Journal Summary
Nancy J. Smith-Hefner
University of Massachusetts, Boston
Women and Politeness: The Javanese Example
In this paper, she explores the relationship between Javanese women’s status and the language formality in their speech. Further, she tries to examine the hypothesis that women will speak more politely than men due to their secondary status. Geertz (1960) profess that Javanese women take a secondary work as shopping or household. Nevertheless, the inferiority of women social claim can be traced to the discussion whether or not it may prevail to all culture and language use, including the politeness level. Hence, this paper encompasses the language and identity as well as politeness among Javanese.
The article published by Cambridge university press 1988 is structured in six sections, initiated by the introduction, the position of women in Javanese society, the Javanese speech level, the socialization on Javanese children, the power of politeness, and ended by the conclusion of the discussion. In the first part, the author elaborates some critical view of language and gender. Some scholars have elicited the notion since a couple of years ago that woman tends to speech more politely than man. Fischer (1958), Labov (1966), Shuy, Wolfram, and Riley (1967) elucidate that woman frequently use more standard form speech than man do. However, the formal language usage does not necessarily mean prestigious as one might assume. The standard speech ‘cannot be used interchangeably with prestige’ due to linguistics variant that may not stand for another. There is something that may determine a ‘prestige’ claim from society that is culture. Thus, the identity if the speaker plays a key role in determining this case.
The position of Javanese women accounts for a secondary class. Geertz’s research (1960) entitled ‘The Religion of Java’ may give a salient avenue for the following researchers to classify Javanese structure. In her finding as well, those women take a household, go shopping and bargaining, and deal with family financial cases. Conversely, the men or husbands typically control family purse strings. The men have predominant authority in the family upon the wives and indeed children. As hypothesis believed until recently, the politeness speech comes from inferior society to the superior one. Accordingly, the communication, the language use within the family may vary in politeness level since father has the highest one, whereas mother and children follow afterward. To testify this stigma, Smith tries to accommodate several responses upon the question of women’ preference not to be a village official or religious specialist. Surprisingly, they declare that such preference occurs not because of their inferiority; it is rather due to the quite positive of men upon their position as caregivers or hostesses.
The following part talks about the level of speech in Javanese community. It is well known that Javanese has a different speech level in addressing to the interlocutor; ngoko that is used to the equal level of conversant and kromo that is addressed to the higher one. The first part associate with the social interaction among teenagers, schoolmates, and mostly friends by which they have known much one another. Whereas the latter happens mostly in the conversation of unbalance power of social status or of the stranger. Not to mention, this speech level is often learned by ‘self-consciousness’ of by instruction by either parents or teachers. In family issue, the language use to address father is kromo since he has invariably the highest position. In addition, Smith founds that there is a change of what is assumed as discrepancy call in family, between husband and wife. Firstly, husband tends to call his wife by her nick name, or by the kin term dhik and mas or kak in vise versa. Such term may change whenever they have children, a wife often call “pak” to address her husband. In my humble overview, some communities and northern part of East java, Madurese, they simultaneously change such lovely call due to the birth of the son or pilgrimage as well. They seem comfortable to abi and ummi after pilgrimage.
The power of politeness
The finding shows the support upon the previous hypothesis on language and gender; Javanese women often offer more ‘respect-marked- speech’ and receive less polite referring or addressing. It is therefore, the earlier works on women and the formality of their speech gains much universal prevailing. In relation to the mentioned idea, the status of the speaker, either social or political, play a tangibly significance role. The one with the higher position may have more authority to lead the speech. It may be enforced to portray the dominant or to acquire respect. Men, even though not exclusive, tend to cultivate the use of speech level to signal superiority, maintain the status, or create the distance. As the result, the speech boundary becomes appear. At this stage, doing research on face is feasible.
Kuala Lumpur, 28 December 2013
Nancy J. Smith-Hefner
University of Massachusetts, Boston
Women and Politeness: The Javanese Example
In this paper, she explores the relationship between Javanese women’s status and the language formality in their speech. Further, she tries to examine the hypothesis that women will speak more politely than men due to their secondary status. Geertz (1960) profess that Javanese women take a secondary work as shopping or household. Nevertheless, the inferiority of women social claim can be traced to the discussion whether or not it may prevail to all culture and language use, including the politeness level. Hence, this paper encompasses the language and identity as well as politeness among Javanese.
The article published by Cambridge university press 1988 is structured in six sections, initiated by the introduction, the position of women in Javanese society, the Javanese speech level, the socialization on Javanese children, the power of politeness, and ended by the conclusion of the discussion. In the first part, the author elaborates some critical view of language and gender. Some scholars have elicited the notion since a couple of years ago that woman tends to speech more politely than man. Fischer (1958), Labov (1966), Shuy, Wolfram, and Riley (1967) elucidate that woman frequently use more standard form speech than man do. However, the formal language usage does not necessarily mean prestigious as one might assume. The standard speech ‘cannot be used interchangeably with prestige’ due to linguistics variant that may not stand for another. There is something that may determine a ‘prestige’ claim from society that is culture. Thus, the identity if the speaker plays a key role in determining this case.
The position of Javanese women accounts for a secondary class. Geertz’s research (1960) entitled ‘The Religion of Java’ may give a salient avenue for the following researchers to classify Javanese structure. In her finding as well, those women take a household, go shopping and bargaining, and deal with family financial cases. Conversely, the men or husbands typically control family purse strings. The men have predominant authority in the family upon the wives and indeed children. As hypothesis believed until recently, the politeness speech comes from inferior society to the superior one. Accordingly, the communication, the language use within the family may vary in politeness level since father has the highest one, whereas mother and children follow afterward. To testify this stigma, Smith tries to accommodate several responses upon the question of women’ preference not to be a village official or religious specialist. Surprisingly, they declare that such preference occurs not because of their inferiority; it is rather due to the quite positive of men upon their position as caregivers or hostesses.
The following part talks about the level of speech in Javanese community. It is well known that Javanese has a different speech level in addressing to the interlocutor; ngoko that is used to the equal level of conversant and kromo that is addressed to the higher one. The first part associate with the social interaction among teenagers, schoolmates, and mostly friends by which they have known much one another. Whereas the latter happens mostly in the conversation of unbalance power of social status or of the stranger. Not to mention, this speech level is often learned by ‘self-consciousness’ of by instruction by either parents or teachers. In family issue, the language use to address father is kromo since he has invariably the highest position. In addition, Smith founds that there is a change of what is assumed as discrepancy call in family, between husband and wife. Firstly, husband tends to call his wife by her nick name, or by the kin term dhik and mas or kak in vise versa. Such term may change whenever they have children, a wife often call “pak” to address her husband. In my humble overview, some communities and northern part of East java, Madurese, they simultaneously change such lovely call due to the birth of the son or pilgrimage as well. They seem comfortable to abi and ummi after pilgrimage.
The power of politeness
The finding shows the support upon the previous hypothesis on language and gender; Javanese women often offer more ‘respect-marked- speech’ and receive less polite referring or addressing. It is therefore, the earlier works on women and the formality of their speech gains much universal prevailing. In relation to the mentioned idea, the status of the speaker, either social or political, play a tangibly significance role. The one with the higher position may have more authority to lead the speech. It may be enforced to portray the dominant or to acquire respect. Men, even though not exclusive, tend to cultivate the use of speech level to signal superiority, maintain the status, or create the distance. As the result, the speech boundary becomes appear. At this stage, doing research on face is feasible.
Kuala Lumpur, 28 December 2013