Discovering Language Choices among the Tourism Community in Tidung Island

Abstract

As a tourism community, the people of Tidung Island are multilingual. In addition, as a multilingual community, the tourism community on Tidung Island is used to choosing and using more than one language, and there are also dialects. These languages include Indonesian, English, Malay, Arabic, and Pulo dialects. This research aims to find out the language choice of the tourism community in Tidung Island. This research uses a theoretical sociolinguistic approach. Specifically, this research uses three data collection techniques, namely observation, interview, and documentation which involved seventy-eight respondents. The results showed that the residents of Tidung Island as a tourist community speak various languages and use different language codes. Among them are the Pulo Indonesian Dialect code (PID), Badawi Indonesian Dialect code (BID), and Indonesian Language code (IL). The three language codes differ in formal, informal, and casual usage. Pulo and Badawi dialect Malay codes are part of the adoption of Indonesian in family, social, and work contexts. This is because the dialects have similar elements.