facts for their irreconcilable love strategies. methodology employing john allan lee’s typology of love, dorothy tennov’s limerence theory, and sigmund freud’s notions of cathexis and narcissism, the writers of this article offer an analysis of james’s story based on the interrelation between content and context. the first section argues may’s desire, if gratified by marcher, would consider both as the potential lovers whose characteristics can be examined by the theories of john allan lee, the canadian psychologist. asking his examinees to share their love experiences, lee theorizes his typology of love styles based on their “personal and social expression[s]” (1977, p. 173). his typology casts each lover in “a role characteristic of a given lifestyle” and holds back from “explaining why a particular person holds attitudes and enacts behaviour typical of one lovestyle” (1977, p. 175). he claims his typology “is about a style of relationship, not about a personality or identity” (1977, p. 174). however, it is rather impossible to ignore the lover’s personality traits, for the criteria lee defines for lovers— “emotional pain,” “self-disclosure,” and “the need for reciprocity,” to name but a few—all reflect the distinct personalities traceable within their dialogues with their beloveds (1977, p. 175). similarly, the nature of the relationship between may and marcher is approachable through their dialogues. to delve into the underlying motives that inspire their persistent relationship, this article, in the second section, employs the limerence theory of dorothy tennov, the american psychologist. this theory has its roots in the book love and limerence: the experience of being in love tennov published to introduce an “intrinsic” aspect to the nature of love (1988, p. xi). in search of a word for that intrinsic aspect, she coined the term ‘limerence’, synonymous with obsession, to connote the emotional pain her interviewees confessed in their love experiences. she then defines limerence as an “unwilled mental activity” carrying the lover “from the peak of ecstasy to the depths of despair” and “back again” (1988, p. xiii). the aim of this limerence theory, according to tennov, is to interpret the influence of such mental activity in the lover’s “overt behavior in public places” (1988, p. xi). as far as james’s story is concerned, the result of this interpretation would find marcher guilty. in the last section, freud’s notions of cathexis and narcissism help to explicate marcher’s guilt in this failed relationship. results and discussion clash of desires in an unrequited love studying may and marcher individually as a potential lover indicates none is selfconsciously deceitful or abusive, neither do journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) mohamad mosavat & tahereh rezaei 258 they harbor a conscious desire to abnegate or self-victimize themselves. they are indeed lovers joined in a difficult but appealing relationship despite their warring love styles. they harbor hope for the future transformation of their beloved or an epiphany, respectively, that either does not happen or happens only too late. lauren berlant defines desire as “a state of attachment” that visits the lover “as an impact from the outside,” seeming “as though it comes from within,” and love as an “embracing dream” that blooms only when the “desire is reciprocated” (2012, p. 6). by reciprocation, berlant means “the two-as-one intimacy” that such potential lovers as may and marcher fail to build their relationship on, for they insist on the false interpretation of each other’s desires, which, though unfulfilled and deficient, define them differently (2012, p. 6). in the story, desire is mentioned two times: once, on may’s deathbed when marcher “had but one desire left — that he shouldn’t have been ‘sold’” (james, 1903, p. 219), and the other, to describe may’s “mere desire, all too visible, to check his obsession and wind up his long trouble” (james, 1903, p. 229). this difference reflects while marcher’s desire is loud and spiritual, may harbors a silent and corporeal desire. indeed, their inability to establish a constructive dialogue accounts for the unfair silence of may’s desire. yet, may’s dialogue differs from marcher’s due to the self-confidence she expresses as a single and autonomous woman. in all her dialogues with marcher, she speaks “with an earnestness,” while keeping “her kind eyes on him,” and beneath her kindness, there is relative autonomy that in comparison to that of marcher is more significant for the progress of their unmarried relationship (james, 1903, pp. 197-198). nevertheless, despite her decision to be an unmarried lover instead of entering a loveless marriage, may reduces her autonomy as a single woman by accepting marcher’s companionship. she turns her back on her autonomy and yields up her superior status to marcher, relying on him for a mutual definition of love. this mutual definition is, however, never reached, for may’s perspective fails to make marcher familiar with the aesthetic dimension of love. their first attempt to engage in a constructive dialogue about love fails in their first encounter: “do you mean because you’ve been in love?” and then as he but looked at her in silence: “you’ve been in love, and it hasn’t meant such a cataclysm, hasn’t proved the great affair?” “here i am, you see. it hasn’t been overwhelming.” “then it hasn’t been love,” said may bartram. (james, 1903, p. 199) may helps marcher understand that his insecure feelings are the result of his odd amorous behavior; however, marcher never grasps what she means by love. according to griffiths, “marcher experiences numbness [emphasis added] at may’s pregnant mention of … falling in love” due to his fear for “the failure of his self-estimation” (1993, p. 54). may tries to dispel this fear by suggesting love as the remedy for his obsession, but he has no aesthetic faculty to identify may’s desire for an equal relationship celebrating her love not as an agreeable companion but as an autonomous woman; he finds her language incomprehensible and even blameworthy for miscommunication. at the beginning of the story, may drifts toward marcher when they meet each other in a gathering that makes possible their reunion. the first spark of may’s desire for marcher’s love is detected in “her guessing that he had, within the couple of hours, devoted more imagination to her than to all the others put together” (james, 1903, p. 191). as they engage in a dialogue, may expresses her satisfaction with whom she has been and the way she has lived by resisting what marcher’s speech implies. indeed, the interrogative statement she utters suggests that she rebuffs the idea of living away from what she has been. this feeling of satisfaction makes her the erotic lover who, according to lee, is “content with h[er] life … and is ready for love, but not anxiously looking for it” (1977, p. 178). may is noticeably eager for marcher, and being a remarkably perceptive woman discerns the special attention he is giving her as she gladly welcomes his approaches. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 259 may suits lee’s definition of erotic lover on other terms as well, as her content life results from her good memories in her warm relationship with her great-aunt “since losing her mother” (james, 1903, p. 201). these family relationships, lee argues, influence the lover’s search for “a beloved whose physical presentation of self embodies an image already held in the mind of the lover” (1977, p. 174). although may never confesses her love for marcher, her permanent presence beside him indicates he fits her ideal image. further, in their last dialogue, she admits to her “content” and “glad” life, suggesting marcher should also enjoy such life (james, 1903, p. 230). not only does she stay with him to the end, but also she develops their relationship to “such a daily habit” that she cannot relinquish it until her death (james, 1903, p. 208). that she strives to maintain her relationship against all odds is the indication of her erotic love style that defines its ultimate goal as the establishment of “profound rapport” (lee, 1977, p. 178). she is eager to resume the dialogue with marcher that cements their relationship, despite “its lightness and of its occasional oscillation” (james, 1903, p. 215). her attitude towards him is one of acceptance and appreciation, as she revels in her love for him and refuses to impose a change without his consent. always holding back from asking him to “repay” her love, (james, 1903, p. 215) she instills love into him by adopting “his own curiosity” as “the basis of her life” (james, 1903, pp. 216-217). as an erotic lover, may “enjoys intensity without demanding or obsessive possession” since she “is selfevident in love, rather than anxious” (lee, 1977, p. 178). although her attempt to make marcher her lover is ultimately successful, his lack of commitment and his refusal to acknowledge his love bothers her. this lack of commitment to love categorizes marcher as a ludic lover who, according to lee, “expect[s] love relationships to fit into his existing schedule of activities” (1977, p. 178). marcher’s ludus love style is illustrated in the way he strings may along for years and keeps her at a distance that, he justifies, is for her protection. he believes in the “things that in friendship one should … take account of” (james, 1903, p. 203). his prudent opinions lead their relationship to “a long act of dissimulation” (james, 1903, p. 207) that accords with what lee defines as “an open game” (1977, p. 178). in such a game, “[t]he fair player is likely to continue enjoying ludus from one relationship to the next” (lee, 1977, pp. 178-179); therefore, “[t]he degree of ‘involvement’ is carefully controlled” (1977, p. 174). kwon considers this idea of love game as “a circle of deception” (2015, p. 156) in comparison to those critics adopting sedgwick’s perspective on proto-queer protagonists of james’s fiction who suggest dissimulation and theatricality, love games, and lack of commitment while adopting impeccable manners are the signs of james’s male protagonists’ “queer-leaning” profiles (haralson, 2003, p. 37). however, in contradistinction to such queer analyses or the reductive treatments of james’s characters as deceitful or selfsacrificial, marcher’s engagement in amorous conduct violating the ethics of reciprocation can be seen as a ludic lovestyle joined with its opposite lovestyle, the erotic. his failure to repay may’s kindness represents his ludic view on women, as he resists her desire to be loved “by his not eternally insisting with her on himself” (james, 1903, p. 213). such selfishness can be predicted to have existed in the other “imbecile” offers, james assumes, marcher has made to women in his youth (james, 1903, p. 195). indeed, in marcher’s life, there seems to be no other woman during his relationship with may, but his negligence in seeing “her suddenly looking much older … after so many years” of being in contact portends the presence of other women in his life (james, 1903, p. 217). james declares at the story’s beginning that marcher has been with different women by then: “he had new ones enough—was surrounded with them, for instance, at that hour at the other house” (1903, p. 194). this mismatch, however, does not presuppose a relationship based on abuse or dissatisfaction, as long as may’s response to marcher’s ludic love strategy is her storgic love style which relies on “a secure family background” (lee, 1977, p. 179). may’s secure background, standing out in her first dialogue with marcher, is the reason for the “difference” he notices in her character (james, 1903, p. 215). he notices this journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) mohamad mosavat & tahereh rezaei 260 difference in her amorous advances after “the death of … her great-aunt” (james, 1903, p. 201). inheriting the aunt’s property, may takes the initiative to start “a sensible bond” with marcher, as she now affords to be in a relationship (james, 1903, p. 201). as carolyn tate argues, may’s “economic independence” helps her “manage[] her own life choices” (2012, pp. 25-26). indeed, the brave choice may makes about loving marcher corresponds to what lee’s storgic lovers expect from their beloveds. what may wants from her beloved is the security that can never be threatened by the “long spells of [his] absence” (lee, 1977, p. 179). these absences are evident in the “long intervals” between their encounters, as james depicts (1903, p. 213). herbert perluck removes the spells of such intervals by rejecting the binding promise of love, and asserts between may and marcher there is “an exquisite sense of the ‘ache’ that … is engendered by … individuality” (1991, p. 244). the sadistic ache that, perluck contends, results from the separateness or absence of the lovers, in may’s storgic lovestyle, however, requests marcher’s presence. although perluck believes these lovers are held together by a sense of ache, not by love, this ache can be the reason for the empathy they develop in their dialogue. they find the opportunity to express this empathy in the “common interest[] and activities” their relationship offers (lee, 1977, p. 179). this common interest is named differently in their dialogue; to marcher, the interest lies in “curiosity,” but to may, in “absorption” (james, 1903, p. 209). why may attributes their common interest to absorption can be explained by what lee discusses about self-disclosure that in storgic love is based on “an avoidance of selfconscious passion” (1977, 175). indeed, may’s avoidance of her bodily passion casts her in the passive role of a “mere confidant” (james, 1903, p. 203). this passive role quotes her “price” for marcher in the “mercy, sympathy, seriousness” she shows towards his fate (james, 1903, p. 203). she not only withdraws from self-disclosure in their association but also lets “this association give shape and colour to her own existence” (james, 1903, p. 152). marcher’s lack of commitment also prevents her sexual disclosure, although she once makes during her sickness when she makes a “movement” to show herself “all draped and all soft, in her fairness and slimness” (james, 1903, p. 224). though noticing may’s sexual advance, marcher feels ambivalent about the reason for this selfdisclosure, as he doubts whether it is for a “generous assurance” or a “recovery of youth” (james, 1903, p. 224). this ambivalence has its roots in “their renewal of acquaintance” (james, 1903, p. 189) when marcher, receiving may’s attention, hesitates between taking it “as a part of her general business” (james, 1903, p. 192) or as “an interest or amusement” (james, 1903, p. 190). these two examples further prove marcher’s maniac love that, as lee defines, reflects the “desire to hold back feelings and manipulate the relationship” (lee, 1977, p. 179). the manifestation of this ambivalence is the love-hate relationship marcher gets stuck in to prove his selflessness. what he defines as selflessness paradoxically makes his selfishness more insidious to may who, he believes, is “no better than himself” (james, 1903, p. 214). marcher is also insecure about the attraction he exerts on may; for example, he once buys her a “small trinket” for her birthday to show “that he had not sunk into real selfishness” (james, 1903, p. 208). although he knows the gift is not fair to compensate for her self-sacrifice, he insists on his own “immense regard” for her (james, 1903, p. 209). his simultaneous insecurity and ambivalence indicate another characteristic of a maniac lover in him, as he seeks “repeated assurance of being loved” by may (lee, 1977, p. 175). may, as the “wise keeper” of marcher, “the most harmless of maniacs,” is responsible for repeating her “unremunerated” (james, 1903, p. 206) love and is “bound” to offer quick answers in his favor (james, 1903, p. 212). although he introduces himself “a man of courage,” marcher is always in need of her supportive answers (james, 1903, p. 212). preferring to keep his obsessive preoccupation with his imaginary beast, which michael anesko defines as his “castrating fate,” marcher manipulates their relationship to a loveless friendship requiring may’s company as a fellow believer (2008, 242). indeed, marcher’s manipulative strategy is part of his maniac love style that results in may’s ignorance of his manipulative “power to journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 261 conceive” the course of their relationship (james, 1903, p. 223). only after may’s death does marcher realize “the part of himself” that was missed in her love (james, 1903, p. 238); in this way, the question of homosexuality as the cause of his inattention to may is unjustifiably emphasized. may’s reaching the end without climax central to tennov’s argument is that the “interpretation” of the lover’s behaviors by the beloved forms a limerent relationship (1988, p. 18). similarly, may and marcher’s love grows in intensity in the expectation of the future reciprocations their “organs of love” offer (tennov, 1988, p. 19). the organs of love, tennov argues, are not “the genitals or even the heart” but the “eyes” of the lover (tennov, 1988, 18). indeed, the gaze frequently connects marcher with may, portending the haunting anticipation in the non-fulfilment of marcher’s expectation of his momentous experience and may’s yearning for him despite the circling proto-stasis of their interactions. when marcher is “face to face with her,” (james, 1903, p. 229) “the light in her eyes” convinces him of her devotion and continuing presence (james, 1903, p. 198). the certainty her “cold sweet eyes” (james, 1903, p. 226) gives him indicates the “objective attractiveness” necessary to sparkle love (tennov, 1988, p. 27). marcher, however, only in her old age, realizes “the cold charm in her eyes,” (james, 1903, p. 224) and throughout these years fails to see in her eyes her limerent desire for reciprocation. coming “with him every step of the way,” (james, 1903, p. 229) may pursues her limerent desire through their “physical union” (tennov, 1988, p. 20). this union, however, fails to work under the best conditions of their limerent relationship that, according to tennov, should be “accompanied by the growth of the emotional response more suitably described as love” (1988, p. 23). the reason is may and marcher are not attracted to each other in the same way, but pursuing different limerent strategies, and start their relationship by following tennov’s advice that “too early a declaration on the limerent’s part or … too early evidence of reciprocation … prevent[s] the development of the full limerent reaction” (1988, p. 26). they indefinitely postpone their declaration of love to the extent that they pass up the opportunity to see such “full limerent reaction” in each other’s behaviors. marcher remains ignorant of his repressed love for may by adhering to his false knowledge that “something rare and strange, possibly prodigious and terrible” will happen to him (james, 1903, p. 198). james implies in the story: for our gentleman [marcher] this [false knowledge] was marked, quite as marked as that the fortunate cause of it was just the buried treasure of her knowledge (james, 1903, p. 202). indeed, may’s reason for hiding her knowledge about marcher’s beast is to retain his companionship. nevertheless, this secrecy leads to “the respectful distance” marcher maintains from her (kwon, 2015, p. 157). quite aware of may’s play of concealment, marcher starts to “look at her with suspicion” (james, 1903, p. 210); yet, may fails to see the growth of suspicion in his behaviors. the question is why may, with her “finer nerves,” is blind to marcher’s gradual detachment (james, 1903, p. 215). according to tennov, “[i]dealization implies that unattractive features are literally overlooked … [or] seen, but emotionally ignored” (1988, p. 31). similarly, may’s erotic love style convinces her that marcher is her idealized beloved, inducing her to ignore his less attractive characteristics. in search of the reason for this ignorance, eugene goodheart refuses to see may’s “[b]lindness” to marcher’s defects as the reason for her devotion (2003, p. 117); he believes may is not only knowing, but also particularly keen. she enjoys a “prophetic status” that gives her the “insight into the mystery of marcher’s consciousness and being” (goodheart, 2003, p. 117). while tennov’s discourse on blindness and goodhearts’ contentions about may’s perceptiveness are at odds, careful scrutiny in the definition tennov gives for blindness to explain the conscious “perception of the limerent object” in lovers offers new insights into may’s ignorance (1988, p. 29). tennov introduces the term ‘crystallization’ to compensate for the conceptual reduction her journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) mohamad mosavat & tahereh rezaei 262 definition of blindness leads. to clarify this term’s meaning, tennov gives the example of “the salt crystals on a twig [that] magnify the attractive features” of it (1988, p. 30). similarly, tennov argues, the beloved’s “attractive characteristics are exaggerated” or “revisualized in the [lover’s] limerent consciousness” (1988, p. 30). the process of crystallization in may’s consciousness goes back to the scene of gathering at the story’s beginning when marcher attracts her with the “simpler sort” of his character (james, 1903, p. 192). his simple character that is at odds with “the gloating of some of his companions” (james, 1903, p. 190) prompts may to leave the company of those “tiresome people” (james, 1903, p. 191). however, when they get engaged in dialogue, she notices he has nothing to attract her “but some words spoken by himself quite without intention” (james, 1903, p. 189). marcher’s lack of intention in his speech appears as the first “unattractive characteristic,” to which may, as a limerent lover, gives “little or no attention” (tennov, 1988, p. 30). nevertheless, her intentional neglect of marcher’s unintentional words proves that her crystallization is not confined to this initial impression. her limerent consciousness continues to be “unconcerned about the defects” of marcher, while a “concerned outsider” like the story’s reader regards marcher as “an unsuitable individual” to be in a relationship (tennov, 1988, p. 30). this conclusion on the reader’s part requires a few “underappreciated imperfections” to be seen in marcher (tennov, 1988, p. 33). one of his imperfections is the oblivion troubling him when may is trying to jog his memories about their first encounter. may notices marcher’s oblivion in that first dialogue with him, when he recalls “most things [about that encounter] rather wrong,” but she hides her “disappointment” about his false “recollections” beneath her “amendments” or “corrections” (james, 1903, pp. 192-193). regarding marcher’s oblivion as his “downfall,” diandra bobé believes that may’s amendments constitute her “efforts” to “spark whatever interest she can” in him (2003, p. 12). that “may’s affections are stronger than” those of marcher’s, according to bobé, promotes her investment in the relationship (2003, p. 12). however, bobé’s view of may as the investor goes counter to tennov’s crystallization that considers marcher as the investor in may’s limerent consciousness. to trace the crystallization of marcher’s words in may’s consciousness, her unspoken agreements with him are good examples. for instance, when she sees his failure to “remember the least thing about her,” she hides her “feeling of an occasion missed” in her facial expression (james, 1903, p. 193). this volunteer concealment demonstrates how may comes to an unspoken agreement with marcher about her own past. after noticing marcher’s oblivion, may crystallizes his words that their “contact … in the past” has “no importance” for their present (james, 1903, p. 190). the present marcher means is obsessed with what tennov suggests as the lover’s “intrusive thinking” on the past (1998, p. 33). intrusive thinking, tennov explains, occurs when “all events, associations, stimuli, [and] experience[s] return” the lover’s thoughts to the beloved “with unnerving consistency” (1998, p. 34). this unnerving consistency, though interrupting the logical “connections” of the lover’s thoughts, is achieved by “the perpetual presence” of the beloved in the lover’s mind which “defines all other experience[s] in relation to that presence” (tennov, 1998, pp. 34-5). indeed, may’s presence in marcher’s mind has the same effect on his intrusive thoughts. the starting point for these thoughts is during may’s sickness when: she was then unable to see him, and as it was literally the first time … in … their acquaintance he turned away, defeated and sore, almost angry—or feeling … that such a break in their custom was really the beginning of the end—and wandered alone with his thoughts … that he was unable to keep down (james, 1903, p. 228). now that may’s sickness has acquainted him with his imminent “forlornness,” he relives the vivid memories of her companionship (james, 1903, p. 228). the vividness of such memories is to the extent that “each word and gesture is permanently available for review” in his mind (tennov, 1998, p. 35). what tennov’s theory journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 263 expects marcher’s memory to be, however, challenges the “differing degrees of memory” that kwon presumes to exist between may and him (1998, p. 151). kwon blames may’s memory for “marcher’s obtuse failure” to grasp her desire due to his misplaced trust in her memory (2015, pp. 150-151). the result, according to kwon, is that marcher becomes “incapable of personalizing his experiences because he lacks the attentiveness to store the present moment” (2015, p. 150). nevertheless, kwon’s reason for marcher’s lack of personalized experiences is inadequate, for it is marcher’s inferior memory that enables him to treasure the present moment, though it is only after may’s sickness. marcher grasps the significance of her aid in her words, but in the review of those words, he searches for alternative meanings in agreement with his opinion. such “alternative meanings” are what tennov expects her limerent lover to look for in the beloved’s “behaviors” during the intrusive thinking phase (1998, p. 35). although marcher never admits, may is conscious of his tendency to see the “other side” of her words (james, 1903, p. 231). this tendency is revealed in marcher’s last “speakable protest” against may’s words when he responds to her rapidly approaching death by correspondingly citing his own mortality; in this response, james plays with the cliché of wanting to eat one’s cake and have it too (james, 1903, p. 232). what distresses marcher is, in fact, may’s deduction that his opportunity for an encounter with the beast is now irrevocably missed, without his even having sensed the loss, for he has exhausted the full spectrum of possibilities. marcher cannot now abide the prospect of continuing to live without anticipating some seismic reconfiguration of his experiential landscape, since existence and expectation, in his understanding, ought to coincide. through his effort to materialize such a coincidence, he misses the chance of loving may who is now doomed, as james’s subtext according to the frustrated drift of marcher’s reply attests to. marcher’s reply further indicates the ingratitude he consciously extends to her, as he believes her presence is at best “miserable,” not being able to answer the question he asks about his fate (james, 1903, p. 228). marcher’s egocentric focus is seen even during her sickness when he, indifferent about the “common doom” of may’s death, selfishly strives for the goal he has assumed for their relationship (james, 1903, p. 228). this goal is “the consummation of infinite waiting” (james, 1903, p. 228); however, he forgets this waiting has been made tolerable for him only by may’s presence. goodheart regards marcher’s death as his moment of consummation when he achieves “a climax in his waiting and seeing” (2003, p. 126). what goodheart considers as marcher’s climax is, however, a “trifle” for may because she sees love as the climax (james, 1903, p. 205). may has kept her climax in “suspense” all these years, but her sickness incapacitates her to stand this suspense (james, 1903, p. 205). therefore, the tragic outcome of this suspense proves marcher guilty of may’s unrequited love. fictionality of marcher’s love object cathexis is the greek word james strachey suggests as the translation of freud’s term besetzung. bruno bettelheim explains, cathexis means when “something—an idea, a person, an object — is being or has been invested with a certain amount of psychic energy” (1983, p. 89). this definition implies a “love-like” state in which “objectification is more pronounced as the cathected object is often not human” (yeager, 2016, p. 2). indeed, the relationship between may and marcher is a good instance of this love-like state, for marcher, choosing an imaginary non-human creature as his cathected object, vividly illustrates such a diversion of interest from the external world that freud diagnoses in his narcissist patients. in james’s story, this diversion—can also be called sublimation, in freudian term, since the lover finds sexual satisfaction in the divinity instead of the human beings—can be illustrated by assuming a self/other dichotomy in the different languages may and marcher use to conceptualize their cathexis. such difference in the feminine and masculine conceptualization, freud argues, arises from the two genders’ distinctive “type of object-choice” (1957, p. 88). though no information is available on marcher’s childhood to help trace his narcissist stages of journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) mohamad mosavat & tahereh rezaei 264 development, a careful scrutiny drawing on freudian discourse reveals the disturbed and regressive redirection of his libido inward to his self (1957, p. 90). unlike the narcissist marcher, may, having readily admitted her love, has adopted an anaclitic approach by properly redirecting her libido outward to an object-love. according to freud, may cannot be a narcissist, for the lover is “humble,” having “forfeited” his or her narcissist tendencies (1957, p. 98). the revival of such forfeited narcissism, freud argues, depends on the return of love, which in the case of may never happens (1957, p. 98). the reason is marcher’s unhealthy obsession and self-involvement with his cathected object that distracts his attention from the love-desire of his companion. james elucidates marcher’s cathexis in “his conviction, his apprehension, [and] his obsession” with “the crouching beast,” which, he thinks, will one day pounce on him (1903, p. 204). although marcher once admits “the thing to happen … never does happen,” (james, 1903, p. 209) he employs this cathexis as an excuse “to be accompanied by a lady” like may (james, 1903, p. 204). he directs his cathexis to “the very eyes of the very beast”; the “incalculable moments of glaring” (james, 1903, p. 211) at its eyes fuel his belief in its “superstition” (james, 1903, p. 235). he, however, realizes the falsehood of this superstition in the final scene when “he flung himself, on his face, on the tomb” of may (james, 1903, p. 244). this scene reveals what he wastes his life on to eventually recognize— probably may’s love—has already happened at the moment of her sexual disclosure. in fact, marcher’s imaginary beast has “sprung in that twilight of the cold april when … she had risen from her chair to stand before him and let him imaginably guess” (james, 1903, p. 243). may not only lets marcher guess the falsehood of his superstition but also offers him an escape from it, but marcher never recognizes “[t]he escape would have been to love her” (james, 1903, p. 243). had he directed his cathexis to may, the conclusion of this story would not have been his unexplained death on her tomb. indeed, in the story which revolves around his enduring emotional investment in anticipating that mysterious event which is dramatically to assail him and to alter the course of his life, marcher appears incapable of entering into a meaningful relationship of mutual recognition as long as his cathexis remains reliant on his narcissist fixation on himself. marcher’s narcissism, hidden beneath “the chill of his egotism,” accounts for his inaction towards may’s sexual disclosure (james, 1903, p. 243). according to freud, such narcissism is seen “in people whose libidinal development has suffered some disturbance, such as perverts and homosexuals, that in their later choice of love-objects they have taken as a model … their own selves” (1957, p. 88). perversion and homosexuality, as two separate examples of narcissism according to freud, are already studied in marcher’s character by ben ware and eve kosofsky sedgwick, respectively, but freud’s arguments about narcissism shed new light on marcher’s cathexis. according to freud, “the aim and the satisfaction in a narcissistic object-choice is to be loved,” so such a narcissist as marcher looks for a beloved who condones his cathected object (1957, p. 98). when he sees may’s longstanding belief in his beast, he defines her as “the only other person in the world then who would have it” (james, 1903, p. 196). he accepts to be with her because he thinks she would pursue the same cathected object, letting his narcissistic obsession ensure the continuation of their relationship. he feels dependent on her to pursue his self-regarding feelings about his cathexis; paradoxically, this narcissism asks for a selfless love that can tolerate his loveless advances. further, his resistance to love serves as a sort of defense mechanism that not only confirms his egoism but keeps may secularly attached to their unmarried relationship. as freud argues, “[l]oving in itself, in so far as it involves longing and deprivation, lowers self-regard; whereas being loved … raises it once more” (1957, p. 99). this self-regard might present marcher as selfish; one example is his undisguised sense of alienation in the company of the ceremony’s guests—the scene making may interested in his seclusive behaviors (james, 1903, p. 191). this alienation further demonstrates the narcissistic reason for marcher’s lack of commitment to love. for, according to freud, such a “tormented” person as marcher “gives up his interest in the things of the external world, in so far as [sic] they do not concern his journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 265 suffering” (1957, p. 82). this act of giving up is not, however, limited to the abstinence of materialism, freud argues, but gradually leads to the person’s withdrawal from showing love. such withdrawal leads to a self/other polarity in the relationship between may and marcher that calls forth “a harmonious marriage” “between the high opinion of [one]self that comes from within … and the “value derived from … others” (macdiarmid, 1989, p. 846). indeed, marcher acts as a selfcathecter who is “over-attached not to the object but to [its] inner fantasies,” (macdiarmid, 1989, p. 846) having an “immature” obsession “mak[ing] him spin off into a futile repetitive internal conflict” (macdiarmid, 1989, p. 850). in all his consultations with may on the true nature of his beast, this self-cathecter is trapped in his subjective world to the extent that he cannot but favor his own interpretation. this world is shaped by may’s voluntary submission to the illusory superiority that, as the result of his self-cathexis, accounts for their emotional distance. such distance persists as long as the may’s other-cathexis insists on “disowning or even dissociating … anything arising from [her] inner world … that would alienate the other” (macdiarmid, 1989, p. 850). indeed, may’s dissociation from her inner world in marcher’s favor, quite evident in their initial dialogues in which she detects his failure to grasp her definition of love, helps him enter into a harmonious relationship founded on mutual recognition that accompanies may’s refusal to insist on her perspective. collaborating with him in strengthening his cathexis, may assumes marcher’s inability to recognize her love is due to his inability to fall in love. she echoes his words to obtain his approval, thereby winning his heart, but his self-cathexis problematizes their relationship and prevents may from introducing her cathected object, that is, marcher himself. far too obsessed with the fictionality of his cathected object, marcher is resigned to a deadly fate that spencer brydon, the haunted protagonist of james’s “the jolly corner”—the story by which james offers a more successful version of a heteronormative relationship— luckily escapes. though both characters believe in the presence of a fictional creature, which for marcher is a beast, and for spencer his alter ego, the difference between their cases of narcissism arises from their final decision to seek refuge to the loving embrace of their cathected objects or their partners. shalyn claggett, in her freudian reading of spencer’s metamorphosed narcissism, draws an analogy in reference to narcissius myth between the “dilemma” spencer confronts between self-knowledge and death (2005, p. 190). this dilemma is similarly seen in marcher’s fate, but the “victory,” claggett assumes, spencer achieves by encountering his cathected object is indeed a pyrrhic victory for marcher (2005, p. 196). the reason is marcher’s belated recognition of the unexpected occurrence of his encounter with his cathected object, coincident with may’s sexual disclosure; this epiphany comes too much late when marcher’s love-object is not alive to receive his redirected libido. hence, marcher cannot be as lucky as spencer to escape the deadly outcome of his selfknowledge about his speculative investment in a wrong cathected object. conclusion while may’s erotic love style makes her eager for marcher’s love and helps her develop rapport with him, marcher acts as ludic lover, jealous and controlling in his affairs, always trying to evade responsibility by keeping women at a distance. may’s storgic love style then compels her to profess her erotic attachment to marcher, but being the love style of an emotionally mature person, this love style requires that she confesses her love only when she is certain about its reciprocation. this reciprocation is inaccessible as long as marcher performs a maniac love style; playing a game of love and hate, he feels insecure in his relation to may and enacts this feeling of insecurity by treating may as the object of his suspicion. while may herself is responsible for marcher’s suspicion, since she constantly makes vague suggestions about his secret, marcher’s love style does not allow a potential limerence to reach full fruition. therefore, each lover’s contribution to the mutual relation turns ambiguous to the extent that may is accused of intentionally miscommunicating her feelings. nevertheless, may is acting as any conventionally male lover would do, that is, remaining unconditionally in journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) mohamad mosavat & tahereh rezaei 266 love. although she shows herself quite intent on developing love rather than giving in to the socially designated role of the woman as a housewife, marcher does not reach emotional maturity to recognize her love. the reason is his self-cathexis, represented in the vain hope for the beast that endows meaning to his life, intensified with his narcissism, which leads to his miscomprehension of may’s love. his late recognition of this love proves that no passion has ever touched him, a recognition under the weight of which he falls prostrate on may’s tomb beneath the huge and hideous leap of the beast descending on him. viewed from this perspective, may is not reduced to a complementary discourse filling the lacuna about marcher’s psychosexual complexities, but is endowed with a singular subjectivity the analysis of which validates content-oriented approaches to james’ story. references anesko, m. 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(1998). love and limerence: the experience of being in love. new york: scarborough house. yeager, e. o. (2016). love. in c. l. shehan (ed.), encyclopedia of family studies (1st ed., pp. 1-7). retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 002/9781119085621.wbefs356. yeager, e. o. (2016). love. in c. l. shehan (ed.), encyclopedia of family studies (1st ed., pp. 1-7). retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 002/9781119085621.wbefs356. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119085621.wbefs356 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119085621.wbefs356 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119085621.wbefs356 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119085621.wbefs356 362 vol. 22 no. 2, october 2022, pp. 362 – 374 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i2.3942 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. culture-based animation: inserting indonesian local culture in animation series ‘si aa’ tira nur fitria tiranurfitria@gmail.com institut teknologi bisnis aas indonesia, surakarta, indonesia abstract article information indonesia offers many opportunities to use local culture’s potential in producing indonesian animation. the greatest idea is to make an animation that is based on the characteristics of traditional or local arts from each region. this research analyzes the indonesian local cultures inserted in the animation series si aa’ created by rans animation studio. this research uses descriptive qualitative research. the documents are taken from 9 videos of the animation series “si aa” released in 2020 and 2021. the result analysis shows that there are 12 examples of indonesian local culture in ‘si aa” animation series such as 1) inserting a local language “sundanese”, 2) inserting local story (folklore) of timun emas, 3) inserting regional dance “jaipong”, 4) inserting regional musical instruments “angklung”. 5) inserting regional music instrument “gamelan”. 6) telling an indonesian national hero “kapitan pattimura”. 7) showing a palace building “keraton”. 8) inserting regional performing arts “wayang suket”. 9) inserting regional performing arts “ondel-ondel”. 10) inserting traditional game “gangsing”, 11) inserting local handicraft “tenun”, 12) showing tourism place destination in maluku, 13) inserting local custom “tandur”. through animation, the creator conveys the local culture by recognizing and appreciating an indonesian identity in their work. initially, culture-based animation served simply as a means of indonesian cultural preservation. keywords: animation; culture; local culture; indonesian local culture; si aa’ received: 14 december 2021 revised: 16 february 2022 accepted: 30 april 2022 introduction one of the popular entertainment facilities for people as audiences is watching films. therefore, nowadays films are not only for entertainment but can also be a means of education as well as a medium to convey certain messages. the film itself is a complex art form and a unique medium of communication whose influence can reach all social segments of society. films bind audiences emotionally and have great aesthetic power. one genre of film is cartoon or animated films (animation). alexander (2021) states that the animated film industry has been significantly developed since its inception. https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:tiranurfitria@gmail.com journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 363 cartoons or animated films are one of the entertainment media currently found on television and cinema, both domestically and internationally. the popularity of animation cannot be separated from the visual style that is very attractive to the eyes, with unique and varied stories, making it easy to enjoy in various circles. on the other hand, animated entertainment media are films that use animation techniques as the medium. huang (2017) states that with the fast development of the global economy and society, animation has gained considerable attention as an essential factor in the global cultural industry. according to (belkhyr, 2013), an animation may be seen as a business that commercializes and standardizes cultural production. animation has another significant aspect that arises from its cultural worth and nature, in addition to being a company that develops, distributes, and sells marketable items. animation is a medium that may depict a visual phenomenon in its entirety. animation is not just an image-driven art, but it also depicts motion. because natural laws do not bind an animation to interpret motion, there are no restrictions on motions that cannot be performed in the actual world or captured in a live-action film. so, in the animation, the characterizations may be quite loose and give up a lot of possibilities for investigation (ardiyansah, 2012). this makes animation a popular medium for grabbing the audience’s attention, particularly in the age of digital animation technology. animation production differs from film production in that it relies on various technologies and skills (yoon & malecki, 2010). animation is being utilized for more than just amusement and has made inroads into other industries such as culture. this statement is supported by shang (2015) that animation scene design is a kind of visual art that includes not only the creation of the tale’s background but also the reflection of the animation characters and the visual expression of the storyline as time passes. as a result, animated pictures with a national cultural meaning might be loved and enjoyed by audiences worldwide. animation and culture influence each other, there is an element of reciprocity between the two, film influences culture after previously culture is the background for making a film. the values contained in the films that are watched affect the reality of life in society. the film is used as a mirror to look at or to see how culture works or lives in society (sari, 2018). in general, culture is meant to be preserved in its status quo, preserving the status quo of its origins (omar & ishak, 2011). the culture of a location has been utilized as a source of inspiration for animation production. in animation, the process of cultural commodification results in culture-based animation goods. initially, culture-based animation served simply as a means of cultural preservation. however, as it develops, it becomes a commodity product (yasa, 2019). indonesia offers many opportunities to use local culture’s potential in producing indonesian animation (sugihartono, 2018). wikayanto et al. (2019) define that local cultural identity in a country affects how the form of animation works in that country. the greatest idea is to make an animation based on traditional arts characteristics. while, widjanarko et al. (2021) state that through animation, the author wanted to convey that preserving this culture was enough by recognizing, appreciating, seeing, and listening to indonesian identity in their work. there are many animation movies or series that have been released in indonesia. one of them is si aa’. through rans animation studio, rafathar’s daily story is presented in an animation entitled si aa. this story, it is not only filled with fictional characters, but the si aa also presents several characters taken from people closest to rafathar. funny and adorable, the story of si aa with various stories represents rafathar’s happy childhood life (afifullah, 2020). before airing on antv, the animated series si aa aired on raffi ahmad’s rans entertainment youtube channel. si aa’s animation that airs on antv attends several new characters to entertain fans of this animation. besides rafathar, raffi ahmad, and nagita slavina, several other characters also attract children to watch it. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) tira nur fitria 364 there are several previous studies related to culture in an animation films. the first, is written by shang (2015). the results reveal that aspects of chinese traditional culture, such as ink painting, paper cutting, chinese opera, shadow puppetry, and chinese architecture, are used in the creation of animated films. in creating the scene, we may use classic ornamental motifs. for example, in “havoc in heaven,” lingxiao hall” and “peach garden,” show traditional cultural elements are used. second, basid (2016) states that several player characters in the animated series adit, sopo, and jarwo show the sundanese dialect of kang ujang, dangdut, and the presence of warung tegal. third, yasa (2019) states that animated films like “mulan” about chinese legends, “kung fu panda” about kungfu culture, “upin ipin” about malaysian culture, “adit and sopo jarwo” and “knight kriss” about indonesian culture, and “si uma” about balinese culture were created as a result of the commodification of culture. fourth, hasri et al. (2020) state that locally generated products like kampung boy, upin dan ipin, boboiboy, and ajen ali not only contain global transmedia narrative qualities but also have substantial local content relating to malaysian cultures and values integrated with them. fifth, sya et al. (2020) state that the animated film si entong through two episodes “sorry physically and mentally yes” and “liang liong” has reflected pluralism through interactions made by entong with his friends of different ethnicities and cultures through the knowledge component, mindfulness (awareness), and skills (ability). sixth, ruslan et al. (2021) state that si pitung was portrayed as a local betawi hero who promoted character idealism. subcultural tensions arose in the story as a result of social cognition, resulting in heroism based on social imagination. seventh, swatriani (2021) states that each character in binekon of belantara studio’s animation is a cultural representation of the indonesian archipelago, sumi from sumatra, jabo from java, kale from kalimantan island, sula from sulawesi island, and papu from papua island. eighth, bangsawan (2021) states that the elements of javanese culture in the animated film knight kris are represented through scenes, characterizations, setting, background music, and javanese ethos and noble values. ninth, tia & metty (2021) state that doraemon animated film can be a medium for learning japanese culture. the respondents became more aware of the cultural terms genkan, ofuro, tatami, dorayaki, kotatsu, and futon. based on previous studies above, shows similarities and differences with this research. all previous studies and this research have the same focus on culture in animation films or series. in the differences, those studies have different objects of research related to the movie. the first study focuses on chinese traditional culture in chinese animated films. the second study focuses on multiculturalism in adit, sopo, and jarwo series. the third study focuses on animated films like “mulan” about chinese legends, “kung fu panda” about kungfu culture, “upin ipin” about malaysian culture, “adit and sopo jarwo” and “knight kriss” about indonesian culture, and “si uma” about balinese culture. the fourth study focuses on malaysian local culture in kampung boy, upin dan ipin, boboiboy, and ajen ali. the fifth study focuses on animated si entong reflects indonesian and chinese culture. the sixth study focuses on si pitung film that reflects indonesian culture, especially local betawi. the seventh study focuses on binekon films representing indonesian culture. the eighth study focuses on knight kris films representing indonesian culture especially javanese culture. then, the ninth study focuses on doraemon film as a medium for learning japanese culture. the object of this research is different from those studies. this researcher is interested to conduct a study about the indonesian animation series “si aa” through rans animation studio, rafathar’s daily story is presented in an animation entitled si aa. now, this animation series is still being aired on tv in indonesia. therefore, this research is to analyze the kind of indonesian local cultures inserted in the animation series si aa’. methodology this research applies descriptive qualitative research. aveyard et al. (2011) state that qualitative research is useful when looking for in-depth answers to questions that cannot be answered numerically. in qualitative research, statistics are not used; the findings are descriptive and interpretive. so, the result journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 365 and findings of this research are explained descriptively without using numbers or statistics. this research involved documents in collecting the data as it can be used as the sole focus for data collection and analysis (given, 2015). documentation is one method of collecting qualitative data by viewing or analyzing documents made by the subject himself or by others about the subject a large number of facts and data are stored in materials in the form of documentation. most of the available data are in the form of written form, but this document can be in the form of electronic data such as audio or video. the document used in this research is 10 videos of animation series taken from the youtube channel “rans entertainment” which can be accessed on https://www.youtube.com/channel/ucva9_f 5lwk-pomynabtrzpg. there are several animation series have analyzed in this research. the method of analyzing data used three concurrent flows of activity: data reduction, data display, and conclusion (silverman, 2009). in this study, researchers used animated video images or subtitles, scanned material, typed subtitle data, and compiled the data according to the source of information. researchers discard unnecessary and organized data which has been reduced giving a sharper picture of the observation of the results is a theme. the researcher presents the analysis in the form of pictures, figures, tables, matrices, carts, or graphics so that the data is organized, and arranged so that will be easier to understand. next, the researchers concluded the result descriptively. results and discussion this research is to analyze the indonesian local cultures inserted in the animation series si aa’. based on the findings, there are several indonesian local cultures found in the animation series si aa’. the examples are as seen in the pictures below: picture 1. local language “sundanese” source: rans entertainment based on picture 1 above, the title of the animation series entitled “si aa: teman kembar baru di sekolah bikin heboh” which be released on 11 december 2020. this story begins with the appearance of two twin girls named cilla and celly in matahari’s class. at minute 01.12, it was seen that they were introducing themselves in front of the class by using the sundanese language. this is written in the dialog subtitle “saya teh cilla, kalau ini teh celly”. kita teh dari sukabumi" (i am cilla, and this is celly. we are from sukabumi). this dialogue shows the local language such as sundanese used in the dialog uttered by the twin girls named cella and celly in the dialogue. they also mention that they are from sukabumi. it also shows the name of a city that is located in indonesia, such as sukabumi in west java. picture 2. local story of timun emas source: rans entertainment based on picture 2 above, the title of the animation series entitled “si aa: dongeng timun mas” which is released on 10 june 2021. this story begins with a little storyteller coming to matahari’s class. then, the little storyteller told one of the famous fairy tales “timun mas” by using hand puppets to retell the story. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) tira nur fitria 366 picture 3. regional dance “jaipong” scene source: rans entertainment based on picture 3 above, the title of the animation series entitled “si aa: belajar tari jaipong” which is released on 15 june 2021. this story begins when a student in matahari's class sees a brochure “jaipong dance competition” for kindergarten children in groups. then some girl students wanted to take part in the competition, where the prize for the competition was a year’s worth of education savings. the girl students started practicing the jaipong dance but they had difficulty with the movements. then they were taught by one of the little dancers. next, they performed their jaipong dance in front of their teachers and school friends, and finally, they were chosen to represent the school for jaipong dance competence. picture 4. regional musical instruments scene source: rans entertainment based on picture 4 above, the title of the animation series entitled “si aa: raffi jadi guru angklung” which is released on 27 march 2021). this story begins with the teacher of matahari's class who asks his students to practice playing a musical instrument because of the creation stage next week in class and they will later perform angklung. picture 5. regional music instrument “gamelan” source: rans entertainment based on picture 5 above, the title of the animation series entitled “si aa: belajar kesenian tradisonal” which is released on 13 november 2021). the story begins with a student who is asked by his teacher to play the gamelan. then suddenly he was in a place where many dancers were dancing to the accompaniment of gamelan music. next, there was a king who met him and took him to the palace to show him various musical instruments in the gamelan. picture 6. indonesian national hero “kapitan pattimura” source: rans entertainment based on picture 6 above, the title of the animation series entitled “si aa: belajar dari keberanian kapitan pattimura” which is released on 19 november 2021). this story begins with rafathar askes her father why pattimura appears in money 1000 thousand rupiahs. his father then tells that kapyain pattimura., it’s a very famous hero from maluku, he is very meritorious to the people of maluku when against the invaders, journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 367 picture 7. palace building “keraton” source: rans entertainment based on picture 7 above, the title of the animation series entitled “si aa: belajar kesenian traditional” which is released on 13 november 2021). this story begins with rafathar meeting with a king then and taking him to the palace. as we see in that the picture shows a traditional palace or kraton. picture 8. regional performing arts “wayang suket” source: rans entertainment based on picture 8 above, the title of the animation series entitled “si aa: belajar kesenian tradisonal” which is released on 13 november 2021). this story begins with the king inviting rafathar to look around the palace. the king said if children want to be puppeteers, they can study at the palace. then rafathar saw two men playing wayang suket. picture 9. regional performing arts “ondelondel” based on picture 9 above, the title of the animation series entitled “si aa: ondel-ondel pak oyoy” which is released on 11 february 2021). this story begins when the children are frightened when they see something scary, and mr. oyoy says that it is not a ghost but ondelondel. mr. oyoy told about the history of ondel-ondel. then some children played with it. picture 10. traditional game “gangsing” source: rans entertainment based on picture 10 above, the title of the animation series entitled “si aa: perang gangsing” which is released on 9 march 2021). this story begins when children want to battle in playing gasing. they play it during break time, then they continue after school. picture 11. local handicrafts “tenun” based on picture 11 above, the title of the animation series entitled “si aa: belajar dari keberanian kapitan pattimura” which is released on 19 november 2021). this story begins when rafathar’s family goes on vacation to ambon, maluku. when they got there, they were greeted and wrapped in a typical woven cloth “kain tenun” from maluku. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) tira nur fitria 368 picture 12. tourim destination in maluku based on picture 12 above, the title of the animation series entitled “si aa: belajar dari keberanian kapitan pattimura” which is released on 19 november 2021). this story begins when rafathar’s family goes on vacation to one of the destination tourism places (beach) in ambon, maluku. the picture shows that the scene takes location in ora beach maluku. picture 13. local custom “tandur” based on picture 13 above, the title of the animation series entitled “si aa: petualangan ke jakarta pada masa lalu” which is released on 6 november 2021). this story begins when rafathar’s mom says that the plants planted in indonesian soil can thrive. for example, planting rice, cloves, coconut and is rich in marine products. it makes other nations jealous. this made rafathar imagine how indonesia used to be. indonesia is a rich country. not only in terms of natural resources but also in cultural diversity. the area that stretches from sabang to merauke makes it an extraordinary indonesian cultural diversity. this diversity triggers the motto bhineka tunggal ika which means different but still one. despite various ethnic groups, cultures, religions, and groups, indonesia is still one unit. the motto, which comes from the old javanese language, confirms that the diversity that exists in our country is the wealth and beauty of the indonesian nation that other countries do not have. indonesia has several forms of cultural diversity that characterize each region, such as traditional houses, traditional ceremonies, traditional clothes, dances, musical instruments and songs, national weapons, special foods, etc. in the animation series entitled “si aa”, it is found there are several indonesian local cultures appear and displayed in the scenes or dialogues as stated in the table below: table 1. indonesian local cultures in “si aa” animation series no time released title of animation series local culture 1. 11 december 2020 “si aa: teman kembar baru di sekolah bikin heboh” local language “sundanese” 2. 10 june 2021 “si aa: dongeng timun mas” local story of timun emas 3. 15 june 2021 “si aa: belajar tari jaipong” regional dance “jaipong” 4. 27 march 2021 “si aa: raffi jadi guru angklung” regional musical instruments “angklung” 5. 13 november 2021 “si aa: belajar kesenian tradisonal” regional music instrument “gamelan” 6. 19 november 2021 “si aa: belajar dari keberanian kapitan pattimura” indonesian national hero “kapitan pattimura” 7. 13 november 2021 “si aa: belajar kesenian” palace building “keraton” 8. 13 november 2021 “si aa: belajar kesenian tradisonal” regional performing arts “wayang suket” 9. 11 february 2021 “si aa: ondel-ondel pak oyoy” regional performing arts “ondel-ondel” 10. 9 march 2021 “si aa: perang gangsing” traditional game “gangsing” journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 369 no time released title of animation series local culture 11. 19 november 2021 “si aa: belajar dari keberanian kapitan pattimura” local handicrafts “tenun” 12. 19 november 2021 “si aa: belajar dari keberanian kapitan pattimura” tourism place destination in maluku 13. 6 november 2021 “si aa: petualangan ke jakarta pada masa lalu” local custom “tandur” based on the table above, it shows that there are several indonesian local cultures in ‘si aa” animation series such as 1) local language “sundanese”, 2) local story (folklore) of timun emas, 3) regional dance “jaipong”, 4) regional musical instruments “angklung”. 5) regional music instrument “gamelan”. 6) indonesian national hero “kapitan pattimura”. 7) palace building “keraton”. 8) regional performing arts “wayang suket”. 9) regional performing arts “ondel-ondel”. 10) traditional game “gangsing”, 11) local handycraft “tenun”, and 12) tourism destination in maluku. the descriptions are as follows: 1. local language “sundanese” as we can see in the findings above, the characters in the animation series ”si aa” use sundanese language in the dialogue both in conversation with her twin or with other friends. while others use indonesian. the characters retold from sukabumi. here, the characters often say “teh” and “mah”. the word “teh” and “mah”. sundanese has meaning in affirming particles. in sundanese, the affirming/reinforcing particle is known as kecap panganteb. this particle works as a focus marker. the focus markers “teh” and “mah” are particles that speakers of the language use very often sundanese in everyday conversation. however, the use of these three particles in the sentence must be low or fit, so it doesn’t seem forced. sundanese is spoken by people living in the western part of java island, especially in west java. it shows that language diversity (multilingualism) cannot be separated from cultural diversity (multiculturalism). in terms of culture, language is a cultural aspect, the wealth of language is something beneficial (devianty, 2017). the various languages will reflect the cultural richness that exists in the user community (multicultural). language shows unique and humane characters to differentiate between human beings and other creatures. 2. local story (folklore) of timun emas as we can see in the findings above, the character tells the story of timun mas. the local story (folklore) of timun emas and the giant is from central java. timun mas looks at the elements forming culture in the story plot. it can be interpreted as elements and cultural values of the javanese people as collective owners contained in the story. in the timun mas story, women have a very important role important, the main characters in this story are women, which implies that in the cultural characteristics of the indonesian people, and java, in particular, women are considered to have an important role in life. 3. regional dance “jaipong” as we can see in the findings above, the characters in the animation series ”si aa” dance jaipong. the characters’ costumes and movements are similar to the origin. jaipong is a regional dance from west java. the costumes or clothes used in this jaipong dance generally wear a kebaya with bright colors and the subordinates in the form of jarit cloth with batik motifs. the size of a costume usually wears a loose size, especially at the bottom because it has to be adapted to lively and dynamic movements. at the head, the dancers usually wear a bun that is beautified with decorations such as crowns and flowers to add to the beauty and elegance of the dancers. the waist is usually also equipped with a scarf, which is also used as a dance accessory to look more elegant. various kinds of regional dances and their origin are mandatory knowledge to recognize the diversity of indonesian culture. the art of dance is an expression of the soul in the form of motion with a certain accompaniment. movement in dances always has value and is different from everyday journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) tira nur fitria 370 movements. every kind of regional dance that exists, must have different characteristics as well as their meaning. 4. regional musical instruments “angklung” as we can see in the findings above, the characters in the animation series ”si aa” play angklung. angklung is from west java. this musical instrument was confirmed as a world cultural heritage native to indonesia by unesco (united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization) in 2010. angklung is included in the group of instruments that, in terms of music, are called idiophones, instruments whose body itself emits sounds or tones when we touch or hit them. angklung is made of bamboo, which is played by vibrating or shaking it to produce a distinctive sound in the composition of two, three, and up to three tones. four tones in every size, both large and small. how to play angklung is easy. one hand holds the angklung frame and the other shakes the bottom of the angklung to produce sound. there are three basic techniques for playing it, namely kalurung (vibrated), centak (jerked), and tengkep (vibrating one tube while the other tube is held so that it does not vibrate). 5. regional music instrument “gamelan” as we can see in the findings above, the characters in the animation series ”si aa” play gamelan. gamelan is the root of javanese culture. philosophically, gamelan is identical to the javanese way of life. gamelan is the root of javanese culture. philosophically, gamelan is identical to the javanese way of life. in javanese society, gamelan has an aesthetic function related to social, moral, and spiritual values. in short, gamelan is an inseparable part of javanese life. gamelan is an ensemble or combination of several musical instruments, such as the xylophone, drum, and gong. this combination has a non-diatonic tone system that delivers a beautiful sound when played in harmony. over time, the javanese gamelan stood alone as a musical performance complete with singers named sinden. gamelan consists of instruments, namely gendang, gong, suling, bonang, siter, rebab, kempul, kempyang, kethuk, saron, gender, slenthem, kemanak, cemplung. 6. indonesian national hero “kapitan pattimura” as we can see in the findings above, the character in the animation series ”si aa tells about kapitan pattimura. pattimur or known as kapitan pattimura is a national hero from maluku (syahrir, 2020). he has the real name thomas matulessy from the matulessia family (matulessy). pattimura’s courage and determination inspire and become an example for the next generation. pattimura was willing to sacrifice his life for the sake of the indonesian nation. 7. palace building “keraton” as we can see in the findings above, the character in the animation series ”si aa” visits the palace. keraton (javanese: kraton or karaton) is an area where a ruler (king or queen) rules or where he lives (palace). the shape of the roof of the palace building is usually in the form of a pyramid. apart from being the queen's residence, the kraton, or palace also functions as a cultural center and the center of government for the king or sultan on the island of java. just like a house, a palace or palace consists of several parts of a building or place that have different functions, often philosophical, cultural, and religious meanings. the development of islamic influence in the archipelago can also be seen in its very diverse relics. 8. regional performing arts “wayang suket” as we can see in the findings above, the characters in the animation series ”si aa” play wayang suket. wayang is one of the various cultural heritages of the past in indonesia. wayang is one of the cultural arts that stands out among many other cultural works. in the scene, it appears of wayang suket. one of the diversity of indonesian wayang is the “wayang suket”, which is an imitation of a shadow puppet figure, only made of grass or suket in javanese. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 371 9. regional performing arts “ondelondel” as we can see in the findings above, the characters in the animation series ”si aa” see and play ondel-ondel. ondel-ondel is in the form of a giant doll made of woven bamboo and decorated with human-like clothes and accessories. in the show, this doll is moved from the inside by someone who is usually a boy because of a fairly heavy load. it has been passed down from generation to generation, this culture contains symbols and deep meanings. the red male ondel-ondel mask means that men must be brave and brave, while the women’s mask means that they must maintain chastity. the coconut flowers on the ondel-ondel head mean strength. the coconut tree has strong roots that can utilize all elements of its body. 10. traditional game “gangsing” as we can see in the findings above, the characters in the animation series ”si aa” play gasing. gasing is one of the traditional games in indonesia, traditional games are part of the variety of cultures that grow in indonesia. before the onslaught of technological developments emerged, various traditional games had colored the lives of indonesian children. the appearance of the top also depends on the area of origin. some are oval, some are shaped like hearts, cones, and cylinders, and some are shaped like flying saucers. the top consists of the head, body, and legs (axis). however, the top's shape, size, and section vary according to each region. traditional games as the nation’s cultural heritage that are popular and still played in various regions until now are one of the elements of national culture still alive and developing in every region in indonesia. this means that in advancing national culture, we must not ignore the existence and life of traditional games, as elements of regional culture, which will color the personality and enrich the national culture. 11. local handycraft “tenun” as we can see in the findings above, the characters in the animation series ”si aa” wears tenun. maluku also has many traditions that are a heritage of indonesia’s cultural wealth. one of the traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation by the people of maluku, is the activity of making weaving. this cloth is also usually used for hanging for every important guest who comes to maluku. moluccan woven cloth does have its philosophical meaning. the production process of this woven fabric also does not use modern tools. traditional spinners use cotton threads, and the coloring does not use artificial dyes but natural dyes derived from wood roots and leaves. this woven fabric is made with a simple principle: combining threads lengthwise and transversely. most of the existing woven fabrics are dominated by stripes and interspersed with certain patterns adapted from the natural surroundings, such as animal motifs, plant motifs, and human motifs. 12. tourim destination in maluku the character in the animation series ”si aa” visit one of the tourist places on the beach in maluku. tourism has a close relationship with certain elements, such as culture, the environment, sustainable development, the impact of tourism on the environment, and social impacts. culture significantly affects tourism in the future. tourism is a combination of products and service products. both are interconnected, needed, and produced by tourism. tourism activities require interaction between tourists as service users and hosts as service providers. in the reality of social life, one form of culture cannot be separated from other forms of culture. trying to highlight an attraction to trigger tourists to the uniqueness of cultural tourism has a close relationship with certain elements such as culture, environment, sustainable development, the impact of tourism on the environment, and social impacts. culture can be a very interesting object for every ethnic community. 13. local culture ”tandur” as we can see in the findings above, the characters in the animation series. one example of javanese science is tandur (planting rice). tandur is simply an abbreviation of tanam mundur, which is a way journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) tira nur fitria 372 of growing rice that has become a habit for farmers in indonesia. the rice seeds are planted one by one at a certain distance by the farmer while walking backward. planting rice is not just planting rice seeds in the ground, after that it’s done. it’s not that simple according to javanese knowledge. tandur is a life practice, which in each part or series has its meaning or wisdom. tandur as a tradition of planting rice also has a philosophy or meaning, namely backward to move forward, everything has size, simplicity, humility, and hard work. the great philosophies of our ancestors all have strong meanings and symbols. “tandur” simple activity turned out to be a very deep philosophy. animated films are known to the public today and their existence is increasingly growing in the market. the positive development of this animation inspires some producers and culturalists to preserve their particular traditional culture that is increasingly marginalized. animation can be considered an appropriate and effective medium to introduce one country's culture to another. the animation that raised culture as a notion of creation was restricted to preserving and presenting culture to the public before it became a commodity. as the public responds favorably to culture-based animation, it evolves into a product, a company, and an endeavor to conserve culture. local cultural elements in indonesian animation can be seen as more the creator’s efforts in representing/reconstructing all forms of cultural identity in indonesia as a reflection of reality in the world really that settles in his memory into animated film media. every artwork created by humans is a reflection of the culture that is around it. this representation allows humans to shape their character and identity alone while still preserving the culture local as the main influence. if pulled into the realm of animation, it can be said that every animation creator will carry an identity culture to a certain degree in each animation work as a form of existence representation of the surrounding culture. in other words, each animation reflects the effects of the cultural situations in which the animation was made. animated films can be used as inspiration for revitalizing or preserving community culture, both cultural objects that are increasingly marginalized and the culture of the community that still exists. conclusion there are several indonesian local cultures found in ‘si aa” animation series such as the use of local language “sundanese”, local story (folklore) of timun emas, regional dance “jaipong”, regional musical instruments “angklung”, regional music instrument “gamelan”, 6) indonesian national hero “kapitan pattimura”, palace building “keraton”, regional performing arts “wayang suket”, regional performing arts “ondelondel”, traditional game “gangsing”, 11) local handycraft “tenun”, and 12) tourism destination in maluku. the animated film industry in indonesia cannot be underestimated. reliable animators began to rise and produce proud works. the indonesian film industry is currently not behind other countries. one of them, the animated film industry, is increasingly showing progress. suppose the many existing cultures of society, especially traditional culture that is increasingly being abandoned by the community are revitalized into the media animation and are displayed with a sufficient portion on television and media. in that case, it will positively impact and become a habitus in society. local animation creators should indonesia multiply to include indonesian cultural identity into the work animation to form a perception about the characteristics of indonesian animation in the minds of more domestic and foreign animation audiences broader in the future. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 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(2010). cartoon planet: worlds of production and global production networks in the animation industry. industrial and corporate change, 19(1), 239–271. https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/dtp040 192 vol. 22 no. 1, april 2022, pp. 192-207 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i1.4020 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. discourses of truck container signs in indonesia i dewa putu wijana idp_wijana@yahoo.com faculty of cultural sciences, universitas gadjah mada, indonesia abstract article information this article attempts to analyze truck container sign discourses found in indonesia from three perspectives: linguistics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics. using data collected from google search and one from my data collection, through careful observation and contextual method, it is found that structurally the truck signs can be constructed in the forms of single sentence discourse and multisentence discourse of a maximum of 9 sentences. the language style used is informal or colloquial, characterized by massive code-mixing among three out of four languages, i.e. indonesian, javanese, english, and sundanese. the discourses are exploited to perform various kinds of speech acts in varieties of strategies and to carry out many communicative functions: emotive, conative, referential, phatic, metalingual, poetic, and recreative. keywords: discourse; signs; truck container; socio-pragmatics received: 27 december 2021 revised: 4 january 2022 accepted: 3 february 2022 introduction language plays a very central role in human life. all people need language to express their thoughts, ideas, and various kinds of emotions to their interlocutors. accordingly, human life is surrounded by verbal discourses exploited by people from many types of profession, political affiliation, nationalities, ethnicities, etc for achieving unlimited goals or purposes. discourses found in truck containers which will be taken into account in this paper are one of them. even though the truck owners create the signs, when they are found or read by people, they may represent the truck owners or the truck drivers’ messages towards whoever read the signs or anyone or any people referred or intended by the textual discourses toward themselves. this kind of discourse used to be exploited by the senders to communicate various topics or themes is interesting to discuss from linguistic, and socio pragmatics viewpoints concerning with its linguistic structures and messages, language variations used by the senders delivering topics, type of speech acts and its strategies, and various communicative functions of the truck container signs in indonesia may perform. all of these matters have not been discussed profoundly by linguists. accordingly, this study intends to deepen these matters to gain a better understanding of the use of truck container signs found passing on the roads of many cities in indonesia. https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:idp_wijana@yahoo.com journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 193 the beginning of discourse studies in indonesian is marked by the formal studies concerning relations between one sentence to another under the heading discourse cohesion and coherence by using the model of analysis developed by halliday and hassan (1976). the application of this model can be seen in ramlan’s work entitled paragraf: alur pikiran dan kepaduannya (paragraph: stream of thought and its unity). this book constitutes the development of his three articles concerning paragraph and sentence relations within paragraphs (ramlan, 1987; ramlan1984; and ramlan 1992) and his experiences in supervising his undergraduate and postgraduate students. the later development is the emergence of various kinds of discourse studies of a wide range of topics with various approaches, structural, sociopragmatic, and functional as well related with indonesian or local languages in indonesia. for example, several studies by wijana (1995); wijana (2014); surana (2014); and maryaeni (2001) are about humorous discourses of various genres, such as cartoon, riddle, sticker, and east java ludruk performance. other trending topics discussed by the linguists are those concerned with speeches, such as islamic friday sermon (sadhono, 2010), traditional javanese wedding (mulyana, 2008), public warnings and prohibitions (arumi, 2007). as far as truck container signs are concerned, up till now, there is no comprehensive study found. most studies concerned with this matter are superficial, such as study carried out by dewi (2014) which is only short discussion on several types speech acts of truck signs found in solo-sragen ring road. using critical discourse analysis, nasirudin (2014) analyzes several aspects of indonesian truck signs’ discourses, including forms, ideology, and their functions. however, the results regarding those aspects are very simple. for example, the structural forms of the truck signs are not merely words, word & picture/design, and short poems/rhymes, but also various sentence types, and multi sentence discourses as well. the ideologies of truck signs are also more complex. they can also bear other ideologies, such as faithfulness, betrayals, hard work, carefulness, and politics. all of these are carried out by various forms of language play, not just rhyming and intertextuality. ilmi (2015) research tries to investigate the semantic aspects of truck discourse signs without clear attention to what semantic aspects her study will focus on. sudaryanto et al. (2019) analyzes the language used, language function, and discourse genres of the truck container signs. the languages used for expressing the signs include indonesian, english, and javanese for delivering four language functions, i.e. expressive, cognitive, phatic, and communicative, and expressed in three types of discourse genres: prayer, flash rhymes idiom, and song titles. because there are around 400 hundred local languages used in the indonesian archipelago, other local languages might still be used in the truck container signs. despite the only few language functions they have found, the number of discourse genres is also too few to mention, the concept of discourse genre is not clear enough, whether idiom and title songs to be included in this terms. finally, julaikha (2019) focuses her attention on graffiti that uses indonesian and limits her attention on discourse types and functions. without regarding the role of sociopragmatic context, this research fails to discover the difference among the discourse types and their functions. based on these conditions, this article will analyze this matter from three linguistic approaches: linguistics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics. firstly, this paper will discuss the structure of the signs from the lowest up to the highest level. secondly, it will reveal the language variation used by the senders to deliver the signs, and thirdly it will discuss types of speech acts, strategies, and the language functions played by the truck container signs. from very basic theory of language, it is stated that language consists of two entities, form and meaning. from this standpoint, the language used for creating truck container signs also contains these two substances. the first is realized by linguistic units of various grammatical levels and varieties of intentions wished to deliver by the sign creators. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i dewa putu wijana 194 the language people use to communicate is always influenced by the extralinguistic contexts involved in the communicative interaction, which in sociolinguistic theory it can simply be formulated by the person who speaks, with whom, where, when, and to what end. in line with the truck signs, these discourses are also influenced by more or less the same factors. therefore, the language variation used to express will also show its particularities. pragmatically, the sign creators do not just want to say something with the created discourses, but they also do something with their verbal creations to affect the interlocutors or the speech participants. in other words, the truck container signs, despite consisting of a locution, also perform illocution and perlocution (austin, 1962, 5-6); parker, 1986, 15-16; parker & riley 2014, 35-43). from this theoretical perspective, there should be various acts and strategies used by the senders in delivering the discourses, for they can affect the addressee in effective ways. and, finally, despite the three main communicative functions of language (emotive, conative, and referential), there should be other functions that can possibly be bear by the truck container discourses. methodology the objects of this research were discourses of truck containers displayed mostly on the tailgates and several on the side and other parts of the vehicles. all data presented in this article were collected from google search added with my collections. the data together and their contexts, picture, and relevant information were noted. further, they were classified according to the structures, messages, language style, speech act categories and strategies, and communicative functions. several data can be analyzed from various aspects. therefore, they may appear more than once in the analysis but with different numbers. the data found were presented as they are without undergoing any grammatical and spelling correction. results and discussion the following sections are the research findings concerning with discourse structure and messages, language variation, speech acts and strategies, and communicative functions of truck container signs in indonesia. the structure of truck container signs all truck container signs are written discourse. as discourses, they express complete messages as the minimum requirement of any linguistic element to be labelled as discourse (kridalaksana. 1993, 212; wijana, 2014, 296). thus, discourse may appear as a word, phrase, clause, sentence or verbal constituent of higher level as long as it expresses a complete message. however, in several cases, the discourse cannot be fully understood without the existence or presence of the nonverbal contexts which accompany the texts. those non-verbal elements commonly constitute visual elements, picture of artists, famous leaders and other figures (human or non-human) co-existing with the verbal elements. as such, to completely comprehend the discourse, despite the verbal elements, the readers must also consider the important role played by the nonverbal elements. for example, consider (1) (2), and (3) below: 1) sorga itu di telapak kaki ibu. ‘the heaven is under your mother’s foot sole’ 2) isih penak zamanku. ‘it is more comfortable in my era’ 3) enak melu sopo, bro. ‘with whom is it more comfortable, brothers?’ no one would fully understand (1) without seeing the painting of a foot palm kicking a child face, (2) the picture of the late soeharto’s smiling face, (3) the picture of three indonesian former presidents, the late gus dur, megawati, and susilo bambang yudhoyono. discourse (1) is mainly intended for eliciting joke, and (2) and (3) for criticizing and comparing social condition new order and after reformation era. with regard to discourse structure, they can simply be classified into journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 195 two types, single sentence discourse and multi sentence discourse. single sentence discourse there are three subtypes of single sentence discourse found in truck container signs. those are minor, simple, complex sentence discourse respectively which will be described in the following sections: minor sentence discourse truck signs in the form minor sentences can be expressed by non-predicative linguistic units, such as words in (4) to (7), or phrases, as shown by (8) to (11) below. 4) zudes ‘vicious, unmannered’ 5) biasa ‘usual, common’ 6) pol1g4my 7) kiss (kisah indah seorang sopir) ‘kiss (beautiful story of a driver) 8) mustibisha ‘must be able’ 9) mitsub, sh ‘proper name plus academic title’ 10) mawar biru (mangan wareg bisa turu) ‘blue rose (eating full and sleeping well)’ 11) anak lanang ‘son’ discourse (4) is an indonesian word with consonant modification (j>z) from judes ‘vicious’, (6) is yielded from english polygamy by letter and number confusion (1 = i and 4 = a) and spelling deviation (i>y), (7) is a created acronym of english word “kiss” with the indonesian meaning, and (8) is a pun on japanese car brand “mitsubishi” becoming a fake indonesian phrase musti bisa ‘must be able’ through metathesis and sound modification. meanwhile, mitsub, s.h. in (9) is an arabic indonesian phrase fake proper name and its academic title s.h. (sarjana hukum) ‘bachelor of law’. mawar biru ‘blue rose’ in (10) is an indonesian phrase created to be a javanese acronym that is intended to stand for mangan wareg bisa turu ‘eating full and sleep well’, and anak lanang ‘(my) son’ in (11) is a javanese phrase that might indicate the vehicle owner possessed a beloved son. simple sentence discourse simple sentence is any sentence consisting of one predicative linguistic unit. the sentence can be constructed by subject and predicate optionally followed by object, complement, or adverbial. in certain conditions, the subject may not present, and only the predicate and the optional element, one of or altogether exist in the truck signs. for example, see (12) to (18) below: 12) belahan jiwaku adalah kamu ‘you are my soulmate’ 13) doa membawa berkah. ‘prayer brings luck’ 14) surga dunia ada di indonesia. ‘the world paradise is in indonesia’ 15) utamakan bayar hutang ‘prioritize to pay debt’ 16) ojo lalekno aku ‘don’t forget me’ 17) maafkan debu kami. ‘we are sorry of our dust’ 18) gadis desa hancur di kota ‘village girl was smashed in the city’ discourses (12) to (18) are all simple sentences that are constructed by various functional elements. discourse (12) is equative construction consisting of subject and predicate; the declarative construction in (13) consists of subject, predicate, and object; declarative construction in (14) consists of subject, predicate, and adverbial; imperative sentence in (15) is constructed by predicate and object; javanese imperative sentence in (16) consists of predicate and object; imperative in (17) consists of predicate and object; and declarative sentence in (18) consists of subject, predicate, and adverbial. complex sentence discourse different from simple sentence, complex sentence consists of two or more clauses. as far as truck container signs are concerned, they can be created in complex sentence discourse of various grammatical and semantic relations. consider the following (19) to (26): 19) cinta sejati tidak akan menjadi tua, meski dimakan usia. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i dewa putu wijana 196 ‘true love will not become old, even though it is consumed by age’ 20) kalah playu, menang sangu ‘loose in run, but win in provision’ 21) kebohongan menyelamatkanmu sementara tapi menghancurkanmu selamanya. ‘falsehood will save you temporarily, but smash you forever’ 22) ya allah, jauhkanlah aku dari ibu-ibu pake motor yang sennya ke kiri tapi beloknya ke kanan. ‘oh god, keep me away from mothers driving motorcycle who give right sign, but turn left’ 23) jangan ngebut karena maut tak seindah music dangdut. ‘do not race because death is not as lovely as dangdut music’ 24) jangan karena ingin menyelamatkan seorang janda jadi menjandakan istri sendiri. ‘do not just because you want to save a widow, you make your wife a widow’ 25) ojo ngaku ayu yen during duwe bojo supir. ‘do not say that you are beautiful before you marry a driver’ 26) orang sukses tidak harus berseragam dan bersepatu pantovel ‘a successful person does not marked by the wearing of uniform and closed toes shoes’ discourses in (19) (20), (21), and (22) are coordinative constructions expressing contrastive, discourses in (23) and (24) are subordinate constructions expressing causative, discourse in (25) is a subordinate construction expressing conditional, while discourse in (26) is subordinate construction expressing additive relation. multi-sentence discourse multi-sentence truck container signs are constructed by two or more sentences which are related to one another for bearing the discourse messages. however, in very few cases the sentences build the messages not related to each other, such as shown by (27) and (28) below: 27) cocok nggo ampiran. cocok nggo omahomah. leren judi, insyaalah munggah kaji. ‘appropriate for entertainment. appropriate for house wife. stop gambling, you hopefully 28) londone teko. senyummu menambah bonku. ‘the foreigner is coming. your smile increases my bill’ the truck sign of (27) has two unrelated parts. the first part consists of two sentences, cocok nggo ampiran ‘appropriete for entertaiment’ and cocok nggo omah-omah ‘appropriete for house wife’. these sentences are used to refer to two kinds of the woman pictured in the truck sign. from their costume, one is pictured as immoral and the other is religious. the second part leren judi, insyaallah munggah kaji ‘stop gambling, hopefully you will make pilgrimage to mecca’ seem to have no relation to the first. the same as (27), discourse (28) is also constructed by two unrelated sentences, i.e londone teko ‘the foreigner is coming’ and senyummu menambah bonku ‘your smile increase my bill’. nearly all truck signs are monolog discourse, only a few are dialog. example (29) and (30) constitutes a discourse in the form of dialog: 29) + dari nol ya, mas. ‘look, it is from zero.’ bukan saya dari klaten. ‘no, i am from klaten’ 30) + kamu mau beli apa, sayang. ‘what do you want to buy, son? ayah bolehkah aku beli waktu ayah satu jam saja. ‘can i buy your time just an hour’ discourse (29) is a monolog. it is intended for gaining humorous effect that the gas station man informs his customer that the gas machine starts from zero before petrol is pumped out. but, the customer thinks that he is asked about where he comes from. in (30), in spite of raising humorous effect the joke is also intended to criticize the busy father for never setting aside any leisure time for his child. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 197 the truck container signs consisting of two or more sentences (of maximum 9 sentences according to my data collection) exploit various rhyming techniques (iteration, alliteration, assonance, etc.) to gain niceties of the sign expressions. consider (31) to (35) below in which the sentence boundaries are marked by slash (/): 31) bahagia itu tidak harus mewah/istighfar untuk masa lalu/bersyukur untuk hari ini/berdoa untuk hari esok. ‘happiness must not always be luxurious. ask god’s forgiveness for you have done in the past. thank god for today. and, pray for tomorrow’. 32) melupakan ibadah itu neraka/melupakan orang tua itu durhaka/melupakanmu mana bisa. ‘forgetting worship is hell. forgetting parents is rebellious. forgetting you, how can i’ 33) truk ini memang jelek/muatannya juga jelek/yang baca, malah tambah jelek. ‘this truck is certainly bad. the load is also bad. the (sign) readers, are even worse’ 34) nerakaku bukan urusanmu/sorga belum tentu jadi milikmu/jangan suka urusin urusan orang lain ‘my hell is not your business/heaven is not certainly yours/do not often interfere another one’s business 35) sholat ora tau/poso ora tau/zakat opo meneh/mabok doyan/judi tiap hari/maksiat jalan terus/tapi pengin masuk surge/emang kowe nduwe kenalan wong jero/sepurano nek aku lewat mambu. ‘praying is never. so as fasting. let alone, paying tithe. gambling is every day. engage in immoral acts never stops. but, you want to enter heaven. do you really have a connection with inside staffs. i am sorry if my fumes when i passed. everything concerning the poetic function of the truck signs will be discussed later in section of communicative function. various messages of truck container signs truck container signs are used to deliver various messages closely related to drivers' profession and their lives as human beings, head of family, god’s creature, etc. several of those messages which are considered very dominant are safe drive (36) and (37), betrayal and faithfulness (38) and (39), hard work (40) and (41), low wage (42) and (43), religiosity (44) and (45). etc. 36) don’t to milk ‘ jangan kesusu’ ‘do not hurry’ 37) hati-hati di jalan. yang di hati kapan jalan-jalan. ‘be careful on the way. someone in your heart when will take a walk with you’ 38) selingkuh boleh saja asal saja rasa sayang sama istri jangan sampai hilang. ‘betrayal is allowed as long as your love to your wife is not ceased’ 39) kutunggu jandamu. ‘i am waiting for you until you are a widow’ 40) kerja keras bagai kuda. sampai lupa orang tua, oh hati terasa durhaka. ‘work hard like a horse. but, if you forgot your parents, oh you are truly rebellious’ 41) lebih baik hidup dari sampah daripada hidup jadi sampah. ‘it is better living from garbage than your life becoming garbage’ 42) ciye yang senyum2 abis gajian terus cemberut karena mesti bayar utang. ‘oh, the ones smiling are just getting salary, and then suddenly morose because must pay debt’ 43) kuat dilakoni. nggak kuat utang bri ‘if we are strong, we will endure it. if not, we borrow bri (name of a bank)’ 44) leren judi, insyaalah munggah kaji ‘stop gambling, god bless you doing a pilgrim to mecca’ 45) doa membawa berkah. ‘prayer brings blessing’ journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i dewa putu wijana 198 language variation of truck container signs generally speaking, the speech situation involved in truck sign deliverance is informal. in this matter, the speech participants, the senders, the addressees, and other participants might be imagined by the creators interacting with one other(s) in a very casual situation. accordingly, the language style used in the interaction is non-formal or casual from any viewpoint: spelling, lexicogrammar, pronunciation (as indicated by the spelling) as well. there are at least four languages found in the signs. those are indonesian, javanese, english, and sundanese. this matter is easy to explain because indonesian is the national language, and all indonesian people master this language as a lingua franca and symbol of national unity (halim, 1980, 17; anwar, 1980, 52-63). english is an international language, a symbol of prestige, the language spoken by highly educated people. most indonesian of lower education use this language for lending beauty. javanese and sundanese are the two most prominent local languages in indonesia; even javanese is the most widely spoken vernacular in the archipelago (moeliono, 2011, 130). discourse (46) to (52) below shows the use of these four languages. 46) selingkuh boleh saja asal saja rasa sayang sama istri jangan sampai hilang. ‘adultry is allowed as long as your love to your wife never ceased’ 47) jaman sekarang mobil mewah bukan jaminan kerena yang bisa buat jaminan cuma bpkb dan sertifikat ‘nowadays, luxurious car is not a guarantee because the things you can use as collateral are only car ownership and land certificate’ 48) don’t to milk. ‘do not be hurry’ 49) new fear the me is 3 ‘driving for the sake of wife’ 50) dhudu jarak sing nggawe pisah nanging sampean karo dee menengmeneng nggawe kisah. ‘it is not distance that separate us, but you and her secretly make affair’ 51) pengin nyanding ning koe not responding. ‘i want sitting next to you, but you are not responding’ 52) aa bilih mau nyandung, mah mangga wae abdi mah ikhlas. ‘darling, if you want to take a second wife, it doesn’t matter, i accept it sincerely’ examples (46) and (47) use indonesian, (48) and (49) use english consecutively as word to word translation and homophonic punning of jangan kesusu ‘don’t be hurry’. in this case, jangan means ‘don’t’ and kesusu colloquial indonesian for ‘hurry’. this is made possible because susu is accidently homonymous with ‘milk or breast’. in (49) new fear is homophonically similar with nyopir ‘driving’, the mi with demi ‘in the sake of’, is 3 with istri ‘wife’. discourse (50) and (51) use javanese, and (52) sundanese. in a multilingual society, the phenomena of code-mixing among three languages, indonesian, javanese, and english as a marker of solidarity (wardaugh, 1986, 104) among the interlocutors seem unavoidable. these matters are also massively found in truck signs. see (53) to (58) below: 53) jaluk imbuh kalau dilegani ‘ask for addition, if you make me happy’ 54) lek seneng podo lali. tapi lek susah podo takon posisi. ‘when happy, all forget, but when getting problem, all are asking position’ 55) ya allah, tolong sisakan praone untuk kami. ‘oh god, please, leave me girl for us’ 56) rabutuh mantu sopir. untuk sebuah nama. ‘i do not want a driver for my son in law. for someone’ 57) woles ae. po face bookan. bb and sing song. ‘just slow/relax. or face booking, black berry and singing song’ 58) otot kawat balung besi. tetap semangat cari rejeki. ‘wire mussle, iron bone. always enthusiastic in looking for luck’ journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 199 in (53) the use of javanese is mixed with the use of the indonesian conjunction kalau ‘if’. in fact, javanese itself has nek ‘if’ for the equivalent. in (54) the sender uses east javanese dialect for replacing the very formal standard javanese used in solo and yogyakarta. lek ‘if’ is east javanese conjunction which is equivalent to nek ‘if’. in (55) the mixture of code is carried out by confusing english word one whose pronunciation is identical with the final syllable javanese word prawan means ‘girl or virgin’. in (56) the first sentence is javanese, while the second is indonesian. in (57) the senders use indonesian slang woles ‘slow’ formed by back-formation of english slow, and english phrase black berry ‘celular brand’ and gerund phrase singing song. in (58) javanese idiomatic expression otot kawat balung besi refers to an extraordinary strength combined by indonesian expression of having final rhyming tetap semangat cari rejeki. so far, the mixture between one of those three languages with sundanese does not exist. speech acts and their strategies truck container signs are exploited by the senders for delivering various kinds of thoughts, ideas, and messages. all of them are expressed using varieties and strategies of speech acts. theoretically, there are at least three kinds of acts possibly done by any person when they are using language to communicate. those are locutionary act, an act of saying something; illocutionary act, an act of doing something; and perlocutionary act, an act of affecting someone (parker, 1986, 15-16). the first act is nothing to do with pragmatics. the second act and the third ones are, but the effect the third brings is difficult to identify. accordingly, this section will focus on the illocutionary act, what the truck sign senders do when they deliver their utterances and the strategies they exploit to deliver whether explicit non-explicit, direct or indirect, expressed or implied, literal or non-literal. all types of the strategy are found in parker and riley (2014, 35-43). based on its illocutionary forces, the speech acts of the utterance can be classified into several categories. those are representative, directive, question, commissive, expressive, and declaration speech act. as far as truck container signs are concerned, in fact there are only six categories found in the data collection. those are representative, directive, question, commissive, and expressive. the use of them in detail will be described in the following subsection. representative speech act a representative speech act is a speech act used by the speaker to describe some states of affairs. this act is exploited for executing several acts, such as stating, asserting, denying, admitting, predicting, notifying, and so on. consider the following (59) to (66): 59) bukan profesi tapi sekedar hobi. ‘it is not a profession, but just a hobby’ 60) doa membawa berkah. ‘prayer bringing luck’ 61) setia itu mahal, makanya tidak bisa dilakukan orang murahan. ‘faithfulness is expensive, so it can be fulfilled by a cheap sort of person’ 62) cinta sejati tidak akan menjadi tua, meski dimakan usia. ‘true love will never be old, even though it is consumed by age’ 63) hanya sopir yang membuatku tersenyum ‘onlu driver can make me smile’ 64) senajan podo dosane aku luwih mileh mabuk ketimbang selingkuh. even they both sinful, i would rather choose drunk than adultry’ 65) lagu kita masih sama, indonesia raya. ‘our anthem still the same, indonesia raya’. 66) rabutuh mantu sopir. untuk sebuah nama. i do not need driver as my son in law. for someone’ without any clearness of what the senders are talking about in (59), they state that what they have done is not their profession, but it is just merely their hobby. in (60) the senders assert their belief in the strength of prayer in bringing happiness for the utterer. discourses in (61), (62), and (63) are the confession of the eternity for faithfulness, true love, and the most favorable profession. discourse (64) is an assertion of the act the sender would rather choose even though both of them are sinful. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i dewa putu wijana 200 discourse (65) is an implicative statement of the sender and their friend about their national loyalty. finally, discourse (66) is a sender’s denial about the profession for their future son-in-law. directive speech act directive speech act is an act intended by the speaker to ask the interlocutor to do or not to do something. in uttering the speech, the sender may do various kinds of directives, such as command, request, advice, caution, prohibition, etc. this act can be carried out directly by using the imperative sentence, such as seen in (67) to (71) below: 67) asal abang kuat nanjak, lewat aje. ‘as long as you are strong climbing, just pass’ 68) jangan lupa pulang. kutunggu jandamu ‘don’t forget going back home. i am waiting for you to be a widow’ 69) hati-hati di jalan. yang di hati kapan jalan-jalan. ‘take care on your way. and, someone in your heart, when will come a long taking walk with you’ 70) ojo rewel, su. wani piro. ‘don’t be fussy, dog. how much will you pay’ 71) nella seng ayune sondol langit. bojone biasa. seng penting kan tanggung jawabe. la awakmu seng ayune mekso. golek seng soge ganteng. ha.ha ngoco. ‘this is the one whose beauty reaching the sky. his husband is just ordinary. the most important is his responsibility, right? and, you which is not so beautiful, looking for the rich and handsome one. ha, ha, look your face in the mirror’ whatever the other possible messages of (67) may have, the woman speaker is asking the driver to pass as long as the vehicle can do. the first sentence of (68) is the sender’s request for the addressee to return home. discourse (69) is the sender’s caution to the interlocutor for safe driving. discourse (70) is a prohibition to the interlocutor to stop being fussy, and asking a question to him how much he dares to pay for the girl offered. in (71) the speaker asks the interlocutor to see her face in the mirror whether she is eligible enough for having envisioned to get a rich and nice-looking husband. the directive speech acts can also be delivered in indirect strategies by using declarative and interrogative constructions. consider (72) to (77) below: 72) 2 anak cukup. 2 istri bangkrut. ‘2 children is enough, 2 wives is bankrupt’ 73) dilarang ngangkut istri orang ‘it is prohibited to load someone’s wife’ 74) sambil nyetir kita dzikir ‘while driving we pray’ 75) lebih baik hidup dari sampah daripada hidup jadi sampah. ‘it is better living from litter than living becoming (social) litter’ 76) kamu mau beli apa sayang. ayah bolehkah aku beli waktu ayah satu jam saja? what do you want to buy, son? father, can i buy your time for just an hour? 77) umpomo fotomu ora editan, opo kowe ora payu? discourse (72) is an indirect way to ask the interlocutor for just having no more than two children, and just have one wife. discourse (73) is an indirect way to prohibit the interlocutor for not doing adultery. discourse (74) is an indirect strategy to ask the friend to always praise the lord. discourse (75) is a reminder for the interlocutor that to be a rubbish collector that is is more dignified than a useless person. discourse (76) is an indirect strategy to remind the interlocutor (father) to save enough time for his family. finally (77) is an indirect command to the interlocutor for not displaying her edited photograph because she is still beautiful enough to attract an adult male. the indirectness of (72) to (75) are uttered by declarative sentences, while of (76) and (77) are expressed in interrogative sentences. from another viewpoint, discourse (72) implicatively reminds the interlocutor that raising more than two children is a hard task, and living with two wives will bring him a lot of inconveniences. so, staying with one wife and two children is much more comfortable. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 201 the following disourses (78) to (81) may respectively constitute implied and indirect strategy to or prohibit the interlocutor from not leaving indonesia, keep working in corona pandemic, keep staying in the village instead of migrating to an urban area, and be careful for loving a driver. 78) surga dunia ada di indonesia ‘the world paradise is in indonesia’ 79) nuruti corona ora nguntal ‘to follow corona you will not eat’ 80) gadis desa hancur di kota ‘village girl is smashed in city’ 81) cinta sopir hanya sebatas parkir. ‘driver love is as wide as parking lines ’ most truck container signs’ directive speech acts are expressed literally. it means that the discourse intentions have the same meaning as the words used to express. in my data collection, there is only found one datum expressing its direction in nonliteral strategies, i.e. (82) below: 82) ngebut adalah ibadah. semakin ngebut semakin dekat dengan tuhan. ‘over speeding is a worship. the more you do the closer you would be with god’ what actually the sender means in his utterance is opposed to the literal meaning of it. the message they intend to express is the following (83): 83) jangan ngebut. ngebut membahayakan keselamatan anda. ‘do not race. racing endangers your safety’ question speech act there are certainly several truck container signs constructed by interrogative questions, seen in (76) and (77) above, intended to express directive acts in indirect ways. compare (76) and (77) with (84) and (85) below which are respectively exploited to deliver command to the interlocutor for not disturbing the sender, or just loving the sender wealth but also satisfying his sexual desire symbolized by the javanese word manukku ‘my bird’ which figuratively refers to ‘my pennis’: 84) siapa takut? ‘who scared?’ 85) apa cuma harta yang memuaskan nafsumu lalu manukku kau anggap apa? ‘is it only wealth that can satisfy you, and what do you consider my pennis’ i only found 2 data showing this phenomenon. in the first, the sender which is represented by the three former indonesian presidents (the late gus dur, megawati, and sby), really want to get an answer about the most comfortable social condition during their precedency era. in the other, the sender asks the interlocutors about the cigarette they smoke. see (86) and (87) below: 86) enak melu sopo, bro? ‘with whom do you feel most enjoyable?’ 87) rokokmu opo, bro? ‘what cigarette do you smoke’ commissive speech act a commissive speech act is an act used by the speaker to express various kinds of promise. so, acts such as promising, vowing, offering, betting, and so on belong to this category. see (88) to (91) below: 88) jangan lupa pulang. kutunggu jandamu. ‘don’t forget go back home. i am waiting for you until you are a widow’ 89) dua mata saya. hidung saya satu. satu hati saya. cuma buat kamu. ‘i have two eyes, i have one nose, and i have one heart, it is just for you’ 90) nak jodo, yo dadi bojo. nak gak jodo yo tak kondangan wae ambek nyumbang lagu. ‘if you are my destiny, you will be my wife. if it is not, i will come to your wedding, and singing song. 91) saya bukan yang terbaik. namun saya belajar menjadi yang lebih baik ‘i am not the best. but i will always learn to become better’ discourse (88) consists of two parts. the first part expresses the directive act of reminding, and the second contains promise about the sender’s faithfulness for waiting the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i dewa putu wijana 202 married girl he loves to become a widow. in (89) by exploiting the indonesian children song rhyming, the sender vow that his love is just for the woman intended in the discourse. discourse (90) even though he still hopes the girl will become his wife, he is already willing that if another thing happens, he has made a promise to attend her wedding although just for singing song. discourse (91) contains the sender’s strong intention to get better every day. expressive speech act any utterance intended by the sender to express all kinds of emotion, such as happiness, sadness, anger, disappointment, wonder, etc. can be classified into this category. there are several acts belong to its sub categories. those are apologizing, thanking, congratulating, welcoming, objecting, and so on. see (92) to (96) below: 92) cintaku kandas di uang jalan bro. ‘my love failed because of my small provision, friend’ 93) aduh panase koyok digudo rondo. ‘oh, it is very hot, like widow’s temptation’ 94) kukira cintamu sepanjang tol cipali. ternyata cintamu seperti tol palikanci yang singkat menemani. ‘i thought that your love is as long as cipali tol. in fact it is just like palikanci tol, very short to accompany’ 95) pergi pagi. pulang petang. penghasilan pas-pasan. ‘go early in the morning, back lately at night. but just barely enough’ 96) pergi dicari. pulang dimarahi. cintamu tak seberat muatanku. ‘you are looking for when i go, and angry when i came home. your love is not as heavy as my burden’ example (92) is an expression of disappointment because his girlfriend considers that his small provision is not enough for gaining her love, and (93) is an expression of the sender that he cannot manage his emotion against the widow’s temptation. discourse (94) is an expression of the sender’s wrong supposition about his girl friend’s love, and (95) is the sender’s complain about the imbalance of his hard working and the income gained. finally, (96) is an expression of the speaker’s confusion about his wife’s behavior, and in addition, her love is not also very deep. from subcategories that have been mentioned, the act of apologizing and objecting seem prominent. see (97), (98), and (99) below. discourse (97) and (98) constitute the act of apologizing of the sender about the dust and the fume the truck made, and (99) is an objection of the speaker about the cause their separation. 97) maafkan debu kami. ‘we are sorry for our dust’ 98) sholat ora tau. poso ora tau. zakat opo meneh. mabok doyan. judi tiap hari. maksiat jalan terus. tapi pengin masuk surge. emang kowe nduwe kenalan wong jero. sepurano nek aku lewat mambu. ‘praying is never. so as fasting. let alone, paying tithe. gambling is everyday. engage in immoral acts never stops. but, you want to enter the heaven. do you really have connection with inside staff. i am sorry of my fumes when i passed. 99) dhudu ajarak sing nggawe pisah nanging sampean karo dee menengmeneng nggawe kisah. ‘it is not distance that separates us, but you and her secretly make affair’ as far as speech act strategy is concerned, closely related with the informal style of the discourse, all truck container signs use nonexplicit strategy. the truck discourse never overtly or explicitly uses the first person subject saya ‘i”, kita ‘we’, or kami ‘we’, followed by performative verbs, such as menyatakan ‘stating’, berjanji ‘promising’, bersumpah ‘swearing’, and memperingatkan ‘warning’ like utterances commonly found in formal registers. communicative functions with regard to the communicative function the human language can play, there are several linguists who have made various distinctions. for instance, buhler (1934) differentiates between referential and emotive functions. brown and yule (1989, 1-2) classify journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 203 transactional and interactional, halliday (1970) claims the difference between ideational and interpersonal, and lyons (1977) between descriptive and social expressive (see also wijana, 2018, 82). the most complete and renowned classification is one done by jakobson (1966, 350-359; see also kadarisman, 2009, 53-54). in his article jakobson mentions six kinds of language functions. those are emotive, conative, referential, poetic, and phatic, and metalingual. the first three functions have been included in discussion about speech acts. the emotive function is already included in expressive speech act, connotative function in directive speech acts, and referential function in the representative speech act. accordingly, this section will only the rest 3 functions: poetic, phatic, metalingual, added with one other important function which is considered very important with regard to truck container sign, i.e. recreative function. poetic function by the language speakers, this primary means of communication can be exploited to create various verbal arts, such as poems, lyric songs, rhyming slang, catchy phrases, jingles, etc. these kinds of verbal works are found in many genres of registers, such as commercial ads, political campaign slogans, product brand names, and enterprises names. in these kinds of genre text, the language plays its aesthetic function which is technically the same as poetic function (see also holmes, 1992. 286; wijana, 2017, 17). in a lot of examples, truck containers sign massively exploit this language function through the use varieties of verbal plays, such as rhyming couplet, either initial (assonance) or final (alliteration), metaphor, simile, proverbial expressions, idioms, etc. see (100) to (103) below which play with assonance using repetition jatuh ‘fall’, affix ber, bersyukur ‘grateful to god’ and berdoa ‘pray’, and alliteration of final syllable nyelempit ‘tucked in’, sakmenit ‘one minute’ and sundul langit ‘to reach the sky’. barang nyelempit is a polite expression to mean ‘woman genital’. 100) jatuh cinta tak sekejam jatuh tempo. “falling love is not as cruel as due date’. 101) bahagia itu tidak harus mewah. istighfar untuk masa lalu. bersyukur untuk hari ini. berdoa untuk hari esok. ‘‘happiness must not always be luxurious. ask god’s forgiveness for you have done in the past. thank god for today. and, pray for tomorrow’. 102) ora usah dolanan barang nyelempit. enake sakmenit. rekosone sundul langit. ‘do not play with tucked in organ. the pleasure just one minute. the suffer is indescribele’ 103) hati-hati di jalan. yang di hati kapan jalan-jalan. ‘take care on your way. someone in your heart when will take a walk with you’ meanwhile the aesthetic effect of the following (104) to (108) is achieved through the use of metaphor and simile. 104) kebohongan menyelamatkanmu sementara tapi menghancurkanmu selamanya. ‘falsehood will save you temporally, but smashes you forever’ 105) kalau hidupmu tak jadikan sholat sebagai penghapus dosa, maka dosa akan menghapus sholat dalam hidupmu. ‘if your life does not make praying as a tool to wipe your sin, and the sin will wipe your praying in your life. 106) putus cinta soal biasa. putus rem mati kita. ‘broken love is a usual problem, broken brake we will die’ 107) cintamu tak semurni solarku. ‘your love is not as pure as my diesel fuel’ 108) cinta sopir hanya sebatas parkir. ‘driver love is as wide as parking space’ in (104) the falsehood is metaphorically compared with something that can save and break. in (105) praying and sin are resembled with an eraser and something which can be erased. in (106), (107), and (108) love is imagined to have the same characteristics with car’s spare parts, fuel, and parking space, entities close or relevant to the driver’s life. finally, proverbial and idiomatic expression are also important elements in creating journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i dewa putu wijana 204 aesthetic discourses, such as seen in (109) and (111): 109) bekerja sambil berdoa. ‘working while praying’ 110) ikuti arus jangan sampai terhanyut. ‘follow the stream but don’t be drifted’ 111) omonganmu koyo susune tonggoku, gede empuk tur ora iso dicekel. ‘what you say is like my neighbour breast, big and difficult to hold’ discourse (109) and (100) are loan idiomatic expressions that come from latin ora et labora and javanese ngeli ning ora keli ‘following the stream but not drifted’. discourse (111) exploits simile, comparing the interlocutor talk with the neighbour breast, and idiomatic expression ora iso dicekel ‘hard to hold’ to means ‘difficult to trust’ phatic function sometimes speech locution is not oriented to exchanging information, but more importantly, is to make contact with the addressee(s). for this condition, the language is exploited to carry out a phatic function, and the linguistic units used to bear are called “phatic communion”. so, lip service chats, opening and closing addresses, expressions of wishes and compliments, etc. belong to this category. only a few data show this function. see (112), (113), (114), and (115): 112) pripun kabare, penak jamanku, tho? ‘how are you, my era is more comfortable, righ?’ 113) isih penak zamanku. ‘my era is more comfortable’ 114) kerjo terus kapan rabine, bro. ‘always working, when will you get married’ 115) yang penting semangat , bung. ‘the most important is that you are always enthusiastic, friend?’ discourses (112) and (113) are created by the creator to build contact with all indonesian era after about two decades, reformation order is felt not bring any better social changes to the whole country. the leader of the new order, the late general soeharto, greets them by saying a rhetorical question that his era is better than nowadays. discourse (114) is a lip service contact to the addressee about the time of his marriage. meanwhile, (115) is the sender’s greeting to the interlocutor to always have enthusiasm. referential function in truck container signs, the referential function of the discourse is intended to explain the meaning of unfamiliar newly created acronyms or abbreviations that are intentionally derived from words or phrases that are already have established conventional meaning. 116) kiss (kisah indah seorang sopir) ‘kiss (beautiful story of a driver)’ 117) mawar biru (mangan wareg bisa turu) ‘blue rose (eating full and sleep well)’ 118) bojonegoro (bocah joko nekad golek rondo) ‘bojonegoro (bachelor is determined to get a widow’ 119) bpjs (butuh pelukan janda semok) ‘social assurance organizer (longing for a plump widow’s hug)’ 120) pajero (panas jobo jero) ‘car brand (hot in and outside)’ 121) hobiku wiridan (wira wiri turut dalan). kowe ojo melu. soale nek ra kuat, isoh edan ‘my hobby is wiridan ‘reciting passage of koran’ (going here and there a long the road). do not go with me. if you are not strong, you might be mad’ in (116) english word ‘kiss’ is treated as an acronym or abbreviation standing for kisah indah seorang sopir ‘beautiful story of a driver’. in (117) an indonesian or a javanese phrase mawar biru ‘blue rose’ is regarded as an acronym to stand for mangan wareg bisa turu ‘eating full and sleep well’. in (118) name of city in east java bojonegoro is regarded as an acronym to mean bocah joko nekad golek rondo ‘a young bachelor is determined to get a widow’. in (119) indonesian abbreviation for badan penyelenggaran jaminan sosial (social assurance organizer) has its new referent butuh pelukan janda semok ‘longing for a plump widow’s hug’. pajero in (120) which is journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 205 commonly refer to ‘japanese car brand’ gets its newly javanese created meaning panas jobo jero (hot outside and inside). lastly, wiridan in (121) is a javanese word used to refer to koran passage reciting is regarded as an acronym of wira wiri ning dalan ‘go here and there a long the road’, daily activity of a driver, and usually does not have a lot of time to recite a holy book. the phenomena of creating ambiguous abbreviations and acronyms seem closely related to humor creation that will be discussed in detail in the following section. recreative function the recreative function of truck signs is dominantly intended by the senders to create humorous situation between or among the speech participants, i.e. the sender and the readers. for evoking such a situation, the discourse is constructed in such way, so enable to elicit comic effects to amuse all parties involved in the process of communication. in any language, ambiguity is a primary source of humorous discourse. in truck container discourses, ambiguity is created in various complicated ways. the first is done by confusing literal and figurative meaning, as seen in (122) and (123) below. in (122), the word numpaki ‘ride, drive’ can mean ride in relation to the vehicle, and can also mean ‘to fuck’ if it is associated with woman. in (123) the proverb sorga di telapak kaki ibu figuratively means ‘the happiness will be realized if someone respects their mother’, and telapak kaki ibu ‘foot sole’ depicted in the truck design is its literal meaning. 122) ora nduweni wis tau numpaki ‘i don’t have, but i once drive it’ 123) sorga di telapak kaki ibu. ‘the heaven is under your mother feet’ fake broken english intended to express various javanese or indonesian messages, critics, advice, physical as well as mental condition, apprehension, etc. are massively exploited in creating funny truck container signs, as shown by (124) to (125) below: 124) is one my do > isone maedo: javanese. ‘what you can do is just being sceptic’ 125) new fear the me is 3 > nyopir demi istri: indonesian ‘driving is for the sake of wife’ 126) don’t to milk > jangan ke susu: indonesian ‘do not hurry’ 127) don’t rich people difficult > jangan kayak orang susah: indonesian ‘do not be like a difficult person’ 128) i am not father > aku ndak papah: indonesian ‘i am alright’ 129) the me a nack is three > demi anak istri: indonesian ‘for child and wife’ 130) pra one are you the end tought so peer. prawan ayu dientot sopir: javanese ‘beautiful girl is fucked by a driver’ other techniques of punning, such as permutation, phonological and lexical substitution are also found, see (131) which refers to short-time sexual intercourse, (132) the power of capitalism, and (133) the scaring and shaking of sumanto, the human corpse eater in which typical use of janda ‘widow’ is substituted by jasad ‘corpse’: 131) dah lama gak gitu. pas gitu gak lama. ‘i have not done it for long time, but when i did, it did not last long’ 132) pada akhirnya yang berjuang akan kalah dengan yang beruang ‘finally, the struggler will loose against the have’ 133) kutunggu jasadmu. ‘i wait for your corpse’ insulting to the signs’ reader is another form of joking, sometimes found in the truck sign discourse. consider (134) and (135) below: 134) truk ini memang jelek. muatannya juga jelek. yang baca, malah tambah jelek. ‘this truck is really bad. the passenger is also bad. the reader, is even worse’ 135) mburiku munyuk ‘in my back is a monkey’ the dialog (136) between the sender and the reader found in a pick-up clearly tends to be created for evoking amusement, the same as (137) the exploitation of the human body part taboo as the source of livelihood. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i dewa putu wijana 206 136) + ojo diwoco! ‘do not read it’ + so, why do you write it’ 137) sedot wc. rejekiku soko silitmu ‘toilet suction. my luck is from your anus’ conclusion truck container discourses consist of verbal elements incorporated with the pictures which play entirely or in part to build the textual contents. the verbal elements in the form of various linguistic units: word, phrase, simple sentence, complex sentence, and multi-sentence constituent are exploited by the creators to deliver varieties of messages that concern mostly of human life problems, such as love, careful driving, religiosity, low income, life hardness, mannerism, politics, etc. the discourses participants are tied in informal speech situation. as such, the verbal activities are massively marked by the use of colloquial or informal styles in which code mixing of various kinds and of various level among the languages used to deliver the messages, indonesian, javanese, english, and sundanese, are abundant. there are various kinds of verbal acts and strategies possibly done by the sender in delivering the discourses. they may stating, directing, expressing emotional feeling, addressing or greeting, explaining, etc. in various strategies implicitly, directly or indirectly, literally or nonliterally, implicatively or non implicatively. in spite of the three main communicative functions, emotive, conative, and referential function, the use of truck container discourse may also be intended to carry out poetic, phatic, metalingual, and recreative functions. references anwar, khaidir. 1980. indonesian: the development and use of a national language. yogyakarta: gadjah mada university press. arumi, sihindun. 2007. wacana peringatan dalam bahasa indonesia. master thesis. universitas gadjah mada. austin, j.l. 1962. how to do things with words. 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pearson. ilmi, fiky akmala. 2015. aspek semantik pada wacana grafity bahasa indonesia bak truk dan implikasinya terhadap pengajaran bahasa indonesia. program studi pendidikan bahasa indonesia. universitas indra prasta pgri jakarta. lyons, john. 1970. semantics. vol. 1. cambridge university press. mulyana. 2008. wacana pidato dalam upacara perkawinan masyarakat jawa. ph.d. thesis. universitas gadjah mada. nasirudin, m. 2014. wacana graffity berbahasa indonesia pada bak truk. fakultas ilmu pendidikan universitas negeri jember. ramlan, m. 1984. berbagai pertalian semantic antar kalimat dalam satuan wacana bahasa indonesia. yogyakarta: lembaga penelitian universitas gadjah mada. ramlan, m. 1992. pengulangan sebagai penanda hubungan antar kalimat. persidangan antarbangsa. 11-13 ogos 1992. kuala lumpur. ramlan, m. 1993. paragraf: alur pikiran dan kepaduannya dalam bahasa indonesia. yogyakarta: andi offset sadhono, kundharu. wacana khotbah jumat di kota surakarta: analisis sosiopragmatik. ph.d. thesis. universitas gadjah mada. sudaryanto, kresna sugiarto, & mita restiana. 2019. “wacana grafity bak truk dalam bahasa indonesia, bahasa daerah, dan bahasa asing”. deiksis. vol. 11. no. 03. yogyakarta: universitas ahmad dahlan. pp. 276-285. surana. 2014. variasi bahasa dalam stiker humor. ph. d. thesis. universitas gadjah mada. wardaugh, ronald. 1986. an introduction to sociolinguistics. oxford: basil blackwell. wijana, i dewa putu. 1995. wacana kartun dalam bahasa indonesia. ph.d thesis. universitas gadjah mada. wijana, i dewa putu. 2014. wacana teka-teki. yogyakarta: a com press. wijana, i dewa putu. 2014. bunga rampai persoalan linguistik, sosiolinguistik, dan pragmatik. yogyakarta: a com. press. wijana, i dewa putu. 2017. kebebasan penyair: yang dicapai dan yang dikorbankan. in mencari formula baru kritik sastra indonesia. sudibyo & saeful anwar (eds.). yogyakarta: interlude. wijana, i dewa putu. 2018. “aneka fungsi bahasa syair-syair lagu ismail marzuki”. deskripsi bahasa. volume 1. no. 2. pp. phenomena diyan krisnawati hirmawan wijanarka 116 revisioning the myth of king ahab in paulo coelho’s the devil and miss prym diyan krisnawati & hirmawan wijanarka diyansenja@gmail.com & hir101@usd.ac.id department of english letters, sanata dharma university abstract many people think that myth refers to only folklores or legends which have long been existed in a society. what if myth turns out to be more than just an ancient story our parents tell us? through paulo coelho’s the devil and miss prym, this article tries to find out the answer. in the novel, a ruthless person was described ruling a village named viscos. he was ahab, a man full of arrogance and meanness. he governed the village whose inhabitants are only a few. the existence of this ahab is reminiscent of another ahab found in the bible. however, coelho presents a surprise for the readers by creating a different ahab, changing ahab to a generous and pleasant man. this revisioning (re-observing and re-examining from a different point of view) reveals the fact that the story of ahab in the novel is more than merely an old story found in the bible. under the light of roland barthes’s theory of myth, this article aims at revealing how the devil and miss prym revisions the myth of king ahab in the bible. myth in this novel can also be classified as the myth of freedom since it breaks some accepted concepts in society. keywords: re-vision, myth, king ahab introduction many people understand myth as an old story. eliade (1987:263-264) says that myth presents itself as telling its listeners of a time altogether different from the time of our experience, it usually brings us to the beginning of creation. there are quite a lot of myths, such as the myth of gods and goddesses in indian culture, and the myth of the kings of sea. however, have we ever thought further that myth is more than just a story? according to roland barthes, myth is more than a story; it is precisely a type of speech. it is the way to communicate (in sontag, 1986:93-95). the devil and miss prym by paulo coelho enables us to understand how the myth actually works. the following discussion of the novel aims at showing how people are generally trapped in their understanding of myth. most of us know that king ahab is the most wicked king we have ever known. however, in his novel paulo coelho changes the character of king ahab into a good one, and it is interesting to find out the reason behind this change. the devil and miss prym was first published in 2000. it has been translated into more than twenty languages from the original portuguese edition o demonio e a senhorita prym. one intriguing fact on the story is that there is a strong connection between king ahab in the bible and in the one in the novel. the character, the setting, and the symbol found in the novel are important elements in the attempt of revealing how the myth of king ahab is re-visioned, and in understanding the function of re-vision. mailto:diyansenja@gmail.com vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 117 under the light of structural analysis, this article elaborates the re-vision of the myth. a glimpse on myth, re-vision, and structural analysis according to campbell, myth is an organized of stories (i.e. myths) by which we explain our beliefs and our history. beneath the story-lines, myths usually confront major issues such as the origin of humanity and its traditions, and the way in which the natural and human worlds functions on a profound, universal level (mythsdreamssymbols.com, 2014). in the most basic sense of myth, myth has some functions. first, myth grants continuity and stability to a culture. second, myth presents guidelines for living. third, myth justifies a culture's activity. four, myth gives the meaning of life. five, myth explain the unexplainable. under this light myth helps us understand t h e world, for example, they may state that a drought is caused by an angr deity. finally, myth offers role models (campbell, mythsdreamssymbols. com, 2014). however, in a more complex understanding, myth is classified into some major types (barthes, 1986: 93-95). first, myth as a type of speech. myth is a system of communication that it is a message. because of that everything can be a myth provided it is conveyed by a discourse. since myth as a type of speech, it can only be analyzed when it is applied or used. second, myth as a semiological system. myth is a peculiar system, in that it is constructed from semiological chain which existed before it: it is a second-order semiological system. that, which is a sign in the first system, becomes a mere signifier in the second. it is in which one speak about the first. the relation concerns with the objects which belong to different categories, that is why it not one of equality but one of equivalence. the total associative of the first two terms will form: the signifier, the signified, and the sign (in sontag, 1986: 95-99). the signifier represents the meaning (form). the signifier consist of form and meaning but they are never in any contradiction or conflict. the meaning is always there to present the form. the signified represents concept. the signified can have several signifiers; that is why we can find many signifiers for one signified. the correlation of the first two is the sign. third, myth as a stolen language. to simply understand the myth as a stolen language, remember that the function of the myth always to transform a meaning into form. it means that myth takes over or colonizes the language (concept which is already settled) to strengthen it. through myth, a person is assumed to be able to read meaning of language beyond what it implies there. thus, myth requires a wide knowledge to understand a meaning. frye categorizes myth into two types, the myth of concern and the myth of freedom. the myth of concern is what holds a group, community, or society together. in the contrary, the myth of freedom is what sees truth as correspondence to reality as verified by the individual (in good, 2014). one thing that makes the two categories of myth is far different. if the myth of concern is “what holds”, the myth of freedom is “what sees”. as what has mentioned above that the myth of concern usually is run by church or political party or even certain norms in society, their objective is to hold a group to shape their mind in accordance with them. meanwhile, the myth of freedom gives us a space to argue, to re-think, to see something critically. it comes from self awareness that there are many things in society that makes us think in the box and we have to find the way out. regarding the term re-vision, peter widdowson mentions that re-vision is the term that deploys a strategic ambiguity between the word revise in the sense of “to examine and correct; to make a new, improved version of; to study a new, and revision: to see in another light; to re http://(mythsdreamssymbols.com/campbell.html diyan krisnawati hirmawan wijanarka 118 envision or perceive differently; and thus to recast and re-evaluate the original (1999: 164-165). revision is when the author makes a story and put it another way, it is a way of defamiliarising, of; making strange, the naturalised or habitualised world of conventional perceptual reality, of „seeing things as they really are‟ (widdowson, 1999: 114). further, widdowson (1999: 165-166) states that there are some principal characteristics of re-visionary works: 1. that they tend to re-write canonic texts (those classics) which have a high profile of admiration and popularity in our literary heritage; 2. that they keep the original text in clear view, so that it is not just the source of new modern version but a constantly invoked intertext for it; 3. that, in this way, they denaturalize the original in exposing those discourses which we no longer see in it because we have learnt to read it in restricted and conventional ways; 4. that they not only rewrite the original as a different, separate, new work, but re-cast, and thus repossess and liberate, the original as itself a new text to be read newlyenabling us to see a different one to what we thought we knew as, say, jane eyre, robinson crusoe, king lear, the tempest or ”an elegy written in a country church yard”; 5. that they make us see parallels (or contrast) between the period of the original text’s production and that of the modern work; 6. that they invariably have a clear cultural-political thirst, especially on behalf of those exploited, marginalized and silenced by dominant ideologies, in demanding that the political inscription and cultural complicity in oppression of past texts be revised and re-visioned as part the process of restoring a voice, a history or an identity to the erstwhile oppressed. another theory that provides a ground for the discussion in this article is the theory of structural analysis. eagleton (1996: 8283) emphasizes that, first, it is an analytical not evaluative. second, it refuses the obvious meaning of the story and seeks instead to isolate certain deep structures within it, which are not apparent on the surface. the third is if one can say the particular content of narrative is replaceable; there is a sense that the content of the narrative is its structure. according to barry (2002: 39), structural analysis is the analysis that focuses on studying of certain object which has meaning but that meaning or essence it in the outside. meaning is always an attribute of things, in literal sense that meanings are attributed to the things by human mind, not contained within them. barry makes a verbal diagram of structural analysis as we can see below: parallels plot echoes structure reflections/ in character/ repetitions motive contrasts situation/circumstance patterns language/imagery we are looking in the factors listed on the left and we expect to find that factors on the right. the story of king ahab in the bible it is written in the bible (king i 21: 129) that king ahab was the m o s t wicked king of israel. he had a wife named jezebel. jezebel was known as a bad woman who worshiped satan. one day, ahab asked for naboth’s vineyard but naboth refused it because the vineyard belonged to his ancestor. ahab came back to the palace. he looked so sullen and refused to eat. ahab told his wife that naboth refused to sell his vineyard to him. hearing that news, jezebel encouraged her husband to take the vineyard by force. it is written in the seventh verse that: jezebel his wife said, “is this how you act as king over israel? get up and eat! cheer up. i’ll get you the vineyard of naboth the jezreelite.” after that, jezebel made a false claim that naboth had rebelled the king vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 119 and god. finally, naboth died and k i n g ahab could gain the vineyard. god heard what he had done, and he sent elia the prophet to convey his message to ahab. in verse 1819, god says: 18 “go down to meet ahab king of israel, who rules in samaria. he is now in naboth’s vineyard, where he has gone to take possession of it. 19 say to him, „this is what the lord says: have you not murdered a man and seized his property? ‟then say to him, ”this is what the lord says: in the place where dogs licked up naboth’s blood, dogs will lick up your blood—yes, yours!‟. when elia delivered god’s command ahab was panicky and frightened. he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and fasted. he lay in sackcloth and went around meekly. after god heard that ahab had regretted his sin, god cancelled to give disaster to ahab. he would bring the disaster in the days of ahab’s son. god did not only punish ahab but also jezebel. in the verse 23 it is said 23 “and also concerning jezebel the lord says: „dogs will devour jezebel by the wall of [b] jezreel. 24 “dogs will eat those belonging to ahab who die in the city, and the birds will feed on those who die in the country.” this story results in the conclusion that k i n g ahab is the most wicked king of israel who allowed himself to be controlled by his wife. it is a myth that is attached to king ahab until now. the fact is naboth dies but the almighty of god remains there. this story shows to the readers, especially the christians, that ahab loved worldly matters more than him. the concept of punishment is also introduced. it is when ahab realized that he had done a big sin. do we need to commit sins first so that we can repent of our sins? the re-vision of king ahab in the devil and miss prym the following table is meant to show the process of re-vision. through characters of the novel, the revision can be identified. coelho re-visions not only the characterization but also the concept each character brings (written in italic). the concept is the ‘signified’ and the form of signified is the ‘signifier’. no. the myth of king ahab in the bible the myth of ahab in the devil and miss prym chantal prym as the revision of the myth of ahab 1. signified: ahab superior, able to do anything he wanted signifier: a wicked king of israel, a weak man, a murderer of naboth, an unreligious man naboth died. signified: ahab superior, cannot do everything he wants signifier: a wise and kindhearted leader, a firm person, a philosophical man, someone who brings peace to viscos no one is dead. signified: chantal prym inferior, but able to do something great signifier: inferior, kind hearted, ambitious and brave woman, love challenge no one is dead. 2. signified: jezebel a devil came as a lovely figure. signifier: an evil wife, a cunning person, a ‘bright’ signified: stranger a devil comes as a religious figure signifier: friendly, charming, rich, seductive, impressive http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%2bkings%2b21%3a1-29&amp;version=niv&amp;fen-niv-9475b diyan krisnawati hirmawan wijanarka 120 provocateur a lovely wife man a pilgrim 3. signified: elijah the prophet punishment; priest must be an angelic man. signifier: loyal, patient man ahab repented of his sin; faithful to god . signified: saint savin, no punishment; priest must be an angelic man. signifier: a holy man, a patient and loyal saint ahab becomes a decent man; faithful to god. signified: the priest no punishment; priest is not always a good man. signifier: a wicked, slick priest who agrees to commit murder the priest agrees to kill berta. 4. signified: naboth death does not mean an end. signifier: loyal, gallant, obedient, superstitious man the presence of god remains there. signified: saint savin submit his life to god. signifier: a holy man, a patient and loyal saint his life is saved. signified: berta submitting her life to be sacrificed. signifier: superstitious, resigned one her life is saved. 5. signified: the vineyard god is everything. signifier: the presence of god sacrificing naboth signified: viscos being respected in viscos is everything signifier: a good place viscos as a terrible place signified: the eleven gold bars gold is everything. signifier: wealth, temptation, prosperity, happiness sacrificing berta 6. signified: the society people must obey the rule’s king signifier: obeying king ahab’s rule naboth is dead. signified: the society in viscos people may choose whether to obey the rule or not. signifier: obeying ahab’s rule people in viscos turn to be a good people. signified: the society in viscos people break the rule. signifier: dare to make change berta is saved. the factors that cause re-vision the results of the re-vision is not only in terms of characters and characterization. based on the close reading of the novel, some nearest possibilities of why coelho did a revision can be concluded: firstly, the truth that our life cannot be separated from myth. eliade argues that myth reports realities and events from the origin of the world that remain valid for the basis and purpose of all there is (eliade, 1987: 263). it is why myth is always talking about the process of creation something including every single thing in our nowadays. our life today is the result of the myth in a very primitive time. we use knife to cut beef because our ancestor used pebble to cut the beef too. the matter is not in the knife or the pebble but it is in the idea to cook beef. we vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 123 have to chop it first into pieces in order to make it easier to cook. similar case is seen in the novel. in the bible, a sinner must be punished. the matter is in the way we accept the idea of punishment. punishment is acceptable when it is given wisely; when it involves respect and trust so that there is a chance to betterment. secondly, myth is regarded as a system of communication. “it is laden with a type of social usage which is added to pure matter” (barthes in sontag, 1986: 94). coelho steals the image of ahab, and re-visions it, to communicate his criticism and point of view. many people are trapped by the thought that people cannot change. ahab is ahab. he was an immoral and arrogant king. coelho tries to revise it: people may change. ahab can be a good even better person. in addition, myth is a semiological system in which myth is in a second order semiological system. it always requires people to see something critically. the function of re-vision frye differentiates the function of myth into two: the myth of freedom and the myth of concern. under the light of frye’s theory, the devil and miss prym can be categorized as the myth of freedom because it offers some new perspectives to the old myths (concepts, ideologies). it is generally agreed that someone who did a mistake must be punished. however, through the character of saint savin, coelho offers a different perspective. a priest must be a perfect religious man; gold promises happiness; devils appear as an evil person. they are concepts people have accepted, and they have been internalized in people’s thought. through the devil and miss prym, the readers are invited to think rationally and realistically. frye states that the myth of freedom appeals to such self-validating criteria as logicality of argument, impersonal evidence, and verification (in good, 2014). in this story for instance chantal and people in viscos decide not to kill berta. they break the myth that “gold is everything”. they prefer to give an honor toward his ancestor and themselves that they never kill somebody who merely tries to get the gold bars. the devil and miss prym is a portrait of people in viscos who struggle for their destiny, to get out of their box, i.e. to get out of the concepts the society have constructed for them. concluding remarks based on the discussion the devil and miss prym above, several points can be put forward: first, the facts that the characters in both stories are parallel, and that coelho makes some changes in his characters. in the bible the characters are king ahab, jezebel, elijah the prophet, naboth, the vineyard, and the society. in the novels there two layers of characters. in the first layer are ahab (as a myth in viscos), saint savin, and the society. in the second layer are chantal prym (as the re-vision toward king ahab’s myth), the stranger, the priest, berta, the eleven gold bars, and the society. the re-vision occurs in each character in the novel. ahab becomes a good and wise person. this is strengthened by chantal is a kind-hearted, ambitious, and brave woman. jezebel, an evil, cunning, and ‘bright’ provocateur, appears to be a lovely figure for her husband. saint savin agrees to commit murder. berta and saint savin are, as opposed to naboth who was not. the eleven gold bars is the form of the revision for the vineyard and viscos. the revision occurs when coelho changes the temptation. it is not about keeping the vineyard and viscos anymore, but gold which promises wealth and prosperity. the revision of the society in the bible can be seen clearly when coelho makes viscos a good society. second, there are two factors underlying the re-vision. the first factor is the fact that our life cannot be separated from myth. what we have today is the heritance of what we had in the beginning of the creation of the world. the second factor is the power of myth which can lead us to improve things that lack of meaning. diyan krisnawati hirmawan 122 third, following campbell’s theory, the myth in the devil and miss prym shows its functions when it grants continuity and stability to a culture, i.e. the stability of ahab’s myth. it also presents guidelines and role models for living by illuminating, among others, how people in viscos have a deep respect to to their ancestor and ahab, how people do not like chantal because she does not conform with others, and how myth shows people to set their free. a good example of this is ahab who brings peace to viscos. references abrams, m.h. a glossary of literary terms. new york: harcourt brace jovanovich college publishers, 1993. print. adams, charles. j. and joseph m. kitagawa. eds. the encyclopedia of religion. mircea eliade. new york: macmillan publishing company, 1987. print. campbell, joseph. “the importance of myth”. myths-dreams-symbols. <http://mythsdreamssymbols.com/cam pbell.html>. web. april 13, 2014. coelho, paulo. the devil and miss prym. new york: harper perennial, 2007. print. “frye and the social context of criticism.” south atlantic bulletin no. 39 (november 1974), pp. 63-72. print. good, graham. northrop frye and liberal humanism. pp. 77-79. <http://cinema2.arts.ubc.ca/ nits/canlit/pdfs/articles/canlit148orthrop> .web. march 28, 2014. harmon, william and hugh holman. a handbook to literature. new jersey: pearson prentice hall, 2009. print. sontag, susan. ed. a barthes reader. new york: mcgrawhill ryerson ltd, 1986. print. widdowson, peter. literature. new york: routledge, 1999. print. http://mythsdreamssymbols.com/campbell.html http://mythsdreamssymbols.com/campbell.html http://cinema2.arts.ubc.ca/%20nits/canlit/pdfs/articles/canlit148-orthrop%3e http://cinema2.arts.ubc.ca/%20nits/canlit/pdfs/articles/canlit148-orthrop%3e http://cinema2.arts.ubc.ca/%20nits/canlit/pdfs/articles/canlit148-orthrop%3e 328 vol. 21 no. 2, october 2021, pp. 328-339 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i2.3163 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. the invisible ethnic: vladimir nabokov, richard rodriguez, and ethnic literature michael nieto garcia mgarcia@clarkson.edu department of humanities and social sciences, clarkson university, usa abstract article information this essay explores the possibilities and constraints of reading texts as ethnic literature. it does so by tracing the master theme of transcendence in vladimir nabokov’s speak, memory and by drawing comparisons with latino autobiographer and essayist richard rodriguez. to date speak, memory has transcended categorization as a particular conception of ethnic literature that precludes also reading it as universal. rodriguez, in contrast, laments that his books are less likely to be read as universal precisely because shelved and categorized as ethnic literature rather than as memoir or simply “literature.” as rodriguez notes, the conception of ethnic literature as a genre marginalizes even as it celebrates ethnic cultures. that is, treating works by ethnic authors as a conventional genre—in the sense that memoirs, westerns, and mystery novels are genres—can have a ghettoizing effect. i argue that ethnic literature is universal despite its focus on a particular culture. to the extent that any work of literature can said to be universal it achieves that status through the particular: a story grounded in a particular culture and, usually, focusing on the particularity of individual characters. there is no view from nowhere. as with other works of literature, ethnic literature is the view from somewhere. i conclude that, when it comes to how we read ethnic literature, it is time for a paradigm shift. keywords: vladimir nabokov; richard rodriguez; ethnic literature; autobiography; american literature received: 2 march 2021 revised: 9 may 2021 accepted: 28 may 2021 introduction in his autobiography, speak, memory (1966), vladimir nabokov poignantly expresses his desire for transcendence.1 and in one sense he achieves it. namely, his texts are not read first and foremost as ethnic literature. they have transcended that categorization. not that this should matter, and yet, in a peculiar way, it does. it matters in the same way that stereotypes matter. even when fairly accurate, stereotypes and https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 329 categories compartmentalize our thinking, boxing us into a particular conception of the person or thing categorized. and, when you frame things one way, it’s difficult to see that thing some other way at the same time. to do so requires a paradigm shift, a cognitive switch, such as happens when gazing at the optical illusions proffered by gestalt psychologists or wittgenstein’s duck-rabbit drawing in his philosophical investigations: either you see the duck or you see the rabbit. but the mind’s eye simply can’t see both at the same time. something similar happens with ethnic literature. when readers think of a text as ethnic literature, they seem to conceptualize it as separate and distinct from that which is deemed (to use the currency of the literary realm) “universal.” of course, the very notion of universality is problematic in many ways— suffice it to say that all “universal” texts are grounded in the culturally and linguistically particular. more to the point, designation as ethnic literature is not mutually exclusive from designation as “universal,” or as literature (capital l), or any other hypostatization of individual literary texts into a general category, set, or class. this exclusion of ethnic literature from universal literary status often happens despite our intentions to the contrary. in this multicultural age we—all of us, of all complexions and political persuasions— celebrate our ethnic heritages. one’s ethnicity is no stigma, but a distinction worn with pride. as a society we profit from the diversity of ethnic cultures, benefitting from the varied points of view and wide range of experiences that stem from our diverse backgrounds. our lives are enriched by the presence of ethnic friends and neighbors, and in far more ways than the mere culinary pleasure of having more ethnic restaurants to choose from. why, then, should ethnic writers and readers not also take pride in having a literature of their own? (therein lies the problem, richard rodriguez would argue: “their own” suggests something separate, apart.) the reality is that ethnic literature as a genre designation marginalizes even as it celebrates ethnic cultures. that is, treating works by ethnic authors as a conventional genre—in the sense that memoirs, westerns, and mystery novels are genres—can have a ghettoizing effect. the ghettoization effect is baked into the cake, despite our best intentions to transcend exclusive categories for more inclusive ones. writers of science fiction are all too familiar with this situation. but, and here’s the beautiful thing, some writers manage to transcend the genre ghetto, to be recognized as “literary.” writers such as octavia butler, ursula k. leguin, and ray bradbury managed to do just that. all three of these writers are widely read, taught in college classrooms, frequently anthologized outside the sf genre, and otherwise deemed “universal.” nabokov manages to do the same as ethnic writer. he has transcended ethnic literature ghettoization, largely by virtue of the lesser visibility of his ethnicity in the american context. many readers will wonder what i’m talking about. nabokov’s texts as ethnic literature? (paradigm shift.) yes, in many ways, nabokov is the quintessential ethnic author. the themes of exile, alienation, otherness, and language are all central to nabokov’s work. and then there is the obsession with identity, and the loss of it. in other words, just the kinds of themes you might expect to find in an immigrant writer. consider, for example, three of nabokov’s most celebrated and paradigmatic texts: pnin, lolita, and pale fire. in all three of these texts at least one protagonist’s ethnic alterity, or cultural otherness, is foregrounded as a major theme.2 lolita showcases keen anthropological insight on american culture, as only a cultural outsider can provide. likewise, nabokov’s cultural otherness allows him to all the more perceptively dissect and parody the shallowness of american consumerism and popular culture. add to this nabokov’s political and literary consciousness as an author. it is significant to note that nabokov— far from disavowing his ethnic roots and attempting to fully assimilate (whether in berlin, france, america, or switzerland)— remained deeply immersed in the russian journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) michael nieto garcia 330 literary tradition: translating pushkin, writing a study of gogol, and otherwise assiduously linking himself to the big names in russian letters. open any nabokov text and it won’t take long to see how thoroughly and indelibly imbued it is with the ethnic stamp. it is somewhat of a wonder, then, given the ethnic color of his life and writings, that nabokov managed to transcend categorization of his works as ethnic literature. this essay will explore our paradigms of ethnic literature through the theme of literary transcendence in vladimir nabokov’s autobiography, speak, memory. i will then compare the framing of nabokov’s text with the ethnic framing and reception of richard rodriguez’s hunger of memory. i argue that ethnic literature is commensurable with universal status despite its focus on a particular culture. to the extent that any work of literature can said to be universal it achieves that status through the particular: a story grounded in a particular culture and, usually, focusing on the particularity of individual characters. one could also drill down into more technical descriptions—such as how the narrative is focalized through an individual narrator or character—to reach the same conclusions. there is no view from nowhere. as with other works of literature, ethnic literature is the view from somewhere. treating literary works by ethnic authors (or with ethnic characters, or covering ethnic themes) as universal is largely a framing matter: it requires a paradigm shift that starts with becoming aware of our own assumptions as readers and bracketing them off. these assumptions, the reading frames that we bring to texts, set reader expectations. our beliefs about the conventions of the genre are a clear example of an interpretive frame. there are also extratextual/contextual interpretive frames, such as the strength with which a given ethnicity signals in sociocultural context. in other words, the ethnic group’s visibility. despite the predominance of ethnic themes in speak, memory, and despite selfindentifying as an ethnically-russian author, nabokov’s autobiography is not read first and foremost as ethnic literature. this stands in sharp contrast to the reception of richard rodriguez’s autobiographical writing, though rodriguez does not self-identify as an author of ethnic literature. the difference in reception boils down to the difference in visibility of each author’s ethnic group, a theoretical point elaborated in the “the invisible ethnic” section of this essay. the subsequent section offers a close reading of the theme of literary transcendence in speak, memory. a third section will take a more comparative approach, juxtaposing nabokov’s literary transcendence with the categorization and reception of rodriguez’s works within the genre of ethnic literature. lastly, i offer some concluding thoughts on the context-framing role of how we shelve our books, and argue for broadening our conception of ethnic literature. the invisible ethnic the primary distinction between nabokov as ethnic author and rodriguez as ethnic author is the visibility of their respective ethnicities in the american context. some ethnicities, for various reasons, are more visible in society than others. italian and irish identities were once highly visible in the american context. they are now much less so. the visibility of russian ethnics was much higher during the cold war. it, too, is now much less so, as is true of many other “white ethnics,” now all banished to the edges of the visible spectrum of american ethnic vision. what gets read as ethnic literature tends to be works by or about ethnic americans whose ethnicity is highly visible in american society: african american, asian american, native american, and latino. in other words, designation as ethnic literature largely reflects the ways in which ethnicity plays out in society at large. it should be stressed that the visibility of one’s ethnicity is not exclusively a matter of visible bodily markers. ethnicity is far more complicated than simple racial logic. ethnicity is, at core, about cultural differences rather than racial ones. but people often take racial features as a signifier of ethnic difference. as philosopher linda martín alcoff notes in her journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 331 penetrating analysis of the visibility of ethnic and gendered identities: “the reality of identities often comes from the fact that they are visibly marked on the body itself, guiding if not determining the way we perceive and judge others and are perceived and judged by them” (p. 5). alcoff’s monumental effort “offers a sustained defense of identity as an epistemically salient and ontologically real entity” (p. 5). that ethnic literature has become such a robust category of literature today reflects those realities—the reality of ethnic identities. when nabokov expresses, in speak, memory, his desire for transcendence of the corporeal self, he unwittingly articulates the situation of ethnic identity. the self cannot exist outside of its relations with others, nor can the ethnic self exist outside of social relations. just as each of us has some notion of self, so each of us has one or more ethnicities that are constitutive of that self. some would note that nabokov cannot escape the “prison of time” as a disembodied self (and still maintain his former individual consciousness). there is no escaping ethnicity, it should be added: no non-ethnic self (p. 20). there is no view from nowhere. the salient point, then, is not ethnic difference, but the varying visibility of different ethnicities. it can play out as a double bind: if your ethnicity is highly visible in society, you risk being marginalized (or worse). but the less visible your ethnicity, the less likely it is to be recognized by others as a salient and valid ethnic identity. the vanishing white ethnic knows the story well. the theme of transcendence in speak, memory the story of that vanishing, that ethnic invisibility, accounts in large part for the literary transcendence of speak, memory—it’s general regard as a universal work of literature. and the quest for transcendence is, in various guises, the foremost theme of the book. nabokov dramatizes three kinds of transcendence in the text: transcendence of time, transcendence of the corporeal self, and the transcendence of art. in addition to making copious references to the ideas of transcendence, timelessness, and mystical union throughout speak, memory, nabokov opens the autobiography with “the awakening of consciousness” rather than the standard “my earliest memory” (p. 21). nabokov associates the existence of time, or a sense of the passage of time, with consciousness—“the beginning in the brain of our remotest ancestors must surely have coincided with the dawning of the sense of time” (p. 21)—and associates mortal life with “the prison of time,” which “is spherical and without exits” (p. 20). it is no wonder, then, that nabokov favors the open geometry of the eternity-promising spiral to the closed circle or sphere. namely, the sphere is nabokov’s metaphor for the imprisonment of human consciousness within the cocoon of one’s lifespan, while the spiral is a metaphor for escaping that prison, and thus avoiding the death of consciousness. human life, as nabokov describes it in the opening sentence of chapter 1, is such that “the cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour)” (p. 19). like that other great magician, prospero, nabokov sees human existence as (terrifyingly) in the round, closed off on either side (the prenatal abyss and the endless sleep of death) by the absence of consciousness: “we are such stuff / as dreams are made on; and our little life / is rounded with a sleep” (the tempest act 4, scene 1, 156–58). it is through “probing my childhood (which is the next best thing to probing one’s eternity)” that nabokov can “rebel against this state of affairs”; namely, “that this darkness is caused merely by the walls of time separating me and my bruised fists from the free world of timelessness” (pp. 20-21). “i do not believe in time” (p. 139), nabokov writes in concluding a chapter (chapter 6, “butterflies”) in which he describes a “forty-year race” chasing a swallowtail from “the legendary russia of my boyhood” to “an immigrant dandelion under an endemic aspen near boulder” (pp. 119-20). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) michael nieto garcia 332 “i like to fold my magic carpet, after use,” continues nabokov, “in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. let visitors trip” (p. 139). in addition to the trick of collapsing time and superimposing events from one point in space-time on those in another, nabokov here elaborates (insofar as the old literary trickster is to be trusted when appraising his own texts) on his ars poetica: the subordination of plot and character-driven narrative to the exploration of themes, an example of which (the “match theme” associated with general kuropatkin in chapter 1) he employs as a primer to instruct the reader on how to read a nabokov text (p. 27). 3 and it is no accident that the theme of timelessness is so spectacularly explored in the “butterflies” chapter since, “the highest enjoyment of timelessness—in a landscape selected at random—is when i stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. this is ecstasy” (p. 139). nabokov’s passion for butterflies offers a portal through which he can experience timelessness. but, alas, it is an ecstasy that cannot (as can creating a work of transcendent art, or producing a body of scholarly work on butterflies) survive his own death. in an interview with alfred appel, nabokov makes the method of his quest for timeless eternity even more explicit: “when we speak of a vivid individual recollection we are paying a compliment not to our capacity of retention but to mnemosyne’s mysterious foresight in having stored up this or that element which creative imagination may use when combining it with later recollection and inventions. in this sense, both memory and imagination are a negation of time” (in appel and newman, p. 141). 4 (speak, mnemosyne was what nabokov wanted to title the british edition of speak, memory, thus invoking the greek goddess of memory and the mother of all nine of the muses.)5 nabokov performs the abolition of time in this manner through the completion of speak, memory itself. he describes the rendering of his own life (“the individual mystery”) on the page through the following elaborate metaphor: “a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life’s foolscap” (p. 25). citing himself, or some aspect of himself, in the guise of vivian bloodmark (an anagram for vladimir nabokov), nabokov remarks, “vivian bloodmark, a philosophical friend of mine, in later years, used to say that while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time” (p. 218). this philosophical statement describing “cosmic synchronization”—“trillions of other such trifles occur—all forming an instantaneous and transparent organism of events, of which the poet (sitting in a lawn chair, at ithaca, n.y.) is the nucleus”—appears in the chapter in which nabokov depicts the composition of his first poem (p. 218). thus nabokov depicts the transcendence of time and space through passion, through being wholly in the moment, via the mystical sense of oneness that he describes attaining through his passion for butterflies: “a sense of oneness with sun and stone” (p. 139). nabokov yearns for something even greater than whatever sublime ecstasy one can achieve within the constraints of physicalism: “and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. it is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that i love” (p. 139). through his autobiography, nabokov strives to harness memory and imagination to art, and thus to attain a kind of transcendence that is not confined by the “parting with consciousness” that sleep and death entail. it is this strong transcendent impulse in nabokov’s writing that leads l.l. lee to observe “that nabokov accepts a kind of platonic ‘idea’ of art” (p. iii). that is, “the esthetic ideas of nabokov would seem to be a variant on an ‘art-for-art’s sake’ esthetic….he seems to separate art from history—from man’s life in time and community—to make art a pure object without direct human significance” (p. iii). one sees this aesthetic in action in the famous sleigh ride scene in which nabokov depicts, in lavish detail, a scene that he imagines (“i vividly visualized her driving away”) rather than actually experiences (p. 37). the scene concludes with an allusion to “a perfect case of art for art’s sake” when nabokov notes that the four-foot long faber journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 333 pencil that his mother purchased for him on that fabulous trip is “far too big for use and, indeed, was not meant to be used” (p. 39). nabokov’s impulse is to reach for such platonic ideals, but despite moments in which a sense of such transcendence is attained, nabokov is too passionate about nature (such has his butterflies) and the embodied life to completely abandon lived experience. in fact, he expresses a mild obsession with getting the actual facts right despite the “impossibility of checking my memory when i felt it might be at fault” (p. 11), and with weeding out “the amnesic defects of the original [referring to the 1951 version of the autobiography, conclusive evidence]” (p. 12). what emerges in the autobiography, as in nabokov’s fiction, is an irresolvable tension between what lee describes as making literature “from life” (p. iii) and the creative rendering of that life through “re-version” and “multiple metamorphosis” into—one can hope— transcendent art (speak memory, pp. 12-13). this tension between embodied experience and the hope of corporeal transcendence is found throughout the text, and along multiple axes. of the topic of his first poem (his first attempt at transcendent art), nabokov will remark with characteristic wit (in a parody of poe, other romantics, and his own early attempts to write in a similar vein), “it is hardly worthwhile to add that, as themes go, my elegy dealt with the loss of a beloved mistress—delia, tamara or lenore—whom i had never lost, never loved, never met but was all set to meet, love, lose” (p. 225). 6 no doubt nabokov’s self-identification as a writer and perpetual exile lends him to such thinking, to the belief that “one is always at home in one’s past” (p. 116). but what of the other people with whom one shares one’s past, the real people who are greater than one’s memory or characterization of them? it is perhaps in his profiles of key personages in his youth—his father, mother, siblings, maternal grandmother, and childhood governesses and tutors—that nabokov is most aware of the limitations of his desire to abolish time through the persistent probing of memory, an endeavor that by its very nature involves degrees of fictionalizing: “my enormous and morose mademoiselle is all right on earth but impossible in eternity. have i really salvaged her from fiction?” (p. 117). likewise, humbert humbert senses that his real crime, in the broadest sense, is that he has stolen lolita’s childhood, which is the sentiment expressed in the final pages of the novel by the narrator when listening to a group of children at play: “i stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries with a kind of demure murmur for background, and then i knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not lolita’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord” (lolita, p. 308). lee notes this and offers an explanation of why this passage is such an indictment of humbert’s actions: “what nabokov attacks in lolita is human insensitivity, the failure of one human being to allow another to live fully” (p. 123). in writing (and revising) his autobiography, nabokov finds himself in a similar dilemma. how is he to stay true to his ideal of uncompromising respect for specificity—his “loathing of generalizations” (“on a book entitled lolita,” p. 314)—and individuality while also striving to confer transcendence through art upon himself and those whom he loves.7 this, too, he shares with humbert, who, in the final passage of lolita, aspires to “make you live in the minds of later generations. i am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. and this is the only immortality you and i may share, my lolita” (lolita, p. 309).8 the sense of the author as demiurge (much as humbert humbert controls the narrative in lolita) is a significant aspect of nabokov’s writing. as a writer, his creative stance is that of complete authorial control over the world of the text. in writing an autobiography, such creative control must extend to memory, of which michael wood writes, “nabokov will have no truck with involuntary memory, or indeed with anything involuntary. memory is an act of will, and of the will at its most lucid and courageous” (p. 87). hana píchová also relates the “elaborate patterning” of nabokov’s novels to the creative use of memory: “through complicated twists journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) michael nieto garcia 334 and turns of structures, images, and themes these writers [nabokov and kundera] create a masterful blend of personal and cultural memory, bringing together the pieces of their past in unique fashion” (p. 11). wood’s analysis, in uniting nabokov’s penchant for thematic patterns and his attitude toward memory, is that, “death and time themselves begin to look like masks for something that nabokov and memory are reluctant to name: loss. nabokov’s habitual (overt) stance is that of memory’s proud agent and possessor. nothing is lost, the past is not a foreign country. then was then and is also now” (p. 86). nabokov collapses the past into the eternal now: [a] summer warmth pervades my memory. that robust reality makes a ghost of the present….everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die (p. 77). thus he accomplishes, through the act of composing a memoir, the mystical sense of oneness that nabokov calls “cosmic synchronization” (p. 218). likewise, the timelessness of pure being (such as that described during the construction of chess compositions: “the strain on the mind is formidable; the element of time drops out of one’s consciousness altogether” [p. 290]), is accessed in a similar manner: through the “creative rights” of memory (p. 93). “i witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past” (p. 170). by treating memory as “an act of will,” nabokov renders key events in his life (such as first love and his passion for chasing butterflies) as existing outside of time, or coexisting in both the present and the past. alas, actual transcendence by this manner evades even the master magician himself, for when he later encounters objective facts that contradict his memory of an event, “it was as if life had impinged on my creative rights by wriggling on beyond the subjective limits so elegantly and economically set by childhood memories that i thought i had signed and sealed” (p. 93). moreover, any desire to congeal the past into a perfect moment in which “nothing will every change, nobody will ever die,” can only exist in tension or outright contradiction with nabokov’s equal passion for personal metamorphosis. for selftransformation is a process of change over time, a process clearly at odds with the notion that by freezing one’s memories one can escape time…and thereby achieve a state of timelessness. toward the literary transcendence of ethnicity-as-genre while nabokov may have failed to attain “timeless transcendence” as an individual consciousness, he has achieved a kind of literary transcendence through his art. and since one of those works of art is his own autobiography (his life on the page), he has indeed achieved personal transcendence of a sort. as comparison case (one where the text in question is widely thought of as ethnic literature), i turn now to the classification and reception of richard rodriguez’s autobiographical books. rodriguez makes a particularly salient comparison case as he specifically addresses the issue of ethnic literature’s marginalization—or de facto ghettoization—in his own autobiography: “let the bookstore clerk puzzle over where it [hunger of memory] should be placed. (rodriguez? rodriguez?) probably he will shelve it alongside specimens of that exotic new genre, ‘ethnic literature.’ mistaken, the gullible reader will—in sympathy or in anger—take it that i intend to model my life as the typical hispanic-american life” (hunger, p. 7). rodriguez expresses here an acute awareness, as ethnic author, of reader expectations about ethnic literature when conceived as a genre.9 moreover, there is an undertone of angst in the passage, an even greater awareness that reader expectations about ethnicity can have the unintended consequence of elevating some works of literature, while devaluing others. by avoiding designation as belonging to a particular ethnic or other subgroup, nabokov, and his work, are more readily elevated to the status of journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 335 “universal,” while rodriquez fears that his autobiography will be marginalized, displayed on some back shelf labeled “ethnic literature.” the designation, rodriguez fears, will disadvantage his text when it comes to classification, canonization, and the likelihood of eventual elevation to high brow status. this is not to say that there is conscious bias against ethnic literature on the part of readers. nor is it to say that ethnic literature will always be considered marginal. indeed, a cursory glance at recent anthologies of american literature shows a trend toward greater ethnic inclusiveness. nevertheless, ethnic literature’s visibility as ethnic literature marks it in the minds of readers as separate from that which is perceived (by its ethnic invisibility and default privilege), as “literature,” or, even, “american literature.” while some would like to see ethnic literature maintain a certain cultural and literary separateness from “american literature,” rodriguez yearns only for universality—and sees anything short of that as exclusionary: in the 1950s it would have seemed to me that a negro writer was writing about the nation in which i was a part, regardless of whether my tribe was singled out for mention. but when the american university began to approve, then to enforce fracture, and when blood became the authority to speak, i felt myself rejected by black literature and felt myself rejecting black literature as “theirs.” neither did i seek brown literature or any other kind. i sought literature—the deathless impulse to explain and describe. i trusted white literature, because i was able to attribute universality to white literature, because it did not seem to be written for me. (brown, p. 27) rodriguez offers here the tangibly felt personal sentiment that literature that is not self-consciously ethnic, making no ethnic claims and having none imposed upon it, has more universal appeal because its indifference to the ethnic identity of the readers makes it more inclusive. therein, argues rodriguez, lies “the universality of dissimilarity”—literature that focuses on individual characters and cases, rather than on groups (brown, p. 12). what is true for rodriguez is not be true for all latino readers, many of whom seek in latino texts precisely the recognition of the ethnically familiar that rodriguez seems to want to avoid. indeed, these sentiments may not even be true for rodriguez at different points in his reading life. what’s more, opposing “white literature” to that “written for me” indicates that rodriguez is thinking of himself as “not white” in this passage. so it seems a double standard (particularly if part of what makes literature universal is that it reflects human reality) to demonstrate self-consciousness about his own race and ethnicity while making the case for literature that eschews racial and ethnic consciousness. whether or not one agrees with rodriguez’s sense that literature should be written with no particular reader in mind, one would at least hope that there would be a space in which latino writers could write texts that are received as just as “universal” as any other american author, should this be their aim. indeed, given the diversity of latino lives, there should be no reason that latino literature would not be a big enough tent to accommodate everything from ethnic tourism to highly original tales about characters who may or may not be latino. “books should confuse,” rodriguez exhorts his readers; “literature abhors the typical. literature flows to the particular, the mundane” (brown, p. 12). surely, then, one possible path to universality for ethnic literature is to revel in the cultural specificity of ethnic lives—the tortillas, spanglish, and idiosyncratic tías. all, of course, without trying to squeeze latino authors into a procrustean bed that prescribes what does or does not quality as authentically latino. latino literature, that is, must be among the most expansive of genres if it is to be true to the identities and experiences of real-life latinos. we should, to be sure, even expect to see lots of science fiction and fantasy novels by latino authors. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) michael nieto garcia 336 cutting in the opposite direction are forces that cause the genre to contract rather than expand. a fetishizing feedback loop seems to emerge in any genre predicated on the notion of representing an entire culture or ethnicity. expectations for ethnic authenticity are sure to trail any book regarded as “ethnic literature,” and so authors writing within the genre tend to self-police their writing to avoid accusations of failing to be “ethnic” enough. 10 such expectations come from both inside and outside the ethnic group. those outside are often coming to ethnic literature as “ethnic tourists,” expecting to find (in any text deemed ethnic literature) an ethnographic account of latinos, native americans, or whatever ethnicity the book is associated with. perhaps more interesting are the ways in which expectations about ethnic authenticity (reflecting fierce internal struggles over what it means to be authentically chicana/o, for instance) can also come from inside the ethnic group. nabokov himself was denounced by russian émigrés (to america) for writing literature that was inauthentically “russian.” in the words of ludmila a. foster, many critics used a basic formula: talented, brilliant stylistically and formally but “unrussian.” the “un-russianness” although it was used normatively, was, however, an indefinite quantity, which encompassed a multitude of “sins” from an inability to touch the heart of the reader, to an absence of verbal experimentation, conceived as peculiar to russian writers. (p. 53) rodriguez received the same treatment in reviews and literary criticism by chicana/o academics. the shared experience of criticism from within the ethnic and immigrant community obscures, at first blush, important differences in the critical reception of the two authors. nabokov is primarily criticized on stylistic and literary counts, but the criticism of rodriguez is overwhelmingly political. in part this is owing to the inherently political content of topics and themes in rodriguez’s books. even as he abjures overt political identification himself, the subject matter of his books (as are the identities and experiences of ethnic subjects) is inescapably political. and in rodriguez’s case, situating himself squarely within the raging identity politics debates of the era had the effect of raising to higher levels the vituperative against him. that the bulk of negative criticism leveled at rodriguez in the 1970s and 80s came from those who most identified themselves (either as readers, subjects, or writers) with chicana/o studies raises an important question about genre: to what extent are ethnic genres and subgenres (associated as they are with ethnic, political, or other group identities) defined by identity politics? and more pointedly, to what extent do the master narratives of chicana/o identity (or whatever ethnicity) dictate the conventions of literary texts by ethnic authors? we must also ask to what extent narratives of ethnicity (rather than social relations in a broader sense) lead to the classification of rodriguez’s books as ethnic literature (specifically, “latino,” “hispanic,” “chicana/o,” or “mexican american” literature) while nabokov’s memoir is (to this day) more likely to be read under the more encompassing rubric of “american literature,” or even just plain, old “literature.” even when the autobiographical works of both authors are referred to as “autobiography,” and approached through the lens and genre conventions of “life writing,” rodriguez’s books are often imagined and shelved under the additional overlay of “ethnic literature,” while nabokov’s memoir is not. nabokov thus escapes (even though foregrounding his russian ethnicity in speak, memory) the constraining conventions of the ethnic genre, as well as dodging (though not completely) charges of ethnic inauthenticity. that is, by virtue of not being read as “ethnic literature,” nabokov transcends the expectation that he represent his ethnicity in a particular way in his autobiography while retaining the freedom to represent the self in all of its dimensions, including as an inescapably ethnic self. conclusion journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 337 research libraries arrange their books differently than bookstores do. so a theory of genre that relies too heavily on where readers find the books they read has to take into account the great variety of logics by which books are shelved, situated, and encountered. such things are all significant aspects of the framing context. but the language of the text itself has to count for more than its cover or the shelf it is found on. that said, such a theory, by giving appropriate weight to the framing context in which books are encountered would have to conclude that readers of the same book are actually reading significantly different books, depending upon how the book was shelved. and that is rodriguez’s point: in some significant way, hunger of memory is a different book when shelved under literature than when shelved under hispanic studies or ethnic lit. if read first and foremost as ethnic russian literature, nabokov’s autobiography would be a different text indeed. fortunately, most readers of nabokov do not see the category of (universal) literature as mutually exclusive from ethnic literature. speak, memory has so far transcended designation as a particular conception of ethnic literature that precludes also reading it as universal. one cannot help but wonder how future generations will regard nabokov’s text if reading it primarily as ethnic literature. much will depend upon how they conceive the category of ethnic lit. to date, our conception of ethnic literature has been too constraining. perhaps much will have changed by then: a broadening of the genre to reflect the full spectrum of diversity within ethnic groups, a reimagining of the genre’s conventions, a loosening of self-imposed constraints…and an elevation of literary status. in any case, when it comes to how we read ethnic literature, it is time for a paradigm shift. acknowledgments the author wishes to thank shirley samuels, debra castillo, fredric bogel, kenneth mcclane, neil easterbrook, peter rabinowitz, and steve yao for many generous and insightful comments. colleagues at clarkson university have been shining exemplars of both interdisciplinary inquiry and free and open discourse. for many inspiring discussions about the texts of both nabokov and rodriguez, i am grateful to jane springer, tina hall, laura ettinger, owen brady (who is greatly missed), ernesto j. martínez, stephen chong, and students and colleagues at hamilton college and cornell and clarkson universities. references alcoff, l.m. (2006). visible identities: race, gender, and the self. new york: oxford up. appel, a. (1967). “an interview with vladimir nabokov.” in dembo, l.s. [ed.] [1967], nabokov: the man and his work. madison: u wisconsin up. (cited in appel, a. [ed.] [1970], nabokov: criticism, reminiscences, translations and tributes. evanston, il: northwestern up (p. 141). appel, a. and newman, c. (eds.) (1970). nabokov: criticism, reminiscences, translations and tributes. evanston, il: northwestern up. boyd, b. (1991). vladimir nabokov: the american years. princeton: princeton up. davidson, e. h. (1969). poe: a critical study. cambridge: harvard up. foster, l.a. (1974). “nabokov in russian émigré criticism.” in carl r. proffer (ed.), a book of things about vladimir nabokov. ann arbor: ardis (pp. 42-53). garcia, m.n. (2014). autobiography in black and brown: ethnic identity in richard wright and richard rodriguez. albuquerque: university of new mexico press. garcia, m.n. (2014/2015). “nabokov’s index puzzle: life and art transcendent in speak, memory.” nabokov studies 13.1, 167-91. hägglund, m. (2006). “chronophilia: nabokov and the time of desire.” new literary history 37, 447-67. jost, w and olmsted, w. (eds.) (2004). a companion to rhetoric and rhetorical criticism. malden, ma: blackwell. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) michael nieto garcia 338 lee, l.l. (1976) vladimir nabokov. boston: twayne. lombardo, s. (trans.) (2000). the odyssey by homer. indianapolis: hackett. nabokov, v. (1951). conclusive evidence: a memoir. new york: harper. nabokov, v. (1997 [1955]). lolita. new york: vintage. nabokov, v. (1956). “on a book entitled lolita.” in lolita (pp. 311-17). nabokov, v. (1989 [1966]). speak, memory: an autobiography revisited. new york: vintage. píchová, h. (2001). the art of memory in exile: vladimir nabokov and milan kundera. carbondale: southern illinois up. proffer, c.r. (ed.) (1974). a book of things about vladimir nabokov. ann arbor: ardis. rabinowitz, p.j. (1987 [1998]). before reading: narrative conventions and the politics of interpretation. columbus, oh: ohio up. rabinowitz, p.j. (2004). “lolita: solipsized or sodomized?; or, against abstraction—in general.” in jost w. and olmsted, w. (eds.), a companion to rhetoric and rhetorical criticism. malden, ma: blackwell (pp. 32539).rashkolnikov, m. (1999). “pninian performatives.” in lisa zunshine (ed.), nabokov at the limits: redrawing critical boundaries. new york: garland (pp. 12759). reed, m. (2000) “homo lepidopterist: nabokov and the pursuit of memory.” clio 29.3, 271-96. rodriguez, r. (2002). brown: the last discovery of america. new york: viking. rodriguez, r. (1982). hunger of memory: the education of richard rodriguez. boston: godine. staten, h. (1998). “ethnic authenticity, class, and autobiography: the case of hunger of memory.” pmla 113:1, 103-16. wittgenstein, l. w. (1953). philosophical investigations. anscombe e. and von wright, g.h. (eds.). oxford: blackwell. wood, m. (1995). the magician’s doubts: nabokov and the risks of fiction. princeton: princeton up. zunshine, l. (1999). “introduction.” in zunshine, l. (ed.), nabokov at the limits: redrawing critical boundaries. new york: garland (pp. xix-xxviii). zunshine, l. (ed.) (1999). nabokov at the limits: redrawing critical boundaries. new york: garland. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 339 endnotes 1 it should be noted that autobiography (nonfiction) is categorically different from works of fiction by ethnic authors. readers expect memoirs to accord with the basic facts of the writer’s life in historically accurate ways. on the transcendence theme. see michael garcia, “nabokov’s index puzzle,” pp. 167-91. 2 an excellent treatment of pnin’s ethnic situatedness in society and how he responds— including by performing russian identity—to the ethnic expectations of others can be found in masha raskolnikov’s “pninian performatives,” pp. 127-59.) 3 lisa zunshine notes that taking nabokov too much at his word has led to “the current critical reticence to explore musical subtexts of his prose or his engagement with augustan aesthetics, based on the fact that nabokov had on several occasions proclaimed his indifference to music and characterized the english age of reason as pedestrian and devoid of imagination” (nabokov at the limits p. xix). rather, zunshine continues, “the system of aesthetic values articulated by nabokov in his self-reflexive critical writings, and subsequently developed by the scholars” is replete with “unavoidable inconsistencies” (p. xix). 4 hence matt reed, in his article “homo lepidopterist: nabokov and the pursuit of memory,” refers to “nabokov’s aesthetics of memory” when comparing speak, memory to marcel proust’s a la recherche du temps perdu (p. 273). 5 stanley lombardo will later translate (in an intertextual allusion not only to nabokov’s memoir, but also to the odyssey from russia, to the crimea, germany, england, france, and westward to america that nabokov describes therein) the invocation of the muse in his rendering of the odyssey as “speak, memory” (p. 1). 6 as is well noted, nabokov shared a great deal of affinity with poe, even as he parodied much of poe’s work. in lolita, humbert’s first love was named “annabel leigh” (an allusion to poe’s “annabel lee,” a poem depicting endless love that even death cannot conquer). the two authors also shared an obsession with the theme of doubles (humbert and quilty), held similar notions about the beautiful and the sublime, and thought of the writer as, in the words of edward h. davidson, an artist that “may be, like god, a timeless mind or a being who can transcend time” (poe, p. 247). 7 brian boyd notes in his biography, vladimir nabokov: the american years, that “nabokov fuses the roles of art and love in his life” (p. 631). “as he falls in love time after time, the theme of colored glass develops,” which converges with his emergence as a writer (penning love poems for his first true love, “tamara”), thus linking—as similarly transcendent—the themes of art and love (p. 631). moreover, boyd underscores nabokov’s desire to transcend time in general by taking “total command of the past” and aiming “to show the mind triumphing over time, as far as it can, and to intimate something beyond human time” (pp. 152-53). against this view, martin hägglund argues that “the chronophilic desire to remember the finite is not compatible with the metaphysical desire to transcend finitude as such” (“chronophilia,” p. 450). 8 as hägglund observes, “many of nabokov’s novels are fictive memoirs where the protagonists narrate their own lives” (p. 447). 9 see peter j. rabinowitz’s before reading for a cogent analysis of the literary conventions with which readers approach texts, esp. pp. 42-46. elsewhere, rabinowitz notes that “genres can be seen not only as sets of formal features, but also from the audience’s perspective, as menus of interpretive procedures for putting together literary meaning” (“lolita,” p. 328). 10 see, for example, henry staten’s award-winning pmla essay on rodriguez, “ethnic authenticity, class, and autobiography.” in regard to expectations of ethnic authenticity and rodriguez’s writing, staten perceptively notes that “instead of merely betraying a presumed chicano identity, rodriguez’s life narrative mirrors the tensions and contradictions of the mexican and mexican american societies” (p. 105). 268 vol. 22 no. 2, october 2022, pp. 268 – 279 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i2.3489 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. maintaining ideology through racial distinction during the 1930s america in ralph ellison’s invisible man raisa hani tamara & achmad munjid raisa.hani.tamara@mail.ugm.ac.id & munjid@ugm.ac.id american studies master’s program, universitas gadjah mada, indonesia abstract article information racial issues in 1930s america illustrate the high racial tension between whites and african-americans due to the series of mass racial violence. despite the rapid industrialization, african-americans, in this period, struggled to find their equal place in society. ralph ellison’s invisible man depicts the social conditions of african-american workers’ socio-economic backwardness in the 1930s. this novel is set during the post-reconstruction era of america, where jim crow laws were instituted. therefore, the analysis of racial distinction in this novel is conducted using post-nationalist american studies and marxism approach. therefore, this qualitative research utilizes althusser’s theories: of ideology and ideological state apparatus (isa). the findings show how white ideology is depicted and maintained: (1) the depiction of ideology can be seen through the class distinction and racial dependency in which african-americans are created to be inferior and submissive to white people. then, (2) the maintenance of ideology relies on althusser’s concept of ideological state apparatuses, such as religious, family, education, legal, politic, trade union, communication, and cultural institutions, function as an adjunct of the state that perpetuates and preserves white-centered values. thus, the racially segregated society essentially only supports the needs of white capitalists as the ruling class. keywords: racism; marxism; ideology; 1930s america; ideological state apparatus received: 17 august 2021 revised: 23 june 2022 accepted: 28 june 2022 introduction the aftermath of the civil war had provoked racial integration in postbellum society, which the intense pro-slavery idea had constantly challenged. despite many attempts to establish a congruent blended community, the vast majority of white people in the south refused the integration of the black population due to their status as ex-slaves. for instance, the tulsa race riot in 1921, which some scholars believe was the worst incident of https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:raisa.hani.tamara@mail.ugm.ac.id journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 269 racial violence in american history (ellsworth, 2009). these forms of violence symbolize the failed attempt at racial reintegration between both societies, black and white. this is a racial period then continued in 1930s america. indeed, the look of 1930s america was still pictured with racial discrimination and violence in which many lynchings and other forms of violence in the south consistently occurred. however, despite this racial violence toward many african-americans, some black societies began to develop and flourish. in new york, the emergence of the harlem renaissance or also known as the ‘new negro movement.’ it is considered a rebirth of the african-american arts because it contributed to the modern african-american culture at that time, such as music, art, literature, dance, fashion, theatre, and many more (kuenz, 2007). besides arts, many black intellectuals were also born to establish a political and educational movement such as the naacp (the national association for the advancement of colored people). later it became the foundation of the civil rights movement (sullivan, 2009). however, despite this improvement in their societal life, the socio-economic discrepancy between black and white communities was high, which later manifested into social class formation based on race. invisible man, written by an africanamerican author, ralph ellison, shows the real social struggle of african-american people in 1930s america. it tells a story of a nameless young black man who lives in the 1930s american segregated society. he is expelled from his campus and lives in new york as a menial worker for white people. this novel gained massive success by making it into numerous “best novel” lists and earning the national book award for fiction. ralph ellison’s personal experience of racism in north and south america inspired him to write this novel (smedley, 2017). ellison also used this novel as a springboard to discuss the most crucial issue: morality in literature, the breakdown of the communist party, and the civil rights movement. therefore, invisible man gives a clear and vivid situation of africanamerican people during the racial discrimination and even political climates during the middle of the 1930s. in conducting an in-depth analysis, this research utilizes althusser’s concept of ideology, especially ideological states apparatuses, within the scope of marxism and the post-nationalist american studies paradigm. this research dives deep into racial distinction in 1930s america, which lies in white people over african-american communities. it focuses on the functions of ideological state apparatuses in maintaining racial distinction as an elaborated discussion. this research answers two main important questions of “how the ideology is depicted” and “how ideological state apparatuses function in maintaining it”. this research works under the postnationalist american studies that concerning the challenges to the study in america becomes coherent with the “nation-states” that can give impact to the cultural studies on american studies and related area, ethnic, women’s, and gender studies (rowe, 2000, p. 26). it means that american studies see the minority group instead of majority-white male americans as the research object. this perspective shifts away from white-centered ideas in modern american society, which involve discussing race, minority, and women’s roles. meanwhile, this research will use marxism as the approach that provides the idea that literary works are not just personal works (castle, 2007, p. 108). thus, this research utilizes two important concepts of althusser’s view, which are ideology and ideological state apparatuses. althusser’s ideology represents individuals’ imaginary relationship with their real condition of existence (castle, 2007, p. 112). it is how a person sees the construction of the society that they got using ideology. ideology, in this case, does not have ‘an ideal, idea-dependent, or spiritual existence, but a material one,’ for ‘an ideology always exists in an apparatus (althusser, 2014, p. 184). based on this statement, althusser insists on the idea that ideology is not something invisible or spiritual. in other words, he asserts ideology as false consciousness that is an imaginary construction. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) raisa hani tamara & achmad munjid 270 moreover, althusser proposes the idea of interpellation, which is the process where a specific ideology comes into someone’s perspective (althusser, on the reproduction of capitalism: ideology and ideological state apparatuses, 2014, p. 264). later the ideology becomes the belief and the value that the subjected use to interpret their reality. ideology is not just getting in when the subjected realizes it, but it is already there since the beginning of their life. it means that an individual is already abstract or more like an empty slate that is still clear. however, by the time they introduce to the world, they become always ready, which means that they already have an ideology and accept ideology. in other words, the dominant class controls the workforce using ideology to keep production excellent and efficient. ideology needs to be materialized to increase its efficiency toward those subjected to it. thus, the interpellation of ideology in a specific society with more than one class needs to use the dominant ideology to create order in society and a way for the dominant classes to hold production within the state. furthermore, ideological state apparatuses focus on how the ideology is subjected to the proletariat class. it functions to ensure the reproduction, as such, of the relations of production, behind the shield’ of the repressive state apparatus (althusser, on the reproduction of capitalism: ideology and ideological state apparatuses, 2014, p. 80). it is here that the state ideology comes significantly into play, the ideology of the dominant class holding state power. it is used by the political leaders of the dominant classes holding state power; the ideological state apparatuses are various, distinct, relatively independent, and prone to providing an evaluative field for contradictions (althusser, 2014, p. 174). it means that isa covers many aspects of society’s life, including religion, education, family, legal system, political system, the trade-union system, communication, and culture (althusser, 1971, p. 144). methodology this qualitative research “explores and understands the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem” (creswell, 2009, p. 209). the process of this research involves emerging questions and procedures. the data analysis inductively builds from particulars to general themes, and the researcher interprets the meaning of the data. ralph ellison’s invisible man is used as data interpreted based on the researcher’s understanding, supported by relevant theory and evidence in this research, to complete this research. thus, the collected and interpreted data give information about ideology and the way it is maintained. results and discussion invisible man depicts the struggle of african-americans in 1930s america, where the infamous jim crow laws exist. therefore, to elaborate and analyze the ideology within the narrative, the discussion of this research is divided into two subchapters: the visible ideology and its maintenance. the visible ideology in ralph ellison’s invisible man in this novel, the way ideology function is to separate classes into a certain level to work simultaneously without resisting. therefore, to elaborate on the ideology within the novel, althusser’s concept of ideology will be used to analyze two important points regarding the ideology, which can be seen in the form of visible ideology and its maintenance. class distinction in invisible man the class distinction in ralph ellison’s invisible man can be seen in the society that the main character lives throughout the story, in which he lives in alabama as a college student and then moves to new york. in the 1930s, american society in the north and south underwent many social issues primarily centered on racial discrimination and violence. regarding the class distinction, this discussion is divided into two critical ideas: the image of white people and african-americans in this novel. the class distinction can be seen through the image of white people in society. in the journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 271 1930s, in american society, both in the north and south, white people are often defined by african-american communities as wealthy and prosperous people. at the beginning of the story, the main character is tasked to escort mr. norton, an honorable guest, during founders’ day on his campus. in doing so, the main character seems to express his admiration for that wealthy white community (ellison, 1952, p. 23). it resembles the africanamerican admiration towards white people as a majority that has financially superior compared to most of the african-american communities on his campus. therefore, it asserts the white socio-economic superiority long established and maintained in segregated 1930s america. in other words, this admiration implicitly evokes the disparity between black and white society, which puts them in an imbalanced position; the superior white and the inferior black people. on the other hand, african-american people were mainly socio-economically backward. black workers, especially, mostly received lower income than whites since they were not protected by anti-discrimination laws (white, 2016). as a result, they struggled to find proper apartments since they simply could not afford sustainable jobs due to discriminative policies regarding racial segregation. therefore, the upper-class people in the 1930s began to enforce harsher rules for their tenants, including eviction of africanamerican tenants who could not afford to pay their rent or due to other racially biased purposes. this eviction provoked confrontations between police and neighborhood residents which once involved three thousand people (naison, 2021). as a result of the financial crisis, they primarily began to live in ghettos, which are known for inadequate living conditions, such as a high crime rate and gang violence. notably, this eviction seems to have a racial purpose beyond the legal reason since this family presumes that white people from the bank who coercively force them to leave are just simply racist (ellison, 1952, p. 147). this act shows how the stereotype of africanamericans as a proletarian class and white people as bourgeoisie has already been embedded in the society, which drives both communities to condemn each other, especially during this financial crisis. in other words, there is a generalization of hatred and stereotypes among both communities, which leads to prejudice toward each other. in this case, his wife considers their eviction part of racial hatred. the bank represents the white ruling power that oppresses and limits the rights of african-americans as human beings. for them, this eviction is a form of racial maltreatment toward african-american workers, which wealthy white people most marginalized. therefore, they likely condemn any power abuse from white people toward them in the name of racism. furthermore, the polarization of class in 1930s america devalues the position of african-american people as “second-class citizens” below their counterparts. the way african-american people see white people and the eviction of african-american tenants can be categorized as evidence that signifies the class distinction between white people as the ruling class and african-american people as the subordinate. these two pieces of evidence illustrate the socio-economic disparity between both communities, which seems to avail the white interests as the majority. this class distinction sparks a social clash within the racially segregated american society, which results in the african-american workers’ resistance in the form of workers’ unions and the dissemination of communism. moreover, in his journal entitled can marxism explain america’s racism?, sidney willhelm evokes the strong relationship between racism and capitalism in america, which shapes the character of american industrial society. racism, he believes, is “a specific product of capitalism and a universal feature of capitalism” (willhelm, 1980, p. 98). therefore, the devaluation of human labor, as is explained above, is needed since it can benefit the superior class/race, “capitalists need racial inferiority to cheapen the cost of labor. “white employers,” nearing asserted in 1929, “are taking advantage of the negroes-using them to force down wages, to break strikes” (1980, p. 98). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) raisa hani tamara & achmad munjid 272 the racial inferiority complex that resulted from the class distinction within the segregated american society is a pivotal aspect to structurize the society by implementing several capitalist elements such as societal hierarchy, class level, and wealth admiration. willhelm further concludes, “in short, racism is primarily an effective strategy for capitalists to restrain economic demands from a recalcitrant labor force (1980, p. 98)”. in other words, racism is, indeed, part of a social formation that is created to strengthen the ideology that white people, as the ruling class, build and impose. this socio-economic superiority later develops into an abuse of power by the ruling class since white people often conduct some racial maltreatment toward african-americans. althusser’s concept of ideology has strengthened class distinction between african-american and white people in the capitalistic society. african-american people, as a minority, are created to feel inferior to cheapen the cost of labor in the segregated american society. it, therefore, creates a wider gap between the african-american community, which is legally limited and socioeconomically backward, and the white wealthy privileged in the societal system. in other words, racism is institutionalized as part of white people’s domination to build a structured societal hierarchy. thus, by looking at those pieces of evidence of class distinction in 1930s america, white people manage to control the middle-class society by imposing an inferiority complex on them. it is a part of social formation that can establish an order since the bourgeoisie needs the proletariat to be marginalized to maintain profitable income and cheap labor costs. racial dependency in invisible man in this discussion, the dependent relationship between the white and africanamerican community relies on two pivotal points; glorification of white’s image and work relationship in the segregated society caused by class distinction. in ralph ellison’s invisible man, the illusion of white people’s images as saviors and philanthropy solidifies the societal and work bond between both parties. therefore, the glorification of white people by african-american people seems to create a dependent relationship between them. for instance, the main character admires the arrival of mr. norton at his university as a white philanthropist who helped establish his college. the main character is in the hope of building a good relationship with mr. norton, whom he is seen as a strong figure for his future (ellison, 1952, p. 23). it is a rare opportunity, the man character says, to drive and escort him since many other africanamerican students want to do it too. the elegancy and influential image of white people have driven many young african-american people to rely on white people to help elevate their future careers. in this case, mr. norton is seen by the main character as his future savior since he could help the main character due to his authoritative power. that is why when he was assigned to drive him to the campus, he could not resist. in fact, he is sure that he is in a position that will benefit him as a young african-american student (ellison, 1952, p. 50). it shows that the glorification of wealthy white people has shaped the understanding of these african-americans to believe and to further rely on white people’s help to elevate their careers. this inferiority is further seen when the main character is forced to accept the white employers’ authoritative power over him when he joins the paint company “… trained to accept the foolishness of such old men as this, even when you thought them clowns and fools.” (ellison, 1952, p. 123). these words echo the idea of being submissive toward white people since they do not have enough power to resist white people’s superiority. thus, the class distinction in the 1930s american society has created the binary superiority-inferiority complex that shapes the societal elements within the society. the inferiority complex that african-americans experienced as middle and lower class resulted from legal and socio-economic factors during the segregation period that limited them as the second citizen. notably, in american society, thomas la veist says, “african-americans have higher rates of unemployment, illiteracy, unwed and teen journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 273 births, low birth weight, homicide, and infant mortality” (la veist & pierre, 2014, p. 41). therefore, acknowledging white superiority can hopefully elevate their social status. moreover, the wealthy image of white people tends to attract many young africanamericans to acknowledge their superiority. thus, as this novel illustrates, social welfare becomes the pivotal aspect that defines african-american’s dependency on white people in 1930s american society. the white employers’ superiority at the workplace can also be seen as indoctrination toward african-american workers to spread white people’s messages when they join the (communist) brotherhood. jesse wolfe, in his journal entitled “ambivalent man”: ellison’s rejection of communism, argues that the concept of the communist brotherhood is based on the author’s experience in the postworld war ii left-wing movement (wolfe, 2000, p. 621). it is strongly associated with the idea of hegelian and marxism philosophical traditions that he adopted. this brotherhood embodies “racist” characteristics of american society, which emphasizes the racial separation between white and africanamerican people. this type of supervision consists of the indoctrination of white people on the inferior african-american workers, which can be divided into two forms: correction and filtering. first, the act of correction toward african-american workers for white people’s needs can be seen when the main character needs to be corrected by his white senior over his speech message and oratory skills (ellison, 1952, p. 190). it says that african-american members need to be trained to be able to “properly” speak as a member of the brotherhood. the words “be tamed” seem to emphasize the “uncivilized” image of africanamerican people due to the substantial class distinction between them and white people in this segregated society. second, filtering involves limitations to constrain africanamerican brothers’ behaviors. it can be seen when the main character is told to voice white people’s demands and not to speak up about his own opinion regarding the social issues within the segregated 1930s american society, “we furnish all ideas. we have some acute ones. ideas are part of our apparatus. only the correct ideas for the correct occasion.” (ellison, 1952, p. 252) it shows the topic of african-american freedom of speech which seems to be faded in this particular period since many of them are not allowed to publically speaking. from the 1920s to the 1940s, freedom of speech based on the first amendment could not be socio-politically applicable to minorities. as norman rosenberg says, “the relationship between free speech battles and struggles against hierarchies based upon race, wealth, and gender generally has been seen by radicals, conservatives, and liberals alike as a close one.” (rosenberg, 1989, p. 332). these aspects (race, wealth, and gender) play an essential role in implementing freedom of speech. therefore, if such groups do not have at least one of these aspects, their voice or action cannot be heard. for africanamericans, it became the primary constraint to define their equal existence in the segregated 1930s american society. correcting and filtering are considered censorship because it only benefits white people despite struggling african-american efforts. the brotherhood is meant to accommodate african-american workers in line with white communist ideas. in other words, this is a form of imaginary construction to build and structurize the society that the dominant class wants. in this novel, white people, as a bourgeoisie class, tend to impose their ideas that craft the racist society used to maintain their socio-economic advantages. in other words, by using ideology, white people manage to control african-american people in the workforce to keep the production excellent and efficient for them. ideological maintenance in invisible man the backwardness condition of africanamericans impacted the well-being of the african-american people, which can be seen in the form of class distinction and racial dependency. therefore, by using althusser’s concept of ideological state apparatus, this journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) raisa hani tamara & achmad munjid 274 chapter explains the ideological maintenance that is happened in the novel invisible man. to ease the comprehension, this chapter is divided into eight subchapters according to althusser’s concept: religious, educational, family, legal, political, trade union, communication, and cultural isa. religious ideological state apparatus the importance of religion in american society can be seen when the main character perceives the white people’s religion as part of their pedagogic aspect (ellison, 1952, p. 65). these african-american students’ response indicates that interpellation, which is the perception process of ideology, has already existed and been believed. it further perpetuates through religious speech, which is seen in this novel when father barbee gives his sermon emphasizing the historical clash between white and african-americans during civil war, predominantly based on racist hatred among them (ellison, 1952, p. 68). it illustrates that racial issue has firmly embedded as part of american social and cultural roots. in a broader perspective, this narration by father barbee can be translated as part of the interpellation of ideology since it emphasizes the better living condition of african-americans, which seems doubtful and ironic due to the post-war creation of jim laws. in other words, it is a way to make indoctrinated ideology seem believable for the african-americans. therefore, this sermon at the school’s church perpetuates the current backward and left-behind condition of africanamerican society as ‘acceptable’. family ideological state apparatus the maintenance of ideology that preserves the white domination also exists within the family. family is part of a social agent that teaches moral lessons in life. in his invisible man, ralph ellison depicts the black family's significance in establishing and maintaining white supremacy ideology. growing up, the main character’s parents told his son (the main character) to accept whatever harsh condition he may face since it is part of the ‘consequence’ of being africanamerican (ellison, 1952, p. 11). in the context of pertaining ‘common good’, africanamerican children are told by their parents or family to have a sense of humility despite living in poverty and under the repression of white people. it is a teaching that projects their submission toward their white oppressor. in terms of racism, the black family during the segregation was transformed into a fundamental social group that inbreeds the white ideology. many sociologists argue that the concept of the modern family emerged as a result of industrialization, which is strongly related to “the conception of the “child” as a social category separate from adults, requiring special concern and attention” (laslett, 1973, p. 481). as further conceptualized by althusser, the family is also defined as an adjunct of the state because it helps disseminate the ideology established by the state (elliot, 1989, p. 445). in this case, the correlation between state and family is significantly close since both manufacturers a thought transferred to others. a marxistfeminist expert, elizabeth wilson, further says that the ideology of patriarchy and racism can be implemented through family because it is an adjunct to the state. althusser views the welfare state, “.. is not just a set of services; it is also a set of ideas, and the ideas it incorporates provide support for a family ideology which operates in a subtle but coercive way to ensure not simply the continuance of things as they are, but women’s acquiescence in their own oppression” (in elliot, 1989, p. 446). thus, in the case of racism in 1930s america, the family, as an adjunct of the state, plays a vital role in the rationalization of jim crow laws, especially dealing with the 1930s industrial expansion where african-americans were subjected to be the white people’s workers and creates a ‘mutual’ dependent relationship. it sustains the racial disparity that structures the american social system. as a result, the main character experiences personal ideological ambivalence in which he stands in the in-between zone of wanting one and wanting another (ellison, 1952, p. 12). this argumentation emphasizes the personal ambivalence of conceptualizing journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 275 the truth of the african-american position in the society where the double consciousness emerges. as william du bois coined, it is an internal conflict, part of a psychological challenge, experienced by subordinates in an oppressive society (1994, p. 8). thus, as an adjunct to the state, the family plays a vital role in rationalizing the oppressor’s ideology to the subordinates. like a religious institution, the family functions as ideological state apparatus that favors american industrialist values since it ironically helps the rationalization of jim crow laws as a core of the social system. educational ideological state apparatus the importance of an educational institution relies on its essential purpose as a place for knowledge sharing. white ideology lessons and practices exist in society. there are two pivotal points in how the maintenance of white-oriented ideology in educational institutions exists: the lesson and practice. the lesson within the educational institution also emphasizes the preservation of the “status quo”. father barbee’s sermon in the school’s church represents the idea that america is a better place than before (antebellum). in his sermon, he perpetuates the image of african-american prosperity and remarkable progress in the society that, indeed, has been falsely used to establish white superiority (ellison, 1952, p. 65). in a broader perspective, the white-centered lessons within the educational institution only perpetuated and preserved the africanamerican backwardness in segregated american society. this concept of whitecentered teachings in the segregation period is a colonial practice that evokes a double consciousness within young african-american students (nugroho & aryani, 2021, p. 125). the school practices also contribute to the dissemination of white ideology. founder’s day, the main character’s college arrangement, depicts how much this african-american community values the presence of white people and their historical influence. when the main character missteps his duty as a driver, mr. bledsoe scolds him as if he defaces the campus’s reputation, ‘he [bledsoe] struck his desk “college for negroes! boy, what do you know other than how to ruin an institution in half an hour that it took over half a hundred years to build?’ (ellison, 1952, p. 79) it shows that the behaviors and treatments of african-american people to white people matter since it can hugely affect the reputation of their institution. bledsoe accuses the main character’s action as a way to endanger the institution developed under the white influence over the ages. africanamericans since they live under an apartheidlike system that devalues their rights. white people have established their position by constructing the racial binary society. as explained in the previous chapter, they are always expected to heighten the white people, which later manifests into admiration and glorification. in other words, this educational institution only produces students with the humility to accept their social position instead of competing with their white counterparts. thus, this educational institution is tasked with dictating and controlling africanamerican students. it is an ideological state apparatus that acts as an interpellation agent to construct what the upper-class society wants from them. legal ideological state apparatus the maintenance of ideology in legal institutions rests on the existence of jim crow laws that legally separate the white and african-american communities in 1930s america. there are two legal institutions that act as ideological state apparatuses in maintaining the white ideology. these institutions are related to public services: transportation and hospital. in public transportation, the main character gets on the bus in new york, which is regulated to separate the seats between black and white passengers. despite the bus seats being almost empty, he is forced to sit in the back due to his race (ellison, 1952, p. 84). this racial seating arrangement is part of jim crow bus laws that prevent the social integration of black and white on the bus. unlike the car that “represented a private transaction that challenged race, technology, journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) raisa hani tamara & achmad munjid 276 and consumerism” (gordon, 2020, p. 5), public transportation such as trains, streetcars, and buses were hugely organized by the state and local governments. therefore, the seating regulation implicates the image of governments’ ideology that expects the humility of the inferior african-american people toward their superior. it is a language of racial hierarchy disseminated to strengthen white ideology in the legal area. then, a medical center or hospital also functions as legal ideological state apparatus that maintains the white ideology. in this novel, when the main character is injured due to an accident involving the boiler machine, he is treated in the hospital. there, he is poorly treated and becomes a part of a medical experiment by applying gestalt (ellison, 1952, p. 129). the legal policy in authorizing some procedures for african-american patients is no longer based on humanity but is structured based on the white people’s interests as the ruling class. the scientific abuse implicates the absence of empathy and humanitarianism since everything, including medical procedures, is institutionalized based on racial hierarchy. the ideology is maintained through legal ideological state apparatuses such as transportation and hospital. it has the ability to institute inappropriateness and inhuman policy toward african-american patients as the oppressed social group. thus, there is an act of legalizing discriminative views in social institutions that directly affect the well-being of african-american people as the subordinates of the white dominant society. political ideological state apparatus the political parties in each country control ideology in the political aspects. these political parties are the institution that controls ideology. a political party has the ability to maintain ideology from the member’s recruitment. at this point, his subjectivity to the white ideology is on hold due to mistrust. after the main character’s speech on the african-american eviction, he is invited by a white person to meet in a café because of his skill in speaking and gathering people to follow him (ellison, 1952, p. 166). embracing the same idea makes the member exposed to the same ideology. thus, the political parties are able to maintain ideology by giving a place for people to explore themselves and make them feel useful by seeing their contribution to the parties. the intensity of the ideology gets stronger by having the opposite ideology exposed, followed by the majority member’s reaction toward the opposing ideology. the reaction of the other members of the parties creates the necessity for the member to follow them to prevent exile within the parties. trade union ideological state apparatus trade union isa is the apparatus of the ideological state that controls ideology in the working places. the first process of interpellation happens at the beginning when the main character is about to enter the paint factory; he sees something, “ahead of me a huge electric sign announced its message through the drifting strands of fog: keep america pure with liberty paints” (ellison, 1952, p. 107). the idea of “keep america pure” means keeping america just like it used to be, which america is for white people. this sign rhymes with the white ideology all over the place as the way the factory intended to be made by white people and for the white people as the costumers. this statement indicates the white ideology that white people are better at doing their work. it is also the way each employer glorifies the vision of the company to its worker at the same time. the main character’s loyalty to the factory is, without a doubt. this loyalty can also be translated as a language of loyalty toward white people is necessary to improve the african-american people’s life. the union is the worker’s organization that defends the african-american worker so that they will have the same right and the same payment as the white worker. the existence of the organization besides the factory organization strengthening the this union is a threat for the loyal worker like lucious because it can make him jobless by displeasing the white people or, in this case, the factory higher people. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 277 communication ideological state apparatus the communication isa maintains ideology through the distribution of information and makes the reader more aware of the current ideology as part of the reality they believe in. there are three ways communication ideological state apparatus operate and maintain ideology: newspaper, dialogue, and letter. first, communication isa mentioned in this novel is the newspaper. this is the news after the main character meets a white man in the middle of the night and punches him for insulting him (ellison, 1952, p. 6). this statement shows how the communication institute reports the condition of the victim of the news based on the victim-witness. newspaper as the communication ideological state apparatus further explored where the main character mentions his role in the brotherhood, the political organization that hired him, as the publisher or spokesperson that makes the brotherhood famous (ellison, 1952, p. 206). another communication ideological state apparatus can be found in the dialogue between characters. it is the confrontation between the main character and mr. bledsoe, the principal of the school that the main character attends in the story’s setting (ellison, 1952, p. 80). bledsoe, in this act, emphasizes that white people have newspapers, magazines, radios, and spokespeople as the person who will tell their idea. these sentences indicate the process of interpellation in the communication of the ideological state apparatus through someone showing the reality that white people control everything in the country. letters are parts of the communication ideological state apparatus after being used by the white people in the setting of this novel to maintain their ideology in the society when the main character wins the battle royal and is expelled to new york (ellison, 1952, p. 21) (ellison, 1952, p. 106). these two occasions of receiving letters contain the message of “keep the nigger boy running,” which, according to klotman, is the metaphor for running from the unpleasant reality. it is an adverse, uncontrollable reaction, a metaphorical bullwhip used by others to frighten invisible man into an erratic, indiscriminate movement that renders him powerless, without control over himself or his surroundings (klotman, 1970, p. 278). to conclude, communication ideological state apparatus is the apparatus in the state that controls the state’s information and distributes the state’s ideology along the way. there are three ways of communication ideological state apparatus maintaining ideology, newspaper, dialogue from the higher status person, and letter. those are used to maintain ideology in the novel by mentioning the main character’s invisibility in public indicates his position in society, which is invisible. cultural ideological state apparatus cultural ideological state apparatus is the apparatus that dominates the society’s culture and interpellated ideology through literature, arts, sports, and many more (althusser, 1971, p. 144). there are four cultural aspects that are used in the novel to maintain white ideology in the novel: blues music, dolls, fashion, and sport. blues music has become essential as the cultural ideological state apparatus. it is part of the art created by african-americans in the late 1860s (pearley sr., 2018). this novel's illustration of blues music is often mentioned as part of the african-american music identity at that time (ellison, 1952, p. 7). the main character expresses his reality which is being invisible, through his admiration of louis armstrong’s song, which represents his reality at this moment. olderman believes that the main character singing his blues song indicates the meaning of himself and his reality (olderman, 1966, p. 143). the poetry of being invisible illustrates the main character's interpellation process toward the song, making him see his reality of himself and his people as invisible. the second cultural ideological state apparatus is the dolls. the two dolls mentioned in the novel that significantly journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) raisa hani tamara & achmad munjid 278 impact the main character are the sambo doll (ellison, 1952, p. 233). this doll outrages the main character because the figure mimicked the african-american people. the dolls are controlled using string, indicating that africanamerican people are controlled and do not have freedom since it represents the past (slavery). the third is fashion, which sets standards people must follow to join the society (ellison, 1952, p. 143). ointments, in the context of this text, are beauty products. this beauty product claims that it could produce the miracle of whitening black skin. this product interpellated white ideology by setting some indicators of how to better society. those who buy this project hope they will be white so that they will be accepted by society. since the society in this context is dominated by white people. white people become the set of things that must be followed to reach the american dream. the last is sports which are used as the way white people need entertainment from the africans (ellison, 1952, p. 12). battle royale is the event in this novel that white people use to treat african-americans as a prerequisite battle to gain success. they have to literary battle or fight for it. this is also the way white people treat minorities. they treat them like circus animals or as a part of gruesome entertainment. entertainment like battling for fighting between two things is deemed as okay sometimes. however, the people who participated in this battle were considered a pawn or unimportant moving objects. it means that the african-americans who experienced this battle are deemed unimportant. using this battle lowers the african-americans’ pride as just another folly object of entertainment and restrained human. conclusion in conclusion, the analysis of ralph ellison’s invisible man asserts the systemic racism that devalues the position of africanamerican people, which are marginalized and exploited by their white counterparts. thus, the emphasis of this novel is on how this ideology is depicted and maintained. the ideology emphasizes two fundamental points: class distinction and racial dependency. first, dominant ideology separates the dominant class and the minority to create a social, racial, and economic gap between those two. as a result, white people are destined to be the wealthy and ruling class. second, the class distinction creates a racial dependency between african-american and white people. both social communities are tied in some economic relationship where the superior white people become “the employers” while african-americans only become “fatalistic workers.” therefore, this novel shows how the wealthy white people, as the ruling class, have reshaped and structured the society where their black counterparts become “the second class citizen. the maintenance of ideology relies on althusser’s concept of ideological state apparatus (isa), in which social institutions play an essential role in perpetuating the ideology. these apparatuses also are used to isolate and control the subordinates who try to stand up against the ideology. this ideological preservation occurs in almost every fundamental level of the 1930s american society, which includes religious, family, educational, legal, cultural, political, trade union, and communication institutions. thus, based on this analysis, it can be concluded that the jim crow laws, which segregated the 1930s american society, have some direct socioeconomic advantages for white people, which can be seen from various perspectives. references althusser, l. 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(2016, february 9). next economy. retrieved from the atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/ archive/2016/02/the-origins-of-theracial-wage-gap/461892/. 429 vol. 21 no. 2, october 2021, pp. 429-438 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i2.3415 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. the semantic field of ngethok 'to cut' and sociocultural factors in javanese society: sociosemantic study dwi atmawati dwi_bbs@yahoo.co.id balai bahasa provinsi daerah istimewa yogyakarta, indonesia abstract article information this research is motivated by the decreasing awareness of some people towards the preservation of the javanese language, especially the younger generation. in their daily communication, some of them do not speak javanese but speak indonesian. in fact, in javanese, there is a complex and complete lexicon that can express livelihoods, such as farming. at this time, these activities are starting to be abandoned due to technological developments and changing mindsets. this study aims to find and explain the semantic components of the lexicon of the verb ngethok [ngǝthͻ?] 'to cut' and its lexemes and socio-cultural factors contained in the meaning of each lexeme. this research used a qualitative descriptive method and sociosemantic approach. the data was taken in the borobudur area, magelang regency, central java province. data collection was carried out by interviewing, recording, and taking notes. in this study, three informants were used. the results of this study indicate that the lexicon of the verb ngethok 'to cut' has fifteen lexemes, namely mancung, mapras, mbabat, mbacok, mlathok, munthes, ngarit, nugel, nggraji, nggunting, ngiris, nyacah, nyembeleh, nyeset, and nyigar. each lexeme has different lexical meanings. the socio-cultural factors of the community that are revealed in the ngethok ‘to cut’ lexicon and its lexemes are people who live in villages and work as farmers, people who work using traditional tools, people have a simple mindset and a strong spirit of mutual cooperation, and people help selflessly. keywords: javanese; lexeme; ngethok; sociosemantic received: 25 may 2021 revised: 22 july 2021 accepted: 21 august 2021 introduction the javanese language is used by most of the javanese people in magelang. the reality shows that some javanese speakers have switched to indonesian to communicate daily. some of the children and the younger generation, both those living in cities and villages, are less able or even unable to speak javanese. some parents no longer inherit javanese as their mother tongue. this has resulted in them being less or even unable to speak javanese. in previous research, it was stated that the number of javanese language https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:dwi_bbs@yahoo.co.id journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) dwi atmawati 430 supporters was decreasing, along with the number of families in housing who rarely spoke javanese in their homes (nurhayati, endang; mulyana; mulyani, 2013). this fact is very concerning, considering that the javanese language is one of the riches of the indonesian people. in fact, javanese has a vocabulary that is quite complex and complete with a speech level. ironically, some people, especially the younger generation, do not understand javanese vocabulary. in previous research, it was stated that there had been chaos in the use of the javanese speech level caused by, among other things, a lack of knowledge or understanding of the javanese speech level (romelah, 2016). the vocabulary contains the cultural values of society, for example, the verb nggawa 'carry' and the lexeme that is included in it. the verbs nggawa ‘carry’ has lexeme include nyangking, mbopong, manggul, nyunggi, ngindhit. nyangking is carrying something with the hands and the position of the hands extended down. manggul is to carry something on the shoulder. mbopong is carrying a child or person with two hands in front of the chest. mbopong can be done alone or more. nyunggi is carrying by placing things on your head. nggendhong is carrying people or things by placing them on their backs and tying them with clothes to their bodies. ngindhit is carrying by placing things or children around the waist. in indonesian the verb carry has lexem memanggul, membopong, memikul, menggendong. the lexeme of a language is closely related to the culture that is owned in that society. community culture can be revealed by understanding the meaning of a lexeme. in this regard, the author tries to reveal some of the javanese cultures through the sociosemantic study of the verb ngethok ‘to cut’. verbs were chosen in this study because they represent semantic elements of actions or processes, both oral and written. this ngethok ‘to cut’ verb was chosen to be studied because it has quite a complex lexeme and various meanings. there are various lexemes of the verb ngethok ‘to cut’ that have no equivalent in indonesian. therefore, this verb ngethok ‘to cut’ is said to be quite complex in describing the culture of javanese society. in addition, research has never been done on the semantic field of the verb ngethok ‘to cut’ in javanese. javanese culture, both in the form of words and expressions, is a very specific linguistic term and is only found in javanese language and society. the elements of javanese cultural words represent, among others, rituals, views or values of javanese culture, social activities, thoughts, behavior. (nirmala, 2015). furthermore, the meaning component analysis shows that no words have exactly the same features and the same meaning. it depends on the culture of the community (arnita et al., 2016). speech is influenced by the culture of the language speaker (suswandi et al., 2017). the semantic structure of the meaning of the word consists of archiseme and differential semes. archiseme reflects a general concept that includes all concepts denoted by words that refer to one conceptual field (dzyubenko, 2017). there is a lexicon of tools in rice farming activities and some of these javanese lexemes have been absorbed in the indonesian lexicon, such as matun, derep, luku, and garu (budhiono, 2017). in further research, it was stated that the influence of the philosophical meaning contained in the javanese language could be in the form of changes in meaning and mention of pronouns (wahyono & pratama, 2017). it is stated that judging from the semantic component, verbs in old javanese are grouped into three, namely state verbs, process, action. judging from the morphological typology, old javanese is a type of agglutination (erawati & sulibra, 2017). furthermore, research is conducted on the relationship between the meaning of language verbs in javanese which refers to eye activity (safitri & ellisafny, 2017). in this study, the problem is discussed using the theory of meaning components analysis. research conducted by krauße (2018) on javanese vocabulary in surabaya focuses on the study of language politeness. the research is limited to the study of the sociolinguistic aspect. research related to the field of semantics is studied on the verb "to see" in javanese by ningrat et al. (2019). in this study, the functions, meanings, and semantic roles of each variant are explained. in further research, it was stated that in heterogeneous societies, journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – oktober 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 431 for example, sundanese and javanese have many vocabularies that have the same shape but have different meanings (hildayani, 2019). in research related to javanese vocabulary and culture, it is stated that there is a vocabulary in javanese society that contains important information for understanding its culture, for example, the word eling. the word eling means self-awareness to avoid bad things so as not to happen to his life (sukaton, 2019). descendants of javanese transmigrant families in maros regency, south sulawesi province are less able to speak javanese (kasmawati; irwan fadli, 2019). this shows that if the javanese language is not taken care of seriously, one day it may become extinct. next, language has an important role as an identity in a multilingual country. language shift tends to occur in young people who live in cities, although in villages there is also a shift in language (andriyanti, 2019). research related to the field of meaning that has been carried out is the activity of 'speaking'. in this study, it is stated that there are 62 verbs which represent the activity of 'speaking' in javanese in the city of semarang (prasetyo, 2020). the next research is about the characteristics of possessive construction in javanese. in the research results, it is stated that the meaning of javanese possessive construction is at the polymorphemic, phrase, and clause level (baroroh & mulyadi, 2020). furthermore, in the results of research on the javanese lexical configuration model, it is stated that the javanese lexical configuration has a hierarchical structure consisting of transitive dominance relationships, asymmetric dominance relationships, and symmetrical dominance relationships (andriany, 2020). the differences between this study and previous research are as follows. the research that has been done is still limited to the semantic fields of the verb ngomong ‘to talk’ (prasetyo, 2020) and ndelok ‘to see’ (prasetyo, 2020) in javanese. in the previous research, it was only studied from the semantic aspect, not combined with the study of sociology. in this study, the verb ngethok 'cut' is studied from a semantic point of view. through this semantic study, the socio-cultural life of the javanese people can be revealed. a study on the relationship between the semantic field of the verb ngethok 'cut' in javanese and the culture of the people has never been done. this research on the verb ngethok is focused on sociosemantic studies. the previous research is still limited to semantic studies on the verb "to see". the problem in this research is the field of meaning of the verb ngethok ‘to cut’ and sociocultural factors in javanese society. the purpose of this research is to explain the meaning components of the verb ngethok ‘to cut’ and its lexemes from the semantic aspect. this research is important to do so that it can be clearly identified the different meanings of each lexeme of the verb ngethok 'to cut' and the javanese culture contained in these words. with this explanation, the researcher hopes that especially the javanese people can understand the meaning of each lexeme of the ngethok ‘to cut’ verb and the diversity of javanese culture. through this understanding, the researcher hopes to grow the awareness of the javanese people to preserve the javanese language. methodology this research uses methodological and theoretical approaches. the methodological approach used is the descriptive qualitative method. the part of the language analyzed is the verb ngethok 'to cut' or related to cut terms in javanese. the qualitative descriptive method is used to analyze variations in the form of the verb ngethok 'to cut' in javanese. the theoretical approach used is semantic theory. this semantic theory is used to analyze the general meaning and the specific meaning contained in the verb ngethok 'to cut' in javanese. the research data was taken in the area of borobudur village, magelang regency, central java. the location was chosen because there are still many indigenous people who work as farmers and live in that place. however, along with the rapid development of technology and tourism, many immigrants who have various profess sions live in the borobudur area. this affects the choice of language used in everyday life. some parents do not pass on javanese as a mother tongue, but they pass on indonesian as a mother tongue to their children. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) dwi atmawati 432 the techniques used to analyze the data were distribution and substitution techniques (sudaryanto, 2015). the steps taken in this research are collecting data, classifying the data, explaining its meaning, determining the semantic characteristics or the componential meaning of each word ngethok in javanese. the data in this study were the verb ngethok ‘to cut’ and lexeme of the ngethok ‘to cut’ verb used by the people in the village of borobudur. data were collected by interview method. the researcher uses the conversational engagement listening technique and the notetaking technique (prasetyo, 2020). researchers conducted interviews and listened to the informants' answers. during the interview with the informant, the researcher noted and recorded things related to the problem under study. the researcher noted the conditions around the informants, for example, the condition of their homes and their daily lives. there are three informants in this study. the research question is what does the word ngethok ‘to cut’ mean? what are some words that are similar in meaning to the word ngethok ‘to cut’? what are examples of its use? the three informants answered research questions related to the verb ngethok ‘to cut’. furthermore, the data is classified and entered into the table and then analyzed. the informants are indigenous people, male, farmers, aged sixty years and over, physically and mentally healthy. these criteria are based on the lexicon and the lexemes studied refer to the activities of village people who work as farmers. data validity is done by checking data on other informants. informants answered research questions openly, meaning that they were not structured. the research question given is about the verb ngethok ‘to cut’ and the lexemes included in it. if the answers given by all the informants are the same, the data is declared valid. on the other hand, if the informant gives different answers, the data is declared invalid. in addition, the author also checked it in the dictionary. the stages of data analysis are reading and observing data, classifying, analyzing and interpreting the meaning components of each lexeme from the field of meaning of the verb ngethok ‘to cut’, and juxtaposing them with the javanese dictionary. the relationship between the meaning of each variation of the verb ngethok 'to cut' was studied using the semantic field theory. the variations of the verb ngethok 'to cut' are analyzed by semantic components theory. to discuss the problems in this research, the theory used is the componential analysis of meaning by nida (1975). nida said that the meaning component is the arrangement of the reference meaning of a word found through component analysis. the components of meaning can be common, distinctive components, and supplementary or optional components. the common component is the central component contained by all lexemes in the same semantic domain or lexical field. diagnostic or distinctive component serves to distinguish meaning from others of the same domain. supplementary or optional components are components whose presence is a supplement and can take the form of connotations. this type of meaning component is not always owned by every word (nida, 1975). the semantic field theory approach does not stop at recognizing words and the meanings associated with the central word, but also in analyzing the meaning of each associated word. the work steps in the analysis of the meaning components include naming, paraphrasing, defining, and classifying (nida, 1975). some cultures are formed by using language, and language only exists because it is formed in a particular culture (tannen, 2013). in relation to the semantic field, it is stated that semantic truth is a true condition related to the clarity of the reference by the statement. a statement is said to be true if it refers to clear references. statements are said to be true when they refer to a specific reference (baryadi, 2020). this statement is the basis for studying the meaning of the verb ngethok ‘to cut’ which is the central word so that each variant of the verb ngethok ‘to cut’ can be clearly distinguished. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – oktober 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 433 results and discussion this section presents the results and discussion in the form of tables and discussions. the table contains the verb ngethok 'to cut' and 15 words which are the lexeme of the verb ngethok ‘to cut’; the meaning components are classified as follows: with tools, without tools, and targets (people, animals, trees/wood, grass/weeds, leaf stalks, certain foods, cloth/leaves/paper/plastic). the plus sign (+) in the table indicates that the lexeme has that component of meaning, while the minus sign (-) indicates that the lexeme does not have that component of meaning. the (+) symbol indicates the presence of semantic features and symbol (-) indicates the absence of semantic features. the people of central java, especially in rural areas, still rely on agriculture to fulfill their daily needs. most of the population of java live from farming because of the geographical conditions of java island, in particular very profitable rural areas for farming (prabowo, 2019). this condition gives rise to various lexemes, both in the agricultural sector and in matters related to its activities. for example, activities related to javanese culture in everyday life are ngethok ‘to cut’. this research discusses the ngethok ‘to cut’ verb lexicon using nida's (1975) meaning component theory to determine the meaning of each word contained in the lexeme of the verb ngethok ‘to cut’. the verb ngethok ‘to cut’ has 15 lexemes, that is mancung [mancuŋ], mapras [mapras], mbabat [mbabat], mbacok [mbacͻ?], mlathok [mlathͻ?], munthes [munthǝs], ngarit [ŋarit], nugel [nugǝl], nggraji [ŋgraji], nggunting [ŋguntiŋ], ngiris [ŋiris], nyacah [nyacah], nyembeleh [nyǝmbǝlɛh], nyeset [nyɛsɛt], nyigar [nyigar]. the following shows the semantic field of the verb ngethok ‘to cut’ based on the findings in this study. the words in brackets indicate how they are pronounced. table 1. componential analysis of the verb ngethok ‘to cut’ verb with tools without tools target person animal tree/ wood grass / weeds petiole certain foods cloth / leaves / paper / plastic / hair ngethok + + mancung + + mapras + + mbabat + + mbacok + + + mlathok + + munthes + + + ngarit + + nugel + + nggraji + + nggunting + + + + ngiris + + + nyacah + + nyembeleh + + nyeseti + + nyigar + + + + in the component analysis of the meaning of the verb ngethok 'cut' the meaning given is based on (1) means, (2) without tools, (3) targets, and (4) how to do it. cutting with tools journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) dwi atmawati 434 such as knives, axes, machetes, machetes, swords, saws, sickles, and scissors. the activity of ngethok 'to cut' without tools means cutting without using tools or cutting only the fingers. the targets of 'to cut' hitting activities can be people, animals, trees/wood, grass/weeds or the like, leaf stalks, food, cloth/leaves /paper /plastic. furthermore, how to use the cutting tool can be by moving the tool back and forth or from right to left or from left to right; swinging from top to bottom, swinging from left to right or right to left. below is an analysis of the meaning of the verb ngethok 'to cut' and its lexeme. lexical meaning analysis of the verb ngethok 'to cut' and its lexeme this lexical meaning analysis is proposed to determine the difference in the meaning of each lexeme. below is presented the lexical meaning in numerical order to make it easier to understand. ngethok ‘to cut’ means breaking or separating objects with a target into two or more parts, either with tools or without tools. example: olehmu ngethok wit rambutan sesuk wae. ‘you cut the rambutan tree just visit’. 1) lexeme verb mancung means separating the person's head from the body using a sword or machete. the way to do this is by swinging a sword or machete at the neck. example: ora gampang mancung wong, kudu jelas kesalahanne. ‘it's not easy to behead people’, it must be clear what the harm is. 2) lexeme verb mapras ‘prune’ means cutting the plant with a sickle. the trick is to move the sickle from right to left or vice versa, on plants. plants that are cut are plants of tetehan, beluntas, or sugar cane. tetehan and beluntas plants are commonly used as page dividers. the purpose of mapras is to make the plants look shorter and tidier. example: mudi gek disambat maprasi tetehan. ‘mudi is being asked to cut the tetehan plants.’ 3) the verb mbabat means cutting grass, thatch, or shrubs using a tool in the form of a sickle. the purpose of mbabat activity is to make the place clean. the trick is to move the sickle from right and left or vice versa to the target until the plant is cut. example: awit mau esuk, bocah kuwi mbabati suket. ‘since this morning, the child is mbabati cutting the grass’. 4) lexeme mbacok means to stab a sharp knife or the like into a person or animal, whether it is cut or not. example: maling sing mlebu omah mau bengi dibacok karo warga. ‘the thief who entered the house last night was hacked by the residents.’ 5) lexeme mlathok means cutting wood or trees with an ax or machete, by cutting. the piece of wood can be made thick or thin. the wood that is split can be used as building material or firewood. example: pak karto sanajan wis tuwa, isih kuwat mlathok kayu. 'pak karto even though he is old, is still strong in chopping wood’. 6) lexeme munthes means cutting the petiole by hand. the trick is that the fingers hold the leaf stalk and then rotate it until the stalk is broken or cut. example: bayeme aja dipunthesi ben gedhe dhisik ‘don't pick the spinach so it's big first’. 7) lexeme ngarit means cutting grass with a tool in the form of sickle to feed livestock, for example goats, cows, buffaloes. example: sakwise mulih sekolah, bocah kuwi ngarit. ‘after coming home from school, the child looks for grass to feed livestock'. this lexeme ngarit has no indonesian equivalent, which is a paraphrase, namely mowing grass or grazing. 8) lexeme nugel means cutting an object in half with two hands (without tools). example: sanajan ora padha bagianne, aku wis isa nugel timun. timun kuwi banjur takwenehake bocah loro. 'even though it's not the same size i've managed to cut the cucumber. then i gave the cucumber to two small children'. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – oktober 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 435 9) lexeme nggraji "sawing" means cutting an object (usually a relatively large diameter wood, tree, or iron) with a saw. example: parto ngewangi suradi nggraji glugu. ‘parto helps suradi to saw the coconut tree’. 10) lexeme cutting means cutting objects, for example, paper, cloth, plastic, plants with scissors. example: bocah-bocah wis rampung anggone nggunting bahan sing arep dijait. ' ‘the children have finished cutting the fabric to be sewn.' 11) lexeme ngiris means cutting objects into thin or small pieces using a knife tool. you do this by moving the knife that is placed on the object and then pulling the knife forward or backward. example: olehku ngiris brambang nganti ntrocos. ‘i sliced a shallot until i cried'. lexeme ntrocos means tears caused by a stinging eye. the spicy taste in the eyes is caused by substances released in the onion when the onion is peeled or smeared. 12) lexeme nyacah means cutting objects into small pieces with a knife tool. the trick is to swing the knife repeatedly at the object. example: kowe le nyacah gori sing rada cepet ben cepet mateng. ‘you chop the jacks up a bit so they are ready soon'. 13)lexeme nyembeleh means to slit the throat of an animal, for example a chicken, duck, goat, buffalo, cow with a knife or the like. example: suk yen arep bada, nyembeleh pitik karo bebek. ‘towards the eid al-fitr, people usually slaughter chickens and ducks.’ 14) lexeme nyeseti means separating the bark with a knife. the goal is that the wood dries quickly when dried. the wood is used as fuel for cooking. example: bapak gek nyeseti kayu ana mburi omah. ‘father is nyeseti wood behind the house'. 15) lexeme nyigar ‘to split’ means to split into two or more parts with a knife, sword, parang, machete, ax or the like. example: yen kowe kesel anggonmu nyigar kayu, lerena dhisik. ‘if you are tired of chopping wood, take a break first.’ javanese socio-cultural factors revealed in the verbs ngethok 'to cut' and its lexeme javanese people have knowledge of how to plant and various traditional agricultural equipment that has been passed down from generation to generation (lestari et al., 2019). the verbs ngethok 'to cut' and lexeme are popular in javanese society, especially the middle to lower class people because it is related to their livelihoods as famers. sociocultural factors of javanese society can be seen from the verb ngethok 'to cut' and lexemes. the following are socio-cultural factors that are revealed from the lexeme. in javanese society, it is known as lexeme mancung, but mancung activity never occurs. this seems to be due to the character of the javanese who are gentle and avoid violence. pancung is usually applied as a form of punishment for committing certain offenses. next, this mbacok activity is sometimes carried out by farmers. when the farmer is in the field and then sees the snake, the farmer sometimes slashes the snake to death for fear of being bitten. the mancung activities targeted are people, while the targeted mbacok activities can be people or animals. mbacok can occur, for example during a robbery. next, the activity of mlathok is usually carried out by javanese people who live in remote villages with low economic status. they do woodworking activities which can be used as fuel for cooking. the activities carried out by the lower middle class that describe the use of traditional tools are mapras, mbabat, ngarit, nyacah, nyeseti, nyigar. javanese people usually do mapras activities when they see that the grass is tall. mapras activities are performed manually, not using machines. houses in the village or remote villages are usually planted with plants as a barrier. they rarely use the wall as a barrier. next, mbabat or mbabati activities are usually carried out by groups of people with low socio-economic status. people having middle and upper journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) dwi atmawati 436 socioeconomic status will usually order people to do it. ngarit activity is commonly carried out, both by boys who are not yet adults and men. javanese people who live in the main village, which is still remote, mostly own livestock, for example, chickens, cows, goats, buffalo, ducks. this livestock is usually traded to make ends meet. nyacah activities are usually done by javanese who lives in the village when cooking. they usually get the ingredients to be cooked from garden products, such as papaya, jackfruit. javanese people are used to slaughtering animals. javanese people in the village usually raise livestock. these animals are sometimes traded, but sometimes slaughtered for cooking themselves. they usually slaughter chickens as a side dish before eid al-fitr. the side dishes, which were quite a lot, were provided to entertain the visiting brothers. on eid al-adha, people who are able usually slaughter a goat or cow for sacrifice as a form of obedience in obeying islamic religious orders. nyeseti activity is often carried out by people living in remote villages. nyigar activity is usually carried out by javanese people who live in remote villages. they usually split the wood into smaller, thinner pieces for easy use as fuel for cooking. people have a simple mindset. the simplicity of the mindset is reflected in the lexeme, for example, nugel, nggraji. javanese people are used to living as is. with their limitations, javanese people are used to solving problems. this can be revealed from the lexeme nugel, munthes. nugel is cutting an object into two or more parts using the fingers and usually, the object that is cut is soft, for example, a banana. next, munthes activity. munthes activity is carried out by the village community when picking leaves for vegetables. the villagers usually cultivate a variety of vegetable crops, both in the yard and in the fields. to make ends meet for vegetables, they just need to pick them. javanese people who live in remote villages usually carry out sawing activities manually, not using electric saws. the javanese community has long known the nggraji activity because some of them have trees. these trees are sometimes cut down and sawn as needed. the sawing activity can be carried out by one or two people depending on the size of the object to be sawed. if the object being sawed is large, such as a tree trunk, the work is carried out by two people using a traditional saw, not a machine. these activities can create harmony because in doing them there is cooperation and greetings when meeting other people. next is the lexeme of nggunting ‘cutting’ this nggunting lexeme is nothing special because it can be found in almost all regions and at all economic levels. the villagers used to cut with a knife manually. this is different from the middle to upper-class people who live in cities. they usually slice onions and the like using an electric device. conclusion based on the data and discussion in this study, it can be concluded that the lexicon of the verb ngethok 'to cut' has 15 lexemes, namely sharp, mapras, mbabat, mbacok, mlathok, munthes, ngarit, nugel, nggraji, nggunting, slicing, nyacah, nyembeleh, nyeset, and nyigar. each lexeme has a meaning component that can distinguish one lexeme from another. the socio-cultural factors of the community that are revealed in the ngethok lexicon and its lexemes are people who live in villages and work as farmers, people work using traditional tools, people have a simple mindset and a strong spirit of cooperation, and people help selflessly so that a sense of belonging is created kinship. at present, the activities of the community as farmers have partially shifted, for example to the industrial, trade, and information technology sectors. the shift is caused by the development of science and technology, the decreasing of agricultural land because the agricultural land has been converted into shops, homestays, hotels, tourist attractions, and restaurants. i suggest that further research be conducted on the study of the lexicon of the verb ngethok 'to cut' from an anthropolinguistic or ethnolinguistic point of view in javanese. thus, more complete information will be obtained about the life of the javanese people in magelang through the disclosure of the lexicon of the verb ngethok 'to cut' from various points of view. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – oktober 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 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(2017). the effect of javanese language philosophical aspect on the society’s communication pattern in indonesian language. 2nd international conference on innovative research across disciplines (icirad 2017), 121–125. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.2991 /icirad-17.2017.23 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bovis narendra pratama & g. fajar sasmita aji willy wonka’s narcissistic personality in roald dahl’s charlie and the chocolate factory bovis narendra pratama & g. fajar sasmita aji bovisnarendra@gmail.com & fajar@usd.ac.id department of english letters, universitas sanata dharma abstract charlie and the chocolate factory by roald dahl is one of the most popular children’s novels. this novel talks about the adventure of five children who have the opportunity to pay a visit to the most famous chocolate factory in the world, wonka’s. this study aims to reveal wonka’s personality disorder as well as the cause of the disorder. the first objective is to identify willy wonka’s characteristics. then, the second objective is to reveal wonka’s personality disorder and to explain the causes of the disorder. the analysis shows that willy wonka is innovative, flamboyant, stubborn, arrogant, and authoritarian. he loves to be the center of attention by putting on outrageous attire. he cannot stand questions and considers them as criticisms or threat. he always brags the products he creates to his guests. lastly, he always wants to take control of every situation, including taking control of his successor. the last four characteristics mentioned imply that wonka has narcissistic personality disorder. there are three causes of willy wonka’s personality disorder. the first cause is living alone for years without any direct contact with human beings. he exiles himself from the society for years; he only pays attention to himself. the second cause is constantly being media frenzy. people give so much credit to his products and gradually he thinks that he is the best for everything because the society already thinks so. the third cause is the spies who pretend to be his employees and try to steal his recipes. he becomes really devastated because of the tragedy. he fires all of his employees and chooses to never come out of the factory ever again. he has lost his trust on people, and he is too afraid to be betrayed by his workers for the second time. keywords: narcissistic personality disorder, freudian psychoanalysis, roald dahl introduction a work of literature contains some elements, such as plot and character. roberts and jacobs (1987: 61) mentioned that there are eleven elements of fiction; they are character, plot, structure, theme, style, point of view, dialogue, description, commentary, tone, and symbol. despite those many aspects, character might be one of the most important elements because character, in a story, is usually the most discussed aspect by the readers. character would undertake actions, they would experience problems, and they too would overcome the problems they face. this point leads to the benefit that a literary work offers, which is to explore the characters that are mentioned in the storyline. an author would put a character into different matters of life, so that the story would be more dynamic. for instance, a character might have anxiety when meeting a lot of people; another might have anger management issue or considers himself as the most superior person among 36 mailto:bovisnarendra@gmail.com journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) others. by looking at what the character says, thinks, and acts, the readers could have an understanding about him/her. readers can draw a conclusion about the personalities of the characters they read in the literary work. as a matter of fact, an analysis of characters in literary works can open a link between literature and another discipline outside literature itself, one of which is psychology. dastmard et al (2012: 9423) declared that psychology and literature have a reciprocal relation. meaning to say, humans are driven by their psyche or unconscious in making literary works, and those works are able to nourish the humans’ souls. barry implies the relation between the world of literature and psychoanalysis. freudian interpretation, then, has always been of considerable interest to literary critics. the basic reason, again, is that the unconscious, like the poem, or novel, or play, cannot speak directly and explicitly but does so through images, symbols, emblems, and metaphors. literature, too, is not involved with making direct statements about life, but with showing and expressing experience through imagery, symbolism, metaphor, and so on (2002: 102). charlie and the chocolate factory was written by british-born norwegian author, roald dahl, and was firstly published in 1964. basically, the storyline of this book tells about charlie and his adventure along with four other children who had the opportunity to visit and explore wonka’s chocolate factory during one full day. this focuses on willy wonka, who was the owner of wonka’s chocolate factory. although willy wonka is not the main character of the story, his presence actually supports the main character this novel, which is charlie. without the presence of wonka, charlie would never receive a chocolate factory as described in end of the story; he would not be willy wonka’s successor if the author did not put wonka. therefore, it is fair to say that wonka’s presence in dahl’s charlie and the chocolate factory supports not only the main character, but also the storyline. because of that reason the researcher intends to do a further analysis on this particular character as wonka actually shapes the story of this novel. roger b. henkle points out the importance of the non-major character that is presented in the story. henkle names the nonmajor character as the secondary character. in his book, he said, “the most obvious function of secondary characters is to populate the world of the novel (henkle, 1977: 94).” this book delivers a very successful and eccentric chocolatier, willy wonka, the best, the greatest, and the most revolutionary man in the sweets industry. he invented remarkable products ever since he started opening wonka’s chocolate factory. everybody knew about his famous products and everybody was eager to know his secrets in making such illustrious products. although he owned the most famous chocolate business in the world, he was just odd in person. he did not dress up like any ordinary adult men. he put on a plum colored velvet tail coat, green trousers, and a gold-topped walking cane. he also cut any contacts with the society. he kept the iron gates in front his factory shut for years. the thing that came out of wonka’s factory was only his products. he locked himself away inside his enormous factory for the last ten years, and nobody knows why he did so. when he finally opened his factory to the five lucky children, he showed his true personality to his guests. every single thing inside the factory was manifestation of wonka’s vision. he built marvelous things inside the factory by following his vision, such as the chocolate river, the meadow that is completely made of edible sweets, etc. he made sure that everything was approved by him because he could not abide ugliness. wonka loved to exaggerate his achievements by continuously mentioning his products as the best, the most revolutionary, and so on. however, each time a question about his products was delivered, he became very defensive. instead of replying the question, he attacked the person who asked by making irritating comments about him or her. a study about someone’s mind or 37 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bovis narendra pratama & g. fajar sasmita aji behavior deals with the way in finding true identities so that one’s personality can be understood more deeply, and perhaps many hidden facts would appear during the analysis as well. the researcher is eager to study the characteristics of willy wonka, especially because this character has “uncommon” behaviors that are presented throughout the story. to do so the researcher examines the relation between willy wonka’s mind, behavior, and personality development. the researcher has several reasons for making willy wonka as the center of this research. the researcher chooses this topic in order to reveal how willy wonka is depicted in the book; what characteristics does he have in order to discover the events or the things that lead willy wonka into being a narcissistic person, and to show how his narcissistic personality develops. by doing so, then the readers of this study would have more understanding about this unique character. two problems are discussed in this study. the first is wonka’s characteristics that drive him into his narcissism, and the second is the causes of willy wonka’s narcissistic personality. freudian psychoanalysis psychoanalysis believes that human behavior is the result of their early experience. peter barry also describes psychoanalysis in his book. according to barry (2002: 96), psychoanalysis is a form of therapy which aims to cure mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind is the definition of psychoanalysis. according to freud, there are three mental divisions: the id, the ego, and the superego. the id is the agent which tries to only look for pleasure. he adds, “it is filled with energy reaching from the instincts, but it has no organizations, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of instinctive needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle (in storr, 2001: 61).” the second division, which is ego, can be defined as the agent who brings common sense and reasons to the mind. it functions to limit the id. the ego is that part of the mind representing consciousness. it employs secondary process: that is, reason, common sense, and the power to delay immediate responses to external stimuli or to internal instinctive promptings. it is originally derived from the id. freud pictured the ego as a ‘special organization’, which is closely connected with the organs of perception, since it first develops as a result of stimuli from the external world impinging upon the senses (storr, 2001: 61-62). the third mental division is known as the superego. this division is actually the result of prolonged parental influence. superego is the agent which aims to assist the ego. as the child gradually acquires cultural and ethical ideas, his libidinal impulses undergo repression. because of this split within the psyche, the child comes to realize that he can no longer idealize himself; that there is an egoideal to which his own ego does not always conform. freud postulated an agency within the mind that devoted itself to self-observation: which watched the ego, and decided whether or not the ego was conforming to, or fell short of, the ego-ideal. this agency was what freud later named the super-ego (storr, 2001: 63). in order to find out the causes of narcissistic personality disorder suffered by willy wonka, the researcher is going to look at wonka’s unconscious. in psychoanalysis, unconscious can be defined as the storehouse of those painful experiences and emotions, those wounds, fears, guilty desires, and unresolved conflicts we do not want to know about because we feel we will be overwhelmed by them (tyson; 2006: 12). tyson adds that until we find a way to know and acknowledge to ourselves the true causes of our repressed wounds, fears, guilty desires, and unresolved conflicts, we hang onto them in disguised, distorted, and selfdefeating ways (2006: 13). 38 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) another important point when analyzing wonka’s unconscious is finding the core issue(s) that he has. in other words, the researcher attempts to find the significant cause that makes wonka become a person who suffers from narcissistic personality disorder. core issue can be the reason why somebody is acting in a certain way when faced by a situation that reminds him/her with the most unpleasant experience in the past. tyson argues that core issues define our being in fundamental ways. it stays with us throughout life and, unless effectively addressed, they determine our behavior in destructive ways of which we are usually unaware (2006: 17). from tyson’s description about core issue, the researcher concludes that core issue is an event or experience which has a tremendous impact on someone’s unconscious that it becomes the main reason why someone behaves in a certain manner. narcissistic personality disorder the term narcissistic is derived from the story of narcissus, a greek who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool. he could not leave his reflection and in the end died for admiring himself in the reflection. terence wilson et al explain that a narcissistic person is characterized by grandiose fantasies or behavior, constant need for admiration, and lack of empathy. this grandiosity is often seen in arrogant, boastful behavior, such as making unwarranted claims of achievement or intimacy with famous people (wilson et al, 1996: 386). susan nolen-hoeksema explains further about narcissistic personality disorder. she explains that people with narcissistic personality disorder rely on their inflated self-evaluations and see dependency on others as weak and threatening. as the name implies, grandiosity is a distinguishing feature, as they are preoccupied with thoughts of their selfimportance and with fantasies of power and success, and they view themselves as superior to most other people. in interpersonal relationships, they make entitled demands on others to follow their wishes, ignore or devalue the needs and wants of others, exploit others to gain power, and are arrogant and condescending (nolen-hoeksema, 2014: 268). corsini mentions five criteria of narcissistic personality disorder: 1. inflated self-image (e.g., displays pretentious self-assurance and exaggerates achievements; is seen by others as egoistic, haughty, and arrogant). 2. interpersonal exploitativeness (e.g., taken others for granted and uses them to enhance self and indulge desires; expects special favors without assuming reciprocal responsibilities). 3. cognitive expansiveness (e.g., exhibits immature fantasies and an undisciplined imagination; is minimally constrained by objective reality, takes liberties with facts, and often lies to redeem selfillusions). 4. insouciant temperament (e.g., manifests a general air of nonchalance and imperturbability; appears coolly unimpressionable or buoyantly optimistic, except when narcissistic confidence is shaken). 5. deficient social conscience (e.g., flouts conventional rules of shared social living, viewing them as naïve or inapplicable to self; reveals a careless disregard for personal integrity and an indifference to the rights of others) (1994: 449). willy wonka’s character 1. innovative surviving in sweets industry is not a piece of cake because there are lots of competitors that might take wonka down and wonka is really aware of that fact. he has to create magnificent things; things that have never been made before. he has to come up with something new in order to last in that business. the demand to become successful and lasting in the industry has led willy wonka to become an incredibly innovative man. wonka constantly thinks out of the box in order to create remarkable products that everyone would love. he does not only 39 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bovis narendra pratama & g. fajar sasmita aji produce some ordinary chocolate and sweets, yet he invents some other unique products as well. the next citation shows some of willy wonka’s creations. “mr. willy wonka can make marshmallows that taste of violets, and rich caramels that change color every ten seconds as you suck them, and little feathery sweets that melt away deliciously the moment you put them between your lips. he can make chewinggum that never loses its taste, and sugar balloons that you can blow up to enormous sizes before you pop them with a pin and gobble them up. and by a most secret method, he can make lovely blue birds’ egg with black spots on them, and when you put one of these in your mouth, it gradually gets smaller and smaller until suddenly there is nothing left except a tiny little pink sugary baby bird sitting on the tip of your tongue (p.9)” some of wonka’s other inventions include the ice cream that would not melt even during the hottest day, the gum that could be blown as big as it can get, the everlasting gobstoppers and the hair toffee. those delicacies are not even available in the market until he launches them. the previous sentence is a clue that wonka is the pioneer who is able to bring enhancement to the sweets business. he needs his products to be the best and offbeat at the same time. with his findings, he brings breakthrough to the sweets industry and makes his business becomes stronger than any other sweets factories. willy wonka does not follow trends that has already existed, yet he sets them. wonka understands that only making the best quality chocolate is not enough if he wants to be the best, which is why he keeps on producing extraordinary products. by being an innovative man who is able to invent great products, he knows that people all around the world would be his loyal customers. below is another citation of charlie bucket’s grandfather’s dialogue when telling his family members about how great willy wonka is. “’clever!’ cried the old man. ‘he’s more than that! he’s a magician with chocolate! he can make anything – anything he wants! isn’t that a fact, my dears?’ (p.8)” 2. flamboyant willy wonka always wants people to acknowledge his presence. one example which shows that he loves to seek for admiration or attention can be seen through the outfit that he wears at the d-day of the chocolate factory tour. he wants people to only pay attention to him. the following citation explains the outfit that wonka wore as well as his physical appearance. ...he had a black top hat on his head. he wore a tail coat made of a beautiful plumcoloured velvet. his trousers were bottle green. his gloves were pearly grey. and in one hand he carried a fine gold-topped walking cane. covering his chin, there was a small, neat, pointed black beard – a goatee. and his eyes – his eyes were most marvellously bright. they seemed to be sparkling and twinkling at you all the time. the whole face, in fact, was alight with fun and laughter (p.42)” the citation above implies that willy wonka owns the quality of being a truly bold and gaudy figure. it is not complicated if someone wants to be the center of attention among a group of people, and it has been practiced by wonka. wonka wants to make people know and recognize his presence; he needs all attention to be drawn into him. that is why he puts on such over-the-top outfit. commonly, adults would not have such attire, especially on a daily basis, yet wonka prefers not to follow the mainstream. people can see wonka as a flamboyant person only by looking at what he puts on his body. another proof which makes him loves to gain attention is by his way of speaking. according to the book, wonka speaks in rather high tone. it is clearly stated by the author himself by saying “...his voice was high 40 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) and fluety.” when hearing something strange, people would naturally turn their heads and look for the source of that noise. in wonka’s case, it is his high and fluety voice which makes people would turn their heads to him, because most people would not use such manners when they speak. he understands that by putting on such outrageous outfit and speaking in a certain way, his guests would put their eyes on him. he definitely attempts to make his presence recognizable, especially after no one saw him for years. because of that reason, he wants to create a lasting first impression. in addition to that, wonka wants his guests to acknowledge that the man they met at that day was the one and only willy wonka. he tries to emphasize on the point about being ‘the one and only willy wonka,’ and for that, he needs an effort to be recognizable. the citation above can also show his effort on being ‘the one and only’ which is by displaying an array of outrageousness. 3. stubborn during the tour in wonka’s factory, he is surrounded by five children who are highly curious; and most children usually have that same characteristic. a child would explore things around him/ her, and when it is necessary, they would directly deliver a question. sometimes they are going to ask questions continuously until they get the answers they need. these children who come to wonka’s factory are eager to know more and more about the properties which wonka has inside his enormous factory. these children are very curious about almost anything inside wonka’s factory because they have never seen anything like it before in their lives. therefore, they start asking questions about the names of certain instruments and their functions, and they also ask about the reason why willy wonka needs certain instruments and so on. somehow, their questions seem to annoy wonka. he is bothered by what they ask. willy wonka cannot stand their curiosity and eagerness to know about the instruments inside his factory. in fact, be becomes grumpy and easy to deliver irritating comments towards those children, especially to veruca salt and mike teavee because both of them ask the most questions among others. he simply does not care about how the kids or the parents might react when they hear his irritating words. one time, he makes a comment about charlie’s physical appearance by saying “you look like a skeleton! what’s the matter? hasn’t there been anything to eat in your house lately? (p.64)” wonka says that out loud in front of charlie and his grandfather without any guilt. he does not know that charlie comes from a really poor family, but still, it is not justifiable for him to make such comment. moreover, everytime the kids start to question about things or give comments, willy wonka would say “there’s no time to answer silly questions (p.67).” or “don’t argue my dear child, please don’t argue! it’s such a waste of precious time (p.70).” wonka considers those children’s questions as criticisms and threats; that is why he often feels irritated by what they ask. it indicates that he does not want other people to go against what he thinks and what he does. moreover, wonka does not want to look as if he were weak by not being able to give satisfying answers to those questions. therefore he becomes defensive each time a question is delivered. he tries to emphasize his status as the best chocolatier in the world by not wanting to take criticisms. he already feels comfortable with his accomplishments and thinks that they are better than anyone else’s. because of that reason, he cannot tolerate anybody who would dare to replace him, or at least doubt about his position as the best man in the sweets industry. commonly, asking questions is a normal thing to do because the guests probably need more information, but wonka does not agree with that thought. for wonka, the children’s questions are indications that the guests are having doubt of him as the best chocolatier, so he becomes very defensive and stubborn. 4. arrogant willy wonka is also an arrogant man. it is true that he is able to invent great things, 41 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bovis narendra pratama & g. fajar sasmita aji but then he brags about it by showing it off to his guests. he brags to the guests again and again. the following citation represents his arrogance. “it’s a stick of gum! it’s a stick of the most amazing and fabulous and sensational gum in the world! (p.72),” and “this gum is my latest, my greatest, my most fascinating invention (p.73).” wonka surely gives emphasis on his sentences by saying “the most” or “greatest”. he needs his visitors to know that he is the one and only willy wonka; the best man who creates the best sweets in the world. nobody could ever replace his spot as the most revolutionary man in making sweets and chocolate. the quotation in the previous sentence proves that wonka has an obsession over his achievements. he already knows that his products are great, but only knowing about that fact is not enough for wonka. he feels the necessity to announce his achievements to others. therefore, he does so; he tells everyone who comes to his factory about the fact that his products are the greatest and the best of the best. 5. authoritarian by the end of the story, charlie is the only one left and willy wonka immediately realizes that he has found a successor for his factory. then he told the lucky boy that he has won wonka’s chocolate factory. wonka wants charlie to take over his business as soon as he dies. he refuses to choose an adult to run his business because he knows that he would not have enough power to control an adult. with a child, it would be very different. it would be so much easier for wonka to control a child than an adult. instead of choosing a professional adult businessman or entrepreneur, he chooses charlie, a loving and obedient boy from a poor family to take over his factory as soon as he retires. making a child to be his successor indicates that wonka is an authoritarian. by choosing charlie, in this matter, a child, wonka can watch every single step that charlie takes. moreover, he knows the fact that charlie is a very obedient boy who does not ask so many questions like veruca or mike, so that he wants to take advantage of that. wonka believes that charlie will do exactly what he is told to do, he would follow any instruction that is given to him, so he chooses charlie among the other children. though wonka is finally able to find a successor who is going to continue his business, he wants to maintain his position in the business as the one in charge and also his superiority. the key to the previous sentence is the word ‘superiority’. wonka wants to make sure that he is still at the very top of any other people. meaning to say, he has a plan to control charlie. the following citation might support the notion that wonka is a dominative person. “i’m an old man. i’m much older than you think. i can’t go on forever. i’ve got no children on my own, no family at all. so who is going to run the factory when i get too old to do it myself? someone’s got to keep it going – if only for the sake of the oompa-loompas. mind you, there are thousands of clever men who would give anything for the chance to come in and take over from me, but i don’t want that sort of person. i don’t want a grown-up person at all. a grown-up won’t listen to me; he won’t learn. he will try to do things his own way and not mine. so i have to have a child. i want a good sensible loving child, one to whom i can tell all my most precious sweet-making secrets – while i am still alive (p.115116.)” it is clear that wonka is very authoritarian. he would do whatever it takes to keep his position at the very top, including hiring a child to run his business. he makes a very strong impression by saying that a grown-up will not listen to him. the last four characteristics mentioned in above indicate that willy wonka, as a matter of fact, suffers from a personality disorder which is known as the narcissistic personality disorder. according to paul näcke, narcissism can be defined as the attitude of a person who treats his own body 42 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) in the same way in which the body of a sexual object is ordinarily treated – who looks at it, that is to say, strokes it and fondless it till he obtains complete satisfaction through these activities (in strachey, 1925: 4). a narcissistic person is usually obsessed over his/her own achievements, believes that he/she is too unique for anyone to understand them, and they have the tendency to exploit others. in addition to that, corsini states five criteria to determine narcissism on someone: 1. inflated self-image, indicated by exaggerating achievements. 2. interpersonal exploitativeness, indicated by taking others for granted and using them to gain personal advantages. 3. cognitive expansiveness, indicated by exhibiting immature fantasies. 4. insouciant temperament, indicated by showing imperturbability except when narcissistic confidence is shaken. 5. deficient social conscience, indicated by flouting conventional rules of shared social living and disregarding the rights of others (1994: 449). all those criteria about narcissistic personality disorder are found within willy wonka. firstly, wonka brags about his inventions by naming them as the most fabulous, the best, and so on. he does not only do that on one occasion, but also on another occasion during the factory tour. secondly, although corsini says that a person with narcissistic personality disorder usually shows imperturbability, it would not occur whenever the person’s confidence is shaken. in willy wonka’s case, he becomes very aggressive and extremely adamant as soon as two of the children (veruca salt and mike teavee) constantly deliver questions to him. he considers mike and veruca’s curiosity as threat because he thinks that both of them have second thoughts about his achievements and inventions. it is their continuous questions that have shaken wonka’s confidence, that is why he defends himself by being extremely rude and grumpy whenever mike or veruca start to deliver questions. he needs to find a way to defend his confidence so that it will not fall apart. the way he defends it is by being rude, adamant, and grumpy. basically, he wants to tell both children that everything must be done in his way and there can be no doubts about his creations for it is a rude thing to do. lastly, wonka’s tendency to exploit others supports the notion of him suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. it can be seen when he talks to charlie about the difference between a child and an adult. “i’m an old man. i’m much older than you think. i can’t go on forever. i’ve got no children on my own, no family at all. so who is going to run the factory when i get too old to do it myself? someone’s got to keep it going – if only for the sake of the oompa-loompas. mind you, there are thousands of clever men who would give anything for the chance to come in and take over from me, but i don’t want that sort of person. i don’t want a grown-up person at all. a grown-up won’t listen to me; he won’t learn. he will try to do things his own way and not mine. so i have to have a child. i want a good sensible loving child, one to whom i can tell all my most precious sweet-making secrets – while i am still alive (p.115116.)” the causes of willy wonka’s narcissistic personality 1. lack of social life the first cause that implies wonka as a person who suffers from narcissistic personality disorder is his lack of social life. meaning to say, willy wonka does not have any direct contact with humans or the outside world for a long period of time; he does not do any communication with fellow human beings. instead of having human employees, he employs the oompaloompas, his tiny workers from the loompaland. 43 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bovis narendra pratama & g. fajar sasmita aji “i smuggled them over in large packing cases with holes in them, and they all got here safely. they are wonderful workers. they all speak english now. they love dancing and music. they are always making up songs (p.54).” it is told that wonka has been isolating himself inside the factory for about ten years. the followings are quotes from grandpa joe’s dialogue when he explains about wonka never coming out to public anymore. “months and months went by, but still the factory remained closed (p.15).” “nobody sees him any more. he never comes out. the only things that come out of that place are chocolates and sweets (p.16).” during those long time of isolation he develops a thought that he only needs to take care of himself and his business, therefore, he does not feel any necessity to think about anyone else’s problems. he has neither children nor family of his own. meaning to say, willy wonka has been living all alone throughout his whole life. in chapter 30, willy wonka told charlie “i’ve got no children of my own, no family at all (p.115).” the statement implies wonka has a serious lack of social life. also, his statement indicates that he has been overcoming every single thing by his own throughout his life. therefore the researcher can conclude that wonka is already used to listen and pay attention to his own. he himself becomes the priority in his life since he does not have any other person who lives with him or any other person to look after. because of that condition, wonka gradually develops a mindset about his position. he sees himself as the more superior figure than everyone else. he sees himself as the center of everything. 2. media frenzy the second reason for the cause of wonka’s narcissistic personality is continuously becoming media frenzy. the society somehow has a part in making wonka becoming a guy with narcissistic personality disorder. wonka owns the best chocolate factory in the world, and everybody knows him. he is truly aware of the fact that his products are very successful. they always become the number one, and his customers love them. his customers adore whatever comes out of wonka’s factory. the society puts him on the spotlight. he and his products also become huge global phenomena. it is the news and people’s acknowledgment of his products that actually increases his pride of himself. acknowledgement in this context is considered as praise by willy wonka. the more acknowledgment he gains, the more self-esteem he has. that supports the idea that narcissistic people rely on the praise of others to build up their self-esteem (wilson et al, 1996: 386). wonka is able to grow more and more self-esteem due to the fact that the media constantly puts him as the center of attention and also due to the fact that he is successful and adored by the society. moreover, he lives by himself, so that it is so easy for him to admire himself because he only deals with his own for the last ten years. one example of people’s acknowledgment can be found through grandpa joe’s dialogue to charlie. “’clever!’ cried the old man. ‘he’s more than that! he’s a magician with chocolate! he can make anything – anything he wants! isn’t that a fact, my dears?’ (p.8)” 3. the spy tragedy the other reason which causes willy wonka become anarcissistic person is the spy tragedy. it is a moment when spies who pretended to be wonka’s employees were sent to steal the secret recipes by his business competitors. the tragedy is a horrible experience for wonka because it remarks the moment when he lose his trust on people and cut any contact with the world. below is a quotation taken from grandpa joe’s dialogue when he tells the spy tragedy to charlie. “yes. all the other chocolate makers, you 44 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) see, had begun to grow jealous of the wonderful sweets that mr. wonka was making, and they started sending in spies to steal his secret recipes. the spies took jobs in the wonka factory, pretending that they were ordinary workers, and while they were there, each one of them found out exactly how a certain special thing was made (p.15).” before isolating himself wonka used to have human employees; he hired the town people to work inside his factory. unfortunately wonka finds out that there are spies inside his factory. he becomes totally devastated for being afraid that his business would possibly come to an end. the following quotations explain willy wonka’s devastation after his business competitors were able to sell their products using wonka’s recipes. “…and mr. willy wonka tore his beard and shouted, ‘this is terrible! i shall be ruined! there are spies everywhere! i shall have to close the factory!’ (p.15)” “…he told all the workers that he was sorry, but they would have to go home. then, he shut the main gates and fastened them with a chain. and suddenly, wonka’s giant chocolate factory became silent and deserted. the chimneys stopped smoking, the machines stopped whirring, and from then on, not a single chocolate or sweet was made, not a soul went in or out, and even mr. willy wonka himself disappeared completely (p.1516).” the impact of the spy tragedy was so huge that it later became a painful memory that wonka could not get rid of and kept inside his unconscious. according to tyson (2006), who quotes freud, the unconscious mostly keeps humans’ painful memories and emotions that a person might not want to know because that person might be overwhelmed by them. in relation to wonka’s case, it is clear that the tragedy really shakes wonka’s mind and influences the changes in his behavior. because the impact of the spy tragedy is extremely huge, it has enough power to alter the personality of the poor willy wonka. he, who was once has the willingness to interact with people becomes much closed and chose to separate himself from the society. after the devastating spy tragedy, wonka’s unconscious directs him to isolate himself because he cannot repeat the same mistake as when he has human workers in the factory. it is proven by wonka firing all of his employees and locking himself away from the society for about ten years (1964: 14-15). therefore it is fair to say that the spy tragedy becomes the turning point of willy wonka, where he becomes narcissistic. willy wonka was once a man who does not have any disorder becomes a man who suffers from narcissistic personality disorder. tyson quotes a term which is known as core issues that can be defined as our being in fundamental ways. core issues stay with us throughout life, and, unless effectively addressed, they determine our behavior in destructive ways of which we are usually unaware (2006: 17). the spy tragedy which wonka been through is the core issue of why he becomes a narcissistic person because the tragedy actually determines his behavior, such as being arrogant, stubborn, and authoritarian. there is a relation between core issue, arrogance, stubbornness, authoritarian side, and narcissism. the explanation is on the following paragraph. wonka becomes stubborn, arrogant, and authoritarian because his unconscious tells him to act in those ways. he was once betrayed by spies, who pretended to be his employees but instead stole his recipes, and he is afraid to be betrayed again; he cannot have the same mistake for the second time.it is proven by him firing all of his employees, separating himself from the society for a very long time (1964: 14-15), and finally hiring small people called the oompa loompas to be his workers (1964: 53). hiring the oompa-loompas was the choice he made since he still needs workers to run the factory. wonka believes that the oompaloompas would not betray him, for they only need a better place for living and cacao 45 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bovis narendra pratama & g. fajar sasmita aji beans. wonka already provides a shelter for them and gives them cacao beans, so in return they would be his loyal worker (1964: 53-54). firing his employees, separating himself, and hiring the oompa-loompas show that he does not want to be betrayed for the second time. he would rather be alone forever than being betrayed again. from there his unconscious directs him to be stubborn, arrogant, and authoritarian as a defense due to his fear of being betrayed. wonka is stubborn especially when he feels that someone is having a second thought about him or his products. it can be seen when he talks to veruca salt and mike teavee. instead of having second thought, both of the children are only delivering questions to satisfy their curiosity about wonka’s factory. he would immediately cut the children’s questions by saying “there’s no time to answer silly questions (p.67).” or “don’t argue my dear child, please don’t argue! it’s such a waste of precious time (p.70).” wonka’s arrogance can be seen when he continuously brags about his products by calling them the best, the most fabulous, and so on (1964: 72-73). he tries to show his achievements to his guests by bragging about them. as corsini says, a person with narcissistic personality disorder often exaggerates his/her achievement (1994: 449), which makes willy wonka seem arrogant. after that, wonka loves to be the dominant figure. nolenhoeksema and corsini state that a person with narcissistic personality disorder would have no doubt to exploit or take others for granted, and wonka actually does that. it is proven by wonka choosing charlie to become his successor. he takes charlie for granted. he knows that by making a child as his successor, he would still be able to control everything since the child would not have enough power to go against his will. finally, the authoritarian side, stubbornness, and arrogance which he constantly implies in the way he acts, indicates that he suffers from narcissistic personality disorder resulted from the spy tragedy. meanwhile, in relation to psychoanalysis, it is fair to say that wonka’s id has taken over much of his state of mind. anthony storr said “the id is primitive, unorganized, and emotional: ‘the realm of the illogical’ (2001: 60).” he also adds that the main purpose of id is to gain satisfaction and pleasure. his id is too strong for the ego to handle, so wonka continuously follows what comes through his mind without re-thinking what might be resulted from his actions. for example, he would immediately cut mike teavee’s or veruca salt’s questions because he feels extremely irritated by their questions. that action is actually driven by his id, because cutting the children’s questions simply gives satisfaction to him. he does have to hear the rest of the question which apparently offensive for him. wonka’s ego, the agent which brings common sense and reasons, and his superego, the agent which helps the ego, are too weak when compared to his id. it is broken because of the causes of wonka’s narcissism that the researcher has mentioned in the previous paragraphs. in his book, storr also explains the origin of id. as indicated in freud’s description, the id is governed only by the most basic, primitive principle of mental dynamics: avoidance of ‘unpleasure’ caused by instinctual tension, which can only be achieved by satisfaction of instinctual needs accompanied by pleasure (2001: 61). the quotation above shows that the id comes to live because it is driven by unpleasant experience. in relation to wonka, his lack of social life, the media frenzy, and the core issue (the spy tragedy), was so overwhelming for his state of mind that it needs an ‘escape’; a state where he could feel free and satisfied, where his desires are fulfilled. from there, his id starts to take over in order to be satisfied. however, wonka’s id has taken over for too long and through his id, he develops the characteristics that imply narcissism, such as being arrogant, flamboyant, stubborn, and authoritarian. 46 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) conclusion from the analysis, the researcher has found five characteristics from willy wonka. firstly, he is ostentatious. he loves to display what he owns in order to gain attention from other people. he wants his guests to acknowledge his presence; he wants to be the center of attention, which is why he puts on outrageous outfit. apart from his physical appearance, he also has his own way of speaking, which is high and fluety. secondly, willy wonka is incredibly innovative. he is able to create some amazing and remarkable products from his factory. he creates things that have never existed. some of his products are one of a kind, because they are originally made by wonka. thirdly, willy wonka is stubborn. wonka becomes extremely adamant, rude, sand grumpy whenever the children start asking questions about the instruments inside wonka’s factory. fourthly, willy wonka is an arrogant man. wonka loves to brag about his creations and his products to the guests. he calls them as the best, the most fabulous, and so on. he likes to exaggerate his achievement, hoping that people would be more and more amazed by him. lastly, willy wonka is authoritarian. he always wants to be the dominant figure, because he loves to control people to gain personal advantages. it is proven by him choosing charlie to be his successor. he believes that charlie would do anything because basically a child would not have the power to fight against an adult. wonka does that to micromanage, exploit, and take charlie for granted. the analysis of the first problem shows that willy wonka suffers from narcissistic personality disorder. the hypothesis is supported by the characteristics of willy wonka that match with the characteristics of a narcissist. wonka always wants to be the center of attention, he tends to exploit other to gain personal advantages, he often exaggerates what he achieves, and he tends to consider questions as threats or criticisms. from the analysis of the second problem, there are three causes of willy wonka’s narcissistic personality. the first cause is willy wonka’s lack of social life. he has been isolating himself inside his factory for years. during those years he gradually develops a mindset that he only needs to take care of him and listen to him because he basically has nobody to be taken care of. from there he becomes more and more egoistic and he becomes the center of everything. he lives by himself and during those years he does not share anything with anyone, just himself. the second cause is becoming the media frenzy. the media always puts him on the spotlight. the news about him always becomes a hit. though he never comes out the factory, he is able to know that people always talk about him, and people really acknowledge him. it is the acknowledgement that raises the pride of him. the more acknowledgements he gains, the more self-esteem he has. unfortunately, the pride rises so far that causes him to suffer narcissistic personality disorder. the third cause is the spy tragedy. the spies pretend to be his employees, but instead they try to steal his recipe. wonka is extremely devastated when he finds out about the spies, so he fires all of his employees and disappears from the society for years. the impact of the spy tragedy is so huge for wonka that he could not get rid of it. later, it becomes a painful memory. the tragedy influences the change inside willy wonka. he, who was once willing to interact with human being, does not want to do that anymore. he chose to lock himself away from the society. he is afraid of being betrayed again, for he cannot repeat the same mistake again. his unconscious that directs him to do so, which is the result of the tragedy that shakes up wonka’s mind. wonka’s id takes over most of his state of mind, which is the result of the lack of social life, media frenzy, and also the spy tragedy. being ruled by the id, then wonka only follows what id directs him to do. as a result, wonka develops several characteristics that imply narcissism. 47 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 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(www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit /freud1925.pdf). september 13, 2015. strange, jack roy. abnormal psychology understanding behavior disorders. new york: mcgraw-hill, inc., 1965. tyson, lois. critical theory today. 2nd edition. new york: routledge, 2006. wellek, rene, and austin warren. theory of literature. new york: harcourt, brace & world, inc., 1956. wilson, terence., k. daniel o’leary., peter e. nathan., lee anna clark. abnormal psychology: integrating perspectives. needham heights: allyn & bacon, 1996. 48 http://www/ http://www.britannica.com/topic/sigmund-freud-on-psychoanalysishttp://www.britannica.com/topic/sigmund-freud-on-psychoanalysishttp://en.bookfi.org/book/1484561%2c) http://textroad.com/pdf/jbasr/%20j.%20basic.%20appl.%20sci.%20res., http://textroad.com/pdf/jbasr/%20j.%20basic.%20appl.%20sci.%20res., http://www.jstor.org/stable/4166922) http://jurnal.ugm.ac.id/lexicon/article/view/5318) http://jurnal.ugm.ac.id/lexicon/article/view/5318) http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/%203791395.pdf?_=1460615580974). http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/%203791395.pdf?_=1460615580974). http://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/freud1925.pdf) http://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/freud1925.pdf) willy wonka’s character 1. innovative 2. flamboyant 3. stubborn 4. arrogant 5. authoritarian the causes of willy wonka’s narcissistic personality 1. lack of social life 2. media frenzy 3. the spy tragedy references 105 vol. 21 no. 1, april 2021, pp. 105 – 115 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i1.2937 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. the world literature and women’s voice in toni morrison’s the bluest eye (1970) and han kang’s the vegetarian (2007) indiwara pandu widyaningrum indinwidya@gmail.com graduate program in english language studies, sanata dharma university, indonesia abstract article information this study seeks to investigate the women’s voice in the world literature depicted by ethnic female authors from african-american and korean descent. gaining international recognition in the world literature, toni morrison’s the bluest eyes (1970) and han kang’s the vegetarian (2007) reveal different social-cultural conditions about how women are presented in their respective nation. morrison presents the life of colored women struggling with racial discrimination in the predominant white society. meanwhile, kang employs the symbolic food of meat and vegetarianism to reveal the women’s voice against social conformity. applying écriture feminine or women’s writing in the analysis, both toni morrison and han kang scrutinize the stereotypical representation of women as passive, obedient, and lacking. in examining the two works, some steps were done: 1) having close reading towards the text to analyze the representation of women; 2) doing the socio-cultural analysis in connection to the women’s voice; 3) drawing the conclusion about the significance of world literature to the women’s voice. this study finds that the world literature has its significant contribution as the windows for global readers to understand women’s issues portrayed in two different nations. not only to present women’s voice, ethnic female authors such as toni morrison and han kang indeed share the local culture through their novels. with this condition, the world literature enables to break the barriers of male western authors as the center by offering room for female writers from non-western countries. keywords: african-american; korean; world literature; women’s voice received: 31 october 2020 revised: 8 january 2021 accepted: 21 january 2021 introduction the development of world literature has given richer colors to the variety of regions and cultural nations circulated in a global scope. taking account of the word ‘world’ literature, it refers to a geographical term that includes the entire globe without taking aside a https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) indiwara pandu widyaningrum 106 particular region. it covers all areas not only in europe or america but also non-western countries from asia and africa (longxi, 2013). with the concept of openness, the world literature functions as the multiple windows which allow readers to experience various literatures from any region (damrosch, 2003). providing more access to the foreign readers, people from all over the world could finally learn about national culture, history and value represented in the literature. before the emergence of world literature, traditionally the western has become the center of literature and civilization. it begins from the antiquity era when famous western authors and philosophers mostly come from greek and roman. along with the establishment of western imperialism, many of the canonical literary works were originated from the western countries. centralized in western countries, the canonical literature was majorly written by male authors (lombardi, 2019) such as william shakespeare, charles dickens and geoffrey chaucer. under this circumstance, the binarism emerges, strengthening the position on western and making non-western as the periphery. however, the barrier is not only limited between western and non-western but it also includes male and female writing. the traditional belief says only men should write, but in world literature nowadays, it turns out to be a more flexible platform for women to express their idea. in literary history, the male western point of view reflects the representation for all kinds of human beings including non-western people and women. hence, there had been discrimination in a way white men’s lenses were used to define marginalized groups. at this point, the shift of landscape in the world literature gives room for authors from noneuropean countries and female writers to show up in the global market. when it comes to writing, the patriarchal society expected women’s narratives to be feminine and less vulgar in expressing their thought (saito, 2010). however, the idea of écriture feminine or the feminine writing by hélène cixous and luce irigaray in the 1970’s affords females to express their own passion originally from the women’s mind (moi, 2008). as the women write, écriture feminine encourages women to represent the repressed and misrepresented femininity done by the western culture (vachhani, 2019). highlighting the necessity for women to write themselves and create their own history (stroud, 2016), the women’s writing resists the conservative norm which suppresses the women’s voice. in order to investigate the women’s writing in world literature, this study applies two selected works from female authors which are toni morrison’s the bluest eye (1970), and han kang’s the vegetarian (2007) translated by deborah smith in 2015. the representative female authors speak up the local experience from african-american and korean point of view related to the issue happening in their society. throughout the discussion, the focus of the analysis is centered on feminine writings from two selected novels depicting both the representation of women and the local issue about women in their respective country. in relation to world literature, it suggests a framework centering on ‘world literary space’. in which, it negotiates between historical, political economic context and the aesthetic autonomy of the text (casanova, 2014). by reading the female writings from different nations, it will be easier for the readers to capture the representation of women ranging from various countries. two selected works by female authors from african-american and korean descent are chosen as the object of the study for some reasons. in the scope of world literature, these two names are widely recognized for the foreign readers. unlike morrison who writes her debut novel in english language, han kang originally writes her book in her national language, korean. due to its success, the novel is translated so that more people outside the nation have access to read the books. regarded as female non-european authors, toni morrison and hang kang against the patriarchal structure by putting the women’s voice in their narrative. moreover, their emergence in the world literature raises the non-european rights to be able to write and present their identity. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. i – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 107 winning a nobel and pulitzer prize american novelist, toni morrison writes a tale of african-american young girl named pecola who has a desire to be white by having the beautiful bluest eye (bracken, 2020). through her novel, morrison uplifts the experience of how it is to be african woman living in a predominant white society where being colored has been connotated to be less and ugly. instead of being judged by deed and intention, black women are treated differently because of their skin color (eddine, 2018). as a woman of color, morrison brings up the african-american’s female voice about the double marginalization of colored women to live in a white patriarchal society. similar to morrison, han kang also writes about the life of korean women under the male’s subjugation. having a brutal dream about bloody animal, yeong-hye as the main character decides to be a vegetarian. by becoming a vegetarian, a married woman yeong hye, rebels against the strict korean social mores (krys, 2016). han kang symbolizes meat and vegetarianism to portray women’s voices in a patriarchal society. living in a country where meat is consumed by a large of people, the figure of a vegetarian woman contradicts what is called normal in society. the opposite of normal representation of woman indeed makes this novel as a counter to social conformity. han kang depicts the bizarre representation of a woman in the vegetarian whose novel has won the man booker international prize in 2016. this somehow leads her to open a new door for korean literature to be mainly known (licher, 2016). estanto (2020) in his writing offers the advancement of woman portrayal, position and chance as portrayed in asian literature. the study discovers that women are considered as subsidiary compared to men (2020). similar to estanto, the current study also employs women’s perspective to see how female writers in each nation vocalize the representation of women. unlike estanto who puts his scope on asian literature, the current study intends to have two different female authors who are part of african-american, and korean nation. the variety of nations in this study seeks the contribution of female authors in giving a depiction about women from a particular country as well as enabling the readers to understand both social and political conditions in each nation. the previous research about feminism by rahimnouri and ghandehariun (2020) investigates feminist stylistic in doris lessing’s the fifth child (1988). the authors combine the analysis from both linguistic and literary perspective. on the basis of the stylistic analysis, the authors find out that harriet as the female character is described as traditional, old-fashioned, powerless, and subordinated. although both the current research and the previous research by rahimnouri and ghandehariun (2020) apply the woman perspective in the analysis, there is a gap in a way the current research focuses on not only women but also national culture in the context of world literature. along with the discussion, the study aims to analyze two main points about: 1) the constructed images of women in the society reflected in two selected novels; 2) the ethnic female writers and socio-cultural issue in world literature. using the perspective of female writing in the context of world literature, this study observes how female writing describes the position of women in global literature and how national identity about social and cultural condition has been portrayed in the narrative. methodology in order to complete the analysis about women representation in the two selected novels, this study applies a descriptive qualitative method. the data are taken from toni morrison’s the bluest eye (1970) and han kang’s the vegetarian (2007) as the primary texts and some journal articles as the secondary data. as the representative of africa-american and korean literature, both toni morrison and hang kang express the women’s voice against normative construction made by the male western society. in addition, the two novels by non-european female authors add more nuances for the non-western to introduce their identity and portray the social, cultural, and political condition in their respective journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) indiwara pandu widyaningrum 108 origin. focusing on the presence of two ethnic female authors, the analysis connects the world literature and marginalized female noneuropean authors. as a matter of fact, the shift from european centric to a more globalized country in world literature has enabled the peripheral group to rise and define themselves. this research posits the mode of women’s writing by ethnic female authors as the core of the analysis. to support the discussion about the women’s voice, écriture feminine or the women’s writing is applied as the theoretical framework in the analysis. thus, it aims to scrutinize how women were presented and shaped by the dominant class. the perspective from the women’s writing finally can empower the women to create new world literature where women could write in a more liberating way (stroud, 2016). there are three main steps done in this study. first, close reading towards the primary texts is needed to find how morrison and kang portray the representation of women. second, the researcher analyzes the way women’s representation is connected to the sociopolitical condition in african-american and korean descent. lastly, the study examines the significance of world literature to ethnic female writings of vocalizing female point of view. results and discussion the constructed images of woman in the society highlighting the idea of female liberation, écriture feminine refers to the writing by women, although it is not limited that men can write it too. what has been problematized by the feminists is about gender and sexuality that is constructed in the society (moi, 2008). naturally, the feminine characteristics are related to caretaking and domestic roles. meanwhile, the masculinity is associated with roles that require physical activities (murnen & don, 2012). the gender roles division between male and female make a clear portrait about inequalities among them. in the two selected novels, both authors display the stereotype about a good wife for a man. they never seem to have boyfriends, but they always marry. certain men watch them, without seeming to, and know that if such a girl is in his house,— they know their work clothes will be mended, washed, and ironed on monday,—her hips assure them that she will bear children easily and painlessly. and they are right. (morrison, 2004, p. 78). taking account of the word ‘wife’, morrison’s the bluest eye captures that most men prefer the brown girls from the northern part to be their wife. the bourgeois black women educate themselves to be good wife which means she dedicates herself to take good care of her husband, family, and household. it seems to be a natural and fixed condition that activities related to the household are associated with the idea of femininity. the concept of patriarchal society believes that men are born to dominate and women to be subordinate (sultana, 2012). under this condition, the society is constructed by the patriarchal structure which gives less access for women to decision making, legal rights, and women’s mobility. depicted by morrison, she subtly evaluates the femininity measured by the nature of a woman to give birth. in society, the figure of women is thus generalized to bear children because that is what women do. women are expected to marry a guy and be a mother. therefore, the women who choose to be unmarried and childless remain undervalued. in the scope of medical care, black women have to deal with stark and persistent disparities (abdou & fingerhut, 2014). in the medical community, the stereotypical perceptions of black women lead to biased treatment in medical care since “black women are more likely to engage in risky health behaviors such as promiscuous sexual behavior” (abdou & fingerhut, 2014, p.318). when he got to me he said now these here women you don’t have any trouble with. they deliver right away and with no pain. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. i – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 109 just like horses. —when them pains got harder, i was glad. glad to have something else to think about—i had to let them people know having a baby was more than a bowel movement. i hurt just like them white women. (morrison, 2004, p. 112). not only vocalizing the women’s voice, but morrison also positions herself as the black woman. through her writing, she resists the negative stereotype of black women. with their hips, black women will have less pain than white women. seen as the horse, morrison deconstructs the stereotype towards the black women. as a part of the black community, morrison attempts to redefine the identity of colored women asserting that black women are also human beings who are equal to white women. the social demand of femininity is also depicted in kang’s the vegetarian. women are supposed to be good with their hands for cooking, ironing and tidying the house because that makes them a good wife. in the society, women have to deal with demands of femininity. this expectation of the society towards women somehow produces the internalized belief about gender roles and constructed identity (marso via hall, 2010). in keeping with my expectations, she made for a completely ordinary wife who went about things without any distasteful frivolousness. every morning she got up at six a.m. to prepare rice and soup, and usually a bit of fish. (kang, 2015, p.10-11). this situation, as portrayed by the authors, raises a question whether or not women have a choice to do what they actually want outside the manifested gender roles in the society. the limitation for women to freely decide their own choice somehow reveals the lack of respecting women’s freedom (2010). in consequence, the voice of women under patriarchal domination tends to be submerged by the common expectation in the society. not only about gender roles, toni morrison and hang kang implicitly assert the representation of women as passive in a maledominated society. a constructed representation of female is legitimately to be a fundamental entity. woman is defined to be inferior and subordinate (madsen, 2000). in morrison’s writing, there are differences between pecola and sammy in a way they express disappointment from the upsetting family. there was a difference in the reaction of the children to these battles sammy cursed for a while, or left the house, or threw himself into the fray.— pecola, on the other hand, restricted by youth and sex, experimented with methods of endurance. though the methods varied, the pain was as consistent as it was deep. (morrison, 2004, p. 42). being a girl, pecola cannot express what she feels. she tends to bury her voice when she is upset. the cultural image of girls in the society demands her to stay at home, even if she wants to run away. feeling overwhelmed, women are supposed to keep quiet and hold her emotion inside. meanwhile, the masculinity casts men to be freer in expressing their anger, not to hold back what is in the mind. under the male domination, kang portrays that woman is not allowed neither to speak up her own voice nor to rebel. the demand of femininity in the society requires women to be obedient and reserved. she was a woman of few words. it was rare for her to demand anything of me, and however late i was in getting home she never took it upon herself to kick up a fuss— even when our days off happened to coincide, it wouldn’t occur to her to suggest we go out somewhere together. (kang, 2015, p.11). from mr. cheong’s point of view, he likes yeong-hye to be his wife because she is an obedient and quiet woman. it is a privilege for mr. cheong that he would be at ease to control his wife. the society intentionally shapes women to be passive through the collective culture cultivated in women’s representation. the figure of a good wife is also embedded in yeong-hye’s sister, in hye, he studied his wife, a picture of responsible compassion as she carefully approached their son with the medicine. she’s a good woman, he thought. the kind of woman whose goodness is oppressive. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) indiwara pandu widyaningrum 110 (kang, 2015). from the male perspective, having a good wife is similar to having someone who can be controlled. the masculinity in the figure of male molds the ideal character for a man as strong and determined. in order to make himself to be superior, man needs someone less inferior to become a devoted wife. in a patriarchal society, women are required to follow some rules for presenting themselves as the kind-hearted and angelic figure. from the novel by kang, the author inserts a contestation that females should be obedient. he didn’t know if her desperate efforts to be understanding and considerate were a good or a bad thing. perhaps it was all down to him being self-centered and irresponsible. but right now he found his wife’s patience and desire to do the right thing stifling, which made him still more inclined to see it as a flaw in her character. (kang, 2015, p.79). hye’s husband feels there is something missing in his wife. doing the right thing and following the expectation in the society reveal that a woman does not really express the real self of her. the portrayals of obedient women like in hye and yeong hye are trapped to fulfill the communal expectation. in the concept of feminine writing or écriture feminine, women must write, and they must not think of themselves as a woman, simply just be themselves (moi, 2008). therefore, there is a connection between a representation of a good wife in kang’s the vegetarian and normative culture cultivated in the society. when a woman is trying to fit and fulfill other’s expectations, it actually leads them away from being the way they are. the image of lacking in woman’s figure is also depicted in toni morrison’s the bluest eye. women are not only presented as inferior and secondary to man. ironically, in patriarchal society, women are perceived as ‘things’ instead of human beings. “he touched me— here and here.” she pointed to the tiny breasts— “miss dunion came in after everybody was quiet, and mama and daddy was fussing about who let mr. henry in anyway, and she said that mama should take me to the doctor, because i might be ruined, and mama started screaming all over again. (morrison, 2004, pp. 89-91). frieda a ten-year-old girl becomes the victim of sexual harassment by mr. henry. from this case, frieda has become the object to release mr. henry’s sexual desire. moreover, the constructed society believes that virginity has become the main determination of women’s worth and value. harassed by the older man, the society doubts if frieda has been ‘ruined’. the way the author uses the word ‘ruined’ indicates implied meaning to show women as an object. when the girl loses her virginity, people will assume that she is broken and losing her worth. another part of the novel captures underaged woman, pecola, as the main character who is sexually abused by her own father, cholly. removing himself from her was so painful to him he cut it short and snatched his genitals out of the dry harbor of her vagina. she appeared to have fainted. (morrison, 2004, p. 145). in her writing, morrison presents a complex family relationship mirroring a traumatic experience in the childhood. described as an alcoholic father, cholly rapes pecola for the sake of satisfying his sexual desire. women are reduced as the material object for man (tyson, 2006). at this point, pecola is no longer seen as cholly’s daughter, instead she turns to be the appropriation of male’s property. the ethnic female writers and sociocultural issue in world literature the literature that has been circulated in a wider scope does not only function as a piece of writing. from the social and cultural depiction in the literary work, the literary work can be the instrument for the author to reflect the local society and its circumstances. what seems to be local is now brought for the foreign readers through the window of world literature. as an african-american author, toni morrison writes down the life of african woman who migrates and then resides in the journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. i – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 111 united states. through her writing, she presents the racial discrimination faced by the colored people and criticizes the western thinking about ideal beauty centering on the figure of white. morrison goes beyond the binarism of the black male literary tradition which is generally divided into black/white, good/evil, self/other. highlighting the voice of black women, morrison explores the plights of women in a patriarchal society which are often ignored by the majority of african-american authors (taha & ibrahim, 2020). the criticism towards the white predominant society in the novel reveals the position of african women. having darkskinned-color and being a woman, women of colored indeed suffer from double oppression in the society. with the collective cultural image imposed by racism, black women are regarded as undervalued and it prevents them from achieving full selfhood in life (madsen, 2000). in toni morrison’s the bluest eye, pecola as the main character desires to have blue eyes to make herself beautiful just like the white women. —if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different. her teeth were good, and at least her nose was not big and flat like some of those who were thought so cute. if she looked different, beautiful, maybe cholly would be different, and mrs. breedlove too. —each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. (morrison, 2004, p. 45). the bluest eyes tells a remarkable story illustrating a poignant tale about the inferiority complex embedded in the figure of colored people. feeling less to be black, pecola wonders if only she is white the society will accept and love her. it has been manifested in the society that standard beauty refers to eurocentric features such as a small nose, thin lips, straight hair, and fair skin (walker, 2014). thus, black women are considered as the opposite of physical attractiveness. set in toni morrison’s hometown in lorain, ohio, the collective value of standard beauty is everything that resembles to white people. the cultural product of standard beauty is invested through the advertisement and other mass media. with the common western idea of the ideal beauty, there is a normative construction shaped in the society by putting the european side as the center. a picture of little mary jane, for whom the candy is named. smiling white face. blond hair in gentle disarray, blue eyes looking at her out of a world of clean comfort. –to eat the candy is somehow to eat the eyes, eat mary jane. love mary jane. be mary jane. (morrison, 2004, p. 48). the depiction of beauty in mass media clearly shows white women as the typical desirable woman. unconsciously, people assume the physical appearance outside white-standard-beauty is naturally ugly. the contrast body image in black reveals the oppressing mind to make dark-skinned-color people feel ugly compared to white. for this reason, it is easier for white people to subjugate colored people because they are intentionally made to feel less and lacking. the normative construction about standard beauty based on eurocentrism raises critics from ethnic writers such as toni morrison. through her writing she argues her opposition towards white domination. the character of claudia mainly narrates the whole story in the novel. in addition, claudia’s presence depicts a young colored woman standing for herself and her people. i hated shirley. younger than both frieda and pecola, i had not yet arrived at the turning point in the development of my psyche which would allow me to love her (shirley). (morrison, 2004, p. 21). opposing to pecola and frieda who admire shirley temple, claudia could not relate why people are fond of the white girl. the representation of claudia implies a rejection towards collective culture embedded in the society, that only white resembling beauty. although she is only nine years old, claudia has her own opinion about preferable body image in the society. she rejects the standard beauty from western thinking, and she is aware that the inferiority complex has been purposely embedded in colored people. unlike toni morrison who speaks about gender oppression combined with racial issues, kang narrates women’s rights enfolded journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) indiwara pandu widyaningrum 112 in the theme of nature. han kang criticizes the society’s demand towards women to fulfill gender roles and to position themselves lower than men. coming from south korea where meat has been the regular dish, the author reversely pictures the meat as something that turns yeong-hye to be a vegetarian. for korean, meat has been placed in the hearts of korean people for its nutrients and the richness of local food made from meat. her fragrant, caramelized deep-fried belly pork was achieved by marinating the meat in minced ginger and glutinous starch syrup. her signature dish had been waferthin slices of beef seasoned with black pepper and sesame oil, —she’d made bibimbap with bean sprouts, minced beef, and pre-soaked rice stir-fried in sesame oil. (kang, 2015, p.18). mr. cheong adores yeong-hye’s ability when it comes to cooking. from the quotation it shows meat is used in many local korean foods such as bibimbap. when yeong-hye suddenly decides to be a vegetarian after her nightmares, it actually reveals the author’s intention to break conventional norms in the society. “you’re claiming that you’re not going to eat meat at all from now on?” she nodded. “oh, really? until when?” “i suppose…forever.” (kang, 2015, p. 17). in korea, there are some interpersonal problems faced by vegetarians. for korean society, meat has generally held a dominant position in mealtime (yoon, 2015). in the cultural context, sharing or ordering similar meals together can strengthen the emotional bonds and intimate relationships among the people (2015). hence, vegetarians can be seen as disturbing the harmony in the community for their principle of avoiding meat. “father, i don’t eat meat.” in an instant, his flat palm cleaved the empty space. my wife cupped her cheek in her hand. —he’d hit her so hard that the blood showed through the skin of her cheek. her breathing was ragged, and it seemed that her composure had finally been shattered. (kang, 2015, p.36). yeong-hye’s decision to stop eating meat frustrates her family. being a vegetarian has caused yeong-hye to be deviant and it results in discordance in the family. the situation gets worse when yeong-hye’s dad physically abuses his daughter to eat meat. however, the decision of yeong hye to be a vegetarian does not merely mean the changing of conventional consumption. in fact, it also marks the transformation of redefining her identity as a free woman. the reverse image from a meat lover to be a vegetarian subtly portrays the realization of yeong-hye upon her autonomy as a woman. being a vegetarian, she can finally connect herself to nature that gives her more lively emotion. eating meat represents the idea of greediness of human beings to violently kill the animals. my bloody hands. my bloody mouth. in that barn, what had i done? pushed that red raw mass into my mouth, felt it squish against my gums, the roof of my mouth, slick with crimson blood (kang, 2015, p.16). the image of being a vegetarian suggests the author’s intention to say that women have the right to choose how they want to live their life. the story emphasizes that women have autonomous right towards their body. the criticism towards women’s bodies is revealed when yeong-hye chooses not to wear bra unlike other women, the only respect in which my wife was at all unusual was that she didn’t like wearing a bra (kang, 2015, p. 11). the representation of yeong-hye against the common image of women is defined to be unusual. women seem to be constrained to express what they want including the restriction to the way normal women should dress. han kang, resembling a woman with nature, conveys the passivity embedded in the two figures. both nature and women are often objectified by the man’s greediness to fulfill physical need from nature and sexual desire from woman. at this point, what yeong-hye does in the novel is to break the conventional norm by relating herself to nature. look, sister, i’m doing a handstand; leaves are growing out of my body, roots are sprouting out of my hands…they delve down journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. i – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 113 into the earth. endlessly, endlessly…yes, i spread my legs because i wanted flowers to bloom from my crotch; i spread them wide… (kang, 2015, p. 99). having finally connected to nature, han kang portrays the women’s freedom in the figure of yeong-hye. the people think yeonghye is losing her mind as she lives in the psychiatric hospital. by this condition, han kang shows that breaking the legitimate value in the society will give the cost for women regarded as weird, unusual and outcast. however, the image of woman who can finally choose what she wants radiates yeong-hye’s power to become limitless amid the stereotypical belief about femininity. conclusion in the context of world literature, literary work functions as the window to understand more about national identity from the various countries. foreign readers can now enjoy the local flavor that has been circulated widely across the globe. the more spaces for nonwestern authors shows the dissolvement of barriers between western and non-western. starting from the 1970’s, women are encouraged to write to express their mind as a woman without a limitation about masculinity and femininity. many female authors emerge, and it remarks the improvement of female writing. the post-structuralist women aim to promote the idea of gender equality between man and woman. the ethnic female writers like toni morrison as african american author and han kang from south korean present the images of women in patriarchal society. both morrison and kang criticize the representation of women as passive, reserved, and obedient in order to be classified as good women as well as good wives. however, their writing emphasizes the close depiction to what reality expects women to be. in addition, the écriture feminine identified in the two novels highlights the importance of women’s right for having the same opportunity as men to freely choose what they desire. as a woman of color, morrison depicts the racial discrimination and gender oppression imposed on the black woman. the society shapes a constructed reality assuming that being beautiful means to be white. therefore, the black women are intentionally made to be inferior and lacking. depicting the experience of african living in america, the bluest eye by morrison portrays local struggle from colored people struggling with the racial prejudice in predominant white society. meanwhile, the vegetarian by han kang portrays the counter to conventional society through the images of vegetarian woman. she depicts the local culture of korean people where meat can be easily found in korean meals. presenting a vegetarian woman, kang highlights that woman is close to the nature in terms of its passivity and inferiority. nevertheless, she delivers her criticism that women have the same right to choose what they want to be over their body and mind. through the female writing circulated across the globe in world literature, readers can have clear depiction about literary works written by female authors from certain regions such as the united states and korea. the work by female authors does not only embrace women’s empowerment, besides it also reflects the local culture in their respective country. at this point, the circulation of ethnic female authors benefits the global readers to understand more about women’s experience and the local tradition in one specific nation. references abdou, c. m., & fingerhut, a. w. (2014). stereotype threat among black and white women in health care settings. cultural diversity and ethnic minority psychology, 20(3), 316–323. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036946 bracken, h. (2020). the bluest eye. encyclopædia britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/thebluest-eye casanova, p. (2014). literature as a world. in world literature in theory (pp. 192– journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) indiwara pandu widyaningrum 114 208). west sussex: john wiley & sons, ltd. damrosch, d. (2003). what is world literature? world literature today, 7(1), 9–14. eddine, n. a. s. (2018). the idealization and self-identification of black characters in the bluest eyes by toni morrison: using voyant text analysis tools. journal of literature, languages and linguistics, 49, 26–31. estanto, d. (2020). the advancement of women’s portrayal, position, and chance in asian literature. nobel: journal of literature and language teaching, 11(1), 16–26. https://doi.org/10.15642/nobel.2020.1 1.1.16-26 hall, c. (2010). third-wave feminism and the defense of “choice.” perspectives on politics, 8(1), 255–261. kang, h. (2015). the vegetarian (d. smith, trans.). new york: hogarth. krys, l. (2016). violence and being human: a conversation with han kang. world literature today, 90(3–4), 61–67. licher, v. (2016). publishing in south korea in 2016: “the vegetarian” of han kang vitalizes the korean book market. publishing research quarterly, 32(4), 297–300. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-0169480-5 longxi, z. (2013). the relevance of “weltliteratur.” poetica, 45(3/4), 241– 247. moi, t. (2008). ‘i am not a woman writer’: about women, literature and feminist theory today. feminist theory, 9(3), 259–271. https://doi.org/10.1177/146470010809 5850 morrison, t. (2004). the bluest eye. new york: rosettabook. murnen, & don. (2012). body image and gender roles. encyclopedia of body image and human appearance, 1, 128–134. rahimnouri, z., & ghandehariun, a. (2020). a feminist stylistic analysis of doris lessing’s the fifth child (1988). journal of language and literature, 20(2), 221– 230. https://doi.org/10.24071/joll.v20i2.258 6 saito, r. (2010). writing in female drag: gendered literature and a woman’s voice. japanese language and literature, 44(2), 149–177. stroud, t. (2016). redefining feminine virtue: écriture féminine and the voyage in the dark. academiaedu. https://www.academia.edu/36656473/ redefining_feminine_virtue_%c3%89cri ture_f%c3%a9minine_and_the_voyage_i n_the_dark sultana, a. (2012). patriarchy and women’s subordination: a theoretical analysis. arts faculty journal, 4, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.3329/afj.v4i0.12929 taha, b. i., & ibrahim, m. f. (2020). the double faced ideology: antifeminism and racism in toni morrison’s the bluest eyes. journal of tikrit university for humanities, 27(8), 56–66. tyson, l. (2006). critical theory today a user friendly guide second edition. london: routledge. vachhani, s. j. (2019). rethinking the politics of writing differently through écriture féminine. management learning, 50(1), 11–23. https://doi.org/org/10.1177/13505076 18800718 walker, s. (2014). black beauty, white standards: impacts on black women and resources for resistance and resilience [dissertation]. university of massachusetts boston. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. i – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 115 yoon, d. (2015). “our forces have redoubled”: world literature, postcolonialism, and the afro-asian writers’ bureau. cambridge journal of postcolonial literary inquiry, 2(2), 233–252. https://doi.org/10.1017/pli.2015.11 phenomena vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 133 a transitivity analysis of miranda in “sexy”: the character in jhumpa lahiri’s short story tia xenia xenia.tia@gmail.com english language studies, sanata dharma university abstract recently, discourse analysis is very popular in analyzing literary text. one of approaches to analyze texts is using transitivity in systemic functional grammar developed by halliday. therefore, in this paper, transitivity is employed to analyze the character, miranda, in jhumpa lahiri’ short story. because of the different processes, sentences or lines related to the character, miranda, were collected and later were analyzed. the result shows that the mental process, the verbal process, the behavioral process, the material process, the relational process, and the existential process appear in the short story. it indicates that the writer wants to characterize deeply about the main character who took an important role in the story. moreover, the mental process is dominant to appear in the story. by this frequent occurrence, we can see that the writer wants to convey the message that miranda is a thinker who eventually realizes that having an affair is not fair to both the mistress and the wife. keywords: short story, systemic functional grammar, transitivity approach introduction interpreter of maladies is a book collection of nine short stories by jhumpa lahiri published in 1990. since jhumpa lahiri is an indian american who grew up in america and is influenced by both indian and american culture, this collection mainly talks about the lives of indian and indian american who are caught in both indian culture and american culture. it also centers on the characters and exposes how they feel and react. the nine short stories collected are “a temporary matter”, “when mr. pirzada came to dine”, “interpreter of maladies”, “a real durwan”, “sexy”, “mrs. sen’s”, “this blessed house”, “the treatment of bibi haldar”, and “the third and final continent”. “sexy” is the most noticeable titles among those tales since it evokes people in a sense of appearance, beauty, and understanding how the object is called sexy. this short story shows the relationship between a white woman, miranda, and a married indian, dev, who works in boston. the mistress, miranda living alone in an apartment, often feels lonely. she talks less. she is also described as sexy. however, sexiness itself is defined as loving someone you do not know by a child named rohin. miranda gives an idea about the theme of this short story. it shows the relationship which ends in the feeling of guilt in loving other person’s husband. this theme reveals how miranda blinded by her relationship finally realizes that falling in love with a married man is wrong. for those reasons, in order to provide a specific focus for the discussion, the character of miranda in the short story entitled “sexy” tia xenia 134 by jhumpa lahiri is chosen as the source of the data. the book collection by jhumpa lahiri is chosen because her collection is an international bestseller and the winner of the pulitzer prize for fiction. moreover, the character of miranda is analyzed because in her book collection of nine short stories lahiri emphasizes mainly in the emotional journeys of characters. besides, miranda herself is the main character who is mentioned repeatedly as “miranda” instead of referring her with “she”. this reflects the textual meta-function which shows how the writer, lahiri, emphasizes the message to the readers or hearers. in order to make the writer’s interpretation of the text explicit especially about the character, miranda, the transitivity approach in systemic functional grammar is employed by investigating the processes in the transitivity model which appears in the text. therefore, based on the background considerations, the aim of this study is to see how these processes are employed in creating the character reflected in the short story using transitivity approach of systemic functional grammar. sfg is employed because common short story cannot be separated from literary words whose wording has a close relationship with grammar. the functional grammar is to interpret the meaning of the text explicitly. it means grammar is used to analyze for finding sensible and useful things inside the text. it is emphasized by halliday (1994, as cited in eggins 2004: 2) and halliday (1985) that the aim has been to construct a grammar for the purpose of text analysis; one that would make it possible to say sensible and useful things about any spoken, or written, in modern english...whatever the final purpose or direction of analysis, there has to be a grammar at the base.