An Investigation of Proxemics Behavior among Acehnese in Public Places

It is assumed that Acehnese do not make use of personal space during interactions. This study aims to investigate the proximity levels used by Acehnese people when communicating with other people. The observation approach was used to collect data with people who were in natural interaction in public places as the participant. The data were pictured and kept anonymous in regards of ethical codes maintained in research. The results show that there are three conditions obtained from this study. First, mostly, Acehnese people use intimate level of proximity, which is less than 0.46 meter eventhough when they are interacting with strangers. However, this condition only applies if the interactions taking place is male-male interactions or female-female interactions. Second, in a condition where the stranger interaction is malefemale, the proximity employed by the people is in the level of personal—which is 1.2 meter. Lastly, men maintained farther distance compared to women. In conclusion, the farthest 202 Celt: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching and Literature, Volume 18, Number 2, December 2018, pp. 201 213 https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v18i2; pISSN: 1412-3320; eISSN: 2502-4914; Accredited; DOAJ proximity level that Acehnese applied was social level (1.2 m to 3.7 m); yet, the main influencing factor is genders.


INTRODUCTION
Aceh, one of the provinces in Indonesia, is famous for its warm citizens This statement is true since Acehnese do not hesitate to smile and say greetings to the strangers particularly tourists who visit Aceh.Also, Acehnese are generally heplful, for instance to show the right direction for those who get lost on their way.This condition gives an advantage for Acehnese people inasmuch as they are able to learn the tourists' languages, especially English, easily Nevertheless, probably the people from western countries assume that Acehnese is offensive as they invite to have a talk at wrong and unexpected moments.This is because the western and asian culture are different as asserted by Hall (1990) that western culture tends to choose spacious area when talking, while Asian tends to get intimate.This Proximic Behavior among Acehnese in Public Places https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v18i2;pISSN: 1412-3320; eISSN: 2502-4914; Accredited; DOAJ spacious area when interacting (verbally or silently) is called proxemic as firstly introduced by Edward T. Hall in 1966.This study considered purposeful since it investigatedthe levels of proximity used by Acehnese when they are interacting each other because the difference between culture apparently give huge influence-not ony in the target language learning but also in other life aspects, just to mention (Ismail, 2017).There are four proxemity levels as lined out by Hall (1990), namely intimate, personal, social, and public.Hence, this study is considered important since more people are coming to Aceh, whether for work or tourism purposes.This study is expected to help the visitors to engage effective communication with indigenous people, As well as to provide information that different approach is basically needed when dedicating others with their hospitality.Based on the explanation above, a research question being sought in this study is as formulated in the following: What proximity level is generally used by Acehnese people during interactions?Are there any other influencing factors?

