Statehood, Scale and Hierarchy: History, Language and Identity in Indonesia 9781783098477

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Statehood, Scale and Hierarchy

ENCOUNTERS Series Editors: Jan Blommaert, Tilburg University, The Netherlands, Ben Rampton, Kings College London, UK, Anna De Fina, Georgetown University, USA, Sirpa Leppänen, University of Jyväskylä, Finland and James Collins, University at Albany/SUNY, USA The Encounters series sets out to explore diversity in language from a theoretical and an applied perspective. So the focus is both on the linguistic encounters, inequalities and struggles that characterize postmodern societies and on the development, within sociocultural linguistics, of theoretical instruments to explain them. The series welcomes work dealing with such topics as heterogeneity, mixing, creolization, bricolage, cross-over phenomena, and polylingual and polycultural practices. Another high-priority area of study is the investigation of processes through which linguistic resources are negotiated, appropriated and controlled, and the mechanisms leading to the creation and maintenance of sociocultural differences. The series welcomes ethnographically oriented work in which contexts of communication are investigated rather than assumed, as well as research that shows a clear commitment to close analysis of local meaning-making processes and the semiotic organization of texts. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

ENCOUNTERS: 9

Statehood, Scale and Hierarchy History, Language and Identity in Indonesia

Lauren Zentz

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Blue Ridge Summit

DOI 10.21832/ZENTZ8460 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Names: Zentz, Lauren, author. Title: Statehood, Scale and Hierarchy: History, Language and Identity in Indonesia/Lauren Zentz. Description: Bristol; Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, [2017] | Series: Encounters: 9 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017013359| ISBN 9781783098460 (hbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781783098484 (epub) | ISBN 9781783098491 (kindle) Subjects: LCSH: Language planning—Indonesia—History. | Language planning—Indonesia—Political aspects. | Language policy—Indonesia. | Identity politics—Indonesia. | Indonesia—History. | Sociolinguistics—Indonesia. | Anthropologial linguistics—Indonesia. Classification: LCC P40.5.L352 I59 2017 | DDC 306.44/9598—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017013359 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-846-0 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: NBN, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2017 Lauren Zentz. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Nova Techset Private Limited, Bengaluru and Chennai, India. Printed and bound in the UK by the CPI Books Group Ltd. Printed and bound in the US by Edwards Brothers Malloy, Inc.

Contents

List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments Preface

xiii xv xvii

1

States, Language(s) and Globalization 1.1 On Not Feeling Foreign in One’s Own Capital City 1.2 The State and its Language(s) 1.3 Globalization and State Formation 1.4 Scales and Performativity, Time and Space 1.5 Methodology and Researcher Positionality 1.6 Learning the Ecology 1.7 The Layout of this Book

1 1 2 8 16 24 34 47

2

Engineering an Imagined Community 2.1 Satriya Speaks Indonesian 2.2 The Historical Setup for Nation and Language Planning 2.3 The Language Planners 2.4 The (Re-)scaled Nation

51 51 53 79 96

3

Locating Languages in Time and Space 3.1 But You Still Use Javanese, Right? 3.2 Creating and Erasing Languages 3.3 What is Shifting in Language Shift? 3.4 A Transition: New Technologies, National Scales

98 98 100 114 134

4

Preserving the Nation: The Threat Beyond our Borders 4.1 Free Sex and Vulgar Clothes 4.2 How Much English? 4.3 Why English and Whose English? 4.4 Knowing English When it is Semiotically Everywhere

141 141 142 159 174

v

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4.5 4.6 5

Repertoires, Motivation and Identity 189 Globalization, Economic Interests and the English Language 202

The State Marches On 5.1 Endless Efforts to Re-scale 5.2 To Our Friend, Richard Ruíz 5.3 The Endless Project

206 206 213 214

Appendix References Index

219 228 243

Map Data ©2015 Google

Map 1 Indonesia in Southeast Asia

Map 1 Indonesia in Southeast A sia vii

Map Data ©2015 Google

Map 2 Sumatra and the Strait of Malacca

viii St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

Map Data ©2015 Google

Map 3 Java and East

Map 3 Java and East ix

Map Data ©2015 Google

St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

Map 4 Java

x

Map Data ©2015 Google

Map 5 Central Java

Map 5 Central Java xi

List of Abbreviations

Postcolonial Indonesia has developed a reputation for its love of abbreviations. This common behavior is evidenced in the long list below, which covers only the tip of the iceberg of abbreviations one encounters while living in and reading about Indonesia. ASEAN BI BJ ED EFL FBS FL FSP FTI KBI LOTI MEA MOI NS OECD P4 PKK SBI SEAMEO SMA SMP SN TOEFL

Association of South-East Asian Nations Bahasa Indonesia: Indonesian Bahasa Jawa: Javanese English Department English as a Foreign Language Fakultas Bahasa dan Sastra: Faculty of Language and Literature (alternate name for the English Department) Foreign Language Fakultas Seni dan Pertunjukan: Faculty of Performing Arts Fakultas Teknologi Informatik: Faculty of Information Technology Kongres Bahasa Indonesia: Indonesian Language Congress(es) Language(s) other than Indonesian Masyarakat Ekonomi ASEAN: ASEAN Economic Community Medium of Instruction Native Speaker Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Penghayatan dan Pengamalan Pelaksanaan Pancasila: Appreciation and Application of Pancasila Implementation Pendidikan Kesejahteraan Keluarga: Family Welfare Education Sekolah Bertaraf Internasional: International Standard School South-East Asian Ministers of Education Organization Sekolah Menengah Atas: High School Sekolah Menengah Pertama: Middle School Sekolah Nasional: National School Test of English as a Foreign Language xiii

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UI UKBI

Universitas Indonesia: University of Indonesia Uji Kemahiran Berbahasa Indonesia: Test of Indonesian Language Proficiency UKSW Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UU24/2009 Undang-Undang 24/2009: National Law 24/2009 UUD1945 Undang-Undang Dasar 1945: The Constitution of 1945 VOC Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie: Dutch East India Company

Acknowledgments

Many thanks are in order, to the faculty and staff at UKSW, as well as my two homestay families, who have essentially shepherded me through most of my time in Central Java. Without their endless kindness and patience, and without the willingness of UKSW’s faculty to invite me back to teach and research alongside them, I never would have kept my bearings in such a faraway land. Since I have left UKSW, many things have changed. Many of the faculty have moved on, and some have passed on. In both cases, I remember these individuals fondly and remain forever indebted to their generosity, particularly the individual named Rosa in this study, who put my name forward to the ED faculty to welcome me as a visiting researcher and instructor, and to the dean of the faculty, Pak Hendro, who was more than enthusiastic in welcoming me. Pak Hendro passed on during my visit to Salatiga in 2013, and I was privileged to attend his memorial service. I will continue to remember his friendly welcome, starting during my first visit to Salatiga in 2008 and continuing throughout the 2009–2010 school year during which I taught there. The eight focal research participants in this book were more than generous with their time, and are genuinely friendly, thoughtful and wonderful individuals. I am proud to know them and privileged to have learned so much from them. They have all moved on to post-college life, all have careers and some have families; some have stayed in Central Java and some have moved elsewhere on Java or far beyond the island and even the nation. My nonofficial research participants, also known as the friends and acquaintances I made, the students I taught and the faculty alongside whom I taught while in Salatiga were also very generous with their time and patient with my perpetual question asking. Thankfully, some of them asked just as many questions of me as I asked of them! I also wish to thank my PhD advisor, Perry Gilmore, for her endless cheerleading. To my other sources of intellectual life support: Brendan O’Connor – thank you for your generous feedback when I need some perspective or some useful citations; Chatwara Duran – thank you for our Research Only! standing xv

xvi St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

Friday morning café work dates; Zane Goebel – thank you for your research, your positivity and support, and for giving me a leg up on writing my book proposal; Jan Blommaert – thank you for encouraging me to submit the book to this series; Nancy Hornberger – thank you for reading another rough draft that has entered this book mostly in Chapter 2, but in many bits and pieces elsewhere as well. Thank you to the reviewers of this book for your thoughtful and constructive comments. Thank you also to my husband, Heydel Cepero, for patiently observing me lose my sanity over and over throughout the writing process, and for providing me with booze and frijoles as needed. We did this AND planned a wedding! omg! This book is dedicated to Richard Ruíz, in whose class I wrote my very first paper on Indonesian language policies. As ever, all mistakes, shortcomings and other possible tragedies remaining in this text are mine and mine alone, and I welcome constructive critiques and conversations under an open door (or email, as it were) policy. If you stop by in person, perhaps I will, as Richard always did, have a bowl of M&Ms waiting for you.

Preface

In lieu of a typical preface that sets the scene for the story the reader is about to encounter, I will leave that information for the first chapter, and use this space to make some comments about decisions I made regarding the presentation of data in this book. My preface might be better titled, in fact, How to Read this Book. I have chosen to include this information up front because it contains some commentaries on the nature of knowledge production and the many, seemingly minute, but ever difficult, painstaking and consequential decisions that we make in presenting and interpreting our data.

Data Excerpts, Interpretive Authority and Subjectivity Many data excerpts are long in this book and this is purposeful. While I am a firm believer in the importance of interpretation – after all, if we just assembled documents and put them side by side we would be assemblers rather than interpreters of data and producers of knowledge – there is an argument to be made for providing lengthy excerpts in order to let the data, and thus the people who provide them, speak for themselves (see Naples, 2003, for a discussion of ‘interpretive authority’; also Lather & Smithies, 1997). My approach to presenting data requires that each individual story and the data that it contains condition the way in which the data appear and condition the researcher’s decisions about how to present them. In some instances, it is only necessary to show three lines from a transcript or to provide paraphrased fieldnotes as evidence for a phenomenon; however, I have found that many instances necessitate the presentation of much more data in order to understand what is being said and how the context conditions it, or how it fits into the larger argument being made or story being xvii

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told. Ethnography is largely about people’s and institutions’ ‘stories’, after all. For these reasons, the reader will frequently see long data passages in this book. This is my thoroughly considered decision to let speakers and texts speak for themselves as much as possible in order to counterbalance my interpretations of what they say or what other phenomena are taking place around them on a more macro level. The reader will see such an effort to counterbalance my own subjectivity as well in my lengthy forays into history, as described in Section 1.5.

Transcription Conventions Transcription conventions are generally in narrative form except where I have deemed a conversation analysis (CA) style of transcription necessary. The CA transcription conventions that I use are located at the end of this preface. Elsewhere I have relied on the narrative transcription conventions of Billings (2014), simply by presenting original transcriptions above translations, in the interest of establishing a common way of presenting non-English origin materials and their translations in Encounters series texts. I have also taken on some of the data presentation style used in Heller (2010), although Heller presents translations above originals. I choose to include both originals and their translations, so that those readers closer to the geographical topic at hand may see the original texts. Many of the spoken word transcripts also involve much code-switching, primarily between Indonesian and English. In order not to take away from this in my translations below the originals, I leave the original English as it was spoken – I do not translate it into a standardized form of English. This original spoken English is seen in the translations in regular font like the one you are reading now. Where Indonesian was spoken in the original conversation, it is presented in italics in the translation. This switch is decided through the speaker’s marked change in selection of features such as prosody, phonology and morphosyntax. What I will often leave out in the translations, however, is where the language that students (or, rarely, myself) used was inflected with Javanese morphosyntax and vocabulary instead of standard Indonesian. My reasons for not representing this in translations are twofold. Primarily, my own inability to consistently differentiate between Javanese, JavaneseIndonesian and standard Indonesian prevents me from doing so in a consistent and reliable manner (while native speakers would be better at identifying these instances, there is still much fluidity and overlap in this area). Secondarily, to note all of this would simply make the transcriptions too messy: as these differences are rarely directly relevant to my analyses of the data in question, this

Pref ace

xix

level of nuance will have to remain only available to those competent in Javanese, Indonesian and the local context. Finally, I rarely make evident in my translations my own dysfluencies in Indonesian. I am very clearly a non-native speaker of the language, and this is exemplified in a comment that focal participant Dian made to me one day: when I spoke Indonesian, she said, I sounded like I was speaking English through an Indonesian medium. Also of note in the data presented in this book: in the transcriptions, we will often see an ‘e’ to represent a discourse marker of hesitation or placeholding, pronounced [ε] or [] by my interlocutors. My interview transcriptions were done by a local resident, fluent speaker of the local languages, and in his writing repertoire he seems to have seen ‘e’ as best representative of that particular discourse marker. In order not to impose an English ‘uh’ on my interlocutors, then, I often leave their ‘e’s as such in the original transcriptions, while changing my own ‘e’s to English ‘uh’s in order to reinforce my non-nativeness to the local context and languages, and my native-speaker status with regard to US English. I also mark my difference in the presentation of my own backchannels, which I generally transcribe as ‘yeah’ [jæ], as opposed to the ‘iya’ or ‘ya’ affirmative response and backchannel sometimes seen in my interlocutors’ speech, unless I have clearly stated ‘iya’ [ija] or [ija] in the recording. Finally, in all transcriptions of oral speech, I capitalize as few words as possible. This is in order to indicate that this is represented speech and not writing, and as such should not adhere to standardized writing conventions. That being said, due to the anomalous capitalization of the word ‘I’, I do capitalize this word in transcriptions in order to make clear that I am referring to the first person singular subject pronoun. Other relevant abbreviations, such as ‘SMS’, I also capitalize in order to make clear the speaker’s reference to that particular abbreviation.

Reproduction of Written Texts Much of the data in this book is in the form of written texts that my students submitted to me via email, written on word-processing programs on their own computers. In these texts they make use of mostly English, some Indonesian, and a few symbols to connect parts of speech and generally make their explanations as clear as possible given the limitations of a written medium (as in Text 3.5). All samples of their written texts are reproduced exactly as the students wrote them, and thus I do not provide any ‘[sic]’ or other indicators to clarify that what the reader sees is precisely what the student wrote. I treat this as understood throughout the book.

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Texts from the Putusan Kongres Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian Language Congress Resolutions) The text Putusan Kongres Bahasa Indonesia (Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa, 2011) serves as data in this book. As such, I include many citations of the text. In order to avoid lengthy citations after every excerpt, I have simplified the citation to simply ‘KBI: page number’. In order to specify which Congress each excerpt is from, I follow this citation with a specification of the congress (I–IX) and what year that congress took place. So the full citation after a given KBI excerpt will look like: (KBI: 23, Kongres III, 1978).

Texts from the writings of Alisjahbana and Moeliono Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana and Anton Moeliono have been two of Indonesia’s most consequential, public and published language planners. Alisjahbana was at the helm of the earliest national language planning efforts in Indonesia, and Moeliono followed him nearly four decades later. Their writings in this book at times serve as data and at others serve as background information, and thus are cited as sources, in opposition to the way that I have labeled research participants’ texts (which are labeled Text 1.1, etc.).

Participants’ names: A note on imposed anonymity and symbolic violence Most of my research participants were not interested in having pseudonyms represent them in this book. However, after I started to write about this data some time ago, I found out that the IRB would require me to use pseudonyms for my participants, based on what I had written in my original agreement with them. As I reconstruct my narrative of it now, I probably made this promise based on a template for requesting IRB permissions and did not realize at the time that I would be beholden to my promise of participant anonymity despite my participants’ desires not to be held so. My impression upon having to go back and ask my participants for pseudonyms of their choice after they had already told me to use their real names was that most gave me more of an ‘I don’t care’ reaction than a strong desire to not remain anonymous. Only two of the eight participants were interested in creating their own pseudonym at that point; the rest had me make one up for them. Due to comments that I received from one reviewer on this point, as well as conversations I have had with many of my colleagues across age groups, it is clear that many of us social scientists feel a great frustration with the difficulties that institutions such as the Institutional Review Board in the United States impose upon us, despite the positive nature of their and our intent.

Pref ace

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It has been a steep learning curve for me to navigate how to maintain the integrity of my research and my participants’ wishes while also obeying the rules set out by the IRB. However, as I am still learning how to work in the most constructive and efficient way possible with the IRB, and also due to the fact that I conducted this research when I was more naïve about the process, I cannot honor my participants’ wishes to have me use their real names in this text. Some readers may see this as an act of symbolic violence, but it is what I feel obligated to do at this moment. I have, however, changed course from my previous work to use the real name of the university and the town where this research was conducted. These two are anonymized in my previous work, again due to my confusion about who and what to anonymize and why I had to do so. However, I never did promise in my original IRB proposal that city and university names would be anonymized, and so I have reversed that action in this work. As one reviewer pointed out (a comment that I had thought of many times over while engaging in what felt like a useless task of anonymizing these latter two), a simple internet search would have clarified the real place and university names involved here based on many of the other local references I make and pictures I share throughout the book – we live in a highly networked and information-rich era where much of this information can be accessed in merely a few clicks. This is all I can do for now in contribution to our field’s negotiations of anonymity, truth telling and participant protection, but I believe our field is coming to an agreement that this is an issue that needs to be addressed currently and in the future (cf. Metro, 2014). One more note about participants and naming before we move on: due to the ethnographic nature of this study, I of course spent time with more people than just the eight focal group participants who are featured below. When these non-focal individuals have entered into my fieldnotes, been mentioned in interviews or responded to writing prompts for me, I have assigned them two-letter initials. Exceptions are mentions of ED professors in data excerpts, who are labeled [prof] or [colleague], and mentions of one government employee I met with, who I have named Pak (Mr.) A. One instructor in this book, Rosa, was mentioned often enough by participants that for the sake of clarity across texts I deemed it necessary to give her a name, and so I asked her to choose a pseudonym for herself.

Conversation analysis transcription conventions used in this book In this book I have provided detailed conversation analyses in Courier New font. I switch to this font because each character takes up exactly the same amount of space. This makes it easier to indicate instances such as overlapping speech, interruptions and time elapsing in the conversations

xxii St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

transcribed. In CA transcripts that were mostly not in English, I have provided a two-column transcription with original speech transcriptions in the left column and English translations, annotated to mimic original transcription details as closely as possible, in the right side column. The qualifications that a transcript needed to meet in order for CA to be deemed appropriate were as follows. (1) There was a group interaction where meaning/conversation was constructed across speakers. Such conversational style, I found, was not amenable to the less-annotated narrative style used in most transcripts provided in this book. The reader will find examples of this in Texts 3.4, 3.7 and 3.8. (2) In a dyadic interview interaction where intonation and conversational turns were essential to the construction of meaning between or across speakers. I have limited this to the lengthy text 4.22. I do not necessarily find this transcription style pleasing for these excerpts: some of these texts, the reader will see, are far longer than a normal CA transcription should be. However, I felt that the alternatives would not convey the material appropriately, and this is explained further in the text surrounding that transcript. For these detailed data transcriptions I have relied primarily on the conventions provided in Jefferson (2004). I paraphrase Jefferson’s conventions here, providing examples of the symbols as I use them in CA transcriptions in this text. =latching speech: no pause between the end of one speaker’s statement and the beginning of the other’s speech 78 Lauren: betul ya= 79 Satriya: =°ya° [overlapping 7 8 9 Satriya:

speech]: speakers talk at the same time like personality atau, [kebanggaan:] [I feel like] oh- no.

(estimated speech): full understanding of speaker’s utterance was not achieved 72 it’s very (forgettable). ((nonverbal information)): description of non-speech actions that are meaningful to interaction 40 Novita: ((looking up at 41 ceiling with big grin 42 on face)) 43 =[um] ↑ ↓: remarkable shift in pitch 6 Nisa: karena: mungkin kita

Pref ace

7 8 9 10

xxiii

bisa menggunakan bahasa: indo↑nesia:, to replace °apa ya (.) bahasa kromo°

CAPS: spoken louder than surrounding speech 43 =[um] 44 Nisa: [HOW][CAN YOU SPEAK] 45 Satriya: [>just because] /phonetic transcription/: where detailed pronunciation is relevant, phonetic transcriptions are presented according to International Phonetic Alphabet conventions, with phonetic symbols presented /in between single slashes/. While such transcription would usually be placed in between [brackets], I use /slashes/ because brackets are used in this system for overlapping speech, as noted above. /↓tn ↑tn/ 137 Dian: /ti a ju ↑εn/ (.) 138 /↓tn/ (.) 139

140 question mark?: phrase-final rising intonation 1 Lauren: dan apakah kamu merasa 2 seperti, (.) 3 apa (.) berubah kalau 4 pakai bahasa inggris? period.: phrase final falling intonation 28 I don’t know. comma,: non-sentence final falling intonation 64 un- I can understand 65 more english than 66 indonesia, 67 sometimes I feel guilty 68 because, ⋅h: inbreath 13

inward caratswhat is it< : the phrase at hand is produced more slowly than surrounding speech 54 I have l- I have °°, @@: laughter pulse 27 terlalu cewek. 28 I don’t know. 29 Lauren: @@@ : rapid word onset 98 >walaupun for me a l99 little bit like gir↑ly, :: lengthened sound 58 Lauren: o:kay underline: underlined syllable(s) are emphasized *slowing down and up 24

Parts of this book also appear in the following articles: Zentz, L. (2014) ‘Is English also the place where I belong?’: Linguistic biographies and expanding communicative repertoires in Central Java. International Journal of Multilingualism 12 (1), 68–92.

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Zentz, L. (2015) ‘Love’ the local, ‘use’ the national, ‘study’ the foreign: Shifting Javanese language ecologies in (post-)modernity, postcoloniality, and globalization. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 24 (3), 339–359. Zentz, L. (2015) The porous borders of language and nation: English in Indonesia. Language Problems and Language Planning 39 (1), 50–69. O’Connor, B. and Zentz, L. (2016) Theorizing mobility in semiotic landscapes: Comparative evidence from South Texas and Central Java. Linguistic Landscape 2 (1), 26–50.

1

States, Language(s) and Globalization

… [T]he model of official nationalism assumes its relevance above all at the moment when revolutionaries successfully take control of the state, and are for the first time in a position to use the power of the state in pursuit of their visions … ‘official nationalism’ was from the start a conscious, self-protective policy, intimately linked to the preservation of imperialdynastic interests … The one persistent feature of this style of nationalisms was, and is, that it is official – i.e. something emanating from the state, and serving the interests of the state first and foremost. Anderson, 2006: 159, emphasis in original

1.1 On Not Feeling Foreign in One’s Own Capital City Officially in Indonesia, signs in public must be written in Indonesian ‘except where local or foreign languages are necessary’. This is written in the national law on language, Undang-Undang Republik Indonesia 24/2009, the slogan of which states that Indonesian people must ‘love’ their local languages, ‘use’ their national language, and ‘study’ foreign languages (with extra emphasis on English). This is not the first legislation that states such: the government has frequently threatened to impose fines on people or companies who have placed other languages – ‘domestic’ or ‘foreign’ – onto their public signs (Dardjowidjojo, 1998; Heryanto, 1995; Kitamura, 2012). Ariel Heryanto (1995) documented state assignment of fines for English on Jakarta signboards prior to 1995, and in 2010, some 15 years subsequent to Heryanto’s report, I asked an employee of the national Pusat Bahasa (Language Center, now called the Badan Bahasa), about the use of English on signboards in the nation’s capital city. He described to me that it was indeed prudent to discourage the use of English on signboards because rural people would not appreciate coming to Jakarta and subsequently feeling diasingkan [foreignized] in their own capital city. 1

2

St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

I employ this brief anecdote, which took place in May 2010, as well as the quote above it, in reference to the policy- and penalty-driven state formation processes that Indonesia has undergone since it gained national independence. In my time studying Indonesia both in person and through texts, I have learned of its unique, yet exemplary, nationalization process. It is nearly the nation-state prototype, a primary inspiration for Imagined Communities. Benedict Anderson points out the importance of ‘the state’ in ‘the nation’; that is, the top-down policy-making activities in the state-driven, postcolonial creation of the Indonesian sentiment of nationally belonging – of being Indonesian and of speaking like or as one – are quite salient. In this book, we will explore the events that led to Indonesia’s past and current attempts at statification and nationalization, particularly from the perspective of language: its importance throughout historical shifts, in current state policies and in individuals’ navigations of their identities. The theories on which this book is based consist of ongoing conversations in Linguistic Anthropology and Applied Linguistics concerning English in globalization, language policy, language ecologies in contemporary nationstates, and the ubiquitous postmodern tension between linguistic performativity and ‘languages’. These topics will set the scene for analysis throughout each chapter of language planners’ texts, national and regional policy statements, and university English majors’ discussions, in their Sociolinguistics class assignments and the research interviews they participated in, about the borders of what can be defined as the Indonesian, Javanese and English languages, and how they are informed by ideologies of language and nationalism in contemporary Indonesia. I first introduce the theoretical frameworks that are used throughout this book before moving on to an introduction of the methodology, context, and the primary individuals involved in this study.

1.2 The State and its Language(s) ‘The state’ has existed for centuries now, in many locations. Prior to the nation-state, states without nations – for example, central monarchies ruling over a land with little communication with residents, and residents having less of an idea of being connected to others in the same kingdom – were precursors to what we now call the nation-state. One essentially transitioned (rarely peacefully) into the form of the next, with a healthy dose of nationalist revolution aided by advances in technology: of primary importance, the printing press, and a good while later, trains and other forms of transportation (Anderson, 2006; Jha, 2006). An important difference between the prenational state and our current nation-state structure is essentially a feeling

St ates, L anguage (s) and Globalizat ion

3

of connection to and within an ‘imagined’ national community, but also important is the reach of state bureaucracy and infrastructure. The state now dictates education most importantly, but it also has its hands in media, roads and transportation, and most other technologies. Within the modern nation-state there is a basic set of knowledge that is expected to be shared by all citizens, and it is distributed through newspapers, education and media. There is also a relatively uniform register of language that most of these media function within, and with the expansion of these institutions it becomes a register that almost everyone understands. In the ideal version of the nation-state, everyone is supposed to be able to produce this register to some extent, and preferably quite well; however, in the real version, this ideal register becomes a point of comparison or reference for the vast array of differences that exist under the state’s reach. That is, in Indonesia’s case, under the Indonesian ‘language regime’ (Sonntag & Cardinal, 2015), national distribution of a fixed and perpetually reiterated set of principles, morals and ideal behaviors, including speech, emanate from central points of media distribution as well as central geographic, class and ethnic locations. Almost everyone sees and hears the ideal model of a national citizen and, as the state’s reach expands, all come to know themselves in relation to it. The state is of course most certainly not the only power and this is increasingly the case (Jha, 2006), but I take the point of view that, in general, other centers of orientation exist in relation to it, and it is therefore ‘often a determining force in the sociolinguistic landscape, in contrast to other centering institutions whose effect can best be described as dominant’ (Blommaert, 2005: 220; see also Ives, 2015; Ricento & Hornberger, 1996; Skocpol, 1985; Sonntag & Cardinal, 2015). As modern states have developed, we have thus seen a re-scaling, or active hierarchization, of perceived language forms and beliefs about them as states have distributed and regulated infrastructure and ‘power/knowledge’ complexes (Foucault, 1980) through education,1 communication technologies and mass media. In this re-scaling, prestige comes to be associated with qualities and language forms that are accessible through time spent in state-regulated institutions (more on this below). Gellner (1983) calls this generally school-based acquisition of nationally shared language and knowledge ‘exo-socialization’: with schooling, large portions of children’s socialization move outside the home and are in direct interaction with the goals of the state. The more one has access to these state-regulated goods and services, the more one performs according to the model distributed by the state, and the more generally publicly acceptable, ‘unmarked’ or ‘part of the common culture’ (Milroy, 2001) that person’s behavior is. Scholars of language claim that the rise of the nation-state in fact coincides with the invention of ‘language’ as we currently know it (Heryanto,

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1995, 2007; Makoni & Pennycook, 2007; Mazrui, 2002). The one state–one nation–one language ideology is regularly traced back to an early formal description in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia in Germany, and its legacy continues through today (Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Krasner, 1995; Sassen, 2006; Sonntag & Cardinal, 2015). After the Peace of Westphalia, 18th-century German scholar Johann Gottfried Herder’s writings are some of the earliest documentation2 that explicitly state the utility of and need for one nation– one language ideologies among then-forming nation-states in Europe (Herder & Forster, 2002). The ideology was repeated or reinforced unofficially throughout the French Revolution and through late 19th-century labor revolts, then officially expressed again in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles (Duchêne, 2008). Anderson (2006) has described how the one nation–one language ideology has been reinforced more recently, in decolonization: the nationalized ‘imagined communities’ that came to life in Europe, and eventually around the world nearing the end of official European colonization, are only stronger in post-colonial contexts. Although these ‘new states’ (Geertz, 1977) generally lacked the same historically integrated foundations that led to Western states’ formation (Anderson, 2006), as they formed they joined an international community already in place – based on the Western national model and state tradition, and already increasingly unified under the League of Nations and then the United Nations structure (Anderson, 2006; Duchêne, 2008; Geertz, 1977; Keane, 2003). The early politicians and language planners of these new states, additionally, were fully aware that they were trying to consolidate, in as few years as possible, the centuries of nation-state formation already achieved in the West (Alisjahbana, 1974; Moeliono, 1986; Simatupang, 1974). Safran (2015) points out, in fact, that in the case of most post-colonial nations it was more the case that their governments ended up forming ‘state-nations’ – that is, a state that forces its agenda of nation-formation on the nation that it is trying to create or consolidate (see also Blommaert, 2006). Postcolonial nations, then, largely fought from the hands of colonial powers by indigenous elite classes who had been educated in European education systems, are frequently and purposefully quintessential top-down modelings of the nation-state structure and ideology complex (or ‘state tradition’; Cardinal & Sonntag, 2015) that came to life through centuries of European change. These newer states have imposed the more ‘organic’ processes that Bauman and Briggs (2003) so astutely described in their documentation of the Grimm brothers’ formation of a national German literature and lore and therefore a national imaginary, by actively generating and consolidating a singular national language, literature and history over their vastly diverse populations.3

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For Heryanto, the creation and control of a linguistic good under nationstate or state-nation formation occurred alongside the establishment of an institutionalized national way of communicating. Such institutionalization, which necessarily entailed differentiated access to these new institutions, also created issues of rights, (non-)equity and a ‘… new privilege to consume what is scarce’ (Heryanto, 2007: 54; cf. Ruíz, 1984). Thus now, when someone uses a certain systematic way of performing language, this is not just their use of a language; it is a performance indexical of a certain status and a certain amount of access – not just to language, but largely to education, the primary and most pervasively state-controlled institution (Blommaert, 2010). This, in Indonesia, is by law all carried out using the Indonesian language.

1.2.1 Modernity’s diglossic dreams and shifting realities The creation of languages in modernity coincides with an ongoing history of iconization of some languages, and erasure of others (Gal & Irvine, 1995; Heryanto, 2007). The production of language ideologies that erase and iconize ‘languages’ enables a blinding, among citizens and policy makers alike, of awareness about the state-driven factors influencing access to resources within local sociolinguistic ecologies (Blommaert, 2010; Duchêne, 2008; Heller, 2010; Hornberger & Hult, 2008). The discursive constructions created at state level and distributed through Indonesian education systems and mass media participate in the creation of a view in which distinct and separate language codes exist, emblematize identity, and can live, shift or die. These ways of talking and thinking about language are contemporarily framed as a continuing legacy of modernity and colonization (Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Errington, 1998, 2008; Makoni & Pennycook, 2007; Milroy, 2001; Mühläusler, 1996, although I have yet to see evidence that they are limited to these eras and sociopolitical frameworks). Regardless of what eras or frameworks they are truly home to, they do strongly inform current realities and they were common tools of colonization and are primary tools in nationalization, and in this research project I and my research participants of course had to use these ways of understanding language in order to talk about it and to try to think beyond what scholars consider to be modernist notions of it (Heller, 2010; Thompson, 1991). Ideologies of language in modernity tend to lump all types of language use together under monolithic categories of ‘a language’ – English, French, Indonesian, Javanese – and to then treat all manifestations of what looks like said language in relation to its ideal form, which is more often than not the collective ideal of the standardized form of that language in any given

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location. There are of course many ‘centers’ of language orientation. There are communities of practice, regions, races, ethnicities that we orient to, but there is still generally one ‘translocal’ standard used in school and one across the mass media, and this tends to be the language of and endorsed by the dominant centering institution that is the state (Blommaert, 2005, 2010; Ives, 2015; Sonntag & Cardinal, 2015). In modernity, then, it is easy to take an ideal form of a language and gauge anything from the language we see on a t-shirt or a street sign to prescriptive talk about language and relate it all to a common center: the prescriptive norm. Under such modernist language ideologies, languages become entities: they come to be seen as embodying certain practices or lifestyles, or even levels of innate or achieved intelligence, and it might even be worth paying for access to them in order to get these other positive values that come to be associated with, or indexed by (Silverstein, 1976, 1998, 2005) the language with which they are associated. If ‘languages’ are said to be invented with the nation-state, then the forms of language not identified with state institutions are relegated to many other labels, among them patois, dialect and vernacular, or from the mouths of my own research participants: bahasa sehari-hari – daily talk.4 These labels are words that usually exist in relation to the modern concept of ‘language’, containing a semantic feature indicating something like ‘less than’ a language: perhaps [-language] (cf. Blommaert, 2010, 2014). With the adoption and implementation of the ‘Indonesian language’, Indonesia was immediately transformed into a modern, singular nation with a singular national language, positioning many other registers of language use as bahasa daerah (often translated as ‘vernaculars’) and in this ‘less than’ position.

1.2.2 ‘Problems’ and ‘resources’ As Duchêne (2008: 262) explains, ‘… the logic of the nation-state creates problems that involve minorities; attempts to resolve these problems cannot in any way avoid the very logic that created the problems’. In the nationstate model that created languages in the first place, and created space for only one to be used on a national scale, non-national registers of language are more likely to be seen as ‘problems’ than as ‘resources’, which has caused them to have to first become languages and then to have ‘rights’ (Ruíz, 1984). Linguists began to point to this in the mid-20th century with claims that all dialects are languages, and all are inherently equal (cf. Bauer & Trudgill, 1999; Milroy, 2001), and later that they could be endangered and that they needed to be preserved (Hale et al., 1992; Hill, 2002; Krauss, 1992;

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Muehlmann, 2004; Shiohara, 2012). From these platforms, scholars and activists could then take a message to policy makers, that all forms of language have the right to be considered a language and, as such, that their speakers deserved rights as speakers of a non- or sub-national language (see, for instance, Labov, 1969, concerning non-standard English in the US; also Hill, 2002, citing Chomsky’s early work). In Indonesia, these registers-become-languages at the sub-national level are grouped together as bahasa daerah. What this term now refers to are standardized collectivities of smaller locales or sociopolitical groupings that contain historically greater variation than is portrayed by their standardized representations. These local groupings of languages and their speakers have essentially become ‘fractal recursions’ (Gal & Irvine, 1995) of the nation: sub-nationalities that then perform another level of centrifugation (Bakhtin, 1981), that is, belief in and social enforcement of a centralized norm. And so, as the nation-state has developed, so have sub-nationalities, each one with its own emblematic language and cultural practices despite the many differences among the speakers that these labels aim to represent. The collective of these unique sub-nationalities in turn regroup in order to come together to form the national identity consisting of its fractally recursive set of subnational identities that now differentiate Indonesian culture from the rest of the international community. Situating such formulaic recursivity within the contemporary world order, Duchêne states: The reproduction of nation-state ideologies can also be explained by the hegemony of a world order that tends to set up the concept of the nationstate as a norm and therefore necessarily situates minority discourses within this logic. To be recognized means acceding to a proper national identity. (Duchêne, 2008: 16) The nation-state lays claims internationally to the diversity of ‘subnationalities’ within its borders that makes it special and unique within the international community. It additionally aims both to overcome this diversity, by frequently referencing the importance of the nation and its one language as its unifying factor, but also to be symbolized by this same diversity as what makes the nation unique and culturally rich. Both activities are conditions for acknowledgment as a full and unique participant in the international community of nation-states, but the latter, of course, must still remain of lesser priority than the national culture, language and identity; in fact, in Indonesia, local cultural events and literature generally must be ‘translated up’ into the national language and also into Western/globalizing models for performance arts, such as we will see in Chapter 3.

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A final note on modernity for now: I do not take the opposite of modern as it is used in this book to be ‘pre’-modern. I only use it in reference to many authors’ work on modernity and ‘modern’ language ideologies, where ‘modernity’ represents an era of mainstream European thought tied up with the formation of nation-states (Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Blommaert & Backus, 2011, 2012; Hymes, 1972, 1985; Milroy, 2001; Milroy & Milroy, 1985). Other understandings of language have always and will always exist alongside this way of viewing language. As well, then, the postmodern terminologies that it competes with (below) are not necessarily new ideas. They are simply constructed in opposition to contemporary modernist views of language rooted in the European nation-state, views that are being challenged in the current context of globalization with the spread of English and faster and increased migration in general. As such, where ideologies that conflict with modern language ideologies are present, I will refer to them as ‘non’-modern.

1.3 Globalization and State Formation The formation of the Indonesian state began long before its national constitution was written. However, achieving independence was an important breaking point – a ‘critical juncture’ (Sonntag & Cardinal, 2015) as the state transitioned to full sovereignty and began to engage in its nation formation project by consolidating internally and integrating externally into a world that had already globalized in many respects. Canagarajah describes, though, that not long after postcolonial states began to form, another force moved in: ‘Although non-Western communities were busy working on the decolonization project, the carpet has been pulled from under their feet by another movement, globalization. … It is as if one historical process subsumed another before the first project was complete.’ He goes on to explain, specifically with respect to the English language: ‘There are significant differences in the project of both movements: decolonization entails resisting English in favor of building an autonomous nation-state; globalization has made the borders of the nation-state porous and reinserted the importance of English language for all communities’ (Canagarajah, 2008: 222). The current globalization era is characterized by some scholars as a period of intensified hegemony from the West and by others as an era of increased interconnectivity between individuals, groups and states around the world (Dewey, 2007). It is said to have begun anywhere from the end of WWII, beginning in 1945, to the post-Cold War era beginning in 1991 (Duchêne, 2008; Graddol, 1997; Jha, 2006), and by some it is labelled the fifth stage of capitalism (Jha, 2006), thus indicating that global trade and

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movement have been happening for far longer than what this current term is meant to define. In this nebulously defined and overly discussed (Baumann, 1998) era, one way in which we can understand the term globalization is to notice that the borders that ‘new states’ (Geertz, 1977) had worked to so rigidly define in at least rhetorically and ideologically anti-Western postcoloniality have been forced right back open in the interest of each state’s economic survival as all sorts of flows from media to business to goods have intensified in their crossing of states’ borders (Appadurai, 1996; Castells, 2003; T. Friedman, 1995; Jha, 2006). This tension, between preserving national sovereignty and identity while participating in a global economy and globalizing communication infrastructures, is a theme that will resonate throughout the chapters of this book. Research on globalization over the past 20 years has shifted in focus away from a center-periphery, colonial-postcolonial model of nations to models of regional centers and peripheries, capital networks which are no longer organized in direct relation to nation-state actors, and multiple flows of discourses that weave fluidly and interconnect in various ways throughout sometimes disjoint, sometimes highly interconnected sectors of media, government, finance, geography and the internet (Albert, 2007; Amin, 2000; Appadurai, 1996, 2001; Castells, 2004; J. Friedman, 2003; Helmig & Kessler, 2007; Sassen, 2006). In this environment where some claim that state sovereignty is faced with its greatest challenges to date, it is also said that national and official ideologies are becoming increasingly xenophobic toward external forces and are homogenizing more internally, as they cater to the non-state processes of globalization while making determined efforts to maintain relevance amid forces that threaten to subsume them (Blommaert, 2005; Castells, 2004; J. Friedman, 2003; Ives, 2015; Jha, 2006; Meyer, 2000; Sassen, 2006; Spring, 2006). In the current context of globalization, multiple scapes, flows and languages are translated and directly transmitted across, within and throughout multiple centers, peripheries and government borders. In this era, whether state power is really challenged materially any more than previously, states are acting out by holding onto their power for dear life, emphasizing protectionism and clinging to the importance of their own modern identities as they continue, and even strengthen, their enforcement and promotion of national languages and ideologies while often turning supranational languages into at once commodities (sometimes even fetishized, see Takahashi, 2013) and threats, and sub-national languages simultaneously into traditions that should be preserved, sold as tourist attractions (e.g. Pietikäinen, 2013), or simply left behind. Cultural tourism is growing with respect to the latter group, although one is often brought to such attractions through English.

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1.3.1 Global English versus state nationalism Chapter 4 will necessitate an understanding of some of the more macro questions of how English’s significance today around the world and in Central Java came to be, in order to shed some light on English’s place in local language use and on the state’s attempts to legislate English in multiple contexts of interaction. A brief history of English’s arrival at its current position as the world’s most highly sought after language will further equip us to understand the state’s actions in the current era. David Graddol gives a concise summary of the history of English’s spread around the globe, which I will even more concisely summarize here. In the 300-year period from 1450 to 1750, Britain began expanding by founding colonies overseas, concomitantly expanding its financial reaches. During this period, English made its way to North America and India, and with the rise of print language, the written English language was stabilized into a standard form. The teaching of English as a foreign language began in The Netherlands and France in the 16th century. From 1750 to 1950, the Industrial Revolution began and initiated a ‘global restructuring of work and leisure which made English the international language of advertising and consumerism’ (Graddol, 1997: 7). The telegraph became a widespread form of longdistance communication, reinforcing the links among spreading British colonies and consolidating imperial powers, and English-medium education was implemented in most British colonies. ‘The first international series of English language-teaching texts was published from Britain in 1938 … the world’s first TV commercial was broadcast in the US in 1941, [and] English emerged as the most popular working language for transnational institutions’ (Graddol, 1997). David Crystal further describes English’s global role in the last two centuries: By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Britain had become the world’s leading industrial trading country. By the end of the century, the population of the USA (then approaching 100 million) was larger than that of any of the countries of western Europe, and its economy was the most productive and the fastest growing in the world. British political imperialism had sent English around the globe, during the nineteenth century, so that it was a language ‘on which the sun never sets’ [cit. Quirk, 1985]. During the twentieth century, this world presence was maintained and promoted almost single-handedly through the economic supremacy of the new American superpower. Economics replaced politics as the chief driving force. And the language behind the US dollar was English. (Crystal, 2003: 10)

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And Graddol brings us up to present day, stating that from 1950: With Britain’s retreat from the empire, local and partially standardised varieties of English have emerged in newly independent countries. ELT has become a major private-sector industry. In the aftermath of World War II, the US became a global economic and cultural presence, making American English the dominant world variety. The first geostationary communications satellites were launched (Early Bird 1965) and the Internet was invented (US 1970s). A world market in audio-visual products was created and soap operas such as Dallas circulated the globe. Worldwide English language TV channels began (CNN International launched 1989). Meanwhile, English has acquired new electronic forms … (Graddol, 1997: 7) Crystal (2003: 6) points out that currently ‘[A]bout a quarter of the world’s population is already fluent or competent in English, and this figure is steadily growing – in the early 2000s that means around 1.5 billion people’. In globalization, increased rapidity in transportation, communication and the development of economic markets and international organizations have led to rapid distribution of scapes representing privilege, prestige, mobility and wealth. Politically, the UN with its many official languages maintains English as its most common working language (Duchêne, 2008), and regional political organizations like ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and SEAMEO (Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization) have in this decade adopted English as their official and/or working languages. In techno- and mediascapes (Appadurai, 1996), products often spread faster than the time that would be needed for translation from their original languages, leading to the very common presence of English on television programs, computer programs and the internet. Thus, English finds itself associated more and more with images of individual, national and global prosperity, both politically and economically as well as through the ‘soft’ global flows of media, mass communication and mass transit. English’s increased semiotic presence throughout societies, along with its official ratification as instrumentally important or necessary by state and supra-/interstate organizations, all increase the rush to get English to all but also increase a rush to regulate it in the interest of keeping nations ‘pure’, as we will see in Chapter 4. This ambivalence creates and reflects similar tensions among the populations subjected to this ambivalent legislation. To meet the demands – perceived or real – of the increasing global importance of English for all, nation-states around the globe are rushing to get the language to the masses through school curricula that are not always successful

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(although what such success would look like itself is also quite nebulous). Such unclear levels of success in English education come through in Mufwene’s (2012) and Gil’s (2010) claims that, despite the large numbers of English speakers that Crystal quotes, the number of fluent speakers of ‘the English language’ is very small outside the world’s four primary Anglophone countries. Pennycook (1994) estimates that, despite large-seeming numbers of English speakers, this still only indicates that one in four people in the world have some level of fluency in English (see also Moore et al., 2010, for a discussion of the problem of counting languages in general). English in Indonesia, or access to English-related resources, is a highly regulated commodity, and the national government plays a substantial role in this, first of all by making sure that English remains foreign to generic ideologies of Indonesianness. Despite policies that legislate ‘the English language’, though, ‘purely’ semiotic uses of English are an integral part of Indonesian language ecologies, and often English crosses borders faster than translators can work, or beyond the control of legislation altogether. When English is used locally, then, it is manipulated in local ways to achieve local ends, and local and long-term residents have fluency in and identify or disidentify with the instances of English that they perform and encounter in their daily lives. These instances of English are not necessarily instances of ‘formal English’, though, and ways of dis-/identifying with these language performances and encounters are seen in talk about language, which serves as one way to bring language ideologies to the fore (Woolard, 1998). Ideologies are, in turn, formed by institutions that are commonly regimented with tacit and explicit language policies. The ideologies that those policies elicit and construct represent in large part the institutionally driven social creation and circulation of languages as consumable, performable goods. These goods are accessed in a hierarchy of state educational systems, private schools and private English language teaching centers, and thus are at least partially symbolic of people’s access to state institutions, and partially symbolic of families’ abilities to pay more in order to get a more standard and fluent variety of English from private institutions. A student’s ability to speak and understand English locates her along center–periphery continua, with more access to the aforementioned goods locating her closer to the center, and providing her with the tools needed to get even closer (Blommaert, 2010; Heller, 2010; Heryanto, 2007; Pennycook, 2007). It is thus evident that one problem in talking about languages per se is that we can be led astray from seeing the actual underpinning mechanisms that lead to languages’ usages in certain local contexts (or ‘glocal’ contexts, to reflect that the local is always influenced by the global and vice versa; Mufwene, 2010). Before any claims can be made regarding exactly how many

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English speakers there are at present, whether or not English is imperializing the world (Phillipson, 1992, 2008), and what number of people speak it (whatever assessors’ understanding of ‘it’ is), we would be more informed by exploring uses of the English language nested within Mufwene’s glocal and Blommaert’s (2010, 2013, 2014) and Pennycook’s (2007, 2010) local contexts, as multiply and complexly scaled parts of globalized systems. If we look at language in this way, then we find instances of ‘Englishing’, as we will see particularly in Chapter 4, to be important components of local language ecologies (Hornberger & Hult, 2008) despite governmental classifications and modern ideologies of ‘English’, presumably ‘all of it’, as a foreign language.

