Ngelidin Sétra, Nepukin Sema? Thoughts on Language and Writing in Contemporary Bali
Keywords:
Balinese language, cultural heritage, endangered languages, language ecology, traditional literacy, religion, power, mass mediaAbstract
Recent decades have seen a shift in Balinese sensibilities
regarding the use of the island’s traditional script, and
of the texts that are written in that script; and this shift
appears to be linked to a series of wider-reaching changes
in the way people set about embodying, cultivating and
contesting shared ideals of agency, community and the
collective good.1 That is to say there seems to be a link
between, on the one hand, the material practices of script
and writing and, on the other, broader styles of what I
would call social and practical reasoning. I wish to suggest
that this empirical observation may have some rather
important implications for how we think about cultural
preservation, and perhaps especially the challenges
facing those working to safeguard the future of Balinese
language, script and literature. I would like to present this
argument with specific reference to the idea of ‘language
endangerment’, not only on account of its prominence in
current debates on language and cultural heritage, but also
as the questions it raises have special bearing on the issues at stake in contemporary Bali. The recent controversy over
the place of Balinese language instruction in the National
Curriculum offers a useful way into the problem.
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