The Role of Indonesian Caregivers’ Nonverbal Elements and Face Threatening Acts toward the Aged

This study aimed at finding out the role of Indonesian caregivers’ nonverbal elements and its relation to the face saving of the aged. This study was part of the author’s dissertation research that took the theme of Indonesian caregivers’ language politeness when they worked as caregivers for the aged in Japan. In this article the concept introduced by Brown & Levinson (1978, 1987) on FTA (Face Threatening Act) is used as the concept in the process of analysis beside the concept from Ekman and Friesen (1969) on nonverbal language. Qualitative method was used in this study and the data used were primary data in the form of the Indonesian caregivers’ utterances in their communication with the aged. The Indonesian caregivers who were used as the subjects consisted of 68 and all of them worked in the regions of Yokohama, Toyohashi, and Okayama. From the data analysis it was found that there were 11 types of nonverbal language which belonged to the emblems group, namely (1) eye contact, (2) smiling, (3) holding hand, (4) leaning forward, (5) lowering body position, (6) affirmative nodding, (7) gesture, (8) hugging, (9) patting shoulder, (10) interpersonal space, and (11) therapeutic touch. From the result of the analysis of the interviews with the aged it was concluded that all of these eleven nonverbal elements did not threat the faces of the aged and the use of the nonverbal elements could play the role as a mitigation of the threat towards the faces of the aged.