THE ROLE OF INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES IN CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY IN MULTICULTURAL INTERACTIONS

Abstract

In this boundless era, people cannot avoid the interactions since they yearn for the interactions to fulfill their needs. Hence, it is becoming more and more impossible for people to live exclusively without having interactions with others from different culture. These kinds of interactions create multiculturalism. The multiculturalism is a given nature for many nations in the world. Hence, they need language to help them to share their mind. In multicultural interactions, people use languages not only to communicate with others but also to symbolize themselves. People learn to enrich their understanding of how language itself works and their ability to manipulate language in the service of thinking and problem solving. To some extent, people concern with how others perceive them. This is how people want to construct their identity. Javanese language, as one of the indigenous languages in Indonesia, helps Javanese people in constructing their identity when they have interactions with others, especially in multicultural interactions. The local wisdom preserve in this language gives the people value in constructing identity to interact with others in the multicultural interactions. Yet, some people have not seen the role of the importance of the indigenous language to create identity in multicultural interactions. As part of the world community, people need to be introduced to values and ideology which will be useful in their future life. Because living in the middle of complicated diversity is an unavoidable fact for future generation, constructing identity in multicultural interactions becomes indispensible. This paper explores the power and role of the indigenous language, especially Javanese, as a medium to construct identity in multicultural interactions.