Intercultural Communication Strategy in Interethnic Marriage in Tapal Kuda Areas, East Java, Indonesia

Conflicts in the family and between families that often lead to divorce often occur among ethnic marriages in the Tapal Kuda areas. This study intends to explore and describe the communication strategies used in inter-ethnic communication as an effort to anticipate and resolve intra and inter-family conflict perpetrators of interethnic marriages. The ethnographic approach to communication with the focus on sociolinguistic study is used to achieve the research objectives. Research informants are inter-ethnic marriages, parents, religious leaders, and KUA officers who are often involved in overcoming issues related to marriage and divorce. Data were collected through participant observation, interviews, and recording. The collected data were transfered in written data and analyzed qualitatively and descriptively with sociolinguistic, ethnographic communication, and pragmatic theories. This research results found that there are three factors that often trigger the failure of communication in inter-ethnic marriages so that they can often also be obstacles to the achievement of speech objectives. These three things are language skills, interaction skills, and cultural knowledge. However, the most dominant thing that occurs and often invites criticism from other cultures is the knowledge and understanding of the culture of other speech communities.