Negotiation Strategies of Fishermen in Fish Trading at Southern Cilacap Fish Auctions: A Sociopragmatic Review

Abstract

To build relationships and social interactions in achieving goals, communication is crucial. One of the human activities involving communication is business or trading. Effective communication in business demands the implementation of communication strategies, particularly in negotiation, to maximize profits. This research aims to describe the negotiation strategies employed by fishermen with regular buyers and traders at fish auctions on the southern coast of Java from a sociopragmatic perspective. This qualitative descriptive study was conducted at three fish auction sites in southern coastal areas. The data comprise fishermen's utterances during transactions with regular buyers and traders, as well as secondary data obtained through interviews with fishermen. The data source includes all speech events in fish trading at southern coastal auction sites. Data collection was conducted using purposive sampling, and the structured data were then tabulated to address the research objectives and hypotheses based on theories and conceptual frameworks. The findings reveal that the communicative interactions between fishermen, regular buyers, and traders exhibit communication patterns: (1) interactions start with offering or directly naming the goods, and (2) face-to-face and reciprocal (dialogical) communication between fishermen and buyers or traders facilitates agreement. Fishermen, buyers, and traders demonstrate communicative skills and shared understanding that support the continuity of economic transactions. This indicates that the dimensions of speech acts and conversational maxims are well understood by traders and buyers. Thus, this research has implications for utilizing communication models in marketing.