A study of lexical items used by the main character in Ca Bau Kan

This study is about lexical items as a style component. The writer analyses the study based on David crystal?s idea of Stylistics and Holmes theory of interlocutor as a part of social factor in Sociolinguistics. Following Crystal, the writer studies lexical items as used by Tan Peng Liang as the main character in speaking to interlocutors of different ethnicity. Style, according to Crystal, refers to some or all of the language habits of one person (person?s speech habit) and is identified with an individual?s personality. In this study, the writer investigates the way Tan Peng Liang, a Chinese who plays an important role in Ca Bau Kan, adjusts the use of word(s) or lexical items to the situation in speaking to interlocutors of different ethnicity. There are 16 interlocutors divided into three groups based on ethnicity: 10 Javanese, 3 Chinese, and 3 Dutch. Moreover, it was discovered that with the use of lexical items, however, Standard Indonesian is predominantly used in speaking to interlocutors of different ethnicity and coloured with other varieties: Colloquial Indonesian, Javanese, Chinese and Jakartanese. In his conversation to a Javanese, for example, he mostly uses Standard Indonesian, not Javanese. The same thing also applies to the way he speaks to a Chinese and a Dutch. From the findings, the writer also finds that the ethnicity doesn?t affect the choice of codes