Language reflects power: Experts

JAKARTA (JP): The holders of power define everything in ways that place the less-powerful at a disadvantage, a scholar says.

"The powerful elite determines the reigning ideologies," said communication expert Jalaluddin Rakhmat from Padjadjaran University in Bandung in the book titled Bahasa dan Kekuasaan (Language and Power) which was discussed here yesterday by prominent scholars.

Jalaluddin said that once a government assumes power, one of the things it will do is set up a specific "dictionary" of words to be used, and which will dominate political discourse.

"Through this dictionary, the members of political communities have to interpret the political reality," Jalaluddin said.

He compared the use of language in the Old Order administration under late president Sukarno to the language used by the current New Order administration of President Soeharto.

"When the Old Order was replaced by the New Order, the powerful elite changed. The reigning ideologies changed as well. In political discourse, there was also a change in people's vocabulary and a shift in the meaning of words," he said.

He pointed out that during the first administration, people's jargon was dominated by the idea of revolution. The current administration's political discourse, on the other hand, is marked with the jargon of economic development such as "take off era", "growth", "technology" and "modernization".

"In the New Order, there's no antirevolution group. What we have, instead, is people who are antidevelopment...who may come from either the left or right extreme," he said.

Jalaluddin said that the new order's political discourse was at one stage dominated by jargon which show the great influence of the Armed Forces (ABRI). He mentioned the use of the acronym for ideology, politics, economic, social and cultures (ipoleksosbud) as an example of political discourse influenced by the military.

"Does the recent decline in the use of words influenced by ABRI, and the increase of technological terms, reflect a shift in the powerful elite?" he asked.

Jalaluddin wrote a chapter titled Communication and Political Changes in the book, which was published by Mizan and edited by Yudi Latif and Idi Subandy Ibrahim.

The book's other prominent writers include sociologist Ariel Heryanto, senior journalist Goenawan Mohamad, political scientist Mochtar Pabottingi, historian Taufik Abdullah, Virginia Matheson Hooker of Australian National University and Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson, a professor of government and Asian studies at Cornell University in the United States.

The book was discussed at the National Library yesterday by Mochtar Pabottingi, Moslem scholar Emha Ainun Nadjib and editor of Kalam cultural magazine Nirwan Dewanto. Some 300 youths attended the discussion.

Mochtar spoke of need to "put the (Indonesian) language back in order so that when people speak, their words represent resistance against despotism".

The senior researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences said going along with the words that the powerful elite define for the community "only bolsters the power that people wish to resist". (swe)