THE ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE CHOICE MADE BY THE CHILD OF MIXED MARRIAGE BETWEEN AN INDONESIAN HUSBAND AND DUTCH WIFE FAMILY
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ISSN: 2302-920X
E-Jurnal Humanis, Fakultas Sastra dan Budaya Unud
Vol 14.2 Pebruari 2016: 43-49
THE ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE CHOICE MADE BY THE CHILD OF MIXED MARRIAGE BETWEEN AN INDONESIAN HUSBAND AND DUTCH WIFE FAMILY
Kampianus Repong
Email: [email protected]
English Department Faculty of Letters and Culture Udayana University
ABSTRACT
Penelitian ini berjudulThe Analysis of Language Choice Made by The Child of Mixed Marriage between an Indonesian husband and a Dutch Wife Family.Penelitian ini berfokus pada kemempuan berbahasa dari seorang anak yang orang tuanya berkawin campur. Tujuan dari penelitian adalah untuk mengetahui berapa jumlah bahasa yang bisa di kuasai oleh anak ini, dan bagaimana dia berkomunikasi dengan orang tuanya dirumah serta dengan teman temanya di luar rumah.
Data yang digunakan pada penelitian ini adalah data primer, yang mana semua data yang digunakan adalah data yang didapat secara langsug dari satu keluarga yang berstatus kawin campur. Metode yang digunakan untuk mengumpulkan data adalah dokumentasi dengan tehnik merekam. Jenis data alih kode dianalisa dengan mengelompokan dan memilih kalimat berdasarkan sumber data dan kemudian data yang dikumpulkan secara kualitatif dan deskriptif dianalisis sesuai dengan teori yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini.
Hasil penelitian ini menunjukan bahwa anak yang diteliti pada penelitian ini memiliki kemampuan bercakap dalam dua bahasa . Kedua bahasa yang dia gunakan adalah bahasa Inggris dan bahasa Indonesia. Bahasa Inggris dia gunakan ketika dia berbicara dengan kedua orang tuanya di rumah, sedangkan bahasa Indonesia dia gunakan ketika dia berbicara dengan pembantu dan teman temanya di luar rumah. Kemampuanya dalam bercakap mengunakan dua bahasa tersebuat adalah sama, dimana hal tersebut didukung oleh cara kedua orangtuanya dalam strategi mendidik bahasa pada anak mereka. Hasil data menunjukan bahwa anak yang diteliti pada penelitian ini, tidak bingung dalam menggunakan dua bahasa dalam keseharianya. Dia tahu kepada siapa dia berbicara dan bahasa apa yang akan dia gunakan.
Kata kunci: perkawinan campur, transmisi bahasa dan strategibahasa
Bilingualism is the ability to use two or more languages. Definitions of bilingualism range from a minimal proficiency in two or more languages to an advanced level of proficiency, which allows the speaker to function and appear as a native-like speaker of two languages. A person may describe himself or herself as bilingual but
may mean only the ability to converse and communicate orally. Others may be proficient in reading in two or more languages
The mixture of two or more people and cultures may lead to bilingualism (Rampton B, 1990). Marriages which involve two people with different language backgrounds are common in many countries. These situations are also found in Indonesia, especially in Bali which is the main tourist destination in Indonesia, attracting tourists and expatriates from the world over. Mixed marriages are a common result of a multi-cultural community. The term of mixed marriage is also found in the family which is used as the main data in this study, and this family are the family which is the mixed marriage between an Indonesian husband and Dutch wife, with one child brought up in bilingual way.
From the background above, there are some problems which can be analysed as follows:
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1. What languages are chosen by the child of a mixed marriage between an Indonesian husband and Dutch wife?
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2. How does the child acquire the languages and what the factors influence the child in choosing certain language?
The aims of the study are as follows:
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1. To find out which language is used by a child in a mixed marriage between
an Indonesian husband and Dutch wife.
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2. To analyse how the child is acquiring the language and the factors influence him to choose the language in a mixed marriages family between an Indonesian husband and Dutch wife.
The data in this study is spoken data taken from the utterances that were made by the child of a mixed marriage couple in his daily conversations with family, friends, with society as well as at school. The data were taken at the time when the child was talking to his parents or to his friends as well as when he was talking to the neighbour and at school.
The data collection was done by a direct interaction and conversation with the family in daily life. The data were taken by recording every conversation made by Daniel while talking to the parents at home, with friends, teachers at school as well as the community.
