Javanese Politeness - Essay Example

Running Head: JAVANESE POLITENESS Javanese Politeness [Name of the Writer] [Name of the Institution] Javanese Politeness Indonesia has an official language of Bahasa Indonesia but the government supports local languages, one such is Javanese. The main language Bahasa Indonesia is a form of Malay, but other widely spoken languages include English, Javanese and Dutch. There are also over three hundred local dialects spoken throughout the country and Indonesia has the most registered languages in the world. With just one language as an official language of the state or country, it would reflect a distinct identification of cultures and customs of the people. (Errengton, 1998) Indonesia currently is still in crisis where there are a few states who are demanding independence from the Indonesian government. This happened because there is no unity within the country, as the government did not emphasize the importance of the use of the official language Bahasa Indonesia. (Brouwer, 2006) This also results the huge diversification of cultures and customs.   By having an official language, government can convey their message where every citizen in the country would understand. If there are more than one official language, citizens of that particular state would not understand each other, and thus resulting not only chaos but disunity too. Governments have difficulty ruling over people that they cannot communicate with. Indonesian Javanese language use depends on a social circumstance, includes three types of different accents, or registers. Each of these styles has their own grammar, vocabulary and even prosody. (Heryanto, 1995) This is not exceptional to Javanese; neighboring Austronesian languages as well as East Asian languages such as Japanese, Korean and Thai contribute to similar constructions. In Javanese language these styles are as follows: Ngoko It is a casual speech, mostly communicated among relatives and friends. This language is used by people of upper class with lower status people, for example managers to subordinates and old people to younger citizens. Madya It is an intermediary sort in between karma and Ngoko. An instance of the circumstance where one would use madya is an interface involving strangers on the road, where individual wants to be nor too proper neither too casual. Krama It is the formal and polite style, which is used among people of the equivalent position who would not fancy being informal. Krama is also the executive style for community dialogue, publications, etc. this language is also used by people of lower grade to people of higher category, for instance youth to elder population or subordinates to managers etc. Along with above mentioned styles, Javanese also include "meta-style" vocabulary - the humilifics and honorofics. (Hill, 2000) If a person speaks about themselves, they have to be polite. In instances where someone talks about some other person with a superior status or to the person who wants to be deferential, honorific vocabulary is used. Status is usually determined according to individual’s age, caliber in the community and various other aspects. Honorific terms are also known as krama inggil terms. Such as youngsters frequently make use of the ngoko style, however if they communicate with their parents they are encouraged to use krama andhap and krama inggil both where as the humilific terms are known as krama andhap terms. (Berman, 1998) If you want to destroy a people's self -esteem, all you need to do is to devastate their language; make it unattainable for them to talk amongst themselves in a language impenetrable to their new captors their masters. The Japanese understood the importance of language as cultural identity when they took over parts of China and Korea. In these areas, they forbade the use of the local languages and all education took place in Japanese. Language education will always be a political issue because it is an important personal and communicative issue. Governments have difficulty ruling over people that they cannot communicate with, so they often try to select and enforce the use of one or several national languages. Canada exercises bilingualism, where its official languages are English and French. Look at USA where its official language is English; although there have been pushes towards bilingualism, it has not been successful.  Another example of a country which only has an official language is China. China’s economy has grown tremendously and China has become one of the superpowers of the world. This is probably is due to the allocation of resources in support of its growth. With just one official language in China, China is able to allocate necessary resources to other purposes, such as the military and battling the poverty. This is another example, why bilingualism or multilingualism should be discouraged to avoid wasting resources in interpreting essential documents into other languages. And, a research in USA was done which states that students learn a second language best when they can build academically upon their first language. There are advantages and the disadvantages of exercising a single language or exercising bilingualism/multilingualism but I feel that there are more advantages to having just one official language than 2 or more official languages. Unity is the basis requirements for a country to run effectively. Strategic politeness has to be distinguished from politeness as social indexing (e.g. Ervin-Tripp et al. (2004), this issue) or discernment' (Hill et al. (2005), Ide (2005). Discernment, unlike volitional' politeness, operates independently of the current goal a speaker intends to achieve. Rather, it represents the linguistic expression of 'social warrants', defined by Kochman as "the entitlements to which individuals lay claim in [any kind of, GK] social interaction" (2003:202). Social warrants, or 'deference entitlements' (Shils (1999)) are constituted by two kinds of attributes: 'macro-social properties' (Shils (2003), comprising both ascribed characteristics (age, sex, family positions) and achieved social properties (rank, title, social position); and individuals' 'situated performance' (Kochman (2003:202)). Studies addressing the linguistic encoding of discernment have typically focused on macro-social properties, as in Brown and Gilman's classical examination of 'pronouns of power and solidarity' (2005), and more recently in studies analyzing, for instance, address terms in Hungarian (Guskova (2004) and in Iranian Persian (Keshavarz (2000), personal reference in American English (Murphy (2000), descriptions of honorifics in Japanese (e.g. Ide (1982), Wenger (2003), Hori (2004), lde et al. (2001), Loveday (2005), Ogino (2005), Neustupn (2003), Coulmas (1999), Matsumoto (2003), Ide (2003), Nahuatl (Hill and Hill (1999), Hindi (Mehrotra (2004), Javanese (Smith-Hefner (2004), and Kituba (Mufwene (2005). While to date no language has been shown to entirely fall short of forms for social indexing, nor to lack contexts where social marking is mandatory, the extent to which social indexing is obligatory varies greatly across languages: in Japanese, as Matsumoto (2001) demonstrates, there