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Title: Dynamic multilingualism and language shift scenarios in Indonesia

Citation Type: Conference Paper

Publication Year: 2018

ISBN: 978-1-9160726-0-2

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Abstract: Indonesia, an archipelago of roughly 14,000 islands, is home to approximately 700 languages. The instatement and development of Bahasa Indonesia as the national language is widely described as a highly successful example of language planning across the multilingual archipelago, and simultaneously as the catalyst for the endangerment of scores of local languages. In an ongoing project examining language shift in Indonesia and focusing on languages with a million speakers or more, we seek to explore this complex language ecology (Mufwene 2017) and the nature of dynamic multilingualism (Musgrave 2014) and language shift scenarios in Indonesia at multiple levels of inquiry, including sociolinguistic interviews, Indonesian census data, and a language use questionnaire, Kuesioner Penggunaan Bahasa Sehari-hari. Here we use our questionnaire data to look specifically at the relationship between identity (ethno-linguistic and regional) and language use in Indonesia with an analysis of how speakers classify and name language varieties that they report. We study the socio-geographic effect of "inner" vs. "outer" island in the Indonesian archipelago, comparing our census data results with further insight gained from our questionnaire data.

Url: http://www.elpublishing.orghttp//www.elpublishing.org/PID/4016

Url: http://www.elpublishing.org/docs/4/01/FEL-2018-16.pdf

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Authors: Ravindranath Abtahian, Maya; Cohn, Abigail C

Conference Name: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL XXII / 2018)

Publisher Location: Reykjavík

Data Collections: IPUMS International

Topics: Other

Countries: Indonesia