ABSTRACT
Although the interaction among literary works has in fact been one of the significant areas to study Indonesian novels, it is still little known due to the way a phenomenon of mingling and competing is developed to expose cultural differences. This study discusses this phenomenon by using an interaction analysis to investigate the potential or actual problems of the communication experienced by characters in three novels, namely Api Awan Asap (from Dayak’s cultural view), Lampuki (from Aceh’s cultural view) and Puya ke Puya (from Toraja’s cultural view). Furthermore, the methodology of the interaction analysis, which was developed by Bateson (1958, 1970), Foster (1979) and Stephen (2001), provides an empirical basis for any claims on the problems or conflicts of communication. By conducting a corpus-based analysis of the interaction among the characters’ different cultural backgrounds in those novels, this study will show the types of conflicts displayed through their communications. Interestingly, conflicts do not take place among characters from different social backgrounds, such as profession, age, sex and education, but among those from the same background. This study also applies Deutsch theory (2000) to conduct competition and establish cooperation, and Meyer’s cultural scale (2015) to help analyse the cultural differences among those characters.
