Background of Study INTRODUCTION

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of Study

Language is always changing, evolving, and adapting to the needs of its users. These happening exist because of social, economic, and cultural contact. As an integral part of culture, language cannot be separated from the problem mentioned above. People cannot avoid the language interplay, especially in an open speech community, which has a relationship with another one. The communities will have a contact language with all linguistic events as consequences. If the same speaker uses two or more languages interchangeably, it means that the language is in a state of contact. The language contact between first language and second language will create interplay. As a result, many language problems arise in human life, either oral or written. People speaking divergent languages populate many areas of the world. This diversity often comes as a classic problem in human communication. Therefore, a language may become a lingua franca to ease communication among people based on understanding among them. 1 English has become “the lingua franca of the world” to substitute Latin in the previous time. 2 As an international language, English is widely used in every corner of the world, either as a native 1 Abdul Chaer dan Leonie Agustina, Sosiolinguistik: Suatu Pengantar Jakarta: Rineka Cipta, 1995, p. 109. 2 Victoria Fromkin, An Introduction to Language: 7 th edition Boston: Heinle Thomson Co., 2003, p. 468. 2 language or a second language and almost information on any subject presented in English, so that the rest of the world knows what is new. For this reason, scholars and educated people need to be able to use English. In Indonesia, English is used mostly as the first foreign language. Considering this status, English is acquired only through learning and teaching activity design and conducted as well as possible. Nowadays, many Indonesian people are able to speak English, but not all of them speak the language in the right way and base on Standard English. When they speak, their English are often interfered with Indonesian structure as their native language. It is occurred because they think that the main purpose of their communication is just understanding, then the communicators can catch what they say even its grammar is neglected. This phenomenon happens in bilingual or multilingual countries, either in the movie dialogues, interview, newspapers, books, and magazines, or even in the high-class contest, such as Miss Universe. If their sentences are analyzed one by one, there are some errors reflecting the structure of Indonesian language. Some sentences may not contain any grammatical errors, but it sometimes sounded uncommon and awkward in English. Indonesian people sometimes transfer the structure of their first language into another one, in this case, Indonesian who knows English. If these two language structures were same, it would not be an important problem, because it is helpful based on alignment and similarity. It is mentioned as positive transfer. 3 3 Henry Guntur Tarigan, Pengajaran Analisis Kesalahan Berbahasa Bandung: Angkasa, 1988, p. 14. 3 However, the opposite case would happen if the two systems were different then the chaos begins. This transfer is known as negative transfer. Negative transfer occurs when a speaker adopts the system of hisher native language on the target language that was not the same language, for example, Indonesian language has defined-define DM pattern, but in contrast English has define –defined MD pattern. Therefore, when they translated a phrase new house into English, their translation would be house new that should be new house. Aware or not, bilingual speakers often do this kind of transfer that more recognized as language interference 4 . How far this language interference comes about, of course, depends on how far bilinguals master their target language. If they do not understand even master the target language, they will mostly transfer their source language structure into target language. The similar case happened to Qori Sandioriva, the winner of Puteri Indonesia 2009. She got a lot of criticism in public through her speech in interview session on Miss Universe 2010 , which is „so indigenous”. She made lots of error when she answered several questions from interviewer, so her English sounded awkward because she broke the rules of Standard English. Errors occurs on various aspects of language and happens both on oral and written 5 . Therefore, the awkward and uncommon sentences often come up. Weinreich says, “Interference is the occurrence of these deviations which occur in 4 Ibid, p. 15. 5 Abdul Chaer, Linguistik Umum, Jakarta: Rineka Cipta, 2007, p. 66. 4 the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language and language contacts .” 6 The language interference also occurs on various aspect of language, such as phonology, syntax, morphology, and lexical. Interference happened at level of morphology and syntax is called grammatical interference. It happened when Puteri Indonesia 2009, Qory Sandioriva, stated her opinions in interview session on Miss Universe Contest 2010, which took place in Las Vegas, United States on August 17, 2010. She mostly transferred the structure of Bahasa Indonesia into English without realizing that this transfer led her into error due to language interference. This situation attracted the writer to analyze them further. In the interview session, Qory still adopted the structure of Bahasa Indonesia when she was answering some question in English. As quoted from the video, when the interviewer asked, “Being a woman, what piece of advice would you give to a man? ” Qory replied “I think when you down, your woman can make you up ”. Maybe she wanted to say that when men feel upset, women can cheer them up, but the message becomes ambiguous because it deviates from Standard English grammar. The absence of auxiliary verb are and ambiguous sentence form bad sentence. Instead, good sentences suppose to appropriate with Standard English grammar and does not create double meanings, such as “When you fall down, your woman can raise you up.” Based on description above, the writer is interested to learn about how source language do interfere target language in English conversation. In addition, 6 Uriel Weinrich, Language in Contact: Finding and Problems, New York: Mouton Publishers, 1953, p. 1. 5 the writer also wants to find out why and what factors that cause the grammatical interference in interview session of Puteri Indonesia 2009 on Miss Universe Contest 2010. As a hypothesis, grammatical interference creates errors in using target language and it occurs because the lack of competance leads her to transfer the structure of Bahasa Indonesia as her source language into English as the target language uncontrollable. As a result, her English sounds awkward because it deviates from Standard English.

B. Focus of the Study