<![CDATA[Ritual language does more than preserve cultural memory; it organizes meaning, legitimizes authority, and shapes gendered identities. Yet research on Pakkiok Bunting , a Makassar wedding poem, has remained descriptive, emphasizing form, function, and values without explaining how linguistic imagery, symbolic expressions, and ritual discourse construct ideology. This study examines how the language of Pakkiok Bunting produces cultural meaning and reproduces social norms through critical semiotics and symbolic anthropology. Employing a qualitative interpretative-critical design, the study analyzed a textual corpus derived from Puisi-Puisi Makassar (1995), supported by observation, performance documentation, transcription, and translation. Data were examined across imagery, symbols, magical beliefs, gender representation, and customary authority. Trustworthiness was strengthened through triangulation, peer debriefing, an audit trail, and thick description. The findings demonstrate that visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and emotional imagery functions not merely as poetic ornamentation but as linguistic and semiotic resources that create sacredness, emotional intensity, and participation. Waves, mist, the moon, stars, drums, Daeng Bunting, and tears encode destiny, ritual legitimacy, family honor, lineage continuity, and maternal sacrifice. The poem consequently operates as performative-magical discourse: its language does not simply describe reality but helps constitute and legitimize it. It also constructs women as bearers of family dignity while normalizing their reproductive and emotional burdens. The study’s originality lies in conceptualizing ritual poetry as linguistic action and offering a transferable critical-semiotic model for examining how language, power, gender, and cultural memory are negotiated in oral traditions, with implications for culturally responsive preservation, language education, and intergenerational transmission.]]>
