Language Style of Moslem Teenagers’ Captions in Instagram Post

Language Style of Moslem Teenagers’ Captions in Instagram Post

Didik Murwantono¹, Zulfa Amila Shaliha², Zanuar Hakim Atmantika³, Isnawati Lydia Wantasen⁴

^1,2Sultan Agung Islamic University, Jawa Tengah, Indonesia

³School of Foreign Languages, Northeast Normal University, China

⁴Universitas Sam Ratulangi, Sulawesi Utara, Indonesia

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2024.803055

Received: 27 February 2024; Accepted: 05 March 2024; Published: 04 April 2024

ABSTRACT

The existence of computing technology along with the development of language science, mainly the popularization of broadband internet is undeniably true among modern Indonesian teenagers. It has caused the explosion of language styles to spread and communicate faster and faster. This study is aimed to describe and analyze the language styles used by Indonesian teenagers in Instagram post. Through a descriptively qualitative approach, this study used document analysis by gathering the data qualitatively and presenting them descriptively. The instruments of this study were caption documents from Indonesian teenagers’ accounts. Their average ages were 14 to 21 years old. The technique of data analysis was identifying, data display, drawing and verifying conclusion. The results show that there are four of five language styles as follows: Formal style, Consultative style, Casual style, and Intimate style. The Casual style is the mostly used by the Instagram teenager users. It is 40%. In short, the Indonesian teenagers enjoyed the Instagram post as a social media for expressing their feelings and impressions. The potential utility of Instagram is a platform for constructive dialogue and a tool for social and entertainment purposes.

Keywords: Language, Instagram, Teenager, Moslem, Casual

INTRODUCTION

Human beings can interact with others through language as a system of communication between individuals and a social phenomenon. Communication is any kind the process that one individual transmits information to another involving some form of behavior and signal (Bloomston and Prather, 2021). Moreover, language cab be a subjective sound of symbol system utilized by individual of social groups to work together, communicate each other and recognize themselves.

In this recent time, many people luxuriate internet for getting data and information. Internet connect people to the others using social media such as, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and other applications to entertain and to update information. Social media is an internet content created by using publishing innovations that are exceedingly accessible and adaptable. It is characterized by interactivity – members openly send, receive, and handle content for utilize by others (Aula, 2010). Teenagers expend their time to share daily activity everyday they want. Hence, they are the biggest social media user on the internet. And teenagers could be a critical period of move from children to grown-up (Batubara, 2016). It indicated that employing proper educational technologies, like internet could further improve teenagers’ performance (Chang & Hwang, 2018)

Internet nearly to people all day long and Instagram is the most social media that’s adored by all elements, particularly young people. It is popular with young adults and has become an important space for interactivity and negotiating ideas. Instagram facilitates conversations about issues of interest, enabling users to share posts (Bulmer et al., 2024). Around in January 2024, there are over 5.04 billion active social media users worldwide, equating to 62.3 percent of the total global population (DataReportal, 2024) This number continues to grow, primarily due to increased smartphone accessibility and ongoing platform innovation (Jokar et al., 2023)

In Instagram, users usually post the photos and write a caption based on the situation of the photos or wherever the users want to write in Instagram like, quotes, daily activities, diaries, stories, and the others. The chosen word and language style used in the Instagram caption are able to depict the users’ account themselves. These captions have a distinctive language style in each teenager, they can like, or comment, and react the photo and caption utilizing comment box. In this case, Instagram as social media used to recognize the types of language style through social media on Instagram captions. And this study investigates the types of language style used by sociolinguistics point of view.

Sociolinguistics studies individual and social variation in language. It is a growing branch of linguist-sociologist science (Situmorang & Herman, 2021). A speaker’s social role is revealed through variation in their speech, much like regional variations in language can tell us where they are from. It is a subfield of sociology known as sociolinguistics, which studies the connection between language use and its social context (Purba et al., 2021).  The focus of sociolinguistics is the factor of language and the effect of language itself on the society, such as the varieties of the language, language style, and how the people use the language in their daily life.

There are five categories of language style, such as Frozen style, Formal style, Consultative style, Casual style and Intimate style (Joos, 1967).  According to Sood, (2018), Frozen and Consultative styles are rarely found on Instagram caption for women, but these styles frequently occur in a daily conversation. Meanwhile, Hutagalung (2017) described that the teacher dominantly used casual style in communicating to students in English course class. Hasibuan (2015) found in his research that Formal style was dominantly used by female and male teachers with different ways of communication. Male teachers are in giving advice, feeling, and proposal, while the female teachers are advice and proposal. And Indra & Hamzah (2018) investigated the language style on Facebook status of teenagers to discover the types of language style and the foremost recurrence style utilized by Facebook users in Indonesia. There are four language styles, namely formal, consultative, casual, and intimate. The found that Casual fashion is the most language style utilized by the Facebook users. It is almost 70%.

