This writing consists of three ‘stories’ of English, all of which are narrated from the historical point of view. Each of the stories, in an orderly turn, will present very briefly ‘word order in English’, ‘the emergence of stress as a phoneme in English’, and ‘the inconsistency of the English spelling system’. I really hope that this writing can serve as a very short introduction to the understanding of English, as a language, seen from its experiencing the linguistic time-and-space continuum. Though presented separately, it does not mean that each story stands alone in its owned fixed point. They three are correlated one to another. Some elements of one story may show significant effect to the development of its counterpart.

Have a good read.

Story No. 1

Introduction: Word Order

When experiencing a foreign language, for instance in terms of speaking and listening, one may tend to scrutinize the vocabulary and pronunciation as indicators of the language’s quality of foreignness. This tendency is understandable since, in its first superficial appearance, vocabulary and pronunciation of a language act as the avant-garde elements greeting the hearer. Notwithstanding, in a further layer of acquaintance of a language, one should gradually realize that another system, or codification, can also specifically indicate the identity of a language.

Hawkins, in his Word Order Universals[1], noted that one element to consider attentively when observing how languages appear to vary is word order. Word order here means the relation of a verb, seen from its position, to the subject and the object of a sentence. He then put forward that there are three word orders found observable in the majority of languages, namely Verb-Subject-Object (VSO), Subject-Verb-Object (SVO), and Subject-Object-Verb (SOV): a concept he labeled ‘Greenbergian tricothomy’[2].

It is obvious that, from the way the concept is presented, one of the essentials it focalizes is the consideration upon position, as an indicator to identify how each phrase inter-relates one another. In other words, turning the logic upside down, it is position that ignites the recognition of the phrase. Meaning to say, in an SVO language, a word located at the final position will not identified as a verb. Furthermore, Greenbergian tricothomy is indeed a generalization per se. This is to say that Greenberg advanced his attempt to distill diverse phenomena of word order in numerous languages into several assumed conceptual systems. Inevitably, the notion of fixedness appears. VSO, SVO, and SOV orders are respectively fixed.

Poedjosoedarmo, in his article “Unique Elements in English Grammar”[3], put forward that with regard to the context that a Subject and an Object of a sentence as having the category of Noun (phrase), another word order, or phrase order, would emerge: free phrase order. What is meant by free phrase order is a condition when the four major phrasal elements of sentence in a language, namely subject, verb, direct object, and indirect object, are not identified by the position each of them is located; all them are, to use Poedjosoedarmo’s term, interchangeable.

As a result of this condition, since the phrases are not identified by the position, such as what we have in the syntactic tricothomy proposed by Greenberg, a language will employ another method of identification. Before going any further, it is important to state early here that identification, in the context of what phrase occupying what function in a sentence, is by and large essential. It is due to the fact that phrase-function identification will largely affect the meaning. One may confuse the different meanings of two English sentences like Ponari cures people with the magic stone and People cure Ponari with the magic stone if English has no agreed syntactic means to identify that the proper name ‘Ponari’ is a subject in the first sentence and a direct object in the second. Back to our discussion, another method of phrase-function identification meant here is the use of either inflections or case markers.

Mobility of phrases is one of the characteristics of a synthetic, or inflectional, language.[4] In an inflectional language, for instance: Modern German, inflections (usually inflectional endings) are needed to fulfill the condition for the phrase’s getting the ability of moving around. It is the compactness of the phrase that allows it to be mobile.[5] In order to be compact, inflectional affixes are employed to the phrase. Gender, case, number, tense, voice, and mood are those which can be identified by the use of inflections. Again, compactness is a means utilized to identify the phrase. Consider German word Mann (Eng. ‘man’), which, in respect to its differentiation through case inflections, namely nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative, will be inflected respectively into der Mann, den Mann, des Mannes, dem Mann(e). Or, the Old English word for ‘dog’ hund (singular) and hundas (plural)[6].

Meanwhile, overt case markers, in relation to phrase-function identification, are needed to let us indicate what a phrase is acting as in a sentence. Since synthetic language does not make use of position as the indicator of phrase-function, and due to the interchangeability of the phrases, case markers, which are apparent in the forms of particles (such as those we have in Japanese of Philippine languages) or particular affixes (the inflectional endings we generally have in Old English), help a speaker of an inflectional language to locate the subject, indirect object, and direct object of the sentence.[7] These three sentence elements are called respectively nominative, dative, and accusative. There are still some other cases to be considered, such as genitive, ablative, and locative (the last two occurs in Latin, but not in Old English).

***

In relation to the fact that Modern English word order is now relatively fixed, which is SVO, the great reduction of inflections and syncretism of cases[8] have contributed much for the shift. This is somehow the general implicit-yet-observable perspective postulated by many scholars.[9] Nonetheless, this notion does not exist without a debate, mainly concerning the chronology of the shift: which one comes first the loss of inflections or the fixedness of the word order?[10] We might also question why SVO is the pattern agreed and survived for English word order until this contemporary time. Why not, for example, SOV or VSO?

In this part, I am going to sketch very briefly the relation between the syntactic sequence SVO in English with the disappearance of affixes in gender system, the changes in affixes for the tense system, and the changes in affixes for the number system.

***

As I have mentioned previously, English’s today’s word order is relatively fixed, namely: SVO pattern. Here, before going further to the discussion of English SVO syntactic sequence and its relationship with the loss of affixes for the gender system and the changes in affixes for tense and number system, I would like to advance a short discussion concerning the process English has undergone to gain its word order fixedness. This historical review is essential since each phenomenon recorded in the history of English language development, the time-and-space continuum English has walked along, would show how English finally comes up with its contemporary modern linguistic body. Due to time constraint, I have to limit the scope of this writing. I will focus our discussion only on the condition and development of gender, tense, and number systems in each era (Old English, Middle English, and Modern English). After that, I would like to try to observe possible causes which lead English to its recent SVO word order. Let us continue, shall we?

Gender, Tense, and Number Systems in Old English

Baugh, in his A History of the English Language, clearly stated that “[a]s in Indo-European languages generally the gender of Old English nouns is not dependent upon considerations of sex.”[11] What he meant by this statement is that sex is not an absolute indicator to determine whether an Old English noun will be considered as masculine, feminine, or neuter. He continued, “While nouns designating males are generally masculine and females feminine, those indicating neuter objects are not necessarily neuter.”[12] For instances, the word monā (stone) is considered masculine, but sunne (sun) is feminine. Interestingly, such words as we might expect to be masculine or feminine, e.g. mægden (girl), wif (wife), or cild (child), are in fact neuter. Meanwhile, as for the word wifmann (woman), a compound word whose second element (mann, meaning ‘man’) is masculine, is categorized ipso facto as a masculine word. It is due to this illogicality that thus Baugh[13], as agreed by Poedjosoedarmo[14], termed gender concept in Old English as ‘grammatical gender’, an arbitrary ‘sex’ designation[15].

Furthermore, in terms of tense system, Old English only recognized a couple of simple tenses, which were distinguished by inflection, namely: present and past tenses.[16] The identification of tenses in Old English is done via inflectional suffixes. Talking about tense system means talking about verbs since the inflected sentence-item in this context is the verb. Bough suggested that in Germanic languages in general, and Old English in particular, there is a distinctive classification of verb into what he called ‘two great classes’: the weak and the strong verbs – in our modern era, we recognize these as regular and irregular verbs.[17] Nevertheless, Peters argued that there is another class of verb in Old English, which he named as ‘the so-called anomalous or irregular verbs’.[18] The shift of the nucleic vowel is the indicator of the strong verbs in their past-tense form. This can be seen from the contrast of sing and sang. Meanwhile, a weak verb will need a dental suffix /-d/ to have it transformed into its past-tense form, as observable in walk versus walked, or a /-t/, as seen in cyss versus cyst. In addition, as for the so-called anomalous verbs, or irregular verbs in Old English, a different base is used to indicate the past form of the verb, as we can see in eom versus wæs.[19]

As for the origin of the use of dental suffix /-d/ or /-t/ to indicate past form of a weak verb, Baugh stated that “[i]t is formerly customary to explain these as part of the verb do, as though I worked was originally I work – did (i.e. I did work), hence the dental is acquired. Yet, he continued, it is adequate for us to acknowledge that “a large and important group of verbs in Old English form their past tense by adding –ede, -ode, or –de to the present stem, and their past participles by adding –ed, -od, or –d.”[20]

Now, it is time to discuss the number system in Old English. The concept of number adheres to the nouns. Plurality and singularity of Old English nouns are signified by inflectional endings. However, it is in fact apparent that in Old English, the highly inflected English colored with case markers, the inflectional suffix used to indicate number “was an allomorph of a combined morpheme of number (singular and plural) and one of four cases (nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive).”[21] It means that the inflectional suffix indicates both number and case. For instance, the ending –a, pronounced /α/ is used to indicate plurality and genetiveness. Thus, we have hund as hund-a, meaning that the noun is plural and genitive.

Gender, Tense, and Number Systems in Middle English

Middle English is often referred as the era when the ‘Period of Great Change’ took place or the ‘Decay of Inflectional Endings’ era.[22] Many of inflectional suffixes, as what we had in Old English nouns and adjective, distinguishing number, case, and gender, disappeared. Here, we are about to see the transformations taking place in terms of gender, tense, and number systems of Middle English.

The concept of grammatical gender in nouns in Middle English had been by and large reduced. Peters asserted that this loss of grammatical gender is a causal effect of the rise of natural gender. This means that the gender concept in Middle English was no longer arbitrary. The determinative measurement used to consider whether a noun is masculine or feminine or neuter is the lexical meaning of the word.[23] What is supposed to be ‘male’, ‘female’, and ‘neuter’ nouns would be considered masculine, feminine, and neuter respectively. The Old English masculine noun stān (‘stone’) is considered neuter its Middle English counterpart. Another possible factor causing this transformation might be the fact that Old English [α ε  u], in the unstressed syllables were simplified into the Middle English [ə]. It is a fixed order in Old English that the primary stress of a word is commonly placed in the first syllable. In Middle English, this regulation might have contributed a stress weakening in the final unstressed syllables. The nuclei of inflectional endings (note the word ‘endings’, indicating that they are located in the final syllable), are consequentially lost since it was weakened, unstressed, into [ə]. Thus, while we formerly had the masculine se mann, swēte mann and the feminine sēo wīf, swētu wīf, in Middle English we had þe man, swēte man and þe wīf, swēte wīf.[24]

Poedjosoedarmo stated that although tense markers in Old English are simplified in Middle English, they are still utilized.[25] Despite this fact, we still need to consider the causes of this simplification. Baugh suggested that the loss experienced by the strong verb conjugation was the serious cause of tense simplification in Middle English.[26] He further counted that almost one-third of strong verbs in English apparently have vanished in the beginning of Middle English period. This condition was also worsened by the asset possessed by the weak verb pattern: consistency. The consistency quality, added by the historical fact that, at that time, English was by and large disconnected from education and standardization and that it was spoke by lower class people, it is inevitably consequential that people frequently applied strong verb pattern wrongly, using the weak paradigm to refer to verbs which were supposed to be strong. Hence, it is understandable that one says sing-sang-sung, yet one also says drive-drove-driven (note that the –en ending is commonly used to indicate past participle).[27]

The serious loss of inflections brought various effects to English. We have recalled Peters’ saying that number and case come in a package in Old English; they come together in a single inflectional ending. It is then predictable that the reduction of inflections will affect number and case system in English.

In Middle English, the Old English nominative, accusative, and dative singular nouns merged into ‘singular common-case’ form. We can see this in the transformation of Old English singular nominative and accusative catt and singular dative catte into the Middle English singular common-case cat. In addition, Old English singular genitive suffix –es, pronounced [εs] became Middle English singular possessive suffix –es, pronounced [əs]. All Old English singular genetives other than –es were abandoned. Middle English –es was applied to nouns which used to have singular genetives other than –es. Thus, Middle English singular possessive sònes rather than Old English singular genitive suna.

Furthermore, as for the plural forms, since the Old English [α], as in –as [αs] was weakened into Middle English –es, pronounced [əs]. Yet, this weakening is not only applied in Old English plural nominative accusative –as; it is also true in other plural nominative accusative inflectional endings. Therefore, we say Old English plural nominative accusative suna as Middle English plural nominative accusative sones. This transformation, Middle English common-plural –es, is then analogized to Old English plural dative and most of genetives inflectional suffixes. Even more, the Middle English plural nominative accusative –es also experienced the commonization. Hence, for Old English plural dative sunum, plural genitive suna, and at the same time for Middle English plural nominative accusative sònes, we say Middle English plural common sònes.[28]

Concluding these, Peters stated

As a result of the above changes, English nouns underwent a reduction in case-number forms from as many as four (n.a.g.d) in OE to two singular (common, possessive) and usually one plural (common), or sometimes two plural (common, possessive) forms in Late ME.[29]

As we have predicted before, the number system change in Middle English indeed influenced the reduction of case system in English.

Modern English

In this part, we are going to discuss very briefly what elements of inflectional affixes survive through the transition of Middle English to the Modern one, and why they keep on existing.

As Sapir and Hawkins both agree with, the loss of inflections have caused English word order is now relatively fixed. The loss of case markers, a consequential effect of the reduction of number system, has made English phrases unable to be mobile as it used to be. Thus, their position is inevitably taken as the means to indicate their functions.

Interestingly, the disappearance of case markers is not followed by the tense markers. Poedjosoedarmo noted that the fact that simplified modern tense markers remain exist, and productive, in Modern English, despite its relatively fixed word order, is because the language still makes use of them to signify the time-concept of the verb action.[30] He also added that tense markers are used to emphasize the identity of the verb, making the verb prominent compared to a noun or adjective, for instance. He marked

Without the tense marker, an English verb would look the same with adjective or noun. Without the tense markers (-ed, -ing, -s), we would have difficulties in identifying a verb from the other parts of speech.[31]

Another use of tense markers in Modern English is that they enable English speakers to creatively make conversion from a noun or adjective into a verb. By adding a tense marker, for instance –ed, a noun like elbow can be easily transformed into a verb elbowed.

I have some critical notes for these notions. As for the use of tense markers as the emphasis of the identity of the verb, distinguishing it from other parts of speech, I think that this opinion is not sufficient to support the reason why tense markers, inflections for tenses, are still needed in English, hence remain. Indeed, the tense suffixes –ing, -ed (together with its irregular counterpart –en), and –s would help indicate which lexeme is the verb. Yet, one might also want to remember that –ing and –ed participles are also used in English to form an adjective; thus, tense inflections can, in an extent, confuse instead of illuminate one. In addition, I have a feeling that most users of English would tend to refer to lexical meanings rather than the appearance of the word. Meaning is very important to be able to survive in a practical use of a language, a conversation, to mention one. It is, to the best of my knowledge, less useful to have one being able to identify that a word is a verb but unable to recognize the meaning. Therefore, it is perhaps fairer to say that the reason why tense markers are still used in English is because they are used to indicate the time of the action; since time-concept is undoubtedly essential in English. One more thing that I would like to propose here, to contribute an addition to the reason, is that tense-markers (in the case of finite verbs) are inseparable to the noun preceding it, i.e. the subject-noun. This is about the subject-verb agreement. Modern English still preserves the concept that the singularity or plurality of the subject-noun will determine, as we have in a present-tense sentence, the verb’s tense inflection. Thus, subject-verb concordance can be advanced as an additional reason why tense markers are still used in Modern English.

Gender markers largely disappear in Modern English. However, we still have some of the remnants: logical gender inflections such as the feminine –ess and –ine, in words like waitress and heroine.[32] Here we can see that the so-called grammatical gender inflections, the illogical arbitrary ones, are no longer utilized.

As for the number system in Modern English, Bough explained that the number inflections maintained in Modern English are only the plural and possessive singular ones. The plural indicator –s is then generalized into all plural nouns, except for a few other like feet, children, and oxen.[33] Even more, as he added, the Modern English possessive singular –‘s is now accompanied by the use of N-of-N, as in the language of mine; but this state was not common until the sixteenth century.[34]

The Disappearance of Gender System, the Changes of Affixes for Tense and Number Systems, and the SVO of English Word Order

That English is now having a fixed word order is empirically true. Some arguments have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. Hawkins, for instance, put forward the idea of case syncretism as the cause for fixedness of word order in English.[35] Before going further to the discussion of the significance of case syncretism to the fixedness of word order in English, it is better to consider the data presented by O’Grady et al. In their Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, O’Grady et al. showed that English language has experienced a development from SOV to SVO syntax.[36] They put forward one of the earliest recorded Germanic sentences (note that Germanic is from which English descended), showing that the form was a SOV language. The datum is a sentence “inscribed on a golden horn (now called the Golden Horn of Gallehus) about 1600 years ago.”[37] It says

Horn of Gallehus

S O V

Ek HlewagastiR HoltijaR horna tawido

I Hlewagastir of Holt horn made

‘I, Hlewagastir of Holt, made the horn.’[38]

Using this reasoning, if the earliest Germanic language applied the SOV word order, and considering that Modern English is now extensively SVO, thus, logically, Old English “represents a transitional syntactic type.”[39] It means that Old English, all along with its extensive inflections and case system, is a bridge connecting the SVO pattern of Modern English with the SOV system of early Germanic.

