From Debby's Lecture 1 - Cinta Laura and Accent Imperfection

I just came back from Debby's lecture at Graduate School UGM. Quite interesting, with the topic Representing Spanish Speaking 'Other' in US Media. As usual, I was the youngest there. (Yup, again, I made it into the graduate school. Only at this time, I tried to make myself invisible. Unlike the lecture last year!)

The material and speech were very interesting, talking about the conflict between English and Espagnol in US. How the English speaking people considered Espagnol speakers as threat to their hegemony. Threat towards their domination as well as their political position. So, basically this was a conflict between languages (as well as proving that language held that tremendous power over things).

However, in the question and answer session, there was an interesting question regarding similar condition in Indonesia. How Indonesian language was placed in the lower position that English (meaning, it will be very cool to speak English rather than Indonesia). No oppression towards Indonesian (rather, the oppression was given to the local dialect). However, the recent phenomenon of Cinta Laura (yeah, yeah, that artist again) has proven otherwise (according to the speaker, though). This case proved that there was a mockery towards foreign language. That actually people still consider Indonesian language as something better than English.

Interesting point, eh? Ain't it good to know that people are still proud of their native language?? However, this case remained untouched until the end of the discussion. (I actually wanted to raise my hand, though. Unfortunately, I felt the urge to remain invisible during the whole discussion. Probably because my dad was there.........)

Hmm, IMHO, the mockery towards Cinta Laura was not solely caused by her use of foreign dialect. This was rather caused by her imperfect dialect (a.k.a. Mertanggung in Javanese!) She didn't speak English well, either did Indonesian. People laughed exactly at her imperfection, not her use of foreign language. This has proven that Indonesian people still have the nationalism towards their language, hehehehe!

Remember! People demand perfection, and will highly regard those speak English perfectly (according to their standard, though). The same case actually happened within Indonesian speaker, where those speaking Indonesian with local dialect were considered bad and low. Only those speaking Indonesian with no local dialect were placed in the prestigious places.

The later case is what lead the extinction of some local dialects, though. The effort to eliminate the local accent is what deliver these local dialects to extinction. (Umm, this will be a completely different discussion, so I'd better limit my writing only on the matter of perfection. The elimination matter will be discussed in the different posting).

Well, so what can we conclude from this Cinta Laura phenomenon? People are not looking English down, but they are looking imperfection down!