Gay Language in Bali (Sociolinguistics Study on Homosexual and Bisexual Men in Bali)

Abstract

In community, people may use different language variation accordance with their age, gender, education, profession, ethnic origin, etc. (Holmes, 2013).Many homosexual and bisexual men in Indonesia speak a language variation that they call Bahasa Bencong/Banci or Bahasa Gay (Gay language), a linguistic phenomenon based on the national language, Bahasa Indonesia (Boellstorff, 2004).This study aimed at investigating the linguistic features, derivation and function of language used by homosexual and bisexual men in Bali, Indonesia.Eight respondents involved in this study were selected through the snowball sampling technique.The data were collected by taperecording respondents' conversation in natural settings and interviewing them.The findings revealed interesting facts of the features of gay language, particularly the lexicon.It was created in a very creative way with the semantic alteration to the original words.The new words they used were formulated by adding affixes to the morphemes or existing words.Other types of word formation found in the study including syllabic substitution, blending, vowel shift, backformation, borrowing, reduplication, clipping and acronym.Another interesting point from the lexical feature was the connotation through female name of a person or famous public figures which signify different meaning.In addition to the lexicon, the use of homophobic words were found relatively often during this study, in which they often call each other with homo or banci (transvestite).Feminine pronouns were also another prominent feature of gay language found in this study.They addressed each other by employing feminine pronouns and feminine names.Further, they also used "feminine technique" in the way they pronounce words.Most of them used the high-pitched tone and rising utterance-final intonation resembling women's intonation.In this study, it was also found that the gay language served many functions for its community and among those functions were as a secret language, an identity of the community and language that provided sense of similarity and belonging to the member of the community.The gay language also functioned to show humor and aided them to speak in a friendlier and fun way.

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