1.3.2 Whose English? In an Indonesia that is undergoing rapid technological, linguistic and discursive shifts, English is apparent on product labels, in popular entertainment, and in ‘the Indonesian language’ itself in the form of increasing numbers of English loan words into Indonesian (Hassall et al., 2008; Sneddon, 2003). In the Indonesian public sphere, Sneddon (2003: 176) describes, ‘Speaking English or spicing one’s speech with English words, phrases and even whole sentences, is so frequent among educated people that the need to keep up puts enormous pressure on many to acquire such skills’. This is enacted among the upper middle classes and it is also modeled in many venues, including: in the widely circulated talk of pop culture stars; in newspaper articles, often with direct transliterations or translations into Indonesian next to them; and in speeches by government officials, dating back to Indonesia’s first president Sukarno (1945–1965), who ‘throw English expressions into their speeches, sometimes without a clear idea of what they mean’5 (Sneddon, 2003: 177). Bourdieu (1986: 18–19) states: ‘… any given cultural competence … derives a scarcity value from its position in the distribution of cultural capital and yields profits of distinction for its owner’. As we will see in Chapter 4, to show off one’s English in Indonesian public spaces is not just a display of English per se. Instead, speaking English in public is often a semiotic display indexing everything that it ‘hitchhikes’ along with (Mendoza-Denton, 2011): access to higher education and wealth; or, in the case where one ‘spices’ his/her speech with English words without having those material goods, achievable aspirations to them at best, and false aspirations to an unachievable status at worst. Current debates about how English should be taught in periphery and expanding circle (Kachru, 2005) countries range from adamant support for standardized native-speaker (NS) target varieties (usually General American or Received Pronunciation, see Jenkins, 2007) to attempts at standardizing a

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lingua franca core that contains the basic amount of characteristics necessary for speakers to come together from anywhere around the world and communicate successfully with each other (Jenkins, 2000, 2007). Critical pedagogies of English language education in ‘peripheral’, or EFL, countries promote learner choice of English target language forms based on learners’ specific needs and individual interests (Canagarajah, 1999, 2006; Jenkins, 2007). They acknowledge, however, the daunting amount of gatekeeping mechanisms holding in place a system of global English hegemony where learners, teachers and researchers, in central, peripheral and expanding circle locations, both tacitly and explicitly endorse NS models of English and of English speakers (Jenkins, 2007). Such NS models generally also imply race, as in Whiteness, and high socio-economic class (Takahashi, 2013): only the highest standardized form of the language will do, and it is generally spoken by the privileged and most stereotypical ‘figures of personhood’ (Agha, 2011) that are attached locally to the nations that these languages have come to be associated with.6 Many models have theorized the spread and impact of English (Bolton, 2000; Gupta, 2006; Kachru, 2005; Phillipson, 1992, 2008), or investigated whether English language learners identify with a global English community (Lamb, 2004, 2009; Ryan, 2006), and many suggestions have been offered regarding who should teach English and how it should be taught to nonnative speakers (Canagarajah, 2006, 2007, 2008; Jenkins, 2007; Pennycook, 2001). Of importance in thinking about English as it travels throughout the world, then, is who the English language belongs to, who English language learners should or want to model their speech after, and whether and how much English’s spread can really be treated as globally democratizing, locally meaningful, representative of imposed Western hegemony, or all of the above.

1.3.3 Linguistic performativity and local Englishing Makoni and Pennycook’s (2007) ‘postmodern performative’ approach to language shifts the researcher’s focus from language to languaging. Pennycook (2007) cites Joseph’s description of this shift, stating that languaging is conceived of as a … verb, of doing things with language … This is different from the engagement with … ‘the institution of the language, the noun-like thing that [speakers] ultimately cannot ignore, but must comprehend, grapple with, accept in some respects and resist in others, as they construct their own linguistic identities simultaneously within it and in opposition to it.’ (Joseph, 2002, cited in Pennycook, 2007: 111)

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Pennycook goes on to explain the importance of understanding how language is used in any given locality. His and others’ (see Section 1.4 below) postmodern performative approaches to languages and languaging challenge preconceived notions of what we call languages and instead encourage us as language and discourse scientists to examine chunks of discourse performed in conversation or on signage. That is, language is an online process, it is constantly being performed and constructed, and it is semiotic at multiple levels and in multiple ways. There are a lot more parts involved in communication than just filling in syntactic trees and claiming that certain words belong to certain languages. Every level of language is assembled in interaction to convey multiply layered messages, indexing footing (Agha, 2005; Goffman, 1979), stance (Jaffe, 2009) and status, as well as relationship to the receiver of the message and to other things and people in the world. All such indexing accompanies and often takes precedence over literal meaning. In this conceptualization of language in use, when language is performed, it is generated through local conventions, or frames (Goffman, 1974), for ways of interacting, creating meaning and understanding. Pennycook addresses contemporary manifestations of English under this performative approach: … [A]cts of English identification are used to perform, invent and (re-) fashion identities across innumerable domains. English, like other languages, does not exist as a prior system but is produced and sedimented through acts of identity … What we therefore have to understand is not this ‘thing’ ‘English’ that does or does not do things to and for people, but rather the multiple investments people bring to their acts, desires and performances in ‘English’. (Pennycook, 2007: 110) English, then, legislated from ‘the top’, travels globally through all of Appadurai’s (1996) ethno-, media-, techno-, finance- and ideoscapes and is manipulated locally in order to achieve local ends within an ecology that is most certainly framed, or scaled, by decisions and beliefs at the top, where policies are made at macro levels. It is local and long-term residents who are most fluent at communicating within these scaled ecologies, and they regularly identify or disidentify with all language forms that they interact with. In Indonesia with regard to English, local residents at all demographic locations use and approach Englishes and Englishings in locally meaningful and very different ways. Thus, under institutions commonly regimented with language policies and ideologies that categorize languages as local, national or foreign, language ideologies can also be found through linguistic performance and talk about it, as both represent individuals’ and groups’ relationships with

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and access to the institutionally driven social creation and circulation of ‘languages’ as consumable, performable goods (Blommaert, 2010; Heller, 2010; Heryanto, 2007; Pennycook, 2007). English’s spread and repurposing throughout the world has highlighted for scientists of language the semiotic nature of language and its re-scaling through integration into local contexts far away and different from each other, and so we now move from talk about English to a more general understanding of language and the scales upon which it is evaluated, as this is the approach that we will take to language use and language users’ experiences throughout this text.

1.4 Scales and Performativity, Time and Space In our current understandings of language, we as analysts are less and less inclined to see the constructs of ‘languages’ as having much to do with how we actually produce language in daily interactions. Postmodernity is replete with new lexical concepts that allow us to deal with this way of understanding language, among them languaging (Pennycook, 2007; Joseph, 2002; Juffermans, 2015), translanguaging (García, 2009), polylanguaging (Jørgenson, 2008), crossing (Rampton, 1995), knowledging (Goebel, 2015), and more. I prefer to approach language use as the performance of differentially available resources located in or away from complex centers and peripheries (Blommaert, 2005, 2010; Blommaert et al., 2005). In his model of scalar language distribution in local contexts, Blommaert (2010) envisions linguistic resources as locally distributed at different intersections along scales of space and time (Table 1.1). With this rubric he theorizes that the things that people generally consider ‘languages’ tend to be registers or clusters of features that are perceived on a translocal and timeless scale – these are, for instance, normative, standardized languages, such as the English language that Kachru’s (1985, 2005) center, expanding and peripheral circles of English focus upon, or the Indonesian language heard on national newscasts and read in national newspapers. In general, these are the languages taught and learned in education establishments and thus most Table 1.1 Language scales in time and space

Time Space Source: Blommaert (2010: 34).

Lower scale

Higher scale

Momentary Local, situated

Timeless Translocal, widespread

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directly connected to the state apparatus. They are expected to be understood with relatively consistent meaning by a wide range of people across a wide range of social contexts and educational levels. This version of language is a dialect or register that tends to be understood by more people than those who can actually produce/perform it. Translocally scaled language forms contrast with time-bound and local instances of language, which correspond to both non-standard varieties of language as well as its function as a symbolic resource. Such instances are described in Alim’s (2009) and Pennycook’s (2003, 2007) examples of global hip-hop artistry, and in descriptions of locally meaningful semiotic uses of language that are bound to a singular occasion within time and space, particularly in signage and advertisements (Blommaert, 2007, 2010; Hult, 2010; Pennycook, 2010; Scollon & Wong Scollon, 2003; see Section 1.6 below, Figures 1.1–1.7). Local, context-bound language performance, saturated with contextually salient information and participants’ positionings, or ‘stances’ (Jaffe, 2009) in relation to each other and to the registers of language available around them, cannot move from context to context with consistent meaning (see also Bakhtin, 1984; Pennycook, 2010; Silverstein, 2005). Each of the combinations available in Table 1.1 are ‘discursively connected’ and appear on the ‘same plane of existence’ within time and space: ‘When people move across physical as well as social space (and both are usually intertwined), their language practices undergo re-evaluation at every step of the trajectory and the functions of their repertoire are redefined’ (Blommaert, 2003: 613). Pennycook (2007, 2010) takes the above explanation further by stating that these language forms that constitute contextually bound ‘languaging’ are hierarchized through local, regional and state-level de facto and de jure policies (see also Johnson, 2013; McCarty, 2011). Thus, Blommaert’s ‘timeless’ forms of language, while indeed no less ‘performed’ than others, are situated at higher positions and/or with higher authority and wider transferability within local, national and global fields that decide normative language use. These timeless and translocal forms of language grant greater institutional voice or power to those authorized to speak them, and they are also, primordially, symbolic of greater access to state institutions and educational systems (Blommaert, 2005, 2010, 2014; Hymes, 1984, as cited in Cazden, 1989). Based on the above, here is how I define scale as it will be used throughout this book. Scales are the multiple planes – local, national and global will be the three most relevant in this book – on which people evaluate their and others’ behaviors. They are scales because they contain evaluations from good to bad, valid to invalid, ‘language’ to ‘not language’ or center to periphery. The scales of these multiple planes are overlapping and ever changing,

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over longer and shorter periods of time. Thus speakers, listeners and readers orient toward more than one at the same time, and change their ways of evaluating over time with respect to each one. At any given moment in time, in a particular location, all of the forms of language possible within Blommaert’s mapping of situated language forms co-exist and are used selectively as needed per context and interlocutor(s) as they orient to different scales. Speakers are then evaluated with respect to the norms deemed appropriate by themselves and their interlocutors based on the scales, and the norms within each one, that are available to each interactional participant (cf. Goffman, 1974). In this book, the most salient scales of norms that we will be examining will be local, national and global norms for appropriateness and of correctness, and these align largely but not entirely with notions of the Javanese, Indonesian and English languages, respectively. Furthermore, since scales are constantly changing at different speeds over different time periods, in this book I will also use the term ‘re-scaling’. With this term I particularly point to the concept that the activities of the state in particular consist of constantly negotiating and attempting to structure the scales available to its citizens in competition with the many other scales and norms available to them based on other, non-state centers of orientation. In Chapter 3 this will appear as the state ideology’s competition with local norms for communication in local registers of language, and in Chapter 4 this will appear as the state’s constant efforts to create a scale of norms in which English remains foreign to ideologies of Indonesianness. As we will see later, appropriateness within the scales related to language use is not only embodied in perceived languages, as in ‘English’, ‘Indonesian’ or ‘Javanese’. It is also the case that language forms and interlocutors’ judgments of them take on the shape of communicative competencies such as norms for politeness, propriety and for displaying ‘critical thinking skills’, and so it is to the idea of competences, languages and repertoires that we now turn.

1.4.1 Languages, competences and repertoires The view of language assumed in the postmodern and poststructuralist body of work disfavors viewing multilingualism as ‘an idealized L1 and L2 … two separate entities “stored in the mind with neat compartments and clear boundaries”, thoroughly developed and working in parallel, [with an always] dominant L1’ (Block, cited in Clark, 2009: 36). Critical applied and anthropological approaches to language have instead ‘produced evidence of a unified linguistic competence in which knowledge of two or more languages exist’ at all times (Clark, 2009: 36; see also Blommaert & Backus, 2011, 2012; Hymes, 1972, 1985; Jørgensen et al., 2011). While a structuralist,

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Chomskyan view might look at linguistic or communicative competence, therefore, as the presence of a certain set of overlapping syntactic, phonetic and semantic parameters in the mind, and the acquisition of a second set of parameters as ‘interfered with’ and/or separate from the first, the approach taken here is more functional. In this book, I approach language use, learning and socialization as variation in, negotiation of and accumulation of sets of communicative resources throughout one’s lifetime. Much of this theoretical framework is rooted in early sociolinguistics, when scholars like Dell Hymes and John Gumperz challenged Chomskyan linguistics by turning the focus toward complete, not parallel and separate, language competencies that functioned together as a whole in speech production and understanding (although see Juffermans, 2015, for evidence that these arguments arose in multiple places around the same time). I will note, however, that a resource-based, functional approach to language and grammar is not, on my part, an attempt to throw the baby out with the bathwater: that is, ‘languages’ are real in both syntactic/structural and ideological form, and many researchers and many different subfields of the study of language will not only agree to this but will provide evidence for it (cf. Carnie & Mendoza-Denton, 2003; Otheguy et al., 2015). However, the concepts of performativity and functionalism used below and inherent in the above list of postmodern jargon (Section 1.4) are most relevant for the analyses at hand and they are also importantly, in this author’s view, the most relevant conceptualization of language for concerns of language policy making, language education and learning, and language shift. I treat other approaches to language, such as theoretical and descriptive linguistics as well as psycholinguistics, as descriptions and theorizations of how language is produced in the brain when language learning and use are being performed through language socialization. Thus ‘linguistic performativity’ is a framework that I will use throughout this book alongside the language ideological framework that states that ‘languages’ are real concepts in the world and they must be referred to in order for us to proceed in talking about the performance of communicative resources. Such a way of approaching language is a framework that I, among others, will continue to press policy makers to consider, over descriptive and theoretical accounts, when thinking about language(s) in education and societies. Within this framework, I now proceed to a few fundamental concepts that are relevant to language learning and language policy in general, but more specifically these are the concepts immediately relevant to the analyses in chapters to follow. As discussed above, Hymes proposed a shift in the meaning of ‘communicative competence’ from the Chomskyan theoretical syntactic framework to the holistic view of a unified communicative competence that includes

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not just ideas about ‘language structure’, but investigations of communicative ‘speech’: It is precisely the failure to unite form and content in the scope of a single focus of study that has retarded understanding of the human ability to speak, and that vitiates many attempts to analyze the significance of behavior. (Hymes, 1972: 59) Blommaert and Backus more recently clarify Hymes’ call for moving attention away from separate languages, and toward the purpose of language, communication: If we define communicative competence as a set of resources over which people have more or less conscious control, but which all share that their use requires some sort of mental operation, a conscious or unconscious ‘decision’, then there is no a priori reason to separate out resources that are squarely within the linguistic domain (e.g. how to pronounce a /p/, which word to select, what syntactic pattern, etc.) from those that are not (e.g. how to mark politeness in a given conversational setting, whether or not show [sic] a particular attitude, how to dress, etc.). (Blommaert & Backus, 2011: 7, italics in original) Hymes claimed that speakers navigate both ‘varieties’ and ‘patterns of speaking’ based on their own ‘repertoires of varieties’ and ‘repertoires of patterns of speaking’ (Hymes, 1972: 55). His use here of the term ‘repertoire’ differs from Gumperz’ more impersonal definition of the term ‘[linguistic or verbal] repertoire’ as a set of communicative norms including codes and speech patterns available throughout a community (Gumperz, 1964, 1972). We thus turn to the term ‘repertoire’ to complement the idea of ‘communicative competence’. The term repertoire is regularly used to explore the resources people deploy and have access to in terms of stylization, use of linguistic codes, and literacy practices (Blommaert, 2005, 2010; Martin-Jones & Jones, 2000; Rampton, 1995, 2003; Rymes, 2010). Blommaert and Backus have further built upon this notion by emphasizing the importance of examining linguistic repertoires in a biographical sense: Repertoires are … indexical biographies, and analyzing repertoires amounts to analyzing the social and cultural itineraries followed by people, how they manoeuvered and navigated them, and how they placed themselves into the various social arenas they inhabited or visited in their lives. (Blommaert & Backus, 2011: 22)

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The notion of a linguistic biography presented in Blommaert and Backus’ work is intended to demonstrate how talk about languages, and self-described linguistic competencies, are only superficial measures that index more complex social trajectories. Their argument is that it is more important to pay attention to the fact that such described competencies index the places and spaces people have been to and traveled through, and the linguistic competencies they have gained, lost and maintained along the way. For instance, an individual might claim that s/he used to speak French, which elicits a story about a college study abroad experience, or an individual might claim that they do not speak Javanese ‘anymore’, situating him-/herself in a community undergoing language shift (we will see this latter example in Chapter 3). While not defined as such, these linguistic biographies are largely described in Blommaert and Backus’ work by referring to discrete languages. I will continue to rely on reference to discrete languages throughout this book because named languages are essential points of social and political reference and, as stated above, they consist, however minimally, of real and separate independent structures that speakers must navigate and manipulate. However, it is necessary to complement ‘languages’ with a more socially and politically relevant notion of sets of communicative resources and communicative ‘practices’ (Pennycook, 2010) that bleed across these individually identifiable ‘languages’ in a singular grammar. In order to complicate the idea of analysis per language, therefore, I argue that changes that arise due to language learning and socialization, as we will see with some of the participants in this research project, might be most insightfully explored through a concept of communicative repertoires. This term is similar to Hymes’ early use of ‘communicative competence’; however, I find two reasons for distancing myself from the latter in my analyses. First, as Hymes himself pointed out some time ago (1985), this term has been through multiple semantic reincarnations: it is used to refer to anything from cognitive syntactic grammars to speakers’ holistic abilities to communicate. Secondly, I find that the term ‘competence’, which, when taken alone, means ‘ability’, implies a state of having or not having competence (as in ‘incompetence’ versus ‘competence’, cf. Merriam-Webster, n.d.). This may be a speaker’s competence to interact within any given speech community; this may be overall competence: the sum total of communicative skills held in one’s mind. However, I have found in my own attempts to employ this concept that using the term ‘competence’ makes it difficult to describe a notion that will be exemplified in the experiences examined in this book: speakers have multiple communicative resources, and they often select (at varying levels of awareness) from among them in order to construct identities and create meanings within specific communicative contexts. As they select from among the communicative resources they

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have accumulated over time and experience, they may very well be judged as more or less competent per a given speech community’s norms, and they may also judge themselves as more or less competent based on things like their comfort levels with the languages that they are speaking or the interlocutors they are interacting with. Competence is thus much more variable and much more open to interpretation than the term might imply: a speaker can very well possess a communicative resource – s/he might have the necessary competence for successful communication in a particular community – but for one reason or another, an interaction might drive the speaker to simply not deploy that resource, or to choose to deploy another communicative resource, in order to achieve a communicative or an identity-driven goal. Such deployment of a specific communicative resource, though, may or may not be perceived as competent by the speaker’s interlocutor(s). I therefore use the term ‘communicative repertoire’ in order to stress that of all the communicative resources that an individual possesses, the said individual actively selects from among them. Furthermore, this is at times regardless of, at times in consideration of, the structured ‘language’ (below, English, Indonesian, Javanese) s/he is speaking. Communicative resources bleed across distinct ‘languages’, i.e. syntactic and phonetic structures. Speakers’ selections of linguistic behaviors create the meanings and identity attributes that they wish to convey to others or to feel in themselves in any given interaction, in all of the perceived ‘languages’ that they speak. We will see in various instances throughout this book that communicative resources, when deployed in contexts different from where they were learned, have the potential to violate communicative norms and thus be deemed in some way ‘incompetent’, despite a speaker’s belief that s/he is acting equally or more competently than his/her interlocutors.

1.4.2 Motivation in language learning In their theorization of the Self, Weinreich and Saunderson (2003) describe their Identity Structure Analysis framework, where the present Self is composed of one’s past experiences – embodied at present in the ‘Self 1/ Agentic Self’ and the ‘Self 2’ – plus a future, imagined Self residing within the ‘Self 2’ and ‘Self 3’. Dörnyei and Ushioda (2009) prefer to capture motivations through the image of an Ideal Self, an Ought-To Self, and the lived L2 Learning Experience. And MacIntyre et al. (2009: 46) prefer to explore earlier delineations of Possible Selves: ‘… a form of future-oriented self-knowledge that can be divided into three distinct parts: the expected self, the hoped-for self and the feared self, each with varying impacts on motivation and selfregulation’. The authors further relate this to Self-Discrepancy Theory, as

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‘[i]ndividuals are motivated to act in order to reaffirm their sense of identity with their present sense of self, or as a potential goal in the case of possible selves’ (MacIntyre et al., 2009: 46). Discrepancy between current and future self is said to cause an individual to feel discomfort, and to consequently act to reduce the discomfort. The above authors all acknowledge that such ‘discrepancies’ and overtly separate ‘Selves’ are all tacit structures in the human mind. Important to this theory, though, is the alignment of future Ought-To and Feared/Hoped-For Selves with extrinsic motivations: the ‘What I am’ and ‘What I should be’ may or may not be in conflict with the ‘What I would like/desire to be’, the latter constituting the Ideal/Hoped-For, or Expected Selves. Some theories exploring language learner motivation add to the above theories the importance of understanding individuals’ lived histories, which frame such ‘selves’ (Block, 2007; Lyle, 2015). Narrative approaches to learners’ present, possible and future selves demonstrate individuals’ reflections on how and who they are and would like to be through the different linguistic codes and communicative resources they acquire as they move through language learning trajectories (Bruner, 1991; Kramsch, 2009; Pavlenko, 2007). Negotiations of identities in writing and in conversation present ways in which individuals see themselves as members of their local social groupings, why they believe they find themselves in the subjectivities that they inhabit at present, and how they see those subjectivities changing in the future. English language education poses a special quandary for possible selves in foreign language education, a field that has traditionally oriented itself to monolithic nationalized target speaker identities (Kramsch, 2003). With its status as a ‘global language’ (Canagarajah, 2008; Crystal, 2003; Kachru, 1985, 2005; Phillipson, 1992, 2008), images of who exactly an ideal English speaker is, and what target forms of language English learners orient themselves to (Lamb, 2004, 2007, 2009; Ryan, 2006), are potentially elusive, although the hegemony of the White Western native speaker continues (see Takahashi, 2013). In my conversations with research participants, they took stances, presented identities, and negotiated subjectivities in interactions with myself and others. They also spoke about people that they did and planned to identify with, and they demonstrated to me their motivations to use certain languages in certain places and spaces, as local, national and global subjects. Our wide-ranging conversations over the course of the year also gave me insight into how their linguistic biographies and communicative repertoires informed their current stances, and how those stances not only portrayed a current self but also laid the groundwork for these language learners’ future selves.

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1.5 Methodology and Researcher Positionality My experience in Indonesia began in the summer of 2008, when I attended the summer language and culture immersion program of the Consortium for the Teaching of Indonesian and Malay (COTIM, now COTI), a program created for graduate students planning to carry out research in Indonesia, hosted by Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana (UKSW), a private Christian university in Salatiga, Central Java (see Map 5). To make a long story short, my participation in this program and my background in language teaching and the study of language led me to return to Salatiga in 2009, with the generous help of some of the faculty who had first taught me Indonesian in COTIM, to pursue my research as an English instructor in UKSW’s English Department (henceforth alternately referred to as English Department, ED, Fakultas Bahasa dan Sastra [Faculty of Language and Literatures] and FBS). I would teach Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, CrossCultural Understanding and basic speaking classes alongside many of the same faculty members who had taught me in 2008. The dean of the ED made generous arrangements for me to return to UKSW on a research visa and as a visiting instructor for the 2009–2010 academic year. I was provided with a homestay family for the year, and I remained close to my first homestay family from 2008 as well as the ED faculty members mentioned above. In my position as an instructor on the English Faculty, I took on a rather heavy load of teaching throughout the year. The effect of such deep immersion in the department setting, however, only led to more interaction with students and, I believe, their having more comfort interacting with me due to my frequent presence on campus both in and outside the classroom. This benefited my work, as more exposure to students and faculty allowed me to become a part of the very tight-knit ED community and to understand their interactions and language use patterns better than if I had taught fewer courses and spent less time on campus. This being said, it also limited my perceptions of language and culture in the rest of the community. To counter these limitations, I benefited from my students’ own statements about their interactions outside of the campus setting. Such benefit is salient in much of the data in this book, as focal participants explain to me, in writing and in oral interviews, how they understand language use in their home communities as something vastly different from the campus setting. Other ethnographic research conducted in the same town (Chao, 2011, 2012) also clarifies the uniqueness of the UKSW setting by providing a remarkably different story from the one I tell you here. I will now give a brief explanation of how the data were collected and analyzed before moving on to explain who the participants were in this study.

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Naples (2003: 3) invites us to differentiate among ‘methods’, ‘methodologies’ and ‘epistemologies’ when we discuss how we have conducted our research. I consider my epistemology to be the general theoretical framework explored above. As for ‘method’ and ‘methodology’, Naples describes the former as the actual activities in which we engage in order to get data in the field, while the latter consists of the constructs that condition our data collection. Thus, as Ingold would describe, ‘ethnography’ as used here would be a ‘methodology’, but not a method. The methods that I used for the ethnographic portion of this research are described below, followed by a description of my tools of analysis, and then the methodological constructs that drove my data collection and interpretation. Methods: (1) Participant observation, that is, spending time with people in the field (Ingold, 2014), took place with students in and outside of the classroom and on and off campus. It took place with my homestay families, as well, and was thus generally my way of life during my time in Indonesia. I incorporate alongside the fieldnotes that I recorded from participant observation, then, (2) Researcher self-reflection (Dyson & Genishi, 2005; Michalowsky, 1996; Naples, 1996, 2003): this consisted of noting my own position, most saliently as insider-outsider and teacher-researcher within the community and reflecting on how that conditioned the data I collected, as well as continually reflecting on the data I was collecting and relating it to prior research in relevant fields. (3) Oral interviews: I conducted both individual and group interviews with the eight focal participants in this study, whom we will meet below. Individual interviews were audio-recorded and focus group interviews were video-recorded, and I wrote copious fieldnotes before and after all of these. Other informal interviews were conducted with members of regional and national government bodies, particularly those who worked in some capacity for the Language Center. Important ideas and phrases from these interviews, as well as contextual information, were recorded after each informal interview again through the writing of fieldnotes. (4) Collection of written documents: I collected students’ class writings, newspaper articles and policy documents such as the Indonesian Language Congress Resolutions, Local Content curricular frameworks, and national policy documents. Data analysis tools were informed by the fields of Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis. As with ‘ethnography’, I do not treat these as

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methods but as conceptual frameworks consisting of methods, and thus the reader will see that within DA and CDA I rely on: (1) (2) (3) (4)

conversation analysis (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Jefferson, 2004), narrative analysis (Bruner, 1991; Kramsch, 2003, 2009); stance analysis (Jaffe, 2009); linguistic landscape analysis (Shohamy, 2006; I only engage with LL superficially here, though; for more depth in relation to this specific context, see O’Connor & Zentz, 2016); (5) textual analysis of policy documents (Fishman, 1974; Johnson, 2013; Kloss, 1966; Spolsky, 2008; Spolsky & Shohamy, 1999; Woodside-Jiron, 2004); (6) and more, in order to unite the data at hand with theories that it speaks to – the epistemology from within I work – and the methodologies that inform my selection of data collection tools. Methodologically, then, this work is constructed through: (1) Teacher-research: for my purposes, this was not teacher-research in the more auto-ethnographic sense of reflecting on my own teaching practices and making that a primary data source (Baumann & Duffy-Hester, 2000; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993; Crookes, 1991). Rather, teaching was for me both an opportunity to act as a full participant in the community in which I collected my data, and it was also a tool by which I was able to collect rich data in the form of students’ in-class comments and written responses in essay-based class assignments that asked them to reflect on their sociolinguistic communities and experiences. (2) Feminist research (Michalowsky, 1996; Naples, 2003) and Critical English Language Education (Canagarajah, 2008; Pennycook, 2001, 2010; Crookes, 1991, otherwise terms this action research): while I was engaging with my participants, I was also influencing their worlds from the standpoint of my own history and epistemological viewpoints and asking them to act upon and alter their own knowledge of their worlds and themselves in it. (3) I also take a historical-structural approach (Johnson, 2013; Ricento & Hornberger, 1996; see also Sonntag, 2015) to the data and the context in question. This means that one of my goals here is ‘to examine the historical basis of policies and to make explicit the mechanisms by which policy decisions serve or undermine particular political and economic interests’ (Tollefson, 1991: 32, cited by Ricento & Hornberger, 1996). Ricento and Hornberger go on to explain the rationale behind this approach to data collection:

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The historical-structural approach assumes (1) that all language plans and policies represent and reflect the sociopolitical and economic interests of majoritarian or dominant interests; (2) that these interests are often implicit and are enmeshed in hegemonic ideologies that serve to maintain the socio-economic interests of ruling elites; (3) that such ideologies are reflected at all levels of society and in all institutions, whether government agencies, planning bodies, legislative or judicial bodies, school boards, or other entities; (4) that individuals are not free to choose the language(s) that they will be educated in or be able to use in specified domains, as all choices are constrained by systems that reinforce and reproduce the existing social order, which of course favor particular languages in particular contexts for particular sociopolitical ends favored by interested parties, usually dominant elites (or counter elites). (Ricento & Hornberger, 1996: 407) Due to my own interest in the historical-structural approach, as well as my relationship to the setting within which I worked and my proficiency levels in the three primary perceived languages in the Central Javanese context – simply stated: fluent in English, conversational in Indonesian, the national language, and having little understanding of Javanese, the predominant local language – the reader may encounter what will seem to be a topheavy and history-heavy interpretation of the local setting. That is, to an anthropological eye, this book may go so far as to overemphasize the role or importance of the state and global/national structural influences – of topdown structures in general (again see Ricento & Hornberger, 1996, for details about this approach as well as criticisms of and arguments for it). However, the importance of history and institutions in our research findings needs to be emphasized (Blommaert, 1999, 2014; Jha, 2006; O’Reilly, 2012). When considering ‘culture’ or ‘policy’, or really most phenomena that we wish to interpret and explain as social scientists, the importance of history cannot be understated in our attempts at achieving scientific validity (cf. Rabinow, 1986; Wiley, 2006) and also in gaining a greater perspective on our synchronic ethnographic observations (Blommaert, 1999). As explained by Jha: … unlike the natural sciences where the human observer is essentially outside the phenomenon being studied, in the social sciences the researcher is a part of it. His/her perspective will therefore tend to be shaped by where the observer is located within the change being studied.

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One way to extricate oneself from this dilemma is to seek the help of history and see whether similar changes have occurred before and where they have led (Jha, 2006: 16). I hope that the ethnographic component to this book will work in tandem with what are seen by some as overly deterministic findings of historical-structural approaches, by examining how, within historical structures and the political battles of the ‘top’, people and communities navigate life and language (Blommaert, 1999; Johnson, 2013; McCarty, 2011). Such triangulation is key to the systematic and reliable presentation and interpretation of data (Schensul & LeCompte, 2013), and it does justice to the notion that history is ongoing in our interactions. Every event that takes place speaks to a long history of events that prepared its possibility, and we and our participants are all implicated in these histories and their further constructions in our research interactions. This set of methodological tools is additionally complemented by research within Indonesia’s borders in places nearby, conducted by others who have different fluencies in the local languages and various different subjectivities from my own (e.g. Chao, 2011, 2012; Goebel, 2010). Additionally, this book will provide information ripe for comparison across countries, as our examinations in situ and historically situated will show similarities and differences across at least postcolonial nations in this era that we call ‘globalization’. I will now introduce the participants with whom I conducted this research project, before moving on to an introduction of the context.

1.5.1 The cast of characters All of the primary informants in this research project had the most privileged access to education that an Indonesian can have. It is a privilege in Indonesia to attend university; only 27% of the country’s ‘tertiary school aged population’7 was enrolled in tertiary education in 2011 (5,364,000 enrolled out of 19,718,000 in the age group; UIS, n.d.b). As English majors, these research participants also held another privilege accessed by an even smaller selection of people their age – that of being conversational to fluent in English. This privilege gained them accolades from their community members – that they would have the ability to travel outside the country and get a nice job – but it also caused them to resituate themselves locally and to be resituated both positively and negatively by their peers. Their privileged access to English and the education that accompanied it gave them new insights into communication skills, as well as new ways of seeing the world around them and themselves in it.

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From these positions, these students were able to deploy the components of their expanding sets of resources and knowledge when and where necessary, in order to jointly assess with me the meanings of multiple manifestations, both semiotic and linguistic, of the multiple language forms around them. We engaged, on a local level, in assessing who enjoys largely state-regulated access to which forms of language, and what instances of languaging are assigned what meanings. The fact of their complex – and privileged – positionality, and their awareness of it, allowed me, as a community outsider, not only to understand local meaning systems, but it also served our engagement together in ‘Critical (English) Language Education’. We raised to the surface of conversation the politicized local contexts in which students lived and learned (Canagarajah, 2008; Pennycook, 2010), and together brought to light language forms’ indications of their producers’ and readers’ positions in local society. I advertised the opportunity to be a focal group participant in this research project to the students of my semester one Sociolinguistics class, which started in early September 2009. After a few weeks of developing rapport with students and establishing a flow for the class, I asked students to consider participating in this project with the understanding that it was not related to our classwork, nor would it affect their grades in any way. I left a sheet outside the classroom after class for students to sign up, and I ended up with eight total focal group participants. Seven were from the Sociolinguistics class, and the eighth, Angelo, asked to join us after Dian told him that she was participating in the project and he took an interest in it. All students were fourth year English majors, and though Angelo did not take Sociolinguistics with me, he had already taken the class and, as we will see throughout our encounters with him, he was the most likely of the group to use the terminology he had learned in his Sociolinguistics class in assessing some of the situations we discussed together. The focal participants engaged with me throughout the year in and out of formal research interviews (of which there were five individual per participant, as well as four group interviews, with the group split into two groups of four participants). Also, at the end of the first semester as well as the second, I asked all students from my Sociolinguistics classes if I could use their already completed and already graded written assignments as data for my research. They were collectively more than obliging. Some students also attended a few out-of-class journaling sessions where I would offer writing prompts based on topics I was interested in for this research. I now turn to a brief introduction of the focal group participants, as they are the individuals with whom we will spend the most time in the following pages. The length of description per person below tends to be proportionate to the time

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I spent with them and thereby the personal details I could gather about them. I use these descriptions not only to quite briefly introduce the participants but also to introduce some of the identity constructs available within this community.

Angelo Having grown up in the fairly large city of Semarang, the capital of the Central Java province one hour away from Salatiga, and in a ChineseIndonesian family – both of his parents were Chinese-Indonesian, and both of his parents’ grandparents had been direct immigrants to Indonesia from China – the forms of language Angelo grew up speaking were informal Indonesian and Javanese, and mixtures thereof, with occasional Chinese terms employed as well.8 He claimed to be able to understand Mandarin, but to only be able to speak a few phrases: on one occasion he did speak to me in Mandarin; I do not understand the language save for one or two words, but it did not seem fully fluent to me (Angelo, Interview 5, 15 May 2010). Based on this stated repertoire and a general public absence of Javanese language in written forms and popular culture, as well as an absence of it in the formal interactions in which he participated, Angelo claimed that he had never had much interest in learning formal registers of Javanese. Indonesian was his preferred language for formal interactions with elders (whereas traditional Javanese culture would expect the use of formal registers of Javanese that are currently declining in use), and he employed mixtures of Indonesian and Javanese with Indonesian friends across ethnicities. Angelo had come to UKSW because he wanted to get away from home for college, but his family would not allow him to go far; UKSW was the farthest he could negotiate. An English major was also not his first choice, but his family had vetoed his preference for a major in the Performing Arts, with the justification that art was something one learns on the side – a hobby. After some negotiation, they were able to agree on English, and Angelo had eventually managed to add in a minor in the Faculty of Performing Arts. During his time at UKSW he was incredibly active in extracurricular activities, namely choral groups on campus. He did not choose to have much down time, but when he did, he loved horror films – a popular genre in Thailand and Indonesia – and he said that he read, anything from ‘heavy’ materials to comic book series.

Satriya In his early life, Satriya told me, he had wanted to be an artist. He said he had excelled in drawing competitions in elementary school but then was made to turn his focus away from it in order to concentrate on his studies. His mother discouraged him from pursuing art as it would not guarantee

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him a regular salary and a secure future as, for instance, working for the government would. During our year together, Satriya told me that he dreamt of being an ambassador to the United States, although he doubted that this was an achievable goal. Satriya disidentified with upwardly mobile and upper-class metropolitan styles that were often marked by English to convey a sense of high-class and attractive fashion – the ‘yuppies’. He mentioned that, instead, he had an affinity for skateboarding and for punk music and its political messages, in both Indonesian and English. Throughout my interactions with Satriya over the course of the school year, I gained a sketch of the linguistic atmosphere in which he had grown up. He described the informal registers labelled as Javanese ngoko and Javanese-Indonesian to be the primary two forms of communication locally, with English as a prestige and high education marker, and formal Javanese kromo as a local and ethnic prestige marker (these registers will be explained below). He grew up speaking primarily ngoko at home and with friends, with Indonesian functioning as mostly an academic and pan-ethnic intraIndonesian language (particularly with his non-Javanese girlfriend), and the language of Indonesian national media and television shows.

Dewi Dewi was raised in what I understood to be an upper middle class suburban community outside Semarang, the regional capital, about one hour away from Salatiga. She claimed to be of royal Javanese lineage, but she also claimed that her first language and the language of her home was Indonesian. She claimed she spoke Indonesian everywhere in her life, except for at the market. When she went to the market, she claimed she would often speak in ngoko to get lower prices. As the vendors there could be expected to prefer to communicate in Javanese, showing such solidarity with them would increase her chances in negotiating better deals. She stayed in a boarding house near campus during school semesters, and made frequent trips home to Semarang for the weekend. She planned to become an English teacher upon graduation, perhaps not permanently, but it would give her an income until she figured out what she wanted to do next.

Lidya Lidya was raised near Semarang, and stated that she was of Dutch, Chinese and Javanese heritage. She frequently mentioned having been exposed to Dutch by especially her grandfather, and also to some extent by her mother, who also had exposed her to some English. She was exposed to some Mandarin by her grandmother, but this had not much entered into her repertoire. Lidya used Chinese-Indonesian terms of address when speaking with other Chinese ethnic peers, but that was the extent of her use of anything

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akin to Chinese language. She claimed to have an aunt who lived in the US and with whom she would occasionally speak some English. Lidya had very Western-oriented aspirations for her English use. In a selfintroduction paper at the beginning of the semester in which she took my Sociolinguistics class, she responded to my question as to why she was studying English: ‘Just one word, LOVE :-). I like learning English, and anything relates to western culture, western movies, western people; so, I’m motivated to study English more.’ She was also a big fan of anime. Lidya had been attending a Charismatic Christian church for about two years, after having switched over from Catholicism. Her new church was one of a couple of charismatic churches in the city, both predominantly attended by Chinese ethnic young adults.9 At this church there was much English visible on signs, in videos, and in the form of occasional word borrowings in sermons and songs; however, aside from these token English borrowings only Indonesian language was spoken. In my experience with Lidya, I observed her primary language of interaction to be Javanese ngoko, but in a Sociolinguistics assignment where she had to describe her linguistic repertoire, she wrote: I prefer using Indonesian and English to using Javanese. Beside I do not acquire Javanese language, I do not like speaking Javanese either. For me, although I learnt Bahasa Jawa subject since I was in elementary school, I never acquire it. For me, speaking Javanese is difficult. (Lidya, Sociolinguistics Assignment 3, 31 October 2009) Lidya lived in the same boarding house as Dewi.

Novita Novita claimed Chinese-Javanese heritage, and claimed her primary home language to be Indonesian. She attended the Gereja Kristen Indonesia – the Indonesian Christian Church – and she taught Sunday school classes there to young children, a job she really enjoyed. She often stated that her primary motivation in learning English was to learn Korean, as KoreanEnglish educational materials are much more available than KoreanIndonesian. She lived with her family in town and rode a motorbike to school every day.

Nisa Nisa claimed Javanese heritage, and lived in town with her family. She and both of her parents were born and raised in Salatiga. She claimed Javanese to be her first language. She had originally wanted to major in Psychology but her parents had preferred that she major in English. Like Angelo’s, most

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families who made this decision for their children did so because they expected better job prospects upon college graduation with an English degree. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do for work after she graduated, laughingly stating that she just wanted to make a lot of money. More seriously, then, she stated that she would most likely become a teacher because that was what her degree was preparing her for, and if that didn’t work out, she might think about working in the tourism industry. Nisa was Catholic, but her family was split between Catholicism and Islam – families with both Muslim and Christian members are common in Java and this is rarely a point of familial conflict.

Ayu Ayu lived far outside the town in a rural area about 10 relieving degrees cooler than urban Salatiga, and she rode her motorbike about 25 km into campus every day. She claimed entirely Javanese ancestry. Javanese was her first language, and she was the only one of the focal participants who claimed to have ever spoken to her father in kromo. She stated, though, that when she started going to kindergarten, this soon stopped. Ayu attended a Mennonite church, and many of their services were conducted in house meetings with neighbors,10 where one or two people would bring a guitar and the small group would all sing together, and then discuss a bible verse or two. Her grandparents lived just up the road from her, and only spoke Javanese. Ayu did not necessarily see herself stopping at an undergraduate degree, but she did plan on working before pursuing any other degree because, she claimed, it is not possible in Java to go straight through from college to a graduate degree without making some money in between.