…a text is a semantic unit, but not a grammatical one. but meanings are realized through wordings; and without a theory of wordings – that is, a grammar – there is no way of making explicit one’s interpretation of the meaning of a text. as a result, after the analysis, the character of miranda will be more understandable due to the transitivity approach and how the transitivity processes in creating the character of miranda can be figured out. in addition, the transitivity analysis explains how finally miranda realizes that having an affair was not fair at all to both his wife and his mistress, and decides to stop loving someone’s husband. this study is also beneficial for the readers since it helps them critically understand the characters in the literary text. this study focuses on miranda as the character in the short story written by jhumpa lahiri. it uncovers miranda as the character in the story by employing the transitivity process. in order to reach the research goals of this study, the transitivity processes analysis is employed. the data were analyzed in top-down approach. first, the clauses related to the character miranda were collected and analyzed based on their transitivity processes. each process was analyzed to reveal the character. the occurrence of the transitivity processes the processes related to miranda are material process, mental process, verbal process, relational process, behavioural process, and existential process. these processes are used to reveal the character of miranda. the frequency of occurrence of each process can be presented in the following table. table 1: the transitivity processes no. processes occurrence percentage 1 mental 51 50% 2 verbal 15 14.71% 3 behavioral 14 13.73% 4 material 13 12.75% 5 relational 8 7.84% 6 existential 1 0.98% total 102 100% the result shows that mostly the mental process appears in the short story. this indicates that the writer wants to emphasize vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 135 the character of miranda as a woman who always consciously thinks and feels about something that makes her worried. therefore, it is understood that in the end of the story miranda finally has a guilty feeling of loving a married man. moreover, the writer really wants to show the emotional journey of the character miranda who becomes a mistress of an indian man. in order to reveal miranda deeper, each process will be explained in detail in the following discussion. the mental process the mental process is the dominant process in this story and it is directly related to miranda. in this process miranda can be analyzed as a thinker since her action is less than her cognition. she always has something to think in her mind. she always thinks, wonders, knows, and remembers about different things. it can be seen in the following sentences: (1) she thought he might be spanish, or labaese. (2) she wondered if the actress and the dixit girls were related. (3) she remembered the fat part of it was green. (4) miranda knew how to wait. from the sentences, it can be seen that the process of thinking is very dominant in characterizing miranda. she always has something in her mind. she thinks whether something is good or not. besides, she is also a kind of person who is always curious about something. she wants to uncover what is bothering in her mind. therefore, as in the mental processes cognition process frequently occurrs, the writer intends to tell that the character, miranda, is a thinker, menaning that miranda has a sharp cognition. moreover, the character of miranda can be revealed more in these sentences. in this process, the perception process can be found. the verbs like hear, see, watch, notice, indicate that miranda is a sensitive woman. she can be a good listener. she cares about anything around her. in addition, miranda likes imagining something. from the following sentences, she mostly imagines or pictures her man, dev. it is assumed that she is falling in love with the man who in this story he has a wife in india and she hopes something good for her relationship. (5) she heard him opening the door,.. (6) miranda pictured the two of them at a restaurant.. (7) she imagined his kicking her…. (8) she saw women wearing skirts.. (9) miranda noticed a man standing at one of the corners (10) miranda watched him sleep… furthermore, miranda is also described as a sensitive person. in this process, we barely find the verbs of hate or dislike, but we can see the verbs of affection such as like. through this verb, it indicates that there is no bad feeling or hatred toward anybody. it denotes that miranda is a positive person and it shows the beautiful nature of miranda. we can find the verbs of hoping like wish, believe, and hope. by these verbs, miranda is seen as someone who has positive thinking. she likes to wait for something good. it shows her optimism to be happy. (11) miranda wishes she could draw a good likeness. (12) she liked walking through the cramped… therefore, as the mental process in this story is dominant, it can be concluded that miranda is a thinker, positive person, caring person, and a sensitive person. it means the writer wants to show that miranda has something to do mostly with her feeling or her mind. the verbal process in the verbal process, this short story mostly uses active voice in which the main character miranda is frequently shown as the receiver. it indicates that miranda is the one to whom the verbal process is directed. she always listens to someone who is speaking or telling something, especially when she has a conversation with dev. it means that miranda is powerless towards dev who takes the tia xenia 136 control of his mistress. we can say that dev is dominant in the relationship with miranda. it can be seen in the following sentences: (13) …he told her to stand at one end of the bridge. (14) dev told her stories about his childhood. (15) …he asked her questions. (16) he told her about how, at eighteen…. miranda’s passivity in the conversation shows that the writer wants to tell that miranda has a defensive character. she does not want to be blamed of what she has done with her lover dev, the married man. that is why miranda always keeps silent about her cousin’s husband’s getting affair. this is be clearly shown in the sentences: (17) laxmi told miranda her cousin’s husband had fallen in love with another woman. (18) laxmi told miranda that it wasn’t the first time her cousin’s husband had had an affair. the behavioural process the processes which commonly occur are nodded and stared. the first common occurrence is nodded. it gives us another reason to refer that miranda is not a talkative person. instead of saying “yes” or something indicating that she agrees on something, she just nods her head to convey her message, answer, or agreement with something. the example of the sentences appearing in the short story are as follows: (19) miranda nodded. (20) she nodded. the second process in behavioral process is stared. it indicates the close relationship with mental processes since it mixes the material process and the mental process. as a result, it proves that miranda is a thinker. she does the action of staring and what she stares at is the unimportant objects. it means that while she is staring, it is supposed that she thinks of something bothering her mind. therefore, it adds the proof that miranda is a thinker. besides, it is seen that miranda is always worried about something. she is even worried about having a call from her lover or not. the sentences can be seen in the following part. (21) still she stared at some bottles, some short, other tall… (22) she stared at her own phone… the material process there are some lines in material process that are employed in reflecting the character, miranda. the character most frequentlyappearing in the material process is miranda. even though she is the actor in this process, she does not have any effect on other people around her. it seems that she is doing the activity for her own. if we take a look at the goal of this process, it reflects some particular places where she likes to go and most of the goals are inanimate objects. it can be seen in the following sentences. (23) miranda went to filene’s basement to buy herself things she thought a mistress should have. (24) …she walked all the way to central square, to an indian restaurant. (25) miranda fastened the chain in the door. (26) … she went to the kitchen to pour herself more coffee. moreover, it is noticed that miranda has the beneficiary role. something has been done for her. as mentioned in the verbal process, the use of the active voice is intended for those who have power. as a result, this material process strengthens the evidence that dev has the power over miranda. he takes the control of miranda who has a beneficiary role and goal in this process. it is shown in these sentences: (27) …he showed her his favorite place in the city. (28) …he carried her over to the bed. (29) … (he) entered her without a word. the relational process mostly the relational process reflects the character of miranda in both her appearance and personality. the appearance of miranda shows her as a good looking woman. it is vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 137 employed in the attributive and identifying process. apart from her appearance, her personality can also be seen in the attributive process. from the attributes which are assigned to the carrier, miranda, hs a hesitant personality. she is afraid of something easily due to her own thought. from this, it is seen that the writer wants to show that miranda has a bad experience with indian when she was a child. it can be easily understood by these sentences. (30) she had silver eyes and skin as pale as paper… (31) she had a narrow, egg-shaped head that rose to a prominent point. (32) … she had been too frightened even to walk in the same side of the street as the dixits’ house (33) …she was nervous to ask. the existential process for existential process the data obtained is only one sentence. however, by this sentence, we can find the main cause in this story and the main cause which bothers miranda’s mind and influences miranda towards her own decision of breaking up with her married-man lover. the main cause can be seen in the sentence (34) in which the word “sexy” that is said by her lover bothers her feeling as well as her thought and also affects her life. in short, the main cause that influences the character miranda is the word “sexy” which is uttered by the man she falls in love with and is defined by rohin, 7 years old, as “loving someone you do not know.” (34) it was the first time a man had called her sexy. conclusion considering the result section, we come to conclusion that the character of miranda can be found out by employing the processes in transitivity approach. the character of miranda can be seen in the material processes, the mental processes, the verbal processes, the relational processes, the behavior processes, as well as the existential processes. those appear in the short story since the writer wants to focus on characterizing the main character miranda. the dominant process appearing in this short story is the mental process. it indicates that the writer intends to emphasize how miranda thinks, feels, and believes about her relationship with a married indian man. furthermore, the cognitive process occurs frequently which means that miranda is a thinker. moreover, from those processes, it can be found that miranda could also be characterized as a defensive, passive, sensitive, kind, lonely woman. therefore, it can be concluded that by using the processes employed in the story, the character miranda can be mostly revealed as a thinker who always has something bothering her mind. references eggins, s. an introduction to systemic functional linguistics. 2nd edition london: continuum, 2004. print. halliday, m. a. k. descriptive linguistics in literary studies. london: edward arnold, 1964. print. halliday, m. a. k. an introduction to functional grammar. 2nd edition. london: edward arnold, 1985. print. halliday, m. a. k. an introduction to functional grammar. 2nd edition. london: edward arnold, 1994. print. labov, w. & j. waletsky. narrative analysis. 1967. print. lahiri, j. interpreter of maladis stories. boston: houghton mifflin harcourt, 1999. print. simpson, p. language, ideology and point of view. london: routledge, 1993. print. 29 vol. 22 no. 1, april 2022, pp. 29-41 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i1.3434 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. us police department’s representation in the new york times article “george floyd’s brother pleads with congress: ‘make it stop’”: a critical discourse analysis sherine gracia & trisnowati tanto sherinegracia12@gmail.com & trisnowatitanto@gmail.com english department, universitas kristen maranatha bandung, indonesia abstract article information the study aims to examine the representation of the us police department in a foreign media news article, the new york times, entitled “george floyd’s brother pleads with congress: ‘make it stop’”. the text itself discusses an incident of brutality and systemic racism involving the us minneapolis police officers towards george floyd, an african-american, which leads to his death. this incident can be considered to be one of the biggest news that attracts the most attention, reaction, and action all over the world in 2020. this research uses critical discourse analysis proposed by teun a. van dijk, focusing only on the micro-level analysis: macrostructure, microstructure, superstructure. there are four linguistics tools applied in the microstructure, which are rhetorical question, lexicalization, metaphor, and implication. the qualitative descriptive method is the research method used. since the data are collected by searching for information in the internet and other printed references, this research is also categorized into a library research for the fact that it has a wide scope of sources, including the academic journal, newspapers, magazine, e-books, relevant web resources, and various multimedia. the result shows that through these three aspects of the microstructure analysis, the author portrays a negative representation of the us police department. keywords: george floyd; micro level; representation; us police department received: 1 june 2021 revised: 2 november 2021 accepted: 18 december 2021 introduction language, as a system of communication, contributes to such an essential role in every aspect of human’s life, notably in human’s nature as a social-being. as one of the most influential features in community, language itself is multifunctional. it allows us to express our ideas, thoughts, feelings, as well as to show one’s representation. according to hall (2013), “representation means using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people” (p. 1). on the basis of showing representation, https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` sherine gracia & trisnowati tanto 30 language can be used to depict the ideology that one has brought towards certain things, either in a positive or negative way. in terms of analyzing the language academically to create one’s representation, i apply one linguistics theory, critical discourse analysis (cda) developed by a famous linguist, teun a. van dijk. according to van dijk (2015), cda is defined as “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” (p. 466). these forms of inequality are considered to be sociopolitical problems; thus, the main aim of a critical discourse analysis is addressing these problems. consequently, approaches employed in cda are diverse and interdisciplinary and they apply many linguistics areas such as stylistics, rhetoric, and sociolinguistics (van dijk, 2008). cda is divided into three major approaches: macro-level analysis, meso-level analysis, and micro-level analysis; however, the scope of my research will be limited only to the micro-level analysis, focusing on the macrostructure, microstructure, and superstructure analyses. van dijk (as cited in anwar, rasyid, & visiaty, 2021, p. 62) explains that the macrostructure covers the main idea of a discourse and gives the portrayal of what the text is about to the audience. it is analyzed from the lead and the headline of the text. furthermore, the microstructure is the actual and direct structures of the discourse that is expressed in the text. it differentiates between meaning and its expression in the surface structures, which are in the forms of words, phrases, clauses, and sentence constructions. the third aspect, the superstructure analysis, deals with the schematic form or categorical structure that organizes the global content of a discourse. with regard to showing the issue of socialpower abuse and inequality in a social and political context, one of the media that can be chosen is a newspaper. a newspaper article belongs to a news report genre. according to tanikawa (2017), a news report delivers “the first-instance news on a daily news cycle: whatever happened on a given day”. to maintain the objectivity in a news report, a journalist should portray the issue in a neutral and unbiased manner, regardless of his or her personal belief. however, once subjectivity is involved in writing a news report, the writer’s ideology and belief is conveyed to a certain party, group, or individual, increasing the possibility of the news report to be biased. considering this reason, taking a news report as the data source will be a very intriguing source for the research. one recent event that catches lots of attention is george floyd’s death in 2020, which may be one of the biggest news that attracts the most attention, reaction, and action all over the world. on may 25, 2020, george floyd, a black man who was arrested for the report of using a counterfeit of $20 bill, died in the hand of white police officers after continuously shouting ‘i can’t breathe’ for approximately nine minutes (british broadcasting corporation, 2020). supported by the high level of social media use nowadays, the video of floyd’s dying in police custody was spread widely through youtube, instagram, and other similar platforms only in a short period, which also led to more and more videos showing police brutality towards black men that apparently had happened before. despite those similar cases resembling floyd’s, george floyd’s case turns out to be the climax of this long-standing issue. it triggers criticism against the us police department, which questions the police’s systemic racism and brutality. this also leads to massive protests done by numerous groups of society and it is considered to be the biggest black lives matters movements in the us history (waite, 2020). for the reason that it is such a controversial issue, analyzing the representation of the us police department in a news report will be an interesting topic to discuss. this research examines a news report taken from a foreign newspaper the new york times, published on 10 june 2020 with the title “george floyd’s brother pleads with congress: “make it stop”’. the new york times, founded in 1851, is a worldwide recognized daily newspaper distributed throughout the united states (oxford learner’s dictionary, n.d.). it is said that the purpose of the new york times is journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 31 “to help people understand the world through on-the-ground, expert and deeply reported independent journalism” (nytco.com, n.d.). although research regarding critical discourse analysis has been extensive, still, this research is expected to give an impactful contribution on the development of linguistics, especially in the field of critical discourse analysis. in 2018, a critical discourse analysis study is conducted by risdaneva (2018), which explores the portrayal of women in two different newspapers from different cultures, which are the jakarta post and the guardian. the representation is portrayed through the choice of lexical items in representing the main news actor. the writer focuses on the use of naming as part of critical discourse analysis. van leeuwen (as cited in risdaneva, 2018) explains that naming is a tool used to investigate how social roles are portrayed in particular contexts. here, the research focuses on comparing the portrayal of women in two newspapers: how these two media with different cultures can possibly generate different outputs regarding the portrayal of women. the research finding is interesting although it can be made more thorough and complete if there are more linguistics tools used. next, research regarding critical discourse analysis is also written by putra and triyono (2018). they focus on the threedimensional critical discourse analysis approach by norman fairclough, namely micro, mezzo, and macro elements. the data is taken from kompas.com, which aims to describe the micro, mezzo, and macro as well as the social, political and cultural situation from the linguistic aspects in “gerakan #2019gantipresiden di antara ambiguitas hukum dan syahwat politik” text. in norman fairclough’s cda (as cited in putra & triyono, 2018), microelement analyzes the text itself, in the form of cohesion, coherence, grammar, transparency, theme, modality, and lexical structures, while the mezzo element aims to find out the process of production, distribution, and use of text. lastly, the macro element tends to find out the social context that influences the birth of a text (discourse) which includes situational, institutional, and social levels. with analyzing three different big aspects, the scope of analysis can be considered to be extensive, complete, and thorough. nevertheless, it makes the analysis of each aspect less specific and focused. in 2019, another study written by nurhaliza and tanto (2019) discusses the representation of indonesia’s judiciary of ahok’s blasphemy in the micro-level analysis of the new york times article “’rot at core’: blasphemy verdict in indonesia dismays legal experts”. the theory is taken from van dijk’s cda, in which the macrostructure analysis is constructed by the main headline and lead, while in the microstructure analysis, they highlight the analysis on stylistics with the use of one tool: lexical style, through the words damaging, vindictive, and intimidating. their study is quite similar to this research, as they both are conducted within the same media and use the same theory; however, the use of only one tool in the microstructure makes the research tend to be less miscellaneous in the matter of linguistics tool variation. lastly, a study by garlitos in 2020 uncovers the ideological representation found in the linguistics patterns of eco-news report of national and local dailies in the philippines. he analyzes twenty-five news reports by using fairclough’s (1992) critical discourse analysis and halliday’s (1985) systemic functional linguistics. halliday (as cited in garlitos, 2020), describes that the function bears on representations and recontextualizations of social practices that are achieved through the transitivity system (participants, processes, and circumstances). in the writer’s decision of choosing the data, taking more than twenty-five news reports obviously increases the comprehensiveness of the research itself, although, at the same time, it also lessens the sense of details in terms of language use that are analyzed in the finding and discussions. compared to the previously-mentioned studies, this research may be smaller in scope. it aims to analyze the representation of the us police department in one article published in the new york times concerning george floyd’s brother who pleads with the congress. the research will be in the micro level as it will take journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` sherine gracia & trisnowati tanto 32 into account the linguistic features and strategies used within the text in order to reveal a representation (van dijk, 1993). however, this research is believed to be richer in highlighting how language use can be employed in a more detailed way in representing a person or an institution in a news article. all the three aspects in the micro level will be dealt with, namely the macrostructure, microstructure, and superstructure. by doing this analysis, it is hoped that it can contribute to the development of critical discourse analysis. moreover, this research is considered to have an essential role in highlighting the significance of assorted language styles in any communicative process in order to achieve a certain purpose, especially when considering that media may intentionally reflect a particular ideology. methodology to find the representation of the us police department in the news article, the research applies the qualitative research method. the study itself employs the critical discourse analysis approach, specifically teun a. van dijk’s framework, as this looks for the analysis of news discourse in a critical perspective. the data are gathered from the internet and other various types of sources, and thus, it is categorized into library research. in this paper, there are three aspects to be analyzed in order to find the representation of the us police department, namely the macrostructure, microstructure, and superstructure. it starts with the macrostructures, in which the global topic of the news report is sought through the headline and lead. in these two parts, some of the words will be analyzed further so that the representation can be depicted. following the macrostructure, the microstructure will focus on the use of four tools: rhetorical question, lexicalization, implication, and metaphor. again, the use of these four linguistics features will be examined so as to get the us police department representation. moving to the superstructure, the news article will be divided into schematic categories, which include summary, main event, background, consequences or verbal reactions, and comments. each paragraph in the news article will be categorized into the suitable schematic categories. the headline and lead will be categorized into summary. then, the other paragraphs will also be classified into the right categories. the most dominant category will be analyzed further to reveal the representation the us police department. results and discussion macrostructure the first major finding concerns the negative representation of the us police department in the macrostructure, which can be identified from the global topic drawn from the headline, including the main and lower headlines, and also the lead. according to van dijk (1980), the macrostructure is the higherlevel semantics that explains the microstructure of discourse, which functions to find the global meaning, such as topic, theme, or gist. in the main headline “george floyd’s brother pleads with congress: “make it stop’”, the writer refers to the subject as ‘george floyd’s brother’, instead of mentioning the name of the brother directly. when something is suggested, but it is not stated directly, this indicates something implicit in it (hornby, 2015). by mentioning the name george floyd to be part of the subject, it can be implied that the writer attempts to put emphasis on that name, indicating george floyd plays an essential role in this news article. following the subject, the writer uses the phrase pleads, which means “to ask somebody for something in a very strong and serious way” (hornby, 2015). in accordance with the headline, it can be stated that george floyd’s brother demands something intensely and emotionally to the congress, which in the united states refers to the legislator. according to hornby (2015), legislator means “a member of a group of people that has power to make laws”. in other words, as the one who has the power to make or change laws, the congress is journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 33 believed to be capable of making something being asked by floyd’s brother become a realization. after reading the first phrase, the reader may be intrigued to find out what floyd’s brother pleads with. thus, the writer puts a colon (:), which functions to “separate two independent clauses when the second explains or illustrates the first” (the punctuation guide, n.d.), as the clause ‘make it stop’ follows afterwards. it can be seen that floyd’s brother asks the congress to make something stop, even though what the word “it” refers to is still unclear yet. by making a particular thing unclear, it is assumed that the writer intends to make the reader curious about the content of the article itself. the next thing to be analyzed is the lower headline, which says “philonise floyd, the star witness at a house hearing on democrats’ policing bill, called for congress to “stop the pain” caused by the killings of black men at the hands of the police.” in this lower headline, the readers’ curiosity about the word “it” in the main headline is clarified. “it” in ‘make it stop’ refers to “…the killings of black men at the hands of the police”. if it is connected with the context, it can be concluded that george floyd’s brother asks the congress, as the one who can make or change the law, to make the killing of black men at the hands of the police stop, in an intense and emotional way. furthermore, by mentioning the word “black” in “… the killings of the black men at the hands of the police” stated in the lower headline as the detailed information in attributing the men killed by the police, the writer builds the impression that the race of the men becomes something that matters quite a lot in the act of killing by the police. in addition, the words killing and pain mentioned in the lower headline imply that the killing of this particular race, which is black, is done deliberately by the police and considered to be such an unpleasant or upsetting action that it raises the feeling of unhappiness. therefore, the writer portrays the negative representation of the us police department through the lower headline. lastly, the lead of the news article is as follows: philonise floyd, whose brother’s death in police custody has inspired two weeks of sprawling protests across the country, made an impassioned plea to congress on wednesday to enact sweeping changes to law enforcement in america to address police brutality and systemic racism. in the lead, the writer states more detailed information about the headline by mentioning what floyd’s brother addresses in the plea to the police. in this case, the writer uses the words brutality and racism to define what makes the us police department have to be evaluated. according to hornby (2015), brutality means “violent and cruel behavior; the fact of being violent and cruel”. besides, systemic racism occurs within “institutions and systems of power and refers to the discriminatory or unfair policies and discriminatory practices of particular institutions” (jarret, raj & breland, 2021). in addition, it is also noteworthy to see that in the lead the police brutality is connected with systemic racism. when it is called so, it means that police brutality is the manifestation of the racial discrimination that has already been embedded in the police department (gee & ford, 2011, p. 115). thus, the us police department is detected to do something bad; not only as an individual’s intolerance and cruelty of another race but also as something structural and systemic. based on the description above, we can draw the global topic of the article, which is about the plea made by floyd’s brother to stop police brutality and systemic racism towards black men. the words brutality, systemic racism, killing, pain along with the other explanations which describe the things that trigger the plea, carry a negative connotation, which leads to the negative representation of the us police department. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` sherine gracia & trisnowati tanto 34 microstructure table 1 data classification based on tools the negative representation of the us police department can also be seen from the microstructure. as stated by van dijk (1980), the microstructure is “the actually and directly ‘expressed’ structures of the discourse” (p. 29), which differentiates between meaning and its expression in surface structures; for instance, the words, phrases, clause, and sentence construction (van dijk, 1980). in this paper, the microstructure will focus on the use of rhetorical question, lexicalization, implication, and metaphor. rhetorical question the first data is taken from paragraph (3) which uses rhetorical question by quoting philonise floyd’s utterance. a rhetorical question is the question form that has an obvious answer and which demands no answer from the audience or the hearer (djatmika, nababan & yulinda, 2018). this question is used so as to make certain points or the ideas of the speaker or writer stand out more. in philonise floyd’s argument in paragraph (3), he poses rhetorical questions to the congress; obviously a black man’s life is not tools data rhetorical question (para. 3) “i am asking you, is that what a black man’s life is worth? twenty dollars?” mr. floyd asked. lexicalization (para. 19) representative jim sensenbrenner, republican of wisconsin and a former chairman of the judiciary committee, endorsed the proposal in democrats’ legislation to create a national registry of police misconduct. he also denounced police unions, accusing them of protecting “bad cops,” and saying they would need to “step up to the plate” in rooting out their own bad actors. metaphor (para. 19) he also denounced police unions, accusing them of protecting “bad cops,” and saying they would need to “step up to the plate” in rooting out their own bad actors. (para. 21) “the sooner we get the bad cops off the force, the sooner there will no longer be any bad apples to spoil the whole barrel.” pic.twitter.com/n4fqy0pt2e— sensenbrenner press (@jimpressoffice) june 10, 2020 implication (para. 3) “this is 2020. enough is enough. the people marching in the streets are telling you enough is enough.” (para. 6) what happened to his brother, he said, was “a modern-day lynching in broad daylight.” (para. 9) “the nation is demanding that we enact meaningful change,” mr. nadler said. he called for congress to institute a new paradigm for law enforcement that he described as “a guardian — not warrior — model of policing.” https://t.co/n4fqy0pt2e https://twitter.com/jimpressoffice/status/1270794470066475011?ref_src=twsrc%5etfw journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 35 worth 20 dollars. this argument itself reflects his elder brother’s case, in which he dies in police custody after being arrested for the counterfeit $20 bill. by applying a rhetorical question, floyd’s brother wants to persuade and influence the congressmen to make them think that the consequence given to george’s fault, which is using the counterfeit $20 bill, is unequal to taking his life, especially due to the fact that he is black. thus, by quoting directly philonise floyd’s rhetorical question, the writer actually depicts the us police department negatively as it persuades the readers to believe how black men’s worth is undervalued by the police’s unfair treatment. lexicalization moving to the next data which is taken from paragraph (19), this paragraph will be analyzed by using lexicalization. lexicalization deals with the underlying concepts and beliefs in specific lexical items (van dijk, as cited in rahimi & riasati, 2011). in paragraph (19), the writer elaborates jim sensenbrenner’s proposal in democrats’ legislation regarding a national registry of police misconduct as well as denouncing the police unions. according to hornby (2015), the word misconduct (noun) means “unacceptable behavior, especially by a professional person”. if we connect the meaning with the context of the sentence, someone in the definition of misconduct refers to the police, which means that the police as the authority have unacceptable or bad behavior. metaphor the following data use metaphor tool in which the data are taken from paragraphs (19) and (21). a metaphor is a figure of speech which draws implicit comparison between two unrelated things, without the express use of “like” or “as” (metekohy & valentino, 2016). this comparison will create connection so as to make the reader understand something at the deeper level than its literal description. in paragraph (19), it is stated that in order to root out the us police department’s bad actors, they have to “step up to the plate”. the idiom “step up to the plate” is derived from an american sport, namely baseball. the plate in baseball is five-sided and larger than the usual plate which is used as the place of a flat marker where the person hitting the ball stands (longman dictionary, 2014). in baseball, this home plate becomes the beginning position where the incoming batter would literally step up to this plate in order to receive the ball from the opposing pitcher. when it is used figuratively in language, step up to the plate means “to do what is necessary in order to benefit from an opportunity or deal with a crisis” (hornby, 2015) in the context of paragraph (19), this meaning of the idiom, which is taking responsibility or accepting challenge, is obtained from the illustration in baseball, specifically in the momentum when one player should literally step up to the plate. to have a clearer understanding, the condition when one player in baseball literally steps up to the plate, signifying one’s taking the responsibility as a player to start the game, is compared with the situation when the us police department should also have the bravery to immediately start taking the responsibility and challenge in order to reveal their own bad actors, even if it might be difficult. accordingly, assuming that revealing the bad actors is the action that should be taken even though it is such a difficult responsibility and challenge to be accepted, it means through the use of metaphor in paragraph (19), the us police department is represented in a negative way. lastly, the data of metaphor is taken from paragraph (21). in this paragraph, the use of metaphor can be seen from the part of the utterance quoted from sensenbrenner press: “any bad apples to spoil the whole barrel”. this phrase is a proverb whose meaning is associated with the quality of a bad apple, in which one bad apple can cause other apples in close proximity to begin to rot as well (farlex dictionary, 2015). this usually refers to “one bad person who has a bad effect on others in a group” (hornby, 2015). regarding this utterance, the bad apples deal with ascribing the quality of us police department itself. in other words, by using the metaphor, this comparison demonstrates the idea that sensenbrenner equates the us police department to have someone whose behavior journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` sherine gracia & trisnowati tanto 36 and action impact the entire group of people negatively, which in floyd’s case, the concern of a particular member’s bad behavior focuses on brutality and systemic racism. accordingly, by directly quoting sensenbrenner press’s utterance, which contains a metaphor, the us police department is represented in a negative way as it persuades the reader to believe the quality of the us police department is being compared with bad apples, which carries the meaning that some us police officers with negative behavior that can influence others should be gotten rid of as soon as possible. implication moving on to the last one, the data from paragraph (3), (6), and (9) will be elaborated further by using implication. implication deals with specific information being inferred by the recipients as “only a few meanings are expressed ‘on the surface’”, while other meanings remain ‘implicit’ knowledge stored in the mental models (van dijk, as cited in rahimi & riasati, 2011, p. 110). the implied message in paragraph (3) can be identified from floyd’s utterance “this is 2020. enough is enough”, in which 2020 refers to the year when george floyd died in police custody due to police brutality and systemic racism. in connection with the fact of george floyd’s death, george, who is black, died in the hand of derek chauvin, who is a white police officer of minneapolis (mark, 2020). this kind of case regarding white superiority against black itself was still strongly happening even after the united states abolished slavery, when black americans continued to be marginalized through legal segregation and diminished access in public facilities, housing, and education (history, 2021). on black’s reaction towards this issue, a mass protest, namely the civil rights movement, which demanded the end of racial discrimination and gaining equal rights under the law, was implemented mainly during the 1950s and 1960s. in 1968, this civil rights movement was officially ended with some results being achieved: it broke the segregation of public facilities by one’s race as well as achieving the most essential breakthrough in equal-rights legislation for african americans, which banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin (britannica, n.d.). this signifies the long period of time to the event of george floyd’s death in 2020, which is approximately 52 years since the time when the civil rights movement ended. by saying “this is 2020”, floyd implies that the racist action done by the police that causes floyd’s death in 2020 is not supposed to happen anymore nowadays since this should have been buried a long time ago. therefore, in paragraph (3), the us police department is represented in a negative way. another data of implication is taken from paragraph (6). in this paragraph, the implied message can be found through philonise floyd’s utterance “a modern-day lynching in broad daylight”. according to hornby (2015), the word lynching refers to “the illegal killing of somebody, usually by hanging, by a crowd of people and without a trial”. regardless of the fact that in 1955 the house approved of labelling lynching as a hate crime under federal law (daly, 2020) and it now becomes illegal, unfortunately, the practice of lynching itself was still happening years afterwards. the existence of the practice of lynching can be seen through the fact that many black activists, during the civil rights movement on 1960s, were attacked and murdered without due process of law (carver, 2020). therefore, philonise floyd’s utterance “a modern-day lynching” implies that the killing of george floyd in police custody, without due process of law, resembles the action of lynching back in the 20th century. it brings back the cruelty and barbarity towards black men that is actually illegal in this modern day. hence, in this case, philonise floyd attempts to convey that his brother is cruelly killed in the hand of self-constituted court by the police, which is against the law and should not have happened anymore. for this reason, in this data the writer portrays a negative representation of the us police department. the next data of implication is taken from paragraph (9). in the paragraph, the implication can be found from the quotation of mr. nadler, which is “a guardian — not warrior — model of policing”. here, the word warrior has the definition of “a person who fights in a battle or war”; while guardian means “a person journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 37 who protects something” (hornby, 2015). in addition, the concept of warriors leads to the perception of traditional concept of police work (science daily, 2019), which is “an occupying force, detached and separated from the community” (rahr & rice, 2015). from the explanation, the warrior concept is associated with the idea of carrying out the obligation like militarized police, who is only to conquer, chase and arrest, without having any compassionate feeling towards the citizens. on the other hand, the concept of a guardian is more related to the idea of not only carrying out the obligations, but also demonstrating the feeling of empathy to guard and protect the citizens and being more involved in the community as well. regarding mr. nadler’s statement, his demanding a change in policing to the guardian concept, not the warrior one, implies that the police currently play the role only as a warrior, namely to conquer, chase, and arrest, which all contribute to the negative connotation. in this way, the us police department is portrayed negatively. superstructure the superstructure analysis deals with the schematic form or categorical structure that organizes the global content of a discourse (van dijk, 1980). here, the article is divided into some categories in the news schemata, such as summary, main events, background, consequences, and comments, in which one paragraph can be categorized into more than one category. there are twenty-seven paragraphs in total. however, since some of the paragraphs can be categorized into more than one category of the news schemata, it consequently results in producing 35 data in this superstructure analysis, excluding the lead and headline. out of the 35 data in total, eighteen data (53%) belong to consequences (verbal reaction), eleven data (31%) belong to main events, and six data (11 %) belong to background. hence, it can be seen that the most dominant category with the highest occurrence is consequences (verbal reaction). as stated by van dijk (1988), a verbal reaction covers the information about the routinely gathered and quoted declarations of either the participants or the politician, as their opinion or comments on the news event. the verbal reaction category in this news article will be analyzed further in terms of the sources. from the sources available, it can be identified that the verbal reactions are stated by nine sources: philonise floyd, democrats, jerrold nadler (democrat of new york and the committee chairman), lucy mcbath (black democrat from georgia), republicans, kevin mccarthy (republican of california), matt gaetz (republican of florida), jim sensenbrenner (republican of wisconsin and former chairman of judiciary committee), karen bass (democrat of california and chairwoman of congressional black caucus). these previously mentioned sources can be differentiated into reliable and unreliable sources, based on its clarity and neutrality. the sources are said to be reliable if they are regarded as proficient and have no personal interest in this issue, resulting in their comments being considered neutral and objective. meanwhile, the unreliable sources are the ones whose sources are considered unclear or have interest in the matter being discussed; in this case, it might be the us police department or george floyd’s side. out of the eighteen paragraphs of verbal reactions leading to the representation of the us police department, four paragraphs will not be analyzed due to the source’s unreliability. these four paragraphs’ sources come from philonise floyd, who is the younger brother of george floyd. since philonise floyd is the one who has much interest in the matter being discussed, his statements will not be analyzed further for they tend to be subjective and therefore, unreliable. accordingly, i would only like to explain further the other eight reliable sources from fourteen paragraphs leading to the us police department’s representation screening only the reliable sources, it is found that they are democrats, jerold nadler, lucy mcbath, republicans, kevin mccarthy, matt gaetz, jim sensenbrenner, and karen bass. it can be seen that the reliable sources are generally the officials, authorities, and journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` sherine gracia & trisnowati tanto 38 political parties or politicians involved in the congress who have no direct interest in the matter being discussed. as these eight sources mentioned are considered neutral, their statements may not tend to be biased to one side, leading to the outcome of their objective and reliable judgments of the us police department’s representation. moreover, it can also be noticed that these sources can be categorized as coming from two different parties, namely the democratic and republican parties. jerrold nadler, lucy mcbath, and karen bass are the democrats, while kevin mccarthy, matt gaetz, jim jordan, and jim sensenbrenner are the republicans. basically, the democrats are commenting on how they take a stance and action in response of police brutality and systemic racism. there are two main points delivered by democrats through the verbal reactions. first, democrats express their understanding about the pain that the victims should bear. this is demonstrated by some paragraphs containing statements that illustrate this idea. for instance, in paragraphs (11) and (12), lucy mcbath, democrat from georgia, says “i know your pain”, followed by equating the pain to “the sucker punch in the heart and gut”. in paragraph (8), jerrold nadler, the democrat of new york as well as the chairman of the committee, also states the phrase “i can’t breathe”, impersonating the victim’s saying while dying in police custody. all these statements demonstrate how the democrats understand the pain and condition experienced by the victim, carrying the same feeling of disapproval against the police brutality and systemic racism as how the victim feels. the second point of democrats’ verbal reaction discusses their attitude and action that are going to be implemented to overcome the issue. as stated by jerrold nadler in paragraph (7), to overcome the police brutality and systemic racism, the nation demands meaningful change, in which one of the actions that should be taken is changing the concept of policing into the guardian concept. in addition, the statements from some paragraphs also portray the democrats’ attitude towards the actions being planned. this indicates the concern as well as the sense of urgency about the issue. for example, in paragraph (7), house democrats explain that they aim to act quickly on handling this issue, while lucy mcbath conveys a similar idea by saying that finally doing something about the police brutality and systemic racism has become her prayer every single day. thus, it is clear that these two main points stated through the democrats’ verbal reactions are negative points about the us police department. furthermore, the republicans’ comments focus on finding the solutions to overcome the misconduct in the us police department. the republicans’ comments can be divided into three main points. first, they elaborate the root of the problems that probably become the cause why police misconducts are still happening. in paragraph (15), the republicans assume that the problem is located on the “bad apples” in the police department. in paragraph (19) jim sensenbrenner, a republican of wisconsin and the former chairman of judiciary committee, adds that he accuses the police unions of protecting bad cops. in line with the previous statement, in paragraph (20), jim sensenbrenner says that having only the bad cop database will not make the bad police get fired. it can be inferred that all this time, in the republicans’ viewpoint, the action of ordering the police misconduct has not yet been done maximally so that these “bad apples” still exist in the us police department. the second point is the solutions which republicans think are needed to be taken so as to overcome the problem of police misconduct. there are four paragraphs unveiling this point. it begins with the republicans’ statement in paragraph (14), saying that the nation’s policing needs to be overhauled. besides, on getting rid of the bad apples, kevin mccarthy states in paragraph (16) that “the most actionable reforms must focus on three core concepts: simple transparency, training and termination of those rare bad apples in law enforcement.” in addition, the last two paragraphs offering solutions come from one source, namely jim sensenbrenner. in paragraph (19), he adds that the us police department needs to “step up to the plate” in rooting their own bad actors, supported by similar idea in paragraph (21) that he calls for journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 39 cooperation to remove police officers with misconduct on the records. the last point delivered by the republicans portrays what is expected to be the result as the congress goes on. through the use of the verbal reaction in paragraph (14), the republicans convey the public expectation, in which the public is hungering for the real solutions, real discussions, and real debate, regarding this issue. additionally, in paragraph (18), matt gaetz hopes that the idea can pass into the president’s desk, while jim sensenbrenner in paragraph (20) expects that speedier resolution can be gotten as this debate goes on. seeing what is expected through the verbal reactions, all of these lead to the completion of resolving the matter being discussed, which is ending the problem regarding police brutality and systemic racism in us police department. accordingly, these three main points mentioned also refer to negative points about the us police department. conclusion the results and discussion clearly show how the us police department is represented negatively in the news report through the macrostructure, microstructure, and superstructure. firstly, in the macrostructure aspect, the headline and lead clearly use words with negative connotation, such as brutality, racism, killing, pain and protests, which become the writer’s strategy to explicitly depict the negative portrayal of the us police department. in the microstructure analysis, the writer uses four linguistics tools, namely rhetorical question, lexicalization, implication, and metaphor. the use of various linguistics features shows a good strategy as the negative depiction can be more clearly identified. last but not least, in the superstructure, the result shows that out of thirty data, there are eighteen paragraphs (53 %) belonging to verbal reactions. the finding also shows that all the quoted sources present the us police department in a negative way. finally, this research still has several limitations, one of which is due to time constraints. this leads to the fact that only one news report is 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http://www.discourses.org/oldarticles/critical%20discourse%20analysis.pdf http://www.discourses.org/oldarticles/critical%20discourse%20analysis.pdf phenomena laurencya hellene larasati ruruk & ni luh putu rosiandani 46 the resistance of women towards sexual terrorism in eve ensler’s the vagina monologues laurencya hellene larasati ruruk & ni luh putu rosiandani puturosi@yahoo.com department of english letters, sanata dharma university abstract in this present time, women are still oppressed and considered as the inferior class to men. one of the literary works containing the evidence is the vagina monologues by eve ensler. the monologues inside it share the experiences of various women who have been physically, mentally, and sexually terrorized. from those experiences of the women in the monologues, this study tries to identify the sexual terrorism that is experienced by each woman in each monologue, and at the same time, tries to examine the resistance of the women towards the sexual terrorism. men use sexual terrorism as a tool to control women’s autonomy over their own body, sexuality, and reproduction. it occurs to any woman in any situation. sexual terrorism is there to keep women in the subordinate position. the awareness of the women towards the sexual terrorism triggers their resistance towards it. each woman experiences different situation of sexual terrorism, therefore their ways of resisting the terror are also varied. feminism approach is used in this study in order to see the accurate analysis of the condition of the woman in each monologue. keywords: sexual terrorism, women, resistance introduction according to carole j. sheffield, there is a different kind of terrorism, the kind that is more familiar and seems natural to all societies, it is sexual terrorism. the targets of sexual terrorism are women. sexual terrorism is the common characteristic of rape, wife battery, incest, pornography, harassment, and all forms of sexual violence (1984: 3). most of the people forget about the horrible cases that women can or still encounter in everyday life. consciously or unconsciously, women are still considered to be in a state of being weak targets.for some people, the opinion that women are still considered weak might be seen as a pessimistic idea, however some facts, whether from the news or literary works, prove that women are still vulnerable and are still being the target of violence and terror. women are still being the victims of sexual terrorism. as shared by carole j. sheffield through her article, men use violence as the tool to control women, “violence and its corollary, fear, serve to terrorize females and to maintain the patriarchal definition of woman’s place (1984: 3).” the intention is to make women frightened, and therefore it is easier to dominate them physically and psychologically. she also said that, “violence and the threat of violence against females represent the need of patriarchy to deny that a woman’s body is her own property and that no one should have access to it without her consent (1984:3).” the other evidences of sexual terrorism are presented by deborah l. madsen through her examples of misogynistic practices in several literary works such as, possessing the secret of joy, a novel by alice walker, which exposes the reality of sexual mutilation and vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 47 the imprisonment of women in their bodies,maxine hong kingston’s description of chinese foot-binding in china men, and earlier corsetry in western society that represents the same kind of women violation in which women are physically torturedin order to be called a beauty. the threat of being rape and violently assaulted keeps women confined in terms of where they can go and when, because women as victims can be accused to be in a wrong situation. “intimidation, terrorism, fear – these strategies keep women in a subordinate position where they are dominated by men (2000: 153).” in this study, the writer chooses the vagina monologues as the object of the study because this study aims to reveal the resistance of the women that have experienced sexual terrorism, and eve ensler provides the evidences needed by the writer to conduct this study. this study tries to reveal the fact that actually women still experience sexual terrorism and they resist it. by trying to see the resistance of those women, this study also aims to show the strength of women. as also stated in the book, “ending violence against women means opening to the great power of women, the mystery of women, the heart of women, the wild, unending sexuality and creativity of women – and not being afraid (2008: xxiii).” sexual terrorism according to carole j. sheffield, sexual terrorism is a system by which men frighten women, and by frightening, men control and dominate women. it can be identified through rape, wife battery, incest, pornography, harassment, and all forms of sexual violence (1984: 3). still according to sheffield, there are five components of sexual terrorism: ideology, propaganda, indiscriminate and amoral violence, voluntary compliance, and society’s perception of the terrorist and the terrorized (1984: 5). first, ideology, it is a united set of beliefs about the world that explains the way things are and provides a vision of how they should be (1984: 5). sheffield argues that patriarchy is the ideological foundation of sexism in almost all societies. the focus of patriarchal ideology is the superiority of men and the inferiority of women, which at the same time provides the justification for sexual terrorism (1984: 5). second, propaganda, it is the systematic distribution of information for the purpose of promoting a particular ideology (1984: 5). the propaganda of sexual terrorism can be found in all expressions of the popular culture such as films, television, music, literature, advertising, pornography, and also in the ideas of patriarchy conveyed in science, medicine, and psychology (1984: 5). third, indiscriminate and amoral violence, they are the heart of sexual terrorism. according to sheffield, every woman at any age, at any time and in any place is a potential target of violence (1984: 5-6). in order to make sure the continuance of sexual terrorism, the forth component that is voluntary compliance, is used as a strategy (sheffield, 1984: 6). sexual terrorism is maintained by a system of sex-role socialization that in effect instructs men to be terrorists in the name of masculinity and women to be victims in the name of femininity(sheffield, 1984: 6). the last component is society’s perception of the terrorist and the terrorized. so far, this final component is what differs sexual from political terrorism. according to sheffield, in sexual terrorism, society blames the victim and excuses the offender. the offender is believed to be either ‘sick’, and therefore in need of consideration from the society, or is acting out normal male desires (sheffield, 1984: 6). resistance stellanvinthagen in his research stated that, “any activity of the subordinated which, in the view of power holders, causes a problem or is a threat to power, could count as resistance (2007: 5).” still according to vinthagen, “…resistance is the kind of actions which dissolve, undermine, question or challenge such subordination – and ultimately, produce non-subordinate relations (2007: 6).” laurencya hellene larasati ruruk & ni luh putu rosiandani 48 as mentioned by vinthagen in his research, “he divides resistance into two forms (public and disguised) which corresponds to three forms of domination (material, status, and ideological), resulting in six types of resistance (2007: 8).” resistance exist in the public form as public declared resistance (open revolts, petitions, demonstrations, land invasions, etc) against material domination; assertion of worth or desecration of status symbols against status domination; or, counter ideologies against ideological domination. and, resistance exists in the disguised form (low profile, undisclosed or “infra-politics”) as everyday resistance (e.g. poaching, squatting, desertion, evasion, foot-dragging) or direct resistance by disguised resisters against material domination; hidden transcripts of anger or disguised discourses of dignity against status dominator; or dissident subcultures (e.g. millennial religion, myths of social banditry, class heroes) against ideological domination (vinthagen, 2007:8). moreover, vinthagen also shares seven basic forms of nonviolent resistance, they are: discursive resistance (example: fact findings), competition (example: building new society and social system instead of which is being resisted), non-cooperation (example: boycotts), selective cooperation (example: helping the opponent with relief work during a sudden natural catastrophe), withdrawal (example: escape to other areas), hindrance (example: interventions), and humoristic undermining (example: self-irony) (2007: 12). as concluded by vinthagen: resistance is not necessarily directing people, telling them what to do but enable them to make their own choices…thus, resistance doesn’t annihilate the social bonds of society, it simply, construct new ones while deconstructing others – and, in the best of cases – opens the space for a freer choice (2007: 21). sexual terrorism seen through the experiences of women in the vagina monologues 1. inside the family and within marriage a. “hair” this monologue shows the experience of a wife that is forced to shave her vagina hair by her own husband. in his opinion, vagina hair is awful, “my first and only husband hated hair. he said it was cluttered and dirty. he made me shave my vagina” (2008: 9). shaving her vagina hair is necessary in order to please the husband sexually. however, for the wife to shave her vagina hair is actually torturing. it makes her feel uncomfortable and even causes a physical pain for her during sexual intercourse with the husband. when he made love to me, my vagina felt the way a beard must feel. it felt good to rub it, and painful. like scratching a mosquito bite. it felt like it was on fire. there were screaming red bumps…i felt little when my hair was gone down there, and i couldn’t help talking in a baby voice, and the skin got irritated and even calamine lotion wouldn’t help it…when my husband was pressing against me, i could feel his spiky sharpness sticking into me, my naked puffy vagina. there was no protection. there was no fluff (2008: 911). b. “i was twelve. my mother slapped me.” menstruation is known as the mark of a girl’s changing phase from a girl to a young adult woman. many myths surround the menstruation phase, and parents usually becomes more concern about their daughter. parents are expected to be supportive and caring,especially the mothers because she has had her menstruation experience. however, there are also cases that parents are afraid and worried, even uncomfortable with the menstruation phase of their daughter. …second grade, seven years old, my brother was talking about periods. i didn’t like the way he was laughing… vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 49 …my mother gave me codeine. we had bunk beds. i went down and lay there. my mother was so uncomfortable… …my friend marcia, they celebrated when she got hers. they had dinner for her… …fifteen years old. my mother said, “mazeltov.” she slapped me in the face. didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing… …i was twelve. my mother slapped me and brought me a red cotton shirt. my father went out for a bottle of sangria… (35-40). from the above quotation, it can be seen that according to those experiences, the daughters become confused of their conditions. their thoughts tell about the uncertainty whether menstruation is good or bad for them. c. “the little coochisnorcher that could” this monologue consists of a girl’s experiences from when she is five years old, until when she is sixteen years old. at the early stages of her life, she always encounteres with unfortunate things related to her vagina. …memory: ten years old i’m playing alone in the basement and i’m trying on my new white cotton bra and panties that my father’s girlfriend gave me. suddenly my father’s best friend, this big man alfred, comes up from behind and pulls my new underpants down and sticks his big hard penis into my coochisnorcher… (79). this memory can be said as the peak incident that influences how she thinks about her vagina. this incident of her being rapped is the one that traumatized her most, assuring her thoughts that her vagina causes many negative experiences in her life. …memory: thirteen years old my coochisnorcher is a very bad place, a place of pain, nastiness, punching, invasion, and blood. it’s a site for mishaps. it’s a bad-luck zone… (79) it shows that at the age of thirteen years old, she finally feels certain that her vagina is a bad thing, a bad area between her legs.she thinks that her vagina only brings suffer and pain towards her life. d. “the memory of her face (part i)” this experience in islamabad shows how a husband feels like he has the right to torture his own wife even when she has done nothing wrong, that even if there is anyone knows about the torture, they could not and would not do anything to save the wife. they all knew something terrible was going to happen each time he came home…they heard her screams, they heard her beg, they didn’t, wouldn’t intervene. she was his unwritten law…don’t ask what she had done, it was just her face that pissed him off. just her needy face waiting for more… (129-130). this story clearly shows that the husband is intentionally assaulting and torturing his wife.he might have been angry of his own incapability of providing a living for his family, so that he unleash his anger to his wife by brutally torturing her. the scale of violence performed by the husband is increasing towards the end of the monologue. e. “crooked braid” this monologue shares the experience of a woman who is a victim of her husband’s abusive behavior. as the time goes by, the abusive behavior of the husband gets worst. …i looked up and he slapped me, my husband. not a blast that knocks your eyes blue. that came later. it was a smack, a hard domestic smack… …i woke up in the hospital after five brain surgeries. my hair was gone…i had to relearn to talk and move my arms…it took me four months to remember how to cook breakfast… …eighteen years he beat me…then he’d go forgetting that the bruises on my face were his handprints…i was just a piece of meat to him, a hole… laurencya hellene larasati ruruk & ni luh putu rosiandani 50 …he elbowed me, jerked me, pulled me up…he picked me up like i was a rag…my husband beat the shit out of me… (150156) from the ending part of the monologue, it can be seen that the husband is actually desperate. he is oppressed by some power above him, and it makes him hopeless. he batters her in order to feel strong again and appear a winner. 2. outside the family and marriage a. “the flood” this monologue shows the experience of an old lady who has experienced sexual terrorism in her young age. she was sexually harassed by the boy named andy leftkov. according to her, he is a tall-good-looking boy who is desired by many girls, and he is rich. …andy was very good-looking. he was a catch. that’s what we called it in my day. we were in his car, a new white chevy belair…i was looking at my big kneecaps when he just kissed me in this surprisingly “take me by control like they do in the movies” kind of way. and i got excited, so excited, and well, there was a flood down there. i couldn’t control it. it was like this force of passion, this river of life just flooded out of me, right through my panties, right onto the car seat of his new white chevy belair…andy said, that it smelled like sour milk and it was staining his car seat… (2008: 27). knowing that, the boy thought it was dirty and smelly, so he labeled her “a stinky weird girl (2008: 27).” after the incident, she becomes afraid of opening herself to other men. …andy drove me home and he never, never said another word and when i got out and closed his car door, i closed the whole store. locked it…i dated some after that, but the idea of flooding made me too nervous. i never even got close again (28). this shows that actually she was verbally and sexually harassed in the past and that incident makes her ashamed of herself. b. “the vagina workshop” this monologue shows the experience of a woman who joins a vagina workshop. this woman is the exact example of the women who have never seen their own vagina, and only fantasized about it. …i don’t know why, but i started crying…maybe it was knowing that i had to give up the fantasy, the enormous lifeconsuming fantasy, that someone or something was going to do this for me – the fantasy that someone was coming to lead my life, to choose direction, to give me orgasms. i was used to living off the record, in a magical, superstitious way… (48). from the above quotation it can be seen that she has been terrorized by her own fear and anxiety. it is built and influenced by the society, so that a woman like her believes that she needs men to depend on. the social condition makes her live in a fantasy that someone will help her and satisfy her, but not herself. society teaches her to be dependent and afraid, making her believes that talking about her sexual parts is wrong and inappropriate. c. “because he liked to look at it” this monologue shows the experience of a woman who hates her vagina. …i thought it was incredibly ugly. i was one of those women who had looked at it and, from that moment on, wished i hadn’t. it made me sick. i pitied anyone who had to go down there…i began to pretend there was something else between my legs…i got so accustomed to this that i lost all memory of having a vagina… (54). and one day, she believes that a guy, whom she went to bed with, named bob, changed her hatred towards her own vagina. …i watched him looking at me, and he was so genuinely excited, so peaceful and euphoric, i began to get wet and turned on. i began to see myself the way he saw me. i began to feel beautiful and delicious vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 51 – like a great painting or a waterfall. bob wasn’t afraid. he wasn’t grossed out. i began to swell, began to feel proud. began to love my vagina…(57). this monologue shows that actually women are indeed vulnerable, and they still need the opinion of men in order to value themselves sexually. d. “my angry vagina” the woman in this monologue shares her thoughts about the unfair things that she feels as a woman. it represents the condition of women even in this modern time. many opinions and rumors are spread in order to shape women’s thinking about themselves in a certain way, a way that the society wants them to be, to see, and to feel. …all this shit they’re constantly trying to shove up us, clean us up–stuff us up, make it go away…like tampons…as soon as my vagina sees it, it goes into shock… …he tells you it smells like rose petals…that’s what they’re doing–trying to clean it up, make it smell like bathroom spray or a garden… …more tortures: dry wad of fucking cotton, cold duck lips, and thong underwear. that’s the worst. thong underwear… …hate to see a woman having pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure… (69-73). it can be seen how she feels toward the torturing things invented to control and suffer women. at the same time, she reveals the doer that is always trying to torture and control her as a woman is in fact men. e. “the memory of her face (part ii)” the experience of a witness seeing what happens in juárez shows how women mean nothing in the eye of the sexual terrorist that they are regarded as an easy target to be kidnapped, tortured, ruined, and murdered. …there is one girl missing for ten months. she was seventeen when they took her away… …whatever they did to her, it went on and on. you can tell from the others, who showed up without hands or nipples… …when she finally reappeared, she was bone... (132-134). the evidence clearly shows that in juárez, girls are easily targeted, kidnapped, and tortured until they die in such an upsetting condition. f. “they beat the girl out of my boy…. or so they tried” this monologue shares the experience of a transwoman.being a woman for her is something that she was always longed for, it was her purpose of life. …they beat me for it. they beat me for crying. they pummeled me for wanting to touch, to pet, to hug, to help, to hold their hands…for carrying purses to kindergarten, they kicked the shit out of me every day on my way to school. in the park, they smashed my magic marker painted nails. they punched my lipsticked mouth. they beat the girl out of my boy… (143). although the earlier process was tough, and the journey of becoming a woman was long, in the end she succeeded on becoming a woman. even after she became a woman, she is still terrorized. this time, the terrors took form in an indirect assault to make her suffer and to make her realize that whatever she did, she will never be fully accepted. …but you know how people feel about immigrants...they don’t like it when you mix. they killed my boyfriend. they beat him insanely as he slept, with a baseball bat. they beat this girl out of his head. they didn’t want him dating a foreigner…they didn’t want him falling in love with ambiguity… (147-148). seeing her experience, it is obvious that even as a woman, she will never be fully accepted by the society. laurencya hellene larasati ruruk & ni luh putu rosiandani 52 3. within the situation of war a. “my vagina was my village” this monologue shows the experience of a woman who was raped at war.before she was raped at war, she describes her vagina as something which is beautiful and cheerful. she identifies her vagina with the feelings of excitement, happiness, richness, and hopefulness: …my vagina was green, water soft pink fields, cow mooing sun resting sweet boyfriend touching lightly with soft piece of blond straw… …my vagina singing all girl songs, all goat bells ringing songs, all wild autumn field songs, vagina songs, vagina home songs… (61-62). and it changes drastically after she is being sexually tortured and raped by the soldiers. she describes her vagina as something which is ruined beyond repair and all the good feelings about it has gone. …there is something between my legs. i do not know what it is. i do not know where it is. i do not touch. not now. not anymore…not since the soldiers put a long thick rifle inside me. so cold, the steel rod canceling my heart...not since i heard the skin tear and made lemon screeching sounds, not since a piece of my vagina came off in my hand, a part of the lip, now one side of the lip is completely gone…not since they took turns for seven days smelling like feces and smoked meat, they left their dirty sperm inside me. i became a river of poison and pus and all the crops died, and the fish… (61-63). from her description about her vagina before and after the rape, it can be clearly seen that she was drastically changed her thoughts about her vagina. b. “under the burqa” before the beginning of this monologue, there is a statement saying, “the piece is about a time and place where women had no choice (2008: 135).” since the beginning of her life, it seems like she does not have a choice whether to wear or not to wear the burqa. the only marriage she has ever committed was also an arranged marriage, “the only man you ever loved, even though it was an arranged marriage (2008: 136).” she cannot even choose to live or die. she is forced to live inside the ‘cage’ that is the burqa. wearing a burqa is usually connected to religious reasons, however, in this monologue, it becomes a way to dominate women. women are treated as animals and put inside a ‘cage’, “imagine muttering and screaming inside a cage” (2008: 138-139). she is restricted andtortured, her freedom is entirely raided from her, “imagine you are begging in this bedspread reaching out your hand inside the cloth which must remained covered, unpolished, unseen, or they might smash it or cut it off” (2008: 136). this monologue obviously shares the experience of a woman who is severely terrorized for life, “imagine you could no longer distinguish between living and dying, so you stopped trying to kill yourself because it would be redundant” (2008: 138). c. “say it” this monologueis the compilation of the experiences of the comfort women. the comfort women refers to young women and girls who were abducted and forced into sexual slavery to service the japanese military from 1932 to 1945 (2008: 176). the comfort women was living in such a horrible terror at that time. what we saw: a girl drinking chemicals in the bathroom a girl killed by a bomb a girl beaten with a rifle over and over a girl running headfirst into a wall a girl’s malnourished body dumped in the river to drown… (161-162). they were barely fed, that they were extremely malnourished at that time.even so, they were still forced to do sexual intercourse with tons of japanese soldiers. they were brutally tortured and treated as a thing to vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 53 satisfy the sexual needs of the japanese soldiers. the resistance of the women towards the sexual terrorism 1. physical and verbal resistance a. “hair” the wife actually resists the terror from her husband. she refuses to shave her vagina hair after knowing that it causes so much discomfort to herself. when he made love to me, my vagina felt the way a beard must feel. it felt good to rub it, and painful. like scratching a mosquito bite. it felt like it was on fire. there were screaming red bumps. i refused to shave it again (9-10). her refusal, her questions and realization reveal that at the end of the day she is aware of the sexual terror that she experiences and she actually resists it. she shows it clearly by refusing to obey her husband’s order to shave her vagina. she also shows it by questioning the connection between shaving the vagina and her husband having affairs. she also realizes her own value and that hair is important and is there to protect the vagina. her decision to take control over her own body and sexuality shows her resistance towards sexual terrorism. b. “my angry vagina” the woman is against the way men secretly try to control and manipulate women. ...you need to work with the vagina, introduce it to things, prepare the way. that’s what foreplay’s all about. you got to convince my vagina, seduce my vagina, engage my vagina’s trust...stop shoving things up me. stop shoving and stop cleaning it up. my vagina doesn’t need to be cleaned up. it smells good already. not like rose petals. don’t try to decorate…it’s supposed to smell like pussy…i don’t want my pussy to smell like rain. all cleaned up like washing a fish after you cook it…(7071). patriarchal society keeps shaping women to be what is perfect in their perspective, that is submissive, obedient, and other feminine traits that attached to women; however, women as represented by the woman in this monologue, are aware that their vagina is perfect already. this anger and rejection show her resistant towards the manipulation, torture and control of men. c. “the little coochisnorcher that could” this monologue shows the horrible experiences of a girl in her early stages of life. the experience then influences her to think of her vagina as a bad thing or a bad area between her legs. however, that does not mean that she does not try to resist the sexual terror done to her, as a ten years old girl, she shows resistance toward alfred who was raping her, “i try to fight him off, but he already gets it in (2008: 79).” moreover, as she was turning into a sixteen years old girl, she finally met a twenty four years old woman in her neighborhood. this woman teaches her to appreciate herself and influences her to value her vagina. the woman influences the girl to be sexually independent and to be more grateful of who she is and what she has on herself. the woman triggers her to be aware of her values.this shows that the women’s miseries came from the interaction with men, and women’s revolution came from their interaction with themselves and other women. d. “i was there in the room” in this monologue, there is no experience of sexual terrorism. however, some statements in this monologue suggest the resistance of women through showing the strength and the capability of a woman and her vagina in the process of giving birth. i saw the colors of her vagina. they changed. saw the bruised broken blue, the blistering tomato red, the gray pink, the dark; saw the blood like perspiration along the edges…we forget the vagina, all of us. what else would explain our lack of laurencya hellene larasati ruruk & ni luh putu rosiandani 54 awe, our lack of wonder…i was there later when i just turned and faced her vagina. i stood and let myself see her all spread, completely exposed, mutilated, swollen, and torn, bleeding all over the doctor’s hands…i stood, and as i stared, her vagina suddenly became a wide red pulsing heart (122-124). it can be seen how the laboring woman and her vagina was in so much pain and struggle, in order to give birth to a new life. she was able to overcome a great deal of pain andsuffering, and then eventually heals herself. at the end of the monologue, the speaker relates the vagina to a heart. the heart is capable of sacrifice. so is the vagina. the heart is able to forgive and repair. it can change its shape to let us in. it can expand to let us out. so can the vagina. it can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us, and bleed and bleed us into this difficult, wondrous world. so can the vagina (124-125). this monologue is related to the power of women, the power of the vagina. the great capability of women and their vaginas can be manipulated, and used by the patriarchal society in order to control women. by forgetting their strength, women are made vulnerable and dependent.the vital source of women’s power is in their reproduction capability. this is the only power that women possess that men do not and men try to control this power in order to keep women in the subordinate position. e. “they beat the girl out of my boy…or so they tried” no matter what the people do to them, no matter how people brutally bullied her, she proves herself to be able to defend her point and life decision. i saw her vagina. i wanted one…i ached to belong. i ached to smell like my mother…i ached to be completed…they assigned me a sex…i always knew i was a girl…i ran away from home, from school, from boot camp…got my first hormone shot, got permission to be myself…i would count the male particles as they died…the feminine is in your face…and my vagina is so much friendlier. i cherish it. it brings me joy…it’s like when you’re trying to sleep and there is a loud car alarm; when i got my vagina, it was like someone finally turned it off (141-147). so much hatred and rejection of her existence lead them to kill her boyfriend because he loves her, he falls in love with what people call as ambiguity. at this point, by brutally torturing her feeling, people try to convince her that she does not belong and that she has chosen to live in a wrong decision. they beat this girl out of his head. they didn’t want him dating a foreigner. even though she was pretty, and she listened and was kind. they didn’t want him falling in love with ambiguity. they were that terrified of love (147-148). however, no matter what happened to her and the people she loves, she always believes in herself and she chooses to live on and stick to her decision to live as a woman. she respects herself and fully embraces her femininity. f. “crooked braid” the last part of the monologue indicates that the reason of the husband’s changing behavior is because of frustration and anger toward the people who oppress them, and his wife was made to be his only outlet of anger. now he calls me in the middle of night, weeping. he didn’t mean to beat his wife...he’s suicidal. he knows what his mother went through. but he can’t stop…they took our land. they took our ways. they took our men (157). it can be clearly seen that the wife is actually a lot tougher than him. she is awfully beaten and abused, and is made sex object, but she is not weakened, she resists the terror from her husband, she defends herself. she fights back through verbal refusal and also physical retaliation. she dares to run away from him so that he can no longer abuse her and dominate her. this monologue also vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 55 shows the strength of women and even reveals the hopelessness of men when faced with oppression compares to women. g. “say it” this part will try to identify whether they resist the sexual terrorism done to them or they are actually just accept their condition at that time. what we are: ...ready outside the japanese embassy every wednesday no longer afraid… (164-165). what we want: now soon before we’re gone and our stories leave this world, leave our heads japanese government say it please we are sorry, comfort women say it to me we are sorry to me ...to me… ...say we are sorry say me see me say it sorry (165-166). it can be seen that even though they could not resist the awful treatment, now they expect the japanese government to state their apology for what they have done to them in the past. this proves that eventually, the comfort women gather their angerand turn it into courage to demand the terrorists to take responsibility for what they have done. 2. mental or inner resistance a. “the flood” by trying to be open to other woman and share her bitter experience show that the woman is actually aware of her situation. though it cannot completely erase her trauma of sexual harassment, it definitely helps her feel better. you made me talk – you got it out of me. you got an old lady to talk about her down-there...[turns away; turns back.] you know, actually, you’re the first person i ever talked to about this, and i feel a little better (30). another statement that indicates her resistance is when she was in the process of being harassed by andy leftkov that she actually defended herself. ...well, frankly, i didn’t really smell anything at all, but he said, andy said, that it smelled like sour milk and it was staining his car seat. i was “a stinky weird girl,” he said. i wanted to explain that his kiss had caught me off guard, that i wasn’t normally like this (27). she cannot debate him outspokenly, so she debates him inside her thoughts.therefore, this might be seen as her mental or inner resistance. b. “my vagina was my village” she actually resists the sexual terrorism by withdrawing from the memories and by evading her connection with her sexuality. she could not verbally or physically resist the sexual terrorism, however, she mentally resist it by saving herself out of that situation. my vagina a live wet water village. they invaded it. butchered it and burned it down. i do not touch now. do not visit. i live someplace else now. i don’t know where that is (63). the experience of being rape at war is forever terrorized her, however, she manage to resist it by not engaging with her sexuality. this might not be seen as a clear resistance, and could be seen as devastation, however by withdrawing from the activity and from the connection with her sexuality, she survives the downfall of her life after the rape. laurencya hellene larasati ruruk & ni luh putu rosiandani 56 c. “under the burqa” she resists the abuse and terror from the men, and she even tried to protect her husband, “because they came and shot him with the gun…and you tried to defend him and they trampled you... (136).” she represents her inner thoughts through this monologue.she describes how vulnerable and defenseless she was, however, at the same time she shows that she survived the torture and she wanted to show that men are the source of her painful experience. i am caught there i am lost there inside the cloth which is your head inside the dark we share imagine you can see me i was beautiful once big dark eyes you would know me (139). in the last part of the monologue, she indicates that if she was given a choice, she might have a different life and experience, and this is her resistance. conclusion it can be concluded that, in this present time, women still experience sexual terrorism. the reason behind the sexual terror is varied depending on the terrorists. it can happen within the family, within marriage, it can be done by a total stranger, it can be done by lovers, and it can happen to young-adult women and to old women. it can happen to any kind of women in any situation, and in any socio-economic line. the similarities between these women in the vagina monologues are that they experiences sexual terrorism, though varied; and that these women show resistance towards the sexual terrorism by sharing and giving voice about their experience on sexual terrorism. it can be concluded from this analysis that basically, all women is eventually aware of their own oppression that is depicted through sexual terrorism; and that those women fights against it through resistance, and the form of the resistance is also varied depending on the form of sexual terrorism they experience and also based on the context of their situation. in the end, what these women try to achieve is actually their independence and freedom over their own body and sexuality. references ensler, eve. the vagina monologues tenth anniversary edition. new york: villard books, 2008. print. “eve ensler”. http://www.eveensler.org/ about-eve. web. 28 june 2014. madsen, debora l. feminist theory and literary practice. london: pluto press, 2000. print. sheffield, carole j. “sexual terrorism” in women: a feminist perspective third edition. ed. jo freeman. mountain view: mayfield publishing company, 1984. print. vinthagen, stellan. “understanding ‘resistance’: exploring definitions, perspectives, form, and implications”. http://www.resistancestudies.org/files/ vinthagenresistance.pdf. web. 21 may 2014. http://www.eveensler.org/ 228 vol. 21 no. 2, october 2021, pp. 228 – 241 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i2.2971 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. deconstructing feminist positions in unigwe’s “possessing the secret of joy” and aidoo’s “the girl who can” confidence gbolo sanka, samuelis gracious ablah, peter arthur cgsanka.cass@knust.edu.gh, pitah_7@yahoo.com department of english, kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, ghana abstract article information for many years, african women have been blaming men for the inferior position of the female gender in african societies. in this blame game, the patriarchal and cultural stipulations of societies are not left out since they present the male gender as superior. this observation is emphasised by the myriads of texts on feminism which largely present discourses that highlight the roles of the male gender and patriarchy in perpetuating female otherness. in doing so, the females are portrayed as mere victims who do not play any active roles in this ordeal and are therefore exonerated from blame. this notwithstanding, a close study of events in patriarchal societies and the evolving contemporary current of thought in feminist domains questions the portrayal of women as helpless victims of patriarchy. by using the theories of feminism and deconstruction and by focusing on the themes and language of the stories, this paper seeks to unearth some patterns in unigwe’s “possessing the secret of joy” and aidoo’s “the girl who can” which speak to the involvement of women as agents of patriarchy. it also argues that some of the time too, men can be victims or subjugates of patriarchy in the african context. the paper concludes that the fight against patriarchy remains the lot of both genders and not in the blame game. keywords: agents; feminism; deconstruction; patriarchy. received: 13 november 2020 revised: 7 march 2021 accepted: 10 april 2021 introduction the paper leans on a theoretical framework comprising feminist theory and deconstruction. feminism exposes us to the concept of patriarchy and its tenets. the theory of deconstruction, on the other hand, aids us unveil certain patterns in the selected short stories that prove how women, consciously or unconsciously, engage in attitudes and stance that indoctrinate patriarchal ideologies. it also helps us establish the possibility of some men suffering from the subjugation of patriarchy in some patriarchal african contexts. https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 229 arguments in the paper are presented through an introduction, feminism in africa, methodology, an analysis of the content of the two stories, and a conclusion. thus, a qualitative method has been adopted in doing a close reading and criticism of the narratives. three basic questions and objectives have been used to guide discussions in the paper: what is the fate of female characters in the two short stories, how does patriarchy contribute to that fate and to what extent do the women contribute to such a fate? the objectives for raising the preceding questions are to establish how female characters are presented seemingly as helpless victims, how patriarchy and male domination are blamed as the cause of the suffering of the female characters and the extent to which women in the narratives also contributed to the entrenchment of patriarchal positions, knowingly or unknowingly. this angle of the study is justified by the observation that previous publications on feminism in african writing have concentrated mainly on the following thematic areas: differences between western and african feminisms, the presentation of african women as the helpless victims of patriarchy or male domination, how african women are able to subvert patriarchy through diverse means and the impact of colonialism on the fate of the african woman. for instance, steady (1981), ogunyemi (1985), ogundipe leslie (1994), acholonu (1995), kolawole (1997), nnaemeka (2003), opara (2003), and ezeigbo (2012, a) have all agreed that western feminism is quite different from the african one. they reject western feminism on the basis of cultural differences, the fact that western feminism has another imperialist agenda of imposing white women experiences as the only form of feminism on all women all over the world and the fact that western feminism seems to exclude black women and men in general from feminist spaces. asaah (2007), azuike (2009), olanipekun (2013), and subba (2014) have also all agreed on the presentation of african women as victims of patriarchy and male domination in the african context. in their works, what comes out clearly is the unfair advantage that patriarchy gives to the male gender over the female gender. even when the woman, in certain circumstances, manages to subvert patriarchy, the success of such a subversion comes after a myriad of obstacles that she needs clear before she gains such independence. on the other hand, odhiambo (2006), musila (2007), nkealah (2013), chitando (2015) and mba (2018) have concentrated their efforts in looking at the ability of the african woman in subverting the roles and positions that have been imposed on them by patriarchy in the african context. to these critics, women are not helpless victims in the works that they have reviewed. women are agents of resistance, change and “complete humans with full potentials and agents of change in a changing world” (mba, 2018, p.11) to ezeigbo (1990, b), colonialism made the traditional igbo woman worse off as compared to the pre-colonial time. traditionally, women had powerful associations of wives and daughters in traditional igbo societies that made them wield power and enabled them manage their own affairs. these traditional associations are no longer a thing of the post-independent era, depriving the woman of the strength that she derived from such associations. thus, from the literature, what is inadequate is the portrayal of women as agents of patriarchy. the argument here is that it is not all the time that women are presented as victims; sometimes they help in entrenching patriarchal positions through their actions and inactions, whether consciously or unconsciously. some of the time too, men “can equally be made subjugates of patriarchy” (sanka, 2019, p. 111). thus, from the works reviewed, feminism in africa has been presented by both critics and writers as an issue that can be looked at from different perspectives. what is missing in this discourse of feminism is the contribution of women to the entrenchment of patriarchal values in their societies and how this can be illustrated from the literary perspective. both ademiluka (2018) and mkhize (2017) agree that women contribute to the entrenchment of patriarchy in african societies both consciously and unconsciously. this is the problem this paper intends providing answers in its analysis. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) sanka et.al. 230 the conclusion drawn is that women sometimes act as agents of patriarchy, whether consciously or unconsciously and sometimes too, some men can be victims of patriarchy. the blame game is not the solution to the damning effects of patriarchy on everybody; there is the need for a closer collaboration between both sexes in order to fight the common enemy. feminism and its interpretations in africa ibeku (2015) observes that feminism is a movement which seeks to change the face of the dehumanising treatments meted out to women and in consequence, it focuses on the emancipation of women. it is interested in “exposing patriarchal form of power as the cause of the unequal and subordinate status of women” and is therefore against “ the erasure, expropriation and the exploitation of the labour and political contributions of african women” for the benefit of african states (eke and njoku, 2020, p. 154, matandela, 2020, p. 7) still on the definition of feminism but in the modern african sense of the term, filomena steady (1996, p.4, a) also observes that “african feminism is, in short, humanistic feminism”. it is a movement that seeks to achieve a humane treatment of women, men and children in general in the society. it is not a tug of war between men and women. in addition, annapurany (2016, p. 424) posits that “feminism refers to a social movement to empower women” or it is a movement which arose in the 20th century to “struggle for cultural roles and socio-political rights …” for women. implying from the above, one can deduce that feminism is a movement that recognises the ill treatments meted out to women politically, economically, socially and culturally and seeks to liberate women from these harsh conditions they find themselves in. this ill treatment meted out to women, generally blamed on “patriarchy” is the springboard on which the feminist movement thrived since patriarchy propelled women to advocate their rights. patriarchy on the hand, is defined as “any culture that privileges men by promoting traditional gender roles” (tyson (2006, p. 85). to mudau and obadire (2017, p.67), patriarchy is “a social structure that gives men uncontested authority.” by implication, patriarchy does not only malign women; rather, it is a structured system which heavily relies on traditional gender roles to malign women. these traditional gender roles which, overtime, become the accepted norm and therefore, the culture and way of life of the society, is said to “cast men as rational, strong, protective, and decisive; [while] they cast women as emotional (irrational), weak, nurturing, and submissive” (tyson, 2006, p.85). emphasising this, boonzaier et al (2004, p. 444) opine that in the canons of domestic abuse which is a subset of feminist discourse, “some theories typically described women as masochistic, passive and personalitydisordered.” on deconstruction, ulmer observes that one interesting feature of the post-new critics era is the discovery that “unlike physics, in which two bodies may not occupy the same space, language is a material in which the same names are capable of supporting several mutually exclusive meanings simultaneously” (1988, p.165) this means that unlike the new critics who believed textual meaning to be definite and capable of being identified by relying solely on the formal features of the text, deconstructive critics “redefined meaning as open to continual shifts, in contrast to the earlier modernist conception of meaning as close in finite denotations” (stern, 1996, p.62). thus, the exclusion of readers from the creation of meaning as well the exclusion of socio-cultural influences from such meaning is taken care of by deconstructive critics who acknowledged the role of these same factors in weaving meaning out of the text. jacques derrida propounded the theory of deconstruction in the 1960s. according to him, deconstruction is all about looking for the “unperceived, the non-present and the unconscious” in a text (1967, p.68). by the “unperceived, non-present and the unconscious”, derrida was referring to the gaps, the inconsistencies and the contradictions inherent in a text. to deconstruct, one needs to first construct a meaning before looking for the absent journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 231 meaning. thus, deconstructive critics look out for what is present in a text in order to uncover what is absent. therefore, the new critics and formalists still have some influence on deconstruction since one has to look for what is present in the text by largely applying the methods proposed by these critics to the text. deconstruction basically asserts that language is fluid and ambiguous and as a result, an utterance lends itself to a varied number of meanings depending on its environment and context. according to tyson (2006, p. 249), “language is not the reliable tool of communication we believe it to be, but rather a fluid, ambiguous domain of complex experience in which ideologies program us without our being aware of them.” methodology the research uses a textual analysis method and grounds its arguments on the theories of feminism and deconstruction. the two theories have been chosen for the paper since it is the situation of women in african societies and how such situation has been interpreted in various ways by researchers that is at stake here. apart from the use of theory to support arguments in the paper, a close textual analysis of the two primary stories has been adopted. words, phrases, clauses, symbols, metaphors, situations and contexts of the two primary sources have been analysed through close reading, thematic and contextual and interpretations. this is also coupled with a selective review of literature from secondary sources such as books, journals, newspapers and electronic media in order to support arguments or adduce evidence in the presentation of the paper. thus a close reading of the primary texts based on the theories chosen and evidence from empirical literature all come together to form the basis for drawing a conclusion in the paper. results and discussion aidoo’s story, “the girl who can” is a tale about the seven year old adjoa who has spindly legs and as a result, nana frets about adjoa’s possible inability to bear children. to nana, the legs are too thin to support firm hips which are a prerequisite for childbirth. nana believes that female education is a mere waste of time and that a woman’s worth is in doing domestic chores. “possessing the secret of joy” by unigwe tells the story of uju who is the only daughter of her widowed mother. in order to enjoy wealth and emancipate themselves from the poverty that has taken over their lives after the death of uju’s father, mama uju psychologically and emotionally blackmails the daughter into marrying the ugly, old, enormous but wealthy chief okeke. uju is thus sold into a life of unhappiness until she discovers what joy there is in motherhood. the two short stories can be interpreted as texts that speak to feminist ideologies where there is a fight for female equality through the telling of the tale of female maligning in african patriarchal societies. many could argue that these two texts are geared towards unveiling the challenges of african women in patriarchal societies and how they survive. the above assertions are forthcoming upon a reading of the narratives. in unigwe’s story, the third person omniscient narrator emphasises the role of men as well as the patriarchal systems of africa in subjugating women. there is the exposition of the fact that uju’s father died in a road accident as a result of the bus falling into a huge pothole, turning over and killing every passenger. however, uju’s father’s family blames it, as it is the norm, on uju’s mother who has suddenly been elevated to the status of a “witch” who has killed their brother overnight. the culture of the society strengthened uju’s paternal family to abuse her mother after being told by a prophet that mama uju, through a vision, chased papa uju with a knife and killed him. this “revelation” of the prophet is heavily built on superstition where africans, generally, believe that everything that happens in the physical world is linked to a spiritual cause since the “spiritual universe is a unit with the physical and these two intermingle and dovetail…them”(mbiti, 1976, p. 75). this situation makes it arguable that women are cornered in their deprived status by culture as journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) sanka et.al. 232 superstitious beliefs are propagated and sustained through cultural practices. to make matters complicated, the story reveals that: supervised by uju’s uncle, her father’s oldest brother, uju and her mother had been sent sprawling out of their modest three bedroom flat in new lay out, to a less modest one room face-me-i -face you flat on obiagu road, their property trailing behind them like unwanted children. the …tragedy. (unigwe, 2005, p.28) the preceding quote cements the role of culture in the economic deprivations endured by women. according to some african cultures, the next of kin of the husband is entitled to all of the deceased’s property including his wife or wives and children if the deceased does not have a son. being a girl, uju just like her mother, is not entitled to her father’s property. this is why uju’s mother says, “if i had a son, your father’s family would never have thrown me out of our home” (unigwe, 2005, p.28). these cultural inheritance customs deprive african women of economic stability since they are mostly left with the choice of either marrying their late husband’s brothers or agreeing to fend for themselves. we are privy to how this inheritance system, built on gender discrimination, impoverishes uju and her mother after the demise of papa uju. this leads to a life of an unenviable hardship and poverty for the duo who have to eat “abacha slices of cassava soaked in water, salted and, on lucky days, eaten with some coconut” for a long time (unigwe, 2005, p.28). apart from living in a one room “face-me-iface-you flat”, being thrown out of her matrimonial home also meant borrowing money from a woman’s cooperative in order to survive. this leads, eventually, to uju quitting school and helping her mother with the selling of “akara balls” and fried yam. it is also important to note that the details of the hardships faced by uju and her mother after the demise of uju’s father unveil the issue of unequal economic opportunities for women in african societies because of the belief that women are cognitively defective but domestically effective. this presents a tale where women are mere victims of the hardships that come along with patriarchy as we see in the lives of uju and her mother. this belief entrenches the perpetuation of a patriarchal culture as being solely responsible for the hardships endured by women in such a society. with the use of the dependent clause, “supervised by uju’s uncle”, the plot moves from blaming culture to blaming the men for the inhumane treatment of women as there is a deliberate emphasis on their role in the subjugation of and the unfair treatment women endure incessantly (unigwe, 2005, p.28). though the cultural stipulations state that women are not entitled to the property of the deceased husband, the dependent clause emphasises how the men perpetuate these ideologies by implementing them. to further depict men as perpetrators of patriarchy, we see how chief okeke who is old enough to be uju’s grandfather finally subdues her and marries her against her will. apart from rendering uju a voiceless entity, chief okeke, being a representative of patriarchy and being fully aware of their age difference, marries uju using his money as bait, and produces a baby with her. this presents a clear case of commodification as the female is seen as an object to be bought with money. the chief could have helped the family out with a small loan to be paid later without necessarily asking the under-aged girl to marry him against her will. the tale is not different in aidoo’s narrative as many can argue that just as the title denotes, it aims at debunking the patriarchal ideology of women being inferior to men. it focuses on how the female gender equally possesses intellectual and cognitive abilities. the narrative presents a tale in which women who are mere victims of patriarchal ideologies seek to prove their worth. being a narrative about the survival of three women without a man, the story aims at proving that women can equally survive and be successful without the male figure. undoubtedly, there are certain structures in “the girl who can” that are clear indicators journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 233 of the role of culture in the subjugation of women as it is observed below: nana: ‘as i keep saying, if any woman decides to come into this world with all her two legs, then she should select legs that have meat on them: with good calves… and a woman must have solid hips to be able to have children.’ (aidoo, 2002, p. 29 a,). this analysis by nana is heavily undergirded by african myths and cultural beliefs. first, we understand how culture aids in subjugating women as the preceding quote emphasises the cultural belief that a woman’s worth is determined by her ability to give birth. a woman who does not give birth is generally branded a witch and the society is uncharitable to the barren (aidoo, 1985, b, aidoo, 1985,c) . this situation is largely responsible for the hardships that women go through as well as the prevention of women from breaking out of their domestic gender obligations. also, the quote: “the older women wear long wrap-arounds all the time” dictates the culture of the people of hasodzi (aidoo, 2002, p.30, a,). thus women are not allowed to show any part of their bodies because their worth in the society is based on how carefully they preserve their bodies against prying eyes and what they can offer with their bodies; they are obliged to wrap themselves up so that their bodies are admired and consumed only by their men. this again, presents a clear idea of how culture and customs aid in presenting women as the inferior sex who are intellectually handicapped and created just to satisfy the sexual urges of men. though these arguments speak to the undeniable roles played by men and culture in the subjugation of women, this paper takes a different view and addresses these two short stories as texts focused on not just presenting females as victims but also imaging the handin hand roles of women in propagating the female gender as the other. upon a careful study of the texts, derrida’s deconstruction theory helps unearth certain patterns and gaps in the language used in the selected texts which point to the fact that culture as well as men is not solely responsible for the persona non-grata status endured by african women in the society. they (women) also play prominent roles in perpetuating their own marginalisation. one of the most recurring ideas in the studies of patriarchy is the “uncontested authority” enshrined in the hands of the male gender over the females by the socio-cultural systems and the abuse of such authority by men, leading to the subjugation of their female counterparts (mudau and obadire, 2017, p. 67). interestingly, there is a complete elimination of the male gender and their authority from the lives of the main families in “possessing the secrets of joy” and “the girl who can”. the few male characters in the texts are given a rather passive image. for instance, uju’s father is only mentioned in passing and is reported dead in “possessing the secrets of joy”. apart from being dead, we see a conscious effort, through the use of language, to ground papa uju’s passiveness in the story when we are told that to uju, her father is “…like an old polaroid picture. defaced. effaced. without a face.”(unigwe, 2005, p. 27) consequently, when uju decides to go a step further to give her father a face and a voice by shutting her eyes and searching the “crevices of her mind”, she can still not remember her father’s face. the absence of uju’s father’s voice as well as his position of not having a “face” as seen in the quote above symbolises a position of powerlessness. emphasising the above is mama uju’s reference to her husband as a “quiet” man. this goes a long way to undergird his passive role. in the same text, mention can be made of uju’s paternal uncle who is also flung to a less prominent position by being mentioned only in passing to have supervised the abuse of uju and her mother after the death of papa uju. the elimination of male control and dominance is not also left out in aidoo’s “the girl who can”. adjoa’s father is only mentioned in passing and is not seen playing any active role in their lives. more so, he is given an ill image and referred to by nana as a “man like that.” (aidoo, 2002, p. 30 a). though the absence of the males from the stories as seen above is geared toward the presentation of the females as worthy of equality, this paper argues that this journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) sanka et.al. 234 elimination of the males from the story liberates the women from male control and gives us a clear portrayal of how women in their own right become patriarchal agents, particularly, in the absence of male control. this elimination also enables us to question the presentation of females as mere victims in the hands of patriarchal men and culture. by ridding the above stories of male influence, the authority and power to make and take decisions is solely concentrated in the hands of the female characters who, unlike the men in the texts, are given a voice and a face. this creates a setting where the lives of the female characters are void of any direct external forces of control from the male counterparts, at least within the context of the family, so that decisions taken are solely in the jurisdiction and control of the females. for instance, an illustration of the use of authority to make decisions being solely in the hands of the female characters is seen in “possessing the secret of joy” where uju and her mother are presented to be solely responsible for their decisions towards survival after being thrown out of their family home. the vital decisions of the means of survival after their ordeal with uju’s paternal family is now solely in the hands of uju’s mother and readers are told how she decided to “…borrow money from a woman’s cooperative to start a petty business, selling dandy chewing gum and sachets of milk and omo detergent in her kiosk…”(unigwe, 2005, p.28 ). readers also see how the decision of uju’s schooling is practically in the hands of her mother who has the power to decide whether or not uju stops schooling. even more importantly, unigwe concentrates the authority to decide who uju marries in the hands of her mother which is contrary to the normal practice in the african patriarchal society. in such societies, the selection of spouses is the sole prerogative of the male gender or at worst, both wife and husband. the same is seen in “the girl who can” where nana, mama and adjoa are left to their own fate: living independently of male domination and control with the power and authority to make decisions fully concentrated in the women’s hands. throughout the story, adjoa, the seven-year old first person narrator of the story clearly portrays the wide gap between the authority of the adult women in her life and that of the children like herself. this clearly draws the hierarchy and shows the concentration of power in the hands of nana and mama. also, we see the decision of adjoa’s education being a sole prerogative of her mother, kaya. interestingly, being the masters of their own lives and independent from male control, it is expected that these female characters in the two narratives will take decisions that will elevate females from the dungeon of otherness to a position of equality. however, the female characters in the selected short stories are seen digging into the belly of authority and taking advantage of the power of autonomy given them to subdue people of similar sex. by so doing, they become agents of patriarchy who perpetuate serious violence on the other females in the two stories. this is a clear pointer to the fact that women are not merely victims but are sometimes participants in their own subjugation because of having been psychologically conditioned, though unaware, to accept their positions of inferiority. according to signorella, “a lingering but not new assumption is that women may be less likely to exhibit racist or other prejudicial attitudes … an assumption that frequently fails both historical analysis and current empirical examinations” (2020, p. 257). thus, advertently or inadvertently, they (women in the narratives) subject either themselves or other females to patriarchal injustices even in the absence of male control. through the actions of mama uju, kaya and nana in the two selected short stories, there is the presentation of varied profound ways through which women themselves aid in sustaining patriarchy in the society. through the character of nana in “the girl who can”, we see how women have over the years accepted their positions as the inferior other as a result of their habitation in patriarchal societies. this acceptance shows that women are not helpless victims without a will. many of these women, as a result of staying within patriarchal cultures, journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 235 unconsciously allow themselves to be programmed into accepting these inferior positions. tyson (2006, p. 86) concurs with this assertion when she observes, “i call myself a patriarchal woman because i was socially programmed… not to see the ways in which women are oppressed…” hence, to end patriarchy, women, just as the men folk, should be made privy to the subtle roles they also play in entrenching patriarchal ideologies. nana, who is the oldest member of the family is presented to have been so conditioned and programmed by the stipulations of culture and patriarchy such that she is convinced without any reasonable doubt that women are inherently inferior and thus are designated for certain traditional roles from which they get their worth. this is why she shows immense commitment and worry towards her granddaughter’s “defective” legs which, she believes, will serve as a prohibiting factor to the achievement of adjoa’s traditional roles as a wife and subsequently, rid her of her worth as a woman in the society. adjoa takes care to vividly portray the importance of her physical features to nana. she says: like all this business to do with my legs. i have always wanted to tell them not to worry. i mean nana and my mother. that it did not have to be an issue for my two favorite people to fight over. but i didn’t want either to be told not to repeat that or for it to be considered so funny …(aidoo,2002, p.28 a). the preceding quote reveals to us how nana has joined the fight in favour of patriarchy by reducing the female’s worth to the state of her body because of the patriarchal ideology that the woman has nothing else to offer but her body. that nana, a woman, is highly committed to these patriarchal ideologies and their sustenance in the society proves that men are not the sole enforcers of patriarchy. women also enforce patriarchal ideologies, to some extent. we are told by adjoa how this discussion about her legs has been repeated regularly and this schools us on the importance nana places on the body of a woman as a symbol of her worth to the neglect of her brains, industry and contribution in various ways to the family and society (aidoo, 2002, a). we understand how important and natural the reduction of the worth of the female to the state of her body has become to nana such that adjoa observes, “what i’m very sure of is that when i came out of the land of sweet, soft silence into the world of noise and comprehension, the first topic i met was my legs.” (aidoo, 2002, p. 28 a). it is why nana also observes: but adjoa has legs…except that they are too thin. and also too long for a woman…but if any female child decides to come into this world with legs, then they might as well be legs…as i keep saying, if any woman decides …children.(aidoo,2002, p. 29 a). this does not only show how important the physical features of the female body is to nana but it also indicates how much of a restriction she has put on the female’s ability to play roles outside of the traditional roles designated for her in patriarchal societies. nana is presented as a symbol and an agent of patriarchy because she objectifies the female by restricting adjoa’s abilities and worth to her physical looks. nana’s unconscious involvement in propagating patriarchal ideologies is also emphasised when we see how happy she is about her daughter’s giving birth to a female. she says, “kaya, i thank my god that your very first child is female” (aidoo, 2002, p. 29 a). this proves how much worth she places on the female gender. paradoxically, to her, the female is only useful if she possesses certain key physical features that will enable her perform her traditional duties: to marry and give birth. this patriarchal ideology of a woman’s worth is emphasised by awogumaduagwu who posits that “…it is also believed a woman has no worth outside marriage because” “a husband crowns a woman’s life” (awogu-maduagwu, and akindele 2016 p.203, adichie, 2006, p.83) consequently, being fully convinced of the belief that the woman is born merely to be a domestic servant, born without any cognitive and intellectual abilities, nana disagrees with journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) sanka et.al. 236 kaya that adjoa should be educated because to her, “it would be a waste of time”(aidoo, 2002, p. 31 a). the above scenario creates a gap in thinking as one wonders why nana accepts the importance of the female child by not lamenting that adjoa should have been born a male but also refuses to accept the abilities of the female in other areas of life apart from the traditional roles assigned her. this presents a situation where nana fails to live up to the expectation of the society as old women are believed, especially by the akans of ghana, to be repositories of wisdom (yankah, 1995, p.70). the story emphasises the extent to which these agents of patriarchy are willing to go because of their convictions. nana is so glued to the idea that adjoa tells us how nana resorts to the voice that “…shut[s] everyone up” when talking about this subject and how she would not care even if she were a source of unhappiness to her children (aidoo, 2002, p. 29 a). she resorts to any means possible to attack kaya as long as she, nana, wins the argument for patriarchy. the quotation that follows illustrates this point: maami: ‘mother, why are you always complaining about adjoa’s legs? if you ask me…’ nana: ‘they are too thin. and i am not asking you!’ nana has many voices. there is a special one she uses to shut everyone up. (aidoo, 2002, p. 29 a). we see a clear case of the length nana goes to uphold patriarchy. more so, the text lends itself to the interpretation that nana deliberately resorts to her special kind of voice regardless of the effect on her daughter, kaya, just so that she prevails. with the use of ellipsis as against nana’s use of an exclamation we are presented with a clear understanding of maami’s inability to complete her sentences because nana would not allow her to. to emphasise this abuse of power and the rendering of the same sex voiceless, adjoa presents nana’s authority and subduing of maami with an exclamation. nana is emotionally attached to this ideology about thin legs as a serious drawback on the female’s ability to perform her societal roles. aidoo’s narrative introduces us to another character who practices patriarchal ideologies, kaya. she is presented as a woman who has outgrown and unlearnt patriarchal ideologies. however, she fails to stand up against her mother because of the respect she has for her. she disagrees with her mother on two things: adjoa’s legs and adjoa’s education. we see this when she argues with her mother against the view that women are domestic entities whose worth should be measured by their physical bodies. more so, she: …kept telling nana that she…felt she was locked into some kind of darkness because she didn’t go to school. so that if…her daughter, could learn to write and read and little besides____ perhaps be able to calculate some things on paper___that would be good. [she] could … (aidoo, 2002, p. 31 a). though kaya has unlearnt these patriarchal ideologies, the text deliberately emphasises the role of her silence in perpetuating these ideologies. her lack of confidence in confronting the patriarchal ideologies leads to the sustenance of such ideas and this makes her a programmed patriarchal agent. tyson (2006) argues that though the socio-cultural systems are to be blamed for this social programming, women have to learn and recognise to resist that social programming and this is what kaya fails to do. adjoa makes it clear how her mother allowed herself to be subdued by nana’s ideologies all the time. we are told by adjoa how kaya would respond to nana’s arguments, “‘oh mother.’ and that’s how my mother would answer. very very, quietly. and the discussion would end or they would move on to something else” (aidoo, 2002, p. 30 a). though kaya seems to have unlearnt the patriarchal ideologies of the hasodzi people, her show of disbelief when she is told that adjoa has been selected to represent the junior section of her school in the district games puts this belief in doubt. interestingly, we see how nana and kaya are on the same page of disbelief about the news adjoa tells them and so they have to go and “ask into it properly” (aidoo, 2002, p. 31: a). though this disbelief journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 237 may be as a result of adults taking for granted the things children say, this scenario is loaded with other interpretations. one would have expected that show of incredulity from nana who has proven straight away her disbelief in the abilities of a woman outside her domestic roles, especially one whose legs have been a bone of contention. hence, kaya’s disbelief comes across as a sign of uncertainty and doubt in the abilities of the female to achieve success outside of the traditional roles assigned her. she is sure the female is worth more than patriarchy defines her to be but she is not fully convinced and this may be one of the reasons underlining her shallow confidence in dealing with the dictates of patriarchy. the issue of women being active participants in the implementation of patriarchal ideologies is also seen in unigwe’s “possessing the secrets of joy”. uju’s mother is presented to have become an agent of patriarchy. moreover, unlike nana in aidoo’s short story, uju’s mother’s involvement in the sustenance of patriarchy as well as woman on woman violence is presented to have been fuelled not only through indoctrination in the otherness of the female but more importantly, by greed and materialism. having been elevated to a place of authority to take decisions, mama uju misuses her authority and consciously or inadvertently perpetuates patriarchal ideologies by subduing the rights of her daughter and by objectifying her. the concept of commodification in marxist criticism aptly describes the way and manner in which mama uju treats her daughter: not as human being but as an object with an exchange value. mam uju objectifies her daughter by reducing her to a domestic entity who possesses only the qualities of marriage and childbirth. we see this reduction of the female to the performance of sexual and domestic responsibilities when mama uju strategically positions her young daughter, uju, at the forefront of her business purposely to expose her to men so that eventually, her body will attract and bring a rich suitor home to emancipate them from poverty. to emphasise this, the third person narrator observes: as uju wrapped up the food straight off the pan for customers, she knew that at the back of her mother’s mind, lurked the hope that one day, one of their clients would notice her daughter and ask for her hand in marriage.(unigwe, 2005, p.28 ) to mama uju, a woman is not of any worth if she does not bring home a rich suitor. it is worth noting that mama uju’s main focus and aim for reducing her daughter to a domestic entity is because of her assumption that uju’s marriage must, as a matter of necessity, bring them financial emancipation. mama uju’s actions open us up to the fact that, she does not only believe in the woman’s worth being restricted to marriage but that uju must marry so that she mama uju can become wealthy. it is mama uju’s attitude of consumerism as well as her decision in commodifying uju which explains why she quickly ascends the throne of motherhood and protects young uju from the prying eyes of godfrey who, she thinks, is a mere carpenter incapable of offering them financial emancipation. we are told that: godfrey, the bachelor carpenter who lived in the same compound as they did had knocked the table up for her at a really cheap rate. ‘neighbourly rate,’ he said, showing off his buck teeth as he smiled, his eyes taking in uju’s developing body, …daughter. (unigwe, 2005, p. 28 ) consequently, the undergirding reason for the decision to subject her daughter to marriage at an early age and to an old ugly chief is in consonance with mama uju’s materialistic goals. due to her desire to become wealthy, mama uju disregards the physical appearance of the old chief, the age gap and how unhappy he would make uju and does everything possible to condemn the seventeen-year old to perpetual melancholy. the man uju is forcefully married to is described as a man who does not only look many years older than his age but also a man whose stomach: …wobbled and preceded him whenever he walked into a room. it was like that of a journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) sanka et.al. 238 woman on the verge of delivering quadruplets, but without the firmness of a pregnant stomach. the hair on his head was sparse, and white, like cotton wool that …to him. (unigwe, 2005, p.27) chief’s appearance is so monstrous that uju cannot but conclude “this man is an elephant” (unigwe, 2005, p. 28). it also explains why on his wedding day he is described as looking “fit to burst in his three piece suit” and more so, why uju can hardly breathe when chief rests his weight on the poor girl on their wedding night (unigwe, 2005, p. 28). this presents an image of not only the harsh realities in the differences in the ages of the chief and uju but also emphasises the mismatch between their physical appearances. being a forced marriage, the willful negligence and irresponsibility of uju’s mother in performing her motherly roles is revealed here. she merely gives uju to chief okeke because of what she stands to gain from the marriage. in fact, she is not different from binetou’s mother in so long a letter who “…begged her daughter to give her life a happy end, in a proper house, as the man has promised them” (bâ, 2008, p.37) in addition, mama uju does not only enforce the patriarchal ideology of the woman being made for marriage but her actions fuelled by materialism become patriarchal as she also advances the belief that a woman is made for childbirth. further, she propagates the idea that a woman’s value is only elevated if she gives birth to male children. then again, the structures of unigwe’s story also link mama uju to the undergirding force of materialism. she only emphasises the importance of male children over females because she needs her daughter’s position as the wife of a wealthy chief to be well grounded. hence, mama uju takes to praying ceaselessly for uju to have male children for chief okeke as “a wife with male children has her position secured. nothing can shake that” (unigwe, 2005, p. 28) she ratifies the patriarchal belief and acts on it. interestingly uju, unconsciously, has also been indoctrinated by her mother to accept the importance of male gender over the female one. we are told that: uju prayed fiercely in her mind as her mother spoke. she prayed that she never had a son for chief. she did not want her position crystallised. she wanted it to be shaky. she wanted chief to find her wanting and …home. (unigwe, 2005, p.28.) we see uju’s gradual acceptance of the female gender and male gender dichotomy as presented in patriarchal societies. she expresses her belief in the efficacy of male children as potent sources, organically and culturally imbued with the abilities to crystallise one’s position as a wife as against the inferior positions of female children who are not potent enough to secure her position as a wife. this is why she prays for female children instead of males because to her, giving birth to female children will cause “chief to find her wanting” (unigwe, 2005, p. 28). just as we see in aidoo’s story where nana would resort to anything possible to subdue other women in her family simply because of her convictions about the patriarchal ideologies, we see mama uju resorting to anything possible which would make her achieve her materialistic goals. this ends up in making her an agent of patriarchy. this is further developed by the conflict of the story which revolves around differences in opinion between a daughter and a mother. the daughter believes marriage should be based on love and a source of happiness. the mother believes that her daughter’s marriage must relieve them from abject poverty whether or not there is love in the marriage or it is incapable of making her daughter happy. to paint an accurate picture of the materialistic and authoritarian tendencies of mama uju and how this fuels her enforcement of patriarchal ideologies, there is a subtle contradiction of mama uju’s assertion that uju’s marriage to chief okeke is the “only” hope for their survival. mama uju is portrayed in the story as an industrious and visionary woman who has been able to make ends meet for herself and her daughter no matter how difficult it is. we see her visionary skills at play as she elevates herself from being the owner of a mere table top kiosk to the owner of an additional business of selling akara and fried yam. more so, we see her ability to get what she journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 239 wants through the way she resorts to every means possible to get her daughter to marry the old chief. by implication, investing this same energy into her business, mama uju can improve her economic fortunes over time but due to greed and abuse of authority, she resorts to taking the shortest route towards prosperity. her actions create a scenario where materialism, abuse of authority and the urge to quickly amass wealth drives her into enforcing patriarchal ideologies by subjecting her only daughter to a state of unhappiness. this is illustrated by mama uju’s insistence on uju’s marriage to the old ugly chief regardless of uju’s concerns. we see this materialism showcased when mama uju asks her daughter, “don’t you want to see me in nice clothes? .a big house? servants? don’t you want to enjoy your life, nwam?” (unigwe, 2005, p.27) the order of priorities in the preceding quote is very important to this assertion and explains why mama uju thinks chief okeke is their only hope. mama uju places her material needs first and makes her daughter’s happiness her least priority by placing it last. all the preceding instances present a picture of a woman whose actions are deliberately acidic to another woman’s welfare. conclusion it can be argued that the selected short stories are narratives aimed at presenting the ill state of affairs that women are subjected to by men in african patriarchal societies. however, this paper argues that through the characters in the stories, the events presented and a study of the language used in both texts, we see how the same texts present women not as mere victims of patriarchy but also as agents in the ordeals they endure in these patriarchal societies. it also emphasises how women carry out different forms of violence on other women. some of the men are also victims of patriarchy in african societies. some researchers are of the view that women are the hardest hit the outbreak of the recent covid-19 due to their situation in society (al-ali 2020, p.334) the problem is that some of these repercussions of the pandemic are made worse by some fellow women in some contexts, intentionally or unintentionally because they have become agents of patriarchy. this paper therefore contributes to research on feminism in africa and the world at large by drawing attention to gaps in tackling the fight for feminism and against patriarchy: women as agent of patriarchy(consciously or unconsciously) and the possibility of men being victims of the same patriarchy in the society it also draws our attention to the unstable nature of meaning due to the fluid nature of language and how language remains a powerful weapon in shaping and portraying the extent to which women could be enemies unto themselves. it is therefore necessary for women and men in africa to accept their subtle, conscious and unconscious ways in perpetuating patriarchy so that together, they can minimize the effects of this phenomenon on all segments of the population in african societies. references acholonu, c. o. 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(1995). speaking for the chief: okyeame and the politics of akan royal oratory. indianapolis; in: indiana university press. phenomena vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 149 the analysis of historical origin and productiveness of derivational affixes in the declaration of independence of america (1776) joan sanita joansanita@yahoo.co.id english language studies, sanata dharma university abstract this paper presents the analysis of historical origin and the productiveness of affixes (prefixes and affixes) that are found in the text declaration of independence. it focuses mainly on derivational affixes combining with the morpheme and also its derivation in the history of english. it also notes the frequency and distribution of the affixes in the text. the aim of this study is to reveal the derivational affixes in the declaration of independence together with its analysis related to the origin of the affixes. three sources of guidance are used as a means to aid the identification the affixes. they are dictionaries, books, and online resources. the result of the study shows that there are eight prefixes and eighteen categories of suffixes found in the declaration of independence. moreover, it is noticed that most of the derivational affixes are still used till nowadays. the frequent prefixes in the text are un-, dis-, and in-. meanwhile, the common suffixes found are ion (-tion, ation) followed by –ence (-ance) and –ment together with –er /or. it can be concluded that their productivity remains to be survived till present day though there are also some affixes that show declensions. keywords: derivational affixes, declaration of independence introduction declaration of independence of america is one of the texts that is important in the late 17th century. it is not only because of the members involved in the moment of declaration but also because of the content of the text itself. with the psychological situation at that time, the declaration of independence can be stated as a proof of the awareness of nationalism and the status relating to the other countries. furthermore, if the text is further analyzed, the content of the text in the declaration of independence is essential in number ways. firstly, the text reveals the condition of the people of america at that time that was under the oppression. that is why they wanted to declare their independence. likewise, in linguistic sense, the declaration of independence can show the language development of english at that time. in other words, development of the language and word-formation are used to construct the text. in this sense, this paper studies the derivational affixation in the declaration of independence of america. the affixes, prefixes and suffixes, are examined together with the comparison to the other affixes. it is crucial because affixations are added, reduced, and modified from time to time. the historical perspective and productiveness of the affixes are significant to be examined in order to joan sanita 150 reveal the more thorough the identification of the word formation of the text. in addition, there is also prediction of some words which are originally seen as derivational affixes but they are no longer identified as affixes since the words have been fused into one morpheme. some false possibilities of prediction dealing with affixes are also noticed. the declaration of independence of america the declaration of independence in america was one of the biggest momentous events in the history. it did not only trigger the nationalism of americans but also bring influence to the other countries, especially the britain’s colony. it was authorized in the united states, july 4, 1776 (armitage, 2007: 157). it consists of approximately 1300 words and the rough draft was written by thomas jefferson. it was signed by 56 delegates of the congress, including john adams, benjamin franklin, john hart, samuel adams, john witherspoon and thomas jefferson himself. it is the symbol of freedom that americans struggled for their independence. this declaration was defended because of the desire of americans to get their freedom (baugh and cable, 1978: 357). moreover, it was also related to the consciousness of americans to be completely separated from britain. the distinction was not only in the case of land territory but also in the state of the language. that is, being americans means having their own language that does not have to be the same as british. they wanted to be treated as equal and they fought to get their power and authority in their own land. the time of the declaration was on 1776 (late of 17th century). it can be stated as a time of modern english. it is the time when the spelling, punctuation, and vocabulary are nearly closed to english on present day (crystal, 1995: 76). correspondingly, the form of affixes is also more similar to the affixes that are found nowadays. there are eight prefixes and twenty eight derivational suffixes identified from the text. the history of derivational affixes the term affixes has been noticed since the renaissance (matthews, 2001: 82). it is the time when english comes to its ‘glory’ for the inventory and also new word formation. many new words entered into english vocabulary as an impact of this period, including the creation of new words using affixation. affixes have existed in the time of old english. it has become part of the vocabulary and indicate the flexibility of the vocabulary at that time. that is, the affixes are used to form new words from old words to vary or enlarge the root idea. the affixes of this period are more similar to modern german. the common-used prefixes are ā-, be-, for-, fore-, gemisof-, ofer-, heafod-, on-, to-, un-, under-, and wiþ(with-). meanwhile, the common suffixes are –ig (–y), -full, -leas (less), -lice (-like), -nes (-ness), -ung –wīs (wise), -dōm, -end, -ere (-er), -hād (-hood), -sum (-some), -scipe (-ship), and -ing (baugh and cable, 1978: 66; wiktionary). most of the above affixes still remain in middle english as well as in modern english. however, as the lists in general, many of affixes are disappeared in the latter time. the latter time after old english is called middle english. the affixes in the middle english time are more or less similar to the affixes in the old english. nonetheless, the affixes in this time are combined and noticed more apparently in the word formation. some of the additional common prefixes besides the above list are on(un-), over-, under-, counter-, dis-, re-, trans-. in contrast, the additional suffixes are -ish, -lock, -red, -ly, more, and-ster (baugh and cable, 1978: 181182; wiktionary). primarily, the most significant time when the affixes are defined more frequently is in the time early modern english (renaissance) up to the nineteenth century or the time of modern english. the affixes are more familiar with the affixes in the present day and the vocabulary is enlarged in a more readily combination (baugh and cable, 1978: 303). the lists of additional prefixes are pre-, de-, super-, inter-, non-, sub-, mal-, anti-, contra-, vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 151 extra-, inter-, and neo-. by comparison, the list of additional suffixes are –able (or -ible), -age, -ate, -ify, -(i)an, (i)al, -ist, ite, -ant, -al, -(a)tion, -ion, -or, -ity, -ive, -th, and -ary (crystal, 1995: 128, 208) in this sense, there are some affixes from old english which are no longer used in modern english. for example, the prefixes forand the suffix –lock previously are usually used in the oe period. by contrast, now there are only few words which survive such as forgive, forbid, forsake, forswear for the prefix fortogether with wedlock and warlock for the suffix –lock. on the other hand, there is also an occurrence when the affixes are seldom used in former period but they are noticeable in the later period. the instances are the suffixes –dom and –wise which become more acceptably used, especially in the rise of american english (culpeper, 2000: 30). the origin of the affixes it is also important to review about the origin of the affixes. that is, there are some affixes which are originally come from english (native old english) but there are also some affixes which are borrowed or derived from the other language. according to plag (2003: 85), the affixes which innately come from english are the affixes which derived from old english period. for the prefixes, they are un-, mis-, be, out-, over-, under-, fore-. meanwhile, the examples for the suffixes are –less, -ness, dom, -ship, -full, and –hood. then, there are also affixes which originate from latin. the examples of the prefixes are con-, contra, de-, dis-, in-, im-, ir-, il-, sub-, inter-, counter-, mini-, pre-, post-, pro-, re-, super-, and –trans. by comparison, the suffixes are –an, -ar, -ian, -ic, -ive, -ty, and -y (lass, 2000: 378-379; walker-esbaugh et al., 2004: 92-93). comparatively, there are also affixes derived from greek. the prefixes are anti-, auto-, bio-, bi-, geo-, hyper-, micro-, mono-, neo-, proto-, pseudo-, and thermo-. meanwhile, the suffixes are –ism, -ist, -ize, -gram, -graph, logue/ -log, -logy, -meter, -oid, -phobia and – phone (green, 2008: 72-73). another influence is the affixes from french. the affixes of french basically come from romance, latin, and greek. therefore, it does not influence many in english. the examples are mainly on the suffixes that are – ette and –esque (lass, 2000: 393). generally, these affixes will contribute to form nouns and adjectives. however, there is also a case when the affixes do not change the lexical category or part of speech of the word. that is, they are more usable in changing the meaning of the word. for example, the prefixes un-, in-, and disare used to change the meaning into negative (the opposite of the root meaning). prefixes in the declaration of independence there are eight prefixes found in the declaration of independence text. they are un, dis-, en-, abin-, pre-, trans-, and with-. the most prefixes that appear in the text are un (six words), dis(three words), and en(three words). as stated previously, the use of prefixes are mostly modifying the meaning of the words rather than in changing the word category. however, there is a case of en-prefix which changes the lexical category of the word. they are exemplified as follows. table 1. list of prefixes in the declaration of independence 1. words with prefix un unacknowledged unanimous uncomfortable, undistinguished unfit. unusual 2. words with prefix dis disavow, dissolve, dispose 3. words with prefix en encourage, enlarging, entitle 4. words with prefix ab absolved 5. words with prefix in incapable, independence 6. word with prefix pre pretended 7. words with prefix trans transport 8. words with prefix with without, within joan sanita 152 in this extent, the prefixes observed from the text deal mostly with adjectives, verbs, adverbs, preposition, and nouns. the prefixes which relate to adjectives are unanimous, uncomfortable, undistinguished, unfit, unusual, incapable, and pretended. then, the prefixes which cope with verbs are unacknowledged, disavow, dissolve, dispose, encourage, enlarging, entitle, absolved, and transport. the prefixes which contend with adverbs are without (also with preposition) and within, while the prefix deals with noun is independence. the use of prefixes un-, in-, and dis usually functions to reverse the meaning. for example, when the prefix unis attached in the word comfortable, fit, and usual, the meaning becomes the contrary. by comparison, the prefixes ab-, pre-, trans-, and withare used in the extent of changing the situation, order, and side of the meaning. conversely, the remaining prefix encan be treated differently. that is, rather than changing the meaning, the use of prefix en functions more on shifting the word category. for example, prefix enin the words encourage and enlarging that change the category from the stem courage (noun) and large (adjective) into verbs. suffixes in the declaration of independence compared with the identified prefixes, the use of suffixes in the text is much more extensive. there are at least eighteen categories of suffixes found from the declaration of independence. they are (1) ion, -tion, or -ation, (2) -ly (3) -y, -ty, or ity, (4) -able, (5) -ence, -ance, (6) -er /-or, ier/ -ior, (7)-ment, (8)-ness, (9)-ive, (10) ent, -ant, (11) -ary, (12) -ing, (13) -al, (14) tude (15) -less, (16) -ure, (17) -ism, and (18) -some. the list of these suffixes can be observed in the table 2 below. table 2. list of suffixes in the declaration of independence 1. words with suffix –ion, -tion, or -ation accommodation, administration annihilation, appropriation, attention, connection, constitution, convulsion declaration, desolation, destruction emigration, foundation, insurrection intention, invasion, jurisdiction legislation, migration, naturalization operation, opinions, oppression petition, population, protection representation, separation, usurpation 2. words with suffix –ly accordingly, fundamentally, likely manly, mutually, repeatedly, scarcely solemnly, totally, 3. words with suffix –y, -ty, or –ity consanguinity, cruelty, injury magnanimity, necessity, perfidy, safety, security, unworthy 4. word with suffix –able inestimable, sufferable, valuable 5. word with suffix -ence, -ance allegiance, compliance, correspondence providence, prudence, reliance, sufferance 6. word with suffix –er /-or, -ier/ -ior creator, executioner, foreigner, frontier, governor, officer, ruler, superior 7. word with suffix –ment establishment, governments, payment punishment, settlement 8. word with suffix –ness firmness, happiness 9. words with suffix –ive destructive, legislative, representative 10. words with suffix –ent, -ant dependent, inhabitant 11. words with suffix -ary boundary 12. word with suffix –ing (as derivational) neighbouring 13. word with suffix -al political 14. word with suffix –tude multitude 15. word with suffix –less merciless 16. word with suffix –ism despotism 17. word with suffix –ure legislatures 18. word with suffix -some wholesome vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 153 in this respect, it can be noted from the text the declaration of independence that the most suffixes used are –ion (/-tion, /-ation), twenty-nine words. sequentially, they are followed by –ly (ten words), –y/ -ty/–ity (nine words), -ence /-ance (seven words), –er /-or (six words), -able (five words) and –ment (five words). as also stated previously, suffixes behave more in changing the lexical category of the attached words. it can be recognized in almost all the suffixes except in the word boundary (bound  noun, bound + -ary noun), political (politic  adjective, politic + al  adjective), despotism (despot  noun, despot + -ism  noun), and some words with suffixes –er /-or, -ier/ -ior (execution  noun, execution + -er  noun; office  noun, office + -er  noun). the identified suffixes from the text considerably change the verbs into nouns, verbs into adjectives, adjectives into adverbs, adjectives into nouns, and nouns into adjectives. the suffixes that change the verbs into nouns are –ion, -tion, or -ation, -ence, ance, -or, –ment, and –ure. the suffixes that alter the verbs into adjectives are –able, –ive, and–ent. the suffix that transforms adjectives into adverbs is –ly. the suffixes that convert adjectives into nouns are –y, -ty, or –ity, and– ness. the suffix that substitutes nouns into adjectives is –less. furthermore, the functions of the suffixes in changing the meaning of the words also vary. the suffix –less is used to show that the ‘thing’ is not there (e.g. merciless). besides, the suffix –able is used to show the capability or liability of the ‘thing’ (e.g. inestimable, sufferable, and valuable). while, the suffixes – er /-or, -ier/ -ior are applied to modify the word which is inhuman to be a person that relates to the base of the word or to state a condition (e.g. creator, executioner, foreigner, frontier, governor, officer, ruler, and superior). the presence of both prefixes and suffixes in the declaration of independence in the text, it can be also noticed that there are also some words with the affixes of both prefix and suffix. there are at least four words of it. they are dissolution, invariably, inevitably, unalienable, and unwarrantable. the change of grammatical category also varied. that is, for the word dissolution, the word dissolute which is an adjective (dis + solute) changes into a noun because of the suffix –ion. meanwhile, for the word invariably, the morpheme vary which is a verb got a reverse meaning semantically by and adding of the prefix in-. after that, it changes into an adjective under the circumstance of the suffix –able (in + vary + able). then it changes the adjective into an adverb under the attachment of the suffix –y (in + vary+ able +y). the more or less similar change also occurs in the word inevitably (in+ evitable + y). the similar change also happens for the next two words, unalienable and unwarrantable. that is, the words alien and warrant change into adjectives under the suffix –able to become alienable (alien + able) and warrantable (warrant + able). then, the prefix unchanges the semantic meaning of the words into the reverse meaning of the adjectives alienable and warrantable. the productiveness of the affixes it can be argued from the text that prefix un-, dis-, and inare commonly used as a reversing suffix for the meaning of the words in the text the declaration of independence. they are frequently used in adjectives, verbs and nouns. moreover, they also can be assumed as the productive prefixes in forming a reversal word together with the prefixes mis-, and nontill nowadays. that is, they are more frequently used rather than the other reversing prefixes such as mal-, a-, counter-, and anti-. likewise, the other four prefixes found in the text (en-, abpre-, trans-, with-) are also still used till recently though the productiveness of the suffixes are limited now, especially for the prefix with-. the suffixes are more productive in creating the words in english. it is because the suffixes mostly behave as changing the lexical category the words. thus, many new word categories could be invented through the process of suffixation. as can be assumed joan sanita 154 from the analysis, the significant suffixes which are used in forming nouns are –ion (tion, ation) followed by –ence (-ance) and – ment. meanwhile, the suffix –ness is not numerously used in the text. similarly, the suffixes –er /-or are frequently used in the text for creating noun which is animate (human). besides, the most productive suffix which is used in generating adjectives is –able and – ive. the suffix –less is infrequently used in the text. it can be assumed because of the content of the text which intentionally conceals the weaknesses. by contrast, it shows more on the solidarity and power since it is related to their mission to get the freedom. on the other hand, the most productive suffix in producing the adverb adverbs is –ly. it can be assumed that there is also a case of prediction of words with affixes which are not seen as a derivational morpheme anymore in the present day. they are the words abdicate, assume, declare, distant, impel, necessary, require, respect, separate, and station. the argument for this is that, those words are formerly made from the morpheme and the affix but then it becomes permanently assumed as a morpheme alone. for example, the words abdicate (originally from latin, 15th century) is historically formed from the past participle of the word abdicare (ab + dicare). also, for the word declare (originally from anglo french and latin, 14th century), it is also made from the word declarare (de +clarare). these days, they are no longer seen as derivations but a single morpheme. conclusion in summary, the text of the declaration of independence of america shows the amount of word formation and productiveness of the affixes in the late 17th century. that is, the text consists of numerous affixes in the form of prefixes and suffixes which are still used till nowadays. likewise, it can be assumed that the suffixes are more numerous (18 kinds) in the text rather than the prefixes (8 kinds). the found suffixes are more on forming the nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. meanwhile, the prefixes found are mainly on reversing the meaning (in-, un-, dis-). finally, it is important to note that the affixes found are still productive till recently. they are still used in spoken or written text as well as in coinage. some affixes are survived though the number of words is limited. the examples are on the prefixes transand withand the suffixes –tude and – some. references akmajian, adrian., demers, richard a., farmer, ann k., and harnish, robert m. linguistics: an introduction to language and communication. new york: cambridge university press, 2001. print. armitage, david. the declaration of independece: a global history. london: harvard university press, 2007. print. baugh, albert c., and cable, thomas. a history of the english language (3rd edition). london: prentice-hall international, 1978. print. crystal, david.the cambridge encyclopedia of the english language. london: cambridge university press, 1959. print. culpeper, jonathan. history of english new york: routledge, 2000. print. finegan, edward. language: its structure and use (4th edition). boston: thomsonb wadsworth, 2004. print. green, tamara m. the greek and latin roots of english (fourth edition). maryland: rowman & littlefield, 2008. print. lass, roger. the cambridge history of the english language. cambridge: cambrige university press, 2000. print. vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 155 matthews, peter. a short history of structural linguistics. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2001. print. plag, ingo. word-formation in english. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2003. print. radford, andrew, martin atkinson, david britain, harald clahsen, andrew spencer. linguistics: an introduction (2nd edition). cambridge: cambridge university press, 2009. print. walker-esbaugh, cheryl., mccarthy, laine h., and sparks, rhonda a. dunmore and fleischer’s medical terminology (third edition). philladepia: f.a. davis, 2004. print. online resources http://www.etymonline.com http://dictionary.reference.com http://www.prefixsuffix.com https://www.learnthat.org http://www.macroevolution.net http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/appendix english_prefixes http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/appendix:suffixes: english http://www.etymonline.com/ http://dictionary.reference.com/ http://www.prefixsuffix.com/rootsearch.php?navblks=1011000 https://www.learnthat.org/pages/view/roots.html#m http://www.macroevolution.net/biology-prefixes-e.html http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/appendix%20english_prefixes http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/appendix%20english_prefixes http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/appendix:suffixes:english http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/appendix:suffixes:english 172 vol. 21 no. 1, april 2021, pp. 172 – 189 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i1.3035 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. the metaphoric conceptualization of the covid-19 pandemic in the online press releases of lapor covid-19 and kominfo maria magdalena sinta wardani mmsintawardani@usd.ac.id faculty of letters, sanata dharma university, indonesia abstract article information this article seeks to describe the metaphoric conceptualization of the covid19 pandemic in the online press releases of lapor covid-19 and the ministry of communication and information technology (kominfo). more specifically, it seeks to 1) describe the metaphorical linguistic forms contained in the online press releases of lapor covid-19 and kominfo, 2) identify the conceptual metaphors contained in the online press releases of lapor covid-19 and kominfo, 3) describe the function of the metaphors contained in the online press releases of lapor covid-19 and kominfo. data were collected between march 1 and october 31, 2020. analysis was conducted using the method developed by steen (2009). nine metaphors were identified as being used within the context of the covid-19 pandemic: 1) berguguran ('fall in battle'), 2) berdamai ('make peace'), 3) garis depan ('frontlines'), 4) melawan ('oppose'), 5) menang ('win'), 6) benteng ('fortress, bastion'), 7) menghantui ('spook'), 8) membesar ('grow in size'), and 9) menelan ('swallow'). three conceptual metaphorizations of the pandemic were utilized by lapor covid-19, namely 1) pandemic is war, 2) pandemic is ghost/specter, and 3) pandemic is monster. meanwhile, one conceptual metaphorization was identified in kominfo's press releases: pandemic is war. these conceptual metaphors' selection was informed by the genre of the discourses as well as specific characteristics of the institutional. metaphors, as rhetoric devices in persuasive discourses, function to 1) increase the attractiveness of the message and stimulate readers' imagination, 2) reduce the complexity of the message, and 3) to concretize the discourse. keywords: press release; conceptual metaphor; pandemic; covid-19; persuasive discourse received: 26 december 2020 revised: 25 january 2021 accepted: 1 february 2021 https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index 173 introduction the ongoing covid-19 pandemic has become a global issue, one that has drastically transformed diverse aspects of human life. this has included communication patterns, as the pandemic has necessitated efficient public communication to ensure that accurate information is spread throughout all elements of society. as stated by syaipudin (2020, p. 14), to overcome the various problems created by the covid-19 pandemic, public communication is the best means of maintaining social interactions. the various stakeholders involved in efforts to control the covid-19 pandemic in indonesia have similarly required public communication to ensure that the public receives accurate information and targeted guidance, as only then can people understand their situation and adapt to it, thereby curbing the spread of the novel coronavirus. online media have become increasingly strategic as public communication patterns have shifted; any information posted online can be rapidly accessed and utilized by the public. it is this consideration that underpins the current study of online press releases regarding covid-19 and its mitigation. the press releases discussed in this study have been published online by stakeholders in indonesia's ongoing efforts to eradicate covid-19. as stated above, this study will examine the press releases of two stakeholders: first, the ministry of communication and information technology (kementerian komunikasi dan informatika, kominfo), a government agency that shares official information; and lapor covid-19, an organization that presents itself as a forum for citizen reporting and is used to share information that (is perceived as) being ignored by the government. these institutions represent two sides of the same coin, and thus are interesting to examine in conjunction. it is necessary to utilize easily understood language to conveying messages. according to syaipudin (2020, p. 14), the ability of the recipient to receive and understand the message is central to the communication process. as such, clear and simple language is necessary to convey messages to the masses and ensure that these messages are understood by recipients, no matter their individual characteristics and sensitivity. individuals' diverse abilities must be considered when encoding messages. it may thus be concluded that simplicity and clarity are the cornerstones of mass communication. this study examines the use of metaphoric language in online press releases, under the assumption that these metaphors serve a specific function within persuasive discourses. it is relatively easy to identify such metaphoric expressions in coverage of the ongoing pandemic. take the following example, an excerpt from a kominfo press release. gelar lebaran virtual, kominfo ajak masyarakat berdamai dengan pandemi covid-19 holding eid virtually, kominfo invites the public to make peace with the covid-19 pandemic (source: https://www.kominfo.go.id) in this title, the word berdamai ('make peace') is a metaphor. in the body of this press release, the metaphoric meaning of the word berdamai is clarified in order to prevent miscommunication and minimize divergent understandings. saya ingin menekankan bahwa berdamai bukan berarti menyerah. berdamai adalah menyesuaikan diri dengan kedisiplinan yang tinggi untuk menjalankan protokolprotokol kesehatan sebagai upaya untuk memutus mata rantai penyebaran covid19. i want to emphasize that making peace is not surrendering. to make peace is to adapt oneself to health protocols, with a high level of discipline, and thus break the transmission chain of covid-19. (source: https://www.kominfo.go.id) the word berdamai is immediately contrasted with the word menyerah (surrender) through negation. the government uses the word bukan to distinguish berdamai from menyerah, thereby journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) maria magdalena sinta wardani 174 attempting shape public opinion by creating a persuasive discourse. metaphors may be classified as persuasive devices that function to stimulate the creativity and imagination of audiences (kristina, 2017, pp. 91–95). according to courtright and smudde (2009, p. 154), persuasion is often identified with public relations. press releases, meanwhile, are persuasive discourses that are used for public relations. such releases trace their roots to journalists' entry into public relations, when they began presenting their clients and organizations using a seemingly objective approach built around the inverted pyramid structure (courtright and smudde, 2009, p. 149). courtright and smudde (2009, p. 149– 153) identify five elements that shape press releases and public relations. first, there exist different types of discourses or genres, which emerge as a natural consequence of commonalities that require specific symbols and responses. second, form follows function; the type of discourse is determined not by convention, but rather the rhetoric strategies that are “given voice” (used to convey a message). third, bilateral communication is necessary; when designing a strategic response, organizations must not simply respond to situations, but consider how audiences perceive said situations and the responses expected of them. fourth, stability and flexibility; public relations staff must not only know the conventional characteristics of discourses, but also recognize the extent of their freedom. some genres allow extraordinary levels of creativity, while others (especially those favored by government agencies) limit the available strategies. fifth, adaptation is inevitable; discourse conventions change over time, along with audience responses and organizational needs. further adaptation is driven by new media channels, which may be more user-friendly and require new approaches. as mentioned above, the covid-19 pandemic has instigated unprecedented transformations in global society. this study will examine how the pandemic is conceptualized by society, realizing this goal based on the metaphors used to describe it. before analysis, it is thus necessary to elucidate on the concept of metaphor, which is commonly used in cognitive linguistics. in cognitive linguistics, metaphors are understood as the main operational framework for human though. according to lakoff (1981, p. 5), metaphors’ existence as linguistic units is only made possible by the presence of conceptual metaphors; as such, understanding requires a consideration of both metaphoric words and concepts. in essence, metaphors are means of understanding and experiencing situations and conditions relative to others. metaphors enable individuals to combine existing ideas, and even to create new ones. according to lakoff (1981), although metaphors have traditionally been perceived as limited to poetics, contemporary studies have understood them as existing in everyday communication. metaphors occupy a primary position in everyday communication, as through them human cognitive processes are operated and experiences are understood. lakoff (1981, p. 3) writes that communication relies on a shared system of concepts and behaviors, and language offers an effective means of exploring this system. in other words, it is possible to recognize cognitive metaphors through a systematic and evidencebased investigation of linguistic forms and metaphors. one such approach is offered by steen (2007), who seeks to bridge the gap between linguistic and conceptual metaphors through a five-stage analysis. this approach offers a promising means of identifying the conceptual metaphors within a discourse. steen writes that, although indirectness facilitates the identification of metaphors, it is not sufficient in and of itself. metaphors are created through the sharp distinction and contrast of multiple conceptual domains, which are linked by various forms of semantic transfer that are built on a foundation of similarity. this distinguishes metaphors from other forms of indirect expression; metonyms, for instance, also contrast two domains, but on a basis of contiguity (steen, 2007, p. 10). journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 175 even when language is used directly, it may still be metaphoric at the conceptual level. in such cases, identifying the conceptual metaphors involved is problematic. steen's method facilitates the identification of words that are used metaphorically in discourses, thereby enabling researchers to identify conceptual metaphors within discourses based on the linguistic metaphors contained within them. one study of metaphors in persuasive texts was conducted by boeynaems et al. (2017), who investigated the metaphoric expressions (both conventional and novel) and non-metaphoric expressions used in news texts to influence audiences' views. conventional metaphors follow conventional frameworks in mapping issues, and thus facilitate the concretization and understanding of relevant issues. their usage, as such, can positively influence individuals' cognitive perception of the message being communicated by increasing the quality of arguments and reducing the complexity of messages. the researchers assumed that, where conventional metaphors positively influence audiences' perception of the text, they will influence audiences' opinions and perspectives. novel metaphors may similarly cultivate a positive response to the message, as they can increase audiences' interest and stimulate their imaginations. in this, the researchers assume that, through the mechanisms inherent to the text, novel metaphors can influence audiences' opinions and perspectives of messages (boeynaems, burgers, konijn, and steen, 2017, p. 2866). in their study, boeynaems et al. (2017) used a dictionary to identify metaphors. if a metaphor's contextual meaning could be identified through the dictionary, it was identified as a conventional metaphor. conversely, if the contextual meaning of the metaphor was not found within the dictionary, it was identified as a novel metaphor (boeynaems, burgers, konijn, and steen, 2017, p. 2866). to determine the strength of such metaphoric expressions, the researchers relied on the google search engine to ascertain their relative frequency. this study found that metaphors operate through diverse mechanisms that follow two distinct perceptual routes. through the first mechanism, which stems from perceived innovation, novel metaphors can positively influence how texts are affectively and cognitively perceived. through the second mechanism, which stems from perceived appropriateness, novel metaphors negatively influence the cognitive perception of the text. haula and nur (2019), seeking to reveal the types of conceptual metaphors employed, investigated how metaphors are conceptualized in the opinion column of the indonesian daily kompas. they found that writers tended to transfer their ideas from the abstract to the concrete, from the ideal to the physical. many used metaphors that were associated with nature, including karam ('to sink'), tumbang ('to fall'), sapuan badai ('storm-swept'), berladang ('to farm'), and bertiup ('to blow'). the images created through these metaphors were predominantly associated with the concept of existence. both studies examine the use of metaphors within news stories. where the first study sought to prove its hypothesis regarding the influence of metaphors on audience perceptions, the second study analyzed opinion pieces and editorials to explore their conceptual metaphors. unlike these previous studies, the current article investigates the linguistic and metaphoric concepts contained within the persuasive texts published on the official websites of lapor covid-19 and kominfo. it also seeks to understand these metaphors' function as rhetoric devices. methodology this research began with data collection, which relied on the observation method and the note-taking technique. during the data collection, metaphoric words related to covid-19 were identified through observation and then recorded. the data were collected from press releases related to covid-19 issued by lapor covid-19 through laporcovid19.org and by kominfo through kominfo.go.id. lapor covid19 was selected to represent a private journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) maria magdalena sinta wardani 176 organization intended to voice the interests of the public, while kominfo was chosen to represent the pandemic-related information and policies disseminated by the government. the data were collected from press releases issued between march 1 and october 31, 2020. after data were collected, it was found that five press releases issued by lapor covid-19 and six press releases issued by kominfo included metaphoric elements in their conceptualization of the pandemic. the data were subsequently analyzed. analysis began with the identification of linguistic metaphors; further analysis was conducted subsequently to identify the conceptual metaphors contained within the texts. an analysis was conducted using the five-stage method developed by steen (2009, p. 206), i.e. 1) the identification of metaphorrelated words, 2) the identification of propositions, 3) the identification of open comparisons, 4) the identification of analogical structures, and 5) the identification of crossdomain mapping. for the first stage, the researcher consulted the fifth edition of the great dictionary of the indonesian language (kamus besar bahasa indonesia, kbbi) to ascertain the basic meaning and contextual meaning of words that were suspected to be related to metaphors. complementary information was collected through an informal search, using google, which enabled the researcher to ascertain whether these words were metaphoric expressions. the identity method was used to identify and describe linguistic metaphors. foundational to this method was the determination of defining elements, through which mental, referential, articulatory, translational, orthographic, and pragmatic elements were identified (sudaryanto, 2015, p. 25). this enabled the researcher to map linguistic units based on their specific referents. also used was the equalizing technique, which enabled the researcher to identify the link between the source and target expression. the results of this analysis are presented formally and informally, both through tables and through description. results and discussion the conceptual metaphorization of the covid-19 pandemic nine metaphors were identified as being used within the context of the covid-19 pandemic: 1) berguguran ('fall in battle'), 2) berdamai ('make peace'), 3) garis depan ('frontlines'), 4) melawan ('oppose'), 5) menang ('win'), 6) benteng ('fortress, bastion'), 7) menghantui ('spook'), 8) membesar ('grow in size'), and 9) menelan ('swallow'). these data indicate three different conceptual metaphorizations of the pandemic, namely 1) pandemic is war, 2) pandemic is ghost/specter, and 3) pandemic is monster. the metaphor-related words collected from press releases will be analyzed in detail below. conceptual metaphor: "pandemic is war" the words berguguran ('fall in battle'), berdamai ('make peace'), garis depan ('frontlines'), melawan ('oppose'), menang ('win'), and benteng ('fortress, bastion') are metaphors. these words (or, to borrow a term from steen, lexical units) will be analyzed within the conceptual metaphor that "pandemic is war". analysis of the word berguguran in the first stage of analysis, the basic (denotative) meaning and contextual meaning of words were identified. to identify the basic meaning of the word, the fifth edition of kbbi was consulted. to identify the contextual meaning, the word's relationship with its surrounding linguistic units was examined. words whose contextual meaning differed from their basic meaning were identified as metaphor-related words. below are the meanings of the word berguguran. basic meaning: 'to die in battle, often in large numbers' contextual meaning: 'many healthcare workers have died while treating covid19 patients' the presence of the word "battle" in the denotative definition above indicates that the journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 177 basic meaning of berguguran exists within the war domain. further analysis is provided below: table 1. analysis of the word berguguran text laporcovid19.org, melalui pusara digital juga sudah mendokumentasikan banyaknya tenaga kesehatan yang berguguran selama pandemi ini. (laporcovid19.org, through the digital database, has documented the amount of healthcare workers who have fallen in battle during the pandemic.) (source: https://laporcovid19.org) 1 identification of metaphor-related words berguguran ('fall in battle') 2 identification of propositions p1 healthcare workers have fallen in battle p2 time p1 during the pandemic p3 modifier many p1 3 identification of open comparison sim{f, x, y [f (healthcare workers y)] t [fall in battle (x, y)] s} 4 identification of analogical structure sim{f, x, y [die (healthcare workers)] t [fall in battle (soldiers)] s} s 5 identification of cross-domain mapping target < source die < fall in battle healthcare workers < soldiers covid-19 < enemy inference pandemic is war from this analysis, it can be ascertained that the metaphor berguguran ('to fall in combat') infers the idea of "pandemic is war" analysis of the word berdamai the meanings of the word berdamai ('make peace') are provided below. basic meaning: 'to reconcile after a period of enmity' contextual meaning: 'to adapt one's behavior to new healthcare protocols to stop the spread of covid-19' again, the basic meaning shows that the word berdamai ('make peace') exists within the war domain. this is reinforced by the usage example provided in the fifth edition of kbbi: "kedua negara yang berperang itu telah berdamai" (the two warring nations have made peace.) this example underscores that the word berdamai exists within the war domain. analysis is provided below: journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) maria magdalena sinta wardani 178 table 2. analysis of the word berdamai text melihat dinamika ini, pemerintah indonesia telah meminta masyarakat untuk mengubah perilaku dan menyesuaikan diri dengan berdamai dengan virus korona baru ini. (seeing these dynamics, the indonesian government has asked people to change their behavior and adapt themselves by making peace with the novel coronavirus). (source: https://laporcovid19.org) 1 identification of metaphorrelated words berdamai ('make peace') 2 identification of propositions p1 seeing these dynamics p2 the indonesian government has asked people p3 to change their behavior p4 adapt themselves (people) p5 making peace (people) with coronavirus p6 modifier p5 novel 3 identification of open comparison sim{f, x, y [f (society with coronavirus)] t [make peace (x, y)] s} 4 identification of analogical structure sim{f, x, y [change behavior (society with coronavirus)] t [make peace (enemy nation)] s} s 5 identification of cross-domain mapping target < source change behavior < make peace coronavirus/covid-19 < enemy inference pandemic is war from this analysis, it can be seen that the metaphor berdamai ('make peace') infers the conceptual metaphor "pandemic is war". analysis of the word garis depan the meanings of the compound word garis depan ('frontlines') are provided below. basic meaning: 'a line of defense situated in close proximity the enemy (in battle)' contextual meaning: 'an area defending against covid-19; hospital' here, the words enemy and battle indicate that the basic meaning of garis depan ('frontlines') exists in the war domain. analysis follows below: table 3. analysis of the word garis depan text terkait hal ini, pemerintah juga harus memastikan ketersediaan alat pengaman diri yang sesuai standar kepada para nakes yang bertugas di garis depan. (regarding this matter, the government must ensure that personal protective equipment that meets relevant standards is available to all health professionals working on the frontlines.) (source: https://laporcovid19.org) https://laporcovid19.org/bukan-berdamai-tapi-berjuang-bersama-melawan-covid-19/ journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 179 1 identification of metaphorrelated words garis depan ('frontlines') 2 identification of propositions p1 ensure government equipment p2 meets equipment standards p3 working health professionals p4 place p3 frontlines p5 modifier p1 must 3 identification of open comparison sim{f, x, y [f (health professionals)] t [duty (x, y)] s} 4 identification of analogical structure sim{f, x, y [duty (health professionals)] t [duty (soldiers frontlines)] s} s 5 identification of crossdomain mapping target < source hospitals < frontlines soldiers < health professionals duty < duty inference pandemic is war from this analysis, it can be seen that the metaphor garis depan ('frontlines') infers the conceptual metaphor "pandemic is war". analysis of the word melawan the word melawan ('oppose') was identified in five press releases on the kominfo website. analysis follows: basic meaning: 'to face off against during war' contextual meaning: 'to prevent, to eradicate' in should be noted that, in the dictionary, the word melawan ('oppose') is also identified as being used in the context of boxing and wrestling. however, warfare is the first context mentioned. the example provided in the fifth edition of kbbi is similarly located in the war domain: "mereka tidak sanggup melawan musuh sebanyak itu" (they were incapable of opposing that many enemies.). as such, melawan has the basic meaning 'to face off against during war', which indicates that it exists within the war domain. analysis follows: table 4. analysis of the word melawan text kiranya benang merah antara ibadah puasa dan lebaran ini juga sesuai dengan semangat kita melawan covid-19 ini, yaitu laku menahan diri, menempa raga, membersihkan diri, dan pada akhirnya mencapai kemenangan. (perhaps the thread uniting the fast and eid is also suited to our passionate opposition to covid-19, enabling us to practice restraint, temper our bodies, cleanse ourselves, and finally achieve victory). (source: https://www.kominfo.go.id) 1 identification of metaphorrelated words melawan ('oppose') 2 identification of propositions p1 uniting thread worship journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) maria magdalena sinta wardani 180 p2 suited p1 our passion p3 oppose we covid-19 3 identification of open comparison sim{f, x, y [f (us covid-19)] t [oppose (x, y)] s} 4 identification of analogical structure sim{f, x, y eradicate (us covid-19)] t [oppose (our enemy)] s} s 5 identification of crossdomain mapping target < source eradicate < oppose covid-19 < enemy inference pandemic is war from this analysis, it may be seen that the metaphor melawan infers the conceptual metaphor pandemic is war. analysis of the word menang analysis of the word menang ('win') follows. basic meaning: 'defeat enemies, opponents, competitors' contextual meaning: 'successfully stop and eradicate covid-19' in the fifth edition of kbbi, the word menang is illustrated through the sentence dalam perang selalu ada yang kalah dan ada yang menang (in war, there always those who lose and those who win.). this shows that the basic meaning of the word menang exists within the war domain. the contextual meaning 'successfully stop and eradicate covid-19', meanwhile, is evident from the word's interactions with the other elements of the sentence. analysis follows: table 5. analysis of the word menang text saya yakin dan percaya, bersama, kita menang dari corona atau covid-19. (i am certain and believe that, together, we can win against corona or covid-19). (source: https://www.kominfo.go.id) 1 identification of metaphorrelated words menang ('win') 2 identification of propositions p1 certain i p2 believe i p3 win we 3 identification of open comparison sim{f, x, y [f (we y)] t [win (x, y)] s} 4 identification of analogical structure sim{f, x, y safe (we)] t [win (state)] s} s 5 identification of crossdomain mapping target < source safe < win journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 181 covid-19 < enemy inference pandemic is war from this analysis, it may be seen that the metaphor menang infers the conceptual metaphor pandemic is war. analysis of the word benteng analysis of the word benteng ('fortress, bastion') follows below: basic meaning: 'a building used to protect or defend against enemy attacks' contextual meaning: 'immunity from covid-19' from this analysis, it is apparent that the word benteng exists within the war domain. this is further evidenced by the example provided in the fifth edition of kbbi: "hanya yang sempat berlindung di dalam bentenglah yang selamat" (only those who stayed in the fortress survived). analysis follows: table 6. analysis of the word benteng text karena saat ini imunitas tubuh menjadi benteng pertahanan utama dari tubuh kita untuk melawan covid-19. (because, currently, our immune system is our body's primary bastion in our opposition to covid-19). (source: https://www.kominfo.go.id) 1 identification of metaphorrelated words benteng ‘bastion’ 2 identification of propositions p1 be immunity bastion p2 signifier p1 currently p3 oppose us covid-19 3 identification of open comparison sim{f, x, y [f (immunity y)] t [be (x, y)] s} 4 identification of analogical structure sim{f, x, y be (immunity)] t [be (bastion)] s} s 5 identification of cross-domain mapping target < source immunity < bastion covid-19 < enemy covid-19 spread < enemy attack inference pandemic is war from this analysis, it may be seen that the metaphor benteng infers the conceptual metaphor pandemic is war. conceptual metaphor: "pandemic is ghost/specter" for this category, the word menghantui ('to spook') was the sole metaphor identified. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) maria magdalena sinta wardani 182 this word indicated the conceptual metaphor pandemic is ghost/specter. analysis follows below: basic meaning: 'to spook as a ghost/specter' contextual meaning: 'to cause fear (concern, anxiety); to frighten' table 7. analysis of the word menghantui text ancaman infeksi covid-19 juga menghantui para pekerja perkantoran dan industri di indonesia. (the threat of covid-19 infection continues to spook the office and industrial workers in indonesia) (https://laporcovid19.org) 1 identification of metaphorrelated words menghantui ‘to spook’ 2 identification of propositions p1 spook covid-19 workers p2 place p1 indonesia 3 identification of open comparison sim{f, x, y [f (covid-19 workers)] t [spook (x, y)] s} 4 identification of analogical structure sim{f, x, y [shadow (covid-19 workers)] t [spook (ghost, human)] s} 5 identification of cross-domain mapping target < source shadow < spook covid-19 unseen < ghost unseen covid-19 expanding < ghost/specter following inference pandemic is ghost/specter from this analysis, it is evident that the word menghantui ('to haunt') infers the conceptual metaphor pandemic is ghost. in the reviewed discourses, this was the only word referring to this domain. the possible usage of other metaphor-related words was explored using a google search, which returned the expression "virus korona gentayangan di jalanan di jakarta" (the coronavirus haunts the streets of jakarta; source: vlix.id). the word gentayangan is generally used to describe the behavior of ghosts; in the fifth edition of kbbi, the example usage provided is "tersiar kabar bahwa ada arwah yang menggentayangi desa itu" (there spread word that a spirit was haunting the village). it may thus be concluded that pandemic is ghost/specter exists as a conceptual metaphor in language. conceptual metaphor: "pandemic is monster" the words membesar ('grown in size') and menelan ('swallow') were identified as metaphors. analysis of these words cannot be separated, as they are used within the context of the same sentence. these words will be analyzed within the context of the conceptual metaphor pandemic is monster. these will be analyzed below. membesar basic meaning: 'to become big; to appear big' contextual meaning: 'to spread more broadly' https://www.vlix.id/ journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 183 menelan basic meaning: 'to take (food) through one's throat' contextual meaning: 'to consume prey, etc.' the words membesar and menelan are analyzed together owing to their chronological link. the subject (s), semantically characterized as an actor, will membesar (grow in size) and ultimately menelan (swallow) human beings, the object (o). as such, both membesar and menelan exist within the monster domain. this is also supported by the example usage of menelan provided in the fifth edition of kbbi: "gambar kepala raksasa menelan bulan" (an image of a monster swallowing the moon). table 8. analysis of the word membesar and menelan text ancaman infeksi covid-19 juga menghantui para pekerja perkantoran dan industri di indonesia. pandemi covid-19 terus membesar dan menelan banyak korban jiwa, serta menimbulkan masalah ekonomi. (the covid-19 pandemic continues to grow and swallow victims, as well as to create economic problems.) (source: https://laporcovid19.org) 1 identification of metaphorrelated words membesar ('grown in size') and menelan ('swallow') 2 identification of propositions p1 grow pandemic p2 swallow pandemic victims p3 create pandemic problems p4 modifier p2 many 3 identification of open comparison sim{f, x, y [f (pandemic y) & f (pandemic victims)] t [grow (x, y)] & swallow (x, y)] s} 4 identification of analogical structure sim{f, x, y [expand (pandemic) & kill (pandemic victims)] t [grow (monster)] & swallow (monster prey)] s} 5 identification of cross-domain mapping target < source expand < grow kill victims < swallow victims inference pandemic kill victims < monster swallow victims more specifically pandemic is monster from this analysis, it may be understood that the metaphor-related words membesar and menelan infer the conceptual metaphor pandemic is monster. this reaches past the dictionary definition of "an imaginary creature that is very large, ugly and frightening", or even the metaphoric "something that is extraordinarily large". culturally, the indonesian people understand monsters as raksasa, as the supernatural beings narrated through wayang journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) maria magdalena sinta wardani 184 stories and fairy tales. these monsters are understood as almost human in form, yet significantly larger. indonesians recognize some supernatural as invisible, and others as astral beings (genderuwo, buta, etc.). both tangible and intangible raksasa are inexorably linked with conflict and fear. however, intangible and astral raksasa are not as familiar with contemporary indonesians as the physical raksasa described in wayang stories and fairy tales. as such, it is possible that the conceptual metaphor pandemic is monster is a more specific form of the conceptual metaphor pandemic is ghost/specter. the understanding of raksasa as frightening beings that threaten human life is used to create a sense of fear. there are thus semantic similarities between ghost/monster and the covid-19 pandemic; both are framed as intangible beings that endanger human life. further investigation is necessary, as this study is limited in its ability to explore the above-mentioned possibility. metaphors' function as rhetoric devices in persuasive discourses this section will examine the diverse functions of metaphors in persuasive discourses, as represented by the press releases issued by lapor covid-19 and kominfo. functional analysis has been conducted to understand the link between the basic and contextual meanings of the collected data. table 9. analysis of the metaphors' function no metaphor basic meaning contextual meaning function 1 berguguran 'to die in battle, often in large numbers' 'many have died while treating covid-19 patients' to increase interest and stimulate the imagination 2 berdamai 'to reconcile after a period of enmity' 'to adapt one's behavior to new healthcare protocols to stop the spread of covid-19' reduce the complexity of the message 3 garis depan 'a line of defense situated in close proximity the enemy (in battle)' 'an area defending against covid-19; hospital' to concretize 4 melawan 'to face off against during war' 'to prevent, to eradicate' to increase interest and stimulate the imagination 5 menang 'defeat enemies, opponents, competitors' 'successfully stop and eradicate covid-19' to increase interest and stimulate the imagination 6 benteng 'a building used to protect or defend against enemy attacks' 'immunity from covid19' to concretize 7 menghantui 'to spook as a ghost/specter' 'to cause fear (concern, anxiety); to frighten' to increase interest and stimulate the imagination 8 membesar 'to become big; to appear big' 'to spread more broadly' to increase interest and stimulate the imagination journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 185 9 menelan 'to take (food) through one's throat' 'to consume prey, etc.' to increase interest and stimulate the imagination several of the metaphoric expressions used in press releases, including berguguran, berdamai, melawan, menang, menghantui, membesar, and menelan, are categorized as verbs. kristina (2017, p. 91–95) notes that verbs are highly persuasive, as they give the impression of movement and action. the usage of verbs transforms how arguments are read, as well as increase their persuasiveness (carpenter and henningsen, 2011, p. 53). it appears that these metaphors are used as rhetoric devices to increase the persuasiveness of the texts. the word berguguran is a metaphoric expression that is used to increase the attractiveness of the message and to stimulate readers' imaginations. berguguran is a conventional metaphor, one that has long been used in the war domain. in readers, it triggers the image of soldiers fighting and dying on the battlefield. the frightening and threatening connotations of war are used as persuasive devices to increase readers' emotional response. in this text, the word berguguran is used in conjunction with tenaga kesehatan (health professionals), and in doing so serves to draw readers' empathy in response to the conditions experienced by said professionals. at the same time, the word berguguran honors the dead health professionals, as it implicitly likens them to soldiers or heroes who have been killed in the line of duty. this message may increase readers' awareness of the dangers of covid-19 and the ongoing emergency situation. the word berdamai is a metaphoric expression used to reduce the complexity of the message within its specific context. it is transformed from the basic meaning 'to reconcile after a period of enmity', taking on the meaning 'to adapt one's behavior to new healthcare protocols to stop the spread of covid-19'. in this example, the word berdamai is simpler and more easily understood than the technical concepts "new behavior", "health protocol", and "stop the spread of covid-19". the word berdamai also has positive and inclusive connotations, implying "stability", "calm", and "serenity". however, where novel metaphors are used, they may be misunderstood. this is anticipated in the following quote: "saya ingin menekankan bahwa berdamai bukan berarti menyerah. berdamai adalah menyesuaikan diri dengan kedisiplinan yang tinggi untuk menjalankan protokolprotokol kesehatan sebagai upaya untuk memutus mata rantai penyebaran covid19." (i want to emphasize that making peace is not surrendering. to make peace is to adapt oneself to health protocols, with a high level of discipline, and thus break the transmission chain of covid-19). (source: https://www.kominfo.go.id) because this metaphor is a new one, it may be interpreted diversely by the public. the word berdamai may be misinterpreted, for example, as 'surrender'. recognizing this possibility, the kominfo press release seeks to control and shape public opinion by imparting audiences with an explicit understanding: berdamai means adapting one's behaviors to health protocols, thereby stopping the spread of covid-19. a different perspective is evident in a press release, titled "bukan berdamai, tapi berjuang bersama melawan covid-19" (do not make peace, but fight together against covid-19). in this release, it is evident that lapor covid-19 does not agree that it is necessary to "make peace", not because the organization understands berdamai differently, but because of factual data on the government's handling of the covid-19 pandemic. consider the following quote: melihat dinamika ini, pemerintah indonesia telah meminta masyarakat untuk mengubah perilaku dan journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) maria magdalena sinta wardani 186 menyesuaikan diri dengan berdamai dengan virus korona baru ini. dalam siaran pers pada sabtu (16/5), juru bicara gugus tugas achmad yurianto mendefinisikan, pola hidup baru itu di antaranya agar masyarakat agar melakukan kehidupan normal, yang diimbangi dengan upaya membiasakan untuk mencuci tangan dengan sabun, menggunakan masker, menghindari kerumunan, dan tidak keluar rumah jika tidak perlu. (seeing these dynamics, the indonesian government has asked the people to change their behavior and adapt themselves to make peace with the novel coronavirus. in a press release issued saturday (16/5), spokesman achmad yurianto defined this new lifestyle as requiring people to continue life as normal, with some changes: handwashing, with soap; wearing a mask; avoiding crowds; and not leaving home unnecessarily. (source: https://laporcovid19.org) in this quote, lapor covid-19 reproduces the meaning of the word berdamai offered by the government: to change one's behavior and adapt oneself. this press release also quotes achmad yurianto, the spokesman of the covid-19 eradication unit, regarding the new lifestyle necessitated to weather the pandemic. in its discourse, lapor covid-19 rejected the call to berdamai, arguing 1) the state must prepare itself, and prioritize health services before reopening the economy in a 'new normal' condition, 2) the indonesian government had limited data, and it was not conveyed transparently, and this limited the government's ability to curb the spread of covid-19, and 3) widespread covid-19 testing had yet to occur. it used these three arguments to assert that indonesia was not yet ready to begin the "new normal". instead of berdamai, it offered the word melawan ('oppose') in its persuasive discourse. this word underscores that lapor covid-19's objections stem not from its understanding of the metaphoric expression, but rather its perception that indonesia was not ready to begin a 'new normal'. the word garis depan has the basic meaning 'a line of defense situated in close proximity the enemy (in battle)'. this conventional metaphor is used as a concrete reference, something that can facilitate readers' understanding of the contextual meaning and visualization of the involved spaces. the word garis depan, which is commonly used in military contexts, is a strong visual that guides readers towards an understanding of hospitals' strategic position in the treatment of covid-19, as well as the urgency of such treatment. the word melawan has the basic meaning 'to face off against during war', but is used to convey the contextual meaning 'to prevent, to eradicate'. it is intended both to increase reader interest and to stimulate readers' imaginations. in the sentence "kiranya benang merah antara ibadah puasa dan lebaran ini juga sesuai dengan semangat kita melawan covid-19 ini, yaitu laku menahan diri, menempa raga, membersihkan diri, dan pada akhirnya mencapai kemenangan." the word melawan is associated with the words semangat (passion), menempa (temper), diri (self), raga (body), and kemenangan (victory). using such words, this discourse emphasizes only positive connotations. the word melawan is also used to stimulate readers' imaginations, to empower them to fight and achieve victory. this metaphor is identified in five press releases on the kominfo website. this repetition shows not only that kominfo has sought to give readers the necessary spirit to stop the spread of covid-19, but also that the government has relied heavily on the word melawan. this message was used to motivate readers, so that they would contribute to the eradication of covid-19. the word menang has the basic meaning 'to defeat enemies, opponents, competitors'. in the sentence "saya yakin dan percaya, bersama, kita menang dari corona atau covid19," the word menang has the contextual meaning 'successfully stop and eradicate covid-19'. the use of the words yakin ('certain'), percaya ('believe'), bersama ('together'), and kita ('we') in conjunction with menang, showing an emphasis on positive connotations. it presents the eradication of covid-19 as a joint project, and in doing so seeks to persuade readers to work together journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 187 during the pandemic, to 'win' by stopping the spread of covid-19. the word benteng is a metaphoric expression used to indicate 'immunity', as seen in the sentence "karena saat ini imunitas tubuh menjadi benteng pertahanan utama dari tubuh kita untuk melawan covid-19." it concretizes immunity as something capable of defending against covid-19's attacks on the human body. this metaphoric expression leads readers to imagine immunity as a physical object, and thereby to better visualize its role in the pandemic. in this manner, the discourse seeks to motivate readers to strengthen their immune systems so they can avoid covid-19. the word menghantui is a metaphoric expression that can increase reader interest and stimulate readers' imaginations. in the sentence "ancaman infeksi covid-19 juga menghantui para pekerja perkantoran dan industri di indonesia," the metaphoric expression menghantui guides readers to imagine covid-19 as a 'ghost' that causes fear and anxiety. these negative emotions are exploited to increase readers' empathy for indonesia's office workers and industrial laborers while simultaneously emphasizing the need for caution. the words membesar and menelan are both metaphoric expressions that can increase reader interest and stimulate readers' imaginations. they guide readers to imagine covid-19 as an ever-growing threat, one capable of swallowing human beings whole. in the sentence "pandemi covid-19 terus membesar dan menelan banyak korban jiwa, serta menimbulkan masalah ekonomi", the words membesar and menelan are combined to frighten readers by underscoring the spread of the deadly disease. it refers to the pandemic as a 'monster', or, in the indonesian socio-cultural sphere, a raksasa, and in this manner emphasizes the danger of the ongoing pandemic. conclusion this study has found nine linguistic metaphors used to refer to the covid-19 pandemic, namely 1) berguguran ('fall in battle'), 2) berdamai ('make peace'), 3) garis depan ('frontlines'), 4) melawan ('oppose'), 5) menang ('win'), 6) benteng ('fortress, bastion'), 7) menghantui ('spook'), 8) membesar ('grow in size'), and 9) menelan ('swallow'). lapor covid-19 used these metaphors in three domains: pandemic is war, pandemic is ghost/specter, and pandemic is monster. meanwhile, kominfo used metaphors in one domain: pandemic is war. this distinction may be attributed to lapor covid-19's use to voice the interests of the public. the metaphoric expressions used in its press releases were intended to increase the public's sensitivity to the pandemic. in this, it used metaphors such as menghantui, membesar and menelan, all of which are common in disaster discourses (including pandemic discourses). these metaphors were also made possible by lapor covid-19's relative freedom in its discourses. meanwhile, the government— represented here by kominfo—had a vested interest in maintaining domestic stability and security. as such, it relied heavily on the conceptual metaphor pandemic is war, which it deemed the most appropriate and strategic means of communicating the state's policies and guiding indonesians through the covid-19 pandemic. it may thus be concluded that, in both cases, institutions' choice of conceptual metaphor was heavily informed by their particular characteristics and the discursive genres used. the government used metaphors to reduce the complexity of its message while stimulating readers' interest and imaginations. lapor covid-19, meanwhile, used metaphors to stimulate readers' interest and imaginations while simplifying and concretizing its message. it may thus be concluded that the persuasive discourses offered by lapor covid-19 and kominfo used metaphors to 1) increase reader interest and stimulate readers' imaginations, 2) reduce the complexity of their message, and 3) concretize their message. these metaphors' persuasive power was used to shape readers' emotional and rational responses. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 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https://www.kominfo.go.id/content/detail/25476/siaran-pers-no-51hmkominfo032020-tentang-gotong-royong-lawan-covid-19-ksp-didukung-kominfo-luncurkan-aplikasi-10-rumah-aman/0/siaran_pers https://www.kominfo.go.id/content/detail/25476/siaran-pers-no-51hmkominfo032020-tentang-gotong-royong-lawan-covid-19-ksp-didukung-kominfo-luncurkan-aplikasi-10-rumah-aman/0/siaran_pers https://www.kominfo.go.id/content/detail/25476/siaran-pers-no-51hmkominfo032020-tentang-gotong-royong-lawan-covid-19-ksp-didukung-kominfo-luncurkan-aplikasi-10-rumah-aman/0/siaran_pers https://www.kominfo.go.id/content/detail/25476/siaran-pers-no-51hmkominfo032020-tentang-gotong-royong-lawan-covid-19-ksp-didukung-kominfo-luncurkan-aplikasi-10-rumah-aman/0/siaran_pers https://www.kominfo.go.id/content/detail/25292/siaran-pers-no-47hmkominfo032020-tentang-dukungan-platform-digital-untuk-social-distancing/0/siaran_pers https://www.kominfo.go.id/content/detail/25292/siaran-pers-no-47hmkominfo032020-tentang-dukungan-platform-digital-untuk-social-distancing/0/siaran_pers https://www.kominfo.go.id/content/detail/25292/siaran-pers-no-47hmkominfo032020-tentang-dukungan-platform-digital-untuk-social-distancing/0/siaran_pers https://www.kominfo.go.id/content/detail/25292/siaran-pers-no-47hmkominfo032020-tentang-dukungan-platform-digital-untuk-social-distancing/0/siaran_pers https://www.kominfo.go.id/content/detail/25292/siaran-pers-no-47hmkominfo032020-tentang-dukungan-platform-digital-untuk-social-distancing/0/siaran_pers journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 1 – april 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 189 https://laporcovid19.org/kapan-kapasitasrumah-sakit-di-jakarta-kolaps/ https://laporcovid19.org/sebagian-besarpenyintas-covid-19-dan-keluarganyamendapat-stigma/ https://laporcovid19.org/agar-new-normaltidak-menjadi-new-abnormal-penuhisyarat-epidemiologi-dan-sosial/ https://laporcovid19.org/bukan-berdamaitapi-berjuang-bersama-melawan-covid19/ https://laporcovid19.org/waspada-klusterperkantoran/ https://laporcovid19.org/kapan-kapasitas-rumah-sakit-di-jakarta-kolaps/ https://laporcovid19.org/kapan-kapasitas-rumah-sakit-di-jakarta-kolaps/ https://laporcovid19.org/sebagian-besar-penyintas-covid-19-dan-keluarganya-mendapat-stigma/ https://laporcovid19.org/sebagian-besar-penyintas-covid-19-dan-keluarganya-mendapat-stigma/ https://laporcovid19.org/sebagian-besar-penyintas-covid-19-dan-keluarganya-mendapat-stigma/ https://laporcovid19.org/agar-new-normal-tidak-menjadi-new-abnormal-penuhi-syarat-epidemiologi-dan-sosial/ https://laporcovid19.org/agar-new-normal-tidak-menjadi-new-abnormal-penuhi-syarat-epidemiologi-dan-sosial/ https://laporcovid19.org/agar-new-normal-tidak-menjadi-new-abnormal-penuhi-syarat-epidemiologi-dan-sosial/ https://laporcovid19.org/bukan-berdamai-tapi-berjuang-bersama-melawan-covid-19/ https://laporcovid19.org/bukan-berdamai-tapi-berjuang-bersama-melawan-covid-19/ https://laporcovid19.org/bukan-berdamai-tapi-berjuang-bersama-melawan-covid-19/ 453 vol. 21 no. 2, october 2021, pp. 453 – 463 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i2.3722 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. oppression towards women as depicted in marge piercy’s selected poems diksita galuh nirwinastu diksitagaluh@usd.ac.id english letters department, universitas sanata dharma abstract article information this present study would like to examine how women are oppressed by the patriarchal society in the selected poems written by one of the contemporary american female writers, marge piercy. marge piercy is particularly known as a female writer as well as a feminist activist. she has written numerous works, including novels and poetry books, which explore issues about women. piercy’s poems are mostly known to be simple and vivid. observing the use of figurative language and the diction in piercy’s selected poems, entitled “a work of artifice” and “barbie doll”, in the light of feminist criticism, this article would like to show how oppression is done towards women and how it results in the silencing, shaping, and subordinating of women. in the poems, the oppression is mostly operated subtly and systematically through various cultural institutions, such as education, family, and media. women, as a result, are trained to believe in the voice of the patriarchal society and to behave following what the patriarchal society demands. the longpracticed oppression has hindered women to develop to their fullest as human beings. the poems can be read as a medium to voice women’s experiences and to criticize the established patriarchal system and its oppression towards women. keywords: oppression; patriarchy; women; marge piercy received: 12 september 2021 revised: 5 october 2021 accepted: 10 october 2021 introduction scrutinizing patriarchal assumptions and how patriarchy operates in literature is one of the major concerns of feminist literary criticism. gender stereotypes and how the images of women are represented in literary works often become the focus of a feminist reading. how women are represented in literary works is perceived as one of the ways patriarchy socializes its assumptions to society. the images of women enacted in literature hence are perceived to reflect and contribute to the shaping of women in reality (leitch, 1988; barry, 2017). feminist literary criticism also emphasizes on examining women and their writings. it is pivotal to foreground women’s voices in their writings as women in patriarchal traditions are constrained to express their thoughts in public (leitch, 1988; mulyani, 2020). women’s experiences are traditionally narrated through https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:diksitagaluh@usd.ac.id journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` diksita galuh nirwinastu 454 male lenses and understanding women’s experiences from women’s perspectives is important in claiming the authority of their images and experiences. marge piercy is one of the female authors who are known as both intellectuals and social activists. she was much involved in the women’s suffrage movement in the first wave of feminism and she is now still active in promoting gender equality and women’s rights. known as a prolific writer, marge piercy has written 17 poetry books and 13 novels. she has also received numerous awards for her writings. her works mostly are concerned with culture, women, and class. the use of simple words, vivid imagery, and strong metaphors have become the characteristics of many of the works of marge piercy. in one interview, piercy says that when a work is expressed “vividly, coherently, and passionately, they pass out the book into life” (lyons & piercy, 2007). in other words, that style will enable a wider range of readers to enjoy and understand the messages carried in piercy’s works. numerous research have examined marge piercy’s works, especially the novels. the first study written by altman (2003) analyzed three novels written by some secondwave feminists, one of which is piercy’s small changes that contains explicit (hetero)sexual revolution by exploring sexuality from the female’s perspective. in patriarchal norms, altman further states that despite the risk of being labeled as trash, those novels provide “a radical terrain of subjectivity for women as they sought individually and collectively to reject a 1950s’ medicalized vocabulary” (2003, p. 11). instead of being considered consciousness-raising, the novels analyzed by altman are appraised as pornographic, trashy, and unserious because of their vivid portrayals of sexuality. however, altman argues that depicting sexuality from women’s perspectives is crucial since sexuality is mostly written from patriarchal perspective. women are often not allowed to express their sexuality; their desire and expectation in sexuality. therefore, altman argues these novels try to place women as the subject in the realm of sexuality by exploring sexuality from women’s perspectives and by naming some sexual terms by themselves. another study by dohal (2019) examines how women are discriminated because of their gender, class, and race in piercy’s utopian novel woman on the edge of time. in that novel, piercy uses the dystopian future to show the result of discrimination done to women, especially in american society in the twentieth century. dohal utters that women are categorized and treated based on their sexuality (2019, p. 2). the novel’s main character undergoes multiple layers of discrimination because she is a woman, she belongs to a lower-class society, and she is a mexican american who lives in new york. in the dystopian future seen by the main character, women are portrayed to live in a disastrous world as the result of discrimination towards women in the contemporary world. piercy wants to warn the readers of this possible catastrophe should the discrimination are kept being done. gilarek (2012) studies piercy’s woman on the edge of the time and russ’ the female man as two feminist science fiction novels that split the settings of their novels into the present and the future worlds. in gilarek’s research, it is stated that both novels present a subversion and deconstruction of the present binary opposition between the genders. the dystopian world described in the novels is aimed to challenge the patriarchal system and show women’s discontent with the patriarchal system. although many of the studies conducted on piercy’s works examine the novels, some studies have also been done on piercy’s poems. padmanugraha (2007) examines one of piercy’s poems entitled “barbie doll” and asserts that this poem criticizes the standard of beauty imposed by patriarchy. the doll is used as a symbol of beauty standards in the patriarchy’s eyes. in addition, padmanugraha states that the poem suggests that women should not be valued by their physical appearance only, but also by their personality, life experience, and wisdom. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 455 siswanti and harendika’s research (2016) focuses on “barbie doll” and “what are big girls made of?”, two poems by marge piercy to explore how women are expected to fulfill society’s beauty standards. in a similar tone to padmanugraha’s study, women are valued by their physical qualities only, and the standards used to evaluate women are the patriarchy’s. siswanti and harendika, furthermore, state that women should not be limited only to their physical qualities (2016, p.140). in another study, sudha (2017) states that in piercy’s poem entitled “a work of artifice”, bonsai is used as the extended metaphor to describe women who allow patriarchal society to limit them. in line with the previous studies conducted on marge piercy’s works, my article would also examine how women are portrayed in piercy’s selected works, particularly her poems entitled “barbie doll” and “a work of artifice”. however, this present research takes a different focus compared to the previous studies. while the previous research on piercy’s “barbie doll” examine the values of women in patriarchal society depicted in the poem, my article would problematize the oppression towards women revealed through the use of figurative language in those two poems. in addition, this article would also take a different stance from the study conducted by sudha (2017). i perceive that it is not that women allow themselves to be limited by patriarchy, but there is a systematic mechanism of oppression towards women that results in the silence of women in the poem. thus, the oppression towards women depicted in marge piercy’s “barbie doll” and “a work of artifice” becomes the main issue to investigate in this article. feminism and feminist literary criticism feminism is both an intellectual and political movement. as an intellectual movement, feminism is discussed and theorized as an academic field, however, feminism also aspires to change the reality (gamble, 2006; tong & botts, 2018). feminism as activism is often considered to begin in the 1960’s with the first wave feminism which is concerned with women’s rights, including women’s access to education and women’s right to vote. this wave was also focused on the legal representation of women in society (sanders, 2006). however, the early stage of feminism had actually started in the sixteenth century numerous writings, such as the one by mary wollstonecraft, which promoted the urge to change society’s attitude towards women that was rooted in the images created by judeo-christian belief. this early feminism tried to voice women in the social and cultural arena and it also led to the rise of the first wave feminism in the 1960’s (hodgson-wright, 2006). as a political movement, the first wave of feminism succeeded in gaining women’s rights to vote and urged wider access for women to access education and enter the workforce. however, after the “success” of the first wave feminism, there was a need to accommodate the wide range of contexts that have not been accommodated by the first wave feminism. in the 1970’s, there was an “explosion of feminist theoretical writings” aimed to theorize the diverse views of feminism, including the diversity of race, class, and sexual orientation (thornham, 2006). it is expected that by widening the perspectives, feminism would be able to unravel the various ways patriarchy operates in different cultural and social contexts other than the white middle-class women’s perspective that dominated the first wave feminism. hence, it can be seen that feminism is not static; it continuously evolves. feminism is also not monolithic; in fact, feminism is a “multifaceted movement” (gamble, 2006). feminism believes that, unlike sex which is naturally given, gender is culturally constructed. “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” is the notion postulated by simone de beauvoir rejecting the essentialist belief that a woman will naturally carry out particular characteristics that become her feminine identity. beauvoir believes that femininity, the standards assigned to be called a woman, is created by patriarchy; it is a patriarchal myth. women are perceived as the other; a male projection of an object that is not male (thornham, 2006). while men are considered to be logical, women are constructed to be illogical; while men are journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` diksita galuh nirwinastu 456 considered to be strong and powerful, women are prescribed to be weak and powerless. men are assigned the roles to be active in the public sphere while women are assigned the roles to be domestic; to be in the private sphere. women, in the patriarchal view, possess the traits that men do not possess. the traits assigned to male and female, however, are not neutral nor equal. spivak argues that in patriarchy, masculinity is seen as the standard or normative category (phoca, 2006). her assertion emphasizes that the category of “woman” is the category that is not standard, deviant, and less than the category of “man”, therefore the standard category has the “right” to control and regulate the other. this binary opposition is the root of the oppression experienced by women since the binary structures will always privilege one of the binaries over the other. in other words, patriarchy creates an ideological and cultural system that privileges men (madsen, 2000). patriarchy benefits male interests and disadvantages females. literature has been an important focus in the struggle of feminism since the early stage of this movement. the increase in women’s literacy in the early modern period has encouraged women to be actively involved in literary culture; in reading and writing practices. literature has then become the means for women to voice and narrate their experiences to the world. women should voice their views through language and literature that used to be dominated by male to change the world women live in (rowbotham, 1973). this purpose to resist the patriarchal domination through the creation of art and literature becomes the role of literature as a form of “creative resistance” (tong & botts, 2018). feminist literary criticism emerged as a part of the second wave feminism in the 1960s which shows women’s resistance against androcentrism in the literature and literary studies. undermining the patriarchal assumptions through the literary representations of women in literature is perceived as an important step towards women’s emancipation (leitch, 1988; eagleton, 2007). feminist literary criticism considers that it is important to demystify the structure underlying the binary opposition used by patriarchy. therefore, it is crucial for feminism to define and name patriarchy operates and oppresses women through literary representations. besides examining the literary representations of women, feminist literary criticism also focuses on the works by women to examine how women voice their experiences and stories through literature. oppression oppression is often mistaken for prejudice. while prejudice happens at the individual level, oppression happens when the dominant group’s prejudice is supported by power (diangelo, 2012). the collective prejudice is spread and instilled through a variety of institutions, such as language, family, and economics. this results in the systematic mistreatment of a minoritized group. the word minoritized here is used instead of minority to show there is another party – more powerful and authoritative – that has orchestrated the unequal position. oppression is systematic in the sense that it is done continuously through a system; it is not random mistreatment. oppression is also historical, which means that the bad treatments have been practiced for a long time, adapted to cultural changes, and have subtly become parts of daily conduct (weber, 2010). diangelo (2012) develops a cycle that helps to conceptualize how oppression is done to the oppressed/minoritized group. this cycle would help to understand how oppression is done by patriarchy towards women as the minoritized. figure 1. diangelo’s cycle of oppression journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 457 the cycle illustrates how oppression works continuously once the dynamic is set. the misinformation/misrepresentation of a minoritized group is the first step that puts the cycle into motion. the misinformation usually contains the negative representation or images that deny the existence of the minoritized group. once the misrepresentation is normalized by society, it is circulated and reproduced in that society. being socially accepted as the truth, the misrepresentation then is utilized to justify the mistreatment. the misrepresentation is not only circulated within the oppressor but also within the oppressed group. they believe that the misrepresentation of them is true; this is called internalized oppression. at this stage, the minoritized group lose their confidence and gain more sense of inferiority. other than internalized oppression, diangelo also speaks about internalized dominance: the dynamic in which the dominant group believes and internalizes the image that they are more dominant and more superior than the minoritized. this collective misrepresentation is not done individually but enforced by institutions, such as science, media, religious institutions, military, and educational institutions. these institutions are employed to sustain and reinforce the misrepresentation. they might be subtle, but they might also be in the form of force. the last dynamic is the justification for further mistreatment. oppression is usually transgenerational. the impacts are felt by the next generations and – again – oppression is justified and maintained. due to the oppression that has been done, it is very possible that the minoritized group “occupies a much lower position” (diangelo, 2012). the dominant group would use the minoritized group’s lower position to rationalize the oppression and blame the minoritized for their condition. explication of the poems this article would examine two poems by marge piercy entitled “a work of artifice” and “barbie doll”. this part would explicate each poem. a work of artifice “a work of artifice” is written by marge piercy in 1973 and published in one of her poetry collections in 1999 entitled the art of blessing a day: poems with a jewish theme. the poem has one stanza consisting of 24 lines. each line is kept short; no single line composes one complete sentence. the lines are all in the form of fragments. piercy starts the poem with an image of a bonsai tree that is put in a pot by a gardener. the bonsai tree in the attractive pot could have grown eighty feet tall on the side of a mountain till split by lightning. but a gardener carefully pruned it. it is nine inches high. (piercy, 1999, stanza 1, lines 1-8) the use of “but” in line 6 indicates the contradiction felt by the speaker. the speaker thinks that the tree actually can grow tall if it grows on the side of a mountain, but in reality, the tree is only nine inches high. as the gardener prunes the bonsai tree, the gardener tells the bonsai tree that it is natural for the tree to be small. not only does the gardener say that the bonsai tree is naturally small, the gardener also says that having the pot to grow is a piece of luck, a grace for the tree. the saying is expressed utilizing an apostrophe in lines 12-16. every day as he whittles back the branches the gardener croons, it is your nature to be small and cozy, domestic and weak; how lucky, little tree, to have a pot to grow in. (piercy, 1999, lines 9-16) in the next lines, the gardener shifts the topic from the bonsai tree to human beings. the gardener says that if living creatures were to be created into bonsai, people must begin shaping them from the early stage of life. the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` diksita galuh nirwinastu 458 last four lines show the ways to make people bonsai. from the shift, it is implied that the bonsai tree is used as a metaphor for human beings. with living creatures one must begin very early to dwarf their growth: the bound feet, the crippled brain, the hair in curlers, the hands you love to touch. (piercy, 1999, lines 17-24) barbie doll “barbie doll” was written by marge piercy and published in 1973 in her to be of use: poems by marge piercy. the poem consists of 25 lines divided into four stanzas. the poem narrates the life story of a girlchild starting from her birth until her death. each stanza is dedicated to detail each stage of her life. this girlchild was born as usual and presented dolls that did pee-pee and miniature ge stoves and irons and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy. then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said: you have a great big nose and fat legs. she was healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity. she went to and fro apologizing. everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs. she was advised to play coy, exhorted to come on hearty, exercise, diet, smile and wheedle. her good nature wore out like a fan belt. so she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up. in the casket displayed on satin she lay with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on, a turned-up putty nose, dressed in a pink and white nightie. doesn't she look pretty? everyone said. consummation at last. to every woman a happy ending. (piercy, 1973) the poem is very rich of powerful symbol, simile, and irony that help portray the miserable life of the girlchild. the first stanza recounts the early life of the girl comprising her childhood and teenage life. however, starting from her teenage life, her surroundings highlight only her physical appearance – shown by “big nose” and “fat legs” – instead of her health and intelligence. in the second stanza, the girlchild is confused; she apologizes to everyone but, still, everyone only sees her nose and legs. the third stanza tells that the environment keeps telling her what to do and she finally decides to follow the advice, which is cutting her nose and legs. in the fourth stanza, the girlchild is depicted to be dead since she is laying in the casket. it is ironic that while she is dead, people in the funeral compliment her beauty and they say that this is a happy ending for her. oppression: silencing, shaping, and subordinating of women this chapter discusses the oppression towards women portrayed in each poem. a work of artifice “a work of artifice” depicts the oppression towards women through the extensive use of metaphor, apostrophe, and irony. bonsai tree is used as the main metaphor that represents women under the oppression of patriarchal society in three major aspects: prevented from growing into their maximum potentials, placed in a particular space, and shaped into the design desired by patriarchy. bonsai is a japanese art of growing small trees or dwarfing a tree (wyman, 1954; vining, 1971; hodge, 1972). in the process of shaping a bonsai tree, consistent pruning and watering are needed. a bonsai grower has to carefully prune a bonsai tree to shape and maintain the shape of the tree. marge piercy effectively uses this bonsai tree as a perfect metaphor for women under the oppression of patriarchy. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 459 a bonsai tree is considered to be an art; an enjoyment for the grower. it is shaped into the desired shape of the grower and made into a miniature. unlike other trees that are grown for their fruits, wood, or any produce of the trees, a bonsai tree is mainly created for an aesthetic purpose; for decoration. there are two methods of taking the tree to be made a bonsai (wyman, 1954). the first is by taking a tree that is dwarfed by nature, such as growing between the rocks so it lacks nutrition and hence its shape is much smaller than the original. the second way is by taking the seedlings of a woody plant and then dwarfing the plant from the early stage. both methods require various cultivation techniques from a bonsai grower: pruning, root reduction, potting, and grafting. this long process of creating a bonsai tree is perceived as an art since it requires the patience and skills of a grower. in other words, a bonsai tree is not naturally dwarfed; it is intentionally dwarfed instead. similar to the bonsai tree, women also experience the dwarfing process by patriarchy, which is metaphorically represented by the gardener in the poem. women are prevented from growing into their maximum potentials as the bonsai tree that actually could have grown eighty feet tall if it grows in the natural habitat (lines 1-4). in the poem, the bonsai tree is prevented from growing by the act of pruning that is done by the gardener every day (lines 6-10). in patriarchy, women are treated as the second sex. they are perceived as less than men; incomplete creatures. therefore, as the standard category, men have the right to control or shape women. in this poem, the gardener is used as the metaphor for patriarchy, a system that oppresses women. in the beginning, patriarchy is used to refer to a government system in which men become the head of the family, however, in its development, this term is used to refer to a system; a social structure and practice in which men dominate, oppress, and exploit women – not only in the household but also outside the family structure. the domination of men outside the household (walby, 1989). the belief that women are less than men or inferior to men has been spread continuously by patriarchy, even since the birth of the judeochristian belief that blames women (eve) as the culprit of human (-men)’s fall into evil/sin. this misrepresentation of women as the second sex, as the inferior, as the illogical is spread and has been accepted by society for a long time. women then are taken as creatures that need to be controlled and shaped by men as the standard category. this misrepresentation of women – that has been accepted by the truth by patriarchal society – leads to the mistreatment towards women. in the poem, it is said that the bonsai tree is put in “the atrractive pot” (lines 1-2). the pot in this context can be read as the place/space that the patriarchy allows women to have. it is even uttered by the gardener that the bonsai tree is lucky to have the pot (lines 15-16). this pot is, in fact, very limited and oppressing for women. a pot for a bonsai tree functions to limit the growth of the root, which will also function to limit the growth of the upper body of the tree. similar to the bonsai tree, women are “given” only very limited space to grow as human beings. women are only allowed to move in the areas/ act in the gender roles permitted by patriarchy (eisenstein, 1983). the gardener croons, it is your nature to be small and cozy, domestic and weak; how lucky, little tree, to have a pot to grow in. (piercy, 1999, lines 11-16) lines 12-16 contain how the gardener croons to the bonsai tree every day as he prunes and whittles back the tree. it is expected that the tree will be small, cozy, domestic, and weak. it can be read as the way how patriarchy circulates the misrepresentation of women to women themselves and society. in patriarchy, women are expected to be dependent and comfortable creatures as illustrated by the use of the words small and cozy. comfortable here means that women are expected to be the place where men can find pleasure and relief – similar to the function of a bonsai tree: decoration and contemplation. the words domestic and weak also imply a similar tone that women should be weak and dependent journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` diksita galuh nirwinastu 460 creatures. the word domestic also explains vividly how women are planted to be responsible for domestic issues. while men are assigned the dominant role of aggression, intelligence, and force, women are assigned the role of passivity, ignorance, and docility (showalter, 1971). from this discussion, it can be seen that women are placed in a pot chosen by patriarchy, that is the role of being dependent and domestic. the use of the word nature implies that women are believed to be essentially (and therefore are supposed to be) inferior to men; women are subordinate to men. women, besides being treated as the second sex, are also treated as an object. like the bonsai tree that is shaped to please and entertain the gardener, women are also shaped to be decoration and pleasure to satisfy the men’s desire. it can also be seen from the use of an apostrophe in lines 12-16. a speech in an apostrophe is directed toward another object/character that cannot reply to the speech (arp & johnson, 2006). the apostrophe illustrates how men have the freedom and authority to speak while women are not given any space to talk. women are depicted to be silenced in the poem by not being given any space to talk or to answer to men. women are conditioned to fulfill the roles prescribed by patriarchy; they are trained to accept the roles as if women are naturally subordinate to men through various media. this conditioning process creates the internalized oppression in which women subconsciously believe in the false narrative crooned by men to them. it is, therefore, not that women agree with the narrative like what is presented in sudha’s research (2017), but they are conditioned by the patriarchal system. the feelings of women are also not presented in the poem because women are represented by an object; a thing, which is a bonsai tree. the only party that can speak is the gardener – the men. the last eight lines show the ways patriarchy oppresses women by pruning them; preventing them to grow as human beings. with living creatures one must begin very early to dwarf their growth: the bound feet, the crippled brain, the hair in curlers, the hands you love to touch. (piercy, 1999, lines 18-24) the oppression towards women is done continuously since the early stage of women’s lives. the feet are bound, so women cannot walk or move freely. this might also allude to the foot-binding tradition in china that perceives small feet as a beauty standard. women’s feet are bound, their feet become small so they will be considered beautiful and accepted by society. however, this footbinding also leaves women’s feet permanently impaired as the feet will deform and will not be able to function properly. not only being made unable to walk, women’s brains are also crippled. access to education, leadership, and any other areas that are considered to be public/ belong to men is pivotal in women’s development. in traditional gender roles, women are prohibited to be in the public sphere because women are believed as incapable of performing the roles. in many parts of the world, women are still denied access to education and politics. this limitation for women to develop their leadership and intelligence is another form of oppression. lines 22-24 depict how women are objectified sexually. women are only seen as body parts that are comfortable to touch. as the content expresses, the form of the poem also implies how women are dwarfed. using only fragments in all lines, this poem tries to resemble the shape of a bonsai tree that keeps being pruned and shaped into a small creature. aimed to be praised as a work of art, piercy employs a work of artifice instead which summarizes the voice of this poem that women are oppressed and manipulatively deceived by men. the poem expresses how subtle patriarchy oppresses women. instead of using a loud voice, the gardener croons while pruning the tree. this signifies how patriarchy oppresses women so subtly that women slowly internalize the misrepresentation about themselves and accept it as if it were the reality. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 461 barbie doll “barbie doll” portrays how the oppression towards women is done particularly through the prescription of beauty standards. this poem mainly employs symbol, simile, and irony to illustrate the suffering experienced by women when being forced to conform to the standards. barbie was first produced in 1959 and has become well-known worldwide. barbie is often idolized as the symbol of feminine beauty. this doll is designed in a sand clock body shape and it has unrealistic body measurements if compared to the real person’s body measurement. barbie comes in various versions and many of which present barbie wearing various outfits for different jobs. this implies that women can move into the public sphere that is usually dominated by men as long as women fulfill the beauty standards required by men, such as having a slim body and wearing feminine outfits (rogers, 2009). this ideal beauty standard is then promoted through mass media hence enables the patriarchal values subtly penetrate into daily life. however, “barbie doll” views this beauty standard as oppression and rejects the conformity to the standards. barbie doll is taken as the title of this poem and it ironically portrays the suffering of women represented by the girlchild in this piece of poetry. presented barbie doll as the title, the readers will probably expect the poem to talk about the doll. however, the poem reveals that the girlchild does not meet the beauty standards and she is forced to fulfill the standards. similar to “a work of artifice”, “barbie doll” expresses that oppression towards women is done since the early stages of a woman’s life. in this poem, family becomes the means of oppression by promoting the patriarchal values since the beginning of a woman’s life. it is portrayed that the girlchild has been exposed to femininity since her childhood which is shown in lines 2-4. she was given dolls, stoves, irons, and red lipsticks that signify the domestic roles assigned to women in patriarchal society. women are expected to take care of babies, cook for the family, and be attractive by putting on some cosmetics. the tension starts to appear in lines 5-6 where the girlchild is criticized because of her physical appearance in her teenage. the girlchild is portrayed to be healthy, strong, and intelligent in her teenage, however, those good characteristics do not seem to satisfy the society because the characteristics possessed by the girl are not the ones the society expects a woman to have. women are assigned the role to be passive, weak, and docile; while the girl possesses the characteristics often assigned to men. therefore, she is still criticized by the society. in line 10, she is depicted as “she went to and fro apologizing” (piercy, 1973) the girlchild starts to internalize the misrepresentation and takes the beauty standards as the truth. women are forced to fit the beauty standards prescribed in the patriarchal society. in lines 12-14, the girl was advised to be submissive and to fulfill men’s desire as the ultimate goal of her life. none of the advice given to her focuses on her own life and identity as a woman, but focuses on men’s desire instead. by utilizing a simile in lines 15-16, piercy shows how women ironically submit to the standards. her good nature wore out like a fan belt. so she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up. (piercy, 1973, lines 15-18) the fan belt is used to represent the girl’s original characteristics. like how important a fan belt is to run a machine, the original characteristics of the girl are the elements that enable the girl to live. however, the girl finally decides to give up and conform to the beauty standards. the words nose and legs in lines 6, 11, and 17 are used to symbolize the original characteristics and physical appearance of the girl. unlike barbie’s, the girl’s nose is big and the girl’s legs are fat; they do not meet the beauty standards prescribed by the patriarchal society. by conforming to the beauty standards, the girlchild aspires to live and to be accepted by society. ironically, the girlchild is depicted as dead instead after she conforms to the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` diksita galuh nirwinastu 462 beauty standards. in the last stanza, the girlchild is portrayed as being in a casket; she is surrounded by people confirming that she is beautiful. she does not have her big nose anymore; she has a turned-up nose instead, as suggested by her surroundings. in the casket, she is dressed in pink and white; the colors that are often associated with femininity. it is an irony that the girl is accepted not when she is alive with her original characteristics and physical appearance, but when she is dead after following the prescriptions of patriarchy. this miserable life is called a happy ending for women. conclusion in patriarchy, women are positioned as inferior and subordinate to men. this view is instilled through various daily practices and cultural institutions, such as education, family, and religion. this collective misrepresentation then results in the oppression of women in society. marge piercy’s “a work of artifice” and “barbie doll” reveal how women are shaped, subordinated, and silenced under the patriarchal system. in “a work of artifice”, piercy uses bonsai tree to represent how women are dwarfed and treated as an object for satisfying men’s desire. “barbie doll” expresses how women are forced to conform to the standards created by patriarchy. both poems criticize the oppressions by saying that the conformity to the patriarchal standards will result in the continuous silencing of women. references altman, m. 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(1954). japanese dwarfed tree. arnoldia, 14(1), 1-7. retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/429536 05 references 85 vol. 22 no. 1, april 2022, pp. 85-101 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i1.3530 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. “all politics is local”: a sociocognitive investigation of contexts as indigenous peculiarities in gubernatorial inaugurals adebayo rasheed mabayoje rmabayoje@gmail.com department of english, university of ibadan, nigeria abstract article information devised by tip o'neill, "all politics is local" relates to the standard that -as a politiciana new governor’s communicative skill is directly connected to the shared understanding of the peculiar situations of a particular locality, by which views regarding the governor’s new regime are presented in an inaugural speech (is). this angle of contexts in is pictures the cognitive bridge of language and society; and has received scarce scholarly attention, particularly from the sociocognitive perspective. they are, therefore, explored in this article along with peculiar activities and events (as issues) in the inaugural speeches of three nigerian governorsrelying on insights from van dijk’s context models and fauconnier and turner’s conceptual blending. six discursive contexts –categorised under common (labour, restoration, electoral process), and distinctive (divine support, tradition and value, morality) -situated six issues in the speeches, in terms of how governors rauf aregbesola (ra) and olagunsoye oyinlola exploited osun people’s religious inclination; in terms of the disposition of ra’s regime to the ideals of some previous administrations; and in terms of how adebisi akande rationalised participants’ behaviours. the article argues that described events and ongoing discourses in a new governor’s is are the subjective mental representations that typify participants’ indigenous peculiarities, and constrain communicative meaning derivations. keywords: contexts; sociocognitive approach; gubernatorial inaugurals; tip o’neill received: 19 july 2021 revised: 10 january 2022 accepted: 18 january 2022 introduction the gubernatorial inaugural speech is structured along with the past and ongoing local events or situations that a new governor talks about and makes use of as communicative skills to present opinions about an administration. the skills, which https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) adebayo rasheed mabayoje 86 relate to the mundane and everyday situations of hearers (gelman, 2019) are displayed through the shared knowledge of what they already know about the local events or situations of the locality of discourse participants. subjective mental representations are thus formed from the knowledge of the events or situations (hart, 2007) in order to implicitly or explicitly present intended views. in essence, the subjective mental representations in the episodic memory of discourse participants in a gubernatorial inaugural speech are informed by the described local events or situations that specifically characterise their locality: also, the representations form the discursive contexts of meaning derivation (van dijk, 1983; 1993), and comprehension of a gubernatorial inaugural speech. in this vein, the foregoing offers more than the lip-labour that van dijk (cited in wodak, 2011) submitted is done to study the relations between text and context in critical discourse analysis (cda). present work is informed by his (2008) sociocognitive approach to context in cda, which is not unrelated to wodak’s (2013) historical perspective. in van dijk’s view, context is “the mentally represented structure of those properties of the social situation that are relevant for the production or comprehension of discourse” (diallo, 2013;). he relates this perspective to the historical nature of discoursean important perspective of cda. this is a strong position held by wodak (2013), who argues that discourse is socially structured and constitutivehence related to a macro-topic. this topic is “connected synchronically and diachronically with other communicative events which are happening at the same time or which have happened before” (wodak & ludwig, 1999:21). therefore, the relations between the socio-cognitive and the historical approaches of cda lie at the point of mental operations of meaning negotiations which are performed by leveraging the shared (historical) background knowledge of the sociopolitical ground of discourse. this is the interest of this articlethe quest to identify the discursive contexts, characterised by peculiar local representations as grounds of discourse in each of the speeches of the three purposively selected nigerian governors: adebisi akande, olagunsoye oyinlola, and rauf aregbesola (osun state government, 2002; adelegan, 2007; osun.gov.ng, 2014). extant works on various linguistic perspectives of inaugural speech (taiwo, 2011; ayeomoni & akinkuolere, 2012; odebunmi and oni, 2012; ezeifeka, 2014; koussouhon & dossoumou, 2015; temidayo, 2015; ogunmuyiwa, 2015; sharndama, 2015; edem, 2016; emeka-nwobia, 2015; virginia & issife, 2017; edem, n.d.-b; osisanwo, 2017; medubi and amuda, 2017; akinwotu, 2018; chen, 2018; tarish, a. 2019) have been on the presidential typefocusing on its discursive features, socio-cultural issues, and pragmastylistic implications; leaving the discursive contexts in the (nigerian) gubernatorial inaugurals to be adequately explored sociocognitively in terms of the indigenous representations of participants’ locality in them. the inadequate representations of specific settings of discourse in the extant worksparticularly the gubernatorial type, and the non-characterisation of the participants in them are of interest to this study. answers are required to the query on how political actorsin terms of local political skills (pierce, 2015), and geographical settings, are distinguished from one another. theoretically, the impact of the societal and cognitive elements on meaning realisations in the speeches requires scholarly attention, because a conceptual account of the ideational function of language is necessary. participants’ experience of reality, which is structured by a variety of construal operations (croft and cruse, 2004)that is meaning realisations along activities within the mental structures of participants require explanations. in essence, the investigation of how meanings are negotiated between the local societal structure (social cognition) and the discourse structure (personal cognition) is necessary to adequately account for the lexicogrammatical choices in the speeches. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 87 methodology this study is based on descriptive design because of the quantitative analytical process adopted. it relied on the conceptual (sociocognitive) approaches of cda (dirven et al., 2012; hart & lukes, 2007) which is interested in the systematic exploration of often opaque relations of “causality and determination” (fairclough, 2014) between discursive practice, event and text, and larger socio-cultural structures, relations and process in order to examine how the practices, events and texts develop. this, thus, suited this study and enabled the presentation of the findings derived from content analysis of the collected data. the data, which was derived from published texts (osun state government, 2002; adelegan, 2007; osun.gov.ng, 2014), was chosen because they relate discursive behaviours of the governors and other discourse participants through observed contextual issues that reflect socio-cognitive elements of language use. thus, they provide a good ground for studying the connection between contextual issues and peculiar local representations related in the is. this aligns with (van dijk, n.d.) view that in an inaugural speech, representations are established “when language users engage in the on-going construction of context as subjective, as well as group-sensitive, interpretation of social situation”. the inaugural speeches show that the governors relate representations of the social situation about other participants or the relations between them. a total of 5,744 clauses from the speeches of three purposively selected governors were analysed based on their relevance to the interest of the study. that is, only clauses that relate to the local situations and activities connected to osun state, nigeria were selected for analysis in order to provide sociocognitive explanations of the discursive contexts in the speeches. the context model of dijk, (2012) informed the identification of linguistic structures in the speeches which, beyond deixis, are interpreted with reference to the context in order to realise discursive meanings properly. this provides the typology of contextual features like physical surroundings of the speech situation, participants’ common background knowledge, and medium of discourse, all of which are crucial in the realisation of discursive meanings. the cognitive realities involved in the speeches are explained based on the fauconnier and turner (2011) idea of online meaning constructions of expressionsconceptual blending theory (cb), which informed the conceptual operations carried out within the mental spaces (hart, 2007) of the governors and other discourse participants. results and discussion raised issues in the data form an important feature of discourse and characterise the discursive contexts in them. explaining what the categories of established discursive issues relate in this work is to determine what can be known about the contexts (song, 2010) that situate them in each of the selected speeches. this analytical task is the core in this study. it is fundamental in extant works alsolike chen’s (2018) explanation of the discursive grounds of the transmission, changing, and maintenance of social ideals and practices of the american citizens by president donald trump. meaning representations are hinted through activities and events that form raised issues. these are vital to the descriptions of the locality of discourse and characterisations of participants. this importance is affirmed in related studiesfor example in ayeomoni and akinkuolere’s (2012). the inaugural speech of a nigerian presidentumar musa yar’adua is explained as showing how a democratic administration placed a premium on the interest of the citizens in relation to good governance. the researchers contrast the government within certain issuecharacterised contexts. this is in the same manner that the three selected governors in the present study present issues to characterise, hence contrasting administrations that have ruled in their state. this is like one of the findings in osisanwo’s (2017) analysis of the inaugural speech of another nigerian presidentmuhammadu buhari, that an inaugural speech is aimed at allaying “the anxiety of… [the people] and promot[ing] peaceful atmosphere”. this journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) adebayo rasheed mabayoje 88 submission is based on the investigation of the text and context relations in the analysed speech. furthering the explanations on text and context adequately is appropriate when premium is placed on the exploration of the indigenous everyday experiences that are characterised in discourse participants’ episodic memory. this angle of analysis provides sufficient explanations of meaning derivation and discourse constructs. this perspective of context examination is important to show how the mental model of discourse participants controls many parts of the production and understanding of text and talk (van dijk, 2008). it informs the explanations of the types of discursive contexts in the data and the raised issues that characterise each of them. context types in the speeches discursive context types in the data are characterised by all indigenous activities, events, and discourse participants that are functionally connected to the manifestation and qualities of a particular discourse, or issue raised in the inaugural speeches. they are discussed from the point of the processes of contextual orientations in society. in essence, the types of contexts in the speeches are explained within the immediate discourse properties as an influence on meanings and interpretations. they are categorised under common and distinctive types. the common contexts they are the general affordances of meaning (odebunmi, 2017) that are commonly identified in the selected speeches and are functionally characterised by issues raised by the governors. three contexts are identified under this category in the datalabour (characterised by regime contrast issue), restoration (characterised by participatory governance issue), and electoral process (characterised by regime change issue). labour context (regime contrast issue) the context of labour is the discursive ground where the governors characterise themselves and other participants in relation to productivity and socio-economic impressions. the context is characterised by regime contrast issues which involve the comparison of previous administrations, regarding employment, industriousness, and the productive capacity of employable citizens of osun state, nigeria, and their socioeconomic impacts. under this context, the governors present socio-economic scenarios that are peculiar to the state. in this regard, the governors trigger a host of inferences and reasoning in hearers through the construction of mental representations, propositions, and assumptions relating to labour in the state. this is made possible through cognitively shared scenarios. this is evident in most of the initial part of governor adebisi akande’s speech where, as illustrated in example 1, he presents labour related activities and events in connection to osun state, and nigerian youths during the military regime that preceded his administration. (1) the children too have begun to inculcate the habit of seeking wealth without work by joining secret cults to constantly create circumstances of anarchy where armed robbery and 419 fraudsters have become the vogue. (adebisi akande) the contrastive meaning of the text is signaled by the lexical item “too” which relates agreement of the text above, or the commonness of its discourse to a preceding text. it is an anaphoric instrument by which governor akande ties back the mental models of his hearers to a similar issue, or local representations he had raised concerning the osun, and by extension the nigerian youths, and their disposition to hard work under the military regime. the new governor presents various shades of the negative effects of the military rule in contrast to what the people of osun state should expect from his new democratic regime. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 89 this ground of contrast in a particular class of the citizenry (the youths) suggests the commonly shared mental models, between the governor and his hearers, that the wealth and strength of a state is its youthsthe important determining economic variable. therefore, their characterisation in terms of how the policies of a regime affect their development is deliberately highlighted by the governor in the example above. expressions like “the habit of seeking wealth without work”, and “joining secret cults”, and “create circumstances of anarchy” are past local events and social situations, which characterise the negative impacts of the military regime on the youths. restoration context (participatory governance issue) restoration context is the site of discourses indicating activities, or events of renewing damaged, degraded, or destroyed social systems or arrangements in osun state through active government intervention and action. it is characterised by discourses relating how a governor tries to encourage the participation of the people of osun state in activities of social intervention. a governor presents his administration as being responsive to the discursive ideas of reestablishment of former or normal social conditions. he deploys expressions that are meant to encourage his hearers to participate, in various roles and responsibilities, in the restoration of certain social order and social constructions. the discursive site of restoration is established between cognitive representations suggesting the effects of participation of the people of osun state in certain social conditions and past and on-going activities presented by a governor. in the example below, governor olagunsoye oyinlola tries to orient the people to a popular participation. the expression indicates participation; that is, what he said in terms of the involvement of the people of osun state in the new administration’s efforts to “restore all yearnings”. (2) it is with gratitude to god almighty and appreciation of the support of the good people of this state that i address you today on this auspicious occasion of the inauguration of our administration that will restore all the yearnings. apparently, there is a great deal for which we must remain eternally grateful to the almighty. (olagunsoye oyinlola) participation denotes the involvement of the people within certain levels of administrative practices of the new government of oyinlola under civic responsibilities. discursive issue –“restore all the yearnings”in this regard is raised by oyinlola and connected to the item “address”, indicating the people of osun state are drawn into the activities aimed at the restoration of their yearnings. cognitive factors are considered in this analysis as variables that relate to information on the state of affairs of the discourseon what the governor said rather than the manner or style of expression. these factors are also situated within the shared social knowledge (ssk) of the people of osun state as discourse participants. example of a clearly expressed ssk is indicated in the earlier part of the text: “appreciation of the support of the good people of this state”, and “all yearnings”, which are potential referential inferences (pri) that signal the effect of the participation of the people of osun state within the discursive context of restoration under the oyinlola administration. the relationship between the pri; that is, the referent in the directly preceding discourse environment: “appreciation of the support of the good people of this state” and the discourse marker of participatory governance issue and the corresponding context in the text: “the inauguration of our administration that will restore all the yearnings” signals the conceptual process that is triggered. the use of the inclusive pronoun “our” to describe oyinlola’s new administration further accounts for the relationship between the pri and the discourse marker that is driven by “address”. the inclusive pronoun in the above example of participatory governance issue in the data marks connection and shared views and feelings between oyinlola and the people of osun state. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) adebayo rasheed mabayoje 90 popular participation, as characterising restoration context, is presented in terms of how the governors classify and identify one peculiar experience with other experiences in a discourse. the classified and identified local experiences indicate issues that construe the engagement of the people of osun state as crucial to the delivery of the objectives of the new administrations, which is to restore some past social systems that the people long for. a governor presents propositions that describe his administration and the people of osun state as partners through such classification and description. electoral process context (regime change issue) the electoral process context is the site for the meaning derivation and interpretation of peculiar political activities and other related discursive behaviours connected to the emergence of an individual as the winner in an election for a political office. this context is characterised by certain events and situations that are distinctively related to the people of osun state, in terms of the process of the replacement of one administration or an administrative policy with another. the governors raise issues that have to do with how to, or the need to replace all or part of the leadership system, administrative apparatus, or bureaucracy of osun state. in a democratic setting, the electoral process context is clearly characterised by the ultimate activities and actions of participants at the polls when the electorate cast ballots for or against candidates of political parties. at this instance, the goal is to actualise a full replacement of the state’s leadership system and administrative apparatus. this electoral process characterisation is presented in the inaugural speeches of the osun state governors in form of discourses that trigger hearers’ mental models connected to the regime change concerns, as in the example below, excerpted from the speech of governor rauf aregbesola. (3) and so, today we celebrate our people who stood for democracy and liberty, who defied every form of provocation and intimidation to make a democratic statement by voting and make [sic] their votes count. they have shown that no gun or sabre rattling can stand in the way of a people who are determined to make a stand for liberty and democracy. (rauf aregbesola) the text clearly indicates a process of choice-making about leadership system in osun state. expressions like “make a democratic statement by voting and make their votes count”, and “make a stand for liberty and democracy” are indicators of the context (electoral process) of the issue (regime change), which governor aregbesola raises in the text. the issue being raised here is indicated by the description of local activities and behaviours of certain people in the state during the process of the election. such expressions like “defied every form of provocation and intimidation”, and “they have shown that no gun or sabre rattling can stand in the way of a people” describe activities of aregbesola’s political adversary against his supporters during the election periods. the supporters are represented as being larger than they really are by picturing them in the entire osun state citizenry he addresses: “today we celebrate our people who stood for democracy and liberty”. this indicates how the issue of regime change also relates to the new identity of the new governor who, having emerged as the helmsman, tries to discountenance adversarial representation in the people whose welfare and security is being entrusted to him. in turn, the new governor presents activities of his adversaries in their quest to accomplish a regime change in osun state. structures like “provocation and intimidation”, and “gun or sabre rattling” form the peculiar representations of aregbesola’s opponents. the meaning of this is derived through the cognitive negotiation between such discourse structures and the social structure of osun state. at this juncture, personal and social cognitions are put into consideration, both of which include the goals and beliefs, emotions and evaluations, mental memory structure, and processes and representations in the regime change issue that governor aregbesola raises in the text. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 91 the distinctive contexts three contexts are variously distinctive to the governors. they are divine support, tradition and value, and morality. they are characterised by religious appeal, social change, and fairplay and justice. context type in adebisi akande’s speeches the inaugural speech of governor adebisi akande is identified with the preponderance of expressions that indicate the review, ascription or rationalisation of participants’ behaviours in discourses that are affected by the ground of right or wrong actions or situations peculiar to the osun people. it is dissimilar to others speeches by the morality context which is characterised by discursive issues of fair-play and justice, and regime change. morality context (fair-play and justice, and regime change issues) morality context refers to the discursive site of judgment, and norms-infuseddiscourses and behaviours. this context is characterised by fair-play and justice, and regime change issues raised in the speeches which border on ethics and values. specifically, this context involves political morality, requesting for the justification of why the people of osun state should accept, support, or obey the initiatives or decisions of a particular regime. the context of morality is characterised by discourses that show that an individual carries out certain actions within established standard of just and honourable behaviour, decency, honesty and abidance by this standard. these signal how governor akande reviews, ascribes or rationalises participants’ behaviours within morality context. (4) the federal government has bleached the states of all sources of internally generated revenue. (adebisi akande) there is a conceptual pattern in the above text from which the context of morality is characterised. specifically, the highlighted expression“the federal government has bleached the states” is metaphorical. the understanding of the morality context depends on how the formal feature of the text above either intensifies or suppresses the (psychological, sociological, and textual) frames of the discourse. hence, the meaning of the construction“the federal government has bleached the states” largely depends on the context of the discourse which is characterised by fairness and just acts that are relevant to specific social situations affecting the people of osun state; as in the expression follows the former“all sources of internally generated revenue”. the major concern here is how the two constructions of the example“the federal government has bleached the states” and “all sources of internally generated revenue” build a mental space of governor akande and the people of osun state whom he addresses, and how it contributes to the social repository of their culturally available elements. their mental space is constructed by all the physical local actions and reactions that the object or element connected with the lexical item “bleach”, on one part, and the inferences of the lexical item“revenue” on the other part. so the social repository of the participants is affected by the local social situations that warrant the presentation of the text as part of governor akande’s inaugural speech. from the foregoing, it is established that the ground of morality is constructed with the presentation of negative peculiar actions of some discourse participants which are at variance with established standard of just and honourable behaviour established in the social knowledge shared by the people of osun state. this understanding and the discursive effects are derived at the emergent mental space of the hearers. the issue relating to the breach in the requirement or standard of fairness with respect to the distribution of nigeria’s monthly allocation among the three tiers of government is connected to “the federal government”, and “the states”. also, within the principle of right and wrong action, adebisi akande reviews the actions of some participants in his inaugural journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) adebayo rasheed mabayoje 92 speech and the effect of such actions on other participants. (5) it is unfortunate that the attempt by the fulani to colonise the people of the northern minorities, the kanuris, and the yorubas resulted in wars throughout the 19th century. (adebisi akande) (6) the federal government has bleached the states of all sources for internally generated revenue; it throws, like crumbs, only 22% of the federal account to 36 states and over 700 local governments for sharing among themselves with a formula most favourable to land size rather than the needs of man within the population ratio and derivation from the land. (adebisi akande) the construction: “to colonise” and “has bleached” connect reviewed action of certain discourse participants whom the new governor describes as being indecent and dishonest. although there are wide spatial differences between the periods of the reviewed actions and the inauguration day of akande (a peculiar representation), these deictic expressions prompt, in the mental space of the people of osun state, the positioning of the participants and their actions along the spatial axis, s. the negative impacts of the actions of the participants are located at the remote end of the spatial axis, while the objective of the review of the actions “colonised” and “bleached” is located at the deictic centre of the discourse space. the implication is that akande connects the present experience of his hearers, that is, his emergence as the new governor, with the reviewed actions of those who ruled the country in the past and shortly before akande’s advent. in the context of the text, the review of the actions of the participants in akande’s speech relates to spatial indexicality which has to do with discursive space between actions of the referent participants“the fulani” and “the federal government”, in the speech and other actions are dedicated in relation to akande as the new governor of osun state. from the abovementioned, the morality context, characterised fair-play and justice, and regime change issues, is therefore established under two categories: (i) propositions associated with the moral rights of the people of osun state, and (ii) propositions associated with akande’s moral responsibilities as the governor. the two propositions are discussed in turn. propositions relating to the people’s rights as a category of morality context under this category of morality context, governor akande presents his partisan identity as against that of his opponents’ or members of the outgroup by deploying statements or assertions that express a judgment or opinion about social or ethical principles of entitlement of citizens under a particular administration. this is illustrated in the following example below; and characterised by fair-play and justice, and regime change issues. first, the fair-play and justice issue is established; characterising morality context through expressions relating to the rights of the people. the new governor presents a judgment about how osun people have been deprived of certain “entitlements”, and rights under past military regimes before his advent. this is observed from how the long term memory of his hearers is engaged as a tactic to premise this proposition of people’s right. the new governor contrasts socio-economic situations in the “old western region under chief obafemi awolowo” with current positions of the states that were carved out or the old region, of which osun state is one. the meaning that the people's right to basic infrastructure under the regime before his advent is derived from the statement: “the people have since lost their entitlements”, as in the text below. (7) in the process, the yoruba nation, which began as numerous kingdoms, each with her own monarchy before covering into one nation in the old western region under chief obafemi awolowo, has been split into seven (whole) and three (fractional) states. and the people have since lost their entitlements. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 93 among these states of the yoruba nation is osun state which was created in 1991 and which, up till today, has no capital city with developed physical infrastructure, no enviable government house, no definable government secretariat, no functional mass media communication system, no adequate rural feeder roads, no good road network nor drainage etc. (adebisi akande) within the context of morality, the derivable meaning from the text is connected to the peculiar representation of osun state as a clime. there is an indication of a contrast between two different regimes of the obafemi awolowo and the military era that came after awolowo. the governor creates two distinct groups, relying on shared knowledge with his hearers. akande presents his partisan identity within this context in terms of the commonly shared knowledge (csk) of good governance, the “entitlement” of the people, which was experienced during the period of the “old western region under chief obafemi awolowo”. this is foregrounded in the proposition “and the people have since lost their entitlements”. hence, the partisan group identity of akande is constructed under the context of morality in terms of the proposition that relates to the moral rights of osun people. second, the propositions relating to the rights of the people as citizens (“adequate rural feeder roads, good drainage”) are also presented within regime change issue, and characterise the discursive context of morality. this is established at the cognitive level of meaning. the “entitlements” of the people, as in the text above, is connected to morality; that is judgment of standards behaviours and norms between governments and the people. in essence, the propositions relating these “entitlements” are processed at the conceptual blending level of discourse. the site of processing here is the morality context, characterised by regime change issue raised by the governor. hence, the expression: “entitlement”, at the emergent structure of meaning processing, inherits structures from the input spaces which are constructed from peculiar representations of osun state; that is, the sskas in: “osun state…has no capital city with developed physical infrastructure”. the elements of the input spaces here are the lack of “enviable government house, definable government secretariat, functional mass media communication system, adequate rural feeder roads, good road network, drainage, etc.” in osun state. they are the “entitlements” that “the people have since lost”. therefore, the regime change issue characterises the morality context by how akande chooses to recruit linguistic structures in the text in order to stimulate the perception of reality of the immoral deprivation of the osun state people of their rights under previous regimes. propositions relating to the speaker’s responsibility as a category of morality context this captures statements or assertions in the new governor’s speech that express a judgments or opinions about his status that morally deserves praise, blame, reward, or punishment for an act or omission, in accordance with his moral obligations as an administrator in osun state. under this category, morality context is characterised by fair-play and justice issue in terms of how governor akande expresses a judgment about his moral responsibility as a leader at the helm of affairs of the state. in the example below, he expresses a praise deserving opinion about his action as a governor. following the footsteps of a former ruler in the old western nigeria, the new governor sees the need to “inspire” osun people “in a manner that” ignites and unleashes “their creative energy”. his partisan characterisation is constructed along the awolowo political ideological group under the former’s moral responsibility as the new osun governor. (8) the visionary purposeful leadership of chief obafemi awolowo once inspired our people in a manner that ignited and unleashed their creative energy. today, we are gathered here to resume the journey that our people began with obafemi awolowo. (adebisi akande) his partisan identity is constructed within commonly shared knowledge (csk) of awolowo political ideology of good governance. this is foregrounded in the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) adebayo rasheed mabayoje 94 expression “we are gathered here to resume the journey that our people began with obafemi awolowo”. in the same sense, his judgment about his status of morally deserving praise as the new osun governor is also presented in the same expression. however, at the heart of the proposition about his moral responsibility as the new osun governor is the expression: “the journey”, which metaphorically represents “purposeful visionary leadership” as used in earlier part of the text. leadership in the context of moral responsibility of the governor is the action of encouraging osun people to achieve social and economic development through viable government policies and programmes. this kind of leadership is metaphorically described by the governor within the link between the literal source domain“visionary purposeful leadership of chief obafemi awolowo once inspired our people” and the metaphoric target domain“we are gathered here to resume the journey…”; where specifically “purposeful leadership”the source, is mapped to “the journey”the target domain. the potency of the metaphorical representation of the proposition that presents aregbesola’s political identity contrast under context of morality is derived from the ontological associations that are induced in the minds of his hearers. the connections between entities of source domain (sd) and target domain (td) are grounded in the everyday experience and knowledge shared by the governor and his hearer. the text takes the form of metaphor scenarios, which consist of mini-narratives (somebody once inspired a people to a particular social action) based on source domain input and include participants, their intentions, course of action, and the explicit message. the metaphorical sense of the expression is evaluative. the intention is to convey an attitude or mood. specifically, the derived meaning suggests the governor’s intention that is aimed to convey his partisan identity within the argument of his moral responsibility as a governor. the evaluative power of the deployment of the metaphoric expression is observed where the new governor carried over the way he evaluated the entities in the source domain; that is, awolowo’s moral responsibility as head of government of the old western nigeria. specifically, the metaphoric expression: “we are gathered here to resume the journey that our people began with obafemi awolowo”, conveys akande’s attitude. he passes on a judgment through the framing chosen in the carrying over of the entities in the source domain, “visionary purposeful leadership of chief obafemi awolowo” to the target domain, “the journey” context type in olagunsoye oyinlola’s speeches governor olagunsoye oyinlola’s inaugural speeches are typical of discourses relating to god’s connection to government, administrative, and other discursive behaviours. the site of these discourses builds from the religious inclination of the people of osun state (peculiar representation) and the exploitation of this by him to present his arguments. the context in his speech is divine context, characterised by religious appeal and regime contrast issues. divine support context (religious appeal and regime contrast issues) divine support context refers to all affordances of meaning that basically relate to the likelihood of god’s backing in in certain activities and situations. all moral sensibilities that make up political discourse are specifications of broad collective habits which form the basis for social life. among the collective habits are the ones that are established within intimate but complex relationship between politics and religion, that is divine support. such habits relate to religious beliefs that are expressed or indicated in the inaugural speech of governor oyinlola. the use of religious appeal discourses as characterising the divine context is not quite common and shows implicit and explicit attitudes of discourse participants. these are illustrated in the examples below. (9) i affirm total submission to god. (olagunsoye oyinlola) journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 95 the speaker“i” is connected to the discursive behaviour “affirm”, which indicates governor oyinlola’s commitment to certain ideal. the commitment is directed at the religious representation“god” which is the shared or common social orientation of the people of osun state, and the nucleus of the context of the discourse, that is divine context. divine context is the ground from which meaning affordances that relate to religious issue in his speech are identified. divinity presupposes religion, particularly with respect to the performance of a governor and his administrations. highlighted constructions in the example below are deployed to integrate osun state as indicating human society, which is composed of individuals and social groups with diverse interests and aspirations. (10) pessimists would say the heavens would fall or that there would be brimstone and fire. but we, who believe in god hold fast to him in prayers and supplication and god in his finite mercies has brought us happily to this destination. (olagunsoye oyinlola) in the global sense, this representation of divinity is considered as sociocultural act that shows that religious bond transcends personal and divisive forces. also importantly, this sociocultural act in the divine support context is aimed at legitimising the advent of a new regime as well as to exhibit an existing social order in ‘a new’ osun state under the new governor. generally, governor oyinlola contextualises the past experiences and anticipated participations within the divine support context to achieve three major goals, including: (i) to restrain or criticise the conduct of his predecessors: (11) pessimists would say the heavens would fall or that there would be brimstone and fire. but we, who believe in god hold fast to him in prayers and supplication and god in his finite mercies has brought us happily to this destination. (olagunsoye oyinlola) (ii) to encourage political participation of osun people: (12) i hereby affirm in total submission to god, service to my people… and their support in that sense. (olagunsoye oyinlola) (iii) to promote democratic values and norm: (13) after the turbulence, occasioned by the last electioneering campaign, the battle has been lost and won. we are here together by god’s grace as brothers and sisters in one love family, the large and extended family of osun state. (olagunsoye oyinlola) pragmatically, perceptual and interpretive characters of the events in the examples in relation to divine support context are conceived of in terms of figure-ground relationship, where events, for example, “we are here together”, are the figures while the invoked context (divine support context), marked by: “by god’s grace”, is the ground. this approach underlines the interest of interpretation of the events in his speech beyond structure and content of context, but rather the ways they are used, invoked, inferred or presupposed. the relationship between the religious appeal issue and the divine context are germane to the referential meaning of the texts. this relationship is reflected in the structure of the expressions in terms of the index entities. religious attachments are developed early in the lives of human being, hence are subject to a lifetime of socialisation of the people of osun state. the influence of divine support context on text, as characterised by the religious appeal issue, is conveyed by how the governor describes and explicitly categorises the participants within the religious discourses. some co-textual features are observed as establishing word-based cohesion within the context of divine support, and its religious appeal discourse characterisation. in this journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) adebayo rasheed mabayoje 96 sense, anaphoric and cataphoric pro-forms play decisive role in the emergent meaning of the text. (14) pessimists would say the heavens would fall or that there would be brimstone and fire. but we, who believe in god hold fast to him in prayers and supplication and god in his finite mercies has brought us happily to this destination. (olagunsoye oyinlola) governor oyinlola co-textually embeds some orientations to the electioneering experience that precedes his emergence as the new governor of osun state, so that the text “pessimists would say the heavens would fall or that there would be brimstone and fire” situates in the religious discourse that follows it, by which the context of divine support is invoked: “we, who believe in god hold fast to him in prayers and supplication and god in his finite mercies has brought us happily to this destination”. the former text is a superordinated co-text which informs the organisation and interpretation of the latter. that is, the understanding and interpretation of ‘why and how heavens did not fall’ is embedded in the super-ordinated text. the deployment of the conjunction “but” also emphasises the relationship of adjacency on the same categorised level of text structure. the deployment is an indication of actions or instance of two focal events occurring at the same point in time or space. oyinlola uses “but” in the text to introduce a contrasting activity of a group he belongs against that of others. it is a move within the micro context of divine support, and structured on the co-text index of macro context. in the same vein, the meanings of the faith-connected expressions or constructions are dependent on the divine context related knowledge that the governor and his hearers share. they show the effect of prior shared knowledge on the understanding and retention of emergent information in oyinlola’s text, as illustrated in the example below. (15) it is with gratitude to god almighty and appreciation of the support of the good people of this state that i address you on this auspicious occasion of our administration. apparently, there is a great deal for which we must be grateful to the almighty. (olagunsoye oyinlola) background knowledge indication derives from cognitive model of critical discourse analysis. from the example, governor oyinlola’s hearers, more rapidly, grasp new information in the discourse, regarding the events, activities, and the participants that are related, and from which they are given prior knowledge. the divine support context is indexed by the highlighted expression in the text. it, at the same time, relates certain activities and events in the past, which the governor provides new information about. they, thus, characterise the divine context that the speaker is invoking. the religious appeal issue is presented in the opening of the text and comprises certain prior knowledge shared by the governor and the people of osun whom he addresses. that is why he connects two actions“gratitude to god” and “appreciation of the support of the good people”, in the religious appeal he presents to carry out a single discursive act of arousing faith sentiment. this shows how prior knowledge directly impacts cognitive process for understanding or retaining new information in a discourse. the prior knowledge in this discourse is pertaining to the religious inclination of the people of osun state which is clear to both governor oyinlola and the people of osun state. the prior knowledge which can be declarative (episodic, semantic), or nondeclarative (procedural, implicit) is the behavioural evidence of the activities of governor oyinlola and the people of osun in the particular religious discourse that characterises the divine context. specifically, the adverb “apparently” as deployed in the opening of the expression, which indicates the divine support context of the discourse, shows that the new information that governor oyinlola gives to his hearers derives from something that the people have heard, or have prior knowledge about. however, they are journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 97 being influenced to infer new meaning from the particular background knowledge. therefore, it is used in their cognition to process, and to derive the new information or knowledge that the new governor is trying to present. this is situated in the expression“there is a great deal for which we must be grateful to the almighty”. contexts types in rauf aregbesola’s speeches the predisposition of governor aregbesola’s addressees to faith is leveraged to present arguments under various topics in the text. this is observed in the deployment of religious or faith discourses (religious appeal issue) that characterise heavenly or godlike connections (divine support context) with discursive behaviours, events, or activities related by the new governor in his speech. also, his disposition, or that of his regime to the social standards associated with some individuals or previous administrations (tradition and values context) are characterised by discourses that indicate striking differences between his regime and other ones (regime contrast issue). these are analysed in turn below. divine support (religious appeal issue, regime contrast issue) divine support context is the site for meaning affordances that suggest instances of a virtue coming from god, or a state of sanctification that governor rauf aregbesola enjoys through godlike assistance. it situates an issue that is pertinent to or is in accordance with faith principles, being scrupulous, conscientious, or exact. the meaning of religious appeal issue raised by the new governor is open and not deniable because it is informed by the common religious ideal that is practiced by the people of osun state. as an example, the governor shows how his eventual emergence as the new helmsman of the state was beyond mundane mean. (16) ladies and gentlemen, let me, at this point, recognise that it is god that has allowed us to come this far. we give him all the glory and adoration. he deployed men and women of courage, grace and honour in the judiciary to restore the mandate of the people. (rauf aregbesola) two expressions explicitly indicate religious appeal in the example“it is god that has allowed us to come this far” and “he deployed men and women of courage, grace and honour in the judiciary to restore the mandate of the people”. these show the degree of religious attachments of the people of osun state and how aregbesola exploits it. religious attachment are often formed early in life of an individual and are subject to a lifetime of socialisation. “to restore the mandate of the people” relates regime change between aregbesola era and the administration that preceded it. “recognise” as in the text relates the inner world of experience of the participants in the discourse, including aregbesola and the people of osun state, which have a form of representation that is realised in the issues raised. the inner world of experience of these participants is represented as reaction and reflection. the site of realisation, “recognise”, involves the governor, and the inner world of experience here are the post-election incidents in osun state. after the april 14, 2007 governorship election, supporters of the presumed winner of the governorship election, rauf aregbesola, believed that the election was rigged in favour of olagunsoye oyinlola, hence staged protests across the state. the matter was taken to the gubernatorial electoral tribunal for three and half years before it was resolved in favour of aregbesola. the representation of this inner world of experience is thus realised in the expression “recognise”, which, within the context of use depicts ‘to express’, with the governor being responsible for the action. this is realised through the conjunction “that”, which precedes the religious appeal marker “that it is god”. from the foregoing, the characterisation of divine support context by religious appeal issue shows how governor aregbesola invokes state of experience that is related to a supernatural power or deity, such as god, the supreme being, and creator deity and is therefore regarded as sacred and holy. the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) adebayo rasheed mabayoje 98 governors present close connections between their political and other social experiences and religion within a broader context of sociocultural system of osun state. this is observed from how they reflect certain experiences that show religious politicisation. the effect of such sociocultural act performed by them is functional in the sense that it helps the integrative performance of their new administration, whereby peaceful cooperation and love of the osun people for their individual government is promoted through such invocation. the establishment of divine support context in the speech is encouraged by and represents the social life elements of the people of osun state. the following text exemplifies such social life induced invocation of divine support which the governor deploys to establish and maintain his reigns. (17) we stand here today to celebrate the goodness of god and the unprecedented spirit of the people of osun state. god, and god alone is omnipotent. at his instance, tyranny crumbles; man’s pretense to omnipotence is shattered. in recent years, it has been the fad for the purveyors of power in osun state and in nigeria to forget that, ultimately, power belongs to god. (rauf aregbesola) the example above shows the divide between private and public faith, with the former being often presented in aregbesola’s speech. this indicates the thin line that exists between politics and faith or religion. expressions like “we celebrate the goodness of god”, “god alone is omnipotent”, and “ultimately, power belongs to god” are all situated on the ground of divine support, and the invocation of religion in political activities. it suggests politicisation of faith, and the influence of religion on the lives of the people of osun state. put more specifically, the divine support context is characterised by six subissues of religious appeal, which are: coexistence, religious participation, emotional sentiment, social identity, legitimisation, and partnership. governor aregbesola’s religious expression“we stand here today to celebrate the goodness of god” indicates that there is no separation between the people of osun state with respect to faith in political context. this is, particularly marked by the pronoun “we” which constructs world of unity and coexistence in the interest of a political instance devoid of differences of faith among the people. the expression“god alone is omnipotent” indicates the culture of faith participation in politics. the fact that faith politically influences the emotion of people in politics is indicated in the expression“at his instance, tyranny crumbles; man’s pretence to omnipotence is shattered.” also, the social identity of aregbesola’s hearers is constructed by the expression“we stand here today to celebrate the goodness of god”. it is an indication that osun people are inclined to religion, and they flag this during political activities. this is evident in the manner that the new governor tries to show divine approval of his emergence as the new helmsman. tradition and value (social change, and regime contrast issues) tradition and value context is characterised by discourses of social change and regime contrast which relate to how social beliefs and the behaviours of the people of osun state, or their judgement of what is essential in life are passed down within the osun communities. these beliefs, behaviours and social judgement carry special representational meanings and are significant with origin in the past. this context, as characterised by the social change and regime change issues, is illustrated under personal and moral factors observed in aregbesola’s speech. the personal factors of social change issue which characterises the tradition and value context are observed within expressions about social values, behaviours and beliefs endorsed by aregbesola or an individual. (18) chief bisi akande’s performance in four years exceeded the combined records of all other governors who have ruled osun state. also, i had the privilege of serving as a commissioner in lagos state under governor bola tinubu who raised the internally generated revenues from 600 million naira per month in 1999 to 8.5 journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 99 billion naira per month in 2007. in other words, the absence of oil resources cannot and should not be used as an excuse for failing to embark on projects that will uplift our people… (rauf aregbesola) the social change issue is marked by the expression“failing to embark on projects that will uplift our people”, and the regime contrast issue is indicated by the expression“chief bisi akande’s performance in four years exceeded the combined records of all other governors who have ruled osun state”. they are both situated within the discursive site of aregbesola’s personal endorsement of the value of good, and effective leadership, as indicated in effect of “chief bisi akande’s performance in four years” on the people of osun state, and how “governor bola tinubu… raised the internally generated revenues” of lagos state. in the same vein, the social change and regime contrast issues characterise the tradition and value context of meaning through expressions that indicate moral standards behaviour of the governor or a discourse participant, as in the example below. (19) in the past four years, we have striven to keep faith with the people on the mandate given to us. we set out to reenact the obafemi awolowo tradition of leadership of good governance; a tradition that sets the western region apart. the formidable challenge notwithstanding, we have delivered largely on our promises. (rauf aregbesola) social change in this study is about the positive and significant alteration that a regime caused in the behavioural patterns of the people, resulting in marked social consequences. the social change issue raised by the governor in example 41 above is related in the expressions“re-enact the obafemi awolowo tradition of leadership of good governance”, and “we have delivered largely”. regime contrast issue is a discourse of differences between two or more regimes or their representations. this is marked in the example above by the expression“the obafemi awolowo tradition of leadership of good governance… sets the western region apart”. both of these issues (social change and regime contrast) are raised by governor aregbesola within the moral factor of the context of tradition and value, which establishes a morally right or wrong behaviour in a discourse. this is specifically marked by the expression“we have striven to keep faith with the people on the mandate given to us”. conclusion thus far, this article has provided sociocognitive explanations of how discursive contextscharacterised by events, activities and indigenous social situations of a particular climedetermine the inherent and/or derived meanings in gubernatorial inaugural speeches. it argues that contexts relate to discourse participants’ locality, thus crucial to the understanding and realisation of the issues raised, and the derived meanings. it has thus described the state of the real world that characterises a particular localitya crucial realisation of meanings from various affordances within the cognitive models of discourse participants. considering the scope of the analytical data of the studyon the basis of documentation and the duration of the regimes of the governors (1999-2018), the study is limited to representations (discursive contexts) that relate the social structures and characterisations of a locality within the western region of nigeria, and its civilian rulers within certain periods. indigenous representations as characterising contexts in gubernatorial inaugurals, and other political texts could be further researched by exploring the recurrence of stylistic featureslike syntactical patterns and rhetorical figures that foreground the nature and quality of the local representations that characterise discourse participants and their locality. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) adebayo rasheed mabayoje 100 references adelegan, f., 2007. from the treasures of the heart: prince olagunsoye oyinlola. osogbo: kingsmann publishers. alaba akinwotu, s. 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(2013). what cda is about – a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments. in methods of critical discourse analysis. https://doi.org/10.4135/978085702802 0.n1. 294 vol. 21 no. 2, october 2021, pp. 294-306 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i2.3122 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. women and matrimony: a study of mona lisa smile pei-yu chao1 & ya-huei wang1, 2* qq0970565666@gmail.com & yhuei@csmu.edu.tw 1 department of applied foreign languages, chung shan medical university, taiwan 2* department of medical education, chung shan medical university, taiwan abstract article information this study intended to use the film mona lisa smile (1993) as an example to examine how women in the traditional generation of 1950 were gender stereotyped and used to trade themselves off through marriage in consideration of a cost-and-benefit analysis. however, as the change of women’s gender consciousness from the conservative to the feminist in the usa of 1950, women began to realize their potential and subjectivity, hence questing for liberal spirit and autonomy to choose their career and husbands based on love. the researchers used the qualitative method, with both the primary and secondary data, to facilitate a latent-content analysis. after conducting a content analysis of the film and the script of mona lisa smile, the researchers took notes regarding gender stereotyping and conventional gender norms in social interactions and conducted a literature review of becker’s side bet theory and homan’s social exchange theory to investigate how women in america in the 1950s were disciplined to meet the expectation of social norms to fit the notion of conventional matrimony, and how people, both men and women, while choosing their mates, seek the maximum interest and minimum cost. the film mona lisa smile lets readers have a chance to see the transformation of a marital relationship from the old days to modern ones. with raised gender consciousness, women may now subject their choices to their own will and, hence, apply a different definition to the word “marriage.” keywords: matrimony; gender stereotype; gender awareness; side bet theory; social exchange theory received: 15 february 2021 revised: 19 may 2021 accepted: 28 may 2021 introduction women in the traditional generation of the 1950s, with the acquisition of manners and rules enacted by social norms, were gender stereotyped to be a functional character willing to sacrifice themselves to help men, to procreate, and to tend all of the chores. according to becker’s side bet theory, matrimony can be recognized as a fair trade of commitments: “commitments come into being when a person, by making a side bet, links extraneous interests with a consistent line of activity” (becker, 1960, p. 32). based on https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:qq0970565666@gmail.com journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 295 becker’s side bet theory, people always make choices assuming the “risk” and the “remuneration” of an event or an investment in advance. this means that fairness can build harmony in matrimony, in that, if the risk and the remuneration can reach a balance, the commitment could continue for a long time. becker’s side bet theory (1960) is associated with homan’s social exchange theory, which was proposed in 1961. homan mentioned that social behaviors are the result of a two-sided exchange process involving giving something and getting something in return. because the core of social exchange theory is to minimize the cost and to maximize the benefit, the decisions and actions people undertake would be based on the consequence of the cost and benefit. in other words, based on the social exchange theory, people would measure social interactions against the benefits that may be derived from them (lawler, 2001). homan (1961) also introduced a “rationality proposition,” asserting that, when people are vacillating in making a decision between alternative actions, they choose the action whose resulted value, multiplied by the probability of gaining the result, is greater. both becker’s side bet theory and homan’s social exchange theory emphasize the cost-benefit analysis, by which, while making a decision, people will follow the direction of maximum interest and minimum cost. this study intended to use the film mona lisa smile (1993) as an example to illustrate how women have been gender stereotyped and used to trade themselves off through marriages. hence, in addition to use gender ideology to define ideal women for the expectations of public and social norms, the study also examined how women themselves in 1950’s had been used to choose to marry rich men in the marriage institution in terms of becker’s side bet theory (1960) and homan’s social exchange theory (1961). however, as the awareness of women’s gender consciousness in the usa of 1950, women sought more freedom to choose their career and husbands based on love (friedan, 1997; lam, 2011). methodology in order to examine how women in the traditional generation of 1950 were gender stereotyped and used to trade themselves off in the marriage institution in consideration of the consequence of a cost-benefit analysis, taking the film mona lisa smile (1993) as an example, the researchers conducted the research, using the qualitative method, with both primary and secondary data, to facilitate a latent-content analysis (babbie, 1995). after conducting a content analysis of the film and the script of mona lisa smile, the researchers took notes regarding gender stereotyping and conventional gender norms in social interactions and conducted a literature review of becker’s side bet theory (1960) and homan’s social exchange theory (1961) to investigate how women at wellesley college in america of 1950 were disciplined to meet the expectation of social norms and to fit in with the ideals of conventional matrimony and how people, both men and women, while choosing their mates, follow the direction of maximum interest and minimum cost. in addition, with the initiation of feminist movement in the usa of 1950, a movement claiming that men and women should be treated equally in any field of life, women’s gender consciousness has been changed from the conservative to the feminist and hence those women in mona lisa smile begin to realize their potential and subjectivity. therefore, they quest for liberal spirit and autonomy to choose their career and husbands based on love. results and discussion feminine mystique in the patriarchal ideology women have dreamed of having a good husband and a “perfect” family: a family with no fights, with children around, and no worries about money problems. this was no exception for women in the 1950s in america (lamb, 2011). hence, in order to let themselves be marriable, american women in the 1950s had to fit the image of the ideal woman, as what friedan (1997) called the “feminine mystique,” which was being promoted in radio programs and commercials at that time. to emulate the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) pei-yu chao & ya-huei wang 296 “feminine mystique,” women made themselves “feminine” by being passive, obedient, and capable of managing the household. their goal was to trade themselves off to get married. hence, in these programs and commercials, women were portrayed as being fond of cooking, clothing, and cosmetics, with no passion for the pursuit of knowledge or selfthought. they were depicted as having nothing to do except housework and keeping themselves beautiful in order to be married off. for these women, the only passion was their life’s goal: to pursue a man and trade themselves off to him (friedan, 1997). while accessing these programs, magazines, or commercials, women were being socialized into the preestablished patterns of gender behavior, assimilating themselves with the expectation of social norms and the marriage institution. the film mona lisa smile, set in the united states of 1953 and directed by konner and rosenthal in 1993, reveals the attitude of women in 1950s america toward marriage. in terms of the education configuration of polite company, like wellesley college in mona lisa smile, these finishing schools were dominated by traditionalists who guided girls to become the ideal feminine characters of that time. for instance, the president of wellesley college, miss carr, urged girls to dedicate themselves to only propagating and taking care of their husbands for the rest of their lives. thus, in addition to acquiring professional knowledge and etiquette, all the girls studying at this college cared about was finding a husband and then building their family. this situation may cause the feminist consciousness to be downcast and let women almost rely on men instead of being independent, with their own thoughts or vocations. according to becker’s (1960) side bet theory, people generally choose a partner based on the assumption of a continued and stable matrimony and then increase their commitment to gain more interest. hence, based on the previous experiences of their ancestors, women may choose a man who is more suitable for them or may choose a companion who has outstanding prospects when seeking marriage. it is said that women make a “side bet'” based on a main bet, or the activity succeeding it; the side bet thereby increases their commitment to the main bet. conversely, if they fail at the main bet, they would also lose the side bet (becker, 1960; aranya & jacobson 1975). hence, running a marriage is somewhat like running a business or organization. indeed, becker (1973) mentions in his theory of marriage that, in each marriage, the husband and the wife are like a two-person company, with one being the entrepreneur to organize the business and the other one being hired to run the business. in this two-person firm called matrimony, in order to minimize the cost and to maximize the benefit, it is necessary to arrange optimal mating in order to “hire” the mate who is capable of bringing maximal benefits to the family (becker 1973). therefore, in order to let themselves be “hired,” or married off, in the competitive marriage market, women have to equip themselves with feminine characteristics so that they become competitive, endeavoring to demonstrate that they can bring the maximal total utility, or happiness, to the marriage (becker, 1991). based on these theories, in interpersonal relations, people also take advantage of the exchange theory. they tend to pay little in exchange for the best benefit. the cost is the part that people want to avoid. in matrimony, for example, in order to reach marital happiness, both men and women would definitely avoid partners with bad habits and negative personalities. moreover, in order to avoid a high cost and to maximize the benefit of matrimony via the cost-benefit analysis, both men and women would keep away from someone in a low social status because marrying such a person would deduct from the highest benefit or even render the cost higher than the benefit. therefore, in order to maximize the benefit and minimize the cost, with respect to committing to matrimony, people would choose partners with a higher social status and economic situation or, at least, those with the same social status or economic situation. thus, based on becker’s side bet theory (1960) and homan’s social exchange theory (1961), once journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 297 one is considering matrimony, as in mona lisa smile, both men and women would choose to enter polite company in order to maximize their benefit, symbolizing the exchange values in the marriage market. as shown in mona lisa smile, spencer, a wealthy man, chooses betty, a rich girl with proper etiquette—not a mediocre girl next door—to be his wife in order to reap the maximal benefits for the household. hence, some potential failures, like screwing up a banquet and losing face, will be avoided in his social interactions. apart from men, women experience the same phenomenon. both men and women prefer assortative mating in some way, which refers to the nonrandom mating in the marriage mating market based on the principle of social exchange theory (buss, 1984). however, women’s marriage decision would be more likely to be conditioned by the dominant patriarchal ideology (castro, 1990; millet, 1985). based on the assortative mating strategy, becker’s (1960) side bet theory, and homan’s (1961) social exchange theory, it seems reasonable that, in mona lisa smile, betty warren, a college student in a finishing school, wants to marry a husband whose status and background are similar to hers. betty is a classic character who always considers her marriage impartially and rationally. she inherits this traditional concept from her mother and always complies with her mother’s words. in becker’s side bet theory (1960), marrying a competent man corresponds to having the security of indemnity in her marriage, in that the marriage guarantees financial security or protection. hence, while rationally seeking a competent man, betty would feel secure if she gained enough financial support. however, if she cannot get the right person, that is, the person meeting her expectations, she would lose her livelihood. hence, betty prepares for her marriage diligently, with numerous expectations. she invests her time, money, and capital to make herself a “qualified” wife in order to exchange financial security for her future life. according to her concept, spending these funds to trade herself off in marriage is relatively worthy. ultimately, as in the costbenefit analysis, betty and her husband spencer are married. under becker’s side bet theory (1960), their marriage is a product made by an equitable transaction. spencer’s role props the household expenses up; betty’s character completes the household tasks all the time. the husband, spencer, is responsible for external matters, while the wife, betty, dedicates herself to the internal household. while making a side bet, both spencer and betty (the husband and the wife) compensate each other and get a good deal on this marriage transaction. through a typical feudal outlook, the social status of a woman is increased by marrying a man; so are the sources of finance. women must rely on men for their livelihoods. in a patriarchal society, the value of women comes from exchanging obligations and delivering babies. in other words, the benefit of matrimony to women depends on the comparison of income and domestic work and the comparison of the social/economic status between the men and women. in the past, men were good at earning remuneration from labor markets; they earned much more than women. on the other hand, women were good at household chores. they took care of all daily living tasks. they also successfully supported each other: men won support and care from women, while women obtained economic dependence and other material support from men. however, there are some limitations to becker’s side bet theory (1960). although women will gain equal benefits or interests from their husbands in their marital relationship in terms of social exchange conditions, there is a factor called “gender role” that diminishes their happiness in matrimony. gender role is one of the factors that decides the social status of a person. in a traditional society, women are at a lower social status, having few or no chances to declare their right to pursue careers or an education. thus, women became accustomed to heavily relying on their husbands, resulting in their lower level of feminist consciousness and subordinate status in matrimony. women in functional marriages in a conservative society, such as the society of 1950s america, matrimony abides https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2f978-3-319-16999-6_3853-1#cr6 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) pei-yu chao & ya-huei wang 298 by conventional social norms, in which almost all women have an expectation of marriage; indeed, matrimony is an important milestone in their life. with this concept, if they do not marry, they cannot have their own family, and hence, they would become a loser. in mona lisa smile, katherine, an art professor, has a talk with president carr at the presidential office. while observing that half of the girls at wellesley college are about to get married to obtain financial support for the rest of their lives, in a conversation with her, katherine realizes that president carr is proud that these girls will get married after attending the finishing school. katherine: these girls… are you proud, president carr? president: yes, actually, i am. katherine: well, you should be, i guess. half of them are married. the other half, give it a month or so. it's really only a matter of time. they’re biding time until somebody proposes! president: a hundred years ago, it was inconceivable for a woman to be a college graduate. perhaps you should look back to see how far we've come. katherine: i’m sorry, from where i sit, it’s just a different kind of corset. well, we can all use a little support. (01:04:4701:05:12) ironically, for these girls, the education they receive prepares them to be a good housewife and mother, not to search for subjectivity and independence. upon the first day of school, katherine even wonders if these female students are only capable of memorizing. they certainly have the ability to memorize the whole course in art history, but unfortunately, they do not have their own individual thoughts or opinions about artwork. joan: you gave me a c. katherine: i’m kind. joan: the assignment was to write about bruegel. i did that. katherine: no, what you did was copy strauss. joan: i was referencing an expert. katherine: if i wanted to know what he thought, i’d buy his book. (00:29:3900:29:53) finding that these girls have been trained to follow this tradition, in order to foster inspiration, katherine asks her student joan to think and reflect over about her assignment, instead of copying others’ ideas. however, at wellesley, the ambition to reach personal fulfillment is taboo. therefore, bringing liberal concepts and the feminist consciousness to students through modern art is prohibited by the president at wellesley, who forces katharine to follow the conventional framework of teaching if she wants to remain at the school. president: i’ve been getting some calls about your teaching methods, katherine. they’re a little unorthodox, for wellesley. we are traditionalists, katherine. katherine: yes, i noticed. president: so if you'd like to stay here... katherine: is that a question? presiden: more a discussion. you’ll have your formal review in may. until then... a little less modern art. (00:43:4000:44:06) wellesley college is truly a “college of marriage,” whose responsibility is to instill the ideology of what a perfect housewife is and to implant within these female students the conventions and social norms to reach the goal of institutionalization, disciplining these girls to be marriable in the conventional marriage system. in other words, wellesley helps these girls project the public image of a perfect wife in order to increase their value in the marriage market. since girls at wellesley bear the obligation of becoming an ideal housewife in order to render themselves marriable in the marriage market, they are kept from developing their potential and from knowing the world, for these matters have nothing to do with their family’s happiness. hence, in order to get married, girls have been disciplined to waive their subjectivity and independence in exchange for financial support from their husbands. they have been trained to obey the unwritten rules and gender ideology rooted in a traditional college, thinking that they were born to be a wife. in order to accomplish their journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 299 life goal to be an ideal wife, at wellesley, they have been expected to cultivate themselves as refined and courteous women. moreover, they have been raised to support and look after their husbands and children, letting their family expand like a continuous flow of water. even if all the tasks are time-consuming, at wellesley, girls have been trained to voluntarily shoulder the tasks, thinking that achieving matrimony means the sacrifice of their dreams and careers. the concept of sacrificing for the family is quite normal in 1950s america because, for these girls, the gender stereotypes had been firmly rooted in their youth. based on becker’s (1960) side bet theory, a harmonious marital relationship can be a consequence of the decision a woman makes when choosing a man to be her husband based on that man’s appearance, personality, financial situation, and social status. for the family’s sake, women tend to choose a man whose qualifications correspond with their own or even bring some practical benefits to them. nonetheless, they would not take mutual affection into consideration. a marriage thus described is also called a functional marriage (fiore & swensen, 1977). people need each other for the purpose of building a family, and they get married for their own benefit. however, this kind of thought will drown them in the trap of a functional marriage, a marriage focusing on function and not mutual affection. the commitment to a functional marriage corresponds to becker’s side bet theory and homan’s social exchange theory because, while choosing a husband, women would go through the cost-benefit analysis, attempting to reach the maximum benefits and to minimize any cost in their marriage. in order to meet the social expectation and the benefits of the transactional marriage, many women fall into the trap of functional matrimony. they cannot follow their hearts and ignore the need of affection. according to the side bet theory, people generally choose a partner based on the assumption of a continued and stable matrimony and then increase their commitment to gain more benefits. hence, based on the previous experiences of their ancestors, marriageseeking women may choose a man who is more suitable for them or choose a companion who has more prosperous conditions. it is said that women make a “side bet'” based on a main bet or activity succeeding, and the side bet therefore increases their commitment to the main bet. conversely, if they fail at the main bet, they would also lose the side bet (becker, 1960; aranya & jacobson 1975). hence, running a marriage becomes a form of running a business or organization, in which the main focus is on the benefit, disregarding mutual affection. in the workplace, organizational commitment refers to the bond between employees and their organizations. indeed, many employees, recognizing and identifying with the clear vision and goal of their organizations, form a strong and positive connection with them (allen & meyer, 1990). there are three components to organizational commitment: affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment (allen & meyer, 1990). however, those who care about maintaining a functional marriage would only take continuance commitment and normative commitment into consideration. since matrimony is like running a firm or business, those getting involved in this business of marriage only need to pay through their commitment to their marriages, businesses, and organizations. hence, regarding organizational commitment, both men and women, upon entering the marriage bind, have to make a continuous commitment to their marriage because they are aware that, once the marriage ends, their meaningful profit also ends. therefore, in consideration of the so-called “main bet” and “side bet,” they choose to stay in that marriage (becker, 1960). the consideration of the main bet and side bet is quite a common phenomenon in the marital relationship. once women get divorced from their husbands, they lose the main bet, as well as the side bet. in a traditional society, even if a woman does not get married based on affection for her husband, she would still make a continual commitment to her marriage because she well knows that, once the state of matrimony starts to fade, she will lose her marriage (main bet) and then her happiness (side bet), such as the well-being and satisfaction that was derived from the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) pei-yu chao & ya-huei wang 300 marriage. moreover, once a marriage is damaged, a woman’s investment in it is in jeopardy. at this time, since the matrimony has suffered some form of damage, some women might decide to rid themselves of a failed marital relationship. however, other women might choose to stay with their husband because they are rooted in the belief in devotion and commitment to matrimony. hence, regarding this normative commitment to an organization (wiener, 1982), women may feel the need to stay in their marriage to continue working to better it, perhaps fearing that departing from the marriage system would bring disastrous consequences or perhaps simply a sense of guilt at the thought of leaving their husbands. therefore, those who are considering their main bet and side bet may be trapped in their marriage. also, some may be rooted in the gender stereotype. therefore, even if their marriage is a total failure, they would never think of divorce, for fear of the gossip. in order to avoid negative perceptions, these women would rather choose to stay in an unhealthy marital relationship instead of ending it. moreover, they are well aware that, once they divorced their husbands, they would fall out of their comfort zone, losing their economic/financial resources and their children. hence, in consideration of the “main bet” and “side bet,” as well as their rooted gender stereotype, those women would choose to stay in a failed marriage, which becomes a bondage of matrimony in conservative society. in mona lisa smile, spencer steps out on betty after their wedding. he thus becomes a perpetrator in the marital relationship. betty wants to escape from a rotten marriage, but she encounters many handicaps. her mother even asks her to tolerate spencer’s affair: betty’s mother: you’re going to turn around, go home, fix your face and wait for your husband. this is the bargain you made, elizabeth. we all did. betty: so you're not going to let me stay in my own house? betty’s mother: spencer’s house is your house now. believe me, it’s for your own good. (01:21:01-00:21:17) to avoid being sized up with curious eyes, all betty can do is to accept her mother’s words and restrain her anger toward her husband. hence, while knowing that her husband is having an affair and while suffering great pain, betty takes her mother’s suggestion: “there will be no divorce” (01:31:43-00:31:44). she manages to be a competent wife in order to remain in her comfort zone and maintain financial support from her husband, spencer. women’s insistence on staying committed to a horrible marriage in traditional society is akin to organizational commitment, a psychological attachment that a worker forms to the workplace. (allen & meyer, 1990; o’reilly & chatman, 1986). as becker (1973; 1991) says that running a marriage is somewhat like running a business or organization, for those women making their family’s happiness their own career, they would be wholly committing themselves to the marriage, always giving priority to their husbands and children. these women focus solely on how to be a qualified wife and mother, not how to be themselves. a harmonious marital relationship will allow women to devote themselves to their marriage. in a conventional society, a woman has no choice but to accede to her parents’ arrangement to marry a person of their choice, whose conditions are similar to hers. this is shown in the film, with betty and spencer. in addition, the social expectation becomes a prison; it restricts married women. once they are married, women form a strong and positive connection to their marriage. consequently, even if they get the short end of the marriage stick, as in a normative commitment, they will voluntarily stay in a rotten marriage because of some positive aspects that the marriage has brought to them, as well as their obligation to their family. however, this choice causes another problem: such a marriage lacks affection and contains only the fulfillment of matrimonial obligations. in addition, due to the energy and effort women have devoted to their marriage, they depend on their husbands much more deeply day by day—they are invested in the relationship. consequently, being bound in the traditional gender stereotypes in a marital relationship, women journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 301 are always situated in a disadvantaged position: they lack economic independence, basic human rights, personal power, and so forth. moreover, they are limited by the conservative concept of gender ideology. nevertheless, fortunately, due to the outbreak of a critical world war ii, the gender character quietly changed. women’s social status became more advanced, and their gender status indirectly improved. world war ii and feminist consciousness world war ii awoke the feminist consciousness and broke the stereotypes of gender roles. in a patriarchal society, men always serve as functional characters, and women must be more emotional and caring. that is, in a stereotypical patriarchal family, husbands would work outside the home in order to bring food to their family, while women would raise children and maintain the household. before world war ii, women who had to work outside the home were members of the lower class, and people would take a negative attitude toward them. however, the outbreak of world war ii (1939-1945) incurred the need of the military and the demand of workers to maintain a stable economy. hence, a great number of women were encouraged to step into the workforce, no longer limited to staying at home and taking care of the household (lamb, 2011). women’s capability to step into the workforce brought about a great change in gender ideology and, hence, deconstructed the conventional gender stereotypes. moreover, with the initiation of feminist movement in the usa of 1950, women’s gender consciousness has been changed from the conservative to the feminist and hence those women in mona lisa smile began to realize their potential and subjectivity. in addition, with the outbreak of world war ii, the shattering of gender stereotypes let american women have a chance for more social interactions, for instance, working for the women airforce service as pilots or in hospitals as nurses (granger, 1991; lamb, 2011), thereby bringing glory to their country and family. while serving as women airforce service pilots (martin, 2020), women flew to protect their country and to seek their freedom. while the traditional social norms were being challenged, feminist consciousness was awakening (tong, 1995), and it continued to do so even though, after the war, women were forced to return home. they then faced the dilemma of either having a career but staying unmarried, or being a wife but giving up the idea of having a career (lamb, 2011). aside from the transition of gender awareness and social interactions, selfrecognition is also a key point for avoiding the box of traditional marriage, the bondage of matrimony. owing to the transition of gender awareness, women after world war ii had more freedom in their marital relationship than those before. this kind of change caused some significant effects on women’s ways of thinking and deeply altered their thoughts toward marriage and the marital relationship. to this end, katherine noted, “pearl harbor happened and everything changed” (00:58:2800:58:30). since world war ii, women have increased their gender consciousness and have given different definitions to the word “marriage.” susan: was he changed? katherine: they both were. i’m sorry. katherine: your parents? giselle: yeah. after the war...they didn’t know each other anymore, didn’t like each other. he left. he got a whole new family. susan: divorce. giselle: what? yeah. first on my block. that’s a city block. katherine: people change. things happen. it’s the same with me and leo. he went off and married someone else. and i got to go to graduate school. connie: ucla, right? which is in hollywood? katherine: it’s close. giselle: anyway, aren’t you gonna tell everybody about, you know.. your big news? joan: what are you talking about? giselle: she got engaged over christmas! connie: congratulations! joan: i’m sorry to blab. it’s just so romantic. how fantastic! journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) pei-yu chao & ya-huei wang 302 katherine: we split up. joan: what? katherine: we split up. well, that was fast. well, not every relationship is meant for marriage. (00:58:37-00:59:52) although, after the end of the war, women were forced to return home to take on the traditional role of an ideal wife, as well as an ideal mother, and to surrender their jobs to the returning men, the occurrence of the second world war had allowed women to awaken their feminist consciousness and think about the traditional social norms and gender stereotypes. as a result, in 1950, various feminist movements began to spring up (lamb, 2011). many propagandists advocated for social, economic, and even political equality for women. thus, with gender awareness, women began to possess power on their own instead of waiting for support from men. female subjectivity, referring to women as independent subjects and not objects (beauvoir, 1997; kristeva, 1981), is highlighted in mona lisa smile when susan asks katherine, “won’t you regret never marrying?” and katherine replies, “i’m not gonna plan my life around it” (01:00:2401:00:35). with the awareness of gender equality and subjectivity, women no longer needed marriage for security. as katherine implies, the change of the gender role and awakening of feminist consciousness have elevated women’s attitude toward matrimony. women could lead satisfying lives and follow their minds instead of following traditional rules, as katherine explains to bill: bill: you know, if you were mine, i’d never let you go. katherine: i wouldn’t have asked your permission. (00:27:00-00:27:04) with gender awareness and autonomy, women, like katherine, had a chance to enter the workplace and have access to higher educational institutions. they could be independent and listen to their inner voices without compromise. indeed, lamb (2011) noted that, as women gradually shed the gender stereotypes, the rise of feminist consciousness jointly affected the marriage institution and the ideology of marriage and companionship. transformation—feminist consciousness and the bondage of matrimony in mona lisa smile, only katherine believes that girls should have their own rights regarding matrimony. other faculty, including president carr, believe that girls do not deserve to have these rights. at wellesley, with rooted gender stereotyping, the girls dare not dream about their careers; instead, they must prepare to sacrifice themselves in matrimony—at least, until the appearance of katherine, a teacher who inspires these girls to find and discover their self-cognition through literature and art. for example, katherine encourages joan, her student, to imagine and fulfill her dream. katherine: yes, you do, but a very busy one. and it says here that you’re pre-law. what law school are you gonna go to? joan: i hadn’t thought about that. after i graduate, i’m getting married. katherine: and then? joan: and then i’ll be married. katherine: you can do both. just for fun, if you could go to any law school, which would it be? joan: yale. yale. joan: they keep five slots open for women, one unofficially for a wellesley girl. katherine: but you haven’t really thought about it. (00:30:33-00:31:04) with the awakening of feminist consciousness, women realize that they do not need to choose between having a family life and having a career. they could have both or choose either at their free will. as shown in the passage, katherine declares that women do not need to choose between being a housewife and having a career; they can have both at the same time. hence, katherine encourages joan to study for her future career, while running her family life. further, by means of the appreciation and reproduction of art, katherine attempts to prompt students to break free of their conservative thoughts, saying that “no one journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 303 needs to own a van gogh original” (00:53:4500:53:48). katherine: they can paint their own. van gogh in a box, ladies. the newest form of mass-distributed art: paint by numbers. connie: now everyone can be van gogh. it’s so easy. just follow the simple instructions and in minutes, you're on your way to being an artist. giselle: van gogh by numbers? katherine: ironic, isn’t it? look at what we have done to the man. who refused to conform his ideals to popular taste. who refused to compromise his integrity. we have put him in a tiny box and asked you to copy him. so the choice is yours, ladies. you can conform to what other people expect or you can... (00:53:57-00:54:38) unlike other faculty at wellesley, katherine encourages students to be inspired by art, thinking that every girl has the potential to become van gogh or another artist. in addition to the freedom to choose their career, women also have more freedom to choose their husbands based on love. women who successfully increase their selfrecognition must recognize and heed their inner voice. on the aspect of matrimony, they will choose the person they truly love; they will gain freedom and affection in their marriage. they will marry neither for social status nor traditional stereotypes: they marry for affection. this type of choice indicates the fulfillment of affective commitment. “affective commitment” refers to the belief and the acceptance of the value of an organization. subsequently, it indicates the value of a person who participates in a specific organization (mowday, porter, & steers, 1982). with this concept, marriage in a liberal society is much more comfortable than that of a conservative generation. with the former, women enter a marital relationship with meaningful beliefs and acceptance, not merely as a means to maintain their current lifestyle. in an affectionate marriage, they will be much more willing to maintain the relationship, as joan, based on affective commitment, highlights by refusing to attend law school because of her family. joan: it was my choice. not to go. he would have supported it. katherine: but you don’t have to choose. joan: no, i have to. i want a home, a family. it’s not something i’ll sacrifice. katherine: no one’s asking you to sacrifice that, joan. i just want you to understand that you can do both. and marriage is not an obstacle for women to get education and maybe that education makes you become a lawyer. joan: think i’ll wake up one day and regret not being a lawyer? katherine: yes, i’m afraid that you will. joan: not as much as i’ regret not having a family. not being there to raise them. i know exactly what i’m doing, and it doesn't make me any less smart. joan: this must seem terrible to you. katherine: i didn’t say that. l... joan: sure you did. you always do. you stand in class and tell us to look beyond the image, but you don’t. to you, a housewife is someone who sold her soul for a center hall colonial. she has no depth, no intellect, no interests. you’re the one who said, i could do anything i wanted. joan: this is what i want. (01:22:2201:23:15) to joan, her family is not her means for profit or a side bet any longer. she stays in her marriage because of love and her own volition (becker, 1960). joan’s decision is made based on her strong connection to her partner. in contrast to traditional women who have no choice, who must make a decision between being a housewife or having a career, joan can freely choose to be a housewife, giving up her intention to enter law school. instead of stepping into a marriage to fit into the image of an ideal woman and a perfect wife to meet the expectations of social norms, joan, with feminist autonomy, listens to her own inner voices and takes the female identity she would like to have. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) pei-yu chao & ya-huei wang 304 breaking gender stereotyping through self-representation in a traditional society, with rooted gender ideology, women are expected to mate with a “suitable” person and to behave accordingly in order to meet the expectations of others. hence, it is held that men should display the characteristics of dominance, social boldness, and emotional stability. in contrast, women should be self-reliant, sensitive, and apprehensive. men are expected to handle all external means of supporting their family; on the other hand, women should be responsible for all the internal housework (lamb, 2011). hence, in order not to be judged, women must act in a manner fitting the normative regulation. this phenomenon falls into what goffman (1959) calls the “fake role.” women must act within a fixed gender frame in public in accordance with social expectations (goffman, 1977; the’baud, kornrich, & ruppanner, 2019). for instance, women should be submissive and obedient, while men should be assertive and ambitious. betty’s mother exemplifies this notion by suggesting that betty recite a love poem to her fiance at their wedding ceremony, but let others know that everything was her husband’s idea. betty: oh, i almost forgot. i spoke to him about reading the poem. he’d rather not. i said all right. betty’s mother: excuse us for a second, joan. a good wife lets her husband think that everything’s his idea. (00:22:41-00:22:59) betty’s mother advises betty not to be an assertive woman, but instead, to be a submissive wife while her image and her marital relationship are on display. in other words, she suggests that betty develop and maintain an image in terms of approved social norms. in marriage during this time, women relied on men for caring and financial support, as men always adopted the dominant role. even if their husbands had an affair and became a perpetrator, women were told to tolerate the indiscretion. they could not even leave a failed marriage because divorce was considered scandalous by conservative society. that is why, when betty finds out that spencer betrayed her, her mother is extremely opposed to her taking any action or even telling anyone. according to betty’s mother, “don’t wash your dirty laundry in public” (01:32:20-01:32:23), in fact, betty’s mother intends to present a certain (fake) face to the public, as, according to goffman (1972), a fake face follows social norms. however, the fake face is definitely proof of the gender stereotype that causes women to suffer in their marriage. in this kind of transactional marriage, matrimony is bound by feudal rules and traditional social norms. it is a consequence brought about by people’s behavior in meeting the standard of society. in fact, matrimony itself is a brutal truth covered by a glorious appearance, the actual fake face, according to goffman (1959), in a conservative society. on the other hand, the truth, the real face, will be uncovered through the passage of time. therefore, in a marriage without affection, although a woman may wear a fake face, someday, her true face will reveal itself, and the so-called “happiness” will ultimately break down. with feminist consciousness, women began to grasp their autonomy, eschewing the need to stay at home all day long to provide household services to their husband and children (lamb, 2011). hence, even stuck in a loveless marriage, betty is torn between being an obedient housewife in order to meet the expectations of others and being an independent woman, listening to her inner voice. though she has tried hard to listen to her mother’s suggestions and to adjust to her housewife role, with raising awareness of feminist consciousness, betty cannot ignore the fact that her husband has a mistress outside. it is no longer possible for betty to pretend that nothing has happened in her marriage. instead, she turns to listen to her own inner voice, declaring that she has no intention of inheriting conservative gender roles. she decides to end her failure of a marriage in divorce, saying, “i filed for a divorce this morning” (01:38:08-01:38:11). with increasing gender awareness, finally, betty requests for a divorce to claim for gender equality. moreover, she begins to pursue her own professional life: “maybe law school. yale, even” (01:38:54-01:38:56). journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 305 katherine, meanwhile, is indoctrinated by feminist self-identification and gender awareness. she symbolizes the shape of feminist identification in future society, as she dares to challenge the college president, miss carr, a president who was brainwashed by patriarchal thought. hence, the president loses, or never had, her female consciousness. in contrast, katherine, with feminist consciousness, holds beliefs that differ from others’ and devotes herself to teaching girls to reflect over the intrinsic value of art and the intrinsic values of being a woman. while other women were stuck in the traditional ideology of art and gender stereotypes, katherine’s actions to help these girls to consider their inner value and build up their intrinsic values and subjectivity are thought of as impropriety. katherine: there are a lot of labels here. i’ve noticed. right family, right school, right art, right way of thinking. bill: well, saves the effort on thinking for yourself. (00:27:14-00:27: 24) at that time, katherine’s quest for a liberal spirit and autonomy is recognized as rudeness, subversion, and a disregard of traditions in the conservative college. however, using art as a means to help these students reflect over their intrinsic values and subjectivity further arouses students’ feminist consciousness and subjectivity. betty and spencer’s marriage demonstrates that, when a marriage has been used to fulfill the expectation of a society, women, as well as men, become victims in the marital relationship. fortunately, with the assistance of katherine and the awareness of feminist consciousness, betty divorces her unfaithful husband. with increasing gender awareness, betty decides not to compromise any longer. instead, she dares to ignore her mother’s conservative framework and breaks through the “box” of traditional marriage (the bondage of matrimony), realizing that a woman should not be sacrificed for a man, but should be her own individual, reaching her own self-fulfillment. conclusion mona lisa smile is a micropicture of the situation affecting women in america in the 1950s. girls, like those shown at wellesley college, were disciplined to follow the conventional gender ideology: to prepare themselves to be a perfect housewife, while sacrificing their thoughts and subjectivity. with rooted gender stereotypes and gender ideology, traditional gender ideology and a conservative social frame led women to gradually erode their time and freedom. thanks to the feminism movements, women began to raise their gender consciousness. the scenarios in the film mona lisa smile let readers have a chance to see the transformation of a marital relationship from the old days to modern ones. readers may be inspired by katherine, joan, and betty in mona lisa smile to learn how to fight for women’s rights, discard the prison constructed of social and gender expectations, and abandon the box of matrimony. with increased gender awareness, women can deconstruct gender ideology, and hence, find their own will, thereby providing different definitions for the word “marriage.” references allen, n. j., & meyer, j. p., (1990). the measurement and antecedents of affective, continuance and normative commitment to the organization. journal of occupational psychology, 63(1), 1-18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.20448325.1990.tb00506.x aranya, n., & jacobson, d. 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(1995). feminist thought. london: routledge. https://doi.org/10.1086/260084 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1007/bf01076408 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1007/bf01076408 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.1977.40.3.707?journalcode=prxa https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.1977.40.3.707?journalcode=prxa https://doi.org/10.2466%2fpr0.1977.40.3.707 https://doi.org/10.2466%2fpr0.1977.40.3.707 https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1661&context=articles https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1661&context=articles https://doi.org/10.1086/324071 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0021-9010.71.3.492 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0021-9010.71.3.492 https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1982.4285349 https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1982.4285349 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f0049124119852395 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f0049124119852395 138 vol. 22 no. 1, april 2022, pp. 138-149 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i1.3781 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. black feminism reflected through the narrator’s responses of women oppression in maya angelou’s memoir: a letter to my daughter elly santi pertiwi & ni luh putu rosiandani elly.santipertiwi@gmail.com & puturosi@usd.ac.id english letters department, universitas sanata dharma, indonesia abstract article information any unjust situation where one group denies another group is considered as oppression. this condition is possibly initiated by groups that assume their internal attribute as superior to another group. therefore, the groups assume they have the right to deny another group's rights. women oppression is one of kinds of oppression. the differences in physical and biological features of a woman's body benefit men with more privilege and no responsibility to carry children. as a result, a woman is considered as not necessarily need education and career path. a movement has arisen to defense oppressed women, especially women of color, whose experiences are not represented through the mainstream feminist movement. black feminism's distinctive perspective sees oppression as an intersection of factors. this article aims to elaborate black feminist perspective toward women oppression in maya angelou’s memoir entitled a letter to my daughter. the oppression experienced by black women is identified in the form of the control of black women images and the regulation of black women bodies. the narrator’s critical perspective toward the oppression is articulated through her action in promoting self-definition and self-valuation to black women. self-empowerment enables black women to resist and oppose any forms of oppression. keywords: black feminism; black women; women oppression; memoir; maya angelou received: 15 october 2021 revised: 2 february 2022 accepted: 3 february 2022 https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:elly.santipertiwi@gmail.com journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) elly santi pertiwi & ni luh putu rosiandani 139 introduction humans tend to group themselves with people who share a similar attribute with them. their dynamics within the group trigger their feeling of belonging to the group. loyalty and pride over being a group member are some of the feelings (university of minnesota libraries publishing, 2010, para.2). on the other hand, those feelings might also constitute a feeling to compete with other groups and even commit violence. the superiority of one's group possibly restricts another recessive group in their access or relation to society. women oppression is one of many kinds of oppression. the distinctive biological and physical features between men and women determine women's role, value and trigger the standard of appropriate expressions for both women and men where men are active and women are passive (collins, 2000, p. 83). the lameness of power between men and women, socially and physically, facilitates men to abuse their power over women. this practice remains through time and can be easily found in any domain, such as home, workplace, and school. it is related to the fact that oppression is practiced from a broad scale such as institutions and government until a lesser scale, such as social community and family (collins, 2000, p. 276). women demand to cut off the unequal condition politically, socially, and economically by proposing a feminist movement. in many ways, the feminist movement is expressed through literary work to remove women's stereotype of being subordinate to men. however, the mainstream discussion in feminism refers to white middleclass and western origins (collins, 2000, p. 6). therefore, feminism is criticized for being unable to stand for all women since it lacks colored women representation, especially black women. madsen states that women oppression is experienced by all women within their racial group (2000, pp. 217-218). however, unlike white women, black women are double oppressed because of their identity as a black and a woman. collins shows black women’s reality through her perspective on black feminism. according to collins, black feminism is a distinctive perspective that views oppression due to intersecting factors such as race, gender, class, sexuality, and nationality (2000, pp. 137-140). in order to respond the reality of black women, black feminists create theories which meet the needs of black women by helping them to mobilise around issues that they perceive to have a direct impact on the overall quality of life (humm, 1990, p. 19). black feminism perspective values african american women's experiences as the center of knowledge to interpret black women's reality and define their objectives without comparing to the white eurocentric ideas (taylor, 1998, pp.54-55). this means that black feminism is the most appropriate perspective to examine african women's lives than the western feminist perspectives. an author, poet, playwright, and civil rights activist, namely maya angelou, is a black woman writer. her best-known works are the series of seven autobiographical that focused on her experiences since she was a child until adult highlighting on the black and women oppression (respect women, 2014). angelou is also considered as the pioneer of autobiographical writing style (spring, 2017). one of her works, a memoir entitled a letter to my daughter (2012), provides essays and poems about her own experiences of growing up as a black woman. a memoir is a type of autobiography which is written by a person who considers their experiences significant to be conveyed. furthermore, memoir tends to be more related to external events that significantly bring impact to its readers (prose: literary terms and concepts, 2012, p. 192). in delivering the message, a memoirist might employ any kind of point of view, however, the first point of view is more frequently used (brittingham, 2013). in a letter to my daughter, angelou uses the firstperson point of view to deliver her stories. the first-person point of view indirectly shows that the readers are expected to be in a similar position as angelou encounters the stories. she journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 140 delivers the stories in a descriptive narrative style. angelou connects ideas and details to convey the sense of how she perceives every experience. abrams states “narrator is the writer of a story who involves events, characters, and what the characters say and do” (1999, p. 173). the narrator and characters in a memoir have significant role in delivering the messages. the author attempts to make the characters understandable for the readers. angelou’s memoir employs several methods of presenting the characters. the methods are personal description, character as seen by others, speech, thoughts and reactions (murphy, 1972, pp. 161-173). a letter to my daughter is not only a narration of angelou’s painful experiences, but it is also an articulation of angelou’s inspiring thoughts on black women. birch mentions that the significant feature of angelou’s work is in “her selection and patterning of her life experiences, which she then weaves into an inspirational fabric of survival” (1994, p. 124). angelou herself states “all my work, my life, everything is about survival. all my work is meant to say ‘you may encounter many defeats, but you must never be defeated’…” (as cited in birch, 1994, p.124). in a letter to my daughter, maya angelou, as the narrator and the main character, articulates her perspective in responding to black women oppression. thus, this study is an attempt to investigate maya angelou's perceptions and responses to the issue of black women's oppression. methodology this study is intended to analyze women oppression experienced by black women, and the narrator's responses which reflect black feminism. in accordance with the purpose of this study, feminist criticism is employed. lois tyson states that “feminism seeks to understand the ways in which women are oppressed” (2011, p.139). furthermore, according to wilfred l. guerin in a handbook of critical approaches to literature, feminist criticism is used to expose patriarchal premises to result prejudices in order to examine the social and cultural context within a literature (1999, p. 197). this approach is relevant to examine the narrator’s point of view in perceiving the experiences and responses of black women in relation to women oppression. the method used in this study is library research. the primary source used is maya angelou’s memoir: a letter to my daughter (2012), and the secondary sources used are books, journal, and articles. in conducting the study, the researchers gather and select the data from the primary source and the selected data is analysed by employing theories related to literature, women's oppression, and black feminism. women oppression in a letter to my daughter women oppression is defined as “the experience of sexism as a system of domination” (humm, 1990, p.153). in angelou’s a letter to my daughter, women oppression is found in two forms. the first is in the form of the control of black women’s image, and the second is in the form of the regulation of black women’s body. the control of black women’s image is the use of stereotypes or myths to justify black women subordination as truth by society (collins, 2000, pp. 72-73). the stereotypes and myths come from particular quality of a black woman used as judgment to generalize all black women or misled information that is intended to justify black women’s position to remain lower. the control of black women's image is an unseen control applied through transmitted idea and beauty image. when angelou was a child and lived in her paternal grandmother’s house in arkansas, she experienced of being controlled by the idea and image of being a black woman which was transferred by the elders. within her paternal grandmother's environment, the children are used to see the world through their elder's view. as collins has mentioned, motherhood and family are used as environments to teach children, especially black children, about being inferior and believe the idea of oppression (collins, 2000, pp. 50-51). in chapter one, entitled home, angelou tells her experience of being inferior to white people that she rarely sees (angelou, 2012, p. 4). as a child, angelou is being told words to memorize. through journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) elly santi pertiwi & ni luh putu rosiandani 141 habituation, angelou believes the memorized words as a fact. as an example, angelou used to believe that she was inferior to her brother, bailey. without knowing why exactly, i did not believe that i was inferior to anyone except maybe my brother. i knew i was smart, but i also knew that bailey was smarter, maybe because he reminded me often and even suggested that maybe he was the smartest person in the world. he came to that decision when he was nine years old (angelou, 2012, p. 4). angelou portrays how a repetitive remark from her older brother could affect her perspective on herself. although angelou knows that she is smart, however, bailey’s words makes her feel less worth and considers it as truth. the transmission idea of black’s inferiority can affect the larger scale and spread out the oppression, as angelou writes, the south, in general, and stamps, arkansas, in particular had had hundreds of years' experience in demoting even large adult blacks to psychological dwarfs. poor white children had the license to address lauded and older blacks by their first names or by any names they could create (angelou, 2012, p. 4). by agreeing on black inferiority, the older black people agree to be inferior to the whites, and the white children also agree to be superior to the older black people. the process of this agreement is through habituation. everyday experiences enable this agreement that being adapted as a routine and later accepted as a regular occurrence (collins, 2000, pp. 158-159). therefore, although they have different ages, both of them routinely see black oppression in their daily lives. the second way used to maintain the control of black women’s image is through beauty image. control through beauty image is a form of image control that considers black women physical appearance out of the women beauty standard. angelou experienced this control when she was a teenager. when angelou was a teenager, angelou felt dissatisfied with her body. angelou tells it in chapter three, revelations (angelou, 2012, pp. 15-17). angelou is asked by a boy who lived up the street to be intimate with him. angelou refuses the invitation for months. she expects to do that with her boyfriend, not a stranger. however, within months of refusal, angelou starts to realize her body’s desire for an intimate look. it was during that time that i noticed my body’s betrayal. my voice became deep and husky, and my naked image in the mirror gave no intimations that it would ever become feminine and curvy. i was already six feet tall and had no breasts. i thought maybe if i had sex my recalcitrant body would grow up and behave as it was supposed to behave (angelou, 2012, p. 16). using several unconvincing words such as 'maybe' and 'supposed,' angelou refers to particular criteria she associates as a standard to her body. angelou assumes that sixteenyear-old girls usually have curvy and feminine body shapes, meanwhile, angelou does not have that, therefore, angelou considers herself abnormal. therefore, to fulfill the standard she claims about how her body is supposed to be, she accepts the boy's invitation to be intimate with him. the standard angelou refers to is constructed by intersecting oppressions. it controls black women’s image by emphasizing woman beauty as it depends on physical attractiveness, includes skin color, hair texture, and body features (collins, 2000, pp. 88-92). the body ideals for black women are “light skin tone, long and straight or loosely curled hair, and a curvy body shape” (oney et al. as cited in avery, 2017, p. 7). as a result, by the existence of this beauty standard, which refers to whites’ physical characteristics, women must fulfill the particular standard to gain their self-worth and remain inferior if they cannot fulfill the standard. the second form of women oppression experienced by angelou is the regulation of black women's body. the regulation of black women's body is a regulation that enables journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 142 black women's body to be objects and profitable to the oppressor. this regulation also restricts black women's authority over their own body. collins states that black women's body's regulation is a useful tool to maintain the elite class's existence to remain in the upper position (collins, 2000, p. 132). black women's body regulation objectifies and makes black women's bodies a commodity. this regulation of black women's body has different forms from employment discrimination related to their dark skin color, the maintenance of black women's body image as an object of pleasure, and intervention to black women's reproduction (collins, 2000, p. 132). angelou experiences the regulation of black women's body through three experiences she tells within a letter to my daughter: 1) domestic abuse, 2) sexual harassment, and 3) rape. domestic abuse is any behavior used to gain power or control over an intimate partner, a married couple, living together, or dating. angelou experiences domestic abuse by her boyfriend, namely mark. in chapter five, entitled accident, coincident, or answered prayer, angelou tells her experience of being in a relationship with a black man when she was a single parent (angelou, 2012, pp. 27-33). to angelou, mark is a soft and tender man. however, after months of his tender treat, mark picks angelou up from her work one night. after driving a little while, mark stops his car on a cliff. unexpectedly, mark accuses angelou of cheating with another man. mark’s accusation of angelou leads to an assault and kidnap. mark hits angelou several times until angelou passed out. after angelou passed out, she wakes up in a condition where most of her clothes are already taken off. mark treats angelou as if angelou is the property that he can treat as he wants. mark's objectification to angelou also includes his act to embarrass angelou in front of the crowd. mark uses derogating words to assault angelou, such as: 'lousy cheating,' 'low-down woman,' and 'lying cheating broad.' during the time mark kidnaps angelou, mark wants to murder himself and angelou with a razor blade. he started to cry, saying he loved me. he brought a double-edged razor blade and put it to his throat. ‘i’m not worth living, i should kill myself.’ i had no voice to discourage him. he quickly put the razor blade on my throat. ‘i can’t leave you here for some other negro to have you.’ speaking was impossible and breathing was painful (angelou, 2012, pp. 29-30). mark’s impulse to kill angelou before committing suicide is derived from his possession of angelou. his feeling to possess angelou shows how mark sees her as his property. mark has done domestic abuse to angelou, which occurs between intimate partners who are black men and black women. black men who abuse black women aim to prove their measure of manliness. it is related to collins’ statement: “violence against black women and children often becomes a standard within our communities, one by which manliness can be measured” (2000, pp. 159). in other words, although, as partners, both black men and women share the same experience of racial discrimination, on the other side, black men also accept black women’s negative image. black men adapt masculinity as a form of domination to black women. black men and women share similar struggles against racial discrimination; black men are expected to protect black women from the whites' oppression. otherwise, black women are assailed both by black men and white men (collins, 2000, p. 54). as a result, it contributes to the sexual harassment experienced by black women. the state of black women double-oppressed by their onerace brother and white men construct black women images as a game for all men to play (collins, 2000, pp. 54-55). therefore, black women's sexual harassment is justified in society. nevertheless, the justification of black women as a general object for sexual harassment is followed by a threat to make them remain silent. the fact that black women always become object is also identified by febriyanto in his research entitled the idea of black feminism in maya angelou’s still i rise and phenomenal woman. he found that in angelou’s poem entitled still i rise, black journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) elly santi pertiwi & ni luh putu rosiandani 143 women are oppressed by white people and black men (2010, pp. 55-56). another angelou’s experience of being harassed in a public space also supported the fact. in chapter ten, morocco, angelou tells her experience of sexual harassment when she was in morocco (angelou, 2012, pp. 59-62). it was her first morning in morocco, and she was walking in the street by herself. angelou was shouted and beckoned by a group of men. when i reached the men, they sat down suddenly. there were no stools beneath them so they did not really sit, they simply squatted on their haunches. i was raised by a southern grandmother who taught me it was rude for a young person to stand or even sit taller than an older person (angelou, 2012, p. 60). when angelou reaches them, they insult angelou by squatting in front of angelou-in-aminiskirt. the different number of the men and angelou, who was alone, shows an unequal power between them. as andersen states, sexual harassment is defined as an unwanted imposition of sexual requirements in a relationship of unequal power (1997, p.134). besides unequal power, sexual harassment cannot be separated from social myths that believe women actually ask for it. the group of men may perceive this myth by seeing the miniskirt that angelou used. although there are some people there, they do not notice what happen to angelou. when she was being insulted, angelou tries to be neutral as she follows the group of men to squat. both angelou and the men do not speak the same language. they are unable to understand each other language. one of the older men says something loud to a group of women behind them. angelou does not know what the older man said, but then no longer after that, one of the women comes to angelou and offers the cup in her hand. just as i prepared to stand and bow, a woman appeared with a miniature coffee cup in her hand. she offered it to me. as i took it, i noticed two things, bugs crawling on the ground, and the men approving of me by snapping their fingers. i bowed and took a sip of the coffee and almost fainted. i had a cockroach on my tongue (angelou, 2012, p. 61). when angelou knows that her cup is filled with cockroaches, she keeps on drinking the coffee. she swallows four cockroaches in total. after drinking the coffee, angelou bows to them and walks out from there. as shared by collins, sexual harassment is followed by a threat to make the victim remain silent and unable to give a counter-attack (collins, 2000, pp. 52-56). in this case, the cockroaches-coffee given to angelou is a form of threat as it is used as a tool to break angelou’s resistance down. kellie et al., found that an individual or a group that sexualized or objectified is seen as someone with less mental and moral status capacity (2019, p. 2). thus, angelou’s experiences of being objectified and harassed in public reflect how a black woman is viewed as a less competent individual. collins suggests that rape is a form of sexual violence used to regulate black women’s bodies (collins, 2000, p. 146). the act of rape forces the victim to be passive and submissive. to black women, the act of rape given to them is justified with the myth of the black prostitute. in other words, the rapist might be triggered sexually; additionally, the label of jezebel toward black women justifies it. therefore, the rapist moves further to force his domination on the victim. rape cannot be separated from the black women’s images since black women are already marked as people with animal-like sexual appetites (collins, 2000, p. 140). in chapter eight, violence, angelou finds many sociologists and social scientists declare a misleading statement about rape. they explain that rape is not considered a sexual act but a need to feel powerful. therefore, in order to support the statement, they further explain that most of the rapists are those who were victims. in other words, the act of rape becomes a tool for them, the rapists, to gain the power used to absent in them (angelou, 2012, pp. 47-49). however, angelou does not fully agree with the statement. possibly some small percentage of the motivation which impels a rapist on his savage rampage stems from the hunger for journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 144 domination, but i am certain that the violator’s stimulus is (devastatingly) sexual (angelou, 2012, p. 48). angelou is sure that sexual attraction is the trigger of rape. although angelou also agrees that rape is a manifestation of hunger for domination, the primary trigger is sexual. angelou believes that the rapist’s mind already reduces the victim's into her sexual part before. the stalking becomes, in the rapist’s mind, a private courtship, where the courted is unaware of her suitor, but the suitor is obsessed with the object of his desire. he follows, observes, and is the excited protagonist in his sexual drama (angelou, 2012, p. 48). angelou considers two forms of rape: intended and impulsive (angelou, 2012, p. 48). the intended rape includes the victim’s objectification, which is already set far before the physical act is done. what is imagined and desired in the rapist’s mind strips down the victim, and it is already considered as rape by making the victim a passive and submissive object. on the other hand, impulsive rape does not mean less violate or sexual. the violator who stumbles upon his unprotected victim is sexually agitated by surprise. he experiences the same vulgar rush as the flasher, save that his pleasure is not satisfied with brief shock, he has a surge and moves on to the deeper, more terrifying, invasion (angelou, 2012, p. 48). the impulsive rape is similar to the intended rape, where sexual attraction becomes the trigger of the rapist. what moves the rapist further is the victim's state, which is considered unprotected, marginalized, and powerless. therefore, the rapist is able to satisfy his pleasure to the victim he considers as weak and insignificant. moreover, the impulsive rapist can unhesitatingly do a terrifying act if he feels threatened by circumstances he cannot control. angelou observes that rape is definitely related to powerlessness. it is reflected in the interaction of her two male friends. i remember a reaction by a male friend, when a macho fellow told him that miniskirts were driving him to thoughts of rape. my friend asked, if a woman wore a micro mini and no underpants would the wouldbe rapist be able to control himself? he added, ‘what if her big brothers were standing by holding baseball bats?’ (angelou, 2012, p. 49). the quotation above implies that a victim’s unprotected state which is identical with powerless state triggers a man to the thought of rape. miniskirt that is often pointed as the cause of a man to be driven to the thought of rape would not be relevant to the case. the following table is the summary of the narrator’s responses to the control of image set for black women which reflect the characteristics of black feminism. table 1. list of the narrator’s responses to black image control black feminism characteristics the responses to black women’s image control to the control through transmitted idea to the control through beauty image lived experience as a criterion of meaning she compares what is told to her with her own daily experiences. angelou finds the importance of motherhood that makes her able to redefine herself. use of dialogue in assessing knowledge claims angelou makes a connection by observing and analysing the pattern. angelou makes dialogue and tries to connect with herself. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) elly santi pertiwi & ni luh putu rosiandani 145 the narrator’s responses reflect black feminism the second part of the discussion focuses on analyzing the narrator’s responses of the identified women oppression discussed in the previous part. the narrator’s responses reflect the idea and characteristics of black feminism. black feminism is an alternative way to build self-definition and self-valuation of black women (collins, 2000, pp. 251-252). black feminism emphasizes empowerment which enables black women to resist the negative labels and opposing any forms of oppression. angelou strongly emphasizes black women empowerment in her works. in her research, yuli identified that black women empowerment is also found in angelou’s poems entitled phenomenal woman, woman me, and seven women’s blessed assurance. the imagery and figurative language used in those works reflect black women’s confidence, nonblaming behavior, and other positive values of attitude (2015, pp 13-15). black feminism suggests four characteristics used in their black women community to validate knowledge. they are live experience as a criterion of meaning, use dialogue in assessing knowledge, use ethic of caring, and personal accountability (collins, 2000, pp. 257-260). responses to black women’s image ccontrol angelou's environment does the control to her image. angelou is unable to prevent and control the idea transmission to fit with her. therefore, in responding to black women's image's control, angelou focuses on shifting her view to define and empower herself. angelou’s response to transmitted ideas and beauty image is in the form of rejection. angelou cannot directly stop the idea transmission and the social occurrences that existed. however, angelou suggests a shifting view from focusing on how people define her to how she defines herself. the memory remains, but it does nothing to redefine someone’s self if that someone believes in who she is. angelou is aware of these unseen controls around her, but she refuses to be controlled by them. angelou shifts her view to empower herself. in responding the transmitted ideas, angelou decides to view and accept her childhood reality as a part of her life that contributes to making her as herself. although she calls the condition at that time “a continual struggle against a condition of surrender” (angelou, 2012, p. 4), it makes her aware of the oppression and to strive against it. the shifting view angelou took to respond to the oppression through beauty image is not only seen from her attempt to define herself, but also seen from the motherhood of her mother, herself, and her expected baby. the development of motherhood aims to transmit power to other members to attain self-reliance as the strength of resistance (collins, 2000, pp. 192-193). angelou's mother's belief and confidence aim to uplift angelou's self-reliance in accepting her previous action's consequences. angelou can uplift her confidence as her alternative way of responding to the oppression. angelou’s mother’s confidence is successfully transmitted to angelou and able to make her redefine herself. therefore, she finds her self-definition regardless of the oppression. in her research on maya angelou’s poems, permatasari found that angelou was aware of the social control to determine the standard of beauty (2016, p.167). however, although black women are not fulfilling the standard, angelou shows the positive and proud image of being a black woman. instead of internalizing the control, angelou chooses to empower herself and all black women to be proud of their own way. ethic of caring angelou connects her experiences with the social condition of the south in general. angelou is aware of her voice changing that denotes her emotion. ethic of personal accountability angelou refuses the idea, but she is aware of the control. angelou tries to redefine herself journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 146 the following table shows the summary of the narrator’s responses to the regulation of the body which reflect black feminism. table 2. list of the narrator’s responses to the regulation of black women’s body responses to the regulation of black women’s body in responding to regulation of black women’s body, there are no direct acts taken when angelou encounters the regulation. every response to the oppression is firstly expressed through angelou’s thought. it can be seen through the description of her situation. her critical situation only allows her to take a thorough observation. in relation to kidnapping case, angelou’s intention to have a dialogue may be failed, but she still observes within her silence. as a result, angelou comprehends what mark seeks from her. with no proof of cheating and chances given to talk, angelou realizes that there is a part of mark where he internalizes the image control to black women. i knew where he had put the razor blade. if i could get it, at least i could take my own life and he would be prevented from gloating that he killed me. i began to pray. (angelou, 2012, p. 30) in the passage above, angelou has a thought to kill herself. instead of being killed, she chooses to kill herself. angelou draws a line from the sequence of events such as the undressing part, the assault, and humiliation in the public space. all of the events indicate mark’s satisfaction to be superior to angelou. by making angelou looks like an object without equal rights and feelings, mark wants to show off his power and manliness. therefore, angelou refuses to be killed and become a victim, and let mark successfully oppresses her. pauli murray states, “a system of oppression draws much of its strength from the acquiescence of its victims, who have accepted the dominant image of themselves and are paralyzed by a sense of helplessness” (murray as cited in collins, 2000, p. 99). it can be concluded that a victim can only be a victim when she is accepted her status. therefore, angelou refuses to accept herself as a victim and justifies herself being oppressed. black feminism characteristics the responses to the regulation of black women’s body domestic abuse sexual harassment rape lived experience as a criterion of meaning angelou refuses to be victimized and shifts her view to empower her selfdefinition. angelou refuses to be victimized by empowers her self-definition and also fosters her black women’s traditional value. angelou argues the sociologists’ misled statement of rape by comparing it to the victim’s point of view. use of dialogue in assessing knowledge claims angelou observes mark in order to know what he seeks. angelou approaches the group of men and tries to have dialogue. angelou analyses rape’s triggers, scheme, and effects on both the predator and the victim. ethic of caring angelou tries to have a dialogue with mark. angelou tries to talk in several languages to the old men. angelou writes the chapter eight, violence (angelou, 2012, pp. 47-49). ethic of personal accountability angelou intends to discourage mark’s impulse to suicide. angelou fosters her traditional teaching. angelou feels accountable to revise the claim. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) elly santi pertiwi & ni luh putu rosiandani 147 angelou also shows a similar rejection of being victimized when she is harassed in a public space in morocco. angelou chooses to act according to her traditional value instead of taking account the harassment done by a group of old men. angelou shows her resistance by approaching those old men. when angelou is shouted and beckoned by the old men, angelou is aware that it has something to do with her dress. instead of being afraid or avoiding them, angelou chooses to approach them politely. angelou’s action is meant to show her refusal to be treated disrespectfully, however, the old men still try to insult her by asking her to drink a cup of coffee with cockroaches in it. instead of giving in, she drinks the coffee and swallows all of the cockroaches. her action by showing respect and politeness—showing the quality of a southern person—even to the disrespectful older men becomes a strategy to resist. angelou focuses on fostering her selfdefinition as a granddaughter of a southern grandmother who values traditional black values to respect the older. angelou’s responses reflect the spirit of black feminism. angelou firmly emphasizes dialogue and empathy to keep herself being accountable in encountering her experiences of oppression. instead of being stuck in the oppressed situation, angelou made use of it to optimize her observation. furthermore, angelou’s responses also reflect black feminism as she engages the sociological imagination by connecting her experiences with the social condition of the south in general. therefore, she can read the clue of what tends to happen and how to respond to it. chapter eight which is entitled violence, (angelou, 2012, pp. 47-49), is a form of angelou’s responses resisting rape as an explainable social occurrence. as a victim and a woman, angelou comprehends the victims’ point of view. this chapter is also written as a form of angelou’s concern for the overlooked rape victim’s perspective. to oppose the academicians’ misleading claims of rape, angelou describes rape critically through its triggers, scheme, and effects on both the predator and the victim. angelou’s capability to discuss the topic is also related to her own experience as she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend when she was eight years old (“maya angelou: academy of achievement,” 2019). related to angelou’s experience, angelou’s resistance to the academicians’ claim becomes explainable. angelou believes that rape is a sexual act, as to how she believes profanity, as part of rape, is directed to the victim in order to fulfill the rapist’s sexual pleasure and have less to do with power (angelou, 2012, pp. 48-49). angelou’s belief is plausible related to her own experience of being raped when she was a child. an adult male does not need to validate his power to an eight-year-old-girl. therefore, angelou firmly argues that the act of rape is triggered sexually. angelou shares the same perspective as black feminist’s in viewing rape. collins states that rape is a form of sexual violence used to strip the victims’ resistance. therefore, they become passive and submissive to give what the rapist seeks (collins, 2000, p. 135). in angelou’s argument, it is sexual pleasure. either it is primarily triggered by sexual attraction or hunger for power, rape is considered violence where the victim’s rights and freedom are seized and dwarfed. the academicians’ claim that most rapists are those who used to be the victims (angelou, 2012, pp. 47-48) makes the act of rape seem explainable. rape seems tolerable, therefore, maya angelou tries to eliminate the possibility that rape is tolerable. angelou refuses any thoughts that consider rape as an ordinary occurrence, and she refuses any justifications to tolerate rape culture. conclusion there are two main points discussed in this study. the first is women oppression in the narrator’s experiences in a letter to my daughter. the second problem is about the narrator’s responses to women oppression which reflect black feminism. the first women oppression found in the narrator’s experiences is the control of black women’s image. the control of black women’s journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 148 images is maintained through transmitted ideas and beauty images. the control through transmitted idea is practiced and preserved by black society. angelou experienced control through transmitted ideas when she was living with her paternal family in arkansas. the second women oppression found in the narrator’s experiences is the regulation of black women’s bodies. angelou experienced black women’s body being regulated through her own experiences on domestic abuse, sexual harassment, and rape. the second point discussed is the narrator’s responses to women oppression. the responses are in the forms of thought, act, and manner that reflect black feminism. the use of black feminism characteristics enables the narrator to perceive her experiences critically. besides analyzing her own experiences of being oppressed, angelou also relates her own experience with the actual social occurrence; therefore, she can figure out the cause and impact of a taken act. moreover, in all responses, black feminism is reflected through the narrator’s shifting view to focus on empowering selfdefinition. the self-definition that angelou chose portrays her as a proud southern daughter, a proud mother, and a proud southern granddaughter. through her empowered self-definition, angelou indirectly preserves the black women community and black domestic tradition by holding on to its value and being proud to be a part of them. references abrams, m. h. (1999). a glossary of literary terms (7th ed.). boston, massachusetts, united states of america: earl mcpeek. academy of achievement. (2019, november 7). academy of achievement: maya angelou. retrieved september 23, 2020, from academy of achievement: https://achievement.org/achiever/maya -angelou/ andersen, m. l. (1997). thinking about women sociological perspectives on sex and gender (4th ed.). massachusetts: allyn & bacon. angelou, m. (2012). a letter to my daughter. london: virago press. avery, brieann. (2017). stereotypes and the self-perceptions of black women: how places and identity strategies matter (electronic thesis and dissertation). university of mississippi, mississippi. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/856 birch, e. l. (1994). black american women's writing. new york: harvester wheatsheaf. brittingham, k. 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(2019). what drives female objectification? an investigation of appearance-based interpersonal perceptions and the objectification of women. sydney: the university of new south wales. madsen, d. l. (2000). feminist theory and literary practice. london: pluto press. murphy, m. j. (1972). understanding unseens: an introduction to english poetry and the english novel for overseas students. allen and unwin. https://writethatmemoirrightnow.com/2013/03/26/are-all-memoirs-written-in-the-first-person-not-necessarily/ https://writethatmemoirrightnow.com/2013/03/26/are-all-memoirs-written-in-the-first-person-not-necessarily/ https://writethatmemoirrightnow.com/2013/03/26/are-all-memoirs-written-in-the-first-person-not-necessarily/ journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) elly santi pertiwi & ni luh putu rosiandani 149 permatasari, i. e. (2016). an analysis of feminism in maya angelou's poems by using historical and biographical approaches (undergraduate thesis). universitas negeri malang, malang. respect women. (2014, june 10). maya angelou the inspirational feminist. retrieved december 9, 2020, from respect women: http://respectwomen.co.in/mayaangelou-the-inspirational-feminist/ spring, a. k. (2017). maya angelou. retrieved december 9, 2020, from national women's history museum: https://www.womenshistory.org/educat ion-resources/biographies/mayaangelou taylor, j. y. (1998). womanism: a methodologic framework for african american women. advances in nursing science, 21(1), 53-64. tyson, l. (2011). using critical theory. new york: routledge. university of minnesota libraries publishing. (2010). sociology: understanding and changing the social world. retrieved december 17, 2020, from university of minnesota website: https://open.lib.umn.edu/sociology/cha pter/6-1-social-groups/ yuli, h. s. (2015). african american women’s self-esteem reflected in phenomenal woman, woman me, and seven women’s blessed assurance by maya angelou (undergraduate thesis). universitas islam negeri maulana malik ibrahim malang, malang. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 125 noun phrases of jace wayland’s utterances in mortal instruments: city of bones dimas indra pratama & arina isti’anah masdimas24@gmail.com & arina@usd.ac.id english letters department, universitas sanata dharma abstract a noun phrase is one of the important elements in building a sentence. every noun phrase has its own head of the phrase. the structure of the noun phrase can be different according to the modification of the head. there are two kinds of modification to the head of the phrase: premodification and post-modification. the existence of the modifiers plays certain roles to the noun phrase. this article presents how the pre-modification affects the character in a literary work. cassandra clare’s mortal instruments: city of bones was chosen as the work to observe. stylistic approach is used in order to conduct this study. the data of the study is collected from the noun phrases found in one of the character’s utterances, jace wayland. the analysis presented in this article covers the types of structure, distribution, and function of noun phrases. this study found several results of the analysis. first, there are seven types of noun phrase structure found in the utterances of jace wayland. second, there are four main functions of a noun phrase in a clause: subject, object, prepositional complement, and predicative complement. third, the noun phrases also have significant role in revealing the character of jace wayland: being descriptive and direct. keywords: noun phrase, stylistics, pre-modification. introduction people nowadays have several ways to entertain themselves. one of the most common ways is through literary works such as poem, short story, novel, and drama. throughout the developments of technology, one of the literary works that is still enthused by many people is novel, a fiction novel for example. unlike non-fiction novel, a fiction novel is a popular work because of its ability to make the readers experience the fantasy life that they cannot have in the real life situation. barnes in greaney states that “novel comes out of life not theories about either life or literature” (2006:1). in addition, a novel can be considered as a medium for many authors to enhance their writing skill. a literary work can be affected by the authors in terms of theirs style of writing. although authors can be different from one to others, they put their work in an unusual technique in spesific words in order to achieve their purpose. a novel can also be the perfect medium source for many criticisms and interpretations of people. it is obvious that many linguistic units are found in the novel. a novel by cassandra clare entitled mortal instruments: city of bones tells us about an alternative world of demon hunters to battle the evil on that world. clare uses some of the linguistic features in order to mailto:asdimas24@gmail.com journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) dimas indra pratama & arina isti’anah 126 enhance the atmosphere or the situation in the novel. for example is the noun phrases found in the structure of the sentences used in the story. the descriptions of the characters are also influenced by the existence of noun phrase. jace wayland is one of the characters shown in the story of the novel. the conversation of the characters can also provide many noun phrases to be found such as in jace wayland’s utterances troughout the story. the author of the story writes the spesific noun phrase to indicate some information related to the characters and the story of the novel. studies on noun phrase have attracted some scholars. pratama (2012) observed noun phrase in edgar allan poe’s “the purloined letter”. he found that the use of post-modification of the noun phrase was used by the author to avoid overwriting for the limited space in fulfilling the condition of the short story writing rules. yudit (2005) identified how the noun phrases reveal hemingway’s style from his works. yudit identified the noun phrases from two of the famous author’s works, ernest hemmingway, short stories “hills like white elephants” and “indian camp”. the research concluded that the characters of hemmingway’s style are simplicity, directness, and emotional understatement. review of noun phrase noun phrase comes in different forms and structures depending on its function in a sentence. every noun phrase has the head that is modified and the central element in the phrase. looking at structure of the noun phrase, it is distinguished into two kinds of noun phrase: simple (e.g. jewel, corn, and trouble) and complex noun phrase (e.g. the colorful balloon). according to maestre (1998: 3) the term simple is used because of the head of noun phrase is not modified by other phrases, whereas the term complex is used because the head is modified by other phrases as the pre-modifiers and postmodifiers. this study also applies the theory of noun phrase constituents proposed by quirk, greenbaum, leech, and svartvik. noun phrase constituents are distinguished into determiner, pre-modifier, head, and post-modifier. those noun phrases also have distinctive properties as in the function in a clause or sentences. huddleston and pullum (2005: 82) propose that the main functions of noun phrases can occur are in the following. 1. in clause structure the first function of noun phrase to occur in a clause is as a subject. typically, the subject of a clause is a noun phrase. the other form of subject in a clause is subordinate clause. for example, in a clause a student helped us, noun phrase a student is the subject of the clause since the basic position of a subject is before the verb helped. almost all of the object of a clause is in the form of noun phrase. in order to identify the object of a clause, there are some indications of the object’s characteristics. an object must be licensed by a verb since it is a special form of complement in the verb phrase. sometimes the existence of an object is obligatory to certain verbs. predicative complement is the next kind of the verb dependent and commonly in form of noun phrases. it contrasts the direct object. for example: (1) she is a student. (2) she found a good speaker. from the example (1) the noun phrase a student is a predicative complement because the noun phrase denotes a feature that is ascribed to the subject she. on the other hand, the noun phrase a good speaker in example (2) is a direct object since it refers to participants in the situation. however, a predicative complement does not refer to the participants in the situation like the direct object does. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 127 2. in prepositional structure in order to be a preposition, a word has to have a complement in the form of noun phrase. it means that noun phrase has the function to complement the preposition to form a prepositional phrase structure. in a clause, we were talking to a student, a phrase to a student is a prepositional phrase. it is indicated by the preposition to followed by the noun phrase a student. noun phrases are not limited to complete the clause and prepositional structure only. they can also fill the structure of adverbial adjunct, object complement, and appositive. the examples of each kind are as follow. (1) we saw her several times. the noun phrase several times is adverbial adjunct because it modifies the entire clause by providing additional information about the time. (2) our cousins always called my uncle a dictator. the noun phrase a dictator is an object complement because it follows directly the direct object. it is different from indirect object because object complement describes the direct object not the other participant of the verb just like the indirect object. (3) our friend, the mayor, lives here. the noun phrase the mayor is the appositive because it renames or describes the noun right beside it. in order to conduct the analysis, this study uses the stylistic approach. the approach gives the attention of the scientific study of the language and its structure in order to show how the linguistic features contribute to the meaning and influence of a literary work. according to simpson, doing stylistics is like exploring a language and spesifically exploring the creativity in using the language (2004: 3). the types of noun phrases the types of noun phrases found in jace wayland’s utterances are found in 7 distinctive types of structure based on the parts of the noun phrases such as the determiners, pre-modifiers and postmodifiers. each of the structure has its own occurrence in some parts of utterances throughout the novel. based on the finding of analysis, the types of noun phrase in the utterances are shown in table 1 bellow. table 1. the types of noun phrases in jace wayland’s utterances no. structure number percentage 1. determiner + head 339 48.9% 2. determiner + pre-modifier + head 117 16.9% 3. pre-modifier + head 86 12.4% 4. determiner + head + post-modifier 76 11% 5. head + post-modifier 38 5.5% 6. determiner + pre-modifier + head + post-modifier 26 3.8% 7. pre-modifier + head + post-modifier 11 1.6% total 693 100% table 1 shows that there are several different structures of noun phrases found in jace wayland’s utterances. from the data collected in the analysis, there is a total number of 693 noun phrases found in the utterances. each of the structure has different percentages of occurrence in the utterances throughout the novel. the table also shows that are three dominant structures with the most significant percentage such as determiner + head, determiner + pre-modifier + head, and premodifier + head. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) dimas indra pratama & arina isti’anah 128 (4) his + poetry poss h the word his, my, and your are categorized as the possessive determiner along with the other form such as her, its, their, our, and inflected ‘s possessive form. noun phrase (6) shows that the word his is the determiner to the noun phrase head poetry. (5) an + electric + eel i art adj h noun phrase (7) shows that the indefinite article an is the determiner to modify the noun phrase head eel which is singular count noun. this time the noun phrase has another property to modify the head. after determiner, there is pre-modifier to modify the noun phrase head. in noun phrase (7) the adjective electric functions as the pre-modifier of the phrase. (6) foreign + diplomats adj h the word his, my, and your are categorized as the possessive determiner along with the other form such as her, its, their, our, and inflected ‘s possessive form. noun phrase (6) shows that the word his is the determiner to the noun phrase head poetry. (7) an + electric + eel i art adj h noun phrase (7) shows that the indefinite article an is the determiner to modify the noun phrase head eel which is singular count noun. this time the noun phrase has another property to modify the head. after determiner, there is pre-modifier to modify the noun phrase head. in noun phrase (7) the adjective electric functions as the pre-modifier of the phrase. (8) foreign + diplomats adj h noun phrase (8) only contains of premodifier and the head. the adjective foreign modifies the noun phrase head diplomats which is in the plural form of noun. for a pre-modifier and head structure, this type of structure commonly occurs with the adjectives or nouns as in noun phrase (8) as the pre-modifier. the distribution of noun phrases to begin with, huddleston and pullum (2005: 82) mention that based on the function, there are four main functions of noun phrases namely subject, object, predicative complement, and prepositional complement. in order to point out the distribution of the noun phrase, this analysis presents the percentage in terms of the number of occurrence. the data collected in the previous analysis is based on the order of appearance. applying the theory of huddlestone and pullum, there are seven kinds of noun phrase function in a clause found according to noun phrase data of jace wayland’s utterances. the table 2 below explains the distribution of the noun phrases based on their functions in a clause. table 2. the distribution of noun phrases in the utterances no. functions in a clause number percentage 1. object 213 30.7% 2. prepositional complement 187 27% 3. predicative complement 165 23.8% 4. subject 119 17.2% 5. adverbial adjunct 5 0.7% 6. object complement 2 0.3% 7. appositive 2 0.3% total 693 100% journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 129 table 2 above shows that there are four main functions of noun phrases dominating the data of occurrence. there are also three other functions found in the analysis such as adverbial adjunct, object complement, and appositive. the following parts present the examples and discussion about the four dominant noun phrase functions. (9) no mundane doctor would know how to heal those wounds. the phrase in italic shown in clause (9) is a noun phrase with the function as a direct object in a clause. the two clause shows that the noun phrase those wounds have the structure of determiner followed by the head of the phrase. there are 97 noun phrases with this type of structure functioning as a direct object found in the utterances of jace wayland. (10) they’re runes, burned into our skin. the noun phrase our skin in clause (10) is a prepositional complement of the preposition into. the noun phrase itself has the structure of determiner followed by the head of the phrase. the word our is the determiner of the singular noun head phrase skin. there are 97 noun phrases sharing this similar structure of noun phrase which function as prepositional complement. (11) that’s your problem. clause (11) shows that the italic phrases is the noun phrase functioning as predicative complement because it follows the linking verb is. the structure of the noun phrase consists of determiner and the head of the phrase. obviously, this is the most noun phrase structure type to occur as predicative complement with total number of 77 noun phrases found from the data collected. in clause (11), the possessive determiner your modify the singular noun head phrase problem. (12) the meek may inherit the earth. clause (12) shows that the noun phrase the meek is the subject of the clause. the structure of the phrase is determiner followed by the head of the phrase. the determiner of the phrase is indicated by the definite article the in the initial position of the phrase. the noun word meek is the head of the phrase. according to the data, there are 64 noun phrases found having this kind of structure and functioning as the subject of the clause. noun phrases revealing jace wayland’s character the noun phrases found in the utterances of jace wayland are various in terms of the structure. distinctive structure of certain noun phrases can add more information to the head of the noun phrase also. therefore, the simplicity and complexity of the noun phrase construction play a role to the function of the noun phrases to jace wayland’s character. all the occurring noun phrase in the utterances found in the analysis will reveal the character of jace wayland. below are the examples of the characteristic of jace wayland revealed by the occurrence of noun phrase. 1. jace wayland’s descriptive character there are two kinds of noun phrase, one with simple structure and one with complex structure. the use of each kind will reveal different function. the simple noun phrases are those without any modification of the head of the phrase. on the other hand, complex noun phrase has several modifications to the head of the phrase by pre-modifier and post-modifier. according to the data collected, almost half of the noun phrase data from jace wayland utterances is constructed with complex noun phrase structure. there are 354 noun phrases with the modification of pre-modifier and post modifier from the total of 693 noun phrases found in the utterances. the main function of the modification of the head phrase is to give additional information to the phrase and journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) dimas indra pratama & arina isti’anah 130 also restrict the things that are mentioned making them specific. the modification by pre-modifier and post modifier in the complex noun phrases will reveal the characteristic of jace wayland being descriptive character. the pre-modification and postmodification to the noun phrase head are used by jace wayland in his utterances when he wants to describe certain things such as a thing, place, and person. the examples of the complex noun phrases used by jace wayland in the utterances according to the use of the phrase are as follows. a. to describe a thing in order to describe something, most of the times jace wayland uses the complex form of noun phrase. because noun phrase’s head is a noun, it is usually used to describe a thing that is common or even special in an utterances. according to the data almost all of the noun phrases describing a thing have the function as direct object. below is the example of the noun phrase. (13) when i found her, she was lying on the floor in a pool of blood with a dying demon practically on top of her. noun phrase in clause (13) has the structure of determiner, head, and postmodifier. it shows that when jace wants to describe something, he adds some more additional information. the post-modifier of noun phrase in clause (13) is prepositional phrase. in fact, there are several prepositional phrase that is used in the noun phrase. the preposition of, with, and on are the indicators of each kind of prepositional phrase. it means that jace does not just stop explaining a pool of blood but also he gives more information with other prepositional phrase such with a dying demon and on top of her in order to describe the pool of blood more detailed. b. to describe a place jace wayland also used noun phrases to describe a place he wants to point to the other characters. because the pupose is to describe a place, this kind of noun phrase is usually found following prepositions in prepositional phrases. the example of the noun phrase is as follows. (14) there are probably other living worlds like ours. noun phrase in clause (14) shows that jace wayland uses complex noun phrase in order to describe a place such as a world. there are adjective word other and present participle living as the pre-modifier of the head phrase world. in addition, the prepositional phrase like ours as the postmodifier modifies the head phrase. the modifications of the noun head give additional information like in noun phrase of clause (14). the word other and living specifies the noun head world meaning that there are other worlds that is living. the prepositional phrase like ours also specifies the noun head because it restricts the noun head. c. to describe a person this is the last function of the complex noun phrase that is used by jace wayland in his utterances. noun phrases are used to describe a person for example the looks, characteristics, and all the things connected to the person mentioned. this kind of noun phrase is usually found with the function of subject and direct object in a clause. following is the example of the noun phrase used to describe a person. (15) the two men who claimed they were emissaries of valentine referred to him as lucian graymark. the noun phrase in clause (15) is used to describe a person. it has the structure of determiner, head, and post-modifier. the head of the phrase is the plural noun men. the cardinal number two gives the additional number of quantity of the head phrase. the finite clause who claimed they were emissaries of valentine also describes the noun head without having to make journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 131 another clause in order to specify the noun head. 2. jace wayland’s direct character when people are direct, it means that they are being straightforward for anything they do or say. some of the noun phrases in the utterances of jace wayland is used when he is being direct to the other character. the structure of the noun phrase used in jace wayland’s character in order to describe his character is various. most of the time the structure that is used in the utterances are those with simple structure of noun phrase. according to the data, there are 339 simple noun phrases foun in the utterances used by jace wayland. the noun phrases are also used in every function of the clause possible such as subject, object, or complements. the examples of the noun phrase used by jace wayland that reveal his character of being direct are as follows. (16) “valentine is in the ground.” in the utterance (83), the phrase the ground is a noun phrase functioning as prepositional complement. it has the structure of determiner the and the head of the phrase ground. the noun phrase the ground is used by jace wayland in his utterances to describe about the whereabouts of the character valentine. he means to say that valentine is dead but instead he says that valentine is literally in the ground as where the dead people are in, buried in the ground. (17) “your simon is one of the most mundanes i’ve ever encountered.” the phrase your simon in utterance (17) is a noun phrase functioning as the subject of the clause. it has the structure of determiner and the head of the phrase. the possessive word your is the determiner of the proper noun head simon. the phrase your simon is used by jace wayland in his utterance to convey the idea that simon, a name of a character in a book, has the characteristic of a possession. that is why jace put the possessive determiner before the name because that is unusual in terms of politeness. (18) “you’re a bigger idiot than you look.” in utterance (18), the noun phrase a bigger idiot is a predicative complement. it is constructed by determiner, adjective, and the head of the phrase. the indefinite article a is the determiner of the phrase. the adjective word bigger is the pre-modifier of the noun head idiot. the noun phrase is used by jace wayland to address other character in an unpleasant way. conclusion according to the analysis, the noun phrases found in the utterances of jace wayland are distinguished into 7 types of structure. each of the structure has the significance in terms of occurrence. the structure types can be classified into: (1) determiner + head, (2) determiner + premodifier + head, (3) pre-modifier + head, (4) determiner + head + post-modifier, (5) head + post-modifier, (6) determiner + premodifier + head + post-modifier, (7) premodifier + head + post-modifier. the second analysis identifies the distribution of the noun phrases in terms of their function in a clause. according to the data collected, the noun phrases found in the utterances has the main function such as the object, prepositional complement, predicative complement, subject, and other function such as adverbial adjunct, object complement, and appositive in a clause. the use of noun phrase in utterances can also have significant function especially to the character of the person who uses the noun phrase. in the third analysis, the noun phrases have significance over jace wayland’s character such as descriptive and direct. the noun phrases are used by jace to describe things, person, and place. they are also used to make direct utterances by jace wayland. in short, the elements and functions of noun phrases can have a special role in journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) dimas indra pratama & arina isti’anah 132 utterances. they can be distinguished into several types with modification to the head of the phrase to give additional information. noun phrases also can have different function in a clause with their significant function the character of a person. references clare, cassandra. mortal instruments: city of bones. london: margaret k. mc. elderry, 2007. greaney, michael. contemporary fiction and the uses of theory. new york: palgrave macmilan, 2006. huddleston, rodney and geoffrey k. pullum. a student’s intoduction to english grammar. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2005. maestre, maria dolorez lòpez. “noun phrase “complexity” as a style marker: an exercise in stylistic analysis.” atlantis. vol. 20. no. 2 (1998): p. 91-105. jstor. (www.jstor.org/stable/41055516) september 26, 2016. simpson, paul. stylistics: a resource book for students. london: routledge, 2004. quirk, randolph and sidney greenbaum. a university grammar of english. essex: longman group ltd., 1985. yudit. “the noun phrases revealing hemingway’s style: a stylistic approach.” phenomena. vol. 9. no. 2. (2005): p. 125. universitas sanata dharma. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 161 the swings of selendang: a deconstruction point of view of tohari’s ronggeng dukuh paruk (the dancer) suzana maria l.a. fajarini english letters department, universitas kristen satya wacana suzanamarialaf@gmail.com abstract employing different perspectives will result on different meanings of a scarf (selendang – javanese/indonesian) in ronggeng dukuh paruk (the dancer). known as an adornment and beautification for women in dancing costume, a scarf represents the shackle of the dancer, srintil as the protagonist in the novel. in the different point of view, the same scarf can be a symbol of srintil’s dominance against the patriarchal system. the novel itself shows subjugation towards women done by patriarchal system. believed to be born as a ronggeng dancer, srintil goes through oppressions since her early adolescent. however, employing derrida’s deconstruction theory, this paper will argue that srintil attempts very hard to achieve her liberation and to overturn the control. the swings of the scarf during the dancing denote the domination of the dancer’s fated life and her self-determination as a woman. under a strong influence of javanese female negotiation, srintil endeavors to liberate herself – although she is rendered to be unsuccessful – yet, there are some efforts done by her. through some discussion the readers are supposed to observe that srintil – who is treated unjustly by patriarchal society – manipulatively resists and fights for her freedom. keywords: deconstruction, patriarchal system, subjugation, resistence introduction as far as patriarchal society is concerned, oppression towards women is not something new. patriarchal ideology could be understood as an idea system that says men are in charge and women are secondary. in a broader boundary, patriarchal system is one system that tends to subjugate women and or those who are weak in which the oppressors could be men or even women as they claim to be the ones who hold power and authority. it has been a fact that reading literary texts is less popular than other entertainment forms such as movies and television programs (sawyer: 2000, 4). however, with its universal themes and values throughout the centuries and nations around the globe, literature persists significant as literary texts offer the readers valuable entities to learn. on the one hand, reading literary texts may lead readers to mainly follow the author’s intent which usually occur when someone reads with lower level of thinking skills. on the other hand, according to bloom in order to develop the higher level of thinking skills, appreciation and interpretation are required (tankersley, 2005: 148). ahmad tohari’s ronggeng dukuh paruk is one example of a literary text which carries certain values hidden in the story line. it does not only talk about the main character’s life, but also an account to the resistance toward subjugation. when the readers employ mailto:suzanamarialaf@gmail.com journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) suzana maria l.a. fajarini 162 certain perspective in reading this text, the story is unfolded into contradiction. this paper aims to invite readers, especially ronggeng dukuh paruk’s, to experience reading against the grain. that is through employing the deconstruction to see the hidden value the story carries. thus, it opens our perspective to be aware of the subjugation happened throughout the story and to acknowledge how the protagonist, srintil, showed her resistance toward her seemingly submissive actions. deconstruction deconstruction is one of the literary theories which is believed to permit and enhance the readers to think critically. instead of reading the text with the mind of the author’s purpose, deconstruction emphasizes interpretation with a subjective approach (from the reader’s side). furthermore, deconstruction comes in due to the fact that readers perceive things with different point of views and perspectives. deconstruction is described differently by different critics and thinkers. but it is believed that deconstruction is, to some extent, reaction of ferdinand de sauussure and claudi levi strauss’s concept of structuralism. structuralism deals language as the main feature of human understanding whereas deconstruction believes that through language not only we can understand the phenomena but it also gives shape to it. as a consequence, structuralism finds the systems in the language and it construes the world accordingly but deconstruction decodes the systems and its hidden messages inherent in language. the term deconstruction is a process done by post structuralist to ‘decontruct’ a text (barry, 1995 (2017): 70). the reputation of using derridean deconstruction is undisputable in order to enhance the critical reading skills of the readers. in order to achieve satisfaction in viewing literary texts from alternative viewpoints and perspective, deconstruction is considered to be successful as one of the most effective instruments. barry adds that the difference is that structuralism makes the meaning of a text definitive and to find unity of purpose within the text, deconstruction assists the readers to come up with their own interpretation that may be justified through the use of the organizing principles of language and signification and to show that actually the text is at war with itself (72). discussion reading the trilogy against the grain, the following discussion may illustrate how actually srintil, the protagonist, attempts her liberation from being shackled by her selendang into someone who dominates the people whom readers thought to be the oppressors. 1. papaya and bukak klambu ritual hellwig in fajarini (2011: 62) indicates three symbols in the text used by tohari in relation to srintil’s bukak klambu ritual, one of which is the offering of papaya from rasus to srintil. according to hellwig this symbol actually leads the readers to infer that later on it is rasus who is the person to have the honor. analyzing the symbol proposed by helwig using deconstructive literary criticism, i associate them to srintil’s effort to achieve liberation. further lines are quoted from hellwig’s discussion followed by my interpretation. srintil is deflowered three times, but only rasus is the “fortunate one.” three indications in the text foreshadow that he is destined for this task. first, when it is made known that srintil will be initiated as a ronggeng, everyone in the village showers her with presents. whereas all the other boys offer her mangoes and jambu fruit, rasus gives her a papaya, a fruit that has erotic symbolic significance. an open papaya resembles the female genitals. moreover, on java there is a myth that a woman who wants to please a man sexually must not eat any papaya. we can interpret this gift from rasus as an expression of his displeasure that in the future, as a ronggeng, srintil will have to journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 163 serve any man sexually; he would rather have her for himself. while hellwig associates the papaya to female genital that refers to srintil’s femininity, in this study i propose a different opinion. employing the setting of the trilogy is a rural area of banyumas where banyumasan dialect is supposed to use, the conversation would be as follows. (1) “srin, kiye tak gawakna gandul.” [(srintil) here i bring you a papaya] (2) “srin, kiye gandul nggo kowe.” [(srintil) i have a papaya for you] (3) “srin, kiye ana gandul.” [(srintil) here is a papaya (for you)] the word gandul in javanese has another meaning of hanging, dangling, or clustering. in my perception, the word, then, resonates more to male genitals rather than female genitals. accordingly, my interpretation on the gift of papaya (or gandul in banyumasan dialect) is rasus presents himself to srintil rather than to show his displeasure to srintil’s being a ronggeng. in my opinion, tohari uses the metaphor of papaya to show how rasus bestows his masculinity before srintil. it is also supported by rasus’s statement: one time, i thought i had found a sly method for regaining her attention. his gift is presented to repossess srintil’s attention after she shows negligence towards him due to people’s attention showered to her and cause rasus to feel jealous of it. apart from that, readers learn that rasus cannot join the competition on mosquito netting ritual as he does not have any golden ringgit. that’s why he is lowering himself in order to have srintil for himself. attached to the above discussion regarding papaya, hellwig observed the incident before the bukak klambu ritual. hellwig notes along these lines. third is an incident that occurs on the afternoon before the bukak kelambu. when srintil and rasus meet by chance on the holy grave of their ansector, rasus sees a mosquito on srintil’s cheek. on her request, he kills it: “i pressed srintil’s cheek. when i took my hand away, there was a small line of blood, a red spot on a white cheek.” the red blood on the virginal white cheek is evocative enough, but there is also the association of the mosquito with the bukak kelambu. rasus will be the first to open srintil’s “mosquito net”. the idea of rasus will be the first to open srintil’s “mosquito net” is confirmed by readers later. however, the one who has the initiative is srintil, not rasus. her decision to give the honor to rasus – despite her immaturity – shows how srintil holds her power to break the sacred ritual which is upheld by paruk people. one chain of long established value concerning the ritual of bukak klambu is already shattered on that particular night. should readers follow the lines in the text with the grains a quick assumption will be extracted that srintil is weak and submissive in her immaturity. nevertheless, reading against the grain, it is proven that srintil is a decisive young maiden. instead of letting other man/men to initiate her, she is consciously let rasus to be the first to deflower her. a character is a channel for the writer to express the writer’s ideas and opinions. in those particular scenes, srintil is rendered into the portrayal of a rebellious woman from patriarchal society which is the reverse of dominant principle in javanese society in which men have the control. though it seems that srintil is depicted as the victim of life in order to show that woman is weak, reading against the grains i observe that tohari’s intention to plot srintil’s life in such a way is to show how appalling the patriarchal system is. 2. the term mewisuda fajarini (2011: 95) writes that regarding the bukak klambu ritual which symbolizes srintil’s initiation to undergo losing her purity, tohari, captivatingly, use the word mewisuda instead of memerawani (from the stem word perawan meanings maiden) or menggagahi (from the stem word gagah meanings being a mannish man over a woman, euphemism of english phrase to journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) suzana maria l.a. fajarini 164 rape). the following lines will show how the word mewisuda is brought into play. siapa yang akan menyalahkan kartareja bila dukun ronggeng itu merasa telah menang secara gemilang. siapa pula yang akan menyalahkan dower bila dia kelak berteriak-teriak bahwa dirinyalah yang telah mewisuda ronggeng srintil. sesuatu telah terjadi di belakang rumah kartareja sebelum dower menyingkapkan kelambu yang mengurung srintil. hanya aku dan ronggeng itu yang mengetahui segalanya. (rdp, 1995: 75) [who could blame kartareja for feeling that he had done so well? and who could blame dower for later claiming that he was the one who deflowered srintil? but something had happened behind kartareja’s house before dower opened the mosquito netting that encircled srintil. only srntil and i knew what it was.] (td, 2003: 77) according to kamus besar bahasa indonesia, the word mewisuda – from the stem word wisuda – has the meaning ‘to inaugurate officially with a formal ceremony either in academic sphere or in career promotion’. therefore, when i read it for the first time, i personally thought that the word does not fit the paragraph as it sounds too intellectual and ornamental regarding who srintil is and what she is experiencing. what i mean by intellectual and ornamental is the word is not a common word i usually find in newspapers regarding the idea of ‘to deflower’, such as meniduri (from tidur – meanings to sleep on), menodai (from noda – meanings to stain), or memerawani (from perawan – meanings to deflower a maiden). therefore, i have thought the word is ornamental too, it does not fit the description of paruk people as humble, simple, and ignorant people. the word then becomes artificial in the whole narrative. nevertheless, reading against the grain i perceive irony and cynicism expressed by tohari by using the word which i considered too intellectual and artificial. i have two clarifications for the use of the word mewisuda. the first clarification is the mosquito net ritual is described as an inauguration of srintil from a maiden to be a ronggeng dancer, from being an innocent girl to a woman. referring to kamus besar bahasa indonesia, then, despite how sarcastic the diction mewisuda is, the text narrates the fact of srintil’s initiation. the second reason is the word wisuda – in javanese – can be a deformation of a word pun wis (w)uda which means is already naked. thus, mewisuda can be a cartoon of someone has unclothed someone else, say in the context discussed it is narrated that dower believes he has unclothed srintil. further searching of the the word wuda (english: to be naked), it originally comes from arabic word hudan (english: to be naked) which then in javanese is pronounced as wuda. considering that tohari has grown up in islamic ortodox family, i supposed he learns arabic to some extent. he knows the meanings of the word hudan and wuda and how close the word wuda is to be twisted to indonesian word mewisuda. whether tohari choose the diction mewisuda intentionally or unintentionally from other terminology, my very argument for it is the text has completely been written, detached from the author, and the text itself gives the readers freedom to interpret it. literally, mewisuda has a positive attitude. i learn from the context that the word is used to criticize the patriarchy. men who adore virginity think they elevate the maiden’s status by mewisuda, on the contrary they actually destroy the girl’s purity through deflowering her. hence, the word mewisuda in the context is a decline of the condition. 3. the shackle of indang to the people of dukuh paruk, having an indang possessed dancer is very special. their belief and old tradition do not consider a ronggeng dancer as a vulgar, degrading, or improper woman. in fact, a ronggeng for paruk people is their tradition and without ronggeng they would lose their prestige (td, 169). using bandel’s terms, the people of this journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 165 small poor hamlet live in their own ‘world’ without realizing that their life practice and value are considered immoral by the outsiders (bandel, 2006: 137). tohari’s describes the ‘oddity’ related to paruk people’s moral values in a natural way, wrapped in being illiterate and isolated that readers can accept the explanation as an ordinary cause-effect. being portrayed as primordial isolated community, the people of dukuh paruk strongly believe that srintil’s sudden ability to dance is a result of the indang’s infiltration [the dancer spirit that possesses srintil]. the javanese philosophy of kebetulan – coincidence – which is closely related to luck works for srintil’s life. for its believers, a luck is really something they neither can achieve nor avoid. a luck comes to a particular person from the supreme being or power beyond human capacity, as in srintil’s case when she is possessed by the indang. thus, coincidences become the way how srintil – from being nobody – turns out to be a famous ronggeng dancer later on. coincidences that lead srintil to be designated as a ronggeng can’t be explained unless as part of the indang-related mysticism believed by the people of dukuh paruk. back to srintil’s emergence as a village dancer, in my understanding, tohari shows the eleven years of vacuum and the sudden appearance of srintil as a ronggeng to emphasis how significant and important srintil is in the trilogy as a dancer. she plays an important role, becomes the central figure of dukuh paruk and the trilogy, give comfort and pride to paruk people, and moves the narrative itself. just like a mother longs for a baby, and after more than a decade the baby is born, so is srintil to dukuh paruk. she fulfills the thirst of the people, she completes the missing piece of puzzle they used to have. her aura as a new ronggeng dancer is a kind of consolation for the people of dukuh paruk. therefore, the people of dukuh paruk adore srintil and feel blessed that finally they have this young girl to give identity to this small village. with their ignorance and superstitious values as it is portrayed in the trilogy, people of dukuh paruk cannot rationally understand srintil’s capability and talent that appear in a sudden. they simply understood as ‘spirit sent by their ancestor’ to reside in srintil’s body. despite srintil’s significance and existence is adored and appreciated by paruk people, and at the same time she is exploited by the kartarejas, srintil is not accepted by the outsiders, especially by women of higher status. they consider her as a rival. srintil – who is considered a mascot and heroin by paruk people especially by the women – is only considered an object of pleasure and desire for men off this impoverished backward village. to these men, srintil is an object who ‘can be paid and get pleasure from’, a sexually charged dancer. however, at the same time srintil actually overpowers these men and entraps them in her intimate magnetism. applying deconstruction literary theory, it can be said that srintil, an enchanting young woman who is adored and loved by the villagers of her birth place, dominates men and women off her tiny village. men, especially the local bureaucrats, are infatuated with her. their wives, conversely, in their envy, bitterness, and antipathy consider her as a rival. the women from higher status consider srintil as an intimidator. srintil, the young woman shackled by the indang, swings her selendang of life from being dominated by her fate, by the kartarejas to someone possessing a power and subjugates men under her charisma. nevertheless, after being imprisoned, srintil attempts to unchain herself from her destiny as a ronggeng dancer. she rejects men’s invitations to have love adventures. she also gets rid of nyi kartareja’s domination. her refusals to serve men’s passions indicate that she does not let herself be regarded as ‘a gulp of water for every man’s thirst. the refusals also prove that she decides to manage her life herself. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) suzana maria l.a. fajarini 166 conclusion a person is aware there are problems in her/his life when s/he comprehends that something is wrong. readers learn that being constrained in the male-dominated society srintil is aware the troubles she has, and negotiates her liberation. srintil is not passive and submissive. the proofs in discussion indicate her efforts. balkin identified that deconstruction shows that texts are overflowing with multiple and often conflicting meanings, not a single meaning as they are written. deconstructive arguments do not necessarily destroy basic concept, rather, they tend to show that conceptual oppositions can be reinterpreted as a form of nested opposition (balkin, 1990: 40). excavating the problems experienced by srintil, readers will easily conclude that she is shackled by her misfortune in spite of her endeavors to free herself from her destitution. however, scoop out the dirt and scrutinize her struggles, the discussion in this paper shows and confirms how srintil manipulatively fights and solves the problems. employing derrida’s deconstruction, srintil’s endeavors can be said as movements of her control over the patriarchal society. references balkin, j.m. "nested oppositions," faculty schoolarship series. paper 281. 1990. bandel, katrin. sastra, perempuan, seks. yogyakarta: jalasutra, 2006. print. barry, peter. beginning theory. manchester: manchester university press, 1995 (2017). print. fajarini, s.m. luki astuti. “the swaying of oppression and liberation through srintil’s selendang in tohari trilogy ronggeng dukuh paruk and the dancer.” graduate thesis. yogyakarta: sanata dharma university, 2011. print. hellwig, tineke. in the shadow of change: images of women in indonesia literature. barkeley: california university press, 1994. print. jao, l., limpingco, d. & tiangco, g. psychology of learning. quezon city: ken incorporated, 1998. print. sawyer, w. growing up with literature. albany, ny: delmar, 2000. print. tankersley, karen. literacy strategies. usa: ascd, 2005. pdf. tohari, ahmad. ronggeng dukuh paruk (under one cover). fifth edition. jakarta: pt gramedia pustaka utama, 1995. print. _________. the dancer. third edition. jakarta: pt gramedia pustaka utama, 2003. print. mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya university, 2010. pintong, p. phayas: traditional isan verse [in thai]. ubonrachatani: siritham publishing, 1985. suvannasri, p. an analysis of phaya-isan: values, existence and transmission. chulalongkorn university, 2004. tangkawee, s. knowledge and skill in language [in thai]. bangkok: odeon store, 1985. phenomena vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 1 literary theory in indonesian english department: between truth and meaning paulus sarwoto sar@usd.ac.id english language studies, sanata dharma university abstract literary theory in indonesian english department is faced with the questions of the integrity of theory and compatibility with local context. the integrity of theory found in other social sciences is absent in literary theory since it makes use of theories of other disciplines in such a way that it departs and yet relates to those theories in a new trajectory. ecumenical posture should be the paradigm when approaching the plurality of literary theory. the compatibility with local context has to be understood in the interconnectedness of theory in the network of global academic conversation. the decision to use or not to use certain theory should not be driven by xenophobic views or the failure to understand the complexity of theory. in this perspective, truth and meaning are never singular. keywords: theory, ideology, humanism, literature “to read in the service of any ideology is not to read at all.” (bloom, 1994: 1) the above claim by harold bloom is based on the belief that literary criticism has to be objective not ideological or political. bloom argues the aesthetic value is objective and that literary reading should focus solely on it. reading a literary text with certain ideological presuppositions, so bloom contends, will interfere fatally with the efforts to unearth the real meaning of the text. he accuses that those – whom he cynically calls the members of the school of resentment employing ideology in reading a text do so because of their inability to recognize and experience the aesthetic (bloom, 1994: 29). this argument between non-political and hence “objective” reading against political criticism is recuperation of the age-old problem of the literary studies’ academic standing. in fact, the problem with literary studies has been problematized since its inception. in the beginning literary study was “merely” a section of language studies and the efforts to separate itself from the study of language has always been met with the theoretical questions of its methodology. as what oxford’s professor of history, edward freeman said when refusing the establishment of a chair in english in 1887: we are told that the study of literature 'cultivates the taste, educates the sympathies and enlarges the mind'. these are all excellent things, only we cannot examine tastes and sympathies. examiners must have technical and positive information to examine. (qtd in barry, 2002: 14) this problem of methodology has been one of the heaviest challenges addressed to the literary studies as an academic subject, first by freeman and several decades later by rene wellek when requesting f.r. leavis to provide a more explicit theoretical ground of his close reading method. now when english studies becomes an established academic subject not only in the west but also in indonesia, the debate in literary theory as one the most important ingredients of english studies is worth revisiting. i will paulus sarwoto 2 explore some questions of meaning and truth in literary theory in the context of indonesian english department. what is literature? my experience in teaching the students of english both the undergraduates and graduates indicates that they are not aware of the complexity behind the definition of literature and tend to take it for granted that what is and what is not literature is unproblematic. given this circumstance, it is understandable that when studying literary theory, they are surprised by its range and scope and to find out that it often seems unrelated to literary theory the way they have imagined it. clarifying the nature of the object of theory is therefore indispensable before discussing theory. let us look back at what eagleton and jonathan culler have to say about literature in their introductory books: literary theory: an introduction (1983, revised 1996), and literary theory, a very short introduction (1997). both elaborate the complexity and problems of defining literature. eagleton, for instance, questions the once widely accepted definition of literature: literature is the kind of writing that uses language in a special way. in the formalist technical terms, it is called estranging or defamiliarizing as opposed to “normal” day-to-day use of language. although this definition, which is derived from viktor shklovsky’s survey on the possible scientific facets of literary analysis, matches the characteristics of poetry, eagleton shows the inadequacy of this definition for two reasons. first of all, not all literary works, a novel or a drama for example, use language with this estranging effect and yet they are still considered literature. secondly, given a certain context any language might be estranging – which reminds us of the nature of meaning characterized by slippage and spillage. other commonly accepted definitions of literature, namely literature as fictional writing and literature as belles lettres (aesthetic writing) are easier to refute. to take a vernacular example, the inadequacy of the first definition is the fact that not all fictional writings, such as indonesian gundala putra petir comic strip or wiro sableng are considered literature. the later definition is usually taught to indonesian high school students: etymologically, susastra (indonesian word for literature) is derived from sanskrit i.e. su meaning good and sastra meaning writing so that susastra means good writing which is synonymous with belles lettres. this definition leads to the impossibility of defining literature objectively because the next question would be who has the right to set the standard of beauty. beauty is in the eyes of the beholders, so the saying goes. a work considered beautiful by a certain community might be ordinary for another. since the definition of literature then depends on the “who” rather than the “what,” both eagleton and culler agree that literature is like weeds: ontological definition of them is beyond objective formulation. the closest definition we might come to is that literature is some kind of writing which for certain reasons people value highly. fictionality, language estrangement and beauty function as non-defining features rather than the defining characteristics of literature. this elusive notion of literature explains the preference of today’s academia to use other terms, such as ‘cultural texts’ instead of literature referring the object of their investigation. this new term has the benefit of not to trap oneself to a very questionable elitist definition of literature. it sees that the limitation of the study of literature to the canon is not tenable anymore. this opening up of the object of the study has lead to what we know as cultural studies utilizing literary strategy to read basically any cultural forms. rolland barthes has exemplified this with his reading of wrestling – as a spectacle and not sports – and other cultural phenomena with a structuralist perspective.1 with derridean view that “there is nothing outside to the text” we may assume that what counts is not the nature of the object under study but the fact that our understanding of it is textual and therefore literary. this is where literary theory needs to be able to account for the academic reading of its objects when situated in a university course. vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 3 literary theory, truth and meaning “literary theory is an illusion” (eagleton, 2003: 178) the demand for the integrity and clarity of literary theory as an academic subject often baffles the indonesian students of literature, especially if they lack literary training. this is due to the nature of literary theory itself that defies monolithic categorization. theories such as structuralism, psychoanalysis, eco criticism, postcolonialism and feminism sound like disciplines belonging to linguistics, psychology, biology and political science rather than literary studies. the fact that they are literary theory indicates that the discipline has to be approached with some caution by leaving behind our assumptions on the integrity of the theory as it is understood in other disciplines. this lack of unity or integral ground (probably except for the object of theory: cultural texts) among these diverse theories is what eagleton means by literary theory is an illusion. bloom’s statement that reading text with ideological presuppositions is not proper literary reading seems to be driven by the desire to tame this wild literary theory i.e. by grounding it on the aesthetic and negating the rest as political reading and hence not literary.2 what he means by the aesthetic is originality, sublimity of the work and the difficult pleasure arising out of its sublime content. in other words, there is a strong sense of timelessness in the value of the work. this claim of non-political aesthetic reading is certainly difficult to sustain now considering the fact that ignoring political dimensions of reading is indeed a political decision. his claim that the traditionalists and resenters are political because of their inability to experience the aesthetic is therefore problematical. bloom situates his reading between two opposing poles: the traditionalists and the political critics. the traditionalists or the liberal humanists as they are often called are the literary critics who are generally evasive about the theoretical accounts of reading and emphasize the importance of the close reading of text (isolating text from the author and historical/ideological contexts). they often relate this close reading with moral judgment making their criticism moralistic in nature. they imagine that reading texts without ideological presuppositions is possible and even a must since the purpose of the critics is to unearth the pure meaning residing inside the text. they also advocate literary reading for more pragmatic purposes, such as the betterment of human beings, the propagation of humane values and the like. this approach is the oldest literary criticism in the history of english studies. in combining close reading and moral evaluation, the traditionalists believe that meaning resides securely inside the text and it is the job of the critic to unearth it for the readers. undeniably there is a political dimension in this close reading method: to make the less disadvantaged english working class in the 19th century accept their lot without demanding the redistribution of wealth. this makes the social structure marginalizing them went unnoticed and the working class felt content despite the structural injustice. truth and meaning were then in the hands of those benefited by the status quo by drawing an illusion that everybody belonged to the one great national project: upholding the glory of the united kingdom. similarly, during colonization the study of english was manipulated for the benefits of the imperialist projects: making the colonized live under the false consciousness that despite the oppression and exploitation, they took part in civilizing mission of the european empires. this evidences that liberal humanist reading method is prone to unrealized ideological cooptation while assuming the objectivity of the method. edward said points out that the political nature of humanist reading is rooted in the politico-ideological constraints. although his or her writing does not have a direct political effect upon reality in the everyday sense the way a politician does, said argues, his reading is nevertheless ideological. said puts the paradox thus: [t]he general liberal consensus that “true” knowledge is fundamentally non political (and conversely, that overtly political knowledge is not “true” knowledge) obscures the highly if osbscurely organized political circumstances paulus sarwoto 4 obtaining when knowledge is produced. (said, 1978: 10) this political nature of text is what said calls in his other book, the world, the text and the critic (1983) as the worldliness of the text3, namely that a text is always constrained its ideological context. text is always wrought with – to borrow raymond williams’ terms (1985: 121-127) the dominant, the residual and the emergent. situated in the opposite camp is a group of critics whom bloom calls the resenters – most likely because he accuses them of resenting the aesthetic. he emphatically states: “pragmatically, aesthetic value can be recognized or experienced but it cannot be conveyed to those who are incapable of grasping its sensations and perceptions” (1994, p. 17). they are, among others, antonio gramsci, stephen greenblatt, alan sinfield and jonathan dollimore. antonio gramsci is targeted because of his claim on the impossibility of disinterested intellectual; stephen greenblatt employs what is now called new historicism while sinfield and dollimore invent its uk version: cultural materialism.4 included in this same camp are the feminist, marxist and postcolonial critics. the common denominator of their error according to bloom is the political perspective in their reading. instead of finding the real meaning of a text, such reading is, for bloom, similar to forcing their political perspective upon the meaning of the text. the view that meaning resides securely inside the text and that the proper procedure to find it is by purifying our thoughts of any hitherto assumptions and ideological leanings underlies bloom and the liberal humanists’ reading. despite bloom’s disavowal of his “membership” in the liberal humanist camp, his approach to literature indicate the same strategy. this is obvious, for instance, when bloom retold how he read milton’s paradise lost: i had to write a lecture on milton as part of a series i was delivering at harvard university, but i wanted to start all over again with the poem: to read it as though i had never read it before, indeed as though no one ever had read it before me. to do so meant dismissing a library of milton criticism from my head, which was virtually impossible. (bloom, 1994: 26) his conviction that although getting rid of the existing knowledge and paradigm is virtually impossible and yet practically possible is at the heart of liberal humanist reading. from the current theoretical perspective, rather than conditioned by the absence of preexisting knowledge like what bloom believes, his new understanding of the text is more likely constrained by it. this is the kind of productive constraints by which new interpretations are generated.5 in this sense, meaning is not inside but outside the text – something that we assign to the text. the view that meaning is outside the text forms the dominant perspective in current literary theory. structuralism, cultural materialism, reader’s response theory, psychoanalysis and postcolonial theory are sustained by the logic that meaning is something that we assign to a text rather than the inherent property of the text. this operation of meaning-making in literary criticism is to be based on a theoretical perspective in order to be able to stand an academic test. in a thesis defence, the question of truth i.e. the true meaning of the text is to be examined by the board of examiners on the basis of the justification for employing certain theoretical perspective(s) and how far the deployment of a theory or a combination of theories empowers (or cripples) the reading of the text. the question of ideology against objectivity is irrelevant since ideology, understood as our ways of perceiving and feeling is already inseparable part of the process.6 the next question would be how we shall justify the study of literary theory postulated mainly in the western academia in the context of english language studies in indonesia? are we to be coopted by the west in the process? the efforts to formulate indonesian theory actually became current in 1980s when some critics such as subagio sastrowardojo questioned the applicability of western theory to criticize indonesian literature and have encouraged the formulation of what they consider to be an vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 5 ‘indonesian poetics’. the idea of inventing it has been driven by the belief that value systems are not universal; since literary theory is constructed within certain value systems, their application to works across different value systems is questionable. in response to the application of western theories, rachmad djoko pradopo in his dissertation reported: oleh karena itu, timbullah berbagai reaksi atas penggunaan teori barat itu, terutama pada tahun 1980-an. reaksi pertama timbul pada awal tahun 1980an dengan “diskusi-diskusi sanggar bambu” yogyakarta yang berusaha mengarahkan terciptanya poetika (ilmu sastra) yang khas indonesia. reaksi kedua dicetuskan oleh subagio sastrowardojo (1984) dalam makalah kritik sastra pada temu sastrawan dan kritikus sastra di jakarta (dkj). tulisan-tulisan subagio sastrowardojo yang mereaksi teori-teori sastra dari barat itu menimbulkan usaha lebih luas untuk membentuk poetika yang khas indonesia. (pradopo, 1992: 691) there were some responses on the use of the western theory, especially in 1980s. the first response was from the bamboo group in yogyakarta by holding discussions in the early 1980s in order to formulate indonesian poetics. the second response was by subagio sastrowardojo (1984) through his article presented in a poets and critics forum at the jakarta arts council. subagio sarstrowardojo’s articles responding to the use of western theory have stimulated further efforts to formulate indonesian poetics. these efforts to formulate an indonesian poetics can be seen as indonesians’ efforts to fathom the degree of cultural boundedness and how far it undermines theory’s application to texts written in different cultures. one of the most notable efforts came at a seminar in 1988 whose proceedings were published in a book entitled menjelang teori dan kritik susastra indonesia yang relevan (esten, 1988)(in search of relevant indonesian literary theory and criticism). the seminar failed to come up with a theory which we might call indonesian poetics.(1988) it may be true that theory formulated in the west is not always suitable as a theoretical tool for analysing indonesian text, typically because such theories refer to and are shaped by contexts whose characteristics are probably absent in indonesia. however, the theorising of indonesian poetics looks like addressing the wrong question from the start. this can be seen from the two points worth noting from the 1988 conference. first, the participants urged that the search for indonesian theory should not be based on the inability to understand or keep up with the development of theory in the west. second, while noting the importance of taking into account of local contexts, it would be impossible to isolate theory from global conversations. the choice of theoretical perspectives, be it vernacular or foreign, has to consider these two important points and the complicity of theory with certain cultural contexts rather than haphazardly dismissing whatever is western in the name of false academic piety. conclusion the connection between literary theory and truth and meaning turns to be rather complicated. current literary theory has shown that this is the case considering the many theoretical perspectives deriving their precepts and political orientation from different disciplines, such as linguistics, psychoanalysis and philosophy, all of which are not always compatible with each other. the orthodoxy of liberal humanism looks pale now in the face to current literary theory. this certainly raises a question on the “tag line” of sanata dharma university: cerdas dan humanis which has been translated through the university policy to a teaching strategy called ignatian pedagogy. inspired by st. ignatius’s spiritual exercises, this model has been developed to empower the teaching and learning process in such a way that the students will be able to achieve the 3cs (competence, compassion and conscience) by the end of their learning process. competence and compassion certainly relate to the basic tenets of liberal humanism, prone to cooptation and manipulation as the history of english studies has shown us. consequently, it is crucial that the design of paulus sarwoto 6 current literary theory in english department is able to help us see that compassion and conscience are never a neutral category – they are ideological. liberal humanists are not wrong in advocating the propagation of humane values through literary criticism. what is wrong is that these values are not seen in their worldliness. as what we have seen in literary theory, this oblivion to the worldliness of values, criticism and text has give birth to the current literary theories, such as postcolonialism, cultural materialism, new historicism, eco criticism, several branches of gender studies, like black feminism, lesbian and gay theory, asian feminism, etc. for literary scholars this plurality of theory, meaning and truth is never discouraging since a text always invites ceaseless surrogation of another text so that the silenced can be heard. rerefences barry, peter. beginning theory. manchester: manchester university press, 2002. print. barthes, roland. mythologies (j. cape, trans.). new york: the noonday press, 1972. print. bloom, harold. the western canon: the books and school of the ages. london: harcourt brace and company, 1994. print. culler, jonathan. structuralist poetics. new york: routledge, 2002. print. eagleton, terry. literary theory: an introduction. oxford: blackwell publishing. print. esten, m. menjelang teori dan kritik susastra yang relevan. bandung: angkasa, 1988. print. pradopo, rachmad djoko. kritik sastra indonesia modern. unpublished dissertation, universitas gadjah mada, yogyakarta, 1992. print. said, edward. orientalism. new york: pantheon books, 1978. print. said, edward. the world, the text and the critic. massachusetts: harvard university press, 1983. print. sinfield, j. d. a. a. ed. political shakespeare: essays in cultural materialism. manchester: manchester university press, 2000. print. williams, r. marxism and literature. oxford: oxford university press, 1985. print. 1 for the complete selection his articles, see barthes’ mythology (1972) 2 jonathan culler delivers similar opinion that the proper literary theory is poetics studying the economy of meaning-making. culler believes that poetics id more difficult that political criticism and this is the reason why critics prefer ideologically oriented criticism rather than poetics (culler, 2002: viii) 3 said discusses the worldliness and the worldlessness of the text in the introduction and chapter 1 of (said, 1983) 4 for the comparison of both approaches see the introduction section of the book (sinfield, 2000) 5 similar conclusion is also found in edward said’s orientalism (1978) where he claims that colonial discourse has become productive constrains for writers. instead of crippling them, they stimulate writers to generate literary works tacitly supporting colonial ideology. 6 terry eagleton contends that ideology is not “simply the deeply entrenched, often unconscious beliefs which people hold” but “more particularly those modes of feeling, valuing, perceiving and believing which have some kind of relation to the maintenance and reproduction of social power” (eagleton, 13) journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bagus wahyu setyawan, kundharu saddhono & ani rakhmawati 144 sociological aspects and local specificity in the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style bagus wahyu setyawan, kundharu saddhono, & ani rakhmawati bagusws93@gmail.com, kundharu.uns@gmail.com, anirakhmawati@staff.uns.ac.id javanese language education, graduate program, universitas sebelas maret abstract javanese literary works are reflections of the scriptwriters’ real world. ketoprak script is one of the literary works of the traditional javanese drama genre. there are several kinds of ketoprak scripts in java and each region has different aspects. each ketoprak text can reflect the social condition of its native area when analyzed by sociological literary-approach. sociology of literature is a study that connects literature with its social reality. classical ketoprak script of surakarta style viewed from the perspective of sociological literature is a reflection of the socio-cultural life of the community in surakarta. it is seen from a socio-historical perspective, socio-cultural, and linguistic aspects used in the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style. these three aspects make the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style has a local specificity and characteristics that distinguish it from other javanese literature. key words: sociological aspect, local specificity, javanese literature, classical ketoprak script introduction literary works in general have three genres, namely poetry, prose, and drama script. in javanese literature there are also three genres. javanese poetry is called kakawin, kidung, or geguritan in modern javanese poetry. javanese literary works in the form of prose can be found in the form of javanese novels, short stories (cerkak), running story (cerbung), and many more. javanese drama is a literary work that consists of several dialogues as the main element and story. some examples of drama script in javanese literature are wayang kulit script, wayangwong script, sandiwara jawa script, and ketoprak script. as a drama script, ketoprak contains the reference of players’ or characters’ dialogue in ketoprak performance (lisbiyanto, 2013). in the beginning, ketoprak did not use the script. instead, it used casting techniques or penuangan. penuangan, according to setyawan (2016: 58) is the presentation of storyline that will be performed by the dalang or ketoprak director shortly before the show. in this process dalang or ketoprak director only conveys the storyline of the story as well as the distribution of characters for each scene. the players come before the stage, then dalang begins to tell story to be staged from the beginning until the end. therefore, players are required to understand the sequences of the story that will be staged through the casting given by the director. in this period, ketoprak players are required to have the ability to create and develop dialogues based on the role and storyline played at that time. over time, the number of ketoprak fans gradually decreases. this is due to several factors. firstly, ketoprak is stagnant and boring. this is influenced by the coming of electronic cinema using advanced technology mailto:bagusws93@gmail.com mailto:kundharu.uns@gmail.com mailto:anirakhmawati@staff.uns.ac.id journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 145 that can produce interesting visual effects. people, as the result, tend to watch electronic cinema rather than ketoprak performance. secondly, it is because of some internal factors. the staged story tends to be the same from time to time and seems to be repeated, so the audience became bored. thirdly, the language is difficult to understand. the message of ketoprak story cannot be directly accepted by the society. fourthly, the process of regeneration of artists and perpetrators of ketoprak is not effective. if a senior ketoprak artist is retired, it will be hard to find the substitute because young people have difficulties in learning ketoprak using penuangan techniques. the difficulties lie in creating and developing dialogue in order to fit the characters, storylines, and conflicts that occur. one of the ways to facilitate the younger generation to learn ketoprak art is to create a ketoprak script as a reference for dialogues, characters, storylines, and conflicts in ketoprak staging. ketoprak script is same with other drama scripts because it contains aesthetics elements of a literary work, thus it can be paralleled with poetry and prose (waluyo, 2006: 2). using ketoprak scripts, ketoprak players who are still in the learning level can easily interpret the story and conflict, as well as explore the characters played. in this context the text of ketoprak as a source of the story that must be interpreted by all the staging elements before performing of ketoprak (satoto, 2012: 65). elements of ketoprak staging are not only players, musicians, and the director, but also lighting crew, setting arrangers, property designers, sound system director, and costume and make-up crew. the use of script in ketoprak staging was applied by ketoprak group of rri surakarta in the 2000s. since then on, the director of ketoprak rri surakarta group has been using the script in the staging of ketoprak, to make it easier for the players to interpret the story. the ketoprak script not only includes the dialogue, but also the scene settings, scene illustration, and technical instructions used by players as the basis for acting on the stage. the director of ketoprak, therefore, should know the script-writing technique, in this case the ketoprak script. the points to be addressed in the writing of the ketoprak text include the theme of the story, the structure of the conflicts (which must be clear and sharp), the choice of language used in the dialogue, the description of each character, and the dramatic plot in the script. as a social art, ketoprak represents social portraits of the society. it is called folk-art because in its early history ketoprak was created and developed by its society. the first stage of ketoprak was performed by some farmers as an expression of gratitude for the harvest. initially ketoprak was performed by bringing onto the stage stories of daily social problems. within the performance was dances and songs were sometimes included. it made ketoprak condensed with the characteristics of the folk art (purwantoro, 2016; hughes & freeland, 2008). just like ketoprak performance which is a folk art, ketoprak script, too, is a representation of the socieal life. ketoprak script also contains social realities occurring in the author's. the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style was created by ketoprak artists from surakarta. in this study, ketoprak scripts were taken from ketoprak rri surakarta group which started using scripts in 2000. therefore, the classical ketoprak analyzed in this study is classical ketoprak scripts of surakarta style written after the 2000s. the approach used to analyze is a sociological approach. using sociological approaches the phenomenology and social construction of the world (lebenswelt), the language and knowledge of the social world, and the ideology underlying the creation of literature works are revealed (satiyoko, 2012: 3). the purpose of using the sociological approach is to analyze the social aspects of the classical, post-reformation, surakarta ketoprak script. furthermore, this study also analyses the special features contained in the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style which distinguish it from the classical ketoprak manuscript. the scripts to be compared are the script of ketoprak metaraman from yogyakarta, the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style, the script of east java ketoprak, and the coastal journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bagus wahyu setyawan, kundharu saddhono & ani rakhmawati 146 ketoprak script from the northern coastal area of java (pati, purwodadi, rembang, and blora). research methodology this study is a qualitative descriptive research using sociological approach. the focus of this study is directed at the detailed and in-depth description of the social and local aspects of the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style. the ketoprak texts used in this study are selected from several manuscripts representing the classical ketoprak scripts of surakarta style, written by ketoprak artists from surakarta. the manuscripts used as the sample in this study are the script of kuncarane kraton pajang, bedhah kartasura, and adeging praja surakarta. the choice of these samples is based on purposive sampling technique. the purposive sampling technique determines the samples according to the data sources which are considered important related to the problems being investigated. this technique does not consider the data sources as representatives of the population, but representatives of information in general (sutopo, 2002: 36). the techniques used in collecting data are recording and writing, with in-depth interviews with ketoprak artists, and also with experts in literature and culture. the data found from the three ketoprak texts are then analyzed using content analysis techniques, with data reduction stages, data presentation, and data verification (moleong, 2014). this study also uses triangulation techniques to test the validity of the data. it is expected that the data and results of the research on the social and local specificities in the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style can be unraveled scientifically. result and discussion sociological approach sociological approach is one of the branches of literary theories that discusses its relationship with society. the sociology of literature was originally developed in france, in 1791, by jonathan herder (1744-1803). herder asserted the relationship of literature and culture, race, customs, and social institutions. hippolyte taine, a literary expert from england, in 1871 was said to be the father of sociological literature. taine argues that literary works are a national monument that represents the consciousness of society and spirit of the times. the theory of sociological literature by hippolyte taine was later developed by lucian goldman who tried to connect art and society. the development of goldman's theory is the birth of genetic structuralism theory which discusses the relationship between the socio-cultural background of the author and the literary work. goldman's view of the socio-cultural background of the author which influence the process of literary creation was reinforced by leo lowenthal. in 1961, lowenthal sparked a theory of the sociology of literature. according to lowenthal, the authors are indeed developing characters and are believed to place them in situations involving interaction with others and with the communities in which they live. the task of literary sociologist is then to find the relationship between the author's imaginary characters and the historical climate from which they originated. the latest theory of sociological literature was triggered by robert escarpit, in 1970, describing the reader as a cultural consumer in literary work (jadhav, 2014). in other words the sociology of literature also emphasizes the aspect of readers of literary works. from the above explanation, sociology of literature is divided into three parts: the sociology of the author's context, the sociology of literary works as the mirror of the society, and the sociology of the readers, as the consumers of literature (faruk, 2012). this article specifically discusses the sociology of literary works, namely to look for social aspects and local specificity features within the classical ketoprak scripts of surakarta style. the social aspects of the classical ketoprak scripts of surakarta style are viewed in terms of socio-historical, sociocultural, and socio-linguistic aspects. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 147 socio-historical aspects in classical ketoprak script of surakarta style the ketoprak script used as an object in this article is a ketoprak script written by a ketoprak artist from surakarta. the story of ketoprak is a representation of events that occurred in the past that tell about life and all the struggle in the kingdom of java (saddhono and setyawan, 2015). the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style tells the story of the historical value of the islamic kingdom of mataram. the ketoprak script does not contain history as a whole, but only contains some historical facts which are already adjusted by the author to create dramatic elements such as the character of the setting or the scene. there are similarities of problems or conflicts in the text of ketoprak to the historical documents (farhah, 2015: 34). the classical ketoprak script of surakarta entitled kuncarane kraton pajang has the setting of time of pajang kingdom. the kingdom of pajang was establiched in 15681586 ad. the kingdom of pajang was led by a king named sultan hadiwijaya. the text of kuncarane kraton pajang tells about the rebellion conducted by arya penangsang, a prince from jipang panolang, (now the district of cepu, blora regency). the rebellion of arya penangsang was driven by the cooperation among danang sutawijaya, ki ageng pemanahan, ki ageng penjawi, and juru mertani. eventually arya penangsang was killed by danang sutawijaya using the spear of kyai pleret which is now a symbol of armor heritage in surakarta hadiningrat palace. in the script "bedhah kartasura" the setting is when the mataram kingdom was moved from pleret to kartasura, to the west of surakarta city. it is written in babad tanah jawi that the palace of mataram kartasura was established around 1705-1719 ad (fawaid, 2015). the perpetrators were similar: mas garendi, susuhunan pahubuwono ii, raden mas said, prince mangkubumi, and the dutch (the voc). the conflict, too, was almost the same: the revolt led by raden mas said, prince mangkubumi, and mas garendi, assisted by the chinese ethnics. the ending of this civil war was the giyanti treaty in 1755, which divided the kingdom of mataram into two areas, namely kraton surakarta hadiningrat and kraton yogyakarta hadiningrat (arifin, 2013). the setting in adeging praja surakarta was sala village, the place chosen for the construction of the surakarta hadiningrat palace. in babad tanah jawi, it is mentioned that the year of the establishment of surakarta kingdom was 1745 ad. the characters in the story are sunan pakubuwana iii, kyai ageng sala, kyai hasan besari from ponorogo, and of course some people of sala village. in general, adeging praja surakarta is about the polemics in the establishment of surakarta kasunanan palace, starting from the choice of the place: sukoharjo or kadipolo. finally sala village was chosen as the location for surakarta kasunanan palace (monfries, 2015). until now some areas mentioned above can be found around the surakarta palace. if reviewed in depth, historical information can be found in the scripts of ketoprak. the three scripts above, for example, contain historical information that includes the settings of places, characters or historians, and the conflicts, which are similar to the ones in historical documents. in addition, the settings of places of the three ketoprak scripts above are not far from surakarta city. thus, the representation of social life of the three ketoprak script is not far away from the social life of the community in surakarta. socio-cultural aspects in classical ketoprak script of surakarta style literary works reflect the proportion that humans have: past, present, and future life. therefore, the values in literary works are living and dynamic ones. however, the data found in literary works may not necessarily be justified into absolute facts. data in literary works must still be interpreted and analyzed using the discipline tailored to the original purpose (sipayung, journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bagus wahyu setyawan, kundharu saddhono & ani rakhmawati 148 2016). a literary work, in the sociology of literature, is considered to reflect the spirit and socio-cultural situation of its time. the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style tells the story that happened in the islamic kingdom of java. so, the socio-cultural portraiture in the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style is about the social-cultural life of the community of the islamic kingdom of java. the text of kuncarane kraton pajang, first of all, reflects the portraiture of the situation during the time of the pajang kingdom. at that time, the people of java embraced the traditional government system, i.e. feudalism, where the royal and noble groups were highly respected (hastuti, 2011: 146). kuncarane kraton pajang presents feudalism system of javanese society. the feudal system can be seen from the differences in the treatment and attitude shown by characters from different social degrees. people with high social degrees, such as kings, queens, ministers and government officials, were more respected than ordinary people. this can be seen from the difference in their language, which is krama inggil. this kind of language is considered more subtle. this can also be seen from their attitude. when speaking to the king, the soldiers or other royal officials should show worship and ask for permission first. the people in kuncarane kraton pajang understand that "the king's words are a command" or “sabda raja adalah perintah”. the king's words in the ancient java is irrevocable (or unable to be withdrawn) order, thereby arising a phrase "sabda pandhita ratu tan kena wola-wali.” the words and statement from a king must be executed and cannot be changed. king's statement is regarded as a gift received in the samadi process and his communication with god. in addition, the king's statement was also used as a means of legitimacy for traditional javanese political leadership (widjaja, 2016: 42). the second script is the bedhah kartasura which tells about the revolt of raden mas garendi against the mataram palace that allegedly has a political relationship with the voc. here lies the sense of nationalism from raden mas garendi. nationalism is a condition of unity where one of loyalty is totally devoted to the state, country, on behalf of a nation (syarbaini, 2010). mas garendi and some people of kartasura chose to rebel against mataram kingdom because at that time mataram was under the influence of the dutch colonialists. such a situation affects every decision and rule of the king which is always in favor of the colonialists. raden mas garendi rebelled because he wanted to defend his homeland and his culture. javanese culture must not be taken by the colonialists. the script of bedhah kartasura portrays the spirit of nationalism in the people who tried to expel dutch colonizers from indonesia. for the third text, adeging praja surakarta, the spirit of mutual cooperation when building the civilization of the surakarta palace is portrayed. the spirit of mutual cooperation is there, regardless of one’s position and rank, whether one is a noble, a scholar, a public figure (ki ageng sala), or just a common person. socio-linguistics aspects in classical ketoprak script of surakarta style the language in literary works is the medium to deliver the author’s ideas. in the script, the language is used in the dialogues and it reflects the character and the social degree. the language in the literary work is influenced by the background and the sense of literature possessed by the author. the author’s local origin also determines the language used in literary works. this is related to the variety of languages or dialects used. dialect is a language that is specifically used in an area (kristanti, 2017). the difference among the dialects are are seen from the choice of words, the accents, and the intonation (yunus, et al., 2016). in the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style, the language used is surakarta dialect. this is evident from the language used in the dialogues. this fact cannot be separated from the fact that the journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 149 author is actually a ketoprak artist from surakarta. therefore, the background of the script writer is very important in determining the language used. it can be said that the language used in the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style is the language derived from javanese dialect (saddhono and rohmadi, 2014). to elaborate the analysis of the language used in the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style, the study compares it to the language used in ketoprak texts from other areas. for example, when compared to the text of ketoprak metaraman from yogyakarta, both of the texts show similarity because they use one of javanese language varieties called basa bagongan. however, when viewed from the choice of words, the two texts show differences. the surakarta style text uses "inggih" while ketoprak mataraman from yogyakarta uses "injih." although both of them mean "yes", the two words are local dialects of different areas. the word "inggih" is commonly used by people in solo/surakarta to express "yes". "inggih" comes from the javanese variant called krama inggil, a variant considered to have more value of politeness compared to the other variants, ngoko and krama (poedjosoedarmo, 2017). the word "sendika dhawuh" in classical ketoprak script of surakarta style, has another variant, "kasinggihan," in the text of ketoprak metaraman from yogyakarta. when analyzed linguistically, the two lexicons have the same meanings, namely expressing willingness. normally, the two lexicons are used when receiving a command from the boss, either from the king or the royal superior who has the higher rank. some other variation of the language seen in the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style compared to the text of ketoprak in other areas as follows: kene: meaning here >< ndene (in the text of ketoprak metaraman yogyakarta) kana: meaning there >< ndana (in the text of ketoprak metaraman yogyakarta) piye: how >< yok apa (in the text of ketoprak jawatimuran from east java) kowe: you >< sira (the text of ketoprak jawatimuran from east java) rada: somewhat >< rondok (the text of ketoprak pesisiran from north javanese coastal area) from the above examples, it is seen that differences and variations in language distinguish the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style with the texts of ketoprak from some areas are due to the different dialects used in the areas. this cannot be separated from the fact that javanese language has various dialects: banyumasan dialect, solo-yogya dialect, coastal dialect, jawa timuran dialect, and banyuwanginan dialect. conclusion ketoprak script is a type of literary work included in the genre of the theater or traditional javanese drama. ketoprak script is used in the staging of ketoprak which is a type of folk art. thus, it represents the social life. the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style reflects the social aspects of surakarta community. it cannot be separated from the author who is a ketoprak artist from solo/surakarta city. using sociological approach that tries to reveal the relationship between literary work and the social structure of the society, some sociological aspects in the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style are found. from the sociohistorical point of view, the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style brings stories that have a socio-historical background from the city of surakarta. the script tells about the story of the islamic empire in surakarta. from the socio-cultural point of view, the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bagus wahyu setyawan, kundharu saddhono & ani rakhmawati 150 reflects the social situation in the islamic empire in surakarta. the three texts, kuncarane kraton pajang, bedhah kartasura, and adeging praja surakarta reflect the sociocultural conditions of the kingdom set as the background of the texts. from the linguistic point of view, the languages used in the three texts are languages derived from javanese dialect of solo/surakarta. from these three aspects, is is observed that the classical ketoprak script of surakarta style has some differences with the ketoprak scripts from other areas. this becames a local specialty and characteristic of classical ketoprak script of surakarta style. references arifin, miftah. “ranggawarsita dan kesusasteraan jawa islam.” al-adalah journal, 16 (2). pp. 319-329. 2013. farhah, e. “charah yahud karya najib alkailani: kajian sosiologi sastra”. journal of etnografi, vol 15 (1), 2015. faruk. pengantar sosiologi sastra. yogyakarta: pustaka pelajar. 2012. fawaid, achmad. “contesting double genealogy: representing rebellion ambiguity in babad tanah jawi.” heritage of nusantara: international journal of religious literature and heritage, 4 (2). pp. 243-260. 2015. hastuti, d. l. “status dan identitas sosial saudagar batik laweyan dalam interior ndalem indis di awal abad ke-20.” journal of dewa ruci, vol. 7 (1), july 2011. hughes, 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(1), april 2017. purwantoro, agus. “wayang godhonk: the transgressive resistance in fine art.” asian journal of social sciences & humanities, 3 (3), august 2014. pp. 104111. 2014. saddhono, k and setyawan, b.w. “nilai budi pekerti dan kearifan lokal dalam naskah kethoprak.” proseding seminar nasional bahasa jawa, penggalian nilainilai budi pekerti dan kearifan lokal melalui pengajaran bahasa dan sastra jawa. pp. 127-138. 2015. saddhono, k. & rohmadi, m. “a sociolinguistics study on the use of the javanese language in the learning procces in primary school in surakarta, centra java, indonesia.” international education studies journal, vol 7, no 6, 2014. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 151 satiyoko, yohanes a. “wani ngaiah luhur wekasane, pesan moral jawa dalam novel berbahasa jawa candhikala kapuranta karya sugiarta sriwibawa: sebuah kajian sosiologi sastra.” jurnal widyaparwa, vol. 40 (1), 2012. satoto, soediro. analisis drama dan teater jilid i. yogyakarta: penerbit ombak. 2012. setyawan, bagus w. “membaca sejarah melalui kegiatan membaca naskah ketoprak (literasi pada ranah sastra jawa).” prosiding seminar internasional riksa bahasa x “literasi dan budaya bangsa”. pp. 734-739. 2016. sipayung, m. e. “konflik sosial dalam novel maryam karya okky madasari: kajian sosiologi sastra.” jurnal ilmiah kebudayaan sintesis, vol. 10 (1), 2016. sutopo. metode penelitian kualitatif. surakarta: uns press. 2002. syarbaini, syahrial. implementasi pancasila melalui pendidikan kemerdekaan. yogyakarta: graha ilmu. 2010. waluyo, herman j. drama: naskah, pementasan, dan pengajarannya. surakarta: lpp uns dan uns press. 2006. widjaja, h. “babak barutradisi mataram islam di kraton ngayogyakarta hadiningrat.” jurnal ilmiah widya noneksakta, vol 1 (1), november 2016. yunus, m. et,al. “empowering the arabic– javanese translation as an indigenous language protection in asia toward the books of islamic moral ethic.” journal of bahasa dan seni, vol. 44, (1), februari 2016. 349 vol. 21 no. 2, october 2021, pp. 349-361 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i2.3168 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. hybridity and the shape of the new african woman regie p. amamio rui101519@yahoo.com department of english and literature, silliman university, mindanao state university-gsc, philippines abstract article information hybridity is argued as an intricate combination of attraction and repulsion that describes the relationship between the colonizers and the colonized. this combination creates a challenge to and disruption of the monolithic power exercised by the colonizers of africa who (mis)represented the land as a dark continent. such monolithic power underpins the portrayal of the colonizers’ patriarchal tradition within which women characters in creative works by africans are commonly situated. the inclusion of women as part of the many subjects of power strengthens the discourse on hybridity in african literature. to question power is to see men and women both apart and together as ambivalence that defines the idea of hybridity in the african literary tradition. in this paper, the employment of deconstruction in the analysis of women characters in five selected stories by african writers reveals a new consciousness in african literature using the dark continent metaphor as a mirror of the female aesthetics. in this sense, the use of women’s bodies in the short stories does not only point to the issue of gender oppression but also to a power that is disrupting and slowly dismantling the long-entrenched patriarchal stance forcing the male characters to question their current worldview and position. overall, this paper has established that contemporary african literature on women recognizes the hybridized identity and shape of the new woman, consequently proving that the so-called dark continent is nothing but a myth. keywords: dark continent metaphor; african women’s bodies; deconstruction; hybridity received: 3 march 2021 revised: 2 june 2021 accepted: 8 june 2021 introduction african literature, which has a long, rich tradition, has often been considered through its different characteristics and categorization: by ethnicity; by region; by nationality; by the language of expression where verbal artistry is enjoyed through local languages such as kiswahili and amharic by bards, scribes, storytellers and poets; by genre; and by themes or generations (diop in okafor, 1997). but, of late, there is a shift from this prevailing https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) regie p. amamio 350 literary terrain towards a greater social awareness resulting in an increased number of women writers (a revolutionary development given that women in most parts of africa do not enjoy the same rights as given to men), increased production of both oral and written literature in african national languages such as zulu and yoruba, and increased critical attention and/or concentration on political and social writings. this shift spotlights the diversity and complexity of life in the african continent reflecting the different literary traditions, social and political realities, and the everwidening and intensifying consciousness toward innovation. it also implies that the context of african literature must be seen in its totality which includes its history, its level of development, and the productive forces that have turned african literary production into a celebration of anti-colonial consciousness. in this sense, the issue of apartheid and other forms of african oppression due to the “myth of the dark continent” as perpetrated by their western colonizers has become one theme in african literature, and the assertion of values that symbolize the distinctive african identities as another theme (brantlinger, 1985). these predominant themes from the new african literary terrain have created an impetus in restoring pride and honor in the black african traditions and, at the same time, a view of african literature as sensual and emotional in contrast to western rationalism (jarosz, 1992). it has also revealed ambiguities leading many writers to question the whole nationalistic envisioning in writing, to move away from the usual realistic narratives to more experimental and fragmentary styles as well as to emphasize the new theme of hybridity establishing it as a significant concept in african literature commonly associated with colonialism. the concept of hybridity is critical in postcolonial discourse due to its broad crosscultural backdrop and its negation of the inequality of power relations. guignery, pessomiquel, and specq (2011) concur with this idea although they argue that the notion of hybridity really is unstable and may be better understood in the contexts of identity, nationhood, language, and culture. bhabha (1994) has explored the term vis-à-vis the new literary direction in africa concluding that there is a “convoluted combination of attraction and repulsion that characterizes the relationship between the colonizers and the colonized (p.85).” for him, these two contrasting terms neither necessarily resist nor complement each other. instead, they become ambivalent or two-powered, which means the complicity and resistance that exist in a fluctuating relation within the colonial subject is seen to be both exploitative and nurturing or even only nurturing. such ambivalence, according to ghasemi, sasani, and nemati (2018), is nurturing on the part of the colonial subject because with the emergence of hybridity, the authority of the colonizer is destroyed. they argue that though hybridity may be a sign of the colonial power’s productivity, it is also a sign of shifting of forces and fixities and a strategic reversal of the process of domination, which is disadvantageous to the colonizer. farahbakhsh and sheykhani (2018) affirm this idea after exploring homi bhabha’s notion of ambivalence in j. m. coetzee’s disgrace. their study shows that ambivalence destabilizes the discourse of colonial authority and discloses the uncertainties and anxieties within colonial powers. in another study, sasani (2015) regards the relationship of the colonizer and the colonized as nurturing for as long as both presume that their relationship is mutually beneficial. he articulates huddart’s (2007) concept stating that “colonialism is marked by a complex economy of identity in which colonized and colonizer depend on each other (p. 22)." but chances are that imbalance and further tension will occur if the colonizers become intimidated by the colonized’s new position (who also make the same assumption), which might acquire the latter equal power becoming their colonial double in the process. according to bhabha (in mambrol, 2016), this situation reflects the contrasting existence of attraction and repulsion in hybridity which produces an issue of power that eventually results in the authority’s own destruction, creating an ambivalent situation nuanced with contestations of power. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 351 such an ambivalent situation is not a simple reversal of binaries because both the colonizer and the colonized subjects are involved in propagating the ambivalence of colonial discourse. for instance, yazdiha (2010) claims that hybridity counters essentialism and offers the opportunity for a counter-narrative. he further argues that it has the ability to empower marginalized collectives and deconstruct bounded labels which are used in perpetrating subordination. thus, this ambivalence has the prospective to allow the once marginalized, repressed collectives to reclaim a part of their cultural space. this idea is supported by jamshidian (2019) who states that through hybridity (represented by hybrids who assert their voices in the third space), the marginalized groups not only can survive and preserve their local heritage and identity despite the imperial pressures but can also affect the dominant power themselves. in brief, hybridity is not presented as a means of division to individualize identities, but rather as a means of re-imagining an interconnected collective. although the paradigm constructed through hybridity supplements discourses of cultural rights and global citizenship, it at the same time opens the exploration on the issue of the depths of power (huddart, 2007). similarly, the concept of ambivalence not only looks at the colonizer-colonized issue, but also at power as a whole being dismantled, subverted, and disturbed through deconstruction. in this context, kourtti (2007) maintains that hybridity outlines strategic ways of diasporic and gendered resistance against colonial hierarchies and patriarchal dominance in post-colonial africa, which become a kind of cultural translation possessing and re-possessing the past and the present in a constructive and meaningful way. african women who are part of the marginalized are thus explored and, at the same time, given a voice and platform to express themselves. their male counterparts are not totally excluded since the telling of the latter’s stories serves to highlight issues and changes in society. for instance, friedman (2006) used joyce carol oates’ male characters in her paper to chart how changing ideologies of masculinity serve feminist purposes as well as to spotlight some cultural ideas relative to the male/female binary. in the above context, this paper explores the africa-as-a-woman metaphor discourse through the analysis of the following short stories: the stranger by abd al-majid ben jallun; a man can try by eldred durosimi jones; coffee for the road by alex la guma; a day off by anthony hokororo; and a meeting in the dark by james ngugi. these five works are all by male writers attempting to depict women's consciousness and the feminine tradition within the african power structure, thereby, contributing to the conversation on hybridity in african literature. methodology this paper is a qualitative study that utilizes content analysis based on poststructuralist or deconstructionist concepts by derrida. deconstruction rejects the notions of objective reality, objective truth, and the objective existence of texts arguing that no such thing as a “fixed representation of reality” exists, approximating homi bhabha’s concept of hybridity. hybridity stands in opposition to the myth of purity and racial and cultural authenticity of a fixed and essentialist identity. bhabha’s concept thus spotlights the idea of an idealized form of purity that is subverted, dismantled, and disturbed through the use of deconstruction. specifically, five selected stories by african male writers are analyzed to perorate on the african women’s consciousness and the feminine tradition within the african power structure, thereby contributing to the conversation on hybridity in african literature. within this power structure, the men represent power both as male characters (literally) and as the power wielded by the west (figuratively) while the women represent africa both as female characters (literally) and as a metaphor for the motherland (figuratively). results and discussion african literature through the works of five male writers depicts hybridity as an exploration of the power structure that elevates women’s position undermining men’s previously held dominance in the process. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) regie p. amamio 352 the maxim of undecidability in african literature the “maxim of undecidability” was employed by poststructuralists to counter the structuralists’ assumption, grounded in saussure’s notion of langue (overall system), that accounts for a single interpretation of the text (parole) positing that a text has many meanings and therefore no definitive interpretation (bressler, 1999). this undecidability of meaning argues against the belief in objective reality, objective truth, and the objective existence of texts for no such thing as a “fixed representation of reality” exists. instead, all expressions and descriptions of truth are subjective; these are simply creative inventions of the mind. therefore, truth itself is relative, depending on the various cultural and social influences in a person’s life. this poststructuralist argument aligns with bhabha’s (1996) concept of hybridity, which asserts that “hybridity stands in opposition to the myth of purity and racial and cultural authenticity of fixed and essentialist identity.” such a notion adopts harmony by combining different systems and encourages the complex, the impure, the heterogeneous, and the eclectic thus debunking an idealized form of purity. the shaping of the idealized form of purity or the notion of “fixed representation of reality” in africa can be traced back to when the powerful imperial impulses were at work, setting the standards for distinguishing what is evil and unethical from what is good and acceptable. these standards resulted in the ambivalence on africa’s distress and in the conflicting discernments of identity with africans struggling to understand both their old self and new self as well as grappling with the uncertainty of their new role in the society. such ambivalence is often manifested in contemporary african short stories. in jallun’s the stranger, for instance, a devious frenchman named andre arrives in morocco pretending as a beggar to deceive the townspeople intending to, later on, usurp the local leadership. andre is first presented as a moroccan in a french body, but later on, exposed as a frenchman in moroccan land two conflicting ideas that are metaphors of the conqueror’s motive and imperial interest. readers might first consider andre as a pitiful man who is saved by africa and a stranger who becomes attuned to the moroccan ways. his adoption of the local practices initiates him to become part of the community – gaining the acceptance and trust of everyone. in the course of his stay in morocco, andre pretends sincere interest in local ways carefully hiding his true self a man with an imperial mind and prejudiced heart against the africans. as an imperialist, he is clear with his intent to gain power over the locals long before he arrived in morocco. it is then not andre who develops an uncertainty of role in the society but the moroccans who are later on forced to live a degraded life after andre usurps power. the townspeople struggle to abide by the rules of their new leader and after some time, feel not just resentment but terror as well of being killed, of their women being violated, of their land being despoiled, and of their tradition being desecrated. the idea of uncertainty is also illustrated in ngugi’s meeting in the dark. the protagonist, john, struggles with his self-portrayal between being a kenyan scholar steeped in his village’s traditional beliefs and practices and being a son of a clergyman, a convert who practices and preaches the whites’ ways and beliefs. john thinks he should establish his identity because he believes he cannot simply be both and is always in a dilemma as to which practices following. john is soon to leave for uganda to finish his education and is expected to come back as a respectable son of limuru. the tension to become the latter is heightened when john witnesses the demise of the old ways in limuru embodied by young men like him transgressing their sacred tradition with their liberal sexual practices – bringing back wives from the land of the whites and impregnating local girls who are left with fatherless children when they go away. john himself is not guilt-free since his father practices the colonizers’ religion contributing to limuru’s destruction. eventually, he, too, commits his own cultural transgressions. what can be argued in both the moroccans’ and john’s positions is the volatility of the hierarchies they are in. the journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 353 status quo is disturbed, tainted, and forever changed by situations beyond their control although the aftermath proves different for the respective protagonists. the moroccans successfully emancipate themselves from physical, moral, and mental slavery. john, on the other hand, from an essentially emancipated fellow at the start ends up being a slave of his inability to choose between the old life and the new ways. he imagines his impending doom in this passage: “i, john, a priest’s son, respected by all and is going to college, will fall, fall to the ground (p. 97).” the trouble with john is that “his imagination magnified the fall from the heights of goodness out of all proportions (p. 101)” and that he has no firm convictions. he fears what his father and the people in the village will say and so is indecisive about whether to fight or not for the girl he loves. hence, john and the moroccans are depicted as metaphors of change embodying the notion that when one is disturbed, one essentially changes. change disrupts stability; it undermines and questions the objectivity of reality and truth. change complements the opposition to a fixed and essentialist identity, on which bhabha and the deconstructionists agree. it should be noted however that though disruptions lead to change, such change could mean either progress or decline. in this instance, hybridity is manifested in the tension that the characters experience as they grapple with identity issues. long before the formulation of the concept of logocentrism, which is the belief that there is an ultimate reality or center of truth that can serve as the basis for all of a person’s thoughts and actions, aristotle had already introduced the principle of noncontradiction an idea that would later be used as a tenet by the deconstructionists. this principle of noncontradiction questions the fixed idea of being and non-being since a thing cannot only either be or not be at the same time. there should be something in between known as becoming (bressler, 1999). therefore, to question and challenge the established center is for one to construct a new one. this thing that comes in between being and non-being based on the pattern set by deconstructionists becomes the product of disruptions and dislocation of the system called the ‘hybrid idea’. the disruption and ambivalence caused by the western cultural system on the african practice of their native ontology have prompted the natives to (re)create their new local identity or, put another way, a new local identity is born out of the ongoing tension created by two opposing practices. african literature has been influenced by this disruption known as the third option a new mode, a new society that undertakes the contrasting views on racism and anti-racism to bring about a society that condemns racism becoming an important subject of many contemporary african literary works. moreover, african artists and writers have also combined different styles, even languages, modes, and genres to produce a hybrid work of art. dismantling a prevailing worldview: men’s power over women’s bodies upon the invention of the myth of the dark continent, many western explorers and authors painted a romantic depiction of africa needing to be saved by audacious men of adventure. part of this fabricated conundrum is painting africa as a land of indolent savages, sexually immoral and demented people conditioning the mind of the explorers that their adventure is a battle between good (the west) and evil (africa) and that their presence will help free these people from their old ways (jarozs, 1992). looking at how the west tried to assign roles to africa, one can readily see that this branding is open to contestation. nonetheless, such unfair and fabricated branding can actually be dismantled by juxtaposing it with the images of the continent and its people that the african writers themselves have depicted in their literary works. to dismantle is to subvert, challenge, undermine, and question the prevailing ideologies or previously held worldviews of people in power (bressler, 1999), which in this case, were perpetrated by the colonizing westerners on the natives in the african continent. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) regie p. amamio 354 since hybridity is seen to challenge existing hierarchies and binarisms, it is also proper to look into where and how these binaries operate. the branding invented by the west which has resulted in binaries or dualism favorable to its people can be explored by the possibility of inverting these hierarchies or “natural order” to shape new knowledge about language and life and to examine the unstable relationship between elements in a binary operation. by identifying the binaries, one can expose the preconceived notion upon which people based their interpretation, and in reversing these binaries to challenge them, people can free themselves from the constraints of their prejudiced beliefs. binaries also reveal and strengthen bhabha’s (in huddart, 2007) point about hybridity – that their reversal creates ambivalence similar to displacing the authority from its position of power. as such, this colonial discourse explores not only the issue of colonizer-colonized but power as a whole that includes aesthetic consciousness and sensibility of feminine tradition and women as subjects of power. in this context, men represent power – literally as male characters and figuratively as the power wielded by the west. women, on the other hand, represent africa as female characters and as a metaphor for the motherland. the short story, the stranger, presents the powerful west as creating the idea of its men going on a romantic journey to battle evil assigning themselves as the redeemers representing the good side. the frenchman andre is a man from the west, a learned and self-proclaimed savior who looks at the moroccans as ignorant, primitive, and weak people who need to be saved and ruled by a dominant man like himself. even though he considers himself entitled because he is a man from the west, reality tells him differently. the hierarchy in which andre believes is questioned and therefore his assumed identity is challenged. as farahbakhsh and sheykhani (2018) put it, the ambivalence formed from this event destabilizes the stance of colonial authority and discloses the uncertainties and anxieties within colonial powers. the event subverts the very dominating culture and evokes a re-examination of the power structure. one could then ask: does andre really represent power?; and do the people really need him as their savior? to situate the above questions, one can look at how andre is portrayed in the story. he is described upon his arrival in the moroccan village as a “mere nobody, shabbily clothed, covered in mud and trembling in the storm from weakness and exhaustion (p. 107).” though he left his village in the south of france poor and destitute, he still carries with him his proud blood. he ambitions to seize the power that uncle ‘abd al-salam (a wealthy landowner and a tribe leader) holds by usurping the latter’s position in the village. his plan involves using his skills and intelligence to win over the people in the small moroccan village. he realizes his goal when he assumes power after the old man dies having been chosen by the tribal leader himself to succeed him. andre immediately becomes dictatorial, bringing french soldiers into the village and literally making everyone his slave despite earlier claiming that he has become one with the villagers having learned their ways. however, andre’s power is only momentary because the villagers have an uprising to protest against their oppression. he dies ironically in the hands of a most unlikely character, fatima, a girl he believes to be weak and fragile. thus, andre is responsible for bringing out both the villagers’ and fatima’s courage to fight against their oppression. fatima expresses his ignominious end as follows: you hold power over this farm and others around it, near and far. but you can never have over our hearts. and so long as you are powerless to take away the contempt i feel, you are still as you were when you arrived, weak and exhausted! you are now in my hands i, the simple farm-girl, (p.107). the preceding passage expresses fatima’s subversion of andre’s previous authority. fatima who is the only daughter of uncle abd al-salam is a passive character at the beginning until the middle part of the story acting simply as a spectator in their village. her bravery comes to the fore after her brothers’ arrest by andre as well as after she witnesses the journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 355 devastation of her paradise, her father’s land, in the hands of the invaders: the beauty of life was gone from the farm – that life which had been full of kindness, mercy, and love. the beautiful fertile land also was no more, that land which used to feed their bodies and souls at one same time, (p.106). fatima who is a triggered character exemplifies pourgiv’s (2012) claim that “[the] conversion of a woman is often perceived by the one experiencing it and not particularly as a transformation from an old self to a new one, but as the discovery of the authentic self that is there since the beginning that is forced into hiding by pressure from familial social structures… (p.3)” fatima as female is conscious of her village’s hierarchical tradition mainly adhering to her passive feminine role in the past. she only displays her hidden courage by taking matters into her own hands because of the absence or inability of the male members (father is dead; brothers are imprisoned) to stand up for their family. with andre’s doom, the “natural order” of good against evil is subverted, making the supposed evil triumphant over the good ones. andre’s power proves superficial being totally dependent on his weapon. once divested of it, he is now incapable of warding off the “evil” forces and is reduced to being a cowering man, according to fatima: and you are trembling with terror and fear despite your knowledge and your authority because it is i who hold the weapon today. i have snatched it from you, you coward, to reveal you as a weak man cringing before a weak girl because a weak girl has a piece of steel in her hand, (pp. 107-108). the gun they fought over can be a representation of andre’s imagined power whereby anyone who holds it holds the power. it has neither true master nor follower. andre’s power is just borrowed and thus could be taken away anytime. he aspires to rule over a small village but fails to have total control over it. andre’s undignified end can then be argued as the naivety of the western people in underestimating the fervor and the heart of the natives whom they have stereotyped as thoughtless, demented, and savage. it turns out in the end that andre is the one who needs saving from his arrogance and ignorance. clearly, the tension emanating from the clash of the two races and cultures creates a change that does not simply separate the powerful from the weak but involves the beginning of a new transcultural form. the village will never be the same again with the people directly witnessing the wickedness of andre and his french soldiers. this event has produced a unique product: blended but is ever-changing that is growth. as for fatima, she becomes a woman who has power, not the old patriarchal power but a power to create, power to articulate, and power to transform lives (friedman, 2006). in meeting in the dark, john who is portrayed as a character struggling with his identity in the village can be argued as a representation of a hybrid. bakhtin (1981) in his concept of hybridity presents two types of hybrid intentional hybrid and unconscious or organic hybrid. in the second type, the combination remains mute and dormant, unresponsive to using the conscious contradictions and oppositions, and allows the union of two or more cultures forming it into a new one. john’s position is the metaphor of the former (two points of view are not mixed but set against each other), which young (in castle, 1996) affirms when he points out that john’s tension “enables a contestatory activity, a politicized setting of cultural differences against each other (p. 136).” john, in the opening part of the story, is already introduced as a hybrid man – a kenyan who knows his tradition but practices or rather is compelled to practice the new ways, the whites’ ways. his father is a convert working as a strict and domineering clergyman and he is esteemed in limuru for his adherence to the whites’ ways. at the same time, he is still traditionally focused on maintaining his family’s name as an exemplar of virtue. with his father’s reputation, john has gained his own value and has built his own influence over the villagers. for a time, he enjoys his privileged position but the village elders expect john to practice and safeguard journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) regie p. amamio 356 his old ways. the tension between the social and political systems disturbs and threatens john’s status quo. he begins to question his identity but fails to realize that he is neither a native nor a foreigner and therefore a product of the tension between the imported culture from the west and the local way of life. the following passage, which expresses john’s contradictory feelings towards limuru, evokes the tension stemming from his being a hybrid: limuru was a land of contrast and evoked differing emotions at different times. once john would be fascinated and would yearn to touch the land, embrace it or just be on the grass. at another time he would feel repelled by the dust, the strong sun, and the pot-holed roads (p.99). his ambivalence towards limuru suggests further that john has become a prisoner in his own comfort. but much of the pressure he feels is self-imposed. in everything he does, he always fears the damnation that he might suffer if he disgraces his family and betrays people’s expectations of him as revealed in the following passage: if only his struggle were just against the dust, the mist, the sun, and the rain, he might feel content… but there was the human element whose vices and betrayal of other men were embodied in the new ugly villages (p.99). john’s inner conflict is all-pervading. he becomes consumed with guilt when he gets wamuhu pregnant out of wedlock because he knows he has betrayed everyone’s expectations especially that of his father. in his desperation, he kills wamuhu and his unborn child. his inner tension worsens after considering how his acts might affect his and especially his father’s social and political status once everyone learns that he “has created and then killed.” it can be argued that john’s suffering is caused by the accumulation of many different factors he inherited stemming from both his own home and his village ways. but his mental torture is mainly caused by his unwillingness to publicly acknowledge his relationship with wamuhu: the villagers have only mere speculations while his family is completely clueless about it. wamuhu, a simple and traditional girl, turned john’s position upside down. she is his girl who has known no other man and yet hidden. just as he is about to leave for college, she becomes pregnant so she keeps reminding him of his promises to her: tell both of their parents about their relationship and eventually start a family as a married couple. but john is torn between leaving for uganda to enter college as if nothing has happened and confessing to his father his sin of disgracing a girl. he decides to opt-out of his responsibility and offers wamuhu money so they can end their relationship: look, wamuhu. let me give you money. you might then say that someone else was responsible. lots of girls have done this. then that man may marry you. for me, it is impossible. you know that (p.101). wamuhu refuses to be paid even after he increases his offer from two hundred to twenty thousand shillings. in the end, john kills her and their unborn child in their dark meeting place. his fear of damnation has become a reality and he even turns out worse than the young men in his village who left unmarried girls with fatherless children. in this sense, the killing of wamuhu parallels the permanent loss of tradition in limuru in as much as wamuhu is one of the very few young people in the village adhering to tribal traditions; many of her generations have adopted the whites’ ways. by killing her and their unborn baby, john contributes to the destruction of their old ways and signals his leaning towards assimilating the colonizers’ culture. meanwhile, jones’ short story, a man can try, explores the tensions brought about by the interplay of colonialism and human values. subverted elements are also expressed in this short story. by presenting the two women in tullock’s life, jones is able to differentiate the west from africa from the vantage of two binaries: majority and minority, and powerful and weak. on one hand, denise, tullock’s fiancée, is an english woman who is highly educated, sophisticated, and a visible member of a political party. she is intensely alert and journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 357 has strong convictions perfectly embodying the values of the west. on the other hand, marie is an african, black, illiterate, soft, and entirely devoted to tullock obviously mirroring how the west perceives africa weak and submissive. therefore, the contrasting portrayals of the two women suggest the west’s hierarchy of power: it has dominance and authority over africa, which it perceives to be primitive and weak. the protagonist, tullock, is an englishman but has not lived his old english life for eight years, embracing instead a relaxed and easy life in africa with marie. when he is compelled to get back home for good, he suddenly feels threatened. his situation in africa has been so dramatically different from his office life in england. he never argues with marie because he is always sure of her willing obedience while thinking of his life with denise, he concludes that it would mean a “lifetime mental tug-of-war.” part of him does not want to exchange “the warmth and relaxation of africa for the chilly, bracing england” but the other part does not want to disgrace his family. on his way home to england, he reflects on his relationship with denise: doubts about their relationship came rushing into his mind. doubts of the most fundamental kind. did he really want to marry denise? it did not matter. he had to (pp.120-121). tullock’s struggles make him a different man from eight years ago but he always bears the stance of an englishman that separates him from his co-workers in africa. like john in meeting in the dark, tullock can be seen as a hybrid, displaced with a sense of discontinuity both in terms of time and space. he knows he will suffer but still chooses such a path: that life with denise would now have to be one long never-ending effort to live up to a life he no longer believed in … but a man can try (p. 121). the depiction of marie as naive is stereotypical but her impact on tullock’s life subverts and challenges the “natural order,” making the weaker woman the one holding real power over tullock. leaving her will cause him a lifetime sense of fragmentation. marie, like wamuhu, is implicated by the distinction of human values and ethical norms she is forced to face. but unlike wamuhu, marie is a willing victim knowing fully that an englishman does not see an african like her as equal. wamuhu refuses to be paid in exchange for her pride and tradition while marie willingly accepts the fact that tullock is ending his connection with her and their child. therefore, these two women represent the dichotomy of values in african colonial discourse as well as the african perception of how the west treats africa. african literature has embraced the many changes in its form as well as the evolution of the theme of historical struggle from liberation to a more optimistic revolutionary dimension. works such as anthony hokororo’s a day off (tanzania) subtly present reversal of binary operations in a society that has been influenced by western culture. zale has been wife to abdu for five years, marrying him after her mother’s sudden death, and thus is saved from torments of solitude. as a wife, she takes care of everything at home. she has dutifully done her chores without complaints but being a “yes woman” for five years awakens her new consciousness and suddenly decides to take a “day off.” zale’s decision to leave the house and travel depicts her courage to challenge women’s established position in society. being a devoted wife has made her life dull and she has lost her initial excitement in their union as revealed in the passage: earlier in their marriage, zale could never resist kissing him awake at such moments. but now her mind registered only the fact that he was dead to the world and that he needed a shave (p132).” her boredom is further gleaned in the passage below: being married had been very great fun at first, looking after the house, making the curtains and learning to cook, abdu had shown himself to be quite a contented journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) regie p. amamio 358 husband. but… it seems that he is too contented (p.135). for zale, to take the day off is revolutionary a challenge to the “natural order.” her day off gives her time to contemplate about herself, her life with abdu, and a chance to meet other people, which she has not experienced in the last five years. in return, zale’s note also brings abdu his own realization and a whole new consciousness: “i’ve decided to take a day off… there’s rice and meat in the cupboard if i’m not back for supper (p.136).” this simple note elicits new learning for abdu who honestly tells her later, “i heard the train coming… knew you’d be along, so … oh the heck with it, zale, who wants to eat alone (p.137)?” his reaction is a triumph for zale who suddenly feels older and wiser than her husband has been able to put into action what she longed to do. acting as an unconventional woman freed her from the constraints of tradition as her husband represents both power and tradition. confronted with his wife’s absence and sudden withdrawal from her daily role, abdu quickly realizes her immeasurable importance in his life. unlike the characters of wamuhu and marie whose bodies are desecrated by men of power through being impregnated and then left behind (marie) or repudiated (wamuhu), zale’s act in cutting her hair does not represent a desecration of her body but the commencement of her new knowledge of the transformative power of the female body. thus, the effect of the ambivalence in zale’s surroundings is nurturing and not exploitative of her body. zale is a hybrid who, according to jamshidian (2019), was once repressed and marginalized but finally asserts her voice and therefore survives the authority of the dominant power while preserving her local identity. in coffee for the road by la guma, the issue of apartheid is symbolically illustrated through the mother’s ill-fated encounter with a racist. the mother, in this instance, tries to defy a social system wherein women of color like her expects equal treatment from their white counterpart but is overwhelmed by the harsh reality of south africa’s social structure. when the story opens, the mother is driving her two children on a long road to cape town where her husband is waiting. she is trying to speed up the journey to reach the new city in the afternoon of the following day but still has to contend not only with managing the road but also with the random needs of her very young children such as sandwiches, water and even answering their gibberish questions. halfway in their journey, the mother needs to stop by a café to fill her empty flask with coffee for the road as well as to get drinks for her children who have been continuously begging for one. the mother enters the café confidently and orders her coffee and is totally unprepared by the rude response from the café attendant: coffee. my lord jesus christ!” the voice screeched.“ a bedamned coolie girl in here... coolies, kaffirs and hottentots outside,” she screamed. “don’t you bloody well know? and you talk english, too hey! (p.127). the startled mother immediately snaps and smashes the flask she is carrying onto the café attendant’s forehead as she cries in rage, “bloody white trash. coolie yourself (p.128)!” in this part, the mother has surely taken charge of the situation, but what awaits her is a complete turn of events when a policeman is already waiting by the roadside to arrest her. without further resistance, the mother follows the police and drives back to where they have started. as a whole, the short story can be divided into two vital parts. first, la guma shows how women as represented by the mother can also do things that are usually done by men such as driving. the mother is even speeding on the road when the story opens. this depicts her as someone independent and dependable as her husband has gone ahead to cape town expecting her to follow with their children and their remaining things. the way she is upfront in confronting the white woman who discriminates against her reveals her unconventional and empowered character but the second part of the story presents the antithesis of her whole journey. no matter how she is empowered to create a new future, she cannot easily do so with institutionalized obstructions set in place for locals like her. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 359 this means that though women may have personal empowerment they will fail to realize their potential if society does not change to provide a supportive environment for them such as institutionalizing policies that will end racism and sexism. the abuse of women in the analyzed short stories such as fatima being nearly sexually assaulted by andre, wamuhu being impregnated and killed by john, and marie being impregnated and left by tullock aptly represent the defilement of africa by its colonizers but yet still thriving, recreating herself to be a positive source of strength just like how the mother stands up against the white café attendant and how zale takes charge of rediscovering herself despite both having to navigate themselves within the entrenched patriarchal system. all the five women characters have challenged the pervading monolithic power of men creating ambivalence that has resulted in the birth of the idea of a hybrid. hybridized identity: the shape of the new african woman the concept of hybridity is in and of itself connected to the idea of identity. ashcroft, griffiths, and tiffin (1989) observe that a colonized culture such as africa underwent a phenomenon that involves a “dialectical” relationship developed from western cultural systems and native system, which in turn (re)creates a new local identity. what comprises this new local identity is a combination of a harsh reality of the interaction of the colonial hegemonic system and the colonized depraved and twisted peripheries. this system is at work when john and wamuhu in meeting in the dark, try to fight the intensifying effect of this structure on their village and themselves. as wamuhu tries to save her dignity and john attempts to conceal his sin, they end up destroying each other. this means that this new identity is a result of the dislocation of the old system and the disruption of the new one. fatima in the stranger acquires her new identity as she evolved from a dormant to an active character, awakened by the harsh reality of slavery. andre compels fatima to recreate an identity that ultimately overwhelms him and destroys his very power. therefore, fatima evolves to be a hybrid who, according to ghasemi, sasani, and nemati (2018), destroys the stance of colonial authority. this (re)created identity is invoked alongside the negritude movement, an ideological position that holds black culture to be independent and valid on its own terms and an affirmation of the african cultural heritage to forge a third option (young, in castle, 1996). this envisioned (re)created identity is what the mother in coffee for the road has already conceived and practiced but hers is a displaced consciousness in an environment still steep in colonial practices. this third option is a new way, a brand-new society where the contrasting values of racism and anti-racism would bring about a society devoid of racism and a new human-centered discipline. meaning, this ideal third option is still just an illusion for an awakened african in a society that does not yet acknowledge it. this is also true with marie in a man can try who for eight years is enchanted by the idea that a western man would take a black woman seriously. after the disillusionment, she just accepts the “natural order’s” verdict that there is a need for a more in-depth people’s enlightenment to place both colonizers and colonized discourses on the same traction. even though being a hybrid could be a result of the difficult and painful history of interracial identity intertwined with issues of choosing one’s affiliations or having one’s affiliations thrust upon a person (radhakrishnan, 1996), it is not always equated with confusion and uncertainty of identity. instead, at some point, it creates a space to rediscover oneself. zale in the day off is a tanzanian woman empowered enough to give herself time to unwind from the deadening domestic servitude she has carried out every single day for years. though tanzanians still practice the patriarchal system in their households, the presence of western ways is surfacing not only through the facilities around the city but also through the values of the locals. zale is a revitalized woman, a modern one who does not see anything detrimental in embracing these modern practices especially that the feeling of liberation made her better understand her journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) regie p. amamio 360 relationship with her husband and her own identity. zale is among those people, according to bhabha (1996), of multiple identities and mixed origins who experience their hybridity with more or less serenity and whom society welcomes with varying degrees of benevolence. ultimately, hybridity is a cultural effect of globalization (bhabha, 1996). it is intrinsically linked to the notion of identity held by multicultural individuals, migrants, and diasporic communities. it does not literally declare war on the past but challenges the consequences of the past that are exploitative and the logic of permanent presence, or of never-changing identity of the colonial discourse (mizutani, 2013). part of this reality is the undermining of patriarchal power and influence of the west in africa and its people, and the part that has made inroads into such a reality comes from former repressed voices and previously invisible bodies of the women characters. conclusion the inclusion and emphasis on women characters in short stories can be interpreted to mean that there is an impossibility of the separation of the arts and the imagination from a “socially, sexually, and historically positioned self (friedman, 2006). the portrayal of women characters in the selected five short stories reveals a unique tradition and, at the same time, a new consciousness in african literature reflecting the concept of female aesthetics. this woman metaphor represents the lost motherland, the vanished nation, or of a powerful but neglected women’s culture. in this sense, the use of women’s bodies in the short stories does not only point to the issue of gender oppression but also to power that is disrupting and slowly dismantling the long-entrenched patriarchal stance forcing the male characters to question their current worldview and position thus realizing their own hybridity. overall, the contemporary african literature on women depicts a hybridized identity in the shape of the new african woman who has acquired her own power, distinct from the still prevailing patriarchal power, to create, articulate, and transform lives, consequently proving that the so-called dark continent is nothing but a myth. references ashcroft, b., griffiths, g., & tiffin, h. (1989). post-colonial studies: the key concepts. new york, usa: routledge. bakhtin, m. (1981). discourse in the novel. in mikhail bakhtin, the dialogic imagination: four essays by m.m. bakhtin (ed. by michael holquist, trans. by caryl emerson michael holquist, pp.259-422). austin: university of texas press. bhabha, h. k. (1994). the location of culture. london, uk: routledge. bhabha, h. k. (1996). culture's in-between. in stuart hall & paul du gay (eds.), questions of cultural identity (pp.53-60). london: sage publications bressler, c. e. (1999). literary criticism: an introduction to theory and practice. (2nd ed.). new jersey: prentice hall. radhakrishnan, r. (1996). diasporic mediations: between home and location. minneapolis, usa: university of minnesota press brantlinger, p. (1985). victorians and africans: the genealogy of the myth of the dark continent. critical inquiry 12 (pp.166168). doi: 10.86/448326 castle, d. 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(2006). feminism, masculinity, and nation in joyce carol oates’s fiction. studies in the novel, 38(4), pp 478-493. retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/29533787 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2784780 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326320533_homi_k_bhabha%27s_ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326320533_homi_k_bhabha%27s_ http://www.jstor.org/stable/29533787 journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 361 ghasemi, p., sasani, s., & nemati, f. (2018). third space, hybridity, and colonial mimicry in fugard's blood knot. khazar journal of humanities and social sciences 211, pp. 34-52. doi: 10.5782/22232621.2018.21.1.3 guignery, v., pesso-miquel, c., & specq, f. (2011). hybridity: forms and figures in literature and the visual arts. cambridge scholars publishing, pp.380. huddart, d. (2007). hybridity and cultural rights: inventing global citizenship. reconstructing hybridity: post-colonial studies in transition. ed. joel kuortti and jopi nyman. studies in comparative literature, 51. doi: 10.1163/9789401203890_003 jamshidian, s. (2019). local heritage/ global forces: hybrid identities in le guin's the telling. gema online journal of language studies. 19. 96-110. doi: 10.17576/gema2019-1904-05. jarosz, l. (1992). constructing the dark continent: metaphor as geographic representation of africa. geografiska annaler: series b, human geography, 74(2), 105-115, doi: 10.1080/04353684.1992.11879634 mizutani, s. (2013). hybridity and history: a critical reflection on homi k. bhabha’s posthistorical thoughts. ab imperio (4), pp. 27-48. doi:10.1353/imp.2013.0115. sasani, s. (2015). a postcolonial reading of athol fugard’s "master harold” . . . and the boys. mediterranean journal of social sciences, 6(3 s2), 458. doi: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s2p458 mambrol, n. (2016, april 8). homi bhabha's concept of hybridity | literary theory and criticism. retrieved on august 13, 2019 from https://literariness.org/2016/04/08/ho mi-bhabhas-concept-of hybridity/ yazdiha, h. 2010. conceptualizing hybridity: deconstructing boundaries through the hybrid. formations 1-1. retrieved from https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_pub s/314 https://literariness.org/2016/04/08/homi-bhabhas-concept-of%20hybridity/ https://literariness.org/2016/04/08/homi-bhabhas-concept-of%20hybridity/ phenomena scolastica wedhowerti 112 is the ramayana a work of world literature? the history, translation, anthologization, circulation, distribution, and production of the ramayana scolastica wedhowerti wedho.sc@usd.ac.id department of english letters, sanata dharma university abstract the notion of world literature (weltliteratur) was first introduced by johann wolfgang von goethe in 1827. it is a concept which peoples of different nations read each other’s works either in their original language or translation. the ramayana, a great indian epic, has existed for more than two millennia. it has been a subject of discussion of whether it is a work of world literature or not. there are factors contributing to the concept of world literature, namely anthologization, history, translation, circulation, distribution, and production. this paper aims at answering the question of whether the ramayana is a work of world literature or not. keywords: anthologization, translation, production, world literature world literature and the ramayana the term world literature (weltliteratur) was first introduced by goethe in 1827. he suggests that it is a future-oriented concept in which different nations would get to know one another through reciprocal reading of each other’s works (goethe in carroll, 1996: 5). in an effort of making a local literary piece into world literature, there are some factors to consider. according to carroll, the three of the most important factors contributing to the concept of world literature are history, translation, and anthologization (1996: viii). further, carroll mentions that history means history of civilization, namely the preoccupation with cultural identity and the attempt to clarify and preserve cultural values (1996: 3). in addition to the notion of world literature, damrosch suggests that world literature encompasses all literary works that circulate beyond their culture of origin, either in translation or in their original language (2003: 4). moreover, he mentions that a work enters into world literature by a double process: first, by being read as literature; second, by circulating out into a broader world beyond its linguistic and cultural point of origin (2003: 6). therefore, the idea of world literature involves not only history, translation, and anthologization but also circulation, distribution, and production. world literature does not just arrive to the actual works but also to the responses of audience. a literary piece is still alive because of the reader or audience. there is a dialog between the reader or audience and the work. literature means different things to different people. literary works may be performed, produced or reproduced in nonwritten form. about the ramayana a great indian epic, the ramayana dates back to 1500 bc. there is diversity of ramayana tradition. according to richman, vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 113 hundreds of tellings of rama’s story exist in india ranging from valmiki’s as the oldest full literary telling of the story to the most familiar telling at this moment (2001: 3). in this paper, the ramayana appears without italics because it refers to the ramayana story in general or story of rama. the valmiki’s was composed by a poet and sage maharishi valmiki in the classical language, sanskrit. he composed the whole work running to twenty-four thousand stanzas. he poured out his expression into a great masterpiece in sanskrit verse consisting of 24,000 slokas (48,000 lines) and 500 sargas (cantos). thus, valmiki’s is in the form of poem. the term sloka refers to a specific meter which valmiki himself discovered (shastri, 1962: xvi). the ramayana is divided into seven books (kandas) of unequal length. the seven kandas are bala kanda, ayodhya kanda, aranya kanda, kishkindha kanda, sundara kanda, yuddha kanda, and uttara kanda. it basically tells us about the ancient tradition of two powerful races living in the north of india called the kosalas and videhas. they live in two kingdoms named the same as their race, kosala and videha. king of kosala, dasaratha has four sons. the eldest is rama, the hero of the epic. king janaka, the ruler of videha has a daughter named sita, the heroine of this epic. king janaka holds a severe test or competition. any prince or warrior able to bend the shiva’s bow will be entitled to marry sita. rama wins his bride. the story continues when sita is abducted by ravana. the battle and effort to free sita become the subject of the ramayana. is the ramayana a work of world literature? the question above is answered through the ramayana’s history, translation, anthologization, circulation, and production in order to prove it as a work of world literature. the ramayana has exerted a tremendous influence on the people of india and around the world. history of civilization which is related to culture and finally arrives at the values of human’s life is deeply expressed by the epic. according to shastri, the ramayana is not only poetry of unsurpassed dramatic power and brilliance, but also a treasure-house of information on rhetoric, medicine, geology, botany, geography, and every facet of the ancient civilization with which learned scholars may interest themselves (1962: xvii). the epic spreads the values which operate locally as well as globally (universally). for every hindu in india and other countries, rama and sita are the ideal man and woman, the model of a perfect couple. rama himself is believed to be the seventh reincarnation (avatar) of god vishnu, the one all-pervading principle of truth and intelligence. rama has a higher pattern of life for he is chosen to have perfect virtues such as being a lover of truth and compassionate. rama and ravana become the symbol of forces of light and darkness existing in human heart as well as in the world. rama’s virtues of being truthful, benevolent, merciful, and compassionate are the forces of light which are opposed by ravana’s anger, selfishness, greed, and lust. the human’s real triumph then conquers the forces of darkness. these values are locally as well as universally accepted. the universality of the epic’s values is also found in it. the various types of situations depicted in the epic are very similar to those which commonly occur in human lives and hence relevant to all mankind. it describes the nine sentiments (rasas). the nine rasas are love between rama and sita, valor in breaking the shiva’s bow while putting the string, pathos on kakasura when he surrendered, marvel in building the bridge for ocean, humor when shoorpanakha approached rama, terror and disgust in the battlefield, fury while slaying ravana, and peace in interaction with sages. from the point of view of translation, the epic has been translated into languages other than sanskrit. the oldest english version was written in 1802 by kirtee bass and divided into five volumes. other english editions were written in 1899 by rames dutt (condensed into english verse) and hari prasad shastri in 1952 (appeared in complete seven kandas). another edition is italian written by s. goressio and divided into ten scolastica wedhowerti 114 volumes. around the first century ad, the epic was brought by indian traders to java and was translated into old javanese or kawi language with a strong sanskrit influence remained. there are still many other translations of the epic into other languages although some of them are not the complete version with seven kandas. the ramayana is also anthologized by paula richman in ramayana stories in modern south india: an anthology. this collection brings together, for the first time, modern retellings translated from the four major south indian languages and from genres as diverse as drama, short stories, poetry, and folk song. this anthology includes translations of 22 primary texts along with interpretive essays that provide background and frameworks for understanding the stories. the question raised by carroll of whether a work of world literature can be anthologized without destroying the differences within and among cultures is answered by seeing more critical thought in the anthology (1996: ix). in part 1 (sita in context), there are ten stories about sita showing readers her strength as a heroine of the epic as well as the heroine of india. the cultural aspect of sita as the model or ideal woman is represented by the ten stories. in order to introduce a literary work to public, circulation, and distribution are required. the ramayana has been created new through the use of modern technology. during the coming centuries, this epic has been rewritten in several versions throughout the asian continent, the indian sub-continent, and other parts of the world. in the early of its circulation and distribution (the 18th and 19th centuries), it was still in the format of hard copies. those were circulated and distributed manually (based on the order to the publisher and distributor). therefore, the means of promotion were advertisements on tv and mass media. then, as technology especially internet advances, it is now sold on the electronic auction. moreover, the format is now no longer hard copies but soft ones. people can buy it in its newest e-book format. how about the young generation in india and other people who do not have access to the internet in accessing the ramayana? the answer begins with the production and reproduction of the epic. it is reproduced in several forms as illustrated books, films, dramas, dances, and tv series. the first example is the launch of chandamama’s ramayana which is an illustrated book with 400 pages of rich, hand drawn illustrations presenting the tale of rama and sita in full color and in a simple narrative style suitable for children. to accommodate its readers, this book is written in 12 indian languages and english. the next example is the existence of kakawin ramayana in old javanese with little variation but bases its story on the ramayana of valmiki and is performed in shadow puppet show (wayang). in central java, indonesia, the epic is also performed in a dance called sendratari ramayana in prambanan temple. moreover, this epic also becomes the source of many stories in many countries such as ramakien in thailand, hikayat seri rama in malaysia, reamker in cambodia, and ramadia lawana in the philippines. another reproduction of the ramayana is in the form of film entitled sita sings the blues. this film is directed by nina paley. this film displays images such as narrators in the form of shadow puppets and cartoon characters. they function as means by which experience in its richness and emotional complexity is communicated to audience. they also tell us the spirit of the age. shadow puppets represent the spirit in the ancient times while cartoon characters represent the modern times with animation technology. in his article, dodson mentions that the ramayana has the theme of heroes and heroic codes (dodson in carroll, 1996: 179). he includes the ramayana and sees rama from western point of view and somehow compares him with other heroes such as genji and achilles. he says that rama possesses many of the usual traits of a western heroic protagonist: aristocratic birth, piety, courage, great skill at arms, endurance, and singleness of purpose, but to these are added traits not often associated with the western heroic figure: courtesy, humility, modesty, self-denial, learning, a highly developed ethical sense, and especially compassion (dodson in carroll, 1996: 180). this fact is a proof that the ramayana is vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 115 widely recognized. on the one hand, the local colors that rama has are accepted even though his traits are not often found in western heroes. on the other hand, rama also possesses traits which are commonly shared by the western heroes. conclusion the ramayana is a work of world literature. this is proven by its history, translation, anthologization, circulation, and production. the history of the ramayana is identified by its local values which are widely accepted. the process of introducing the values is done through translation. translation plays an important role in encouraging people to pay attention to a certain literary piece. translation serves as a bridge connecting peoples from different cultures and languages. people especially scholars conduct more research by reading the anthology of the ramayana. it enables them to criticize and disseminate the works in it. it also becomes a resourceful reference for readers to study and give more responses. the process of production, reproduction, and circulation is done in order to introduce the local colors of great indian tradition to the world. therefore, there will always be refraction. the ramayana with its local colors still becomes the identity of india. however, with the help of technology, it provides us with widely accepted universal values. references carroll, michael thomas, no small world: visions and revisions of world literature. illinois: national council of teachers of english, 1996. print. damrosch, david, what is world literature? princeton: princeton university press, 2003. print. griffith. ralph, the ramayan of valmiki translated into english verse. london: trubner & co., 2008. print. narayan, r.k., the ramayana. new delhi: vision books pvt ltd., 1987. print. richman, paula, questioning ramayanas: a south asian tradition. berkeley: university of california press, 2001. print. richman, paula, ramayana stories in modern south india: an anthology. bloomington: indiana university press, 2008. print. romesh, dutt, the ramayana and the mahabharata. london: j. m. dent, 1917. print. 376 vol. 21 no. 2, october 2021, pp. 376-390 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i2.3241 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. racism towards black american: intersectionality in constructing social racist through poetical depiction by langston hughes and amy saunders i gusti ayu sundari okasunu, ni luh nyoman seri malini*, made detriasmita saientisna seri.malini@unud.ac.id english department, faculty of humanities, udayana university, indonesia abstract article information in this research, the development of racism based on the different formations of socio-cultural and historical aspects was the standpoint that was shown by the interpretation of poetical depiction of meaning and messages. the gap between langston hughes in “i, too, sing america” (1926) and amy saunders in “you’re not black” (2019) as the data advocates for racist transformation in natural past and present american socialization. several critical studies have examined the racial issues reflected in poems however they didn’t elaborate on racism specifically rather than segregation and discrimination although racism is classified in several types. moreover, the critical studies have been done only analyzed the racism happened on the past while this study compares the past and present racism as the concern of social construction among black american as the target of unfair treatments. the descriptive qualitative method using documentation, descriptive analysis, and note-taking technique was used to identify and elaborate meaning correlation with racial issues in the poems. this research aimed to classify the figurative language and its meaning related to racism while illustrating the development of racism from the perspective of sociocultural and historical aspects that influenced the poets and their poetry. theory of critical race was used to demonstrate that racism was developing in a different formation. the research has found the interconnection between historical values of slavery system constructed stereotypes of black people as minor american. social construction formed a cultural differentiation which led to segregation and discrimination towards black in any form of everyday aspects. keywords: racism; poetry; langston hughes; amy saunders received: 26 march 2021 revised: 15 may 2021 accepted: 8 june 2021 https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 377 introduction literature has taken a role in every expression in written things whereas the other documents cannot be classified as such (klarer, 1998). literature introduces people to new experiences means literary work immediate literary environment shaped by given social group and epoch (morris 2005, p.81) literary work tends to imitate the world that proceeded by text where it is capturing critics of its social phenomenon being reflected as the main basis. literature enables people to see through the other's lenses of perspective in which triggers the readers to reflect upon their life. racism is a common issue that is depicted in literary works. racism is a situation in which a group of people feels superior above the other group of people. wilson (1999, p. 14) stated that a root of racism is an ideology of racial domination which means that the presumed biological or cultural superiority of one or more racial groups is a means to justify or prescribed the inferior behavior in the social position of another group. racism as a process of socialization is the operation of certain levels of racial differentiations which is ‘racialized’ the downplaying diversity within both dominant and subordinate groups (satzewich, 2011). the practice of racial discrimination leads to racism happen following the american social perspective where it is also influenced by the historical values that this community has been held on for several years. the impact of this social racist is the shape of human culture to live an unequal life for the minor group. the term racism is developing along with the situation of america nowadays. even though time has passed and social life has improved, the practical ways of racism also developing correspond to the newest sociological term. the case that proves this term is the death of george floyd who was arrested shortly after allegedly using a fake $20 bill at a local cup foods on may 25, 2020, because of police custody while another white suspect of murder got compensation for his case. besides the demonstration, there are several ways to express protest against racism such as depicting racism through poetry. poetry is a criticism media of life under the condition fixed for such criticism by laws of poetic truth and beauty. poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful meaning in which expresses through written things (lennard, 2005). the special grammar of poetry emphasizes more meaning and deep feeling from the writer where in particular the ideas of the poet must be the realization of his or her experiences. the poet has a strong power to influence readers through their poetry. as mentioned by poetry foundation, there are more than a million poets who are enthusiastically writing against race and discrimination. two of them come from different ages but are famous for their openminded poetry to describe racism. they are langston hughes and amy saunders. langston hughes was an american poet, novelist, playwright, and short-story writer who was a black man born in joplin, missouri. he was famous against racism through his poems and novel in the 1969s. meanwhile, amy saunders was one of the 15th winners of the foyle young poets of the year award 2019. her poem won the prize as it depicted racial development in the 21st era. she has shown the modernization of racism along with social development and stereotypes through her ironical yet metaphoric poem. the sense of the metaphoric poem is derived from the figurative meaning that strengthens the poem to gather its ideas powerfully. according to perrine (1992), figurative language is the used of certain forms of language to communicate such as daily conversation, articles in the newspaper or journal, advertisements, novels and poems, etc that afford readers with the imaginative pleasure of literary works, bringing certain imagery, making something abstract to be concrete and sensuous, representing emotional intensity along with information and meaning, and the way to saying much in a brief. simply saying, figurative language is the figure of speech consist of certain thoughts as the meaning (bartczak, 2016). knickerbockers and reninger (1963) in their book entitled "interpreting literature" stated that figurative language derived from the word "metepherein" from greek which means to carry meaning beyond its literal meaning. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) okasunu et.al. 378 from those metaphoric meanings, the poet used to represent racism implicitly. the assumption of race is shaped by wider societal variable forces (oni & winant, 2004). the whole field of racism cannot be covered only by the theory and practice but also by the nature of racism itself. today, racist is a geneticist category whereas in the past it was a legal one. racism is regarded as a doctrine and defined as the theory of inequality of races. racism is a situation in which a group of people feels superior above the other group of people. in recent times, studies on racism have become the foundation to identify human social systems and interactions in the eye of the cultural diversity of origin. black poets as the pioneer of black voice have engaged in the illustration of important equal identity among races. race as a social categorization constructs the people based on their visual differences which are imputed identification of invisible differences. a range of critical studies has analyzed the interpretation of racist portrayal through the use of poem. khosravishakib (2017) wrote in social function of poetry from view of new criticism that poetry has the function of moral elements and representation. morality lied their values in the meaning and implicit ideas gathered in poetry. the intention of morality shown by its interconnection with the poet and the social life where the poet has been developing portrayed the personal experiences as the main source of ideas. the language of poetry unconsciously depicted morals and feeling as he highlighted in his research the judgment of social issues in the standard function of poetry. duki (2017) in the essential characteristics of langston hughes's poetry and their impact on the congolese conscience has shown the connection of morality in poetry influences other's moral development. he stated that every poem was written in form of a representation of particular essential characterization. he highlighted the external factors of langston hughes's poetry and the way from its figurative sense influence the congolese. the standpoint of his analysis resulting in the categorization on what way hughes's i, too destructed congolese. langston hughes who was famous for his ideas against racism led to an important event of protest through literary work in harlem renaissance. he has believed that racism differentiated the act and behavior relied on the assumption of natural biological and social differences in determining people by their races. along with the idea that racism can be protested through strong yet meaningful poetry, the critical studies on the interpretation of poetical-depiction on racism increasing. li and jun luo (2018) in a culturalist interpretation of the dark brother's sound bitterness in hughes's 'i, too, sing america" has stated that the dark brothers have been suffering to be characterized in cultural reality that unavoidably shaping the cultural interaction to be distanced from the white people as they often got impolite cultural awareness and led the deconstruction of superiority from cultural counterparts arrogantly. he found out that hughes depicted strong resistance in protesting the cultural discrimination that humiliated the bitterness of the dark brother's cultural associations. he highlighted that from the poem of hughes's perspective, there was an interpretation of black beauty in the profound of poetical expression and representation. similarly, stephane (2017) in "i'm bad man": when langston hughes traduces the reflexive bad effects of white people's racism on black individuals who refuse "feeling blue" in his poem "badman" or the blues poems has stated that the blues is very important as the part of their cultural development in their relationship with racist. he stated along with the ideas of the morality of poem that hughes wrote the blues poem to justify the importance for black to overcome and bear the racial injustice they have been through in american society. he found that langston hughes's poem "i'm a bad man" was focusing on the reflexive bad effects of racism from negro individuality. from the interpretation of the poem, black people have developed themselves stronger around violence and discrimination. there are two distinct phases in the sociology of racism as constructed by social development and social changes. the first journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 379 phrase defining racism as prejudicial beliefs and attitudes, for example, the income inequality between the whites and blacks could readily be explained used the perception of workplace discrimination, differences in the educational requirement, and legally segregated school. the term racism happened as social processes and construction namely racialization. although several studies discussed racism, this research is still relevant because the issue of racism is not common to be discussed in the language and literature field when this phenomenon still exists and happened in our daily life. moreover, the research conducted on poem is quite rare. the research about poem commonly discussed only the language feature used by the poet. however, this research analyzed in which way the poet represented racism happened or expressed in correlation with the real situation and condition that the writer wanted to draw. this research used socio-cultural and historical aspects and perspectives to strengthen the meaning analysis towards race and racism in poetry. this research also used two different poets who are langston hughes to represent the age of the 1920s and amy saunders to represent the year of 2019 as a comparison of how far racism developing in each period. methodology this research was utilizing the descriptive-qualitative method using documentation, descriptive analysis, and notetaking techniques (miles and hubman, 2014). the choice of literary works as the data was carefully taken by considering the meaning construction related to racism and the strength of the poems proven by their achievement for years. the data used in this research were the poem written by langston hughes (1926) entitled "i, too, sing america" and the poem written by amy saunders (2019) entitled "you're not black". the procedure for data collection was by the library research material from several journals, conference papers, textbooks, and news articles. in analyzing the data, the research used an analytical method where the critical analysis guided by several steps namely; classifying the figurative language and its meaning related to racism, analyzing the relationship between those poetical meanings and types of racism being portrayed, elaborated the connection between poem and its socio-cultural and historical background and comparing the two poems to analyze the development of racism from the past to present. several theories are also needed in the analysis to guide the explanation and straightforwardly keep the analysis on its standpoint. there was critical race theory proposed by richard delgado and jean stefancic in 2017 as the main theory and supported by the theory of figurative language proposed by knickerbockers and reninger in 1963. socio-cultural and historical aspects also joined the analysis as the external perspective regarding the poet to elaborate how situation shaped the human's mind in literary works and interpretation. results and discussion the interpretation of poem can be widely present based on personal knowledge however the term figurative language is used to guide the interpretation to straightforwardly follow the standpoint of analysis. racism in langston hughes's portrayal of "i, too, sing america" (1926) [1] line 1 "i, too, sing america" this poem started by ironically the notion of self-proclaimed affirmation that the main subject of the poem "i" is the speaker as he was a citizen he is also allowed to sing america. "i" as the subject of the poem can refer to africanamericans who are implicitly represented through the poem by langston hughes. the phrase 'sing america' means an act of a citizen that equally has the same role in the citizenship to do and to treat in the same way. it is classified as a metaphor since it is used to create a new sense where the literal meaning and the situation are applied. it is also a comparison and an expression showed in a simple way between the situation that the african-american people have faced and the right of them as a human being and as a citizen in america. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) okasunu et.al. 380 [2] line 2 "i'm the darker brother" the word "i'm the darker brother" has particularly a special image of the speaker that is presented through metaphorical meaning. the word "i'm" obviously pointed at the speaker as he is the main subject and the person who experienced the story which was the poem is about. it is proven by the following words "darker brother". "i'm" which is followed by "darker brother" brings up the assumption of self-recognition from the speaker as he is part of the darker family. [3] line 8-10 "tomorrow, i'll be at the table when company comes" tomorrow has a meaning for the day after today, one day after today, or probably the time we cannot predict in the future. in accentuation for how long is the period that they will be at the table is not being predicted by hughes however hughes does not want to discourage his darker family about their hope. "tomorrow" is chosen as the replacement of the word that means "time will heal" so this line stands for langston hughes's hope and beliefs for justice to black americans. the line says "i'll be at the table" metaphorically representing the position, status, and power within persons in social construction. moreover, langston hughes stand for personal self-beliefs to dispute the third line by stating that african-americans will have to sit at the same table which means will speak as loud as the whites, will act as brave as the whites, and will live the life with their wisdom not to be afraid and being under the other person, but stand with their own feet on their own country, tomorrow. [4] line 15-17 "besides, they'll see how beautiful i am and be ashamed—" these lines begin with the self-confidence of the speaker who declares himself as someone who will be 'bloom' as beautiful as he is and all of the people who see him lowly would be ashamed of what they have done to him. the beauty of themselves through their color is shown in line 16 which says "they'll see how beautiful i am". this line shows that the time for them to be admitted as an american citizen is now coming and they have their rights to grow up and develop themselves to live life with wisdom. this line also tells the self-conception of the black people as american that lead the whites to the conclusion of what they have done is wrong and they have to be ashamed of the fact that the people they were discriminated of and they have isolated are growing up and stand with equal confidence and strength as well as them. this line used a metaphor and says "how beautiful i am" is not exactly mean the appearance of the speaker because the word "beautiful" there attach many meanings. according to this poem, langston hughes describing the "beauty" in the sentence "they'll see how beautiful i am" as the declaration of pride and conception of black america. the line "how beautiful i am" means that black america can grow older and bigger than the whites and can reach real happiness with a brighter and better life than the whites in an equal situation. [5] line 18 "i, too, am america" the last line begins with the repetition that same as the beginning of the poem. moreover, the last line expresses the affirmation to emphasize that the black people already have the recognition as the american and free from racial discrimination. this line also has a function as a conclusion or the ending of life as happy life for the africanamerican people. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 381 storyline of langston hughes's "i, too, sing america" figure 1. storyline of langston hughes's poem "i, too, sing america" the diagram above shows the fluctuation of a black speaker as he is representing the darker brother from the spirit of anti-racism. it has increased when seen by the diagram firstly the speaker affirms himself as american then growing up to have a self-believe rely on a better future for black people. intersectionality is the name of darker brother construct social racism in poetical depiction of "i, too, sing america" by langston hughes. the term intersectionality is a closeminded perception that creates stages over society. in the 1920s when langston hughes was alive, this term is well-known as caste and social system. the caste itself leads the growth of white supremacy where the black people should have and always be under the legal rule that white is the owner of black people because of the slavery system. even though in langston hughes's era there is no slavery however the perception and the culture of slavery still hold a role. black people have no power as white. this term shows in hughes's poem "i, too" line number 2 which says: "i'm the darker brother" (i, too, sing america line-2) the word darker has been explained before as a meaning of skin color and racial identity. however, some people thought this word was only the representation of race in hughes's perspective. indeed, the word "darker" is derived from the cultural perspective from the history of racism itself. the relationship between race and physical appearance is undeniable at the same time uncertain. it becomes a subject to distinguished people. as rayford logan has said, there would be the darker skin with tightly curled hair, thick lips, and broad noses among the negroes. therefore, the term "dark" was created to identify people. the term "dark" is used to classify people in their social life activities. as time passed by, they used it as a cultural perspective that constructs their social life and group. the belief that one with darker skin color belongs to the low-class society makes a thick line that is classified as the intersection between white and black people in america. they used it as a culture that must have a continuation perspective so that the race cannot be mix and white still has the power. on the other hand, they used the term "darker" as a racial identity to symbolize a low-class community. the term "darker" that is part of intersectionality represents in langston journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) okasunu et.al. 382 hughes's poem is all based on the sociocultural experience of the poet and his friend. langston hughes and the other black kids were not allowed to swim at the ymca or join the boy scouts. the black people and their kids which were called colored boys which has the same meaning as "darker brother" at that time were not allowed to take the grammar class, play at the school teams, and were forbidden to play against whites. at the patee theater on massachusetts street, for example, there was a sign that said "no colored admitted" in the box office. little langston and other black boys could only be listening to the movies wistfully while the other whites friend talked about the latest episodes of charlie chaplin and mary pickford. the term "no colored admitted" was created as the cultural perspective where it is followed by social construction. thomas sowell (1994) has said in the book "race and culture: a world view" that history was recorded because it was representing peoples and nations however the patterns that emerge in history were the pattern of culture(2006). people submitted the term of color as the cultural pattern on the way they distinguished groups within the community. langston hughes was living in a period where the colored culture led his society to the new reconstruction of what people called racial differentiation. moreover, those intersections then lead to the form of social construction as shows in hughes's "i, too, sing america" line 810 which says: "tomorrow, i'll be at the table when company comes" (i, too, sing america line 8-10) some poems protest the social conditions of black specifically; some are boldly declarative of the beauty and dignity of the race; still others—perhaps the most revered— transcend both angry protest and bold declaration to affirm quietly the dignity and historicity of blacks. hughes reacted as both artist and social critic to the primitivism ferment of the early twentieth century. hughes's position was of course complicated by his racial identity, which made him an object and not merely an observer of primitivism representations. as a poet, hughes constantly tries to illustrate how formal qualities may assist an act of engaged social criticism. despite the use of words that divide us into the "transparency" of poem meaning and convey us to believe that we are taking an unmediated view through a windowpane of a world outside the poem, hughes offers historical knowledge by directing our attention to his careful arrangement of words on the page. his style often fluctuates the language formation in the poem's social perspectives. hughes's speaker assumes two points of view: observer and victim. figure 2. meaning description of black people self-believe in langston hughes's "i, too" journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 383 from the diagram above, the speaker shows that the only way to completely free from the cultural subjugation, domination, and manipulation of the cultural counterparts of dark brothers is to be aware to develop their cultural persistence through the successive enhancement of their awareness of cultural subjectivity through cultural communication, cultural negotiation, and cultural subversion instead of cultural dependence, cultural submission, and cultural concession. "no matter how hard they have to suffer, the day when everything is changing to be better will come soon" is the key point for line 8 and line 9. the ninth line which says "i'll be at the table" representing the future using the modal "will" and equality from the word "be at the table". the word "table" here has many interpretations such as: • "table" is a place where two or more people sit and communicate with the same posture and body positions to describes the social equality status. • "table" has a role in social life because when people talk at the same table it means they have the same class or even there is no class classification among them. • "table" is human rights because western people metaphorically call a table the symbol of justice and rights. furthermore, langston hughes uses repetition for the line four and ten, as says "when company comes". the line with the notion of "company" in it has a metaphoric meaning identifying such as the group of white people, the highest class person, the power holders, and rich man/woman in the community but all of them are the white american which shows the existence of social determination that construct the social interaction in american society. racism in amy saunders's portrayal of "you're not black" (2019) (6) line 3-4 "i eat with a knife and fork" "you're not black if you don't use your hands to eat" saunders in the third line depicted the speaker eating with the table manner ethics using the cutlery to represent and show the level of equality. she uses situational irony where the black people use cutlery to not being underestimated as african-american. this is considered as situational irony because although the black people are already got their human rights, the stereotypes that develop in american society force them to fall into a trap of wanting to be the same and act the same as the white people so that they would not be discriminated base on their racial identity. (7) line 11-12 “yet, i am familiar with the beat of pounding pounding of sugar cane, the whipping of backs” in these two lines, saunders uses the term metaphor to represents the gap between the capitalist as the social holder and the slaves in the working-class community. the statement of the eleventh line is strengthened by the depiction of the working field present in line twelve. the line pounding of sugar cane, the whipping of backs represents yet the time has passed, the historical values when economical conditions for the black people was imbalance and forced them to be right in working classes were at another low point, and there was intense labor and racial strife whenever they are talking about the black american existence in the community. (8) line 13-14 the cries and screams of my ancestors ring loud in my head centuries later racial discrimination is assumed to be the most thing from the past that whites may assert as the 'african paranoid' since they often give them the advice that slavery happened hundreds of years ago but the strong effects of the racist that happened in the past still following the next generation. these lines represent their self-rejection towards the old perspective about slave and enslaved however metaphorically they also cannot neglect the fact that whether free or enslaved, the african americans were not able to be the pure citizens of america because of the large number of white represented in setting the formula for enumerating the population. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) okasunu et.al. 384 (9) line 17-18 and i'm sorry if i don't live up to your 'black norms' but i live in a world with segregated dorms the use of ironic language continuing in the representation of black matter and black social construction in lines seventeen to eighteen where there is the emergence of two racial terms used by the white people and black people to implicitly portray racism. the first one is the term "black norm" mentioned in line seventeenth where it is originally derived from the whiteness perspective on the social and community law they made up in the past to maintain the position between black and white to be always the same in white dominancy. black norms refer to the preference for whites that makes it is harder than the norm and social construction practiced in american life can be proved as discrimination outlawed by civil rights. carefully considered, the black norm can be also seen as an examination to reveals a pattern to what is seemingly arbitrary as racial action. in sociological terms, people internalize certain values and norms that induce them to participate in, accept and reproduce relations of production however in the term of the black norm, white american forced what must be internalized in addition to make white values as the highest role and the black american participate as the servant to accept the status they made for them. and bound up with such representations are certain societal norms, gender roles, attitudes towards certain groups, etc., which may be disseminated and normalized or satirized that could be seen as the process of interpellation of ethnic identification. the meaning of "i don't live up to your black norm" represent the great rejection of the active presence of experience which forms the schemes of perception, thought, and action that tends to guarantee the 'correctness' of the constancy of formal rules in the explicit norm of white supremacy. there is no term of a black norm in the historical values because if the state is racist, it is racist to everyone; it is merely more difficult for white people to see this because part of the racism of the state is to treat and promote whiteness as the norm. they ignored the fact of humans and norms but created the white norm to rely on the invisibility of whiteness and the focus on blackness as particular and deviant. this obscures the fact that whiteness is just as integral to the mechanisms of racism (in the same way that homophobia relies on homosexuality as the defining identity of gays and lesbians and obscures the particularism of heterosexuality). saunders uses the term 'black norm' where the speaker rejected to be live on as an allusion to the formation of social classes that violate the human norms to create a social structure in which white people hold on to the power strongly over the existence of black people. saunders represents the sense of incompatible norm with its purposes in implementing the norm itself. she continues to strengthen the situational irony faced by the african american in the next line saying "but i live in a world with segregated dorms" to represents the segregation. saunders uses irony in term of situational irony seen by the condition she depicted in line seventeenth that the speaker does not want to live under the domination of whiteness however the eighteenth line depicted the situation where the speaker only rejected to accept to live under the norm that white people created for them and still they live in the segregated norm as the part of discrimination and segregation. the term 'segregated dorm' brought by saunders in this line implicitly referring both spatial and mental segregation which is creating non-cooperative communal structures but stark the internal as well as external divisions. (10) line 20-21 i'm not trying to in any way be mean but i live in a society covered in white sheen saunders must have a strong belief in the opposition of whiteness. it is depicted in her 20th line in her poem that she representing a speaker who is in an inner conflict between herself and her social life. from the beginning it has been identified that the speaker in saunders's poem is a black person, struggling for the racist acts in the community. the previous lines have shown the way how black people tried to demand their human rights and how cruel america is. however, like a slow wind after a storm, the speaker in saunders's journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 385 poem reflected her guilty and her sadness that she never tried to be mean but society forced her to be mean to protect herself. it is portrayed in the contradiction depicted in those lines that the speaker lives in the society that saunders metaphorically said as "white sheen" with it are relying on the perspective of racial segregation and white power. as mentioned by a historical research of the notion "whiteness", the term "society covered in white sheen" which is referring to the notion of whiteness itself depicted by saunders is the social community that identifies itself as a white and "signifier power". although there are human rights and declaration of independence in america, the categorization is something that must be practiced. no wonder the more society changes, the more racial discrimination being practicing. some are arguing that the term of whiteness and white supremacy in society is formed by the prestige of white people itself. on another hand, proven by history even the poor whites are praised for their existence. it is different from the places that even the richest black man ever had in his life, still being under the poor white although the society covered it well. as jeff forrest has argued that whiteness is conferred upon the poor whites that they certainly have the privileges including all the respect and deference from slaves. thus formed american society into a land where racism was found for the reason saunders metaphorically saying "society covered with white sheen". storyline of amy saunders's "you're not black" figure 3 the storyline of langston hughes's poem "i, too, sing america" journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) okasunu et.al. 386 the figure shows similarities between saunders’s poem and hughes's poem story however the differences are shown from the part when the speaker lost her self-confidence regarding racial practices and tried to be as close as white and resemble their culture. moreover, the poem shows the tendency that black people are haunted by their history. however, the ending of both poems is the same, the rise of black spirit and nationalism. intersectionality and segregation that construct social racist in present america depicted by saunders "you're not black" line 15-18 "so how dare you? how dare you put me down! question my ethnicity, i'm still a shade of brown and i'm sorry if i don't live up to your 'black norms' but i live in a world with segregated dorms intersectionality is closely related to segregation. people of color or known as black americans are separated from the whole american in terms of physical appearance and social status. they were labeled as african american not purely american. the gap line between these two different communities created what people knew as an intersection. in saunders's poem, the term of this intersection is reflected from the use of metaphorical language "i'm still a shade of brown" which means the speaker acknowledges her entity as black people in a society full of white power. saunders used the phrase "shade of brown" to emphasize the position and its gap between white and color people, african americans. as intersectionality has defined the line that separated one bigger community from the other smalls, saunders expressed the position of black people as to where they are the shadow under the white hands. the pressure of intersectionality has always being practiced whenever black people tried to get along with the community. in social perspective for example a case happened in history reported in the book entitled "racist america: roots, current realities and future reparation" mention of brother and sister that were ripped from their homes and imported in chains to virginia, their name were being ignored as they were called as "negro john" and "negro mary" without their last name by their new white family who has purchased them for a slave ship. it can be figured out that white people always make a distance by labeling the black people so they won't pass the intersection between them. therefore, it constructs the social life to be full in the hand of whiteness as mentioned in the lines below: line 21-22 "i'm not trying to in any way be mean but i live in a society covered in white sheen generally, skin color was the part of a name that was largely used as a conceptual framework among whites to treat most of "blackness" in negative terms. white people named this as racial ideology where they defined themselves as superior groups who are justifiably dominant to make this term rational and placed black people as inferior as the groups who deserve the lower status in american society. through these lines, saunders expressed her feeling reflected by the speaker in her poem who's not sick for a society which means she has tried her best to take it back. however, discrimination towards black people was encountered to be stressful for the target of those discriminatory. united states of america is recognizing metaphorically as a house of racism from saunders 22th line saying "i live in a society covered in white sheen" which means america is a place for those who are white to be free and easily run the society. comparison: intersectionality and separation between black and white american portrayed by langston hughes and amy saunders "i'm the darker brother" (langston hughes "i, too" line -2) "so how dare you? how dare you put me down! question my ethnicity, i'm still a shade of brown and i'm sorry if i don't live up to your 'black norms' journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 387 but i live in a world with segregated dorms (amy saunders "you're not black" line 15-18) `intersectionality is the term where power, privilege, disadvantage, and discrimination are all functioning in the interlocking spectrums of identity (delgado and stefancic, 2013). once a person believes in the term of intersection, it will along with racism created the difficult rejection of gender or sexuality as a category to recognize discrimination. it leads to the implications of the violence and discrimination to reach the higher victims on the black woman. intersectionality helps to reveal the privilege when someone remembered that intersection is multidimensional where multiple dimensions intersect. as society categorizes someone based on race, it might be that race plays the role as a whole cluster of color, culture, identification, and experience. it also can be concluded that intersectionality itself is related to the hierarchy. once the hierarchy is made, the problems of social construction become more complex. intersectionality can be defined as the belief of individual classes and interests. the term "darker brother" in langston hughes's "i, too" deeply representing the brotherhood or root of the family of the darker skin people in america which is the africanamerican. the term "darker" which is referred to skin color is more about the label of personal race and biological appearance belongs to the ancestor. dark skin color is something that is passed down genetically by the ancestors and something inevitable because it involves heredity. no one could deny their heredity and must accept it. however, based on historical aspect, the black people or african people have had kidnapped a long time ago in the transatlantic trade slavery. the status when the african first stepped down their feet in america was as a slave and worker. according to robert fogel, the developments of the "slaves" in america which grew into a group of african-americans is based on the "age-old sentiments" on the slavery system where the whites have emphasis with a new race that justified the domination of white over the black and labeled them as "the darker brother" to create a slight differentiation and segregation. meanwhile, saunders within those lines also shows the wall that differentiates the society between the major group and black people the minor. saunders used the term "black norms" and "segregated dorm" to emphasize the different world black people and white people have had. normally in history, there was the only term of the white norm since they were the founder of those terms, however, saunders implicitly does the allusion to protest saying the norm is from the black. on the other hand, these phrases emphasize also the intention that the line says "i'm sorry if i don't live up to your black norms" which means that the black people are never agreed with the intersection white people has made for them. unfortunately, they have no power to leave the segregated society that they have sick of for years. moreover, still related to the meaning of "shade of brown" and "segregated dorms" that indicated the racial separation within society, a new york minister and editor namely samuel e cornish has denounced that the lacked price of races is stunning by such term namely "negro" "colored" and "african". the term of segregation to make a distinction between white and black use from the langston hughes era until the present even though they use different types of naming. the intention to label the black people tend to create stereotypes in american society that construct their position in the daily aspects as mentioned in lines derived from both poems below: "i'll be at the table when company comes" (langston hughes "i, too" line 9 and 10) "i'm not trying to in any way be mean but i live in a society covered in white sheen" (amy saunders "you're not black" line 21-22) what these lines represent have similarity with what dickinson, washington, and other influential white leaders described slavery as creating people who would be cowardly, weak, degenerate, and inferior from their viewpoint that seen african american to be kept and treated as slaves or simply saying it is a natural law of american society. the lines of this part of the poem depicted that by the time there are journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) okasunu et.al. 388 many black and white abolitionist who was aggressively protesting the slavery system which is only lead to sad and sorrow for the life of african american so it still being a consideration and a struggle for the next generation of the black family to survive without being discriminated in american society. the interests of the white racial class have included not only a concrete interest in labor and other exploitation during the slavery and segregation periods but also a concrete interest later on in maintaining the privileges inherited from one's ancestors. in langston hughes's poem, black people tend to seek equality and got no more than little power to be in the same position as whites. they have less power and position based on the construction of social status. it is depicted from the notion table used to represent the hand of human rights. he uses the notion of the table to emphasize the stages there to determine where black people must be and what power whites hold on. people with black skin are considered to be in the lower status where the social development to maintain the power of whites as the highest status. the strongest belief of separated social life leads to the strongest impact of negative attitudes about "blackness" that are reproduced locally by the major community to identify and strengthen the "whiteness" role. the formation of whom society you are living in clearly depicted by saunders in correlation to what in 1760s indian people mostly believe is the color term occur as the markers of clear distinctions between people and their indications of belonging a land. white america does know their land is a land for free but they shape their perspective to not acknowledge the term of land for people yet distinguished their society into black and black to make it divided between the african americans and themselves as american. conclusion this paper tried to show the complex practice and the structural development of races from the eye of literary work poetry in different ages. the research resulted in the elaborated analysis of three great parts. firstly, langston hughes and amy saunders's poems were depicted meaning that focus on the determination of white and black in american society implicitly emphasized the practices of whiteness in american society as a system of positional status based on the influence of black slaves stereotypes derived from history. secondly, based on the categorization of racial practice in critical race theory, both poems have represented american society as the bowl of racism where the intention to force whiteness to the black's personality created an effect of white dominancy in every single part of living matter. lastly, racism in america based on the analysis of socio-cultural and historical aspects as the mean to compare both poems has shown that it was developed from past to present in complex yet implicit intention and construction. the two poets portrayed different soul to be black because langston depicted black people as they have the spirit to move on and fight for their equality in the eye of human right meanwhile saunders depicted the black people in the present to lost their self-confidence and seen the advantages to be white so they often pretending to follow the nature of whiteness. therefore, the meaning that emphasizes discriminate social construction in america based on racial identity can be presented in the table below; journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 389 table 1 american past and present social construction base on skin color past (langston hughes’s poem “i, too”) present (amy saunders’s poem “you’re not black”) social construct-ion indicator black white black white social position low class high class equal equal race perception dogma: blackness (slaves) dogma: whiteness (company) stereotypes: black as newcomer stereotypes: white’s racial privilege socializati-on within society segregate: minor small group dominant: major with big group discriminate: physical appearance dominant: land ownership stigma evaluation of environ-ment live in an area that is predominantly black live in central area live in middle income area; stay-spread from the table above, the differences between past and present construction of social life base on racial identity are significant. the social life construction has been changed from the form of social class into the form of apply new stigma about racial differentiation. in the past, white people maintain their position to dominate social interactions however, white people in the present adopt new stereotypes that stem from whiteness stigma and the notion of white land ownership (racial privileges that white is the owner of america). in the past, hughes represents different social construction of white and black using a clear distinction of “darker family” and “company”. it shows the different classes and social statuses between black and white people. meanwhile, saunders represents the different social construction between black and white people using the implicit meaning of “society covered in white sheen” which means an equal society that applies closed racial discrimination. closed racial discrimination is an act to do racist implicitly as a new habit resulted from the development of old stigma that sees whites are inherently superior to blacks. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) okasunu et.al. 390 references arango, t & friends. 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(1941). theory of literature. lowe & brydone ltd., london https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-floyd.html https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-floyd.html https://doi.org/10.15640/ijll.v5n2a17 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47558/i-too https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47558/i-too http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.6n.2p.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.6n.2p.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/sll.v2n1p27 https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/youre-not-black/ https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/youre-not-black/ http://www.allsubjectjournal.com/ journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) levita setya budi & dewi widyastuti 116 self-determination to fight oppressions as seen in the main character of the color purple by alice walker levita setya budi & dewi widyastuti iralevita@gmail.com & ewi@usd.ac.id department of english letters, universitas sanata dharma abstract in several cultures in the world, women usually receive inequality and experience oppression. these experiences are reflected in a literary work by alice walker entitled the color purple. this novel tells about a woman, named celie, who is oppressed. however, she fights the oppression by having her self-determination. this study tries to identify how the characteristics of celie are described, to find out how the oppressions that she experiences are described, and to examine how her self-determination to fight the oppressions are described. the color purple proves that self-determination helps women to fight oppression whatever characteristic that they have. celie is described as an uneducated, submissive, and unattractive woman in the story. she experiences sexual oppressions and non-sexual oppression. she proves that her sexual self-determination, by having a lesbian relationship with shug, and non-sexual self determination, leaving her husband to memphis and running her own business, helps her to fight oppressions that she experiences, and she could live her life without any oppression. feminist approach and radical feminism theory were used in this study to analyze self-determination to fight oppression of the main character of the color purple. keywords: self-determination, oppression, women introduction in several cultures in the world, women are usually treated differently from men. they always experience inequality because they are considered lower than men. women were not able to enjoy the rights that men had. it happens because of the patriarchal culture. in patriarchy, men were the center of everything. only men that had the rights and authorities at home in patriarchal society (madsen, 2000: xii). susan brownmillershares the idea that men use oppression as a strategy for sustaining patriarchy. she also shares the radical position that all women constitute a single class with the same experience of oppression. one example of oppression here is rape. all women are victimised by rape because the threat of rape is directed to all women in patriarchal society.it is a way to dominate women in patriarchy because it benefits the men (madsen, 2000: 12). the domination of patriarchal society is the main concern of radical feminism that will be used in this study as they opposed the domination of patriarchal society, as stated here, “radical-libertarian feminists rejected patriarchal society’s assumption there is a necessary connection between one’s sex (male or female) and one’s gender (masculine or feminine). instead, they claimed that gender is separable from sex mailto:iralevita@gmail.com mailto:ewi@usd.ac.id journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 117 and that patriarchal society uses rigid gender roles to keep women passive (“affectionate, obedient, responsive to sympathy and approval” (tong, 2009: 51). according to andrea dworkin, there are three fundamental terms of radical feminism. first, women are the oppressed class and men are the class of oppressor in a patriarchal society. second, their relationship is maintained through physical violence against women. third, the oppression happens systematically under patriarchy (madsen, 2000: 162). women, that are always being the victims of oppression, did not keep silent. they make many movements to struggle and fight for their rights throughout the history. one example of the movements is the three movements of american feminism. these movements show the self-determination that is done by women. self-determination is a way that can be used by women to fight oppressions that they experience. the term self-determination according to camille paglia means, “what this means is that the individual should be granted the freedom to do anything that does not restrict the freedom of any other individual to do anything they wish” (madsen, 2000: 24). in this study, the writer uses the color purple by alice walker as the object of the study because the aim of this study is to reveal the self-determination to fight oppressions as seen in the main character of the novel, which is celie. celie is a fourteen year-old girl that experienced oppression in her life. she is getting raped and abused by her stepfather. she is forced to marry a man that also abuses her. the oppressions that she experiences can be divided into two, which are sexual and non-sexual oppression. at the first of the story, she appears as a submissive woman. she never fights back; she just receives any oppression that she gets. however, at the end of the story, she is able to react and fight any oppression that she gets by using self-determination. self-determination self-determination refers to characteristics of someone that leads someone to have freedom. by having freedom, they are able to make choices based on their own self. women would be able to live without any oppression in their life. the term self-determination is described by camille paglia. according to her, self-determination means, “what this means is that the individual should be granted the freedom to do anything that does not restrict the freedom of any other individual to do anything they wish” (madsen, 2000: 24). self-determination can be used as a way to fight oppression. this is in line with the role of radical feminism according to andrea dworkin. the role of radical feminism is to offer an accurate analysis of the condition of women who are angry with men that oppress them, to offer a means of women rage so they can properly direct to those who oppress them, and to point to a struggle that is based on self-determination (madsen, 2000: 163). furthermore, for someone that has self determination means taking some actions to fight an identity which he or she has received from society. for women that are oppressed, they have to become self determining. they have to take action in order to fight against the oppression that they received, as stated here, “to become self-determining for a woman means taking some kind of action against an identity which she has received from her social conditioning—i.e., the identity of the so called inferior sex,” (wandor, 1986: 134). radical feminism encourages women to be self-determining. women have to be united and develop solidarity with each other. it asserts that women are strong and powerful, and not weak. it also declares that they refuse objectification and exploitation by men (wardon, 1986: 135). radical feminists agree that patriarchal society oppresses women, as stated here that, “socialist feminists agree with marxist journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) levita setya budi & dewi widyastuti 118 feminists that capitalism is the source of women’s oppression, and with radical feminists that patriarchyis the source of women’s oppression” (tong, 2009: 4). feminist states that being lesbian is a form of sexual self-determination because women want to release from the domination of patriarchy (madsen, 2000: 226). celie’s characteristics 1. uneducated celie, the main character in the story, is described as an uneducated woman. it can be inferred from her manner in writing her letters to god and her sister, nettie. she writes her letters in a typical language of black americans. her lacking of education happens because her stepfather never lets her go to school. for him, celie is a dumb person, as stated in the story, “you too dumb to keep going to school, pa say” (p. 11). here, it can be seen that celie’s stepfather has a direct description that celie is an uneducated woman; she is too dumb for him. celie’s stepfather also thinks that celie is not a clever woman. in the story, celie’s sister named nettie is the one that should go to school. he says that nettie is clever enough to go to school and celie is not the clever one, as stated in celie’s letter, “the first time i got big pa took me out of school. he never care that i love it. nettie stood there at the gate holding tight to my hand. i was all dress for first day. you too dumb to keep going to school, pa say. nettie the clever one in this bunch” (p. 11). here, it is clearly stated that celie’s stepfather sees celie and her sister, nettie, differently when he takes celie out from school. he does not allow celie to study. in his eyes, celie is dumb and not the clever one, but her sister is the other way around. celie’s stepfather considers that celie has to do everything that a woman should do at home, not going to school. in the eyes of her stepfather, celie is good to be a wife and keep children, not for going to school and get education. it can be seen from his conversation with albert, celie’s husband, before they get married. celie’s stepfather says, “she ugly. don’t even look like she kin to nettie. but she’ll make the better wife. she ain’t smart either, and i’ll just be fair, you have to watch her or she’ll give away everything you own. but she can work like a man,” (p. 10). celie’s stepfather convinces albert to take celie as his wife. even though celie is uneducated and different from nettie, celie can be a better wife. she can work like a man. for celie’s stepfather, celie is also good with children, “she good with children” (p. 12). 2. submissive celie is a submissive woman. she always obeys every word from her stepfather, her husband, and her stepchildren. she could not be mad every time she gets oppression from her stepfather. it can be seen from her speech; she says that a child has to obey her father and her mother because there is a norm written in the bible that says so, i can’t even remember the last time i felt mad, i say. i used to git mad at my mammy cause she put a lot of work on me. then i see how sick she is. couldn’t stay mad at her. couldn’t be mad at my daddy cause he my daddy. bible say, honor father and mother no matter what. then after while every time i got mad, or start to feel mad, i got sick. felt like throwing up. terrible feeling. then i start to feel nothing at all (p. 39). the statement above gives an indirect presentation about celie, it is clear that celie is submissive. she knows what the bible said and her reaction proves that she is submissive. she obeys the norm. she obeys her stepfather and never gets mad at him even though in her past life, her stepfather rapes her. celie’s past life gives a significance proof that celie is a submissive woman. when her stepfather gives a command to her, “you gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t” (p. 3). this means that celie has to satisfy her journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 119 stepfather’s sexual desire. it happens after celie’s mother getting sick and cannot satisfy his sexual desire. celie’s stepfather rapes her until she gets pregnant twice. however, celie still never makes any protest toward any oppression that she experiences. celie is not only obeying what her father asks her to do but also her husband. her husband is so cruel to her. he always asks celie to do everything. if celie does not obey him, he will beat her. this makes celie fears him and never fights back. instead of fighting back whenever her husband beats her, celie just said, “i say, just born that way, i reckon.” (p. 22). she believes that everything that happens to her is a kind of fate. she thinks that she was born that way, so she has to receive it and becomes afraid of her husband. for other characters, like harpo, nettie, sofia, and kate, all of them agree that celie is very submissive. for harpo, celie’s stepchildren, celie is an obedient person because she always does whatever his father asks her to do and never refuses it (p. 56). celiealso obeys her husband’s children. it can be seen from her reaction every time her stepchildren ask her to do everything. she just obeys them and lets them run over her and does whatever they ask her to do. celie’s unwillingness to fight back reminds sofia, harpo’s wife, about her mother. for sofia, celie looks similar her mother who never stands up for herself. sofia’s mother always lives under her husband’s foot that always does everything that her husband asks her to do (p. 38). 3. unattractive throughout the story, celie is described as an unattractive woman. her personal description shows how unattractive she is. her appearances in the story, such as wearing a tight dress and having a fat body (p.12) show that she is a very unattractive woman. compared to nettie, celie is less attractive than her. “i know i’m not as pretty or as smart as nettie, but she say i ain’t dumb” (p. 11). from this statement, it can be seen that celie’s thought shows that she is not as pretty and smart as her sister. the other characters in the story often give a direct presentation or opinion about celie, like her father, her husband, and shug. celie’s stepfather states that celie is ugly, “she ugly. don’t even look like she kin to nettie,” (p. 10). for him, celie is different from nettie, she is ugly. not only celie’s stepfather who thinks she is ugly but also shug. she said that celie is really ugly at the first time she saw her. mr. children all bright but they she looks at her from head to toe and mean. they saycelie, i want dis. celie, i want dat. our mama let us have it. he don’t say nothing. they try to get his tention, he hide hind a puff of smoke. don’t let them run over you, nettie say. you got to let them know who got the upper hand they got it, i say. but she keep on, you got to fight. you got to fight. but i don’t know how to fight. all i know how to do is stay alive (p. 17). as a sister, nettie is the one that always remindscelie to fight. celie cannot just let them run over her. however, celie is not willing to fight for herself. for her, it is enough to stay alive rather than to fight back. nothing looks attractive in celie, it is clearly stated in the story, “she look me over from head to foot. then she cackle. sound like a death rattle. you sure is ugly, she say, like she ain’t believed it,” (p. 42). in the story, celie’s husband described celie as an unattractive woman from the very first time he saw her. he described celie as an ugly woman since the first time he saw her (p. 9). later, he also describes that celie is skinny, funny, too scared to open her mouth to people, not a good cook, a pore, and black. he says everything bad about celie (p. 176). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) levita setya budi & dewi widyastuti 120 oppressions experienced by celie 1. sexual oppression celie as a woman, she is the oppressed class in patriarchal society based on andrea dworkin’s (madsen, 2000: 162) fundamental terms in radical feminism. the story begins with the sexual oppression done by celie’s stepfather. she experiences repeated rapes from her stepfather at the age of fourteen. as a submissive woman, she cannot fight or refuse whenever her stepfather rapes her. you gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t. first he put his thing up gainst my hip and sort of wiggle it around. then he grab hold my titties. then he push his thing inside my pussy. when that hurt, i cry. he start to choke me, saying you better shut up and git used to it (p. 3). he rapes celie many times until celie gets pregnant twice since her mother was very busy with her children and cannot satisfy her husband’s sexual desire. so, in this case,celie is the one who replaces her mother’s role to satisfy her stepfather’s sexual desire. however, celie just keeps that as a secret and never tells her mother that her stepfather rapes her. her mother only knows that he is so kind to her. after celie’s mother died, celie is more oppressed by her stepfather. he forces her to marry albert, someone whocelie always calls as mr._ in her letters. actually, albert wants to marry nettie, celie’s sister. however, celie’s stepfather does not let him marry nettie because nettie is too young for albert. celie’s stepfather sees nettie as an educated person, he supports nettie to get she does not have any right to decide to whom she will get married. however, after marrying albert, celie’s life does not even change. she is more oppressed by her husband sexually. celie’s husband that always described celie as an unattractive woman from the very first time he saw her, he only treatscelie as a sexual object, “mr. clam on top of me, do his business, in ten minutes us both sleep,” (p. 59). celie never feels the sexual pleasure from her husband. 2. non-sexual oppression in the story, celie is not only experiencing sexual oppressions, but also the non-sexual one. her stepfather always treated her badly. her stepfather does not allow celie for getting an education. celie stays at home and he makes celiedo everything that a woman should do at home. she has to cook and do everything like her mom, and also satisfy his sexual pleasure (p. 3). after experiencing repeated rapes by her stepfather, celie gets pregnant and the oppression does not stop there. later, after celie gives birth to her babies; her stepfather takes her babies and gives them to missionaries. that celie is not allowed to care for her babies is an oppression from her stepfather. the other non-sexual oppression that celie gets is violence from her stepfather and husband. they do not hesitate to beat her whether celie does what they want or not. moreover, albert thinks that women are good to be beaten, as what stated here, “harpo ast his daddy why he beat me. mr. higher education and reach her dream to be say, cause she my wife. plus, she a schoolteacher. because of that reasons, as the father,he forces celie to marry to albert. he thinks that celie will be a good wife if she marries with to, as what he says to albert, “but she’ll make the better wife,” (p. 10). as a submissive woman, celie obeys her stepfather to marry the man she does not love and love her back. celie does not have any other choices because as a black woman, stubborn.all women good for—he don’t finish,” (p. 22). he believes that a woman should be lower than man. a woman is the inferior and a man is the superior. a woman should obey man. he thinks that he has the power to rule and control his wife by beating her. in this story, the relationship between celie and the men in her family, her journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 121 stepfather, and husband, is maintained by physical violence. it is in agreement with the second and third fundamental terms of radical feminism by andrea dworkin (madsen, 2000: 162), which is the relation of men and women is maintained by means of unceasing physical violence. the main reason why her stepfather and husband use physical violence to celie is systematic under patriarchy. moreover, albert treats celie like she is a slave. at home, she does everything that a woman should do at home, such as cleaning house, cooking, and taking care her stepchildren (p. 20). at the field, celie also has to work in the field for hours, like what is stated here, “he wake up while i’m in the field. i been chopping cotton three hours by time he come,” (p. 26). in the society where celie lives, it is a common situation that a woman works in the field. it can be seen from the conversation between kate and harpo, “harpo, she say. harpo the oldest boy. harpo, don’t let celie be the one bring in all the water. you a big boy now.time for you to help out some. women work, he say. what? shesay. women work. i’m a man,” (p. 20). albert oppresses celie more by separating her with her sister, nettie. albert, as the one who takes the mail out of the box, receives the letters from nettie to celie and never gives the letter to celie. albert hides all letters from nettie to celie, and never gives the letters to celie. he makes celie thinks that her sister is dead. celie’s self-determination to fight the oppressions 1. sexual self-determination after experiencing sexual oppressions, namely repeated rapes, forced to marry a man that she does not love, and treated as a sexual object, celie undergoes a radical change in her life. she tries to fight sexual oppressions that she experiences by using sexual self-determination. celie’s sexual self determination can be seen from her relationship with shug in the story. shug is albert’s girlfriend. while she was sick, albert brought her home and celie takes care of her. as a submissive woman, celie does not get angry. it seems that celie does not have any problems when her husband brings another woman home because celie has loved shug from the very first time she saw shug’s picture at the beginning of the story. celie admires shug so much. she directly states that shug is the most beautiful woman she ever saw. even, shug is prettier than celie’smother (p. 8). when shug is sick, celie’s husband brings her to the house. nonetheless, celie’s reaction does not like any other women in common who sees her husband coming home with his lover, she does not feel angry. it is the other way around, celie feels very happy and excited like written here, “come on in, i want to cry. to shout. come on in. with god help, celie going to make you well,” (p. 42). it shows how celie is very happy and excited with shug’s arrival. she really hopes to take care of shug. she believes she can make shug healthier with god’s help. even though celie feels very happy and excited when shug comes, shug gives a different response to celie. she does not feel like having any interest in celie. she seems to hate celie from the very first time she meets celie. shug thinks that celie is an unattractive woman. celie is just an ugly woman for her (p. 42). time flies, celie and shug get along with each other. shug does not hate celie anymore. they start to build a lesbian relationship listen, she say, right down there in your pussy is a little button that gits real hot when you do you know what with somebody. it git hotter and hotter and then it melt. that the good part. but other parts good too, she say. lot of sucking go on, here and there, she say. lot of finger and tongue work.button?finger and tongue? my face journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) levita setya budi & dewi widyastuti 122 hot enough to melt itself. she say, here, take this mirror and go look at yourself down there, i bet you never seen it, have you? naw. and i bet you never seen albert down there either (p. 69). having a relationship with shug makes celie feel what she cannot get from her husband, like sexual pleasure. shug is the one who teaches celie about her parts of the body that celie does not know. shug teaches celie about sexual pleasure that she does not get from her husband. celie feels sexual pleasure from shug that she does not get from her husband. they hug and kiss and do anything like two married ladies (p. 94). by having a lesbian relationship with shug, celie feels safe and comfortable. celie can feel the freedom because whenever she stays behind shug, no one will oppress her. shug protects celie from getting any non sexual oppression like beating from albert; she stays beside celie so that albert will not beat celie. this fact is strengthened with this speech when celie tells shug that her husband always beats her and shug says that she will not leave celie until she knows that albert will never beat his wife again, what he beat you for? sheast. for being me and not you. oh, miss celie, she say, and put her arms around me. us sit like that for maybe half a hour. then she kiss me on the fleshy part of my shoulder and stand up. i won’t leave, she say, until i know albert won’t even think about beating you (p. 66-67). celie’s relationship with shug shows the sexual self-determination done by celie. radical feminists (madsen, 2000: 226) state that being lesbian is a form of sexual self determination. having a lesbian relationship demonstrates that women want to release from the domination of patriarchy because it is the source of women oppression. they believe that in a lesbian relationship, there is no domination of patriarchy and no one will oppress them. in this story, celie wants to be separated from the domination of the men in her family, like her stepfather and husband that always oppress her. celie wants to be separated from men and removes patriarchy from her life, so she builds a lesbian relationship with shug where there is no domination and oppression from men. the other way around, celie feels very comfortable and safe with shug who always protects her. moreover, shug never thinks that celie is her maid. shug brings celie to memphis is to encouragecelie. she hopes celie becomes able to stand on her feet. shug does not make celie feels to be oppressed by treating celie like she is her maid. in the color purple, shug represents a character that has self-determination. shug, as an attractive woman, always encourages celie that she needs equality in life. shug represents a character that could live her life without any oppression because she has freedom. celie can decide to start her new life by having a relationship with shug, “my life stop when i left home, i think. but then i think again. it stop with mr. maybe, but start up again with shug,” (p. 72). celie thinks that her life just stops when she got married to albert. however, she can start her new life again after she meets shug. this is in line with the idea of radical feminism (wardon, 1986: 135). it said that women have to be united and have solidarity with each other. here, for a person like celie who experiences oppressions, she needs support from people around her, like shug. shug and celie become a united. they develop solidarity with each other. shug supports and encourages celie that celie needs equality. 2. non-sexual self-determination after becoming submissive and receives non-sexual oppressions, celie becomes able to fight any oppression that she experiences by using non-sexual self-determination. she is brave enough to make choices and decisions to pursue her freedom and decide the best for her life. celie starts to change after knowing that albert is the one that hides nettie’s letters, celiegets shocked. she becomes so mad for journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 123 knowing that albert hides the letters. celie has a decision to kill him although shug avery does not let it happens (p.122). celie also makes a decision about the one who will sleep with shug avery because shug avery does not let her kill albert. celie says to shug avery, “make albert let me sleep with you from now on, while you here, i say. and somehow or other, she do,” (p. 123). celie decides that shug avery should make albert let celiesleep with shug avery, and surprisingly shug avery does it for celie. celie also shows a characteristic of someone that has self-determination by fighting the oppression that she experiences. she leaves her husband and lives in memphis with shug avery (p.170). furthermore, after deciding to leave her husband, she curses her husband by saying that he is a low down dog and his dead body just a welcome mat for celie. as an unattractive woman that her husband always says that she is too scared to open her mouth to people celie shows that she is brave enough to speak, she cannot become a submissive woman anymore. celie wants to fight her husband that always oppresses her. by leaving him she could enter into a new life without oppressions (p.176). subsequently, celie is also brave to express her anger toward her husband and her stepchildren. she is angry at her husband because he is the one that separates her from her sister, nettie.moreover, when her husband gets angry and wants to slap her, celie reacts by jabbing her case knife to his hand. celie also gets angry with her stepchildren because they have made her life like a hell on earth (p. 171).this fact strengthens the idea that celie finds her self determination that everyone should be granted the freedom to do anything, that does not restrict the freedom of any other individual to do anything they wish (madsen, 2000: 24). celie realizes that no one can prevent her from achieving her freedom, including her husband. even though she is always described as an uneducated, submissive, and unattractive woman in the story, but celie has a good characteristic in her life. celie proves that she is a strong woman. she experiences oppression for a long time; however,celie never commits suicide or just escapes from her difficult life problem. she stays there. she endures and receives the oppression that she experiences as her fate. this good side helps celie to find her self determination. if celie escapes from her difficult life problem without doing something, celie might never find her self determination. celie might never fight the oppression that she experiences. after moving to memphis, celie does not live dependently to shug. celie becomes more independent. she can support her own living economically by making pants. she starts running her business in the dining room as her factory. she gets money and employees. moreover, celie become more educated because she has darlene that teaches her how to talk. after the death of her stepfather, celie and nettie are the ones who inherit the land, house, and store from her real father. after celie finds her self-determination and fights oppressions that she experiences, celie becomes happy with her life right now like what she says in her letter to nettie, “i am so happy. i got love, i got work, i got money, friends and time. and you alive and be home soon. with our children,” (p. 183). no more men oppress her. she can live her life independently and get freedom. here, celie shows a good characteristic in her life. she desires to learn everything is very strong even though she is an uneducated woman. she learns how to make pants that finally helps her to support her own living economically. when her stepfather does not allow her to go to school, celie still keeps learning every school subjects from nettie (p. 11). in the end of the story, she also learns how to talk from darlene. her desire to learn helps her to find her self-determination. nettie represents a character that has self-determination. nettie and celie are also united to encourage and develop solidarity for each other. nettie is also the one who helps to support celie in finding self journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) levita setya budi & dewi widyastuti 124 determination. nettie as the one who gets education, nettie always encourages celie to fight back. she cannot be a submissive woman. however, celie never wants to fight back before she finds her self-determination. nettie also proves to celie that she has self-determination; she has a characteristic that leads her to have freedom. she is able to make choices based her own preferences. she is also working to reach her freedom.she takes actions to fight against albert. when nettie leaves home and she finds out that albert is following her, at first she ignore him and walks faster. however, it still makes albert could catch her and try to kiss her. nettie reacts and fights him by hurting albert (p.170). after celie finds her self-determination, she is able to fight and live their own life without any oppression from her stepfather and husband. this is in line with the role of radical feminism. the role of radical feminism is to offer an accurate analysis of the condition of women that angry with men that oppress them, to offer a means of women rage can be properly directed to them who oppress them and to point to a struggle that is based on self-determination (madsen, 2000: 163). celie’s anger to the oppression that she experiences and her struggle to fight oppression is based on self determination. her anger is directed to her stepfather, her husband and her children that oppress her in the family. conclusion in conclusion, the color purple shows that women still experience inequality in life. they get many oppressions, sexually and non-sexually. it is because women are living under the domination of patriarchal society. in a patriarchal society, women are the oppressed class. women should be able to fight back any oppression that they experience by using self-determination, by having the ability to make choices and decision for themselves in their life. their anger should be directed to the one who oppressed them and removes patriarchy itself from their life so that they could live their life without any oppression. celie, the main character of the color purple, proves that a woman must be able to fight any oppression whatever characteristics that she has. as a woman, celie shows that she has to fight any oppression that she experiences by having self-determination. she proves that her finding of sexual and non-sexual self determination helps her to react and fight sexual and non-sexual oppressions that she experiences, and she could live her life without any oppression. references madsen, deborah l. feminist theory and literary practice. london: pluto press, 2000. tong, rosemarie. feminist thought. 3rd edition. colorado: westview press, 2009. walker, alice. the color purple. new york: harcourt brace jovanovich publisher, 1982. wandor, michelene. carry on, understudies: theathre and sexual politics. new york: routledge&kegan paul inc, 1986. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) humorous situations created by violations and floutings of conversational maxims in a situation comedy entitled how i met your mother jenna nadia rasbi putri amianna & adventina putranti jennarasby@gmail.com & putranti@usd.ac.id english letters department, universitas sanata dharma abstract as a form of communication that evokes laughter, humor is seen as one of important aspects in building relationship with people. linguists suggest that humor exists because there is noncooperative interaction among interlocutors resulting from not observing cooperative principle in the conversations. related to that, this study aims to analyze humorous situations in a situation comedy entitled how i met your mother season 2, episodes 1 to 5 which are created by violating and flouting the conversational maxims as the forms of not observing the cooperative principle. keywords: humorous situation, cooperative principle, flouting, violation introduction one of the social phenomena found in society dealing with language use in communication is humor. as explained by holmes & marra (2002) humor is a means to improve communication and relationship among speakers and hearers. humor, as stated in the oxford american dictionary and thesaurus, is “the condition of being amusing or comic.” hence, by having the ability to amuse, humor can create humorous situations. according to chiaro (1992: 4344), a humorous situation occurs when there is two-faced meaning or ambiguous meaning of linguistic features in a conversation, such as, choice of words. this two-faced meaning is present because the participants in a conversation are probably not cooperative with each other by not following grice’s cooperative principle (cp). the participants’ attitude for not following the rules of the cp will create ambiguity and misunderstanding which later can create laughter as one of the effects. aside from social interaction, humor can also be found in tv shows. the similarity between humor found in daily interaction and the one that is found in tv shows lies on the principle which creates humor itself. as suggested by grice, jokes are noncooperative (attardo, 1994: 271). taken into account, both humorous situations in daily interactions and in tv shows occur because non-cooperative interactions are found between the interlocutors. the difference between the two lies on the process of the occurrence of the humorous situations. in daily interactions, humorous situations occur naturally in the conversations without being planned by the interlocutors. meanwhile, the conversations in tv shows are designed by the writer in order to create humorous situations. even though the conversations in tv shows are designed, they still carry the principle which creates humorous situations. this study is conducted to examine the humorous situations created by noncooperative interactions in a situation comedy, entitled how i met your mother. in 97 mailto:jennarasby@gmail.com mailto:putranti@usd.ac.id journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) jenna nadia rpa & adventina putranti this case, the non-cooperative interactions result in violating and flouting of conversational maxims as the sub principles of grice’s cooperative principles. the data of this study are obtained from season 2, episodes 1 to 5. the 2nd season is chosen without any specific purpose since humorous situations are found in all of the 10 seasons. how i met your mother is an american situation comedy airing from september 19, 2005 to march 31, 2014 which is known best for its eccentric humor and it receives positive reviews over the past view years. imdb states that the situation comedy is rated 8.4 out of 10 stars for its eccentric humor. to reach the aim of this study, the writer is summing up into two questions: 1. what are the types of violation and flouting of conversational maxims appear in a situation comedy how i met your mother season 2, episodes 1 to 5? 2. how do the violation and the flouting of conversational maxims found create humorous situations in a situation comedy entitled how i met your mother season 2, episodes 1 to 5? in this research, pragmatic approach is applied in order to analyze the violation and flouting of conversational maxims done by the characters in the situations comedy. grice’s cooperative principle and its four conversational maxims theories are applied to examine the types of conversational maxims which are violated and flouted by the characters in order to create humorous situations. furthermore, humor theories are applied in order to analyze how the humorous situations are created by the violation and the flouting of conversational maxims found in this situation comedy. meaning in interaction to this day, a number of theories of language have been developed by linguists. one of these theories is pragmatics. thomas (1995: 22-23) defines pragmatics as meaning in interaction. it takes not only the contributions from the speakers in saying utterances, but also from the hearers in understanding the utterances from their point of view. besides the contributions from the interlocutors, contexts of utterance, such as physical, social, and linguistic contexts, and the meaning potential of utterance are taken into account in producing meaning. thus, pragmatics is context-dependent. an utterance cannot be understood separately from the context it is uttered. context related to the definition of pragmatics, understanding utterances cannot be separated from the context in which the conversation takes place. in here, context plays an important role in meaning interpretation. cutting (2002: 3-7) explains that there are three contexts in order to deal with meaning of words in context, which are, situational context, background knowledge context, and co-textual context. the first one, situational context, is “the situation where the interaction is taking place at the moment of speaking” (cutting, 2002: 4). this context deals with what the speakers and the hearers can see around them. the second one, background knowledge context, contains two types of context; the first one is cultural background context which is dealing with the knowledge that is mutually shared by people in the same community, people in the same country, people in the same school, or people in the same family, and the second one is interpersonal background context which is dealing with “knowledge acquired through previous verbal interactions or joint activities and experiences, and it includes privileged personal knowledge about the interlocutor” (cutting, 2002: 6). the last one, which is co-textual context, is a type of contexts related only to the context in a text. conversational implicature the basic assumption in communication is that when speakers and hearers are engaged in a conversation, they are generally being cooperative with each other. at some point, the meaning of utterances is not conveyed from the 98 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) expressed meaning but from the implied meaning. something that is more than what the words mean is called an implicature; the additional conveyed meaning of utterances (yule, 1996: 35). implicatures are the example of more is being communicated than what is said. implicatures which occur in conversations and depend on certain context for their interpretation is usually called conversational implicatures. as stated by yule (1996: 40-43), there are two types of conversational implicature, they are, generalized conversational implicatures and particularized conversational implicatures. the former is a type of conversational implicature which does not require certain knowledge from a particular context to understand the additional conveyed meanings. there is no special background which is required to create inferences in a conversation, while the latter, is the type of conversational implicature which requires special knowledge of specific context in order to work out the additional conveyed meanings (yule, 1996: 40-43as seen in the example below: a : what on earth has happened to the roast beef? b : the dog is looking very happy. (levinson, 1983: 126) in order to make b’s answer relevant, a has to draw on some assumed knowledge b expects him to have. it is possible that the dog has eaten the roast beef, thus, it looks very happy. cooperative principle when people are engaged in a conversation, they will exchange information with their interlocutors. the basic concept that there will be sufficient amount of information provided in a conversation is one of general idea that the interlocutors will cooperate with each other at the moment they are involved in a conversation. grice suggests that in order to be cooperative with each other in a conversation, interlocutors should obey the cooperative principle which runs as follows: make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose of direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged (thomas, 1995: 61-62). according to grice’s theory of cooperative principle, people should give contribution that is required by the situation, such as, giving sufficient amount of information in a conversation. that being done, the interlocutors are said to be cooperative in making a conversation run smoothly. grice suggests that in a conversational interaction, people work on the assumption that a certain set of rules is in operation, unless they receive the indication of the opposite. on one hand, there are times when speakers have indications that the interlocutors obey the same conversational norms as the speakers do. on the other hand, there are times when speakers’ assumption that others are cooperating according the same conversational norms is misplaced, since, in fact, the interlocutors turn out to blatantly mislead the speakers by not obeying the conversational norms. in that condition, the speakers are expected to search the implicature might be delivered by the interlocutors. to avoid a situation when interlocutors blatantly mislead others by not obeying cooperative principle, grice develops four conversational maxims as the sub-principles of the cp. grice’s four conversational maxims are formulated as follows (thomas, 1995: 63-64): a. maxim of quantity i. make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose of the exchange). ii. do not make your contribution more informative than is required. according to this maxim, speakers should give neither too little nor too much 99 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) jenna nadia rpa & adventina putranti information to the interlocutors. when the speakers give too little information, the hearers may not be able to understand what they are talking about due to the hearers’ lack of information. meanwhile, when the speakers give too much information, the conversation may become not effective since the excess information given in the conversation. b. maxim of quality i. do not say what you believe to be false. ii. do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. this kind of maxim expects the speakers to say anything based on reality. the speakers are not allowed to tell lies to the hearer or to say anything which is far from the truth. c. maxim of relation be relevant due to this maxim, speakers are supposed to say something that is relevant to what has been talked in a conversation. they must give information related to the topic of discussion. d. maxim of manner i. avoid obscurity of expression ii. avoid ambiguity iii. be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity) iv. be orderly this last maxim expects the speakers to be brief in saying something. they should avoid saying something which is difficult to understand. at last, the speakers should avoid ambiguity in their utterances. when the speaker fails to obey each rule of the maxim of manner, it is possible that the hearers also possible to miss the implicatures drawn by the speakers. flouting and violating conversational maxim according to grice, flouting a maxim is a situation when “a speaker blatantly fails to observe a maxim” (thomas, 1995: 65). the speakers do not have any intention to mislead or deceive the hearers, but they expect the hearers to look for the meaning different from, or in addition to, the expressed meaning. the speakers assume that the hearers are able to infer the implied meaning of what is said. different from flouting a conversational maxim when the speakers expect the hearers to understand the implied meaning, violating a maxim is a situation when a speaker fails to obey a conversational maxim in order to intentionally generate misleading implicature in a conversation (thomas, 1995: 73). speakers are said to violate a conversational maxim when they know that the hearers will not know the truth and will only know the expressed meaning of what is said. in other words, the speakers intentionally mislead and deceive the hearers. in this research, the writer analyses how the participants in how i met your mother situation comedy flout and violate conversational maxims which lead to the occurrence of humorous situations. humor humor is one of the important aspects in building relationship with people. in social relationships, humor plays an important role, which is “measuring mutual understanding about particular topics and signaling good intentions (kuipers, 2006: 1). the encyclopedia of britannica defines humor as a form of communication that evokes the reflex of laughter of people (benton (ed), 1983: 7). many linguists have taken humor as a category which covers “any events or object that elicits laughter, amuses, or is felt to be funny” (attardo, 1994: 4). by having the 100 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) quality to be funny, humor can create humorous situations. grice, as cited by attardo (1994: 271-276), suggests that jokes or humor are non-cooperative. meaning to say, humorous situations exist because there is non-cooperative interaction among the interlocutors. this non-cooperative interaction occurs because the interlocutors do not obey the cp and its maxims by violating or flouting the rules. by doing so, the humorous situation is created between the speakers and the hearers as the product of violating or flouting the maxims. modern theories of humor have been developed by linguists. raskin, as one of the linguists, classifies humor into three categories, which are, incongruity theory, hostility theory, and release theory (attardo, 1994: 47). these theories of humor are seen as the common accepted classification of humor. each of the theory sees humor from different viewpoint. incongruity theory of humor the philosophers who are associated with incongruity theory of humor are immanuel kant (1724 – 1804) and arthur schopenhauer (1788 – 1860). as cited by attardo (1994: 48), kant defines laughter as “an affection arising from sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing”. the attention will be focused on the sudden transformation, which is the process of how someone’s idea about something is transformed, and the fact that the expectation is turned into nothing. meanwhile, schopenhauer explains that laughter is caused by “the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation, and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity” (schopenhauer, the world as will and idea, 1819, quoted in attardo (1994: 48). from the explanations above, it can be seen that the basis of the incongruity theory is that humor occurs when there are differences between what is expected and what later occurs. the differences involve the feeling of surprise of the hearers or the audience. this means that humor is the outcome of incongruity created by two conflicting meanings, which are the certain idea that people have in mind and how the idea will create certain expectation as how it will turn out. the following conversation is a violation of quantity maxim found in the situation comedy of how i met your mother in which contains incongruent idea between the speakers’ expectation and what actually reveals in the conversation. situation: at the apartment. robin comes and wants to tell ted about lily’s getting back in town. ok, first of all, that is interesting. second, we have to tell him. no, we don't. he's just starting to get better. going out with barney. how do you think he'll feel when he hears lily's moved on? she's moved on? well, it happens. i've fallen out of love faster than that before. sometimes, boom, with no warning whatsoever. one day we're in love, the next day, he's dead to me. but we're great! honey? ted looks confused and shocked. 101 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) jenna nadia rpa & adventina putranti in the situation above robin has violated the maxim of quantity. she provides too much information that what is required in the conversation. this can be seen from her answer to ted. ted questions robin about whether or not lily has moved on and her answer is, “well, it happens. i've fallen out of love faster than that before. sometimes, boom, with no warning whatsoever. one day we're in love, the next day, he's dead to me. but we're great! honey”. in here, robin’s answer contains information that is not requested in the situation. the unnecessary information is about her personal love experience which is actually not the information expected by ted. robin could have just told him lily’s condition at that time. to understand how this violation of quantity maxim creates humorous situations, incongruity theory of humor is applied in the analysis. related with incongruity theory of humor, humorous situation occurs because there are two conflicting meanings that occur in the conversation. in the situation above, the two conflicting meanings are ted expectation of robin’s answer about lily’s condition and the actual answer he gets from robin. in the conversation, ted asks robin about lily’s condition after breaking up with marshall and whether or not she has moved on. he expects robin to give sufficient answer based on his question. in fact, instead of giving him sufficient information about lily, robin gives information about her own love experience about how she handles a break up with her ex-boyfriend which is not appropriate in the exchange of information. she even explains it enthusiastically without realizes that she provides unnecessary information to ted. this unnecessary information from robin is not expected by ted and the audiences. thus, robin’s unexpected answer shows her absurd and ridiculous action. her ridiculous action is the result of her unawareness of ted’s expectation. in conclusion, the transformation of the idea expected by the audiences and what actually turns out in the conversation makes the audiences’ expectation vanish and creates discrepancy which arouses laughter. another humorous situation containing incongruent idea also appears in the following conversation where the character flouts maxim of manner: situation: in a strip-club, barney gets a call from ted. barney barney. ted uh, hey. where are you guys? barney we're at a fundraiser helping young women raise money for college. ted strip-club. nice. is marshall ok? the excerpt above is taken at the situation when ted and robin are on their way to montauk. during the trip, ted calls barney to check on marshall. ted asks barney where they are at that time. without any doubt, barney answers him by saying, “we're at fundraiser helping young women raise money for college”. after listening to barney’s answer, ted directly knows that barney and marshall are in a strip-club. ted knows that both of them are not really at a fundraiser. in here, it can be seen from barney’s answer that he has flouted the maxim of manner. barney’s answer is ambiguous and he intentionally says that to trick ted and let him figure out the actual meaning of his statement. instead of giving ambiguous statement, barney could have just said, “we are in a strip club” to ted directly. this is another flouting containing incongruent idea between people’s expectation and what it actually occurs in the conversation. to understand how this flouting of maxim of manner creates humorous situations, incongruity theory of humor is also applied in the analysis. related with incongruity theory of humor, humorous situation occurs because there are two conflicting meanings that occur in the conversation. in the situation above, the two conflicting meanings are the audiences’ expectation of barney’s answer to ted and 102 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) the actual answer ted gets in the conversation. hostility theory of humor hostility or superiority theory is an earliest theory of humor which can date back to aristotle’s and plato’s works. this theory mentions the negative element of humor, which is its aggressive side (attardo, 1994: 49). that aggressive side can be seen as the negative side of humor which is mainly used to humiliate, disparage, or ridicule others’ inferiority or misfortunes. both aristotle and plato emphasize that laughter is a means of power when it is directed against others’ faults or flaws, so that it will show someone’s superiority among the victims. thomas hobbes, as a philosopher, suggests that “laughter arises from a sense of superiority of the laugher towards some object” (attardo, 1994: 49). in that case, “some object” commonly refers to the “butt of the joke”; anything that is being laughed at. as stated in moreall (1987: 20), hobbes uses the term “sudden glory” to indicate the expression arising from comparing someone’s superiority with others’ weaknesses. from the explanations above, according to hostility theory, humor is created when there is a sudden glory as the expression when someone is being superior among others. the feeling of superiority appears when someone laughs, mocks, or humiliates at others’ inferiority, weaknesses, stupidity, or misfortunes. the conversation bellow shows a humorous situation in the form of sudden glory which is created by flouting quality maxim. ted hey. robin hey. ted how was your day? robin good. ted wow, you're a great interviewer. aren't you gonna ask how my day was? robin no, i know how it was. it was awful. ooh, you want to rent a movie tonight? ted you know, um... i listen to your work stories all the time. robin yeah, but... and i don't want to be rude here, but my work stories are interesting. i'm a television news reporter. the situation above is when robin just goes back from working and ted is waiting for her at the apartment. in that situation, ted asks robin how her day was, and she answers that it was good. according to ted, robin’s response is not like the way he wants. robin provides less information than what he expects. further, since robin does not ask ted about his work stories, ted asks robin again by directly saying, “aren't you gonna ask how my day was?”, then she answers, “no, i know how it was. it was awful”. in fact, robin has no idea how ted’s job is. she never asks ted about his job or what he does in the office. she does not truly understand about ted’s job yet she still says that his job is awful. her answer is only based on her own opinion which shows her lack of adequate information about ted’s job. providing any opinion without the foundation of adequate information is the fact that robin has flouted the maxim of quality. before making any assumption, it is better for her to know the environment of ted’s job. in the situation above, laughter arouses when robin flouts the maxim of quality, 103 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) jenna nadia rpa & adventina putranti which is when she mocks ted’s job as an awful job. linked to hostility theory, robin’s action is seen as an action of being hostile. according to the theory, humor is created when someone is laughing at others in an attempt to humiliate or ridicule their inferiority or misfortunes. people who are treated as the inferiors will be the butt of the joke. in the situation above, robin’s answer to ted is seen as the form of humiliation to ted, and in this case, ted is seen as the butt of the joke. laughter arouses when there are pleasure and glorious feelings created from being superior to ted. another humorous situation containing an act of being hostile can also be found in the following conversation where the character flouts maxim of manner: marshall lily is evil! she just wore that dress to torture me. well, you know what? two can play at that game. see, at brunch, i'm going to torture lily right back. yeah. there's a part of my body that she's got a weakness for, too. barney dude, you can't whip that out at brunch. marshall no, not that. i'm going to unleash my calves. barney that's crazy. nobody's turned on by men's calves. they're a thoroughly unerotic body part. marshall well, yeah, i'd say that, too, if i had those skinny little chicken legs. barney i'll be waiting by the phone for your apology. in the conversation above, marshall has a fight with barney. in the beginning, marshall tells barney about his plan to take revenge to lily by showing his body part that he is sure will seduce her. that body part is his calves. to respond marshall’s plan, in disbelief barney says, “that's crazy. nobody's turned on by men's calves. they're a thoroughly unerotic body part.” barney’s answer is ambiguous and it carries deeper meaning which he thinks that calves are uninterested body parts that no one will be paying attention to. he even uses the word ‘unerotic’ which is a word invented by himself to describe calves. offended by barney’s statement, marshall abruptly says, “well, yeah, i'd say that, too, if i had those skinny little chicken legs.” as explained previously, marshall has flouted the maxim of manner by uttering that statement. marshall hopes that barney gets the implicature he delivers which is that barney’s thin legs. regarding his reply to barney, marshall’s statement contains humiliation addressed to barney. he mocks barney’s legs for being too thin, especially because they look like chicken legs. according to hostility theory, marshall’s action is seen as an act of being superior and barney is seen as the inferior. as the victim, he becomes the butt of the joke. glorious feeling occurs when marshall mocks barney for having checks like chicken. that glorious feeling creates laughter in the situation. release theory of humor release theory of humor is basically based on the idea that humor is used to release tension or psychic energy (attardo, 1994: 50). once the tension is released, someone will feel liberated. according to this theory, in order to deal with an upcoming social or psychological event, emotional tension is built. when there is excess energy in one’s mind, the surplus energy is dispelled through laughter. the most influential proponent of this theory is sigmund freud. as quoted by schwarz (2010: 51), he considers laughter as “an outlet for psychic or nervous energy”. according to freud, relating to his analysis of humor, he suggests two forms of joking, which are “innocent” and 104 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) “tendentious” jokes. on one hand, innocent joke is known as innocent humor. instead of threatening people, this type of joke tends to elicit enjoyment of the content. freud states that there is no fear of judgment being disturbed by the content or purpose of the jokes (schwarz, 2010: 55). on the other hand, tendentious joke is a joke which describes an event that commonly shock or terrify the audience. it functions either to express hostility and aggressiveness or obscenity and exposure. he argues that in tendentious joke, unconscious thought is responsible for releasing joke due to the repressed feeling. in that case, pleasure arises from the hidden aggression or hostility one feels towards people who have more power than him. in conclusion, release theory of humor is a theory which sees humor as a means to release tension and energy someone has as the effect of being controlled and suppressed by circumstances or thoughts. people, then, get liberated by bursting out laughter in order to release the tension. below is a conversation when a humorous situation is created by releasing emotions as the character is violating the maxim of relation. situation: ted, robin, marshall, lily, and barney are having brunch with ted’s parents. in the middle of it, lily and marshall are having a quarrel about who seduces who. lily just admit it. you came here trying to seduce me. marshall seduce you? you seduced me. lily you sat down next to me and took most of your pants off. marshall you went to san francisco for three months. lily how is that seducing you? marshall well, it's not but i'm still mad about it. above is a situation when marshall is having a fight with lily. they are arguing about who is seducing who. lily accuses marshall for seducing her and vice versa. in the middle of the fight, marshall says, “you went to san francisco for three months.” as explained in the previous subchapter, his response above is not related to the topic of discussion they are having. he does that because he still cannot accept the fact that his wedding with lily is canceled due to the fact that lily flies to san francisco in order to chase her dream. thus, he changes the topic of discussion intentionally and blames lily all over again for leaving him. marshall’s statement above can be seen as a violation of maxim of relation. in here, release humor theory is applied in order to see how the humorous situation is created by the violation of maxim of relation. in the situation above, humor arouses when marshall violates the maxim of relation, which is the moment when he suddenly changes the topic of discussion by mentioning lily’s journey to chase her dream in san francisco. that statement represents marshall’s anger towards lily that he still keeps even until after lily gets back in town. according to release theory of humor, humor is created when someone attempts to release particular emotion and feelings in his mind in order to be free from that emotion. marshall’s action above can be seen as an attempt to release the pain he carries in his mind. thus, when he releases his emotion, laughter occurs. conclusion in this research, after analyzing the conversations, there are found fourteen violations of maxim of quantity, one violation of maxim of quality, two violations of maxim of relation, and two violations of maxim of manner in the selected season of how i met your mother situation comedy. the violations are created because the characters in the situation comedy intentionally mislead and deceive the interlocutors by generating misleading implicatures in a conversation. 105 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) jenna nadia rpa & adventina putranti different from violations of conversational maxim, flouting of conversational maxims as seen in the situation comedy occurred because the characters in the situation comedy do not intentionally mislead and deceive the interlocutors. they expect the interlocutors to be able to look for the meaning different from, or in addition to, the expressed meaning. the speakers assume that the hearers are able to infer the implied meaning of what is said. from both of the data findings, it can be concluded that the characters in the situation comedy entitled how i met your mother have violated and flouted conversational maxims. for the second problem of this research, the writer concludes that the humorous situations are created by the violation and the flouting of conversational maxims done by the characters in the situation comedy. from the analysis, there are three different ways of how the humorous situations are created. first, the humorous situations are created because some of the violation and the flouting of conversational maxims contain incongruent idea between people’s expectation and what actually occurs in the conversation between the interlocutors. this result is obtained by applying incongruity theory of humor which sees humor as the outcome of two conflicting meanings. second, the humorous situations occur because some of the violation and the flouting of conversational maxims contain the acts of being hostile to someone else; especially by mocking or humiliating other’s inferiority. this result is obtained by applying hostility theory of humor to the violation and flouting found in the situation comedy. according to hostility theory of humor, humor is created when there is a sudden glory as the expression when someone is being superior among others. third, the humorous situations occur because some violation and flouting contain particular released emotions of the characters which elicit laughter. this result is obtained by applying release theory of humor. references attardo, salvatore. linguistic theory of humor. berlin and new york: mouton de gruyter, 1994. benton, h. (ed.). the new encyclopedia britannica: macropedia knowledge in depth volume 9. chicago: william benton pub., 1983. chiaro, delia. the language of jokes: analysing verbal play. london and new york: routledge, 1992. cutting, joan. pragmatics and discourse: a resource book for students. london: routledge, 2002. fromkin, victoria, robert rodman, and nina hyams.an introduction to language: 7th edition. massachusetts: thomson corporation, 2003. holmes, janet and meredith mara.“over the edge?subversive humor between colleagues and friends”.humor. vol.15.no.1 (2002): pp. 65-87. jafari, janin. “the pragmatic analysis of wilde’s comedy: the importance of being ernest”. theory and practice in language studies. vol.3 no.12 (december 2013): pp. 2152-2156. kuipers, giselinde. good humor, bad taste: a sociology of the joke. berlin: mouton de gruyter, 2006. leech, geoffrey. principles of pragmatics. london and new york: longman, 1983. levinson, stephen c. pragmatics. cambridge: cambridge university press, 1983. morreall, john (ed.). the philosophy of laughter and humor. albany: state university of new york press, 1987. palupi, sri retno. an analysis of humor types and grice’s maxim in the situation comedy friends episode of “the one with that could have been” (a pragmatic 106 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) approach). undergraduate thesis. surakarta: university of sebelas maret, 2006. savorelli, antonio. beyond sitcom: new directions in american television comedy. new york: mcfarland & company, inc., 2010. schwarz, jeannine. linguistic aspects of verbal humor in stand-up comedy.dessertation.saarbrücken: der universität des saarlandes, 2010. shade, richard a. license to laugh: humor in the classroom. new york: teacher ideas press, 1996 thomas, jenny. meaning in interaction: an introduction to pragmatics. new york: routledge, 1995 wood, linda a. and rolf o. kroger.doing discourse analysis: methods for studying action in talk and text.california: sage publications, inc., 2000. wu, yu-wen and yong chen. “humor strategies in the american sitcom “friends: an empirical study with reference to grice’s cooperative principle” in [department of english] proceedings. pingtung city: national pingtung university of education, 2010. yule, george. pragmatics. oxford: oxford university press, 1996. 107 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) language propriety in javanese soepomo poedjosoedarmo sastra@usd.ac.id english language studies, universitas sanata dharma abstract this paper presents the principles of language propriety in javanese. the principles presented here cover the speech components offered by hymes. it discusses how an individual or p1 should behave as a participant in the social network in general and how one should do when engaging in a conversation with an interlocutor (p1 to p2). the discussion also points out what topic and aim of speech should be expressed and with what means of communication one should express it (s, e and i), how should the genre and the speech act be, how are the sentences to be expressed, and what words are to be used or to be avoided to suit the mood of the speech (g, a, and k). furthermore, the paper also displays how the speech should be uttered and enunciated and how a person should handle his physical gestures to accompany the speech act (a part of n). some key terms of language propriety in javanese presented here are ramah, sabar, tepa slira, hormat, empan papan, nuju prana, and subasita. keywords: propriety, javanese, speech introduction this paper is a brief discussion on the principle of politeness in javanese. this is actually an extension of my paper entitled “language etiquette in indonesian” (1978). this is not meant to be a principle of universal language propriety. though the maxims and principles as proposed by grice, leech and brown and levinson are paid attention to, and many of the points do agree with the principles presented here, the description in this paper is particularly good for the javanese people. different from the situation in europe and america where the normal individuals are monolinguals, most javanese people are now bilinguals, speaking javanese and indonesian. besides, the javanese language makes use of distinct speech levels, which means distinct speech codes, hence reflect a slightly different practice of language propriety from those adhered to by most of the europeans and the americans. as “the javanese speech levels” i wrote in indonesia in 1968, it is supposed to be an ideal principle of language propriety, and not a description of actual fact that is happening with everybody nowadays. some young javanese who claim themselves to be modern or liberal may wish to observe a different principle of propriety, and disregard the teaching of their parents or teachers. the points presented here are in the forms of idioms or set phrases which most parents consider them as the principle and actually say when they educate their children. some are in the forms of positive advice (using positive idioms), and others are in the forms of prohibition, using negative imperative aja “don’t do this or that”. 1 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) soepomo poedjosoedarmo the principles the points covered are following hymes’ points of speech components, speaking (1974), i.e. the speech event (setting, scene, situation), participants, end (topic and goal), act of speech, key or mood, instrument (channel), norm, and genre. it so happens that most of the principles agree with the points proposed by hymes. however, the order of presentation is a bit different. it starts by how an individual (first participant, p1) should act or behave as a participant in the social network in general. secondly, how one should do when engaging in a conversation with an interlocutor (p1 to p2). third, to suit the speech event, what topic and aim of speech should be expressed and with what means of communication one should express it (s, e and i). fourthly, how should the genre and the speech act be, how are the sentences to be expressed, and what words are to be used or to be avoided to suit the mood of the speech (g, a, and k). fifthly, how should the speech be uttered and enunciated. finally, as an addition, how should a person handle his physical gestures to accompany the speech act (a part of n). in summary, the general principles are as follows. first, one must be friendly (sumanak) and tanggap (responsive). second, one must be wise in choosing the language or the speech level, because language or speech level may imply the place of the interlocutor in the social stratum. he should be tepa slira (considerate) and andhap asor (modest, humble). third, one must be wise in choosing the topic and the goal of the conversation. the topic one chooses should agree with the situation, the setting and the scene, and the speech event. he must pay attention to the principle of empan papan (proper for the setting and situation). fourth, one must nuju prana (suit the heart, try to please) the interlocutor. the genre, the speech act, the sentences and the diction one uses must make the interlocutor happy. further, the speech must be cekak aos (brief but clear). in addition, the speech uttered must be distinct (wijang) and easily understood (terwaca). the followings are some illustration. the attitude for an individual in a social communication, parents usually advice their child to be friendly. the term actually used is sumanak (from the steam sanak “family, relative”plus infix –um). one should try to treat his interlocutor as sanak “relative, family’, so the relation can be close and the communication can be smooth. with this close acceptant of friendship, and acquaintance will feel at ease, and a good social relation will prevail. on the other hand, when one becomes an addressee being addressed by somebody else, one should be nggatekake ‘paying attention to what the speaker says’. one must not nyepelekake ‘neglect, be little, look down’ the speaker. it is good to be tanggap ‘ready to respond’, and tanggap ing sasmita ‘respond to the finest sign expressed by the speaker. in javanese there is a saying dupak kuli, esem mantra, semu bupati. it means if you were a coolie, you understand only when you are kicked. if you were a mantra ‘government official’, somebody educated, you should be sensitive enough to understand the meaning of the smile of the speaker, especially when the speaker is your superior. and if you are talking to a bupati ‘king, governor’, you should even become more attentive. you should be able to understand the meaning of the slightest change in the look of the face. further, one must be honest, true, and never tells a lie. one must be jujur ‘honest’. in addition, it is advisable to be sumeh, showing a cheerful face while engaging in a conversation. it is not good to be mrengut or mbesengut ‘frowning or showing a sour face’. sabar ‘patient’ and sareh ‘calm and easy’ are attributes that are good to be observed in many occasions. during a conversation, one must not gampang nesu ‘get easily angry’, gampang muntab ‘get impulsive and hot temper’, and mutungan ‘easily feeling broken, being fed up, unwilling to continue the relation’. parents often say aja ladak ‘don’t be quarrelsome’, aja nyenyengit ‘don’t be 2 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) hateful’, aja galak ‘don’t be vicious’, and aja kumaki ‘don’t be cocky, don’t be a brag’. the attitude of a speaker (p1) when talking to an addressee (p2) when a person is talking to an addressee, there are three idioms usually used: tepa selira, andhap asor or lembah manah, and ngajeni. when the interlocutor is someone of the lower status than his own, he should act tepa selira. this means ‘to position oneself at the place of the addressee’. to be brief, it can be translated into ‘considerate’. in other words, ‘show a feeling of sympathy or solidarity’. basically, it concrns with the choice of the language or the speech level to be used to talk to p2. if the interlocutor does not speak the respectful level of speech or high karma well, join him using the madya (middle, moderate) level. if the interlocutor does not know how to express the idioms of gratefulness and complementation in a nice wat, just accept it. one has to be momot, which means ‘accommodative’. it is considered polite to use indonesian or else to use low ngoko level when the interlocutor is right. indonesian is usually used to someone from another ethnic group, or to an educated javanese to whom one is not intimate yet. indonesian can also be used when one is not sure about the social status of the interlocutor. ngoko level can be used when p1 considers the interlocutor is close to him or when the social status of the interlocutor is lower than p1. for example, when the interlocutor is one’s own younger brother or one’s own servant, ngoko level can be used. in general it is good for p1 to be andhap asor, to the position oneself in the low and humble position. it is good to be lembah manah, humble and patient. this actually means p1 regards and treats p2 with the high respect. p1 treats p2 with high respect. p1 ngajeni (‘respect’) p2. therefore, p1 may speak to p2 in a respectful code, using high polite karma (the polite speech level) when p1 wants to show to the interlocutor distant relation, but using ngoko (ordinary level) with honorific vocabulary or karma inggil words when p1 wants to be intimate with p2. in javanese it is possible to be intimate to an interlocutor but at the same time still respectful’. there are two types of respectful vocabulary. anyway, apart from the degree of intimacy and the social status of the interlocutor, the choice of the language and the speech level is actually also determined by the wish of the interlocutor. one must not use the ngoko level when an interlocutor insists to use the polite krama level to him. one should use indonesian if the interlocutor insists to use indonesian. one should speak with the krama level if the interlocutor insists to use the krama level. the choice of language or speech level is closely related with the choice of the right term of address and the vocative. in javanese there is a long list that one can choose to show respect when addressing a respected person. among others one can use kin terms, royal titles, professional titles, and religious titles. the following are several examples. (1) the kin terms are e.g. bapak ‘mister’, literally ‘father’ and ibu ‘mrs’, literally ‘mother’. (2) the royal titles are e.g. den, raden, den mas, den ayu, (3) the professional titles are e.g. doc for doctor and prof for professor, (4) the religious titles are e.g. haji or kyai haji for a muslim religious leader, romo for a catholic priest. in connection with the above principles, p1 must never act conceited (umuk), and implicitly demand the interlocutor to speak in krama to him. he must not brag or indulge in showing oneself off. he must not indulge in the habit of nggunggung diri ‘boasting his high prestige’. for example, one must not get into the habit of talking about his high achievements and superiority, whether in his physical look, social status, economic welfare, educational attainment, political advancement and bureaucratic position. he must not be degsura, boasting oneself and self-centred, not listening to others and always talk about himself. degsura is from the word deg “to stand up’ and sura ‘bold, 3 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) soepomo poedjosoedarmo courageous, brave’, which means boasting of his own standing and belittling other people. one must not allow oneself to cause embarrassment (gawe isin) on p2, or worst of all afflict shame feeling toward p2. he must not gawe wiring, meaning literally ‘cause shame’. one is prohibited to cause ill feeling or gawe serik to p2. he should not point at the weakness of p2 in terms of his physical look, or the failure of p2 in terms of social, educational; and economical necessity, and all the more in terms of his ethical and moral conduct. criticism should not be expressed when there is another person present during the conversation. the proper attitude in relation with the speech event when p1 wants to initiate a conversation, p1 must see to it that his topic and objective agree with the principle of empan papan. this literally means ‘agree with the setting and the speech event’. the topic and the goal chosen must suit the situation and agree with the mood of p2. one should not discuss a serious personal matter in public. for example, one should not try to collect the debt from the addressee while attending a wedding party, or during a funeral ceremony. one should not talk about a terrible disease during dinner. one should not complain about his personal problem, for example his rivalry with somebody else when the interlocutor just woke up in the morning. p1 should not blame p2 for having been lazy at the time when p2 just found out that he failed his exam and was very upset. when p1 is talking about something that is not considered proper in relation to the speech event, he may be said to be benyunyak-benyunyuk ‘intrusive, repulsive’. when he asks for something when the speech event is not right, he is mangkelke ‘annoying’. when he always talks about himself at any time, he is njelehi ‘boring’ or mbocahi ‘like a small child’. as an interlocutor, it would be better if one just continues to respond about the topic that has just been talked about. this way the topic is relevant. people will say that p1 is nyambung ‘relates to or connects with’ the topic being discussed. another thing to care is the means to express the topic of the discourse. at present there is a choice to convey messages, i.e. whether to use a telephone, hand phone, letter or saying it orally. for many of the conservative people, the most polite way is to convey a message via oral presentation and face to face. if one cannot see the interlocutor personally, one can send a letter by mail or via a messenger. the letter must be properly enveloped. for example, an invitation letter can be sent by male. if the message is not very formal, and the relation between p1 and p2 is fairly close, p1 can contact the interlocutor through the telephone or hand phone. the attitude of a speaker when delivering a speech act another principle one should observe is that one should convey the message in a pleasing way. one should try to nuju prana, which literally means ‘pleasing the heart’ of the addressee. this especially concerns with the choice of the genre, the choice of the speech act, the choice of the sentences, the choice of the diction that suit the mood accompanying the speech, the length of the speech and the utterance of the speech. first is about the genre. the speaker can just continue using the same genre as expressed by the interlocutor. if the interlocutor uses informal style of speech, p1 can use the same informal speech. if the interlocutor uses a literary speech, p1 can use the same literary speech. for example, if in a speech event the interlocutor uses pantun ‘fun humorous poem’, the interlocutor can respond in the same way. if, otherwise, p1 should initiate the conversation, he can use the normal polite conversational style. secondly, it concerns with the length of the speech act. about the length of the speech act, the principle is that p1 should convey it in cekak aos way. the message should be conveyed in brief but clear way. 4 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) cekak means ‘brief’, and aos means ‘full of content, compact, comprehensive’. everything that is needed should be in the discourse, but only those that are needed are mentioned. if illustrators are needed, one should try to supply the illustrations in shortest possible way. when p1 talks in a lengthy way, it may annoy the interlocutor. one should not talk in nggladrah ‘long meandering’ way, mentioning things that are not relevant. in addition, the sentences must be runtut, arranged in a structural manner. they must be cohesive and coherent. they are well ordered. this way, the speech will be easily understood. the sentences must not overlap with each other. they must not tumpeng suh ‘overlap, confuse’. when p1 wants to present an assertive speech act, i.e. informing something to the interlocutor, he can be polite by starting his speech with pambuka ‘opening’, for example, the word nuwun ‘excuse me’, or nuwun sewu ‘thousand pardon’. when p1 wants to interrupt, he can start by saying nuwun sewu, kepareng sumela atur ‘excuse me, may i interrupt’. when p1 wants to make a commitment, e.g. make a promise, it is advisable to insert an opening idiom such as insya allah ‘god willing’ or muga-muga ‘hopefully’, or yen tanpa alangan ‘if there is no ill accident’. in a wedding invitation, a similar opening is often expressed. set phrases such as menawi gusti allah merengaken ‘if god permits’ or menawi gusti allah ngijabahi ‘if god gives his blessing’ often opens an invitation letter to a wedding reception or circumcision party. this way he is considered religious or humble. when one wants to present an opinion about the interlocutor or about something else, it is respectful when he uses praises or complements. he can also try to be less bombastic by using idioms or hedges. it is not polite to use interjections in one’s sentences. interjections such as lho, (expressing s slight surprise), lha kok (expressing a mild protest), nha (to agree with the interlocutor’s opinion) are considered not polite when conversing with somebody respectable. the use of an interjection suggests that p1 is in a higher position than the interlocutor. nor is it possible to end one’s sentence with a tag particle such as jare or je ‘you know’, dhing ‘sorry’, rak iya ‘isn’t it’, don’t you agree’. tag questions and sentence particles suggest that the speaker is not careful and regards the interlocutor as not an important person. p1 must make an effort to present the content of the speech as pleasing as he can. he should try his best to ngiyani or giving agreement to the opinion of p2. it is considered acceptable to conform to the interlocutor. if necessary, his speech must contain bombongan ‘praises’, pangalembana ‘complements’. the content should not be kasar, saru, sengol, sengak, nylekit, nglarani ai, nyangklak, nranyak, nyepeleke, and nyalahke. kasar means rude and vulgar. saru means pornographic or improper. sengol means containing reprimand. sengak means offensive. nylekit means containing a painful flavour. nglarani ati means hurting feeling. nyangklak means afflicting disrespect. nranyak means damaging one’s honor. nyepeleke means regarding someone as unimportant. nyalahake means to downgrade. finally, to make the interlocutor happy, the speech must be delivered with good enunciation, pleasing intonation and nice tempo. with the good pronunciation, the interlocutor can understand the message easily. with the good intonation the flow of the information can be perceived without any annoyance. good normal tempo of utterance is pleasant to hear. the speech that is delivered with distinct enunciation, pleasant intonation, and sareh ‘easy’ mood present a message that is cetha ‘clear, distinct’ or terwaca ‘clearly understood, comprehensible’, and pleasant to perceive. the use of proper gestures apart from the linguistic requirement, there is another principle that must be 5 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) soepomo poedjosoedarmo observed. accompanying the utterance of the language, proper physical gesture is required. this especially concerns with the position of the head, the direction of the eyesight, the movement of the mouth, the way to sit, the way to stand, and the movement of the hands. there is a principle of subasita or trapsila, meaning ‘proper behaviour’ or ‘proper physical gesture’. the following are a few examples. first, in general the head and its parts, e.g. the eye, mouth, nose, and ears are considered sacred and therefore very important in terms of respect. one must not touch the head of a respectable person without any good reason. one must not refer to any of them without any good reason, and if one has to refer to any of them without any good reason, and if one has to refer to them, one has to use very polite or krama inggil words. otherwise you will be deemed nranyak ‘very rude or impolite’. one must not even sit or stand in a place higher than that the respectable interlocutor sits or stands. one must bow down when he has to walk passing the place where the respectable person is sitting down. when one talks to respected person, and the person is explaining something to him, he should look at the person in the face, showing that he is paying good attention to what the interlocutor is saying. if the interlocutor is giving an instruction, one can also look down to the direction of the legs of the interlocutor. one must not show bulging eyes, because bulging eyes is a sign of anger. one should talk in a natural way, moving the mouth, the tongue and the lips in an ordinary way. one should not give the impression that he (or she) is being coquettish or acting funny in a childish way. when p1 is sitting on a mat, he should sila, folding the two legs and lay the legs flat in front. when he is sitting on a chair or a bench, he should sit erect and folding the two legs parallel in front. one should not jegang, putting one leg on top of the other. when the respected interlocutor is sitting on a mat, one should not sit on a bench or a chair, which is higher than the seat of the interlocutor. sitting in higher place is said to be methengkreng, which is very impolite. when both p1 and p2 are standing, p1 should stand erect and stay still, and put the two hands together in front. it is very polite if one can ngapurancang, putting the two hands straight down together, one on top of the other. while talking, the hands should stay still. if the hands move up and down, the movement will distract the speech, hence it is considered not polite. methentheng ‘to stand akimbo’ is very impolite, as if one is challenging the interlocutor to fight. when one has to point at something, he can use the right hand with the thump pointing to the thing. in summary, in the following chart the principles are presented. in the first column it is presented the principle of a good speaker as a person. in the second column the choice of a language or speech level is noted. in the third column the proper topic and speech channel are considered, especially to agree with the speech event. in the fourth column the manner for presenting the speech is mentioned. hymes’ signs (speaking) as a way to memorize the speech components are put individually between brackets behind certain relevant principles. so are the conversational principles of grice. at the end of each column the principles in javanese idioms are supplied. the principle for the physical gestures is presented in a separate place, the fifth column. the following is a chart that represents the above principles. 6 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) norms of language proprierty (unggah-ungguh) (n) proper physical gesture suba-sita, trapsila p1 as a person friendly, true, good temper (p, k) p1 to p2/p3 accomodative & respectful (p, a) speech event: good topic, goal& channel (s,e,i) manner form & content (a,k,g) friendly, (i.e. ready to adress, listen, and respond) (p1) good control of one’s temper (k) be true, no lying (maxim of quality) 1. su m a n a k , t a n g g a p , sa b a r, ju ju r selec the right language & speech level adjust to the speech level or the language of p2/p3; be considerate be accomodative be modest to oneself, but respectful to p2 2. t ep a slira , a n d a p a sor, lem b a h m a n a h , n g a jen i proper topic & goal be relevant (e) (maxim of relevance) address p2 when the situation is right suit the topic to the event proper instrument, i.e. oral, written, or electronic (i) 3. em p a n p a p a n , n g a jen i (h orm a t ) proper genre, speech act, sentences (maxim of manner) clear discourse: logical & coherent (maxim of manner) easy lexicon & concept fluent conveyance, pleasant voice (maxim of manner) modest & appreciative 4. n u ju p ra n a cet h a , cek a k -a os, n g a jen i implications there are five maxims noted in the above javanese politeness principles. the first maxim concerns with the general attitude of the speaker during the conversation. the second concerns with the respect of the speaker toward the hearer’s status. the third concerns with the topic, the objective and the means of expression during the speech event. the fourth concerns with the pleasant expression the speaker should convey to the hearer. the 7 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) soepomo poedjosoedarmo fifth concerns with the body language during the conversation. with the above descriptions, there are at least two things we can learn. first, in general the principle of language propriety in javanese is very similar with that of english. secondly, the way people teach their younger generation using idioms seems to be common both in javanese and in english. leech’s principle and maxim of politeness (1983) in english are in general agree with the above principle of politeness in javanese. the way the maxims are classified in english may not exactly agree with those of the javanese, but in general the content is very similar. for example, the principles of choosing expressions which minimally belittle the hearer’s status and the maxim of giving more praise to the hearer seem to agree with the principle of javanese andhap asor and ngajeni. both point at the principle of respecting the status of the hearer, and not belittling him. the principle of andhap asor and tepa slira seems to also agree with the sympathy feeling of leech. they concern with the positive feeling the speaker should extend to the hearer. the tact maxim (i.e. minimize cost to the hearer and maximize benefit to the hearer), the generosity maxim (minimize benefit to self and maximize cost to self), the maxim of agreement (i.e. minimize disagreement and maximize agreement), and the consideration maxim (i.e. to maximize the hearer’s pleasure) seem to agree with the javanese maxim of nuju prana. they put emphasis of making the hearer to feel comfortable and pleasant. meanwhile, brown and levinson’s principle of face threatening act (fta) is in agreement with the javanese principle, except that the javanese add with the javanese speech levels for the correct personal relation between the speaker and the addressee. the following can be used as a principle of speech norm. 1. what does p1 have to do? ready to engage in conversation (ramah). control your emotion, exhibit good temper (sabar). 2. pi to p2. what language to choose? (tepa slira) respect the language ability of the addresse (p2). accommodate p2’s speech ability, and try to adapt it. choose the right language acceptable by p2. 3. p1 to p2. respect the social status or social position of p2 (hormat) use the right speech level. 4. respect the mood of p2 (empan papan) choose the right speech objective and the right topic. also choose the right instrument: oral, written, telephone, phone cell. 5. present a pleasant speech act (nuju prana) pleasant enunciation. pleasant speech act: assertion, directives, commissives, expressive, etc. apply the right conversational maxim (grice): be brief, relevant, true, and pleasant manner). show appreciation and complementation at the right time. 6. apply good physical gestures (suba sita) references brown, p. & levinson, s.c. (1987). politeness, some universals in language usage. cambridge: cambridge university press. grice, h.p. (1975). “logic and conversation” in p.cole & morgan (eds). syntax and semantic speech acts. new york: academy press. hymes, d.h. (1974). foundation in sociolinguistics. an ethnographic approach. philadelphia: university of philadelphia press. leech, g. (2005). “politeness, is there an east-west divide?” journal of foreign language, vol. 160: 1-30. 8 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 1 – april 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) poedjosoedarmo, s. (1968). “javanese speech levels” indonesia, ithaca. cornell university. poedjosoedarmo, s. (1978). “language ettiquette in indonesia” spectrum essays presented to sutan takdir alisjahbana. in s.udin (ed). dian rakyat jakarta. 9 140 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 140 – 148 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.5335 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. demolishing humanity through pleasure and pain: reading huxley’s brave new world and orwell’s 1984 side by side reimundus raymond fatubun mal1959ever@gmail.com english education department, universitas cenderawasih, indonesia abstract article information oligarchical collectivism that supports totalitarianism silences freedom of speech, privacy, assembly, etc. both personal and communal through horrific pain or plentiful pleasure. authors write literary works to remind readers of this situation through novels, poems, plays, political essays, and or satire. in today's life, it seems these two ways of totalitarianism are being practiced in life singly or combined in different parts of the world. this can be seen in a number of countries where the government does this both in disguise and addressed to a certain group of members of society such as in nigeria and in real terms such as in nicaragua. this is also done in total for a country such as ukraine by russia. two of those great anti-utopia literary works are novels that raise the issue of restrained freedom of life in huxley's brave new world and orwell's 1984. these two anti-utopian novels raise the issue of the freedom of life that is confined but in different ways. using marxist psychoanalytic criticism, this paper discusses this issue seen in both novels by the two authors. the focus is on how both authors show totalitarianism being practiced both personally, and in the society found in these novels – how they are treated to follow rules that confine personal and societal freedom in totalitarianism. keywords: brave new world; humanity; pain; pleasure;1984 received: 5 november 2022 revised: 21 february 2023 accepted: 15 march 2023 https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:mal1959ever@gmail.com journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 141 introduction science and technology are advancing quickly, but their applications are not always what they were designed for. additionally, this can be done by organizations or even a state for frequently contested interests in addition to being done by people. as we can see, in the modern world, organizations and even entire nations use science and technology to control the actions of their employees or citizens. some nations even use them to further their own national interests abroad. this could have been accomplished indirectly through the internet, without the workers or the populace realizing it, or bluntly and directly. while science and technology are developing swiftly, not all of their uses are as intended. in addition to being done by individuals, this can also be done for frequently contested interests by organizations or even a state. as we can see, in the modern world, businesses, governments, and even entire peoples use science and technology to regulate the behavior of their workers and citizens. even some countries employ them to promote their own national interests abroad. this may have been done plainly and directly, or more covertly and covertly via the internet, without the workers or the general public understanding it. the novels brave new world (bnw) by aldous huxley and 1984 by george orwell are explored in this article in relation to the aforementioned concept. the ideas are the same in both works, despite the fact that they were written by two different authors from two different historical periods and geographical areas. this study’s objectives are to (1) look into how totalitarianism is maintained in bnw and (2) discuss how it is maintained in 1984, specifically how individuals and groups are forced to follow rules that keep them in a totalitarian society. readers should be on the lookout for any potential threats to mankind that have been either explicitly or implicitly forewarned by authors and historians throughout human history. it is anticipated that this succinct essay will help readers to pay attention to the “voices” of literature and history. the general objective of this article, then, is to look into how totalitarianism is depicted in both brave new world and in 1984. there have been several utopian/dystopian novels written before huxley's and orwell's, which are discussed in this article. there have been many others, but these are the ones that most explicitly present the idea of utopia/dystopia, particularly those that deal with control, oppression, and the loss of rights, as well as the treatment of the human being under an egregiously cruel totalitarian regime. actually, the first dystopian novel is we, written by zamyatin in 1922, and believed to have inspired huxley to write his masterpiece brave new world. this book was not permitted to be published in russia until 1988. the protagonist of bradbury's dystopian novel fahrenheit 451 is guy montag, and it explores the dystopian world in which reading certain books is prohibited, books must be destroyed, and what can be watched even in public places is monitored. in this censored and oppressive totalitarian state, society is unable to think or express itself freely. atwood also published a dystopian book in 1985 called the handmaid's tale, in which a radical religious political movement was born. the sons of jacob organization has seized the american government and installed a brutal theocracy known as the republic of gilead. this republic's citizens are not free, which makes them even more hazardous for women in especially because all of their rights have been taken away from them. fatubun (2022) authored an article regarding huxley's brave new world in relation to harari's homo deus: a brief history of tomorrow, which explores how science is used to create and control human life; in a separate article titled the contemporary significance of orwell's animal farm in indonesia's contemporary political situation, fatubun (2022) discussed how the satirical novel depicts a situation that is similar to the current political climate in indonesia by analyzing the behavior of the characters. pavle journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) reimundus raymond fatubun 142 (2021) analyzes orwell's viewpoint on the theoretical concepts of socialism through a comparison also of animal farm and 1984. after giving a brief overview of orwell's political development from the second to the fourth decades of the 20th century, he analyzes the books and demonstrates that orwell was still committed to the principles of democratic socialism in both of them, that his antisocialism was unjustified, and that both animal farm and 1984 contained critiques of capitalism and western imperialism. in comparison to theories on aging and life narratives advanced by philosophers and bioethicists, maren's (2019) article investigates how brave new world depicts a society without elderly people. maren paints a dystopian picture of a totalitarian society in the dystopian novel where art, truth, and meaning are sacrificed to pleasure and distraction and where the ruled are trained not to question the values of their rulers. she also argues that the extermination of old age has significant political, moral, and emotional costs. jennifer et al (2017, see also todd, 2019) states that, using the analogy in brave new world, some digital divide theories and frameworks need to be disproved since they are heavily linked to first-world countries and ignore the different access to technology that those who live in poverty have. by taking a closer look at the current situation, the authors appeal to educators, administrators, and researchers to consider the impact that the widespread adoption of technologies has had on younger generations as well as the contribution that the digital has made to knowledge creation and future visions more critically and consequentially. huxley's interdiscursive utopia is explored in maxim (2021), with a particular emphasis on but not limited to his brave new world. huxley's work reveals a sizable preservation of social prejudice and hierarchical thinking when read against the backdrop of pertinent critique and contextualized in 1920s and 1930s debates over the changing significance of science and the scientist in britain. this situation seriously undermines the interdiscursivity of his utopia and calls into question literature's claim to provide a complete picture of social reality. in the same novel, diken (2011, see also albloly and nour, 2019) explores the dystopian novel's ongoing relevance in a modern, postpolitical setting where a passive nihilist definition of "happiness" is elevated to the status of a political and ethical ideal and where "freedom" is taken for granted. significantly, rereading the novel compels one to consider modern, "democratic" forms of tyranny as well, despite huxley's original target being stalinism. in light of three key concepts— biopolitics, nihilism, and network society— diken urges us to reconsider the tenets of the brave new world. in his discussion of how modern political leaders influence their followers' ideas and behavior, zimbardo (2019) uses jim jones, the founder of the peoples temple, as an example. eight of jones's selections from orwell's list of state control strategies will be discussed, followed by revelations of how he put them into devilish daily practice to completely control devoted followers—resulting in their mass suicide/murder at jonestown, guyana, 40 years ago. another similar discussion is donald j. trump's status as orwell's big brother in the flesh as questioned by rodden (2020). he looks at how the trump administration has, in an extraordinary sense, become a hotbed of newspeak, a place where both his supporters and detractors constantly use catchphrases from 1984. al-subaihi and ismail (2020) focus on winston as a character to study the issue of social-psychological alienation in orwell's 1984 and primarily on seeman's interpretation of alienation, which clarifies the phrase "powerlessness." winston made a strong case for "alienation." the four factors that cause winston to feel alienated are tyranny, terror, the party's hold on power, and information. discussing the novel in connection with realworld governments, diglin (2014) believes that they have used new media technology in ways that make them akin to orwell's fictitious "big brother," and that this is why the usage of new media culture is linked to 1984. the author discusses the sociopolitical climate at the time the book was written, offers contemporary examples of how government journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 143 entities have utilized new media technologies as surveillance weapons, and concludes by asserting that new media technologies are causing language and knowledge to disappear. of all the articles reviewed above, they did discuss these two works by bringing up various issues, but no one made clear that these two works have the same goal of criticizing governments that use totalitarianism and small elites of oligarchs to organize and simultaneously suppress society in two different ways. the distinction between the two is that huxley’s work used hedonism while orwell’s used violence. nobody made this comparison. methodology marxist criticism is (morner and rausch, 1991; selden, 1989, holstein,1987) a literary analysis method that assesses a literary work as a product of a specific historical period's ideology. when marxist critics analyze a literary work, according to barry, (1995, p.156) they do the following: 1. they make a division between the ‘overt’ (manifest or surface) and the ‘covert’ (latent or hidden) hidden content of a literary work (much as psychoanalytic critics do) and then relate the covert subject matter of the literary work to the basic marxist themes such as class struggle; 2. they relate the context of a work to the socio-class status of the author; they explain the nature of a whole literary genre in terms of the social period which ‘produced’ it; they relate the literary work to the assumptions of the time in which it is ‘consumed’; is a ‘politicisation of literary form’, that is, the claims that literary forms are themselves determined by political circumstance. bearing in mind the marxist procedures above, the process followed to come to the results, and finally, the conclusion through the analysis is what miles and huberman (1994; miles, et al, 2014) called the interactive model. starting from the reading of the literary works to find the marxist-stalinist issues until the conclusion, this circular process was followed. results and discussion brief summaries that highlight the major themes in each book reveal that the central theme of huxley’s book is a man losing his fight to maintain his freedom and sanity in a dystopian world of test-tube children and think-alikes, while the central theme of orwell’s book is a man losing his fight to maintain his freedom and sanity in a dystopian police state. after a few quick sketches of certain well-known individuals mentioned in the novels, the main problems in the books are covered. famous figures alluded given that both novels advance the same philosophical viewpoint, both books make references to well-known proponents of that viewpoint. a number of important ones are described below. lenina crowne in brave new world alludes to vladimir lenin, the founder of the world's first proletariat revolution and the communist party's marxist-leninist offshoot. lenina crowne is a brainwashed member of the new world who adheres to the socialist dictatorship and goes by the name lenina, which is a tribute to vladimir lenin. lenin introduced and supported a socialist dictatorship in russia that shared many of the same ideals and inspirations. under this rule, no one was allowed to think or believe anything other than what lenin wanted them to as stated in (https://sites.google.com/site/annasanchezal journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) reimundus raymond fatubun 144 lusion) by sanchez. she is also explained in (https://www.coursehero.com/) as vladimir lenin, who led the russian revolution of 1917, is the inspiration for lenina's first name. this demonstrates huxley's sense of humor because ms. crowne is a total conformist who would never rebel against the world state. her last name is most likely a nod to john crowne, a romantic playwright from the british isles who lived in the 17th century. given that she gleefully adopts the world state's perspective on many enduring connections, lenina matches this description. benito hoover is a reference to benito mussolini, the founder of fascism in italy. the chewing gum fan has the name of benito mussolini, also known as il duce, the italian premier of the fascist party from 1922 to 1943. herbert hoover, the american president from 1929 to 1933, is the last name huxley gave his character. and bernard marx is in reference to karl marx the philosopher both of them have new ideas and their own opinions on things, everyone in the world state is named after some socialist philosopher but like a philosopher, bernard sees the world differently and questions it. bernard like marx had ideas that are different from mainstream society which makes him an outsider (https://www.coursehero.com/). emmanuel goldstein found in orwell’s 1984 and leon trotsky is explained in (https://www.liquisearch.com/). the similarities between leon trotsky’s and emmanuel goldstein's biographies, physical characteristics, writing style, and political philosophy were noted by a number of modern commentators not long after the publication of the novel. big brother and joseph stalin (https://www.bing.com/), it is safe to argue that the two are very comparable after reading the novel and researching stalin's leadership over soviet russia. there are many similarities between big brother and oceania and stalinism and the ussr. the capacity to alter reality and rewrite history was also abused by both governments. in brave new world a controlled society: a threat to freedom and human civilization in brave new world, people are treated as lab-created things that the rulers, a select elite group known as the alphas, can manipulate as they see fit. human values, in particular universal religious and cultural values, are nonexistent in society. there are no homes for children generated in labs, and art and science are only used for specific purposes. totalitarianism, like that found in communist and theocratic nations, is what governs this civilization. look at what is taking place in iran today. concern for what huxley sees as a danger to civilization. he mentioned issues that are detrimental to humanity, such as mind control, selective breeding of humans in labs, and the potential for the igniting of genetic engineering in the presence of biogenetic engineering. these issues prevent people from thinking freely enough to come up with innovative solutions that are beneficial to humanity. because humans created them in a laboratory, all of their potentialities were "killed," and as a result, human potential cannot be realized or developed. additionally, because human values are not permitted to derive from sources like art, religion, history, etc., potential in humans cannot be preserved or developed. the confinement of consciousness is the most concerning aspect since pleasure, such as sex, is always available and drug (soma) is used to cure every pain, discomfort, stress, etc. so society loses consciousness of its humanity. the demise of the diverse human capacities this is a system that stifles the many creative impulses, novel ideas, and dazzling creations that the human mind is capable of. it is still possible to see the human ingenuity that has given rise to so many inventions, innovations, and creative works. look at the great architecture of the world like the egyptian pyramids, the great wall of china, the great cathedrals and monasteries, particularly in europe, the borobudur temple, the angkor https://www.coursehero.com/ journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 145 wat temple, the forbidden city, the vatican, etc, and not mention great modern architectures all over the world. listen to the great music and songs from bach, mozart, beethoven, handel, vivaldi, schubert, verdi, etc. dance great dances like salsa, reggaeton, tango, flamenco, viennese waltz, indian classical dance, and balinese dances. study the great minds of aristotle, nietzsche, confucius, kierkegaard, aquinas, sartre, lao tzu, avicenna, st. augustine, etc., and ascertain the originality of their ideas. because individuals simply copy and obey what is already in place, all of the byproducts of the varied human minds as well as the diverse human brains themselves become dysfunctional in this society. oligarchic government and collectivism an oligarchy, a form of governance in which the authority is concentrated in a small number of people or in a dominant class, the alphas, is responsible for carrying out collectivism. collectivism must be imposed through hedonism, in which the society is ruined, in order for the oligarchic regime to operate effectively. lust for material possessions and sexual gratification are always available when pleasure and happiness are considered the highest goals in life. members of the society become unconscious of their genuine humanity as a result of this oligarchic control through hedonism and may even become utilized as automatons. only john the savage, as he informs mustapha mond, the controller, does not enjoy this hedonistic, without families, without religion, and without arts civilization: "… i like the inconveniences." …. "… i don't want comfort. i want god, i want poetry, i want real danger, i want freedom, i want goodness. i want sin." (pp. 267-268). the engineered perpetual working classes evolutionism says that space and time have no beginning and no end, everything evolves, and there is no purpose in life; it is no good or bad. humans are animals that they can be created in laboratories and human evolution can be accelerated through engineering science and technology as seen in the laboratories in this work. the oligarchy, the alphas, is to engineer and create more working classes like the betas, the gammas, the deltas, and the epsilons with more complete and sophisticated algorithms to serve them. since all the lower classes were created in labs with certain specific algorithms, they will be confined to their positions for good. in this case, there is no justice in this society in terms of human status. in a modern free world, everybody is free to work to achieve what he or she aspired to and change his or her status from a poor village peasant boy or girl to a dignified general, a smart scientist, a rich businessman or businesswoman or a famous artist. the threat in a society consisting of confined classes like this is that if the alphas take control, ancient myths about gods and goddesses’ wars might come to life once more. the fighting would mimic the trojan war from greek and roman mythology or bharatayuddha from indian legend. as a result, myths won't just be made up by poets or novelists; rather, they will be things that have always existed in reality. in 1984 confined individual, controlled society the party's capability to keep the public ignorant of history, current affairs, and party policies determines its ability to keep them ignorant of reality. without the necessary information, people are unable to make important decisions in their lives. the novel 1984 serves as an example of the negative consequences of people ceding control of their thoughts, feelings, and actions to an outside power that subtly manipulates society through media programming and an effective police network. because the party suppresses all human emotions—aside from rage and terror—in order to retain control over society, there is no meaningful interpersonal engagement or intimacy. genuine feelings like pity, love, friendship, and generosity, which distinguish people as unique individuals and set them apart from those who share the same https://en.berlin-translate.de/culture/the-most-famous-dances-in-the-world/#salsa https://en.berlin-translate.de/culture/the-most-famous-dances-in-the-world/#reggaeton https://en.berlin-translate.de/culture/the-most-famous-dances-in-the-world/#tango https://en.berlin-translate.de/culture/the-most-famous-dances-in-the-world/#flamenco https://en.berlin-translate.de/culture/the-most-famous-dances-in-the-world/#viennese-waltz https://en.berlin-translate.de/culture/the-most-famous-dances-in-the-world/#indian-classical-dance https://en.berlin-translate.de/culture/the-most-famous-dances-in-the-world/#indian-classical-dance https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/aristotle-116.php journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) reimundus raymond fatubun 146 sentiments, are the greatest dangers to authority, much like in brave new world. social conventions and behaviors that have been imposed replace individuality, such as dressing in uniform, following party schedules, and adhering to newspeak rules that restrict individuals from harboring alternative viewpoints. significance of the past according to orwell, the present will be governed by power rather than by truth if we don't have a grasp of history and a memory of past events and emotions. it is possible to effectively leave no standards for the present or opportunities for the future by altering the past. the party manipulates its followers into rejecting the idea of a history while simultaneously "creating" one by inventing historical occurrences to support its accomplishments. evidence that contradicts the ruler’s objectives is destroyed, whether it is present in publications like books, movies, newspapers, or even the thoughts of individual people. the party's logic has problems, but only those with memories can dispute its authority by pointing them out. who controls the past controls the future, therefore, for this purpose, the ruler programs it. who controls the present controls the past, and for this purpose, the ruler rewrites it. winston’s efforts to rewrite history books are a great danger for the party. winston is similar in thought and character to john the savage in brave new world. newspeak and its role the official language is newspeak, george orwell's most original and well-known creation. by eliminating phrases that might be used to further independent or politically unacceptable views, newspeak supports the ruler's beliefs. as younger generations adopt newspeak, oldspeak disappears. newspeak's main objective is to prevent people from expressing unpopular viewpoints or unique ideas by giving people fewer and more tightly defined terms to pick from. before expressing notions, much less nuanced and complex ones, a new language often takes time to fully grow. the ruler's objective is to prohibit the use of a language like newspeak at this time. when it comes to law and order, society most likely just discusses usual, everyday behaviors. because of newspeak, society, particularly the younger generation, eventually, lose connection to the past. perpetual violence as a result of ongoing hostilities, oceania instills a hate of the party's adversaries in its people and uses force to oppress any who disagree with its policies. the fundamental goal of the system is to divert public attention from any private sentiments that aren't under party control (or approval). when people are compelled to live in a perpetual state of anxiety brought on by repeated threats of destruction through war, they are willing to give over their right to make decisions to a seemingly confident, all-powerful authority. in this way, the authority maintains its uncontrolled power. according to goldstein's book, conflict makes it possible for society to continue consuming the products it has produced, which leads to steady employment for the general public. because war uses excess material resources that could be utilized to make the population too comfortable and ultimately too knowledgeable, the authority profits. the major members of powers do not want the conflict to end in order to maintain shortages, thriving economies, and their authority as dictators. conclusion since they both criticize comparable philosophical tenets from marxist-stalinist practices, both authors include allusions to proponents of the same intellectual grounds in their literary works. both works are full of marxist-stalinist issues: the absolute and repressive dictatorship, the ruthless elimination of rivals in the top leadership, the extensive use of the secret police and terror; and the extreme disregard for human rights and the rule of law. both works of literature criticize totalitarianism, which confines people in journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 147 society through rigorous monitoring. they also serve to warn readers of the dangers that human society faces as human values deteriorate. both authors address strong authority and authoritarianism, but huxley achieves so through pleasure and orwell through agony. the alphas in brave new world and the party in 1984 are two instances of small elite oligarchies that dominate life with zeal which may still be found today in certain governments. they also debate individuality, which is strictly prohibited. they also criticize historical data manipulation because it increases the chance that those in positions of authority will invent the "truth" by removing historical facts. this reminds people of the use of algorithms today. the authors also warn about the harm that excessive pleasure and misery can do to unique human creativity and invention. both too much pleasure and too much pain are detrimental to both the human body and spirit in the individual and society at large. references a, albloly & d, nour. 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(1924). we. new york: e. p. dutton. websites https://orwell.fandom.com/wiki/emmanuel_ goldstein retrieved 9 october 2022. https://www.ipl.org/essay/joseph-stalin-ingeorge-orwells-1984 retrieved 9 october 2022. https://www.bing.com/search?q=is+big+brot her+in+orwell%27s+1984 retrieved 9 october 2022. sanchez, anna. https://sites.google.com/site/annasanch ezallusion/a-brave-new-world retrieved 9 october 2022. https://www.liquisearch.com/emmanuel_gol dstein/leon_trotsky retrieved 9 october 2022. https://www.coursehero.com/lit/bravenew-world/the-historical-significance retrieved 9 october 2022. https://sites.google.com/site/annasanchezall usion/a-brave-new-world retrieved 9 october 2022. https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorid=7003547537 https://dx.doi.org/10.31577/wls.2021.13.4.7 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fabian firman elmar & maria ananta 178 creature symbols to foreshadow harry’s confrontation with his past in j.k. rowling’s harry potter and the prisoner of askaban fabian firman elmar & maria ananta f.firman.e@gmail.com & m_ananta@usd.ac.id department of english letters, universitas sanata dharma abstract symbol is a major element in literary works. it always has a meaning which is different than the literal meaning of the symbol itself, and thus, it is prevalent in literary works which often contain hidden meanings. foreshadowing on the other hand, is the act of vaguely hinting the readers to the future event in the story or even the outcome of said story. this study discusses the creature symbols presented in j.k. rowling‘s harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban as foreshadowing element that hints towards the confrontation between harry and his past in the conflict of the novel. there are three creature symbols found in the novel: the black dog, the rat scabbers, and the dementors of azkaban. the black dog reflects sirius‘ loyalty to his friends and its black fur symbolizes the sorrow and mourning he felt for their death, but its resemblance with the grim stands for his vengeful obsession to peter pettigrew whom had betrayed him and the potters. the rat scabbers on the other hand, symbolizes betrayal, cowardice, and cunning trickery, traits that can be found in peter pettigrew. the dementors meanwhile, symbolizes hopeless misery and despair known as depression. these guardians of azkaban foreshadowed that the conflict would be a confrontation between harry and his past while the black dog and rat revealed the truth behind said past regarding who betrayed the potters twelve years ago and the innocent man whom said crime was blamed upon. key words: symbols, foreshadow, j.k. rowling introduction in harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban, j.k. rowling uses symbols in form of creatures presented in the story. for example, a large black dog which was the animagus form of sirius black. a dog is a symbol of loyalty, but the black dog was presented in the story as an omen of death. peter pettigrew on the other hand have the animagus form of a rat, a symbol of disease and cowardice. these creature symbols are used by rowling to clue in the readers towards the main conflict of the story in which harry potter is confronted by the unknown part of his past, one that is related to the night when his parents, james and lily potter, were murdered, and him becoming the boy-wholived, the hero of british magical world. the creatures in the novel, both magical or nonmagical, are an important aspects in harry potter universe, especially regarding the third book prisoner of azkaban where creatures are prevalent throughout the story, and thus, the writer is going to discuss in this undergraduate thesis how the creature symbols in the novel foreshadow harry potter‘s confrontation with his past as revealed by the plot of the novel. mailto:f.firman.e@gmail.com journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 179 symbols abrams defined a symbol broadly as “anything that signifies something” (1999: 311), but he further elaborated the terms in relation to discussing literature as follows: in discussing literature, however, the term "symbol" is applied only to a word or phrase that signifies an object or event which in its turn signifies something, or has a range of reference, beyond itself (1999: 311). a symbol then refers to a specific object which signifies a certain meaning, or meanings, which are different than the literal concept of the object. as an example, the event of war as a symbol is not to be taken literally as merely a conflict, but a symbol of chaos, failure of leaders to keep order and peace for their people. abrams classified symbols into conventional or public symbols and personal symbols. conventional symbols refer to “symbolic objects of which the further significance is determinate within a particular culture” (abrams, 1999: 311). these symbols are conventional because they were not invented by one person, but their meanings were established into place within the culture of a society. examples of such symbols are sword which in medieval culture of europe and in the samurai culture of japan is a symbol for honour and justice, and cross which is the symbol of salvation and victory against evil in the christian culture. personal symbols on the other hand, refer to “symbols that are made by exploiting widely shared associations between an object or event or action and a particular concept” (abrams, 1999: 311). whereas conventional symbols are the result of culture, personal symbol is an invention of a person, an author, and thus, their meaning is defined in accordance to the author‘s will and may differs to the symbolic meaning established in a certain culture. for example, a sword, as opposed of being a symbol of honour and justice as established in warrior culture of medieval europe and japan, symbolizes war, chaos, and bloodshed instead. according to arp and johnson: 1. a story must furnish a clue that a detail is to be taken symbolically. the symbol always signals their existence through emphasis, repetition, or position (2006: 280). 2. the meaning of literary symbol must be established and supported by the context of the story. a symbol has its meaning in the story, not outside of it (2006: 280). 3. to be called a symbol, an item must suggest a meaning different in kind from its literal meaning, or in other words, a symbol is something more than a representative of a class or type (2006: 280). 4. a symbol may have more than one meaning. it may suggest a cluster of meaning that is controlled by the context of the story (2006: 281). thus, in order to identify a symbol within a literary work, it is necessary for the reader to observe the detail of the work, especially repeated, emphasized, and strategically positioned detail that may pertain clues that an object may be a symbol of importance in the story. the context of the story itself must also support the idea that an object is a symbol, as the use of an object as a symbol must be established within the story and the symbol cannot be referred to as one without it. lastly, a symbolic meaning of an object is not connected to the object in a literal sense, but it represents something more beyond the object itself, such as an idea or an emotion that are often linked connotatively to the object, and that an object may have a cluster of meaning, each of which is supported by the relevant context of the story. foreshadows foreshadowing as a literary term is a “hint or suggestion of what is to come” (barnet, 2008: 103), allowing readers to glimpse at the future events of the story. this means that foreshadowing is a vague clue that can be found in the story that indicates the readers of upcoming event, character development, or plot progression that will happen later in a story. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fabian firman elmar & maria ananta 180 cuddon states that foreshadowing is “an arrangement of events and information in such way that later events are prepared for or shadowed forth beforehand and thus, gives structural and thematic unity” (2013: 285). thus, there is a unity in the structure and theme of the novel in a way that the later events happened in the story, such as how the conflict is going to be resolved or how will the character faced his enemy, is already clued in to the readers through connection to earlier scenes and previously given information in the early part of the novel. creature symbols in harry potter and the prisoner of askaban creatures are intricately tied into the novels of harry potter series. whether it is a common animal, mythical beasts of legend, or the magical creatures of rowling‘s own creation, rowling made the creatures she presented in harry potter series as an inseparable part of its universe and often served a role to further the story‘s plot. there are creatures rowling presented which served in particular importance as symbols: the black dog, scabbers the rat, buckbeak the hippogriff, the white stag that appeared as harry‘s patronus, hermione‘s pet cat crookshanks, and the dementors of azkaban prison. in this study the black dog, ron‘s pet rat scabbers, and the dementors of azkaban prison are examined 1. the black dog the black dog made a recurring appearance throughout the novel‘s storyline, shadowing harry twice just before accidents that nearly killed him and later was revealed to be the animagus form of sirius black, a fugitive on the run. the fact that the black dog appeared repeatedly throughout the plot as it shadowed harry, twice just before the accidents that nearly killed him and once more just before his confrontation with sirius black, as well as the revelation of it as sirius‘ animagus form confirmed that the black dog is a symbol of importance. originally, the black dog was thought to be a grim, a dog-like creature which professor trelawney described in the novel as followed, “the giant, spectral dog that haunts churchyards, an omen—the worst omen—of death” (1999: 118). if the black dog truly is a grim, then it is meant to be a symbol of death. however, as arp and johnson stated, “the meaning symbol must be established and supported by the context of the story” (2006: 180). thus, there must be evidence within the novel that support whether the black dog is a grim that symbolizes death or not. ron weasley‘s words are found in the novel regarding the subject, “grim scare the living out of most wizard” (1999: 122) and many students in the divination class during their first lesson gasped in horror when professor trelawney announced that harry had grim in his tea cup as they understand the significance of grim. “my dear,” professor trelawney‘s huge eyes opened dramatically, “you have the grim.” “the what?” said harry. he could tell that he wasn‘t the only one who didn‘t understand; dean thomas shrugged at him and lavender brown looked puzzled, but nearly everybody else clapped their hands to their mouths in horror. (1999: 118) it can be concluded that grim as a symbol of death is a common superstition in the magical world. thus, it fits abrams‘ theory of conventional symbol that it is a “symbolic object which significance is determined within a particular culture” (abrams, 1999: 311). in this case, the significance of grim is established within the culture of witches and wizards in the magical world. the two accidents that occurred immediately following the black dog‘s appearance, both nearly takes harry‘s life, seems to support the possibility that the black dog is indeed a grim. the first occurred during the night when harry left magnolia journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 181 crescent and the second is on the first quidditch match of the season against hufflepuff. while there were no clear implication that the black dog appeared to be spectral in its first appearance as how trelawney described the grim, harry had estimated its size to be very large when he lighted the surrounding area. what harry saw at the time was a silhouette which he later affirmed to be something similar to a dog, “there was a big black thing,” said harry, pointing uncertainly into the gap. “like a dog … but massive …” (1999: 37). coincided with its first appearance, harry was almost crushed by the knight bus that answered his unintended summon when he accidentally waved his wand arm as he fell. harry had brushed with death at the time. he thought little of the incident until he saw the cover of a book about death omens in flourish and blotts which had the picture of a black dog similar to the one he saw at the night, but even then he tried to assure himself that it was just a stray dog (1999: 59-60). the black dog made a second appearance during the first game of quidditch in the season between gryffindor and hufflepuff. again, the grim appeared this time as a silhouette, though harry could clearly made out its form. he turned, intending to head back toward the middle of the field, but at that moment, another flash of lightning illuminated the stands, and harry saw something that distracted him completely—the silhouette of an enormous shaggy black dog, clearly imprinted against the sky, motionless in the topmost, empty row of seats (1999: 197). as with the dog‘s first appearance, the incident occurred following its presence endangered harry‘s life. numbing, swirling white mist was filling harry‘s brain. … what was he doing? why was he flying? he needed to help her. … she was going to die. … she was going to be murdered. … he was falling, falling through the icy mist. “not harry! please … have mercy … have mercy. …” a shrill voice was laughing, the woman was screaming, and harry knew no more (1999: 199). as it turns out, despite the two incidents occurred previously pointed to the conclusion that the black dog is a grim as harry had feared, rowling gives a clue that the black dog may not be a grim in its third appearance. crookshanks seemed to have come to a halt. harry was sure he could see something else moving in the shadow of the trees too. and just then, it emerged— a gigantic, shaggy black dog, moving stealthily across the lawn, crookshanks trotting at its side. harry stared. what did this mean? if crookshanks could see the dog as well, how could it be an omen of harry‘s death? (1999: 338) the black dog appeared for the fourth time when it kidnapped ron into a hidden passage beneath the whomping willow. ron was on his feet. as the dog sprang back toward them he pushed harry aside; the dog‘s jaws fastened instead around ron‘s outstretched arm. harry lunged forward, he seized a handful of the brute‘s hair, but it was dragging ron away as easily as though he were a rag doll (1999: 373). that the black dog could bite ron and dragged him away is clearly an evidence that it is solid in appearance instead of spectral and thus, is not a grim. accordingly, as the evidence disproved the previous hypothesis, there must be something else signified by the black dog. towards the climax of the plot, the black dog is revealed to be the animagus form of sirius black. as it turns however, sirius black journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fabian firman elmar & maria ananta 182 was never a traitor. he is a loyal friends to harry‘s parents and sworn that he “never betrayed james and lily and would have died before he betrayed them” (1999: 415). he also stated that his reason to break out from azkaban was to protect harry as he was the only one who knew that the traitor pettigrew, servant to lord voldemort was still alive (1999: 415). this loyalty is actually reflected in the black dog that is his animagus form. dog is often depicted as loyal animal and here, the form of black dog sirius assumed signified the loyalty he held towards his friends. hence, loyalty the signified meaning by the symbol of dog in prisoner of azkaban. however, as arp and johnson suggested that “a symbol may suggest a cluster of meaning as per the context of the story” (2006: 281), there may be another meaning to the symbol of black dog aside from loyalty. in the quoted passage below, sirius is depicted to hold grief and sorrow over the death of harry‘s parents. the grief and sorrow he felt over their death are the meaning symbolized by its black fur which is the color often used as a sign of grieving in funeral. its relation to death also related to the dog‘s heavy resemblance to the grim, the harbinger of death in the novel. in this case, the black fur of the dog reflects sirius‘ desire for vengeance on whom caused him much sorrow and anguish, his traitorous friend peter pettigrew. this desire was so strong that it turned into obsession that enabled him to resist the dementors. 