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Youth Language, Gaul Sociability, and the New Indonesian Middle Class *

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Youth Language, Gaul Sociability, and the New Indonesian Middle Class * Nancy J. Smith-Hefner Department of Anthropology, Boston University Youth Language, Gaul Sociability, and the New Indonesian Middle Class * ABSTRACT This article examines the linguistic form and social functions of bahasa gaul, the informal Indonesian “language of sociability,” as it is used among Indonesian university students and in various publications aimed at middle-class Indonesian youth. Bahasa gaul registers youth modernity in both its positive and more contested aspects. It expresses not only young people’s aspirations for social and economic mobility, but also an increasingly cosmopolitan, national youth culture. Perhaps most signifi cantly, bahasa gaul articulates the desire of Indonesian youth for new types of social belonging through the formulation of relationships that are more egalitarian and interactionally fl uid as well as more personally expressive and psychologically individualized. Keywords: Indonesia, slang, youth culture, the new middle class, bahasa gaul ABSTRAK Artikel ini mengkaji bentuk linguistik dan fungsi-fungsi sosial bahasa gaul sebagaimana digunakan oleh para mahasiswa dan dalam berbagai publikasi yang ditujukan untuk anak kelas menengah di Indonesia. Bahasa gaul meregistrasi modernitas anak muda baik dalam aspek-aspek positif maupun yang diperselisihkan. Selain mengekspresikan aspirasi anak muda dalam mobilitas ekonomi dan sosial, bahasa gaul juga mencerminkan budaya anak muda nasional yang semakin bercorak kosmopolitan. Selain itu, mungkin yang terpenting, bahasa gaul mengartikulasikan hasrat anak muda Indonesia mengenai bentuk-bentuk baru identitas sosial melalui formulasi hubungan yang lebih egaliter, cair dan interaktif serta lebih ekspresif secara personal dan lebih mempribadi secara psikologis. Katakunci: Indonesia, bahasa anak muda, budaya anak muda, kelas menengah baru, bahasa gaul. * Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Vol, 17, Issue 2, pp. 184-203, ISSN 1055-1360, EISSN 1548-1395. © 2007 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. Direct requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http:// www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintlnfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/jlin.2007.17.2.184. Acknowledgements. Research was funded by a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Grant and a Spencer Foundation Small Grant; write-up was generously supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. I would like to thank Robert W. Hefner for his careful read ing of numerous drafts of this paper and helpful suggestions for revisions. I would also like to thank Asif Agha and three anonymous readers who offered excellent and very useful comments on an earlier version of this article. 61 JURNAL STUDI PEMUDA • VOL. I NO. 1 2012 Nancy J. Smith-Hefner, Youth Language, Gaul Sociability, and the New Indonesian Middle Class ince the fall of the New Order regime research presented here is part of a larger in the spring of 1998, a new Indone- ethnographic project on Indonesian youth and Ssian youth language has captured public social change. During an eight month period attent ion and has become a lightning rod for in 1999 and fi ve subsequent month-long visits the latest social trends. Bahasa gaul, literal- between 2001 and 2006, I conducted some 200 ly’ social language’ or the ‘lan guage of so- interviews and participated in innumerable ciability’, is a speech variety associated with informal dis cussions with young people on Indonesian youth and based on Indonesia’s issues pertaining to their lives and experience. national language, bahasa Indonesia. Among In the course of that investigation, I collected Indonesian university students bahasa gaul several hundred gaul words and expressions functions as a type of slang, “the ever-chang- within the context of their use. I then cross- ing and fashionable vocabulary of sociability referenced them with other available lists that students use casually with one another” and with slang usages in youth publications, (Eble 1996:1). The casual language of Indo- including magazines, newspaper advice co- nesian student sociability borrows from other lumns, and self-help books. Periodically, I informal Indonesian speech varieties, includ- took my fi ndings back to stu dents and asked ing Jakartan Indonesian/Jakartan Malay and them to indicate those words and expressions the cant of gangsters and criminals (bahasa they used regularly, those they considered prokem), but expresses the particular experi- gaul (even if they didn’t use them themselves), ences, preoccupations, and aspirations of the and those they felt were not gaul or were current generation of Indonesian youth. no