Background of the Study

1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background of the Study

Nowadays, there are so many people who have more than one language. Most of them are having two or more languages, namely their native language and the second language. The language which is usually mastered well by people is their mother tongue or native language. Most of them firstly used their mother tongue to communicate with their family and society. However during their communication with other people and because of the need of understanding other people about what they mean, there is a demand for the people to master or know the other languages. This condition causes many people want to learn another language to make their communication effective. People who master more than one language is called bilingual or multilingual. Hundreds of millions people in the world routinely use two or more languages in their daily lives. This also happens to the Indonesian people who are multilingual. Indonesian people master at least the Indonesian national language that is Bahasa Indonesia and their regional language. People usually master foreign languages, such as English, Japanese, Chinese, and etc. The fact that people who can use more than one language encourages them to mix code whenever they speak. It is very common people can use more than one language at the same time. Moreover, it is also possible for the bilingual or multilingual people to use more than one language in a communication even though in the same topic, context or people. 2 The condition where people use more than one language or code in the same topic, context, or people in communication is called code mixing. According to Nababan 1993:32, code mixing is the situation in which the speaker mixes two or more languages or kind of language in speech act. And Suwito 1985:75 states code mixing is the use of two languages or more inserting the elements of language from one language in the other consistently. Code mixing can be seen in spoken and written language. Code mixing in spoken language such as: radio program, television program, teaching-learning process, and etc. The code mixing can also found in written language can found in: newspaper, magazine, novel, internet medium, and etc. In internet medium there are many code mixing is found, when people chat with other people at Facebook or Yahoo Messenger. Facebook is the most famous and widely used by people. Facebook is a social networking site that is currently booming in cyberspace. Facebook is used as a place to add friends, business relations, advertising and even just play games. Facebook makes people free to do anything because people can communicate without having to meet face to face. Facebook can be thought of as people’s home on the internet. It’s a place where people can leave messages, browse through photo collections, or even to chat online. It can be a great way to keep in contact with friends and family, and even find long lost friend that we have not spoken for years. Why do a lot of people really like to update status? Individually, Facebook is regarded as a medium to show off. It tells information that can activate the same sensation in the brain like other activities such as eating food, getting money, or having sex. Facebook has become an effective medium for showing off because of 3 its simple mechanism. Whatever is written on Facebook, it will be immediately responded very quickly within seconds and will make them feel better. Facebook itself is always used by other people as a tool of communication. In the Facebook there are a lot of kinds of code mixing, when people chat or write their status in their timelines. Facebook deploys an increasing code mixing custom, especially Indonesian and English language code mixing. With regard to the mind, they prefer to talk about themselves and less likely to talk about other people. This certainly has a risk of over share. Because it is a pleasure to share anything in this medium, they don’t pay attention on issues they must share. The consequence is this may be harmful for themselves. For example, when a criminal who updates their status about the new crime, this will make it easier for the police to catch. Based on the reasons above, the writer attempts to find out code mixing occurred in Facebook status. As an illustration, the researcher will present examples in a Facebook status and some comments which describe the reality of the language use among them in which afterward the reality of the language use can be categorized as code mixing. The examples are as follows: Dasar begok Sayang kali aku gak ngerti fashion. Huft. 1 GGG : Ganteng-Ganteng Gay. 2 Sorry ya mas, hubungan kita memang harus berakhir sekarang. 3 4 From examples number 1 until number 3 with the bold writing show the examples of code mixing, because the words are used in two different languages Indonesian–English. It indicates the existence of language mixing, because the Facebook users master two languages, Indonesian and English. Based on this fact, the writer believes that research is needed to find out the use of code mixing in social networking Facebook.

1.2. Problem of the Study