literalisasi

Literalisasi is the process of rendering something in a literal way, or interpreting it in terms of its most basic, concrete meaning. In linguistics and translation studies, literalisasi often refers to translating or interpreting expressions by their primary denotations, avoiding idiomatic, metaphorical, or culturally loaded senses.

The term in Indonesian is formed from literal and the suffix -isasi, and is used across disciplines to describe a stance, strategy, or outcome of interpretation. In religious studies, literalisasi can describe a strict, literal reading of sacred texts, sometimes contrasted with contextual, allegorical, or figurative readings. In translation practice, literalisasi aims to preserve lexical content and syntactic structure, but can produce awkward phrasing or loss of idioms and cultural nuance.

Literalisasi can serve as a diagnostic or evaluative tool in discourse analysis, signaling when a text or its interpretation relies on a surface, face-value sense rather than deeper or contextual meaning. Critics warn that excessive literalization may distort metaphor, irony, humor, or pragmatic intent, hindering understanding or misrepresenting authorial nuance. Proponents, meanwhile, argue that literal approaches reveal straightforward information and reduce ambiguity in certain analytical or documentary contexts.

Related concepts include literalism, literal reading, literal translation, and semantic literalness. Literalisasi is thus a useful lens for examining how language is interpreted, translated, or contested when literal meaning competes with figurative or contextual interpretation.