Back to case syncretism, or amalgamation, in addition to proposing this concept as the factor causing fixedness of word order in Modern English, he went further to say that this concept can also be used to explain “the new basic verb position of English, subject + verb + object (SVO), …”[40] Case syncretism, as we have seen happening in English, will cause the lessening of word order freedom in the syntax. It is because, since the case markers have vanished, the phrases are no longer interchangeable. What remains to use as identifier of the phrase function is the position. However, why SVO? Quoting Greenberg’s statistical universal[41] “[i]f in a language the verb follows both the nominal subject and nominal object as the dominant order, the language almost always has a case system,” Hawkins proceeded by arguing that it is

“equivalent to saying that if a language does not have a surface case system, it will (almost always) not have SOV order, and hence the loss of a case system historically can be used to explain the loss of SOV structures in the history of English…”[42]

Here we are facing the argument saying that it is the reduction of case system, hence case syncretism, that has made English acquire its fixed SVO word order system. Why? Immediately before putting forward Greenberg’s idea, Hawkins argued about the influence of case syncretism to the verb position. I will quote the full sentences since I consider them very important.

Syntactic position takes over from case inflection as the indicator of the grammatical relations, subject and object, and this fixing of position automatically reduces the rearrangement possibilities. Subject and objects have to maintain their fixed positions in order to be clearly recognisable as such. And verb position is the particular vehicle which most conveniently enables these basic grammatical relations to be expressed by means of word order: the subject occurs to the immediate left, and the object to the immediate right of the verb.[43]

For Hawkins, ‘syntactic position’ substitutes case inflection in the context of identifying the grammatical relations among the parts of speech. Fixed position is important to be maintained since it relates to the clear recognition of the function. And, verb position is the ‘most convenient’ means with which the grammatical relations can be shown. Thus, the verb is placed in the center, flanked by the subject, in its left, and the object, in its right. These subject-lefting and object-righting are then simply logically connected to the Greenberg’s idea that OV languages are typically occupying case system while VOs are generally not. The disappearance of gender system, the changes in affixes for the tense and number system have contributed to the fact that English has now lost its case system, thus it must be SVO. However, this argument does not explain why case system vanished from English.

The remaining question is answered by Bough.[44] He suggested that the massive reduction of inflections in Old English, followed by the loss in case system, was mainly caused by the alternation of pronunciation in the inflectional endings for number, case, and often gender. This shift has caused those endings to no longer possess the distinctive forms they used to have. Consequentially, the usefulness was also fading. In addition to the phonetic changes, the operation of analogy[45] can also be considered as the factor that caused the shift invaded verbs. The changes occurring in the inflectional endings of nouns and adjectives were analogized to verbs.

Poedjosoedarmo launched an attempt to propose another chronology which explains how English acquired its SVO pattern.[46] He put forward the phonological variable, especially the prosodic features, i.e. intonation pattern, as the element which has the power to change the word order of a language. “It is the drift to the new intonation pattern that may prompt the rise of new word order,” he suggested.[47] This is indeed true, as he has proven in his “Syntactic Changes in Malay”[48], in the juxtaposition of Standard Malay and Brunei Malay. There he noted that Brunei Malay employs the focal intonation in the front part of the sentence, thus it acquires its VSO order, while Standard Malay employs the opposite, hence SVO. In relation to English, he tried to support his argument by using Hawkins’ ‘contrasting’ (sentence) stress[49] to reveal that “sentences in English and German that are considered ungrammatical under a ‘normal’ intonation pattern may become grammatical if a ‘contrasting’ stress or a contrasting intonation is employed.”[50]

I will not rush myself to accept Poedjosoedarmo’s idea. Firstly, as for the use of contrasting stress to the sentence, when the discussion was headed to English, Hawkins himself was not as ensured as when he was discussing sentence permutation in German. He confessed,

It must be admitted that an intuition-based approach to the data is problematic in this area of varying degrees of grammaticality, of subtle appropriateness conditions, and of stress- and intonation-sensitive syntax, and these results will need to be supplemented by more sophisticated form of data-gathering and elicitation.[51]

Secondly, it is because Poedjosoedarmo did not present any evidences supporting his argument. In addition, one may ask a question to Poedjosoedarmo’s decision to use the contrasting stress concept to strengthen his idea about the influence of intonation stress to English word order: which English? Old English? Middle English? Was it valid that there was such phenomenon as intonation stress occurring in the transition from Old to Middle English, or Middle to Modern English? What is the proof? Unfortunately, different from how he has beautifully presented evidences in the case of Brunei Malay and Standard Malay, there is no apparent proof positive indicating that there was a tendency in the transition period of Old to Middle English, or Middle to Modern English, in which speakers produced a new pattern of intonation stress, say, for example, putting the focal intonation in the rear part of the sentence, as what Standard Malay has. Changes in the vowels and consonants indeed happened in English. And the fact that many monosyllabic words emerged in Middle and Modern English since the weakening phenomenon of the unstressed final syllable, considerably affecting the Old English inflectional suffixes, is also valid. The fact that English considers word stress as being phonemic (as we will discuss further in Story No. 2) is also affirmative. And that English now recognizes sentence stress as a means providing the focus of attention in a sentence is not to be doubted. Yet, at least for me, none of these facts refers to the tendency of the intonation stress would directly (I would like to emphasize this: directly) shift the word order of English into SVO. However, this thought is very interesting to discuss further. If proof positive can be advanced, this argument will hilariously shake the pre-existing ideas about the syntactic shift of English, for instances those proposed by Hawkins and Bauer, to mention a few.

Yet, until that time arrives, I would say that the process of the syntactic shift in English into a SVO language as follows. It was indeed, agreeing with Baugh and Poedjosoedarmo, started by the change of pronunciation. However, this phonological shift did not directly affect the free word order of English; it was influential to the disappearance of gender system and changes in tense and number system. Especially for the change in number system, it directly affected the case system, hence Hawkins’ cases syncretism. It was this case syncretism that brought changes in the word order of English into SVO (the conditions why the verb is positioned in the middle location has been described above).

***

Story No. 2

Introduction: the Phonemic Stress

Stress pattern is one essential prosodic feature in English. For instance, in Old English the stress quality of the word would determine whether lengthening would take place in that particular word or not. Lengthening would not happen if the word is lightly stressed.[52] Yet, here we can see that, in that particular context, stress has not yet reached the status of being phonemic, whereas we now in English have the fact that English has become phonemic, i.e. it distinguishes the meaning of the words. What actually has contributed to the recent phonemic quality of stress in English? Why do we now differentiate ‘export as a noun and ex’port as a verb?

This part will discuss that particular question, especially relating it to the phenomenon of the Great Vowel Shift, the emergence of monosyllabic words, and the use of word stress as a variable to differentiate between geographical dialects.

The Great Vowel Shift

Barber, in his The Story of Language, defined the term ‘Great Vowel Shift’ as series of changes in the English long vowels, which took place in late Middle English and early Modern English.[53] Two influential literary persons have to be mentioned here: Chaucer and Shakespeare. Both of them had developed a different set of pronunciation for ‘long vowels’; and the changes experienced by Shakespearean pronunciation, when compared with that of Chaucer, represent the stage of the major shift.

A diagram of front and back vowel changes was put advanced by Barber[54], as follows:

Front Vowels: ā àę àệ à ī à diphthong (ai)

Back Vowels: ō à ộ à ū à diphthong (au)[55]

We can see more clearly the changes in the contrasts between Chaucer’s and Shakespeare’s pronunciation, as quoted from Bough below:

M.E. Chaucer Shakespeare

ī [fi:f] five [fAIv]

ệ [me:də] meed [mi:d]

ę [klε:nə] clean [kle:n]

ā [na:mə] name [ne:m]

ō [g:tə] goat [go:t]

ộ [ro:tə] root [ru:t]

ū [du:n] down [dAun][56]

In addition to the focus of the vowel change, Poedjosoedarmo[57] also explained that, in the period of Great Vowel Shift, the final –e in some dictions disappeared; and some phonemes such as /p/, /t/, and /k/, are aspirated. He also put forward that diphthongization happening in this period was likely to be caused by the adoption of strong stress. Quoting Alexander[58], he presented the examples of some English vowels which became diphthongs: the Middle English long [i:] and long [u:] became Modern English diphthongs [ai] and [au] respectively. Furthermore, the change happening in those two vowels appeared to give impact to the pronunciation of other vowels, e.g. the Middle English [e], [o], [a - - e], and [aw] have transformed into Modern English [i:], [u:], [ei], and [ou] respectively.

Apparently, the strong stress adoption also give effect to the mute of some sounds, such as the initial sounds [k, g, p] and some final sounds [-e, -b].[59] What is the effect of all these?

The Emergence of Monosyllabic Words

English language, which descends from Germanic, contains many monosyllabic words. It is understandable since monosyllabicity is one particular characteristic of Germanic language.[60] Yet, what we are going to discuss here is those monosyllabic words which emerged due to the phonological shifts happening in the transition period from Middle to Modern English. Shortenings of sounds, some marked by the production of diphthongs substituting long Middle English vowels and some marked by the dropping of several initial consonants, a final vowel, and a final consonant, all resulting from the adoption of strong stress[61], had increase the production of monosyllabic words – as we can observe in Middle English disyllabic stere to Modern English monosyllabic star and in the silent k- in words like know, knight, knee.

Further Effects

The adoption of strong stress resulted in the active and productive use of stress as a means to differ meanings in a word, a compound word, or in a sentence, i.e. the concept of primary and secondary (or strong and weak) stresses is used to mark the contrast of meaning in English. Thus, English speakers have to be prepared to anticipate the misunderstanding of meaning due to stress placements. For instance, the word tightrope: when the primary stress is placed in the first syllable, the meaning of the word is ‘a rope for acrobatics’. Meanwhile, when, in the opposite, the stress is imposed in the second syllable, the meaning of the word is ‘a rope drawn taut’. This case is important to pay attention to especially in speaking condition since it is easier to sense the difference in writing: as for the first meaning, it is written without separation tightrope, and vice versa. Another example is the compound redcoat; when the stress is put in the first syllable, the meaning will be ‘a British soldier’, while when put in the second, the meaning is ‘a coat that is red’.[62]

Quoting Shuy, Woflram, and Riley, Poedjosoedarmo put forward three important variables which may distinguish one dialect to another: phonological, grammatical, and lexical items.[63] Furthermore, he added that “articulation of the consonants and vowels” and “the production of prosodic features employed when pronouncing the words or the sentences” are also significant indicator to identify one dialect differently to another. What does this mean? It means that, as our focus in this part, prosodic features, such as stress pattern and intonation pattern, can differentiate one dialect to another. It means that stress can also distinguish one English dialect to its counterparts. Let us take American English and British English as our pair-example. British English has the tendency to place the primary stress in the first syllable for words like garage, fillet, and ballet. On the other hand, American English does the opposite. As for loan-words from French, such as patois, massage, and debris, a British English speaker also tends to stress the first syllable while American will stress the second. For some polysyllabic words, for instances: laboratory, secretary, and lavatory, American English speakers tend to place a weak stress on the second last syllable.[64]

***

We have seen how stress patterns have become phonemic in English. We have also seen that the Great Vowel Shift has contributed much to the adoption of strong stress, which then resulted to the phonemic quality of the stress and the use of it to differ one English dialect to another. Now it is time to continue to the third story: the spelling.

Story No. 3

Introduction: the Inconsistency of the English Spelling System (a Blessing or a Curse?)

“English spelling is notoriously difficult, and foreigners learning English are bewildered by the lack of correlation between spelling and pronunciation,” said Brook.[65] Reading several references presenting information about English orthography, one must be prepared to realize that the ‘negative’ tone in words such as ‘notoriously difficult’, ‘bewildered’, and ‘lack’ is apparently common to be used to start the discussion on English spelling. English orthography in fact does not appear to be corresponding with its pronunciation. This is often frustrates learners of English when studying how to write in English. It is then understandable that ‘spelling’ is one of the prominent subjects in classes in Elementary Schools in English speaking countries.

Responding to this inconsistent quality to English spelling, numerous efforts of reforming the spelling system in English had been done. Yet, all of them are likely to be failing, abandoned, ignored. What actually arises this peculiar orthographic phenomenon? Why doesn’t English adopt the one-segment-one-symbol spelling system, which will serve best to the similarity with its word pronunciation – and, thus, being remedy to all the frustrations? In this part, we are going to discuss the reason causing this phenomenon to happen and why the effort to make it more consistent has failed.

English Spelling(s)

Brook said that the cause for the variety of English spelling is that it adopts more than one system of spelling conventions. He added, “[s]ome of our spelling conventions go back to Old English and others were introduced by French scribes during the period of Norman and French ascendancy which followed the Norman Conquest,”[66] The instance for this fact can be shown by the difference between the spelling of [s], as in mouse and mice. It is the influence of French that contributed the spelling of [s] becomes c in mice. It will be more understandable if we recall that Old French [c] becomes [s] when being next to front vowels.

Sampson, in his Writing System: a Linguistic Introduction, stated that the characteristic of a writing system is that it tends to be conservative, being largely different from pronunciation, which shifted from time to time. Explaining a consequential effect of this manner, he continued that “[t]hus, the orthography we use today is, in essence, a phonemic script for a spoken language that vanished long ago – while, in relation to the contemporary spoken language, our spelling is simply chaotic.”[67] This argument is based on his opinion that English spelling system, in some remote time in the historical past, was ‘phonemic’; meaning that “words were spelled as they were pronounced.”[68]

Furthermore, Sampson comprehensively provided several reasons why the phenomenon of spelling inconsistency appears in English. Yet, in general, he firmly stated that the factors causing English spelling to lose its once-phonemic (one-segment-one-symbol) characteristic are not of internal developments happening within the language. He argued that

Rather, the unphonemic nature of modern English spelling was caused by external influences, particularly political developments stemming from the Conquest, which introduced rival spelling-conventions that competed with the native conventions and with another.[69]

Sampson then ‘blamed’ the Norman Conquest, which took place for more than three hundred years (until the early 15^th century), as one of the major factors causing the inconsistent orthography in English. We can imagine that for more than three centuries English was removed from its official use; consequentially leading to ‘a breakdown in the standardization of its form’.[70] French was the language use in public life, in addition to Latin. Many educated English native speakers then tended to write in French, rather than English. It is natural then that they imported French orthography, which even at that time was not yet fully regularized. Thus, we now have in our Modern English the sound [i:] spelt with the French <ie>, as in thief, though, on the other hand, we also still have the native spelling <ee>, for the same phoneme, as in deed.

Another reason is the fact that, even before the Conquest, English had already been imposed with influences from Latin; and educated English people had known and used it. Furthermore, at the time of the Conquest, French, a Romance language, acquired the trend of using writing style which reflects the word’s etymology, for instance, French povre (meaning ‘poor’) was respelled into pauvre since the word descended from Latin pauper. This trend thus infiltrated English spelling conventions, hence English det or dette (derived from Latin dēbitum) became debt.

These ‘external’ reasons proposed by Sampson are quite different from that which was suggested by O’Grady et al.[71] They also put forward an internal historical factor causing the irregularities in English spelling system. Great English Vowel Shift indeed chiefly disturbed the relationship between symbol and segment in Middle English period. It was because of the change the language was experiencing in its phonological pattern. The Great Vowel Shift had converted long vowels such as /i:/, /e:/, and /a:/ into /aj/, /i/, and /e/ respectively. “Thus the letter I, which had formerly been used only to represent the phonetically similar /i:/ and /i/, ended up representing the very dissimilar /aj/ (the descendant of /i:/) and /І/ (the descendant of /i/),” they added. Hide and hid, wide and width, etc., are the proofs of this change.

Attempts to Reform: the Failures

The ‘chaotic’ appearance of English orthography has for so long been responded with efforts to propose spelling reform. In England, the dramatist George Bernard Shaw ever advanced his proposal of orthographic reform. In America, Noah Webster and Benjamin Franklin struggled to declare a distinctive spelling discriminating American to British English. Yet, all these failed.

