A study on speech levels of javanese language used in Pesantren Al Ulya Malang

ABSTRACT

Javanese language is one of the regional languages in Indonesia, which is mostly used by the people in the western and the eastern part of Java. It has three main speech levels namely ngoko, madya and kromo, The use of the Javanese speech levels is not easy because every level has certain meaning. Therefore before someone speaks using this language she or he must know first about the background of the listener in terms of age and social status then related them with the speaker٠s position. This study was conducted by observing the communication of the students of Al ،Ulya. The writer chooses the students of Al ،Ulya as the subject of this study because most of them are Javanese that use Javanese language as the prior language, therefore they use the different speech levels of Javanese namely ngoko, madyo and kromo in their daily communication

Based on the illustration above, and in order to conduct the study systematically, the writer formulated the research problems as follows: 1) How do the students of Al ، Ulya use the speech levels of Javanese regional language in their verbal commiriication? 2) Why do the students of Al ،Ulya use those speech levels of Javanese regional language in then• verbal communication?.

This study is a descriptive-qualitative research, in which the data are presented in the form of words to describe the use of speech levels of Javanese regional language by the students of Al ،Ulya and the reasons for using the speech levels. The research instruments used in this study were observation, interview, field note and tape recorder. The data resources were verbal communication conducted by the students of Al ،Ulya. The writer hopes that this study will be for the fields of linguistics, since it gives useful information about the speech levels of Javanese language used also the Javanese culture including the etiquette in communication; especially for another researcher who wants to investigate in the same area or who is interested in using speech levels of Javanese language used in verbal communication.

Based on the result of this study, it was found out that the students of Al ،Ulya used three speech levels of Javanese regional language namely ngoko, madya and kromo in their verbal communication. Ngoko speech level is used toward friends and the younger because they want to make closer relation, no clumsiness and relaxed situation. Madya speech level is used toward the older people and people of higher social status because they want to respect their listeners. Kromo speech level, especially Kromo Inggil is used toward Kiai and his wife, the guest and toward the teacher in formal situation because they want to respect their interlocutors for their in high position.

Based on the discussion of this study, there are some suggestions offered. The first, Javanese language as a regional language needs to be preserved in order not disappeared entirely as the time goes by. The second, the Javanese language cannot be separated from the politeness sense, therefore a speaker has to use Javanese speech levels properly based on the listener background in order to get the effective communication. Moreover it is important to further researcher to discuss about another speech levels of another language in order to get communicative communication with another people in different culture.