Being East and Being West...(Khristianto & Widya Nirmalawati)

COTEFL-International Conference on Teaching English as Foreign Language

BEING WEST AND BEING EAST: THE EFFECTS ON JAVANESE SOCIAL COMMUNICATION IN ENGLISH

Khristianto & Widya Nirmawalati

Muhammadiyah University of Purwokerto

Mobile: 085227737495, E-mail: rezalx@yahoo.com

Abstract

The reality has proved that the different culture brings a typical social behavior, including the different strategy in a daily communication. An aspect of reality may be considered important to be verbalized in a certain culture, but it is just meaningless and ignorable for another. It seems that the cultural system as the context of language use inevitably affects much the forms and the functional aspects. The egalitarian atmosphere and the non-existence of extended family or in another way the individualism and/or the not very significant meaning of family in the individual life in the western are the values which are contrast to the eastern.

This, then, raises the differences way the community have in seeing others, the elders and/or the members of the family. The eastern call the persons by the kinship terms. The terms are brought wider to include other person beyond the family as the symbol to respect them. The parents will hush, as their son calls name for a friend deserves to older brother by the age.

For the Eastern, being old means being to be respected, for the younger generation. This, then, results in the respecting address, even for the unknown person, as he or she looks older than him/herself, an individual should be addressed with the respecting address, drawn from the kinship terms to accord the age and the appropriate rank in the familial link. While the western will address others by the names, mostly, if the persons are close, they will directly call their first names. In other situation, they will use “Mr., Mrs., Ms, DR,” followed by their family name.

This paper will explore some effects induced by the cultural gap and suggests some points to consider by the teachers dealing with the communication ethics in speaking class.

Introduction

The reality has proved that the different culture brings a typical social behavior, including the different strategy in a daily communication. An aspect of reality may be considered important to be verbalized in a certain culture, but it is just meaningless and ignorable for another. A culture may see gratitude as something normally manifested in verbal expression, that it has many expressions to represent the sense of “gratitude” like “thanks” in English or “terima kasih” in Bahasa Indonesia. Another culture may manifest the same feeling in another way than the verbal media. This is also the case other kinds of feeling of which a certain culture has its own way to realize in its own cultural context and situational context.

In Indian culture for example, as in most eastern cultures, the familial linkage, the occupation, and the age are the significant factors determining the way they communicate. This fact, then, reveals in a form of honorific addresses to refer someone with one of those properties: familial link, being older, or having an honorable profession. A person in India will address someone they respect by transforming into plural. An Indonesian takes another to do that; he or she will apply kinship terms, like “bapak”, “ibu” , “mbak”, “mas”, “kang,” and etc, according to the age of the respected persons. If he/she is in an age older than a speaker, and deserves to be older brother or sister, the terms “mbak/mas” (meaning “sister” or “brother”) will be chosen.

A research has been done by Supardo (2006) to discover the addresses applied by an aristocratic Javanese family. The interlocutors as the data are father, mother, children, and servant. It is found out that each interlocutor has his/her specific addresses as talking to another member of the family; the address applied by each individual is determined by his/her relation to the addressee. The lord of the house, for example, is addressed with “mas” by his wife, “rama” by his children, and “ndoro” by the servant.

Another investigation is done by Pujiyatno (2008) who tried to cover the kinship terms among the common people in a Javanese community. It is found out that the community uses the familial addressee not just limited to their extended family. They don’t only function to show the blood relationship, but also to respect the others. Then, the terms are used to address anyone who is respected. For example, the term om “uncle” which originally means to refer someone who is sibling to father/mother can be used to say om satpam or om (the toy peddlers). It is impossible for Javanese to call by name to someone older.

Greetings: An Interpersonal Function

Functional in Halliday’s view is simply the language in use. He declared that the existence of language is always in the context of practices made by its corresponding speakers. It is those practices that evolutively develop a language system (1985: xv). In other words, Saussure believed that paroles (the empirical practices of language use in any kinds) which are produced by human community in each social interaction is the only empirical entities and experiences of the langue, the rules of language that is actually preserved in human mind (Ahisma-Putra: 2005).

