Discourses of Truck Container Signs in Indonesia

This article attempts to analyze truck container sign discourses found in Indonesia from three perspectives: linguistics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics. Using data collected from google search and one from my data collection, through careful observation and contextual method, it is found that structurally the truck signs can be constructed in the forms of single sentence discourse and multi-sentence discourse of a maximum of 9 sentences. The language style used is informal or colloquial, characterized by massive code-mixing among three out of four languages, i.e. Indonesian, Javanese, English, and Sundanese. The discourses are exploited to perform various kinds of speech acts in varieties of strategies and to carry out many communicative functions: emotive, conative, referential, phatic, metalingual, poetic, and recreative.


Introduction
Language plays a very central role in human life. All people need language to express their thoughts, ideas, and various kinds of emotions to their interlocutors. Accordingly, human life is surrounded by verbal discourses exploited by people from many types of profession, political affiliation, nationalities, ethnicities, etc for achieving unlimited goals or purposes. Discourses found in truck containers which will be taken into account in this paper are one of them. Even though the truck owners create the signs, when they are found or read by people, they may represent the truck owners or the truck drivers' messages towards whoever read the signs or anyone or any people referred or intended by the textual discourses toward themselves. This kind of discourse used to be exploited by the senders to communicate various topics or themes is interesting to discuss from linguistic, and socio pragmatics viewpoints concerning with its linguistic structures and messages, language variations used by the senders delivering topics, type of speech acts and its strategies, and various communicative functions of the truck container signs in Indonesia may perform. All of these matters have not been discussed profoundly by linguists. Accordingly, this study intends to deepen these matters to gain a better understanding of the use of truck container signs found passing on the roads of many cities in Indonesia.
The beginning of discourse studies in Indonesian is marked by the formal studies concerning relations between one sentence to another under the heading discourse cohesion and coherence by using the model of analysis developed by Halliday and Hassan (1976). The application of this model can be seen in Ramlan's work entitled Paragraf: Alur Pikiran dan Kepaduannya (Paragraph: Stream of thought and its unity). This book constitutes the development of his three articles concerning paragraph and sentence relations within paragraphs (Ramlan, 1987;Ramlan1984;and Ramlan 1992) and his experiences in supervising his undergraduate and postgraduate students.
The later development is the emergence of various kinds of discourse studies of a wide range of topics with various approaches, structural, sociopragmatic, and functional as well related with Indonesian or local languages in Indonesia. For example, several Studies by Wijana (1995); ; Surana (2014); and Maryaeni (2001) are about humorous discourses of various genres, such as cartoon, riddle, sticker, and East Java Ludruk Performance. Other trending topics discussed by the linguists are those concerned with speeches, such as Islamic Friday sermon (Sadhono, 2010), traditional Javanese wedding (Mulyana, 2008), public warnings and prohibitions (Arumi, 2007).
As far as truck container signs are concerned, up till now, there is no comprehensive study found. Most studies concerned with this matter are superficial, such as study carried out by Dewi (2014) which is only short discussion on several types speech acts of truck signs found in Solo-Sragen Ring Road. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, Nasirudin (2014) analyzes several aspects of Indonesian truck signs' discourses, including forms, ideology, and their functions. However, the results regarding those aspects are very simple. For example, the structural forms of the truck signs are not merely words, word & picture/design, and short poems/rhymes, but also various sentence types, and multi sentence discourses as well.
The ideologies of truck signs are also more complex. They can also bear other ideologies, such as faithfulness, betrayals, hard work, carefulness, and politics. All of these are carried out by various forms of language play, not just rhyming and intertextuality. Ilmi (2015) research tries to investigate the semantic aspects of truck discourse signs without clear attention to what semantic aspects her study will focus on. Sudaryanto et al. (2019) analyzes the language used, language function, and discourse genres of the truck container signs. The languages used for expressing the signs include Indonesian, English, and Javanese for delivering four language functions, i.e. expressive, cognitive, phatic, and communicative, and expressed in three types of discourse genres: prayer, flash rhymes idiom, and song titles.
Because there are around 400 hundred local languages used in the Indonesian archipelago, other local languages might still be used in the truck container signs. Despite the only few language functions they have found, the number of discourse genres is also too few to mention, the concept of discourse genre is not clear enough, whether idiom and title songs to be included in this terms. Finally, Julaikha (2019) focuses her attention on graffiti that uses Indonesian and limits her attention on discourse types and functions. Without regarding the role of sociopragmatic context, this research fails to discover the difference among the discourse types and their functions. Based on these conditions, this article will analyze this matter from three linguistic approaches: linguistics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics. Firstly, this paper will discuss the structure of the signs from the lowest up to the highest level. Secondly, it will reveal the language variation used by the senders to deliver the signs, and thirdly it will discuss types of speech acts, strategies, and the language functions played by the truck container signs.
From very basic theory of language, it is stated that language consists of two entities, form and meaning. From this standpoint, the language used for creating truck container signs also contains these two substances. The first is realized by linguistic units of various grammatical levels and varieties of intentions wished to deliver by the sign creators.
The language people use to communicate is always influenced by the extralinguistic contexts involved in the communicative interaction, which in sociolinguistic theory it can simply be formulated by the person who speaks, with whom, where, when, and to what end. In line with the truck signs, these discourses are also influenced by more or less the same factors. Therefore, the language variation used to express will also show its particularities.
Pragmatically, the sign creators do not just want to say something with the created discourses, but they also do something with their verbal creations to affect the interlocutors or the speech participants. In other words, the truck container signs, despite consisting of a locution, also perform illocution and perlocution (Austin, 1962, 5-6) ;Parker, 1986, 15-16;Parker & Riley 2014, 35-43). From this theoretical perspective, there should be various acts and strategies used by the senders in delivering the discourses, for they can affect the addressee in effective ways. And, finally, despite the three main communicative functions of language (emotive, conative, and referential), there should be other functions that can possibly be bear by the truck container discourses.

