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. Their daughters are distinguished differently from their sons since they were at an early age. Moreover, the rules are also applied in speaking and the way of speaking. The girls must be polite and speak tenderly but not THE sons. This situation occurs as the social regulation. It is obeyed and practiced by almost every family regardless of various backgrounds. Every single family tends to do this. This phenomenon will lead to when they are adults they will speak in accordance to their gender. One of them is the way how to make a request. A request is a kind of action that is asking someone else to do something. In the request, the hearers are supposed to act based on the instruction. Thus, the request must be carefully made so that what is being instructed will be fully obeyed. Some researches indicated that the request is of high possibility to threaten ones’ face. Thus, some strategies can offer alternatives to requests. This writing is aimed at describing the strategy of Minangkabau women to request. Each strategy will have not only an impact on the hearers but also the speakers. There are some considerations for women to make and to choose the way of request. The data are taken from a best seller novel titled ‘Arini Bias Rindu’ written by Naya R. The novel talks about a woman who had to get married to her cousin (father’s niece). Her husband did not treat her as a wife, but this woman could patiently face all those bad things. She could manage to get through all the trials she faced. Any utterances uttered by the female characters containing the request will be the data. 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.