GRAMMATICAL EXPRESSION OF BUGIS POLITENESS

This paper discusses the use of grammar as a strategy to express politeness in Bugis society. This is based on the research I conducted in 2005 in two different Bugis communities: the first was in Awangpone, a rural area and the second was in Parepare. There are three main aspects of Bugis grammar used by Bugis people to encode their politeness. The first one is the pronoun system, in which Bugis speakers use idi’, ta-, or -ki, (the 1st plural inclusive pronoun) to address people politely rather than using iko, mu-, and –nu (the 2nd person pronoun). The second one is the use of participant avoiders such as passive voice dior terms such as tauwé ‘people’ or anu ‘something or someone’ to avoid mentioning the subject or object directly. Another device is the phonological alternations between final –o and final –i/–é, in which final –o is less polite than final –i/–é such as the pairs iyé’/iyo ‘yes’ or –mi/-mo ‘just’.


Introduction
Many scholars have conducted research on politeness and they mostly associate politeness with its functions in conversational interactions in a particular society (Brown and Levinson 1987, Mizutani and Mizutani 1987, Pizziconi 2003).
Politeness is defined in different ways such as a kind of 'rational, goal-oriented behaviour' (Haverkate, 1988), 'politic behaviour' (Watts, 1992:50), 'appropriate behaviour' (Meier, 1995), 'a diplomatic strategy of communication' (Kummer (1992:325), and 'etiquette' (Geertz, 1960). Other terms, such as 'honorification' or 'honorific', are used in reference to politeness (Scupin, 1988;Agha, 1994). Lakoff (1976:64), for example, interprets politeness as 'forms of behaviour which have been developed in societies in order to reduce friction in personal interaction'. She proposes two basic rules for politeness, which she calls rules of pragmatic competence: 'be clear' and 'be polite'. Furthermore, Lakoff formulates the following rules of politeness as 'formality: keep aloof, deference: give options, and camaraderie: show sympathy ' (1976:65). Holmes (1995:4-5) describes politeness as 'behaviour which is somewhat formal and distancing, where the intention is not to intrude or impose'. According to her, 'being polite means expressing respect towards the person you are talking to and avoiding offending them.
Politeness is culture specific as, like all communicative acts, it carries different meanings in different cultures and it will also vary depending on certain circumstances. What is regarded as linguistically polite behavior in one culture might be considered impolite behavior in another culture. Zhan (1992:3) notes that 'politeness strategies vary from language to language, from culture to culture. ' Hongladaron and Hongladaron (2005:159) also note that 'politeness is a culturally embedded notion both relates to human culture and to the various local cultures'. Therefore, it is interesting to explore politeness practices in different communities such as in Bugis society. Bugis people who are mostly found in South Sulawesi Indonesia have been long known for their unique traditional and religious norms. Their concept of pangngaderreng 'a system of conduct', siri' na pesse 'shame and compassion', and the symbolism of sarung sutra 'silk sarong' characterized their cultural life. In addition, their religious norms and other social systems such as gender and social status Murni Mahmud contribute to these characteristics (Abdullah 1986, Pelras 1996, Mahmud 2008a).
In expressing their politeness, Bugis people use various strategies such as grammar, address terms, speech levels, code switching, jokes, humor, and small talk (Mahmud, 2008a(Mahmud, , 2008b. One of the strategies is the use of grammar. This paper is going to explore the use of these grammatical expressions by Bugis people in order to be polite.

Method
The data for this paper were partly taken from my Ph.D thesis, which was based on the fieldwork that I conducted for one year in 2005 in two different Bugis communities, one is in the rural area, Awangpone, Kabupaten Bone, and another is in the urban area, Parepare.
To collect data, I employed ethnography of communication using some strategies such as participant observation, informal interview, and recording conversations. Two groups of respondents were involved in this research. The first group was interviewed about the concept of politeness. They included adat 'cultural' leaders, religious leaders, and professional workers aged from 23 to 73 years old, both men and women. The second group of respondents was those whose conversations were recorded. There were 241 respondents: 136 respondents from Awangpone and 105 from Parepare To obtain spoken Bugis language, I recorded a variety of conversations between men and women using tape recorders in three contexts: single-sex settings (male and male or female and female) and mixed-sex settings (female and male). Conversations were recorded in formal settings such as in offices and schools and in informal settings such as in families and neighbourhood. Participants were housewives, graduate students, office workers, and teachers aged 15 to 50 years old.

Discussion
There are three important sets of grammatical aspects of Bugis politeness. They are pronouns, participant avoiders, and phonological alternations.

