TRANSLATING A MOTHER TONGUE

Most Indonesians of my generation are multilingual; we can at least speak two or three languages, namely Indonesian, English, and a local language. This paper reflects my personal effort in discovering how the languages are positioned in my mind. I assume that Javanese was the first language I acquired, followed by Indonesian, and then English. As I grew up, Javanese became the language I use mainly at home or to certain people only. Indonesian and English, on the other hand, seem to be taking the more dominant place in terms of level of proficiency and amount of usage. Needless to say, I only use my mother tongue in informal conversational level. By translating Javanese literary work into English, relying on translation theories and language of thought, this project helps me assess my real mastery of a language I call mother tongue. The reflection on the translation process shows that my oral proficiency in the mother tongue is perceived to be higher than reading and writing proficiencies. The reading comprehension skills in the register of literary texts are lower than expected because of my intensive exposure to other languages

Bòsò Walikan Malang’s address practices

Address practices in natural conversations are sociolinguistically significant, because they display speakers’ socio-cultural values as well as the community’s social structure and social change. Focusing on Bòsò Walikan Malang1 (/bɔsɔ waliʔan malaŋan/, hereafter referred to as Walikan), a youth language spoken in Malang, this paper examines how address terms and politeness are practiced in a multilingual setting. Walikan is a colloquial variety of local Javanese and Indonesian that features word reversing (mlaku > uklam ‘to walk’; makan > nakam ‘to eat’). The youth language was specifically chosen as the focus of this study because it is an important symbol of the socio-cultural identity of the Arema (Arek Malang; the people of Malang). Looking at the underexplored topic of speech levels in youth language, the current research discusses the value of Walikan’s address terms and how they are currently used to demonstrate the speakers’ linguistic politeness. The analysis compares Walikan’s address terms with those of Javanese and Indonesian, two dominant languages spoken in the area. Data for the current study were drawn from recordings, interviews, and observations conducted in an extensive fieldwork. The results of this study reveal a speakers’ shift of value that is mainly prompted by a compromised common ground and social distance. The study argues that address practices in Walikan show different degree of politeness than that of Javanese and Indonesian

Exploring augmentation of meaning through intersemiotic complementarity in children comic book series

Comic books are taking a new turn as a medium of learning. The combination of modes of visual and verbal in comics is a rich source of meanings. They are arguably one of the contributors to why comic books are considered as a form of reading materials for the purpose of language learning. With this regard, the present study is looking into a comic book series targeted for young readers, entitled ‘Little Dim Sum Warriors’. The overall aim of the study is to comprehend how the readers are likely to learn language with the comic. More specifically, the study addresses the details of the verbal-visual relation in LDSW and the prediction on how readers might be able to perceive the meaning-making process in LDSW. In doing so, the study analyzes the first two installments of the series in terms of the relationships between the verbal texts and visual images in terms of the ideational meanings. Data analysis is facilitated primarily using Royce’s (1998) framework of ideational Intersemiotic Complementarity to map out and categorize any instances of visual-verbal relation in the data in terms of the instances of repetition, synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, meronymy, and collocation. Through the analysis, the study found that the verbal-visual relations mostly fall into the categories of repetition and collocation, which further indicate that the repeated meaning in both verbal and visual aspects are found effective in learning language. Other relations, however, such as those that appeared as anonymy or synonymy, might require the attendance of teachers or parents to create a discussion with the young readers regarding the meaning-making process. The results of the study also implied some hints on how reading activities between parents and children may be conducted.

Perceptual Dialectology: Northerners and Southerners’ View of Different American Dialects

American English, also known as US English, is a set of dialects in the English language mostly used in the United States. It has considerable variations in terminology, phrasing and syntax. The differences are mostly on regional basis. The three major regional dialects are: Northern, Midland, and Southern. Generally, dialect varieties are acceptable in society; however, some of them are more stigmatized than others. The present study has been done to examine American English speakers‟ perceptions towards regional American varieties in terms of correctness, pleasantness, and difference from their own speech

THIRST TWEETS: WOMEN’S LANGUAGE USED TO SEXUALLY OBJECTIFY MEN

This study explores thirst tweets as sexual objectification with women as the writers and men as the targets, and the reason this phenomenon is allowed by society. As a new trend by BuzzFeed, thirst tweets are a set of tweets where mostly women compliment celebrities’ bodies. The data were gathered from a playlist video under the account BuzzFeed Celeb on YouTube. Firstly, Fairclough’s (2013) CDA and Langton’s (2009) Sexual Objectification theories were used to analyze the social relations of thirst tweets with sexual objectification. Secondly, watching the celebs’ reactions and comparing it to Berdahl et al. (1996) answered public’s tolerance in objectifying men. The results show that the construction of thirst tweets is in the form of reducing to the body and appearance, using violent language, and calling the celebs ‘daddy’. Also, the celebrities’ reactions and power play an important part in that the objectification is justifiable. While few felt uncomfortable, the male celebs still act polite by thanking the writers. Writers, as the consumers in a fandom, felt they are entitled to objectify these celebrities