2. scabbers the rat the rat scabbers is a pet belongs to ron weasley, harry‘s best friend along with hermione granger. it is described by a witch working in the magical menagerie on diagon alley as a common garden rat, but one that “has been through the mill” after she saw its tattered left ear and a front paw that missing a toe (1999: 64-65). scabbers‘ sickly appearance is first noted when harry encountered ron and hermione in diagon alley during the summer holiday. he pulled his pet rat out of his pocket. “and i want to get him checked over,” he added, placing scabbers on the table in front of them. “i don‘t think egypt agreed with him.” scabbers was looking thinner than usual, and there was a definite droop to his whiskers (1999: 63). aside from its bad health condition, scabbers is also seems to be constantly in fear of something, though often it is because hermione‘s cat crookshanks was after him. however, during buckbeak‘s execution, the rat tried to escape frantically from something even when crookshanks was not around. “it‘s scabbers — he won‘t — stay put —“ ron was bent over, trying to keep scabbers in his pocket, but the rat was going berserk; squeaking madly, twisting and flailing, trying to sink his teeth into ron‘s hand (1999: 369). this stress and fear are later revealed by sirius black to be because of his escape from azkaban, and the rat, whom truly is peter pettigrew in disguise, knew that sirius was out for him. the first time his condition is noted to be sick is also recalled by harry to coincide with the time of sirius‘ escape. accordingly, the position and repeated details of scabbers‘ ill condition and fear made it fit to be mention as a symbol. scabbers then as a symbol reflects the character of peter pettigrew for the rat is his animagus form. peter is revealed by sirius to be a spy for voldemort and a traitor to harry‘s parents for selling them out. peter as a treacherous man ratted on his friends, james and lily, giving their location which he supposed to keep secret to voldemort. incidentally, his animagus form is also a rat, a small rodent animal. by the double meaning of the word rat, it can be concluded that the rat scabbers symbolizes betrayal. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 183 aside from his treachery, the symbol of rat also reflects two other traits of peter pettigrew. first is the cowardice he showed after his deception was revealed. according to sirius, peter is “always liked big friends who‘d look after him”(1999: 412) and that “his own stinking skin meant more to him than harry‘s whole family” (1999: 419). this statement is supported by the fact that peter tried to beg sirius and remus lupin for mercy. “sirius — it‘s me … it‘s peter … your friend … you wouldn‘t …” black kicked out and pettigrew recoiled. “there‘s enough filth on my robes without you touching them,” said black. “remus!” pettigrew squeaked, turning to lupin instead, writhing imploringly in front of him. “you don‘t believe this … wouldn‘t sirius have told you they‘d changed the plan?” (1999: 416). when the two made clear their intention not to spare him, peter turned towards ron and hermione in desperation, but neither were willing to help him. peter even knelt towards harry, clearly in fear for his life. he tried to convince harry that his father james, someone he had betrayed, would have understood and show him mercy. “harry … harry … you look just like your father … just like him. …” …… “harry,” whispered pettigrew, shuffling toward him, hands outstretched. “harry, james wouldn‘t have wanted me killed. … james would have understood, harry … he would have shown me mercy. …” (1999: 417-418). conclusively, the symbol of rat in prisoner of azkaban signifies several different meanings. it stands for betrayal as peter pettigrew sold his best friends whom he had been get along since the school days to voldemort. the rat is also a symbol for both cowardice and cunning for although peter is capable of clever trickery, he is a coward who is first and foremost care about his own life and is willing to do anything to save himself. 3. dementors of azkaban the dementors are the guardians of azkaban, a dreadful prison where the ministry of magic put the convicted witch and wizard for imprisonment. they are a kind of dark creatures with terrible physical appearance described as follows in prisoner of azkaban, even more terrible than its appearance is its power to suck happiness and bring despair and hopelessness to its immediate surroundings. as lupin put it, dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. they infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. even muggles feel their presence, though they can‘t see them. get too near a dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. if it can, the dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself … soulless and evil. you‘ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life (1999: 208-209). this terrifying power is even more pronounced by its ability called the dementor‘s kiss which enables it to suck the soul of the living. it is, according to lupin, is “its last and worst weapon, used upon those they wished to destroy utterly” (1999: 274275). to be subjected to the dementor‘s kiss is something lupin described to be worse than death as he stated that, you can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. but you‘ll have no sense of self anymore, no memory, no … anything. there‘s no chance at all of recovery. you‘ll just — exist. as an empty shell. and your soul is gone forever … lost (1999: 275). as with both the black dog and the rat scabbers, the dementors of azkaban is mentioned as a symbol of importance in this study since their recurring appearance journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fabian firman elmar & maria ananta 184 throughout the story and positioned as an opposition towards harry, despite being tasked to guard hogwarts and its students, fits the theory of symbol stated by arp and johnson in perrine’s literature that “the symbol always signals their existence through emphasis, repetition, or position” (2006: 280). when a dementor first appeared in the story during the ride on hogwarts express in an inspection for sirius black presence on the train, harry was immediately subjected to its frightening power. in his second encounter during the quidditch match however, it is clear that the group of dementors were after harry specifically. and then a horribly familiar wave of cold swept over him, inside him, just as he became aware of something moving on the field below. … before he‘d had time to think, harry had taken his eyes off the snitch and looked down. at least a hundred dementors, their hidden faces pointing up at him, were standing beneath him. it was as though freezing water were rising in his chest, cutting at his insides. and then he heard it again. … someone was screaming, screaming inside his head … a woman … (1999: 198). unlike the black dog and the rat which are conventional symbols, the dementor, being a creature invented entirely by j.k. rowling, is a personal symbol. this is because the meaning it signified as a symbol is defined in accordance to her will as the author as per abrams theory of symbol (1999: 311). the power of dementors reflected the meaning it signified as a symbol. they drain the positive feeling from their surroundings and leave despair and hopelessness in their wake. a case in point, the reaction of harry‘s friends after the encounter with a dementor on the train. “it was horrible,” said neville, in a higher voice than usual. ―did you feel how cold it got when it came in?” “i felt weird,” said ron, shifting his shoulders uncomfortably. “like i‘d never be cheerful again. …” ginny, who was huddled in her corner looking nearly as bad as harry felt, gave a small sob; hermione went over and put a comforting arm around her (1999: 95). this feeling of unhappiness along with harry‘s own experience of having to relive the memory of his mother‘s death which left him in misery in his encounters with the dementors on two separate incidents signify that the dementor is a symbol of negativity in form of unhappiness, despair, and misery, as their power instilled such feelings upon their victims, leaving them unable to recall any sort of memory except ones that brings them suffering and hopelessness. creature symbols as foreshadowing elements in the exposition part of prisoner of azkaban, the character sirius black, the assumed antagonist of the story, was introduced very early in the third chapter as an escaped convict in the muggle news (1999: 18) before his identity was made clear by the newspaper stan shunpike was reading during the knight bus ride. harry held the paper up to the candlelight and read: black still at large sirius black, possibly the most infamous prisoner ever to be held in azkaban fortress, is still eluding capture, the ministry of magic confirmed today.… while muggles have been told that black is carrying a gun (a kind of metal wand that muggles use to kill each other), the magical community lives in fear of a massacre like that of twelve years ago, when black murdered thirteen people with a single curse (1999: 41). while sirius black is mentioned to be a convicted wizard, it was stan who revealed that sirius was a “big supporter of voldemort” (1999: 42). however, it is to be noted that the revelation of sirius identity as a supporter of voldemort was preceded by journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 185 harry‘s first encounter with the large black dog suspected to be a grim (1999: 36-37). after a brief encounter with the minister of magic cornelius fudge, harry then proceeded to spend the rest of summer in leaky cauldron while taking occasional trips to diagon alley to buy school supplies. when he visited the flourish and blotts for new book, he was reminded of coming across the black dog in magnolia crescent when he saw the same dog was on the cover of a book about death omens, though later he tried to convince himself that it meant nothing. eventually, harry was reunited with ron and hermione again in diagon alley. it was in this meeting that harry first took notice of scabbers unusual condition, which at the time coincided with the news of sirius black escaped from azkaban (1999: 63) and later, this detail was recalled during the climax of the conflict. the presumed main conflict of the novel was introduced by the end of summer holiday when harry accidentally overheard the conversation between mr. and mrs. weasley regarding sirius black: “molly, how many times do i have to tell you? they didn‘t report it in the press because fudge wanted it kept quiet, but fudge went out to azkaban the night black escaped. the guards told fudge that black‘s been talking in his sleep for a while now. always the same words: ‘he‘s at hogwarts … he‘s at hogwarts.‘ black is deranged, molly, and he wants harry dead. if you ask me, he thinks murdering harry will bring you-know-who back to power. black lost everything the night harry stopped you-know-who, and he‘s had twelve years alone in azkaban to brood on that. …” (1999: 72-73) in the midst of the ride towards hogwarts, the train was stopped for an inspection conducted by the dementors of azkaban in search for sirius black. it was during the inspection harry encountered a dementor for the first time and it forced harry to relive the moment of his mother‘s death, albeit the memory was, at the time, limited to the scream of unknown woman. this encounter is the inciting incident of the plot. it marks the beginning of rising action, the increasing complication of the conflict in the plot, as not only that harry was in danger from sirius black, but the dementors that were stationed around hogwarts to capture him would not mind preying on him as well. furthermore, that harry was forced to relive his mother‘s death during the encounter foreshadowed that the main conflict would be related to harry‘s past. specifically, the night when his parents were murdered by voldemort and his subsequent vanquishing the dark lord twelve years ago in godric‘s hollow. throughout the rising action part of the plot, the threat of sirius black seemed to be looming over harry. in the first divination lesson where professor trelawney predicted his death when she saw that his tea leaves formed the shape of a grim, a giant, spectral black dog believed by witches and wizards to be an omen of death (1999: 118) and harry was immediately reminded of the large, doglike silhouette he saw the night at magnolia crescent before he boarded the knight bus which happened to bear a great resemblance to a grim. this made him slightly worried, although later mcgonagall dismissed her prediction and assured harry that he would be just fine since none the students whose death were predicted by trelawney has died yet (1999: 120). further into the year, another clue of sirius‘ supposed betrayal was given by malfoy. “of course, if it was me,” he said quietly, “i‘d have done something before now. i wouldn‘t be staying in school like a good boy, i‘d be out there looking for him.” “what are you talking about, malfoy?” said ron roughly. “don‘t you know, potter?” breathed malfoy, his pale eyes narrowed. “know what?” malfoy let out a low, sneering laugh. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fabian firman elmar & maria ananta 186 “maybe you‘d rather not risk your neck,” he said. “want to leave it to the dementors, do you? but if it was me, i‘d want revenge. i‘d hunt him down myself” (1999: 140-141). malfoy‘s words, same as mr. weasley‘s, implied that harry would have wanted revenge on sirius for a reason unknown to him. at this point however, harry has yet to know that the reason sirius was imprisoned years ago was not only for the mass murder he was notorious of, but also for the treason he supposedly had committed by selling his parents to voldemort twelve years ago. despite the looming threat however, the year seemingly progressed smoothly for the students of hogwarts until sirius black managed to sneak into the castle during the student‘s visiting hour to hogsmeade and attacked the fat lady after he failed in his attempt to enter the gryffindor common room. this alerted the whole resident of hogwarts and instigated the staff to conduct a thorough search around the castle to find black, albeit to no avail. since sirius clearly attempted to enter the gryffindor common room, this seemed to reinforce the idea that he was after harry. with the fat lady being too frightened to guard the entrance to gryffindor common room, her portrait was momentarily replaced by sir cardogan‘s while security around the castle was heightened in the light of the incident, especially in the case of harry who were routinely followed by teachers to ensure his safety. the quidditch season then began not long after the incident and in u expected turn of event, the gryffindor were to face hufflepuff per the request of slytherin team to switch their match as malfoy‘s arm was supposedly not yet healed. it was during the match harry encountered the grim for the second time (1999: 197-198), and just as when harry came across the grim in the magnolia crescent where he almost got crushed by the suddenly appeared knight bus, this second encounter was also followed by an incident that nearly killed him. this time by a group of dementors that suddenly appeared on the field. harry was once again forced to relive the memory of the screaming woman, but this time it was clearer. harry realized then that the woman whose scream he had heard was his mother and what the dementors forced him to relive was his memory of lily begging voldemort to spare him before the dark lord killed her in the halloween night twelve years ago. that this memory was shown twice in his two encounters with the dementors signals that the conflict of the novel was not only related to sirius black, but also harry‘s past regarding the night when his parents were murdered. the second appearance of the grim in the quidditch match also worried harry, especially since near-death accidents seemed to occur every time it showed himself to harry, making him wonder if the grim would haunt him to death (1999: 205). the two accidents harry had experienced seemed to affirm professor trelawney‘s prediction regarding harry‘s death. another thing that made harry even more nervous was how strongly the dementors affected him. he consulted to lupin about it and he agreed to teach him a defensive spell against dementors (1999: 210). in the very last weekend of the first terms, another trip to hogsmeade was held. since harry did not have a signed permission form for the visit, he was not allowed to go, but he was given a way to sneak out from the castle by fred and george weasley in form of marauder‘s map. the map not only showed the people in hogwarts, but it also showed the secret passages within the castle. this allowed harry to sneak out into hogsmeade without anyone‘s notice. he rendezvoused with ron and hermione at the honeydukes candy shop and spent his time with them. after they finished with their visit to honeydukes, the three opted for a cup of butterbeer at the journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 187 three broomsticks, but unexpectedly, he found out from eavesdropping the minister cornelius fudge‘s conversation with the professors of hogwarts and the innkeeper madam rosmerta that sirius black was his parents‘ best friend, that his parent named him his godfather, and that had supposedly betrayed them to voldemort. another important detail that was revealed in the conversation was the introduction of peter pettigrew, the wizard who was allegedly murdered by sirius black twelve years ago for confronting the man in the light of his supposed betrayal. “it was not we who found him. it was little peter pettigrew — another of the potters‘ friends. maddened by grief, no doubt, and knowing that black had been the potters‘ secret-keeper, he went after black himself.” “pettigrew … that fat little boy who was always tagging around after them at hogwarts?” said madam rosmerta. “hero-worshipped black and potter,” said professor mcgonagall. “never quite in their league, talent-wise. i was often rather sharp with him. you can imagine how i — how i regret that now. …” she sounded as though she had a sudden head cold. “there, now, minerva,” said fudge kindly, “pettigrew died a hero‘s death. eyewitnesses — muggles, of course, we wiped their memories later — told us how pettigrew cornered black. they say he was sobbing, lily and james, sirius! how could you?‘ and then he went for his wand. well, of course, black was quicker. blew pettigrew to smithereens. …” (1999: 231). peter was another friend of james potter. according to the quoted passage above, he often tagging along with james and sirius during their hogwarts days and even heroworshipped them. the passage also mentioned that pettigrew was the one whom confronted black for his treason and was murdered for it, according to the muggle witnesses fudge mentioned. after the end of christmas holiday, harry was getting a lesson from lupin on an antidementor charm called the patronus which supposed to act as a shield that chase away the dementors. lupin used a boggart, a creature that is able to shapeshift into any person‘s greatest fear, in place of a real dementor since harry‘s boggart form was one. however, the dementor‘s effect on harry was so great that even the boggart-dementor was able to affect harry. this time, he also relived the memory of james telling lily to run when he realized voldemort was at their doorstep (1999: 267). nonetheless, harry managed to produce a decent patronus despite this setback and later, he managed to produce a good one to expel the fake dementors which turned out to be malfoy and his cronies during the match against ravenclaw. just afterward the gryffindor‘s victory party however, another incident occurred. this time, sirius black managed to gain entry to the common room and apparently was about to attack ron. sirius escaped before any of the teachers can apprehend him, but this incident vaguely hinted that perhaps harry was not his target. harry pondered upon himself on why black had chosen to escape since he could have easily silenced ron before he could make a noise and then proceed to attack harry without anyone‘s notice instead, though he rationalized that he did so because he would not be able to escape afterwards had he done so (1999: 302). just the day before the quidditch final between gryffindor and slytherin, harry saw the grim once again. only this time, he saw hermione‘s pet cat, crookshanks, trotting along with it. and just then, it emerged — a gigantic, shaggy black dog, moving stealthily across the lawn, crookshanks trotting at its side. harry stared. what did this mean? if crookshanks could see the dog as well, how could it be an omen of harry‘s death? (1999: 338). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fabian firman elmar & maria ananta 188 as is discussed in the first part of the analysis, this was the clue that point towards the possibility that the black dog was not grim as harry had first thought since crookshanks seemed to be able to perceive it normally. that harry spotted them both later was recalled during the climax of the novel by harry whom realized that crookshanks was helping black all along to get to peter. after gryffindor‘s triumph in the quidditch final, the second terms was about to end with the exams were underway. at the end of harry‘s divination exam, professor trelawney unexpectedly prophesied the impending return of voldemort with the help of a servant whom had been chained for the last twelve years. sirius black seemed to fit the criteria of the servant mentioned in this prophecy. he was thought to be a major supporter of voldemort, a loyal servant who spied on the potters by his order, and he had been imprisoned in the dreaded azkaban for twelve years since his betrayal was revealed to public by peter pettigrew. trelawney predicted that the servant was going to break free before midnight that day and so harry then immediately set out to find ron and hermione to tell them of the prophecy, but before he had the chance to, ron and hermione gave him news that hagrid‘s hippogriff, buckbeak, was set to be executed that evening, distracting him from the importance of his own news. this marked the beginning of the climax in the novel where harry would be confronted by the truth behind his past when voldemort murdered his parents and was subsequently vanquished, leaving him as the lone survivor of the night. the three then set out to hagrid‘s hut under the cover of harry‘s invisibility cloak. they accompanied hagrid before buckbeak‘s execution and in the midst of their conversation, ron‘s pet rat scabbers whom had gone missing since the beginning of the second terms, presumably eaten by crookshanks, suddenly turned up in hagrid‘s milk jug (1999: 366-367). the rat looked worse than ever and it behaved frantically as if it was desperate to free himself and escape from something coming after him. when crookshanks appeared near them when they sneaked out of hagrid‘s hut, scabbers managed to slip away and the cat chased it down until ron managed to catch it close to the whomping willow. but then, the enormous black dog harry had seen throughout the year suddenly appeared and attacked ron, dragging him and scabbers along into the large gap in the whomping willow‘s roots which turned out to be a secret passage. ron was on his feet. as the dog sprang back toward them he pushed harry aside; the dog‘s jaws fastened instead around ron‘s outstretched arm. harry lunged forward, he seized a handful of the brute‘s hair, but it was dragging ron away as easily as though he were a rag doll — ..… and there, at the base of the trunk, was the dog, dragging ron backward into a large gap in the roots — ron was fighting furiously, but his head and torso were slipping out of sight — (1999: 372-373). the quoted passage above showed that the dog was not a grim all along as it is capable of physically attack ron while grim as a spectral being like hogwarts ghosts was incapable of such feat. this was foreshadowed by the scene when harry noticed the dog was sneaking around hogwarts with crookshanks, which seemed to be able to see it without a problem, as a company. this scene where the grim that had shadowed harry all year long suddenly appeared to attack ron is also a reminiscence to sirius‘s attack towards ron when he was supposed to after harry instead. harry and hermione then went after the dog into the passage and turned up at the shrieking shack where they were confronted by sirius black whom turned out to be an animagus who could transform into the black dog that attacked ron. this revelation of sirius black being an animagus had been foreshadowed early in the novel, specifically during the scene where harry saw an enormous dog-like silhouette at journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 189 the magnolia crescent. this occurred just before sirius himself was introduced indirectly when harry saw the newspaper stan shunpike was reading in the knight bus and thus, vaguely hinted at the possibility above. that the grim which black‘s animagus form resembled was seen as an omen of death also supported this as black was seen as the greatest threat towards harry‘s well-being throughout the year with the minister of magic and the staff of hogwarts had to ensure his safety personally. lupin then entered the scene and both he and sirius revealed that ron‘s pet rat scabbers was in fact peter pettigrew who had been hiding in his animagus form for twelve years. as lupin explain the background story on how peter could be disguised as scabbers when he was supposed to be dead, sirius never took his eyes off scabbers, showing obsessive behaviour towards it as if it was a prey. after pettigrew‘s cover as scabbers was blown, sirius sworn to harry that he was never a traitor (1999: 415), albeit he felt responsible for james‘ and lily‘s death since he was the one whom arranged the switching of secret keeper into pettigrew (1999: 408), and that the reason he escaped azkaban was not to going after harry, but instead he was going after peter who had betrayed him and his friends to protect harry from him since he was the only one to know of the truth, thus revealed his true character as a protagonist instead of the assumed antagonist all along. the revelation that sirius black was never a traitor and instead remained a loyal friend of james and lily all along was vaguely foreshadowed by his animagus form. though its appearance resembled a grim heavily, a dog is a common symbol of loyalty which, as it turns out, is an important characteristic of sirius black. the black colour of its fur also supported this indirectly as black being the colour that symbolizes sorrow and mourning reflected sirius‘ own anguish for the death of his friends since if he was a traitor, he would not have felt such a heavy sorrow for the people he betrayed. on the other hand, sirius also showed an obsessive behaviour to capture pettigrew. he had attacked the portrait of fat lady for denying him entry into the common room to capture peter. he also attacked ron twice, the first being when he successfully entered the common room by using stolen passwords and the second being when he forcefully dragged ron who was unknowingly carrying peter at the time to the shrieking shack. sirius also would have kill peter had harry not stopped him by appealing to his friendship with james. these behaviours shows that sirius has an obsession for vengeance against peter and this was foreshadowed by the heavy resemblance his animagus form bears to a grim, a creature believed to be an omen of death. despite not being a grim, the black dog‘s appearance that resembled one do symbolizes sirius‘ desire for vengeance and to bring death, only his target was peter pettigrew rather than harry as previously assumed. the climax in the novel also revealed the truth regarding peter pettigrew. he was long thought to die a hero as the conversation between cornelius fudge and hogwarts‘ staff at the three broomsticks revealed, bravely confronted sirius black for his betrayal on the potters and was subsequently killed along with twelve muggles. however, sirius and lupin exposed him as an animagus and that he had been under disguise for the last twelve years as a rat. “i think so,” said lupin, holding scabbers tightly in one hand and his wand in the other. “on the count of three. one — two — three!” a flash of blue-white light erupted from both wands; for a moment, scabbers was frozen in mid-air, his small grey form twisting madly — ron yelled — the rat fell and hit the floor. there was another blinding flash of light and then — it was like watching a speeded-up film of a growing tree. a head was shooting upward from the ground; limbs were sprouting; a moment later, a man was standing where scabbers had been, cringing and wringing his hands (1999: 409). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fabian firman elmar & maria ananta 190 the revelation of scabbers as peter was very vaguely hinted as peter was only mentioned past the inciting incident of the novel which was the train inspection by the dementors at the beginning of the terms. in terms of appearance, both peter and scabbers shared a single distinguishing feature: a missing finger. this was what allowed sirius to see through peter‘s trick of faking his death when he saw the weasleys‘ photo on the newspaper fudge had given to him (1999: 405). scabbers‘ sickly appearance and frantic behaviour throughout the year were what truly foreshadowed the revelation. according to ron, scabbers had been sick around the time they were on a vacation to egypt (1999: 63), coinciding with the news of sirius‘ escape from azkaban, and throughout the year, with the threat of sirius black was looming over hogwarts, its condition worsened. it also behaved wildly as if something was after it. often this was because of crookshanks that seemed to be obsessed over chasing scabbers ever since the check-up on the magical menagerie, but later it was revealed that scabbers was trying to catch the rat for sirius and the reason for the rat‘s sickly appearance and wild, fearful behaviour was that he knew sirius would come after him for his betrayal. peter‘s treachery and his clever trick to deceive the magical world of his death were also foreshadowed by his animagus form. the rat in prisoner of azkaban as discussed in the previous part of the analysis reflected the aforementioned nature of peter pettigrew. sirius ousted him as the true traitor, revealing that he had been the true secret keeper (1999: 415) and the symbol of rat in the novel stands for betrayal. it also stands for cowardice which peter gave away when begged sirius and lupin to spare him the moment his ruse was up and to ron, hermione, and harry when he failed (1999: 417). lastly, the rat as a symbol of cunning was reflected in peter‘s trick of falsifying his death as scabbers in the second semester of the terms, which in turn foreshadowed the clever ruse he had put up twelve years ago to frame sirius for his betrayal to the potters so he could hide away safely. conclusion as foreshadowing element, the aforementioned symbols were placed throughout the exposition and rising action part of the novel as they cued the readers in for the climax in the conflict of the novel, which was the confrontation of harry and his past. the symbol of black dog was first appeared at the magnolia crescent before the indirect introduction of sirius black during harry‘s ride on the knight bus and then appeared again during harry‘s disastrous quidditch match against hufflepuff. in both cases, the appearance of this black dog was immediately followed by a near-death accident, which led to assumption that the dog was a grim, an omen of death. however, a vague clue was given that the black dog may not be a grim when harry inadvertently noticed that crookshanks was able to see the dog too, and this was proven when the dog attacked ron and dragged him to the shrieking shack later. sirius then was revealed to be an animagus who could transform into the black dog that had been haunting harry throughout the year and this had been foreshadowed by the first appearance of the black dog at magnolia crescent where harry saw the dog just before the character sirius black was indirectly introduced to him as a convicted wizard and a supporter of voldemort, harry‘s nemesis. however, it was revealed in the climax of the novel that sirius black was not the traitor to harry‘s parents and that he had escaped from azkaban not to hunt for harry, but in pursuit of the true traitor, peter pettigrew. this was foreshadowed by the black dog‘s attack on ron, the owner of scabbers, theanimagus form of peter pettigrew, which was reminiscent to the earlier scene of the novel when black attacked ron in the gryffindor common room. that the black dog shares a resemblance to the grim that was an omen of death also foreshadowed sirius‘ vengeful obsession to catch and kill pettigrew and his journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 191 blaming himself for the death of his friend as the black colour of its fur symbolizes sorrow and mourning. the symbol of rat in the novel that was depicted with sickly appearance and wild, fearful behaviour throughout the novel. it was first noted to have a sickly appearance during harry‘s summer at hogsmeade with ron stating that scabbers didn‘t like egypt, which coincidentally was around the same time the news of sirius‘ escape from azkaban was spread. the rat was depicted to behavewildly and fearful as the year progressed. often this was because hermione‘s pet cat crookshanks seemed obsessed to catch it and later, it went missing in the beginning of the second semester, presumably eaten by said cat. however, it turned up on hagrid‘s hut later and its condition seemed to be worse than ever and even more fearful, frantically tried to escape its owner ron as if it did not recognize its owner and something was after it. scabbers then was revealed to be peter pettigrew whom was long thought to be dead, but turned out had been hiding all along as the rat, and his former friends, sirius and lupin, exposed him as voldemort‘s spy and traitor to the potters. this was foreshadowed by scabbers sickly appearance and frantic behaviour throughout the year as the reason for it was, as revealed by sirius in the climax, that peter realized the reason sirius escaped from azkaban was to hunt him down. although it was first assumed because of crookshanks, harry recalled that scabbers had been sick before he met crookshanks in the magical menagerie. the black dog‘s attack on ron, its owner, which was reminiscent to the scene where sirius was looming after ron in his bed, seemingly was about to attack him, also suggested this as well. furthermore, peter‘s treachery to the potters and his subsequent faking his death and framing sirius for his action were foreshadowed by the trick scabbers pulled off to fake its death and framed crookshanks for it at the start of the terms‘ second semester. lastly, the dementors of azkaban as the symbol of despair forced harry to relive the memory of his parents‘ death thrice. the first was during the train inspection at the start of the terms, the second was during the first quidditch match of the season between gryffindor and hufflepuff, and the third was during harry‘s anti-dementor lesson with lupin against a pretending boggart. these suggested that the conflict would have a relation to the night in harry‘s past when his parents were murdered by voldemort as later revealed when harry eavesdropped the conversation between the minister and the staff of hogwarts at hogsmeade. to summarize, the dementors as the symbol of fear foreshadowed that the conflict of the novel would be a confrontation between harry and his past through the act of forcing him to relive the memory of his parents‘ death thrice, while the symbol of black dog and rat foreshadowed the truth behind said past, that the assumed antagonist of sirius black was innocent of the crime he was blamed for and that peter pettigrew whom was long thought to die a hero was the one who betrayed the potters as a servant of voldemort. references abrams, m. h. a glossary of literary terms: seventh edition. boston: thompson learning, inc., 1999. arp, thomas r. and greg johnson. perrine's literature: structure, sound, and sense. boston: thompson wadsworth, 2006. barnet, sylvan, william burto and william e. cain. an introduction to literature: fiction, poetry, and drama. new york: pearson longman, 2008. “creature and color symbolism in j.k. rowling‘s harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban.” listiyaning tias. e-journal. 22 november 2016. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 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"foreshadowing". n.d. encyclopaedia britannica. 22 november 2016. <https://www.britannica.com/art/foreshad owing>. guerin, wilfred l., earle labor, lee morgan, jeanne c. reesman, and john r. willingham. a handbook of critical approaches to literature: sixth edition. new york: oxford university press, 2011. haryani, kristiana artiningtiyas budi. “animal symbolism to foreshadow future events in george r. r. martin‘s a game of thrones”. undergraduate thesis. yogyakarta: universitas sanata dharma, 2015. roberts, edgar v. and henry e. jacobs. fiction: an introduction to reading and writing. new jersey: prentice-hall, inc., 1987. rowling, j. k. harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban. london: bloomsbury, 1999. sabarno, melia h. “the significance of hermione granger to represent rowling‘s school life in harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban”. undergraduate thesis. yogyakarta: universitas sanata dharma, 2006. “the top 100 bestselling books of all time: how does fifty shades of grey compare?”. n.d. the guardian. 24 november 2016. <https://www.theguardian.com/news/data blog/2012/aug/09/best-sellingbooks-alltime-fifty-shades-grey-compare>. tyson, lois. critical theory today: a-user friendly guide. new york: routledge, 2006. 435 vol. 22 no. 2, october 2022, pp. 435 – 443 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i2.4905 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. the language of violence against women: male voice domination in the public and private domains fransisca kristanti f.kristanti@usd.ac.id, fransisca_kristanti@dlsu.edu.ph universitas sanata dharma & de la salle university, philippines abstract article information violence against women (vaw) has been a long-debated issue for many things, including the authoritative male voice that often reduces (if not diminishes) women’s voice in public and private domains. often, the lines between the public/private dichotomy become blurred, and the traditional gender perception practiced in the private domain transcends to the public domain. this literature review scrutinizes the authoritative male voice in both the public and private domains within the violence against women discourse. this paper reports that the male authoritative voice is prevalent in both the private and public domains. yet, the faint lines between the private and public domains cause the interference of a more structural authoritative voice toward the private domain. even though the language of support enables the victims’ and survivors’ experiences to be verbalized, the support center staff are not all linguistically equipped to effectively elicit and report the experience. this ineffective elicitation and reporting open opportunities for the authoritative male voice to maintain its power in vaw cases. keywords: violence against women; male voice; private/public dichotomy; the language of support received: 8 august 2022 revised: 16 august 2022 accepted: 21 september 2022 introduction violence against women (vaw) has been a long-debated issue within the public/private dichotomy. even though vaw is recognized to receive legal consequences in both public and private domains, the judiciary system still often fails to put a value on women’s voices (weatherall, 2019). within the discussions of vaw, the feminist perspective differentiates the public/private dichotomy between the family and the larger social order (weintraub & kumar, 1997). this public/private dichotomy is strongly tied to masculinity and femininity in which women are put within the family’s private domain. this positioning often results in women’s lower hierarchical status, https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:praptomo@usd.ac.id journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fransisca kristanti 436 reflected in the imbalanced power between men and women in society. in the vaw discourse, identifying a clear line between the public and private domains is often difficult. the public/private dichotomy often overlaps, and a clear separation between the two becomes difficult to identify. in domestic violence (dv) cases, the line between the public and private domains is blurred. some cases of harassment and dv might fall into both public and private due to particular documentation on the public institution of the judiciary system or platforms of exposure (anderson & cermele, 2014; ehrlich, 2021). in these instances, the perceived reality becomes highly dependent on the reality of the public domain, which is highly masculine. the domination of masculinity in the vaw is translated into the authoritative male language in reporting, responding, and building the reality around the discussions. this paper would like to highlight that the male voice dominating the discourse of vaw does not necessarily come from the male sex. the male voice is “the perpetuation of a masculine-derived perception of reality” (easteal, bradford, & bartels, 2012, p. 4) which is often embraced by both males and females, especially in a patriarchal society. therefore, in regards to the perpetuation of the strong masculine perspective in the vaw discourse, this paper explores the overlap between the public and private domains in vaw discourse and how the constructed reality is highly influenced by the masculine-derived language that the public institutions embrace. to elaborate on this, this paper will first briefly discuss the language of vaw in public and private domains, respectively. in the next part, the complicacy of the public/private dichotomy when the private domain transforms into cases of the public domain will be discussed further. focusing on various linguistics discussion of the previously published papers, this part will try to present how the language of masculinity interfere with the language of femininity. finally, the last part will discuss the language used by the institutions aiming to give support to victims and survivors of vaw. the language of violence against women in the public and the private domains vaw invades both the public and the private domains, and it is often manifested in similar language. most of the time, the voice that moves the legal system is male (easteal, bartels, & bradford, 2012), whether it comes from a male or female source. the following sub-sections explain the phenomena in the language of vaw in public and private domains, respectively. the language of violence against women in the public domain vaw in the public domain might take various forms, from direct aggression toward women (jing-schmidt and peng, 2014; makoni, 2021) to the excessive glorification of men (de bres and dawson, 2021), which emphasizes women’s lower status than men. this notion has rooted deeply in society as it manifests in the languages used in cases of vaw. in modern society, online media has become the perfect source for studies in the public domain. social media has become one of the platforms where aggressive language against women can be easily found. one study illustrates china’s strong patriarchal culture in the use of derogatory terms against women. jing-schmidt and peng (2014) observed the use of a gender-based cyber slur reflecting misogyny in the chinese lexicon of biăo, which is translated into ‘slut’. in weibo, the chinese social media platform, the word biăo, which has a strong negative connotation, collocates with words with a positive connotation. the dominant collocations for biăo are xīnjī-biăo (crafty slut), nǔ shén-biăo (goddess slut), lù chá-biăo (green-tea slut), guīmì-biăo (bestgirlfriend slut), and shèngmŭ-biăo (holymother slut). the syntactic construction of these terms puts the word biăo as the head of the phrase, and this syntactic construction influence the semantic construction of the phrases. the positive connotations of the modifiers are overpowered by the negative connotation of the word biăo. thus, the terms become misogynistic labels to degrade women, which underlines and confirms the journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 437 traditional gender perspectives about the superiority of men. even though slurs are often found in verbal aggression, anderson and cermele (2014) argue that the dominant verbal aggression towards women on twitter is not in the form of slurs. instead, most derogatory cyber remarks on twitter are targeted toward the traditional gender perception, which puts men to be more superior to women. the most common verbal aggression strategy on twitter is more about how women are weak or are not as capable nor as reliable as men, such as a coward, ‘poor little me’, or not a real gamer. jensen and de castell (2013) identified explicit threats of rape and other violence in their study of the responses to feminist frequency about the absence of female protagonists in xbox one e3 games. again, the authoritative male voice resounds on the traditional notion of male superiority that silences the challenging female voice. stepping away from the social media platforms, krook (2017) states that vaw is prevalent in politics around the world in the form of harassment, bullying, or even assassination to silence women’s voices within the political landscape. dalton (2019) underlines the strong idea of a mother as an idealized woman has caused great harm in the japanese political landscape for women. openly addressed criticisms from japanese male politicians to female politicians revolve around this idea. he presents several examples, such as: ‘shouldn’t you hurry up and get married? ‘if you don’t marry, you won’t have any children so will end up in a nursing home funded by other people’s children’s taxes’ ‘can’t you bear children?’ ‘you should have a child yourself first!’ (dalton, 2019, pp. 3-4) women’s role as child bearers from a strong patriarchal perspective resounding in the language of male authoritative voice results in the labeling of a woman to be defective when refusing to conform to this norm. in cases where an apology is demanded, such as when suzuki ahikiro, a japanese male politician, publicly shouted, ‘shouldn’t you hurry up and get married?’ to shiomura ayaka, a tokyo metropolitan assemblywoman, in 2014, the public apology was made personal instead of structural. generalizing the context by addressing the apology to other women who cannot marry or have children, the apology silenced the issue of the women’s place in japanese politics. in the context of sekuhara (sexual harassment) in japan, dalton (2019) also argues that even as victims, women should use the polite form of language when confronting their male aggressors to protect their image as women and to avoid unwanted social consequences and being blamed as the initiators of the aggression. victim-blaming is also prevalent in holoshitz and cameron’s (2014) article, where they studied the language of sexual violence in congo news reports. the language of seduction and consensual sex terminologies in narrating the events are often used in the reports, and at the same time, they downgrade the perpetrators’ agency. they also underline that when it comes to the perpetrators’ identity, the news reports tend to make them less identifying by using collective identifiers such as tribal groups, rebel movements, or government soldiers. the ideological domination of the male voice supporting or taking cover in patriarchy tends to shift the focus to the victims and distorts the victims’ reality. the language of violence against women in the private domain in the private domain, the use of the term ‘domestic violence’ to describe vaw within the household or intimate contexts highly reduces its significance in the legal system due to the association of the word ‘domestic’ to be less important than that ‘professional’ terms (easteal, bradford, & bartels, 2012). this labeling of ‘domestic’ highly influences the perception of how violence that occurs in the private domain is perceived as not ‘real’ violence in the legal system. an illustration of this phenomenon is given in easteal (2001, p. 2) from a transcript of an interview by the police and the solicitor when interviewing a victim of domestic violence. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fransisca kristanti 438 ‘were you hit?’ ‘were you bashed?’ ‘no’, she responded. it was elaborated that the violence involved the pinching of her breasts and nipples and the perpetrator jumping on her when she was lying down. however, these actions were not considered as ‘hitting’ or ‘bashing’ from the lens of the male voice. in addition, cases of rape by intimate partners in the private domains tend to be considered less severe than cases of rape by strangers. words such as ‘inferred consent’ or ‘signaled consent’ are used in describing intimate partner rape (fewster, 2009). the failure of the victims to produce a straightforward objection of ‘no’ is deemed as a failure in meeting the standard of objection under the set parameters of the frontal objection of the male voice. hence, it was considered an ‘inferred consent’. furthermore, the male authority perspective in cases of intimate partner violence is prevalent. from the male perspective, harris, palazzolo, and savage (2012) identified that the male voice dominates the discussion of intimate partner violence from twelve conversational transcripts of students between the age of 20 to 24 years old. slurs and downgrade of women’s agency were acknowledged. this finding is in line with a part of the discussion by anderson and cermele (2014) that identified the use of slurs such as ‘bitch’, ‘whore’, and ‘slut’, as well as threats of violence in 130 civil protection order (cpo), petitions filed in 2010 to the u.s. pacific northwest court. in conclusion, the vaw in the private domain shows a strong indication of a high degree of male voice practices, both in the intimate relationship context and the projected legal context. the female voice associated with softness, politeness, and obedience is ignored when determining the level of crime that took place within the domestic context. on the other hand, the frontal and authoritative male voice is set as the standard of whether a crime is a crime or a domestic dispute or misunderstanding. the intersection of the public and private domains in most (if not all) cases of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and domestic violence, it is impossible to draw a clear line between the public and the private domains. what was private becomes public when documented in public institutions such as the judiciary court. anderson and cermele (2014) distinguish the private nature of the cpo and the public nature of twitter tweets. however, they also argue that these two platforms can also be considered private and public at the same time. the verbal aggression reported in the cpo was private because it took place within the family or intimate relationship institution. however, once the cpo petitions are officially documented as court records, they will lose their private nature and becomes public. the complicacy occurs when the verbal aggressions recorded in the cpo petitions cannot be used to give legal sanctions to the perpetrators. on the other hand, tweets fall in the public domain due to their impersonal nature and are regarded as expressions of free speech protected by law. nevertheless, even though tweets can be publicly accessed, they are private because they are considered “backstage talk” which cannot cause direct physical harm. in regard to the mitigation of women’s agency in private domain cases that reach the public domain, andrus (2011; 2012) analyses the ideology behind the hearsay rule in excited utterance and considers it a trustworthy depiction of an event in domestic violence cases. analyzing the us v. hadley trial record (2002), appellate discourses (2005), and the 911 reports and the trial excerpts, she applies the concept of fractal recursivity to find out that the dismissal of the victim’s agency due to her excited utterance favors her position as a victim of domestic violence. the court admitted her excited utterance as a truthful portrayal of the event. hildebrand-edgar and ehrlich (2017) support this argument by presenting a contradictive perspective using the r v. wagar case. they elaborate on how the choice of linguistic style influences the journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 439 perception of the victim’s credibility. while excited utterance is considered truthful, the victim’s choice of powerful speech style is deemed to be untrustworthy. even though a powerful speech style usually expresses more credibility than the powerless speech style, they argue that complicacy occurs when the powerful speech style is performed by the victim. while claiming the victim’s agency, the victim loses her credibility as an ‘ideal’ rape victim. her assertiveness and confidence in retelling events and responding to the court’s questions are considered a powerful speech style that violates the typical traits of an insecure and vulnerable victim. on the other hand, the assailant’s strategy of using the powerless speech style of repeated apologies earned him credibility as the ‘victim’ of the assault he committed. regarding the construct of violence against women, the media has brought a lot of contributions to the discussion of the victims’ agency (lorenzo-dus and bryant, 2011; eades, 2012; bou-franch, 2013; ehrlich, 2013). the limited perspective of the judiciary sometimes mistreated the victims of violence (ehrlich, 2012; jordan, 2015). when it comes to the victims’ identity construction, most victims cannot escape the private boundary of the events of violence and subconsciously embrace the traditional gender role assigned to them. langan, hannem, and steward (2016) explore the victims’ constructions of identity, ideology, and navigation of narratives in abusive discourses and identify ideological contradictions between the identity construction relation to empowerment. in their study of recorded inbound calls to new zealand victim support’s national contact service, tennent and weatherhall (2019) identified that most callers avoided using expressions directly linked to the assault. using conversation analysis, they analyzed recordings of 396 inbound calls from 2015 to 2016. out of all the recordings, only 20% of the victims used words closely related to violence, such as assault and violence. in contrast, the majority of victims did not address themselves as victims and used associative words that did not directly connect to the event. the majority of the callers used people and place references to describe the event. they addressed the perpetrators as husbands, ex-husbands, or expartners. in addition, they referred to the location as our home and in jail. tennent and weatherall claim that the victims illustrated difficulties in narrating their experiences of violence and instead of building their disclosures by associating the aspects of the violence to the private domain. these studies of identity constructions present an illustration of how the victims are still tied to the private relation within the family or intimate relationship institutions. in addition, goodman and walker (2016) identify the male perpetrators' strategies of identity and accountability management in sexual assault and domestic violence cases to be male-authoritative. in the intimate partner violence discourse, the analysis of the consultation transcripts from six male perpetrators undergoing court-mandatory probations reveals that they avoid further accountability by claiming that they do not remember most parts of the event while attempting victim-blaming. the use of a maleauthoritative voice in the legal system is also strong in the brazilian judiciary. de freitas and bastos (2019) argue that the choice of the courtroom language in the brazilian courts often mitigates the responsibilities of the male-perpetrator from the sexual actions by textually putting them as non-agents in passive voice for the act of sexual intercourse even though the court uses active voice for other violent actions and put the perpetrators as the agents. in a separate section, the court chose to address the sexual assault events with a euphemism of “forced sex” instead of rape. in both cases, the court failed to acknowledge the serious crime of the assault by referring to it as either intercourse or sex. the deeply rooted masculine language of the public domain can also be seen from the association of the aggressor’s motive as the inability to control his natural instinct as a male species (stokoe, 2012). the stronghold of masculinity in the courtroom can also be seen from the acknowledgment of hard evidence rather than verbal explanation. ehrlich (2019) explores how strong arguments regarding sexual assault could be derived from public visual evidence and are accepted as a solid source of the truth. the presence of widespread use of journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) fransisca kristanti 440 visual evidence circling on social media in sexual assault trials can provide solid evidence due to semiotic ideologies (thurlow, 2017). erhlich shows how digital images taken from the public domain can provide a strong argument that consent was not given and that silence and passivity should be regarded as the inability to respond instead of consent. using the visual image, solid arguments for nonconsent can be presented. with the images also, the court was able to gain access to the event during the time of happening through real-time documentation. while favoring the victim’s reality, the fact that the visual image can present unrebutted hard evidence in the courtroom can be seen as the reflection of the male voice in the legal system. in summary, it is almost impossible to categorize most cases of violence against women into either private or public domains since most contexts can present more than one perspective, which influences the public/private dichotomy. once the private domain crossover into the public domain, the male voice of the legal system might manifest in several forms: 1) the mitigation of women’s agency, 2) the inability to escape traditional gender roles in constructing the victims’ identity, 3) the downgrading of the male perpetrators' accountability, and 4) the construction of the male’s ideal definition of violence in the form of unrebutted evidence to the event. the language of support since a better understanding of violence will result in better planning on how to decrease the occurrence of violence (lombard and mcmillan, 2012), the role of support centers for victims and survivors is crucial in establishing a better understanding of the violence. however, not all the institutions offering support to the victims and survivors have a good understanding of the gender construction within the culture, and how a deeper understanding of the construction will help those people better respond to violence (ehrlich, 2014; tennent, 2019). it was discussed previously that tennent and weatherall (2019) analyzed the inbound call recordings to the new zealand victim support’s national contact service to find that most of the callers avoided using the terminologies directly connected to the assault. in the same study, they also identify that the words describing the violence used by the operator were drawn from a particular list of the institutional register and that the words cannot overcome the obstacles of the complexity of the victims/survivors’ experience of violence. the limited vocabulary in the institutional register might influence the way the callers expressed their situation, and with better lexicons in the register, the victims/survivors’ experience of violence might be better articulated. in another light, collocation can be a valuable tool to show support (brezina, mcenery, and wattam, 2015). de la ossa (2019) discusses the connection between collocative words of particular pronouns and the construction of meaning they represent in violence against women discourses. she studied the guidance text for domestic abuse survivors by women’s aid based on the analysis of pronouns and how they illustrate solidarity in construction. the use of the firstperson pronoun ‘i’ collocates with the action of separation from abusive relationships. this supports the construction of the survivors’ agency and avoids victim-blaming as the text still puts the perpetrators as the responsible parties for the abuse. the contrast between the second-person pronoun ‘you’ and the thirdperson pronoun ‘they’ relies on the chosen action, whether to abandon or to stay in the abusive relationship. the collocation of ‘you’ with the act of separation, as of ‘i’, and how ‘they’ collocates with staying in the abusive relationships shows that the women’s aid guidance text favors those who choose to leave the abusive relationships. a study by sutherland et al. (2019) shows that in australian mainstream news, the representations of vaw have been extensively covered. however, the representation of women’s voices in the reporting or the victims’ reality was still underrepresented by the lack of explicit descriptions of the violent situation. a considerable proportion was put more on the reportage from the law and justice perspective than the survivors, advocates, or vaw experts. deriving from this concern, journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 441 easteal et al. (2021) conducted a study that compares the language of journalists reporting vaw before and after going through australian training programs dedicated to improving vaw news reporting practices. as a result, the language of vaw news reporting becomes much more supportive of the female voice, presenting a more proportional report by eliminating sensationalism, including vaw experts’ perspectives and vaw help-seeking information. furthermore, the coverage also mentions coercive control beyond the isolated case by linking the vaw cases with broader social context. two significant additions and changes in the reporting language are decreasing the degree of the perpetrators’ excuses and victim-blaming portrayals. by doing these two significant changes, the language of the news reports becomes more objective and more supportive toward the victims. finally, in the discussions of victim/survivor support in cases of violence against women, language repertoire and flexibility become crucial in responding due to the psychological needs for support. however, despite good intentions, not all support centers are linguistically equipped and ready to provide worthy assistance and support to the victims, and this becomes something to discuss further. conclusion the authoritative male voice is present in both public and private domains of the violence against women discourse regardless of the association of femininity to the private domains. in the public domain, verbal aggressions are primarily rooted in the traditional gender role assignment, which positions women as less capable than men. the cultural perception of the ‘ideal’ woman also becomes the controlling aspect of verbal aggression in the public domain. the belief that women are not as good as men and that women should do their job in taking care of their children can be heard loud and clear in verbal aggression. the private domain show more linguistic varieties in verbal aggressions. slurs, threats of violence, and remarks related to body parts are strong in the private domain. the fact that private cannot be taken away from the public in the discussions of violence against women has increased the intricacy of the issue. how the male voice controls the public domain is disadvantageous to the victims of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and domestic violence in the legal system. the judiciary language reflects the male voice, which often fails to recognize the women’s agency and the victims’ reality while successfully downgrading male perpetrators’ accountability and defining male’s definition of violence. finally, the language of support in the gender-based violence discourse is prominent to be fully capable of verbalizing the victims' and survivors’ violence experiences. however, not all support center staff are linguistically equipped to do so. more research in discussing the language of support in violence against women discourse will contribute to a much better understanding of the practice of support, leading to better suggestions and a better understanding of the victims/survivors' experience. this better understanding will contribute to better planning of actions in reducing the occurrence of violence against women both in the public and private domains. acknowledgment i would like to thank raymund vitorio, ph.d., who provided insight and expertise that greatly assisted this research. references anderson, k. l. & cermele, j. 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(eds). public and private in thought and practice, (pp. 1-42). chicago: university of chicago press. 404 vol. 22 no. 2, october 2022, pp. 404 – 412 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i2.4802 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. the ordinariness of code-meshing in the indonesian linguistic landscapes setiono sugiharto setiono.sugiharto@atmajaya.ac.id doctoral program in applied english linguistics, atma jaya catholic university of indonesia, indonesia abstract article information code-meshing as a strategic linguistic practice has been considered a rarity in a high-stake writing practice (e.g. academic writing). studies in composition scholarship have demonstrated that such a practice needs arduous intellectual endeavors and extra rhetorical efforts to be realized. that is, code-meshing requires an exceptionally high linguistic adeptness, language awareness, and rhetorical sensitivity in order to be performed effectively. as such, the products of code-meshing in scholarly writing are often seen as a marked form of textual realization. this article shows that while strenuous struggles are needed to practice code-meshing in academic writing (i.e. high-stake translingual practice), such a practice can be performed as mundane, ordinary, unremarkable, and relaxed activities (i.e. low-stake translingual practice) in linguistic landscapes or signage displayed in public places. illustrations of the code-meshed texts in the latter case will be provided, and then examined to account for their ordinariness. in light of the vibrant low-stake translingual practice, i shall develop an important notion of grassroots performativity to suggest the everydayness of quotidian language practices enacted by multilingual language users in their own community. keywords: code-meshing, linguistic practice; linguistic landscape; multilingual language users; grassroots performativity received: 22 june 2022 revised: 24 august 2022 accepted: 7 september 2022 introduction initially developed as part of translingual practices in composition studies, codemeshing has become a widely-quoted terminology du jour used to describe an egalitarian linguistic practice of mingling and blending different linguistic codes so as to create a hybrid textual realization, the eventual goal of which is to pluralize academic writing (see canagarajah, 2013; young 2004). in composition scholarship, scholars have used such terms as translingual writing (horner, lu, royster, & trimbur, 2011) and transcultural literacy (lu, 2009) to refer to a https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 405 similar idea to code-meshing practice. studies on cross-cultural compositions (albeit limited in numbers) have demonstrated that meshing different linguistic codes amid dominant and established writing conventions requires an exceptionally high linguistics adeptness. this suggests that code-meshing can only be effectively practiced and performed by experienced writers and scholars who have solid and mature metalinguistic knowledge (i.e. the ability to reflect and manipulate language structure to suit one’s communicative purposes). without fully developed metalinguistic adroitness and rhetorical sensitivity in shuttling between languages and cultures, one cannot effectively create and display his hybrid textual realizations as the desired goal of codemeshing practice. matsuda (2014), without belittling the value of code-meshing practices as an innovative approach to translingual writing pedagogy and research, cautions us against the haphazard application of these practices in both composition pedagogy and research. a lack of understanding of the notion of code-meshing as a realization of translingual writing in its application would lead students and scholars to valorize and celebrate it uncritically, rather than employing it “for its intellectual value” (matsuda, 2014, p. 479). while the pros and cons of the usefulness and value of code-meshing have their own merits, we, however, need to go beyond this robust intellectual debate by contextualizing code-meshing practices outside the confine of academic writing. in doing so, we can fully capture the diversity of linguistic practices in other life domains, as well as appreciate the perfomative potential of multilingual language users in their everyday linguistic practices. engrossing ourselves exclusively in the translingual practice of the elitist genre (i.e. academic writing) could mask linguistic performativity of lay language users. this article further takes issues on the idea of code-meshing by contextualizing its realization in the linguistic landscapes or public sites in the indonesian context. it argues here that unlike in the scholarly writing domain, translingual practice of code-meshing in public spaces can be seen as an ordinary, mundane, and unremarkable language practice, or what dovchin and lee, 2019 call “the ordinariness of translinguistics.” thus, while in the former case, code-meshing can be viewed as a high-stake, exclusive and marked translingual practice, in the latter case, codemeshing can be seen as a low-stake, inclusive and unmarked translingual practice. the article is structured as follows: first, it clarifies the seemingly interchangeably-used terms of code-meshing, code-switching, and code-mixing; second, it reviews and discusses evidence of high-stake code-meshing practices of multilingual writers from different ethnicities in published scholarly writings; then, instances of low-stake code-meshing practices in the linguistic landscapes will be presented and analyzed; finally, a notion of grassroots performativity will be proposed to suggest the everydayness of quotidian and relaxed language practices enacted by multilingual language users in their own community. code-meshing, code-switching and code-mixing: a terminological mistmach? amongst the available neologisms in the field of applied linguistics, especially in composition and literacy studies, codemeshing (unveiled initially by young, 2004) has sparked controversies among scholars in the field. probably due to its relative novelty, code-meshing has not yet gained an established status like other seemingly similar notions of code-switching and code-mixing. at its best, it has been treated as synonymous with code-switching and code-mixing. at its worst, its significance and values have not been fully recognized. matsuda (2013), for example, seems indifferent to expounding and distinguishing code-meshing with code-switching and codemixing, and considers these terms as “a terminological mismatch” (p. 133). for him, any intellectual endeavors should not be engrossed with distinguishing the terms, as “many applied linguists use the term “codemixing” interchangeably with code-switching, journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) setiono sugiharto 406 which is more or less the same idea as codemeshing” (p. 134). canagarajah (2013), taking a somewhat different position, does treat code-switching as the same as code-mixing, but makes a sharp distinction of these terms with code-meshing. problematizing the traditional differences between code-switching and code-mixing (the former requires bilingual competences, while the latter does not), he sees no need to treat the two separately, as dual language competences are not always required in switching and mixing codes. clearly, canagarajah’s treatment of making the terms synonymous is heavily influenced by his strenuous advocacy of translingual practice, in which “one can adopt language resources from different communities without “full” or “perfect” competence in them…(p. 10). yet, as for code-meshing, canagarajah (2013) differentiates it from code-switching and code-mixing, in that the former “offers a possibility of bringing the different codes within the same text rather than keeping them apart” (pp. 112-113). thus, while both codeswitching and code-mixing are seen as resorting to language separation and segregation, code-meshing views different linguistic codes as integrated into one compartment (see also canagarajah, 2006 for the distinction of code-meshing and codemixing in a specific context of literacy theorization and pedagogy). the distinction between language segregation and language integration in relation to the distinction of the three terms above is taken even further by young (2009) to sharpen the distinction between codeswitching (or code-mixing) and code-meshing, to which he staunchly advocates both as an ideology and as a pedagogy. for young, codeswitching subscribes to a segregation ideology, which “fortifies language barriers” (p. 67), and which serves as a basis for facilitating racism and sexism. furthermore, as a pedagogy, codeswitching has been argued to instill into students “a segregationist logic” (p. 54), and is therefore deemed incompatible with linguistic diversities that have long characterized language classroom. accusing code-switching of being undergirded by “the dominant language ideology”, young (2009) contends that this ideology has been imposed on “minoritized dialects speakers” to conform and accept the standard norm for communication. as a corrective to this, young (2009; see also young, 2013) proposes a preferable notion of code-meshing. code-meshing, as he asserts, “encourages speakers and writers to fuse standard language with native speech habits, to color their writing with what they bring home…, to multiply the range of available rhetorical styles, expand our ability to understand linguistic difference and make us in the end multidialectical, as opposed to monodialectical” (young, 2009, 64-65) [italics added]. what code-meshing envisions in both oral and written communication is that language users can shuttle forth and back without necessarily conforming to the “standard principles for communication” (young, 2009, p. 64). in addition, codemeshing used in a pedagogical context is deemed compatible with multilingual speakers and writers, as “it allows them to become more effective communicators by doing what we all do best, what comes naturally: blending, merging, meshing dialects” (young, 2009, p. 72). the above exposition provides a clear elucidation that that code-meshing is a mutually exclusive notion which radically differs from both code-switching and codemixing, in that it heavily emphasizes language practice or performance (i.e. the actual), rather than language competence (i.e. the ideological). that is, code-meshing is concerned with “whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done, actually performed, and what its doing entails” rather than with “whether (and to what degree) something is formally possible”, to borrow hymes’ (1972, p. 281) formulation of communicative competence. [italics in original]. with its emphasis on the performativity of language in practice –an important and excusive tenet that distinguishes it from both code-switching and code-meshing –we therefore see no reason for treating it, along journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 407 with the other two terms, as a terminological mismatch. instead, drawing a strict boundary between these interchangeably used terms is of paramount importance for the sake of avoiding a terminological obfuscation. code-meshing as a high-stake translingual practice deemed a strategic linguistic practice in indexing and infusing one’s identities and ideologies, code-meshing was initially intended to resist linguistic inequalities especially in literacy practices where the established conventions and norms of the privileged language (i.e. english) have been dominant. in the pedagogical circle, code-meshing practices have been continuously exhorted and even encouraged in order to challenge “the dominant communicative norms through the meshing of minoritized languages and literacies for embodying alternate identities and values” (canagarajah, 2021, p. 20). despite the fact that the effective implementation of code-meshing in the pedagogical context has been called into question by scholars (block, 2018; flores, 2013, kubota 2016), such translingual practice has long been evident in the writings of highly proficient multilingual writers. classic examples of code-meshed writings can be found in canagarajah’s (2006, 2013) astute analysis of the writing of an africanamerican scholar, geneva smitherman, who attempted to gain voice in writing by meshing her home language, african-american vernacular english (aave) with standard english. despite the dominance of the established norms and conventions smitherman had to comply for her writings to pass muster in the review process, canagarajah demonstrated that smitherman managed to strategically appropriate these norms and conventions and to get her writings published in the journals. another study of code-meshed texts by multilingual scholars have recently been carried out by sugiharto (2015). scrutinizing the writings of two renowned indonesian scholars from two different ethnicities (javanese and sundanese), sugiharto has provided further evidence of code-meshing practice as a strategic way of indexing multilingual writers’ identities in gaining voice in academic writing. both canagarajah’s (2006, 2013) and sugiharto’s (2015) studies have revealed that code-meshing occurred at both lexical and morpho-syntactical levels. this will be discussed further below. code-meshing at lexical level drawing upon the studies from canagarajah (2006, 2013) and sugiharto (2015), this sub-section shows and discusses how multilinguals writers of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds successfully managed to appropriate the established academic conventions and to construct their alternate discourses. the codemeshing instances shown here occur at the lexical level. the classic study of code-meshing at the lexical level has thrown important light into how a multilingual writer styles him/herself to gain voice amidst the dominance of the established writing conventions (canagarajah, 2006, 2013). consider the following codemeshed text: as an organizational position, the “students’ right” resolution represented a critical mechanism for cccc to address its own internal contradictions at the same time as marching, fist-raising, loud-talking protesters, spearheaded by the black liberation movement, marred the social landscape of “america the beautiful” (smitherman, 1999, pp. 357-358). from canagarajah’s (2013) analyses, the text has rhythmic voice indicated by the lexemes marching, fist-raising, loud-talking, which “evoke a register that is more oral and nonacademic” (canagarajah, 2013, p. 118). while the inclusion of such lexical items (influenced by the aave oral culture) can render the text non-standard, the emotive and repetitive expressions are considered rhetorically enriching, as they have indexical values. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) setiono sugiharto 408 consider again the following translanguaged text from another multilingual writer: both sundanese and javanese for example share the values of silih asah (mutual learning), silih asuh (mutual caring), and silih asih (mutual loving) (alwasilah, 2014, p. 24) the meshing of sundanese phrases silih asah, silih asuh, silih asih with english was done deliberately, yet strategically. it is interesting to observe here that for the sake of the reader’s understanding of the meanings of these phrases, alswasilah felt obliged to provide their english equivalents for each of the phrase. however, as alwasilah might have believed that the original sundanese phrases could capture the specific nuances of the context of his writing, he insisted on using the phrases, for which their english counterparts might not be able to convey the original meanings. given alwasilah’s cultural background as a sundanese, the employment of these phrases helped index his ethnic identity. as ivanic (1998) has pointed out, the lexical aspect of writing can construct a writer’s identity. thus, it is through the use of his native language that alwasilah was able to self-represent himself as a multilingual scholar who was adroit in crossing different languages in order to exercise his agency. similar to alwasilah’s code-meshed practice, dardjowidjojo ‘s writing evokes a sense of deliberate deviation of the standard norm for the sake of achieving a certain stylistic and rhetorical purpose. the ewuh pekewuh outlook would also bar students... (dardjowidjojo, 2001, p. 319) the meshing of the javanese and english in the example above showcases not only dardjowijojo’s linguistic dexterity in shuttling languages, but also his consciousness of historical, cultural, and socio-political factors in which the texts are constructed. as can be seen from the example, the javanese phrase ewuh pekewuh ‘feeling uncomfortable and uneasy’ are deliberately meshed with the english codes to locate the temporality of the text and to bring the author’s agency as an indonesian nationality with a javanese ethnicity. in doing the meshing, dardjowidjojo grounded his agency “in the mutually constitutive relation of the individual and the social, the official and the lived or practical” (lu & horner, 2013, p. 592). with a strong cultural root as a javanese, he could freely select and choose culturally available voices and easily play out with meshing codes with the purpose of attaining a rhetorical effectiveness of his writing. dardjowidjojo’s insertion of the indigenous words instead of finding their english equivalents reflects what wertsch (1991) calls “patterns of privileging”, where the individual writer “can exercise the power to conform to or resist the social forces that are privileging one voice type over another” (ivanic & camps, 2001, p. 7). it should be clear here that dardjowidjojo, while aware of the governing academic norms or standard written language he ought to conform, chose to resist the social forces that could privilege the dominant language (i.e., english), and opted instead for using codes of his home language(s). code-meshing at morpho-syntactical level code-meshing also occurs at the morphosyntactical level, as illustrated in the instances of a multilingual writer below. at the morphosyntactical level, darjowidjojo meshes javanese terms (gugu and tiru) with the indonesian prefix di, ensuing a passive construction. morpho-syntactical wise, the meshing of the codes from the three languages creates a double passive construction. as for the standard written english norms, the following meshed construction is rather eccentric, and may be deemed undesirable and deviant from the established norm. a guru to us is a school-time parent. (s)he must, therefore, be digugu (trusted that what (s)he says is right) and ditiru (imitated)... (dardjowidjojo, 2001, p. 315) journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 409 the construction of be digugu and ditiru demonstrates linguistic creativity, rather than deficit. to borrow milu’s term, such a creativity is called “linguistic inventiveness.” (milu, 2013). the double translanguaging (from javanese to indonesian to english) here may seem to flout the standard written english to which the writer must conform. while being conscious of the “ungrammaticality” of the above construction, darjowidjojo, nevertheless, seems to adopt what canagarajah (2011, p. 411) calls a “relaxed attitude” toward writing style and grammatical error, not because he is ignorant of the grammatical rules or shows no “care about form”, but because he treats written standards “subservient to his rhetorical purposes”. additionally, the linguistic inventiveness shows the author’s boldness to enact his agency and index his ethnicity (as a javanese) without necessarily complying with the standard conventions of academic discourse. such a double passive construction provides further evidence that grammatical norms are always emergent in a specific communicative setting and ideological in nature. code-meshing as a low-stake translingual practice while code-meshing in academic writing can be considered as an elitist, exclusive linguistic practice that can only be effectively performed by skillful writers, code-meshing in linguistic landscape can be seen as a more inclusive, ordinary, quotidian, and mundane activity. the latter is a low-stake linguistic practice that can be done by ordinary language users who have no necessarily advanced language proficiency. unlike in the academic writing which compels the writers to devise their cognitive strategies in planning to code-mesh (when, where (in the texts) and how to code-mesh), code-meshing in the public space seems to be performed at ease without these tedious mental strategies. consider, for example, figures 1, 2 and 3 below. we see in these figures (signage found in the food stalls in major cities in indonesia) an assortment of creative meshing and blending of linguistic codes of english and indonesian. in figure 1, for instance, we see a list of the menu, along with the prizes offered: ‘prett ciken’ (fried chicken), ‘kulit ciken’ (chicken skin), and ‘ceker ciken’ (chicken feet), all which have different prizes. the lexical meshing here takes the form of both whole borrowing, as in the case of ‘prett ciken’, and partial borrowing, as in the case of ‘kulit ciken’ and ‘ceker ciken.’ in the former case, the original english words are deliberately borrowed wholly by altering their spelling so as to sound indonesian phonologically, and in the latter case, the original word has been partly borrowed and blended with the indonesian words, creating what is called loan-blend. the creative meshing of these different linguistic codes also has a humorous dimension which can make people laugh upon reading it. understood from the context in this specific instance of signage in the public site (the food stall) in a multilingual country like indonesia, codemeshing of different languages becomes an ordinary practice. figure 1 (source:https://twitter.com/kfcayamnyajago) another example of quotidian codemeshed practice can be seen in figure 2 where the street vendor offers different kinds of fresh beverages such as ‘es jeruk’ (orange ice), ‘milksek’ (milk shake), and ‘es kelapa muda’ (young coconut ice). the word ‘sex’ in ‘milksex’ has undergone a spelling change from the original shake, and as a result is pronounced differently from the latter word. the spelling alternation of the word shake into ‘sex’ may also evoke a sense of creative playfulness, and has a humorous dimension. yet, despite this spelling alteration, the word is less likely to get https://twitter.com/kfcayamnyajago journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) setiono sugiharto 410 misunderstood if construed from its context (i.e. a street vendor selling any kinds of beverages) and its meshing with the indonesian ‘es jeruk’ and ‘es kelapa muda’. figure 2 (source: http://www.masplanet.com) unlike such traditional beverages as orange ice and young coconut ice, milk shake is relatively popular among young people in the urban context. also, the beverage is more common in the big restaurants than in the street food stalls. however, as milk shake is getting more popular among people from all walks of life, it has been offered in almost public sites including by street vendors. thus, the meshing of the borrowed word milkshake (with its emerging local variant milksex) with other local indonesian words, as depicted in figure 2, is indicative that code-meshing has become a mundane and ordinary linguistic practice. that’ s to say, there is nothing exotic and remarkable about it. finally, in figure 3 we see how a rather odd-looking word ‘tek ewei’ (derived originally from the english word take away) is meshed with the indonesian words. during the covid-19 pandemic, the english take away has been a common sight especially in big restaurants and food stalls in the malls where customers are not allowed to dine in on site. so common and popular is the word in the ears of the indonesian people that even street stall owners use it to inform their customers that they only provide a take-away service. as we can see in figure 3, the banner says “sorry, for the time being we only provide a take away service.” with the spelling modification –and consequently phonological alteration –the english take away has not only been borrowed, but has also been meshed with the indonesian words. figure 3 (source twitter/lucunation) on grassroots perfomativity what, in fact, accounts for the occurrence of the relaxed, ordinary, and mundane meshing of the different linguistic codes in the local linguistic landscape shown above? it is important to note here that translingual practice is not restricted to scholarly writing only, but has expanded its scope to include the consideration of space. as such, it also involves “diverse semiotic resources and ecological affordances” (canagarajah, 2013, p.6). this expansion in scope of translingual practice has been triggered mainly by the notion of “the mobility of linguistic and other semiotic resources in time and space” (blacklegede & creese, 2017), typified by migration of people, diasporic community and advanced technologies, amongst other. mobility, in essence, has made linguistic borders become unstable, porous and unbounded. as for the global spread of englishes worldwide, english has permeated into other localities resulting in what pennycook (2007, p. 6) calls “transcultural flow of englishes”. thus, when english enters and moves to a new territory beyond its place of origin, there is the possibility that it not only is borrowed, but is also remade, repurposed and even localized by the inhabitants of the new territory. this flow, as pennycook (2007) succinctly describes it, refers “not merely to the spread of particular forms of culture across boundaries, or the existence of supercultural commonalities (cultural forms that transcend locality), but rather to the process of borrowing, blending, http://www.masplanet.com/ journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 411 remaking, returning, to the processes of alternative cultural reproduction” (p.6). as a result of the transcultural flow of englishes in the everydaness of communicative events, language incessantly moves and travels. in this sense, language becomes “mobile resources”, and is no longer treated as “immobile language” (bloomaert, 2010). it is the fluidity and mutability of the mobile resources that make translingual practice such as code-meshing now ubiquitous in city’s linguistic landscape, and has become an urban phenomenon. scholars have termed this phenomenon as “translanguaging space” (li, 2011), or “spatial repertoires” (pennycook & otsuji, 2015, “which links the repertoires formed through individual life trajectories to the particular places in which these linguistic resources are deployed” (p. 83). the ubiquity of language resources in the public places shown in the examples previously reflects language speakers’ adroitness and resourcefulness in linking their linguistic repertoires to spaces around them. this vibrant linguistic practice in a low stake level – everyday productive linguistic practices involving highly complex semiotic resources and culture – can be seen as “grassroots performativity” (sugiharto, 2014). lowstake linguistic practices such as those shown in the examples does not require advanced linguistic proficiency to be performed effectively. the convivial, playful, and quotidian code-meshed texts in the public signage above provide evidence of vibrant “multilingualism from below” (pennycook & otsuji, 2015, p. 49). despite its playfulness and seemingly lacking of seriousness, the value and significance of the conviviality in such a lowstake code-meshing practice should not be overlooked. as blommaert (2013) has convincingly argued, the everyday linguistic practices or what he prefers to call ‘relaxed identity work’ like mundane badinage have their own linguistic significance, because this work constitutes ‘identity rehearsal,’ which eventually becomes activated in ‘specific configurations when identities become chips in a high stakes game’ (p. 620). furthermore, the playfulness and the humorous, convivial side of the creative meshing in the examples above have an important bearing on linguistic practice in a multilingual world, as they can “challenge the power relations and hierarchical order in the process of knowledge construction” (tai & li, 2020, p. 608). conclusion the banal presence of code-meshing in the public sites shown previously provides “a picture of the very ordinariness of mixed language use and also a source of pride” (pennycook & otsuji, 2015, p. 5). despite the fact that the code-meshed texts above sound parodic, humorous and playful in nature, they still exhibit significance as a linguistic practice critically and creatively performed ground-up. this stands in a stark contrast to code-meshing as a high stake linguistic practice in academic writing where linguistic dexterity and metalinguistic awareness are called for. as an instance of grassroot performativity, convivial code-meshing practices demonstrate the resourcefulness of language users in not only borrowing and mixing different linguistic codes, but also in remaking and repurposing them by virtue of the communicative needs of the local community. references alwasilah, c. 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(2009). “nah, we straight”: an argument against code switching, jac, 29, (1-2), 49-76. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2019.1575831 https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2019.1575831 https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amaa043 https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amaa043 56 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 56 66 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.5198 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. locative imperatives in javanese suhandano suhandano@ugm.ac.id faculty of cultural sciences, universitas gadjah mada, indonesia abstract article information javanese is a member of the western austronesian language, a sub-family of the austronesian language family. languages in this sub-family are known in linguistic literature as having an exceptional feature in their voice system among the world’s languages and continue to be exciting issues in the theory of syntax. this paper investigates the voice system in javanese and focuses on the locative imperative clauses’ voice system. data are collected from the javanese spoken in yogyakarta at the ngoko level. this study demonstrates that javanese has five variants of locative imperative clauses: intransitive locative imperatives, active locative imperatives, passive locative imperatives, locative imperatives with actor focus, and locative imperatives with locative focus. the five variants of imperatives reflect the voice system of the clauses. there are two voice systems of locative imperatives in javanese: a two-voice system and a multiple-voice system. intransitive locative imperatives, active locative imperatives, and passive locative imperatives are imperatives within the two-voice or active-passive voice systems. the other two variants of locative imperatives, the locative imperatives with actor focus and the locative imperatives with locative focus, are types of locatives imperatives within the multiple voice system. the existence of the two voice systems in javanese indicates that this language is in the process of changing from a multiple-voice language to a two-voice language. keywords: javanese, imperative, locative, voice system received: 27 september 2022 revised: 21 december 2022 accepted: 26 december 2022 introduction imperative clauses can be found in all languages, so this type of clause is universal. indeed, the universality of the imperative is still debatable. zhang (1990) distinguishes two types of imperatives, strong and weak, and says that strong imperatives are not universal. there are also reports that there is no imperative clause in some languages, such as rapanui, lango, and maori. a closer scrutiny of these languages, however, shows that they have imperative clauses that stand clearly apart from other clauses, such as declarative and interrogative clauses (alcázar and mario saltarelli, 2014). https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 57 imperative clauses have their grammatical properties, differ from the grammatical properties of the other two moods of clauses, and differ from one language to another. in some languages, imperatives appear simple in their forms, but in others, they can also be dauntingly complex (aikhenvald, 2017). in english, the verb of imperative clauses appears in the bare form, without any affixes. aikhenvald (2016) reported that the verb of imperatives in manambu, a ndu language from the east sepik province of papua new guinea, has a complex form and consists of a stem and some affixes. in korowai, a papuan language, imperative verbs consist of a stem and a person-number suffix which can be first person, second person, and third person, both singular and plural (vries, 2017). in karawari, transitive imperative verbs consist of a stem, an imperative suffix, followed by a suffix marking a transitive object (telban, 2017). this paper discusses imperative clauses in javanese, a member of the austronesian language family in the western austronesian sub-family. in the linguistic literature, languages in this group are known as having an exceptional feature in their voice system among the world’s languages. their voice system has become an interesting issue and a matter of debate in the study of syntactic theories (himmelmann, 2002; naes, 2013; chen & mcdonnell, 2019). the discussion of the javanese voice system in this paper focuses on the voice system of locative imperatives (li), a type of imperative clause that consists of a verb and two core arguments, an actor and a locative. austronesian languages exhibit varieties of voice systems that can roughly be divided into two types: philippine and indonesian (himmelmann, 2002). arka & ross (2005) make more details in classifying austronesian languages. the indonesian type or the twovoice type language is further classified into two types: a two-voice type with morphological markers on the verb and a twovoice type without morphological markers on the verb. they also add another type of language with no voice system. so, according to arka & ross (2005), there are four types of austronesian languages in terms of their voice system. javanese is included in the indonesian type, i.e., the sub-type of the two-voice type with morphological markers on the verb. studies of voice systems in austronesian languages are generally carried out in declarative clauses, but as blust (2013:499) said, voice systems can also be found in imperative clauses, as indicated by the existence of multiple forms of imperative marking. to illustrate, consider the two li clauses in (1) and (2). 1) para-ni kantor-e! come-apl office-def come to the office!’ 2) para-nana kantor-e! come-lf office-def come to the office!’ the two clauses in (1) and (2) express the same meaning ’come to the office!’. the two clauses have a structure: the verb comes at the beginning of the clause, followed by the locative argument that is expressed in a noun phrase (np). the verb of the two clauses has the same root or stem para, but they take a different suffix. in (1) the verb appears with the suffix -i, and the verb in (2) takes the suffix -nana. the suffix -i is an applicative suffix (apl) and the suffix -nana indicates a locative focus (lf). the difference of suffixes on the verb marks the difference in voice system of the clauses. the li clause in (1) is an li clause in the active voice, while the li clause in (2) is an li clause in the actor focus (af) voice. this paper addresses two questions: what are the variants of li clauses in javanese? and why does javanese have variants of li clauses. the first question will be answered by describing the types of li clauses in javanese. it will be showed that there are five types of li clauses in javanese. the second question will be answered by explaining that the existence of imperative clause variants in javanese is related to the voice system of the clauses. there are two voice systems of li clauses in javanese: a two-voice system and a multiple voice system. the relationship between affixes on verbs and the voice system in javanese has been described by poedjosoedarmo (2002). she identified affixes on javanese verbs that mark voice/focus system in declarative, imperative, and desiderative modes. she found that in journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) suhandano 58 active declarative clauses the affix nmarks a patient focus, the affix n-ake marks a benefactive focus, and the affix n-i marks a locative focus. in passive declarative clauses the prefix dimarks a patient focus, the affix di-ake marks a benefactive focus, and the affix di-i marks a locative focus. in imperative clauses the suffix -a, -en, -(k)na, -ana respectively marks an actor focus, a patient focus, a benefactive focus, and a locative focus. in javanese desiderative clauses a patient focus is marked by the affix dak--e, a benefactive focus is marked by the affix dak--(k)ne, and a locative focus is marked by the affix dak--ane. so, four arguments may be the focus of a clause in javanese: an actor, a patient, a benefactive, and a locative. in this paper, i elaborate on one of them, that is a locative focus in imperative clauses. suhandano (2021a) discussed the benefactive and instrumental focus of the imperative clauses in javanese. he found that benefactive and instrumental arguments of javanese imperative clauses can be present as elements of clauses that are focused or unfocused. the benefactive and instrumental arguments are expressed in prepositional phrases (pp) when they are not focused. when they are focused, the two arguments are expressed in noun phrases (np), and the clauses' verb appears with the suffix –(k)na. their position in the clause structure also differs when they are focused and when they are not. this evidence leads him to conclude that there are two voice systems in javanese imperatives with benefactive and instrumental arguments: a two-voice system active-passive and a multiple-voice system. the existence of the two voice systems in javanese indicates that this language is changing from a multiple-voice type language to a two-voice type language. suhandano (2021b) discussed the similarities and differences between imperative clauses with actor and patient arguments in javanese and indonesian and found that javanese has more variants of imperatives than those of indonesian. in indonesia, there are two types of imperatives: active and passive. in addition to these two types of imperatives, javanese has two other imperatives: imperatives with actor focus and imperatives with patient focus. he argued that indonesian and javanese have different number of imperative clause variants because their voice systems are different. indeed, indonesian and javanese voice systems are derived from the same voice system, the multiple voice system of the protoaustronesian. the multiple voice system of proto-austronesian has developed into a twovoice, active-passive system in indonesian. the voice system in javanese also changes from the multiple voice system of protoaustronesian to a two-voice system, but the change is not yet completely finished, at least in the imperative clauses. javanese still maintains the multiple voice system of its ancestor language so that the imperative clauses of the javanese language apply two voice systems. that is why javanese has many variants of imperative clauses with actor and patient arguments than those of indonesian. this paper further explores the findings by looking at the voice system of li clauses or imperatives with actor and locative arguments. the results of exploring the voice system in li clauses reinforce the previous finding that there are two voice systems in javanese imperative clauses, that is the multiple voice system and the two-voice system. this also strengthens the hypothesis that javanese is being changing from the language type of multiple voice system to the two-voice system. methodology javanese is the largest austronesian language in terms of the number of native speakers. it is also spoken in a wide area, in the island of java, in some parts of indonesia where javanese speakers migrate, even outside of indonesia, such as in suriname and new caledonia. therefore, javanese has many geographical dialects such as the javanese dialects of tegal, banyumas, yogyakarta, surabaya, malang, osing, etc. in addition to the geographical dialects, there are also social dialects of javanese that can roughly be divided into two variants: the ngoko variant/ordinary or low variant and the krama variants/respect or high variant. the data of the discussion in this paper are collected from the javanese dialect of yogyakarta, the standard dialect of javanese, in the ngoko variant. the data are in the form of spoken javanese and collected through the observation method. the researcher observed the use of javanese in journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 59 everyday conversations by its speakers. from these observations, the researcher obtained a number of imperative clauses. not all imperative clauses, however, become data in this study. the data of this study are locative imperative clauses. therefore, the imperative clauses found from observation must be identified to select the locative imperatives. an imperative clause will be identified as a locative imperative when it contains a locative as a core argument. the data are analysed from two approaches, the synchronic approach and the diachronic approach. the li clauses in javanese are described synchronically to find out their structural characteristics. for this purpose, two methods are employed, they are the immediate constituent analysis method and the distributional method. using the immediate constituent analysis method, the elements of li clauses are identified. there are at least three elements of li clauses: the verb, the locative argument, and the actor. the actor, however, does not always appear explicitly in the clause structure. the three elements, then, are analyzed in their positions in the clause structure by applying the distributional method. the three elements are permuted in the clause structure so that it is known which order is possible and which is not possible or which strings which are grammatical and ungrammatical. each element of the clause is further analyzed by looking at their marker. the marker found on the locative arguments is a preposition, and the markers found on the verbs are affixes. from the results of synchronic analysis, then, the variants of li clauses in javanese are described. the analysis with the synchronic approach was carried out to answer the first question, what are the variants of li clauses in javanese. the diachronic approach is carried out by comparing the results of the synchronic analysis to the voice system of protoaustronesian as proposed by wolff (blust, 2013, p. 438). the comparison focuses on the affixes on the verbs that mark the argument focused on the clause. in addition, the diachronic analysis was also carried out by comparing the results of the synchronic analysis with the typology voice system of austronesian languages proposed by arka and ross (2005). from this comparison, the development of the javanese language is interpreted. javanese is changing from a multiple voice type language to a two-voice type language so that this language has variants of imperative clauses. the diachronic analysis is intended to answer the second question, why does javanese have variants of li clauses. results and discussion there are five variants of li clauses in javanese: intransitive li, active li, passive li, li with actor focus, and li with locative focus. the existence of these five variants is related to the two types of voice systems of javanese imperative clauses: the two-voice system and the multiple voice systems. the first three variants are variants in the two-voice system, and the other two variants are variants in the multiple voice system. these findings answer the two research questions above. before the variants of li clauses are described and discussed in terms of the voice system of javanese imperatives, to facilitate the understanding of discussion, it is needed to give a brief overview of the structure of javanese li clauses. the structure of locative imperatives javanese li clauses consist of a verb with two arguments, an actor and a locative. among the three elements, the actor of li clauses tends to be optional. the actor may present explicitly in the clause, but it may be absent in the clause. for example, in li clause (3) below, the actor is absent, and in (4), the actor kowe appears explicitly in the clause 3) lungguh-a ing kursi iku! sit-af on chair that ‘sit on that chair!’ 4) kowe lungguh-a ing kursi iku! you sit-af on chair that ‘sit on that chair!’ the actor's optionality in the javanese li clauses is not an exception. it is prevalent that the actor (the subject or the addressee) of imperatives in the majority of languages of the world is not expressed explicitly as alcázar and mario saltarelli (2014) said, the subject of an imperative seems to be optional, even in languages that ordinarily need to express it. in journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) suhandano 60 canonical imperative, the actor or the addressee of imperatives is always a second person (aikhenvald, 2010). zanuttini (2008) calls imperatives with null subjects in english as core imperatives and they are generally accepted cross-linguistically. the addressee of the two li clauses in (3) and (4) is a second person kowe ‘you’. therefore, the two li clauses can be categorized as canonical imperatives. li clauses in javanese have a structure: the verb comes at the beginning of the clauses, followed by the locative argument. for some li clauses, the locative argument may come at the beginning of the clause. for example, the locative argument of li clauses in (5) can be moved at the initial position of the clause as in (6), and both li clause in (5) and (6) are grammatical. 5) lungguh-ana kursi iku! sit-lf chair that ‘sit on that chair!’ 6) kursi iku lungguh-ana! chair that sit-lf ‘sit on that chair!’ the two li clauses above express the same command and consist of the same elements, but their structure differs. the verb of the two clauses also takes the same suffix, -ana indicates a locative focus (lf). this means that the verb and the locative argument is not in a fixed order in the clause structure. the verb may come in the initial position of the clause, followed by the locative argument (verb + locative), or the locative argument comes in the initial position of the clause, followed by the verb (locative + verb). morphologically the verb of li clauses may take different affixes that indicate the types of li clauses. in example (1) above, the verb takes the suffix -ni. in (2), the verb takes the suffix -nana. in (3) and (4), the verb takes the suffix -a, and in (5) and (6), the verb takes the suffix -ana. based on the affixes that attach to the verb, the li clauses in javanese can be classified into five types. the five types or variants of li clauses in javanese are (a) intransitive li clauses, (b) active li clauses, (c) passive li clauses, (d) li clauses with af, and (e) li clauses with lf. in addition to the difference of affixes on the verb, the locative arguments are also expressed in two different categories, in an np or a pp. the variants of li clauses are described below. intransitive locative imperatives intransitive li clauses in javanese consist of an intransitive verb followed by a locative argument in the forms of prepositional phrases. the verb may be in a stem form (without affixes), as in (7), or a verb prefixed nas in (8). 7) lungguh ing kursi iku! sit on chair that ‘sit on that chair!’ 8) m-(p)ara menyang kantor-e! act-come to office-def ‘come to the office!’ the verb lungguh in (7) is an intransitive verb, it consists of a single morpheme or a monomorphemic word. the verb mara in (8) is an intransitive verb that consists of two morphemes, the prefix nwhich indicates an active verb (act) and the stem para. the verb mara is a complex word or a polymorphemic word. in the intransitive li clause (7) the locative argument is expressed in the pp ing kursi iku which consists of the preposition ing and the np kursi iku. in the intransitive li clause (8) the locative argument is expressed in the pp menyang kantore which consists of the preposition menyang and the np kantore. the choice of the preposition to mark the locative argument depends on the semantic characteristics of the verb. the locative argument in intransitive li clauses bears grammatical relations as an oblique, not an object (for discussion of grammatical relations in javanese, see suhandano, 2015). since the verbs such as lungguh and mara are followed by locative arguments bearing grammatical relation of an oblique, they are categorized as intransitive verbs. therefore, li clauses with such verbs are called intransitive li clauses. based on intransitive li clauses as exemplified in (7) – (8), it can be said that intransitive li clauses in javanese have two characteristics. first, the locative arguments journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 61 are expressed in prepositional phrases, take the preposition menyang or ing, and they bear grammatical relations as obliques. second, morphologically the verb can be monomorphemic words (stem verbs) or polymorphemic words (complex words). when the verbs are complex words, they consist of the prefix nand a stem. the verb of intransitive li clauses has no suffix. active locative imperatives in javanese, intransitive li clauses can be changed into active li clauses through the syntactic operation of applicative. when it occurs, the preposition marked the locative argument is deleted and the verb takes the applicative (apl) suffix -i/-ni. the two intransitive li clauses in (7) and (8), for examples, can be changed into active li clauses in (9) and (10) respectively. 9) lungguh-i kursi -ne! sit-apl chair-def ‘sit on the chair!’ 10) para-ni kantor-e! come-apl office-def ‘come to the office!’ in the active li clauses (9) and (10) the verb takes the suffix -i/-ni. the suffix -i appears when the stem of the verb ends in consonants as in (9) and the suffix -ni appears when the stem of the verb ends in vowels as in (10). the suffix -i/-ni, an applicative suffix, indicates a grammatical relation changing from an oblique relation to an object relation (suhandano, 2015). the locative arguments in (9) and (10) are not expressed in a pp as in (7) and (8), but they are expressed in an np, which bears a grammatical relation to object. the li clauses such as in (9) and (10) are called active li clauses. the active li clauses have similarities with active clauses in declarative moods. compare the li clauses in (9) and (10) with their active declarative counterparts, respectively, in (11) and (12) below. 11) ali ng-lungguh-i kursi-ne. ali act-sit-apl chair-def ‘ali sat on the chair’ 12) ali m-(p)ara-ni kantor-e. ali act-come -apl office-def ‘ali came to the office’ in both the active li clauses and their active declarative counterparts, the verb takes the suffix -i/-ni and the locative argument is expressed in an np. the differences are that the subject of the active declarative clauses does not appear in the active li clauses and the prefix non the verb of active declarative clauses is deleted in the active li clauses. so, it can be concluded that the active li clauses have two characteristics. first, the verb of active li clauses takes the suffix -i/-ni and without any prefix. secondly, the locative argument is expressed in an np, not in a pp as in the intransitive li clauses. passive locative imperatives javanese active li clauses have their counterparts in their passive forms. the active li in (9) and (10), for example, can be expressed in their passive forms in (13) and (14) respectively. 13) kursi -ne di-lungguh-i! chair-def pas-sit-apl ‘sit on the chair!’ 14) kantor-e di-para-ni! office-def pas-come-apl ‘come to the office!’ javanese passive li clauses have characteristics: the verb take the passive prefix diand the suffix -i/-ni. the locative argument may come in front of the clause or before the verb as in (13) and (14); and it may come in after the verb as in (15) and (16). 15) di-lungguh-i kursi-ne! pas-sit-apl chair-def ‘sit on the chair!’ 16) di-para-ni kantor-e! pas-come-apl office-def ‘come to the office!’ the actor argument of passive li clauses cannot be expressed explicitly. trying to express explicitly the actor of the li clause in (15), for example, will produce the ungrammatical clause in (17). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) suhandano 62 17) *kowe di-lungguh-i kursi-ne! you pas-sit-apl chair-def ‘sit on the chair!’ the ungrammaticality of (17) can be explained as follow. in declarative passives, the prefix diappears on the verbs when the actor is a third person. when the actor is a first person, the verb takes the prefix tak-; and when the actor is a second person, the verb takes the prefix kok-. consider the passive declarative clauses below. 18) kursi-ne di-lungguh-i ali. chair-def pas-sit-apl ali the chair was sat/occupied by ali. 19) kursi-ne tak-lungguh-i. chair-def i-sit -apl the chair was sat/occupied by me. 20) kursi-ne kok-lungguh-i. chair-def you-sit-apl the chair was sat/occupied by you. in the passive declarative (18), the actor is ali, a third person np, and the verb takes the prefix di-. in the passive declarative (20), the actor is a second person and the verb takes the prefix kok-. in the passive li clause (17), the verb takes the prefix di-, so the actor must be a third person. that is why the li clause (17) is ungrammatical. but why a passive with third person actor is used in imperative clauses. the use of a third person actor or subject in imperative clauses is also found in other languages; imperative of this type is called a non-canonical imperative (aikhenvald, 2010). therefore, passive li clauses in javanese can be categorized as a non-canonical imperative. locative imperatives with actor focus another variant of the li clauses in javanese is the li clause with actor focus (li with af). this type of li characteristic is that the verb takes the suffix -a. consider the li clause in (21) and (22) below. 21) lungguh-a ing kursi iku! sit-af on chair that ‘sit on that chair!’ 22) m-(p)ara-a menyang kantor-e! act-come to office-def ‘come to the office!’ the verb of the li with af in (21) and (22) consist of the stem and the suffix -a. in (21) there is no prefix on the verb and in (22) the verb takes the prefix n-. the verb will take the prefix nif in its declarative counterpart the verb appears with the prefix n-, but if in its declarative counterpart the verb does not appear with the prefix n-, the verb does not take the prefix n-. therefore, the morphology of the verbs in li with af clauses is the same as those in their declarative counterparts except the presence of the suffix -a. this differs from active li clauses in which the prefix non the verb of their declarative counterparts is deleted in the imperative mode. li clauses consist of two arguments, an actor and a locative. both the actor argument and the locative argument can be focused on. when the actor is focused, the verb will take the suffix -a. so, the suffix -a marks the actor focus. it is the argument, not the locative argument, that focused in the li clauses in (21) and (22). when the locative argument focuses, the verb will take a different suffix described in the next section below. as described above, the locative argument of li clauses can be expressed in a pp and an np. the locative argument is expressed in a pp in the intransitive li clauses; and it is expressed in an np in the active li clauses and passive li clauses. the locative argument in the li with af clauses is expressed in a pp as in the intransitive li clauses. the locative argument in (21) ing kursi iku is a pp which consists of the preposition ing and the np kursi iku. likewise, the locative argument in (22) menyang kantore is also a pp which consists of the preposition menyang and the np kantore. it is worth to bear in mind that the actor argument presents in all types of imperative clauses, not only in li clauses, although it tends to appear implicitly. therefore, the actor focus can be found in all types of imperative clauses. there is no a locative argument in the following imperative clauses, all of the imperatives focused on the actor, marked by the suffix -a on the verb. 23) meneng-a! quite-af ‘be quite!’ journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 63 24) tuku-a kue iku! buy-af cake that ‘buy that cake!’ 25) ng-gawa-a kue iku nggo ali! act-bring-af cake that for ali ‘bring that cake for ali!’ locative imperatives with locative focus javanese li with locative focus (lf) clauses are marked by the verb's suffix -ana or -nana. the verb will take the suffix -ana when it ends in consonants (26). when the verb ends in vowels, it will take the suffix -nana as in (27). 26) lungguh-ana kursi iku! sit-lf chair that ‘sit on that chair!’ 27) para-nana kantor-e! come -lf office-def ‘come to the office!’ morphologically, the verb of li with lf only takes the suffix -ana/-nana, it does not take any prefixes. note that the verbs in the two clauses above appear without the prefix n-. the verb para that takes the prefix nin li with af as in (22) appears without the prefix nin (27). the absence of the prefix non the verb of li with lf is similar to the verb of active li clauses. as the locative argument of active li clauses, the locative argument of li with lf clauses is also expressed in an np. it differs from the locative arguments of intransitive li clauses and li with af clauses in which the locative argument is expressed in a pp. the locative argument kursi iku in (26) and kantore in (27) are nps and are not preceded by prepositions. since the locative argument in (26) and (27) is focused, it can be put in the initial position of the clause as in (28) and (29). 28) kursi iku lungguh-ana! chair that sit-lf ‘sit on that chair!’ 29) kantor-e para-nana! office-def come -lf ‘come to the office!’ so, the li with lf clauses have characteristics: (i) the verb takes the suffix ana/-nana without the prefix n-, (ii) the locative argument is expressed in an np, and (iii) the structure can be: the verb comes in the initial position of the clause and followed by the locative argument, or vice versa, the locative argument comes in the initial position of the clause followed by the verb. locative imperatives and the voice system the description of li clauses above shows that there are five variants of li clauses in javanese. different affixes mark each variant on the verb and the locative argument may be expressed in an np or a pp. the characteristic of each variant of li are summarised in the table 01 below. table 1. the characteristics of variants of li clauses type of li affixes of verbs category of the locative intransitive li n-/∅ pp active li -i/-ni np passive li di--i/-ni np li with af n-/∅--a pp li with lf -ana/-nana np the intransitive li has characteristics: the verb may take the prefix nor may have no affixes, and the locative argument is expressed in a pp. the active li has characteristics: the verb takes the suffix -i/-ni, and the locative argument is expressed in an np. the passive li has characteristics: the verb takes the prefix diand the suffix -i/-ni, the locative argument is expressed in an np. the li with af has characteristics: the verb takes the suffix -a and the locative argument is expressed in a pp. the li with lf has characteristics: the verb takes the suffix -ana/-nana, and the locative argument is expressed in an np. the five variants of li clauses can be classified into two types: the first type includes three variants: the intransitive li, the active li, and the passive li; and the second type includes the li with af and the li with lf. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) suhandano 64 compared with their declarative counterparts, the li clauses of the first type are similar to their declarative counterparts. the intransitive li clauses are similar to their intransitive declarative counterparts. the verbs in intransitive li and intransitive declarative appear in the same forms, some verbs take the prefix nand some other verbs appear without any affixes. the locative arguments in the two moods of clauses are also expressed in the same category in a pp. the difference of intransitive li clauses and intransitive declarative clauses lies on their intonation when they are spoken. the intransitive li clauses end in a raising tone, meanwhile, the intransitive declarative clauses end in a falling tone. the active li clauses are similar to their active declarative counterparts. in li clauses and their active declarative counterparts, the verb takes the suffix -i/-ni . but, the prefix nin the verb of active declaratives is deleted in the active li clauses. likewise, the passive li clauses are similar to their passive declarative counterparts in which the verb of the two moods of clauses takes the prefix diand the suffix -i/-ni. the similarity of li clauses and their declarative counterparts in terms of their affixes on the verbs and their categories of the locative arguments can be seen in table 2 below. table 2. the affix on verbs and their category of locatives in locative declarative and locative imperative type declarative imperative affix loc affix loc intransitive n-/∅ pp n-/∅ pp active n-i/ni np -i/ -ni np passive di-i/ni np di-i/ni np indeed, the li clauses of the first type differ to their declarative counterparts in the case of the presence/absence of the subject. the subject presents explicitly in the declarative clauses, but it absents in the li clauses. the absence of subject is not specific for the li clauses, but it is a general phenomenon of imperatives (alcázar and mario saltarelli, 2014). therefore, based on the similarities of the li clauses of the first type to their declarative counterparts, it seems that the voice system of the li clauses of the first type are the same as those of their declarative counterparts the two-voice system: active voice and passive voice. in other words, the existence of the intransitive li, the active li, and the passive li is reflection of the two-voice system in javanese clauses. it agrees with the classification of austronesian languages proposed by arka and ross (2005) in which javanese is in the group of indonesian or twovoice types. how about the li with af and the li with lf? the existence of the li with af and the li with lf clauses in javanese indicates another type of voice system in javanese. actors, and locatives are arguments of clauses. if these arguments can be the focus of imperative clauses, or be focused, is it possible to focus other arguments such as patients, benefactives, or instrumentals. the answer is that, in addition to the actor and locative arguments described above, the other arguments can be focused in the javanese li clauses. suhandano (2021) shows that the patient argument can be focused in the li clauses. the li with pf (patient focus) are marked by the suffix -en/-nen on the verb as in (30) below. 30) waca-nen buku-ne! read-pf book -def ‘read the book!’ benefactive and instrumental arguments can also focus on li clauses in javanese. the li clause in (31) and the li clause in (32) are examples of the li with bf (benefactive focus) and li with if (instrumental focus), respectively. 31) gawa-kna ibu-mu kue-ne! bring-bf mother-your cake-def ‘bring the cake for your mother!’ 32) gebug-na tongkat-mu nyang ula-ne! hit-if stick-your to snake-def ‘hit the snake with your stick!’ the verb of the li with bf in (31) takes the suffix -kna and the verb of the li with if in (32) takes the suffix -na. the suffix -kna and -na are allomorphs of the same suffix; -kna appears when it attaches to a word ends in vowels as in journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 65 (31) and -na appears when the suffix attaches to a word ends in consonants as in (32). the li with bf and the li with if are marked by the same suffix, the suffix -na/-kna. the same affix marks that benefactive and instrumental voices is not only found in javanese, but it is also found in formosan and philippine languages as reported by wolff (blust, 2013). it is clear that locative, actor, patient, benefactive, and instrumental arguments can be the focus of imperatives clauses in javanese. this suggests that javanese is a type of the multiple voice system or the philippine type of austronesian languages. therefore, there are two voice systems in javanese imperative clauses: the two-voice system and the multiple-voice system. the five types of li clauses discussed in this paper come from the two voice systems. the intransitive li, active li, and passive li clauses are imperatives in the two-voice system and the li with af and li with lf clauses are imperatives in the multiple-voice system. the two voice systems underline variants of imperative clauses in javanese. it seems that the existence of two different voice systems in javanese indicates that this language is in the process of changing from the multiple voice system to the two-voice system. as it is widely accepted, the multiple voice system is the original voice system of the austronesian languages or the voice system of proto-austronesian. donohue (2008) says that the change in the presence and nature of voice systems follows the migration path of the austronesians, moving the highly marked diathesis to a more ‘normal’ diathesis. it seems that javanese follows this path. this conclusion, however, needs to be confirmed using other evidence, such as evidence from the voice system in declarative clauses. to ensure that the existence of five variants of the li clauses in javanese is the result of the development of the multiple voice system in proto-austronesian, it is also necessary to compare the affixes of verbs in the javanese li clauses with the affixes of voice system markers in the proto-austronesian. in addition, it is also necessary to compare the case markers of the arguments in the javanese li clauses with the case markers in the protoaustronesian as reconstructed by blust (2015). conclusion there are five variants of li clauses in javanese: the intransitive li, active li, passive li, li with af, and li with lf. the five variants have the same structure, the verb comes in the initial position of the clause, followed by the locative argument; although it is also possible to place the locative argument in the initial position of the clause. as generally found in other languages, the subject or the addressee of javanese li clauses tends to be absent in the clause structure. the locative argument s expressed in two categories: a pp and an np. the verb of the clause has different affixes in the five variants of javanese imperatives, the affixes mark the different variants of li clauses. the five variants of li clauses in javanese come from two different voice systems, the multiple voice system, and the two-voice system. the multiple voice system is the voice system of the proto-austronesian. it seems that javanese is in the process of changing from the multiple-voice system to the twovoice system. this finding reinforces the statement that affixes on javanese verbs are related to the voice system/focus system of the language (poedjosoedarmo, 2002). in addition, the findings also strengtens the hypotesis that there are two voice systems in the javanese imperative clauses and the existence of the two voice systems indicates that javanese is in the process of changing from a multiple voice language to a two-voice language (suhandano, 2021a,b). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 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(2008). encoding the addressee in the syntax: evidence from english imperative subjects. nat lang linguist theory 26, pp. 185-218. phenomena vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 123 class struggle as the impact of oppression seen in clifford odets’ waiting for lefty hardian putra & dewi widyastuti ewi@usd.ac.id department of english letters, sanata dharma university abstract class struggle is one of the many cornerstones of marxism. it can be defined as a collective effort of an oppressed class against the oppressor class to overthrow the throne of the oppressor class. in this case, the class of proletariat against the class of capitalists. the proletariat are engaged in this class struggle because they want welfare in their life. waiting for lefty, a play written by clifford odets which is often considered a masterpiece, has a theme related to class struggle. it talks so much about the gap that separates the two classes mentioned previously and also the oppression that comes along. this oppression is found in the form of economic and legal oppression and are responded by the oppressed class in the form of class struggle. the class struggle itself becomes a reality after the oppressed class experiences the class consciousness. the oppression and class struggle depicted in the play will be the main focus of this study. thus, it will be relevant to analyze the class struggle as the impact of oppression in waiting for lefty by applying the theory of marxism. keywords: oppression, class struggle, marxism marxism and the play many classes exist within society. based on marxism, there are two basic classes, which are the capitalists and the proletariat. the relationship between these two classes is contradictory to one another. in other words, there is a class antagonism within the society. these classes are in conflict because each of the classes has a different interest. they are incompatible. the first class, as the owner of the means of production, wants to maintain their position as the ruling class, which has complete control over the proletariat. hence, the capitalists carry out the oppression of the proletariat in order to maintain their superior position. while the latter want to improve their life by insisting their rights, which according to them have been robbed by the capitalists. as a result, there is a class struggle within the society. in waiting for lefty, clifford odets tries to represent this phenomenon. odets tries to critique the condition of society and economic life as related to human rights by writing waiting for lefty. he stands behind the oppressed class that resists humanism in life. in this play, the oppressed class is represented by the group of taxi drivers. odets fights against the oppression that is experienced by the proletariat, especially the economic aspects, which are caused by the arbitrariness of the employer and the despotism done by the government. waiting for lefty was chosen to be studied because some of the characters that are represented by the members of workers union, in this case the taxi drivers union and their relations, represent the struggle of an oppressed class against the ruling class. the ruling class is represented by the other hardian putra – dewi widyastuti 124 characters, the employer, his servant and also the industrialist. the play is closely related to marxism. the theory of marxism is treated as the fundamental theoretical framework in this study. although marxism is considered as an old-fashioned theory, its emergence has influenced so many disciplines, for example economics, politics, cultural studies, etc. this play helps to explain the humanistic value about welfare for people. the conflict faced by the taxi drivers is very much so related to their economic life. in waiting for lefty, odets describes the taxi drivers’ problem in relation to their standard of living due to the small wages that they earn. at the same time, the industrialists exploit their employee because they think they have power over them. profit is the only main objective of the industrialist’s business. proper wages should be given to all the workers in order to ensure the equality of welfare among the people. the people should have access to the rights they deserve. many aspects found in the play waiting for lefty, including the equality of welfare that is demanded and struggled for by the working class, is worthy of furtherer study and analysis. the classification within society will be the first thing to be analyzed in this study. the oppression carried out by the oppressor class will then be analyzed. the depiction of the class struggle will be the last analysis in this study. the writer hopes the study can give its contribution to the society in seeing the world in general, related to the equality of welfare that is supposed to be had by everyone without exception. class divisions the theory of social class is used to analyze the groups where the characters belong to. in gary day’s class, marx called the class who owned the means of production the bourgeoisie and the class who sold their labour power the proletariat. according to marx, the interests of these two classes were fundamentally opposed since the bourgeoisie, in order to make a profit, paid the workers the lowest possible wage while demanding that they attain the highest level of productivity (2001: 7). in alan swingewood’s marx and modern social theory, marx and engels assert that our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonism. society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (1975: 115). in their communist manifesto, karl marx and friedrich engels explain that bourgeois is a synonym of capitalist because both are the owners of the means of social production and the employers of wage labor (1967:79). the members of the proletariat by using the theory of social class based on marxism, there are five characters that can be classified as the proletariat. they are joe, miller, sid, benjamin, and agate. they work in the taxi company, selling their labour power in order to get money. they are totally dependent upon their employer because they do not own the means of production. ironically, this situation is used by their employer to push them down. joe is a poor taxi driver who loves his family very much. as a father who has to be responsible to feed his family, he feels that the wage from his job as a taxi driver is not sufficient to meet the needs of his family. when the union, of which he is a member, is involved is in the middle of a dispute, he is the one who is brave enough to provoke the others to strike. joe: ...what’s this crap about goin’ home to hot suppers? i’m asking to your faces how many’s got hot suppers to go home to? anyone who’s sure of his next meal, raise your hand! a certain gent sitting behind me can raise them both. but not in front of here! and that’s we’re talking strike-to get a living wage! (odets, 1994: 1789). he is aware of his family’s misery after being complained to by his wife, edna. edna grouses about the condition of the family that is near to the devastation. being captured by the awareness of the fact that the taxi company treats his family, joe’s responsibility towards his family comes up so he decides to do some action to improve their condition. vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 125 edna: …you got two blondie kids sleeping in the next room. they need food and clothes. i’m not mentioning anything else-but we’re stalled like a flivver in the snow. for five years i laid awake at night listening to my heart pound. for god’s sake, do something joe, get wise… (odets, 1994: 1790-1791). miller was a lab assistant who worked for an industrialist named fayette before he worked as a taxi driver. he is a talented young man who likes a sobriety in his life. he feels bothered when he faces the same condition as his previous experience which exclusively concerns about the arbitrariness of the employer. he is fired from his job, regardless of his ability and talent, because he does not want to do a spying job. fayette: you understand the consequences? miller: i lose my raise simultaneously miller: and my job! fayette: and your job! miller: you misunderstand miller: rather dig ditches first! (odets, 1994: 1795). sid is a taxi driver who fails to marry a woman he loves because he does not have sufficient money to build his own family. he thinks that people cannot live properly if they do not have money. in fact, he decides to break off his engagement with flor because he cannot earn enough money to support their life when they get married. he is willing to give up the engagement that has been run for a long time without any effort to try to fix things right. thus, sid can be described as a man who gives up easily. this can be seen in the dialogue below. sid: hello, babe. flor: hello. (for a brief time they stand as though in a dream.) sid (finally): good-bye, babe. (he waits for an answer, but she is silent. they look at each other.) sid: did you ever see my pat rooney imitation? (he whistles rosy o’ grady and soft-shoes to it. stops. he asks: ) sid: do not you like it? flor (finally) : no. (buries her face in her hands. suddenly he falls on his knees and buries his face in her lap.) (odets, 1994: 1799). benjamin is a talented jewish person who used to be a doctor before he joined the taxi company as a driver. similar to miller, he also reveals the unfair treatment by his previous employer. he is replaced by leeds, a nephew of the senator. although benjamin is more competent, benjamin is powerless to maintain his job regarding the fact that leeds is the senator’s nephew. in other words, the employer has complete control over him, in spite of everything, including his talent. benjamin: it’s important-excuse methey’ve got leeds up there in my place he’s operating on mrs. lewis-the historectomyit’s my job. i washed up, prepared…they told me at the last minute. i don’t mind being replaced, doctor, but leeds is a damn fool! he shouldn’t be permitted barnes (dryly): leeds is the nephew of senator leeds (odets, 1994:1801). agate is the one who dares to incite the members of the union to strike after they wait for leftythe union leaderfor a long time, but they cannot see him. he is proud to be a member of the working class. he is a hard worker. when he was eleven, his eyes got injured because the factory where he worked did not provide a shield to protect the laborers from injury. as a result, he has to wear glasses for the rest of his life. agate: …maybe i got a glass eye, but it come from working in a factory at the age of eleven they hooked it out because they didn’t have a shield on the works. but i wear it like a medal cause it tells the world where i belongdeep down in the working class! (odets, 1994: 1804). the negligence of agate’s previous employer is used by agate to incinerate the spirit to do the strike because at the moment the members of the union also feel neglected by their employer, the taxi driver company. agate always talks with a shrill voice, showing his seriousness and madness. hardian putra – dewi widyastuti 126 agate: …this is your life and mine! it’s skull and bones every incha the road! christ, we’re dyin’ by inches! for what? for the debutantes to have their sweet comin’ out parties in the ritz! poppa’s got a daughter she’s gotta got her picture in the papers. christ, they make’em with our blood. joe said it. slow death or fight. it’s war!...working class, unite, and fight! tear down the slaughter ouse of our old lives! let freedom really ring (odets, 1994: 1804). the members of the capitalist class the capitalists are the opponent of the proletariat. they can fully control the employees or the workers because they have control over the means of production. there are two characters that can be included in the class of capitalists. they are harry fatt the corrupt leader and fayette the industrialist. harry fatt represents the taxi company. he is described as a wealthy person. he refuses the decision to conduct the strike. it is because fatt already has a better life as a result of his corrupt leadership. rather than supporting the union to strike to get a better life, he tries to prevent it. in fact, he provides examples of some strikes that met a dead end in order influence the union to not to strike. he is equally a “boss” and enemy of the workers, for his corrupt leadership subverts their struggle for a better life. fatt: you’re so wrong i ain’t laughing. any guy with eyes to read knows it. look at the textile strike-out like lions and in like lambs. take the san fransisco tie-up-starvation and broken heads. the steel boys wanted to walk out too, but they changed their minds. it’s the trend of the times, that’s what it is. all we workers got a good man behind us now. he’s a top man of the country-looking out for our intereststhe man in the white house is the one i’m referrin’ to. that’s why the times ain’t ripe for a strike. he’s working day and night(odets, 1994: 1788). he often uses the word “red” which refers to the communist and to everyone who wants to strike in order to mock them. during this time period, communism is considered a bad ideology (odets, 1994: 1788). fayette is a greedy and profit-oriented industrialist. as an industrialist, he has the authority to control his employee. thus, he forces miller to do a spying job. he argues that the job is necessary in order to serve the country but clearly the case of business is the one that is more significant to him. miller (addressing his pencil) : they say 12 million were killed in that last one and 20 million more wounded or missing. fayette: that’s not our worry. if big business went sentimental over human life there wouldn’t be big business of any sort! (odets, 1994: 1794). he does not bargain with his employee. in the case of miller, the options that fayette offers are do the job or lose the job. fayette: you understand the consequences? miller : i lose my raise miller : and my job! (simultaneously) fayette: and your job! miller: you misunderstand(odets, 1994: 1795). the oppression oppression is a widely used – and misused – term. marxists, social democrats and some liberals all agree that something called “oppression” exists; that certain groups in society do not enjoy the full legal, political or economic rights enjoyed by others (www.anu.edu.au). karl marx and friedrich engels write that the modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonism. it has actually established new classes, new conditions of oppression, and new forms of struggle in place of the old ones (marx & engels, 1967: 80). modern bourgeois society means the capitalistic society because bourgeois refers to the class of modern capitalists, the owners of the means of social production and the employers of wage labor http://www.anu.edu.au/ vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 127 (1967: 79). from the quotation above, it can be understood that oppression does exist in the capitalist society in which case the oppressor is the bourgeois or the capitalists. for marx and engels, no government or state is really above, or neutral in, the class struggle. far from being impartial, the state is itself the historical product of class society. the state was established (and later its power expanded) because of the need of the dominant class for protection from the exploited (roth, 1995: 161). economic oppression the need of money is covering the need of humanity if the subject is capitalism. as written by tucker, capitalism crushes our particularly human experience. it destroys the pleasure associated with labor, the distinctively human capacity to make and remake the world, and the major distinguishing characteristic of human from animals (tucker, 1978: 98). therefore, economic factors play a great role in running the social life. joe provides us with an example. the wages from his job as a taxi driver cannot completely fulfill the needs of the family. although he has been working very hard to feed his family, he is unsuccessful. it is because the company where he works is not concerned about the low wages, regardless of the economic condition of the employees. hence, the oppression exists here. here is the dialogue between joe and edna that expresses their miserable condition because of the company where joe works. joe: well, we’re averaging six-seven dollars a week now. edna: that just pays for the rent. joe : that is something, edna. edna: it isn’t. they’ll push you down to three and four a week before you know it. then you’ll say, “that’s somethin’,” too! (odets, 1994: 1791). the low wage given by the company is not fair, especially when the fact that joe has driven all day long is not considered. it seems that the company does not care about the welfare of the drivers. as the family’s economic situation keeps worsening, the problems within the family keep increasing. in fact, edna threatens joe that, if their economic situation does not get better, she will leave joe for another man named bud haas. joe : this is what i slaved for! edna: tell it to your boss. joe : he don’t give a damn for you or me! edna: that’s what i say. joe: don’t change the subject! edna: this is the subject, the exact subject! your boss makes this subject. i never saw him in my life, but he’s putting ideas in my head a mile a minute. he’s giving your kids that fancy diseases calls the rickets. he’s making a jelly-fish outa you and putting wrinkles in my face, this is the subject every inch of the way! he’s throwing me into bud haas’ lap. when in hell will you get wise(odets, 1994: 1793). in the case of sid and flor and their problems in relation to getting married, economic factors also play a great role. they have a similar experience with joe and edna. the low wage given by the company to sid makes him unable to start his own family, his own life. their engagement is not supported by flor’s brother, irv, or her mother. irv mentions that the wage of a taxi driver is not enough to feed the family. irv: mom told you ten times-it ain’t him. it’s that he ain’t got nothing. sure, we know he’s serious, that he’s stuck on you. but that do not cut no ice. flor: taxi drivers used to make good money. irv: today they’re makin’ five and six dollars a week. maybe you wanna raise a family on that. then you’ll be back here living with us again and i’ll be supporting two families in one. well…over my dead body. ( odets, 1994: 1796). sid and flor reveal that the capitalists, the owners of the capital, deliberately desire the miserable condition of the proletariat. hence, the oppression by giving the low wage is committed in order to obtain high profit. this oppression is a tool to maintain the hardian putra – dewi widyastuti 128 position of the ruler class that controls the lower class. flor: but something wants us to be lonely like that-crawling alone in the dark. or they want us trapped. sid: sure, the big shot money men want us like that. flor: highly insulting us sid: keeping us in the dark about what is wrong with us in the money sense. they got the power and mean to be damn sure they keep it. they know if they give in just an inch, all the dogs like us will be down on them togetheran ocean knocking them to hell and back and each singing cuckoo with stars coming from their nose and ears. i’m not raving florrie flor: i know you’re not, i know (odets, 1994: 1794). agate the agitator is also oppressed by the taxi company. he feels that his work is merely to support the company instead of himself. he thinks that his life is robbed by the boss. agate thinks that his poverty is caused by the greed of the company. roth writes that oppression can be the result of a deliberate, conscious act, or it may be unconscious and unintentional yet still have oppressive consequences (1995: 632). the correlation between the two groups capitalists and proletariatis a contradictory, binary opposition. the capitalists are wealthy, secure, and have high status; meanwhile the proletariat is lacking a subsistence minimum. thus, the act done by the company by providing a low wage, whether conscious or not, results in the oppressive consequences experienced by agate. agate: …hell, some of us boys ain’t even got a shirt to our backs. what’s the boss class tryin to do-make a nudist colony outa us? … agate: this is your life and mine! it’s skull and bones every incha the road! christ, we’re dyin’ by inches! for what? for the debutantees to have their sweet comin’ out parties in the ritz! poppa’s got a daughter she’s gotta get her picture in the papers. christ, they make’em with our blood. (odets, 1994: 1804). legal oppression as explained previously, the state exists in order to assist the capitalists to maintain their position. in robert c. tucker’s the marx-engels reader (2nd edition), karl marx says that the state’s objectives are transformed into objectives of the department, and the department’s objectives into objectives of the state (1978: 24). department refers to the part of the state namely enterprises. the enterprises belong to the capitalists. the state can exist because it is funded by the enterprises which pay the taxes. thus, the state gives a special authority to the capitalists to control their workers because the profit they get will be higher. as a result, the taxes can be increased. this oppression is called legal oppression because the state as the legal institution participates in this act of oppression. the state cooperates with the capitalists to oppress the proletariat. as the highest institution, the state is supposed to help the people for the sake of its obligation. in waiting for lefty, the state ironically abandons its people. in the case of miller, the state apparently legalizes oppression. it is because the spying job offered to miller is a job in order to serve the country. miller: may i ask the nature of the new work? fayette (looking around first): poison gas… miller: poison! fayette : orders from above. i do not have to tell you from where. new type poison gas for modern warfare (odets, 1994: 1791). miller is also in the middle of oppression when fayette questions how big his nationalism and patriotism are. instead of serving the country in a right way, the loyalty to the country is measured by what you will do for your country to lift it up, no matter how you do it. of course, if miller rejects the job, the society where he belongs will label vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 129 him anti-nationalist. the people will definitely expel him from the society because of it. fayette: you’re doing something for your country. assuring the united states that when those goddamn japs start a ruckus we’ll have offensive weapons to back us up! do not you read your newspaper, miller? … miller: but sneaking-and making poison gasthat’s for americans? (odets, 1994: 1795-1796). the oppression towards benjamin takes place when his position as a doctor, who is going to operate on a patient, is ridiculously replaced by the hospital’s director. in the end, benjamin eventually gets fired. although the replacement’s ability is far from benjamin’s, benjamin is powerless because the replacement is the nephew of the senator, who has power over him. in this case, once again the state plays a big role in the act of oppression by the capitalists. it is because the dismissal of benjamin happens when the senator, who plays a main part in running the state, comes to interfere in the hospital’s policy. benjamin: …i do not mind being replaced, doctor, but leeds is a damn fool! he shouldn’t be permitted barnes: leeds is the nephew of senator leeds. benjamin: he’s incompetent as hell. .... barnes: turn your gimlet eyes elsewhere, doctor. jigging around like a cricket on a hot grill won’t help. doctors do not run these hospitals. he’s the senator’s nephew and there he stays (odets, 1994: 1801). the class struggle as the impact of oppression the class struggle as the impact of oppression in the form of real action found in waiting for lefty comes to the surface after passing through a fundamental phase that eventually leads the workers to the class struggle, namely class consciousness. thus, the liberation of the class consciousness among the workers will be discussed before the class struggle is discussed. liberating the class consciousness the important phase prior to the class struggle is the liberation of the class consciousness among the workers. this consciousness is needed as a tool to unite the workers into a distinct group, in this case a social class, so that it enhances the power of class struggle. according to jozef wilczynski, class consciousness is described as the awareness and understanding by members or groups of a particular layer of society belonging to a distinct social class (1981: 78). there are two stages of the development of class consciousness adopted in marxism. as written by jozef wilczynski, class “in itself” and class “for itself” are hegelian concepts adapted and used in classical marxist terminology (especially by marx and engels) to describe two stages of the development of class consciousness among the working class. the former indicates the earlier stage, when workers become aware of their grievances against capitalists. if they take any action, it is directed against individual employers, not capitalists as a class. in the second stage, class “for itself”, workers become conscious of their class identity (as the proletariat) and the unbridgeable antagonism that divides them from the class of capitalists (bourgeoisie) (1981: 79). in waiting for lefty, to liberate the class consciousness among the workers, all the oppressed characters involved in the union speak up about their own experience of oppression. the oppressed characters have a particular experience of oppression done by the capitalists. thus, they speak about the oppression in front of the members of the union to awake the class consciousness among them. joe with his experience of oppression that threatens his family (odets, 1994: 1789-1793), sid with his experience of oppression that prevents him from getting married (odets, 1994: 1796-1799), miller and benjamin with their experience of oppression that causes them to lose their jobs (odets, 1994: 1793-1796 and 1801-1803), and agate with his experience of oppression that causes the damage to his eyes and also hardian putra – dewi widyastuti 130 results in his poverty (odets,1994: 18031804). they contribute to the process of awaking the class consciousness among the workers, the proletariat. the contribution of the individual’s consciousness toward the experience of oppression above is considered as the “class in itself” stage. it takes place when each of the workers are aware of their condition. their grievances are directed to their employers as individuals, not as a distinct class. after they reach the “class in itself” stage, comes the “class for itself” stage. it takes place when the workers are fully conscious of their miserable condition that is caused by the mistreatment of their employers, the capitalists. in this stage, the workers act as a distinct social class that shares the same experience and feeling. the grievances are directed to the class of capitalists, not to the individual employers. in waiting for lefty, it seems that the workers have reached the “class for itself” stage. they are said to be in the stage of “class for itself” because they act as a distinct social class, the proletariat, they feel that they have the same opponents which are the capitalists. in this case, they act as a group of taxi drivers that is oppressed by the company, so they feel that they need to fight against the company that oppresses them. one character who particularly contributes to liberate the class consciousness among the workers is agate. after being fed up because he finds that the life of the workers is miserable under the capitalists, he ferociously stimulates the union to strike. in fact, he is willing to be called as a communist because of his desire to strike to get a better life. agate (to audience): what’s the answer, boys? the answer is, if we’re reds because we wanna strike, then we take over their salute too! know how they do it? (makes communist salute.) what is it? an uppercut! the good old uppercut to the chin! hell, some of us boys ain’t even got a shirt to our backs. what’s the boss class tryin’ to do-make a nudist colony outa us? (odets, 1994: 1804). in the end, the workers decide to strike. in this case, the strike can be described as the realization of the class struggle. it happens because they get to the final stage of the class consciousness after they experienced oppression. only the consciousness of the proletariat can point to the way that leads out of the dead end of capitalism. as long as this consciousness is lacking, the crisis remains permanent. when the proletariat is tired of the day by day slavery and oppression, the time has come for them to move out. the proletariat is not given any choice but to revolt against the greedy capitalists. as marx says, quoted by georg lukacs, it must become a class not only “as against capital” but also “for itself”; that is to say, the class struggle must be raised from the level of economic necessity to the level of conscious aim and effective class consciousness (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/w orks/history/lukacs3.htm). “class for itself” as the final stage of the class consciousness results in the class struggle. class struggle in their communist manifesto, marx and engels write that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles (1967:79). marxism views the class struggle as an expression of dialectical materialism, where contradictions between classes lead to a struggle which is resolved in a synthesis, the process repeating itself as production forces change. the class owning the means of production utilizes the state, equipped with instruments of oppression, to maintain its rule over the exploited class. this rule and exploitation are opposed by the oppressed class in primarily two spheres: 1. economic: a struggle for the improvement of the conditions of work and a change in the principle governing the distribution of the fruits of labour. 2. political: a struggle for the seizure and maintenance of political power (wilczynski ,1981:80). in the capitalist society, the main characters of class struggle are the capitalists on one side and the proletariat on the other side. put crudely, the capitalists desire high profits and the proletariat want high wages. vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 131 this is the source of the struggle between the classes. the state also plays a significant role in the act of class struggle done by the proletariat. it is because the state has become a tool for the capitalists as the oppressor to oppress and exploit the proletariat. it also can be found in waiting for lefty, particularly in the lab assistant episode scene when miller is asked to do an illegal job. the job is to spy and to make a poison gas. ironically, it is ordered by the state, using war as the main justification. fayette: the world is an armed camp today. one match sets the whole world blazing in forty eight hours. uncle sam won’t be caught napping! miller (addressing his pencil): they say 12 million were killed in that last one and 20 million more wounded or missing. fayette: that’s not our worry. if big business went sentimental over human life there wouldn’t be big business of any sort! (odets, 1994: 1794). after experiencing the oppression and the final stage of class consciousness, the “class for itself”, the proletariat in waiting for lefty decides to strike. the strike is the real action of the class struggle to demand a better life. in the domain of marxism, a strike within a company done by the workers in order to demand a better life can be included in the category of class struggle. however, a strike is not identical to a class struggle. the strike is just the means of the class struggle. there are two basics of class struggle. they are economic and political. the economic motive is merely the fundamental one because the proletariat wants a better economic life. it happens because the capitalists, the ones who has power over the proletariat, can do anything to the proletariat, including deliberately oppressing. joe:…”god,” the wife says,” eighty cents ain’t money-don’t buy beans almost. you’re workin’ for the company,” she says to me, “joe! you ain;t workin’ for me or the family no more!”…(odets, 1994: 1789). the class struggle is the response to the oppression. the oppressed characters generally experience economic problems. for example joe who cannot fulfill the needs of the family, and also sid who cannot get married because he does not have enough money. they are trapped in that kind of situation because they belong to the distinct social class that is oppressed by another class. hence, they have to do the struggle to liberate themselves from their unhealthy economic life. in other words, the economic oppression has an impact which is the class struggle. joe: …what’s this crap about goin’ home to hot suppers? i’m asking to your faces how many’s got hot suppers to go home to? anyone who’s sure of his next meal, raise your hand! a certain gent sitting behind me can raise them both. but not in front here! and that’s why we’re talking strike-to get a living wage! (odets, 1994: 1789). the political struggle is conducted because they want to make sure that they can have a stable economic condition. the struggle will have an impact on the life of the proletariat. the desire to completely liberate the class because of the oppression is very strong since they experience extreme oppression in their lives. agate (crying): hear it boys, hear it? hell, listen to me! coast to coast! hello america! hello. we’re stormbirds of the working class. workers of the world... our bones and blood! and when we die they’ll know what we did to make a new world! christ, cut us up to little pieces. we’ll die for what is right! put fruit trees where our ashes are! (to audience): well, what’s the answer? all : strike! agate: louder! all: strike! agate and others on stage: again! all: strike, strike, strike!!! (odets, 1994: 1805). led by agate, after knowing that lefty has been killed, they conduct the strike to hardian putra – dewi widyastuti 132 demand their rights. agate says that they want to make a new world. it means that they want to make a better world for themselves. the new world means a world without oppression. thus, the strike as the means of the class struggle results in a political struggle. it is the struggle to seize the power of the capitalists so that they can form their own world. conclusion from the analysis, it is obvious that the society consists of two different classes which are the capitalists who own the means of production; therefore they have power, and the proletariat who sell their labor. the antagonistic relationship between capitalists and proletariat exists in the society according to the marxism theory. capitalists as the one that have the power over the proletariat tend to oppress the proletariat in order to maintain their position as the upper class while the proletariat want some improvement in their life. their different interests cause them to always be in dispute. the day by day oppressions done by the capitalists that are ironically assisted by the state in the form of economic and legal oppression eventually make the proletariat conscious of their miserable condition. they are conscious that they, as one class, are oppressed by another class. this consciousness is known as class consciousness, to be more specific, it is the “class for itself” stage of the class consciousness. this leads the proletariat to struggle in order to improve their life since the capitalists cannot provide it for them. it is called the class struggle. hence, it appears that the oppression carried out by the capitalists result in the form of class struggle conducted by the class that experiences the oppression in order to bring back the welfare that is lost in the capitalist society. references day, gary. class: the new critical idiom: london: routledge, 2001. print. lukacs, george. “class consciousness”. history and class consciousness (1920). <http://www.marxists,org/archive/ lukacs/works/history/lukacs3.htm> web. 26 march 2009. marx, karl and friedrich engels. the communist manifesto. london: penguin classic, 1967. print. mcnally, david. “toward a marxist theory of oppression”.http://www.anu.edu.au/pol sci/marx/gayleft/towardstheory.rtf web. 26 march 2009. odets, clifford. waiting for lefty, written by himself. 1935. the heath anthology of american literature, 2nd edition. ed. paul lauter. lexington: d.c. heath and company, 1994, pp. 1788-1935. print. roth, john k. international encyclopedia of ethics. london: braun-brumfield inc, 1955. print. swingewood, alan. modern and social theory. london: macmillan press ltd, 1975. print. tucker, robert c. the marx-engels reader, 2nd edition. new york: w.w. norton company, 1978. print. http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/gayleft/towardstheory.rtf http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/gayleft/towardstheory.rtf 89 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 89 – 100 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.5126 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. the psychopathy of john berryman and its application to his poetry “not to live” budi tri santosa btsantosa@unimus.ac.id english literature, universitas muhammadiyah semarang, indonesia abstract article information the phenomenon of psychopathic behavior that occurs in society has unconsciously inspired various forms of art, one of which is poetry. more poets write about their mental illness through indirect expression. poetry is one of the popular ways to express it. this research aims to analyze the word or phrase in “not to live” to find the psychopath of the poem. the approach used in this study is a semiotic approach and uses a qualitative method. data were collected through observation and repeated readings through heuristic and hermeneutic readings. data analysis used descriptive qualitative analysis. the results of semiotic research in john berryman’s poetry is that reading heuristics describes how bad the world and life are. that meaning can be seen through simile, metaphor, personification, ambiguity, and contradiction. to show the author’s personality, hermeneutic reading shows the feelings of hatred experienced by john berryman because the world is full of hypocrites and deceit. matrix, model, and variant in not to live can be seen as distorted personality due to the sorrw of his life, and proven by unrhyme matrix in his poetr. the hypnogram of the poetry is when the poet feels how real life is and how to survive. from the semiotic approach, the poem can be seen as psychopathic poetry. keywords: poetry; psychopathic; semiotics; pyschology received: 27 november 2022 revised: 26 february 2023 accepted: 27 february 2023 introduction in the modern era, people no longer care about existing social norms, and almost some have no empathy or sympathy (gulin, 2020; thompson & mather, 2013). psychologists consider the phenomenon a disorder in the social community called a psychopath (maibom, 2018). psychopath behaviour is visible, and many people can also be categorized as a psychopath because people have hidden secrets that people do not know if they are psychopath traits (müller et al., 2005). the behavior of a psychopath is generally based on one’s own and regardless of the social norms in the community (larsen, 2018). https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:btsantosa@unimus.ac.id journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) budi tri santosa 90 psychopathy is a mental disorder characterized by egocentric and antisocial behavior. (hare, 2006). psychopaths represent the soul and disease. psychopaths are distinguished by a number of indicators. interpersonal, affective, and distorted behavior are examples of these indicators. the phenomenon of psychopathic behavior that occurs in society has unconsciously inspired various forms of art, one of which is literature. it happens because literary works cannot be separated from the authors who created them. the author writes about the phenomenon of psychopathic behavior based on his experience related to psychopaths or the author’s imagination that can describe the character of a psychopath. learning about psychopaths becomes interesting not because of how people’s personalities become the basis of indicators or characteristics of psychopaths but because there are factors, reasons, and backgrounds of a person becoming a psychopath (blair, 1995; paulhus & williams, 2002; pera-guardiola et al., 2016). psychopaths are interesting to use as a theme in a literary work because the story is emotionally draining and stirs the reader’s psychology. literature and psychology do have a close relationship, indirectly and functionally. the indirect relationship is that literature and psychology have the same starting point, the human psyche. meanwhile, the functional relationship between literature and psychology is that both are useful as a means to study the psychological state of others. the difference is that in literary works, the psychological symptoms of imaginary humans as characters in the literary work. this research focuses on sadism and brutality as part of a psychopath. sadistic is described as behavior committed by a person for pleasure and satisfaction while hurting his victim (pfattheicher et al., 2021). meanwhile, brutal acts are crimes that violate laws and social norms. brutal acts are one of those circumstances that can be categorized as psychopathic. brutal and sadistic are the same because it tortures their victims equally without guilt (aiello et al., 2015; henderson et al., 2014). based on this phenomenon, researchers want to compile comprehensive research on psychopaths through one literary work, poetry. at one point or another, literature can describe mental health. in the literature, mental health has been described in many ways. some works of fiction often shed light on mental illness and its treatment—some of the world’s most widely researched writers on mental health. the writer believed that good literary works depended on the author’s mental health (richmond, 2014). many poets have written about his mental illness. they struggled with emotional instability and alcoholism until they decided to commit suicide. the poet aims to create literary works based on his mental health condition to express his litigating and thinking. literature can hide the author’s feelings, including mental health (stuckey & nobel, 2010). every word in the poem always has a hidden meaning that makes anyone guess the meaning of the poem. riffaterre argues that poetry conveys something indirectly (riffaterre, 2021). the continuity of expression in poetry is the attraction of poetry compared to other literary works. indirect delivery intends to create and get the energy of poetry until it feels what is expressed. in addition, it also causes poetic tension, clarifies the purpose, and separates literary works from everyday (riffaterre, 2021). more poets write about their mental illness through indirect expression. poetry is one of the popular ways to express mental illness, and scrutinize the hidden feeling, face, and story (richmond, 2014). it means poetry can be interpreted as an expression of a person. poetry gives an expressive face in poetry. poets do not have to pretend to be others to hide their mental health. poetry becomes a mental health therapy and reference that literature can be used as a safer way to express, demonstrate, or deal with mental health (stuckey & nobel, 2010). writing poetry and responding to other people’s writings allows individuals to express emotions, validate feelings, define ideas, experience context, and be more aware of personal mental health. poetry acts as a journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 91 catalyst for emotional disclosure by reflecting the emotions experienced by the reader or acting as memories that are then shared (boone, 2008). many types of research about psychopath in literary works (fitriani, 2019; lynam, 1997; potamites et al., 2014). the research found that the author has been under much pressure and oppression from her parents since childhood. it can affect a person’s psychological condition, as happened by amy elliott dunne, a psychopath because there is too much oppression in her life. she acts cruelly and has another personality (fitriani, 2019). however, it just describes her psychopathic identity. other researchers found that a poet has six psychopathic behaviors: antisocial, selfish, irritable, dominant, hypocritical, and cruel. those happen because of the trauma of his childhood. his mother could not express affection to her children, such as kisses or hugs. his parents always fight before him (astuti et al., 2015). however, this research focuses on how psychopaths release the burden on literary work. the third previous study was entitled freudian repetition and restoration in sylvia plath’s life, art, and death. this article is written by (potamites et al., 2014). unfortunately, this research focuses more on how sylvia plath made all her poems obsessed with death and suicidal feelings based on sigmund freud’s theory. the difference from this study is that this article examines how poets are obsessed with suicide and death but do not focus on psychopathic structures despite using the same object. adding the paradigm of a psychopath in literary work, this research uses a semiotics approach to scrutinize the poem to see psychopathic traits. in semiotics, the researchers use riffatere’s semiotics which focuses on four things to reveal the hidden meaning in a poem. first, indirect expression is a concept that indirectly has a particular way of bringing meaning. poetry conveys one thing with another intent, distinguishing poetry from language. the indirect expression occurs due to displacing, distorting, and creating (riffaterre, 2021). the indirect expression has in line with psychopaths. psychopaths do have a penchant for harm. antisocial behaviors such as cheating, lying, robbing, stealing, fighting, adultery, and murder are all behaviors that appeal to psychopaths from hidden and indirect. second is heuristic and hermeneutic. the first reading stage is a heuristic reading, while the second stage is called a hermeneutic reading (riffaterre, 2021). heuristic readings are rhyme readings according to normative, morphological, syntactic, and semantic grammar. this heuristic reading results in an overall meaning according to normative grammar with a first-rate semiotic system (riffaterre, 2021). the role of hermeneutics in this research focuses on interpreting the words or phrases related to psychopaths. the goal is for the poetry's content always to be meaningful and relevant to address society's problems. third is the matrix, model, and variant. the matrix is the source of all meanings in poetry. usually, the matrix does not exist in the text of the poem. the matrix is then actualized in a model, something is seen in the poem’s text. this model can also be said to be the first actualization of the matrix (riffaterre, 2021). a model is a word or sentence that represents a poem verse. model explanations are expressed in each line or paragraph's variants. models and matrices are both variations on the same structure. in other words, poetry develops a matrix into a model and then converts it into variants. fourth is that hypogram. the relationship between literary works and others is called a hypogram. hypogram can also be found by looking at the relevance of literary works to their history (riffaterre, 2021). hypogram in creating literary works can include society, historical events, or nature and life experienced by poets. as with any matrix, a hypogram is a space that is the center of the meaning of poetry to be found. based on the background, previous studies, and literature review, this research aims to (1) scrutinize the semiotic meanings in john berryman’s poetry, (2) reveal the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) budi tri santosa 92 structures of psychopathic poetry in john berryman’s poetry. methodology the researchers use descriptive qualitative techniques to analyze data since this research data is a word or phrase. the researchers use words, phrases, or verses to interpret poetry. (nassaji, 2015). there are two types of data sources: primary and secondary data. the primary data came from john berryman's poetry collection book, the dispossessed section, with the poem not to live. secondary data are journals or articles related to semiotics supporting this research. this research uses a semiotics approach to scrutinize the meaning of poems. the technique of data collection is close textual reading. the researchers read poetry carefully to understand the meaning and meaning of poetry (greenham, 2018). then, the researchers apply semiotic close reading. this technique is researched using riffaterre’s semiotic of poetry (juodinytė-kuznetsova, 2011). in theory, riffaterre (1978), stated that four things to note in understanding and interpreting a poem are: (1) an indirect expression, (2) heuristic and hermeneutic (retroactive) readings, (3) matrices, models, and variants, and (4) hypograms. the researchers searched all four in the poetry and repeatedly read to get the hidden meaning of poetry. in this research, there are several steps of data analysis, such as: understanding the diction of john berryman’s poetry to get a critical relationship between the word and his emotional structure through indirect expression, understanding heuristic and hermeneutic, matrices, models, and variants, and hypogram, categorizing understanding into riffaterre’s semiotic poetry into psychological, and the researcher separate words in poetry that contain psychopathic elements that support poets making poetry. results and discussion semiotic meaning in john berryman’s poetry riffaterre’s semiotics interprets poetry by paying attention to the system of signs and determining what conventions allow the poem to have meaning through heuristic reading, hermeneutic reading, finding the continuity of expression, finding matrices, models, variants, and hypograms (riffaterre, 2021). a semiotic approach can examine more details about the communication conveyed by the artwork and how the literary work is delivered to be easily understood (riffaterre, 2021). the semiotic process occurs in the reader’s mind due to the second reading stage. before reaching the stage of meaning, the reader must face obstacles at the mimetic level. literary works begin with heuristic reading, carried out from the beginning to the end of the text. this first stage of reading is referred to as heuristic reading to find the meaning of poetry, while reading is referred to as hermeneutic reading to find the significance of poetry. there are several compounds found in poetry. a simile is a figure of speech that uses comparison to express similarities between two different things . it is one of the most commonly used figures of speech, and often uses the words “like” or “as” to make the comparison. for example, “he was as strong as an ox” is a simile that compares the strength of a person to the strength of an ox. similes can be used to express ideas in a more vivid and interesting way than simply using plain language. they can also be used to emphasize a point, add humor to a situation, or create a mental image that is easier to remember than a description in plain language. metaphor is a figure of speech used to compare two seemingly unrelated things or ideas. it is often used to make a point or evoke an emotion in the reader. metaphors can be used to describe people, places, objects, and even abstract concepts. for example, someone might describe a difficult task as "climbing a mountain," or a difficult decision as "walking a tightrope." by using metaphor, the writer can convey an idea in a more vivid and engaging way than simply using facts or details. metaphor can also help the reader to more easily visualize and understand the concept being discussed. personification is a figurative language used to describe human characteristics in animals, plants, objects, or concepts. rhyme is journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 93 an intermittent sound that occurs both within and at the end of the poetry array. the last one found in this poetry is irony, which is a compound that compares two very different things. irony is a figurative term that refers to the opposite purpose of reality. (riffaterre, 2021). this poem has several semiotic types based on the theory of riffaterre. not to live is an ordinary poem, but many meanings support it into poetry that can analyze based on semiotics. distorted personality of psycopath analyzing indirect expressions in a poem can make it easier for the reader to understand the poem’s content and know every unusual word in the verse (austin, 1966). according to riffaterre, poetry says something but has another meaning. poetry conveys something indirectly that is called indirect expression. as a result, semiotics and poetry are linked because the latter is required to understand symbols in his poems, particularly for analyzing and interpreting them. poems containing symbols representing many realities and vicissitudes of life are considered considerable human significance. signs can take the shape of words, images, sounds, symbols, gestures, and objects in a semiotic meaning. signs do not only ‘carry’ meanings; they also serve as a vehicle via which meanings are created. semiotics aids the reader in realizing that meaning is not passively absorbed but only emerges via the active process of interpretation. throught indirect expression, the distorted personality of psyschopath can be exposed. a psychopath can say one thing, but it has other interpretation. this hides sorrow, suffering, and pressure(bucklew, 2013). then, poetry, full of figurative language, is one of media to hide the true feeling (lee & ling, 2004). the first stanza in not to live explicitly contain an indirect expression, such as it kissed us, soft, to cut our throats, this coast, (line 1) in line one, “it” in this poem is a personification because in line “it kissed us,” “it” refers to an object that is not alive. it can smell, although it is not clearly described “it.” a thing or something described as having a feeling is called personification. the following line also found indirect expression. like a malice of the lazy king. i hunt & hunt! but find here what to kill?— nothing is blunt, ( line 2 and 3) the phrase “malice of the lazy” is a simile because it exposes something to others. there is a characteristic of simile that is the word “like.” in some verses, poetry usually not only contains one indirect expression. but phantoming uneases i find. ghost on ghost precedes of all most scared us, most ( line 4 and 5 ) line four (4) is irony because the word “phantoming uneases” is a state of concern. that line insinuates the poor people, who still do not get anything despite their efforts. the irony is usually used to mock or satirize situations. another indirect expression the “ghost” and “most” is rhyme. rhyme is the use of sounds in poetry to make the poem beautiful. lines six (6) and seven (7) are the following metaphors. howls fail upon this secret, far air: grunt, (line 6) the word becomes metaphor because “howls fail at this secret” means as bragging or talking and spreading gossip to everyone. the word “howls” likens people, and “secret” is their disgrace, called metaphor. shaming for food; you must. i love the king (line 7) the phrase “shaming food” into metaphor because it equates an object with something else without words like or what, which is a hallmark of metaphor. as in line six (6), the metaphor in line seven (7) is “shaming” to replace the intent of searching. it is a metaphor in the poem not to live, the personification is found in lines eight and metaphor again in line nine (9). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) budi tri santosa 94 & it was not i who strangled at the toast but a flux of a free & dying adjutant: (line 8 and 9) in line eight (8), personification is found in “strangled at the toast” because it like “toast” as if it can be “strangled” like a living thing. in line nine (9), the phrase “flux of a free” is a metaphor because it likens freedom to something that can be followed to be fought for. not all words or verses in poetry contain an indirect expression, as in line 10, there is no indirect expression. god be with him. he & god be with us all, for we are not to live, i cannot wring (line 10 and 11) although rarely encountered, ambiguity is detected in the word “wring” in this poem. the term “wring” is illustrated by the character “i,” who can do nothing for this life even though it is just a tiny thing that is often done. ambiguity is a word, phrase, or sentence in a poem with a double or multi-interpretive meaning; even though it is not explained above, it turns out the poem is ambiguous not to live. in the following line, there is an indirect expression. like laundry, blue my soul, indecisive thing . . (line 12) a simile is found in this line because “like” signifies simile. that line means a very concerning, unmanageable situation, and ignored by the surrounding environment. almost every poem has an indirect expression simile. the last two lines are still being found as indirect expression metaphors. from undergrowth & over odd birds call (line 13) the phrase “over odd birds call” is a metaphor because the word “bird” refers to something beautiful, free to go anywhere, and calming, but here, the term “over odd” also makes the sound of the bird not attractive anymore. and who would starv’d so survive? god save the king ( line 14 ) the word “king” refers to someone powerful and arbitrary. the metaphor here states that an influential person will always live happily without lacking a single thing. indirect expression in psychopathic poetry has different characteristics from other poetry. the choice of words in psychopathic poetry is more likely to depict nature, god, and the self associated with suffering mental problems. the number of indirect expressions is also evidence of emotional instability in the poem. psychopath of john berryman to understand the psychopath contextually, the researcher employs heuristics and hermeneutics to read the meaning of poetry. the position of heuristic and hermeneutic is to create a process of intersubjective agreement toward the meaning of the conventional language (olesen, 2013). contextual language develops and expands a set of metaphors through intersubjective agreement and convention. the first line, poem not to live by john berryman, is depicted with a very loving and comforting feeling in the word, “it kissed us”. it means the desires or passions that exist within us. that desire controls us. the phrase “kissed us, soft” means a willingness to love so much. it can be interpreted as the desire to love sincerely. still, on the one hand, the surface hurts and makes them worry and fear— supported by the inclusion of figurative language that makes the poem more beautiful, which is in the pharse “to cut our throats” and the tense atmosphere in the word “this coast”. so if interpreted in this sentence means a situation where the character “i” craves a pleasant life but life provides pain and distress. this can be interpreted as one of the psychopath traits. the persona “i” feel pleasant by cutting the throat. as mentioned by boccio and beaver, feeling pleasant in a horrific situation can be apsychopathic personality trait (boccio & beaver, 2021). the phrase to cut our throats means to hurt slowly which makes anyone tormented. the phrase this coast is where we can feel calm and at peace and fear the great things that can kill us. it kissed us, soft, to cut our throats; this journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 95 coast means the desire in us, the desire to love sincerely; the feeling is very soft and comfortable to feel, but that desire, if too great, can torture us kill slowly. however, in that desire, we can feel peace of mind, but on one side, if the passion continues to be left and master ourselves, can cause worries and worse circumstances. it refers as an unenabled human desire that existed from birth. desire or willingness to love and hurt. the word “king” in line 2 means a trait or character that requires a person to be selfish and arbitrary. despite already knowing the circumstances, the character ‘i’ do not care even if it had to be selfish and arbitrary. selfish and arbitrary consider a trait of a psychopath (arnett, 1997). ‘i’ continued to feel it in order to survive. it is explained in the line “like the malice of a lazy king. i hunt” to clarify the situation, the presence of the phrase’s figurative language becoming meaningful. the word malice means something terrible and detrimental. malice is a desire that exists in humans. this trait can harm others and oneself, meaning this desire is the same as neither ego nor superego can control. in the sense of king, a lazy king has power and cannot be about his desires and arbitrary. the word lazy means someone who does not care about anything to achieve his desires and justify various ways. therefore, lazy king can be interpreted as a sinful desire for something, and nothing can stand in the way of it, no matter what happens, the desire must be realized even though it has to sacrifice the feelings of others. lazy king refers to an evil desire and does not care about anything to make it happen. the word “hunt” means to seek something to survive for those who have no power. “but find here what to kill?—nothing is blunt,” in the word “what to kill” means nothing to find, eat and survive. the word “nothing is blunt” means everything is in vain; even though it has done anything, nothing is obtained and only vanity. line i hunt & hunt! but find here what to kill, which means chasing something very persistently, but when the “i” figure realizes it does not know what is being pursued or tried, i do not know what to give and sacrifice for great desire. all that is desired turns out to be just a desire without making it happen, that is depicted in nothing is blunt. the line i hunt & hunt! but find here what to kill? nothing is blunt is something we want, and we pursue it with effort and sacrifice of many things, but at one time, we realize that all our desires will not be recognized even though many have been sacrificed. only desire alone will not be realized. in that context, the ego plays a role in stopping can be seen in the word nothing is blunt. the second and third lines have the meaning of life that is passed just to find food, if you want to survive must be able to be selfish and arbitrary, even though it has behaved so not necessarily get something. all psychopathy personality found is haunting anxiety (greenacre, 2013). the character ‘i’ tries to explain what makes humans frightened: the guilt that always haunts, the worry for the future, and the life that is always imagined. it is in the line “but phantoming uneases i find. ghost”. the word “gosh” is interpreted as worries or unsettling circumstances. in the fifth line, the word “ghost” represents the phrase “on ghost precedes of all most scared us, most”, which means worry is the scariest thing for any human being to feel. the fourth and fifth lines can be interpreted as only the excitement or worry of life when these feelings are the ones that scare them the most. the phrase phantoming unseases refers to uncomfortable feelings. anxiety arises because the person fears his own shadow. this state becomes the nature of a restless person, who always thinks something great will happen. when a desire is not realized, then the anxiety of wanting to make it happen always looms like a ghost or spirit that follows. the word ghost is interpreted as something that always overshadows and makes fear that finally suppresses from the word unseases to master feelings. in this phrase, the poet wants to illustrate that the desire he hopes for cannot be realized and makes him uneasy, always overshadowed and afraid that everything is not what he expected. in the phrase “we fled”, they are fleeing the looming worries. to survive despite their worries, they must do whatever it takes journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) budi tri santosa 96 despite spreading shame and shamelessly throughout the city in the phrase “how is fail upon this secret, far air: grunt”. the shame is described in the word ‘howls fail upon this secret.’ some compounds make the atmosphere in the sentence feel alive.this sentence means the absence of shame for life to survive despite having to open up about your disgrace and put aside worry. the words we fled means running away from what’s looming. because anxiety always looms, the poet wants to convey that he avoids or escapes from the anxiety. the line howls fail upon this secret means that the desire is felt to reveal something but is held back by circumstances. the secret is interpreted as hidden but in howls so that the secret is spread throughout the place like the word grunt, which people always do. in other words, the line we fled howls fail upon this secret, far air: grunt, boasting of his wishes at being forced by circumstances that make him scared by the perceived ghost for survival. this sentence is included in the psychological that means his desires that should not be boasted but in the talk to survive. on the seventh line “shaming for food” is depicted with everyone having to dare to take risks to survive. the word ‘i love the king’ they like selfish and arbitrary nature like a king because of these traits that make them able to survive in this world. the line “shaming for food; you must. i love the king” means that to survive, everyone must take risks and behave like a selfish and arbitrary king in this world that will survive. the phrase shaming for food is a situation in which a person does anything to survive to make ends meet. the word shaming means a person can embarrass himself even if he has to reveal his wishes or secrets. the word food means something that must be done by humans or basic needs that must be met. the words you must it can be interpreted as looking for food is an obligation or a necessity even though it must embarrass yourself and because of need or commitment no matter what way. the line i love the king, king is defined as a selfish, bossy, and controlling nature. i love the king means that despite its terrible nature, it is still liked and done because of that trait that encourages it to get food. in a state of survival, everyone attacked each other to get food. it is found in the word “strangled on toast”. the word strangled means something is done to hurt, something that makes you lose your breath. at the same time, toast here means food that people are contesting. this sentence implies someone who must be selfish, arbitrary, and bossy to survive for food, even if they have to embarrass themselves. the desire to stay makes a person not think long to do anything. for someone who is only a maid or a lowly person, freedom becomes something that anyone wants to have in the word “but a flux of a free & dying adjutant”. to get food, you have to have freedom. the atmosphere in this sentence was somber. the phrase a flux of a free means adapting to a new environment or situation, which makes anyone want to feel it. although the following freedom, there is also the word dying adjutant which means we are all just servants or someone assigned to escort. even though we feel the space, we remain bound by the fear that makes dying, and we are only lowly people trying to survive wherever we go without realizing god is always with us all wherever we are, many of us do not believe that prefer life. this word describes a strong ego, the desire to be free but bound by fear and lack of power because they are self-conscious that they are only inferior people. in a state of fear and distress, even though nothing went well, they were always convinced that “god be with him. he and god be with us all”. combining the eighth, ninth, and tenth lines means that anyone who wants to survive must be able to fight and take risks because only people with degrees can quickly get everything. for lowly people to be free can not be done, especially for food must eliminate the sense of humanity despite knowing god is with all of us but the concern about living is there. the word “for us, it’s not for our lives” means to survive, and incompetence robs us of our freedom. sad feelings are ignored, and no one cares about us, making someone always survive. life is only for eating and drinking without meaning. the word “i cannot wring” journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 97 means that even simple things usually done for them cannot be done because there is no freedom because life does not belong to them. the phrase for we are not to live means a situation where we eat and drink without meaning; even though we still eat and breathe, life cannot be controlled as we wish. the word i cannot wring means wanting to seize or do everything of your own accord, but there is a word that cannot, which means it cannot be done even if you are going to do something you usually cannot. the phrase “like laundry, blue my soul— indecisive thing.” deep sadness and fear for a future to live is ignored by those with power; those people are just dirty and smelly people begging for food. in lines eleven and twelve, this means to do a simple thing they cannot do because there is no power. the sadness and worry felt is only ignored by those who have power. they are set aside and considered dirty and smelly. on line thirteen (13) is the phrase “from the undergrowth,“ meaning from a bad place and invisible to people. the phrase “& over odd birds call” means the voice of life calling them to fight and defend against those in power. on the phrase “and who would starv’d so survive?” it means questioning who will survive in this world, whether those considered inferior or those with power. it is still the one with the power that god will save under any circumstances. it is in word “god save the king”. in this last line, it is explained that the lowly must fight against those in power in order to survive but the fact is that god still gives more life to those in power. the phrase from undergrowth means from a place that people have never found, a filthy home. the phrase odd birds represents a call about life that they think is an unpleasant call. the phrase survive it means a battle with destiny, to capture who will survive in a state of hunger, whether we or the king, but on the one hand, the words god must have saved the king, saved those in power, and had authority. in the sentence, the word starv’d means a need that must be met. still, these needs can be met if we survive. this sentence means that even in the worst of circumstances, god will still save those who have power from lowly people like them. hermeneutic reading in the poem not to live tell the story of the poet’s psychiatric condition. the poet was distressed to the extent that he felt that his life was only for eating and drinking. the difficulty also made the poet feel the urge to do anything to eat and drink, even though he had to face death. among the sorrows that plagued him, the poet was always haunted by the worry of not surviving and fighting against those who had power and undoubtedly had a better life. the ambiguity of john berryman inner feeling the text in poetry is an alteration of the matrix. the matrix is the motor or generator of a text in poetry, while the model determines how it is acquired and developed. so after finding the matrix, it will be developed by the model. the matrix is the keyword for interpreting the concretized poem. with these stages, the researcher wants to validate the interpretation from a heuristic reading of the poem, so there will be a more precise meaning. a model is a word or sentence representing a poem’s stanza. meanwhile, a variant is a form of elaboration of the same structure as the model. it is said that the matrix, model and variant are the development of poetry. poetry is the development of a matrix into a model then transformed into variants. the matrix is the source of all meanings in the poem (riffaterre, 2021). in poetry not to live, which becomes the matrix of poetry, the poet feels deep distress. this feeling is the poet’s experience. a feeling of concern about the life felt by the poet, and how the poet faces this life. struggling to survive life is a profound effect for the poet. he had to fight for food despite having to do anything and sell his life. life remains unfair to poets, there is always a differentiator of social status between human beings. the people with power and ordinary people seem to be striking the difference. to get food for the sake of life man must risk everything he has because god will only save those with power. the little people will never be seen. in addition to the matrix, there are also models and variants. a model is a word or journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) budi tri santosa 98 sentence representing a verse in a poem or as the first actualization of a matrix. the model in this poem is the struggle for survival, while the variants in this poem are: (1) the poet’s life feels like giving good but, in reality gives terrible things. a life that makes him feel fear and worry that is continuously haunting to face tomorrow. it’s in the first line to five. (2) haunting anxiety terrifies poets, and is forced to do anything to survive and get food. it’s in line six to ten. (3) the lousy life and restlessness of the poet’s heart despite doing anything to survive, but still the ones who get a better life are the ones in power. revealed in line eleven to fourteen. the root of john berryman pyschopathy a hypogram is the setting for creating a literary work that covers the state of society, events in history, or nature and life experienced by the poet. in riffaterre’s theory there are two types of hypnogram: potential hypnogram and actual hipograms. a potential hypnogram is a hypnogram that appears in a literary work, all forms of implications of the meaning of language understood from a literary work. in contrast, the actual hypnogram is the relationship of literary works with things outside the literary work. in the poem not to live, the hypnogram describes the matrix that is the bitterness of life. the poet describes how life is challenging to live. life demands to keep fighting and racing for food. it does not matter if people must be insulted by more powerful people. the actual hypnogram of poetry is the setting for the creation of this poem, a time when poets had to fight to survive. the poet created this poem in 1953. at that time, the poet created this poem in honor of his fellow poet named anne bradstreet, because the poet felt that anne and he had almost the same life story. this poem is taken from the poet’s life experience, where he fought for food, survival, visible to the rich and poor, and how the poor must die in order to survive, the poet believes that the world is unfair because only the rich can survive. in other words, the background to making the poem not to live is the psychic condition experienced by the poet when this poem is made, which is when the poet feels how real life is and how to survive. conclusion the poem, analyzed using riffaterre’s semiotic theory, looks at the form of poetic discontinuity and unity of meaning. using several stages of theoretical work, namely indirect expression to look for the distorted personality from hiding the real feeling. then, the heuristic reading which only looks at the poem’s structure, hermeneutic looks for the elements that make up the poem to get the unity of meaning and uses matrices, models and variants, and finally is a hypnogram. the first reading with the grammatical heuristic stage and continued with the hermeneutic stage of searching for meaning and matrix in the poem not to live generally describes sorrow, pain, fear of love, hope, and violence. the variant of the poem that is emphasized is in the first stanza which covers the core. the model in this poem in general is that when we love the right person, it will make us better while loving the wrong person, love will kill the lovers. the hypnogram in this poem is motivated by the expression of feelings told through violence and pain. it can be concluded that the poem not to live is a poem that contains psychological aspects experienced by poets. the poem is images of the poet’s feelings and past. research on the personality structure of the id, ego, and superego experienced by poets yields the conclusion. this poetry whose character’s personality structure is in line with the ultimate function of the normative superego principle. the pressure of the desire and needs of the id structure can be channelled by the working system of the ego structure that is successfully calmed by the superego balancing principle. in the poem not to live, the id’s desire is dammed by the ego and produces the ego’s desire but cannot reach the superego, so the dominant ego in the poem is when the need to eat must be met based on circumstances not based on desire. the id’s passionate impulse to be channelled in the ego system. the strong desire to hate the world does not go as it once did, so wild emotions fill the poet’s self. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 99 references aiello, v., amore, m., nuvoli, g., & saleh, f. 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(2013). book review: a personality for modern living. evolutionary psychology, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/147470491301 100111 413 vol. 22 no. 2, october 2022, pp. 413 – 421 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i2.4840 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. reification of bourgeois ideology in bhattarai’s muglan bimal kishore shrivastwa bimalksrivastav@gmail.com department of english, tribhuvan university, nepal abstract article information this paper aims to explore how innocent nepali youths reify the elitist bourgeois ideology of the nepalese society that forces them to go to muglan, a term, denoting foreign country for nepali people, and confront unexpected blows there in govinda raj bhattarai’s novel, muglan. reification signifies the ideology and perception of people residing in a capitalist society. the study of the impact of reification demonstrates the reality of a society. bhattarai is critical to the way sutar kanchha, the protagonist of the novel, obsessed with the dominant capitalist ideology, goes to bhutan to earn. but he gets robbed there and he is forced to do tough physical labor like an animal. to survey terrific effects of the dominant capitalist ideology of the nepalese society over the life of the poor nepali people, the research paper applies neo-marxist insights, with special focus on louis althusser and antonio gramsci. the chief finding is that bhattarai is critical to persisting capitalist ideology of the nepalese society that forces innocent nepali youths to leave their country just for survival. but, in turn, they get robbed and are compelled to work like slaves in the cruel muglan. it is expected that researchers intending to explore on nepali literature from the neomarxist perspective will find the paper a useful reference. keywords: bourgeois; exploitation; ideology, reification. received: 28 july 2022 revised: 28 august 2022 accepted: 7 september 2022 introduction this research study is concerned with noticing the impacts of the reification of the capitalist ideology by people in govinda raj bhattarai’s novel, muglan. reification connotes the social consciousness of the people living in a capitalist society (lukacs, 1971; marx & engels, 1994). it is a representation of social consciousness which identifies the human relationships with thing-like characteristics (mehmood, 2018). after the demise of semifeudalism in nepal led by the political movements in the first decade of the twentyhttps://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:bimalksrivastav@gmail.comuthor's journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bimal kishore shrivastwa 414 first century, nepali people have obsession with adopting the lifestyle of the capitalist class (bista, 2008). mishra (2014) argues, “potentially, and in a specific sense, the recognition that nepal is a capitalist state constitutes no less than a revolutionary recognition” (para. 2). the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeois has been reflected by many nepali writers such as b. p. koirala, parijat, govinda raj bhattarai and so forth. the term, ‘muglan’ refers to the mugal empire of india between the 16th and 19th centuries. for nepali people, muglan connotes a foreign country where youths go to earn. the publication of muglan in 2012 heightened bhattartai’s place as a canonical writer in nepali diaspora literature (hutt, 1998; mishra, 2021; neupane, 2021). govinda raj bhattarai is a “novelist, essayist, linguist, literary critic, and translation consultant of nepali literature” (“govinda raj bhattarai”, n. d., para. 1). muglan is compared to the great works of nepali literature like ramayana by bhanubhakta, muna madan by laxmi prasad devkota and tarun tapasi by lekhnath poudyal. muglan is “the first book, a fiction detailing the road construction works in bhutan and the harsh life of the innocent people of nepali origin that were suppressed, exploited, and terrorized there” (“criticism is a parasitic plant…” 2020, para. 13). the novel, muglan is “set in the early 19th century, partly in india and mainly in bhutan” (mishra, 2021, p. 50). it relates a pathetic tale of the nepali youths who go to muglan with the high ambition of earning money. at the outset, sutar kanchha and thule go to dorling, that is, darjeeling, west bengal, india, from the eastern border of nepal for marketing. but instead of coming back home, they flee to muglan with the high ambition of being recruited into the army, so that they can earn money and support their families. but their expectations are shattered by the end of their journey to muglan. they have to work as road diggers in the form of the bonded laborers in the the ha paro mountain at bhutan where they meet their tragic death (atam & baral, 1999). the paper is concerned to depict how the proletariat youths of the nepalese society are always betrayed by the brutal and inhuman elitist bourgeoisie people living in different parts of the world. they are purchased and sold like cattle in the filthy capitalist world of human trade. they become bondage laborers and are compelled to work as road builders in the dark forests and rocky hills of bhutan. the research questions the paper raises are: why does sutar kanchha run away from his own society? or why does sutar fail to resist against the elitist bourgeois ideology? thus, the rational of the research lies in observing what is not addressed by other researchers. it is how bhattarai critiques the capitalist ideology of the nepalese society that forces the energetic youths of nepal to go to muglan in the text, muglan. there are some writers who have narrated the stories of the nepali people going to abroad for accumulating wealth and accomplishing their desire for material possession. laxmi prasad devkota’s renowned poetic play muna madan, published in 1936, depicts a man’s obligation to go abroad to supply wealth to his family. mishra (2021) observed madan, the protagonist of the play, going to lasha leaving his beloved, muna, and his old mother back in kathmandu to in his material passion and finally meeting his tragic death. other noted nepali diasporic novels such as yamapuriko mahal [edifice of yampuri], muluk bahira [out of the country], saran̊ ārthi [the refugee] also expose how the materialistic drive force nepali people to suffer in foreign country (koirala, 2011). govinda raj bhattarai’s debut novel, muglan is regarded as “a pioneering work of diaspora studies in nepal” (neupane, 2021, p. 57). now, let’s assess the critics’ evaluation and reviews made on the novel, muglan, from multiple perspectives. the novel is mainly taken as one of the significant migration literatures by a group of critics. muglan, like many other nepali novels, chronicles the story of nepali youths migrating to foreign countries as breadwinners so as to accomplish the family’s economic problems (subedi, 2007; neupane, 2021). mishra (2021) marked bhattarai dealing with gender issues in the novel in these words: “muglan deals with the problems faced by men in patriarchy. though the protagonist and his companions have emulated traditional masculinity and hoped to live like men, they fail” (p. 44). koirala (2011) appreciated bhattarai for creating such a journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 415 powerful fiction and securing his position as a canonical writer in nepali literature. subedi (2014) surveyed the linguistic aspects of the novel, muglan, and finds bhattarai switching and mixing codes, that is, using words and phrases from indian and bhutanese languages. the power of muglan lies in its magnetic appeal because it is written with ink of blood, paper of skin and the pen of bone (atam & baral, 1999). the critic, subedi (2007) marked the novel dealing with the tragic tale of nepali youths who are forced to meet a premature death in the foreign-land, bhutan. in this way, some renowned critics have analyzed the text, muglan from diverse perspectives. however, sufficient study of the novel from the neo-marxist perspective has not been made. here lies the research gap. hence, the present paper aims to study the impact of reifying the elitist bourgeois ideology by ordinary people in a society in the light of muglan. methodology the analytical procedure of the paper is textual as it is constructed and guarded by the circumference of neomarxist approach. neomarxism is the post-marxist criticism emerged in 1960s to address the issues social inequality and exploitation of the monopolistic capitalism (black & anderson, 2004). it applied the qualitative approach to research method. regarding the textual approach, belsey (2005) remarked, “there is no such thing as ‘pure’ reading: interpretation always involves extratextual knowledge” (p. 160). the hypothesis is to be tested through textual analysis. apart from the intensive study of the text, muglan by bhattarai, as the primary data, the related materials from the secondary resources such as articles on the text published in websites, journals, and magazines are analyzed to discuss the impact of imitating the capitalist ideology by poor and common citizens of a society. reification is a central concern of neomarxism that stemmed from the marxist thought in the 1970s and 1980s. if marxism, theorized by karl marx and friedrich engels, views society as the endless history of class struggle, neo-marxism regards that economic exploitation is an external cause (tyson, 2006). a researcher, postone (2003) believed that marx’s idea of class struggle is related to reification because it is a product of social consciousness. marx and engels (1994) stated: “all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided” (p. 592). he implied that human ideology is always evolving because of the changing mode of economic foundation. neo-marxists question that the present trend of capitalist mode of production that has given birth to capitalist ideology. neomarxists demand for competent labor. althusser (1999) contended, it is not enough to ensure for labor power the material conditions of its reproduction if it is to be reproduced as labor power. i have said that the available labor power must be competent, that is, suitable to be set to work in the complex system of the process of production. (p. 1485) in the capitalist society, the repressive state apparatuses force to do complex job. the poor people enjoy in their imagination rather than in their real life situation. therefore, the ideology of the state impels the poor people to make a beautiful dream of their happy existence. althusser (1999) stated: there is, therefore, a cause for the imaginary transposition of the real conditions of existence: that cause is the small number of cynical men who base their domination and exploitation of the people on a falsified representation of the world which they have imagined in order to enslave other minds by dominating their imaginations. (p. 1499) capitalist bourgeois society imposes its ideology to the proletariat people through its subtle and powerful mechanism. marx and engels (1994) believed that people would change the existing system one day by revolting against the bourgeois class. but neo-marxist critics believe that people support the capitalist system consciously because they have no alternative to reject it. zizek (1999) remarked, “the most elementary definition of ideology is probably the welljournal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bimal kishore shrivastwa 416 known phrase from marx’s capital: ‘sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es’ – ‘they do not know it, but they are doing it’” (p. 312). classical marxism advocates that false consciousness persuades general people to remain under capitalistic ideological shadow. a notable neomarxist philosopher, gramsci (1994) ruminated that ideology is a means or tool of hegemonizing the proletariat. the civil society and political society, according to gramsci (1994), operate in a society to maintain their hegemony: what we can do, for the moment, is to fix two major super-structural levels: the one that can be called ‘civil society’, that is, ensemble of organisms commonly called ‘private’, and that of ‘political society’ or ‘the state’. these two levels correspond on the one hand to the functions of ‘hegemony’ which the dominant group exercises through the state and ‘juridical government’ (p. 12). the capitalist ideology of the elite group is either maintained forcefully or through consensus. the neo-marxist approaches, discussed above, are the key theoretical tools used to analyze how the poor people in muglan reify the capitalist ideology and suffer later on. results and discussion the study explores how bhattarai’s muglan portrays the tendency of the innocent nepali youths to reify the dominant bourgeois ideology which forces them to flee abroad for earning more without being conscious of its aftermath consequences. the dominant bourgeoisie ideological system of a society makes the people aware of their economic limitations and forces them to argue that economic prosperity brings happiness (althusser, 1999). at the same time the patriarchal society of nepal aids the young to go abroad for earning. the father of pakhe kailo in the novel, muglan, assesses that kanchha can go to foreign country for earning because he is a male. pakhe kailo states: “it is alright for a son to leave home and go to foreign land” (muglan, p. 118). this signifies that reifying the capitalist ideology is not a new phenomenon in nepal. generations of people from nepal have been going abroad for making money. sutar kanchha and his friends see no trace of happiness in the land of nepal because there are no job and income opportunities (koirala, 2011). they, therefore, adhere to the contemporary nepalese bourgeoisie ideological system that reminds them of their obligation. the social consciousness is an inevitable human phenomenon that stems from the socioeconomic base (lukacs, 1971; marx & engels, 1994). the tendency to reify the bourgeois is rooted in the nepalese vein for a long time. althusser (1999) believed, “ideology has a material existence in the sense that it is embodied in all sorts of material practices” (p. 1490). this, in turn, generates the idea in their minds that economic growth enhances happiness. the young boys of the novel plot to go to muglan, foreign country, expecting to obtain better job opportunities, such as armies, and better economic status. in the exposition of the novel, muglan, the narrator describes, “sitting in the truck loaded with goods, they experienced adventurous moments. they fancied descending down towards muglan and were swept away by the imagination of being recruited in the army” (muglan, p. 2). they feel as if they have obtained eternal joy. when sutar is becomes more imaginative, thule says, “wow! how wonderful it is, kanchha, to be in the lorry! this reminds me of being in a cradle” (muglan, p. 2). it is wonderful to go abroad and serve in difficult for the nepali people because the reification of the dominant bourgeois ideology has influenced their mentality. in the novel, muglan, the nepali people are unaware of the bitter truth that they are victimized by the capitalist system. instead, they are not only reifying dominant bourgeois ideology but also ignoring the importance of home, family, and doing simple work without surrendering to the capitalists. neo-marxists believe that we do not act out of free will. instead, we are acted by the system in reality. althusser (1999) argues, “it, therefore, appears that the subject acts insofar as he is acted by the system” (p. 1491). the desire of the youths to go to muglan for recruitment seems to be acted out of their freewill. but, in reality, it is the social system, manipulated by the capitalists, that causes journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 417 them to reify the capitalist ideology and go there. bhattarai demonstrates the truth in these lines: the boys, who had spent their lives quite pleasantly working at home and amidst the cattle and who were drunk with their youth and vigor, might have been carried away by wild dreams. they could not control themselves from the temptation of getting lost in this colorful world of muglan, away from home (muglan, p. 2). the minds of the innocent nepali youths float into the horizon of imagination to make their future bright. they are compelled to conceive in such a way because of the predominant capitalist ideological system of the state. nepali worker go abroad with a great dream of earning much money. but they do not know how they are exploited in the foreign land. zizek (1999) claims that poor people, in their obsession to reify bourgeois, do not know what they are doing in capitalist society. this situation is marked in this line: “neglecting to carry the salt back home after selling ghee in ‘dorling’, they got into a truck heading for siliguri” (muglan, p. 2). the nepali youths are so obsessed by the conception of a happy future that they are even ready to confront all the obstacles that might come in their way. pitkin (1987) connects associates reification with social evil because individuals “treat themselves and others, as if they were things, not people” (p. 123). they can’t fight against the existing capitalist system of the country that is indifferent to their unemployment and poverty. bhattarai further reports: their minds were possessed by the unprecedented imagination of reaching muglan, recruiting themselves and becoming lahures [foreign army]. they followed that man with trembling legs, supporting themselves solely on the sweet fantasy of trotting in their boots once they became lahures (muglan, pp. 22-23). the sweet fantasy makes the simple nepali youths forget their pain, their hunger, and their exhaustion. they have a conviction that every misery and obstacle they tackle today results in material reward tomorrow. the ideology of adhering to the elitist bourgeois trend is not a new phenomenon. it is trans-historical. althusser (1999) contends, “in its freudian conception this time, our proposition: ideology has no history, can and must be related directly to the freudian proposition that the unconscious is eternal, that is, it has no history” (p. 240). the pervasiveness of reifying the capitalist ideology is marked in the mentality of the nepalese youths earlier because they had the trend go to muglan to make their life materially prosperous. they don’t bother where there muglan might be. but they have no problem leaving their family, village and native land for employment. when the driver’s helper demands twenty rupees per head as the fare for their journey to foreign country, thule consoles himself and sutar says, “it might be right, yes, our father used to say it took him five koris while going to assam” (muglan, p. 3). this justifies that the process of leaving house to support one’s family has been exercised for a long time in nepal. in laxmi prasad devkota’s muna madan, the muglan of the unemployed nepalese youths is the lasha (mishra, 2021). the muglan the nepalese youths in the early 21st century is arab, quatar, iraq, and korea and so on. some of them suffer in war affected countries as sutar in muglan in bhutan and madan in devkota’s muna madan suffer in lasha. this condition of experiencing pain has become an ongoing process and eternal process in nepal. it is ironical that the bourgeois capitalists take advantage of ruling over the proletariat because the ideology of the proletariat is hegemonized to be ruled. a notable neomarxist philosopher, gramsci (1994) ruminates that ideology is a means or tool of hegemonizing the proletariat. he holds the opinion that civil society and political society exercise “through the state and juridical government” (p. 12) in order to maintain their hegemony. in muglan, a l m o s t all the characters are ex pl oited by the s ystem of t he elitist journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bimal kishore shrivastwa 418 bourgeois society. the protagonist, sutar kanchha and other youths are exploited by the capitalists because they blindly reify the capitalist ideology. they suffer from the brutality, cruelty and inhumanity of the capitalist ideology. in the elitist bourgeois society, the capitalists control the state and every system to exploit the proletariat as the commodities. adorno and horkheimer (2005) state: as naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them. (p. 238) honneth (2005) is right in his conception that “reification is a modified form of human behavior” (p. 93). human beings are treated like lifeless things in capitalistic society. when the youths attempt to run away from bhutan, they were recaptured by the human traffickers treated inhumanly. we can observe the bitter truth in this scenario: after the sound of every whipping, another one would twirl his moustache and ask‘will you run away like this?’ the man would merely whisper something in a n indistinguishable manner. he ordered, ‘go to work from tomorrow. as a penalty, your two months’ salary will be deducted. and you will receive only half of your ration. understood?’ the four laborers stood sobbing there with scars of canning all over their bodies (muglan, pp. 74-75). the labors are canned by the atrocious boss to impose their power on them. this justifies how the capitalists treat the proletariat as commodities. capitalists treat the labors as commodities in the culture industry disregarding what is correct or what is incorrect (walker & gray, 2007). in precapitalist society, the rich practiced slavery. they used to purchase poor as slaves or the cheap laborers for imposing them with heavy work. the repressive state apparatuses are not unified in the capitalist society (gramsci, 1994). the police and the prison system, the military, the state and government are not homogenized. and they not only operate their industry privately but also attain their power through implicit consent of the state apparatuses. kanchho and sutar have to perform the complex work in muglan because they have no any option to challenge the existing order of the authority. the reification of the bourgeois ideology makes one powerless (blackledge & anderson, 2004). the jimdar commands the youths to do whatever the work they are assigned to. the irony of the repressive state apparatuses can be perceived in the novel in these lines: the jimdar kept telling kanchho and sutar, ‘now you have to work. the work is digging the road. you have to work from six o’clock in the morning to five in the evening. you will have to do whatever you are assigned’ (muglan, p. 48). kanchho and sutar are the poor youths who have to obey the harsh command of the capitalists. though their job is tough and beyond their expectations, they can’t deny. the proletariat can’t challenge the authority and power in a society manipulated by the bourgeois society. walker and gray (2007) highlight the adverse impacts of the reification in these words: “human qualities, relations, actions and even human beings themselves are transformed in the course of capitalist production into things, and these things come to have power over human beings” (pp. 194). kanchho and sutar are transformed as objects. kanchho and sutar have to obey when the jimdar iterates, “you will have to do whatever you are assigned” (muglan, p. 48). they have no potential to reject the command of the authority. in a capitalistic society, the labors become powerless, subalterns (gramsci, 1994). the elitist bourgeois compel the subalterns them to do the tough, complex and risky task so as to accomplish their motif. the working class laborers have to carry on completing the task though it is difficult and unbearable. it is not that they were not cautioned. an experienced laborer alarms them saying, “you all have come here with such journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 419 an enviable physiques and are full of dreams, but they will suck every drop of blood out of you and kill you” (muglan, p. 61). but their insistence to reify capitalistic dream there makes them tolerate the subjugation from the contractors. here lies bhattarai’s intention, that is, to criticize the materialistic society where human treats human as inhuman. the youths in the novel, muglan, are assured that they will be recruited in the army. althusser (1999) does not like the way the small number of powerful men dominate and exploit poor labor and enslave their imaginative minds with their materialistic drives. though domination and exploitation lurk in the life of the proletariat, though the proletariat cannot dominate the bourgeois in their real life situation, they build an imaginary world to cherish their lives. then they are kept in raini didi’s hotel. the youths start recreating thinking how pleasant the world of the army would really be. this illusion is rendered in these lines: looking at his mates and smiling, karki said, ‘this is the rice of bageda and this, the lentil soup of musur. now the government will provide us with ration like this daily. nothing to worry about. now the diet of dhindo is over, right”? (muglan, p. 32) here, karki acts as if he knew everything like a leader and commander of the group. karki and his friends soar into the world of illusion that after their recruitment, they are going to obtain good payment and facilities. this displays how their minds are baffled by the reification of the capitalist ideology. and the new source of income would transform the standard of their. but the irony is that they are ignorant of the filthy world of the culture industry. they are going to live a sorrowful and helpless life. in the culture industry, the capitalists exploit the workers as the parts of machine (adorno & horkheimer, 2005). karki and his friends do not know that they are going to be treated like the cogs in the machine. they will be kicked out of the industry the moment the machine parts stop functioning. in the culture industry, bourgeois seek to sell labors as cheap objects. though the capitalists require labor, they have no problem paying low wages to the labor. the feelings and sentiments of slaves trampled in materialistic society. the possession of power by the bourgeois assists keeping proletariat stay isolated like an outsider. when the nepalese youths succeed in escaping from the imprisonment of the bhutanese in muglan, they are tagged “tipaite” (muglan, p. 48). they are tagged as offensive criminals and looked for everywhere by the police. althusser (1999) holds the opinion that the unjust treatment exercised by the bourgeoisie is found in all cultures of the world. it has been directly or indirectly aid by the state authorities and judiciary. as soon as the nepalese youths are noticed, the police will punish them badly. this justifies how the law becomes blind and brutal for the poor youths in the mercilessness foreign land. gradually, all the characters become alienated in the novel, munglan. feenberg (2015) opines that reification generates fragmentation and distance among the closed fellows in the society. the road contractors appoint kanchha and other nepali youths to blast the rocks at bhutan. thule and lale do not come back to the tent from the worksite. thule must have been killed by the blast, and lale subba “was biting his teeth forcefully, as if he was still shivering and rattling his teeth with cold” (p. 76). he might have been frozen to death. rai kancha dies too. the narrator describes the death of rai poignantly: rai who had left his parents, home and village with a hope of seeing them again after being recruited into the army and earning money, and making his and their life comfortable, was lying lifeless today, offering the last breath of his life to the ‘ha dzong’ on a bare hill, without even being noticed by the vultures and jackals. (muglan, p. 80) the capitalists are so merciless that they never consider about the problems of the poor people. there is no one to understand the problem of rai. the capitalists know that construction of road demands tough labor in the extreme weather with minimum supply of food. so, many of the nepali workers have journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bimal kishore shrivastwa 420 unexpected accidents or die because they are forced to work in an adverse situation. capitalist ideology gives the false impression that that human progress is possible only through the material prosperity (gramsci, 1994). though sutar kanchha succeeds in escaping narrowly from the police, he is penniless. then he thinks of going back to his home: “despite enduring so much i had almost lost my life. i think of my home, my old father and mother, my wife in her parents' house” (muglan, p. 105). therefore, he decides not to go home, but stay working at chengmari tea state. he is influenced by the reification of the capitalist ideology till the end. the narration justifies this: “he was in his late twenties, how could he go back home emptyhanded. his parents might have very high hopes of him. he thought it better to die rather than go back home empty-handed” (muglan, p. 151). one is so trapped in discourse of capitalism that his identity and existence is lost before he can escape from the capitalist ideology (honneth, 2005). he commits suicide in his disappointment because he was badly trapped by the elitist ideology of capitalism. sutar kanchha loses his life in his attempt to reify the superficial capitalist ideology. bhattarai’s muglan displays the irony of the situation of our life that capitalist ideology is predominant in the social, political and economic systems of our state. innocent nepali people have been losing their family, society, and lives in their passion for reifying the bourgeois ideology. conclusion analyzing bhattarai’s novel, muglan, the researcher comes to the finding that novel depicts impacts of reifying the contemporary socio-economic system of nepal on the poor nepali people. the nepalese youths from the 1960s to the present era have been so influenced by the elitist bourgeoisie ideology of the nepalese society that they reify the superficial capitalist ideology and intend to go to muglan. the muglan was india or bhutan in the past because they needed no passport and visa to go and work there. but today qatar, dubai, malaysia are the modern destinations where nepalese youth go to find job. every year, thousands of poor nepali die working in the foreign country because they can’t resist the massive load of the work imposed on them. the ideology of the youth is a production of the contemporary capitalistic society. the working class people of nepal are forced to go abroad for employment. but they also have an elusive dream that muglan offers them better economic gain. they aren’t aware of the bitter reality behind working environment in foreign countries. bhattarai depicts the pitiful condition of nepali proletariat dominated, exploited, and tormented by the bourgeois. in the novel, muglan, bhattarai main concern is the critique of tendency of the nepali people to reify capitalism. sutar kanchha commits suicide because in utter disappointment because he can’t escaping from the bourgeois ideology. like sutar kanchha, other nepali people lose their identity, value, and meet tragic death in the capitalist society. acknowledgment the researcher extends his gratitude to the experts of research and publication department at post graduate campus, tribhuvan university, biratnagar, nepal, for providing valuable guidelines during the preparation of the paper. the researcher has no conflict of interest to disclose. the researcher received no fund for the preparation of the paper. references adorno, t., & horkheimer, m. 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(1999). mapping ideology. london: verso. http://www.google.com/search?q=reification%3a%2ba%2brecognition-theoretical%2bview%3a%2bthe%2btanner%2ble http://www.google.com/search?q=reification%3a%2ba%2brecognition-theoretical%2bview%3a%2bthe%2btanner%2ble http://www.google.com/search?q=reification%3a%2ba%2brecognition-theoretical%2bview%3a%2bthe%2btanner%2ble http://www.google.com/search?q=reification%3a%2ba%2brecognition-theoretical%2bview%3a%2bthe%2btanner%2ble http://www.google.com/search?q=reification%3a%2ba%2brecognition-theoretical%2bview%3a%2bthe%2btanner%2ble https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v8n5p43 https://kathmandupost.com/opinion/2014/06/10/nepal-and-capitalism https://kathmandupost.com/opinion/2014/06/10/nepal-and-capitalism https://doi.org/10.3126/jodem.v12i1.38716 https://doi.org/10.3126/jodem.v12i1.38716 http://ejournals.pncampus.edu.np/ejournals/pjri/ http://ejournals.pncampus.edu.np/ejournals/pjri/ https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00135697 http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2f9780230500914_5 http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2f9780230500914_5 458 vol. 22 no. 2, october 2022, pp. 458 – 465 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i2.4195 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. bilingualism in indonesian children’s language acquisition 1,2aulia apriana & 1adi sutrisno aulia.apriana.fs@um.ac.id & adisutrisno@ugm.ac.id 1faculty of cultural sciences, universitas gadjah mada, 2faculty of letters, universitas negeri malang, indonesia abstract article information language acquisition and development are two important phases in a child’s life. hundreds of ideas have been tested to build a scientific explanation for how children may understand and produce the languages of their environment. language intake, exposure volume and duration, and grammatical complexity all appear to have a role in influencing children's language development. these intricacies become even more complicated as children differ greatly from one another. it's on top of the several languages the children pick up along the route. some children speak only one language (monolingual), whereas others speak multiple languages (bilingual). apart from the endless debate about whether being bilingual is a blessing or a curse, it is fascinating to study how those children finally end up being bilinguals, either through acquisition or learning. therefore, this article aims at portraying the phenomenon of bilingualism in indonesian children’s language acquisition by looking at the strengths and weaknesses of being bilinguals, the important factors in second language acquisition and learning, and the strategies for second language acquisition and learning. in conclusion, to be bilingual, a child has undergone a very long process. even though some experts are still debating whether bilingualism is beneficial or even harmful for their cognitive, psychological, and linguistic competence, children nowadays are created to be bilinguals even since they were born. as a result, those children grow up as multilingual children who are ready to cope with the dynamic of the environmental changes around them. keywords: bilingualism; language acquisition; factors; strategies received: 15 january 2022 revised: 23 may 2022 accepted: 22 june 2022 https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:aulia.apriana.fs@um.ac.id journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 459 introduction if we pay attention to people’s conversations around us, we will find that it is now prevalent to listen to people employing more than one language in their conversations. the reason for doing it may vary, from merely showing solidarity to reflecting social status. these people who can express themselves in more than one language are called bilinguals and the phenomenon that some people become bilinguals is known as bilingualism. while it is interesting to study bilingualism possessed by people in general, it is even more interesting and challenging to explore the phenomenon of bilingualism possessed by children. in general, bilingualism is defined as a person’s ability to understand and produce two different languages (crystal, 2003; o’grady, 2010; parker & riley, 2010; savilletroike, 2012; steinberg, nagata, & aline, 2001). this definition supports the most wellknown definition of bilingualism given by bloomfield (1933) who defines bilingualism as the ‘native-like’ control of two languages. this term “native-like” may sound too heavy, that is why some other experts then formulate more realistic definitions, such as titone (1972) as quoted by hamers & blanc (2004), who claim bilingualism is the individual’s capacity to speak a second language while following the concepts and structures of that language rather than paraphrasing his or her mother tongue. then, spolsky (1998) defines a bilingual as a person who has some functional ability in a second language. this ability may vary from one bilingual to another. however, steinberg et al. (2001) explain further that bilingualism does not include bidialectalism, which is a person’s ability to use one language in some different dialects. therefore, when we say that a person is bilingual, he/she must be able to express him/herself in two or more different languages. in indonesia, bilingualism is not something new. the history of bilingualism in indonesia dates back to the period when indonesia was colonized by some foreign governments. lauder (2008) describes that when indonesia was colonized by the dutch, many indonesian people became bilinguals of indonesian and dutch, especially the scholars. during this period, english was taught beginning from junior high school (mulo = meer uitgebreid lager onderwijs or extended elementary school). as dutch is akin to english linguistically, and all of the students who entered mulo had a solid foundation in dutch when they studied at the elementary school, english was relatively easy to master. as a result of quality education, mulo graduates could speak, read, and write in both english and dutch, besides indonesian. then, during the japanese occupation for three and a half years, the education system was radically changed. no more schools for the elite. it was an egalitarian system. instead of dutch, japanese was taught intensively as it was designed to become the second language in indonesia. the indonesian language was to play a crucial role in education as well as in society at large. some educated people living at this age then became bilinguals of indonesian and japanese. when japan was conquered by america and the dutch left indonesia for good, many scholars still mastered english, dutch, japanese, and indonesian. however, dutch and japanese speakers decreased from time to time. english, on the other hand, was established in 1967 to be the foreign language of indonesia and taught in indonesian schools (zein, sukyadi, hamied, & lengkanawati, 2020). from that description, we can see clearly that bilingualism, or multilingualism, is common in indonesia. besides english, japanese, and dutch, indonesian people also possess some local languages like javanese, sundanese, madurese, and many others. therefore, children who are born in indonesian communities usually, by nature, will become bilinguals. hamers & blanc (2004) define a bilingual community as a linguistic community where several individuals in that community are bilinguals and two languages are in contact. this will result that two languages can be used in the same interaction. similarly, fishman (1971), as quoted by platt & platt (1975) suggests that bilingualism can only happen in a complex speech community which causes the people in that community to become aware to acquire several languages. furthermore, gumperz (1982) also mentions that bilingual journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) aulia apriana & adi sutrisno 460 people usually use their own idioms for ingroup communication and the common language for their interaction and communication with outsiders. in this case, the bilinguals have a repertoire of domain-related rules of language choice (spolsky, 1998), meaning that bilinguals can choose which language he/she is going to use. in other words, since the members of a bilingual community usually vary in the capacity of mastering the languages used in the community, those people have to be intelligibly able to set a condition where they can communicate effectively. this condition then leads bilinguals to switch between codes. in code-switching studies, we recognize at least two codes, or languages, are involved. the dominant language is often called the matrix language. myers-scotton (2009) states that the base language is called the matrix language (ml) and the contributing language (or languages) is called the embedded language (el). the ml is dominant and supplies the morpho-syntactic frame of the clause or sentence and the el has the auxiliary function and supplies content morphemes that are embedded into the ml. in the context of nowadays indonesian children, zen & apriana (2015) reveal that the matrix language of the children is mostly indonesian. many of them use indonesian at home and their first encounter with local languages is at school. the result of this study also strengthens the belief that most indonesian children are bilinguals. bilingualism can be viewed from different perspectives, which then lead to different classifications. when we look at bilingualism from the point of view of their first and second language competence, we will have balanced bilinguals and dominant bilinguals. according to butler & hakuta (2006), we say a child is a balanced bilingual if he/she has an equal competence between his/her first and second language. then, if the competence of one language is better than the other, we call this bilingual a dominant bilingual. steinberg et al. (2001) also propose another classification, depending on the time of the acquisition or learning. when a child acquires or learns his/her first and second language at the same time, we call this child a simultaneous bilingual. on the other hand, when one language is acquired or learned after the other, we can say that this child is a sequential bilingual. interestingly, each of these classifications is having both strengths and weaknesses. bilingual children: strengths and weaknesses bilingualism in a child is actually not a rare case anymore. many kinds of research have been done to reveal the language acquisition of a child in terms of their bilingualism. werker (2012) believes that more than 50% of children population in the world are bilinguals and they get the exposure to both languages from birth. however, issues concerning whether bilingualism is beneficial or harmful to a child’s language acquisition and development keep haunting not only language experts but also parents. crystal (2003) is among those experts who believe that bilingualism carries negative consequences for children’s language acquisition due to the incapability of the brain to process two different language systems at the same time. in other words, bilingualism in a child will slow down the process of acquisition of the child’s first and second languages. a similar reaction toward bilingualism is also shown by meisel (2006) who finds a negative impact of bilingualism on the children’s cognitive, psychological, and linguistic competence. kennison (2014) supports the idea and claims that one common concern among parents who are raising bilingual children is that the children will be confused learning two languages at the same time and will mix up the two languages. when the bilingual children are mixing up their languages and later figuring out that the two languages are separate entities, it could cause them to lag behind their monolingual peers in the long term. this is known as the fusion hypothesis (meisel, 1989 in kennison, 2014). on the other hand, a study conducted by thordardottir (2015) shows that bilingual children can perform equally well as those monolingual children, as long as those bilingual children receive equal exposure to journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 461 both languages. however, children with unequal exposure to both languages show unequal performance across languages and scored significantly lower than monolinguals. a previous yet similar study was conducted by peal and lambert (1962), bruck, lambert, and tucker (1976), and bain & yu (1980) which are elaborated in steinberg et al. (2001). peal and lambert (1962) had carried out an intelligence test for 164 primary school students, some of whom were monolinguals while some others were bilinguals. the result shows that the achievements of bilingual children surpass the achievements of monolinguals. the conclusion drawn referring to the result of the experiment is that children’s bilingualism enriches their mental and cognitive competence. another test was carried out by bruck, lambert, and tucker (1976) measuring creativity and language competence. the test was given to a group of monolingual students and a group of bilinguals at a total immersion program school of english and french. again, the result shows that bilingual students achieve better scores than monolinguals in terms of creativity. in addition, the second language competence of the bilingual students is almost native-like. then, an experiment done by bain and yu (1980) on a group of bilingual children from various countries (alberta, canada, alsace, france, and hong kong) also reveal a fundamental finding that bilingual children are better in cognitive performance compared to the monolinguals. regarding the cognitive performance of bilingual children, recent researches show that bilingualism appears to speed up the children’s cognitive processing as well as their ability to adjust to environmental changes. not only is that, in the long term, bilingualism is also believed to be able to prevent cognitive decline. this will then protect the brain from the symptom of dementia (bialystok, craik, & luk, 2012; byrd, 2012; marian & shook, 2012). in the context of simultaneous and sequential bilingualism, nicoladis & genesee (1997) point out that simultaneous bilinguals show the same patterns of morpho-syntactic development as monolinguals, for example in the use of finite verbs, subject pronouns, and verbal negation. in addition, david & wei (2008) and junker & stockman (2002) argue that those young bilinguals, just like young monolingual learners, tend to omit function words and grammatical morphology during the two-word stage and in some of their threeword stage and even in their multi-word utterances. however, many experts say that sequential bilinguals tend to have some difficulties with vocabulary, morphology, and syntax, due to the different grammatical structures between the languages. fortunately, these difficulties do not cause a significant delay in the language development of those sequential bilingual children unless they have their own personal impairment. despite the positive or negative impact of bilingualism on children’s language acquisition, many experts are also keen on studying the criteria of second language competence. in this context, steinberg et al. (2001) argue that this competence can be measured from some aspects, such as grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. meanwhile, bachman and palmer (1996) in butler & hakuta (2006) categorize competence into two domains, real-life domains, and language instructional domains. according to them, a bilingual does not necessarily have to be competent in both domains. apart from the endless debate about whether being bilingual is a blessing or a curse, it is fascinating to study how those children finally end up being bilinguals, either through acquisition or learning. therefore, before we go further on the factors that can influence the success of a child’s second language acquisition and learning, we need to have first a clear distinction between the term “acquisition” and “learning”. according to dorsch (2011), acquisition usually means an unconscious process of absorbing a language while learning means a more conscious process of getting the ability to understand and produce a language. from this definition, we can now hold a clear cut between acquisition and learning, that an acquisition process is unconscious while a learning process is conscious, even though in many cases, the two terms are usually interchangeable. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) aulia apriana & adi sutrisno 462 important factors in second language acquisition and learning children’s language acquisition has always been a very interesting yet challenging field of study. our curiosity about how children acquire language, or languages, has led us to countless investigations and conclusions. many language experts believe that children’s language acquisitions start even before the babies are born. babies can hear the voices coming from outside their mother’s womb. later, as soon as they come into the world, they hear and enjoy the voices that they hear from their parents and other caregivers, including their older siblings. then, from their birth up to the age of five years old, children develop language very quickly. their language mostly begins to develop via repetition and imitation of their surroundings. experts believe that from the age of two years old, children are usually able to produce simple phrases, and by the age of three, they should be able to produce full sentences. by four years old, they should be able to produce full talk, although they may still make some grammatical errors. then, by the age of five, they should be able to produce basic language. rice (1989) mentions that language acquisition has three major components. the first one is the language itself, the second one is the child and his/her abilities to acquire language, and the third one is the environmental setting. these three components contribute to the success of a child’s language acquisition, either for their first, or second language acquisition. then, steinberg et al. (2001) mention the three factors that can influence the success of a child’s second language acquisition: 1) psychological factors, 2) social factors, and 3) other psychological factors. the psychological factor has other three sub-factors, intellectual, memory, and motoric capacity. according to them, the intellectual factor carries two basic patterns in second language acquisition and learning, they are explication and induction. the first pattern refers to a conscious effort done by parents or teachers in introducing the structure of a second language to the child. here we can highlight that this explication pattern belongs to a learning process because it involves a conscious act. on the other hand, the second pattern, induction, is an acquisition process because it refers to a “self-discovery” method where the child is seeking the structure of the second language by him/herself through daily exposure, especially in the family. from the child’s daily activities, such as listening, watching, asking questions, and answering questions, he/she can draw a regularity as well as variety in a certain system of language. later on, they will adopt and adapt this system and use it in their own context. the second sub-factor, memory, is also a very influential psychological factor in the process of second language acquisition and learning. steinberg et al. (2001) strengthen a hypothesis that children have a marvelous capacity for storing, processing, and retrieving language data. this is the scientific reason why children can develop their bilingualism better and faster than adults. however, lenneberg (1967) in steinberg et al. (2001) also underlines that this memory capacity will continuously decrease as the children come into puberty. the last sub-factor, motoric capacity, will determine the success of a child in acquiring or learning a language. because the main component of a language is sound, the child’s ability to produce an accurate sound becomes crucial. the articulator is the executor of all the processes from the brain to the nerves. when the child reaches the age of 12 years old, this motoric capacity decreases with the decreasing of their brain plasticity. the second important factor in a child’s second language acquisition and learning is the social factor. this factor is strongly connected to the language environment of the child and the forms of the interaction that occur, either formally or informally. again, if we refer back to the distinction between acquisition and learning, this formal interaction occurs in the learning process while the informal interaction occurs in the acquisition process. one important highlight by steinberg et al. (2001) shows that informal interaction suits young children better. this is because they tend to enjoy language exposure in a more natural setting, such as at home or a playground, where the induction pattern can journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 463 work better. on the other hand, a more formal interaction that occurs in a learning process, such as in a classroom setting, will work better for grown-up children because they already have an understanding of their responsibility in language learning. the last factor that also contributes to the process of second language acquisition and learning of a child is the other psychological factors, which entail motivation and attitude. since the two factors need conscious control of the mind, both of them belong to the factors in the learning process. motivation is always the most important factor for success in any learning process, including language learning. even though most studies reveal that children below two years old do not need motivation factors because they can naturally react to any language exposed to them and then naturally develop their language skills, children above two years old already start to need motivation for their actions. a child who has higher motivation in learning a second language will succeed faster than the others. besides motivation, attitude is also very important. douglas brown (1987) in steinberg et al. (2001) found that a negative attitude can harm the function of the memory which then consequently will decrease the capacity of the brain to store, proceed, and retrieve the language data. however, many studies show that most children can build a positive attitude toward second language learning because they are usually unable to recognize the stereotype that spreads around them about the negative impact of second language exposure. besides the three factors proposed by steinberg et al. (2001), there are also some other ideas on the factors that can contribute to the success of a child’s language acquisition. one recent research by bao & liu (2021) proposes three major affective factors in second language acquisition, self-esteem, motivation, and anxiety, which are modified from krashen (1985)’s affective filter hypothesis. according to them, children with high self-esteem and motivation are less worried and more driven to learn a new language. on the other hand, children with high anxiety will experience the biggest affective obstacle in language learning. in addition, sun (2019) reveals that age and first language proficiency should also be included in the important factors in language acquisition. regarding age, while adults generally perform better at the beginning due to their superior cognitive abilities, children perform better in terms of pronunciation and standard accent and are more likely to succeed in learning a second language and communicating with it. then, because language transfer occurs frequently during the process of second language acquisition and learning, the children’s ability in their mother tongue will also have a significant impact. understanding the important factors in second language acquisition and learning is of course beneficial to understanding how children can finally end up being bilinguals. however, understanding the strategies of the exposure given to those children is also needed to get a thorough picturesque of the phenomenon. strategies in second language acquisitions and learning in the previous section, we already have two basic patterns in second language acquisition and learning, which are explication and induction. in both patterns, the role of parents has a huge portion of necessity. either consciously teaching their children two languages at home or unconsciously exposing those children to a bilingual family setting, parents are responsible for creating bilingual children. according to barron-hauwaert (2004), two language strategies are used by parents at home. the first one is 1p1l (one parent one language) and the second one is 1p2l (one parent two languages). the term “one person, one language (opol)” was first introduced by a french linguist, maurice grammont, in 1902. his theory proposes that parents should separate the languages used at home as soon as possible, to prevent confusion among their bilingual children. this theory is then adapted by many other linguists, including barron-hauwaert. the 1p1l strategy proposes that one parent should only use one language in a journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) aulia apriana & adi sutrisno 464 bilingual family while the other one can use the second language. this mostly happens in families where the parents come from two different language environments. for example, when dad comes from an english-speaking country while mom comes from a frenchspeaking country, dad should only speak english at home while mom should only speak french. this way, according to grammont (1902), is better for children’s language development. this is in line with steinberg et al. (2001) who claim that children who are exposed to the 1p1l strategy tend to acquire a second language faster and learn the language skill better than the children who are exposed to the 1p2l strategy. the consistency of 1p1l in language use seems to be more effective for the children. however, in many recent situations in indonesia, parents are also bilinguals and they tend to use both of their languages with their children. for example, when dad is an indonesian-javanese bilingual and the mom is an indonesian-madurese bilingual, they tend to mix up their languages at home which then results in a multilingual child of indonesian, javanese, and madurese (zen & apriana, 2015). this is similar to the result of a study done by mclaughin (1987) in steinberg et al (2001) that children who are exposed to the 1p2l strategy tend to produce more codemixings where they mix up vocabularies and grammar of two languages into one sentence. conclusion to be bilingual, a child has undergone a very long process. even though some experts are still debating whether bilingualism is beneficial or even harmful for their cognitive, psychological, and linguistic competence, children nowadays are created to be bilinguals. in the indonesian context, for example, children are exposed to several languages at the same time even since they were born. some factors are responsible for bringing those children to be bilingual, including steinberg’s psychological, social, and other psychological factors, bao & liu’s factors of self-esteem, motivation, and anxiety, as well as sun’s factors of age and first language proficiency. still in the indonesian context, even though the 1p1l is believed to be more beneficial for the children’s language development, many bilingual parents in indonesia tend to use both of their languages with their children. as a result, those children grow up as multilingual children who are ready to cope with the dynamic of the environmental changes around them. acknowledgment this paper is a part of my dissertation draft entitled ‘sibling effects on language development of indonesian bilingual children’ supervised by dr. adi sutrisno, m.a. and dr. tofan dwi hardjanto, m.a. thank you so much for your guidance and supervision throughout the writing process of this paper. references bao, y., & liu, s. 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(2015). contributing factors toward first and second language acquisition; a manifestation of krashen’s affective filter hypothesis. in engaging linguistics and literature: perspectives and insights beyond the curriculum (p. 6). uin maliki malang, indonesia: naila pustaka. 46 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 46 – 55 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.4970 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. reimagining trauma: japanese american incarceration reflected in kenji by mike shinoda shofi mahmudah budi utami1 & muammar kadafi2 shofi.mahmudah.budi.utami@unsoed.id 1 english literature department, universitas jenderal soedirman, indonesia 2 east asian languages and literatures department, universitas jenderal soedirman, indonesia abstract article information trauma inherited by forbearers from those who had suffered racial injustice can endure so much consequence for later generations. similarly, what had been affected to intergenerational jews around the world about the holocaust was, to an extent, repeated by japanese americans who had experienced incarceration during the world war ii. this tragedy was recorded and reflected in several art and literary works including photography, short stories, and music. interestingly, these eerie memories transmitted by the postgeneration or referred as ‘witness’ instead of ‘testifier’ (survivor) can be thoroughly seen present and well understood in such works. one of which is a song written by an american musician, mike shinoda, entitled kenji. therefore, this paper aims at figuring out on how this traumatic experience inhabited by the person who seemed to own the memories coming from someone else. later in this study, the problem will be approached with postmemory by frosh gradually by investigating constructive process in the lyrics of kenji. in order to enhance discussion on this issue, the details of each line will be further analyzed with the concept of postmemory including memory, transmission and constructive process. as a result, the findings indicate that transmission of the trauma is reimagined through ‘actively’ constructive process by the songwriter as the ‘witness’ of the japanese american incarceration. rather than picturing the memory in similar context, the witness employs testimony in his creative reinvention to offer ‘new context’ in working through the trauma. keywords: postmemory, japanese american, japanese american incarceration, kenji received: 7 july 2022 revised: 27 september 2022 accepted: 2 december 2022 introduction trauma is always associated with eerie events or experiences which cause “predominant emotions of being shocked, worried, and scared” to inhabit forbearers (nagata et al., 2015, p. 358). of these recollections attached with such emotions, those who were subjected to traumatic events potentially have two consequences; whether https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:shofi.mahmudah.budi.utami@unsoed.id journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 47 they kept away the stories they had been through, or they properly processed the trauma by letting later generations know in order to rethink and embrace the trauma in a new perspective. therefore, to continue these memories, many stories of traumatic events have been passed down through generations, such as giving connection through narration to the postgeneration in a form of photography (hirsch, 1997) or by active teaching or telling stories (frosh, 2019). it can also be reflected through a wide range of means to share these memories of survival, such as holocaust that is retold through the movie entitled the pianist (2002), the historical tragedy of 1965 genocide in indonesia that is inscripted in the novel dari dalam kubur (from the grave) by soe tjen marching (2020) or the imprisonment of japanese americans after japan’s attack on pearl harbor that is clearly illustrated in a song entitled kenji (2005). all of these shared stories address a theme about poignant memories and cultural trauma although in retelling or writing such horrific stories could be severely tough and complicated. in some of the cases, memories of traumatic upheaval are mostly buried in individual’s minds—those who suffered from the tragedy—they did not know whether their children knew they lived the sufferings, as mentioned by the interviewee of japanese americans living in incarceration—in this case, both of the parents and the children seemed to prevent this talk in the family, as they believed in “shikata ga nai” (tagouri, 2022, 18:40). however, this belief always make the children of the survivors stay distant from the story of sufferings, which positions the postgeneration “unknown” to life in the internment camps. later when this generation began learning the tragedy, they cannot fully grasp the story because the only source they got was from history book portraying the evil act of japanese. this partial story could potentially be one-sided story particularly based on the view of the dominant society; while the truth was never revealed by their parents. therefore, in the context of japanese american incarceration, the later generations namely nisei (the second generation and was born in the u.s), sansei (third generation) or yonsei (fourth generation) would rather know from history books than the story passed down from the survivors since their parents or grandparents hide their memories as incarcerees (tagouri, 2022, 19:6). despite their memories are stored in silence, it does not mean they have freed the memories. they seemed to be trapped constantly as victims; thus they were unable to release the trauma. what frosh identified is that the silence will keep shadowing the survivors with the trauma; by shutting themselves off, this trauma, associated with levels of anger and sadness, will be somehow failed to be decoded by later generations—leaving this hurtful memories as the ‘enigmatic’ message (frosh, 2019), which situates postgeneration in between making sense of ‘what they think they know about it’ and ‘what they actually know about it’. in other words, the postgeneration seemed to be connective with this distant past because their family were there experiencing life in the incarceration; while they, in different way, felt that they were not grasping very well of their parents’ anger, sadness, or silence caused by trauma. through the song kenji written by shinoda, who is sansei or third generation, the story of japanese american incarceration is retold to listeners or those who might not hear the story firsthand. known as an american musician and the frontman of linkin park and fort minor, shinoda is at his best writing lyrics and creating rap verses in either linkin park’s or fort minor’s songs. the song kenji was released in 2005, yet many online media platforms have recently reintroduced the song by relating it to his experience dealing with trauma. with the coming of his new solo album in 2018 entitled post traumatic, it draws a lot of attention as well as to connect the tragedy that his family ever experienced during world war ii. during his time promoting post traumatic album, he did many interviews in which he was given opportunity discussing japanese americans’ experience in the concentration camps. interestingly, based on the interview that was published in an article by rollingstone, shinoda stated that “… much like japanese families—there’s not a lot of openness to talking about these difficult subjects. the term we use is shikata ga nai, which means ‘it can’t be helped.’ it’s almost like ‘what’s done is done” (chong, 2022). taking off from this point, it is central to argue that many traumatic experiences are, according to frosh, not processed very well; journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) shofi mahmudah budi utami & muammar kadafi 48 being in silence gives a ‘maltreatment’ causing “the trauma will never be resolved” (frosh, 2019, p. 6); otherwise, it stays as poison. in kenji, it is potential to look over that the trauma is treated indifferently. borrowing freud’s concept of ‘archaic remnants’, noriko & osborne viewed this potential, that unspeakable memories generated from trauma can be expressed through art, music, literature, or theater as it originates individual’s memory (noriko & osborne, 2018); but this paper particularly argues that the ‘memory’ discussed is not literally memory, but it is most likely compatible with the term ‘postmemory’ as it is coming from someone else who did not directly experience the tragedy. additionally, in this case, a song can also render mechanism in explaining the memory that can potentially redress the ‘trauma’. kenji, in brief, pictures the scenes of the event when japanese americans were forced to leave their homes. nearly 80 years ago, the united states government put around 120.000 innocent japanese americans in the incarceration camps (nagata et al., 2015), which included the first generation (issei) and the u.s born second generation of japanese americans (nisei). similarly as artworks or literature do, this song, to an extent, tries to mediate cultural trauma for most japanese americans. therefore, this paper would approach to view the trauma reimagined in the song that could potentially draw new interpretation on the trauma; that the concept of postmemory formulated by frosh would be much compatible to figure this out. most studies of postmemory are, however, centered on observing holocaust since the postgenerational transmission of this memory is observable, and this was also a pivotal point in setting out the initial study on postmemory. thus, there are a lot of discussions on holocaust and its relation with postgeneration, one of which is researched by wolf viewing the possible positivity in ‘reframing’ trauma among the children of survivors of holocaust (wolf, 2019). another one is the research conducted by larkin that found out a dialectic between the postgeneration with the ‘memory’ itself; such negotiation done by the postgeneration gives two options, whether they tried to reconcile or erase the memory traces of war in lebanon (larkin, 2010). the other research views the structures of transmission of the memory and highlights more on the importance of familial transmission rather than other forms of transmission. compared to familial transmission, affiliative transmission is less likely to be found even though this is also contributive to the postgeneration (assa, 2019; kumalasari, 2016). pointing out from these previous studies on postmemory, they generally identify the direct connection of these inherited memories with the postgeneration, particularly of the holocaust survivors, which most postmemory relates to. by locating postmemory only on one event, this paper would rather view another event of which impacts are similar with the holocaust and perceive the connection through which this memory is shared such as being manifested in creative works. moreover, viewing postgenerational transmission of trauma through the lyrics of kenji that has never been done by others will enrich the discussion under the topics of trauma and postmemory since it will be focused on the lyrics or the representation in the research object instead of centering on the agency (such as the survivors or the generations of the survivors). most studies in postmemory are centered on how the process of trauma is mediated through postgeneration that plays as the agent. departed from this point, this paper will otherwise proceed on the assumption that there could be mechanism in passing down the story of trauma, not necessarily employing the recollections but through the inherited memories where imaginative creation can be produced in various representations. methodology in order to grasp that there was an act of incarceration towards japanese american in the united states, this research firstly explored the lyrics of kenji and simultaneously investigating relatable historical background of the japanese american internment camps in 1942, knowing that artwork such as song is “produced in a particular historical context” (gracyk, p.26). it is also essential to note that the data in this research are primarily based on the song, kenji. therefore, the data are limited only on the lyrics along with its expression through the song. because this study does not journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 49 cover on the details of the song elements such as the music, tones, and the arrangement, this would be primarily textual based analysis. this research is also undertaken by secondary sources including the report of interview on podcast and magazine articles as well as academic articles under the topics of postmemory. the song, kenji, becomes the main focus in interrogating means of expression in the lyrics that are presumably connected to the issue on how japanese americans’ trauma is reimagined and represented through many forces. the selected expressions of the lyrics of kenji will be identified according to some of which indicate ‘memory’ of the incarceration. then, it will be analyzed based on the concept of transmission whether the memory shared by ‘testifier’, the one who has experienced the traumatic event and therefore possesses the trauma; and ‘witness’, who does not directly experience the tragedy and responds to this testimony of suffering. this interpretation will lead to argumentation, as hirsch points out, that family becomes the domain of transmitting cultural trauma through shared stories, images, or behaviors that are remembered intergenerationally (hirsch, 2012). it will then concentrate to the songwriter of kenji as the sansei who is still interconnected with nisei as the incarcerees; while to render this information, relevant sources indicating the historical background of the songwriter and the japanese americans in general are necessary. my analysis on the song, kenji, draws on two elaborations assisted by the concepts of postmemory by frosh including transmission—which differs the person who transfers the inherited memories—and constructive process. frosh emphasizes that constructive process does not only employ stories passed down by the testifier, but this process is also obtained when imaginative investment becomes a means to mediate trauma (frosh, 2019). first, as highlighted in his book, intergenerational element becomes important to provide mechanisms to the continuity of memory as well as identity. postmemory, according to frosh, is essentially “concerned with understanding how the person might feel inhabited by memories that come from someone, somewhere or someone else—notably, from a traumatised previous generation” (frosh, 2019, p. 10). in this perspective, the data taken from the lyrics will be interpreted to understand its mechanism of transmitting stories; drawing argumentation by distinguishing the experience of incarceration retold by two sides; whether it is transmitted by the ‘testifier’ or the ‘witness’. second, to view its constructive process, this discussion will draw a relation between the representation (the song, kenji) and the agent (the songwriter, as the witness as well as postgeneration). the songwriter (sansei) is then seen as the agent who maintains close connection to this suffering experienced by previous generation (the nisei’s experience in the incarceration). most importantly, it describes on how postgeneration reproduces these ‘memory traces’ not by the process of recalling of the memory or merely by means of stories but through imaginative process manifested in the creative work (the song) which gives a way to work with the trauma. results and discussion recontextualizing the japanese american incarceration moving away from common understanding that ‘trauma will soon be forgotten’ through the silence or by not speaking about it, this paper would otherwise view that trauma can be ‘worked through’ not by forgetting it because the recollections force the memory to stay even starker. at this point, it will leave scars in the mind, and it keeps captivating. in this specific context, having experienced living in the japanese american incarceration could be traumatic as the removal was only based on hatred toward a particular group of community while they were undeniably american citizens. according to shinoda’s aunt (the recorded voice inserted in the song) “yeah, soon as war broke out, the fbi came and they just come through the house and, you have to come all the japanese have to go they took mr. ni, the people couldn't understand journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) shofi mahmudah budi utami & muammar kadafi 50 why they had to take him because he's an innocent laborer” (shinoda, 01:58) that japanese americans generally or their family especially had a little notice upon their removal. after pearl harbor attack, president roosevelt signed executive order 9066 which urged japanese americans to leave their homes (editors, 2021). this had affected 120.000 people who were actually american citizens with japanese ancestry, most of whom were issei and nisei. in the quoted lines above, it is also emphasized that they left without knowing the reason why they were forced to go. the testimony from shinoda’s aunt suggests the feeling of “cannot make sense of the happening” as she goes on the story by asserting “he’s an innocent laborer” which clarifies that her family personally has nothing to do with the war. in fact, german americans and italian americans were not excluded when the united states was also at war with them. this discrimination towards japanese americans, primarily for issei and nisei generation, had therefore endured an individual rather than collective level of trauma (nagata et al., 2015). as shinoda’s aunt mentioned the word ‘innocent’ here, it somehow stresses that japanese americans were not villains of the war; they were merely victims who were treated unjustly by the country. this had impacted the rest of their life with scars in their identity, such as prejudices and discrimination; some nissei’s experiences are rejection by the dominant society (nagata et al., 2015), and they were treated as if they were committed with japanese allegiance— this was of course traumatic. it is even terrifying because the japanese americans did not know where they would be sent to. there were also lack of information for how long they would stay in the concentration camps (nagata et al., 2015), and they had barely known of what the government planned for them. this certainly magnified their shock and fear on what would happen to their lives next. they gave ken a couple of days to get his whole life packed in two bags just two bags, he couldn't even pack his clothes and some folks didn't even have a suitcase to pack anything in so two trash bags, is all they gave them and when the kids asked mom, “where are we going?” nobody even knew what to say to them (shinoda, 01:16-1:32) with no anticipation to leave the house and no imagination of places they would later stay at, psychologically they were attacked with anxiety. the selected lines said that the family of shinoda even had no idea to answer their children about the destination they were going to. this was similarly happening to the other family who gave story in rep podcast about japanese americans incarceration; when he once asked his mother about where they were going, his mother just told him that they were heading home, which in fact was concentration camp (tagouri, 14:57). such memories lived in their minds, especially those of issei’s and nisei’s, some of whom, likewise both shinoda’s aunt and the interviewee, experienced their childhood spent in the camps. living in the incarceration was also experienced by shinoda’s father as his voice recording is present in the song, “when we first got back from camp, uh it was pretty, pretty bad”. through this line, he testified that he once experienced camp life with his other siblings including shinoda’s aunt, but here shinoda’s father only highlighted the condition after the camp life—that they would be still rejected by the society and were still regarded as an evil. this is also stated in the song lyric in the following. then they got back to the home and what they saw made him feel so alone these people had trashed every room smashed in the windows and bashed in the doors written on the walls and the floor “japs not welcome, anymore!” (shinoda, 03:02-03:14) the story from shinoda’s father acknowledges that they were ostracized even after the war and after the u.s shut the camp. this historical event prisoning the innocent japanese americans indeed restrained both individual trauma and prolongedly shattered their political identity as an american. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 51 all of those statements discussed earlier are entirely based on recollections owned by the nisei generation as ‘testifier’ and characterized as ‘memory’. as frosh identified that memory is different form history for it is originally from personal experience, formed through a process of recalling, and has an affective charge (frosh, 2019), therefore shinoda’s aunt and father have capacity to speak about the japanese americans incarceration. to an extent, these testifiers’ stories are not only exclaiming historical truth but also giving intergenerational dialectic, between sansei and nissei who used to be kept it in silence. shinoda added these voice recordings as if he wanted to present a historical truth taken from testimony of the testifiers. this seems to provide real picture that might not fully presented in history book; such action of discriminating a certain group of people is real. furthermore, kenji definitely wants to not only claim the truth of japanese american incarceration but also redeem the past in such a way they can intergenerationally accept it—more specifically those who suffered this traumatic experience. working through the trauma with this openness and such direct interaction with the survivors will not only lessen the weight of the pain, but also to acknowledge themselves conquering the trauma. performing such intergenerational dialectic also allows them to recontextualize the past event in different perspective, not in a painful way but a more redemptive manner. the writer of kenji as sansei tries to look on the other side of this trauma, by speaking of it and understanding that this trauma can be lessened. here, shinoda seems to give space of freeing this trauma by avoiding repetition given by his father and his aunt. the previous generation was only focused on the horror that keeps haunting, such as the lines testified by shinoda’s aunt in minutes 01:58—the shock that came abruptly without coping the fault they made. in this sense, the shared story can be dominantly occupied with the testimony of the survivors. if the story is centered only on the way presenting its haunting moment, then there will also be potential to repeat the story in such a way. however, shinoda worked this testimony with another picture of life in the camp; as it is stated in this line—“other than that, try not to think about it. try not to worry 'bout it being so crowded 'cause someday, we'll get out someday, someday”—which shows the spirit and understands that life must be continued on. in addition, a song gives new experience particularly to hear the story in a new way— which raises a sense of escaping from the feeling of being haunted by trauma. in this understanding, recontextualization of trauma can make sense. in other words, the mechanism of transmitting this memory by the witness is not merely by means of ‘remembering’ the testimony but also by reflecting these inherited stories through the song. furthermore, by connecting such stories can “maintain powerful and evocative associations between then and now, between here and there” (oksman, 2020), which helps particularly the postgeneration, in this case shinoda, to get to its proximity with distant event experienced by issei and nisei. despite its traumatic affect has impacted the postgeneration, this story helps the postgeneration remains connective with their ancestry. moreover, it also gives awareness to the postgeneration that memories of traumatic events are sometimes “framed by variety intersecting forces” (oksman, 2020), which sometimes distorts its historical truth. therefore, the postgeneration needs to nullify any falsification on historical context including accusation of japanese americans’ betrayal to the country and also to voice those who were “caught in the limitations addressing trauma as well as understanding it” (tronsgard, 2017). so, such accusation of japanese allegiance during the era or unproved betrayal to the country of united states of america can be clarified by the postgeneration through revealing truth of the incarceration. in this case, a song can be a way communicating such matters. kenji does not only reflect the truth of the life in incarceration, but also give a space to acknowledge such ‘remembering’ accompanied with the spirit that has forced them to continue the life. reimagining trauma as a form of redress it is arguably true that the postgeneration to whom the forbearers transmitted the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) shofi mahmudah budi utami & muammar kadafi 52 traumatic memories can play pivotal role. recalling those memories will be painful, but different way on approaching the trauma could be instead powerful. through the term borrowed from larkin about ‘the agency’ which most studies of postmemory are centered at, the postgeneration grew up with such monumental memories inherited from forbearers, which are actually translated in their own right—the postgeneration can choose position whether they are fully occupied on the ‘haunting’ part of the testimony or take different side by giving space to free this ‘haunting’ part. the postgeneration could therefore connect with such traumatic memories, not in a way silencing or forgetting the trauma but giving acts to articulate it overtly (tronsgard, 2017). actively creative manner is a case in point; this includes writing stories in a form of literary works or through artistic activities such as composing music or writing songs. shinoda, for instance, gives connection to the memory inherited by, the nisei generation through imagery employed in the song lyrics, kenji. the war, according to the song, was particularly narrated in a “scene” involving japan and the u.s. in this sense, shinoda ‘witnessed’ (as he was not the testifiers) the event by providing juxtaposition of japanese as a country and japanese as an ancestry. preceding the picture of war, shinoda gives few forewords of his grandfather’s life by addressing the name, kenji (ken), which is actually shinoda’s middle name. it was world war ii when this man named kenji woke up ken was not a soldier, he was just a man with a family who owned a store in l.a that day, he crawled out of bed like he always did bacon and eggs with wife and kids he lived on the second floor of a little store he ran he moved to l.a. from japan they called him immigrant, in japanese he'd say he was called “issei” that meant first generation in the united states when (shinoda, 00:26-00:46) the first two stanzas above describe literally the origin of his family in the united states long before 1940s. his grandfather was coming from japan and lived with their children in los angeles, california—“many issei had lived in the united states for four decades at the start of the war, had no intention of returning to japan” (chiang, 2018, p. xiv). even though most of them (issei) were eventually naturalized as american citizens, they were ostensibly regarded as ‘unamericans’, moreover when the war broke out. this indeed made them process cultural trauma, especially on how the mass downplayed their identity. over time, this social and political rejection had created “a sense of shame, depression, humiliation, selfblame, and a feeling of being responsible for what had happened” (nagata et al., 2015, p. 360)—therefore the song kenji seems to redress the japanese american identity which has been seen inextricable from the 1942 event. shinoda otherwise makes clear on how to detach this public stigma on the japanese americans’ trauma by juxtaposing ‘two images of japanese (as a country and as ancestry) in order to nullify its negativity for being incarcerees. in the song, it mentions “he’d say he was called “issei” that meant first generation in the united states.” which portrays the japanese ancestry is inseparable from their identity as an american while they in fact never gave allegiance to japan. it therefore seems proper that most issei or nisei parents were just silencing their experience in the incarceration to their children (sansei generation). beside this act of silencing trauma was common in japanese american family, this was in other words an attempt to “repress incarceration trauma” (nagata et al., 2015, p. 364). thus, the postgeneration like sansei, through the narration represented in kenji, could create a public awareness towards this social injustice; and more personally to fill the gaps in their family history caused by the unspoken trauma. in the study of postmemory dichotomy, cassar identified that the postgeneration potentially mediates between nostalgia and aversion towards traumatic memories inhabited by the forbearers (cassar & avellino, 2020)—in this sense, shinoda reflected both the narrations directly from his father and aunt (nisei generation) and his witness based on their journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 53 recollections. it is arguably true that through the representation in the song kenji leads to communicate these ‘witness’ and ‘testifiers’ in order to negotiate these recollections of cultural trauma of being the japanese americans. everybody was afraid of the germans, afraid of the japs but most of all, afraid of a homeland attack and that morning, when ken went out on the doormat his world went black, ‘cause right there, front page news three weeks before 1942 pearl harbor’s been bombed and “the japs are coming” pictures of soldiers dying and running ken knew what it would lead to and just like he guessed, the president said “the evil japanese in our home country would be locked away” (shinoda, 00:47-01:15) in the lines captured above, shinoda expressed how the war had assaulted the japanese americans’ cultural and political identity in the postwar era in particular; the u.s government subjected all americans with japanese ancestry to be excluded from being an american, neither as an american citizen nor a part of american society. the military attack on pearl harbor seemed to reveal the villainy of japanese, which is clearly mentioned in the lyrics with the phrase “the evil japanese”. more specifically “everybody was afraid of the germans, afraid of the japs” declares that the actual attack was by japan as a country not as ancestry. however, shinoda asserts how the society reacted by exclaiming “but most of all, afraid of a homeland attack”, which can be understood that japanese as ancestry dealt with being prejudiced as the perpetrator of the ruin of ‘home’, america. the lines above also emphasizes that the consequences the japanese americans had were caused by racial discrimination; the society narrowed their view towards the war and the social forces had irrelevantly become the basis to assault their american identity embedded in the act of racial injustice. it was later on continued by the response of the u.s government and american society suspecting that the american with japanese ancestry were “potentially disloyal and capable of espionage or sabotage” (nagata et al., 2015, p. 357); and they therefore “would be locked away” (shinoda, 2010). this imagery juxtaposing two different perspectives on carefully viewing japanese american identity leads to an overt expression in order to address the trauma and of course to serve as reinterpretation towards the trauma, that through this expression they can redress the disloyalty attached to their cultural identity. it can also be understood that the testifiers from nissei generation (shinoda’s father and aunt) had been processed by the sansei (shinoda) in giving new reconceptualization understanding the trauma. this familial transmission is essential but, in this sense, the postgeneration has so much to do to communicate the social injustice but most importantly negotiate the effects that the japanese americans had from the trauma. in order to prove their loyalty to the united states, the japanese americans joined the army instead. their allegiance was indicated by the “loyalty questions” given when they were relocated in the camps, or by being “asked to serve in the armed forces of the united states” (nagata et al., 2015, p. 358), which in the song, shinoda obviously explained the circumstances. and time passed in the prison town he wondered if he'd live it down if and when they were free the only way out was joining the army, and supposedly some men went out for the army, signed on and ended up flying to japan with a bomb that fifteen kiloton blast put an end to the war pretty fast two cities were blown to bits the end of the war came quick and ken got out, big hopes of a normal life with his kids and his wife, but (shinoda, 02:37-03:01) the judgment towards their allegiance to defend the united states then became the basis where to put these japanese americans; it journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) shofi mahmudah budi utami & muammar kadafi 54 could be in more restrictive camp in tule lake (california) or less restrictive camps in around the midwest and east (nagata et al., 2015). such condition was seemingly apt to apply to those who were confined, but this case was completely humiliating since they were american citizens and had no implication of the espionage for japan. as the lines say “some men went out for the army, signed on; and ended up flying to japan with a bomb” obviously asserts that they were a part of the american society that of course would defend their own country—as a proof of their loyalty to the united states. again, shinoda highlights that these situations were actually experienced by japanese americans in the camp. more importantly, he raises awareness that it is not the people being incarcereed that is humiliating but rather the act of unjustly discriminating by the country to their people. here, kenji is after all as a potential platform to repair and particularly redress japanese american identity. even after the war ended, the japanese americans were still not entirely accepted in the american society. then they got back to the home and what they saw made him feel so alone these people had trashed every room smashed in the windows and bashed in the doors written on the walls and the floor “japs not welcome, anymore!” and kenji dropped both of his bags at his sides and just stood outside he looked at his wife without words to say she looked back at him wiping tears away and said someday, we’ll be okay, someday now, the names have been changed, but the story is true my family was locked up, back in ‘42 my family was there, where it was dark and damp and they called it an internment camp (shinoda, 03:02-03:33) the lines above exemplified how the american society treated the japanese americans soon after the government closed the camp. here, shinoda tried to illustrate when his family returned to the previous region in the west coast where they initially resided. however, this comeback seemed full of anxiety, uncertainty, and daunting as the lines said “these people had trashed every room; smashed in the windows and bashed in the doors; written on the walls and the floor “japs not welcome, anymore!” (shinoda, 2010). shinoda’s family encountered such social rejection expressed by the anti-japanese sentiments. not only that, his family also struggled to restart anything they had been built before they were relocated; “many returned to small farm and fishing communities to which they had given a lifetime of labor” (park, 2020, p. 277) which directly exposed them for racial prejudice or discrimination. however, with stressing “and said someday, we’ll be okay, someday”, shinoda narrated how his family still held on their spirit having viewed the positivity on their future life. to an extent, this constructive process gives way in reimagining trauma of the nissei generation, that attaching such spirit on the japanese american identity transforms this trauma into more thriving life and reforms the japanese identity with no lasting effect on incarceration. shinoda, through this song, seems to be connective with the past and then by giving physical coping of the nissei’s trauma, and in reverse bridging the society and the japanese american community with no perpetuating negativity on their cultural identity. conclusion rather than focusing on the structure of transmission, which is consequently centered at the agent—the postgeneration—the creative reinvestment through artwork such as song, kenji, views the strategy to represent the actual blocked memories experienced by the nissei. constructive process represented in the song gives path to not only connect with the memory of the past but also to recontextualize the japanese american incarceration in clear understanding on their ancestry. other than that, this creative narration in the song addresses the trauma powerfully, by representing the story of shinoda’s grandfather in a form of verbal articulations. the most significant implication from the song is however giving awareness journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 55 that the japanese american identity is not constructed through their inheritance of incarceration memory possessed by the forbearers but by being attached to their ancestry which always fostered positivity in life; and this is how it can avoid its prolonged negative impacts of the trauma. references assa, a.e.p. 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(2022, may 16). shikata ga nai (no. 5) [audio podcast episode]. in rep. iheartpodcasts and at your service. https://pod.link/1616179105/e pisode/c55020799eb24d7c076e7efafead 1592 tronsgard, j. (2017). drawing the past: the graphic novel as postmemory in spain. romance notes, 57(2), pp. 267–279. wolf, d. l. (2019). postmemories of joy? children of holocaust survivors and alternative family memories. memory studies, 12(1), pp. 74–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/175069801881 1990 http://www.jstor.org/stable/23597532 197 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 197 – 208 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.5455 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. spatializing narrative: postcolonial spaces of oswald andrew bushnell’s ka’a’awa kristiawan indriyanto kristiawanindriyanto@unprimdn.ac.id faculty of teacher training and education, universitas prima indonesia, indonesia abstract article information this study explores the representation of space in o.a bushnell’s ka’a’awa in which the seemingly contradictory spatial scene of the urban, the rural, the picturesque and the macabre delineates the complexity of postcolonial spaces. ka’a’awa foregrounds the historicity of postcolonial spaces, narrated from nihoa’s firstperson account to provide an avenue for readers to mentally mapped the spaces as the narration progresses. this study is the intersection between environmental/eco-criticism and geo-criticism which focuses on the complexities between spatial referents and their real-world referents as is stated by tally jr and prieto, especially the postcolonial contexts of hawai’i-west interaction during the second half of the 19th century. the finding posits how the readers familiarize themselves with the picturesque landscape of o’ahu through nihoa’s evocative narration and how the spatial scene later resurfaces as space connotes death and diseases due to epidemic which defamiliarizes readers from prior spatiality. the spatial scene narrating scene of disease, despair and death highlights the discursive and material condition of hawai’i as a postcolonial space. space in ka’a’awa alludes both toward the referential condition of 1850’s hawai’i and symbolically represents the decline of the hawai’ian natives. keywords: ecocriticism, geocriticism, hawai’ian literature, postcolonial spaces received: 1 december 2022 revised: 20 february 2023 accepted: 21 march 2023 introduction recent development within humanities study in general and literature in particular delineates the increasing awareness toward the importance of spatiality, especially space, place and its representation. soja (1989) argues for “the reassertion of space in critical social theory” as in previous decades the lingering issues of critical theories lies upon the primacy of time-focused discourse which “occluded, devalued, and de-politicized space”(p. 4). soja’s assertion for the spatial turn in the humanities continues the seminal https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:kristiawanindriyanto@unprimdn.ac.id journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kristiawan indriyanto 198 argument proposed by foucault upon how the post-ww ii societies have entered “an epoch of space” (1984, p. 1). in the aftermath of the spatial turn, concepts related to space, and spatiality enters the lexicon of humanity studies. as spaces are always open to discussion due to its shifting and permeable nature, the importance of concepts such as hybrid identity, border crossing, re/deterritorialization cannot be understated. space and place are both active participants of social change, and its representation through cultural objects such as literature highlights the interwoven nature between the real and the imagined world. this is delineated through prieto’s argument on how “literature not only represents the world around us, but participates actively in the production of that world” (2016, p. 22). although the spatial turn, as soja proposed have only emerged in the turn of the millennium, the issue concerning spatiality have always been an integral part in literary analysis. setting is a key concept in analyzing literature, moreover several genres are definedby spatial/geographical characteristics such as pastoralism, travel narratives, american mid-west literature and urban tales (tally, 2017). similarly, ryan et all argues that the creation of an imaginary world requires three main components, space or setting ; time or events ; and existents, or characters (2017, p. 61). in the era of spatial turn, critics have begun to explore the dynamic interconnection among space, place and its representation through literature from the lens of various theoretical disciplines. postcolonial scholar, such as edward said in culture and imperialism contextualizes how imperialism is inherently a geographical violence as virtually every space in the world is subjected into colonial servitude and the necessity of a “geographical inquiry into historical experience of colonialism”(1994, p. 6). said’s line of argumentation underlines how spaces and places are perceived, represented, and ultimately used. the reassertion of space in literary studies emphasizes the intertwined nature of the text and the spaces/places represented in it and bridges the divide between the word and the world, the real and the imagined. spatial representation of place remains closely linked with the issue of temporality, especially concerning how either the past or the future is imagined. the current discussion of space and place departs from prior assumption about the passive nature of spatiality compared to the dynamic aspects of temporality by emphasizing the transformation of space and place during a given time period. this reenactment of the representation of place and time provides an avenue to perceive how the space itself is transformed. as literature is one way upon which the readers have made sense of and given forms toward either the fictional storyworld or the referential world outside the text, reading literature can be stated as a form of creating mental images of mapping. r. t. tally jr proposes that, “in a manner of speaking, literature also functions as a form of mapping, offering its readers descriptions of places, situating them in a kind of imaginary space, and providing points of reference by which they can orient themselves and understand the world in which they live. or maybe literature helps readers get a sense of the worlds in which others have lived, currently live, or will live in times to come” (2013, p. 2). fictions enable readers to better understand the world around them by imagining a representation of reality which might differs from readers’ own background. writing itself can be seen as a form of spatialization that depends upon the readers’ acceptance of numerous conventions such as literary devices. a spatially oriented literary criticism contextualizes the textual representations concerning space and time and the dialectical nature of the relationships between text and their real-world referent (prieto, 2016, p. 20). the dynamic nature of space is emphasized in post-colonial literature in which the environment is transformed and altered due to colonial encounter. a spatial imagination represented through postcolonial literature, in deloughrey and handley’s opinion is “made possible by the experience of place” (2011, p. 4). this dynamism foregrounds the landscape, often reduced as mere settings and bystander journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 199 to human experience into an active participant in the historical process. moreover, the spatial turn which emphasizes space criticizes the reductionist binarism of nature/culture in western paradigm, in which the environment is delegated as automata devoid of meaning. in other words, there is no distinction between the social and the natural world as both are intricately linked with each other which results in the necessity of redefining the meaning of the term ‘environment’, as mukherjee posits, “the economic capital is etched onto the very political, cultural, and ecological fabric of our world. since it has been my contention that it is precisely this network of politics, culture, ecology, physical space and non-human matter that we should understand as ‘environment’, there is no way for us to understand it without our engagement with the notion of the uneven unfolding of historical capital”(2010, p. 14). in postcolonial literature, spaces delineate the continuous history of colonialism and inequality established upon marginalization and domination. space therefore becomes a site of colonial encounter and contestation between past and present in which ideas and imagined places meant as much as direct conquest and imperial authority. as soja posits, writing a spatial scene means “struggle over geography, struggles about ideas, images and imagining and also the search for fundamental and egalitarian rights to inhabit space”(2011, p. ix). these imaginary geographies projected through literature textualities alludes towards specific physical locale in the real world transformed in the process of colonialism. issues related with the transformation of space due to colonial encounter had been a pivotal theme in hawai’ian literature, especially concerning the shifting paradigm of how the environment is conceptualized. hawai’i’s writers have created imaginative fictions which is imprinted with the traumatic history of loss and dispossession, in which their familial ties towards the land are subjected toward western instrumentalization of land as commodities. the local literature of hawai’i reflects both their ethnic culture and the familial ties toward the physical environment especially the land (aina) (ho’omanawanui, 2008, p. 124). spatial imagination represented in their literature delineates historicity of hawai’ian archipelago from the earliest colonial encounter up until the present state of domination and marginalization under american hegemony. this changing political situation correspondents with the physical degradation of hawai’ian environment, as kaytrask summarizes, “in hawai’i, the uprooting and great dying of my people was quickly followed by massive and irreparable changes on the land. under american control, hawai’i has been transformed into a tinsel version of the fragile beauty it once was. militarism and tourism –twin engines of haole (white) american culture in hawai’i – have increased their rapacious consumption of our physical and cultural heritage as we enter the twenty-first century” (1993, p. 60). kay-trask’s assertion projects hawai’i as a postcolonial space defined by experiences of physical loss, exploitation and cultural appropriation. this poetic imagination conjures the memory of distant past while connotes it with the present issue in which the transformation of space is a focal point in the process of reclamation. space in hawai’ian literature, therefore functions to uncover the “normalized quiet of unseen power” (said, 2004, p. 135), revealing the mechanism and effect of imperial authority by analyzing how space is altered and transformed. oswald andrew (o.a) bushnell’s novel, ka’a’awa (1972) reimagines the spatiality of hawai’i during the 1850s, a turbulent era in hawai’ian history. although descended from the white settlers of hawai’i, bushnell was noted for his portrayal of the suffering and oppression faced by native hawai’ians under american domination and acknowledged as a ‘local writer’ and an insider, someone who was born and raised in hawai’i (sumida, 1991, p. 251). the time frame of the novel was marred journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kristiawan indriyanto 200 with the outbreak of pestilence amidst the modernizing process in hawai’i due to american influence, the creation of urban area such as honolulu, contrasted with the still largely rural area around the island of o’ahu. the impact of whaling, trading and the implementation of a plantation system transformed honolulu into a global port for ships and peoples from asia and continental usa (wilson, 2000, p. 61). the present study analyzes how o.a bushnell’s ka’a’awa contextualizes the moment of spatiality by underlying the representation of various spatial place through nihoa’s travel on o’ahu. this narration projects hawai’i as a postcolonial space through various spatial descriptions conveying the impact of hawai’i-western interaction through diseases and death, occurring within the picturesque landscapes of hawai’i. this juxtaposition between the sublime and the macabre occurs recurringly in the narration, as nihoa ventures from one spatial scene to another. narrated through first-person account, readers’ at first familiarized themselves and mentally mapped the sublime sight hawai’i rural areas which later become the scene of mass death during epidemic outbreak. the issue of subverting the familiar into the unfamiliar and relating the textual spaces of ka’a’awa with the referential scene of 1850’s o’ahu delineates the complexities of postcolonial space. moreover as is explored by james, spatial representation is always mediated from a subjective perspective, in which a particular perspective delineates how space is represented and perceived (2015, p. 38). the issue of spatiality in literature in general and hawai’ian literature in particular had been explored by several scholars. regarding spatiality in literature, vidiyanti et al (2022) argues how several indonesian poets, such as chairil anwar, rendra and goenawan mohammad represents the view of postcolonial indonesia through the representation of house and body spaces as a postcolonial space which suffers from the traumatic impact of colonialism. differently, deloughrey (2020) delineates how caribbean literature spatializes the dialectic relationship between ocean and ship, in how the atlantic is conceptualized as a cultural and material space. the issue of spatiality has also been a central tenet in hawai’ian literature. indriyanto (2022) on his analysis of a ricepaper airplane, a korean-american literature argues how the spatial imagination narrated by the character sun wha illustrates his displacement in hawai’i and inability to reconcile with this past in korea. (2022, p. 100) differently, carrigan’s analysis of two hawai’ian literature, davenport’s shark dialogues and mcmillen’s school for hawai’ian girls delineates hawai’i as a postcolonial space by focusing on the issue of how tourism operates and is perceived (2009, p. 182). based upon the prior discussion of spatiality, it can be stated that the representation of space is a recurring theme in literary analysis. contrary with prior discussion of how space is contextualized in hawai’ian literature, this paper underlines how spatiality of bushnell’s ka’a’awa represents the historicity and complexity of hawai’i as a postcolonial space. the analysis contemplates the historicity of postcolonial space through its seemingly contradictory portrayal of space between the sublime and the macabre. this emphasis establishes the novelty of this study as prior discussion of spatiality and hawai’ian literature still not elaborate the representation of postcolonial space due to colonial encounter. methodology the study is a literary analysis with qualitative framework, in which the data is in the form of quotations, sentences, dialogues and monologue from the novel ka’a’awa : a novel about hawai’i in the 1850s written by o.a bushnell. the aim of a qualitative study is “to explore and understand individuals/groups ascribe to a social or human problem ”(creswell & poth, 1998, p. 97). the analysis is conducted through underlying quotations from the text exploring issue of spatiality, narrated from nihoa’s perspective which is then analyzed from an ecocritical paradigm. the focus of the analysis is to delineate how spatial issues is represented and how the textuality of the novel represents the referential condition of hawai’i during the 1850 in the context of hawai’i-west journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 201 interaction. the primary data is taken from the first-person point of view of the narrator, hiram nihoa as he travels and offers his commentary on the spatial status of various place. the data mainly focuses with nihoa’s opinions, dialogues and internal monologues, taken from several chapters of the novel. secondary data in the form of academic articles, essays, journals or books is provided to better contextualize the historical condition of hawai’i during the time period depicted in the novel. to emphasize the spatial representation of space, place, mapping and literature itself, this paper employs ecocriticism. narratives tend to map and represent social and natural spaces through textuality, while literary criticism tries to analyze these poetic attempts at making sense of the world. the premises of ecocriticism, as stated by filipova is the inquire of the ideas of how humans interact with the non-human environment and how their ecological imagination manifested in the form of literature. (2021, p. 13). as stated by prieto, ecocriticism’s emphasizes on activist advocation on real world environmental issues have often emphasizes “thematic at the expense of the textual mechanics of representation”(2016, p. 31). similarly, susie asserts how ecocriticism traditionally privileges “the representation of nature in a more biocentric terms” (2001, p. 142) which foregrounds natural/biotic aspect instead of urban/built environment. all these remarks highlight the limitation of an ecological analysis which tends to privileges place while neglecting other forms of spatiality in the narrative form. the complexity of the referential relationship between text and the real work, especially concerning spatial representation has not been adequately explored by ecocriticism, on contrary with another critical theory emphasizing space, geocriticism. geocriticism, as tally elaborated, is a critical framework which focuses on the spatial representation within texts while also explores the overlapping aspects of actual, physical geography and the narrators/characters’ cognitive mapping in the text itself (2008, p. 4). on their book, ecocriticism and geocriticism: overlapping territories in environmental and spatial literary studies (2016), tally jr and battista explores the area on intersection and overlapping concerns between ecocriticism and geocriticism. they argue that these two approaches share similar concern upon how spaces and places are perceived and ultimately used, although also differs in several aspects, as noted in the prefix geoand eco-. as noted by tally jr and battista, contrary with ecocriticism’s strong stance on environmental issue, geocritic had no particular position concerning the use or abuse of space and place (2016, p. 1). geocritics argue how the omission of spatial categories on minority study had serious political consequences concerning their disenfranchisement. the insights provided by geocritical oriented literary criticism therefore can account for how ecocritics interpret literature’s representation of space in which the area of literary mapping, geography and cartography is one of the promising avenues of interdisciplinary. literature itself, as stated by tally jr is a form of mapping as it offers readers descriptions of places, “situating them in an imaginary space and providing points of reference to orient and understand the world in which they live” (2013, p. 2). at the core of geocriticism is the interconnection between textual and real spaces, on how imaginary spaces allow readers to comprehend the physical/real spaces more comprehensively. textual representation of space, on how it is narrated in the text, therefore provides an avenue of interpreting the possible meaning from its description. reading is an active process of mapping the spatial messages transmitted by the writers. (tally jr., robert t.; battista, 2013, p. 79). in reading ka’a’awa, this paper highlights how the act of mapping is emphasized through the narration of hiram nihoa on his journey around o’ahu island. nihoa’s journey, in firsthand account provides readers with textual cues necessity to reconstruct a spatial imagination of o’ahu in their mind. tally jr elaborates how the writers function as a cartographer, mapping the ‘real and imagined’ spaces, while the readers become a kind of journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kristiawan indriyanto 202 geographer who actively interpret the textual map provided through narration. nihoa’s firstperson account offers a detailed representation of space, which alludes toward the historical reality of hawai’i in the 1850’s with diseases and epidemic in the foreground. as prieto argues, the intersection between eco/geocriticism contextualizes the “complexity of spatial representations and the dialectical relationship between texts and their real-world referents” (2016, p. 20). results and discussion the importance of spatiality in ka’a’awa is delineated by the fact that the narration happens due to the necessity of charting and surveying the area around o’ahu island. ka’a’awa, which takes place in the 1850’s situates the rapid changes and transformation in both hawai’ian society and the landscape within the context of hawai’i-west encounter. the protagonist, hiram nihoa is an educated hawai’ian native (kanaka maoli) from the lineage of chieftain and successful businessman in less than favorable endeavor who in the past was the guardian (kahu) of the crown prince alex (future kamehameha iv). the story progresses when nihoa was ordered by king kamehameha iii on a mission to survey possible dangers toward the kingdom’s security especially the possible arrival of filibuster from california on the coastline. his journey takes him all around the island of o’ahu, where he experienced first-hand the impact of westernization amidst outbreak of epidemic which despoiled several rural areas. the majority of the narration occurs on the titular village of ka’a’awa, in which nihoa recognizes that his child companion, eahou is actually the last descendant of the high chief of o’ahu, kalanikupule. outbreak of influenza, and later smallpox devastates ka’a’awa and other areas in o’ahu island. in the end nihoa and his white (haole) counterpart, saul bristol rebuilds the village of ka’a’awa and establishes a training school ke eahou to educate the younger generation of hawai’ians. narrating the story from the perspective on an experienced native traveler allows bushnell to present a commentary regarding the plight faced by the hawai’ian on o’ahu island as nihoa journeys from one place to another. ka’a’awa can therefore be read as a form of travel narrative, a genre of literature which focuses upon the connection between the traveler and traveled spaces (pratt, 1992). hawai’i in the 1850 was still undergoing westernization and travel outside the boundaries of honolulu was difficult, having to navigate harsh hilly terrain in the tropical condition with only horse or mule possible avenue of transportation. as mitchell notes, “the footpaths connecting the villages were narrow trails, following the shore where possible”(1982, p. 167). the hawai’ians of old were accustomed of traveling via canoe, and trails which later developed into narrow roads and paved with flat stones were only introduced by the arrival of western missionaries. on o’ahu, the so called “roundthe-island-road” extended from honolulu across the central plateau to waialua through the nuuanu pali was available on the 1850’s, it was the road taken by nihoa in the novel (kuykendall, 1953, p. 25). traveling around the island of o’ahu therefore was an arduous task, in which nihoa was ordered by the direct order of the hawai’ian royalty themselves, narrated as follows: "kahu," alex turned to me. 'this is what we ask of you: do you ride, as would an ordinary man of the people, through ko'olaupoko and ko'olauloa, along the windward coast of o'ahu, from kane'ohe in the south to kahuku in the north. as you ride along, look about you, listen to the countryfolk you will meet”(bushnell, 1972, p. 42). although nihoa was an experienced traveler, he acknowledges that it has been around ten years since his last journey on o’ahu, visiting his relative at kahana, the valley on the northern coast where he was born. this circumstance causes him to be unaware about the present situation in o’ahu, resulting in shock and lamentation upon seeing first-hand the desolation brought by the epidemic toward the native hawai’ians. by extension, this subjective consciousness in experiencing space is also extended toward the readers, as they consciously chart the unfolding map of nihoa’s journey on their mental images as the narrative progresses. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 203 nihoa’s voyage orients reader toward various spatial points, moving onward from the urban setting of honolulu up the eastern, windward coastline until the titular valley of ka’a’awa. the depiction of honolulu is quite sparse and derogative compared to the evocative description of the rural areas, alluding toward nihoa’s dissatisfaction of this urban spatial space. the foundation of honolulu, originally as a trading port and later developed into a center of government as well ensures the transformation of its prior landscape, in which nihoa, as a middle-aged man remember all too well. he laments the changing of hawai’ian society, stratified by social classes which excludes certain groups from the urban capital as follows, “dead they are, those chiefs, and dying, everything is changed, is changing still. 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”. (1972, p. 52). the dynamic nature of space is emphasized through the contrast between natural environment (slopes) and the built environment (hovels) created to accommodate the living spaces for the honolulu’s lower classes (kolea). this stratification is a byproduct of hawai’i-west interaction, as pre-contact hawai’ian society basically consists of ahupua’a, land division in which land was parceled from the chieftain to the common people which ensures equal access of all resources. daws identifies that a landmark moment in honolulu came at the end of 1840’s as foreigners were allowed to lease and later to buy land, by 1850’s “the outlines of a town committed to western property practices became visible”(1967, p. 80). as the intersection of trade across the pacific, honolulu was also filled with dozens of businesses and infrastructures which in nihoa’s mind disrupts the natural beauty of hawai’ian landscape. nihoa remarks how, “beyond the far end of pauoa's narrow mouth my path met the wide muddy thoroughfare which we of honolulu are pleased to call nu'uanu street. at the harbor, where it begins, this street is paved with cobblestones, to help horses and oxen in the moving of freight to and from sailing vessels warped in close to the stinking beach. fid street, as sailors call it, although it is paved with cobblestones, is bounded with warehouses, stores, grogshops, and brothels. it is no thing of beauty” (bushnell, 1972, p. 54). the picturesque setting of hawai’i is further emphasized as nihoa begins his journey outside honolulu. throughout his narration, nihoa expresses his appreciation toward the natural landscape, while acknowledging the intimate relationship between people and the environment through the naming of various places. as kimura states, aloha aina, love of the land reflects the close bond between place and people in hawai’ian culture (1983, p. 178). nihoa addresses vividly the sights of o’ahu and recounts their place names in its entirety by stating, “toward midday lono and kane tired of their sport, the clouds disappeared, the sun shone in splendor upon nu’uanu. on either side, in all the little ravines which score the proud cliffs of lanihuli on the left, of konahuanui on the right, waterfalls poured down, hundreds of them, like ribbon of soft white kapa adorning the green pali. but almost above us, on the flank of lanihuli, the flowing water could not fall; up it went, up into the air, blown by strong winds rushing through the pass of nu’uanu” (bushnell, 1972, p. 75). this evocative description conveys the readers to simulate this imaginative experience as if they were physically travelling across o’ahu. the passage is full of textual cues articulating movement, “the flowing water” “waterfalls poured down” “blown by the strong winds” which alludes that the mental map navigated by the readers is not a static setting by is dynamic instead, as nihoa moves from a particular vintage point to another. through naming of place, kanaka maoli acknowledges the living world around them, and cultural practices are interwoven within these place journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kristiawan indriyanto 204 names (indriyanto, darmawan, & chandra, 2023, p. 257). his spatial imagination further illustrates the interwoven relationship of nature and culture in hawai’ian society, as people in rural o’ahu lived as their ancestors have done in centuries. “before us lay the green and lovely land of kane'ohe, bathed in the golden light of kane the sun, kane-the-giver-of-life, going now to his sleep beyond the wall of high mountains. from dwellings among the hills and upon the plain the smoke of cookingfires ascended into the quiet air, sent forth from the fires that sustain life” (bushnell, 1972, p. 108). atkins et al, charting the life of pre-contact hawai’ian society identifies how the hawai’ians daily ‘aina (meal) usually consist of poi (cooked taro corns), banana, sweet potato with fish or meat cooked on a fire (1994, p. 108). this glimpse of past societal living condition persists in rural o’ahu, in which nihoa’s point of view allows readers’ access to this spatial memory. moreover, some royalty such as princess ruth ke’eliolani preserves the traditional way of living altogether as a staunch advocate of hawai’ian culture. as stated by bennett, “ke‘elikōlani maintained distinctive hawaiian beliefs and practices, she preferred to live in a traditional grass house (hale pili)”(2017). at kahalu’u valley, nihoa witnesses the continuation of pre-contact hawai’ian society in which princess ruth and her retainers are both dressed in traditional attires. the rural landscape in turn becomes a space to preserve traditional heritage that stands in contrast with the urban, westernized ideal. “within a few minutes we came to the place where the hilly slopes become more gentle, where long ago the forest was burned away to make some farmer’s sweet-potato patch perhaps. in this wide clearing the retainers of princess ruth had set up a village of grass huts, canvas tents, low sheds thatched with ki leaves, and other kinds of temporary shelter. dozens of servants were laboring for their chiefess. all were dressed in the manner of olden ways, the men in ma/o, the women in pa’u” (bushnell, 1972, p. 108). nihoa’s narration starts to have a mournful tone as he begins to travel across various spatial area impacted by epidemic which devastated hawai’i in the 1850’s. his account reveals the juxtaposition between the picturesque hawai’ian landscape and the despoilation caused by plague outbreak, occurs in the same location, kane’ohe as stated in the preceding passage: “the countryside through which we rode was a land of desolation. this lovely fertile district, where once so many people lived, was almost emptied now. where are all the people gone, i wondered, until i remembered the graveyard, crowded to its walls with the dead of kane'ohe, covered from end to end with strawflowers, those ugly dry blossoms that even as they are opening feel dead to the touch. many houses were rotting away, others had long since fallen in upon their foundations of rocks and stamped earth. cooking-fires marking the abodes of the living were few and spaced far apart” (bushnell, 1972, p. 111). this first-person account delineates how nihoa’s account of kane’ohe valley is linked with his lamentation of the plight of his people. the traumatic event of epidemic is vividly described by the desolateness of this still beautiful valley, devoid of its prior inhabitants. the imagery of a graveyard “crowded to its wall by the dead of kane’ohe” contextualizes the macabre sight of countless buried bodies. as previously stated by vidiyanti et al, “the body plays an important role in postcolonial text”, (2022, p. 83) in which the buried bodies of hawai’ian natives delineates the traumatic impact of westernization. moreover, where prior spatial scene positions rural area as a space to preserve traditional heritage, this spatiality orients hawai’i as a postcolonial space, in which the outbreak of disease is directly linked with hawai’i-west interaction. as exemplified by inglis, hawai’ian indigenous people had no immunities towards common diseases in the western world such as influenza and “the introduction of infectious diseases to the indigenous (and isolated) population of hawai‘i by foreigners resulted in high rates of depopulation”(2013, p. 22). the journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 205 representation of a spatial scene devastated by disease positions bushnell’s narration in the historicity of epidemic which ravaged the hawai’ian indigene during the 1850’s. the spatial scene narrating scene of disease, despair and death highlight the discursive and material condition of hawai’i as a postcolonial space. witnessing an area deeply affected by epidemic is a recurring theme in the novel, as bushnell situates the readers within a narrative of death, losses and diseases. moving toward the shore of kualoa, nihoa creates another juxtaposition concerning the tropical vista in hawai’i with the desolateness of plague epidemic, “this shore of kualoa, with its sandy beaches and shallow reefs and vast open sea beyond, with its splendid prospect of o’ahu’s mountains, from kanehoalani above to the cliffs to waimanalo thirty miles away, was once the home of many people. but now few of kualoa’s families survive. the spirits of the dead have gone to sleep the long sleep of niolopua, their houses on this earth have been blown away by the winds. now it was empty, this land, drained of life as well as hope” (bushnell, 1972, pp. 195–196). this excerpt visualizes a mental imagery of an idyllic tropical paradise, with “sandy beaches, vast open sea beyond and the splendid prospect of o’ahu mountain” before moving toward a more somber imagery of “land drained of life as well as hope.” the grimly visage simulates an impression of a panorama of horror, happening within the familiar tropical imagery which the readers had been familiarized with as the narrative progresses. lamenting the changes brought by western diseases in his ten-year absences journeying across o’ahu, a despaired nihoa contemplates the future of his native people. the image of the lifeless branches from dead trees posits a powerful symbolism both for the decline of hawai’ian indigenous people and the transformation of the physical environment, as narrated below, “grieving at the change which ten years had brought, i rode in dismay through the deepening gloom. even though i had known in my mind that my people were dying away, i was not prepared for this. thinned they were, i had thought, stripped like old leaves from the trees by a searing wind. yet the trees still live, i had thought, and they will bear young leaves again, and fruit. now i saw how even the trees were dead, that no leaves and no fruit would grow again from those lifeless branches, from this invaded earth” (bushnell, 1972, p. 114). a spatially oriented analysis of literary studies reorients how the desolate spaces represented in the text due to epidemic with the occurrences of real pestilence which ravaged the kingdom of hawai’i in the late 1840’s until early 1850’s. the deadly plagues were mainly measles, dysentery, influenza and whooping cough, in which the hawai’ians have few natural immunities. schmitt estimates how these epidemics killed around 10.000, one-tenth of the kingdom’s total population while an outbreak of smallpox in the 1853 killed somewhere between 5.000-6.000 people (1970, p. 361). even though these diseases did not always caused death, the secondary effects of the infections were often fatal (inglis, 2014, p. 31). the effect of this mass death and depopulation cannot be understated, changing the islands’ demographics forever as the native population declined. honolulu, being the center of trade and commerce was particularly affected by the smallpox disease, as seen below, "terrible, terrible. worse than you can imagine, worse even than the most frightening of dreams. the yellow flag flies still, day and night. the death-carts roll through the streets, picking up the bodies of the dead—and sometimes of the dying as well. smoke hangs above, as if the city burned. smoke from wood fires, burning at almost every street corner, to purify the air, to drive the pestilence away. as the whole earth will be on judgment day is honolulu every day. a city of destruction.” (bushnell, 1972, p. 411) journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kristiawan indriyanto 206 honolulu, left unexplored during majority of the narration which occurs in rural o’ahu is revisited through a vivid textual description evoking terror and destruction. this spatial representation of honolulu during smallpox diseases evokes an apocalyptic image of the burning city, “a city of destruction” conveys a macabre space as the people struggles to overcome the epidemic. space in nihoa’s prior passage therefore connotes toward both the referential space of 1850’s honolulu during an epidemic and symbolically represents an apocalyptic inferno of the judgment day. the familiar space is revisited and then defamiliarized, as the mental image of honolulu, constructed through nihoa’s narration resurfaces as spatial scene connotes death and diseases. the nuance between subverting the familiar into the unfamiliar further delineates the complexity of postcolonial space with its seemingly contradictory representation of space. to concur, it can be foregrounded how the analysis of space in bushnell’s ka’a’awa explores the complexity of postcolonial spaces. the application of ecocritical approaches changes the paradigm of literary analysis into foregrounding places and spaces as a site of colonial encounter. furthermore, geocriticism articulates the process of mapping those spaces, which in this novel is narrated from the first-hand account of an indigenous traveler. nihoa’s account offers a commentary toward the historicity of hawai’i during the turmoil of the 1850’s, ravaged by death and diseases. the analysis of postcolonial spaces as a result of colonial encounter enriches the spatiality of literary analysis by foregrounding the impact of colonialism upon the postcolonial landscape, conclusion bushnell’s ka’a’awa, narrated from nihoa’s first-person experience delineates the complexity of postcolonial spaces through the competing spatial forms of the urban, the rural, the picturesque and the macabre. nihoa’s subjective account represents the historicity of o’ahu in the 1850 as a result of hawai’i-west interaction. the evocative description conveying the picturesque hawai’ian landscapes is contrasted with the macabre and the horror due to epidemic. space in bushnell’s ka’a’awa echoes both the referential space of 1850’s o’ahu as well as symbolic meaning delineates the decline of hawai’ian natives as well as evoking apocalyptic imagery of the burning honolulu. the spatial scene narrating scene of disease, despair and death highlight the discursive and material condition of hawai’i as a postcolonial space. as a concluding remark and a possible avenue for future researchers on this novel, ka’a’awa is a polyvocal narration which portrays two protagonists, hiram nihoa and saul bristol. an analysis of how hawai’i as a postcolonial space is portrayed from saul bristol, a westerner perspective can provide a counter discourse from the indigenous point of view of hiram nihoa. references atkins, n., cambra, h., galuteria, p., & mitchell. donald d kilolani. 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(2000). reimagining the american pacific : from south pacific to bamboo ridge and beyond. durham: duke university press. phenomena catharina trihastuti – adventina putranti 138 the images of a minister built through the use of ecclesiastical words in emerson’s “the problem” chatarina trihastuti & adventina putranti chatarina.th@gmail.com & putranti@usd.ac.id department of english letters, sanata dharma university abstract “the problem”, a poem by ralph waldo emerson, expresses emerson’s preoccupation with the problem of vocation. it is about emerson’s dilemma of his admiration toward church leaders despite his refusal to remain within their ranks. “the problem” is analyzed from its diction -which consists of ecclesiastical wordsto create images that can help the readers understand the poem. this study covers two main problems. the first is dedicated to find the meaning of the ecclesiastical words especially those that are related to a ministerin “the problem” and the second is devoted to find the images created from the ecclesiastical meanings in the previous problem. the results of this analysis show that in “the problem” there are twelve expressions containing ecclesiastical meanings. the ecclesiastical meaning of a word is sometimes different from the general meaning. the ecclesiastical meaning is more specific than the general meaning. the second finding is that the ecclesiastical meanings can result in the perception of six images. the first is about the poet’s liking of the job of a minister and its burdens as well. the second shows that the poet would be a minister, with all of its burdens, even though he cannot see a minister’s faith yet. the third is about the poet’s hesitance to be a minister. the fourth is that the church with its host, chanting choir, and priest christianize the people. the fifth is about the bible and the prophets that teach about god and salvation. the sixth is about the poet’s admiration toward chrysostom, augustine, and taylor and also the reason why he chose to leave the ministry. keywords: ecclesiastical words, images introduction ralph waldo emerson wrote “the problem”. he grew up in a religious family since his ancestors were preachers. he was once a reverend in a unitarian ministry, but he resigned in 1832 because he could not believe in its tenets. after resigning from the ministry, emerson became known as the leader of american transcendentalism. he chose to sail to europe, and while in europe, he visited many scientific museums and produced some literary works including “the problem”. “the problem” was written in 1840, eight years after he resigned from the ministry. it consists of 5 stanzas. “the problem” is about emerson’s dilemma of his admiration toward church leaders despite his refusal to remain within their ranks. in “the problem” emerson uses ecclesiastical wordswords related to a church whether its nature, constitution, members, mission, functions, etc., that are interesting to study. furthermore, this study focuses on ecclesiastical words especially mailto:chatarina.th@gmail.com vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 139 those that are related to a minister. the meanings of these ecclesiastical words are sometimes different from the general meanings. they are more specific than general meanings. therefore, these ecclesiastical meanings can lead the readers to develop some images that can help them understand this poem. by understanding the use of these ecclesiastical words in “the problem” correctly, emerson’s hardship and conflict of faith can be appreciated. besides, this poem was chosen because of its unique characteristics that lead readers into a world of imagination. “poetry does not make direct reference to the world of phenomena, but provides a representation of it through its peculiar and unconventional uses of language which invites and motivate readers to create an imaginary alternative world” (verdonk, 2002: 12). in other words, a poem requires its readers to wonder in an imaginary world in order to understand the poet’s intention. in writing a poem, the poet must be able to deal with the limited space given to express all their feelings and what they wish to accomplish. therefore, the choice of words in poems or, in this case, the ecclesiastical words play a very important role in affecting the reader’s imagination. the meanings of the ecclesiastical words in emerson’s “the problem” the meanings of the ecclesiastical words are based on two dictionaries in order to see the general and the specific meanings. the dictionaries used are hornby’s oxford advanced learner’s dictionary sixth edition as the general dictionary and attwater’s the catholic encyclopedic dictionary as the specific one. in this analysis, the first stanza will be explained first and the other stanzas will follow it. i like a church, i like a cowl, i love a prophet of the soul, and on my heart monastic aisles fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; yet not for all his faith can see, would i that cowled churchman be. (emerson, 1840, 1st stanza, lines 1-6). the first stanza above can be paraphrased as follows: i like a church, i like a cowl, i love a prophet of the soul, and on my heart, monastic aisles fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles. for all i cannot see his faith yet, i would be that cowled churchman. from the paraphrase above, the poet wants to reveal his sympathy to the clergy by saying that he likes and loves everything that is related to the clergychurch, cowl, and prophet of the soul. in the poet’s heart, there is a call to live in a monastery. furthermore, the poet would be the churchman even though he can not see his faith yet. in the first stanza, five ecclesiastical words can be found. they are church, cowl, prophet, cowled, and churchman. the meaning of these ecclesiastical words is as follows: according to hornby (2000: 221), church means building, services, christian, minister, and institution while according to attwater (1951: 95) church also means building, services, christians, pastor, and congregation. both of them are similar. the fourth meaning, which is minister or pastor, it indicates that the first of the first stanza, “i like a church, …” means that the poet like a minister. according to hornby (2000: 306), cowl means a garment worn by monks and cover for a chimney. the first is the ecclesiastical meaning, like what is stated by attwater (1951: 127) that cowl is a garment worn by monks and nuns. cowl in the first line of the first stanza “… i like a cowl”, therefore, indicates that the poet likes the thing worn only by the monks. here, the poet does not only like the cowl, but he would also like to be the one who wears the cowl. he likes to be a minister. according to hornby (2000: 1058), prophet means a messenger of god, muhammad, a person knowing the future, a person teaching new idea, theory, etc., books of the old testament and the hebrew bible. these five meanings are the general meanings. the ecclesiastical meaning is like what is stated by attwater (1951: 408) that prophet is a messenger of god and a preacher. therefore, “i love a prophet of the soul” means that the poet loves the spirit to be a catharina trihastuti – adventina putranti 140 messenger of god and a preacher. the poet loves to be the minister since the minister is the one who has this kind of spirit. cowled generally and ecclesiastically is the same. it means wearing a cowl. therefore, cowled also indicates a minister, someone who wears a cowl when doing his duties in church. cowled cannot be separated from churchman since it is an adjective. according to hornby (2000: 221) and attwater (1951: 95), churchman means clergyman. therefore, cowled churchman means a member of a clergy who wears a cowl. it indicates a minister. “yet not for all his faith can see, would i that cowled churchman be”, therefore, means that the poet would be the minister although he cannot see the minister’s faith yet. why should the vest on him allure, which i could not on me endure? (emerson, 1840, 2nd stanza, lines 7-8) the second stanza is paraphrased as follows: why should the vest, which i could not endure, allure him? in the second stanza above, there is only one ecclesiastical word found, vest. according to hornby (2000: 1499), vest means underwear and waistcoat. for common people vest has no relation to the church. it is only a usual type of clothing worn under a shirt. however, according to attwater (1951: 515), vest means garment worn by ecclesiastics. therefore, it indicates a minister. the second stanza shows a contradiction with the previous stanza where the poet wants to be a minister very much. in this stanza his doubt of the church is expressed. the poet asks why the vest, which he could not endure, should allure him. this becomes a problem for him. hence the title, “the problem”, derives from this stanza and all other stanzas which will discuss this particular issue. not from a vain or shallow thought his awful jove young phidias brought; (emerson, 1840, 3rd stanza, lines 9-10) lines nine and ten are paraphrased as follows: phidias’s awful jove brought not from a vain or shallow thought. there are no ecclesiastical words found in these lines, but there are two important words to know, phidias and jove. according to miller (1962: 571) “jove was the gold and ivory statue of zeus at olympia, the work of one of the greatest of greek sculptors, the fifth century artist phidias”. this provides evidence that these two lines are related with the work of phidias. phidias made his awful jove not from a vain or shallow thought but on the contrary, he made it with a profound thought. never from lips of cunning fell the thrilling delphic oracle; (emerson, 1840, 3rd stanza, lines 11-12) lines 11-12 are paraphrased as follows: the thrilling delphic oracle never fell from lips of cunning. delphic and oracle are not ecclesiastical words, but they are also important to understand. allen (2003: 982) states that oracle: 1. an often cryptic answer to some question, usually regarding the future, purporting to come from deity. 2. a priest or priestess who delivers oracles, or a shrine housing them. 3. a person giving wise or authoritative decisions, or a statement by them from the above quotation, oracle might refer to the priest or priestess through whom the deity was believed to speak. moreover, delphic, according to allen (2003: 366), was “relating to ancient delphi or its oracle”. in ancient greece, worshippers of the god apollo would visit the oracle in the city of delphi to ask questions and seek truth. line 11 and line 12 are related to the oracle or the priestess. these lines mean that the thrilling oracle in the city of delphi never fell from cunning lips but on the contrary fell from the one who really knew about the deity. out from the heart of nature rolled the burdens of the bible old; (emerson, 1840, 3rd stanza, lines 13-14) lines 13-14 are paraphrased as follows: vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 141 the burdens of the old bible rolled out from the heart of nature. lines 13-14 means that the burden of the old testament came out of the bottom of nature’s heart. it truly came from nature’s heart. the litanies of nations came, like the volcano's tongue of flame, up from the burning core below, the canticles of love and woe. (emerson, 1840, 3rd stanza, lines 15-18) lines 15-18 are paraphrased as follows: the litanies of nations came like the volcano’s tongue of flame, up from the burning core below, the canticle of love and woe. in lines 15-18 above, the poet wants to reveal the litanies that came from the nations. these litanies came like the volcano’s tongue of flame, up from below the burning core. these litanies were the canticles of love and woe. this means that there are prayers of mankind that came sobbingly like the volcano’s tongue of flame, up from the burning core. they screamed about their hopes and their sorrows. the hand that rounded peter's dome, and groined the aisles of christian rome, wrought in a sad sincerity; himself from god he could not free; he builded better than he knew; the conscious stone to beauty grew. (emerson, 1840, 3rd stanza, lines 19-24) lines 19-24 are paraphrased as follows: the hand that rounded peter’s dome and groined the aisles of christian rome worked in sad sincerity. he could not free himself from god. he built better than he knew so the conscious stone grew beautifully. according to miller (1962:571) the hand that rounded peter’s dome in line 19 is the hand of michelangelo, “the hand was michelangelo’s, the architect of st. peter’s at rome”. michelangelo designed the great dome of st. peter’s church in rome. therefore, lines 19-24 means that peter’s dome and christian rome existed because of the artists’ hands like michelangelo. the artists worked in a sad sincerity, they worked so hard in order to make the beautiful church like peter’s dome and christian rome and of course they could not free themselves from god since god was always behind them. in the third stanza (lines 9-24), the poet wants to reveal his thankfulness towards god, the artists, and its creature. the beginning of the 3rd stanza shows that phidias made jove with his thought until jove was created amazingly. the thrilling oracle in the city of delphic also came from the expert, not from the cunning. then it was followed by the burden of the old bible from the heart of nature and the screaming of hopes and fears that came from the nation. while the nature and people in the nation screamed their hopes and fears, there was an architect, michelangelo, who made peter’s dome or christian rome. he worked so hard with the help of god. he could not free himself from god to make the beautiful art. therefore, the poet very much appreciates the artists and their works since the artists could play the role of the priest very well. the artists could express the real things that humans need from the imitation of nature. know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest of leaves and feathers from her breast; or how the fish outbuilt its shell, painting with morn each annual cell; or how the sacred pine tree adds to her old leaves new myriads? such and so grew these holy piles, whilst love and terror laid the tiles. (emerson, 1840, 4th stanza, lines 25-32) lines 25-32 are paraphrased as follows: did you know that the wood-bird's nest is made of leaves and feathers from her breast? do you know how the fish shed its shell, painting its annual cell each morning? do you know how the sacred pine tree adds her old leaves to new ones? the similar things happen toward holy piles or the church. holy piles grew while love and terror laid the tiles. in lines 25-32 of the 4th stanza above, there are questions related to nature. these are questions about how the wood-birds make their own nest with leaves and feathers, how the fish build its shell by painting its annual cell each morning, and how the sacred pine tree adds her old leaves to new ones in a very large number. these questions denote catharina trihastuti – adventina putranti 142 what the poet wants to reveal about gospel. the growth of the church is analogized to wood-birds that make their own nest using their feathers and leaves. people build the church with their own efforts until the church grow. faith renewal towards christ, like what happens during the easter ceremony when people renew their faith annually is analogized to the fish that shed their annual shell. christians are analogized to pine-trees that make their old leaves into new leaves. christians have grown into myriads. these churches grow while love and terror happen in this universe, while a lot of people tried to love or support it and on the contrary, tried to destroy it. earth proudly wears the parthenon as the best gem upon her zone; and morning opes with haste her lids to gaze upon the pyramids; o'er england's abbeys bends the sky as on its friends with kindred eye; for out of thought's interior sphere these wonders rose to upper air, and nature gladly gave them place, adopted them into her race, and granted them an equal date with andes and with ararat. (emerson, 1840, 4th stanza, lines 33-44) lines 33-44 are paraphrased as follows: earth proudly wears the parthenon as the best gem upon her zone and morning opens her lids with haste to gaze upon the pyramids. the sky bends over england's abbeys and on its friends with kindred eyes. for out of thought's interior sphere these wonders rose to upper air and nature gladly gave them place, adopted them into her race, and granted them an equal date with andes and with ararat. in these lines, the poet wants to reveal something about art, religion, and science. earth is proud of the parthenon -a temple of athena made by man where there is a large statue made by phidias and beautiful friezes as the best and the most precious stone in this universe. the same thing also happens to the pyramid, an amazing structure made by human being. morning opens her lids with haste to gaze upon the pyramids. people are enthusiastic to see it. besides, people also give honor to the abbey and to the ministers in it. these three holy piles, parthenon, pyramids and england’s abbeys are related to art, religion, and science. they were all made from thought creativity, and science. human beings, especially the artists, made these holy piles with their creativity and their ideas and as a result nature gave a place for parthenon, pyramid, and england’s abbey along side andes and ararat which are found in nature. these temples grew as grows the grass, art might obey but not surpass. (emerson, 1840, 5th stanza, lines 45-46) lines 45-46 are paraphrased as follows: these temples grew as the grass grows, art might obey but not surpass. lines 45-46 above means that churches, which had been built by the artists, grew everywhere like the grass. art, the artists, might obey the churches’ authority but it would not be more than that. the artists had their own creativity to make their creative works without the church’s intervention. the passive master lent his hand to the vast soul that o'er him planned, and the same power that reared the shrine, bestrode the tribes that knelt within. (emerson, 1840, stanza 5, lines 47-50) the quotation above can be paraphrased as follows: the master lent his passive hand to the vast soul that planned over him and the same power that reared the shrine bestrode within the tribes that knelt. in these lines, the poet wants to reveal that the artists lent their hands to make the great art or the church. they were planned by the same hand that bestrode the people that knelt within the shrine. there were so many followers or christians within it and the artists bestrode them. even the fiery pentecost girds with one flame the countless host, trances the heart through chanting choirs, and through the priest the mind inspires. (emerson. 