Anaphora : Journal of Language, Literary, and Cultural Studies

Effects of Read-Aloud Folklore on Character Development and Regional Literary Literacy Among Parents and Children

2025-08-05T13:29:24+00:00

The globalization era presents challenges in preserving the existence, sustainability, and authenticity of local literary heritage, including folklore. Today, folklore is gradually fading and becoming less familiar among younger generations. However, regional literary literacy plays an essential role in building and maintaining the cultural identity of a community and contributes to fostering positive character development in children from an early age. Recognizing the central role of regional literary literacy in shaping children’s growth and development, it is crucial to internalize positive values derived from folklore amidst moral decadence. Responding to the duality between modernity and the preservation of local wisdom, this study aims to highlight the significant relevance of strengthening regional literature through the read-aloud method. The research focuses on teachers and parents of students at SD Negeri Pakintelan 03 Gunungpati, Semarang, Central Java. “Ketika Nasi Menangis”, a trilingual book developed in Indonesian, Javanese, and English, was used as a medium to support this research. The findings indicate that reading folklore aloud has a positive impact on children’s character development in general and the enhancement of regional literary literacy in particular. For parents and teachers, this study has fostered their understanding of the importance of bedtime storytelling through the read-aloud folklore method, encouraged enthusiasm for narrating bedtime stories, and provided a practical guide for effective storytelling.

Cultural Representation Analysis in English Textbook in Indonesia EFL Secondary School Students

2025-08-05T13:42:11+00:00

This study aims to examine the representation of cultural dimensions in pictures and written texts (students’ exercises and reading texts) in the English textbook Work in Progress (2022), based on Yuen’s (2011) and Chao’s (2011) theories, and to determine whether the cultural dimensions in the textbook align with intercultural competencies and the Pancasila Student Profile in the Merdeka curriculum. Cultural dimensions are crucial in language learning as they foster global awareness, intercultural understanding, and appreciation of cultural diversity. This qualitative study employs a content analysis methodology to analyze data from the English textbook Work in Progress (2022), designed for tenth-grade high school students and published by the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia. The analysis, based on Yuen’s (2011) cultural dimensions, indicates that perspectives are the most dominant dimension, followed by persons, products, and practices. Furthermore, the cultural categories based on Chao’s (2011) theory are dominated by international culture, intercultural interaction, source culture, target culture, and universality across culture. The findings highlight the textbook’s alignment with the Merdeka Curriculum’s goals of promoting intercultural competence and global diversity. Yuen’s (2011) cultural dimensions (persons, perspectives, products, and practices) and Chao’s (2011) cultural categories (international culture, intercultural interaction, source culture, target culture, and universality across culture) reflect the Merdeka Curriculum’s emphasis on understanding how cultural dimensions in textbooks support the Pancasila Student Profile’s goal of recognizing and appreciating cultural diversity.

Revealing Gender Ideology in Integrated Korean Language Textbooks through Theme-Rheme Structures:

2025-08-05T14:10:47+00:00

This study adopts a Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) approach grounded in Halliday’s theoretical framework to investigate Theme-Rheme structures in the Integrated Korean Language textbooks . This research is significant as prior studies on Korean language textbooks have largely overlooked the interplay between thematic structure and ideological representation, leaving a gap in understanding how discourse patterns contribute to implicit cultural messaging. The primary objective is to examine the deployment of marked and unmarked themes as well as the patterns of thematic progression within narrative and descriptive texts. The data are drawn from Volumes 3 and 4 of the textbooks, which encompass cultural, object-related, and activity-based themes. The findings indicate that the majority of clauses adhere to the Simple Linear Thematic Progression pattern, wherein the rheme of one clause becomes the theme of the subsequent clause, thereby contributing to a cohesive and logically sequenced discourse. In certain instances, Complex Linear Progression patterns were also observed, offering extended elaboration of central ideas. Material and relational processes are predominantly employed to represent actions and identity relationships, illustrating how lexical choices such as verbs and conjunctions function to structure the narrative. Furthermore, the analysis reveals the implicit integration of feminist ideology gender roles within the texts, particularly concerning evolving gender roles in contemporary Korean households. The thematic patterns identified reflect broader social values and ideological transformations embedded in the educational material, conveying underlying messages that promote gender equality and advocate for more equitable social roles. The thematic patterns identified in the texts function not only to organize information but also to foreground specific social actors and actions that align with feminist ideology. By consistently thematizing female subjects, progressive roles, or relational identities, the texts reflect and reinforce broader social values of gender equality and contribute to the ideological transformation toward more equitable gender norms.

