LANGUAGE USE, INTERACTIONS, AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS: ARE THERE ANY CONSIDERATIONS TAKEN BY CHILDREN WHEN MAKING REQUESTS TO THEIR INTERLOCUTORS?

Nurlaksana Eko Rusminto, Mulyanto Widodo

Abstract


According to literature, a child’s request is always addressed to a specific person or group of people. To our knowledge, however, studies on language use, interactions, and social dimensions in relation to request making to an interlocutor are uncommon in the Indonesian context; therefore, we sought to describe the considerations taken by children when making requests. Forty children between the ages of 6 and 10 took part in this qualitative study. We collected data using observation and field notes. The collected data were subsequently analyzed using an interactive model. The findings indicate that the majority of children's requests are directed toward interlocutors who are classified as having an extremely close relationship. In contrast, children never make direct requests to interlocutors classified as quite distant or extremely distant. The findings also indicate that requests made to interlocutors with a higher social status than children use a particular verbal form based on the nature of the request and the implied context. In contrast to reality, requests made to interlocutors with a lower social status are more likely to be made directly. It is hoped that the findings of this study will contribute to pragmatic and speech-related theories, as well as to improvements in language education based on a communicative and contextual approach that returns language to its primary function as a tool for communication and places language learning in a meaningful context.

Full Text:

PDF

References


Abdullaeva, M. D. (2021). The importance of familiarizing preschool and primary school children with the social norms of speech. Academicia: An International Multidisciplinary Research Journal 11(1), 920–25. doi: 10.5958/2249-7137.2021.00126.9.

Annan, E. B. (2022). The effect of study abroad on the choice of request perspectives in formal and informal contexts: evidence from role play. Journal of French Language Studies, 1–15. doi: 10.1017/S0959269521000259.

Cai, Z. G., Sun, Z., & Zhao, N. (2021). Interlocutor modeling in lexical alignment: the role of linguistic competence. Journal of Memory and Language, 121, 104-278. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2021.104278.

Chang, Y. F., & Ren, W. (2020). Sociopragmatic competence in American and Chinese children’s realization of apology and refusal. Journal of Pragmatics, 164, 27–39. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2020.04.013.

Cresswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Washington DC: SAGE Publications Inc.

Duff, P. A. (2019). Social dimensions and processes in second language acquisition: multilingual socialization in transnational contexts. The Modern Language Journal, 103, 6–22. doi: 10.1111/modl.12534.

Holmes, J. (1992). An introduction to sociolinguistics. New York: Longman.

Holmes, J. (2017). Intercultural communication in the workplace. The routledge handbook of language in the workplace, 335–47. doi: 10.4324/9781315690001.

Hubscher, I., Garufi, M., and Prieto, P. (2019). The development of polite stance in preschoolers: how prosody, gesture, and body cues pave the way. Journal of Child Language, 46(05), 825–62. doi: 10.1017/S0305000919000126.

Hymes, D. (1989). Ways of speaking. In explorations in the ethnography of speaking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Insani, W. R., Rusminto, N. E., & Ariyani, F. (2019). Pemerolehan kalimat pada anak usia 4 sampai 6 tahun dan implikasinya terhadap pembelajaran di tk. j-simbol (bahasa, sastra, dan pembelajarannya). Jurnal Fkip Unila, 7(3). Retrieved from http://jurnal.fkip.unila.ac.id/index.php/BINDO/article/view/19164/13670

Keizer, R., Helmerhorst, K. O. W., & van Rijn-van Gelderen, L. (2019). Perceived quality of the mother–adolescent and father–adolescent attachment relationship and adolescents’ self-esteem. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 48(6), 1203–17. doi: 10.1007/s10964-019-01007-0.

Leavy, P. (2017). Research design: Quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, arts-based, and community-based participatory research approaches. London: Guilford Publications.

Leech, G. N. (2016). Principles of pragmatics. New Delhi: Routledge.

Matthews, D., Biney, H. & Abbot-Smith, K. (2018). Individual differences in children’s pragmatic ability: a review of associations with formal language, social cognition, and executive functions. Language Learning and Development, 14(3), 186–223. doi: 10.1080/15475441.2018.1455584.

Miles, M. B., Huberman, M., H., & Saldana, J. S. (2014). Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook. Third Edit. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications Inc.

Pescaroli, G., & Alexander, D. (2018). Understanding compound, interconnected, interacting, and cascading risks: a holistic framework. Risk Analysis, 38(11), 2245–57. doi: 10.1111/risa.13128.

Portner, P., Pak, M., & Zanuttini, R. (2019). The speaker-addressee relation at the syntax-semantics interface. Language, 95(1), 1–36. doi: 10.1353/lan.2019.0008.

Ren, W. (2019). Pragmatic development of Chinese during study abroad: A cross-sectional study of learner requests. Journal of Pragmatics, 146, 137–49. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2019.01.017.

Ronan, P. (2022). Directives and politeness in spice-Ireland. Corpus Pragmatics, 6(2), 175–99. doi: 10.1007/s41701-022-00122-x.

Salman, S. M., Al-Saidi, H. S., & Khalaf, A. S. (2022). Pragmatic analysis of impolite speech acts and their verbal responses in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Jordan Journal of Modern Languages and Literatures, 14(1), 87–109. doi: 10.47012/jjmll.14.1.5.

Sperry, D. E., Sperry, L. S., & Miller, P. J. (2019). Reexamining the verbal environments of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Child Development, 90(4), 1303–18. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13072.

Steinbach, A. (2019). Children’s and parents’ well‐being in joint physical custody: A literature review. Family Process, 58(2), 353–69. doi: 10.1111/famp.12372.

Webman, S. R. (2019). Level of directness and the use of please in requests in English by native speakers of Arabic and Hebrew. Journal of Pragmatics, 148, 1–11. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2019.05.020.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.30743/ll.v6i2.5751

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Fakultas Sastra 
Universitas Islam Sumatera Utara (UISU), Medan
Jl. Sisingamangaraja Teladan Medan 20217
Telp. (061) 7869911, e-mail: language_literacy@sastra.uisu.ac.id