Indonesian people’s sarcasm culture: an ethnolinguistic research

Abstract

This research investigates the semantic, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic aspects of the culture of Indonesian sarcasm, especially East Indonesia, namely South Sulawesi with an ethnolinguistic framework. Researchers collect sarcasm utterances and study the semantic aspects. Furthermore, the speech is used in a social experiment to obtain pragmatic data. Social experiments are carried out in two situations, namely the situation of friendship (close) and the situation free (situations not knowing each other). The utterance of sarcasm for Indonesians is a culture for expressing thoughts and feelings towards a particular problem, event, situation, or object (generally human). Indonesians use sarcasm in various emotional situations such as anger, disappointment, regret, even in joking situations. Semantically, Indonesian sarcasm has bad, insulting, or immoral meanings that can intimidate even hurt the feelings of others. So, pragmatically the use of sarcasm can lead to antipathy and even conflict. Self control is required to respond to sarcasm.