A study on terms of address used to address members of family and relatives in Gek dialect

This study deals with terms of address used to address members of family and relatives in Gek dialect. The writer is interested in doing this research because she finds that terms of address used in Chinese, especially in Gek dialect, are more complicated than in English. Apart from that, these terms of address are not common for many people in Indonesia and have its own characteristics which are different from other terms of address. Therefore, the statement of the problems are formulated as follows : What the terms of address for members of Chinese family and relatives in Gek dialect used by Gek Chinese Indonesian families in Surabaya are and why one still maintain the terms of address. The theories underlying this study are language and dialect, Chinese Language and its dialects, and Hakka (Gek) dialect. This research is categorized as a descriptive qualitative research which means the writer described the terms of address qualitatively. It is also categorized as a field research since the writer went to the informants' house and collected the data needed. The data for this study are obtained from four informants. They are chosen under some assumptions, that is, they have background of Gek Chinese families and also they still use this dialect for addressing their family and relatives. Using a list of question and tables, the writer collected the data needed. After that, she classified the terms of address and examined them. Then, the writer analyzed the reasons of the information for still maintaining the terms of address. The writer also got the fact that there is a little bit difference in some terms. After being analyzed, it is known that the differences are only variants. Furthermore, there are two additional terms, namely, "Dang" and "Piau". "Dang" indicates that a speaker and the members of relatives have the same surname and also have a closer relationships while the term "Piau" is otherwise. The writer suggests that next researchers add and review this study or they could choose the other topics concerning sociolinguistics, not only terms of address