Language of Disaster and Society: The Socio-Emotional Functions of Language after Natural Disaster

DOI

10.2991/prasasti-19.2019.5How to use a DOI?

Keywords

language of disaster; social functions; emotional functions; social interaction; Palu disasters

Abstract

Natural disasters are frequently inevitable. They destroy many social structures, infrastructure, environment and lives. Moreover, disasters evoke mixed feelings of sadness, anxiety, anger, loss, fear, even trauma. These emotions may impede community capacities to recover from disaster adversity. After disasters, impacted societies should survive, be more resilient, rebuild/redevelop and learn to anticipate the potential recurrent disasters. Within this emergency situation, language and communication play fundamental roles in facilitating social interaction post disaster. Language mediates recovery process, becomes tools for representing human-society experience and is embedded in social activities. This study aims to explore social and emotional functions of language infused in local people social interaction and their environment after Palu natural disasters in 2018. The data are collected through direct observation, images and interviews with Palu local people. The data show that after Palu disasters, language has socio-emotional functions which potentially contribute to community resilience, recovery and emotional strengthening process. Language which is infused and embedded within local people social interaction and social activities play social purposes, such as social sharing, caring, evoking empathy and sympathy, social warning and generating community awareness on potential danger of recurrent disasters. Moreover, language also serves emotional functioning, including expressing anger, sadness, panic, trauma, reducing social anxiety and generating social strength. The study indicates that language reflects human experiences. It grows within different social context and serves different social needs. Language also has adaptive capacity to adjust to various and distinctive social characters, necessity and situation. Language in disaster area is not only reflecting social emotion and situations, but also potentially social emotion and behaviour.

Copyright

© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Adi Suryani
AU  - Soedarso Soedarso
PY  - 2019/08
DA  - 2019/08
TI  - Language of Disaster and Society: The Socio-Emotional Functions of Language after Natural Disaster
BT  - Proceedings of the Fifth Prasasti International Seminar on Linguistics (PRASASTI 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 34
EP  - 40
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/prasasti-19.2019.5
DO  - 10.2991/prasasti-19.2019.5
ID  - Suryani2019/08
ER  -