WORD FORMATION PROCESSES OF INDONESIAN SLANG IN KASKUS

A research proposal

Iqbal Bagaskara Pratama

1400535

6A

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE STUDY PROGRAM

FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE EDUCATION

INDONESIA UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

2017
1. Introduction

1.1. Background

Social media is a place for people to interract with each other online. It also has
some different platform like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Line, Path, KasKus,
etc. As social media continues to grow, the language begins to evolve. Language
evolution is not always degradation, even on the social media. In Indonesia, the role of
social media for the creation of Indonesian slang word is considered important. One
aspect that significantly seen is the morphology form, word formation processes. This is
highly affected by the Indonesian slang itself, which is widely found the word formation
processes. So it makes the spread of the new word that formed by word formation
processes in social media is very quick and acceptable by most of Indonesian people.

Slang is very familiar to Indonesia because almost every Indonesian people used
slang, even in some formal place like school, company. This is because the slang of
Indonesian language is highly influenced by word formation processes. Therefore, when
a new slang arrives to Indonesia, people can learn the terms very quickly. Especially in
social media, it is one of the causes of the deployment of slang words that later on
influnce the Indonesian slang in social media.

Among the social media platform that already mentioned above, there is one
platform that can be considered as the oldest and the most populer in Indonesia, that is
KasKus. KasKus is a large forum community, and ranked number 1 on the most visited
website in Indonesia, conducted by Alexa (alexa.com). KasKus contains numerous of
category. Each of categories represented a certain field, and some of it has sub-topic.
The field is a topic that can navigate their user, also known as kaskuser, to make a
discussion to other user or just browsing. There is much information placed at KasKus
because every kaskuser can create a topic that is related to the certain category. This is
similar to make a post and comment on different social media platform like Facebook or
Twitter, but in KasKus, there are several rules that applied, and it can be said that
KasKus apply a strict regualtions, which is different from other platform.

Since KasKus is considered as the largest Indonesian forum community in, it is

possible that KasKus is one of the sources of the creation of Indonesian language. Not
only because KasKus is the largest Indonesian forum community, it is also the oldest
one. In order to determine the contibution the creation of Indonesian slang in KasKus in
terms of its word formation, this research will be conducted. The word formation
processes will be explained by using Yule (2006) theory about word formation
processes, and Richard (1985) about the difinition of Slang. This research will be benefit
for further knowledge about the development of Indonesian slang in social media
considering the skyrocketing of social media in Indonesia recently. In addition, it seems
that research about creation of slang in social media is still lacking. Therefore, this
research can provide useful information for the development of the creation of slang in
social media that still not easy to find.
1.2. Purposes of Research

This research aims to determine about the creation of Indoensian slang language
in social media in terms of its word formation process in one of social media platform in
Indonesia, namely KasKus. Furthermore, this research will also determine the function
of the word fomation processes.

1.3. Statements of Problems

As stated above, this research is intended to determine the creation of

Indonesian slang language in social media and its function in terms of its word
formation processes. Thus, there are two research question that can be formulated:

1. How does word formation processes in KasKus can determine the contribution of the
creation of Indonesian slang language in social media?

2. What is the function of each type of word formation processes in KasKus?

1.4. Clarification of terms

To conduct this research, there are several key concepts that related to this
research:

1. Slang

A type of language consisting of words and phrases that are regarded as very
informal, are more common in speech than writing, and are typically restricted to a
particular context or group of people.

2. Word Formation Processes

Word formation refers to the ways in which new words are made on the basis of
other words or morphemes. It also called derivational morphology.

3. Social Media

Social media is a collection of Internet-based communities that allow users to

interact with each other online. This includes web forums, wikis, and user-generated
content (UGC) websites.

4. KasKus

Kasak Kusuk also known as KasKus is an Indonesian Internet forum that is the
largest Indonesian online community.
2. Review of Related Literature

2.1. Slang in Social Media

Slang mostly used in colloquial speech, mostly spoken than written, and typically
restricted to a particular group according to English Oxford Dictionaries. However,
slang is now common in written, and not particularly restricted to a group. Social media
is a new era of slang. Social media is quickly changing communication on a global scale,
and it is doing so in incredible ways. The fact that the social media has incredibly
changed global communication is cannot be predicted. At this stage, slang from a certain
group can spread very fast to other community without restriction.

