Abstract

Migrating is one of the characteristics of the Bawean people. For the Bawean people, wandering is a tradition and culture that guide their life. The study of advice on the tradition of migrating is expected to reveal the cultural characteristics of the Bawean people. Advice, as a traditional expression, is a product of a tradition that communicates a set of behavioral models related to the speakers’ customs, norms, and cultural ethics. This study aims to find and describe the values and norms of advice from the migrating tradition. This study aims to find and describe the meaning, function, values, and norms of advice from the migrating tradition. The study uses a naturalistic interpretative method as part of its approach to explore the migration and wandering traditions of Bawean people. The researcher thoroughly describes and translates the advice, then interprets the meaning and content of the advice based on the local cultural context. An anthropolinguistic approach and an ethnographic communication design are used. The study uses primary data sources such as interview and observation results, and secondary data sources such as migrant tradition texts. The analysis uses anthropolinguistic parameters to describe the performance of the text’s meaning and evaluate the functional content, values, and norms of the oral tradition of the advice. The findings show that the advice to migrate is specifically for men, related to the prerequisites for being a Bawean man. The meaning of advice is presented as a label of awareness of experience toward facts and is concluded objectively. Symbolically, the advice depicts the tradition of maturing Bawean men to become ethical, moral, knowledgeable, experienced, hard-working, responsible, and devout Muslims. This article shows a cultural perspective on ethnicity and language by highlighting advice that reflects cultural characteristics. The study of local tradition is essential to identify the ethnicity value.