Indonesian Women Bloggers: The Role of Bahasa Gaul in Negotiating Public/Private Connections

Abstract

This study suggests blogging as a practice has unintended cultural and political implications. It can be drawn from the data, derived from multiple qualitative fieldwork methods (2008–2012), that Indonesian women bloggers circumvent cultural constraints. Appropriating the private Bahasa Gaul, women bloggers establish connections and make alliances in public. Further, the utilisation of modes of ‘street language’ in the digital age comprises a distinctive register of sociability, liberated from certain norms and hierarchies.

Keywords:

• Indonesian Women Bloggers
• Bahasa Gaul
• Language and Blogging
• Women’s Autonomy
• Colloquial Language in Blogs
• Blog Conversations

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was conducted as part of a PhD research project at the University of Wollongong, Australia. I acknowledge the generous support of Professor Philip Kitley and Professor Mark McLelland throughout. I am also grateful for the opportunities for intellectual growth offered by TAPJA Editor Professor Simone Dennis, along with the editorial advice offered by TAPJA Executive Editor Diana Glazebrook, and the detailed insights of the anonymous reviewer who provided a particularly instructive and expert review. This research has been conducted under Ethics Approval number HE09/336 granted by the University of Wollongong.

Notes

1 IssueCrawler is a software that allows the mapping of blog networks.

2 583 local dialects, belonging to different ethnic groups, are spoken in Indonesia.

3 Chandra’s (2008) personal mapping project provided my study with more than 300 blogger communities in Indonesia.

4 CAPTCHA: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by the Indonesian Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education. This work was supported by Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Tinggi [grant number Batch 3 2009].