There is one interesting rejection written beautifully by M.J. Shields in a letter he sent to The Economist. Shields showed that orthographic reform can be enhanced painlessly if it is implemented through a long and patient period of time. Yet, he implicitly semiotically suggested the constraints and jaw-dropping frustrations for readers when reading the reformed spelling convention, if it indeed takes place. Here I present the full quotation:

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter ‘c’ would be dropped to be relapsed either by ‘k’ or ‘s’, and likewise ‘x’ would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which ‘c’ would be retained would be the ‘ch’ formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform ‘w’ spelling, so that ‘which’ and ‘one’ would take the same consonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish ‘y’ replasing it with ‘i’ and Iear 4 might fiks the ‘g-j’ anomaly wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would continue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double consonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist consonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali be posibl to meik ius ov thi ridandant leterz ‘c’, ‘y’, and ‘x’ – bai now jast a memori in the maindz of ould dodderers – tu replays ‘ch’, ‘sh’, and ‘th’ rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, after sam 20 iers ov orxogrephykl riform, we wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy spiking werld…[72]

For a person who is accustomed to English traditional orthography, reading the last two paragraphs, especially the last one, will require more energy and time. However, through times, this constraint indeed can be overcome. If so, why is it so difficult to reform English spelling system into a more phonetic one?

Apparently, there is another two factors acting as the obstacles for the reform. The first one is that, in future times, people who only know how to read using the new orthography will find it difficult to read books or documents written in traditional orthography, just as people in recent time trying to learn reading in the ‘new’ one. The solution can be both that the future people have to learn the traditional spelling conventions, a must which may lead to a cancelled intention, and that all books and documents of old times have to be converted into the new spelling system. As for the latter, we can imagine how much cost we have to expense; millions and millions books, papers, documents, and articles are waiting to be retyped and reprinted and redistributed. The second factor is that, as in the case of English, having a one-segment-one-symbol spelling system is not always advantageous, especially considering the contemporary global status of English. Global English will lead to divergence of English variants; and more variants means more diverse phonological characteristics. Thus, if English agrees the phonemic orthography, every dialect of English may want to have their ‘own’ spelling convention, the best one meeting their phonetic performance. Thus, the chaos is not mitigated but worsened.[73]

Furthermore, as suggested by Brook[74], another liability of having a phonetic spelling convention is that it would ‘disguise’ the connection between several related derivational words, such as nation – national and photographic – photographer; and at the same time it “would introduce a misleading identity of form to cession and session, symbol and cymbal, allowed and aloud.” When applied, as for in the case of allowed and aloud, phonetic spelling system will force users of English to recognize the meaning and the function of the word via the semantic context of the sentence, whereas, when written in the traditional orthography, the morphology of those two words can be recognized more easily.

The last idea of the above paragraph is perhaps, to the best of my consideration, the best way to understand why English retains its inconsistent form. It is because this very form is possibly the most appropriate system to be applied in a language such as English. Chomsky and Halle[75] stated that “[t]he fundamental principle of orthography is that phonetic variation is not indicated where it is predictable… an optimal orthography would have one representation for each lexical entry.” Apparently, for Chomsky and Halle, the fact that English is not occupying one-segment-one-symbol orthography is not representing a ‘chaos’, rather, an optimal use of spelling system; since orthography should have a ‘representation for each lexical entry’. This idea is interesting since it put forward the peculiar characteristic of English spelling: that English orthography refers to the need of representing words, the lexical entries, rather than their phonetic displays.

By then, we may say that inconsistency in English is never a curse, yet thus a blessing.

Epilogue

Three stories have been presented; and, as expected before, hopefully the linkage among the stories have already been made prominent. In conclusion, we may say that, in the context of this writing, the mother-cause of the development of English is the shift in pronunciation, which leads to the fixedness of SVO word order, the phonemicization of stress, and the irregularities of spelling in English. It is understandable since in its practical use language tends to be conversational. This is also meant to say that if changes are to happen in a language, phonetic and phonological shifts is more likely to be the root of the change. I admit that the notion I have proposed just now will remain speculative if no further intricate studies are done and more evidences are given. Thus, I hereby decided to isolate the validity of this writing to the narrow and diminutive scope it has attempted to wander about.

References

Barber, C. L. The Story of Language. (5^th ed.) London: Pan Books Ltd., 1972.

Bauer, Brigitte L. M. The Emergence and Development of SVO Patterning in Latin and French: Diachronic and Psycholinguistic Perspectives. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Baugh, Albert C. A History of the English Language. (3^rd ed.) New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1978.

Brook, G. L. A History of The English Language. London: Andre Deutch Ltd., 1958.

Chomsky, Noam & Morris Halle. The Sound Pattern of English. New York, Evanston, and London: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1968.

Finegan, Edward. Language: Its Structure and Use. (4^th ed.) United States: Thomson Wadsworth, 2004.

Hawkins, John A. Word Order Universals. San Diego, New York, Berkeley, Boston, London, Sydney, Tokyo, and Toronto: Academic Press Inc., 1983.

Hawkins, John A. A Comparative Typology of English and German – Unifying the Contrasts. London and Sydney: Croom Helm Ltd., 1986.

O’Grady, William, John Archibald, Mark Aranoff, and Janie Rees-Miller. Contemporary Linguistics: an Introduction. (5^th ed.) Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005.

Peters, Robert A. A Linguistic History of English. New York, Atlanta, Geneva, Ill., Dallas, and Palo Ato: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1968.

Poedjosoedarmo, Soepomo. “Unique Elements in English Grammar”. Phenomena Journal of Language and Literature, Vol. 9 No. 3, February, 2006. Published by the Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University.

Poedjosoedarmo, Soepomo. “Syntactic Changes in Malay”. Phenomena Journal of Language and Literature, Vol. 4 No. 2, October, 2000. Published by the Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University.

Sampson, Geoffrey. Writing Systems: a Linguistic Introduction. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1985.

Verdonk, Peter. Stylistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Nothing comes from nothing, Thieflet; no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old – it is the new combinations that make them new.

(Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories)

Popular Culture

Walter Benjamin, in his famous essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, had postulated that mechanical reproductions of copies, such as photography and works of art, confront the uniqueness of the genuine (1969: 221). Let us take Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece Monalisa as an example. Thanks to the technology that now people all around the world have the access to the image of the painting without having to go to a certain museum. The technologies of photography and printing have made copies of Monalisa possible to be reproduced in diverse forms and contexts. One now may enjoy the ‘aesthetics’ of (copies) of Monalisa in T-shirts, postcards, advertisements in billboards, etc. For some conservative people, this act of commercialization is a proof positive of the ubiquitous culture of consumerism. Nonetheless, there are also others who consider this phenomenon, the displacement of the genuine from its distinguished position, as something celebrated as a challenge to binding traditions (check: Cavallaro, 2004: 368-369).

To begin a discussion about popular cultures, it is important for us to consider the ideas of ‘challenging the binding traditions’. The so-called ‘pop music’, for instance, was firstly established as a challenge to the old strict and colossal tradition of the Western orchestra music. Pop musicians reduced the concept of massive musical instruments in the Western orchestra into simply minimalist ones: guitar, bass guitar, drums, and synthesizer. The pioneer of this music, just to make a generalization, is The Beatles.

Furthermore, using the recording technology, supported by the strength of capital and the creativity of mass communicators, this kind of music is chiefly commercialized and spread to the entire world. Bombarded by the propaganda, people started to ‘like’, so to speak ‘made to like’, this music. And through years, up to now, the world has already had thousands of “The Beatles”.

So what is popular culture actually? What is it: the notion of being popularized? When is something considered popular? Answers to these questions can be made by listing characteristics attributed to the term ‘popular culture’: mass production to capitalization (commercialization, or commodification) to mass advertisements to consumerism to mass (unending) reproduction. Something is popularized by being produced, commercialized, advertised, consumed, and reproduced massively. Mechanic technology, to put it in Benjamin’s words, is a main tool of succeeding these actions. Mass media is the means, the vehicle, to inform, meaning to advertised, the world about a phenomenon which is intended to be popularized. Mass media has the capacity to ‘whisper the magic words’ to the subconscious memory of the audiences (the potential consumers) by using the method of repetition (remember: reproduction). Repetition succeeds proliferation.

***

Back to the discussion of ‘copies’ and ‘the real’: reproductions, or replications, of the real, producing numerous copies, have blurred the idea of originality – originality only exists when it provides the possibility of reproductions, to put it in Jacques Derrida’s suggestion (cited in Cavallaro, 2004: 370). What emerges from this is the concept of simulacrum, an image or representation of something/someone. Jean Baudrillard asserted that in the postmodern society, simulacra do not imitate the pre-existing realities, yet they displace realities: the simulations have been able to produce their own realities (Cavallaro, 2004: 372). The condition when the ‘copies’ have displaced the ‘real’, though through memories/histories one can still link both, is what is called simulacrum. And this simulacrum acts like a trap. It binds the audiences in a demonic-cycle of remaking. In this remaking sense of thinking comes the paradox: simulacrum is both “challenging and proliferating traditional values simultaneously” (2004: 370).

The Articulation of Popular Culture in Sleepless in Seattle

The movie Sleepless in Seattle (1993) is a simulacrum per se. It is a movie said to be inspired by an older one An Affair to Remember (1957). Now wait! An Affair to Remember is not even the most ‘real’ one: it is a remake of another older movie entitled Love Affair (1939). Even more, An Affair to Remember has an Indian remake: Mann, which was released in 1999. No wonder it is so popular.

Sleepless in Seattle, intrinsically speaking, is also articulate in terms of promoting popular culture. Two important choices of settings of time, Christmas and Valentine’s Day, are not of no good reasons. Christmas and Valentine’s Day are two temporal pointers which have been popularized, globalized. The idea of globalization is even semiotically prominent in the beginning of the movie: the geographical image of the US, shining alone in the dark globe, as if proposing the idea that the world is the US and the US is the world. Globalization is the idea when a local phenomenon becomes a global one. And if there should be a local thing to be globalized, it would be from the US: Cocacola, Nike, Mc Donald, Viagra, you mention it!

The movie puts forward the idea of ‘demonic cycle of remaking’ presented earlier in this essay. ‘Back in fashion’ is the phrase used by Annie’s mother when presenting the wedding-dress to her. The notion ‘back in fashion’ really indicates the importance of reproduction, or repetition, in popular culture. As if willing to celebrate the concern of being historical, Annie’s mother suggested her daughter to wear that old wedding-dress because that kind of style is now-again trendy.

It is also interesting to see how the movie portrays the significant role of mass media in the modern world. Jonah, son of Sam, made a phone call to a radio station, telling the broadcaster, the illusive Dr. Marcia Fieldstone, that his father might need a wife. Radio, being at least the same as television, is the means of promoting a local (even individual) phenomenon into a massive (social) one. It sounds silly actually that an individual problem like that of Sam suddenly becomes important that the whole country astoundingly becomes concerned to this man (Sam never thought that 2000 women were asking for his phone number). There is one scene in the movie which proves that the radio is a key point in popularizing Sam. The broadcaster used such sentence as “We hope you call again.” My question: who is this ‘we’? Obviously, the radio was trying to be inclusive, involving the listeners in Sam’s problem, attempting to create a sense of an imagined (comm)unity. And that is what being popular means. Recently, we have the concept of ‘fans-club’ as the representation of this imagined (comm)unity. People from different places, who admire a certain figure or celebrity, gathered themselves in this small unit of society. They feel that they are united by their being fans of the same person.

***

The notion of being ‘historical’ is also performed by Sleepless in Seattle. This movie includes some scene which will remind its audiences (particularly the Americans) to the movie inspiring it. There is a scene when Sam recognized Annie, who was at that time frozen in the middle of the street, and said ‘hello’. All Annie could do was to hello Sam back. This scene is a reference to An Affair to Remember, whose scenes also appeared, watched by the characters, several times in the critical plot of Sleepless in Seattle.

Lastly, one of the most important things adopted by Sleepless in Seattle from An Affair to Remember is the idea of having a ‘promise’ to meet in Empire State Building, New York. One might wonders, why that very building? Or, why building?

Benedict Anderson, in his book Language and Power – Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia, suggested:

It is a peculiarity of monuments of this type that, by and large, they face two ways in time. Normally, they commemorate events or experiences in the past, but at the same time they are intended, in their weather durability, for posterity. Most are expected to outlive their constructors, and so partly take on the aspect of a bequest or testament. This means that monuments are really ways of mediating between particular types of pasts and futures. (1990: 174, emphasis mine)

Empire State Building is then a monument which connects the particular past (the popularity of An Affair to Remember) with the ‘future’ one (Sleepless in Seattle). This is an important subject of reminding people with the notion of ‘popularity’; however it is defined in particular context and time.

Hence, so true is the water genie, in Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, when saying that “…it is the new combinations that make them new.” Sleepless in Seattle is ‘new’ in a sense that it is a combination of the ‘new’ and the ‘old’ contexts. And that is what makes it (so much) popular: that it confirms popular cultures, maintaining the status quo ruling the world!

Prologue

Daisuke Takahashi, a Japanese explorer-researcher, has spent more than a decade seeking for the exact place where a Scottish seaman, Alexander Selkirk, had build his hut when, in 1704, got stranded in an island now recognized as a part of the territory of Chile. Considering Takahashi’s vehement enthusiasm to Selkirk, one might come up with a question: what is so special about this poor seaman? Some people apparently believe that Selkirk is a model-character of one of the world-wide popular canonical texts of English literary works: Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719). To that reason, the island where Selkirk was drifted ashore, spending four years and four months living alone, is now named The Island of Robinson Crusoe. Selkirk was ‘discovered’ by two English vessels, which stopped to reload the ships with clean water and timber. Interestingly, when the captain saw Selkirk for the first time, he described him as, “A man clothed with goat leather, who appeared to be more savage than his goat.”[1]

***

Literary Work and Its Visualization: Defoe versus the ‘Filmic’ Crusoe

The invention of motion picture technology has promoted efforts of audio-visualizing numerous works of literature. Unfortunately, to the consideration of duration of the movie, which consequentially affects the number of production cost), audio-visual reproductions of a literary work often result in what I call the trans-creation of its intrinsic elements.

For the interest of the market, for instance, a script-writer can delete some details to avoid duration constraint; add a romantic atmosphere; plug-in another character; change the direction and style of the plot, and even re-characterizing the story’s heroes or heroines. In this tension between an effort of producing satisfying visualization of the literary work and an ‘obligation’ of considering technical limitations, oversimplification often appears as an inevitable consequence. Oversimplification often leads to a heartbreaking disappointment, especially for movie goers who, before watching the movie, have got a chance to read the original text. Perceiving this very characteristic of reproduction is what makes one should be aware that distinctions occur in the relation of a literary work, which acts as a basis-text, and its movie-reproduction, which is a result of its trans-creation – that is why one must treat and read each work through a different manner and awareness. Intertextuality indeed happens, for the movie is an adaptation of the literary work. Yet, distinctions stand up; motivated ideological interests might slither stealthily in to the movie, changing the ideological focal point of the original literary piece.

Let us take the case of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Compare to the movie Robinson Crusoe, there are many details of Defoe’s trans-created. In the synopsis he made, Faruk described that Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe came from a bourgeois family, living in Hull, England. Crusoe’s father wanted him to live an established life, by studying law, running the business. Yet, Crusoe disliked this idea of establishment. Crusoe was more interested in experiencing life through exploration and voyages, visiting many far-away lands in each corner of the earth. It was this disagreement which made Crusoe decided to start his marine journey[2]. Now consider this quotation, which was taken from the narration given in the movie Robinson Crusoe, “And so my story begins, like so many other stories: with a woman.” Apparently, in the movie version, Robinson Crusoe must have fled from his home-country, which is Scotland, because of a love conflict he experienced with his once best friend, Patrick. Crusoe’s lover, Mary, was about to be married with Patrick, on regard to Mary’s family’s decision. The conflict was finally ‘resolved’ with a lethal duel between Crusoe and Patrick. In that fight, though without a deliberate action, Patrick got stabbed, and killed. To avoid the horror of Patrick’s brothers’ vengeance, Mary suggested Crusoe to leave Scotland, waiting until the situation was de-emotionalized; and the sea was the place to which Crusoe decided to escape.

That is just one of remarkable distinctions between Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and the movie. There are many more, for instance, the length of time Crusoe spent being stranded in the island and the colonial experiences he had from the trip he made. Considering these, I decide to treat the movie Robinson Crusoe as a(nother) simulacrum of Defoe’s. And as a simulacrum, the movie comes up with an action of (re)defining itself, taking another focal point of narrating the story. Notwithstanding, I do not intend to disregard Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in reading the movie. In fact, my hypothesis is that the movie is, to use Gayatri C. Spivak’s coined term, a counterfocalization of the novel.

