MEETING 5 : LINGUISTIC PRACTICES

According to Foley (1999), Linguistic practices is any communicative practices which

promotes coordination of action between beings in on-going social structural coupling
through the meaning bearing capacity of signs drawn from a large system of signs and their
combinatorial possibilities called language. The signs in this system are spoken and also
gestures as the signs of the deaf.
“Practice theory” is this seeming paradox: that language, culture, and society all
apparently have a preexisting reality but at the same time they are very much the products
of individual humans’ words and actions.

The basic idea underlying practice theory is that structures (both linguistic and
social structures) at the same time constrain and give rise to/cause human actions, which
in turn create, recreate, or reconfigure those same structures – and so on, with structures
and actions successively giving rise to one another. This kind of human action – that
which is embedded within social and linguistic structures, that which both reflects and
shapes such structures – is known as “practice” or “agency.” (Struktur bahasa dan struktur
sosial pada saat yang bersamaan mengakibatkan dan menimbulkan tindakan-tindakan
manusia dan sebaliknya tindakan manusia menciptakan, menciptakan ulang, dan
mengkonfigurasi ulang struktur-struktur (bahasa dan sosial) yang sama dengan struktur-
struktur dan tindakan-tindakan yang secara terus menerus saling mempengaruhi. Tindakan
manusia seperti ini – yang melekat pada struktur sosial dan bahasa yang mana keduanya
merefleksikan dan membentuk struktur-struktur tersebut – itulah yang disebut practice atau
agency).

Sherry Ortner, for example, defines practice further as being imbued with
dimensions of inequality. She considers any form of human action or interaction to be
practice “as far as the analyst recognized it as reverberating with features of inequality,
domination, and the like in its particular historical and cultural setting” (1989:11–12; see also
Ortner 1984). “ She asserts that ”Practice” “emerges from structure, it reproduces structure,
and it has the capacity to transform structure” (Ortner 1989:12).

Practice theorists are interested in questions of social reproduction and social

transformation – why things sometimes change and sometimes remain the same. One concept
practice theorists have used to explain this process is Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, which he
uses to refer to a set of predispositions/tendency that produce practices and representations
conditioned by the structures from which they emerge. Habitus is a difficult concept but one
that is potentially very illuminating, for it can be used to describe how people socialized in a
certain way will often share many perspectives and values, as well as styles of eating,
talking, or behaving.
Social systems – languages, habitus, structures, cultures, etc. – are created and
recreated, reinforced, reshaped, and reconfigured by / emerge from the actions and words
of particular individuals, groups, and institutions acting in socioculturally conditioned
ways.
In other words, languages and cultures emerge dialogically in a continuous manner
through the social and linguistic interactions of individuals “always already situated in a
social, political, and historical moment” (Mannheim and Tedlock 1995:9). Neither structure
nor practice, therefore, should be seen as analytically prior to the other. Instead, each should
be seen as being embedded in the other. Social and linguistic structures emerge from the
everyday actions of real people, and vice versa. The concept of emergence as it is used in
linguistic anthropology (as well as other fields) refers to instances when the whole is more
than the sum of the parts. Language, culture, and social structures emerge from social
practice on the part of individuals but cannot be understood with reference only to those
individuals but as groups.
Furthermore, DURANTI, ALESSANDRO (1997) stated Linguistic anthropologists
is about the ways in which the words said on a given occasion, a way of thinking about the
world and the nature of human existence.
Consider greetings, for example. In many societies, greetings take the form of
questions about a person’s health, e.g. the English “how are you?” In other societies,
greetings include questions about the participants’ whereabouts, e.g. the pan-Polynesian
“where are you going?” why does the way in which one answers matter? Does the content of
such routine exchanges reveal something about the users, their ancestors, humanity at large?
Why do people greet at all? How do they know when to greet or who to greet? Do the
similarities and differences in greetings across language varieties, speech communities, and
types of encounters within the same community reveal anything interesting about the
speakers or to the speakers?
An Example of the most well-known greeting in Torajan people : “manasumoraka?”
This is illustrated in the following short dialogue :
 A : ‘Manasumoraka’? (Sudah masakkah?)
B : ‘Manasumo. Talendu’opa (Sudah masak. Mari singgah)
C : ‘Kurre sumanga’. Ki/Ku tarra’pa’. (Terima kasih. Kami/Saya lanjut).
B : ‘Iamoke. Ta pada salama’ (Ia. Semoga kita sama-sama mengalami keselamatan)

Why is such a greeting used to greet? Where is it derived from?

