THE USAGE OF ~TTE PARTICLE IN JAPANESE INFORMAL CONVERSATIONS THROUGH THEMATIC DISCOURSE IN A LISTENING TEXTBOOKS: SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY

Abstract

Japanese is known as one of the languages in the world that has unique and complex informal forms. One of them is the change in the shape of the particles whose presence in informal conversations can confuse advanced learners of Japanese. The particles that tend to experience changes in informal conversational discourse are wa, to iu, toiunowa and to omou. The purpose of this research is to identify the usage of -tte particles contained in the thematic discourse material of listening textbooks for Japanese learners on advanced basic levels so that learners can understand the function of these -tte particles to support understanding the context of conversational discourse comprehensively based on the theory of Chaer (2004), Fujimura (1993) and Saegusa (1997). This research uses descriptive method with the object of study in the form of a conversation sentence containing -tte particles in the listening textbook in various surroundings. From the results of data analysis, it was identified that the usage of the -tte particle in informal conversational discourse can function as a topic marker particle, as a marker for indirect speech, as a final emotive marker of a speaker and as a contradiction conjunction, so that the learners could understand the usage of the particle in informal conversation sentences in the listening textbook related to social relationships between characters.