The Use of Local Malay and Woirata in Social Media

In this study, I investigated the language used by the Woirata community on Kisar Island in the Facebook groups “Putra Putri Oirata” and “Keluarga Manheri Mauhara”. I classified the language used in the posts and comments on each Facebook group to capture the language repertoires of the Woirata peop...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNusa Vol. 71; pp. 41 - 55
Main Author Nazarudin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Universitas Katolik Indonesia Atma Jaya, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies 01.09.2021
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ISSN0126-2874
2187-7297
DOI10.15026/116870

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Summary:In this study, I investigated the language used by the Woirata community on Kisar Island in the Facebook groups “Putra Putri Oirata” and “Keluarga Manheri Mauhara”. I classified the language used in the posts and comments on each Facebook group to capture the language repertoires of the Woirata people on social media. The data show that the Woirata community uses a different variety in different domains: formal Indonesian for obituaries and politics, local Malay (MTJ, or Far East Malay) for daily conversations and comments on politics, and Woirata for self-expressive comments. Younger users employ innovative orthography understood only among the younger MTJ users, boasting about their creativity. From the data, it can be seen that they have developed a new lingua franca on the Internet that can be defined as a new “writing orality”.
ISSN:0126-2874
2187-7297
DOI:10.15026/116870