LITERATURE REVIEW
Different cultures might hold various concepts of personal space as the interaction takes place.Therefore, each culture determines its own way in representing intimacy level between two speakers.This notion is in line with Hall (1991, p. 60) as he argues that "space speaks to us just as loudly as words".He further introduced the term proxemics to refer to different space level used in different culture during interaction.According to Agnus (2012), there are three areas in proxemics field, they are distance, space, and modes of behavior and perception.However, this study only focused on the use of distance during interaction.Since there are four levels of territory brought in by Hall (1963), Figure 1 provides the illustration of the territory radius of each individual.It shows the four areas of territory.The first one is intimate level which is up to 0.46 meter; personal level is between 0.46 meter to 1.2 meter; social level is between 1.2 meter to 3.7 meter; and public level is over 3.7 meter.Hall (1963) proposes that intimate space includes some characteristics such as touching, whispering, and embracing.People in this zone are categorized as certain people who hold special relationship such as children and spouse.Then, personal space, usually among friends or relatives, is usually marked by talking with normal voice.Social space is marked by talking with normal to rather loud voice.It is usually used during Celt: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching and Literature, Volume 18, Number 2, December 2018, pp. 201 -213 https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v18i2;pISSN: 1412-3320; eISSN: 2502-4914; Accredited; DOAJ the interactions with acquaintances and unfamiliar people.Lastly, public space is marked with the use of certainly loud voice, sometimes a special device such as microphone and loudspeakers are also put in use.This space is generally attempted in seminars, public lectures, presentations, etc.Some examples are also provided by Hall (1990) as in the following.The first example is territory in American culture.In public, Americans employ two or three persons in conversations and there is also a distance between one group to another.The way they keep from intruding others is by controlling their voice to be not too loud.However, if they speak loud enough, other people would only pretend they do not hear.Next, in Germany, they consider visual and sound intrusions to their private sphere.This means that if we look at them for no reason in public-or talk loudly-they will likely to get angry.Despite sometimes they are misunderstood to be similar, in fact English and American have a great disparity.If American classifies people by space they use, Englishmen employ social status as a way of classifying people's status-especially those who were brought up in middle-and upperclass social status.
Another different perception has also been found in Japan, an Asian country.There is, indeed, no word "privacy" in Japanese.Japanese sees the contrary side of American culture where they have special space for work, family, bedroom, etc.It is not a problem for the Japanese to sleep close to each other on the floor.However, the concept of privacy does exist in Japan; they prefer to give meaning in arranging objects.Contrastingly, the Arabs are considered to have the most intrusive ways in defining privacy.It is the characteristics of the Middle Eastern culture to push and shove people, even to pinch and to touch others, in public place.Thus, no wonder that most Proximic Behavior among Acehnese in Public Places https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v18i2;pISSN: 1412-3320; eISSN: 2502-4914; Accredited; DOAJ westerners are commonly shocked when visiting Arabs, as the Middle easterners are, too.However, Iranians keep their distance even among themselves when they are in public places (Gharaei & Rafieian, 2013).This shows that even among the Arabs themselves, which is in the similar culture, can reveal differences (Sameer, 2017).
In Indonesia, which is also an Asian country, similar perceptions as the Japanese are adopted.In her study, Ningrum (1998) found that intimate and social distance in Indonesia is closer than that settled by Hall (1990).Besides, she also mentioned that there are other factors that influence the distance, they are gender and types of relationship.Furthermore, Prawitasari (2009) adds that the room safety also determines the personal distance of Indonesian people.In addition, Ballendat, et.al (2010) also mention that other factors such as position, identity, movement, and orientation play roles in determining the spatial distance among people around us.
From the reviews above, it is assumed that people with different culture, expect other people to act like, or at least, respect the way they behave in their culture.As Eresha, et.al (2013) also support that German and Arab people even want robots to react like their own culture when interacting with them, including in maintaining territorial space in communication.

METHODOLOGY
The method used was a qualitative research with observation of participants' personal identities.The participants' identities were kept anonymously.They were observed approximately for 30-45 minutes to determine the relationship between the participants if they were family membes, friends or strangers.The ethical practice in disguised-observation which implies that the confidentiality and anonimity of research data obtained from the participants must not be exposed for any explicit or implicit pledge, and proper method and secure manner should also be implemented (Clark, 2006).The sudy was conducted in a small town, Meulaboh, Aceh Barat, Aceh in eight public places; a park, a playground, a market, a hospital, a mosque, a restaurant, a sports field, and a beach.The reason why these public places was chosen was to observe participants' spacial distance.The data were captured without recording any conversiation and participants' awareness since it might have broken the secure manner and could have cause anti-observed behaviour from the participants.After obtaining the data, they were analyzed by data reduction, data display, and data verification (Miles, Huberman, and Saldana, 2013).

RESULTS
The result of this study was in form of pictures to identify the relationship among the participants.After observing for more or less an hour, the results are shown in the following pictures: The picture above shows a family sitting in a hospital bench.The relationship among the participants is male-female non strangers.It can be seen that those people who were waitingare the family members.They are sittingnear with one another without rigidity and look comfortable.The woman is sitting at the edge of the bench, separated from her husband (wearing black shirt) by a little boy.She is not sitting directly next to her husband.Meanwhile, the husband is stiiting directly next to man in white shirt.
From the situation, it can be concluded that the main consideration of their seating is gender.Commonly, if there is still extra space, most men do not sit directly close to women.Yet, intimate distance which is less than 0.46 m was still applied.Another data observed is provided below where people are waiting in a bank.After studying figure 3, it can be stated that the woman and man in the left circle are not family members and acquaintances.They are male-female stangers.Their space was approximately 0.46 cm yet still in personal distance category which is 1.2m.Moreover, both women in Proximic Behavior among Acehnese in Public Places https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v18i2;pISSN: 1412-3320; eISSN: 2502-4914; Accredited; DOAJ the right circle are friends and it can be seen from their proximity by sitting closely in the level of intimate less than 0.46 cm.

