Two tales of an Indonesian city, language, and nation

Joe Errington, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Yale University

Indonesia’s development has been crucially enabled by a linguistic paradox: though less than a century old Indonesian is now known by almost all Indonesians, but spoken natively by none.   I sketch this unusual situation from two angles, with two stories.   One, broadly historical, foregrounds Indonesian’s institutional and ideological roles in a farflung integrationist dynamic.   The other, more biographical, situates Indonesian in lives and interaction among some young residents of Pontianak, capital of the province of West Kalimantan.   

These two versions of a linguistic success story—one about a national language, the other about an urban vernacular–help to draw out what has been called the “valuable paradox” within Indonesian.    They help also to frame “the Indonesian case” in broader comparative terms, and so consider the value of linguistic nativeness for nationalist ideologies and feelings of belonging.

Joe Errington joined Yale’s department of Anthropology and the Council on Southeast Asian studies in 1982, teaching primarily about linguistic anthropology and Southeast Asia.  He served many years as the Council’s chair.  Drawing on research in Central Java he wrote three books on sociolinguistic change in that region of Indonesia, followed by a brief essay on the work of linguistics in colonial contexts.  HIs last book, the basis of this talk, is Other Indonesians: nationalism in an unnative language. 

Wednesday, December 6, 2023
12:00 Noon
Room 203, Luce Hall
34 Hillhouse Avenue

Hybrid event
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