One Land, One Nation, One Language: An Analysis of Indonesia’s National Language Policy
Scott Paauw
An Analysis of Indonesia’s National Language Policy has been done by Scott Paauw. Indonesia, a
country which has a significant number of distinct ethnic groups, speaking an estimated 600
languages, has been successful at promoting an indigenous language as its national language,
although it has a great size and diversity of population. Paauw stated that language choice and
language development are two basic ingredients to language planning. Historically, there were three
languages which emerged as possible official languages for the new nation (Indonesia): Dutch, the
colonial language; Javanese, the language of the largest ethnic group, Javanese; an,d Malay the
historic lingua franca of the archipelago. Pauuw explained that each of these languages has a special
status. First, Dutch was spoken by the educated elite of Indonesia, also, was the language that the
future heads of the country felt most open to talk and write. However, it did not have the same
quality as other colonial languages (e.g English and French). Second, the Javanese made up 47.8% of
Indonesia’s population. Unfortunately, Javanese completely separate lexicons used depending on the
age and social class of the person addressed, which makes the language difficult to learn. Third, The
Malay language was the native language of less than 5% of the population at the time of
independence, but it served as a lingua franca in much of the archipelago through trading, and had
functioned for more than two thousand years. besides, Malay was regarded as easy to learn. In 1865,
Malay was designated the second official language of administration during the dutch colonial era.
Paauw also explained that there was congresses which was held to assign the national language of
Indonesia. The First Congress of Indonesian Youth in 1926, and the future leaders of Indonesia
discussed the national language issue. Two years later,
at the second congress, not only was Malay the language of the congress, but the new name of
the language, Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) was introduced, and the question of which
language would be the national language was settled with no debate. The second congress was
where the Youth Pledge (Sumpah Pemuda) was proclaimed, gave a new prestige to the Malay
language, now called Indonesian.
The Dutch colonial administration saw the growing nationalism as a threat, and reacted
by removing Malay as a regular subject from schools in Java in 1930, and throughout Indonesia
in 1932.
1n 1942, the Japanese invaded and occupied Indonesia, an event which Alisjahbana (1962:2) has
referred to as the most decisive moment in the development of Indonesian. The Japanese
immediately forbade the use of Dutch for any purpose. Their ultimate goal was to institute
Japanese as the language of administration and education, but this was not realistic in the short
term.
When Indonesian independence was proclaimed on August 17, 1945, after the surrender of the
Japanese at the end of World War II, Indonesian was designated the sole national language of the
new nation.
following reasons why Indonesian was accepted so readily as a national
language: “its central role as a vehicle and symbol of the movement for political independence,
its ethnically neutral status in not being the first language of any prominent ethnic group, and the
freedom it provides from encoding in all utterances distinctions in rank and status.
The position of vernacular languages in Indonesian society is protected by the Indonesian
constitution, which states that Indonesian is the national language and that the vernaculars are
guaranteed their right to existence and development.
One of the most important factors in the acceptance of Indonesian as a national language was its
function as a language of unity, giving Indonesians a sense of identity and enlisting them in the
process of building a new nation. The potential danger of ethnic divisions and conflicts occurring in
such a large and
diverse nation made it essential to bring the nation together through a shared sense of
nationhood, and the Indonesian language was both the symbol and the vehicle of that unity.
The most important factor in the spread of Indonesian as a national language was the
development of Indonesia’s educational system and literacy. By
1996, after 51 years of independence, 87.26% of the population was literate in Indonesian.
The mass media in Indonesia have also been an effective vehicle for promoting
knowledge and use of Indonesian. From the initial programming, which began in 1964, until
1988, all television programming was in the Indonesian language.
Diglossia and Urbanization has contributed
significantly to the acceptance and spread of the Indonesian language.
no other post-colonial nation
has been able to develop and implement a national language with the speed and degree of
acceptance which Indonesia has. No other national language in a post-colonial nation is used in
as wide a range of domains as Indonesian, a feat made more impressive by the size and ethnic,
linguistic and cultural diversity of Indonesia.
Garvin (1974:72) provides a list of properties, functions and
attitudes which characterize a standard language and which are factors in language planning. The
“symbolic” functions which Garvin mentions include the unifying function, the separatist
function, and the prestige function. the unifying function takes precedence over all others, and has
caused Indonesia to reject the participatory function, for