Dian Dian and Ayu were very close. Dian also lived far outside Salatiga, although in an area much more like a suburb than Ayu’s rural location. Dian’s father owned cows and sold their milk, and her mother worked at a local school. They lived in a sort of housing complex – almost like a large and divided family ranch-style home – where her grandparents also lived. She claimed Javanese ngoko as a first language, and frequently described the difficulties that she had in trying to speak kromo when she wanted to show deference to elders. Dian was a very outspoken individual both in our interviews and, contrary to cultural stereotypes and to the behavior of most of her peers, in class. She was very interested in finding a way to get to the United States before she settled down with a family, and her second choice of a dream destination was England, but she never could figure out how she might get to these places.

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Table 1.2 charts these eight focal participants with some of their most relevant demographic characteristics for our purposes: Table 1.2 Focal group participant biographic information Name

Sex

Ethnicity

Religion

Home town

Primary language

Angelo

M

Chinese

Catholic

Semarang

Satriya Ayu

M F

Javanese Javanese

Dian

F

Javanese

Muslim ChristianMennonite Muslim

Nisa Novita

F F

Dewi Lidya

F F

Javanese Chinese/ Javanese Javanese Chinese/Dutch/ Javanese

Catholic Christian-National Church of Indonesia Muslim ChristianCharismatic

Salatiga Rural outside of Salatiga Rural outside of Salatiga Salatiga Salatiga

Indonesian/ ngoko ngoko ngoko

Semarang Semarang

ngoko ngoko Indonesian Indonesian Indonesian/ ngoko

1.6 Learning the Ecology In my experience in Central Java, local language ecologies consisted of varieties of Javanese ngoko, a register of informal, peer-to-peer communication, as the most common mode of talk. I would hear high register Javanese kromo, typically used for addressing someone in a superior social position, in just bits and pieces, mostly symbolically in the form of salutations as young or middle-aged adults addressed their elders on the streets in town. On campus, ngoko remained the language I heard most commonly in hallways outside of the classroom. I never heard kromo being spoken to address professors on campus: formal address in this context was carried out in fluent Indonesian. At the university there was also a great diversity of students from throughout Indonesia. Interethnic communications tended largely to be in Indonesian, save for the few non-Javanese students who had lived in Java long enough to pick up some ngoko from time spent with more locally rooted Javanese peers or family members. There was also a large Chinese ethnic population locally and on campus (see Section 1.6.2). These students tended to speak just as much Javanese and Indonesian as any urban-raised Javanese ethnic student; in fact, among my eight focal participants as seen above, ethnicity did not

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seem to be a primary determining factor in whether Javanese or Indonesian was claimed or observed to be their first or dominant language. This seems reasonable – people of Chinese descent have been present on Java for centuries, and they have mostly become speakers of the local languages (cf. Goebel, 2009, 2010). It is in fact the urban/rural divide that now seems more indicative of an individual’s first or preferred language, urban life leaning more toward Indonesian, and rural toward Javanese. Families having resided in Java for generations are assumed to speak some level of Javanese, mostly ngoko, the informal peer-to-peer register and really the most expansive register of Javanese in the sense that it is spoken in the widest variety of circumstances and has the largest vocabulary. This, then, is the default day-to-day language among peers who prefer to speak to each other in Javanese, and it is often the ‘language of self-talk’ for these individuals (Errington, 1998). Kromo is the formal register of Javanese, used when paying deference to someone with higher social status than the speaker (Goebel, 2010), and it is said to only ever have consisted of about 700 words (Nababan, 1985). At this point, kromo is increasingly a ceremonial language and decreasingly spoken outside of such contexts. Formal Indonesian is becoming the register of deference and formality in an expanding range of contexts.11 We will revisit Javanese and its various registers in Chapter 3. In addition to spoken language, I did not notice written Javanese in public in Roman script (its most widely used script at present), and I noticed old Javanese script used just once on any public sign (Figure 1.1). Interestingly,

Figure 1.1 The one instance of Javanese script I have record of, with name of the street written in Roman letters below

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Figure 1.2 Save my culture. Support.our.local.hero

in the photo seen on this book’s cover, repeated above in Figure 1.2, I saw just this one time, Indonesian language written in a script evocative partially of the Javanese language seen in Figure 1.1 and partially of the ‘official’ Roman alphabetized version of Javanese which makes use of diacritics but which is not the commonly preferred way to write in Javanese. It looks like the following: Sugêng Rawúh ing laman sitús wèb ki-demang.com/kbj5 (‘Welcome to the website of ki-demang.com/kbj4’, Ki-demang.com, 2006). Indonesian encompasses quite a diverse set of linguistic performances, due both to its presence in the archipelago for over a millennium in myriad forms and myriad speech communities, ranging from coastal trade throughout Southeast Asia to the royal courts that moved in the 1500s from western to eastern Sumatra and what is now southern Malaysia (see Chapter 2). What are considered ‘Malay’ and ‘Indonesian’ have both increased and shifted in their diversity of formal expression after nationalization as more people have come to speak the language(s). The growing numbers of speakers who have learned Indonesian have learned it as a second language and thus have continued to inflect this lingua franca with vocabulary and phonology from their first languages (cf. Moeliono, 1986). In Salatiga, this diversity was apparent in the many accents of Indonesian that I encountered thanks to the large transient student population: UKSW attracted students from all corners of Indonesia. The most prominent forms of Indonesian locally were

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Javanese-Indonesian, which might be spoken by both Chinese and Javanese ethnic people (as stated above, and cf. Goebel, 2005, 2009, 2010), as well as the possibly different dialects of Chinese-Indonesian mentioned below in Section 1.6.2. In public signs, it was possible to see some ‘accented’ forms of Indonesian, that is, using slang terms from Javanese or from Jakarta youth forms of language, in order to signal that the sign was directed toward a younger audience. In the 2009–2010 school year, a student described the language on the sign shown in Figure 1.3 as making use of bahasa gaul, a term used to indicate Jakartan ‘cool’ youth/young adult language. Standardized Indonesian in Salatiga, as well as elsewhere, just sort of ‘permeates the atmosphere’. It is the language of television news programs and of newspapers, and of any sign put out by the government. For instance, in the banner below the L.A. Lights ad, we see a banner all in capital letters authored by the Dinas Perhubungan – the Department of Transportation – which states ‘For safe, smooth and orderly [passage] … please use the pedestrian bridge’ just down the street from this sign. Standardized Indonesian is more closely approximated in the classroom or the faculty meeting than in informal conversations; the latter tend toward a lexicon, phonology and morphology more heavily influenced by local Javanese language – the ‘Javanese-Indonesian’ proposed above (and see Cole, 2010). The standardized variety of Indonesian also does not hold a complete monopoly on

Figure 1.3 L.A. Lights cigarette advertisement: ‘You wanna be someone? Don’t overdo it, please!’

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television: it does coexist in entertainment shows with varying levels of local inflection (Budiman, 2012 and Yuwono, 2012 clarify that the presence of non-standard Indonesian has really only been allowed on national television since the Reformation period of decentralization began in 1998, and see Djenar, 2016, for a similar change observed in Indonesian teenlit). Such nonstandard inflection is common in informal comedy shows like Opera van Java, a nightly improvisational skit show in which non-standard (mostly Javanese) dialects of Indonesian are used to great comedic effect, reinforcing beliefs that non-standard varieties of Indonesian should be valued lower than the standard, on the national scale. Locally inflected forms of Indonesian are also present in shows like sinetron – afternoon soap operas – where local vocabulary or affixation is often used to portray characters in various ways, good or bad (Goebel, 2015). It can also be found on dating shows like Take Me Out Indonesia, filmed in Jakarta, where young adults in their 20s and 30s look for a new mate, often while speaking a ‘cool’ Jakartan form of the language. In Salatiga, regarding languages other than Indonesian or Javanese, Arabic exists mostly in the form of religious incantations in neighborhood mosques (these are often broadcast outside the mosque on a public speaker) or during prayers at home, as well as the typical call and response greeting of Assalamu alaikum – Wa alaikum salam (cf. Idris, 2016). A little bit of Arabic script might appear on a street banner celebrating a Muslim holiday, and in general many Arabic origin words are now a part of Indonesian.12 So much Arabic lexicon informs Indonesian and the local languages of the region due to the centuries-long influence of Islam and of Middle Eastern traders. In one salient example, Allah is the word for God in both Islamic and Christian communities in Central Java.13 Another, (ber)silaturahmi, means generically to ‘to socialize and reciprocate’ (Chao, 2012: 4), but it is mostly used for a practice on the day of Idul Fitri, the Muslim New Year and celebration of the end of Ramadan, when people visit each other’s homes and beg forgiveness from each other with the phrase mohon maaf lahir dan batin (beg forgiveness, body and soul) – which itself consists of words from Arabic/Arabo-Persian zâher and bâten (R. Bertrand, 2005: 151, citing Geertz, 1960 and Adelkhah, 1998). Language forms regularly considered to be Arabic were rarely visible in the public setting in Salatiga, save for a poster announcing the celebration of holidays, particularly Ramadan or Idul Fitri. English is also everywhere, but certainly not in the same sense that Indonesian or Javanese ngoko is. English is frequently used for semiotic purposes, to attract attention to a product’s prestige or to a person’s cosmopolitanism. It is not much of a spoken language locally. We will see in Chapter 4 that it is actually almost entirely inappropriate locally to speak it in public;

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one must go inside a classroom or catch a (frequent) American blockbuster movie being shown on the television (most of these movies and shows are subtitled, but children’s shows are dubbed) to really hear English spoken. English words are, though, increasingly a part of Indonesian vocabulary, often seen in areas related to technology, medicine and pop culture. I discussed with some students during the year that young adults might say ‘I love you’ to their partners, and when I asked about this, some stated that to say ‘I love you’ in an otherwise Indonesian or Javanese conversation would be ‘Romantic, high class, modern’. But it might express more sincerity to say Aku mencintaimu, ‘I love you’ in Indonesian. (Interestingly they did not provide a Javanese alternative – this could be a product of our school context and my own positionality; it could be due to the possibility that the idea of saying ‘I love you’ as we discussed it was a Western import in the first place.) The only places English could be expected to be spoken with much fluency in Salatiga were at the local International School, where foreign families14 who lived locally sent their children to be taught in English and, occasionally, at higher echelons of any international companies found nearby. The older sister of participant Dian worked at a managerial level in a local textile factory, and Dian explained that this sister, an economics graduate, conversed with her Indian boss in English, and she would frequently make comments about the nativization of pronunciation of English words (the ‘wrong’ pronunciation) used in the production line by non-English speaking factory employees. Two local spas, very expensive for the local budget and located on the edges of town, served either tourists passing through for a night or local wealthy residents. Food menus there tended to be only in English save for the names of local dishes (their descriptions, however, remained in English), and a sufficient number of employees at the spas spoke enough English to take care of non-Indonesian speaking guests’ basic needs. Elsewhere in town, English would only be spoken behind the closed doors of English language classrooms and occasionally at ED extracurricular activities, as well as on many signs along the city’s central streets (Figures 1.4–1.5). As advertisement signs increased in size and cost, English made its way more prominently onto them in flashier and larger forms. These were largely cigarette company advertisements (as in the product name ‘L.A. Lights’, in Figure 1.3). Among other options for these ‘big money’ signs was the informal but ‘cool’ Indonesian – the bahasa gaul of Figure 1.3. Graffiti, quite common in town, generally used a mix of Indonesian and English (see Figure 1.6 for the latter, Figure 1.2 for both), and I did come across an instance of perhaps one of the most globally circulated German phrases, Ich liebe dich (I love you; Figure 1.7).

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Figure 1.4 A cigarette advertisement in town. Cigarette brands have the most money and the biggest advertisements in town

Korean dramas were also incredibly popular locally, Mandarin was increasingly taught, and finally, of course, any non-Javanese ethnic group who gathered locally would spend much time speaking their own ethnic language as well as speaking Indonesian with their own accent and some vocabulary specific to their home languages. Table 1.3 attempts to lay out the local languages described above with some of the practices that they are associated with. As I am more concerned with talk about languages than with the forms themselves, I will not provide here examples of what these separate perceived languages or registers look like in writing, any more than I have in the discussion and figures above (but see Errington, 1998; Goebel, 2010; Wolff & Poedjosoedarmo, 1982, for some examples). I instead describe them according to typical sociolinguistic concepts of context and activity – speech domains (Fishman, 1991) – in which each form is spoken.

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Figure 1.5 English use increases with Western-style foods sold

Figure 1.6 The presence of English greatly increased on graffiti and wall murals

41

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Figure 1.7 Ich liebe dich Table 1.3 Languages and their practices in Salatiga Javanese (ngoko) Javanese (kromo)

Javanese Indonesian Chinese (Peranakan) Indonesian Other dialects of Indonesian Standardized Indonesian English Classical Arabic Multiple languages indigenous to other islands (Torajanese, Batak, etc.)

Informal interactions among locals (born and raised in Java or residing in Java long enough to have learned it) Local/pan-Javanese ceremonies surrounding death, birth, pregnancy; younger-to-elder talk, ideologically cited as ‘the Javanese language’; ‘no-one speaks it anymore’ Younger generations’ peer communication; local, place-based performance of Indonesian-educated identity Chinese intra-ethnic communication where Javanese is not used Intra-ethnic communication locally where Javanese is not a choice or where context (e.g. classroom) requires Indonesian Translocal performance of Indonesian identity, schools, elite education, television performances, churches Communication with foreigners, in English Department or English classes elsewhere; performance of mobile, elite identity Muslim prayer at home and at the mosque Intra-community talk among migrants to Java (for education, work)

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1.6.1 Life in the English Department In the ED in particular, the daily wear of the students tended to be jeans, shorts, t-shirts and shoes or flip-flops, and ED instructors would wear comfortable clothes – jeans and blouses or button-down shirts – as well. Many ED students mentioned to me, however, that this was unique to the department. ED students and faculty members were known for having less formal clothing and also less formal student–faculty interaction styles than many of the other departments on campus – they would almost never be seen in more formal or business attire, and they were proud to be the group on campus most likely to wear flip-flops. The interaction model of the ED at the university was progressive compared to local norms in all levels of education, employing conversational models of classroom interaction instead of teacher-to-learner lectures, and engaging students with a broad range of topics from Drama to Business to Literature to Teaching Practicum, as well as the Linguistics, Sociolinguistics and Cross-Cultural Understanding courses that I taught (among other instructors). However, the department was known primarily for preparing English teachers, and it also seemed to me to remain very ‘center country’ oriented. When I asked if the curriculum included English literature from outside the US or the UK, I learned that English literature here still meant primarily Anglo-American literature, save for one professor who did share her own English language poetry in her classes. The ED’s yearly theatre performances consisted of Shakespeare and contemporary American plays. They had, a few years previously, put on West Side Story, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream was the drama performed in the year I was in residence. Students’ required final undergraduate theses focused largely on the structural or formal (i.e. Chomskyan) and basic psycho-linguistic aspects of local English language learning, although one student did propose a sociolinguistic study on a Chinese ethnic dialect of Indonesian (he was later not allowed to do it) and, to my surprise, another decided to do his final thesis on Spanish-English bilingualism in the US! This, of course, should not have been a surprise as a lot of learning materials were adopted from the US (and, again, the UK. Our Sociolinguistics textbook was an old, photocopied version of an early edition of a foremost introductory Sociolinguistics textbook in the US and UK, and an English language learning text that I encountered in a local private English center was very much British.). Among the ED faculty, I was one of five foreign English instructors ranging from part time to full time. Three others hailed from the US and one was from Australia. Perhaps elicited by my own teaching behaviors, perhaps due to the younger ages and the generally progressive education ideologies

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(that is, class should be interactional and students should have a sense of autonomy in their own learning) that many Western teachers who choose to teach abroad enter their classrooms with, students shared with me that there was generally an expectation that Western teachers would be more charismatic and more interactive in classroom interactions than local professors. I did not observe how other professors, young or old, foreign or local, in the ED conducted themselves in class, but the same students who told me that Western teachers were young and boisterous also told me that Indonesian teachers tended to be less interactive in classes, and therefore students expected to be more passive learners in those classes. I do not believe this held across all faculty members, though, and this also did not lead to an overwhelming preference among the ED student body for one teaching style or one ethnicity/nationality over another: some felt safer with other nonnative speakers and felt they could understand them better and would be judged less by them, but some felt that native speakers were better language models. However, as I learned, ‘native speaker’ needed some clarification: speaking in terms of ‘national dialects’, not many students found Australian accents to be an acceptable target model, despite the frequent presence of at least one or two Australian teachers in the department as well as the geographical proximity between Australia and Indonesia (we will explore this in Chapter 4). Similarly to their reputation for clothing practices, ED student–faculty rapport outside class was said to be less formal, and there was a great number of extracurricular activities involving both students and professors, from the theatre productions mentioned above, to intramural sports matches, to the production of a magazine, and to the department’s annual conference event, LoVED (Loading Via English Days), at which both students and teachers performed (students for competition, and faculty for laughs). The ED as a whole prided itself on its cohesiveness among students and faculty alike, and on its organization of such a wide range of extracurricular activities that far exceeded any other department on campus. It was thus very common for ED faculty and students to commingle and so I had many opportunities to gather with students outside of class. I developed a friendly rapport with many students, within and outside the school walls and not exclusive to my eight focal group participants, and ranging from evening basketball games, to coffee or lunch gatherings, to chorus performances, all the while speaking varying combinations of Indonesian and English with a smattering of Javanese words and inflections. From my position as teacher-researcher and ethnographer, I thus gained a substantial amount of knowledge of the ED and UKSW learning contexts, as well as the larger contexts of Salatiga and Central Java.

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It is necessary to provide some further information about identities that were relevant to many ED students, including some of the focal participants, that were in some ways or at some times divergent from mainstream culture and language practices at UKSW. These are, namely, Chinese ethnicity and the situation of Muslim students on the majority Christian campus at UKSW. These two subsections are a slight digression, but they are also necessary in order to convey the distinct difference of this campus community in comparison with most researchers’ experiences on Java.

1.6.2 Situating Chinese ethnicity locally Chinese identity on Java is little formulated in terms of language use. However, there is a long record of documentation of difference between Chinese Malay and pribumi (indigenous) Malay, dating as far back as the 15th century (Teeuw, 1961). Generally, though, varieties of Chinese-Malay or Chinese-Javanese language have not received much attention in research, and it is not clear how unique they really are.15 Interest in exploring these Chinese varieties is growing, though: studies are beginning to investigate differences across Chinese and Javanese speakers of both Javanese and Indonesian (Goebel, 2009; Oetomo, 2013) and, as stated in the previous section, one Chinese ethnic student in my first semester Sociolinguistics class in 2009 wanted to do a final project on a Chinese dialect of Indonesian that he had noticed in his day-to-day life. This is to say that there is at least some noticeable difference between Javanese ethnic and Chinese ethnic ways of speaking, although a clear vision of what those differences are remains to be fully explored. The primary linguistic difference between ethnicities that was available to me in my interactions in Java was that Chinese identity was clearly marked by terms of address that differed from traditionally Javanese terms. For instance, where Javanese forms of address for older brother and sister, but also for more general social relations, are Mas and Mbak, respectively, their Chinese ethnic counterparts locally are Koh and Cik. One day on campus a small group of Chinese ethnic young women sitting together hailed me with the greeting ‘Cik Lauren!’ I got so excited that they had welcomed me into their circle, I blurted out, ‘Yayyy, aku sudah menjadi orang Indonesia!’ (Yayyy, I’ve become an Indonesian person!). I was immediately met with, ‘Nggaaaak! Orang Cina!’ (Nooooooo. Chinese person!), demonstrating an important maintenance of a distinct Chinese ethnic identity within Indonesia – at least now that it is safe to do so (see the next chapter for a brief glance at the long history of ethnic violence that has been perpetrated upon the Chinese ethnic population in Indonesia).

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Of note also regarding reference to the Chinese population of Indonesia, I encountered three words used to describe Chinese ethnic identity. Cina, pronounced ['tina] in Indonesian registers, ['tin] in Javanese, seemed to be the one I heard most frequently. However, and interestingly, it was also deemed the least polite, and it seemed to me that the Javanese version could be interpreted as a slur. A term that students told me was more polite was the English Chinese, pronounced ['tanis]. And, as research participant Angelo – himself of Chinese descent – told me, Tionghua would be the most politically correct form to use, although I almost never heard the word spoken.

1.6.3 Situating Islam on campus On our campus, jilbab, Muslim women’s head coverings, were quite rare among the campus’s minority Muslim student population (there were about half as many Muslim as Christian students on campus). This lack of jilbab was quite remarkable when compared to public campuses that I visited in the region, where jilbabs seemed nearly ubiquitous. They were so normalized, in fact, that they were provided as a part of school uniforms for young women on these campuses, when they wore them for formal university events. It is unclear why UKSW’s young female Muslim students tended not to wear jilbabs – whether it was simply because students did not wear school uniforms (this argument requires the assumption that other universities’ young female students, off campus, would not wear jilbabs as a daily custom, which is not likely), or if it was to fit in with the clothing styles of non-Muslim students. Another option came to light when I asked some Muslim students who did not wear head coverings why they did not do so. They answered that, for them, the donning of the jilbab, also called kerudung, was a mark of womanhood, and therefore they would put it on when they were more mature. As participant Dewi once said: her faith was not strong enough yet to wear it (Fieldnotes, 19 April 2010). As I have watched my two female Muslim focal group participants on Facebook as they have graduated from college and gotten married, I have noticed that the donning of the jilbab aligned somewhat with marriage for Dian, about two years after graduation, but not for Dewi, who started to wear a jilbab around the same time as Dian, but a year or two before her own marriage. A clear reason as to why the young females at UKSW were less likely to wear the jilbab, or why ‘their Islam’ only required that they veil themselves when they felt ‘strong enough’ to do so, remains elusive to me, other than to ponder that the Islam that they practiced was a more secular variety and that, although Islam dominates the Javanese population with greater than 90% adherence throughout the island, Muslims on the campus of UKSW

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were in a minority position at least for the portion of their day when they were on campus. Some combination of these factors might have led them to not don the veil until later in life.

1.7 The Layout of this Book A brief and subjective introduction to the Indonesian and Javanese context has been provided in the present chapter. I will delve more deeply into the cultural and political history of the nation and the island in Chapter 2, tying local and national history together with the history of Malay-nowIndonesian and of the institutionalization that led to the development of both the Indonesian government and the Indonesian language planning body. History is deeply important to the creation of institutions and of language hierarchies within the country and is thus essential to understanding the more micro-level and contemporary language experiences that will be explored in subsequent chapters. After this history is explained, I will enter into a discourse analysis of the Putusan Kongres Bahasa Indonesia (Proceedings of the Indonesian Language Congresses, henceforth cited as simply KBI, see Preface), documents written to summarize the five-yearly Indonesian Language Congresses hosted by what is now called the Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa (Center for Language Development and Cultivation), which is generally shortened to Badan Bahasa, the Language Center. In Chapter 3 we will discuss more historical and top-down elements, here regarding the history of Javanese, before moving to a focus on the predominant experiences of language shift in students’ identity formation. In the latter, I particularly address a cultural and generational shift away from Javanese, the high register kromo. For these students, such shifting identities can be seen as not only an effect of nationalization, but also of learning the English language. In the latter half of this chapter, Dian is quite vocal. Her use of Javanese was of great concern to her, not only in terms of improving her formal competence in the language, but also in formulating an identity for herself in a community that constantly chided her for her low level of proficiency in formal Javanese. In Chapter 4 I explore the influence of English nationally and locally. On the national level this has mostly to do with top-down planning processes concerning where, when and how much English should become a part of Indonesians’ lives. The government displays quite conflicting behaviors as it tries to maintain its policy of having Indonesian-medium curricula throughout public schooling, while recognizing that, instrumentally, it must keep up with the material necessity of so much information being in English and not

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enough people to translate it all into Indonesian. At the local level, I take advantage of English majors’ ‘double’ positionality as at once knowers and possessors of a very limited commodity, ‘the English language’, while they are simultaneously local citizens who live within the systems and institutions of Central Java that give specific meanings and significance to the various English forms available locally, including many that are ‘purely semiotic’. Participants’ interpretations from this standpoint provided me with insight into local meanings of English forms that make their way around the world in the current era of globalization, and of globalization’s role in making ‘the English language’ (seem) so significant and important in the world today. Chapter 5 will conclude the book by resuming the ideas and data discussed herein, but I will also use the chapter to leave this investigation open ended in a nod to the fact that the state’s construction of a national identity is ever continuing and always incomplete. I must add a note that while the chapters of this book are divided loosely by language – Indonesian, Javanese, English – I treat as obvious and as discussed above in various ways, that the language forms and features available in any ‘language ecology’ do not act separately – they indeed interact and intermingle under the formation of the ecology and scaled hierarchies in which they are situated. Thus we will see across chapters reference to multiple languages due to the fact that Indonesian, Javanese, English, Dutch, Chinese and Arabic languages, registers and features are in regular, normal interaction according to the roles that they fulfill in Indonesia’s, Salatiga’s and the ED’s scaled language ecologies. With this, we turn to the invention of the Indonesian language and its spread in Indonesia.

Notes (1)

(2) (3)

Safran (2015) points out in reference to one of the most prototypical models of the officialization and institutionalization of a national language, France, how tightly intertwined schooling and the propagation of the national language are: ‘French became an institution (was institué), and primary schoolteachers became known as instituteurs’ (citing Nadeau & Barlow, 2006: 142). And most frequently cited: the term ‘Herderian’ is common parlance in linguistic anthropology and related fields to indicate the one language–one nation language ideology and language regime. This is not to say that every state has put into writing a monolingual national policy; however, as Sonntag and Cardinal (2015) point out with their term ‘language regime’, it is often the case that, despite these more multilingual policies, the modern nationstate has a tendency to favor one dominant language (for examples of the difference between multilingual state policies and the monolingual language regime of the modern nation-state, see Safran, 2015 for a general commentary; Orman, 2008 and Probyn, 2005 on South Africa; Martin-Jones, 2011 on Wales; Ives, 2015, Ruíz, 1984

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(4) (5) (6)

(7) (8)

(9)

(10)

(11)

(12) (13)

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and Sonntag, 2015 on the United States). In Indonesia itself, there are estimates from 300–700 languages spoken, but one, uncontended, serves officially to unite the nation and continues to take up more space as resources are almost solely devoted to its spread, use and even ‘perfection’. While my students used this as a term to refer to the lower registers of non-Indonesian languages, Sneddon (2003) also claims that it is a label used for non-standard dialects of Indonesian. Although Sukarno’s own English proficiency was probably substantial, along with his proficiencies in the eight other languages he is said to have spoken (Pisani, 2015). Sometimes, race alone is enough. I noted in my fieldnotes one day: [Colleague] told me that with respect to English teachers, if you’re a bule – a white person – even if you’re not a native English speaking bule, if people see you they will just hire you and assume your expertise, without having any idea if you can actually teach English or not, or if you know how to teach at all. They just see White skin and grab you as quick as possible (Fieldnotes, 23 October 2009). This term is not actually explained on UNESCO’s website. I take it to intend a ‘traditional’ view of university-aged students, being the four to five years immediately after the expected age (18) for high school graduation. I cannot speak to the frequency of these terms as he only twice relayed any to me: once in a journal piece where he quoted elder family members speaking in JavaneseIndonesian but using the Chinese terms Zhongguo ren and Indi ren for Chinese and Indonesian ethnicities, respectively (Angelo, Journal entry, 19 January 2010). For more about charismatic churches and their presence in Salatiga, see Chao (2011, 2012). As is evidenced in Chao’s work, the presence of charismatic/Pentecostal Christianity in Java is long and complex. It is worthy of multiple books and too long to explain here. Intan (2006) mentions that a 1969 law regulating the establishment of any and all places of worship ended up being enacted as the limitation of establishment of places of worship for non-Muslim religions. This practice and the law, which has never been revoked, caused many non-Muslim worshippers to start holding services in their homes. I cannot be sure if this is what, over a longer term, led Ayu’s community to worship among neighbors. On the one hand, rural areas tend to be more strongly Muslim; on the other hand, there is also more space between homes and so her community may simply have decided to have smaller services among closer neighbors, and only to gather at a more common location less frequently. Javanese and Indonesian are considered, and are observably, different languages, both situated within the Malayo-Polynesian language group according to Ethnologue. Within this family, Indonesian is considered a subgroup of the Malay language, and Javanese stands alone as its own language group (Ethnologue, 2015h). Budiman (2012) complicates this slightly, but still limits the use of Arabic in Indonesia to a strong Muslim religious identity, particularly through popular Muslim religious music. This was a topic of heated cultural and legal debate in Malaysia during the time when I was in Indonesia. Most students in Salatiga that I asked about the Malaysian controversy surrounding this word – which included Bible and church burnings and ended in new legislation regarding ownership of the word (Kassim, 2010; Sikand, 2010) – did not see a problem with the use of Allah by Christians. Focal participant Dewi actually claimed that Muslims locally do not say Allah, they say Alloh, and so it wasn’t a problem if Christians said Allah.

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(14) Not all foreign families were native English speakers. It was noted by some people I spoke with that an increasingly large number of foreign families were Korean, but they still preferred to have their children educated at the English-medium international school. (15) Exceptions are Wolff and Peodjosoedarmo (1982) and Rafferty (1982). Goebel (2009) also cites more historical accounts of Chinese register formation (i.e. Coppel, 1983; Kusno, 2000; Purdey, 2006). Ethnologue (2015c) also accounts for Peranakan Indonesian (Peranakan is a word indicating those of Chinese ethnicity), claiming that it has no more than 20,000 speakers, all elderly.

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2.1 Satriya Speaks Indonesian Satriya described to me that at this point in his life – his fourth year of college – his communication took place largely in Indonesian in most of his daily activities such as talking to his college friends, his girlfriend, the high school English Debate students he coached, and in regular interethnic interactions and academic transactions at UKSW. He claimed that he regularly spoke in English with his ED and Debate Club peers, and he once explained that he would be more likely to speak Indonesian with a cashier at the mall who he knew was Javanese than in a transaction at the market with a Javanese vendor, where he would be more likely to speak in Javanese. With regard to his views about Javanese proficiency, Satriya expressed the value of being able to speak its multiple registers, but he also justified the fact that nobody his age really does speak them – in his experience, adults really didn’t mind if he spoke a polite version of ngoko, generally known as the peer-to-peer register of the language, to them. As he had advanced through schooling, the presence of Indonesian and English increased in his daily life. Indonesian seemed just a language of circumstance for him, garnering, as he described to me, little affective attachment and even a sense of being demeaned for being markedly Javanese when speaking Indonesian. In a conversation one day, he expressed to me that the two forms of language he would be most proud to be able to speak were Javanese kromo, the register of deference, and English. He stated that Indonesian, on the other hand, is there ‘just to communicate’ (Fieldnotes, 19 October 2009). Despite his stated lesser affection for Indonesian, Satriya spoke it fluently by necessity: by the time we met in 2009, Indonesian was well in place as the common academic, interethnic and mass media language. Indonesian in Indonesia is now a fact of life – it is as ‘natural’ an idea as the Indonesian nation itself. 51

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Satriya explained his own increasing use of Indonesian as he had continued through schooling to be a result of his institutional and academic life and the people with whom he had developed relationships within these institutions. This included his girlfriend, who was from Toraja, on Sulawesi (Maps 1, 3), another Indonesian island with different local languages and ethnicities. She spoke little to no Javanese, having come to UKSW directly from Toraja, and little English as she was not an English major. This made Indonesian the obvious choice for communication between the two. However, Satriya claimed that she made fun of his medhok (‘country bumpkin’) accent whenever he tried to express himself in Indonesian. It became clear at other times as well that Satriya understood his Indonesian to be strongly ethnically marked, in a way that placed his accent low on a national scale of language and accent valuation. This became apparent beyond time spent with his girlfriend when he described an interaction that he had experienced with debate competition participants from Jakarta and other universities on Java. Satriya explained that he felt, during this interaction, that elite university students he encountered at the competition did not want to ‘get close with’ him and his other Javanese peers. As he wrote in an assignment:

Text 2.1 Their accent is still close to my Javanese accent Even though they speak Indonesian I feel easier to get close with them compared to other debaters from UI [Universitas Indonesia, in Jakarta], STAN [Indonesian State College of Accountancy, in Jakarta] and UGM [Universitas Gadjah Mada, in Yogyakarta]. At that time, I felt that students from Jakarta and UGM do not want to close with my friends and me from [UKSW]. I think that the main reason why I can easily get close to them compared to other universities from Jakarta is because their accent is still close to my Javanese accent so it makes our communication easier although all of us speak using Indonesian. (Satriya, Sociolinguistics Assignment 3, 4 November 2009) In this way, Satriya located the three universities he mentioned, and their students, from two of the larger cities on Java, higher on a scale of national prestige and worth than his Central Javanese and smaller university peers. The Indonesian language served as a language that unified participants in an ‘Indonesian space’ beyond their separate localities; however, within this space a Javanese variety of Indonesian united Javanese students from less prestigious universities under a ‘Javanese’ and ‘small-town’ identity. Satriya felt that these accents placed himself and his UKSW peers lower on a nationalized scale and that students from Jakarta’s and Yogyakarta’s prestigious

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universities were higher up, notable in their versions of Indonesian, which sounded closer to the standardized form of the language. The latter were apparently the holders of the ‘common culture’ (Milroy, 2001) of Indonesia, and as such they had the power to judge negatively, or even disdain the lesser or more locally delimited Indonesian language variety, ‘Javanese Indonesian’ or pejoratively, ‘medhok Indonesian’, and its speakers, Satriya and his UKSW peers (see also Silverstein, 1996).

2.2 The Historical Setup for Nation and Language Planning In informal interviews I conducted in 2010 with employees at regional and national offices of the Language Center, they recited to me the theme Mencintai bahasa daerah, memakai bahasa nasional, mempelajari bahasa asing (Love local languages, use the national language, study foreign languages). A member of the Language Center’s Jakarta office explained to me that this theme is officially stated in the national law on languages, Undang-Undang 24/2009 [UU24/2009] (Fieldnotes, 3 May 2010). UU24/2009’s slogan is a new package for an old set of national and official language ideologies. UU24/2009 is officially titled ‘Law of the Republic of Indonesia Number 24 Year 2009 Concerning the Flag, Language, and Symbols of State, as well as the National Anthem’ (Undang-Undang Republik Indonesia Nomor 24 Tahun 2009 Tentang Bendera, Bahasa, Dan Lambang Negara, Serta Lagu Kebangsaan). Chapter III of this law contains 21 articles dedicated to legislating the use of language in the nation, with a primary focus on the place of the national and official language. A selection of Chapter III’s articles follows: Pasal 35 (1) Bahasa Indonesia wajib digunakan dalam penulisan karya ilmiah dan publikasi karya ilmiah di Indonesia. (2) Penulisan dan publikasi sebagaimana dimaksud pada ayat (1) untuk tujuan atau bidang kajian khusus dapat menggunakan bahasa daerah atau bahasa asing. Article 35 (1) The Indonesian language shall be used in the writing of scientific papers and scientific publications in Indonesia. (2) Writings and publications for the purpose of specialized areas of study, as referred to in paragraph (1), may use local languages or foreign languages.

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Pasal 36 (1) Bahasa Indonesia wajib digunakan dalam nama geografi di Indonesia. (2) Nama geografi sebagaimana dimaksud pada ayat (1) hanya memiliki 1 (satu) nama resmi. (3) Bahasa Indonesia wajib digunakan untuk nama bangunan atau gedung, jalan, apartemen atau permukiman, perkantoran, kompleks perdagangan, merek dagang, lembaga usaha, lembaga pendidikan, organisasi yang didirikan atau dimiliki oleh warga negara Indonesia atau badan hukum Indonesia. (4) Penamaan sebagaimana dimaksud pada ayat (1) dan ayat (3) dapat menggunakan bahasa daerah atau bahasa asing apabila memiliki nilai sejarah, budaya, adat istiadat, dan/atau keagamaan. Article 36 (1) The Indonesian language shall be used for geographic names in Indonesia. (2) The geographic names as referred to in paragraph (1) only have one official name. (3) The Indonesian language shall be used to name buildings or building premises, streets, apartments or housing complexes, offices, commercial complexes, trademarks, business institutions, educational institutions, and institutions founded or owned by Indonesian citizens or Indonesian legal entities. (4) The naming as referred to in paragraph (1) and paragraph (3) may use local or foreign languages where they are of historical, cultural, customary and/or religious value. Pasal 37 (1) Bahasa Indonesia wajib digunakan dalam informasi tentang produk barang atau jasa produksi dalam negeri atau luar negeri yang beredar di Indonesia. (2) Informasi sebagaimana dimaksud pada ayat (1) dapat dilengkapi dengan bahasa daerah atau bahasa asing sesuai dengan keperluan. Article 37 (1) The Indonesian language shall be used in information about goods or the production of goods, domestic or foreign, circulating in Indonesia. (2) The information referred to in paragraph (1) may be supplemented with local or foreign languages as necessary.

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Pasal 38 (1) Bahasa Indonesia wajib digunakan dalam rambu umum, penunjuk jalan, fasilitas umum, spanduk, dan alat informasi lain yang merupakan pelayanan umum. (2) Penggunaan Bahasa Indonesia sebagaimana dimaksud pada ayat (1) dapat disertai bahasa daerah dan/atau bahasa asing. Article 38 (1) The Indonesian language shall be used for public signs, street signs, public facilities, banners, and other information tools considered to be public services. (2) The use of Indonesian as referred to in paragraph (1) may be accompanied by local or foreign languages. Pasal 39 (1) Bahasa Indonesia wajib digunakan dalam informasi melalui media massa. (2) Media massa sebagaimana dimaksud pada ayat (1) dapat menggunakan bahasa daerah atau bahasa asing yang mempunyai tujuan khusus atau sasaran khusus. Article 39 (1) The Indonesian language shall be used in information distributed via mass media. (2) Mass media as referred to in paragraph (1) may use local or foreign languages for special purposes or objectives. In addition to these, Articles 33 and 31, concerning private businesses, require communication only in Indonesian. The articles in this chapter of UU24/2009 thus effectively oblige citizens to speak Indonesian and only to see or hear Indonesian in public fora, including in non-state enterprises. The law actively marginalizes the use of other languages, specifying that they should only be used when absolutely necessary and thereby inexplicitly relegating the rest of their usage to private personal spaces. It is made clear in these articles that a local or foreign language can only be seen as ‘necessary’: when local cultures desire to display the local historical significance of certain locations; when students want or need to engage in academic study of ‘foreign’ languages; or, in some locations, when there is an economic need to cater to foreign tourists passing through.

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National schooling, compulsory for all, is required in Article 29 to be conducted only in Indonesian, with, unlike the articles above, complete exclusion of local languages: Pasal 29 (1) Bahasa Indonesia wajib digunakan sebagai bahasa pengantar dalam pendidikan nasional. (2) Bahasa pengantar sebagaimana dimaksud pada ayat (1) dapat menggunakan bahasa asing untuk tujuan yang mendukung kemampuan berbahasa asing peserta didik. (3) Penggunaan Bahasa Indonesia sebagaimana dimaksud pada ayat (1) tidak berlaku untuk satuan pendidikan asing atau satuan pendidikan khusus yang mendidik warga negara asing. Article 29 (1) The Indonesian language shall be used as the language of instruction in national education. (2) Language of instruction as referred to in paragraph (1) may be a foreign language for the purpose of supporting students in learning foreign languages. (3) The use of the Indonesian language as referred to in paragraph (1) does not apply to foreign education organizations nor to education organizations that specifically teach foreign nationals. To understand why these policies were written in this way in 2009 and why it is ‘only natural’ that Satriya should speak Indonesian more and more and speak it the medhok way that he does, we must look back to how it is that ‘Indonesian’ even exists as a language, and how it came to be the central focus of legislative attention and government resources. To fill in the story begun in the introductory chapter, we look back in time, long before there was an Indonesia or an Indonesian language, with the journey of the Malay language and the arrival of Europeans in the archipelagic region that is now called Indonesia.

2.2.1 A ‘pure orientalist artefact’ The term ‘Indonesian’ was first used to indicate a subgroup of the Malay race/ethnicity. ‘Indonesia’, described by R. Bertrand (2005: 558) as a ‘pure orientalist artefact’1 is actually thought to have been coined by an English colonist/ethnologue in Singapore around 1850. He combined the Greek terms Indos – which itself traveled to Greek from Persian hindu, an interpretation of

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Sanskrit sindhu meaning from or of the area now known as India, and nesos, Greek for island (R. Bertrand, 2005; Intan, 2006; Owen, 2005). The use of ‘Indonesia’ to refer to the country became popular in the early 1900s when Indonesian nationalists were learning about nationalist revolutions located in many other places and times. They learned of European nationalist revolutions through their Dutch higher educations; of increasing international discourses on freedom and justice; of India’s own growing nationalist movements through the writings of Gandhi and Tagore; of the Chinese nationalist movement of Sun Yat Sen. These early nationalists (re-)appropriated, as their national identity that needed to be revived, stories written down by colonists together with indigenous Javanese priyayi – non-blood lineage elites – over long periods of Dutch presence in the region, about what local ‘Javanese culture’, the earliest and largest locus for nationalist agitation, meant. These stories, delineating a tradition parfaite, or perfect Javanese tradition, had come to collectively formulate local culture in varying combinations of orientalist, mystical religious, and nationalist fashion, and they would indeed become the roots of Javanese nationalism (Alisjahbana, 1966; R. Bertrand, 2005; Pemberton, 1994). ‘Indonesia’ as an official group name or title is earliest seen with the Perhimpunan Indonesia – the Indonesian Association, a renaming into Malay of Indische Vereeniging. This was a group of young and educated Indonesian nationalists who campaigned for Indonesian nationhood in the first two decades of the 20th century, first in The Netherlands and then post-WWI in what was to be Indonesia as well. They were a precursor to the first Partai Nasionalis Indonesia, the Indonesian Nationalist Party, founded in 1927 (Foulcher, 2000). Indigenous nationalists pre-independence assembled in a large number of very non-aligned groups whose only shared goal amid myriad ideological and practical disagreements was to liberate their nation from the Dutch. The activity of some of these movements led to a convening of an All-Indonesia Youth Congress, first taking place in 1926, mostly in the medium of Dutch. The second of these meetings, in October 1928, became the historical landmark of calls for Indonesian independence (Alisjahbana, 1956). This 1928 Sumpah Pemuda, or Youth Pledge (or Oath), put forth an official statement declaring that Indonesia was one nation, united by one language and one land. The group, writ large, were elite, Dutch educated and polyglot, communicating with each other mostly in Dutch; however, they committed to conducting this 1928 meeting in Malay which, by the end of the meeting, would be called Indonesian (Foulcher, 2000). The Sumpah Pemuda took place during an era of Indonesian liberation campaigns that had increased at the turn of the 20th century as more

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indigenous individuals were becoming educated in Malay-medium schools through Dutch ‘ethical policy’, while at the same time The Netherlands was consolidating its political power over the whole archipelago. Because of their successful consolidation of power and increasingly violent suppression of dissent, though, Indonesian liberation and the achievement of a new state would require far more than these groups’ activism. WWI, the Depression and a 1942–1945 Japanese occupancy until the end of WWII all weakened Dutch control of the country to a 1945 breaking point, at which time those who had participated in the Sumpah Pemuda – largely Western-educated secular nationalists – became the political leaders of the new nation, declaring independence with their national constitution, Undang-Undang Dasar Republik Indonesia 1945, The National Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia. Article 36 of the 1945 Constitution declared Indonesian the official language of the state. What was by this time Indonesian had already long been in use under the name of Malay in many local Islamic and secular schools, both indigenous and Dutch run (Alisjahbana, 1974; R. Bertrand, 2005). The plan now was to move forward and unite as one nation, with one land, and with one national language that everyone would accept as their own. Despite Malay’s long-term presence and use in the archipelago, Heryanto (1995, 2007) describes that an ‘invention’ of a unitary Indonesian language occurred alongside the state’s decolonization and nationalization, as ideologies of nationalism and statehood began to infuse the very semantics of the Indonesian language itself. A common myth about the national language of Indonesia is that the premise for choosing Malay to become the national language, Indonesian, was an idea that it belonged to no-one yet could belong to everyone in the archipelago. This belief was based on the fact that Malay (or the concept of it) has been a lingua franca on these islands – particularly the coastal regions – for centuries. It was thought that people who spoke Malay generally used it as a second language to communicate interethnically. Its ethnically and regionally ‘nonattached’ nature, then, would make it a prime candidate for becoming a national language while simultaneously avoiding interethnic conflict that might be fomented by favoring a specific group’s language (Keane, 2003). This is far too simplistic a treatment of Malay, however, or perhaps we could say it is as complex and accurate as was the documentation that came to call Malay ‘Malay’: this was documentation by European missionaries and colonials who were outsiders to the local communities and who were often looking for or imposing cultural similarities among vastly disparate peoples (Errington, 2008). Early and foremost Indonesian language planner Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana speaks to such simplicity (although he also adopts it as a view of a general Indonesian culture) by describing Dutch

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ethnologist van Vollenhoven’s description of a distinct set of cultural characteristics shared by all ‘Indonesians’: He found, inter alia, a preponderance of communal over individual interests, a close relationship between man and the soil, an all-pervasive ‘magical’ and religious pattern of thought, and a strongly family-orientated atmosphere in which every effort was made to compose disputes through conciliation and mutual consideration. (Alisjahbana, 1966: 71) The Malay language as it was understood by the early 20th century was chosen to become Indonesia’s national language as – based on this prior documentation and the fact that most nationalists did use a variety of or some varieties of Malay as one of their languages – it had come to be conceptualized as a singular language that had been used by much of the archipelagic population as only a lingua franca and not a first language throughout most of the Christian Era. It thus could conceivably belong to no-one yet everyone at the same time (Alisjahbana, 1966; Keane, 2003; Sneddon, 2003). It was not only a lingua franca by this point in time, though. An explanation for how and why Malay could have spread so far and become the primary medium of communication for many by this point in time starts centuries ago, with the rather organic development of trade routes through the Strait of Malacca and eastward throughout the archipelago (see Map 2). The strait, touching on the northern side and western end of the island of Sumatra and on the southern coast of the Malaysian peninsula, has long been a gateway for anyone traveling from west of this region eastward. Such regular and widespread contact and traffic through the region led to the development of many forms of Malay expanding out from the Malaccan Strait. Most variations on this language were used for trade and could be thought of as nobody’s first language, and many of these varieties were perhaps even more pidgin than language; however, varieties of Malay did develop in many coastal regions, sedimenting, or creolizing – which implies much influence from more local and regional ways of communicating – to become the primary language of local communication (Alisjahbana, 1966; Kaplan & Baldauf, 2003). Having become the primary language of many groups of people, though, Errington (2008) maintains that Malay was never really, outside of Sumatra where the language originated, a language receiving strong ethnic affiliation by its speakers. Up until current times, Indonesian people have rather grasped on to religion and kingdom, with language not documented as an issue of conflict (J. Bertrand, 2004; Maier, 1993; see also Heller, 2010, for a more recent example, in a vastly different location, of shifts in allegiance from religion to language in Canada).