1840, 5th stanza, lines 51-54) the lines above can be paraphrased as follows: even the fiery pentecost girds the vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 143 countless host with one flame, trances the heart through chanting choirs and through the priest whose mind inspires. in these lines, priest is an ecclesiastical word. according to hornby (2000: 1044), priest means a person who performs religious duties in church and a person who performs religious ceremonies in some religions that are not christian. the ecclesiastical meaning of priest is like what stated by attwater (1951: 400) that priest is a minister. lines 51-54 shows that pentecost as the signs of the descent of the holy spirit and the signs of the birth of the church made people unconscious through the chanting choirs and through the priest. the existence of the church with the minister and the chanting choirs, made many people interested with it and finally they became its followers or christians. the word unto the prophet spoken was writ on tables yet unbroken; (emerson, 1840, 5th stanza, lines 55-56) the two lines above are paraphrased as follows: the word spoken unto the prophet was written on unbroken tables. prophet is an ecclesiastical word found in lines 55-56. prophet in line 55 means moses, not messenger of god and preacher like stated in the table. this is evidenced by the quotation below: prophet=moses: (14th–13th centuries bc), hebrew prophet and lawgiver; brother of aaron. according to the biblical account, he was born in egypt and led the israelites across the desert toward the promised land. during the journey he was inspired by god on mount sinai to write down the ten commandments on tablets of stone (miller, 1962: 571). these lines express how the church and their prophets taught about god and salvation. the word by seers or sibyls told in groves of oak, or fanes of gold still floats upon the morning wind, still whispers to the willing mind (emerson, 1840, 5th stanza, lines 57-60) lines 57-60 are paraphrased as follows: the word told by seers or sibyls in groves of oak or fanes of gold still floats upon the morning wind, still whispers to the willing mind. lines 57-60 above talk differently about the word delivered by seers or sibyls, the sons and daughters of nature. in the two last lines (59 and 60), it is emphasized that these words (teachings) are still taught by people like emerson, for example, and are still waiting for those who are willing to accept these teachings. the poet reveals that he tries to tell the world that salvation does not always come from the church. one accent of the holy ghost the heedless world hath never lost (emerson, 1840, 5th stanza, lines 61-62) lines 61-62 are paraphrased as follows: one accent of the holy ghost hath never lost the heedless word. because of the holy ghost that is active in the world, the world has never stop paying attention. the holy ghost always cares for the people in this world. in lines 61-62, the poet wants to point out that the one thing that binds man with his maker is the human soul. without nurturing their souls humans are lost. i know what say the fathers wise, the book itself before me lies, old chrysostom, best augustine, and he who blent both in his line, the younger golden-lips or mines, taylor, the shakspeare of divines, his words are music in my ear, i see his cowled portrait dear, and yet for all his faith could see, i would not the good bishop be. (emerson, 1840, 5th stanza, lines 63-72) the above quotation is paraphrased as follows: i know what the wise fathers say, the book itself lies before me, old chrysostom, best augustine and he who blent both in his line, the younger golden lips or mines, taylor, the shakespeare of divines. his words are music in my ear. i see his cowled portrait dear and yet for all his faith could see, i would not be the good bishop. catharina trihastuti – adventina putranti 144 from the paraphrase above, four ecclesiastical words can be found. they are father, augustine, cowled and bishop. the meaning of those ecclesiastical words is as follows: according to hornby (2000: 483), father has five meanings. it means a male parent, a person’s ancestors, the first man to introduce a new way of thinking, god, and priest. the fifth meaning of father, which is priest, is the ecclesiastical meaning like what is stated by attwater (1951: 190) “the fathers: is by right the title of a mendicant friar but in speech is extended to all priests of the regular clergy.” augustine has no meaning in the general dictionary. however, according to attwater (1951: 39), the definition is the “bishop of hippo”. cowled generally and ecclesiastically is the same. it means wearing a cowl. therefore, it indicates a minister, someone who wears a cowl when doing his duties in the church. according to hornby (2000: 120), bishop has two meanings. first is a senior priest and second is a piece used in the game of chess. the first is the ecclesiastical meaning like what is stated by attwater (1951: 56) that bishop is the supreme ecclesiastical ruler of the diocese. beside the information above, there is also important information from major writers of america. here is this important information: old chrysostom: st. john chrysostom, bishop of antioch in the fourth century. the sobriquet “chrysostom” meaning “golden lips,” was applied to him because of his eloquence as a preacher (miller, 1962: 573). from the quotation above, old chrysostom in line 65 of the fifth stanza refers to st. john chrysostom, bishop of antioch in the fourth century. the sobriquet “chrysostom” meaning “golden lips,” was applied to him because of his eloquence as a preacher. jeremy taylor (1613-1667), bishop of dromore, one of the greatest of anglican pulpit orators. he is sometimes known as the "shakespeare of divines" for his poetic style of expression and was often presented as a model of prose writing. taylor's fame has been maintained by the popularity of his sermons and devotional writings rather than by his influence as a theologian or his importance as an ecclesiastic. (miller, 1962: 573) from the quotation above, this means that taylor in line 68 of the fifth stanza refers to jeremy taylor. he was a bishop and one of the greatest of the anglican pulpit orators. he was known as the shakespeare of divines, which implies that he was great artist of divines. “mines: that is, of golden eloquence” (miller, 1962: 573). this implies that mines in line 67 refers to emerson himself, he was the younger “golden lips”. he was eloquent as the preacher. based on the ecclesiastical words and some of the other information above, the poet wants to tell about his belief that salvations did not come from the church only. he also knew what the ministers said about the bible. he knew that the bible had existed before him. st. john chrysostom, st. augustine and taylor, were great preachers and great orators, so was emerson. their words were music in his ear and the poet liked them. emerson knew that they were good clergymen also. however, the poet would not be a good bishop in spite of his faith. the poet chose to leave the ministry. the images created from the meaning of the ecclesiastical words 1. church actually church has five ecclesiastical meanings. church means building, services, christians, pastor or minister, and congregation. the fourth meaning of church, which is minister, creates an image of a person who is in clerical states and lives to serve the church. a minister has responsibilities towards god, christianity, ../../../../../wiki/sermon vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 145 christians, and themselves. a minister, as the leader of the church institution, has big duties since there are so many christians that have various backgrounds in the congregation. there are many responsibilities on his shoulders, regarding the church. based on this image, church is not as simple as its looks. church which means minister here is to indicate the poet’s liking of the minister and to explain the burdens as well. 2. cowl the ecclesiastical meaning of cowl is a long ample garment with wide sleeves worn by the monks or nuns only as their habit in a church. the image created from this ecclesiastical meaning then is that cowl is not a garment worn by everyone, but it is only used by a member of religious orders such as monks or nuns when participating in the liturgy. those who wear the cowl have big duties in both the church and in society. they are unmarried and live in a monastery or in a church. they have to serve god and christians by leading the mass or preaching in front of the christians in a church or in other places. they have to behave nicely and be a role model as well as a good person. they must have a moral responsibility since everything that they do is looked on by others. therefore, to be the person who wears the cowl is not as easy as it looks because there are a lot of duties. cowl in the first stanza therefore is used by the poet to show his liking of a minister who has these kinds of duties and also to show the burdens of wearing the cowl. 3. prophet of the soul this phrase ecclesiastically means the spirit of the messenger of god. the image created when there is a person who loves a prophet of the soul is that the person is close enough to god and has a spirit to be the messenger of god or to convey the messages from god since the prophet is a person who gets revelations from god about religion and its mission. nowadays, a person who wants to convey god’s messages or who has this kind of spirit can do it by serving god, christians, church, and society through becoming a minister, nun, or another among the clerical orders. in this poem, a poet is one example of a person who loves this spirit. the poet loves to be the messenger of god, to be the minister who delivers god’s messages and preaches to the christians. however, this prophet of the soul is not only used to convey the poet’s liking of the spirit of prophet. behind the spirit of prophet here, there are burdens that are not light. they should convey god’s messages for various kinds of people and not all of them can receive these messages easily. sometimes people who want to convey god’s messages have to receive humiliations, unbelief, insults, etc from people who do not want to receive it. prophet of the soul in the first stanza is therefore used by the poet to show his liking of a minister who has the spirit of the prophet and also to show the burdens of it. in conclusion, the three ecclesiastical meanings abovechurch, cowl, and prophet of the soullead the readers to create the image that to be a minister is not easy since there are a lot of duties and responsibilities that can be a burden. they show the poet’s liking and burdens of a minister all at once. four ecclesiastical meanings above are related to clergy, especially with the clergyman or minister. they show that the poet likes everything that relates to the clergychurch, cowl, and prophet of the soulalthough to be the clergyman is not easy since there are so many burdens. however, still there is a call in the poet’s heart to be the clergyman. 4. cowled churchman the ecclesiastical meaning of cowled churchman is a male member of christian clergy or a member of a church. the image created from this ecclesiastical meaning is that a cowled churchman can be clergyman, a minister or a priest. cowled churchman has the authority to perform certain rites and administer certain sacraments, it depends on their institution whether he is the jesuits, the franciscans, or the dominican. he performs religious ceremonies and duties in a church. at mass, he acts as readers, reading aloud catharina trihastuti – adventina putranti 146 passages from the bible, and he helps distribute the holy communion. cowled churchman has to live under religious vows poverty, chastity, and obedience. from the images of cowled churchman above, the image created for “yet not for all his faith can see, would i that cowled churchman be”, is that the poet would be the minister, with all of its burdens, in spite of the fact that he cannot see the minister’s faith yet. 5. vest vest in the second stanza ecclesiastically means a special garment worn only by a churchman when doing his duty in a church. the image created from this ecclesiastical meaning is that vest is a symbol of a minister since not all people can wear it, only a churchman can do it. this is not as simple as its general meaning. the vest is not only about the special garment worn by ministers but like a minister who wears a cowl, a minister who wears a vest has duties, responsibilities, and burdens also. either in church or in society he has duties to be the leader for many people, to be someone to follow, to serve god and christians. he has a moral responsibility, everything he does should be good and nice. for example, a minister who wears a vest cannot do something which is not good like dating a woman, hanging out in a mall or club and drinking alcohol. his duties and responsibilities are not easy. there are heavy burdens on his shoulders. from this image, it can be seen that actually the poet starts to question his ability to carry on as a minister. this stanza shows a problem faced by the poet. in the previous stanza, it is just a sign of a problem faced by the poet. here in the second stanza, the problem starts to appear clearly. he asks himself why being a minister allures him. 6. priest the ecclesiastical meaning of priest in the fifth stanza is the minister of divine worship, especially in its highest act, sacrifices. the image that comes from this ecclesiastical meaning is of certain members of the clergy who primarily performs religious ceremonies and gives religious advice. a priest also has the authority to transmit sacred power to others through ceremonies, conducts worship services, administers the sacraments, preaches among others. the ecclesiastical meanings of priest give an image of “even the fiery pentecost girds with one flame the countless host, trances the heart through chanting choirs, and through the priest the mind inspires”. (emerson. 1840, stanza 5, lines 51-54) the emergence of the church with its holy breads, its chanting choirs and its priest hypnotize the people. the emergence of the church with its priest and its chanting choirs make many people interested in it and finally they became its followers or christians. 7. prophet the ecclesiastical meaning of this word is the messenger of god. since prophet in problem formulation one refers to moses, therefore the image created from this ecclesiastical meaning is moses, a messenger of god who during his journey was inspired by god on mount sinai to write down the ten commandments on tablets of stone. prophet creates an image about the bible spoken unto moses that was written on the ten commandments. it indicates that the ten commandments, which are a list of rules for living and for worship of christianity, teach about god and salvation. the ten commandments are divided into two groups. the first group deals with the relationship between people and god, while the second group deals with the relationship among the people. “the word unto the prophet spoken was writ on tables yet unbroken;” (emerson, 1840, stanza 5, lines 55-56). “the word by seers or sibyls told in groves of oak, or fanes of gold still floats upon the morning wind, still whispers to the willing mind” (emerson, 1840, stanza 5, lines 57-60) means that these words (teachings) are still taught by people like emerson and are still waiting for those who are willing to accept them. the poet tries to tell the world that salvation does not always come from the church. the four lines above talk differently vol. 14 no. 2 – october 2014 147 about the word delivered by seers or sibyls, the sons and daughters of nature. 8. father the ecclesiastical meaning of this word is all the priests of the regular clergy. the image created from this ecclesiastical meaning is a priest of the christian church. father is a term of address for priests in some churches (especially the roman catholic church or the orthodox catholic church). 9. augustine the ecclesiastical meaning of this world is bishop of hippo. the image that comes from this ecclesiastical meaning is saint augustine. his beliefs can be divided into three main groups: (1) god and the soul, (2) sin and grace, and (3) the church and the sacraments. 10. colwed portrait it is an adjective of cowl, which is a long ample garment with wide sleeves worn by the monks or nuns in a church. the image built from cowled portrait is the picture of a minister. 11. bishop the ecclesiastical meaning of this word is the supreme ecclesiastical ruler of the diocese. the image that comes from this ecclesiastical meaning is that a bishop is a clergyman of high rank who is the head of a church district or diocese. he administers an area that contains a number of churches. these churches teach that only bishops possess full priesthood and, therefore, only they can ordain clergy and perform certain other priestly functions. such churches consider bishops the successors of the apostles of jesus christ. the image created from the meaning of father, augustine, cowled portrait, and bishop refers to the poet’s reason why he chooses to leave the church. he knows what the priest says about the bible, he knows that the bible has been laid before him. he admires st. john chrysostom, st. augustine, and jeremy taylor or shakespeare of divines because of their eloquence as preachers, orators, and the poet himself is also like them, a great preacher and orator. for the poet, their words are music in his ears. the poet sees his cowled portrait and yet, in spite of his faith, he would not be the good bishop, and he chooses to leave the ministry. based on the analysis presented above, the images created from the meaning of ecclesiastical words can be grouped in the following table: no stanza ecclesiastical words/phrases images created 1 1 church, cowl, prophet of the soul the poet’s liking minister and its burden as well. 2 1 cowled churchman the poet would be the minister 3 2 vest hesitance to be the minister 4 5 priest church and its host, priest, and chanting choir makes people become christians 5 5 prophet bible and ten commandments 6 5 father, augustine, cowled portrait, bishop the poet’s admiration toward chrysostom, augustine, and taylor and then the reason why he leaves ministry conclusion from the analysis of the first problem, there are 12 ecclesiastical words with specific meanings. the ecclesiastical meanings are sometimes different from general meanings. they are more specific than the general meanings. from the analysis of the second problem, there are 11 ecclesiastical meanings that create six images. first is an image about the poet’s liking of the minister and its burdens as well that comes from church, cowl, and prophet of the soul. second is an image that the poet would be the minister, with all of its burdens, in spite of the fact that he cannot see minister’s faith yet. this image comes from the meaning of cowled churchman. catharina trihastuti – adventina putranti 148 third is an image of the poet’s hesitance to be the minister which comes from the meaning of vest. forth is an image that the church with host, chanting choir, and priest makes people become christians. this image comes from the meaning of priest. fifth is an image about the bible and the prophets that teach about god and salvation. this image comes from the meaning of prophet. the last is an image about the poet’s admiration toward chrysostom, augustine, and taylor and also the reason why he chooses to leave the ministry. this image comes from the meaning of father, augustine, cowled portrait, and bishop. references allen, robert. the penguin english dictionary 2nd edition. london: penguin books, 2003. print. attwater, donald. the catholic encyclopedic dictionary. london: cassell and comp. ltd., 1951. print. carpenter i, frederick. ralph waldo emerson. new york: american book company, 1934. print. hornby, a.s. oxford advanced learner’s dictionary sixth edition. new york: oxford university press, 2000. print. miller, perry. major writers of america i: bradford, taylor, franklin, edwards, irving, cooper, bryant, poe, emerson, thoreau, hawthorne, longfellow, lowell, melville, whitman. new york: harcourt, brace & wond, inc, 1962. print. verdonk, peter. stylistics. oxford: oxford university press, 2002. print. 125 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 125 – 139 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.5097 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. humor as a political act: study of indonesian presidents’ humor surahmat, i dewa putu wijana, suryo baskoro surahmat@mail.ugm.ac.id faculty of cultural sciences, universitas gadjah mada yogyakarta indonesia abstract article information this study aims to explain the use of humor by indonesian presidents for political communication. presidents’ use of humor is an interesting phenomenon, given that they are social subjects who wield great power within a country. their social position leads to different characteristics and social impacts due to the humor used. this research uses a qualitative descriptive approach. data was collected from books, news sites, and youtube channels documenting the humor of the three indonesian presidents. data were then analyzed using pragmatic analysis. the results show that presidential humor varies according to personal preferences, speech objectives, and contexts. presidents use joke, conversational humor, and pun to joke, tease, praise, satirize, criticize, and delegate power. joking, teasing, and praising are used on friends and political allies. meanwhile, satirizing and criticizing are applied to political opponents. humor is a middle ground for presidents, enabling them to achieve speech objectives without explicitly expressing their intention. politically, humor functions to (1) represent oneself positively and represent opponents negatively, (2) build relationships and positioning with opponents and allies, and (3) exercise control and discipline. however, the relationship between form, style, and illocutionary of presidential humor is often ambiguous. such conditions seem related to political relations' dynamic and equal nature, where friends and foes are not always crystal clear. keywords: humor, political humor, presidential humor received: 28 august 2022 revised: 1 december 2022 accepted: 3 december 2022 introduction humor discourse plays a crucial role in contemporary politics. in practice, humor does not only melt the pot but also increases the persuasion of political messages (innocenti & miller, 2016), convey social criticism (webb, 1981; wijana, 2018), include and exclude certain parties (kessel, 2011), and spread and reinforce ideology (sorensen, 2008). humor is also a means of resistance (dubberley, 1988; sorensen, 2008) as it can be employed for constructing and consolidating political brands (săftoiu & popescu, 2014). https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:surahmat@mail.ugm.ac.id journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) surahmat et al. 126 president is one of the parties that use humor in his political communication. several presidents in various countries often rely on humor for that purpose. in the united states, presidents abraham lincoln, ronald reagan, roosevelt, and barack obama were considered successful in using humor in their communication (carpenter et al., 2019). zimbabwean president robert mugabe was also known for his frequent use of humor in touch (maremera, 2020). the president of ukraine, vladimir zelensky, who has a comical background, also uses humor in several political events (zhadanova & shirobokov, 2019). in indonesia, presidents also frequently employ humor for the same political purposes. sukarno (bung karno), indonesia’s first president, often used humor to communicate with staff, ministers, and fellow state leaders. president abdurrahman wahid (gus dur) was known to be good at using humor in various situations (budiyanto, 2009; faridl, 2011; khusnita, 2013; lu’lu, 2022; qomariyah, 2021). likewise, the current president of the republic of indonesia, joko widodo (jokowi), is known to use humor on various occasions. the other four indonesian presidents (suharto, b.j. habibie, megawati sukarnoputri, and susilo bambang yudhoyono) have also employed humor in their political communication with varying intensity. the president’s use of humor is interesting because it relates to his social status and political power. as a language user, the president is a subject who has the same position as other language users. however, on a societal level, he holds a special place as he has great power in the government. this power allows him access to information, knowledge, and social skills that ordinary people do not have. political power also makes him have a special relationship with the people around him. these privileges allow the president to use humor differently to approach a particular discourse he wants. several previous studies show that humor has been widely used by presidents in many countries to campaign, debate (rhea, 2007, 2012), establish relationships with constituents (carpenter et al., 2019), and communicate political regulations (waisanen, 2015). in indonesia, studies on presidential humor are limited to the use of linguistic features in creating humor, for instance, in terms of the use of implicature (budiyanto, 2009; faridl, 2011; khusnita, 2013) and the used language styles (priharyadi & ariyanto, 2015). there has not yet been a study on humor as a form of political action. this research possesses a novelty in terms of its exploration of the relationship between the form, style, and illocutionary humor of the presidents with the political goals they want to achieve. this study aims to explain how indonesian presidents use humor in their political communication. this question will be answered through a pragmatic approach. to answer it, the researchers describe (1) the characteristics and styles of presidential humor, (2) presidential humor as a form of middle-ground communication to convey political messages, and (3) the political goals that the presidents want to achieve through humor. the significance of this research is to increase understanding of the fundamental nature of humor, especially political humor. for communication practitioners, this study can be used to improve the effectiveness of political communication. methodology this study used a conversational analysis (ca) approach. this approach assume that conversation is a form of social action (baxter, 2010). this assumption is relevant to the nature of presidential humor studied in this study. the humor is basically a part of the conversation whose use involves turn-taking. the contextual meaning of humor can only be understood by involving the social context of its use. to understand the contextual meaning of humorous discourse, researchers examine the illocutionary speech by studying the form and style of humor with the social context of its use. to get the illocutionary of each humor studied, the researcher reconstructs the use of humor by involving the social context of its use. reconstruction is carried out by digging up data on the social context of the use of humor which includes time and place settings, participants, social relations between participants, and events when humor is used. this is done because each of the humors studied contains contextual information. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 127 the selected data were 36 humor discourses collected from different sources. president sukarno’s humor was obtained from the book ketawa bersama bung besar (laughing with the big bro) by eddi elison (elison, 2014). abdurrahman wahid’s humor was obtained from the book gitu aja kok repot by abdul rahman (rahman, 2020). president joko widodo’s humor was obtained from national news sites and youtube. two president joko widodo’s humor are respectively from cnn indonesia (https://www.cnnindonesia.com/nasional/2 0180424181310-20-293221/jokowi-sindirmenteri-susi-ingin-jadi-cawapres) and republika (https://sindikasi.republika.co.id/ berita/ q0jv76430/jokowi-singgung-pelukanerat-surya-palohsohibul-iman), four are from liputan 6 (https://hot.liputan6.com/read/ 3979898/ 4-guyonan-ala-jokowi-ini-suksesbikin-ketawa), and four are from the presidential secretariat youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@sekretariatpre siden). data were analyzed using conversational analysis. the analysis was carried out in two stages, namely identification and synthesis. at the identification stage, the researcher identified the form, style, and illocutionary of humor. the form identification relies on a theory by martin (2007) which divides humor into three forms, namely joke, anecdote, and pun. identification is done by looking at the textual structure of humor. the style is based on a theory by martin et al. (2003) who divided humor styles into four, namely affiliative, selfenhancing, self-defeating, and aggressive. identification of style is done by looking at the content of humor and the relationship between humor speakers, audiences, and humor targets. the illocutionary act is based on a theory by austin, 1962). identification is carried out based on the content of speech and the broader context of its use. in the synthesis stage, the data that has been identified is then interpreted contextually by linking the use of humor to the social, historical and contemporary political conditions of indonesia. results and discussion characteristics and choices of presidential humor both personal and social factors influence the use of presidential humor. its choices in terms of styles and forms are due to individual preference and purpose of speech. on the one hand, humor regulates the relationship between the president and speech partners and its targets. on the other hand, humor is also held by social context the time it is expressed. the data shows that the types of humor used by the president of indonesia tend to vary. president sukarno used conversational humor (8) and anecdotes (3). president abdurrahman wahid (gus dur) used more diverse types of humor, such as puns (4), jokes (8), and conversational humor (2). meanwhile, president joko widodo uses conversational humor more often (9) and only uses puns once. conversational humor is a form of spontaneous humor that usually appears in a conversation (martin, 2007). this type of humor tends to be intuitive and is firmly correlated to context, as in humor 1 below: humor 1 in may 2019, jokowi held an iftar with highranking officials from other countries. officials in attendance included the speaker of the people's consultative assembly, zulkili hasan, speaker of the house of representatives bambang soesatyo, and ministers. journalists asked president jokowi about the political conditions in the country, including what agreements were made at the event. with a serious face, jokowi replied, "yes, we agreed. together at one table earlier. the speakers and deputy speakers of the people's consultative assembly, house of representatives, regional leadership, and the constitutional court chief justice are also there. we all agree that later on monday, we will break our fast at the place of the speaker of the house of representatives, mr. bambang soesatyo. https://www.cnnindonesia.com/nasional/20180424181310-20-293221/jokowi-sindir-menteri-susi-ingin-jadi-cawapres https://www.cnnindonesia.com/nasional/20180424181310-20-293221/jokowi-sindir-menteri-susi-ingin-jadi-cawapres https://www.cnnindonesia.com/nasional/20180424181310-20-293221/jokowi-sindir-menteri-susi-ingin-jadi-cawapres https://sindikasi.republika.co.id/%20berita/%20q0jv76430/jokowi-singgung-pelukan-erat-surya-palohsohibul-iman https://sindikasi.republika.co.id/%20berita/%20q0jv76430/jokowi-singgung-pelukan-erat-surya-palohsohibul-iman https://sindikasi.republika.co.id/%20berita/%20q0jv76430/jokowi-singgung-pelukan-erat-surya-palohsohibul-iman https://hot.liputan6.com/read/%203979898/ https://hot.liputan6.com/read/%203979898/ https://www.youtube.com/@sekretariatpresiden https://www.youtube.com/@sekretariatpresiden journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) surahmat et al. 128 jokes are humor in the form of anecdotes that have been packaged and memorized so they can be passed on to one another (martin, 2007; raskin, 1985). the characteristics of jokes are narrative, short, and containing setups ending with a punchline. one of sukarno's humor was presented to the american ambassador to indonesia, howard jones, who was also his friend, below is anecdot. humor 2 "do you know what a woman's age has in common with the state of a country?" asked soekarno. ambassador jones shook his head. sukarno answered immediately. "women aged 15 to 19 are like africans. they are wild, young, and untouched." "women aged 20 to 29 are like the united states. rich, passionate, and have many advantages." "women aged 30 to 39 are like india. they have many stories and are mysterious." "women 40-49 years like france. she had the glory. but in the past." "women aged 50, 60, and 70 are like russia. big, wide, and no one wants to come close." pun is a type of humor that exploits the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that some words sound alike but have different meanings (martin, 2007). pun can be seen in abdurrahman’s humor below when he play with semantic ambiguity of term “empat mata”. humor 3 when megawati sukarno putri became president of the republic of indonesia, she was confused by the many problems facing this nation. she felt unable to cope with all these problems.. she was so confused, she felt should meet gus dur and talk to him one-on-one (in bahasa indonesia: empat mata). finally, megawati invited gus dur to the palace through his aide. but what happened? gus dur refused megawati's invitation. megawati became even more confused. when asked by his daughter, yenni wahid, why he refused to meet with megawati, gus dur casually replied, “obviously i refused. you already know that i only have one eye, why did he ask for a one-on-one meeting (pertemuan empat mata)?”. table 1. forms of presidential humor president forms of humor joke conversational humor pun sukarno 3 8 0 abdurrahman wahid 8 2 5 joko widodo 0 9 1 in addition to varying in nature, presidential humor varies according to style. the data shows that president sukarno more often used affiliative (amount: 5 humor), aggressive (amount: 3 humor), and selfenhancing (amount: 2 humor) styles. president abdurrahman wahid used aggressive (amount: 5 humor), affiliative (amount: 4 humor), and self-defeating (amount: 1 humor) styles. most of president jokowi’s humor is affiliative (amount: 8 humor), although he also uses aggressive, selfdefeating, and self-enhancing humor styles. according to martin et al. (2003), affiliative humor tends to be used by someone by saying funny things to cheer up others, facilitate relationships, and reduce interpersonal tension. this style usually puts the speaker and the audience on one side so that both can enjoy the fun. president joko widodo used this humor type in humor 4 below: humor 4 when commemorating national music day at the state palace, president jokowi journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 129 delivered a speech to the audience. the guests were musicians from various generations. president jokowi said that during visits to various regions, he often held quizzes with bicycle prizes. at that time, he wanted to do a quiz. however, because the bicycle had not been prepared, he would give a business card to exchange for a bicycle in the palace. “the question is not about fish,” president jokowi answered with laughter from the audience. self-enhancing humor is usually used to increase the speaker's pleasure. it places the unpleasant experience and the paradox of life as funny stuff. a humorous perspective makes people more relaxed in facing stress or difficulty. sukarno used this style in humor 5 below: humor 5 in 1960, when the conflict between the west and east blocks was heating up, bung karno got invited to visit moscow, the soviet union, on october 3, 1960. before bung karno’s group left, there was an argument because the soviet union objected to bung karno’s departure with a chartered plane belonging to an american company pan am. kremlin offered to pick up bung karno on a particular soviet plane. however, the offer was rejected. bung karno would cancel the visit if his decision were not agreed upon. the soviet union eventually softened and let bung karno go with pan am. on the way back to indonesia, bung karno told reporters, “you know, moscow is also afraid of us if we threaten them.” “how come?” asked a reporter. “because moscow knows that there are bears in indonesia. not a red one, but a black bear and likes to eat honey.” self-defeating humor is used to entertain others by belittling oneself. this effort is made to win the heart or approval of others by making yourself a weak and lousy party. it is associated with humor as a means of defensive rejection or a tendency to hide underlying negative feelings. abdurrahman wahid used this humor, respectively, in humor 6. humor 6 at the afterlife’s door, an angel asked a metromini driver. “what was your job back then in the world?” “i was only a metromini driver, sir.” the angel then gave a luxury room to the driver, as well as some golden stuff. gus dur then came, guided by his faithful aide. “what was your job back then?” asked the angel to gus dur. “i was a president and preacher, sir.” the angel then gave a small room and wooden stuff. however, gus dur complained about the decision. “sir, how can i only get these? i was a president and preacher, yet i got no more than the metromini driver, even worse.” the angel replied calmly, “you made people fell asleep during your preaching so that people forgot the god almighty. meanwhile, the driver, in contrast, drove in a rush; he made people pray.” aggressive humor is associated with sarcasm, ridicule, and "insult." the distinctive character of this humor is its use of targeting other parties without regard to its potential impact on others. the user of this humor puts himself in a superior position, giving him a legitimate sense of laughing at others, even if the humor hurts them. abdurrahman wahid used it in 7. humor 7 journalist: what position do you think is suitable for amien rais? gus dur: head of bulog. let him be happy to take care of rice (rice is pronounced the same way as rais). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) surahmat et al. 130 table 2. styles of presidential humor president style affiliative self-enhancing self-defeating aggressive sukarno 5 2 0 4 abdurrahman wahid 6 0 3 6 joko widodo 7 1 1 1 the choice of various forms and styles of humor also gives birth to its various illocutions. the data shows that the presidents’ illocutionary humor includes joking, teasing, satirizing, praising, criticizing, and delegating power. the table below shows the humorous illocutionary power of three different presidents. table 3. illocutionary acts of presidential humor president illocutionary acts joking teasing satirizing praising delegating sukarno 5 4 0 2 0 abdurrahman wahid 8 3 4 0 0 joko widodo 5 0 2 2 1 data in table 1 shows that indonesian presidents use numerous forms of humor. the variety is due to their personal preferences. in fact, personalities are proven to determine choices in humor (ann & calhoun, 2001; čekrlija et al., 2022; johnson & mccord, 2010). characters matter because humor styles are bounded to other qualities in individuals, which can be proposed in five factors, namely neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. in the presented data, president sukarno, for example, tends to use conversational humor which is correlated with extraversion factors including sociable, talkative, and funloving. his humor demonstrates his fondness for conversing with various parties such as friends, ministers, journalists, palace staff, and aides. sukarno often took the initiative to ignite humor in both official and unofficial forums. meanwhile, president abdurrahman wahid’s choice of humor also directly indicates that he is a witty person. this trait is related to the openness factor, including curious, broad interests, and unconventional. in his hands, jokes became the safest choice to express his unique, against the current, and even controversial attitudes and opinions. his broad interests and knowledge make the humor topics very diverse, ranging from social, politics, to religion. just like president sukarno, president joko widodo also majorly uses conversational humor. however, the influencing factor is different. most of joko widodo’s humor was conveyed when he gave a speech or was interviewed by journalists, in contrast to sukarno who used humor to dilute informal chatter. president joko widodo’s choice is related to the agreeableness factor including soft-hearted, good-natured, and trusting. the influence of agreeableness is relevant to the dominant humor mission in the form of praise, flattery, and once in a while: satire. besides the choice of forms, presidential humor styles are also various. they can be seen in table 2. this tendency seems to be based on the nature of affiliative humor that can please all parties. president sukarno used this humor to maintain the warmth of relations between his family, staff, subordinates, and journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 131 fellow leaders of the country. president abdurrahman wahid used this type of humor to entertain his congregation (because he was also a kiai), journalists, and his friends. meanwhile, president joko widodo uses affiliative humor to strengthen relationships between people from various backgrounds, especially his constituens and allies. the second most used humor by the president is aggressive humor. as stated by r. a. martin et al. (2003), the distinctive character of this humor is to target other parties, both parties who hear directly and third parties. the high frequency of using aggressive humor seems to be related to the political position of the president, who often has the opposition of other politicians. president abdurrahman wahid often used this type of humor to satirize or criticize his political opponents, people he identified with his political and ideological interests. self-enhancing humor ranks third in the frequency of use. the hallmark of selfenhancing humor is to make unpleasant experiences or incongruities in life funny. a humorous perspective makes people more relaxed in facing stress or difficulty. president sukarno used this humor, among other things, to laugh at the inconsistency of his attitude against the imperialist state but instead used its products. he also used this humor to enjoy self-superiority when dealing with leaders of other countries. president abdurrahman wahid used this type of humor to enjoy the humorous nature of his people, especially the madurese, who seemed to have a special place in his heart. meanwhile, president jokowi uses this type of humor to make his relationship with his wife fun. the data shows that self-defeating humor is rarely used by presidents. president sukarno did not use this type of humor, while presidents abdurrahman wahid and jokowi only used it once. this seems to be related to the president’s socially and politically superior position. as the head of state and a government whose honor is strictly guarded, he is not worthy to be humiliated even through humor. the forms and styles of humor are influenced by personal preferences and speech objectives, while illocutionary acts are more determined by the social setting and practical goals that the president wants to achieve. by adapting hypothesis proposed by martineau (1972) on the social function of humor, three determining social settings on presidents’ position are revealed. they are (1) humor speakers and audiences are in the same group (2) humor speakers and audiences are in different groups and the content of humor is about one of the groups, and (3) humor speakers and audiences are in different groups and the humor is related to the interaction of two groups. president is a social subject connected uniquely to other surrounding subjects such as supporters, opposition, and neutral parties. when speaking to the internal groups, the president uses humor to establish collective solidarity, discipline its members, or encourage hostility towards the opponents. humor 8 below is an example of an aggressive style of conversational humor that president sukarno used when talking to cuban president fidel castro. the social context shows that sukarno and castro were in one internal group (actor = audience), namely as leaders of countries that were both colonized. meanwhile, britain is an outside group because it is a colonial state. humor 8 when bung karno made a state visit to havana on may 9, 1960, bung karno was greeted by prime minister fidel castro. they seemed so close that they exchanged hats. bung karno gave his taqiyah (muslim skullcap) to castro, and castro gave his guerrilla hat to bung karno. castro then served bung karno a cigar while commenting, “this is the original production of our country. tobacco and sugar make the colonial state always target us.” after smoking a cigar with castro, bung karno handed him a can of his favorite cigarette, the player brand, made in england. castro was amazed and asked, “don’t the imperialists make this?” journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) surahmat et al. 132 “that’s right! the imperialists and capitalists must be sucked into smoke and dust,” answered bung karno. the preceding humor is used by president sukarno to enhance internal solidarity and hostility with external groups. the solidarity function is manifested with pre-assumption that indonesia and cuba are two countries experiencing the same terrible fortune to be colonized. meanwhile, the hostility function is manifested by sparing britain as a colonial state. humor 7 is an aggressive-style pun used by president abdurrahman wahid to charge external groups. aggressive humor is style of humor associated with sarcasm, ridicule, and "insult" (martin, 2007). this humor was created by abdurrahman wahid by taking advantage of the similarity of the sound of amien’s last name, “rais”, to the word “rice”, which was the main commodity managed by bulog. the social context that triggered this humor was the political enmity between the president and amien rais, who was then chairman of the people’s consultative assembly (mpr). amien rais is trying to oust abdurrahman wahid through a special trial. this social context proves that abdurrahman wahid’s humor was used to disintegrate his political opponent amien rais. the proposed social function is accommodated by humor potential in bringing certain illocution, which in this case, is an effort to made fun of opponents—to trigger his anger. humor 4 is an affiliative-style conversational humor used by president joko widodo to maintain internal solidarity. its humor was given birth by a specific social context, namely the commemoration of music day. as the leader of the government in charge of regulating music, president joko widodo invites musicians to talk about the progress of national music scheme. this context shows that president joko widodo as an actor (a), is in the same group with the musicians as the audience (au). the humor refers to president joko widodo’s habit of carrying out quizzes by asking the names of fish when meeting people. instead of asking the same questions, president joko widodo chose to ask about music. humor 4 serves to increase internal solidarity because it contains an illocutionary, namely in the form of praise, to the audience who are considered too intelligent to be simply asked the names of fish. moreover, by asking about music, president joko widodo demonstrates that he has the same interest and appreciation as the musicians. humor as middle ground in political communication table 3 shows that illocutionary acts in presidential humor are quite various due to distinguishing speech objectives and social contexts. this part will reveal that illocutionary acts in presidential humor can serve as a political communication middle ground. humor is used to joke, tease, satirize, criticize, and delegate power. by using humor, speech objectives can be achieved without overlooking correlated values and social contexts. joking joking is the most common speech act found in presidential humor. this speech act can be related to indonesia’s social and political context. president is culturally a person possessing a noble and dear position. this status can construct a distant relationship with others. meanwhile, social distance is the potential to cause communication problems, a situation that no speaker, including the president, wants. by using humor, the president tried to reduce the distance so that communication with his family, palace staff, journalists, and the general public got the streets ahead. this speech act can be seen in the following humor 9: humor 9 after inaugurating the indonesian ambassador to the kingdom of the netherlands, soedjarwo tjondronegoro, bung karno saw a reporter enjoying the beauty of the denok statue in the bogor palace courtyard. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 133 the statue was made by a sculptor trubus, depicting an officer in bogor palace. bung karno approached the reporter and asked, “what’s interesting from the denok?” “mr trubus’s ability to sculpt it, sir!” “are you sure not because of the naked statue?” the reporter blushed. “you are still young. " i know what’s in your thought…” said bung karno. seeing the reporter smiling, bung karno asked again, “have you seen the original body?” president stands in a particular political position. this position often places the president as “another” or even an opponent to other political actors. as a social distance, the political difference can also create communication problems. hence, the president jacks self-acceptance up by utilizing humor to omit the communication barrier. this strategy can be observed in the following humor 10: humor 10 during a speech at the national conference of the golkar party, president jokowi, a cadre of the indonesian democratic party of struggle (pdip), expressed his experience of being asked by many people. “i was asked, ‘why is the coordinating minister for political, legal, and security affairs (luhur binsar panjaitan) calling the regional leadership councils (dpds) of golkar?’ i replied, ‘mr luhut is in the golkar party advisory council’. isn’t he?” then, someone else asked why the vice president also gathered the dpds. my answer was the same, ‘mr jusuf kalla used to be the (general) chairman of the golkar party. that’s fine too.’ various questions went in a row. ‘so where is the palace?’ this was my crystal clear answer, ‘the palace? it is at merdeka utara street.’” for a political figure such as president, joking is a speech act which facilitates a positive and wide acceptance in certain environments. in some interpersonal relationships, it can create a better quality, leading to a higher possibility of being loved and respected by people in general. teasing the speech act of teasing can also be found in presidential humor. it is identical to aggressive humor, which presidents commonly use to change certain conditions on staff, political allies or opponents, or journalist into pleasant situations. this speech act can be found in the following humor: humor 11 journalist: gus, what if you were nominated with your partner, akbar tanjung? gus dur: nah, i’m afraid of the breaking! journalist: what breaking? gus dur: the students. they will be on the roof of the legislative building again. in humor 7 abdurrahman wahid used humor to tease akbar tanjung. as the general chair of the golkar party, he was responsible for causing student demonstrations at the dpr/mpr building in 1998. this humor is to show implicative rejection and dislike. humor, in this case, is to avoid the image of the arrogance of the president. satirizing the president may disagree with others as an individual or head of a country. the president’s disapproval can be presented directly or indirectly. in indonesia, disagreements tend to be expressed indirectly to remain courteous. the following humor 12 contains an innuendo by president jokowi to his coalition partner, chairman of the nasdem party surya paloh for his political manoeuvre. humor 12 in a speech during the celebration of the 55th anniversary (hut) of the golkar party at the sultan hotel, senayan, central jakarta, wednesday night (11/5/2019), president jokowi greeted all chairpersons of invited parties. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) surahmat et al. 134 “the honorable party chairman mr surya paloh. we know by looking at him that tonight, he is much brighter than usual after meeting mr sohibul iman at pks. his face is so glaring,” said jokowi. president jokowi mentioned that surya paloh embraced sohibul iman in the previous meeting. “i’ve never been embraced by mr surya as tight as he did with mr sohibul iman,” explained jokowi. the satire is a form of indirect warning made by president joko widodo against surya paloh. joko widodo can imply disapproval of surya paloh’s actions without having to express it directly with humor. as a coalition partner in the government, the president realized he did not have the authority to directly rebuke surya paloh. moreover, surya paloh is a senior to respect, typically in indonesian culture. satire through humor is a middle ground that allows disagreements to be presented without tarnishing the face of the reprimanded party. praising praising is a form of expressive speech act. besides direct praise sentences, this speech act can also be done using humor. president jokowi’s humor in the democratic party congress, as expressed in humor 13, is praise for susilo bambang yudhoyono and agus harimurti yudhoyono. even though this humor can be interpreted as satire, president jokowi’s position as sby’s junior makes praising a more reasonable speech act he intended. humor 13 at the democratic party’s national working meeting, president joko widodo mentioned that he needed more time to prepare clothes whenever he got invited to a democratic party event. “i feel a huge gap regarding clothes with mr susilo bambang yudhoyono this far. today i have been preparing things since dawn because i had to guess which outfit mr sby would wear.” “the dealings with him have not yet been done, and now there is agus harimurti yudhoyono. things get worse. look at him: young, charming, and smart. he dresses neatly, perfect. it is totally different from me.” criticizing the speech act of criticizing can also be found in the president’s humor. anecdote in humor 14 is used by abdurrahman wahid as an open critique of the military—which are considered not capable enough of carrying out duties. humor 14 gus dur said that once, a corporal of abri (military force) dressed in plain clothes walked alone on a dark, deserted street. he was then spontaneously intercepted by two men with guns. “i’m not joking,” said one of the men threateningly. “give me your money, or i’ll scatter your brain.” “just shoot me and scatter my brain,” replied the corporal calmly. “as an abri member, i don’t need a brain. all i need is money to live.” humor 14 is a critique because in the context of indonesian politics, gus dur has shown disputes with the military. the conflicts occurred because he was a scholar who often criticized the government—while the army tended to defend it. by using humor, abdurrahman wahid chose a safe way so he could deliver sharp criticism without offending the military. meanwhile, humor 6 is a middle ground to convey to the preacher without making the utterance seem impudent. by using himself as an anecdote character, abdurrahman wahid disguises his social criticism as if it were autocritique. delegating the power possessed by a president accommodates him to delegate things to his subordinates. president jokowi used the following humor 15 to hand over tasks to his minister. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 135 humor 15 president jokowi was once asked what foreign investors could do to make it easier to invest in indonesia, and he replied, “i want to test my minister’s knowledge. so give it an answer, mr minister, but it must be no longer than my speech.” the minister of trade, thomas lembong, immediately stood up and responded to the instructions. after the answer, the moderator, richard bush, joked, “mr president, i was impressed by your ability to lead. you know how to delegate responsibilities without handing the power over.” jokowi repeated this when asked about the prospects for american-indonesian civil society relations. “i want to test my minister again, but this time for the minister of foreign affairs. please answer,” said jokowi with a smile, again attracting laughter from the audience. president joko widodo expressed humor 15 when he was being interviewed brookings institute in an international forum. all questions on public policies were answered efficiently. however, when the interviewer asked about more detailed technical questions, joko widodo seemed incapable. he then used humor to delegate his ministry the task (to answer). in this case, humor becomes a middle ground for joko widodo to delegate the task without seeming to be confused with the proposed questions. political functions of presidential humor presidential humor has a political dimension not only because it is used by social subjects possessing notable political positions but also because every discourse in principle, has its political dimension (fairclough, 2001). language is used to control others, establish power, or resist. the choice of form and content of discourse is tied to its users’ social relations and social subject (fairclough, 2001). the data points out that presidential humor has three political functions, namely (1) representing the president positively and others negatively, (2) maintaining or building relationships and positions, and (3) carrying out controlling and disciplining. representing the president and others representation is political as it does not merely re-display reality but shows the intention of language users and even constructs a new reality (hall, 1997). representation strategy is implemented by depicting certain parties or figures negatively and portraying other parties or figures positively at once. in president sukarno’s humor, the negatively-represented parties were countries that were politically opposed to him, including the netherlands, america, britain, and russia. they were described as stupid (netherlands), big but not brilliant (america), greedy (england), and submissive (russia). meanwhile, sukarno and indonesia have generally represented positively as reasonable, intelligent, friendly, and lucky parties. president abdurrahman wahid also used the politics of representation. in contrast to sukarno, who represented other countries negatively, abdurrahman wahid’s humor tended to be directed at his political opponents, including amien rais, akbar tanjung, abri, and harmoko. they were described as stupid (abri), incompetent (amien rais), hated by society (akbar tanjung), and even evil (harmoko). the following humor 16 shows a negative representation of harmoko as the same party as the devil: humor 16 president suharto went to mecca for the hajj. some ministers had to accompany him, including the most sedulous “guidance asker,” minister of information harmoko. after going through several hajj rituals, suharto’s entourage did the jumrah ritual, symbolizing exorcising demons by throwing a pillar like a statue. the problem arose here, especially for harmoko. the stones he threw always turned around and hit his forehead times. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) surahmat et al. 136 harmoko threw again, and the stone hit his forehead again. “why is it always like this, huh?” thought harmoko, starting to tremble with fear. he then changed positions. after seven shots, harmoko looked left and right, looking for president suharto’s position to “ask for guidance .” however, before standing in front of the president, he heard a whisper, “fellow demons are forbidden to throw each other.” the result was the same: the stone he threw hit him as there was someone who sent it back. in president joko widodo’s humor, the politics of representation tends to be used to describe him. jokowi is tendency to avoid conflict makes him less likely to be offensive. in his humor, president jokowi represents himself as an ordinary person. the presented nature and role is himself as a good grandfather, a romantic husband, a leader with close relation to the community, and an unpretentious official. the following humor 17 is a typical form of representation of president jokowi: humor 17 during his conversation about his grandchild jan ethes, president jokowi said that he frequently was in charge of being an mc. “harusnya tugasnya mc itu kan master of ceremony gitu, pak,” ujar cak lontong. (“mc should be master of ceremony, sir,” said cak lontong.) “no, mc is momong cucu (taking care of grandchild),” replied jokowi. however, in some humor, president jokowi also represents himself as a party with high power or authority, as shown in humor 12 and humor 15. build relationship and positioning the president’s humor is also used to regulate positions and social relations. fairclough (2001) explains that relations and subjects are two closely related aspects that even habitually overlap. however, in text analysis, both have to be distinguished. relations intertwine with various relationship patterns established due to power distribution. meanwhile, subjects are related to power accumulation on specific individuals or institutions. in discursive practice, relations cannot be separated from positioning. according to tirado & gálvez (2008), positioning is a discursive construction utilized to construct specific actions that can be understood by oneself and others. moreover, positioning creates a space where the members participating in the conversation have certain positions. president sukarno’s humor was used in various relations, including friendship, professionalism, and kinship. president sukarno positioned himself as egalitarian in friendly relations with his humorous listeners. this relationship was intertwined when sukarno spoke with fidel castro (humor 8) and journalist (humor 5). professional relation places sukarno superiorly so that he has the chance to tease and even make fun his subordinates. meanwhile, the family relation places him as a father with authority. president abdurrahman wahid shows a more assertive positioning. in almost all of his humor, abdurrahman wahid put himself in a political position as a critic of abri (humor 14), the new order (humor 11, humor 16), and other political opponents (humor 7, humor 3). at the same time, he builds a positioning as an insider of nahdlatul ulama (humor 6) who stand close to the grassroots. his positioning as a member of nu is built by utilizing the internal code, and his intimacy represents his closeness to the grassroots in joking with the madurese and tegalese. meanwhile, president joko widodo’s humor exemplifies friendly and authoritative political relations. friendly relations are shown when he talks to ordinary people, figures, or groups with no direct political affiliation (humor 1, humor 4, humor 17). however, he also does not hesitate to show an authoritative position when using humor in front of his ministers, colleagues, and political opponents (humor 12, humor 15). such positioning can be considered ambiguous or even contradictory. however, as a form of political action, these two forms of positioning are in the line since the authority as state head journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 137 comes from the people’s support. by placing himself as an ordinary person and close to the people, president jokowi is strengthening his political authority. carry out controlling and disciplining humor, just like other speech forms, possesses a particular impact on the attitudes and behavior of those who hear it. in the speech act theory proposed by austin (1962), speech is called perlocutionary as it might cause other effects after being produced. this theory assumes that the power in an utterance can lead to inevitable social consequences, such as actions. this ability makes humor can control and discipline certain social subjects. through humor, presidents influence others to do and not to do something. controlling and disciplining through humor are related to humor’s cognitive and psychological mechanisms. butler (2015) emphasizes that humor might control people since most dislike being laughed at. therefore, they avoid actions that might lead to jokes, banter, or insult. because no one likes to be laughed at, laughter can be applied to prevent people from doing socially-deviant things (larkin-galiñanes, 2017). the humor discourse can effectively sort out what is expected and deviant because it connects the two opposing things. president abdurrahman wahid used humor to reject a policy issued by the governor of jakarta sutiyoso with the following humor. humor 18 one day, when abdurrahman wahid served as president of the republic of indonesia, there was a serious discussion about the dengue fever outbreak that was hitting jakarta at that time. gus dur was busy discussing the deadly disease. “in your opinion, why is dengue fever increasingly prevalent in jakarta, sir?” asked a minister. “yes, because the governor of jakarta, sutiyoso, forbade bemo, auto-rickshaw, and bajaj soon. even though the mosquitoes here are only afraid of tiga roda (three wheels).” by putting a policy to be seemed funny, abdurrahman wahid tries to convey that the regulation must not be carried out. in the context of public policy-making, there is a mental process implying that funny is inappropriate. the same phenomenon can also be found in president joko widodo’s humor. in humor 12, president jokowi try to disciplining one of his allies. he also uses humor to control the behavior of his ministers as shown in humor 10. making funny of action is a strategy for depreciation; the action will be considered silly, unintelligent, or even unethical. therefore, president jokowi expects that the parties he mentions will not commit similar acts. conclusion humor plays a significant role in presidents’ political communication. its feature tendency to be funny makes it an appropriate way to convey various political messages. presidents can strengthen internal solidarity with allies through humor. this objective is manifested by using affiliativestyle humor with multiple illocutionary forms, namely joking, teasing, or praising. at other chances, humor can also be used to express disapproval, rejection, and hostility towards other parties. presidents tend to use aggressive humor with illocutionary forms of satirizing and criticizing. however, the relationship between form, style, and illocutionary of presidential humor is often ambiguous. such conditions seem related to the dynamic and equal nature of political relations, where friends and foes are not always crystal clear. considering that studies on humor and politics in indonesia are still relatively deficient, these findings can serve as a starting point to examine the political function of humor more generally. humor’s role in jacking up the persuasion of political messages is worthy of study, as well as its use to communicate public policy. furthermore, indonesia will hold a general election in 2024. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) surahmat et al. 138 we can use this momentum to examine whether prospective voters will prefer candidates with good humor or not. acknowledgement this article is part of author’s dissertation written in a study at the doctoral program in humanities, faculty of cultural sciences, universitas gadjah mada funded by puslapdik kemdikbud (ministry of education and culture of the republic of indonesia) and indonesia endowment fund for education (lembaga pengelola dana pendidikan). references ann, a., & calhoun, l. g. 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(2018). political humor in indonesian. kne social sciences, 3(5), pp. 312–331. https://doi.org/10.18502/kss.v3i5.234 0 zhadanova, v. v., & shirobokov, a. n. (2019). humor as a tool of political discourse: from media personalities to candidates for the presidency. rudn journal of studies in literature and journalism, 24(1), pp. 109–116. https://journals.rudn.ru/literarycriticism/article/view/21021 340 vol. 21 no. 2, october 2021, pp. 340-348 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i2.3163 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. folk onomastics study of anthroponymy found in babad banjoemas wirjaatmadjan chusni hadiati chusni.hadiati@unsoed.ac.id jenderal soedirman university, indonesia abstract article information folk onomastics is a sub-category of socio-onomastics which deals with people’s beliefs and perceptions of names and name use. interestingly, pragmatics also plays important role in the study of onomastics as names cannot be split up from the context where they are used. the phenomenon of anthroponymy that gradually advances relates to the development of human civilization. personal name is very pivotal in human life due to the role of name bearers’ in history. name is not only a name for it carries something along with it throughout the time particularly those who have power and position in history. babad banjoemas wirjaatmadjan (bbw) was a chronicle of banyumas regency from 1582 until 1932 which was written by raden wirjaatmadjan and continued by raden poerwasoepradja. as a chronicle of banyumas regency, bbw displays historical names and aliases related to the cultural context of banyumas. this article tries to dig out the phenomenon of anthroponymy of banyumas’ regency leaders (bupati) in bbw as the names indicate the historical background of the bearers. thus, the research spotlights the cultural values carried by alias or pseudonym of banyumas leaders. utilizing descriptive qualitative and library research, i found out that bupati’s names and aliases in bbw were classified based on five conditions: place of death, place of retirement, place of banishment, medal of appreciation, and lifelong action. the result highlights the traditional proverb that good men must die but death cannot kill their names. keywords: name; alias; culture; history; chronicle; banyumas received: 3 march 2021 revised: 27 april 2021 accepted: 28 may 2021 introduction anthroponymy is broadly defined as the importance of individual name in society which is tightly bound with the context where the name emerges. a name may have emotional, social, and historical meanings to society due to what happened in the past. the change of political and cultural conditions can influence the naming system of newborns (obradović, 2015). the study of individual or person name belongs to anthroponymy generally known as the study of proper name both individual and collective. although the study of person names belongs to anthroponymy yet pragmatics takes an https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:chusni.hadiati@unsoed.ac.id journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 341 important role in it since name emerges in our social life and person names vary broadly from context to context and time to time (batoma, 2020). name is the center of interest in socioonomastics study as it analyses the use and variation of names. the acknowledgment of context will be taken into account in analyzing the importance of person name in society with regard to the society’s belief and perception of that name. in other words, folk onomastics will hold an important role in the study of person name. folk onomastics can be defined as a study of people’s beliefs and perceptions about names and name use; thus the term is parallel to folk linguistics and folk dialectology (ainiala, 2016; vaattovaara, 2009). it was hans walther (1971) who initially coined the term sozioonomastik in german. socio-onomastics has two main goals. the first, it is the study of the social origin and use of different variants of proper names within various situations and contexts. the second, it takes into account the name-giver, namebearer, and name user. besides the term sozioonomastik, the term namensoziologie was also used without substantial differences. those two terminologies are interchangeable (ainiala, 2016). related to the first aim of socio-onomastics, anthroponymy, a study of personal name, is a part of socio-onomastics which is generally defined as the investigation of names in society. since it deals with names in society, sociolinguistics also takes part in this discipline as is clearly stated by ainiala (2016). to be able to interpret the meaning of a name or the importance of the name’s bearer, sociolinguistics will be taken into account. however, i have a strong argument that it is pragmatics rather than sociolinguistics that is taken into account in the study of anthroponymy. the following three paragraphs highlight my argument. person name is culturally bound. person name is a pivotal element of all individuals as it relates them socially and individually. a person is an individual creature yet he also lives in a social environment and he will be first recognized through his person name. in some society name given by parents to their children is a gift and prayer for their children’s brighter future and life. in banyumas society, a newborn baby will only be given names after he passes the immediate period of danger after birth or puputan which is usually counted seven days after birth. banyumas is a regency in central java province indonesia. parents will show their gratitude for the safety of their children by making gatherings with the whole members of the family. a newborn baby who frequently gets sick is considered of having the wrong name and thus parents will change the baby’s name to avoid bad luck and bad health condition in the future. to find out the meaning of person names, the culture where those person names live must take into account. culture can function as a context in the study of anthroponymy as a person name will be meaningful when it is put in the context (society) where those names are used. person name taken from the name of pasaran (javanese calendar system) will be meaningless when it is used in a different culture that does not recognize the concept of pasaran. relating to its linguistic unit, name is classified as a phrase or a word since by definition name is a word or set of words by which someone or something is known, addressed, or referred to. in javanese context, a baby who was born in a certain day can be named similar to the name of the day. in javanese culture, people have their own name for days for, example minggu for sunday, senen for monday, selasa for tuesday, rebo for wednesday, kemis for thursday, and setu for saturday. a baby who was born on wednesday could be named rebo or when he was born on saturday he will be named setu. again in pasaran, people are also familiar with a fiveday period such as legi, pahing, pon, wage, and kliwon. pasaran is a javanese cycle which consists of five days which is different from gregorian calendar that contains seven days. those days (legi, pahing, pon, wage, and kliwon) are called as pasaran. so in javanese calendar system there will be at least two combination of a day, for example, selasakliwon, selasa-legi, selasa-pahing, selasa-wage, and selasa-pon. a baby who was born in selasawage can be named as wage or when he was born in selasa-pahing he may be named as pahing. the phenomenon of naming a baby according to the pasaran of their birth and to the day they were born may not be found in journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) chusni hadiati 342 other cultures even though such names in banyumas today rarely exist. as society can function as a context in the study of person name, i highlight that pragmatics is essential in the study of person name. nowadays there is a tendency for banyumas people to name their babies religiously and it is in line with al-qawasmi & al-haq (2016) research finding stating that muslim parents are forced to give good names for their children religiously. this tendency, however still needs further and deeper investigation. one interesting phenomenon in banyumas culture is when a man starts a family he will receive a new name that is somehow different from the previous one. people call this new name as jeneng tuwa (old name) because the man will eventually get old and become a father of his children. in banyumas, jeneng means name and tuwa means old. having received jeneng tuwa, a man is also considered to be entering a new phase of his life. jeneng tuwa however is not given to a girl or a woman who starts a family because a woman will follow her husband’s name. for instance, a newborn baby boy was named radjiwan by his family and when he starts a family he is named achmad suwandi. his wife's maiden name was kustirah yet his wife does not get a new name as jeneng tuwa instead she is called mrs. radjiwan. the phenomenon of jeneng tuwa is rarely found nowadays in banyumas culture and a deeper investigation is worth considering. the phenomenon of day-name, pasaran-name, and jeneng tuwa in banyumas culture encourages me to take the position that the study of anthroponymy has intersected the study of pragmatics rather than sociolinguistics. however, socio-pragmatics will be more fluid for the discussion. my claim is also in line with the latest research conducted by jabborovna (2021) who stated that pragmatics plays an essential part in anthroponymy. numerous research on personal name have been conducted so far by pina-cabral (2015), hailu (2017), charwi (2019), abubakari (2020), and ajiboye et al. (2020). pina-cabral (2015) investigated the function and reflection of personal names and how personal names position name bearer to other people. hailu (2017) found that there is a tight relationship between babies’ names and their parents’ ideological, religious, and educational status. charwi (2019) investigated the association of datooga names and their sociocultural background. abubakari (2020) showed that the name patterns of kausaas reflect the relationship among socio-cultural and religious practices. ajiboye et.al. (2020) investigated that foreign culture includes muslim and christian has influenced batonu’s personal names. i have not found any research on personal names related to the historical chronicle of a place, thus this research can fill the gap and complete the research on anthroponymy as this research focuses on the folk onomastics study of anthroponymy found in babad banjoemas wirjaatmadjan (bbw). historical background functions as the context that will be useful in the elaboration of person names. to dig out the cultural values of names, the historical background must be taken into account which means pragmatics as the study of meaning in context plays an important role. thus, this research sheds a light on the anthroponomy of banyumas leaders by elaborating their historical context as they are found in babad banjoemas wirjaatmadjan. methodology the data of this research were names and aliases which were found in babad banjoemas wirjaatmadjan (bbw). it is one of banyumas chronicles which was written by raden wirjaatmadjan and continued by raden poerwasoepradja. unlike babad banjoemas mertadiredjan which was written in poetry, bbw was written in prose and thus easy to read. bbw used as the source of person names in this research was a translation version and the original javanese version was translated into bahasa indonesia. bbw was a historical note that described the emergence of banyumas regency from 1582 until 1932 and consequently in retelling the historical episodes, several leading persons arisen. those leading persons had person names and aliases that indicate the episodes of their historical lives. it supports the idea that name is a matter of social praxis in every culture since the use of names can reveal the social, cultural, and even historical condition. the journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 343 study of anthroponymy calculates the historical context of the names’ bearers (bilkis, 2020; boamfa, 2017; ziolkowska, 2011). thus the understanding of banyumas context would be taken into account as person names could not be dissected from its context. this research belongs to qualitative research as it tries to elaborate name as a linguistic unit by utilizing contextual information encircled the name. contextual information could be gathered by using library research which meant that i searched, compiled, and extracted information from various sources to provide a qualitative explanation. library research and interview were utilized to gather additional information to enrich the background and historical context to support the analysis. to get a clearer understanding, interview with banyumas senior citizens was very beneficial. interviews could complete the context of name use as some words/phrases in bbw were hard to understand. fifteen person names together with their aliases found in bbw were used as they indicated historical episodes in the emergence of banyumas regency. those names were classified based on the historical events that cause their appearance. by utilizing context, i found that those person names and aliases can be classified into five categories, i.e. place of death, place of retirement, place of banishment, medal of appreciation, lifelong action. results and discussion a man may lose his family, possession, position, and even his life yet his name will always be attached to him and a person name may stay the same or even change through history as we have discussed in the phenomenon of jeneng tuwa in banyumas culture. in addition, people may receive several aliases for what he has been through especially those leading persons in history. they got aliases for what happens to their lives and for what they have done. the following analysis of aliases in bbw shows that aliases are classified based on five types, namely, place of death, place of retirement, place of banishment, medal appreciation, and lifelong action. place of death there are two names and aliases in bbw that display the place of their death, namely joedanegara i or jeodanegara seda masjid and adipati joedanegara ii or adipati seda pendapa. parents sometimes name their baby by copying the name of their ancestor thus the baby will receive a name that previously belongs to other people before them such as their relatives, godparents, or grandparents (pina-cabral, 2015). this phenomenon can be found in bbw. raden ngabehi mertasura i was the second bupati of banyumas regency who reigned during 1583-1600. after he died, his son replaced his position and he was named raden ngabehi mertasura ii who reigned in 1601-1620. this kind of naming system are very common in that era such as joedanegara i (1650-1705), joedanegara ii (1708-1743), jodanegara iii (1749-1755), joedanegara iv (1755-1780), tjakranegara i (1832-1864), and tjakranegara ii (1864-1879). the values of these names are passed from generation to generation as they pass their names to the younger member of the family and young relatives receive their names from a dead relative (pina cabral, 2015). related to their place of death, two names are found as data, joedanegara i and joedanegara ii. joedanegara i was known as joedanegara seda masjid. seda in javanese means death and masjid means mosque. when joedanegara i was the leader of banyumas regency, banyumas regency was under the reign of mataram who was ruled by amangkurat iii (1703-1704). joedanegara i loathed amangkurat iii for he had demoted the position of joedanegara i as the leader of semarang regency into the leader of banyumas regency. semarang regency was bigger than banyumas regency, thus by removing joedanegara i from semarang to banyumas, amangkurat iii had disappointed joedanegara i. at that time, joedanegara i was married to raden ayu bendara, amangkurat iii’s niece. due to his disappointment, joedanegara i did not treat his wife properly. raden ayu bendara, joedanegara’s wife reported her husband’s behavior to amangkurat iii. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) chusni hadiati 344 amangkurat iii was furious and he finally sentenced joedanegara i to die. the death penalty was conducted in masjid kartasura (purwokartun, 2020, p.159; tjahjono, 2015, p.35). from that moment on, joedanegara i was known as joedanegara seda masjid. adipati joedanegara ii was familiar with his alias as adipati seda pendapa. pendapa in javanese is a hall, a place where a leader gathers with his subordinates. when adipati joedanegara ruled banyumas regency, banyumas regency was a district under surakarta palace governed by paku buwana ii. paku buwana suspected that adipati joedanegara had helped the rebellion of geger pecinan or geger kartasura in 1740. thus to get his clarification, paku buwana asked joedanegara ii to come to his palace and if he refused the invitation, it meant joedanegara ii disobeyed him. knowing that information raden panji gandakoesoema, adipati joedanegara ii’s son sent a letter to his father. at that time adipati joedanegara ii was with his subordinates in the pendapa. after reading his son’s letter, joedanegara ii was shocked and got a heart attack. joedanegara died not long after that in a pendapa. due to thefact that joedanegara ii died in a pendapa, people called him adipati seda pendapa or literally means adipati who died in a pendapa or hall (purwokartun, 2020, p.47). the aliases of joedanegara seda masjid and adipati seda pendapa have depicted the place of death of banyumas leaders. their aliases are even more popular than their original names as their aliases are passed down from time to time together with the historical event accompanied them. names and aliases carry the historical information of the names’ bearers (florence, 2016). people are more aware with the names joedanegara seda masjid and adipati seda pendapa rather than joedanegara i or joedanegara ii. place of retirement i found three names of banyumas regency’s leader that show the place of retirement. they are kanjeng raden tumenggung tjakrasapoetra or bendara kanjeng baron, kanjeng raden mas tumenggung tjakranegara ii or bendara kanjeng gendayakan, and kanjeng raden tumenggung dipakoesoema v or bendara kanjeng candiwulan. baron is a region in surakarta, central java. after reigning banyumas regency for four years from 18791882, kanjeng raden tumenggung tjakrasapeotra retired from his position and decided to stay in baron, a place where most of his family lived. he did not have any children so that banyumas regency was in vacuum of power for three years before his nephew, raden mas tjakrakoesoema replaced his position. kanjeng raden tumenggung tjakasapoetra died and also buried in baron. due to this fact, he was then known as bendara kanjeng baron (purwokartun, 2020, p.177). raden mas tumenggung tjakaranegara ii retired from his position as bupati banyumas in 1879. not long after that, he decided to live in gendayakan, pasinggangan village in banyumas regency. he stayed there until the day he passed away and his decision made him well-known as bendara kanjeng gendayakan. bendara kanjeng candiwulan was the alias of kanjeng raden tumenggung dipakoesoema v. he retired from his position as bupati banyumas in 1894 and decided to move to candiwulan, purbalingga regency. he spent the rest of his life in that place. when he died, he was buried there and he became popular with the alias bendara kanjeng candiwulan (purwokartun, 2020, p.183). gendayakan and candiwulan are two different places with similar characteristics. these two places are relatively remote mountainous areas, having fresh air and surrounded by indigenous and local people. the place of retirement was chosen by each person for their personal and emotional motives. kingston et al. (2001) state that one of the criteria of choosing a retirement place is the sense of autonomy with security. by living in a remote area and surrounded by fresh air and local people, the retired bupati found a sense of security, thus they decided to move to these places. they prefer to spend their old time with indigenous people and stay away from the crowd by moving to a remote area. the last place where they spend their time marks the place of their retirement and it becomes part of their aliases. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 345 place of banishment one alias found in babad banjoemas wirjaatmadjan that indicates the place of banishment is bupati padang which was the alias of raden tumenggung prawiranagara. he reigned banyumas from 1831-1832 and he suffered from mental illness. it was hard at that time to get medical treatment from doctors or hospitals even for those who had important positions in society. due to the lack of medical treatment, his illness became worse and worse. this condition had made him murder some of his servants out of his control and it was very dangerous for people who worked or lived near him so that his family decided to exile him to padang, west sumatra (purwokartun, 2020, p.141; purwoko, 2014, p.31). there is additional information from the interview that denies the above-mentioned fact. at first, raden tumenggung prawiranagara did not suffer from mental illness. he was disappointed because of dayeuhluhur’s area expansion. raden tumenggung prawiranegara got less power and less territory and caused him alcoholaddicted. when he was the head or wedana of pegadingan house, he hurt the stepmother of pegadingan’s wedana and some of her servants by using keris, a dagger with a wavy blade used as a weapon or accessories by people in traditional javanese. furthermore, he also burnt the wedana’s house and persecuted four men who wanted to turn down the fire. when the fire was finally down, he realized that he was wrong and surrendered himself to d.a. varkevisser and adipati mertadiredja ii. due to his crime, he was then exiled to padang, west sumatra. this narration was told from time to time and people get more familiar with the alias of raden tumenggung prawiranegara as bupati padang. the two above narrations constitute the alias of bupati padang or raden tumenggung prawiranegara in banymas context. banyumas culture belongs to the javanese culture which holds an old traditional saying mikul dhuwur mendhem jero. this old saying is a kind of advice for javanese people to be able to hide their family’s unfortunate condition and keep the family’s dignity above all. it also shows that banyumas people still hold value to respect their leader by not telling their bad side. this old javanese saying probably becomes the consideration why raden tumenggung prawiranegara was said to suffer from mental illness rather than being a criminal. the alias of bupati padang supports the idea that name can function as the depiction of family relations and social dynamics (zungu, 2020). raden tumenggung prawiranagara was then named as bupati padang due to the place of his banishment. he was dethroned by his successor, adipati tjakranegra i who continued to rule from 1832-1864. as a name is not only a part of language, it is also a part of society and culture, the name bupati padang that refer to raden tumenggung prawiranagara was passed down from generation to generation. medal of appreciation there is one name of banyumas regency’s leaders that was known for his medal of appreciation during his reign. it was kanjeng raden adipati tjakranegara i who was known as kanjeng rider. kanjeng raden adipati tjakranegara i received the medal of ridder orde kroon from the dutch government for all of his efforts in handling the giant flood in banyumas regency. when kanjeng raden adipati tjakranegara ruled banyumas regency, there had been a forecast stating that bakale ana bethik mangan manggar which meant that someday there would be climbing gouramy or anabas testudineus eat the coconut tree flower. people finally believed the forecast when the biggest flood in banyumas history occurred and the water level at that time reached 3-4 meters as the stain can be seen on the wall of banyumas regency. the flood happened in february 21-23 1861 (tjahjono, 2015). kanjeng raden adipati tjakranegara i did his best effort to save his people. having handled the flood strenuously, kanjeng adipati tjakranegara was bestowed by the dutch government with ridder orde eiken kroon, a medal of appreciation for his service. from that moment on, kanjeng raden adipati tjakranegara was known as kanjeng rider (purwokartun, 2020, p.173). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) chusni hadiati 346 the aliases of banyumas leaders that depict their medal of appreciation are in line with agyekum's study (2006) which highlights that names are not arbitrary labels as they indicate socio-cultural function and meaning. the alias kanjeng rider to replace the name kanjeng raden adipati tjakranegara portraits the idea that as the leader of banyumas regency, he has shown his function to handle the massive flood situation in banyumas that is deeply crafted in banyumas people’s memory. lifelong action data shows that there are two names in babad banjoemas wirjaatmadjan that indicate their lifelong action. the first is adipati warga utama ii or adipati mrapat, tumenggung tojakoesoema or tumengung kemong, and ngabehi mangoenjoeda ii or mangoenjoeda mukti. adipati warga utama ii was the first bupati of banyumas regency. he was chosen by pajang king, sultan hadiwidjaya, to replace his father in-law as the bupati of wirasaba regency. adipati warga utama i was wrongly murdered by sultan hadiwidjaya because of a wrong accusation. having chosen as the head of wirasaba regency, adipati warga utama ii as the son in-law of adipati warga utama i divided wirasaba regency into four parts, i.e. banjar petambakan (banjarnegara regency), merden (cilacap regency), wirasaba (purbalingga regency) and kejawar. adipati warga utama ii ruled kejawar which was later named as banyumas regency. banjar pertambakan was given to his youngest brother in-law, ngabehi wirajoeda, merden was given to his second brother in-law, ngabehi wiakoesoema, and wirasaba was given to his eldest brother in-law, ngabehi wargawijaya (herusatoto, 2008, p.63). the decision to divide wirasaba regency into four parts was adipati warga utama ii wisest decision because he did not take advantage of sultan hadiwijaya’s policy for his own good. instead he shared it with his brother in-laws. related to his action, adipati warga utama ii was known as adipati mrapat. mrapat comes from the word mara papat or divide into four parts. since adipati warga utama ii divided wirasaba regency into four parts he was known as adipati mrapat and he was named for his lifelong action. tumenggung tojakoesoema ruled banyumas regency in 1780-1788. he was not a native banyumas people instead he was assigned by mangkunegara (surakarta palace) to reign in banyumas (purwoko, 2014, p.31). tumenggung tojakoesoema was known as tumenggung kemong because during his reign in banyumas regency he always ordered his soldiers to hit kenong whenever he wanted to make an announcement. it happened all the time during his reign and thus he was known as tumenggung kemong. kemong derived from the word kenong. kenong is a javanese traditional musical instrument made from brass. it produces sound when people hit it on the surface. tumenggung tojakoesoema was not banyumas native and consequently, during his reign, there were a lot of riots, looting, and other rebellious movements in banyumas regency. those occured because most of banyumas people did not like him to be the leader of banyumas regency (babad banjoemas wirjaatmadjan, 2020: 39). no wonder, he productively produced announcements related to the condition of banyumas regency and his announcement was always initiated by hitting kenong. due to his lifelong action during his reign in banyumas regency, tumenggung tojakoesoema was named tumenggung kemong. from their life-long actions, banyumas leaders get their aliases. adipati wargautama was known as adipati mrapat and tumenggung tojakoesoema was popular for tumenggung kemong. those names bring essential parts of information of the chronicles of human groups. people recognize those two banyumas leaders from their two aliases as they bring important information of banyumas people’s chronicle. conclusion a naming system shows the process of social, cultural, and historical of each person. names and aliases live in society as people memorize them along with their historical events which are passed down from generation to generation since the aliases of banyumas leaders depict the chronicle of banyumas. the anthroponymy studies of aliases of banyumas leaders have revealed that aliases are used to identify the place of death, journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 347 the place of retirement, the place of banishment, medal of appreciation, and lifelong action. values as the core belief of a culture also determine the emergence of aliases. the aliases of certain leaders were chosen to preserve the value and respect to that particular figure. leaders deserve to be respected as they have conducted good things during their reign. the analysis has shown that values give an influential contribution to the emergence of aliases of banyumas leaders. i need to highlight here that the emergence of names and aliases cannot be separated from its cultural and historical setting. this research focuses on the emergence of names and aliases of banyumas’ leaders by digging up the historical and cultural background. thorough research on anthropological views on names and aliases in various cultures can be worth considering references abubakari, h. 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(2020). mystical arts and occultism in traditional societies: a case study of zulu anthroponymy. indilinga african journal of indigenous knowledge systems, 19(2). phenomena vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 91 c.s. lewis’ use of symbol to express christian concepts, stories, and teaching as seen in the chronicles of narnia: the magician’s nephew hermawan & adventina putranti putranti@usd.ac.id department of english letters, sanata dharma university abstract literature is said to be the medium where author expresses his experience in life, especially on the relationship with the creator. this idea could be clearly seen in the chronicles of narnia: the magician’s nephew where c.s. lewis, the author, expresses christian concepts, stories, and teaching he understands throughout his life. those all are expressed through symbolism due to its capability in making association with human experience as well as conveying any complex ideas in a form of concrete objects which are easily understood by the readers. keywords: expressive approach, symbol, christianity literature as the expression of author’s religiosity as one of the medium exploring the meaning of human experience, literature is somehow used to express what author sees in life, what they have thought and felt about any incident they have (hudson, 1985:10). if we examine further about human experiences themselves, they come in a variety of ways: they can happen to the authors, take place between the authors and other persons, between the authors and their environment, and also between the authors and their god. through literature, the author can expose the experience of god’s existence and also god’s role in the author’s life (gaudium et spes in veeger et al, 2001:14). it can be seen that the author’s religion and any experience within his or her religion will be one of the most important influences which will determine the kind of literary product that the author is going to produce. the religiosity within the literature itself can be seen in the way the author expresses his experience in finding god’s existence and reveals god’s role in changing the life of the author. thus, it can be inferred that there is a strong relationship between literature and religion, in the way that literature can be the overflow, utterance, or projection of the thought and feeling of the author (abram, 1953:21-22), especially his or her religious life. symbol as expression device in literary work symbol is said to be effective to be used as an expressing device to convey the religious concepts, stories, and teachings from real life into literature. it is because symbol has a rich capability in conveying an association with the human experience (guth, 1997:189-190). this ability enables the author to put a symbolization of a particular thought, feeling, or experience in a form of concrete objects or symbols which will be easier to convey message, and be understood by the readers. in this notion, symbol usage brings a new dimension toward literary analysis as it brings the reader to examine hermawan & adventina putranti 92 more than just the surface story, but go deeper to look for the ulterior meaning where the real purpose of the author in writing a story is revealed. as the consequence, when the readers fail to understand it, they will definitely miss the richness the literary work has; how the author expresses such a complex ideas or concepts in a form of a symbol. therefore, investigating symbol as the medium in any particular literary product in some way become one the chief concern of the research as it can touch various presentation and interpretation of life the author wants to convey (leo, 1961:4). c.s lewis’ prominence in christian apologetics and literary world in exposing how the author expresses any underlying religious message through the medium of literature, it is necessary to examine more on the author’s biography to find any fundamental background. since childhood period, c.s. lewis has started to find his interest in writing an imaginary story where he included his private fantasy which is characterized by the shocking ignorance of natural form such as trees appearing as balls of cotton wool stuck on post (lewis, 1955:6). this passion brings him to a personal memorable experience on what he calls as “joy” which is hard to define but he claims to render one characteristic; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again (lewis, 1955:18). although lewis grew up in the christian surrounding, he never committed in it; in fact he claimed himself to be an atheist. during his university study, however, there was a moment when he had a serious discussion with his friends; dyson and tolkien in 1931 about myths which brings him to the greatest distress. they could convince him that myths were actually god’s way of preparing the ground for the christian story. therefore, the stories of resurrection throughout history were precursor to jesus’ true resurrection. in conclusion, christianity can be the completion of all the mythology before it. this discussion brings him to more curiosity on christianity until he committed on conversion. from his conversion, lewis realized that his previous experience of “joy”, a longing for another world which was actually a kind of pointer for his longing for heaven or god. after his conversion, lewis wanted to commit himself in,evanglization, and it was not long before he thought of combining religious enthusiasm with imagination in his works of christian fiction. lewis started to write a book entitled pilgrim’s regress that told the story of his conversion in allegorical form which was published in 1933. he also started to write christian apologetic books; which was written purposely to defend his faith by using logic. one of them is entitled problem of pain where he postulates on the existence of other universes. from 1948 until 1956 he published more books, children’s literature entitled the chronicles of narnia, and his biography entitled surprised by joy. narnia gives lewis an opportunity to indulge his love for animals and mythological creatures with christianity. as the consequence, his literary works are likely to have double dimensions; on the surface it will have been a well-sustained story, yet when it is analyzed deeply, c.s lewis’ creativity in rendering a christianbased story and ideas can be found within the story. in this notion, we can see how christian ideas and stories can be presented in a popular form by the use of a lively and joyful imagination so that through the fantasy that it creates, the message can be more easily understood. c.s lewis’ use of symbol in the chronicles of narnia: the magician’s nephew in conveying association purpose, symbol can manifest in various forms starting “from an egg to the story’s setting: a single object, a physical type of object, a physical substance, a shape, a gesture, a color, a sound, a fragrance, etc.” to represent many underlying ideas from the facet of human personality, the romanticism of youth, or futile ambition (stanton, 1965:31). in accordance with the definition above, a symbol may emerge in a form of a character, object, setting, situation, or action. in the magician’s nephew, the prominent symbols presents in magic; vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 93 including aslan, the white witch, and the apple tree, and humans, including digory, and mr. ketterley. 1. magic in the story magic is not created as a single entity yet is manifested in various objects. this manifestation of magic can be seen throughout the journey done by digory; the main character in the novel as he meets the white witch, aslan, and the magical apple tree. the witch is manifested as a supreme lady having amazing power known her deplorable words which she can use to destroy anything to suit her wants to achieve her ambition for greatness (lewis, 1955: 66). aslan, on the contrary, is depicted as a good and loving lion that has the powerful ability to create, rule, and give life (lewis, 1955: 109). the apple tree, in another case, is presented as having a magical power which can bring attraction and the fulfillment of human (lewis, 1955: 172-175). these expositions show that those three manifestations of magic are united with shared details as objects having magical power. this magic, in this case, however, is not merely used to describe the source of power having the capability to create something supernatural or miraculous. in the context of the story, magic has a special role to define supremacy of particular objects; manifested in its ability in destroying, creating, and attracting, and to emphasis its high and important level. thus, it can be said that the author uses magic as the symbolization of supreme power in his novel. in this case, the reader is asked not to understand magic in the literal sense as it is defined in merriam webster’s collegiate dictionary as “the use of means (as charms or spell) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces, and is also an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source or something that seems to cast a spell (2006:372).” this definition gives emphasis on the criteria of magic to be an “extraordinary power”, yet in the context of the story, magic is associated with another kind of “power”. it is not only the extraordinary or supernatural one, but also a position of supremacy. this kind of thing exposes the second layer meaning of magic which makes the readers need to think more about the purpose of magic within and throughout the story. furthermore, this definition gives emphasis as well that magic must be “used” and “casted” through medium of “charm and spell”. it means that magic is something spoken by a human being. however, the author does not merely use human being as the magician. first, the author makes a personification for aslan to possess a speaking ability as human. then, the author also uses the apple tree which is definitely not a human being. the witch may be the only human being used by the author, yet if we analyze further, she is named “white witch”. the word “white” here is really significant as in the context of the story the author uses it to give emphasis on the deadlylike appearance of the witch which is paradoxical with her existence as human being. this anomaly in defining magic definitely shows that the author wants to use magic in a particular purpose which is in this case as the symbol. it can be said that magic is not used in the literal sense, but is used to declare the supremacy of particular object. in the purpose to give the notion of magic as a symbolization of supreme power, the author uses several devices which can be elaborated further to see magic’s role as the symbol. first, the author repeats the notion of magic in a consistent way from the beginning until the end of the story. this consistency is shown by the mentioning of “magic” in an explicit way in those three manifestations of symbol to define the source of their supernatural power. second, the author also puts emphasis on the role of magic throughout the story. this emphasis can be seen because magic becomes the center of attention for each event that happens in the journey of digory. the author is likely to place magic that exists within the context of the story and to show how the elements interact with each other to influence his adventure. in addition, the author also gives the title of the novel as the magician’s nephew showing the author’s intention to put the notion of magic as the center of attention due to its role as a symbol in the context of hermawan & adventina putranti 94 the story. by looking at those devices, magic is likely to become one of the symbols in the the chronicle of narnia: the magician’s nephew. 2. human being after using the supernatural power, the author also uses the natural being as the symbol as devices to portray two kinds of personalities living inside the human beings, virtuous and vicious ones, into two manifestations; digory and mr.ketterley. a. digory throughout the story, the digory is characterized by using such a device with the purpose of explicitly exposing the basic of human traits. the first one is curiosity from which he ends to awaken the evil witch as he rings the magical bell (57). the second is the amazement of glory shown in how he observes the beautiful vicious witch (58). furthermore, he is also characterized a boy full of needs as he is trying to find the medicine to cure his mother. this one is said to be his number need since it is described several times in the story (29, 81, 93, 130). these characteristics are used to portray digory as real human beings. however, what should be understood more is that digory still listen to his conscience in deciding something. it is proved on the quest to the magical apple tree where he chooses to obey bringing the apple back instead of following the temptation to eat the delicate fruit. he notices the wrong decision may give temporary joy but later will be endless disaster. this virtuous way leads to the specific imagery of digory as the symbolization of human beings from in a virtuous point of view. as it is suggested from the theoretical bases, the readers may be able to interpret a symbol by looking at the details that the author uses. in this way, by looking at the characterization process of digory, the author is likely to bring forward ideas to show the reader about concrete and factual details that can raise people’s ideas on human characteristics. furthermore, the detail is consistently presented in the events created by the author who can show how those characteristics influence a human being’s way to fulfill his goal or duty. in this way, the author is likely to make an association of what people in common generally face in the factual life. these all lead the readers to see the mind in which the author creates digory in a purposive way, and becomes the symbolization of human beings themselves. those events, in addition, show the quality of digory in the way that he makes a choice according to his basic characteristics. as the event is likely to be drawn from a factual event, the readers will agree to say that digory’s response shows his virtuous embodiment. b. mr.ketterly mr.ketterly is another manifestation of a human being who is also characterized with some characteristics to emphasize his humanity. first, it is his ambition for greatness as it can be seen from his ambition to be a great magician (lewis, 1955: 26). the next is his longing for love shown in his interest toward the white witch (lewis, 1955: 83), and his desire for abundance as it is seen on how he wants to make narnia the source of his income (lewis, 1955: 120). however, in achieving his goal, he applies several principles which are actually violating ethical rules so that others regard him as a “mad” person (lewis, 1955: 6). he thinks that it is okay to endanger another life seen through his pursuit of greatness. he also thinks that “i” is the most important and “others” should be neglected as seen through his purpose of abundance (lewis, 1955: 120). this makes him what he believes, feels, and thinks. by looking at the way the author characterizes mr.ketterly, it can be seen that he is endowed with characteristics owned as well by the ordinary human beings in the real life, such as ambition of greatness, his longing for love, and his desire for abundant living. what makes him different from digory is that mr. ketterly tried to gain those ambitions in vicious ways revealed through the principles that he has. the author is likely to emphasize those characteristics in the way he responds his choice in pursuing his ambitions, desires vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 95 and longing. therefore, it can be said that mr.ketterley is the symbolization of a vicious way of being human. c.s lewis’ use of symbol to express christian concepts, stories, and teaching as it is discussed that author’s experience of god’s existence and role plays a significant influence in the writing of his literary work, authors themselves can express this in various ways. it may come in the form of a religious idea, concept, or story manifested in each element within the story. in this case, it will be elaborated how lewis’ proficiency as a prolific writer, poet, scholar of english literature, and defender of christianity has a significant influence on the story he writes. in the magician’s nephew, those religious influences are manifested in the form of symbols. it will analyze how the magician’s nephew really becomes “the overflow, utterance, or projection of the thought and feeling of the author (abram, 1953:21-22).” 1. biblical concept of god in the creation of aslan as the symbol of virtuous supreme power as it is described before, aslan belongs to one of the manifestation of magic being physically described in the form of a lion. his magical power is portrayed by his ability in creating the land of narnia from nothingness. his supernatural power in defining reality can also be seen in the way he gives his creation the ability to talk and think by breathing his out, long, and warm breath. this power shows how aslan is depicted in a preeminent position compared to other beings. it can be seen the author creates aslan by using the form of lion as the manifestation of creator and sovereign ruler in narnia. it is likely not a coincidence since if we are relating the story with christianity, god in christianity is also sometimes symbolized as a lion. this can be seen in the book of hosea 5:14 which says “for i will be like a lion to ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of judah. i myself will tear and go away; i will carry off, and no one shall rescue”. in this verse, the use of the first person pronoun, gives the intention that the speaker is actually god himself, and we can see that god symbolizes himself as a lion, or even as a young lion. this does not only happen in this verse we can also see it in the book of revelation which says, “then one of the elders said to me, do not weep. see, the lion of the tribe of judah, the root of david, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals (revelation 5:5).” those verses show that the figure of lion is often used metaphorically in the holy bible. it is probably because the lion has excellent characteristics needed to define the most superior figure among all of the animals such as its strength, fierceness, and its powerful voice as it is seen in amos 3:8a : “the lion has roared; who will not fear!” lewis finds that in the bible the lion is mostly used to signify the sense of might and prominence, so that it is a surprise that he chooses a lion to characterize the supreme power in narnia. as lewis decides to describe aslan in portraying the biblical metaphor for god, he is also consistently depicting biblical ideas on god’s preeminence in the characterization of aslan. in the bible, god is described in such a prominent position due to his preeminence as the creator of all things and as sovereign ruler. those two elements are also used to elaborate as aslan’s preeminence manifested in his magical power, as they can be found in the story. in this notion, the bible also describes god as someone possessing immortality and having the ability to give and sustain life. it can be seen in genesis 1:1-2 that, “in the beginning when god created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from god swept over the face of the waters.” in addition, the bible not only describes the preeminence of god as the creator and sovereign ruler, but it also consistently depicts the moral perfection of god. this nature of god can be seen in 1john 1:5, which says that, “this is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that god is light and in him there is no darkness at all.” in this verse, it is likely that the bible uses to hermawan & adventina putranti 96 different spectrums to contrast the difference between god’s characteristic as light and his opponents as dark. from this verse, it can be seen that light is likely to be associated with righteousness, while on the opposite, darkness is unrighteousness. from the elaboration above, it can be seen how lewis’ christianity really has such a strong influence on his literary work. it can be seen how he exploits the biblical concept of god as the creator and sovereign ruler having perfect moral feature in the creation of the character of aslan. aslan is created to be a symbol of virtuous supreme power to convey those three qualities. in the story, those qualities can be seen explicitly in the way that aslan is given the supreme power to create the land of narnia, and to make others submissive before him. in addition, aslan is also depicted as having virtuous moral qualities. this is unquestionably the form of lewis’ expression on his christian life. 2. the biblical concept of the devil in the creation process of the white witch as the symbol of vicious supreme power as it has been stated in the previous chapter, the white witch is another manifestation of magic in the form of a beautiful, tall, and solemn queen. it is stated that she has a strong, proud, and happy expression, yet with cruel looks. if this imagery is related to the bible, we may come up with the biblical concept of the devil, it is said that actually the devil used to be a cherub; the most powerful and beautiful of angelic beings, created by god himself as it is seen in ezekiel, saying that, “your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. i cast you to the ground; i exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you” (ezekiel 29:17). not only is angelic beauty manifested in the white witch, but lewis also includes powerful strength in the characterization of the witch. this strength can be seen from the magical power she possessed, namely the deplorable word, which is capable of destroying her world and people where she is in conflict with her sister regarding the successor to the throne. lewis also manifests devil’s rebellion against god and its failure in the story. it is written that the white witch viciousness and ambition for power makes her wants to fight against aslan due to his superior power. this fight is started when she tries to fling the iron bar straight at aslan head as she enters narnia. in addition, it is also said that her attempts fails. however, it never stops her and she tries the next fight by trying to tempt digory to ignore aslan’s command. she wants to convince digory that aslan’s command is actually done for the purpose of keeping something good from digory. fortunately, digory makes the right decision to submit to aslan’s command. as it is seen from the elaboration above, lewis’ background as a christian has a prominent influence on the characterization of the white witch in the novel. it is likely that lewis tries to insert biblical concepts on the devil in the image of the white witch to strengthen her position as the symbolization of vicious supreme power in the story. 3. the biblical story on the origin of temptation in the ccreation of the apple tree as the symbol of attraction the story of the apple tree begins with the command aslan gives to digory to look for the apple tree which can be used to protect narnia from the dangerous witch. as he tries to enter the gate to the place that the tree is located, he sees cautions, saying that he is only allowed to take the fruit for others for those who wants to steal it for their own needs will find despair after achieving their desire. however, as digory discovers the apple, he finds that it has a kind of charm, making everybody attracted to it with its good shine and smell. digory knows that it is forbidden to eat the fruit for his-own, yet he is tempted to taste that fruit because of thirst and hunger. in this case, the notion of temptation is introduced. vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 97 to create the attractive and powerful apple tree that can bring temptation to digory and the others when seeing it, lewis uses the biblical story of the origin of temptation as well. this story is written in the book of genesis, where god introduces the tree of knowledge of good and evil to be forbidden to eat. it is said, “and the lord god commanded the man, ‘you may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (genesis 2:16-17). although the story is different in the way that the bible introduces god to be the one giving the rule, there is a connection in how lewis uses the same object a “forbidden tree” in his novel. not only forbidden, both the apple tree and the tree of knowledge of good and evil are also related with each other. they are attractive for its beautiful look and smell. it is explained that “the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. (genesis 3:6)”. as digory experiences, those factors become the beginning point of temptation. it is likely that the command of god about not eating the fruit of that tree has given the opportunity for temptation to occur. 4. biblical concept of human nature in the creation process of digory and mr.ketterley as the symbol of human beings as it has been explained above lewis tries to expose dualism within human beings, namely the virtuous and vicious side of human beings, through the symbolization of digory and mr.ketterley. this dualism is expressed at the moment they have to choose virtue or vice as they make a decision. as we know, digory is portrayed as a boy having such great curiosity which has such a prominent influence in his life. as he is entering charn, his curiosity made him strike the magical bells which unfortunately awake the evil white witch. his choice has brought bad consequences for him and others as she desires to conquer digory’s world. this desire has brought the witch to make a riot in his world. on a purpose to save his land, he takes her with his magical rings to another world bringing them to the newly-created land of narnia. however, the white witch has not ended the desire so that she wants to conquer narnia as well. fortunately, she cannot stand against aslan, narnia’s creator. so, she goes away from that land. with the purpose of protecting narnia from the witch, aslan sends digory to look for the apple tree. when he arrives at the place, he finds himself charmed by the tree and he wants to eat fruit. however, the order is that he is not allowed to eat the tree for himself. at that moment, the witch comes. she informs him that the tree has a healing power that can cure his beloved mother. thus, she encourages him to ignore aslan’s order and steal the fruit. however, at that moment he makes the right choice by casting away his desire for saving narnia. lewis introduces the idea that there lies within him a conscience to help him not repeat the mistake he has made. therefore, as it has been stated that he becomes the symbolization of the virtuous part of human beings. another symbolization of human beings is mr ketterly who is portrayed as someone having great ambition for power and fame. this encourages him to create magical rings which can be used to travel to another world. however, he always does it with deceit and sacrifice. his experiment is successful as digory brings the witch back to him. when he sees the glorious appearance and magical power and the witch, he wants to be under submission to her since he thinks that she will help him to gain his ambition. as they arrive in narnia, he finally realizes that the witch does not care about his whereabouts as she just wants to use him as a servant to gain her desire as the ultimate ruler. therefore, he rebels against her. in narnia, he finds that the environment really suits him well so that he feels better there compared to his world. however, it does not make him want to submit under aslan’s rule, indeed he wants to kill aslan as he finds that narnia can be a profitable land that can make him rich. unlike digory, he does not make atonement when he is in his second opportunity to hermawan & adventina putranti 98 choose. as a consequence, he cannot enjoy the goodness that narnia brings to him. furthermore, his action makes his ears closed so that he hears the talking animals as he hears the ordinary animals. it makes all the talking animals treat him badly for his wicked-deeds. thus, he becomes the symbolization of the vicious part of human beings. from the elaboration above, it can be seen that although digory and mr.ketterley symbolize two different things, they share some similarities. first, they are portrayed as someone who has made a mistake in their life which makes them regarded as having bad impact on others. second, they are created with a conscience which always guides them to be a good person by aiding them to make a good choice. however, what makes the difference is that only digory follows his conscience which leads him to good consequences. in other words, mr.ketterley never makes atonement as is done by digory. to see that lewis creates the symbolization of human beings in his novel in that way, it can be observed that he is influenced by the biblical concept on human nature. the bible gives a fundamental understanding on human nature as the belief derived from genesis, that humans are initially created according to god’s own image. it is stated in genesis that, then god said, ‘let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. ’so god created humankind in his image, in the image of god he created them; male and female he created them (1:26-27). as the verses say that humans are created in the image of god, humans are said to be created perfectly good as endowed with the perfection of morality god has. this concept places human in such an honorable and dignified position so that god pronounced the humans he created as very good as it is stated in genesis 1:31 that “and god saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good”. lewis probably uses this concept in his characters symbolizing human beings; digory and mr.ketterley reflected the human conscience guiding them to choose the right choice even in the characterization of mr. ketterly as the symbol of the vicious part of human beings. christianity, however, also believes that although humans are created perfectly well, they have fallen into sins as the result of the first human being deeds, adam and eve, disobedient toward god. this human fall has brought negative results that humans have to endure, that is the permanent harm working within human soul. this damage has made humans born after adam’s fall have a tendency toward sins. this concept is expressed by paul the apostle as he declares that the damage occurs “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god (romans 3:23)”. to explain further on what sin has done on his soul, paul the apostle writes another verse telling of his heart’s condition which admits the presence of the sin in his heart so that he is finally able to understand what moves him toward something which he knows to be wrong although he truly wants to do the right one. he defines this condition working in his life as a principle. he states that, for i delight in the law of god in my inmost self, but i see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. wretched man that i am! who will rescue me from this body of death? (romans 7: 22-24). this principle can also be seen in the characterization of digory and mr.ketterly. although they are manifestations of two different parts of humans, they actually complement each other as they are symbols of a complete human being. therefore, although they are created with a good conscience they are defiled in their life with the power of sin. in this way, digory is distorted by the desire to taste the magical apple and bring it to cure his mother. digory is said to be trapped in such a way by the charm of the apple that he wants to ignore the order and command of aslan. as the apostle paul says, he is put into captivity by vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 99 the desire that he has. mr.ketterly is also under the captivity of his ambition for power and fame that he ignores moral standards and his conscience. this shows that, although digory is said to be the symbolization of the virtuous part of human beings, he can still make a mistake. by looking at that elaboration, it can be seen how the biblical concept of human nature is expressed by lewis in his creation of the symbolization of humanity in his work. the concept is shown in the way he used human nature as the image of god in making them virtuous and human nature after falling into sin by placing within them a vicious quality. 5. the biblical teaching on decision making in strengthening the understanding of digory and mr.ketterley’s position as human beings in christianity. as it is elaborated in the previous part, the author uses digory as the symbol of the virtuous part of human beings and mr.ketterley as the symbol of the vicious part of human beings by exploiting the biblical concept of human nature within the process of creation of two objects as symbols. however, if analyzed more deeply, the author also inserts the biblical teaching on decision making to determine the virtuous digory and vicious mr.ketterley. digory becomes the symbolization of the virtuous part of human beings by his will to put aside his own desire for finding medicine for his beloved sick mother. he trusts aslan, as the symbolization of virtuous supreme power, instead of the deceit done by the witch, as the symbolization of vicious supreme power. this makes him succeed in accomplishing the mission for the protection of narnia. his virtuous choice has brought safety toward narnia and releases him from guilt. the more important thing is that aslan gives him the fruit that heals his mother. then, mr. ketterley becomes the symbol of the vicious part of human being as his greed has turned him into a selfish and heartless person. it also makes his eyes and ears closed that he cannot see the goodness of narnia. he even regards aslan and narnia as dreadful thing. as it is elaborated before, those choices become the justification to determine their role in the symbolism of human beings. this is in fact influenced by lewis’ understanding of the biblical teaching on decision making that enable human to determine whether he chooses a virtuous or vicious part. as it has been explained before, the bible describes the devil to work in viciousness. however, it tells that he may help people to gain what people desire as it is said in gospel of matthew 4:8-9 that states “again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, ‘all these i will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’” this verse says that devil can give whatever desire man has including greatness and fame, yet it is said that he never does it without payment as he looks for man’s worship. as humans are willing to submit before him, as what happens with adam and eve, they will fall into sin and the bible tells that “very truly, i tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin (john 8:34)”. it is said that sin has the power to enslave human beings by corrupting their thought, attitude, and action which eventually can destroy a person’s life. the bible records a special account of what sin may result within us. sins may bring “envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. i am warning you, as i warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of god (galatians 5:21).” the bible, however, also tells the concept of free will. this concept says that, although god wants his children to be obedient toward him, yet humans are not created as persons without free will. god gives human beings freedom to make decisions on their own, including to choose something which is the contrary to his will. this concept is expressed in deuteronomy 30:19, which says “i call heaven and earth to witness against you today that i have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. choose life so that you and your descendants may live.” this verse strengthens the elaboration before on what the devil and god may give us as we submit before them. god teaches that hermawan & adventina putranti 100 human choice will end in two different results, namely life and death, as well as blessing and curse. it also explains how god really loves man that he always wants man to choose virtue although never wants to force them to do so. the most important thing that man must remember is that choices are always bound to consequences. therefore, god reminds man of which choice is the best to choose, as it is said by the psalmist, “mark the blameless, and behold the upright, for there is posterity for the peaceable. but transgressors shall be altogether destroyed; the posterity of the wicked shall be cut off (37:37-38).” god says that there are two different results that the upright and the transgressor will get. the transgressor may get the temporary desire, but it is said that it just leads to destruction. the profound joy is only gained by those making virtuous choices. by looking at the elaboration it can be seen how lewis’ religious understanding on human free-will to choose either god or satan and its consequences has an important influence on the creation of digory and mr.ketterley as the symbolization of human beings seen through their kind of choices and consequences they have. digory chooses the virtuous part that he earns good consequences. meanwhile, mr.ketterley chooses the vicious part that leads him to obtain bad consequences. conclusion there is a strong relationship between literature and the author’s life because a literary work can be the medium where author expresses what he experiences or believes in life, in this case in how c.s. lewis defines his relationship with his creator. this is clearly seen in how he uses symbols to express christian concepts, stories, and teaching by associating particular ideas he has with the items he has in his story. there are five symbols in the the chronicles of narnia: the magician’s nephew. they are magic as the symbol of supreme power which is manifested in three objects namely aslan as the symbol of virtuous supreme power, the white witch as the symbol of vicious supreme power, and the apple tree as the symbol of attraction. furthermore, there is also the symbolization of human being manifested in two objects namely digory as the symbol of the virtuous part of human being and mr. ketterley as the symbol of the vicious part of human being. c.s lewis is likely to use those symbols to express christian concepts, stories, and teaching. it is because the result shows that in the creation process of those symbols the author seems to be influenced by the bible as seen through the use of the biblical concepts of god in the process of the creation of aslan. it is also true for the biblical concept of the devil when creating the white witch, the biblical story on origin of temptation in creating the apple tree, and the biblical story on human nature in creating digory and mr.ketterley. the story is also used to teach about biblical teaching on decision making. if we examine on c.s lewis background further, this religiosity in his literary work is something inevitable. starting from his early life, lewis is known as someone having a very great interest in writing and drawing imaginative literature, especially a chronicle story. furthermore, it is also recorded that after his conversion to christianity, lewis had a strong commitment for evangelization. those two prominent factors are the ones influencing him to combine his religious enthusiasm with his interest in imaginative literature which is manifested in the creation of the symbols in the chronicles of narnia: the magician’s nephew by associating it with various concepts, stories, and teachings in the holy bible. in conclusion, it can be seen that the magician’s nephew really becomes the medium of the author’s expression of christian concepts, stories, and teaching through symbols. vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 101 references guth, hans.p. and rico gabrielle l. discovering literature: stories, poem, plays. englewood cliff: blair press book, 1997. print. holy bible: new revised standard version. michigan: zondervan bible publisher, 1989. print. hudson, william. an introduction to the study of literature. london: george.g.harrap, 1958. print. leo, brother. a christian approach to christian literature. new york: schwartz, kirwin&fauss inc., 1961. print. lewis, c.s. surprised by joy: the shape of my early life. new york: harcourt, brace&world inc., 1955. print. _________. the chronicles of narnia: the magician’s nephew. new york: harpercollins, 1955. print. stanton, robert. an introduction of fiction. new york: halt, rinehart, and winston, inc, 1965. print. 389 vol. 22 no. 2, october 2022, pp. 389 – 403 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i2.4765 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. an extended study on tense and aspect markers in pagu dalan mehuli perangin angin dalan@usd.ac.id english letters department, universitas sanata dharma, indonesia abstract article information this paper revisits four clitics of pagu (a west-papuan language spoken in north halmahera, indonesia) those that have been described as tense and aspect markers (wimbish 1991): -oka, -ou -osi, and -uli. the first one is considered a tense marker for ‘non-future’ time, while the other three are aspect markers for ‘perfective’, ‘imperfective’, and ‘repetitive’ respectively. following a metatypy approach (ross 2006; 2001), i argue that while these clitics have the tense-aspect functions, at the same time under a unified analysis, each should have an extended function vis. a ‘locational marker of space and time’, ‘confirmative’, ‘durative’, and ‘repetitive presupposition marker’, respectively. these meanings and functions are based on the speakers’ interpretation of them in the local lingua franca (a variety of the north maluku malay). this supports bowden’s (2012) argument that the indigenous languages of north halmahera (papuan) have influenced the present varieties of malay spoken as the lingua franca in the region. keywords: papuan language; metatypy; tam markers; north maluku malay received: 22 june 2022 revised: 8 august 2022 accepted: 15 august 2022 introduction this paper analyses the functions and meanings of the four clitics: -oka, -ou, -osi and uli of pagu, a non-austronesian language spoken in the halmahera island. the morphology of pagu is complex, with morphemes seeming to display richer functions than previously described which tends to be narrow and mostly follow linguistic categories found in european languages, particularly tense and aspect (wimbish 1991). if we study the wide range of pagu data where each of the mentioned clitics occurs and look at the local malay translations, we will see that it has more than just tense and aspect functions. in fact, the local malay translations on pagu transcriptions done by the native speakers of both languages were key to understanding the meanings and functions of the morphemes. i believe the indigenous language of pagu has influenced the people to speak their malay https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) dalan mehuli perangin-angin 390 variety, the lingua franca spoken northern maluku. see, for instance, bowden’s (2012) discussion on the retention of features of indigenous languages on the north maluku malay in order to mark their identity as local people that differ from other malay varieties throughout indonesia. the pagu people’s retention of features of the morphemes in their local malay is necessary for them to maintain the expressions, thoughts, and concepts of their ancestral language. therefore, studying how the language express the pagu clitics will help us understand their functions/meanings more profoundly. changes in morphosyntactic type and grammatical constructions in multilingual communities such as pagu are very common worldwide, known as metatypy (ross 2006; 2001). although not all morphemes have local malay equivalents, one can grasp the speakers’ understanding of them through in-depth interviews and elicitations with questions such as literal translations of the morphemes in different contexts (himmelmann 1998). in addition, body gestures can help express meanings (fast 2014; black 2011). in this paper, i assume that the local malay (a variety of the north maluku malay especially spoken by the pagu people) has experienced some metatypy processes from their indigenous pagu language morphemes. in other words, there must be certain expressions of each of the clitics in the local malay. thus, their closest functions and meanings are best described based on the speakers’ interpretation in this malay variety. the two languages pagu is spoken at the southeastern end of the northern peninsula of halmahera island, north maluku province, indonesia (figs. 1 and 2). administratively, it belongs to the north halmahera kabupaten (regency), with tobelo as the capital. figure 1. map of indonesia showing halmahera figure 2. map of halmahera showing the pagu area according to the 2012 census, the language is spoken by half of the total population of 5500 (hisyam et al. 2012). it is mostly used by people over forty years while the youngest speakers of the language are around twenty-five years old. it lacks generational transfer, as parents tend to speak the local malay, which is the lingua franca of the region (hisyam et al. 2012). based on wurm’s (1982) categories, we can classify pagu as an ‘endangered language’, where good speakers of the language are young adults (perangin-angin 2018). the first attempt to revitalize the pagu language was conducted by the indonesian institute of sciences (lipi) with a multidisciplinary team, consisting of two anthropologists, a historian, and a linguist (myself), from 2011 to 2014. it produced several works including: (i) a triglot ‘pocket’ pagu-indonesian-english dictionary consisting of approximately one thousand five hundred journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 391 word-entries, (ii) teaching-learning materials for elementary school grades one, two, and three, and (iii) a regulation of the local government that states that pagu and the two other indigenous languages in the north halmahera regency, modole and boeng (a dialect of tobelo spoken in the northern region that borders pagu and modole), are a compulsory subject in elementary, junior, and high school. malay is classified as an austronesian language (eberhard et al. 2020). it has been used in the region for roughly four hundred years (robertson 1906). due to long contact with malay and the fact that malay is more economically, socially, and politically beneficial than pagu, malay has become more prominently used. malay is widely used in all pagu villages, especially in coastal areas, as residents come from various communities in halmahera and outside the island. over half of the pagu population consider themselves native speakers of the local malay, and others have little or no knowledge of pagu (peranginangin 2018). local malay referred to in this paper is the intra-ethnic variant of north maluku malay spoken by the pagu people. according to bowden (2012), this malay variant is heavily influenced by the ternate language, another indigenous language belongs to the west papuan language family (voorhoeve 1983). this can be seen from many of its words in the malay variant, such as ngana (singular second person) and ngoni (plural second person). north maluku malay has become the lingua franca in the region used by people with different indigenous languages, and has gradually become the first language for many. while people from different backgrounds use the lingua franca with each other for business, they also have their own variants. the malifut kecamatan (sub-regency), for instance, has two ethnic groups: the pagu and makean people. the latter was relocated from makean island (see fig. 2) to malifut by the local government in the 1970s due to a volcanic threat (wilson 2008). currently, the same dialect of north maluku malay as that used in ternate, the biggest city in the province, is generally used in everyday conversations. however, people from the same community tend to use a dialect that has features of their indigenous language. in this paper, local malay refers to the malay variant spoken by pagu people to each other. for instance, the pagu articles o and ma very commonly appear in front of noun phrases. pagu verbal morphology pagu verbs are very rich in morphology (wimbish 1991; perangin-angin 2018). any verbs including ditransitives, transitives, intransitives/adjectives/statives in pagu must be attached by one or two pronominal prefixes that cross-references with the subject and/or object argument. the subject alignment does not follow the split system (holton 1997; 2008) where some unspecified verbs (either active or statives) select the subject pronoun prefixes (subjective paradigm) and some others object pronoun prefixes (objective paradigm). rather, the active and stative verbs behave differently. the active verbs can be said to be aligned syntactically as the verbs must always be marked by a subject prefix that crossreferences with the subject. the statives on the other hand can be syntactically or semantically aligned depending on the speakers’ perception whether the subject (undergoer) suffers from the event or not. thus, for example, the stative sawin ‘hungry’ can be marked by the subject prefix wo(3sm.s) ‘he’ or the object wi (3sm.o) ‘him’. while the former can be interpreted as non-empathetic ‘he is hungry’, the latter empathetic ‘something caused him to be hungry (so he is suffering from it now)’. morphosyntactically, there is no difference between active and stative marking i.e. wo-leal (3sm.s run) ‘he runs’ and wo-sawin (3sm.s hungry) ‘he is hungry’ the object alignment on the other hand follows some particular semantic hierarchy of the object. firstly, any human object of a twoplace predicate must be marked by an object prefix. seconldy, a non-human object of a twoplace predicate by contrast can be marked or unmarked depending on whether it is active accomplishment (the action changes the state of the object) or activity (the action does not journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) dalan mehuli perangin-angin 392 change the state of the object); the terms are known as aktionsart verb classes, first developed by vendler (1957) and further improved by other scholars including dowty (1979) and van valin (2005). while the former is marked the latter is unmarked, e.g. ‘hitting a coconut’ can be an activity (e.g. ‘the coconut is still intact’) or active accomplishment (e.g. ‘now the coconut has been cut into two’). finally, in a three/more place predicate, beneficiary object is always marked over a patient object. for example in ‘she asked me about the rice for the woman’, the patient ‘me’ is unmarked whereas the beneficiary ‘the woman’ is marked (perangin-angin 2018). in addition, verbs can also be attached by clitics and other affixes. prefixes can be inflectional or derivational. the derivational ones are prefixes such as the reflexive marker ma-, causative si-, simultaneous makaetc. the inflectional prefixes are the pronominal prefixes (argument markers). the tam markers (-oka, -ou -osi, and-uli), the negator uwa and the directional markers -ino ‘to here’ and -ika ‘to there’ are clitics in the form of suffixes (they appear after the stem or after another clitic). schematically, the pagu verbal morphology looks like the figure below. the verb stem must always be preceded by one or two argument markers (pronominal prefixes) followed by the derivational one and closed by one or more tam markers/clitics. table 1. order of pagu verbal morphology argument markers derivational stem (+reduplication) clitics sentence (1) demonstrates verbal morphology. the verb stem olik ‘bathe’ is marked by the derivational reflexive prefix maand pronominal prefix wothat crossreferences with the pronoun una ‘he’. two clitics are attached: the tense marker -oka and aspect marker -ou. (1) unai woi-ma-olik-oka-ou. 3sm 3sm-refl-bathe-n.fut-perf ‘he has/had bathed himself’ the glossing of (1) follows wimbish (1991). the perfect reading of the sentence results from the occurrence of -oka and -ou, which function as a past tense marker (nonfuture) and perfective marker, respectively. we will see in the discussion that each of the clitics will be analyzed to have a broader function in order to have its thorough array of description. methodology descriptive linguistic activities or writing a grammar of little studied and unstudied languages have been compared with ‘making a map’, where researchers see the landscape of the target language from high above in order to see its overall view (payne 1997). in addition, they must also walk on the ‘ground’ to see idiosyncrasies of the building structures (the structures of the languages themselves). however, many linguists have considered the tendency to see and describe what they see based on the western paradigm, such as basing their description predominantly on their european linguistic knowledge (gil 2001) or a misconception of learning noneuropean grammars (purwo 2014). this suggests the approach of escaping eurocentrism in order for linguists to achieve better language description. practically, asking questions regarding pagu morphological elements that function as tense and aspect markers will limit our view of the structure, ignoring other possible functions of those elements. rather, the functions and meanings of particular elements in the language should be considered independent of european categorization. this paper emphasized the functions and meanings of the target elements -oka, -ou, -osi, and -uli. in order to understand their functions and meanings thoroughly, i utilized speakers’ knowledge who provide them with translations in local malay. in addition, i adapted a unified analysis of each morpheme. each morpheme has a broad range of functions that may yield different interpretations of sentences depending on the context. for instance, the clitics -oka and -ou in (1) can function as a journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 393 ‘non-future’ tense marker and a ‘perfective’ aspect marker, respectively. based on overall interpretations of the clitics in a broader context, the former functions as a locational marker of time and space and the latter as a confirmative marker that confirms whether a state or action occurred. thus, the clitics are glossed based on these functions. hence, the perfective meaning of (1) is arguably derived from this literal meaning: ‘(that) he bathed himself there (referring to a certain time in the past) is confirmed (completed).’ the data used in this study were taken from the lipi project (six times during the period from february 2012 to june 2014 – where each fieldwork roughly lasted in three weeks) and fieldworks conducted four times during the period from december 2014 to june 2018. they consist of both audio and video recording. in addition, elicitations from informants were collected on the two occasions and over the phone. most of the recorded data were transcribed in the annotating program elan (sloetjes & wittenburg 2008) and toolbox. elan data consisted of pagu transcriptions and local malay translation performed by native speakers. additionally, i interlinearized these data with indonesian and english translations. interlinearization (providing a series of functions and meanings of morphemes) was achieved based on local malay translations and multiple cross-checks with speakers and translators. results and discussion this section discusses the functions and meanings of the four clitics -oka, -ou, -osi and uli. the following subsections respectively will specifically discuss each of them. the clitic -oka as a deictic locational marker of both time and space there are no in-depth studies of the clitic -oka of mainland languages of the north halmahera family. while several researchers have discussed the clitic most treat it exclusively as a tense marker (holton 2003; kotynski 1988; wimbish 1991). on the other hand, shelden (2002) treats a similar element from galela, the particle ka, as a spatio-temporal deictic marker and argues that ka functions ‘to point in an alternate direction to a place in space and time’ (‘alternate direction’ means toward any direction away from the speaker). however, the pagu -oka is a locational marker, whereas the galela ka is a directional one. in pagu, locational and directional meanings are carried out by different clitics: -oka and -ika, respectively. (note that pagu is chiefly a cv-cv language. this means both -oka and -ika will be truncated into -ka when the last sound of the stem it attaches to is a vowel. speakers will distinguish whether the clitic is locational or directional based on the context). for instance, the locational phrase ‘i’m in/at the market’ requires -oka, while the directional phrase ‘i’m going to the market’ uses -ika. however, shelden (2002) neither considers the galela ka as a locational marker nor mentions if it functions as a tense marker. i argue that in pagu, -oka not only functions as a tense marker but rather as a marker of a broader scope, namely, a locational deictic marker of both time and space. this is based on in-depth interviews with speakers. an equivalent feature appears in local malay translations of pagu transcriptions. for instance, di sana can literally be translated as ‘at there’, where this distal direction can refer to a certain time or place. the expression kalamareng di sana ‘yesterday at there’ is usually said while pointing the forefinger upward and backward in order to refer to a specific time in the past. alternatively, when referring to a certain place, a speaker will normally point horizontally in a certain direction. in addition, the local malay proximal di sini ‘in here’ has a dual temporal and locational paradigm, where the speaker usually uses their forefinger to point to the nearest ground to refer to ‘now’ or ‘here/this place’. the pagu proximal demonstrative nane/nena ‘here/this’ acts in the same manner. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) dalan mehuli perangin-angin 394 the clitic -oka as a temporal marker tense in european languages is defined as ‘a location of time’ (comrie 1985; bhat 1999); that is, it relates to a certain time of a situation or event. tense is never used to refer to a space (‘locate situation in space’). thus, it has a timespecific function. as a temporal marker, -oka can modify not only (i) a certain event or condition, same as the tense function, but also (ii) a specific time, such as an hour, day, or moment. as a tense marker, it can refer to either past or future but not present, as its distal meaning ‘there’ can only refer to the distal location in the future or past. the present location of time is proximal, which can only be expressed by the proximal demonstrative nane ‘this/here.’ the clitic -oka can also yield a present (progressive) meaning when it occurs with -osi (see (20) below). in addition, it can produce a habitual meaning (activities or events that regularly occur in the past and are predicted to occur in the future) when the element ka appears in the utterance (see [4] below). syntactically, -oka takes scope not merely over the immediate stem, but rather the whole phrase, either a verb phrase or a noun phrase (that is why i call it a clitic instead of an affix). see (2), (3), and (4) where -oka modifies the verb phrase which includes the verb and also the pronominal (prefix), and (5), (6), (7) and (8) where it modifies the entire noun phrase it attaches to. the clitic -oka can attach to a predicate in order to modify a specific event in the past or future, as demonstrated in examples (2), (3), and (4) below. sentence (2) exemplifies an event that happens in the past, while (3) is in the future. in addition, as exemplified by (4) below, it can also result in a habitual meaning (events that happen repeatedly from the past and in the future). (2) ya-luat ma ya-luange 3ps -four but 3ps -three yo-soneng-oka. (past) 3ps-dieloc.there ‘they were four, but three of them died (sometime in the past there)’. the speaker is talking about his own children where he used to have four children, but three had passed away. (3) gailoa o takol tomorrow nrnm hour tumidiing dewela-ino seven morning-to.here wo-masakai-oka. (future) 3sms -cookloc.there ‘tomorrow at seven in the morning (or earlier) he’ll cook. (4) o takol tumudiing nrnm hour seven dewela-ino ka morning-to.here only wo-masakai-oka. (habitual) 3sms-cook-loc.there ‘he always cooks at seven o’clock in the morning.’ lit. ‘at seven in the morning (cannot be later but possibly earlier) he just cooks there.’ in (2), the clitic -oka refers to certain events in the past (‘when the three children died’). in contrast, (3) refers to an event in the future (‘cooking at seven in the morning tomorrow’). these tenses can only be known from the context. the words in (4) are similar to those in (3), differing only in the absence of the adverbial time gailoa ‘tomorrow’ and the occurrence of the emphasizer ka ‘only, just, no matter what’. the ka element indicates a habitual meaning (‘no matter what, the cooking activity must be conducted at seven in the morning’). these three examples show that -oka not only refers to a specific event in the past, as in (1), but can also refer to the future and habitual actions when the event is modified by the element ka. this indicates that it should not be treated as exclusively a non-future marker but must be considered in its broader function as a deictic marker (meaning ‘at there’) used in the temporal realm (hence, temporal marker). journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 395 as a temporal marker, -oka can also attach to a noun phrase that functions as an adverb of the time of an utterance, referring to the past or the future. sentences (5) and (6) below demonstrate this. (5) hari jumat-oka de o day fridayloc.there then nrnm ngoi to-ka-isa-osi. (future) 1s 1ss -to-seaward-on.go.first ‘this friday i’m going seawards.’ (the speaker plans to go to ternate for some errands) (6) hari jumat-oka day fridayloc.there kaugonika, o ngoi yesterday nrnm 1s to-ka-isa. 1ss-to-seaward (past) ‘on friday yesterday, i went seawards.’ in both (5) and (6), -oka attaches to jumat ‘friday’, referring to the future in (5) and the past in (6). the meaning is understood based on the context and the occurrence of the adverb of time kaugonika ‘yesterday’. we will see later in the next sections that as a temporal marker -oka can cooccur with each of the three other clitics -oka-ou, -oka-osi and -oka-uli. the clitic -oka as a spatial marker the clitic can also function as a spatial marker to mark the location in the spatial realm. it always attaches to the spatial reference noun (a location) to form an adverb of place as demonstrated by (7) and (8) below. (7) o aiwani i-lepe o nrnm animal 3nhs-a.lot nrnm bongan-oka jungleloc.there ‘animals are a lot in the jungle there.’ (8) ami-pena mo-eye o 3sfposs-pen 3sfs-take nrnm tonak-oka soil-loc.there ‘she took her pen on the ground there.’ in (7) and (8) above, -oka attaches to a noun phrase to modify it as an adverb of place, namely, bongan ‘jungle’ and tonak ‘ground’, ‘floor’. it functions as a deictic marker to point to the place where the situation or event occurs. the clitic -ou previous research treats -ou as an aspect marker that functions as a perfective marker (wimbish 1991:47). traditionally, aspect is defined as ‘different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation’ (comrie 1976: 3). ‘internal temporal constituency’ indicates that the situation or event undergoes a process within a certain expanse of time, which can be considered to be either an on-going or incomplete process (imperfective) or a completed process (perfective). here, however, i will argue that it can have a broader function and thus should be treated as such. syntactically, just like -oka, it is also a clitic because it modifies the whole phrase (verb and noun phrase) it attaches to instead of the stem only. as (1) indicates, -ou is treated as a perfective marker. i argue that it is actually a confirmative marker, to confirm that the event or state (the predicate that is attached by -oka) is certain to happen in the present, future, or past. it can also attach to a noun phrase to confirm that it is the ‘correct’ one. the term ‘confirmative’ follows janhunen (2012: 244), who argued that ‘the confirmative conveys a confirmed fact based on the speaker’s personal observation.’ this function is based on the speakers’ interpretation in local malay in most of its appearance in the transcriptions, namely, the word suda. in this language, it has a dual meaning of perfective and confirmative. the perfective indicates ‘already’, as in ‘have you eaten?’ the short answer can be suda ‘done’; however, in a complete sentence, another form, su, must be used, such as kita su makang (1s perf eat), meaning ‘i have eaten’. speakers never use suda for the perfective meaning in such an utterance. on the other hand, the confirmative meaning can only use suda. it always occurs in journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) dalan mehuli perangin-angin 396 the final position. it can modify an np such as anak itu suda (child that certain), ‘that child for sure’, or a clause ngana baca suda (2s read certain), ‘just read it!’. the function of the pagu -ou as a confirmative marker is the same as the local malay suda. similar to the confirmative marker in local malay, -ou modifies a predicate or a noun, the constituent that it attaches to. the clitic -ou with a predicate predicates in pagu can be states or active verbs. morphologically, they both behave identically, as each of them must be preceded by a pronominal prefix. as described below, each must be attached to a pronominal prefix wothat cross-references with the predicate’s argument. any of the predicates can be attached to -ou to produce a confirmative meaning. (9) wo-sawin-ou. 3sms -hungry-certain ‘he must be hungry (for sure).’ (present) ‘he will be hungry (for sure).’ (future) ‘he was hungry (for sure).’ (past) ??‘he had been hungry (for sure).’ (past perfect) (10) wo-tagi-ou. 3sms-walk.away-certain ‘he must be going (for sure) (progressive) ‘he’ll be going for sure (future) ‘he went out for sure’ (past) ??‘he had gone for sure.’ (past perfect) the confirmative meaning that results from -ou attaching to the predicate, as in (9) and (10), is closest to the meaning of a high degree of certainty prediction based on a personal view (let’s say that the speaker’s highest degree of certainty on the condition/event is of 95% to 99% (100% is the rate of a reality / what really happens). sentence (9) exemplifies a prediction of someone’s certainty in relation to his feeling of hunger. it can be interpreted as ‘the person must be hungry’. the tense can be future, present, or past based on the context. however, it cannot have a (past) perfect tense, shown by translations marked with ??. in order to have a past perfect meaning, -oka must occur before -ou (see (12)). likewise, the verb tagi ‘go’ with -ou, as in (10), produces a prediction of certainty in the past, future, or present tense only. it cannot have a past perfect tense without the clitic -oka (see (13)). a predicate with -ou yielding an imperative utterance a verb with -ou can produce an imperative sentence, particularly when the subject is a second person pronoun no‘you’ accompanied by an imperative stress on the penultimate of the verb (perangin-angin 2020). this imperative indicates asking someone to do something, based on the speaker’s belief that it is absolutely necessary to happen. thus, intransitive verbs such as tagi ‘go’ with -ou mean ‘just go!’ when extra stress is used (marked with the capitalized syllable ta; see (11)). (11) no-tagi-ou 2ss-walk.away-certain ‘just go!’ in addition, -ou in imperative sentence such as (11) is a confirmative marker that produces the same confirmative interpretation, ‘you must go (for sure)!’. note that if the extra stress is not present (but rather a regular stress) the confirmative meaning is still present. the imperative is however not so strong i.e. the urgency of the demand/command is much less. this is also the same with the transitives as demonstrated by (16). a predicate followed by -oka and -ou yielding a perfective meaning a predicate with -ou alone cannot yield a past perfective meaning (to express an event or situation that has happened in the past) journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 397 unless it is preceded by -oka, as demonstrated by (1). wimbish described -oka as a past tense marker (non-future) and -ou as a perfective marker. additionally, the perfective meaning can result from the overall function of -oka as a locational (time) marker and -ou as a confirmative marker, demonstrated by (12) and (13). (12) wo-sawin-oka-ou. 3sms-hungryloc.there-certain ‘he has/had been/become hungry. lit. ‘he was hungry at a certain time in the past for sure (confirmed).’ (13) wo-tagi-oka-ou. 3sms -walk.away-loc.there-certain ‘he has/had gone away.’ lit. ‘he had gone away at certain time in the past for sure (confirmed).’ examples (12) and (13) are similar to (9) and (10), respectively, except without the occurrence of -oka in the latter. the clitic -oka follows the predicate sawin ‘hungry’ in (12) and tagi ‘go’ in (13) while -ou occurs at the end. here, the clitic -ou modifies both the predicate and -oka, indicating that the state or event in the past marked by -oka is confirmed by -ou (i.e. it indeed has/had happened in a certain time in the past). this produces a perfect meaning. compared with (9) and (10) above, where -oka is not present, a perfect reading is not possible. this occurs only when both -oka and -ou are attached to a predicate in the respective order, where the former is a temporal marker and the latter is a confirmative marker, with the former modifying the predicate and the latter modifying both the predicate and the tense. the clitic -ou with a noun phrase the clitic -ou can also attach to a noun phrase in order to confirm whether the attached noun is ‘the preferred or correct one’, demonstrated by (14) and (15) below. (14) o namo gena-ou nrnm chicken that-certain ‘that chicken for sure/certainly’ (context: in the market, someone finally decided after some thought which chicken to buy.) (15) o fian-ou nrnm fian-certain ‘fian for sure/certainly.’ (context: the teacher says this after thinking of which students should answer the question.) in the two examples above, -ou attaches to a noun phrase o namo gena ‘that chicken’ and o fian ‘fian’, respectively. the phrases are uttered when the speaker confirms one over several options. in (14), there are several chickens to buy in the market, while in (15), there are several students in the class to whom the teacher wants to address a question. it can also produce an imperative sentence when attached to the object of a twoplace predicate (16). (16) no-tibo o namo 2ss-buy nrnm chicken gena-ou! that-certain ‘just buy that chicken!’ lit. ‘you buy that (particular) chicken for sure’. (asking the listener to buy that particular chicken rather than the other ones). as (16) demonstrates, the object of the predicate tibo ‘buy’ o namo gena ‘that chicken’ is assigned an extra stress on the penultimate (marked with the capital ge). this produces both a confirmative and an imperative reading; that is, the speaker is certain that the listener must buy the particular chicken. the function of -ou applies only to the immediate phrase it attaches to. in (16), it modifies only the np o namo gena ‘that chicken’. attaching -ou after the verb produces no-tibo-ou, only modifies the verb phrase to mean ‘just buy it! do not just look at it! do not just borrow it! similarly, in (12) and (13), -oka attaches to a predicate and modifies the clitic that journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) dalan mehuli perangin-angin 398 functions as the location of time marker (tense). this confirms that the state of being hungry in a certain time in the past (12) or the activity of going at a certain time in the past (13) indeed happened (perfect meaning). the clitic -oka that attaches to np, as in (5) and (6) above, cannot be attached to -ou to produce a perfect meaning, as -oka functions as a tense marker only if it attaches to a predicate. the clitic -oka in (5) and (6) is merely a temporal location marker. the clitic -ou cannot confirm the time in order to produce a perfect meaning. the clitic -osi the clitic -osi is described in as an imperfective marker (wimbish 1991), as demonstrated by (17) and (18) below (glossing and translations are wimbish’). it also occurs with -oka; however, the latter is treated as a tense marker, which differs from a temporal marker. (17) wo-oyom-osi. 3sms-eat-imprf ‘he will eat.’ (but he hasn’t quite started yet) (18) wo-oyom-oka-osi. 3sms-eat-nfutimprf ‘he is eating now.’ its overall function suggests that -osi is a durative marker, marking a certain duration of a situation or event. pragmatically (by presupposition), this duration is always interpreted to happen first at a certain time and be followed by another situation or event later. the figure below illustrates the meaning and function of -osi. figure 3. the durative marker -osi in a multiple event timeline similar to -oka and -ou, the function and meaning of -osi is based on the local malay dolo ‘first’. note that dolo can function as an adverb which mean ‘in the past’. however, -osi does not have the latter meaning. both dolo and -osi function as durative markers, where the speaker presupposes that the intended event or state must be followed by another one. commonly, -osi attaches to a verb. like ou, it can occur with the time marker -oka and produce a perfect progressive reading (see (20) below). the durative function of -osi means ‘ongoing (at a certain moment) first’, implying that the duration will always be followed by another duration of an action or event. i gloss it on.go.first. as such, examples (17) and (18) from wimbish can be translated into (19) and (20) below. (19) wo-oyom-osi. 3sms-eat-on.go.first ‘he will/should/must/ eat first’ (future), or ‘he was/is eating first’ (progressive), or ‘he eats first’ (present), or ‘he ate first (past) but not ‘he has/had been eating first’ (present/past perfect progressive) (20) wo-oyom-oka-osi. 3sms-eat-loc.there-on.go.first ‘he has/had been eating first’ (past progressive / perfect progressive) sentence (19) translates better as either ‘he will/should/must eat first’ (future), ‘he was/is eating first (progressive), ‘he eats first’ (present), or ‘he ate first’ (past). this depends on the context (when the event happens, or tense) and the speaker’s attitude (expectation, suggestion, necessity expressed through the modals will, should, must). however, it cannot produce a perfect progressive meaning, as given in the translation above. the speakers require -oka to occur between the predicate and -osi as shown in (20), as -oka functions to mark the location of time of the event, such as eating at a certain time in the past. in addition, -osi modifies the eating event in the past to produce the ongoing first meaning. this can be literally interpreted as ‘the eating event has started sometime in the past and it is ongoing now until the next coming event’. as such, the sentence can be understood as a past perfect journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 399 progressive reading. it implies that the event is supposed to be followed by another event. the clitic -osi can also modify other types of verbs (transitives or ditransitives) by attaching to the verb, as demonstrated by tibo ‘buy’ in (21) and kula ‘give’ in (22). (21) wo-tibo-osi o bila. 3sms-buy-on.go.first nrnm rice ‘he will/should/must buy rice first’ (future) or, ‘he bought rice first’ (past) or, ‘he buys rice first’ (present) or, ‘he was/is buying rice first’ (progressive) (22) mo-wi-kula-osi o pipi. 3sfs-3smo-give-on.go.first nrnm money ‘she will/should/must give him money first’ (future) or, ‘she gave him money first’ (past) or, ‘she gives him money first’ (present) or, ‘she was/is giving him money first’ (progressive) in (21) and (22) above, -osi attaches to each of the verbs in order to yield an ongoing first meaning. the tense and the use of a modal in the english interpretations depend on both the context and the speaker’s attitude. a predicate with -osi that yield an imperative utterance like predicates with -ou, those with -osi can produce an imperative meaning when the subject is a second person and an extra stress is assigned to the penultimate of the predicate base word. therefore, when stress is assigned to the penultimate syllable of the verbs tibo ‘buy’ and kula ‘give’ in (21) and (22), respectively, and the subject is replaced by no ‘you’, the sentence becomes imperative, as demonstrated in (23) and (24). the capitalized syllable of each predicate below shows the extrastress on the penultimate position. (23) yo-tibo-osi o bila. 2ss-buy-on.go.first nrnm rice ‘please buy some rice!’ lit. ‘you buy some rice first!’ (24) yo-wi-kula-osi o 2ss-3smo-give-on.go.first nrnm pipi money ‘please give him some money!’ lit. ‘you give him some money first!’ literally, the ‘ongoing first’ meaning of the sentences with -osi in (23) and (24) is similar to those above. however, since the verb is assigned an extra stress, it becomes imperative. compared with imperative sentences with -ou, those with -osi are more polite (in english, it can be roughly translated as ‘please’), due to the impact of the pragmatic presupposition of -osi, that you may or can do or can have something else if you do this first (as a reward). thus, these sentences are more polite, as they sound persuasive. note, if the extra stress is absent it still yields an imperative. however, like the one with -ou as in (11) and (16) the urgency of the command is weak. it sounds like a suggestion i.e. ‘it will be good for you to do it; if not it will be just okay’. the clitic -osi with a noun phrase other than attaching to the predicate, -osi can also attach to a noun phrase object instead. thus, for the verbs tibo ‘buy’ and kula ‘give’ in the examples above, it can also attach to the object, as shown in (25) and (26) below. however, the meaning can differ from those where -osi attaches to the predicate. (25) wo-tibo o bila-osi. 3sms-buy nrnm rice-on.go.first presupposition: ‘he will buy some rice first, and then buy something else later’. (26) mo-wi-kula o 3sfs-3smo-give nrnm pipi-osi. money-on.go.first presupposition: ‘she will give him some money first, and then some other thing later.’ when -osi attaches to the np object, it becomes ambiguous. first, it can have the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) dalan mehuli perangin-angin 400 same meaning as when it attaches to the predicate, as in (21) and (22). by presupposition, the next event is another activity, such as ‘after buying some rice, she will go to the field’ and ‘after giving him money, she will have lunch’. second, based on a presupposition, the activity remains the same in the next event; however, the np object changes, such as ‘after buying rice she will buy some fish’ and ‘after giving him money, she will give him some gift’. the clitic -uli wimbish (1991) describes -uli as a repetitive marker, glossed repet. this is demonstrated in (27) (wimbish 1991:51). additionally, it also has another meaning ‘this time’, as illustrated by (28) below (wimbish 1991:52). note, wimbish (1991) takes the form of the clitic as -oli instead of -uli. i take the latter after consultation with my informant based on its pronunciation in words it attaches to, where the first vocal is closer to /u/ than to /o/. (27) wo-oyom-oli. 3sm-eat-repet ‘he eats again.’ (28) dodoa-oli na-tooma-uwa? why-this.time 2s-kill-neg ‘why didn’t you kill it this time?’ i argue that the two meanings and functions of -uli described above belong to one single function, that is, a repetitive presupposition marker. it functions to signify whether the action or condition stated by the predicate occurs as a consequence of a certain cause appeared previously. the cause, however is not stated. pragmatically, it can be interpreted as an adverb of reason: ‘for a certain reason/motivation the event/condition (stated by the predicate) happens/happened/will happen (again)’. i gloss it repet (repetitive) with this broader meaning. this presupposed meaning is established based on the uses of three words of local malay found in the translations of any appearance of -uli. speakers and translators tend to use ulang ‘repeat’, lagi ‘again’, or kong ‘then/next’ to express the use of -uli in local malay translation. the following pagu transcriptions fit the interpretation of -uli in different words: in (29) and (31) ulang ‘repeat’ is used to signify a repeated action, in (30) and (32) lagi ‘again’ is used for reasoning why things happen, while in (33) and (34) kong ‘then’ is used for reasoning why things should happen that way. based on this, examples from wimbish in (27) and (28) above can have a pragmatic interpretation as in (29) and (30) below. (29) wo-oyom-uli 3sms-eat-repet ‘he eats again.’ prag. ‘(for a certain reason/motivation) he eats now’ (it can be interpreted as ‘again’ because by presupposition ‘he must have had eaten previously’) (30) dodoa-uli na-tooma-uwa . why-repet 2ss-kill-neg ‘why on earth didn’t you kill it?’ prag. ‘on what possible reason you did not kill it? sentences (29) and (30) above demonstrate that -uli is not merely a repetitive marker but rather a repetitive presupposition marker that means ‘for a certain or any reason or motivation, the doer eats’. this can yield the meaning ‘again’ due to the pragmatic presupposition. the use of the present tense and the adverb ‘now’ are based on the context. in addition, the clitic can produce past and future tenses. in this interpretation, ‘again’ may be pragmatic, as the event must have had happened previously. similarly, (30) has the same pragmatic meaning of ‘for any possible reason’ (see prag). the question dodoa (why) is followed by -uli to provide a pragmatic reasoning for the killing not having happened. likewise, sentence (31) demonstrates that the repetition reading of ‘again’ results from the pragmatic interpretation (see prag). (31) nena mio-nyanyi-uli this 1ex-sing-repet ‘here we’ll sing again’. prag. ‘for some reason, we will sing now’ journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 401 the sentence above can have a repeated reading due to the pragmatic meaning of the event that another singing action must have happened previously. due to its pragmatic implication, -uli can also be interpreted as an adverb of reason, such as ‘besides’, ‘moreover’, or ‘furthermore’, as in (32) and (33). (32) ma de mo-lepe-uli. but and 3sfstalk.a.lot-repet ‘(but also) besides, she talks a lot.’ prag: ‘but also, for any (possible) reason, she talks a lot.’ (33) ma ngoak -osi rnl child-on.go.first nourus-uli. 2sstake.care -repet ‘moreover, you still need to take care of your children.’ (so don’t go) prag: ‘for any possible reasons, you still need to take care of your children.’ furthermore, it can also mean ‘in fact’ like in (34) below. (34) awi-pokol ma 3smposs-stomach but ka i-kakasidel-uli just 3nhs-hang-repet ‘in fact, his belly is hanging down’. prag: ‘for any possible reason, his belly is hanging down.’ (speaker is talking about her brother’s big belly, which hangs down on the body) finally, as mentioned, -uli can also occur with the temporal deictic marker -oka, demonstrated by (35) below. (35) wo-iyak-oka-uli. 3sms-marry-loc.thererepet ‘he got married again.’ prag: ‘for some certain reason/motivation, he got married (at a certain time in the past) again.’ due to the occurrence of -uli, the event of getting married happened in the past must be interpreted as repetitive, indicating that ‘there must be some certain reason for him to repeat the event of getting married’. the absence of uli in the sentence produces a non-repetitive past event. conclusion the functions of the four pagu clitics, -oka, -ou, -osi, and -uli, undeniably exhibit the tam functions of tense, perfective, non-perfective, and repetitive markers respectively. however, the results of the present study show that those four clitics must have broader functions: time and spatial locational, confirmative, durative, and repetitive presupposition markers, respectively. as such, the tam functions of each of the clitics are a minor part of the big picture. avoiding the restrictions of traditional categories is necessary for describing little studied languages. for pagu, focusing exclusively on elements responsible for tam markers reveals only fragmentary functions of the clitics. this study demonstrated the necessity of escaping eurocentrism in order to document the extensive functions and meanings of the elements. this can be achieved by utilizing the local knowledge revealed through studying elements in their other language (the lingua franca) as a result of the language change process (metatypy). references bhat, d. n. s. 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(1982). papuan languages of oceania. ars linguistica 7. tubingen: gnv. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/malcolm_ross_(linguist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/alexandra_aikhenvald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/r._m._w._dixon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/r._m._w._dixon journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 403 abbreviations 1ex first plural exclusive 1s first person singular 1ss first person singular subject 2ss second person singular subject 3nhs third non-human subject 3ps third person plural subject 3sfposs third person singular female possessive pronoun 3sfs third person singular female subject 3sm third person singular male 3smo third person singular male object 3sms third person singular male subject imprf imperfective lit. literal meaning loc locative neg negative nrnm non-related noun marker (marking a noun that has not been introduced in the discourse) perf perfective prag. pragmatic interpretation repet repetitive rnl related noun linker (marking a noun that already has a certain relation with another noun in the discourse) 101 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 101 – 114 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.4398 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. stylistic features of netspeak language on 9gag’s instagram account i gede sumerta yasa, putu nur ayomi, putu devi maharani putu.nur.a@unmas.ac.id universitas mahasaraswati denpasar, indonesia abstract article information the emergence of netspeak as a variety of languages cannot be separated from the development of the internet and social media. the characteristic of its medium and the social media nature of communication makes netspeak have distinctive and unique features that differentiate it from the more traditional form of communication, such as topographic and grammatical irregularities, as well as lexical creativity. this study attempts to discover the use of written communication features on 9gag’s instagram account as a popular community-based content creator. the qualitative method is applied by using crystal’s feature of language variety model. the data was gathered through observation and documentation and then analyzed in terms of graphology, typography, grammar, vocabulary, and discourse features. this research found some distinctive graphic features such as punctuations and spellings, morphological processes and syntactical irregularities, distinctive vocabularies, and some discourse feature that presents unique coherence and chronological order. the finding indicates the rich features present in the data source, with the characteristics of informality and irregularities that often bend the rules of standard language imposed by internet users. moreover, the finding also shows that the written language development on netspeak is a way to overcome the barriers to expression in instagram communication. keywords: netspeak; language-variety; social-media; instagram received: 17 february 2022 revised: 17 may 2022 accepted: 15 november 2022 introduction the rapid expansion of technology accelerates the development of language. a new variety of languages is created because the internet provides a different medium of communication. as a term introduced by crystal, netspeak is known as a language of the internet (crystal, 2001). in the modern era, the internet has become a powerful global medium, and so is netspeak. there are some reasons why netspeak has become so enormous for people to take advantage of its existence. first, the medium boasts massive users. every year more people flock to this digital world. in 2014, 89.42% of young adults in the us used at least one social media platform; the numbers increased to 97.5% in two years (villanti, l, ilakkuvan, jacobs, graham, & rath, 2017). today, approximately https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i gede sumerta yasa et.al. 102 there are 4.5 billion internet users worldwide. second, it is highly productive and flexible. the netspeak is expanding, and new expressions are created every day. from a lexical perspective, the media influences the vocabulary of a language, which causes semantic differentiation from other linguistic expressions, resulting in new words that are distinctive from its traditional meanings, such as neologism (pei, 2014). the productive side of the netspeak is also affected by the morphological process; the media is rich with affixation, clipping, blending, etc. (ratih & gusdian, 2018); for example, the medium has prefixes such as cyber-, like ’cyber-art’ (dong, 2014), and ’cyber-culture’ (jurida, dzanic, pavlovic, jahic, & hanic, 2016). during the pandemic, the internet played primary roles as a source of information and medium of communication, and many new terms were created, such as ’zooming’, ‘coronials’, and ’coronacation’, which were found on social media (nabila et al., 2021; alsalman et al., 2021). moreover, people appear not to follow the standard of language rules, and sometimes, the grammatical system is bent on acquiring unique expressions. third, the medium fascinates all gender and age, from young millennials to generation x. those who commonly prefer formal writing is now starting to embrace the social media and even stated that this linguistic situation as ‘a feature of the progressive world’ (tahir & hassan, 2021). fourth, the features in netspeak, mainly social media that exist nowadays, offer many benefits for individuals and businesses. for commercial purposes, social media helps corporate and entrepreneurs to promote their business, build connections to customers, monitor the market, and raise brand awareness (akram, 2018). for communitybased creators, creating and using social media can attract followers and gain popularity. netspeak has distinctive features that other media lack; a survey even encourages teachers to use this feature as a supplement for english language acquisition (jeyaraj, 2014). for example, a meme, an attractive graphic image with embedded text, carries various messages and is a source of discourse with funny characteristics (handayani, sari, & respati, 2016). the medium is also rich in stylistic variation presented by its features. for example, bbc learning english on instagram created a unique style of spelling by adapting to the topic being discussed, like “eggcelent” when covering content about the egg idiom (ratnadi, yasa, & hardiyanti, 2021). nevertheless, it cannot be avoided that written communication content or ideas on netspeak might be interpreted differently by people. this is described with the term ‘visually decontextualized’, meaning lack of visual contact; thus, participants of communication on netspeak cannot rely on context, and sometimes meaning is unclear (crystal, 2001). nevertheless, internet users can mitigate this communication barrier by using several features offered by the social media platform. for example, an informant from a study conducted by choiriyati et al. (2020) prefers to choose diction, punctuation, and capital letters when communicating on whatsapp and instagram to diminish multi-interpretation. besides the studies mentioned above, researchers have conducted some studies that focuses on certain features of netspeak. mahasneh et al. (2021) revealed that internet memes could convey social and political expression with a trait of entertainment that makes people react. the study of emoji by cohn et al. (2019) explored the interrelation of the use of emoji and grammar by investigating the users’ perceptions. the third research is a study by monderin et al. (2021) which concerned with the lexical feature of netspeak in filipinos social media. nasir et al (2018) studies the use of morphological phenomenon on netspeak and the use of punctuation marks. meanwhile, wang et al. (2017) studies the stylistic form of netspeak in chatroom situation. the netspeak features presented by head of states in twitter communication have also been explored by ayomi (2021) using the theory of systemic functional linguistic. except for wang et al. (2017) and ayomi (2021), the studies mentioned above discussed only several aspects of netspeak. wang has discussed most of the netspeak features. however, these features are discussed separately from their context of use. on the other hand, ayomi (2021) focuses more on how the linguistic choices present meaning, especially politically. less attention is given to the stylistic varieties. in the previous studies, the discourse stylistic feature is not covered journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 103 enough yet, and this study brought the stylistic way of creating coherence or violation while achieving intended purposes. thus, this study tries to fill the gap in the current research on netspeak by offering a more comprehensive analysis covering the whole aspect of netspeak features in their context of use by focusing on one instagram account. by focusing on one account with a specific profile, the interplay between pictures, symbols, and the written language and how those features contribute to the humour and entertaining aspect of 9gag’s instagram posts, where the element of creativity and wit is highlighted can be examined deeper. stylistic approach studies the typical linguistic expression that characterizes certain types of text including the description of their function and effect (verdonk, 2002). as this study specifically deals with multimodal digital text in which the visual signs come into play, the analysis employed the crystal’s five features of written communication (2001) to describe the textual form, followed by the contextual analysis to interpret the purpose and meaning of the netspeak features. there are five types of features for written communication. the first feature is the graphic feature, which encompasses the general presentation of written language, such as the use of animation or images. crystal gives an example of how an english newspaper can be identified by its headlines, columns, and captions. the second feature is orthographic, which covers personal writing systems in punctuation, emphasis, capitalization, or spelling. the example is a spelling modification of “beanz meanz heinz” in advertising. the grammatical feature is the third feature of written language, which includes the morphological and syntactical structure of the language. for example, religious passages in english use unusual vocative construction like “o god, who knows…”. the next feature is a lexical feature, which focuses on the vocabulary of a language in terms of a set of words and idioms. for instance, legal english writing has expressions such as ‘alleged’, ‘easement’ and ‘heretofore’. the last feature is the discourse feature, which features the organization of a text in terms of coherence, relevance, or progression of ideas. for example, an english scientific journal consists of sections such as abstract, introduction, methodology, result, and conclusion. the aim of the present study is to discuss every stylistic feature and analyse its textual form and contextual function based on crystal’s model (2001) to acquire a stylistic variation of netspeak found on instagram. methodology as the data source, the writer chose 9gag’s instagram account (instagram.com/9gag). it was selected for the account is an up-to-date community-based instagram page where a variety of english used shows the informality characteristic of language. the selection was supported by the cosmopolitan nature of its followers, with english as the primary language used in communication which therefore can produce more creative form of language. this study used two methods for collecting the data which are observation and documentation. the first method was used to gather data by observing content published by 9gag’s instagram account from the three parts: graphics, captions, and comments. the data was taken from the september to october 2021 posts. the study explored possible written netspeak features used by instagram users and did not search for each feature’s quantity or the number of occurrences. thus, the writer applied purposive sampling when choosing the data. data were collected from content that highly represents the use of a feature. the documentation process was conducted by screen-shooting the part of the instagram page where the feature occurred and listing some information or detail possessed by the content to provide intertextuality to the data if necessary. the data were analyzed using a qualitative method to identify the written netspeak feature on 9gag’s instagram account. the theoretical framework for the analysis of this study was based on crystal’s stylistic feature of written language (crystal, 2001). the study used an inductive approach to analyze the features by studying the aspect of graphology, typography, grammar, vocabulary, and discourse. a complete data was obtained through synthesizing step where the writer combined all information: languagejournal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i gede sumerta yasa et.al. 104 wise and external details taken from various sources to support the data. results and discussion the study finds some stylistic features distinctive to the netspeak situation in the 9gag instagram account. graphic features are discovered in two primary forms: memes and emojis and used to create stories or lexical representations. for the orthographic features, the forms indicate textual stylistic variety that affects the intertextuality of the written text, used by instagram users to create puns or funny comments. the grammatical features present ways to make new expressions through the various morphological processes. the deviations in syntactical forms of the data are employed to achieve the intertextual meaning of the expression. words or phrases found that are classified into lexical features possess distinctive meanings suitable to netspeak situations and apart from everyday uses. finally, the discourse features highlighted forms or styles to create orders and coherences of text to gain banter or achieve intertextual links related to the contents. this section is divided into five subsections to cover each written-language feature category found on the data source. forms and functions of the graphic features in netspeak two distinctive graphic features are massively used on the data. the first feature is graphic images, which serves three functions: context-oriented task, baiting or promoting, and emotive purpose. the second is emoji. it has three primary uses: act as lexicons, bridging emotions, and stylistic purpose. the finding regarding this feature is in line with the study of masahneh et al. (2021), which found the use of memes as a mode of expression. the use of meme to create different interpretation from context interplay the first use of graphic features in the meme is to create different interpretation from the context interplay. datum 1 figure 1 figure 1 presented on datum 1 was used to offer a plot twist to a post, which was obtained through manipulating the targeted meaning of the writing. a different interpretation was produced as the image influenced the context of the whole post. the quote “mac now supports window” has the mainstream relation to the capability of a device (mac) to operate an operation system (os). by providing the image, the context of the writing shifted into the capability of a computer (mac) physically holding a window (part of a house). the graphic on datum 1 can carry the task of delivering meaning and clarifying context. this meaning shift creates a playful and entertaining nuance to the picture. the use of meme to promote a webpage through baiting datum 2 figure 2 & 3 one of the interesting forms of communication that can only exist in social media is meme. figure 2 of datum 2 possesses the ability of the image to bait people to flock into the comment section of the post. figure 2 presents a meme with a command to dictate the viewers of the content: to order people to comment randomly (spamming). the author of 9gag uses foreshadowing technique of how the comment will be filled with spams. this method attracts people to contribute to the spam filling of the comment section. the baiting process successfully influenced the journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 105 followers to spam comments on the comment section shown in figure 3. the phenomenon promoted the content by elevating its insight on adding the number of comments of the post. use of meme and emoji to express impression or emotions datum 3 figure 4 the writers found that meme can be used to express the feelings of the addressers. datum 3 presented a ‘spongebob’ meme with two graphic elements: the smiling sponge bob represented a fake smile, and transparent three sponge bobs expressed frustration. the whole feeling from datum 3 is internal frustration towards ignorance. datum 4 figure 5 the emoji of datum 4 was a reaction to the meme in datum 3. the crying emoji on datum 4 represented a sad feeling, an impression of how sadly accurate the circumstance presented in datum 3. by reflecting on both datum 3 and 4, netspeak medium found on the data source possesses several graphic features used to express feelings. this finding is supported by the study of memes on social media conducted by mahasneh and bashayreh(2021), which states that internet memes can convey expression messages of the creators. use of emoji as lexicons there are two uses of emoji found by the writers which occur in the sentences. the first use is to substitute a word with a graphic emoji, and the second is to embed graphic subsidiary art for a stylistic purpose. datum 5 figure 6 the graphic in datum 5 presented a use of ‘world emoji’ to represent the lexicon noun ‘world’. the user used it as the graphic carries semantic meaning from the sign represented by the emoji, which takes the world-like depiction. the use of emoji on datum 5 as a substitution for word is also in line with the finding of a study conducted by cohn et al. (2019) that states emoji can be used to substitute for words in sentences, especially for nouns or adjectives which have a lesserambiguous semantic connection with the graphic. it also produced a writing style on a syntactical level that combined non-verbal communication as a word to prepositional phrase ‘around the world’. another use of emoji is the brown-red leaves that act as a subsidiary unit in the sentence. the presence of the emoji does not influence the sentence’s syntax. it was used to add a stylistic extension of the message as the brown-red leaves emoji has a conceptual meaning related to autumn, thus creating tone and imagery to the sentence. forms and functions of orthographic feature in netspeak the writers found several distinctive orthographic features used by users to suit their personal writing preference when delivering ideas on the data source. the finding of this feature encompassed the use of punctuations & symbols, alphabet & number characters, and use of uppercase. some features show the flexibility and informality nature of written language on netspeak, apart from standard writing, showing a unique journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i gede sumerta yasa et.al. 106 variety of english on the internet. the study is also in line with the study of nasir et al. (2018) that found informal use of punctuation which does not follow standard use of language. distinctive uses of asterisk instagram users were found to use asterisks on 9gag’s instagram account to achieve several linguistic tasks. the writers found three functions for this feature. datum 6: “are you trying to make me look like sh*t? seriously?” datum 7: “why you no be like jonny? *wooden spoon crack to head*” datum 8: [first comment] “has to ve” [correction comment] “be*” first, an asterisk is used to diminish or soften expletives on social media. this symbol on datum 6 replaced the letter in spelling level and acted as censorship applied to written communication. the nature or common rule of using this asterisk on datum 6 is replacing the middle letter of the word; thus, at least the initial letter has to remain in the word to make readers know which word is referred to. the application of an asterisk on the expression of datum 6 reduced the direct characteristic of the swear word ‘shit’. an instagram user applied the use of an asterisk in datum 7 to indicate an ongoing action or event. it was used by placing an asterisk at the beginning and the end of the sentence. the use of asterisks in datum 7 separated and distinguished the expression from another writing style like dialogue or statement. the resulting written text in datum 8 got synchronous or parallel action when an utterance was delivered. thus, the final expression of datum 7 expresses a comparison to somebody while hitting his/her head with a wooden spoon. the third use of asterisk found on the data source indicates the correction to written communication. a characteristic of written communication on instagram, particularly in the comment section, is not immediately revisable, especially when users have sent the comments and errors occurred. the characteristic implied that the netizens have to re-write their ideas to correct the mistyping. nevertheless, the existence of an asterisk as an orthographic feature, represented by datum 8, creates a shortcut to do the correction with minimum effort. in datum 8, an instagram user made an error in his/her comment and revised the error consecutively on the following comment. the user only applied the asterisk to which word was targeted for the revision. this same feature of datum 8 also occurred in the study of tahir et al. (2021), which found the use of asterisk stars to indicate a user’s correction to a word or text. use of symbol as a lexicon datum 9: “@ that friend” a symbol on netspeak was found used by the author of 9gag to substitute a lexical unit on a sentence. the symbol used in datum 9 was the at-sign-symbol (@). on social media platforms like instagram, this symbol signals username and address to other users. in the circumstance of datum 9, it was used to replace the word ’tag’ in the sentence, a related lexicon to addressing activity on the data source. thus, the sentence carried imperative meaning to make users tag their friends. this symbol is also commonly used to replace the word at, found in expression like “i’m @school” (tahir& hassan, 2021). use of symbol as emphasis datum 10: “every. single. time.” the writers found the use of full-stop that was placed after each word in a sentence to create emphasis or dramatic effect. the punctuation in datum 10 added a brief pause when reading every word. the chunked nature of the writing provides emphasis to each correspondent word. it was used to express the impression of the addresser to a dilemma or indecisiveness when deciding to buy something. the degree of the expression is elevated as the writing got a distinctive sound pattern of falling intonation after each word when influenced by the punctuation in datum 10. thus, it created a dramatic effect ‘related’ to the sentence on datum 10. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 107 use of symbol to deliver speech act the punctuation of the question mark presented in datum 11 was found carrying a speech act addressed to the instagram users. datum 11: “?” [a comment found in the post featuring figure 7] figure 7 the post where datum 11 occurs presenting a meme that needs context or general knowledge to understand. a roman soldier indicates that the number engraved on the wall must be interpreted in roman numeral, which is 69 (sixty-nine). to the netspeak community, when the 69 expression occurred on the internet, which is a porn thing, they commonly reacted with ’nice’. people who do not know this culture often ask for context to understand. the question mark in datum 11 represents confusion with an embedded speech act that requests the viewers to give the addresser information regarding the post in datum 11. use of specific letter to soften expletive datum 12: “*gets 2 stars* ah shxt! here we go again” the writers found a stylistic form of blurring expletives used by instagram users by replacing certain character(s) within the expletives. datum 12 presented customization applied to a word to reduce the aggressive nature of expletive in written language. the word shit was softened by replacing the letter ’i’ with ’x’. similar to using an asterisk in datum 7, this feature acts as censorship for a curse word. use of repetitive letter to emphasize emotion datum 13: “they are soooo cute” the feature of repetitive letters represented by datum 13 was used by instagram users on the data source to achieve stronger emotion in expression. it created a prolonged word by applying consecutive typing, either vocal or consonant letter, to the targeted word, in this case, the repeated letter o in the datum 13.the modified word is ‘so’, which is a modifier to create a greater degree for the adjective ’cute’. repeated letters in the datum 13 enable a further higher degree of greatness, thus modifying the cuteness level. orthographic emoticon orthographic smileys were found used by instagram users to express emotions, achieved by combining alphabets, punctuations or numbers. datum 14: “family goals <3” the emoticon feature in datum 14 was found to be used by instagram users to express the emotional state of the addresser. it is distinctive and is commonly created by combining alphabet letters, numbers, punctuations, and symbols. emoticon in datum 14 presented a creation of ‘heart emoticon’ by using less-than sign (<) and numeral three (3). the love emoticon in datum 14 was used to express lovable or likable feelings to a post covering halloween family life. the addresser of expression in datum 14 loves how the family spends halloween. use of uppercase to emphasize words and to express emotion capitalizations were used by netizens to emphasis the meaning of a word or to create a stronger emotion. datum 15: “well, it’s fast food, so” journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i gede sumerta yasa et.al. 108 datum 15 was found to present emphasis by applying uppercase to the word ’fast’. the orthographic feature in datum 15 occurred in a comment when the addresser reacted to a post that had a topic about a prank. the prankster on the post where datum 15 was found pretended to get a whole raw potato when buying french fries in a fast-food restaurant. the addresser of datum 16 stressed the ‘fast’ word to emphasize how fast the restaurant’s food service was. the emphasis was targeted to obtain funny expressions when fast was referred to as a real-quick or no process at all. datum 16: “my norenglish (norwegian + englis) is on point” the writers found a way to emit a stronger emotion used by an instagram user on the data source by applying uppercase to the expression. application of uppercase on datum 16 created a prosodic element of rising intonation, usually found in yelling or burst of excitement. the addresser of expression in datum 16 found the post that covered a mockery of the english language, which the user commented before, felt related to the linguistic phenomenon of the addresser; thus, the addresser felt the post was hilarious. use of alternating capitalization for sarcastic tone alternating capitalization is a form of capitalization used by cyber-citizens to create sarcasm or mockery. (datum 17): “she really said “it’s notevencooked at all”. tf woman?” a use of alternating capitalization presented in datum 17 was applied to create a sarcastic tone to the expression. the application added a consecutive change of rising and falling tones, commonly known as mockery. datum 17 is a comment found by the writers in a post where a prankster pretends to get a raw potato when buying french fries. when the prankster presents the raw potato to a staff at a fast-food restaurant, the employee then yells to her friend, saying that the raw potato is not cooked. the addresser of datum 17 then commented the post, implied by alternating capitalization that it should be obvious the potato is not cooked because it is a raw one. structural spelling modification the writers found distinctive variants of spelling modification that occurred in the structural level of the word. those three variants are reduced spelling, embedded spelling, and customized spelling. datum 18: “lol tru” datum 19: “he’s training to be jacked just so he can pick his doggo up” datum 20: “so kyot” datum 18 represents a phenomenon of reduced spelling, where the spelling of the word was modified by omitting the letter e of the final position in the word ’true’. a distinctive variant of embedded spelling occurred when an instagram user embedded additional letter(s) to a word. the variant is presented in datum 19. the addresser of datum 19 added suffix -o in the word ’dog’. netizens were also found reconstructing the spelling of a word by replacing certain letters. the last variant is customized spelling, which phenomenon is presented by datum 20. the word ’kyot’ in datum 20 was created from a total transformation of the word cute. the more known version of ’kyot’ is ’kyoot’, which the latter version share similar pronunciations with the word ‘cute’. these unique variants of spelling presented in the three data were obtained to elevate state of the art within verbal communication, which reflected stylistic features of netspeak found on the data source. the writers used the term ‘conceptual’ for a variant of distinctive spelling, which adjusts or modifies the spelling according to conceptual elements of writing such as topic or theme. two unique spellings were found applying this feature. datum 21: “it’s furry pretty datum 22: “cause u vamp my furendo” datum 21 was found as spelling that adjusting to a topic. the topic discussed where journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 109 the comment of datum 21 occurred is about a pet. the addresser of the comment transformed the word ’very’ into ’furry’, adjusting the spelling of the word to one trait of pet: fur or furry. on the other hand, datum 22 is an adaptation to japanlish (japanese english), where the consonant cluster is not common in the japanese language; thus, japanese people usually add vocal sound after coda in a syllable or between consonant. both data represent the richness of stylistic writing communication found on netspeak, evoking language art. the feature of alpha-numerical spelling was found used by an instagram user to create a more straightforward and shorterexpression to written communication. (datum 23): “me b4 i started playing val...” number in datum 23 was used to replace syllables in a word. numeral 4 (four) is a homonymy of ’fore’. thus, the number was used to substitute the second syllable ‘fore’ in the word ’before’. combining letters and numbers in spelling is a distinctive feature to netspeak, which creates a briefer yet stylish and cool expression to writing. forms and functions of grammatical features in netspeak the grammatical features which are present on 9gag’s instagram account represent productivity and flexibility of written language that present the simplicity trend of english netspeak. the grammatical feature found on the data source was primarily used to acquire simpler expressions. furthermore, this type of feature is used to create a new idea or word on netspeak. abbreviation & acronym the first morphological process found by on the data source was abbreviation and acronym. datum 24: “no lol don’t say sorry omg…” datum 25: “just imagine mark stops to pay fb and ig users…” datum 24 presents the two wordformations; ’lol’ is an acronym, whereas ’omg’ is an abbreviation. the word ’lol’ is abbreviated from initial letters of each word in ’laugh out loud’, and then got a variation of pronunciation where the abbreviated is pronounced as common word /lɒl/ instead of spelling every letter like the usual way to pronounced abbreviation; ‘omg’ in datum 24 is pronounced as spelling it. datum 25 shows a variant way to abbreviate words where ’facebook’ and ‘instagram’ are compound words. the addressers abbreviated both words in datum 25 by taking the initial word in each morpheme: ’f’ from ’face’ and ’b’ from ’book’. clipping & shortening instagram users were found using clipping and shortening when delivering ideas on the data source. there were two types of clipping and shortening found there based on the type of morphological process: prosodic and non-prosodic morphology. datum 26: “for urwknd activity” datum 27: “aw that dog huge tho” datum 26 presents a non-prosodic morphological process where the addresser of datum 26 shortened the word ‘weekend’ to ’wknd’. the shortened version of the word in datum 26 was acquired from taking vocal letters from the spelling structure of the word. the word in datum 27 was obtained through prosodic morphology. the process required an omission of a syllable in the word ’though’ (second syllable). the final word is a word that only has its first original syllable. conversion the writers found a productive characteristic of netspeak on the data source where words’ classes were converted to create new expressions that did not exist previously. conversion was found in several comments, which is presented in datum 28 below. datum 28: “me googling everything after watching...” journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i gede sumerta yasa et.al. 110 in datum 28, the converted word is ‘google’, which is a noun known as a search engine on the internet. the morphological process applied in datum 28 changed the word class from noun to verb. the result was a word with new meaning ’to search for information on the internet via google’. coinage like the previous morphological process, the writers found coinage where new words were created to obtain a more precise meaning, yet the expressions were newly formed; the words do not exist in every word class. datum 29: “a lobsterwoman yeeting one that wasn’t big enough” the word ’yeeting’ in datum 29 is the present continuous form of ’yeet’, which is a verb as a new word from the coinage process. the meaning of this word is ’to throw thing with full power’. compounding & affixation new words were created on the data source by combining a free morpheme with either another free morpheme (compounding) or bound morpheme (affixation). datum 30: “it’s crazy how lost this insta page is from 9gag itself” datum 31: “multiverse of memeness” datum 30 was found by the writers contained a word formed by the compounding process: ’insta page’. it was created by combining the word ‘insta’ (shortened from instagram, a noun) with another free morpheme ’page’ (also a noun). the process in datum 30 resulted in a new noun that has meaning ’a webpage on instagram’. on the other hand, datum 31 has a word that created through affixation. the word ’memeness’ in datum 31 was created by adding suffix (bound morpheme) ’–ness’ to word ’meme’. the suffix in morphology is used to create a word to describe a state, condition, or quality. the process affixation in datum 31 was a derivational one with change of meaning occurred in the process. it created a new noun ’memeness’ which means ’a state of being meme’. verb-less sentence a syntactical irregularity found by the writers on 9gag’s instagram account was the verb-less sentence. it is a condition where there is no verb present in a sentence. english language standard, verb as the predicate is a prominent aspect in language, and regular english sentences must consist of at least a verb. datum 32: “you okay bro?” on circumstances found on the data source, some sentences were found without having a verb; the verb was omitted. the standard type of verb omitted on the data source was the auxiliary verb. this phenomenon is presented in datum 32, where ‘are’ is an auxiliary verb used to attach with the pronoun ‘you’ was omitted in datum 32. this syntactical feature of netspeak was used to create a shorter expression. the finding is also in line with the study conducted by wang et al. (2017) that found incompletes sentences with no verb, especially auxiliary verbs. omission of apostrophe the writers found cases where apostrophes in expressions on the data source were omitted. there were two types of apostrophe omission found: possessive and contraction apostrophe omissions. datum 33: “that lady laugh is the best ive seen...” the omission found in datum 33 is the contraction omission. when the word ’have’ is contracted to the personal pronoun ‘i’, the apostrophe was used to indicate that part of the word is omitted. this finding in datum 33 implied that instagram users tried to simplify the writing by omitting elements that do not significantly affect an expression’s meaning. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 111 irregular grammar particle creativity in grammar can also be seen in a unique and irregular application of grammar particles as can be seen below: datum 34: “looks like a karen, but karen’t in datum 34, the writers found an uncommon use of particle ’not’. it is an english particle used to indicate the negation of something. in standard english, the particle is joined to the verb class word. meanwhile, in datum 34, the particle is combined with ’karen’, which is a noun to create a new expression. use of negative particle to non-verb word is not usual; thus, the addresser of datum 34 imposed a loose grammatical rule on his/her writing. nevertheless, this informal feature of language revealed a productive characteristic of language, freely creating a new expression without addressing grammar. the new expression in datum 34 means ’a lady who does not like a karen’ (karen is slang that stands for an obnoxious and aggressive middle-aged lady). another factor considered by the writers is that both ’karen’t’ and ‘aren’t’ sound similar, thus triggering the application of this feature. forms and functions of lexical features in netspeak a distinctive vocabulary was found by the writers when exploring the data source. based on the data gathered by the writers, the lexical feature found on the data source shows a semantic difference of words where the meaning of lexicons on netspeak are different from their standard meaning on formal writing. the different meaning is achieved to express a better expression to fit the netspeak situation. this finding is supported by monderin et al. (2021) and wang et al. (2017), who found meaning deviation of words on netspeak. table 1. netspeak lexicon on 9gag’s ig account class word noun spam police, bot, page, reel, tweet, follower, stalker, username verb promote, scroll, block, buffer(ing), feature, tag, google(ing) adjective viral the writers found several distinctive words to netspeak vocabulary on 9gag’s instagram account. some of them are semantically different from their counterparts in other linguistic situations; the words have a different meaning when related to the netspeak. for instance, in the netspeak situation, the word ’tweet’ is related to the twitter platform, which means ‘a post made on twitter’, whereas the common meaning related to this word is sound of a bird. other example is ‘spam police’, where in daily use, the word is used to refer to a law enforcement unit. the internet users adopted the word as a metaphor to describe ’a person who reports people who commit spam’. the semantic comparison of words found on the data source indicated that netspeak has its own vocabulary, which is acquired to express the need for language and ideas within. table 2. other netspeak vocabulary on 9gag’s ig account class word slang no cap, karen, catfish, f onomatopoeia zzzzzz (rotating sound), bzzzzzz (sound of a mosquito), pspspspspsps (sound of calling a cat) there are two types of vocabulary found on the data source: slang and onomatopoeias. instagram users commonly use these words presented in table 2 as the community on netspeak of the data source. the words are flourished as the characteristic of this medium is informal. for its informal use, the word also semantically differs from its standard journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i gede sumerta yasa et.al. 112 meaning. for example, cap literary means ‘a headwear, whereas on netspeak, cap means ‘to brag or lie’. thus, the expression of ‘no cap’ in table 2 has meaning ’no lie’. another unique type of slang was present in the data source. the one-letter slang ‘f’ means ‘to pay respect’, adopted from a video game of call of duty, which used as a command to pay respect (press f to pay respect); thus, the phenomenon indicates an influence of entertainment to slang of netspeak. forms and functions of discourse feature in netspeak the study discovered unique discourse features that focused on the progression of ideas and coherence. the writers found formal and contextual links used to create coherent writing while maintaining funny characteristics of the content of the data source. meanwhile, flouting and violating maxims were also used to create funny expressions that attract other users to join the conversation. violating or flouting maxims instagram users committed violations or flouting maxims of conversation on the data source. this linguistic phenomenon occurred for the users tried to create an attractive expression that attracted other instagram users to comment on the addresser’s expression. datum 35: user a: “who is eminem?” user b: “i believe he was the season 5 winner of masterchef” for example, as found in datum 35, user b flouted maxim of quality by telling a lie to make a funny comment regarding who eminem is. the correct information should be ‘a rapper’, but user b instead delivered the wrong information on purpose. use of zero anaphoric expression instagram users sometimes refer to the previous expression by using zero anaphora or ellipsis. datum 36: user c: “who the f has 261 unread messages...” user d: “being in group chat be like: ” in datum 36, user d used no entity to link back to the expression of user c. the no-entity part is the part after the colon of the expression. the use was intended as a shortcut for creating an expression that referred to user c’s expression without typing. the addresser used the full expression of datum 36 to concept a phenomenon of joining a group chat and many unread messages received when checking it. when the referring expression was applied, the whole meaning of expression addressed by user d would be “being in group chat be like: 261 unread messages... ”. use of contextual link the writers found the feature in content that took concepts like a dictionary on the data source. in this post, the writers found the use of external information that created a coherent expression. datum 38: morning (n) ah shit, here we go again. if analyzed literally, the word morning’s meaning is not like in datum 38; the correct meaning should be ‘an early phase of a day, usually after sunrise’. however, the author of 9gag adopted an expression from a game to be presented for the meaning of morning in datum 38. the expression of “ah shit, here we go again.” it originated from a playstation game entitled ‘grand theft auto: san andreas’. this expression was taken from the protagonist when entering hostile territory. the quote expresses the distress of the protagonist. 9gag brought the same concept to the content in datum 38. the meaning brought in datum 38 was an expression of distress when starting a day in the morning. this feature somewhat makes a discourse coherent in a unique way. furthermore, the viewers must know the link to understand the intended meaning. conclusion the language found in the data source was rich in written features, and after analyzing the features, the writers concluded the study in journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 113 four primary points. first, the result supported netspeak as a variety of english, which can be compared from other linguistic varieties, indicated from the distinctive feature which show the difference in terms of semantics, has a unique structure and rich concept in writing. second, the netspeak found in the data source has variation in stylistic expression, for a goal can be achieved by using many different features found there. third, the features found on the data source are sometimes influenced by external factors. the 9gag’s account by the internet community is known for its relation to movies, games, and other entertainment. fourth, the writing found on the data source shows progression and development where writing known for its de-contextualized communication can be overcome by features found on the data source. for the limitation of the study, the writers suggest other researchers who are interested in netspeak to explore other platforms of the internet such as twitter and others, because every platform has its own culture and features. references akram, w. 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(2017). research on features of chatroom netspeak from a stylistic view. studies in literature and language, 15 (1), pp. 43-46. https://doi.org/10.3968/9780 280 vol. 22 no. 2, october 2022, pp. 280 – 292 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i2.4149 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. issues of inequality and the political economy in 1990s singapore: a marxist reading on alfian bin sa’at’s “birthday” bima iqbal khadafi bimaiqbalk@gmail.com graduate program of english language studies, universitas sanata dharma, indonesia abstract article information this research closely reads a short story by alfian bin sa’at entitled “birthday” in relation to the historical narrative and the political economy of 1990s singapore using the perspective of terry eagleton’s marxist literary criticism. the result of this study shows 1) that alfian challenges a portion of the historical narrative of singapore’s political economy in the 1990s at which ideology works to justify the power hierarchy, yet altogether highlights the other portion of it to shed some light on the oppressed; 2) that challenging and, at the same time, highlighting the historical narrative are alfian’s strategy to endorse his political commitment while not being openly partisan; and 3) that alfian carefully configures the literary form and content of his work – through his use of multilingualism and singaporean english – to advocate his idea of the future of singapore and – through his use of simple sentences that build a stream-of-consciousness plot – to underline the complex social realities whereby issues of inequality (gender, racial, and class) are correlated. this study implies that the use of marxist literary criticism in reading a literary work from a formerly colonized country cannot neglect the traces of neo and/or colonial experiences since colonialism itself, following marx and postcolonial theorists, is a more acute form of capitalism. however, this paper finds that, different from the usual postcolonial reading, the singaporeans (its capitalists and government) are as complicit as the western neo-colonial enterprises for the inequalities and oppression happening in the region. keywords: marxist literary criticism; political economy; postcolonialism; inequality; alfian bin sa’at received: 10 january 2022 revised: 20 april 2022 accepted: 30 april 2022 https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 281 introduction it has been a general agreement among literary scholars that ‘serious’ literature of modern singapore deals with a dialectical grappling between the issues of individual existence (on identity, the sense of belonging, intersubjective relationship, etc.) and the social realities (the power hierarchy governing economic, sexual, racial, ethnic, and religious structure) that situate them (holden, 2013; zhang, 2015; and gui, 2017). this tension results in the sense of “not being at home” (tay, 2011); or, in homi bhabha’s (2004) term, of “unhomeliness.” the recent article aims, in general, to show how this is also the case with the works of alfian bin sa’at by focusing only on his short story entitled “birthday” which was first published in his short story anthology, corridor (1999). as a contemporary author famous for his plays and poems—exquisite works that have won him several prestigious literary awards— alfian bin sa’at was born into a moslem singaporean family of minangkabau, javanese, and chinese hakka descent on 18 july 1977 in the city of singapore. he has gained international fame as an author as his works being translated into german and swedish; widely read in london, zurich, hamburg, and munich; and being on the reading list of the university of london, the university of new york, and the west virginia university (sin, 2016). however, in both malaysia and singapore, alfian is considered controversial. on the one hand, as he himself said in an interview reported by bahrawi (2016), he is a vehement political writer and has, throughout his works, criticized the socio-political issues of his country; but, on the other hand, he grapples to connect issues of sexuality with his religious upbringing (“a moment with…,” 2012; bahrawi, 2016). despite gaining the status of a celebrated author, alfian’s works are still understudied. previous studies on his works can be categorized into two: those following poon (2016), insisting that the central issue in alfian’s works is the religious discrimination of moslem singaporeans, and those following bahrawi (2019), arguing that it is the racial discrimination of malay singaporeans that occupies him. both of these studies, different as they are, share one basic similarity: they believe that the discrimination (either racial or religious) has something to do with the neo and/or colonial experience of singapore. these kinds of reading, although having some truths in themselves, risk reducing the complex phenomenon of discrimination by projecting the blame into the west; they neglect to look carefully and closely at the enigmatic yet deeper structure from which the phenomenon of discrimination emerges. but what is this structure? or perhaps the question one should more precisely ask: how can we approach this structure? there are many ways to approach it with each way leading to a different appearance (in a hegelian term; see hegel, 2019) of deep structure. social psychology, for example, will lead one to discover the unconscious structure of a certain community, as done by chew (2018), from which one could diagnose the cause of racism. this paper, however, uses marxist approach postulating that any practice of discrimination is conditioned by what karl marx calls the economic base; that the phenomenon of discrimination is just the tip of the iceberg reflecting a much more complex social reality intertwined with economy and politics—a reality that changes from time to time in accordance with the change of class formation. this study, hence, hypothesizes that the discrimination (racial, religious, and/or others) that alfian depicts in his works is the result of his reflection of the singaporean political economy. to test this hypothesis, this article aims to scrutinize the particular types of discrimination that alfian depicts in his “birthday” and how they correspond to the political economy of 1990s singapore. methodology this article specifically used terry eagleton’s (2002) interpretation of marx to analyze alfian’s “birthday.” his theorizing has the advantage of not being reductive the way the orthodox marxists (e.g. el guabli, 2020) and the anarchists (e.g. clark, 2018) do; and in the fact that its domains of study are specific, so that this research can focus on specific issues without getting distracted by, for instance, psycho-social analyses the way journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bima iqbal khadafi 282 freudo-marxists (e.g. sanka, 2019) do. in interpreting marxism as a tool for literary criticism, eagleton focuses on four domains: 1) literature’s alignment with history; 2) the configuration between literary form and content; 3) the author’s political commitment; and 4) the author’s attitude as a producer. for the sake of brevity, this paper, however, deals only with the first three. the relationship between literature and history should be looked at from the configuration between the base and the superstructure situating it. consisting of productive forces (i.e. labor power and the means of production) and relations of production (i.e. social, economic, and technological relationships in a workplace), the base is the basic social reality from which the superstructure—consisting of the institutional systems (e.g. the government, the school, the military) and the collective consciousness (e.g. arts, religions, philosophical ideas)—emerges. from the superstructure, ideology, which are certain forms of social consciousness, emerges to preserve the power hierarchy. meanwhile, marxists view art and literature, as parts of the superstructure, as “not mysteriously inspired, or explicable simply in terms of their authors’ psychology. they are forms of perception, particular ways of seeing the world; and as such they have a relation to that dominant way of seeing the world, which is the social mentality or ideology of an age” (eagleton, 2002, pp. 5-6). it must be noted that the superstructure is never a mere reflection of the base. in his “letter to joseph bloch” (1973), friedrich engels explicitly denies any arguments saying that the relationship between the two is always mechanical (i.e. the superstructure is always determined by the base). he explains that any social realities of the superstructure simultaneously reflect upon and react back to the economic base. in other words, the superstructure—despite being conditioned or contextualized by the base—has a certain degree of independence that can always influence and even change the base. now, as the relationship between the base and the superstructure is always dialectical, so is the case with that between art and ideology: art and literature can challenge ideology and hence be the agent of historical change. meanwhile, on the configuration of literary form and content, marx believes that any literary works should reveal a unity between the two. but eagleton (2002, p. 20) interprets this unity as marx’s suspicion “of excessively formalistic writing”. he argues that “mere stylistic exercises led to ‘perverted content,’ which in turn impresses the ‘stamp’ of vulgarity of literary form (ibid.)”. hence, the relationship between literary content and form should always be dialectical despite, as what happens in between the base and the superstructure or in between ideology and art, the latter is conditioned by the former. but then again, the form “reacts back upon it in a double-edged relationship (ibid.)”. lastly, on the author’s commitment, marx and engels always judge the quality of a literary work based on certain political predilections. yet, they do not endorse the formula of explicit political correctness being the primary benchmark of literary aesthetics. engels explicitly states, in his “letter to minna kautsky” (1973), that to be openly partisan in writing is never an effective and efficient strategy for an author to challenge the ideology. only in an indirect way, through metaphor and metonymy (which are the mechanisms of the dream-work in psychoanalysis), for instance, can a revolutionary literature work effectively since what it aims is to raise class consciousness (to bring forth the unconscious impulse and desire to the surface; to gaze the real that is suppressed by the symbolic order). in this sense, marxist literary criticism originally rejects the reflectionist theory stating that literary works should teach certain political attitudes toward social realities as explicitly as possible. this paper implemented eagleton’s marxist literary criticism to reads its primary source of data, alfian’s short story “birthday”. after explaining the historical narrative of the political economy of 1990s singapore, this study traced in detail the issues of inequality in alfian’s short story and how they challenge, complement, or correspond to the narrative. the similarities and the disjunctions between journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 283 the story and the historical narrative provided this article with insights into alfian’s political commitment. lastly, this research scrutinized how the configuration of form and content in “birthday” can further explicate alfian’s stance. in addition, this article used secondary data to elaborate its findings. they are previous studies exploring singaporean political economy in the 1990s, articles on alfian bin sa’at, and scientific works on singaporean literature. results and discussion before discussing the results of marxist reading on alfian’s “birthday”, it is crucial to look at the historical development that modern singapore had undergone in and prior to the 1990s. the following section deals exactly with the general description of 1990s singapore’s political economy and how the country had come to that point. 1990s singapore: history and political economy there are at least three characteristics of singapore that need to be highlighted in the beginning of our discussion: 1) singapore (and the majority of southeast asian countries) were the victims of western colonialism; 2) prior to being colonized by the west, the region consists of some local and independent kingdoms trying to conquer each other (thus nationalism is a relatively new concept); and 3) the geographical location of singapore has invited many ethnicities other than the west to settle around the region. as the last characteristic is perhaps the most important for our discussion, it must be noted that orang laut or the sea gypsies (arguably the natives of the region), has settled for a long time side by side with the chinese before thomas raffles came (swee-hock, 2012). additionally, when william farquhar took over the region that had become the new free port of great britain, foreign traders such as the bugis, the peranakan chinese, and the arabs flocked to the region. lastly, with singapore later being grouped (together with penang and malacca) by the british east india company as the straits settlement, a residency and subdivision of the presidency of bengal, in 1826, many indians came over to the region (chew & lee, 1991). thus was the origin of the multiracial, multicultural singapore. as a nation, although its independence was established gradually thanks to the echoes of “merdeka!” spreading all over the region after the japanese defeated the british, singapore achieved its complete independence in march 1957 when britain finally granted singapore its internal self-government. singapore would later have its own citizenship, a legislative assembly whose seats were expanded to fifty-one which are voted entirely by its citizens, a prime minister who was able to control all aspects of the government except defense and foreign affairs, and yang-di-pertuan negara as the leader of the state (chew & lee, 1991). in the 1959 election, the people’s action party (a left-wing party; abbreviated as pap) won the election— despite being condemned by the british at that time—giving its leader, lee kuan yew, the privilege of being the first prime minister of singapore. as a consequence of this political evolution, out of fear of the party’s stance on communism, many private businesses shifted their headquarters from singapore to kuala lumpur; but, thankfully, the pap successfully handled the situation by embarking on several programs to increase the nation’s economic and social development. however, the pap believed that the future of singapore was to merge with malaysia. the reasons for this are: 1) the strong historic and economic ties between the two; 2) singapore’s lack of natural resources; and 3) the rise of crucial problems that singapore faced such as the declining entrepôt trade and the fastgrowing population needing jobs and lands to settle on. therefore, on 16 september 1963, both countries, including north borneo and sarawak, merged (chew & lee, 1991). but, the union between the two was rocky from the start and would give rise to a series of racial disasters between the malays and the chinese (and non-malay) singaporeans as an effect of the infamous article 153 of the constitution of malaysia promulgating discriminatory policies that benefited the former in social, political, and financial sectors over the latter. the tension culminated in the 1964 race riot on 21 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bima iqbal khadafi 284 july, killing twenty-three people and injuring hundreds. following this tragedy, on 9 august 1965, the union was completely broken off and singapore became the republic of singapore with yusof bin ishak as its first president. these successive tragic events can be seen as the cause of racial disparity between the chinese and malay singaporeans in contemporary singapore, with the former now being the dominating group over the latter. because of the failure of the union between singapore and malaysia out of racial issues, the republic of singapore insisted on establishing a new nation that is inherently and vehemently multiracial, as lee kuan yew himself says: we are going to have a multiracial nation in singapore. we will set the example. this is not a malay nation, this is not a chinese nation, this is not an indian nation. everybody will have his [or her] place. equal. language, culture, religion. and finally, let us, really, singaporeans, we unite, regardless of race, language, religion, culture. (cited by pak, 2021, p. 4). hence, the government has created several laws to prohibit racist attitudes. the most famous one is perhaps the sedition act of singapore which prohibits any ill wills, remarks, and gestures that might offend other races and social classes in the country. another one is the penal code chapter 224 which controls specific offences for racial remarks: “[o]ffenders will be either fined, imprisoned for up to three years, or both” (chew, 2018, p. 2). however, even with this strict regulation, racism has not yet vanished in the region. according to pak (2021), the multiracialism that was dreamed of by yew is not actually a celebration of multiculturalism per se, but a political mandate given by the government to impose a multicultural environment; which can also be seen as, faut de mieux, a revenge policy made by the chinese singaporeans to the malay-dominated malaysia because of the bitter experiences during the union. on this, i am tempted to argue that the establishment of the laws concerning racial attitudes has led singaporeans, especially the chinese ones, into an externalization of the super ego (as opposed to the internalization of the super ego; see žižek, 2006) that can result in the figuration of the other (in this case, the malay singaporeans) as someone whose characteristics appear in the unconscious structure of the chinese singaporeans as lazy, filthy, disgusting, even dangerous, and (paradoxically) racist (even if they are necessarily not) while denying the fact that it is them who are the racist ones. this unconscious racism emanates in two major realities: a reluctance to discuss racial issues (or an insistence that there is no racial inequaliy in the region; thus the multicultural atmosphere feels very superficial) and a preference for meritocracy that favors the chinese singaporeans (chew, 2018). that being said, the very formula for multiracialism of singapore, the cmio framework (chinese, malay, indian, and other—a framework which is the legacy of the british; see goh & holden, 2009) actually preserves the very practices of racism in the country. this unconscious racism has also affected some crucial domains in the social institutions of the nation, especially the education (moore, 2000; khoo & lim, 2004) and economic ones (low, 2001). as for its political economy, according to cahyadi et al (2004), in general, there are three categories of singapore’s strategy: 1) the government’s strategic role; 2) the mobilization of human capital; and 3) the infrastructure development. in the 1960s, the strategy that the country took was to import highly capitalistic western ideas by asking the united nations to send a team of economic advisors that would be led by a dutch industrialist albert winsemius. this resulted in the establishment of the economic development board (edb) in 1961 whose main purpose was to attract foreign capitals to enter singaporean markets. the edb successfully brought western economic powers (especially the us) and some japanese firms to enter the country’s markets by developing the jurong industrial town and creating the economic expansion incentive act, giving the foreign corporations tax benefits up to five years – is this not a different form of western colonialism practiced in the newly so-called independent state of singapore? journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 285 although those strategies gave fruition to the country’s economic development in the early 1970s, there were crucial problems faced by the edb: the unemployment rate was about 10% of the population, skepticisms over the british withdrawal from the region, the indonesian policy of confrontation, and the singapore-malaysia separation. the edb solved the problems by 1) extending the tax benefit up to ten years; 2) nationalizing private companies such as the development bank of singapore (dbs), the singapore airlines (sa), and the sembawang shipyard; 3) extending the use of the central provident fund (cpf) for housing purchase and medical benefits; and 4) surprisingly (or perhaps not) forcing labor unions to merge into the national trades union congress (ntuc) to control employment and wage and to attract more foreign corporations. all these mark the rise of singaporean capitalists to dominance, after a deal with the western enterprises, over the region and its dominated groups. of course, what follows from those strategies was none other than the protests over the workers’ wages culminating in the early 1980s. in addition, the emerging economic markets of singapore’s neighbors made it no longer afford in becoming a market of low-wage workers anymore. therefore, the edb started to focus on converting the labor forces from unand semiskilled labors into skilled and professional ones by establishing the national computer board (ncb) for opening the path toward what low (2001) calls the knowledge-based economy (kbe) and the information and communication technology (ict) revolution. the government also strove to build new infrastructures and continued giving tax incentives and benefits to multinational and pioneering companies; making singapore the leading country in southeast asia in economy. in the 1990s, to further accelerate the kbe and ict revolution, the government established higher schools like the national university of singapore (nus) and the nanyang technological university (ntu). the edb also initiated the singapore-johor-riau (sijori) triangle to relocate singaporean manual-production-based companies to the nearby areas of johor, malaysia and the islands of bintan and batam in riau, indonesia. the reason behind the edb’s initiation of sijori follows pang’s (2009) logic of creative labor: creative or intellectual labor, can only replace the manual one as the main productive forces in the region only if the manual productive activities are done in a different society. in other words, for singapore to completely adopt the kbe scheme, the country needs to relocate its manual productive activities to different regions outside its own. hence, it can be said that after gaining enough capital for its own, singapore made use of its neighbors, malaysia and indonesia, to fulfil its needs for manual labor for it to become a new western enterprise. in the late 1990s, to come to terms with the 1997 crisis the edb was forced to adopt different strategies. they are 1) privatizing some nation-owned companies, 2) cutting salaries and wages (chong, 2007), and 3) importing low-wage labor from foreign countries (low, 2001). the ict revolution was continued after the crisis had ended to further expand the scope of the country’s kbe (vu, 2013). in so doing, the republic of singapore adopted a politico-economic strategy that chong (2009, p. 952) calls “liberal economics with a mercantilist tinge” by widening its doors for the free market while maintaining a strong level of influence to control it. it also has developed a narrative that singaporean citizens are always driven by a survivalist need, “an insatiable hunger for progress” (bahrawi, 2019, p. 504), as reflected by lee kuan yew’s memoir from the third world to first (2000) whose title serves as the evidence of what i have argued in the previous paragraph, that singapore strove to be the new capitalistic western enterprise. this argument is supported by dass’ findings (2014) stating that singapore opened itself the most for globalization among other southeast asian countries by aligning “its foreign and domestic policies to maximize growth” (p. 293) and adopting a kind of economic-based curricula. although they had led singapore to economic and political success in the global contestation, these ambitious policies have led the country to the crisis of cultural identity as the result of sacrificing its people for the neocolonial gods residing in the west and using its journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bima iqbal khadafi 286 neighbors as the sources of manual labors. furthermore, because of its complex (and arguably superficial) idea of multiracialism as well as its complex history of inequality, its figures on literary, social, and humanism (including alfian bin sa’at) have struggled to search for the idea of nationalism and cultural identities that could transcend the racial and religious boundaries (patke & holden, 2010; tay, 2011). sections that follow show how alfian in “birthday” reflects upon the historical narrative of the political economy of 1990s singapore just discussed and how the narrative closes its eyes to the issues of inequality. the oppressed women’s “birthday” alfian’s “birthday” follows a story of a female malay singaporean factory worker named rosminah, a mother of two children, who despite being married to her husband, awang bin razali, has neither felt happy being with him nor actually been in love with him. in the quiet of the kitchen, the refrigerator hums soothingly. rosminah fixes herself some orange squash and settles into one of the kitchen stools. those lights still going on during the night, still blinking. wedding gifts, the vcr and airpot, and the rice cooker and electric kettle, which are not turned on at the moment. rosminah wonders; if she had a hundred electrical appliances and set them running all at the same time, would their small function lights flood her kitchen like an entire constellation? maybe they could form a shape, like neon letters in the dark, a sign, lucid answers. her question: did she love the man she married? or should the question be: did she marry the man she loved? (alfian bin sa’at, 2010, pp. 45-46). perhaps one thing that makes rosminah unhappy is the fact that her family lacks economic capitals. although alfian does not provide a detailed account of awang’s job, two things are certain: that rosminah has to work at a factory to support her family’s well-being and that awang frequently demands his wife’s money for whatever reasons. but the most important thing that might be the reason for rosminah’s unhappiness is the fact that her marital relationship lacks loving experiences: never in the story does awang show sufficient care, love or tenderness to his wife. instead, awang seems to selfishly love his self-value more as shown by a passage telling how careful rosminah must be in delivering the money that her husband borrows from her to him: she is also used to his anger when she places the money directly into his hand, with her eyes looking into his face such that he has to turn away. at one such instance, his face had crumpled and he flew into a rage, asking rosminah if she really thought that he was poor, that he really needed her money that badly. (pp. 32-33). awang even seems to neither love nor care much about his children. in a dialogue between him and rosminah, after snatching the money, he asked how the children were doing, yet the very questions he posed to his wife signifies a pretension that he somehow cared about them, which is a made-up, obvious lie from how alfian depicts the scene: “how are the children?” he asks next, cocky and unable to stay silent. rosminah clasps the button on her purse with a click which she will remember days later. with patience she replies, talking to the reflection of her husband in the bedroom mirror. “they are all right.” “any problems in school?” “no.” “anything for me to sign?” “no. nothing.” “i don’t sign if i see red marks.” “our children don’t get red marks.” “i know. i just don’t sign if i see that they have been lazy.” “our children aren’t lazy.” “i know.” her husband pauses to compose himself. “i know all that, you don’t have to tell me.” her husband then starts to yawn. it could have been a real yawn or he could have made it up. (pp. 33-34) the depiction of the rosminah-awang relationship, therefore, reveals the patriarchal oppression rusminah is under. there is journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 287 neither reciprocal care nor love in it, only the fact that the marriage is used by awang to extort rosminah’s body. for awang, rosminah is nothing but a mere resource to fulfil his sexual desire (although, because of its obviousness, no description of sexual activities between the two is given) and his economic needs, and a tool to preserve his line of descent as a cultural obligation. on this, one can sense how rosminah has lived her life for the sake of others (awang and the children) without actually fulfilling her own needs of freedom, desire, and dream. the subalterns’ “birthday” in addition to the patriarchal oppression rosminah is under, one cannot neglect the terrible experiences that rosminah had undergone on her first day at the factory: she was five months pregnant with siti nuraeni (her second child), she was estranged from the environment of the factory and was even bullied by her co-workers. if we follow marx’s theorizing of labor, these suggest that rosminah is doubly oppressed: first by the patriarchy and second by the capitalists. how she is unable to speak of the oppressions she is under and can only sob in the silence of the night signifies that she is what gayatri spivak (2010) calls the subaltern who lives in what bhabha (2004) calls an unhomely life. she is overshadowed by the feeling that she is not at home in any circumstances in her life, even when she is inside of her own home, sleeping with her husband and caressing her children. the only one who can comfort rosminah from her miseries and unhomeliness is her indian singaporean girlfriend kala. kala is the one defending rosminah from the bullies at the factory. she is the only person who ever gives rosminah a gift on her birthday. indeed, the whole narrative actually deals with how rosminah struggled to pay back the gift she had received from kala (a sandwich maker an ordinary household object which also reflects their status in the class formation of society) by planning to buy a gift for kala’s upcoming birthday as a symbol that their relationship is a reciprocal and loving one. the reason why kala can comfort rosminah is that she can also be seen as a subaltern who lives an unhomely life. the difference, however, is that kala is not oppressed by the figure of a husband, but of a boyfriend who lied to her about the fact that he has married despite having already had sex with her. kala is also oppressed by her own parents, who blame her that it is because of her body (that alfian depicts as male-like) that she is unable to get a husband. the experiences that kala and rosminah have been through suggest—following marxist feminists like emma goldmann (2002), michèle barrett (2004), and lillian robinson (1978)—that women are treated as commodities in a capitalistic society. here, i am tempted to argue that kala’s parents, by blaming kala’s body for not attracting men, can be said to wail over the fact that the commodity in their hands is not sufficient to meet the demand of the patriarchal market. the term that i used to describe the position that rosminah and kala occupy in their society, the subaltern, and the experience that follows it, the unhomely life, are not actually of marxist but of postcolonial theorizing. the reason i chose the two is that “birthday” itself cannot be read without acknowledging the fact that it depicts the lives of two oppressed subjects living in a neocolonial background: 1990s singapore. on this, the factory that rosminah and kala work at can be seen as the most explicit signifier of neocolonialism in the story. according to the co-worker bullying rosminah, the factory produces the spare parts for nasa rockets. why, then, would nasa be dependent on a factory outside the us over the spare parts of its rockets? the question can be answered, again, by following pang’s (2009) logic of creative labor. as the historical narrative mentioned earlier suggests, western enterprises (in this case, the us) make use of singapore (a market of low-wage labors) as a region in which its manual productive activity is done, so that their productive forces can evolve into the creative and intellectual ones; so that nasa can focus on scientific experiments and on developing mathematical and cosmological formulas instead of building rocket parts. alfian’s depiction on this matter, therefore, is in line with the politico-economic strategy of singapore the way it gives itself up to the west for the sake of economic progress. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bima iqbal khadafi 288 however, according to the historical narrative of singapore’s political economy given by political economists described earlier, the strategy of giving itself up to the west was implemented in the 1960s-1980s while “birthday” is set presumably after the 1980s. does this mean that alfian is historically incorrect in depicting the climate of singapore’s political economy during the period? i do not believe so. what alfian does is actually revising (or rather, challenging) the narrative of singaporean politico-economic history. he shows his readers that even if the state focused on the kbe and ict revolution during this time, the actuality shows that the two had not been fully implemented yet; as singapore could not escape from the grip of the west as it was still a region of manual labor, the new productive forces (the intellectual and the creative) had not yet fully populated singapore. this is why i stated at the beginning of this paper that studies like those of poon (2016) and bahrawi (2019) do indeed have some truths in them—that alfian’s works cannot be read separately from the reality of neo-colonialism as the result of the western capitalism. the victims of this neo-colonial experience are none other than the singaporean proletariats (factory workers, lower-class society) and especially the female ones as they are the ones who suffer the most: they are oppressed not only by the colonial enterprises and the capitalists, but also by the patriarchal subjects. what this paper adds to the usual postcolonial reading is that the singaporean capitalists and government are equally complicit in the sufferings of the proletariats and of the subalterns since it is for the sake of the former’s hunger for capital that the neo-colonial practice flourished in the region, that the latter continued to suffer. touching upon the issue of subalternity, “birthday” can be seen to illustrate spivak’s argument that the subaltern cannot speak. alfian, through the rosminah-kala relationship, provides a solution for the subalterns similar to that given by bhabha at the end of the location of culture (2004) concerning the unhomely lives: social solidarity. on this, one must highlight that deep in her heart, rosminah loves kala more than her family as shown in the passage: “but this gift for kala was something different. it was to be done in secret” (alfian bin sa’at, 2010, p. 43). it is because rosminah finds her sense of self, the shared experience of a subaltern living in an unhomely life, in the figure of kala that she loves kala more than her family although it is a love that cannot be spoken of with anybody since nobody will ever understand. the social solidarity among the unhomely lives, among the subalterns – this is the exact form of a loving relationship between rosminah and kala that keeps them surviving the neocolonial, capitalistic cataclysms. unfortunately, at the end of the story, rosminah failed in taking back the check from her husband’s pocket, consisting of the fifty singaporean dollars money that was supposed to be used for buying kala a birthday present. yet rosminah still wanted kala to hear her unspoken voice that might explain why she failed to do so. as rosminah dropped the sandwich maker (kala’s gift for her), she imagined that kala heard her unspoken voice and was in disbelief at her failure by projecting kala, in her mental functioning, into the figure of her son who was was at the scene. as rosminah does neither tell her husband that she needed the money to buy kala a birthday present, nor explain to her children what she was going through, nor tell kala that she had wanted to give her a birthday present but unable to do so; the subaltern still cannot speak, but this does not mean that it does not want to be heard—“birthday” is an invitation to hear the unspoken voice of the subaltern. no “birthday” for racists there exists in “birthday” another form of inequality. given that the majority of modern singaporeans consists of chinese (velayutham, 2009; chew, 2018; pak, 2021), it is surprising that the only chinese figure existing in the story is just an old man smoking without paying attention to rosminah and kala when the latter told rosminah about her irresponsible boyfriend. this old man is ised by alfian as a mere part of the background of that particular scene. following pierre macherey (2006), there is a social reality that alfian wants to highlight by, because of its obviousness, not talking about it (which is also the case with rosminah-awang sexual relationship discussed earlier): the ethnic journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 289 issue in singapore. why, then, there are no chinese in both rosminah’s and kala’s lives? by not answering, alfian wants to show the obvious fact: that the chinese singaporeans are of a different class from them. on this, a report given by the singapore straits times in 1998 can be used as a clue of singapore’s structure of relations of production. according to the report, there are three types of labor in 1990s singapore: 1) the professional (whose monthly earnings are above s$ 3500, e.g. managers, administrators); 2) the skilled (whose monthly earnings are in between s$ 2000 to s$ 3500, e.g. technicians, architects); and 3) the unskilled (with around s$ 100 worth of monthly earning). in discussing the report, low (2001) implies that the majority of chinese singaporeans occupied the first two since they have more privileges to higher education than any other ethnicities in singapore (see also mutalib, 2011; chew, 2018). the protagonist who is of malay descent and her friend kala who is of indian descent (seen from the economic condition they have, the labor position they are in, and, following the two, their level of education) are, needless to say, below the higher social class occupied by chinese singaporeans. this reading is thus in line with the historical fact discussed previously. alfian’s “birthday”, by not talking about it, accentuates the bitter racial reality of 1990s singapore. between the form and content of “birthday” and alfian’s political commitment hence, transcending its length, “birthday” deals with the complex reality of inequalities in singapore. not only does it suggest the racial disparity between chinese singaporeans and other ethnicities in the region, but it also tells the neo-colonial experience of the region, the struggle of the proletariats, and the patriarchal oppression of singaporean women. the way alfian challenges the politico-economic narrative of 1990s singapore by depicting that singapore had not yet fully adopted the kbe and ict scheme but still was a market of lowwage manual labor for the west, while highlighting the historical fact concerning the racial disparity between the chinese singaporeans and other races in the region reflects his commitment as one of the leading figures of social justice in singapore who supports not only racial equality but also gender equality, justices for the proletariats, and the social solidarity among the subalterns. in so doing, he neither condescendingly teaches his readers about the political party they should follow, nor gives any cliché speeches in the story, but shows his readers the realistic depiction of the female malay and indian proletariats under the oppression by the patriarchal subjects, the capitalists, the dominating race, and the western enterprises. in addition, similar to smith’s (2015) research, this article finds that the language that alfian uses in his work is not what is usually called the “standard” english whose structure, pronunciation, and lexicons follow either british or american english. instead, alfian uses a mixture of chinese, malay and tamil in his singaporean english. this is most evident in some exclamations employed in the text such as “what lah,” “oi!” or “aiyoo.” the use of this singaporean english can be interpreted as alfian’s view of singaporean national identity. for alfian, singaporean national identity is a dialectical processing between the native identity, the western influences, and the multiculturalism of modern singapore that would produce a sublation—in hegel’s (2019) term—of the three; or an imagined future that is continually formed by present conditions (smith, 2015; bahrawi, 2019). alfian also uses simple prosody and style in his sentence structure. but there exists a sense of modernism in his plot structure through the use of stream of consciousness. the plot itself in general actually moves linearly. it starts from the night before rosminah’s family went to sleep, when awang borrowed the money, and ends on the next morning when her children awoke. during the night, rosminah was unable to sleep and started to recall random events that had led her to the dilemma of kala’s birthday present. in recalling these events, she follows not the temporal order but the stream of her feeling. she recalled first the event happening to her children the previous morning, her meeting with kala in the factory, her lunch with kala, her dream of giving the present to kala, her marriage to awang, and lastly about the time journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) bima iqbal khadafi 290 when kala tells rosminah about her boyfriend and her parents. hence, “birthday” moves back and forth between the past, present, and future. this movement results in the story being so simple but needed a complex process of interpretation; a complexity that allows the story to convey a complex reality of inequalities in 1990s singapore. conclusion in the introduction of a recent anthology in which “birthday” is included, sui (2010) states that the short story deals with an obsession of a middle-aged woman to give her friend a birthday gift. she then equalizes this obsession with that in poe’s stories or in picasso’s paintings—a psychological obsession that is universal in world literature. there are, of course, some truths in her remark, but inscribing the epithet “universal” to describe alfian’s works (indeed, to any works of art and literature) can sometimes be misleading. the marxist reading just implemented, despite only applied to only one short story, suggests that alfian’s “birthday” corresponds to the historical (and, especially, the politico-economic) context of his society by the time it was written—that is, “birthday”, as is the case with any literary works across the world, is very particular. in its relation to the historical narrative whereby most of the time ideology is at work, the story challenges the usual portrayal of the 1990s singapore’s political economy proclaiming that the country had adopted the knowledge-based economy and had converted the manual productive activities into the intellectual and creative ones. the story of rosminah and kala working at the factory producing spare parts for nasa rockets suggests that far from being politically and economically independent, singapore was still overshadowed by the west—it was still under the neo-colonial oppression under the seemingly innocent banners of globalization and economic progress. yet at the same time, the story underlines the historical fact of the racial disparity between chinese and nonchinese singaporeans. both the challenge to and the highlight on some portions of the historical narrative of 1990s singapore in “birthday” signifies alfian’s strong commitment to gender equality, justice for proletariats, and social solidarity among the subalterns while not being openly partisan. this commitment is strengthened by alfian’s configuration of literary form and content: on the one hand, he advocates a future singapore that synthesizes the native culture, western influence, and the present multiculturalism through his use of multilingualism and singaporean english; on the other hand, he recommends a closer reading of complex social realities with all the elements comprising them (psychological, gender, racial, economic, and politics) through his seemingly simple sentences arranged in a stream-of-consciousness plot. in addition, this paper has shown that marxist reading on a literary work from a formerly colonized country cannot neglect the experience of neoand/or colonialism. for, following both the marxist and postcolonial tradition, colonialism, in its very essence, is a more acute form of capitalism; it has to do with the capitalist urge to collect profit. however, different from the usual postcolonial reading, this paper finds that the singaporean capitalists and government can be said to be as equally complicit in oppression and inequality happening in the region as the western neocolonial enterprises. references “a moment with … playwright alfian bin sa’at.” (2012, 2 feb). lifestyle asia. retrieved from http://www.lifestyleasia.com/sg/en/cult ure/feature/a-moment-with-playwrightalfian-saat-10651/. alfian bin sa’at. 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(2015). in search of modern identity: yeng pway ngon, chia hwe peng, and chinese singaporean poetry. asian and african studies, 24(2), 131-155. retrieved from https://www.sav.sk/journals/uploads/1 20813091_zhang.pdf. žižek, s. (2006). how to read lacan. new york and london: w. w. norton & co. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) amporn sa-ngiamwibool & somchai srinok 152 from tripitaka to isan phaya: on common characteristics of existence asst. prof. dr. amporn sa-ngiamwibool, shinawatra university, thailand & assoc. prof. dr. somchai srinok, mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya university, thailand amporn_kai@yahoo.com abstract phaya, or a philosophical verse of local people in northeastern thailand or locally called isan whose culture is intimate to that of lao people’s democratic republic, is believed to be influenced by buddhist dhamma. it is, therefore, interesting to analyze how the local isan philosophers borrowed ideas from the source and composed this valuable cultural heritage, with a specific focus on the theme of common characteristics of existence, consisting of anicca (impermanence), dukkha (suffering) and anatta (non-self). 252 existing verses were explored with a focus on common characteristics of existence. the findings revealed that the essence of the verses was literally borrowed from the source, tripitaka, and figuratively adjusted for literary purposes. implications of this analysis reassure that phayas are a truly cultural and religious heritage for the two countries. keywords: tripitaka, isan phaya, common characteristics of existence introduction the value of literature, both local and traditional, is enormous and greatly contributing to life on various aspects (e.g. inspiration, emotion, art, culture, history, imagination, use of language, knowledge and wisdom, and critical thinking) (bunnotok, 1984; fakkong, 1987; manyaporn, 1979; mutramata, 1974; tangkawee, 1985) and beneficial to individuals as well as the society (bunnotok, 1982, 1983, 1984). literature influences the society and is influenced by it. the lifestyle of the people is also built upon it (kuntawee, 1986). one of the local literary works that influence the lifestyle of local people is phaya, or a philosophical verse of local people in northeastern thailand or locally called isan where their cultural heritage has been traditionally passed down from generations to generations. isan phaya is believed to be influenced by buddhist dharma (e.g. thanapaññõ, 2011) as it teaches a sense of duty to adhere to and maintain the buddhist dharma (e.g. precepts) in order to achieve good results in this life and the next one (kuntawee, 1986). like other genres of literature, it affects the local people individually and socially (e.g. suvannasri, 2011) as it deals with a philosophy of life, lifestyle, social traditions, religious faiths and cultural values that have been passesd on from generations to generations through the local culture and language of the isan people. any studies of isan phaya are very interesting and worth trying because this local verse is socially engaged with buddhism and, therefore, becomes universal to some extent. despite its significance, there have been a limited number of research studies concerning local isan literature. research specifically on isan phaya is scanty (e.g. suvannasri, 2011; preecha, 1985; thanapaññõ, 2011) and most of this limited number focus on phaya and the local people in general (suvannasri, 2011; preecha, 1985). even scantier is isan phaya influenced by journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 153 buddhist principles (e.g. thanapaññõ, 2011). the following are some research studies on phaya. on the condition of phaya at present, suvannasri (2011) studied the values, existence and transmission of isan phaya. the purposes of the study were to: 1) analyze values of phaya, 2) analyze the existence of phaya in the current context of isan community, and 3) present ways of phaya transmission. the research was based on triangulation and the instruments for the data elicitation included documentary research, field trip, in-depth interviews, nonparticipatory observations and panel discussions. the data were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed to draw the conclusion of the study which were finally verified by phaya experts for validity check. the results of the study revealed the following research findings. first, the values of 283 phaya verses in this study fell into these two parts: individual persons and the society. the contents on persons were concerned with these topics, ranging from the most to the least: self-development, occupation and social development respectively. in details, the contents on the society were concerned with family and social institutes (e.g. political, economic, educational and religious). second, of the 283 phaya verses that are still exist, consisting of 31 unused, 252 using and 12 changed. they were written in various forms (namely, radio and television programs academic texts, verses, preachments, conversations in welcoming parties, baisrisue-khuan ceremonies, lectures and through the internet). lastly, there were four means to transmit phayas: 1) school curriculum, 2) organizations engaging in local culture, 3) community learning center, and 4) youth and new generation engagement. on phaya and lifestyle, preecha (1985) studied the contents of isan phayas and classified them into 13 categories: 1) eating: “กินผู้เดียวบปั่นหมู่ งเูขียวเกีย้ว” (sharing food to others can save one from snakes.) 2) distress: “ลกูตายเสีย เมียตายจาก พรากพ่ีน้องหนีไปไกล ลงไปไทยค้างวัต่าง ผวัเมียฮ้างปะกนั ไปนอนวนัพรากพ่ี น้อง ป้องหมนู้อยลงไปขาย พ่อแม่ตายแสนคดึฮอด บมี่เมียนอนกอดอยู่ผู้เดียว เทียวทางหลงยามค ่า ตกฮ าฟ้อฮ้อง เจ็บปวดท้องบมี่ยา” (the loss of beloved children and wife, the separation from siblings and spouses, children, the distance from home for trade, the missing dead parents, sleeping alone without the loved one, getting lost at night time, rain and thunder storms, pain without medication – all these are painful, lonely and helpless.) 3) happiness: “อยากมีหลายมนัไฮ้ อยากได้หลายมนัตาย” (giving is happiness while taking is suffering.) 4) self: “เพิ่นซงัโต อย่าโง่ซงัตอบ” (smart people should ignore hatred.) 5) people: “ลกูท่ีดีควรต้อง นบนอบบงัคม คณุบดิามารดา ผู้พาเพียรสร้าง” (children should respect and honor their parents for their devotion.) 6) work: “ตื่นแตเ่ช้ากินยอดฟ้า ตื่นสวยกินขวยขีไ้ก่โป่” (early birds catch the worms; otherwise, catch nothing.) 7) carelessness: “อยา่เซื่อใจทาง อยา่วางใจคน มนัจนใจโต” (trust neither an unknown road nor an unknown person.) journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) amporn sa-ngiamwibool & somchai srinok 154 8) merit and sin: “บญุบาปนีเ้ป็นคูค่ือเงา เงานัน้ไปตามเฮาซูย่ามบมี่เว้น” (merit and sin are like the shadows that always follow us.) 9) relationship: “ตกหมู่แฮ้งเป็นแฮ้ง ตกหมู่กาเป็นกา” (feathers of the same flock together.) 10) wisdom: “ได้ยินด้วยห ู ได้ดดู้วยตา ให้พิจารณาด้วยใจ ฮู้แล้วอย่างเลิง” (what is heard or seen needs to be considered by heart to see the truth and stay calm when you realized it.) 11) learning: “เฮียนให้สดุ ขดุให้เถิง” (master all what you have learnt.) 12) dharma puzzle: “อยากกินน า้แซบ ให้ขดุน า้บอ่หนิ อยากกินน า้แซบ ให้ขดุน า้บอ่หิน อยากกินน า้แซบ ให้ขดุน า้บอ่หิน” (if you wish to drink pure water, dig under the rock. if you wish to do business, be moral. if you wish to go to heaven, kill yourself / your ego.) 13) miscellaneous: “ใกล้ไฟมนัฮ้อน ใกล้ค้อนมนัเจ็บ” (get burnt when you are close to fire and get hurt when you are close to a hammer.) on phaya and buddhist principles, thanapaññõ (settha) (2011) aimed to: 1) study the history and development of isan proverbs, 2) compare both aspects, and 3) study the relationship between isan proverbs and buddhist proverbs. this was documentary study. the results of the study revealed the following findings. first, phaya was the proverb which was spoken and written by isan scholars to teach persons to adhere to the buddhist principles in order to be well-peformed and live a happy life. it was divided into two groups: phaya kreu or proverbs of a long sentence, and phaya kom, or proverbs of short words. whether they are long or short, the contents fall into 3 categories: good proverbs, loving couple talks, and puzzle proverbs. second, the proverbs were in harmony with buddhist proverbs in four main ways: 1) the practice of persons (e.g. the education), 2) the relation of persons with persons (e.g. the six directions), 3) association or the relation of persons with the nature (e.g. defiling of persons with the nature), and 4) relation of persons with supernatural power (e.g. bases of meritorious action, evil, carelessness, and non-carelessness for daily life). finally, buddhist proverbs were divided into thirteen groups: 1) self, 2) person, 3) action, 4) work, 5) carelessness, 6) vices and virtues, 7) association, 8) happiness and suffering, 9) donation, 10) precepts, 11) diligence, 12) death and 13) miscellaneous. isan phaya proverbs could be synthesized into each of the equivalent buddhist proverbs. both were almost exactly alike and aimed at personal development and socialization. it could be concluded that, based on the review of local isan literature in general and phayas in particular, isan phayas fall into two categories: lifestyle phayas and buddhist phayas. on lifestyle, phaya is one of the strategies that are intended to socialization. as reflected, the contents of phayas are primarily concerned with how to lead a decent life, especially refraining from all evils. these lifestyle phayas include the 13 types as indicated in the work of preecha (1985) and thanapaññõ (settha) (2011). in addition to association with the life, numerous phayas are based on buddhism as the life of the isan people in the old days were tied to buddhism intimately and they had a strong faith in buddhism. therefore, the local philosophers, both the clergy and the laity, borrowed the contents of phaya from buddhist principles from the basic to advanced levels. isan phaya includes these contents: karma, five precepts, the ten wholesome performances, the eight-fold path, the four sublime states of mind, the four basis for success, the six directions, the thirty-eight blessings and the four noble journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 155 truths. the contents of the phaya were obviously influenced by buddhism, especially to direct the new generations to concentrate on virtues, refrain from vices and live by the teachings of the buddha. it can be concluded that the philosophy underlying this local wisdom is buddhism. it is therefore worth analyzing. based on prior research, this present study had the following distinctions. first, no prior research has studied isan phaya in terms of buddhist cultural heritage and local wisdom, especially to see how the local isan philosophers borrowed ideas from the original source or tripitaka. second, this present study analyzed isan phaya how the original source was borrowed from the source literally and figuratively. third and finally, this research study focused on the three common characteristics of existence, one of the essential buddhist principles have never been studied before. this present study was, therefore, worth analyzing, with the following research question: how did the local isan philosophers borrow ideas from tripitaka, to compose isan phayas literally and figuratively? to answer this research question, the following was the purpose of the study. purpose of the study this study primarily aimed to analyze how the local isan philosophers borrowed ideas from tripitaka to compose isan literally and figuratively, with a specific focus on the three common characteristics of existence, consisting of anicca, dukkha and anatta. research method this was a documentary study. the research procedure followed these three steps. first, the researchers explored how the local isan philosophers borrowed ideas from buddhism and invented isan phayas on lifestyle. second, the researchers analysed 252 isan phayas that still exist and used by the local isan people based on the study of pornsavan suvannasri on “an analysis of phaya-isan: values, existence and transmission” to draw out the focal themes under the analysis (i.e. three common characteristics of existence), consisting of: anicca, dukkha and anatta. finally, the verses in these three categories were analyzed to draw out the essence of the verses as stated in tripitaka and draw the conclusion of the study. results of the study the analysis of the study on the focal themes under the study (i.e. three common characteristics of existence), consisting of anicca, dukkha and anatta. the results revealed that, literally and figuratively, the isan phaya has borrowed from tripitaka and presented the contents as they are in the original source for a didactic purpose to remind the local people to be aware of the nature of life according to the teachings of the buddha, especially the impermanence of all things and suffering caused by this impermanence. all created isan phaya verses aimed to remind the listeners that everyone is subject to impermanence which consists of these three common characteristics as follows: anicca, dukkha and anatta respectively. 1. on anicca or the condition that everyone and everything is limited to a certain duration and, consequently, liable to change and disappear, this characteristics is less obvious in isan phayas than the other two ones and the contents of the phayas expressed the ultimately unsatisfactory nature of temporary states and things that are limited to a certain duration. both pleasant and unpleasant experience is temporary and do not last long. we cannot deny either experience. “สขุทกุข์นีข้องกลางเทียมโลก บมี่ใผหลีกพ้นซลิงหนัคูค่น” (happiness and unhappiness is true to this world and no one can deny either.) both happiness and unhappiness are temporary like the following example. things might change and maybe tomorrow we might have been crying. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) amporn sa-ngiamwibool & somchai srinok 156 “เพิ่นนัง่ให้ โตอย่างนัง่หวั” (do not laugh while others are crying.) all things, either pleasant or unpleasant, are temporary. to avoid these temporary states and things, some phayas suggest some solutions, namely focusing on the present. “ห้างท้องใส่ไข่แลน” (prepare for lizard eggs.) in this phaya, it is likely that lizard eggs, or ไข่แลน, were chosen for literary purposes. homophone (i.e. ใส่ไข่) is chosen for a literary purpose. this phaya, however, implies that we should live on the present, focus on what is available and do not expect things or valuable things, to come because the expectations might not come true. lizard eggs are something valuable for the local people but it is not worth expecting to get them and live a life on the expectation. the message might be very important as it was repeated as seen in the sample below: “กรายไปหน้าหากินปลาหนองใหม่ หนองเก่านัน้ แสนซบ้ิอนก็บง่ม” (move on and on to look for fish in new ponds and ignore the old ones that are full of fish.) those who are not interested in what is available and always in pursuit of new things indefinitely might waste time as they already have what they are looking for. figuratively, the ponds and fish refer to luck that people are already have but do not realize it and look for another one which might be beyond their reach or does not exist. “คาดซิได้บินมาคือนกเจ่า คาดซิบไ่ด้บินเจ้ยเจิดหนี” (if we will get a fortune that we expect, it will come to us just like a bird flying to us. if we won’t, it flies away. therefore, we should accept what will happen.) “ใผหอ่นคองคอยถ้าคนตายซติ่าว คือ ดงัดาวอยู่ฟ้าคองได้ก็บม่า” (no one is waiting for the dead to be revived like waiting for the stars in the sky that will never come down to the earth.) we should not expect something that is impossible as it is a waste of time to do so and be focus on the present and what is available. in short, isan phayas everyone and everything is limited to a certain period of time and this causes dukkha. 2. on dukkha or the condition that everyone and everything is unsatisfactory and cannot be relied on for true happiness. this this characteristics is the most obvious among the three. the phayas under this analysis revealed the dukkha is the truth of life. “สขุทกุข์นีข้องกลางเทียมโลก บมี่ใผหลีกพ้นซลิงหนัคูค่น” (happiness and unhappiness is true to this world and no one can deny either.) happiness and unhappiness can be seen as merit and sin that we cannot deny and will follow us everywhere. “บญุบาปนีเ้ป็นคูค่ือเงา เงานัน้ไปตามเฮาซูย่ามบมี่เว้น” (merit and sin are like the shadows that always follow us.) therefore, we should do the good things so that merit follows us and refrains from the bad things in order to keep distance from sin. the phayas include speaking, gossip, thinking before you speak, keeping promises, telling no lies, speaking no evils of others, saving, making merits, moderation, gratitude, forgiveness, maintaining good relationship between the relatives and friends. greed, lust, sacrifice, self-reliance, respect for the rights of others, promoting good rules of action, honor and dignity, codes of conduct, hospitality, anger control, unity, waste no journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 157 time and money, leadership and refraining from all wrong doing and vices. the phayas also deal with the basic insight that life in this mundane world is dukkha, for example: “ฝงูหมู่หญิงชายส้วย สิบสามปีมีลกูลือแล้ว นกัปราชญ์ถมแม่น า้นทีกว้างขาดเขิน” (teenagers of thirteen years old get married and have a baby. even scholars cannot fix this problem.) this phaya reflects the deterioration of social conditions that young men and women at the age of only thirteen years old have a family and a baby now despite of the fact that they are immature and unable to support themselves economically, socially and mentally. this situation is worsening even scholars who have the knowledge cannot fix the problem. like the secular world, the religious world is in trouble as follows: “ศาสนาสองพนัห้ากรายมามนัต่าง สงัฆะเจ้าวนัมือ้บ่ถกึกนั” (buddhism now is not the same as it was two-thousand years ago. sangha are in conflicts now.) more subtly, some phayas explained the cause of dukkah, for example: “ความอยากหยุ้งควายหลายโตดงึจ่อง โตหนึง่ข้องง าคอม โตสองข้องง่าขาม โตสามข้องง่ามี ้ โตส่ีข้องหว้า โตห้าข้องง่าบก โตหกข้องง่าแต้ ใผสิมาซอยแก้ ความน้อยจัง่สิไป” (one’s craving is like six buffalos pulling someone down. the six buffalos include visible objects, taste, smell, sound, touch and emotions. these six buffalos refer to ayatana. if one cannot control ayatana, life will get into trouble. all suffering is caused by ayatana. to refrain from suffering is to control ayatan. to control body, speech and mind is to control ayatana.) whoever, either in secular or religious worlds, clings to the six ayatana and craves to impermanent states and things is dukkha. dukkha arises when we crave and cling to these impermanent states and changing phenomena. the clinging and craving condition leads to karma, which ties us to samsara or the round of death and rebirth. craving includes kama-tanha, craving for sense-pleasures; bhava-tanha, craving to continue the cycle of life and death, including rebirth; and vibhava-tanha, craving to not experience the world and painful feelings. samsara or the round of death and rebirth was conveyed in this phaya. “สงสารนีเ้วียนตาย เวียนเกิด คือมดไตข่อบด้งเวียนแล้วคอบเลิง” (the recurrence of life, or repeated rebirth of dukkha, keeps everyone caught in saṃsāra, or the endless cycle of repeated rebirth of dukkha and dying again, is a circulation just as ants are moving around the edge of the tray to the original.) the dukkha can be confined and ceases when one disengages from craving and clinging and craving and clinging are confined and cease. the state that craving and clinging cease when no more karma arises and rebirth ends. cessation is nirvana or the state that the mind is in peace and there is no permanent self or soul in living beings (anattā) so liberation of the mind from karma is the key to free oneself from dukkha. 3. on anattā, this characteristics is the least obvious among the three. anattā, or nonself, is the condition that everyone and everything has no self-inherent entity and cannot be controlled. the condition arises when one follows the buddhist path (e.g. the four noble truths and the noble eightfold path) to moksha, or liberation, and it starts when one disengages from craving and clinging to impermanent states and things which come and go. we cannot rely on anyone or anything, even ourselves as well as others that have long been adhered to and embedded in the culture of the northeast (e.g. ghost and spiritualism), as revealed in the following phayas. therefore we cannot adhere to journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) amporn sa-ngiamwibool & somchai srinok 158 anyone or anything. the only true thing or way we can adhere to is buddhism. “ใผหากเจ็บป่วยไข้พยาธิเกิดในตน เอาหมู่เดียรถีร์มาป่ินปัวโกยฮ้ายลางหมอท้วงให้เสียหมู กบัไก่ทัง้ควายเผือก ให้ผีด า้ หากสิดีว่าตายโตเหล่าพ้งค าแท้เอาเขามากระท าโทษ ฝงูหมู่สตัว์มิ่งเม่ียนตายแท้ก็เพ่ือโตนัน้ตาย ครัน้วา่ดีจริงแท้ หากเป็นภยัตดิตอ่ไปนัน้ดีแตใ่นชัว่นีไ้ปหน้าก็บด่ีแท้ดาย สตัว์อยู่ไต้ลุ่มฟ้าก็แพง แท้แตชี่วงันีแ้ล้วบค่วรให้เขาตายย้อนชีวงั โตผิกฮีตจริงตาย ธรรมของพระพทุธเจ้าของเฮาห้ามเท่ียงจริงแท้แล้ว ดีทอ่โตเฮานีต้ายไปผดัเปล่ียนเอาตาย พระพทุธเจ้า จงึยอย้องวา่ทา่นเอย” (if people who were sick by fever or illness seek help from a pagan for treatment, were asked by the pagan to kill animals (e.g. buffalos, pigs, chicken, etc.), considered such killing is properly reasonable, believed in those words and caused death to the cattle, this killing will never be beneficial to the sick people as those animals died to save them. those animals love their lives, too. this is sinful and against the teaching of the buddha, namely “do not kill.” on the other hand, if they die to save those killed animals, the buddha praised such a deed as great.) “คนเฮานี ้ ลางเทื่อดี ลางเทื่อฮ้าย ลางเท่ือมี ลางเทื่อไฮ้ ลางเทื่อได้ซ า้ผิดเล่าพลอยเสีย แม่นวา่เป็นผวัเมีย บเ่ช่ือใจกนัได้” (we sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes rich, sometimes poor, sometimes getting but losing later. we cannot trust our husband/wife. life is uncertain.) “สิบชิน้บ่ปานปลา แม่นวา่สิบพ่ีน้อง ลงุป้าน้าอาก็บป่านพ่อและแม่ สิบพ่อแม่ก๋บป่านผวัและเมียแท้ แลสิบผวั และเมียก็บป่านแก้วสามและครูบาอนัสอนสัง่คลองนิพ พานนัน้แท้แล” (ten pieces of meat are not equal to one fish. ten siblings and cousins are not equal to parents. ten parents are not equal to spouses. ten spouses are not equal to the three gems (i.e. buddha, dharma and sangha) and those who talked about nirvana.) “พระพทุธเจ้านีเ้ป็นเอกเอโกแท้ตายฝงูหมู่ผีสางสงัสรร พสิ่งโยมย้อ ยอมไหว้หาอนัใดมาเป็นท่ีพึง่บมี่แล้ว มีแต ่ คณุพระพทุธพร้อมพระธรรมเจ้าแลพระสงฆ์นัน้แล้ว ใผบเ่อาใจเข้าในคลองพทุธบาฐสอนสัง่มานีฝ้งูหมู่โภยพ ยาธ์ิฮ้ายไหล เข้าหลัง่โฮมนัน้แล้ว เหน็ว่าโตสบายแล้วลืมคณุพทุธบาทเสียนัน้ ชาติหน้าแลเหล่าได้เป็นฮ้ายบส่งัแท้แล้ว” (buddha is the only one that even ghosts respect and pray for so we can rely on buddha, dharma and sangha. those who do not abide by the teachings of the buddha will suffer from all misfortunes and diseases. those who find themselves comfortable and forget the kindness of buddha will suffer from all evils in the next life. therefore, everyone should follow the teachings of the buddha.) the messages of all the aforementioned phayas signify that we all need to adhere to and have a strong faith in buddhism. the only pathway to the non-self is to follow the buddhist path. conclusion five conclusions could be drawn from the results of the study. first, in general, the local isan philosophers borrowed ideas from tripitaka to compose isan phaya literally and figuratively as shown in the essences of the phaya. second, on anicca, the contents of the phaya under analysis expressed the ultimately unsatisfactory nature of journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 159 temporary states and things that are limited to a certain duration. third, on dukkha, the phaya under this analysis revealed the individual and social aspects of dukkha as the truth of life, the condition that everyone and everything is unsatisfactory and cannot be relied on for true happiness. fourth, on anattā, the phaya specifically focused on disengagement from craving and clinging to impermanent and adherence to the buddha path as the best way for disengagement. fifth and lastly that consistently convey the intended ideas using appropriate tone and style. only a few numbers were adjusted for literary purposes (homophones). it could be concluded that the isan phaya has literally borrowed from tripitaka and figuratively presented the contents as they are in the original source for a didactic purpose to remind the local people to be aware of the nature of life according to the teachings of the buddha. discussion the findings of this study were consistent with prior study (bunnotok, 1984; fakkong, 1987; manyaporn, 1979; mutramata, 1974; tangkawee, 1985) that, like other local and traditional literature, isan phaya greatly contributed to life on various aspects. this present study supported the study of preecha (1985) that isan phaya reflect the lifestyle of the local people. more importantly, the contribution of the phayas under this analysis was greater and more universal than the prior study as this study focused on the three common characteristics of existence (consisting of anicca, dukkha and anatta) which are concerned with the nature of life in all aspects. this study, therefore, rendered strong support to the study of thanapaññõ (2011) that isan phaya were drawn from buddhist principles for didactic purposes and the phaya under this study were mostly drawn from tripitaka. implication of the study and suggestion for further inquiry this reflects isan local people’s strong faith in buddhism. implications of this analysis reassure that isan phaya may be a truly valuable heritage that should be passed on to the next generations for cultural and religious purposes. therefore, further inquiry should analyze other buddhist principles in isan phaya. references bunnotok, t. local literature [in thai]. bangkok: odeon store, 1982. bunnotok, t. feungwien: a study of the history and literature of isan [in thai]. bangkok: thammasat university, 1983. bunnotok, t. methods for studying modern literature [in thai]. bangkok: thaiwattanapanit, 1984. fakkong, s. thai literature before western influence [in thai]. bangkok: karnsasana publishing, 1987. manyaporn, k. comparative literature [in thai]. bangkok: pannakit, 1979 mutramata, p. thai literature: history and criticism [in thai]. ayutthaya: tienwattana publishing, 1974. phramahasopan thanapaññõ (settha). the synthesis of isan proverbs into buddhist proverbs. mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya university, 2010. pintong, p. phayas: traditional isan verse [in thai]. ubonrachatani: siritham publishing, 1985. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) amporn sa-ngiamwibool & somchai srinok 160 suvannasri, p. an analysis of phaya-isan: values, existence and transmission. chulalongkorn university, 2004. tangkawee, s. knowledge and skill in language [in thai]. bangkok: odeon store, 1985. 209 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 209 – 223 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.4690 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. nzema idiomatic expressions as indirection strategy: a politeness theoretical perspective john nyame, kwasi adomako, mohammed yakub, rahinatu taiba ibrahim, esther nana anima wiafe-akenten mr.nyame@gmail.com department of akan-nzema education, university of education, winneba, ghana abstract article information the paper explores nzema idiomatic expressions used as indirection strategy. figurative devices such as proverbs and euphemisms have received quite an appreciable amount of study in connection with verbal indirection in nzema. little or no attention however has been given to idioms, particularly as indirection devices in the language. this paper therefore focuses on idioms which incorporate body parts such as head/brain, eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, hands, legs, heart/chest, stomach and body/skin that are used to avoid any straightforward language that seeks to undermine and threaten the face of an addressee. data were gathered from both primary and secondary sources. the primary data comprise recordings of traditional ceremonies such as marriage contraction and arbitration, where the use of idioms as indirect expressions was pervasive. authors’ native speaker intuition was also brought to bear on the analysis of data. interviews with competent indigenous speakers of nzema were conducted for useful information and clarification on the data gathered. the secondary data were sourced from two nzema literary texts. the paper finds that, these culturally constructed body parts related idioms are deliberately employed as both face saving and as politeness devices in the language. keywords: communication; body part idioms; figurative language; politeness received: 27 may 2022 revised: 20 december 2022 accepted: 9 january 2023 introduction nzema is a kwa language spoken in the south-west part of the western region of ghana, west africa. the dialectal components of nzema are dwᴐmᴐlᴐ, ɛlεmgbεlε, adwɔmɔlɔ, egila and ɛvaloε (annan, 1980; kwaw, 2008); with dwᴐmᴐlᴐ as the standard dialect that is studied from basic to the tertiary level of education in ghana. the speakers and their geographical location are also referred to as nzema. the nzemaland is bordered to the https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:mr.nyame@gmail.com journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) john nyame et al. 210 west by ivory coast (also known as the la cote d`ivoire), to the east by the ahanta, to the north by the aowin (or anyi) and wassa, and to the south by the gulf of guinea. the nzema population in ghana according to the ghana statistical service (2021) is 342, 090. the nzema area is predominantly agrarian; most of the nzema population are farmers who engage in subsistence agriculture. aside from farming activities, however, the people also take delight in trading to supplement their livelihood. some of the nzema speaking communities can also be found mostly in the southeastern part of the la côte d`ivoire (kwesi, 1992). these communities include: apolonu, maama, agyεkε, mouah (mowa), ngyeme, noi (noe), akpanye, anzeasawu, manvea (mafia), bassam, kakusuazo, kpɔkεti, poso (border town), nzɔbεnu, mgbɔsεya and eboko. their traditional capital is bassam (also known as grand bassam) (nyame, 2019). indirection, as a linguistic device, is largely employed in speech by most interactants all over the world. as a speech device, it avoids speaking about things in plain language or going straight to the point but rather go around the main purpose of the conversation yet, with the intention of putting the message across. this means that interlocutors try as much as possible to protect their relationship with others by means of employing indirection to encapsulate information that may sound unpleasant when stated in plain language. in other words, speakers in an interaction try to use words which would sound pleasant in the ears of their listeners which however may be unpleasant in their interpretation. the nzema, like many other languages, employs indirection to enhance communication. this is achieved through certain indirection strategies. these strategies include evasion, silence, circumlocution, innuendo, euphemism, surrogate language, etc. (hope, 2015). the paper discusses nzema idiomatic expressions as indirection strategy. idioms are a group of words whose meanings are different from the meanings of the individual words. they are expressions which have figurative and metaphorical meanings. they are conventionally understood by a particular speech community. idioms, by their nature, hardly ever mean exactly what the words say. in general terms, they are meant to embellish and reinforce expressions in any communication event. the paper focuses on idiomatic expressions related to human and some animal body parts. we argue that almost all of these body parts are a rich source of linguistic discourse in the domain of idiomatic expressions. the body parts comprise the head and its parts which include mainly the eyes, the nose, the hair, the lips, the tongue, the throat and the teeth. other parts include the neck, the arms, the legs and the feet. apart from these, there are other organs that lie inside or within the body which are equally vital to human and other animates’ virility. they include: the heart, the lungs, the kidney, the bile, the brain and all other glands of the body. these body parts form the fulcrum of most nzema idiomatic expressions. the current paper discusses idioms which relate to the head and its associates such as head/brain, eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, ears, face and throat. for instance, if someone says bɛli me nye which literally means ‘they have eaten my eyes’, he or she saves the face for though ‘they have eaten his/her eyes’, yet he/she can see. it is face saving for him to state his disgust this way than to state directly that bɛsisi me, ‘they have cheated on me’. thus, by means of idiomatic expressions, a speaker can alleviate the shame and pain his statements may bring upon himself and other people. the socio-cultural contexts or situations where indirection is mostly employed among the nzema include arbitration at the chief’s palace or traditional court, borrowing and lending and at marriage ceremonies. the essence of employing idiomatic expressions in speech among the nzema is among other reasons to save both the face of the speaker and the addressee. this enables the interlocutors to communicate politely and therefore secure their interpersonal relationships. effective use of idiomatic expressions as indirection strategy also means that one is competent in the language. since idiomatic expressions as indirection strategy has not yet been documented in the scholarly literature, our focus is for the most part descriptive, although we do use and interact journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 211 with existing theoretical models for our discussion. obeng (1994) and oyetade (2000) agree that indirection is a communicative device employed to avoid speaking plainly about things or going straight to the point but rather revolve around the main purpose of the interaction; however, with the intention of putting the message across. this communicative device which exists in almost all cultures, has compelled several scholars to examine the phenomenon and that has also given rise to different definitions of the concept. oyetade (2000) views (verbal) indirection as a strategy of communication in which interlocutors avoid directness so as to prevent crises, so as to achieve ‘certain communicative momentary goal’. thus, verbal indirection manifests in expressions such as proverbs, metaphors, subtle or polite insults, euphemisms, circumlocutions, honorifics, among others. according to obeng (1994, p. 42), indirection is “a communicative strategy in which interactants abstain from directness in order to obviate crises or in order to communicate ‘difficulty’ and thus make their utterances consistent with face saving and politeness.” in the opinion of hope (2015), (verbal) indirection is “a speech form which avoids speaking directly about things or going straight to the point but rather moves around the main purpose of the interaction; still, with the intention of putting the message across.” from this assertion, it is clear that interactants employ indirection in their speech to prevent crises and conflicts. tannen (1994) indicates that indirection is a fundamental element in human communication. she explains that we all use indirect communication strategies at times and in certain circumstances – we mean more than we say, and we gather meaning from others beyond the words they use. though indirection is used in almost all cultures, tannen (1994) further points out that indirection is among the various discourse elements that varies significantly from one culture to another, and one that can cause confusion and misunderstanding. this implies that even in cultures where the phenomenon exists, the degree and type of indirectness vary. indirect communicators try as much as possible to obviate conflict, tension and situations that may cause discomfort. the purpose of the communication exchange is maintaining harmony and saving face (joyce, 2012). supporting joyce’s (2012) view, peace corps (2012) explains that in a high-context culture, which may be relatively homogeneous and tends to emphasize interdependence and social relationships, people develop deep and often unconscious understandings of what is expected in that culture. because of shared expectations about behaviour, the context can be altered by the speaker to convey information without creating tension and uncomfortable situation. explaining the reason behind the use of indirection among the fante, hope (2015) establishes that fante uses indirection to indicate communicative competence in socio-cultural context and to avoid face threatening for both the speaker and his listeners and to show respect or politeness. this is so because, in our daily conversations, interlocutors usually obey cooperative socio-cultural principles and appropriate strategies so as to avoid misunderstanding or communication failure. in communication, we try to take into account the other’s feelings so that we do not make them feel uncomfortable. being polite appears to be a complicated matter in all cultures. politeness in conversation is definitely not a new topic for scholars, as a result, many scholars have expressed their views on what politeness means. among them is yule (1997) who sees politeness as a universal phenomenon that shows one has good manners and consideration for other people. this coincides with tolmach’s (1990) definition. he explains politeness as a system of interpersonal relations designed to facilitate interaction by decreasing the conflict and confrontation in all human interchanges (tolmach, 1990). goffman (1955) defines politeness as the actions of a person who is pledged to protect both his own ‘face’ and the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) john nyame et al. 212 ‘faces’ of others in social interaction. his submission is in line with brown and levinson (1987) who state that politeness strategies are developed in order to save the hearer’s ‘face’. face refers to “the respect that an individual has for him or herself, and the maintaining of ‘self-esteem’ in public or in private situations” (huang, 2008, p. 96). yule (1996) views politeness as the means employed to show awareness of another person’s face. brown and levinson (1987) further state that there are two aspects to this self-image: one is positive face, the other is negative face. positive face refers to the wish of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others. negative face refers to the wish of every ‘competent adult member’ [of a society] that his actions be unimpeded by others. it is therefore not impossible to say that politeness can be understood as a socio-cultural phenomenon, a vehicle through which good interpersonal relationships are achieved, and a norm imposed by social conventions. an act or utterance which may be considered polite in one culture may not necessarily be regarded as polite in another culture. it is therefore obvious that in trying to be polite, it is necessary to consider the socio-cultural background of the interlocutor, as well as the communicative situation. ajayi (2018) studied verbal indirection in yoruba to ascertain whether politeness expressions are really face-saving strategies in their contexts of use or not. his study revealed that, rather than the expressions functioning as face-saving devices, they are actually deliberately employed by interlocutors as face-threatening strategies. this means that in the yoruba language and culture, expressions that can function as face saving, can as well be used as face-threatening devices. fukushima (1996) also observes that the japanese tend to be more direct in performing requests than the english. the primary aim of this study is to explore idiomatic expressions used as indirection strategy in the nzema language of ghana. since this area of nzema has not yet been documented in the scholarly literature, we focus on idioms which incorporate body parts such as head/brain, eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, hands, legs, heart/chest, stomach and body/skin that are used to avoid any straightforward language that seeks to undermine and threaten the face of an addressee. hopefully, the study will be of interest and use to nzema and non-nzema linguists specializing in the study of indirection and politeness. methodology this qualitative study uses data from both primary and secondary sources. data were gathered from some communities in the three traditional districts of nzema, namely nzema west, nzema central and nzema east. we gathered (hand-recorded) some nzema expressions which involved idioms from spontaneous natural speech contexts. sometimes, as participant and non-participant observers, we sought permission as matter of ethics and tape-recorded proceedings of traditional ceremonies such as marriage contract and arbitration, where the use of idioms as indirect expressions was pervasive. interviews with four competent indigenous/native speakers of nzema were conducted for useful information and clarification on the data gathered. in order to obtain reliable information, we considered older people between the ages of fifty (50) years to seventy (70) years for the interview. the rationale is that the aged, especially in the african context, are seen as the custodians of socio-cultural knowledge, including language due to their experiences (see rababa’h & malkawi, 2012; thompson & agyekum, 2015). we also relied on our competence, experience and intuitive knowledge as indigenous nzema speakers to copy some of the expressions in a data collection note book. researchers such as diabah and amfo (2018) and nyame and tomekyin (2018) consider data collection based on native-speaker intuition also reliable and thus used it in their works on akan and nzema proverbs respectively. we read two literary texts written in nzema by kwesi (1979) and quarm (1993) and extracted idiomatic utterances to supplement the primary data. these secondary materials were considered useful because they are easy to read and comprehend, and also contain fascinating story lines with some figurativeidiomatic expressions which are considered journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 213 necessary for this study. the data were transcribed and translated for analysis. we analysed the data by looking for recurring patterns or themes in the selected idioms. for instance, idioms that relate to mouth were categorised as one theme. idioms related to eyes were also categorised as another theme, inter alia. the data analysis is preceded by the various excerpts that illustrate the conversations and body parts idioms that were prevalent. in presenting the data (excerpts) for the analysis, we have indicated the dates and names of the communities in which the data were gathered. to fulfil our promise of confidentiality and anonymity to our participants, kingship terms such as mother, father, son, daughter, uncle, etc., and alphabetical codes have been used. the paper is a contribution to studies in pragmatics, which deals with language use and understanding beyond its structural organisation. mey (2001, p. 6) considers pragmatics as the study of the conditions of human language use that is determined by the context of usage. agyekum (2019, p. 2) observes that pragmatics “explains aspects of meaning which cannot be found in the plain sense of words or structures”. this implies that figurative devices such as proverbs and idioms among others, can lend themselves to pragmatic inferences and interpretations. thus, the current paper is anchored on the notion of face and linguistics politeness as an aspect of pragmatics to offer explanation and description of body parts idioms in nzema. grundy (2000: 146) posits that “polite expressions are properly and appropriately carried out in social interaction so as to avoid being offensive. in linguistic politeness, the speaker tries to be as tactful and respectful as possible and to avoid face threat.” brown and levinson’s (1987) politeness model is grounded on the notion of face. the politeness theory deals extensively with face threatening act, which run contrary to the face want of the addressee and/or speaker (brown & levinson, 1987: 65). politeness theory and face theory seem to offer a common explanation and assumption (redmond, 2015). central to politeness theory, however, is the phenomenon of ‘indirectness’. thus, brown and levinson outline four main types of politeness strategies including bald on-record, positive politeness, negative politeness and off-record (indirectness). the authors explain indirect strategies as ‘roundabout’ language employed by speakers through the use of metaphors, irony, contradictions, overstatements and displacements among others. in a discourse encounter, these strategies help to remove/minimize speakers from potentially imposing embarrassments and discomfort on the listener in the communicative process. the nzema consider some explicit terms as abusive and obscene, and so they try to ‘sanitise’ such expressions through indirect strategies as shall be highlighted in section five (5) of this paper. hence, we consider the politeness theory useful to underpin this study. the politeness theory suits the data because the use of nzema body parts idioms is an off-record strategy, a means of avoiding face-threatening acts and offensive speeches. interlocutors use such idioms to ensure social cohesion and peaceful coexistence. results and discussion this section deals with the analysis of data. we focus on the presentation and analysis of data based solely on body-parts associated with the head, namely the eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, among others to engage in the discussion. the various discourse contexts where these idioms are employed are also discussed. the literal and idiomatic interpretations of the idioms are not based on dictionary meaning. rather, the inferences are based on the nzema socio-cultural conceptualisations and context of use. we present the various idioms used for the analysis in table 1. the idiomatic expressions are provided in nzema, followed by the english translation and their figurative-idiomatic meaning. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) john nyame et al. 214 table 1. idiomatic expressions and their interpretations idioms related to eyes i. bɛli ɛ nye ii. anwuma wɔ ɛ nye zo english translation your eyes have been eaten up. you have rolling eyes. idiomatic meaning you have been cheated/fooled. you are promiscuous. idioms related to mouth i. ɛ nloa wale ii. ɔ nloa anu ɛbuke english translation you have a longer mouth. his/her mouth is widely opened. idiomatic meaning you are a gossip. he/she is very extravagant. idioms about head/brain i. bɛli wɔ adwenle ii. ɔ nye ɛngyi ɔ ti anwo english translation your mind has been eaten up. he/she has no eyes on the head. idiomatic meaning you have been wooed. he/she is irresponsible/useless idioms related to teeth i. ɛ gye tu a ɛme ii. ɔle kila gye english translation you swallow your tooth. it is mouse’s teeth. idiomatic meaning you are a pathological liar. the house is not plastered. idioms related to nose i. kpɔla ɛ bonyi zo ii. wɔhwi ɛ bonyi zo bile english translation wipe your nose. you have painted your nose black. idiomatic meaning cover your private part. you are adamant/unforgiving. idioms related to ears i. ɛ nzo gyigyi ii. ɔ nzo nu yɛ se english translation your ears are erected. his/her inner ear is hard. idiomatic meaning you are a pry. he/she is deaf. idioms related to face i. bɛye ɛ nyunlu nwoma ii. ɛ nyunlu ɛgua aze english translation your facial skin has been removed. your face has fallen. idiomatic meaning you are shameless. you have disgraced yourself. idioms related to throat i. ɛnlɛ ɛ kominza ii. ɛ kominza le kpole english translation you do not have a throat. you have a big throat. idiomatic meaning you are a beggar. you are selfish. idioms related to eyes the data showed the prevalence of nzema idiomatic expressions rated to eyes. as a veritable tool for ensuring polite communication, this category of idioms serves as indirect means to rebuke people who are easily lured/cheated and people who live promiscuous lifestyle. the excerpts in 1 and 2 exemplify the use of eye-related idioms in nzema communication. excerpt. 1 (16/06/2021, at nsein, a community in nzema central) a (showing and informing her friends about a new dress she has bought from the market) b (shouting in awe): tɛladeɛ boni ɛne, ɛdɔle ye ɛzɛ? ‘what kind of dress is this? how much did you buy it?’ a: sidi ɛya ko. ‘it is hundred ghana cedis (ghs 100.00).’ b: bɛndɔ ye zɔ, eza tɛ kpalɛ ne bie ɔ? ‘it is expensive and not original.’ c (laughing from behind): bɛli ɛ nye. tɛ sidi abulanlu a bɛtɔ ye ɔ? ‘your eyes have been eaten up. is it not sold at fifty ghana cedis?’ in the above conversation, a shows her new dress to her friends with confidence that she bought a quality dress with a moderate price. b responds in awe, and indicates that the dress is not original and also expensive. c makes mockery of a, and tells her bɛli ɛ nye, ‘your eyes have been eaten up.’ this is because the original dress is sold at fifty ghana cedis and not hundred ghana cedis. some nzema idioms encourage vigilance. consequently, every nzema is expected to be open minded, observant and be on top of issues. it is disheartening to hear that one has been lured or cheated. therefore, victims of such situations are branded ahoasea ‘fools’, and by way of expressing this directly, they say bɛyɛ ye koasea, ‘he/she has been fooled/cheated’. however, in order not to express the flaws of the victim in plain language, speakers rather resort to bɛli ɛ nye, ‘your eyes have been eaten up’. this journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 215 expression sounds milder and face saving as compared to the former. this accounts for why c employs the idiom bɛli ɛ nye, ‘your eyes have been eaten up.’ for one’s eyes to be eaten implies that the person was never observant and also took things for granted. excerpt. 2 (03/07/2021, at esiama, a community in nzema central) daughter (comes to sit in the family meeting about her reason for a divorce. her mother interrogates her intention for the divorce): mame, mese mengya ko la, yemɔ ala ɛne! ‘as for me, i have made up my mind to divorce him and that is all.’ mother (looks at her daughter in amazement): duzu ɛtane a yeyɛ wɔ a, anzɛɛ . . .? ‘what wrong has he done or . . .? father (interrupts): anzɛɛ wɔnwu nrenyia fofolɛ bie ɔ? ‘or is it because you have seen another man?’ son (her brother reveals the secret of her new relationship): ɔ nee nrenyia fofolɛ wɔ ɛkɛ. ɛkenle ne, mengɔndole ye nee ye kpavolɛ fofolɛ ne wɔ ɛnweazo lɔ nza efiade ne anu kɛ bɛlɛno nza. ‘she has seen another man. i met her and her new boyfriend in the drinking spot at the beach last week drinking beer together.’ mother (pulls her daughter closer to herself): ɔle nɔhalɛ ɔ? ɛbɛla mɔɔ kɛkala ɛlɛbɔ la ɛ. anwuma wɔ ɛ nye zo bɔkɔɔ. ‘is that true? so, this is the new life you are living. it is clear that you have rolling eyes.’ from the above excerpt, it is obvious that the lady who is seeking divorce is a married woman. her reason for divorce is not clear, but insists on divorcing her husband. however, from the information given by her brother, we are convinced that she has been flirting with other men. it is also obvious that apart from her brother who has seen her with her boyfriend, other people might have also seen her with him and have reported her to her husband. the lady senses possible divorce and does not want to wait for that to happen since it is defaming for a woman to be divorced on the basis of infidelity. to avoid this, she rather threatens her husband with a divorce. the mother, having realized her daughter’s lifestyle, describes her as anwuma wɔ ɛ nye zo ‘you have rolling eyes’, an idiom which means one is a harlot or a maniser. the nzema, as part of their tradition and culture, embrace polygamy, but detest people who live promiscuous life (kwaw, 2008). any man or woman who flirts indiscriminately is described as ahulomraalɛ, ‘womaniser’ or ahulomrenyia, ‘maniser’ respectively. since this attitude is unacceptable in the society, and brings shame and disgrace to indulgers and their families, speakers try to avert such shame and disgrace by employing a more subtle expression such as anwuma wɔ ɛ nye zo ‘you have rolling eyes’. by having ‘rolling eyes’, it means that the person is always gallivanting in search of new lovers to satisfy his or her lustful appetite. thus, the mother avoids the direct expression ahulomrenyia, ‘maniser’ in describing her daughter in order to save her face. idioms related to mouth other nzema idioms that emerged were those related to mouth. these expressions are used to gently rebuke people who are gossip and extravagant, as can be seen in excerpts 3 and 4 respectively: excerpt. 3 (25/09/2021, at adoabo, a community in nzema central) a (meets b at the community centre and interrogates him): akee meande wɔ nganeɛ bieko. kɛ adawu ne mɔɔ yɛbɔle la ɛhɔdwu ɛ? ‘i have not heard from you all this while. what has been the outcome of the issue we discussed the other time?’ b: menvɛlɛle lɔya ne mɔɔ edwɛkɛ ne wɔ ɔ sa nu la. ɔbɔle ɛwɔkɛ kɛ ɔbamaa me mualɛ noko metɛtele ye nganeɛ. ‘i called the lawyer who is handling the case. he promised to give me feedback, but i have not heard from him.’ c (intrudes): lɔya boni ɔ, edwɛkɛ boni a wɔ ɔ sa nu a? ‘who is that lawyer, what case is he handling?’ b: kyɛkyɛ, ɔnvale ɛ nwo, ɛ nloa wale somaa eza ɛ nzo gyigyi. sɛ ɛbadie yɛ nloa anu na wɔahɔha. ‘no, it is none of your business, you have a longer mouth and your ears are erected. you have come as a sneak.’ we observe from the above excerpt that c intrudes in the conversation between a and b, and wants to get full details of their conversation. b rebukes c and refers to him as journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) john nyame et al. 216 ɛ nloa wale, ‘you have a longer mouth.’ among the nzema, it is a sign of disrespect to intrude into people’s conversations uninvited. moreover, revealing people’s information which should be kept confidential is disapproved of. for instance, a discussion held in tete-a-tete, just as what is between a and b, is expected to be kept behind closed doors. whoever is fond of thrusting into people’s conversations is described directly as nwondomgbɔ, ‘gossip/betrayer’, an expression which is embarrassing. therefore, an indirect expression such as ɛ nloa wale, ‘you have a longer mouth’ is used to lessen the embarrassment the above expression might cause. having ‘a longer mouth’ does not mean that the person has a protruding or abnormal mouth. the idiomatic expression rather implies that the person spreads falsehoods, is incapable of keeping secrets, and above all, jumps into people’s conversations. consequently, b uses the idiom ɛ nloa wale on c so that c is not embarrassed. excerpt. 4 (10/08/2021, at bolɔfo, a community in nzema east) x (sees his brother (y) with a lady by the roadside. he waves and passes) y (comes home to meet his brother (x). he discusses his intention to marry): ayi, mekulo kɛ megya raalɛ o! akee melɛnyi. ‘my dear, i want to marry. i am not growing any younger.’ x (sighs): wɔnwu bie ɔ? ‘have you found one?’ y: ɛhɛe o, wɔnwu ye bɔbɔ. ‘oh, yes, you have already seen her.’ x: ɛnee nwane ɔ? ‘who is she then? y (mentions the lady’s name (z)): yemɔ yɛɛ mekulo kɛ megya ye a. ‘it is z i want to marry.’ x (shakes his head in disagreement): z mɔɔ ɛnee ɛ nee ye gyi nehane la ɔ? aa! kyɛkyɛ, ɛnze kɛ ɔ nloa anu ɛbuke ɔ? ɛnrɛhola ye sɔ. ‘are you referring to z with whom i saw you this morning? oh! no, don’t you know that her mouth is widely opened? you can’t handle her.’ studies such as sobo-blay (1977) and ɛzenrane (1992) show how the nzema train their wards to be economical so as to save for the future. lavish and extravagant life is seen as a sign of irresponsibility; a behaviour which they highly disdain. however, to save the face of those who live extravagant life, the nzema employ the idiom ɔ nloa anu ɛbuke, ‘his/her mouth is widely opened’, which is milder than its direct counterpart ɔsɛkye ezukoa somaa, ‘he/she is very extravagant’. from excerpt 4, x shows his disapproval about y’s intention to marry z because he knows z to be extravagant. however, in order not to talk about the behaviour of z in plain language as ɔsɛkye ezukoa somaa, ‘she is very extravagant’, x deploys the idiom ɔ nloa anu ɛbuke, ‘her mouth is widely opened’, a subtle expression used to save z from embarrassment. in this context, the ‘widely opening of z’s mouth’, is linked to the unnecessary spending and her lavish lifestyle which can impoverish y. that is to say, anything that z’s ‘mouth’ gets hold of, it swallows it. idioms related to head/brain the data further showcased nzema idiomatic expressions that incorporate head and brain. this category of idioms points to the fact that a person must always be vigilant and very responsible in all endeavors. these are illustrated below in excerpt 5 and 6 respectively: excerpt. 5 (11/10/2021, at yediyɛsele, a community in nzema east) husband (during arbitration in the chief’s palace, reveals his intention to divorce his wife): mehye ye nee nrenyia, ɔti mengya ye ko. ‘i have caught her with another man in bed therefore i can’t continue to marry her.’ chief’s spokesperson (calls the woman): ɛ hu se yehye wɔ nee nrenyia, ɔle zɔ ɔ? ‘your husband says he has caught you with another man in bed, is it true?’ wife: (stammering): ɛ-ɛ-ɛ ɔle zɔ, emomu melɛ ngilenu ekyi. ‘erm, erm it is true, but i have a little explanation.’ spokesperson: duzu ngilenu bieko? raalɛ mɔɔ ɛdawɔ bɛgya wɔ la, bɛli wɔ adwenle zɛhae. ‘what explanation do you have?’ you are a married woman, but your mind has been eaten up.’ wife (holds husband’s legs while kneeling): kpavolɛ ne, tɛ me ɛhwee ɔ, me nee ye bɔ nzɛmedɛ ala. anoma anzi yɛɛ ɔhanle kɛ anrɛɛ memakyi menlie debie a. mengɔle la, ɔmaanle me nza menonle, noko meannwu ɛhwee bieko. me nye zo kade me la, ɛnee me nee ye yɛ mu nwiɔ yɛgua journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 217 ye ɛkpa ne azo. ‘there is nothing between me and the said man. we are only friends. three days ago, he asked me to come to his house for an item. he offered me a drink which i drank, but fell unconscious afterwards. when i gained consciousness, i realised that we are in his bed. elder 1 (addresses the husband): mɔɔ ɛ ye ɛha la kile kɛ tɛ ɔ nye fuu ɔ, emomu kpavolɛ ne a gyegyele ye a. yemɔti mgbɔdalɛ la ɛ nyunlu. ‘your wife’s explanation indicates that her act was not intentional, but the man caused everything. therefore, we beseech you to pardon her.’ husband (insists): mame, menlie mgbɔdalɛ biala. mese me nee ye ɛndɛnla bieko. ‘as for me, i will not pardon her. i said this is the end of our marriage.’ elder 2: ɔkile kɛ wɔhwi ɛ bonyi zo bile, ɛnrɛdie mɔɔ yɛlɛka la ɔ? ‘so, you have painted your nose black, you do not want to take our advice?’ the nzema are not happy with people who fail to make assessment and think critically about foreseen and/or unforeseen circumstances. people who are gullible and therefore allow themselves to be duped and defrauded are seen as not making adequate use of their mental faculties. for instance, a married woman who is easily wooed to commit adultery, is regarded as not utilising her brain sufficiently. from excerpt 5, the married woman allowed herself to be seduced. however, since it is inconvenient to explicitly refer to her as bɛbɛlɛbɛla wɔ ‘you have been wooed’, the spokesperson indirectly uses the idiomatic expression bɛli wɔ adwenle ‘your mind has been eaten up’ to politely describe the woman as being gullible. excerpt. 6 (02/09/2021, at mgbɔtɛba, a community in nzema west) x (introducing y, the new caretaker of their cocoa farm to his wife, z): ahenle mɔɔ kɛkala banlea yɛ egyinli ne azo amaa yɛ la ɛne. ‘this is the new caretaker of our farm.’ y (turning to z): ɛ hu se menea bɛ egyinli ne azo, na medame noko mebayɛ ye zɔ somaa. ‘your husband has entrusted the cocoa farm to me and i promise to manage it well.’ z: (addressing her husband, x): ɛfa awie wɔamaa yeanlea ɛya ne a, ɛyeka mɔɔ ɔdaye ɔ nye ɛngyi ɔ ti anwo la yɛɛ ɛvale ye a. ‘you could not find anyone to manage our farm than this person who has no eyes on his head.’ the direct expression used to describe a useless and irresponsible person is sonlamgbane. this expression undermines the reputation of an addressee, and so the nzema try to ‘neutralize’ its effect by saying ɔ nye ɛngyi ɔ ti anwo, ‘he/she has no eyes on the head.’ from excerpt 6, z refers to y as ɔ nye ɛngyi ɔ ti anwo, ‘he has no eyes on his head’ because she knows y to be irresponsible who will mismanage their farm. however, in order to be polite and save the face of y, z avoids the direct expression ɔle sonlamgbane, ‘he is irresponsible/useless.’ the eyes play a vital role by seeing things around and transferring them to the brain (in the head) for processing. therefore, the nzema believe that whoever ‘has no eyes on the head’ cannot reason to be responsible. idioms related to teeth nzema idioms related to teeth, as our data proved, can be employed to admonish braggers and liars. the idioms serve as polite and indirect means to show disapproval of such unsatisfactory behaviours. consider the following excerpts in 7 and 8: excerpt. 7 (06/12/2021, at bɔnyɛlɛ, a community in nzema west) a (brags in the midst of his colleagues about his newly built apartment): bɛse bɛnrɛzi sua kpalɛ la, bɛhɔnlea mɔɔ mezi la. ‘you people do not build proper houses, go and look at what i have built.’ b (puffs): duzu sua kpalɛ a wɔzi a? ‘what better house have you built?’ c: (taps b on the shoulder): mmatɛne ye zo. sua ekpumgbunli nwiɔ mɔɔ eza ɔle kila gye la ɔdaye. ‘do not listen to him. just a twobedroom house which is even mouse’s teeth.’ ɔle kila gye, ‘it is mouse’s teeth’, is an idiom employed by interactants to politely indicate that a particular building is not plastered. the only context where this idiom is used is when someone builds a block house and brags about it when it is not plastered. before contemporary architecture, the standard house an average nzema could build journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) john nyame et al. 218 was either raffia or mud house. only few could afford building cement block houses. consequently, those who built cement block houses were deemed very rich and therefore revered much in the society. it became a practice where people built and completed them by just roofing and fixing few doors. the nzema however do not regard an unplastered house to be complete even if the owners reside in them. since living in a raffia or mud house indicates misery, even those who could not complete their houses by plastering them despise those residing in raffia and mud houses. to keep those braggarts mute over their uncompleted houses, the nzema describe such houses directly as bɛampɛlɛse nwo, ‘they are unplastered’. such a comment is disparaging to the average rich people. therefore, to avoid this, the idiom ɔle kila gye, ‘it is mouse’s teeth’ is deployed. from excerpt 7, c humbles the braggart friend, a politely with the idiom ɔle kila gye, ‘it is mouse’s teeth’ to imply that a’s house is not any better as he claims. here, the roughness of a’s house because it is not plastered, is linked to the sharpness of the mouse’s teeth that can harm easily. the idiom therefore admonishes unplastered house owners who are pompous to be humble, since their buildings can equally cause wounds just as the teeth of the mouse. excerpt 8 (23/05/ 2021, at nzulezo, a community in nzema west) grandmother (calls her grandson and asks him about a missing money): ezukoa ne mɔɔ mendole ye ɛkponle ne azo la wɔ ni? ‘where is the money i put on the table?’ grandson (opening his palms): metɛnwunle ezukoa biala o! ‘i have not seen any money.’ grandmother: (grabs him and detects the money in his pocket): ɛse tɛ wɔ a wɔva ɔ? nwane bieko a me nee ye de ɛke a? ɛdawɔ, ɛ gye tu a ɛme. ezukoa boni a wɔ wɔ kodoku nu la? ɛ nyunlu ɛgua aze. ‘are you saying that you have not taken any money? who else lives with us here? as for you, you swallow your tooth. which money is in your pocket? your face has fallen.’ teeth related idioms can be used to gently rebuke liars as well as people whose evil deeds catch up with them unaware and as a result are taken aback. for instance, someone who is fond of consistently defending him or herself even when he or she is caught in the act, is plainly talked about as ɛle alane, ‘you are a pathological liar’. from excerpt 8, however, to save the grandson from an embarrassment, the grandmother resorts to the idiomatic expression ɛ gye tu a ɛme, ‘you swallow your tooth.’ tooth, when removed from the gum is usually discarded. therefore, the grandson ‘swallowing his tooth’ implies that he does evil things and covers up. idioms related to nose idioms related to nose also came up as part of the data. the usage of nose-related idioms as roundabout expressions to avoid face-threatening acts are observable in excerpts 9 and 10: excerpt. 9 (18/12/2021, at asasetelɛ, a community in nzema central) x (with her study mates, y and z. she signals y to push her bra up) y (appears not to understand the signal from x): na ɛ sa mɔɔ ɛlɛtende wɔ me nwo zo noko la ɛ? ‘why are you pointing your hand at me?’ z: (notices that one of y’s breasts is almost exposed): ɔse kpɔla ɛ bonyi zo. ‘she is asking you to wipe your nose.’ from excerpt 9, z could directly tell y, keda ɛ nyɛfo azo ‘cover your breast’ to alert y that one of her breasts is almost exposed. this direct information can however cause y a serious embarrassment. to avoid this, therefore, z employs the idiom kpɔla ɛ bonyi zo, ‘wipe your nose’. the nose is among the most noticeable facial features. therefore, asking someone to ‘wipe his/her nose’, according to the nzema, is to indirectly inform the person to cover an exposed part of the body, particularly his/her sex organ. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 219 excerpt. 10 (11/10/2021, at yediyɛsele, a community in nzema east) (also in excerpt 5) husband (during arbitration in the chief’s palace, reveals his intention to divorce his wife): mehye ye nee nrenyia, ɔti mengya ye ko. ‘i have caught her with another man in bed therefore i can’t continue to marry her.’ chief’s spokesperson (calls the woman): ɛ hu se yehye wɔ nee nrenyia, ɔle zɔ ɔ? ‘your husband says he has caught you with another man in bed, is it true?’ wife: (stammering): ɛ-ɛ-ɛ ɔle zɔ, emomu melɛ ngilenu ekyi. ‘erm, erm it is true, but i have a little explanation.’ spokesperson: duzu ngilenu bieko? raalɛ mɔɔ ɛdawɔ bɛgya wɔ la, bɛli wɔ adwenle zɛhae. ‘what explanation do you have?’ you are a married woman, but your mind has been eaten up.’ wife (holds husband’s legs while kneeling): kpavolɛ ne, tɛ me ɛhwee ɔ, me nee ye bɔ nzɛmedɛ ala. anoma anzi yɛɛ ɔhanle kɛ anrɛɛ memakyi menlie debie a. mengɔle la, ɔmaanle me nza menonle, noko meannwu ɛhwee bieko. me nye zo kade me la, ɛnee me nee ye yɛ mu nwiɔ yɛgua ye ɛkpa ne azo. ‘there is nothing between me and the said man. we are only friends. three days ago, he asked me to come to his house for an item. he offered me a drink which i drank, but fell unconscious afterwards. when i gained consciousness, i realised that we are in his bed. elder 1 (addresses the husband): mɔɔ ɛ ye ɛha la kile kɛ tɛ ɔ nye fuu ɔ, emomu kpavolɛ ne a gyegyele ye a. yemɔti mgbɔdalɛ la ɛ nyunlu. ‘your wife’s explanation indicates that her act was not intentional, but the man caused everything. therefore, we beseech you to pardon her.’ husband (insists): mame, menlie mgbɔdalɛ biala. mese me nee ye ɛndɛnla bieko. ‘as for me, i will not pardon her. i said this is the end of our marriage.’ elder 2: ɔkile kɛ wɔhwi ɛ bonyi zo bile, ɛnrɛdie mɔɔ yɛlɛka la ɔ? ‘so, you have painted your nose black, you do not want to take our advice?’ another nose-related idiom is wɔhwi ɛ bonyi zo bile, ‘you have painted your nose black’. this expression is used to gently describe an adamant person who never reconsiders his/her thoughts in order to desist from any undesirable action. among the nzema, someone who is insistent, especially in maintaining undesirable opinion or position is described directly as ɛnze gyakyi, ‘you are adamant/unforgiving’. since this expression exposes the individual of a negative attitude, the former is used indirectly to ‘prune’ the inconvenience that may be caused. as can be observed from excerpt 10, the wife appears to give a pardonable explanation. as a result, elder 1 implores the husband to pardon his wife. the husband, however, maintains his position. consequently, elder 2 rebukes the husband indirectly, referring to him as wɔhwi ɛ bonyi zo bile, ‘you have painted your nose black.’ elder 2 uses this idiom to avoid describing the husband plainly as adamant. in the nzema traditional setting, black is a symbol of sorrow or evil. therefore, the husband ‘painting his nose black’ in this context, implies that he has put an evil action before him and he is determined to doing it regardless of any criticism. idioms related to ears ear-related idioms among the nzema are used to rebuke pries in a subtle manner. such expressions are also employed as a polite way to describe people who are deaf. the conversations in excerpt 11 and 12 exemplify the usage of nzema idioms related to ears: excerpt. 11 (25/09/2021, at adoabo, a community in nzema central) (also in excerpt 3) a (meets b at the community centre and interrogates him): akee meande wɔ nganeɛ bieko. kɛ adawu mɔɔ yɛbɔle la ɛhɔdwu ɛ? ‘i have not heard from you all this while. what has been the outcome of the issue we discussed the other time?’ b: menvɛlɛle lɔya ne mɔɔ edwɛkɛ ne wɔ ɔ sa nu la. ɔbɔle ɛwɔkɛ kɛ ɔbamaa me mualɛ noko metɛtele ye nganeɛ. ‘i called the lawyer who is handling the case. he promised to give me feedback, but i have not heard from him.’ c (intrudes): lɔya boni ɔ, edwɛkɛ boni a wɔ ɔ sa nu a? ‘who is that lawyer, what case is he handling?’ b: kyɛkyɛ, ɔnvale ɛ nwo, ɛ nloa wale somaa eza ɛ nzo gyigyi. sɛ ɛbadie yɛ nloa anu na wɔahɔha. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) john nyame et al. 220 ‘no, it is none of your business, you have a longer mouth and your ears are erected. you have come as a sneak.’ ɛ nzo gyigyi, ‘your ears are erected’ is an idiom used to indirectly rebuke pries. to have ‘erected ears’, implies that the person is fond of moving around and listening to people’s conversations with the intent to spreading their private matters. in excerpt 11, b deploys the idiom ɛ nzo gyigyi, ‘your ears are erected’ to implicitly describe c as a pry. the idiom is intended to avoid the overt statement ɛle akpɔsemadi, ‘you are a pry’, an expression which condemns c. from the excerpt, it is obvious that the nzema expect people to be always engaged, working hard to make ends meet. they detest idle people whose main concern is to be nosy. excerpt. 12 (18/07/2021, at nsein, a community in nzema east) tenant 1 (approaching his landlord while calling him): yɛmenle x, yɛmenle x, mesɛlɛ wɔ gyinla die me kɛnlaneɛ ezukoa ne. ‘mr. x, mr. x, please wait and take the money for my light bill.’ landlord (still going) tenant 2 (addresses tenant 1): maa ɔrɛla sua nu na mɔɔ ɛlɛka la ɔnde. anzɛɛ ɛ rɛle ɛvi kɛ sua menle ɔ nzo nu yɛ se ɔ? ‘let him return because he cannot hear what you are saying. or have you forgotten that his inner ear is hard?’ according to the nzema, deafness is a natural condition which should not be made fun of. people who are deaf are said to be ‘ill’ but not impaired, and are therefore described as those ‘suffering from their ears’. a more polite way to describe a person with such a condition, however, is to say ɔ nzo nu yɛ se, ‘his/her inner ear is hard’ as tenant 2 employs in the excerpt above. tenant 2 uses this idiom to avoid the direct and harsh statement, ɔ nzo ɛdi, ‘he is deaf’, which is insulting and embarrassing. idioms related to face the data revealed that face-related idioms are employed to admonish people who are insensible to disgrace. also, when a person indulges in a shameful act, an idiom that incorporates ‘face’ is used to subtly remind them of such undesirable behaviour. excerpts 13 and 14 respectively illustrate these instances. excerpt. 13 (06/11/2021, mgbɔtɛba, a community in nzema west) daughter (informs her mother that she is attending a friend’s party): ɔmɔ, mekɔ meara o! ‘mother, i am leaving for the party.’ mother (asks her to return): se nehae, duzu tɛladeɛ ɛne? metɛsele wɔ kɛ mmawula adɛladeɛ nzinrenzinra ɛhye mɔ ɔ? ‘come back here, what kind of dress is this? have i not warned you not to wear short skirts anymore? daughter (feigns): na nvonleɛ boni a wɔ nwolɛ a? ‘but what is wrong with my dress?’ mother: yemɔti ɛnnwu nvonleɛ biala wɔ nwolɛ ɔ? ɛnee noko ɔkile kɛ bɛye ɛ nyunlu nwoma. ‘so, you see nothing wrong with your dress? then, it means your facial skin has been removed.’ a person who is insensible to disgrace is usually careless and acts in a manner that undermines his/her reputation and that of his/her family. such a person willfully indulges in immoral practices such as adultery, incest, stealing, and indecent dressing among others and is never ashamed. among the nzema, someone who behaves this way is dissociated. both the young and the old are seriously cautioned not to keep such a person’s company. to openly talk about someone who is amoral, the nzema say ɛnze nyiane, ‘you are shameless.’ this expression derogates an addressee, especially one who occupies a position in the society. thus, the idiom bɛye ɛ nyunlu nwoma, ‘your facial skin has been removed’, is the indirect expression used to mitigate the discomfort of the direct statement ɛnze nyiane, ‘you are shameless.’ from excerpt 13, we observe that the daughter is fond of wearing short skirts; an act which can bring shame to the family. thus, the mother rebukes her for improper dressing. in rebuking her, however, the mother employs the idiom bɛye ɛ nyunlu nwoma, ‘your facial skin has been removed’ to save her face. from the nzema perspective, the ‘facial skin’ is the human ‘sensor’ that detects shame and disgrace. when one’s sensor, ‘facial skin’ is ‘removed’, journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 221 issues of morality and immorality are of no concern to the individual. excerpt. 14 (29/11/2021, at ekpu, a community in nzema west) (also in excerpt 8) grandmother (calls her grandson and asks him about a missing money): ezukoa ne mɔɔ mendole ye ɛkponle ne azo la wɔ ni? ‘where is the money i put on the table?’ grandson (opening his palms): metɛnwunle ezukoa biala o! ‘i have not seen any money.’ grandmother: (grabs him and detects the money in his pocket): ɛse tɛ wɔ a wɔva ɔ? nwane bieko a me nee ye de ɛke a? ɛdawɔ, ɛ gye tu a ɛme. ezukoa boni a wɔ wɔ kodoku nu la? ɛ nyunlu ɛgua aze. ‘are you saying that you have not taken any money? who else lives with us here? as for you, you swallow your tooth. which money is in your pocket? your face has fallen.’ we observe from excerpt 14, that the grandmother exposes her grandson of a theft he initially denies. the grandmother in reproaching her grandson, however, uses the idiom ɛ nyunlu ɛgua aze, ‘your face has fallen’ instead of the direct expression wɔbɔ anyiemgba, ‘you have disgraced yourself’. this direct expression connotes every act of misconduct and therefore denigrates the grandson. even though the nzema do not condone malice, it is too harsh to expose people in a manner as in the latter expression. the ‘fallen face’ in the idiom implies that the grandson has misconducted himself, and has attracted shame. it is as if he can no longer raise his head for his face to be seen. idioms related to throat beggars (people who wish to eat every food that they find others eating) as well as selfish people are indirectly reprimanded through the use of throat-related idioms among the nzema. these are evident in excerpt 15: excerpt. 15 (13/05/2021, at nzulezo, a community in nzema west) x and y (eating fufu at the restaurant) z (comes to meet his friends, x and y at the restaurant. he washes his hands and joins them on the table uninvited): bɛmɛ bɛ ti ɛyɛ boɛ bɛnyia bie nwonlomɔ ye bɛlɛtete. ‘you people are fortunate to be served fufu this morning.’ x: (holds z’s hand): duzu ati a ɛbato kɛ ɛ gɔnwo mɔ ɛlɛdi aleɛ a ɛmmaa bɛnvɛlɛ wɔ na wɔado ɛ sa nu a? ‘why do you join us to eat uninvited?’ y (addresses z): wɔ subane zɔhane ɛha ɛ nwo, ɛnlɛ ɛ kominza fee. ‘this has been your usual habit, you do not have throat at all.’ x (also addresses z): aleɛ biala ɛkulo kɛ ɛdi bie, noko ɛ kominza le kpole. ‘you wish to eat every food that comes your way, but you have a big throat.’ in the nzema socio-cultural milieu, people who cannot control their appetites for other people’s foods are not cherished. such people always yearn for food and want to taste any food they see others eating even when they are already full. such individuals are described in a plain language as adanlɛ, ‘beggars’, an unpleasant label that seeks to expose someone as a glutton. from excerpt 15, z joins his friends at the table to eat even though he is not invited. such a behaviour is morally unacceptable, and so y reprimands z for his action. however, in order for y to sound polite and to save the face of z, the idiom ɛnlɛ ɛ kominza, ‘you do not have throat’ is employed. this idiom does not necessarily mean that physiologically, z has no throat, but it implies, according to the nzema, that z always expects every food he sets his eyes on to pass through his throat. x also criticizes z’s behaviour by using the idiom ɛ kominza le kpole, ‘you have a big throat’ to further imply that not only is z a gourmand, but also selfish. in this idiom, ‘having big throat’ does not suggest that z has an expanded throat or that he has a goitre; rather, the implication is that z is selfish and always wants the best for himself alone. the nzema detest individuals with such attitude because they tend to be greedy and corrupt, and always try to cheat on others. since this attitude (selfishness) is unacceptable in the society, it is disturbing to plainly describe an indulger as ɛle angomedi, ‘you are selfish’. thus, x avoids the direct expression ɛle angomedi, ‘you are selfish’ in order not to embarrass z. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) john nyame et al. 222 conclusion within the purview of brown and levinson’s face theory, the current study has examined some nzema idiomatic expressions used as indirection strategy. beyond the language-specific description of nzema idioms as indirection devices, this paper also makes a contribution to the broader study of indirection and politeness. as the data have revealed, the nzema use a lot of idiomatic expressions that relate to body parts such as head/brain, eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, ears, face and throat. it has been shown that, these culturally established body parts related idioms are deliberately employed as face saving and politeness devices. interlocutors employ these subtle expressions wherever they engage in speech activities that require face saving and politeness. this strategy enables interactants to be conscious of what they say so as to avoid conflicts, embarrassments and possible punishments. even though the nzema disdain people who engage in social vices, those who exhibit such acts are criticized in a language that does not weigh them down because such individuals are not born with those vices and therefore can change. a careful use of these idioms as indirection strategy indicates one’s cultural and communicative competence in the language. references agyekum, k. 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(1997). pragmatics. oxford: oxford university press. http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/engl-reports/2 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 133 the development of bilbo baggins’ character through leadership in j.r.r. tolkien’s the hobbit iline megale & f.x. dono sunardi dono.sunardi@machung.ac.id faculty of language and arts, universitas ma chung malang abstract leadership has been interesting since it refers to a significant quality applicable to a wide context of human’s life. traditionally, there are two points of views related to leadership. one sees it is a trait one was being born with, and the other as a cultivated trait. galton (1869) suggests how extraordinary intelligence as an important key of leadership is something inherited. however, this view has been challenged by newer theories, being one of them is servant-leadership introduced by greenleaf in 1977. this model believes that in order to become a leader, one must firstly learn how to be a servant. the hobbit (1937) by j.r.r. tolkiens is a great showcase as to how servant-leadership is cultivated along the personal development of its main character, bilbo baggins. the novel narrates how bilbo joins an expedition of dwarves as a servant and through these he learns how to become a leader. since the focus is the character development of bilbo and the servant-leadership attributes he cultivates along the way, this research employs qualitative method. the finding confirms the presumption that bilbo baggins is a round and dynamic character because of its complexities and developments throughout the story. toward the end of the story, bilbo succeeds in developing nine leadership attributes, i.e. vision, honesty, integrity, trust, service, modeling, pioneering, appreciation of others, and empowering. these attributes are not something bilbo naturally endowed with, but he develops, practices, and cultivates them. it is also found that the attribute of service, as the heart of servant-leadership, is dominant in bilbo baggins. the findings also suggest that leadership as a trait is something that can be learned from an exploration into a literary work. key words: leadership, servant-leadership, character development introduction leadership, just like many other human traits, cannot be neatly separated from the actor behind it. in this case, it is a leader. a leader should develop certain qualities that make him or her capable of facing any kind of situations and leading others in sustainable ways to overcome the hard times. it is along the line of this argument that not everyone can be a leader (since not everyone is able to face difficult times, let alone help others on the times of hardship), francis galton, with his trait theory (as cited in zaccaro, kemp and bader 2004, p. 102), explains how extraordinary intelligence is one of the keys to leader attribute and thus argues that leadership is inherited, not developed kind of attribute. in contrast, leadership theories from the later period challenged this. mcgeecooper and trammell (2013), for example, journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) iline megale & f.x. dono sunardi 134 states that servant leadership, a model developed by greenleaf in 1977, can move traditional notions of leadership and prepare companies (or any groups) to face the challenges of an uncertain future. servant leadership model believes that to be a leader, one should be a servant first. leadership is not a static human attribute but a skill that can be trained through learning and life experience. training of leadership can happen in many different way, being one of them which is indirect and yet effective is through reading and exploring into literary works. according to barnet, burto and cain (2008), compared to writers of different genres such as journalists, authors of do-it-yourself manuals, and authors of textbooks, writers of literature are special because what they do is recording their responses to life and imagining the responses of others. it is the reason why reading and exploring into literary works can be a great way to learn about human being and its matter, including on the topic of leadership. and novel, as the new form of literary works, is a longer form of fiction which is relatively realistic in portraying and representing human lives (barnet, burto and cain 2008). albeit its indirectness in giving life instructions, fiction, as suggested by badaracco (2006) in regards with leadership and organizational behavior, can be as instructive as any business textbook. along this line, the hobbit (1937) by j. r. r. tolkien, can be a great showcase to explore human lives’ representation. readers can learn about, among others, the topic of leadership through the exploration of its characters development. despite the fact that tolkien (as cited in carpenter 1981) meant it as a children’s story, the hobbit is undoubtedly a representation of leadership in real life. as suggested by its title, the hobbit is the story of its main character of it, i.e. a hobbit which can be described as a member of an imaginary race similar to humans, of small size and with hairy feet. in particular, it narrates the adventure of a particular hobbit, named bilbo baggins. bilbo tries to help, in literal way as the servant, the king of dwarves to conquer smaug, the dragon, so that the king can reclaim the throne of lonely mountain. in the beginning of the story, therefore, bilbo does not assume any leadership position. he is by himself among the group of dwarves he serves. as the story goes, however, he develops certain leadership qualities. the paper tries and aims at achieving two objectives, namely (1) to describe how the character of bilbo baggins develops in the hobbit, which will require some exploration into the intrinsic elements of the novel, and (2) to identify servant leadership attributes that appear in bilbo baggins as his character develops. novel and characters novel is one more current, longer narrative form of literary works. as a narrative, novel involves events (which make up the story line and plot), characters, and what the characters say and do (abram 1999). as one form of literary works, novel is of course a work of fiction. so saying, a character in a novel differs from a historical figure or a figure in real life. he or she is created only of sentences describing him or her or being put into his mouth by the author (wellek and warren 1949: 15). however, hallet (n.d.) highlights how fiction writers aim at creating “legitimate untruths,” which refers to their insistence in seeking to demonstrate meaningful insights into the human condition. therefore, fiction is “untrue” in the absolute sense, but true in the universal sense. moreover, plato (as cited in wellek and warren 1949) calls fiction as an artistic verbal imitation of life. the opposite of fiction is not “truth” but “fact” or “time and space existence”. the great service of a novel reveals the introspective life of the characters (forster 1927). good novels, therefore, are source books for psychologists to see and explore various characters. in addition, the act of reading novel and relating ourselves to its characters is also a way for us to express emotion and relieve us from great pressure of real life. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 135 it is in this view that we should read the hobbit, a fantasy novel, a genre of fiction, and understand its (main) characters. the hobbit is perceived as a high fantasy novel whose setting is in a created world or imaginary kingdom. the tone of the story is serious; it focuses on the conflict between opposing forces and concerns with big questions as well as ultimate values such as goodness, truth, courage, or wisdom (albernarle county public schools 1996). tolkien (as cited in foster 1981) is known to elaborate his own view upon fantasy world. a fantasy world is perceived as a serious secondary world (or “subcreation”), which is an escape from primary world. therefore, a fantasy world is a mirror, a re-presentation of the real world. there are four terms employed to describe this situation, i.e. recovery, escape, consolation, and eucatastrophe. recovery means that secondary world can give readers a sense of wonder and appreciation because they can gain a clear view about a world with different situation and creatures. it is a way to escape from the common problems in the real world and open an opportunity to “converse” with other living creatures. but still, the fulfillment of these escapes is one of the consolations of the happy ending. in the best form, the happy ending is a eucatastrophe, an unexpected turning of the plot. some characters in j. r. r. tolkien’s the hobbit (1937) exhibit strong leadership attributes. urick (2014), for instance, in his research found that the characters of gandalf, aragorn, and bilbo are effective leaders because they possess qualities described in transformational and servant leadership theories. urick’s work is, therefore, one of several papers that proves the hobbit is a good source to learn about leadership. character is one of several intrinsic elements of a novel, being the others are plot, point of view, setting and theme. exploring into character is one of the most frequent and significant ways taken by a student of literature to understand a novel. it might be due to the relatively easiness to relate the lives of a novel’s characters with one’s own life. theoretically speaking, there are some common ways to categorize characters in a novel. the most popular categorization is probably by forster (1927) who divided characters into round and flat. flat characters are a single character line and act as a function of only a few fixed character traits. round characters, meanwhile, are complex figures who have dimensional personalities. the second categorization of character dividing it into static and dynamic. kokemuller (2016) writes a static character is one who does not undergo any significant change in character, personality or perspective along the story. thus, as stated by holman (1980), a static character only can be seen from the pattern of the action and not the changing of character toward something. a dynamic character, in contrast, is the one who might experience a major life transition, a coming-of-age experience, trials, and tribulations, a change of heart or develop more likeable qualities or take a turn for the worse. he is changed by his actions and those actions impact upon the character. it can be argued that the reason for our relative easiness as readers to relate with character(s) of a novel is facilitated by characterization. characterization itself is a general term for sentences or the concepts which are employed to characterize in the sense explained or for the act of speaking so (aschenbrenner 1983). certainly, a method is needed in characterization. minderop (2005) suggests that the common direct and indirect methods are not the only one characterization method. other methods can be utilized as well such as point of view, stream of consciousness, figurative language, and also character’s motivation in doing something. however, direct and indirect method becomes the focus in this paper. moreover, holman (1980) explains there are three fundamental methods of characterization in fictions. first is the explicit presentation by the author of the character through direct narration either in an introductory part or more often journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) iline megale & f.x. dono sunardi 136 throughout the work, illustrated by the action. it can be said as direct method. second, the author presents the characters by their actions and less or without giving his explicit comments on them. third is the representation from within a character inner self and without the author’s comment. the last two methods are called as indirect method. minderop (2005) explains further that telling (direct) method consists of characterization through characters’ names, looks, and narrator’s speech. showing (indirect) method consists of dialog and action. characterization through dialog includes what the narrator says, the personality of the narrator, dialog location, and situation, the personality of the characters which are referred by narrator, mental quality of the characters, tone, stress, dialect, and vocabulary of characters. meanwhile, characterization through characters’ action includes face expression and motivation of the characters. this paper will only employ direct characterization through names, looks, and narration as well as indirect characterization through character’s action, other’s opinion, and dialog. servant leadership greenleaf (as cited in mcgee-cooper and trammell, 2013) provides us with a definition of a servant-leader. a servantleader is a person who begins with the natural feeling of willingness to serve first. as such, he or she develops some characteristics, like willingness and readiness to help, support, encourage, and lift up others. and because of their noble role model, others begin to be inspired and moved. russell and stone (2002: 146-152) formulate nine functional attributes of servant leadership. the classification of functional attributes is a result of their repetitive appearance in many literatures. the first attribute is vision. vision is a clear idea of what leader wants to do. it becomes his strength to persist in facing declines and failures (bennis, 2009: 33). the next attributes are honesty and integrity. a leader with integrity honors his or her commitments and promises (bennis, 2009: 152). there are three essential parts of integrity: self-knowledge, candor and maturity (bennis, 2009: 34-35). selfknowledge is about knowing personal strength and weakness which is important. candor is based on honesty to personal action and thought. maturity talks about how well a leader grows as a person through learning to be dedicated, observant, capable of working with, and learning from others. the fourth attribute is trust. integrity is the basis of trust. trust is one that must be earned which is given by the co-workers and followers (bennis, 2009: 35). the fifth is service. service is the core of the servant leadership. the fundamental motivation should come from the heart that is willing and ready to serve. a leader who makes visible self-sacrifices in the service of the organization will be viewed as more sincere and committed (yukl 2010). the next or sixth attribute is modeling. malphurs (as cited in russel and stone 2002) says effective leaders introduce values through deeds (or models) as much as or more than through words. another attribute is pioneering. ulrich (as cited in russel and stone 2002) states leaders need to be pioneers who take risks, create new paths, shape new approaches to old problems and have strong values and beliefs that drive their actions. the next attribute is appreciation of others. spears (2010) breaks down into some point of characteristics which are listening, empathy, and healing. listening with periods of reflection is essential to the growth of servant leadership. by listening, a servant-leader does not only try to understand others but also empathize with them. a servant-leader will accept and recognize his members’ uniqueness. this kind of leadership will transform inside the team. the relationship among members will be healed. the last or ninth attribute is empowerment. empowerment perceives that the leader values workers as the best parts of the corporate machine (fairholm and journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 137 fairholm, 2009: 79). giving others the power required to perform a given act means granting another the practical autonomy to step out and contribute directly to his or her job. but, it does not mean that leaders give away their power. the character development of bilbo baggins in order to show the character development (and changes) that bilbo baggins experiences in the course of the story, we will take a closer look of it and make a comparison between bilbo before his adventure as a helper to the dwarves and after. 1. bilbo baggins before taking the adventure there are several strong inferences from the novel about how bilbo baggins as a hobbit used to live before embarking on the adventure with the dwarves. the first and foremost characteristic of living as a hobbit is the love to living in comfort zone. this refers to a state that is in contrast with leaving safety and taking a risk of adventuring the unknown. as can be read in the hobbit: “i should think so – in these parts! we are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. nasty .disturbing uncomfortable things! make you late for dinner! i can’t think what anybody sees in them,” said our mr. baggins,…(p. 9) bilbo, as a typical hobbit, will not usually take a dangerous path of adventure. he prefers to stay at home, prepare regular meal, and live a life like “normal” hobbits of his village. bilbo cannot even make it why there are those who like to take adventure and put themselves in danger. just like his fellow hobbits, bilbo is also a warm and polite personality. one day, when he meets gandalf, a wizard who has known bilbo’s mother for so long, bilbo cannot but show his warmth and politeness to him. as can be read: ”good morning!” he [bilbo] said at last. … “what a lot of things you do use good morning for!” said gandalf. “now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won’t be good till i move off.” “not at all, not at all, my dear sir! let me see, i don’t think i know your name?” (p. 9) politeness and warmth to strangers can take form in many small talks. despite the fact that bilbo wants to express his rejection to gandalf’s offer to have an adventure, he keeps saying “good morning” and “thank you” to the later. it suggests how bilbo does not want to hurt a stranger who he has just met. the coming of the thirteen dwarves to his house also surprises bilbo in not a very good way. they come to him much like intruders to his peaceful life. as narrated, he liked visitors, but he would like to know them before they arrived (p. 11). however, when they do come, bilbo cannot but show his characteristic, almost automated, warmth and politeness. “come along in, and have some tea!” he managed to say after taking a deep breath. ”a little beer would suit me better, if it is all the same to you, my good sir,” said balin with the white beard. but i don’t mind some cakeseed-cake, if you have any.” “lots! bilbo found himself answering, to his own surprise; and he found himself scuttling off, too, to the cellar to fill a pint beer-mug, and to the pantry to fetch two beautiful round seed-cakes which he had baked that afternoon for his aftersupper morsel. (p. 11) repressing his own true feeling, bilbo welcomes everybody who comes to his house. he prepares everything the dwarves, his guests who at the same time the intruders, need, including their preference for food and drink. but this comes as something he himself cannot avoid. he has been trained to be polite and warm to all. this also suggests that bilbo is not an assertive person. