ABSTRACT
This article studies the speech act of criticism in the ethnic Madurese community (in Indonesia). The study focuses on indirect criticism. The goals are to explain the various semantic formulas that are used to express indirect criticism in the Madurese community, to identify the lingual markers, and to understand the different contexts of use according to the cultural norms of the Madurese community. The data was collected through the methods of Discourse Completion Tasks and interviews. The results of the data analysis show that the semantic formulas that are used to express indirect criticism in the ethnic Madurese community vary widely. In general, each semantic formula has specific lingual markers which indicate the type of semantic formula. Each type of semantic formula is generally used in a different context.
