ABSTRACT (it has a copyright!)

ABSTRACT

The Use of Informal Language in Indonesian Muslim Blogger
Members’ Weblogs
(A Descriptive Study of Indonesian Muslim Blogger Members
Who Are Living Abroad and Frequently Using English)

Many factors influence people whether they use formal or informal language in their writings. Some of them are the audience, the purpose, and the subject of writing. Informal written language is used mostly in informal situation. The characterizations of informal written language are the use of colloquialisms, many contractions, sentence fragments, new vocabulary, and short sentences. The study attempted to identify the informal language characteristics of writings in Weblogs. Weblog is known as a media to publish writings using Internet technology. This is a descriptive research that employs qualitative method. This research involved two members of Indonesian Muslim Blogger as the respondents. They were chosen because they are living abroad and frequently using English in their Weblogs. The data are obtained from the respondents’ postings in their Weblogs and the answers of open questionnaire. The research reveals that their writings are indeed consisted of informal language. Both of them have the same preference of informal language characteristics in their Weblogs. The most favorite is new vocabulary, followed by the use of contractions, colloquialisms, and sentence fragments.The research also finds the reasons for using informal language in their Weblogs. R#1 states that he considers Weblog as an informal tool and comprises only for his personal records, whereas R#2 seems to be not realized of her language use in her Weblog. Additionally, she only focuses on her communication goal and does not concern the language use.