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) iline megale & f.x. dono sunardi 138 bilbo’s warmth and politeness, however, also opens up new opportunities for him. as bilbo follows the conversation taking place in his house, he hears the beautiful, enchanting songs of the dwarves. bilbo himself is someone who loves aesthetic works, including songs. and, those songs sung by his dwarf guests inspire him to explore the wonderful world outside his current place. “[s]omething tookish woke up inside him, and see the great mountains…” (p. 16) as bilbo’s interests in the topic of world exploration mount up, and the side of himself that longs for adventure swells, there comes a moment when the dwarves express their disbeliefs in bilbo’s ability to help them in their dangerous journey. one of them, gloin, says, “ humph!” … as soon as i clapped eyes on the little fellow bobbing and puffing on the mat, i had my doubts. he looks more like a grocer-than a burglar!” (p. 18). however, gandalf, the wizard, determines that bilbo baggins is a burglar that he has chosen and who will prove to be useful for them later. thorin, the leader of the dwarves, finally concedes and decides to take bilbo in the journey. in the conversation taking place at the night before the departure, he makes this point clear, although he will not assign an important role to him. as we can read: “i think we have talked long enough for one night, if you see what i mean. what about bed, and an early start, and all that? i will give you a good breakfast before you go.” “before we go, i suppose you mean,” said thorin. “aren’t you the burglar? and isn’t sitting on the doorstep your job, not to speak of getting inside the door? (p. 23) despite the dwarves’ doubtfulness on his future usefulness, bilbo decides to go with thorin and the companions. but this is not happening before: (1) he gets “a letter of invitation” from the dwarves to join their adventure, which the dwarves agree to write, and (2) a last-minute push from gandalf, an external force outside bilbo that makes him embarking on the journey: “that leaves you just ten minutes. you will have to run,” said gandalf. “but—“ said bilbo. “no time for it,” said the wizard. “but—“said bilbo again. “no time for that either! off you go!” bilbo is, therefore, a hobbit that needs an external push to take a risk. indeed, he felt some interest in exploring the world outside his safe house and is formally invited to join an adventure, but he still need someone to kick start him. 2. bilbo baggins after taking the adventure there are many changes in the character of bilbo baggins after he decides to join the journey of the dwarves. these changes, which positively seen as developments, are evidently results of experiences that he has during the trip, many of which, as can be expected from a fantasy novel like the hobbit, are dramatic. here are some changes in bilbo as he proceeds on his journey as a burglar for the dwarves. a. being a braver hobbit if prior to his journey, bilbo is a meek hobbit, because of the experiences he faces during his journey, bilbo becomes a braver and, to some extent, a risk taker character. one night, for example, he is asked by thorin to check where a certain bright light comes from (it is not too far from their place to rest for the night). bilbo cannot but accept and do the order as his position is the burglar. so, despite his own being terrified, he embraces himself to see what happens. upon his investigation, bilbo finds the bright light comes from three trolls. trolls are monster-like creatures that eat man-flesh. the trolls that bilbo sees are in the middle of their discussion about the dish. bilbo has never met that kind of creature before but ever read about them. surely bilbo feels terrified at what he finds but he persists on doing what he can do and finds out more in journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 139 order to bring something back to thorin and his companies. he acts more bravely than he would have been if he keeps staying in his village. bilbo knew it. he had read of a good many things he had never seen or done. he was very much alarmed, as well as disgusted; he wished himself a hundred miles away, and yetand yet somehow he could not go straight back to thorin and company empty-handed (p. 30). b. becoming a smarter one at one point of the novel, bilbo, after accidently being left behind by the group, meets another strange creature. it is a gollum. bilbo then exchanges riddles with it and there he shows up how smart he is in answering and making riddles that he comes up as the winner. the last question he raises cannot be answered by the gollum as he does not originally intend it as the riddle: “what have i got in my pocket?” he said aloud. he was talking to himself, but gollum thought it was a riddle, and he was frightfully upset” (pp. 58-59). although that question is unintentional, this shows how bilbo is very keen and smart in using the opportunity. eventually, he is able to escape with the help of the magic ring he gets in the cave of gollum, which enables him to be reunited with his group. c. being a reliable helper as the story unfolds, bilbo’s “patron” and the one who has chosen him as a burglar, gandalf, departs from the expedition. this, of course, comes as a not very nice surprise for bilbo. he is going to be on his own from the moment gandalf leaves. he feels doubtful about himself, as can be read: “do we really have to go through?” groaned the hobbit. “yes, you do!” said the wizard, “if you want to get to the other side. you must either go through or give up your quest. and i am not going to allow you to back out now, mr. baggins. i am ashamed of you for thinking of it. you have got to look after all these dwarves for me,” he laughed. (p. 98) the responsibility that gandalf entrusts on him to take care of the dwarves is not something light. and yet, in the ends bilbo determines to give his best service to the cause. the departure of gandalf makes it possible for bilbo to grow into a reliable helper for the group. without bilbo’s defeating the spiders, for instance, the dwarves could not be saved: “they knew only too well that they would soon all have been dead, if it had not been for the hobbit; and they thanked him many times” (p. 116). d. being a firm and active “leader” there is a moment in the novel when the dwarves are being captivated by the elves of mirkwood. bilbo makes a plan to get them out of the jail. one option is to make use his magic ring, as he has done several times before this. but, his magic ring could not make all the members disappear at the same time. so cunningly bilbo chooses to make the guards drunk and then instructs the dwarves to escape through the tunnel with barrels. his idea is protested by the dwarves but bilbo shows his firmness as a leader as can be read: “we shall be bruised and battered to pieces, and drowned too, for certain!” they muttered. “we thought you had got some sensible notion, when you managed to get hold of the keys. this is a mad idea!”” “very well!” said bilbo very downcast, and also rather annoyed. “come along back to your nice cells, and i will lock you all in again, and you can sit there comfortably and think of a better planbut i don’t suppose i shall ever get hold of the keys again, even if i feel inclined to try.” (p. 124) bilbo’s character is also getting stronger from day to day. he becomes a more self-confident hobbit than he used to be. he starts to think journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) iline megale & f.x. dono sunardi 140 and act that the journey to misty mountains is his own business as well. it is not limited to only about helping the dwarves. it is also about himself. “now strange to say mr. baggins had more than the others. he would often borrow thorin’s map and gaze at it” (pp. 140-141). e. becoming someone who is willing to self-sacrifice willingness to self-sacrifice is a sure sign of a true leader. and there are moments in the novel where bilbo decides to sacrifice himself. by doing so, he earns trust and confidence from his dwarf companions, especially from thorin, the leader. in one occasion, for example, it can be read: “what then do you propose we should do, mr. baggins?” asked thorin politely. … “now i will make you an offer. i have got my ring and will creep down this very noon-then if ever smaug ought to be napping-and see what he is up to. perhaps something will turn up. ‘every worm has his weak spot,’ as my father used to say, though i am sure it was not from personal experience.” (p. 150) by doing so, it does not mean that bilbo does not feel afraid himself. he is horrified by this. however, he once again is able to manage unpredictable situations inside the cave. when his presence is smelt by the dragon, he can make smaug not see him. in the end, he comes back safely from the cave. f. being a loyal burglar as the story goes, we can see a more independent and confident bilbo. his position among the dwarves gets ever stronger. one of his highest “achievements” as the burglar is his success in getting arkenstone of tharin, which is to thorin the most valuable thing in the world. but that does not spare him from taking an opposite opinion from thorin and his company when he deems necessary. bilbo’s independence puts him at a risk of being hatred by thorin. this surely is something he does not like. however, as a burglar, bilbo is indeed very loyal to the dwarves. it is proved by his response when he is persuaded by the elvenking not to go back to thorin and stay with them instead. “... i advise you to remain with us, and here you shall be honoured and thrice welcome.” “thank you very much i am sure,” said bilbo with a bow. but i don’t think i ought to leave my friends like this, after all we have gone through together.” (p. 184) g. being humble, kind, and influential after the battle of five armies (a battle which is not anticipated before between goblins and the wild wolves in one side and elves, men, and dwarves on the other side), bilbo is reunited with the dwarves. unfortunately, at this moment thorin is dying and his last words express his regret towards bilbo. “farewell, good thief,” he said. “i go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed. i wish to part in friendship from you, and i would take back my words and deeds at the gate.” bilbo knelt on one knee filled with sorrow “farewell, king under the mountain!” he said. “this is a bitter adventure. yet i am glad that i have shared in your perils – that has been more than any baggins deserves.” “no!” said thorin. “there is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly west. some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. if more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” (p. 195) in the conversation above, bilbo looks humble and kind. he has given a big influence in thorin’s life and the latter is grateful for it. bilbo’s sincerity can also be seen when he gives his little share to the elvenking. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 141 “in what way have i earned such a gift, o hobbit?” said the king. “well, er, i thought, don’t you know,” said bilbo rather confused, “that, er some little return should be made for your, er, hospitality. i mean even a burglar has his feelings. i have drunk much of your wine and eaten much of your bread.” “i will take your gift, o bilbo the magnificent!” said the king gravely. (p.198) bilbo is able to touch many hearts with his good attitude. he also gives a lot instead of asking or demanding what he wants (even though he grumbles a lot too). at the end of his adventure, bilbo is praised by gandalf. gandalf looked at him. “my dear bilbo!” he said. something is the matter with you! you are not the hobbit that you were.” (p. 203) bilbo does not only succeed in completing the mission as a burglar but also develops his leadership characteristics that once was a dormant potential in need of exploration. the servant leadership attributes of bilbo baggins from the discussion on bilbo baggins’ character development, it can be said that he has nine functional attributes of servantleadership. they are vision, honesty, integrity, trust, service, modeling, pioneering, appreciation of others, and empowerment. presumably, those attributes do not come all at once. some of the attributes can be seen from the beginning of the story but the others emerge later on. but basically, bilbo develops all of the attributes through the journey that he takes with the dwarves. when bilbo is assigned to be a burglar, he wonders what he should do. however, during the journey, he learns to be a good burglar. furthermore, he makes his own decision to trade with the elvenking and bard. at this point he becomes a burglar who is capable of using his potentials very well. he becomes a visionary person who knows what he is doing and what he wants to do. he wants everyone feel satisfied though he knows his friendship with thorin is at risk. bilbo shows honesty and integrity almost all the times. after being offered to join the adventure, he simply admits that he has no business to take a dangerous journey because he is a common folk. but when he finally decides to take that chance, he starts to do his best as a burglar. it is true that bilbo is not a leader of a group at the beginning of his journey. however, day by day, he gains more trust from the dwarves. getting trust from the followers is important for a leader. without it, the followers will never obey to the leader. in facts, bilbo leads the dwarves when they are attacked by spiders and trapped in the elves’ jails. bilbo is also a good model and pioneer. instead of debating with the dwarves about who is going to volunteer to enter the cave of the dragon, he agrees to be the first who checks in. actually, it is not his business but the dwarves’, the ones who own the mountain. however, bilbo speaks through his deeds by simply taking the first step. the last attributes of servant-leader that belongs to bilbo are appreciation of others and empowerment. they are important qualities in servant-leadership. hall (as cited in page and wong, 2000) states that a servant-leader is the one who invests himself in enabling others, in helping them be and do their best. to be a leader is about appreciating others and helping them to be better. bilbo does not show these attributes heavily in the hobbit (maybe later in the lord of the rings) because here he is more empowered by gandalf than empowering others. however, bilbo starts to empower when he orders the dwarves to unite against the spiders. he also shows this quality when he encourages the dwarves to dare to take risk in order to escape from the mirkwood’s jail. in those examples, bilbo does not only give order but he also does his part and supports the dwarves to solve the problem. it makes bilbo is a truly servant-leader. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) iline megale & f.x. dono sunardi 142 conclusion j. r. r. tolkien’s the hobbit (1937) has showcased several leadership characters. one of the leaders we have discussed here is bilbo baggins. in this paper, we explored character and characterization theories in order to know the character development of bilbo baggins. from there, we tried to analyze the servant leadership attributes found in bilbo baggins as his character develops. it is found that the character of bilbo baggins develops and experiences changes during his journey with the dwarves. before taking the adventure, bilbo is described as a normal hobbit who loves food and comfort. it is said about him: “he had only just had breakfast, but he thought a cake or two and a drink of something would do him good after his fright” (p. 10). he is hard to gain trust from the dwarves because of his appearance and natures. but after taking the adventure and meeting with lots of unpredictable things and real challenges, like trolls, gollum, big spiders, smaug, and the dragon, bilbo becomes a solid servant-leader. therefore, bilbo is perceived as a round character because of his character complexities and as a dynamic character because of his character development. by exploring into the development of his characters, bilbo is proved to have some servant-leader attributes as mentioned in russell and stone (2002: 146-152). they are vision, honesty, integrity, trust, service, modeling, pioneering, appreciation of others, and empowerment. references abrams, mh. a glossary of literary terms, 7th ed. new york: heinle & heinle. 1999. albemarle county public schools. “genre definitions,” n.d. web. 14 april 2016. <https://www2.k12albemarle.org/dept /instruction/languagearts/curriculum %20appendices/appendixf_genredef.pd f>. aschenbrenner, k. analysis of appraised characterization. dordrecht, nl: d. reidel publishing company. 1983. badaracco, jl ‘leadership in literature’. harvard business review. 2006. web. 24 march 2016, < http://www.asecsldi.org/dotasset/292762.pdf.>. barnet, s, et al. an introduction to literature: fiction, poetry and drama, 15th ed. london: pearson longman. 2008. bennis, w. on becoming a leader. basic books, new york. 2003. carpenter, h. the letters of j.r.r. tolkien. london: george allen & unwin. 1981. fairholm, mr & fairholm, gw. understanding leadership perspectives: theoretical and practical applications. new york: springer. 2009. forster, e.m. aspects of the novel. new york: rosettabooks llc. 1927. foster, r. “teacher’s guide: the hobbit.” rev. a jurskis, 1981. web. 24 january 2016. <http://www.randomhouse.com/catalo g/teachers_guides/9780345534835.pdf >. hallett, fnu. “elements of fiction,” n.d. web. 30 march 2016. <https://www.carrollwooddayschool.or g/uploaded/documents/elementsoffict ion6-4-10.pdf>. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 143 holman, c.h. a handbook to literature, 4th ed., indianapolis, in: the bobbs-merrill company, inc. 1980. kokemuller, n. “dynamic vs static character definitions and examples”. 2016. web. 30 march 2016, <http://education.seattlepi.com/dynam ic-vs-static-character-definitionsexamples-4939.html>. mcgee-cooper, a & trammell, d. “the essentials of servant leadership: principles in practice”. rev. m kosec, ann mcgee-cooper & associates, inc. 2016. web. 12 april 2016, <http://amca.com/amca/wpcontent/uploads/the-essentials-ofservant-leadership-final.pdf>. minderop, a. metode karakterisasi telaah fiksi. jakarta: yayasan obor indonesia. 2005. page, d. & wong, p.t.p. “a conceptual framework for measuring servantleadership”. 2000. web. 12 april 2016, <https://www.twu.ca/academics/gradu ate/leadership/servantleadership/conceptual-framework.pdf>. rateliff, j.d. the history of the hobbit. london, uk: harpercollins. 2000. ross, a. “english language and literature for aqab.” 2002. web. 13 may 2016, <https://books.google.co.id/books?isbn =0435109855>. russell, r.f. & stone, a.g. “a review of servant leadership attributes: developing a practical model’, leadership & organization development journal, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 145-157, 2002. web. 12 april 2016, <http://strandtheory.org/images/russ ell_stone_-_sl_attributes.pdf>. spears, l.c. “character and servant leadership: ten characteristics of effective, caring leaders”. the journal of virtues & leadership, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 25-30, 2010. web. 10 april 2016, <http://www.spearscenter.org/hsless ay.pdf>. tolkien, j.r.r. the hobbit. 1937. web. 18 june 2015, <https://docs.google.com/file/d/0b_yp zx3300uzwmjqyme0ajg2mjg/view>. urick, m.j. “wizards, hobbits, and kings: leadership in tolkien’s middle-earth and lessons for business leaders’, pp. 21-29, institute of leadership in management inc., 2014. web. 25 march 2016, <https://www.researchgate.net/profile /michael_urick/publication/27610165 6_wizards_hobbits_and_kings_leadersh ip_in_tolkien's_middleearth_and_lessons_for_business_leader s/links/5550d21808ae93634ec9f059.p df>. wellek, r. & warren a. 1949, theory of literature. new york. harcourt, brace and company. 1949. print. yukl, g. leadership in organizations, 7th ed. upper saddle river, nj: pearson education, inc. 2010. print. and bader, fnu. “leader traits and attributes”, the major schools of leadership, pp. 101124, 2004. web. <http://www.corwin.com/upmdata/5014_antonakis_chapter_5.pdf>. 422 vol. 22 no. 2, october 2022, pp. 422 – 434 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i2.4323 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. the new image of indian girl in sherman alexie’s the search engine mundi rahayu mundi@bsi.uin-malang.ac.id department of english, universitas islam negeri maulana malik ibrahim malang, indonesia abstract article information the current paper examines the native american people's identity, especially the main female character's cultural identity in the short story entitled the search engine. sherman alexie, the author of the story, is a native american writer who harnesses the indian identity as one of the main topics. the identity presented in the main character, corliss, shows the challenges of the stereotypes of native american girls. for that reason, the paper aims at exploring the new indian woman’s cultural identity represented in the main character, corliss, in the short story the search engine. the study applies postcolonial feminist literary criticism by gayatri spivak that highlighted the importance of the women in the third world or she called the subaltern’s voice. spivak’s ideas denied the universalities in women movement, and she advocates the women in postcolonial countries who are marginalized and silenced. spivak’s concept applied in this study enables the writer to deeply explore the issue of woman's identity among the american native people, as the native people are also in the position of postcolonial. the study shows that the main character, corliss is represented as the new female image identity, in which she can challenge traditional stereotypes of native american women. corliss is described as a highly literate woman, with a lot of reading on english literary works, and has concern on her indian-ness, which is often incommensurable to her big family’s views. her excellent literacy and attitude toward indian and white people enable her build new consciousness in seeing the indian men and women and their relation to white people. keywords: female image; indian girl; literary image; native american literature received: 29 january 2022 revised: 2 august 2022 accepted: 4 august 2022 introduction the discourse of indigenous people has increasingly attracted international readers mainly since the raising awareness on the human rights. in the literary world, indigenous literary work affected young indigenous people in how they perceived https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:bimalksrivastav@gmail.comuthor's journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 423 themselves and built their own identity (topash-caldwell, 2020). there are various narrations of native american literary works from which we can figure out the ideas on the stories and knowledge of the indigenous people. one of the main issues in indigenous literature is the position and image of native woman. in popular culture, american native women have almost always been portrayed with stereotypes of indian princess or the ‘‘squaw’’ – ‘‘a violent, degraded, and filthy creature,’ or presented as fantasy that tinged with prejudice in the wild west shows (green, 2000; mandell, 2004). under such background, this paper aims to explore further, the representation of native american woman in a literary work of 21 century. the work discussed in this paper is the short story entitled the search engines which is part of the book ten little indians (2003) written by sherman alexie. in ten little indians (2003), alexie attracts readers’ attention that the indian narrative is worthy of special attention. in this collection, the nine stories highlight the people of the spokane tribe of native americans in washington state. the titles of the nine stories are: the search engine, lawyer's league, can i get a witness? do not go gentle, flight patterns, the life and times of estelle walks above, do you know where i am?, what you pawn i will redeem, whatever happened to frank snake church. the writer narrates the indian characters that are sincere, lovable, funny, and fallible (coulombe, j.l., 2011). they reflect the life as indians in the city of seattle, a multicultural urban space with blurry cultural boundaries (coulombe, j.l. 2002). for instance, some indian boys are puzzled about what to do to get their way home, as they just sit at the bench of the coast and wait for their ships/canoes to pass by. on the other hand, there is a young indian who found out his grandmother’s regalia at the shop, but he could not afford to buy it back, and he spent the money he got for the drinking instead (the story what you pawn i will redeem). the writer narrates not only his identity as an indian, but he also talks about a multicultural society. the first short story in the collection entitled the search engine narrates a young indian girl who is highly literate as she is the only one in her clan who studied english literature in university. as an indian girl, corliss, the main character, faces many challenges in pursuing her literacy and study. she takes great efforts for her ambition to be an educated and literate woman. the challenges come from her parents and big family members who did not understand corliss’ thought. she realizes that she has different views from her parents and uncles, regarding her study, the success indicators, and different views on white people. the identity is the main issue in this story, as the indian’s perception on the world is affected by their history, and how they perceive their selfidentity, and their interaction with the whites. with the problems and challenges that she encounters in this story, the main character, corliss is represented as an indian girl with a new image. there have been some researches on the issue of native woman in american literature. responding to the popular culture stereotype that native american woman was often represented as princess or the ‘‘squaw’’ – ‘‘a violent, degraded, and filthy creature,’’ annette van dyke (2005) wrote that american native writers have developed the literary works by exploring the authentic native tradition elements such as the belief in the sacredness of language and earth, representing the place and landscape in their original view, and highlighting their traditional values (mcgrath, 2000). to erase the bad stereotype of princess or squaw, native american women writers have had to address the misconceptions about the importance of women in native culture (van dyke, 2005). one of the outstanding native woman writers in the 19th century, winnemucca wrote her autobiography, life among the piutes: their wrongs and claims (1883). for her, writing has become a resistance tool against the white people. her resistance is expressed through the poetic and political discourse in her book, life among the piutes. in this book, winnemucca presented her mastery in rhetoric that combines her sentimentality and anger. she used tears as the prominent narrative device in the book. she also presented humor that attract the readers at journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) mundi rahayu 424 large. by doing so, she challenged nineteenth‐ century norms that excluded women from comedy. the rhetoric she developed in that book proved to be powerful narrative technique for criticizing colonialism (carpenter, 2020). the studies on native american women above indicates the struggle that the native women encountered in their time. i argue that the struggle of the women as portrayed in the literary works might have some changes along with the shift and development of the social political context of the society. as written by nancy shoemaker in her book entitled negotiators of changes (1994), the european colonialization gave more complex impacts towards native american women's power such as the adaptation, subversion, and economic changes, as well as other issues like the changing meanings of motherhood, women's roles and different gender ideologies. for that reason, the current paper focused on exploring native american woman identity represented in a story written by an american indian (spokane) writer, sherman alexie in the early of the 21c. this study aims at understanding the portrayal of the indigenous woman in a short story entitled the search engine. like the other alexie’s literary works, for example, the lone ranger and tonto fistfight in heaven (1993), some signal (1998), ten little indians (2003), the story shed the light on the life of native americans in their involvement with the daily life of multicultural americans. the story the search engine is the first part of the collection of short stories entitled ten little indians. the 52-page story is the longest one in the collection. interestingly, the story narrates some issues related to native american woman identities, generational gap that contributes to the different identities, and native’s contested views on white people, as well as some conflicts related to the identities. as studied by douglas ford (2002), the identity of aboriginality has become an everchanging state since the contact of the native people with cultures of people of other continents. in his works, alexie represents the complexities of catastrophic events and expression experienced by the native american people in daily life (ford, 2002). sherman alexie is one of the contemporary native american literature writers, who is arguably the most renowned, innovative, and cosmopolitan as well as provocative native author today (bockes, 2016; farrington, 2015; herman, 2009). his complete name is sherman joseph alexie jr., born on october 7, 1966, as a spokane-coeur d'alene native american tribe of spokane, washington. he writes about the lives and emotions of his kinsmen and women from the "inside" of their tribal world (donohue, 2008). alexie is also popularly known as a novelist, short story writer, and filmmaker, inspired by his own feeling, thought, and concerns as an indigenous. he grew up on the spokane indian reservation, and now lives in seattle, washington. his background affects his works, especially on the theme of identity. his stories are fictions that plays with the art constructing stories, identities, and thus, interpretations of the world (wyman, 2014). alexie also uses the popular culture in his works, such as in the lone ranger and tonto fistfight in heaven, which constructs a model of native american identity that shifts beyond reaction to be as inclusive as it is divisive. his views on white culture functions to investigate the issues of identity which are at the heart of american indian literature (gordon, 2001). alexie’ works addressed social issues that the indian encounter across native american history. he has received many prizes for his works. “reservation blues” was his first debut, of which he got the american book award in 1996. the other best work is the novel entitled “the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian” (2007). he also wrote a screenplay for the film smoke signals (1998), adapted from his book the lone ranger and tonto fistfight in heaven (1993). understanding alexie’s works gives the readers ideas on how the native live for better or worse and the true story of the modern indian (banka, e., 2006). in critical perspective, his work becomes a provocative view into the modern indian psyche (bockes, 2016). one of important aspects in alexie’s work is humor. for alexie, humor functions as his “green card” or his way of getting people’s attention (kertzer, 2012). journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 425 native american literature has played important role in literary studies. one of the important points is that indigenous literary works present language, and knowledge as well as the philosophy of indigenous communities. in many cases, the indigenous literary works also function as amplifying the authentic voice of the tribes and countering the stereotypes and complications notion of indian identity in productive ways (ladino, j.k. 2009). the way of thinking is one of the most important aspects in understanding the native people, in which it is based on their tribal cultures and how they see the world and universe (fixico, d.l, 2009). in more general, farrington found out that there are two categories of criticisms on native literary works, those who denounce the author’s works for constructing indian stereotypes, and those who fight for the author’s commitment to down-to earth portrayals of a tearing reservation community (farrington, 2013). of those two categories, alexies belongs to the second one, and at the same time deconstructed the indian stereotypes. the search engine presented the main character, corliss, a woman who challenges traditional stereotypes of indian women. instead of living with her big family, she prefers to live independently in the city of washington. as the history tells us, from the 1930s up to now, in the us, there have been some generations of the native people living in the cities (weaver, 2012). corliss is a girl who has a strong commitment to literacy, and determined to study english literature, which is out of her family’s expectations. to explore further the portrayal of the indigenous woman in the story the search engine, the study applies the postcolonial feminism perspective. in the indigenous context, patriarchy is often intersected with colonialism and racism to produce violence, affecting the contemporary realities of indigenous women (luebke, j. et.al.,2021). postcolonial feminist literary criticism focuses on women’s struggle to articulate her voice in the traditional patriarchal society of the native american. sometimes, women are successful in articulating their voice, but some other times they have to negotiate, or break social norms openly and silently (rahayu, m. and aurita, n.a., 2020). the concept developed by mohanty (1994) and spivak (1985) helps us understand the relationship between raceand-gender-conscious historical materialism. the connection enables us to figure out the complexities and interconnections between women, to understand the power, privilege, agency, and dissent that a woman can make. in postcolonial feminism, some important influential writings dealing with the paradigm are gayatri spivak’s “three women’s texts and a critique of imperialism” (spivak, 1985) and mohanty’s “under western eyes: feminist scholarship and colonial discourses” (mohanty, 1988). spivak criticizes western feminism as the perspective that reproduces the ideas of imperialism (spivak, 1985). the imperialist ideas that spivak criticizes are, first, the imperialism as the important part of the cultural representation of england to the english. second, that literature had important roles in the production and reproduction of the cultural representation of imperialism. spivak highlighted the importance to be critical on the imperialism ideas. spivak also articulated the concept on subaltern and the importance of the voice of the women of the “third world” in facing the imperialist ideas (spivak, 1988). in line with spivak, mohanty’s critique on colonialism stated that the image of the third world woman who is always oppressed is problematic, because this image maintains the illusion of women’s autonomy in the first world, that assert the assumption of the western women’s secular, liberated, and have control over their own lives (mohanty, 1988). the writings criticize that western feminist ideas tend to colonize postcolonial women. so, the criticism goes on to the point that it is necessary to build feminist individualism that highlights female problems by contextualizing them in their own context. in the postcolonialism paradigm, the question is how the native's voices subvert the assumptions of colonial discourse. the imperialist assumption that justifies colonialism says that the feminine land out there is to be explored by male explorers (mcclintock, 1995). the idea displays the interconnection between colonialism and the feminism movement which aims to raise journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) mundi rahayu 426 against the colonial power. native’s voice and feminist voice get the interconnection in the postcolonial studies, as one of the tools of analysis in scrutinizing the consequences of colonialism, dealing with the social and economic impacts of colonialism. under the postcolonial perspective, feminist criticism ponders how literary works and other cultural products emphasize or subvert women's oppression under economic, political, social, and psychological aspects (mikulan, 2009). in reading literary works, the readers need to scrutinize and interrogate the portrayal of women, solicit the archetypes from the perspective of feminism, observe the feminist and communal values or the patriarchal system that has been in charge of the construction and possible subversion of gender inequality (dresang, 2002). methodology this study is qualitative research, in which it seeks to understand the social phenomena by engaging qualitative data collection and analysis to encapsulate the human experience (harreveld, 2016). the social phenomena discussed here is represented in literary work so that it is specifically analyzed through literary criticism, a study to evaluate and interpret the literary works using the lens of literary theories. the literary work discussed in this study is a short story entitled the search engine written by sherman alexie, as the data source. the data are in the forms of words and sentences all of which describe the details of how the female character (corliss) in the story builds and develops her cultural identity as a native indian girl. under the perspective of postcolonial feminism (spivak, 1985), the story is observed in the aspect of how the female main character takes efforts to build her native identify in the multicultural spaces. the search engine is part of the short stories collection of ten little indians (2003). the concept of postcolonial feminism is applied in the data analysis. the interpretation is done through close-reading. in literary studies, a close reading is typically the occasion for more general observations and for quite wide-ranging reflections. the observations about the style or genre of the text at hand, or about its author, or reflections on the era in which it was written. the observations and reflections—more or less subtle, more or less original—about related human circumstances and experiences (smith, b.h., 2016). in that way, the analysis aims to answer the question of how female indian cultural identity represented in the story. results and discussion the search engine tells us about a young woman, called corliss, a spokane indian who lives in washington. as the indian, corliss grows up in a spokane family, and now she lives in her apartment in the city while studying english literature at washington university. the spokane is a native tribe in the native american plateau, who populate the eastern part of washington state and parts of northern idaho in the united states of america. the new image of corliss that defies the stereotype of an indian girl, can be classified into two, her identity as a girl of excellent literacy and her attitude toward indian and white people. the history saw, since the native people move out of tribal societies, and the traditional lifestyles changes, it affects the women's roles both in the context of mainstream american life and in tribal life, to be more challenging (cook-lynn, 1996). corliss’ identity as an independent indian girl with excellent literacy grown up in spokane indian in washington, america, corliss was raised in a big family of indians. she loves her father and mother, uncles and nieces. her father and uncles are all happy to sit together, share a story and nostalgia, and laughter so that it seems the world is friendly for them. however, as an indian girl, corliss builds an ambiguous perception of her clan. on one side, she loves her big family. on the other side, there are many things about her family that she dislikes at all. corliss is presented as an independent girl, in many ways. she is independent in making decision of what she wants to study in the university, and what she loves in her life: books and literacy. this also makes her journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 427 independent in making political stance of judging the white people, not following her father or clan’s opinion. her willing to read a lot of literary books shapes her critical thinking and makes her excellent in literacy. corliss’s excellent in literacy can be explained in the following narration. as a 19year-old girl who loves books so much that she wants to be “buried in a coffin filled with used paperbacks,” (tse, p.5) and has “never met one human being more interesting to her than a good book” (tse, p.10). corliss is a young woman who grew up on the spokane reservation, and as an indian girl, it is a high privilege for her to enroll the higher education. she had to make a great effort to reach her status as a university student, for example, she had to collect cans to get money before enrolling in the junior high school. represented as a poor indian girl, corliss has a strong will to study, and she reads and memorizes the poetry of popular poets. poetry plays an important role in her life. corliss is charmed reading literary works. moreover, she chose english literature as her major. different from corliss, her family, father, and uncles are all dislike poetry or such literacy things. the indian men were suspicious on anything of ‘white book.’ this can be seen from the incident when corliss brings a book and her uncles call it a “white book.” her uncle hates the books written by white people, he called it “white book.” corliss clarified, that the name of the book writer was gerard manley hopkins, who wrote in 19c. however, the uncle responds cynically, “white people were killing indians in the 19c.” in addition, the uncle said, “i bet this hopkins dude was killing indians, too” (tse, p.13). not only white people the indians hate, but also the catholics. her father replied, “oh, corliss, those catholics were the worst. your grandmother still has scars on her back from when a priest and a nun whipped her in boarding school. you shouldn’t be reading that stuff. it will pollute your heart” (tse, p.14). the view on the catholics was affected by their bad memory in the past. for her father and uncles, the books written by white people are just seen as bad things. instead of getting wisdom, they perceive the book as something harmful, that can pollute her heart. the perception of the white book is affected by their historical events in which, white people have killed their indian ancestors and grabbed their land and their future. the colonial memory of colonialization has haunted the indian minds till now. however, corliss is determined to be independent for her future that she imagined, “she wanted a maximum life, an original aboriginal life” (tse, p.5). she imagined that her future life is a “maximum life,” that means, a life meaningful for/as a native indian girl who loves literary works. the identity as a native indian aboriginal girl is important for her implying that people respect her as an indian girl. she does not figure out a success like those living in urban, such as being an executive in a big company, or many modernity imaginations that happened to many young people in modern times. instead, she loves her life as an native indian woman, with the access of a good life for her and her family as aboriginal life. the concept of the life is still an abstract idea, but it is elaborated further in the story. to reach her dream, she fought hard to go to an underfunded public college. she worked hard since young age, gathering aluminum cans and selling them in her summer break before she went to junior year of high school. in that way, she could afford the yearlong sat-prep course. the course was successfully raised her scores and won her academic scholarship, but that was not enough. corliss still had to fight more for her dream. at the beginning of every semester, corliss had called the history and english teachers at the local prep school she couldn’t afford, and asked what books they would be reading in class, and she had found those books and lived with them like siblings (tse, p.5). the citation above shows corliss’ strategies to be able to take the preparation school before going to the university/college, calling the teachers of history and english and asked them the books they read in the class, so journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) mundi rahayu 428 that she could read and learn the books by herself, any time. corliss shows her commitment and strong motivation to study. she built the consciousness that the study would make her life better and maximum as an aboriginal girl. corliss builds her dream independently, which was very much different from her family’s ideas. corliss understands that her family loves and supports her for many things she could enjoy as a college student in washington. the family sent her money, although it was not enough for her. as presented in the citation below, we can find out the language “miraculous twenty-dollar bill” that implies how big efforts her family support her, sending her money to survive in the university. twenty dollars cannot be called a big money, but for the indian people, it has been something miraculous, so that she felt guilty to question the importance of her tribe. how many times had she opened an envelope and discovered a miraculous twenty-dollar bill? the family and the tribe were helping her, so maybe she was a selfish bitch for questioning the usefulness of tribalism. here she was sitting in a corner of her tiny apartment, pretending to be alone in the world, the one poetic spokane, and she was reading a book of poems, of sonnets, by another spokane (tse, p.14). although her family was lack of financial resources, corliss she was determined to build the dignity through literacy. she loves reading a lot of literary works and being in solitude. her tiny apartment shows her simplicity of life. in addition, she does not want to share the apartment with other people, either white people or indian. she knows indian well, so she perceives that her indian roommate would be busy with their big family culture, as she knows well how indian people’s lifestyle. “indians were used to sharing and called it tribalism,” but in corliss's mind, they are failed communism. the indians are habitual to living together, not daring to be alone, as the stereotype of indians who were terrified of being lonely, of being exiled. that is contradictory to corliss because she, as an indian herself, had always dreamed of solitude (tse, p.10). in addition, she made a safe place by living alone, as the violence and discrimination often happened to native women (le may, g., 2018). life in an indian family and clan implies living with a mother, father, seven indian siblings, and cousins. for corliss, solitude life is what she looked for. she enjoyed her solitude and kept it sacred, implying that she does not allow anyone to enter her world. she just had minimal material things in daily life, so it is necessary to mention the content of the wardrobe in her apartment. “maybe she lived in an academic gulag, but she had chosen that way” (tse, p.10). “gulag” means camps for labor which is terrible and miserable, so many people died in the camps. academic "gulag" refers to the condition of the unenjoyable place in the academic sphere that made people study hard without enough facilities. the academic gulag in this context shows the situation in which corliss had to work hard in her study and might not be supported by good facilities. though living in limited resources, corliss loves her life, and she is grateful that she can read so many books and has her own life, separated from her indian family. corliss criticizes her indian extended family that in her views, “they just look like people who have no ambition in life.” most of her uncles and most indian people are mostly blue-collar construction jobs. the teachers and guidance counselors contributed to reproducing the stereotype of the indian working type. they always said that the indians could work only in blue-collar jobs. the blue-collar jobs are workers who engage in hard manual labor, typically agriculture, manufacturing, construction, mining, or maintenance. they have to work hard physically and do not get a good salary. in this case, corliss took pity on her clan, especially the matter of “the indian never ask questions, no interrogating on any matter of life.” in corliss’ view, the ability to ask questions and interrogate life is a basic and important thing people have to do. inability to raise questions means they are just passive recipients of their fate, that other people determine for them. her father and uncles never asked questions. how can you live a special life without constantly interrogating it? how can you live a good life without good journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 429 poetry? she knew her family feared poetry, but they didn’t fear it because they were indian. the fear of poetry was multicultural and timeless (tse, p.13). corliss is ambiguous in viewing her clan. in one side she loves them very much, with their togetherness, but at the other side, she viewed the fears and collective lack of ambition of the indian people. moreover, she found out that her father and uncles never asked questions dealing with their lives, their works, and destiny (tse, p.13). it is strong evidence that corliss is represented as a new female image of an indian woman challenging the habits and norms in her clan. when her father and uncles never asked questions of everything, corliss did the question of anything. constantly interrogating or anything will bring into a special life. and another aspect that corliss challenged from her family is the love of poetry, by putting a rhetorical question, “how can you live a good life without a good poetry?” so, good poetry is the key to building a good life. the paragraphs above show that corliss’s excellent literacy is based on the idea that life should be lived in a critical perspective. the critical thinking can be obtained through the excellent literacy. corliss reads a lot so that she is able to ask questions in her life. asking questions is proven to be very important in life, especially when corliss found out that her father and uncles never ask questions anything for their lives, and it turns out to be a miserable life. in other words, good life can be obtained through excellent literacy. corliss’ ambiguous attitude toward white people corliss’ view on white people is ambiguous too. on one side, she finds out the white people’s romantic view of indians. on the other side, she found out the white poets and white teachers are all the people she adored. she said how the white people did “goofy sentimentalism,” such as when the white people looked at the natural wonder in grand canyon, niagara falls, or even seeing newborn babies and indians, with the same “goofy” feeling. goofy means silly. corliss makes the example of goofy sentimentalism by making the parallel perception of the grand canyon, newborn babies, and indian people in the eyes of the white people. “being a smart indian, corliss had always taken advantage of this romanticism, but that didn’t mean she wanted to share the refrigerator with it” (tse, p.11). this allusion is funny too, the unwillingness to share the apartment with the white people that means sharing the refrigerator, the furniture that has to exist in one’s room and is considered as something private, because people put many ‘private’ things like foods in this refrigerator. unwillingness to share something means that corliss celebrates her individuality which would not possibly happen when she is living with her indian family. as an indian, corliss realized that the white people are the ones who made the indian or the native colonialized and miserable life, who uprooted from their original land and made them powerless in most of their life. however, she made a politics of difference, she differentiates the white people who are good and bad. as we can find out in the following citation, corliss is represented as a socially and historically literate young indian girl who makes a difference in identifying the bad and the good white people, that white people is not a single face. sure, she hated all sorts of white people— the arrogant white businessmen … it was easy to hate white vanity and white rage and white ignorance, but what about white compassion and white genius and white poetry? maybe it wasn’t about whiteness or redness or any other color. corliss wasn’t naive. she knew racism, tribalism, and nationalism were encoded in human dna … however, she also wanted to believe in human goodness and mortal grace (tse, p.14). corliss hated the white businessmen people (flannel-shirted rednecks) who are arrogant, and she said they represented the worst of whiteness. she also understands the meaning of the terms “racism, tribalism, and nationalism”. however, she also realized that the many good things are coming from white journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) mundi rahayu 430 people, especially the “white genius and white poetry.” this implies that corliss amplified the ideas that intellectuality, education, literature, and poetry are the parameter of the kindnesses of a human being. on the other side, corliss admires white people, especially the educated, the teachers, and the poets. she respected the teachers and the white people who were so kind to her. they helped her, although never met in person, with the information on the books of the courses at prep school that corliss did not afford to attend. and those same teachers, good white people whose whiteness and goodness blended and separated, had faxed her study guides and copies of the best student papers. two of those teachers, without having met corliss in person, had sent her graduation gifts of money and yet more books. she’d been a resourceful thief, a narcissistic robin hood who stole a rich education from white people and kept it (tse, p.4). the citation above shows how corliss took efforts to get learning resources from the teachers who were white people. they were very kind to a poor indian girl who has strong motivation to learn and read books, so she feels like robin hood, a popular man in folklore who did many crime actions, stealing, robbing, and even hijacking the lord’s caravan. he gave all of the things to the poor people and the needy. in this context, corliss equated herself with robin hood because she had got the books and other resource material for study, only by calling the teachers, and she felt so fortunate for that. the other point that corliss applauds from white people is the poets. corliss has been in love with poetry since she was young, while her family feared poetry. she loves poetry “because so many people feared it. maybe she wanted to frighten people with the size of her poetic love.” her family and parent often laughed at corliss’ love of poetry. while corliss thought that she had got a lot of pearls in her life through the book she reads, the other people in her clan just laughed at that. “i bet you’re reading one of those white books again, enit?” the first uncle asked. “his name is gerard manley hopkins,” corliss said. “he wrote poems in the nineteenth century.” “white people were killing indians in the nineteenth century,” the second uncle said. “i don’t think so,” corliss said. “he was a jesuit priest.” her father and uncles cursed with shock and disgust. “he was a catholic?” her father asked. “oh, corliss. those catholic were the worst. your grandmother still has scars on her back from when a priest and a nun whipped her in boarding school. you shouldn’t be reading that stuff. it will pollute your heart (tse, p.13-14). as an indian woman, corliss defied the stereotypical indian girl that men constructed. she was a typical woman who admired and loved poetry and poets because the literary works gave her many precious insights in life. the fact is contrary to her family, father, and uncles, who hate anything from the white people. the native people constructed stereotypical characteristics of white people that are all evil and the poetry or literature as something useless. the assumption strengthens the understanding of poetry and literature that cannot be separated from the history of the white colonialization to the native americans. the indian’s enmity attitude is acknowledged as something common that corliss understands but could not accept. corliss mentioned that a book author is a white man named gerard manley hopkins, who wrote in 19 century, but the indian men reacted that all white men killed indians in the century. when corliss replied that hopkin is a jesuit priest, the father and uncles responded with a more horrific comment that a priest and a nun had whipped her grandmother. the bitter history was produced and reproduced for generations of the indian community so hate for white people has become a norm. this can be evidenced in the father’s response to corliss, “you shouldn’t be reading that stuff. it will pollute your heart” (tse, p.14). on the other hand, corliss could not make a dispute with the elder people because of the indian journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 431 norms, that arguing means disrespect to the elders. she realized that the ‘education of hate’ had been the norm in her clan, and she did not agree on this, but she could not make any open resistance to them. as a literary student, corliss learns to build commitment to humanity, so that she perceives the white men, especially the educated and poets deserve respect because of their works. she is a student of english literature that had learned and read a lot of white men’s literary works, and she learned many things from the books, the white book, and poetry. corliss also realized that her community reproduced the fear and hate of white people, and she was not on the same mind as her parents. however, considering the respect for the elders, corliss never made an open resistance to the elders. corliss studies english literature that contrasts with her father and uncles’ ideas, that they are all proud of her intelligence, her brave and smart brain. however, they expected that corliss study science, math, law or politics, instead of literature. the idea of success for the indian men is the career that resulted in much money and wealth, like a politician, or law professional. the indian people are represented as people who did not recognize the importance of studying literature. “you’re pretty and smart, why are you wasting your time with poems? you should be studying science and math and law and politics. you’re going to be rich and famous. you’re going to be the toughest indian woman around” (tse, p.15). the indian men perceived that learning the poems was just wasting the time. instead of literature, they prefer her studying math, law or politics, because the people identify that these studies made them rich and famous. for indian men, the success of a woman has not been perceived as a threat for them. they did not feel insecure about their wife’s success financially or professionally. the paradox presented by the indian men in corliss’ views is that they are kind, decent, sensitive, stupid, sexist, and unpredictable. for example, the men’s opinion on their wives. the wives were all successful in their jobs and made much more money than the men earned, nevertheless, the men were just happy and proud of their wives. instead of jealousy, these men just bragged about their wives’ prosperity, “ha, my woman just got a raise! my honey makes more money than your honey! my wife manages the whole dang kmart, and then she comes home and manages us! she’s a twenty first-century woman!” (tse, p. 15). in that situation, corliss felt the paradox in seeing her clan, including her father, uncles, and the whole family, that made her feel strange. “corliss looked at her father and saw a stranger, a loving stranger, but a stranger nonetheless.” corliss perceives herself as different from her clan and she thinks that her family and her clan are strangers, although she is proudly identified herself as a native indian. “and i’ll tell you what,” her father said. “after corliss graduates from college and gets her law degree, she’s going to move back to the reservation and fix what’s wrong. we men have had our chances, i’ll tell you what. we’ll send all the tribal councilmen to the golf courses and let the smart women run the show. i’ll tell you what. my daughter is going to save our tribe” (tse, p.15). corliss’ father’s idea on education is pragmatic, education is an investment for the tribe. the father quintessential is seeing his daughter graduate from college and have a law degree so she can take care of the problems of the indian tribe. the stereotype of those who graduate from the university is that she/knows all the problems and the solutions. the idea is also grounded on the fact that the indians were paralyzed in dealing with the white men throughout history. they were defeated, uprooted, evacuated in the reservation, which changed and omitted their culture and land. what they know is that the indian men should have an advocate that defends their rights, and the father put this burden on corliss’ shoulder. nevertheless, the idea would not happen, since corliss preferred to study english literature, and it means she loves the humanity in literary works, instead of the idea of vanquishing the white. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) mundi rahayu 432 the most striking of corliss’ ambiguity is dealing with her perspective on the white poets. they are the men who contribute to acquaint the life through their works. this idea is contradictory to the tribe’s assumption of the white people. this is a challenge for corliss since she is afraid of misconstruing how to explain this issue to her father or uncles. corliss admires the white poet, not because he is a white man, but because the work of the white men has enlightened her to take the commitment of humanity that she believed. corliss felt that she did not find comfort from her family and friends, nor in god, but continued to seek the comfort. she projected the same feeling to the jesuit priest, a white poet who wrote poetry. she felt that she was destined for something larger, that she believed she was supposed to be eccentric and powerful and great and all alone in the world. the other point of corliss’s identity as a new indian girl can be elaborated in her split identities. “in front of the mirror, the young indian girl, corliss saw herself as an old white man in a white collar and black robe. she felt as a white jesuit priest” (tse, p. 15). she can identify herself as the white man hopkin. she perceived that hopkin was a sad, lonely, and lovely man who “screamed to god for comfort, answers, sleep, and peace,” the same feeling that she experienced herself. therefore, corliss associated herself as hopkin because of the similar sensitivity. the personal concern makes corliss adore the poetry written by hopkins that aspirates her ideas in searching for the meaning of life. instead of identifying hopkin as a white man, she acknowledged him as a man, who was seeking comfort as she did. she concluded that she recognized her own identity the same as the white man wearing a white collar and black robe, connotated as a jesuit priest. the indian girl who loves reading and literacy, defies the stereotype of indian women, who mostly did anything according to the men’s desires. most of the books corliss has read are the works of the white men in english literature. this does not mean that the reading is something luxurious or made her in a higher position, instead, she felt that she realized that she felt ordinary (grinnell, 2004). corliss was very surprised and intrigued when she found a very old, 30-year-old poetry book written by a spokane author, harlan atwater. the book entitled “in the reservation of my mind, by harlan atwater.” corliss realized that she is knowledgeable anybody in her tribe, however, she was a bit surprised that she did not recognize the name. this fact led her to do investigation about atwater. she asked her mother, and tracked the name in her clan but for unavailing. the mysterious name challenged her to search the identity of the poet. that is the title “search engine” refers to. after a long search, corliss finally found out the poet of spokane origin. the reality that surprised her was that atwater was now a forklift driver who cared for the aged white couple who adopted and raised him. she met atwater in a used bookstore, and he told her that he gave up writing because of the feeling of being too ordinary to be a poet. after a long, serious conversation, they detached in different ways. from the meeting, corliss got valuable knowledge on being a poet and a native people simultaneously, that being a native poet should not be contrasted with the white. this has been a spiritual experience for corliss in building the awareness that being a native people, she needs not to be the same as the other, she has her own authority to build her identity. conclusion it can be concluded from the analysis that the main character of the story of the search engine is presented as a woman with new identity in which she is an independent and highly literate and her ambiguous views on white people. her independence can be seen from her bold decision in choosing her study, english literature, as she loves books and literary works. her high literacy leads her developing the critical thinking. she is also independent in making political stance of judging the white people, not following her father or clan’s opinion. corliss is presented as a new image of indian girl when she consciously differs herself from her clan and family in perceiving the white people. her family has a bad perception on any white people in general, while corliss journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 433 admires white poets and intellectuals. corliss acknowledges that she is indebted to the white teachers who are generous and kind to her. she admires white poets who give new insights through their works. that is why corliss feels ambiguous in seeing her own indian identity. in one side she loves her family and her clan and her indianness. on the other side, she feels different from her family. she sees the other native indian as the other, as ‘stranger.’ this strengthens the notion of ‘new identity’ as an indian girl. in sum, corliss, the main character in this story, has practiced the politics of difference. she builds her power as a young woman who challenges the stereotype of traditional indian woman. she is independent in making decisions of her own life, and she is highly literate. her new image is also evidenced from her ambiguous views on white people. she learns a lot from white teachers and white poets. she is convinced that she can build her own identity which does not need to be the same as the others. references alexie, s. 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(2014). telling identities: sherman alexie’s war dances. american indian quarterly, 38(2), 237-255. doi:10.5250/amerindiquar.38.2.0237 http://doi.org/10.1353/chl.2012.0023 http://www.mcgill.ca/files/crclaw-discourse/can_the_subaltern_speak.pdf http://www.mcgill.ca/files/crclaw-discourse/can_the_subaltern_speak.pdf 490 vol. 22 no. 2, october 2022, pp. 490 – 503 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i2.4541 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. translation procedures of harsh language and their correlation to the visual in the life and times of scrooge mcduck janis ramadhanti saputri & andika wijaya janis.ramadhanti@ui.ac.id & andika.wijaya@ui.ac.id english studies program, faculty of humanities, universitas indonesia, indonesia abstract article information comics are media that people of all ages can enjoy, and while some comics have age restriction, the life and times of scrooge mcduck is a comic that targets both young and old readers. as it is the story of scrooge mcduck’s rise to success, the comic depicts aggressiveness not only physically through violence and facial expression but also verbally through the usage of harsh language. the objective of this research is to analyze (1) the translation procedures that are used in the comic the life and times of scrooge mcduck and (2) their correlation with the visual elements of the comic. this research uses vinay and darbelnet (1958/1998) theories on translation procedures by basing the utterance of harsh language on theories proposed by ljung (2011) and ford (2016). this research uses the qualitative descriptive method, and the data were taken by setting the limitation on the character’s facial expression at the time of the utterance of harsh language. from this research, it can be concluded that the translator utilizes many translation procedures to translate the harsh language, in particular the reduction procedure. this research also shows that translation procedures are utilized to reduce the element of verbal aggressiveness, yet the procedures that are used do not influence the intention behind the utterance as the aggressiveness has been presented through the visuals. keywords: translation; translation procedure; comic translation; harsh language received: 12 april 2022 revised: 16 agustus 2022 accepted: 19 agustus 2022 introduction translation is a process to change a text from its source language (sl) to the target language (tl) while taking the context of the source text (st) into consideration. comic is a unique media type for text translation, as it includes not only textual elements but also visual elements. thus, comic translation can be categorized as multimedia text translation because of practical or commercial limitations, such as the size of text balloons or panels and https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 491 their specific objectives (celotti, 2014). both these textual elements and visual elements have the embedded cultural aspect of the countries they are made in, and said aspect will also be transferred in a translation (celotti, 2014; unsal, 2017). thus, comic translation involves translating both the textual and visual aspects. in indonesia, translated comics are popular among young and old readers. one such comic is the paman gober series and its spinoff kisah hidup paman gober, originally titled the life and times of scrooge mcduck which was first released in the united states in 1998. the comic tells the tale of scrooge mcduck’s journey to glory starting from his childhood days in scotland to his reunion with his nephew donald and grandchildren huey, dewey, and louis. although it is a series that is primarily targeted to young readers, due to the heavier topics compared to the original series and characters’ circumstances, there are many harsh words such as insults, curses, and derogatory remarks. harsh words in the comic can be said to be harsh language, as it is a language that can be said to be a face-threatening language that threatens the self-image, emotional, and social sense of self of another person (yule, 2005). so it can be said that the harsh language in the comic is used to attack someone’s sense of self, including words deemed offensive or derogatory. in addition to insults and threats, swearing that also appears in the comic can also be seen as a form of harsh language. however, the comic mostly used euphemism as it can be accepted easily because it can be considered as a way to avoid stronger profanities (jdetawy, 2019; ljung, 2011; bowers, playdell-pierce, 2011; ford 2016). other ways the comic avoids taboo, swear words, and profanities other than euphemism and milder swear words are (1) using grawlixes or strings of symbols, (2) changing the spelling, (3) contracting the phrase, (4) using minced oaths or replacement words, (5) inventing replacement words or phrases, homophones and others, and (6) avoiding swear words (ford, 2016; bednarek, 2019). an example of euphemism is how the threat “i’ll kill you” can be translated. to avoid the indonesian word “bunuh” (“kill”), the threat can be softened by using the expression “aku singkirkan kau” (lit. “i’ll get rid of you”), making it less direct and more ambiguous. in the comic, the harsh words or harsh language appear as verbal trigger event (vte), which is “statement(s) that lead to explosive verbal responses” which then can lead to reactive verbal aggression (rva) and can act as an attack (wigley iii, 2010). harsh language as vtes in the comic is used as (1) behavior criticism, (2) blame, (3) character attacks, (4) command, (5) competence attacks, (6) personality attacks, (7) physical appearance attacks, (8) negative comparisons, (9) profanity, and (10) threats among others. however, the harsh language also appears to (1) express the speaker’s feelings in certain situations such as fighting and scolding and (2) achieve negative impact such as bring harm to others (jdetawy, 2019) when characters utter some swear words as swear words can be also used as interjections to express surprise, pain, fear, anger, disappointment, and disagreement (ljung, 2011). although the harsh language may result in another character’s replying back with another harsh language, or rva in reply to vte, in many circumstances violence is also involved and leads to conflict, because it may incite aggressiveness in the speakers and their opponents (hamplea, cionea, 2010). in knowing the context of vte, rva, and conflict in the comic, it is crucial to include the visual aspects. visual elements and the context of the visual alongside the text is needed to know whether the situation can be considered as inciting conflict and aggressiveness or not. aggressiveness and conflict can be seen not only through the actions of the characters but also from their facial expressions which are still rooted to human expressions, so the readers may easily identify the emotions of the characters as seen by comparing figures 1 and 2. because of that nature, analyzing the characters’ expression through humans’ expression cues is doable as the theory of expression by ekman and friesen (2003) in particular has been used as the references for disney. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) janis ramadhanti saputri & andika wijaya 492 figure 1. an expression of anger. reprinted from unmasking the face (p. 88), by p. ekman and w. v. friesen, 2003, cambridge, ma: malor books. copyright 2003 by p. ekman. figure 2. scrooge’s angry expression. reprinted from the complete life and times of scrooge mcduck volume 1 (p. 1), by d. rosa, 2021, seattle, wa: fantagraphics books, inc.. copyright 2019 by disney enterprises, inc.. due to american publisher’s “comics code authority”, the language in the comic does not cross any levels that can be said to be foul or vulgar (zanettin, 2014). as indonesian also have swear words that usually refer to things or situations that are deemed disgusting, unpleasant, and forbidden or bad in religions (wijana & rohmadi, 2016), the indonesian publisher of disney comic also has a guideline they need to abide, such as not including certain words including “goblok” (stupid) and “tolol” (dumb) (yuliasri, 2017). another example is the the word “pig”, which also appears in the comic, is an insult that was often said to an overweight or unhygienic person. however, the indonesian insult term “babi” (lit. “pig”) has more negative connotation due to said animal being taboo to be consumed in a religion. this politeness strategy in translating disney comics is due to the requirements of deference and appropriateness without threatening the socio-cultural norms of the countries the translated comics are released in and to ensure the parents and adult figures that are interested in children’s welfare will accept them, even sacrificing humor as done by disney publisher in arab (zitawi, 2014). there is also a concern that the behavior of children and teenagers can be affected by the harsh language they read, so there is a need to censor media they consume (ford, 2016). although there is an emphasis by disney publishers to tone down the harsh language in the translation, verbal violence such as labels, threats to hurt and kill, humiliation, swearing, and cursing has been depicted in indonesian original folktales which are traditionally taught to children (masykuroh, 2016). there has been much research about comic translation and of harsh language in it in indonesia. one of them is done by nurlaila, purwaningsih, and firmawan (2015) about the politeness degrees and translation techniques of directive utterances in donald duck comic and its indonesian translation. the finding of that research is that most directive utterances that are found in the comics are impolite, and are closely related to culture. anggraini and himawati (2017) conducted research about swear word translation of the walking dead comic that focuses on the translation techniques which are censorship, substitution, taboo for taboo, and euphemism. however, the swear words that are analyzed are crass and vulgar profanities which are not suitable for young readers. another research is done by wafa and tjahyadi (2017) who analyzes the techniques, methods, and ideologies that are used in a bilingual comic baby blues siaga satu anak pertama, and the result is that the techniques that are used lean more towards the st. the last research which is by yuliasri (2017) is about the censorship through translation techniques in translating humorous texts in donald duck comics and the reasons underlying the translators’ choices. it is found that censorship is done through reduction and generalization techniques, and has distorted some of the meanings by reducing or losing the humor in the original text. while there is research about swearwords and censorship, the former analyzes words that are not suitable for young readers while the latter focuses on the effect of translation choices on humor. although there is much research that has been done to analyze translation procedures in journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 493 comic translation from english to indonesian, the visual itself has not been analyzed alongside the text. as has been previously mentioned, translating multimedia texts such as comics needs to take all the elements of the media to be translated. furthermore, the correlation between the translation procedures and their effect to the visual has not been researched extensively. harsh language is particularly focused on this study since there are different degree of acceptability between different cultures that prompt publishers such as disney to issue translation guidelines in some countries (yuliasri, 2017; zitawi, 2014). in dealing with this kind of language in children’s comics, not only translators must adhere with the translation guidelines, but they also need to consider the narration, visual aspects and the characterization of the speaker. understanding how the translator applied the official standards disney publisher has placed to translate harsh language in their children’s comic books with consideration to such other aspects of the books may help translators and researchers alike in understanding how harsh language in children’s comic books is typically translated in indonesia. it may also shed a light on what kind of harsh language is acceptable in a media consumed by children in indonesia, as has been previously explored in the case of translating disney comic books in arab countries (ford, 2016; zitawi, 2014). the object of this study is the life and times of scrooge mcduck, and this study focuses on whether the translation procedures that are used affect the context of the dialogues and the visual in the life and times of scrooge mcduck. methodology the st for this research was the comic series the life and times of scrooge mcduck which was written and illustrated by don rosa. this research used the third reprint of published final edition of the series, titled the complete life and times of scrooge mcduck printed by fantagraphic books in 2021. the tt of this research was the limited edition of kisah hidup paman gober volume 1 to 7 which were released biweekly from july to september 2009 by kompas gramedia. the data of this research were the dialogues of the characters in the st and tt, specifically when harsh language was used. first, in collecting the data, the harsh language as vtes that triggered rvas were identified according to wigley (2010). said vtes include other workarounds for common swear words and profanities as described by ford (2016) and bednarek (2019). using the theories that ljung (2011) and ford (2016) proposed, the data would be analyzed in the qualitative method. next, by using the theories of facial expression by ekman and friesen (2003), the limitation was set on the expressions of the characters as harsh language could be used both in positive and negative situations. the data limitation were specifically the visuals of negative emotions such as contempt and anger by front-views and side-views. for contempt, the character’s expression showed: 1) raised upper lip and raised or lowered lower lip, 2) wrinkled nose, and 3) pushed-up lowered eyelids and lowered eyebrows. as for anger, the facial expression showed: 1) drawntogether, lowered eyebrows, 2) tensed eyelids, 3) hard-staring eyes, and 4) tightly-pressedtogether or parted-in-a-square-shape lips. as the limitations were set on the characters’ expressions, panels where the expressions were unobservable such as being covered by face masks or silhouettes and did not correspond to the limitations were omitted. in addition, the negativity of the utterance of harsh language was emphasized when it was related to conflict and physical aggression. after establishing limitations on the visual cues, the next step was documenting any harsh language that could be found by those limitations and was done by using tables to classify the finding. the classification was not only the type of harsh language but also noting the existence of physical aggressiveness. the next step was to analyze and classify the translation procedures that were used by referring to vinay-darbelnet’s translation procedure theory and davoodi’s taboo translation theory. the classification of the procedures are 1) borrowing, 2) calque, 3) literal, 4) transposition, 5) modulation, 6) equivalence, 7) adaptation, 8) reduction, and 9) addition (vinay, et. al, 1958/1995). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) janis ramadhanti saputri & andika wijaya 494 meanwhile, davoodi’s theories was used to identify the usage of the previously mentioned procedures in terms of translating taboo words, which are 1) translating directly if st is not deemed taboo in tl, 2) using censorship to remove the taboo word entirely, 3) substituting the taboo word with a non-taboo term, 4) replacing the taboo word with another taboo term, and 5) applying euphemism or non-offensive term. as multiple translation procedures could be used in one sentence, the usage of multiple procedures was also noted in the tables. the last step was analyzing the usage of the translation procedures along with the visual cues to find the relationship between visual elements and the chosen translation procedures. to analyze the translation, oxford advanced learner’s dictionary 7th edition, merriam-webster.com dictionary, vocabulary.com, online etymology dictionary, and kamus besar bahasa indonesia (kbbi) online were used to find and compare the meanings of the words in the sl and the tl. the st and tt were provided as examples below along with the literal back translation (bt) from the tt to better compare the difference and/or similarity between the st and tt, as well as whether there is any change in the translation. words, phrases, or clauses that are categorized as harsh language that was discussed in certain translation methods were in bold. results and discussion translation procedures the number of harsh language expressions in the twelve chapters of the life and times of scrooge mcduck that are found using the parameter of the characters’ facial expression is 167. the following table breaks down the translation procedures and the number of times they are used in the translation. among them, 43 of the harsh language expressions are translated with more than one procedure. thus, the number of procedures that are listed in the table below may not correspond to the number of harsh language expressions that are found. table 1. translation procedures and their frequency translation procedure frequency reduction 62 adaptation 36 modulation 35 equivalence 26 transposition 18 direct 18 borrowing 10 addition 2 reduction the translation procedure that is mostly used in the translation is reduction. in accordance with disney’s comic translation guideline for indonesian publishers, the usage of harsh language is significantly reduced through the reduction translation procedure, which is a form of censorship by removing the harsh language. all harsh language expressions which function as interjections are untranslated from sl to tl across the twelve chapters. because interjections are adjectives or adverbs, deleting them do not change the message of the utterance in the sl. furthermore, there is no interjection adjective to emphasize a noun in the tl. in approaching the matter, the data show that the translator approaches the interjection adjectives as emphasis, thus leaving them untranslated. st: none of your goldurn business! (vol.1, p.1, panel 5) tt: bukan urusanmu! (vol.1, p.22, panel 5) bt: not your business! (chapter 1) “goldurn” is not a lexical word, but a euphemism of the swear word “goddamn” in the form of homophone which also doubles as a pun because of scrooge’s obsession with wealth and his history of being a gold prospector. although the interjection is untranslated, due to the character’s expression and the rest of the translated phrase, the intention behind his dialogue is unaltered. the same also applies to other untranslated journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 495 adjectives as interjections because the visuals such as the characters’ facial expressions and actions make the intentions of the characters clear enough. another example of reduction is in translating insults which can vary from nouns that are deemed offensive in tl to phrases of creative insults with various degrees of offensiveness. while omitting offensive nouns is possible without changing the whole sentence, omitting creative insults means that the whole sentence needs to be rewritten in the tt. however, these omissions may result in the loss of the intention behind the utterance, such as in the following example; st: have at you, cur! (vol.1, p.83, panel 8) tt: siap! (vol.3, p.12, panel 8) bt: ready! (chapter 5) in the above utterance, scrooge is talking to one of the whiskervilles, his family’s nemesis, before they start dueling each other. according to oxford dictionary (2010), “cur” is a dated word containing contempt to call an aggressive dog and is used to insult someone as a “lowly, despicable, and low-bred man” (harper, n.d.; “cur”, n.d.). in the comic, other than a way to offend his opponent, it also refers to the whiskervilles themselves as dogs in contrast to the mcducks who are ducks. in addition, the usage of the word “cur” can be found multiple times directed only at anthropomorphic dog characters or characters with physical attributes of dogs such as the whiskervilles and the beagle boys in the st. because the insult is never directed at humantype characters or other anthropomorphic characters except dogs, it can be considered to be a racial slur. thus, the insult in this instance works two-fold by calling the whiskerville as literally and figuratively an aggressive dog. however, the reason this insult is untranslated in the tt can be attributed to the culture of the target country. in indonesia, calling people with the word “anjing” (lit. “dog”) is deemed highly offensive, as dogs have negative characteristics and are thought to be impure in islam (putra, 2012). the negative connotation of the word “dog” can also be traced back to the colonial era, in which planks with words “inlanders and dogs are prohibited to enter” could be found in public places exclusive for dutchmen, japanese, or europeans (kusno, 2015). although it can be reasoned that the whiskervilles species is canine and thus it is appropriate to call them as such, the polite culture that target readers have does not allow the usage. other namecalling that refers to animals, such as “pig” and “monkey'', is also left untranslated because of the same reason. there is an exception to the erasure of name-calling which is “duck” (lit “bebek” in tt) because it is not used as an insult in everyday use. in conclusion, the reduction procedure is used to remove interjections and name-callings, insults, and creative insults that are too offensive in tl. adaptation adaptation is used to translate phrases or sentences so they sound natural in tl. this freedom in translating certain phrases and sentences allows the translator to convey the intention of the utterance in the sl to an understandable one for target readers. although the translation is not constrained to what is written on the st, the nuance and intention of the original utterance need to be maintained. this procedure can be said to replace the harsh language in the st to another harsh language in the tl. adaptation is mostly used in translating the creative insults and threats that scrooge and other characters make. as they are not orthodox or common to use, the translator has a choice to either preserve the lexical elements present in the st or approach them through cultural values and intrinsic intention. by approaching them to be closer to the tl culture, the translator can translate them to what the target readers are familiar with as in the case with the following example; st: i’ll eat little nobodies like you for afternoon tea! (vol.1, p.106, panel 1) tt: kamu akan kujadikan mainanku! (vol.3, p.37, panel 1) bt: i will make you my toy! (chapter 6) the above threat is spoken by flintheart glomgold, who later becomes scrooge’s rival. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) janis ramadhanti saputri & andika wijaya 496 the threat “eat (little nobodies like you) for afternoon tea” can be traced back to his origin as a boer, which is a south african who originates from netherlands (“boer”, 2010). the practice of afternoon tea was a social activity for the english upper-class in the 19th century (marks, 2020), and has also been done by the boer dwellers regardless of class as a result of the dutch and british colonialism in south africa (skinner, 2019). however, the significance of afternoon tea may be unrecognizable to tl readers because the practice is mostly adapted due to the influence of british colonialism (skinner, 2019). due to the difference in culture, the translator adapts the threat into something simpler and easily recognizable for the target readers by changing the activity. both activities in the text, which are afternoon tea and playing with toys, are done as pastimes. in the translation, scrooge is compared to a toy to imply he is not threatening and will not be significant, and as such has the same implication as in the st. thus, both insults work as flintheart belittles scrooge by not considering him as a big threat. for translating creative insults which rely heavily on cultural values, the adaptation procedure allows the translator to use other idioms or phrases that are similar in meaning as they may be tricky to translate. although the meaning may not be similar, the intention behind the utterance can be preserved as in the following example; figure 3. a villager insulting scrooge. reprinted from the complete life and times of scrooge mcduck volume 1 (p. 154), by d. rosa, 2021, seattle, wa: fantagraphics books, inc.. copyright 2019 by disney enterprises, inc.. figure 4. a villager insulting scrooge. reprinted from kisah hidup paman gober seri 5 (p. 55), by d. rosa, 2009, jakarta, indonesia: kompas gramedia. st: mister big mucky-muck! (vol.1, p.154, panel 3) tt: mulut besar! (vol.5, p.55, panel 3) bt: big mouth! (chapter 9) the sentence in the sl is informal, as it is said by a villager to scrooge. merriam-webster (n.d.) defines “mucky-muck” as an important and often arrogant person, which is her opinion of scrooge. by calling scrooge as “mister big mucky-muck”, she is doubling down on scrooge’s importance and arrogance. in the tt, the translator changes the sentence entirely to “mulut besar”, as “bermulut besar” means a person who likes to brag about him/herself (“bermulut”, n.d.). while the meaning does not exactly align with the st, they have the same nuance as she insults scrooge by directly calling him an arrogant person in the st or implying it in the tt. to conclude, adaptation is necessary as it is used to alter insults and threats to be more familiar to tt readers. modulation the flexible uses of modulations that occur in the translation have different functions according to the intention of the translator. the use of modulation of a different scope from specific to broad makes insults in the st become nonexistent in the tt, as many of scrooge’s pointed name-callings lost their intentions because they are reduced to the generic “you”. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 497 st: that explains why there's more of you curs than ever! (vol.1, p.218, panel 2) tt: itu sebabnya kalian ada banyak! (vol.7, p.14, panel 2) bt: that’s why there are a lot of you! (chapter 12) the phrase “you curs” is said by scrooge to the beagle boys, and as has been previously mentioned “cur” contains contempt and doubles as a racial slur as it is directed to anthropomorphic dog characters as suggested by the name beagle boys. however, the translation standardized the aggressive “you curs” to the neutral “you” as a form of censorship. on the other hand, scope modulation from broad to specific also helps the translator clarifies the intention of the speakers as in the following example; st: stand still so’s i can bash ya, ya twerp! (vol.1, p.32, panel 5) tt: berhenti agar aku bisa menamparmu! (vol.1, p.53, panel 5) bt: stop so i can slap you! (chapter 2) the above utterance is said by one of the beagles as he fights with young scrooge. there is a scope modulation from broad to specific by translating the word “bash” to “menampar”. the word “bash” means to hit someone/something very hard, while the word “menampar” is more specific than “bash” as it means hitting someone/something with the palm of the hand. however, the beagle’s crude nature is toned down in the tt due to the use of the more common “slap” rather than the informal “bash”. another example of clarifying the speaker’s intention can also be seen in the following example by using modulation of a different point of view. st: i’m gonna run him down! (vol.1 p.117, panel 4) tt: akan aku kejar dia! (vol.4, p.16, panel 4) bt: i will chase after him! (chapter 7) the above utterance is said by scrooge when he takes off on an emu’s back to find a thief. in the translation, there is a point of view modulation from “run him down” to “kejar dia”. the phrase “running someone/something down” has multiple meanings (“run”, 2010), which are (1) hit someone/something with a vehicle and knock them to the ground and (2) to find someone/something after a search. meanwhile, the word “kejar” in sl means (1) chasing after someone/something and (2) chasing someone/somebody down. while “run him down” has the ambiguousness of scrooge possibly hitting the thief with his emu due to his annoyance, the tt makes it clear that scrooge has no intention to do so. in later panels, it is shown that scrooge only ties the thief up when he finds the criminal. here it can be concluded that modulation has a wide range from toning down the harsh language to specifying the speakers’ intentions. equivalence like the use of adaptation, equivalence is related to the difference of cultural values between the sl and the tl. a word in the sl may not be directly translated to the sl, and unlike using modulation to translate the word into something similar, using equivalence means the translator uses a synonym or part of the synonym of the word. it is also used to censor words that cannot be used in the tl such as in the following example; st: what sort of stupid name for a kid is donald?! (vol.1, p.181, panel 6) tt: konyol sekali memberi nama anak donal! (vol.6, p.17, panel 6) bt: it is very silly giving donald as a kid’s name! (chapter 10) according to a previous study about indonesian disney’s publisher translation guideline, “bodoh” in tl which is the direct translation of “stupid” in sl is unusable. thus, the translator chooses a word which can be called an equivalence to said word in this instance of hortense berating quackmore. while the rest of the sentence is not directly translated from the st, the word “stupid” is in line with the use of “konyol” in the tt. the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) janis ramadhanti saputri & andika wijaya 498 translator’s decision to use the word “konyol” which has the same connotation as “silly” can be said to be equivalent. although both “stupid” and “silly” refer to lack of thought and judgement, the word “stupid” relates to lack of intelligence while “silly” relates to ridiculousness (“silly”, 2010; “stupid”, 2010). the same is true for the relation between the word “bodoh” and “konyol” in the tl as the word “bodoh” relates to lack of knowledge while “konyol” relates to lack of common sense (“bodoh”, n.d.; “konyol”, n.d.). thus, the harsh language is still kept with nuance differences. the following example is the application of using the synonymous meaning of the words as equivalence; st: i’ll bet he’s a creampuff—a pampered sissyboy! (vol.1, p.212, panel 4) tt: aku yakin dia lemah dan cengeng! (vol.7, p.8, panel 4) bt: i’m sure he’s weak and a crybaby! (chapter 12) the above utterance is donald’s spoken opinion of scrooge. “creampuff”, a type of baked dessert, is also synonymous with “wimp” which means someone who is weak and cowardly (“creampuff”, 2010). the word “sissyboy” which is used to mock boys or men also has a similar meaning to the former word by implying someone is weak and easily frightened, attributes that are traditionally associated with a girl. while the quality “weak” is attributed to both “creampuff” and “sissyboy”, “crybaby” is used because easily crying is also an attribute that is traditionally associated with a girl. here we can see that equivalence is used to simplify or to replace untranslatable harsh language. transposition the use of transposition or structure shift in the comic is related to grammatical convention and lexical differences of the tl and can also happen due to the translator’s word choices. this procedure does not necessarily change the meaning of the harsh language and is accompanied with other types of translation procedures. the following is an example of transposition that is related to grammatical convention; st: you empty-headed youngsters should be ashamed of yourselves! (vol.1, p.225, panel 4) tt: kalian pemuda malas harusnya malu terhadap diri kalian sendiri! (vol.7, p.21, panel 4) bt: you lazy young men should have felt ashamed of yourselves! (chapter 12) the compound noun “empty-headed youngsters” undergoes a structure shift. the head noun “youngsters” is at the end of the phrase in the st, while the head noun “pemuda” is at the beginning in the tt. this indicates that transposition is typically used due to word choices and grammatical convention. direct the use of the direct translation procedure in the comic is used to translate a word, and when it is combined with other words in a phrase, the procedure that is used to translate that phrase is different. thus, direct translation cannot be said to be a procedure that can be used by itself in comic translation although it preserves the harsh language that is present in the st. st: stop talking to that grubby workman! (vol.1, p.68, panel 9) tt: jangan bicara dengan pekerja kotor itu! (vol.2, p.55, panel 9) bt: don’t talk with that dirty worker! (chapter 4) while “grubby” is more informal than “kotor” in terms of usage in their respective languages, both words share similar meaning. to conclude, direct translation retains the original word’s semantic meaning, albeit some connotation or register may change during the process. borrowing the use of the borrowing in the comic is strictly limited to grawlixes, which are strings of unrelated typographical symbols to journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 499 represent offensive words as a form of censor which can be found in american-produced children comics such as disney comics. grawlixes are can be drawn as part of the visual, but sometimes they can be written as dialogue as in the example: st: why, you pack of @#%&! (vol.1, p.154, panel 4) tt: @#$%&! (vol.5, p.55, panel 4) bt: @#$%&! (chapter 9) the utterance is spoken by scrooge as he raises his voice against the villagers who insult and throw tomatoes at him. in the st, the grawlix is preceded by the phrase “you pack of”, implying that the grawlix is a replacement of some wild animals who hunt together such as canines (“pack”, 2010). thus, it can be inferred that scrooge likened them as bloodthirsty animals that hunt for his blood. in particular, animals that hunt in packs such as wolves are usually used as a slur in america to denote someone as being less than human due to their untamed animalistic nature (smith, 2011). although the phrase “you pack of” is reduced in the tt, losing the nuance of the utterance, scrooge's annoyance at the villagers can still be known from his facial expression. while grawlixes are usually left as they are in translation, most notably those that are drawn along with the visuals, some undergo a change in the string of symbols. st: @#%*@! (vol.1, p.65, panel 6) tt: *$%! (vol.2, p.52, panel 6) bt: *$%! (chapter 4) the above grawlix is scrooge’s exclamation of frustration. although it remains as a grawlix in the tt and thus has no difference in nuance, the string of symbols is changed. it has nothing to do with the translation, so it can be said that the tt borrows the grawlix from the st. our data shows that borrowing is strictly used for grawlix and even then some nuance might be lost. addition the use of addition in the comic is rarely found due to the usage of other procedures which better fit the translator’s needs which is to tone down the degree of offensiveness of the harsh language. however, as the addition procedure is used to add more nuance to the insults it keeps the harsh language that is present in the st. st: shaddup and keep movin’, ya little sawed-off pipsqueak, or i’ll squash ya into the snow like a worm! (vol.1, p.130, panel 1) tt: diam dan jalan terus, bebek kecil! aku akan benamkan kamu ke dalam salju seperti cacing! (vol.4, p.31, panel 1) bt: be quiet and keep walking, little duck! i will bury you into the snow like a worm! (chapter 7) the word “bebek” is not in the st and is added in the tt. in the st, the name-calling phrase which is “little sawed-off pipsqueak” consists of three words related to lack of height, which is translated as only “kecil'' to reduce the redundancy of the insult in the tt. the name-calling “bebek'' is commonly used as a form of name-calling throughout the comic due to scrooge’s race. to replace the superfluous way of calling scrooge short, the translator added “bebek”. however, it also raises a problem that is not present in the st like the discussed “cur” in a previous section as the speaker is depicted as a human, not a duck like scrooge. thus, by emphasizing scrooge as a duck in the tt the speaker’s harsh language can be taken as a racial slur which is nonexistent in the st. another reason for the use of addition is due to linguistic convention in tl. st: tigthwad! (vol.1, p.142, panel 2) tt: dasar kikir! (vol.4, p.43, panel 2) st: stingy! (chapter 8) the word “dasar” is a noun in tl which is classified as an informal word that is used as emphasis or exclamation to something which is deemed as a part of someone or something journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) janis ramadhanti saputri & andika wijaya 500 according to the kbbi (n.d.). if a noun is preceded by the word “dasar”, it becomes an insult due to the nature of the word “dasar” as the base for an insult phrase. although there are also interjection adjectives and adverbs in sl, the word “dasar” has no equivalence in nuance in the sl. similar to some interjection adjectives in sl, some cultures in indonesia deem this word to be offensive. the translator adds this word to make the speaker sound crude. while the informal aspect of the speaker can be inferred from the word “tightwad”, the word “kikir” does not have the same degree of informality. these examples show that addition is used to add more nuance to the harsh language in the tt. the harsh language expressions that can be found in accordance with the research parameter are used as insults, threats, interjections as emphasis, and exclamations. however, not every harsh language in the comic is related to interpersonal conflicts nor physical violence. as verbal aggressiveness or rva leads to conflicts, it can be concluded that harsh language or evt does not equal rva. although insults and threats can be firmly categorized as evt due to their nature as means to attack another person’s self, interjections and exclamations are only categorized as harsh language due to breaking the degree of politeness in sl and tl. the degree of politeness is closely related to the culture of the language, so the degree of politeness between sl and tl is also different. thus, another conclusion that can be reached is that breaking the degree of politeness does not result in rva. in accordance with davoodi’s translation of taboos theory, most of the translation procedures in translating the harsh language in the life and times of scrooge mcduck are used to (1) censor the taboo terms, (2) apply euphemism by replacing the taboo terms with non-taboo terms, and (3) keep the taboo terms as taboo by using direct translation or translating them to other taboo terms. the reduced harsh language that is present in the tt may be attributed to the degree of politeness in indonesia. as is the case with the study about disney’s comic that is published in the middle east (zitawi, 2014), the degree of politeness in the target country influences the translation. although the degree of politeness in indonesia can be said to be less strict than in the middle east, it is still comparatively different to america. due to this differing degree of politeness, what is considered tame in the sl may be deemed to be crude in the tl and vice versa. as has been mentioned previously, the publisher of disney’s comics in indonesia has a translation guideline which needs to be followed about what words they can and cannot use. for example, while the word “stupid” is considered tame in the sl, it is forbidden to be translated directly in the tl, so it is translated as “konyol” and not “bodoh”. this higher degree of politeness in the target readers’ culture is also the reason why reduction is highly used in translating the life and times of scrooge mcduck. other translation procedures such as adaptation, modulation, and equivalence are also used to obscure or even censor the harsh language. on the other hand, adaptation, modulation, equivalence, and addition is used to keep the nuance by adding some harsh language such as “bebek” and “dasar” to the tt. in relation to the reduction of harsh language, the aggressive intention behind the utterance is still preserved because the visuals of the comic, such as the facial expressions of the characters, remains unchanged in the translated publication. tl readers can infer the negative intention behind the characters’ spoken words due to the various aspects of the visuals, such as facial expressions, the conflict that preceded or proceeded the utterance, or the physical altercation that is shown in the previous, the following, or the same panel as the dialogue balloon. in conclusion, the translation procedures that are used do not affect the intention of the utterance, as the intention is also represented through the visual aspect of the comic. conclusion from the results and discussion, it can be concluded that the translation procedures that are used in the comic the life and times of scrooge mcduck are applied to tone down the harsh language that is present in the st. although there are exceptions, the majority use of reduction is in direct correlation to remove or censor the harsh language in the tt. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 501 other translation procedures such as adaptation, modulation, and equivalence are also used to translate the harsh utterances to be more polite and act as euphemism in terms of verbal aggressiveness. the reason for this reduced harsh language is due to disney’s indonesian publisher guideline which is to limit the use of harsh language such as insults and name-callings that are deemed inappropriate for young readers. however, the less usage of harsh language in the tt does not change the intention of the utterances, as the visual aspect of the comic conveys the intention well. the aggressiveness of the characters is conveyed through their expressions and actions in times, before and/or after the utterance. in conclusion, the usage of translation procedures to lessen the element of harsh language in the comic does not correlate to the aggressiveness shown by the visuals. nevertheless, the result of this research is limited due to the visual constraint of the research object. because the restriction is set on the character’s facial expression at the time of utterance, any harsh language that is not accompanied by the speaker’s facial expression was not analyzed. further research on comic translation and its relationship with the visual elements is recommended. the visual elements in comics are plenty, and this research only includes elements such as facial expressions and depiction of physical violence. future research may want to explore the challenges in translating comics with substantial cultural items, references, expressions or gestures in their visual elements. references anggraini, d., & himmawati, d. r. 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(first published 2008). https://doi.org/10.30996/parafrase.v17i1.1361 https://doi.org/10.30996/parafrase.v17i1.1361 https://doi.org/10.30996/parafrase.v17i1.1361 https://doi.org/10.30996/parafrase.v17i1.1361 https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v7i1.6863 https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v7i1.6863 https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v7i1.6863 journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 193 the translation strategies of metaphors in dee’s supernova: the knight, the princess, and the falling star alexander i. kaparang & adventina putranti alexanderkaparang@gmail.com & putranti@usd.ac.id department of english letters, universitas sanata dharma abstract the metaphors in dee’s supernova: the knight, the princess, and the falling star are translated in various ways. this paper discusses the translation of the metaphors in the work. newmark’s translation strategies and metaphor translation procedures are employed as the theoretical framework. the result shows that the majority of the translation of the metaphors manages to maintain their metaphorical expressions. imitative translation is mostly employed while the rest applies functional communication. establishing the link between translation strategies and metaphor translation procedures underlying the principle of translating metaphors is highlighted. it is also found out that the sense of each metaphor becomes the key in translating metaphors. keywords: metaphors, translation strategies, translation procedures introduction one of the most prominent characteristics of dee’s writing in one of her novels, supernova: ksatria, putri, dan bintang jatuh (supernova: the knight, the princess, and the falling star) is the use of a fairly large numbers of figures of speech. the most dominant figure of speech employed is metaphor alongside personification and simile. the three of them are under the same heading of tropes having the nature of comparison (keraf, 1981:136). this study focuses on metaphors and how they are translated as they show not only a considerable number of applications, but also more distinctive features compared to personification and simile. the process of translation they undergo is intriguing since the concepts which do not normally belong together (in one particular language) now need to find their way to another language. this study reveals what happens to the object, image, and sense of each metaphor in the novel. the discussion may start by considering that a writer must have a purpose in employing metaphor. for the majority of readers, it is easy to notice and understand that the purpose is to produce certain effects on the readers. the effects, as explained by keraf, could be for clarity, emphasis, beauty, humor, or anything else (1981:129). those effects are expected to achieve some objectives, developing characterization or advancing storylines for instances. for that reason, to translate metaphors is a challenge. it is a challenge since the translation has to be a bridge enabling readers to not only understand the story they read, but also to experience the effects created. the process of translation in which whether the translation manages to preserve meaning while keeping the elevated and enhanced language from the source text becomes a crucial question to ask. examining the result and the process of translation used is ensuring the words mean what they are meant and the metaphors are well utilized, thus well delivered. mailto:alexanderkaparang@gmail.com journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) alexander i. kaparang & adventina putranti 194 translation strategies there are 30 sentences in this 231-page novel explicitly containing 31 metaphorical expressions based on keraf’s definition of metaphor. they could be divided into two based on the methods employed: imitative translation and functional communication. the two are according to newmark’s theory on translation strategies consisting translation methods and translation procedures. translation methods deal with the whole text, such as sentences, while procedures with smaller chunks of the text, such as words. imitative translation refers to word-forword translation, literal translation, faithful translation and semantic translation. in other words, the focus is on both content and form. meanwhile, functional communication includes adaptation, free translation, idiomatic translation and communicative translation. it emphasizes the content/message. the definition of each method is as follows: no methods explanation imitative translation 1 word-for-word translation preserving the word order and translating the words by their most common meanings 2 literal translation converting the grammatical constructions to the closest target language structure, but still translating them by their most common meanings 3 faithful translation keeping precise contextual meaning of the source text within the constraints of the target language grammatical structure 4 semantic translation similar to faithful translation, but taking more account of the aesthetic value of the source text functional communication 1 adaptation adapating the source text culture to the target text culture and then rewriting the text 2 free translation producing the translation without the style, form, or content of the source text 3 idiomatic translation reproducing the message of the source text, but having a tendency to distort nuances of meaning by prefering colloquallism and idioms which do not exist in the source text 4 communicative translation presenting the exact contextual meaning of the source text in a way both content and language are acceptable to the readers quoted from newmark ( 1988:81) word-for-word translation, adaptation and idiomatic translation were not found among the data. the data show that there are 27 expressions applying imitative translation (7 literal translation, 17 faithful translation, 3 semantic translation) and 3 applying functional communication (1 free translation, 2 communicative translation). the followings are the examples for each category. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 193 1.a. imitative translation – literal translation source text [cinta tidak membebaskan. konsep itu memang utopis.] cinta itu tirani. target text love is a tyrant. the target language (tl) sentence is considered literal translation since each word is translated by its denotative meaning, not contextual meaning, and the grammatical construction is adjusted to the closest target language structure. the phrase cinta itu is translated as “love” and the word tirani is translated as “a tyrant”. based on kamus indonesia inggris, it is undeniable that tirani could also be translated as “tyranny”, not “tyrant”, but either way they are still regarded as denotative meaning. it is because “a tyrant” basically has the same definition of tyranny: unfair use of power and control. thus, the idea of tyranny is already there. for that reason, both are regarded as denotative meaning. meanwhile, in terms of grammatical construction, there is an addition of the word “is” and the article “a”. they are not regarded as expansion, but they are seen as an adjustment to the target language grammar. the word “is” is needed to act as a verb, which is basically a requirement in forming a sentence. the article “a” is needed to refer to a general type of thing, which has been the rule in the target language. this adjustment is the reason why this sentence is considered applying literal translation and not word-forword translation. 1.b. imitative translation – faithful translation source text kami adalah jalinan satelit yang saling membelit. [mengelilingi satu planet yang menarik kami laksana magnet.] target text we are satellites on parallel orbits, circling around the same planet. the sentence is considered faithful translation since it is translated by not only its denotative meaning, but also its contextual meaning. additionally, the translation is still within the constraint on the target language grammar. the phrase kami adalah jalinan satelit, which is the beginning of the sentence, is translated by its denotative meaning, “we are satellites”. the word jalinan (alignment) signifies the idea of plural form. it is because it carries the idea of “to be aligned”, which is only possible in a group of things, instead of only one single thing. this idea is then translated by forming the plural form of “satellite”, which is “satellites”. the next phrase, yang saling membelit (intertwining), acting as a modifier, is translated contextually as “(being) on parallel orbits”. that is why the first two phrases are translated as “we are satellites on parallel orbits” rather than “we are intertwined satellites” which could be perceived as a translation by its denotative meaning. however, the resulted translation seems to undergo a transposition (change of grammar) in which it is one sentence coming from two different sentences. this marks another indication of translation based on context. the idea of the later sentence in the source text, mengelilingi satu planet yang menarik kami laksana magnet (orbitting a planet pulling us like a magnet) is put as a modifier in the translated text. what becomes the indication of contextual translation is the fact that the sentence is not translated literally. it only translates the main idea, “circling around the same planet”, and ignores the supporting idea, yang menarik kami laksana magnet (pulling us like a magnet). this is why this sentence is considered as applying faithful translation. 1.c. imitative translation – semantic translation source text [tidak ada yang tahu betapa sulitnya pertanyaan itu. re dipaksa untuk menyusuri kelamnya gua masa kecil yang penuh lumpur. mungkin inilah gorong-gorong saluran sekresi psikologis. tidak heran freud tergilajournal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) alexander i. kaparang & adventina putranti 194 gila.] tak ada yang lebih menarik daripada menyaksikan seseorang menyelam ke septic tank kotorannya sendiri. target text she does not realize how difficult that question is. it forced him back into the small dark cave of his childhood, which was filled with mud and slime. the muck that clogged his subconscious. no wonder frued is so popular. nothing is more interesting than watching a man drowning in the swamp of his own being. the sentence is considered a semantic translation since the translation supports the source text in terms of meaning (within the constraint on target language grammar) and also takes the choice of words into account. that means there has been more consideration in choosing certain words, which are not only based on their denotative and connotative meanings, but also based on how they work and function in the target language. explicitly this sentence could be regarded as a translation applying faithful translation. however, the functional equivalents of the word menyelam (to dive) and the phrase “septic tank” indicate that there is more than just a contextual translation. first, the word menyelam carries a denotative meaning of “to dive”. based on longman dictionary of contemporary english (2011), it basically means “to swim under water”. meanwhile, the word “drowning” basically also means “to go under water”. however, it differs in a way that there is no sense of control in drowning. this different sense is realized in the translation as a form of interpretation. the sense of this particular word might be different, but the sense of the idea of the text is still the same. menyelam ke septic tank (diving into a septic tank) is clearly a very unpleasant activity. thus, it might not feel like diving, it might feel more like drowning anyway. to use drowning rather than diving is to use a more appropriate diction since “drowning” conveys a more negative sense than diving. this strengthens the impression that this sentence wants to convey, which is how uncomfortable this activity is. second, the phrase “septic tank” carries a denotative meaning of “an underground container for holding human waste”. meanwhile, the word “swamp” means “a land which is always very wet or covered with a layer of water”. those two might seem different, but they are contextually the same. it is because it is stated that “the swamp is full of his own being”. it means that the idea is still the same: the place described is filthy. however, the translated version does not exactly specify the place as “septic tank”. nonetheless, they contain the same thing. to use “swamp of his own being” rather than “septic tank” is to consider how the word corresponds with the idea of drowning. swamp, in general, must be bigger and deeper than a septic tank and it is more common to portray someone drowning in a swamp than in a septic tank. this whole explanation is based on how the words are defined and how they function based on kamus besar bahasa indonesia edisi keempat and longman dictionary of contemporary english. 2.a. functional communication – free translation source text [tidak ada yang tahu betapa sulitnya pertanyaan itu. re dipaksa untuk menyusuri kelamnya gua masa kecil yang penuh lumpur.] mungkin inilah gorong-gorong saluran sekresi psikologis. [tidak heran freud tergilagila. tak ada yang lebih menarik daripada menyaksikan seseorang menyelam ke septic tank kotorannya sendiri.] target text she does not realize how difficult that question is. it forced him back into the small dark cave of his childhood, which was filled with mud and slime. the muck that clogged his subconscious. no wonder frued is so popular. nothing is more interesting than watching a man drowning in the swamp of his own being. the sentence is considered free translation since it explicitly does not imitate the source text in terms of style, form and content, yet still manages to communicate the message. in the source text, there is a description of a place where all the so-called journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 195 “psychological waste” is put. the word sekresi signifies the idea that those “psychological waste” are supposed to get rid of. it is because, according to kamus besar bahasa indonesia edisi keempat (2008), sekresi (secretion) is where all the waste belongs. since the context here is on someone’s state of mind, it is reasonable to say that the waste refers to the waste in one’s mind: his psychological state. in other words, or in a more realistic description, it talks about things in the past that someone wants to forget. this idea is then interpreted and translated as “the muck that clogged his subconscious”. ”the muck” refers to the “psychological waste” which is the idea behind the word sekresi. meanwhile, “clogged” here refers indirectly to goronggorong (tunnel/water channel), which is not uncommon to be blocked or clogged. this is in reference to kamus inggris indonesia edisi yang diperbarui. “subconscious” refers to the word psikologis (psychological) as well as to the whole particular context in which this description is talking about something occurring in someone’s mind. this whole explanation justifies why the message of the source text is still delivered although it has different style, form, and content. 2.b. functional communication – communicative translation source text [tanpa kamu, ide-ide di otakku seperti mulut tanpa lidah. tidak ada artinya.] kamu adalah pesawat yang menyeberangkan nuansa dalam kepalaku ke format yang bisa dimengerti. target text you are the means by which the nuances in my mind find expression in a way other people can understand. the sentence is considered a communicative translation since it explicitly does not imitate the source text. as it still preserves the content, it must be not a free translation. the translation focuses on a more reasonable content and language of the target text. it means it applies communicative translation strategy. it could be seen that the source text is translated in a clearer and shorter way. the contents which are recognized as necessary are kept: “you”, “nuances”, “mind”, and “understand”. they are then expressed briefly by dismissing the parts which might be considered to be avoidable: mulut tanpa lidah (mouth without a tongue), pesawat (airplane), menyeberangkan (carrying), and format. those words potentially do not articulate the meaning well if they are translated imitatively. even if they could articulate the meaning well, the translation is not a must. they are there as elevated words which function as complements. the main idea is still carried by the other content words mentioned before. that is why it is justifiable to classify this as communicative translation. the metaphors in 30 sentences, there are 31 metaphorical expressions found, 27 of them are maintained while the other 4 are not. the data are categorized as maintained metaphor when they satisfied the requirements of a metaphor in terms of form and/or meaning, which are based on newmark’s theory on metaphor. there are 27 data maintaining the metaphorical expressions. those data can be categorized into three: original metaphor into original metaphor, stock metaphor into stock metaphor, and original metaphor into dead metaphor. besides, each metaphor in this part is also analyzed by reviewing the metaphor translation procedures (mtp) employed. metaphor translation procedures 1. reproducing the same image 2. replacing the st image with another compatible tt image 3. turning the metaphor into a simile 4. turning the metaphor into a simile along with the sense 5. turning the st image into its sense 6. deleting the metaphor 7. describing the metaphor quoted from newmark (1988:81) here is an example of the maintained metaphor. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) alexander i. kaparang & adventina putranti 196 source text mtp [bisanya cuma ngomong tinggi.] saya dan masalah saya cuma kamu anggap remah-remah kue, sementara kamu sibuk melalap potongan kue yang lebih besar. it employs the 1 st and 2 nd metaphor translation procedures. target text [you talk big, but you don't care about me and my problems.] i'm stuck with the crumbs and you're feasting on some fantastic banquet. first, it is an original metaphor since the comparison is based on what happens in the story. it is about a person believing that the person she talks to sees her as insignificant. second, the original metaphor is translated as an original metaphor by reproducing the same object and image, as well as replacing an image with another equal image in the target text. it could be seen that the objects, saya (me) and masalah saya (my problems) are still translated as the same objects although they experience transposition. the two images however are treated differently. the first image, remah-remah kue is turned into the same image, “crumbs”. the second image, potongan kue yang lebih besar (bigger piece of cake) is turned into a different yet functionally equal image, “fantastic banquet”. it means that the original metaphor is maintained by using the first and second metaphor translation procedures, that is reproducing the same image and replacing the st image with another compatible tt image. meanwhile, the data are categorized as non-maintained metaphor when they do not satisfy the requirements of a metaphor in terms of form and/or meaning, based on newmark’s theory on metaphor. four data are not classified as metaphor anymore. here is an example. source text mtp mungkin itu adalah kali pertama anda mencicipi kewarasan. it employs the 5 th metaphor translation procedure. target text it may be the first sane thing you've ever done. the tl sentence is no longer classified as a metaphor since the translation does not show anymore comparison. in the source text, the metaphor is indicated by the phrase mencicipi kewarasan (to taste sanity). “sanity” here is considered something which could be tasted like food, while it is actually an abstract noun. “to taste” is a verb which works on food while food is not an abstract thing. it is a concrete object. this feature is not realized in the translation. the idea is expressed in a different way which is more explicit and contains no more figure of speech. on the other hand, the translation shows that there is still a point of similarity between the source text and the target text. this indicates that the sense between the two of them is still the same. the image is turned into its sense, as a process of metaphor translation, but it does not result in form of metaphor. in conclusion, the metaphor is not maintained since the translation undergoes a paraphrase process. conclusion by looking at the metaphor translation procedures, the relevance to the translation strategies is established. out of 27 metaphorical expressions which use imitative translation, there are 20 of them applying reproducing the same image. one of them applies reproducing the same image and replacing the st image with another compatible tt image at the same time. this is to explain why there are 28 expressions found in the text. four expressions are using a replacement the st image with another compatible tt image, 3 expressions turn the metaphor into a simile, and 1 expression turns the st image into its sense. meanwhile, out of 3 functional communication, the three of them turn the st image into its sense. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 197 this result shows that it is a priority to reproduce the same object and image in the target text, but, in times when it is not done, the translation maintains the sense. this is especially highlighted in the 3 functional communicative translation in which all of them turn the st image into its sense. in conclusion, the key to translating metaphor, both by using general translation strategies and specific metaphor translation procedures, is the sense of the metaphor. references brikci, nouria and judith green. a guide to using qualitative research methodology. london: medecins sans frontieres, 2007. chesterman, andrew and jenny williams. the 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english letters, universitas sanata dharma, 2012. loescher, w. translation performance, translation process and translation strategies. tuebingen: guten narr, 1991. longman dictionary of contemporary english. harlow: pearson education limited, 2011. nida, eugene and charles taber. the theory and practice of translation. leiden: e.j.brill, 1974. newmark, peter. a textbook of translation. hertfordshire: prentice hall, 1988. newmark, peter. approaches to translation. oxford: pergamon press, 1981. rasari, titis. “a study of the translation of the metaphors in george bernard shaw’s man and superman into indonesian in akhmad santoso’s manusia adimanusia”. undergraduate thesis. yogyakarta: english letters, universitas sanata dharma, 2011. suryawinata, zuchridin and sugeng hariyanto. translation: bahasan teori & penuntun praktis menerjemahkan. yogyakarta: kanisius, 2003. cover luar phenomena vol 16 no. 2 vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 99 stand up comedy: language play and its functions (systemic functional linguistic approach) i dewa putu wijana idp_wijana@yahoo.com faculty of cultural sciences, gadjah mada university abstract it is obviously misleading to regard that play-on-word activities are unimportant or trivial in human life. in many diverse societies, punning activities have very central roles in rituals as well as in cultural transformation processes. the importance of role played by punning activities attracts me to discuss the functions of language found in stand up comedy, the most recent and popular comedy show broadcasted by metro tv station. this television program shows the skillfulness of comedians in telling jokes in front of its audience who are mostly teenagers or adolescents. joking activities play central roles in human life because of their various functions, especially to criticize various social conditions that happen in the speakers’ community. however, to create unaggressive and constructive criticisms, the comedians build an intimate relation with their audience to create an effective deliverance. consequently, they use certain moods of interaction using informal language styles which are full of ambiguities that can easily confuse audience’s perceptions about many things. this is, of course, for the sake of eliciting audience’s smiles and laughter. keywords: stand-up comedy, language play, contextual framing introduction halliday (1970) differentiates the social function of a language into two categories, namely ideational function and interpersonal function. this classification is similar to brown and yule’s concept of transactional and interactional function (brown & yule, 1983, 1-2). ideational function concerns with the function to express ideas or thoughts. meanwhile, interactional function is related to its function to create and maintain social interactions between the speakers. the global era, which focuses on scientific and technological development, ideational or transactional function seems to get more attention, while the interpersonal or interactional is neglected. therefore, interactive discourses, such as riddles and other types of language plays get the impact. the declination of researches’ attention toward several types of interactional discourse, especially ones that contain language plays and the same kind, is mainly caused by the existence of negative opinions which consider that language plays are childish and inappropriate to use for discussing serious matters (cook, 2000, 81). rejections against everything associated with language plays have occurred for along time. for example, aristotle regards language plays can threat philosophy (ulmer, 1988). johnson views that language plays as “the fatal cleopatra” which destruct shakespeare plays (redfern, 1984). even more extremely, a literary critic describes language plays as a low quality activity. all these opinions are certainly illogical and often not objective, also inconsistent. they are totally not aware that rhyming concepts, such as alliteration, metaphor, and ironyseriously discussed in i dewa putu wijana 100 literary analyses areactually a representation of language plays (cook, 2000, 81). oracles, implicit advices are essentially language plays. shakespeare, a famous english literary writer often exploits language plays in his comedy or tragedy literary works. for example, when hamlet’s mother got drunk because of the wine that has been filled in a poisonous pearl by a man whom she was in the party with. he shouted”is this union here”. union is another word for referring to ‘pearl’ in the elisabethan english besides the meaning of ‘wedding party’ that will bring his mother to her death. for his skill in playing on words, shakespeare was even called “a dedicated punster” in a very impressive javanese traditional play performed by a famous group from tulungagung once i watched in local television program, the fail of arya penangsang in defeating his long standing enemy sultan agung who is also popularly called jaka tingkir is caused by his incapability in interpreting the oracle (sanepa) expressed by his adviser when his enemy was already face to face with him. the oracle is an implicit command: rangkakna! the meaning intended by his adviser to him is ‘tusukkan/tikamkan kerismu’ (stabb your kris!). however, what he comprehended was ‘sarungkan kerismu’ (sheathe your kris!) because this word is accidently ambiguous (taksa). because of his misinterpretation, sultan agung liberated from the tragedy, and at the end of the story, arya penangsang was killed by suta wijaya, sultan agung’s son. these facts clearly show that it is obviously misleading to regard that play on word activities are unimportant or trivial in human life. in many diverse societies, punning activities have very central role in rituals as well as in cultural transformation processes. for examples, in gonds community (middle of india), men gather in the side of village when one of their member is passed away. they are riddling accompanied by drum beats (cook, 2000, 79). handleman (1996, 49) notes that african, caribbean , and south east asian societies, use riddles in various ritual ceremonies, such as marriages, funerals, wakes, religious worships, and the choice of a king. in east toraja, riddles are played when they wake watching the dead before funeral. meanwhile in west toraja, the riddle reciting is done during the coming out of rice grains (stokhof, 1980, 56; wijana, 2014, 8). riddle is one of discourse genres that is full of puns. the other evident that proves the centrality of punnings in human life is the never ending comedy programs shown in visual mess media. the cease of one program is quickly replaced by the other. the fade of srimulat popularity and its actors timbul, basuki, eko, topan, lesus, etc. was succeeded by the emergence of opera van java that popularizes parto, sule, aziz, etc. afterwards we saw ilc (indonesia lawak club) with cak lontong as its central joker. ilc might get its name from playing on ilc (indonesia lawyer club). probably it is just only the common people who know which one is funnier. shop names often exploit play on words. in yogyakarta there is a shop named isakuiki (isaku iki ‘just this i can do’), reflex massages kakiku (kakiku ‘my foot’) , restaurant takashimura (tak kasih murah ‘i give you a cheap price), beauty salon la risa (lariso ‘hopefully sell well’), fried chicken small restaurant kentucku fried chiken ( ken tuku fried chicken ‘is asked to by fried chiken’). t shirt business are also pond of puns in popularizing its designs. after dagadu, joger in bali does the same thing. these kinds of activities are also found in bandung and other cities as well. the importance of role played by punning activities attracts me to discuss the functions of language found in stand up comedy, the most recent and popular comedy show broadcasted by metro tv station. this television program shows the skillfulness of a comedian (comic according this program) in telling jokes in front of its audience who are mostly teenagers or adolescents. in every show, there are at least three comedians performing his/her joking skill about their experiences and showing their high capability in playing linguistic elements of various hierarchical levels. vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 101 theoretical frame work language variations used by the speakers in sociolinguistic perspectives are strongly influenced by extra linguistic factors that are varied but essentially the same between one theory and the others. in systemic functional linguistics (sfl) theory used as an approach in this brief paper, the situational contexts are field, tenor, and mood (halliday, 1978, 33; ). field refers to what is happening, what speakers and hearers are doing, and the characteristics of the social actions being done by the interlocutors. tenor refers to people involved in the verbal interactions which include their personal relationship (degree of intimacy), the role they play in that particular situation, etc. mood refers to parts played by the language, all effects expected to gain by the interlocutors by using certain type of text including its symbolic organization, role, function, channel, and rhetorical mode as well. by this theoretical frame work, it can be hypothesized that the language variation used by the comedian or jokester in stand up comedy show to amuse the audience has various symbolic functions for gaining certain effects to the direct audiences who present in the tv studio, and the indirect audiences, all people outside the studio who watch the stand up comedy program. it is certainly out of my capacity to able to discuss all stand up comedian discourses in this paper. therefore, i will focus my attention to comical discourse episode delivered by a woman comedian named wati salsabila. contextual framing of stand up comedy this section is intended to put the stand up comedy discourse in the frame of three contextual aspects of systemic functional linguistics have been outlined above. the framing yields the following result: field: a comedian wants to tell his/her imaginative experiences to the audiences in order to amuse them. tenor: a comedian and audience who relatively have the same status, interact directly or indirectly in informal situation and intimate personal relationship. mood: the discourse delivered by the comedian should effectively amuse the audience, indicated by laugh and smile expressed or shown every time the jokester throw the jokes. this contextual framing lead us to understand the language variation exploited in stand up comedy discourse and its functions in the whole process of verbal interactions. language play in stand up comedy even though the discourse is delivered in humorous mood of interaction, this does not mean that the thematic structures the comedian want to convey are unserious matters. in many cases, the social problems implicitly criticized by the comedian are important issues being faced by the community for gaining quick response and improvements. in wati salsabila’s discourse we can notice critics against various social issues, such as the attitude of some people to value more highly everything that come from outside than one they have already had passed down by their ancestors, as shown by the children naming. the ability of indonesian medical doctors or might also be its other scientists is considered so low that they cannot make precise predictions of many things, such as the wrong prediction of birth. many indonesians are wasteful and consumptive. they can spend ten million rupiahs for shopping per day, and own 10 mobile phones, more than they really need. many electronic cinemas have low quality because they are not seriously made, and more strikingly, most of them do not reflect the real social conditions. all of these can clearly be seen from various aspects, such as casting, unnatural dialogs, directing, story quality, etc. social health and social welfare are also used to be the critic materials of wati salsabila’s jocular discourse, such as the large numbers of mosquito and big families with bad economic condition. to achieve effective deliverance, these thematic issues must be wrapped by the use of appropriate language style. the language style which is commonly used for delivering jocular texts and the sorts is informal style. i dewa putu wijana 102 standard languages tightly bound by complicated grammatical rules are not suitable to use in joke telling activities (apte, 1985, 190-191; wijana, 1995, 141). humorous text which is full of ambiguities can only develop in nonstandard varieties. ambiguities, the most significant characteristics of humorous text, which can be created by various linguistic violations are difficult to appear in well-formed utterances that usually express accurate meanings. ambiguities in humorous discourse constitute an effective tool to transfer two totally opposing perceptions, such as good and bad, honest and dishonest, important and trivial, etc. for all of these matters, consider the following (1) to (13) below: (1) namanya sendiri katanya adalah wati salsabila yang tidak matching dengan wajahnya merupakan singkatan dari waduh mati salah sambung bisa lahir karena pada waktu kecil seharusnya tidak lahir sebab anak yang ke-10. ‘some one said that her name was wati salsabila which is not matched with her face. this name is an abbreviation of waduh mati salah sambung bisa lahir (oh my god, even wrong number can be born)’. at that time she should not been born because she was the 10th child’. (2) karena ada 10 anak dalam keluarga, tetangganya sering menyebut keluarganya p10, yakni (walaupun tidak tepat betul jumlah p-nya), putraputrinya pak pono pada perang perkara panganan peyek. ‘because there were ten children in the family, the neighbors often called her family the ten p, putra-putrinya pak pono pada perang perkara panganan peyek (mr pono’s children were quarreling because of chip’) (3) tetangganya namanya seperti nama spanyol padahal dari wonogiri, yakni (iwan) aldiano singkatan darialhamdulilah dia nongol karena pada waktu kecil sulit lahir ‘her neighbor’s name is like a spaniard. in fact he is from wonogiri, that is iwan aldino which stands for alhamdulilah dia nongol (thanks god, finally he comes out) because at that time he was difficult to be born’ (4) sebenarnya pagi ini saya dipanggil sby, tapi saya nggak mau, saya lebih berat stand up karena nama saya wati bukan sby. ‘actually this morning i was called (by) sby, but i would not come, i would rather chose stand up because my name is wati, not sby. (5) ini hp saya baru masih anget. ‘this my hand phone, still hot. (6) susu mana bagus di perut.(karena seharusnya di dada) ‘how can breasts be good in the stomach because they must be in the chest’ (7) saya benci ke mall karena sejak melihat tulisan jumbo sale big sale berarti yang gemuk-gemuk saja yang dijual dan tulisan sale all itemberarti yang hitamhitam saja yang dijual. ‘i hate going to mall after having seen the ad jumbo sale – big sale. it means that they only sell the big (fat), and the ad sale all item. it means that they only sell the black. (8) anak tetangga saya diperkirakan lahir januari oleh dokter eh ternyata lahir bulan desember sehingga diberi nama kukira januari. ‘my neighbor’s child was predicted to be born on january, but apparently in december, and then he was named kukira januari’. (9) ninabobok oh nina bobok kalau tidak bobok digigit nyamuk (lagu ini bohong karena sudah tidur tetap digigit nyamuk, dan anaknya sendiri namanya bukan nina) vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 103 ‘sleep my baby, sleep my baby!’ ‘if you do not sleep, the mosquito will bite you’(this song is not true because the mosquito still bites even the baby has already slept, and the baby’s name is not nina) (10) karena nila setitik rusak susu sebelahnya. ‘because of one drop indigo, one side of the breast is rotten’ (11) anak-anak bisa menyulap radio menjadi nanas. radio disiram air panas dipegang anak kecil jadi nanas, nanas. ‘children can conjure up a radio to be a pineapple. the radio is sprayed by hot water, and then the children holding it will scream “hot, hot!” (12) tong kosong, mari diisi. ‘an empty barrel, let us fill it!” (13) pada saat itu tidak ada tv, satu-satunya hiburan ya hanya itu. ‘at that time, there was no tv, the only amusement was just that activities’ in this episode, the ambiguities are created by various techniques and linguistic manipulations. abbreviation technique that create a contradiction between part of her elegant arabic name salsabila and its real meaning which the shorter form stand for ’salah sambung bisa lahir’ is applied in (1), p 10 that stand for ‘putra-putrinya pak pono pada perang perkara panganan peyek’ (2), and the impressive italian name aldiano that poolishly stands for ‘alhamdulillah dia nongol’ (3). in (4), (5) and (6) the ambiguity is respectively made possible by the polysemi of indonesian words interfered by javanese dipanggil that can mean ‘to be invited for a ministry position’ and ‘is called by the name’, anget can be associated with ‘new’ in relation with ‘news’ or ‘newly copied papers’, bagus can mean ‘healthy for stomach’ and ‘its appropriate anatomical position’. in (7) and (8) the ambiguity is caused by the accidental homonyms between indonesian and english or japanese like words. those are between item and item ‘a colloquial form for hitam ‘black’, kukira ‘japanese name’ and kukira ‘i think’. this phenomenon is the same as the combination of nina in nina bobok ‘title of indonesian children bed time song’ in (9). in (10) the joke is evoked by the ambiguity of susu that can means ‘milk’ and ‘breast’ and slight phonetic modification sebelanga ‘earthen cooking pot’ into sebelahnya ‘next side of’. the conventional proverb is karena nila setitik rusak susu sebalanga ‘because of one drop indigo, one (earthen) cooking pot of milk is rotten’. in (11) the word panas ‘hot’ is slightly changed into nanas because of children early language acquisition in which they tend to reduplicate the final syllable of words they want to master. the word nanas is accidentlyhomonymous with nanas that means ‘pineapple’. some indonesian proverbs are so popular that the speaker can identify them without being completely expressed. in (12) the conventional proverb is tong kosong nyaring bunyinya ‘empty barrel has a nice sound’ that intended to tease a talkative person with limited knowledge. in this joke the proverb is treated literally to be tong kosong, mari kita isi ‘empty barrel, let us fill it’. finally in (13) the ambiguity is caused by several interpretation of word itu ‘that’. for euphemistic expression to avoid vulgarism this word can also pragmatically refer to ‘sexual activity’ that cause her having big family. the other language plays found in this episode are the film titles which the comedian stars in “ketika aku tidak ada” (when i did not exist) and “wanita di balik pintu” ‘the woman behind door’ implicate that she never acts in any film. a hyperbolic song title “akan kupeluk dia sampai mati” ‘i will hug you until dead’ is taken literally to evoke sadistic situation. the song lyric mungkin hanya tuhan yang tahu segalanya ‘may be only god knows everything’, taken from “engkaulah segalanya” ‘you are my everything’, popularized by ruth sahanaya, is considered to hesitate the god’s power because of the use of mungkin ‘may be, possible’. the language style used for joking activities will certainly have very different characteristics in various hierarchical i dewa putu wijana 104 grammatical and discursive aspects (phonology, lexico-grammar, cohesion, coherence, etc.) compared to other register styles for conducting different activities. language functions in stand up comedy language has many communicative functions in human life, and even now no one can count them exactly because the large number of activities that can be carried out by using this verbal human means of communication. in addition, an utterance expressed by the speakers can simultaneously perform two or more functions in every speech event. however, if the language function can simply differentiate into two categories, these are transactional and interactional function, the joking activities found in this stand up comedy episode more appropriately belong to the second category, i.e. interactional function. even though there is also some information want to communicate by the comedian to his/her audience, she seems more concerned to express her criticism on the social conditions in indirect, humorous, and interactive ways. the choice of this mood of interaction are intended to minimize the destructive or aggressive effects of the jokes might bring to the audience. as far as the interactional function is concerned, this language function must also be divided into several subcategories. apperently, in the earlier version, halliday in relation to children language acquisition, as cited by siregar (2011, 5), describes his language function theory into seven categories, and the two main categories are a part of them. one of the main categories are given different label, i.e. representative function for ideational function, and transactional function for interpersonal function. those categories completely are instrumental function for exploiting the circumstance and making certain situation to happen, regulatory function for regulating or controlling situation, representational function for making statement and explain realities, interactional function for keeping on social relationship, personal function for expressing personal feelings, heuristic function for learning science and knowledge, and imaginative function for creating imaginative ideas. based on this theoretical framework, wati salsabila’s stand up comedy episode at least conveys three dominant communicative functions, i.e imaginative, personal, interactional and regulatory functions. by imaginative function the comedian create fictional or imaginative stories about herself, her family, and other events occurring in her society. by personal function, she express her feeling and criticism about all of those situation. by interactional function, she use the informal mood of interaction to create intimate relation with the audience in order to elicit their smile and laugh. finally, by regulatory function she indirectly persuade the audience, especially the authoritative parties to take a part for improvements. conclusion joking activities that are commonly considered unimportant or trivial, in fact, play central roles in human life because of their various functions, especially one for criticizing various social conditions happen in the speakers’ community. however, to create unaggressive and constructive criticisms, the comedian should build an intimate relation with his/her audience for its effective deliverance. consequently, he/she should use certain mood of interaction using informal language style with full of ambiguities that can easily confuse audience’s perceptions about many things in order to elicit audience’s smile and laugh. references apte, mahadev l. 1985. humor and laughter. ithaca. cornel university press. brown, gillian & george yule. 1983. discourse analysisis. cambridge: cambridge university press. vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 105 cook, guy. 2000. language play, language learning. oxford: oxford university press. halliday, m.a.k. 1970. “language structure and language function”. john lyons (ed.) new horizons in linguistics. harmondsworth. middx: penguin books. halliday, m.a.k. 1978. language as social semiotic: the social interpretation of language and meaning. edward arnold. halliday, m.a.k. & hasan, ruqaiya. 1992. bahasa, konteks, dan teks: aspek-aspek bahasa dalam pandangan semiotik sosial. diterjemahkan oleh asruddin barori tou. yogyakarta: gadjah mada university press. redfern, w. 1984. puns. oxford: blackwell. stokhof, w.a.l. 1980. “100 woisika riddles”. majalah ilmu-ilmu sastra indonesia. jilid ix, no. 1. hlm. 53—101. jakarta: fakultas sastra universitas indonesia. siregar, bahren umar. 2011. seluk beluk fungsi bahasa. jakarta. pusat kajian bahasa universitas katolik atma jaya. ulmer, g. 1988. “the puncept in gramatology”. j culler (ed.): on puns: the foundation of letters. oxford: blackwell. wijana, i dewa putu. 1995. wacana kartun dalam bahasa indonesia. disertasi doktor. universitas gadjah mada. wijana, i dewa putu. 2014. wacana teka-teki. yogyakarta: a com. press. page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4 page 5 pheno vol 16 2.pdf (3) artikel 1 putu (arina) ed-2 (4) artikel 2 indri (arina) ed-1 (5) artikel 3 ose (hir) ed-2 (6) artikel 4 alvian & anna (arina) ed-2 (7) artikel 5 eilen & hir (hir) ed-2 (8) artikel 6 elisabeth ratih & ni luh (hir) ed-2 (9) artikel 7 munthe & ria (arina) ed-2 (10) artikel 8 rosa vania & elisa (hir) ed-2 (11) artikel 9 pramesthi & mul (hir) ed-2 (13) index vol 16 no 2 oktober 2016-1 (14) contributor's notes-1 77 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 77 – 88 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.5946 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. alternative models of electronic literary criticism: intermedial and ergodic tatang iskarna iskarna@usd.ac.id graduate program in literature, faculty of letters, universitas sanata dharma, indonesia abstract article information electronic literature, known as cyber or digital literature, has elicited negative and favourable responses. negative reactions centre on disagreements regarding its definition and the author's quality and authenticity. positive reflexes include its rapid and massive distribution, publication, and subversion against the dominant establishment of printed literature. its open space for creativity due to the addition of multimedia and its intensive interaction between writers and readers also become beneficial values. despite the negative and favourable backlash, electronic literary criticism development has not yet been widely discussed. electronic academic critique models are rarely debated due to a lack of consensus on their definitions, interdisciplinarity, and technological obstacles. this article attempts to propose alternate models for electronic literary criticism, viewing it as a new genre. this literary analysis offers alternatives based on its significant elements: technology (platform), immersive experience and interactivity (the reader’s involvement), literary work (various electronic types), and accessibility (wide range of readers). considering that electronic literature combines literature, technology, and digital media to interpret works and investigate the relationships between technology, authorship, and readership, its criticism needs to broaden its area which includes technology. intermedial and ergodic criticism can be the alternatives to approach this new genre. keywords: electronic literature, electronic literary criticism, intermedial, ergodic, interactive and immersive experience received: 23 february 2023 revised: 16 march 2023 accepted: 27 march 2023 introduction electronic literature is a fast-expanding discipline that has altered how people read, write, and appreciate literary work. the emergence of electronic literature also referred to as cyber or digital literature, has led to debate. the debate over the arrival of this new form of literature lies in how it is defined as it is a sort of multimodal work (bluijs, 2021). the category, scope, and inclusion of literary types become the problem https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:iskarna@usd.ac.id journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) tatang iskarna 78 of how to define them (palwicka, 2017). the following questions are part of the debate: whether or not electronic literature is work which is created and distributed solely in digital formats, such as websites or multimedia applications or it refers to any literary work, printed or digitalized, that can be presented or placed on the internet, such as social media, blog, or website. the other controversy which distinguishes electronic literature from printed literature is whether or not it should bring the ability of the reader to influence the narrative or enjoy an immersive experience. in addition to causing debate, electronic literature has generated various negative and positive responses. the controversy of its response revolves around questioning the quality and legitimacy of its work and authors on the one hand (gunawan, 2019; yulhasni & suprayetno, 2018; fitriani, 2007) and providing space for plagiarism (sulaiman, 2020). on the other hand, multiple benefits can be gained from this genre: fast and massive distribution (setiyowati et al., 2020), publication without the approval of the editor of the book publisher, subversion against the establishment and dominance of printed literature (yulhasni & suprayetno, 2018; yulhasni & suprayetno, 2018), open space for creativity due to the addition of multimedia(rahman, 2017), and intensive interaction between writers and readers (fediyanto et al., 2021; wahyudi & wati, 2021; nurhidayah et al., 2019). the debate on definitions and the controversial responses to the emergence of electronic literature has resulted in the lack of suitable models of electronic literary criticism that will be used to study, assess, and appreciate works of cyber literature. there is not enough literary criticism of electronic literature, which is the kind of analysis that goes beyond just describing it and looking at it critically (pawlicka, 2017). electronic literary criticism has not been developed (nugroho & suyitno, 2020) like other established literary criticisms, such as new criticism, formalism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and other literary criticisms because it does not yet have a strong foundation and agreement on its definition, form, quality, and aesthetic values. the basic question in this article is how electronic literature should be appreciated, judged, and valued. some alternative models, therefore, should be proposed and set. for this reason, this article is presented to offer alternative models of how to give literary criticism to electronic literature. the alternative model must, of course, be based on the contextual definition and the positive response to the existence of electronic literature. the concept of electronic literature in this article refers to literary works designed to be read on electronic devices, such as computers, smartphones, tablets, and ereaders. this literary genre is distinguished by its incorporation of digital technologies, such as multimedia elements, interactivity, and hypertext. electronic literature: perspectives and agreement on its definition agreement on the definition of electronic literature and the history of its development form the basis for literary criticism. electronic literature is a new field of study that can be approached from a variety of perspectives. it can be defined in a variety of ways. without a clear and rigorous definition, electronic literature is a difficult object of study to categorize and clearly describe (hayles, 2008). some similar definitions have been put forward by academics who have an interest in electronic literature, such as hayles, rettberg, rosario, flores, and even scholars in electronic literature organization (elo). besides the definition, electronic literary researchers, such as pawlicka, contributed to depicting the chronological development of this kind of literature. hayles (2008) defines electronic literature as a literary form that employs digital technologies in its development, distribution, and interpretation. this concept spans a wide range of works, from early computer-generated poetry to interactive multimedia storytelling. hayles contends that electronic literature challenges established assumptions of what literature is and opens up new channels for expression and experimentation. she emphasizes that electronic writing often blurs the boundaries between reader and author since the reader is often called upon to contribute to the creation journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 79 of meaning through their interactions with the text. additionally, electronic literature can use digital media’s inherent qualities, such as nonlinearity, hyperlinking, and multimedia, to generate new forms of storytelling and expression. hayles's definition emphasizes the significance of technology in the development and interpretation of electronic literature and the notion that electronic literature is not just digitized traditional literature, but rather a new kind of literary expression. to sum up, hayles underlines that this new genre excluded print literature although it has been digitized, it is digitally born, a first-generation digital object created on a computer and meant to be read on a computer. similar to hayles, retterberg also describes electronic literature most simply as new forms and genres of writing that explore the capabilities of the computer and network. it is literature that would not be feasible without the current digital milieu. he adds that electronic literature has grown rapidly as a field of creative practice, academic research, and pedagogy in the last half-century, most notably from the 1990s to the present. computers and the internet have drastically changed many aspects of life for a large proportion of the world's population. textuality and communication are now mediated digitally. therefore, electronic literature reflects new situations through the work of writers and artists who consciously investigate the potential of new media for new modes of storytelling and poetic practice (rettberg, 2018). this kind of digital literature emphasizes the need to avoid digitizing printed literature in defining electronic literature. rosario defines electronic literature as a type of writing that began to pop up when computers and digital technology became more common. it's written for the digital age, but readers shouldn't think of it as digitized print literature (rosario, 2021). this digital genre can be viewed as art that focuses on writing and uses the expressive power of digital and electronic media. it is not about printing which transforms into digital writing. to understand this concept, the following analogy will be useful. even though poetry has its roots in an oral culture, literature as an art form and field of study has been shaped by writing and printing for hundreds of years. electronic literature is the study of writing in electronic and digital media, which combines computation, multimedia integration, and interactivity through a variety of input devices, networked data, and digital culture itself. as digital culture grows and develops, it has a bigger impact on the people who make electronic literature (flores, 2021). all the above definitions more or less fit what the electronic literature organization outlines electronic literature as “works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer” (electronic literature organization, 2022). to summarize, electronic literature is not merely putting written or printed works of literature on the internet and then the readers read them. it involves computer and digital technology, immersive experience, intermediality, interactivity, and between the writers, readers, works and the multi-media. hence, electronic literature is a literary work created or published with the help of digital technology. novels, poems, plays, and other works of fiction that are published online or in electronic formats, as well as works that incorporate elements of digital technology into their storytelling or creation process, are examples of this. electronic literary works can also be interactive, allowing readers to interact with the content in work ways. viewpoints on the historical development of electronic literature the definition of electronic literature cannot be separated from its historical development. literary scholar and theorist n. katherine hayles (2008) has made significant contributions to the study of electronic literature. she proposes some phases of the development of electronic literature. hayles traces the origins of electronic literature to the late 1950s and early 1960s when early computer programmers began experimenting with novel forms of computational expression. in the late 1960s and 1970s, new genres of journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) tatang iskarna 80 computer-generated poetry and fiction emerged, and electronic writing began to flourish and expand. as electronic literature continued to evolve, it was influenced by the proliferation of the internet and the world wide web. electronic literature came to be acknowledged as a unique field of study in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the formation of scholarly journals, conferences, and organizations devoted to its study and promotion. the history of electronic literature is a complex and dynamic one that is shaped by the interplay of technological, cultural, and intellectual factors. by understanding electronic literature's historical and cultural context, academics can gain a deeper appreciation of its significance and potential as a form of artistic expression and cultural production. similar to hayles, flores suggests that the first generation of electronic literature consists of a handful of pioneering works published between 1952 and 1995. for the majority of this time period, computer access was limited, resulting in a tiny number of practitioners, the majority of whom were unaware that they were creating electronic literature. only computer scientists, professors, and technical employees in the commercial sector, as well as producers in cinema, television, and radio studios, had access to pricey instruments for creating electronic literature over the first several decades. flores adds that the second generation was marked by the rise of the world wide web which caused a significant paradigm change and expansion in the production and circulation of electronic literature. because an increasing number of people have access to personal computers and the internet, the number of practitioners increases proportionally, and the ease of publication has resulted in a vast quantity of original material entering circulation via the web. practitioners are programmers, computer users, online artists and developers, writers and artists who collaborate with programmers, and users of multimedia authoring tools. the third generation of electronics, flores argues, is built on social media networks and widely adopted platforms and apps, both its production and audience size are enormous (flores, 2021). the development of electronic literature is divided into three phases. the first phase is the time of computer literature when texts were created on a computer prior to the advent of the internet in 1994. the second phase is broader and more complex, lasting until 2008. it broadened the meaning of electronic literature by incorporating new categories in which theorists departed from traditional literary theory in analyses of electronic literature, and this segment developed the areas and categories: kinesthetic, haptic, and proprioceptive experience of digital text, the body as code, and new types of performativity in reading literature. the third phase’s interest is in the academic community, more broadly digital humanities. it paid attention less to the content of electronic literature and more broadly to its place in the academic community and, more broadly, in digital humanities. it is important to note that the third phase of transition is linked to the development of new technologies that lead to advances in digitality such as the increasing deployment and use of text and image on handheld devices, where inter-art creation occurs as in the text, image, moving image, and sound (pawlicka, 2014). pawlicka concludes that periodization or phases of the development of electronic literature help people to place electronic literature in the history of literature. by separating changes into different phases, it can be perceived that electronic literature moved from text to techno-text, from text as decoding meaning to text as a process of information and information system, from interpretation to experience, from visual perception to performativity, from close reading to hyper reading, and many other changes. another period of electronic literature is studied in terms of the types of invention. rosario views the development through some works that were invented. she traced back some works considered the origin of electronic literature. "stochastic texts" is a series of computer-generated texts created by theo lutz in 1959. it is considered to be one of the earliest examples of digital literature and is considered a pioneer in the field of computergenerated writing. lutz used a computer program to generate random word combinations and create short, meaningless journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 81 sentences that were meant to challenge traditional notions of authorship and meaning in writing. rosario states further that by the 1980s, as computers got better, poets used the screen more and more to show how their words move. these experiments set the stage for many later poems that became popular in animated, hypermedia forms. in 1985, at an international exhibit in paris called "les immatériaux," which was organized by jeanfrancois le lionnais, the alamo6 group showed its first poems that were "generated" by a computer. this sort of gave the go-ahead for a new type of visual poetry that was "animated" by this new medium. in the 1990s, researchers at cern in geneva, led by tim berners-lee, made the technology that made the internet popular. from that date on, there were more and more websites with "cyberpoetry" and "cyber-literature," which led to the birth of a new generation of digital authors. since then, the number of poems published on the internet has grown steadily. in 1999, the magazine doc(k)s felt the need to make a list of what had already been made. when viewers looked at a program in an installation like textgenerated poems, the first works were made automatically. as graphics software got better, more and more works used visual methods that looked like concrete and visual poems that were drawn and fixed on the page (rosario, 2021). to sum up, electronic literature dates back to the earliest days of the internet and digital technology. in the 1960s, early computer scientists and writers began experimenting with using computers as a medium for creative expression, resulting in the development of interactive fiction and hypertext fiction, two of the earliest types of electronic writing. in the 1980s and 1990s, the birth of the world wide web and the spread of personal computers increased the possibilities for electronic writing, as online literary communities flourished and new types of digital storytelling were developed. the ongoing development of digital technology in the 21st century has led to the evolution of electronic literature, including the incorporation of multimedia, social media, and artificial intelligence in its production. today, electronic literature remains a dynamic and rapidly-evolving field, with a growing corpus of works and a committed community of writers, academics, and readers. types of electronic literature from the definition and historical development of electronic literature, it can be observed that there should be experts who are responsible for the production of electronic literature. the first can be programmers or coders who develop software or tools necessary for the creation of electronic literature. the second is digital artists and designers, the ones that create the visual and interactive elements of the work, such as graphics, animations, and user interfaces. sound designers and musicians will be the third experts. they create the audio elements of the work, such as sound effects and music. the fourth experts are the editors and proofreaders who are in charge of reviewing the text error. the last is publishers or distributors. they can be individuals or companies that help bring the work to a wider audience. electronic literature is useless when there are no readers or users. their engagement with electronic literary work can shape its impact and success. electronic literature is a collaborative and interdisciplinary form of work that frequently requires the participation of a wide variety of individuals and skill sets. in the definition and history, there are also some types of electronic literature. according to hayles (2008), they are hypertext fiction, network fiction, interactive fiction, locative narratives, installation pieces, "codework," generative art, and flash poem. meanwhile, rettberg (2019) divides this genre into six types: combinatory poetic, hypertext fiction, interactive fiction and game forms, kinetic and interactive poetry, network writing, and divergent stream. in order to give appreciation and valuable judgement, the knowledge about these types of electronic literature should be comprehensively understood. hayles (2008) and rettberg (2019) outline this genre into six types. they are hypertext fiction, network fiction, interactive journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) tatang iskarna 82 fiction, locative narratives, flash poems, and kinetic and interactive poetry. hypertext fiction and the divergent stream is a type of electronic literature that uses hypertext technology to tell stories that do not flow in order. the readers can move from one part of the story to another by following links between different parts of the text. its stream focuses on multiple, branching storylines. while hypertext fiction usually only has one non-linear path through the text, the divergent stream has many paths that can lead to many different results. while network fiction refers to writing that uses networked media to make a story readers can interact with to experience their own way, interactive fiction is a literary work in which the reader can take part in making the story in the form of a computer game or a hypertext story. meanwhile, the locative narrative is a type of interactive story that uses location-based technologies to create a story or experience tied to a specific place. writers use gps, augmented reality, and other location-based technologies along with stories to create a unique, immersive, and real-worldbased story experience. flash poems can be defined as short pieces of poetry meant to be read quickly and all at once. only taking up one page or screen of text, they use multimedia elements like sound, pictures, and animation to make them more interesting to read. kinetic and interactive poetry looks at how the computer's multimedia capabilities can be used as a place for both writing and reading poetry. the above types show complexities in a way that sometimes these types can intersect in use and application. many works that could be called literary installations or locative narratives are also hypertext fictions. rettberg (2019) experimented to write about combinatory poetry and kinetic poetry separately, but a lot of kinetic poems are also combinatory. these electronic literary types help readers focus on certain things that all the works in a group have in common, but none of these genres can be said to have fixed or unchangeable boundaries. therefore, appreciation and study of electronic literature can be focused generally on digital technology, immersive and interactive experiences amongst the reader, experimentation on the form, accessibility to a wide range of readers, and artistry as literary work with its basic elements, such as theme, plot, conflict, imagery, characters, and others. an alternative model of electronic literary criticism electronic literature is a new genre which has different and unique characteristics in comparison with printed literature. it is not merely a printed literary work transmitted into digital form or posted on digital platforms. as hayles (2008) suggests, it excludes digitized printed literature because it is digitally born as the first generation digital objects created on a computer and meant to be read on a computer. being differently defined from printed literature, electronic literature also requires a different perspective of criticism. therefore, the need for electronic literary criticism should be proposed and developed. in the digital era, literary criticism should not be merely a matter of what the words are said, but also how they are expressed. the medium becomes an important element in appreciating literature as the literature today is not only what it is said but how it is said. new approaches are needed, especially which discuss the technical feature rather than the literary one. that is why techno-criticism should be widely discussed (nirmal, 2014). how advanced and helpful technology determines the high appreciation toward electronic literature. electronic literary criticism can be created by combining textual analysis and a cinematic approach in the way how video, image, and text are able to reflect a semantic meaningful representation of video poetry. merging the element of media and the textual component will evoke a more comprehensive understanding of literary work (aziz & ariff, 2019). as electronic literature needs special treatment of appreciation, the literary criticism toward it should be unique. strehovec proposes that electronic literature is journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 83 not a continuation of print-based literature. instead, it is a practice shaped by digital textuality that emphasizes the uniqueness of new media and new ways of thinking about writing in programmable media. when talking about new media art, it is important to point out the following things that are important to the practice: database logic, its process-like nature, software, algorithms, interactivity, playfulness, and the use of interfaces. they are also embedded in the social realm in a way that shows some of the most important aspects of the current social paradigms (strehovec, 2014). these are the existing approaches to appreciating electronic literature. it can be perceived that the emphasis on technology gain much attention. besides, the connection between the readers, writers, programmers and the interfaces also play important role in understanding this genre. the followings are the other alternative approaches to electronic literary criticism. appreciative bases from the above definitions and historical development, it can be concluded that there are some points to consider concerning literary appreciation. electronic literary criticism might begin by identifying its significant elements, which can be called appreciative bases. what is meant by appreciative bases here is the different ground or dimensions of electronic literature that researchers and readers can use to enjoy and evaluate electronic literature as a unique form of literature. these appreciating grounds give a framework for comprehending, assessing, and evaluating the effectiveness and impact of the various aspects that comprise electronic literature. they are technology (platform), immersive experience and interactivity (reader’s involvement), electronic literature types (literary work), accessibility (wide range), and socio-cultural function (impact). technology in electronic literature refers to how the platform demonstrates the creative and innovative use of digital media, including interactivity, multimedia, hypertext, virtual and augmented reality, and other features that are unique to digital technology. the platform here means software or system that is used to create, distribute, or display a work of electronic literature. it can be specific authoring software or tool that an electronic literature author uses to create a work, such as unity or twine. a website, mobile app, or another digital environment where electronic literature is hosted and accessed by readers can be the platform. platforms can have a significant impact on the form and content of electronic literature, as different platforms offer different affordances and constraints for the creation and distribution of digital works. additionally, the choice of platform can shape the audience and reception of a work, as readers may have different expectations and experiences depending on where and how they access the electronic literature. it should take advantage of the unique possibilities of digital technology to create new and exciting literary experiences. this is the unique characteristic of electronic literature which can be distinguished from traditional print literature. to what extent the technology is used determines the capacity of the platform. the immersive experience refers to the extent to which the reader feels fully engaged and involved in the reading of a digital text. in electronic literature, the reading experience is often characterized by a high degree of interactivity, multimedia elements, and nonlinear structures, which can significantly impact the way in which the reader engages with the text. in this context, the immersive experience can be seen as a combination of different factors, including the reader's engagement with the narrative, the level of interactivity and exploration offered by the text, and the sensory and emotional response elicited by multimedia elements such as sound, video, and animation. readers take part in the story and find out more about it in a way that is more interactive and interesting. interactivity in electronic literature can be defined as the ways that readers can interact with digital works of literature and take part in them. electronic literature often has interactive parts that let readers move through the work in non-linear ways and make choices that change the way the story goes or how the work is presented. it can take many different forms, such as hypertext links, journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) tatang iskarna 84 multimedia elements, and stories that go in different directions. hypertext links, for example, let readers move through the text by clicking on links to other parts of the work, making for a non-linear reading experience. multimedia elements like audio, video and pictures can also be added to the story to make it more interesting and make reading more immersive. readers get more involved with the text and read reading more dynamic and interactive. electronic literature gives readers the chance to personalize their experience and interact with the work in a way that is unique to them. this is because readers can make choices and move through the work in different ways. interactivity can also challenge traditional ideas of who the author is and who the reader is. it can make the reader a partner in making meaning in the work. the different types of electronic literature, such as hypertext fiction, kinetic poetry, locative narrative, or interactive fiction, require different treatments and can influence the approaches used to understand the meaning of electronic literature. hypertext fiction, for example, focuses on the path through which the story is read by clicking on different links. it lets the reader take the lead in figuring out what it means. they do this by making choices and going their own way through the work. because hypertext fiction does not always have a clear beginning, middle, and end, readers may need to look for themes, images, or motifs that keep coming up to figure out what it means. kinetic poetry emphasizes animation, sound, and visual effects are used to make the reading experience more dynamic and immersive. for kinetic poetry to make sense, readers may have to pay attention to how the different parts interact with each other and with the text itself. this might require a multimodal way of interpreting the work, where the reader looks at the written words, pictures, and sounds. in the locative narrative, the story is read in a certain place, using mobile devices or other technology to create an augmented reality effect. to understand what locative narratives are about, readers may need to pay attention to how the work interacts with the space it takes up and how it uses technology to make the reading experience better. this could mean that figuring out what it means will require knowledge from fields like geography, architecture, and computer science, among others. interactive fiction often has a story structure with multiple paths, where the reader makes choices that change the way the story goes. to figure out what interactive fiction is about, readers may need to think about how the choices they make affect the story's ending and the themes and motifs that keep coming up. this might require a way of interpreting the work that puts the reader at the centre, where the reader actively builds meaning by making choices and going down different paths. accessibility is one of the important bases for appreciating electronic literature. to make cyber literature available to a wide range of readers, publishers and authors should focus on making content that is easy to use and navigate. this means using simple language and avoiding jargon, making sure the content works well on different devices and browsers, giving alternative text for images, videos, and audio, and breaking up long blocks of text with text formatting. also, authors should make sure that their content is accessible to people with physical or learning disabilities. for example, videos should have closed captioning, and audio content should have transcripts. also, authors should make their content easy to find in different ways, like through search engines, social media, and direct links from other websites. after accessibility can be handled, electronic literature can expand to its sociocultural functions. raising social and cultural issues becomes the potential function of this genre. being easily accessed, this genre can be used to raise awareness about social and cultural issues that are marginalized or not extensively highlighted in mainstream media. universal and world issues such as environmental degradation, socioeconomic inequity, violations of human rights, and cultural disputes can be addressed. digital literary work gets people to talk about social and cultural issues and share their own journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 85 experiences and points of view as it is equipped with interactive features. this digital genre is able to create immersive and interactive experiences that force readers to think critically about complex social and cultural issues. put in certain platforms, this craft can facilitate dialogue between individuals of diverse cultures and points of view. by incorporating interactive elements such as forums, comments, and social media, electronic literature can encourage readers to discuss social and cultural issues and share their own experiences and perspectives. possible alternative approaches to electronic literary as a literary work, digital literature retains the same characteristics as printed literature. this work remains relevant from an approach standpoint if it is understood from a variety of literary critical perspectives, including form, ideology, social and historical context, and reader response. however, as it is a unique genre blended with digital craft, there are a variety of possible techniques for analyzing digital literary works such as kinetic poetry, hypertext fiction, or locative drama. the possible strategies can include intermedial and ergodic approaches. the elaboration of the above approaches is as follows. intermedial approach the intermedial method focuses on analyzing how a digital literary work interacts with other forms of media, such as images, sound, and video. this may include analyzing how the work uses or transforms these media, as well as their impact on the reading experience. in wurth’s term, it is a mix of different types of media that cross over and mix with each other. words become like colours, colours become like words, texts become like buildings and spaces, and sounds are heard in space. these kinds of crosspollinations questioned the identities and conditions of each art form. many kinds of complex digital literary work, especially poetry, can be placed and understood in the context of intermediality. they create new ways of becoming (wurth, 2006). an important part of the intermediality method is analyzing how the electronic text creates meaning by utilizing the affordances of each medium. how, for instance, can the use of sound or music add to the text's overall mood or atmosphere? how does the inclusion of visuals or video improve the reader's comprehension of the text? the other component of intermediality is considering how the electronic text relates to or draws from various media forms. a piece of electronic literature may, for instance, reference a certain film or literary work, or it may include aspects of a particular genre, such as science fiction or horror. an investigation of intermediality would investigate how these allusions contribute to the overall meaning and interpretation of the text. recognizing the manner in which electronic literature is a hybrid form that integrates and interacts with various media forms is necessary for an intermediality-based analysis of electronic literature. by analyzing how these many media elements interact and contribute to the overall meaning of the text, readers can acquire a greater understanding of how electronic literature generates meaning and engages the reader. appreciating electronic literature through an intermedial approach may take these methods. the first is paying close attention to the many forms of media employed in the piece. how these forms of media interact with one another and contribute to the work's ultimate meaning should become the focus of attention. the second is that readers need to provide a list of the various forms of media utilized in the work, including text, photos, sound, and video. determining the specific occasions in which each element is utilized and exploring their interrelationships can be taken. in the third method, researchers can study the interaction between media by examining how the various forms of media are utilized in connection to one another and by looking for instances in which the text, images, music, and video collaborate to convey journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) tatang iskarna 86 meaning. the next is scrutinizing the impact that the employment of numerous media aspects has on the reader's experience of the work. the other method is examining the effects of each media component. readers should assess how each media type contributes to the work's meaning. it is then followed by analysing how the employment of each element impacts the work's tone, atmosphere, and message. how, for instance, does the use of sound contribute to the work's atmosphere? what contribution does the use of visuals make to the reader's comprehension of the text? appreciating electronic literature also means inspecting how the various forms of media are utilized to structure the narrative of the work and how the situations in which media elements are used to generate transitions between portions of the work or create a nonlinear narrative framework. this analysis may be based on the interaction between the various types of media, and it is followed by drawing conclusions about the overall meaning of the work. this involves how the usage of various mediums contributes to the themes, ideas, and messages of the work. ergodic approach in the ergodic approach, the readers do not merely read the text, but they also have to interact with it in some way by making decisions or altering it in order to advance. this approach bases its understanding on the definition of ergodic literature as a type of literature that requires non-trivial effort on the part of the reader to traverse the text (aarseth, 1997). the term “ergodic” is derived from the greek terms ergon and hodos, which represent "labour" and "way," respectively. the concept of cybertext, aarseth states, emphasizes the text's mechanical order by positing that the medium's complexities are an intrinsic aspect of literary discourse. however, it also focuses on the reader or user of the text as a more integrated figure than the readerresponse theory would suggest. the performance of their reader takes place entirely in his brain, whereas the performance of cybertext users is also extranoematic. during the cyber textual process, the user will have executed a semiotic sequence; this selective movement is a physical construction that is not accounted for by the many conceptions of "reading." this phenomenon is referred to as ergodic. aarseth claims that ergodic literature is not confined to traditional forms of literature such as "choose your own adventure" books (1979) or interactive fiction but also encompasses digital media such as video games, hypertext fiction, and other types of interactive narratives. he offers a cybertext theory, which he describes as the arrangement of text in computer-based media. organizational patterns of cybertext can affect the reader’s experience, such as ergodic loops which means repeating and recursive acts required to proceed through the text. the ergodic approach may take some steps. the first is identifying the elements of the work that require the reader to actively interact with the text to comprehend or navigate it. this can incorporate interactive features, hypertextual frameworks, and other non-linear narrative formats. once the ergodic elements have been found, the next step is to examine the loops or interaction patterns required to advance through the text. readers recognize the various options or paths open to the reader or analyze the rules or limitations that control the reader's interaction with the text. the next can be examining the effect on meaning. the ergodic approach highlights the significance of the reader's active involvement with the text in establishing meaning. consequently, it is essential to analyze how ergodic features and loops contribute to the text's overall meaning and interpretation. conclusion appreciating electronic literature requires both technical and creative skills, for example, using software and programming languages, adding multimedia elements, and designing interactive elements. as readers are engaged in the field, they should be willing to learn about and try out new technologies and art techniques. electronic literary criticism is an interdisciplinary area that combines the study of literature, technology, and digital journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 87 media to evaluate and interpret works and investigate the relationships between technology, authorship, and readership. it investigates how electronic and digital media shape, inform, and reflect literature, as well as how the creation and use of new and digital technologies affect literature and literary criticism. intermedial and ergodic analyses are two alternative criticism which can accommodate this complex genre. the intermedial approach examines the ways in which a digital literary work engages with various media types, such as visuals, sounds, and moving pictures. depending on the assignment, this could involve discussing the effects of the various forms of media used in the text and how they are incorporated into the narrative. the ergodic method requires the reader to do more than just consume the material; they must actively participate in the process by making choices and influencing the outcome. this method is grounded in the idea that ergodic literature is defined as books that demand significant cognitive work from the reader. references aarseth, e. 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(2018). cyber sastra: perlawanan terhadap hegemoni dalam sastra indonesia. tahun, 3(2), pp. 106– 109. http://dx.doi.org/10.53712/jk.v3i2.709 150 vol. 22 no. 1, april 2022, pp. 150-162 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i1.3783 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-share alike 4.0 international license. nnimmo bassey’s aesthetic imagination and social meaning in we thought it was oil but it was blood okwudiri anasiudu okwudiri.anasiudu@uniport.edu.ng department of english studies, university of port harcourt, nigeria abstract article information this paper explores nnimmo bassey’s poetry collection: we thought it was oil but it was blood. it interrogates the aesthetic imagination and language use in the construction of the poem as a text, and the social meaning wrapped in such imagination and language use. this paper draws insight from postcolonial ecocriticism and critical functional linguistics as theoretical frameworks. the methodology this paper adopts is qualitative, descriptive, and critical. the guiding motivation for this research is the dearth of critical study on bassey’s we thought it was oil but it was blood. the research problem and gap this study seeks to bridge is the minimal attention the available scholarship on bassey's poetry offered to the exploration of aesthetic imagination and social meaning construed through the internal formal structure of the poem, realised through stanzas, and structures and the linguistic configuration such as deixis, metaphorical schemas. the analysis shows that place deixis, pronouns adjective, and metaphors are important linguistic designs bassey deploys in construing his aesthetic imagination, particularly the social realities of the niger delta region such as the contentious issue of environmental justice, ecological despoliation, minority rights, and agitation whenever resource control is mentioned. keywords: aesthetic imagination; social meaning, ecocriticism, functional linguistics, niger delta received: 15 october 2021 revised: 26 january 2022 accepted: 2 february 2022 introduction immanent in the form of a poem is a sociological meaning foregrounded through a poet’s language use. from a functionalist purview, the foregoing assertion projects poetry as a text type with functions beyond the aesthetic configuration of an imaginary universe. this function includes a homologous relation. it is a mimesis of the real human society which it echoes, particularly the condition therein. and from this real human world, a poem also draws its emergence. https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:okwudiri.anasiudu@uniport.edu.ng journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 151 poetry achieves this function of mimesis through its deployment of language. language, as used here, is deployed from the functionalist purview to mean a sociological artefact deployed in the construal of social experiences and ideation (see kamalu, 2018, halliday and matthiessen 2006). the main thrust of the functionalist model is the submission that language is a sociosemiotic system (halliday 1978). this proposition is useful in literary analysis because literature is conceived as an “organization of language” (eagleton, 2008, p. 2). the rationale for adopting the functionalist model alongside postcolonial ecocriticism in this study of bassey’s poetry is that while ecocriticism guides the conversation in this study around the thematization of environmental damage in the postcolonial niger delta, functional linguistics provides the linguistic model to explain how the analysis of language use in the poem reveals the theme. nnimmo bassey’s we thought it was oil but it was blood could be read as an interventionist craft. what this means is that poetry for bassey is a medium for socioaesthetic consciousness-raising where his “passions, and his desires, his great aspirations and social affirmations, the character and structure of the polity, freedom, justice and social change” (udenta, 2015, p.15) could be conveyed. sadly, bassey’s poem has not enjoyed the critical attention it deserves considering the pioneering role he has played both as a frontline activist and as a poet. not only that, the criticism on his poem has been on its thematic concerns while the analysis of how language could construe the social meaning he projects has received minimal attention. for example, aghoghovwia (2014) explored the “politics of transnational petroenvironmentalism”, in the poem where he argued that in bassey’s poetry, “the niger delta features in the global public imagination as the archetypal theatre of crude oil production in africa, and in the global south generally” (p.60). on the other hand, maledo, and edhere (2021) aver that the poem “walks a thin line between commitment to poetry and commitment to the struggle of environmental activism in bringing issues of social and environmental justice into the public sphere” (p.130). bassey’s poetry has been explored as a reference to the unbroken will-power of the niger delta people in the struggle for resource control, economic inclusion and political integration (gomba, 2016, p.141). other critics have read bassey's poem as a type of ecoactivism which calls attention to "the devastation that oil extraction has brought to the people and critiques the ways in which the trajectory of oil permeates every aspect of being and dominates the quotidian for the inhabitants of this environment” (abba and onyemachi (2020, p.10). the research problem in this study is the minimal attention the available scholarship on bassey's poetry offered to the exploration of aesthetic imagination and social meaning construed through the formal structure of the poem, realised through stanzas, and the linguistic configuration such as deixis, adjectives, personal pronoun, and metaphorical schemas. this is the gab this study bridges. the study notes that despite the advancement in the study of aesthetic designs and the formal structure of a poem evident in the works of roman jakobson, viktor schlovsky, and i. a richard, there is a decline in the textual analysis of poetry and its social meaning in contemporary times. the present efforts in literary scholarship tilt to the analysis of the novel as a text form. one among several excuses given is the opaque nature of poetry and the complexity of its analysis. this paper stresses that such worry, while legitimate can be resolved through engaging and subjecting the criticism of poetry to the test of new, eclectic theoretical models and analysis. methodology the methodology deployed in this paper is within a qualitative, descriptive and analytic approach with insights from a combination of functional linguistics and postcolonial ecocriticism. functional linguistics is pivotal in journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` okwudiri anasiudu 152 accounting for the correlation between text and its social meaning. it was pioneered by halliday (1978) who underscores the social dimension of language as social semiotics. the functional model has been expanded by fowler (1981, 1989) to show how literary texts such as novels engage language to communicate social meaning. the departure this paper makes from the fowlers application of the functional model is that it deploys this model in the analysis of poetry. this is to underscore, how the structure of a universe of how a work of literature (poetry) is homologous to the society which it acts as a mediator (anozie, 2010, p. 596). this is focal because embedded in text structures are social ideologies and meanings of which poetry, is not exempted. thus, in this paper, the analysis will demonstrate how the poem as a text type or form, its structure, and language illuminate social meaning. this study will demonstrate how formal elements such as stanza, linguistics structure serve to project the environmentalism of the poor in the niger delta which is a major issue raised by nixon (2011) in his postcolonial ecocriticism. the postcolonial ecocriticism of nixon (2011) focuses on the environmental impact of human activities like oil exploration in places like the niger delta region. the impact manifests in terms of “massive pollution and the degradation of farmlands, rivers, and waterways (udumukwu, 2019, p. 23). nixon (2011) describes such impact as a slow type of violence because of the fatal or detrimental changes on ecology which such human activities engender and the protracted manner of its manifestation (p.2). postcolonial ecocriticism and functional linguistics are two different conceptual models, however, this study synergized these two concepts? the reason is that, while the postcolonial ecocriticism of nixon lacks the linguistic capability to explain how language could explicate the thematic concerns it explores, functional linguistics provides such resources. results and discussion aesthetic imagination and organic structure in we though it was oil but it was blood we thought it was oil but it was blood is a lachrymal dithyramb of thirty-six poems contained in one collection chronicling the dilemma of the niger delta region at a crossroad: between economic exclusion from its oil wealth as a minority in the nigerian state and the environmental disaster which oil exploring activities portend for the region. worthy of note is that the twin evil of economic exclusion and eco-degradation are some of the reasons for violent activism in the region. the poem is structurally divided into six parts. every poem in the collection is thematically related with a thematic run-online which continues the thought process which begins from one poem to continue in another poem in the collection. the tone and prevalent atmosphere which pervade each of the poems are projected through the linguistics structures and the poet’s choice of words. the organic structure of the poem as a text type is punctuated by choruses. while some of the poems like “give back” and “we thought it was oil [ …]” are laced with metaphors such as gloom, and doom to "give voice to the bitter songs/placed in [the] palate" (bassey, 2002, p. 60) of the people of the niger delta. but the "bitter song" comes after, a moment of rejoicing as we see in the opening poem "we thought it was oil [ …]". the persona expresses joy over the many good prospects oil wells and exploration carries with it. this is what evoked the sense of rejoicing: the other day we danced in the street joy in our heart we thought we were free (bassey, 2002, p. 13) we need to mark the use of person deixis in the poem, represented by the first person pronoun “we” in a plural sense. such pronouns are imbued with the agentive role of an journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 153 existential subject, and it speaks of a collective, or a group voice, and the experiencers of a phenomenon. this is crucial because such linguistic items or deixis imbricate the poem with meaning beyond their grammatical context and functions by pointing to a social meaning or idea beyond the linguistic context (see fowler 1981, p.188). for instance, the lines shown below which is an excerpt from, “we thought it was oil […]” show the formal arrangement of the poem and the ethnolinguistic construct reflected in the poem. we thought it was oil but it was blood [. . .]. dried tear bags polluted streams things are real when found in dreams we see their shells behind military shields evil, horrible, gallows called oilrigs drilling our souls we thought it was oil but it was blood [. . .]. they may kill all but the blood will speak they may gain all but the soil will rise we may die and yet stay alive placed on the slab slaughtered by the day we are the living long sacrificed we thought it was oil but it was blood [. . .] (bassey, 2002, p. 66) an alert finger should be placed on the reoccurring chorus, “we thought it was oil /but it was blood [. . .]” from the excerpt above which serves as a response to the antecedent poem while the chorus serves as a precedent. the chorus has traces of the oral repertoire of the african, particularly a call and response feature of the niger delta folksong. aghoghovwia (2014) also reiterates this formal organic quality of bassey’s poem stating that: the poem is modeled on a call-andresponse motif of folksongs associated with most indigenous communities in the niger delta. bassey bears witness to a history of oil-related crises in the niger delta and uncovers how big oil in cahoots with the nigerian state continues to deploy military tactics to suppress any form of people's resistance. the poet associates oil with the image of blood to project a narrative of socio-environmental destruction. he deploys concrete images of filth, violence, war, and death, in the form of "blood," "gallows," "black holes," "slaughtered on the slab," "bright red pools," to give graphic expression to how the oil encounter in the niger delta, in all its manifestations, has inflicted violence and destruction on the environment and brought untold hardship to the people. (p. 66) another important organic structure the poem draws attention to is the temporal deictic reference evident in the noun phrase, "the other day" in the poem, “we thought it was oil […]” which expresses the spatiotemporality of an event, even though the exactitude of such reference is not stated. the other day we danced in the street joy in our heart we thought we were free (bassey, 2002, p. 13) deictics refer to the quality of a linguistic structure which enables it to point to a place, indicate time and person. in the context of the poem, deictics refer to the poet's choice of a word that points to the semantic universe in the poem, the time of the events within this universe and the persons or agents involved in the event in relation to a context (fowler, 1971, p. 61). deictics is evident in bassey’s deployment of the adverbial group such as, “other day” which points to a day before the present moment or time of conversation. this is a time in the past. importantly, what occurred within this time past is relevant in the present moment within the world of the poem. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` okwudiri anasiudu 154 bassey also engages metaphors of movements in his linguistic construction of the aesthetic imagination in the poem’s organic form. this is captured in the word “dance”. “dance”, has a connotative meaning even though it is a material process. the word “dance”, as used within the linguistic structure of the poem, the lexico-semantic function of “dance” speaks of an action evoking excitement, carried out by the people within a time reference known as “the other day”, for the people “danced” and “joy” welled up in their heart. in the linguistic context of our interrogation, we can situate this act or dancing and the phenomenon of joy that it carries with it, such as a mental state necessitated by the presence of such icons of modernity such as oil flow stations, oil refinery, and the promises of petrol dollars among others. but this dancing is short-lived as captured in “we thought it was oil […]”,: looking up, far from the crowd we beheld guns red-hot guns (bassey, 2002, p. 13) it is worthy of mention that poetry like every genre of literature offers its meaning through double articulation. this is the allegorization of reality through symbolic representation where the meaning of a lexical item transcends its denotation to include other metaphorical suggestions. understanding this will enable us to map a connection between bassey's aesthetics and his social commitment to the niger delta region and poetry's medium of communication which is figurative. for instance, the contextual usage of linguistic structures like “red-hot”, and “gun” as their referential meanings transcend the surface realization they depict. what this suggests is that the possible meanings a reader may infer from the rhetorical designs deployed by bassey in the poem’s organic structure is different from the denotative sense of the same word or language used in everyday discourse. this is what is implied by the language of literature being different from everyday language (fowler 1989, p.13), hence the need for disambiguation. the lexico-semanticity of “guns” suggest violence and forceful coercion. these guns are “red-hot”, a descriptive term suggesting or foregrounding danger. we arrive at this semantic mapping through the indexical function of danger associated with the colour red. and beyond that, thus, the red-hot gun semioticized as a tool for repression and securing forced obedience. the niger delta region in nigeria is the focal setting the poem portrays. the region is depicted as an eco-space where small arms proliferation is common as captured in the lexical item "the guns". the phrasal group “the guns” also speak of military might or power. the specificity which the definite article confers on "guns" suggests not just any type of gun but “the guns”. this alludes to the atrocities and instigation of an atmosphere of danger created by the nigerian government through its military arm deployed to terrorize the people of the niger delta region. a historical example of the deployment of “the guns” which evokes traumatic memory to the niger delta people is the odi massacre (november 20, 1999) during the era of olusegun obasanjo as the civilian president of nigeria. apart from the odi massacre which is one of the possible allusions we can draw from the poem through its use of the phrasal structure “the guns”, we thought it was oil… also speaks of other forms of repression the niger delta region is subjected to which includes ecological repression, human repression, economic repression and psychological repression. albeit, the minority people of the region are undeterred and resolute in their demand for equity and justice as they are willing to pay the ultimate pricethat is death -for their land (gomba, 2016). the social reality in the niger delta as portrayed in the poem foregrounds "biopower" the systems and technologies put in place by the government of a place to subjugate the people through instruments of coercion such as the gun (see foucault et al., 1997, 256). what bassey achieves by his foregrounding of biopower is that he amplifies the functions of poetry not just as art for journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 155 aestheticism, but also as a tool that could be deployed for social activism. this is further demonstrated through the aesthetics of violence in the lines, "who will be slain the next day?" and, "first it was the ogonis/today it is the ijaws" (bassey, "we thought it was oil[ …]", 2002, p.14). bassey further engages descriptive adjectives to capture the drilling instrument used by the oil extractive industry as evident in "we thought it was oil […]", in the line "evil, horrible, gallows called oilrigs" (bassey, 2002, p. 14). such adjectives are deployed to portray the oil exploration activities as not being compatible with the environment and also as a source of violence or harm to ecology. the long term effect is the damage which such activity causes to the sky as we see in the line "… a scrambled sky/ a million black holes/ a burnt sky" (bassey "we thought it was oil […]" 2002, p.14). bassey portrayal of the process of oil exploration is synonymous with puncturing the earth such that the earth bleeds. this also accentuates the injury done to the sky during drilling processes. this drilling activity in search of crude oil creates atrophy and ecological death as captured in the poem “when the earth bleeds”, in the line, “oil makes life stop” (bassey, 2002, p.16). this is because it has the potential of making the earth sick and eliminating all life forms through: a thousand explosions in the belly of the earth bleeding rigs, bursting pipes this oil flows from the earth’s sickbed (bassey, 2002, p.16) of particular mention in the poem is the nature of damage to the air quality in ogoniland such that humans cannot even breathe, as we see in the poem, “when the earth bleeds” in the line "but in ogoni land, we can't even breathe" (bassey, 2002, p. 16). we see this also in the poem, "gas flares", where the earth is depicted as being gassed, and the gas goes up in an explosion, igniting flames, "the earth gassed/ now the sky is ablaze/ now the sea is ablaze/popping/ a million explosions/ a shower of soot (bassey, 2002, p. 48). what gets the sky ablaze is the gas flaring which reduces oxygen quality in the atmosphere. the poem "did you?" also captures this reality as evident in the oil processing activity of the south african oil company engen petronas. these waves … this breeze sucked into your lungs from whence cometh they? are you the breath of life? or the wheeze of death from the deadly oven of engen petronas? (bassey, 2002, p.17) the persona in the poem, “did you?” raises pertinent concern on the effect of bad air on the human lungs. this scenario by semantic analogy also speaks to the present ecological crises prevalent in port harcourt, called soot, due to illegal refineries in port harcourt known as “crude oil bunkering”. such illegal bunkering is captured in the poem “climatic climax” as “men murdering the weather” (bassey, 2002, p.19). bassey also offers a remedial strategy synonymous with what iheka (2018) calls strategic anthropomorphism-ways human’s intentional actions which ensue a sustainable ecology or environmental remediation (p. 14). this is a form of proximity aesthetics that engenders strategic ecological management. we see it in the poem "when the earth bleeds" do we just sit? wail and mope? let’s unite with our fists let’s bandage the earth (bassey, 2002, p. 17) from the poem above, the clausal group, “let’s bandage the earth” in the poem suggests the need for ecological remediation. this is accentuated by the lexical item, “bandage”, a covering for injury or wound to protect the wound. in the context of the poem, this wound is inflicted upon the earth by human activities such as oil exploration. significantly, the process of bandaging the earth is a call to responsibility; instead of sitting and wailing in complain over the sad state of nature in the niger delta. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` okwudiri anasiudu 156 the consequence of human complacence is that nature fights back. in the poem "oceanic march" we see instances of nature or the ecology fighting back. also, the poem, "this rising tide" (bassey, 2002, p. 20), captures nature rising in resistance against the dumping of refuse on water bodies, against the gas flaring which is described as " the flares from the nozzles of evil" (bassey, 2002, p. 20). the dumping of refuse, and industrial waste, cause the ocean to scream in lamentation "can't i refuse/the poison" (bassey, 2002, p. 20). the deployment of the first-person pronoun, i, imbues and animates nature with a voice of its own. this foregrounds the place of nature in human relations with the ecology, where the ecology is imbued with anthropomorphism which allows it to speak up against its marginal status as a subaltern demanding for its voice to be heard. another significant insight we can draw from the structure of the poem is how it foregrounds a thematic back and forth movement. in the structural sequences of the poems this back and forth motion indicates the present moment and the past…for instance the structure "this rising tide" speaks of the present phenomenon, but importantly, it also points to an event in the past that initiated it. this also foregrounds causality, that is, causes and effect. for instance, the present ecological, political and social crisis captured in the poem points to a level of neglect by both the government, the international oil exploration companies, and the niger delta people. as a reader makes a foray into the narrative paths of the poetry collection, the reader is confronted by the poem "in united niger delta oil co.", which pictures the earth, and the oil extracting processes on the earth as being in a relation, similar to that of the tapster and the palm. the analogy is focal as it underscores the oil extracting processes in the niger delta as killing the earth just as " the tapster tapped the palms to death" (bassey, 2002, p. 23). the death here signifies the violence perpetrated on the niger delta ecology through oil spillage. this is adumbrated in the line "the butterfly points accusing antennas at the ponds of their spills" (bassey, 2002, p. 23), and "yesterday we saw a mountain of butterfly dead" (bassey, 2002, p. 24). the economic benefits of butterflies as plant pollinating agents cannot be overemphasized, albeit, in such conditions of oil spills, such members of the ecological community cannot survive, hence their death. and we should see their death in terms of signaling crop failure and food scarcity. bassey takes his reader further into a dystopic state of the ecology engendered by human activity as demonstrated in, “we have one earth”. this is also demonstrated in “we have one earth” where the persona scream, "i scream for a drop of water a drop of water/an unpolluted air, a leaf for my pate a task for my biceps" (bassey, 2002, p. 25). the scream for a drop of water does not necessarily imply the absence of water, what it also possibly suggests that the available water(s) is/are polluted, they are deeply contaminated for drinking, hence the contradiction in terms manifesting as the desire for even a cup of water, in a region surrounded by water. it also speaks of the state of the air, since the water cycle has evaporation as part of its processes. and in a cautionary remark, humanity is warned to desist from those actions furthering the destruction of nature, because if the chattering birds must not run out of breath men must give nature a break and for a moment cease their jabber to allow the weaver bird chatter songs of life long postponed (bassey, 2002, p. 26) in the foregoing, there is a tone of urgency and call for ecological consciousness towards deep and social ecology. this consciousness should translate into a responsible ecological relationship with nature. in the poem “we have one earth”, man is cautioned against the culture of denial, disconnect, and indifference towards nature which has led to, “departed mahoganies long snatched” (bassey 2002, p.25). “we have one earth” also puts a clarion call for real commitment away from rhetorics towards tackling the deplorable state of nature, "we must be ready to face/taking a stand to keep apace/… we have one earth; we are all in one place! (bassey 2002, p. 25). this journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 157 thus infuses a question of ethics into the debate and discourse on ecology and human relation, since human activities such as consumption constitute the main source of ecological degradation. the poem “we have one earth” further captures the long-term consequence of human neglect on the ecology, due to the unabated sourcing of human food and material from an already depleted earth reserve. in a moment of global debates we overran the questions of con-sumption on the scrawny mugs of po-ver-tea …i scream for a drop of water a drop of water an unpolluted air. a leaf for my pate a task for my biceps answers don’t come for voices long dead (bassey, 2002, p. 25) apart from the subtle apocalyptic vision the poems offer, they also point to the origin of the crisis which is the geologic transformation in the niger delta engendered by human despoliation. social meaning in we thought it was oil but it was blood: towards an environmental poetics the aesthetics of ecological despoliation of the niger delta portrayed in we thought it was oil foregrounds several social meanings and real-life experiences of the region. it also spurs critical debates and robust conversations on the full impact of oil exploration and when it began as evident in an observation below: it would be misleading to conclude that the environmental problems caused by oil started in 1956. according to the united nations environment programme (unep), “oil exploration activities started to have an impact on the niger delta vegetation even before a well was drilled or oil produced, and the footprint left by seismic surveys over 50 years can still be seen . . . seismic lines may make the interior of some wetland areas more accessible, potentially leading to further degradation. (iheka, 2018, p. 90) we thought it was oil also indicts the perpetrators of environmental violence on the niger delta which include: the nigerian government and the multinational oil corporations operating in the niger delta with oil mining licences (oml) in collaboration with the nigeria government. this is succinctly captured in one of the poems “the united niger delta oil co.”, for “[…] so it was that shell, exxon-mobil, texaco, nnpc elf, chevron, agip, statoil, and similar entities agreed…shared and divided the land and the sea” ( bassey, 2002, p. 22) and “rejoicing with the junta with the spoils of war” (p.24). the “junta” speaks of the nigerian military, the spoils of war speak of the petrodollars from the crude oil sales, got through the despoliation of both people and land in the niger delta. importantly, the foregoing does not exonerate the niger delta militants, oil bunkers and the passive actions of the niger delta people through the careless disposal of waste, plastic containers. the foregoing situation is aggravated as the nigerian government’s failure to engender an atmosphere of trust which would have helped facilitate the process of ethical engagement with the host communities where the oil wells are domiciled in the niger delta. this is because the previous dealings of the nigerian government with the niger delta people particular on the ogoni clean-up was not truly honest. the killing of ken saro-wiwa is a testament to this fact. bassey in his poetic imagination depicts the nigerian government using shape “metaphor” a “banana” as we can see in the line “indeed those who occupy/the stately houses of power/ are truly like bananas/how many bananas are straight” (bassey 2002, p. 64). those who occupy the “stately houses” through military might also unleash biopower and violence on the niger delta host communities whenever the people of the host communities make demands through the instrument of protest over the negligence wrought on their community, and the alienation of the people from the wealth from their region by making demand for an allinclusive government and resource control. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` okwudiri anasiudu 158 bassey's portrayal of the prolonged despoliation of the ecology through oil extraction and bunkering activities in the niger delta crystalize as air pollution. bassey (2002) describes this pollution as, "hellish flares [which] melt gasping throats" (p. 24) caused by the explosion in oil facilities. for example: one such incident in 2006" observed by "the unep team . . .during aerial reconnaissance of ogoniland. a massive fire was raging at the yorla 13 oil well and continued burning for over a month. such fire causes damage to the vegetation immediately around the well site and can produce partly burned hydrocarbons that may be carried for considerable distances before falling on farmland or housing. (iheka, 2018, p.112) two important metaphors which foreground the social meaning we can draw from the title of the poem are the lexical items: "oil" and "blood". they appear as reoccurring semiology. this is what gomba (2016) refers to as the oil motif in the niger delta discourse. the metaphor of oil serves as a semantic schema and icon which points to the violence wrought on the niger delta region. in a denotative sense, "oil" speaks of crude oil, a product that constitutes the mainstay of the nigerian economy and the purpose of the business of the extractive industries in that region. connotatively, it also speaks of the wealth it brings, and the petro-politics of international oil corporations (the big oil). the lexical item “blood" is deployed as a metaphor for life, of the experiences of the individuals who inhabit the cosmic universe fabricated in bassey’s aesthetic imagination. the metaphorical schema of the word "blood", construes has by semantic extension, ordinates such as nonhuman lives, and the abiotic components that support such lives on earth, such as air, water, land, vegetation. hence, in this paper, bassey’s social activism conveyed in the poem is read as allencompassing. it serves as an outcry to the violence on human lives and as an aesthetic commitment towards consciousness-raising on the violence perpetrated on all non-human forms of ecological life as victims. the violence on human life is an indirect consequence of ecological damage as a result of oil prospecting, exploration, refining, and neglect. the economy of the region depends on nature's providence of crude oil, fish, wood, and many more. importantly, billions of dollars have accrued from crude oil revenue, yet the environment is left unattended. hence, the damage due to neglect of the region engendered environmentalism of the poor, and a heinous form of poverty as shown below what could and should have been for the niger delta’s oil minorities the beginnings of great promise augured instead a poisonous future. who could have dreamed in 1958 that four decades and $600 billion of oil revenues later, some 90 million nigerians would be surviving on less than a dollar a day? and that nigeria would rank below haiti and congo on the united nations human development index, a composite gauge of life expectancy, education, and income? even those figures don’t capture the plight of the ogoni and the delta’s forty other oil micro-minorities: their environment has become so despoiled that supplementing that daily dollar with untainted crops and fish has become untenable. (nixon, 2011, p. 106) two forms of social activism have been deployed in the niger delta as a way of response, beginning from okara till the emergence of the niger delta region. there is violent militancy and literary activism. both violent and literary activism took a new turn after the arrest of ken saro-wiwa by the federal government of nigeria and the plight of the people of the niger delta region gained international notoriety. unfortunately, sarowiwa was hanged to death, with nine other ogoni in 1995. from that moment, discourse on the niger delta assumed an intellectual and radical twist with the kaiama declaration while ogoniland becomes a flashpoint for the discussions. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 159 the reasons for activism in the niger delta can be summarized in three points (1) economic deprivation, (2) ecological despoliation and (3) political alienation of the niger delta geopolitical space. the murder by hanging of ken saro-wiwa aggravated the situation and ushered in another phase of tension, arrest of nnimmo bassey and others as evident below: human rights violations related to oil exploration and production in the niger delta continued after 1995. internationally known environmental activists such as nnimmo bassey and isaak osuoka were arrested. many people have been killed. major multinational oil companies, not only shell but also chevron, agip and elf, are involved in those violations because they sometimes ask for the intervention of the police and the military. (martinezalier, 2002, p. 103) interestingly, critical appraisal of the situation in the niger delta focuses on the violence in the region. yet, there is a need to look beyond the violence and search for the cause underneath it. for if the violence is the painting, there must indeed be a canvass. in this paper, we see this canvass as the inharmonious and confused type of modernity infused upon the people. this modernity disconnects the people from their environmental resources and can be traced to the industrial revolution in 18th century europe which balkanised the region and incorporated it into nigeria. while this modernity occasioned the replacement of slave human labour with machines in the niger delta and moved the economy from palm oil to crude oil, it thrives on the idea of predatory capitalism. our position in this essay is not to undermine or take for granted the foreign direct investment in the region or discourage sincere programmes for economic growth such as the nlng projects in bonny in rivers state but to ask real questions which will help this region move beyond self-destruction. another social meaning construed in bassey's we thought it was oil… is the shared connection between the oil-related ecological despoliation in the niger delta region with the oil explosion into the san jacinto river in 1994 captured in the poem, "polluted throats". the oil pipeline which got busted causing the explosion belonged to colonial pipeline company. the explosion poured burning oil into the san jacinto river in texas, united states of america. according to a correspondent dittrick (1994): the fumes and smoke from the burning was destructive "sending at least 50 people to a hospital with respiratory problems caused by breathing the fumes." (n.p). the poem “polluted throats” recounts this historical experience and describes the fumes generated from the burning fuel in metaphorical terms such as “pregnant clouds/furious, howling like dogs/breaks into thunderous detonations” (bassey, 2002). by semantic extension, the experiences of the niger delta people echo the sad and avoidable ecological realities in other regions of the world, bhopal in india, and the plight of the waoroani people of ecuador to protect their land and its ecosystem from oil exploration activities. according to aanderson (2019), the waorani people won a historic ruling in ecuadorian court protecting half a million acres of their territory in the amazon from being earmarked for oil drilling. at the centre of bassey's eco-activism is the need to place nature on the agenda of human consciousness. this is achieved through contrast and allusion as seen in the poem "nija project" a pictorial depiction of environmental pollution to the air in the niger delta and in "your laughter" and "winamorena" where he extolled the landscape of important places, such as caracas in venezuela and taylor creek, stub creek, manam, nun, qua iboe, winamorena. these sites share a commonality in terms of the activities of oil extracting industries and ecological despoliation. from the poem, “nija project” the poetic vision of bassey begins to shift to political issues bordering nigeria, even though the issue of politics is reflected in “glass blocks and bricks”; “lion-hearted” a poem written in honour of gavin williams, and https://www.upi.com/archives/1994/10/20/flames-engulf-flooded-texas%20river/8372782625600/ journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` okwudiri anasiudu 160 “excuse me”. “the poem “remember wesley” focuses on religion, particularly the christian faith. it is from “tidbinbila” poems (or do green grins) that the ecological concerns in the collection resurfaced again. the poem “shuffle” continues the cry for ecological awareness as it points to the challenges of climate change. rampaging waves lap up water-locked land and watery shores polar ice melt down polar waves knocking in atlantis and those outside noah’s ark…and i learn the meaning of climate change (bassey, 2002, p.45) the poem, “oil is thicker?” engages connotations to speak of the binaries between oil and blood. it calls out to the perpetrators of violence in the region, and the position concerning the values they placed on the two commodities, oil and water: blood is thicker than water to you who sucks my hopes is oil thicker than blood? (bassey,2002, p. 47) of particular interest to us is the linguistic structure, "to you who sucks my hope". this structure shows the interconnectedness in ecological order and sustainability. as the environment and ecosystem are damaged…the capacity of the earth to sustain life diminishes. this is a deliberate act, engendered by human consumption of earth resources which impoverishes the earth. in this instance, human extraction of fossil fuel such as oil is what is at stake and this may engender ecological crises in the long run with great damage to the vegetation. this is what is implied in the poem “zoungbodji” as “our ecological debt" (bassey 2002, p. 59). some of the outcomes include the destruction of aquatic life where whales have become endangered species because of the dumping of waste product generated by humans into oceans as demonstrated in another line in “zoungbodji” the line “a peep into the dark bowels of the galleys &/weed entangles bellies of the whale” (bassey 2002, p. 59). the poem, "without the sun" in the collection is an ode to nature and the symbiotic relationship, multispecies interconnectedness which should guide ecological relations instead of privileging humans alone. its shows the relationship between, sun/moon, woman/man, sea/fish, land/lives (bassey, 2002, p. 61). this should engender harmony. from section six of the poetry collection, the focus centres on non-oil ecological pollutants like cigarette smoking which is described as "a drag of life) (bassey, 2002, p. 68), in "a dream of tycoons", producers of such substance are construed using descriptive adjectives like "these merchants of death" (bassey, 2002, p. 69), and despite the warning that "tobacco is dangerous to your health/tobacco can kill" in the poem "zoungbodji", (bassey, 2002, p. 70) humans indulge in it. the lines show suggest that while tobacco has great health implications on man, tobacco also poses a threat to the atmosphere and climate in the long run. in the poem "hot air", a cigarette is depicted as "rocket launchers/ splinter grenades" (bassey, 2002, p. 71). nnimmo bassey and social activism nnimmo bassey is a nigerian. he was born on the 11th of june 1958. he is a human rights activist. he served on the board of directors of nigeria's civil liberties organization. in 1993, he co-founded a nigerian (non-governmental organization) ngo known as environmental rights action (friends of the earth nigeria) through which he advocates, mobilizes, educates and organizes environmental discussions and awareness campaigns. one of the enduring values of bassey's poetry is its capacity to serve as a tool for social activism. aghoghovwia (2014) observes that such “activism focuses on social and environmental justice about oil extraction, and exposes the monumental damage done to local communities" (p.61). specifically addressing the niger delta situation (gomba, 2016, p. 141). bassey's social activism also deals with what is described as the fate of humans who journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 1 – april 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 161 depends on the damaged ecology (see egya, 2012). and poetry only serves as one of the tools for this purpose. even as the director, environmental rights action (era) and friends of the earth, nigeria, nnimmo bassey is worried about the spate of corruption which makes it difficult for the nigerian government to say anything about the situation. in an interview, bassey notes that […]the oil industry in nigeria is deeply immersed in corruption. the oil industry and those in power are tied together in what i will like to term unholy wedlock. corruption cuts both ways and because the corruption is coming from both sides when the oil companies commit murder, our government can hardly say anything about it. ( ivwurie,2004) the irony of the situation in the aesthetic imagination portrayed in the poem is that while communities are very glad to welcome the presence of modern infrastructures which should signal economic progress, instead, ecological violence becomes the order of the day. the outcome is the dance of freedom, which herald the discovery of oil as captured in the poem, we thought we it was oil, in the lines, "the other day/we danced in the street/joy in our hearts/ we thoughts we were free" (bassey 2002, p. 13) is short-lived. the prosperity which the discovery of oil should bring becomes a spiral of wanton destruction of the environment in that region manifesting as pollution of farmlands, rivers and waterways (udumukwu 2019, p. 23). the situation of the niger delta region which bassey's poem captures places the region on the map as a priority centre. such societies are characterized by human-induced environmental crises which is "the most pressing contemporary issue of all time" (glotfelty, 1996, p. xv). the environmental condition in the niger delta has great implications for the world at large since it is a centre for crude oil energy source and fossil "energy demand are the primary forces causing large quantities of harmful pollutants and greenhouse gases to be emitted into the atmosphere, resulting in serious human health and environmental consequences (molina, 2010, xi). sadly, "… innumerable talks, conferences and seminars seem to have failed abysmally to proffer hope for environmental sustainability in the near future" (sunday et. al, 2013, p. 67). conclusion this study has examined the aesthetic imagination and the social meaning in nnimmo bassey’s poetry we thought it was oil but it was blood. the study calls attention to the paucity of research on the organic form of the poem, realised through stanzas, structures, and the linguistic configuration such as deixis, metaphorical schemas. the analysis shows that place deixis and metaphors are important linguistic designs bassey deploys in construing his aesthetic imagination, particularly the social realities of the niger delta region such as the contentious issue of environmental justice, ecological despoliation, minority rights, and agitation whenever resource control is mentioned. acknowledgments i give credit to professor onyemaechi udumukwu whose lectures on african poetry inspired this study; and obari gomba (phd), the associate dean of the faculty of humanities, in the university of port harcourt for his mentorship on poetic analysis and insight into the discourse on the niger delta poetry. references aanderson, m. (2019). waorani people win landmark legal victory against ecuadorian government”. in amazon frontlines. retrieved from https://www.leonardodicaprio.org/waor ani-people-win-landmark-legalvictoryagainst-ecuadorian-government/, april 30. abba, a. a., & onyemachi, n. d. (2020). weeping in the face of fortune: ecohttps://www.leonardodicaprio.org/waorani-people-win-landmark-legal-%09victoryhttps://www.leonardodicaprio.org/waorani-people-win-landmark-legal-%09victoryjournal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) `` okwudiri anasiudu 162 alienation in the niger-delta ecopoetics. humanities, 9(3), 54. anozie, s. (2010). genetic structuralism as a critical technique (notes toward a sociological theory of the african novel). in tejumola olaniyan and ato quayson (eds) african literature is an anthology of criticism and theory. blackwell publishing. aghoghovwia, p. 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(2013). environmental challenges and ecoaesthetics in nigeria’s niger delta. in t.j demos (ed.), third text 120 critical perspectives on contemporary art and culture vol.27, issue 1., (pp. 65-75), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528822. 2013.753194 https://www.upi.com/archives/1994/10/20/flames-engulf%20flooded-texas-river/8372782625600/ https://www.upi.com/archives/1994/10/20/flames-engulf%20flooded-texas-river/8372782625600/ https://www.upi.com/archives/1994/10/20/flames-engulf%20flooded-texas-river/8372782625600/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528822.%202013.753194 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528822.%202013.753194 cover luar phenomena vol 16 no. 2 vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 165 the impression of rhetorical devices in wendy’s taglines apryanti madah munthe & ria lestari amadahmunthe@gmail.com & rialst@usd.ac.id english letters department, sanata dharma university abstract advertisements are able to attract and capture audiences’ attentions by means of words, phrases, or sentences as seen in wendy’s taglines. this paper attempts ate finding out kinds of rhetorical devices used in the taglines and how the taglines impress the audiences’ attentions. there were 39 taglines used by wendy’s since 1969. the findings show there are 19 kinds of rhetorical devices in the taglines: aphaeresis, parallelism, asyndeton, alliteration, assonance, anaphora, epanalepsis, homoioteleuton, rhyme, free verbal repetition, metaphor, hyperbole, litotes, onomatopoeia, rhetorical question, periphrasis, anthimeria, polysemy, and pun. from the audiences’ response, assonance is the most persuasive rhetorical device in the taglines. keywords: taglines, rhetorical devices, wendy’s introduction nowadays, people are familiar with the existence of advertisements. according to goddard (1998: 16), an advertisement is a text functioned to capture people’s attention and make people turn to the advertisement itself. an advertisement includes taglines. generally, taglines are means to capture the audiences’ attentions. arens (2006: 417) states that a good tagline provokes audiences’ attentions and shows the meaning or message. taglines deal with words, phrases, or sentences. to put it differently, it means wordplay. thus, it is essential for advertisers to use several linguistic features, such as rhetorical devices. nowadays, globalization has brought a lot of influences into indonesia. the most visible one is fast-food. there are many fastfood brands found everywhere. some fastfood brands use writings to attract the audiences, one of which is wendy’s. wendy’s is a fast-food brand which is built in 1969 by dave thomas. wendy’s grows fast and now it is spread all over the world. wendy’s creates taglines, such as “quality is our recipe” and “juicy hamburgers and lots of napkins”. indeed, understanding advertisements is not easy. linguistics can be the means to analyze the taglines. linguistics as the study of language has many branches, such as morphology and pragmatics. to apprehend the advertisements, the linguistic theory applied is stylistics.afterward, stylistics concerns with the style of language. crystal (2008: 460) mentions that stylistics is a branch of linguistics which studies the features of situationally distinctive uses (varieties) of language, and tries to establish principles capable of accounting for the particular choices made by individual and social groups in their use of language. stylistics is applied to reveal the style of words, clauses, or sentences within the advertisements. in stylistics, there are rhetorical devices, for example george h. w. bush’s campaign slogan “don’t worry, be happy”. in the slogan, there is a repetition of the sound /i/ at the end of the phrases which is rhyme. apryanti madah munthe & ria lestari 166 there are some similar studies conducted by previous researchers. the first related study is taken from dubovičienė and skorupa’s (2014). in the journal, they define and explain the meaning of advertising slogan and its characteristics. they also identify and analyze some stylistic features used within english advertising slogans of the world’s famous brands. afterward, they evaluate the frequency of the use of the stylistic features in slogans and identify the most common stylistic devices used in english advertising slogans. they take printed advertising as the object of the study which is observed from the linguistic perspective. they reach several findings. firstly, they define the advertising slogan as a short catchy phrase related to a specific brand defines. it presents and helps the customers remember the key concepts of a brand or advertising campaign. moreover, they also find out that most of the advertising slogans contain pun (figurative languages), alliteration (sound techniques), and repetition (rhetorical devices). stylistics analyzing an advertisement can be seen analyzing an advertisement can be seen through linguistic approaches. linguistics is the study of language which has many branches. one of the linguistic approaches is stylistics. to apprehend the advertisements, the linguistic theory applied is stylistics. stylistics concerns with the style of language. crystal (2008: 460) mentions that stylistics is a branch of linguistics which studies the features of situationally distinctive uses (varieties) of language, and tries to establish principles capable of accounting for the particular choices made by individual and social groups in their use of language. from the stylistic perspective, the theory used is rhetorical devices.today, people easily find an advertisement around them. however, they are not aware that the advertisement uses rhetorical devices. the theory adopted from leech (1969: 75) states that rhetorical devices are divided in two sections, namely “schemes” and “tropes”. according to leech and corbett, in priantini’s undergraduate thesis (2015), those terms, “schemes” and “tropes”, are further subdivided. the “schemes” are subdivided into 30 kinds, while the “tropes” are into 14 kinds. schemes according to leech, scheme is “the foregrounded repetition of expression” (1969: 74). solely, it means that “scheme” concerns with the expression. they are prosthesis, epenthesis, proparalepsis, aphaeresis, syncope, apocope, metathesis, antisthecon, parallelism, antithesis, anastrophe, parenthesis, apposition, ellipsis, asyndeton, polysyndeton, alliteration, assonance, anaphora, epistrophe, epanalepsis, anadiplosis, climax, antimetabole, polyptoton, symploce, homoioteleuton, chime, rhyme, and free verbal repetition. from the thirty kinds of schemes, there are 10 kinds used in wendy’s taglines. tropes subsequently, leech defines trope is “foregrounded irregularities of content” (1969: 74). simply, it implies that “tropes” is more to the content within the texts. furthermore, it is divided into 14 kinds.they are irony, metaphor and simile, hyperbole, litotes, onomatopoeia, oxymoron, rhetorical question, personification, periphrasis, anthimeria, synecdoche, metonym, homonym and polysemy, and pun. however, in wendy’s taglines, there are 9 kinds of tropes used, as follows. advertisement another theory is the theory of advertisement since wendy’s taglines are included in the advertisement section. all taglines used for commercial reasons are included in advertising. taglines are also known as slogan. slogan is “a phrase designed to be memorable, attaching to a product or service during a particular advertising campaign” (goddard, 1998: 127). because of using words, advertisers have to choose every word carefully. the advertisers will use vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 167 words which carry positive meaning or interpretation. the word chosen in the tagline give the mnemonic effect. goddard justifies that “the reader is encouraged to think that they are going to by something that is beyond the reach of the hoi polloi. it is a privileged buy” (1998: 74). methodology wendy’s has created taglines since 1969. being spread all over the world, wendy’s produces taglines in different languages, such as mexico. however, the object of the current study is the taglines which are authentically created in english. as the researcher apprehends what the linguistic element is analyzed, the approach applied is stylistics. the sentences and phrases are treated as the stylistic unit to analyze. according to verdonk (2002: 121), stylistics is “the study of style in language, i.e. the analysis of distinctive linguistic expression and the description of its purpose and effect”. the taglines are from http://www.bestmarketing degrees.org and https://en.wikipedia.org. the data are taglines which are reviewed from 1969 until the present time. to support the findings, there are 30 questionnaires distributed. the questionnaires are accessed online in https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1r9qcd8a kisv5o0rh493kg-hzecktgpyel58ffykqrxs/ formresponse. the aim of questionnaires distributed is to prove whether or not the rhetorical devices employed in the tagline affect the audiences.the appropiate respondents are people speaking english because they can capture the message. below is the table showing the categories and scale of the questionnaire. categories in the questionnaires scales categories in the total points scales very much unattractive 1 very much unattractive 1-30 unattractive 2 unattractive 31-60 rather unattractive 3 rather unattractive 61-90 rather attractive 4 rather attractive 91-120 attractive 5 attractive 121-150 very much attractive 6 very much attractive 151-180 discussion kinds of rhetorical devices aphaeresis the first rhetorical device is aphaeresis. aphaeresis is that there is a subtraction of a syllable at the beginning of a word, but the meaning still remains the same. wendy’s tagline employing the aphaeresis is tagline 2: “we fix ‘em 256 ways”. as seen in the tagline, there is a word ‘em. the subtraction in the word ‘em is the first syllable which is th. if tagline 2 is elaborated, it becomes “we fix them 256 ways”. the subtraction th in the word them often occurs due to the ease of its pronunciation. consequently, the existence and the absence of the th in tagline 2 does not affect the meaning, namely we fix them 256 ways. parallelism the next rhetorical device applied in wendy’s tagline is parallelism. parallelism is about the parallel structure. as the structural form of each tagline is analyzed, there are three of wendy’s taglines using parallelism as follows: “juicy hamburgers and lots of napkins” (tagline 4), “hot-n-juicy” (tagline 5), “the best burgers and a whole lot more” (tagline 17). firstly, the use of parallelism is to create a coherent sentence or phrase. tagline 4, 5, and 17 are combined by the same kinds of phrases, such noun phrase and adjective phrase. tagline 4 in 1978 uses parallelism. tagline 4 says “juicy hamburgers and lots of napkins”. the tagline is formed by noun phrases, which are the noun phrase juicy hamburgers and the noun phrase lots of https://en.wikipedia/ https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1r9qc apryanti madah munthe & ria lestari 168 napkins. the tagline employs the use of conjunction and. the parallel structure of the tagline is elaborated as follows. [np [np [adj juicy] [n hamburgers]] [conj and] [np [art lots of] [n napkins]]] as mentioned before, tagline 4 is formed by two noun phrases and conjunction and. the head of the first phrase is hamburgers while the second one is napkins. the first noun phrase is a noun modified by an adjective juicy while the second one is a noun modified by article lots of. [ap [ap [adj hot]] [conj n] [ap [adj juicy]]] as tagline 5 is elaborated, it connects two adjectives. they are the adjectives hot and juicy. the adjectives hot and juicy are linked by the conjunction and. the conjunction and is written by capital n as how it is pronounced. another tagline sharing the similar pattern is tagline 17. tagline 17 which is firstly published in 1989 is formed by two noun phrases. the parallel structure of the tagline is elaborated as follows. [np [np [artthe] [adj best] [n burgers]] [conj and] [np [art a] [adj whole] [n lot] [adv more]]] tagline 17 has two noun phrases. the noun phrases are the best burgers and a whole lot more. the head of the first phrase is burger while the second one is lot. both of the noun phrases are connected by the conjunction and. asyndeton another rhetorical device found in wendy’s tagline is asyndeton. asyndeton is the omission of conjunction (corbett, 1990). the asyndeton is applied in one out of 35 taglines, tagline 26: “don’t compromise. personalize” here, there are two sentences. the first sentence is don’t compromise while the second one is personalize. the verbs from each sentence have an opposite meaning. since both of the sentences carry opposite meaning, the omission is the conjunction but. subsequently, the employment of the asyndeton has a specific aim which is to create a fast rhyme. consequently, the audiences might interpret tagline 26 as i do not compromise, but i can have my order as i want. alliteration the fifth rhetorical device applied is alliteration. alliteration is about repetition of the initial consonant sound for the following word. the alliteration is obviously seen in 10 wendy’s taglines as follows. tagline 2 “we fix „em 256 ways” tagline 11 “parts is parts” tagline 14 “where‟s the beef? choose fresh, choose wendy’s” tagline 16 “the best burgers in the business” tagline 17 “the best burgers and a whole lot more” tagline 19 “the best burgers yet” tagline 30 “it‟s waaay better than fast food” tagline 31 “it‟s waaay better than fast food... it‟s wendy’s.” tagline 32 “it‟s waaaaaaaaaay delicious. it‟s wendy’s.” tagline 35 “now that‟s better for the first time” firstly, tagline 2 creates alliteration by placing the consonant /wi:/ in the word we and ways /weɪz/. as seen in tagline 11, the initial consonant sound is repeated. the sound of /p/ from the word part is repeated again in the word part. meanwhile, tagline 14 applies alliteration in the word where’s /wers/ and wendy’s /ˈwendiz/. subsequently, tagline 16, 17 and 19 use the alliteration and place in the words best /best/ and burgers /ˈbɜːɡəz /. the repetition is the sound /b/. the similar pattern also appears in tagline 30, vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 169 31, 32, and 35. however, there is a difference. the difference lays in the consonant sounds which are repeated. in due course, there is an aim for using the alliteration in the taglines. it is to make the tagline easy to remember. as it is justified by leech (1969), the use of alliteration in the advertisement is to urge the audiences remembering words in the ad easily. another purpose is to produce an organized sentence or phrase. assonance another rhetorical device from scheme is assonance. in assonance, both corbett (1990) and leech (1969) define assonance as the repetition of vowel, but it is followed by different consonants. there are 20 taglines which use assonance as follows. tagline 1 “quality is our recipe” tagline 4 “juicy hamburgers and lots of napkins” tagline 7 “wendy’s has the taste you crave” tagline 8 “ain‟t no reason to go anyplace else” tagline 9 “you‟re wendy’s kind of people” tagline 12 “it‟s the best time for... wendy’s” tagline 14 “where‟s the beef? choose fresh, choose wendy’s” tagline 15 “give a little nibble” tagline 16 “the best burgers in the business” tagline 17 “the best burgers and a whole lot more” tagline 18 “eat great, even late” tagline 19 “the best burgers yet” tagline 20 “you can eat great, even late” tagline 21 “it‟s hamburger bliss” tagline 23 “it‟s always great, even late” tagline 25 “it‟s good to be square” tagline 26 “don‟t compromise. personalize” tagline 30 “it‟s waaay better than fast food” tagline 31 “it‟s waaay better than fast food... it‟s wendy’s.” tagline 32 “it‟s waaaaaaaaaay delicious. it‟s wendy’s.” as an example, tagline 1 has a repetition of the vowel /i/. the repetition /i/ lays in the word quality /ˈkwɒləti/, is /iz/, and recipe /ˈresəpi/. tagline 15 places the assonance or the vowel /ɪ/ in the words give /ɡɪv/, little /ˈlɪt(ə)l/, and nibble /nɪb(ə)l/. other taglines create the assonance by repetiting the vowel followed different consonants. in due course, the use of assonance creates a rhyme while the tagline is pronounced. the mnemonic effect is wendy’s employs the assonance for two reasons. firstly, it overplays the words inside the taglines. besides, the employment of the assonance makes the audiences easily remember the words inside the taglines because of its rhyme (corbett, 1990). those lead the audiences to the goal of the advertisement which is to buy the product. it is known as the mnemonic effect. the mnemonic effect happens when the audiences are persuaded to buy the product by the advertisement (crystal, 2008: 321). anaphora the next rhetorical device is anaphora. anaphora is about the repetition of a word or group in the beginning of a clause. there are 3 wendy’s taglines applying the anaphora as follows: “where’s the beef? choose fresh, choose wendy’s” (tagline 14), “it’swaaay better than fast food... it’s wendy’s.” (tagline 31), and “it’s waaaaaaaaaay delicious. it’s wendy’s.” (tagline 32). the first tagline published in 1985 is tagline 14. it says “where’s the beef? choose apryanti madah munthe & ria lestari 170 fresh, choose wendy’s”. tagline 14 is formed by two sentences. as analyzed, tagline 14 repeats the similar word in the second sentence. it repeats the word choose. meanwhile, the next two taglines which are tagline 31 and 32 happen to have the same repetitions. both of tagline 31 and 32 use the same repetitions, the word it’s. according to corbett (1990), the repetitions of the words choose andit’s are used to create rhyme, strengthen the emotion carried, and emphasize the idea. thereafter, there are several reasons for applying the anaphora in the taglines. firstly, the anaphora is to create a rhyme. another purpose is to strengthen the emotion carried, for example tagline 31. it demonstrates that the fresh beef can be only found in wendy’s. besides, the anaphora can emphasize certain ideas, namely tagline 32. tagline 32 shows it is only in wendy’s whose taste is very delicious. epanalepsis epanalepsis is another rhetorical device used in wendy’s taglines. the epanalepsis is about the repetition of an initial word within a clause or sentence at the end of the clause or sentence. according to corbett, the use of the epanalepsis is to show the emotional spontaneity (1990). tagline 11 applies the epanalepsis as follows: “parts is parts” (tagline 11). tagline 11 is one out of 35 wendy’s taglines which employs the epanalepsis. tagline 11 is “parts is parts” (1983-1984). as it can be seen, tagline 11 repeats the word parts twice. according to longman active study dictionary (2010: 644), the word part means “one of the piece, areas etc. that form the whole of something”. however, the word parts refers to one of wendy’s products which is chicken nugget. the emotional spontaneity is raised by the repetition of the word parts. homoioteleuton subsequently, homoioteleuton is quite similar to rhyme. the difference is the repetition. homoioteleuton repeats the suffixes (corbett, 1990). as the taglines are analyzed, there are two taglines using homoioteleuton. they are tagline 4 and 11 as follows: “juicy hamburgers and lots of napkins” (tagline 4), “parts is parts” (tagline 11). tagline 4 says “juicy hamburgers and lots of napkins” (1978). as tagline 4 is looked over, there is the repetition of suffix {–s}. the suffix {–s} is attached in the noun phrases, namely juicy hamburgersand lots of napkins. tagline 11 also uses the repetition of suffix {– s}. tagline 11 attaches the suffix {–s} in the word part in the beginning and the word part in the end. since homoioteleuton is quite similar to rhyme, homoioteleuton makes the audiences easily memorize the taglines. it is due to the rhyming produced. rhyme afterwards, the rhetorical device employed is rhyme. rhyme is the sound at the end of a word within clauses and sentences repeated. it concerns with the spelling rather than the pronunciation (leech, 1969). rhyme is employed by 11 out of 35 taglines. tagline 1 “quality is our recipe” tagline 6 “wendy’s has the taste” tagline 7 “wendy’s has the taste you crave” tagline 8 “ain‟t no reason to go anyplace else” tagline 14 “where‟s the beef? choose fresh, choose wendy’s” tagline 15 “give a little nibble” tagline 18 “eat great, even late” tagline 20 “you can eat great, even late” tagline 21 “it‟s hamburger bliss” tagline 24 “do what tastes right” tagline 26 “don‟t compromise. personalize” vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 171 the employment of rhyme is often found in the taglines or headlines. rhyme gives an ease for the audiences remembering the words inside the ad. it obtains and attracts the audiences’ attention by producing rhyming taglines (corbett, 1990). the first tagline is tagline 1, for intance. it lays in the word quality /ˈkwɒləti/ and recipe /ˈresəpi/. other taglines create the rhyme with different sounds. free verbal repetition thereafter, there is free verbal repetition. it is the repetition in the same words, clauses, or sentences which are placed in the next ones (leech, 1969). the repetition created does not have an exact pattern. as all the taglines are observed, there are 2 taglines using free verbal repetition as follows: “aren’t you hungry… aren’t you hungry?” (tagline 10) and “parts is parts” (tagline 11). firstly, it is tagline 10. tagline 10 is “aren’t you hungry… aren’t you hungry?” (1983). as it is seen clearly, there is a repetition of the whole sentence in tagline 10. tagline 10 repeats the sentence aren’t you hungry twice. the repetition of the phrase is to show when people are hungry, wendy’s can accommodate the hunger. likewise, tagline 11 uses the free verbal repetition. tagline 11 is “parts is parts”. it repeats the word parts. according to wendy’s advertisement, the word parts refers to one of wendy’s products which is chicken nugget. wendy’s chicken nugget is fused from parts of chicken and then sliced into parts. the aim of free verbal repetition is to highlight that the chicken nugget served by wendy’s is from parts of chicken and into some chops. metaphor besides, there is metaphor. the metaphor is about comparing two objects which are different but somehow they share similarity (corbett, 1990). there are three taglines employing the metaphor as follows: “quality is our recipe” (tagline 1), “wendy’shas the taste you crave” (tagline 7), “you’re wendy’s kind of people” (tagline 9). there are some aims of using metaphor. one of them is to give the audiences clear understanding about something. the first tagline is tagline 1. the tagline compares two objects which are quality and recipe. according to longman active study dictionary, the meaning of quality is “a high standard” (2010: 722). meanwhile, in longman active study dictionary, the meaning of recipe is “a set of instruction that tell how to cook something” (2010: 740). by referring the word quality to recipe, wendy’s attempts to show the audiences that the products served are made by paying attention to the quality of the product. to put it differently, wendy’s serves the high quality products. another tagline is tagline 7. tagline 7 says “wendy’shas the taste you crave”. in tagline 7, the word taste is described as something craved. the word crave reflects the feeling of a powerful desire for something. tagline 7 demonstrates that wendy’s product is that everyone would like to taste the most. meanwhile, tagline 9 also employs the metaphor. tagline 9 says “you’re wendy’s kind of people”. the word you refers to people who consume wendy’s products. concurrently, the word wendy’s modifies the phrase kind of people. the word wendy’s is placed as an adjective. the adjective meaning of wendy’s can be seen in one wendy’s tagline used from the beginning until the present time. hyperbole in due course, there is hyperbole. hyperbole is about exaggerating. its purpose is to make something sound more than the reality (leech, 1969). some of wendy’s taglines use the hyperbole as the rhetorical device as follows. apryanti madah munthe & ria lestari 172 tagline 2 “we fix „em256 ways” tagline 7 “wendy’s has the taste you crave” tagline 12 “it‟s the best time for... wendy’s” tagline 15 “give a littlenibble” tagline 16 “the best burgers in the business” tagline 17 “the best burgers and a whole lot more” tagline 19 “the best burgers yet” tagline 21 “it‟s hamburger bliss” tagline 30 “it‟s waaay better than fast food” tagline 31 “it‟s waaay better than fast food... it‟s wendy’s.” tagline 32 “it‟s waaaaaaaaaay delicious. it‟s wendy’s.” firstly, there are 4 taglines which use an adjective to give the exaggerating sense. they are tagline 12, 16, 17, and 19. all of them employ the hyperbole by using the adjective best. it labels wendy’s as the fast food with the best in every aspect, for instance tagline 12 implies that every moment is good for wendy’s. afterward, tagline 16 overstates that wendy’s burger is the best compared to other burgers. another tagline also overstating is tagline 30, 31, and 32. those taglines use the word way. based on longman active study dictionary (2010: 1005), the word way means “a distance or a length of time, especially a long one”. tagline 30 and 31 gain the hyperbole meaning from the phrase waaaybetter than fast food. those taglines imply that wendy’s is more than a fast food. in fact, wendy’s is categorized as a fast food. meanwhile, tagline 32 implies that wendy’s is very delicious. subsequently, tagline 2 applies the hyperbole. tagline 2 is “we fix ‘em 256 ways”. it obtains the sense of hyperbole from the use of the phrase 256 ways. wendy’s does not explain exactly the 256 ways. it contains the exaggerating effect. the phrase 256 ways leads the audiences to directly think that wendy’s has lot of way to fix things. as it is known, 256 is a huge number which can lead the audiences to relate a huge number or amount of certain thing, in this case ways. likewise, tagline 7 also shows the similar idea. it implies it by using the phrase the taste you crave.wendy’s overstates the taste what people feel a powerful desire for. as analyzed, all of those taglines imply that wendy’s has the one and only best product which people must taste and buy. litotes litotes is also employed in wendy’s tagline. in litotes, it uses a negative or weak statement to reveal a good impression (corbett, 1990). it is employed in two out of wendy’s taglines, tagline 8 and 26 as follows: “ain’t no reason to go anyplace else” (tagline 7), “don’t compromise. personalize” (tagline 26). firstly, tagline 8 creates the litotes by using the words ain’tand no. the words ain’t and no have the negative or weak meaning. meanwhile, tagline 26 is “don’t compromise. personalize” (2006). tagline 26 shows the negative or weak statement. the negative or weak statement is indicated from the use of the word don’t. as it is known, the word don’t stands for do not. as it is mentioned before, the use of litotes is to impress the audiences. tagline 8, for instance, uses the weak form ain’t and not to show the audiences that there is no reason to go other fast foods. further, tagline 26 uses the word don’t as the weak form. it impresses the audiences by stating wendy’s is the place where people can obtain the product exactly how they desire. onomatopoeia in due course, onomatopoeia uses the sound of nature. it mimics the sound, such as boom and purr (corbett, 1990). wendy’s uses the onomatopoeia in one of its taglines. it is tagline 28 as follows: “uh huh” (tagline 28). vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 173 the sound uh huh is familiarly known as an interjection. it shows an agreement. it is included to onomatopoeia because it is a sound naturally produced by human. as mentioned before, onomatopoeia can manipulate the audiences’ emotions. the onomatopoeia can manipulate the emotion because it describes things vividly and gives the right ideas about the advertisers intending to mean directly. tagline 28, for example, plays the audiences’ minds to agree with wendy’s due to the sound uh huh indicating an agreement. rhetorical question thereupon, there is rhetorical question. it uses a form of question which does not need an answer. the purpose is to affect and persuade the audiences. moreover, it often makes audiences introspect due to the question (corbett, 1990). it is revealed that there are 2 out of 35 wendy’s taglines using the rhetorical question as follows: “aren’t you hungry… aren’t you hungry?” (tagline 10), “where’s the beef?” (tagline 13). firstly, the rhetorical question is to make the audiences to think or rethink (corbett, 1990). it does not need an answer. from the structure, tagline 10 is an in interrogative form which directly leads to rhetorical question. tagline 10 is “aren’t you hungry… aren’t you hungry?” it attempts to make the audiences rethink whether or not they are hungry and to eat at wendy’s. as it is discussed before, tagline 13 is also in a form of interrogative sentence. it does not require an answer. the question aims to make the audiences think of wendy’s in which they can find the beef. periphrasis besides, the rhetorical device used is periphrasis. in periphrasis, it substitutes a descriptive word by a proper name. besides, a proper name assumed to be familiar to the audiences is included in periphrasis (corbett, 1990). there are six taglines using the periphrasis as follows. tagline 6 “wendy’s has the taste” tagline 7 “wendy’s has the taste you crave” tagline 9 “you‟re wendy’s kind of people” tagline 14 “where‟s the beef? choose fresh, choose wendy’s” tagline 31 “it‟s waaay better than fast food... it‟s wendy’s.” tagline 32 “it‟s waaaaaaaaaay delicious. it‟s wendy’s.” tagline 6, 7, 9, 14, 31, and 32 are clearly using periphrasis because those taglines present the name of the product, namely wendy’s. wendy’s substitutes a fast food company named wendy’s old-fashioned hamburgers. the word wendy’s is classified as a proper name. it is that the proper name is assumed familiar to the audiences. tagline 6 tries to tell that wendy’s is the place where people can find the taste that they want. tagline 7 attempts to represent wendy’s is the only place which serves the must-taste fast food. it is justified by the phrase the taste people crave. further, tagline 9 uses metaphor. it combines metaphor and periphrasis. as it is discussed before, it is also metaphor. the comparison of the word quality and recipe creates the idea that wendy’s attempts to show the audiences that the products served are made by paying attention to the quality of the product. to put it differently, wendy’s serves the high quality products. anthimeria meanwhile, anthimeria is used by writers when they do not have any word to describe something. they use words with multi interpretation to describe things (corbett, 1990). there is only one tagline as follows: “wendy’shas the taste” (tagline 6). firstly, tagline 6 employs the anthimeria. it can be seen from the word taste. according apryanti madah munthe & ria lestari 174 to longman active study dictionary (2010: 917), the word taste means “the taste of food or drink is what it is line when you put it in your mouth, for example how sweet or salty it is”. tagline 6 does not use a specific description about its taste, such as sweet, sour. however, the word taste is modified by the article the. the phrase the taste indicates both of the advertiser and the audiences know how wendy’s taste is. tagline 6 uses the phrase the taste which is to raise the audiences’ curiosity. polysemy further, homonym or polysemy is about a word carrying two or more meanings. the meanings carried are also related to each other (o’grady &dobrovolsky, 1989). there is only one tagline as follows: “it’s good to be square” (tagline 25). tagline 25 shares the similar pattern. here, the word bringing more than one meaning is the word square. the word square has seven meanings. since the word square is preceded by be, the word square is in a form of adjective. longman active study dictionary (2010: 867) defines the word square as an adjective means as follows. the meaning of adjective square having the shape or approximate shape of a square, denoting a unit of measurement equal to the area of a square whose side is of the unit specified, at right angles; perpendicular, level or parallel, (of two people) owing nothing to each other, old-fashioned or boringly conventional, (of rhythm) simple and straightforward. from those meanings carried by the word square, the most appropriate meaning is old-fashioned or boringly conventional since wendy’s describes the hamburger as the old-fashioned one. it is proven by the main idea of wendy’s about the old fashioned hamburgers. pun afterward, there is pun as rhetorical device. pun is about using a word which carries more than one meaning or adopting word whose pronunciation is similar (corbett, 1990). there is only one tagline using the pun. it is tagline 5 as follows: “hotn-juicy” (tagline 5). there is the letter n between the words hot and juicy. the letter n is the conjunction and, but it is shortened. it is shortened because its pronunciation is still the same. the purpose of the pun is to create the sense of humor (corbett, 1990). tagline 5, for instance, raises the humor sense by utilizing the word whose sound is similar. though the sound of n and and are similar, they carry different meanings. in the discussions, there are 22 taglines using more than one rhetorical device. meanwhile, there are also taglines not using rhetorical device, namely tagline 3, 22, 27, 29, 33, and 34. as the taglines are analyzed, it appears that assonance is the most frequently applied in wendy’s taglines. there are 20 taglines applied the assonance. those are tagline 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 26, 30, 31, and 32. assonance is followedby alliteration and periphrasis as the most frequently used in wendy’s taglines. the impression of wendy’s taglines toward the audiences according to hopkins, a good tagline has two important elements, namely “the fit target and credibility” (madjadikara, 2004:36). as it is known, wendy’s is one of the most famous fast food brands in the world. the fit target for wendy’s is young people because eating fast food becomes the vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 175 trend for young people. dugan (2013) justifies that young people (aged 18-29) are the audiences eating fast food most often. so, the fit target for wendy’s is young people as respondents. there are 30 respondents. the respondents are people who learn english as second foreign language. they are students. each respondent observes and then ranks the level of wendy’s taglines’ attractiveness. the questionnaires are distributed online. since the respondents must rank each tagline, there are 6 categories. the scale is from 1-6 which is explained in table 3.2. the categories and scales. after the result of questionnaires is gathered, it is measured again by the total point of each tagline into 1-6 scale. here is the result of the questionnaires. chart 1the result ofquestionnaires as it is seen in the chart, the result of the questionnaires reveals that the 35 taglines are categorized into either attractive or rather attractive. there are 9 taglines rated as attractive while the rest of the taglines are rated as rather attractive. the nine taglines rated as attractive are tagline 1, 6, 7, 8, 13, 18, 23, 26, and 31. it appears that tagline 6 “wendy’shas the taste” and 8 “ain’t no reason to go anyplace else” are the most persuasive taglines. they reach 127 points. meanwhile, the least tagline is tagline 27 “that’s right” for 100 points. it is rated as rather attractive. as the taglines rated as attractive are observed, these taglines share similarity. most of the taglines rated as attractive use assonance as the rhetorical devices, namely tagline 1, 7, 8, 18, 23, 26, and 31. the findings for the second research question are revealed from the questionnaires, it leads to the interpretation. as it is seen before, the use of rhetorical devices affects the audiences. however, the number of rhetorical devices applied does not really impress the audiences, which happens in tagline 13 and 32. furthermore, the use of assonance in wendy’s taglines impresses the audiences because most of wendy’s taglines rated as attractive apply assonance as the rhetorical device. another rhetorical device also capture the audiences’ attentions is rhyme. there are several aspects why assonance and rhyme become the most impressive rhetorical devices. firstly, assonance is the repetition of vowel, but it is followed by different consonants (corbett, 1990 and leech, 1969). meanwhile, rhyme is the sound at the end of a word within clauses and sentences which is repeated which concerns with the spelling rather than the pronunciation (leech, 1969). both of assonance and rhyme concern with the sounds. the repetition of vowel and sound draws the audiences’ attentions to several words.besides, it also creates the words rhyming and gives the audiences pleasure to read. the extent effect of the rhyming and pleasuring words is that the audiences can memorize them easily. 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 t a g li n e 6 t a g li n e 2 6 t a g li n e 2 3 t a g li n e 2 4 t a g li n e 3 0 t a g li n e 1 6 t a g li n e 3 t a g li n e 2 5 t a g li n e 3 5 t a g li n e 1 9 t a g li n e 2 t a g li n e 4 apryanti madah munthe & ria lestari 176 conclusion there are 11 schemes applied in wendy’s taglines. those are aphaeresis, parallelism, asyndeton, alliteration, assonance, anaphora, epanalepsis, homoioteleuton, rhyme, and free verbal repetition. meanwhile, there are 10 tropes applied in wendy’s taglines. those are irony, metaphor, hyperbole, litotes, onomatopoeia, rhetorical question, periphrasis, anthimeria, polysemy, and pun. so, there are 21 rhetorical devices employed in wendy’s taglines from 1969 until the present time. most of wendy’s taglines apply more than one rhetorical device. tagline 32, for instance, uses 7 rhetorical devices, namely anaphora, alliteration, periphrasis, hyperbole, rhyme, and assonance. however, it also appears that there are 6 wendy’s taglines which apply none of the rhetorical devices. furthermore, the most frequently rhetorical device employed is assonance. the assonance is applied in 19 taglines. it is followed by hyperbole for 11 taglines and alliteration for 8 taglines. as it has been discussed and analyzed, it reveals several important points. firstly, the result of questionnaires shows that the employment of rhetorical devices in the taglines affects the audiences. even if it affects the audiences, it does not mean that the taglines employing various rhetorical are more persuasive than those employing one rhetorical device. besides, it also reveals that assonance is considered as the most persuasive rhetorical device because it is applied in most of the taglines rated as attractive. it is followed by rhyme. there are 2 taglines rated as the most attractive. they are tagline 6 “wendy’shas the taste” and 8 “ain’t no reason to go anyplace else”. ultimately, a well-known fast food as wendy’s has to be carefully in creating and publishing their product through the taglines. they have to pay attention to every single word because it is a message from wendy’s to the audiences. every single word in the tagline is the representative of wendy’s. the messages are created by applying and combining rhetorical devices. it is a persuasive message, so that the audiences’ attentions are captured. furthermore, the audiences are willing to buy wendy’s products. references arens, w. contemporary advertising. boston: mcgraw-hill, 2006. berger, arthur asa. media analysis techniques. 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(https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/schemes. html). november 7, 2015. yule, george. oxford introduction to language study: pragmatics. new york: oxford university press, 1996. http://www.etymonline.com/%20index.php?term=advertisement http://www.etymonline.com/%20index.php?term=advertisement http://www.grayflannelsuit.net/blog/the-evolution-of-fast-food-logos-burger-chains http://www.grayflannelsuit.net/blog/the-evolution-of-fast-food-logos-burger-chains http://www.grayflannelsuit.net/blog/the-evolution-of-fast-food-logos-burger-chains http://www.grayflannelsuit.net/blog/the-evolution-of-fast-food-logos-burger-chains http://www.buzzle/ http://www.sciencepub.net/american/%20am0602/02_0930_semiotic_usage%20_am0602.pdf http://www.sciencepub.net/american/%20am0602/02_0930_semiotic_usage%20_am0602.pdf http://www.sciencepub.net/american/%20am0602/02_0930_semiotic_usage%20_am0602.pdf http://www.sciencepub.net/american/%20am0602/02_0930_semiotic_usage%20_am0602.pdf http://www.slideshare.net/paulinatj/visual-strategies http://www.slideshare.net/paulinatj/visual-strategies http://www.slideshare.net/paulinatj/visual-strategies https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/schemes.html https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/schemes.html https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/schemes.html https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/schemes.html https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/schemes.html page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4 page 5 pheno vol 16 2.pdf (3) artikel 1 putu (arina) ed-2 (4) artikel 2 indri (arina) ed-1 (5) artikel 3 ose (hir) ed-2 (6) artikel 4 alvian & anna (arina) ed-2 (7) artikel 5 eilen & hir (hir) ed-2 (8) artikel 6 elisabeth ratih & ni luh (hir) ed-2 (9) artikel 7 munthe & ria (arina) ed-2 (10) artikel 8 rosa vania & elisa (hir) ed-2 (11) artikel 9 pramesthi & mul (hir) ed-2 (13) index vol 16 no 2 oktober 2016-1 (14) contributor's notes-1 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i dewa putu wijana 108 exploitation of pragmatic aspects in indonesian humorous discourses i dewa putu wijana idp_wijana@yahoo.com faculty of cultural studies, universitas gadjah mada abstract this paper is intended to analyze and describe various pragmatic aspects exploited by humorous discourse creators in creating jocular texts in indonesian. by assuming that nearly all jokes are created through a non bona fide process of communication, in which cooperative and politeness principles are intentionally violated in various ways, there must be extensive exploitations of pragmatic aspects. the examples are many kinds of speech acts, presupposition, pragmatic implicature, etc. found in indonesian humorous discourse to create activities. all of these aspects so far have not been seriously studied by indonesian linguists, especially whose works concern with humorous discourses. keywords: humor, discourse, text, pragmatics. introduction humor, which is commonly regarded as something related to trivial matters, certainly plays a very important role in human life because of its capability to release people from various kinds of tension they have faced in conducting their daily activities. the people’s misleading and belittle views towards humor might directly cause the rareness study of humorous discourse found in any world language compared to the studies of other aspects of language. as far as indonesian studies of humor are concerned, several investigations can be mentioned. those are wijana (1995) and noerhadi (1992) that concern indonesian cartoon discourse, and wijana (2015) and surana (2015) respectively discussing the indonesian political humors and indonesian humorous sticker discourse. even though the study of wijana (1995) and surana (2015) is conceptually framed by sociolinguistic and pragmatic theories and the objects of study are the shape of brief monologs or dialogs, these studies are mostly full of analysis of play upon words, such as phonological substitution and permutation, lexical and grammatical ambiguities, synonymy, antonym, euphemism, metonymy, etc., which are intentionally exploited by the cartoonists and sticker creators in arousing the comic effect of their creations. the presence of pictures or illustrations either in cartoons and stickers, which are expected to provide contextual back ground to the cartoon and sticker discourse, in fact does not help much the creators create humorous discourses on the basis of higher hierarchical pragmatic levels. meanwhile, the study of noerhadi (1992) and wijana (2015) tend to focus on script oppositions created by the cartoonists and jocular discourse creators without paying much attention to the role of mailto:idp_wijana@yahoo.com journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 109 linguistic and pragmatic aspects in developing the wholeness of discourse. based on such conditions, this paper aims at finding out the exploitation of pragmatic aspects of higher level, such as speech act, pragmatic implication, and presupposition by the indonesian humorous discourse creators. this study is considered to have a significant role in enhancing our comprehension towards the importance of those pragmatic aspects in any verbal communicative processes. therefore, any types of humorous texts essentially are important language teaching materials to use by any party (teacher or lecture), especially to explain linguistic problems of any levels that make the teaching situation more interesting, alive and enjoyable (wijana, 2011: 485-503). conceptual framework conceptually usual (non-humorous) discourses are different from the humorous ones. the first is developed by certain assumptions that the text producers (writer or speaker) and the receivers (listener or reader) are tightly bound by communicative rules in which both parties will behave naturally to succeed the communication process, and no party intends to mislead the other (allan, 1986, 3). this condition is called bona fide process of communication (raskin, 1994, 103). from grice’s theoretical view point, the so called bona fide process of communication is marked by the obedience of interlocutors towards four conversational maxims, i.e quantity, quality, relevance, and manner maxim (grice, 1975: 45-47). in addition, in such a situation the interlocutors should also consider the implementation of interpersonal politeness maxim which consists of six sub-maxims. those are tact maxim, generosity maxim, approbation maxim, modesty maxim, sympathy maxim, and agreement maxim (leech, 1983, 132). speakers can flout or break their obedience towards those maxims as long as there are some reasons that underlie that violation. in other words, there are always implicatures of any violation towards the cooperative principles and the politeness principles. in humorous discourses, comic effect achievement is the main reason for the violations. as the results, various types of puns, such as inter-lingual pun, malapropism, spoonerism, tongue twister, printing error, etc. can be found in the use of language (apte, 1985. 181-187). as what will be proved in this paper, play upon words must not be the only way used by the humorous text creators, other aspects of pragmatic use of language can also be exploited in order to flout the cooperative and politeness principles have been mentioned above. method of investigation this research begins with the data collection extracted from indonesian humorous story books. the data presented in this paper are those that exploit pragmatic aspects as the source of their humor. the pragmatic aspects are then classified whether they belong to speech act with its sub-categories, pragmatic implicatures, presupposition, or others. the indonesian humorous discourses are presented together with their english translation. results after examining the data carefully, there are at least three aspects of pragmatics that are often exploited by the humorous discourse creators. those are speech acts, presupposition, and pragmatic implicatures which will consecutively be discussed below. 1. speech act speech act is the most important topic concerned in pragmatics because all utterances which constitute objects of pragmatics are produced through speech acts. speech act is various possible acts performed by the speaker in uttering speech. in order to identify what kind of speech act an utterance belongs to, the utterance must be analyzed together with its context. extra linguistic factors such as speaker, hearer, journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i dewa putu wijana 110 spatiotemporal setting of the utterance, words preceded and followed the utterance, etc. are an inherent parts of the utterance context (leech 1996, 13; sperber & wilson, 15-16). indonesian humorous text creators some time exploit sentences which have unclear contextual situation, such as shown in anecdote (1) below. (1) romo dr. haryatmoko dalam suatu pelatihan metodologi penelitian kualitatif dan penelitian filsafat bagi dosen filsafat ugm tahun 2009, memberi contoh yang bagus bahwa teks itu kadang otonom. suatu saat ada seorang sopir truk dari jogja menuju ke bogor. karena capek, maka dia beristirahat di tepi jalan dan tidur di mobilnya. baru beberapa saat dia tidur, jendela pintu truknya diketuk orang. “pak, jalan menuju ke bogor itu lewat mana, ya?”, tanya pengetuk pintu yang ternyata pengemudi lain yang hendak ke bogor. dengan agak berat hati dia menjawab, “bapak terus saja ke depan, dan setelah bertemu perempatan belok kanan.” setelah mengucapkan terima kasih, pergilah sang penanya tersebut. kejadian ini berulang sampai tiga kali dengan pengendara yang berbeda. akibatnya sang sopir tidak beristirahat. karena betul-betul ingin istirahat, tetapi tidak bisa, karena selalu ditanya ke mana jalan menuju ke bogor, maka dia mengambil kertas dan menuliskan, “saya tidak tahu jalan menuju bogor”, kemudian dia tempelkan kertas itu di pintu samping truknya dengan harapan tidak ada lagi orang yang bertanya tentang jalam menuju ke bogor. kembali dia melanjutkan istirahatnya. namun baru beberapa saat kemudian, kembali dia dikejutkan oleh suara pintu truknya yang diketok orang. anehnya orang itu tidak merasa bersalah justru dengan bangga mengatakan. “mas, anda tidak tahu, ya jalan menuju ke bogor? saya tahu, yaitu anda ke depan setelah bertemu perempatan belok kanan…” anda dapat bayangkan betapa jengkel sopir tadi. ‘preacher dr. haryatmoko in a qualitative and philosophy research methodology training for ugm faculty of philosophy lectures, gave a good example that a text sometimes was autonomous. one time there was a truck driver went to bogor from yogyakarta. because of long way travel, he felt very tired, and took some rest. he was asleep in the truck. but, not long after, someone knocked the door. “sir, where is the road goes to bogor?” then, he reluctantly answered, “you just go straight away, and after intersection turn left.” apparently, he was another truck driver who would go to bogor.” after saying thank you, that driver was gone. the same events happened three times with different drivers. because he really wanted to take a rest, and was always disturbed by someone who wanted to go to bogor, he took a piece of paper, and wrote “i don’t know the road goes to bogor.” and stick it in one side of the truck. he continued his sleep. but, not so long after, someone knocked the door again. strangely, the person did not feel any guilty, but proudly told: “you really don’t know the road to bogor, do you? i know it. you go straight way, and turn right after the intersection.” you all can imagine how annoyed the driver was. the existence of autonomous text in (1) is due to saya tidak tahu jalan ke bogor ‘i don’t know the road goes to bogor’ has lost its context. thus, it can be interpreted as the act of indirect information requesting “please tell me, where the road to bogor is” even though the writer intends his utterance to be an indirect forbidding/prohibiting which means “don’t disturb me because i don’t know the road to bogor.” different from (1), humorous discourse (2) exploits indirect and non-literal speech acts, namely the speech act formed by sentence of the different mode from its intention and has opposite meaning to the words which construct the sentence (parker & riley, 2014, 42-43). in (2) the teacher’s non literal command to be silent is literally taken by her students. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 111 (2) terlalu tenang seorang guru kelas iv harus meninggalkan kelasnya selama beberapa menit. ketika dia kembali, dia begitu terkejut karena semua murid di kelasnya sangat diam dan tenang, tidak seperti biasanya jika ia masuk ke dalam kelas tersebut. murid-muridnya pasti sedang ribut dan bertingkah seenaknya. tapi kali ini murid-muridnya sedang duduk sangat manis. guru yang masih sangat terkejut itu berkata, “wow, selama aku mengajar kalian, aku tidak pernah melihat kejadian seperti ini sebelumnya. ini sangat mengejutkan. tapi tolong beritahu aku, ada apa sebenarnya dengan kalian? mengapa kalian sangat tertib? akhirnya setelah beberapa saat guru menanti jawaban, sally salah satu muridnya berbicara. “baiklah, ibu guru pernah mengatakan kepada kami, jika ibu masuk ke kelas kami, dan mendapatkan kami sedang duduk tenang dan tertib, ibu pasti akan langsung terkena serangan jantung.” too quiet a four grade class teacher had to leave her class for several minutes. when she came back, she was so surprised that all students were quiet and silent not as usual when she entered that class. all students that were noisy and behaved as they wish, but that time they sat nicely. the teacher who was still surprised, said, “wow, as long as i teach you all, i have never seen the situation like this before. this is really surprising me. but, let me know, what’s wrong with you? why are you so quiet and obedient? finally, after waiting for a while, sally, one of the students answered. “all right, you ever said to us, if you entered our class, and found us sitting quietly and nicely, you certainly would get heart attack”. in (2) it is described that on one side, the students do not comprehend their teacher’s non-literal utterance which the teacher will be very happy to see her students calm and quiet. on the other side, the naughty students show that the unusual behavior is intended for their teacher’s getting heart attack. discourse (3) is intended to criticize some indonesians who are too obedient and difficult to have different opinion from his superior. from different view point, this kind of people is alluded to be less initiative coworker/staff. the single word utterance tidak ‘no’ can be both an information giving or a refusal if the context of use is slipped off. (3) tidak antoni seorang karyawan baru suatu perusahaan mendapat berita bahwa ada panggilan telopon untuknya. ternyata bapak john, pimpinan tempat ia bekerja ingin berbicara padanya. “ya, pak john,” kata antoni dengan hormat dan sopannya, “ya, pak john… ya, tentu saja, pak john, ya..ya..ya, pasti pak. ya …ya..ya. tidak, pak john. sinta, sang sekretaris, yang mendengar seluruh percakapan itu, sangat terkejut. “berani benar anda mengatakan tidak padanya. apa sih yang diminta pak john?” “dia tidak minta apa-apa, jawab antoni,” dia hanya bertanya apakah saya tidak malu terus-menerus mengatakan “ya”. no ‘antoni, a new staff of a company got news that there was a phone call for him. apparently, it was mr john, the head of the company that wanted to talk to him. “yes, sir,” said antony respectful and politely, yes, mr. john, yes…yes…yes…, sure sir. yes…yes…yes. no, mr. john.” shinta, the secretary who heard the whole conversation, was very surprised. “you dare to say no to mr. john. what is he asked you for?” “he does not ask for anything,” antoni answered. “he only ask whether i do not feel ashamed for continuously saying “yes”.” 2. presupposition any utterance in pragmatic view point is presupposed something in which the untruthfulness of something presupposed journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 112 will consequently make the presupposing proposition not be judged to be true or false. in case of the following, (4), a speaker should presuppose the same condition as the people/person asked if he/she wants to show his higher capability to solve the proposed problem, eating the malakamo fruit. more clearly, the speaker must also still have mother and father. this condition does not exist in (4), or is not fully aware by the interlocutors when they are asked to solve the problem by the speaker. (4) permainan “buah simalakama” dalam beberapa pelatihan, saya dan pak charris sering menggoda peserta pelatihan tentang kiat mengatasi dilema. “bagaimana sikapmu jika menghadapi dilema seperti makan buah simalakama? artinya jika buah itu dimakan, ibu akan meninggal, tetapi jika buah itu tidak dimakan bapak yang meninggal.” biasanya para peserta pelatihan agak kesulitan menjawab pertanyaan ini. namun ada juga peserta yang berusaha menjawab, “digigit, tetapi tidak dimakan, pak.” ada pula yang menjawab, “tidak usah dimakan, pak, karena saya memang jengkel dengan bapak saya yang kawin lagi.” setelah para peserta menjawab, akhirnya mereka penasaran, balik bertanya kepada kami, “jika bapak berdua dihadapkan pada situasi seperti kami, yaitu menghadapi dilema seperti buah simalakama, apa yang akan bapak lakukan?” dengan santai kami menjawab, “kami santai saja. seandainya kami makan, ibu kami memang sudah meninggal, seandainya tidak kami makan, bapak kami juga sudah meninggal. jadi kami termasuk orang yang telah mampu mengatasi dilema buah simalakama karena bapak dan ibu kami sudah meninggal. kami sudah yatim piatu.” the “simalakamo fruit” game ‘in some training occasions, mr. charris and i often tempted the trainees about the best way of solving dilemma. “what would you do if you faced with a situation like eating a “malakamo” fruit (proverbial fruit which brings equally bad luck if someone eat it or does not eat it. if someone eats it, his/her mother would die, and would be the same to his/her father if (s)he does not). usually the participants found it very difficult to answer this question. however, there were also some who tried to answer. “i will just bite it, but did not eat the whole fruit”. and, there was also an answer “i will not eat it because i hate my father who got married with other woman.” after having answered that problem, finally they feel very embittered, and asked us back. “now, if you two, are faced with the same dilemma like eating a malakamo fruit, what would you do?” in a relaxed atmosphere we answered, “we are just relaxed. if we eat it, our mother has passed away, and if we do not eat, our mother has also passed away. so, we are people who are already able to overcome the malakamo dilemma because our parents have already passed away. we are already orphans.” pragmatically, any utterance which contains “if condition” presupposes that the interlocutor or the speaker to which the utterance is directed would perceive it as a serious matter, and then (s)he will give a proper reaction to the content of everything conditioned. in example (5) pak charris’s unnatural behavior and unrealistic answers are due to his perception to the utterance as an unreal matter. (5) permainan seandainya saya dan pak charris dalam berbagai pelatihan pmkh tingkat nasional sering menggoda peserta pelatihan dengan pertanyaan. “tuliskan apa yang akan kau lakukan seandainya saya kasih uang 100 juta rupiah?” jawaban yang mereka tulis di kertas cukup beragam, misalnya: saya akan pergi haji, akan membeli rumah, akan membeli sepeda motor, dsb. akan tetapi, ketika saka balik bertanya, “siapa di antara anda yang pada baris pertama menuliskan akan bersedekah?”, ternyata tidak ada 20 persen. kondisi ini seungguh memprihatinkan. kemudian pertanyaan saya lanjutkan, “siapa di antara anda yang menolak pemberian journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i dewa putu wijana 113 saya?” ternyata tidak ada, artinya peserta cenderung tidak kritis menerima pemberian saya. mereka saya ingatkan bahwa dalam hukum harta haruslah mempertimbangkan dari mana asal harta, dan untuk apa harta itu dipergunakan. sebagai pembanding saya lantas bertanya pada pak charris. “pak, seandainya saya beri uang 100 juta rupiah apa yang akan bapak lakukan?” dengan santai pak charris menjawab, “akan saya bagi-bagikan dan hambur hamburkan uang itu sampai habis.” saya balik bertanya, “lho, kalau dihabiskan, bapak dapat apa?” tanya saya pura pura penasaran. “nanti, kalau sudah habis, saya akan berandai-andai lagi.” (baru berandai-andai kok sudah terlalu bernafsu, apalagi kalau sungguhan ya…?) the if game mr. charris and i in several pmkh national training often tempted the training participants with a question. “write down what would you do if i gave you 100 million rupiahs?” the answers they gave were considerably various, such as: “i would go to be a pilgrim; i would buy a house; i would buy a motor car, etc.” however, when i asked them further, “who are among you preferably would donate the money?” apparently there were less than 20%. this condition was really apprehensive. and then i continued, “who among you would refuse the money?” apparently, no one. this means that the participants tend to be uncritical receiving my gifts. i warned them that islam wealth law should consider where the wealth was from and what it was used for. for comparison i then asked mr. charris. “sir, if i give you one hundred million rupiahs, what would you do?” with full of relax he answered. “i would donate and waste all the money.” i asked him again pretending to be embittered. “oh, if you waste it all, what would you get?” “later, if the money was already wasted up, then i would suppose it again” (it is just a supposition why do you take it seriously?) 3. pragmatic implicatures in communicative event, speaker’s intention is not always asserted by the meaning of words constructing the utterance, but it can also be implicated by them. the relation between the intention and the utterance are made possible by the existence of pragmatic reasoning (allan, 1986, 183-188; wijana, 1996, 37-40). pragmatic implicatures or conversational implicatures are different from entailment, which is semantic in nature. the following (6) and (7) are examples of humorous discourse that exploit pragmatic implication. (6) menyalakan lilin seorang turis sedang makan. dia bertanya kepada pemilik rumah makan tersebut: + “buat apa menyalakan lilin di siang hari begini?” “untuk lalat, tuan.” + “wah, hebat!! bangsa anda memang benar-benar baik hati. bukan cuma manusia, lalat pun diberi penerangan sendiri.” to lit a candle ‘a tourist was eating. he asked a question to the restaurant owner: + what for do you light a candle in the afternoon like this? “for flies, sir.” oh, it is terrific. your nation is really very kind. it is not only people, even flies you give specific lighting.’ (7) pak, ada pesawat menyerang “pak ada pesawat inggris menyerang!” kata seorang tentara usa kepada komandannya. lalu si komandan berkata “tembak pesawat mereka.” lalu beberapa menit kemudian si tentara melapor lagi, “pak, ada pesawat belanda menyerang.” lalu si komandan berkata, “tembak pesawatnya.” kemudian beberapa jam berselang si tentara melapor lagi, “pak, ada pesawat indonesia menyerang.” lalu si komandan berkata lagi, “biarkan saja nanti juga jatuh sendiri.” journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 114 sir, there is a plane attacking “sir, there is a british plane attacking!” an american soldier said to his commander. then, the commander said, “shoot that plane!” and a few minutes after, the soldier reported again, “sir, there is a dutch plane attacking”. “fire it.” and, several hours after the soldier reported again, “sir, there is an indonesian plane attacking.” “just, don’t shoot, it will fall itself” in (6) to give lighting for flies implies that indonesia has a serious problem which concerns in environmental health or cleanliness. accordingly, the tourist’s utterance bangsa anda memang benar-benar baik hati ‘your nation is really very kind’ is a kind of non-literal speech act because it is not intended to give a compliment, but to express an indirect insult. meanwhile, in (7) the commander’s behavior towards the indonesian plane implies that indonesian made plane very bad quality. this aircraft will fall itself without being shot. this proposition implies that indonesian aerospace technology is far behind those two countries. different from (6) and (7), the conversational implication in (8) is drawn by the front desk library staff through the book description said by the beautiful girl. (8) buku paling membosankan seorang gadis cantik mendatangi front desk perpustakaan umum. “minggu yang lalu saya meminjam sebuah buku, tapi itu adalah buku yang paling membosankan dari semua buku yang pernah saya baca. tidak ada cerita atau tidak jelas sama sekali, juga terlalu banyak karakter aneh!” penjaga perpustakaan menyahuti. “oh, pasti andalah yang telah membawa buku telopon kami” the most boring book a beautiful girl came to the front desk of a public library. “last week i borrowed a book, but that was the most boring book i had ever read. there is no story or it is not clear at all. and, it has many strange characters!” the library attendant responded, “oh, you must be the person who took away our telephone book.” in the following (9) the pragmatic implicatures are expressed by the lecturer in which the utterance “ mohon bantuannya ditutupkan pintunya dari luar, ya?” ‘would you close the door from outside, please!” indirectly suggests that the student is not allowed to follow the lecture. this pragmatic aspect is combined with non-literal apologizing speech act but cannot be understood by the student. the student’s dumbness or disrespectfulness is shown by the violation of modesty maxim, one of leech’s politeness principle sub maxims. (9) setiap dosen memiliki gaya unik dalam memperlakukan mahasiswa yang terlambat. pertama versi prof. koento wibisono, yaitu menyindir dengan ungkapan, “mohon maaf. saya sudah berani memulai sebelum anda hadir.” biasanya mahasiswa yang tidak tahu diri justru menjawab, “tidak apa-apa pak, kali ini saya memaafkan.” versi kedua, versi dosen x, dkk., jika mahasiswa sudah benar-benar terlambat dan apalagi pakai kaos oblong dan sandal jepit, dosen x akan berteriak, “keluar…anda tidak pantas ikut kuliah.” versi ketiga, versi pak ridwan, dkk. yaitu dengan mengatakan, “bagi saudara yang terlambat, mohon bantuannya ditutupkan pintunya dari luar, ya!” ungkapannya halus, tetapi maksudnya tidak boleh ikut kuliah. ‘every lecturer has a unique way in treating his students who come late. the first is prof. koentowibisono’s version. he usually teases the students by saying “i am sorry, i dare to start the lecture before you are coming.” usually the dull students will give an answer “it doesn’t matter, sir. this time i forgive you.” the second version is mr. x and his friends. in the case of the students who are too late let alone they wear t shirt and slippers, they will shout: “go out, you are not proper to enter the class.” the third is mr. ridwan’s version. “for you the late journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) i dewa putu wijana 115 comer, would you close the door from outside, please!” his expression is polite, but he means the student is not allowed to follow the lecture’. closing remarks beside the use of play on word, as what has been proved by the previous studies, the exploitation of pragmatic aspects which have higher level than those used in punning are also found in humorous discourse creating activities. those pragmatic aspects are speech acts, presupposition, and pragmatic implicatures. because of the data limitation and the rareness study of these pragmatic aspects, especially on presupposition and implicature category, this paper has not been able to find out yet what types of presupposition and implicatures which are always exploited by the humorous discourse creators. references allan, keith. linguistic meaning. volume i. london: routledge & kegan paul, 1986. apte, mahadev l. humor and laughter. ithaca: cornell university press, 1985. grice, h.p. “logic and conversation”. p. cole & j.l. morgan (eds.). syntax and semantics 3: speech acts. pp 41-58. new york: academic press, 1975. leech, geoffrey. principles of pragmatics. new york: longman, 1983. noerhadi, toety heraty. “kartun dan karikatur sebagai wahana kritik sosial”. majalah ilmu-ilmu sosial. xvi. no. 2, 1989: pp. 129-155. parker, frank & kathryn riley. linguistics for non-linguists. singapore: pearson., 2014. raskin, victor. semantic mechanism of humor. dordrecht: d. reidel publishing company, 1994. surana. “variasi bahasa stiker humor bahasa indonesia”. disertasi doktor. program studi ilmu-ilmu humaniora. fakultas ilmu budaya universitas gadjah mada, 2015. wijana, i dewa putu. “wacana kartun dalam bahasa indonesia”. disertasi doktor universitas gadjah mada. yogyakarta, 1995. wijana, i dewa putu. dasar-dasar pragmatik. yogyakarta: andi, 1996. wijana, i dewa putu. “pemanfaatan permainan bahasa sebagai bahan pengajaran bahasa dalam upaya meningkatkan mutu pengajaran ilmu bahasa di indonesia”. dalam pemberdayaan bahasa indonesia memperkukuh budaya bangsa dlam era globalisasi”. jakarta: badan pengembangan dan pembinaan bahasa kementrian pendidikan dan kebudayaan, 2011. wijana, i dewa putu. “wacana humor politik dalam bahasa indonesia.” kertas kerja tidak diterbitkan, 2015. sources of data djamboel, big. humor gaul santai abis. rumah ide. santoso, heri. gadjah mada bercanda: humor, hikmah & kisah unik dosen ugm. yogyakarta: pustaka rasmedia, 2009. 67 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 67 – 76 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i1.5062 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. the bugis people's naming system in bugis ethnic tradition muhsyanur muhsyanur.academic@gmail.com institut agama islam (iai) as’adiyah sengkang, indonesia abstract article information the naming system in the bugis ethnic is part of the customary system that has been attached since the bugis existed. the purpose of this study is to describe the system of naming the bugis in the bugis tradition. this research is a type of qualitative research using descriptive methods and ethnographic approaches. verbal data are in the form of words, phrases, and expressions as well as statements obtained from the interview. the data collected were from three community groups: tosora in majauleng district, lagosi in pammana district, and gilireng in gilireng district. three community groups are known as cultural villages. they are called cultural villages because these three villages are the source of the history of the bugis people of south sulawesi. this study uses an ethnographic approach. this is because research activities are inseparable between the activities of a community group as the object of research and their cultural system. thus, information or data is obtained from interactions between researchers and the public who are research subjects or data sources. the results of this study are based on findings that show that the bugis self-naming system is of three types; based on the situation and circumstances, based on natural events, and based on the child’s appearance. the results of this research provide an increase in the revitalization process of traditions that exist in bugis society. the naming system in the bugis ethnicity is still being preserved even though advanced technology is growing rapidly. keywords: naming, bugis people, bugis tradition, system received: 17 august 2022 revised: 27 november 2022 accepted: 3 december 2022 introduction since the development of advanced technology, around the 1980s, the naming system for the bugis ethnic group has experienced a shift in modernity. this does not mean that bugis culture has been evacuated. some of the bugis ethnic groups still put forward bugis traditions and a naming system. giving names with modern nuances is only partly done for those who have minimal understanding of bugis culture. https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online)`` muhsyanur 68 the naming system for bugis ethnics, especially when their children are born, is inseparable from the bugis belief system and customary system itself.first, the belief system in question is not deviated from or contrary to the religion adhered to, namely islam. second, the customary system in question is based on traditions carried out by the predecessors (ancestors) of the bugis people. the name given to the bugis ethnic is not just a word that sounds good.however, apart from good wording, it also has a beautiful meaning and cultural value.this shows that the naming system in bugis ethnic customs cannot be separated from language and cultural systems. language has a close relationship with culture. language itself is one of several cultural or cultural products. language cannot be separated in life. because language has an important role in human life. the important role of language in general is as a means of communication in social life or in social interaction. humans can adapt from one human to another because of language. therefore, humans live their lives through language. thus, the principle of all humans regarding the role of language is that there is no life without language (no life without language). all humans need language. even animals also need language to communicate and interact with each other. even all living things in this world need language. in the naming system, language is a reinforcement of cultural values because it gives meaning.thus language cannot be separated from the cultural system.besides that, language is a tool and force for communication. language is one of the main factors that improve the quality of human life and influence the progress of human life. language acts as a cultural medium in culture. culture must be represented through language(ellis, n. c., 2019); hall, s. (2020). in general language plays three roles for culture. first language describes cultural things. a second language includes a cultural aspect. the third language represents cultural truth. language is a system that originates from culture and is developed by culture itself. from this it can be understood that languages are related to each other. galante a (2020) and garcía, m. l. (2019)argue that the relationship between language and culture is deep rooted. language serves to support and connect cultures. language is the most important part of the cultural development of an ethnic group. a language that also becomes the culture of its users grows with the dynamics of other cultures involved in political religious and social movements. language also became a medium for recording and communicating important events such as political changes religious changes social problems and changes in social values. in social life language is a means of communication between each other. he appears. the function of language is to separate from the life of every society. the previous opinion shows that language is needed and always exists in all fields in various activities of human life. even language itself is inherent in all humans. one of them is the name given and attached to a person or in a family member or the general public in various regions in the archipelago and in the world. the name attached to a person is a tangible manifestation of the use of language. language plays a role for self-naming to humans. through names, a person can define others and himself. the naming system for humans reflects social norms and is based on needs by considering various things. therefore, the name is the language. giving a name to someone is a language practice by arranging letters into one word and forming a name. or a series of words that form a phrase so that it becomes a name (mateos, 2014). speaking of self-name, everyone in this world of course has a name. therefore, the name is not only to mention someone. however, it is also a self-identifier as well as an identity for every human being. self-name is a need for every human being. therefore, in addition to human language that characterizes humans with other creatures, also with a distinctive name. that is, it is okay for animals and plants to speak or need language, but do not need and do not have a self-name as is the case with humans. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 69 name is something that is attached to each and everyone. the name is a term or word and or phrase that can be called to call and greet someone. everyone's name is different (olatunji, issah, noah, muhammed, & sulaiman, 2015)mensah, inyabri, & nyong, 2021). name is a personal attribute that has a function as a means to identify a person, and is always used for various purposes, since he was born until the name is written on the tombstone (marbin et al., 2021). in addition, sinai & waldfogel(2004) and esanovna & saparniyazova(2019)also explains the importance of a name, in many contexts, names are affixed to administrative files, names also appear when someone succeeds in spawning a masterpiece. even in the hereafter, muslims believe that allah will judge someone by calling the name they carried while living in this world. the name can be analogous, that the name is a prayer, the name shows the uniqueness of an area. in addition, the name as a mirror of the individual, a mirror of a community, and even a mirror of all aspects of life. (de haviland basoeki, 2013), name is a sign (name is omen) that will be attached to each individual and is used as a greeting. self-name is the first sign that belongs to someone(tacikowski& nowicka, 2010). one expert, zoest(marnita, 2000), the name is basically a non-physical sign system that is attached to everyone. on the other hand, it has also been described that self-name is the clearest linguistic marker in social relations. everyone has a number of different names, including first names and family names. concrete examples of names as self-identity are names on diplomas, id cards, certificates, driver's licenses, passports and other identities (hudson, 1996). fouad et al., (2020)asserts that the meaning attached to the name plays an important role in human identity, because it is believed that the given name not only functions as a social identity, but also affects several aspects of human life. thus, names can influence humans, both forming character and personality and disposition. based on this opinion, it can be stated that the name is also a form of human itself as a creature that has dignity and worth. every person and a tribe in every region in indonesia generally has uniqueness and certain reasons in naming or giving names to their children. thus, it cannot be denied that every region in all regions of indonesia has a different system for giving names to their children. the differences in these systems are part of the diversity of traditions. tradition is an activity that becomes a habit based on the understanding and belief of a certain tribe or area. the tradition includes local wisdom which consists of a set of knowledge that is used as a policy for the community to behave. one of the ways and efforts made by tribes or ethnic communities in an area to preserve various traditions is to pass them down from generation to generation. tradition is a system that is attached to a community group. the concept of tradition refers to various activities that are repeated. tradition itself is something that is inherited and passed down from generation to generation so that it becomes a belief system for a group of people. in a simple sense, tradition is a series of activities that have existed for a long time and continue to exist because they are used as habits and needs in a group or community group. the tradition is part of culture and cannot be separated from people's lives (muhsyanur, 2020). indonesia is known as a cultured country. therefore, each or all regions in indonesia have their own uniqueness and style in the form of tradition. even tradition is sacred. neonnub & habsari(2017), tradition is something that becomes a habit and is sacred or sacred. traditions or customs can be found in various regional communities. tradition is one proof that humans have been present in the world for centuries. in other words, tradition is the source of human life. in addition to a tradition that has local wisdom, it also contains values and functions so that it can be used by every community. thus, it has been emphasized that tradition is a product of culture that must be preserved. because, culture is a supporter as well as a pillar in national development. this is also stated in muhsyanur & verlin(2020), culture needs to be preserved, because culture is the basis for strengthening the nation's character. in addition, culture is a pillar as well as a reference for generations in building the nation. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online)`` muhsyanur 70 therefore, a good nation is a nation that maintains its cultural existence. based on the previous explanation, it can be concluded firmly that the essence of giving a name is part of a tradition or a form of cultural practice. agyekum(2006)also suggests that naming can be considered as a cultural practice. every society in this world who has a newborn baby, then they will also give a name to the baby. the name is the main marker to make it easier to identify his identity. giving a name to a baby does not happen immediately, but through a ritual process or official ceremony. in general, people say that the name is a prayer. in a broad sense all communities or ethnic groups in indonesia may have similar traditions in giving or opening their own names. the difference is that it is a process and a different way of celebrating. these similarities and differences are a form of indonesian unity. this is officially stated on the garuda symbol as well as the motto of the unitary state of the republic of indonesia. the motto reads "bhinneka tunggal ika", which has different meanings but remains one. likewise, for the bugis community or ethnicity, namely giving a name to the community is part of the tradition. the bugis ethnic group is one of the most populous ethnic groups in south sulawesi. the bugis ethnic community does not only live in the sulawesi region. however, it is also widely spread in various areas outside the island of sulawesi, such as on the islands of java, sumatra, papua, kalimantan, and other areas. in fact, there are also those that spread outside indonesia, such as in malaysia and singapore. this caused the bugis ethnic community to spread a lot due to the habit of wandering with the aim of spreading trade access. therefore, the tradition of wandering in the bugis ethnic community is known as the sompek or passompek tradition. abidin (2016) links language, culture, and naming, namely that one of the 'languages' that keeps the turmoil in the development of bugis culture is the language that is attached as the proper name of the bugis people. the self-name of the bugis, which is the distinctive identity of a bugis, has undergone a long history of change. this change was due to the cultural contact of the bugis with other ethnic civilizations from outside south sulawesi, which mainly resulted in the change of religion, political upheaval, and a shift in the understanding of values in bugis society. naming the bugis people is part of local wisdom that includes various policies. giving the name is not just a name, but has a value and meaning that is closely related to the cultural elements of the bugis people. when compared to the past with the present, the past is more cultural than the present. this is due to the influence of science and technology which is growing rapidly. with the progress and development of science and technology, it certainly has an influence on culture, especially the bugis tradition. therefore, basically everyone's naming system is influenced by various factors such as culture, religion, language, and so on. according to de haviland basoeki(2013), the naming system of various indonesian cultures and people is different, the procedure for variations depends on the origin of the island, ethnicity, culture, language, and education obtained. likewise, in the bugis tradition. the process of giving self-name or naming to the community is not only based on aspects of language, culture, and or traditions. however, it is also based on a system that binds the bugis community itself. during the observations of researchers in the field accompanied by documents from 2016 2021, there is still little research on the naming system in the bugis ethnicity. therefore, the researcher initiated to deepen by conducting research. research on the naming system in the bugis ethnic is very much carried out as an effort to revitalize culture and to introduce the digital era generation to the bugis ethnic cultural system. methodology based on the data collected, this type of research is qualitative research. the data collected came from 3 (three) community groups, namely lagosi in pammana district, tosora in majauleng district, and gilireng in gilireng district. the three community groups are known as cultural villages. it is called a cultural village because the three villages are sources of bugis ethnic history in south sulawesi. this research is a field research. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 71 field research refers to a series of activities carried out in a planned, structured, systematic manner, and prioritizing a scientific attitude with the aim of obtaining information in the form of data which is then processed scientifically to produce scientific findings. the information or data is obtained from the interaction between the researcher and the community that is the target of the research or the source of the data. therefore, this study uses an ethnographic approach, which deals with the environment, culture, situation of community groups, and ethnic groups. the source of the data for this research is the bugis community in wajo regency. there are two types of data in this study, namely text data and oral data. text data in the form of words or phrases, namely personal names obtained from various documents and books. the documents in question are documentation in the form of written information such as ancient manuscripts relating to the naming system records in the bugis ethnic, while books are concerned with the publication results of previous research. oral data in the form of expressions, statements, and discourse were obtained directly from interviews conducted between researchers and the public. this research method is divided into 3 (three) stages, namely: data provision, data analysis, and data presentation. first, the provision of data is carried out by applying the proficient method with recording and notetaking techniques (sudaryanto, 1993: 137139), and the literature study method. the data for this study were the names of the bugis people and their history, which were obtained from informants consisting of primary and secondary informants. primary informants are the main informants who provide data, namely one stakeholder (figure is bugis). secondary informants are additional informants who provide supporting data. there were two secondary informants, namely one traditional elder and one non-traditional elder. in addition, the data was also obtained based on the experience and personal knowledge of the researcher who is a bugis ethnic group. second, data analysis was carried out by applying a qualitative approach to the interactive model of miles and huberman (1994), with procedures; data collection, data shrinking, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. third, the data presentation stage is carried out informally by explaining the results of the data analysis in a clear and detailed manner (sudaryanto, 1993: 145). results and discussion based on the analysis in this study, it shows that the bugis self-naming system in the bugis tradition is based on three things. first, based on the situation and circumstances. second, based on natural events. third, based on form. based on situation or circumstances the bugis naming system in the bugis tradition based on natural situations and circumstances is a naming system with reference to matters relating to a family itself when the child is born. the things in question are related to the location of things, both places(rice fields, gardens, etc.), and or with respect to the conditions around them. giving a name to a child generally follows the wishes or circumstances experienced by a father. the father in the family, both in the bugis tradition and in the tradition in general, has a high degree in the family. my father was made a leader. therefore, the father becomes a reference in naming a child. in other words, naming based on situations and circumstances, generally relates to things experienced by the father. the names are based on the situation and circumstances. (1) ambo atauindo unga (2) biu (3) dalle the word ‘ambo’ or ‘indo’ in data (1) is used as an affirmation. the word ‘ambo’ is specifically for men, while the word ‘indo’ is specifically for women. furthermore, the word ‘unga’, in the bugis tradition is the name given to a child based on the situation. this situation is related to the condition of the rice planted by the father in the field which shows that it has started to flower. in other words, the name ‘unga’ was given because the child was born when his father was looking at his rice in the fields that were starting to flower. the word from the name ‘unga’ is bugis which means flowering. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online)`` muhsyanur 72 giving the name unga is associated with luck, which indicates that the child born brings good luck to the father's rice. giving the name raises the hope that the child will always bring good luck throughout his life. the name or the word ‘unga’, which means 'flowering' if interpreted in a figurative language shows the meaning of being decorated, good, successful, proud, and happy. to give confirmation, parents add before the name or word ‘unga’ with the name or word ‘ambo’ or ‘indo’ so that it becomes ‘ambo unga’ (for men) or 'indo unga' (for women). the word ‘ambo’ or ‘indo’ is a bugis language, which lexically means 'father' or 'mother' and both can mean parent or peak. thus, the phrase from the name ‘ambo unga’ or 'indo unga' means the mother of success or the pinnacle of success. the word ‘ambo unga’ or 'indo unga' can be attached to everyone by adjusting the name that comes after it so that it has a good meaning. the name ‘biu’ in data (2) is a form of a word in bugis language which means 'no mother'. the name is given to someone based on circumstances, namely after the child came out of his mother's womb or after being born into the world, his mother suddenly died. giving the name does not indicate bad luck or unlucky. however, as an impression to the family that the child did not have a mother since childhood. aside from being an impression, it is also a moral message that shows that death can come to pick up anytime, anywhere, and to anyone. death is a predetermined destiny. one of them is that death can pick up a mother in the seconds after struggling to give birth to her child. the name ‘dalle’ in data (3) is a form of a word in the bugis language which means 'sustenance'. giving the name ‘dalle’ is based on three reasons parents. first, children are born as sustenance, deposit, and gifts given by god as well as a form of god's power. second, his son was born at the same time that his parents were poor, so by giving the name ‘dalle’ to his son, his parents hoped that his son would be a source of sustenance or the beginning of the awakening of both parents. third, the child was born to coincide with both his parents in a prosperous state and living a rich life. by giving the name ‘dalle’ to their children, their parents hope that with the presence of their children, they will remain in a prosperous and wealthy state, even more than what they had before. the name ‘dalle’ can be given to a boy or a girl. however, to give a differentiator, you can pre-add the name or the word 'ambo' or 'indo'. giving a name for the bugis community based on the situation and circumstances has its own meaning. likewise with other ethnic groups, one of which is javanese, they give a name to a child who is born, mostly based on various aspects, including the situation and it has meaning (widodo, yussof, & dzakiria, 2010). therefore, for the bugis ethnic, naming based on the situation and circumstances means that later the child who is born can master the field. that is, the child is able to interact in any situation and situation. it teaches children to be able to face every challenge in life. challenges are things or objects that inspire determination to improve problem-solving abilities(finkbeiner et al., 2014). based on natural events the naming of the bugis in the bugis tradition based on natural events is naming by referring to an extraordinary event or series of events caused by nature. natural events in question are events that are positive in nature so that they are impressed by residents or a group of people. the examples of bugis names in the bugis tradition based on natural events are as follows. (1) sumange (2) billa’ the name ‘sumange’ in data (1) is a form of a word in bugis language which means 'spirit' or 'excited'. the name sumange 'is given to children based on natural events, namely regarding the rain that flushed a village after a prolonged drought. therefore, with the rain, the community or parents are eager to work on their rice or rice fields again. in addition, showing the spirit of life because the rain or water that allah sent down is a sustenance and a source of life for every human being and for all living creatures. the name or word ‘sumange’ can be added after it journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878(online) 73 with the appropriate name or word, such as the word 'alam' (in indonesian) means everything related to the environment and its surroundings. by adding the word 'nature' so that it becomes 'sumange alam', which can mean a spirit based on nature or the spirit of nature. the name ‘billa’ in data (2) is a form of the word in the bugis language, which means lightning. lightning is a natural occurrence. according to the big indonesian dictionary (kbbi), lightning is a light that flashes quickly in the sky which is usually accompanied by a roar of thunder. giving the name ‘billa’ by parents based on the occurrence of extraordinary lightning in a chain when their child was born. this is an impression for parents and also as a message that lightning is a natural phenomenon from the sky that shows the power of god. giving names to children based on natural events is not foreign to all ethnic groups in indonesia. in addition to the bugis ethnic tradition, also in other ethnic groups. this can be seen in the first president of indonesia, namely soekarno, he gave the names of his children with natural names such as guntur, guruh, taufan, bayu, and mega (dwiyono y, 2012). only 2 (two) did not use natural names, namely rachmawati and sukmawati. the same thing happened to the miyah ethnic. giving names to people of the miyah ethnic group was not given without a specific purpose(baru, 2016). based on the child appearance the bugis naming system in the bugis tradition based on form is giving a name to a child by referring to the child's own form when he was born. the form in question relates to the appearance, color, or special signs that exist in the child's own form. the examples of bugis names in the bugis tradition based on natural events are as follows. (1) cora (2) baba the name 'cora' in data (1) is a form of a word in the bugis language which means bright or shining. the name is given because when the child is born, it looks bright and shining, although in general all newborn children look radiant. however, the name is a symbol of happiness for parents and family. furthermore, the name 'baba' in data (2) is also a form of the word in the bugis language which relates to a kind of mole that is attached to one of the limbs on the body. however, the size is larger than the mole and the color also varies, some are dark black and some are brown. giving the name 'baba' has a certain reason. apart from being a sign that characterizes the child, parents also consider it a sustenance as well as an advantage. give names to children based on shape. the form in question is in accordance with what is attached to the child, such as a birthmark. birthmarks for some ethnic bugis believe as a source of mythology, mystery, and superstition. this is in line with the opinion of kane(1998), telyndru(2010), kusumaningrum & mulyani(2016), and kamilah & setyani(2018), that such things cannot be avoided in life, because they are part of local wisdom. basically, there are several birthmarks that are commonly found in children, especially newborns or infants. one of them is like a mole. various theories from the past about the meaning of birthmarks continue to make people curious to this day. during the salem witch trials from 16921693, moles were considered a sign of wrongdoing and were called "the devil's mark" by witch hunters(kučera, 2020). however, recently the journal of the society for physical research has dedicated years of research to learn more about whether birthmarks are evidence of reincarnation and clues to how you died in a previous life. the medical definition states that birthmarks classify that some type of abnormality is present when a child is born, such as a collection of red blood vessels gathering in the skin making the mark visible(wheeler, 1998). based on the previous statement, the physical signs on a newborn child (such as moles) for the bugis are sacred. the sacredness depends on the location of the mole. for example, if the mole is on the lips, then it is associated with the child's brushetiquette, that is, he may become fussy. moles for the bugis people can have positive and journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online)`` muhsyanur 74 negative meanings. it depends on the location and position of the mole itself on the limbs. conclusion based on the results of the study, these findings are broken down into 3 (three) important points. first, the bugis naming system in the bugis tradition is based on the real thing. that is, the name attached to every bugis person refers to situations, circumstances, natural events or phenomena, and forms. it is not just a name, but also based on local knowledge. second, as part of the tradition, the name attached to the bugis people uses the bugis language so that it seems traditional which is full of meaning. third, naming based on tradition has been culturally ongoing since the ancestors until around the 1980s. because since the 1980s some bugis people have given a modern name based on the development of advanced technology. nevertheless, the process of giving names to bugis people continues through bugis traditions such as rituals or traditional ceremonies coupled with a collective prayer thanksgiving that is packaged in activities, namely in bugis customs, especially the bugis community who are muslim called mabbarazanji. the three systems of naming the bugis people in the bugis tradition mentioned above hold hopes and prayers for the bugis people. thus, the name is not just a string of words attached as one that characterizes the bugis people themselves. however, the name is also a necessity in supporting the survival of the bugis people in interacting in their lives. the interesting thing about the bugis naming system is that in addition to representing the life conditions of the bugis people, it also reveals the life history of the bugis people. therefore, for the bugis, the name is a living history. acknowledgment the author thanks the chancellor of the islamic institute (iai) as'adiyah sengkang, who has provided support for this research; to the resource persons as informants in this research; research companion team; and especially to prof. dr. setya yuwana sudikan, m.a. 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(2010). nama orang jawa: kepelbagaian unsur dan maknanya. sari-international journal of the world and civilisation, 28(2), pp. 259–277. retrieved fromhttp://journalarticle.ukm.my/1271 /. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 167 criticisms towards the idea of proper woman in jessie burton’s the miniaturist theresia anggarani wardana & ni luh putu rosiandani department of english letters, universitas sanata dharma theresia.teko@gmail.com & puturosi@yahoo.com abstract a discussion about a proper woman always includes the discussion of the concept of separate spheres. in victorian age for instance, a proper woman is perfectly described by the term ‘angel in the house’. seventeenth century netherlands also expected the same thing for women in that era. the concept of separate spheres along with its expectations of women’s proper roles is an example of social construction of gender which defines women. this study is conducted to reveal the criticisms towards the idea of proper woman in the miniaturist. the results of this study are: first, women who are considered proper by the society in the miniaturist have two roles, which are being a wife and being a mother. moreover, women are also expected to have five characteristics: obedient, powerless, submissive, dependent, and domesticated. second, the miniaturist, using the setting in the 17th century netherlands as a tool to criticize people in the 21st century, tries to redefine the way society thinks, including women, about women’s life. the criticisms found in the novel cover four things: criticism towards women’s expected roles; criticism towards women’s obedience; criticism towards women’s powerlessness, submissiveness, and dependence; and criticism towards women’s domestication. the text tries to make women more aware of their own value. women are also suggested to have self-dominion over themselves, and be more critical, independent, and tougher. society’s mindset regarding women’s value and capability in the present time is also redefined. the most important thing is the text tries to make people in the 21st century understand women as individuals or persons who have their own right and independence. keywords: criticism, proper woman, introduction what is a proper woman? in england’s victorian age, for example, in defining a proper woman, the concept of separate spheres cannot be excluded. gerard koot states it has long been understood that industrial capitalism brought with it an increased separation between places of work and the family home, and that this played a large role in the development of a social ideology and reality of separate and domestic spheres for bourgeois women (2015: 2). the term ‘angel in the house’ then might perfectly describe a proper woman. ‘angel in the house’, a title of a popular poem written by coventry patmore which reflects his mindset of a perfect wife or woman, became the popular victorian image of the ideal wife or woman (academic.brooklyn. cuny.edu, 2011). it is not surprising then if a proper woman is the one who is confined to home and expected to be “devoted and submissive to her husband … passive and powerless, meek, charming, graceful, mailto:theresia.teko@gmail.com mailto:puturosi@yahoo.com journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) theresia anggarani wardana & ni luh putu rosiandani 168 sympathetic, self-sacrificing, pious, and above all—pure” (academic.brooklyn.cuny. edu, 2011). the separate spheres framework holds that, as kent in webpage.pace.edu says: women inhabited a separate, private sphere, one suitable for the so called inherent qualities of femininity: emotion, passivity, submission, dependence, and selflessness, all derived, it was claimed insistently, form women’s sexual and reproductive organization (2003). women’s being dependent on men resulted in the idea that marriage was the ultimate goal for women. marriage meant survival in victorian era. since the society prevented women from making their own living, there was an inescapable dependence upon men’s income (webpage.pace.edu, 2003). the object of the study, the miniaturist, takes place in 17th century netherlands. in fact, the separation of spheres happened in netherlands earlier than any country, which was in the 17th century (koot, 2015: 2). similar to victorian ideal of women, in the 17th century netherlands, “the dutch believed that women were viewed “as the weaker sex who confine their duties to the home while men function in the world at large”” (johansen, 2007: 1). being ‘the weaker sex’ means that women are dependent to men. it is no wonder that 17th century dutchwomen also saw marriage as their goal. the concept of separate spheres along with its expectations of women’s roles is socially constructed. the concept is indeed an example of social construction of gender. women are defined by the society and they should be like what the society expects them to be or in other words a proper woman, or for patmore, ‘angel in the house’. burton’s debut novel, the miniaturist, has been chosen as the object of the study. the novel provides interesting criticisms towards the idea of proper woman, mainly through its female characters. the setting in 17th century is used as a tool to criticize the 21st century in which women are still defined by the society. the focus of this study is on examining thoroughly the depiction of proper woman through the female characters in the novel and analyzing the criticisms addressed towards the idea of proper woman. feminist criticism is used as the approach of the study. feminist criticism is unique because, as bressler puts it, it is more “divided than unified, housing more internal disagreements…” (1999: 188), which means it consists of a variety of feminist theories. nonetheless, feminism has a set of principles uniting the differences: feminist critics declare that “women are people in their own right, they are not incomplete or inferior to men” (bressler, 1999: 189). feminist critics include many literary schools such as historical and psychoanalytic to increase people’s understanding of women’s experience in the past and present and also to promote people’s appreciation of the value of women in the world. the practice of feminist criticism typically involves examining how the gender roles of literary work reflect or subvert the ‘traditional’ gender roles (millikan, 2011). proper woman in the 17th century dutch society in the miniaturist de beauvoir says that “one is not born but rather becomes a woman” (humm, 1990: 238). in other words, being a woman is something that one learns. the identity of a woman is socially constructed. society demands her to behave and live her life like what is considered to be proper. nella, nella’s mother, and marin are the three female characters analyzed in order to figure out the depiction of proper woman. the explanation is divided into two elements: the meaning of proper woman seen as women’s roles and the meaning of proper woman seen as characteristics or qualities expected by the society. journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 169 1. women’s roles words ‘proper woman’ are repeatedly mentioned in the novel, especially by the main character, nella. there are two criteria of being proper woman, as it is clearly stated by her, that “a proper woman marries—she has children” (161). these criteria are the roles expected from every woman in the society. a. wife in the very beginning of the story, nella is very enthusiastic about becoming a wife in amsterdam. for her, becoming a wife equals getting a new life as a woman. her mindset of proper woman is given by her mother who keeps telling her the importance of getting married, specifically to a man who can keep a guilder in his purse” (17).moreover, according to her mother, “life is hard if you’re not a wife” (22). at first, nella is quite shocked with her mother’s blunt statements, she even questions her mother. not only that, she even feels the urge of escaping her village. yet in the end, she does what is told anyway, as she “concerned about her mother’s nerves just enough not to rebel” (18). therefore, when johannes brandt, a wealthy merchant, asks for her hand, she gladly accepts him, because, as nella says herself, being a wife is the only option she has in life. this statement implies that being a wife is the fate of women. then, it becomes nella’s goal to be a proper woman. it can be seen from her attempt to practice being a lady for two years—she tries to walk like a lady and wears a newly tightened corset. b. mother after a woman becomes a wife, another requirement of becoming a proper woman is having children or in other words being a mother. when her mother tells her to marry a rich man, nella once says that she does not have anything to give him in return. her mother surprisingly replies “look at you. what else do we women have?” (17). implicitly, her mother tells nella that women only have their body to be ‘offered’ to men. nella indeed does grieve because of her mother’s statement and feel that she is ‘reduced’ as a woman by her own mother. from her mother’s statement, it can be said that her existence as a woman is simplified. nella’s existence, or women’s existence in general, is merely for the purpose of procreation. therefore, commenting nella’s first menstruation, her mother says that the purpose of that blood is “the security of children” (23) or a promise of motherhood. nella fails to see how it is possible to feel secure if she has to experience labour pains which sometimes lead several women to death. when nella refuses to be that kind of wife, her mother says there is no other kind of wife. she states that nella’s body is the key, while patting nella’s stomach. so, a woman may function well if she can produce children. 2. women’s characteristics through nella and her mother, it can be seen how women are expected to live their life in the society. the society’s expectation towards women is described through nella’s mother, who keeps telling her that women’s roles are to be a wife and to be a mother. that is the idea of proper woman, which is an “internalised norms of femininity” (gamble, 2006: 3) found in the dutch society in the novel. the idea already becomes the part of the society, the part in which they think or behave. however, talking about being a proper woman is not only about the roles of being a wife and a mother. it also involves characteristics or qualities expected from the society. the appropriate characteristics of women in the 17th century dutch society in the novel are obedient, powerless, submissive, dependent, and domesticated. a. obedient social construction of gender is learned through many aspects of society. in nella’s case, she learns it from her parents, especially her mother. nella’s obedience is related to her reaction towards idea of proper woman given by her mother. nella, at first, questions the idea of proper woman given by her mother—even she feels the urge of escaping her village when she practices being a lady. up to this point, her ‘little journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) theresia anggarani wardana & ni luh putu rosiandani 170 rebellion’ can be seen. ‘little rebellion’ here means there is a small part of nella that rejects the idea of proper woman. this ‘rebellion’ is weak since nella does not entirely disobey her mother. yet, it stops at that point because at the end, nella chooses to believe what her mother says since she concerns about her mother’s nerves. it results in nella’s accepting the idea of proper woman and she clings tightly to this idea, which can be seen from how she perceives her marriage with johannes and her life as a woman. in other words, she obeys the social construction of gender by accepting the idea of proper woman. in addition, nella’s obeying what her mother says also implies her naivety, since her decision to obey her mother lacks careful consideration. she believes her mother always tells her the truth, including the idea of proper woman, without giving any thoughtful consideration. b. powerless in the novel, women have less power than men for, as wilson states, “men hold power in all the important institutions of society” (2000: 1494). since they have less power, it is not surprising that they are willingly married, as marriage is believed as “the only possible form of influence a woman may have” (317) and a way—or the ‘only’ way to increase woman’s power. moreover, marin’s statement that says we can do nothing, petronella—we women … some of us can work … backbreaking work, for which they won’t even pay us half of what a man could earn. but we can’t own property, we can’t take a case to court. the only thing they think we can do is produce children who then become the property of our husbands (160) implies the powerlessness women have in their lives. from marin’s statement, women’s important role is only on procreation and the rest, they are powerless. in the novel, women’s powerlessness is also seen in nella’s reaction towards the first note the miniaturist sends read: every woman is the architect of her own fortune. she is confused with it because she thinks “women don’t build anything, let alone their own fates. all our fates are in the hands of god, and women’s in particular, after their husbands have passed them through their fingers …” (76). nella’s reaction conveys that women are entirely powerless to the extent that they cannot have their own lives without men’s interference. their fates lie in their husbands’ hands. it is not surprising as it is widely believed in the novel that “men are the makers of the world” (289). as the word ‘makers’ suggests, men undoubtedly hold power in the society. c. submissive women’s mindset that they are not the owner of their own fates also implies their submissiveness to men. the very fact that they let men have their fates shows they willingly accept men’s authority in their life. they admit the idea as if it were natural. it is similar with what tong states in her book that in patriarchal society, cultural constructions are considered natural and being a normal person means one is able to show their gender identity and behavior based on their biological sex (tong, 2009: 51). in other words, the idea is already internalized in women’s mind. therefore, the miniaturist’s first note is not ‘natural’ since it differs from what is constructed in the society, much to nella’s confusion. d. dependent women’s being powerless always eventually leads to another problem, which is their dependence upon men. women’s dependence can be seen from the fact that marriage is the ultimate goal for women. indeed, since a proper woman marries and becomes a mother, it implies that women need men in order to be a proper or perfect woman. as they are not prepared to work, women need security in order to survive their life. security here means protection against poverty. nella needs security from a wealthy merchant in order to survive from her ‘previous’ life, which is covered with her father’s debt. “you’ll have a roof over your head, thanks be to god” (30), nella’s mother once says to nella. it also can be seen from journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 171 marin’s statement that nella’s purpose of marrying a merchant is due to the need of having a secure life. it means women are financially dependent on men. besides financial dependence, women are also dependent on men in order to have authority. it is widely believed by many women in the novel, including nella and her mother, that “… [marriage is] the only possible form of influence a woman may have. marriage is supposed to … increase a woman’s power” (317). nella wants to make amsterdam her own, considering the fact that johannes is an influential and charismatic merchant in amsterdam. in the novel, an example of power women may have if they get married is having household to run, because commonly a household can only be obtained when a woman is a wife or a widow (315). d. domesticated to be a wife means a woman becomes the mistress of the household. yet, it cannot be defined as simple as that. she as a wife has the authority of the household and, as stated earlier, this kind of authority is what a woman can dream of. it likely refers to janeway’s argument which states about women’s agreement about exchanging private power in return for public submission. men rule the public domain, while domestic sphere is under women’s authority (eisenstein, 1984: 10). nella’s job as johannes’ wife is to become the mistress of the household whose job is “keeping us [people living in brandt’s house] all in order” (174). the fact that women can only rule the domestic sphere or the household means the idea of separate spheres exists in the society in the miniaturist. the idea of separate spheres not only can be seen through nella, but also from another female character, marin. as her brother works in voc (vereenigde oostindische compagnie), marin seems to know about the inside and outside of the voc (29). nella is rather surprised finding out about this fact, she even thinks that “johannes is surely crossing a forbidden boundary” (29) as he seems to let his sister know about his works. from nella’s thought it can be concluded that outside world is, in fact, not women’s business. nonetheless, in spite of her interference in johannes’ work, she still is not allowed to work just like her brother because, as a woman, she should remain at home. another proof can be found from what nella’s father says about women who work together with men: “it is a good thing that ladies no longer sail so much. women on board bring bad luck” (53). his words also reflect the current society’s belief that women should stay at home, that women should know their place. nella’s mother agrees with her husband and adds, “they [women] only bring the luck men give them” (53). women are also prohibited to come and visit their husbands’ workplace. the guards at voc workplace prevent nella to visit her husband. moreover, a wife cannot go to her husband’s warehouse unannounced. nella describes brandt’s warehouse as “her husband’s domain” (298), indicating it is not hers. the criticism towards the idea of proper woman johannes describes the 17th century dutch society in the novel as an invisible cage … [which makes] any person’s behaviour mutate under such constant scrutiny, such bigoted piety—neighbours watching neighbours, twisting ropes to bind us all … well, it’s a prison (264). the society always watches what each person does and judges whether it is appropriate or not. therefore, it in a way binds everyone, including women who are bound to the idea of proper woman which make them have no freedom over their life. the miniaturist tries to criticize the idea of proper woman which restricts women’s lives. however, before the criticisms are analyzed, it is important to figure out to whom the criticisms are actually addressed. burton stated herself that she “wasn’t drawn to a historic setting in order to set up the issue of a rounder female character…” (lee, n,d.). it means that the setting is not the focus of her novel. her focus is that she wants to journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) theresia anggarani wardana & ni luh putu rosiandani 172 create female characters who “for once are not defined by any other ideal than that they are human” (lee, n,d.). from those statements, it can be said that the concerns of the criticisms are directed to people in the 21st century. the setting in the 17th century netherlands is used as a tool to criticize the social construction of gender which still binds women in the 21st century. the miniaturist wants to show that the idea of proper woman or, in other words the social construction of gender, still exist today—a situation which is not very different from the 17th century. the criticisms are not only addressed to the society, but also to women themselves who are still chained by the social construction of gender. through the female characters, the text tries to redefine the way people think about women and also the way women think about their own value. it has the same purpose with feminist critics who want to “promote people’s appreciation of the value of women in the world” (millikan, 2011). 1. criticism towards women’s expected roles the society’s demands regarding women’s roles are voiced through nella’s mother. the 17th century dutch society in the novel defines women’s life by assigning the roles of being a wife and a mother. however, these roles in other words give no freedom to women. women lose their self-dominion as they cannot decide what kind of life they have by themselves. the miniaturist criticizes the way of thinking about women’s expected roles. in delivering the criticism, it employs two ways of criticizing: first, through nella’s unexpected marriage life and second, through marin’s mindset about being a wife. nella comes to brandt’s house with high hopes to become a merchant’s wife. ironically, it turns out her marriage is not like what her mother says. she is untouched by johannes even though she wishes to immediately do her proper role as a wife and have children. it is not that kind of marriage which her mother tells her—the “ideas of true love, of marriage beds, laughter, and children” (110). the security of life she seeks in marriage cannot be obtained as she finds out that johannes is often slack in his works which, eventually, results in his having no money left. moreover, marin holds the authority of the household, another thing nella pursues. its climax is when she finds out that her husband is a gay which undoubtedly seals away the promise of motherhood. after the revelation concerning the idea of proper woman comes to her, she realizes that she has pulled her wings off. she even thinks “for some of us, it’s a waste to be married” (399). the text shows the importance of having independence as a person or self-dominion. women should have their own decision regarding their lives. when marin is still young, she makes a brave decision of not being married. she does not want to live her life under the authority of a man since she “couldn’t tolerate being a wife” (316). she thinks that as a single woman she already has a household without being a wife and she can interfere in johannes’ works. this means everything to her—especially her capability of interfering with her brother’s works in which she is very interested in—she even considers it as a freedom. she does not want to give up who she is and what she has (315). if she gives up on her current life and lives as a wife, she will lose her freedom as she will live under the authority of her husband. indeed, marin is an interesting female character in this novel. even in her youth, she shows selfdominion—a thing which is rarely found in women’s characteristic in that time. the idea of feminism is reflected through this character. she shows the independence as a person. society does not define her existence as a woman. she, in this context, is free. nella’s unexpected marriage life and marin’s way of thinking can also be interpreted as the text’s way of mocking the idea of proper woman. the unexpected marriage life of nella implies that the idea is indeed foolish and makes no sense. there is no way an idea like that can guarantee women’s life to be perfect. the text also uses marin as a character to show its mockery towards the idea of proper woman. when nella states that a proper woman marries and has children, marin gives an interesting journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 173 comment: “then what does that make me? am i not a proper woman? last time i looked i certainly was” (161). marin has a different opinion about the word ‘proper’. she identifies ‘proper woman’ based on the biological appearance of a woman, a female human being. her comment implies that the social construction of gender which assigns women to do proper role does not define a woman. 2. criticism towards women’s obedience the miniaturist criticizes women’s obedience in accepting the idea of proper woman. nella is the character used as an example of a woman who willingly obey the society’s expectation or in other words, the social construction of gender. the text tries to redefine this way of thinking by showing nella’s marriage life and how she looks like a fool to believe in such idea. another way the text uses to show its criticism is by showing the importance of having critical thinking. it is presented through nella’s action when she buys christmas presents for her family. when she tries to find the perfect gift for her little sister, arabella, she thinks her sister will love to have finest christmas biscuits. “… but better, she thinks, that arabella should have a book and learn a little” (195). nella tells herself that “you wouldn’t have thought such a thing back in august” (195), implying that back in august, she does not feel the necessity of learning as she only focuses on becoming a wealthy merchant’s wife. her intention to buy a book for arabella means she thinks her little sister needs to have wider knowledge, so that she will be more critical about deciding what kind of life she really wants. nella does not want her little sister to willingly accept the idea of proper woman. 