Methodology
The objects of this research were discourses of truck containers displayed mostly on the tailgates and several on the side and other parts of the vehicles. All data presented in this article were collected from Google Search added with my collections. The data together and their contexts, picture, and relevant information were noted. Further, they were classified according to the structures, messages, language style, speech act categories and strategies, and communicative functions. Several data can be analyzed from various aspects. Therefore, they may appear more than once in the analysis but with different numbers. The data found were presented as they are without undergoing any grammatical and spelling correction.

Results and Discussion
The following sections are the research findings concerning with discourse structure and messages, language variation, speech acts and strategies, and communicative functions of truck container signs in Indonesia.

The Structure of Truck Container Signs
All truck container signs are written discourse. As discourses, they express complete messages as the minimum requirement of any linguistic element to be labelled as discourse (Kridalaksana. 1993, 212;Wijana, 2014, 296). Thus, discourse may appear as a word, phrase, clause, sentence or verbal constituent of higher level as long as it expresses a complete message. However, in several cases, the discourse cannot be fully understood without the existence or presence of the nonverbal contexts which accompany the texts. Those non-verbal elements commonly constitute visual elements, picture of artists, famous leaders and other figures (human or non-human) co-existing with the verbal elements. As such, to completely comprehend the discourse, despite the verbal elements, the readers must also consider the important role played by the nonverbal elements. For example, Consider (1) (2), and (3) below:
'With whom is it more comfortable, brothers?' No one would fully understand (1) without seeing the painting of a foot palm kicking a child face, (2) the picture of the late Soeharto's smiling face, (3) the picture of three Indonesian former presidents, the late Gus Dur, Megawati, and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Discourse (1) is mainly intended for eliciting joke, and (2) and (3) for criticizing and comparing social condition new order and after reformation era. With regard to discourse structure, they can simply be classified into two types, single sentence discourse and multi sentence discourse.

