Student’s Competence And Attitudes Towards Negeri Sembilan Dialect: A Sosiolinguistic Study

This article investigated students’ competence and attitudes towards the Negeri Sembilan dialect.The purpose of this article is to find out the competence of dialect among lower secondary school in Negeri Sembilan. The research was conducted in the districts of Rembau and Tampin. This study is divided into two parts. First, a list comprises of original words from Negeri Sembilan dialect was collected from Rembau district (one of the six districts in Negeri Sembilan). Second, this group of words were reduced to 80 words and tested on a group of students in a school in the Tampin district. The research samples were acquired individually and in groups. Similar method was observed by Labov and a few other researchers in the West (Chambers Trudgill 1990). This study utilizes the naming method (on certain aspects) and questionnaires with multiple choice questions. Findings from the study show that the students have a moderate attitude towards Negeri Sembilan dialect because they received little encouragement from their parents. However, the students displayed a positive attitude towards competence and perception on Negeri Sembilan dialect. The findings also indicate that the higher the social economic background of the students, the lower their competence of the Negeri Sembilan dialect. Lastly, the analysis on word class shows that social change leads to a few words pertaining to adat (custom), for example, kodin and the verbs bertating and bertandak are among words that were least understood by the respondents. Overall, the findings of the research indicate that there is an observable pattern of language change among adolescents in Negeri Sembilan which is in-line with a rise in social status.