Directive Speech Acts on Ulaon Unjuk in Batak Toba Custom: Gender Perspective

摘要

In Batak Toba culture, women are not permitted to speak in any cultural ceremonies, except in traditional marriage ceremonies, namely manuppaki (giving donations) and mangulosi (giving ulos-a traditional Batak Toba cloth) where they are equal to man in term of giving advices. This research aims to find out the significant differences of directive speech acts uttered by either, male or female guests and the factors why the differences occured during the traditional ulaon unjuk activities. The method of this research is qualitative descriptive. All data were collected by recording and interviewing the female and male guests during the events. Then, all the utterances were orthographically transcribed. The utterances containing directive speech act were analyzed using the pragmatic approach. The results of the research show that the female guests tend to use three directive acts; warning, ordering, prohibitting, asking, commanding, requesting, advising, suggesting, while the utterances of male guests were classified into forbidding, commanding, warning, ordering, asking, begging, requesting, suggesting, and advising. The factors that make the directive speech act of male guests different from the female guests' are due to the patrilineage system in Batak Toba where the lineage of a family is taken from the father. Thus, men have more power. They are are considered as kings in their families. Regarding to that system, begging and asking were fewer to be uttered by male guests during the ulaon unjuk activities. The second factor was because of the dominant conversations carried out by the male guests. Men have more opportunities in delivering their speech in various traditional Batak Toba custom. That situation naturally makes the male guests more clever than the females in expanding the topic of conversation. The third factor was because of the emotional feeling. The emotional relationship between a mother to a child is usually stronger than a father to a child. That is because mothers are the ones who are obliged to treat their children. This condition also caused the female guests delivered more directive speech in terms of asking, advising and forbidding for the brides during ulaon unjuk activities.