ETHNOGRAPHY OF SPEAKING: AN ANALYSIS

I. INTRODUCTION
A mother is yelling to her twelve year old son who always forgets to put his shoes in the shoes rack.
Mother :[ pointing at her son’s shoes]
“Sudah berapa kali mama bilang jangan taruh sepatumu di sini !”
[“How many times have I told you not to put your shoes here!”]

Son : Iya…. iya . [he grabs the shoes and put them in the shoes rack]
[ OK…..OK]

Having noticed that her son always forgets to put his shoes in the shoes in the shoes rack, the mother is yelling angrily. Her son knows why she is angry. This can be seen from his response “Iya ….iya” [ OK…..OK]. He will not answer, for example “Sudah tiga kali” [three times]. Her son can interpret his mother’s utterance “Sudah berapa kali mama bilang jangan taruh sepatumu di sini !” [“How many times have I told you not to put your shoes here!”] as an angry statement instead of a question. This example shows an utterance may be interpreted differently depending on the context.

Sociolinguists have been using discourse analysis to understand the meaning of stretches of spoken or written language beyond an utterance or a sentence level. Holmes (2008) points out that:
Discourse analysis provides a tool to identify the norms of talk among different social group and cultural group in different conversational and institutional contexts and to describe the discursive resources people use in constructing different social identities in interaction. (p. 356)
The analysis can be conducted with different kinds of approaches. One of them is ethnography of speaking.

Ethnography of speaking framework focuses on speech event as a whole, and embraces the total social and cultural setting as components in the analysis. Dell Hymes developed for the analysis of communication events involved the following components:
·Topic: what people are talking about
·Setting and Scene: It refers to the time and place of a speech act and, in general, to the physical circumstances.
·Participants: Speaker and audience. The audience can be distinguished as addressees and other hearers.
·Ends: Purposes, goals
·Act Sequence: Form and order of the event.
·Key: Cues that establish the "tone, manner, or spirit" of the speech act.
.Instrumentalities: Forms and styles of speech.
·Norms: Social rules governing the event and the participants' actions and reaction.
·Genre: The kind of speech act or event.

II. DATA ANALYSIS
The data was collected from utterances in a conversation among three people. The conversation, which lasted for four minutes, took place in the grocery store. Below is the data of the respondents.

DATA OF RESPONDENTS
NO NAME AGE EDUCATION OCCUPATION LANGUAGES
1 LKH 60 Elementary School Grocery Owner Indonesian, Betawi, Sundanese
2 JM 45 Elementary School Street Vendor Indonesian, Javanese
3 LL 26 Bachelor in English English teacher Indonesian, Sundanese


Based on Hymes’ framework, the data can be analyzed as follows:
·Topic : the difficulties of earning money nowadays
·Setting and Scene: The conversation took place in the grocery store, in the morning
·Participants:
LKH: Grocery owner
JM : Street vendor, visiting customer and grocery owner’s neighbor
LL : English teacher, grocery owner’s niece
·Ends [Purpose]:
The purpose is to share problem about the difficulties of earning money
nowadays.
·Act Sequence:
The conversation began as a response to LL’s question to her aunt, LKH.
LL : Buat apa ?
[What for ?]
Then, LKH responded with :
LKH :Katanya mau dagang. Kalo mau dagang di inpres noh ada.
Tapinya ya gak bisa. Tempat si Encang noh kalo mau dibeli.
[She said she wanting sell. If she wanna sell at Inpres, go there.
But yeah, she can’t. It’s Encang’s place if she wanna buy it].

Latter on, the conversation developed in the form of question and answer, like in:
LL : Mau dagang apa emang si Wiwit ?
[What does Wiwit wanna sell actually?]
LKH : Tauk.
[Dunno]
LL :Ngaco
[That’s silly.]
LKH : Emang dagang enak?
[You think selling easy ?]
LL : Iya, susah kan. Sepi ya, sekarang ini....
[Yeah, difficult, right ? Not many transaction nowadays]
LKH : Kelihatannya enak, yah? Sekarang...
[Looks easy, right ?]
LL :Kenyataannya ?
[Actually ?]

When JM was coming, she was directly involved in the conversation. From the
middle to the end of conversation, LL did not take part in the conversation. She
was only listening because as an English teacher, she did not have any experience
in running a business. She could not share her opinion or feeling towards the topic
of the conversation: the price of a kiosk at Inpres market and the
difficulties of running a business nowadays like LKH and JM.

LKH : Iya. Entu yang ke sini, anak buahnya bos. Jualan rokok. Kalo dia
banyak duit bosnya, ya ? Kalo yang embak-embak tuh, yang
jualan sayuran tuh. Dua puluh lima juta ?

[Yes. The one coming here is the boss’s man. Selling cigarrettes.
He has lots of money, right ? What about he girl selling vegetables?
Twenty-five million?]

JM :Kalo kita dua puluh lima juta? Buat beli apa ? Jualan aja kaki lima.
[Twenty five millions ? How can we afford it ? We are only street
vendors]

·Key:
B
· Instrumentalities:
Styles of speech is casual because the conversation took place in a grocery store.
Formal style is not required in this place, for example :

LKH : (laughing) Ntar kita dagang ya...
[We will trade, then.]
JM : O, iya...Kalo nggak bisa dagang gimana nih ? Nyari makannya
gimana ? Udah make gerobak. Jualan kaki lima.
[Yeah right….What if we can’t sell? How can we survive? We’re
only using carts. Being street vendor.]

Both speakers used informal style Ntar kita dagang ya... instead of Nanti kita
berdagang ya. [We will trade, then.]. Then, Kalo nggak bisa dagang gimana nih?
instead of Bagaimana kalau kita tidak bisa berdagang [What if we can’t sell?]

· Norms:
The norm in this conversation allow the participants to interrupt, like in:
LKH : Apa kita jual kerbau ya ? (laughing) Berapa biji kerbaunya?
[What about selling buffalo ? (laughing) How many buffaloes ?]
JM : (Laughing) Ya, kalo punya kerbau kalo nggak punya ? Jual apa ?
Jual kecapung? (Laughing) Jual kecapung juga kagak laku.
(laughing) Yes, if we have buffaloes. But, if we don’t ? What can
we sell ? Dragonflies ? (laughing). Nobody buys dragonflies.
LKH : Dah sekarang mendingan kita jadi tukang sapu aja di jalanan.
[Well, now we’d better become street sweepers.]

LKH interrupted JM when they made a joke of selling buffaloes to buy a kiosk at
Inpres market. Knowing that they were talking nonsense, LKH interrupted using
the particle “Dah” to move to another idea.

· Genre:
The kind of speech act is conversation between people who have known each
others.
· Rules of interaction:
There is no prescribed orders of speaking