Contact Talk

Zane Goebel is Associate Professor in Indonesian and Applied Linguistics in the School of Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Queensland, Australia. Deborah Cole is Associate Professor in the Department of Language, Literature and Communication, College of Humanities at Utrecht University, the Netherlands.Howard Manns is Lecturer in Linguistics in the School of Languages, Literature, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University, Australia.

"This is an immensely important volume in which a synthesis is achieved of decades of theoretical debate, now integrated in an original and innovative framework for a sociolinguistics of complexity. Offering a range of richly documented studies within a coherent framework, this book is compelling reading for anyone interested in the contemporary dynamics of language and society." — Professor Jan Blommaert, Director of Babylon, Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg University, Tilburg, the Netherlands"This book shows that although Indonesia has arguably the world's most successful national language in one of the world's most linguistically diverse countries, the problem of contact languages has not been 'solved'. With ethnographically rich examples and introducing the concepts of 'scalar shifter' and 'contact register', the authors show beautifully how language remains a pivotal resource for the construction of difference and sameness in the midst of massive decentralization and globalization." — Joel Kuipers, Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, George Washington University, USA

• 1. Theorizing the Semiotic Complexity of Contact Talk: Contact Registers and Scalar ShiftersZane Goebel, Deborah Cole and Howard Manns2. Indonesia and IndonesianHoward Manns, Deborah Cole and Zane Goebel3. Reentering the Margins? The Scale of "Local Language" in a Decentralizing IndonesiaAdam Harr4. Moving Languages: Bivalency and Scalar Shifters in Central Javanese Language EcologiesLauren Zentz5. From "Top-down" to "Bottom-up": The New Order’s Vertical Synchronicity and the Vintage Aesthetics of the Margins in Post-Suharto Political OratoryAurora Donzelli6. Revaluing and Rescaling National and Ethnic Language Boundaries in Online DiscourseHoward Manns and Simon Musgrave7. Adolescent Interaction, Local Languages and Peripherality in Teen FictionDwi Noverini Djenar8. Modeling Contact Talk on TelevisionZane Goebel9. Localizing Person Reference among Indonesian YouthMichael C. Ewing10. Revaluing Papuan MalayIzak Morin and Zane Goebel11. The Emergent Selectivity of Semiotically Playful UtterancesDeborah Cole12. CodaZane Goebel