Bureaucracy affects press language

Bureaucracy affects press language

By Ignas Kleden

JAKARTA (JP): A seminar titled "The role of the mass-media in
promoting the Malay-Indonesian language" recently examined
bureaucracy and its influence on language and the media. The
seminar, organized by the Association of Indonesian Journalists
(PWI) and featuring experts from Malaysia and Brunei Darusalam,
was held in Bandar Seribegawan on March 3-4.

The debate raised some interesting points, two of which
appeared in the Kompas daily (March 5 and March 6) and deserve
attention. First, what kind of linguistic relationship exists
between government officials and bureaucrats on the one hand, and
journalists and professional linguists on the other? Second, how
can we find a modus vivendi between the standardization and the
development of language? And who is responsible for each of these
things?

Let me try to deal with the two questions, not as a
professional linguist but as an active user of the Indonesian
language. Journalists and the mass media have been accused of
distorting the use of the Indonesian language. This is due to two
factors. On one hand, journalists are subject to the journalistic
genre. Rosihan Anwar, a senior Indonesian journalist, has said on
many occasions that this genre is basically characterized by the
"language economy". This means sentences are as short as possible
or as long as necessary. The style should be simple or as
sophisticated as necessary. Superfluous words which are used only
for ornamental purposes should be eliminated. The use of
prefixes, suffixes and other auxiliary terms should also be
avoided.

In this way, journalistic language tends to be precise, less
beautiful than literary language, and less sophisticated and less
formal than scientific language. Language economy is intended to
serve the reporting of facts and not opinions or analysis. This
often creates the impression that journalistic language is
monolithic. But with such simplicity and clarity, does
journalistic language become an efficient and effective language,
or a poorly truncated from of correct and beautiful language?

This situation is still aggravated by the fact journalists
have to convey what is said by their informants. In the case of
the Indonesian press, most of the informants are government
officials or high-ranking bureaucrats who are known for using
language with a lot of linguistic distortion in phonetics (the
pronunciation of suffix (kan as ken), syntax (the use of
superfluous daripada), or even in semantics (the use of excessive
euphemistic forms or abbreviations, which are not always publicly
known).

Here we are faced with some difficulties, both journalistic
and linguistic. If journalists have to report on what their
informants say, they have to choose either to stick to what was
said or to reshape what was said and run the risk of changing the
substance of the story. Be that as it may, the habit of using
high-ranking officials as the main source of information has led
to a situation where bureaucratic language exerts a powerful and
immediate influence on the use of journalistic language.

In contrast to this, are journalists who do their best to gain
access to the event as it unfolds. These journalists have
relatively more freedom to use the journalistic genre as they
want to. But if the Indonesian media is more inclined to report
statements than facts, and if most of the statements are still
from government officials, it is very unlikely the media will get
rid of bureaucratic language. One can therefore appreciate a
statement by former Indonesian journalist Mochtar Lubis, who on
the occasion of his 75th birthday said: "If I was still an active
journalist today, I would write more about the common people,
instead of government officials going on same safari." (The
Jakarta Post, March 7).

The now defunct Tempo magazine was one among the very few
which consciously structured an alternative to the bureaucratic
use of language. The journalistic essays of Goenawan Mohamad for
example, which were widely known as Catatan Pinggir, were
certainly far more literary than just journalistic pieces and by
no means bureaucratic.

The habit of using government officials as the main source of
information does not matter much as long as they are able and
accustomed to using the standardized Indonesian language, which
should be the language of government administration. In the case
of Indonesia, officials are inclined to imitate language mistakes
committed by their bosses. In turn, these mistakes are also made
by journalists reporting on the statements of those officials.
But the question is why are language mistakes so easily
disseminated and internalized among officials? The answer should
be sought not in linguistics but rather in language behavior.

Language in general, and the Indonesian language in
particular, is not only a means of communication but also an
attribute of identity. According to an old Malay saying, Bahasa
menentukan bangsa (the way one speaks indicates where one comes
from). The language of bureaucracy is also an attribute of power.
Those who work within bureaucracy tend to internalize the
language used by their colleagues, and particularly their
bosses, in order to identify themselves as members of the
bureaucracy. Since bureaucracy is a mechanism to implement
power, bureaucratic language (including all the mistakes) plays
an important role in showing one's participation in wielding
power. In other words, language mistakes easily become a part of
society because they are an effective status symbol.

The only way to improve the situation is not to blame
journalists for the mistakes in their reporting, but to introduce
a new awareness among our bureaucrats that an appropriate status
symbol for them is not bad language but correct language, as is
the case with all modern bureaucracies. It is worth considering
whether or not using standardized Indonesian should be included
as a precondition to recruit someone who wants to join the
bureaucracy. Another solution is to encourage journalists to
depend less on official statements, and instead rely on direct
access to facts and events in their reports.

But the problem also questions the relationship between the
standardization of language and the development of language. This
is a point of heated debate which is still raging among
professional linguists. The question is: should language be
organized and standardized in accordance with syntactical rules
which are established by professional linguists, or should
language be left to the creativity of its users? If we take the
first choice, we are easily subject to the domination of some
linguistic experts while ignoring what is happening among
language users. If we take the second choice, we are easily led
to a situation where there are no rules at all. The development
of language is dependent upon the whim of its users, and all the
mistakes are justified simply because they are widely accepted.

At this point the linguistic question turns into a
philosophical one: is language normative or empirical by nature?
I would argue, language is basically empirical, but we can look
at it and even criticize it in terms of some norms. However, the
norms which are to be applied should be open to discussion and
review, where all the syntactical normative rules, are taken from
the standardized syntax of Latin or Greek, as is the case with
the traditional grammarian school.

In reality, this means there must be some rules to allow
people to orient themselves in language, though these rules must
be open to correction and modification, just like language must
be open to improvement and innovation. Language should not only
be standardized, it also needs to be developed. It is subject not
only to regulation, but also to innovation and creativity.
However, the creativity and development of language should be
based on a minimum mastery of its rules. One can swerve from the
existing rules in order to enable a new creation in language (for
example through new metaphors, or through new syntactical
structure), but this should only be carried out responsibly.
Language should not be created in contrast to or even despite the
rules, and not because of neglect of just because of the
ignorance of the rules.

To quote the golden formula of Noam Chomsky, the performance
of language users should be a realization of the competence of
the language and not evidence of a lack of language competence.

The writer is a sociologist based in Jakarta.