A Sociolinguistic study on rude words used by Street Children

ABSTRACT

Since Indonesia got a monetary crisis in 1997, many workers are fired from their jobs. This crisis has very great impact for the family life because their spending did not match with their incomes. Finally, some families live inharmoniously.

This unlucky condition will potentially influence children either their behaviors and their educations. Children tend to leave their homes because their family could not give them love and affection.

Many children who leave their homes become street children and earn money by playing music instrument or selling newspapers in the street. Their existence as street children influence their way of speaking because their society treat them hard and have to interact with hard life.

Street children tend to speak rude words to communicate with each other rather than polite ones. The social phenomenon above invites the writer to know deeper about street children and some rude words they use to communicate with each other. The writer decide to give the title of his thesis “A Sociolinguistic Study on Rude Words Used by Street Children”.

The problem of this study are: What rude words are commonly used by street children?, what are the factors that are influence to the street children in using rude words?, and in what circumstances do the street children often speak the rude words to communicate with each other?.

The objectives of this study are to find the rude words which are commonly used by street children, to describe some factors that influence street children in using rude words in their communication, and to explain the situations and events when the street children often use the rude words.

The method of this study is descriptive-qualitative research because it only attempts to describe the phenomena that happens in human life especially some rude words spoken by street children in their daily communication.

Based on the data had been collected, some rude words used by street children can be classified into two groups namely terms of address and emotional expression. The terms of address divided into three groups namely names of animal, physical conditions, and other terms of address. Meanwhile, the emotional expression can be divided into two groups namely phrase form and words form.

Based on findings and discussions, the writer draws conclusion that it almost everyday street children use rude words to communicate with each other such as bajul (crocodile), gundul (bald), kelinci (rabbit), etc. Some factors that influence the street children in using rude words are internal and external factors. The internal factor comes from the children family’s life and the external factors come from the environment where the street children live. The certain events when street children especially street boys musician will speak rude words when there is a driver rejecting their coming and he does not say it politely.

At last, the writer suggest that there will be cooperation between government and the Al Fadholi Community Service Institute to train street children in order that they can reduce thair bad habits in using rude words.