Pronoun Systems
The first important aspect of Bugis grammar that is used to show politeness is the pronoun system. In Bugis conversations, pronouns used are mostly from Bugis, but some Indonesian pronominal terms are used as well. The Bugis pronouns can be seen in the following Although the second person forms are sometimes used to address others, it is usually seen as more polite to address people using the first person plural inclusive forms (idi',-ki', ta-/i-) rather than the plain second person forms (iko,-ko, nu-/mu-). The use of the first person plural inclusive possessive pronoun (-ta') is also more polite than the second person possessive pronouns (-nu/mu). The use of polite pronouns (idi',-ki', ta-/i-) are more distant or formal whereas the less polite pronouns (iko. -ko, nu-/mu-) are more familiar and informal.
These pronouns are exploited by Bugis people in order to express their politeness. Due to the influence of power in the form of hierarchical social status, the use of different pronouns to address different people in Bugis society is also heavily based on social status. This is similar to the use of pronouns of 'power and solidarity' as proposed by Brown and Gilman (1972:255-277).
According to them, there are two types of pronouns as politeness devices. The first type is pronouns of power which is non-reciprocal or asymmetrical, with the greater receiving In the above extract, PAM used the second person pronoun -ko in akkedako instead of the first plural inclusive pronoun -ki' in akkedaki'. This direct use of the second person -ko by PAM to PAS is acceptable because the interlocutors are of similar status and are close relatives and neighbours. This familiarity encouraged PAM to use the familiar pronoun -ko. PAM used a polite device i-in iti' instead of using mu-in muti' which would have been expressed in the utterance: muti' maneng lokka masigi'é. This extract shows the use of the first person plural inclusive agent marker as a generic marker, where no direct reference to a first person agent is entailed. It is used to refer to a second person agent, PAA, and it made her more distant and polite. This extract also shows that although both speakers are familiar, being close relatives and neighbours and have similar status as hajj and noble, pronoun choice is influenced by age and sex differences.
Therefore, PAM used familiar pronouns and distant pronouns to different interlocutors. The first important aspect is familiarity. Talking to a speaker who is closely related and a neighbour as well as being a similar age and status encouraged her to use familiar pronouns. With Hunaeda in extract 2, PAM also used a familiar pronoun. In her conversation with Mardi in extract 3, status seem the main determinant because Mardi is older and a male. When she was talking to PAA in extract 4, she used different pronouns. Although PAA was also her close relative and neighbour and has a status as high as PAA as hajj and noble, she uses the more distant pronoun because PAA was an older male with high status.
Beside the use of Bugis pronouns as indicators of politeness, Bugis people also use Indonesian pronouns due to the fact that Bugis people are bilingual. The examples can be seen below:

Extract 5: School boys at home
School boys of the same age were talking to each other at home about their school farewell party. They had just finished their final exam. Amin (A, 15)'s farewell party is different from others as he is from an Islamic school. His school only invited kasidah 'a kind of religious performing group', not a band, playing modern pop music. In the first turn, Illa (I, 15) asked using the familiar Indonesian pronoun kau. However, the use of this pronoun is acceptable because of their familiarity as friends and similar age and status.
Bugis speakers may also use the Indonesian pronoun Anda. This pronoun is more impersonal and used to refer to a general audience, possibly someone unknown for speakers of the same age as or younger than the speaker Sneddon (1994:161).

Extract 6: A lecturer and his student
A lecturer and a student: Haji Iksan (HI, 38) and Akmal (A, 21) were talking on the campus. Akmal wanted to conduct some training for his fellow students. He was asking about his lecturer's ability to donate some funds. HI asked him to explain his reasons so that he could decide whether to contribute or not.

HI: anda mau bikin kegiatan apa?
'what kind of activity are you going to do?' A: kegiatan pelatihan kader dasar tingkat lanjutan-nya 'a follow-up activity of basic candidate training' Despite his position as Akmal's lecturer, HI in the last turn used Anda to address Akmal. This created a more distant and formal relation between the interlocutors. This is influenced by the formality of the situation in the setting or the locations of the recordings, although HI is older and higher in his status than Akmal.
Other Indonesian pronouns used by Bugis speakers are kita and kami. The pronoun kita is the first inclusive plural pronoun and means 'we' where the person being spoken to is included, that is 'I and you'. The other is the first exclusive plural pronoun kami, which means 'we' where the person being spoken to is excluded, that is 'I and others but not you' (Sneddon, 1994:160).
Due to the influence of bilingualism, Bugis speakers, especially in the urban area may use these Indonesian pronouns, which do have Bugis equivalents, especially kita. This pronoun kita has Grammatical Expression Of Bugis Politeness the same meaning as the first Bugis plural inclusive pronoun idi'. Kita is used to mean 'you' by many speakers in South Sulawesi, not only by Bugis, but also by other ethnic groups such as Makassar, Mandar, and Toraja. When speaking Indonesian, speakers sometimes used kita to address other people in order to be more polite. Indonesian pronouns such as kamu/kau to mean 'you' are considered impolite and familiar. Using idi' or kita to address people is more polite than saying iko or kamu 'you'. Examples can be seen in the following extracts:

Extract 7: A husband and a wife
A husband and a wife in a family in Parepare were speaking to each other. Pak Haris asked using kita instead of kami to include all of the speakers, which is more polite and formal. In responding his request, Pak Latif also used kita instead of kau/kamu to be more polite in his response to Pak Haris. Indeed, the use of an address term Pak without mentioning the name of Pak Haris also made him more polite.
The formality of the situation and their distant relationship led both speakers to use formal and more polite pronouns.
Bugis speakers, especially in the urban area, may also use Bugis pronouns within Indonesian utterances which may indicate level of politeness as seen below: HE asked Marwiah to say how much salary she wanted for each month as my research assistant. She used the Bugis pronoun ki' in ajukanki' and dibayarki' in her mainly Indonesian. Although both speakers are friends, and HE was senior in age and status, she used distant pronouns. This was influenced by my presence as a researcher; the conversation was directed to me. The Bugis pronoun -ki' added to her Indonesian made HE's speech more distant and more polite. Even in more formal settings, Bugis pronouns can be mixed with Indonesian to make speech more polite.

'Participant Avoiders'
A second aspect of Bugis grammar that can be exploited for showing politeness is the use of 'participant avoiders'. One of these is the use of passive rather than active forms of the verb. Using a passive form marked by the passive prefix di-and ri-can free the speaker from having to mention a participant overtly at all. According to Lakoff and Ide (2005:8), passive forms can be used to 'deny responsibility for the propositions we are uttering'. See extracts below: Another participant avoider is use of the term people. By saying people, the real subject or the participant is avoided. The example is as follows:

Extract 11: At Safari Ramadan
Some males were coming from the mosque praying. At the time, there were many guests sitting in the lounge room and it is not polite to pass through. Therefore, those males went through the kitchen where many females were sitting and preparing meals. Both of them used anu to avoid mentioning the objects to make their speech less impolite in the presence of other newly met people in their school. This strategy avoids identifying the participants in an event and regard politeness. As with the choice of pronouns, their use is influenced by status of the interlocutors and the formality of the situations.

Phonological Alternations
There are also a number of pairs of semantically equivalent terms in which a phonological alternation between final -o and final -i/-é can be used to encode politeness differences in Bugis. Final -o is less polite than final -i/-é. One of the examples is the use of iyé'/iyo 'yes' which can function to strengthen arguments and soften disagreements. Compare these two extracts below:

Extract 13. Expressing condolosence
Two female teachers, Nur (N, 27) and Marliah (M, 27) are talking during the school break in their school. Nur was explaining the plans for the school. Nur asked her colleague, Marliah to visit their friend's house where there was to be a special gathering because of the death of Puji's husband some days ago. Lina used the polite ending -mi in sudahmi and makanmi rather than -mo in sudahmo and makanmo. Note that Rosida also was trying to be polite by using the first plural inclusive pronoun -ki in makanki' rather than the second person pronoun -ko in makanko.

Conclusion
This paper has discussed the use of some grammatical expressions by Bugis people to express their politeness. These can be seen from the use of pronouns, some aspects to avoid participants, and some phonological alternations. Analysis of the conversations shows that the more polite pronoun takes the plural form (the first inclusive pronouns such as idi', ta-,-ki') rather than the singular form (the second person pronouns iko, mu-, and -nu). Indonesian pronouns can be used when speaking Bugis, but to be more polite, the second person Indonesian pronoun. The discussion also shows the importance of avoiding participants by the use of terms such tauwa, anu, or the use of passive voice. In addition, some phonological alternations in which the ending -o is less polite than -e.
Many factors influence the choices of these grammatical aspects. In both areas, factors such as age and status differences play important roles in determining the polite usage of those grammatical expressions. For example, the use of pronouns which was greatly influenced by different ages, status, and gender. Due to the influence of power in the form of hierarchical social status, the use of different pronouns to address different people in Bugis society is also heavily based on social status. The lower the status of the speaker is, the greater their tendency is to use very formal and polite pronouns. However, in some situations, other factors such gender, familiarity, and situation may contribute to the choice of Bugis politeness expressions.