Single Sentence Discourse
There are three subtypes of single sentence discourse found in truck container signs. Those are minor, simple, complex sentence discourse respectively which will be described in the following sections:

Minor Sentence Discourse
Truck signs in the form minor sentences can be expressed by non-predicative linguistic units, such as words in (4) to (7), or phrases, as shown by (8)

Simple Sentence Discourse
Simple sentence is any sentence consisting of one predicative linguistic unit. The sentence can be constructed by subject and predicate optionally followed by object, complement, or adverbial. In certain conditions, the subject may not present, and only the predicate and the optional element, one of or altogether exist in the truck signs. For example, see (12) (14) consists of subject, predicate, and adverbial; imperative sentence in (15) is constructed by predicate and object; Javanese imperative sentence in (16) consists of predicate and object; imperative in (17) consists of predicate and object; and declarative sentence in (18) consists of subject, predicate, and adverbial.

Complex Sentence Discourse
Different from simple sentence, complex sentence consists of two or more clauses. As far as truck container signs are concerned, they can be created in complex sentence discourse of various grammatical and semantic relations. Consider the following (19) to (26) (23) and (24)

Multi-sentence Discourse
Multi-sentence truck container signs are constructed by two or more sentences which are related to one another for bearing the discourse messages. However, in very few cases the sentences build the messages not related to each other, such as shown by (27) and (28)  The truck sign of (27) has two unrelated parts. The first part consists of two sentences, Cocok nggo ampiran 'appropriete for entertaiment' and Cocok nggo omah-omah 'appropriete for house wife'. These sentences are used to refer to two kinds of the woman pictured in the truck sign. From their costume, one is pictured as immoral and the other is religious. The second part Leren judi, insyaallah munggah kaji 'Stop gambling, hopefully you will make pilgrimage to mecca' seem to have no relation to the first. The same as (27), discourse (28) is also constructed by two unrelated sentences, i.e Londone teko 'the foreigner is coming' and Senyummu menambah bonku 'your smile increase my bill'.
Nearly all truck signs are monolog discourse, only a few are dialog. Example (29) and (30)  Discourse (29) is a monolog. It is intended for gaining humorous effect that the gas station man informs his customer that the gas machine starts from zero before petrol is pumped out. But, the customer thinks that he is asked about where he comes from. In (30), in spite of raising humorous effect the joke is also intended to criticize the busy father for never setting aside any leisure time for his child.
The truck container signs consisting of two or more sentences (of maximum 9 sentences according to my data collection) exploit various rhyming techniques (iteration, alliteration, assonance, etc.) to gain niceties of the sign expressions. Consider (31)  Everything concerning the poetic function of the truck signs will be discussed later in section of communicative function.

Various Messages of Truck Container Signs
Truck container signs are used to deliver various messages closely related to drivers' profession and their lives as human beings, head of family, God's creature, etc. Several of those messages which are considered very dominant are safe drive (36) and (37), betrayal and faithfulness (38) and (39), hard work (40) and (41), low wage (42) and (43), religiosity (44) and (45)

Language Variation of Truck Container Signs
Generally speaking, the speech situation involved in truck sign deliverance is informal. In this matter, the speech participants, the senders, the addressees, and other participants might be imagined by the creators interacting with one other(s) in a very casual situation. Accordingly, the language style used in the interaction is non-formal or casual from any viewpoint: spelling, lexicogrammar, pronunciation (as indicated by the spelling) as well. There are at least four languages found in the signs. Those are Indonesian, Javanese, English, and Sundanese. This matter is easy to explain because Indonesian is the national language, and all Indonesian people master this language as a lingua franca and symbol of national unity (Halim, 1980, 17;Anwar, 1980, 52-63).
English is an International language, a symbol of prestige, the language spoken by highly educated people. Most Indonesian of lower education use this language for lending beauty. Javanese and Sundanese are the two most prominent local languages in Indonesia; even Javanese is the most widely spoken vernacular in the archipelago (Moeliono, 2011, 130). Discourse (46) to (52)  Examples (46) and (47) use Indonesian, (48) and (49) use English consecutively as word to word translation and homophonic punning of Jangan kesusu 'don't be hurry'. In this case, Jangan means 'don't' and kesusu colloquial Indonesian for 'hurry'. This is made possible because susu is accidently homonymous with 'milk or breast'. In (49) new fear is homophonically similar with nyopir 'driving', the mi with demi 'in the sake of', is 3 with istri 'wife'. Discourse (50) and (51) use Javanese, and (52) Sundanese.
In a multilingual society, the phenomena of code-mixing among three languages, Indonesian, Javanese, and English as a marker of solidarity (Wardaugh, 1986, 104) among the interlocutors seem unavoidable. These matters are also massively found in truck signs. See (53)