is no such thing as socially unmarked sentences, whereas in all Indo European languages, there evidently is. As the choice of linguistic forms in Japanese carries social information, Matsumoto further argues that unexpected social markings give rise to 'interactional implicatures', much in the same way that violations of the Gricean maxims instantiate conversational implicature. This line of reasoning can be extended to social indexing in general: whenever social indices are used, they have to conform to socio culturally prescribed or permitted choices; nonconformity occasions addressee or audience to implicate covered information (about the speaker and the attitudes s/he allegedly endorses). Descriptive accounts of politeness strategies available for the performance of a given type of linguistic action are a prerequisite for cross linguistic comparison (e.g. Fraser and Nolen (2006), Hill et al. (2005), Ide (2001), Blum- Kulka et al. (2001a,b) for a literature review) examining what is (pragmalinguistically) possible, what is actually done by 'politic' speakers (i.e. by speakers observing socio culturally determined conventions of linguistic action, Watts (2001), and what the sociopragmatic significance is of any chosen politeness strategy. Furthermore, in order to explain cross-cultural differences in the selection and use of politeness strategies, their intraculturally determined values have to be considered. A few examples will have to suffice to illustrate this point. The literature on compliments in different varieties of English (e.g. Manes (2003); Wolfson (2003), American English; Holmes (2005, 2000), New Zealand English; Herbert (2001), Herbert and Straight (2001), South African English and American English; Lee (in press), Hawaii Creole English) predominantly documents maximizing strategies, increasing the force of the compliment and thereby enhancing the receiver's positive face wants (I love your shirt, your presentation was really great, etc.). Differences across these varieties pertain to the degree of invested maximization. Thus Lee (in press) finds that the structure I love you~, which is highly frequent in American English, is rarely used by speakers of English in Java (4.55% of all complimenting verbs); the verb filling the same slot is like (95.45%). Similarly, Holmes (2002) reports that like is used twice as much as love in New Zealand compliments. Unfortunately Holmes does not comment on this finding. Convincingly, Lee (in press) attributes the preference for the less affectively charged verb in HCE to the influence of Asian - specifically Japanese - cultural ethos on interactional norms in the multi-ethnic speech community of HCE speakers, requiring some affective restraint on the expression of appreciative emotion where mainstream American culture opts for emphatic enthusiasm. Still, the maximization strategies operating in HCE compliment giving support the association of hearer-beneficial acts with maximization. The converging evidence from the studies makes a strong case for the complex interplay of politeness, social relationships and communicative action. Projecting their findings on the research agenda on politeness suggests the need for investigating the forms and meanings of politeness, its unmarked absence and marked opposite in form of rudeness in a considerably expanded variety of discoursal, social, cultural and not least historical contexts. Such studies will permit the construction of empirically informed models of politeness. For the time being, politeness models appear to be most useful if they do not aspire to be generalizable to every attested contextual configuration but are confined in range to contexts with some well-defined communalities, such as speech communities. Models of this kind represent the intermediate stations that have to be reached on the way to the much more ambitious final goal: establishing a unifying theory of politeness that meets the requirements of descriptive and explanatory adequacy. References Berman, Laine 1998. Speaking through the silence : narratives, social conventions, and power in Java. New York : Oxford University Press. Blum-Kulka Shoshana, (2004). You don't touch lettuce with your fingers: Parental politeness in family discourse. Journal of Pragmatics : 259- 288 (this issue). Brouwer, (2006). The influence of the addressee's sex on politeness in language use. Linguistics 261-262, 697- 711. Brown, Penelope and Stephen D. Levinson, (2002). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, Penelope and Stephen D. Levinson, (2002). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Errington, J. Joseph. 1998. Shifting languages : interaction and identity in Javanese Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ervin-Tripp, Susan, Jiansheng Guo and Martin Lampert. (2004). Politeness and persuasion in children's control acts. Journal of Pragmatics 307-331 (this issue). Faerch, Claus and Gabriele Kasper, (2001). 'Internal and external modification in interlanguage request realization'. In: S. Blum-Kulka, J. House and G. Kasper, eds., 2001a, pp. 221-247. Guskova, Antonina, (2004). Syntax der H6flichkeitsformen im Ungarischen aufgrund der Bedeu- tungsentwicklung der Personalpronomen. Acta Linguistica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 1-43. Heryanto, Ariel. 1995. Language of development and development of language : the case of Indonesia. Canberra : Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Dept. of Linguistics. Hill, Beverly, Sachiko Ide, Shoko Ikuta, Akiko Kawasaki and Tsunao Ogino, (2005). Universals of linguistic politeness. Quantitative evidence from Japanese and American English. Journal of Pragmatics 347- 371. Hill, Jane H. and Kenneth C. Hill, (2004). Honorific usage in modern Nahuatl: The expression of social distance and respect in the Nahuatl of the Malinche Volcano area. Language 123 155. Hori, Motoko, (2005). A sociolinguistic analysis of the Japanese honorifics. Journal of Pragmatics 373- 386. Ide, Sachiko, (2006). Japanese sociolinguistics: Politeness and women's language. Lingua 357- 385. Keshavarz, Mohammad Hossein, (2000). Forms of address in post-revolutionary Iranian Persian: A sociolinguistic analysis. Language and Society 565-575. Kochman, Thomas, (2003). "The politics of politeness: Social warrants in mainstream American public etiquette'. In: Deborah Schiffrin, ed., Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics. pp. 200-209. Loveday, Leo, (2005). Japanese sociolinguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Manes, Joan, (2003). 'Complimenting: A mirror of cultural values'. In: N. Wolfson and E. Judd, eds., pp. 96-102. Matsumoto, Yoshiko, (2001). Politeness and conversational universals - observations from Japanese. Multilingua :207 221. Murphy, Gregory L., (2000). Personal reference in English. Language and Society 317-349.\ Sen, Krishna and David Hill. 2000. Media, culture and politics in Indonesia. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Wenger, James, (2003). 'Variation and change in Japanese honorific forms'. In: Shegiru Miyagawa and Chisato Kitagawa, eds., Studies in Japanese language use. Carbondale, IL: Linguistic Research. Read More