The Movie Robinson Crusoe: a Voyage to be Wiser

In the movie, before Crusoe was forced to leave Scotland, after a brief debate between Mary and Crusoe about the duel and the death of Patrick, Mary stated one important sentence to him: “Come back wiser for the experience.” This message, to my understanding, is the soul of the plot of the movie. Mary considered Crusoe’s accepting the invitation of Patrick to fight in a duel as a deed disregarding wisdom. Thus, in addition to the practical purpose of leaving Scotland, which is to escape from the vengeance of Patrick brothers, Mary inserted this message to be remembered by Crusoe as the essence of his fleeing: to be a wiser man.

Crusoe promised Mary to be back-home in a year. He decided to spend the time by doing sea-travel. He joined a trade-ship, a ship which he told carrying diverse cargos, starting from spices, jade, to slaves. For he was academically educated, the captain of the ship appointed him the man to chronicle the voyage.

The Means of Survival

And then came the tempest. High and dense waves hit the ship, shaking it up and down, right to left. The vessel became shipwrecked. All the crews died. Only Crusoe survived. Realizing that he was the only survivor, stranded in an island he had never known before, Crusoe started to worry about his life. He said,

I spent that first night not daring to imagine what dangers might crawl beneath me, and sleepless on thinking how I might survive the next day without food or weapons or human company.

Notice the name of items Crusoe mentioned as a condition for his survival: food, weapons, and human company. ‘Food’ represents Crusoe’s basic need to stay biologically alive. ‘Weapons’ represents his need of security, since he was stranded alone in an island whose interior was out of his knowledge. ‘Human company’ represents Crusoe’s need of socializing, for his entire life was filled with human relations. In the next day, Crusoe immediately accomplished the first two needs: food and weapons. He swam to the ship he found unsunk, foundered on a giant coral rock. After being aboard, he found that some cabins of the ship were not immersed with water. There, he recollected food, carpentry tools, guns and the powder, and much other stuff enough to supply him for about a month. He did find a company, though: another survivor of the shipwreck, the captain’s old dog Skipper. But still, it is not a ‘human company’.

Crusoe, in his expectation of being found by a ship sailing along the coastline of the island, stayed as near as possible to the seashore. He built a huge bone-fire formation of timber, which, once burnt, functioned as a sign of ‘HELP’. After months of waiting, finally a ship came in the horizon. Crusoe shouted as loud as his power could manage to the sailing ship. He burnt his bonfire. He shot his gun, trying to make some noises to attract the ship’s attention. But none of these succeeded.

In the middle of his desperation, Crusoe started to realize his condition. He said, “It was on that day I came to see I must no longer rely upon chance, or fate, or divine intervention for my survival. But solely on my own efforts, as a man.” Crusoe confessed that he “relied upon chance, or fate, or divine intervention” for his survival. This is understandable since Crusoe, later told in the movie, was a very religious man. However, he decided to detach all his divine faith, at least in the context of his survival. He started to become a ‘man-on-his-own’.

Thus, Crusoe started to build a more settled house in the island. He screened around the island, trying to recognize its topography. He secured his house with fortress, complete with traps. He started to conduct agriculture and took some animals as his livestock. He kept in touch with his own culture by playing the bagpipe he found in the ship. He made his calendar; and he wrote down his experiences in a journal. By doing all these, Crusoe built his own ‘Scotland’, claiming it as his own property. On this, I agree with Faruk’s analysis on Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe, either in the novel or the movie, were not untied from his condition of being connected to his culture of civilization[3].

***

The Encounter

Not until two years did Crusoe at last sense human sounds. However, horror haunted the lonesome Crusoe since the voices he heard were not familiar to his ears. He said, “From somewhere in my island came sounds I believed I would never hear again. Human voices to be sure. But voices unlike I’d ever heard before.” Crusoe, guns in both hands, tried to find the place where those strange human voices came from. He finally arrived at cave presenting him with a scene of barbaric ritual of cannibalism being done by some men. Unable to resist the horror, Crusoe shot his guns, killing some tribal men there, and apparently saving one man, which was about to be sacrificed. This man, escaping from his near-death, followed the frightened and panic Crusoe. When they encountered each other, the man approached Crusoe, kneeling, taking one of Crusoe’s legs and putting it on his shoulder. In fact, to Crusoe’s surprise, the man slammed him down, grabbing the gun, which for sure he was not able to function. Crusoe, still having another gun in his hand, made a shot to the ground, to show how danger and powerful it was. Crusoe did not aim his shot to the man since he did not want to kill him; since he saved him from death; and, as true it was, since he longed for a human companion. This is what Crusoe said to the man, “You want the gun? Oh, no. It’s very powerful and if you try to take this I will use this power to kill you and I don’t want to kill you. You’re my friend.”

And yet the horror continued. Some of the tribal men, which were later Crusoe recognized as the Nimsa tribe, attacked both Crusoe and the man he rescued. Both managed to defend and kill all the attackers. After killing his enemy, the man Crusoe rescued tore open his dead enemy’s chest, pulling out the heart, and starting to eat it. Crusoe’s religious ratio could not stand seeing this. He shouted a loud ‘No!’ to the man and whispered a hissing ‘Blasphemy’ almost to himself. The man left the heart uneaten; yet he got offended and left Crusoe alone in that place.

Crusoe ran back to his fortress, with a head full of terrifying memories about the scene he had just experienced. This is what Crusoe thought about the man he saved:

How could I ever have imagined of being a friend to this savage? I saw now he was from another world, one surely ruled by Satan. I, Robinson Crusoe, would guide and protect my kingdom against all evil.

From this statement, one would immediately realize that Crusoe was not sterilized yet from his religious belief. He started to make judgments to the man, who he called a ‘savage’, based on his own religious standard (note how he called the man’s trying to eat the heart as a blasphemy).

Nonetheless, Crusoe himself had an emotional conflict. He could not deny that he still needed human company. Yet, at the same time, he was not very satisfied with the ‘type’ of human company he had just found. His dissatisfaction, considering cannibalism he witnessed done by the man, created a rigid boundary separating him and the man, making both of them enemies to each other. This is Crusoe’s contemplation:

It is hard to describe my conflict of emotion. In all these two years, I’d longed for the company of another human being. And now we were enemies, hunter and prey. And he was out there, somewhere on my island.[4]

Living together in a small island made both Crusoe and the man unable to avoid meeting accidentally each other. One day, Crusoe was incidentally caught in a trap the man made. Crusoe, helplessly crying for help, lost his rifle from his hand. The man took that rifle, playfully gave-and-took it to and from Crusoe. Crusoe finally succeeded to cut the rope-trap which tied his leg. For one more time, he threatened the man with a pistol he still had in his belt. He shot, again, to the ground. He forcefully asked the rifle back. The man gave it to him. At this point, the pissed-off Crusoe shouted, “You understand danger? Death!” He added, “Who are you? What are you?” After that, Crusoe performed the danger of the guns; he shot to dead one of the bats hanging upside down on the trees. To Crusoe’s astonishment, the man did the same thing, by using a short bar of wood to hit the target-bat. And the target was knocked down. The man ran to take the two dead bats. He came back to Crusoe; and, with a smile, lifting up the bats to Crusoe’s eyes, as if saying, “Our dinner.” This is the point where Crusoe’s started to think a little bit different about the man. He said,

That he was a savage was undisputable. And yet he seemed to be a descent follow-with-heart. In time I might even turn him from his pagan ways. Perhaps this was my mission.

Notice that Crusoe still called the man ‘savage’. Notice the sentence “He seemed to be a descent follow-with-heart.” Notice how Crusoe thought that he might be able to change the man from ‘his pagan ways’. And notice how Crusoe considered that it perhaps was his mission. This is an indication that Crusoe started to think that the man should be civilized to be ‘free’ from his ‘savageness’. This colonizing thought is even emphasized when Crusoe considered that the man ‘seemed to be a descent follow-with-heart’. In his own thinking, Crusoe’s cognition, constructed with a Europe-centrist process of acquiring knowledge and standard and arrogance of Western countries, had led him, consciously or not, to plan a practice of slavery.

In the very first step of commencing his mission, Crusoe decided to give the man a name, an English name, to be specific. He named the man with the name of the day when they for the first time were set in a peaceful relationship. He named the man ‘Friday’. At the same time, Crusoe also gave a ‘new’ name to himself, in regard to his considering himself higher, more civilized, more knowledgeable, and cultured than Friday. Crusoe named himself ‘Master’. By doing so, Crusoe had established a binary opposition standing between Friday and him: a master-and-servant relationship. In the movie, Crusoe’s master-attitude is proof positive when seeing the scene where Crusoe insisted to have Friday’s limbs chained. Friday had a chance to reject the force, but Crusoe, who was holding a gun in his hand, threatened him by aiming it to his face. This scene also affirms a meta-function of weapons, the gun, which Crusoe for the first time considered as a condition to survive. Gun has become not only a tool to have security, but also to gain and maintain power.

It perhaps was out of Crusoe’s expectation that Friday, instead of doing barbaric attacks like what he was afraid of, came to him, limbs chained, bringing some food provision. This touched Crusoe. He decided to unlock the chain, ‘giving’ Friday a ‘freedom’ of mobility. Friday’s attitude also, for one more time, shifted the way Crusoe perceived him. In the narration, Crusoe admitted,

I had wrong thoughts on the savage, and I was truly sorry for it. It became clear to me that I could not have found a better creature to be subject to my benevolent rule. At least, that was how I saw it then.

Apparently, though admitting that he had been assuming unfair prejudices to Friday, Crusoe still considered him as a ‘subject’ to his ‘benevolent rule’. Crusoe still could not separate himself from his colonial mission: civilizing Friday – on this, I concluded that, to this extent, Crusoe still considered Friday as a ‘savage’. However, in the narration of the movie, which was done by Crusoe himself, the quotation above was the last time Crusoe called Friday a ‘savage’. From that on, Crusoe started to call his companion with the name he had given, Friday.

Friday No Like Your God. Friday No Like You.

As Friday and Crusoe lived together in that island, Crusoe started to realize that Friday was not a man of tabula rasa, a man who is empty and hence needs to be filled. Friday was a man having his own culture and skills and knowledge. In terms of agriculture, for example, Friday in fact performed his planting and harvesting skills very well. This is how Crusoe felt about it, “Friday became constant and diligent to his work, and proved to know a great deal about planting and harvesting our crops. Indeed, to my surprise, he began to instruct me.” Crusoe apparently must have admitted that he was one step behind Friday in some parts of their skill-activities. However, since he had committed himself on succeeding his mission to Friday, he started to find, from his standard point of view, what elements of Friday that could be educated. This deed actually shows that Crusoe was running himself in the path of creating an individual with his own standards. He attempted to convert Friday into a copy him. Commencing this mission, he said, “In turn, I made it my mission to teach Friday the King’s English. And after six months, I was astonished that he learnt the language with such great proficiency.”

In Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, it was described that Crusoe kept Friday on learning low English. Crusoe of course knew that Friday had his own language, yet refused to take it as a ‘language’. Thus, in order to have Friday speak to him, Crusoe taught him English.[5] In the movie, as clearly stated in the narration, Crusoe decided to teach Friday the King’s English. It must be noted, however, that Friday, in the movie, did not speak the King’s English. Friday spoke English with his own grammatical codification.

In postcolonial studies, language is of nucleic focus. The theory of postcolonial literature have postulated that language is one of the means of ‘writing back’ to the colonizer. Here, we recognized two key terminologies: abrogation and appropriation. Language abrogation is an action to deny the privilege of the colonizer’s tongue, a refusal of its metropolitan usage as the means of communication. Meanwhile, language appropriation is an effort to position the language of the colonizer in a context of one’s own culture; this is an act to mark some distinctions and separations from the standpoint of the colonial privilege of the colonizer’s language.[6]

The linguistic uniqueness of Friday’s English, to an extent, may be an act of positioning Crusoe’s King’s English to the context of his own cultural usage. I said ‘to an extent’ since there are not authentic evidences I can find in the movie showing Friday’s abrogating and appropriating the English he learnt from Crusoe. Nonetheless, I also cannot put aside the probability because, starting from the scene when Friday spoke English for the first time up to the end of the movie, Friday kept on speaking his own English, whereas he had been largely exposed to the King’s English Crusoe always used when speaking.

***

Though having been successful in educating Friday on the language, Crusoe came to see more clearly that “other aspects of Friday’s education proved more arduous”. As stated before by Crusoe, changing Friday’s ways, which he called ‘pagan’, was his mission. This is related to the practice of cannibalism Crusoe found heartbreaking. He started to ‘educate’ Friday to seize the practice. And he did this by opening a discussion about God. In fact, Crusoe tried to use the discussion to introduce Friday to Christian religious teachings. Crusoe started to tell Friday about God, the maker of mankind. Friday, realizing that he also had the same concept of divinity, of genesis, in turn introduced Crusoe to Pakia, the creator of the mother earth, according to the faith of Friday’s people. Crusoe later argued that Friday must not worship Pakia since it permitted the people to commit cannibalism. Friday replied that the purpose of eating human heart was to make one strong, a reply which directly aroused Crusoe’s anger; again Crusoe shouted the words ‘pagan’ and ‘blasphemy’ to Friday. The dispute ended up with Friday’s being offended. He said, “I no like your God. I no like you.”

‘Civilized’ by the Subject of Benevolent Rules: The Wiser Crusoe

For one more time, this has caused Crusoe lose his human companion. His uncontrolled emotion and his strict religious belief, as he admitted, had crafted a huge gap separating him from his friend, Friday. He mused,

Now I knew I should come to regret my harsh rumps. Whether Friday was the better for our meeting I do not know. But I have good cause to think providence was sending him to serve me. And so I’m alone again. I managed well enough without him. I eat well enough, I lived totally well. But I began to miss him as a companion.

Even, again Crusoe felt that his version of divinity did not help him to mingle with other humans in this kind of isolation. While, for the first time Crusoe realized that he must no longer cling onto divine intervention to survive; now he came to be aware that religion was not the answer to maintain his relationship with Friday. He said,

In my studies of history I had chronicle of religious wars that have plagued mankind since the beginning of time. And how sad, I thought, that, in this universe of two, religion had now put us at our own war.

Experiences of living with Friday apparently had enlightened Crusoe’s way of thinking and judging about things. To the most extreme effect of this enlightenment, Crusoe admitted, “[T]he lessons of humanity do not come easily to a stubborn soul. Once I had thought mine was the only true path. Now, I was no longer sure.” Considering all these contemplations made by Crusoe, one might question: in the middle of his conducting his civilizing mission, how could it be Crusoe who learnt so much, who got realized so much, who got changed so much? This question is crucial to be put forward in analyzing the ideological presentation of the movie Robinson Crusoe. The paradox found in the long run of Crusoe’s attempts of ‘educating’ Friday shows that Crusoe himself could not resist influences contributed by Friday, through arguments and disputes they had during times they lived together in that island. Both Crusoe and Friday, to borrow a Marxist term, ‘interpenetrated’ to each other. It is this ‘interpenetration of the opposite’ which came up as a means of (re)defining one’s self. Crusoe later realized that Friday had become a pair to him. He could not claim his existence without Friday. He could not (re)define himself in the absence of Friday. This is why, every time Friday decided to live separately from Crusoe, he always felt a great remorse.

***

The peak of friction between Crusoe and Friday was Friday finally knew the meaning of the word ‘master’, the word Crusoe used to name himself before Friday. The scene started when Crusoe got startled, astonishingly realizing that in fact he was not the first white man Friday had ever known. This is Friday’s words,

My father told me about white men long ago. Not good. White men take much everything. Not give back. Take land, take people. Tanga people. Make people slave. You’re not white man, Master. You’re good man.

In addition, it was at this point that Crusoe came to see that Friday had already had knowledge about the concept of slavery practiced by White people. In Friday’s view, Crusoe was not a white man since he made him a friend, instead of slave.

And then came the time when Crusoe must have told his true name.

“My name is not ‘Master’. My name is Robinson Crusoe.

“Robina Crus? What name is ‘Master’?”

“White man.”

“I am slave to you?”

“No, it was a mistake.”

“I am not your slave!”

Crusoe and Friday got separated again. To this time, Crusoe got even a bigger regret. He said, “So my stupid arrogance had lost my dear companion for the second time. And I was alone again.” He called his ‘arrogance’ stupid. What Crusoe meant by ‘arrogance’ here is the attitude he once practiced to appraise Friday: his deed of asking Friday to call him ‘Master’, to satisfy his need of power and to legalize his position as a civilizing missionary.

