A Relevance-theoretic Analysis of Mustofa Bisri’s Poem “Siapa Menyuruh?”

Abstract

This article presents an interpretive study of “Siapa Menyuruh?”, a poem by Indonesia’s contemporary poet Mustofa Bisri. The study is carried out within the framework of Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory (RT), which is based on the principles that human cognition tends to the maximization of relevance (I), and that every act of communication presumes its own optimal relevance (II). This suggests that in the relevance-theoretic perspective, Bisri wrote the poem “Siapa Menyuruh” not because he wanted to violate certain linguistic norms or any communicative maxims, but because this was the most relevant utterance he could produce. He intentionally raised the effort to process his poem because he promised greater cognitive effects to the reader. The reader who is willing to process his utterances in the poem further is granted not with one, single strong implicature, but with a number of weak implicatures.