Politeness in Bugis Family Discourse: An Ethnolinguistic Study on the Influence of Education
Keywords:
Ethnolinguistics, Linguistic Politeness, Bugis Language, Family, EducationAbstract
This study examines linguistic politeness in Bugis parent–child interaction from an ethnolinguistic perspective. It focuses on parents’ use of polite and casual pronouns and particles when addressing their children, particularly in relation to the children’s educational attainment. The data consist of naturally occurring Bugis utterances collected through observation and semi-structured interviews in Amali Village, Bone Regency, South Sulawesi. Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory is employed to identify politeness strategies, which are subsequently interpreted within an ethnolinguistic framework to uncover their cultural meanings. The findings demonstrate a systematic contrast between polite forms (idi, -ta, -ki) and casual forms (iko, -mu, -ko) in Bugis family discourse. Polite forms are used by parents to express respect and to acknowledge children’s symbolic status associated with higher education, whereas casual forms index intimacy and traditional age-based hierarchy. These patterns indicate that linguistic politeness in Bugis families is not fixed but dynamically negotiated through socio-cultural factors. The study concludes that education functions as symbolic capital that reshapes politeness practices in parent–child interaction while preserving core Bugis values of intimacy, hierarchy, and respect.
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