TOURISM REGISTER: A SOCIOCULTURAL LINGUISTIC STUDY

Abstract

This research aims at analyzing form, function and sociocultural meaning of registers used by tourists and tourism service providers in Surakarta Residency, Central Java, Indonesia. This descriptive and qualitative study is presented within the framework of sociocultural linguistics. To achieve the goal, data on utterances expressing tourism registers were collected through observation and field notes, recordings and in-depth interviewing. The data in the form of conversations were obtained from tour related activities from receiving reservations to handling checking out. The research findings show that (1) forms of tourism registers are utterances which have specific meanings expressed by tourists and tourism service providers; (2) the forms of registers are classified into linguistic units, such as word, phrase and acronym; (3) tourism registers play an important role in cross-cultural understanding between foreign tourists and local tourism service providers who employ registers for a variety of purposes, namely effective communication; (4) registers which the tourism service providers use in tour related activities can be both easy and at the same time very difficult to be understood by either the domestic or foreign tourists and vice verse; and (5) through registers which are used as a means of communication, there are also cultural contacts between tourists and tourism service providers.  

Keywords: tourism register, tourism service providers, tour related activities, sociocultural linguistics