Language Policy, Ideology and Language Attitudes: A Study of Indonesian Parents and their Choice of Language in the Home

Abstract

This study is driven by my curiosity about Indonesian parents’ use of English, a foreign language in Indonesia, to raise children. It led me to ask why this seems like normal practice and why parents seem to have little attachment to Indonesian although they grew up speaking the language. Previous studies have focused, among others, on how Indonesian children navigated their identity as cosmopolites and how English language schools applied the national education policy. Meanwhile parents’ choice of home language has received little attention. This study fills the gap in the literature by focusing on the ideology of raising children in the school language. I draw on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to explain the motivations behind the parents’ use of English. I discuss the impact of language policies during the Dutch and Japanese occupations, the New Order and post-New Order periods, on parents’ language attitudes and argue that the ideology of raising children in the school language is inculcated within more than one generation. In every generation, parents use the school language in the home, respectively, Dutch, Indonesian and English, reflecting the assumption that language is a tool for economic advancement. The study uses a combined quantitative and qualitative methodology, involving questionnaire and video/audio recordings of parent-children interactions. The participants consist of upper-middle class parents who send their children to English language schools. The findings show that most parents speak a mixture of Indonesian and English, which suggests that they still value Indonesian as the family language, but use English to support their children’s schooling. I show that parents’ attitudes reflect the ideology of language inculcated through language policy and implemented through education, which promotes the school language as a tool for achieving better social standing. Parents who want their children to succeed thus deem that English language schools are the best option for their children. This study contributes to the understanding of the role of English in the Indonesian education system and the impact of language policy on language attitudes. By focusing on Indonesia, it provides an example of the process involved in the dissemination of the language through the education system.