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2.2.2 Early records of Malay’s spread The arrival of the Europeans at the Indonesian archipelago postdates centuries of conquer, and missionary and trade-driven visits by Middle Eastern Muslims, Indian Hindus and Chinese traders and migrants. Malay has, for equally as long as all of these waves of migration, been a coastal trade language for many and a first language for many more, and its spread beyond the kingdom of Malacca far predates European documentation of the region (Coedès, 1930; Errington, 2008; Maier, 1993). The earliest written evidence of Malay dates back to 7th–10th century inscriptions that have been located along the east coast of Sumatra (Coedès, 1930; Teeuw, 1961). These inscriptions, very few in number and not very long in text, all contain a few recognizable Malay words and strong influence from Sanskrit. Coedès (1930) notes Chinese travelers’ written documentation of time spent on Sumatra during the first millennium CE, and Alisjahbana (1966) points out that there are remains from around this time of Chinese travelers’ documentation of a lingua franca they called Kwenlun, noted to have been spoken in the archipelago. The earliest known spread of Malay throughout the archipelago is said to have been propagated by the Kingdom of Srivijaya, ‘which dominated a considerable portion of South-East Asia at the beginning of the Christian era, and which had its centre in a Malay-speaking area of Indonesia’ (Alisjahbana, 1966: 58), that is, the land touching on the Strait of Malacca (see Map 2). Srivijaya was ousted from power at the end of the 13th century by the Javanese, and its leaders, after some attempts to regain relevance, moved westward up the Sumatran coast to eventually establish the Malaccan kingdom. This kingdom’s power and mobility only accelerated the spread of Malay language and culture: Malay went ‘eastward to areas far beyond Malacca’s political control, such as Ternate and Tidore in the northern Moluccas’ (Sneddon, 2003: 58, see Map 3). Malay’s contact with European explorers mainly begins in the 16th century. The Portuguese and Spanish were the first to arrive, and they defeated Malacca in 1513, which led the Malaccans to relocate their kingdom back east, to the Riau-Lingga, or Riau-Johor, area, which spans what are now central eastern Sumatra and the southern portion of the Malaysian peninsula. The Malaccan courts were re-settled on the Johor River by 1530, and it was in these newly established courts that a highly formalized Malay language, written and spoken, was cultivated. Sneddon goes on to explain that, after the invasions in Malacca, trade traffic grew even stronger throughout the archipelago and as it did, so did Malay. The Malay of the Sumatran courts became the established language of courts throughout the archipelago, and ‘bazaar’/pidgin forms of Malay

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creolized as they became languages of the home and of daily functioning. These new varieties of Malay, Sneddon describes, became the first languages of many port areas from the far west to as far east as Ambon, Ternate, Manado and Kupang (Map 3), while ‘[i]n other places, such as the northern Moluccas and coastal parts of western New Guinea, the language remained largely for inter-ethnic communication’ (Sneddon, 2003: 60–61). Sumatra remained the hub of political power and interaction as it was the gateway to the east, and it also continued to be attributed status as the place to go if one wanted to find the best, or the most pure, form of Malay. During the 16th century also, along with the militarized intervention of the Portuguese and Spanish, Catholic missionaries arrived, including Francis Xavier. The missionaries quickly understood that Malay was a regional lingua franca, so much so that they decided to translate bibles and texts only into Malay and not any other local languages at this early stage of contact. A Dutch man named Jan Huygen van Linschoten, traveling with the Portuguese between 1579 and 1592, went so far as to write that ‘Anyone who does not know Malay in the Indies will not get anywhere, as with French with us’ (Steinhauer, 1980, as cited in Sneddon, 2003: 61; see also Alisjahbana, 1966: 59). Following these early European visits to the region, Dutch traders moved in, and forced the Portuguese out of the many ports the latter had previously monopolized. Errington explains that ‘by the time the Swiss linguist Werndly wrote his Malay grammar in 1736, Malay was spoken’ in those ports that the Dutch now began to dominate (Errington, 2008: 135), and by this time, due to the perpetual waves of Malay diaspora, Malay may have been different, more widely spread, or more firmly established in these regions than even the language that the first Portuguese arrivals encountered. And so the many types of Malay already spoken in the archipelago by the time Dutch travelers arrived included a court Malay, associated with high rank, religion and ritual, and written in an Arabic script called Kawi. This was, from what we know, the only Malay written other than missionary linguists’ documentations. There were also many informal varieties of Malay, associated with the marketplace and everyday Malay life in many regions of Sumatra, as well as in coastal areas and ports far to the east of Sumatra. These latter varieties must have ranged from pidgin to creole and any other term we might assign to a variety of ‘the Malay language’ that could have developed under the influence of vast varieties of speech previously and concurrently present in all of these regions. We can only assume that we see partial remnants of these ways of talking in the deeply rooted dialects of Malay/Indonesian now spoken in areas such as Manado, Makassar, Banjarmasin, Ambon and the Lesser Sundas, areas long noted for having ‘their own’ local first-language varieties of Malay (Maier, 1993). And

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while these can be considered regional dialects, they may be further broken down into ethnic dialects per region if we consider that each region hosts various ethnolinguistic groups (Sneddon, 2003; Stevens, 1973; Teeuw, 1961).

2.2.3 Dutch arrival and settlement, local semantic shift The Dutch presence in the islands did not begin with an intent to govern. The Dutch East Indies Company, or the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC), first arrived with the intent to trade, and particularly to gain a monopoly over mostly the northern coastal ports of Sumatra and Java, in order to export spices and sugar to Europe at low rates (R. Bertrand, 2005; Ricklefs, 2008). The Dutch who took this journey were not always the most upstanding population of their country – but they were no less smart negotiators and entrepreneurs. The first inroads these travelers made on the northern coasts of Sumatra and Southern Malaysia were made by having noticed that their marine technology was only as advanced as local marine technology, but that their weaponry was further advanced. Weaponry became their selling point: they offered protection to local ports in exchange for monopoly or near monopoly of the goods going out of them (Ricklefs, 2008). These arrangements quickly pulled the VOC into pre-existing local conflicts, as they moved their way down the coast and onto Java, setting up headquarters in Batavia (now Jakarta). The VOC became involved in Javanese rule as well, and slowly tightened their financial and political control of the region. As they moved into Central Java, the increase in Dutch power was partially achieved in collaboration with Javanese royalty, and often with the willing collaboration of the priyayi, the non-blood nobility who saw access to power and privilege if they worked alongside the Dutch. During their expanding presence, as the Dutch lived side by side with these Javanese elites, the two groups began to develop strongly codified ways of performing Dutch- and Javanese-ness, as the priyayi classes began to describe and enact a ‘natural’ cara Jawi (way of being Javanese), which became the point of comparison for a ‘natural’ cara Walandi (way of being Dutch). Both of these ‘ways’ – first described as ways of dressing before expanding to other cultural practices – became fully integrated into Javanese courtly culture. For their own part, the Dutch were learning local languages as they increased their presence and power on the islands; in fact, they limited the role of Dutch strictly to a very few indigenous elites, preferring to keep their own language from the natives: To avoid … interactional pitfalls, and the need to teach Dutch to the Javanese, the colonialists had recourse to Malay, such as they knew it, to

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communicate across the colonial divide. From the early 18th to the late 19th century, the Dutch satisfied themselves with ad hoc, improvised communication in Malay, preferring it, as one linguist acidly noted, in ways ‘inversely proportional to their knowledge of the language’ (Heinrich Kern, quoted in Groeneboer, 1998: 142). These improvised modes of un-native speech came to have a name which reflected its home in zones of colonial contact: ‘service Malay’ (dienstMaleisch). (Errington, 2008: 136–137) An interruption in this Dutch–Javanese collaboration and contact began in 1810 when Sir Thomas Raffles paid a visit to the region and noticed that the Dutch had gone ‘too native’ for his tastes. He scolded them, and informed these ‘Indies Dutch’ that they would have to reform their ways, stop speaking lowly pidgin forms of Malay to communicate with the locals, learn the higher forms of Malay, and essentially re-become Dutch by ‘scientizing’ themselves and distancing themselves from the uneducated native population (Maier, 1993). This was a turning point for Dutch and Inlander relations, as at this point the Dutch were compelled to live more separately from the locals and, by 1900, to actually begin to act ‘more Dutch than the Dutch’, taking on highly conservative Dutch language and behavioral standards – which in turn still revealed the fact that they were not really from The Netherlands while also distancing them from the native population, who found in their changing behaviors and their increasing power more reason to resent them (Maier, 1993). As these relations changed, the cara Jawi which had been constructed alongside the cara Walandi in elite Javanese culture began its journey to becoming a celebrated, revivalist and orientalist ideal of what Javanese culture was, and what practices represented it. This culture was documented largely by members of the priyayi class (largely educated by the Dutch) in collaboration with European ethnologists, and these notions of local culture would later inform Javanese and Indonesian nationalist and traditionalist identities as they moved to gain sovereignty (R. Bertrand, 2005; Pemberton, 1994). Pemberton (1994) explains, through descriptions of semantic shift, that many words changed in semantic value over this period of contact. The words that he points to changed to form key words in contemporary modernity and nationhood in both Javanese and Indonesian languages and cultures. Pemberton explains some of these word changes, and other scholars add to the list: •

upacara transitioned from ceremonial or processional regalia – a fixed set of ostentatious items held by ruler and members of court – to ‘official ceremony’ by 1930. After this it was ‘employed by literati and journalists

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•

•

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to designate other sorts of festivities’ (Pemberton, 1994: 192) such that now it generally refers to any type of celebration, and especially those occurring on the national independence holiday, 17 August. cara, ‘way’, as in a way of doing something, added on an alternate meaning of a reified set of customs: ‘Cara’s tendency toward this sort of reification is tied, of course, to a broader history of epistemological shifts and the emergence of a particular form of reflexivity, conveying a sense of, in a word, “culture”’ (Pemberton, 1994: 66). Specifically, cara started as a term used to differentiate between ways of dressing: there was a Javanese custom – cara Jawi – and there was a Dutch custom – cara Walandi. But, ‘during the nineteenth century, the world originally fashioned in the name of cara Jawi would broaden to distinguish “Javanese” language, customs, literature, and so on, and, thus, expand toward a recognizably cultural world ideally fit for Javanological revelations’ (Pemberton, 1994: 136). tatacara: Internal to various Javanese cultures, cara further expanded to tatacara, joining with tatakrama – etiquette, and tatabasa – good grammar, to indicate ‘a well-defined cultural landscape in the name of “Java” … What was once, perhaps, a plenitude of practices was now ruled by a singular system of thought that contained these practices as varied yet unified expressions of “Javanese” custom’ (Pemberton, 1994: 137). Tatabasa – tatabahasa in Indonesian – now generally refers to grammar, specifically the structural rules for (formal) language. bahasa, bangsa and kebangsaan: Heryanto explains that up to even the mid-20th century, the Malay word bahasa, which is now glossed as ‘language’ represented an idea much closer to ‘culture’. Bangsa, currently Indonesian for ‘nation’, prior to nationalization was said to represent more the idea of ‘descent, kind or sort’ (Heryanto, 1995: 19, 2006). R. Bertrand (2005: 559) notes that bangsa and kebangsaan transitioned to ‘nation’ and ‘citizenship’, becoming synonymous with another word, kewarganegaraan, also ‘citizenship’ – ‘the property of state membership’.2 These words took on their current meanings during and after WWI, when Dutch-educated elites like Mohammad Hatta (who went on to become Indonesia’s first vice president and later prime minister) went to and returned from The Netherlands, where they represented the interests of the regions under Dutch rule (the Indische Vereeniging mentioned above), and locally, as Chinese ethnic residents in Batavia (now the nation’s capital, Jakarta) followed the Chinese nationalist movement of Sun Yat Sen (R. Bertrand, 2005: 559). wajib: in the 1800s this word signified responsibility with respect to the state, particularly knowing one’s place, or a conscience de soi de la classe dominante in Bourdieu’s terms – a constructed class self-consciousness

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that guaranteed non-blood nobility (the priyayi class) their place in the Javanese universe (and thereby placed the peasantry clearly lower than them). Wajib now means obligatory in a general sense (R. Bertrand, 2005: 132).

2.2.4 Schooling in the colonial era and early language planning The Dutch established a schooling system early in their time in the region, but they established schools for Dutch children only and under the same schooling policies as The Netherlands itself had. A very few elite indigenous children were allowed into these schools. As the Dutch began to develop a bureaucratic structure, though, and still not wanting to educate locals in their own language, they began in 1848 to establish Malaymedium schools for a larger number of indigenous children. As these schools grew, European reform trends began to create pressure for better treatment of populations under colonial power and, locally, more and more people began to request access to education for their own children. This, as well as a belief that a growing revolt culture among laborers would be quelled if the latter were acculturated to Western ideologies (R. Bertrand, 2005), led the Dutch to establish a new ‘ethical policy’ at the beginning of the 20th century. Under this policy, attempts at political decentralization across the islands were begun (not so earnestly, Ricklefs, 2008), and the Dutch further expanded education, still using Malay as the medium for schooling. For the Malay used in these Malay-medium schools, Dutch linguists sought to document, develop and expand the same renowned Classic Malay of the royal courts of the Riau-Johor area in order to ‘develop’ a language of education for these Dutch-run schools. This, in the very early 20th century, is treated as the first standardization of what was to be the national Indonesian language. A linguist named Christian van Ophuijsen is attributed with the documentation of this school Malay after being sent to the RiauJohor courts to document it. He published his school grammar in 1910; however, his documentation of Malay was simply one in a long tradition of mostly European linguistic documentation of Riau court Malay (Teeuw, 1961; van der Putten, 2012). Van Ophuijsen’s name remains frequently associated with the standardization of Malay at this time, however, because unlike the linguists who preceded him, he was not only a linguist but he was highly involved in developing the indigenous education system (Alisjahbana, 1974; Teeuw, 1961). While in 1848 the Dutch began to educate elite indigenous people just enough for them to run the local bureaucracies, their schools simply entered

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into a mix of the indigenous schooling choices starting to grow at the time. Islamic schools, called pesantren, followed the practices of Middle Eastern religious schooling. In 1862 there were an estimated 94,000 students in these schools on Java, and by 1893 there were an estimated 11,000 pesantren with 272,000 students (Ricklefs, 2008: 158). Later, and as both Javanese and Indonesianist nationalist movements grew, Javanese-medium schools, founded by Javanese national activist Ki Hadjar Dewantara, were set up by Javanese nationalists educated in Europe and inspired by the national reformist literature they had read there. These schools were called Taman Siswa, and they provided nine years of schooling, during which were taught diction, math, commerce, singing, national history, English, Javanese and Dutch. They had expanded to 175 schools by 1932 (R. Bertrand, 2005; Ricklefs, 2008). Christian missionary schools had also been in place in various locations in the archipelago since the 1600s. These schools were conducted largely through the Malay medium, and they left their learners with high levels of literacy compared to the other schooling programs (Alisjahbana, 1966; Ricklefs, 2008). As Dutch schooling expanded under the ethical policy in the first decade of the 20th century, the colonial government added desaschoolen, numerous primary schools which provided education in the local language. These schools taught basic reading and math skills as well as ‘technical knowledge needed to become a factory supervisor or a store clerk’3 (R. Bertrand, 2005: 498). The establishment of the Malay and local-language Dutch-run schools, then, alongside the indigenous Javanese and Malay medium schools above, laid the groundwork for Indonesian domestic education in a language other than that of the colonizer. Additionally, the nationalist Taman Siswa schools planted a seed for an education system that presented Javanese history and culture in a way much preferable to the history that the Dutch were teaching in their own schools. As education expanded, so did both secular nationalist and Islamic anticolonial movements. Their numbers grew throughout the early 20th century, and their development was aided by the Depression, which caused Dutch activity in the island to severely contract, after it had only newly consolidated its power in 1910 over the soon to be Indonesian archipelago. As these indigenous movements grew, however, one thing the Dutch were sure to keep intact was their suppression of local populations, ever more violently, and so that the locals would still be unable to take control (Ricklefs, 2008). As the anti-colonial movements grew, the increasing popularity of reformist Islam among the growing, non-priyayi middle classes of Javanese, and the increasing accessibility to Mecca for religious pilgrimages encouraged a divide among the following groups: nationalist Islamic groups oriented

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toward the Middle East (largely from non-priyayi backgrounds and pesantren educations); nationalist groups who practiced locally rooted traditions of Islam and preferred a secular democracy (largely from priyayi-rooted bureaucrats); and nationalist groups oriented toward Western philosophies of governance (overlapping with the previous groups, but also including non-Muslims). The secular nationalist ideals of the latter groups developed particularly strongly among the nationalists who had been educated in the West or in Dutch schools locally, and these individuals were largely members of the lower priyayi classes (the higher priyayi classes were a small group who were largely pro-Dutch and held the highest positions that an indigenous person could hope for at that time in Dutch legislature; R. Bertrand, 2005). In the end, Western-oriented secularists who had become disgruntled bureaucrats under a Dutch system that trapped them in its bureaucracy with no chances for upward mobility would organize the Sumpah Pemuda; they would then serve under the bureaucracy of the Japanese government during the latter’s WWII occupation, and they would finally be the group to come to power and craft the Indonesian Constitution in 1945 (Ricklefs, 2008).

2.2.5 Publishing a national literature With all the different factions of anti-colonial movement mentioned above, there was clearly not a complete sense of united nationalism among the indigenous population. But alongside political mobilization, seeds of linguistic and cultural unification were being planted through the increases in schooling mentioned above as well as already increased transportation options and increasing numbers of vernacular publications. A vernacular press had begun to develop in the mid-1800s, although most attempts were short lived. A Javanese language newspaper called Bramartani, written in Javanese script, did develop and survive, though. Bramartani … was intended to bring general information, including news from elsewhere in the Indonesian archipelago and overseas, to an elite readership. A year later the first weekly newspaper in the Malay language appeared in Surabaya with the title Soerat Kabar Bahasa Melaijoe (‘Malay-Language Newspaper’). It was intended for a readership of traders and shopkeepers, but folded after three months. With modern education still very limited in Java, most of these early newspapers and periodicals had short lives, rarely surviving more than two years. Bramartani, however, had a longer, if not entirely unchequered, history, lasting until 1932. (Ricklefs, 2008: 154)

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Under Dutch ethical policy, a publishing house for Indonesian literature, Balai Pustaka, was established in 1908. It ‘performed three main functions: the publication of older classical works and popular stories in regional languages, the translation of Western literature into Indonesian and the publication of the new Indonesian literature’. It managed to ‘spread its publications remarkably widely, given the low levels of literacy among Indonesians at that time’,4 selling some 100,000 books in 1920, and recording 1 million library borrowings (Ricklefs, 2008: 221). As attempts at spreading news and literature grew, as the priyayi classes’ secular and more globalist orientations developed through their schooling, as residents from many of the archipelago’s islands joined Dutch military forces, and as other colonized regions of the world began to form decolonization movements, a sense of ‘imagined community’ began to pick up speed among the educated few in Indonesia. These feelings held most strongly on Java, where Dutch power was concentrated and where the idea of cara Jawi had come to more closely embody a regional nationalist sentiment. As it had been Dutch educational policy to teach English as a course subject, at least in the elite Dutch-medium schools, and as Ki Hadjar Dewantara’s Taman Siswa Javanese-medium schools had taken on this policy as well, educated people’s growing knowledge of both Dutch and English gave educated locals access to readings on national liberation and social justice. As they began to grow in numbers and to gain awareness of themselves as a more widespread group under the domination of a singular entity, their use of Dutch and Malay grew as they wrote to each other in newspapers in both languages and developed the social consciousness of a colonized group in need of national liberation (Alisjahbana, 1966; R. Bertrand, 2005; Ricklefs, 2008). The movement grew in strength toward the event marked by the 1928 Sumpah Pemuda.

2.2.6 The birth of Indonesian In October 1928, at the second All-Indonesia Youth Congress in Batavia (soon to be Jakarta), a declaration was made that Indonesia would be formed, unified under homeland and language, and that the singular national, official language would be called Indonesian. The official declaration made at that 1928 Congress has been repeated frequently by political leaders ever since, with slight but important changes in wording and intention across regimes. I borrow the quotes below from Foulcher’s (2000) article describing changes in the recitation of the Sumpah Pemuda since 1928. This original Oath announced at the 1928 Youth Congress was written by Muhammad Yamin, a prominent figure in the nationalist movement and a future holder of many ministerial titles relating to culture and education in the Indonesian national government:

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Kami poetera dan poeteri Indonesia mengakoe bertoempah-darah jang satoe, tanah Indonesia. Kami poetera dan poeteri Indonesia mengakoe berbangsa jang satoe, bangsa Indonesia. Kami poetera dan poeteri Indonesia mendjoendjoeng bahasa persatoean, bahasa Indonesia. (Foulcher, 2000: 380) This translates as: We sons and daughters of Indonesia declare that we have one birthplace, the land of Indonesia. We sons and daughters of Indonesia declare that we are one nation, the Indonesian nation. We sons and daughters of Indonesia uphold (revere) the language of unity, the Indonesian language. (Foulcher, 2000: 402) Anton Moeliono, an instrumental member in the language planning process (later head of the Language Center), describes an event just two months before the Sumpah Pemuda: … [In] Soekarno’s speech of August 15, 1928 in Jakarta, one year after the founding of the Perserikatan Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian National Association) … he stated that language differences between ethnic groups would not hinder unification, but the sooner Malay (Indonesian) became widespread, the sooner Indonesia would achieve independence. (Schrieke, 1929, as cited by van der Wal, 1963, as cited by Moeliono, 1986: 26) This being said, this group of early nationalists spoke mostly Dutch among themselves, and it was even noted that much of the Malay spoken at the 1928 Congress was dysfluent at best (Foulcher, 2000). In 1933, another important literary magazine was established. Poedjangga Baroe, or New Writers (later written Pujangga Baru after spelling reforms implemented collaboratively between Indonesia and Malaysia in 1973), led by Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana, Armijn Pane and Amir Hamzah, ‘was a magazine designed to promote the Indonesian language and its literature. All the political and cultural leaders of Indonesia rallied to its support’ (Alisjahbana, 1966: 64; see also Moeliono, 1986). Through this magazine, ‘literary and linguistic standards for the language of Indonesian unity were established’ (Ricklefs, 2008: 229). The writers and editors of Pujangga Baru carried on conversation with the writers and publishers of Balai Pustaka, both developing a national literature and debating how the development of national

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literature and language should move forward. Alisjahbana himself was in the camp of a quite forward-thinking and forward-moving modernist ideal who would look to Western languages for the development of both literary styles and vocabulary expansion, while some contemporaries like Sanusi Pane, the brother of Armijn Pane, would ‘urge that cultural inspiration be sought in Indonesia’s pre-Islamic past’ (Ricklefs, 2008: 221). This group would also later include Moeliono. Malay, now Indonesian, was a language that is said to, by the time of the Sumpah Pemuda, only have been the native language of some 500,000 (Nababan, 1991) out of 60.7 million (Ricklefs, 2008: 187) inhabitants of soon-to-be Indonesia (although the varieties of Malay mentioned above, and whether they were included in this count, are not discussed). Stevens (1973) estimated that by 1973 there must have been around 6–10 million native speakers of Indonesian, among a population of over 100 million; by the 1990s Nababan (1991: 117) estimated that ‘there are now more than 17 million who can legitimately be called “native speakers” of Bahasa Indonesia’. By the time of these latter two counts, these newer native speakers would come to know this, one or the only of their native languages, not as Malay, but only as the national language – naturally, as Indonesian.

2.2.7 Institutionalization The first national Indonesian Language Congress, Kongres Bahasa Indonesia, was convened in Medan, Sumatra, in October 1938, by the editors of Pujangga Baru. At this conference the group called for the creation of ‘an institute and a faculty for the study of Indonesian, to decide on technical terminology, create a new orthography, and codify a new grammar in accordance with the changes taking place in the structure of the language’ (Alisjahbana, 1966: 64). Those present at the Congress also called for Indonesian to be made the language of all laws and governing bodies, with Alisjahbana explaining that the language of law was as important as the language of education in developing a society. However, there was no institutional support at this point and so these requests remained on paper only. It was not until an almost four-year Japanese takeover of Indonesia beginning in 1942 that the language’s position was further strengthened and that the conveners of the first Language Congress were given the institutions that they sought. The Japanese immediately banned Dutch from administration upon their arrival. This was, looking in one direction, an act of defiance of the Dutch, but it was also, looking internally to the nation, an act of necessity. Seeing how widespread Malay already was, the Japanese saw that there was not enough time to enforce Japanese in governmental affairs. They turned to

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Malay instead and began teaching Japanese in schools in anticipation of eventually making it the national bureaucratic language. In the meantime, for any outreach they wanted to make, from cities to the most rural locations they could reach, the Japanese used Malay to communicate with the locals (Alisjahbana, 1966). This brought Malay’s spread farther and deeper than it had ever reached, into the most isolated regions of the country. On 20 October 1942, the Japanese established a Commission on the Indonesian Language (Komisi Bahasa Indonesia), charged with making decisions concerning grammar, terminology and ‘the form of words used in ordinary parlance by the Indonesian people’ (Alisjahbana, 1966: 65; see also Alisjahbana, 1956). The commission was run by the editors of Pujangga Baru as well as some other nationalist leaders, including the soon to be first Indonesian president and vice president, respectively, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta (Alisjahbana, 1974). Building upon the Commission, a Language Office was established under the leadership of Alisjahbana, and by the end of the Japanese occupation, ‘7,000 new terms had been decided on, mostly related to teaching in the secondary schools’ (Alisjahbana, 1974: 401). As WWII came to a close and the Japanese relinquished their hold in 1945, the Indonesian national movement was able to come to a head. At this ‘critical juncture’ (Sonntag & Cardinal, 2015) in 1945, a national constitution (Undang-Undang Dasar 1945) was drafted, declaring Indonesian the official language, and solidifying the position of local or regional languages (bahasa daerah)5 as something to be ‘honored and maintained’ as long as their use was in service to the Indonesian nation and language. The following articles of the constitution address this: Bab XV, Bendera, Bahasa, dan Lambang Negara, Serta Lagu Kebangsaan Pasal 36 Bahasa Negara ialah Bahasa Indonesia. Chapter XV, National Flag, Language, and Symbol, and National Anthem Article 36 The State Language is Indonesian. Bab XIII, Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Pasal 32 (1) Negara memajukan kebudayaan nasional Indonesia di tengah peradaban dunia dengan menjamin kebebasan masyarakat dalam memelihara dan mengembangkan nila-nilai budayanya. (2) Negara menghormati dan memelihara bahasa daerah sebagai kekayaan budaya nasional.

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Chapter XIII, Education and Culture Article 32 (1) The State will develop Indonesian national culture amid world civilization by ensuring the society’s freedom to maintain and develop their own cultural values. (2) The State honors and maintains local languages as a part of national cultural wealth. After the War, the Dutch did step back in to try to regain their former positions of power, forming a Federation of Indonesian States and, reconciling themselves to the spread of Indonesian at that point, making Indonesian the official language of their Dutch East Indies government (Alisjahbana, 1966). In 1947 a Working Committee on the Indonesian language was established, also under the leadership of Alisjahbana. In 1949, due to internal revolution and international pressure to decolonize, the Transfer of Sovereignty was signed, Indonesia was officially independent, and in 1952 the Working Committee ‘became a part of the Linguistic and Cultural Institute of the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy in the University of Indonesia’ (Alisjahbana, 1966: 66). Dutch political influence rapidly diminished, and their language with it, thanks in large part to their own long-held separatist language policy. By this time, English was already well in place as a primary language of global importance, and there was already a tradition domestically of teaching it as a course subject, as discussed above. Alisjahbana claims that by the mid-1960s, although Dutch was still the most proficient language of most educated Indonesians,6 university education was already able to be conducted almost entirely in Indonesian, although language planners found themselves under great pressure to translate ‘an overwhelming proportion of books and other important writings of study and research on Indonesia’ from Dutch into Indonesian (Alisjahbana, 1966: 66). He called for another task of colossal proportions which the Indonesian people will have to tackle: the translation of everything of real value that has been written in the various regional dialects, let alone the great universal works of human knowledge. It is essential that Indonesia loses no time in catching up with the European languages, which have had time to grow through the centuries by a gradual evolutionary process. If this task is not performed as rapidly as possible, the transfer from Dutch to Indonesian will mean a deterioration in the Indonesian people’s intellectual development. (Alisjahbana, 1966: 66)

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2.2.8 Re-scaling and centralization Along with the planning and implementation of the ‘new’ Indonesian language and its new Indonesian state came new language hierarchies and new ideologies of language in the nation. The choice of Indonesian was explained by early policy makers as the creation of a language belonging to no-one yet to everyone internal to the nation, and not to be the sole language of the nation but to be dijunjung tinggi – held with high regard, ‘revered’ (Foulcher, 2000: 380). This choice of a lingua franca already in place was meant to eliminate interethnic domestic rivalries that risked being heightened through the officialization of one or more other indigenous languages. Although conflict was not necessarily lessened, language planning per se has been successful in that such conflicts did not take place based on arguments about language (J. Bertrand, 2004). It is a general assumption at this point that most Indonesians now speak Indonesian and almost all understand it. Ethnologue (2015b), though, as of a count dating from 2000, cites the number of native speakers at almost 23 million, with L2 speakers estimated at 140 million, and a total population of almost 240 million as of 2013. So conceivably, according to these estimates, there are about 77 million, or 32% of the residents of Indonesia who do not speak the language at all. This is quite a large proportion, though – as discussed in the case of English in Section 1.3.1 – it does not claim what the measured levels of proficiency are, nor does it describe receptive proficiency where speakers understand but cannot speak the language. One can only imagine as well that these numbers must be changing rapidly as technologies continue to improve and expand at a very fast pace (see also Foulcher, 2012). Two more oft-cited reasons for the choice of Indonesian as the national language, beyond its spread and its lingua franca status, were first that it is an easy language to learn (we will revisit this idea in the next chapter) and also that it, desirably, had an ‘egalitarian nature’: Indonesian lacked the status-bound variations in register that Javanese had (Alisjahbana, 1966; Heryanto, 1995). By nationalists, the registered variation of Javanese was seen as feudal – backwards and passé for the democratic modern era that they had been educated to be a part of and the international community that they needed to integrate with. In the Western tradition that the new country’s leaders had learned to see as superior, a lack of registers was seen as more democratic and more appropriate for unifying the hugely diverse population that was now Indonesia, if for no other reason than a post hoc logic that stated that all of Western Europe’s languages did not have registers to the extent that or in the same way as Javanese had them (Heryanto, 1995; Keane, 2003; Nababan, 1985). This ‘anti-feudalism’ would bleed forward into second president Suharto’s authoritarian consolidation of the nation, where

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this idea was one among many ‘anti-backwards’ ideas that caused a reconfiguration and further marginalization of local cultures into essentialized versions of themselves, in order to create a diversity ‘acceptable’ to the modern nation-state (Bjork, 2003; Heryanto, 2007; Pemberton, 1994): Variations of ‘localisation’ are tolerated and at times necessary, but they are tolerated as long as they operate under control and pose no threats to the overall system. Progress demands the demise of autonomous diversity, including vernacular activities, social institutions, and worldviews. (Heryanto, 2007: 53) Where this philosophy of minimal tolerance of local identity has related specifically to languages in Indonesia since nationalization, it has seemed that the tolerance for and even pemeliharaan and pelestarian – the maintenance and preservation (Section 2.3.2) – of local languages has been similar to approaches reported elsewhere: Fabian describes the status of local languages in Tanzania: ‘equal rights granted by law to African languages could not have meant more than their right to be “developed”’ (Fabian, 1986: 48). Local languages’ marginalization is further evident in Foulcher’s (2000) description of changes made to the yearly commemoration and repetition of the Sumpah Pemuda. He points out that, while the original statement claimed that the language should be ‘revered’ and that people in the 1920s saw no conflict of interest in using both Javanese and Indonesian, or both Dutch and Indonesian, in public, these statements quickly changed to ‘berbahasa satu, bahasa Indonesia’ – Indonesians speak one language, the Indonesian language. This change in the wording of the Sumpah Pemuda took place rather early after nationalization, and has been present in each Hari Sumpah Pemuda (Youth Oath Day) commemoration since nationalization. Foulcher provides one example in an address president Suharto gave at the 50th annual commemoration of the Sumpah Pemuda in 1978: Tepat 50 Tahun yang lalu, di Jakarta ini, lahirlah Sumpah Pemuda yang sangat terkenal: – mengaku berbangsa satu, Bangsa Indonesia; – mengaku bertanah air satu, Tanah Air Indonesia; – mengaku berbahasa satu, Bahasa Indonesia. (Foulcher, 2000: 377) Exactly 50 years ago, here in Jakarta, the famous Sumpah Pemuda [Oath of Youth] was born: – (we) declare we are one nation, the Indonesian nation

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– (we) declare we have one homeland, the Indonesian homeland – (we) declare we have one language, the Indonesian language. (Foulcher, 2000: 402) Such a small change in rhetoric, Foulcher claims, is epiphenomenal to the strict centralization that first president Sukarno initiated with his Guided Democracy project in 1957, and second president Suharto strengthened under his New Order, begun in 1966 and lasting until 1998. The statements made at the yearly commemorations surrounding this monolingual principle thus eliminated the importance of diversity and maintenance of local languages that early nationalists had seen as foundational to the nation (see also Foulcher, 2012). However, later we will see that attention to local languages did not die out completely and in fact is in some ways growing again. The most extreme period of marginalization of Languages Other Than Indonesian (LOTI), through active centralization and standardization of the national language and culture, was also the longest, that of Suharto’s 1966– 1998 regime. While Foulcher (2000) mentions that under this regime a more monolingualist notion of nationalism reigned, Pemberton (1994) points to something more inconsistent, claiming that Suharto very vocally touted the nation’s other slogan, Bhinneka tunggal ika, ‘unity in diversity’. An example of such contradictory actions lies in creation of the Taman Mini theme park outside of Jakarta. In 1971 Suharto funded his wife’s ambition, after she had visited Disneyland, of creating a Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (Beautiful Indonesia Miniature Park, now often called Taman Mini). She was given funding for this project, much to the displeasure of other politicians who believed this was a fickle waste of money in a country that had much more pressing needs for funding fundamental infrastructure. The Taman Mini theme park can be taken to be representative of Suharto’s policy of respecting a diversity either of the past – the cultures in Mini Indonesia are often essentialized and put in traditional clothing and housing – or one respecting modernized versions of local cultures as mentioned above – stripped of their ‘backwards’ elements. In the end, the park was such a massive success that it was frequently discussed as a replacement for going home if one was feeling homesick after having migrated to Jakarta. It was often marketed even as a sufficient replacement for actually visiting the rest of Indonesia (Pemberton, 1994). Suharto’s celebration of diversity at Taman Mini, though, ran counter to many of his actions, one being the violent silencing of dissent, and the faking of elections in order to stay in power (Heryanto, 2006); another was a transplantation program in which Javanese residents were sent to other islands with at least a partial intent to ‘Javanize’ the national culture (Foulcher, 2000; Goebel, 2008; Pisani, 2015; Poedjosoedarmo, 2006). A third

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homogenization effort was, of course, the implementation of Indonesian and a singular national curriculum as the only medium of education in public schools and as the only language of national television and media (there have been exceptions in local radio, see Manns, 2014; Reid, 2003; however, Moeliono, 1986, did target radio stations both public and private as important sites for dissemination of the standardized national register). Suharto’s nationalization of a school system, national language planners’ development of a huge corpus of new vocabulary, and the nationalization of radio and then television made a highly standardized formal register of Indonesian ubiquitous, and also further increased the national reach of Javanese and Jakartan dialects and registers of Indonesian as they were performed – genuinely or in imitation (Manns, 2014) – in national broadcasts. On television this began in the 1970s with Indonesia’s sole channel, TVRI (Televisi Republik Indonesia). National channels, as well as the presence of international shows, began to expand in the 1980s when Suharto gave his children rights to their own new public stations (Pisani, 2015). Suharto’s nationalism also meant fully erasing the presence of Chinese from the linguistic landscape (Kitamura, 2012), and while it was explicitly stated that foreign and local languages in general should not be present in public signage in the interest of unification, efforts to enforce this were much less rigid for other languages than they were with regard to the Chinese language and names. However, the monolingual policy in general did still have enough influence that changes were visibly made to alter the presence of languages that were not the national one: an UKSW student told me one day that a store in Salatiga’s main commercial street named ‘Green’ when she was very young was told to change its name to Indonesian, becoming Griya Eceran (Retail House). However, people in the city continued to know and recognize it as Green for a long time afterwards (YW, 7 January 2010). YW further stated: ‘However, I do not know when the policy had been revoked since I can see many shops with English names recently.’ In 2010 I took a picture of Green (Figure 2.1), named exactly that, so its sign was presumably replaced more recently under more lax policies. Actual efforts toward encouraging diversity in the form of support of local languages did slowly change in the later period of Suharto’s rule with, for instance, the establishment of a five-yearly Javanese Language Congress in 1991, and increasing calls for the maintenance and preservation of local languages in the Indonesian Language Congresses, as we will see below. A more explicit acknowledgment of the nation’s cultural and linguistic diversity from the central government, though, truly began when Suharto stepped down in 1998, amid much social and political upheaval, domestic and international pressures for democracy, and a grave economic downturn in the

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Figure 2.1 Green store

country. We see this in his short-lived successor President Habibie’s statement of interest in restoring the nation’s emphasis on the pluralism underlying its one unifying language: Persatuan dan kesatuan yang dibangun itu tidak pernah dimaksudkan untuk meniadakan kemajemukan masyarakat. Kemajemukan masyarakat sama sekali bukan merupakan kendala atau hambatan bagi persatuan dan kesatuan. (Republika Online, 1998a, cited in Foulcher, 2000: 400) The unity and one-ness we are building is never intended to deny the plurality of our society. Social plurality in no way represents a restriction of or an obstacle to unity and one-ness. (Foulcher, 2000: 405) However, as we will see in Chapter 3, such efforts may have been too little too late – or perhaps, at some level of awareness, any increase in attention to local languages after the state was already so consolidated was purposefully so: now that the state was treated as a natural fact by most Indonesians, attention to local languages and cultural practices would never again gain enough power to threaten national control/unity.

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2.2.9 Discussion: A naturalized relationship with language As we have seen, Malay prior to decolonization was essentially a matter of fact for primarily coastal populations, and it had already begun to be a language of education throughout the archipelago by the mid-19th century. In the eastern two-thirds of Java, Javanese and other local languages were also rather a matter of fact, with nobility and royalty more likely to be fluent in the highest registers of the language, and rural peasants speaking only a few words of them. Pre-nationalization, formal Malay was already increasing in prestige value, and Javanese already had its own rural/urban and royal/ peasant hierarchies expressed within the language. Upon nationalization, however, Malay-now-Indonesian became the language of the present, of nationalist discourse (Anderson, 1966), of the future, and of socio-economic mobility; Javanese, building on the tradition parfaite, or perfect tradition, image that the priyayi classes had already constructed for it (R. Bertrand, 2005; Pemberton, 1994), came to be constructed as representative of practices iconic of a pre-national past (cf. Bauman & Briggs, 2003), in a sub-national present (Pemberton, 1994: 144). Alisjahbana (1966) would go so far as to say that, while Malay’s literature was moving forward and developing in new and innovative ways, largely under the influence of the West, the Javanese language’s literature had entirely stagnated, looking almost only to the past (see also Reid, 2003; Ricklefs, 2008: 153). ‘Javanese’ was becoming a language and culture to be performed, but not necessarily to be lived, and this view was aided by the ‘traditionalization’ of Javanese culture established by the priyayi class, who subsequently became a very large proportion of the state’s bureaucrats (R. Bertrand, 2005; Pemberton, 1994). With all these developments first in nationalization, then in a national school system, and amid the continuing spread of communication technologies, it is most certain that a re-scaling of language forms has happened since nationalization and continues to be actively engineered. This re-scaling is continuous with the pre-independence era, but we can consider the decolonization and statification process to be a ‘critical juncture’ (Sonntag & Cardinal, 2015) in Indonesia and its languages’ history. Currently, local languages are decreasingly public languages – they are almost never heard on television, and they are only rarely read in some small-circulation magazines. A standard Indonesian is ubiquitously heard and read but unequally accessed, and so one’s production and understanding of it indicates levels of access to the standard Indonesian speaking ‘center’, which is mostly accessed through schooling. Heryanto describes: ‘Even words and meanings have become “scarce” industrial commodities in a way that would have been unthinkable in the communities of the East Indies archipelago during the 19th century’ (Heryanto, 2007: 54).

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And so, while top-down rhetoric has made continual claims to diversity, behaviors have frequently contradicted it. As the nation has moved forward technologically, Indonesian has been given free rein to spread far and wide, often at the expense of the use of other languages. Thus, despite the discourses of ‘unity across a maintained linguistic diversity’ that began with the foundation of the nation, there is of course the necessity of the tools of language spread for any language that is to thrive, and these tools have largely been devoted to Indonesian, even in the post-Suharto decentralization era (see also Errington, 1998; Foulcher, 2012; Gellner, 1983). With this, we move on to an exploration of how the planning of the national language has collaborated with the wider system of nationalization explored above.

