Politeness Strategies in Buginese Language: A Sociolinguistic Analysis in Sinjai Regency

Abstract

This study examines politeness strategies in the Buginese language as used by the Bugis
community of Sinjai Regency, South Sulawesi, from a sociolinguistic perspective.
Politeness is a central aspect of communication that reflects both cultural values and
social relationships among speech participants, yet the specific linguistic forms through
which the Bugis Sinjai community expresses politeness, and the social factors shaping
their use, have not been comprehensively documented. This study aims to describe the
forms of politeness strategies used by the Bugis community in Sinjai Regency and to
identify the linguistic forms and characteristics that mark politeness in their everyday
communication. A qualitative descriptive method was used, with data collected
through observation, interviews, and documentation involving indigenous community
members and community leaders as primary informants, supplemented by library
research. The findings show that politeness in Bugis Sinjai speech is realized through
four pragmatic maxims, namely the maxims of policy, generosity, acceptance, and
humility, and through four politeness strategies following Brown and Levinson's
framework: bald-on-record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off-record
politeness. At the morphological and syntactic levels, politeness is marked by proclitic
and enclitic pronouns, honorific vocabulary, and indirect sentence structures, all of
which realize the cultural value of siri' through its subvalues of sipatangngari,
sipakaraja, and sipakatau. These findings show that politeness in Bugis Sinjai
communication is inseparable from cultural values and is shaped by the social status
and relationship between speech participants.