A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF COMPLAINING SPEECH ACTS IN INDONESIAN AND JAPANESE DIGITAL COMMUNICATION

Abstract

Today’s digital communication enables individuals to easily express their opinions
and thoughts, including lodging complaints via social media. Therefore, this study
aims to analyze the differences in complaining speech acts between Japanese and
Indonesian in digital communication. This study employed a qualitative approach
with a contrastive analysis method. Data consisting of utterances containing
complaining speech acts in Indonesian and Japanese were collected from the social
media platform X. The findings indicate that although both Indonesia and Japan are
classified as high-context cultures, Indonesian speakers tend to express complaints
more directly and explicitly, often accompanied by emotional expressions.
Conversely, Japanese speakers tend to utilize indirect complaining speech act
strategies through implicit expressions. These differences reflect the distinct
politeness norms and cultural values inherent in both languages. Consequently, it can
be concluded that culture plays a vital role in shaping complaint strategies within
digital communication.