Foreign Language Intervention In The Use Of The Kaili Ledo Dialect In The Pombewe Village Community: A Sociolinguistic Study

This study aims to describe the forms of foreign language intervention in the use of the Kaili Ledo dialect in the community of Pombewe Village, Sigi Regency, Central Sulawesi, and to identify the factors that encourage the use of foreign language elements in everyday communication. The study employs a descriptive qualitative design within a sociolinguistic framework. The data consist of community utterances, semi-structured interviews, observations of language use, and questionnaire responses. The informants comprise community and customary leaders, parents, young people, a teacher, and a religious figure, while the questionnaire design involves 40 respondents across five age groups. The illustrative analysis shows that foreign language intervention appears mainly as the insertion of English lexical items into daily conversation, particularly in the domains of technology, social media, education, work, and youth interaction. Frequently used items include online, meeting, download, upload, chat, follow, like, share, update, and weekend. The factors behind this use include the expansion of digital technology, social media exposure, the prestige of English, educational and occupational settings, and the communicative habits of the younger generation. At the same time, Kaili Ledo remains in use within the family, customary activities, community events, and conversations with older speakers. These findings point to lexical intervention accompanied by a tendency toward a functional shift in the use of Kaili Ledo, especially among young speakers, and underline the importance of turning positive attitudes toward the language into consistent practice in the family, schools, customary life, and digital media