And yet this time Friday came to resolve the problem. He approached Crusoe, who was busy building his boat, and for one more time shouted, “I am not slave!” To this claim, Crusoe kindly replied, “I know, Friday. You’re my friend.” Hearing Crusoe’s reply, Friday got closer to Crusoe, touching his shoulder, saying something which would never be told by him to any one unless the person was so special:

“I tell you my spirit name. Only spirit, me, and Tanga big man know. Dua tawona. Dua tumpiriri no na. Dua tumpiriri lu bo na.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Crusoe gave life. Not say more.”

Friday still remembered who saved his life from death. That is why he said “[c]rusoe gave life.” And the life Crusoe gave to Friday was what made Crusoe meaningful to Friday.

***

To cut the story short, I would depict briefly how the movie Robinson Crusoe ends. Crusoe and Friday had to fight for their lives against the warriors of Nimsa tribe. Though they successfully defeated all the enemies, Crusoe was injured; a poisonous arrow stabbed his chest. To this, Friday, ignoring the risk of mockery he might have to endure from his people, decided to take Crusoe to his native land. There, they both were captured. Crusoe was healed from his wound. Yet, a fight had been arranged for both Crusoe and Friday. This fight had to be done as a punishment for Friday was considered to bring in a white man to enslave the people of the tribe. The misunderstanding brought these two dear companions in a duel they would have never thought before.

In the duel, after several hesitations, both Friday and Crusoe started to attack each other. Until came the time when Crusoe slipped and lost his dagger. He then decided to submit to the fate: death. Yet, Friday was terrible reluctant to swing his lethal axe to Crusoe. On this hesitation, came a flock of white men, slave traders, who, seeing the scene of Friday lifting up his axe to finish Crusoe, shot right away Friday to death.

Crusoe was saved by the slave traders. He followed their ship to come back to Scotland. Crusoe, still feeling awful for he had just lost his dear friend, narrated his thought as such: “And so faith had saved her hardest trick to last. Just as the duel had caused me to flee my native land, so too that the battle between friends bring about my return.” Friday had pay back the life Crusoe had once given to him. Specifically for Friday, this was the utmost accomplishment of the plot of his life. The existence of Friday had helped Crusoe to meet the essential purpose of his journey: to be wiser, to be ‘civilized’.

Epilogue

And like many other movies, the movie Robison Crusoe is closed in a happy ending. Crusoe, after six years of fleeing, came back to Scotland. He was then married to Mary. They settled down and lived happily. Yet, there were still pictures of Friday clinging in the cloud of Crusoe’s memory. He said, “But, for the rest of my days, I would think often and long of the man who’d give me the greatest gift of all: my life, when I’d all but lost it; and his friendship, unto death.”

As I have stated before in my hypothesis, this movie Robinson Crusoe is a counterfocalization of Daniel Defoe’s The Live and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. The justification of it can be seen from the analysis of the tense happening in the relationship between Crusoe and Friday: how both interpenetrated to each other. However, since the core-text I used here is the movie Robinson Crusoe, I did not conduct a detailed comparative reading for Defoe’s and the movie. Above all, affirming Tiffin’s remark on postcolonial literatures, that postcolonial literary writers do not “simply ‘writing back’ to an English canonical text, but to the whole of discursive field within which such a text operated and continues to operate in post-colonial worlds,”[7] I tend to say that the movie itself, accompanying Coetze’s Foe, for instance, is indeed a counter-discourse to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

Using the idea of being ‘a wiser man’, a term which I guess an euphemism of being ‘a more civilized man’, has successfully altered the all-too-Europe Robinson Crusoe to a man who puts humanity above all artificial boundaries which for so long have segmented people in to small separate boxes. His fate, being stranded alone in an island far away from his motherland, forced to fight the solitary life, meeting other human beings which were so ‘the other’ to him, running a life together with one of those people he used to think as savages, realizing his own weaknesses, his own narrow-mindedness, and his complementary need of human company; all these had helped Crusoe to fulfill the message given by his lover before starting to flee from Scotland. And in all these lies the notion of anti-Crusoe-as-the-colonizer.

Bibliography

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: theory and practice in post-colonial literatures, London and New York: Routledge, 1989.

Tiffin, Helen, The Post-colonial Literatures and Counter-discourse. In Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (eds.), The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 1995

Faruk, Belenggu Pasca-Kolonial: Hegemoni & Resistensi dalam Sastra Indonesia, Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar, 2007.

Miller, Peter, Penemuan Pondok Crusoe, National Geographic Indonesia, vol. 1, no. 2, October 2005.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: toward the history of the vanishing present, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.

(An imaginary conversation between Mr. Luminato and Darco)

This writing presents an imaginary conversation between two dramatic personas, Mr. Luminato and Darco. They are two adult men who accidentally get acquainted to one another, when spending leisure times in the middle of the city park. Mr. Luminato, a man in his seventies, appears to be a blind man; he wears black glasses, dressed in a bright-greyed jacket. Due to his old age, he has to use a crutch to support his two legs, which are now no more able to let him stand or walk long enough. Mr. Luminato talks in a very fatherly manner; the pace of his speech, the cool tone and color of his voice, indicate his fatherly attitude. Between his thick lips is a pipe, no matter the tobacco is lit or not. On the other hand, our Darco appears to be a very cheered-up handsome guy. He is a twenty-four-year-old young man, energetic as he can be. Darco is a want-to-know-all person. It is understandable since he is in the age of thirst for knowledge. He dresses casually, with a pair of sneakers on his feet. He does not really smoke, meaning to say that it is not a habit for him. He speaks in a warm and expressive way; with a dynamic flux of intonation, representing his young, adventurous desire of learning.

Our conversation starts at the time the sun is about to set, probably at three in the afternoon. The air is still, with some breeze blowing smoothly once in several minutes. It has been a beautiful bright day; the sky is magnificent, with the mild clouds mediating the color of the sun, like a canvas painted by an experienced and wise artist. And Mr. Luminato is sitting alone, enjoying the activity of inhaling and exhaling the dense smoke of Cuban tobacco with his pipe. He has a small old book, whose paper’s color has started to go brown. It is entitled Krishnamurti’s Notebook. In the middle of this situation, the young Darco comes to sit on the very park-bench where Mr. Luminato is sitting. There is no conversational interaction for a while. Until Darco ignites the talk.

Darco. What a very solemn afternoon, isn’t it, sir?

Mr. Luminato. (nodding his head, exhaling a long blow of smoke)

Darco. The sky is marvelous, the color is awesome; the temperature is not piercing; I can even smell the fragrance of the grass. (cheerfully) What a splendid day!

Mr. Luminato. (nodding his head once again, inhaling deeply the air)

Darco. (low in tone) You don’t speak much, do you? Never mind, I was just trying to start a conversation because it is rather awkward for us, people, sitting together in the same bench, and having nothing to talk about. Forgive my loquacious tongue, sir.

Mr. Luminato. (nodding slowly, without turning to Mr. Darco)

Darco. (looking vacantly to the scenery; pause; and then whistling happy tunes)

Mr. Luminato. (leaning to the back rest)

Dacro. (stopping the whistling, clearing his throat)

Mr. Luminato. (in a sudden) What?

Darco. What – what?

Mr. Luminato. What do you want from me?

Darco. (confused with the question) Excuse me?

Mr. Luminato. What do you want to know, young man?

Darco. (hesitatingly) Nothing.

Mr. Luminato. What do you mean ‘nothing’? How do you know that there is such a thing as ‘nothing’?

Darco. Er… there is ‘nothing’ because there is ‘something’.

Mr. Luminato. How plainly interesting.

Dacro. What?

Mr. Luminato. What – what?

Darco. What is interesting?

Mr. Luminato. Life – death, good – bad, do – undo, full – empty, and, now, nothing – something. How plainly interesting.

Darco. OK, now tell me more. I am all ears.

Mr. Luminato. (laughing)

Darco. What are you laughing at?

Mr. Luminato. You, son.

Darco. What is it about me?

Mr. Luminato. Are you sure that such a talkative person as you can be all ears? I don’t want to talk to an all-ear guy, the one who just listens and never responds.

Darco. Fine, then. I’ll listen and respond.

Mr. Luminato. Good, good. Let me start with this: you said that the sky is marvelous and its color is awesome – how do you know that?

Darco. Because I saw it, I see it, and I am seeing it right now. Well, the sky is not exactly the same like what I said before to you, anyway. It has changed a bit. But, it’s still breathtaking.

Mr. Luminato. How, then, do you know that this is the city park; that the thing you are sitting at now is a bench, that the nicely-cut grasses before you are green, and that this is an afternoon. In short, how do you know that all those exist? How do you realize them? How do you realize that you and I exist?

Darco. Cogito ergo sum! I think therefore I exist[1].

Mr. Luminato. Gracious me! Here comes our Cartesian youngster.

Darco. What makes you replied like that?

Mr. Luminato. How did you get the ability to think that you think that you exist – that all things I mentioned before exist?

Darco. Well, I am alive. I have a life.

Mr. Luminato. That’s true, but what makes you alive? What makes our surroundings ‘alive’? What enables us to realize that there is such a thing called ‘life’?

Darco. Wow, are you leading me to the discussion of the creation of the world?

Mr. Luminato. (in a deep voice) “In the beginning God created the heaven and earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”[2]

Darco. It sounds familiar to me.

Mr. Luminato. (continuing) “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”[3]

Darco. “And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from darkness.”[4] Yes, the Bible!

Mr. Luminato. It is the Bible, yes. But, so what?

Darco. Meaning?

Mr. Luminato. It is not the container which is important; it is the content.

Darco. Well, let me recall. One minute. (mentioning carefully, with pause after each word) Er, ‘the beginning’, ‘earth’, ‘without form’, ‘darkness’, and…

Mr. Luminato. Light!

Darco. Ay! It’s the light!

Mr. Luminato. Indeed. (breathing deeply, mentioning his speech in one breath) We often take light for granted. We consider it ordinary, so ordinary that we don’t realize it. It’s like the air; you are aware of its existence right away, not to say only, when you have a blocked-nose.

Darco (almost to himself) Why it took me 24 years before I knew this stuff?

Mr. Luminato. Light, young man, is existential for all of us. It affects us biologically. It enables the plants to live. And, then, it shows us reality. It contributes to us a number of visual impressions that affect our perception emotionally. Light makes life possible.[5] Even, the so-called ‘God’ used it.

Darco. I can see that.

Mr. Luminato. Yes, that’s it. Light enables you to see. (making a short giggle) The word is semantically ambiguous, actually. We don’t use it just to express physical thing, namely ‘light’, but we also associate it to a more abstract thing, like the sentence You have been enlightened.

Darco. Ay, that’s true.

Mr. Luminato. Yes, it is. It is the ‘eye’ that connects us to light. Why? Because the eye is able to register things such as differences in brightness, color, shape, distance, mime.[6]

Darco. No doubt.

Mr. Luminato. It means that, using the ‘eye’, humans are able to see how light brings to us the reality of space and time.

Darco. Wait, ‘space’: I can understand it. But, time?

Mr. Luminato. How can you tell that it is ‘twilight’, or ‘morning’, or ‘noon’, or ‘afternoon’, or ‘dusk’, or ‘evening’, or ‘night’ without the existence of light? Space and time is inseparable. Where there is space there is time. And their existence can only be sensed through the existence of light.[7]

Darco. Understood.

Mr. Luminato. Time is to space as light is to shadow. You cannot have light without having the shadow it produces, however subtle it is. (touching his pipe to check the tobacco; finding it done, refilling the pipe and lit it up again) Shadow is actually a waste product of any source of light.[8]

Darco. What do you mean by ‘any source of light’? How many light sources do we have on earth?

Mr. Luminato. On earth? We, humans, only have the artificial ones. Animals are luckier. Some of the jelly fish and fire-flies have their own in their bodies.

Darco. Artificial? What is the natural one then?

Mr. Luminato. Why, it’s the sun indeed! But we don’t have it on earth, boy. It’s in the outer space.

Darco. (laughing at the ‘error’ he found in his own words) I see, I see.

Mr. Luminato. Sources of light: natural and artificial. That’s what we got in our daily life.[9] Even, in our highly developed contemporary world, we become less and less aware of the existence of artificial light. We only realize it when there is a power cut.

Darco. (nodding and smiling) Right, right.

Mr. Luminato. What is interesting about light is, though light enables us to see things, it is not visible itself.[10] Once it comes to existence, it spreads to all directions, illuminating all objects in its surroundings. It enables us to see the shapes and colors. But where is the ‘real’ visible light?

Darco. Where?

Mr. Luminato. Darken your room in to a total black-out. Get a pistol. Shoot it up above. Do it in the middle of the day. And you will see light. (giggling when Darco’s face-tone is changing, as if he already predicted the shifting face-tone) No, please don’t do that. I was just kidding.

Darco. And it’s not funny.

Mr. Luminato. I know.

Darco. So, you have to cure me.

Mr. Luminato. (laughing politely) I will. Let me try to satisfy your insatiable thirst for knowledge, young gentleman. Let me continue.

Darco. Yes, please.

Mr. Luminato. As I have told you before, we take light, both the natural and artificial ones, for granted; we consider it ‘normal’. It is because it is either present or it isn’t. But, we can sense the presence of visible light through shadows colors.

Darco. Shadows and colors?

Mr. Luminato. Yes, shadows and colors. In the use of light for artistic works, painters are the individual who realize the importance of light. You can see it in, to mention a few, Georges de La Tour’s St Sebastian Tended by St Irene or Edward Hopper’s Morning Sun. Both paintings really show how the painters were really concerned of shadow. (pause, waiting)

Darco. Continue.

Mr. Luminato. It’s the contrast it produces. Parts of the painting colored with dark colors signify the existence of light. And there have I spoken the other term: ‘color’.

Darco. What about that?

Mr. Luminato. Color is another element through which we can sense the presence of light. Light itself is color. Newton and Goethe, for examples, had tried to sense light through colors. They sorted colors from light, using prisms.[11] Johannes Itten, a color theorist, even more extremely, concluded this phenomenon into a dictum sounds “Light is color; color is life; light is life.”[12]

Darco. (contemplatively) Hm… light, color, and art. I believe this has something to do with plays.

Mr. Luminato. Brilliantly, indeed. Look, the presence or absence of light is not solely responsible for our ability to experience visual impression. The direction, strength and color of, since you are speaking about drama performances, artificial light sources, the color of the light, and the body colors of illuminated objects are the parameters that also go into the seeing experience.[13] In play performances, all these considerations are significant.

Darco. (nodding, agreeing) Ehem…

Mr. Luminato. “A performer can be presented much more excitingly and expressively if he [sic.] is standing in an atmospheric space and drawn into the combination of light and shade created by the light state.”[14] Lighting, in addition to its elementary use as for visualizing the stage, properties, and actors, joint altogether with the intensity, planned direction of aims, movement, and color, will create the expected mood, emotional atmosphere, in the play.[15]

Darco. Tsk-tsk-tsk.

Mr. Luminato. Mesmerizing, huh?

Darco. You bet.

(After that, there is a long silence between them)

Mr. Luminato. What is your name, by the way, son?

Darco. Darco, sir.

Mr. Luminato. Mine is Luminato. (sighing) No wonder your name is Darco. You are still ‘dark’, and need to be brightened. (giggling)

Darco. No wonder your name is Luminato. You are illuminating.

(Both laugh quite loudly)

Mr. Luminato. Anyway, young man, it has been a nice talk with you. (pause) I think I have to go now. Can you tell me the time?

Darco. Ha-ha. I guess, for a light-master like yourself, you don’t need me to tell the time. The sun will tell you.

Mr. Luminato. (smiling mysteriously) Sadly, my son, it will not. (taking off his black-glasses, looking directly at Darco) I am blind.

References

Books

Keller, Max. Light Fantastic: The Art and Design of Stage Lighting. (2^nd ed.). Munich, Berlin, London, New York: Prestel, 2006.

Parker, W. Oren and Harvey K. Smith. Scene Design and Stage Lighting. (3^rd ed.). New York, Chicago, San Fransisco, Atlanta, Dallas, Montreal, Toronto, London, and Sydney: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc., 1974.

Reid, Francis. The Stage Lighting Handbook. (5^th ed.). London: A & C Black, 1996, (reprinted 1999)

The Holy Bible. (1987 edition). The Gideons International: National Publishing Company, 1987.

Audio-visuals

Keller, Max. A Journey into Light with Max Keller. DVD, 2006.