Speech Acts and Their Strategies
Truck container signs are exploited by the senders for delivering various kinds of thoughts, ideas, and messages. All of them are expressed using varieties and strategies of speech acts. Theoretically, there are at least three kinds of acts possibly done by any person when they are using language to communicate. Those are locutionary act, an act of saying something; illocutionary act, an act of doing something; and perlocutionary act, an act of affecting someone (Parker, 1986, 15-16). The first act is nothing to do with pragmatics. The second act and the third ones are, but the effect the third brings is difficult to identify. Accordingly, this section will focus on the illocutionary act, what the truck sign senders do when they deliver their utterances and the strategies they exploit to deliver whether explicit non-explicit, direct or indirect, expressed or implied, literal or non-literal.
All types of the strategy are found in Parker and Riley (2014, 35-43). Based on its illocutionary forces, the speech acts of the utterance can be classified into several categories. Those are representative, directive, question, commissive, expressive, and declaration speech act. As far as truck container signs are concerned, in fact there are only six categories found in the data collection. Those are representative, directive, question, commissive, and expressive. The use of them in detail will be described in the following subsection.

Representative Speech Act
A representative speech act is a speech act used by the speaker to describe some states of affairs. This act is exploited for executing several acts, such as stating, asserting, denying, admitting, predicting, notifying, and so on. Consider the following (59) to (66): Without any clearness of what the senders are talking about in (59), they state that what they have done is not their profession, but it is just merely their hobby. In (60) the senders assert their belief in the strength of prayer in bringing happiness for the utterer. Discourses in (61) Discourse (65) is an implicative statement of the sender and their friend about their national loyalty. Finally, discourse (66) is a sender's denial about the profession for their future son-in-law.

Directive Speech Act
Directive speech act is an act intended by the speaker to ask the interlocutor to do or not to do something. In uttering the speech, the sender may do various kinds of directives, such as command, request, advice, caution, prohibition, etc. This act can be carried out directly by using the imperative sentence, such as seen in (67)  Whatever the other possible messages of (67) may have, the woman speaker is asking the driver to pass as long as the vehicle can do. The first sentence of (68) is the sender's request for the addressee to return home. Discourse (69) is the sender's caution to the interlocutor for safe driving. Discourse (70) is a prohibition to the interlocutor to stop being fussy, and asking a question to him how much he dares to pay for the girl offered. In (71) the speaker asks the interlocutor to see her face in the mirror whether she is eligible enough for having envisioned to get a rich and nice-looking husband.
The directive speech acts can also be delivered in indirect strategies by using declarative and interrogative constructions. Consider (72) to (77)  Discourse (72) is an indirect way to ask the interlocutor for just having no more than two children, and just have one wife. Discourse (73) is an indirect way to prohibit the interlocutor for not doing adultery. Discourse (74) is an indirect strategy to ask the friend to always praise the Lord. Discourse (75) is a reminder for the interlocutor that to be a rubbish collector that is is more dignified than a useless person. Discourse (76) is an indirect strategy to remind the interlocutor (father) to save enough time for his family. Finally (77) is an indirect command to the interlocutor for not displaying her edited photograph because she is still beautiful enough to attract an adult male. The indirectness of (72) to (75) are uttered by declarative sentences, while of (76) and (77) are expressed in interrogative sentences.
From another viewpoint, discourse (72) implicatively reminds the interlocutor that raising more than two children is a hard task, and living with two wives will bring him a lot of inconveniences. So, staying with one wife and two children is much more comfortable. Vol. 22 No. 1 -April 2022ISSN: 1410; 2580-5878 (online)

