Language, Migration, and Identity
Neighborhood Talk in Indonesia

Explores how language is used in a contact setting to build and present identities, expectations and social relations.

Zane Goebel (Author)

9780521519915, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 July 2010

240 pages, 27 b/w illus. 2 maps
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.5 cm, 0.5 kg

'A valuable addition to the body of work that exists on language in Indonesia … Goebel draws on an extensive and complex body of theoretical work, but his writing style and attention to detail make it possible for a reader with little prior exposure to grasp his main arguments.' William M. Cotter, PhD student, University of Arizona

While much scholarship has been devoted to the interplay between language, identity and social relationships, we know less about how this plays out interactionally in diverse transient settings. Based on research in Indonesia, this book examines how talk plays an important role in mediating social relations in two urban spaces where linguistic and cultural diversity is the norm and where distinctions between newcomers and old timers changes regularly. How do people who do not share expectations about how they should behave build new expectations through participating in conversation? Starting from a view of language-society dynamics as enregisterment, Zane Goebel uses interactional sociolinguistics and the ethnography of communication to explore how language is used in this contact setting to build and present identities, expectations and social relations. It will be welcomed by researchers and students working in the fields of linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, the anthropology of migration and Asian studies.

1. Introduction
2. Long term processes of enregisterment
3. Enregistering local practices and local spaces
4. Linguistic signs, alternation, crossing and adequation
5. Women, narratives, identity and expectations in Ward 8
6. Learning to become a good ward member
7. Emerging identities in a monthly Ward 8 male meeting
8. Chineseness as deviance
9. Language ideologies and practice in Ward 5
10. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Sociolinguistics [CFB], Linguistics [CF]