Gender-Based Conversation Topic of Indonesian Speakers in Japanese Conversations with Japanese Native Speakers at The First Meeting

Abstract

Without a topic, conversation will not occur. However, the choice of conversation topic also needs to be considered, especially if the speech partner is a speaker with a different cultural and linguistic background. This study aimed to identify what conversation topics are raised by Indonesian-speaking Japanese learners in conversations with contact situations at the first meeting. The participants of this study were divided into male and female participants. The data was taken through roleplay conversation with the participants being 20 Indonesian speaking students and 20 Japanese speaking students. Roleplay conversations were carried out in two different settings, namely the setting of cultural exchange events at universities in Indonesia and the setting of conversations on trains in Indonesia. From the results of data analysis, it is known that for both male and female Indonesian speakers, both in the setting of cultural exchange events at universities in Indonesia and meetings on trains in Indonesia, the category of conversation topics that is most often raised is the category of personal information of the speakers and speech partners and categories of Indonesian and Japanese cultures and situations. Seeing these results, it can be concluded that both male and female Indonesian speakers have a greater desire to build deeper interpersonal relationships with Japanese speakers. This information was known from the fact that there were many occurrences of topics related to extracting information related to speech partners in all conversation groups.