Routledge Language Policy in Superdiverse Indonesia (Routledge Studies in Sociolinguistics)

Indonesia has an extreme diversity of linguistic wealth, with 707 languages by one count, or 731 languages and more than 1,100 dialects in another estimate, spoken by more than 600 ethnicities spread across 17,504 islands in the archipelago. Smaller, locally used indigenous languages jostle for survival alongside Indonesian, which is the national language, regional lingua francas, major indigenous languages, heritage languages, sign languages and world languages such as English, Arabic and Mandarin, not to mention emerging linguistic varieties and practices of language mixing. How does the government manage these languages in different domains such as education, the media, the workplace and the public while balancing concerns over language endangerment and the need for participation in the global community? Subhan Zein asserts that superdiversity is the key to understanding and assessing these intricate issues and their complicated, contested and innovative responses in the complex, dynamic and polycentric sociolinguistic situation in Indonesia that he conceptualises as superglossia. This offers an opportunity for us to delve more deeply into such a context through the language and superdiversity perspective that is in ascendancy. Zein examines emerging themes that have been dominating language policy discourse including status, prestige, corpus, acquisition, cultivation, language shift and endangerment, revitalisation, linguistic genocide and imperialism, multilingual education, personnel policy, translanguaging, family language policy and global English. These topical areas are critically discussed in an integrated manner against Indonesia’s elaborate socio-cultural, political and religious backdrop as well as the implementation of regional autonomy. In doing so, Zein identifies strategies for language policy to help inform scholarship and policymaking while providing a frame of reference for the adoption of the superdiversity perspective on polity-specific language policy in other parts of the world. Review "In the ninety years since the first Indonesian Youth Congress, conducted in Dutch, called for selection and development of a national language to overcome the superdiversity of languages, Bahasa Indonesia has come to fill that role. This pioneering study of language management is a book that must be read by all interested in language policy and in the effects on other language varieties of successful language planning."---Bernard Spolsky, Professor, Bar Ilan University, Israel "Subhan Zein’s approach to language policy and language revitalisation is erudite and original. Add to that his comprehensive knowledge of and proactive recommendations for cultivating and sustaining the rich, complex, dynamic language diversity of Indonesia. The result: an intellectual tour de force that will be a reference and resource for Indonesia and for language policy and planning scholarship for years to come."---Nancy H. Hornberger, Professor, University of Pennsylvania, USA "Language Policy in Superdiverse Indonesia not only mirrors Indonesia’s history but also echoes cultural integration in academic study. Zein’s book offers a holistic perspective that is reflected in the interaction between language history and language ecology… Overall, this book, at macro and micro levels, creatively contributes to linguistic research and policy-making under multicultural contexts, and it can also shed new light on the educational development of an emerging Indonesia."---Reviewed by Kezheng Chen, BA (Zhejiang University, China) in Language in Society "Subhan Zein’s book Language Policy in Superdiverse Indonesia provides a substantial review of the dynamics of language, policy and language shift in Indonesia. There is no shortage of scholars praising Indonesia’s language planning. However, few books have investigated its underpinnings, and arguably none have done it as thoroughly as Zein has here. Each chapter ex