インドネシアにおける政治と言語 -バ・スロ事件の文化論的考察-

国際政治の理論と実証

抄録

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that language is a very important part of political processes, that ‘physical’ processes go along with the manipulation of language, and that political conflicts or integration between different cultures or language systems may, on many occasions, be seen as the processes in which one language or culture ‘destroys, ’ or more modestly, takes over other languages or cultures.
Indonesia is one of the world's largest dual-language states. While people in Indonesia commonly share the Indonesian language (bahasa Indonesia) as the national language, almost all Indonesians have their own ethnic languages as their native tongues and use them in everyday life. The Javanese language is the commonest of the ethnic languages in terms of the population. The major characteristic of the Javanese language is that it has two major levels in terms of ‘respectability’: one is the language of krama and the other is the language of ngoko. The language of krama, which has been highly developed through Indonesian history, is a ‘honorific’ language and is used by lower status people to higher status people. The language of ngoko is a ‘commoners’ language and is used among close friends and by higher status people to lower status people. When a person uses ngoko and the other person uses krama, then there exists a ‘dominance-conformity’ relationship between them.
In this paper, we briefly describe the major characteristics, origins, and historical developments of these languages. Then, the “Mbah Suro” affair in 1967 is detailed. The affair is well known as one of the most salient resistance movements against the central government in Jakarta. One of the characteristics of the “Mbah Suro” affair is that it is a culturally based resistance movement. The event was widely publicized by the Jakartan government, whose objective was naturally to justify its action, and the newspapers reported the affair in detail. Next, the analysis focuses on how this event was reported in terms of the languages used in order to show the functions of the different languages in the political arena.
Mbah Suro, who was a religious and cultural leader in a local area, used the language of ngoko to his followers, which shows that he is their legitimate leader. However, after Mbah Suro was killed by the physical forces of the central governmnent, the event was reported in such a way that the central government official talked to Mbah Suro using the langiage of ngoko and Mubah Suro replied in krama. This shows the central government demonstrated that legitimacy was on its side and that Mbah Suro “knelt down” to the central government. This psychological and cultural persuasion by the central government was only possible by the use of the Javanese language which maintains a distinction between ‘vulgar’ and ‘honorific’ versions. And, the Javanese language was used when the newspapers reported the event, even though the newspapers usually use the Indonesian language (which does not have such a distinction).