2.3 The Language Planners Language planning and national consolidation in this postcolonial state have been argued and thought about in different ways than how the older nations might have experienced it. While early Indonesian nationalists clearly did not start from nothing, as evidenced in the long history that I have abbreviated above, and while Indonesian nationalism has clearly not been established without contention, the Indonesian leaders and planners of language, education and all national infrastructure were most certainly charged with creating a nation much more actively, and much more quickly, than the way in which European nations had formed. Anderson (2006) describes how France and other European nations formed rather ‘organically’ as technologies expanded. In these locations, the development of the printing press enabled imagined nations to form as people shared ideas across wider spaces in a common language. It also moved written language toward more stabilized forms and allowed for literacy in general to become a much more plebeian concept. As education was nationalized and standardized in the 18th and 19th centuries, literacy expanded yet again in European spaces, and national languages became even more stable ‘entities’ (Alisjahbana, 1966, 1971). In the case of Indonesia and Indonesian, the spread and stabilization of an Indonesian language (and of local languages – although, as we have seen, they have not received the same infrastructural attention) have been executed with much more top-down effort and an expedited time frame than the slightly more grassroots, or at least less explicitly government driven, process of European nationalization. Such explicit and ‘fast-tracked’ planning is something that both Alisjahbana and Moeliono were actively committed to in their writings. Both claimed that national planners were attempting to accomplish in a matter of decades what

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the Western nations had accomplished over centuries (Alisjahbana, 1966, 1974; Anderson, 2006; Moeliono, 1986). As Alisjahbana stated: It is essential that Indonesia loses no time in catching up with the European languages, which have had time to grow through the centuries by a gradual evolutionary process. If this task is not performed as rapidly as possible, the transfer from Dutch to Indonesian will mean a deterioration in the Indonesian people’s intellectual development. (Alisjahbana, 1966: 66–67) And Moeliono later added: … it may be concluded that language planning, like planning in other areas of development economics, has as its goal achieving a level of development, in one or two generations, which took hundreds of years in other language communities. Language planning looks farther ahead than descriptive linguistics because within it are included plans leading to language development in directions chosen by the planners. That is, this endeavour does not only predict language changes which will take place, but attempts to influence those changes. (Moeliono, 1986: 7) Moeliono’s descriptions of both the tacit and explicit ideologies and intentions behind the Indonesian language planning process demonstrate what Keane (2003) has described as a declaration of an Indonesian identity separate from the rest of the world, simultaneous with a rendering transparent of the Indonesian national language such that this unique Indonesian identity would be immediately translatable among modern developed nations. And Alisjahbana, it seems, not only wanted to adopt this template but to perfect it, aiming for Indonesian to become one of the ‘most simple and efficient languages of the modern world’ (Alisjahbana, 1974: 414). Moeliono makes a direct connection between developing a national language and developing a nation morally and materially: ‘Considering Indonesia’s diglossia, low level of literacy, and limited use of the written language by the majority, we may conclude that the development of standardisation still depends on development of non-linguistic aspects of the society’ (Moeliono, 1986: 66). Alisjahbana expressed a similar idea before this: It is essential that conscious efforts be made to develop those qualities in the Indonesian language which can be adapted to contemporary modes of thought, and to discourage those which conflict. But in trying to guide this process of development, we must always bear in mind that to force the pace of modernization too urgently will only destroy the

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individuality and native strength of the language, and create something contrived and artificial, unrelated to the lives of ordinary Indonesians. On the other hand, if the traditional structure of the language is left too much alone, the forms and substance of contemporary thinking will remain unassimilated ‘foreign bodies’. Only those groups which are consciously directing the growth of the Indonesian language, and those which use it with a full awareness of the consequences, can help us to find the proper balance. (Alisjahbana, 1966: 204)

2.3.1 Planning the corpus: Lexicon and grammar In working toward their shared goal of standardizing language and nation, the language planners disagreed on a number of issues, one of them being terminology development. Moeliono discouraged adoption into Indonesian of lexical innovations that hailed from the West/English. Instead, in order to avoid such ‘foreignization’ of Indonesian, he encouraged the adoption of words largely from Malay, Sanskrit and Arabic as at the time – although in other eras these had also been colonizers’ languages – words from these languages were seen as non-foreign and a part of ‘Indonesian history’ (Moeliono, 1986). Alisjahbana (1935, 1974), on the other hand, embraced Western terms and Western democracy. He preferred that terms be taken from the West so that Indonesia might enter into conversation with the global community more easily (for more on the disagreements between these two, see Sneddon, 2003: 130–132). Moeliono and others’ preference for more historically rooted terminology is exemplified in Sukarno’s choice of the word Pancasila to delineate Indonesia’s five pillars of democracy, where panca, five, and sila, pillar, both come from Sanskrit origins. The other unifying motto of the state, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, is also rooted in Sanskrit, although adopted from a 14th-century Javanese text. It is said to mean Unity in Diversity, although some say that this is an inaccurate translation of how it would have actually been interpreted when it was written (Intan, 2006; Ricklefs, 2008). Despite Moeliono’s resistance to lexical borrowings from English and Dutch, though, the grammatical model that he relied on to ‘modernize’ Indonesian was entirely based on Western language ideologies, and in this sense was in agreement with Alisjahbana’s (1935, 1974) Western-oriented outlook. Moeliono states: Havranek (1964), a linguist of the Prague School, in discussing the characteristics of a standard language which underlie those of a language of science, concludes that the most important characteristic is

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its rationality. This means that it can formulate statements which are accurate, exact, and abstract. The form of such sentences reflects the objective precision of science in such a way that the parts of the sentence resemble logical propositions. Logical relations are expressed in compound sentences which show the ordered logical connections between ideas. (Moeliono, 1986: 42) Moeliono goes further to explain that a rational language as explained above must have a syntactic structure that allows for ‘sentence structure with a hierarchy of subordinate clauses’ in order to address ‘relations such as cause and effect, motive and goal, parallelisms, possibility, probability, and necessity’ (Moeliono, 1986: 42). He points to a set of nouns that have become conjunctions as evidence that communication is forcibly becoming more ‘rational’ as Indonesians are educated and enter global scientific discussions: ‘In addition to relations of equality shown by coordination, relations such as cause and effect, motive and goal, parallelisms, possibility, probability, and necessity, are made explicit by sentence structure with a hierarchy of subordinate clauses.’ These complex sentence structures have caused some nouns to turn to conjunctions: ‘sebab cause/because, untuk for, ration/for, bagi part/for, berkat blessing, favour/due to’ (Moeliono, 1986: 42). Throughout his text, Moeliono makes further suggestions for changes across fields of (morpho-)syntax, phonology, lexicon, and so on, that should be changed toward a more rational grammar, beyond the changes already observed by himself and others. Interestingly, we will see this language ideology of the rational supremacy of European languages resonate through Angelo and Satriya’s statements regarding English in Chapter 4. Having addressed how the Indonesian language should be modernized and rationalized, Moeliono (1986) goes on to describe how the modernized Indonesian language will now be nationalized. Once again he and Alisjahbana (1935, 1971, 1976) model the language’s spread on that of Western nations’ literary traditions, calling for the creation of an entire national body of literature in Indonesian, culled from the lore of the nation’s localities. This approach is still reflected in the latest iteration of national language policy, UU24/2009, which we have encountered above. As with disagreements over word borrowings and the way forward in planning the Indonesian language, planners’ desire to build a sense of unification through literatures and cultures was also not entirely agreed upon with respect to the form that it should take. Similarly to Moeliono’s contention that words from the past should be brought up to the present in Indonesian in order to show a more unique local identity, while Alisjahbana looked directly to the West for contemporary vocabulary, Alisjahbana

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(1935) was much more in favor of a singular nationalist moral disposition, to be portrayed in literature, while some contemporaries and colleagues disagreed. Sanusi Pane (1935) was among them, stating that it was very clear that, in nationalism, cultures of the past are naturally carried forward into national and local cultures, and this should be portrayed in their national literature. As stated in Chapter 1, planners’ discussions over the assembly of all these nationalist tools of literature remarkably resemble Bauman and Briggs’ (2003) description of the Grimm brothers’ foundation of one of the first national bodies of literature, in what would become Germany, based on their agglutinations of folklore collected from the various local cultures and their translation ‘up’ of these stories into the national category and language of the German nation. It turns out that this was not a tacit influence, either: Moeliono himself openly recognized the importance of Jakob Grimm’s contributions to standardizing the German language, for processes of standardizing language in Indonesia (Moeliono, 1986: 89). With this insight into the goals of language and nation planning in mind, we now turn to the Indonesian Language Congresses, many of which Moeliono and Alisjahbana participated in or led. The first Indonesian Language Congress was held in 1938 in Medan, located far west on the northern coast of Sumatra.

2.3.2 The Language Center and its Language Congresses The Resolutions of the Indonesian Language Congresses (Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa, 2011, hereafter cited as KBI) are documents that have been drafted collectively by the language planners – linguists, politicians, literature specialists and education leaders – who have directed each conference. This body of planners are currently housed in the national Language Institute (Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa [Center for Language Development and Cultivation], more commonly referred to as the Badan Bahasa), under the umbrella of the Ministry of Education and Culture (Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan). At the first Language Congress in 1938, a group of individuals from among the nationalist movements came together to propose goals for language development and spread throughout the Indonesian nation. This initial Language Congress was the first laying out of a framework by early nationalists of what would need to be accomplished once independence was gained. The congress was held in Medan, Sumatra because, as Foulcher explains, early planners believed that that was where the best Malay was located (see above Section 2.2.2), and so they would be honoring

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the place where a Malay that was baik dan benar – good and proper – was spoken (Foulcher, 2000). Nothing much came of this meeting right away, but when the Japanese invaded in 1942, they made Malay the language of government and public communications as a holdover until they could spread Japanese far and wide. The occupying Japanese government established a terminology commission, which Alisjahbana headed (1974), and Alisjahbana independently created and taught his own version of a standardized and modernized Indonesian grammar, in a foundational book entitled Tatabahasa Baru Bahasa Indonesia (first published in 1949, see Alisjahbana, 1974). The book has been published in many versions, and it came to be used widely by Indonesian schoolteachers. After full independence was achieved, the first mention of Indonesian government endorsement of a language planning body dates to 1947, according to the timeline provided on the current Language Institute’s website (Badan Bahasa, n.d.). Specifically at that time, the Minister of Education appointed a Working Group (Panitia Kerja) on language. A second Language Congress was held in 1954 and opened by President Sukarno himself, who had been active in the language planning process and meetings. Mohammad Yamin, who authored the pledge of the Sumpah Pemuda, was also a member of this group, now in the role of Minister of the Department of Education, where the language planning body was to be housed. Another Congress was not assembled again after this until 1978, after which the Congresses became five-yearly events, the most recent of which was held in 2013. The Congresses are always held during the month of October, the same month as the 28 October Sumpah Pemuda, and since 1980 known as ‘Language Month’ (Sneddon, 2003; although in 2010, 30 years into the life of Language Month, my students claimed that they had still never heard of it). Since its establishment, the language planning body has undergone many changes, both in name and in location within the national political structure. In Appendix A, I have assembled information, far too lengthy to include here, from the timeline of the Language Institute (Badan Bahasa, n.d.), complemented with brief summaries (in English) of the statements of the Language Congress Resolutions over time, as well as other historical points of interest that are relevant in 20th-century Indonesian history. The information summarizes and fills in some of the events that I have described in this chapter, and associates them in time with top-down language planning activities. To note, only the first nine Congresses are discussed here – I have been unable to access the proceedings of the 10th, which took place in 2013. Apparent over the years in these Language Congress proceedings, certain statements have been reinforced with the growth of the nation. As the

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Indonesian language seems to become established with the nation’s growth, language planners continue to seek yet fuller establishment of it. As international markets expand, new justifications for depicting an external threat to the nation enter the discourse and justify attempts to further plan and control the language. And so, as time progresses, slight changes in global and national relations and discourses are appropriated in the interest of maintaining and growing state institutions. As language preservation discourses become popular, the language planners establish the term pelestarian (preservation) in order to emphasize the need for attention to the health of regional languages. While these terms appropriate the global discourses of their eras, though, they are largely a repackaging of old wine in new bottles. That is, the ‘language maintenance’ that has always been called for, since the 1928 Sumpah Pemuda and in each meeting’s resolutions, is now ‘language preservation’ because this enters the nation into a global conversation about language endangerment. Similarly, the external threat that has always menaced the integrity of the nation and the consolidation of Indonesian, often under the name of ‘English’, is now a threat under the name of ‘globalization’. And the need to educate a nation through the medium of Indonesian is now a need to create ‘human capital’. These are interesting discursive changes that demonstrate that language planners are writing a national text in a very global conversation. They also demonstrate, though, that changes in discursive regimes often mask similarities with the past. What has become even more interesting to me in these Language Congress Resolutions, then, has been, amid textual participation in these changing global discourses, the authors’ overall consistency in promotion of the Indonesian language, and their repeated proclamation of the steps that need to be taken to solidify the language’s primary position in the nation. As Blommaert (2010) claims, it is consistency, or homogeneity, that is abnormal, and so this lack of change in the core statements of these resolutions should attract our attention and should tell us something about state formation. What it mostly comes to tell us, I believe, is that the stability that we see in the goals of state institutions brings us back exactly to the quote that this book opened with: the state serves the interests of the state first and foremost, and its goals have been consistent and continually pursued since its very beginnings. Now, in globalization, it is simply trying to keep that structure intact amid more and faster transportation and communication technologies. So now let us look at these consistent goals before moving on to some of the specific statements made regarding local languages and English. As demonstrated in the first half of this chapter, Indonesia’s nation formation in general has not consisted of a smooth and linear process. Despite this, and in light of the discursive transitions and massive political

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disruptions that the state has undergone since the first Congress, the Resolutions present a relatively unwavering agenda. Through the 125 pages of Resolutions split across the first nine congresses, I have found the following eight themes: (1) Word borrowings into Indonesian from both foreign (namely English) and regional languages are allowable but only with careful consideration. (2) The grammar of Indonesian must be well described and distributed to language users (i.e. the nation). (3) Language planners consistently ask for agency status as a part of the national government, or for changes in said status – these changes throughout the years consist of continual requests for expansion and higher status/ consideration. (4) The primacy of Indonesian, peripherality but inclusion of local languages, and resistance to foreign languages. Resistance to the latter has increased over time as particularly the use and necessity of English has expanded. The peripherality of local languages seems to have been maintained throughout the centralized Suharto era, but they are given much more consideration starting in the 1998 Congress, the same year decentralization began officially. (This being said, local languages are largely in shift: languages with the smallest number of speakers are extinct or near-extinct [Florey & Bolton, 1997; McConvell & Florey, 2005; Shiohara, 2012], and even the larger languages like Javanese are now decreasing in numbers of speakers [Cohn & Ravindranath, 2013; Reid, 2003]). (5) The responsibility of exemplary or public figures in society (media, politicians, pop stars, teachers) to speak ‘good and proper Indonesian’ in order to provide an example for all citizens to follow and in order to increase citizens’ ‘positive attitude’ toward the language. (6) The need for the establishment of Indonesian literature and an increase in reading habits throughout Indonesian society. (7) National development: the language should be developed in terms of grammar and vocabulary in order to serve the needs of the nation as it develops toward a more ‘civilized’ and ‘rational’ societal reality. Communication through their one shared language should make cohesion and communication easier, and the language should be sufficient to express everything necessary in personal and professional relations in this ‘modern’ era. (8) The Teaching of Indonesian as a Foreign Language: as the nation’s international presence and influence expands, so does its language’s importance, and therefore teaching infrastructure needs to be provided in and out of the country for the teaching, and more recently the testing, of the

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Indonesian language proficiencies of both Indonesian citizens and incountry foreigners. An important characteristic of the Resolutions to note is a continually stated desire to increase the bureaucratic scope of the language planning body. Regarding this, Sneddon (2003) notes that the language planning body’s influence or success is unsure at best. The current register known as Standard Indonesian, or bahasa Indonesia yang baik dan benar, has indeed spread far and wide to the point that nearly everyone in the nation understands it and many can speak it. However, Sneddon describes that, throughout the language planning body’s existence, its outreach has been abysmal, and its representatives continually complain that the standards that it has set for language use among Indonesians are never attained, even by government officials representing the state and presumably therefore also representing the language. As stated in Section 2.2.6, as early as the 1928 Sumpah Pemuda there was criticism of the dysfluent Malay that many presenters spoke at the time, and starting with the very first president Sukarno, politicians’ speeches have frequently included both local (largely Javanese) and foreign (largely English) terms. Newspapers have long been notorious for including borrowings and using abbreviations or acronyms with little to no explanation of them despite the fact that the general reader is not likely to be familiar with them. Where planners have coined words, these words have not been used among the populace – and it has often been the case that the typical speaker or writer has never heard of them in the first place. In addition to Sneddon, Stevens addresses this issue: It is very difficult, however, to legislate language use, and most of the developments in modern Indonesian have been spontaneous rather than planned. This spontaneous growth has been so rapid in some areas (particularly in the press) that Indonesians who have been away for even only a few months are sometimes at a loss to explain what appears in the newspapers. (Stevens, 1973: 74) Regularly, then, in most public venues, the ‘purity’ of the Indonesian language and therefore of public ‘Indonesianness’ is violated, and this motivates language planners to continually request expanded institutionalization. Sneddon describes language planners’ attempts at outreach over the years as in fact rather lamentable: As early as 1954, Alisjahbana criticised the Lembaga Bahasa dan Budaya (Institute for Language and Culture) for its inability to convey its message to the public, saying that new terms were being hidden rather than

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presented to the community. He pointed out that the Second Indonesian National Language Congress, held in 1954, was a wasted opportunity to publicise their work. Since then, terminology creators have displayed a consistent inability to market their product successfully. They have lacked public relations expertise and failed to establish institutional links with the mass media and even with the Department of Education and Culture. Having only an advisory role, the Pusat Bahasa has no control over implementation of its decisions. (Sneddon, 2003: 132–133) He goes on: lists of terminology are created but barely disseminated; the Language Center’s newsletter is ‘drab’ and ‘uninspiring’; language advice television shows over the years have been ‘seen as unimaginative and boring, consisting of “talking heads” droning on about the correct way to use particular words’ (Sneddon, 2003: 133). Only the slightest glimmer of hope for language planners appears in Sneddon’s description of Moeliono’s radio talk show around the turn of the 21st century, which ‘proved more lively, allowing interaction with the public’ (Sneddon, 2003: 133). Perhaps another glimmer of hope for successful outreach resides in the increasing attention that the Language Congresses received after they were established as regular events, from 1978 onward. The Congresses now attract international interest – at least among language scholars – and the 1993 Congress was ‘addressed by no fewer than seven cabinet ministers’ (Sneddon, 2003: 134). However, let us not get our hopes up: … there is a considerable amount of cynicism about what this all achieves. … Without the authority to put resolutions into effect and with little influence on those who might be in a position to do so, the language planners have always been largely powerless to implement resolutions, so that subsequent congress organisers have found it necessary to reiterate the same policies. (Sneddon, 2003: 134) It seems that languages live and change much more organically – in much more ‘grassroots’ ways – than is preferred by those who try to ‘reduce language to text’ (Pennycook, 2007) and then to plan it all out. However, we still cannot entirely dismiss the role or the existence of the language planning body. The very fact that there is a need seen for such an institution and for such rules about language is part and parcel of the re-scaling and ‘development’ of the Indonesian language and nation, and, in complement, the re-scaling, development, standardization and shift of ‘local’ and ‘foreign’ languages. With this, we now take a brief glimpse at

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some of the statements from these resolutions as they position these other languages within the polity and in relation to the central importance of Indonesian.

2.3.3 The place of local languages Institutionally, the Language Institute followed New Order trends in continually extending the reach of centralized control through local branches controlled by Jakarta. Aid for local languages was banned from their purview by the regime in 1967 after Suharto took over. Despite Suharto’s strictly central and Indonesian-only regime, we can see that like the ‘unity in diversity’ motto and the touting of diversity at Taman Mini, the importance of local languages was never left behind in language planners’ statements. Identitas kebangsaan Indonesia dimanifestasikan bukan saja oleh bahasa Indonesia, melainkan juga oleh bahasa-bahasa daerah. Oleh karena itu, pembinaan dan pengembangan bahasa Indonesia harus diimbangi dengan pembinaan dan pengembangan bahasa derah [sic] sesuai dengan Penjelasan Bab XV Pasal 36 Undang-Undang Dasar 1945. The national identity of Indonesia is manifest not only in Indonesian but in local languages, too. Therefore, the cultivation and development of Indonesian must be accompanied by the cultivation and development of local languages in accordance with the explication in Chapter XV Article 36 Constitution of 1945. (KBI: 19, Kongres III, 1978) At the height of the Suharto regime, we find the statement that comes the closest to holistically denying local languages status; however, this is really more about ‘purifying’ Indonesian than it is about marginalizing other languages: Fungsi bahasa Indonesia sebagai alat pemersatu bangsa perlu dimantapkan. Salah satu cara yang mudah ialah menghindari, sekurang-kurangnya mengurangi, pemakaian kata-kata asing dan bahasa daerah dalam hal atau peristiwa yang bersifat nasional. The function of Indonesian as a unifying tool for the nation must be strengthened. One easy way is to avoid, or at least decrease, the use of words from foreign and local languages in affairs or events of a national nature. (KBI: 40, Kongres IV, 1983)

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The message of plurality grew as the New Order allowed public emphasis on diversity and local identities to grow, starting especially in the 1980s, although this emphasis remained rather ‘in name only’ for most of that time (Foulcher, 2000). Language planners continued to call for the recognition of plurality and the safeguarding of non-national languages, and this was reinforced in the early 1990s, in accordance with the movements in the international community and in academia noted above. Particularly interesting in the text excerpts below, then, is the use of pelestarian or preservation, in reference to local languages. This word does not appear in the Language Congress Resolutions before 1993, but it occurs with regularity after that year. (In the following excerpt I briefly summarize Points (1) and (3) for the sake of focusing on the relevant quote): Kebijaksanaan bahasa nasional itu perlu mencakup batasan dan ketentuan mengenai: Legislation of the national language should include restrictions and specifications concerning: (1) [the place of Indonesian as national and state language] (2) kedudukan dan fungsi bahasa daerah sebagai unsur kebudayaan Indonesia yang hidup, sesuai dengan penjelasan Pasal 36 UndangUndang Dasar 1945, serta pembinaan, pengembangan, pengajaran, dan pelestariannya; dan the place and function of local languages as living elements of Indonesian culture, in accordance with the explanation given in Article 36 of the 1945 Constitution, as well as their cultivation, development, teaching, and preservation; and (3) [the place of foreign language learning] (KBI: 57, Kongres VI, 1993, emphasis mine) Bahasa daerah di Indonesia dijamin hak hidupnya sesuai dengan penjelasan Pasal 36 Undang-Undang Dasar 1945. Oleh karena itu, pelestarian dan pengembangan bahasa daerah, yang merupakan aset budaya nasional, harus dilaksanakan agar bahasa dan sastra daerah dapat berkembang dengan baik sehingga dapat dimanfaatkan, baik sebagai sarana penunjang komunikasi maupun sebagai salah satu sumber pemerkayaan bahasa dan sastra Indonesia. Local languages in Indonesia are guaranteed the right to life in accordance with Article 36 of the 1945 Constitution. Because of this, the preservation and development of local languages, which represent an asset to national culture, must be carried out so that local languages and

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literatures can develop well to the point where they can be taken advantage of, both as tools for communication as well as sources for the enrichment of Indonesian language and literature. (KBI: 72, Kongres VII, 1998, emphasis mine) Although a first attempt at decentralization had taken place under international influence in 1994, it was not until Suharto’s resignation in 1998 under the forces of a groundswell of local push for democracy as well as strong international pressure for the same that decentralization was given serious effort, with these ‘arms from the center’ that branched out into local institutions being shifted into sites of local control (Bjork, 2003, 2004; Gaylord, 2008; Pisani, 2015). We can see a trend toward expanding the reach of the Language Institute in the 1993 KBI, and the 1998 KBI explicitly states that local governments should play more active roles in cultivating both Indonesian and local languages. The latter arrives in the same month as Habibie’s call for decentralization, which we saw in Section 2.2.8, shortly after he assumed the role of president. Supaya benar-benar memiliki daya jangkau nasional dan dapat menjalankan fungsinya secara efektif dan efisien, Lembaga Kebahasaan Indonesia yang dimaksud pada butir 5 di atas perlu ditunjang dengan lembaga sejenis dengan nama Balai Kebahasaan Indonesia di setiap daerah tingkat I di seluruh Indonesia. Balai Kebahasaan Indonesia sebagai penunjang Lembaga Kebahasaan Indonesia bertanggung jawab kepada Gubernur Kepala Daerah Tingkat I, tetapi berfungsi di bawah koordinasi Lembaga Kebahasaan Indonesia. In order to truly achieve a national range and execute its function effectively and efficiently, the Indonesian Language Institute intended in [the above paragraph] needs to be supported with similar institutes named Indonesian Language Offices in every level I region throughout Indonesia. The Indonesian Language Offices are responsible to the Head Governors of the Level I Regions, but will function under the coordination of the Indonesian Language Institute. (KBI: 58, Kongres VI, 1993) Pemerintah daerah perlu memainkan peranan yang lebih besar dalam pembinaan dan pengembangan bahasa Indonesia dan bahasa daerah, antara lain, dengan mengeluarkan peraturan perundang-undangan yang diperlukan.

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Local governments need to play more active roles in the cultivation and development of Indonesian and local languages, among other things by publishing necessary legislation. (KBI: 75, Kongres VII, 1998) At the central governmental level, it was in fact not until the Reformation period that President Habibie’s government, and no longer just language planners, made official statements interested in restoring the nation’s emphasis on the pluralism underlying its one unifying language. Foulcher points out that never before, throughout the Sukarno and Suharto regimes, had such an emphasis on pluralism been described by an Indonesian president in commemoration of the Sumpah Pemuda. Now, ‘the call for greater openness was part of a widespread rejection of the New Order’s emphasis on conformity, standardisation and centralisation in the interests of a de-centred and localised social and political pluralism’ (Foulcher, 2000: 400). Bjork cites one member of the Ministry of Education and Culture at this time who supported calls for decentralization and democracy: ‘Indonesia has “entered what is called globalization, the free market. So we need to have every level of society active. … Because Indonesia will be joining the AFTA, APEC, and the WTO. Decentralization is part of the process of preparing for membership in these organizations”’ (Bjork, 2003: 194). Habibie’s call was not only a direct rejection of New Order policies: global pressures toward democracy, economic openness and emphasizing the importance of the local were clear, even in discussions of language. Calls for language preservation that had started in KBI proceedings earlier, in 1993, seem to have been in conversation with global initiatives among scholars and organizations like UNESCO, who published their Universal Declaration on Linguistic Rights in 1996 (see Appendix A). By 1998 there was a clear global trend then, of calls for respect for diversity in general, calls for democracy and decentralization, and also acknowledgment that the maintenance of linguistic diversity and language preservation are essential to governments’ relations with their citizens. However, as we will see in Chapter 3, such efforts may have been made too late and with too little material support for linguistic pluralism to be maintained. Shiohara (2012: 120) also proposes that ‘because the national language occupies the status of a freely-chosen language of unity among all ethnic groups, minority language speakers do not have a sense of their mother language as being displaced by the national language’. With little previous attention to language loss, which may have been an enabling force in the unresisted spread of Indonesian, the newly ‘lamentable’ shift away from local languages could safely be brought into the national discourse upon Reformation because these languages and most regionalisms were solidly no

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longer a threat to national consolidation. The state was already moving forward, participating in growing neoliberal discourses: a ‘public political culture’ that was entirely Indonesian emphasized the development of national youth as quality, efficient and economically competitive national and global workers (DaSilva & Heller, 2009), invariably fluent in Standard Indonesian and, desirably, comfortable with English at some level. Heryanto takes this idea further, claiming that any recent mentions of the importance of localisms are merely a flash in the pan in the contemporary climate: Although some ‘localisation’ has lately become a necessary element in the gambit of global capitalism, and ‘multi-culturalism’ was for a while politically correct, these have come and gone as dictated at a higher level by the logic of centralised efficiency, accumulated profit and global domination. (Heryanto, 2007: 52) The ‘preservation’ of local languages is far from guaranteed, and it seems that any attention to them may already be ending, save for their documentation.

2.3.4 English and globalization English has been mentioned in the Resolutions since 1954. The term ‘globalization’ (globalisasi) first appears in 1998, and the discourse of threat that accompanies it is generally the same as the discourse that accompanied the threat posed by English prior to the use of ‘globalisasi’. Di dalam politik itu sekurang-kurangnya haruslah ditetapkan usahausaha yang nyata di dalam rangka pembangunan nasional antara lain sebagai berikut. … (iii) Sikap tegas terhadap bahasa asing, misalnya peninjauan kembali pengajaran bahasa Inggris di sekolah lanjutan yang sekarang dilakukan dengan secara meluas dan merata, dengan kemungkinan menggantinya dengan sekolah-sekolah bahasa asing (Foreign Linguistic Schools) untuk kepentingan negara dalam hubungan Internasional. Within this policy [strict enforcement of Indonesian as the national language] there at least must be determined clear efforts within the framework of national development, among others the following. …

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(iii) A strict attitude toward foreign languages, for example a review of the teaching of English in secondary schools which is now carried out widely and evenly, with the option to replace this with foreign language schools (Foreign Linguistic Schools) for the interests of the country in International relations. (KBI: 10, Kongres II, 1954) Perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi, perkembangan teknologi informasi, dan tantangan kehidupan dalam era globalisasi menuntut agar kualitas bahasa Indonesia ditingkatkan dan kemampuan daya ungkapnya dikembangkan. Untuk itu, unsur-unsur bahasa seperti sintaksis dan kosakata, termasuk peristilahan, perlu diperkaya. Selain itu, penggunaan bahasa Indonesia sebagai sarana komunikasi di segala bidang perlu lebih dimantapkan untuk menghadapi kenyataan makin meluasnya penggunaan bahasa asing, terutama bahasa Inggris, di Indonesia. The growth of science and technology, the growth of information technology, and the challenges of life in the globalization era demand that the quality of Indonesian be improved and its resources for expression developed. In order to do this, the elements of the language such as syntax and vocabulary, including terminology, needs to be enriched. In addition to this, the use of Indonesian as a tool for communication in every field must be further strengthened in order to face the reality of the increasing use of foreign languages, especially English, in Indonesia. (KBI: 75–76, Kongres VII, 1998) As already discussed in Chapter 1, the current era is one which we might think of as rather infested with the term ‘globalization’, and it is widely accepted as the current era’s name. Through a simple search on Google Scholar I have found no academic titles containing the term ‘globalization’ before 1990, and so, like the term pelestarian in the previous section, we can conceive of the adoption of the term ‘globalization’ in these resolutions as an indication of language planners’ participation in a global/international discourse wherein ‘globalization’, like ‘English’ before it (and now alongside it), poses a competitive challenge that must be met by citizens of the neoliberal world that Indonesia is a part of, but that also poses a threat to statehood and represents global imperialism. Globalization and English are also used to drum up nationalist sentiment against external powers while erasing the fact that the state holds primary responsibility for the erasure of languages and increases in interethnic conflict (J. Bertrand, 2004; Ricklefs, 2008):

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Era globalisasi ditandai, antara lain, oleh meningkatnya kontak budaya dan komunikasi antarbangsa, terutama dengan menggunakan bahasa Inggris. Dalam hubungan itu, kedudukan dan fungsi bahasa-bahasa yang digunakan di Indonesia perlu dikukuhkan. The globalization era is marked by, among other things, increasing cultural contact and international communication, especially through the use of English. Within these relations, the position and the function of the languages used in Indonesia needs to be affirmed. (KBI: 72, Kongres VII, 1998) Dalam perkembangan kehidupan masyarakat Indonesia kini telah terjadi berbagai perubahan, terutama yang berkaitan dengan tatanan baru kehidupan dunia dan perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan serta teknologi, khususnya teknologi informasi, yang semakin sarat dengan tuntutan dan tantangan globalisasi. Kondisi itu telah menempatkan bahasa asing, terutama bahasa Inggris, pada posisi strategis yang memungkinkan bahasa itu makin jauh memasuki berbagai sendi kehidupan bangsa Indonesia. Akibatnya, pertumbuhan dan perkembangan bahasa Indonesia dan bahasa daerah, mau tidak mau, dihadapkan secara frontal pada kenyataan bahwa penggunaan bahasa asing tersebut makin meluas. Akan tetapi, di balik kondisi kebahasaan di Indonesia seperti itu, harus diakui bahwa bahasa Indonesia ternyata mendapat tempat yang makin baik di luar negeri untuk dipelajari. In the development of Indonesian society today, various changes have taken place, especially those related to the new world order and the development of science and technology, especially information technology, which is increasingly burdened with the demands and challenges of globalization. These conditions have placed foreign languages, especially English, into strategic positions that make it possible for that language to further enter various corners of Indonesian national life. As a result, the growth and development of Indonesian and local languages, like it or not, is faced head on by the fact that the use of the aforementioned language continues to spread. However, on the other side of this state of language use in Indonesia, it must be acknowledged that the teaching of Indonesian in foreign countries is spreading. (KBI: 81–82, Kongres VIII, 2003) It is time to move on from these Resolutions, as they have set a sufficient frame for the coming chapters.

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2.4 The (Re-)scaled Nation Given the vast and repeated spread of Malay to many parts of Indonesia by the time of nationalization, perhaps its route to becoming the national language was not actually quite the miracle that Joshua Fishman once claimed it to be (1978; see also Lamb & Coleman, 2008; Sneddon, 2003). Additionally, despite its ever-increasing spread and increasing use as a first language, language planners continually insist that the spread of ‘good and proper Indonesian’ has not yet been successful. This may be because of the divergence of their standardized form of Indonesian language from the Indonesian language, or rather Indonesian languages/dialects, that have ‘bubbled up from below’ (McCrum & MacNeal, 1986, regarding the spread of English) over centuries, in fact. In the end, Indonesian’s ‘still unsuccessful’ spread, its belonging to no-one in the first place, and its ease of learning for all (more on this in the next chapter), are myths that need to be seen as rhetoric toward a national cause – this is instrumental in re-scaling language use and ideologies in the country, and it is in this way that it affects, or (re-) orients, language use on the ground. It is further not the case, despite its continual request for expansion, that the language planning body has had much direct influence at all in the development and spread of the language. What ‘a language’ needs to spread is not necessarily planners so much as infrastructure, and thus it is the ‘spontaneous’ borrowings and linguistic ‘feature selection’ that have taken place largely in mass media, in Indonesian-medium education, as well as among especially more highly educated members of the nation, that have led to its spread in forms divergent from what planners have often wanted. Indonesian’s instrumental necessity for upward mobility, and its prestige value, produced by Indonesian-language mass media, pop culture, government and schooling are what have led to its successful spread. Because of this, Indonesian regularly takes a form – rather, many forms (Cole, 2010; Goebel, 2015) – consistently different from what language planners generally desire. And it is in this sense that the nationalization of Indonesian has in a way been very successful, which also makes it necessary to agree with Fishman’s (1978) ‘miracle’ commentary, at least to some extent: the process of language nationalization here is exemplary. However, Indonesian was never created; it is not an Elvish- or Klingon-like venture – although Alisjahbana did take at least some inspiration from Esperanto’s development, ‘especially in the adaptation of words from the Western world’ (Alisjahbana, 1974: 414–415). The language, though, never started from scratch, and by the time of nationalization it was in fact very many people’s language – a first language for some and a regular lingua franca for others.

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To conclude our discussion of the Language Congresses and the spread of Indonesian for now, then, the Indonesian Language Congress Resolutions have never stated strong, or sole, favor for the exclusivity of Indonesian that particularly Suharto and his New Order regime encouraged. We must recognize the relative powerlessness of this organization in implementing language use and change, though, and see these Resolutions more as a set of declarations of national ideology or ideals that describe national re-scaling more broadly while speaking specifically from a linguistic, or perhaps ‘languages-based’, perspective (cf. Johnson, 2013). These Language Congresses work as a single part of an enormous state-nation machinery (that consists of enormous amounts of national congresses for many topics) that on the whole has led to a massive re-scaling of life and of languages in Indonesia. This re-scaling has encouraged the growth of many varieties of Indonesian in the nation and has, actively and passively, marginalized and (re-)standardized local languages, and created conflicting feelings toward English. The true determiner of language shift and change has more likely been the presence of and people’s varying levels of access to state-regulated media and state institutions, which serve to spread semiotic and linguistic features that index ‘Indonesian’ and contract the use of features associated with local languages, and these are all ongoing and continual processes. With this, we turn to some of the current visible effects of this large-scale and active re-scaling of language forms.

Notes (1) ‘Pur artefact orientaliste …’. (2) ‘la qualité d’appartenance au negara’. (3) ‘des savoirs techniques requis pour devenir agent d’encadrement dans une manufacture ou bien clerc dans une agence commerciale’. (4) Ricklefs elsewhere points out that, by 1930, the percentage of literate adults in Indonesia was 7.4%, remarkably low in comparison to neighboring Phillippines. Whereas the US played a much more proactive role in creating English literacy and language skills, the Dutch remained largely uncommitted to public education (Ricklefs, 2008: 192–193). (5) I use the terms ‘local languages’ and ‘regional languages’ interchangeably to refer to bahasa daerah. Elsewhere, ‘vernacular’ is used for the same purpose (Nababan, 1985). (6) The number of these Dutch-proficient Indonesians cannot have been large despite Alisjahbana’s statement. R. Bertrand (2005: 499) claims that by 1930 a mere 0.32% of the indigenous population were literate in Dutch.

3 Locating Languages in Time and Space

3.1 But You Still Use Javanese, Right? In the course of my time in Central Java it became apparent to me that the label indicating ‘the Javanese language’ – bahasa(BI) or basa(BJ) Jawa – represented either: (1), not a ‘language’ but the bahasa sehari-hari, ‘daily talk’, that everyone spoke with each other every day; or (2) it was a very sophisticated language that was too difficult for even local residents to learn. This inconsistency over the definition of language and the definition of Javanese ways of communicating is well represented in a conversation that I had one morning over breakfast with a friend. The following is a paraphrase of the conversation that I jotted down after we finished our meal together: Then AC said something about languages she can and can’t speak and she said she can’t speak Javanese. She said she can’t read the characters [of the syllabary]. I said, ‘But what languages do you use every day with your friends?’ ‘Well yeah that’s Javanese but “daily Javanese”.’ ‘Ngoko [informal peer-to-peer register].’ ‘Ah! You know!’ ‘Yeah. So, you can speak Javanese.’ ‘Yeah but I can’t speak the one that’s kromo/alus [high register/less formal but respectful register]. There are levels in Javanese – ngoko, kromo, kromo alus and one that even I forget!’ ‘But you still use Javanese, right?’ ‘Yeah …’ (Fieldnotes, 30 December 2009) 98

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Just two days prior to this conversation, other messages caught my attention as I attended the home viewing service for AC’s grandfather’s recent passing. As we sat at the ceremony, held at their aunt’s house nearby, AC’s older sister SJ sat next to me. As the service began, SJ told me that this was about to get boring because she and her siblings couldn’t understand the bahasa Jawa kromo – the high register of Javanese – that was being spoken at the service. A couple of minutes later, one of her other sisters leaned over and asked me, ‘Are you bored? Because I am. I can’t understand any of this.’ The message so far was simple: SJ and her siblings could not understand what was being said at this funeral service because it was in a register of Javanese that they did not understand. Yet, no less than two minutes later, SJ was leaning over my way and translating into Indonesian for me, the hymns and psalms that we, the group, were reciting in kromo, as we read through them in the program (Fieldnotes, 28 December 2009). A few months later when I attended a Javanese language service with SJ and her mother at the church they regularly attended, she did the same thing. The importance of these conversations is not necessarily that speakers claimed not to speak Javanese while they really did speak – often as their first language – at least ngoko, the lower register of it, and at least understood much of ceremonial high Javanese, kromo. This is relatively common behavior, especially in an era of standardized languages where the ‘language-ness’ of formal and standardized languages is emphasized at the expense of other ways of speaking (Ferguson, 1959; Milroy, 2001; Silverstein, 1996). What is more important in these conversations, for our purposes, is students’ occasional willingness to identify as non-speakers of Javanese, despite the fact that they have all of the above receptive and productive abilities with various registers of the language. As I will argue below, this may be an important site of production of youth identities that encourage language shift from, in this context, Javanese to Indonesian, with Indonesian’s position in the national marketplace ever expanding into people’s homes and daily lives. Currently, Javanese is by far the most widely spoken LOTI in Indonesia, with 84,300,000 speakers estimated throughout Indonesia in the 2000 census, and 69,000,000 of those on Java. A total population of Javanese speakers globally was at the same time estimated at 84,608,470 individuals (Ethnologue, 2015d). Although how this was measured is not clarified (again this is problematic, as in Section 2.2.8 with counts of Indonesian and Section 1.3.1 with counts of English speakers), the Javanese language treated as it is in this survey is clearly nowhere near extinction or even endangerment. In this chapter I therefore explore more specifically how discourses and policies at state and community levels combine to create spaces in which languages might be born, intermingle, thrive, be marginalized, or die at all. The data in this chapter thus

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come together to explore present ideas about language use, past inheritances of language hierarchies and individuals’ desires for linguistic futures in Central Java. Broader lines will be drawn to relate these conversations and policies to global trends in policy making and to the legacies that the colonization, modernization, nationalization and globalization that we have discussed throughout the last two chapters might leave for even the most widely spoken and presumably non-endangered local language in Indonesia that is Javanese.

3.2 Creating and Erasing Languages We now understand that the state’s ‘creation of languages’ in Indonesia, along with the creation of the Indonesian nation-state, validated its entry into ‘modernity’. In modernity, ideologies about what constitutes a language, about inherent complexity in language entities, and about how languages are learned and shared in societies, have also made their way into contemporary national mindsets. This shift in discourses has affected, through the re-scaling of language forms, conceptions of and access to all language forms in any given locality. In Central Java, Indonesian is, of course, the national language, and one’s mastery of it – particularly a standardized version of it – indicates a higher class and education level. Indonesian has been described to me at times as very difficult, and at times as very easy. It has generally been portrayed to learners both within and outside of the nation as a very easy language, and this reputation tends to surface when I mention Indonesian to interlocutors both in and outside the country. Beliefs that I have encountered about Indonesian have even veered off to such extremes as ‘I heard you can learn Indonesian in just a few weeks’. Javanese, on the other hand, is portrayed as mystifyingly complex, as we saw in this chapter’s introductory vignette. It is constantly described as an incredibly complicated and difficult language consisting of register levels the mastery of which is nearly impossible for most, including locally born and raised Javanese people. Local residents in Java do not expect a foreigner to speak, or even to be able to learn, Javanese, and my students themselves, almost all of them fluent in ngoko, frequently described the Javanese language to me as ‘very difficult’. It turns out, though, that when this great difficulty is described, it is actually the formal register kromo, and the correct, contextually appropriate use of it, that are being referred to. Without denying the perceived difficulty of the language, a very brief description of its registered history is due. Kromo is said to have only ever consisted of about 700–1000 words (Poedjosoedarmo, 2006; Wolff &

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Poedjosoedarmo, 1982), in a rather prototypical diglossic situation between the low and high register(s) (Ferguson, 1959). It is thus a subset of vocabulary, accompanied by changes in affixation and intonation, that are used in very limited circumstances in order to indicate one’s subordinate position to his/her interlocutor. The strict and formalized use of registers of Javanese is said to have been created, actually, by the non-blood priyayi nobility surrounding the Javanese courts of Surakarta (see Map 4) throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. During this period, the priyayi constructed themselves as a strongly ascetic class to differentiate themselves from the others – occasionally interrupting their asceticism with quite intoxicating festivities to provide relief from their abstention. They also increasingly demanded that they be spoken ‘up’ to, in highly formalized and ‘correct’ kromo. Their incentive to create such strict indicators of status in language is said to have been strongly motivated by the idea that, since their nobility could not be proven by blood, it must be proven through behavior: both their own behaviors and the behaviors of others in relation to them. These behavioral changes largely took on the form of the reformulation and reification of Javanese to include a strict set of rules regarding the use of registers so that interlocutors of lesser classes would have to ‘talk up’ to the priyayi class, and the latter would be able to talk down to their subordinates. This would clearly indicate the status of all parties in the interaction, and would reinforce these statuses through the interactional performances themselves as well as others’ observations of these interactions (R. Bertrand, 2005; Poedjosoedarmo, 2006). It makes sense, then, that strict rules for kromo usage unwind and become very uneven once one leaves the areas surrounding the Javanese palaces where most priyayi were located. In East Java, even persons of lower class have been known to use kromo as simply a formal register of language, referring to everyone including themselves in kromo. In Central Java, to use kromo pronouns in reference to oneself would look as if the speaker were putting himself up on a pedestal or equating herself to royalty. Also, Wolff and Poedjosoedarmo (1982) note that 2nd-person terms of address are generally flattened in East Javanese dialects to one word, sampeyan. In Central Java, the use of this word to address a superior could be insulting; the term that should be used is panjenengan (alternately spelled as penjenengan). In other areas and contexts, a sort of middle ground between kromo and ngoko has historically been achieved: rural people without a full grasp of kromo, due to their far peripherality in relation to court life, would often attempt to indicate respect with some approximation of kromo. This register came to be called madyu,1 and it is only known to have consisted of some 35 distinct words, primarily function words. It is generally conceived as sort of a sliding gradient between kromo and ngoko (Poedjosoedarmo, 2006; Wolff

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& Poedjosoedarmo, 1982). It has been said that when speaking this madyu register, some people would go so far as to make up words that sounded like kromo in attempts to signify the higher register, all which, of course, the priyayi classes treated with great scorn. Such ‘ridiculous’ word coinage served as simply one more indicator of these people’s lower class status and altogether backwardness. This way of inventing words and speaking language that sounded ‘more kromo than kromo itself’ came to be called Krômô désô2 – ‘country Kromo’ (Wolff & Poedjosoedarmo, 1982: 37). In contrast to kromo, ngoko has a much more complete lexicon, but it has come to be called ‘not a language’; it is just bahasa sehari-hari – daily talk. When I would ask my students about what languages they spoke, Javanese would often not make the list. I would then suggest that they spoke Javanese all the time, but then they would respond, ‘But that’s just daily talk’. As described above, the registers of Javanese are historically and regionally complex, and consist of multiple variations of multiple sets of inflection, intonation, and vocabulary. However, in my own fieldwork, the term students and I used together to describe higher registers of Javanese was almost always kromo, or sometimes kromo inggil to refer to the same idea. To refer to the low register, the bahasa sehari-hari of most people locally, we used the term ngoko. It was very infrequent that anyone would refer to more complex levels in my presence, but one of these rare moments happened in a Sociolinguistics class one day when I specifically asked students about the registers of Javanese. They first, and ironically based on the above history, told me that if I really wanted to know the layers of Javanese, I would have to find someone who grew up rurally because they would possess knowledge about the most pure forms of Javanese, and so they would also know all of its more nuanced levels. They went on to point out such a person among their classmates in the room, and he hesitatingly named a few of the levels described above. Once or twice as well, a speaker referred to more distinct variations of ngoko: one is ngoko alus, or ‘refined ngoko’, and another is ngoko lugu, ‘crass’ or ‘rough’ ngoko, both mentioned by Satriya, below. The distinction regularly and most consistently relied upon in conversations with my research participants about the different registers of Javanese was ngoko – informal, versus kromo – formal, and so in this book these are generally the two registers that I divide Javanese into.