Journal of Language and Literature
The following disourses (78) to (81)

Question Speech Act
There are certainly several truck container signs constructed by interrogative questions, seen in (76) and (77) above, intended to express directive acts in indirect ways. Compare (76) and (77)  Discourse (88) consists of two parts. The first part expresses the directive act of reminding, and the second contains promise about the sender's faithfulness for waiting the Journal of Language and Literature ISSN: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) I Dewa Putu Wijana married girl he loves to become a widow. In (89) by exploiting the Indonesian children song rhyming, the sender vow that his love is just for the woman intended in the discourse. Discourse (90) even though he still hopes the girl will become his wife, he is already willing that if another thing happens, he has made a promise to attend her wedding although just for singing song. Discourse (91) contains the sender's strong intention to get better every day.

Expressive speech Act
Any utterance intended by the sender to express all kinds of emotion, such as happiness, sadness, anger, disappointment, wonder, etc. can be classified into this category. There are several acts belong to its sub categories. Those are apologizing, thanking, congratulating, welcoming, objecting, and so on. See (92)  As far as speech act strategy is concerned, closely related with the informal style of the discourse, all truck container signs use nonexplicit strategy. The truck discourse never overtly or explicitly uses the first person subject saya 'I", kita 'we', or kami 'we', followed by performative verbs, such as menyatakan 'stating', berjanji 'promising', bersumpah 'swearing', and memperingatkan 'warning' like utterances commonly found in formal registers.

Communicative Functions
With regard to the communicative function the human language can play, there are several linguists who have made various distinctions. For instance, Buhler (1934) differentiates between referential and emotive functions. Brown and Yule (1989, 1-2) classify Journal of Language andLiterature Vol. 22 No. 1 -April 2022 ISSN: 1410-5691 (print);2580-5878 (online) transactional and interactional, Halliday (1970) claims the difference between ideational and interpersonal, and Lyons (1977) between descriptive and social expressive (see also Wijana, 2018, 82). The most complete and renowned classification is one done by Jakobson (1966, 350-359; See also Kadarisman, 2009, 53-54). In his article Jakobson mentions six kinds of language functions. Those are emotive, conative, referential, poetic, and phatic, and metalingual. The first three functions have been included in discussion about speech acts. The emotive function is already included in expressive speech act, connotative function in directive speech acts, and referential function in the representative speech act. Accordingly, this section will only the rest 3 functions: poetic, phatic, metalingual, added with one other important function which is considered very important with regard to truck container sign, i.e. recreative function.

Poetic Function
By the language speakers, this primary means of communication can be exploited to create various verbal arts, such as poems, lyric songs, rhyming slang, catchy phrases, jingles, etc. These kinds of verbal works are found in many genres of registers, such as commercial ads, political campaign slogans, product brand names, and enterprises names. In these kinds of genre text, the language plays its aesthetic function which is technically the same as poetic function (See also Holmes, 1992. 286;Wijana, 2017, 17). In a lot of examples, truck containers sign massively exploit this language function through the use varieties of verbal plays, such as rhyming couplet, either initial (assonance) or final (alliteration), metaphor, simile, proverbial expressions, idioms, etc. See (100) to (103) below which play with assonance using repetition jatuh 'fall', affix ber-, bersyukur 'grateful to God' and berdoa 'pray', and alliteration of final syllable nyelempit 'tucked in', sakmenit 'one minute' and sundul langit 'to reach the sky'. Barang nyelempit is a polite expression to mean 'woman genital'. In (104) the falsehood is metaphorically compared with something that can save and break. In (105) praying and sin are resembled with an eraser and something which can be erased. In (106), (107), and (108) love is imagined to have the same characteristics with car's spare parts, fuel, and parking space, entities close or relevant to the driver's life. Finally, proverbial and idiomatic expression are also important elements in creating aesthetic discourses, such as seen in (109)

