Speech act criticism as a mechanism of social control in the ethnic madurese community

The article investigates the speech act of criticizing as a means of social control in the ethnic Madurese community. The aim is to understand how the ethnic Madurese use the verbal criticism strategy (VCS) and the silent criticism strategy (SCS) and their relation to the intensity of a criticism, and how the VCS is expressed in various situational contexts using the parameters of public and non-public (±Pu) and their relation to contexts of criticism that are favoured and less favoured. The data were collected through DCTs and informant interviews. The results show that in the ethnic Madurese community, VCS tends to be more widely used than SCS. This tendency indicates that the intensity of a criticism as a means of social control in the ethnic Madurese community also tends to be high. Furthermore, the expression of a criticism (using VCS) in the ethnic Madurese community has taken into consideration the parameter of social distance (±D). It appears that the parameter (±D) tends to determine whether a criticism in a particular context should be expressed publically/openly (+Pu) or privately (−Pu), while the parameter of power (±P) does not have a significant effect. The social parameter (±D) also determines whether a particular context of criticism tends to be favoured or not favoured.