3.2.1 Institutionalizing Javanese and developing local content curriculum Article 42 in UU24/2009 speaks to the status of local languages in the service of national displays of a rich and unique Indonesian culture among a

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world community of other unique nations that are, nation-internally, all constituted by their own sub-national groups of speakers. These come together in Indonesia’s case to create its vision of itself as a nation ‘unified in diversity’. Article 42’s text reads as follows: Pasal 42 (1) Pemerintah daerah wajib mengembangkan, membina, dan melindungi bahasa dan sastra daerah agar tetap memenuhi kedudukan dan fungsinya dalam kehidupan bermasyarakat sesuai dengan perkembangan zaman dan agar tetap menjadi bagian dari kekayaan budaya Indonesia. (2) Pengembangan, pembinaan, dan pelindungan sebagaimana dimaksud pada ayat (1) dilakukan secara bertahap, sistematis, dan berkelanjutan oleh pemerintah daerah di bawah koordinasi lembaga kebahasaan. (3) Ketentuan lebih lanjut mengenai pengembangan, pembinaan, dan pelindungan sebagaimana dimaksud pada ayat (1) diatur dalam Peraturan Pemerintah. Article 42 (1) Local governments shall develop, enhance, and protect local languages and literatures so that they may continue to fulfill their social positions and functions in community life according to the development of the era and in order to maintain its place within Indonesia’s cultural richness. (2) The development, enhancement, and protection as referred to in paragraph (1) shall be performed gradually, systematically, and sustainably by local governments under the coordination of language institutions. (3) More precise provisions for the development, enhancement, and protection referred to in paragraph (1) shall be stipulated by Government Regulations. In the interest of nation building, local languages and literatures are to be developed, cultivated and preserved in order to display the unique richness of Indonesia’s local pluralism. This preservation of such richness in statehood is presumably for display both to a nation-external audience as well as to a nation-internal audience. Across these distances and differences, it is largely to be delivered via the Indonesian language that has been modernized to be highly translatable internationally, among other modern state languages (Alisjahbana, 1966; Keane, 2003; Moeliono, 1986). Indonesian should thus open Indonesia up externally to the world of modern nation-states and also,

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as a nation-internal ‘unifying tool’, it should allow such displays of localness to be translated across localities, giving Indonesians a unique sense of national identity – what they all collectively possess – within the larger world. Nationinternally, a unified national identity should reflect back onto the collectivity of Indonesian citizens: an identity in which who and what Indonesian people are – or were before they were brought together as a diverse and unique set of ‘proto-national’ cultures – is shared through their one nationality (Errington, 1998, 2008; Foulcher, 2000; see also Bauman & Briggs, 2003). This ‘proto-nationality’, a term that Errington (2008) deploys to describe contemporary portrayals of pre-national cultures, was regularly displayed on the campus of UKSW in ‘culture nights’, where groups of students from the diverse islands of Indonesia would don ‘traditional’ garb and perform ‘traditional’ dances. The first time I attended one of these events I thought it was interesting to see the different images that differing groups had of themselves and their pasts. After a while, though, I learned that at UKSW, this was the only thing that ‘culture night’ meant: a glimpse at these pre-national tribal or royal cultures through traditional dance, all explained and programmed through Indonesian, and always the same. The glimpse now of what Indonesia is, is exactly this set of notions of what some Indonesians were, and not, as I saw on multiple other occasions that were not considered culture nights, modern song and dance parties that largely make use of pop music from various nations. One such event was our department’s annual LoVED competition (see Chapter 1), which included dance performances and acting (although in these instances the acting and music were in English, of course). To resume from the anecdote that this chapter opened with, when I asked young adults in the community if they could speak Javanese, the general answer was no. When I asked for clarification, pointing out that they spoke Javanese every day all the time, the answers I got back indicated that actually, ngoko is not a language – it’s just daily talk – and ‘Javanese’, implicitly kromo, is a language that is more or less learnable – mostly less learnable – but it would be really cool if they could speak it (this sense of ‘coolness’ I explore further below). Although it is typical for people in many locations to speak of colloquial varieties as ‘just talk’ while their reference for ‘language’ is a high register, it is still pertinent to point out the erasure and marginalization that accompany these labels. Gal and Irvine’s (1995) ‘erasure’ is appropriate to this situation and these beliefs in the sense that the definition of ‘the Javanese language’ and of language per se in modern Indonesia requires standards, formality and written form. When a register is not accompanied by these things, it becomes ‘not a language’. The priyayi and Dutch efforts to formalize and bureaucratize Javanese in the early 20th century, along with the increasingly oppositional discourses

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that had formed Javanese identity in relation to the Dutch (see Chapter 2: cara Jawi vs cara Walandi), have been part and parcel of ngoko’s formulation as ‘not a language’. As their focus has largely remained on the higher, more formal registers of the language, the lower register has not been assigned the standards, formality and prescriptive written form that would be necessary for its qualification as a language in modernity. Thus, while it can be seen as a typical behavior across cultures to ‘erase’ the lower registers from ‘language-ness’, we cannot ignore the fact that the current ecology in Central Java, in which people label ngoko as ‘daily talk’, is inseparable from a history of creating languages and erasing non-languages that is thoroughly entwined among Javanese and European co-created ways of understanding what language is and how it works. A notable moment in the formalization of Javanese dates to 1918, when a combined group of Dutch and Javanese scholars held a Congres voor Javaansche Cultuurontwikkeling (Congress for Javanese Cultural Development), after which they established the Java Instituut officially on 4 August 1919 (R. Bertrand, 2005). Upon the nation’s establishment, with the declaration of Indonesian’s central importance, Javanese ceased to be a medium of education (as in the Taman Siswa schools noted in Chapter 1), but its study and its local importance in daily conversation persisted. However, national discourses had already begun to refer to the use of local languages as acts of ‘maintenance’ and ‘development’, the former term relegating them to a marginal position with respect to the national language, and the latter entering them into the era of standardization and (sub-)nationalities. The Java Instituut held Javanese language and culture conferences approximately biannually until 1930, after which the institute’s activities decreased to publications only, particularly their magazine Djawa. The magazine and the institute before it hosted many activities and had great influence over the rebirth of tradition parfaite Javanism, from 1920 to 1941 (Sears, 1996, cited in R. Bertrand, 2005). In 1941 with the beginning of WWII, all Institute activities ceased (Kongres Bahasa Jawa [KBJ], 1991). In 1953, meetings recommenced, no longer under the Java Instituut but instead under the Tjabang Bahagian Bahasa Djawatan Keboedajaan Kementerian Pendidikan, Pengadjaran, dan Keboedajaan – the Language Branch of the Culture Cabinet in the Ministry of Education, Teaching and Culture. These meetings were held inconsistently every few years, but as early as the second meeting in 1957, the meeting’s leaders were requesting their own Kongres Basa Jawa. The first Congress did not take place until 1991. Before the inaugural Javanese Language Congress, the first local content courses that would be responsible for teaching local languages were recommended as early as 1985, along with the ongoing requests coming from these Language Branch meetings that

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asked for the national government to memelihara (cultivate) local languages, ‘sebagai bagian dari kebudayaan Indonesia yang hidup’ – as a part of living Indonesian culture (KBJ, 1991: 42). The brief history above is written into the opening piece to the proceedings of the 1991 inaugural Javanese Language Congress. This piece closes by explaining the importance of meetings about Javanese language and culture becoming a Kongres: this is proof of the importance of culture in Indonesia as it approaches the end of the 20th century, and hopefully of interest in putting language and culture in their proper place in this fast developing country (KBJ, 1991: 43). Despite this activity surrounding the Javanese language, and despite the national dominance of Jakartan and Javanese cultures, there is enough evidence to claim that Javanese (and Jakarta’s own Betawi language, among other local languages) has been continually marginalized in the interest of strengthening Indonesian. Javanese has been thought of as no more than a course subject, as the following quotes from the Indonesian Language Congresses show: Bahasa daerah masih dapat dipakai untuk membantu bahasa Indonesia sebagai bahasa pengantar di kelas satu sampai dengan kelas tiga sekolah dasar di daerah-daerah yang masih memerlukannya. Di samping itu, bahasa daerah dapat pula diajarkan sebagai mata pelajaran. Local languages may still be used to help with Indonesian as a medium of education in the first through third grades of elementary school in regions where this is still needed. Alongside this, local languages may also be taught as course subjects. (KBI: 21, Kongres III, 1978) Bahasa daerah di wilayah tertentu dapat dijadikan mata pelajaran tanpa menggangu [sic] pendidikan bahasa Indonesia. Karena itu, kurikulum, buku pelajaran, metode pengajaran, dan sarana lain pendidikan bahasa daerah perlu dikembangkan. Regional languages in certain areas may be made course subjects without interrupting Indonesian language education. Because of this, curriculum, study books, teaching methods and other resources for local language education must be developed. (KBI: 49, Kongres V, 1988) Despite recommendations that more resources be devoted to materials in local languages, it is clear that their use as a fully-fledged medium for

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education and for knowledge transfer is a ‘problem’ (Ruíz, 1984). No child should need or want to use their local language for such pursuits past grade three (in fact, they shouldn’t want to at all; they should only rely on this allowance when burdened with a need, that of facing problems that their first language poses to their Indonesian proficiency). Educational resources are wholly dedicated to the national language, ensuring its spread and survival often at the expense of others. It is only by 1985 that there is even any thought to developing infrastructure for these increasingly marginalized languages. In its more recent attempts to decentralize (Section 2.3.3), the national government implemented muatan lokal, or local content courses. After first being recommended in 1985 by the Language Branch, it was not legally instituted until 1994 under pressure from international – both in the Southeast Asia/ASEAN region as well as more globally – trends and recommendations. At that time, though, it met with very little implementation (Bjork, 2004). Under muatan lokal policy, provinces were to be given priority over what their own local content curricula looked like. In 1994 this legislation intended to devolve 20% of curriculum development, or six class periods a week, to local authorities. It largely amounted, though, to a shift of classes already in place so that they would fall under the label of muatan lokal, and to generally little to no change in teaching practices or local/teacher autonomy; the topdown and no-questioning-allowed structure of New Order governance remained fully intact (Bjork, 2003, 2004). On the other hand, in other locations on Java, Javanese language classes already existed. Bjork (2003) cites that prior to this legislation, in East Java, Javanese language classes had already existed as a part of the regular academic curriculum. It was only under the new local content legislation that these classes were simply moved over, along with other classes such as cooking, accounting and ‘auto’ – classes that had previously fallen under the label of the national Pendidikan Kesejahteraan Keluarga, PKK (Family Welfare Education) program. The shift of these classes to the label of local content curriculum was described as an effort to shift the situation while not obligating schools and teachers to come up with anything new. Across the board, then, the local content curriculum existed ‘in print only’ (Bjork, 2003: 201). Decentralization was again attempted in 1998 after Suharto stepped down. More laws were passed in 1999 to devolve tax collecting rights and political powers to local authorities, and ‘By the end of the twentieth century, the question was no longer whether or not Indonesia would embrace decentralization, but the speed of change and the impact of the reforms promulgated by the government’ (Bjork, 2003: 190). The first mention of

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muatan lokal in KBI proceedings was in 2003, and by 2006, the Department of Education’s National Ministry of Education Regulation (Peraturan Menteri Pendidikan Nasional) 22/2006 required muatan lokal study – just two hours per week of it, and the content was again left to the discretion of province level governors: Muatan lokal merupakan kegiatan kurikuler untuk mengembangkan kompetensi yang disesuaikan dengan ciri khas dan potensi daerah, termasuk keunggulan daerah, yang materinya tidak dapat dikelompokkan ke dalam mata pelajaran yang ada. Substansi muatan lokal ditentukan oleh satuan pendidikan. Muatan lokal is curricular content intended for the development of competencies that are tailored to the region’s characteristics and potential, including regional specialties that cannot be grouped into course subjects already available. The substance of muatan lokal will be decided by the educational department. (Menteri Pendidikan Nasional, 2006: 7) Central Java’s own prescription for muatan lokal, as described in a Resolution by the Governor of Central Java (Surat Keputusuan Gubernur Jawa Tengah) 423.5/5/2010, presents a curriculum for the teaching specifically of the Javanese language to students throughout primary and secondary schooling. It draws out goals for students to become conversant in both ‘literary’ and ‘nonliterary’ forms of expression in Javanese, and it aims for them to understand huruf Jawa, or the Javanese syllabary (hánácáráká or carakan in Javanese, the basic category of which are also referred to as nglegena). These are positive aims toward the maintenance of this local language; however, the curriculum written in Resolution 423.5/5/2010 presents a syllabus that looks much like the foreign language education programs that reify and stereotype cultures, and which early language planners endorsed (see Alisjahbana, 1971, 1974; Moeliono, 1986). While it does not do much for me to make such claims based on the rather vague statements of a curricular resolution, this assessment is supported by students’ statements about their own experiences in the classes. Students I asked about muatan lokal courses, first in 2008 and then in 2009–2010, primarily referenced the classes’ all-round uselessness and even discouraging effects. Additionally, while these classes were legislated at two hours per week, students regularly told me they attended just one hour per week in school (Smith-Hefner, 2009 corroborates these claims). And of course, there was no national or regional test on this material as there was for topics like math, science and Indonesian, and therefore, as one parent explained to

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me, any upwardly mobile student would have little material incentive to take interest in these classes. This does not mean they would not have affective or other reasons for taking interest in the class; however, no student mentioned that they did see a reason to take the class. The only positive attitudes I witnessed that might have anything to do with muatan lokal courses revolved around the joy that some younger adults had, even long after high school, in being able to write people’s names in the Javanese syllabary. In my experiences talking to both high school and ED students, muatan lokal classes had a reputation as immensely boring and as a place where students who daily spoke Javanese went to get told that they could not speak Javanese. It seemed apparent to me, from the first comment I ever heard about muatan lokal classes, that this attempt to inspire a ‘love’ of local Javanese language and culture had simply ended up acting as a cog in the mechanisms of monolingual statehood. It worked in tandem with the culture night dances mentioned in the previous section and Ibu Tien’s Taman Mini in Chapter 2 (see also Errington, 1998; Gellner, 1983): the result has been a reification of a premodern local ‘high’ culture and language – worth celebrating but not really practicing – placed in the past and out of touch with today’s youth who, like Nisa as we will see below, have learned that they can ‘no longer’ speak it. The muatan lokal curriculum has eliminated ngoko from the field of languages by not including it past Grade 1. Ngoko is thus legislatively and culturally placed outside the scope of ‘the Javanese language’; it is portrayed in these documents as a children’s version of Javanese language – something to be grown out of. And so, discourses both in and outside of school teach students, who, along with adults, speak ngoko throughout large parts of their days, that they do not speak Javanese, or at least do not speak it well. It seems that Javanese classes are teaching little about a living culture, and the notion that Javanese is of the past and worthy of nostalgia and little more is reinforced through the quite limited resource allocation that these local content courses receive. It seems, then, that the one thing these courses do effectively teach, along with the other phenomena in the above paragraph, is something not written into any curriculum: a feeling of nostalgia, consisting of a ceremonialism involving high poetry (geguritan); a cultural-religious mythology, taught through wayang kulit, that is now often associated with superstition and backwardness (cf. Alisjahbana, 1966; R. Bertrand, 2005); music practices with gamelan, a tonal percussive instrument very important to wayang performances; and learning a script that is largely limited to symbolic purposes at present. The fact that students generally come out of the classes able to write names in this script, but nothing else, seems to be all that is really needed, considering that Javanese has been written in the Roman alphabet

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for quite some time now. There is additionally no room in the curriculum for Javanese literature; Alisjahbana (1966) and Wolff and Poedjosoedarmo (1982) point out, in fact, that Javanese literature stopped being created long ago, and this was only reinforced upon nationalization. Despite the overwhelmingly poor reception of muatan lokal classes among students, though, it still seemed enough, according to some, to do the job of keeping Javanese language alive and well:

Text 3.1 The point of muatan lokal is for people to appreciate local culture Today at the Depdiknas (Department of Education), I met with Pak A, director of [X3] section of the Depdiknas Semarang. I asked him about the laws that are put out by his office and he said that International Standard School (see Chapter 4) legislation comes from the national level, and muatan lokal comes from a Surat Keputusan Gubernur (Governor’s Decree) concerning muatan lokal. He said that the point of muatan lokal is for people to appreciate local culture … He mentioned at one point that Japan has a good culture of maintaining respect for their own culture. This is one thing that muatan lokal is there to promote – what’s called Etika in Indonesian, sopan-santun in Javanese … (Fieldnotes, 11 April 2010) The goal of muatan lokal was clear, and Pak A’s faith in it seemed certain. Muatan lokal in Java will be enough to uphold the Javanese ‘ethic’. Moreover, many of the same students who had taken and generally been bored in their own muatan lokal classes had just as much faith that these classes would maintain and preserve Javanese culture and language as did Pak A. In the following group conversation, Dewi, Ayu and Dian all explain why Javanese is not under threat:

Text 3.2 It’s not possible for local languages to be left behind Dewi:

Ayu:

kalau bahasa lokal ditinggalkan juga nggak bisa, ya? soalnya pakai- sekarang mulai dari SD sampai SMA itu anak dapat pelajaran di sekolah dapat pelajaran bahasa jawa. jadi kalau ditinggalkan nggak mungkin. terus misalnya di rumah diajari bahasa jawa, secara simple, seperti saya, dulu saya waktu kecil belajarnya bahasa jawa kromo. dari kecil saya tahunya kromo. tapi setelah saya masuk sekolah, as long kindergarten and elementary school uh, I forget my kromo and then I switch into ngoko sampai

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Lauren: Ayu: Dian: Lauren: Dian: Lauren: Dian: Lauren: Dian: Lauren: Dewi:

Ayu:

Lauren: Ayu: Dian: Lauren: Dian: Lauren: Dian: Lauren: Dian: Lauren:

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sekarang. jadi saya itu sudah lupa kromonya karena like TK itu saya sudah interact sama teman-teman dan teman-teman pakai javanese semua. dan saya ikut-ikutan pakai bahasa indonesia, sudah nggak pernah pakai yang kromo lagi. okay. so what language will you use with your children at home? home? at home? at home. javanese. javanese? javanese. I think I agree with Ayu. if we teach bahasa indonesia and english in fact uh, their grand mother and father speak in javanese, the children will be able to adapt. okay. kan bisa sendiri gitu lho. okay. it’s not possible for local languages to be left behind. because they use- now starting from elementary to high school kids get studies at school get javanese language studies. so it’s not possible for it to be left behind. then for example at home I was taught javanese, in a simple way, like I, first when I was little I learned javanese kromo. from when I was little I knew kromo. but after I entered school, as long kindergarten and elementary school uh, I forget my kromo and then I switch into ngoko until now. so I like already forgot kromo like at kindergarten I already interacted with friends and my friends all used javanese. and I joined in using indonesian, already I never used kromo again. okay. so what language will you use with your children at home? home? at home? at home. javanese. javanese? javanese. I think I agree with Ayu. if we teach indonesian and english in fact uh, their grand mother and father speak in javanese, the children will be able to adapt. okay. you know they can do it on their own like that. okay. (Ayu, Dewi, Dian, Lidya, Interview 4, 20 May 2010)

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This conversation is framed with students’ statements that Javanese will not be lost. Dewi, herself a descendant of Javanese royalty who was raised in an urban environment and claims to speak only Indonesian, starts out by explaining that it is not possible for Javanese to be lost because it is taught in muatan lokal courses. The excerpt closes with Dian’s claim that her future children’s Javanese proficiency will be guaranteed as they will speak Javanese with only their grandparents, and Indonesian and English with her and her future husband. Right in between these two statements Ayu, in what I understood to be her attempt to convey agreement with Dewi and Dian that muatan lokal classes are enough to maintain Javanese, contradictorily tells us the story of how, from the moment she started going to school, she shifted her own language use away from kromo (which a child of that age would not be expected to speak much of anyway, to my understanding) and into ngoko and Indonesian. Amid their very own strong claims to language loss or shift toward Indonesian, these three students maintain beliefs that Javanese will not be lost because it is being safeguarded in the same muatan lokal classes that, by reputation, do not teach students to speak Javanese – worse sometimes, they teach them that they cannot in fact speak Javanese – and because their children will speak the language with only their grandparents. Furthermore, Ayu demonstrates well how the community fabric through which kromo would be learned no longer exists. We will see this in more detail below with Dian. Here, Ayu claims to have been learning kromo before she started her schooling; however, as soon as she started leaving home and heading to the schoolhouse, those moments where she might have learned kromo decreased, ‘exo-socialization’ (Gellner, 1983) and peer pressure to use other forms of language increased, and her kromo faded away. Angelo, on the other hand, was not convinced that muatan lokal would keep Javanese in use. While he did speak ngoko with many of his friends, he claimed that before he started school he never had seen Javanese script, and that his family’s use of kromo was not fluent. In comparison to his exposure to English, as we will see in Chapter 4, his learning of Javanese felt forced, ‘useless’ and unwelcome.

Text 3.3 I didn’t feel interested Angelo: dari awal itu udah nganu- jadi pelajaran bahasa jawa waktu kecil, yang pertama kali aku dapat itu udah nggak enak. Lauren: u-huh. Angelo: udah nggak enak, jadi dipaksa harus bisa menulis jawa, dipaksa harus tahu bahasa krama, terus bahasa gini, gini, gini itu jadi nggak suka.

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Lauren: … Lauren: Angelo: Lauren: Angelo:

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ya. okay.

okay. tetapi juga ada exposure bahasa jawa? sangat minim. okay. sangat minim. karena di keluargaku nggak ada yang bisa bahasa jawa one hundred percent. termasuk yang sampai aksara jawanya dan sampai, termasuk bahasa krama-kramanya yang ini itu nggak ada yang seratus persen bisa. dan itu memang aku pertama kali belajar itu murni baru, sangat bener-bener baru. Lauren: okay. Angelo: diperkenalkan dengan huruf jawa baru. dan aku nggak merasa interested, merasa, ‘useless lah belajar ini semua.’ so, I learned that not because I want to but because I have to. Angelo: from the beginning already- so javanese classes when I was little, from the very first time it already didn’t feel good. Lauren: u-huh. Angelo: it already didn’t feel good, so I was forced, had to be able to write in javanese, forced to know kromo, forced in language this, this, this like that so I didn’t like it. Lauren: yeah. okay. … Lauren: okay. but there was also exposure to javanese? Angelo: so minimal. Lauren: okay. Angelo: so minimal. because in my family nobody can speak one hundred percent javanese. including javanese script and kromo that’s like this or like that, nobody can one hundred percent. and that the first time I studied it pure, it was truly, really new. Lauren: okay. Angelo: introduced to a new javanese script. and I didn’t feel interested, I felt, ‘well this is useless studying all of this.’ so, I learned that not because I want to but because I have to. (Angelo, Interview 2, 27 November 2009) Javanese class was just a drag, a forced class, a place where a good student like Angelo went to get bad grades. By relegating the only institutionally ratified speaking of Javanese to a twohour maximum per week language class modeled on ‘Culture with a big C’ classes that are actually taught through the primary medium of Indonesian (as UU24/2009 Article 29 requires) and that consist of a cultural essentialization

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that scholars of second and foreign language teaching take increasingly critical views of (see Block, 2007; Canagarajah, 2008; Kramsch, 2009; Pennycook, 2001), the government has created more contexts where Indonesian becomes the primary acceptable mode of communication, high Javanese the language of local heritage, and low Javanese – a language that is quite frequently, if not the most frequently, spoken language locally – rather dismissed, or erased, ideologically speaking. Kromo is something that grandparents, but not youth, speak, and it is associated with practices like gamelan and wayang that are still performed locally, but which are also increasingly tourist attractions, modified into Western theatrical format (Alisjahbana, 1966). These actions join other forces that accumulate to work against Javanese’s maintenance and toward more spaces for local syncretism (O’Connor & Zentz, 2016; Woolard, 1998; Woolard & Genovese, 2007) between ngoko and Indonesian, and for a Javanese dialect of Indonesian to become the widely preferred mode of daily communication and a distinctly localized marker of Javanese-Indonesian citizens’ identities (see also Cole, 2010). In school-based attempts to preserve local cultures based on modern language ideologies, state-endorsed ideologies about learning language do not necessarily lack an understanding that there are connections between language performance and cultural ways of interacting; it seems, however, that their attempts to preserve these cultural fabrics function under an assumption that cultures can be upheld by the same institutions and materialities that exclude them instead of by the entire community fabrics that previously upheld them (if they ever existed as they are now imagined to have been, which is questionable in the first place, based on what we learned above about the priyayi-led reformulation of Javanese language and tradition, further explained below). Or, as Hornberger (1988: 226) states: ‘as in many other language-contact situations, the emotional balance between the languages is in contrast to their functional balance. It is as if loving a language is a compensation for not using it for a full range of functions.’

3.3 What is Shifting in Language Shift? A mystification of local culture and language has been part and parcel of Dutch–Javanese and Middle East–Javanese interactions over centuries. In interactions with the Dutch, the Javanese upper classes increasingly emphasized the mysticism of local animistic practices in establishing an oppositional identity from the Dutch, while lower classes were increasingly Islamized as modern reformist Islam took hold in the early 20th century (R. Bertrand, 2005; Pemberton, 1994; Ricklefs, 2008). Both Christianity and

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modern Islam would do away with the much older animistic practices of Javanese-Hindu tradition on Java; however, the priyayi classes held on to them as symbolic of local culture and incorporated them into official Javanese identity (Pemberton, 1994). The orientalist depiction of mysticism that resulted – treating indigenous systems as both less than Western belief systems while also magically powerful in some ways (R. Bertrand, 2005; Said, 1978; see Chapter 2) – becomes important in talk about ‘the Javanese language’. While, as we have seen, it is generally the case that ngoko is not treated as a language, kromo has become a sort of super-language; ‘super’ in the sense that it is locally special and important, but more iconic than used, and often portrayed as mystifyingly hard to learn. In a focus group interview with Novita, Satriya and Nisa, the topic of prestige arose when we talked about both English and Javanese. These had come across to me in previous conversations as different types of prestige, and so I asked further about the ‘coolnesses’ associated with the ideas of being able to speak Javanese and being able to speak English. The group’s co-constructed response conveyed common modern linguistic ideologies of inherent difficulty and ease in learning languages as well as of languages as entities that naturally contain certain characteristics: kromo is next to impossible to learn, whereas English is easy; kromo is ‘sophisticated’, and English signifies mobility, both upward and outward. While they framed the languages in this way, however, factors like access to the resources that they would need to be able to speak either of these languages continually arose in tacit ways in our conversations, as did, quite less tacitly, a phenomenon common in language shift: shaming and chastisement by elders toward the youth who have not been around Javanese enough to learn it but who still sometimes wish to try:

Text 3.4 Sophisticated Javanese 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

so: what’s the difference in the c:oolness of speaking kromo inggil= Nisa: u-huh Lauren: and the c:oolness of speaking english? what’s the difference? Nisa: o[h!= Novita: =be[cause you cano [ya yaer ↓no.] (we learn [the) difference] Nisa: [different] pronoun. ((Nisa turns head to look at Satriya)) Lauren: m-hm Satriya: pron[ouns diff]erent, Nisa: [referent] corr↑ection ((smiles at Satriya)) Satriya: some verbsyeah correction. ((smiles)) Nisa: @@[@@] Novita: [uh] (the verbs) ((tapping Nisa on shoulder, then laughs)) Nisa: uh maybe many many= Satriya: =[different expressions] Nisa: [many things] to memorize. °in learning javanese.° Satriya: many things to memorize. [but-] Nisa: [in e]nglish we have also memorized a lot of things, Satriya: but when you can speak english, it’s- (too m-) uh: for us it’s already common. but then we can sophisticated javanese °then that will be so cool right?° Nisa: yeah. Satriya: for example if you speak to me in english, Lauren:

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58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

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((taps Nisa on the shoulder and directing speech to her)) Nisa: [kok] ((turns head to Satriya) Satriya: [then] I say SO ↑WHA:T. Nisa: ↓uh: but then you can speak kromo inggil to me. [°wha:°] Novita: [(now ayo)] Nisa: [REALLY?] Satriya: [@@@@] Nisa: then I will learn! the- @@@ then you’ll be sophisticated of ↓me ∙h: >mungkin nggak tahu ya. kromo inggil itu sudah((maybe I dunno yeah. kromo inggil it’s already)) it’s very (forgettable).

(Satriya, Nisa, Novita, Interview 4, 24 May 2010) In this conversation, Nisa and Satriya initially took their explanations about the difficulties of learning Javanese in different directions. I understood Nisa’s ‘opinions’ (Line 29) comment to mean that the ‘experts’ in kromo had differing and difficult to please opinions about how Javanese should be spoken – thus her initial statement referred to the fact that even when she and her peers do try to speak ‘Javanese’ – read kromo – right, there is somebody right there waiting to correct them. When she revisited that idea with the word ‘correction’ (Line 39), indicating that people correct her and her peers a lot when they try to speak in Javanese, Satriya agreed; however, he had already begun to take his explanation in another direction equally exemplary of modernistic notions of language: grammatical complexity (Lines 28, 37). Nisa joined Satriya then by naming a few grammar terms exemplary of why Javanese is inherently difficult to learn based on its linguistic structure (Lines 34, 38, 47): multiple pronouns to refer to different referents, different expressions that are appropriate at different times and with different interlocutors, and so many formal aspects of the language to memorize. Thus, for them, ‘the Javanese language’ was inherently more complex than others, making it obviously more difficult to learn than other languages like Indonesian and English; every time they tried to speak it, their interlocutors expressed hyper-attention to and correction of their speech, which inevitably eased their transition to using solely Indonesian with community elders. The comments in this conversation began on a note of difficulty and sophistication, but ended with topics of (1) chastisement and (2) the amount of access that Satriya and Nisa seemed to have to spaces where kromo was

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spoken. It seemed more salient to these students, though, that the Javanese language was more difficult than most: elders constantly correct youths when they speak it, and that is why today’s younger generations do not or cannot speak it. It was only secondary, and barely mentioned, that opportunities to learn the language in regular interactions in their lives may have been rare to non-existent. Continuing with the topic of correction, I turn to Dian’s description of a time when she tried to speak in kromo to an elder but was met with more correction than conversation.

3.3.1 Correction There is some evidence that these youths who have ‘lost their love to Javanese’ as we will see below, and ‘forgotten’ how to speak it, still do try to speak kromo. But the heavy correction by interlocutors is embarrassing and makes fluid conversation difficult. In a Sociolinguistics class assignment, Dian recounted a situation in order to show what it looked and felt like to try her hardest to address an elder in kromo only to be rigorously corrected by him throughout the conversation:

Text 3.5 Although I was embarrassing, but at least I could improve my ‘Kromo Inggil ability’ [C]an you imagine, what happened with me when I am at the Elementary School? I am the youngest teacher, that means I have to speak in ‘Kromo Inggil’ to respect the head master and all the teachers. Since then, I really realize how my own culture and its value are. My culture is very unique and it is extremely different from other cultures in Indonesia, even other countries. Javanese requires us to respect others, especially older people, have a good attitude. For instance, we have to bow when we meet others and say ‘nyuwun sewu’ (Excuse me), we have to speak in a good manner (Soft, slow, but clear), we have to speak in ‘Kromo Inggil’ with older people, and so on. I had an embarrassing experience when I made a conversation with one of the teachers in the Elementary School. Here, was my conversation: Mr T: “Sugeng enjang, Mbak”. (Kromo) ( good morning, miss) Dian: “Sugeng enjang, Pak”. (Kromo)

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Mr T: “Mbak, kalawingi sinten ingkang sedo”? (Kromo) (Kromo) ( Miss, who was died yesterday?) Dian: “Oh, sing sedo kalawingi, moro tuone Pak Zam”. Ngoko Kromo Ngoko (Oh, someone who passed away yesterday was, Mr Zam’s father in law) Mr T: “Oh, ingkang sedo kalawingi, moro sepuhipun Pak Zam”. (Kromo) (Oh, someone who passed away yesterday was Mr Zam’s father inlaw). Dian: “Injih Pak, hmmm lha njenengan mboten layat ?” Kromo Ngoko (Yes, sir. Hmm, Did you come to the funeral ?) Mr T: “Kulo malah mboten takziah, lha kulo kalawingi tindak dateng Semarang” (Kromo) (I did not come to the funeral, because I had to go to Semarang) From the conversation above, we can conclude that I am not a good speaker of ‘Kromo Inggil’. Actually I have tried my best to speak in ‘Kromo Inggil’. Unfortunately, I did not know the words in ‘Kromo Inggil’, so I mix my speech in ‘Ngoko’ suddenly. Below, the words that I mix: No 1 2 3

Ngoko Sing Moro tuo Layat

Kromo Ingkang Moro sepuh Takziah

English Who (Relative Clause ) Father/Mother inlaw Come to the funeral

In addition, one thing that made me more embarrassing was that, Mr T corrected my words directly when he replied my questions. You can imagine, how shy4 I was at that time. However, there was a good side of it. Although I was embarrassing, but at least I could improve my ‘Kromo Inggil ability’. (Dian, Sociolinguistics Assignment 3, 31 October 2009)

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Dian certainly had an attitude of perseverance, but for many young adults who are fluent in Indonesian and who have grown up speaking Indonesian to their elders in at least institutional settings if not also with family and friends, why try speaking kromo, a language they are less comfortable producing, when by speaking Indonesian there will be no misunderstandings and no correction? By speaking Indonesian, the risk for embarrassment or shaming is greatly lessened and communication takes place more efficiently – save for the situation where an elder might scold the younger for using Indonesian instead of kromo in the first place (stories like these were often told by students raised in urban environments, about their visits to rurally located family members). These students might regret the Javanese that they have ‘lost’, but it is not clear that they ever spoke it in the first place. In light of this, there might be no going back, especially considering peer norms that form around these young adults’ identities as non-speakers of kromo.

3.3.2 Peer pressure?: Conforming to a non-kromo norm Novita had expressed to me in individual interviews that she grew up speaking primarily Indonesian at home, but that she definitely had an interest in learning more Javanese and incorporating its use into her life.

Text 3.6 I’d be more proud if I could speak both of them Novita: … kadang-kadang, e, perasaan bersalah itu ada. maksudnya, saya fasih berbicara maksudnya saya bisa berbicara bahasa inggris, tetapi, e waktu orang tanya pakai bahasa jawa, tentang bahasa kromo, saya nggak bisa menjawab itu sesuatu yang tidak membanggakan sama sekali buat saya. tapi, akan lebih bangga, akan lebih bangga kalau bisa dua-duanya, (inaudible). buat saya. Lauren: okay. ya dan sekarang, sekarang sedang mencoba belajarnya lebih atau, Novita: sedikit-sedikit kan, seperti kalau ada orang ngomong, coba didengarkan, ‘oh tadi ngomong apa,’ misalkan ‘kulo badhe tanglet.’ uh, apa, artinya apa, begitu seperti itu sedikit-sedikit, belajar sedikit-sedikit. belum- karena orang di sekitarku jarang ngomong seperti itu. ngomong bahasa jawa. Novita: … sometimes, uh, I do feel guilty. I mean, I’m fluent I mean I’m fluent in english, but uh when people ask if I speak javanese, about kromo, I can’t answer and that’s really not something to be proud of in my opinion. but, I’d be more proud, I’d be more proud if I could speak both of them, (inaudible). in my opinion.

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Lauren: okay. yeah and now, now are you trying to learn it more or, Novita: a little bit you know, like if there are people speaking it, I try to listen, ‘oh what did they just say,’ for instance (in kromo:) ‘I would like to ask,’ uh, what, what’s it mean, like that just little by little, learning it little by little. I haven’t yet- because people around me rarely talk like that. speak javanese. (Novita, Interview 3, 12 February 2010) Novita’s general self-assessment as she described it to me was that she could not speak kromo very well at all but that she was presently making efforts to learn it by tuning in when it was spoken and trying to figure out what was being said. However, in the text below (Text 3.7) we see that just prior to Nisa and Satriya’s explanation of Javanese’s difficulty in Text 3.4 above, Novita shared some more about her respect for people her age who did make efforts to learn Javanese. Nisa and Satriya agreed with her (Lines 12–13), and stated that it was nothing special if one could speak Indonesian (Lines 16–19); but if a young adult ‘like them’ (which among these three students points to: born and raised in Salatiga, highly educated, and along a range of middle-class socio-economic backgrounds) could speak Javanese kromo, now that was something to be respected (Lines 21–22, 28–30) because most Javanese youth like them had, as Nisa said, ‘lost their love to Javanese’ (Line 33).

Text 3.7 We have lost our love to Javanese 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

because uh one of my friend uh learn javanese and I thought it’s very cool. Lauren: oh okay Novita: because (.) for myself it’s difficult to learn in javanese and my friend entered. at uh UI university to learn javanese in in school. so why don’t uh what is it we uh: uh: menanamkan ((instill)) from now from the children to uh like Indonesian? Lauren: [okay] u-huh (.) Nisa: yeah= Satriya: =yeah. because medhok is considered< for me, a little bit (.) rough, °ya° jadinya agak ↓ya

109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123

this is a man. gitu. okay so kalau bicara bahasa inggris medhok= =u-uh itu: (.) merasa lebih:= =jantan ↑jantan °gitu° iya lebih lebih cowok. cowok. but if totally using (.) uh >english intonation< then soEH: ↓ya will be sound so girly.

Lauren: Satriya: Lauren: Satriya: Lauren: Satriya: Lauren: Satriya:

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>but after ↓all< my- because of my english is medhok, then it help me to show: like< >I still maneven though for me a llittle bit like gir↑ly, but javanese help me to show that I am (.) me↓dho:k and like < (.) >because medhok is considered< for me, a little bit (.) rough, °ya° so it makes it somewhat ↓ya this is a man. like that. okay so if you speak medhok english= =u-huh i:t (.) feels mo:re= =masculine. ↑masculine °like that° yeah more more guy. guy. but if totally using (.) uh >english intonation< then soEH: ↓ya will be sound so girly.

(Satriya Interview, 5 February 2010) In the elided part of the conversation above, Satriya hypothesized that a feminine characteristic of his English speaking could be due to the fact that the majority of his ED teachers were female. However, and interestingly, the same medhok-ness that Satriya had claimed that his girlfriend had demeaned him for, and that he felt created distance between his peers and

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students from more prestigious universities on Java (see Chapter 2), here gave him a sense of value, strength or rootedness when speaking English. In English, his medhok-ness helped him to assert his worth as a Javanese man (Lines 98–117). The addition to Satriya’s communicative repertoire of not only English, but also of the critical thinking skills that he had learned through English language educational spaces, presented some destabilizing forces to Satriya’s local identity. He tried to incorporate his new critical thinking skills outside of the spaces where he’d learned them, but found that he was not welcome to do so. And when he spoke in a language and context that would allow him to freely express these skills, he found himself clumsy and effeminate. When Satriya did not fully achieve his ideal sense of empowerment, then, he stabilized his identity with another aspect of the same quality that in Indonesian he felt demeaned for. The insecurity that he had projected onto his medhok Javanese-Indonesian subjectivity now served to counterbalance a felt sense of effemination in English, by tapping into his sense of masculinity as a Javanese man speaking in English. English was a language that allowed Satriya to outscale (cf. Blommaert, 2010) the intranational ideologies that pitted his Javanese identity against him, and when he did so, he was free to use those same characteristics to feel more comfortable while outside or above the national gaze. Despite the felt lack of control that Satriya conveyed to me over his English language performances, he wrote that even though he had difficulties in producing English, a certain piece of his identity might very well be at home as a speaker of the English language:

Text 4.23 Is English also the place where I belong? I feel so comfort when I speak Javanese. However, I often feel awkward when I speak Indonesian to people who are especially skilled Indonesian speakers because I do a lot of code switching from Indonesian to Javanese whenever I think the Indonesian words cannot bring my expression as good as Javanese. As the result, they seem to get difficulties to get my messages. I think Javanese is the language where I belong to. Nevertheless, I also feel so comfort when I speak English as long as I speak English in certain context. I also feel that English can carry out my intention or feeling compared to Indonesian. For example, I can translate English to Javanese and Javanese to English rather than English to Indonesian and vice versa in translation class. Is English also the place where I belong? (Satriya, Sociolinguistics Assignment 3, 4 November 2009)

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Satriya was, for all intents and purposes, a modern middle-class Javanese speaker of English, not necessarily looking to model himself after any hegemonically formed language standards, but simultaneously forced to participate in a field containing these standards as a member of the global English-speaking community as we saw in Section 4.3.1. The critical thinking skills that Satriya gained in ED and EDS activities made him feel empowered and useful – allowed him to expand his real self toward a new ideal self – in situations that called for critical thinking. However, this style of interaction was not always a welcome addition in his local Javanese peer communities, and so he found that sometimes this skillset pushed him to the periphery of his home culture. His developing critical thinking skills, learned in ED-related activities and through the medium of the English language, had blended across all his languages, demonstrating how his education in the English faculty, in expanding his repertoire of linguistic codes, had done much more: it had changed his outlook on himself, his world, and his ways of communicating, thinking and identifying in his local Javanese and Indonesian communities.3

4.5.2 Angelo’s linguistic biography and motivations Although Angelo had not necessarily anticipated majoring in English in college, he demonstrated that he was drawn to it early in life because of its affective allure in media and advertising outlets, among others. When he described to me some of his early classroom language learning experiences, he claimed that he had always been motivated to learn English and to excel in English courses. Learning Javanese in the classroom, however, seemed utterly irrelevant (as we saw in Section 3.2.1), as what was taught there (largely formal kromo) was not the Javanese language that people actually used in the communities he circulated through (informal ngoko was the dominant register).

