A psycholinguistic study on hesitation in Ahmed Deedat’s Debates with Christian Missionaries

ABSTRACT

As a social person, human beings use language as a mean for interaction in their similar speech community. And when we produce a language, we realized that hesitation often happened in our daily conversation. Hesitation is said to be silent sound or indefinite words that usually happen on spontaneous human communication.

This research attempts to investigate the hesitation in Ahmed Deedafs debates. We know that Deedat was a master of debater. Because of that, we consider that Deedat never makes hesitation when he speeches. In fact, Deedat still makes it. So it shows that hesitation can happen in everybody. The researcher focused on types of hesitation and the reasons of hesitation in Ahmed Deedafs debates with Christian Missionaries in the debates "Is Jesus God?” and “Crucifixion: Fact or Fiction?”.

In conducting this research, the researcher used qualitative methods. The data were collected from 15 data that taken from two compact disks’ debates. They were analyzed by using the following steps: presenting, identifying, arranging, discussing, and drawing conclusion. The key instrument is the researcher her self. The researcher used compact disks and taking notes the data that she got.

The data analysis revealed some findings covering the formulated research problems. First, the types of hesitation in Ahmed Deedat’s debates with Christian Missionaries. The researcher found five kinds of hesitation from 15 data. They are 2 false starts, 9 repeats, 1 restarts, 11 silent pauses, 3 filled pauses, and 2 word lengthening. So, repeats and silent pauses become dominant because frequently appeared, whereas restarts were rarely found in this study. Second, the reasons of hesitation in Deedat because some common reasons, like pragmatic reason, planning what to say and taking breathe or come up for air. The researcher also finds the other reasons of hesitation that not mentioned in the theory. They are stuttering and intentionally.

Finally, the researcher expects that there will be other researchers who are interested in studying psycholinguistics especially hesitation. Based on the result of the study, the researcher hope the further researchers will focus on one types of hesitation.