The Language Choice of Chinese Community in Medan: A Sociolinguistics Study

Abstract

This study aims to describe the manifestation of language choice and the dominant factors of determining language choice among Chinese community inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic relations in Medan. This study used descriptive qualitative method emphasized on a multiethnic and multilingual Chinese community background. The sociolinguistic theory of language choice focused on the domain features involving family and occupation domains was used as the basis of this study. It applied Miles and Huberman technique for analyzing the data and the Bungin formula for calculating the data. Of the 80 respondents, the results of the questionnaire showed that the Hokkien sub-ethnic was the dominant sub-ethnic in Medan compared to other Chinese sub-ethnicities. The manifestation of language choice in the domain of family and occupation especially in inter-ethnic relation is dominated by vernacular language, especially Hokkien language although respondents come from non-Hokkien ethnic. However, Indonesia language becomes the main language used related to intra-ethnic relation. In addition, the dominant language choice factor is influenced by Chinese participant’s cultural backgrounds similarity.

The Phenomenon of Language Games as College Students Responses to the Revised Criminal Code Draft 2019: A Sociolinguistics Study

“…Possibilities that cause similarities in creating language games are age factor which is in the adjacent age range, the same social status which is college student, and the context of a demonstration that is the rejection of the RUU KUHP 2019. This is in line with what is said by Nasution & Ayuningtyas (2020) that language choice used by the speaker is indeed influenced by the situation of the speaker"s social community. It was also stated that age and level of education can influence language choice when communicating with others.…”

Discovering the Prosodic Domain of Aceh Hakka Tone Sandhi

“…Hakka is a dialect spoken in Southern China (Lau, 2016;Zhang, 2021). As discussed by Chang, Chang, and Chang (2021), Hakka people also migrate to other countries, so it is spoken in Southeast Asia, such as Malay (Wang, 2017;Liao, 2020;Ong, 2020), Thailand (Wang, 2018;Ungsitipoonporn, 2020), and different regions in Indonesia such as Medan (Nasution & Ayuningtyas, 2020), Aceh (Azeharie, Sari, & Tjhin, 2017;Srimulyani et al, 2018), and Singkawang (Wulandari, 2018). Regarding Aceh Hakka, the dialect focuses on the diasporic Chinese organization of Hakka Banda Aceh (Srimulyani et al, 2018) and the president of Yayasan Hakka Aceh in 2022 that is spoken by around 4.000 overseas Chinese.…”

Speech Act Varieties of Chinese and Non-Chinese Community in Medan Traditional Markets

“…This progress happened because Medan has various ethnic groups, customs, and languages. Each ethnic has its language that they are accustomed to using other than the Indonesian language (Nasution & Ayuningtyas, 2020). The habit of using vernacular language can be seen in traditional markets.…”

“…This research focuses on the utterances of Tionghoa community members that tend to use the Hokkien language frequently with people of inter-ethnicity as the interlocutors. This tendency happened because the Tionghoa community in Indonesia is dominated by Hokkian people and the Hokkian language (Nasution & Ayuningtyas, 2020). However, it is slightly different with the non-Tionghoa community members who do not always use their vernacular language in communication regardless of communicating with people of the same ethnicity.…”