A Study of Indonesian Chinese Language Learners Using Chinese Sarcasm and the Cultural Differences

• Main Authors: DINALIA WIDJAJA, 黃廷婷
• Other Authors: Hsieh, Chi-Yi
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/7f5r8t

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 華語文教學研究所 === 106 === In order to respect both parties, people often deliberately violate the cooperative principle and follow the politeness principle, using satirical expressions to indirectly express their dissatisfaction and criticism toward each other. The meaning of sarcasm is in order to maintain each other's face, using a particular communication way to express criticism or dissatisfaction about the real situation or another negative attitude of each person. The particular communication way here refers to in-direct communication expression, can be expressed by using rhetoric. Besides, the use of sarcasm involves not only the cultural differences but also the used materials and conceptual comprehension. For example, Indonesians usually use the word “Otak udang” to sarcasm people who have low IQ, translate into Chinese is “Head of a Shrimp”, while Chinese speaker won’t use “Head of a Shrimp” to sarcasm people with low IQ. This indicates that there are many cultural differences and conceptual differences between the sarcasm phrases used by Indonesian and Chinese speakers. The method of collecting material in this study is based on the Discourse Completion Task, and then allows Indonesian Chinese learners to answer questions. The assignments included the topics in the individual phases of The Threshold Level. This study is aimed at 20 Indonesian language speakers’ whose Chinese language at middle or high level and 20 Chinese speakers. From the statistics data, the researcher find out that most of Indonesian Chinese learners’ sarcasm sentences is using in-depth association. In-depth association can also increase the sarcasm level and more have indirect meaning, but the premise is that the listener must first understand the context of the topic in order to understand the speaker's real meaning. Then, there are not many Indonesian Chinese learner using association terms that contain Indonesian national culture, out of some keywords have opposite meaning to Chinese culture, such as “bull” and “red”, but the Chinese speaker can understand the meaning of the whole sentences through the relation between the words in the sentences. There are only three words that contain relatively strong Indonesian national cultures, such as “Head of Shrimp”, “Mother's child” and “The land crocodile”. These words came from the fact that the Indonesian language has been translated into Chinese directly, and this concept does not exist in the Chinese language concept, which makes it impossible for Chinese speakers to understand its meaning. Indonesian Chinese learners’ sarcasm can basically be understood by mostly Chinese speaker. But also there are still some sarcasm sentence cannot be understood by Chinese speaker, researcher believe that the difference Indonesian views on politeness and the vocabularies that contain Indonesian culture in some sarcasm sentences will affect Chinese speaker understand the meaning of their sarcasm sentences. Then, most of Indonesian Chinese learners also can understand the sarcasm sentences made by Chinese speakers. Basically, although Indonesian Chinese learners cannot understand every meaning of vocabulary in the sentences, but if they can capture and understand the key words or phrases, it’s enough to understand the most basic meanings of Chinese speakers’ sarcasm sentences. The most common rhetoric strategic in Indonesian Chinese learner’ sarcasm sentences are metonymy strategic. As Chinese is not the native language of Indonesian Chinese learners, they tend to adopt relatively simple rhetorical strategies such as: metonymy rhetoric strategic or metaphor rhetoric strategies. The results analyzed in this study about the relationship between sarcasm sentences and Chinese language proficiency are in line with the notions by Wen Chuanhua (2012) that in order to satirize other people, they need better language organization and communication skills, so they can make an objective description and can clearly expressed their sarcasm position and concept. For the teaching of sarcasm, the researcher thinks in order to avoid misunderstanding of sarcasm sentences between Chinese speakers and Indonesian Chinese learners, it is necessary to improve Chinese proficiency of Indonesian Chinese learners. More importantly, we should increase the Chinese learners' about Chinese cultural knowledge and allow them to more read or listen daily conversations among Chinese speakers, hopefully will be helpful in increasing knowledge about Chinese culture.