Istikhorini Atika, Sudirman Wilian
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INTRODUCTION
Human beings are social beings that instinctively cannot be separated from each other. Living
together in a society requires someone to interact among members of society and every time the
interaction takes places, language is definitely needed. In relation to society, language has two
functions: firstly, to establish social relationship and secondly, to give information about speakers
such as habits, personality, social background, and so forth (Trudgill, 2000, p. 1). One of the ways
to engage with the language function above is by initiating expressions of greetings and leave
takings because they are indicated as interactional routine (Liu, 2016),
conversational routine
(Aijmer cited from Alhabri & Al-Ajmi, 2008), and habitually spoken sequences (Davies in
Alhabri & Al-Ajmi, 2008) that are commonly used by individuals in their everyday life.
According to Goffman (in Betholia, 2008), greetings and leave-takings fall under access
rituals used in everyday conversational routine (Aijmer cited from Alhabri & Al-Ajmi, 2008) to
express a certain feeling to the hearer (Li
cited from Jeffrey, 2014), which is associated with
positive politeness or person’s positive face need or face saving act (Brown & Levinson in
Jibreen, 2010). Thus, knowing how speakers and hearers express greetings and leave-takings in
one culture is necessary. However, there is one thing that should be noted. The forms and styles
to express greetings and leave-takings in every culture (speech community)
differ from one
culture to another. They are influenced by customs, traditions, habits, etc. Halliday (in Jibreen,
2010) mentions that in English, people express their greetings based on time utilization which is
divided into two forms; time-free-greeting and time-bound greeting. He says that the expressions
of greeting like
How are you?, How do you do?, Nice to see you, Hi, Hello, etc.
are included in
time-free greetings because they are not bound to the time. In other words, they are initiated freely
without paying attention to the time. Time-bound greetings, on the other hand, as they are called
are those uttered at a certain time, for example,
Good morning
or
Good night,
which are expressed
only in the morning or at night.
Similarly, in Persia, as described by Dezhara, et.al. (2012),
the forms of greetings are
divided into time-free and time-bound greetings as well. They consider
Salaam (aleikom)
[hello,
hi] and
Az molaghate shoma khoshbakhtam!
[Nice to meet you!] as time-free greetings; and time-
bound greetings containing expression like
Sobhe (shoma) bekheir
[Good morning],
Zohre
(shoma) bekhei
[Good noon], and
Asr (shoma) bekheir
[Good evening]. When a person meets an
acquaintance on the street, the most
common greeting uttered is
Salaam (aleikom)
. It is used
mostly at an informal occasion. The more formal greetings are usually time-bound. Meanwhile,
Az molaghate shoma khoshbakhtam!
is used at a formal occasion when someone meets a stranger.
Each of the greeting forms above (except
Az molaghate shoma khoshbakhtam!
) is quite often
followed by a question such as
Ahvale/ hale jenabe ali chetore?
[How is your excellency],
Ahvale/
hale sharif chetore?
[How is your excellency, less formal], etc. which meaning shows whether
the person is talking to someone of equal status or someone who has a higher rank. Furthermore,
gender differences influence Persians in expressing greetings. Both genders prefer to utilize time-
free greeting forms rather than time-bound greeting, but females will be more polite in expressing
them. They will likely add job titles or honorifics such as
doctor, mohandes
[engineer] (it is used
together with addressee’s surname),
khanom
[Miss. /Mrs.] and
agha
[Mr. /Sir] in order to show
her politeness, even though the conversation is informal.
DuFon (in Shleykina, 2016) states that Indonesian greetings resemble English time-free
and time-bound greeting such as
Apa kabar?
[how are you?],
Selamat pagi
[Good morning],
Linguistik Indonesia, Volume ke-38, No.1, Februari 2020
59
Selamat siang
[Good afternoon],
Selamat malam
[Good evening], and
Selamat tidur
[Good
night]. However, the greetings for children like
Sudah mandi?
[Have you bathed yet?] and
Sudah
makan?
[Have you eaten?] are problematic for non-native speakers. In China, Wei (2010: 57)
argues that the types of greetings for children above are considered as the inquiry greeting because
these forms make speakers
to create such investigation, but actually they do not intend to
investigate whether you are full or hungry. Rather, the expressions tend to show your politeness
or to make you feel that someone cares for you.
Apart from the above-mentioned reasons, factors like social status, age, gender, and group
membership also add non-native speakers’ problem in learning Indonesian and Sasak. Since
Indonesian and Sasak share almost the same patterns in initiating greetings or leave takings, the
problems like greetings to children and the influence of such factor above may occur in Sasak.
Hence, this study is expected to give some contribution for the Indonesian education, especially
non-native Sasak who want to learn the Sasak language. Thus, this article tries to find out the
patterns of greetings and leave-takings used by the Sasak community in Lombok.
METHOD
This study uses an ethnographic design to observe the patterns of greeting and leave-taking among
the native Sasak in Lombok. All native speakers who were born and grew up in Lombok are
considered as the participants. Besides, the researcher also takes the role as an active participant
in the interaction. Craswell (2012) refers to this method as participant observer. In order to obtain
the data, observation sheet is used when hearing and seeing the participants greet and bid farewell
to each other in many different situations and contexts. The data observations are analyzed using
Haliday’s greeting types which consist of time-free and time-bound greeting.
These types of
greeting are compared and contrasted with the greeting and leave-taking patterns from another
culture; in this case the patterns in English.
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