Iconic Meanings of Traditional Herbs and Shrubs: Culture-Specific Based Envirolinguistic Perspective

Traditional herbs and shrubs, which are ubiquitous all over the world, have been used in various cultures for many purposes, such as for medicinal and ornamental purposes. These herbs and shrubs have different names depending on the cultures where the plants grow. This envirolinguistic research which aims to conserve the names of the traditional herbs based on local culture in the perspective of linguistic and environment is a descriptive qualitative linguistic research. The tangible data of this envirolinguistic research is the list of names of the traditional herbs and plants obtained from many data resources. The location of the data sources is the places identified as the center of the agriculture of the traditional herbs in Yogyakarta Special Region and surrounding areas. Besides, in this digital era, the names of the traditional herbs can be obtained from the Internet websites. These two locational resources make the research adequately feasible to be analyzed. The linguistic data, which is the end-product of this research, are gathered or obtained by the use of observation method. The technique used to gather data also includes transcribing or recording techniques. Data can also be obtained by giving cues during the interview. This technique is sometimes accompanied by recording or transcribing, both directly and indirectly, open or secretly. The data analysis in the envirolinguistic research on the names of traditional herbs is conducted by applying the equivalent method and distributional method as commonly practiced in the linguistic research. The iconic meanings of herbs and shrubs resulted from the analysis were then presented.