“Texts are therefore not structures of presence but traces and tracings of otherness. They are shaped by the repetition and transformation of other textual structures,” said John Frow in his ‘Intertextuality and Ontology’[1]. These definitive sentences are one of the ten theses he proposed to begin the theoretical discussion upon the term intertextuality.[2] What is vehemently interesting in intertextuality to be talked about when observing the works of art? It is its use of the voluminously spacious and diversified word: text(s). On the condition that we accept the theory of intertextuality, we are then prepared to accept that things, from the atomic to the gargantuan ones, are texts; and thus the prefix inter- indicates the interlocking connection which becomes ‘the blessed tie that binds’. This theory is then igniting a way of thinking that a textual form of creation does not stand alone in vacancy. So long as humans can track down histories, interconnections are more likely of the discovery.

In the realm of literature, in which text and its structure are of the essence, intertextuality is (almost) absolute. Goethe’s Faust would never exist without the influence of Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. Shakespeare was influenced by Seneca, and Seneca by Sophocles. Putu Wijaya created his Aduh due to the influence coming from Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot, brought by W.S. Rendra to Indonesia in the late 1960s. And the very same Waiting for Godot indeed influenced an American playwright Edward Albee through his The Zoo Story. No matter how much accentual or subtle, or how much deliberate or with-no-preconceived-purpose, they are, influences (read: intertextuality) do exist. Especially, and yet indeed not only, in the works of literature intertextuality is ubiquitous. It is (not) surprisingly everywhere. ‘Repetition and transformation’, to name them in Frow’s terminologies, are the consequential effects produced by the intertextuality experienced by the ‘new’ texts. Since texts do have structures, again no matter how accentual or subtle they are, and since, to make it specific to the scope of our discussion, indeed literary texts have structures, contiguities of textual structures among literary works contribute the re-creations of form and content.

As for this short article, it is for sure the notion of intertextuality that induced me to observe the transformation of one of structural formal elements of a genre in literature, namely: drama. Throughout this writing I am trying to provide a comprehensive description about how an interactive intercreative dialogue done by playwrights has enabled a transformation of a formal element in traditional drama: the chorus. Let the show begin!

The Curiosity of the Chorus

What is chorus? Why has it become one of the formal conventions of drama? These what-and-why questions need to be asked to begin the discussion of its transformation.

The earlier meaning of chorus, etymologically derived from Greek khoros, is “a group of people, wearing masks, who sang or chanted verse while performing dancelike maneuvers at religious festivals”.[3] In the tradition of Greek tragedies – in this, we have to note that Greek classical drama is up to now considered as the earliest root of English dramas – choruses were largely utilized. Greek classical drama itself “arose from choric dances in religious celebrations”.[4] At this point, we have to bear in mind that the Greek tragedy was derived from the dithyramb, a lyrical expression of poetry presented in honor of Dionysus, one of the gods in Greek myth.[5] This sacred lyric poetry is accentuated through the use of the so-called ‘dithyrambic chorus’. Hence, since the tradition of Greek tragedies is meant to be produced in line with religious activities, the use of dithyrambic chorus is of consequence.

Formerly, in the earliest Greek tragedy, the traditional chorus employed one actor and fifty chorus members, making the performance chiefly a choral one. Dithyrambic chorus then becomes a dramatic one when eventually the actor comes prominently out of the group, doing actions individually, detached from the leader of the chorus.[6] In its earliest use, chorus was functioning as an entity which commented on, as well as giving some elementary interpretations to, the actions. This means that chorus, though still included in the major structure of the tragedy, worked separately from the actions; it served as a distinct element, probably an objective one, who was granted a right to contribute motivated commentaries to the actions played at the stage.[7]

Apparently, in the history of Greek tragedies, a gradual shift happened. The performance was no longer choral; the actor and the dramatic elements appeared to be more significant. This is to say that, as seen in the works of Sophocles, chorus then functioned as merely and primarily lyrical. It also became less integral to the dramatic actions. Yet, it does not mean that it has no dramatic role in the actions anymore. As we may see in Oedipus Rex, for instance, there were times when Choragos, the leader of the chorus, exchanged words/dialogues with King Oedipus; this fact is observable, for instance, in the beginning of Scene One.

***

The functions of the chorus developed from its traditional conventions. It all started when a Roman playwright, Seneca, took over the Greek classical type of chorus. Moreover, in the mid-sixteenth century, English dramatists, some of which are Norton and Sackville, as in Gorbuduc, copied-and-pasted the type of chorus made use in Senecan dramas.[8] This condition was then followed and developed at the time of Elizabethan theatre. Significant alternations occurred. One of the most considerable shifts is the drastic reduction of the number of people involving in a chorus. Only one person is employed in the Elizabethan theatrical chorus. Also at this time, the functions of the chorus, which in the Greek classical dramas were to comment and interpret actions happening on stage, had been made more numerous and diverse. For instance, the chorus actor gave speeches in the prologue and epilogue of a play. In several occasions, the actor was also meant to introduce each of the acts.[9] Note that I now am using the term ‘actor’, rather than merely ‘chorus’. What does this mean? It means that ‘chorus’ was ascended, from its former status that was non-, or less, integral part to the actions, to “become more integral parts of the unified actions”.[10] Moreover, as stated by Abrams, “[t]his character served as the author’s vehicle for commentary on the play,” and this traditional function is added, “as well as for exposition of its subject, time, and setting, and of events happening offstage.”[11] These monumental shifts and additions are evident in Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and Shakespeare’s Henry V, to mention a few.

The appearance of chorus (or, it is better to name it ‘choral actor’, since it is now more integral to the actions played), to an extent, may arise confusion. This is true remembering that a choral actor will present a theatrical trait which is different from the actors who are playing as dramatic personas of the drama. One of the most ‘distracting’ oddities of a choral actor is the direction to whom s/he mainly talks. A choral actor will tend to address the audience directly. This produces oddity since, as noted by Gill, in his Mastering English Literature, choral figure “openly advertises the artificiality of the stage by refusing to be a character like the others and talking directly to the audiences about what is going on.”[12] Due to this condition, the existence of a chorus in drama is thus made as one of dramatic conventions; chorus is a dramatic condition the audience has to accept and agree with.[13] And since it is now a convention, chorus is one more time ascended – its use is fully admitted integral to the whole structure of a drama; of course, this is true specifically for those plays which are utilizing chorus or choral characters in the stream of their dramatic structure.

The Development of Choral Techniques

In this part, I would like to present a discussion about the development of techniques of using chorus in drama. The texts that I am to compare are Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex (representing Greek classical drama), William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (representing Elizabethan drama), and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (representing English 20^th century drama). Here I will try to put forward how each text represents its technique of using chorus. By comparing the three, we will finally see that modifications, improvements, and alternations taking place starting from Elizabethan era are creative consequential efforts made up by the playwright to respond to the zeitgeist, the spirit of age, of their own time.

–Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex

As mentioned before, the organization of Greek theater is held as a part of a religious festival. It was at this time that the earliest standard technique of employing a chorus was established.

In Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, the use of chorus as the commenter and/or interpreter for the actions played on stage is significant. It is observable, for instance, in the Párados part. This expository part is divided into three ‘strophes’ and three ‘antistrophes’; and every strophe or antistrophe is a response/comment to the earliest part of the play: the Prologue. In the Prologue, which is opened by a scene where King Oedipus addresses his countrymen in a speech, it is told that Thebes, the setting of place for the play, is suffering from despair and plague. Here is the quote from line 25-34, uttered by the Priest.

Your own eyes

Must tell you: Thebes is tossed on a murdering sea

And can not lift her head from the death surge.

A rust consumes the buds and fruits of the earth;

The herds are sick; children die unborn,

And labor is vain. The god of plague and pyre

Raids like detestable lightning through the city,

And all the house of Kadmos is laid waste,

All emptied, and all darkened: Death alone

Battens upon the misery of Thebes.

This is then responded by the chorus in Strophe I, in a form of an emphasis to the dialogue spoken by the priest.

Fear unjoints me, the roots of my heart tremble.

Now I remember, O Healer, your power, and wonder:

Will you send doom like a sudden cloud, or weave it

Like nightfall of the past? (line 157-160)

The commentary from the chorus then comes in Antistrophe I. It commented on, in a form of a prayer, the despairing condition of Thebes.

Let me pray to Athenê, the immortal daughter of Zeus,

And to Artemis her sister

Who keeps her famous throne in the market ring,

And to Apollo, archer from distant heaven –

O gods, descend! Like three streams leap against

The fires of our grief, the fires of darkeness;

Be swift to bring us rest!

As in the old time from the brilliant house

Of air you stepped to save us, come again! (line 163-171)

Interestingly, the chorus does not only respond to a ‘general’ issue like the despair of Thebes; but it also reacts to a quite special one like what Kreon, the brother of Oedipus’ wife, Iokaste, has uttered previously in the Prologue part.

KRE. My lord: Laїos once ruled this land, before you came to govern us.

OED. I know;

I learned of him from others; I never saw him.

KRE. He was murdered; and Apollo commands us now

To take revenge upon whoever killed him. (line 107-111)

The chorus commented this dialogue between Kreon and Oedipus, in which Kreon stated what he had learned from his journey to Delphi – he was sent by Oedipus to go to Delphi to find the remedies for the desperation Thebes was experiencing – that Apollo wanted people of Thebes to take revenge for the murder of Laїos, their former king. The comment is given in the Párados part in Strophe 3.

Send the besieger plunging from our homes

Into the vast sea-room of the Atlantic

Or into the waves that foam eastward of Thrace –

For the day ravages what the night spares –

Destroy our enemy, lord of the thunder!

Let him be riven by lightning from heaven! (line 190-195)

In Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, the use of a chorus leader is significant. The utilization of a chorus leader, named Choragos in the play, is, in my opinion, maximal since he takes part in the actions of the play – he makes dialogues and also serves a role in the plot of the story. This is a little chunk of conversation between Oedipus and Choragos the Chorus Leader, in Scene I. They exchange dialogues right after Oedipus made a lengthy speech about the conditions he was about to do about the solving of Laїos’ murder case.

CHORAG. Since I am under oath, my lord, I swear

I did not do the murder, I can not name

The murderer. Phoibos ordained the search;

Why did he not say who the culprit was?

OED. An honest question. But no man in the world

Can make the gods do more than the gods will.

Choragos also serves a role in the flow of the plot. He is the one who introduced Oedipus to the blind seer Teiersias, who later heightened the heat of the plot by addressing accusation to Oedipus.

The idea of opening and closing the drama is also done by the chorus in Oedipus Rex. Though the play is not technically opened by the chorus, since the Parados of the chorus appears after the Prologue, which is not done by the chorus, the play is indeed closed by the chorus leader Choragos.

CHORAG. Men of Thebes: look upon Oedipus.

This is the king who solved the famous riddle

And towered up, most powerful of men.

No mortal eyes but looked on him with envy,

Yet in the end ruin swept over him.

Let every man in mankind’s frailty

Consider his last day; and let none

Presume on his good fortune until he find

Life, at his death, a memory without pain. (line 1469-1477)

I found something interesting about the role of Choragos in the play. This finding will support that chorus, at least in Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, is indeed an integral part to the dramatic actions. In Scene III, Oedipus and his wife, Iokaste, had an argument about Oedipus childhood history. Iokaste insisted that the questioning should not be continued since it would bring down doom to him; until finally Iokaste, frustrated with Oedipus’ stubbornness, left the place.

IOK. You are fatally wrong! May you never learn who you are!

OED. Go, one of you, and bring the shepherd here.

Let us leave this woman to brag of her royal name.

IOK. Ah, miserable!

That is the only word I have for you now.

That is the only word I can ever have.

[Exit into the palace] (line 1011-1019)

Responding to this situation, Choragus spoke

CHORAG. Why has she left us, Oedipus? Why has she gone? (line 1020)

Notice how Choragus brought the question to Oedipus. He used the first person plural (inclusive) pronoun ‘us’. The use of such pronoun explains that Choragus is an integral part of the story. He is one of the characters playing in the drama. He, as the chorus leader, is the entity representing that the function of chorus in Greek classical drama was not only lyrical, but also dramatic. Yet one has to admit that the dramatic function of chorus in Greek tragedy is less significant than its lyrical one; and this issue is what is extensively worked-out and developed in our modern drama.

–William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

As mentioned by Abrams, chorus is further used for its dramatic functioning rather than lyrical. Chorus is administered more roles in the play: it introduces the story (and frequently also closes it), puts forward commentaries upon the actions, brings the knowledge about the setting of place and time, and also telling events which are absent in the stage but are influential to the stream of the plot. Frankly speaking, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is not the upmost instance of the development of chorus utilization technique in Elizabethan theatre. Shakespeare’s Henry V, Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, or Twelfth Night by Shakespeare are considered more representative to signify the development of chorus utilization in Elizabethan dramas. Also, it is these plays mentioned just now which induced the more extended use of chorus – that modern drama critics have to attribute an additional specific terminology to cope with the metamorphosis of chorus; some name it ‘choral’ and some ‘chorus-like’.[14] Yet, as for the interest of this writing, I decided to use Romeo and Juliet to be contrasted with another play we are about to discuss later, Wilder’s Our Town.

The chorus in Romeo and Juliet, one person dressed in black, appears twice during this five-act play: in the Prologue and in the opening of Act II. In the Prologue, the chorus is there to announce some general yet nucleic information regarding the story to be performed in the stage. He is there to give preconditions to the audiences, preparing them for the plot by providing some ‘clues’ which may lead to the exposition-conflict-resolution of the play. Here is the quotation showing how the chorus introduces the two general characters of Romeo and Juliet: the Montagues and the Capulets.

Chor. Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. (line 1-4)

In there, he altogether has also announced the setting of time where the play is (imagined) to take place. A little hint is also given, which, when observed, will bring understanding about the root of the conflict experienced by the Montagues and the Capulets (see line 3-4).

The chorus then continues his introductory speech by putting forward the preliminary information about the point at which the conflict in the play is to be arisen: the love between Romeo (son of Montague) and Juliet (daughter of Capulet).

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair star-cross’d lovers take their life;

Whose misadventur’d piteous overthrows

Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife. (line 5-8)

There is an interesting thing I found in the chorus’ introductory speech, i.e. the advertisement about the stage. In the Prologue, line 9 to 14, especially in line 12-14, the chorus clearly address to the probable duration of the stage playing the story.

The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,

And the continuance of their parent’s rage,

Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,

Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;

The which if you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Note the predicate is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage. Here the chorus plainly informs the duration of the play, which is to say that he is not a part of the actions (that he is not integral to the dramatic body of the story) and that things presented on stage is indeed a play – meaning to say that it is an entertainment. This is where the difference is located, when Elizabethan drama is compared with Greek tragedy. In Greek theater, the performance is held as a part of religious activity. Nonetheless, in Elizabethan era, plays are plays as entertainment is entertainment. Thus, it is understandable that Shakespeare came up with the idea of using the chorus to address technical information about the stage. We will see further that this technique is developed even more dramatically in Wilder’s Our Town.

Another different point that will be soon discovered, when comparing attentively Greek drama with Elizabethan drama, is the number of acts, which then brings consequences to the shifts in time-and-space setting. Oedipus Rex is drama in which the unity of time, place, and action is essential. This means that there is no time-and-place change in the play. The properties are just right there, on the stage, and need not to be (re)moved, added, reconfigured, or changed to produce different setting of time or place. However, the case is different when we come to Romeo and Juliet. There are five acts there and stage-scene changes do happen. Stage properties have to be changed or removed to come up with new settings. Again this is a matter of stage technicality. Yet, it indeed brings consequence to the use of chorus in, at least, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The appearance of the chorus in the opening of Act II is the example. In the copy of the play I was using as the data reference for this writing, the editor put a footnote regarding the appearance of the chorus in Act II. It is then understood that the chorus appears there not only because commentaries and preconditions need to be given to begin the new act; rather, it appears “affording time for scene change.”[15] Apparently, the place setting of Act I (a square in Verona) is different from Act II, as we can see in the neben text: “Garden of Capulet’s House, with garden-wall, and street adjoining. Full stage with balcony.” This massive change of place setting needs time. Therefore, in front of the being-closed curtain, the chorus is employed to give time for the change.

The appearance of choral or chorus-like character, in my opinion, is not absent in Romeo and Juliet, though we may say that it is more utterly in Henry V, for example. Escalus, the Prince of Verona, in the very last part of the play, performs himself as the one who ends the story, acting as the chorus-like character, who highly probably directly address and announce the audience, with a choral speech.

