No abstract

This book is the product of a collective intellectual exploration and a shared interest in the language practices of young people in Indonesia. Through numerous meetings, both face-to-face and via Skype, we have discussed and debated different theoretical concepts as well as the many examples that appear in this book. Though the three of us have known each other for some years, writing a book together has afforded us the opportunity to appreciate the differences in our academic background and interest and given us the courage to meet the challenge of aligning differing analytical perspectives in order to provide a rich account of the multi-situated nature of language use. Meeting that challenge was not always easy but was always a fruitful process. When we embarked on this project, we knew that examining youth language practices would be a satisfying endeavour. We are very grateful to the young participants in Bandung and Malang for allowing us to record their conversations, and to authors of Teenlit in Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta and Surabaya for granting us interviews. Editors of Teenlit at Gramedia Pustaka Utama and Gema Insani in Jakarta, and Mizan in Bandung have been particularly welcoming. We also thank Simon Chandra of Cendana Art Media Publishers, Sheila Rooswitha Putri and Ronny Amdani of Curhat Anak Bangsa Publishers for kindly granted us permission to reproduce the comic work presented here. We owe a debt of gratitude to our research assistants, who dedicated many hours to transcription and annotation, and helped us with the occasional tricky teen word or youth cultural reference: Eliyana, Refdinal Hadiningrat, Asdit Leonitara, Linda Mayasari, Harni Kartika Ningsih and Catrine Ana Prastyari. Particular gratitude is due to Enung Rostika, who led the collection and transcription effort in Bandung, and Catur Siwi Dia Rachmatika, who did the same in Malang. Our sincere thanks also go to Jo Taylor whose keen editorial eye efficiently refined this manuscript in its closing days. Our respective institutions have provided study leave to enable us to work on this project and financial support in the form of travel grants, research assistant funding and editing assistance. We are grateful for the generous support provided by the University of Sydney (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences),

This article explores new functions served by language varieties in fiction. Focusing our analysis on two types of texts in Indonesian -teen fiction and comics -we examine the interplay between standard and colloquial varieties to show how they are used together with non-verbal elements to promote youthful involvement. We identify three ways in which involvement is created in the texts: through free indirect discourse, non-verbal cues, and the gradual building of empathy indicated by shifting perspectives. We show that shifts from narrator's to character's perspective are shifts in alignment. By shifting to colloquial language, the narrator aligns their perspective with that of both the character and the reader, thus blurring the divisions between them. Nonverbal cues can also signal a shift in narrator roles, from a teller to a keen commentator and interlocutor who directly addresses the reader and invites them to share story-world experience. The frequent shifts between varieties represent a new style of writing which gives salience to the role of narrator as agent with a double persona: an anonymous agent who tells the reader about the characters in relation to the unfolding events, and an agent-participant who makes their presence known to the reader through direct address and evaluative commentary.

No abstract

No abstract