YULIANA ERLINDA Pengarang SEBASTIANUS FERNANDEZ Dosen Pembimbing 1 Alexander Home Kabelen Dosen Pembimbing 2 Sebastianus Fernandez Ketua Penguji Alexander Home Kabelen Penguji 1 Yosep B. Kroon Penguji 2

The problems of this research are 1) what is the form of the ritual speech used in Poto Wua Ta'a engagement ceremony in Rubit Village of Sikka Regency 2) what is the meaning of the ritual speech used in Poto Wua Ta'a engagement ceremony in Rubit Village of Sikka Regency 3) what is the function of the ritual speech used in Poto Wua Ta'a engagement ceremony in Rubit Village of Sikka Regency. The aims of research are 1) to describe the form of the ritual speech used in Poto Wua Ta'a engagement ceremony in Rubit Village of Sikka Regency 2) to describe the meaning of the ritual speech used in Poto Wua Ta’a engagement ceremony in Rubit Village of Sikka Regency 3) to describe the function of ritual speech used in Poto Wua Ta'a engagement ceremony in Rubit Village of Sikka Regency. The method used in this research was descriptive-qualitative method. The subjects of this research were three informants who are traditional elders of the Rubit village. The techniques used for data collection in this research were interview, recording, note-taking, and documentation study. The research results show that the form of the ritual speech used in the Poto Wua Ta'a ceremony is in form of traditional poetry. The meaning of the ritual speech used in Poto Wua Ta’a of engagement ceremony includes cultural meaning, social meaning, and religious meaning. The functions of ritual speech used in Poto Wua Ta’a of the engagement ceremony include morality function, didactic function, recreational function, aesthetic function, and advisory function. The traditional Poto Wua Ta'a ceremony is one of the important ceremonies in the traditional marriage process in Sikka district, especially in Rubit village, so it is hoped that the originality of every element in this traditional ceremony will not be changed even though times change. Keywords: Form, Meaning, Function, Traditional Speech, and Poto Wua Ta’a