Prince: A glooming peace this morning with it brings;

The Sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:

Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;

Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished:

For never was a Story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

[The scene closes] (Act V, Scene III, line 304-310)

There are two peculiarities which finally led me to the conclusion that the speech given by the Prince is chorus-like. The first one is the use of double-dots [:] after the name of the character, whereas throughout the script, the punctuation which distinguish the name of the character and the dialogue s/he is about to speak is a period [.]. The second peculiarity is the ambiguity of addressee to whom the speech is conveyed. We can see that the Prince used an imperative sentence “Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things,” This sentence, and the way the Prince close his speech, using a causal adverbial clause “For never was a Story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo” after reminding that “Some shall be pardon’d and some punished” attract my attention since it made me imagine that the speech can also be directed to the audiences in addition to the characters appearing on stage. The Prince is sort of giving a final concluding and advising remark to all people watching the story of the death of Romeo and Juliet to “have more talk of these sad things”. Thus by spreading the moral messages in the story, the Prince (Shakespeare?) hoped to see effects produced as the follow-up after watching the aesthetic performance – the catharsis, to put it in Aristotelian term, is the spread of peace and love message; peace and love defeat grudge and hatred. His speech is not only the expressive of his character, it is like a public commentary made on the peak event. Thus the Prince is chorus-like.

–Thornton Wilder’s Our Town

Modern plays become the witness of the great diversified use of chorus or choral/chorus-like characters in drama. Richard Gill gave us one prominent example of this diversified and extended use of chorus: the play A Man for all Seasons by Robert Bolt. He said,

“Robert Bolt creates the Common Man, who opens and closes the play, as well as commenting on the action in between. But he is also a character, or, rather, a number of characters: steward, boatman, publican, jailer, foreman of the jury and, finally, executioner. He is both apart from and part of the action.”[16]

From the quotation, we can see that the chorus of A Man for all Seasons, the Common Man, is not only opening, closing, and commenting on the action of the play, as the traditional function of a chorus is, but also playing multiple characters in it. This very characteristic is chiefly significant also in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. We shall soon see, after a brief analysis about the chorus-like character in Our Town, the Stage Manager, that this shift is not without aesthetical and zeitgeist reasons.

***

Our Town is Thornton Wilder’s masterpiece play written and performed in 1938. In this play, Wilder made use of a choral character he named the Stage Manager. For those who are not really familiar with the technical definition of this term, here I present its meaning, which I quote from Robert L. Benedetti’s The Director at Work.[17]

Your Stage Manager…is many things to you: social director, police officer, general contractor, tactician, conscience and alter ego…The SM’s (stage manager’s) primary responsibility during the rehearsal process is to facilitate the work itself: this means making sure everything needed for an effective rehearsal is ready when work is to begin: a substitute set, furniture, props, whatever.

And it does not stop there. A stage manager “will also police the actors and deal with problems of lateness, incorrect line memorization, and rehearsal deportment.” Therefore, a stage manager certainly will bring much influence to the organization of the stage. Once the performance begins, the stage manager will act as the “surrogate director”, substituting the real director, who will be absent when the stage is opened.

Why did I give detailed explanation of the roles of a stage manager? It is because these very roles are what the character Stage Manager in Our Town is really playing. Let us see more about this.

The Stage Manager in Our Town opens the play, setting up the simple stage properties to be used later. This is the complete earliest neben text (stage direction) in the script of Our Town, showing the role done by the Stage Manager.

No curtain.

No scenery.

The audience, arriving, sees an empty stage in half-light.

Presently the STAGE MANAGER, hat on and pipe in mouth, enters and begins placing a table and three chairs downstage left, and a table and three chairs downstage right. He also places a low bench at the corner of what will be the Webb house, left.

‘Left’ and ‘right’ are from the point of view of the actor facing the audience. ‘Up’ is towards the back wall.

As the house lights go down he has finished setting the stage and leaning against the right proscenium pillar watches the late arrivals in the audience.

When the auditorium is in complete darkness he speaks.[18]

Notice how detail the neben text is. The Stage Manager, though a character in the play, does do his technical duty: ‘setting up the stage’, so to speak setting up the place where the play is about to take place; in a play usually a stage manager is the one who rather manages the setting up of the stage (the practical is done by the setting crews).

His introductory speech indeed reminds me to the speech of the chorus in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, when the chorus inform the probable duration of the play. There, the Stage Manager tells,

This play is called Our Town. It was written by Thornton Wilder; produced and directed by A… (or: produced by A. …; directed by B. …). In it you will see Miss C. …; Miss D. …; Miss E. …; and Mr F. …; Mr G. …; Mr H. …; and many others.[19]

To some audiences, this information is awkward, and seems superfluous. Why should it be told? Perhaps, the answer for this question can be seen in Thornton Wilder himself. In the Preface he wrote for a book containing three of his plays, he announced,

Toward the end of the twenties I began to lose pleasure in going to the theatre. I ceased to believe in the stories I saw presented there. When I did go it was to admire some secondary aspect of the play, the work of a great actor or director or designer.[20]

Notice when he said “some secondary aspect of the play, the work of a great actor or director or designer.” This notion will never be understood if one does not acknowledge how Wilder perceived theatre of the nineteenth century. Wilder was fed up with most of the performances, he did no longer believe in every word presented there. If he wanted to go to the theatre, it was only to admire the ‘secondary aspect’. Another sentence from him will make this clear: “One way to shake off the nonsense of the nineteenth-century staging is to make fun of it.”[21] The great work of the actor is a secondary aspect which could make Wilder, the author of Our Town, stepped his feet to the theatre auditorium. And since this aspect is only, for him, secondary, he made fun of it by making it ‘primary’. The result is as we can see in the first words uttered by the Stage Manager of Our Town. Names of actors, actresses, director, or producer are mentioned – as if showing that the strength of the play (merely) relies on the strength of those people, and not on every word it functions. And Wilder use the ‘chorus’, the Stage Manager, to convey this critical notion.

Some of the roles of the Stage Manager in Our Town are traditional. Notwithstanding, these traditional functions are by and large extended to a degree. In Romeo and Juliet, for instance, the chorus is meant to introduce the setting of place for the play. In Our Town, this function is also done by the choral figure, the Stage Manager.

The name of the town is Grover’s Corners, New Hempshire – just across the Massachusetts line: latitude 42 degrees 40 minutes; longitude 70 degrees 37 minutes. The First Act shows a day in our town. The day is 7 May 1901. The same is just before dawn.[22]

Yet, interestingly, he does not do this information alone. He invites some other characters to accompany him telling additional information about the town. He invited Professor Willard of the State University, asking him about some details about the town’s history and its anthropological data.[23] He also invites Mr Webb, one of the characters in the play to step aside for a while from his dramatic character, and join him (the Stage Manager) to present some social and political reports about the town.[24] He even invites the ‘audiences’ to be involved in brief Question-and-Answer session with Mr Webb.[25]

The Stage Manager, being quite similar to Robert Bolt’s Common Man in A Man for all Seasons, also acts as other characters to substitute the invisibility of those characters in the play. For instance, when he plays as Mrs Forrest, an old lady whom George Gibbs, son to Mr Gibbs (who is neighbor to Mr Webb), bumps into.[26] Or, when he acts as Mr Morgan, the invisible owner the drugstore; here is the stage direction specifying it.

[The STAGE MANAGER, wearing spectacles and assuming the role of Mr Morgan, enters abruptly from the right and stands between the audience and the counter of his soda fountain][27]

Or, when he acts as the minister who pronounced George Gibbs and Emily Webb husband and wife, as in this: “In this wedding I play the minister. That gives me the right to say a few more things about it.”[28]

Abrams has stated that one of the functions of the modern chorus is to inform the events which are not present on the stage. This function is indeed also done by the Stage Manager in Our Town. One example will be presented here, when the Stage Manager gives information about the future of the character Joe Crowell, who at that time is told as a boy.

Want to tell you something about that boy Joe Crowell there. Joe was awful bright – graduated from high school here, head of his class…It was all wrote up in the Boston paper at the time. Goin’ to be a great engineer, Joe was. But the war broke out and he died in France – All that education for nothing.[29]

Furthermore, as the one who holds the flow of the plot of the play, the Stage Manager indeed makes many interruptions and some of these interruptions are announced to the characters and responded by them. Here is one of the examples.

[The STAGE MANAGER enters briskly from the right. He tips his hat to the ladies, who nod their heads.]

STAGE MANAGER: Thank you, ladies. Thank you very much.

[MRS GIBBS and MRS WEBB gather up their things, return into their homes and disappear.][30]

The Stage Manager also clearly announces the change of time when it will be changed, as in “Now we’re going to skip a few hours.”[31] Here, it is then prominent that the role of the Stage Manager seems to be like a dalang in Javanese wayang, or a master of ceremony in a formal occasion.

Though making many interruptions, apparently, the Stage Manager also has the role of removing interruptions made by some minor characters. This is the scene of George and Emily’s wedding. There are three baseball players there (George’s friends), shouting cheerfully at him.

THE BASEBALL PLAYERS: Eh, George, George! Hast – yaow! Look at him, fellas – he looks scared to death. Yaow! George, don’t look so innocent, you old geezer. We know what you’re thinking. Don’t disgrace the team, big boy. Whoo-oo-oo.

STAGE MANAGER: All right! All right! That’ll do. That’s enough of that.

[Smiling, he pushes them off the stage. They lean back to show a few more catcalls.][32]

Lastly, since he opens the stage, he also closes it.

[The STAGE MANAGER appears at the right, one hand on dark curtain which he slowly draws across the scene.]

STAGE MANAGER: Most everybody’s asleep in Grover’s Corner… Hm.. Eleven o’clock in Grover’s Corners – You get a good rest, too. Good night.[33]

And so complete the roles of the Stage Manager are: he gives comments; he acts as invisible characters in the play; he puts forward information about the setting of time and place in details; he manages the plot of the story; he provides the audiences with events being absent on stage, he sets up the properties of the stage, he opens and thus closes the play. Now, the question: why do all these happen in modern play?

The Ascendency of the Chorus – the Ascendancy of the Clown

In this part, I am going to try to answer why the phenomenon of chorus ‘ascendency’ happened, chiefly in modern drama. To my opinion, we cannot ignore this chorus phenomenon, the shift, because it also brings effect to the development of play writing.

First of all, we have to notice that in Greek tragedies, though tending to be lyrical, we cannot resist to admit that the role of the leader of the chorus, as we can see in Choragos in Oedipus Rex, is indeed significant and dramatic, rather than lyrical. Notice that formerly there were 50 persons employed in a chorus, and one of them is the actor. This number was reduced massively into just 12 persons. Sophocles added some more, making it 15. Yet, what is interesting is the role of the chorus leader; a chorus leader is free to interact with the other dramatic characters in the play – this makes him integral part of the dramatic body of the play. We then understand that the chorus leader is just one person. This quantity is what adopted in Elizabethan theatre. Elizabethan drama made use of just one person to deliver the prologue and epilogue of the drama; a function it derived from Senecan dramas. And yet, Elizabethan dramas came up with its discovery of the so called choral character(s). These characters are not the chorus, yet they are the chorus-like ones. And this has produced ambiguity about the meaning of chorus: is chorus chorus-like or is chorus-like chorus?

I see this bias happening due to the trait of Elizabethan dramas which only put chief attention to the main characters; and the main characters are usually important people, such as noblemen, kings, etc. Minor characters are only used to ‘interrupt’ the serious tense atmosphere of the play by making ‘jokes’. This phenomenon is observable in many Shakespeare’s plays. These minor characters are then named the ‘clown’. The stories of Shakespeare’s plays are never about the clowns, they are mainly about the important people. This tendency, in my knowledge, produced hesitation in Elizabethan dramatists to ascend the role of the chorus into one of the primary figures in the play; since it would tend to break the convention.

But what do we have now? We have the chorus, or say the choral character, in its modern appearance and type, modified into a character that plays actions and even holds the management of the plot of the story. Indeed, the main structure of the story is not about the chorus him/herself: the story we see in Our Town is not the story of the Stage Manager (or, can it be?). However, the roles and functions of the chorus are truly intensified. What does this signify?

To my understanding, we can answer this question by seeing the ascendency of the chorus to the ascendency of the clown in modern dramas. In today’s drama, most of the stories are about ordinary people; they are not kings nor noblemen nor knights, or something like that. They are salesmen, barber, simple mothers, doctors, farmers, etc. The stories of modern drama are mainly about these people. It can be understood that this difference is a consequence of the change in the society. The community in Elizabethan era was still feudal where today is liberal.

The ascendency of the ‘clown’, or ordinary people, as the center of stories in today’s play, to an extent, gives way for the extensiveness of today’s chorus. Chorus is therefore not functioned as merely an announcer; a chorus can be everything in the play: it can be the telescope from which the audience can see closer to the essential details of the story played on the stage; it can be the one who substitutes invisible actors on the stage; it can be the one who announces what happens next and what happened before, and so on and so forth. Chorus is no longer reduced into its separated/isolated place apart from the actions. Chorus becomes more flexible; it can swim to and fro, apart from but also a part of the actions. This is why chorus becomes so important and thus ascended.

Concluding Remark

I have started this piece of writing with a very short discussion about intertextuality. I hope I have made intertextuality effective in the discussion of the transformation of chorus from Greek to Modern plays. The metamorphosis is indeed a cause-and-effect product of interactions among playwrights from different generations. A writer is used to be a reader. S/he cannot write in a vacant situation. Influences should not be perceived as only stimulation for a mere imitation. We have seen the proof. Creativity has made the development of the technique of using chorus contribute to the development of the whole structure of English plays. Intertextuality indeed plays its role in the changes and creative modifications shaping what is now recognized as English Drama.

References

Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. (6^th ed.), Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1993.

Benedetti, Robert L. The Director at Work. New Jersey: Pretice-Hall Inc., 1985.

Gill, Richard. Mastering English Literature. (2^nd ed.), London: Macmillan, 1995.

Encyclopedia International, Stanley Shindler (editor in chief), vol. IV, New York: Grolier Inc., 1971.

Texts of the Plays

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. The British Council.

Sophocles. Oedipus Rex.

Wilder, Thornton. Our Town. Penguin, 1982.

If essentially human language is figurative, it is simply understandable that every civilization has its own poetics. What this means is that each individual, having the quality of being imaginative and expressive, while at the same time mastering the language, will tend to employ the figurative quality his/her language. The outputs can be in many forms. One of them is poem.

As an embodiment of ideas, which means that it is tangible and visible, a poem will have a structure. It is formed via, and yet not only, words. A poem is both formalistic and idealistic. Culler further defines a poem as

…a structure of signifiers that absorbs and reconstitutes the signifieds, in that its formal patterns have effects on its semantic structures, assimilating the meanings words have in other contexts and subjecting them to new organization, altering stress and focus, shifting literal meanings to figurative ones, bringing terms into alignment, according to patterns of parallelism. (2000:75)

To see this more clearly, let us try to read a poem entitled ‘I Spik Ingglish’ by Chan Wei Meng (Robe Pope, 1996:300).

I speak English
To a foreign friend –
‘I don’t understand what you’re trying to say!’
‘How come? I spik Ingglish what!’

I spik Ingglish
In Home –
‘Hungry? You want fried lice or mee?’
‘I eat Can-tucky cheeken, can or not?’
‘Listen! Study Ingglish, earn more manee.’

I spik Ingglish
In School –
‘Every body read – sing sang sung.’
‘I sing Maly hab a litter lamb.’
‘Attention! School close at one.’

I spik Ingglish
In Work –
‘You know, the komputer cannot open, izzit?’
‘I donno, got pay or not?’
‘Remember – customer is always light, pease.’

I spik Ingglish
In shop –
‘Hello, can I hepch you?’
‘I looksee first.’
‘Buy now! they is vely cheep and new.’

I spik Ingglish
Everywhere
Understand?

Meng, a Chinese-Singaporean student of English, wrote this poem as by and large a collection of her reflections on the phenomena of English language; that is why she set several settings of place, which are (somewhere) ‘to a foreign friend’, ‘in home’, ‘in school’, ‘in work’, ‘in shop’, ‘everywhere’. It is very interesting to try to read-aloud this poem, attempting to pronounce the uncommon spelling of words, since it will evoke, for sure, a Chinese-English dialect: pay attention to words such as ‘lice’, ‘mee’, ‘vely’, ‘light’, etc. The grammar of the sentences is also saying something important. Such expressions as ‘can or not’ and ‘they is vely cheep and new’ are common grammaticality in dialects. Seeing these facts, then, did Meng mean only as the words in her poem mean? Considering the settings, the unique spelling, the phonetic effects appearing when it is read, and the grammar, it is for sure that the poem is saying something further.