longer gaul. Determining what is or is Like the slang used by American college not gaul is of course a slippery slope, as an students, bahasa gaul emphasizes a shared important part of gaul’s appeal, and of slang’s social identity and sense of belonging among appeal more generally, lies in its up-to-date or its speakers. It speaks to solidarity rather than contemporary character. Gaul, like American status differentials and to a shared positive college slang, is constantly changing as new value placed on cool and occasionally ironic words or expressions become popular and distan cing from the formality and hierarchy of others fall out of use.1 an earlier genera tion. Gaul differs from Ameri- Bahasa gaul registers youth modernity can college slang, however, in the degree to in both its positive and more contested as- which it is oriented both “upward,” expressing pects. Its metapragmatic multivocality and aspirations for social and economic mobility, competing ideological valences are central and “outward,” expressing an increasingly to an understanding of its social role and cos mopolitan, Indonesian youth culture. Per- linguistic value. As a form of slang, bahasa haps most signifi cantly gaul articulates the gaul has been disparaged by some Indonesian desire of Indonesian youth for new types of observers as “ruining good and proper Indo- social identifi cations through the formulation nesian.” Its critics argue that that gaul will of relationships that are more egalitarian and corrupt the integrity of the standard and limit interactionally fl uid, as well as more per- the linguistic creativity of youth (cf. Sarjono sonal ly expressive and psy chologically indi- vidualized. 1 Some terms, however, may stay around for a significantly longer period of time as slang; these This article examines the linguistic forms words are what Robert L. Moore (2004:59) calls and social meanings of the informal language “basic slang.” Basic slang terms are those which may of sociability used among Indonesian uni- be used for decades and “not wear out” because of the centrality of the values they represent. “Cool,” for versity students and in various pub lications example, is one such word. Other words eventually aimed at educated, middle-class youth. The catch on and become part of the everyday, colloquial language. 62 JURNAL STUDI PEMUDA • VOL. I , NO. 1 , MEI 2012 Nancy J. Smith-Hefner, Youth Language, Gaul Sociability, and the New Indonesian Middle Class 2004; Suara Merdeka 2004; Direktorat Pen- percent of the population (Sneddon 2003:105). didikan Menengah Umum n.d.) —to say Today, in what is widely acclaimed as a nothing of the countercul tural values asso- remarkable political and linguistic achieve- ciated with its use. In the relaxed social ment, the number of Indonesians who can language of university stu dents, however, speak their national language is well over 90 there is little evidence that gaul is created in percent (Errington 1998:2; Sneddon 2003:11). special or unfamiliar ways. On the contrary, The achievement is all the more remarkable gaul follows quite regular language patterns in inasmuch as Indonesia is a multilingual and forming new words and in adapting dialectal multi ethnic nation, one in which the majority and foreign word borrowings and does not of Indonesians grow up speaking a regional or violate the grammatical patterns of informal, ethnic language as their mother tongue and as spoken Indonesian. Moreover, in infusing the lan guage of ingroup interactions. Indonesian with a liveliness, emotional ex- The spread of Indonesian as the national pres sivity, and cosmopolitan cachet, bahasa language is widely associated with the often gaul may in fact be increasing the appeal of heavy-handed nation-making policies of the national language to young people across the New Order state which governed Indo- Indonesia’s diverse ethnic groups, further nesia from 1966 to 1998 (Anderson 1966; eroding the position of regional languages as Errington 1998; Liddle 1988). Language the codes of informal, in group interactions. stan dardization was implemented as one aspect of the government’s ambitious deve- lopment project. Within the context of state ‘Good and Proper Indonesian’ ’developmentalism’ (pembangunan) great emphasis was placed on Indonesian’s role as The nation of Indonesia encompasses some an instrument of modernization and nation- fourteen thousand islands from Sumatra in the making; conversely, less attention was paid west to West Papua (Irian Jaya) in the east. to Indonesian’s communica tive function and With over 234 million inhabitants, Indonesia cultural meanings (Heryanto 1990). Per- is the largest Muslim-majority country and haps not surprisingly gov ernment efforts the fourth most populous nation in the world. at language planning and standardization Estimates of the number of languages spoken focused
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