The result of this research was analysed using qualitative methods, meaning that the data were analysed based on such activities on observing, comprehending and judging the data or fact and their relation with variables of hypotheses. The analysis was then correlated to the problem which had been formulated and presented descriptively, so some answers were obtained. The final steps on this data analysing was to match the results of the research with the theory used. The main theory used in this study is the theory proposed by Romaine (1995)
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5. The analysis of language choice made by the child
5.1 The strategy adopted by the parents in transmitting the languages.
Based on the experience of this mixed marriage family in bringing up their first son for nearly four years, it could identified that this family had adopted the type – 2 strategy of raising bilingual child proposed by Romaine (1995). The characteristic of this type is the parents have different native languages while the language of one of the parents is the dominant language of the community and both parents speak the nondominant language to the child, who is fully exposed to the dominant language only outside. In this case both parents speak none of their native languages to each other, nor to the child. This family picked English as their communicating language to each other, while Indonesian is the dominant language in community.
This analysis demonstrates some data taken during the research.
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1. The conversation between Daniel and his father.
Father : Hey Daniel, let’s go to sleep now boy! Remember that you have to go to school tomorrow!
Daniel : No…I am not tired, I still want to play, Pap.
Father : But it is already late, you have to wake up early tomorrow.
Daniel : No, I don’t want to
From the conversation between Daniel and his father above, it is clear that, Daniel only speaks English to his father.This is due to the strategy used by the parents in
transmitting the language to their child. The parents only talked English to their child, while Indonesian he can be learned outside.
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2. Conversation between Daniel and his mother
Mother: Hey Daniel, do you want to go to the beach today?
Daniel : Yes I want to mom..!!
Mother: If so then we need to prepare for our beach toys
Daniel : Ok mom, let’s go now
The conversation between Daniel and his mom above shows that Daniel has answered his mom in English as he quickly said that he wanted to go to the beach. It was also because his mom often asked him to go to the beach. This situation is totally different from when Daniel is talking to the nanny. The way how he reacts to conversations with different people. From the conversation between Daniel and his mother and father we can analyze that the strategy of the parents in bringing up Daniel is by sharing the same language to Daniel, which is not the native language of one of the parents. This situation is supported by the theory proposed by (Romaine 1995), type- 2 in which both parents have different native languages and both parents speaks the nondominant language to the child, while the dominant language is only exposed outside.
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3. Conversation between Daniel and the nanny at home
Daniel : Tanta ada berapa jari tangan saya (hey aunty how many fingers
do I have )
Nanny : coba Daniel hitung (can Daniel count them ?)
Daniel : ok,,satu,,dua,,tiga,,,dst(ok,,one,,two,,,three..and so on)
Nanny : ada berapa jumlahnya Daniel (how many fingers do you have
then)
Daniel : ada 10 tanta ( there are 10 aunty)
Nanny : Daniel pintar ( Daniel is so smart)
The example of conversation above shows that the nanny only talks Indonesian to Daniel, and Daniel himself shows that he knows whom he is talking to. He knows how to speak to different people using different languages. We can see that Daniel understands what the nanny asked and he knows which language to use to answer in different situations.
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4. Conversation between Daniel with his friend
Daniel : Ayo Netta maen bola(come on netta, let play the football)
Netta : Ayo,,,tendang bolanya(okey, kick the ball then)
Daniel : Ok, harus lari Netta(okey, but you have to run Netta)
Netta : Malas,,tendang saja(I am lazy let just kick it)
From the conversation above we could see that Daniel is only using Indonesian to his play mates at home. This is due to the language used by his friend at home is only Indonesian. then Daniel knows what language to use to his friend. And the most important is that he knows whom he is talking to and which language to speak. This situation also happens in other situation when Daniel meets with his friend who only speaks English.
All the data mentioned above show us clearly that the child of this mixed married family between an Indonesian husband and Dutch wife speak two different language equally.
Based on the data analysis from the previous chapter, it can be concluded that the child of mixed marriages in this study could speak two different languages (English and Indonesian). These two languages he used depend on the situation whom he is talking with, and he could place himself in every situation and used certain languages in certain situation.
This child uses English when he speaks to his parents and his foreign friends, even though that English is not the native language of the parents. This is due to the fact that parents have different native languages and do not understand each other’s languages. While Indonesian is used when speaking with the nanny and the community as well as with his Indonesian friends. Most of his friends are Indonesians and the nanny could only speak Indonesian to this child, this situation really helped this child improved his Indonesian skill, as his parents only speak English to him.
Rampton, B. (1990) Displacing the "native speaker": Expertise, affiliation and inheritance ELT Journal, 44, 97-101
Romaine. (1995:197) Bilingualism, second edition. Oxford: Blackwell publishing
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