Many researchers in language styles, (Wu et al., 2017); (Kovacs & Kleinbaum, 2023); (Jakic et al., 2017) examined the variation of language that used by people to communicate with other. The use of language is affected by situation and context when they communicate (Susanti, 2018).  People use the language style by analyzing the linguistic alternant that they choose and the way how to communicate. And this research is different with those by focusing on Indonesian teenagers from 14 years old to 21 years old and analyzing the characteristics of their dominant language styles or the personality of the users in Instagram post by evaluating the way how they communicate with other through Instagram documents.

METHODOLOGY

This research was methodologically descriptively qualitative research by gathering the data qualitatively and presenting them descriptively. It involves the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials- personal experience, observational, interactional, case study, and visual texts – that describe routine and problematic moments and meanings in individuals’ lives (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994). The data were Instagram post from Indonesian Moslem teenagers by the random unknown population sampling. The researchers accessed the Moslem Teenagers’ Instagram posts in order to obtain their accounts. Few of them were called by the researchers to get approval for collecting the data. There were 100 users with the old average from 14 to 21 years old. Then The researchers identified the caption on the Indonesian Moslem teenagers’ accounts that probably have a language style. The next step was the classifying of the Instagram posts into several categories of language style. And the last one, the researchers evaluated and analyzed the Instagram documents into the language style categorization from Martin Joo supported by document analysis.

RESULT

The data of this study were taken from several Instagram accounts in Indonesia. There were 100 Instagram captions. For the unknown population, the researchers used the formula as follows:

n: sample size; Z²ɑ/2 = the Z score for different significant levels is: 1.96 for 5%. And Z0.05/2 = Z0.025, it was found the score 1.96 (see distribution table z).  = deviation standard (0.5) and = refers to the significance level of making error or error standard (10%=0.1).

And n = 96.04. For Humanities research, it had better take the sample 96 minimally or the sample would be 100. And the result of the research showed that from Joo’s language language style theory, there were five language styles used in Instagram captions, namely Frozen style, Formal style, Consultative style, Casual style, and Intimate style. The casual style was dominantly used by the teacher in English course class as can be seen in the table 1. Instagram Post of Indonesian Moslem Teenagers

Table 1 Figurative Language Style for Moslem Teenagers’ Posts

The table above describes the total percentages of language style: Frozen, Formal, Accumulative, Casual, and Intimate found in the Instagram users’ captions. The Casual style is mostly used in the Instagram captions by 47% of 100 posts. Meanwhile the lowest score is for the Intimate style posted by Indonesian Moslem teenagers around 6%. The Frozen style is 8% of all posts from figurative language styles. The average percentage of the language styles are both Formal style with 24% and Accumulate style of 15%.

Table 2 Characteristics Moslem Instagram Users

A total of 100 document Instagram post were identified.  Based on the visual and textual analysis, this study also finds that the process through the social construction of cognitive age is evidenced in the Instagram posts of 100 from Indonesian Moslem Teenagers as a tool for creativity. The researchers reveal how age is constructed trough creative expressions of cognitive “feel. Look, do, and interest” age (McFarlane & Samsioe, 2020; Rahman & Chang, 2018). Moreover, In total, 47% of the posts were identified as the Casual type which has characteristics of conversation with friend, statement or opinion, relaxed or normal situation.

DISCUSSION

100 Instagram posts met the inclusion criteria for this study: language style and document analysis. Language style is the style or the way people to use language in communication, it can be written or oral language. The researchers only chose some posted documents correlated with the language style and investigate those Instagram posts. There five of language styles are discussed in the following section: Frozen, Formal, Accumulative, Casual, and Intimate

1. Frozen Style

It is the most formal style by having formal setting and symbolic value like in the ceremony, palace, church, mosque, and other specific places and occasions. The objects of this study were document posts of Indonesian Moslem Instagram, but the researchers found 8% of all posts.

Datum 5 @emi_saya “Assalamualaykum warrahmatullahi wabarakatuh”

Datum 14 @munixori “Assalamu’alaykum”

Datum 23@krisna-ft, 46@hi.indah, 87@foridab, 92@agungnr “Assalamu’alaikum wr.wb”

Datum 37 @rizal_loro, 75widisolid “salām”

These data are categorized as Frozen style, because the statement is related to religious document of Islam. This style is characterized by the very careful, has fixed form, and has symbolic or historical nature (Maulana, 2019). It is any kind of greeting for Moslems that means ‘peace upon you’.  And now it also used as a general meeting by the Muslim countries around the world in general. Moslem teenagers, at least, have Islamic cultural values as their traditions. They believe that by keeping tightly the tradition, it can guarantee the better life of future.

2. Formal Style

Formal style is commonly a complete sentence standardized for work, business, and academic., it is used in the formal events, talks about the serious problem such as in the formal speeches and official meeting. It is a type of document intended to share information which conforms to established professional rules, standards, and process, and avoids using slag terminology or abbreviated words. it usually used when we talk to elder person. Officials often used formal style besides more polite, also for keep their image in front of community. The Formal style in this study was in 24%. Some of the document posts from Moslem teenagers can be seen as follows:

Datum 9 @cakecaine: “Look how these wildflowers grow in between ruins, look how I grow despite the hurricane.

