Strategies Of Minangkabau Women To Request As Depicted In Novel ‘Arini Bias Rindu’

From the perspective of gender, women are generally expected to be more polite in speaking. Therefore, when these women make a request that will impose others, they absolutely select the appropriate strategy not just as a Minangkabau people but also as the women. That women must behave and speak politely is taught since childhood. Most parents quite often claimed that their daughters must speak and behave well because they are girls. Girls are not supposed to be like this but must be like that. The way the parents educate the children indirectly has built the concept of gender. The observational method with note-taking techniques was applied to take the data. An interview is also conducted with selected informants related to the position and roles of Minangkabau women in society. The analysis was related to the concept of the speech act of request and Minangkabau kato nan ampek. The result of the analysis is descriptively presented. Having analyzed the data, it is found that there are five strategies used by Minangkabau women in making requests in the novel. They are 1) giving alternatives, 2) asking, 3) informing, 4) questioning, and 5) offering. Informing is used more often than others. It implies that the implicitness of Minangkabau women in requesting is also in line with the concept proposed by Errington [1] and Revita [2] that Minangkabau people tend to speak indirectly.