The Functions of Politeness Marker “IO” in Manggarai Language: Kempo Speech

Abstract

This article presents “IO” as a politeness marker carrying different functions during interactions among the people of Kempo community in West Manggarai Regency, the province of Nusa Tenggara Timur, Indonesia. The aim therefore is to present the functions of the “IO”marker in interactions. The data were obtained by means of observing and recording formal and non-formal dialogues and by interviewing key informants for data validation. The results show that “IO” marker functions to initiate saying prayers, to initiate formal talks, to say agreement, to initiate saying disagreement, to induce in a request way, and to reply a call. These different functions appear in different contexts indicating that the Kempo speech community express a unique politeness marker that is contradictory to the idea that language varies according to social context in sociolinguistics. However, such findings confirm that politeness is universal but to express it is differently from ethnics to ethnics. In addition, the politeness strategy used by Kempo speech community is contributive to enrich the concept of politeness of Brown and Levinson as well as the theory of cost-benefit scale of Leech. The study can also inspire other researchers to do study on the socio-cultural phenomena of the Kempo speech community in particular and of the Manggarai people in general. Keywords - Descriptive Study, Functions of Politeness Marker “IO”, Manggarai Language, Kempo speech community