BOOK REVIEW
3
|
Javanese speakers who claim that they do not know Javanese, although in fact they usually speak a
lower variety of Javanese, ngoko, in their everyday life. From the local people's perspective, ngoko is
not a language, but just a “daily talk” (p. 104). Zentz explains that such “erasure” of the lower variety
is due to the educational programme of muatan lokal, or “local content courses” where the high form
of Javanese, kromo, and the traditional Javanese scripts are taught as the Javanese local language to the
exclusion of the lower form of Javanese, ngoko. In this process, kromo is reshaped and redefined as the
only variety of the Javanese language, whose highly complicated grammar and archaic scripts are hard
to learn. Therefore, the local language, in this case, kromo Javanese, becomes a form of local tradition
and heritage that should be maintained and preserved. At the same time, new technological advances in
communicative platforms such as the internet, and other media resources, expand Indonesians’ every-
day encounters from local to national and international levels, while promoting the use of Indonesian
and English, not local languages, in their daily online and face‐to‐face interactions.
Chapter 4 explores the addition of another significant linguistic resource, English, to Indonesian
speakers’ linguistic repertoires in global contexts. English is placed in a rather ambiguous position in
Indonesia's national project. The Indonesian government considers English to be an important tool by
which Indonesian citizens can have access to a wider world market. Yet, at the same time, in the midst
of Indonesia's active nationalization, the Indonesian language has been emphatically associated with
Indonesianness and high morality in comparison to the stereotypical English speakers’ images in the West.
This chapter on English is especially rich in ethnographic detail. In this chapter, Zentz provides a
comprehensive analysis of the various local forms of language resources, and their semiotic meanings
as they emerge through people's everyday interactions. At the local level in Indonesia, English rather
works as an “indexical of the English language” (p. 188), which Zentz calls “local Englishing” (pp.
188–189). As illustrated with the episode of the broken English expressions written on a t‐shirt sold
at a local boutique, English in this local scene is not meant to be read or understood. Instead, English
serves as a speech act, that is, it “acts on” the world, as its speaker “performs” his/herself as having
gensi (prestige). The inclusion of English in the local repertoire, furthermore, opens up a new space
where other types of selves and subjectivities are possible through various semiotic processes. For
example, English can allow a Javanese speaker to do “opining, rejecting, disagreeing, and debating”
(p. 190), which are speech acts that are rarely employed in Javanese conventional social encoun-
ters that emphasize rukun, the traditional values of social harmony and mutual respect. On the other
hand, according to the research participants, speaking English itself makes the speaker “feel girly” (p.
191), although speaking English with a Javanese accent, a speech style often called medhok (country
pumpkin) (pp. 191–193) can be understood to index its speaker's masculinity. The contrast between
Javanese and English is projected onto the features of masculinity and femininity within the local
group, where the insider–outsider relations are projected onto intra‐group differences recursively in a
fractal pattern (cf. Gal & Irvine, 2000). Zentz concludes this chapter with a discussion on “expanding
repertoires and motivation” (pp. 200–201) that go beyond “code‐bounded notions of languages and
second language acquisition” (p. 201).
In the final chapter, Zentz summarizes and reiterates the theoretical implications of her findings,
by suggesting two key concepts, “ideology and access” (p. 210) in understanding the processes of “in-
clusion, exclusion, language learning, and reshaping and evaluating language forms” (p. 210) as they
take place in the promotion of nation‐building and globalization, the social changes that Indonesia
is currently undergoing. According to her, “it is access to language forms, and identity negotiations
and motivations” (p. 211) that plays a crucial role in one's language learning and practices. However,
even the possibility of people's learning and access to any particular languages has been ideologi-
cally constructed. For example, the notions of “ease” and “difficulty” of learning a specific language
are in fact ideological constructs that are created and circulated through formal education and mass