Datum 20 @shellyaaaa: “Happily, It is real life if as Moslem,  your love is only God

Datum 49 @andhika.kl: “it is easy to do the homework”

Document posts from Moslem Teenagers show that those sentences used standard and right grammatical structure.  There are also statements which may be from his lecturer or parents to motivate him being happily even though he fights against with unconditional situation. Islam teaches their adherents to know meaning and purpose of life, serving as an agent of social control behaviour, and motivating people to work for positive outcome. Islam as the religion of Rahmatan lil’alamin (blessing for the whole universe), form the beginning despite having affirmed that the true religion is Islam (QS Ali Imran, 3:19 and 85), but in principle and social life, Islam recognizes religious entities other religions and allow their followers to perform and practice their own worship (Islam, 2020).

Instagram provides a complete tool to give teenagers for exploring expressions of supportive and resistant their feelings with the issue over social media (Ares et al., 2023). Today, individuals use social media to express their opinions and feelings. It is therefore necessary to understand how the language used in user-generated content and the emotional conveyed by the content affect responses from other media social users (Ulqinaku et al., 2023). Some of the document posts can be seen as follows:

Datum 7 @keviinhugo: I love it when my heart smiles but when it does, it smiles because of you.

Datum 31 @riyatno_purbo: “Love is in everywhere, you are my moon”

From the data above, it can be categorized into Formal style. @kebiinhugo user tries expressing any feeling from his deep heart about love. There are many ways of expressing love, and most people have one or two ways that they most commonly demonstrate affection in identifying and understanding love. The following expression of love that are the most common five ways to express love – gifts, time, acts, touch, and words. This Instagram post describes the fact that document, mainly written posts can significantly give the deep meaning of the issue around them.

3. Consultative Style

Consultative style is a style used in semiformal communication situation where sentences tend to be shorter and spontaneous.  It is one type of language style which is required in daily activity. It happens in a two-way participation.  It uses user participation and feedback. The Consultative style from Moslem teenagers can be in the following document posts.

Datum 17 @finnwolfhardofficial: It’s Nick’s 22^nd birthday.

Feedback:  I love him so much. Nick, thank you so much for getting me into film, and video games, and comedy. You’re my best friend. Here’s to many more.

Datum 61 @aisyhjuwaid: Happiness are simple. Just spending your time with everyone that you love and making memorable moment. Thanks God

Datum 83 @yulistiyana: Have you ever wanted to ask a question? but you didn’t because you knew your heart couldn’t handle the answer?

These data are classified into consultative style because the wording in these sentences aims to engage the reader to do something. According to Joos’s theory, the defining feature of the consultative style is that the speaker gives information on a subject and the listener/reader participates (Dewi, 2022). In this caption, @instagram gives information about how the readers can give any feedback. In Datum 17: “here’s to many more”; in Datum 61:” Happines are simple”; in Datum 83:” Have you ever wanted to ask question?” Thus, making these a Consultative style

4. Casual Style

There are 47 document posts categorized into Casual style in Moslem Teenagers’ Instagram. Their old is from 14 years old to 21years old. When the teenagers have a chat, Casual style is also characterized by the use of the first name or even nickname rather than a little name and last name in addressing one another. The pronunciation is rapid and often slurred, besides that use of slang. Some of them are as follows:

Table 3 The Casual Style Posts from Moslem teenagers

5. Intimate Style

Intimate style is the last place of language style found in the Moslem teenagers’ Instagram. It is developed within families, lovers, and close friends. And Intimate style is also characterized by non-verbal communication and private code characterized. Some of document posts can be stated as follows:

Table 4 The Intimate Style from Teenager users

CONCLUSION

Based on the result and discussion of this study, some conclusions can be drawn as follows: There are five language styles found in Moslem teenagers’ Instagram posts with different percentages. The most dominant style used is the Casual style of 47%. In this case, Moslem teenager users feel more comfortable using Instagram as friendly and relaxed. The Frozen style is 8% indicating that Moslem teenagers still hold their traditions as Moslem like writing “assalamu’alaykum” in the first line of their document posts. At least, even though the development of science and technology is undeniably true recently, Moslem teenagers still keep the movement of knowledge on the basis of Islamic values. This study also finds that the background of education and age has given great influences toward the choosing of language style. There is 45% from Moslem teenagers around 17 years old to 19 years old who dominantly contributed to this study. By Instagram, the teenagers’ users have closed relationship among them through language style. The different background of age and education also shows the Instagram users’ status tendency in expressing what they feel immediately. At least, people would know the characteristics of others. By this conclusion, the researchers hope that this study will help more people who are interested in relevant research theoretically and practically with different point of views.

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