     Along with the above-mentioned styles, Javanese also include "meta-style" vocabulary - the humidifies and honorifics.  (Hill, 2000) If a person speaks about themselves, they have to be polite. In instances where someone talks about some other person with a superior status or to the person who wants to be deferential, honorific vocabulary is used. Status is usually determined according to an individual’s age, the caliber in the community, and various other aspects. Honorific terms are also known as krama inggil terms. Such as youngsters frequently make use of the ngoko style, however, if they communicate with their parents they are encouraged to use krama andhap and krama inggil both whereas the humilific terms are known as krama andhap terms. (Berman, 1998)

            If you want to destroy a people's self-esteem, all you need to do is to devastate their language; make it unattainable for them to talk amongst themselves in a language impenetrable to their new captors their masters. The Japanese understood the importance of language as a cultural identity when they took over parts of China and Korea. In these areas, they forbade the use of the local languages and all education took place in Japanese. Language education will always be a political issue because it is an important personal and communicative issue. Governments have difficulty ruling over people that they cannot communicate with, so they often try to select and enforce the use of one or several national languages.

            Canada exercises bilingualism, where its official languages are English and French. Look at the USA where its official language is English; although there have been pushes towards bilingualism, it has not been successful.  Another example of a country that only has an official language in China. China’s economy has grown tremendously and China has become one of the superpowers of the world. This is probably is due to the allocation of resources in support of its growth. With just one official language in China, China can allocate necessary resources to other purposes, such as the military and battling poverty. This is another example, why bilingualism or multilingualism should be discouraged to avoid wasting resources in interpreting essential documents into other languages. And, research in the USA was done which states that students learn a second language best when they can build academically upon their first language.

      While to date no language has been shown to entirely fall short of forms for social indexing, nor to lack contexts where social marking is mandatory, the extent to which social indexing is obligatory varies greatly across languages:  in Japanese, as Matsumoto (2001) demonstrates, there is no such thing as socially unmarked sentences, whereas, in all Indo European languages, there evidently is. As the choice of linguistic forms in Japanese carries social information, Matsumoto further argues that unexpected social markings give rise to 'interactional implicatures', much in the same way that violations of the Gricean maxims instantiate conversational implicature. This line of reasoning can be extended to social indexing in general: whenever social indices are used, they have to conform to socio-culturally prescribed or permitted choices; nonconformity occasions addressee or audience to implicate covered information (about the speaker and the attitudes s/he allegedly endorses).

            Descriptive accounts of politeness strategies available for the performance of a given type of linguistic action are a prerequisite for cross-linguistic comparison (e.g. Fraser and Nolen (2006), Hill et al. (2005), Ide (2001), Blum-  Kulka et al. (2001a,b) for a literature review) examining what is (pragmalinguistically) possible, what is actually done by 'politic' speakers (i.e. by speakers observing socio-culturally determined conventions of linguistic action,  Watts (2001), and what the sociopragmatic significance is of any chosen politeness strategy. 

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