Towards a Character Language: A Probability in Language Use

Abstract

This opinion paper is about a probability in language use, about how a competent speaker should be aware of speaking for politeness or for camaraderie, and be capable of avoiding impoliteness. The main aspects of pragmatics are briefly introduced and then elaborated as building-blocks of character language. The proposed building blocks are: 1) elaboration of meaning and form strategies, 2) distant language and close language strategies, 3) politeness and camaraderie strategies, 4) object language and metalanguage strategies. A view on character language in Indonesian context is given, on how politeness, camaraderie, and impoliteness are elaborated; and then, six phases of character language building are proposed as a verbal social project: 1) interaction phase, 2) teaching-and-learning process phase, 3) evaluation phase, 4) re-evaluation phase, 5) verification phase, 6) selection phase.