In her research, Bargehyan (2014) claims that Slang is a phenomenon that has
always existed in the language but it has been ignored by linguists for a very long time.
Internet slang (Internet shorthand, Cyber-slang, SMS speak, netspeak, or chatspeak)
refers to a variety of everyday languages used by different communities on the Internet.
She later found in her research the types of internet slang. They are; letter homophones;
punctuation, capitalizations and other symbols; onomatopoeic spellings; keyboard-
generated icon and smileys; leet; flamming; and shortening (acronyms and
abbreviation). She later on adds that most of the terms that she found in her research
are only used when people are inside the internet, and it is very less likely to be found in
daily conversation, especially when it comes to people reaction on someone post or
comment.

The spread of the Indonesian slang in Indonesia is also quick because of the
global communication. Howard Manns (2010) performed a study to Jakarta Indonesian
community in a social media. He observed the typical style of slang used in internet
chatting. He found that the tendency of Jakarta Indonesia to chat with each other’s is
often change the phonolgy sounds. For example the sentence “mo ke room laen.” From
the example, he indicated that the tendency of Jakarta Indonesia to use the slang in
internet chatting has variety reasons. One said it is a form of internet chatting, the other
said to make it easier to communicate, and some other said it is just for the trends. This
can be concluded that the Indonesian slang in social media still follow the west style
because their reason is different.

2.2 Word Formation Processes on Slang Words

Yule (2006) has acknowledged that there are at least 11 types of word formation
processes to create new words. They are etymology, coinage, borrowing, compounding,
blending, clipping, back-formation, conversion, acronyms, derivation, and multiple
processes. Hana (2013) in her research about colloquial words created by teenagers
uses six of them. They are borrowing, clipping, compounding, affixes, acronyms, and
coinage. She indicates that these processes are used by teenagers to create the
colloquial words in Facebook. The results are there is vowel change in colloquial word
created by teenagers, it divided into three processes: substitution, addition, and omition
or deletion. Second is consonant deletion, it has two types: final consonant deletion, and
week syllable deletion. The third is consonant change, which divided into substitution,
compounding, affixes, clipping, and coinage.

Later on in her research, she claims that the colloquial words that are found are
divided to three processes: phonological, morphological, and others. It can be concluded
that word formation of colloquial are influnced by three characteristics. Also she found
other findings of word formation processes created by teenagers as a phenomena of
language contact, not the pehonomena of interfere.

Speak about word formation on slang words, there must be a trends of a type of
word formation that mostly used. Nur and Hafizh (2013) found that there are 88 kinds
of slang word which formed by ten types of word formation processes. They were 2
(2,3%) words which were formed by abbreviation process, 10 (11,4%) by acronym, 11
(12,5%) by blending, 3 (3,4%) by clipping, 45 (51,1%) by coinage, 5 (5,7%) by
compounding, 7 (8%) by multiple processes, 2 (2,3%) by borrowing, 2 (2,3%) by
affixation, and 1 (1,1%) by reduplication.

From the result, it can be seen that coinage is the dominant way in forming new
word. After seen the word that resulted from coinage, all of the words are not available
in standar Indonesia. One factor that causes the dominant of coinage is teenager. They
tend to create new word for saying certain things. She later on listed 11 edition of the
magazine and the result is still the same. Among all of the 11 edition of Aneka Yess!
magazine, coinage always the dominant way to create a new word. In details, the results
are 2002 (52,9%), 2003 (40%), 2004 (41,7%), 2005 (25%), 2006 (47,1%) 2007
(23,1%), 2008 (43,8%), 2009 (62,5%), 2010 (54,2%), 2011 (38,5%), 2012 (38,5%). She
later suggest that the reason of why coinage is the dominant way to create a new word
is because the tendency to use the coinage process makes it easy for the younger people
to produce many vocabularies.

Sometimes slang is used not just as colloquial speech, but as an identity of

certain groups. Once again the role of word formation is important in order to form a
new word. Dwi Nurhayati (2016) conducted a study on word formation and a technique
in understanding Waria Tulungagun. Her research reveals two-folded concept. First,
waria slang in Tulungagung has ten word formation processes including Derivation-
suffix/na/; Multi Process; Acronym; Blending; Borrowing: Reduplication; Synonym;
Coinage; Irregular Form; Echoism, Changing of Vowel Syllabic. Secondly, a technique of
understanding the meaning of their sentences could applied by removing some suffixes
in order to find the stem of those words. She suggested that it is to be sensitive with
sociolinguistics phenomena, it is better to observe the social context which happens in
the environment.
2.3 Word Formation of Slang in Social Media

People nowadays cannot get out of social media. The main purpose is of course
to communicate with each other everyday. In 2015, Siti, Mageswari and Mohamad
conducted a study, which result that there is a common feature used by Malay young
adult user and why they utilize it in everday communication. Their study contemplates
the linguistics choices made by the Malay young adult Facebook user. Specifically, it
explores the language features of Cyber Language to form new by using word formation.
The finding of this study shows the modification in spelling by the research participants
on Facebook. Those people employ abbreviation (clipping, acronyms and combination
of letters), blending and use emoticons or symbols which proven that the language used
on FB among Malaysian adult users is informal.

