Being polite or flirting

As Indonesia rich of cultures and has vast number of local languages,

communication across communities is therefore often difficult due to
distinctive languages spoken in every ethnic groups. While Indonesian
language is settled as nations language so that everybody can convey
information inter-culturally, the phenomenon today, however, is that the
modern society naturally form their new variety of language intraculturally (ethnolect; Herk, 2010) as the effect of massive and regular
engagement of inter-cultures in the particular meeting area, e.g. a town
where they do a trade, a migration town, and so on, (Mahmud 2008). In
Makassar, as the outcome of assimilation between four local ethnic groups
of

South-Sulawesi

island

(Makassarese,

Buginese,

Torajanese,

and

Mandarise) and their dialects, the local inhabitant naturally add certain
suffixes when speaking Indonesian, (Mahmud, 2010). For instance, suffix
{-ta} and {-ki} which both mean you/your in polite way. Those extra
suffixes are exclusively understood by the citizen of Makassar as it is only
used in the area, (Pelras, 1996). Interestingly, when people from outside
of the island, (e.g., Javanese, who have no idea about the variety of
Indonesian language spoken in Makassar), were converging to resemble
his/her interlocutors (Giles et al., 1991), they often misuse the suffixes.
Even if they got it right when using it, it will be considered differently by
the local people, not the way it should be understood. For example, when
outsider man student talking to native woman student in the casual
conversation after class has over.
kelompok berapa-ki

what group are you?

berapa orang dikelompok-ta?

how many people are in your

group?
(Nurhadi Hamka, personal experience, as eavesdropper, 2013)

The examples above demonstrate the speakers act of converging by

using the suffixes {-ki} and {-ta} to resemble more closely his
interlocutor. As brief observation I conducted, I assume that before start
converging, the speaker at first might be just as eavesdropper or
overhearer, observing the language used by the people around him. And

then, within such period of time, he eventually understands the use of

those suffixes including the function of each. Bell (1997) explained this
situation as a social evaluation of linguistic features that leads to style
shift. However, when eavesdropper, overhearer, auditor, or even the
addressee herself in the situation above understands about the language
and cultures of Makassar, they will assume that the use of {-ki} and {-ta}
by the speaker in the example above was considered overusing of polite
suffixes as the power between the speaker and the addressee was equal
(students). In addition, the situation has changed to casual context where
the use of {-ki} will automatically shift to {-ko} and suffix {-ta} to {-mu}.
Therefore, using polite suffixes in the situation above was not crucial.
Moreover, Speer (2002) and Hobbs (2003) argued that women are found
to be more polite than men which also means that men are less polite
than women. Thus, when the man speaker uses polite suffixes in the
situation where being polite is not necessarily needed, it is highly possible
to eventually create an image of the act of flirting rather than the act of
being polite.
Questions to be discussed:
Do you have the same phenomenon where the act of converging of the
outsider is misunderstood by the local speaker/addressee? How does that
happen? Does it happen only inter-language or also intra-language?

References:
Bell, Allan. (1997). Language style as audience design. In Nikolas
Coupland and Adam Jaworski, eds 1997, Sociolinguistics: A reader,
240-50. St. Martins Press.
Giles, Howard, Coupland, Justine, and Coupland, Nikolas. (1991). Contexts
of

accommodation:

Developments

in

applied

sociolinguistics.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Herk, Gerard Van. (2012). What is Sociolinguistics?. West Sussex, UK:
Wiley-Blackwell.
Hobbs, P. (2003). The medium is the message: Politeness strategies in

mens and womens voice mail messages. Journal of Pragmatics, 35,

243-262. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00100-5.
Mahmud, Murni. (2008). Politeness in Bugis. Ph.D. Thesis, The Australian
National University.
Mahmud, Murni. (2010). Politeness in Bugis. A Study in Linguistics
Anthrophology (volume I and II), Badan Penerbit Universitas Negeri
Makassar, Makassar.
Pelras, C. (1996). The Bugis. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Inc.
Speer, Susan A. (2002). Sexist Talk: gender Categories, Participant
Orientations and Irony, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 6 (3): 347-377.