International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 154

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES SPRING 2016 The Socio-Political Factors of the Emergence of Teaching English in Postcolonial Indonesia Dewi Candraningrum Biodata: Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta & Jurnal Perempuan. [email protected] Introduction This essay addresses the question of how English entered Indonesia in relation to European Colonialism in the early Sixteenth century. In order to identify more closely the place occupied by English in postcolonial Indonesia, the rest of the paper will be devoted to sketching the position of the “surrounding” colonial languages — Portuguese and Dutch in the interplay with the position of Bahasa Indonesia, the Indonesian national language in the mid-twentieth century. This sketch will be framed from the perspective of the entry of foreign languages into pre and post-colonial Indonesia. Bahasa Indonesia as one of the Austronesian or Malayo-Polynesian languages had been used as the lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago before the seventh century. It is a modern dialect of the Malay language which borrowed heavily from many foreign languages: the notable ones are Sanskrit, Arabic, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese and English. This paper will also “untangle” the sedimentation of foreign languages into the history of foreign language teaching in Indonesia, beginning with the arrival of Sanskrit along with the Hinduism and Buddhism; the arrival of Arabic accompanying the introduction of Islam; the arrival of Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Dutch with Christians and Catholics missions, and, finally, the introduction of Japanese following the brief colonial occupation by Japan in the 1940s. In exploring further the impact of the English language on Indonesia, I will provide a general account of Dutch colonization. In discussing this, I will supply information of the language policy of the colonizer wherever necessary to provide a better picture of the existence of English: how its significance and impact was different from and similar with other European foreign languages in the course of Dutch colonization. I will use a critical perspective in cultivating the history of the arrival of English language during the Dutch era as well as uncovering the socio-political factors that imbued the establishment of English departments in Indonesian universities through the policies developed by the Indonesian government. I argue that the existence of English language, besides normal, neutral and beneficial as viewed publicly, was also embedded by other significant factors such as social, political, economic, and religious elements. These dimensions played significant roles in the emergence of English language teaching in Indonesia during the pre and post-colonial periods of Indonesian history. 154 | P a g e