3. criticism towards women’s powerlessness, submissiveness, and dependence the text criticizes women’s powerlessness, submissiveness, and dependence since women, again in this context, are defined by ideals made by the society. the criticism is directly addressed to women themselves. women’s submissiveness to this idea implies the absence of self-dominion in women’s life as they believe their fate belongs to men and also the lack of struggle or willpower in women’s life. the mindset makes women dependent since men hold their fate. this results in their accepting men’s domination with resignation. the text tries to redefine the way women think about their fate by employing two things: first, through the existence of the miniaturist and her notes, and second, through nella’s action influenced by the miniaturist. a. the miniaturist and her notes the miniaturist is a character who holds the important key of nella’s mindset changing. nella has the first contact with the miniaturist when she orders some miniatures to furnish her wedding gift from her husband, a cabinet-sized replica of their home. along with miniatures, she sends notes which bring out nella’s self-awareness. through these notes, the mindset of women’s fate is redefined. the first note says that “every woman is the architect of her own fortune”. there is a contradiction between the popular mindset about fate and this miniaturist’s note. the miniaturist rejects the former and tries to tell nella that the current belief that women have no authority over her fate is wrong. through this notes, she states that every woman is the creator of her own fate. the miniaturist wants nella to rethink about her self-dominion which indeed is pulled off by the idea of proper woman. after telling nella that women’s fates lie on their own hands, she sends the second and third note—“i fight to emerge” and “things can change”, respectively. as their fates belong to them, they should fight for their own life instead of depending on men. the miniaturist, through her notes, encourages nella to fight for her life because things can change. the fourth note says “nella: the turnip cannot thrive in the tulip’s patch of soil”. it is directly stated in the novel that turnip and tulip are completely journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) theresia anggarani wardana & ni luh putu rosiandani 174 different plants—“one practical and simple in its structure, the other decorative and engineered by man” (226). through the miniaturist’s note, the symbolism of turnip and tulip is used. a ‘turnip’ woman is practical which means that she fights and deals with the real situation rather than clinging to idea of proper woman. a ‘tulip’ woman, who likely refers to a proper woman, is ‘engineered’ by man. it means her life is being controlled by men. she is dependent to be able to live. the ‘decorative’ word in ‘tulip’ woman may refer to its function which serves eye’s pleasure. since she follows the rule and she has the attitudes expected from her as a woman, the society sees her as a pleasure. the ‘turnip’ woman, on the contrary, is ‘simple’. turnip is a plant which grows out of sight, so it has no decorative function. however, it nourishes its body inside the soil. a ‘turnip’ woman gives no pleasure to the society. yet inside she has a quality which the ‘tulip’ woman lacks: self-dominion. the ‘turnip’ is critical, independent, strong-willed and not defined by anything else except herself. ‘the soil’ may refer to mindset or way of thinking. the ‘tulip’ woman grows in the society where she is taught to be an ideal woman based on the society’s perspective. the ‘turnip’, therefore, cannot fully develop in the ‘soil’ in which the ‘tulip’ grows. the point of the fourth note is that, with such different characteristics with a proper woman, the ‘turnip’ will not be able to grow if she follows the idea of a proper woman like what the society expects them to. the miniaturist conveys that nella has to leave behind her mindset about proper woman because each woman has their own selfdominion. the miniaturist’s characteristics are similar with marin in a way that they are women who are not defined by the ideals from the society. the miniaturist in particular, with her notes and behaviors, is a character whose purpose is to free women caged by the idea of proper woman. b. nella’s actions with her marriage life goes unexpectedly wrong and, especially, with the influence of the miniaturist’s words in her life, nella changes her mind regarding the idea of proper woman. from her actions, it can be seen that she has taken back her selfdominion which previously has been lost because of the idea of proper woman. there are three actions which show her selfdominion: her action regarding meermans’ sugar, her action concerning thea, marin’s illegitimate daughter, and her action about her dependence on the miniaturist. johannes is imprisoned while leaving behind his unfinished business regarding selling meermans’ sugar. marin is incapable of doing something about it since she is pregnant with an illegitimate child. the only one who can save brandt’s family name and wealth is nella. with her new mindset that her fates lie in her own hands, she fights to emerge from this difficult situation. she no longer shows the lack of self-dominion which makes her accept her fate with resignation. she believes that things will change if she does something about it. her struggle pays off since she is able to sell the sugar, all by herself. nella’s self-dominion also can be seen through her decision regarding marin’s illegitimate daughter, thea. marin dies after delivering her daughter. this exacerbates the current situation nella faces as it will certainly difficult for her to raise an illegitimate child. however, she positions herself as the answer of the current situation. “we must endure. for thea’s sake, we must emerge from this” (389). it means that whatever she does, it will determine how things will end up. she expresses selfdominion since she struggles and fights for her life. nonetheless, nella’s self-dominion reaches its climax when she decides to stop depending on the miniaturist. the miniaturist indeed has a big role in nella’s life. she guides nella to find her selfdominion. this results in nella’s dependence on the miniaturist’s guidance. however, at the end of the story, she decides to stop relying on the miniaturist and start depending on herself. nella’s full selfdominion is symbolized by her breaking journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 175 down the cabinet house and its miniatures, the things which bring the miniaturist into contact with her. this symbolizes the end of the miniaturist’s involvement in nella’s life as she starts her life anew as an independent woman. through both the miniaturist’s mindset seen in her notes and nella’s actions influenced by the miniaturist, the idea of women’s empowerment is applied to criticize their submissiveness, powerlessness, and dependence. the miniaturist’s way of thinking empowers nella as a woman to have more control in her own life and confidence when facing the difficult situation she is in. through the idea of women’s empowerment applied in the novel, the idea of feminism is reflected. again, it is about women’s independence as persons. the text voices women’s authority over her own self. criticism towards women’s domestication since social construction restricts women’s domain, in other words it limits women’s freedom. moreover, women’s domestication also means the limitation of women’s potential. as wollstonecraft suggests, women are prepared to get married and be a good wife. they are not trained to work like men, so they “have no other scheme to sharpen their faculties” (wollstonecraft, 1793: 61). this situation is reflected through nella who, when she still lives in her village, is prepared to be a good wife. in the novel, no men are interested in training women. women are not given the same opportunities as men to sharpen their faculties. the text rejects the mindset regarding women’s domestication as it restricts women’s freedom as well as their potential. it tries to redefine the way people think by using two women characters in her novel, marin and nella. marin knows the in and out about johannes’ work in voc. marin indeed has fascination with her brother’s work. her room is full with things her brother brings home from journeys. those are indeed uncommon things for a woman in that time to have—even nella comments that “this room is not from amsterdam, though it shows an amsterdammer’s drive for acquisition. this is the republic’s reach, in four small walls” (51). however, it implies something more important: her incapability of having men’s job. the society believes that women on board bring bad luck. this statement, the writer argues, is a manifestation of the concept of separate spheres which restricts women to remain at home. it also shows the implication of the subordination of women’s interests. this kind of mindset limits women’s true potential, including marin. besides studying the things johannes brings home for her, she masters snippets concerning her brother’s work as a merchant—those of tobacco sales, silk and coffee, for example. she often gives advices to johannes about his work and reminds him to work diligently. yet, marin only can go as far as that. she cannot go further as she is bound to the concept of separate spheres. nella is used to show women’s capability in doing what is considered as men’s job. what makes her different from marin is that she has the opportunity to do it. as stated previously, nella is the one who can successfully sell meermans’ sugar. this action, besides implying nella’s selfdominion, conveys another important fact: she is able to cross the boundary of the separate spheres. she makes a brave decision to violate the rule and cross the boundary of separate spheres. not only that, she cleverly decides to whom she sells the sugar after carefully considering the situation. at first, she feels unconfident when she knows she has to bargain as a part of selling the sugar. it turns out she can do it very well, even arnoud maakvrede, the confectioner to whom nella sells the sugar, is impressed with nella’s ability of bargaining. with her skill, she has the potential to become a good merchant as good as her husband. through these two characters, the miniaturist tries to redefine the mindset in the society that women’s characteristics make women incapable of functioning in the public realm, so that they are best suited in the domestic sphere (hughes, n.d.). through http://www.bl.uk/ journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) theresia anggarani wardana & ni luh putu rosiandani 176 marin, the text shows that women are also capable of doing men’s job if given the opportunities of doing so. nella proves that she is able of doing men’s job very well in spite of the fact that she is a woman. the belief that women are not allowed to go into men’s domain is destroyed through nella’s action which proves that it is not impossible to cross the boundary of separate sphere. the criticism reflects the idea of feminism which desires equal rights and equal opportunities for women. it shows that with equal rights and opportunities, women have the same potential as men in public domain. through marin and nella, the miniaturist also wants to make women aware about their value. women should not think that they are less competent than men. conclusion in order to dissect the depiction of a proper woman in the 17th century dutch society in the miniaturist, the roles and characteristics of women which are considered proper are analyzed. women are expected to fulfill two roles in their life, which are to be a wife and a mother.besides fulfilling the roles of being a wife and a mother, women in the 17th century dutch society in the novel are also expected to have the appropriate characteristics: obedient, powerless, submissive, dependent, and domesticated.using the setting in 17th century dutch society as a tool, the miniaturist criticizes society’s mindset, including women’s in the 21st century which are still chained by the social construction of gender. the text criticizes four things: women’s expected roles; women’s obedience; women’s submissiveness, powerlessness, and submissiveness; and women’s domestication. the miniaturist encourages women to recognize their own value, to have selfdominion over themselves, and to be more critical, independent, and tougher. the text also tries to redefine society’s way of thinking regarding women’s value and capability. above all else, the text tries to make people in the 21st century understand women as individuals or persons who have their own right and independence. references bressler, charles e. literary criticism: an introduction to theory and practice. 2nded. new jersey: prentice hall, 1999. burton, jessie. the miniaturist. london: picador, 2015 eisenstein, hester. contemporary feminist thought. boston: g. k. hall & co., 1983. “historical analysis: women as “the sex” during the victorian era”. victorian women: the gender of oppression. n.p. n.d.(webpage.pace.edu/nreagin/tempmot herhood/fall2003/3/hispage.html). september 1, 2015. hodgson-wright, stephanie. “early feminism”. n.d.the routledge companion to feminism and postfeminism. ed. gamble, sarah. new york: taylor & francis elibrary, 2006: pp 3-14. humm, maggie. the dictionary of feminist theory. columbus: ohio state university press, 1990. johansen, brenda. “nit-picking in the golden age of dutch art”. 2007. (http://www1.umassd.edu/euro/semina rpapers.cfm). august 31, 2015. koot, gerard. the portrayal of women in dutch art of the dutch golden age: courtship, marriage and old age. dartmouth: university of massachusetts, 2015. lee, richard. “richard lee talks to jessie burton, star debut author at the london book fair”. historical novel society. n.p. n.d. http://webpage.pace.edu/nreagin/tempmotherhood/fall2003/3/hispage.html http://webpage.pace.edu/nreagin/tempmotherhood/fall2003/3/hispage.html http://www1.umassd.edu/euro/seminarpapers.cfm http://www1.umassd.edu/euro/seminarpapers.cfm journal of language and literature vol. 17 no. 2 – october 2017 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 177 (historicalnovelsociety.org/richard-leetalks-to-jessie-burton-star-debut-authorat-the-london-book-fair/). october 14, 2015. millikan, lauren. “the feminist approach”. the evolution of alice criticism. carleton college. february 24, 2011. (http://www.carleton.edu/departments/ engl/alice/critfem1.html). july 18, 2016. the angel in the house.william makepeace thackeray. n.p. march 2, 2011. (http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/engl ish/melani/novel_19c/thackeray/angel.h tml). september 2, 2015. tong, rosemarie. feminist thought: a more comprehensive introduction. 3rd ed. colorado: westview press, 2009. wilson, ara. patriarchy: feminist theory. n.d.routledge international encyclopedia of women: global women's issues and knowledge. eds.cheris kramarae & dale spender. new york: routledge, 2000: pp. 1493-1497 wollstonecraft, mary. a vindication of the rights of woman: with strictures on political and moral subjects. dublin: j. stockdale, 1793. http://www.carleton.edu/departments/engl/alice/critfem1.html http://www.carleton.edu/departments/engl/alice/critfem1.html http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/thackeray/angel.html http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/thackeray/angel.html http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/thackeray/angel.html 158 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 158 – 166 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23.i1.4844 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. writing the self: interior voyage in 19th century french travel writing andi mustofa1,2, wening udasmoro1, sri ratna saktimulya1 andimustofa@mail.ugm.ac.id 1department of humanities, universitas gadjah mada, indonesia 2department of french language education, universitas negeri yogyakarta, indonesia abstract article information travel is a momentum to look inside that influences the travelers' existence, along with meeting and interacting with others. the self as a traveler experiences internal dynamics reflected in the travel writings. this paper analyzes five french travel writings to reveal the self-construction of travelers who explored the east in the 19th century. the analysis results show that travelers’ self-construction is divided into enlightenment or romantic subjects and true travelers or travelers as tourists. the enlightenment subject prioritizes facts and empirical knowledge outside of the self for the broader interest. in contrast, the romantic subject puts forward subjective and emotional attitudes in dealing with and narrating others used for personal gain. true travelers look for difficulties in other places to prove themselves in conquering the challenges. travelers as tourists try to avoid the obstacles by seeking safety and comfort during the trip. the east as a travel destination is a space that offers difficulties in constructing and legitimizing the traveler's self-image with the attributes that society expects, such as courage and persistence. the five french travelers, both enlightenment or romantic subjects and true travelers or tourists, had various knowledge of the others due to factors such as the purpose of the trip, profession, social status, and duration of the trip. knowledge of the others and self-disclosure narrated in travel writings manifest the french travelers’ power to control and manage themselves and represent the other. keywords: french travel writing; interior voyage; nineteenth-century; other; self received: 04 july 2022 revised: 21 november 2022 accepted: 22 november 2022 introduction the self is a metaphor for a journey. travel writing records not only a physical journey (exterior voyage) but also a metaphorical journey in the form of a mental journey (interior voyage). in the latter context, travel is a momentum to look inward, or as thompson (2011) called an inward turn, which affects the self and the traveler's existence. as interactions and encounters occur between https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:andimustofa@mail.ugm.ac.id journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 159 the traveler and the other, the self as a moving subject experiences internal dynamics that affect narrative patterns about himself. these self-narrative patterns are reflected in travel writings written by travelers due to the relationship between self and others. previous studies examining travel writings have tended to look at other representations in travel writings (ai, 2014; bernier, 2001; brisson, 2013; copin, 2001; détrie, 2006; driever, 2013; gonçalves, 2020; jaya and pratama, 2021; keck, 2004; marcinkowski, 2006; mermann-jozwiak, 2009; nayar, 2005; nygren, 2006; shi, 2007; udasmoro, 2017), the relationship of travel writing with orientalism and imperialism (amarawat, 2016; grangé, 2011), and the identity construction of self and other (juall, 2008; lee, 2007). these studies focus on depicting travel destinations as the other world in the context of the binary opposition of self/other to construct different identities between travelers as a self vis-à-vis destinations as other. however, the depiction of the traveler's self as a subject who travels in another world has not been well mapped. this paper completes the gap in previous studies by questioning how travelers construct themselves in the travel writings they create from their journeys. several 19th century french travel writings describing travelers' journeys to the east are selected as case examples to answer this question. the first travel writing is voyage de paris à java (1832), written by honoré de balzac. balzac's journey was imaginary. this means that balzac never set foot on java and wrote his journey to java from his imagination. the second work is quinze ans de séjour à java (1861) by just-jeanétienne roy. this work results from the author's experience as a member of the military who was assigned to java under the military corps of the kingdom of the netherlands. the third is voyage autour du monde: java, siam, canton (1869) by ludovic de beauvoir. beauvoir's writings contain his experiences worldwide, with java as one of the destinations, in an adventure with his fellow nobles. the fourth travel writing is en océanie: voyage autour du monde en 365 jours by edmond cotteau (1895). cotteau's work results from a journey with a mission scientifique that focuses on ethnographic and geographical studies. and the fifth is java, ceylan, les indes: excursion sous l'équateur et la zone torride (1897) by émile delmas, a wellknown french politician who visited several eastern regions for tours. french travel writings were chosen because france was a great empire that was the source of the creation of the east (martins, 2011; said, 2003; vinson, 2004). furthermore, the 19th century was the peak of french interest in the east, marked by many trips from france to the east (détrie, 2006; lin, 2003; lombard, 1971; said, 2003; vinson, 2004). the journey of the french to the east is not only a form of exploration to meet others, but also a form of identity formation and selfadvancement. in other words, a journey, which is recorded in travel writing, can be used as a challenge to gain experience and selftransformation. thompson (2011, p. 119) states that travel writing offers the stages of self-development of the travelers. this selfdevelopment is influenced by others encountered during the journey. therefore, this paper argues that others encountered on the way become objects for travelers to carry out internal transformations. in other words, the interactions between self and others affect the travelers’ internal dynamics. in addition, the travelers’ self-construction in travel writing is influenced by several factors, such as the purpose of the trip, profession, and social status in society. methodology this study is qualitative research which analyses the data taken from french travel writings first published in the 19th century, namely honoré de balzac's 2006 edition of voyage de paris à java (1832) from babel, quinze ans de séjour à java (1861) by just-jeanétienne roy published by ad mame et cie, voyage autour du monde: java, siam, canton (1869) by ludovic de beauvoir in 1998 edition of kailash, en océanie: voyage autour du monde en 365 jours (1895) by edmond cotteau published by librairie hachette et cie, and java, ceylan, les indes: excursion sous l'équateur et la zone torride (1897) by émile delmas published by librairie de l'art. the selection of data sources is made by looking at the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) andi mustofa et al. 160 diversity of travelers' data, including age, profession, purpose, and type of trip. note taking technique was used in collecting lingual data in the form of phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or discourse in the text from five travel writings. the data were obtained through the actions, words, and thoughts of the travelers as reflected in the travel writings. content analysis was used in analyzing research data to determine the travelers’ self-description. this research analysis was conducted by reading the five travel writings thoroughly. textual analysis was used to determine the patterns of selfconstruction in the interactions done by the french travelers towards other. the patterns of travelers’ self-construction were determined by identifying the travelers’ behavior and views based on thompson's concept of revealing the self. results and discussion being enlightenment or romantic travelers? thompson (2011, p. 117) divides the subject of travel, who goes on an adventure to the outside world, into two major subjects, namely the enlightenment and romantic subjects. the enlightenment subject prioritizes facts and empirical knowledge as an effort to explore knowledge that focuses on things outside of the self to narrate great goals for the broader interest. the romantic subjects influenced by the flow of romanticism put forward subjective and emotional attitudes in dealing with and narrating others. in contrast to the enlightenment subject, the romantic subject leads to self-discovery, enlightenment, knowledge, and understanding of the world for personal gain. in terms of narrative, the enlightenment subjects position themselves as trusted observers of the external world who rarely include personal details that lead to internal descriptions of themselves. in contrast, romantic subjects observe and react to interactions that occur with others, recording and reflecting on them—the interaction between the self-other. however, the two categories of subjects use the others encountered as a trigger to understanding the external world and internal self. travel creates momentum to get to know others (thompson, 2011). in other words, travel serves to gain knowledge, or what thompson calls a utilitarian agenda. therefore, the form of travel writing with this function tends to be based on empirical facts, so its accuracy is reliable. such travel narratives were written by enlightenment subjects who prioritized finding facts and empirical data from the other world. roy's journey, recorded in quinze ans de séjour à java, makes the world of java the main focus. for example, roy shows detailed narration when explaining the origins and names of the days used in javanese society. “la semaine ou série de sept jours a été introduite à java par les hindous, et renouvelée par les arabes. dans les premiers temps, les peuples de cette île la divisaient en cinq jours, comme les mexicains. les noms actuels de la semaine hebdomadaire, sont évidemment sanskrits, savoir: daïtia, qui correspond à notre dimanche, lonia lundi, angara mardi, boudha mercredi, wraspoti jeudi, soukra vendredi, et sanischara samedi. tous ces noms appartiennent à la mythologie hindoue, comme les noms des jours de notre semaine appartiennent à la mythologie gréco-latine, et ont la même signification: ainsi, daïtia, signifie le soleil, lonia ou soma la lune, angara mars, boudha mercure, wraspoti ou vrihaspoti jupiter, soukra vénus, et sanischara ou sana saturne” (roy, 1861, p. 67). “the week or series of seven days was introduced in java by the hindus and renewed by the arabs. in the early days, the peoples of this island divided it into five days, like the mexicans. the current names of the weekly week are obviously sanskrit, namely: daïtia, which corresponds to our sunday, lonia monday, angara tuesday, boudha wednesday, wraspoti thursday, soukra friday, and sanischara saturday. all these names belong to hindu mythology, as the names of the days of our week belong to grecolatin mythology, and have the same meaning: thus, daïtia, means the sun, lonia journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 161 or soma the moon, angara mars, boudha mercury , wraspoti or vrihaspoti jupiter, sukra venus, and sanischara or sana saturn” (roy, 1861, p. 67). roy's journey, which lasted for approximately fifteen years in java, seemed to affect the details of the narrative given. the long duration has implications for the traveler's opportunity to explore javanese knowledge when interactions occur between roy and foreign objects in java. in addition, the mastery of the javanese language allows roy to understand java through canon and authoritative sources such as ancient manuscripts, chronicles, and local rulers in java, then describe them in detail in his travel writing. therefore, the subject of the enlightenment in roy's journey turns to valid and credible sources to convey detailed information related to java. moreover, roy's status as a well-known military soldier supports him in obtaining accurate and reliable data. if the enlightenment subject focuses on extracting knowledge about others, cotteau's narrative is no different from roy's, which focuses on information such as ethnographic and geographical knowledge of java. cotteau is a journalist who travels to java funded by the french ministry of education to conduct observations of javanese people, culture, and landscapes. this scientific mission influenced cotteau's narrative in his travel writings. “après tjandjour, la voie ferrée s’engage dans une contrée montagneuse et déserte, puis atteint, à une altitude de 700 mètres, le fertile plateau de bandoung, où nous arrivons à 3 heures de l’après-midi; nous avions quitté buitenzorg à 8 heures du matin. ici, grâce à l’élévation du sol, la température est sensiblement plus fraiche : mon thermomètre ne marque plus que 26°” (cotteau, 1895, p. 82). “after tjandjour, the railway enters a mountainous and deserted region, then reaches, at an altitude of 700 meters, the fertile plateau of bandoung, where we arrive at 3 o'clock in the afternoon; we had left buitenzorg at 8 o'clock in the morning. here, thanks to the elevation of the ground, the temperature is noticeably cooler: my thermometer only registers 26°”(cotteau, 1895, p. 82). in the previous quotation, narratives that show self-subjectivity are reduced to produce credible narratives without dramatization in capturing and reporting the events seen. in other words, the traveler is tasked with observing without reacting and reflecting on what he saw. aesthetic appreciation of others tends not to be raised. otherwise, romantic subjects react to their encounters with others on their journey. these reactions are not only a matter of good and bad but also, for example, admiration, loneliness, sadness, happiness, and nostalgia. “pauvres javanais! ils ne parlent au résident qu'à genoux et en accompagnant leurs réponses d'un geste d'actions de grâce reconnaissant, qui consiste à élever les mains jointes jusqu'à la hauteur du front. je me sens indigné et comme suffoqué de cet abaissement; mais vraiment je ne suis pas venu ici pour changer les mœurs du pays; et puis, au fond, je sens que je m'aguerris” (delmas, 1897, p. 114). “poor javanese! they speak to the resident only on their knees and accompany their answers with a gesture of grateful thanksgiving, which consists in raising the joined hands to the height of the forehead. i feel indignant and as if i suffocated at this humiliation, but really i did not come here to change the manners of the country, and then, deep down, i feel that i am hardening myself” (delmas, 1897, p. 114). “ah! j'ai avant tout à cœur de vous dire combien les hommes à java m'ont inspiré de vive sympathie et de respect sincère” (beauvoir, 1998, p. 118). “oh! i have, above all, at heart to tell you how much the men in java have inspired me with lively sympathy and sincere respect” (beauvoir, 1998, p. 118). delmas's sadness in seeing the practice of worship in javanese society and beauvoir's admiration for the attitude and humility of the javanese were reactions to the encounter between french travelers and others who showed character as romantic subjects. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) andi mustofa et al. 162 romantic subject narration is more directed towards personal relationships and looking inward (inward turn) (thompson, 2011). the same is found in balzac's imaginative journey. in the context of voyage de paris à java, balzac highlights the prowess of javanese women in controlling death. “a paris, vous aimez à votre guise: jouant, aimant, buvant au gré de votre organisation; aussi l'ennui vous y saisit bientôt. mais à java, la mort est dans l'air: elle plane autour de vous ; elle est dans un sourire de femme, dans une œillade, dans un geste fascinateur, dans les ondulations d'une robe. là où vous avez la prétention d'aimer, de suivre vos penchans, vous périssez radicalement...” (balzac and maurus, 2006, p. 42). “in paris, you love as you please: playing, loving, drinking according to your organization; so, boredom soon seizes you there. but in java, death is in the air: it hovers around you; it is in a woman's smile, in a glance, in a fascinating gesture, in the undulations of a dress. where you pretend to love, to follow your inclinations, you perish radically...” (balzac and maurus, 2006, p. 42). balzac's admiration for javanese women can be seen in his narrative, which constructs javanese women as dangerous and full of love figures who can handle a man. romantic subjects influenced by the movement of romanticism, which emphasizes subjective and emotional reactions, appear to be more dominant in balzac's travel writings. diaz (2000) mentions that balzac's relationship with 19th century romanticism is at the level of imagination. this can be seen in balzac's imaginative journey to java, which explores self-subjectivity and avoids using quantitative data. tourists in the world of other thompson (2011) explains that travelers as tourists seek comfort and avoid all the hassles of traveling. in the context of java, ceylan, les indes, delmas considers himself a tourist who visits java to see and enjoy the beauty of the world of the far east (delmas, 1897, p. 161). the purpose of delmas' journey influences the narrative written in java, ceylan, les indes. being a tourist means seeking safety and comfort while traveling; likewise, delmas is on his way to java. the adventures he does tend to look for comfortable and safe things. delmas strives to create these situations and conditions by constantly interacting with the familiar. “mes compagnons hollandais du natal m’avaient fort recommandé l’hôtel des indes ; mais il est tenu par des allemands. il me paraît plus congruent de m’installer à l’hôtel de java, dirigé par un très obligeant français, m. pélé” (delmas, 1897, p. 73). “my dutch companions from natal strongly recommended the hôtel des indes to me; but it is held by germans. it seems more congruent to me to settle in the hôtel de java, run by a very obliging frenchman, mr. pélé” (delmas, 1897, p. 73). when choosing a hotel in batavia, delmas decided to stay in a hotel managed by a french. several other european travelers who had visited batavia suggested delmas rent a room at hôtel des indes. however, delmas flatly refused because a german managed it. delmas' ties to france are evident in this context. for him, the similarity of origins from france made delmas confident of the quality of the hotel he took, even though other european travelers did not recommend it. thompson (2011) states that the journey that is presented not in the form of a spiritual journey or exploration will be presented as a self-indulgent jaunt due to the absence of challenges. familiarity with france encourages delmas' behavior because, for him, it provides comfort even though he is in java. this, for example, can be seen in the food that delmas chose while in java, i.e., french-style food. an upscale tourist, delmas, claimed that the local food horrified him (delmas, 1897, p. 76). delmas' behavior creates a superior attitude while demeaning the local culinary culture he encounters. the differences that are present are not appreciated but instead removed. tourist traveler does not have significant implications for the internal transformation of travelers. this is because encounters with journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 163 others that trigger difficulties as a form of selfexamination are reduced or eliminated so that they do not have implications for themselves (thompson, 2011). everything in unfamiliar territory is arranged to be familiar and comfort the traveler. in the context of delmas' trip, foreign things far from french influences are engineered and attempted to be as close as possible to france so traveler can enjoy java in comfort and tranquillity. the self as true traveler travel is a self-test (thompson, 2011). therefore, difficulties and dangers become a way of finding authentic experience, which, for thompson (2011), becomes a medium of selftransformation for the travelers. in the context of voyage autour du monde: java, siam & canton, beauvoir was looking for this test in one-horned rhino hunting activities. “j'ai orné ma carabine de sa baillonnette pour les cas désespérés et chargé mon arme avec une consciencieuse attention, car le danger est grand. il paraît que, lorsque l'animal attaque, il vous broie en un instant d'un seul coup de ses énormes pieds, qui ont plus d'un pied et demi de diamètre. au bout d'un quart d'heure, deux coups de feu, tirés par les traqueurs, se font entendre ; on a vu la bête!” (beauvoir, 1998, pp. 41–42). “i adorned my rifle with its bayonet for desperate cases and loaded my weapon with conscientious attention because the danger is great. it seems that when the animal attacks, it crushes you in an instant with a single blow of its enormous feet, which are more than a foot and a half in diameter. after a quarter of an hour, two shots fired by the trackers are heard; we saw the beast!” (beauvoir, 1998, pp. 41– 42). beauvoir admits that his involvement in rhino hunting makes his narrative of his journey unique and different. in addition, the practice of hunting is considered capable of training him to face challenges that are dangerous, stressful, and fun (beauvoir, 1998, p. 46). cotteau's journey of scientific aims and emphasizing scientific matters emphasized the difficulties encountered in obtaining the data sought. cotteau's persistence in exploring java was displayed intensively, especially when climbing mount merapi to show his authenticity. cotteau narrates mount merapi as a legend because of the beautiful morphology of the mountain and the level of difficulty in climbing it. these two things made mount merapi famous among the world's nobles (cotteau, 1895, p. 99). danger and discomfort are markers of an authentic journey that corroborates the travelers’ claim that they have acquired genuine knowledge about themselves and others (thompson, 2011). the self described in travel writings is not only a reliable eyewitness, but the traveler possesses and acquires the attributes desired and attained by the society, such as persistence and courage. the narrative of the difficulties and obstacles faced by cotteau shows his tenacity in his efforts to defeat merapi. furthermore, travel writing becomes a self-promotion medium for the success of travelers in conquering others (thompson, 2011). besides being shown through the conquest of mount merapi, the narrative of cotteau's heroic self-promotion is strengthened by his ascent on mount merapi, which is immortalized in an article in gazette de semarang magazine. in the magazine, cotteau and breon were the first two french nationals to conquer merapi. this has become a medium of self-promotion and public recognition of cotteau's success in showing his authenticity as an adventurer. in balzac's imaginative adventures, the myth of upas as a poisonous and deadly plant and the myth of javanese women are used to show the traveler’s existence. in other words, upas and women become media for selfexamination for balzac to strengthen his position in his relationship with others. the travel writing voyage de paris à java records the author's love relationship with a javanese woman. udasmoro (2007) argues that balzac's positioning of javanese women is the author's attempt to do imaginative domination of the east. although the journey is carried out imaginatively, the narrative about javanese women creates a self-image for balzac as a subject who has power. this power is contained in balzac's narration of his persistence and courage in defeating the legendary myth of javanese women as a death journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) andi mustofa et al. 164 control figure and a potent concoction of poison to kill (balzac and maurus, 2006, p. 30). however, balzac tried to fight the construction he created himself by establishing a love relationship with a javanese woman. balzac takes risks by having relations with javanese women to show his adventurous spirit and brave attitude in the face of danger. in this case, balzac dares risk his soul to get the woman's love. in addition to constructing the image of javanese women who are closely related to death, the myth of upas as a poisonous plant in java is also used by balzac as a medium for selfexamination. “figurez-vous une plaine d’ossemens blanchis ceinture digne de l'upas, témoignage de son pouvoir, malheureux atteints çà et là, quand ils se croyaient sauvés, la plupart amoncelés autour de l’arbre” (balzac and maurus, 2006, p. 65). "imagine a plain of bleached bones belt worthy of the upas, testimony to his power, unfortunate hit here and there, when they thought they were saved, most of them piled up around the tree” (balzac and maurus, 2006, p. 65). upas is a plant that produces a toxic substance equivalent to hydrocyanic acid, which can kill its victims quickly, without spraining, convulsions, and suffering (balzac and maurus, 2006, p. 62). for balzac, the myth of the upas he raises is a way of gaining authentic experience and knowledge about others and himself. traveling through java challenged balzac to fight the things he had constructed beyond reason. balzac confirms this dangerous adventure in the form of a fight against death by approaching the upas tree (balzac and maurus, 2006, p. 68). the extreme power of upas can ultimately be defeated by the courage to get to know the poisonous plant more closely. in voyage de paris à java, javanese women and upas plants become balzac's focus to construct his self-image as heroic subjects on a trip to java. thus, java is not merely a foreign and wildland but also a space for selfexamination. thompson (2011) argues that true travelers tend to choose adversity and describe it as a form of self-defense. the success of the traveler in overcoming obstacles, in the context of balzac, namely javanese women and upas plants, is a form of achievement in conquering and mastering others he encounters. in the context of quinze ans de séjour à java, roy's journey in java is a process of selfdevelopment and maturity. roy's self-test in the narrative of his journey is manifested in physical tests as a dutch military force. roy was assigned to several military missions during his stay in java for approximately fifteen years. roy's achievements in the military made him a leader in the mission of eradicating pirates in the dutch east indies. roy positioned himself heroically as a key figure in formulating a strategy, attacking enemy bases, negotiating, and determining punitive sanctions against the group of hijackers (roy, 1861, pp. 209–210). travel writing, according to thompson (2011), offers stages of self-development. these stages in the context of roy's journey are shown through his narrative about himself, starting as a member of the french royal military and ending up as a member of the dutch royal military with a high-ranking status. the kingdom of the netherlands legitimized roy's military position by giving the highest award, namely the chevalier de l'ordre du lion néerlandais (order of the lion of the netherlands) and roy's promotion to lieutenant-colonel after the eradication of pirate gangs. like cotteau, roy's travel writings have become a medium of promotion for his authoritative self. in addition, travel is a way to gain cultural capital (thompson, 2011). roy's trip to java became an intermediary to strengthen his position in society, both the community of origin and the local community he served. conclusion traveling to a foreign place is a construction to build self-strength. the journey makes the travelers feel complete after achieving the attributes obtained in the process of the journey. the east has become a destination for self-fulfillment for french travelers who are part of the west. this fulfillment is done through difficulties and challenges that must be faced and overcome to journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 165 construct and legitimize the traveler’s selfimage. becoming a true traveler or tourist is influenced by the purpose of the trip. what distinguishes the two is whether there is a shift in views before and after the trip. as a tourist, the traveler always looks for comfort during the journey. therefore, tourist trips are little or even less likely to create transformations in themselves. on the other hand, true travelers deliberately seek adversity elsewhere to prove their resilience and qualities that demonstrate the ability to manage themselves and, second, to reveal their power over others. the difficulty becomes a legitimacy about the quality of self. if the self succeeds in overcoming the existing obstacles and challenges, then the self-image with the attributes expected by society has been successfully constructed. the five french travelers, whether enlightenment or romantic subjects, true travelers or tourists, have a varied knowledge of the others. the depth of knowledge about others is influenced by factors such as the purpose, duration of the trip, profession, and social status. knowledge of the other and selfdisclosure are described in travel writings from the french travelers’ power to control and manage themselves and represent the destination as the other. acknowledgment this article is part of a dissertation being worked on at the doctoral program in humanities, faculty of cultural sciences, universitas gadjah mada. financial support from the indonesian endowment fund for education/lembaga pengelola dana pendidikan (lpdp) is gratefully acknowledged. references ai, q. 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(2007). perempuan jawa menurut balzac dalam voyage de paris à java: dominasi dan subordinasi imajiner. jurnal semiotika, 12(1), pp. 1–10. udasmoro, w. (2017). representing the other: marquis ludovic de beauvoir’s account of nineteenth-century java. asian studies: journal of critical perspectives on asia. 53(2), pp. 57–83. vinson, d. (2004). l’orient rêvé et l’orient réel au xixe siècle. l’univers perse et ottoman à travers les récits de voyageurs français. revue d’histoire littéraire de la france, 104(1), pp. 71–91. 13 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 13 – 24 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.4967 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. databases on the indonesian prefixes peand pen karlina denistia karlinadenistia@staff.uns.ac.id english diploma program, vocational school, universitas sebelas maret, indonesia abstract article information this paper provides the theoretical grounding in constituting databases related to peand pen-, two indonesian nominalizing prefixes, which have various meanings (e.g., patient, agent, or instrument). the first database contains the words with pe and penwhereas the second database provides the cosine similarity between two words of interest. using a written indonesian corpus as the primary source (leipzig corpora collection), the databases contain the following information: peor pen prefixes, allomorph of pen-, base word, semantics role, morphological variation, cosine similarity, as well as the word frequency. furthermore, this paper elaborates the theoretical consideration on how each information was cultivated. in building the databases, indonesian morphological parser and word to vector were used to analyze the indonesian morphological status and to put the words in the corpus into a vector. in addition, manual verification for the data against the indonesian comprehensive dictionary was also conducted. in the end, the databases are available for free so that the data could be used as materials for a corpus-based analysis on indonesian morphology. this research shed light to a careful and thorough classification of the open-access databases of peand penfrom their allomorphs, base word, semantics role, and morphological variation. the information provided in this article is hoped to be contributive in indonesian morphology specifically, and other linguistics fields (e.g., corpus linguistics and quantitative linguistics) in general. keywords: corpus data; morphology; prefixes; cosine similarity received: 5 may 2022 revised: 25 november 2022 accepted: 3 december 2022 introduction penand peare two nominalizing prefixes to create an agent, an instrument, or a patient. several studies related to the prefixes’ form, meaning and their corresponding verbs have been conducted to investigate penand pe(dardjowidjojo, 1983; ramlan, 1985; chaer, 2008; putrayasa, 2008; sneddon et al., 2010; subroto, 2012; ermanto, 2016; sugerman, 2016). pen-, the first prefix, derives https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) karlina denistia 14 nouns from a process of affix substitution with menverbal prefix (e.g., pembaca ‘writer’membaca ‘to read’). pe-, the second prefix, derives nouns from a process of affix substitution with beror diverbal prefixes (e.g., pelari ‘runner’-berlari ‘to run’ and pesapa ‘addressee’-disapa ‘to be addressed’). from the semantics perspective, both forms might occur in a similar semantics role (sneddon et al., 2010). penexpresses agent, instrument, or causer. for instance, from the base word kasih ‘to love’ an agent pengasih ‘lover’ is derived, pemotong ‘cutter’ is derived from potong ‘to cut’, as well as from the base word sakit ‘to be sick’ becomes a causer penyakit ‘disease’. words with pe-, meanwhile, express patient, agent, or instrument (e.g., sapa ‘to address’-pesapa ‘addressee’, lari ‘to run’-pelari `runner’, pekasih ‘love poison). nasalization in pen-, denoted by ‘n’, shows that it has five nasalized allomorphs (e.g., penpen-, penpem-, penpeng-, penpeny-, penpenge-). there is only one allomorph that does not follow the nasalization rule, penpe-, which is described as very similar to the invariant pe-. as a result, non-native indonesian may find difficulty to differentiate peand penas one of penallomorph occasionally appears in the same phonological environment (see table 1). for example, pelari ‘runner’ is pe-, whereas pelukis ‘painter’ is penalthough both proceed a stem initialized by the lateral liquid /l/. the only way to differentiate penand pein this circumstance is by relating them to the corresponding verb. the overlapping issue on these two prefixes is not yet well addressed until now. what makes it more difficult to distinguish pe and penis because there has not been a consensus whether these formations are derived from one or two prefixes (denistia, 2018). what might be the reason of this inconclusive finding of peand penis due to a few numbers of observations. therefore, a set of databases are needed to explore this phenomenon from the quantitative perspective. table 1. words with peand penthat have similar phonological condition word prefix noun translation pen allomorph base word base translation base word class semantic role pelari perunner lari to run v agent pelukis penpainter pe lukis to paint v agent pemusik pemusician musik music n agent pemasak pencooker pe masak to cook v instrument perenang peswimmer renang to swim v agent perokok pensmoker pe rokok cigarette n agent pewisata petraveler wisata to travel v agent pewawancara peninterviewer pe wawancara interview n agent recent studies on these prefixes conducted analyses based on corpus data (denistia & baayen, 2019, 2022a, 2022b, denistia et al., 2022). their research focused on investigating whether peand penare allomorphs from their productivity, computational learning, and semantics distribution respectively. one of their significant findings concluded that peand penshould be treated as two different prefixes due to their different productivity and semantics. penis found more productive than pe-. in addition, although both peand pen creates agents; penis productive in creating instruments, while peis productive in creating patients. moreover, the number of derived words with pen(and all of its allomorphs) is linearly dependent on the number of base words for menallomorphs. pe-, however, is an outlier in the linearity of the base words’ productivity. apart from productivity analysis, using semantics journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 15 distribution (mikolov et al., 2013), denistia et al. (2022) measured the similarity of all possible combination between peand pen-. they found that peand penare semantically discriminable. peand pencosine similarity is significantly different only across prefixes. furthermore, compared to derived words with pen-, words starting with pehave meanings that are more similar to their noun bases. this paper provides a detailed explanation of the materials and database used in denistia & baayen (2019) and denistia et al. (2022). theoretical grounding on how the information in database were classified (e.g., the classification of peand pen-, allomorph of pen-, semantics role, cosine similarity, tokens frequency in the corpus) is described. the tools used to generate two database of peand penare also elaborated in this paper. the information and explanation provided in this paper are structured in a way that i hope to be generally contributive in both corpus and quantitative linguistics analysis. in what follows, i first introduce the main corpus and tools. in the next section, i present the databases. finally, i conclude the study in the final section. along with this paper, two databases are made available for public and can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/pepenproductivity and http://bit.ly/pepensemvector. methodology leipzig corpora collection the leipzig corpora collection corpus, which includes a range of indonesian textual registers from 2008 to 2012, including newspapers, the web, and wikipedia (goldhahn et al., 2012), was used to create the pepen database. this corpus contains 36.608.669 word-tokens that belong to 112.025 different word types and appear in 2.759.800 sentences. started by the projekt deutscher wortschatz since 15 years ago, now, the leipzig corpora collection has developed into 136 monolingual corpora including indonesian (goldhahn et al., 2012; quasthoff et al., 2006). it uses available online newspapers to crawl as a method for gathering text data [http://www.abyznewslinks.com]. in addition, it uses a framework for parallel web crawling utilizing http://www.httrack.com as the web site copier. another way that was conducted to collect the corpus is by crawling the world wide web randomly, utilizing findlinks [http://wortschatz.unileipzig.de/findlinks/] (heyer & quasthoff, 2004). besides, udhr [http://www.ohchr.org] and wikipedia [http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikiprep/] were also used as its resource, resulting in more texts in various languages that are covered for this corpora. the text data in the corpora has been preprocessed using the html-stripping in order to take the data containing the well-formed sentences, langsepa created by pollmächer (2011) so that each language would be clustered separately, and www.sonderzeichen.de to generate the sentence boundary. to sidestep the copyright issue and to make it impossible to recreate the original material, the phrases were jumbled. the indonesian leipzig corpora collection corpus is made available online at https://corpora.unileipzig.de/en?corpusid=ind_mixed_2013. indonesian morphological parser (morphind) the morphind parser (larasati et al., 2011), which has an overall accuracy of 84.6%, was used to perform morphological analysis on the words in the pepen database. it was run in non-compound mode. before starting the parser, i manually fixed 200 words beginning with peor penthat had typos (see table 2 for illustrations) and added the frequency of the typos to the frequency of the words. additionally, using the dictionary as the gold standard manual verification, morphind's recall for detecting peand penwas 0.82 and its precision for doing so was 0.98. the r open-source programming language, version 3.3.3, was used to process the data in r studio(r team, 2015). r is an open source that can be downloaded at https://cran.r-project.org for free (available for windows, mac, and linux users). http://bit.ly/pepenproductivity http://bit.ly/pepensemvector http://www.abyznewslinks.com/ http://www.httrack.com/ http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/findlinks/ http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/findlinks/ http://www.ohchr.org/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikiprep/ https://corpora.uni-leipzig.de/en?corpusid=ind_mixed_2013. https://corpora.uni-leipzig.de/en?corpusid=ind_mixed_2013. https://cran.r-project.org/ journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) karlina denistia 16 table 2. typo example entries in the database word translation frequency typo revision freq of typo pelukis painter 321 pelunis 1 pemusik musician 208 pemuzik 7 penulis writer 5312 pemnulis,pemulis,pengnulis,penulia, penulih,penulsi,penults,penulus,peulis 1,1,1,1, 1,1,1,1,1 perokok smoker 671 peerokok,peroko,perokor 1,1,1 table 3. the morphind parser output examples word parser noun translation allomorph base base translation pencipta pen+cipta_nsd creator pen cipta to create pendaki pen+daki_nsd climber pen daki climbing peninju pen+tinju_nsd puncher pen tinju punch petinju pen+tinju_nsd boxer tinju boxing petani petani_nsd rice farmer tani farming peternak peternak_x– farmer ternak cattle pengelas pen+kelas_nsd welder penge las to weld pengusut pen+kusut_nsd investigator peng usut to investigate table 3 shows the sample output of morphind parser. from table 3, one can see that morphind correctly parses pencipta, pendaki, and peninju. however, morphind parser is not accurate in identifying pein petinju, petani, and peternak. in several instances, morphind is unable to accurately detect single-syllable base words. pengelas ‘welder’, for instance, morphind identifies the base word is kelas ‘classroom’, thus the morphological process is [penpeng+ kelas]. the base word of pengelas ‘welder’ is las ‘weld’ and thus the morphological analysis is [penpenge+ las]. also, the base identified by the parser is not accurate as in pengusut ‘investigator’. pengusut ‘investigator’ is supposedly formed from the base word usut ‘to investigate’, but morphind identifies its base as kusut ‘tangled’. thus, the correct parsing is [penpeng+ usut] and not [penpeng+ kusut]. due to some misidentification, the online version of kamus besar bahasa indonesia, a comprehensive dictionary of indonesian, (http://kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id; viewed on june 2016), which was published in 2012, and comprises more than 90,000 lemmas, was used to manually examine and correct morphind output as needed (alwi, 2012). word to vector i lemmatized the leipzig corpora collection corpus based on morphind’s morphological analyses output. prior to the lemmatization, all the word in the corpus were lower-cased, numbers were excluded, punctuation marks and 15 highest frequency stop words were removed. i removed stop words itu ‘that’, ini ‘this, dan ‘and’, yang ‘which’, pada ‘of’, di ‘in’, dengan ‘with’, akan ‘will’, juga ‘also’, dari ‘from’, untuk ‘to/for’, dalam ‘inside’, ke ‘to’, karena ‘because’, and tidak ‘not’. morphind lemmatizes anti-, pra-, pasca-, non-, ku‘i’, -ku ‘my’, kau‘you’, -mu ‘your’, -nya ‘his/her/its’, se‘one’, per‘per’, and particles (e.g. -lah to show emphasize, -kah to ask question) as bound morphemes. the suffix -nya was marked to indicate its function as a question word by nya-wh. however, antar was not separated from its base because it has a different reading when this word occurs in a form of a simple word (e.g., antar paket itu ‘pick that package up’ versus antaragama ‘among religions`). finally, hyphenated words http://kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id/ journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 17 were kept in the form of reduplication as the way they are (e.g., iteration, intensification, or plurality; rafferty (2002), chaer (2008), dalrymple & mofu (2012), sugerman (2016)). word to vector was made used to convert all the lemmatized words in the corpus into a vector. each word in the corpus was encapsulated in high-dimensional vectors so that a vector will represent a word (turney & pantel (2010)). cosine similarity, which is length-normalized and is equal to the inner product of the vectors, was used to calculate the degree of semantic similarity between two lemmas, based on the distributional information of the words (their cooccurrences with other words in huge corpora). the similarity of the cosine of the angle 𝜃 is cosine similarity between �⃗⃗� and �⃗⃗⃗⃗� . in the pepen cossim database, the results of computing the cosine similarity value for each conceivable pair combination of words from the set of pe-, pen-, and their base words were stored. lemma1, lemma2, cosine similarity (the cosine similarity value between lemma 1 and lemma 2), and derived-base cosine similarity (cosine similarity measure of the derived word with its base word) are all included in the database. finally, i collected a total of 358224 permutation of derived words with penand 59810 permutations of derived words with petogether with their cosine similarity to their base words (see table 4 for list of example entries of this database). words with a token frequency less than 5 were not included in this database. table 4. pepen cossim database’s examples of entries lemma1 l1 english lemma 2 l2 english cossim l1l2 prefix l1 prefix l2 base l1 b1 english base l2 b2 english cossim l1-b1 cossim l2-b2 pencipta creator pelatih trainer 0.022 pen pen cipta to create latih to train 0.358 0.192 pencipta creator pemilih voter -0.111 pen pen cipta to create pilih to vote 0.358 0.364 pencipta creator pencari seeker 0.092 pen pen cipta to create cari to search 0.358 0.147 peternak farmer pengupas peeler -0.03 pe pen ternak to farm kupas to peel 0.717 0.212 peternak farmer penyapu sweeper 0.03 pe pen ternak to farm sapu broom 0.717 0.374 peternak farmer penyemprot sprayer 0.005 pe pen ternak to farm semprot to spray 0.717 0.646 results and discussion pepen database includes a total of 3090 words; 2818 words with pen-, 267 words with pe-, and 4 words with the unproductive variant per-, benjamin (2009). the latest prefix is not discussed in this paper. for the sake of the quantitative analysis, both pepen database and pepen cossim database provide the information on how many times the words with peor penand their base words occur in the corpus; usually called as ‘token frequency’ (see table 5). the mentioned frequencies are the word's overall frequency and are not segmented by meaning. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) karlina denistia 18 table 5. sample entries of pepen database noun word noun translati on frequen cy pe allomo rph base word base translati on base word class base frequency semantic role pelari runner 358 t lari to run v 2312 agent pelukis painter 321 f pe lukis to paint v 282 agent pemasak cooker 6 f pe masak to cook v 1070 instrument pemusik musician 208 t musik music n 9799 agent perenang swimmer 296 t renang to swim v 821 agent perokok smoker 671 f pe rokok cigarette n 3619 agent pewawanc ara interview er 101 f pe wawanca ra interview n 3015 agent pewisata traveler 1 t wisata to travel v 7371 agent classifying peand pen there are two ways to differentiate pe and pen-. the first one is by applying the phonological condition on penand its six allomorphs: penpen-, penpeng-, penpem-, penpeny-, penpe-, and penpenge-. the phonological context influences the nasal allomorphy of pen-. the phonological conditioning of penallomorphs is summarized by ramlan (1985), sugerman (2016), and sukarno (2017) as follows: 1. -n is lost with base words initialized by /ny/, /w/, /r/, /m/, /n/, /ng/, or /l/ a. pen+ nyanyi ‘to sing’ to be penyanyi ‘singer’ b. pen+ wangi ‘good smell’ to be pewangi ‘instrument to give a good smell’ c. pen+ rusak ‘broken’ to be perusak ‘destroyer’ d. pen+ mabuk ‘drunk’ to be pemabuk ‘who gets drunk’ e. pen+ lukis ‘to paint’ to be pelukis ‘painter’ 2. -n becomes -n with base words initialized by /t/, /d/, /j/, /c/, /sy/, or /z/ a. pen+ tulis ‘to write’ to be penulis ‘writer’ b. pen+ daki ‘to climb’ to be pendaki ‘climber’ c. pen+ jelajah ‘to explore’ to be penjelajah ‘explorer’ d. pen+ cuci ‘to wash’ to be pencuci ‘instrument to wash/agent who wash’ 3. -n becomes -ng with base words initialized by a vowel or /k/, /h/, /g/, or /kh/ a. pen+ ingat ‘to remember’ to be pengingat ‘reminder’ b. pen+ ganti ‘replacement’ to be pengganti ‘who/which replaces’ c. pen+ halang ‘block’ to be penghalang ‘barrier’ d. pen+ kuasa ‘power’ to be penguasa ‘ruler’ 4. -n becomes -m with base words initialized by /p/, /b/, or /f/ a. pen+ buat ‘to make’ to be pembuat ‘maker’ b. pen+ picu ‘trigger’ to be pemicu ‘trigger’ c. pen+ fitnah ‘to sander’ to be pemfitnah ‘slander’ 5. -n becomes -ny with base words initialized by /s/ a. pen+ saring ‘to filter’ to be penyaring ‘who filters’ 6. pengeoccurs in monosyllabic base words a. pen+ cek ‘to check’ to be pengecek ‘checker’ there are some exceptions of these phonological condition given by sneddon et al. (2010). if the stem is borrowed from other languages, some bases with initial /k/, /s/, /t/, /p/ are not lost. thus, the derived words as a result of borrowing becomes more accepted as an indonesian word as in the stem klasifikasi ‘classification’ to be pengklasifikasi ‘classifier’. table 6 shows the second way to distinguish peand pen-, which is by process journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 19 of affix substitution. in this case, the prefix penchanges verbs with the menprefix into noun. menalso has 6 allomorphs (menmeng, menmen-, menmem-, menme-, menmeny-, and menmenge-). again by affix substitution, the prefix pecreates nouns from verbs with the prefix ber (dardjowidjojo, 1983; ramlan, 1985; putrayasa, 2008; benjamin, 2009; sneddon et al., 2010; tjia, 2015; ermanto, 2016). however, it should be noted that ramlan (1985) acknowledged only several verbs with bercorrelates to pe-. table 6. examples of the corresponding penwith menand pewith ber-. noun word noun translation pe base word base translation corresponding verb verb translation pelari runner true lari to run berlari to run pelukis painter false lukis to paint melukis to paint pemusik musician true musik music bermusik to play music pemasak cooker false masak to cook memasak to cook perenang swimmer true renang to swim berenang to swim perokok smoker false rokok cigarette merokok to smoke pewisata traveler true wisata to travel berwisata to travel pewawancara interviewer false wawancara interview mewawancarai to interview the base words for both the verbs with menor berand their nominalizations with penand pecan be nouns, adjectives, and verbs. verbs with men-, which ordinarily renders a transitive verb, can be added by -i and -kan suffixes. the suffixes -i and -kan typically signify intensification or iteration while also adding a location, a beneficiary, or a causer as a new argument (arka et al., 2009; kroeger, 2007; sneddon et al., 2010; sutanto, 2002; tomasowa, 2007). in the same vein, verbs with ber-, which has infrequent allomorphs beand bel-, essentially express reciprocity, stativity, or reflexivity. berare found with -an or -kan, but pedoes not combine with the suffixes (chaer, 2008; kridalaksana, 2007; putrayasa, 2008; ramlan, 1985; sneddon et al., 2010). the verb structure with ber-an and ber-kan create respectively reciprocative (e.g., peluk ‘to hug’-berpelukan ‘to hug each other’) or ‘having x’ (e.g., dasar ‘base’-berdasarkan ‘based on') (sneddon et al., 2010). although derived nouns with mencan be further modified with the suffixes -i or -kan, derived nouns with pendo not. nevertheless, the verbs with men-/-i or men-/-kan affixes may have semantics that are similar to the derived nouns. for instance, pewawancara, ‘interviewer’, is related to mewawancarai ‘to interview someone’. also, although the corresponding verbs with bercan be extended by -an or -kan suffixes, derived nouns with pedo not carry the suffixes. base word of peand pen indonesian nouns, verbs, and adjectives can be monomorphemic or polymorphemic. kridalaksana (2007) explained that nouns are classified into abstract or concrete, animate or inanimate, countable or uncountable, as well as collective or non-collective. in term of verbs, they can be characterized by adding dengan and adjective which function as an adverbial of manner (referring to the -ly suffix in english). for instance, berlari ‘to run’ can be modified into berlari dengan cepat ‘to run fast’; therefore, berlari is a verb. verb formations are classified into transitive or intransitive, active or passive or anti-active or anti-passive, reciprocal or nonreciprocal, reflective or nonreflective, copulative or equative, and performative or constant. with regards to adjectives, they could be indicated by tidak ‘not’ as the negation, premodifiers (e.g., sangat ‘very’, agak ‘pretty’, lebih ‘more’), and that they could modify nouns. they are classified into predicative or attributive and gradual or nongradual adjectives. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) karlina denistia 20 table 7 shows examples of the base word and base word category in the database. in pepen database and pepen cossim database, the dictionary and morphind were used to decide what base word category of the peand pennouns. there might be a conflict in determining the base word category between those two tools. upon that case, i followed the base word category information provided by the indonesian dictionary. however, in the case where the information on the word category of the base is not provided in the dictionary, i used the morphind parser identification. i did not provide a further classification on each type (such as whether the verb is transitive or intransitive, or whether the noun is animate or inanimate). table 7. examples of pepen base word and base word category. word noun translation peallomorph base word base translation base word class pencipta creator f pen cipta to create n pendaki climber f pen daki climbing v peninju puncher f pen tinju punch n petinju boxer t tinju boxing n petani rice farmer t tani farming n peternak farmer t ternak cattle n pengelas welder f penge las to weld n pengusut investigator f peng usut to investigate v semantics role of peand pen manual verification of all peand pen words was not doable. therefore, i did a manual annotation for the semantic role for all derived words with peand penand checked against the usage in the corpus for at least one token, as well as the dictionary (alwi, 2012). one of the implications of this limitation is that the ambiguity in assigning a semantic role to peand penwords which express multiple semantic roles could not be resolved. thus, it is possible that there are cases for which a semantic role was realized in the corpus with no semantic role registered in the database. table 8 shows various readings for pe and penformations. as in english, -er nominalizations may have a range of semantic roles (e.g., printer, which has both an instrument and agent reading) (g. booij, 2010; g. booij & lieber, 2004). i did not distinguish between impersonal agent in this research. the term impersonal agent was introduced by booij (1986) for ‘radio station’ of the dutch word zender which also has both an instrumental interpretation, ‘transmitter’, and an agentive meaning, ‘one who sends’. although it is commonly known that pen create agents, patients, and instruments (sneddon et al., 2010), the database contains a small number of instances of causer (e.g., penyakit ‘disease’) and location (e.g., penghujung ‘the end’). semantic roles that are not registered in the database may nonetheless be used in the corpus, which is plausible and perhaps likely. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 21 table 8. examples of pepen semantic role. no word noun translation pe base word base translation semantic role 1 pembanding who compares f banding to compare agent 2 pembanding something to compare f banding to compare instrument 3 pembanding something to be compared f banding to compare patient 4 pesiar cruise t siar to broadcast instrument 5 pesiar traveler t siar to broadcast agent 6 penyiar radio announcer f siar to broadcast agent 7 penyelam who dives f selam to dive agent 8 peselam diver (athlete) t selam to dive agent 9 pengasih who loves f kasih love agent 10 pekasih love poison t kasih love instrument 11 penyakit disease f sakit to be sick causer 12 pesakit patient t sakit to be sick patient 13 penyapa addressor f sapa to address agent 14 pesapa addressee t sapa to address patient words with more than one semantic role have multiple entries in the database, one row per role (cf. table 8, rows 1-6). occasionally do the prefixes penand peattach to the same base word; often, the form with pealludes to a profession in a semantic sense, whereas the word with pendoes not (cf. table 8, rows 7 and 8). in some instances, the form with the prefix penexpresses the agent, causer, or instrument, while the form with the prefix pe expresses the patient or agent (cf. table 8, rows 9-14). morphological variation of peand pen in indonesian, there are bound morphs for possession of nouns, (first -ku, second -mu, and third person singular -nya), subject (first ku and second person singular kau-) and object (first -ku, second -mu, and third person singular -nya) marking on verbs (sneddon et al., 2010). these bound morphemes fulfill the contextual inflection, an inflection which is not dictated by syntax, proposed by booij (1996). additionally, there are two suffixes that can be added to verbs or nouns to indicate emphasize (-lah) or query (-kah). clitics are the term given to bound morphemes, which are phonologically condensed versions of free pronouns (kridalaksana, 2008). therefore, i will refer to these morphs as inflectional because they alter existing words rather than creating new ones, much to how english adverbs modify verbs. reduplication creates different semantic functions on verbs and adjectives, including intensification and iteration respectively, as well as to convey the plural for nouns. (rafferty, 2002; chaer, 2008; dalrymple & mofu, 2012; sugerman, 2016). according to booij (1996), reduplication as well as -lah, -kah and -pun instantiate inherent inflection. although it may have syntactic relevance, inherent inflection is the kind of inflection that is not required by the syntactic context. in the database, reduplication is more like syntactic modification than to word formation. hence, reduplicated forms were classified as inflectional because their semantics are still related to a plurality (e.g., intensifier or iterative). some examples on the inflection are listed in table 9. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) karlina denistia 22 table 9. examples of inflection in pepen database. word translation peallomorph base word base word class inflection pemerintahnya his/her/its government f pem perintah n possession pemerintahlah government (emphasize) f pem perintah n particle pemerintahpun government (emphasize) f pem perintah n particle pemerintahpemerintah government (plural) f pem perintah n reduplication pelarinya runners t lari v possession pelari-pelari his/her/its runner t lari v reduplication conclusion given the fact that there have been many qualitative descriptive about the indonesian peand penprefixes, some questions on how to discriminate them remain unanswered. penhas 5 allomorphs: penpen-, penpem-, penpeng-, penpeny-, penpengethat follow the nasalization rule and there is only one allomorph, penpe-, that is not nasalized. a case arises when these two are in a contest, appearing in the same phonological environment. moreover, there has been an inconclusive agreement among theories whether these nominalizing prefixes are one or two independent formations. this paper provides detailed information on two databases, namely pepen database and pepen cossim database, as the contribution to a quantitative approach for indonesian linguistics. taken from leipzig corpora collection, i used several tools and programming language to classify the database from its prefix, allomorph, base word, base word class, semantics role, inflection, as well as cosine similarity. these databases could be used to conduct a further study on pe and penformations. this study, however, is limited to only two nominalizing prefixes, peand pen-. indonesian has other nominalizing affixes (e.g., -an as in luar `outside’ to luaran `outcome’, makmur `prosperous’ to ke-/-an as in kemakmuran `prosperity’). in addition, pen could also attach to the suffix -an to form pen/-an circumfixes (e.g., tinggal `stay’ to peninggalan `heritance’). another noun could also be derived from per-/-an, such as unbah `to change’ to perubahan `a change’. therfore, some explanation on databases of other nominalizing affixes would be useful for further research. acknowledgment lembaga pengelola dana pendidikan, the endowment fund for education in indonesia, provided funding for this study under grant number prj-1610/lpdp/2015. references alwi, h. 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(2015). grammatical relations and grammatical categories in malay: the indonesian prefix menrevisited. wacana, 16(1), pp. 105–132. tomasowa, f. h. (2007). the reflective experiential aspect of meaning of the affix -i in indonesian. linguistik indonesia, 25(2), pp. 83–96. 362 vol. 21 no. 2, october 2021, pp. 362-375 doi: 10.24071/joll.v21i2.3190 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. revealing the intentions of prince harry’s first speech after royal split: a systemic functional grammar analysis widi handayani widi.handayani93@gmail.com graduate program of english language studies, universitas sanata dharma, indonesia abstract article information it is a qualitative research that analyzes the speech delivered by prince harry after his royal split. the study is under the study of systemic functional grammar (sfg). it answers the types of processes of the ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions that occurred in the speech. to analyze the data, tables are presented to describe the findings, which are followed by discussions. the result shows that in terms of ideational metafunction, the speaker displays all his concrete actions, including doing charity and meeting many people of his country through the material process. he involves his senses to communicate the language in his mind. it indicates prince harry’s empathy to the people towards the news of the royal split. the interpersonal metafunction shows that he does take sides on his wife and family. he employs that the media power force creates huge speculations among the citizens. through this process, he reassures people that his wife is not the cause of the split. the split will not change the commitment he has to serve the country. the personal pronoun ‘i’ shows that the speaker is the subject matter of the speech. the textual metafunction in the speech indicates that an unmarked theme deploys the idea that it is a declarative speech that functions to give information or clarification. to conclude, the speech is not only a charity speech but also a clarification related to the royal split. keywords: sfg; ideational; interpersonal; textual metafunction received: 11 march 2021 revised: 28 april 2021 accepted: 28 may 2021 introduction people communicate their thoughts, messages, or ideas through language. sirbu (2015) clarifies how language is a crucial part of communication since it connects the people in a particular society (p. 405). through language, they are able to use either oral or written forms. each of the forms has the same goals, which are transferring and receiving information. https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 363 moreover, language can be functioned to influence or establish relations, such as the language used in speech. pradiptha, purwati & hadiati (2020) clarify that speech is a power manifestation which means when someone gives a speech, s/he is able to influence how other people think about a particular idea (p. 23). in other words, the speakers are able to convince the audience that they have the same thoughts. hence, they can gain sympathy. it is mentioned above that a speech can change how people perceive a particular idea. hence, in the speech, the speaker must bring a particular meaning as well, including personal intentions. further, the meanings performed behind the speech can be analyzed structurally. in order to analyze the messages behind the speech, systemic functional grammar (sfg) can be applied. systemic functional grammar (sfg) or systemic functional linguistics (sfl), according to halliday and matthiessen (2014), is how to understand and value the text. further, thompson (2014) clarifies that meaning in sfg is practically linked to the function. in order to analyze the generalizable patterns, it is essential to focus on the purpose of using language (p. 28). sfg refers to the analysis of clauses or sentences which particularly beneficial to reveal the events or states, attitudes, and the organization of the clauses or sentences. the choice of the structure of the clauses or sentences, such as the subject and predicate, contribute to revealing the ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunction of a language. in other words, in communication, the speakers must arrange the utterances well in order to make the listeners understand the meanings (umiyati, 2019, p. 55). the meanings are described in three metafunctions, namely ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions. ideational metafunction deals with the language use to deliver the states, events, or experiences (alaei & ahangari, 2016, p. 205). in other words, it deals with the way of communicating the language in minds. halliday (1988) states that interpersonal metafunction shows how the language users assume, negotiate, and establish their position in relation to other users of the language. besides, the concerns of the analysis are clauses as the exchange (p. 68). in other words, interpersonal metafunction exemplifies the way the addresser and audience interaction and how the language is used to maintain the relations among them. thompson (2014) conveys this metafunction related to the ways the messages are organized. then, the organized messages can fit into other messages with wider contexts (p. 28). therefore, analyzing the speech using this metafunction is beneficial to seek out the types of theme, mood, and theme types. in other words, it deals with the organization of language. the paper is a study of prince harry’s first speech after his royal split using systemic functional grammar (sfg). the study’s objective is to reveal the types of processes of the ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunction to find the meanings of the speech. as a royal family member, he has the power to influence or change other people’s perspectives. therefore, his first speech must contain a particular meaning related to the split. this study is not a pioneer study since many scholars have been conducted researches applying sfg as the theory. yang, in 2017, analyzes obama’s inaugural address using interpersonal metafunction. the result performs the first person is used often. declarative clauses indicate an advantage. besides, medium and low modal auxiliaries use to help readers understand the speech better. briones (2016) studies two texts under the same topics. the study focuses on finding the similarities and differences by using ideational and interpersonal metafiction. the result presents that in terms of interpersonal metafunction, the texts share the same moods and modalities. meanwhile, in terms of ideational metafunction, text 1 focuses more on the material and relational processes, whereas text 2 focuses more on the characters of the movie. kadir (2017) analyzes donald trump’s victory speech using interpersonal journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) widi handayani 364 metafunction. the result shows that donald trump uses positive declarative clauses as the first choice and imperative clauses as the second choice. the first personal pronouns such as ‘i,’ ‘we,’ and ‘you’ are frequently used. darong (2021) studies interpersonal metafunction on joe biden’s victory speech. the result presents that joe biden uses a lot of declarative clauses, modality, and the pronoun ‘we.’ cahyani (2017) conducts a study of systemic functional grammar in the students’ interpretation of song lyrics. it focuses on transitivity. the result shows the types of processes that aim to make the illustration of the song meanings which are meant by the composers. this study aims to study the types of processes that occur in speech using the three metafunctions in systemic functional grammar (sfg). the use of the whole field of sfg makes this study different from the previous studies mentioned previously. by that, it will be beneficial to bring new insight to the readers in understanding the three aspects of metafunction, including ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunction applied in an object. therefore, this study does not contribute to the development of the theory. however, it helps the readers to enrich their understanding. methodology it is a qualitative research that specifically studies systemic functional grammar (sfg). the study analyzes the first speech delivered by prince harry after buckingham palace announced an agreement on his and meghan’s split from the royal duties. the writer takes the transcript of the speech from cnn websites which was published on monday, january 20, 2020. the title of the transcript is read prince harry’s full speech after royal split, which is written by jack guy and max foster. in his speech, he clarifies the decision he makes about the split. he also points out that he and his wife, meghan, do not walk away from all the responsibilities. he states that he and his wife will always serve the queen and the country. since it is a charity speech, he also talks about the charity he holds. halliday (1988) states that systemic functional grammar is used to study the meaning of the text through the grammatical structure to find the meanings and functions (p. 17). in this case, the researcher studies three metafunctions of sfg, namely ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions, in order to convey the meaning or ideology of the speech. it is suitable for the data since this speech must contain a particular meaning or ideology. hence, analyzing it will give an understanding of what kind of ideology prince harry brings. the reason for choosing the speech is because it is the very first time prince harry gives a speech after his splitting. of course, everyone wants to hear his clarification. therefore, the speech is significant. to collect the data, there are several steps done by the writer. first, the writer downloads the script of the speech entitled “read prince harry’s full speech after royal split” found on cnn websites. second, the speech is analyzed based on the categories. third, the speech is classified into the same categories. further, to analyze the data, the writer starts with the table showing the occurrence of each of the metafunctions, namely ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions. then, the writer goes to a deeper analysis by providing some data followed by the discussion. the writer does a peer-review in order to ensure the credibility of the analysis. results and discussion the finding shows that in terms of ideational metafunction, the material process frequently occurs, which shows the real actions performed by prince harry. in the interpersonal metafunction, modalization shows the idea that prince harry performs high commitment of probability which indicates the validation of what is stated in the speech. meanwhile, in the form of textual metafunction, an unmarked theme occurs frequently to demonstrate that prince harry is straightforward in his statements. furthermore, the discussion of the findings will be started with the ideational metafunction, interpersonal metafunction, and textual metafunction. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 365 ideational metafunction thompson (2014) argues that ideational metafunction conveys the way people perceive the world through language by communicating their experiences. besides, it also includes the way they communicate the world through language in their minds (p. 28). hence, by applying this metafunction in the speech, it is expected to explore the way the language is delivered to communicate the experience. (ejiofor & uchechukwu, 2019, p. 41). table 1. transitivity process distribution transitivity process frequency % material 23 43.40 mental 15 28.30 relational 5 9.40 circumstantial 5 9.40 verbal 3 5.70 existential 1 1.90 behavioral 1 1.90 total 53 100 the material and mental processes occurred at 43.40 and 28.30%, respectively. it is followed by the relational and circumstantial process of 9.40%. each of the processes will be displayed in the discussion below. material process the material process is the process when the actor is doing an action. eggins (2004) reveals that this process is related to actions done by an entity. the actions are usually concrete, noticeable actions. the actions include actors and participants (p. 215). it also deals with the happening process (wahyudin, 2016, p. 1). in the speech, there are 23 occurrences of this process. (1) we both do everything we can to fly the flag and carry out our roles for this country with pride. (2) the decision that i have made for my wife and i to step back, is not one i made lightly. (3) what i want to make clear is we’re not walking away, and we certainly aren’t walking away from you. (4) it has also been a privilege to meet so many of you, and to feel your excitement for our son archie, who saw snow for the first time the other day and thought it was bloody brilliant! based on the data above, in this process, most of them use the subject pronoun ‘i’ and ‘we.’ it indicates that the actions are mostly done by prince harry himself and also the collaboration with other people, including his wife and the members of the charity. it shows that prince harry really involves in every event or decision. in the first data, the verb do is used to show that the actors really involve in the action of doing the roles to keep the pride of the country. the second data is the verb ‘made.’ it proves that the decision he makes really influence many lives. the third data is the verb ‘walking away.’ it is the action that the subject ‘we’ use to clarify the issue. the fourth data is ‘meet.’ the action of the meeting is concrete due to the fact that in the charity, the actor really encounters the people of the country. from the discussion of material process, it is shown that the actions that are manifested in the form of verbs in the speech are concrete since it deals with the real process between the subjects and the objects. besides, the material process in the speech also indicates clarification, such as in third data, ‘what i want to make clear is we’re not walking away, and we certainly aren’t walking away from you.’ the pronoun ‘i’, which is prince harry, clarifies that his family will not run from mental process this process refers to the idea that sometimes people communicate, not what they are doing. however, they state what they journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) widi handayani 366 feel or think. it is one of the major processes along with material and relational (harbi, jabar, md nor, & isa, 2019, p. 46). according to halliday and matthiessen (2014), there are three types of this process, namely cognition (verbs of thinking, knowing, & understanding), affection (fearing & liking), and perception (verbs of hearing and seeing) (p. 118). in other words, mental process refers to the human senses (pertama, rukmini, & bharati, 2018, p. 421). (1) i must say that i can only imagine what you may have heard or perhaps read over the last few weeks. (2) so, i want you to hear the truth from me, as much as i can share -not as a prince, or a duke, but as harry, the same person that many of you have watched grow up over the last 35 years -but with a clearer perspective. (3) the uk is my home and a place that i love. that will never change. (4) i have grown up feeling support from so many of you, and i watched as you welcomed meghan with open arms as you saw me find the love and happiness that i had hoped for all my life. based on the data above, the three types of mental processes are found in the speech. the verbs ‘imagine’ and ‘hoped’ are the type of cognition. it refers to the understanding of imagining and thinking about a certain event. it deals with the work of the brain, which is related to the cognitive system. the other type is affection. it proves with the verbs ‘hear’ and ‘love.’ it deals with the feeling of the subject, which mostly is prince harry, toward the objects of the clauses such as the news, the wife, and the country. lastly, it is the type of perception. it shows in the verbs of ‘heard,’ ‘watched,’ and ‘saw.’ it deals more with the sight and hearing instruments. hence, it can be concluded that in the speech, prince harry explores the senses to clarify his information. relational-circumstantial process according to halliday and matthiessen (2014), there are a large group of processes in english that do not encode action meanings but encode the states of being. one of the processes is the relational process. it deals with the things that are stated are related to the other things. there are two types of relational processes. eggins (2004) declares that the types are possessives and circumstantials. circumstantial refers to the location or place. (1) good evening, and thank you for being here for sentebale, a charity me and prince seeiso created back in 2006 to honor my mother’s legacy in supporting those effected by hiv and aids. (2) i and all those at sentebale, be it here in london, lesotho or botswana -will continue the work to make real long-lasting impact for all those that have been left vulnerable. the data above show the relationalcircumstantial processes are ‘being here’ and ‘be here.’ the verbs being and be need to be related to other things so that they cannot stand alone. in other words, they need clarification. in this case, the addition is circumstantial here. it is mentioned previously that ‘here’ is a location that is considered circumstantial. hence, ‘being here’ and ‘be here’ are employed to clarify a certain place mentioned in the speech. the purpose of saying ‘being here’ and ‘be here’ can be meant to include the people in the context of the conversation. verbal process this process expresses the way people communicate to express their ideas, feelings, or perceptions toward others. eggins (2004) clarifies that there are three components in this process. first, it is the sayer who is responsible for the verbal process. second, it is the receiver whom the verbal process is engaged. lastly, it is the verbiage which refers to the nominalized statement of the process. there are only three occurrences in this process. (1) before i begin, i must say that i can only imagine what you may have heard or perhaps read over the last few weeks. (2) so ... welcome to richard’s garden -minus the fountain! (3) first, may i echo johnny’s words earlier and thank in particular patricia and journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 367 richard, and all the teams involved in making tonight so very special and such a success... at least so far... thank you also for turning up! based on the data above, it shows that the verbs are used in the speech just to clarify, thank, and welcome the people. in the first data, the verb ‘say’ is used to clarify the thing that is still unclear, which is the news of splitting from the royal family. the second data, the verb welcome, is used to show politeness towards other people. in other words, it is part of the manner to greet the guest. the third data, the verb echo, is also used to repeat the words delivered by the previous person in order to sharpen the points. interpersonal metafunction interpersonal deals with the use of language to interact with other people. specifically, it can be found in both oral and written form (hulu, 2019, p. 44). it also sees the relationship between the speakers and the interlocutors (ilham, 2019, p. 33). thompson (2014) reveals that it can be used to seek out the attitude of the speakers toward what they are talking about (p. 28). through this metafunction, the meanings of the speech are seen by the language used by the speaker. this metafunction deals with modality, polarity, and personal pronoun. modality in understanding the modality, there are two types of it, namely modalization and modulation. further, thompson (2014) clarifies that modality has two types, namely modalization and modulation. modalization refers to give information to other users of the language. meanwhile, modulation focuses on providing goods or services to other language users. in modality, there are three ways to show speakers’ commitment in which they can choose the degree to validate what they are saying. halliday and matthiessen (2014) convey it into 3 degrees, high, median, and low (p. 80). thompson (2014) suggests that in terms of responsibility, explicit subjective, implicit subjective, implicit objective, and explicit objective are often used to show the modalization and modulation (p. 75). to make it clear, the table is employed below. table 2. modality distribution types of modality frequency % modalization 14 66.70 modulation 7 33.30 total 21 100 modalization thompson (2014) reveals that modalization refers to give information to other users of the language. in modalization, there are two different areas as well; they are probability as in “the child might be hers” and usuality as in “she often went there” (p. 71). (1) the uk is my home and a place that i love. that will never change. (2) i will always have the utmost respect for my grandmother, my commander-in-chief, and i am incredibly grateful to her and the rest of my family, for the support they have shown meghan and i over the last few months. (3) but i hope that helps you understand what it had to come to, that i would step my family back from all i have ever known, to take a step forward into what i hope can be a more peaceful life. (4) first, may i echo johnny’s words earlier and thank in particular patricia and richard, and all the teams involved in making tonight so very special and such a success... at least so far... thank you also for turning up! the data above show that they all tell the probability by using the modal ‘will,’ ‘may,’ and ‘would.’ the first until the third data indicate the highest level of probability which is reflected in the use of ‘will’ and ‘would.’ the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) widi handayani 368 high level of the commitment is seen as a validation of what is said in the speech. in other words, the commitment to do the action is higher. meanwhile, the use of modal ‘may’ indicates that it has low values of probability. in other words, the commitment to doing the action is low. in this case, the action will finish at the moment. it is different between the uses of ‘will’ or ‘would’ because it is related to the long-term action such as respecting the family, continuing serving the country, and loving the country. all of the data above are included into implicit subjective in terms of responsibility. it indicates that the subjects and the modal are mentioned inside the clauses or sentences. thompson (2014) refers it as the way speakers express the point of view in a way that it is their subjective point of view (p. 73). (1) there’s a lot to do, but it’s only possible by working together and receiving support from people like yourselves... and like lewis capaldi... who has so generously flown here directly from malaysia, via dubai -taking tonight out as a detour on his way to the grammys in los angeles -where he is nominated for best song. (2) what i want to make clear is we’re not walking away, and we certainly aren’t walking away from you. our hope was to continue serving the queen, the commonwealth, and my military associations, but without public funding. unfortunately, that wasn’t possible. the two statements above are modalization in the form of probability— halliday and matthiessen (2014) mention 3 degrees of probability, namely possibly/probably/certainly. the degrees are equivalent to either yes or no, maybe yes or maybe no (p. 177). both of the data are included in the degree of possibility. it indicates the lowest degree of probability. in the first data, it shows that there are many things to do and it will be successful if the people work together. if they do not cooperate as a team, then those many things may not finish. the second data shows that the prince with his family wants to serve the country without funding. however, it does not provide conceivably. hence, the word ‘possible’ in the second data is more like a dream that cannot be fulfilled. in terms of responsibility, the two statements above are considered implicit objectives. it happens since it conveys the idea that the modality is inside the information and it does not have any speaker. in this case, the focus of the discussions is the idea of many things to do and the inability to serve without public funding. modulation thompson (2014) reveals that modulation focuses on providing goods or services to other language users. besides, in modulation, there are also two areas, namely obligation as in “you should go now” and inclination as in “i’ll give you a hand” (p. 71). (1) before i begin, i must say that i can only imagine what you may have heard or perhaps read over the last few weeks. (2) so, i want you to hear the truth from me, as much as i can share -not as a prince, or a duke, but as harry, the same person that many of you have watched grow up over the last 35 years -but with a clearer perspective. (3) we both do everything we can to fly the flag and carry out our roles for this country with pride. once meghan and i were married, we were excited, we were hopeful, and we were here to serve. the data above perform that they form both obligation and inclination. the first data, the modal ‘must’, indicates the obligation that has to be done. in this case, the obligation is to clarify the issue of the royal split he makes. since it is the very first speech he has, people are obviously curious about what he will say about the issue. even though it is not a real clarification speech because it is a charity speech, people still want him to say something related to the issue. in the forms of the values, this modal includes the highest commitment. in terms of responsibility, it is a part of implicit subjective in which the subject is prince harry himself, and the modality is inside the action. the other data, the modal ‘can’, indicates the inclination. it refers to the ability of the people to do the action. in this case, the subject can do the actions such as sharing information, serving the country, and helping other people to live happily. however, in terms of values, the modal is considered as low commitment. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 369 besides, the 2 data are also included as implicit subjective which the subject and the modal are clearly mentioned. polarity the other form of interpersonal metafunction is polarity. thompson (2014) argues that polarity deals with positive and negative forms. in the negative forms, it is identified by the element ‘n’t’ or ‘not.’ it also has a specific grammatical structure such as in yes/no interrogative. besides, polarity is expressed through mood adjuncts such as in ‘never,’ ‘hardly,’ and ‘nothing.’ meanwhile, there are intermediate stages between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ such as ‘maybe,’ ‘sometimes,’ or ‘supposedly.’ this is called modal space. it does not intend to say that an expression is positive or negative (p. 68). there are nine clauses or sentences which consist of negative polarity found in the speech. (1) the decision that i have made for my wife and i to step back, is not one i made lightly. (2) and i know i haven’t always gotten it right, but as far as this goes, there really was no other option. (3) i’ve accepted this, knowing that it doesn’t change who i am or how committed i am. the 3 data above are all in the form of declarative forms. through these polarity clauses or sentences, the subject, prince harry, tries to tell that the decision he makes is not a premature decision. he and his wife come up to that conclusion after having a long discussion and consideration. it also conveys that as a prince, he is still a human that often makes mistakes. he reminds people that perhaps his decision is not right for everyone, but it is something he chooses. hence, people have to appreciate it because there is no other option left. lastly, he also argues that nothing is able to change him, including his values. it gives a greater understanding that he is still the same harry with the same commitment. personal pronoun personal pronoun also has a function to this metafunction. it establishes the relation between the speakers and the audience. in the speech, there are many personal pronouns found, such as ‘i,’ ‘we,’ ‘you,’ ‘my,’ and ‘me.’ table 3. personal pronoun distribution personal pronouns frequency % i 41 35.60 we 15 13.00 you 15 13.00 my 14 12.70 it 9 7.80 me 6 5.20 our 3 2.60 your 3 2.60 us 3 2.60 they 2 1.70 her 1 0.80 his 1 0.80 their 1 0.80 them 1 0.80 total 115 100 based on the table above, the most frequent of the personal pronoun is i, with a total occurrence of 35.60. later on, it is followed by the pronouns ‘we,’ ‘you,’ ‘my,’ ‘it,’ and so on. the data in the speech show that in terms of personal pronouns, they consist of subject pronoun, object pronoun, and possessive adjective. subject pronouns found in the data are ‘i,’ we,’ ‘it,’ and ‘they.’ (1) i also know you’ve come to know me well enough over all these years to trust that the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) widi handayani 370 woman i chose as my wife upholds the same values as i do. (2) once meghan and i were married, we were excited, we were hopeful, and we were here to serve. (3) for those reasons, it brings me great sadness that it has come to this. (4) i will always have the utmost respect for my grandmother, my commander-in-chief, and i am incredibly grateful to her and the rest of my family, for the support they have shown meghan and i over the last few months. azar (1999) mentions that the subject pronoun is used as the subject of the clauses or sentences (p. 132). in this sense, it can be said that the use of the subject pronoun in the speech is to indicate that the actors really matter in the actions. the highest frequent is the subject pronoun ‘i,’ so prince harry refers to himself as the subject focus of the actions. in other words, it refers to the speaker. prince harry is the center of attention. besides, the use of the subject pronoun ‘we’ means that he includes other people as one since ‘we’ can be described as ‘i’ and the others. it creates emotional effectiveness since it involves other people being in the same position. in other words, it shortens the distance between the speaker and the audience. the pronoun ‘it’ is used to describe the abstract ideas in the sentence. further, the pronoun ‘they’ refers to the subject outside the conversation, which in this case is the family. the other form of pronoun found in the speech is an object pronoun such as ‘you,’ ‘me,’ ‘us,’ and ‘her.’ azar (1999) clarifies that object pronoun is used as the objects of the verbs or objects of prepositions (p. 132). (1) so, i want you to hear the truth from me, as much as i can share -not as a prince, or a duke, but as harry, the same person that many of you have watched grow up over the last 35 years -but with a clearer perspective. (2) we are taking a leap of faith thank you for giving me the courage to take this next step. (3) i first visited lesotho many years ago, back in 2004, and was shown around by my dear friend prince seeiso -who sadly isn’t able to join us this evening. (4) i will always have the utmost respect for my grandmother, my commander-in-chief, and i am incredibly grateful to her and the rest of my family, for the support they have shown meghan and i over the last few months. the data above show that all of them are used to refer to the people he talks to. it creates dialogic communication. it also preserves an intimate relationship between the speaker and the audience. the people mentioned as the object pronoun must be feeling appreciated. the other form of personal pronoun found in the speech is a possessive adjective. azar (1999) declares that possessive adjectives are directly followed by a noun (p. 132). in this case, the possessive adjectives found are ‘my’ and ‘his.’ (1) i first visited lesotho many years ago, back in 2004, and was shown around by my dear friend prince seeiso -who sadly isn’t able to join us this evening. (2) i will continue to be the same man who holds his country dear and dedicates his life to supporting the causes, charities and military communities that are so important to me. the use of the possessive adjective above is to show the possessiveness he has, which in this case are friend and country. it shows that he really means what he has. textual metafunction textual metafunction deals with the organization of the language (efransyah, 2018, p. 85). the first analysis on this metafunction is started with the types of theme, which is followed by the types of mood and the types of theme. types of theme there are two types of theme in this metafunction, namely unmarked and marked theme. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 371 table 4. types of theme distribution types of theme frequency % unmarked 27 55.10 marked 22 44.90 total 49 100 based on the table above, it clearly shows that the unmarked theme is the highest occurrence of the theme, 55.10%. meanwhile, the marked theme is in the second-highest of the theme, 44.90%. each of the themes will be presented below. unmarked theme an unmarked theme is indicated by a subject at the beginning of the sentence. thompson (2014) reveals that an unmarked theme is found in the declarative clauses. it happens because it straightforwardly identifies the clauses or sentences (p. 148). there are 27 occurrences of this theme. some of them are presented below. (1) i have grown up feeling support from so many of you, and i watched as you welcomed meghan with open arms as you saw me find the love and happiness that i had hoped for all my life. (2) we both do everything we can to fly the flag and carry out our roles for this country with pride. (3) you’ve looked out for me for so long, but the media is a powerful force, and my hope is one day our collective support for each other can be more powerful because this is so much bigger than just us. (4) the decision that i have made for my wife and i to step back, is not one i made lightly. the data presented above show that all of them are straightforwardly employ the messages directly regarding the subject ‘i,’ ‘we,’ ‘you,’ and ‘the decision.’ all of them are in the form of declarative since the purpose is to give the information to the audience. besides, the use of different subjects such as ‘i’ and ‘we’ makes the organization of the language is more interesting. it happens because ‘i’ is a singular subject while ‘we’ is plural which includes the subject ‘i’ inside. marked theme the marked theme is identified with any initial functional elements. it can be a conjunction, finite, or anything in the initial of the clauses or sentences. thompson (2014) mentions that this type of theme is unusual enough to draw attention to them since their occurrence is when contextual reasons overrule the unmarked as the choice of the subject (p. 149). there are 22 occurrences of this theme. (1) before i begin, i must say that i can only imagine what you may have heard or perhaps read over the last few weeks. (2) so, i want you to hear the truth from me, as much as i can share -not as a prince, or a duke, but as harry, the same person that many of you have watched grow up over the last 35 years -but with a clearer perspective. (3) and this role has taught me more about what is right and just than i could have ever imagined. (4) first, may i echo johnny’s words earlier and thank in particular patricia and richard, and all the teams involved in making tonight so very special and such a success... at least so far... thank you also for turning up! based on the data above, it shows that the initial positions of the clauses or sentences are not subjects. however, most of them are conjunction such as ‘before,’ ‘so,’ ‘and,’ and ‘first.’ the use of these themes makes the clauses or sentences varied. it happens because it does not always start with a subject in the initial position. besides, since it is a speech, it is pretty normal to use conjunction as the initial position of the clauses or sentences. it occurs because when a person does a speech, s/he does not always follow the script. hence, conjunction is often used to connect with the other clauses or sentences. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) widi handayani 372 types of mood in terms of mood, there are three types of mood which are declarative, imperative, and interrogative. however, in this speech, the mood found is only in the form of a declarative. table 5. types of mood distribution types of mood frequency % declarative 49 100 total 49 100 based on the data above, it shows that all clauses or sentences in the speech are declarative. some of the data are presented below. (1) i’m sure lewis was the draw factor, but i know you will all be leaving tonight with a better understanding of what we’re trying to achieve at sentebale, and that’s what really matters to us. (2) i first visited lesotho many years ago, back in 2004, and was shown around by my dear friend prince seeiso -who sadly isn’t able to join us this evening. (3) my work and commitment for this charity, that i founded 14 years ago now, will never falter. (4) once meghan and i were married, we were excited, we were hopeful, and we were here to serve. the data presented above show that they are all declarative clauses or sentences. it happens because the clauses or sentences only display information such as about a person, visit, or commitment. in the speech, prince harry does not give commands or requests to the people. besides, he also does not employ questions. hence, it shows that in the speech, prince harry does not show the power dominant to influence other people. instead, he focuses on telling them about the facts of information. therefore, it is more like storytelling which still has the goal to influence other people. types of theme there are 3 types of theme, namely experiential, textual, and interpersonal theme. however, in the speech, based on the analysis, the theme found is only the textual theme. the purpose of textual theme is to connect one clause to another clause. thompson (2014) clarifies that the elements of textual theme are conjunctions and conjunctive adjuncts. the conjunctive adjuncts are often considered as a continuation, which refers to a small set called discourse markers (p. 164). in this case, the speech only produces conjunctions as a part of the textual theme. table. 6 textual theme distribution conjunction frequency % addition (and, or, so) 66 88 consequence (because, but) 9 12 total 75 100 based on the table above, it proves that additional conjunction is the highest number with 88%. meanwhile, consequential conjunction is only 12%. addition the additional logical relation in this study is ‘and,’ ‘or,’ and ‘so.’ the function of these conjunctions is to connect one clause to the other clause. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 373 (1) it has been our privilege to serve you, and we will continue to lead a life of service. (2) i will continue to be the same man who holds his country dear and dedicates his life to supporting the causes, charities and military communities that are so important to me. (3) i’ve accepted this, knowing that it doesn’t change who i am or how committed i am. (4) so, i want you to hear the truth from me, as much as i can share -not as a prince, or a duke, but as harry, the same person that many of you have watched grow up over the last 35 years -but with a clearer perspective. (5) so ... welcome to richard’s garden -minus the fountain! based on the data above, ‘and,’ ‘or’ and ‘so’ are functioned to connect one idea to another idea. besides, it is used to give detailed information about the topic of the speech. for example, in the first data, prince harry mentions that serving the people is an honor, and he connects it to the idea that he and his family will always continue to serve the country. another example is in the third data. the additional conjunction ‘or’ is used to describe that every decision he makes will never change him and his commitment to dedicate himself to the country. besides, the additional conjunction ‘so’ is functioned to connect or conclude the idea of the clauses. in the fourth data, previously, prince harry declares that people might hear news or speculations from the media. then, the conjunction ‘so’ is used to request people to hear the explanation from him in order to get a clear clarification. therefore, the use of additional conjunction is beneficial to give extra information so that the readers are able to get a greater understanding of the knowledge of the topic or the context. consequence the consequential logical relation in this study are but and because. the function of these conjunctions is to show the contrast idea in one clause to the other clause. the evidence is described below. (1) so, i want you to hear the truth from me, as much as i can share -not as a prince, or a duke, but as harry, the same person that many of you have watched grow up over the last 35 years -but with a clearer perspective. (2) our hope was to continue serving the queen, the commonwealth, and my military associations, but without public funding. (3) you’ve looked out for me for so long, but the media is a powerful force, and my hope is one day our collective support for each other can be more powerful because this is so much bigger than just us. based on the data above, it is seen that the conjunctions are meant to show the contrast among the ideas. in the first data, the conjunction ‘but’ refers to the idea that people see harry as the real harry with a new perspective. in the second data, the conjunction ‘but,’ again, is used to oppose the idea of one clause to another. in this case, it refers to prince harry’s hope that he and his family will still serve the country without using public funding. it brings an idea to the people that even after his royal split, he will still serve the country. in short, it shows that the action of serving is still the same. the difference is only in the funding. finally, the conjunction ‘because’ is aimed to show the causality. in the third data, it states that the power of media in bringing the news is bigger, so that he hopes that people can support each other since it will be much more powerful when together. conclusion to conclude, by having an analysis on halliday’s systemic functional grammar (sfg), the speech spoken by prince harry has several findings. firstly, it is illustrated that it is not just a charity speech, but it is a clarification speech about his royal split. he gives the assertion to the people that splitting will not change him. through interpersonal metafunction, it is seen that he applies a lot of modalization such as ‘will’ and ‘would’, which give an affirmation that the speaker has a high commitment to committing to the actions. secondly, the clarification is not only promising the people but also clarifying the fact about his wife that she is not the cause of the split. he does take a side on the wife and the family. it is supported by the use of journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) widi handayani 374 pronouns ‘i’ which describes his determination that the decision is a long consideration. besides, by performing textual metafunction especially consequence textual theme, he reassures people to believe in him instead of the media. this study only focuses on the system of grammar analysis only. hence, it cannot really convey the ideology brought in the speech since it focuses more on the structures. therefore, future researchers can explore more by combining the theory on systemic functional grammar with other social theories such as theory in psychology or any other theories depend on the context of the objects of the study. in other words, they can conduct a critical discourse analysis to enrich the analysis in this theory. references azar, b. s. (1999). understanding and using english grammar. new york: mary jane peluso. briones, r. r. (2016). textual analysis through systemic functional linguistics. journal of english language teaching and linguistics, 1(2), 109-144. cahyani, y. d. (2017). sfg in the students’ interpretation of song lyrics. journal of english language learning, 1(1), 1-17. retrieved january 25, 2021, from http://jurnal.umna.ac.id/index.php/jell /article/view/912. darong, h. c. (2021). interpersonal function of joe biden’s victory speech (systemic functional linguistics view). journal of educational research and evaluation, 5(1), 57-66. efransyah. (2018). analyzing thematic structure in indonesian folktales in english version: a systematic functional grammar (sfg). professional journal of english education, 1(2), 85-94. retrieved february 20, 2021, from https://journal.ikipsiliwagi.ac.id/index.p hp/project/article/view/456/62. eggings, s. (2004). an introduction to systemic functional linguistics (2nd ed). manchester: continuum. ejiofor, & uchechukwu, e. (2019). investigating material clauses in the igbo language. journal of language and linguistics(5), 38-55. retrieved february 20, 2021, from http://www.jolledu.com.ng/index.php/jo ll/artice/view/66/59. guy, j., & foster, m. (2020, 1 20). read prince harry’s full speech after royal split. retrieved 12 20, 2020, from cnn: http://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn .com/cnn/2020/01/20/u/transcriptprince-harry-speech-intl-gbr/index.html. halliday, m. (1985). an introduction to functional grammar. london: edward arnold inc. halliday, m. k., & matthiessen, c. m. (2014). halliday’s introduction to functional grammar. oxon: routledge. harbi, s., jabar, m. a., md nor, a. n., & isa, n. m. (2019). ‘hey, jude! i wanna hold your hand’: transitivity process analysis on popular songs by the beatles. international journal of language education and linguistics, 9(1), 45-54. retrieved february 20, 2020, from http://ijleal.ump.edu.my/. hulu, f. (2019). interpersonal function in martin luther king jr’ speech. international journal of systemic functional linguistics, 2(1), 43-46. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.22225/ijsfl.2.1.9 99.43-46. ilham. (2019). mood and modality of interpersonal meaning in research journal articles. jurnal eduscience, 5(1), 30-50. retrieved january 27, 2021, from https://ejurnal.esaunggul.ac.id/index.ph p/edu/article/view/2831/2414. kadir, s. (2017). the implication analysis of interpersonal metafunction in donald trump’s victory speech. al-gasaq, 1-19. koussouhon, l., & dossoumou, a. (2015). exploring ideational metafunction in helon habila’s oil on water: a reevaluation and redefinition of african women’s personality and identity through literature. international journal of applied linguistics, 4(5), 129-136. doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.5p.129. journal of language and literature vol. 21 no. 2 – october 2021 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 375 pertama, t., rukmini, d., & bharati, d. a. (2018). implementation of three metfunctions in verbal language and visual image of students’ textbook. english education journal, 8(4), 418-431. retrieved january 27, 2021, from http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php /eej. pradiptha, w. a., purwati, t., & hadiati, c. (2020). reflection of ideology: a critical discourse analysis of donald trump’s declaration speech of jerusalem as capital city of israel. journal of english studies, 1(1), 22-34. rahayu, s. h., & efransyah. (2020). transitivity in the tenth grade students’ recount texts. professional journal of english education, 3(3), 401-407. retrieved january 30, 2021, from https://journal.ikipsiliwangi.ac.id/index. php/project/article/view/456/62. sirbu, a. (2015). the significance of language as a tool of communication. "mircea cel batran" naval academy scentific bulletin, 18(2), 405-406. thompson, g. (2014). introducing functional grammar. new york: routledge. umiyati, m. (2019). textual metafunction in donald trump’s speech “reognizing jerusalem as israel’s capital”. international journal of systemic functional linguistics, 2(2), 55-60. retrieved january 25, 2021, from https://ejournal.warmadewa.ac.id/index. php/ijsfl. wahyudin, a. y. (2016). an analysis of process type used in news item. teknosastik, 16(1), 1-8. doi:10.33365/ts.v14i1.79. yang, h. (2017). the interpersonal metafunction analysis of barack obama’s inaugural address. international journal of languages, literature, and linguistics, 3(1), 27-31. doi:10.1817/ijill.2017.3.1.105. set cover luar phenomena vol 15 no. 2-bitmapcon f.x. risang baskara 148 facilitating second language acquisition through digital storytelling f.x. risang baskara risangbaskara@gmail.com english letters department, universitas sanata dharma abstract this study was conducted to investigate the experiences of students who used digital storytelling to facilitate second language acquisition with english as a foreign language (efl) students in university. thirty students enrolled in an efl english speaking class in university level participated in this study. presentation scores, notes on preparation and presentation, and teachers' reports showed that the efl students made improvement in their acquisition of the english language after approximately four weeks of instruction and reports were given regarding the role of digital storytelling in that instruction. it was concluded that digital storytelling can enhance students’ motivation and confidence in using the english language to make a classroom presentation and can assist with language acquisition in efl students. keywords: english, presentation, digital storytelling, second language acquisition introduction storytelling is one of the resourceful functions of digital media. moreover, using digital media to tell a story is not only a method to put together thoughts and ideas, but also to share a story with family, friends, and potentially the world. when we apply new technologies and believe its role in the classroom settings, a new form of storytelling has emerged. as such, students are provided with new technological tools. digital storytelling is of vital significance for teaching concepts and information. according to robin digital storytelling is a technology application that is well-positioned to take advantage of user-contributed content and to help teachers overcome some of the obstacles to productively using technology in their classrooms (2006: 709). as meadows (2003) mentions, "digital storytelling makes use of low-cost digital cameras, non-linear editing software and notebook computers to create short, multimedia stories” (189). he also states that digital stories are not quite like any previous form of broadcast material (189). digital stories provide opportunities for student's control of learning process, boosting their learning confidence and learning motivation. according to robin (2008), at its core, digital storytelling allows computer users to become creative storytellers through the traditional processes of selecting a topic, conducting some research, writing a script, and developing an interesting story (220). there are many advantages in using digital storytelling in the classroom such as developing communication skills, practicing to ask and answer questions, expressing opinions, and improving the language and computer skills. considering this fact, technological atmosphere in the classroom should be created for students in order to make them more technologically literate designers, learners, and thinkers. being allowed to have and manipulate language data in multiple media may provide learners with the interaction that they need to acquire a second language. recent years have shown an increase in the interest of using computers for language teaching and learning. with the introduction vol. 15 no. 2 – october 2015 149 of multimedia computing and the internet, the role of computers in language instruction has become an important issue confronting a large number of instructors around the world (warschauer & healey, 1998). after reviewing the literature, there are many indications that computer technology may provide many benefits for the acquisition and application of english language skills. computer interactions also enhance communication skills and strengthen language through computer support group interactions (bourdon, 1999). therefore, a search for a specific digital storytelling approach and the experiences that efl learners had using the technology to improve their language acquisition in order to see how the computer-based learning guide might meet the needs of those learners. significance of the study this study may help efl learners in university level by providing them a new perspective on the integration of technology into the language learning that may result in a shift in technology use. by attempting to provide a clear picture of what and how to integrate digital storytelling, one can learn about how to facilitate meaningful use of technology into second language acquisition and at the same time, motivate students. in addition, the findings of the study can be of use to syllabus designers and efl instructors. in addition, teacher and syllabus instructors can benefit from the findings of the study and develop a better understanding of the role of digital storytelling instruction. although indonesian educational system has made great attempt in its general educational area, growth in technological supports that facilitate educational advances, have been slower. the use of computer software and hardware has not been fully explored. in addition, no previous study has examined the potential of digital storytelling in facilitating second language acquisition. research questions second language acquisition is a complex topic. many unpredictable variables influence second language acquisition and consequently complicate research on the topic. the research conducted was exploratory and grounded in qualitative methods, yet it was identified three questions that guided the observations, interviews, field notes, and findings. based on the purposes of the study, the following research questions drive the study, 1. do students perceive digital storytelling as a useful tool for learning english? 2. what experiences did the students have using digital storytelling? 3. what can interviews and observations discover about the effect of digital storytelling for efl students in university? setting the setting for this research was sanata dharma university, which is located in yogyakarta, indonesia. in english department, faculty of letters, sanata dharma university, the english language courses designed for undergraduate students emphasize on developing their oral communication skills. students find such courses a challenging task, especially when it comes to speaking in class and assessed by the lecturer. the performance of many students tend to be on the average, with very few of them are slightly above average grades. one of the english language courses that students of english letters department need to enroll is speaking iv. this course is aimed at developing the strategies and skills necessary for effective oral presentations. in this course, the students seem to have boredom and lack of motivation and participation during the speaking course. students may be influenced by lack confidence in participating in class presentations because students’ classroom discussion consists primarily of recent issues and in-depth analysis. lengthy and elaborate presentations are avoided due to poor vocabulary and fear of making mistakes. digital storytelling presentation format is introduced to help student to improve their presentations skills and develop their second language proficiency. at the core of this study was also the creation of a motivating learning environment that would allow students to f.x. risang baskara 150 develop both their speaking and organizational skills and encourage autonomous learning, thus facilitating the students’ second language acquisition process in the classroom. participants there were thirty students enrolled in the efl class at the time of this research project. they were in the fourth semester in their study in the department of english letters, sanata dharma university. the efl course was the speaking iv, and students received their english credit by successful completion of this course. the class was heterogeneously mixed and the english language proficiencies were varied. all of the students were in the tenth grade and between the ages of 19-21. analysis and findings the project took place in the beginning until the end of the semester. the students used pecha kucha, one of the digital storytelling formats, to help their presentation in the classroom. pecha kucha is a simple presentation format where 20 images are shown, each for 20 seconds. the images advance automatically and the presenter will talk along to the images. the presentation format was created by astrid klein and mark dytham of klein dytham architecture in tokyo japan, in february 2003. it was first designed as an event for young designers to meet, network, and display their work in public (pecha kucha, 2013). the presentation format is very concise and effective. it was designed so that it can easily gather the audiences’ attention. presentations are limited to 20 slides, each shown for only 20 seconds (set up to automatically advance), for a total time of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. the presentation format requires the presenters to use less words and more relevant pictures and graphics appropriate to the topic (artyushina et al., 2011). by using pecha kucha, the timing that the students have for each presentation was as follows: 6 minutes and 40 seconds for the presentation itself, followed by a question and answer session discussing several issues raised by the speaker (which lasted roughly five minutes). given this timing, 10 presentations were allocated to each lesson; the project was thus completed in 4 lessons, or slightly around four weeks. the presentation was assessed according to the marking grid used in university levels to evaluate oral exams. the speakers were also required to hand in written reports of their preparation and presentations to allow a fair assessment of the amount of effort they had put into this project. after reviewing the informal interview notes, i found that ten of the thirty students (33%) had little prior experience working with computer software before using the pecha kucha format. fifteen of the thirty students actually had access to a computer at home, but they used the computer primarily for internet surfing or to play games. they all reported they did not seem to have a fear of computers. they all seemed to have a desire to work more with computers. the students made comments before they used the pecha kucha program that reflected their confidence that utilizing digital storytelling could improve their language learning. one student replied that he had not used the computer much in his classes, but he had always heard that technology helps students learn; therefore, he was excited about the opportunity to be able to simply use a computer. another said that in his previous high school, the use of technology was more established than teacher-led instruction, so he felt that the lack of technology use that he had experienced in the university seemed “backwards” to him. students realized the importance and value of the use of technology in the learning process in general, and disappointment that technology was not used more often in more or all of their classes was apparent. when the students were observed during their interaction with pecha kucha, there were much other information. students needed to know very little about computers to use the pecha kucha format. students who used the format for the first time completed a pecha kucha guideline that http://klein-dytham.com/ http://klein-dytham.com/ http://klein-dytham.com/ vol. 15 no. 2 – october 2015 151 familiarized the students with its basic format. all of the students began the preparation at the component of the pecha kucha format. ten of the thirty students showed at least a 20% increase in their first presentation scores. overall, and in only four weeks, the students made an increase of 10.50 points in their second presentation scores. in the follow-up class discussions after each presentation, the students volunteered to answer questions from the audiences. the questions to which they responded only required brief responses, but their voluntary class contributions reflected the confidence that they had gained in their ability to function at least conversationally using the language. when interviewed after their interaction with pecha kucha, only five students retained his original preference of conventional one-to-one teacher instruction in the classroom. other students felt that more time using pecha kucha format might have helped them to increase their presentation scores. by the third week using the program, slowly it was possible to reduce the amount of group time using pecha kucha, and the amount of individual consultation was increased. when the observation records of the students using pecha kucha were analyzed, there were ten of the thirty students, who almost always asked either their peers or teacher for assistance, had reduced the amount of times that they needed additional instruction. the longer they used pecha kucha format, the more comfortable they became with it and the more confidence they gained in their ability to perform the tasks independently and correctly. from the teacher’s report, it was stated that using computers along with teacherdirected instruction could be an essential component for assisting the students to function better in an english language context. it was also stated that helping efl students develop their speaking skills would be a logical instructional starting point, especially when learners have low literacy levels in english or even their native language. it was also essential for the teacher to not only focus on the classroom presentation, but also to include more practice using digital storytelling to assist all students with other skills that are related to speaking skills such as reporting, negotiating, clarifying, and problem solving. it was also necessary to reevaluate the instructional strategies; some said that they intend to include communicative and whole language instructional approaches that may involve the use of digital storytelling. future action planning second language acquisition is an area of study in which the variables are so numerous and unpredictable that it is difficult to isolate any particular method or intervention and accurately determine an effect. nonetheless, a teacher’s professional research goal is to continue to find ways to help students improve their second language acquisition skills. since the recent literature shows some indication that pecha kucha or other digital storytelling formats may be a possible and valuable tool to improve second language acquisition, it was necessary to continue to conduct research in this area. there is also the concept of instrumental and integrative motivation that has been especially influential in the field of secondlanguage acquisition (ullman, 1997). it is also interesting to address the learning style differences that may affect a students’ language learning. perhaps the inclusion of innovative digital storytelling formats should be accompanied with ways to address the individual learner, while recognizing and addressing the learning style in each learner. therefore, the next future research in this area of second language acquisition will certainly address these issues. conclusion even though much remains to be learned about second language acquisition, this study shows that use of digital storytelling can at least facilitate second language acquisition. it seems that students perceived pecha kucha, f.x. risang baskara 152 as one the digital storytelling formats, to make a positive difference in the students’ language acquisition and their confidence in their improved language skills. second language acquisition has potentially great practical importance for educators since reading and writing are influenced by language development. research findings should be of interest to second language materials writers, second language curriculum developers, and classroom teachers in identifying complementary relationships between second language acquisition and the use of technology and multimedia. while this study has focused on the second language acquisition process from the perspective of the language, the learner, and assistance to the learning process, it is important to point out that learning styles and environment of second language acquisition have a remarkable impact on second language learning. this is especially true for efl students. english level is not better than it had been as the result of teaching without respect to the students’ learning styles and without computerassisted. reid (1998) shows that knowledge of learning styles, environment may be used to maximize students’ potential for learning, and that effective management of learning styles even promotes successful language development. a better understanding in what learning style preference among adult students by the finding from the measurements would help determine the strategies or provide design management training sessions, curriculum, instructional strategies, career counseling, and classroom practice and a foundation for efl-related research in the country whose native language is not english. therefore, many other issues regarding students' language learning need to be researched and addressed when finding alternative and beneficial influences on second language acquisition in efl students. references artyushina, g., sheypak, o., & khovrin, a. “developing student presentation skills at the english language classes through pechakucha.” ieee global engineering education conference (educon). 2011. bourdon, c. “easing into esl.” american libraries. vol. 30, 1999: 2-94. meadows, d. “digital storytelling: researchbased practice in new media.” visual communication. vol. 2 no. 2, 2003: 189193. ohler, j. “the world of digital storytelling.” educational leadership. vol. 63, no. 4, 2006: 44-47. pecha kucha. pecha kucha 20 x 20. 2013. retrieved january, 2015, from http://www.pechakucha.org reid, j. m. (ed.). understanding learning styles in the second language classroom. upper saddle river, nj: prentice-hall, 1998. robin, b. “the educational uses of digital storytelling.” society for information technology & teacher education international conference. march 2006: 709-716. robin, b. r. “digital storytelling: a powerful technology tool for the 21st century classroom.” theory into practice. vol. 47 no. 3, 2008: 220-228. sadik, a. “digital storytelling: a meaningful technology-integrated approach for engaged student learning.” educational technology research and development. vol. 56, no. 4, 2008: 487-506. warschauer, m. & healey, d. “computers and language learning: an overview.” language teaching. vol. 31, 1998: 57 71. page 1 page 2 phenomena vol 15 no. 2.pdf page 1 page 2 set cover dalam phenomena vol 15 no.pdf page 1 binder1.pdf (3) artikel 1prof putu (venti) ed-2 (4) artikel 2joan (arina) ed-3 (5) artikel 3 maria (hir) ed-2 (6) artikel 4 adria (arina) ed-2 (7) artikel 5 lany (hir) ed-2 (8) artikel 6 sisca (harris) ed-2 (9) artikel 7 risang (arina) ed-2 (10) artikel 8 herujiyanto (hir) ed-2 (11) artikel 9 patrice (venti) ed-2 (12) artikel 10 venti (arina) ed-3 (13) artikel 11 suryo (arina) ed-2 (14) index (2 des 2015)-1 (14) contributor's notes-2 mitra bestari dan daftar isi-oct 2015.pdf page 1 page 2 set cover luar phenomena.pdf page 1 183 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 183 – 196 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.5406 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. material anomaly as ecocide in ginsberg’s “ballade of poisons” and dickinson’s “agents orange, yellow, and red”: epiphany in ecological precarity henrikus joko yulianto henrikus.joko@mail.unnes.ac.id english department, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia abstract article information ecocide has been a classic anthropogenic phenomenon from time to time, it dated from the industrial revolution in the 18th century to the present postindustrial era of digital technology. this anthropogenic activity correlates with an overconsumption of material things such as fossil fuels and other earth minerals. despite the merit, these subterranean minerals in fact contain toxic particles that have detrimental impacts on any life form and the physical environment. this study discusses allen ginsberg’s poem “ballade of poisons” and adam dickinson’s “agents orange, yellow, and red” as two poetic texts from different periods, the modern and contemporary ones. the purpose of the study is to highlight how these two poems polemicize the anthropogenic overuse of material and chemical products as ecocide that wreaks havoc on any life form. the study uses close reading method by examining ecological aspects in the poems and then contextualize these aspects within ecopoetic perspectives by referring to some notions such as material transcorporeality and its intrusion on human’s body. poetry as one literary genre becomes an agent of social change and an ecological epiphany in this present posthuman precarity. ginsberg’s “ballade of poisons” and dickinson’s “agents orange, yellow, and red” then serve as an agent to actualize epiphany in this present ecological precarity. their epiphanic poetics evokes one’s instantaneous awareness of the hazards of material overuse and of the insubstantial natures of these things through the human’s material objectification. keywords: ecocide; epiphany; ecological precarity; material transcorporeality received: 22 november 2022 revised: 28 december 2022 accepted: 16 january 2023 introduction ecocide has rooted in ancient times. this correlates with human’s exploitation of natural resources to fulfill his necessities. the material excess has caused detrimental impacts on the natural environment. global warming and climate change as one of ecocides has emerged since the old times during the permian period, 250 million years ago. it was a mass extinction https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) henrikus joko yulianto 184 that occurred on land and in shallow water environments. paleontologists believed that it was caused by “a slow but inexorable change in climate and sea level when forces of continental drift” caused the physical formation of the continents and this event swept away more than 90 per cent of the earth’s species. then about 200 million years ago was the second ecological catastrophe in which the mega fauna including dinosaurs, large crocodile-like animals, a few mammal-like reptiles along with coral reefs and most shelled ammonites disappeared from the earth. the cause was “a series of environmental catastrophes” that occurred about 100,000 years or less. the two main causes were “a 1-to 5-mile-wide meteor colliding with the earth” and “the eruption of great lava flows” from the area that is now known as the jungles of the amazon river valley. last but not least, about 65 million years ago, the mega fauna such as terrestrial dinosaurs and hundreds of thousands of other land and aquatic species went extinct. the causes of this extinction were climate changes and a sudden change in sea level. the paramount mass extinction took place when “a giant, 6-mile-wide asteroid or comet crashed into the surfaces of the earth near the yucatan peninsula”. the collision brought “a fiery hell of burning forests over much of the earth’s surface, giant tidal waves, and great volumes of poisonous gas”. the cataclysmic impact was millions of tons of earth and extraterrestrial debris that blocked the sunlight and exterminated plants and other living creatures (broswimmer 2002, 14-15). in the late 18th century in england another human ecocide was the industrial revolution. since the industrial activities were very massive, these caused detrimental impacts on human’s lives and the natural environment. for instance, the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide was getting more severe reaching to 280ppvm and in today’s time it has increased to 380ppvm (maslin 2009, 7-8). ecocide as a nature phenomenon that correlates with anthropogenic activities and thus reveals anthropocentrism deals with several environmental issues that still occur at the present time, including climate change, the plundering of ecosystems, the eradication of species and the pollution of air, land and water (whyte 2020, 14). poetry serves as an ecological agent during this millennium . words as material elements of poetry convey certain idea, vision and value that aim to evoke one’s awareness of his interconnectedness with the natural environment. an american professor of english and an ecocritic, john felstiner in his phenomenal book, can poetry save the earth? argued that poems play an important role in shaping one’s changing consciousness of the world around us (felstiner 2009, 4). then, he quoted an environmental historian, william cronon’s notion that emphasized the interconnectedness between human and its natural environment—“to protect the nature that is all around us, we must think long and hard about the nature we carry inside our heads, whether wild, rural, or urban” (ibid., 2009, 6). furthermore, he argued if poetry that he calls ecological poetry or nature poems have major roles in responding to many environmental problems, in which most of these are anthropogenic or man-made that many refer to ecocide. among these include logging, wildland drilling, agribusiness, dynamite fishing, military sonar, oil spills, pesticide overuse, animal poaching,and other related eco-crimes (felstiner 2009, 11-12). american poetry has expressed its concern about ecocide since modern era through several ecopoems. even more so, poems that criticized anthropocentrism has begun since the transcendental era in the late 18th century. ralph waldo emerson as one major transcendentalist writer in his poem entitled “hamatreya” for instance had suggested his critique of this human’s craving for land as a material possession while it belongs to the nature. he describes this through the figure of landlords as the owner of the lands; these landlords tend to be possessive of the lands which suggests human’s desires for this material thing— bulkeley, hunt, willard, hosmer, meriam, flint, possessed the land which rendered to their toil hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood. each of these landlords walked amidst his farm, saying, “tis mine, my children’s and my name’s. how sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees! journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 185 how graceful climb those shadows on my hill! i fancy these pure waters and the flags know me, as does my dog: we sympathize; and, i affirm, my actions smack of the soil.’ (sherman 2017) in modern era , an american poet, gary snyder expressed his concern about ecocide in his poems under the three headings, “logging”, “hunting” and “burning” that all refer to anthropogenic activities in extracting and even overextracting natural resources including nonhuman animals. in one poem entitled in number “14” in “logging” for instance, the poet looked back to the ancient human practice in overextracting trees and deforesting the land that impacted on the environmental catastrophes— the groves are down cut down groves of ahab, of cybele pine trees, knobbed twigs thick cone and seed cybele’s tree this, sacred in groves pine of seami, cedar of haida cut down by the prophets of israel the fairies of athens the thugs of rome both ancient and modern; (snyder 1978, 15) in contemporary era, new poets at this present time express their ecological concern through experimental and innovative poems. many of these poets even redefine what they think about ecopoetry.and they raise some polemical issues such as global warming, climate change, and petro culture. among these include stephen collis, a canadian poet who polemicized human’s petro culture in his poem “take oil & hum”; ca conrad in his experimental poems such as “tarot as verb taroting meat” that problematizes plastic overuse and consumerism in general; craig santos perez, a hawaiian poet who similarly critiques human’s plastic overuse in his poem “the age of plastic”, in which he enumerates various plastic derivatives and their use in human’s daily products (staples & king 2017). their poems exemplify the important roles poety aims to play as an aesthetic text in raising human’s ecological awareness of caring and protecting the earth and its material things in fulfilling his daily necessities. this brief paper discusses two poems of two poets who come from different eras : allen ginsberg as one major figure of the beat generation, a literary activism in the american postwar era of the 1950-s and adam dickinson, a contemporary canadian poet at this present millennium. ginsberg’s phenomenal work howl was a collection of poem written in the 1950s. yet, the poet wrote other great poems from the 1960s to the contemporary era of the 1990s. “ballade of poisons” is one of his poems written in 1978 (mulligan 2006), the era when america had experienced an energy crisis and some environmental problems. there was an ecocide when a company called hooker chemical and plastics used the land near niagara falls county, new york to “bury more than 21,000 tons (19,051 metric tons) of harmful chemicals in metal barrels there” between 1942 and 1955. then in the 1970s, construction “broke the canal’s clay seal” and people began to smell strange odors and many children experienced burned hands and faces. in about 1977, the canal’s chemicals came out to the surface and “spilled into the niagara river”. even worse the corroded barrels “broke through the ground and appeared in backyards, swimming pools, and basements.” many residents had been contaminated by the toxic gas and subtances from the barrels. pregnant women showed birth defects in their babies and other residents had been diagnosed to have high white blood cell in their bodies that led to cancer of the blood or bone marrow. president jimmy charter “ordered emergency aid to clean the canal called love canal and help to relocate its residents.” since the incident, his government issued the superfund act of 1980 that protected people from “abandoned toxic waste sites and holds polluters” be responsible for their industrial practices (richards 2010, 41-42). the second poem is a contemporary poem entitled “agents orange, yellow, and red” by a canadian poet and teacher, adam dickinson. like ginsberg’s, dickinson’s poem also polemicizes human’s overuse of chemicals in his daily activities that this practice causes environmental hazards or an action of ecocide itself (staples & king 2017). although these two poems come from the different eras and different literary background, one similar journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) henrikus joko yulianto 186 quality is that they all discuss human’s excessive use of chemicals and other nonrenewable materials that this brings forth ecocide. two questions that this paper addresses are: first, how the two poems polemicize material things as anomaly and the causes of ecocide; second, how the polemics against the material things evoke one’s epiphany in the midst of ecological precarity. in discussing these two questions, the analysis refers to some books and references about ecopoetry, material ecocriticism, transcorporeality, and ecocide (alaimo 2010; broswimmer 2002; hume 2012; iovino & oppermann 2012, 2014; whyte 2020). methodology analysis in the paper refers to qualitative method by using words in the two poems as the main data. in collecting the data, i did close reading as one research method suggested in new criticism (rapaport 2017). the method began with reading the two poems for several times to get the general overview of them. then, i tried to identify images in the poems that depict material anomaly and that the materials becomes polemic of ecocide. next, since the discussion on the material anomaly in the two poems also consider the ecological impacts, the analysis refers to some notions on material ecocriticism and transcorporeality to support and give some proofs. the term ecopoetry consists of two words “ecology” and “poetry” that describes any ecological aspect in poetry. it came from ecocriticism as the study of ‘the relationship between literature and the physical environment’ (glotfelty 1996, xviii). ecopoetry refers to the kinds of poetry that deals with environmental issues such as the impacts of climate change and deforestation on the planetary life including its living creatures. an ecocritic william rueckert compares poetry with fossil fuels (stored energy). but different from the fuels, poems are “renewable source of energy that emerge from language and imagination” (glotfelty & fromm 1996, 108). street in her essay “the roots of it” says that poetry in general is ecopoetry since the origin of what any poem describes always foregrounds the natural world. in fact, ecopoetry does not only mean a depiction of natural creatures or life in the natural world, but serves as a ‘a kind of paradigm shift’ or “the apprehension of real biological selves (as opposed to fantasy selves) inhabiting this planet in their co-existence with one another (street 2013, xxxviii). furthermore, fisherwirth and street mention three main groupings of poetry that deal with environment and its issues, namely nature poetry, environmental poetry, and ecological poetry. among these three, ecopoetry tends to be experimental and innovative in polemicizing the environmental issues—“”it engages questions of form most directly, not only poetic form but also a form historically taken for granted—that of the singular, coherent self” (fisher-wirth & street 2013, xxix). the study of ecopoetry is known as ecopoetics or the study of the interrelationship between ecology and poetry. the hawaiian poet, craig santos perez in a brief writing said that ecopoetics is “the study of poetry written about the natural world, environmental justice, ecology, and climate change.” ecopoetics also discusses “how formal elements in poetry might embody ecological concepts, transformations, or aesthetics.” at this present time, ecopoetics has played major roles in times of ecological precarity including some ‘ion and ‘ism such as massive industrialization, urbanization, nuclearism, plantationism, militarism, and environmental imperialism. ecopoetics then can be an agency to criticize anthropogenic activities that cause global warming, climate change and other ecocides (staples & king 2017, 167). the word ecocide might be a trendy term about exploitative anthropogenic activities against the natural environment. this term consists of two words ‘ecology’ and ‘cide’ that means a killing of the natural environment as the living habitat for any life form. this suggests a human’s deliberate action in destroying the natural environment. these actions certainly threaten ‘the sustainability of the planet’ such as those of “climate change, the demolition of ecosystems, the eradication of species and the pollution of air, land and water” (whyte 2020, 14-15). this term also often refers to ‘the renewed protest movement against climate change’ and becomes a frequently used term by academic lawyers and criminologists (ibid., 2020, 16). ecocide is often associated with capitalism and any human business and industrial activity conducted by any corporation. capitalism as an economic system journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 187 that is “based on perpetual growth and continual reproduction of private wealth” tends to ignore things related to environmental conservation. instead, it privileges practices in aggrandizing profit for a group of elites. in a like manner, any business corporation is mostly based on capitalist principles in doing its profitmaking activities as maximally as possible. this liable to excessive material activity certainly has greatly contributed to the ‘destruction of the planet’ (ibid., 2020, 15). in 1972 olof palme, the prime minister of sweden used the term ‘ecocide’ to describe “the use of napalm and the defoliant agent orange during the vietnam war.” this chemical warfare in vietnam was used “to slaughter people in enemy territory, destroy their villages and wipe out forests and crops.” palme and other world leaders called for ecocide to “be an international crime” and then an international lawyer richard falk responded the call by publishing ‘a draft ecocide convention’. the convention “provided the legal basis for outlawing the use of chemical substances to clear people from the land in wartime or peacetime.” in the vietnam incident, it was estimated that 4.8 million people “were directly sprayed with agent orange and around 400,000 people died immediately.” the vietnamese red cross estimated that “a further 1 million people were disabled or suffered severe health problems” because of the chemical substances. a worse situation was that vietnamese babies “are still born today with congenital disorders” because of the substances in the atmosphere. there were nine different private chemical companies led by monsanto that had been in charge of “developing and manufacturing agent orange for the us military.” yet, some of the companies such as dow, monsanto, and diamond shamrock like the us military continued “to deny any relationship between health effects on claimants and their chemicals.” among other corporations that are found to be ‘the biggest offenders’ of the ecocide include exxonmobil, shell, bp, and chevron. in fact, these oil companies have produced fossil fuel emissions since 1965 about 35% and the emissions got more increased in the following years. several other corporations are coca-cola, pepsico, nestle, danone, mondelez international, procter & gamble, unilever, perfetti van melle, mars & colgate-palmolive (whyte 2020, 16-18). the crime these corporations have done against the natural environment is by producing nonrenewable products such as plastic that contains toxic particles that can pollute the air. they also produce other toxic chemicals such as dioxins and pesticides that hazard water and air (ibid., 2020, 18). several persistent and damaging chemicals that corporations have used in their products include leaded petrol, bisphenol a (bpa), polycchlorinated biphenyl (pcb), polyvinyl chloride (pvc), organophosphates, glyphosate (ibid. 2020, 2425). these chemicals then become anomaly or things (substances) that “deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected” (oxford dictionary of english 2020) in terms of their toxic substances that endanger any living creature and the natural environment. historically, the ecocide has occurred in the pre-historic eras in the ancient times. home sapiens has become “the greatest catasthropic agent” (broswimmer 2002, 13). these prehistoric people and their activities toward the physical environment have brought mass extinction of various species of plants and animals and their detrimental impacts on the ecosytem itself (ibid., 2002: 13). the first cricis of mass extinction occurred on land and in shallow water environents about 250 million years ago in the permian period. paleontologists believe that the cause of the mass extinction was “a slowe but inexorable change in climate and sea level” which occurred when “forces of continental drift caused the earth’s great continents to merge together into a single, gigantic super continent.” then, the continents separated from their tectonic embrace that similarly brought about the extinction of 90% species. this extinction also includes most of the marine and land-living animal life and left “a 200 million-year-long evolutionary history” that was then called the paleozoic era. the second major crisis occurred about 200 million years ago when “the world’s ecosystems reorganized themselves into a series of stable marine and terrestrial communities.” in this era,the mega fauna includes newly evolving dinosaurs, large crocodile-like animals and a few mammal-like reptiles. these creatures disappeared from the earth along with coral reefs and most shelled ammonites. the cause of this extinction was not journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) henrikus joko yulianto 188 a single and rapid one, but “a series of environmental catastrophes occurring about 100,000 years or less.” the two main causes include the event when “a 1-to-5 mile-wide meteor collided with the earth and left a 70mile-wide crater in quebec.” while, the eruption of great lava flowing beneath the crater is now known as the jungles of the amazon river valley. all these events greatly created environmental change and produced the second wave of mass extinction. the third great mass extinction took place 65 million years ago. in this era, the terrestrial dinosaurs and hundreds of thousands of other land and aquatic species went extinct. the cause of this extinction the collision of “a giant, 6-mile-wide asteroid or coment into the surface of the earth near the yucatan peninsula.” the collision produced “a fiery hell of burning forests over much of the earth’s surface, giant tidal waves, and great volumes of poisonous gas.” what worse was that “millions of tons of earth and extraterrestrial debris blazed upward and blocked the sunlight.” on land and in the oceans, plants perished and this caused the starvation of many creatures. in the 65 million years after the third period, the emergence of ‘behaviorally modern humans’ and their massive activities produce ‘a new major crisis of mass extinction’ including the present issues of global warming, greenhouse effect and climate change (broswimmer 2002, 13-15). results and discussion analysis of material things as anomaly and ecocide in ginsberg and dickinson’s poems begins with an investigation into their form (typography) and then content that polemicizes toxic substances of material things humans use for a social and political aim. material things as anomaly and ecocide in allen ginsberg’s “ballade of poisons” and adam dickinson’s “agents orange, yellow, and red” ginsberg’s poem has three stanzas (triplet) and each consists of 10 lines or called decastich and five lines of envoi that represents a classic form of ballad. in each stanza he uses anaphora or the repetition of similar word ‘with’ in the beginning line: with oil that streaks streets a magic color, with soot that falls on city vegetables with basement sulfurs & coal black odor with smog that purples suburbs’ sunset hills with junk that feebles black & white men’s wills with plastic bubbles aeons will dissolve with new plutoniums that only resolve their poison heat in quarter million years, with pesticides that round food chains revolve may your soul make home, may your eyes weep tears. (mulligan 2007, 700) in terms of form, the repetition “with” in the beginning of each line then produces musical effect just as song refrains. the first and fourth lines also have alliteration in the words “streaks streets” and “suburbs’ sunset ”. then each line uses rhyme scheme a b a c c d d e d e, which similarly produces a harmonious sound. in terms of content, the stanza above polemicizes a number of material things that become anomalies since these things cause problems. being problematic then corresponds with the meaning of anomaly as ‘something that deviates from what is normal or expected’. among these material things include fossil fuels such as ‘oil’, ‘soot’, ‘basemenet sulfurs’, ‘smog’, ‘coal black odor’, ‘junk’, ‘plastic bubbles’, ‘harmonium’, ‘new plutonian’, ‘poison’, ‘pesticides’, ‘four chains’. these anomalies bring forth ecocide since they do something and cause certain detrimental conditions as the poet describes by using the repetitive word ‘with’ and ‘that’. in the next ten lines in the following stanza, the poet portrays these anomalies through several images of material things that humans consume in their dailies— with freak hormones in chicken & soft egg with panic red dye in cow meat burger with mummy med’cines, nitrate in sliced pig with sugar’d cereal kids scream for murder, with chemic additives that cause cancer with bladder and mouth in your salami, with strontium ninety in milks of mommy, with sex voices that spill beer thru your ears with cups of nicotine till you vomit journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 189 may your soul make home, may your eyes weep tears. (mulligan 2007, 700) in this second stanza, the poet still uses anaphora and also the repetition in the last line “may your soul make home, may your eyes weep tears”. different from the first stanza that depicts fossil fuels and other related material products, this second stanza catalogues things that deal with human’s daily products such as ‘chicken’, ‘soft egg’, ‘red dye’, ‘cow meat burger’, ‘sliced pig’, ‘sugar’d cereal’, ‘chemic additives’, ‘salami’, and ‘nicotine’. the material products also stand for anomalies since individual’s overuse of these things would cause some hazards. for instance, “red dye in cow meat burger”, ”nitrate in sliced pig”, “sugar’d cereal”, ”chemic additives”, “strontium ninety in milks of mommy”, “cups of nicotine” all suggest the danger of these products when humans overuse or misuse them since they contain toxic substances. strontium 90 itself is “a radioactive isotope produced by nuclear fission” and becomes the major source of calcium in milk products. it is also used in medicine and industry. like chemic additives that cause the emergence of cancer as the poet says in line 15, the overuse of this strontium will also cause the same problem (https://en.m.wikipedia.org). therefore, these products also cause ecocide since despite giving benefits to humans, their internal properties contain toxics that harm humans physically and certainly the natural environment. in the next ten lines from line 21 to 30 the poet again polemicizes material things that wreak havoc on humans and the natural environment— with microwave toaster television with cadmium lead in leaves of fruit trees with trade center’s nocturnal emission with coney island’s shore plopped with faeces while blue whales sing in high infrequent seas with amazon worlds with fish in ocean washed in rockefellers greasy potion with oily toil fueled with atomic fears with cia tainting world emotion may your soul make home, may your eyes weep tears. (mulligan 2007, 700) in this third stanza, the poet portrays human’s products and infrastructures including some corporations whose industrial activities have caused some environmental problems. the images “microwave toaster television” exemplify modern lifestyle while these also suggest the poet’s critique of modern people’s dependence on these electronic appliances that all still make use of fossil fuels as the energy. the next line “with cadmium lead in leaves of fruit trees” illustrates how the cadmium lead as one earth metal contains toxic particles despite its utility in the electronic appliances. the emission of the metal has contaminated the leaves of fruit trees. the emission of the cadmium in the environment is increased by human’s use of chemical fertilizers and corporation activities such as coal and fossil fuels excavation (https://www.unep.org).the line that describes “coney’s island’s shore” that was plopped with faeces suggests a metaphorical meaning that the island had been polluted by debris of human’s material products . then the next line “blue whales that sing in high infrequent seas” suggests the disappearance of blue whales as rare and endangered species because of anthropogenic activities. furthermore, the phrases “amazon worlds”, “rockefellers greasy potion” and “cia tainting world emotion” exemplify corporations that have big roles in committing ecocide through their business activities that make use of fossil fuels and their derivative products. these images also become anomalies since these things in their supposed merit for human living have in fact deviated from what individuals in common (lay people—my emphasis) have expected. thus, what these corporations have done is instead an ecocide. the repeated line “may your soul make home, may your eyes weep tears” serves as an entreaty to humans (those who hold the authority—my emphasis) to change their material-oriented mind to save the earth and the world as the only sustainable habitat for any living creature. the last stanza is an envoi or a conclusion of the ballade consisting of five lines. this contains an entreaty to those who hold the authority such as president and his cabinet members not to excessively implement profitmaking and material-indulging policies. instead, they have to cognize the danger of human’s overuse of the non-renewable material products such as fossil fuels toward journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) henrikus joko yulianto 190 the natural environment and any existing life form— president, ‘spite cockroach devotion, folk poisoned with radioactive lotion, ‘spite soulless bionic energy queers may your world move to healthy emotion, make your soul at home, let your eyes weep tears. (mulligan 2007, 700) the repetition in the last line aims to evoke human’s compassion for the natural environment and any living creature that coexists with each other. in this envoi, the images such as “cockroach devotion”, “radioactive lotion”, “soulless bionic energy queers” serve as the poet’s criticism of human’s overuse of material especially that of non-renewable material things. these juxtaposed images as ginsberg’s typical poetic expressions also represent anomalies that further become ecocide since they serve as toxic materials. in the next poem “agents orange,yellow, and red” adam dickinson polemicizes material things humans use but that these things then cause some problems to human’s life and the natural environment. the poem is in a vertical form that suggests a flowing stream as well as a spontaneous outburst of feeling— you are either for chlorine or for the plague. right now is the cleanest we have ever been, and for this you must love aerial defoliants or you love communism. under the bandage of the one-industry town closing ranks around staples of forestry and fish, the wound is wide-eyed and headstrong. through the clearing,freshwater carp blink past the graves of missionaries who introduced them to the new world. (staples & king 2017, 68) the lines above have revealed material things as anomalies since these make polemics and that they give impacts to each other thing in the natural environment. some images such as “one-industry”, “defoliants”, “staples”, “clearing ”, “new world” suggest corporations that manufacture material products that further cause the problems. these things refers to ecocide that occurred in vietnam in the 1960s when the us military sprayed the chemical herbicide and defoliant called “agent orange” to the lush jungle in vietnam to eradicate communist enemies during the vietnam war from 1961 to 1971. this agent orange is “a mixture of equal parts of two herbicides, 2, 4, 5-t and 2, 4-d and contains dioxin as the most toxic substance. this herbicidal warfare certainly did not only destroy the forests in vietnam but also crippled many vietnamese people physically and psychologically (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/agent_orange ). in the next lines, the poet further illustrates how material things as anomalies pollute the natural landscapes such as rivers and cause a kind of environmental precarity— northern rivers are warmed by the paper mill’s piss, which, like making the world safe for democracy, slowly leaked into my childhood yellowing the lipophilic paperbacks of my adipose fat. you are for pulp or for poverty. you respect the constitution or you stare at the ground lost in bankruptcies for herring gull beaks or blurred embryos in cormorant colonies. (staples & king 2017, 68) in the lines above, the poet further portrays how corporations have caused ecocide to the natural environment through their activities such as “paper mill’s piss” that suggests waste and debris from the papermanufacturing company that pollutes the rivers. the images “my childhood yellowing” and “lipophilic paperbacks ” exemplify how the material things from the manufacturer serve as anomalies that cause problems to humans and the natural environment. the material transformation from the paper waste into its toxic substances that permeate through one’s body suggests what is called transcorporeality of the material thing. it is the material agencies of the product that has hazardous impacts on human’s body to make it toxic, too (alaimo 2010, 17-18). the next lines “you are for pulp or for poverty”, “you respect the constitution or you stare at the ground lost in bankruptcies” and “for herring gull beaks or blurred embryos in cormorant colonies” depict human’s sociopolitical agencies in overconsuming material journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 191 things and that this material overuse in turn has detrimental impacts on his bodies, nonhuman creatures’ bodies and the natural environmen t. this trajectory exemplifies the toxic traffic from the human’s corporation as the agent that causes this ecocide and humans who consume the product in their daily activities (alaimo 2010, 18). in the last lines, the poet further polemicizes this human’s ecocide through his censure for a factual political incident of poisoning viktor yushchenko by government agents. they put dioxin in his food. viktor yushchenko was a ukrainian politician and the third president of ukraine from 23 january 2005 to 25 february 2010 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/viktor_yushch enko) every erected media platform reduces the problem of war to a problem of tint. during the orange revolution, viktor yushchenko was poisoned by government agents who haywired his food with dioxin. his face flared into pages of acne. you are either for the red or the white blood cells, for the tops of trees, or the bottoms. (staples & king 2017, 68) the lines above seem to criticize the herbicidal warfare by the us military in the past during the vietnam war. these serve as an ecological melancholia that shows concern about the war hazard and its lasting impact on human’s consciousness as the poet said in the phrase “a problem of tint” being suggestive of “trace” of the war in human’s unconscious mind. the phrase “orange revolution” refers to “a series of protests and political events” that occurred in ukraine from late november 2004 to january 2005 during “the run-off vote of the 2004 ukrainian presidential election.” the protesters claimed that the election was “impaired by massive corruption, voter intimidation, and electoral fraud.” it took place during the presidential election of viktor yushchenko in which he contended another candidate, viktor yanukovych. yushchenko received more votes than yanukovych so that he became the third president of ukraine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/orange_revol ution). then, the lines that describe the poisoning of viktor yushchenko by government agents reveals the same political incident during that time. the “dioxin” as the poison that they mixed in yushchenko’s food corresponds with the same toxic the us military used in the “agent orange”, the chemical herbicide they sprayed to the lush jungle in vietnam in the 1960s. this coincidence indicates how the dioxin as anomaly still becomes a forceful toxic that can exterminate its victim. the last lines seem to be addressed to the dioxin itself that can cause a variety of cancers when it seeps through human’s blood cells. furthermore, it also polluted the canopy (the tops of trees) as well as soil and sediment. the polluted soil further impaired the food chain and caused illnesses for humans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/agent_orange ) . seeking epiphany in the midst of ecological precarity ecocide correlates with consumerism or consumer-oriented society. looking back to the history from the ancient to the postmodern one, it is clear that any environmental problem would always come from individual overuse of material things (broswimmer 2002, 13-15). furthermore, this ecological precarity has lasted since the ancient era, the neolithic period initiated by the ‘neolithic revolution’. as humans kept evolving, they began to explore the natural environment and its resources. thus, the next eras the mesolithic period or “middle stone age” to the pre-modern era were the times when humans began to intensively domesticate plants and animals. for instance, during the upper pleistocene era, people began to domesticate animals such as dogs, goats, sheep, and wild oxen in their daily activities of food production. they began to “alter the biosphere” in a very significant way with their ‘extensive tracts of natural systems’ that was further called ‘agro-ecosystems’ or what an environmental sociologist marina fischer-kowalsky called “terrestrial colonization” that initiated “human civilization” itself (broswimmer 2002, 60-64). yet, during the pre-modern era or the classic one, people had done ecocidal activities. among them include the mesopotamians, southwest asia (3700 bce to 1600 bce); the greeks, mediterranean (770 bce to 30 bce); journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) henrikus joko yulianto 192 the romans, mediterranean (500 bce to 500 ce); the chaco anasazi, northwestern new mexico (700 ce to 1300 ce); the mayas, mesoamerica (200 ce to 900 ce); the easter islanders, rapa nui (700 ce to 1700 ce) (broswimmer 2002, 69-99). for instance, in the mesopotamian culture known as the sumerian civilization during the bronze age,people exploited land by means of irrigation that made the land infertile, sedimented and salinized (broswimmer 2002, 73). they also did an extensive deforestation of cedar forests that similarly led to soil erosion and siltation (ibid., 2002, 74). in a like manner, in the other eras such as the greeks, mediterranean, people did ecological damage or ecocide to the mediterranean landscape. for instance, for expanding the greek city-states, they destroyed rich pine and oak forests and get the lumber, firewood, and charcoal or “simply to create more pasture lands for their domesticated animals.” not to mention largescale wars such as the unending peloponnesian war between sparta and athens led to “wholesale destruction of nature” since they always intensively utilized natural resources to “produce weapons and to mount military campaigns.” the severe deforestation mostly occurred in the mainland greece and asia minor. people transformed large areas of countryside into “relatively barren wastes, while there were also “muchincreased soil erosion and flooding”. this similar ecocide also happened to the other epochs of the romans, the chaco anasazi, the mayas, and the easter islanders (ibid., 2002, 80-99). then the ecocide in the modern era took place by emerging capitalism and corporation. these two institutions privileged on their own more than thought about public’s interests.these orientated toward “private property, business, laissez-faire, profit motive, and the pursuit of self-interest” (ibid., 2002, 102). corporation refers to any human business and the birth of corporation refers to “incorporation” that “involves a process of recognition or registration by a state government.” after the corporation is registered, it has “a legal status as an independent entity that is called ‘corporate personhood’ or ‘corporate person’ who owns the property and assets of the corporation (whyte 2020, 28). this present time is the successor to the modern era. in terms of development and civilization, humans keep doing massive physical development and exploiting natural resources. the reason why they have done the similar ecological demolition from time to time is because human’s needs are the same. so people from the ancient and the contemporary times generally need food and other material things to survive and conduct their daily life. the problem is that humans tend not to use the material things or the natural resources judiciously but extravagantly. accordingly, this exploitative behavior would lead to ecological catastrophes including loss of biodiversity (wilson 2016,19-27). ecocide occurs because of “the interaction of economic, political and cultural power along with demographic change” (broswimmer 2002, 153). the cause also tallies with capitalism or what a political theorist, manfred b. steger calls “globalism”. this present global trend “coincides with the social process of “neo-liberal globalization” or a phenomenon characterized by transnationalization of production and the presence of transnational corporations (tncs) as the central engines of economic power.” these corporations are “the integral part of the late modern ecocidal juggernaut.” the tncs perpetuate “our progressively ecocidal world and do so by effectively silencing, trivializing, and legimitizing their anti-social and ecological practices”(ibid., 2002, 153-154). furthermore, globalism that is identical with neo-liberal globalization or global capitalism has created social inequalities and poverty. this social impoverishment becomes one major factor that contributes to “ecocide and environmental degradation” since poor people tend to exploit “open access resources” desperately that in time causes environmental degradation. this environmental demolition in turn “exacerbates poverty and threatens not only the economic prospects of future generations but also the livelihood, health, and well-being of current populations.” the examples of the countries that experience “this damaging environmental consequences of this globalism” are ghana, the philippines, and indonesia (ibid., 2002, 157-158). the word “epiphany” in oxford dictionary has two meanings. the first meaning is “the manifestation of christ to the gentiles as represented by the magi” and the second is “a moment of sudden and great revelation or realization” (2020). in this analysis, the word journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 193 “epiphany” refers to the second meaning, which is “a moment of sudden and great revelation or realization. ginsberg’s “ballade of poisons” and dickinson’s “agents orange, yellow, and red” and their vision of ecocide serve as an epiphany to open reader’s eyes and raise his/her awareness of the hazards of material things that are polemicized as anomalies and transcorporeal objects because of their toxic substances and their impacts on human’s and nonhuman’s body and the natural environment. ginsberg polemicizes the ecoissue in america in the late 1970s, while dickinson portrays the issue as it is connected with the past history and with the present situation of corporations and their massive activities that have detrimental impacts. the difference in the temporal setting does not really matter since what ginsberg has portrayed in the poem could serve as a metaphor for any material thing that people in the world make use of excessively. in the envoi for instance, the lines serve as an entreaty not only to the leaders of world countries but also to all people to mind the healthy planet— president, ‘spite cockroach devotion, folk poisoned with radioactive lotion, ‘spite soulless bionic energy queers may your world move to healthy emotion, make your soul at home, let your eyes weep tears. (mulligan 2007, 700) certainly, it is not only president of all world countries who has to take responsibility for caring the planet but also all citizens in the countries who should be aware of preserving their natural environment by judicious consumption of material things in their dailies . the repetition of the last line “make your soul at home, let your eyes weep tears” becomes an epiphany to evoke one’s conscience and compassion to cherish the natural life rather than to exploit its resources. as a beat poet, ginsberg’s poetics of epiphany might be influenced by his correspondence with his companion, jack kerouac who initiated a new method in writing by searching for what he called “a new vision” (charters 1995, 98). this new vision in fact embodies spiritual and ecological aspects in their search for nonmaterialism and spontaneous affirmation— the two values that show honesty, kindness and compassion for all life (charters 2007, 563). he also reveals the epiphany through the anaphora “with” in all the stanzas. besides having a jazzy rhythm , the repetition of “with” serves as a sudden and great revelation of human’s interdependent relation with material things . not only that the material things behave passively but more importantly the things serve as active agents in determining certain conditions. in dickinson’s poem, the poet suggests this epiphany through his criticism of ‘agents orange’ as the toxic substance that humans used in the past incidents for doing crime against human and the natural environment. the last three lines of the poem— you are either for the red or the white blood cells, for the tops of trees, or the bottoms. (staples & king 2017, 68) serve as a parody to criticize the hazards of the toxic substance such as dioxin and other similar subtances to any life form including human, nonhuman creatures and vegetation in the natural environment. in his essay entitled “poetics” adam dickinson argues that his poems embody scientific and poetic aspects that he calls “pataphysical poetics”. he further explains the meaning of “pataphysics” or “the science of exceptions, particulars, and imaginary solutions” as those that deals with “hyperobjects like oil and chemical pollution, which, as they enter human bodies through food and consumer products, constitute a kind of absurd, imaginary science project enacted upon the citizens of the industrialized world without consent.” he further argues that by this pataphysical poetic, he aims to be able “to respond to the capacity of petroculturalhyperobjects to influence social formations or alter human metabolism.” he gives another name “metabolic poetics” to his poems in which by polemicizing oil and other chemicals he aims to “examine the way oil has become a form of writing in human biological and metabolic contexts based on a toxicological and symbiotic map of my own body (obtained through blood, urine, and microbiome testing).” with this metabolic poetics , he aims to “respond through writing to the ways in which the outside writes the inside, to the ways in which my blood is a form of media expressing journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) henrikus joko yulianto 194 the biology of petroculture, expressing my intimate and uncanny relationship to the energy sources of my historical moment, while also expressing the continuous interchange between self and environment that has marked human evolutionary history ” (staples & king 2017,71-72). what dickinson argued with his metabolic poetics in this case corresponds with what stacy alaimo said about transcorporeality of any material object that seeps through human’s body in his/her daily interaction with it (alaimo 2010, 17-22). at this present time, ecocide has still been a prevalent issue as humans tend to exploit natural resources in producing material things for their daily necessities. material things have their agency with their pervasive and inbuilt property as a part of its generative dynamism” that means the affects on human and nonhuman’s bodies (iovino & oppermann 2014, 3; 2012, 449-450). petroculture has still been a way of life as people still rely on fossil fuels for their daily energy for their vehicles and industries. yet, often the factories and industries do not care about managing their industrial waste and tend to dispose it haphazardly so that it pollutes land and marine habitats (o’neill 2019; weis 2015). for instance, plastic trash as the derivative product of fossil fuels becomes the major environmental problem around the world. world corporations such as dow and dupont, lyondellbassell (“the second biggest manufacturer in the world, based across the netherlands, the us, and the uk”), basf and exxon mobil produce plastics. the us uses plastics mostly for packaging (34% in 2017), for consumer and institutional goods (20%), and for construction (17%) (o’neill 2019, 145). plastics are made from petrochemicals and so these contain toxics that cause environmental damage and health risks. a report by the international energy agency in 2018 estimated that the petrochemicals will “make up nearly a third of global oil demand by 2030 and a half of global demand by 2050” (ibid., 2019, 146). among these toxics include phthalates (“used to keep plastics flexible”), bisphenol a (bpa that is used in water bottles). these particles especially have “long-term impacts on human and animal reproductive systems and brain development”. and these toxics in fact have seeped through human’s body in certain measurable levels (ibid., 2019, 146). heap of plastic trash will emit toxic particles to the atmosphere and contributes to the rising temperature or global warming. the drifting plastic trash to the oceans will also endanger marine creatures such as turtles, seabirds, whales as they were often “tangled in plastic or dead from ingesting plastic trash” (o’neill 2019, 148). jenna jambeck et al. (2015) estimated that “4.8 to 12.7 million tons of plastics have entered the ocean, including plastic bags, bottles, caps, microbeads from beauty products, and nylon or plastic fishing nets.” the number of discarded fishing nets itself approximately “makes up 46% of ocean plastics” (o’neill 2019, 148), and the rest include domestic plastic products including shopping bags, bottles, bottle caps, food wrappers, etc. (weis 2015, 42). another hazard of this plastics is microplastic that is minuscule in size and comes from any plastic product as well as heap of trash when it is burnt or heated by the sunlight (o’neill 2019, 148-149; weis 2015, 44). all this plasticculture causes the ecocide since the natural environment such as soil becomes arid and degraded by this plastic trash. with its toxic particles plastics serve as anomalies for human and nonhuman creatures. responding to the hazards that the material things especially the non-renewable and non-degradable ones such as fossil fuels and plastics do, ginsberg’s and dickinson’s ecological criticism serve as poetics of epiphany that evokes a sudden and great revelation of the merit of natural life and the disruptions committed by humans and their backfiring impacts on engendering toxic bodies. conclusion poetic language is not only an “agent of orange but also of other colors including red, yellow, green and others” that means that it depicts a natural life and its problems because of anthropogenic activities. it does not only portray it but also evoke the reader’s awareness of changing their view and behavior toward the natural environment. during the present ecological precarity with the polemical issues such as global warming, climate change, loss of biodiversity and some others, humans need to retreat and re-think of the future of the planet if they persist in their massive activities towards the physical environment. ecocide is a classic phenomenon as long as humans still exist and need resources from the natural environment. yet, it should not be a reason for humans to keep their exploitative and despoiling acts toward it journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 195 since these practices will bring catastrophes not only to the natural environment but also to themselves. ginsberg’s and dickinson’s poems apart from the different eras have pointed out epiphany or a sudden revelation of the nature of the physical environment and its material things and how these things will bring catastrophes through human’s overuse of these things. their ecological epiphanic poetics serves as the agent to remind individuals of the need for conserving the natural environment and its biodiversity for a resilient and sustainable planet. references agent orange. 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(pp. 19-27). new york: liveright publishing corporation. phenomena vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 81 a look at the world through a word ”shoes”: a componential analysis of meaning miftahush shalihah miftadia_laula@yahoo.co.id. english language studies, sanata dharma university abstract meanings are related to language functions. to comprehend how the meanings of a word are various, conducting componential analysis is necessary to do. a word can share similar features to their synonymous words. to reach the previous goal, componential analysis enables us to find out how words are used in their contexts and what features those words are made up. “shoes” is a word which has many synonyms as this kind of outfit has developed in terms of its shape, which is obviously seen. from the observation done in this research, there are 26 kinds of shoes with 36 distinctive features. the types of shoes found are boots, brogues, cleats, clogs, espadrilles, flip-flops, galoshes, heels, kamiks, loafers, mary janes, moccasins, mules, oxfords, pumps, rollerblades, sandals, skates, slides, sling-backs, slippers, sneakers, swim fins, valenki, waders and wedge. the distinctive features of the word “shoes” are based on the heels, heels shape, gender, the types of the toes, the occasions to wear the footwear, the place to wear the footwear, the material, the accessories of the footwear, the model of the back of the shoes and the cut of the shoes. keywords: shoes, meanings, features introduction there are many different ways to deal with the problem of meaning. it is because meaning is related to many different function of language. finegan (2004: 181-182) states that there are three types of meaning. they are linguistic meaning, social meaning and affective meaning. linguistic meaning deals with both sense and reference. social meaning is what we rely on when we identify certain social characteristics of speakers and situations from the character of the language used. affective meaning is the emotional connotation that is attached to words and utterances. sometimes, a word or lexeme can bring a complex semantic structure. a lexeme is combined from smaller components of meaning which are combined differently to for a different lexeme. a lexeme can be analyzed and described through its semantics components which help to define differential lexical relations, grammatical and syntactic processes. based on semantic theory, lexeme can be classified according to hared and differentiating feature. the semantic features explain how the member of the set related to one another and can be used to differentiate them from one another. the determination of such features is called as componential analysis. discussion componential analysis is a method that looks at each word as a bundle of different features or components. the focus of componential analysis is to find the features that are necessary and sufficient for a given item to be an example of a given word. to determine the meaning of any form, contrast must be found, for there is no meaning apart miftahush shalihah 82 from significant differences. nida (1975: 31) states, if all the universe were blue, there would be no blueness, since there would be nothing to contrast with blue. the same is true for the meanings of words. they have meaning only in terms of systemic contrasts with other words which share certain features with them but contrast with them in respect to other features. nida then categorizes the types of components into two mains types, i.e. common components and diagnostic or distinctive component. common component is the central component which is shared by all the lexemes in the same semantic domain or lexical field. diagnostic or distinctive component is served to distinguish the meaning form other from the same domain. leech (1976: 96) states there is a very simple example to explain those two types by providing the words man, woman, boy, girl and other related words in english. those all words belong to the semantic field of ‘human race’ and the relations between them may be represented by the following table. components man woman boy girl [human] + + + + [adult] + + [male] + + in the semantic domain of man, woman, boy and girl, [human] is the common component, and they are distinguished by [adult], [male], [female] as the diagnostic components. componential analysis can be done within the same semantic domain. nida (1975: 48) states there are three basic steps in the procedure for determining the diagnostic features. the fist one is determining the common feature and line up all the apparently relevant differences in form and possibly related function. the second is studying the relations of the features to one another, in order to determine the redundancies and dependencies. the last one is formulating a set of diagnostic features and testing such a set for adequacy. furthermore, nida (1975: 54-61) has developed there three basic steps into six procedural steps which are important for analyzing the components of a related set of meanings. the first is conducting a tentative selection of meanings which appear to be closely related, in the sense that they constitute a relatively well-defined semantic domain by virtue of sharing a number of common components. in this case, the meaning of father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, and cousin all share the components of being applicable to human beings and designated persons whi are relathe either by blood or by marriage. the second is listing all the specific kinds of referent for each of the meanings belonging to the domain in question. in some special situations one may even be able to list all the referents. for father and mother, as related to any one ego, there would presumably be only one referent. expressions such a father-in-law, mother-in-law, stepfather, and stepmother are all regarded as separate semantic units and should be treated only as parts of extended domain, since they are clearly secondary in formal as well as semantic structure. the third, determining those components which may be true of the meanings of one or more terms, but not of all the terms in question. obviously some of the meanings, as reflected in the differences between referents, involve the component of female sex, e.g. mother, aunt, daughter, sister, niece and cousin, while others involve the component of male sex, e.g. father, uncle, son, brother, nephew and cousin. the term cousin is non-distinctive with respect to sex. one must proceed feature to determine those components which do make distinctions and ultimately the features of sex, generation and lineality and consanguinity vs. affinial relations prove to be the distinctive features. the fourth is determining the diagnostic components applicable to each meaning, so that the meaning of father may be indicated as possessing the components: male sex, one ascending generation, and direct descent; mother as female sex, one ascending generation and direct descent; brother as vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 83 male sex, same generation as ego, and first degree of laterality, etc. the next one is cross-checking with the data obtained by the first procedure. on the basis of the diagnostic features, one should be able to apply the correct terms to the referents known to possess such features. the last one is describing the diagnostic features systematically. it may be done simply by listing the diagnostic features for each meaning (or term) or the arrangement of such data in the form of a tree diagram or matrix. the actual linguistic procedures employed in componential analysis consists of four types, they are naming, paraphrasing, defining and classifying (nida, 1975: 64-66). the process of naming is in certain respects similar to reference, though the perspective is somewhat different. reference is usually described as the relation established between linear unit and a referent, while naming is the specific act of designating a referent. paraphrasing is also an important linguistic function and one can spell out the distinctive features of any semantic unit by employing certain types of paraphrases. uncle can be paraphrased into my father’s brother or my mother’s brother. the process of defining would seem to be simply another form of paraphrase, but defining is a highly specialized form or paraphrase and is rarely used in actual language situations. it consists essentially in combining all the various specific paraphrase into a single statement based on the diagnostic components of the particular meaning in question. uncle may be defined as the brother of one’s father or mother or the husband of one’s aunt. the last one, that is classifying, involves a triple procedure. the first is lumping together those units which have certain features in common. the second is separating out those units which are distinct from one another. the third is determining the basis for such groupings. classification is never merely a process of putting referents into conceptual files for the basic kinship terms in english, it is essential to establish the features of sec, generation, degree of lineality and consanguinity-affinal distinction. this paper will observe the componential analysis of the word shoes. shoes are the protective items that enables us to protect ourselves during various activities, comfort us in various outdoor environments, provide us with another way to express ourselves with their designs and uses that changed from ages to ages and from civilization to civilization. with the combined minds and traditions, our ancestors quickly gained skills to adapt to any kind of environment, from scorching hot deserts, humid swamps, icy landscapes, mountainous cliffs, to moderate plains and lush forests. all those environments required its own dress code, with shoes playing very important part for enabling people to move, work and live more longer, safer and healthier. first archeological evidence of protective covering of the feet comes from 40.000 b.c., exactly in those times when humans from africa came to europe and started their expansion toward all four corners of the earth. after the modern human civilization appeared in the middle-east and northern africa kingdoms of babylon, assyria and egypt, production of shoes finally started to happen on more widespread and “industrial” scale. the need of protecting feet from scorching sands gave birth to first sandals some 6 thousand years ago, and during the time of the egypt pharaohs the first mentioning of high heeled shoes started appearing in the historical records. even so long ago, high heel shoes started their life as synonyms for wealth, political position and social influence. as the centuries went on, trade with other european countries slowly transferred the fashion of high heeled shoes to the greece and rome, where they were used from highest position in their ruling classes to all the way down to the common people and even slaves. simple wooden clogs, sandals, leather buskins, slippers, high heeled shoes and many other types of protective foot items were used during those ancient times. during the last 700 years, there were countless fashion changes that brought and took away many types of shoes from use in europe and entire world. in the last 150 years miftahush shalihah 84 emergence of faster communication and new ways to faster produce clothing and shoe items brought tremendous rise of new fashion trends in europe and united states, who quickly became leaders in production of new types of shoe designs. new materials, faster manufacture and means for widespread popularization of these items (television, radio, and newspapers) created many new types of shoes that are in use even today. the best and most popular examples of this new wave of shoes are american sneakers who were created in early 20th century when manufacture of cheap gum soles enabled charles goodyear to create cheap and reliable canvas shoe that was both durable, light and silent (which was the feature that gave them their name), and steel heeled stilettos from roger vivier, which enabled females to proudly showcase their femininity, sexual appeal and form of their body. without a doubt, shoes represent one of the most important aspects of our outdoors experience. they empower us to live and work in various environments, showcase our creativity and fashion sense and provide comfort that no other clothing item can produce. let’s simplified shoes as the general footwear. here we will see the distinctive features of some kinds of footwear. from my observation, there are 26 kinds of footwear with 36 distinctive features. the shoes types are boots, brogues, cleats, clogs, espadrilles, flip-flops, galoshes, heels, kamiks, loafers, mary janes, moccasins, mules, oxfords, pumps, rollerblades, sandals, skates, slides, sling-backs, slippers, sneakers, swim fins, valenki, waders and wedge. however, the distinctive features are based on the heels, heels shape, gender, the types of the toes, the occasions to wear the footwear, the place to wear the footwear, the material, the accessories of the footwear, the model of the back of the shoes and the cut of the shoes. the heels height is divided into three features that are flat, short and high. for its shape, there are 6 types that are tapered, narrow, rounded, pointed, square and full. the shoes of course differentiated based on its user whether male or female. we can also see the model of the toes of the shoes, whether it is close or open. the occasion to use the shoes is also differentiate, whether to use it in formal, informal, to exercise or to dance. the place of use is also different, indoor or outdoor. there are some material of the shoes such as plastic, leather, nylon, canvas and satin. some of footwear are provided with adding accessories such as lace, buckle, strap and tie. the back of the shoes is also different; some of them are open and the others are closed. the cut of the shoes are also different: low cut, medium cut, total closure, closed up to the ankle, closed up to the calf, closed up to the knee and closed up to the thigh. a boot is a type of footwear and a specific type of shoe. most boots mainly cover the foot and the ankle and extend up the leg, sometimes as far as the knee or even the hip. most boots have a heel that is clearly distinguishable from the rest of the sole, even if the two are made of one piece. traditionally made of leather or rubber, modern boots are made from a variety of materials. boots are worn both for their functionality – protecting the foot and leg from water, snow, mud or hazards or providing additional ankle support for strenuous activities – and for reasons of style and fashion. the brogue (derived from the gaelic bróg (irish), bròg (scottish) "shoe") is a style of low-heeled shoe or boot traditionally characterised by multiple-piece, sturdy leather uppers with decorative perforations (or "broguing") and serration along the pieces' visible edges. modern brogues trace their roots to a rudimentary shoe originating in scotland and ireland that was constructed using untanned hide with perforations, allowing water to drain when crossing wet terrain such as a bog. brogues were traditionally considered to be outdoor or country footwear not otherwise appropriate for casual or business occasions, but brogues are now considered appropriate in most contexts. cleats or studs are protrusions on the sole of a shoe, or on an external attachment to a shoe, that provide additional traction on a soft or slippery surface. in american english the term cleats is used synecdochically to refer to shoes featuring such protrusions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/footwear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/shoe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/foot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ankle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/human_leg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/knee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/heel_%28shoe%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sole_%28shoe%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fashion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/goidelic_languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/boot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/perforations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/scotland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/shoe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/traction_%28engineering%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/american_english http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/synecdoche vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 85 clogs are a type of footwear made in part or completely from wood. clogs are used worldwide and although the form may vary by culture, within a culture the form often remained unchanged for centuries. espadrilles or alpargatas are normally casual flat, but sometimes high heeled shoes originating from the pyrenees. they usually have a canvas or cotton fabric upper and a flexible sole made of rope or rubber material moulded to look like rope. the jute rope sole is the defining characteristic of an espadrille; the uppers vary widely in style. flip-flops (also called zōri, thongs, jandals, pluggers, go-aheads, slappies, slides, step-ins, chankla or a variety of other names throughout the world) are a type of opentoed sandal typically worn in casual situations, such as outside or at the beach. they consist of a flat sole held loosely on the foot by a y-shaped strap that passes between the first and second toes and around either side of the foot. they may also be held to the foot with a single strap over the front of the foot rather than a thong. the name "flip-flop" originated because of the sound that is made by slapping between the sole of the foot and the floor when walking. galoshes (from french: galoches), also known as boat shoes, dickersons, or overshoes, are a type of rubber boot that is slipped over shoes to keep them from getting muddy or wet. the word galoshes might be used interchangeably with boot, especially a rubberized boot. properly speaking, however, a galosh is an overshoe made of a weatherproof material to protect a more vulnerable shoe underneath and keep the foot warm and dry. mukluks or kamik (singular: kamak, plural: kamiit) are a soft boot traditionally made of reindeer skin or sealskin and were originally worn by arctic aboriginal people, including the inuit and yupik. the term mukluk is often used for any soft boot designed for cold weather and modern designs are often similar to high-top athletic shoes. the word "mukluk" is of yupik origin, from maklak, the bearded seal, while "kamik" is an inuit word. in the inuipiaq language the "u" makes an "oo" sound, and so the spelling "maklak" is used with the same pronunciation. slip-ons are typically low, lace-less shoes. the style most commonly seen, known as a loafer or slippers in american culture, has a moccasin construction. one design was introduced in london by wildsmith shoes called the wildsmith loafer, they began as casual shoes, but have increased in popularity to the point of being worn in america with city lounge suits. they are worn in many situations in a variety of colours and designs, often featuring tassels on the front, or metal decorations. mary jane is an american term (formerly a registered trademark) for a closed, low-cut shoe with one or more straps across the instep. classic mary janes for children are typically made of black leather or patent leather, have one thin strap fastened with a buckle or button, a broad and rounded toebox, low heels, and thin outsoles. among girls, mary janes are traditionally worn with pantyhose or socks, and a dress or a skirt and blouse. among boys (less common), mary janes are traditionally worn with socks, short trousers, and a shirt. a moccasin is a shoe, made of deerskin or other soft leather, consisting of a sole and sides made of one piece of leather, stitched together at the top, and sometimes with a vamp (additional panel of leather). the sole is soft and flexible and the upper part often is adorned with embroidery or beading. though sometimes worn inside, it is chiefly intended for outdoor use, as in exploring wildernesses and running. mule, a french word, is a style of shoe that is backless and often closed-toed. mules can be any heel height from flat to high. the style is predominantly (but not exclusively) worn by women. sandals are an open type of outdoor footwear, consisting of a sole held to the wearer's foot by straps passing over the instep and, sometimes, around the ankle. while the distinction between sandals and other types of footwear can sometimes be blurry (as in the case of huaraches—the woven leather footwear seen in mexico—and peep-toe pumps), the common understanding is that a sandal leaves most of the upper part http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/footwear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/high_heel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/shoes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pyrenees http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/canvas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cotton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/textile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sole_%28shoe%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rubber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/jute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/upper_%28shoe%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/z%c5%8dri http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sandal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/french_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rubber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/boot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/shoe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/boot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wellington_boot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/boot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/reindeer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pinniped http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/arctic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/inuit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/yupik_peoples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/athletic_shoes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/athletic_shoes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/yupik_peoples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bearded_seal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/dress_shoe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/moccasin_%28footwear%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wildsmith_shoes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/lounge_suit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/american_english http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/instep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/leather http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/patent_leather http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/patent_leather http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/shoe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/deer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/french_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/shoe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/heel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/outdoor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/footwear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sole_%28shoe%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/instep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ankle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/huarache_%28shoe%29 miftahush shalihah 86 of the foot exposed, particularly the toes. people may choose to wear sandals for several reasons, among them economy (sandals tend to require less material than shoes and are usually easier to construct), comfort in warm weather, and as a fashion choice. an oxford shoe is characterized by shoelace eyelets that are attached under the vamp, a feature termed "closed lacing". this contrasts with derbys, or blüchers, which have shoelace eyelets attached to the top of the vamp. originally, oxfords were plain, formal shoes, made of leather but they evolved into a range of styles suitable for both formal and casual wear. based on function and the dictates of fashion, oxfords are now made from a variety of materials, including calf leather, patent leather, suede, and canvas. they are normally black or brown, and may be plain or patterned (brogue). pumps are one of the most popular styles of women's shoes, and they're also one of the most difficult to define. in their most basic form, pumps have closed backs, and low-cut fronts that hit closer to the toes than they do the top of the foot. a classic pump has a seamless vamp, and is without laces, buckles, straps or ties, but it's very common to see the classic pump silhouette enhanced by an ankle strap, t-strap, or mary jane strap. pumps can have open toes, peep toes, pointy toes, round toes, almond toes or square toes, and they can have heels of any height. skate shoes or skateboard shoes are a type of footwear specifically designed and manufactured for use in skateboarding. while numerous non-skaters choose to wear skate shoes, the design of the skate shoe includes many features designed especially for use in skateboarding, including a rubber or polyurethane sole with minimal tread pattern or no pattern, a composition leather or suede upper, and double or triple stitching to extend the life of the upper material. a low, padded tongue is often included for comfort. slide is a common term that refers to a shoe that is backless and open-toed, essentially an open-toed mule. generally, all slides are a type of sandal. thongs and flip flops are normally classified separately. slides can be high-heeled, flat-heeled or somewhere in between, and may cover nearly the entire foot from ankle to toe, or may have only one or two narrow straps. they usually include a single strap or a sequence of straps across the toes and the lower half of the foot to hold the shoe on the foot. a slingback is a type of woman's footwear characterized by a strap that crosses behind the heel or ankle. a slingback strap is distinguishable from an ankle-strap in that the latter is a strap that completely encircles the ankle. slingbacks can be considered a type of sandal and come in a wide variety of styles from casual to dressy, with heel height ranging from none to high, heel types ranging from as thin as a stiletto to as thick as wedges and they may be either closed or open-toe. slingback's straps is usually adjustable through a buckle or an elastic allowing the wearer to slip her foot into the sandal easily without the need to make further (or any) manual adjustment to the strap or buckle, while still holding the foot in the sandal relatively securely. the buckle can be made of metal, plastic, or even sometimes stone. sneaker is a synonym for "athletic shoes," the generic name for the footwear primarily designed for sports or other forms of physical exercise. additionally, in recent years, sneakers have come to be used for casual everyday activities. the term describes a type of footwear with a flexible sole made of rubber or synthetic material and an upper part made of leather or canvas. valenki are traditional russian winter footwear, essentially felt boots: the name valenok literally means "made by felting". valenki are made of wool felt. they are not water-resistant, and are often worn with galoshes to keep water out and protect the soles from wear and tear. valenki were once the footwear of choice for many russians, but in the second half of the 20th century they lost most of their appeal in cities, due to their association with rustic dress. waders refers to a waterproof boot extending from the foot to the chest, traditionally made from vulcanised rubber, but available in more modern pvc, neoprene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/foot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/toe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fashion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/shoe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/shoelace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/eyelets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/shoe#vamp_.28upper.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/derby_shoe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/brogue_shoe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/skateboarding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/polyurethane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/composition_leather http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/upper_%28shoe%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mule_%28shoe%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sandal_%28footwear%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/thong_sandals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/flip-flops http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/flip-flops http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/footwear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/heel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ankle http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ankle-strap&action=edit&redlink=1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/stiletto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wedge_%28footwear%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/buckle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/synonym http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/athletic_shoes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/athletic_shoes http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/generic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/shoe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sport http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/physical_exercise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rubber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/leather http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/canvas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/russia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/felt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/boot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/felt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wool http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/felt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/galoshes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sole_%28shoe%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/waterproof http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/boot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rubber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/polyvinyl_chloride http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/neoprene vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 87 and gore-tex variants. waders are generally distinguished from counterpart waterproof boots by shaft height; the hip boot extending to the thigh and the wellington boot to the knee. they are therefore sometimes referred to as chest waders for emphasis. waders are available with boots attached or can have attached stocking feet (usually made of the wader material), to wear inside boots. on most shoes, the "heel" sits under only the heel of the foot, but a wedge heel runs under the foot, from the back of the shoe to the middle or front. as you've probably guessed, it has a somewhat triangular, wedge shape, but not all wedges are high heels. in fact, wedge heels range from low to high, it's the shape and the length of the heel that classify it as a wedge. to make a better view on the description of each kind of shoes, the table is provided below. kinds of shoes heels height heels shape flat short high tapered narrow rounded pointed square full boots √ √ √ √ brogues √ √ cleats √ clogs √ √ √ espadrilles √ flip-flops √ galoshes √ √ kamiks √ √ √ √ loafers √ mary janes √ √ √ moccasins √ mules √ √ √ oxfords √ √ pumps √ √ √ √ rollerblades √ sandals √ skates √ slides √ sling-backs √ √ √ √ √ slippers √ sneakers √ swim fins √ valenki √ waders √ wedge √ √ √ kinds of shoes gender toes occasion male female close open formal informal exercise dance boots √ √ √ √ √ brogues √ √ √ √ cleats √ √ √ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/gore-tex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hip_boot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wellington_boot http://shoes.about.com/od/glossaryofshoestyles/g/wedges.htm miftahush shalihah 88 clogs √ √ √ √ espadrilles √ √ √ √ flip-flops √ √ √ √ galoshes √ √ √ kamiks √ √ √ √ loafers √ √ √ mary janes √ √ √ moccasins √ √ √ √ mules √ √ √ oxfords √ √ √ pumps √ √ √ rollerblades √ √ √ √ sandals √ √ √ √ skates √ √ √ slides √ √ √ √ sling-backs √ √ √ √ √ slippers √ √ √ √ sneakers √ √ √ swim fins √ √ √ √ valenki √ √ √ waders √ √ √ wedge √ √ √ √ √ kinds of shoes place of use material indoor outdoor plastic leather nylon canvas rubber wood boots √ √ √ √ brogues √ √ √ cleats √ √ clogs √ √ espadrilles √ √ √ flip-flops √ √ √ √ galoshes √ √ √ kamiks √ √ loafers √ √ mary janes √ moccasins √ √ √ √ mules √ √ √ oxfords √ √ √ pumps √ √ √ rollerblades √ √ √ sandals √ √ √ skates √ √ slides √ √ √ vol. 15 no.1 – april 2015 89 sling-backs √ √ √ √ slippers √ √ √ √ sneakers √ √ √ swim fins √ √ √ valenki √ √ √ √ waders √ √ √ √ wedge √ √ √ √ √ √ kinds of shoes adding accessories back of the shoes lace buckle strap tie open close boots √ brogues √ cleats √ √ clogs √ √ espadrilles √ flip-flops √ galoshes √ kamiks √ loafers √ mary janes √ √ moccasins √ √ mules √ oxfords √ √ pumps √ rollerblades √ √ √ √ sandals √ skates √ √ slides √ sling-backs √ √ √ slippers √ sneakers √ √ √ swim fins √ valenki √ waders wedge √ √ √ √ kinds of shoes shoes cut low cut closed up to the ankle closed up to the calf closed up to the knee closed up to the thigh boots √ √ √ √ brogues √ cleats √ miftahush shalihah 90 clogs √ espadrilles √ flip-flops √ galoshes √ √ kamiks √ √ loafers √ mary janes √ moccasins √ mules √ oxfords √ pumps √ rollerblades √ sandals √ skates √ slides √ sling-backs √ slippers √ sneakers √ swim fins valenki √ √ √ √ waders √ √ √ √ wedge √ conclusion the theory that is served in the discussion is used to analyze the distinctive features of the word shoes. by having this analysis, the writer hopes that the reader can have a better understanding on the differences of each type of the shoes. the writer also provides a table so that the reader can see the differences more clearly. references finegan, edward. language. its structure and use. 4th edition. new york: thomson wadsworth, 2004. print. leech, geoffrey. semantics. harmondsworth: penguin ltd., 1983. print. nida, eugene a. componential analysis of meaning. the hague: mouton, 1975. print. cover luar phenomena vol 16 no. 2 raynesta mikaela indri malo 106 functions of indirectness in american idol judges’ comments raynesta mikaela indri malo raynestaindri8@gmail.com agribusiness department, universitas kristen wira wacana sumba abstract indirectness is one of the most efficient ways to communicate each other. people use indirectness in communication for different purposes. the most discussed and discovered purpose across cultures is for politeness; people use language in indirect way to prevent hurting other’s feelings. in many cultures, indirectness is highly valued because saving face and harmony in social relationships are highly respected. this study is a descriptive study which is aimed at analyzing the functions or the purpose of using indirectness or indirect language in one of the rarely discussed realm of language use, a tv show, specifically, american idol. the findings also reveal the strategies used in order to perform the functions. the data is limited to the audition of american idol season eight (8) which was held in 2009. there were 7 recordings for the 8 cities of audition. the total number of data used in this study was 50 indirect comments. the result shows that there were 3 functions of the use of indirectness in the comments of the judges. the functions were (i) being ironic, (ii) being polite, and (iii) giving hints. keywords: indirectness, politeness, judges’ comments introduction language is generally a tool or media of communication, used by people to communicate each other. however, communication in general is culturally dependent. it means that using language in communication is also culturally dependent; one speaks according to the acceptable rules or customs in his or her society. cultural aspect that is related to or is conveyed through language is politeness (and impoliteness). each society has its own parameter of measuring politeness and determines its own way or rule of how to be polite, such as in communication. most societies measure politeness (and impoliteness) using the scale of directness and indirectness. for instance, a boy who says ‘open the window’ to his teacher is regarded to be impolite since he uses or employs a direct request. in a society like indonesian society, the younger a person is, the more indirect use of language he or she should use when speak to older people. the above expression should be, for example, ‘would you mind opening the window’? besides in every day communication, directness and indirectness is also found in various contexts of communication such as in letters, radio broadcasting, and tv shows. this study is aimed at analyzing functions of indirectness in one of the most popular tv shows in america, american idol, with the focus on the indirectness in the judges’ comments in the contest. this study is a descriptive study which tries to describe the natural use of language, in this case the use of indirect speech or indirectness in english in giving comments to other people’s performance in a tv show. the description is shown in the analysis of data which consist of sentences and any lexical item as part of the comments. the main source of the data is the recording of the american idol show. number vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 107 of data is limited to the audition of the 8th season of american idol (2009). this field is chosen because the study investigating indirectness in this field has not been done yet, even the study of how language is used in general in this field is also rarely found. review on pragmatic theory pragmatics is the systematic study of meaning by virtue of, or dependent on the use of language (huang 2007: 2). it means that pragmatic is concerned with the meaning of language when the language is used in particular context. pragmatics studies the relationship between context of use, sentence meaning, and speaker’s meaning. according to yule, pragmatics is the study of the relationship between the linguistic forms and the users of the forms (yule, 1996: 4). only pragmatics (compare to syntax and semantics) concerns with the presence of human in the analysis of language use. the benefit of studying the use of language through pragmatics is that one can learn and discuss about people’s intended meanings, their assumptions, and their purposes or goals, and also kinds of action that they are performing (such as offering, requesting, etc). generally, the central topics of inquiry in pragmatics include deixis and distance, reference and inference, presupposition and entailment, cooperation and implicature, speech acts and events, and also politeness. in line with yule, leech says that meaning in pragmatics is defined relative to speaker or user of the language. that is why he calls the relation as triadic relation; between language, its meaning, and its speakers. pragmatics is then defined as the study of meaning in relation to speech situations. for that reason, it is also important to know the aspects of speech situation. they are (i) the addresser or the addressee – any individual involved in the interaction -, (ii) the context of an utterance the physical or social setting of an utterance as well as any background knowledge assumed to be shared by speaker and hearer and which contributes to hearer’s interpretation of what speaker means by a given utterance-, (iii) the goal(s) of an utterance, (iv) illocutionary act of an utterance, and (v) the utterance as a product of a verbal act (1983: 13). hoye (2006) emphasizes that applying pragmatics stresses the problems of the use of language that arise in social contexts where the failure to communicate successfully may lead to social exclusion and disadvantage. it also aims to reveal the hidden relationship between social power and language use, for example by helping people understand the power of language to discriminate others (in mey, 2009: 26). in relation to the topic of this study, pragmatics is applied to study of the use of language in the level of group of people, who specifically use language in a public area. by applying pragmatics, the element of language use, such as the indirect use of language can be investigated. pragmatics is used to find the relation between the context (the show of american idol), the speakers (the judges) and the speakers’ meaning in using language, especially the indirect use. based on the context, the show of american idol is a commercial tv show and has been distributed and watched worldwide. the judges are those people who have been working in the show business for many years, for example as singer, producer, song writer, and also talent scout. review on indirectness theory indirectness refers to a speech act in which the expressed meaning of an utterance does not match the speaker’s implied or intended meaning. an indirect illocutionary act requires the speaker’s and the listener’s shared knowledge on particular topics in the conversation and the ability to make interpretations on the listener’s part (thomas 1995: 119). as a communication style, indirectness is found in everyday interaction. indirectness is used as a more useful method in communication. for example to perform different expression such as giving hints, avoiding confrontation, joking, being ironic, or expressing politeness by saving the face of either speaker. in many cultures, mainly in the asian or eastern cultures, indirectness is raynesta mikaela indri malo 108 appreciated because saving face and harmony in social relationships are highly respected. besides for politeness reason, there are also studies such as of colston and huang that report the use of indirectness as the tool for offensiveness. there are claims which state that indirectness is related to the opposite of politeness, impoliteness and rudeness (srinarawat, 2005). according to culpeper et.al, impoliteness is the use of strategies that are designed to attack face and thereby cause social conflict and disharmony (2003: 1545). discussion basically, in the show, the tasks of the judges are first giving comments on the singing performance of the contestants and then making decision whether a contestant is going to hollywood or not. the judges have their individual rights to give any comments. some are in the direct forms and some are in the indirect forms. in the indirect forms, one that is being analyzed here, there are different types of functions conveyed by the comments. from the analysis of the data, there are 3 functions of the indirectness in the comments given by the american idol judges, namely (i) being ironic, (ii) being polite, and (iii) giving hints. the findings also reveal the strategies used in order to perform particular functions. 1. being ironic according to leech, irony is a secondorder principle, building on the politeness principle. it allows the listener to understand the offensive intention of the speaker’s remark (1983). it means that irony is basically used to convey politeness when speakers basically want to say something impolite or offensive. in the analysis of the indirect speech in american idol, generally the speakers use irony to convey sarcasm or offensive attitude or comment toward the hearer, such as to insult or to criticize the hearer. the comments that function at conveying the irony are (3), (4), (6), (7), and (17). sentence (3) ‘okay. all right, i just wondered if you turned up on the right show or not’ is a comment to the contestant, elijah scarlet who sings indistinctively with his deep voice. simon, rather than commenting on the contestant’s performance, asks the contestant a series of question on the contestant’s understanding and awareness of the purpose of the show (see conversation (a)). after asking those questions, simon ironically says ‘all right, i just wondered if you turned up on the right show or not’ which indirectly means that in simon’s opinion, it is not the right thing to do for the contestant to join such competition regarding his bad performance and his lack of ability in singing. this indirect speech act conveys irony to insult the contestant that the contestant has come to the wrong show or that it is a wrong the decision for the contestant to have a willing to join such show. in sentence (4) ‘i'll tell you what it sounded like. it sounded like a cat jumping off the empire state building, and the noise it would make before it hit the floor. if that makes sense’, simon is being ironic when commenting the performance of chelsea marquardt. the irony can be seen through the use of simile, that simon compares chelsea's voice to that of a cat. people facing this kind of sentence should have knowledge about the world, in this case about the sound of a cat jumping off a very high building such as the empire state building. the sound that the cat makes before hitting the floor is the cat’s scream with its unclear voice. the sound, if it can be described, is the terrible one. by saying the sentence, simon indirectly says that chelsea’s voice is terrible. sentence (6) ‘have you ever sung?’ is the comment given by kara to the contestant, dalton powell, who sings indistinctively with his little voice. although the comment is in the interrogative form, it is not really a question. instead, it is used to convey irony of the condition at the time. dalton comes to an audition for a singing competition with totally having no skill in singing. the judge, kara, rather than directly saying the fact that dalton cannot sing at all, asking the question ‘have you ever sung?’ which literally means that kara wants dalton to share his vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 109 experience. this question however also implies something like ‘have you ever sung? because the way you sing shows that you are someone with no experience in singing.’ indirectness in this comment is used to convey irony to insult the contestant. sentence (7) george, have you ever done this before? auditioned, or sang in public? is simon’s comment after watching the performance of george ramirez. this comment is similar to sentence (6) above. by asking this question, simon is ironically says that george is someone who has never been singing in front of people and it is not good if he wants to join american idol because experience and skill are highly required. in the sentence (17) ‘yeah, hopefully soon’, simon is expressing his hope that the contestant, tara matthews, will fly away or go away soon from the audition room. simon says this sentence right after tara singing the song someday i’ll fly away. the way simon chooses the moment to say the sentence implies his hope. by saying the sentence simon also indirectly wants to say that the performance of the contestant is not good at all and therefore it is better for the contestant to go away from the audition room. the discussion above shows that in being ironic, speakers or the judges is insulting the contestant by saying offensive sentences. the irony itself created at the time the judges say something which is basically means the opposite of it. for instance, the comment ‘have you ever sung?’ is basically indirect speech of saying ‘you have never sung for you entire life’. it is can be concluded then that the use of indirectness is to convey rudeness, deliberately or not, through the use of irony. this rudeness then which sometimes raises anger of the contestants who are being insulted by the judges. the insulted contestants sometimes express their anger through swear words or curse, crying, or even doing anarchist actions. 2. being polite politeness can described as the attempt to save face of another (brown and levinson, 1987). in order to save other’s face, people usually use indirectness or indirect speech act in saying something even if it is something that the hearer does not like, such as criticizing the hearer or rejecting the hearer request, or in the case of american idol, rejecting the contestants of getting on the next step of the competition process. there are 6 sentences, (5), (14), (20), (22), (23) and (25), taken as example of politeness as the function of indirectness. the first is sentence (5) ‘you're probably just like a cool bar singer, you know? you're singing in bars and in the clubs and doing your thing. i'm not sure it's right for this, man, for me’. randy gives this comment to the contestant, matt bridesky who used to be a bar singer. randy is being polite in his use hedges ‘i’m not sure’ to mitigate the effect of his intention. the rather strong version of this sentence is for example, ‘i think this is not right for you’. randy is also being polite in the way that he gives or states the good sides of matt’s work as a bar-singer, and then states the reality that american idol is not right for matt. in (14), ‘i think you would do a lot of things very well, but not singing. i mean that in a compliment-in a complimentary way’ simon is giving his ideas on tatiana del toro’s performance in a polite way. from the comment, it can be inferred that according to cowell, singing is not good or suitable for tatiana. however, cowell gives his comments indirectly by first give compliment to tatiana’s talents. this is theoretically will lessen the effect of face threatening act toward the hearer. the effect will be different if the comment is given in a direct way such as “you cannot sing, i think” or “you are a terrible singer”; it will attack the face of the hearer. the expressive sentence (20) ‘we didn't mean to hurt your feelings, honey’ kara’s statement when commenting the performance of tara matthews, who sings someday i’ll fly away. before kara gives the comment, the contestant is first being commented by simon who hopes that the contestant will go away soon from the audition room since her performance (from the voice, outfit and the song choice) is raynesta mikaela indri malo 110 horrendous or not good at all. kara is basically agrees with simon that tara does not deserve to be allowed to go to the next step. however kara does not state it directly. kara is being polite to reject the contestant in the way that rather than saying or giving comment on tara’s performance, kara only says that sentence which indirectly means that the judges have to reject tara and if the rejection hurts tara, the judges basically did not mean it. in sentence (22) ‘you are beautiful, and i'm sorry that you had to hear some stuff that was harsh, but it's the way these auditions go, and we have to pass’, paula is also trying to be polite when rejecting the contestant chelsea marquardt, who, by simon, is being compared to the cat. before paula gives this comment, kara also gives similar comments which aim not to break the heart of the contestant after being commented in such a rude way by simon. paula expresses her feeling of regretful that the contestant cannot go to hollywood using more polite form than just simply saying the last clause ‘we have to pass’. paula considers her partner’s in conversation feeling that she says the good thing about the contestant, says sorry for the bad things said to the contestant, and then finally says that it is the fact that the audition is not good and the contestant does not succeed. through this sentence, paula is also encouraging chelsea’s heart by saying that chelsea is beautiful. by firstly states this encouraging statement, paula lessens the effect of the fta or face threatening acts in this case the rejection toward chelsea. paula states (23) when commenting the contestant, randy madden, at the time of voting. rather than saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, paula states ‘you know what, i do appreciate your story, and i know that this is hard for you’ which then arises a question from simon cowell ‘yes or no?’. simon’s question clearly shows that paula does not say what she wants to say directly, whether it is a yes or a no. at that time, randy starts to cry and beg to the judges to let him go to hollywood. paula basically has the same answer with other judges, that it is a no for randy madden. however, paula wants to be more polite because she considers the feeling of the contestant that might be hurt after finding out that he cannot make his dream comes true. in (25) ‘i think, michael, you're quite interesting, but your voice isn’t’ simon is being polite in saying that the contestant’s voice is not good or interesting. simon’s politeness is revealed through the use of the first clause ‘i think, michael, you're quite interesting’ which basically gives praises to the contestant. after giving praise, simon then says the truth that michael’s voice is not as interesting as himself. from the above discussion, it can be seen that indirect speech is used when the judge want to reject or eliminate the contestant but at the same time want to do it in polite way that might not hurt the contestant. the typical structure of indirectness that conveys politeness is that the main clause which contains the truth (that the contestant will be eliminated) is placed as the second or third clause in a complex sentence. the first or opening clause is usually contains praising or good things about the contestant. this is done to lessen the effect of the fta on the side of the hearer. 3. giving hints a hint, as it is defined by the collins cobuild dictionary, is a suggestion or advice which is given indirectly. generally, people give hint by saying something indirectly to express their feeling. it is clear then that the use of indirectness is to give hint. in the case of american idol, it is the judges who give hint to the contestants through their comments. there are 13 indirect sentences in the comments of the american idol judges which are used to give hints sentence (1) ‘the competition would sorely miss you if you weren't in it’ is the comment given by paula abdul at the time the judges have to vote whether the contestant, emily whynne-hughes is going to hollywood for the next round or not. instead of saying ‘yes’, as what simon cowell and randy jackson do, paula says ‘the competition would sorely miss you if you weren't in it’. in this way, paula gives an vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 111 indirect answer to the contestant’s performance. her answer functions at giving hint to the contestant that she is going through to hollywood based on her good performance. american idol would miss the contestant if she were not in it. therefore she is accepted. paula abdul expressed her opinion by asserting her opinion. sentence (2) ‘and i don't think you've got star quality. and i don't think you ever will’ is a comment from simon to the contestant, randy madden who wants to be a rock-star because confidently thinks that he is a rockstar in a box that need to be opened. however, simon thinks that randy’s performance is very wimpy and randy himself is like a drama queen because he suddenly burst into tears when simon seems to dislike him or his performance. that is why simon says that randy does not have a star quality because of his wimpy and dramaqueen characters. by saying this, simon indirectly says that it is a wrong decision for randy to come to the audition since he does not have a star quality. simon gives hint to randy that american idol is not the right place for him because he will never be a star (rock-star). the next is (8) ‘i think you would struggle within the parameters of this competition’. simon gives this comment to michael perelli who sings nervously since he is not allowed to sing with his guitar. nervousness adds the weakness of michael’s performance. simon, by saying that sentence is giving hint to michael that since his voice and performance are not good enough to be in a competition as american idol, he will struggle a lot if he goes to the next round. when commenting the performance of rich kagel, simon says (9) ‘you're never ever, in a million billion years, gonna win a show like this’, which literally means that rich will never win any singing competition even in a million billion years. indirectly, through the sentence, simon wants to say that rich’s performance and voice are not good enough. by using hyperbole, or using language in an excessive way, simon wants to give hints that rich will not succeed the audition, not only in 2009 but also in many years in the future. the sentence (10) ‘jessika, i can swim, but i'm not going to win ten olympic medals at the olympic games’. this sentence is stated by simon when commenting the performance of jessika byer who is really confident of her experiences and winning on some singing competition out of 700. based on jessika’s performance, simon questions how jessika can win those competitions. by saying that sentence, simon is giving hint to jessika that she will be eliminated. according to simon, one may be able to swim but it is just not enough to win a swimming competition. it is also the case in singing competition. jessika can sing, but it is not enough for her to win or even to be accepted in american idol. paula gives comment (11) ‘you really gotta work on your voice’ when commenting the performance of lea marie golde whose voice seems to be not fully develop yet. this sentence is a directive that paula is giving her advice to lea. however, by saying this sentence, paula also indirectly says that lea will not go through the next round. paula is giving hint that lea does not succeed in the audition. paula also gives hint when saying (12) ‘but it's--you know what, i think you should be in a band, i really do’ at that time the judges have to vote whether randy madden will go through the next round or not. rather than saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, paula states (12) which indirectly means ‘no’. by saying that it is better for randy to be in a band, paula gives hint that it is not good for randy to be in american idol. through (13) ‘michael, five years wouldn't make any difference’ simon is giving hints to the contestant who asks for a second audition after 5 minutes. by saying this, simon gives hints that he (simon) does not want the contestant to have a double audition because not only in 5 minutes, but even in 5 years the contestant will not be able to sing any better. the comment indirectly says that the contestant fails in the audition. the sentence (15) ‘(aquila: well, can i try it one more time, please?) aquila, we've done the entire album.’ is a comment given by simon cowell to aquila eskew-gholston who raynesta mikaela indri malo 112 sings her own songs. aquila is a woman who thinks that to be a good singer, one should has good knowledge on the body system, especially on how to employ one’s parts of body to produce good voice and to sing well. her performance is not good and then she asks to sing another original song. however, simon cowell does not want aquila does that. simon, rather than saying “don’t (do that)”, saying “we've done the entire album,” which actually give hint that simon does not want to hear aquila sing anymore because usually, if an entire album is done, it means that all the song have been sung and there is no need to hear anymore song. cowell gives his opinion indirectly by giving hints. sentence (16) ‘good, that's the direction i want you to take. right, then right’ is simon’s comment to the contestant, dana murano who does not sing very well in the audition. simon thinks that dana cannot sing the big song as the one form chaka khan. then dana says ‘oh, i will take as much direction as you guys want’. simon, however, replies with an answer that seems to be not expected by dana, rather than saying or giving advice of what dana should do. by saying (16) simon is indirectly leads dana to the door to get out of the room. this comment also a hint that dana fails in the audition. in (18) ‘um, did you actually deliver the resignation letter? (yes, i did.) i think you may need to retract it, adeola, based on that performance’ simon is giving hint to the contestant adeola that she will not go to the next round. adeola is a girl, who on the day before the audition gave the resignation letter to the office where she used to work for to pursue her dream in american idol. by saying that adeola has to retract the resignation letter based on her performance, simon indirectly says that adeola is eliminated. therefore, she needs her job back. simon gives comment (19) ‘okay. can we have another song?’ when the contestant, joel contreras has just finished the first line of his song. basically, joel appearance is somewhat ridiculous with his big ipod made of cardboard which he calls as human ipod. comment (19) is basically a hint that the way joel sings is terrible so he should sing another song. the last sentence (21) ‘i'm glad you sang bubbly’ is expressing paula’s pleasure of anne marie boskovich’s singing the song which is matching her voice. by saying that sentence, paula is not only expressing her pleasure but also hinting that the contestant’s performance is good supported by the choice of song. the result in the end shows that anne is accepted to go to hollywood for the next round. conclusion after having the analysis of the indirectness in the american idol judges’ comments, it is found that there are 3 functions of the use of indirectness in the comments of the judges. the functions are (i) being ironic, (ii) politeness or being polite, and (iii) giving hints. the first function is done by stating something but meaning the opposite. as irony is the second principle in the politeness principle, the discussion about irony is also being related to politeness. by using irony, a speaker is basically using polite expression when he/she wants to say something impolite or offensive. the data shows that the judges use irony to convey, deliberately or not, an offensive attitude toward the contestants, i.e. to insult the contestants. there are two ways through which irony is achieved, (i) the use of questions; and (ii) the use of sentences that have relation to the title of the song. the second function is done through the use of typical pattern found in this study, that is by stating positive followed by the truth which is usually negative (compliments – facts pattern). the judges perform politeness through the use of indirectness especially when they have to eliminate the contestants. by doing it indirectly, it then lessens the possible risk, i.e. the contestant get angry of being eliminated. there are several ways through which politeness is achieved, (i) the use of hedges, (ii) statement of regret (‘sorry), (iii) giving compliments or praises, (compliments – facts pattern) and (iv) the use of statement with consideration of the contestants’ feelings. vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 113 the last function of indirectness is for giving hints. it is found that the judges use indirectness to give hint about the contestants’ auditions (either good or bad) as well as about their voting for the contestant (either accepted or eliminated). there are several ways through which this function (giving hint) is achieved, (i) giving advice or order, (ii) the use of conditional if, (iii) using words such as ‘chance’ or ‘shot’ which indicates opportunity in the next round (especially to say yes), (iv) hyperbole, (v) the use of comparison, (vi) making prediction, (vii) criticizing, etc. references culpeper, j., derek b., and anne w. 2003. “impoliteness re-visited: with special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects.” journal of pragmatics vol. 35. hoye, l. f. 2009. “applying pragmatics.” concise encyclopedia of pragmatics. 2nd ed. ed. jacob l. mey. oxford: elsevier. huang, yan. 2007. pragmatics. oxford: oxford university press. leech, geoffrey. 1983. principles of pragmatics. london: longman. mey, jacob l. 2006. “pragmatics: overview.” concise encyclopedia of pragmatics. 2nd ed. ed. jacob l. mey. oxford: elsevier. srinarawat, deeyu. 2005. “indirectness as a politeness strategy of thai speakers.” broadening the horizon of linguistic politeness. ed. lakoff, robin t. and sachiko ide. amsterdam: john benjamins publishing company. thomas, jenny. 1995. meaning in interaction: an introduction to pragmatics. new york: longman. yule, george. 1996. pragmatics. oxford: oxford university press. page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4 page 5 pheno vol 16 2.pdf (3) artikel 1 putu (arina) ed-2 (4) artikel 2 indri (arina) ed-1 (5) artikel 3 ose (hir) ed-2 (6) artikel 4 alvian & anna (arina) ed-2 (7) artikel 5 eilen & hir (hir) ed-2 (8) artikel 6 elisabeth ratih & ni luh (hir) ed-2 (9) artikel 7 munthe & ria (arina) ed-2 (10) artikel 8 rosa vania & elisa (hir) ed-2 (11) artikel 9 pramesthi & mul (hir) ed-2 (13) index vol 16 no 2 oktober 2016-1 (14) contributor's notes-1 cover luar phenomena vol 16 no. 2 vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 137 modernism as projected through the character of vladimir in samuel beckett's waiting for godot eileen shannon & hirmawan wijanarka hir101@usd.ac.id department of english letters, universitassanata dharma abstract samuel beckett’s waiting for godot, a play published in 1948, not long after the break of world war ii, displays absurdity through its theme, plot, setting and characters. despite the postmodern label on the literary work itself, this article assumes that there are ideas of modernism contained within it, projected through the character of vladimir. six characters are analyzed in this study. they are vladimir, estragon, pozzo, lucky, and the boy. among these characters, vladimir tends to be more of a modernist rather than a postmodernist. this is shown in his act of waiting for godot while the others do not really concern about the relevance of godot in determining the outcome of their fates. vladimir rests his faith and hope in godot, persuading his fellow tramp estragon to accompany him during his wait. vladimir’s critical thinking and quest for answers give a clear place to stand for the other characters who don’t present the importance of logical thinking. vladimir stands out as a character with modernist values such as anticipating, reasoning, and relevant discoursing. keywords: modernism, postmodernism, samuel beckett introduction samuel beckett (1906–1989) was an irish playwright, poet and novelist who was strongly influenced by his fellow irish writer, james joyce, which resulted in beckett being considered as the last of the modernists. however, he is also considered as one of the fathers of the postmodernist movement in literature. waiting for godot happens to be beckett’s first play which was originally written in french (which he then translated into english by himself), published back in 1948 and known for the absurdity of its content. the tragicomedy in two acts was first staged on 19 november 1957 before an audience that consisted of fourteen hundred convicts at the san quentin penitentiary (esslin, 1968: 19). considering its publishing period and other features such as existential crisis, identity crisis and absurdity, it can be clearly seen that the play tends to be one of the postmodern literature. moreover, waiting for godot is also a leading play in the theatre of the absurd, written by martin esslin in 1961, a theatrical outcome of postmodernism, which was inspired by existential philosophy and its view that human condition is basically meaningless (camus, 1942: 18). postmodernism is the term used to suggest a reaction or response to modernism in the late twentieth century. “modernism began in the 1890s and lasted until about 1945, while postmodernism began after the second world war, especially after 1968” (abrams, 1993: 118-120). this implies that postmodernism took place after modernism, making it seem like a form of continuity from modernism. in fact, postmodernism does not continue modernism; it is rather a countereffect of it. modernism is based on using rational, logical means to gain knowledge while postmodernism denied the application of eileen shannon & hirmawan wijanarka 138 logical thinking. rather, the thinking during the postmodern era was based on unscientific, irrational thought process, as a reaction to modernism (abrams, 1993: 120). a hierarchical, organized and determinate nature of knowledge is known as the characteristics of modernism. postmodernism lacked the analytical nature and thoughts were rhetorical and completely based on belief. the fundamental difference between modernism and postmodernism is that modernist thinking is about the search of an abstract truth of life while postmodernist thinkers believe that there is no universal truth, abstract or otherwise. "in a word, the modernist laments fragmentation while the postmodernist celebrates it" (barry, 2002: 84). postmodernism argues that there is no absolute truth in the universe. rules of classical literary works are not valid in this case. there is no unity of time, place and action in literary works of postmodernism. unlike classical literary works, there is no hero. waiting for godot was written in the second half of the twentieth century and arose similarities between postmodernism and the play. although waiting for godot is admitted worldwide as a literary product of postmodernism, some aspects of modernism are reserved in the play through the character of vladimir. this article aims at answering these questions: (1) how are vladimir, estragon, pozzo, lucky and the boy described in samuel beckett’s play waiting for godot? and (2) how does vladimir project the ideas of modernism among other characters in samuel beckett’s play waiting for godot? modernism and postmodernism starting with the most general definition of modernism, the term is widely used to identify new and distinctive features in the subjects, forms, concepts, and styles of literature and the other arts in the early decades of the present (twentieth) century, but especially after world war i (1914-1918) (abrams, 1993: 118-119). this term is also likely to be related to ‘enlightenment’, another term defining an era where human beings held on to a rational way of thinking in search for a universal truth. in terms of literature, abrams stated that modernism could be defined as a movement due to world war i. the term modernism is widely used to identify new and distinctive features in the subjects, forms, concepts, and styles of literature and the other arts in the early decades of the present (20th) century, but especially after world war i (1914-1918) (1993: 118-119). in general, according to winquist, modernism is the name given to the literary, historic, and philosophical period from roughly 1890-1950, which was marked by the belief in the unity of experience, the predominance of universals, and a determinate sense of referentiality (2001: 251). both abrams and winquist imply that the idea of modernism was commonly brought out during the first half of the twentieth century. their theories also mention the term ‘universals’ or ‘universal truth’, meaning to convey that the purpose of modernism (in this case, literature) is to create only one truth instead of versions of truth, believing that human experience can somehow be unified in literature. madansarup states that the basic features of modernism can be summarized as: an aesthetic self consciousness and reflexiveness; a rejection of narrative structure in favour of simultaneity and montage; an exploration of the paradoxical, ambiguous and uncertain, open-ended nature of reality… (1993: 131) when speaking of pure modernism, sarup’s statement here emphasizes that it is about experimentation and the aim of finding an inner truth behind surface appearance, which is an abstract truth. while modernist thinking is about the search of an abstract truth of life, postmodernist thinkers believe that there is no universal truth, abstract or otherwise. vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 139 postmodernism argues that there is no absolute truth in the universe. rules of classical literary works are not valid in these literary works. there is no unity of time, place and action in literary works in postmodernism. still about postmodernism in general, as stated by terry barett in abrams’, postmodernism does not merely chronologically follow modernism, it reacts against modernism, and might better be called antimodernism. the term postmodernism is sometimes applied to the literature and art after world war ii (19391945) (1993: 120). following barett’s statement in abrams’, postmodernism happens to be a breakthrough or to be more exact, a counter towards modernism, in a way that these terms have their own traits and characteristics. the term postmodernism originated among artists and critics in new york in the 1960s and was taken up by european theorists in the 1970s (sarup, 1993: 131). sarup in an introductory guide to poststructuralism and postmodernism wrote that one of them (the artists), jean-francois lyotard, in a famous book entitled the postmodern condition, attacked the legitimating myths of the modern age, the progressive liberation of humanity through science, and the idea that philosophy can restore unity to learning and develop universally valid knowledge for humanity. postmodern theory became identified with the critique of universal knowledge and foundationalism (1993: 132). this signifies the deletion of boundaries such as boundaries between art and everyday life, elite and popular culture, stylistic eclecticism and code mixing. so postmodernists assume that there is no reason (universal truth), only reasons (many versions of truth). lyotard in sarup also said that in postmodernism there is: a shift of emphasis from content to form or style; a transformation of reality into images; the fragmentation of time into a series of perpetual presents. there are continual references to eclecticism, reflexivity, self-referentiality, quotation, artifice, randomness, anarchy, fragmentation, pastiche and allegory (1993:132). in the context of literature, this implies that the concept of postmodernism has a style of referring to a larger context (the metadata) outside of its own, repeating things, forming series of scenes which do not define the time nor place and most of the time breaking the conventional rules made up by society (the act of anarchy). vladimir (didi) in waiting for godot as the dominating one, vladimir seriously takes responsibility over his partner, estragon. most of the time, estragon appears to be dependent on vladimir. vladimir even once said to estragon that “it’s too much for one man” (beckett, 1972: 10). this shows vladimir’s personality as a dominating person. vladimir also worries that if they do eventually part and go their own ways, estragon would not be able to make it. vladimir has a scant hope for estragon’s survival since estragon had been so much relying on him. estragon. (coldly). there are times when i wonder if it wouldn’t be better for us to part. vladimir. you wouldn’t go far. (beckett, 1972: 16) vladimir’s response towards estragon’s intention of parting, actually resembles his idea of estragon’s dependency on him. he knows that estragon is weak because all this time it is vladimir who has been taking care of him; he feeds and nurtures him, even comforts him when he wakes up from his nightmares. of the two, vladimir is the more religious one, the truth seeker, while estragon is ignorant about it and shows more interest in looking at pictures of colorful maps in the bible instead of the sermons in it. eileen shannon & hirmawan wijanarka 140 vladimir. did you ever read the bible? estragon. the bible… (he reflects). i must have taken a look at it. vladimir. do you remember the gospels? estragon. i remember the maps of the holy land. coloured they were. very pretty. the dead sea was pale blue. the very look of it made me thirsty. that’s where we’ll go, i used to say, that’s where we’ll go for our honeymoon. we’ll swim. we’ll be happy. (beckett, 1972: 12) vladimir in fact reads the bible and is critical about it. he is critical towards the fact that only one of the gospels admits that one of the thieves crucified next to christ was saved, while other gospels tell none of the thieves were saved (beckett, 1972: 13). estragon, on the other hand, did not really care much about why people choose to believe that one gospel instead of the other three. in their first encounter with pozzo and lucky, it is vladimir who dares to confront pozzo, making himself appear to be man of the action. he shows compassion towards lucky’s condition. vladimir. (exploding). it’s a scandal! silence. flabbergasted, estragon stops gnawing, looks at pozzo and vladimir in turn. pozzo outwardly calm. vladimir embarrassed. pozzo. (to vladimir). are you alluding to anything in particular? vladimir. (stutteringly resolute). to treat a man… (gesture towards lucky)… like that… i think that… no… a human being… no… it’s a scandal! (beckett, 1972: 27) he could not stand the sight of lucky being enslaved by pozzo for it was inhumane, sickening and scandalous. vladimir’s humanist sense doesn’t allow him to bear any suffering that happens around him. he hates to see this, and even interrogates himself “was i sleeping while the others suffered?” (beckett, 1972: 90). he carries a feeling of guilt, assuming that he has done little or perhaps nothing to improve the miseries of others. he even refuses to listen to stories of estragon’s nightmares. estragon. i had a dream. vladimir. don’t tell me! estragon. i dreamt that vladimir. don’t tell me! estragon. (gesture towards the universe). this one is enough for you? (silence). it’s not nice of you, didi. who am i to tell my private nightmares to if i can’t tell them to you? (beckett, 1972: 15-16) vladimir is always the one who is strongwilled in waiting for godot. everytime estragon suggests to leave, vladimir always restrains him with the same reason: because they have to wait for godot. this happens about seven times throughout the play, showing his commitment in the act of waiting for godot who might never come. by the end of act 1, vladimir shows his optimism by assuring estragon that “tomorrow everything will be better”. he is determined that something good is about to happen soon, like the attendance of godot. vladimir. we’ve nothing more to do here. estragon. nor anywhere else. vladimir. ah gogo, don’t go on like that. tomorrow everything will be better. estragon. how do you make that out? vladimir. did you not hear what the child said? estragon. no. vladimir. he said that godot was sure to come tomorrow. (beckett, 1972: 52-53) in act 2, when that ‘tomorrow’ comes, vladimir recalls the events that happened on the previous day about pozzo and lucky, the tree and pretty much what they had been doing. vladimir appears to be the one with the strongest memory of all characters. while others fails to recall past events properly, vladimir is certain about his own memories. he always ends up reminding estragon -and pozzowhenever they forget things. once, he said to estragon “you forget everything” (beckett, 1972: 48). being the more religious and committed one, vladimir holds on to his belief in salvation. he is certain that salvation is to come, and their savior is godot himself. at the vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 141 end of act 2, vladimir states this belief of his about godot when estragon persuades him to hang themselves. vladimir. we’ll hang ourselves tomorrow. (pause). unless godot comes. estragon. and if he comes? vladimir. we’ll be saved. (beckett, 1972: 94) another time, vladimir expresses his happiness and joy in thinking that godot has finally arrived. both vladimir and estragon were just passing the time, doing nothing meaningful when suddenly they heard voices of people approaching. triumphantly, vladimir cries “it’s godot! at last! gogo! it’s godot! we’re saved! let’s go and meet him!” (beckett, 1972: 73) in the second act, vladimir tries to convince estragon to do something. to him, they have wasted plenty of their time just on waiting and arguing and just doing some ‘idle discourse’. vladimir’s action is shown in the scene where pozzo cries for help for someone to help him get up. vladimir. let’s not waste our time in idle discourse! (pause. vehemently). let us do something, while we have the chance! it is not every day that we are needed. not indeed that we personally are needed. […] let us make the most of it, before it’s too late! let us represent worthily for once thefoul brood to which a cruel fateconsigned us! what do you say? (beckett, 1972: 79) vladimir realizes that they are wasting their time, and he finally gets bored in just waiting. he considers their act of waiting as ‘nothingness’ which does not give any meaning to him, unless he makes something useful of his time. vladimir. we wait. we are bored. (he throws up his hand). no, don’t protest, we are bored to death, there’s no denying it. good. a diversion comes along and what do we do? we let it go to waste. come, let’s get to work! (he advances towards the heap, stops in his stride). in an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness! he broods. (beckett, 1972: 81). vladimir relies more on his ability to think, making it crucial for him to use his intelligence and critical thinking in almost all his (or estragon’s) actions. at times, he even does the thinking for estragon. in the scene where lucky is demanded to entertain the others, vladimir prefers the intellectual diversion in wanting to listen to what lucky thinks instead. pozzo. who! you know how to think, you two? vladimir. he thinks? pozzo. certainly. aloud. […] well, would you like him to think something for us? estragon. i’d rather he’d dance, it’d be more fun? pozzo. not necessarily. estragon. wouldn’t it, didi, be more fun? vladimir. i’d like well to hear him think. (beckett, 1972: 39) in conclusion, vladimir is a type of person who has a stronger sense of moral judgment than the other characters, but is still bestowed with a sense of indecisiveness. his constant peering into the hat and his walking back and forth are indications of his restless spirit and a longing for stability. at one point he becomes so frustrated with his lack of action that he nearly despairs. vladimir is the most committed, the most constant. he reminds estragon that they must wait for godot. perhaps this is simply because his memory is sharper; he remembers many things that estragon seems to have forgotten. modernism in vladimir in waiting for godot being aware that this thesis uses the new criticism approach in analyzing the characters and in relating their characteristics to the ideas of modernism and postmodernism, the writer limits the analysis inside the object of the study, focusing on the characters. the analysis refers to only the ideology of modernism and postmodernism eileen shannon & hirmawan wijanarka 142 as the extrinsic elements of the object of the study. in waiting for godot, vladimir appears to be the center of the play, in fact playing a role as the hero or protagonist. though many have assumed that vladimir and estragon are both the protagonists, this research shows how vladimir controls most conversations and even estragon’s motivation in the play. the analysis of the characters shows how the characters have several points that can define their characteristics and ideas. vladimir is one of the two main characters who shows dominance over the other, and most of the time does the thinking. estragon could not really rely on himself to think because he has a problem with his memory (just like the other characters in the play). this implies that vladimir is the only character who has a good memory. previously in this thesis, it has been explained that modernism thinking is based on using rational and logical means to gain knowledge while postmodernism denies the application of logical thinking. rather, the thinking during the postmodern era was based on unscientific, irrational thought process, as a reaction to modernism (abrams, 1993: 120). in this section, the thesis discusses the ideas of modernism in vladimir and also the ideas of postmodernism in the other characters. an overview of the other characters in the play is conducted in order to give a contrast to the character of vladimir. 1. the act of anticipating the first aspect from vladimir’s modernist ideas to be analyzed is his act of anticipating. from the very beginning of the play, vladimir shows his determination in waiting for this person or entity named godot who never shows up, believing that he will eventually come. he has never met this godot before, and it is strange enough for someone to just be waiting on a person to come without knowing exactly what their purpose of waiting is. estragon could not tell why he waits for godot because he only relies on vladimir to provide him the reason why. all vladimir knows is that he waits because he seeks for salvation. salvation from godot. estragon. and if he comes? vladimir. we’ll be saved. (beckett, 1978: 94) vladimir waits dearly for godot, his savior, and always restrains estragon from giving up on the wait. he in fact needs someone to accompany him during his wait, because he knows that he will feel lonely. he even manipulates estragon to stay with him, telling him that he (estragon) will never make it alone. estragon seems quite certain of his intentions of leaving vladimir, but he remains stuck with him. although it seems as if both vladimir and estragon are waiting for godot, the writer finds it differently. the only reason why estragon still sticks around is because of his dependency on vladimir, not his pure intentions in waiting the endless wait for godot. vladimir takes care of estragon who frequently suffers from physical pain, and both of them take advantage of this condition; vladimir has a friend to accompany him during his wait while estragon has someone to rely on to feed him and think for him. estragon. you see, you feel worse when i’m with you. i feel better alone, too. vladimir. (vexed). then why do you always come crawling back? estragon. i don’t know. vladimir. no, but i do. it’s because you don’t know how to defend yourself. i wouldn’t have let them beat you. (beckett, 1978: 59) the conversation above is a very strong piece from the play that can prove how vladimir is the only one waiting for godot. although vladimir at times seems irritated by the presence of estragon (even estragon senses this), he couldn’t stand the feeling of being alone. even when estragon falls asleep, he wakes him up just because he feels lonely. he uses estragon’s dependency to manipulate him to stay with him. estragon. and if we dropped him? (pause). if we dropped him? vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 143 vladimir. he’d punish us. (beckett, 1978: 93) estragon really shows his intentions of giving up the wait. he does not really care much about godot and even assumes that the responsibility to wait for godot rests on vladimir. at the end of each acts, it is vladimir whom the boy approaches and delivers godot’s message to. this makes it even clearer that vladimir has the role of waiting for godot. estragon even mentions godot as “your man” to vladimir, giving the impression of being satirical and leaving it all up to vladimir to take actions (beckett, 1978: 21). modernism emphasizes experimentation and the aim of finding an inner truth behind surface appearance (sarup, 1993: 131). vladimir has the need to prove that godot will eventually show up and offer him the salvation he has been waiting for. although godot remains unseen, vladimir wishes to see him in person one day and finally unveil godot, who is an abstract truth. 2. the act of reasoning the next modernist aspect of vladimir is his act of reasoning, or, in other words, thinking. vladimir shows interest in thinking, and makes it a good habit of his. he often contemplates conditions or circumstances, wanting to find out the reasons why these things occur. thinking, is an activity which keeps vladimir sober and conscious most of the time, and he needs to maintain this to put life into his actions. modernist people concern more about how they see rather than what they see (barry, 2002: 82). so the main question is “how” or “why” instead of just “what”. the characters in the play, except for vladimir, show their disinterest in thinking. apart from the difficulty they go through in recalling past events, they tend to just give up on thinking or not try hard enough to even do it. lucky does not think for himself because it is pozzo who gives him orders, telling him what to do. once he thinks, only nonsensical words come out (while pozzo calls this “thinking”). pozzo even stopped lucky’s action of thinking by removing the hat from lucky’s head exclaiming “there’s an end to his thinking!” (beckett, 1978: 45). pozzo does not go far in thinking because he has a short span of focus, forgetting his purposes due to any smallest distraction. he tends to ignore having to do reasoning for his actions, intentions or his conditions. he sometimes asks questions but does not really mind if they are answered or not. here, pozzo shows characteristics of being postmodern, lacking the analytical nature and having rhetorical thoughts (open ended questions). there is a time when vladimir is trying to find out the reason for pozzo’s blindness, repeatedly asking pozzo why. pozzo then bursts into fury, expressing his feeling of being tormented by questions. he doesn’t care why he has gone blind or why lucky is dumb, because for him, to ponder these things is just a waste of time (beckett, 1978: 89). the moment when pozzo offers to put lucky on a show to entertain the tramps, vladimir chooses to hear him think while estragon is interested in seeing him dance (beckett, 1978: 39). this adds to vladimir’s act of reasoning, wanting to know how others think. vladimir takes thinking seriously. he tries to explain to estragon that there is nothing wrong in thinking. what is wrong is to “have thought”, in other words, only guessing and relying on mere belief. vladimir. when you seek you hear. estragon. you do. vladimir. that prevents you from finding. estragon. it does. vladimir. that prevents you from thinking. estragon. you think all the same. […] vladimir. we’re in no danger of ever thinking anymore. estragon. then what are we complaining about? vladimir. thinking is not the worst. […] vladimir. what is terrible is to have thought. (beckett, 1978: 64) eileen shannon & hirmawan wijanarka 144 the boy does not show much effort in thinking or reasoning. when being asked, most of the time he only gives short answers, simply by saying “yes, sir”, “no, sir”, or even “i don’t know, sir”. vladimir gets frustrated when conversing with the boy because he (the boy) doesn’t seem to have initiative in thinking of anything else to say apart from answering questions. every time vladimir stops asking questions, the boy only remains silent. 3. the act of relevant discoursing the third modernist idea to be analyzed is vladimir’s act of relevant discoursing. while the previous discussion concerns about the act of reasoning or thinking, this part discusses the type or manner of conversations that are developed from vladimir’s reasoning. so in order to express ideas and thoughts, a discourse or conversation can be one of the ways to do it. throughout the play, from the beginning until the end, vladimir and estragon pass the time by conversing with each other, sometimes getting into a debate or argument, then talk about random things and so on. they seem to always find something to talk about, whether it makes sense (relevant) or not. for vladimir, it is crucial to find something worthy enough to talk about so that they don’t pass the time in doing nothing useful. reasoning is a must for vladimir, but only doing it without considering the discourse to be relevant is not good enough. his words and actions have to be meaningful and purposeful, otherwise he will only think of himself as useless, worthless and idle. that moment when he hears pozzo’s cry for help, he becomes enlightened and right away figures out something to make out of it. vladimir. let us not waste our time in idle discourse! let us do something, while we have the chance! it is not every day that we are needed. not indeed that personally we are needed. […] let us make the most out of it, before it is too late! let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! what do you say? (beckett, 1978: 79) vladimir supposes that he has been wasting his time doing idle discourse with his partner estragon, blathering about irrelevant things that do not improve their current state of being. these things they talk about such as the story of two thieves or a man who went to a brothel house, memories of good old times and even plans of committing suicide. they even play roles as pozzo and lucky, take a boot on and off, peer into hats and sing or sleep. both vladimir and estragon labor themselves in these idle discourses and activities, but eventually, vladimir gets fed up doing this and realizes that he should be doing something else more important. vladimir. well? what do we do? estragon. don’t let’s do anything. it’s safer. (beckett, 1978: 18) vladimir. you’d rather be stuck here doing nothing? estragon. yes. vladimir. please yourself. (beckett, 1978: 71) at the point when vladimir comes to realize their being idle, he then tries to think of something to do. on the other hand, estragon seems to put aside the need to make something useful and meaningful out of their time, instead, when he (estragon) feels bored or hopeless, all he thinks of is just to fall asleep, leave or just commit suicide. he’s only bored waiting and runs out of things (anything) to do. pozzo and lucky only happens to pass by from nowhere to nowhere and not really do anything distinctive from what vladimir and estragon have been doing, which is the act of pointless blathering. pozzo and lucky talk about things but do not make up their minds of what to do, only to just be going “on” and vladimir and estragon to just be “waiting for godot”. they all just go back to the start; pozzo not sure where to go and the tramps not sure what to do. vladimir. we wait. we are bored. (he throws up his hand). vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 145 no, don’t protest, we are bored to death, there’s no denying it. good. a diversion comes along and what do we do? we let it go to waste. come, let’s get to work! (he advances towards the heap, stops in his stride). in an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness! he broods. (beckett, 1978: 81) vladimir feels that they should not waste a good chance to finally do something useful, a purposeful action to save them from their deadly boredom and state of nothingness. vladimir needs to prove himself worthy for once and not get carried away in idle discourse during the wait. closing remarks the second objective is to reveal the ideas of modernism in vladimir. as said previously in this thesis, vladimir seems to be the only sane person among the other characters. though perhaps estragon could also be counted as being sane, vladimir is one step ahead of him due to estragon’s defective memory. he has shown signs of being the odd one, having different a different behavior and point of view. he is the only one determined to wait for godot because he believes in salvation and that godot is his savior. he gets frustrated when he comes to think of nothing meaningful to do. vladimir contemplates the bible while estragon only admires it from the interesting looking pictures in it. when nobody remembers anything that happened on the previous day, he is the only one who can recall his memories and feel confident to rely on them. he also questions the reality at them time he becomes frustrated; he wonders if he is sober or asleep. from the result of the analysis, the ideas of modernism in the play can be seen through the character of vladimir marked by his acts of anticipating, reasoning, and relevant discoursing. through vladimir, the postmodern play itself is able to convey its ideas of modernism by creating a contrast between the two ideologies; between vladimir and the rest of the characters. references abrams, m.h. a glossary of literary terms seventh edition. new york: heinle & heinle, 1993. barry, peter. beginning theory an introduction to literary and cultural theory. manchester: manchester university press, 2002. beckett, samuel. waiting for godot: a tragicomedy in two acts. london: faber and faber, 1972. camus, albert. le mythe de sisyphe. paris: gallimard, 1942. currie, w.t. brodie’s notes on samuel beckett’s waiting for godot. suffolk: the chaucer press, 1978. esslin, martin. the theatre of the absurd. new york: anchor books doubleday & company, inc., 1968. hapsari, louciana. “the idea of modernism as revealed through character and plot in luigi pirandello’s six characters in search of an author” undergraduate thesis. yogyakarta: universitas sanata dharma, 2014. henkle, roger b. reading the novel: an introduction to the techniques of interpreting fiction. michigan: harper & row, 1977. murphy, m.j. understanding unseens: an introduction to english poetry and the english novel for overseas students. oxford: george allen & unwin ltd, 1972. nawaningrum, theresia. “the contribution of minor characters toward the main characters’ motivation in the act of waiting in samuel beckett’s waiting for godot” undergraduate thesis. yogyakarta: universitassanata dharma, 2002. reaske, c.r. how to analyze drama. new york: monarch press, inc., 1966. eileen shannon & hirmawan wijanarka 146 roberts, edgar v. and henry e. jacobs. fiction: an introduction to reading and writing. new jersey: prentice-hall, inc., 1989. sarup, madan. an introductory guide to poststructuralism and postmodernism. horlow: longman, 1993. winquist, charles e. and victor e. taylor. encyclopedia of postmodernism. london: routledge, 2001. page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4 page 5 pheno vol 16 2.pdf (3) artikel 1 putu (arina) ed-2 (4) artikel 2 indri (arina) ed-1 (5) artikel 3 ose (hir) ed-2 (6) artikel 4 alvian & anna (arina) ed-2 (7) artikel 5 eilen & hir (hir) ed-2 (8) artikel 6 elisabeth ratih & ni luh (hir) ed-2 (9) artikel 7 munthe & ria (arina) ed-2 (10) artikel 8 rosa vania & elisa (hir) ed-2 (11) artikel 9 pramesthi & mul (hir) ed-2 (13) index vol 16 no 2 oktober 2016-1 (14) contributor's notes-1 cover luar phenomena vol 16 no. 2 elisabeth oseanita pukan 114 haudenosaunee indigenous knowledge as reflected in oren lyon’s “where is the eagle seat?”, an oration to united nations elisabeth oseanita pukan ose@usd.ac.id department of english letters, universitas sanata dharma abstract various problems that people in the world face today, such as environmental and political problems and not to mention human rights issue, cannot all be answered with modern knowledge and technology. in fact, many of these problems are caused by the excess use of technology and some modern values which are not sustainable and not egalitarian. the study about indigenous knowledge, therefore, is important to be conducted that people may have alternative ways to address world problems. this study attempted to discover the indigenous knowledge of haudenosaunee, one of native american nations in united states, which is reflected in oren lyons’ oration entitled “where is the eagle seat?”. anthropological approach is used in this research. ethnographical data of the haudenosaunee are utilized to trace the indigenous knowledge in the oration text. in interpreting the text, the researcher used paul ricoeur’s interpretation theory from the hermeneutic tradition. this study found six haudenosaunee indigenous knowledge, i.e. justice and equality among people, equality between people and the natural world, earth as a mother and american continent as turtle island, sustainability and concern for future generation, the power of the creator and the natural law, and unity,. all of these indigenous values are used by lyons to address world problems and the problems that native american people face since the coming of european settlers in their land. keywords: haudenosaunee, indigenous knowledge, chief, faithkeeper introduction the world problems that people face today are getting more complex and many, ranging from environmental and political crises to the issue of human rights. from those issues, environmental crises happened around the world, such as the vanishing wilderness, pollution, scarcity of resources, and not to mention the impacts of global climate change, are the ones which trigger scientists and policy makers to integrate their science-based knowledge with indigenous knowledge. they saw that indigenous knowledge can be a way out for these environmental problems for it has been guiding indigenous people around the world to live sustainably with the natural world (vien, 2010). realizing the importance of indigenous knowledge as an alternative ways to solve contemporary world problems, united nations, as one of global policy makers, took a step to protect the existence of indigenous knowledge around the world by holding the united nations conference on environment and development (unced). held in rio de janeiro brazil in 1992, the conference highlighted the urgent need to develop mechanisms to protect the earth's biodiversity and to conserve the knowledge of the environment that is also being lost in many communities (nakashima & roué, 2002). vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 115 far before the modern scientists and un realize the importance of indigenous knowledge as alternative way out to world problem, native american people in general and haudenosaunee people in particular, as a matter of fact, has been preserving and practicing their indigenous knowledge throughout centuries. moreover, many of their chiefs even incorporate indigenous knowledge in their orations in international forums, and thus, share it with the international world. oren lyons, a haudenosaunee chief or faithkeeper is one of them. when he got a chance to address the united nations in geneva in 1977 to advocate the indigenous people of america, he made use of haudenosaunee indigenous value to address the problems of human rights and natural degradation. indigenous knowledge has been disregarded until recently, for it has been overshadowed by the promise of modern science and technology (nakashima & roué, 2002). in response to this, through this study, the researcher aspired to elevate the issue of indigenous knowledge by investigating an oration transcript of chief oren lyons entitled “where is the eagle seat?”. in this study, the researcher is not only focusing on the knowledge which is correlated to environmental issue. it is because indigenous knowledge not only consists of ecological guidance, but also encompasses practices of value systems, worldviews, and ways of life (nakashima & roué, 2002). approach and theory the approach to this study is anthropological approach. within anthropological approach, culture, including indigenous knowledge, is perceived as the shared set of values, ideas, concepts, and rules of behavior that allow a social group to function and perpetuate itself (hudelson, 2004). as anthropological approach is used, the researcher use ethnographic data of the haudenosaunee to identify the indigenous knowledge in oren lyon’s oration. the researcher utilized paul ricoeur’s interpretation theory from the hermeneutic tradition to decipher haudenosaunee indigenous knowledge contained in oren lyons’ oration text. text, according to ricoeur, is any discourse fixed by writing (dorairaj, 2000). in this research, native american orations by oren lyons are already fixed into writing through transcription. the researcher took “where is the eagle seat?” from the book the ill a.d. and the odd essay by michael scharding. based onthe theory, as these orations are already fixed into writing and became texts, they have gone through a process of distanciation (dorairaj, 2000). it means that there is estrangement between the texts and the authorial intention; there is separation between the text and the original situation of discourse; and there is split between the text and the original audience (dorairaj, 2000). interpretation fills this gap between what a speaker meant in saying something and what her statements mean outside of her intentions (ghasemi, taghinejad, kabiri, & imani, 2011). the step of analysis in ricoeur’s interpretation theory includes explanation, interpretation and understanding. understanding is more directed towards the intentional unity of discourse (the view of the whole), while explanation is more directed towards the analytic structure of the text (ricoeur, 1976:74); and in the end, in the understanding process, the interpreter’s inner world meets the unique world of each text to create a new picture or understanding of a possible world in the consciousness of the interpreter (ghasemi et al., 2011). indigenous knowledge according to douglas nakashima and marie roué, indigenous knowledge systems are the complex arrays of knowledge, knowhow, practices and representations that guide human societies in their innumerable interactions with the natural milieu (nakashima & roué, 2002). the content and nature of indigenous knowledge extend well beyond the confines of one scientific discipline to encompass not only empirical knowledge, but also practices and know-how, value systems, ways of life and worldviews (nakashima & roué, 2002). elisabeth oseanita pukan 116 indigenous knowledge has several characteristics which differentiate it from western knowledge system, i.e. local, holistic, and oral (hart, 2010). local because it comes from specific territory; holistic as indigenous people do not share the dichotomous western worldview that separates material from the spiritual, nature from culture, and humankind and other life forms (nakashima & roué, 2002); and oral because it is orally transmitted from generation to generation (vien, 2010). in addition to these three characteristics, castellano (2000) added two other characteristics, i.e. indigenous knowledge is experiential (derived from experience) and it is conveyed in narrative or metaphorical language (hart, 2010). the characteristic of indigenous knowledge which needs to be highlighted is the holistic characteristic. unlike eurocentric science, indigenous knowledge does not oppose the secular to the spiritual, and therefore does not oppose the empirical and objective from the sacred and intuitive. such boundaries in indigenous knowledge are permeable (nakashima & roué, 2002). ‘science of the concrete’ in indigenous knowledge blends imperceptibly into the metaphysical realm. indigenous people believe that the concrete and the spiritual coexist side by side, complementing and enriching rather than competing and contradicting (nakashima & roué, 2002). native american indigenous knowledge gregory cajete, a tewa native american and an assistant professor at the university of new mexico, once wrote that “science” which is used interchangeably with “knowledge” is culturally relative (1999: ix, 4). it means that what is considered science is dependent on the culture/worldview/paradigm of the definer as human being see and perceives the world through certain paradigm (cajete, 1999: ix). native american science, according to cajete, operates through different paradigm from western science. native american paradigm is comprised of and includes ideas of constant motion and flux, existence consisting of energy waves, interrelationships, all things being animate, space/place, renewal, and all things being imbued with spirit (cajete, 1999: x). gary witherspoon once observed the first idea about motion and flux. he said that the world is in motion and things are undergoing process of transformation, deformation, and restoration (cajete, 1999: x). this notion led to “spider web” network of relationship which means everything in this world is interrelated; and if everything is interrelated, all of creation is related. interrelatedness is tied to the idea that everything is imbued with spirit. if human beings are animate and have spirit, all of their relations are also animate and imbued with spirit (cajete, 1999: x). spirit and energy waves are the same thing for native americans. they believed that all of creation has a spirit or have certain combination of energy waves. what appeared in material world is the manifestation of this combination of energy waves, but on the contrary, not all of energy wave combination manifests themselves into material objects (cajete, 1999: x). the other important idea in native american paradigm is renewal. it is also interrelated to the constant flux explained above. the idea of flux led to native american understanding of certain pattern in seasons, animal migration, cosmic movement and many others (cajete, 1999: xi). it led to further concept that the process of creation is a continuous process, but certain regularities that are foundational to our existence must be maintained and renewed (cajete, 1999: xi). the concept of land in native american paradigm is also unique. for native americans, the land is very important for events such as patterns and cycles occur at certain places (cajete, 1999: xi). each tribal territory has its sacred sites, and its particular environmental and ecological combinations resulting on particular relational networks. all of this happened on earth. thus, native americans saw the earth as a sacred entity and they even called it as “mother”, the source of life (cajete, 1999: xi). vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 117 those are the paradigm shared among native americans which determined how they conceptualize their knowledge. in native american societies the teaching of this paradigm happens through story telling. cajete stated that the author of a story does a beautiful holistic treatment of native american science by giving it “livingness” and spirit. as the author weaves through ecology, relational networks of plants, animals, the land, and the cosmos, the native american paradigm comes to life (cajete, 1999: xii). haudenosaunee society and culture haudenosaunee, which is more wellknown as iroquois,is a native american confederacy consisting of five (later six) native american tribes or nations: onondaga, mohawk, oneida, cayuga, and seneca (rasmussen, 2000: 397). in the early 1700s, tuscarora nation joined this confederacy due to war with british colony(johnson, 2003:7). before this league of nations is formed, the five native american nations were constantly at war. they were one day united by a man named deganawida whom they later called as the peace maker. deganawida bring the five warring nations the message of peace, reason, law, and the abolishment of war (gonyea, 1986: 13). he invited the people of the five nations to unite in a confederacy and live under one law. as the people tired of anarchy, they listened to him. the haudenosaunee live under the great law of peace (gayanashagowa) since the day the confederacy was found. this law outlined the path to harmony and unity among the five nations and set out a proper form of government which allowed for the ideas of peace, power and righteousness (haudenosaunee iroquois confederacy). it also declares the basic respect for the rights of all people (harris & johnson, 2009: 3). it guaranteed freedom of assembly, religion, speech and universal suffrage (gonyea, 1986: 14). in the haudenosaunee tribal website, it is written that within the great law of peace text there are three main principles which stand out to govern the rest: peace, power and righteousness. the element of peace means a person’s own peace, being of a good mind, and the ability to use the mind to negotiate rather than going to war. in order to have peace one must have balance in their life with health of mind and body (haudenosaunee iroquois confederacy). this peace will lead to the next principle, power. power does not necessarily mean having power over another. for the haudenosaunee, power comes from unity. it is by achieving these goals outlined for the haudenosaunee that they gain the final principle of righteousness. righteousness is found through living a proper life and following the will of the creator as set out in the original instructions (roland j.). the basic of haudenosaunee unit was the extended family. people related by blood and marriage were grouped into clans tracing descent through the female line (johnson, 2003: 21). each clan comprised of a head woman, known as a matron, her immediate male and female descendants and the issue (formal or law children) through the female line. not only is the haudenosaunee matrilineal, but they are also matrilocalas a marrying couple would live with the wife’s family in an extended family longhouse. each longhouse accommodated up to thirty people, and in a village, there could be from twenty to fifty longhouses (rasmussen, 2000: 397). woman has a special position in onondaga. the great law of peace instructed that women shall be considered the progenitors of the nation. they shall own the land and the soil, and men and women shall follow the status of the mother (welker, 2014). not only that, women also play important role in the haudenosaunee political system since haudenosaunee chieftainships are held by the clan mother of each clan. a chief is selected from the eligible male members of the clan by the clan mother in counsel with the female members of the clan and with the agreement of the council (gonyea, 1986: 25). for haudenosaunee, religion was an inseparable part of their daily life (graymont, 2005: 25). their religious and ceremonial life is centered on the belief that all beings, http://www.indigenouspeople.net/iroqcon.htm http://www.indigenouspeople.net/iroqcon.htm http://www.indigenouspeople.net/iroqcon.htm elisabeth oseanita pukan 118 animals, plant foods, and objects were imbued with power of spirit force otennota, orenda, which flowed through all nature (johnson, 2003: 22-23), and they sought to keep in the right relationship to them (graymont, 2005: 25). three spirit orders were revealed through analysis of haudenosaunee prayers. they are spirit forces on earth, a middle level of spirit above the earth, and an upper pantheon of forces controlling the universe (johnson, 2003: 23). prayers and thanksgiving songs were addressed to the spirit world and run through the deities upward to the creator. in addition to prayers and thanksgiving, they had rites which were also addressed to the creator and to the spirit of cultivated plants (johnson, 2003: 23). the thanksgiving address is recited in all haudenosaunee formal occasion except funerals (johansen & mann, 2000: 314). in addition, they also developed a cycle of agricultural thanksgiving ceremonials. because of the importance of these religious rites for the haudenosaunee, knowledge of how to perform the proper rituals was therefore essential. these occasions, furthermore, unified the community in a common purpose and way of life (graymont, 2005: 25). like many other native american nations, the haudenosaunee has a creation myth. in haudenosaunee myth, the first life on earth was brought by a sky woman who was fallen down from a sacred tree which grew in the sky world (johansen & mann, 2000, pp. 86, 87). this sky world is a physical place that floated among the stars. the father of this sky women was dead before she was born. his death was the first ever to occur in sky world, a spirit sign (johansen & mann, 2000: 87).this sky women had an ability to have spiritual conversation with her deceased father, and during one of the conversations, her father’s spirit advised her to marry an authority officer of the sky world known as the ancient. he is also popularly called “he holds the earth” or “the earth-grasper” (johansen & mann, 2000: 87). after marrying the ancient, she was soon with child through the sharing of breath with her husband (johansen & mann, 2000: 87). one day, the ancient had a disturbing dream that made him ill. he needed his advisors to catch this dream. the ancient’s advisors saw what was needed to fulfill his dream: to pull up the great tree of sky world, opening up the magnificent vista on the water world—earth. thus, he ordered the tree to be uprooted. once this was done, its roots pointed to earth, showing the sky people the way there (johansen & mann, 2000: 87). having uprooted the tree, the ancient was thus able to fulfill the second part of his dream that his wife was to fall through the hole in sky world down to the water world below (johansen & mann, 2000: 88). when the sky woman fell, she grabbed wildly at the roots of the upended great tree trying not to fall. although she was unable to climb up, she managed to hold some seeds from the bountiful tree. in her right hand, she got the seeds of the three sisters, i.e. corn, beans, and squash – these would later be the staple food for the haudenosaunee. she slid down through space and into the atmosphere of earth (johansen & mann, 2000: 88). the fall of the sky women was noticed by the farsighted eagle. he noticed all the elders of earth creature. for the first time, lightning (the fire dragon) streaked across the sky of earth at her side as she hurtled through the atmosphere, while heron and loon helped to catch and hold her on their interlocking wings. in the meantime, the great tortoise sent around a moccasin which means an emergency council of elder animals to see what was to be done. knowing that the sky woman was unable to live on their watery planet, all of the elder spirits of earth creatures quickly agreed that she should not be dropped into the waters. the animals, then, have the idea of diving down to the bottom of the sea for whatever dirt might have clung to its sacred roots. the great snapping turtle offered his shell to carry the dirt (earth) and vowed to carry it above him forever as he swam (johansen & mann, 2000: 89, 90). because a small piece of dirt was now ready to accept her, the birds put the sky woman down on her new house, turtle island. by using her power, the sky women helped the earth increase in its size. she sang vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 119 medicine chants as she walked in ever increasing circles, spreading the dirt before her until it turned into the great land mass of turtle island. wherever sky woman went, every kind of plant sprouted up before her (johansen & mann, 2000: 90). since then, the sky women live on the earth and gave birth to her daughter there. later, her daughter died after giving birth to two human beings. the sky women planted the seeds she grabbed from the sacred tree of the sky world. from her daughter grave then grew all the plants of life. corn, beans, and squash grew from her breasts, potatoes sprang from her toes, and tobacco grew from her head. the daughter of the sky women had transformed into mother earth, a living entity (johansen & mann, 2000: 91). that was the creation story shared among haudenosaunee nations; and this creation story was still honored by them and continues to affect their way of life. indigenous knowledge in oren lyons’ “where is the eagle seat?” oration 1977 representing native americans for the first time in international forum, oren lyons transmitted several values associated with indigenous knowledge of the native american in general and of the haudenosaunee in particular. the following is the discussion. a. justice and equality among people justice and equality were explicitly mentioned by oren lyons in the beginning of his oration. the following quotation is his statement about equality. “our nations who have principles of justice and equality, who have respect for the natural world, on behalf of our mother the earth and all the great elements we come here and we say they too have rights”(scharding, 2002: 93) in the quotation above, oren lyons described native american nations to the audiences as “nations who have principles of justice and equality”. furthermore, he mentioned again the value of equality in the middle of the oration as follows. “we were told in the beginning that we were not human. there are great arguments in the histories of many countries as to the humanness of the red people of the western hemisphere. i must warn you that the creator made us all equal with one another.” (scharding, 2002: 93) in the above citation, oren lyons mentioned that everybody is created equal by the creator. thus, it can be interpreted that for the haudenosaunee, equal value possessed by every human is inherent, because it is actually given to every human being by the creator. another thing which is visible in the quotation above is that oren lyons used this idea of equality to promote human rights and to fight against dehumanization experienced by native american since the coming of european settlers in their continent. justice and equality of all people mentioned by lyons in the oration is actually nothing new for the haudenosaunee; it is part of their indigenous knowledge. justice and equality are two of some principle elements underlying haudenosaunee constitution or the great law of peace (lopez & lyons, 2001: 6). there are three basic principles for the haudenosaunee, i.e. righteousness, health, and power. righteousness itself means justice practiced between men and nations, and power which means the authority of law and customs backed by such force as is necessary for justice(cousins, 2004, p. 4). meanwhile, equality among nations acknowledged by haudenosaunee is resulted from the interdependence that developed among the five nations following to the great law (cousins, 2004: 4). the welfare and interests of society as a whole became a principal consideration. this, in turn, resulted in members of society developing relationships based upon equality, respect, and regard. each person retained a significant measure of such rights, but those rights and privileges never exceeded one’s duties and responsibilities to others (cousins, 2004: 4). furthermore, in haudenosaunee society, the principle of equality is applied in gender elisabeth oseanita pukan 120 relation. women are not considered as less important than men in haudenosunee society. as stated earlier, haudenosaunee women hold special position. they are considered as the progenitors of nation and are the ones who have power to inaugurate male leaders in their community. b. equality between people and the natural world oren lyons did not only promote equality among people. although this oration is spoken in the event of un conference in geneva concerning the issue of discrimination toward indigenous populations of america, oren lyons also talked about the principle of equality of all creations and the rights of the natural world as he said, “our nations who have principles of justice and equality, who have respect for the natural world, on behalf of our mother the earth and all the great elements we come here and we say they too have rights.” (scharding, 2002: 93) lyons said that they – lyons along with all native american delegates, came to represent the natural world, i.e. mother earth and all the great elements. it signifies that there is an obligation among natives american leaders to address environmental issue in the gathering. in the quotation bellow, oren lyons repeated the similar statement. “and it is with this spirit that we come here and we hope that the people and the nations from which we come and to which we will have to return and which we will have to face, whatever they may have in store for our speaking the truth on behalf of people, of the world, of the four-footed, of the winged, of the fish that swim. someone must speak for them.i do not see a delegation for the four-footed. i see no seat for the eagles.” (scharding, 2002: 93) in the last sentence, lyons affirmed that there is no representation for living beings other than human in the conference. it is a metaphor through which he implied that the interest or the welfare of the natural world now have no place in the decision making of human beings. people now forget to think about the consequences of their action to the natural world. they tend to forget their actual place in the universe. the following statement also reflects this inclination. “we forget and we consider ourselves superior, but we are after all a mere part of the creation. and we must continue to understand where we are. and we stand between the mountain and the ant, somewhere and only there, as part and parcel of the creation.” (scharding, 2002, p. 93) oren lyons’ avowed the arrogance of people in the above statement that they assume themselves superior than any other creatures. in fact, according to lyons, human being is actually just a part of a bigger creation. the view that human being is superior to the rest of creations does not fit to haudenosaunee worldview. in their perception, all life is equal, including the birds, animals, things that grow, and things that swim; and it is the creator who presents this reality (lyons, 1991: 203). furthermore, one of haudenosaunee fundamental laws is to treat all elements of natural world with respect and they acknowledge those elements as equal component of their lives on earth (hill, 2004). this concept of equality of all beings does not only exist in haudenosaunee traditions. it is a basic concept believed by native american in general. the communal consciousness of native american communities is extended to and included the natural world in an intimate and mutually reciprocal relationship. members of native american communities connected themselves to the plants, animals, waters, mountains, sun, moon and stars through clan and societal symbolism, ritual, art, and tradition (cajete, 2000, p. 95). this idea of communal consciousness extended to include the natural world is related to native american paradigm that all creations have “spider web” network relationship as explained by cajete (1999, p. x). this form of relationship means that human being is interrelated with other forms of creation, including the animals, plants, and the land. vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 121 human beings indeed have special quality compared to other creations. they have been gifted with life to evolve spiritually through the material experience (cousins, 2004). they have free will which allows them to make choices that release them from acting in a purely instinctual or impulsive manner. being gifted with free will, human beings have a responsibility to use it in a commendable manner (cousins, 2004). those who do, treat all things – including the natural elements, with honor and respect. this concept is reflected in oren lyons’ further utterances when he said that people have been given mind so that they have responsibility to take care the natural world. here is the statement. it is our responsibility, since we have been given the minds to take care of these things. the elements and the animals, and the birds, they live in a state of grace. they are absolute, they can do no wrong. it is only we, the two-legs that can do this. and when we do this to our brothers, our own brothers, then we do the worst in the eyes of the creator.” (scharding, 2002: 93) the last sentence of the quotation above shows again the communal consciousness of native american which include natural elements. in that sentence, lyons referred to the animals as the people’s relatives, i.e. brothers. trees are not just trees for native americans, they were seen as relatives, and so were other species. they were relatives who watched human being all the time to see how human beings were handling the remains of plants and animals. because of this belief, native americans have to show respects for them (martinez, salmon, & nelson, 2008, p. 92). respect and looking at material elements as relation is also reflected in the way lyons referring to the earth. in his oration, he called the earth as “our mother” or “mother earth”. c. the earth as a mother and american continent as turtle island in the oration, oren lyons referred to the america continent as turtle island when he introduced himself and his fellow native americans delegates. he also called the earth as “mother earth”. here is his statement. of the red brothers of the western hemisphere, of the two great turtle islands a certain few of us have been given a short time and a great task to convince you that we too are human. and have rights. our nations who have principles of justice and equality, who have respect for the natural world, on behalf of our mother the earth and all the great elements we come here and we say they too have rights (scharding, 2002: 93). from the quotation, the researcher interpret that two turtle islands signifies north and south american continents as native north americans were joined by native south americans in this 1977 un event. referents of turtle islands to signify america and mother earth to signify the earth show that as native american, oren lyons was still holding on native american myth, specifically haudenosaunee creation story, even when he was speaking in international forum. as has been discussed previously, there was a belief that american continent was formed becausea turtle offers its shell to carry the mud gathered by animals to save the sky women from falling into the water. the turtle vowed to carry the earth above him forever as he swam (johansen & mann, 2000: 89, 90). the myth also told that the daughter of the sky women became mother earth after her death. it was from her grave that plants sustaining human beings’ existence grows (johansen & mann, 2000: 91). referents turtle island and mother earth show that as a haudenosaunee faithkeeper, oren lyons continued to see the american land and the earth through the eyes of tradition. this tradition, though may sound absurd for modern society, has great positive consequences for the environment. this mythmade the haudenosaunee to become constantly conscious of the fact that human being existencein this world is not something that can be taken for granted. the mother earth can be seen as nature which provide for the lives of all living things. it is from the environment that people get the food they elisabeth oseanita pukan 122 eat, the water they drink, and the fresh air they breathe. therefore, people need to pay it back by treating the environment with great care. d. sustainability and concern for future generations oren lyons did not only address the issue of native american rights in his oration. he also addressed the rights of the future generation in the following statement. “the future generations, our children, our grandchildren, and their grandchildren are our concern. that they may have clean water to drink that they may observe our four-footed brothers before they are extinct, that they may enjoy the elements that we are so fortunate to have and that serves us as human beings.”(scharding, 2002: 93) the above quotation demonstrates that native americans have awareness to think about the fate of the upcoming generation. the idea that the future generation may enjoy the natural elements enjoyed by the society today shows that for native americans, the generations to come have equal rights with the present generation. the consciousness about the welfare of the coming generation exists in haudenosaunee culture. in their great law of peace article twenty eight, the peace maker asked every confederate lord to look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations. this concept appears again in the article fifty seven which says that the five nations shall be united completely and enfolded together, united into one head, one body and one mind so that they shall labor, legislate and council together for the interest of future generations (welker, 2014). it shows that since the day of the founding of haudenosaunee confederacy, they were given a duty by the peacemaker to ensure the welfare of future generation. in the oration, oren lyons made further argument related to the rights of the upcoming generations, i.e. their well-being can be attained only if people understand the principle of equality of all life. here is the statement. “and not only human beings, but all life is equal. the equality of our life is what you must understand and the principle by which you must continue on behalf of the future of this world.economics and technology may assist you, but they will also destroy you if you do not use the principles of equality. profit and loss will mean nothing to your future generations.”(scharding, 2002: 93) the essence of the above statement is the importance of sustainability for the future of the world, for future generations. this sustainability can only be achieved if people use the principle of equality. economics and technology mentioned by oren lyons are inseparable part of our society today which is actually prone to natural exploitation. however, according to lyons, this natural exploitation will not happen if people have respect for the natural world and acknowledge that all forms of life are equal. this respect and understanding of equality of all forms of life will not only bring harmony between people and the natural world for the time being, but also for the future. on the contrary, lyons argued that economic law of profit and loss will mean nothing to future generations. if present generation today is focusing on gaining as huge profit as possible by exploiting natural resources with the help of technology, then the loss will be suffered by the coming generation. the value of sustainability and concern for future generation shared by oren lyons in this oration is actually a warning to the audience. it is a warning so that people will not only be obsessed by the economic law of profit and lost. it is a warning so that technology will not mindlessly be used to outsource the natural world without thinking about the impact that will be suffered by the coming generation. vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 123 e. the power of the creator and the natural law another statement containing indigenous value found in oren lyons’ oration is that power is not manifested in the human being, but in the creator. here is the quotation. “power is not manifesting in the human being. true power is in the creator. if we continue to ignore the message by which we exist and we continue to destroy the source of our lives then our children will suffer.” (scharding, 2002: 93) within the statement, there are two connected ideas, i.e. belief in the power of the creator and the natural law. the place of power in the creator said by lyons denotes the existence of theism in haudenosaunee. they believed that all things have been placed here through the will or direction of the creator or the master of life. consequently, all things have a distinct purpose and are of equal value, although they may have different forms and functions (cousins, 2004). when oren lyons said that power is not manifesting in the human being, he is trying to warn the audience that the power they seem to have over the natural world is actually the creator’s, thus, they have to follow the law, the natural law, in exercising that power. natural law is also a powerful influence in traditional haudenosaunee understanding. those who chose to ignore it, or toil against it, often suffered grave repercussions (cousins, 2004). this principle is reflected in the later sentence of the above quotation. oren lyons said that people cannot excessively exploit the natural resource – or in his language: destroys the source of life, as it denies the equality of all living things created by the creator, otherwise their children will suffer. this causal connection of destroying the source of live and the suffering of the children is one example of the working mechanism of natural law believed by haudenosaunee. oren lyons’ sequential statement about the power of the creator and natural law shows that there is close relation among the two things. the creator governed the universe through the natural law. furthermore, natural law can function as a good control for human being that they will carefully outsource the natural world. f. unity importance of unity of spirit and of brotherhood among nations is also one of the indigenous knowledge shared by oren lyons in his oration. union such as united nations is not something new for the haudenosaunee. hundred years before the formation of united nations, onondaga nation, mohawk nation, seneca nation, cayuga nation, and oneida nation unified themselves under a confederacy. in this next quotation, oren lyons put this idea. “there should be brotherhood, and the haudennosaunee, six nations, the iroquois, who were here fifty-three years ago to say the very same thing, the unity of spirit, of brotherhood. united nations is nothing new to us. our confederacy is a thousand years old. the representation of the people is nothing new to us because that is whom we represent.” (scharding, 2002, p. 93) lyons chose the term unity of spirit and of brotherhood in the oration, instead of simply union. haudenosaunee has a very long experience with this kind of unification as lyons said that their confederacy is thousands years old of age. the five, later six, nations, did not only unite themselves in a union, but they also live under the same spiritual guidance: the great law of peace cited by the peacemaker who unite them. furthermore, based on this great law of peace, each nations were divided into interlocking clan system, thus they can find members of their same clan (perceived as their brother and sisters) in other haudenosaunee nations. these great law of peace and interlocking clan system are means to unify the six nations of haudenosaunee confederacy in the spirit and in the brotherhood. this kind of union has been proven to give positive effect for the haudenosaunee. it did not only bring peace to the six nations, but it had made them formidable for their neighboring nations, and thus it gave them power and authority. elisabeth oseanita pukan 124 lyons pointed out the importance of unity in spirit and in brotherhood among united nations countries so that un council can have the same power and authority to solve various problems faced by the world. the last sentence of the quotation is about representation of people within the union. oren lyons said that representation of people in un is not something new; as in haudenosaunee governmental system, they have been using the scheme of people representation since the day of the founding of confederacy. those are the six indigenous knowledge identified in oren lyons oration “where is the eagle seat?”. conclusion looking at the indigenous knowledge identified, the researcher found that haudenosaunee indigenous knowledge is indeed complex as it confirms the holistic nature of indigenous knowledge. it does not separate the natural and the spiritual and it does not separate human kinds and other life forms. haudenosaunee knowledge which is related to the natural world such as natural law and sustainability is interrelated to the knowledge of spirituality – as the haudenosaunee believe that the natural world is imbued with spiritual force. they are also interrelated with the haudenosaunee knowledge on human relations. paradigm of interdependence or the web of life which views that every entity in this world is connected in reciprocal relationship led to the vision that every human is created equal; and belief that all elements in the natural world is created equal, including human, led to the command that human beings must consider the natural world in their decision making. furthermore, haudenosaunee indigenous knowledge on spirituality governs the relation between human beings and the creator and also governs the relation between human beings with other creation. haudenosaunee indigenous knowledge which speaks about human relations, which is visible in oren lyons oration, emphasize the concept of equality and justice. this knowledge on human relations also put forward the importance of peace, harmony, and reconciliation among peoples. with the existence of peace and harmony among people, unity will be established. unity is also emphasized in the oration. unity among people is needed to address various problems which transcend national boundaries. haudenosaunee knowledge which speaks about nature emphasizes the existence of natural law. within this law, human being must maintain the harmony of the relationship of all being. they cannot act carelessly in outsourcing the natural world, otherwise they will suffer. haudenosaunee indigenous knowledge on natural law was put forward to promote sustainable lifestyle to save the world from continues environmental degradation. haudenosaunee indigenous knowledge also speaks about the future generation. in haudenosaunee culture, the generation yet unborn has a special place. in every consideration, the haudenosaunee have to consider the impact of their decision on the future generation. the future generation, for haudenosaunee means the continuation of their existence. the message concerning the future generation was put forward to remind the audience about the importance of sustainable lifestyle so that the future generation can also enjoy the natural resource enjoyed by their ancestors now. it is important to think of the fate of the future generation, as their existence means the continuation of human being as a species. references cajete, gregory. native science natural laws of interdependence. santa fee, new mexico: clear light publisher, 2000. print. cousins, michael. “aboriginal justice: a haudenosaunee approach.” native law centre vol. 9, no. 1. 2004: 4. print. vol. 16 no. 2 – october 2016 125 dorairaj, a. joseph. “paul ricoeur's hermeneutics of the text.” indian philosophical quarterly xxvii no. 4. 2000: 403-410. print. ghasemi, a., taghinejad, m., kabiri, a., imani, m. “ ricoeur’s theory of interpretation: a method for understanding text (course text).” world applied sciences journal 15, 2011: 1623-1629. 2011. print. gonyea, ray. onondaga portrait of native people (pp. 11-32). new york: syracuse university press, 1986. print. graymont, barbara. the iroquois indians of north america. philadelphia: chelsea house publishers, 2005. print. “great law of peace”. haudenosaunee iroquois confederacy.web. 22, 2015< http://haudenosaunee.ca/5.html> harris, alexandra. & johnson, tim. haudenosaunee guide for educators . new york: national museum of the american indian, smithsonian institution, 2009. print. hart, michael. “indigenous worldviews, knowledge, and research: the development of an indigenous research paradigm.” journal of indigenous voices in social work, 2010:1-16. print. hill, sidney. (2004). “neighbors of the onondaga nation, working in solidarity with the onondaga nation.” peacecouncil.net 2004. web. december 17, 2014. hudelson, p.m. “culture and quality: an anthropological perspective. ”oxfordjournals.org web. march 24, 2015. johansson, b. e. & mann, b. a. encyclopedia of the haudenosaunee. westport: greenwood publishing, 2000. print. johnson, michael. tribes of the iroquois confederacy. oxford, uk: osprey publishing, 2003. print. lopez, b. & lyons, oren. “the leadership imperatives: an interview with oren lyons.” manoa, vol. 19, no. 2, maps of reconciliation: literature and the ethical imagination, 2001. print. lyons, oren. “an iroquoian perspective.” learning to listen to the land. ed. w. b. willers. washington d.c.: island press, 1991 p. 203. print. nakashima, douglas., & rou´e, marie. “indigenous knowledge, peoples and sustainable practice.” volume 5, social and economic dimensions of global environmental change, 2002: 314–324. print. ricoeur, paul. interpretation theory: discourse and the surplus of meaning. fort worth, texas: the texas christian university, 1976. print. roland, jon. “constitution of the iroquois nations: the great binding law, gayanashagowa.” constitution.org october 18, 1998. web. november 18, 2014. scharding, michael. green book of meditations volume 4: the ill ad and the odd essay. northfield, minnesota: drynemetum press, 2002. print. “values”. haudenosaunee confederacy. web.november 18, 2014< http://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy .com/values.html> vien, john. “teaching and learning for a sustainable future.” unesco.org. 2010. web. february 19, 2015. welker, glenn.“iroquois constitution”. indigenouspeople.net. web. may 26, 2014. page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4 page 5 pheno vol 16 2.pdf (3) artikel 1 putu (arina) ed-2 (4) artikel 2 indri (arina) ed-1 (5) artikel 3 ose (hir) ed-2 (6) artikel 4 alvian & anna (arina) ed-2 (7) artikel 5 eilen & hir (hir) ed-2 (8) artikel 6 elisabeth ratih & ni luh (hir) ed-2 (9) artikel 7 munthe & ria (arina) ed-2 (10) artikel 8 rosa vania & elisa (hir) ed-2 (11) artikel 9 pramesthi & mul (hir) ed-2 (13) index vol 16 no 2 oktober 2016-1 (14) contributor's notes-1 481 vol. 22 no. 2, october 2022, pp. 481 – 489 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i2.5121 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. cinderella formula: the romance begins hirmawan wijanarka hir101@usd.ac.id english letters department, universitas sanata dharma, indonesia abstract article information as a type of formula fiction, a romance applies a fixed pattern of plot development, including the ending, which is always a happy one: celebrating the unification of the hero and heroine who previously struggled very hard against all obstacles threatening their mutual love. however, it does not mean that discussing the plot of romances is of no use. on the contrary, it is interesting to see how romance writers can create so many possibilities in the structure of the so-called formulaic plot. this study attempts to observe the benefit of characterization in the creation of these various structures of plot development. for this purpose, this study sets up two objectives. firstly, the study observes the characterization of the hero and heroine as well as the construction of the plots. secondly, the study points out the significance of characterization in driving the development of the plots. in the light of cawelty's (1977) perspectives on literary formula and radway's (1991) ideas about romance, this study concludes that the choice (i.e., the characterization) of "the hero and heroine" proves to be playing an essential role in the plot development. the gaps set between the hero and the heroine make it possible for the writers to develop various complicated plots, focusing on their relationship. initially, it seems hard to match and unite the hero and the heroine in most romances. this fact, however, is the most crucial part of a romance. the struggles needed to overcome their problems will elicit more emotional conflicts and, thus, create more romantic suspense. the feeling of inferiority, jealousy, fear of losing the partner, and uncertainty about a deeper relationship is likely to occupy the heroine's (and sometimes the hero's) mind. and when they finally successfully overcome these problems, they will feel how great and strong their love is. keywords: formula fiction, romance, mills and boon received: 31 august 2022 revised: 14 september 2022 accepted: 26 september 2022 introduction a romance is said to be a universal story because the experiences presented in its story are usually the experiences and the dreams most people see in real life. generally understood, a romance is a story of a love relationship between a man and a woman that ends in lasting happiness. harmon and holman add that a romance usually includes https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:hir101@usd.ac.id journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) hirmawan wijanarka 482 "passionate love" (2003, p. 443). its plot centers on the complicated problems of love and on how the main characters solve these problems. who is never in love? and who does not want to have a love relationship as portrayed in romances? in general, this type of story does not have much variation in its plot structure. the development pattern is always the same, whatever the intrigue and the main characters are. because of the "monotonous" structure of the story, a romance is classified as one type of formula literature whose characteristics are, among others: (1) having certain standard conventions which establish a common ground both for the writer and the audience, and (2) putting forward the goals of escape and entertainment. besides romance, formula literature includes five other genres: detective story, adventure, mystery, melodrama, and alien beings. cawelty (1976, p. 41) calls a romance the feminine version of an adventure story. while an adventure story focuses on the hero's heroic and triumphant action, a romance generally focuses on the heroine's persevering struggle, which ends in happiness. this happy ending is another characteristic of a romance. all romances provide the readers with the heroines' good and appropriate decisions, which lead to happy endings (or at least a suggestion that there will be a happy ending). the usual outcome of the love relationship between the heroine and the hero is a lasting and permanent marriage. the next characteristic of a romance is "romantic suspense" (radway, 1991, p. 65). radway points out that there is always a point in a romance plot where the heroine and her lover have a" love-hate" relationship. this situation will create suspense which will lead the story into complication. radway (1991, p. 134) presents the following summary of the thirteen stages of an ideal romance: 1. the heroine's social identity is destroyed 2. the heroine reacts antagonistically to an "aristocratic" male. 3. the aristocratic male responds ambiguously to the heroine. 4. the heroine interprets the hero's behavior as evidence of purely sexual interest in her. 5. the heroine responds to the hero's behavior with anger and coldness. 6. the hero retaliates by punishing the heroine. 7. the heroine and the hero are physically and/or emotionally separated. 8. the hero treats the heroine tenderly. 9. the heroine responds warmly to the hero's act of tenderness. 10. the heroine reinterprets the hero's ambiguous behavior as the product of the previous hurt. 11. the hero proposes/openly declares his love for/demonstrates his unwavering commitment to the heroine with a supreme act of tenderness. 12. the heroine responds sexually and emotionally. 13. the heroine's identity is restored although the formula of romances has generally been the same from time to time, it is interesting to see that the readers' response is changing. comparing the romance readers' response in 1980 and that in 2016, fekete (2022) states that unlike the group of women reading in 1980, the group of 2016 readers enjoyed stories infused with much explicit description of sexual acts, heroines with clear sexual desires, and independent heroines. changes in sex's meaning in romance novels evince an important shift in the nature of ideal intimacy (p.21). khairiah a. rahman (2013) studied some asian romance movies, which often portrayed behaviors against society's moral codes, such as obeying authority, adhering to cultural norms, and putting society before self. however, following the formula of romance, most of the problems are, in the end, resolved. this fact emphasizes the celebration of happy or agreeable endings, or in radway's terms, "the restoration of the hero or heroine's identity." journal of language and literature vol. 22 no.2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 483 rahman gives an example of the malay romance movie cun (attraction) that captures two contrasting lifestyles: the paddy fields of a village against the kuala lumpur twin towers. the story tells about a lead female who suffers an emotional breakdown when her fiancé, the country's leading actor, is caught on camera in a scandalous affair with an aspiring new starlet. the reporter escapes to the village and falls in love with a land-rich farmer who practices eco-friendly agriculture. what may be viewed as scandalous to traditional practice is the marriage proposal itself, as the girl returns to the village to propose to her man. traditionally, marriage is a collective process initiated by the man and involving the wider social group. in this case, though, the girl initiates the ceremony without her family (rahman, 2013, p. 112). the happy ending can be seen in the fact that the movie, in the end, reconciles the two opposing lifestyles of the city and country, although the girl's behavior to propose the village farmer, however, gained social sanction. in conclusion, rahman states that in asian romance movies, "scandals are portrayed to highlight a deviance from the norm and the movies work to find a resolution as they bring back the familiar and accepted, acknowledging new perspectives without compromising social acceptance" (2103, p. 119). thus, romance keeps promising agreeable endings for whatever problems. in our wide-world web literature today, the plot of romance can even be seen in video games, a new narrative media that invites a closer study. according to saito (2021), "romance games in japan, which began as text-based adventure games and are today known as bish¯ojo games and otome games, form a powerful textual corpus for literary and media studies. they adopt conventional literary narrative strategies and explore new narrative forms formulated by an interface with computer-generated texts and audiovisual fetishism, thereby challenging the assumptions about the modern textual values of storytelling" (2021, p.1). in terms of the plot formula, romance games apply the same patterns. the complexity of the interaction between the hero and heroine contributes to the intensity of their love relationship. in bish¯ojo (for men), the hero is the player, and the heroine is the woman character in the game; in otome (for women), the heroine is the player, and the hero is the man character in the game. although one of the main characters in these video games is the player (either the heroine or the hero), interestingly, they tend to show a general formulaic plot and paradigm of romance. while otome games "show tendencies to sustain male-centric gender codes and historical settings," men's romance games [bish¯ojo], despite academic discussions of these games as paramount to postmodern culture, tend toward the reaffirmation of modern perceptions of romantic love as free will and thereby revalidates the illusion of gaining authorial control over the text. facing the parallel plots and looped gameplay, the player learns to overcome divergences by finding the sole love object and thereby acknowledging one's patriarchal power of choice (saito, 2021, p. 16) neisya and yanti (2019) conducted a similar study about formulaic plots. they observed five soccer-themed movies, particularly the convention (formula) found in those movies and the invention that makes them different from one another. neisya and yanti found "a formula" that makes up the plot in the movies under study: the introduction of the main character, the main character's initiative to solve problems, the problem that is slightly solved, the suspense of success, the increasingly complex problem in the climax, and the happy ending (2019, p. 393). the second finding of their study is about the invention that each of the movies showed. according to the research, what makes one movie different from the other is that each movie combines the theme of soccer with its journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) hirmawan wijanarka 484 prevalent culture (including local wisdom). this is meant to create familiarity and an emotional bond with the target audience. garuda di dadaku relates the football issue to the complexity of indonesian educational culture: shaolin soccer puts forward the image of a china kung fu master; bend it like beckham elevates the life of indian immigrants living in london; barefoot dreams invites the audience to get to know the human side of a korean who helped the local community in papua new guinea to achieve their dreams; and air bud 3: world pup presents a fantasy of a smart pet named buddy (2019, p. 400). this study essentially examines the convention and invention in the formulaic romance plot, focusing on the hero and heroine. it particularly observes two problems: (1) the starting point of the plot of romances, i.e., the choice of the hero and heroine and their characterization, and (2) the significance of the characterization in the development of the formulaic plot. methodology grounding the study on cawelty's (1977) theory of literary formula and radway's (1991) formula of romance, this study examines ten selected romances published by mills and boon and harlequin. they are: 1. across the lagoon (1974, by roumelia lane), 2. young tracy (1973, by rosalind brett), 3. an apple from eve (1981, by betty neels), 4. one of the boys (1981, by janet dailey), 5. escape to love (1982, by claudia jameson), 6. man in charge (1973, by lilian peake), 7. the man at la valaise (1974, bu mary wibberley), 8. falcon's prey (1981, by penny jordan), 9. the silken cage (1981, by rebecca stratton), and 10. the sleeping fire (1982, by daphne clair). the study first examines the characterization of the hero and heroine (the main characters). secondly, the study observes how the characterization contributes to the complexity of the plot structure, which later makes the plot different from other romances. the cinderella formula according to cawelty, a romantic effect of a love affair can be achieved when the two lovers can overcome social and psychological barriers (1976, p. 43). therefore, it is crucial to set the major characters (the hero and heroine) in such a situation. one favorite, ever-green formula is that of a simple, ordinary girl who falls in love with a rich or aristocratic man, just like the story of cinderella and her prince. other variations might include a love relationship between a young working girl and a rich man, or between a young simple-minded, innocent ordinary girl and a mature and experienced man. such circumstances will provide more possibilities for romantic effects rather than a love relationship between two lovers of equal situations. the term "cinderella formula" has its origin in the story of cinderella, in which the heroine (cinderella) finds an unbelievably romantic love after a long, sad, and hard life she had to go through in her stepmother and stepsisters' house. cinderella's story is barely believable, but it is the dream of every woman. the possibility of this dream coming true is what romances try to convey to their readers. in cawelty's opinion, the romantic and dream-like love story between cinderella and her prince would provide not only many problems in its development but also a satisfactory and agreeable happy ending. the fact that the prince prefers to break social conventions about the ideal marriage (which should be between a prince and a princess) provides a path for the plot to produce a very romantic and moving atmosphere. besides, the prince, too, disregards his own psychological burden of being looked down by other members of the royal family who expect a lovely princess to be his spouse. journal of language and literature vol. 22 no.2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 485 such a situation gives the romance a good starting point and a good atmosphere to draw the readers' attention and, later, to bring the readers away from the burdensome life, i.e., to escape temporarily from daily life's problems. the hero and heroine's characterization in the romances in across the lagoon by roumelia lane (1976), carol lindley, a young woman whose job is to accompany a fifteen-year-old girl (stephanie) on a long summer vacation in italy, cannot escape her gradual love with stephanie's uncle, gray barrett, who is carol's employer. carol is employed to take care of stephanie's stay in italy because gray will be very busy. carol, the heroine, is a simple, "immature" twenty-year-old, small-city girl who practically has little experience. as a sales assistant selling lampshades, her circle has always been in the neighborhood. she had always thought that she would be content to be a sales assistant for as long as she needed to work. admittedly it hadn't exactly been a job of her own choosing. at sixteen, she had no idea what she wanted to do. at a loss, her mother had taken her along for an interview with the careers advice officer at school…... she had been selling lampshades ever since; tall ones, short ones, flowered ones, plain ones. on rainy days and sunny days she had greeted the customers with a smile and wandered with them while they pondered over bright puce fringes, figured parchment and tinkling chandeliers (lane, 1976, p. 5). dreaming of getting a job out of the ordinary, she took the chance to leave her hometown when she saw a vacancy in a newspaper: "wanted, responsible person to supervise fifteen-year-old schoolgirl on venetian riviera for the duration of summer vacation. ring lyndhurst 34044." (lane, 1976, p. 7). on the other hand, gray barrett, the hero, is a thirty-five mature, experienced, successful businessman. he is so well-off that money is not really a matter for him. compared to carol, gray is just exactly the opposite. the vista was lost on the man at the desk, presumably gray barrett, who sat, pen in hand, frowning over papers before him. because he didn't look up, carol felt obliged to move into the centre of the room if only to attract his attention. he went on scribbling, casting his glance up only for a second to flick it over her with a curt, 'miss lindley, i take it?' (lane, 1976, p.9). the wide gap between them creates an awkward situation in that communication seems to be unnatural for them, especially for carol. she cannot express her feeling freely. in carol's eyes, gray barret is an arrogant and cynical person, and what is more, he is so ignorant of her presence. she couldn't get over the colossal conceit of the man. without giving her time to open her mouth at her interview he had turned her down flat for the job. now when he couldn't get anyone else and he was stuck he thought all he ha to do was snap his fingers ad she would come running (lane, 1974, p. 22). as the story unfolds, carol, too, gradually adores gray barret. unfortunately, the gap between the two is so wide that what carol can do is keep her love for gray only in her own heart. "carol had to admit that she didn't notice the younger girl much. her gaze was usually with gray; watching him when he seemed about to smile, or when he strolled about somewhere nearby" (lane, 1974, p. 146). a slight variation can be observed in rosaline brett's young tracy. the cinderella of this romance(a young, simple, and innocent maggie) is in love with her prince, an attractive, mature, and experienced nicholas heward or nick. the gap between the heroine and the hero is not only in terms of social status but also in maturity and experiences, particularly those with women. this is what maggie thinks about nick after nick kisses her on one occasion. for nick, it is just an ordinary kiss that he usually has with his girlfriends. however, for maggie, journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) hirmawan wijanarka 486 …. the incident had been disquieting, to say the least. she, who usually slept only a moment after her head reached the pillow, had lain awake in bed, at first furious and then querulous. what outsize conceit the man had! what imperviousness! what a darn, bulldozing sort of nerve! (brett, 1973, p. 70). maggie's anxiety about her feeling of love for nick becomes complicated when she realizes that nick considers her no more than just a lovely little girl. this situation creates a lovehate relationship between them. and it grows worse when she feels jealous after knowing that nick has a relationship with a more mature girl of his level. a closer version of the original cinderella story is the story of felicia and her prince in falcon's prey by penny jordan. felicia is just a typically ordinary english girl of no particular background, and she is going to marry a real prince from kuwait, faizal, a man who is immensely wealthy and cultured. nowadays, faisal's family no longer roamed the desert, for faisal's maternal grandfather had founded a merchant bank at the time that oil was first discovered in kuwait, and now the bank had offices in new york and london, ruling a financial empire so vast and complex that felicia's head spun whenever faisal tried to explain its workings to her (jordan, 1981, p. 9). an additional gap between them is, of course, their cultural background. she is really overwhelmed when knowing that several days before this kuwaiti prince does propose to her, and felicia, a common london girl, says "yes." even now she could hardly believe that someone actually loved her. after all, she reflected humbly, there was nothing special about her, thousands of girls had creamy skin and red-gold hair, and thousands more had slender, elegant bodies; she was nothing out of the ordinary (jordan, 1981, pp. 7-8). now she clearly realizes that all of this means nothing else but problems. and from this point on, their relationship grows more and more complicated. what felicia worries about turns real when the first problem occurs. faisal's uncle, sheik raschid al hamid al sahab, accuses felicia of being an unprincipled gold-digger, a woman whose intention is to get faisal's money. felicia's struggle grows harder and harder. the silken cage (rebecca stratton) presents a different variation of the cinderella formula. rather than changing the setting and the circumstances around cinderella and the prince, rebecca stratton creates different characteristics for both cinderella (troy darrell) and the prince (kadir ben raschid). kadir ben raschid is not a handsome and kindhearted wealthy man, but instead, a barbaric wealthy man. he is a man whose words must be done, whose orders must be executed and not to be challenged. and, indeed, nobody dares to argue against his words. troy, playing the role of cinderella, has different traits. while the real cinderella is a very patient and submissive woman, troy darrell is full of curiosity in almost everything and is always eager to do anything to satisfy her curiosity. there is also a "wild" spirit inside troy. these traits of troy can be seen when she bravely goes to morocco to look for her "missing" brother, peter darrell. "do you mean that you have definite information concerning his whereabouts?" troy shook her head, her curiosity showing itself in a small frown as she regarded him. "not definite information, no, but i do know that a man drove peter to jelhabu dhai. and no matter how long it takes me, or what i have to do to get there, i'll get to the wretched place too, even if i have to walk every inch of the ways" (stratton, 1981, p. 35). the fact that peter darrell is "missing" along with the sheik's sister, ayesha, gives way to the complication of the story. troy and kadir ben raschid, an ordinary plain, travelling woman and a sheik, a very liberal individual and a religion-oriented leader, are journal of language and literature vol. 22 no.2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 487 involved in a love-hate relationship. in lilian peake's man in charge, the love relationship between the heroine (juliet bourne) and the hero (drew major) begins with the "hate" relationship. juliet bourne is delighted to work in a big famous department store, and she really enjoys being in charge of the new trendy boutique. however, her new ideas for the boutique prove to lead her to continual conflicts with the general manager of the department store, drew major, who seems to be always on the opposing side. moreover, he is very cynical towards women in general and towards her in particular. possibly, it is the gap in their status that gives reasons for dane to behave that way. here is one of their daily conflicts: "did you get permission to put up these works of art?" no, mr major." "not from the general manager? not even from the supervisor of this section?" "no, mr major." "then you will kindly take them down and return them where they belong—in your portfolio of similar artistic masterpieces at home" (peake, 1973, pp. 33-34). what juliet does not realize is that as she is getting tired and sick of this man, a growing love for him is developing in her heart. in the end, her love grows so strong that she finds it too hard to fight against it. "no! she cried. "you can't kiss me. you can't kiss a thief! that's what you call me, isn't it? to you i'm a thief." she was twisting her face right and left away from his mouth (peake, 1973, p. 141). in the last comparison, it is very interesting to see a similar relationship between sacha donnelly and nikolai torlenkov. trying to forget her boyfriend, sacha goes to a cottage (valaise cottage) in a remote village with the hope of living alone in an isolated neighborhood. she thinks she can enjoy herself there, without anybody else disturbing her. unfortunately, arriving at the place, she learns that somebody, tor, is also going to stay at the same cottage. sacha, then, decides to leave the cottage soon. for a certain secret reason, tor cannot let sacha leave the cottage, so in a sense, sacha becomes his "prisoner." and like juliet in man in charge, sacha begins her relationship with tor with a feeling of dislike. "please," she said suddenly. "please tell me why you are keeping me here? i've done nothing—i just came here for holiday." and tears sprang to her eyes. they were partly caused by the very hot tea she had just swallowed, but he wouldn't know that, and it might help…… ( wibberley, 1974, p. 19). strangely enough, being tor's prisoner is not at all a bad experience. in her heart, sacha even feels an irresistibly growing love, and she begins to feel the pleasure of being tor's prisoner. the gap between them is not financial or intellectual. instead, it is the blind spot between them that creates romantic suspense. sacha does not know anything about tor, but she feels so close to tor. when she finally knows everything about tor, she does not want to be separated from him. "it's lovely, thank you, tor," she breathed. she mustn't cry. she mustn't. she smiled at him, and the look in his eyes sent the blood rushing to her face, so that she had to look quickly down at the paperweight (wibberley, 1974, p. 129). then everything goes as expected: sacha and tor are in love, and happiness comes to them. conclusion the gaps set between the heroes and the heroines indeed make it possible for the writers to develop complicated plots, focusing on the relationship between the respective pairs. as seen in the table above, the gaps can be classified into three: 1. the gaps in experience and maturity (young tracy, across the lagoon, the man at la valaise), 2. the gaps in the social status (escape to love, journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) hirmawan wijanarka 488 falcon prey, and the silken cage), and 3. the gaps in the professional status (the sleeping fire, an apple from eve, one of the boys, man in charge). at the beginning of the story, it seems hard to match the hero and the heroine. this, however, is the most crucial part of a romance. the struggles needed to overcome their problems will elicit more emotional conflicts and, thus, create more romantic suspense (including love-hate relationships). inferiority, jealousy, fear of losing the partner, and uncertainty about a deeper relationship are likely to occupy the heroine's (and sometimes the hero's) mind. and when finally they are successful in overcoming these problems, they will feel how great and strong their love is. these emotional and social conflicts or problems are the results of the gap (which is provided by the cinderella formula) between them. since romance is a genre of formula literature, the solution to the problems will just be the same: a satisfactory happy ending, whatever the variations of the development are. this, in fact, emphasizes one thing: that the problems and the process of solving them are more important than the ending of the story. consequently, this entails a further feature: the importance of establishing a starting point for the plot. the cinderella formula proves to be a very effective way to create a good starting point for the plot, i.e., by providing gaps to be cultivated further throughout the story. the summary of the heroes and heroines in the ten romances can be seen in the following table: table 1. summary of the heroes and heroines title the heroine the hero young tracy a store attendant in a small village an experienced housing developer across the lagoon a child keeper her employer the man at la valaise an ordinary simple girl an experienced russian spy escape to love an ordinary london girl a wealthy spanish aristocrat falcon prey an ordinary young girl an arab aristocrat/sheik the silken cage an ordinary, adventurous girl a morroco sheik the sleeping fire an editorial staff a manager of the magazine, palmer's boss. an apple from eve a nurse an experienced doctor, her employer one of the boys a camera woman a producer of tv shows man in charge a boutique attendant in a large department store an owner and manager of the department store references brett, r. (1973) young tracy. london: mills & boon limited. cawelty, j.g (1976). adventure, mystery, and romance: formula stories as art and popular culture. chicago: university of chicago press. clair, d. (1982). the sleeping fire. london: mills & boon limited. dailey. j. (1981). one of the boys. london: mills & boon limited. fekete, m. (2022). confluent love and the evolution of ideal intimacy: romance reading in 1980 and 2016. journal of popular romance studies. voll 11. 1-30. retrieved from: https://www.jprstudies.org/2022/05/co https://www.jprstudies.org/2022/05/confluent-love-and-the-evolution-of-ideal-intimacy-romance-reading-in-1980-and-2016/ journal of language and literature vol. 22 no.2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 489 nfluent-love-and-the-evolution-of-idealintimacy-romance-reading-in-1980-and2016/ harmon, w. & holman, h. (2003) a handbook to literature. upper saddle river: prentice hall. jameson, c. (1982). escape to love. london: mills & boon limited. jordan, p. (1981). falcon's prey. london: mills & boon limited. lane, r. (1974). across the lagoon. london: mills & boon limited. neels, b. (1981). an apple from eve. london: mills & boon limited. neisya & yanti, c.h. (2019). formula analysis of soccer themed movies: a study of convention in popular literature. english community journal. 3 (2). 393–401. retrieved from: https://jurnal.umpalembang.ac.id/englishcommunity/art icle/view/2253 radway, j. (1991) reading the romance. chapel hill: the university of north carolina press. rahman, k. (2013). life iimitating art: asian romance movies as a social morror. pacific journalism review. 