Gaya bahasa (Style), Konteks dan Register Pertemuan 10 Matakuliah : G0362/Sociolingustics Tahun : 2007 Gaya bahasa (Style), Konteks dan Register Pertemuan 10

Learning Outcomes Pada akhir pertemuan ini, diharapkan mahasiswa akan mampu : Mahasiswa dapat memberikan contoh tentang akomodasi dalam penggunaan bahasa mereka sehari-hari Bina Nusantara

Outline Materi Audiens sebagai faktor yg mempengaruhi gaya bahasa Akomodasi: Konvergensi dan Divergensi Konteks dan kelas sosial Register Bina Nusantara

What is Style? These three sentences show differences in style of speech From a friend: “Where were you last night? I rang to see if you wanted to come to the pictures?” In a court: “Could you tell the court where were you on the night of Friday the seventeenth of March?” From a teacher to students: “I know some of you went ‘trick-or-treating’ last night. Did you go out last night Jimmy?” Bina Nusantara

Definition of Style According to Holmes: Style is language variation which reflects changes in situational factors such as addressee, settings, task or topic. Bina Nusantara

Factors that influence style Addressee Age Social background Bina Nusantara

Addressee Who you talk to influences your choice of language: A friend  casual style, informal; An older person  more formal, polite Younger  informal, casual A stranger  polite, more standard form Bina Nusantara

Age of Addressee People usually talk differently to children than to adults Adults ‘baby-talk’ to children Native-speakers simplify their language to non-native speakers Bina Nusantara

Social Background People adjust their style of speech according to the background of the interlocutor. How two doctors talk to each other about a patient’s condition? How would they explain the same thing to the patient or the patient’s family? How would you talk to the President? How would you talk to your maid? Bina Nusantara

Accommodation Theory Speech accommodation happens when a speaker changes their style of speech to make others understand, such as using less technical terms. Speech convergence is when the speaker’s style of speech becomes more similar to the style of the interlocutors (e.g. baby talk). Speech divergence is when the speaker purposely talk differently from the interlocutors to assert his/her identity difference or to simply avoid talking to them. Bina Nusantara

Context, Style and Class Formal Context and Social Roles Speech changes according to context (i.e. settings), style and class: In a formal business meeting, a son has to address his father by his title and name. A radio/TV announcer changes his/her style of speaking to accommodate the listeners/ viewers. In some cultures, such as Javanese, your social class (caste) and the class of your interlocutor determine your speech style. Bina Nusantara

Different Styles within an interview When strangers meet, they would use most careful style of speech. In Labov’s social dialect survey in NYC, Labov elicited a wider range of styles in his interviews. He asked his informants to read aloud a passage and a list of minimal pairs (for careful speech style), then asked them to answer questions (formal style), and later asked them to tell a story (more relaxed or vernacular style). Bina Nusantara

The interaction of social class and style In Norwich (data reported by Trudgill, 1974) the more formal the style someone was using, the more ‘-ing’ they used (rather than ‘-in’) The data also revealed that the higher the social class the more standard form they used (i.e. more ’-ing’) Some people shift style (either to be more formal or more vernacular) in order to be more accepted by their interlocutors. Bina Nusantara

Hypercorrection Is when someone uses a form that is beyond the standard. And hence they use a wrong form instead. example: ‘between you and I’ ‘he asked for you and I’ Bina Nusantara

Non-western societies Japanese has a special set of grammatical contrasts for expressing politeness and respects for others. They assess their status on the basis of family background, gender, age, and the formality of context. Similarly, Javanese has different levels of its language to mark the different relations between the speakers and the listeners. Bina Nusantara

Register Register is the typical style associated to a certain group of speakers. For example, doctors talk about ‘symptoms’, ‘post-natal syndrome’, etc. Legal documents have certain ways of paragraphing, sectioning, phrasing, etc. Sport announcers Bina Nusantara

Sport Announcer Talk Syntactic reduction ‘[It] bounced to second base..’ ‘Federer [is] looking rather … surprised..’ Syntactic Inversion ‘In comes Jackson’ ‘slowly returning the ball…is Matt’ Heavy Noun modification ‘Yao, this gigantic young man from China, who… Routines and formulas Horse-racing commentators have different routines for the start, or locating horse names. Bina Nusantara

Conclusions People speech reflects not only their identity such as their ethnicity, age, gender, and social background, but also reflects the context in which they are using the language. Bina Nusantara