Language Police

Name: Language Police
Uploaded: 2021-01-30T03:53:31Z
Duration: 20 min 32 s
Description: .It is not just a small circle of educated Indonesians who feel their national language is completely flawed. Such concerns are not new. The level of concern fluctuates, although it has increased lately.

BY ARIEL HERYANTO

· 6 minutes read

.It is not just a small circle of educated Indonesians who feel their national language is completely flawed. Such concerns are not new. The level of concern fluctuates, although it has increased lately.Where do such feeling arise from? What is the impact on people\'s lives? To understand the problem, we need to unpack the basic issues.

Speaking is working together. The results are shared together. Those who are the poorest or most despised have their part, moreover, the rich or powerful. Language is never completely subjective. Language is never owned by one person or a group of people with a patent or copyright.

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Speaking is productive and creative work. Experts call the first language we learn and use in everyday life as our "mother tongue". The value is infinite, similar to breast milk, which is given by a mother abundantly with affection, for free and without condition.

Admittedly, there is no ideal society. Because there are various gaps, working together in a language is also problematic. Language can be a battlefield, apart from familiarity.

In one language there are various versions. In fact, it is natural that in one family, parents and children have different variations

Society changes, like the language. It never stays the same, like a dictionary. English, Japanese and Balinese are very different. In one language there are various versions. In fact, it is natural that in one family, parents and children have different variations

The Indonesian language is of Malay descent, but Indonesians may laugh at Malaysian terms. The Javanese language in East Java sounds strange and funny to some people in Central Java. It is also the opposite.

There is an American version of English. The accent, vocabulary and spelling differ from Scottish, Singaporean or Australian English. This variation is found not only in casual chat, but also in official languages at international forums and in government documents, both written and oral.

None of that is a disaster. It is not a threat that must be eradicated.

Those of us who have studied English will remember how inconsistent it is. The verb changes when the subject being discussed has happened or will take place in the future. To complicate matters, the change in the verb form does not consistently follow a single pattern. There is no rational or scientific reason why it happens.

The language meanders. It is different from the work of a calculator or computer. The language is similar to most plants. The growth is not perpendicular. Branches and leaves are not completely symmetrical.

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All of that is not a problem for language speakers. It only became a problem when there are some state-sponsored linguists who act like exact scientists. They have poor tolerance for linguistic variations.

In order to eradicate language variation, they look for scientific formulas, such as in mathematics or chemistry. It is as if, if X were added with Y, the result must be Z. If X is a prefix, while Y is a verb, then Z is the right and true form the word. The form of the word which has become popular in society is ridiculed, corrected, or avoided if it does not match the formula of the experts.

Perhaps the experts have genuine intentions. They have high knowledge. However, their work is not a language that grows organically in society. The result is language rules that are alien to society. If the mother tongue can be likened to breast milk, the engineering language of these experts is like canned milk, mass-produced from standard recipes and scientific formulas.

Implicitly or explicitly, the language of the community is declared bad and incorrect. The strange thing is that instead of being offended, some residents welcome the insult.

Previously, all members of the community were active and productive in working together in language. Now many are eager to become mass consumers, only looking for the elite\'s language. Namely the elites who monopolize the authority to determine which language is good and correct.

Some who feel they speak properly and correctly turn themselves into the language police. They raid and attack the language activities of citizens that don’t not comply with the rules engineered by linguists.

The colonial government either banned the publication or tried the author.

A century ago, anticolonial movements flourished through the Malay language newspapers and novels that lived in the community. The colonial government either banned the publication or tried the author. The colonial government also appointed a team of linguists and created a "good and correct" Malay language. Nationalist works were labeled as "wild reading" in "slang” language which was not suitable for an educated public to read.

The politics of "good and correct" language collapsed with the end of Dutch East Indies colonialism. However, this policy grew even more magnificent during the New Order era. Language standardization was in line with the technocratic logic and the spirit of fascism which was dominant at that time.

Recently, the obsession with “good and true” language has returned. Why? The passionate passion of the Indonesian middle class in speaking properly and correctly appears to be linked to obsessions in a number of other fields, for example, on the concept of beauty and lifestyle and up to a matter of dating or worship.

The symptoms are similar to those who suffer from stress in front of a mirror for hours. They regret the body that was born by their mother. They feel too fat, too short and don’t look cool. The skin is too dark, the nose is not sharp enough, compared from the appearance of celebrities in advertisements, television, or social media.

Manuals and lectures on all of that are selling well. Sources of knowledge from the family or the general public or common sense are deemed inadequate.

They miss the appearance, clothes, work, and speech that are all good and correct, according to the experts\' version. Manuals and lectures on all of that are selling well. Sources of knowledge from the family or the general public or common sense are deemed inadequate.