Unauthentic, Vulgar, Forgotten: Reappreciating Vernacular Malay Literature

• In Event: 356. Middle Classes in Late-Colonial Java: Revisiting the Ancestors of a Future Nation

Abstract

The cities of late-colonial Java were home to various ethno-linguistic groups, such as Europeans, Eurasians, Chinese, and various indigenous communities. Together, they constituted a lower middle-class that formed the motor of economic, socio-political and cultural progress. This society relied on an underexplored dialect of colloquial Malay for their interethnic communication, which included a recently digitized corpus of popular newspapers, novels, poetry and advertisements. This presentation traces the sociolinguistic features of a plural society on the cusp of modernity. What can the vernacular Malay language tell us about the nature of city life in colonial Java? How did the non-elite perceive the world around them? What types of popular and public culture took shape in the wake of global capitalism and literacy in Malay?

Author

• Tom Gunnar Hoogervorst, KITLV