Levels of Discourse Information in Indonesian

Patterns from Traditional and Modern Short Stories

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.210427.067How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Backgrounding, foregrounding, discourse, information, level, Indonesian, narratives, peak

Abstract

This paper reports on a multi-level discourse information structure in Indonesian and how each level is signalled, an expanded analysis beyond contrasting background to foreground information, the main focus of the earlier studies on classic Malay, Indonesian, and Sundanese texts. Additionally, these pioneer investigations have not included a comparative analysis of data groups within a language or cross languages. In this regard, as the official language of the Republic of Indonesia, Indonesian provides such a context, given its transformation from a trade to a modernized language through a national language planning program. Thus, this present study intends to identify how Indonesian contrast types of discourse information by examining a representative corpus of traditional and modern short stories previously analysed (1945-1965 and 2000-2006 data) and additional 2016-2019 publications. Using Aspect, Tense, and Labovian Global Narrative Structure, the analysis shows that: (1) Indonesian distinguishes five discourse information levels: ordinary background, significant background, ordinary foreground, significant foreground, and peak, coded by overt and underlying linguistic markers, (2) Aspect differentiates the background from foreground levels, (3) a tense switch from the past tense to the Historical present defines the ordinary-significant distinction, and (4) a combination of overt and underlying markers depicts the peak level.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Rama Munajat
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/04/28
TI  - Levels of Discourse Information in Indonesian
BT  - Proceedings of the Thirteenth Conference on Applied Linguistics (CONAPLIN 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 437
EP  - 444
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210427.067
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.210427.067
ID  - Munajat2021
ER  -