Sampé akhirnya gué ngobrol soal film lah nih … in general lah ya topiknya. Langsung salim nih sama bokap nyokap gué kan … Yaudah gué ngobrol. Kok tiba-tiba ada kursi nambah … siapa nih mau duduk? Trus … yaudah déh … gué diemin aja tuh … ampé tiba-tiba ada cowok nih dateng … tuk-utuk-utuk dateng duduk. Pak, saya kemarin dinner … Udah kan ni … berempat ni tuh kan. Till eventually I raise the question of film … just in general, as somethin’ to talk about. Like straightaway kisses my parents’ hands, right? 3 So alright, I chat with him. Then outta the blue there’s this extra chair … Who’s gonna sit there? So … alright then … I’m just quietly sitting there … till suddenly this guy shows up … knock knock knock … comes and sits down. So, Mister, the other day I was having dinner … Everything’s ready, right … just the four of us. To illustrate the point, she then turns to Satria and provides an example: Agnes’s response is summarily to dismiss Satria’s remark, implying that her mother has bad taste in men.
Although ultimately addressed to the group as a whole, her story begins as a riposte to Dewi’s boyfriend, Satria, who had teasingly suggested that her mother’s effort to find her a suitable marriage partner might be a ‘good thing’. baik dan benar) Indonesian taught in school and promulgated by the state.Ĭonsider, for instance, the events that Agnes relates at the start of the film. 2 In addition to distinctive morphological and syntactic patterns, this includes frequent lexical appropriations from English and the use of interactive discourse particles, pronouns, and terms of address that clearly distinguish their speech from the canonically ‘good and correct’ (I. In contrast to the various forms of Javanese spoken in the second part of the film, they speak a broadly colloquial Jakartan Indonesian (Sneddon 2006), employing elements that scholars of Indonesian linguistics have described in terms of bahasa gaul (‘cool’ or ‘sociable language’ see Sahertian 1999 Smith-Hefner 2007), bahasa gado-gado (‘mixed’ or ‘mixed-up language’ Martin 2018), and more recently bahasa JakSel (Rusydah 2020)-a style of speaking that is stereotypically associated with the fashionable youth of certain neighbourhoods in southern Jakarta. Their conversation is marked by a cosmopolitan sensibility, and a collective if casual intimacy mediated by language, gesture, and affect. Let us begin with the opening scene, with Dewi and her friends hanging out at a hip Jakarta café-smoking, drinking, and joking with one another about their ‘troublesome’ parents. It is for this reason that these examples of simulated language-in-use may be understood as a form of commentary-reflecting critically on the complex and at times incongruous desires, expectations, and aversions at play in the lives of an increasing number of young Indonesians. Albeit partially improvised, the conversations we encounter in the film were scripted and enacted with an eye to exemplifying (Goodman 1976:52–7) the circumstances they represent. It is important to bear in mind that these uses of language are not ‘natural’ in any straightforward sense of the term. The tension between Dewi’s multiple and often conflicting obligations is marked by the use of language-from the colloquial Jakartan Indonesian she speaks with her friends at the café to a brief exchange with her English-speaking boss on the telephone and the various forms of Javanese employed ‘at home’. As we have seen in prior contributions to this special issue, the film follows a young woman as she travels from Jakarta to her natal home in Central Java to attend her father’s funeral. My aim in this brief essay is to explore the relationship between language and mutual (mis)understanding in Candra Aditya’s short film Dewi pulang. Dewi, line 91ĭewi, you’re the one who’s gotta try to understand her.
What’s going on with you? Why don’t you get it? Dewi’s mother, line 64īut even just a little, Mum … please … try to understand how I feel. Keywords: Javanese language colloquial Jakartan Indonesian code-switching cinema short films
0 kommentar(er)
