ENGLISH AS A SYMBOL OF PRESTIGE IDENTITY

        What is identity? It seems that there is no one single correct answer. One can speak about social identity, gender identity, cultural identity, religious identity, national identity and many other identities. It is clear that human beings are not created alone. They live in the world together with other creatures and other objects. Their lives become more meaningful if they are in harmony with their environment. Patterns of environmental management that is ideally useful to meet the needs of human life and to the preservation of the natural environment are usually called local knowledge or local wisdom. This local knowledge and wisdom are kept in their languages. Thus, the identity is certainly shaped by the language and the social experiences that one has. Balinese is an identity for Balinese ethnic group. In addition to its function as a means of social interaction, as a local language, Balinese also expresses cultural values that live in the Balinese society as the native speakers. What is the role of language in the development of identity and cultural identity in particular? Language is intrinsic to the expression of culture. Language is a fundamental aspect of cultural identity. It is through language that we transmit and express our culture and its values. Language has the power to define and shape the human experience. It is because of language that we can name our experiences.

        From the literature one can learn that the global capitalist economy could lead to an erosion of local culture in developing countries. Historically, Balinese tourism dates back to 1920s when Bali was discovered as “the last paradise”, Balinese traditional culture was recreated and even invented for Western audiences (Yamashita, 2013:49). Yamashita noted that the first five-year development plan began in 1969 under President Suharto’s regime. Under this plan, tourism was seen as an important source of foreign currency earnings for Indonesia, and Bali was designated as the most important Indonesia’s international destinations. In this context, the Balinese provincial government adopted the policy of tourism development with special emphasis on culture (2013:49). In the process of tourism development, Balinese traditional culture has become a cultural resource economically for both the province of Bali and the Indonesian state government. In this way, the local culture has become part of tourism industry in which touristic culture which is created in the context of tourism has emerged and through this process; culture has become a “cultural capital”.  If we pay attention to the tourist area around Bali, it is clear that English is the dominant language used in public spaces. The sub-discipline of linguistics that study signs in public spaces is a linguistic landscape’.

        Studies of the linguistic landscape (LL) are concerned with language in its written form, in the public sphere; language that is visible to all in a specified area. This sign is treated as a text. According to Landry & Bourhis (1997: 25), the language of public signs, advertising boards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region or urban agglomeration. LL studies more on out-door signs which are relatively fixed signs or fixed texts with regards to their position. Signs might have some degree of stability. For instance we might add the notion ‘mobile’ signs which could be leaflets and flyers being distributed in the street, advertising on vans, buses and other vehicles that pass through the streets of the area under study, free tourist maps and other publications available on counters and desks of hotels and tourist information centres. The texts making up the LL may be monolingual, bilingual or multilingual, reflecting the diversity of the language groups present in a given territory or region. However, language or code preference is never the result of an arbitrary decision. The linguistic code choices in the public sphere serve to index broader societal and governmental attitudes towards different languages and their speakers. In this case, the predominance of one language may reflect the relative power and status of the language. The LL clarifies that the field normally aims to apply its findings in a broader context, making inferences about the motives behind and impact of particular displays of language in public. Landry and Bourhis (1977: 23) explain that linguistic landscape “serve[s] important informational and symbolic functions as a marker of the relative power and status of the linguistic communities inhabiting the territory” The informational functions of the LL include serving as a distinctive marker of the geographical territory inhabited by a given language community. This will inform us about the linguistic characteristics, territorial limits, and language boundaries of the region they have entered and it also indicates that the language in question can be used to communicate and to obtain services within public and private establishments within that region.

        The use of ‘foreign’ languages, particularly on commercial signs, may also have a symbolic function. In the case of English, for example, shop name signs written in English in Bali might be symbolizing foreign tastes, fashions or associations between particular products or types of businesses and English-speaking culture. This is due to English is perceived as being more modern and prestigious than local languages. The language use can be seen as a semiotic system which operates as systems of social positioning and power relationship since no choices are neutral in the social world.  LL can give a way of looking at the power relations in a given community and it also reflects the relative power and status of different languages in a particular sociolinguistic context. English has played the role of linguistic vehicle of globalization. The globalization is a process which is motivated by the dramatic development of transport, communication technologies and international commerce which is affecting most aspects of life and business including language choice and use. There is a growing body of evidence to show that English is rapidly spreading through the streets of the tourist areas in Bali. In tourist areas, English has become as a lingua franca because it has something to do with the symbolic value of English for the local people, as a language of international prestige, or a status marker.