Text 4.24 From early on I already liked English Angelo: Lauren: Angelo: Lauren: Angelo: Lauren: Angelo:

memang dari awal memang udah suka dulu. okay. lebih suka bahasa inggris? apanya? jadi lebih suka bahasa inggris? ya. dari dulu. apakah kelasnya sendiri lebih menarik atau apa? kenapa berbeda? nggak juga sih. kalau aku, pengalamanku pribadi memang karena mindset-nya. Lauren: okay.

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… Angelo: tapi kalau bahasa inggris, bahkan sebelum belajar, sebelum tahu pelajarannya itu sendiri tu udah nggak asing tho. kan aku, soalnya aku apa ya, suka main game. suka nonton film. jadi sebelum tahu pelajaran bahasa inggris itu sendiri, exposurenya udah ada. Lauren: okay. Angelo: kalau main game pasti pakai bahasa inggris, kan? ‘new game.’ ‘continue.’ atau judul-judulnya itu pasti exposurenya sudah ada. Lauren: yeah. Angelo: film kan juga. ‘the end.’ Lauren: u-huh. Angelo: terus misalnya apa ya, dulu film apa sich, ‘the apa’ gitu. terus sampai aku tanyakan, ‘the itu, apa artinya?’ terus uh, ‘mommy itu apa?’ ‘mommy itu ini.’ ‘bedanya sama mother apa?’ gitu. Lauren: okay, okay. the exposure. Angelo: hu-uh exposurenya … dari sebelumnya udah ada exposure ke sana jadi kan nggak asing kan. Lauren: iya. Angelo: justru dan justru karena nggak asing itu, mempelajarinya juga, ‘lho, ini kan yang waktu itu aku pernah baca,’ ‘ini kan waktu itu yang aku pernah lihat.’ … Angelo: Lauren: Angelo: Lauren: Angelo: Lauren:

indeed from early on I already liked [english]. okay. you preferred english? what? so you like english more? yeah. from the beginning. were the classes themselves more interesting or what? why was it different? Angelo: not that either. for me, my own personal experience was indeed because of my mindset. Lauren: okay. …. Angelo: but for english, even before studying it, before knowing the class material alone it already wasn’t foreign. you see for me, the thing is I what, liked to play games. liked to watch films. so before I knew about english class material, I already had exposure to it. Lauren: okay. Angelo: when playing games for sure they use english, right? ‘new game.’ ‘continue.’ or titles like that for sure there was already exposure. Lauren: yeah.

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Angelo: films, too. ‘the end.’ Lauren: uh-huh. Angelo: then for example what yeah, early on whatever film, ‘the what’, like that. that to the point where I would ask, ‘the that, what’s that mean?’ then uh, ‘mommy, what’s that?’ ‘mommy that’s this.’ ‘what’s the difference between that and mother?’ like that. Lauren: okay, okay. the exposure. Angelo: uh-huh, the exposure. from beforehand there was already exposure in that vein so like it wasn’t foreign, see. Lauren: yeah. Angelo: and directly because it wasn’t foreign, studying it too was like ‘hey, this I’ve read this before,’ ‘this I’ve seen before.’ (Angelo, Interview 2, 27 November 2009) English, in Angelo’s early life, was everywhere in little bits and pieces. On TV, in films, in video games. Seeing those words in such attractive places piqued his curiosity and, with that priming and his interest, he was able to take off and excel in an English language classroom. Throughout many of our conversations I deduced some of Angelo’s motivations based on his statements about preferred habitus and styles that he described to me through his descriptions of other people, which included, similarly to Satriya’s expanding repertoire, much more than language per se.

Text 4.25 Somehow influenced by them Lauren: um: do you think that uh, caranya yang kamu sekarang belajar untuk menjadi guru, apakah cara mengajar sama dengan cara mengajar guru-guru yang kamu pernah, pernah punya di, Angelo: well I was influence by some of the teachers I have ever, some teachers who have ever taught me. by means of the way I speak. the way I, the way I speak, the way I teach, the way I prepare the materials it was like, ya somehow influenced by them. Lauren: by who? Angelo: many people said that the way I speak ya, you know uh, the, the way I speak especially in, ya in speaking, I sound like [prof 1]. Because ya-iya like this one. I’m not as fluent as her, but ya, ya, the ‘ya, ya’. Lauren: oh, okay. alright. okay. Angelo: it was very [prof 1]. terus very [prof 1]. and teaching style, I mean how I act in classroom is like uh you know, a mixture between, I don’t know, maybe [prof 2] and Rosa. ya. I should say

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Lauren: Angelo: Lauren: Angelo: Lauren: Angelo:

yes. I admire Rosa’s speaking. Rosa being a person actually. Rosa being a teacher, Rosa being a manager, Rosa being a director. and I admire also [prof 1]. not admire actually but, ya, because I’m like, like quite close to [prof 1]. okay, okay. so, itu lebih ke personal? personal, karena, karena merasa dekat, jadi mengambil kelasnya. dan sering mengambil kelasnya. okay. what do you admire about [prof 1]? admire not really sih. not really admire butkenapa bisa dekat? uh- maksudnya apa ya? uh, ya, she talks fluently, and- very very fluently and apa ya. explanation itu clear enough gitu lho. very clear. jadi, ndak apa namanya- ya explanation-nya itu gampang diterima, mudah diterima.

Lauren: do you think that the way that you now study to become a teacher, is your way of teaching the same as the ways of teaching of teachers that you’ve ever had in, Angelo: well I was influence by some of the teachers I have ever … some teachers who have ever taught me. by means of … the way I speak. the way I, the way I speak, the way I teach, the way I prepare the materials it was like, ya somehow influenced by them. Lauren: by who? Angelo: many people said that the way I speak ya, you know uh, the, the way I speak especially in, ya in speaking, I sound like [prof 1]. because ya-iya like this one. I’m not as fluent as her, but ya, ya, the ‘ya, ya’. Lauren: oh, okay. alright. okay. Angelo: it was very [prof 1]. terus very [prof 1]. and teaching style, I mean how I act in classroom is like uh you know, a mixture between, I don’t know, maybe [prof 2] and Rosa. ya. I should say yes. I admire Rosa’s speaking. Rosa being a person actually. Rosa being a teacher, Rosa being a manager, Rosa being a director. and I admire also [prof 1]. not admire actually but, ya, because I’m like, like quite close to [prof 1]. Lauren: okay. what do you admire about [prof 1]? Angelo: admire not really sih. not really admire butLauren: how come you’re close? Angelo: I mean what ya, ya she talks fluently and- very very fluently and what yeah, explanation it’s clear enough, like that. very clear. so, it’s not what is it, yeah the explanation is easy to understand, easy to understand. (Angelo, Interview 5, 15 May 2010)

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We spoke many times over the year about Rosa, and I would say that she was one of the ED faculty members that Angelo admired the most. My friendship with her may have primed Angelo to talk about her more with me than he would have about other members of the faculty, but she did stand out among the faculty to many students. Angelo admired Rosa’s habitus – the ways in which she presented herself. To him, Rosa was somebody who had high standards, who did not put up with anybody’s ‘stuff’, and who he imagined that I myself as a ‘Westerner’ could have direct, Western-style confrontations with if a conflict arose, instead of the indirect communication style commonly attributed to Javanese culture and which he distanced himself from ideologically.

Text 4.26 They tend to be more direct Angelo: sementara kalau orang, orang di budaya timur seperti di, di Ambon, atau di Poso, atau mungkin di western culture, mereka cenderung lebih direct. Lauren: uh: Angelo: dalam artianLauren: I think sangat tergantung. Angelo: if there is a conflict or ada sesuatu nggak suka atau apa, nggak disuka dari seseorang, for example, we have a problem, then you as- sebagai orang dari budaya western apakah akan nggrundel with Rosa or [prof] or et cetera, and said Angelo is like this or Angelo is like that atau you just talk to me directly? ‘I feel irritated because you uh-uh-uh-uh-uh.’ gitu. Lauren: kalau saya sendiri, biasanya lebih direct. Angelo: the second one, kan? Lauren: iya. Angelo: nah, I myself prefer the same method … Angelo: all the while if people, people in eastern culture like in Ambon or in Poso, or maybe in western culture, they tend to be more direct. Lauren: uh: Angelo: in the senseLauren: I think that really depends. Angelo: if there is a conflict or there’s something they don’t like or what, something someone they don’t like about someone, for example, we have a problem, then you as- as a person from a western culture are you going to talk behind their back with Rosa or [prof] or et cetera, and say Angelo is like this or Angelo is like that or you just talk to me directly? ‘I feel irritated because you uh-uh-uh-uh-uh.’ like that. Lauren: for me personally, usually more direct.

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Angelo: the second one, right? Lauren: yeah. Angelo: now, I myself prefer the same method. (Angelo, Interview 2, 27 November 2009) Another time when Rosa came up as the topic of conversation, he described her very positively, using such adjectives as ‘tough’, ‘elegant’ and ‘mandiri’ ((independent)), and he also stated (more than once over the course of the year) that he admired Rosa because of a response she had once given to a class he was in, where she claimed, as I paraphrased in my fieldnotes, ‘There are 30,000 people on this campus. Do you think I’m gonna spend my time making sure every one of them likes me?’ (the number is an exaggeration, but it is what I noted in my Fieldnotes, 10 January 2010; Angelo repeated that this statement was important to him in Interview 4, 16 March 2010). I highlight in Angelo’s positioning of Rosa, and of himself in relation to her, an aspect of his ‘Ideal Self’ (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2009). This is a characteristic that he already may see himself as possessing to some degree, but that he wishes to increase in himself (see Section 1.4.2). The discrepancy between his current self and an ideal, or ‘possible’ self (MacIntyre et al., 2009) that still kept his own self-perceived identity somewhat wanting for what he saw in Rosa’s, formed a potential source of motivation for Angelo. This motivation indeed went beyond, but encompassed, English. Angelo admired Rosa’s ‘high standards’ in general (Interview 2, 27 November 2009), and he also wanted to acquire perhaps a bit of ‘English the way Rosa does it’. This English was represented to a small extent in the form of language Rosa used as an English instructor; however, Angelo more often addressed the ways in which she acted when she spoke both English and Indonesian, inside and outside of the classroom. Angelo explained some of Rosa’s directness by aligning it with her Ambonese ethnicity, which he included in the above conversation as one of the Indonesian cultures who were more ‘straight-talking’ than Javanese culture. He also aligned this straightforwardness with globalized, ‘cosmopolitan’ or Western elite culture, which to him embodied: independence, impressive standards, direct speech, and self-confidence in the fact that it is probable that one will displease people from time to time. And these were the qualities that Angelo wished to emulate in any language.

4.5.3 Discussion: Expanding repertoires and motivation For Satriya, English created new spaces in which he could express himself: it opened up new worlds in terms of technology and education, and it was a language in which he had learned to express himself in ways that had

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previously been discouraged in his lifetime. For Angelo, English was perhaps a means to an end: a secure way to get through college, as well as a foot still in the door were he to return to a ‘humanistik’ career, as he labelled his interests in the fields of music, entertainment or maybe even education (in opposition to a non-‘humanistik’ career like, for example, business, which he strongly asserted that he would like to avoid). These students’ needs, goals and the changes they underwent while majoring in English remained neatly within Indonesian borders and their perceptions of Indonesianness; however, their goals in becoming proficient in English remained impossible to separate from historically Western, and especially contemporary US-origin, forms of and uses for English. The examples of Angelo and Satriya above demonstrate that participants’ language use and also the habitus characteristics (Bourdieu, 1991), presentations of self (Goffman, 1959), and new and different ways of thinking that they learned through their experiences in the ED interwove and formed individuals not just with new languages but with new repertoires that included and transcended clearly defined, code-bound notions of languages and of second language acquisition. When second language acquisition takes place, a socialization complex that is at once uniquely individual and strongly influenced by prior socialization, while simultaneously tied to, here, collective ED, Javanese and Indonesian experiences, informs language acquisition, socialization and the expansion of communicative skills across ideologically and structurally separated languages such as English, Indonesian and Javanese. ED students take most of the same classes, share the same professors and geographical location; but all have a diversity of biographies, current interests and future desires. It is these individual forces that shape learners’ motivations: their desires to continue their own socialization trajectories among certain social groups or types of people that they identify with, and their desires to expand their communicative repertoires, a process based partly in learning new ‘language codes’ but which, as we have seen, affects language use, communication and identification in far more complicated ways. The above analysis is relevant to language acquisition and language socialization, including the influences that language learning exerts broadly across individuals’ communicative repertoires, or sets of resources, and how they deploy these resources across contexts. In the specific set of case studies at hand, where participants are learners of English, their attitudes and motivations as English language learners and speakers tie directly into conversations surrounding the nature of the spread and teaching of English both in EFL contexts and more globally. In our conversations, participants demonstrated their motivations to use certain languages in certain places and spaces. Integral to these discussions,

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though, were their descriptions of the people and characteristics that they did and planned to identify with in order to achieve their future ideal selves and places in the world, as language users and as members of local, national and global societies. In their daily lives, much of the skills taught through these students’ ED courses and extracurricular experiences with English provided them with critical thinking skills that offered a different lens, in any language, through which to examine their local cultures, and their own places within them, enabling them to approach local issues in new and critical ways. The English language created a space for these students to imagine themselves as members of a global English-speaking community, and simultaneously to assert their own locally grounded identities in an indexically global register. It was also a place to expand their identities and communicative repertoires beyond – to scale out of – the options available in Javanese and Indonesian national spaces. These students remained entirely Javanese and Chinese and Indonesian but English allowed them to reimagine what those identities could mean to them, and how they would prefer to position themselves both locally and globally.

4.6 Globalization, Economic Interests and the English Language With ‘English’ in Indonesia, talk about the language itself tends to reinforce beliefs that English has value as a commodified good. It is, to some, a language that will benefit all who have it and therefore it should be taught to everyone in public schools. It is also at the same time a symbol of imperialism and even, to some, corrupt Western morality, and therefore it should be banned from signs, kept out of the Indonesian language, and kept out of Indonesians’ mouths as much as possible. Public figures should not speak it – if they do, their ‘Indonesianness’ is at risk, and as role models for the public ideal this can be very harmful to widespread nationalist sentiment. However, English is also an instrumental necessity in order to access information that has not been translated into Indonesian, and so everyone should have at least some proficiency in it. Unfortunately for national purists, it is impossible to learn a language without learning new ways of being, and thereby reimagining oneself in the world. That is, after all, what their own goals were, explicitly stated as such, with the establishment of Indonesian as the national language. Government officials, as public role models, show off their English proficiency (or desire for it) and thereby indicate that all Indonesians should know some English. Such constant attention to the language and such regular policy making regarding its place in the nation make it quite clear that English is seen as

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something that people absolutely need, but also as something that some fear to be growing out of control – it is ‘popping up like mushrooms’, as Rosa once described the appearance of private English learning centers, or growing ‘like a weed’ (Zepeda, 2012). However, this lack of control seems to be caused less by the growing number of private English centers throughout the nation, and more because of the unwelcome power of external forces that it represents and, because of this, it is something to approach hesitantly and to constantly warn against. The apparent ambivalence between keeping foreign borrowings and foreign languages out, but still improving Indonesians’ English proficiency that we have seen in this chapter demonstrate the double bind – which Lauder (2008) goes further and calls ‘language schizophrenia’ – that Indonesia finds itself in: internationalization of state education standards cannot be effectively instantiated without English, but when English is used, a lack of resources for fluent English acquisition has inhibited students’ learning. The ‘foreign language’, English, is of essential importance domestically, but it hitchhikes (Mendoza-Denton, 2011) along with internationalized standards and the money needed to pay for or access them. In tertiary education, the inevitability of English is resisted to no avail, and SBI secondary schools rushed to implement English-medium schooling, also to no avail. English is taught now at most levels of public schooling with very low success rates, and there is a widespread and rapidly increasing number of private English learning institutions wherein better English proficiency is guaranteed by one’s ability to pay for it. The English language may be seen as a tool for mobility and a key to higher education, but it is only so for people who already have access to higher educations and mobilities, and to private schools that can provide both English-proficient teachers and quality content. English is part and parcel of better education and increased mobility; standing alone, however, it has little significance for increasing mobility and wealth among the population. Despite this, so much attention to English alone generally endorses the idea that it is in fact English alone that works to get people what they aspire to have and where they aspire to be in life, and it is also English alone that threatens a ‘pure’ Indonesian identity. To these English majors as students and as local citizens, and thereby as participants in Javanese and Indonesian political and cultural institutions, it was obvious that worrying about whether the English on public signs and chic clothing was formally ‘correct’ completely missed the point of English’s placement in these locations in the first place. Local semiotic Englishing, for most of the population on Java, had very little in common with the formal English that these eight English majors more rigorously studied and learned to communicate in. In public on Java, both formally correct and semiotic

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occurrences of English signify prestige and aspirations to wealth and social and geographic mobility. Performances of English within local meaning and value systems position performers into an identity of having: having access to wealth, having access to education, being a member of a class of Indonesian citizens that can have or at least can imagine having these material goods. In this context, a t-shirt sold at a clothing boutique where prices are a little more expensive than other places indicates that there is a class of purchasers among whom English can signify prestigious aspirations because (1) they can afford to buy this t-shirt, and (2) they presumably would want to do so based not only on the store it is sold in but also based on its design, inclusive of the English language on it. While English is seen everywhere, it is still the case, just as Dian discussed regarding the t-shirt, that it is not only English that does the talking. For the discerning consumer, English is indeed a semiotic hitchhiker: it is everywhere, and many want it, but English alone cannot sell a product. The store, or the shirt, must actually convey some other types of quality in order for a purchase to be made. We have seen throughout this book that in order to understand globalization it is necessary to go beyond the use of English, and in order to understand the role of English in globalization, the intricacies of its presence, usage and meanings must be locally explored. The highest levels of prosperity and mobility in the world today quite likely cannot take place without some English proficiency. However, English per se has frequently been synecdochically mistaken for access to wider educational opportunity and to the wealth and privilege that enable people to procure better educations and greater mobility in the first place. Furthermore, the state’s role as simultaneously promoter of, gatekeeper against, and bystander to this access to English language demonstrates how the state itself is an entity completely enmeshed in global scapes of finance, media and migration, and one that is constantly battling for its own survival and even predominance.

Notes (1) It is also worth mentioning that this curriculum, specific to the FSP, seems to privilege Western music over other locally rooted musical traditions as well as others around the globe. Of the FSP music performances I went to, all were of Western classical or Broadway musical type songs. (2) This was in reference to the 2008 global economic crisis in which many banks throughout the world had to be bailed out by their respective governments. Century Bank was a big example in Indonesia, and the topic of whether or not the banks should have been bailed out was a debate topic on which Satriya had worked with his high school students. (3) These ‘critical thinking’ skills that Satriya speaks of were intended to have been placed into the national curriculum, through the Indonesian language, when the

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reformasi period began in 1999. However, as Gaylord (2008) points out, for many reasons – including teachers being accustomed to teaching in the lecture format they had been using previously, as well as ineffective implementation of curricula and teacher training – this was not a change that happened across the board. Satriya, who would have been in primary and secondary school in the early 2000s, claimed that his schooling was largely of the older variety, where students were to listen, to not question, and to not ask questions – but simply to receive the knowledge deposited into their minds by their teachers. This is possibly one reason why, in Satriya’s treatment of languages, English is so closely intertwined with critical thinking while Indonesian does not at all have such an association.

5 The State Marches On

5.1 Endless Efforts to Re-scale In our semester-final Sociolinguistics paper, Ayu described a future linguistic repertoire that she imagined for herself, as well as what languages Indonesia needs in order to prosper:

Text 5.1 I will still use those three languages in the future For the conclusion, I will still use those three languages in the future. I will use Indonesian to speak with people from Indonesia, I will use Javanese to speak with people from java, and I will use English to help me earn my living because it is the international language, and this country will develop well if its residents are smart. Using English will enable people to master many subjects in the world, such as tourism, technology, science, and many other fields. So, people will get a good job easily when they are able to communicate. To communicate itself doesn’t mean only speak with the local people, but it is more on the communication in the world because from that, people will learn from foreigners directly. It means, they are not only learning by theory, since they directly practice it with those they learn from. (Ayu, Sociolinguistics Final, 17 December 2009) Hegemonized language ideologies, and infrastructure based on these ideologies, travel throughout institutions of power mostly associated with the state, including – if not primarily – education, and they act complicitly with mass media, internet technologies, and domestic and international corporatization, none of which functions independently from states nor the histories that formed them. Societal discourses of language use and language preference, within these hierarchies and amid idealized models of Indonesianness and of sub-national cultural uniqueness, and which aim to keep the foreign foreign, are not immune to – in fact they are entirely interdependent 206

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with – flows and scapes that privilege use of modernized and globalized languages. Indonesian in Indonesia is the ideologically and institutionally dominant linguistic form; Javanese, like other local languages, is relegated to the peripheries and the past; English flows increasingly through Indonesian ‘center’ and prestigious, aspired-to contexts, and is increasingly present in signage and other public semiotic displays. But among these other languages, it is the strengthening of Indonesian’s place in Indonesian society that has been the primary focus of nationalization all along: Politik bahasa yang tegas yang mampu menyuburkan rasa cinta kepada bahasa Indonesia dan yang sanggup melenyapkan rasa kurang harga diri, terhadap bahasa asing, hendaklah mengatur kedudukan Bahasa Indonesia dan hubungan bahasa ini dengan bahasa-bahasa daerah, baik di sekolah, sejak dari sekolah rendah sampai ke perguruan tinggi ataupun di dalam masyarakat. A language politics that is strict and able to nourish feelings of love toward Indonesian and is willing to destroy feelings of lesser self-respect in relation to foreign languages, must regulate the position of Indonesian and its relations with local language, both in school, from primary to higher education or among society. (KBI: 12, Kongres II, 1954) In the set of National Language Congress proceedings, we have found official nationalism embraced and perpetuated through the Indonesian language, with attention to local languages directed largely toward what can be taken from them in order to support the development of the Indonesian language and nation. Given that the Language Institute itself, through all of its incarnations, has had little influence on public life and language, one must see these statements as largely reflective of the goals of nationalism in general and, here, of the goals of the Indonesian state in ‘cultivating’ not just its language, but its citizens, toward a model that thinks ‘rationally’ and is ‘civilized’, presumably like the citizens – or at least the perceived models for them – of the states with which the Indonesian government wishes to compare itself and frequently to model itself after. This is a symptom inherent in the postcolonial, modular approach to statehood, wherein ‘new states’ (Geertz, 1977) generally mold themselves based on contemporary views of historical formations in European and North American state structures in the interest of conforming to the economic and political behaviors typical of these same nations – and this is a perpetual game of catch-up. As the West, or the OECD countries, or the industrial or post-industrial nations

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(Heryanto, 1995, addresses this terminology issue) continue to change their policies and practices, the ‘developing’ state is constantly left to adopt them after they have already been written and implemented (well or not) in these ‘advanced’ countries. The nation-state strives to individuate itself among others while entirely ‘fitting in’ by following these practices. All the while, it works internally to create and cultivate an imagined community that agrees wholeheartedly with its premises and is willing to take on the selfdiscipline and behaviors taught in schools and necessary for proper and obedient citizenship. The foundations for making claims to statehood in Indonesia (as in other nations) were largely informed by the genuine will of a large number of people to be freed from another group that had oppressed them in many ways and for far too long. As well, the state’s geographical and political consolidation and Malay’s national lingua franca status were basically already in place prior to 1945 after many centuries of trade as well as power shift, transfer and consolidation over the vast Indonesian archipelago. By the second decade of the 20th century at the latest, Indonesia was almost already a ‘natural’ concept. However, this does not dismiss the importance of the ‘critical juncture’ (Sonntag & Cardinal, 2015) of state formation, nor the effectiveness of the often Machiavellian behaviors of the state (Anderson, 2006; Heryanto, 2006). The violence and collusion put upon the Indonesian people postcolonially in the interest of consolidating nation-statehood and public consent to it has been quite harmful; the nation has been united largely at the state’s will, with a combination of both helpful institutionalization and viciously harmful silencing of dissent (J. Bertrand, 2004; Heryanto, 2006; Oppenheimer, 2012, 2014, 2015). As Errington (1998) points out, though, none of this ‘forced integration’ in any way dismisses Indonesian nationalism, nor local identities as inauthentic. It is not the case that an entire Indonesian nation has been ‘duped’ into buying into their own Indonesianness; nor is it the case that Javanese culture lives only in the past or only in kromo. However, the current symbology of both cultures rarely represents their contemporary realities. My students, while they wore jeans and listened to pop music, told me without hesitation that Javanese culture meant wearing kebayas (Javanese formal skirts and tops), listening to gamelan, and eating rice snacks usually purchasable at off-street vendors that are getting harder and harder to find. Since nationalization, the language forms within Indonesia’s borders have been massively re-scaled, re-hierarchized and (re-)standardized. This history of re-scaling under state-nationalism has been of course not just a re-scaling of language forms and semiotic registers (Agha, 2005, 2006), but of the fabric of Indonesian life. Although the idea that everyone should speak

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‘proper’ kromo is largely a product of priyayi gentry staking out their place in Javanese society, and though ridicule of people who do not speak kromo properly has been around for quite some time, this ridicule has now been reorganized. The ‘old-fashioned’ rural people, who used to garner the most ridicule for their language are now often attributed the best knowledge of the Javanese language by my students (and concomitantly, though, ridicule for their medhok or ndeso Indonesian). Their perceived lives on the periphery – a sort of conflation of their location in the desa (countryside) with their imagined location in the past (as old-fashioned) – now makes them the carriers of the flame of formal Javanese, which seems to reside in some sort of orientalist sophisticated antiquity with its speakers. Those who now speak Javanese lamentably are less frequently rural people as was the case pre-nationally, but now they are instead younger generations in urban locations, perhaps especially the well-educated ones. The Javanese language is no longer imagined as something boys should know better than girls (Poedjosoedarmo, 2006), or that only certain classes of people should be able to speak. Anyone who goes to school, and is thus removed from a context of Javanese language use for most of their waking hours, now risks being chastised for their lack of proficiency in Javanese. This has led to difficult identity negotiations for some students: the institutionalization of Indonesian life has re-scaled youths’ daily practices, placing them on a path of upward mobility that frequently leads them far, far away from local language proficiency. The modern nation-state system has worked, and continues to work (not always explicitly, or ‘on purpose’), toward shifting Javanese language practices into an icon of the past. This has been shown here in students’ general impressions that their muatan lokal classes are useless, in the tacit teaching that ngoko is children’s language, and in the teaching of kromo as something that accompanies gamelan and wayang, but not necessarily contemporary interaction. In order for it to gain any recognition at all in this national system, the Javanese language has been pulled into a system of beliefs about language that necessitates its own standardization and marginalization. The diglossia that language planners hoped for is, here, in substantial shift and continual change, and this is not only evident in the changing landscape of Javanese use but also in the continual development of local dialects of Indonesian that do not adhere to the central standard norm. In discourses about English, its treatment as a global good and thus its separation from the contexts to which it is attached when it is used risks erasing an understanding that there are many other goods that one must have access to, such as financial and social capital, in order to truly gain a position among a globally mobile elite, ‘cosmopolitan’ society. The English language per se indeed does very little to or for people (Pennycook, 2007);

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however, access to the places where it might be used in the first place make all the difference in the world, and these are the real commodities attached to English. In Central Java I found a context where one must first have access to education at all to have any understanding of formal English. Those receiving education, but located in marginalized school settings such as rural and low socio-economic urban educational settings, have access to some English, but it is a formal English that is ‘more divergent’ from internationally ratified standard Englishes, that is, a formal but more peripheral English (cf. Blommaert et al., 2005). Moving toward the center, I found in the examples of SBI and tertiary schooling that even those Indonesians with access to the highest levels of education and presumably of English learning resources as well are prevented from accessing, to the extent necessary, the resources they need for a truly quality, elite education. Both infrastructure and the top-down politics of language prevent them from doing so. Indonesian as a national, standardized language, of course, has undergone great change, with heavy corpus, status and acquisition planning (Cooper, 1989; Haugen, 1983; Johnson, 2013), and ‘policy planning (on form) and cultivation planning (on function)’ (Ricento & Hornberger, 1996: 402). As institutions have made their way into daily Indonesian life, the Indonesian language has continued to expand into the home and further and deeper into the crevices of people’s and communities’ daily lives. In so doing, the use of Indonesian, said to be a former explicitly thought out act that indexed clearly that one was interacting on a national or nationalist plane of existence (Anderson, 1966), is now increasingly the default, unmarked mode of interaction. As it has transitioned into this position, though, more so in urban spaces, it has also been and continues to be inflected with regional accent, vocabulary and morphosyntax, and many of these combinations have become nationally recognizable as salient regional dialects of Indonesian. Such dialect visibility and diversification has led to the labeling of these dialects as inferior to ‘good and correct Indonesian’; they are forever imperfect in the eyes of the center and of language planners. Key to understanding all of the above processes of inclusion, exclusion, language learning, and reshaping and evaluating language forms, have been ideology and access. Ideologies about all of these language forms are both reactive and productive. That is, they have been somewhat silently accompanied by, yet worked in tandem with, shifts in access to language forms and shifts in the production of language forms as state institutions have spread farther and wider. People frequently talk about languages’ imagined ease and difficulty, but they rarely mention the changing amounts of access that people have and have had to these languages as their environments have shifted. This has inevitably resulted in a situation where languages that are used and

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heard less come to be seen as really hard, while languages that are used in school and on television become the norm – easy and approachable. In combining the terms access and ideology, then, we have also seen throughout this book that ‘languages’ do not necessarily exist. That is, the idea of separately bound codes that live, can be legislated about, and can be learned separately from identity and outside of practices of code-switching, trans- or poly-languaging, are simply not possible, and these former ideas are not relevant if we want to understand what happens to language learners when they learn, as in the case of English, or do not learn, as in the case of kromo, a language. To understand and improve language learning practices, it is access to language forms, and identity negotiations and motivations, that drive our learning trajectories, and not necessarily a sequence of syntactic formations devoid of context. In all communicative situations, people constantly mix registers, transfer skills learned in one linguistic context to another, and make linguistic choices in order to convey things like knowledge and identity. The concept of communicative repertoire is therefore one that is most telling with regard to what happens in learners’ communicative strategies and abilities when they learn new language forms, and it is also a very telling one for understanding how students negotiate their multiply available linguistic resources amid the micro-, meso- and macro-level influences under which their interactions and identities are conceptualized. In this book, by scale I have meant multiple planes on which activities are evaluated at the same time. That is, something can have low value on a national scale but be locally very meaningful and even indexical of prestige. By re-scaling, I have meant the re-organization of these scales that happens over time, never ends, and is currently strongly influenced by top-down, macro-level forces. Take, for instance, the Indonesian that a Javanese college student in Salatiga might now speak. As we saw with Satriya, he found this variety of Indonesian to be valued low on a national scale, when he is spending time with students from bigger cities and more prestigious universities. In his home town, this same variety is ‘Indonesian’, the language of higher education and intellect, and therefore, on a local scale, Satriya’s JavaneseIndonesian is highly evaluated. But when we switch to a national scale, Javanese-Indonesian is medhok, country bumpkin language. Prior to nationalization and the continual advancement of technology, travel and communication that has been taking place over the past century, it is likely that communication on a national scale and on a global scale were not very salient in people’s lives. The national scale or the global scale may only have existed for some people at some times; the more important scales of value were oriented to local and regional centers, as with the rules made for Javanese by the priyayi surrounding the Surakarta and Yogyakarta palaces. The

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ideologies from these more local centers that preceded the state remain in ideologies of Javanese language use as we saw in Chapter 3, although they are altered under national re-scaling. As for English, as technologies have grown and the presence of English has become more salient, people can now orient to an ‘English scale’ or a ‘global scale’ or a ‘cosmopolitan scale’ in which English proficiency is a primary indexical measure. Some individuals might not even have access to this scale at all: these might be people in rural locations with little access to internet communications and higher educations; but for the college students in this study, this ‘global scale’ is a salient part of their lives. They orient themselves to it when they try to decide ‘whose’ English they should be speaking; they orient themselves to the national scale when they decide that it is okay to speak English like an Indonesian; and they orient to a local, sub-national scale when they measure semiotic Englishing for what it is worth – that is, ‘they don’t care about the meaning, they don’t care about the … structure, as long as it is written in English it’s awesome’. Again, these scales, like separate ‘languages’, are all highly overlapping. The local can rarely at this point be measured without the influence of a national scale – that is, while Javanese-Indonesian is valuable locally, many of its speakers will, at some level of awareness, note that their Indonesian is not the same as a more central and prestigious form of Indonesian spoken in Jakarta, at the University of Indonesia and on their television screens. And of course, while semiotic Englishing locally can have value to some as ‘just English’, to many who have had access to English resources – that is, access to some level of the study of English – and who are thereby capable of orienting to ‘the English language’ on a national or global or ‘translocal’ scale, this English is wrong, silly, ridiculous, completely unvaluable. The scales all exist at once, and people deploy their orientations to and within them, in accordance with how much access they have had to the resources within them. In order to gain an understanding of what globalization and postcoloniality mean for languages in Central Java and in Indonesia more broadly in this book, I have explored the production of language as entirely inseparable from its local context of production, a context which inherits a deep, complex and continuing history of colonization and then Indonesian state-driven nationalization consisting of repetitive top-down attempts to shape, or (re-)scale language use. Re-scaling efforts continue to take place in reaction to and in production of global and local flows of all of Appadurai’s (1996) ethno-, media, techno-, finance and ideo-scapes. Regarding top-down policies and their influence, the differences in what language policies say and how people actually use language exemplify tensions between the ideologically perceived

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languages about which policies are made, and the sociolinguistically situated linguistic resources or features that are drawn out in acts of linguistic performance. The latter tend to be more messy and fluid than what the notion of countable and definable ‘languages’ provides for us, and in fact the notion of discrete ‘languages’ frequently ‘erases’ many of the facts and circumstances that we must know about in order to accurately assess a given situation such as language shift (Chapter 3) or language learning and socialization (Chapter 4; see Blommaert, 2010; Gal & Irvine, 2000; Goebel, 2015; Ives, 2015; McCarty, 2011; Moore et al., 2010; Pennycook, 2010). The nation-state has been highly instrumental in re-orienting its citizens to the activities of daily life. Its exo-socialization through public schooling has drawn students away from previously common local language practices, but they are still evaluated on those older scales by older people, and even by themselves, having still frequently been exposed to those local evaluative systems or scales. The nation-state also re-orients its citizens both to and away from the global or international. It orients people away from the international by promoting beliefs that English is a threat to national identity, yet it also must succumb to such global scales and make its citizens competitive within them. Its struggle is perpetual as it tries to maintain an order of scales in which it is central: local languages must be ‘translated up’ into it as we saw in Chapters 2 and 3, and the global scale that keeps penetrating its borders must be kept foreign to ideologies of ‘pure’ Indonesianness. The state is thus, as we saw in this book’s introduction, a primary orienting force, as it continually acts to resist centers of power and orientation within and without that are far beyond its control.

5.2 To Our Friend, Richard Ruíz And so, keeping in mind the quote that this book began with, we see that the agenda of the state in nationalism marches on. Our friend Richard Ruíz has left with us one more way in which to observe Indonesia’s seemingly endless language negotiations and legislations: Orientation … refers to a complex of dispositions toward language and its role, and toward languages and their role in society. … Orientations are basic to language planning in that they delimit the ways we talk about language and language issues, they determine the basic questions we ask, the conclusions we draw from the data, and even the

214 St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

data themselves. Orientations are related to language attitudes in that they constitute the framework in which attitudes are formed: they help to delimit the range of acceptable attitudes toward language, and to make certain attitudes legitimate. In short, orientations determine what is thinkable about language in society. (Ruíz, 1984: 16, italics in original; see also Johnson, 2013: 37) Politicians’ and language planners’ orientations toward languages in Indonesia, and more broadly in modernity, first of all created languages. After this, and under nation-statehood, government and language planners’ orientations have created lots of: •

• •

problems: local languages are a problem for acquisition of the national language and so they may only be used transitionally, only sometimes, only until Grade 3, and only as a crutch until Indonesian proficiency can replace them; nobody speaks Indonesian well or correctly; English threatens nationalism; a lack of English proficiency among Indonesians puts them at risk of competing internationally and learning even locally; rights: the Indonesian nation and state have a right to sovereignty under a national language; local speakers have a right to use their language and to maintain it, as long as they organize themselves to do so; resources: local literatures are to be used to enrich national literature; English is a resource for knowledge acquisition; and Indonesian is a resource for communication and national identity formation.

With this, I hope the reader will indulge me as I avoid the trend of a normal conclusion in an effort to demonstrate that this story is not a closed and sealable package, but that it instead represents ongoing and perpetual activities: history in the making. I conclude, beyond the above, that the state’s efforts to forge its desired national identity are open ended and ever continuing. To show this, I briefly explore the latest, and our final, round of the state’s attempts to enforce the dominance of Indonesian within its borders: a debate that was taking place during my initial drafting of this book in late 2015, concerning changes in language requirements for foreign workers employed inside Indonesian borders.

5.3 The Endless Project The Indonesian state’s and language planners’ most recent attempt to control and expand Indonesian language and identity surrounds a

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new attempt to make foreign workers pass an Indonesian language proficiency test: Under a controversial new proposal, foreigners working in Indonesia may need to master the Indonesian language. The Minister of Manpower and Transmigration plans to introduce Indonesian language tests for foreign professionals, in a move aimed at boosting knowledge transfer between foreign and local workers. The proposed regulations are likely to apply to all foreign workers, including those employed by natural resources companies. (Toime et al., 2015) In my initial writing of this closing chapter, it was apparent that this debate on whether or not foreigners should learn Indonesian had caused quite a stir in Indonesian national media – for a time, I saw articles about it almost daily. Comments in response to the numerous articles I read online about this new law were often critical of the government’s stance on this issue, claiming that this newly proposed regulation was a blindly nationalist move that would hurt foreign investment. One bit of supporting evidence for the identity-based protectionism inherent in this move to legislate language was the claim that laws concerning foreign workers already made it so difficult to hire them that while the new language law would absolutely discourage more foreign workers and investors from coming, or even cause a mass exodus of those already there, the work of protecting Indonesian jobs had already been done through these nonlanguage related laws: If the aim of the Indonesian government is to limit the number of foreign workers in the country in order to protect its own workforce, the language requirement is not really necessary, [Peter, a Dutch resident of Indonesia] added. ‘[The new regulation] is too much because it’s already difficult [for companies] to hire foreigners – they are more expensive than local staff, and there are a lot of regulations that companies must comply with,’ Peter said. ‘So companies that hire foreigners actually really need [the foreigners]. If locals can fill the positions, they will easily prefer locals.’ (Maulia, 2015) One driving force for the suggestion of this law seems to have been a newly open economic market in ASEAN, which was felt locally to put Indonesians at an economic disadvantage exactly because of their low levels

216

St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

of English. Laws to make foreign workers learn Indonesian would even out this unequal playing field: Menurut [Prasetyantoko, Kepala Ekonom Bank Tabungan Negara yang juga Dekan Fakultas Ilmu Administrasi Bisnis dan Komunikasi Universitas Atmajaya] jika pemerintah sudah menerapkan konsep ini mau tidak mau warga negara asing wajib mempelajari bahasa Indonesia apabila ingin mendapatkan pekerjaan. Hambatan ini juga bertujuan untuk mempertahankan bahasa Indonesia dalam pasar MEA [Masyarakat Ekonomi ASEAN] 2015 agar tidak punah. ‘Sudah pasti dalam MEA penggunaan bahasa Inggris sangat dominan, dari fakta yang ada tidak semua masyarakat Indonesia bisa berbahasa Inggris. Sekarang dibalikan giliran orang asing yang harus bisa berbahasa Indonesia,’ ujar dia. … According to [Prasetyantoko, Chief Economist of the State Savings Bank and Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration and Communication, University of Atma Jaya], if the government has already implemented this idea, like it or not foreign citizens are required to study Indonesian if they want to be able to work. This barrier is also intended to maintain Indonesian in the 2015 ASEAN Economic Community so that it doesn’t go extinct. ‘It’s already clear that in the ASEAN Economic Community English is very dominant, and from the facts we have not every Indonesian can speak English. Now the tables are turned so it’s foreigners who have to be able to speak Indonesian,’ he said … (Berita Satu, 2015) The notion in the above article of a threat coming from within ASEAN itself is also notable in my conversation with the banker that I met in Jakarta in Chapter 4, who had also worried that, due to ASEAN’s recently opened borders, workers from the Philippines, who had better access to English to begin with in their home country, would now come and take all of the jobs from the Indonesians if Indonesians’ English learning was decreased any further. Amid all this worry about Indonesian’s ‘survival’ amid foreign influences and Indonesian citizens’ ability to compete for elite jobs, though, I came to find out that this recent attempt at legislating over foreigners’ Indonesian use in the country was a repeat idea, with a repeat repeal, and it also accompanied other protectionist measures such as we saw above in Peter’s statement: that of making work permit paperwork for foreign employees extremely difficult to complete. An article from 2003 demonstrated, also similarly to the 2015 repeal, that at that time there were also fears of the potential ill effects

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such a law would have for the presence of foreign workers and thereby investment from foreign companies on Indonesian soil – an economic need despite Indonesian identity concerns: Rencana tersebut pantas dihargai, menunjukkan rasa nasionalisme dan perhatiannya yang cukup mendalam pada bangsa dan negara Indonesia khususnya tentang penggunaan bahasa Indonesia. Menurut penulis, sebelum dilaksanakan sebaiknya dibahas dan dipertimbangkan secara mendalam untung ruginya menerapkan kewajiban tersebut. Jangan sampai terjadi maksudnya baik, namun hasil akhirnya justru menjadi bumerang bagi Indonesia. This plan deserves respect, showing a sense of nationalism and deep concern for the Indonesian nation and state, especially concerning the use of Indonesian. According to this author, before this is carried out it would be best to discuss and consider in depth the pros and cons of implementing such obligations. Let us not end up with good intentions, but with a final result that ends as a boomerang for Indonesia. (Dwipayana, 2003) The state’s one nation–one language arguments were in deep conflict with Indonesia’s need to compete in an open ASEAN market (cf. Burgess, 2003) and more broadly. Amid all the hype and controversy in the summer of 2015, a Jakarta Post article made a new announcement, based on orders directly from the president himself. Not only was the language test requirement to be repealed all of a sudden for foreign workers, but their visa process to gain entry into the country would now also be relaxed immediately – a complete reversal from all of the protectionist measures and fears described above. I include this lengthy excerpt in order to show the long cascade of changes so immediately made – a complex that reaches far beyond, but includes, language legislation: As a sign that Indonesia is embracing expatriates to help lure foreign investment, the government has lifted several restrictions on foreigners working in the country. Aside from scrapping requirements for foreigners working in Indonesia to master Indonesian, the government will also ease the process of obtaining a Temporary Stay Permit (KITAS). Newly appointed Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung said on Friday that such policies were part of the government’s commitment to ‘deregulate’ all bureaucratic processes that have hampered the flow of foreign investment.

218 St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

‘The language requirement and the process to obtain a KITAS [Temporary Stay Permit] only make the process of attracting foreign investment harder and longer,’ he said. Manpower Minister Hanif Dhakiri said his office has followed up an instruction from President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo to eliminate the requirement for foreigners to master the Indonesian language. Hanif said that he had already issued Ministerial Regulation No. 16/2015 on procedures for the employment of foreign workers on June 29 as a revision to a 2013 regulation stipulating the language requirement. ‘The regulation issued in June does not require foreign workers to master the Indonesian language. Therefore, there is no need to worry about such a requirement,’ Hanif told The Jakarta Post on Friday. … The new regulation, Hanif added, would also ensure faster and simpler procedures for foreign workers to get work permits as the entire process would be conducted online. The new regulation has also overturned an earlier policy requiring foreign workers to have a university degree in order to be able to receive the working permit. Foreign workers will only be required to have an ‘education background that is fit for the job’, a competency certificate or five years of experience. ‘The competency requirement is needed to ensure that skills are the main reason for hiring foreign workers,’ said Hanif. ‘This also serves as a reminder to businesses that they should hire foreigners based on their competency, not their formal education.’ … (Parlina, 2015) With a new dip in 2015 in the Asian economy and the Indonesian Rupiah down more than it had been in many years, the nation’s ambivalent stance toward, but constant attempts to grasp and control identity, languages and economic certainty continue. Foreign investment is crucial, and globalization, whatever it is and whenever it started, continues to force the nation’s borders right back open every time it tries to close them.