Phatic Function
Sometimes speech locution is not oriented to exchanging information, but more importantly, is to make contact with the addressee(s). For this condition, the language is exploited to carry out a phatic function, and the linguistic units used to bear are called "phatic communion". So, lip service chats, opening and closing addresses, expressions of wishes and compliments, etc. belong to this category. Only a few data show this function. See (112) Discourses (112) and (113) are created by the creator to build contact with all Indonesian era after about two decades, reformation order is felt not bring any better social changes to the whole country. The leader of the new order, the late general Soeharto, greets them by saying a rhetorical question that his era is better than nowadays. Discourse (114) is a lip service contact to the addressee about the time of his marriage. Meanwhile, (115) is the sender's greeting to the interlocutor to always have enthusiasm.

Referential Function
In truck container signs, the referential function of the discourse is intended to explain the meaning of unfamiliar newly created acronyms or abbreviations that are intentionally derived from words or phrases that are already have established conventional meaning.

116) Kiss (Kisah indah seorang sopir)
'  (121) is a Javanese word used to refer to Koran Passage Reciting is regarded as an acronym of wira wiri ning dalan 'Go here and there a long the road', daily activity of a driver, and usually does not have a lot of time to recite a holy book. The phenomena of creating ambiguous abbreviations and acronyms seem closely related to humor creation that will be discussed in detail in the following section.

Recreative Function
The recreative function of truck signs is dominantly intended by the senders to create humorous situation between or among the speech participants, i.e. the sender and the readers. For evoking such a situation, the discourse is constructed in such way, so enable to elicit comic effects to amuse all parties involved in the process of communication. In any language, ambiguity is a primary source of humorous discourse. In truck container discourses, ambiguity is created in various complicated ways. The first is done by confusing literal and figurative meaning, as seen in (122) and (123) below. In (122), the word numpaki 'ride, drive' can mean ride in relation to the vehicle, and can also mean 'to fuck' if it is associated with woman. In (123) the proverb Sorga di telapak kaki ibu figuratively means 'the happiness will be realized if someone respects their mother', and telapak kaki ibu 'foot sole' depicted in the truck design is its literal meaning.

122) Ora nduweni wis tau numpaki 'I don't have, but I once drive it' 123) Sorga di telapak kaki ibu. 'The heaven is under your mother feet'
Fake broken English intended to express various Javanese or Indonesian messages, critics, advice, physical as well as mental condition, apprehension, etc. are massively exploited in creating funny truck container signs, as shown by (124) to (125)  Insulting to the signs' reader is another form of joking, sometimes found in the truck sign discourse. Consider (134) and (135)  The dialog (136) between the sender and the reader found in a pick-up clearly tends to be created for evoking amusement, the same as (137) the exploitation of the human body part taboo as the source of livelihood.

Conclusion
Truck container discourses consist of verbal elements incorporated with the pictures which play entirely or in part to build the textual contents. The verbal elements in the form of various linguistic units: word, phrase, simple sentence, complex sentence, and multi-sentence constituent are exploited by the creators to deliver varieties of messages that concern mostly of human life problems, such as love, careful driving, religiosity, low income, life hardness, mannerism, politics, etc. The discourses participants are tied in informal speech situation. As such, the verbal activities are massively marked by the use of colloquial or informal styles in which code mixing of various kinds and of various level among the languages used to deliver the messages, Indonesian, Javanese, English, and Sundanese, are abundant. There are various kinds of verbal acts and strategies possibly done by the sender in delivering the discourses. They may stating, directing, expressing emotional feeling, addressing or greeting, explaining, etc. in various strategies implicitly, directly or indirectly, literally or nonliterally, implicatively or non implicatively. In spite of the three main communicative functions, emotive, conative, and referential function, the use of truck container discourse may also be intended to carry out poetic, phatic, metalingual, and recreative functions.