A Semant ic Analysis of Oral Tradit ion in Traditional Medicine Tawa in Solok Regency

Tawa is one of the examples of oral tradition that persists in traditional medicine in Solok Regency. This research is aimed to find out linguistics meaning in each type of tawa and the dominant types of meaning found in two types of tawa. The analysis is done by the application of the theory conducted by Geoffrey Leech (1981) that divides meaning into seven categories: conceptual, connotative, social, affective, reflective, collocative and thematic meaning. This research uses descriptive-qualitative method. After analyzing the two data, types of meaning found are conceptual meaning (0 data), connotative meaning (14 data), social meaning (9 data), affective meaning (0 data), reflective meaning (0 data), collocative meaning (3 data), and thematic meaning (0 data). The results show that connotative, social and collocative meanings as the dominant type of usage in the whole types of tawa. The result caused by the fact that Solok Regency is under Minangkabau and Islam culture. The indirectness in using language, the ideology of Adat Basandi Syara’, Syara’ Basandi Kitabullah are the factors of the choice of words in tawa language.