DEIKSIS IN THE RITUAL SPEECH OF DEATH CEREMONY IN TORAJAN CULTURE: ANTHROPOLINGUISTIC APPROACH

Abstract

This paper aims to explain deixis in ritual utterances in the Rambu Soloq ceremony, the death ceremony in Torajan culture, which indexes various meanings based on the context in which they are used. The data in this paper were taken from several utterances in the chant of Badong and Mebala Kollong of Rambu Soloq ceremonies in North Toraja Regency, South Sulawesi. The data were obtained through observation, recording, and note-taking methods. After that, they were transcribed and translated into English. The samples selected purposively consist of 18 utterances containing three types of deixis, namely pronoun deixis, place deixis, and social deixis. They were then analyzed qualitatively using an anthropolinguistic approach from the point of view of performance, indexicality, and participants (Duranti, 1997) in disclosing the meanings of various types of deixis. The results of the analysis show that the types of deixis contained in the utterances of the chant of Badong and Mebala Kollong ritual speech are independent and dependent deixis in the form of prefixes and suffixes, collective inclusive, and collective exclusive deixis, as well as individual deixis. Meanwhile, place deixis contextually refers to both visible and invisible places. Social deixis refers to various social relations in the society where the different types of deixis are used. Those types of deixis index various referents or meanings based on their context including situational, cultural, social, and ideological context of the community related by co-text such as paralinguistics and prosody. The types of deixis in those utterances contain various values and norms such as religious values, kinship, brotherhood, mutual respect, praise, and law norms that can be a source of local wisdom in building the character of the society.