One thing that is needed to determine the word formation is the trend of word
formation processes. Like the word formation on slang word, which is coinage, the
trend for word formation processes in social media is also have one. The study
conducted by Rieta (2013) found that there are seven word-formation processes found
in her research, based on the data obtained from Oxford Online Dictionary dated August
2012 – August 2013. They comprise acronym, blending, borrowing, clipping, coinage,
compounding, and derivation. The most common process to form a new word is formed
through compounding, with the number of 33, 8%.

Later on she argues that the reason why compounding is the most common way
to form a new word. First is the limitation of users productivity and creativity. Second,
the equal meaning of the compound with the meaning of the existing words when they
are combined. The last one is the possibility of compounds to be standardized since they
do not usually omit the linguistic features. She claims again that there are several
reasons of users in creating new words. First, it is used to describe one’s experience,
feelings, and thoughts, or in other words to show his their identity. Second, it is used to
capture the character of technology which continuously develops. Last, Internet
language is used to break the communicative limitations among users.

The tendency of the new words to be slang words which are informal and usually
appearing in short form (e.g. acronyms and clipped words) make it difficult to
determine whether they are speech or writing. On the other hand, the habit of using the
Internet language has a possibility to be brought out to the real world. In some
ciscumstances, it has influenced the formal writing. If this situation continues, the
Internet language has the possibility to change English language in the future.
3. Research Methodology

3.1. Research Design

In order to conduct this research, this research will use qualitative method
because this research needs to learn the behaviour of people when doing a
communication between each other. Furthermore, this research will adopt descriptive
qualitative because this research will not interfere the field of research and makes it
naturally happen.

The reason why the writer chooses descriptive qualitative method aside from the
mentioned above is the subject of this research is about human aspects. That is
communication. People communication cannot be determined by just a number or
explanation, it is need further observation about the behaviour of people intention to do
so. That is why, the writer beliefs that descriptive qualitative method is the best way to
conduct this research.

3.2. Data Collection

The subject of this research is an online forum community. So, this research will
collect the data by observing each of the thread started on the forum, and then
documented it into file. Because the activity of the forum itself is consider very active,
this research will not provide a sample because the writer believes that by interfering
the activity of the forum will make the accuracy of the purpose worse.

First, the writer will spot the categories from the forum that considered as the
most active one, the writer plans to make ten categories as the data to analyze. In order
to determine the most active categories, the writer will go to each categories and
observe the lounge of the categories (each categories has a lounge). How to determine
the most active categories is by observing the time of each post in the lounge thread. It
is not that hard to determine because the time is easily seen and can be measured. Once
the categories found, the writer will look after the activity of the thread from each
categories.

After determine the top ten most popular categories, the writer will look the
activity of the popular thread from each category. Usually, one category has four to five
popular threads that currently being discussed by kaskuser. Among of all categories,
one category considered as the most popular one because that category is a place is like
a general place to gather, unlike the other categories that has specific topics, called The
Lounge. The activity at that category is very fast. One thread can drown the other
quickly in just several minutes. Therefore, the writer thinks that this is the perfect place
to collect the data because that place can be considered as the representation of KasKus,
but not ignoring the other categories as well.
 Later on, the spot to collect the data is determined; the last thing to do is to put
the findings in the theory used. This is easy to do but it needs long time to entry the data
in order to make the findings more accurate.

This research only collects the data through observation because the writer
wants to keep the naturality of the kaskuser. If this research, for example, collect the
data through survey, it is very likely the data disturbed, and also there is a possibility
that the behaviour of people changed suddenly from very informal to less formal.

3.3. Data Analysis

The data that collected will be placed on each type of the word formation
processes, and later on will be measured how many words in each type of word
formation processes from each of categories.

After locating the data into each type of word formation, the next thing to do is to
compare the number of each type of word formation that has been located in each of the
categories. This is done in order to measure the trend of each type of word formation
from each category, and then compare the trend from one category to another. The
purpose of comparing the trend of each type of word formation processes from each
category is to determine the function of each type of word formation processes. This is
hypothetically will take a long time to do.

Then, the data that its function has been determined, the writer will look up the
other social media platform in order to find the words that are not used by other social
media platform. This is intented to proof that the word that created in kaskus can be
determined as a new word, so that it will make the purpose of the research is fulfilled.
4. Reference

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