Figure 3: Proximity between male-female strangers
The main point of sitting in public place from the picture is also gender.Whenever male-female interaction occurs, strangers and non strangers,they keep distance of their seating in public places.
Situations observed from figure 1 4 shows two nurses holding hands while interacting.The distance level of their physical contact was less than 0.46 cm.This shows that the females are comfortable to have physical contact near each other.
Here, the nurses are cowokers who know each other in the hospital.The situation is in opposition to a Turkish cultural behaviour as stated by Chelik (2005) about speaking and standing where they are often too far from one another that it makes the speakers not comfortable.
By comparison, there is another picture of female-female stranger proximity, which is shown in Figure 5 below: The picture illustrates women sitting next to each other, yet they kept distance which was approximately 1.2 m.They are not talking with one another and are just sitting in the police station.To differentiate between female-female non stranger and female-female stranger, it can be proven from the data above (figure 3 and figure 4) that female-female non stranger easily made physical contact due to their intimate relationship.However, as shown in figure 5, it is difficult for female-female strangers to get physical contact and start conversations since they do not know each other although they are sitting in the closer level of proximity.
The proximity level of male-male strangers is shown in Figure 6 and 7.In Figure 6, the picture shows off two men sitting on a bench of a hospital.They are sitting at a far distance approximately with 1.2 m of level proximity.While the other circle shows the level distance between male-female non strangers.They are married couple but they kept distance within 1.2 m.This description is in line with the Iranian culture norm as stated by Gharaei & Proximic   Subsequently, two non-stranger males as shown in Figure 7 are talking to each other within 1.2 m (personal level).In other words, they do not keep the intimate level of proximity.In this case, probably it is caused by the room safety as stated by Prawitasari (2009) that even though they know each other, it does not mean that they have to sit well in a face-to-face condition.9 shows another proxemic distance applied by malemale non-strangers.They are also college friends who are sitting for lunch in a canteen, but not sitting next to each other even though there is an empty space next to his friend.In this position, they used a personal level of proxemity, namely 1.2 m.

Figure 9: Proximity between male-male non-strangers
The table below is provided to illustrate the discussions on the proxemic distance used by participants: The table shows that there is a significant difference between male-male nonstrangers and female-female non-strangers in proxemic distance.Personal level is used by male-male non-strangers and intimate level used by femalefemale non-strangers.In short, men keep more distance than women.Furthermore, the farthest distance is used by male-male stranger within social level (3.7 m), whereas the closest distance is used by female-female nonstrangers in distance less than 0.46 m.In addition, as seen in the figure 4, female-female non-stranger interaction also applies physical contact that is hand-holding.This supports Suprihadi & Rokhayani (2016) and Pasaribu & Kadarisman (2016) findings that there is a difference in male and female in learning as well as in interacting socially-verbally and non-verbally.

CONCLUSION
Three conclusions can be drawn from the results and discussion above.First,most Acehnese use intimate to personal level of proximity when interacting to each other verbally and non verbally.Yet, this definitely depends on gender (Parkel & Leo, 2012;Ningrum, 1998).Second, there is a significant difference between-gender interactions namely male-male strangers, male-male non-strangers, female-female strangers, female-female nonstrangers, male-female strangers, and male-female nonstrangers.Furthermore, the implication of this study shows that the result can be useful for outsiders who come to Aceh in managing their level of distance among Acehnese people, which profoundly depends on gender, as also suggested by Ningrum (1998).
Figure 1: Proxemic Distance(Hall, 1963) Celt: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching and Literature, Volume 18, Number 2, December 2018, pp.201 -213 https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v18i2;pISSN: 1412-3320; eISSN: 2502-4914; Accredited; DOAJ Figure 2: Proximity between male-female non strangers and figure 2 are in compliance with Ningrum's statement (1998) who gives the opiniion that Indonesian people do apply closer levels of proximity but genders and types of relationship always prevail as the influencing factors.It is line with the Acehnese cultural norm which is how men and women keep their distance when interacting with each other.As stated by Par and Leo (2011), cultural norm is one of the influencing factors in determining the interaction distance.

Figure 4 :
Figure 4: Proximity between female-female non strangers

Figure
Figure4shows two nurses holding hands while interacting.The distance level of their physical contact was less than 0.46 cm.This shows that the females are comfortable to have physical contact near each other.Here, the nurses are cowokers who know each other in the hospital.The situation is in opposition to a Turkish cultural behaviour as stated by Chelik (2005) about speaking and standing where they are often too far from one another that it makes the speakers not comfortable.
Figure 6: Proximity between male-male strangers