Language is not other than a means to serve human’s needs—functional, pragmatically practices. Greetings and addressing are a part of the interpersonal aspects of language function. It means the terms or forms of expression in those social domain emerge as the manifestation of relation among the individuals as the social creature. Alip (2006:79), quoting Widdowson (1997) and Aitchison (2003), stated that among interpersonal function is the use of language for social relation, taking place in phatic communion within which language is used to promote good relationship between the speech participants.

Discussion

Western and Eastern Culture

It seems that the cultural system as the context of language use is inadequately affects much the forms and the functional aspects. The egalitarian atmosphere and the non-existence of extended family or in another way the individualism and/or the not very significant meaning of family in the individual life in the western are the values which are contrast to the eastern.

This, then, raises the differences way the community have in seeing others, the elders and/or the members of the family. The eastern call the persons by the kinship terms. The terms are brought wider to include other person beyond the family as the symbol to respect them. The parents will hush, as their son calls the name for a friend deserve to older brother by the age.

For the eastern, being old means to be respected, for the younger generation. This, then, results in the respecting address, even for the unknown person, as he or she looks older then ego, an individual should be addressed with the respecting address, drawn from the kinship terms to accord the age and the appropriate rank in the familial link.

The western will address others by names, ignoring the age of the addressee. If the persons are close, they will directly call their first names. In other situation, they will use “Mr., Mrs., Ms, DR,” followed by their family name. The addresses in the Indonesia include the kinship terms like Bapak, Ibu, Saudara, Tuan, Nyonya, Mas, Abang, Om, Tante, that may be followed by the name. This terms are not only for the person having a familial relation, but also others who the speaker intends to respect, even for a person that is just encountered in public space in a bus or in the bench of football stadium. Kinship terms are a bridge to address someone as the speaker has not known his/her name, replacing just “hi” or “hello” in English context.

Adressing Terms
Indonesian	English
Bapak, Ibu, Saudara, Tuan, Nyonya, Mas, Abang, Om, Tante, names, adik, paman, pak-De	Mr, Sir, Mr., Mrs, DR, Madam, girls, guy, budy, you, names.

Eastern Ethics: Polite Esteem

The application of the kinship terms in eastern culture, Indonesia and other local languages is a sort of internalized value and it is the standard way in addressing someone older. An individual will call by name as the addressee is at the same social level, or at the same age. In a situation in which the addressee is a foreigner, Javanese or Indonesian will find an appropriate terms like, om, mas, pak, and etc. Again the terms are taken from the familial setting. If one violates this rule, others will view the behavior to be unethical.

English has no equivalents for the term. The languages just has terms with no meaning of familial link: ”Mr, Mrs, Miss” which in bahasa Indonesia may be the same as ”Tuan,” ”Nyonya” and ”Nona” used in a very specific situation, and hard to find in a daily communication. This is evidence that there is a significant cultural gap between the east and the west, especially on the addressing.

Compromising Eastern Culture in Western Code

The addressing terms which are realized in the daily social interaction of the eastern culture are inevitably lost as the interlocutors speak English. This is due to inexistence of the parallel terms in English marking a respect to the second person we talk to. The problem is how to make the politeness in our communication is verbally delivered? Or is there a way to make an English communication take place by keeping the Javanese ethics in place?

Teachers may put this point into their consideration. The real example of how the kinship terms are applied in social communication is in the movie imported from Hong Kong or India. It may reflect the real situation as they have English as second language. They apply the terms ”brother,” ”sister”, ”uncle” or ”aunt” as the replacement of the kinship terms which do not only function to show the real relationship of the family, but more about the way to show respect or politeness. In a gangster movie, the member of the gang may call their senior, with “Brother Hung” or “first brother”, “second brother”, “uncle Chow”, and etc.

The translated terms into English are actually not so sufficient to represent whole terms used in an extended family of eastern culture. Is it acceptable to our eastern thought if we just left the politeness code? This is very important if we have an ideal to put English as our communication media, to bridge the social communication in the context of Javanese culture. Or is it possible to attach the terms in our English utterance to naturalize the situation, and to escape from the ethical doubt to call the name for the person we actually want to respect.

Mbak, do you have the book?

