Politeness strategies of madurese and javanese cross- cultural interaction in Probolinggo

ABSTRACT

Madurese and Javanese, who possess different language and culture, may live in one community and create cross-cultural interaction. However, this kind of cross- cultural interaction often raises some problems. The different language, attitude, and behaviors may cause misunderstanding. The strategy of communication is needed, then. The strategy of communication that emphasizes on the use of polite words and actions, called Politeness Strategy, is needed to be used to reduce misunderstanding. This study observed the politeness strategies used by Madurese and Javanese and the influence of the culture, both Madurese and Javanese, on the use of the strategies.

This study is a descriptive qualitative research. It is designed to get information based on the phenomena and is reported in the form of words or sentences. The subjects of this study were Madurese and Javanese who lived in two sub districts of Probolinggo regencies, namely Wonoasih and Leces. The instrument, used to collect the data was an observation called participant observation. It means that the researcher came to the subjects of this study and had interaction with them. Then the data gathered from the field were analyzed in three steps. They were data reduction, where the researcher selected and simplified the data, data display, where the researcher grouped the data based on the identification or classification, and conclusion, where the researcher concluded the data.

As the findings, the researcher found the use of three kinds of politeness strategies. They were bald on record, positive politeness, and negative politeness strategies. There were 21 usages of bald on record strategy, 37 usages of positive politeness strategy, and 10 usages of negative politeness strategy. Madurese culture holds an important role in this cross-cultural interaction of Madurese and Javanese. This happened because of a long time of interaction in this area. Madurese, with its straightforwardness, has strong impact on Javanese culture, which have more reclusive characters. It was showed by the use of direct approach in building the conversation and the use of brief utterances even sometime in the kinds of indirect approaching conversation.

Cross-cultural interaction created some phenomena that needed an investigation and solution. Not only in the field of sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, but also in other disciplines, such as psycholinguistics. A research on this cross-cultural interaction might be challenging to observe. At last, the result of this study is hoped to give good contribution to other researchers especially in the field of cross-cultural interaction.