Language Attitudes of Betawi Teenagers toward their Mother Tongue: A Sociolinguistic Perspective

The present research sought to investigate the language attitudes of Betawi Teenagers towards their mother tongue. Language attitudes cover opinions, ideas, and prejudices that speakers have with respect to a language. Research of language attitudes is getting much attention for years in some fields. Due to the importance of the language attitudes, this research intends to describe the language attitudes of Betawi Teenagers towards their native language. The Betawi language is one of the dialects in Jakarta, Indonesia. This study employed descriptive qualitative research. The data used are the data obtained through questioners, observations, and in-depth interviews to know the attitude of the Betawi community language. The objectives of this study is to map out the language attitudes of Betawi teenagers towards their mother tongue or Betawi Language. The results showed that (1) The language attitude of the Betawi teenagers towards the Betawi language is negative, (2) The Indonesian language is strongly dominant in their daily life, and (3) The foreign languages do not affect in the maintain of their mother tongue. Apart from that, other languages such as “slang” also color their language choice. This linguistic fact is going continuosly from time to time and influencing their language attitude. In fact, even though they understand the Betawi language, it is not of the primary use.