earticle

영어

Indonesia is a multilingual, multicultural, and multiethnic country. After a series of twists and turns, Indonesia has chosen Malay, one of its regional languages, and developed it up as a single national language, in the name of Bahasa Indonesia. Some scholars appraise Indonesia's language planning as an epoch-making success, while not a few are pessimistic about its future. This paper aims at studying the hidden side of achievements of the language planning in Indonesia. In order to understand those conflicting appraisals, we should examine the socio-historical backdrop of the biggest island state in the world which has succeeded in building a single nation and a single national language. In particular, we scrutinize the background of its national language policy which contradicts with the policy of preserving the regional languages and allowing the use of foreign languages. Thus, we come to the conclusion that Indonesian language planning has succeeded in preserving and developing the national language in terms of national integration. But it has brought about serious problems in terms of preservation of regional languages and the use of foreign languages. Considering that Indonesia's language planners are in this dilemma, this paper looks for possible solutions.