PERSONAL DEIXIS IN RADIO BROADCAST: EXTINCTION SIGNAL OF ‘KAMI’IN INDONESIAN

Abstract

In Indonesian, “kami” means ‘we’, which exclusively refers to the speaker and somebody else or other people but the addressee(s) or hearers. In English, to understand ‘we’ is not as simple as in ‘kami (exclusive ‘we’)’ and ‘kita (inclusive ‘we’)’ in Indonesian. The use of person deixes ‘kami’ and ‘kita’ refers to subjects taking actions or belongings. However, recently ‘kami’ is barely used by people and the trend of using inaccurate ‘kita’ is increasing. It is the same case as in utterances used by either radio broadcasters or other parties who are interacting with them. Thus, a research on personal deixis is needed particularly about the use of personal deixes. The aim of this research is to give a description about the use of person deixes ‘kami’ and ‘kita’ by radio broadcasters and the listeners. The description of the use of such deixes can be used as a benchmark to estimate the spoken language diversity that has been commonly used on each radio station. Besides, the description of it on radio stations can show that there are mistakes in the use of deixes in spoken language. By using an indirect observation method, the data are collected by recording in morning broadcasts on five different radio stations. The result shows that only few speakers - broadcasters, callers, and interviewees - use deixes ‘kami’ or ‘kita’ correctly. Deixis ‘kita’ is often used but mostly used inaccurately. On the other side, person deixis ‘kami’ is less used, and when speakers use this deixis, they use it accurately. However, ambiguities occur when ‘kami’ or ‘kita’ is used in certain contexts. The speakers of news-based radio broadcasts use the deixes properly. Meanwhile, young-listener-targeted radios frequently use deixis ‘kita’ incorrectly, except one radio, which is a state-owned radio.