Language selection in the Indonesian novel: Bahasa gado-gado in expressions of love

Abstract

In the post-New Order era, the use of English in Indonesia is noticeably increasing, particularly in otherwise Indonesian popular print texts, a domain where language selection is evident and publicly accessible. The appearance of English in Indonesian popular texts is linguistically known as code-switching, called bahasa gado-gado in the Indonesian context. Although noticeably increasing, English is still unfairly treated by many Indonesians and by the government as a foreign language that carries the “West” ideology. In other words, English not only functions as a linguistic resource but also as a language of Otherness that may carry some Western ideologies for many Indonesians. In fact, the juxtaposition of English and Indonesian in otherwise Indonesian speech acts still receives social censure or is seen as an interference to Indonesian-ness. Using an interpretive textual analysis, I show that code-switching with special reference to English effectively functions to express the overt love expressions and to project one’s socio-cultural hybridity and lingustic proficiency.