Crafting, Grounding, and Acceptability of a Local History as Embodiment of a Local Filipino Legend

2025-08-06T03:49:13+00:00

This research describes the process of collecting historical data and crafting it into a written form that aims to translate a local event from the past into a historical legend. The narrative complements the dearth of local Filipino literature that informs, entertains, and inculcates local culture and values. Despite the influx of local stories in towns and provinces around the Philippine archipelago, only old tales are repeatedly compiled, and published. This paper addresses this gap by documenting a local town history. There were two sources utilized in obtaining the historical data of the narrative: local history books of Alicia town and Isabela province in north Philippines including church pamphlets; and a semi-structured interview form. The high acceptability and grounding of the narrative are due to its closeness to the real event, revealing that respondents manifested a shared understanding of the meaning of the legend. This research recommends the need for more storytellers. Due to the limited time and resources, adjacent towns were not explored. The written narrative could have been widely-sourced and hence richer. The narrative’s effectiveness to inform and educate the young was not also explored. It is also recommended that this narrative be integrated to History and Character Education subjects in upper elementary or high schools, a true test of its effectiveness and a way to realize the rootedness of their culture or why they do what they do. The duty of the storyteller or researcher is to provide experiences making them realize the importance of local stories.

Comparing DeepL and Google Translate in Translating Arabic Expressive Speech Acts in Masameer: al-Film

2025-08-06T05:26:47+00:00

In cross-language communication, machine translation is an important tool that supports the understanding of meaning between speakers from different cultural backgrounds. This study compares the translation quality of expressive speech acts in the Masameer animation using two automatic translation engines: DeepL and Google Translate. Expressive speech acts rely heavily on pragmatic context and emotional expression, which presents a challenge due to the presence of implicit meanings, cultural values, and social nuances that are often difficult to translate automatically. This study employs a qualitative-comparative approach by analyzing 19 representative data points. The translations were assessed by two experts using Nababan’s model and validated through method triangulation, including interviews, content analysis, and theory-based discussions. The results show that Google Translate is superior in terms of accuracy (2.00 and 2.68) and acceptability (2.63), compared to DeepL, which scored 1.84 and 2.68 in accuracy and 2.36 in acceptability. However, both engines remain weak in translating metaphorical expressions and culturally specific contexts. This research fills a gap in comparative studies on Arabic-Indonesian machine translation and contributes to the development of translation technology and Arabic language learning, particularly in the areas of pragmatics and intercultural communication.

Marginalizing and Distracting: Digital Technology Integration in Kurikulum Merdeka

2025-08-06T09:00:46+00:00

The implementation of Indonesia’s Kurikulum Merdeka aims to transform education through student-centered learning and digital technology integration. However, this study reveals significant challenges that hinder its success. Drawing on recent surveys, case examples, and literature, the findings highlight how economic and infrastructural barriers marginalize both teachers and students, limiting access to essential digital tools and reliable internet. Moreover, while digital technologies offer promising educational affordances, their use also introduces distractions that can undermine learning outcomes. These tensions expose a gap between the curriculum’s visionary goals and the practical realities faced in diverse educational contexts. The study underscores the urgent need for targeted policy interventions to improve digital equity, support teachers, and develop strategies to manage technology use effectively. Implications for curriculum design and recommendations for future research on digital inclusion and distraction management are discussed to guide the evolution of Kurikulum Merdeka towards a more equitable and effective education system.

Using Fillers as Women’s Language Markers in Conversation Found in Redeeming Love Movie

2025-08-05T14:15:50+00:00

The purpose of this research is to analyze the use of fillers in the Redeeming Love (2022) movie in terms of its types, functions, and possible causes of filler usage, especially in Angel’s speech. Fillers, often dismissed as meaningless hesitations, carry pragmatic, psychological, and sociolinguistic functions that are particularly revealing when examined through gendered communication. The research employs a descriptive qualitative method using transcription data from selected scenes in the film. The data are taken from Redeeming Love movie and are analyzed using the theory of Rose (1998), Stenström (1994), and Duvall et al. (2014). The analysis identifies both lexical and non-lexical fillers, with significant emphasis on hesitation and emotional reinforcement. The findings suggest that Angel's use of fillers reflects internalized anxiety, social power imbalance, and identity negotiation—all of which are critical in interpreting women’s speech patterns in patriarchal narrative structures. This research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of female language features in cinematic discourse.

Language Commodification in Digital Tourism Landscape: A Corpus-Based Approach to Destination Branding Strategies

2025-08-05T14:18:02+00:00

The digital landscape has become the primary medium for tourism promotion, where language plays a vital role in constructing destination image. While digital marketing continues to attract growing interest, there’s still a noticeable gap in research when it comes to understanding how language itself is turned into a commodity in digital tourism. Addressing this gap, the study aims to reveal how language is commodified in digital tourism promotion and to analyze the branding strategies reflected in its linguistic features. A total of 18 official tourism destination websites in Indonesia over the period of 2023 to 2024, the data were analyzed using AntConc software, generating a corpus of 39,135 tokens. The analysis focused on word frequency, collocation, concordance, and semantic prosody to identify dominant linguistic patterns. The findings reveal that digital tourism promotion is dominated by affective and visually charged vocabulary such as “indah”, “pengalaman”, “unik”, “spot” and “instagrammable”, which collectively contribute to constructing an aesthetic and emotional narrative of the destinations. The identified branding strategies include emotional appeal, visual-social imagery, exclusivity, cultural authenticity, and comfort and accessibility. The implications of this study underscore the importance of linguistic data in designing more effective tourism promotion strategies grounded in emotional resonance and social relevance. This research contributes to the development of applied linguistics within the context of the digital tourism industry and provides strategic insight for destination managers in crafting more compelling and competitive branding narratives.