The creation and adoption of Bahasa Indonesia as the official language of Indonesia has an interesting history related to Dutch colonialism and the Indonesian nationalist era in the first half of the 20th century. Due to the fact that Dutch colonists prevented Indonesian colonial subjects from speaking Dutch to keep a social boundary between colonizers and colonized, the Malay language (from which Indonesian is based) spread in popularity among the population while Dutch remained the language of political affairs. When Indonesia declared its independence in 1945 and identified Indonesian as the official language, only 5 percent of the population identified it as their native language, with Javanese being the dominant language with about 45% of the population being native speakers. However, in contrast to the post-colonial linguistics of many colonized languages, it was quickly adopted by the government and is considered to be one of the most successful adoptions of a national language (S. Dardjowidjojo). Indonesian was accepted as the national language because of its ability to unite diverse inter-island populations and not be seen as pushing the dominant culture of the island of Java. Today, most Indonesians are at least bilingual, speaking BI as well as their local language, such as Balinese, Javanese, Sundanese, etc.
In my study of BI this semester, I will likely be focusing mostly on the domains of Sociolinguistics and Anthropological Linguistics. Julie and Thalia have been naturally moving us in the direction of the domain of Sociolinguistics through the conversational nature of our language meetings and the use of texts introducing Indonesian grammar through social contexts. Through my research of Indonesian performing arts, I have identified Anthropological linguistics as the most relevant domain for my research and thus the domain within which I will spend much time and effort. As I gain more proficiency in written Indonesian, I plan to continue my study by reading Indonesian literature on the subject of performing arts, and utilizing these and other important pieces of Indonesian literature to familiarize myself with cultural references and touchstones.
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