19 (2), 107-121. htpps://doi.org/10.24135/pjr.v19i2.2 20 peake, l. (1973). man in charge. london: mills & boon limited, 1973. saito, k. (2021). from novels to video games: romantic love and narrative form in japanese visual novels and romance adventure games. arts. 10 (3), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts100300 42 stratton, r. (1981). the silken cage. london: mills & boon limited. wibberley, m. (1974). the man at la valaise. london: mills & boon limited. https://www.jprstudies.org/2022/05/confluent-love-and-the-evolution-of-ideal-intimacy-romance-reading-in-1980-and-2016/ https://www.jprstudies.org/2022/05/confluent-love-and-the-evolution-of-ideal-intimacy-romance-reading-in-1980-and-2016/ https://www.jprstudies.org/2022/05/confluent-love-and-the-evolution-of-ideal-intimacy-romance-reading-in-1980-and-2016/ https://doi.org/10.3390/arts10030042 https://doi.org/10.3390/arts10030042 224 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 224 – 233 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.5533 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. uap values reflected in selected covid-19 themed digital literature for children and young adults catharina brameswari1, almira ghassani shabrina romala1, nathaniel alvino risa prima2, theresia enny anggraini1 catharinabrameswari@usd.ac.id 1english letters department, universitas sanata dharma, indonesia 2department of literature, faculty of humanities, universitas indonesia, indonesia abstract article information digital literature for children and young adults (lcya) reveals children and young adults’ experiences in the real world from their perspectives. it also portrays that most children and young adults face complex and enormous challenges in this digital world to find their true selves, potentials, and future, particularly during this covid-19 pandemic. the goal of this lcya is in line with jesuit’s universal apostolic preferences (uap), which “commit to promoting a healthy and safe environment for children and young people so that they can develop their full potential as human beings.” therefore, this research scrutinizes universal apostolic preferences (uap) values reflected in selected covid-19-themed digital literature for children and young adults (lcya). importantly, digital literature is a garden of eden for digital natives, gen-z, and digital readers where they can access literary texts from their smartphones, tablet, and laptop. these issues are essential to be discussed because children and young adults are the future generations, the future world, and future humanity. this pandemic should be seen from a different perspective, for this condition has encouraged us to take care of ourselves and others, especially children and young adults. importantly, those digital works are also reminders that children’s and young adults’ energy and spirit can bring love and changes to our planet. this research attempts to develop our empathy in understanding the loneliness, misery, and suffering of others during this difficult time. digital literature and literature for children and young adults (lcya) discourses are suitable for use since this research uses digital short stories highlighting children and young adults’ lives during the covid-19 pandemic. keywords: uap; covid-19 pandemic; digital literature; lcya received: 15 december 2022 revised: 21 march 2023 accepted: 24 march 2023 https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 225 introduction literature is the reflection and illustration of our society and all events which exist in real life. it mirrors the interaction between men and culture and the relationship between men and nature. through the lens of the writer, the reader can see the real problems which happened around them. one of those is the issue of the covid-19 pandemic. since march 2020, we have been forced to stay inside our house and limit our contact with others. the covid-19 pandemic has changed people’s lives in many aspects, and there is no clue for how long this will last. this global situation has forced many children and young adults to discontinue their studies due to economic and health problems. on the other hand, they also must adopt new habits during the quarantine. despite these new restrictions, digital literature has thrived during this time (wright, 2022). digital literature, also known as electronic literature, is a literary genre created digitally and made to be read and accessed digitally. it refers to works that are ‘native to the digital environment’ (rettberg, 2019). in this sense, digital literature is distinguished from works that are simply digitally disseminated (for example, e-books) in that they require a computer/code to exist, and cannot be represented by traditional print (wright, 2022). hayles (2007) underlines that printed literature that is transformed into a digital version is not an example of electronic literature. many people think that electronic literature is the same as e-book. fundamentally, e-book is the electronic form of printed literary work, while electronic literature is the form of the creative process through digital media. thus, digital literature is different from various literary works because it can juxtapose digital elements like photos, music, and videos with text. those aspects will create a new reading experience, which is exciting and interactive for the readers. snyder (1996) explains that “hypertext works do not have linearity. it means that a digital work does not have a beginning, middle, and end like the printed version”. on the other hand, the readers may choose a different path, flow, and plot. thus, different readers will have different reading experiences though they read the same literary work. moreover, koskimaa (2000) states that digital literature is a “digitally born” literary artifact written for digital media. wardripfruin (2010) defines digital literature as a literary work that required digital assistance from computers, laptops, cell phones, or tablets. simanowski (2010) adds that digital work cannot be created easily by using a computer. it needs unique computation ability for coding and building links for web pages. concerning the covid-19 pandemic that has changed all aspects of human life, the influence of technology has transformed us into a modern social group that always gets information and communicates virtually. during this situation, digital and social media platforms like facebook, twitter, or instagram can help people to meet virtually. notably, the covid-19 pandemic also brings more opportunities for both digital authors and readers. those digital platforms mentioned above can be the authors’ place to write and publish their works without any limitations. also, they do not need to worry about paying the printing cost for their books. due to those benefits, readers can easily access their works from various ages whenever connected to the internet. moreover, digital readers will not be charged by mostly online sources to read digital literature works extensively. thus, children and young adults may find their favorite reading texts during their free time. the researchers chose children and young adults as the focus of this research because most of them face complex and enormous challenges in this digital world to find their true selves, potentials, and future. this focus is in line with jesuit’s universal apostolic preferences (uap), which “commit to promoting a healthy and safe environment for children and young people so that they can develop their full potential as human beings.” as one of the literary genres, lcya reveals children’s and young adult’s experiences in the real world from their perspectives. guttery (1941) argues that children’s literature is one of the literature types that is intentionally designed for and speaks closely to young readers (p. 208). thus, during the covid-19 journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) brameswari et.al. 226 pandemic situation, it is also essential to hear their voices through literary works. the researchers were also interested in the issues concerning children and young adults during the covid-19 pandemic. since the outbreak occurs, children and young adults’ aspects of life have been shifted. the impact of the government’s policy to make physical distancing has created challenging situations for many people. digital platforms are now expected to help people in conducting their daily activities. all school activities are now transformed into digital meetings, and teaching materials are also given in digital forms. since technology plays an essential role during the covid-19 pandemic, the researchers use digital literature works to illustrate children’s and young adults’ experiences during the covid-19 pandemic. moreover, it is in line with nikolajeva (2005), who states that children’s literature may promote real issues in our society and be “a vehicle to educate its readers.” based on the issues mentioned above, this research focuses on the attempt to scrutinize uap values reflected in selected covid-19themed short stories, such as “on new year’s resolution” and “a personal reflection of the pandemic” taken from the dear asian youth platform. these digital short stories are essential because they are relevant to our society’s condition. through these works’ lenses, we are asked to look at the real problem and the effects of the covid-19 pandemic and how uap values can be an alternative solution to this condition. the teachings are showing the way to god through discernment during this pandemic, walking with the poor, the outcasts of the world, including those who are affected by the covid-19 pandemic, accompanying the young in the creation of a hope-filled future during this challenging time, and also collaborating in the care of our typical home for a better world. furthermore, digital literature works will be easily accessed by children and young adults since they are more accustomed to and literate in ict usage. more importantly, digital sources are mostly free to access, consume low internet data, and be operated efficiently. importantly, digital literature is a garden of eden for digital natives, gen-z, and digital readers where they can access literary texts from their smartphones, tablet, and laptop. the flexibility of a digital environment made digital literature better able to adapt to restrictions imposed by covid-19 (wright, 2022). for that reason, the researchers decided to focus on covid-19-themed digital short stories for children and young adults. in the future, this genre is a challenge for researchers, lecturers, and even students because it may change the way they work, teach, and study. furthermore, we cannot deny that printed text may be replaced by hypertext soon. the same thing is also experienced by printed news, which is slowly being replaced by digital news media. based on those cases, it is an ample opportunity and challenge for the researchers and lecturers to switch from printed literature to digital literature or hypertext. importantly, digital works can be used as an alternative to reading sources during the study from home. due to the benefits mentioned above, the researchers employ digital literary works taken from @dearasianyouthliterature. these issues are essential to be discussed because children and young adults are the future generations, the future world, and future humanity. we need to accompany and nurture them like st. ignatius and st. francis xavier, who was led and cared for by god. this pandemic should be seen from a different perspective, for this condition has encouraged us to take care of ourselves and others, especially children and young adults. importantly, those digital works are also reminders that children’s and young adults’ energy and spirit can bring love and changes to our planet. this research attempts to develop our empathy in understanding the loneliness, misery, and suffering of others during this difficult time. digital literature and literature for children and young adults discourses are suitable for use since this research uses digital short stories highlighting children and young adults’ lives during the covid-19 pandemic. since digital literary works were recently published, there is no research discussing the same works. thus, the researchers may fulfill the niche that is still possible to be explored. even though no previous studies are debating the same works, the researchers will present journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 227 some studies that problematized digital literature and children’s and young adults’ literary works theories on digital literature and lcya are challenging to be discussed and have invited many scholarly dialogues. the other researchers’ perspectives on these selected digital short stories are essential as the instrument to start this research. there are four studies used by the researchers to compare the analysis with this present study and to see the importance of it. three articles discuss three issues on digital literature, while another article concerns the lcya. the first article was written by serge bouchardon (2017) in “towards a tension-based definition of digital literature.” the researcher problematizes the meaning and importance of printed literature and digital literature. this debate is the reason that the term digital literature is not fixed yet. many researchers and experts have their terms and definition for digital literature. it has caused an oscillation because printed literature and digital literature are close links. the second research to review is by engberg and bolter (2011), who show digital literature’s status in contemporary culture. digital literature works are still unfamiliar to the literature reader even though we live in the digital era. the researchers also highlight how creating digital works is an act of violating the mainstream position. however, its functions remain quite influential recently within the art community and popular culture. another research on the same topic is conducted by rowberry (2017) in “the rise of electronic literature.” in line with previous studies, rowberry also scrutinizes the position and continuity of printed literature and digital literature. moreover, he also illustrates how the lines between published literature and digital literature are now being blurred. the last research is conducted by anggraini (2016), who concerns with applying theories to lcya. in “literary theories and literature for children and young adults (lcya): how theories are applied to lcya,” she presents how literary theories can be used to analyze children’s and young adults’ literary works. she finds that the approaches used to analyze lcya are quite like the methods used to analyze mainstream literature. however, the theories’ application should be adjusted since targeted readers, and certain audience groups enjoy lcya works. it is for this reason that the existing ideas were created to analyze mainstream literature. along with the high popularity of children’s and young adults’ literary works, an exclusive theory was designed to examine them. departing from the previous studies, the researchers propose a study that employs theories on digital literature and lcya to unveil uap values in the selected covid-19themed digital works. from four discussions, none of them specifically problematized young adults’ works which are in the form of digital literature. besides, none also illustrates the children and young adults’ issues during the covid-19 pandemic. as a result, this investigation tries to fulfill the niche that is still possible to be explored. in triggering the discussion, the previous studies will be used as a guideline and stepping stone to perceive this research’s goals. based on the discussion mentioned above, the researchers will use digital literature and literature for children and young adults to investigate the selected covid-19-themed digital works. moreover, jesuit’s uap teaching will help the researchers find the values of its third focus in those digital literary works. literature for children and young adults (lcya) the language used in the literature for children and young adults (lcya) work is considered simple and easy to understand. however, some authors will choose difficult words to teach the readers (nikolajeva, 2005). guttery (1941) adds that lcya intentionally designs for children and young adults’ readers because it has the power to speak like them. in the present time, lcya works are various and bring specific vital issues around them. kiefer et al. (2007) mention that nowadays, children and young adults “are more aware of their life experiences than the previous generation.” every day, they are exposed to digital platforms and social media, which are easy to access. this experience can be seen from the selected digital works that recite the main characters’ lives in times of the covid-19 pandemic. the writers of the works are asian teenagers who try to share their life journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) brameswari et.al. 228 experiences as teenagers, which adults commonly ignore. there are some classifications of young adults’ literature according to tomlinson and lynch-brown (2010) in herz and gallo (2005). they find that a teenager is usually the main character or the center of the story. the main character’s actions will lead to the events and the flow of the story. moreover, the way young adults tell the story is their view of the world and the adults around them. thus, lcya is essential for adults because they can understand children and young adults through various works. additionally, lcya works may bridge the relationship between adults and young adults and also open their communication. methodology in this study, the researchers mainly employed the descriptive qualitative method to analyze the phenomena and issues that are presented in the selected works. the primary sources of this research are taken from a digital platform. “on new year’s resolution” written by amber ting and “a personal reflection of the pandemic” by ella were from @dearasianyouthliterature. the short stories were selected because both were written by teenage writers and reflect young adults’ experiences during the lockdown to support the primary sources and to enrich the discussion, journals, articles, reviews, and uap documents will be used as the secondary data. the researchers will conduct four main steps. firstly, the researchers identified the conditions during the covid-19 pandemic and tried to find digital short stories that illustrate the issues. next, the researchers sorted the digital literary work found in @dearasianyouthliterature and analyse the raw data. in this study, the researchers aim to reveal how the covid-19 pandemic affects the characters’ lives in the selected short stories and how uap values are reflected in the stories. secondly, the researchers wrote the problem formulations after conducting a close reading of the literary works. then, we searched for secondary sources and theories. third, we applied digital literature and lcya discourses, and secondary data to unveil the answer to formulated questions. the secondary data are used to find the connection between the real context and the events illustrated in the novel. lastly, the analysis will be presented in the discussion part and will be closed with a conclusion. moreover, some suggestions to future researchers will be put after the conclusion. results and discussion this section reveals how the covid-19 pandemic affects children and young adults’ life depicted in the selected digital literature works. secondly, the next section unveils how uap values, which are “showing the way to god, walking with the excluded, and journeying with youths are reflected in the selected covid-19-themed stories. thirdly, it also finds solutions to the problems faced by the characters during the covid-19 pandemic based on the uap values reflected in the digital stories. the effects of the covid-19 pandemic towards young adults’ life the covid-19 pandemic has shifted the way our world works. years prior, we did not imagine there would be a large-scale pandemic that can disturb the normal lives which humans were used to. meanwhile, at the present, no one gets exempted from the impacts of the pandemic. through the two digital short stories, “on new year’s resolution”, as well as “a personal reflection of the pandemic from a wuhan girl”, it is highlighted that young adults experience particular effects of the pandemic, namely: mental health issues as well as xenophobia and racism. importantly, these effects urge them to further adapt and integrate themselves. mental health issues the first effect of the covid-19 pandemic that changes the lives of young adults is facing mental health issues. this unfortunate situation happens because young adults have to join online school while they are trapped inside their bedrooms. initially, due to the unfamiliarity and uncontrollable nature of the covid-19 pandemic, many governments and authorities across the globe have reinforced the prevention measures. they include the journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 229 practice of social distancing, travel-control measures (mobility limitation), and quarantine (self-isolation) for those who are infected with the virus. nevertheless, the purpose is to lower the transmission rate of covid-19 on a significant scale. the implementation of these regulations makes most people to be detached from their daily social surroundings as they are forced to remain at home. young adults who were used to being active in daily activities—which predominantly involve groups of people (e.g. classroom activities, workplace)—have unfortunately shifted their activities to be held at home, for the sake of health safety. they also experience discomfort due to the closure of schools and universities which results in academic hindrance as well as the loss of income due to the closing of many businesses. this drastic change in condition might be too overwhelming for some young people and lead to psychological-related issues. in the selected digital short story, both authors illustrate their view of the world and the factual condition during the lockdowns. moreover, by using digital platforms, both teenage writers try to share their voices that are mostly ignored by adults because they think that they are unimportant. in “on new year’s resolution”, for instance, it is implied that the writer is “still recovering from the extremely difficult 2020”. she writes in her notebook that “2020 was awful” (line 13). it is further mentioned that the “quarantine was and still is an awfully isolating experience that exacerbated many people’s mental health issues” (lines 39 40). she faces a drastic change during the quarantine that makes her feel isolated and pessimistic. on the other hand, the main character also feels unmotivated and desperate because she has achieved nothing during 2020. on new year’s eve, she chooses to stand on her tiny apartment balcony to watch the fireworks (ting, 2020, lines 1-9). the condition explained by the writer is according to the reality of the pandemic as well as scientific data. it approximates that 56.2% of young adults (18-24 years old) are reporting symptoms of anxiety and/or depressive disorder during the covid-19 pandemic (kff, 2020). these psychological conditions might be rooted in the sudden significant life change experienced by many young people during the period of the pandemic. most of them were not ready to face the reality that shifts quickly (school shut-down, job loss, family loss), thus, leading to the disruption in their mental or psychological state. the writer is fully aware of this situation, hence, she says “it’s okay if you need to use up a considerable portion of 2021 to recover from 2020. if you need a permission slip, this is it: you are allowed to do whatever you want wherever you want” (ting, 2020, lines 41 42). the quotation above verifies how the main character tries to accept and make peace with the condition around her. ting, moreover, uses her story as a medium to share her feelings and even other people’s feelings during the pandemic. it is for this reason that sharing and expressing our feelings may help us to prevent the issue of mental health. more importantly, sharing some positivity towards others may eliminate their burdens and show our empathy. xenophobia and racism xenophobia is understood as the fear and prejudice towards foreigners or immigrant subjects and/or their attributes. meanwhile, racism is defined as prejudice and discrimination towards a person or people according to their membership in a certain race or ethnic group. during the initial emergence of the covid-19 pandemic, xenophobia and racism became prominent issues across the globe. this issue is reflected in the speech of american 45th president, donald trump, who referred to covid-19 as the “chinese virus” as he attempted to shift the blame for the outbreak spread towards the chinese government. this reckless behavior by a person in power has led to further racist, anti-chinese attitudes in both real life and through social media such as twitter (abc, 2021). further, according to zatira and prakoso (2020), this certain negative phenomenon does not only happen in the united states, but also in japan, hong kong, south korea, southeast asia, australia, and europe which are directed mainly to the chinese (pp. 253-257). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) brameswari et.al. 230 in the short story “a personal reflection from a wuhan girl”, the writer further justifies that covid-19 leads to the emergence of xenophobia and racism which are directed toward the chinese, especially the ones from wuhan. these peculiar phenomena are showcased through online comments on the internet. she writes that “when she reads the threads of ridiculous comments on this absolutely stunning city in english, the words seemed outrageously unfamiliar and stupid” (lines 7-9). this certain attitude and response, according to the writer, comes from “the foreigners that have no idea about a single truth about wuhan” (line 9) as “without knowing the truths, people started guessing, bursting out hate and misconceptions (lines 14-15). though asian racism already existed before the quarantine, asian people and asian communities across the globe experience more racist incidents as well as anti-asian hate crimes (cabral, 2021). growing up, she has been very familiar with the city she was born and raised in. she only has good memories and attachment to the city as she says “it (wuhan) is one of the most beautiful places she knows. her perception of her hometown is composed of precious moments like eating a bowl of noodles, laughing with long lost friends, and walking in the ocean of cherry blossoms” (lines 5-7). for the writer, the xenophobic and racist behavior of the outsiders has hurt her, and further made her vulnerable as a wuhan youth. the short story, furthermore, narrates the struggle of asian people and the asian community amidst the pandemic. nevertheless, the description made by the writer of the beauty of wuhan and her good memories in wuhan are ways to stand up and celebrate her culture. it was the way she helps the other to understand and know the “beauty” of wuhan. uap values in the selected covid-19 themed stories the covid-19 pandemic has shifted young people’s lives in many aspects. according to racine, et. al (2021, cited in cnn, 2021), during the pandemic, youth’s depression and anxiety are doubled compared to the pre-pandemic; one in 4 adolescents globally is “experiencing clinically elevated depression symptoms, while 1 in 5 youth are experiencing clinically elevated anxiety symptoms. this peculiar situation is rooted in the social isolation as well as school disruption”. thus, in this section, the researchers present three uap values that are illustrated in the two selected short stories. they are showing the way to god, walking with the excluded, and journeying with youths. showing the way to god following the state of hopelessness and anxiety, youth’s fundamental survival through the discovery of each own self is needed. one of the prominent ways could be done by finding (a relationship with) god during the state of the pandemic. the bible has elaborated thoroughly on this matter. hebrews 4:16 let us “come boldly to the throne of our gracious god, as there we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”, isaiah 26:3-4 mentions that each one of us “will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. trust in the lord forever, for the lord, the lord himself, is the rock eternal.” thus, it is indicated that seeking a relationship with god is crucial, especially in this current state. there are some ways in finding god during the pandemic situation. finding god could be done by getting in touch with “our deepest self, the space where god speaks to us, through discernment. discernment is not only necessary when serious problems have to be solved, but also an instrument of struggle to follow the lord better day by day and hour by hour” (jesuits uap, 2021). through praying and being spiritually conscious, one has employed an effort in the act of discernment to reach god. the main character fully experiences the presence of god when she watches the fireworks from her balcony. it can be seen when she “stands on her tiny 5f apartment balcony, closing her eyes for exactly 59 seconds to savor the glow” (line 8). it can be indicated that the main character—who has not connected and associated with anyone during the pandemic—may feel the existence of god from her personal experience during new year’s eve. in many literature and old tales, god is often represented through the journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 231 symbolism of “lights”. he specifically appears to the main character in the form of glowing colorful fireworks which she savors that night. here, the main character is perceived to be spiritually conscious by experiencing god's presence. in corollary, this encounter leads to the emergence of her new spirit to continue her living—after she enjoys the fireworks— when she “opens her laptop to study” (line 9). walking with the excluded the next uap value that can be found in “a personal reflection from a wuhan girl” is walking with the excluded. it is god’s dream to take the hand off the poor and to embrace those who are seen he excluded. in the story, the main character and the people in wuhan are seen as excluded because they are viewed as the cause of the outbreak. on the other hand, “the whole world has turned its back on the innocent inhabitants of this city, without rationality nor justice” (lines 22-23). the main character describes the condition of the homeless people in china that are living in misery. whether it be the disproportionate numbers of deaths of coronavirus in the us or the unavailability of living space for homeless workers in china, issues like these reflect some serious problems present in our society and draw surprising similarities between countries. similar to other wars in history, minorities, again, are suffering (lines 37-40). the quotation above shows how disturbing the situation is. it is known that those who are weak, poor, and sick suffer more than others from the effect of the spread of the virus. in many places, lockdowns have put people in economic difficulties and homeless people are less prepared to fight the outbreak of the “unavailability for living space and thus the coronavirus became a sword that forced them to walk in darkness and valleys of life” (line 38, 47). through the short story, the main character shows her action to walk with the excluded, homeless people in china, but helping with the construction of the new hospitals. the main character also reflects and spreads positivity towards the problem faced by many people in wuhan. she illustrates how the volunteers helping around the city became their only source of food and aid and how they also become the listeners to the homeless stories and hopes (lines 42-44). journeying with youths youth is a specific period for fundamental decisions and the beginning of dream fulfillment. yet, young people today, still face complex challenges: the uncertainty of relationships in a digital era, diminishing opportunities for work, the rage of political violence, discrimination, as well as the degradation of the environment. these situations make it difficult for them to find support from family and surroundings under the spiritual and financial foundation. this research emphasizes helping the youth to find their true self by emphasizing the elaboration on the youth’s experiences, particularly, during the time of the pandemic. furthermore, uap (2019) elaborates that “it is the young who, from their perspective, can help us to better understand the epochal change that we are living and its hope-filled newness” (p. 4). it is believed that youth’s optimism and their spirits are the ones that drive a better future. they play significant roles in shaping the perspective toward the future. in the short story, the main character wrote optimistically as well as enthusiastically that “2021 will be her year. (as) 2021 was awful. in 2021, she’ll put it behind her once and for all. she will study. she’ll even write at least once or twice a week. she’ll become a better, the best, most productive version of myself possible—starting today. she is pulling an all-nighter” (lines 12-15). it signifies that even though the situation was rather hard in 2020 as “quarantine was and still is an awfully isolating experience that exacerbated many people’s mental health issues” (lines 39-40), youths remain optimistic for a better upcoming period. here, there is also a bold critique of the modern enigma regarding the urgent state of humans (specifically, youth) in its correlation with an urge for productivity for it is stated that “in her notebook entry, she’d equated her “best self” with the “most productive version of herself, but our best selves aren’t our most productive selves. they’re our most brave or kind selves. they’re journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) brameswari et.al. 232 our most responsible or honest or fun-loving selves. they’re whatever-adjectives-youwant-them-to-be. if that adjective is only productive? well, you can’t be productive if you’re burnt out anyway” (lines 32-36). it signifies that there is this peculiar hope for future productivity. the solutions to the young adult’s problems during this difficult time, young people need a space that can accompany and embrace them to communicate their experiences and strengthen each other. the selected works, in addition, have become the tool to reflect the events that happen during the outbreak and to promote solidarity among children and young adults. by reading and sharing digital literature works, children and young adults can interact to heal their wounds. as digital natives, children, and young adults can also directly communicate their thoughts and feelings in the comment section for the works uploaded on instagram. the digital short stories have brought hope to our world, help children and young adults to imagine new roads, and accompanied them to walk the roads till the end. moreover, both writers and readers may have a direct interaction by using the comment section on the instagram account. during the covid-19 pandemic, direct interaction is limited. thus, this new way of communication may “create new ways of understanding digital literature during the pandemic situation and the possibility to use the digital work as a media of communication in the future” (brameswari, 2021) conclusion children and young adults face complex situations during the covid-19 pandemic. the selected digital literature for children and young adults (lcya) short stories illustrate how teenagers experience mental health issues, xenophobia, and racism. as alternative reading sources, digital literature has reflected the main characters’ condition during lockdowns. moreover, digital texts are not only used to help young people to communicate their problems but also to promote solidarity among young adults. the selected digital short stories may also guide young people to find god, give hope to the excluded, and accompany the youths during their winding journey. in line with jesuit’s universal apostolic preferences (uap), the values from selected digital stories can also be used to remind young adult, readers, that their spirit and existence are important to build the world. in addition, the researchers underline that those stories are also the remedy for anyone who feels lonely, anxious, depressed, and sad. digital literature is still gaining popularity in indonesia, thus, future researchers may use digital stories in conducting their research for there are rooms to be explored. furthermore, the message contained in the digital stories may help the readers to understand global values and appreciate another form of literature field but canon. acknowledgment the researchers would like to express our gratitude to the institute for research and community service universitas sanata dharma for funding this research through the universal apostolic preferences (uap) special scheme in the context of the covid-19 pandemic. this research would not have been possible without exceptional support. references anggraini, t. e. (2016). literary theories and literature for children and young adults (lcya): how theories are applied to lcya. proceedings of the literary studies conference: language literature and society. (pp. 191-199). bouchardon, s. (2017). towards a tensionbased definition of digital literature. journal of creative writing studies, (2)1. http://scholar works.rit.edu/jcws/vol2/iss1/6. brameswari, c. (2020). social media literature works as media of journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 233 communication during the covid-19 pandemic. proceedings of the 5th english letters undergraduate conference, 12-21. https://www.usd.ac.id/fakultas/sastra/s asing/f1l3/eluc17/proceeding%20elu c%202021%20compressed.pdf. cabral, s. (21 may 2021). covid ‘hate crimes’ against asian americans on the rise. bbc news. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-uscanada-56218684. guttery, j. 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(2010). “five elements of digital literature”, in simanowski, r. schäfer, j. and gendolla, p. (eds.). reading moving letters: digital literature in research and teaching. a handbook verlag, bielefeld. transcript. wright, d. t. h. (2022). digital literary creative practice and covid-19, journal of intercultural studies, 43:6, 897-910, doi: 10.1080/07256868.2022.2128081. zatira, z. z., and prakoso, m. p. (2020). the corona case and the increasing cases of racism and xenophobia against ethnic chinese in the world. journal of islamic world and politics, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.18196/jiwp.4256. online sources https://www.dearasianyouth.org/post/onnew-years-resolutions https://www.dearasianyouth.org/post/apersonal-reflection-of-the-pandemicfrom-a-wuhan-girl https://www.educatemagis.org/mission-andidentity-in-jesuit-schools/universalapostolic-preferences/ 1 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 1 – 12 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.5317 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. degeneration of society as an apocalyptic symptom: gender-driven crime and violence in roberto bolaño’s 2666 jorisse campado gumanay jcgumanay@up.edu.ph university of the philippines cebu and silliman university, philippines abstract article information roberto bolaño’s five-part novel 2666 is an exploration of the degeneration of the world as seen in the events happening in santa teresa, where poor and marginalized women are murdered with no justice in sight. this study focuses on the fourth part of the novel, “the part about the crimes”, where the manifold murders and the women victims’ lives unfold while those in power ignore the crisis in town. this paper uses textual analyses and employs foucault’s approach to power, the feminist views to the foucauldian approach, and the feminist approach to femicide to elucidate the notions of power explored in the novel, especially in relation to gender power imbalance and destabilization. through the analysis it was found that the changing power dynamics in a largely patriarchal society and the subversion of accepted gender norms contributed to the rise of femicides in santa teresa. the highly unequal society portrayed by bolaño in his novel serves to reflect modern latin american society and its perceived chaos, where violence against women have become the norm. the novel’s lack of resolution implies that the world is still very much in that chaos, degeneration continuing to happen, serving as an apocalyptic symptom that signals that the end is coming ever nearer to humanity, an end that is man’s own doing. keywords: apocalyptic literature; roberto bolaño; 2666; latin american literature received: 2 november 2022 revised: 29 december 2022 accepted: 16 january 2023 introduction in the novel 2666, roberto bolaño writes, “only in chaos are we conceivable” (2004/2008, p. 736). 2666 is a dense, multilayered novel exploring the degeneration of the world as seen in the events happening in santa teresa, a border town where poor and marginalized women are murdered, the perpetrator, or perpetrators, unknown. it’s implied that the crimes are the work of more than just one man, but of several people who https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:jcgumanay@up.edu.ph journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) jorisse campado gumanay 2 are in power. chaos reigns in this highly unequal society, where rich men loom over the powerless, especially the women who are forced to work menial jobs in a place where justice is something akin to a dream. chaos is defined as anything that moves the universe back towards an undifferentiated state, likened to that of prior to creation (finamore, 2009). in much of literature, total chaos can be preemptive of a cataclysmic event, such as an apocalypse. in real life, chaos is spread through fear of the unknown, such as panic buying prior to the arrival of a storm. chaos is also spread through anger, such as an outbreak of violence due to a triggering event involving injustice towards a marginalized people. from 2020 to 2021, as the covid 19 pandemic raged on across the world, chaos surfaced in many instances, spread by misinformation and lack of information. in today’s world, where progress and technology govern life, including war and conflict, it can be said that the world constantly sees chaos in one form or another. plenty of apocalyptic narratives point toward chaos as a sign that the world is ending, with death and sickness taken as omens of impending doom. the word apocalypse comes from the word apokálupsis, which means “revelation” or “unfolding” (lewis, 2004). with this definition in mind, an apocalypse is commonly associated with the revelation of john, the final book in the bible, which narrates the eventual doom of humankind in a final battle between good and evil. the novel 2666 subverts this, hinting at a “secret” which lies at the heart of the killings, but it is never revealed. in literature, apocalyptic or postapocalyptic themes are prevalent in the genres of science fiction, horror, fantasy, or dystopia, and involves the collapse of civilization in the face of a cataclysmic event, such as a nuclear bomb, impact event, climate deterioration, or pandemic. none of these things are present in roberto bolaño’s 2666. in the novel, there is no impending event to fear, and perhaps it would have been easier had there been one. instead, the novel offers a constant flow of horrifying reality, one that is perhaps more frightening than any disaster. 2666 was written by bolaño towards the end of his life, when he was battling liver disease and was waiting for a transplant (tayler, 2009). some would say that this fact may have contributed to his apocalyptic views of daily reality. the novel was meant to be published in five installments, in five books, an arrangement that he sought in order to ensure that the family he was leaving behind would be well provided for. however, his literary executor and heirs, in “respect for the literary value of the work” published the novel in full in a single volume in 2004, a year after his death. the first english translation by natasha wimmer appeared in 2008. since then, the book has been widely lauded for its sprawling narrative style and complex themes. much of the book deals with social degeneration in different aspects of life. the five sections, or books, intersect with each other in certain respects. at the heart of the novel is the rampant killings of women in the city of santa teresa in mexico, which borders the united states. the first section, or “book”, “the part about the critics”, is a glimpse into the world of academia, a world that is separate from reality with its out-of-touch sensibilities. it involves four academics and their search for an obscure german author, whose works they have dedicated their entire research careers to. the second book, “the part about amaltifano”, is about the philosophy professor óscar amaltifano, who moves to santa teresa from chile with his teenage daughter, rosa. he worries that his daughter will become a victim of the female murders happening in the city. later on, he eventually succumbs to mental illness. the third book, “the part about fate”, is about the journalist oscar fate and his bid to tell the story of the femicides, leading him to interview the main suspect, klaus haas. the fourth book, “the part about the crimes”, is the narrative of the many crimes targeted at women in the city of santa teresa. it is the main focus of this study. finally, the fifth book, “the part about archimboldi”, is about the life of the german author benno von archimboldi, whose real name is hans reiter. it tells about his past during the second world war as a soldier on the easter front, and beyond. the novel ends with the revelation that reiter is the uncle of klaus haas. throughout the novel, many themes related to degeneration are journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 3 touched upon: the collapse of relationships, mental stability, careers, society, and even the instability of such ordered sections of civilization, such as the police force and journalism. no cataclysm is mentioned, but the novel thrives on an atmosphere of tension, and there’s a hint that there’s something bad happening, something worse than the killings. apocalypse is even directly hinted at in the book: “in another, he wonders what will be left when the universe dies and time and space die with it. zero, nothing” (bolaño, 2004/2008, p.736). readers are left with no definite answers by the end of the book, but perhaps that was the intention all along: to end things by giving nothing. this study is an exploration of bolaño’s personal vision of the world in 2666, a world where chaos is the symptom of a looming apocalypse. the fourth part of 2666 focuses on a narration of crimes against women in santa teresa, told in an almost detached style reminiscent of the news or forensic reports. several studies have analyzed the forensic approach that bolaño adopted for this section of the book, which functions as the narrative of a world that is increasingly wearying and full of relentless crime. this study focuses on the fourth part of the book, “the part about the crimes”, where much of the chaos in the novel is narrated. the fourth part is markedly different in style and content from the rest of the book due to its almost lack of story or focus, jumping from the description of one crime to another, and from character to character, effectively depicting the essence of a society where crime and violence are the norm. for this reason, the fourth part of the book fits the scope of this study, which is to explore the notion of a society on the verge of an apocalypse, as depicted in the novel. frantzen (2016), for example, points out how the forensic approach in the narrative, in terms of composition and style, blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction. the result goes beyond mere trauma and testimony, creating a projection of the political implications of the 21st century. meanwhile, scott (2018) refers to bolaño’s writing style in this chapter as “narrative necrosis”, reminiscent of the process of decomposition that dead tissue undergoes. the narrative writing style is dead-like and serial, cataloguing one crime after another with little or no resolution, with several sections ending with the phrase “and the case was closed” despite not arriving at any conclusion or resolution, with the implication that the police gave up. scott’s (2018) argument is that such repetition is designed as a “structural correlative for the seriality of the actual murders” (p. 3) which alters the narrative quality of the novel, leading to a narrative necrosis that functions as the correlative for the bodies piling up in the course of the story. this is especially true since the next and final part of the novel refuses to provide any consolation or conclusion to the murders, and instead focuses on the life of archimboldi. ultimately, the novel ends with archimboldi preparing to board a flight to mexico, purportedly to visit his erstwhile nephew, the suspect of the santa teresa murders, who is not known to be responsible for any of the crimes at all. brito (2018) also points out that the fourth book’s idiosyncratic framing tells of the patriarchal gender system, set in a world where the women characters are innately aware that their place in society is lower because of their gender. he further posits that once the crimes are discovered, with plenty of details to horrify the reader, the approaches the characters come up with to solve or escape the crimes fade away beyond the page. as such, the novel’s focus is not on the violence but rather in how the characters react or engage to it subjectively. brito highlights three female characters from the book and analyzes how they can’t unite to challenge the hell ruling over santa teresa, but the fragments of their stories narrate a glimpse into innate strength and dignity, the only weapon they can wield against a society that almost excludes them. this paper looks into the forensic narrative of the fourth book and how it functions as a doomsday message full of chaos and ruin, set in contemporary reality. the narrative tension, a trademark of bolaño fiction, serves to portray chaos as a precursor to complete devastation. the experiences of the characters in the book are at the core of this tension, which ultimately leads them to make difficult choices on how to react to the killings and how to structure their lives around journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) jorisse campado gumanay 4 the chaos. much of the study on bolaño’s work focuses on his grandiose literary style that is quite unlike any of the latin american greats. his fiction does not possess the magical realist style so known throughout the region. instead, his works portray the grittier side of latin american society, conjuring characters that are unpredictable, a testament to the author’s bohemian intellectual life. many studies focus on the author’s stylistic aplomb, but not much focus is given on his social realism, especially in his portrayal of the tragic realism at the heart of latin american society. gentic (2015) pointed out that bolaño employs a modified type of realism derived from the “reality effect” of roland barthes and jacques rancière’s theory on the democratization of the reading process. in effect, bolaño mimicked latin american politics, situating it in the realist style. this goes back the notion put forward by another latin american author, mario vargas llosa (1978), who said that writers from the region have a social responsibility that they cannot escape from. similarly, deckard (2012), posits that bolaño reformulated realism to explore the ideologies of art while dealing with the limits of realism, especially in his portrayal of millennial capitalism. bolaño’s 2666 continues his social realist style through the portrayal of marginalized classes, in particular, the women laborers who are murdered and forgotten, powerless in a world made by powerful men. reinares (2010) points out that the novel combines patriarchy with class and race, so that an invisible barrier is clearly delineated between the ones preyed upon and those who are untouchable. the seemingly emotionless portrayal of the women and their deaths is a constant reminder that their poverty is a crucial element to their violent demise. despite the rampant female exploitation present in the maquiladoras, and despite the dangers posed towards women who go out at night on their own, the women still persist to go and do their job, portraying an unending cycle rooted in patriarchy and class struggle in a society where only those in power can live is safety and comfort. meanwhile, mathew (2016) explored the image of mexico portrayed in 2666, a mexico of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that became a violent cradle of modernity. it is a reality that arose out of economic and political structures, among others, rooted in a corrupt power system designed to exploit the poor, especially poor women. in the novel, the murders of women have become so frequent that they have become banal. the dismissive attitude is propagated in society through a host of global factors that conspire to create an entire community complicit to gender-based violence. brito (2018) focused on this oppressive structure, theorizing that the power dynamics in santa teresa are effectively captured not by portraying those in power but by giving a voice to the individuals who are alienated from such power. in particular, the women in the novel are the farthest away from power, fighting a war against gendered violence and patriarchal power, while having to shoulder the burden of all the murdered women who will never be avenged. by giving voice to these women, bolaño stays true to the latin american notion of the writer’s social responsibility. baker (2020), in particular, theorizes that 2666 is bolaño’s denunciation of the gendered violence associated with mexican society, which has long reinforced systemic violence in the face of its established power systems. all of these related studies explore the notion of power and gender and how they are embedded in latin american society, dictating much of the social structure and leading to rampant corruption and violence which create an atmosphere of chaos and complicity. this study aims to contribute to the growing body of knowledge focusing on bolaño’s unique approach to social realism, which focuses on giving a voice to those who are marginalized in latin american society, especially the women and the poor who are alienated from power. methodology this study uses the fourth part of roberto bolaño’s novel 2666, “the part about the crimes”, as its source. the method of study is textual analyses using foucault’s theory of power, especially subjection, discipline and journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 5 justice, the various feminist views on foucault’s approach, and the feminist approach to femicide. this paper aims to elucidate how the power dynamics in society contributed to the degeneration of one city, the symbol of a world that has gone wrong and is increasingly headed towards catastrophe. the feminist approach to femicide also underpins this study to look at issues of misogyny and patriarchy and how they contributed to the cases of femicide and the characters’ attitudes towards them. the feminist approach confronts dominant patriarchal ideology while investigating the nature of the killings of women. this paper looks into the gender relations in the novel and how they reveal an imbalance that has given rise to a generally accepted culture of violence against women, ultimately resulting to femicide. in discipline and punish (1975/1977), foucault argues that society has reconfigured its ways of punishment and surveillance to more humane approaches, ultimately creating not only the modern prison but also schools, factories, and workhouses. this has led to the creation of a more obedient population that has accepted the structure of society, along with its values and beliefs. under the prisonlike model of modern society, people seek to fit in as if they are being constantly watched, so that they accept the realities propagated by the wider society. however, foucault also emphasizes that if there’s power, there are also “sites of resistance” that offer a glimpse into the reconfiguration of power relations to address widespread oppression. apart from disciplinary power, foucault also describes sovereign power, a pyramid-like power structure with a group or a person at the very top holding power, while “normal” or oppressed people are located below. a group propagating the orders from the top occupy the middle. this structure is akin to that of an absolute monarchy (lynch, 2011). taylor (2011) further demonstrates that the sovereign power has the right to take or subtract from the oppressed, such as taking a life, but not to control life, which is present in disciplinary power. these approaches provide an avenue to analyze the chosen part of the novel in terms of its portrayal of power and its implications on gendered violence and the exploitation of marginalized classes, especially women. the apocalyptic element in the novel is underpinned by the rampant violence and crimes against women, and this study explores the notion that existing power structures have served to encourage such systemic violence and the attitudes of people towards issues related to it. results and discussion a patriarchal society is one in which oppressive attitudes towards women are culturally sanctioned and integrated and expressed throughout all of society’s institutions (jasinski & taylor, 2011). corradi et al. (2016) traced the primary tenet of any patriarchy in power, specifically in an unequal power distribution between men and women, which gives rise to the use of violence as a means to control women. the number of violent murders of women led to the creation of the word “femicide”, which is distinct to the gender-neutral “homicide”. it was first used by diana russell in 1976 to raise awareness on the violent deaths of women, and how these killings were specifically carried out because of gender-related issues. the more general phenomenon of violence against women is also linked to issues of unequal power distribution (hester et al., 1995). santa teresa in 2666 is without a doubt a patriarchal society. in it, men are still very much in control of the world, but the women are also able to take charge of their own lives, including their sexuality. this emerging power and freedom that women enjoy threatens to change the power dynamics in society, leading to widespread violence and crimes against women. the patriarchal structure in society is clearly illustrated in the way the crimes against the poor women are treated. they are largely dismissed or ignored, left as cold cases. moreover, not much thought is given to the crimes at the beginning, as they are not treated as a serious issue. in one instance, the crimes of a man dubbed as the “demon penitent”, a church desecrator, are given more coverage in journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) jorisse campado gumanay 6 the media, due to his targeting of churches and priests. as in many latin american countries, it is implied that santa teresa has a network of cartels operated by kingpins, politicians, and the police, all of whom are men who are in positions of power. the poor, especially the women, are completely at their mercy, so much so that these groups of men are able to direct the course of investigations at a moment’s notice. they are able to stop probes into certain cases, for example, to avoid getting the truth about the murders out. among feminist scholars, the works of michel foucault have been very influential. this is in spite of the fact that foucault has never really discussed the relationship between gender and power, even after his explorations on power, sexuality, discipline, and subjectivity. there is no acknowledgment as to how gender dictates discipline on the body, for example. nevertheless, scholars such as angela king (2004) posit that gender, especially femininity, affects the notion of discipline as outlined by foucault, producing bodies and identities and operating as a type of social control. in 2666, it is implied that the killings of women in the city are related to the idea of control, especially with regard to the control of women and how they live their lives. most of the women who are murdered in the story belong to the working class, with a few exceptions. they drop out of school and work in maquiladoras, the foreign-owned factories that are notoriously exploitative. as workers in these factories, the women subvert the docile image that society has of them, using their bodies not for domestic activities but for livelihood, effectively demoting the role of the male in the household. they do not possess the traditional notion of femininity, the type of discipline subscribed to women, by performing tasks that are particularly unfeminine. drawing from foucault’s notion of power and discipline, bartky (1990) expounds that disciplinary practices are gendered so that women’s bodies are rendered more docile than their male counterparts. as such, women become aware of surveillance, as in the panopticon model described by foucault, but they employ a self-surveillance that is a form of obedience to patriarchy. once this selfsurveillance breaks down, and women no longer feel beholden to the surveillance and discipline that they are subjected to based on their gender, the power relations also break down, especially the established patriarchal order, giving way to the chaos described in the novel. the patriarchal order subsists by ignoring the mounting cases of femicide, or by directly participating in the crimes, as implied in some instances. some of the victims are migrants moving to the city or continuing on beyond the border to the united states. several work as prostitutes or dancers, while others are waitresses and salesladies. all of these women, who died violently, are virtually ignored by the police. when the case starts out with a woman being missing, families have to persist in visiting the police station before the authorities deign to have any interest. in many instances, family members are the ones doing the searching, even if it is in vain. eventually, the bodies are found dumped in vacant lots, parks, alleys, garbage dumps, drainage pipes, and construction sites. some of the cases are similar to each other and can be the work of a serial killer, but the police force in santa teresa insists that there is no such thing in the city. it is widely known that bolaño based the femicides in the real-life killings of women that happened in ciudad juárez in mexico, which started in 1993. the chilean author had never been to juárez, but he corresponded with the mexican journalist sergio gonzález rodríguez, best known for his reportage of the crimes (gras & meyer-krentler, 2010). in total, there are 109 murders in 2666, 98 of which are unsolved, or 90 percent of the cases. following an analysis between 2666 and rodríguez’s essay “huesos en el desierto” (“bones in the desert”), which tallies the number of women murders in ciudad juárez between 1995-1998, andrews (2014) concludes that 73 of the murders described in the novel correspond to the real murder cases in the mexican city. this information further proves that bolaño wanted to mirror the truth closely in order to journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 7 depict the madness of the world as seen in a city that, for many years, refused to acknowledge that it had a case of femicides. in the novel, several of the women are murdered by the men in their lives because of their perceived independence. gabriela morón, an 18-year-old young woman, was shot by her boyfriend because she refused to go to the united states with him. it was said that she was comfortable staying in the city because she had a good job. perhaps in a telling scene, when asked if one victim had a boyfriend, a friend said, “what do we need men for when we have our own jobs and make money and can do what we want?” (bolaño, 2004/2008, p. 468). control is also present in the ways that the women are violated, tortured, and killed. many are found to be anally and vaginally raped and killed by strangulation or multiple stabbing. victims whose suspects are apprehended are found to be killed because of jealousy. the notion of the imbalance of gender relations in the city is perhaps best encapsulated by the discussion of fears and phobias between elvira campos, an asylum director, and inspector juan de dios martínez. campos describes gynophobia as the fear of women, which she says naturally only inflicts men and is common in mexico. when martínez protests, campos insists: “almost all mexican men are afraid of women” (bolaño, 2004/2008, p. 382). campos then goes on to list more phobias, until martínez interjects that some mexican men may be afraid of women, but surely not all of them as it can’t be that bad. in the novel, the fear of women is prevalent in a society where the men are in power, and so control in the form of violence becomes the norm. in an analysis of the femicides in ciudad juárez, livingston (2004) observes that women who seek employment and leave the home, especially to work in the many maquiladoras in the city, threaten to destabilize gender roles. in the novel, many of the women victims have left the home and are largely independent, no longer relying on a male in the household to provide for the family. in some cases, they are not even interested in dating or settling down. as such, the role of the male is not as clearly delineated, leading to a power destabilization between genders. as such, the gender-driven violence in the city may be a negative reaction to the fact that women have been attaining independence and personal autonomy, while men seem to be losing ground. pantaleo (2010) specifically identifies sociocultural attitudes towards gender roles as an influential factor in the nature of the crimes in juárez. she classifies that in patriarchal mexico, two expressions of gender status have been maintained in society: machismo, characterized by male aggression and power, and marianismo, characterized by domestic duties and subordination. furthermore, the changes in gender roles may be seen as a threat to mexico’s culture of hypermasculinity (olivera, 2006). in the novel, the men very much still subscribe to the machismo gender expression, characterized by displays of power in the form of guns, cars, and wealth. meanwhile, the traditional notion of marianismo is not as practiced among the women, who are slowly gaining independence outside the home by occupying jobs that are traditionally assigned to men, such as in factories or politics. moreover, they are not as subordinate and are able to speak their minds and control their own sexuality. this leads to an imbalance between the two genders and their associated expressions. the novel further illustrates the notion of patriarchal power in the character of klaus haas, a german-born us citizen who becomes the main suspect in the killings owing to his connection to one of the victims, who was a customer in his computer shop. despite the killings continuing on while haas is incarcerated, the police believe that he is the murderer and all other crimes after his arrest were “minor”. over time, haas develops connections within the prison and is able to have a degree of freedom, such as having a cell phone. he also conducts press conferences, and it was during one of these that he revealed his discovery that the cousins antonio and daniel uribe, sons of rich men, are responsible for the killings. they are also said to be proteges of a narco, or drug lord, and are friends with sons of millionaires, narcos, and cops. these young men prowl the city, spend journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) jorisse campado gumanay 8 money, and kill, according to haas. it is never revealed if this particular information is true. meanwhile, haas is rumored to have a connection with a narco himself, which is what may have afforded him his privileges in jail. it is also hinted in the novel that a meeting between a group of powerful men and the police was convened to discuss the killings in the city, including how to deal with them while avoiding chaos and panic. another illustration of patriarchal power is seen in the characterizations of the sons of the elite. in the novel, the victims of the femicide range from the ages of 10 to 50. the kidnappings of children are another issue that may be the work of a group. in several instances, the victims are seen to approach a black peregrino, which is later revealed to be a favored car model among the rich. at one point, the police are ordered to stop the investigations on the car model, since almost the entire fleet of peregrino’s in the city are owned by the sons of the city’s elite. drug cartels are known to operate in ciudad juárez, and many instances of violence against women are commonly attributed to them, including a number of the murders. furthermore, olivera (2006) states that gang activities are highly influenced by misogyny. in 2666, it has been hinted several times that organized crime may have a hand in the killings. these illustrations of power wielded by men, specifically rich and influential men, emphasize the power relations in santa teresa. the city functions within the bounds of sovereign power, where the rich, including crime bosses, rule over everyone, while corrupt cops and officials guard their secrets. meanwhile, the everyday man and woman are at the bottom of the hierarchy, with the implication that women are placed further down, given how society treats them. disciplinary power is also present in the city, in the form of the prison-like systems of the maquiladoras, which are the source of livelihood for many in the city. the lower classes believe that they must work and accept the realities of their hardships, an endless cycle perpetuated for generations. they are also accepting of the corruption prevalent in society, such as in the police force, for it has been the way of things. regarding the killings, it’s implied that the mothers are afraid, along with some of the fathers, but people in general are not. for many in the city, life goes on. the foucauldian insight into the nature of subjection is useful in this regard. for foucault, becoming a subject means being subjected to power relations at the same time. butler (1993) draws on this to call for a subversive performance of the norms of gender that govern gender identity production. butler further illustrates that foucault’s power as subjection determines which bodies matter, and ultimately which lives matter and which deaths can be grieved. in 2666, the lives of the many women who are murdered are not mourned by the people but are only remembered by a few, especially by their families, before they become just another number, their cases neglected and ultimately forgotten. subjection in relation to gender is illustrated by congresswoman azucena esquivel plata, a powerful woman in the novel. she hires an investigator to find her mexicanamerican best friend, kelly rivera parker, who has disappeared and has likely fallen victim to the femicides in the city. despite being a powerful woman, the congresswoman is unable to mount a public display of support for the campaign against the killings. instead, she has the search conducted quietly, hiding behind the men she tasks with the investigation. she declares that she can’t tell the authorities because they will perceive her to be crazy, and she can’t tell the us police, either, out of patriotism for mexico. such powerlessness in a powerful woman encapsulates the imbalance of gender relations in the city, with the implication that she is only a woman after all and is subjected to the constraints of her gender in a world that is still run by men. the crimes against women are given little to no attention by the police and the papers. more attention is given to the crimes of a man called “the penitent”. he is a sacraphobe, as labelled by the psychologist elvira campos, or someone with a fear of holy objects. he wrecks church properties and urinates all over the journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 9 floor. in one scene, a newspaper reporter from mexico city is sent to write about the penitent, and only then does he discover that there are femicides in the city. when he later asks the opinion of others about the case, they dismissively say that the cases are simply related to the cartel, as all things are in santa teresa. power in relation to justice is another issue explored in the novel. for foucault, power structures and the subjugation of institutions influence justice, embodying systems of class oppression. in the novel, only a few of the women victims attain justice. one of these is linda vàzquez, who comes from a rich family. the teenage vázquez is beaten and then stabbed to death by her boyfriend and his friends, who are part of a local gang. while in prison, the gang members are mutilated to death by inmates because they had “killed the daughter of a man with money” (bolaño, 2004/2008, p. 521). the implication is that the father paid for the torture and murder of the suspects. in santa teresa, it seems that only the rich are able to take advantage of the justice system, albeit in a violent form, and this is especially possible if one is a man. due to the destabilization of power and gender roles in santa teresa, there is widespread chaos in the form of violence and crimes against women, contributing to the apocalyptic atmosphere in the novel. regarding the novel’s doomsday elements, rohter (2005) points out that the title has a particularly apocalyptic quality. it is also thought to be a biblical reference, referring to the exodus, which began 2,666 years after earth’s creation (hitchings, 2008). ironically, the number 2666 never makes an appearance in the novel, but it does appear in the author’s short novel amulet and in his other famous work the savage detectives. in amulet, the number is used to describe a road that looks like “a cemetery in the year 2666”, while in the savage detectives, it’s used in a cryptic line referring to “days to come” (mishan, 2009). as such, the title of the novel itself can be thought to be the author’s grim prediction of the year when the world will come to an end. in santa teresa, the manifold crimes and violence are the mere precursors to that end. something horrible, unknown, and unnamable is happening, the violence ignored by those in power and the deaths of the innocent rendered inconsequential. the complicity and corruption prevalent in the city are best encapsulated by the line: “no one pays attention to these killings, but the secret of the world is hidden in them” (bolaño, 2004/2008, p. 349). the “secret” here is never revealed, but one interpretation could be that the world is governed by the corruption at the heart of man, creating chaos, and it is that very same corruption that will spell doom for mankind. the breakdown of power and gender relations directly correlates to the apocalyptic element in the novel, as seen in the tension in the narrative. bolaño is known for employing narrative tension in his works. in 2666, he heightens and sustains the tension by means of fragmentation and alternation, decentralizing it and relying on the brief stories of marginal characters rather that posing an overarching question and finding an answer (andrews, 2014). the result is a narrative that can leave the reader breathless as each case is described in gory detail and then set aside. the dizzying number of bodies piling up can also lead to a feeling of weariness. andrews further discusses that “the part about the crimes” is not a mystery, since 90 percent of the cases are left unsolved, and the murderers are not among the characters whose stories intertwine in the novel. instead, andrews (2014) posits that bolaño has left the perpetrators out to “concentrate instead on surveying the damage done” (p. 85). this narrative style effectively captures the chaos in santa teresa, which embodies the slow degeneration of society. the chaos is within the hearts and minds of the people as well, especially among the women. in one scene, a 28-year-old teacher, perla beatriz ochoterena, is revealed to have committed suicide due to the tension she feels, caused by the rising number of femicide cases. in the letter she leaves behind, she says: “all those dead girls” and then: “i can’t take it anymore. i try to make a life for myself, like everyone, but how?” (bolaño, 2004/2008, p. 517). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) jorisse campado gumanay 10 after seeing a demonstration by the feminist group women in action (wa) on television, elvira campos suspects that the whole of mexico has gone crazy, leading her to think that perhaps it was best to leave the country. on a fatalistic note, she reflects on whether she should just kill herself before aging any further, after seeing an old colleague among the wa protesters. later on, she confesses to martínez that she sometimes dreams of giving everything up, selling everything, and moving to paris, going further as to how she will reinvent her entire identity via plastic surgery. martínez, for his part, finds himself breaking down at times as a result of the trauma derived from his exposure to the cases, but he ultimately finds himself unable to produce tears. this is especially notable since martínez is very much a part of the corrupt and patriarchal system, exhibiting misogynistic qualities, yet even he finds the situation unbearable. these glimpses into the psyche of a few characters reveal the tension caused by the chaos broiling beneath the surface in santa teresa. women are dying everywhere, but only a few care and even then they struggle to have their voices heard. there’s something evil governing the city, but many are complicit to that evil, and so life goes on. klaus haas hints at a “giant” that will come and save him from his plight. this is implied to be his uncle, archimboldi. however, it can also be interpreted as a great evil coming to the city. it is an evil that is already perceived to be rotting away at the core of society, but something even greater is on its way. conclusion in bolaño’s universe, santa teresa is a stand-in for the very real place that is ciudad juárez in northern mexico, notorious for its female homicides. in 2666, as in real life, the violence is ignored by those in power and the deaths of the innocent are rendered inconsequential. the textual analyses of “the part about the crimes" using foucault’s approach to power reveals the novel’s complex exploration of latin american society in relation to subjection, discipline, and justice. while the foucauldian approach has been largely gender-neutral, many feminists have used foucault’s theories to explore the notion of how gender governs discipline and subjection. in the novel, this is illustrated by the women characters and how their subversion of discipline and subjection has led to a gender power imbalance that resulted in widespread femicides. this destabilization of gender roles contributes to the chaos in society that then becomes an apocalyptic symptom, where crime becomes banal. the power structure present in santa teresa has contributed to the people’s way of life. as a result, they have become more accepting of the realities of work, crime, and corruption circulating in their community, while bowing down in fear and weary surrender before those in power. meanwhile, women are perceived to be at the bottom in society, and their personal autonomy is controlled and assailed at every turn with violence as a means of control. something horrible, unknown, and unnamable is happening. the novel explores the notion that the contemporary times and their manifold crimes and violence are the mere precursors to the coming end. the novel’s lack of resolution implies that the world is still very much in that chaos, degeneration continuing to happen, the end coming ever nearer to humanity. acknowledgment i would like to acknowledge my partner, nicolo nasol, for his support, advice, and insights in all things; my postgraduate professor, dr. andrea soluta at silliman university, for her expert eye in going over another bolaño paper that i wrote, which encouraged me to continue researching the author and his works; and dr. cesar ruiz aquino, professor, fictionist, and poet extraordinaire at silliman university, for imparting his relentless scrutiny to see beyond the written word. journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 11 references andrews, c. 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(2011). biopower. in d. taylor (ed.), michel foucault: key concepts (pp. 4154). stocksfield, uk: acumen publishing limited. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/national-reading-2666-month-the-title-2 http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/national-reading-2666-month-the-title-2 https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582x05286092 https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582x05286092 https://doi.org/10.1177/1057567710380914 https://doi.org/10.1177/1057567710380914 https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/books/a-writer-whose-posthumous-novel-crowns-an-illustrious-career.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/books/a-writer-whose-posthumous-novel-crowns-an-illustrious-career.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/books/a-writer-whose-posthumous-novel-crowns-an-illustrious-career.html https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2017.1378614 https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2017.1378614 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/17/fiction-roberto-bolano-2666-chile https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/17/fiction-roberto-bolano-2666-chile https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/17/fiction-roberto-bolano-2666-chile 466 vol. 22 no. 2, october 2022, pp. 466 – 480 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i2.4197 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. ludic taunting: does taunting work differently in video games? 1sf luthfie arguby purnomo*, 1sf. lukfianka sanjaya purnama, 1lilik untari, 2agung prasetyo wibowo, 1nabil aqib, 1yosse vira oktaviana theluthfie@gmail.com 1english letters department, uin raden mas said surakarta & 2gunadarma university, indonesia abstract article information studies on taunting in video game context tend to mull over around how players taunt other players via online chat features. studies on how taunting works in games with in-game taunt features are under investigated. examining twenty-seven gamestory-wise and gameplay-wise games, we argue, through this sociolinguistic study, that taunting designed for game characters is better termed ludic taunting since it has different functions from that of taunting in games with online chat feature and in real life. ludic taunting has two major functions namely narrative and mechanical. the former which refers to taunting for game story-bound purposes is classified into archetyping, cameoing, and mythopoesing. the latter, for game play-bound purposes, is classified into buffing, cosmeticizing, cueing, debuffing, hinting, and rewarding. game designers and scholars could employ this study as a reference in designing games with in-game taunt features. keywords: game narrative; ludology; ludus; sociolinguistics; taunting; toxic language received: 16 january 2022 revised: 23 may 2022 accepted: 22 june 2022 introduction ‘toxic’, ‘toxicity’, and words derived from them, as found from urban dictionary and merriam-webster, are identical to gaming behaviors especially online gaming. these toxic behaviors are articulated through the use of lingual, para-lingual, and non-lingual expressions intended for, as studied by paul (2018), abusing, offending, harassing, and even threatening other players. these toxic expressions are mechanically uttered through online chats on which the players speak or text the target players directly or through button pressing from which the controlled avatars utter the programmed toxic expressions. the former tends to disclose a freer fashion of uttering toxic expressions than the latter since the latter is programmed. one of the commonly found lingual https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:theluthfie@gmail.com journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 467 expressions related to the latter is taunting. from the perspectives of linguistics, these studies on taunting in video game context might fall into cyberpragmatics as studied by balogh and veszelszki (2020), semantics by šimko and bieliková (2014), sociolinguistics by graham (2019), and ludic linguistics by purnomo et al. (2017). taunting in games, as implied by leonard (2004) and rouse iii (2004), not only revolves around player-to-player interaction but player-to-character interaction with both being done over an avatar-based computer mediated communication. the former emerges as a phenomenon due to the growing popularity of esport while the latter has been an integral convention of game designs for game genres which emphasize on role-plays and mimicry. the phenomenon of the former has drawn several linguistic studies and those studies tend to favor the former more than the latter with the focus and emphasis over online games. those studies mull over online lingual patterns of toxic expressions (kwak and blackburn, 2015), sexual harassment (tang and fox, 2016), taunting as gauche strategies (patridge, 2017), and trash talk as a part of gaming experience (pujante, 2021). studying taunting as a part of game character design is a topic under investigated. su and shih (2011) studied taunts by game characters but the taunts are connected with virtual spectating – commentaries by spectators – in capcom’s street fighter iv. the gap left by these studies is the typology of taunting in games delivered prosthetically by game avatars or game characters through the control of the players. the communication happened in games, as laid out by purnomo et al. (2019), is called prosthetic communication, where players require the presence of an avatar or game character to relay their communication. when the players want to taunt, for instance, they are dependent on what communication mechanics the games provide through the avatars and game characters. in most massively multiplayer online games (mmog) and massive online battle arena (moba), which involve hundreds and thousands of players, conventionally players can taunt via direct chat features relayed through the avatars or the game characters they play. on the other hand, in offline games, taunting is made possible through different mechanics, the mechanics su and shih (2011) call as ingame taunts. in namco’s role-playing game (rpg) tales of legendia, for instance, taunting is an arte – spell – learned by one of the protagonists – norma beatty. players have to learn the arte if they plan to decrease the attack strength of the foes they want to engage in a fight with. casting the arte, the attack strength of the foes will be reduced and that will make the characters played will have less damages when hit. this in-game taunt treated as a spell points out that the taunt is limited only to the character – norma beatty – and thereby implying that the players could not channel their lingual expressions of taunting. all the players could do is to prosthetically control the character when they think they need to taunt for a strategic gaming purpose. this example also indicates that taunting in the game acts as a strategy or what patridge (2017) calls as gauche strategy delivered in a playful or ludic fashion. the ludic fashion is seen from the fact that taunting is a skill the player has to master – a parody of what taunting is used for in a real life. as implied by baugh (2018), verbal and non-verbal taunts are aimed at delivering a provocation. through this provocation, those being taunted are expected to suffer a distraction or disruption from which the taunters might exploit to achieve what they truly aim. in games categorized into what caillois (1961) calls as agon, emphasizing on competitiveness, taunting is a necessary game mechanic for the players to exploit as a strategy to defeat the other players. game genres with competitive values and online features like fighting games, mmorpgs, and mobas are the genres mostly associated with taunts in a different mechanical design. taunting in video games is different from taunting in real life in a sense that the former tends to involve what purnomo et al. (2017) call as ludic functions with which any game elements including taunting is treated as a game mechanic. due to its status as a game journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) purnomo, et.al. 468 mechanic, taunting plays a role in influencing the gamers in winning a game or losing it. fighting games have more restrictive fashion of delivering taunts than mmorpgs and mobas. in fighting games, the taunts are expressed through button pressing to execute programmed in-game taunts performed by the game characters. pressing particular button or combination of buttons, characters will do a pose while uttering the taunt or will do only a non-verbal taunt. on the other hand, mmorpgs and mobas tend to be less restrictive than fighting games due to their online nature. mmorpgs, which value social narratives, tend to be less competitive than mobas which are defined by their status for being an esport. this degree of competitiveness is one of the primary factors that define the emergence of taunt. this is what paul (2018) calls as a toxic meritocracy, where the strive for merits is achieved through toxic behaviors. in sociolinguistic perspectives, if seen from hymes’ speaking formula, to achieve an end – purpose or goal – as represented through ‘e’, players might exploit the letter ‘i’ – instrumentalities – as they deem fit. this condition, in relation to taunting, implies that taunting is mechanically bound to the game system in which the game is played. in ergodic literature perspectives, those instrumentalities hold a key role in defining what aarseth (1997) calls as user’s functions, how game elements lead to different responses from the players. that fighting games, mmorpgs, and mobas have different manners in delivering taunts points out that they have different user’s functions. through these differences in user’s functions, ludic or playful structures of each game are designed to generate different gaming experiences. in relation to taunting, we can say that taunts might function differently since the ludic structures of each game are different. in ludological perspectives, as laid out by frasca (2013), where all game elements including lingual expressions are all game mechanics that define a game, taunting might be considered also as a game mechanic. since taunts are a game mechanic, they might function differently than what provocation or provoking means in the real world. thereby, to address this issue, purnomo et al. (2019) propose what is called prosthetic communication, which perceives game avatar or game character as the central figure in a game mediated communication – implying that what the players want to express are limited by elements that construct the avatars or the characters. to reveal how this communication works, they propose a hymes’ speaking like formula called gaming. gaming stands for game system, attributes, mechanics, indexicalities, narratives, and geosocial systems. through this formula, if applied for taunting, we can comprehend how taunting is communicated. taunting in an rpg where narrative exploration is what defines the game, taunting might function more as a part of the story. in ubisoft’s assassin’s creed valhalla, for instance, taunting is facilitated as a playful mini game from which the players can engage as an optional quest. the taunting is a part of what is called as flyting – taunting, insulting, and mocking in a poetic and rhymical fashion. winning the flyting, players are rewarded by in-game currency and an increase on the charisma level of the main character. this presence of flyting functions not only as a mini game but also as a storial reference. the game is set in norse and to strengthen the nordic nuance in the game, flyting is one of lingual traditions in nordic culture has to be included. in the perspectives of gaming, the use of flyting in which taunting is a part of it is a part of narratives – the ‘n’ – which concerns on indicating that one game mechanic like taunting might influence the flow of the narratives in its entirety. this case indicates that taunting has what caillois (1961) calls as ludus, a structured play, and what huizinga (2014) calls as a ludus which refers to playfulness since the taunting is structured as such to mimic a real life taunting while at the same time to induce playfulness. departing from these distinctive and unique traits of taunting in video games, we argue that taunting in game designs requires a more linguistic attention by offering a neologism as a start. this study aims at indicating the presence of ludic taunting and constructing a typology of functions of in journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 469 game taunts in games which we call ludic taunting. the theories of ergodic literature by aarseth (1997), ludology by frasca (2013), prosthetic communication by purnomo et al. (2019), ludus as a structured play by caillois (1961), lability and merriness by huizinga (2014), and taunting by baugh (2018) were employed as a ground basis for constructing the typology of ludic taunting. these theories were selected since they are interrelated. their inter relation is perceivable from how each theory could address the elements of games from macro level e.g. game as a literary work to micro level e.g. taunting as a lingual activity, a game narrative, and a gameplay. the first theory, ergodic literature, was employed to address how video games have distinctive user’s functions different from the other interactive media. these distinctive user’s functions are further defined by ludology, a game study which perceives any elements within a game including lingual elements as a game mechanic. since lingual elements in games are uniquely uttered by character and avatar mediated, an analysis on how the elements work in a game requires a framework of communication analysis. we used prosthetic communication formula – gaming – to address this issue. since taunting involves a structured play and playfulness, to address this issue, we employed game theories from caillois and huizinga. employing the theories, it was expected that baugh’s taunting signified by the presence of provocation, jeering, and sneering sarcasm would be gamingly perceived to give a picture that taunting in games with in-game taunts work distinctively from taunting in games with direct online chat and taunting in real life. methodology data and data sources this research is of sociolinguistic study with an emphasis on the taunting mediated interactions between game characters-togame characters in a prosthetic communication context. to explain these interactions, gaming approach was applied. the data of this qualitative study were in the forms of verbal and non-verbal expressions. data in verbal expressions were the utterances performed by game characters and data in non-verbal expressions comprise visual and operative data. visual data were images and visual effects accompanying the emergence of taunting while operative data were poses and actions by the game characters. poses were iconic character defining gestures which are commonly indicated by a short signature motion while actions were active motions. these data were taken from 16 gamestory-wise titles and 11 gameplay-wise titles: table 1. data sources gamestory-wise developers/ publishers gameplay-wise developers/publishers assassin’s creed valhalla ubisoft blazblue continuum shift arc system works dragon age ii bioware/electronic arts crash team racing beenox/activision dragon quest xi: echoes of an elusive age square enix dragon ball xenoverse 2 bandai namco devil may cry iii: dante’s awakening capcom fifa 22 electronic arts final fantasy x square enix gwent: the witcher card game cd projekt red final fantasy x-2 square enix mortal kombat 11 netherrealm/shiver entertainment/qloc/warner bros. interactive entertainment journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) purnomo, et.al. 470 gamestory-wise developers/ publishers gameplay-wise developers/publishers final fantasy xii square enix pocket fighter capcom final fantasy tactics square enix sonic all stars racing transformed sega genshin impact mihoyo street fighter 3rd strike capcom legend of legaia prokion/contrail street fighter iv capcom red dead redemption rockstar games tekken 7 bandai namco scribblenauts unlimited 5th cell/nintendo/ warner bros. interactive entertainment suikoden ii konami tales of legendia namco thousand arms red entertainment/ atlus wild arms 2nd ignition media vision/contrail/ sony interactive entertainment data analysis data analysis technique by spradley (2016) was employed in this study. four phases of analyses were taken. first was domain analysis. in this phase, the theory of taunt by baugh (2018) was implemented to classify which expressions were categorized as taunt and which ones were not. completed, taxonomy analysis commenced. in this second phase of analysis, taunts were analyzed based on gaming formula by purnomo et al. (2019), ludus by caillois (1961), and lability and merriness by huizinga (2014) to indicate how the verbal and non-verbal elements of the game characters influence the emergence of their taunts. done, componential analysis took place. in this third phase, findings from taxonomy analysis were addressed by the theories of user’s functions by aarseth (1997) and ludology by frasca (2013) to reveal how in-game taunts work as a game mechanic. in the last phase, cultural theme analysis, ludic taunting is constructed as a neologism based on the findings on componential analysis along with its function typology. results and discussion this section is divided into two sub sections. the first sub section deals with explaining what ludic taunting is and how it distinguishes itself from taunting in real world. the second sub section talks about the function typology of ludic taunting. ludic taunting we argue that taunting in games with ingame taunt features is better termed ludic taunting since taunting in such games is a game mechanic to which players could optionally or obligatorily interact and benefit from. due to its position as a game mechanic, taunting might fall into two major functions namely narrative and mechanical with the first referring to story-wise and the latter to playing-wise. in cd projekt red’s gwent: the witcher card game, an online digital card game adapted from the witcher series, players can pick a leader with which the players could deliver a taunt during the card match. the taunts are intertextually linked with the narratives of the characters in their source game – the witcher series. dettlaff van der eretein, the high vampire from the witcher iii: wild hunt’s expansion, blood and wine, for example, has a verbal taunt that goes ‘your world will soon lapse into slumber as darkness descends’. this utterance is categorized into a taunt since it triggers provocation and jeering from which physical reactions from the taunted takes place. in the journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 471 context of the story, the physical reactions appear from the duchess of toussaint, her subjects, and geralt of rivia. this taunt is a reference for his action in performing the crimson curse with which he summoned all types of vampires to bring destruction upon the city of beauclair. the details are as follows: detlaff: (revealing himself) i’m here. geralt: this belong to you, maybe? (showing detlaff’s severed hand) detlaff: it did. but you may keep it. i’ve a new one. by revealing himself, it shows that detlaff has confidence in facing geralt. this confidence is further emphasized by displaying his nature as a vampire that could regenerate. displaying this regenerating ability of his, detlaff discloses an opportunity for geralt to scheme how to counter foes with regenerative abilities. this confidence persona is condensed through his taunt in gwent through his utterance ‘well done, indeed. how i adore a challenge.’ this intertextual narrative on taunting is found on six scenes of the witcher iii: wild hunt and its spin off card game gwent. the details could be seen from table 2 on the appendix. the witcher iii: wild hunt is the last of saga of the witcher geralt of rivia. a witcher is a hunter with exceptionally monstrous power earning his life through monster hunting. the game has a sidekick card game called gwent in which the world of the witchers is explored from a card narrative and gameplay perspective. taunts are not merely used as a cosmetic to provoke but also an intertextual narrative pointer to the source game from which the game is adapted. all the six taunts could summarize the whole narrative life of dettlaff from being tricked by syanna to sending beauclair into chaos through crimson curse. all of these events lead him to earn the title the beast of beauclair. besides functioning in a narrative fashion, taunting in games with in-game taunts function mechanically also. in konami’s suikoden series, for example, taunts play an important role in winning a one-on-one duel with in-game characters. the duel is carried out in three actions. they are attack, defense, and desperate/wild/special attack. this duel system is constructed in rock-paper-scissors (rps) fashion meaning that one action overpowers the other action. in suikoden series, the rps is carried out in attack > defense > desperate/wild/special attack > attack. the key to understand which move the opponent attempts to deliver is to imply and infer the lines the opponents say. taunts uttered by the opponent tend to result in attack and thus, by comprehending that a line is a taunt, the player is expected to perform wild/special attack to damage the opponent. the two examples, besides signifying how taunting in games with in-game taunts have different functions with taunting of the real world, also indicate that the taunting has a significant role in determining the flow of the play and constructing the play style of the players. addressing the roles of taunting in the flow of the play and play style, we adopted the word ‘ludic’ derived from ‘ludus’, a structured play (caillois, 1961). attaching ‘ludic’ to ‘taunting’, we attempt to indicate that taunting in games with in-game taunts is structured or programmed to define the playing process – implying that ludic taunting is never a ‘paidia’, a spontaneous play. the spontaneity might come from the physical responses by the players in pressing the buttons to deliver a taunt but not the taunt itself. analyzed by gaming, it is revealed that the structures of function of ludic taunting are different only on the attributes. narrative functions tend to emphasize on progress – implying that taunting will disclose the possibilities for a new story to progress or that taunting plays a key role in completing a story. in square enix’s dragon quest xi: echoes of an elusive age, for instance, players are often taunted by the enemies and they have to face the taunts to progress the story. one of the taunts is found from one of the bosses called dora-in-grey, a pun of wilde’s the picture of dorian gray, to progress the story and reveal the mystery surrounding her. on the other hand, mechanical functions of ludic taunting tend to have an impact journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) purnomo, et.al. 472 attribute – meaning that the taunts play as a key role in deciding the outcome of a play e.g. battle. as aforementioned, konami’s suikoden series are the example of this impact attribute. the details of gaming analysis could be found from table 3 in the appendix. ludus, as implied by huizinga (2014), could also mean playful. being playful requires what he calls as lability and merriness with the former referring to rule breaking and the second to laughter resulting from a competition or a contest. these two elements of playfulness are within ludic taunting. taunting in games with in-game taunts breaks the rules of taunting. as baugh (2018) suggests that taunting is intended to generate provocation which tends to be negative. however, provocation in ludic taunting context might end up in a positive result like the victory of the played character. merriness also becomes a part of ludic taunting since some characters like dan hibiki from capcom’s street fighter series throws his taunts in a silly manner. even his taunts, called as legendary taunt, work as an opener for ultra combo in street fighter iv. the acts of dan’s taunts like the legend has now begun!, chickening out?!, burn this in your memory, and a piece of cake indicate that he tends to narrate his identity and archetype as a self-admiring, self-adoring, or narcissist in a comic tone. this is further strengthened by the fact that his design is a parody of the characters from rival title. as seen from the lability, taunts which are supposed to be used for provocation are used as a combo opener. this rule breaking on what taunts are ought to be indicates the presence of lability. on the other hand, hostile reactions in dan’s taunt’s case is in line with what taunts generate in a real life. to complete the playfulness, merriness is delivered through dan’s silly poses and using the taunt as a strategy to lure the opponent to him and knock him down with ultra combo. the details on how taunts are related to lability and merriness could be seen from table 4 in the appendix. the functions of ludic taunting as mentioned on the explanation about ludic taunting, there are two major functions of taunting in games with in-game taunts features namely narrative and mechanical. each function has a sub function with narrative functions having three sub functions and mechanical having seven. three sub functions of narratives comprise archetyping, cameoing, and mythopoesing while seven sub functions of mechanics consist of buffing, debuffing, cosmeticizing, hinting, provoking, and rewarding. archetyping aims at narrative identity establishment and narrative alignment, cameoing at intertextual referencing, mythopoesing at story world construction. the presence of these sub functions points out that taunting is employed as a narrative device – further implying that the creation of taunting in game context takes a literary consideration. since games are not only about narratives or stories, but also gameplay or mechanics, taunting in games addresses this trait also. buffing aims at inflicting positive status for the taunter, cosmeticizing at generating alternative visual and catchphrasing purposes, cueing at indicating that a boss battle and a powerful attack from the enemy will commence, debuffing at inflicting negative status for the tauntee, hinting at indicating a clue to solve an ingame challenge, and rewarding at acquiring in-game rewards. the sub functions of narrative functions tend to circumnavigate around story-bound purposes while mechanical functions tend to revolve around strategizing purposes. each sub function has a tendency to be delivered in verbal in combination with the non-verbal of poses and actions. as laid out by baugh (2018), taunting is predominantly delivered verbally through jeering and sneering sarcasm. sarcasm tends to possibly appear on any sub functions of taunts while jeering dominantly appears on mechanical sub functions. that jeering tends to be mechanical is understandable from the fact that buffing, debuffing, cosmeticizing and hinting focus mainly on taunt as a skill. on the other hand, narrative sub functions tend to be more varied than those of mechanical sub functions in delivering the taunts nonverbally. this condition occurs due to the journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 473 storial nature of narrative which tends to have interpretive and explorative user’s function – meaning that any actions are possibly executed in responding to the game narratives. on the other hand, mechanical sub functions tend to be configurative in nature – meaning that players could adjust their mechanical responses through e.g. button configuration or strategy configuration to acquire the desired goals. the following sub sections will detail each sub function of ludic taunting. the details of the lingual and nonlingual expressions of taunting could be seen from table 5 in the appendix. archetyping each character in video games, just like characters in the other literary work types, is archetyped. the difference lies on the ‘mechanical’ archetype, where each character has distinctive movements that signify and define them. taunting in games with in-game taunt features might function as an archetype indicator for the taunter. the following example from beenox and sony interactive entertainment’s crash team racing might help comprehend the statement. doctor neo cortex: the trophy’s mine! outta my way! komodo joe: ssssucker! ssssuccess! sssheheheehehe! dingodile: i’ll fry youse! the taunts narratively reflect and strengthen the archetypes and the traits. doctor neo cortex, the main antagonist of the series, is archetyped as a creator which highlights his being a ‘doctor’ or mad scientist and a ruler which always attempts to rule over anything. his self-centric taunts reflect this archetype. in komodo joe’s case, his magician archetype, an archetype to indicate cunningness, is reflected from his hissing sound uttered in sarcastic expressions. dingodile’s outlaw, an archetype which indicates rebellious nature, is expressed in threatening tone through the word ‘fry’. the details of how taunts work regarding with the archetypes of the taunter could be seen from table 6 in the appendix. archetypes in games are not designed for storial aspect only but also mechanical or playing elements. in rpgs, for example, players can play as a knight who mostly wields two-handed weapons with which he uses for a melee combat or a mage who wields staffs to cast magic for a ranged combat, or any other character classes with distinctive mechanical designs. in the context of taunting, some games use taunting to define the character classes. one of the games is square enix’s final fantasy x-2. the followings are the examples from three out of seventeen character classes along with their taunts: yuna (songstress): might as well have some fun! rikku (songstress): welcome to your doom starring me! paine (songstress): i guess we can win this way too. songstress is a character class which uses songs and dances as a fighting ability. to emphasize these ‘entertaining’ fighting abilities, their taunting is also designed to reflect these abilities. thus, the characters are equipped with lingual expressions like ‘might as well have some fun’, ‘starring me’, and ‘win it this way too’. this character-taunting expression synchronization is also found from the other character classes like gun mage and berserker. gun mages uses guns to project magic and berserkers use their ridiculously powerful strength to physically brutalize their foes. gun related lingual expressions like ‘my gun cries out’, ‘i got a bullet for every fiend’, and ‘time for a fiend hunt’ are uttered by yuna, rikku, and paine respectively when they transform into gun mages. on the other hand, lingual expressions indicating physical prowess like ‘sometimes you just have to hack your way through!’, ‘fight me or better yet let me fight you’, and ‘if you’re gonna bring it, bring it.’ are the taunting expressed by yuna, rikku, and paine. cameoing taunts in games with in-game taunts might work intertextually by referring to the other games through a character or a signature action reference. the function of cameoing tends to be comedic in nature. in capcom’s pocket fighter, for example, where characters from various fighting games journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) purnomo, et.al. 474 produced by capcom are reanimated in a comedic chibi – small sized body with a rather big head – and crossover-ed, cameoing is one of the flavors added. this cameoing also appears on taunting. in one of dan hibiki’s taunts, he dressed himself in an elvis presleyesque style while shouting ‘oh yeah!’ at the players. this comedic cameoing strengthens the hilarious narrative of dan who always shows himself up in a flashy way – just like elvis. the fact that the one he taunts is not the opponent but the player indicates the use of breaking the fourth wall formula, one of narrative devices in game to trigger laughter. cameoing is also delivered through mimicking signature actions from the characters of the other game titles. in square enix’s final fantasy tactics, for example, has a memorable scene where ramza and delita, the main characters of the game, grass whistle to reminisce their past. interestingly this scene is somehow parodied in atlus’ thousand arms through taunting which ends in a positive narrative response. palma: can you make a grass whistle? meis: a. of course! check it out! b. nah, that’s for kids! thousand arms is an rpg with dating simulation feature, in which the players could interact with female characters and flirt them to make them fall in love with meis, the played character. each female character has a distinctive personality. the example has palma, a priestess who concerns on hygiene and sanitary. thus, the player has to select an answer which indicates that meis loves cleanliness. the correct answer for the case above is b – ‘nah, that’s for kids’ – since grass is dirty. selecting ‘b’ will make palma respond ‘i’m glad to hear that. nobody in their right mind would do something unsanitary’ and increase her love gauge. meis’ b choice and palma’s response are taunts that seemingly parodize ramza and delita’s grass whistle in an intertextual fashion. signature action cameoing might metacognitively leave what hocking (2007) calls as ludonarrative dissonance, where the narratives told through game story are in conflict with the narratives told through game play. in electronic arts’ fifa 22, any player can do any goal celebrations through button pressing or sequencing actions after the players score a goal. some goal celebrations are iconic and taken from real life goal celebrations. one of the iconic celebrations is ronaldo’s called ‘sii’ celebration, where he would pirouette mid-air and shouting ‘sii’ which means ‘yeah’ after landing on the ground. any players in fifa 22 could do this as long as they input the correct button pressing and sequencing. since ‘sii’ is a part of ronaldo’s narrative, when messi, ronaldo’s rival, performs this on the game, metacognitively dissonance occurs. mythopoesing taunting could also be a narrative device to build the game world – the mythopoesis. as mentioned in the literature review, taunting in the form of flyting constructs the nordic world of the vikings in ubisoft’s assassin’s creed valhalla. through flyting, the depiction of viking’s culture would be more realistically detailed. the example of taunting in flyting context is as follow: manning: have you ever seen muscles as massive as mine? eivor : a. you have the form of a very large swine b. i’m not awed by your muscles, but shocked by your pride c. what make up in muscles, you’re lacking in spine manning is a character proud of his muscular build with which he taunts eivor, the character controlled by the player, by saying ‘have you ever seen muscles as massive as mine?’. the player has to respond this taunt by taunting back with considerations over rhyme and context. since being muscular is not always the indicator of being brave, the best answer is choice c ‘what make up in muscles, you’re lacking in spine’. the word ‘spine’ which means ‘guts’, ‘courage’, or ‘bravery’ rhymes with ‘mine’ while ‘make up’ and ‘muscles’ rhyme and contextualize with ‘muscles’, ‘massive’, and ‘mine’. taunting for mythopoesing in games with in-game taunts is also delivered to create a journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 475 realistic scene. in rockstar games’ red dead redemption, the players could order john marston, the main character, to taunt even non-playable characters (npcs). to enable the taunting, the players have to lower marston’s honor level. fulfilling the condition, the players will acquire a wide variety of taunting which narratively strengthens the wild wild west cowboy world. the taunting revolves around ‘death’, ‘fight’, and ‘kill’. these taunting themes are delivered from stock taunt in an action game like ‘you’re good as dead already’, wild west cowboy defining taunt like ‘you’d best shoot me now and this is over’, to a hilarious taunt like ‘you can shoot a fart out of your own ass’. buffing buffing refers to a mechanical device from which the players could benefit their controlled characters positive statuses e.g. power up. in capcom’s devil may cry series, performing taunting will fill the devil trigger gauge. filled, dante, the played character could transform into his demon from which is more powerful than his human form. that one of the methods of transforming into a demon form incorporate taunts points out that taunting becomes a significant game mechanic in the game. players who do not want to do fighting or stylizing a fight or any other techniques possible can rely on taunting and thus implies that taunting here is a positive action. some games do not employ taunting for directly buffing the played characters – the taunting requires a strategy to execute it for the most of benefits. in bandai namco’s dragon ball xenoverse 2, taunt needs to be equipped and made it a tandem along with the other moves. in bandai namco’s tekken 7, bryan fury’s taunts could deliver a significant damage to the foes if the players swiftly and accurately do a button pressing switch from taunting to moves corresponding as a follow up for the taunting. these game mechanics signify how taunting is designed as a game mechanic for the players to strategize with – a game mechanic design found from taunting mostly in mechanical functions. though buffing tends to be a mechanical device, in some games the mechanical devices are in tandem with narrative devices. in capcom’s street fighter 3rd strike, for example, necro, a character with flexible rubber like body and gruesome maniacal look and lunatic trait, taunts by jeering gibberish expressions. executing this taunt, necro’s attack will increase in the next move. that the taunt is delivered through gibberish jeering strengthens his bizarre traits narratively. this case is also found from mihoyo’s genshin impact. taunting in the game is aligned and synchronized with the character performing the taunting. the energetic and zealous amber, for example, is a fire-elemental character and one of the taunting lines is ‘go! go! baron bunny’. both attributes strengthen the full of life energy amber has. cosmeticizing taunting in games might work as a cosmetic element. through cosmetics, the played characters could have an alternate look through visual changes. in netherrealm’s mortal kombat 11, for instance, has an equipable taunt called end of round taunts. as the name implies, the taunts are performed in the end of the fighting round. each character has a wide variety of taunts along with their visualization. the examples from netherrealm’s mortal kombat 11 are as follows: scorpion: (pointing to the enemy and drawing back the hand in fire) you will suffer! sub zero: i’ll end you! (casting shining ice energy from his hand in an upward direction) mortal kombat series are famous for its gore and brutal fighting scene. the taunts, either the verbal and non-verbal, as seen from the two iconic characters of the franchise, strengthen the gore and brutality. though these taunts tend to be cosmetic, as seen also from the fact that to access the taunts the players have to browse the ‘kosmetics’ menu, their ludus could tempt the players to collect all of the taunts. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) purnomo, et.al. 476 taunting for cosmeticizing is not designed only for playable character but also non-playable characters (npcs) like monsters in rpgs. sony interactive entertainment’s wild arms 2nd ignition, for examples, have monsters that could taunt. monsters like dryad, gizmo, gremlin, and pumpkinhead could taunt the players but the taunting either has buffing effects to the monsters or debuffing to the characters played. the facts that the taunting is not for the two functions point out that the taunting tends to be for cosmeticizing purposes. a unique case of cosmeticizing is found from sega’s sonic & all stars racing transformed!. in this cross-over racing game, players have to fulfill a particular condition to unlock the taunting of each racer. this is unique in a sense that the game is intended for 10+ meaning that the game is friendly for kids minimum at 10 year old. explicating the taunt would be, to some extent, make the age rating indicate a discrepancy. even though the condition is fulfilled, the taunting is still considered mild since it mostly involves funny gestures. cueing taunting might also function as an indicator that a crucial battle or usually referring to boss battle will commence. boss battle refers to a battle in rpg genre where, as the name implies, the players have to engage in a battle against a boss, a usually powerful character the players have to defeat to resume the game narratives. this ludic taunting also functions as an indicator that the enemies especially the bosses will deliver a powerful attack. the following example from square enix’s final fantasy xii might help clarify this statement: gabranth: hear me, basch! do not think killing the kingslayer will win your back your honor! when you abandoned home and kin, your name was forever stained with blood! basch: aye, this stain is mine to bear. but i will bear it willingly, knowing that i did that i could...for hope! gabranth: preen and strut as you like! in the end, we are the same! blood-thirsting carrion birds, hell-bent on revenge! all of the lines said by gabranth are a taunt. narrative consistency is seen from the taunt used in the boss appearance and powerful attack scenes. taunting through blaming for past actions is used by gabranth on the two scenes. interestingly gabranth ends his line by claiming that he and basch are the same in nature – ‘blood-thirsting carrion birds, hellbent on revenge!’. the interesting part is that this taunting is to narratively support that they are twins. this case indicates that cueing in games is constructed by concerning also on the narrative elements. debuffing taunting for debuffing is the most common game mechanics employed in rpgs. unlike buffing which inflicts positive statuses to the played characters, debuffing inflicts negative statuses to the enemies. in rpgs like bioware’s dragon age ii and square enix’s final fantasy x and xii, this mechanical sub function is even identical to particular character classes – tank and warrior. these character classes use taunts to draw enemies into them – allowing the other played characters to strike the enemies that have put their focus on the tanks and warriors. due to the nature of rpgs, laden with narratives, the taunts are designed to align with the narratives of the characters even if the taunts are non-verbally executed. in square enix’s final fantasy x, for example, the non-verbal taunts reflect the traits of the characters. beckoning signs, gestures which indicate a challenge for a fight, are dominantly employed by the male characters while female characters tend to be varied. the female characters tend to explicitly align the traits with the taunts. yuna is calm and innocent in trait and nature from which bye bye hand gesture is aligned. rikku’s rebellious traits are perfectly reflected from her butt smack taunts. lulu’s journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 477 alluring trait and appearance are synchronously reflected from her air kiss. hinting as mentioned on the first part of the findings, taunting in games like konami’s suikoden series might serve as a hint. through understanding what is implied by the hinting, the players could give a correct response which might endow them gaming benefits. in konami’s suikoden ii, for example, the hero has to fight a character by the name flik in a one-on-one duel. the duel, as explained on the first section of the finding, is constructed in a rps system – meaning that the players have to guess the correct response through comprehending the lines said by the foe. ‘you dodged my sword, the kid gloves are coming off...’, for example, indicates a special attack or called desperate attack. this indication is seen from the use of the word ‘kid’ and the clause ‘gloves are coming off’. the word undermines the hero’s ability while the clause which means ‘to fight hard to achieve something’ indicates that the following attack will not be just a plain attack. noticing this in an allotted three second chance of decision, the players have to correctly respond it by selecting defend. the details on how hinting works in suikoden ii could be seen from table 7 in the appendix. rewarding performing a taunt in games might grant the players with in-game rewards. in arc system works’ blazblue continuum shift, players could earn a trophy or an achievement called taut taunt if they play the cat-like girl taokaka and let her do the taunts five times to the enemy. the taunt itself is a non-verbal action in the form of punching and thus, the taunt functions as a game mechanic to damage the enemy. game rewards are not limited to achievement or trophy. in capcom’s devil may cry iii, the rewards are the taunt itself. the players will receive a ‘cooler’ line of taunt if their killing style improves. with d rank being the lowest and sss being the highest, it implies that the higher the style rank is, the ‘cooler’ the taunts will be. the consideration of being ‘cool’ is that on how the taunts reflect dante’s carefree personality and rebellious youth narrative. ‘let’s start the party’, ‘sweet, baby’, and ‘crazy’ are sss level taunts since they reflect dante’s personality and narrative. what connects the first and second taunting for rewarding systems is what aarseth (1997) calls as anamorphic ideology of influence, where the pre-requisite actions to acquire an achievement is hidden. since the actions are hidden, the players have to interpret, explore, and configure any possible game mechanics to acquire the achievements. this condition, in the context of taunting, points out that taunting is designed to ensure replayability of the games. conclusion taunting in games with in-game taunts deserve a neologism which we called ludic taunting since it has different functions from taunting in real life and games with online chat features. ‘ludic’ is used to signify the structured play and playfulness of the taunting. this signified element is embodied through two major functions of ludic taunting namely narrative and mechanical functions. the former refers to story-bound functions while the latter to playing-bound ones. each function has sub functions with narrative functions having three and mechanical having six. the sub functions of the former are archetyping, cameoing, and mythopoesing while the latter has buffing, cosmeticizing, cueing, debuffing, hinting, and rewarding. all of these functions are what define ludic function and what differentiate it from taunting in real life and in games with online chat. taunting in games with in-game taunts tend to have a positive function in a sense that the players could benefit from the taunting to obtain significant experience in enjoying the games through assistances, rewards, and playful experiences. taunting for assistances could be found from buffing, cueing, debuffing, and hinting sub functions. taunting for rewards could be acquired from mythopoesing and rewarding. taunting for playful experiences could be gained from journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) purnomo, et.al. 478 cameoing and cosmeticizing. departing from this assumption, further research could address how lingual elements are designed as such to leave a positive impression to the sub functions of ludic taunting. further studies could employ cyberpragmatics by yus (2011) in addressing this issue. future research could also focus on taunting on casual games for educational purposes like 5th cell’s scribblenauts unlimited. in the game, players could type a noun or a noun with an adjective of any word from which the game visualize the typed words. typing the word ‘taunt’ will not be visualized by the game but typing the word ‘insulted’, a character will appear with a boxing icon appears to indicate anger. if further experimented with ‘insulting’, a character will appear followed by a scene where the character is hunted by the other characters on the stage. this unique response toward insults in casual games for educational purposes could be addressed linguistically through educational linguistics. references aarseth, e. j. 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(2011). cyberpragmatics: internetmediated communication in context. amsterdam: john benjamins publishing company. appendices table 2. dettlaff’s taunts in gwent and their narrative references to the witcher iii: wild hunt taunts narrative references well done, indeed. how i adore a challenge. countering geralt of rivia, the main character, in beauclair when he investigates the murder of aristocrats with each move, you make my task easier. excellent. referring to his murder list to free syanna, her lover your world will soon lapse into slumber as darkness descends. crimson curse fool! you should have killed me when you had the chance. countering geralt and regis the high vampire, dettlaff’s friend, who wants to stop him get on with it! move! now! countering syanna, the one decepting dettlaff with her fake love table 3. the ludus (structured play) of ludic taunting prosthetic communication ludus (structured play) narrative functions mechanical functions game system influenced influenced attributes progress impact mechanics button-pressing button-pressing indexicalities respective respective narratives metaleptic metaleptic geosocial system gnomic gnomic table 4. lability and merriness analysis taunts acts ludus (playfulness) lability merriness provocations hostile reactions laughter contest the legend has now begun! self-praise combo opener vulnerable pose strategy don't underestimate me! warning combo opener vulnerable pose strategy chickening out?! mocking combo opener vulnerable pose strategy saikyo! self-praise combo opener vulnerable pose strategy ohh yeah! interjecting combo opener vulnerable pose strategy too easy! underestimating combo opener vulnerable pose strategy burn this in your memory! underestimating combo opener vulnerable pose strategy a piece of cake! underestimating combo opener vulnerable pose strategy journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) purnomo, et.al. 480 table 5. lingual and non-lingual expressions of the sub functions of ludic taunting functions sub functions verbals non-verbals jeering sarcasm poses actions narrative archetyping +/+/+/+ cameoing +/+/+/+/ mythopoesing +/+/+/+ mechanical buffing + +/+ cosmeticizing + +/+ cueing +/+/+ debuffing + +/+/+ hinting + +/+ rewarding +/+/+ table 6. archetyping taunts in crash team racing characters archetypes traits taunts doctor neo cortex creator/ruler ambitious the trophy’s mine! outta my way! komodo joe magician cunning ssssucker! ssssuccess! sssheheheehehe! dingodile outlaw brutal i’ll fry youse! table 7. taunting for hinting character attacking taunts correct responses defending taunts correct responses desperate/special attacking taunts correct responses flik okay, let's see what you've got. desperate attack c'mon take a swing at me. attack now it's my turn. don't faint on me. defend this is just a waste of time. don't get too confident or you'll get yourself killed. you dodged my sword, the kid gloves are coming off... that's how to attack. got it? better be more careful. you'll get yourself hurt. here goes! hope you can handle this! 504 vol. 22 no. 2, october 2022, pp. 504 517 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i2.4810 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. the norm establishment in whatsapp group conversations n. norwanto & faizal risdianto norwanto@iainsalatiga.ac.id & faizalrisdianto@iainsalatiga.ac.id english education department, uin salatiga, indonesia abstract article information this linguistics study aims to observe the development of norms in whatsapp groups (wags). over the years, linguists have devoted their time to theorizing norms of im/politeness evaluations and linguistic interactions in computermediated communication (cmc). however, the norms of virtual interactions have not gained adequate attention. this study systematically documented and examined the conversations of 539 members of three wags to describe the norms of virtual group communication. the data indicated four sources of wags norms: the aims of creating the group, framing unmarked behaviors, and framing positive or negative evaluations of members' utterances or actions. the members' alignments toward non-virtual individual and social norms also significantly affect their negotiating wag norms. in the stages of the norming process, wags tend to experience conflicts due to interpersonal differences. these disputes are likely to disrupt the group's performance or predispose some members. theoretically, group development is comprised of formation, conflicts, norming, and performance. depending on the homogeneity or heterogeneity of the member's background, wags do not necessarily experience conflicts in the norming process. however, some of them tend to leap the stages from formation to performance. keywords: im/politeness evaluations; norms; virtual communication; whatsapp group conversations received: 24 june 2022 revised: 29 august 2022 accepted: 12 september 2022 introduction the studies of social media dialogues have greatly interested many linguists, particularly in pragmatics (e.g. bolander & locher, 2015; bou-franch & garcés-conejos blitvich, 2014a, 2014b; theodoropoulou, 2015; zhang & kramarae, 2014, etc.). pragmatics studies of post-2000 have focused on micro norms of im/politeness evaluations (locher & watts, 2005). however, the study related to im/politeness in whatsapp conversations is treated with negligence. even though waterloo, baumgartner, peter, and https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:faizalrisdianto@iainsalatiga.ac.id journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 505 valkenburg (2018) compared users’ behaviors on whatsapp to the other three platforms: facebook, twitter, and instagram, they studied positive and negative emotions. therefore, this linguistics study examines the emergence of micro-norms in whatsapp group (wag) conversation and the interference of social norms of traditional (non-virtual) interactions. micro-norms refer to norms negotiated and established at the micro-level, e.g. in a particular interaction or discourse. (locher & watts, 2005) this study expands the bettenhausen and murnighans’ study (1985), which focused on the patterns of norms in a new group which has not yet gained "pre-established habits" (terkourafi, 2005). bettenhausen and murnighan argued that the uncertainty about proper behavior causes the group members to refer to similar past experiences; in the early stages of interaction, the group members depend on "societal rationality" (terkourafi, 2005, p. 250) to decide on appropriate behavior in a new context by consulting similar past experiences. furthermore, bettenhausen and murnighan (1985) indicated three patterns of behavior, such as (1) changing their belief openly, (2) implicitly agreeing to the group’s moral evaluation (evaluation of member(s) toward other members’ utterances or actions, e.g., polite/ disrespectful, appropriate/ inappropriate, etc. which is based on group norms, e.g., polite/ disrespectful, appropriate/ inappropriate, etc.), or (3) imposing individual interpretations on the group. bettenhausen and murnighan (1985) collected conservative (non-virtual) interaction data of a newly formed group of 19 decision-makers. in contrast to their study, this research aims to observe virtual group conversations to determine the micro norms of wags’ conversations. group development involves four general stages: forming, storming, norming, and performing (bettenhausen & murnighan, 1985, p. 350; tuckman, 1965, p. 396). furthermore, tuckman stated that forming the group constitutes orientation, identifying the boundaries of members' behaviors or testing, and creating dependency rapports with leaders, pre-existing standards, and other group members. the second process may generate "conflicts and polarization around interpersonal issues." when the group overcomes the resistance, it reaches the third stage of norming. the fourth tuckman’s stage is when the group resolves the structural issues and supports task implementation. computer-mediated communication (cmc) linguistics studies on whatsapp are an integral part of the rapid development of cmc. the prototype e-mail exchange recorded at the beginning of 1960 indicated the earlier use of cmc (thurlow, lengel, & tomic, 2004 p. 15). herring (2013, p. 13) stated that some pioneering studies on cmc were published in the 1980s, such as baron (1984) studying the effects of communication medium on language production. since the 1990s, linguists have begun studying cmc seriously, and, presently, it has "grown dramatically" (herring, 2013, p. 3). murray (1990) indicated the features of cmc conversations, i.e., “speech-like native,” having no greeting and pre-closing (e.g., o.k, bye), and omission to reduce typing time. ferrara, brunner, and whittemore (1991) suggested that "interactive written discourse" is hybrid and shows both written and spoken language characteristics. during this period, the familiar form of cmc was e-mail and electronic messages (murray, 1990, p. 42). the subsequent linguistics studies of post2000 have brought new interests (i.e., im/politeness) in the development of cmc studies. haugh (2008) analyzed linguistic cmc data to theorize misunderstanding in communication. davies (2018) used online comments relating to the soto court hearing to propose "classification, assessment, and argumentatively" in evaluating im/politeness utterances. davies found three categories of metapragmatic behavior, namely classification, assessment, and argumentativity. in 2010, locher and seven other linguists started to address im/politeness in cmc (2010, p. 4). they collected the data from conversations in emails (haugh, 2010b), online newspapers (upadhyay, 2010), interactive websites (planchenault, 2010), bulletin board systems (nishimura, 2010), online fora (angouri & tseliga, 2010), and chat (darics, 2010). haugh journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) norwanto & faizal risdianto 506 found two factors that affect the discursivity of the evaluation of impoliteness: different perceptions of norms and the position of commentators vis-à-vis these evaluations. upadhyay shows that linguistic impoliteness can be used to “communicate disagreement”, “argue against out-group’s ideological views”, and “discredit ideological opponents”. in virtual communication, while planchenault found that a new member must consider the norms of the group, nishimura showed that violation of "unmarked norm of linguistic practices" (e.g. the use of honorifics) could cause "community dissolution". this study is different from the findings. while the last two studies analyzed the possible effects of aligning with or violating group norms, it focuses on establishing virtual group norms. the rapid development of information technology has brought new members to cmc, e.g., facebook, whatsapp, etc. in 2015, a special issue addressed the im/politeness on facebook and discussion boards (locher, bolander, & höhn, 2015). theodoropoulou (2015) did a frame analysis of politeness used in greek birthday wishes. the other two papers explained the relationship between politeness and identity (bolander & locher, 2015; haugh, chang, & kádár, 2015). regarding whatsapp, waterloo et al. (2018) researched contrast expressions of emotion on facebook, twitter, instagram, and whatsapp. concerning the definition of cmc, it involves four sides, namely people engaging in the process of communication, computers as the media of human interaction, contexts, and purposes (j. december, 1997, p. 15; thurlow et al., 2004 ). those involved in an interaction mediated by technology are meta-participants (kádár & haugh, 2013, p. 84). furthermore, the computer in cmc has broader functions, including calculation and typing tools, and "a platform for the operating system and software applications to support network data transmission and user applications" (j. december, 1996, pp. 20-21). the second function of the computer makes it possible to include other gadgets for the same tasks in linguistics cmc studies. locher (2010, p. 1) uses ‘computer’ to refer to all means of mediation in communication, e.g., computers/internet, mobile phones, video conferencing, etc. the latest development in cmc is communication applications. one famous exchange information application is whatsapp, with approximately two billion users in 2020 (pertiwi, 2020). in indonesia, 83 per cent of internet users (171 million) or more than 141 million people are using whatsapp (barokah, 2019). it provides textbased messages (e.g., private conversation between two people and group discussion or wag exchanges), data sharing, voice and video calls. the data indicated the massive influence of cmc, particularly whatsapp, in social interactions. norms the discussion of human behaviors, including linguistic interactions, apart from norms, only takes place in imagination (bettenhausen & murnighan, 1985, p. 350). studies indicate that the norms exist in group development (bettenhausen & murnighan, 1985, p. 350; tuckman, 1965, p. 396). technology development has brought human beings to live in two social realities: traditional and virtual societies. the second social group have emerged "from a surprising intersection of human needs and technology" (shayo, olfman, iriberri, & igbaria, 2007, p. 206). wags are members of cybernetic organizations of virtual societies. virtual has become a term for defining a society in which members do not have to live, meet, or work together directly ("face to face") in order to produce goods, services, or maintain social relationships (shayo et al., 2007, p. 187). as a virtual organization, whatsapp enables wag's members to efficiently and effectively communicate resources and achieve organizational goals. wags, like other community groups, commonly have moral orders to maintain proper social behaviors. garfinkel (1964, p. 225; 1967, p. 33) stated that moral orders in society are "natural facts of life" for determining right and wrong. moral orders are rules that regulate the daily activities of certain members of society. the members are journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 507 sometimes not aware of their presence, "perceivably natural normal courses of action," which are accepted together as they are (take it for granted) (garfinkel, 1967, p. 225). social actions and meanings that members of the society recognized form the moral orders of the society, which enables the members to evaluate social practices (e.g. utterances or actions) as good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, polite, less polite, over-polite, impolite, etc. (kádár & haugh, 2013, p. 94). moral orders consist of three layers of norms: individuals, groups/ organizations/ communities, and society/ culture (kádár & haugh, 2013, p. 95). furthermore, kadar and haugh stated that the history of interactions between individuals forms the first norms. on the second level, this norm is a set of expectations recognized by members of a particular community and organizational culture. finally, the third norm is the expectations represented in social conventions to evaluate social actions and meanings. haugh (2003, pp. 399-400) shows two types of norms, namely “norms about what one should do, and norms about what one is likely to do” (terkourafi, 2005, p. 244). while traditional theories (e.g. lakoff and leech) tend to approach politeness studies using the former, which tend to be prescriptive or theoretical, other studies (e.g. frame-based view, relational work, etc.) "seek to establish empirical regularities in a bottom-up fashion" (terkourafi, 2005, p. 244). methodology this qualitative research analyzed linguistic data of cmc in the form of virtual conversations. locher (2010, pp. 3-4) stated that cmc tends to develop its norms. thus, cmc has become an essential source of data for linguists to develop im/politeness theories (kádár & haugh, 2013, p. 53). this research data were words, phrases, clauses, and sentences of natural conversations from three wags in indonesia. the first group was a community that was interested in pragmatics. this group had 257 members in december 2020. the second group was an association of employees and their families of an educational institution having 255 participants. the third wag was a communication medium between a lecturer and 27 students. the three wags had different characteristics. this study was able to document the conversations of the first and the third wags from the groups' creation. they were helpful in scrutinizing the initial development of group norms. while the third wag was categorized as a non-conflictive group, the first and the second group were dynamic wags having conflictive and nonconflictive conversations. in the process of data collection, the wags' conversations were copied and pasted on microsoft word. to maintain the originality, the researchers screenshot the wags' conversations. before collecting the data, research consent was sent to the three wags requesting permission to analyze the conversations, store them and publish the study results. this study then removed the utterances which did not get consent from the members. this study analyzed 11030 words of the third wag’s conversation, 658 words of the second wag’s dialogue, and two months’ conversation of the first wag relating to the chat of group creation and advertisement. concerning the data analysis, this study enhanced the theories of the non-virtual establishment of organizations and group norms, i.e., tuckman (1965) and bettenhausen and murnighan (1985), respectively. it also refers to the definition of im/politeness by locher and watts (2005). during the analysis process, data were classified into conflictive and non-conflictive conversations. conflict reflected the "storming" process (bettenhausen & murnighan, 1985, p. 350; tuckman, 1965, p. 396). the next step was coding; each participant in wag's conversation was distinguished using fourdigit numbers. each selected sentence then was analyzed to see the process of norm establishment. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) norwanto & faizal risdianto 508 results and discussion observation of wags interactions indicates the four stages, even though they do not always experience the whole process, and the sequence is probably the inverted reverse. the characteristics of wags influence the course of these stages. wags are potentially created as (1) independent virtual organizations or (2) instruments for reaching the purpose of established organizations. while the second group participants are commonly workmates or colleagues, the members of the first wags are heterogeneous. they either do or do not affiliate with a particular institution. however, they share similar interests. the first type of wags experiences interpersonal conflict periodically, which is the root of the gradual emergence of norms. the second group potentially only undergoes forming and performing. these wags' members share common knowledge of the groups' structure and functions, and hence they potentially experience fewer conflicts and leap into performing. this study applies tuckman's organization development process while searching for the sources of wags' norms. the previous study shows the foundations of group norms: "explicit statements by supervisor or co-workers; critical events in the group's history; primacy; and carry-over behaviors from past situations [e.g. other organizations]" (feldman, 1984, p. 50). while feldman's processes exist in wags, this study finds some specific sources of norms, such as the purposes of founding wags. concerning tuckman’s, the study's observations indicate that wags’ norms are possibly established without conflicts, i.e., through the framing of unmarked behaviors. marked behaviors refer to utterances or actions evaluated negatively or positively by other members, while unmarked attitudes will go “largely unnoticed (i.e., it will be politic/appropriate)” (locher & watts, 2005, p. 11). this study follows the general stages of the developing group (i.e. forming, storming, and norming) to elaborate on the findings. forming and storming the data indicated that the objectives of creating wags have roles in regulating the members' interactions. the wags' aims might be unstated, informed implicitly, or declared explicitly. the first and second types were eligible for wags whose members were fully informed, e.g., the wags created by an institution to reach their goals. concerning the second type, the purposes of wags were explained subtly through group names or other methods. the group's leader, founder, or other members proposed an explicit statement of goals regarding the third category. excerpt (1) shows how the founder declared the aims, and excerpt (2) indicates wag's norms rooting in the objectives. data (1) 1. 4201 created this group 2. 4201 added 415 3. 5719 : thanks for having me in this group pak f. 4. 4201 : assalamualaikum bapak an, bapak dr j, pak n, ph.d. this is a group of pragmatics discussion. i hope that we are able to know each other and share our knowledge of pragmatics excerpt (1) was the forming process of a wag. the conversation occurred on 18 may 2020, the same day when 4201 created the virtual group. the wag's members include academicians that are interested in pragmatics. the excerpt was an "orientation" process (tuckman, 1965, p. 396), involving the addition or invitation of new members, greeting, thanking, and introducing. lines 1-2 were information generated by whatsapp informing the creator of the wag and the new members, respectively. line 3 was the expression of thanking of the newly added member. the word pak f ‘mr. f’ indicates that 5719 had already known 4201. pak or bapak ‘mr.’ is a title expressing respect among indonesian; the first is less formal than the second. in line 4, 4201 greeted three new members and introduced them to the existing members. lines 4 also introduced the group's name and aims. the introduction shows that some new members were not fully informed journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 509 about the group. the message of purpose was an essential attribute in the development of wag's norms. excerpt (2) shows how the aim contributes to the process of storming or negotiating, norming, and performing. data (2) 5. 0675 joined via an invite link 6. 0675 :(advertising two applications) 7. 6180 : q buat apa mba m ‘what is q, sister m’ 8. 0878 : paraphrase bu hehe ‘it is an application to paraphrase, mrs. 😊(laughter emoticons)’ 9. 0675 : (no consent to be the data) 10. 4756: bukankah q free y? ‘q is free, isn’t it?’ 11. 0675 : (no consent to be the data) 12. 3363 :[reply 0675] apakah ini berkaitan dgn pdf?? ‘does it relate to pdf?’ 13. 0675 : this message was deleted 14. 8782: (reply -3363-) a passer-by, pak. t. numpang lewat...... 🙂 15. 4201: for your info. this is a wag for pragmatics discussion forum. the focus of this group is bridging pragmaticians and pragmatics learners. no commercial ads are allowed except call for paper in language studies. 16. 0675 left 17. 4756 : lha iya,wong jelas2 q gratis malah diperjualbelikan ‘q is free, but she sold it instead.' 18. 4201: mungkin kayak g ada yg free, ada yg premium? 'it may be like g; there are free and premium editions.' 19. 3363: mungkin saran saya coba fokus ke pdf saja, misalkan bagaimana membumikan pragmatics di indonesia, mempopulerkan, diskusi dan sharing secara konstruktif 'i suggest focusing on pdf, for instance, how to introduce pragmatics in indonesia, to popularize, discuss, and share constructively.' 20. 0878 : 👍👍 21. 4201 : [reply 3363] dan mestinya orang jualan itu ngga boleh baper. begitu diingatkan left. ‘and a seller should not be too sensitive. she left the group when others warned her’. 22. 3363 : [reply 4201] mungkin bapernya bukan bawa perasaan, namun bawa perubahan. ‘the baper did not mean sensitive but brought changes’. 23. 4201: mungkin bisa presentasi korelasi antara q dengan memahami konteks ujaran dalam ranah pragmatics.🤭. ‘she may present the correlation of q and context of utterances in pragmatics. emoji’ 24. 0878 : 🤭 25. 5027 : (reply 4201) dia masuk grup memang tujuannya jualan pak..😃🤣 krena dilarang ya langsung left.. ‘her only goal in joining the group is to sell her merchandise. laughter (emoji). she left because it was prohibited.’ a new member (0675) joined the group (5) and shared an advertisement (6). she offered two applications (q and g) at a bargained price. while enquiring about the function of q application, 6180 called 0675 mbak m (10). the title and name respectively indicated that they know each other. mbak literally means 'elder sister' in the javanese language. the conversation was in bahasa indonesia; however, the title has been adopted and well known in the region. the expanded meaning of this word shows respect to the elder siblings, relatives, acquaintances, friends, and even strangers. the conversations were "unnoticed" (locher & watts, 2005) until 3363 posted a question (12). the question was “non-literal” and “indirect speech acts” (searle, 1975, pp. 169-170; wijana, 2021, p. 25). questioning the relationship between the conversation (particularly the advertisement) and pdf (pragmatics discussion forum; the name of the wag), 3363 rooted his question to the aim of wag (4). when 4207 reposted the group's purpose (15), it is clear that the “illocutionary force” (dresner & herring, 2010, p. 253; searle, 1968, p. 407) of the line (12) was to warn 0675 (6), she broke the norm and hence the conversations were inappropriate. rooting the moral evaluation (i.e., improper) journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) norwanto & faizal risdianto 510 to line 15 indicates that the aim of wag is the moral order. the evaluation is not only 3363’s “idiosyncratic evaluation” (kádár & haugh, 2013, p. 67), other critics (e.g., 14, 25) designate typical expectancies of appropriate/inappropriate behaviors. how the members evaluate the advertisement show that wags' purposes are the "familiar scenes of everyday affairs" (garfinkel, 1967; kádár & haugh, 2013, p. 67), leading to the moral meaning of right or wrong actions. norming regularities of positive and negative evaluations as norms evaluations of utterances or actions involve three poles, namely “unmarked” (unnoticed conversation or actions), “negatively marked,” and "positively marked" behavior (culpeper, 2012, p. 418; locher & watts, 2005, p. 12; long, 2016, p. 4). the three types of evaluations lead to norming or the emergence of wag's norms through framing. moral evaluations (e.g., appropriate/ inappropriate, write/ wrong, etc.) are framed as the members' expectancies when they occur regularly. concerning positive or negative evaluations, the process encompasses the role of critics/disagreements or compliments/ agreements, which potentially cause storming or negotiating interpersonal interests. within the storming and norming process of wags having many members, the silent majority dominates the conflicts. they are "ratified recipient[s]" (haugh, 2013, p. 61) or participants that passively read or even neglect chats during or after the wags’ discussion. pertaining to negatively marked behavior, the example of it is when 3363 (15) criticized 0675 (9). the reply 8782 (17) reinforced the implicature of this negative evaluation; 0675 broke the norms of the wags. only ten members posted 36 responses on the topic. one conversant was interested in the applications, and seven participants disagreed with 0675's advertisement (9) and her actions to leave the group (19). the data indicates that most of the members were the silent majority. the negative evaluations of advertisements in the wag recurred three times in two months. excerpt (2) was the third warning against advertising. the second "refusal speech act” (allami & naeimi, 2011, p. 386; shishavan & sharifian, 2016, p. 78) was posted 13 days before the excerpt (2), and the first was a month before the second. the regularity of actions with few opponents potentially frames the negative evaluation against advertising as the micro norm of the wag. terkourafi (2005, p. 247) argues that norm is a regularity that recurs in language expressions. issues of interpersonal differences, such as values, norms, personality (de wit, greer, & jehn, 2012, p. 360), or economic interest (e.g., excerpt 2), may cause disagreements or conflicts among group members. intense or moderate disagreements characterize the conflicts, and the first leads to friction. moderate conflicts affect some members and do not harm group harmony and performance in general. the example of moderate conflict in excerpt (2) has various effects on its members. 0675 might consider 8782's utterance (17) as aggressive words leading to the "feeling of friction, annoyance, and irritation" (thiel, harvey, courtright, & bradley, 2019, p. 4) and, hence, causing her to leave the group (19). the laughers’ emoji, and pun (25), however, indicate that the participants consider their critics “teasing” (haugh, 2010a). concerning the pun, the baper (25) is a slank word, which stands for bawa perasaan 'sensitive feeling'; however, 3363 changes the meaning into bawa perubahan ‘bring changes’. the absence of negative evaluation towards the sarcasm, teasing or pun indicates the acceptance of the members into the word game and jocular mockeries as the micro norms of the wag. data (3) 26. 6796 : di xxxxxxxxx sdh banyak pandemi2 yg lain. narkoba, korupsi, semua siaga 1. ‘in xxxxxxxxx, there are many other pandemics. drugs, corruption, all are in stage 1.' 27. 2678 : wkkkkk ‘laughter’ 28. 2515 : anakku sing mi malah wis bar pesta siaga lho mas f 🤭😁🤭 ‘my kid in elementary school had siaga [scout] gathering, brother f. laughter (emoji).' journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 511 29.2520: bp ibu bahas dan komen tentang covid 19 baiknya tidak sambil tertawa apalagi meremehkan. info mlm ini sgt mengkhawatirkan negeri kita. cuma saran.. ‘mr and mrs, if you discuss or comment on covid 19, it is better not to laugh or underestimate it. tonight's news informed the critical conditions of our country. it is only a suggestion ..’ 30.2576: njih hbs liat mata najwa jg.. ‘yes, i also watched it in mata najma [tv programme]’ 31. 👍👍👍 32. 4727 : (news link) 33. 2520 : kita perlu belajar dan ambil hikmah dari kasus di xxxxxx. ‘we should learn and take the lesson from cases in xxxxxx.' 34. 2810 : angka kematian akibat covid-19 xxx xxx sudah mencapai 9,4 % (wawancara tv7 dg gub xxx) 😭 ‘death rate of covid-19 was 9.4% (interview of tv7 with xxx governor).' 35. 450: dan saran juga, kita juga tidak tahu secara persis kondisi anggota keluarga dari warga pxxxxx, barangkali ada di antara kita yang sedang mengkhawaktifkan saudaranya. oleh sebab itu. oleh sebab itu kita jaga perasaan hati dari warga pxxxxx ‘and also my suggestion, we do not know precisely the condition of pxxxxx family members, some of us may be worrying about their relatives. therefore, we should take care of the feeling of pxxxxx members’. 36. 2678 : betul. leres pak j 👍👍👍 ‘it is true. it is true mr j’ 👍👍👍 negative or positive evaluations do not necessarily generate conflicts; they are potentially accepted without divergence. excerpt (3) indicated critics without group disruption. the conversation dated back to 18 march 2020, the beginning months of the covid-19 pandemic. talking about the plague, 6796 classified the pandemic, together with drug abuse and corrupt behaviours, stage (siaga) one (26). then, 2678 (27) and 2515 (28) replied with laughter and pun (siaga), respectively. siaga ‘be on the alert’ (26) means the stages in a natural disaster, while siaga (28) refers to scout rank. 2520 (29), then evaluated the "non-serious or playful frame" (haugh, 2010a, p. 2108; 2014, p. 78) negatively. 2520 interpreted laughter as an act of belittling the increase in covid-19 cases. to show approval of the negative evaluation, the other participants posted thumbs-up emoticons (31, 36) and then relayed the covid19 news (30, 33, 34) or addressed the playful expressions of a lack of empathy for those suffering from coronavirus disease (35). conservative individual and social norms the data indicated that the emergence of wags' norms might leap over tuckman's storming process. it means that the wags did not experience disputes during the norming process; harmony or non-conflict interactions are the sources of group norms. the norming processes are largely "unmarked" or "unnoticed" (locher & watts, 2005) by the members. the group members potentially narrated the unnoticed behaviors repeatedly. moreover, the unmarked utterances or actions root in individual and social norms of nonvirtual interactions. excerpts (2) and (3) indicate that moral evaluations (appropriate, inappropriate, polite, impolite, etc.) of wags’ conversations involve members’ alignment with conservative individual and social norms. conservative norms refer to traditional values or norms of non-virtual social interactions. excerpt (2) shows how individual norms affect wags’ member evaluations. first, 6180 (7) and 0878 (8) tend to have “intentional silence” (ephratt, 2012, p. 63; kasher, 1976, fn.5). they were supposed to understand that 0675's advertisement (6) forfeited the wag's norms, but they did not criticize her. the absence of negative evaluations (silence) indicates that they avoid “face-threatening acts” (fta) (brown & levinson, 1987, p. 72). second, 3363 (12, 19) and 4201 (15) tend to mitigate fta. they used non-literal and indirect speech acts to criticize 0675 obliquely. third, other conversant affiliated with open criticism. the numpang lewat ‘passerby’ (14), pun (22), or laughter emoji (25) are likely to be “banter” or “mock impoliteness” (leech, 1983, p. 144) or journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) norwanto & faizal risdianto 512 “jocular mockery” (haugh, 2010a, p. 2107) among the members. however, 0675 potentially interpreted it differently. the numpang lewat was another popular name for advertisement in indonesia; some tv presenters used it to end their statements before commercial breaks. the laughers (emoji) confirmed the jocular mockery among the members. for 0675, however, she probably infers the meaning semantically; the phrase categorized her as an outsider that only sought profit in the wag. this assessment likely stems from the fact that she joined the wag for a few seconds and immediately placed an advertisement. pertaining to norms, the differences in how to answer advertisements show the existence of individual norms in wags conversations. different methods of criticizing (indirectly and jocular mockery) are then accepted in this wag. furthermore, excerpt (3) relates the members' non-virtual social or cultural norms to the virtual norms of the wag. 2678 (36) agreed with 2520's evaluation (29) expressed with three markers: the words betul ‘true’, leres ‘true’ and the three thumbs up emoji. in addition, all members of the wag speak bahasa indonesia, most of them speak javanese, and some people also speak arabic and other local languages. the conversations were in bahasa. betul indicates 'agreement' in the indonesian language. meanwhile, 2678 repeated the acceptance in the javanese language (leres). the speaker should have a particular intention of repeating the agreement in two different languages. semantically, leres and betul have the same meaning; however, they are different sociolinguistically. the betul address members of all social groups, and the leres might personally address 2520. the inference arises from the speech levels of the javanese language. it has four types of words: ngoko ‘low’, madya ‘middle’, krama ‘high’, and honorific (krama inggil and krama andhap). the leres is a krama variation of the ngoko bener ‘true’ (sasangka, 2005, p. 93). krama indexes refined and formal level (poedjosoedarmo, 1968, p. 57; wolff & poedjosoedarmo, 2002, p. 4) to express polite (poedjosoedarmo, 1968, p. 57) and respect (smith-hefner, 2009, p. 213) manners, “speaker deference to addressee” (silverstein, 2003). someone of lower status uses krama to address higher-level hearers (oakes, 2009, p. 820). in this context, 2678 used leres to respect older colleagues (i.e., 2520). concerning the emergence of wags norms, the speaker's affiliation with conservative social norms affects the virtual language ideology of the speaker. the establishment of wags’ norms the data indicated two patterns of wags’ norms: (1) those specified, discussed, and accepted when the groups are created and (2) the norms that emerged gradually during the members’ interaction. figure 1 shows the process of the emergence of wags’ micro norms. when a member posts utterances, emoticons, stickers, videos, images, or other actions, others evaluate them as “unmarked” or “marked” (locher & watts, 2005, p. 12) behaviors. utterances or actions which meet members' expectancies are unmarked (see excerpt 4) and largely go "unnoticed" (locher & watts, 2005, p. 11). they may also be marked positively or negatively. the evaluations, either negative or positive, are potentially accepted (see excerpt 3) or negotiated by others. the negotiation causes less conflict (see excerpt 2) or tension among members. the final agreements of the evaluation and unnoticed behaviors are the convention and micro norms of wag’s interactions, “familiar scenes of everyday activities” (garfinkel, 1967, p. 33). the convention is “recurrent schematic behavior” (kádár & mills, 2013, p. 143) which mainly "regulates social interactions" (kádár & haugh, 2013, p. 264). journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 513 figure 1. the establishment process of wags’ norms excerpt (4) validates the application of figure 1 on unmarked routinized behaviour originating from members' conservative social practices. data (4) is a conversation between a lecturer (415) and university students in bahasa on 02 september 2020. they were preparing pre-service teaching practices in secondary schools. when asking whether the students have met the principal of the school, 415 used sowan ‘to meet’ (javanese language) (37) instead of menghadap or menemui (‘to meet’; bahasa indonesia). sowan is the variation of javanese ngoko words adep, mara, and teka ‘to meet’. poedjosoedarmo (1969, p. 170) categorized the word krama inggel (ki), while sasangka (2005, p. 152) classified it as krama andhap (ka). both ki and ka are honorific or "respect vocabulary," indicating high deference to the addressee (poedjosoedarmo, 1968, pp. 57-58). the lecturer preferred the honorific word to address the school headmaster, that was not the conversation participant. in the wag, the sowan was used six times in september 2020. it is used interchangeably with bahasa indonesia bertemu ‘to meet’ (four times) and ketemu ‘to meet’ (ten times). the members of the wag also regularly use other javanese words, such as nggih ‘yes’ (ki). the word, together with its variation, i.e., enggih, nggeh, nggh, were used 33 times. other javanese variations used include [e]mpun ‘already’ (m), kalih ‘with’ (k), naming ‘only’ k), and dereng ‘not yet’ (k). madya (m) is a middle variation between lower ngoko (n) and high krama (k) in expressing politeness. data (4) 37. 415: apakah sudah pada sowan kepsek / wakakur? adakah pesan khusus atau catatan dr beliau2x ttg penyerahan, pelaksanaan, dan penarikan ppl? ‘did you meet the principal/vice principal? are there messages or notes from them concerning handover, action, and withdrawal of pre-teaching practice?’ 38. 1269: kalau yg di pringapus bisa lwat online bapak ‘it can be done online in pringapus, mr.’ 39. 6748: belum sowan mengenai itu bapak ‘i have not met them, mr.’ … 40. 2309: sd it mh ngadirojo mpun sowan pak namung kalih kepsek kaleh wakakur dereng ‘i have met the vice principal of sdit mh, instead of the school principal’. 41. 415: man 1 c clear. saya sdh kontak p. m dan pak wakakur sdh menerima itu sebagai penyerahan ppl. beliau nanti akan menyampaikan ke kepsek. ppl tgl 7 sept s.d. 11 okt. ‘man 1 c is clear, and i have called mr m, and the vice-principal acknowledged that the call was the participants' handover'. … unmarked utterances/actions marked (positive/negative evaluation) individual, group, and social norms of members convention norms dis/agreement journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) norwanto & faizal risdianto 514 42. 415: pdf pedoman ppl bisa di print dan jilid sendiri utk diserahkan ke sekolah. “you can print the the guidance book of ppl and give it to school” 43. 6748 : baik bapak .terimakasih ‘yes mr. thank you’. 44. 9053 : nggih pak yes mr.’ the existence of javanese words in the indonesian-javanese code-mixing in the wag was unnoticed. however, the regular occurrences of the javanese code show that the agreement of wag's members originated from one of the respect norms in javanese culture. the regularity of javanese codes indicates convention among the wag's members to index the speaker's deference to the hearer and in absentia third parties in the middle, high, and honorific variations. the members then use it as the norm to evaluate other similar utterances. conclusion the analysis showed that wags’ norms potentially emerge from four different sources: the group's aims, unmarked behaviors, regularity of negative and positive evaluations, and the alignment of the members toward conservative social norms and individual expectancies. the last findings correspond with bettenhausen and murnighan (1985)'s finding indicating personal experiences as the source of group norms. the result suggests discursive wags' norms; 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(2010). identity and impoliteness in computer-mediated reader responses. journal of politeness research, 6(1), 105-127. doi:https://doi.org/10.1515/jplr.2010.0 06 waterloo, s. f., baumgartner, s. e., peter, j., & valkenburg, p. m. (2018). norms of online expressions of emotion: comparing facebook, twitter, instagram, and whatsapp. new media & society, 20(5), 1813-1831. doi:10.1177/1461444817707349 https://doi.org/10.1515/jplr.2010.003 https://doi.org/10.1515/jplr.2010.003 https://tekno.kompas.com/read/2020/02/13/18190017/whatsapp-tembus-2-miliar-pengguna https://tekno.kompas.com/read/2020/02/13/18190017/whatsapp-tembus-2-miliar-pengguna https://tekno.kompas.com/read/2020/02/13/18190017/whatsapp-tembus-2-miliar-pengguna https://doi.org/10.1515/jplr.2010.006 https://doi.org/10.1515/jplr.2010.006 journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 517 wijana, i. d. p. (2021). on speech acts. journal of pragmatics research 3(1), 14-27. doi:10.18326/jopr.v3i1.14-27 wolff, j. u., & poedjosoedarmo, s. (2002). communicative codes in central java: southeast asia program publications, southeast asia program cornell university ithaca, new york. zhang, w., & kramarae, c. (2014). “slutwalk” on connected screens: multiple framings of a social media discussion. journal of pragmatics, 73, 66-81. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma. 2014.07.008 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.07.008 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.07.008 36 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 36 – 45 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23.i1.4784 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. understanding how they work: the agents’ strategies in producing indonesian-english literary translation m. yuseano kardiansyah1, 2, aprinus salam1, nur saktiningrum1 yuseano@teknokrat.ac.id 1faculty of cultural sciences, universitas gadjah mada, indonesia 2faculty of arts and education, universitas teknokrat indonesia, indonesia abstract article information this article contains a study on yogyakarta literary agents’ strategies in producing a translated work from indonesian into english (indonesian-english literary work) entitled “pilgrimage in the land of java”. due to the development of literary studies based on the practice of its agents, this study aims to understand more the pattern and vision of agents in producing translated literary work in a particular context. in this case, the agents are a poet iman budhi santosa, an indie publisher interlude, and a translator chrysogonus siddha malilang. this study adopts the bourdieusian concept of strategy in cultural production as the framework of thought. meanwhile, interview and document selection are two primary techniques to collect data for this qualitative research. this study reveals the strategies implemented by the three primary agents during the production of “pilgrimage in the land of java”. although running on the same track, it turns out that each of them had specific strategies based on the role that they possessed during the production. this study also discloses the significance of social capital in translation practice. keywords: agents; strategy; indonesian-english literary work; social capital received: 16 june 2022 revised: 26 august 2022 accepted: 15 november 2022 introduction the emergence of indonesian literary works at the frankfurt book fair (fbf) 2015 has shown the attempts made by literary agents in indonesia to earn global recognition for indonesian literature in general or even its literary men in particular. with a lengthy historical background (since johannes guttenberg invented the printing machine during the 15th century), fbf has now transformed into a brand mark and a model of the international cultural exhibition, with hundreds of thousands of visitors worldwide attending every year. it is believed that the social capital given by the event can potentially attract the world's public to learn more about the literary culture that is now titled “17.000 https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 37 islands of imagination”. therefore by joining the exhibition, the struggle of indonesian literature to enter the international scale of literary contestation has moved one step forward. since 2007, indonesia has tried to get involved in fbf by independent initiation from ikapi (indonesian publishers association). however, that attempt always found deadlock due to a limited source of funds. until 2009, with serious support from the indonesian ministry of education and tourism (kemendikbud), indonesia could routinely be involved in fbf and other international book fairs. the ministry then established the national committee (later the national book committee). this committee must curate potential works that deserve a funding subsidy for the english translation project. then in 2014, the committee announced the recommended name of writers, publishers, and book titles that earned the subsidy program. based on the list launched by the ministry, besides essay anthologies, nonliterary books, children's books, and comics, there were 79 novels, 57 short story anthologies, 58 poetry anthologies, 14 dramas, one memoir, and also one short story and poetry mixed anthology. after further exploration, one of the literary translations listed can now be found by the researchers of this study. that particular work is “ziarah tanah jawa” (2013) – written by a prominent poet, namely iman budhi santosa – that has been translated into “pilgrimage in the land of java” (2014) and published by interlude publisher yogyakarta. this kind of work leads to an interesting fact to be further investigated because it shows the existence of a cultural phenomenon that can produce such a specific literary product. in the field of indonesian literature, especially in yogyakarta, iman budhi santosa’s name is highly recognized. this poet is seen as an agent who has a dominant position due to his respected and consistent reputation for decades, having a creative process in the field of yogyakarta literature (safitri, 2015; salam, 2018). during his long-life career, iman has produced many works in different genres such as the novel, short story anthology, and poetry anthology (including ‘geguritan’). one of his poetry anthologies is “ziarah tanah jawa” – containing a collection of 81 poems from 2006 until 2012 – translated into the english version “pilgrimage in the land of java” by a translator namely siddha malilang, and published by interlude publisher. an interesting fact in this discussion is the practice of cultural production that results in ‘indonesian – into – english’ (or indonesianenglish) literary work. in this study, the practice behind the production of such literary work is considered attractive because by investigating the practice of the agents during the production of indonesian-english literary work, it is assumed that the cultural dynamic that happened in the indonesian literary translation production can be further understood. accordingly, this study focuses on exploring the strategies of literary agents in the production of “pilgrimage in the land of java”. it is conducted to disclose how an indonesian literary work – that shows javanese locality – is transformed into the english version. scientific studies toward literary translation practice have been developing all around the world. besides studies that focus on motive or purpose that tend to be various (yu, 2010; abdolmaleki, 2018; al-mahrooqi & denman, 2016; ashcroft, 2014), that literary practice, in general, can also show certain cultural conditions. they can be seen from studies on translators’ role, translation institutions, government policy, also strategies and impacts given by literary agents’ practice (tekgül, 2016; harding, 2014; zahrawi, 2018; saito, 2015; hadley & akashi, 2015; xu, 2012; yuan, 2018; bai, 2009; solum, 2018; haroon, 2017; lygo, 2016; daldeniz, 2010; milani, 2017; hanna, 2005 & 2009). however, the study on indonesianenglish literary production is still hard to find in indonesia. the current condition shows how minimum the attention of literary researchers toward literary translation production and its agents’ practice inside. it is proven by the lack of variation in translation studies in indonesia (dewi, 2019). in her study, dewi shows that most translation studies developed in indonesia only focus on the text, and the investigation of the literary translation process and its agents have not attracted the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kardiansyah et al. 38 attention of indonesian literary translation scholars. it is ironic since the name of indonesian literature has been highlighted since 2015 among the world literary public. it will be unfortunate if indonesian scholars miss such a practice of literary production. thus, this study can potentially fulfil an empty area that previously seemed ignored by them. some scholars have conducted studies on agents’ strategies in translated literary production. among many of them, there are daldeniz (2010), xu (2012), hadley and akashi (2015), and zahrawi (2018). each study focuses on agents such as the translator, publisher, and literary man. daldeniz develops a study focusing on the strategy and orientation shift of publisher timaş yayinlari as an agent of western classical works translation in turkey. this study highlights (economic) capital conversion as a strategy implemented by timaş yayinlari to accumulate or reproduce more capital to adapt to the shift of society’s political orientation in a particular period. in a study related to the translator’s strategy, xu sees that scholar translators tend to raise their visibility by pursuing a different strategy than other translators in literary translation. here, xu studies the translation result demonstrated by jeffrey c. kinkley toward shen congwen’s “biancheng”. xu reveals some strategies in this case: 1. kinkley uses congwen’s literary capital as one of the world's most recognized chinese writer, 2. kinkley attaches his reputation as an expert on congwen’s works in his translation work by giving some paratexts (footnote and endnote) that expose his credibility as a scholar. almost in line with xu’s study, hadley and akashi studied haruki murakami’s strategy to raise his visibility as a celebrity translator due to his reputation as a prominent literary man. based on the study, they find that murakami uses a foreignization strategy for he realizes that this can attract readers' attention to the translator of the work and, eventually, murakami’s role as a celebrity translator. in the other context, zahrawi focuses his study on the translator’s strategy in negotiating the meaning and keeping cultural identity from the source text into the target text in two different works. the study reveals that both translations contain various levels of foreignization and domestication. in one literary work, the translator uses a domestication strategy to ease target text readers' understanding of the translated work. meanwhile, the translator of another work prioritizes the foreignization strategy to keep the cultural identity of the original work before target text readers. such a study shows that each strategy has its function. in domestication, the translator’s target is the high reception of target readers, while in the foreignization strategy, the translator’s ultimate aim is to inform the cultural identity of the original text to the readers. therefore, they can be related to the socio-cultural context where the text was born. according to those studies, it can be seen how the concept of strategy has become an essential object of discussion to understand various practices possessed by many agents in the production of literary translation. however, none of them realizes that in particular circumstances, the production of literary translation can be a collective work that involves the writer, publisher, and translator as the agents of production. that situation is found in the production of “pilgrimage in the land of java”. here, the poet, the publisher, and the translator work together to produce a work projected to be exhibited in fbf 2015. instead of seeing literary translation as the product of a translator or publisher only, this present study will see it as a collective form of action. it is potential to see their interaction and strategies during the work production. how they collaborate and strategize to achieve a shared vision must be investigated in this case. as one of the key concepts from bourdieu’s field of cultural production theory (johnson in bourdieu, 1993, p. 17), the strategy can be viewed as the specific orientation of practice in which this concept is not based on conscious calculation (as a product of habitus), but the result of unconscious dispositions toward practice (unconsciousness). accordingly, the action the agents take follows the game flow (feel for the game) that has already been internalized in their mindset. this concept is also directly related to the practice of an agent in social space or particular fields based on their capital. accordingly, capital can be understood as a set of force and power resources that journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 39 agents can use to practice in a specific field of literature. in this case, bourdieu (jenkins, 2013, p. 125, bourdieu, 1990, pp. 118-120, and karnanta, 2013, p. 11) categorizes capital into four types: economic capital, cultural capital, social capital, and symbolic capital. economic capital can be seen in the form of production tools, materials, and money. cultural capital is a holistic intellectual qualification that can be produced through formal education or family tradition. social capital is social networking possessed by an agent with other agents with power or relevant capital. meanwhile, symbolic capital is a form of accumulated prestige, status, authority, and legitimation. the practice of producing literary work reflects how an agent fights to struggle and gain some profit in the literary field. in this context, bourdieu (johnson in bourdieu, 1993, p. 8) believes that when the agents have come into a field, all of their capital has already automatically invested in gaining more capital from their involvement. the general logic that can be used in this case is that none want to get lost in the game they play in that field. thus, they need strategies to succeed in every production of literary work they run because the result of the production is projected to give more capital to each agent. that is how investigating literary agents’ strategy is vital to understanding sociocultural implications in the production of literary work, especially to see how they struggle to reach the objective that they aim. therefore, in the context of literary translation or general literary production practice, the strategy can be investigated both from every action taken by the agents during production and also by comparing the textual form of both source text (st) and target text (tt), considering tt commonly reflects the production practice and logic behind that work. the strategies implemented by iman as the poet and interlude as the publisher is traced further in this particular study. however, specifically for the translator’s strategy needs a more specific perspective than the bourdieusian concept explained previously. accordingly, specifically in the typology of text translation, venuti (munday, 2016, p. 225226) explains two translation strategies which are ‘domestication’ and ‘foreignization’. domestication is a translation that emphasizes a transparent and fluent style in the tt. it is intended to minimize the foreignness of the target text as if it is not a translated text. conversely, foreignization is a translation that prioritizes a heterogenous style highlighting st's foreign identity. it is used to preserve the original identity of st toward the receiving readers so that they can be aware of the linguistic and cultural differences inherent in the foreign text. those strategies can be seen in how the translator translates some javanese cultural texts in “pilgrimage in the land of java”. therefore, the strategy implemented by siddha as a translator will be examined through such a framework. methodology in general, the material object is known as the object that becomes the field of research, while the formal object is the aspect studied from the chosen material object (udasmoro, 2012). thus, in this research context, the material object is the production of indonesian-english literary work entitled “pilgrimage in the land of java” by iman, interlude, and siddha malilang. meanwhile, the formal object is the practical strategy implemented by those three main agents during the production of that work. in the context of this research, studying the strategy implemented during the translation process by those three agents is essential since their strategies are fundamental in the practice of cultural production. in the case of translated literary work production, the agents’ strategies are set for their objective accomplishment in the production. here, the connection among iman budhi santosa as the poet, interlude as the publisher, and a translator, namely chrysogonus siddha malilang (siddha), potentially form a kind of inter-agent relation in the process of cultural production that resulted “pilgrimage in the land of java”. by developing a comprehensive understanding of a particular human culture from an objective perspective, this research journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kardiansyah et al. 40 focuses on finding relevant data related to the role of some cultural agents and their strategies in producing indonesian-english literary work. the data are obtained by interviewing the main agents (the poet and the publisher) and observing both the source text (st) and target text (tt). specifically, this research needs information about agents’ practices that can be explored through some written sources (i.e., journal articles and essays) and asked directly to the agents via interview. besides, it also needs data on the translator’s work by collecting specific texts – in the form of lines and stanzas – both in st and tt. those data will be inductively selected and classified based on the research needs to answer the problem stated previously. as a set of methods to figure out the relationships among data collected, three primary ways are applied for analyzing the data in this research. first, analyze data from interviews to understand the roles and actions taken by all literary translation agents during the production process. it is conducted to know how each agent interacts with each other and what kind of responses they take to overcome every challenge faced during the production process. second, analyzing how some selected texts in st are transformed into tt. this analysis aims to know how some specific acts implemented by the agents are reflected in the final result of the translation work. results and discussion the poet’s strategies according to a direct interview with iman budhi santosa and the interlude publisher's management, the researchers can finally come up with some findings related to iman’s strategy as the poet in the holistic production process of “pilgrimage in the land of java”. there are two main strategies he implemented during the production process. firstly, he uses his networking. secondly, he acts as a mediator to actualize the expected translation spectrum. before that, it must be known that literary translation production – like general literary production – will never be detached from its agents’ preferences. the preference must deal with the positions employed by each agent during the production process. the more capital (social, cultural, economic, or even symbolic) they possessed, the more power they had to dominate the process. in this context, the researchers see iman as an agent who has an exceptionally high bargaining position among other agents. besides his symbolic, cultural, and social capital, he also has economic capital because the fund used for the production was granted to him as the author. as a prominent literary man participating in the yogyakarta literature, managing mass media, and other activities, iman undoubtedly had a wide range of social networking at that time. that condition enabled him to comfortably convert such kind of economic capital into the form of literary work production. furthermore, he also used his social capital to look for a publisher and translator that could help him produce the work. it must be known that during the preproduction process, iman chose other agents, such as interlude publisher and siddha malilang, by himself to later support him based on their particular portion. in this case, sukandar (interlude’s management) was one of iman’s ‘ideological apprentices’ who confessed that he had learned so much from him. meanwhile, siddha had previously worked on translating iman’s other works for his academic purpose. eventually, it turned out that both iman and siddha had similar ideologies related to the translation spectrum. based on such a social relation, iman chose both to help him publish “pilgrimage in the land of java”. besides, for the sake of running the production process much more manageable, it implies an idea that iman had known best about the cultural capital owned by those two agents and calculated this variable for the production. for instance, siddha took an m.a degree in english education and was a ph.d. candidate in creative writing pedagogy or sukandar as interlude’s management was an activist for literary events and community in yogyakarta. moreover, both were very close to javanese culture – as they are ethnically javanese – for the poetry anthology to be published containing thick javanese values. iman implemented that strategy to keep the work’s proportionality according to the international journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 41 reader's segmentation targeted through this work. the following strategy is becoming a mediator between the publisher and the translator during the production process. according to the interview, it turns out that there was no sufficient social connection between interlude and siddha because this collective work was conducted separately without having any direct communication with one another. consequently, as the central agent, iman took the role of mediator to bridge the gap and did some specific discussions with each of them to produce a translated literary work as expected. iman discussed book design (cover and backside), content layout, and translation results with interlude. meanwhile, with siddha, he dealt with the indonesianenglish translation strategy to be implemented in his book. iman conducted such a strategy for organizing the growing production process at that time, solving gap problems between two other agents, and also realizing the production result targeted to international readers. as a belief that he often expresses that translation indeed must be oriented to its target readers. accordingly, unlike the previous studies that only highlight the role of translator and publisher, the production of “pilgrimage in the land of java” shows that a poet's existence is also vital during the production process. his social and cultural capital enabled him to implement two strategies explained previously. social capital is crucial for the first strategy because it needs a wide range of social networking to know which kind of agent is suitable for a literary project. the poet’s decision to choose interlude and siddha malilang as the co-agents in the production implies that he already understood that both were competent to produce a literary translation product. meanwhile, cultural capital in the form of working experience in literary and mass media production enabled the poet to lead the production process, such as distributing the task to the publisher and translator, monitoring the process, and evaluating the final product. the publisher’s strategies based on an interview with interlude, the researchers eventually discovered some strategies this agent implemented as an independent publisher in the production of “pilgrimage in the land of java”. firstly, like iman, interlude also used its current social networking at that time, and secondly, it took a role in designing a book that could represent the quality of the book and attract international readers. here, the researchers also find that iman gave interlude sufficient discretion to explore the design and layout arrangement for a book to be published. as an independent publisher, even though interlude’s management admitted this publisher still had many weaknesses in terms of personnel compared to major publishers, they did not lose the tactical idea. for that case, interlude cooperated with a freelance painter toni malakian to create a cover painting and gapura omah desain to design the book cover and its content. by the discretion possessed, interlude had the freedom to determine its agent members during the pre-production process. interlude has often cooperated with both of them in producing literary books in yogyakarta during its practice as an indie publisher based on friendly relationships. for the same reason, the management then chose them to support “pilgrimage in the land of java” publication. besides knowing their cultural capital or capacity already, the main reason interlude cooperated with them was proximity so that the interaction during the production process could be fluid, communicative, and comfortable. interlude implemented that strategy to keep the quality of work and – more than that – to overcome every obstacle, especially the limitation of economic capital, in the production process by utilizing its social capital. the following strategy is to design a book cover that reflects the book's content so that it can also attract readers’ attention to enjoy it further. in this case, sukandar acknowledged that the most challenging part was designing the book cover because he believed that this will always be crucial for readers’ first impression, whether or not they want to dive deeper into exploring the book content. as the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kardiansyah et al. 42 one close to iman and his works, sukandar – more or less – had understood the literary vision of the poet, born in magetan on march 28th, 1948. hence, he then tried to arrange the basic idea that would be applied as a cover book illustration with some symbolism: 1. winding road in the form of ‘keris’ as a symbol of pride in javanese culture, 2. a parent who wears ‘blangkon’ walks along with a child as a symbol of the javanese education system, and 3. the horizon conventionally symbolizes a future. therefore, the cover of this book holistically symbolizes a parent who leads a child making a pilgrimage, re-exploring, and re-understanding javanese local wisdom, for the sake of a brighter future. inevitably, not all readers would so easily understand the meaning behind those symbols. nonetheless, with some illustrations of goods identical to javanese culture on the book cover, it implies a specific strategy to attract the interest of international readers. based on the interview, sukandar, interlude’s owner, believed that keris and blangkon have already been well-known as part of javanese culture and tradition. based on that reason also, the publisher decided to illustrate them on the book cover and hoped that when slightly saw “pilgrimage in the land of java”, that impression could directly attract international readers to read it until the end. besides that, the publisher also strategized to pursue the visibility of all agents involved in this book production by mentioning the names of the poet and translator and the publisher's logo on the cover. even on the last page – although without consent – the publisher decided to put iman’s face illustration along with his short biography to introduce a poet whose dozens of poems are contained inside this work. moreover, on the back cover, the publisher also showed a poem entitled “pilgrimage in the land of java”, so the readers could read and be moved to read it more. all those strategies were implemented to give the readers an attractive first impression. by that, the publisher hoped readers would buy the book, open it page after page, and get hooked up with the texts translated by the translator siddha malilang. here, social capital in the form of social networking was utilized to solve the lack of personnel. besides, cultural capital in the form of knowledge in the book production and publishing strategy enabled the publisher to think about an interesting book presentation by using javanese symbols on the cover and ensuring the visibility of agents involved in the production by acknowledging all of them on the book cover, book identity page, and the last page. thus, like the poet, interlude’s social and cultural capital enabled this publisher to overcome every challenge during the production. the translator’s strategies as explained by venuti previously, the strategies applied in translation practice can be domestication or foreignization. both are the results of the ethical attitude of the translator toward a foreign text and culture. however, in the context of “ziarah tanah jawa”, the condition is relatively challenging. this anthology contains a lot of javanese expressions and terms, so the translator must find a way to transfer them into the tt (english) properly. therefore, the translation strategy implemented by siddha on javanese expressions and terms in “pilgrimage in the land of java” will be discussed further. based on the analysis, it is found that the translator uses the domestication strategy in most javanese cultural texts. this study finds 47 javanese cultural texts translated into english, and these are some examples of how the translator transformed those texts: st-1: “karena wong jawa nggone semu, sinamun ing samudana, sesadone ing adu manis” (santosa, 2015, p. 3) tt-1: “can you read the faces of java? what lies under the masques and tongues?” (santosa, 2014, p. 3) st-2: “tak ada lagi sesanti: “bener durung mesthi pener, salah durung mesthi kalah, becik bisa kuwalik.” (santosa, 2015, p. 108) tt-2: “there is no more saying: ‘being true may not be right, the wrong may not be lost, the righteous may be wronged.’” (santosa, 2014, p. 112) st-3: “tembang dolanan” (santosa, 2015, p. 16) journal of language and literature vol. 23 no. 1 – april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 43 tt-3: “children song” (santosa, 2014, p. 19) st-4: “pungkuran” (santosa, 2015, p. 16) tt-4: “backyard” (santosa, 2014, p. 19) nevertheless, a different thing was found in some other cultural texts. it is also found that the translator uses the foreignization strategy to translate five javanese cultural texts, as follows: st & tt-5: “cempe-cempe undangna barat gedhe, takopahi duduh tape, yen kurang golekka dhewe…” (santosa, 2015, p. 6 & 2014, p. 8) st 6: “udan liris, sidamukti” (santosa, 2015, p. 104) tt-6: “udan liris to sidamukti” (santosa, 2014, p. 108) st & tt-7: “suta-naya, dadap-waru” (santosa, 2015, p. 95 & 2014, p. 99) st & tt-8: “vatusastra” (santosa, 2015, p. 38 & 2014, p. 41) st & tt-9: “serat babad” (santosa, 2015, p. 23 & 2014, p. 26) from 52 cultural texts found in the st, it turns out that 90,4% are transformed into the target language, while 9,6% are preserved as foreign texts. therefore, it shows that the translator tends to perform a transparent and fluent translation practice in producing “pilgrimage in the land of java”. with such a domestication strategy, the translator can minimize the foreignness of this work to receiving readers. this strategy can realize a condition where the poet is brought back home to the target culture. however, several original texts still potentially present foreignness to the target readers. in this case, it is well-understood that there was no way for siddha except to keep those texts as they were. otherwise, the readers will lose the cultural context of the poetry. unfortunately, he did not attempt to give any explanation upon those kinds of ‘exotic’ texts – neither as the footnote nor as to the endnote – so there lies a probability if that text could not be well-understood by the readers, or maybe it can be in the opposite, the readers can even be stimulated to learn more about javanese culture instead. since the fundamental function of foreignization is “to make the readers realize that they are reading a translation of a work from a foreign culture” (munday, 2016, p. 226). the decision to use either domestication or foreignization type of translation must be determined by the translator’s academic background and practical experience. here, cultural capital in the form of knowledge and techniques in translating literary work enabled the translator to transfer the st to tt. therefore, cultural capital is very influential in the practice of literary text translation. conclusion in conclusion, this study has proven at least three significant findings. first, all agents' social and cultural capital were the main factor supporting the production practice of literary translation. in the context of “pilgrimage in the land of java”, the poet, the publisher, and the translator were bound in a social chain in which iman budhi santosa became the binder knot. second, the poet, the publisher, and the translator as literary agents strategized with each logic of practice (habitus). the publisher strategized in designing an attractive book ‘packaging’, the translator strategized by dominantly domesticating the cultural texts into english, and iman was the one who organized the whole process. third, all the agents strategized to produce a translated literary work by expecting that this work could be well-accepted and easily read by receiving readers. by focusing on the agents’ strategies during the production process, this study can only reveal some specific actions they took when a translated work was in the making. it is unable to explore further how the literary production they have conducted can potentially impact their existence as a poet, a publisher, and a translator. as previously emphasized theoretically, the orientation of the agents investing their capital through a production practice is to gain some more profit in the literary field, be it economic, social, cultural, or symbolic. thus, it is recommended to investigate further what kind of capital the journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) kardiansyah et al. 44 agents can accumulate through the production of an indonesian-english translated work and how that accumulated capital can potentially support the agents’ practice and strategy in the indonesian literary field. by doing that, we will see a bolder picture of how translation is tightly related to the social practice of the literary agents. acknowledgment this work was supported by the research fund provided by the research department of universitas gadjah mada and other academic supports given by universitas teknokrat indonesia. this study is also a part of an ongoing dissertation at s3 ilmu-ilmu humaniora study program, faculty of cultural science, universitas gadjah mada. references abdolmaleki, saleh delforouz, et.al. 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(2018). maintaining cultural identity in translated literary text: strategies of translating cultural-specific items in two arabic plays. arab world english journal for translation & literary studies (awej tls), 2(2), pp. 2-16. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/ vol2no2.1 set cover luar phenomena vol 15 no. 2-bitmapcon vol. 15 no. 2 – october 2015 163 word stress contribution in second language acquisition patricia angelina lasut lazut22@yahoo.com english language education study program, sanata dharma university abstract possessing native-like pronunciation is one of the main goals that non-native speakers of english would like to accomplish. besides the ability to pronounce english sounds correctly, using the proper english word stress also plays an important role in achieving that goal. this paper first specifies the nature of word stress in english and its contribution on successful english language learning. secondly, it addresses the problems that are commonly encountered by the indonesian learners in using correct word stress in their speech. finally, it also proposes some ways that english learners can use to learn english word stress better. hopefully these proposed ways will be able to help the learners to speak in english more fluently with not only accurate pronunciation but also with correct word stress. keywords: english, word stress, pronunciation, second language acquisition introduction in most schools in indonesia, from the elementary levels to the high school levels, teaching english pronunciation is all about teaching the english sounds: vowels and consonants. many english learners and teachers believe that to have good pronunciation, they just need to master the individual sounds. indeed, those sounds are very important for the beginner english learners. nevertheless, mastering them does not guarantee that the learners will have good and comprehensible english pronunciation. in the english language education study program, sanata dharma university, there is a subject that is specialized in teaching the learners correct pronunciation. this subject is named pronunciation. it is divided into two levels for the first and the second semester learners: pronunciation practice i and pronunciation practice ii. these courses focus on the pronunciation theory in the first part, followed by pronunciation practice in the second part. in those classes, there are still many learners who produce awkward and incomprehensible english although they have good mastery of the individual english sounds. one of the factors causing them to speak unnaturally is the improper placement of english word stress. this indicates that english word stress also affect the learners’ second language acquisition, particularly in english language learning. therefore, this paper will make an effort to discuss the features of english word stress and its contribution to the learners’ second language acquisition. in addition, problems commonly encountered by the learners related to word stress and some ways to help learners to speak in english with accurate stressing will also be proposed. patricia angelina lasut 164 word stress role on second language acquisition second language acquisition is concerned with the study of the way in which an individual becomes able to use one or more languages which are different from one’s first language. this process can take place in a natural setting or through formal classroom instruction, and, although the degree of proficiency that can be attained is a controversial topic, it can start at childhood or during the adult age (krashen, 1982). the success in second language acquisition depends on many factors. in the case of english language learning in general and english pronunciation in particular, one of the contributing factors is the proper placement of english word stress. before discussing english word stress, it is essential to know what the definition of stress is. stress is the degree of loudness in which we produce a syllable. stress is important in individual words, in phrases and in sentences. by shifting it around in a word, a phrase or a sentence, the emphasis or the meaning will also be different. it is essential to know, though, that the word stressing in all languages are different to one another. there are two opposite types of languages: stresstimed and syllable-timed. according to mackay (1985), a stress-timed language is determined by the stressed syllables, which occur at regular intervals of time, with an uneven and changing number of unstressed syllables between them; whereas syllabletimed language is based on the total number of syllables since each syllable takes approximately the same amount of time. english is obviously a stress-timed language because it has an alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. in other words, english is a quantity sensitive language, that is, a language in which syllable weight influences stress placement. in this regard, english differs from languages where no attention is paid to syllable weight and all syllables are treated in the same way by stress rules. indonesian, on the other hand, is a syllable-timed language because it gives nearly equal weight and time for all syllables. therefore, these two languages are very different. unfortunately, many indonesian learners who are learning english seem unaware of this essential difference. consequently, they tend to apply the indonesian stress patterns (syllable-timed) when speaking in english (stress-timed). they do not know that this improper word stressing makes their english speech unnatural and hard to comprehend. english words can be composed of one or more syllables. in all words of two or more syllables, one syllable (stressed syllable) is stronger than the others (unstressed syllables) in the same word. a stressed syllable is louder, longer, clearer, and has higher pitch than unstressed syllables. thus, the combination of stressed and unstressed syllables helps to create the word rhythm in english, which results in various strength, length, and pitch of syllables. gilbert (1994) has explained that syllable stress plays a very important role in english because english speakers appear to store vocabulary with stress patterns. consequently, a mistake in putting the stress can throw a conversation off track, especially if the speaker’s control of english vowel sounds is uncertain. therefore, the more frequently speakers misuse stress, the more effort listeners have to make to understand what they say. common problems encountered by indonesian learners many learners tend to ignore stress patterns of english words because they do not know the importance of syllable stress in english. one common problem would be when they randomly put stress in any one of the syllables in a word, and often such a wrong stress placement mistake can alter the meaning into something that is totally different from the intended meaning. for example, there is a sentence “he is a very important person.” the correct word stress placement should be on the second syllable. so, the correct pronunciation should sound like this: “he is a very important person.” in vol. 15 no. 2 – october 2015 165 fact, many learners who are not aware of the correct stress placement would put the stress on the first syllable. therefore, it becomes “he is a very important person.” in the word “important,” they put the stress on the first syllable, rather than on the second one. therefore, what is heard was not “important” but “impotent,” which obviously will cause embarrassment for the speakers once they are aware of their mistakes, and confusion for the listeners, especially the native speakers, because they usually get the meaning of a word based on its stress pattern. another common problem is that they tend to give each syllable almost the same strength, length, and pitch. it is probably because the stress placement in each indonesian syllable is equally strong, so they treat english words in the same way. they are not aware on how to weaken and reduce unstressed syllables. a very good example is the word “chocolate.” many learners pronounce it as “cho co late,” which is apparently influenced by the stress patterns of indonesian. in english, a very important characteristic that the learners often miss is that vowels in unstressed syllables are mostly reduced to a short central vowel / i /, as the vowels reduced in the second and third syllable of “chocolate.” it is the vowel reduction that makes the difference between stressed and unstressed syllables very clear in english. gilbert (1987: 36) has pointed out that “clarity of the vowel is a particularly difficult concept for many learners since in their languages all vowels are spoken in a full, clear way”. ways to learn word stress listening to and repeating after the model is one way to learn word stress, but definitely is not enough. other ways to learn word stress are by doing word stress pattern building and activities on stress production in terms of syllable strength, length, and pitch. for word stress pattern building, visual effects on the blackboard can be used. when learning a new word, the learners need to figure out its stress pattern as well. learners should try to emphasize stressed syllables by using various visual effects. there are several possibilities and it does not really matter which the learners choose as long as they are consistent. the most common way is to put an accent ( ‘ ) with a different color pen over the syllable that is stressed. for example is the word electric. learners can write it as e‘lectric. next is predicting stress in words. many pronunciation textbooks provide word stress pattern rules. however, it is better for the learners to discover and generate the rules instead of memorizing the rules. learners can generate word stress pattern rules from the words that they have learned and apply the rules to the words that they do not know. in this way, learners are not memorizing the rules but internalizing them. for example, they are given the correct stress placement of these words: terrific, italic and academic; which will be presented like this: ter ‘ri fic, i ‘ta lic, a ca ‘de mic. they are then asked to generate the rule. the answer will be: in words ending in -ic, the main stress comes before -ic. practising varying stress to alter meaning will provide learners the experience of using different stress patterns to get different meanings. it helps learners to be more aware of the effects of stress patterns on meaning. for example, in the words “‘pervert” and “per ‘vert”, it is the different stress patterns, not sounds, that result in the difference in meaning. other words that can be used are subject, record, import, export, etc. as for the stress production, it will be beneficial to learn the characteristics of stressed and unstressed syllables in english using a chart. this chart will help learners to understand how stressed syllables differ from unstressed ones in four features: loudness, length, clarity and pitch. learners need to know these characteristics to be able to produce stress correctly. besides, learners can use this chart to examine which characteristic(s) they do not produce in saying english words with more than one syllable. it makes learners aware of these characteristics as well as identifying their problems in the production of word stress. patricia angelina lasut 166 table 1. characteristics of stressed and unstressed syllables in english (gilbert, 1993: 72) loudness vowel length vowel clarity pitch stressed loud long full high unstressed quiet short reduced low another way to learn is to clap hands or tap on the desk to emphasize loudness of a stressed syllable. these auditory techniques are useful to produce a strong beat in a stressed syllable and a weak beat in an unstressed syllable. they are very effective in helping learners recognize the beat strength in syllables, especially when they are not able to distinguish which syllable is louder than others by hearing words. when learning an english word, the learners can say a word and, at the same time, clap or tap on the desk to emphasize the feature of loudness. learners can also use rubber bands as a visual image for length variation in syllables. learners pull a wide rubber band between the two thumbs while saying a word. stretch it out during the stressed syllable but leave it short during other unstressed syllables. it provides a visual image of the variable length of the syllables as well as a kinesthetic tool that mimics the actual effort involved in lengthening a stressed syllable (gilbert, 1994). hand gestures are also useful to indicate pitch change. the learners can imagine themselves as concert conductors, holding their hands up when the pitch is high and down when the pitch is low. the up-anddown waving gestures provide a visual effect showing learners how pitch changes among syllables. another way is to use backchaining. learners repeat the word by starting with the last syllable and extending backwards to the beginning, which is especially helpful in dealing with a long word with more than three syllables. this technique can help learners say a word with natural rhythm, avoiding the tendency to say a word so slowly as to make each syllable equally clear by attempting to chain it forwards. for example, the backchaining of the word “economics” will be: mics  no mics  co no mics  e co no mics conclusion word stress is an imperative part of second language acquisition and english language learning in particular, both in terms of comprehending spoken english and increasing oral intelligibility. in summary, this paper has discussed the nature of english word stress, its contribution to successful english language learning, the common problems indonesian learners experience when they learn word stress in pronunciation, and some suggestions on ways to learn word stress. hopefully these proposed ways will be able to help the learners to speak in english more fluently with not only accurate pronunciation but also with correct word stress. references beisbier, b. sounds great: intermediate pronunciation and speaking for learners of english. ma: heinle & heinle, 1995. brown, h.d. principles of language learning and teaching (4th ed.). englewood cliffs nj: prentice-hall, 2000. browne, s. c., & huckin, t. n. pronunciation tutorials for nonnative technical professionals: a program description. in j. morley (ed.), current perspectives on pronunciation (pp. 41-57). washington, d.c.: tesol, 1987. celce-murcia, m. teaching pronunciation as cimmunication. in j. morley (ed.), current perspectives on pronunciation (pp. 1-12). washington, dc: tesol, 1987. vol. 15 no. 2 – october 2015 167 culpeper, j., katambah, f., kerswill, p., wodak, r., mcenery, t. english language: description, variation, and context. great britain: palgrave macmillan, 2009. dauer, r. m. accurate english: a complete course in pronunciation. new jersey: prentice-hall, inc, 1993. ellis, r. the study of second language learning. oxford university press. 1997. finegan, e. language : its structure and use (3rd ed.). harcourt brace. 1999. fromkin, victoria, david blair, peter collins. an introduction to language. sidney: harcourt, 1996. gilbert, j. b. pronunciation and listening comprehension. in j. morley (ed.), current perspectives on pronunciation (pp. 29-39). washington, d.c.: tesol. 1987. gilbert, j. b. clear speech: pronunciation and listening comprehension in north american english. 2nd ed. new york: cambridge university press, 1993. gilbert, j. b. intonation: a navigation guide for the listener. in j. morley (ed.), pronunciation pedagogy and theory (pp. 36-48). bloomington: tesol, inc. 1994. harmer, j. the practice of english language teaching. cambridge: pearson longman, 2007. kenworthy, j. teaching english pronunciation. london: longman, 1987. krashen, s. principles and practice in second language acquisition. oxford: pergamon press, 1982. mackay, i. introducing practical phonetics. taipei: crane inc, 1985. pennington, m. c. phonology in english language teaching: an international approach. longdon: longman, 1996. page 1 page 2 phenomena vol 15 no. 2.pdf page 1 page 2 set cover dalam phenomena vol 15 no.pdf page 1 binder1.pdf (3) artikel 1prof putu (venti) ed-2 (4) artikel 2joan (arina) ed-3 (5) artikel 3 maria (hir) ed-2 (6) artikel 4 adria (arina) ed-2 (7) artikel 5 lany (hir) ed-2 (8) artikel 6 sisca (harris) ed-2 (9) artikel 7 risang (arina) ed-2 (10) artikel 8 herujiyanto (hir) ed-2 (11) artikel 9 patrice (venti) ed-2 (12) artikel 10 venti (arina) ed-3 (13) artikel 11 suryo (arina) ed-2 (14) index (2 des 2015)-1 (14) contributor's notes-2 mitra bestari dan daftar isi-oct 2015.pdf page 1 page 2 set cover luar phenomena.pdf page 1 167 vol. 23 no. 1, april 2023, pp. 167 182 doi: 10.24071/joll.v23i1.5151 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. the animal in man ─ an image pattern in frank norris’ mcteague godwin yao gaaku1; felix mawudor vorvor2, david ako odoi3 ggaaku@dace.edu.gh 1department of languages, dambai college of education; 2department of languages, akatsi college of education; 3language centre, university of ghana, ghana abstract article information every man possesses an animal instinct that lingers beneath the surface, waiting for an appropriate time to manifest. in frank norris’ mcteague, some characters degenerate to the level of the animal, displaying brutality and striving like predators for survival. this study sought to investigate the animal metaphor as an image pattern in mcteague. the study used textual analysis as a design to analyse, interpret and evaluate mcteague. the study concluded that joseph le conte’s theory of evolution and cesare lombroso’s theory of criminology influenced the writing of mcteague. thus, there is extensive use of the animal metaphor as an image pattern through the characters in the novel: mcteague, trina, marcus and zerkow. they are metaphorically hustled up and down the evolutionary ladder between the levels of the animal and the human. consequently, these characters degenerate to metaphorical animals and constitute an image pattern in the novel. when things are normal, their animal instincts are not only concealed but also tamed and only come out when things become abnormal. the study further established that the animal instinct is there in every human; hence, everyone must be conscious of this animal instinct and learn to control it in times of abnormality. the study recommends that future researchers investigate how this animal instinct can be tamed in man when faced with instinctual forces. keywords: animal metaphor; image pattern; instinct; degenerate received: 10 september 2022 revised: 7 november 2022 accepted: 16 january 2023 introduction frank norris’ mcteague (1899) is a naturalistic tale of moral degeneration under economic pressures. according to surur and dengela (2019), “environment and the situation are responsible for people’s characters and development of their life stories” (p. 1724). the novel shows how a man’s long-suppressed animal instincts can break through and permeate his civilised appearance, the unmaking of man’s civility by the caprice of events, creating metaphorical animals in the novel. https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) gaaku, et al 168 the critical literature written on norris certainly points to two sources as regards the naturalistic themes within his novel. firstly, norris is “a disciple of zola” (dieng, 2014, p. 91) and french naturalism. secondly, one of norris’s professors, joseph le conte, who was notorious for his candid view on evolution given in his lectures, influenced him (payne, 2019). this study, however, opines that joseph le conte’s theory of evolution and cesare lombroso’s theory of criminology mainly influenced the writing of mcteague. the particular evolutionary theory that attracted norris, le conte's version, tries to reconcile charles darwin’s theory and god. according to le conte, god’s energy creates a variety of complex levels in animals. at some point, god’s energy converts the animal’s consciousness into a spirit that has immortality (le conte, 1896). since man is no more than an animal with an immortal spirit, he has a dual nature. this dual nature becomes the basis of le conte’s theory. to le conte, sin or evil results when the animal part of man dominates. pizer (1966) is of the view that if man surrenders to his animal instinct, he hampers himself in the evolutionary fight and ends up destroying himself. again, le conte theorises that the spirit without a supporting animal force is ineffectual. the animal force in man supplies the strength for him to perform his moral duty, a duty created by his spirit. in other words, the simultaneous existence of the spiritual and animal forces in man is, to le conte, the ideal expression of god’s acting through evolution. at the same time that the darwinian evolution was so popular, a related theory was also fascinating the public; particularly, the college community. cesare lombroso, author of crime: its causes and remedies (1911), developed a theory that criminals are individuals at an earlier stage in evolution, like animals or savages. he regarded these degenerates as members of a new species fairly below the evolutionary level of ordinary men and at the level of animals. lombroso believed that some individuals became criminals because their ancestors had been criminals; therefore, they had inherited the criminal tendency. some incident in one’s life, to lombroso, could trigger an individual’s reversion to his ancestor’s behavioural pattern. lombroso also believed that arrested development in the individual could produce the same symptoms as a reversion to ancestral behaviour. specifically, lombroso theorised that among criminals, about 40 percent are criminals because of either heredity or degeneration and that particular physical and psychological characteristics reveal this heredity or degeneration. to be categorised as a born criminal, an individual must exhibit five or six of these traits. a few traits, such as the enormous jaw, large ears, well-developed frontal sinuses, and zygomatic arches, which create the appearance of square-headedness, and a ferocious look, are the most suggestive of the criminal type. besides, lombroso notes a number of other physical traits that reveal a born criminal. in crime: its causes and remedies, he listed a number of physical characteristics as those found in born criminals, a few of which norris uses in his work. the prognathous jaw of the lombrosan type is the one that norris uses most frequently, as we see in the case of mcteague: an abundance of wrinkles, apelike ears, unusually long arms, and squareheadedness are other physical symbols which he borrows from lombroso to show the degeneracy or criminality of certain characters like mcteague. some perceptual abnormalities that lombroso noted as also being representative of the criminal, such as keen eyesight, sharp hearing, unusual sensitivity of smell, and insensibility to pain, are observable, too, in some characters. extraordinary agility is also sometimes used by norris to reveal the born criminal. beside physical attributes, lombroso suggested that certain psychological behaviour distinguishes the criminal type. similarly, norris imbues some of his characters with the criminal’s psychology. deterioration in moral and emotional sensibilities is the primary sign of degeneration. an increased desire for sensual pleasure, combined with a passion for drinking and gambling, hastens this deterioration. journal of language and literature vol. 23, no. 1 april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 169 impulsiveness, recognisable in unstable and inconsistent passions, is part of the criminal’s behaviour. norris also includes a lack of remorse or guilt in his degenerate characters like mcteague and trina. sluggishness and excessive idleness occur in his criminal character types. norris selects only traits that can easily be assimilated into a character inconspicuously, not, as french (1962) suggests, because he disliked studying and had only a superficial knowledge of his subject, but as a result of deliberate choice. the question arises as to what stimulated norris to use these two theories in his novel. mere exposure to them seems an inadequate reason; many other ideas to which he was exposed never appear in his writing at all. one possible answer can be deduced from norris’ philosophy of literature. he explains in the need of a literary conscience that an author must take the responsibility of telling the truth in his writing. to norris, truth is the practical, tangible, concrete work of daily life. representing daily life in his fiction, to norris, expresses truth. without question, evolutionary theories; particularly, those of le conte and lombroso, influenced norris’ perception and interpretation of truth; that is, daily experience, in his works. another aspect of his literary thoughts, revealing a reason for using evolution in fiction, is his belief that the subject ought to be treated objectively: it is the thing that is one’s own, the detection of an issue appropriate for fabricated tale that has never been treated, and the meticulous study of that issue and the reasonable display of results. using scientific theory to document the atavism of his characters may have seemed to him the most objective procedure. perhaps, the most distinctive literary comment is his observation in the novel with a purpose that a novel must reveal something about the main character as a representative, in his behaviour, of all men: because le conte’s ideas encompass all men, and because lombroso’s ‘born criminal’ describes a type, norris’ use of their theories seems quite plausible in light of his own literary criteria. this is because in norris’ formative years, evolution became the catchword of the era, and his intellectual environment fostered the development of characters who display brutality (as in lombroso’s theory) or those who struggle for spiritual dominance (as in le conte’s). the combined force of exposure to these scientific ideas and his own philosophy cast the die for a character like mcteague. norris’ conception of naturalism embraces the drama of everyday life; hence, the characters in his mcteague are suitable for literary naturalism (payne, 2019), and they bear the distinct evolutionary and genetic mark of le conte’s theories. the characters degenerate to metaphorical animals due to social and economic pressure. thus, the study sought to examine the animal metaphor as an image pattern in the novel. dovetailed into it is the question of how the animal metaphor is presented as an image pattern in mcteague. frank norris’ mcteague has received a lot of critical attention due to its literary significance. although a number of previous studies on mcteague had employed textual analysis just as the present study, many of them focused attention on different issues other than the animal metaphor as an image pattern in the novel. dieng (2014), for instance, employed textual analysis to carry out a comparative study of emily zola’s thèrése raquin and frank norris’ mcteague, focusing on the narrating instances, characterization, narrative structures, and aesthetic crafting of the two novels. one of the key findings of dieng (2014) about mcteague was that the characters exhibit greed, hypocrisy and other common societal problems. however, dieng’s study could not establish that the display of social vices by these characters constitutes the animal metaphor as an image pattern in the novel, although dieng’s study also employed textual analysis just as the present study. schreiter (2012) also conducted a comparative study on frank norris’ mcteague and jack london’s novels, concentrating on the use of naturalistic techniques in the novels. equally employing textual analysis, schreiter identified sexuality and violence as major naturalistic themes in frank norris’ mcteague. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) gaaku, et al 170 schreiter further established that norris fixes his characters in unavoidable tragic circumstances and only expects them to exhibit the worst form of behaviour. although the study of schreiter (2012) could not establish it, the assertion that the characters in mcteague exhibit the worst form of behaviour implies that there is a huge manifestation of the animal metaphor as an image pattern in the novel. again, surur and dengela (2019) carried out a textual analysis of elements of naturalism in frank norris’ mcteague. through close reading, they identified in mcteague, such naturalistic elements as determinism, lower class plausible characters, objectivity, immoral contents, language of the actual world and pessimism. the study of surur and dengela revealed that hereditary and environmental constraints accounted for the animistic behaviour of the major characters in mcteague. hence, surur and dengela also indirectly appreciated the fact that animalism is evident in mcteague. moreover, mcglynn (2008), in reviewing mcteague admitted that many of the characters are violent: mcteague, trina, zerkow, and maria demonstrate similar foolishness and desire for violence. mcglynn concluded that the common cause of violence in mcteague is the various characters’ hunger for money. this presupposes that the animal metaphor manifests as an image pattern in the novel. however, mcglynn’s review of mcteague seems to have overlooked it. the present study thus fills this lacuna. sams (2021) also examined mcteague from a cultural-historical perspective; the aim of his study was to give the novel more room for future readings. sams’ study employed a multidisciplinary approach and focused on essential themes in mcteague, such as americanness, masculinity, and the crisis of masculinity, violence, power, and the frontier myth. themes such as the crisis of masculinity, violence, and power, as established by sams (2021), suggest that there is evidence of animalism in mcteague. the present study, therefore, contextualises the animal metaphor as an image pattern in the novel by doing a textual analysis as explained under the methodology. besides, masoomi et al. (2016) conducted a textual analysis of mcteague as an entropic melodrama. these scholars considered how a particular negative human nature can gradually escalate and destroy everything. masoomi et al. opined that in mcteague, frank norris metaphorically applied entropy to illustrate the distinct devolutions that unavoidably encompassed community entropy. masoomi et al. concluded that mcteague explains norris’ concern for a society full of disorder. this also suggests a society filled with acts of animalism. since the study by masoomi et al. only subtly touched on animalism in mcteague, the present study obviously makes it clearer by focusing on the animal metaphor as an image pattern in the novel. from the foregoing review, it is obvious that although many of the previous works had carried out textual analyses of frank norris’ mcteague, little or no research attention has been directed towards the study of the animal metaphor as an image pattern in the novel. there is, therefore, a lacuna in related literature in this regard, which the present study sought to explore. to help achieve the intended purpose and significance of the study, the paper is hinged on the following hypotheses: 1. everyone is both human and animal. 2. the animal metaphor manifests to form an image pattern in norris’ mcteague. methodology the study is a qualitative research as proposed by creswell (2013), and the literary approach employed by the study is new criticism. new criticism is a formalist literary criticism that proposes that the text is a selfcontained object and that everything the reader needs to know to understand it is already in the text. new criticism focuses on the layers in the text. this literary approach concentrates on the elements of a text only, such as irony, paradox, metaphor, symbol, plot, journal of language and literature vol. 23, no. 1 april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 171 and the like, by engaging in very close textual analysis. the instrument used to collect data for the study was text. according to ofori-birikorang (2017), a text is something that we make meaning from. we interpret texts in order to try and obtain a sense of the ways in which, in particular cultures at particular times, people make sense of the world around them. the research design is textual analysis. mahasha (2014) postulated that textual analysis “is the study of literature which includes analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of literary works” (p. 17). the study thus falls within the interpretive paradigm of meaning making as explained by kusi (2012). kusi explained that the interpretive paradigm describes a philosophical position which considers reality as a social creation which is experienced subjectively. according to him, interpretive research acknowledges interpretations as “socially constructed realities” (p. 178). this implies that knowledge and meaning-making stem from interpretation; therefore, knowledge construction is not autonomous of thinking and reasoning individuals. interpretive paradigm is reinforced by observation and interpretation, hence, to observe is to gather data about happenings, while to interpret is to make sense of that information by drawing inferences or by judging the correlation between the information and some abstract pattern. this implies that interpretive research puts analysis in context. the present study therefore contextualises the animal metaphor as an image pattern in frank norris’ mcteague by doing a textual analysis as hypothesized by mahasha (2014), of how some characters are portrayed in the novel. hence, the study analysed, interpreted and evaluated the animal metaphor as an image pattern in the novel. results and discussion the nineteenth century american literature presents animalism as a reprehensible side of humanity that lingered beneath the surface, waiting for an opportune time to come out. in frank norris’ mcteague, the animal in man is metaphorically presented through characterisation. the eponymous character, mcteague, for instance, acts like a grizzly bear keeping its mate from wandering too far; yet, this does not please his brutal nature: mcteague begins to drink, and his alcohol-sodden brain allows the animal to take full control of him. he begins biting trina’s fingers. although the skin is not usually broken by his chomps, her fingers are bruised to the point where she finds work difficult, if not unbearable. eventually, mcteague begins to break her flesh with his teeth, and the paint she works with poisons her fingers, requiring amputation. mutilated and finally crushed, trina leaves mcteague, causing the animal to take full control of the fallen man. the above incident confirms the argument raised by coyle (1988) that “what the reader finds in the major fiction of norris is an ongoing battle between the major forces of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ that exist within the lives of his protagonists” (p. 8). and le conte is of the view that sin or evil results when the animal part of man dominates. hence, mcteague’s brutality to trina clearly shows that his animal instinct dominates him, and he seems to have no control of it. this is contrary to the argument put forward by pizer (1966) that man has the exclusive ability to control rather than be controlled by his environment, so man must resist the sensual as well as have the strength to resist the pressure of the environment. it is therefore not surprising that mcteague’s surrender to his animal part brings about his destruction because according to pizer, if man surrenders to either of the two remnants of his animal instinct, he handicaps himself in the evolutionary struggle, and his self-imposed destruction soon follows. mcteague’s animal nature is sealed when he kills trina in the coatroom of a school. when he flees, he relies on his animal instincts to keep him alive. like a deer chased by a wolf, mcteague manages to elude his pursuers until they trap him in death valley. the hunting pack then closes in, and mcteague joins the hunters in a blood-soaked death. in fact, there is a kind of commonality between the character of mcteague and that of patrick collins of san francisco, a real-life journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) gaaku, et al 172 murderer who murdered his wife in the 1890s and had to be charged by the jury. the following portrayal of patrick collins by the san francisco examiner (newspaper) of 14th october, 1893, justifies this claim: ...he is not a man who has sunk, but one who was made an animal by nature to start with... a collins is never annoyed by the want of a good opinion of himself. a grotesque egoism is at the bottom of the concentrated selfishness which marks the character of all such brutes and pushes them into their crimes. self excludes the capacity to feel for others... there is an immense capacity for hatred in a collins (p. 8) apparently, both mcteague and the reallife patrick collins of san francisco committed a crime (of murder) in their respective situations because they were driven by the animal instinct. they are both criminals; individuals at an earlier stage in evolution that caesare lombroso describes as degenerates and members of a new species fairly below the evolutionary level of ordinary men and at the level of animals or savages. besides, trina is as much an animal as her husband. she is initially repelled by the dentist’s brutish nature, but as soon as he casts his dominating spell on her, her masochistic animal nature awakens. she experiences sexual arousal from mcteague’s domination, and is hooked from the first time: “suddenly he took her in his enormous arms, crushing down her struggle with his immense strength. then trina gave up, all in an instant, turning her head to his. they kissed each other grossly, full in the mouth” (p. 69). actually, trina’s love is a fatal addiction. in the words of norris, “trina’s emotions had narrowed with the narrowing of her daily life. they reduced themselves at last to but two, her passion for her money and her perverted love for her husband when he was brutal” (p. 239). this negates the general assumption that the brutality of a man to his wife kills the love she has for him. however, it confirms the theory that love is blind. despite mcteague’s brutality, trina’s love for him remains unwavering because her love is sightless and cannot see the brute in mcteague. moreover, mcteague’s brutality and trina’s affection for money to the neglect of her husband also prove the hypothesis that the animal instinct is there in everyone but covered; so, anybody can degenerate into an animal when the environment is ripe. this image pattern was what the study looked at in mcteague. trina’s affection for money, for example, is so strong that she openly expresses her love for it: at times, when she knew that mcteague was far from home, she would lock her door, open her trunk, and pile all her little hoard on her table...trina would play with this money by the hour, piling it and repiling it, or gathering it all into one heap... she loved her money with an intensity that she could hardly express. she would plunge her small fingers into the pile with little murmurs of affection, her long, narrow eyes half closed and shining, her breath coming in long sighs. “ah, the dear money, the dear money,” she would whisper. “i love you so! all mine, every penny of it. no one shall ever, ever get you...” (p. 238). trina’s strong love for her money for the money’s sake makes her degenerate to the level of an animal as she drifts away from union to selfishness. she therefore moves away from reason and lives by instinct like an animal, as money becomes a stimulus to trigger miserliness in her. she behaves miserly and becomes very insensitive to the plight of her husband. from mcteague’s own words: she let him walk the streets in the cold and in the rain... she knew it was going to rain. she knew it. didn’t i tell her? and she drives me out of my own home in the rain, for me to get money for her, more money, and she takes it. she took that money from me that i earned. ‘twasn’t hers; it was mine; i earned it ─ and not a nickel for carfare. she don’t care if i get wet and get a cold and die. no, she don’t, as long as she’s warm and’s got her money (p. 226). journal of language and literature vol. 23, no. 1 april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 173 having come to know mcteague and trina in the circumstances of their ordinary lives, we are able to feel for them as their story unfolds. therefore, they have an existence apart from the puppets they become, as the pressure of their fate in the latter parts of the novel hurries them on to their annihilation. these scenes are more successful in telling us about the characters than are norris’s theoretical devices. one of these is the trick of giving everyone a sort of darwinian double existence so that on the surface, people are domesticated and conventionalised; whereas underneath they are carnivorous beasts and for that matter, animals. in the naturalistic novel, the beast shows through the human exterior as the devil did in the older fiction: the modern mephistopheles is a werewolf or, more likely, an ape-man. because le conte’s ideas encompass all men, and because lombroso’s ‘born criminal’ describes a type, norris’ use of their theories seems quite plausible in the light of his own literary criteria. both pizer (1973) and dillingham (1969) suggest that norris’ philosophy of life is reaffirmed in his use of le conte’s suppositions. donald pizer explains that norris had difficulty in reconciling his own sensual desires with his concern for morality. because le conte explained man as possessing a dual nature, the animal heritage can account for man’s sensual drives and violent behaviour without denying man’s spirit. dillingham, in the same fashion, implies that by accepting le conte’s philosophy, norris could still believe in the fundamental goodness of man, a vestige of his christian background, while accepting the exciting discoveries of evolution. the combined force of exposure to these scientific ideas and his own philosophy cast the die for a character like mcteague. mcteague therefore reveals the scientific theme that pervades some of norris’ works in that the main characters such as mcteague, trina, and marcus illustrate the reversion to a lower level of evolution; that is, the level of animals. for example, mcteague, a lombrosan criminal, reverts to the behaviour of his father, brutal and criminal and for that matter, an animal. mcteague’s criminality; for that matter, animalism does not spring to life because of some wilful act, but rather because of the effect of his environment on his brutal inheritance. set in the california’s city of san francisco, mcteague is a carefully plotted story based on a notorious murder. the eponymous mcteague, the young man in question, witnesses a decline in his fortunes and finds himself pitted against forces he has no control over. it is a naturalistic novel in which, right from the beginning, the notion of man as an animal cannot be downplayed. mcteague is moved irresistibly by heredity and unavoidably augmenting it is the environment. even the subtitle of the novel, a story of san francisco, lays emphasis on this. norris’s choice of san francisco is very critical. in his view, he chooses san francisco not only because the events on which mcteague is based took place in that city, but because san francisco is isolated enough for the purpose (pizer, 1964). this gives mcteague the necessary insulation as a naturalistic novel. the crucial role of the environment is particularly true of mcteague who loses his bearing and appears incapable of a conscious relationship with the environment. thus from the onset, mcteague is taken out of his environment to see whether he can adapt. he, however, fails to adapt. he, instead, becomes more animalistic; in fact, beastly, with every twist in his fortunes; hence, the animal savagery at the background of his existence. it is from this story that the elements of man as animal metaphor is presented and analysed. basically, mcteague is an example of the lombrosan criminal both physically and psychologically. mcteague has a square head, large arms and hands, and the prognathous jaw of the born criminal or an animal: mcteague was a young giant, carrying his huge shock of blond hair six feet three inches from the ground; moving his immense limbs, heavy with ropes of muscles, slowly, ponderously. his hands were enormous, red and covered with a fell of stiff yellow hair; they were hard as wooden mallets, strong as vises, the hands journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) gaaku, et al 174 of the old-time car-boy. often he dispensed with forceps and extracted a refractory tooth with his thumb and finger. his head was square-cut, angular; the jaw salient, like that of the carnivora (p.7). mcteague also has great manual dexterity. at the end of the novel his senses, like those of a born criminal, have become quite acute. norris repeatedly describes mcteague; he emphasises the physical description with its criminal features whenever mcteague frightens trina. for example, she faints in mcteague’s dental chair after he proposes to her. the description of her fainting scene is immediately preceded by a statement of the lombrosan appearance of mcteague. a similar situation occurs after their marriage; after a quarrel over moving to a less expensive apartment, mcteague threatens trina. the following description is part of that scene: trina looked at him fearfully, half blinded with weeping. her husband's thick mane of yellow hair was disordered and rumpled upon his great square-cut head; his big red ears were redder than ever; his face was purple; the thick eyebrows were knotted over the small, twinkling eyes; the heavy yellow moustache, that smelt of alcohol, drooped over the massive, protruding chin, salient like that of the carnivora; the veins were swollen and throbbing on his thick red neck; while over her head trina saw his upraised palm, calloused, enormous (p. 232). again, norris repeats the lombrosan characteristics just before mcteague kills trina. it seems likely that norris is using his reading public’s knowledge of lombroso to help the reader understand mcteague’s brutal behaviour. this is because in norris’s formative years, evolution became the catchword of the era (payne, 2019), and his intellectual environment fostered the development of characters who display brutality (as in lombroso’s theory) or those who struggle for spiritual dominance (as in le conte’s). he actually portrays mcteague as a born beast. in other words, norris makes lombroso’s theory practical in mcteague: mcteague’s behaviour is motivated partially by his born criminal nature − allowing the readers to relate the violent behaviour to what they had previously recognised as the lombrosan physique. for instance, norris portrays mcteague as having a square head, large arms and hands, massive, protruding chin, big red ears, heavy moustache that smelt like alcohol, swollen and throbbing veins, thick neck, and the prognathous jaw follows. “often mcteague dispensed with forceps and extracted a refractory tooth with his thumb and finger. his head was square-cut, angular; the jaw salient, like that of the carnivore” (p.7). psychologically, mcteague reacts as a born criminal and animal. he begins to deteriorate emotionally and morally once he loses his dental practice. for example, at first, he simply reverts to the behaviour of his bachelor days. he sleeps all afternoon and drinks cheap steamed beer. later, he begins to drink hard liquor and punishes trina by hitting her, pinching her, or biting her. finally, he ends up killing her, an act for which he as if acting out the lombrosan theory, feels absolutely no remorse or guilt. here, mcteague behaves at the level of an animal because he is left with only instincts; just as any animal with instincts without spirit, to validate le conte’s assertion that sin or evil results when the animal part of man dominates him. however, le conte theorises that the spirit without a supporting animal force is ineffectual; because, the animal force in man supplies the strength for him to perform his moral duty, a duty created by his spirit. this presupposes that the simultaneous existence of the spiritual and animal forces in man is, to le conte, the ideal expression of god's acting through evolution. another lombrosan psychological characteristic is his tendency to be motivated by fleeting passions. for example, mcteague proposes to trina within a few weeks of their meeting. his love begins to diminish after their marriage; he soon only tolerates her, and then he avidly dislikes her. another example of his unstable passions is his brief anger towards marcus for breaking his pipe; his anger vanishes, almost as quickly as it appears when trina gives him the large gilded tooth. journal of language and literature vol. 23, no. 1 april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 175 it should be noted, however, that mcteague is not totally responsible for his psychological characteristics, any more than he is for his physical attributes, for in both respects, he is strongly influenced by heredity. this view is established by caesare lombroso’s argument that some individuals became criminals because their ancestors had been criminals; therefore, they had inherited the criminal tendency. both mcteague and trina fulfil the lombrosan requirement of inherited weaknesses. even though trina is not a born criminal, her talent for animal carving is attributed to her german-swiss ancestry, which corroborates lombroso’s further assertion that some incidents in one’s life could also trigger an individual’s reversion to his ancestor’s behavioural pattern. lombroso also believed that arrested development in the individual could also produce the same symptoms as a reversion to ancestral behaviour. it is therefore rational to read from mcteague that trina’s stinginess derives from her inherited peasant blood: generations of want, impoverishment, and frugality tinted with parsimony breed in her a tendency toward covetousness and hoarding. logically, norris’ depiction of mcteague as a born criminal and trina as a selfish person helps to consolidate lombroso’s hypothesis that among criminals, approximately 40 percent are criminals because of either heredity or degeneration, and that particular physical and psychological characteristics reveal this heredity or degeneration. lombroso explains that in order to be categorised as a born criminal, an individual must exhibit five or six of these traits. according to him, a few traits, such as the enormous jaw, large ears, well-developed frontal sinuses and zygomatic arches, which create the appearance of square headedness and a ferocious look as epitomised by mcteague for instance, are the most suggestive of the criminal type. in mcteague’s case, the indictment of ancestors is more severe, for they are all pictured by norris as evil men: below the fine fabric of all that was good in him ran the foul stream of hereditary evil, like a sewer. the vices and sins of his father and of his father's father, to the third and fourth and five hundredth generation, tainted him. the evil of an entire race flowed in his veins (p. 29). specifically, norris, in the opening of the novel, depicts mcteague’s father as a steady worker much of the time; every two weeks, however, his father became a beast: “every other sunday he became an irresponsible animal, a beast, a brute, crazy with alcohol” (p. 6). mcteague inherits this same trait from his father: but mcteague never became a drunkard in the generally received sense of the term. he did not drink to excess more than two or three times in a month, and never upon any occasion did he become maudlin or staggering. perhaps his nerves were naturally too dull to admit of any excitation; perhaps he did not really care for the whiskey, and only drank because heise and the other men at frenna’s did. trina could often reproach him with drinking too much; she never could say that he was drunk. the alcohol had its effect for all that. it roused the man, or rather the brute in the man, and now not only roused it but goaded it to evil. mcteague’s nature had changed (pp. 236237). norris continues by pointing out that the alcohol and several other factors lead to his abuse and murder of trina. although the alcohol triggers the brutal action of the criminal, norris reveals mcteague as a stupid, but strong savage early in the novel. mcteague’s mental development is so limited that he can do only one task at a time. mcteague, for example, is incapable of working and talking at the same time. similarly, his mental slowness prevents him from stopping the thievery of his maid. mcteague is proud of his immense, animal-like strength. he brags of killing a heifer with his bare hands, and he sometimes pulls teeth without the benefit of instruments because it helps to attract clients. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) gaaku, et al 176 another action showing his low evolutionary level or animal nature is his frenzied fighting. when angered, mcteague becomes indifferent to his surroundings or the circumstances of the disagreement. evidence of this lower evolutionary state; in this case that of an earlier civilization is norris’ description of mcteague as he battles marcus at a picnic: sluggish enough and slow to anger on ordinary occasions, mcteague when finally aroused became another man. his rage was a kind of obsession, an evil mania, the drunkenness of passion, the exalted and perverted fury of the berserk, blind and deaf, a thing insensate (p. 182). this savage fury, of course, causes mcteague’s own destruction. he and marcus struggle at the end of the novel. mcteague, blindly and foolishly, kills marcus while they are handcuffed together and is trapped in the desert because of his uncontrollable anger. another sign of his primitive or animal nature is his inability to handle a love affair wisely. one of the most obvious revelations of his savage behaviour is his need to touch trina or things that belong to her. while staying in her bedroom at her parents’ home, he is compelled to smell her hairbrush and clothes. he also gathers the clothes to him so that through them he can recall trina to his mind: if he had suddenly discovered trina herself there, smiling at him, holding out her hands, he could hardly have been more overcome... a whole group of trinas faced him there. he went farther into the closet, touching the clothes gingerly, stroking them softly with his huge leathern palms. as he stirred them a delicate perfume disengaged itself from the folds. ah, that exquisite feminine odour i it was not only her hair now, it was trina herself ─ her mouth, her hands, her neck; the indescribably sweet, fleshly aroma that was a part of her, pure and clean, and redolent of youth and freshness. all at once, seized with an unreasoned impulse, mcteague opened his huge arms and gathered the little garments close to him, plunging his face deep amongst them, savouring their delicious odour with long breaths of luxury and supreme content (pp. 65-66). his desire to have trina, regardless of her wishes or marcus’ jealousy, is reminiscent of a neanderthal man’s carrying of his chosen mate off to the cave. norris, using the same image, states: it was all one with him that his best friend, marcus, might be in love with the same girl. he must have trina in spite of everything; even in spite of herself. he did not stop to reflect about the matter; he followed his desire blindly, recklessly, furious and raging at every obstacle... it seemed so simple to him since he loved trina to take her straight to himself, stopping at nothing, asking no questions, to have her, and by main strength to carry her far away somewhere, he did not know exactly where, to some vague country, some undiscovered place where every day was sunday (pp. 35-36). because mcteague’s desires become necessities for him, he marries a woman whose behaviour causes him to complete his role as a born criminal and animal through murder. another obvious metaphor which qualifies mcteague as an animal is his difficulty with communication through language. mcteague fails to comprehend marcus's talk about a picnic; he cannot cope with marcus's pretentious explanation of the horrors of capitalism. only after some time can he understand that trina has won $5,000 in the lottery. when mcteague receives the first notice that he must quit practising dentistry, he is dumbfounded by the paper and must have trina explain what it means. french (1962) discusses mcteague’s inability to cope with language and, through language, the law, by saying that he was a ‘thing-handler’, that is, capable of thinking only in terms of tangible items. that makes him no more than an animal. moreover, at a point in the novel, mcteague desires nothing but animal pleasures. at that point, mcteague’s animal nature starts to dominate, making him repugnant: journal of language and literature vol. 23, no. 1 april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 177 mcteague had lost his ambition. he did not care to better his situation. all he wanted was a warm place to sleep and three good meals a day. at the first ─ at the very first ─ he had chafed at his idleness and had spent the days with his wife in their one narrow room, walking back and forth with the restlessness of a caged brute, or sitting motionless for hours, watching trina at her work, feeling a dull glow of shame at the idea that she was supporting him. this feeling had worn off quickly, however ... he was intractable, mean; and when he had drunk a little more heavily than usual, he found a certain pleasure in annoying and exasperating trina, even in abusing and hurting her (p. 235). lombrosan theory suggests that the criminal type is a breed different from other human beings. norris utilises this distinction and creates animal images to apply to mcteague. he compares mcteague to a draught horse, a bull, a cat or dog, a bear, a snake or an anaconda and an elephant. but more than just being compared to an animal, mcteague is made to seem bestial when many of his actions are described in terms of animal behaviour. eating for mcteague is a matter of devouring food without discrimination, as an animal would devour it: “mcteague ate for the sake of eating, without choice; everything within reach of his hands found its way into his enormous mouth” (p.133). later in the novel, mcteague’s hunger operates as a rider does on a horse: “hunger rode him and rowelled him. he was no longer well fed, comfortable” (p. 280). when he is angry, he growls and grinds his teeth like some savage dog. another interesting image is norris’ reference to mcteague's falling in love with trina in terms of an animal's being ensnared in a trap: never had mcteague been so excited; never had he made so long a speech. his arms moved in fierce uncertain gestures, his face flushed, his enormous jaws shut together with a sharp click at every pause. it was like some colossal brute trapped in a delicate, invisible mesh, raging, exasperated, powerless to extricate himself (p. 47). the animal-like mcteague continues to work after he has been forced to stop practising. he is no more than a creature of habit in that he is inadaptable. mcteague lives in a room, his den, where he seeks only the sensual, animal pleasures. when denied these pleasures, he, like an animal, becomes aggressive: he, who loved to be warm, to sleep and to be well fed, was icy cold, was exhausted and foot-sore from tramping the city. he could look forward to nothing better than a badly cooked supper at the coffee-joint ─ hot meat on a cold plate, half-done suet pudding, muddy coffee, and bad bread, and he was cold, miserably cold, and wet to the bone. all at once a sudden rage against trina took possession of him. ... he became more and more indignant at the picture he made of himself. "i aint going to stand it much longer," he repeated (pp. 225-226). pizer also suggests that mcteague’s return to placer county, his childhood home, and the big dipper mine, represents the animal's returning to his den. while there, he acts like a nocturnal animal in that his fear causes him to work at night and sleep during the day. again, in mcteague's flight from marcus and the posse, his fear causes the animal in him to demand flight: but once more the spur bit into his body, goading him on. there was to be no rest, no going back, no pause, no stop. hurry, hurry, hurry on. the brute that in him slept so close to the surface was alive and alert, and tugging to be gone. there was no resisting that instinct. the brute felt an enemy, scented the trackers, clamoured and struggled and fought, and would not be gainsaid (p. 328). the claim of the lombrosan theory that criminals' evolutionary levels are the same as those of animals or savages makes it quite logical for norris to discuss mcteague in bestial terms. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) gaaku, et al 178 norris expands the animal metaphor when he describes mcteague’s behaviour as being instinctive rather than rational. his reactions to trina, early in the novel, are sometimes discussed in terms of instinct. at first, mcteague instinctively distrusts her because he recognises that she is a woman; therefore, she is different. his near rape of the anaesthetised trina and the arousal of his sexual desire are, of course, instinctual. pizer (1977) explains that the importance of the instinctive sexuality is that it forces trina and mcteague to marry. this marriage lacks the strength necessary to survive the pressures of outside occurrences and the idiosyncrasies of the two characters themselves. norris discusses the marriage as a product of instinct and chance: their undoing had already begun. yet neither of them was to blame. from the first they had not sought each other. chance had brought them face to face, and mysterious instincts as ungovernable as the winds of heaven were at work knitting their lives together. neither of them had asked that this thing should be ─ that their destinies, their very souls, should be the sport of chance ... they were allowed no voice in the matter (p. 74). the supremacy of instinct over reason becomes ever more pronounced in mcteague after he kills trina. instinctively he decides to flee. once he leaves san francisco, his instincts help him find the right trails to return to placer county. after his arrival there, he throws off the san francisco experience and resumes his boyhood life as a miner: straight as a homing pigeon, and following a blind and unreasoned instinct, mcteague had returned to the big dipper mine. within a week's time it seemed to him as though he had never been away. he picked up his life again exactly where he had left it the day when his mother had sent him away with the travelling dentist, the charlatan who had set up his tent by the bunkhouse (pp. 296-297). like a wounded animal, mcteague returns to his home grounds to die. the animal in mcteague develops an instinct for danger; he acquires a sixth sense which forewarns him whenever the posse is near: what strange sixth sense stirred in mcteague at this time? what animal cunning, what brute instinct clamored for recognition and obedience? what lower faculty was it that roused his suspicion, that drove him out into the night a score of times between dark and dawn, his head in the air, his eyes and ears keenly alert? (p. 300) this sixth sense is so powerful that it drives mcteague away from a gold discovery worth a million dollars: it was warning him again, that strange sixth sense, that obscure brute instinct. it was aroused again and clamoring to be obeyed. here, in these desolate barren hills, twenty miles from the nearest human being, it stirred and woke and roweled him to be moving on. it had goaded him to flight from the big dipper mine, and he had obeyed. but now it was different; now he had suddenly become rich; he had lighted on a treasure ─ a treasure far more valuable than the big dipper mine itself. how was he to leave that? he could not move on now. he turned about in his blankets. no, he would not move on. ... he threw off the blankets ... for half an hour he waited, watching and listening in vain. but as he returned to camp, and prepared to roll his blankets about him, the strange impulse rose in him again abruptly, never so strong, never so insistent. it seemed as though he were bitted and ridden; as if some unseen hand were turning him toward the east; some unseen heel spurring him to precipitate and instant flight (pp. 316 317). this instinct does force him to flee and to continue to move away from danger until he becomes so exhausted that the betterequipped, more thoughtful marcus catches him. journal of language and literature vol. 23, no. 1 april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 179 norris clearly utilises the lombrosan reversion to a lower state of evolution in mcteague. norris’ creative talent enables him to project lombrosan criminology into a novel so successfully that the protagonist retains sympathetic appeal even in his repulsiveness, even when described in terms of animal imagery. pizer (1966) indicates the lombrosan nature of mcteague: the result of this variety of influences impinging on the conception of mcteague is that though he is not a literal portrait of a lombrosan born criminal, he does have sufficient characteristics of that type to indicate that norris was loosely drawing upon contemporary ideas involving degeneracy and atavistic criminality. mcteague lacks many of the explicit stigmata listed by lombroso, such as epilepsy and tattooing. mcteague's characteristics are rather those which indicate norris' imaginative response to the dramatic possibilities inherent in the idea of alcoholic degeneracy resulting in atavistic criminality, particularly those characteristics which immediately suggest atavism, such as physical size and strength and mental slowness. so mcteague's father has died of acute alcoholism, and mcteague himself is huge, strong, stupid, and crude. moreover, he has the protruding jaw, square head, and alcoholic intolerance of the lombrosan criminal (p. 60). norris’ imaginative response to a scientific theory appears in the form of a man whose brutality and criminality take control of him which eventually destroys him. in terms of physique and conduct, he is no more than an animal. indeed, there is an extensive portrayal of animal imagery in mcteague, and often it occurs where characters are being metaphorically hustled up and down the evolutionary ladder, between the animal and the human levels. for instance, there is a memorable moment in the book when, before she is married to mcteague, trina reclines prettily in the dentist’s chair. she is under ether, and mcteague’s emotions are described hence: “suddenly the animal in the man stirred and woke; the evil instincts that in him were so close to the surface leaped to life, shouting and clamouring” (p. 27). an animal is a predator for survival; so, although mcteague for instance, becomes a hunted animal after his murder of trina at the end of the novel, he kills his pursuer, marcus. also, when being pursued in the desert, mcteague “was thirsty and drank a little from his canteen” (p. 327) to enable him survive the terrible heat of the desert. hence, “mcteague had told himself that the heat upon the lower slopes of the panamint had been dreadful; here in death valley it became a thing of terror. there was no longer any shadow but his own. he was scorched and parched from head to heel” (p. 327). in fact, mcteague is portrayed in the novel by norris as an animal from the jungle. after he has been bitten by marcus during a fight, his screaming is described not as that of a human being but as that of a hurt beast and a wounded elephant from the jungle: then followed a terrible scene. the brute that in mcteague lay so close to the surface leaped instantly to life, monstrous, not to be resisted. he sprang to his feet with a shrill and meaningless clamor, totally unlike the ordinary bass of his speaking tones. it was the hideous yelling of a hurt beast, the squealing of a wounded elephant. he framed no words; in the rush of high-pitched sound that issued from his wide open mouth there was nothing articulate. it was something no longer human; it was rather an echo from the jungle (p. 182). besides, throughout the novel, mcteague is directly and continuously associated with animals such as “bull” (p. 8; 28), elephant with “elephantine sentiment” (p. 26), “anaconda” (p. 50), cat or dog as “he pawed at his cheeks with both hands” (p. 50), bear as he gives trina “a bearlike embrace” (p. 75) and trina referring to him as “old bear” (p. 108), snake as he spits words “as a snake spits its venom” (p. 182), and horse as he is “docile and obedient as a big cart horse” (p. 7; 224). journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) gaaku, et al 180 generally, mcteague is a metaphor of a wild animal from the jungle: “his head was square-cut, angular; the jaw salient, like that of the carnivore” (p. 7). mcteague is an animal possessed by “bestial fury” (p. 184). he also walks “back and forth with the restlessness of a caged brute” (p. 235) when he loses his job as a dentist. even the comforts mcteague enjoys are described as those of animals: “the little animal comforts which for him constituted the enjoyment of life were ministered to at every turn, or when they were interfered with ─ as in the case of his sunday afternoon's nap and beer ─ some agreeable substitute was found” (p. 150). aside mcteague, other characters such as trina, marcus and zerkow also become animals when they are metaphorically pushed up and down the evolutionary ladder, between the animal and the human levels. for instance, trina descends to the level of an animal when her husband, mcteague loses his job as a dentist. she becomes so much obsessed with money and moves from union to self-interest and isolates herself. trina is highly driven by the instinct of hoarding, and she develops strong passion for money for the money's sake: she took a ten-dollar piece from the heap and put the rest away. then she paused, “no, not the gold piece,” she said to herself. “it's too pretty... it was a lamentable sight. trina looked longingly at the ten broad pieces in her hand. then suddenly all her intuitive desire of saving, her instinct of hoarding, her love of money for the money's sake, rose strong within her” (p. 164). here, trina’s instinct of hoarding, her love of money for the money’s sake is so strong that: “one evening she had even spread all the gold pieces between the sheets, and had then gone to bed, stripping herself, and had slept all night upon the money, taking a strange and ecstatic pleasure in the touch of the smooth flat pieces the length of her entire body” (p. 277). in fact, trina totally degenerates to the level of an animal; thus, she metaphorically becomes a harassed cat; a wild animal for that matter, as she fights mcteague: she “...fought for her miserable life with the exasperation and strength of a harassed cat and with such energy and such wild, unnatural force that even mcteague for the moment drew back from her” (p. 288). again, although nice at the beginning of the story, marcus descends to the status of an animal by reporting mcteague to the authorities at the city hall. even during the fight between him and mcteague, marcus metaphorically becomes a snake and bites mcteague: ‘“god damn you! get off me,’ he cried under his breath, spitting the words as a snake spits its venom... with the oath marcus had twisted his head and had bitten through the lobe of the dentist's ear. there was a sudden flash of bright-red blood” (p. 182). likewise, a character like zerkow cannot be overlooked in this discussion because he is equally a born animal: “he had the thin, eager, catlike lips of the covetous...” (p. 37). as he is eager to listen to the story about “gold dishes” from maria, he craves with “...his bloodless lower lip moving against the upper, his clawlike fingers feeling about his mouth and chin... it was as if some hungry beast of prey had scented a quarry”' (p. 39). above all, zerkow confirms his animal nature when he descends to the level of an animal by murdering maria as he is possessed by “a pitiless greed that checked at no tale of treasure, however preposterous” (p. 41). here, zerkow completely loses his spirit of reason. he is only driven by instinct; therefore, he is no more than an animal. conclusion this study has successfully established the hypotheses that everyone is both human and animal, and that the animal metaphor manifests to form an image pattern in frank norris’ mcteague. the study has also established that joseph le conte’s theory of evolution and cesare lombroso’s theory of criminology influenced the writing of mcteague. the study also established that the animal metaphor is central to mcteague and it forms an image pattern in the novel. the study has further ascertained that the animal instinct is there in every human. this upholds the observation of hart and long jr. (2011) that “...humans are animals” (p. 52). as far as things are normal, the animal instinct in man is journal of language and literature vol. 23, no. 1 april 2023 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 181 suppressed and only comes out when things are not normal as we see in the cases of mcteague, trina, marcus and zerkow in frank norris’ mcteague. obviously, all these characters are metaphorical animals that constitute an image pattern in the novel. they are not far from what lonngren (2015) describes as “literary animals” (p. 173). from another perspective, one can conclude that it is normal for people to be stripped of their civility in times of abnormality because the animal instinct is an integral part of every human. this implies that one must be very conscious of one’s own animal instinct and endeavour to control it. it is therefore recommended that all individuals strive hard to devise the appropriate means of controlling this animal instinct when faced with instinctual forces. future researchers should also investigate how best the animal in man can be tamed in abnormal times. this would help to prevent the accompanying brutalities and criminalities that arise whenever this animal surfaces in man. references coyle, j. a. (1988). allegory in the major fiction of frank norris (master’s thesis). hamilton, ontario: mcmaster university. creswell, j.w. (2013). research design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches ─ 4th ed. california: sage publications inc. dieng, b. (2014). “reading frank norris’s mcteague (1899) against emile zola’s thèrése raquin (1865)”. multifontaines, 1 (1), pp. 99-108. dillingham, w. b. (1969). frank norris: instinct and art. lincoln: university of nebraska press. french, w. (1962). frank norris. new york: twayne. hart, k. & long jr., j.h. (2011). “animal metaphors and metaphorizing animals: an integrated literary, cognitive, and evolutionary analysis of making and partaking of stories”. evoedu outreach, 4 (6), pp. 52-63. kusi, h. (2012). doing qualitative research ─ a guide for researchers. accra: emmpong press. le conte, j. (1896). evolution: its nature, its evidences, and its relation to religious thought. new york: appleton. lombroso, c. (1911). crime: its causes and remedies. with an introduction by maurice parmelee. boston: little, brown. lonngren, a. (2015). followingthe animal: power, agency, and human-animal transformations in modern, northerneuropean literature. newcastle, uk: cambridge scholars publishing. mahasha, t.w. (2014). “african identity: the study of zakesmda'sthe madona of excelsior and bessie head’s maru” (unpublished master’s thesis).limpopo: university of limpopo. masoomi, m., amjad, f. a. & arvin, m. (2016). “frank norris’ mcteague: an entropic melodrama”. international journal of humanities and social sciences, 10 (11), pp. 3617-3623 mcglynn, d. (2008). “mcteague’s gilded prison”. rocky mountain review, spring 2008, pp. 25-44. norris, f. (1964). mcteague. new york: the new american library, inc. norris, f. (1968).the responsibilities of the novelist. new york: greenwood. ofori-birinkorang, a. (2017). “textual analysis”.eng 502, research methods. unpublished lecture notes, university of education, winneba. payne, c. (2019). lack of truth in fiction: frank norris’s mcteague (master’s thesis). roanoke, virginia: hollins university. pizer, d. (1964). the literary criticism of frank norris. austin: university of texas press. pizer, d. (1966). the novels of frank norris. bloomington: indiana university press. pizer, d. (1973). the novels of frank norris. new york: haskell house. journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) gaaku, et al 182 pizer, d. (1977). mcteague. norton critical edition. new york: norton. sams, p. m. (2021). the significance of identity in mcteague: gender crisis, violent power struggles, and genre during the closing of the frontier (thesis). kuopio: school of humanities, philosophical faculty, university of eastern finland. schreiter, s. (2012). “the use of naturalistic techniques in frank norris’ mcteague and jack london’s novels”. anglistisches seminar: ps novels of the 1890s, march 22, 2012. surur, a.n. & dengela, s.t. (2019). “elements of naturalism in mcteague by frank norris”. international journal of english, literature and social sciences, 4 (6), pp. 1721-1732. set cover luar phenomena vol 15 no. 2-bitmapcon vol. 15 no. 2 – october 2015 111 deviation of enhancing stereotypes through lexicalization and songs in mulan joan sanita joansanita@yahoo.co.id english language studies, sanata dharma university abstract this paper investigates the deviation of enhancing stereotypes that takes place in disney film mulan. it attempts to reveal the stereotypes that arise from the film in terms of lexicalization and the songs. also, this study examines the implication of watching this type of movie as it is classified as family genre. the analysis is based on s. jager and f. mayer (2009) film analysis on foucauldian approach of discourse analysis. it connects linguistic discursive practice, non-linguistic discursive practice, and materialization (object). because of the limitation of the space in presenting the data, this paper focuses only on the linguistic discursive practice in terms of lexicalization and four songs represented in the film. the result shows that in terms of lexicalization, the use of word ‘girl’ compared ‘man’ has an implied deal with the case of stereotypes. likewise, the symbol of ‘girl’ as a doll and ‘man’ as a sword symbolized in the film also bring the effect on the stereotypes which are characterized by the female and male characters. then, in terms of songs, the four songs that are sung in the film also convey the stereotypes which can be denoted by the film. keywords: deviation, stereotypes, film introduction mulan was one of disney movies that acquired good reception at the time of its release. this film raises the tale from the other countries, that is, a legendary female figure form china. the story tells about the battle of mulan, a chinese woman who has lots of limitedness in gaining her freedom. here, mulan is described as a rebellious daughter who always confronts problems in the family. as an impact, she is not able and permitted to do things that she thinks right and proper. as its category is a family movie, most people will tend to say that this film is suitable to be watched by all ages (general audiences). likewise, the type of the film which is made as an animation will make parents to become less aware of the contents of the movie. they will presume that animated film is intended for children or teenagers like the animated films in general. moreover, disney, which is known as creator and producer for many children’s cartoons and animations, has a very big impact on the globalization on its films world-wide. the films such as cinderella, sleeping beauty, snow white, and aladdin, are inevitably popular among people of leveled generation and ages around the world. the problem will be tightening when we really pay attention deeply into the story. that is, the implication that is offered by disney through its story and its feasibility to be watched by young generation during this time. the story, which derived from the other culture from the other country, is in fact can lead to different meaning and perceptions. furthermore, the impact of the story perhaps will be misguided of misunderstood by its viewers, especially for the young ages. thus, it is considered important to seek deeper to the implied consequences resulted from the point of view of language, non-discursive, and objectification that is advocated from this joan sanita 112 movie: what is implicated from the movies in terms of enhancing stereotypes and how far can we tolerate this kind of films to be viewed by the young ages. stereotypes stereotypes can be defined as an authorized issue in enabling the maintenance of discrimination over time and across different segments of experience and sociallife (cook and cusack, 2011: 37). this occurrence also can be dissimilar according to the culture, the perception, and the reception of people individually or collectively. most stereotypes are argued to take place firstly by stating to the visual or physical appearance. ethnical, racial, group, individual, men, women, the elderly, and the young are all the factors that may emerge the stereotypes (zebrowitz, 1996 :79). then, it may be followed by the difference in sounds (language, including accent, vocabulary, etc), behaviors, habits, as well as relating with religion and political interest. in this paper, there are at least two stereotypes that are observed. they are cultural and gender stereotypes. cultural stereotypes deal with specific physical or facial features, judge in (personal) beliefs, norms, customs, and low/ high prejudice to certain culture (moskowitz, 2005: 506). meanwhile, gender stereotypes are in line with the social and cultural construction of men and women. that is, to make a judgment in the extent of their distinctive physical, biological, sexual and social functions (cook and cussack, 2011: 20). they basically affect and endorse to each other in social-life construction. the worrisome thing about these stereotypes is that when they already enter to children’s psyche or the so-called ‘children’s trajectory’, with certain internalization that affects them as they were getting older (schneider, 2005: 353). since children watch the movie, any exposure may have a tendency to bring them in misguided role of understanding. therefore, they should be monitored continuously dealing with the input and contact that they live in daily experience. here, the power of media (in this case is movie) is argued as the biggest ‘ills’ for promoting stereotypes among people, not to mention, children as well. lexicalization in the film in this film, there is one marked lexicalization that is done by the characters. that is, the use of lexeme a “girl” in the whole of story. it can be observed that all conversations which take place in the movie use this word consistently throughout the film. it can indicate the estimation of a girl as a powerless human being that has negative connotation. significantly, the word girl is always used to call or name mulan. there is only one big time when she was called as “woman”. that is, this name is given to her when her disguise is revealed by the royal guard. in fact, this calling is also not containing a good sense at all since it is used as a connotative idea followed by the metaphors treacherous snake. this lexeme can be compared directly to the use of word to represent male characters in the film. the word “man” is used to represent the entire male figures in the story. if we compared these two words, “a girl” and “a man”, they definitely bring different sense to the viewer. the word “girl” has the features of young, immature, perhaps also powerless, reckless and innocent. whereas, the word “man” has the features of adult, mature, powerful, and full grown-up. if they are compared mutually from the film, these two lexicalizations offer an obvious idea of gender stereotype. moreover, if we look through the film, there are two objects used frequently in the film and can be stated as the representative symbols of the female and male characters in the film. in this extent, the objects signify the imagery of the story as it uses a symbol to underline some idea of the story. the first is related to the two objects that are presented and compared in the story. they are “the doll” versus “the sword”. in this story, the doll signifies mulan where the sword represents men. vol. 15 no. 2 – october 2015 113 a doll is usually an image of fragile, young, innocent, and playful thing that essentially deals with a girl or a young woman. likewise, in the song, it is also stated that a woman is like a porcelain doll that represents beauty and fragility. meanwhile, a sword is a symbol of power, dignity, greatness and skill. in this film, the presence of the doll is compared to the sword which characteristically reflects two disparate things as the significance of women and men in the story. songs as the implied message of the stereotypes the other interesting knowledge can be gained from the songs which are represented in mulan film. the lyrics of the song are the depiction of the character’s mind and also can be stated as the significant part of the story. that is, it covers up the idea of the story in a whole. there are four songs which are sung by various characters in the film. the first song is when mulan is prepared to meet the matchmaker, entitled honor to us all (min 00.06). in this song, it can be inferred that women should be pretty, beautiful, innocent, calm, obedient, and the like. the extract of the song can be seen below. ……… -with good fortune -and a great hairdo you'll bring honor to us all [maid] ………. men want girls with good taste -calm -obedient who work fast-paced -with good breeding -and a tiny waist …….. we all must serve our emperor who guards us from the huns the men by bearing arms a girl by bearing sons [maids together] when we're through you can't fail ……… ancestors, hear my plea help me not to make a fool of me and to not uproot my family tree keep my father standing tall [mulan] scarier than the undertaker we are meeting our matchmaker [girls] ……….. please look kindly on these cultured pearls each a perfect porcelain doll [parents] this extract of song describes perfectly how to be a woman in chinese culture. this song represents the “dos” and “don’ts” to be a chinese woman as well as the demands of the society to be the perfect girl in civilization. there are some criteria to be a perfect girl, such as doing a great hairdo, having a good taste, calm, obedient, work fast-paced, giving a good breeding, and having a tiny waist. it is also mentioned that women should serve the emperor by “bearing sons”, compared to men who do it by “bearing arms”. this is somewhat a kind of different culture that happens to men and women in the state of being. from the last lyric, it is also shown how mulan is hopeless and frightened to be failed. she is not confident to prove herself as her family wanted. the second song is when mulan fails to impress the matchmaker and shames her family in the song reflection (min 12.15). in this song, mulan describes her thoughts in a stressful way. she seems reckless and feels so bad for herself and her family. she states firstly, that if she reveals her true self to the others, it will only break her family’s heart and dignity. she does not want to let her family down but the indeed she did it. she joan sanita 114 bares her feelings through this song. here are some lines of the song. [mulan sings] now i see that if l were truly to be myself l would break my family's heart who is that girl l see staring straight back at me? why is my reflection someone i don't know? somehow i cannot hide who i am though l've tried when will my reflection show who i am inside? when will my reflection show who i am inside? the third song is presented when mulan and the soldiers are trained for the army (i’ll make a man out of you min 38.04). this song reveals the exact way of how hard mulan tries to be able to finish the training and try her best to act as a man. it is noted from the lyric that to ‘be a man’ is the thing related to strength, power, endurance, and toughness. in this song, it is also shown how the soldier must follow every single order that is dictated by the captain. here, the expectancy of men’s obedience in the hierarchical system is also shown through this extract line of the song. [shang] ……… did they send me daughters when i asked for sons? ……. mister, l'll make a man out of you ……. you're a spineless, pale, pathetic lot and you haven't got a clue somehow i'ii make a man out of you ……….. [shang] -with all the strength of a raging fire ……….. time is racing toward us till the huns arrive heed my every order and you might survive you're unsuited for the rage of war so pack up, go home, you're through how could i make a man out of you? -be a man [the soldiers] -we must be swift as a coursing river [shang] -be a man [the soldiers] -with all the force of a great typhoon [shang] -be a man [the soldiers] -with all the strength of a raging fire [shang] related to women’s stereotype, the song a girl worth fighting for (min. 47.37) describes overtly how men perceive women and how they want women to be look like or behave. when the soldiers debate of the girls, mulan seems to offer different opinion of a woman that she thinks worth to fight for. however, none of the men agrees with her. the criteria of a worth girl seems to discard all the things that are related to cleverness, power, voice, and the like. the significant lines of the song are presented as below. [ling] that's what i said. a girl worth fighting for l want her paler than the moon with eyes that shine like stars my girl will marvel at my strength, adore my battle scars [yao] [chien po] i couldn't care less what she'll wear or what she looks like lt all depends on what she cooks like “beef, pork, chicken. hmm” …………. my girl will think l have no faults [yao] that l'm a major find [chien po] vol. 15 no. 2 – october 2015 115 [mulan] how 'bout a girl who's got a brain who always speaks her mind? my manly ways and turn of phrase are sure to thrill her [ling] …………. the impact of the film related to stereotypes it is proposed that mulan’s ideological messages are freedom, right of passage, intolerance, choice, greed, and the brutalities of men chauvinism. it is also argued that mulan, as the lead character of the film, challenges these stereotypes, especially on women (giroux, 1999: 111&117). however, the fact is that, from the findings that have been presented, the issue of stereotypes is not heavily much disproved from the film. from the time duration of 87 minutes, around 70 minutes of the film tells the all kinds of act and language behavior that somewhat enhancing the stereotypes to women and chinese culture. it is only the last 17 minutes of the film where there is a phase of realization of the role of mulan as a heroine. but, again, it is only a little portion of the film compared to the whole narrative which is presented. similarly, if we dig up deeper to the essence of the story, there are some female figures who are presented in the story, such as mulan’s mother, grandmother, and the maids. however, until the end of the story, the viewpoint and the treating of them are still the same from the beginning. it can be seen extensively at the end of the story when mulan’s grandmother met captain shang at the yard. she said “sign me up for the next war.” it implies how much women are still amazed to men’s stuff and felt it affordable to be chased. likewise, it is clearly shown from the story that mulan is actually neglected and even is underestimated by shang after her disguise uncovered. she is treated so badly and her attempt to explain the reason why she did it is not heard at all. even when she was dumped by the royal guard, shang did nothing. her effort to tell shang that the huns are still alive is also in vain until she makes her own effort to save the emperor. however, at the end of the story, mulan still expects him as her lover. she seems thoughtless and does not consider of what he has done to her before. it shows implicitly how women are still weak in the story and mulan, eventually, is still innocent to realize the happening. she cannot prove herself or get recognition as well. if we observe further, this happening is really a big deal for the viewers, particularly the young people who usually watch disney films. their films, which are popular or even being the favorite of the children, are in reality does not convey a proper heading of them. they can make generalization of what is good or bad based on the film which can be misleading. nonetheless, parents typically do not really notice about it since they assert that disney films are safe and indeed intended for children. this presumption makes disney film, in this case is mulan becomes the potential recklessness of its delicate viewers. conclusion in conclusion, mulan contains some stereotypes related to gender and culture. these indication can be confirmed from the film analysis based on jager and maier (2009). on the findings, there are at least some important points to be stressed from disney film mulan. the lexicalization of saying a girl rather than a woman is also significant in implying how females are seen and treated in the film. subsequently, the four songs that are sung by the characters in the film also show the general perception related to women and also men. this is considerably important in showing the tendency to stereotype of the film. in entailing these all things with the impact of the film, it can be stated that mulan somehow conveys the deviation of its viewer to subconsciously permit the stereotypes related to women and culture. this occurrence becomes more disturbing when disney film is mostly being the favorite of the young ages as its viewers. parents also joan sanita 116 typically neglect this issue as they did not realize how much the impact of this tendency in constructing the troublesome compensation that the children will experience in dealing with real life. references cook, rebecca j., and cusack simon. gender stereotyping: transnational legal perspective. pennsylvania: university of pennsylvania press, 2011. giroux, henry a. the mouse that roared: disney and the end of innocence. maryland: rowman & littlefield publishers, 1999. moskowitz, gordon b. social cognition: understanding self and others. new york: the guilford press, 2005. schneider, david j. the psychology of stereotyping. new york: the guildford press, 2005. teun a. van dijk, edited by weiss, gilbert., wodak ruth. critical discourse analysis: theory and interdisciplinary. new york: palgrave macmillan, 2003. wodak, ruth, and meyer, michael. methods of critical discourse analysis: introducing qualitative methods. london: sage publications, 2001. zebrowitz, leslie a. “physical appearance as a basis of stereotyping” (page 79-120) in stereotypes & stereotyping, edited by macrae, c. neil., stangor, charles, and hewstone, miles. new york: the guilford press, 1996. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120762 http://movies.disney.com/mulan http://video.disney.com/watch/mulan-in60-seconds-4d7e951396aab4bfdd590ef6 http://www.dissduisburg.de/2014/06/analysing-discoursesand-dispositives/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120762/ http://movies.disney.com/mulan http://video.disney.com/watch/mulan-in-60-seconds-4d7e951396aab4bfdd590ef6 http://video.disney.com/watch/mulan-in-60-seconds-4d7e951396aab4bfdd590ef6 http://www.diss-duisburg.de/2014/06/analysing-discourses-and-dispositives/ http://www.diss-duisburg.de/2014/06/analysing-discourses-and-dispositives/ http://www.diss-duisburg.de/2014/06/analysing-discourses-and-dispositives/ page 1 page 2 phenomena vol 15 no. 2.pdf page 1 page 2 set cover dalam phenomena vol 15 no.pdf page 1 binder1.pdf (3) artikel 1prof putu (venti) ed-2 (4) artikel 2joan (arina) ed-3 (5) artikel 3 maria (hir) ed-2 (6) artikel 4 adria (arina) ed-2 (7) artikel 5 lany (hir) ed-2 (8) artikel 6 sisca (harris) ed-2 (9) artikel 7 risang (arina) ed-2 (10) artikel 8 herujiyanto (hir) ed-2 (11) artikel 9 patrice (venti) ed-2 (12) artikel 10 venti (arina) ed-3 (13) artikel 11 suryo (arina) ed-2 (14) index (2 des 2015)-1 (14) contributor's notes-2 mitra bestari dan daftar isi-oct 2015.pdf page 1 page 2 set cover luar phenomena.pdf page 1 318 vol. 22 no. 2, october 2022, pp. 318 – 334 doi: 10.24071/joll.v22i2.4461 available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. power relations and social classes in pengakuan pariyem by linus suryadi ag: reflection of masculine ideology rudi ekasiswanto, wisma nugraha christianto richardus & wening udasmoro rudiekasiswanto@ugm.ac.id, krisnugraha@ugm.ac.id, udasmara@ugm.ac.id faculty of cultural sciences, universitas gadjah mada, indonesia abstract article information the study aims to explore power relations and social classes as the reflections of the masculine ideology of the author in the novel pengakuan pariyem by linus suryadi ag. the theories implemented in the study are van dijk’s power relations and social classes theory and connell’s masculinity theory. the study is qualitative descriptive and applies the critical discourse analysis (cda) method, used to dismantle the ideology that is produced and reproduced through the language within the novel. the research data are lingual units that indicate power relations and social classes which simultaneously reflect the notion of masculinity. the results of the study are as follows. first, pariyem as the central character in the novel lives within a hierarchical and dualistic javanese society. her submission as the babu (housemaid) of a priyayi (noble) family does not only lead pariyem to be dominated symbolically, but also legitimizes the priyayi (aristocrats) power over wong cilik (commoners). it is reinforced by the representations of the priyayis’ world views in terms of culture, aristocracy, bureaucracy, and education orientation. it shows that priyayis are culturally dominant. secondly, since pariyem is a character created by a male author, her behaviors and actions reflect the ideology of masculinity. rather than voicing women, the power relations that pariyem experiences through the events constructed in the novel show that she embodies the masculine ideology, or masculinity. keywords: power relations; social classes; masculinty; pengakuan pariyem received: 8 march 2022 revised: 16 may 2022 accepted: 22 june 2022 bibit, bobot, dan bebet dan saya sudah 3b sebagai babu, kok itu saya indhit, saya kempit saya sandang dan saya tayang sampai masuk ke liang kubur ah, ya, maklum jawa baru, mas semua serba pakai kelas https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/joll/index mailto:rudiekasiswanto@ugm.ac.id mailto:krisnugraha@ugm.ac.id journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 319 bangsawan dan rakyat jelata darah biru dan darah biasa dalam kraton dan luar kraton —berbeda derajatnya kehormatan serta kedudukannya dan dasar kehidupan yang dijadikan patokan ialah asal-usulnya semua terpateri di jidat tua family background, personal quality, and financial health and i already have all of them to be a maid, really i will cherish and maintain them until the end of my life ah, yes, it’s the new java all are determined by classes nobles and commoners royal blood and ordinary people inside the palace and outside the palace —they have different levels the honor and positions and the basis of life that is made as the standard is family bakcground all engraved on the old forehead … (agustinus, 2015, p. 6) introduction above is a quotation from pengakuan pariyem (pp) written by linus suryadi ag, and it was first published in 1981. as an overview, this work of fiction is about pariyem, a javanese woman from the wong cilik class (commoner) and a daughter of a farmer family from wonosari, gunung kidul, who works as a babu (servant/maid) for a priyayi (noble) family of ndoro kanjeng cokro sentoso in ndalem suryomentaraman, ngayogyakarta. one day, pariyem was engaged in sexual intercourse with his master’s heir (his son), raden bagus aro atmojo or known best as den baguse, and she became pregnant. when her pregnancy was discovered by the priyayi family, pariyem was sent off to wonosari until she gave birth to a baby girl that was named endang sri setyaningsih. precisely a year after she gave birth to her daughter, pariyem returned to the family, working as a babu although she was now technically a daughter-in-law of ndoro kanjeng family. the above overview implies that in every social relationship, whether between a babu and a master or between a man and a woman, there is a power relation (foucault, 2002). even though she had given birth to a girl with priyayi’s blood, it did not mean pariyem could become a part of the priyayi. in other words, the social class inherent in her prevented her from moving to a higher social class. this indicates that events presented in pp are relevant to power relations between one social class and another. moreover, as a woman, pariyem's life is often determined by a man's desires as the party who holds power. there is a power relation within this gender relations. whilst she is positioned as the subject of power, pariyem seems able to tell the story about herself and her experiences because linus, the author, utilizes interior-soliloquy monologue. pp is written in the form of prose lyrics, so that pariyem, who is the central character, can articulate herself. however, pp is a novel that was written by a male author. therefore, it raises a question of whose voice that is truly narrated in this novel, whether it is pariyem as a woman or linus as a man author, who indeed operates under masculinity ideology. therefore, the attempt to journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ekasiswanto et.al. 320 answer the questions can be achieved through the use of the masculinity concept. in this concept, instead of describing masculinity, the focus should be on the processes and relationships between men and women who lead gendered lives (connell, 2005). beynon (in monika, gunawan, and marhaeni, 2021) stated that masculinity is not only biologically defined, but it is also reproduced and constructed socially and culturally. one of them is through literary works. it is possible that when a woman is advocated and constructed in a work of fiction written by a male author, the possibility is the author aims to display his masculinity. gender is not an autonomous entity. it always interacts with various social categories, including power relations and social classes (udasmoro & nayati, 2020). therefore, both aspects are processes and relations that distinguish between men and women, and these can be used to legitimize the author's ideology, masculinity. before discussing the reflection of the two aspects further, it is necessary to first discuss the position of masculinity as an ideology. masculinity is a configuration of gender practices that refers to the male body directly, symbolically, and indirectly (connell, 2000). in this case, the author's masculinity is both symbolic and indirect because it is represented in the pp, in which the relationship between men and women is described as one carrying out social practices in a gendered life. this means that the social practice which is the practice of gender reconfiguration occurs in society within ideological collective processes (connell, 2000). with such a theoretical statement, masculinity becomes an ideology hidden in the text, and this symbolically and indirectly refers to the ideology of the author. returning to the two aspects above, in other words, power relations and social classes in pp reflect masculinity. power is a relationship among classes, groups, social formations, and individuals as members of a social class (van dijk, 2008). in the process and exercise of power, power relations are manifested within individuals’ interactions belonging to different social classes. in these relationships, there is one dominant class in charge of creating plans, controlling actions and cognitions (mind), and decision making for other social classes (van dijk, 1993). power requires several basics, i.e., social resources whose placement and utilization are possible within social environments. social resources are attributes, properties, and materials that have social values that are not evenly distributed and only possessed by certain classes, such as wealth, roles, positions, ranks, status, titles, knowledge, skills, privilege, age, and membership of social class of dominant culture (van dijk, 2008, 2011). it gives rise to binary oppositional discourses, i.e., wealthy and poor, men and women, old and young, highly and lowly/no educated, and so on. the bases of power make individuals of the dominant social class able to control and dominate those of lower classes. in its continuation, domination could produce various inequalities, including gender inequalities. pp is a work of fiction that needs to be considered and discussed within the realm of indonesian literature. there are a number of studies discussing pp that are reviewed in this article; these articles are sari, et al. (2018), saraswati (2009), and wulandari (2021). the first two studies argued that pariyem is a helpless, passive subject and has experienced various forms of gender injustices; thus, her state and experience indicate her representation in the context of society and culture. socially, she is a female laborer, culturally, she should bear children. being a laborer, pariyem cannot become a legal daughter-in-law after she gave birth to her daughter. instead, she was treated as both a babu and mistress. meanwhile, wulandari (2021) discussed pariyem's relation as the central character within javanese culture practices: sinden and mysticism. according to the research reviews, pp has been studied, in particular, through feminism viewpoint. these studies viewed pariyem as a woman, the one who underwent gender injustice, in connection with her relationship with the javanese culture. meanwhile, being different from these studies, the current study discusses power relations and social classes presented in pp as a reflection of masculinity. this cannot be separated from the fact that pp is a work of a male author. in this case, linus journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 321 aimed to represent women and confront the patriarchy, but he was trapped and could not escape his masculinity. therefore, revealing problems of power relations and social classes leads to uncovering the masculinity that is present in pp. based on this explanation, the current study will solve two research problems as follows. firstly, how are the construction of power relations and social classes in pp represented? secondly, how is the author's masculinity reflected on the issues of power relations and social classes in pp? methodology the study is a qualitative descriptive research conducted using critical discourse analysis (cda) method. cda is devised to explain a discourse's role in the (re)production of social issues, such as power abuses, dominations, and inequalities, through text (van dijk, 2001, 2008). cda aims to connect language application at the micro level with social issues at the macro level. it is done by analyzing six elements: (1) semantic macro structures (topic), (2) local meanings (lexical choices, expressions, figures of speech), (3) formal structure (linguistic markers, such as word order, syntactic structure), (4) global discourse and local, (5) realization of language (language styles), and (6) context. however, as stated by van dijk (2013), cda is neither a theory nor a method but a critical perspective that its implementation can be combined with other theoretical approaches in the fields of social sciences and humanities (van dijk, 2001). therefore, this study does not aim to discover and analyze the six elements in pp, but to use it as a critical perspective to unveil power relations and social class in pp as a verbal text, which is represented through the use of semantic units, lexical selection, formal structure, and the other elements. the six elements are inherently implicated in the analysis of these two research problems so that each element is not analyzed singly, let alone separately. this research was conducted by reading the novel thoroughly, which was the data source. moreover, research data, lingual units that display power relations, and social classes are gathered by scrutinizing and note-tang techniques. then, data analysis was conducted by interpreting data in accordance with applied theories to solve research problems: power relations and social classes as well as a reflection of masculinity. the researcher then concludes the research findings. results and discussion power relations and social classes in pengakuan pariyem pariyem as a wong cilik and babu pariyem is a character that narrates her own story using first-person point of view (monologue). she is involved and exists in the world and various events. the world and events are the environments of the javanese society. pariyem lives in a structured javanese society that is divided hierarchically and dualistically. the first class consists of nobilities and intellectuals, and they are also known as the priyayi. the second class consists of laborers and ordinary people that are also known as the wong cilik. the priyayi’s world views, whether natural or supernatural, are centralized on peculiarity and fineness, while the wong cilik are centralized on roughness (faruk, 2010). the first group possesses higher social status than the second class. it is represented by two spaces within the novel, i.e., wonosari, gunung kidul, and ndalem suryomentaraman, ngayogyakarta. the first space represents a village culture while the second space represents an urban culture that gives shape to supra-village culture (sutherland, 1983). ya, ya, pariyem saya maria magdalena pariyem lengkapnya “iyem” panggilan sehari-harinya dari wonosari gunung kidul sebagai babu ndoro kanjeng cokro sentono di ndalem suryomentaraman ngayogyakarta yes, yes, i am pariyem maria magdalena pariyem is my full name "iyem" is my nickname from wonosari gunung kidul the maid of ndoro kanjeng cokro sentono journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ekasiswanto et.al. 322 in the palace of suryomentaraman ngayogyakarta (agustinus, 2015, p. 30) the excerpt clarifies that priyem, as a wong cilik, comes from a village. meanwhile, ndoro kanjeng as a priyayi comes from an urban area. in the exerpt, pariyem describes herself as a wong cilik working as a babu of the priyayi family. she then realizes that she lives in different social classes as an individual regarding the relationship between priyayi and wong cilik. there is another power relation in a working relationship, i.e., between a babu and her master. therefore, ndalem suryomentaraman, in which pariyem lives and serves, does not only differentiate but also gives shape to the hierarchical relation of two different social classes. the quote above also shows pariyem's full name with her baptismal name, namely maria magdalena. this shows that there is a parallelism of mariyem as mary magdalene. this baptismal name shows pariyem's identity as a catholic despite her syncretism with kejawen beliefs. in catholicism, mary magdalene refers to the holy woman, who was made a witness to the resurrection of jesus by god, but she is also known as a penitent prostitute. (simon & ramli, 2020). it is this repentance that parallels the title pengakuan pariyem (pariyem's confession). this title implies that pariyem's confession to his brother, mas paiman, is associated with the confession of sins in catholicism, that is, someone enters the confessional, then confesses all her or his sins without any hesitation because these will definitely be kept confidential (soemanto, 1985). in this case, mas paiman is equated with the priest who hears all of pariyem's stories. the parallelism between pariyem and maria magdalena places her as the claimant. in this confession, she plays the role of a narrator, who tells about the characters in the novel, in which she is actually involved in the story, but it seems as if this involvement is not visible. pariyem can enter the story as a babu, and then she can freely leave the story as a narrator, who tells about the life in ndoro kanjeng's house, her relationship with each family member, the characteristics of each priyayi, and so on. she lives in the house as a babu, but this does not fully emerge. with this concept of recognition, she acts in two positions. on the one hand, she becomes a character who experiences power relations in unequal interclass relations. on the other hand, she becomes an observer, who witnessed the formation of power relations and social classes in relation to the family of ndoro kanjeng in suryomentaraman, ngayogyakarta through various means, such as work relations, position, knowledge, sexual relations, and others, all of which she tells mr. paiman. therefore, the naming of maria magdalena reflects not only pariyem’s name and identity, but also how the power relations and social class are recognized by her as a character and a confessor or storyteller. the social structure between pariyem and ndoro kanjeng family relates to role divisions. pariyem as a wong cilik and a woman reminds us of koentjaraningrat’s, mulder’s, and geertz's idea that women are symbolically associated with the household (permanadeli, 2015). this association is proven by pariyem, who works as a babu in her daily life. this is an occupation associated with the household. when she introduces herself as a babu, the description shows that pariyem is proud of the wong cilik social class and her social role as the babu of a priyayi family. she does not only admit it, but she also embraces it. she views being a babu not as a disgrace or adversity; she accepts it as a fate destined for her by god; thus, she should be grateful and not blame anyone. in other words, she possesses grounds that reinforces her wong cilik status. in regard to this, pariyem says the following: kalau memang sudah nasib saya sebagai babu, apa ta repotnya? gusti allah maha adil, kok saya nrima ing pandum kalau indonesia krisis babu bukan hanya krisis babu saja o, allah, apa nanti jadinya? terang, negara kocar-kacir! karena, demikianlah hukumnya: … ada priyayi ada babu if it's my fate as a maid, what's the problem? journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 323 god is the most just, for sure i accept my part if indonesia has a maid crisis it's not just a maid crisis oh, god, what will happen next? of course, a chaotic country! because that is the law: … there are nobles; there are maids (agustinus, 2015, p. 30) pariyem realizes that as a babu, she is in a subordinate wong cilik class under the dominant priyayi class. therefore, she lives in social relations with a concept of power relations being implemented. however, she is loyal to her social role by serving ndoro kanjeng’s family. she denies reality by expressing precise and concrete reasons to preserve herself as a babu. from her point of view, a babu is an essential job for the state. moreover, she states that god predetermines the fates of all social classes, and this is undeniable. therefore, each individual should live their social role in accordance with their social class. based on the quotation above, pariyem visualizes an unstable and messy country when lacking wong cilik. therefore, a country should be established with equilibrium or the law of binary oppositions, including the opposition between the wong cilik and the priyayi. pariyem's reception as a member of the wong cilik class and a babu may be found explicitly in the novel. early on in the novel, she has a thought that life does not necessarily need to be felt and thought about. for her, life is like the river winanga, river code, and river gajah wong. they have different geographical conditions, yet all of them flow from the upstream to the downstream. people have different social classes, but in the end, everyone starts with his or her birth and finishes with their death. she surrenders herself as an individual who is grateful without regret and accepts her fate without resisting it. moreover, pariyem also states some javanese proverbs, such as "bibit, bobot, dan bebet”, “madeg, mantep, dan madhep”, “asah, asih, dan asuh”, “karsa, kerja, dan karya”, “lirih, laras, dan lurus”, and the phrases "sudah trima" (already accepted) and "lega lila" (willing to accept). she believes that she was born to be a babu. therefore, in accordance with these proverbs, she has committed herself to her role and responsibility. pariyem’s reception shows that, practically, she is a victim of symbolical domination. domination affects consciousness and, mainly, actions (bourdieu, 2001). in the beginning, pariyem interprets life as a society constructed by a social stratum. she praises the wong cilik as the complementary of the priyayi and balancer of society. as magnissuseno (1984) suggests, her actions are a form of honor to power relations, hierarchical relations that, in the end, might create social harmony. moreover, pariyem's behavior, according to nrimo ing pandum, which means 'accepting what is given', has made her committed and devoted to working as a babu. her attitudes somewhat conceal the power relation present in the master-babu relationship between pariyem and ndoro kanjeng’s family even though this power relation is ever present and becomes stronger. ndoro kanjeng as priyayi and master the priyayi class in pp is represented by ndoro kanjeng who lives with his wife, ndoro ayu cahya wulaningsih, and two children, den baguse and ndoro putri wiwit setiowati. among four members of the priyayi, ndoro kanjeng is depicted as the patriarch and a model of a pure javanese priyayi. his image and characteristics are constructed and attached to him as an individual who holds priyayi values firmly. according to sutherland (1975), the priyayis have specific images and characteristics. they usually have positions in the government. this class also includes experts of keraton's aristocratic culture. in addition, they better understand classic literature, music, dance, wayang kulit, philosophy, ethics, mysticism, language manners, and nice clothes. they also have more appreciation and awareness of integrity and honor. as stated in the following excerpt, those traits are present in ndoro kanjeng. “kanjeng raden tumenggung gelarnya putra wijaya nama timurnya cokro sentono nama dewasanya ndoro kanjeng panggilannya priyagung kraton ngayogyakarta journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ekasiswanto et.al. 324 . . . cakrak pembawaannya selir-selirnya berserakan . . . wawasannya luas seluas alun-alun lor kanjeng raden tumenggung is his title putra wijaya his first name cokro sentono his adult name ndoro kanjeng is his nickname a noble of kraton ngayogyakarta . . . good looking lots of concubines . . . broadminded as wide as alun-alun lor (agustinus, 2015, p. 66—67) ndoro kanjeng possesses social resources that are attached to him. firstly, he is a culturally dominant social class member who possesses privileges. it can be seen from the use of antonomasia by the author, an epithet or title given to a proper name. the phrase ndoro kanjeng is a proper name, title, and position given by cokro sentono as the great priyayi of kraton ngayogyakarta. he is a wise and an authoritative priyayi. secondly, he owns many concubines (ampeyan). he represents most priyayi's tendencies to practice polygamy with more than four women with one woman as their principal wife (sutherland, 1983). in this case, ndoro ayu is the principal wife. thirdly, ndoro kanjeng possesses broad knowledge. this indicates that he is highly educated and belongs to a social class whose members are intellectuals. with his intellect, he obviously belongs to much higher social class than pariyem’s; she did not even finish her elementary school (agustinus, 2015). one of the social resources of the priyayi, according to van dijk (2008), is social positions. in pp, this position is a social attribute of ndoro kanjeng; thus, he appears as an ideal, proper, and stalwart priyayi. the existing social resources interact with and determine each other. in the previous discussion, ndoro kanjeng has broad knowledge because he is highly educated. because of his knowledge and resources, he is appointed to several positions within bureaucrats and institutions. for example, as written in the part where pariyem tells about him, he is a former director general of rtf in betawi during the new order era (referring to prof. dr. umar kayam). today, he works in a bureaucratic structure as well as academic and cultural institutions as a lecturer at the faculty of literature and culture of universitas gadjah mada and universitas sebelas maret. he is also the chairperson of the national filmography board, director of the center of indonesian education and cultural research, and the vicerector for the art market division of universitas gadjah mada. other descriptions are also found in the following excerpt. ya, ya, ndoro kanjeng pernah bilang: “kita sendiri punya peradaban, iyem apabila bukan kita yang menghargai malah malu dan meremehkan, itu aib siapa yang mengangkat martabatnya?” selalu pakaian jawa, selalu pakaian jawa! bebed sido mukti dan surjan lurik lengkap blangkonnya gaya ngayogyakarta yes, ndoro kanjeng said: “we have our own civilization, iyem if we don't appreciate it even ashamed of and belittling it, it's a disgrace who raises its dignity?” always javanese clothes, always javanese clothes! bebed sido mukti and surjan lurik complete with ngayogyakarta style blangkon (agustinus, 2015, p. 69) the priyayi, in the javanese social structure, actually does not live only in real life, yet it also exists in the symbolic world, representing the real world (kuntowijoyo, 2003). the symbols are reflected by traditional javanese clothes worn by ndoro kanjeng, all of which are luxurious and majestic. the javanese clothes he wears consist of a suit, pantolan, surjan lurik, selop, bebed sido mukti, and ngayogyakarta style blangkon. as the representation of the world, those symbols manifest priyayi world view to distinguish themselves from wong cilik class, which will maintain power relation between both classes. meanwhile, in the part where journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 325 ndoro kanjeng gives an advice to american, for instance, ndoro kanjeng shows interest in wayang. he considers wayang as the source of life values that should live within oneself. it indicates that ndoro kanjeng is a priyayi who continuously tries to become subtle by appreciating spiritual, intellectual, and cultural elements (faruk, 2010). the excerpt above indicates that ndoro kanjeng delivers insight concerning javanese culture civilization to pariyem. his utterance shows that he i both a priyayi and a master. he possesses access to power to influence pariyem's knowledge as a wong cilik and babu. in this case, knowledge and insights are the resources of social power that ndoro kanjeng uses to control pariyem's cognition (van dijk, 1993). this implies an unconscious power relation because ndoro kanjeng can dominate pariyem symbolically with knowledge. according to bourdieu (2001), the unconscious occurs because of the "miracle" of symbolic power between the dominating and the dominated. this symbolic power is the power relation realized through knowledge stored under consciousness in the form of suggestions or considerations. through the above quote, it appears that ndoro kanjeng suggests and emphasizes the importance of preserving javanese civilization, one of which was through clothes. power relations between pariyem and den baguse this power relation can be seen in the sexual relationship between pariyem and den baguse, the son of ndoro kanjeng. this intimacy represents twofold domination, i.e., a relationship between a priyayi and a wong cilik and between a man and a woman. in this case, the dominance of the man over the woman is the more obvious. this intimacy first happened when pariyem cleaned her employer's son's room when all other family members were visiting the gembira loka zoo. den baguse, who was at home, seduced pariyem and engaged in sexual intercourse with her. in this incident, pariyem became a sexual object because she was the target of all the actions and behavior of the man, and she did not resist. her giving in indicates that pariyem's passivity is the nature of a woman in terms of sexuality. the following is an excerpt related to this incident. “o, allah, saya kaget setengah mati, mas sekujur tubuh saya digerayanginya pipir, bibi, penthil saya dingok pula paha saya diraba-raba diraba-raba paha saya alangkah begidik bulu kuduk saya alangkah mrinding urat saraf saya tapi saya pasrah saja, kok saya lega lila oh, god. i was shocked to death, mas my whole body was touched by him my cheeks, lips, nipples were also touched by him my thighs were groped he groped my thighs i had goosebumps on the nape of my neck my nerves were all trembling but i just gave in, really i sincerely surrendered (agustinus, 2015, p. 40—41) the quote above describes the power of a man who objectifies a woman in sexual intercourse. implicitly, this is indicated by the use of passive verbs, such as be touched, be kissed, and be groped. these passive verbs suggest that den baguse, a man, is an active party who treats and positions pariyem as a person who satisfies his sexual craving. this incident illustrates the difference between men and women regarding sexual intercourse, namely that women need men while men must find partners (connell, 1987). in addition, sexual intercourse also reflects the problem of power relations because, in such a relationship, women depend on men. furthermore, connell argues that pariyem's objectification reflects this distinction and, more specifically, inequality. from the quote above, it is also understood that pariyem's passivity is represented not only by the sexual acts imposed on her but also by her acceptance. it is apparent when pariyem describes herself as submissive and accepting when she was having sexual intercourse with den baguse. she even felt proud and enjoyed the sexual intercourse. pariyem narrates that since her first sexual intercourse with den journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ekasiswanto et.al. 326 baguse, they had had this many times (agustinus, 2015). tapi terselip rasa bangga pariyem saya maria magdalena pariyem lengkapnya “iyem” panggilan sehari-harinya dari wonosari gunung kidul sebagai babu ndoro kanjeng cokro sentono di ndalem suryamentaraman ngayogyakarta kini memerawani putra sulungnya but there's a sense of pride i, pariyem maria magdalena pariyem is my full name "iyem" is my nickname from wonosari gunung kidul as the maid of ndoro kanjeng cokro sentono in the palace of suryamentaraman ngayogyakarta have taken away his first son’s virginity (agustinus, 2015, p. 41—42) it appears that pariyem is proud and enjoyed her sexual intercourse with den baguse because as a maid belonging to the wong cilik class, she could have sex with ndoro kanjeng's son belonging to the priyayi class. this pride and enjoyment can be interpreted that pariyem has a complete control over den baguse. the pride and pleasure that pariyem feels is a form of symbolic domination because she accepts it by enjoying the various physical intimacies acted out on her (bourdieu, 2001). in another part, she also describes den baguse's physical characteristics, such as having thick hair on his chest, a mustache, and beard. moreover, based on his sexual experience, he admires den baguse for having good sexual qualities. he could last long enough and was "good at doing it". in other words, it is understood that this power is built and exercised by den baguse through his physical and sexual qualities. subsequently, the effect of this power is evident and firmly entrenched in pariyem as a person dominated in the form of perception and disposition schemes, namely pride, enjoyment, and admiration (bourdieu, 2001). in addition, there is another issue that cannot be ignored. this is when pariyem narrates that she "took den baguse's virginity." the choice of these words seems to state that she was the one who played an active role during her sexual intercourse with den baguse's and took his virginity. this aligns with connell's opinion (2005) that when a man initiates unlawful sexual intercourse with a woman, the man will not be blamed, thanks to the justification and legitimacy of the supremacy. meanwhile, it is women who are often blamed for such a sexual conduct. in many parts of the novel where pariyem introduces herself repeatedly, she always mentions that she is from wonosari gunung kidul, who works as a babu in ndoro kanjeng's family. however, the word memerawani (to take one’s virginity) makes the above quote different from other introductory quotes. this word implies not only pariyem's position in a sexual relationship with den baguse, but also her capacity and activeness to create major changes in her life because as a babu, she could have a sexual intercourse with a priyayi who is none other than the son of her employer. in fact, that relationship also made her pregnant and the child born to her was recognized as part of the family of ndoro kanjeng. by “taking the virginity of” den baguse, pariyem created a big shift because she became a person who was more than a mere insignificant babu from wonosari, gunung kidul, who only dealt with domestic affairs. more than this, although in the end he remained a babu, she became an important part of the ndoro kanjeng’s family constellation. in addition, even though den baguse did not married her as a form of a formal and legal recognition, pariyem is still ndoro kanjeng's daughter-in-law, so that spiritually there has been a shift from a babu to a daughter-in-law. although pariyem's sexual relationship with den baguse, which lasted for a while, made her pregnant eventually, she was not disappointed, did not expect, and did not ask den baguse to marry her. in her opinion, the baby in her womb was her pride because it was a priyayi's descendant. the fact that pariyem did not ask den baguse to marry her illustrates that she still respected him as one of her employers. this attitude shows that she, as a servant, did not violate politeness rules; she did not want to offend her employer (untoro, journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 327 2016). ndoro kanjeng's family discovered pariyem's pregnancy after ndoro putri learned it directly from her. finally, "a family trial" was held for pariyem and den baguse. “o, allah, inilah saatnya kami pengadilan keluarga berlangsung berdasarkan hukum keluarga hakim merangkap jaksa, ndoro kanjeng cokro sentono ndoro ayu dan ndoro putri, bertindak sebagai pembela sedang den baguse dan saya, sebagai orang tertuduh: oh god, this is the time for us family court is held based on the family rules the judge and prosecutor is ndoro kanjeng cokro sentono ndoro ayu and ndoro putri, act as the defense attornies while den baguse and i are the accused. (agustinus, 2015, p. 193) ndoro kanjeng has the power in the family court regarding the issue being litigated, namely pariyem's pregnancy that involved den baguse, his son. pariyem compares her employer to a judge who is in charge of trying and deciding a case and a prosecutor who is in charge of conveying accusations. he also has the highest authority among in the family. ndoro kanjeng demanded that den baguse be responsible because, after all, the baby in pariyem's womb was his child. however, in this case, this responsibility did not mean that pariyem has to be legally married to den baguse, and this goes in line with pariyem’s statement that becoming his legal wife was not what she expected. according to soemanto (1985), den baguse not marrying pariyem was due to her social class, and there was an exploitation of a wong cilik, who happens to be female, by the priyayi. in this situation, the dominant social class placed her as a woman who was powerless (the oppressed). doro kanjeng was committed that pariyem’s unborn baby would be ndoro kanjeng's and ndoro ayu's grandchild, ndoro putri's nephew, and den baguse's child. this commitment shows that in various positions, whether as the head of his family, a husband, father, or an employer, ndoro kanjeng has strong authority. moreover, although it is not explicitly written in the novel, it can be understood that he is the eldest in the family. in other words, his power is generated by the intersection of roles, positions, and ages so that he becomes the most dominant male figure in the family. with this power, he can control the minds of den baguse and pariyem, and even decide their issues. based on the quote above, the family trial affirms connell's thesis (1987) that a family cannot simply be defined as the foundation or smallest unit in society. moreover, a family is a complex entity. in fact, a family is a social institution with long, intensive, and solid power relations, which cannot be found in other social institutions. this complexity appears from the fact that, on the one hand ndoro kanjeng, as a man, acts as a father. on the other hand, he has to act as an employer in events like the family trial. in other words, ndoro kanjeng plays two roles at the same time. he decides the case between den baguse, his son, and pariyem, a maid in his house. at the same time, he adjudicates a problem between two people belonging to different social classes. the man belongs to the priyayi class, and the woman belongs to the wong cilik class. therefore, in the family, both the father's dominance over his child and the employer's dominance over his maid exist simultaneously. in the end, this dominance will trigger inequality. reflection of linus suryadi ag's masculinity in pariyem's confession in the encyclopedia of indonesian literature (2021), linus suryadi agustinus (also known as linus suryadi ag) was born in kadisobo, trimulyo, sleman, yogyakarta on march 3, 1951 from a family of farmers. augustinus is a baptismal name that indicates his identity as a catholic. his name has become more famous because pp became the research object in this study. according to umar kayam, pp is an expression of linus' poetic identity, which happens to have a javanese cultural background (soemanto, 1985). this is in accordance with ashadi siregar's opinion in linus suryadi ag yang saya kenal. based on linus' novel, he concludes that linus is a journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ekasiswanto et.al. 328 kejawen, a javanese person who prides himself on the traditions that have been passed down from his ancestors. this biographical information at least shows that linus' javanese cultural background is strongly expressed in pp, especially through pariyem as the central figure. pariyem's identity is nothing but linus' identity. early on in the novel, pariyem describes herself as a farmer's daughter who believes in javanese mysticism even though she is technically a catholic. pp is a work written by a male author. therefore, even though it appears to be voicing women, it is suspected that pp is actually expressing linus' ideology, i.e., masculinity, because it can be assumed that pariyem as a female character created by men is actually a man's attempt to express his ideology secretly. in other words, the creation of this female character has the potential to be influenced by masculinity because, after all, linus is a man whose actions are different from women. in pp, linus hides behind the language and uses it to express masculinity (seidler, 1989). language as a medium for literary works, such as novels, also mediates various events, especially those related to power relations and social classes, as presented in the previous discussion. these problems are processes and relationships constructed by the author to produce gender as a social phenomenon in society (connell, 1987). therefore, the power relations and social classes in pp appear to reflect the ideology of masculinity expressed by linus as a male author. this ideology is reflected by, for example, pariyem working as a maid. she explains that every morning at 06.30, she has done much work, from preparing breakfast to cleaning up ndoro kanjeng's house (agustinus, 2015). however, she never complains, but is proud, enjoys, and is grateful for her social role. the novel repeatedly emphasizes her attitude, as shown in the following quotes: m a d e g, m a n t e p, dan m a d h e p dan saya sudah 3m sebagai babu, kok kabegjan masing-masing kita punya … asih, asah, dan asuh dan saya sudah 3a sebagai babu, kok standing tall, confident, and with clear direction and i have all of them as a maid, really each of us has our own luck … love, care, and nurture and i am already all of them as a maid, (agustinus, 2015, p. 29) k a r s a, k e r j a, dan k a r y a dan saya sudah 3k sebagai babu, kok saya siap menyambut berkah-kerja sebagai ibadah harian hidup saya will, work, and effort and i am already all of them as a maid, really i am ready to welcome the blessings of work as the daily worship in my life (agustinus, 2015, p. 32) l i r i h, l a r a s, dan l u r u s dan saya sudah 3l sebagai babu, kok saya ngomong tak pernah berteriak lirih, tapi terang kesampaian sanggup menguak tabir lengang dan menyibak bising percakapan quiet, harmonious, and honest and i have all of them as a maid, really i never speak loudly quietly, but clear and concise able to uncover the silent veil and break the noise of conversation (agustinus, 2015, p. 34) the quotes above show pariyem's thoughts, which indirectly legitimize and affirm her role as a maid for the priyayi's family. she does not mind the work of a maid because she believes that 'luck' is destined for every human being regardless of their social class. moreover, she also considers that work is worship. this view has increasingly plunged her into the practice of domestication. as a maid, her role is to handle domestic work, namely household tasks, so that she remains in a private space, the domestic space. this domestication implicitly reflects masculinity because male and female spaces are separated. women are placed in private spaces, while men are in and dominate public spaces as journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 329 fields of power (bourdieu, 2001). linus' masculinity is made more evident through the narrative of the character ndoro kanjeng who has various social resources, one of which is shown by the following quote. “ndoro kanjeng wong wicaksono, lho, sering benar diminta kasih wejangan dalam upacara ngunduh pengantin upacara tetesan dan supitan dalam upacara layat kematian dan dalam upacara ruwatan dia sering diminta kasih ular-ular dalam penataran para guru dan dosen para sutradara dan bintang film dalam penataran para lurah dan sindhen para camat, bupati, dan pengrajin ndoro kanjeng is a wise person, he is often asked for advice in wedding reception ceremonies female circumcision and male circumcision ceremonies in funeral ceremonies and in ruwatan ceremonies he was often asked to give a speech in teacher and lecturer workshops movie directors and actors in headmen and javanese singers’ workshops sub-district heads, regents, and craftsmen (agustinus, 2015, p. 68) the quote above implies one of the most significant social resources of ndoro kanjeng, namely comprehensive knowledge or insight. as an intellectual who has held various positions in government and academia, he has become a respected male priyayi, so he is often asked to give sermons or lectures in public ceremonies or official activities. because of this respect, he is often invited to meet with various groups whose members can include the public, academics, culturalists, and bureaucrats. in these events, he is the dominant figure. these qualities show that men fulfill the two main gender dimensions: power and symbolism (connell, 2005). in the first dimension, men have power in various institutions and control the public sphere to ensure their position at the top of the social hierarchy. in the second dimension, men can control cultural institutions. it can be seen that the lectures and advice given ndoro kanjeng to various groups are more important than the domestic tasks such as those carried out by pariyem. in addition, as an intellectual figure, he shows that men also dominate the world of education. connell (2005) states that it is not enough to recognize the various forms of masculinity. however, it is necessary to recognize the relationship between various types of masculinity, namely alliance, domination, and subordination. according to him, the relationship is constructed through praxis, such as inclusion, exclusion, and exploitation. in this case, linus' masculinity is reflected in the relationship between ndoro kanjeng's domination over pariyem as a maid who is excluded from the public sphere and uneducated. this dominance is also shown symbolically through the knowledge of javanese civilization presented by ndoro kanjeng. this issue reflects hegemonic masculinity (connell, 2005). this concept is a configuration of gender practice that embodies an acceptable answer to the problem of patriarchal legitimacy, which guarantees the domination of men and the subordination of women. this concept is further reflected in the narration of ndoro kanjeng's intellectual ability to control pariyem's thoughts about the obligation of how the javanese should behave concerning civilization and culture. in addition, it is followed by pariyem's admiration and respect. she shows her obedience as a maid towards her employers and as a woman towards men. the attitude of pariyem justifies the dominant position of men. linus' masculinity is also reflected in pariyem's relationship with den baguse. however, before discussing sexual intercourses as the primary relationship between the two, it is necessary to look at the way pariyem, who is linus, describes the character of den baguse. any male character depicted by a male writer has the potential to express masculinity in pp. it should be pointed out that pp was published in the 1980s when the indonesian society experienced economic and technological progress, which went hand in hand with westernization and modernization (supriyadi, 2014). these factors influenced linus in narrating den journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ekasiswanto et.al. 330 baguse. in contrast to ndoro kanjeng as a representation of a genuine priyayi who is very oriented towards javanese culture, den baguse has modernized himself through several patterns of life and lifestyles. this shows that in a priyayi family, there is an opposition between traditionality represented by ndoro kanjeng and modernity represented by den baguse.. here are quotes that demonstrate this. lha, ini beda dengan kamar den bagus di dalamnya dipajang wayang wisanggeni dan antasena tapi ada poster gerombolan musik rolling stones well, this is different from den bagus’ room inside, there are puppets display wisanggeni and antasena but there is a rolling stones band poster (agustinus, 2015, p. 103) “ah ya, raden bagus ario atmojo begitu pula ndoro ayu bercerita pada para tamu yang sowan ke ndalemnya dia kuliah di fakultas filsafat universitas gadjah mada saban hari rajin ke bulaksumur ngangsu ngelmu pada para dosen di kamarnya, penuh buku-buku asing … dia suka musik jreng-jreng itu lho di kamarnya, kaset menumpuk kacau balau lha, kalau numpak sepeda motor yamaha ngebut banternya luar biasa … dia suka celana blue jeans belel berkaos t-shirt dan kaca-mata ah yes, raden bagus ario atmojo likewise, ndoro ayu told the story to the guests who visited his residence he studies at the faculty of philosophy universitas gadjah mada every day he goes to bulaksumur gaining knowledge from the lecturers in his room, there are lots of foreign books … he likes that modern music you know in his room, the cassette tapes are piled up in a mess well, when he rides a yamaha motorcycle he rides extremely fast … he likes tattered blue jeans with t-shirts and glasses (agustinus, 2015, p. 43—45) the two quotes above show that modernization has been internalized by den baguse, ranging from music, education, transportation to fashion. this modern style is in contrast with ndoro kanjeng's lifestyle. for example, ndoro kanjeng is loyal to javanese clothes in the name of civilization and culture. in contrast, his son wore modern clothes. linus not only differentiates between the father and son in the priyayi's family. this narrative also expresses masculinity because modern society—in this case, represented by den baguse—plays a role in contemporary constructions of masculinity because new powers that have not existed before implying new patterns in gender relations (connell, 2005). therefore, this narrative is intended to build an image of masculinity. the rolling stones, for example, is an english rock band consisting of four men. rock music can be understood as music with loud tones, sounds, and instruments. this poster marks the image of masculinity in den baguse because men use music as a medium to show certain gender normative expectations (de boise, 2020). there are many areas in which one can explore the places where and ways how masculinity is constructed (mellström, 2020; barrett, 2020; ottemo, 2020). one of these areas is the relationship between men and technological artifacts, namely motorcycles. in pp, linus has metonymized it with a yamaha motorcycle. den baguse uses it as transportation to go to universitas gadjah mada in bulaksumur area. pariyem says that her employer's son likes to ride his motorbike at high speed. this behavior reflects masculinity because, through the motorcycle, den baguse is constructed to meet the expectations of a male associated with masculinity, speed, acceleration, and risky behaviors. this portrayal confirms that men tend to be stronger, faster, stronger, and more aggressive than women. another reflection can also be seen in den baguse's fashion or clothes style. he wears jeans, t-shirts, and journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 331 glasses. this style is not merely a practice of his everyday lifestyle; it is also a meaningful cultural phenomenon because it becomes a means of forming a unique masculine identity (reilly and blanco f., 2020). den baguse is a hybrid masculine body because he is formed from a combination of gender (male), class (priyayi), and ideology (modernism) (moffatt in reilly and blanco f., 2020). he is described as a metrosexual man, namely a man who pays attention to and manages physical appearance with clothes. this metrosexuality portrays him as a manly and mature male figure. pariyem has her own opinion of den baguse, both physically and non-physically. physically, according to him, he is not only handsome but also commanding. meanwhile, non-physically, he is a man who is titis, tatas, and tetes, which means that he is competent or sharp, always able to complete any assigned task, and wise. not just an assessment, pariyem's impression is a configuration of admiration for a man who symbolically positions her as a subordinated woman. however, den baguse does not only rely on women's judgment. he is also actively involved in constructing masculinity because, for a man, gender is not only accepted through socialization or discourses but also actively produced with resources and strategies (connell, 2000). his attitude and behavior are reflected in the following excerpt: tiap pagi dia mengolah diri olah raga di longkangan “mens sana in corpore sano”—dia bilang— “di dalam tubuh sehat, jiwa pun sehat” every morning he exercises exercising on the patio “mens sana in corpore sano”—he said— "healthy body makes a healthy soul." (agustinus, 2015, p. 38) doing exercise is den baguse's attempt to construct his masculinity. as part of modern society, health is an important institution because it contains the ideology of gender, namely the image of masculinity and the interpretation of the male body. the male body is interpreted as more robust, healthier than, and superior to the female body through exercise. this narrative is essential to reflect masculinity because, for men, sport is the main area to introduce the dominant form of masculinity (connell, 2000). this claim agrees with matthews and channon (2020), who assert that den baguse's sport is an "ideological nature reserve" that provides symbolic capital to strengthen manhood to express masculinity. in addition, pariyem's appreciation and admiration towards den baguse are also shown in the sexual relationship between her and den baguse. oh, ampun, ya, ampun! anunya gedhe banget, lho saya marem meladeninya oh, my goodness! his penis is huge i closed my eyes when we made love (agustinus, 2015, p. 50) in the above quote, pariyem utters an interjection (oh, my goodness!) which shows her astonishment at something extraordinary. this interjection expresses admiration specifically aimed at den baguse's large and long phallus, which satisfied her during her sexual intercourse with him. as a representation of the male body, the phallus reminds and brings us to the concept of the body, which, according to connell (2009), is a natural machine to produce gender differences. the differences occur due to biological and/or social factors. connell also clarifies that the concept tends to be put forward by men to maintain the gender order. in this case, the phallus is a biological organ inherent in den baguse's body. the organ is also socially influential as it distinguishes it from pariyem and as a source of power. the size of den baguse's phallus that satisfies pariyem is his biological organ and a social identity that he uses to express and reveal himself as a masculine man. therefore, this sexual relationship, which is especially supported by the phallus, reflects linus' masculinity. a reflection of masculinity is also found in the power relationship between pariyem and ndoro kanjeng in the family trial, which took journal of language and literature issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) ekasiswanto et.al. 332 place after the whole family discovered her pregnancy. at the end of the trial, it was decided by ndoro kanjeng, who played the dual role as the "judge" and "prosecutor", that pariyem was part of his family. ndoro kanjeng ensured that the unborn baby in pariyem's womb would be recognized, so that the child would have a father, an aunt, a grandfather, and a grandmother. the employer also sent pariyem back to wonosari, gunung kidul for a year to prepare for the birth of the child and take care of it after it was born. ndoro kanjeng would provide all necessities for pariyem and her to-be-born child. this assurance can be seen clearly in the following quote: pekerjaanmu tak berubah, sebagai biasa hanya selama setahun tinggal di dusun di wonosari gunung kidul kowe bertugas merawat diri dan si thuyul sedang semua kebutuhan nanti tersedia your duties aren’t changed, as usual only a year living in your village in wonosari gunung kidul you are in charge of taking care of yourself and the baby all your needs will be provided. (agustinus, 2015, p. 201—202) the main problem indicated by the quote above is that even though pariyem is internally recognized as part of the priyayi family because of the baby in her womb, it does not mean that she has experienced vertical mobilization from the wong cilik class to the priyayi class. indeed, there are several privileges that pariyem receives, including material provisions for her and the baby's needs. this provision makes a slight difference in her position as a maid in general. however, she has remained a maid formally even though he had to stop working for a year to return to wonosari, gunung kidul. in other words, pariyem has been designated as a mistress or concubine for den baguse. this decision illustrates that the continuation of pariyem's fate depends on the decision of ndoro kanjeng. this dependence is despite the fact that pariyem was carrying his son's child. it seems that ndoro kanjeng is the ideal male figure because he has substantial resources and the highest authority among other figures; he is the patriarch. his authority is why pariyem says in a different part of the novel that her fate, whether or not she would continue to stay at her employer's house, is at the mercy of her employer (agustinus, 2015). it is increasingly clear that pariyem is still positioned as a babu and placed in the domestic space doing household tasks. this domestic space is culturally defined as the world of women. pariyem's unchanged status implies that linus constructs pariyem as a woman who is subordinate, obedient, and submissive to decisions as a form of male domination over her. therefore, instead of voicing women in pp, linus has created this pariyem character to construct masculinity, so that pariyem is nothing but a reflection of his masculinity. conclusion talking about pp means critiquing the central character, pariyem, who was created by linus, a male author with the ideology of masculinity. therefore, this research has attempted to reveal the masculinity concealed in pp by examining the processes that differentiate men from women, namely power relations and social classes. pariyem experiences this problem as a woman who lives within a segregated social structure in a dualistic and hierarchical manner. this dualism is represented by pariyem who belongs to the wong cilik class and works for a family belonging to the priyayi class. as a servant, her work relationship is mainly with with ndoro kanjeng and his son, den baguse. the disparity in various social resources brings about the power relations between a wong cilik and a priyayi, a babu with her employer, and a woman and a man are. these resources are only owned by the priyayi, causing them to have a basis for constructing thier power. these social resources allow the formation of oppositions between those who control and those who are ruled. in this case, the power that is exercised against pariyem is built up subtly, and she is not even aware of this as it manifests symbolically. however, this subtle power can be clearly understood since linus constructed pariyem's attitude and views, which maintains and strengthens her journal of language and literature vol. 22 no. 2 – october 2022 issn: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) 333 position, both as someone belonging to the wong cilik class having the role of a servant and a woman who is dominated. pariyem's attitudes and views, which influenced her actions, were constructed by linus to express masculinity. on the other hand, power relations and social class portrayed in pp are processes that reflect linus' masculinity. this masculinity is reflected in pariyem's various attitudes that strengthen her domestication and exclusion from the public sphere. she is impressed and admires the modern priyayi figure, den baguse, who is a male character narrative created by linus. she self-objectifies herself as a sexual object. finally, she submits to ndoro kanjeng's decision. therefore, it is revealed that linus, who seems to be an advocate of women, indeed constructs how pariyem as a woman behaves and acts. pariyem is nothing more than a fictional female character who more or less cannot be separated from the sexual identity of the author. consequently, pariyem character that a male author constructs cannot be separated from masculinity. in conclusion, instead of advocating for women, power relations and social class are processes and relationships that reflect masculinity. references agustinus, l. s. 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(2021). the religiosity of javanese society in modern indonesian literature. indonesian community empowerment journal, 1(1), 8–13. set cover luar phenomena vol 15 no. 2-bitmapcon vol. 15 no. 2 – october 2015 173 learning valuable things from words of poverty in v.s. naipaul’s miguel street suryo sudiro sudiro71@gmail.com universitas teknologi yogyakarta abstract in addition to consisting of an interesting story, a novel may consist of lessons to learn. v.s. naipaul’s miguel street reflected realities of people in trinidad. the cynical words in the novel tell how people live in poverty. it is not only a story of past events but also a valuable text to see and learn actual realities of education. there are two lessons that readers can learn from the words. first, what adult people do are lessons for the teenagers. when the adult show bad characters teach how to do bad conducts, the teenagers will easily see and do the same things. when the adults resort to violence in their families, the teenagers will resort to the same things outside homes. when the adults drink alcohol and consume drugs, the teenagers will try and do the same, or even, worse. they will run out of their homes and find other places to live. the matters will deteriorate when the teenagers do not have proper education. it is a threat of character education. second, there are always heroes in communities. parents are some of them. the heroes provide poor children and teenagers with proper education. they show that there is always a valuable thing to do in poor condition. it shows that poverty does not only supply threats of character education but also opportunities of it. the schools should conduct good education. the schools should educate mind and heart. keywords: learning, reading, reality, proper education, mind, heart introduction words are powerful to articulate what a speaker thinks and what a speaker wants to say. when producing words, a speaker expresses the experience that he has in his mind. the experience that he shares strengthens the meanings. the meanings can be valuable to others when they represent important interest of human beings. the words can be arranged in a story. a literary work is not only a book of beautiful words, but also a book of history and knowledge. a reader can feel amused when reading a literary work. also, he can find good things to know in the work. an author of a literary work tells a story of his imagination and expression, and in the same time he records what happens at the time he writes the story. a novel, as a literary work, is not only a book to get the beautiful words and amusement inside, but also a book that has a lesson to learn. from a novel, a reader can have what really happens in a specific time. then, the reader can use the story as a reference to compare to a real condition. as a result of it, a reader can make an analysis on something that he concerns. an interesting concern of many others to see in a work is how character education of older people is learned by the teenagers and children in the setting of place. when creating good, useful and valuable characters become and objective of education, educators spend a lot of time to talk about the principles, definition, and mailto:udiro71@gmail.com suryo sudiro 174 effectiveness. in addition, it is important to consider the strategy and the factors that support and burden the strategy. we should pay an intensive attention to the relation of poverty and schools. poverty is one of many threats and opportunities of education. it will make schools inconsistent with their primary purpose. the primary purpose of an education process at school is to make students know how to make a life, not how to make a living (postman, 1996). however a school must turn into a purpose to the economy of their community when poverty rises. poverty that is related to how people regard money and happiness is an urgent point to consider. it is difficult to talk about good character to people who seldom see good things in their lives. there must be certain and specific actions to resolve the problems, and there must be certain person who can become distinct character to change the condition. reading a text and writing an interpretation even though in literary studies, the debate on literature’s main function has been going on till today, it is pleasant and relieving to find what bressler (1994) wrote in his book when giving a comment on the two opposing sides of critics, tracing their arguments to plato, many contend that literature’s primary function is moral, its chief value being its usefulness for hidden or undisclosed purposes. but others, like aristotle, hold that a work of art can be analyzed and broken down into its various parts, with each part contributing to the overall enjoyment of the work itself. for critics, the value of a text is found within it or inseparably linked to the work itself. (1994: 12) when reading a literary work, a reader does his or her activity on two questions. the questions refer to if literature is merely a fun reading, or if it is also a reading activity to study and learn from the work. i myself choose the latter although i also feel necessary to examine the intrinsic elements of a work. i must recall what newton (1988) concluded to say in his book that in any case anyone who retains an interest in literature has no option but to vote. it shows that a reader is given an authority to do something with the text in literature. this study is an effort to observe how an author tries to show the condition of his society. i choose to think the same as what wolfgang iser thought. he said, at the same time it must be pointed out that a text can only come to life when it is read, and if it is to be examined, it must therefore be studied through the eyes of the reader… (iser in newton, 1988: 227) i can find that a reader has a big role to create another valuable work derived from a work or a text. a reader’s creation may also become one of the possible realizations of a text (iser in newton: 1988). i choose to do like what iser suggested to do. i read a novel, miguel street written by v.s. naipaul and firstly published in 1959. then, i highlight what i find from the novel. after presenting my findings, i am going to write my interpretation as a realization of a text. in addition to reading the text as a reader, i am also willing to be a good teacher with things to discuss with my students. teaching students in classrooms means using valuable things to present precious things to the students to know and do. it needs teachers’ creativity and development. the creativity includes how to get valuable references. the references also show how teachers develop their teaching materials. one of many good references is a literary work. for teachers, a literary work can become a good book to learn the intrinsic nature of the work. it can also become a book of life issues to discuss in the classrooms. the teachers can focus on the literary elements of the work, or on the issues brought by the vol. 15 no. 2 – october 2015 175 author in the work. even many teachers use a literary work to do both. when focusing on the intrinsic nature of a literary work, teachers have their students see the setting, characters, tone, and style etc. the students will present their reading and show how they understand the work by detailing the literary elements. it is good activity of reading. the students can understand the meaning of the words in a literary work and show how the words support the work. in the other side, a literary work can provide the teachers and students with life issues. when using the work this way, the class can become a reading class and a writing class. firstly, the teachers give a set time to the students to read and understand the work. then, the students write how they understand the work. they can use a specific critical theory to analyze the work. therefore in this article, i show that in a novel, miguel street written by v. s. naipaul, there are many people who live in poverty deal with other people in their neighborhood. the vocal points are the words, poverty, and education. their words and their daily interaction tell how they live in poverty. education is another interesting part of life to observe in the novel. after reading the novel, i try to find some data regarding the same or similar matters in real society, especially in indonesia. then, i will show how character education is something to see more because of its urgency in our society. miguel street: the words and poverty miguel street is a novel that tells us about a different place in the world. it is different from the place where people speaking english such as the united states of america, england, australia and some other countries where english is spoken in education standard ways. miguel street is in port of spain, trinidad. the author, v.s. naipaul attempted to tell us other world and in the same time, he mentioned some enjoyment which was standardized by the first world, prosperous countries. in the novel he used words coca-cola, pepsi-cola and cambridge school to represent the higher level standards of life. the story shows limited economic opportunities and aborted ambition. although he wrote all condition with humor rather than sadness, readers still feel the sadden situations. the characters lauged at the others and naipaul attempted to make readers think that they were stupid. it is shown in the dialogue. what you making, mr. popo? i asked. popo would always say.”ha boy! that’s the question. i making the thing without a name (p. 17). the english which is used in the dialogue strengthens the notion of restricted sociocultural condition. in their dialogues, the characters use a distinct nonnative english variety that is different from the standard english of higher class people. the author wanted to show us that the characters are uneducated and poor. because of the poor condition, they have just a small and easy hope. we can read it in the novel. after midnight there were two regular noises in the street. at about two o’clock you heard the sweepers; and then just before dawn, the scavenging-carts came and you heard the men scraping off the rubbish the sweepers had gathered into heaps. no boy in the street particularly wished to be a sweeper. but if you asked any boy what he would like to be, he would say, i going be a cart-driver. ……………..………. there was certainly a glamour to driving the blue carts. the men were aristocrats. they worked early in the morning and had the rest of the day free. and then they were always going on strike. they didn’t strike for much. they struck for things like a cent more a day; they struck if someone was laid off. they struck when the war began; they struck when the war ended. they struck when india got independence. they struck when gandhi died. (p. 36) suryo sudiro 176 the states in the story are mixed and they regard the states as their world. almost all words in the story tell us that they live in cynical, funny and pessimistic atmosphere. miguel street is an example of trinidad society. it tells about indian and black residents drawn from trinidad’s urban lower class that usually faces unpleasant condition as what naipaul wrote some words of elias, a character in miguel street. elias began saying, “but what the hell you expect in trinidad? you got to bribe everybody if you want to get your toenail cut”. (p. 44) even in more cynical w