Fieldtrip Report

          Socio/psycholinguistics is one of the subjects that had been taken by fifth semester students of English education study program. It has two credit hours. Actually this subject is two subjects that are combined as one subject. The first subject is Sociolinguistics and the second one is psycholinguistics. Sociolinguistics is about language that is used by people to interact with other meanwhile psycholinguistics is about how language is used in the term of mind and heart. In sociolinguistics, the topics are Language Attitude Motivation and Standards, Regional and Social Variation, Pidgins and Creoles, Speech Act, and Language and Education. In psycholinguistic, the topics are Discourse: Forms and Functions, Discourse: Comprehension and Memory, Sentence: Comprehension and Memory, Words: Meaning, Memory and Recognition, Speech Sounds: Articulation and perception, and Language and Brain.

            On January 2013, all fifth semester students of English education study program had a field trip to fulfill the learning necessity in speaking III and socio/psycholinguistics. The trip started from from 7^th to 16^th of January with the route was from Jakarta, Bali, Yogyakarta, and Bandung. In the field trip, the students were asked to have observation with native speaker. This report will focus on two topics; they are speech act (sociolinguistics) and Discourse: Forms and Functions.

            First is about speech act. Speech act means the meaning of utterance is different. It depends on condition, context, idiom, sentence, and the way people interact. Speech act has three kinds of meaning. Those are: propositional or locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary. Propositional or locutionary meaning, namely, the literal meaning of utterance. It means what is said that is the meaning. Illocutionary meaning, namely, the social function that the utterance or written text has. It means the meaning is not same with what is said. Perlocutionary, namely, the result or effect that is produced by the utterance in that given context. It means this expression is done in many times because the listener does not give response to the first expression/utterance.

            For example in the short conversation between student and native speaker from IALF:

            “Sir, can we take photo of us together?” Student asked.

            “I’m sorry, I don’t have time” said the native speaker.

            In the first meaning (propositional/locutionary) might be he really did not have time to take photo. In the second meaning (illocutionary), might be he had another job in other place so he was hurry up. In the third meaning (perlocutionary), might be he really did not want to take photo because he said in many times.

            The second example, when students of English education study program wanted to start interview with native speaker in kuta beach:

            “Hello sir, can we have conversation just for a few minute?” Student asked

            “Oh I’m sorry, I want to swim” said the native speaker

In the locutionary meaning, might be he really wanted to swim. In the illocutionary might be it was just his reason he did not want to have conversation with student. In the perlocutionary meaning, might be he really did not want to have conversation with the student because he said in many times.

The next topic is about Discourse: Forms and Functions. Discourse is a sequence of sentences that hang together or cohere, as in conversation, story or book. There are three aspects in discourse. They are: context, condition, and situation. Context is about the setting where the conversation or discourse happens. Condition is about what is relationship between whomever there. Situation is about what kind the discourse is, whether it is formal or informal. In the discourse, there are three types of conversation. Informative dialogue, idle chat and combination of informative dialogue and idle chat (in between). Informative dialogue is doing conversation to get information, idle chat is doing conversation just for fun, and combination of informative dialogue and idle chat is doing conversation not only to get information but also to refresh thinking or just for fun. The example of discourse can be seen from the interview that had been done by the students of English education study program in Kuta Beach. The student interviewed a foreigner, named Simon. The context is in Kuta Beach, The condition is Simon as informant, and the student as interviewer, and the situation is informal. The kind of conversation that student used informative dialogue Why? Because interviewer asked about how many times he goes to Bali, what do you think about Bali, and what’s the differences between Bali and his country and other. And he answered he has gone to Bali in many times, He thought that Bali is good and also he said that having vacation in Bali is cheaper than Australia. He answered all of the questions clearly and briefly.

In short, Speech Acts and Discourse: Forms and Functions occur in daily conversation in native speaker. Native speaker answer all questions briefly and clearly. There’s no idle chat. So that’s why it is very important and useful to learn about both of the topics whether the theory or directly apply it in daily life to make student have knowledge about that and share it to other people.  

*mongroro