Criticizing Strategies in English and Javanese Languages: A Comparative Study

This research is a pragmatics study of speech acts on EFL (English as Foreign Language) learners and native Javanese in expressing criticism. This study was conducted to analyze the criticizing strategies used by EFL learners who have Javanese background and native Javanese, and to analyze the comparison between them using qualitative approach. The subjects of this study are 27 EFL learners and 30 native Javanese speakers. Data for this study is elicited from the respondents through Discourse Completion Task (DCT) which consists of six situations with different levels of status and ages. The respondents in each group are asked to write the expression of criticism to complete the DCT. Their responses are collected to be analyzed based on the Nguyens theory of criticizing strategies. The findings of the study show that most of the respondents from the first group (EFL learners) utilized indirect strategies more than 70% in three of six conditions (close-higher, close-lower, unfamiliar-equal) and almost 50% in one other condition (unfamiliar higher). The rest of the conditions are using combination strategy (close-equal) in 56%. Only in unfamiliar-higher situation, almost 50% of them use direct strategies. In the other condition, all of the respondents in Native Javanese group utilized indirect and combination strategies more than 45%. None of them used direct strategies more than 25% in all of the conditions. It is also found that in average, most of two of group participants used indirect strategies in performing criticizing acts