1.

The focus of the paper is to find out the practice of Code Switching in Indonesia after the
New Order and during the Reformasi Era and to identify the significance of said practices
through 5 different Indonesian post Reformasi Novels.
2. During the New Order, any form of Western culture including English is considered as
“western infiltration”, and it is threatening the nationality of Indonesia. Due to Suharto’s
policies of neatness, “tidiness”, and orderliness, every Indonesian must practice perfect
Indonesian, and people who speak other than Indonesian; whether it is regional or English
are considered arrogant, inorderly, and semi-lingual (Anatias, 2017, p. 2). After the New
Order, people are free from any kinds of strict regulation in everything, including language
use. People can speak using their own regional language. Reformasi Era writers, bilingual
writers to be specific are now free to express themselves through their writing by using any
language they want in order to strive the penultimate form of art through writing.
3. English situations in Eastern Asia are different from any Western countries, since it is not
their first language. In some countries, English have already extensively researched. For
example, both Malaysia and Singapore. However, those two countries have a similar colonial
background in the past. Indonesia, however, has a different colonial background from the
latter, and English is not as widespread as them. According to the Kachruvian Circle,
Indonesia is considered as an “Expanding Circle”, unlike Malaysia and Singapore, which is an
“Outer Circle” (Kachru, 1990; Anatias, 2017, p. 4). English have been taught in Indonesia
since the 1950s starting from grade 7 – or Junior High School grade 1 onwards. In 2006, the
government had been requiring the education of English since elementary. The policy got
mixed results, until recently in 2013, it is entirely the school’s decision whether to teach
English or not (Anatias, 2017, p. 4). Until now, English in Indonesia is still being taught at
schools, and scholars are still actively doing research on the language.
4. Literature is a form of art. An art is meant to reach the peak of artistic value, and entertain
people. Artists, including writers have their own creative liberty in creating their art.
Bilingual writers use code switching in order to deliver messages that cannot be delivered by
only using one language, to get to the peak of artistic value. A writer would use seasons,
such as Winter and Autumn/Fall. These seasons aren’t present in Indonesia, therefore
bringing up these seasons will deliver new meaning to the reader. Code switching is used to
indicate several different clusters of luxury. An example, the word “Outlet” is more
sophisticated, luxurious, and educated than “Cabang”. The person that use the English word
will look like they’re more educated from other characters that doesn’t use the word. Other
than that, code switching is used to introduce the reader to some foreign culture. An
example is how Indonesian eat “Nasi goreng”, “Pecel”, “Tempe Goreng”, while an American
would eat “Scrambled egg”, “Toast”, and “Bacon”.
5. Yes, I still use code switching in my everyday life. Mostly during chatting with friends in a
daily basis. This is because my friends speak English and they know the culture and jokes
that just cannot be understood with Indonesian. Code switching is a way for me to express
my feelings deeper using western cultural references and English vocabulary. Other than
that, as a new learner of French, I code switch French with English so I can understand the
language better. In other words, I use code switching to practice my second languages, both
semantically, and semiotically.