A sociolinguistic investigation of Acehnese with a focus on West Acehnese: a stigmatised dialect.
type: CreativeWork
description: This study investigates differences between two Acehnese dialects, the high status North Acehnese and the stigmatised West Acehnese, and explores the social interpretations of these differences. The linguistic subsystems that differentiate the two dialects are analysed and attitudes of Northern and Western Acehnese speakers towards the dialects are investigated. To obtain primary data from native speakers, intensive fieldwork in The Province of Aceh was carried out. An Acehnese wordlist from Daud & Durie’s (1999) Kamus basa Acèh = Kamus bahasa Aceh = Acehnese-Indonesian-English thesaurus, -which is mainly based on North Acehnese, was used to elicit a comparative wordlist in West Acehnese. Three different methods were used in the data collection: participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and the matched guise test. The data from the questionnaire of the matched guise test was analysed statistically in order to determine the significance of the results. There are salient differences between North and West Aceh dialects regarding several key phonological features and lexical items. It is also found that Acehnese has a more complex vowel system in comparison to Bahasa Indonesia. Although the Acehnese vowel system includes all the vowels of Bahasa Indonesia, North and West Acehnese exhibit different vowel correspondences in Indonesian loanwords and in some cases replace Indonesian vowels with the vowel /ɯ/, which is unusual amongst the world’s languages. Some differences characterise North Acehnese as a ‘refined,’ ‘standard,’ and ‘prestigious’ Acehnese variety and West Acehnese as a ‘rough,’ ‘vulgar’, and stigmatised variety. However, these characterisations need careful discussion in this context. Due to the negative opinion towards their dialect, West Acehnese speakers accommodate their language style to North Acehnese when they communicate with people of non-West Acehnese background. However, the strong negative judgement that the majority of Acehnese peopl…
abstract: This study investigates differences between two Acehnese dialects, the high status North Acehnese and the stigmatised West Acehnese, and explores the social interpretations of these differences. The linguistic subsystems that differentiate the two dialects are analysed and attitudes of Northern and Western Acehnese speakers towards the dialects are investigated. To obtain primary data from native speakers, intensive fieldwork in The Province of Aceh was carried out. An Acehnese wordlist from Daud & Durie’s (1999) Kamus basa Acèh = Kamus bahasa Aceh = Acehnese-Indonesian-English thesaurus, -which is mainly based on North Acehnese, was used to elicit a comparative wordlist in West Acehnese. Three different methods were used in the data collection: participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and the matched guise test. The data from the questionnaire of the matched guise test was analysed statistically in order to determine the significance of the results. There are salient differences between North and West Aceh dialects regarding several key phonological features and lexical items. It is also found that Acehnese has a more complex vowel system in comparison to Bahasa Indonesia. Although the Acehnese vowel system includes all the vowels of Bahasa Indonesia, North and West Acehnese exhibit different vowel correspondences in Indonesian loanwords and in some cases replace Indonesian vowels with the vowel /ɯ/, which is unusual amongst the world’s languages. Some differences characterise North Acehnese as a ‘refined,’ ‘standard,’ and ‘prestigious’ Acehnese variety and West Acehnese as a ‘rough,’ ‘vulgar’, and stigmatised variety. However, these characterisations need careful discussion in this context. Due to the negative opinion towards their dialect, West Acehnese speakers accommodate their language style to North Acehnese when they communicate with people of non-West Acehnese background. However, the strong negative judgement that the majority of Acehnese peopl…
author: Zulfadli
keywords: Acehnese; West Acehnese; stigmatised dialect; language attitude; accommodation; Matched Guise Test; loanword phonology; lexical semantics
date published: 2015
date modified: 2026-07-24T00:50:44Z
provider: University of Adelaide
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Adelaide

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2440/92352