Shifting Languages

A fascinating account of the role of language in radical social transformation in Javanese-Indonesian community.

J. Joseph Errington (Author)

9780521632676, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 December 1998

236 pages, 2 maps 2 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.505 kg

"This book is a major contribution that shows how such work can be done. It succeeds as a fully realized study of socially, culturally, and politically grounded language phenomena. This rich accomplishment is itself the very best argument for Errington's analytic position." Language in Society

Indonesian is the national language of a vast, plural nation state, the world's fourth-largest country with a population of over 200 million. Although its use is growing rapidly, and is now spoken by nearly everyone over the age of six, it has almost relatively few native speakers. This remarkable growth, unprecedented in the development world, is largely due to the forceful presence of state institutions that use, promote, and disseminate a language first introduced by the Dutch colonial administration. Joseph Errington's third book on language in Indonesia is a detailed analysis of 'shifting languages' in two small Javanese communities. A key figure in this area of research, he examines changing conversation practices in relation to questions of ethnicity, nationalism, and political culture. Errington concludes that the Javanese story has theoretical implications beyond the two villages to other parts of Indonesia, South East Asia, and to the developing world in general.

1. Introduction
2. A city, two hamlets, and the stage
3. Speech styles, hierarchies and communities
4. National development, national language
5. Public language and authority
6. Interactional and referential identities
7. Language contact and language salad
8. Speech modelling
9. Shifting styles and the modelling of internal states
10. Javanese-Indonesian code-switching
11. Shifting perspectives.

Subject Areas: Political science & theory [JPA], Anthropology [JHM], Cultural studies [JFC], Sociolinguistics [CFB]