Personal Pronouns as the Constructor of Speaker Identity: Analysis in Javanese Text

One of language that has honorific markers in its usage of personal pronouns is Javanese. Javanese has several speech levels. This distinctive distribution of speech levels exists only in Modern Javanese. In Old Javanese, that distribution is not found. This article discusses the use of personal pronouns of Javanese in a speech act situation. The data used in this research are two texts that were written on different times. Ādiparwa text represents the use of personal pronouns of Old Javanese, and Pedhalangan text represents the use of personal pronouns of Modern Javanese. This research uses both data to see how the identity of speakers is formed through the use of personal pronouns in Old Javanese text and Modern Javanese text. The results indicates that the identity of speakers in Modern Javanese texts is influenced by the use of personal pronouns tied by the use of speech level, whereas in Old Javanese text, the identity of the speaker is influenced by the use of personal pronouns and the utterance context. In Old Javanese texts, speakers can present different identities in one utterance, whereas in the Modern Javanese, speakers can only indicate one identity in one utterance.