Nama: Sarah Hasya Az-Zahra

NPM: 180410130070
Pragmatics
Politeness among Cultures: A fun lecture with Anton
It was ordinary Wednesday. I have some regular classes, until 12.30. At 12.30, I went to
B203, to hear some lecture from a native speaker name Dr. Anton Kurmelev. As far as I
know, he came from Russia. I thought it would be a boring lectures talking about politeness.
Alternatively, if it were not boring, then it would be nerve-wracking, because he is Russian
and I was thinking that a Russian is strict because of their ideology. In this lecture, there was
also Bu Amel and Bu Lestari as the moderator of the lecture.
However, I was wrong. He was friendly and he like to tell some jokes, Russian jokes mostly.
He started the lecturer by asking us to tell the example of politeness in Indonesia, so he could
start to explain how politeness works in Russia. At first, we were shy and silent. Then, some
of us start to talk about her family habit. She said that she and her mother could not eat before
her father eat. Then, Anton started to relate the politeness with hierarchy. He said that in
politeness, especially in Indonesia, there are relation between culture and hierarchy. It
involves the utterances and gestures that we make.
In gesture affect the politeness, for example, Anton was wondering why some of us bend
when get through to the older people. The answer would be to keep the politeness. We were
also talking about how girls in Indonesia say hello through gesture, while Anton explain how
Russian men say hello, with shake their hand and one of them grab it with the other hand. In
utterance affect the politeness, we talk about how Indonesian people differentiate the
utterance of Kamu with Bapak, Ibu. This utterances show that Indonesian has some
hierarchy of utterance and it relate to politeness. There also some hierarchy of utterance in
Russia. There are [t] for word Kamu and [v] for Bapak,ibu or some strange
people. The difference is that in Indonesia we cannot call people who older than us with the
word Kamu but in Russia we can call older people with word as long the older people
have already asked us to do that. Beside gesture and utterance, some of us ask about the use
of rude nickname. Like in Indonesia, Russian does not allow people to call their name with
rude nickname. Anton also explain about the difference of culture of city people and village
people. The city and village affect the politeness of people. Some of city people are rude
while some of village people are nice. It is not happened in Indonesia only, but also in Russia.
Until the end of the lecture, I have some impression that Russia and Indonesia has some
similarities and differences. I think that culture, environment, and the hierarchy that the social
has set for us affect politeness. After the lecture finish, we take some pictures with Anton, Bu
Amel and Bu Lestari. It was a fun lecture and I want to see him again for some questions
about culture and politeness.