Book Reviews
Shifting Languages: Interaction and Identity in Javanese Indonesia. /. Joseph
Errington. Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, 19.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.216 pp.
JAMES WILCE
Northern Arizona University
This book has few peers in presenting a coherent account of the linguistic constitution
both of subjectivity (especially chapter 9) and of local modernities. Its title is a selfconscious pun, wherein "shifting" is either transitive—referring to code/style switching in everyday interaction—or intransitive—invoking epochal change. The two
"shirtings" are not equal; Joseph Errington argues that the microagenries of face-toface actors outshift the macroagency of modernist visions for a Bahasa Indonesian
(hereafter, "Indonesian") that can transcend Indonesia's ethnic divisions. Errington's
account of "local modernity" prioritizes the local—namely, how "rationalized" Indonesian forms are being Javanized.
Thus, any epochal shift here transforms "mode" (p. 189) more than code. Perhaps
Indonesian will never replace Javanese. Instead, Errington sees a hybridizing of the
distinct "modes of speakership" (p. 189) represented by the two languages, for example, a hybridizing of the "official" with the "exemplary" modes, the one associated
with the business of the self-styled "New Order" Indonesian state, the other with
the "exemplary centers" of old Java (p. 79). Changes in Javanese usage are not signs
of its impending replacement; Javanese speakers simply borrow more Indonesian
elements to suit contemporary needs (p. 115). If such changing usage indexes modernity, it is not a wholesale adoption of "pure Indonesian," as a "contextually uninflected instrumentality . . . for . . . precise, efficient communication," that does so.
The instrumental functions that modernist theories associate with Indonesian actually carry over into Javanese usage when it includes Indonesian borrowing (p. 115).
For Errington, such phenomena give lie to epochalist models predicting wholesale
language shift.
Chapters 1 and 11 introduce and conclude the book. "A City, Two Hamlets, and
the State" (chapter 2) is a historical snapshot of the relations between Javanese and
Indonesian in upland villages and "exemplary centers" like Solo. "Speech Styles,
Hierarchy, and Community" (chapter 3) deconstructs the epochalist view of language and its shifts, presenting a view of a sociolinguistic landscape "more heterogeneous and less stable than either dominant elite conceptions or some received
scholarly accounts would suggest" (p. 35). It depicts the spread of reciprocal use of
low b£s£ between elites and nonelites in place of old asymmetries of use and address.
Chapter 4 ("National Development, National Language") critiques Gellner's techno
determinist vision of "language 'standardism.' " Yet, as Errington points out, Gellner's vision happens to "resonate . . . with New Order development ideology and
practice alike" (p. 51). "Public Language and Authority" (chapter 5) shows how Javanese
ways of performing state authority are syncretically taken up in new Indonesian
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state-related events of public speech. Chapter 6, "Interactional and Referential Identities/' shows how speakers use kin terms and pronouns to form the intersubjective
grounds for conversation. Chapter 7 describes the practice and local model of "Language Salad" arising out of close contact between Javanese and Indonesian. Chapter
8 explores Javanese "Speech Modeling" as a culturally particular form of reported
speech. Chapters 9 ("Shifting Styles and Modeling Thought") and 10 ("Javanese-Indonesian Code-Switching") unfold a pronominal trope for the different functions
attaching to three variants—Indonesian, bdsd Javanese, and ngdko Javanese. Indonesian prototypically encodes a "third-person perspective"; as the code that often
subserves instrumental and object-referential functions, it is made to project objectivity or transcendence. Being marked for polite address, basa has a "thou-orientation" (p. 139); that is, it is the addressee-oriented code designed for intersubjectivity.
Ngoko is the variant of choice for subjective or first-person perspective (p. 180).
When three codes operate with such complementarity, the prospect of any being
displaced seems distant.
Errington's book contributes to the critique of essentialist visions of "distinct languages" and to theorizing relations between linguistic variants and populations. Errington points out how imperfectly his data fit earlier theories, for example, Gumperz's model of the functions of code-switching and Gellner's vision of the relation
between industrialization and language change. If codes are hybridized or crossfertilized, one may be found speaking "two codes" simultaneously (pp. 187-189).
The book thus neatly problematizes the model of code choice along the paradigmatic
axis.
