Development was not only unknown and unspoken of in the pre-colonial communities of what is now Indonesia. It was simply unthinkable. So was the idea of ‘language.’ In fact, the introduction of the two concepts and the practices to which they refer were inseparable. Once these communities constituted a nation, the work of ‘Developing the nation’ has been persistently accompanied by the task of ‘Developing the national language’.
Heryanto, Ariel (1990) “The Making of Language: Developmentalism in Indonesia”, Prisma; The Indonesian Indicator, 50: 40-53.
keywords: bahasa, developmentalism, Indonesia, Javanese, language, Malay, Prisma, vernacular
Ariel Heryanto 