African-American Vernacular English as Hip-Hop Artist Identity in Indonesian Rapper Ramengvrl's Songs

This study aimed to investigate and identify the grammatical features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) used in the song lyrics of the Indonesian Rapper Ramengvrl’s album, Can’t Speak English, and understand the underlying reasons for this AAVE use by applying the language and society of sociolinguistics approach. The data was analyzed using Wolfram’s theory of classification of grammatical features of AAVE in Ramengvrl’s songs to elaborate on the purpose of its use. The data analyzed were qualitatively collected by closely and thoroughly listening to the songs and reading the transcribed lyrics. The results are as follows: Ramengvrl employs 8 out of 13 grammatical features of AAVE. Those are copula/auxiliary absence, specialized auxiliary, subject-verb agreement, negation, remote “been,” nominals, non-standard pronouns, and question formation. Furthermore, this AAVE use by Ramengvrl is because of (1) the influences of Hip-hop artists, (2) the authenticity of Hip-Hop culture, and (3) as an anti-language to represent herself. Keywords: African-American Vernacular English, AAVE, hip-hop, identit

“It is expected …” BETWEEN RELIGIOSITY AND EVIDENTIALITY

The present study is focused on analyzing the uses of some expressions showing expectations in academic texts. A corpus-based study specifically dealing with the uses of the verbs "expect" and "hope",  this project seeks to understand the phenomenon as reflected in C-SMILE (Corpus of State University of Malang Indonesian Learners’ English). Analyzing the corpus of about 6 million words composed of texts of undergraduate theses written in English by Indonesian EFL learners, this study has arrived at an interpretive point that Indonesian cultural norms are influential to the manifestation of the expressions. The expressions reflect some degree of the writers’ religiosity. This unfortunately also suggests a lacking point of evidentiality in academic written works. Keywords: C-SMILE, corpus linguistics, EF

See: How Indonesian Student Writers Use Directives in Academic Texts

This study investigates the roles and functions of directives in academic texts mainly produced by Indonesian college students. Sixty-two (62) imperatives, 11 “it is + Adjective + to”-clauses, and 7 modals of obligation are searched for in academic texts taken from the Corpus of State University of Malang Indonesian Learners English (C-SMILE) and the Corpus of Indonesian Texts in Academia (CINTA). As a point of comparison, we use the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). We found that the corpora are similar regarding the high frequency of occurrences of the imperative see, among other directives. However, the corpora differ with regards to the functions of the imperative see. Whilst see in COCA plays an important role in directing readers to both internal and external sources, see in C-SMILE and CINTA is used exclusively to refer to internal resources. This suggests a lack of access on the part of Indonesian undergraduates’ to necessary reading materials. In addition, other directives, such as cognitive imperatives, are rarely used in the Indonesian corpora. The low frequency of cognitive imperatives indicates that the practice of inviting readers to develop their mental process of understanding has not been well established in Indonesian academic culture. These findings suggest the need to introduce to Indonesian student writers, various ways of engaging readers into texts

Little Dim Sum Warriors: translanguaging of Chinese and English in educational comic books for bilingual children

Comic books used to serve the purpose of entertainment; nowadays, they also provide one of the most innovative ways of learning. Not only do they stimulate brains with the visual mode, but they can also function as more effective teaching and learning resources with the usage of two modes: text and image. Referring to Kress’ (2010) framework on modes, this study investigates the translanguaging aspects of Little Dim Sum Warriors, a series of educational comic books with young bilingual or multilingual speakers as the target audience. This study focuses on how translanguaging, that is the fluid language practices of bilingual speakers (Wei, 2018), is present effectively in comic books by making use of Chinese culture (the learners’ home culture) when targeting English (learners’ target language) proficiency. In conducting the study, we analysed two storybooks of the series and collected the translanguaging practices found in both text and image formats. In our analysis we use Royce’s (1998) Intersemiotic Complementarity framework to assess the relation between verbal and visual modes. The results show that the translanguaging practices in comic books are divided into three forms: text, visual, and context-meaning. These practices help the audience understand foreign language and culture in a creative way, which fits the traits of young learners. Hence, keeping their attention in language learning intact