Hesitation in the conversation of the Desk Officers and Tourists in MTIC (Malang Tourist Information Center)

ABSTRACT

In our daily communication, whether we are aware or not, we always make some hesitations when we are talking. Hesitation is another term for pausing, generally means period of silences during speaking which mostly occur in spoken language. Speaking as a sentence production is often accompanied by hesitation.

The purpose of this research is to get understanding and detailed explanation about hesitation occurred in the conversation of the desk officers and tourists in MTIC (Malang Tourist Information Center). This research gives deep information about hesitation, helps the speaker or the listener in understanding the utterances by using hesitation.

This research is a descriptive qualitative. The data are in the forms of utterances produced by the desk officers and tourists in MTIC (Malang Tourist Information Center). The data are collected from the conversation between the desk officers and tourists who come to MTIC. All of the conversations are recorded and are accompanied by some notes. In order to make the data manageable, the researcher makes a script of the record. The data are analyzed by selecting the data that refers to the problems of the study by classifying the utterance that match to the problems of the study, categorizing to the types of hesitation, describing, discussing and interpreting the data. After that, the whole data are discussed and continued by making conclusion.

The data analysis revealed some findings covering the formulated research question. It is found that the speaker uses some kinds of hesitation in their conversation. Meanwhile, the speakers produce hesitation by some reasons, such as preparing for the next utterance, forget and try to remember the vocabulary, and need a long time to remind or think first before enunciated. Furthermore, there are five types of hesitation found in the conversation of the desk officers and tourists in MTIC (Malang Tourist Information Center), they are false start, restart, repeats, pauses and word lengthening. But typically, both of desks officers and tourist used unfilled pause in their utterances.

Based on the findings mentioned above, it is suggested to the next researchers to analyze hesitation in the natural conversation or pure spontaneous conversational interaction such as in interviewing the native speakers.