PERFORMA PRAGMATIK ANAK USIA TIGA TAHUN DARI BERAGAM LATAR BELAKANG SOSIAL

Abstract

In our society, child language development is usually identical with the amount of new
vocabularies produced by a child. Yet, in preparing a child to get involved with his or her
community, parents should also consider childs pragmatic competence. This paper is aimed
to give perspective about childrens pragmatic competence particularly on their performance
in Directive Speech Acts (DSA) and also to describe their environment which supports their
pragmatic performance. Using qualitative descriptive method, researcher involves four
children who have different social background. Direct observation is used in order to get data
naturally and it is also completed by in-depth-interview with childrens parent and teacher.
The result shows that 3-year-old children are able to understandand to produce DSA. Their
ability in understanding DSA can be seen when they respond ones DSA, both verbally and
non-verbally. In producing DSA, they use indirect form to express their intention. Another
result of this research is that children should have linguistic environment to stimulate their
ability in using language as tools of communication. The more children interact verbally with
a speech community, the better their pragmatic competence will be.

Keywords: Directive Speech Acts, three-year-old children, linguistic environment