IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION AND CODE MIXING ON MICRO SCALE BUSINESS ADVERTISEMENTS IN MEDAN

This research dealt with the common phenomena on business advertisement discourse. The objectives of this descriptive qualitative study were: (1) to show the elements of print advertisements contain code mixing; (2) to show the categories of code-mixing used by advertisers/entrepreneur in print advertisements; (3) to describe the realization of identity construction in print advertisements; (4) to find out the reasons why the advertisers/entrepreneur of micro scale business use bilingual languages in marketing a product in the way advertisements they do. The data were obtained from the language used (written text) from four different backgrounds of micro scale business advertisements but they focused on culinary products namely, “Burger Sumo”, “Jajanan Medan 369”,“Chicken Holic”,and the last “Martabak Buddy”. This research applied qualitataive research design.The data were collected through observation, collection the culinaries’ print advertisement and indepth interview. The findings of the study showed that: 1) In term of elements in the print advertisements occurred in micro scale business in Medan. There were product name, subheading, slogan, headline, body copy and illustration. Some slogans used puns to make them more memorable and attractive for consumers. The internet URLs mostly found as element that provided code mixing in the data; 2) Six categories of code mixing were found in Micro Scale Businesses, namely bilingual, isolated lexical, phrasal lexical substitution, phrasal substitution, sentential substitutions, and others (trilingual). In some of print advertisements, the slang word was found in the data; 3) Identity constructions were realized in form of code mixing Indonesian language to other language, especially English. The linguistic code featured identity of modernity construction.The findings showed that advertisers construct different identities for persuading the consumers or to be positively disposed towards their brand. As a form of marketing strategy, advertising did ideological work and it played an important role in identity formation. In those cases, the motivations typically involved international, success, future, fun and sophistication orientation which were closely identified with mixing English (modernity); 4) In addition to being presented in English, foreign words turned to enjoy the potential to make a specific product or brand name more appealing and memorable, and this trait of foreign words can be used in Indonesian print advertising discourse. Based on the results of the study,the reasons were attention getting, persuasion, innovation and creativity, prestige, technological words to fun and memorability because the owners thought that tag line/branding in Indonesian language cannot translate directly or if the discourse translate in English the message cannot deliver well to consumers because English has own term in the market / business.