Abstract
This paper discusses the contents and meaning of local language education in Lampung Province, Indonesia, which started during Soeharto’s regime. Lampung is now a multiethnic society as the result of the massive domestic immigration called transmigrasi. Every student from elementary school to high school, however, regardless of ethnicity and mother tongue, is now obliged to study the Lampung language for the purpose of its preservation. Within the scheme of local language education (pendidikan bahasa daerah), the local language is treated as a cultural inheritance of the local people as well the Indonesian nation. Thus, it should be preserved by the inhabitants of each region, however diversified its ethnic composition. While the Lampung people also utilize such realigned cultural elements when introducing themselves to others, they continue trying to narrow the gap between the real diversity and the imagined one.
In analyzing this case, we should examine the idea of “region (daerah)” and “local language (bahasa daerah).” In this context, “daerah” is a notion denoting the territory of a province being imagined as a homogeneous cultural entity. “Bahasa daerah” is a language imagined inherently in it, although in fact Lampung people themselves are composed of many ethnic groups and languages. Imagining a region in this way is not inherent, but led by the language and cultural policy enforced by the central government. People accept it as a new mark for placing themselves in Indonesian society; this kind of intercourse is a cultural phenomenon characteristic of New Order Indonesia.