Pada umumnya masyarakat Toraja memasak nasi dengan menggunakan belanga dari
tanah liat. Beras dalam belanga tanah liat dimasak dengan api dan air. Ketika beras sudah
diperkirakan setengah masak, maka harus diambil 1 biji lalu dipencet. Kalau hasil pencetan
itu sudah terbagi 3 maka masakan harus dikeluarkan airnya (diti'dikki) untuk dimatangkan
dengan cara dipareso'/dipadada' dengan meletakkannya di samping tungku di atas bara api.
Ketiga hasil pencetan beras itulah yang mengandung rahasia keabadian hidup yaitu: api, air,
dan tanah. Api berasal dari langit, air dari dalam tanah (ditimbah), dan tanah
liat/belangah dari bumi itu sendiri. Perpaduan ketiganya inilah yang dipakai untuk
memasak dan mematangkan ‘ma’nasu’ nasi. Supaya belanga kena panas secara merata dari
tungku, belanga itu harus diputar secara berlawanan dengan jarum jam yaitu dari timur
ke barat lewat utara. Mengapa? Karena sumber hidup itu berasal dari timur (sumber
kehidupan) menuju barat (sumber kebangkitan) melalui utara (bersama Puang Matua
'God'). Nasi yang sudah dimatangkan dengan api, air,dan tanah liat yang berasal dari atas
bumi (langit), dari dalam bumi (air) dan dari bumi (tanah liat) yang diciptakan oleh Puang
Matua itulah yang merupakan sumber hidup dan keselamatan bagi manusia agar umur
panjang. Maka sesungguhnya ungkapan ‘manasumoraka’ adalah makna tersembunyi dari
‘Apakah anda memiliki umur Panjang?’ atau ‘Apakah langit dan bumi bersama/milik
anda?’. Jawaban ‘manasumo, talendu’opa’ artinya ‘Ya, kami/saya memilikinya. Semoga
anda juga memilikinya agar kita sma-sama memperoleh keselamatan.
(HAL DI ATAS SANGAT BERKAITAN DENGAN KISAH TENTANG PADI (PARE)
YANG BEGITU SAKRAL YANG PADA BAGIAN AKHIR KISAHNYA
DISEBUTKAN SBB: “MENGKALAOMI ADE’NA PARE TALLU BULINNA
ROKKO TAMPONA LIMBONG SITARANAK LOMBU MASAKKA’/TURUNLAH
PADI KE SAWAH HIDUP BERSAMA LUMPUR SEJUK”. DARI KUTIPAN CERITA
TERSEBUT TERUNGKAP BAHWA PADI/PARE HADIR DI BUMI ATAS
KEHENDAKNYA SENDIRI UNTUK MANUSIA SUPAYA MANUSIA MEMILIKI
HIDUP).
 (In general, Torajan people cook rice by using three elements, namely clay pot, fire,
and water put on three furnaces (stones). When the rice is estimated to be half cooked, then
one seed must be taken and pressed. If the results of the squeeze are already divided into 3,
the water must be removed (diti'dikki). Then, it is dipareso '/ dipadada', i.e. to put it next to
the stove on the coals of fire. The three parts of the rice squeeze contain the secrets of life
eternity, i.e. fire, water, and clay/soil. Fire comes from heaven, water from the ground
(dumped up), and clay (earth) from the earth itself. These three combinations are used to
cook ‘unnasu/ma’nasu’ and ripen rice. In order that the pot obtains heat evenly from the
furnace, the pot must be rotated counter-clockwise from east to west through north. Why?
Because the source of life comes from the east (source of life) to the west (source of
awakening) through the north (Puang Matua 'God' region). Rice that has been cooked
with fire, water, and clay (soil/earth) originally come from the sky (fire), underground the
earth (water), and from the earth itself (clay) and are created by Puang Matua, the source
of life and safety for humans to have a long life. Thus, actually the phrase 'Manasumoraka
’has a hidden meaning of “Do you still have a long life?” Or “Are the heaven and the
earth still with yours?”. The answer is ‘Manasumo, talendu’opa’ meaning “Yes, we / I
have it. Hopefully you also have it so that we can get salvation”.)

What is unique about linguistic anthropology lies somewhere else, namely, in its
interest in speakers as social actors, in language as both a resource for and a product of
social interaction, in speech communities as simultaneously real and imaginary entities whose
boundaries are constantly being reshaped and negotiated through myriad acts of speaking.
For grammarians/structuralists, they typically deal with language as an abstract
system of rules for the combination of distinct but meaningless elements (phonemes) into
meaningful units (morphemes), which, in turn, are combined into higher-level units (words,
phrases, sentences). Structuralist linguistics viewed language as an abstract system.
For linguistic anthropologists, on the other hand, the object and goal of study is
language as the measure of our lives. This is one of the reasons for which linguistic
anthropologists tend to focus on linguistic performance and situated discourse. Linguistic
anthropologists also focus on how language allows for and creates differentiations – between
groups, individuals, identities.
We must be prepared for the possibility that power means different things within
different cultures. For the linguistic anthropologist, a differentiated notion of power means
that we are likely to find linguistic practices distributed differently across gender, class, and
ethnic boundaries.
Linguistic anthropologists start from the assumption that there are dimensions of
speaking that can only be captured by studying what people actually do with language, by
matching words, silences, and gestures with the context in which those signs are produced.
It has also allowed us to see how speaking produces social action.