Mas, could you tell me where it is?

Mas Yus, I really need your help.

In our context, we will say like this:

Apa Ibu mau ini?

This addressee is directed to the second person who is actually there with the speaker. The normality of grammar says that the second person is kamu/you. However, the ethics says another. It is impolite to address to someone we should respect by “kamu”. We should change the kamu into the kinship terms, according to the appropriateness to his/her age. In this case, a mother will be upset, and suggest the child not to call her “kamu”.

*Mah, roti ini separonya buat kamu ya…*

Or in another situation, a girl will address her senior like below.

Mbak Wid, mau nitip?

which will not be normally transferred into English into?

“Mbak Wid, do you want me to buy some?

The expression of politeness in Javanese culture is really hard to realize as we communicate in English. This case is similar with the addressing somebody in higher position. It is hard to write “mu” (your) in an SMS to mean “panjenengan” or “bapak/ibu” in Javanese or Indonesia.

“Sir, I lost my book, Could I borrow yours.”

The egalitarian tone is obviously seen in this text. While in Javanese, we actually want to pack this expression in a very polite tone. Seeing the case above, English will only show its respect tone via a vocative tool, like the examples below.

Mom, do you want it?

When a person will address to someone he/she respect, he must accompany the second person: you” by the vocative tool of politeness. This will also include when it comes to possessive “you”. For the case of the specific term like mbak, it seems that we can keep it to include in our communication in eastern context. This part may be a style of Indonesian English.

To replace “you” in Javanese social communication with English code, it is possible to make our utterance is mix of English lexical code and Javanese social ethics, by putting the kinship terms in the utterance. This way will keep our politeness verbal expression and enable us to communicate in English way. Perhaps, this will create some odd in our expression, but this is a kind of middle way to bridge the egalitarian nature of English, and our typical ethics as Javanese interlocutors. Thus, we may consider these expressions.

1) Could Ibu come to the office? (“Could you come to the office”)

2) Are they Bu Nur’s sisters? (Are they your sisters)

3) Prof, we are waiting for Bapak’s presentation material. (Prof, we are waiting for your presentation material)

4) Mbak, do Embak have the book? (Mbak, do you have the book)

5) Mas, could Mas Arif tell me where it is? (Mas, could you tell me where it is)

6) Mas Yus, I really need Mas Yus’s help. (Mas Yus, I really need your help)

There is always a sacrifice in any form of compromised way. Just like Purwo (2009) said that there is a sacrifice of our cultural value as we communicate in English. And one of them is the politeness value which is just lost as we talk in English. In fact, we still want to verbalize the politeness but English is not so sufficient in terms of politeness verbalization.

Final Remarks

The paper is only an initial step to consider some cultural gap which influences our communication. The middle way above is only a hypothesis that we may take, and there are more possibilities to propose in the future with more consideration. At least, this brief view have touched our subtle part of English communication which so far has been left in our ignorance, seeing the fact that there are more considerable matters that should addressed in the context of English learning in our country. However, an attention should be paid for the matter, as well, at least by the individuals who share the concern.

References

Ahimsa-Putra, Heddy Shri. 2005. Strukturalisme Levi-Strauss. Yogyakarta: Keppel Press.

Alip, Fr. B. 2006. Language and Peace. Journal Phenomena: Journal of Language and Literature Vol.10. No.2-October 2006. Yogyakrta: Dept. of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University.

Halliday, M.A.K. 1985. Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.

Purwo, Bambang Kaswanti. 2009. The Development of Language Study. Informal Lecture for 1^st COTEFL May 1-2, 2009.

Pujiyatno, Ambar. 2009. Istilah-Istilah Kekerabatan Masyarakat Kabupaten Kebumen: Sebuah Kajian Etnolinguistik. Jurnal Leksika: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra dan Pengajarannya Vol.3.No.1. Pebruari 2009. Purwokerto: Fakultas Sastra, UMP.

Supardo, Susilo. 2006. Addressing Terms in Javanese Aristocrat Family. Jurnal Leksika: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra dan Pengajarannya Vol.1.No.2. Agustus 2006. Purwokerto: Fakultas Sastra, UMP.