LANGUAGE SHIFT AND MAINTENANCE OF INTERMARRIAGES CHINESE FAMILIES

This study deals with language shift and language maintenance of intermarriages Chinese families. It aims at finding out the factors make language shift and language maintenance occur in intermarriage Chinese families, finding out how language shift and language maintain occur in intermarriage Chinese families and finding out why language shift and language maintain occur in intermarriage Chinese families.This study was conducted in qualitative method of which design was descriptive case study. The sources of data for this study were four intermarriage Chinese families; meanwhile the data was the utterances of the intermarriage chinese families.The data was analyzed by using Interactive Model by Miles, Huberman, and Saldana. To find out what factors affecting language shift and language maintenance in intermarriage Chinese families, the researcher used theory suggested by Holmes. Based on the data analysis, the first finding shows that there were six factors affecting language shift and language maintenance occured in intermarriage chinese families namely bilingualism, migration, economic, environment, demographic, and attitude. And as the second finding was that the language shift and language maintenance in intermarriage Chinese families occured since there are two languages exist in interethnic marriage couple. The existence of two languages means the competition between two languages. The competition of couple’s languages in four intermarriage Chinese families led to language maintenance in three families namely Chinese Man – Batak Woman, Acehnese Man – Chinese Woman, Javanese Man – Chinese Woman and language shift occured in one family namely Chinese Man – Malaynese Woman. And as the third finding was the reasons why language shift and language maintenance occured in intermarriage Chinese families are bilingualism in which the man or woman mastered two languages which led to language maintenance, migration in which the women migrate to follow their husband which led to language shift and language maintenance, economic factor dealing with the men and women’s occupations which affected them to maintain or to shift their languages, environment where they lived in homogenous or heterogenous ethnic affected them to maintain or to shift their language, demographic factor which made them to use Indonesian language, and attitude which might be postive to maintain language or negative to make language shift occured.