UNDERSTANDING SHIFTING LANGUAGES ON INDONESIAN TELEVISION: UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL VALUE IN LATE CAPITALISM

Abstract

The work of Bourdieu (1991), Hobsbawm (1990), Wallerstein (2004), and Bahktin (1981), among others, have become a cornerstone for understanding valuation processes attached to language as well as their relationships with political economy and processes of globalization in a period referred to as “late capitalism” (e.g. Blommaert, 2010; Goebel, 2010, In press; Heller, 2011; Heller & Duchene, 2012b). In this paper, I draw upon this work to offer an interpretation of the ongoing revaluation of languages in Indonesia, including the ideology of Indonesian as the language for doing unity in diversity. My empirical focus will primarily be material I have gathered from television in 2009. Central to my argument will be that as the Indonesian state has moved between centralized and decentralized regimes (often pushed by market forces) these processes have helped regiment multiple centres of normativity around language in Indonesia. With changing political and economic conditions in the early 1990’s local content became increasingly valued in the media. Some languages (and the ethnic groups associated with them) were increasingly commodified, as in the case of Si Doel (e.g. Loven, 2008; Sen & Hill, 2000). As it became clear that local content sinetron was a “sell well” genre, this genre was copied by many other producers of television content (Rachmah, 2006). At the same time, these market forces – and the decreasing influence of the state in determining how language was modelled on television – helped increase the social value of local languages and mixed languages (Goebel, In press). These processes effectively drove language change in the social domain of television.