Dimensi Sosial-Kultural Pisuhan Surabayaan dalam Perspektif Sosiolinguistik

Abstract

As an egalitarian, open, and outspoken speech community, Surabaya speakers shape “Bahasa Suroboyoan” into a variety that is direct, spontaneous, and impressionistically coarse compared with standard Javanese. One salient manifestation of this directness is swearing (pisuhan), a spontaneous negatively-valued expression uttered with a heavier spoken stress as a strong emotional release, which may take the form of abusive words, swearwords, blasphemy, curses, obscenity, or expletives. Prior studies on swearing have examined Javanese, Indonesian, and Madurese, but none has specifically addressed swearing in “Bahasa Suroboyoan”, despite its distinctive lexicon absent from other Javanese varieties. This gap motivates the present study, which aims to (1) describe the forms of swearing utterances in “Bahasa Suroboyoan” based on sociocultural context, (2) identify the characteristics of swearing-form usage based on sociocultural context, (3) explain the functions of swearing utterances, and (4) describe the phenomenon of code-mixing accompanying swearing. This descriptive-qualitative study draws on 117 speech events comprising 134 swearing utterances, collected from May 2007 to January 2009 through tapping-and-recording, observation-and-note-taking, and in-depth interview techniques, using purposive and time sampling, validated through source and method triangulation, and analyzed contextually with attention to social, situational, and cultural dimensions. Findings show that swearing in “Bahasa Suroboyoan” occurs as words, phrases, and clauses; exhibits twelve referential characteristic models; performs fourteen emotive functions; and is accompanied by both language code-mixing (Javanese–Indonesian, Javanese–English, Javanese–Arabic) and speech-level code-mixing (ngoko–krama).