used in complementary domains and functions, and there is very little overlapping.
10
Examples given by Ferguson 1959:328 of a High variety in High domains include: a sermon in a church or mosque, personal
letters, speeches, high forms of literature, university lectures, news broadcasts, and newspaper stories. Examples of a Low variety in Low domains are: conversations with family, friends and colleagues,
instructions to servants, waiters and clerks, captions on a political cartoon, radio “soap operas”, and folk literature.
At the outset of this research, it was expected to find that the national language, Indonesian, likely plays the role of a High variety c.f. Grimes n.d.; Sneddon 2002, while Jambi Malay plays the role of the
Low variety in a diglossic relationship.
1.3.1 Standard Indonesian
Let us look first at what is spoken in Jambi City, where cultures and peoples continually mix. Standard Indonesian SI
11
is the main language of wider communication LWC in urban Jambi. Based on observation, SI is what is spoken on television, during official government ceremonies, in classrooms, in
the newspapers, the radio, hospitals and doctors’ offices, in supermarkets, banks, and other prestigious places of business. Furthermore, media, especially television, have spread to even the farthest reaches of
Jambi Province. Standard Indonesian is the language of most books.
12
It is primarily what is spoken between different ethnic groups and to foreigners. SI is rather well accepted and there is general agreement
that it is extremely useful and important as a LWC. Not only is it seen as important, but it is also seen as prestigious. As in Asim’s 2001 study of Banjarese Malay and Indonesian, SI indeed takes on the High
function, as defined by Ferguson 1959, in Jambi City.
Please refer to table 1.1 for a summary of the results of a study on the usage of Indonesian in Jambi City Purba 1997. It can be seen from this table that High domains have at least 70 usage of
Indonesian, while Indonesian is relatively less common, although still surprisingly high, in the low domains home, everyday speech, within ethnic groups.
Table 1.1 Usage of Indonesian SI, mixed Indonesian and Jambi Malay SIJM, Jambi Malay JM, and “Other” in Jambi City
Domain SI
SIJM JM
Other
Intraethnic 62.5 15.5 22 0
Interethnic 88.5
10 1.5
Government offices 91.5
55.5 3
Educational institutions 94
4.5 1.5
Home 47.5 23
29.5 Official ceremonies
95 3
2 Government
84 10.5
5.5 Education
70.5 16.5 13 0 Traditions 26.5
34 39.5
Everyday speech
42.5 34.5 23 0 Averages 70.25
15.7 14.05
It is unclear whether the Jambi Malay referred to in Purba’s study is Jambi Indonesian, or Jambi Malay, since there is often ambiguity between them and there has not yet been anything published on the distinction. Since the study took
place in Jambi City, it is possible that what he means by Jambi Malay is actually Jambi Indonesian, which is a mesolect
, or intermediate variety on a continuum between Jambi Malay and Standard Indonesian, as per Trudgill’s definition 1986. See section 1.3.2 for a discussion of Jambi Indonesian.
It
is unclear in the study whether Purba is exclusively referring to between Jambi Malay speakers or between members of other groups as well.
10
Sneddon, however, found that functional compartmentalization is not always so neat, using data from High and Low forms of Indonesian itself. Though Indonesian consistently conforms closely to Ferguson’s original model of diglossia and should continue to
be considered a diglossic situation, he discovered a point of departure in that there is a continuum between Low and High forms depending on the social situation Sneddon 2002.
11
Indonesian, or SI, as it will most often be referred to in this paper, is Standard Indonesian, the official language of Indonesia.
12
Of course, there are books in other languages available for specialized purposes, such as English language textbooks, and the Quran and commentaries written in Arabic.
The vast majority of people in Jambi can understand and speak Indonesian. As Purba 1997 pointed out, data from the statistics office in 1995 show that 97.58 of people in Jambi City can speak
