PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES IN BUYER-SELLER COMMUNICATION AT PASAR LANGSA: SPEECH ACTS, POLITENESS, AND IMPLICATURE

Abstract

This study examines pragmatic strategies in buyer–seller interactions at Pasar Langsa, Aceh. Adopting a qualitative descriptive design with a pragmatic lens, it integrates participant observation, five-to-ten-minute naturalistic recordings, and semi-structured interviews with 10 sellers and 50 buyers across five commodity categories. Analysis is informed by Austin and Searle’s speech act theory, Brown and Levinson’s politeness model, and Gricean implicature. Findings show ritualized openings and closings anchored in greetings, blessings, and kinship address that frame transactions as moral and relational events. Buyers routinely deploy indirect directives through comparative remarks or budget cues; sellers respond with commissives-especially quality guarantees-often couched in religious expressions. Nonverbal cues (smiles, head-tilts, handling products) and prosody (rising offers, slowed requests) co-manage stance and mitigate face threats. Code-switching between Acehnese and Indonesian indexes solidarity versus neutrality, while generational differences mark degrees of directness. Crucially, commodity type shapes interactional length and complexity: durable goods invite multi-round bargaining; perishables are negotiated briefly and decisively. These results refine existing marketplace pragmatics by foregrounding implicature as a structural engine of negotiation and by evidencing a religiously inflected politeness that sustains trust. The study suggests pedagogical uses for teaching pragmatics, practical guidance for vendor communication, and contributes to cultural documentation of traditional markets under pressure from retail modernization.