Appendix: KBI Statements Situated within the History of Indonesian Nationalization

16th– 19th c. Early 20th c.

Dutch colonists and European missionaries wrote grammars for both Javanese and Malay. Van Ophuijsen compiles standard wordlist, grammar and spelling conventions, in conversation with previous documentation of Malay, to be used in the Dutch educational system. The dialect that became the standard was largely informed by literary Riau Malay. The language of this region was also the language most deferred to by people in the broader region as where to find the most ‘pure’ Malay. Dutch scholars first propagated this, then ‘Dutch-trained Indonesian educationalists’ continued their work after Independence (van der Putten, 2012). These are the roots for what would become the current Badan Bahasa. Establishment of Balai Pustaka (Literature Office),1 ‘the first national publishing house in Jakarta … to promote the use of Indonesian through publication of books and magazines’ (Nababan, 1991: 120).

1928

Establishment of Budi Utomo, a nationalist group consisting mostly of lower priyayi seeking Dutch/Western knowledge, Javanese cultural rebirth, and avoidance of political Islam as well as Christianity in general (Ricklefs, 2008: 197). Their founding on 20 May 1908 is declared the National Day of Awakening by party members (Intan, 2006: 32). ‘… [In] Soekarno’s speech of 15 August 1928 in Jakarta, one year after the founding of the Perserikatan Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian National Association) … he stated that language differences between ethnic groups would not hinder unification, but the sooner Malay (Indonesian) became widespread, the sooner Indonesia would achieve independence’ (Moeliono, 1986: 26, citing Schrieke, 1929, as cited by van der Wal, 1963). 219

220

St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

1930s

1938

European Depression causes Dutch to reduce their presence in Indonesia. However, as Indonesian nationalism simultaneously grows, the Dutch, seeing their control decrease, crack down more violently on dissent. KBI I Proceedings: Indonesian can take in new words from foreign languages for scientific terminology. Language needs to be regulated because there is a new way of thinking. Need for a new grammar to fulfill the needs of current Indonesian usage. Hope to spread respect for Indonesian (bahasa Indonesia, henceforth BI) so it can become language of law. A higher education college of literature needs to be created for development and creation of national culture, as does an Institute for the Indonesian Language (Institut Bahasa Indonesia). ‘To a degree, this congress can be considered as a planning conference whose goal was to implement the Oath of the Youth of 1928. The Congress resolved that it was necessary (1) to create a faculty of language and letters; (2) to establish a standardized grammar and orthography; (3) to write a comprehensive dictionary; and (4) to create a modern terminology’ (Alisjahbana, 1971: 181).

1942– 1945/ WWII

1945

1946

1947

These calls were largely not acted upon. Japanese occupation – committees created to reform and modernize Indonesian. This was in the interest of Japanese control and erasure of Dutch, but it (and the Japanese understood this) would also reinforce Indonesian as the national language. The Japanese appointed a terminology commission in 1943, but their work was not completed by 1945 when they had to stand down (Nababan, 1991). Alisjahbana led this committee. Independence and Undang-Undang Dasar 1945, the National Constitution (UUD1945). UUD1945, Section 15, Article 36: Bahasa negara ialah bahasa Indonesia (The national/state language is Indonesian). The royal courts of Yogyakarta begin using Indonesian: ‘Indonesian replaced Javanese as the language of official communication, thereby reducing the influence of the subtle hierarchical social levels of Javanese among administrators’ (Ricklefs, 2008: 256). Soewandi (then Minister of Education) Spelling Reform standardizes spelling based on Dutch rules: ‘oe’ becomes ‘u’ for [u]; ’ becomes ‘k’ for []; reduplication is represented by 2: sehari-hari becomes sehari2 (Penerapan, n.d.). ‘On June 18, 1947, a new Language Commission (the Working Committee on the Indonesian Language) under the present author was set up, and was able to establish approximately another 5,000 new terms’ (Alisjahbana, 1974).

Appendix

1950 1952

1954

1950– 1957 1957 1965– 1967 1972

1974 1975

221

Indonesia is admitted to the UN (Ricklefs, 2008). ‘After the Transfer of Sovereignty, the work [of the Language Commission] was carried further by a larger committee on terminology, which in 1952 became a part of the Linguistic and Cultural Institute of the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy in the University of Indonesia, under Dr. Prijana’ (Alisjahbana, 1974: 401; see also Badan Bahasa, n.d.). KBI II Proceedings: Opened by Sukarno. The group is no longer coming together as private citizens but under the auspices of the Cultural Mission to the Ministry of Education, Teaching and Culture (Jabatan Kebudayaan Kementerian Pendidikan Pengajaran dan Kebudayaan). An institution must be developed to cultivate Indonesian. All Indonesians should use proper BI, but we cannot force the use of uniform language among filmmakers, as they must use language appropriate to the region and the atmosphere of the story. Press and radio cannot be entirely faulted for not using good language because they are expanding the language to new contexts. Call for panel to review spelling system. Words may be borrowed from foreign languages and ‘local languages of the same family’. Local languages must be seen positively, as resources for national culture and language. ‘Despite the shortcomings of the political system up to 1957 … the people of Indonesia had achieved one extraordinary victory. Indonesia was a single nation’ (Ricklefs, 2008: 293). Sukarno begins Guided Democracy, with a philosophy of ‘socio-nationalism’. Alisjahbana (1966) likens this to Hitler’s ‘national socialism’. Soekarno and Guided Democracy overthrown in coup blamed on Communists. Suharto assumes presidency by March 1967. Joint spelling reform with Malaysia, Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan (Perfected Spelling): ‘u’ = [u]; ‘c’ = [t]; ‘j’ = [d]; ‘y’ = [j] replace: ‘tj’ = [t]; ‘j’ = [j]; ‘dj’ = [d] (Penerapan, n.d.). ‘About 250,000 words have been coined to date’ (Alisjahbana, 1974: 401). Research Institute for Language and Culture becomes part of Department of Education and Culture. Now called the Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa (Centre for Language Cultivation and Development). This Center establishes a national terminology committee also in collaboration with the Malaysian Language Council, set out to standardize ‘the terminologies of all the disciplines in education, science and technology’ (Nababan, 1991: 120). Nababan states that by 1991 this project was almost complete.

222

1978

St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

KBI III Proceedings: Suharto opens the Congress, followed by the Minister of Education and Culture Daoed Joesoef. Language expresses cultural values, and as a part of cultural and societal values, strict policies must be made with regard to its use. BI’s development is creating more clear thinking and communication. The development of, and positive attitudes toward local languages must accompany the development of the national language. BI’s original intent was to eliminate social difference, but so far it’s creating social differences. This needs to be overcome toward a more unified and democratic society. The development of the authority of Indonesian will engender a stronger identity for Indonesia internationally. Words may be borrowed from foreign and local languages, but carefully and only if alternatives cannot be found in BI. Indonesian is the medium of all education. Local languages may be used if needed for the first three years of education, or taught as a course subject. Certain foreign languages may be taught for international communication and to get scientific and technological information from foreign books. It is hoped that the mixing of the above languages will be overcome with the example of teachers’ use of good and proper Indonesian. There are still not enough school and library books in proper Indonesian. The priority source language for new scientific terminology is English.

1983

P4 (Penghayatan dan Pengamalan Pelaksanaan Pancasila, Appreciation and Application of Pancasila Implementation) education program implemented to improve understanding and teaching of Suharto’s version of Pancasila. KBI IV Proceedings: BI is increasingly stable as a tool for social, administrative, scientific and religious communication. With this, the language has a core base that’s big and solid enough to allow people from different backgrounds to communicate. BI does not escape the influence of people who speak it, both in terms of linguistic structure and social structure. BI is doing well as a language of science, which has led to more books in Indonesian and more works translated into Indonesian. With influences on Indonesian from such a diverse populace, we must be very careful not to let BI diverge too far from its core. With this diversity means that there are many people who aren’t using the language correctly including the educated people such as college students, educators, journalists and government representatives, who have influence over the language. More and more people are speaking BI as their first language; however, their use of the language still needs to be improved toward good and proper BI.

Appendix

1985– 1986

1988

223

Errington’s (1995) fieldwork explores use of Javanese language of authority to transition into nationalized ways of democracy – a national public is developed locally using local ways of understanding and communicating. Local languages are becoming diacritics of ethnic identity in the national community that is ‘unified in diversity’. KBI V Proceedings: Opened by Suharto. BI is increasingly strong, as shown by its use from SD through university. But still many people use it incorrectly so we must continue focused and integrated research on BI toward its further development. A TOEFL-like test must be developed in order to assess people’s BI proficiency. It is hoped that with the recent establishment of the Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa (Center for Language Cultivation and Development) and the publication of the Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (Great Indonesian Dictionary) and the Tata Bahasa Baku Bahasa Indonesia (Standard Indonesian Grammar), the language will be further perfected. Literature does not always make use of standardized language, and it is hoped that readers will not mistake the former for the latter. Literature, both local and national, must continue to be improved in quality because it is a good educational device for the nation. Teachers in all fields, as well as community members and parents, must demonstrate good use of the language to children. Local languages may be taught as course subjects, and for this, local languages must be developed. Foreign languages may also be taught as course subjects, for the purpose of gaining scientific knowledge from books in other languages.

Early 1990s

1991

1993

Standard Indonesian grammar and dictionary, Tata Bahasa Baku, Bahasa Indonesia, published under Moeliono and Dardjowijojo (1988). Globally, discourses of language loss, endangerment, and preservation become popular (Cohn & Ravindranath, 2013; European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, 1992/1995, cited in Hill, 2002; Hale et al., 1992; Krauss, 1992; Muehlmann, 2004; Nettle & Romaine, 2000; Shiohara, 2012). Instruksi Menteri Dalam Negeri Nomor 20 Tahun 1991 (Instruction of the Minister of the Interior, No. 20, Year 1991) calls for pemasyarakatan bahasa Indonesia (the spread, or popularization, of Indonesian) (KBI: 60). KBI VI Proceedings: The language issues in Indonesia are those of the national language, local languages and foreign languages. These are all interrelated and they therefore cannot be separated.

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St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

1994

Mid1990s

1998

These language problems implicate all institutions: government, business, public and private. In order for language policies to succeed, we need the support of institutions that have a national reach, and we need one single language policy that will encompass the use of local, national and foreign languages, as described in the Sumpah Pemuda and the National Constitution. This must have short and long term plans, and it must have the status of an Undang-Undang Kebahasaan Indonesia (National Language Law). In order to execute such a law, the Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa needs to immediately be elevated to become a non-departmental institute under the name Lembaga Kebahasaaan Indonesia (National Language Institute), with direct responsibility to the President. Another set of institutions should be developed to support the work of the above institute: Balai Kebahasaan Indonesia (Office of Language in Indonesia) should be developed in every region Level 1 throughout Indonesia. Authors of literature must be in touch with their regional roots in order to produce high quality literature and develop a nationally shared culture. Foreign language competence needs to be expanded in order to be able to access sufficient information published in other languages. The field of Bahasa Indonesia bagi Penutur Asing (BIPA, Indonesian for NonNative Speakers) is growing and being recognized. First implementation of muatan lokal (local content curriculum). 20% of primary and secondary school curricula should be locally designed. Seen as central government’s ‘flagship’ decentralization program. In reality, though, little actually changes (Bjork, 2004). Globally, academic discourses of linguistic and cultural human rights increase (Skuttnab-Kangas & Phillipson, 1995, and Declaration by American Anthropological Association Committee for Human Rights 1998, both works cited in Hill, 2002; Shiohara, 2012). Suharto steps down in May amid Asian economic crisis, student riots and extreme inflation. KBI VII Proceedings: First mention of ‘globalization era’. To keep up with globalization and technological advances, grammar, dictionary and language guidance needs to be improved in order to increase sumber daya manusia, human capital. Public figures must speak BI well so that others will also want to do so. Improvement of BI will support noble national cultural values. BI needs to be improved as the national language and official language in order to compete with the influence of especially English. On the other hand, English ability needs to be increased, where needed.

Appendix

Post1998

2003

225

Local languages are guaranteed the right to be developed and maintained. They make up a national asset and can be utilized for communication as well as the enrichment of national culture, and so a clear plan must be carried out toward their development. BI is increasingly seen internationally as an important language, and so resources for the teaching of Indonesian to non-native speakers need to be improved. Literary appreciation and creativity must be improved. This not only enriches the soul of the nation, but leads to greater respect internationally. Reform Era. Fears of national disintegration due to new Regional Autonomy law, regional conflicts, and ‘chaotic series of presidential successions at the centre … attention to the national language was invoked as one way of maintaining national unity and integration. This fear seems to have been projected onto the increasing role of English in the public sphere, especially in highly visible contexts …’ (van der Putten, 2012: 266). Indonesian reinforced again. KBI VIII Proceedings: Pemberdayaan Bahasa Indonesia Memperkukuh Ketahanan Budaya Bangsa dalam Era Globalisasi [The Empowerment of Indonesian in Strengthening National Cultural Resilience in the Globalization Era] The national language’s position is strengthening, as intended by the 1945 UUD and the 1928 Sumpah Pemuda. But foreign languages, primarily English, are making headway into the nation, threatening both national and local languages. However, Indonesian’s importance in the world is also spreading. Decentralization since 1998 has brought many changes. The national government’s authority now is only on the national language, and now regional language use and teaching are the responsibility of local governments. The cultivation and development of Indonesian and local languages must be carried out synergistically between local and national institutions, and with eyes toward the future for the cultivation and teaching of local languages and literatures. The continued elimination of the inability to speak Indonesian and the improvement of all citizens’ Indonesian use is important for the intelligence of this nation. Language is the backbone of education because the Indonesian language is increasingly accessing knowledge. The role of language for developing literature and a shared national history is greatly important and people must be taught this and be taught to love literature. Mass media also educates the nation and continues to develop the language. Even before Independence, mass media was helping to spread Indonesian, but sometimes the mass media forget their role in this, and display language that’s not proper and that does not contribute to developing an intelligent nation.

226

2006

2008

2009

2010

2012

St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

The national Department of Education’s Permendiknas (Peraturan Menteri Pendidikan Nasional, National Ministry of Education Regulation) 22/2006 requires two hours per week of muatan lokal (local content) study, the content of which is left to the discretion of province-level governors. KBI IX Proceedings: This technology and information era is leading every nation to work hard to preserve its own identity. Today’s world is losing its borders and can no longer resist the five influences on people’s ways of living and thinking: people (sosial), technology, mass media, ideologies and money [cf. Appadurai, 1996]. To resist these flows, we need Indonesian people who are intelligent and competitive. A competitive Indonesian is one who has not been uprooted from their culture. Our strengths are in our ethnic diversity and our interethnic communications, which make us tolerant and receptive to the diversity that makes us who we are. A competitive Indonesian is one who has this tolerance, and can also develop their individual self in international relations. Our nation’s intelligence must be pursued through education, politics, social interactions, economics, culture, defense and mass media. Because of this, language use in all activities must continue to be improved to a high quality. UU24/2009 is a continuation of the LPP legacies in Indonesia, with renewed protectionism against English, and lip service to local languages. In rhetoric, local languages are protected, but in action, local languages are said to be ‘incorrect’ and ‘inadequate’ to the demands of modernity (van der Putten, 2012: 228). Badan Bahasa (Language Institute) created (not anew; this was a shift from being called the Pusat Bahasa. What changes were made to merit this name change are unclear). Now supervises 30 Balai Bahasa (Language Offices) ‘that implement its policies in the regions’ (Badan Bahasa, n.d.). Keputusuan Gubernur Jawa Tengah (Resolution by the Governor of Central Java) 423.5/5/2010 describes muatan lokal curriculum. Muatan lokal classes are legislated at two hours per week, but students regularly told me they attended just one hour per week in school (Smith-Hefner, 2009, claims one hour as well). The classes have a reputation as immensely boring and as a place where students who daily speak Javanese go to get told they cannot speak Javanese. International Standard Schools – schools that adopt ‘OECD country’ curricula – ‘UK’s Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE), or the US-based International Baccalaureate (IB)’ (Jakarta Post, 2010) – are eliminated due to outcry that they help the rich get richer.

Appendix

2013

2015

227

Kurikulum 2013 released. English is eliminated from primary schools. My informants (2013) say that they do not agree with this decision: one says other Southeast Asian countries that speak more English will take the jobs that need English in Indonesia. Another says it’s not a matter of agreeing at this point, but understanding what was the reasoning behind this choice. Most news articles I have read have mentioned briefly but consistently the threat that English poses to Indonesian/national identity. Muatan lokal is also said to be eliminated entirely in this curriculum (Prasetyo, 2013). Law requiring foreigners to learn Indonesian in order to work in Indonesia is implemented, and immediately revoked, for the second time. A first and nearly identical effort was made in 2003.

Note (1) Ricklefs (2008) claims it was formed in 1908 as Balai Pustaka or Commissie voor de Volkslectuur and renamed in Dutch as Kantoor voor de Volkslectuur in 1917; Sneddon (2003) claims it was formed in 1908 as Commissie voor de Volkslectuur, and renamed Balai Pustaka in 1917; Alisjahbana (1971) claims it was formed in 1911, and Nababan (1991) claims 1938.

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Index Note on page references: References referring to illustrations, photographs, maps, and tables appear in italics. References referring to material appearing in the original source materials (interviews, original documents, student writings) appear in bold. References referring to information in the endnotes are given in this format: 49n10, meaning the 10th note on page 49. abbreviations Indonesian versus Javanese, 138–139, 140n6 AC (friend of Zentz) ability to speak Javanese, 98 Alisjahbana, Sutan Takdir language planning work and publications of, 69–70, 71, 72, 84, 220, xx quoted on importance of explicit and ‘fasttracked’ planning, 79–80, 80 on the nature of Malay, 58–59, 59 on the problem of translation into Indonesian, 72 All-Indonesia Youth Congress, 57–58. see also Sumpah Pemuda America. see United States Anderson, Benedict imagined communities of, 2 Angelo (study participant) communicative repertoires of, 195–200, 201 introduction to, 29, 30, 34 interviews on appeal of English, 195–197 on communication as more important than sounding like a native speaker, 167–168 on English as an international language, 166 on English as ‘cool,’ 166–167 on future of Javanese in Indonesia, 112–113, 112–113 general thoughts on English, 166–169

on the habitus of ED faculty, 197–198, 197–200, 199–200 ideas about proper English and accents, 168 pressured to major in English, 159–160 on speaking English in public, 174–175, 174–176 anonymity, ethical complications of, xx–xxi anti-colonialism movements, 66–67 Arabic (language), 38, 42, 49n12 Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), 11, 215–218 Australia English instructors from, 43, 44, 168, 168–169 perceptions of Australian English, 171, 172 Ayu (study participant) introduction to, 33, 34 religious community of, 49n10 interviews on future of Javanese in Indonesia, 110–111, 112 on judging a person’s education based on their English skills, 179–181, 179–181 on using all three languages, 206 Badan Bahasa. see Language Center Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa (Center for Language Development and Cultivation). see Language Center

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bahasa daerah (‘vernaculars’). see languages, local Bahasa Indonesia (BI). see Indonesian Bahasa Jawa (BJ). see Javanese bahasa sehari-hari (‘daily talk’). see also languages versus ‘a language,’ 6, 98–99, 104–105 Javanese ngoko as, 98, 98, 102 vernacular speech in Indonesia, 6, 49n4 Balai Pustaka (publishing house for Indonesian literature), 68, 69–70, 219. see also literature bank bailouts, 204 Beautiful Indonesia Miniature Park. see Taman Mini Indonesia Indah BI (Bahasa Indonesia). see Indonesian BJ (Bahasa Jawa). see Javanese Bramartani (Javanese-language newspaper), 67. see also media Britain. see also United Kingdom colonization by, 10–11 Budi Utomo (nationalist group), 219 business, appropriate languages for, 54, 55, 76, 77 CA. see conversation analysis capitalization in transcribed speech, xix cara Jawi (way of being Javanese), 62–65. see also priyayi (Javanese elites) cara Walandi (way of being Dutch), 62–65. see also Dutch (people) Catholic missionaries, 61 Center for Language Development and Cultivation (Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa). see Language Center Chinese (language), 30, 31–32, 45, 49n8, 50n15, 76 Chinese (people), 30, 31–32, 34, 45–46 code-switching, xviii Commission on the Indonesian Language (Komisi Bahasa Indonesia), 71 communication, 18–22. see also language (concept versus specific languages) communicative repertoires, 20–22, 200–202 of participants Angelo, 195–196, 195–200, 197–198, 199–200, 201

Satriya, 51–53, 189–195, 190, 191–193, 194, 200–201 competence, communicative. see communication Consortium for the Teaching of Indonesian and Malay (COTIM), 24 The Constitution of 1945 – UndangUndang Dasar 1945 (UUD1945), 58, 71–72, 71–72, 220 conversation analysis (CA), xviii, xxi– xxiv. see also methods and methodology ‘coolness,’ 115–117, 115–117, 166–167 COTI. see Consortium for the Teaching of Indonesian and Malay COTIM. see Consortium for the Teaching of Indonesian and Malay daily talk. see bahasa sehari-hari (‘daily talk’) data excerpts, length of, xvii–xviii decentralization. see also muatan lokal and effects on local languages, 91–92, 107–108 decolonization, 4, 8. see also nationalization desaschoolen (primary schools), 66. see also education Dewi (study participant) introduction to, 31, 34 interviews asked about fears of English supplanting Indonesian, 153 on future of Javanese in Indonesia, 110–111, 112 on judging a person’s education based on their English skills, 179–181, 179–181 on name of God for local Muslims, 49n13 on wearing (or not) Islamic headcoverings, 46 Dian (study participant) introduction to, 33, 34 interviews on Australian English as less useful/ intelligible, 171, 172 on being corrected when trying to speak kromo, 118–119, 118–119, 118–120

Inde x

challenges impeding her ability to improve her kromo, 126–131 commentary on English and studying it, 169–173 on communication as more important than sounding like a native speaker, 172–173, 173 on difficulty acquiring the ability to speak kromo, 126, 126–127, 127–129, 129 on English appearing on a t-shirt, 183–187, 183–188 on future of Javanese in Indonesia, 111, 112 on her use of Javanese, 47 on judging a person’s education based on their English skills, 179–181, 179–181 on mother viewing inability to speak kromo as rudeness, 127 on parents viewing inability to speak kromo as rudeness, 127, 128–129 on reasons for majoring in English, 160, 160 on understandability of different varieties of English, 169–172 on use of Indonesian when texting, 135–137, 135–139, 137–138 on wearing (or not) Islamic headcoverings, 46 discrepancy and theories of the self, 22–23. see also self Djawa (magazine of the Java Instituut), 105 Dutch (language), 57, 63, 65, 69, 70 Dutch (people), 58, 61, 62–63, 64, 65–67, 68, 72, 219, 220 Dutch East India Company – Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC), 62 ED. see English Department EDS. see English Debate Society education. see also English Department; International Standard School; muatan lokal access to, 28–29, 159, 210 appropriate languages for, 56

245

during the Dutch colonial era, 65–66, 68 effects on local language proficiency, 131–132, 132–134, 208–209 international schools, 39, 50n14, 56 as part of nationalization process, 3, 5, 79, 159 pedagogical approaches and cultures, 43–44, 159, 204–205n3 teaching of English, 13–14 (see also English; International Standard School) eliminated in primary schools, 148–153, 149–150, 151, 152–153, 227 teaching of Indonesian, 76, 78 EFL (English as a Foreign Language). see English; languages, foreign English (language). see also languages, foreign access to, 11–13, 28–29, 158 ambivalence regarding, 47–48, 202–204 associated with critical thinking skills, 190–191, 194, 202 racial identity, 49n6 Western argumentation, 165–166 as a commodity, 161, 209 contexts for use of clothing, 181–189, 182 general use, 51–52 graffiti, 41 internet and computer applications, 162, 162, 176 public signs, 1, 40, 41 scientific papers and publications, 53 semiotic displays, 13, 14–16, 38, 174–189, 182, 203–204 speaking, 38–39, 42, 142, 174–176, 178–181, 188–189, 189–191 speaking in public (as inappropriate), 38, 174–175, 174–176, 178 contributions to Indonesian lexicon, 38, 81, 143–147, 144, 145–146, 146–147, 176–177 fluency in, 12 and privilege, 158, 158, 159, 161, 203–204, 209–210 as global(izing) language, 8, 10–13, 16, 72, 93–95, 158, 166, 166

246

St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

English (language) (Continued) as marker of status, 12, 13–14, 115–117, 115–117, 143, 166–167, 166–167, 174–175, 174–176, 176–181, 183–187, 183–188, 188–189 place in local language ecologies, 38–39, 40, 41, 42, 47–48 scaling of, 16–17, 18 teaching and study of, 13–14 (see also International Standard School; muatan lokal) assumed benefits of, 159–161 difficulty of finding proficient teachers, 151, 156–157 in Dutch schools, 68 and the formation of self and identity, 23 influence of professors on participants, 164–165 public desire for, 151 relevance of teachers’ nationalities, 43, 44, 168, 168–169, 170–171, 172, 172, 173 as threat, 81, 85, 86, 141–142, 151–153, 202–203 variations of, 161, 167–168, 167–169, 168, 170–171, 172, 172, 173 English Debate Society, 189–190 English Department (ED), 24, 43–45 Englishing. see English; languaging Esperanto, 96 ethnicity of participants, 34. see also individual participants Faculty of Language and Literature – Fakultas Bahasa dan Sastra (FBS). see English Department Faculty of Performing Arts – Fakultas Seni dan Pertunjukan (FSP), 204n1 Fakultas Bahasa dan Sastra. see English Department Fakultas Seni dan Pertunjukan. see Faculty of Performing Arts Family Welfare Education – Pendidikan Kesejahteraan Keluarga (PKK), 107 FBS. see English Department feminist research. see methods and methodology

FL (Foreign Language). see languages, foreign France, 4 FSP. see Faculty of Performing Arts gengsi (prestige). see prestige Germany, 4 globalization role of English in, 47–48, 155–156 (see also English) state formation and, 8–16 tensions with nationalism, 8–9, 85, 93–95, 214–218, 224 goods and services appropriate languages for, 54, 55 graffiti use of English in, 41 use of German in, 42 grammar and desire for rational languages, 81–82 Grimm, Jakob folklore writings of, 83 Habibie, 77, 92 Hamzah, Amir, 69 Hatta, Mohammad, 71 historical-structural approach, 26–28. see also methods and methodology identity. see also self of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, 45–46 and language use, 23, 45–46, 47, 98–99, 126–131, 194, 194–195, 200 (see also kromo) of Muslims in Indonesia, 46–47 undertaken as deliberate national project, 79–81 (see also language planning; nationalization) independence. see Indonesia Indonesia history of, 47, 56–58, 68–72, 104, 208, 219–227 map of, ix, vii Indonesian (language) deliberate cultivation of, 78–79, 80–81, 86–87, 89, 96–97, 210, 214–218, 227 (see also Indonesian Language Congress; language planning; nationalization)

Inde x

as a foreign or second language, 86–87, 100, 152–153, 214–218, 227 history of, 47, 58, 68–73, 96–97, 220 (see also Malay) Javanese inflections, 52–53, xviii–xix lack of fluency in, 152–153 language family of, 49n11 lexicon and grammar addition of English vocabulary to, 39, 86, 143–147, 144, 145–146, 146–147, 176–177 addition of Sanskrit vocabulary to, 81 as deliberately shaped, 81–83, 86 difficulty in controlling, 86–88 numbers of speakers, 70, 73 perceptions of, 73, 100, 120, 134–140 scaling of, 16–17, 18 (see also scales) spelling reform, 220, 221 uses and contexts, 34–35, 36–38, 42 in internet communications, 138–140 on national television, 37–38 by public figures, 86 on public signs, 1, 36, 37 in scientific papers and publications, 53 in text-messaging, 134–140 Indonesian Association – Perhimpunan Indonesia, 57 Indonesian Language Congress(es) – Kongres Bahasa Indonesia (KBI). see also Indonesian Language Congress Resolutions 1954 proceedings, 70, 83–84, 221 1978 proceedings, 83–84, 222 1983 proceedings, 222–223 1988 proceedings, 223 1993 proceedings, 223–224 1998 proceedings, 224–225 2003 proceedings, 225 2008 proceedings, 226 international interest in, 88 Resolutions of (see Indonesian Language Congress Resolutions) Indonesian Language Congress Resolutions (Putusan Kongres Bahasa Indonesia). see also Indonesian Language Congress; Language Center citation of, xx

247

overview, 47, 83–89, 222–226 as ideological declarations, 97, 207 regarding English, 93–94, 93–95 regarding foreign languages, 142–143, 142–143, 220, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226 regarding globalization, 93–95, 94, 95 regarding local languages, 89, 89, 89–93, 90, 91, 106, 106, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225 regarding the regulation and promotion of Indonesian, 207, 207, 220 situated within history of nationalization, 219–227 Indonesian National Association – Perserikatan Nasional Indonesia, 219 Indonesian Nationalist Party – Partai Nasionalis Indonesia, 57 Institutional Review Board, xx–xxi International Standard School – Sekolah Bertaraf Internasional (SBI), 154–155, 154–157, 155, 226. see also education internet, appropriate languages for, 139–140 Islam, 34, 46–47, 49n10, 49n13, 66 Japanese (language), 70–71 Japanese occupation of Indonesia, 70–71, 84, 220 Java, ix, x, xi Java Instituut, 105 Javanese (language). see also kromo; languages, local; madyu; ngoko constructed as ‘traditional’ rather than living language, 78, 109–110, 114, 208–209 inflection of Indonesian, xviii–xix language family of, 49n11 marginalization of, 106–114, 209 perceived as complicated and difficult, 100, 102, 137–138, 138–139, 140n6 place in Indonesian society, 73, 78, 102–114, 208–209 registers of (see kromo; madyu; ngoko) semantic shifts in, 63–65 speakers of, 98–99 syllabary of, 35, 35, 108, 109–110, 112

248

St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

Javanese (language) (Continued) teaching of, 106, 106–114, 108, 110, 110–111, 112–113 (see also muatan lokal) use in digital communications, 134–140, 137–138, 138–140 Javanese (people), 75, 115–116 Javanese Language Congress – Kongres Basa Jawa, 76, 105–106 JM (friend of study participant Angelo) English language skills of, 158, 158 KBI. see Indonesian Language Congress Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. see Ministry of Education and Culture Komisi Bahasa Indonesia. see Commission on the Indonesian Language Kongres Bahasa Indonesia. see Indonesian Language Congress Kongres Basa Jawa. see Javanese Language Congress Korean (language), 32, 40 Koreans, 50n14 kromo (formal register of Javanese). see also Javanese; madyu; ngoko considered to be ‘Javanese’ (versus ngoko), 104–105 contexts for use of, 51, 132–134 correction by elders for speaking incorrectly, 116, 116, 117–118, 118–120 cultural and generational shifts away from, 47, 110–111, 112, 112–113, 114, 118, 125, 126–131 history of, 100–102, 140n1 invented formal register of (Krômô désô), 101 origin of name, 140n1 perceived as difficult, 98–99, 100, 102, 115, 116, 117–118 place in local language ecologies, 34, 35, 42 prestige value of, 78, 115–117, 115–117, 120–121, 120–125, 121–122, 123–124 proficiency in achieved through indirect learning, 140n5 effects of education on, 131–132, 209

gendered divisions in, 131–132, 209 as reflecting proper character, 127–131 used by participants, 30, 31, 33 (see also individual participants) Krômô désô. see Javanese (language) language (concept versus specific languages). see also communication; languages; languages, foreign; languages, local; specific languages as assessed along variety of scales, 16–18, 206–213 (see also scales) versus ‘daily talk,’ 6, 98–99, 104–105 frameworks for understanding, 5–6 learning, 18–21, 22–23, 121, 122–125, 140n5, 200, 202, 210–211 nation-building and, 2, 3–5, 48–49n3, 48n1, 48n2, 59, 148 as performative (see performativity) as set of communicative resources, 16, 19–22, 162–163, 162–164, 163, 211 Language Center – Badan Bahasa, 1, 47, 53, 226. see also National Law 24/2009 Language Center – Pusat Bahasa, 221, 226. see also Language Center – Badan Bahasa Language Congresses. see Indonesian Language Congress Language Month, 84 language planning, 79–95, 96–97, 213–214. see also Alisjahbana; Indonesian Language Congress; Indonesian Language Congress Resolutions; Moeliono; Ruíz languages (in Indonesian context). see also Chinese; English; Indonesian; Javanese; kromo; languages, foreign; languages, local; madyu; Malay; ngoko as aspect of identity, 126–127, 129–131 as associated with rights, 214, 224 ‘daily talk’ versus ‘a language,’ 6, 98–99, 104–105 hierarchies of, 3, 5–6, 9, 16–18 (see also scales) pre- and post-nationalization, 78–79

Inde x

role of accents in, 52–53 shifts in (re-scaling), 73–77, 96–97 and structure of the book, 27–28 language planners’ positions on (see Indonesian Language Congress; Indonesian Language Congress Resolutions; language planning) in local ecologies, 34–47, 48 of participants, 34 (see also individual participants) as problems, 214 as resources, 214 languages, foreign. see also Dutch; English; Japanese; Korean contexts for use of, 54, 55, 56, 146, 147–148 fluency in, 12 language planners’ attitudes regarding, 1, 53, 142–143, 142–148, 146–148 (see also Indonesian Language Congress; Indonesian Language Congress Resolutions) resistance to, 86 word borrowing from, 143–147, 144, 145–146, 146–147 languages, local. see also Javanese; kromo; madyu; ngoko contexts for use, 53, 54, 55, 56 decline of, 78–79, 86, 126–131 as discussed by the Language Congresses (see Indonesian Language Congress; Indonesian Language Congress Resolutions) and ethnic identity, 6–7, 76, 223 influence on Indonesian, 37–38 marginalization of, 73–77, 106–114, 132–134 place in Indonesian society, 1, 6–7, 53, 78–79, 86, 89–93, 102–114 preservation of, 76, 85 scaling of, 16–17, 18 (see also scales) languaging, 14–16, 17, 126–131 Lidya (study participant) communicative repertoire of, 32 introduction to, 31–32, 34 interviews on judging a person’s education based on their English skills, 179–181, 179–181

249

linguistic landscape analysis. see methods and methodology literature, 67–68, 69–70, 82–83 LOTI (Languages Other Than Indonesian). see languages, foreign; languages, local madyu (semi-formal register of Javanese), 101, 140n1. see also Javanese; kromo; ngoko Malacca, kingdom of, 60 Malacca, Strait of, 59, viii Malay (language), 47, 57–68, 70, 71, 78, 83–84. see also Indonesian medhok (‘country bumpkin’) accent when speaking English, 191–193, 191–194 when speaking Indonesian, 52–53 media, 3, 55, 67, 76, 88, 133 methods and methodology, 24–28 Ministry of Education and Culture – Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, 83. see also Language Center missionaries, Catholic, 61 modernity, 5–6, 8 Moeliono, Anton language planning efforts of, xx quoted on events leading up to the Sumpah Pemuda, 69 on importance of explicit and ‘fasttracked’ planning, 79–80 on shaping Indonesian grammar and lexicon, 81–82 motivation role in language learning, 22–23 muatan lokal (local content courses). see also education establishment and discontinuation of, 150–151, 224, 226, 227 language education in, 105, 108, 108 English, 150–151 Javanese, 106, 106–114, 110, 110–111, 112–113 as ‘useless,’ 108–109, 112–113, 112–113 multilingualism scholarly understandings of, 13–22 Muslims, 34, 46–47, 49n10, 49n13, 66

250

St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

names of buildings and structures, 54 geographic, 54 narrative analysis. see methods and methodology nation, 2–5, 6–7, 9. see also nationalism; nationalization; state nationalism. see also nation; nationalization in Indonesia, 57–58, 66–67 Javanese, 57 postcolonial, 207–208 tensions with globalization, 8–9, 94–95 nationalization. see also nation; nationalism; state as deliberate state project, 2, 79–81 of Indonesia, 219–227 National Law 24/2009 – Undang-Undang 24/2009 (UU24/2009), 1, 53, 53–56, 54, 55, 56, 102–104, 103 newspapers. see media ngoko (informal register of Javanese). see also Javanese; kromo; madyu as ‘daily talk’ instead of ‘a language,’ 98–99, 104–105, 109 ngoko alus versus ngoko lugu, 102 origin of name, 140n1 place in local language ecologies, 34, 35–36, 42, 51 reaction of elders to younger persons’ use of, 126–131, 127, 127–129, 131 used by participants, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 110–111, 110–113, 112–113 Nisa (study participant) introduction to, 32–33, 34 interviews on being unable to speak kromo, 122 on the ‘coolness’ of speaking English, 115–117, 115–117 on the ‘coolness’ of speaking kromo, 115–117, 115–117 on Novita’s ability to speak kromo, 122–124, 123–124 pressured to major in English, 159–160 on social divergence caused by unequal access to English, 178 Novita (study participant) introduction to, 32, 34

interviews on the ‘coolness’ of speaking English, 115–117, 115–117 on the ‘coolness’ of speaking kromo, 115–117, 115–117, 121 on her ability to speak kromo, 122–124, 123–124 on learning to speak kromo, 121 on trying to improve her abilities in kromo, 120–121, 121 oral interviews. see methods and methodology orientations role in language planning, 213–214 Pane, Armijn, 69 Pane, Sanusi, 70, 83 Partai Nasionalis Indonesia. see Indonesian Nationalist Party participant observation. see methods and methodology participants. see also individual entries overview, 28–30 author’s relationships with, 24, 26 demographics of, 34 interviews with, 25 (see also individual participants for specific topics) names of anonymity and, xx–xxi Angelo, 29, 30, 34 Ayu, 33, 34 Dewi, 31, 34 Dian, 33, 34 Lidya, 31–32, 34 Nisa, 32–33, 34 Novita, 32, 34 Satriya, 30–31, 34 peer pressure, 122–125 Pendidikan Kesejahteraan Keluarga. see Family Welfare Education performativity, 14–16, 16–17, 19–22 Perhimpunan Indonesia. see Indonesian Association Perserikatan Nasional Indonesia. see Indonesian National Association pesantren (Islamic schools), 66

Inde x

PKK. see Family Welfare Education pluralism, 90, 92 Poedjangga Baroe. see Pujangga Baru Portuguese (people), 60, 61 preservation of languages, 85, 90–91, 223 prestige associated with knowing kromo, 78, 115–117, 115–117, 120–121, 120–125, 121–122, 123–124 (see also kromo) associated with possessing English, 12, 13–14, 115–117, 115–117, 143, 166–167, 166–167, 174–175, 174–176, 176–181, 183–187, 183–188, 188–189 (see also English) priyayi (Javanese elites), 57, 62, 67, 101 pseudonyms, use of, xx–xxi Pujangga Baru (New Writers) literary magazine, 69–70, 71. see also Indonesian Language Congress Pusat Bahasa (Language Center). see Language Center – Pusat Bahasa Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa (Language Center). see Language Center – Pusat Bahasa Putusan Kongres Bahasa Indonesia. see Indonesian Language Congress Resolutions race whiteness as associated with English fluency, 49n6 radio. see media Reformation period, 92 Reform Era, 225 religion, 34, 49n9, 49n10. see also Islam repertoires, communicative. see communicative repertoires re-scaling. see scales researcher self-reflection. see methods and methodology Resolutions of the Indonesian Language Congresses. see Indonesian Language Congress Resolutions resources, communicative. see communication Ruíz, Richard, 213–214 rural/urban divide, 35, 49n10, 131–132, 208–209

251

Sanskrit, 81 Satriya (study participant) introduction to, 30–31, 34 involvement in the English Debate Society, 189–190 links between language and identity, 191–195 interviews on ‘comfort’ of speaking English and Javanese, 194 communicative repertoire of, 51–53, 189–195, 190, 191–193, 194, 200–201 context for, 56 on the ‘coolness’ of speaking English, 115–117, 115–117 on the ‘coolness’ of speaking kromo, 115–117, 115–117, 121–122, 123–124 on English as linked to immorality, lack of patriotism, 141, 141–142 on English as part of using technology, 162 on English as resource for communication, 162–163, 162–164, 164 on English/Western argumentation as superior, 165, 165–166, 165–166 on his Javanese accent, 52, 191–193, 191–194 operation on different scales, 211 on sounding ‘girly’ when speaking English, 191–193, 191–194 on studying and speaking English, 161–166 on use of ngoko when speaking to elders, 131 on using critical thinking skills as ‘showing off,’ 190 on validity of non-native speakers’ English, 164, 164–165 SBI. see International Standard School scales and scaling, 16–18, 206–213 science and technology appropriate languages for, 53 lag in Indonesian vocabulary for, 143–146, 145–146, 146 technology

252 St atehood, Scale and Hierarchy

science and technology (Continued) English vocabulary as enmeshed in, 162, 162 spread of English by, 10–11 SEAMEO. see South-East Asian Ministers of Education Organization Sekolah Bertaraf Internasional. see International Standard School Sekolah Menengah Atas (SMA – High School). see education Sekolah Menenga Pertama (SMP – Middle School). see education Sekolah Nasional (SN – National School). see education self. see also identity relative to language learning, 22–23, 200, 202 semiotics, 13, 14–16. see also English; languaging signs, public, 1, 37, 37, 40, 41, 55, 76, 77 SJ (sister of a friend of Zentz) ability to speak and understand Javanese, 99 SMA (Sekolah Menengah Atas – High School). see education SMP (Sekolah Menengah Pertama – Middle School). see education SN (Sekolah Nasional – National School). see education South-East Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO), 11 Spanish (people), 60, 61 Srivijaya, kingdom of, 60 ST (fourth-year English major) on finding a job that makes use of English skills, 160–161, 160–161 stance analysis (see methods and methodology) language performance and the positioning of self, 17, 23 English and, 28–29, 181–188, 183–187 state concept of, 2 involvement in re-scaling, 18, 96–97, 206–213 regulation of English and access to it, 11–12, 18, 47–48

role in creating and maintaining nation, 2–5, 9, 48, 207–208 state-nation. see decolonization; nation; state Strait of Malacca. see Malacca, Strait of Suharto, 73–74, 75–76, 221, 224 Sukarno, 49n5, 71, 75, 84, 143, 221 Sumatra, viii Sumpah Pemuda (Youth Pledge/Oath), 57–58, 68–69, 69, 74–75, 74–75. see also All-Indonesia Youth Congress Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (Beautiful Indonesia Miniature Park), 75 Taman Siswa (Javanese-medium schools), 66. see also education Tatabahasa Baru Bahasa Indonesia, 84. see also Alisjahbana teacher research. see methods and methodology telegraph. see communication television. see media Televisi Republik Indonesia (TVRI), 76. see also media Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), 173 text-messaging choice of language(s) for, 135–140 texts collection and analysis of, 25–26, xix (see also methods and methodology) textual analysis. see methods and methodology TOEFL. see Test of English as a Foreign Language transcription conventions used in this book, xviii–xix, xxi–xxiv Transfer of Sovereignty, 72, 221 translation delays in, 11, 72, 176–177 UKSW. see Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana Undang-Undang 24/2009. see National Law 24/2009

Inde x

Undang-Undang Dasar 1945. see The Constitution of 1945 UNESCO. see United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization United Kingdom. see also Britain perceptions of UK English, 170–171, 172, 172 United Nations, 11, 92 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 92 United States perceptions of American English, 168, 168–169, 169, 170–171, 172, 173 as source of English instructors, 43, 44 Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (1996), 92 Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana (UKSW), 24, 46–47

253

urban/rural divide, 35, 49n10, 131–132, 208–209 UU24/2009. see National Law 24/2009 UUD1945. see The Constitution of 1945 Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC). see Dutch East India Company vernacular. see languages VOC. see Dutch East India Company Yamin, Muhammad, 68, 84. see also Sumpah Pemuda Youth Pledge. see Sumpah Pemuda Zentz, Lauren, 24, 25, 26, 27, xviii–xix. see also English Department; methods and methodology; individual participants’ interviews