488 Chapter 15 Speech levels
ditionally, speakers report that the proper use of the vocabularies was more
rigorously adhered to in certain social relationships, citing the importance of
students addressing their teachers and santri addressing their kiai using alos
vocabulary.
The situations in which each vocabulary was to be employed was at times
subject to some variation as well. Outside of some specific examples such as
student to teacher and others like it, there is not always agreement among
speakers regarding what situation calls for what level of politeness. Two sources
note that (in past times) husbands would address their wives in tengnga'an (Ste-
vens 1966, Muakmam 2007), while others have reported that husbands would
address their wives in kasar. At any rate, this appears to no longer be the case,
and spouses regularly use kasar with one another.^9 Some report, however, that
some higher frequency alos words (e.g. asaren ‘sleep’ rather than tedhung and
neddha ‘eat’ rather than ngakan) might be employed to increase the level of
politeness.
Variation also took place in the completeness of the vocabulary used. In
many instances, children would mainly use kasar vocabulary with their parents,
but again would integrate higher frequency alos lexical items. And as Stevens
(1966) notes, many aspects of language are subject to change and there has been
and can be expected to be such changes in the respect vocabularies. He cites, on
the one hand, alos tenggi words becoming alos, and thus being used to refer to
the first person. In some ways this is not entirely surprising as in practical terms
many Madurese speakers do not differentiate the alos and alos tenggi vocabula-
ries, simply using the label alos.^10 This is not to imply that they do not under
(^9) But see Muakmam (2007) for a different view of the currency of the practice.
(^10) Muakman (2007) does identify some alos lexical items as ka oreng laen 'to other
people' (alos tenggi) and others as ka aba' dibi' 'to oneself' (alos mandhap), but includes
only some 16 lexical meanings in the alos tenggi set. Additionally, some items in his ka
aba' dibi' set would not be classified as alos mandhap but clearly fit his category of
words that would refer to the self (as well as others of non-honorific status).
stand that some alos words are used only in reference to third and second per-
sons of higher rank; they do. It simply indicates that using a single label could
well improve the chances of such a shift. Stevens (1966) identifies shifts in so-
cial factors as having perhaps a greater impact on the implementation of the
speech levels, citing a tendency for familiarity to replace status as a criterion–
kasar tending to be used between well acquainted people regardless of rank (e.g.
children to adult family friends) and alos with unfamiliar people regardless of
social rank.
There was evidence of these shifts over 40 years ago, when Stevens made
his observations, and the trend has only accelerated. Many societal factors have
exacerbated this, including: the increased use of Indonesian (a language without
the intricate respect vocabularies) in everyday life, the use of Indonesian in