Shifting Languages also exemplifies a self-reflexive, tentative turn in linguistic anthropology. Errington ends most chapters with questions about his textualist presentation. He admits that texts' meanings are indeterminate and that, when he asked
those who recorded their conversations for him to interpret a particular usage, his
questions seemed foreign. Unflustered, Errington applies a structuralist analysis but
transcends its tendency to essentialize. Thus, he treats the significance of code in
terms of intercede relations. But he also uncovers how Javanese make Indonesian
the language with a modernist, instrumentalist feel (via flattened levels of indexicality) by shunning parts of its pronominal repertoire (p. 179), a section on which I
have some criticisms (below). Although Errington avoids fully embracing a "levels
of awareness" explanation for the failure of questioning to produce insightful
metapragmatic discourse, he uncovers everyday practices mat provide plenty of insight.
I have a few criticisms. Not only do languages shift in this book, but transcription
conventions do too, once (text 10.1) with no explanation and no obvious system to the
admixture of italic, roman, and bold text. Moreover, the conventions of 10.1 itself
clash with those in the shorter individual excerpts discussed in the text. I would
also like clarification of pronoun use, something too important to Errington's argument to be left unclear. Errington treats aku—a not-very-self-lowering, hence informal, "I"—as important enough to warrant mention as an element now considered
both Javanese and Indonesian. Yet he then says that, when Javanese speakers resort
to Indonesian, they avoid aku, preferring the formal soya (pp. 92-93). This inherently
confusing situation needed more spelling out. Generally, his argument regarding
change and its agents leaves readers awash in nuances and ambiguities. Explaining
some ambiguous speech might require attention to a context Errington neglects, that
of political terror (Laine Berman, Speaking through the Silence: Narratives, Social Conventions, and Power in Java, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Shifting Languages has relevance far beyond Indonesianists and Asianists, and deserves a wide reading. In classes, it will work best if assigned as a whole. Its rich
Book Reviews
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data, dose interpretation, and sweeping social and linguistic theory make this a very
significant work.
Department of Anthropology
Northern Arizona University
Box 15200
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
Jim.Wilce@nau.edu
Growing Up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York. Ana Celia Zentella.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997.323 pp.
KATHLEEN C.RILEY
City University of New York Graduate Center
Ana Celia Zentella's account of the forms and transformations of multilingualism
within el bloque, a community of first to third generation Puerto Ricans in New York
City's Spanish Harlem, is an inspired example of what she terms "anthropolitical
linguistic" analysis. While borrowing from the theoretical and methodological repertoires as well as activist stances of a wide variety of sociolinguists and linguistic
anthropologists, she nonetheless presents a powerful and synthetic perspective
uniquely her own.
Being an "indigenous ethnographer"—a role she explicitly problematizes and
reevaluates for its benefits and pitfalls—contributes to the impact of the book, underlying, for instance, her comprehension and skillful use of evocative detail to depict
character and setting. Also, her ethnic membership adds emotional weight to her
call for the application of research findings to the redress of the education, employment, and psychosodal problems faced by Puerto Ricans in the United States. Finally,
as she claims in her acknowledgments, 'The fundamental discipline, linguistic skills,
and cultural knowledge that the book required were part of my life [growing up]
in the South Bronx, as they are part of the lives of El Barrio's children" (p. vi)—and
the book does richly testify to the resourcefulness, perseverance, and intelligence
bred within such communities. Nonetheless, all of this could be true and still not
prefigure the analytic clarity, substantive depth, and overall integration of her text.
The book reads in some respects like a collection of separate essays devoted to
somewhat discrete subjects: bilingualism and language shift, code switching, the
structural consequences of languages in contact, language socialization, bilingual
acquisition, and applied issues. The drawback of this framework is that the book
lacks discrete segments devoted to synthesizing her theoretical underpinnings or to
explicating the community's cultural ideals and practices—traditional or transforming. Instead, theory relevant to a particular topic is laid out at the start of each
chapter, and snippets of culture (e.g., the concept of respeto) are brought in when
needed. The strength of this layout, however, is that chapters of the book could be
used selectively or the book as a whole as a classroom text to illustrate various
language—in sociocultural context topics. And despite the lack of in-depth expository chapters, the book does not lack cohesion, as cross-references are made between