Poem is then a distilled manner of expression of ideas. It is very personal, as we may see the poem ‘I Spik Ingglish’ as a private muse of Meng on the phenomena of English. Yet, what then makes poem(s) poetry is intertextuality, the term coined by Julia Kristeva to depict how works of literature are related each other. Meng’s poem has its intertextuality, no matter whether the poet was conscious or not about it, with, say, Merle Collins ‘No Dialects Please’ (1970). Both poems are talking about dialect of English and all the probable problems surrounding the spectrum of the phenomena.

Consequently, it is fine to say ‘my poem’ since poem is indeed personal and distilled. Yet, one might prefer to say ‘our poetry’ since it is the intertextuality, the complicated and motivated interpenetration of poems, which make my poem(s), your poem(s), and their poem(s) become(s) OUR POETRY.

Anda, dan para rekan-sezaman Anda, mungkin akan sukar sekali menyesuaikan diri dengan keadaan ini karena terlanjur di lumbung kosakata di benak Anda telah terpatri bahwa kata anjing, mengebiri, dan lidah punya cabang makna yang bersifat kiasan. Tapi keturunan Anda? Mereka masih lempang-lowong lumbung kosakatanya. Dan mereka belajar bahasa di sekolah-sekolah; dan sekolah-sekolah menawarkan kamus, yang sekarang sudah jauh berkurang jumlah halamannya itu, sebagai alat belajar bahasa – ingat Anda tidak sempat mengajari mereka berbahasa karena Anda terlalu sibuk dengan tugas kantor dan segala macam tetek-bengek beban cari-makan cari-aman yang ditimpakan keadaan dan penguasa ke pundak Anda. Tanpa terlebih dahulu lengkap menangkap realita, anak-anak Anda telah dicekoki agar cepat mencerap, menganggit, dan mengerti seluruh kosakata yang nantinya mereka ‘perlukan’ di hari depan. Ribuan makna kiasan yang telah terpasok di lumbung kosakata Anda tadi akhirnya musnah karena penguasa memutuskan bahwa kosakata tersebut sudah ‘tidak dapat menjawab zaman, tidak sopan, tidak santun, tidak benar secara nalar, tidak layak, dsb.’ Generasi berganti generasi dan anak-anak tadi dipersiapkan untuk meneruskan sistem ini. Di masa itu, lahirlah sebuah generasi ‘unik’ yang dibentuk oleh bahasa ‘unik’ pula.
***

Ilustrasi di atas adalah saduran sepenggal kisah (bahasa) yang diceritakan oleh George Orwell dalam novel profetiknya yang berjudul 1984. Inggris tahun-1984 yang dibayangkan Orwell dalam novelnya itu adalah Inggris yang seragam, sepikir, seatur, setutur sekaligus Inggris yang miskin, menderita, amburadul. Orwell dengan sangat jeli membongkar sistem kekuasaan, sistem pengawasan, dan juga sistem propaganda dan cuci-otak yang dimainkan oleh partai-penguasa lewat media. Yang paling menarik bagi saya: bahwa Orwell tidak lupa untuk juga membongkar sistem bahasa dalam masyarakat yang ia kisahkan di novelnya.

Saya ingat: saat duduk di kelas tiga bangku sekolah dasar di kota kelahiran saya, ada sebuah kata yang kami (para siswa dan guru) anggap sangat ‘berbahaya’. Nama kata itu adalah kerjasama. Entah karena kencangnya angin persaingan yang ditiupkan di ruang kelas, kata kerjasama mengalami pemaknaan yang peyoratif, maknanya lebih mirip dengan kata bersekongkol. Makna itu ‘menjadi’ di kepala saya untuk beberapa lama, dan ‘membatasi’ cara-pandang saya terhadap makna kerjasama, walau sekarang saya sudah menyadari bahwa adalah lucu untuk menganggap tindakan kerjasama sebagai tindakan yang buruk di sebuah negeri yang konon menganut mazhab gotong-royong ini. Namun, saya tidak tahu perkembangan makna kerjasama di benak teman-teman sekelas saya dulu.

Saya kira Orwell tidak mengada-ngada dengan ramalannya itu. Bahasa memang dibentuk oleh dan membentuk penuturnya. Dari mana jalannya, misalnya, kalimat bahasa Melayu klasik seperti ini, “Maka adalah sahaya mengunjukkan sehelai warkat ini ke hadapan tuan besar tiada dengan sepertinya hanya sahaya menunjukkan suatu pasal dari sahaya punya garam yang sahaya belum terimah…,” dapat berubah ke dalam bahasa Indonesia kini menjadi “Maka saya ajukan surat ini pada Anda karena ada satu masalah: garam saya belum saya terima…,” kalau bukan karena rekayasa besar-besaran bahasa Melayu oleh program pembakuan tata bahasa Indonesia, sebagai satu bentuk perencanaan bahasa di Indonesia? Inilah contoh bahasa yang dibentuk (dengan sengaja) oleh penutur. Lalu, bila Anda perhatikan poster-poster seminar pelatihan motivasi yang belakangan ini gencar diselenggarakan, maka mata Anda akan tertumbuk pada kata investasi yang dipakai sebagai ganti kata biaya pendaftaran. Dengan mengubah pilihan kata biaya menjadi investasi, maka berubah pulalah cara pandang orang terhadap seminar itu: bahwa ‘biaya’ atau ‘beban uang’ (negatif) yang dikeluarkan untuk ikut pelatihan adalah sebuah ‘penanaman modal’ (positif). Bukankah hal tersebut sama saja dengan mengubah sebutan harga sembako naik dengan harga sembako disesuaikan?

Bagaimana dengan, misalnya lagi, kecenderungan para penulis karya ilmiah di Indonesia untuk menggunakan kata penulis atau peneliti alih-alih saya dalam tulisan-tulisannya (ambillah contoh: skripsi, tesis, atau disertasi)? Pandangan yang terbentuk selama ini adalah bahwa hal tersebut untuk menunjukkan mutu keobjektifan dan kesahihan fakta yang digunakan dalam penelitian. Ada lagi yang bilang bahwa, khusus untuk perkara Indonesia, hal itu adalah untuk menunjukkan kerendahan hati. Tapi bukankah gaya tutur seperti itu merupakan warisan para sarjana angkatan lama Belanda, yang menyebut diri mereka ‘schrijver (penulis) supaya bisa berlindung di balik teks, menyuruh fakta bicara sendiri – singkatnya, tak berani menanggung risiko atas klaim yang dibuatnya? Melihat bahwa gaya tutur ini sebelumnya tidak ada di nusantara, dan bahwa ia merupakan warisan – dalam arti, ‘sudah ada dulu lalu diterima’ – maka saya simpulkan bahwa gaya tutur (bahasa) itu telah membentuk persepsi penutur bahasa Indonesia sekarang tentang ‘keobjektifan’ dalam penulisan karya ilmiah.

Contoh terbaru tentang usaha menggunakan bahasa untuk membentuk (persepsi) masyarakat adalah kasus minuman keras ‘lapen’. Bila Anda berkunjung ke Yogyakarta, tempat lapen membudaya, Anda kini akan melihat tebaran spanduk-spanduk anti-lapen, yang berisi kalimat-kalimat himbauan (walau cenderung imperatif) untuk menjauhi dan menghindari lapen. Uniknya, kata lapen di situ maknanya disamakan dengan seluruh cakupan makna yang bisa dirangkul oleh kata miras. Saya tanya: apakah Jack Daniels bukan miras? Mengapa spanduk-spanduk tersebut tidak bilang Hindari Jack Daniels juga? Bukankah ini sama saja dengan pembentukan persepsi klise-negatif atas kata komunis, PKI, Gerwani, dan Lekra seperti yang dilakukan oleh rezim Orba, lewat segala cara termasuk lewat pendidikan dasar formal?

Relasi bahasa dengan kuasa erat sekali kaitannya dengan perkara membentuk dan dibentuk oleh bahasa. Pajanan (eksposur) – dalam rupa propaganda dsb. – terhadap bahasa akan menentukan sejauh mana bahasa itu membentuk persepsi penuturnya. Seperti perkara yang saya ungkapkan lewat pengalaman pribadi saya tadi, kata kerjasama tidak lagi saya maknai sebagai persekongkolan karena saya tidak lagi secara mendalam terpajan dengan makna itu. Maka, bila dipajan dengan menggebu dan bertubi-tubi, aforisme mengerikan seperti yang ditonjolkan Orwell dalam novelnya – PERANG IALAH DAMAI / KEBEBASAN IALAH PERBUDAKAN / KEBODOHAN IALAH KEKUATAN – itu pun dapat menjadi kenyataan.

*tulisan ini, dengan judul “Antara Lapen dan Jack Daniels”, pernah dimuat di Majalah Basis Nomor. 05-06, Tahun Ke-59, 2010.

Perkenankan saya kutip sepenggal kalimat yang maktub dalam Tajuk Rencana KOMPAS, terbitan Sabtu, 25 Oktober 2008, yang berjudul Martabat Bahasa Indonesia: “[j]angan-jangan yang bisa kita banggakan tinggal ‘berbahasa yang satu, bahasa Indonesia’; dua lainnya terpuruk.” Kalimat yang tertuang dalam paragraf kedua dari Tajuk Rencana tersebut berkaitan dengan peri keprihatinan kita (KOMPAS?) terhadap terpuruknya dua butir pertama Sumpah Pemuda 1928, dan (seakan-akan) dengan legawa menyatakan bahwa, setidaknya, butir terakhir, yaitu butir tentang bahasa persatuan, masih tersisa untuk “dibanggakan”.

Dengan menyesal saya nyatakan bahwa saya tidak sependapat dengan anggapan tersebut. Terlebih lagi, ketika membaca lebih lanjut Tajuk Rencana itu, saya menyadari bahwa paragraf ketujuh, yang kurang-lebih berkesimpulan bahwa “[k]ita sendiri menggerus tanah kubur untuk kematian bahasa Indonesia,”; telah membunuh “kebanggaan” kita yang “tersisa” tentang sesuatu yang bernama Bahasa Indonesia.
***

Mengapa “PEMUDA” Memilih Bahasa Melayu?

Pertanyaan ini mungkin, sadar atau tidak, muncul dalam benak kita: mengapa bahasa Melayu menjadi akar bahasa Indonesia? Kalau dilihat dari mayoritas jumlah penduduk Indonesia, beserta penyebarannya di bumi Nusantara, bukankah bahasa Jawa lebih layak? Atau mungkin bahasa Sanskerta, yang memiliki tradisi sastra-tulis yang tentunya tak kalah dahsyat, yang juga pernah bercokol di tanah-tumpah-darah ini? Apa sebenarnya yang istimewa dari bahasa Melayu sehingga ia dipilih sebagai bahasa pemersatu beribu nusa yang ditinggali oleh manusia berkebudayaan dan berbahasa yang bhinneka ini?

Pendapat Amin Sweeney, dalam sebuah pengantar untuk buku bertajuk Karya Lengkap Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munsyi (Jilid I, 2005), mungkin bisa dijadikan jawaban atas pertanyaan ini. Ia menuturkan, “[o]rang Indonesia memilih bahasa Melayu untuk dikembangkan sebagai bahasa nasional karena bahasa itu telah berabad-abad berfungsi bukan hanya sebagai lingua franca, tetapi juga sebagai khasanah dan penyebar ilmu pengetahuan serba jenis.”

Penyebaran bahasa Melayu di seputaran Nusantara tidak bisa dilepaskan dari sejarah masuknya Portugis dan Belanda. Namun jangan pula lupakan bahwa jauh sebelum bangsa Eropa menginjakkan kaki di pasir pantai Nusantara (meskipun sebenarnya peluru meriam merekalah yang duluan menjejak di Nusantara ini), bahasa Melayu sendiri telah berpetualang keluar kandangnya. Ini dapat dibuktikan dari penelusuran sejarah yang mengungkap keberadaan piagam Kedukan Bukit (683 M), piagam Talang Tuo (684 M), piagam Kota Kapur (686 M), dan piagam Karang Brahi (688 M), yang kesemuanya menunjukkan bahwa, pada abad ke-7, Kerajaan Sriwijaya telah memberdayakan bahasa Melayu sebagai alat sambung-wicara resmi antar penduduk. Belum lagi, Prasasti Gandasuli (berangka 832 M) yang ditemukan di Kedu, Jawa Tengah, menebalkan praduga bahwa bahasa Melayu kuno telah digunakan sebagai (salah satu) alat komunikasi di luar tanah Melayu sendiri.

Mari kita berangkat ke masa beberapa abad lalu untuk membuktikan pernyataan Sweeney tentang bahasa Melayu sebagai “khasanah dan penyebar ilmu pengetahuan serba jenis.” Saya mengambil penyebaran agama Kristen di Nusantara sebagai salah satu bukti. Remy Sylado, dalam tulisannya yang berjudul Tuhan ‘Isaj Elmeseih (Inul Itu Diva? Kumpulan Rubrik Bahasa KOMPAS, 2003), mengungkapkan bahwa seorang misioner bernama Fransiscus Xaverius, pada 1445, meminta orang Melayu di Malaka untuk menerjemahkan Doa Bapa Kami, Kredo, dan Ave Maria ke dalam bahasa Melayu. Misioner ini lalu mengajarkannya pada masyarakat di Maluku (tentunya tidak sekedar doa-doa saja yang diajarkan, tapi juga bahasa Melayu). Kemudian menyusul terjemahan Injil dalam bahasa Melayu yang dikerjakan oleh Brouwerius (terbit pada 1633); oleh Ruyl (terbit pada 1629); oleh Lucam (terbit pada 1651); terjemahan Injil dalam bahasa Melayu Tinggi yang digarap oleh Leijdecker (terbit pada 1733); koreksi atas terjemahan Leijdecker oleh Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munsyi, atas permintaan William Milne (terbit pada 1814); dan oleh Emde (terbit pada 1835) serta Klinkert (terbit pada 1875). Satu contoh dari lingkup pembuktian yang agak sempit ini kiranya bisa dijadikan bukti, tanpa bermaksud memukulrata, untuk memahami bahwa bahasa Melayu digunakan untuk menyebarkan “ilmu pengetahuan serba jenis”. Bukti-bukti lainnya akan Anda temukan dalam pemaparan saya selanjutnya.

Menariknya, sebelum PEMUDA “memilih” bahasa Melayu sebagai akar bahasa Indonesia, orang Belanda sudah sangat tertarik dengan kecomelan bahasa negeri Malaka ini. Sweeney melanjutkan dalam tulisan pengantarnya dengan mengutip pernyataan van der Putten tentang pentingnya Riau bagi pihak Belanda pada abad 19: “Riau memiliki satu ‘komoditas langka’ yang diperlukan Belanda: bahasa. Mereka percaya bahwa Riaulah tempat untuk memperoleh informasi tentang bahasa Melayu dalam bentuknya yang paling asli dan murni.” Apa pula peri pentingnya bahasa Melayu bagi Belanda? Ternyata, Belanda menggunakan bahasa Melayu untuk mengelola kerja administrasi pemerintahan Hindia-Belanda dan untuk memasyarakatkan harta-karun pemikiran barat untuk, kurang ajarnya, menaikkan tingkat keberadaban manusia yang tinggal di wilayah jajahannya (van der Putten, 2001: x; seperti dikutip Sweeney: xiv).

Perlu saya perjelas di sini tentang “bahasa Melayu yang mana yang dipilih Belanda?” dan “bahasa Melayu yang mana yang dipilih PEMUDA?” Pihak Belanda, dengan segala kepentingan yang diusungnya dalam penggunaan bahasa Melayu, lebih tertarik untuk menjagokan bahasa Melayu yang disebutnya Melayu Tinggi. Bahasa Melayu Tinggi ini berarti bahasa Melayu tulis yang dipakai di Riau. Belanda, melalui Klinkert, merasa “kecewa” dengan bahasa Melayu Rendah, yang dikata-katainya sebagai patois (sebuah istilah sosiolinguistik untuk menyebut sebuah ragam-bahasa dengan tradisi sastra-tulis yang lemah). Bahasa Melayu Tinggi ini pun tidak luput dari apa yang disebut Sweeney sebagai “penjinakan” karena Belanda merasa bahasa yang akan diandalkannya sebagai bahasa administrasi penjajahan dan alat propaganda pemikiran barat ini harus disesuaikan dengan logika Belanda (baca: barat). Perlu diingat bahwa tidak ada bahasa yang hampa, murni, kosong, tanpa pengaruh dari nalar budaya lokal tempat bahasa itu dipakai. Inilah yang diperkosa oleh Belanda: mereka memaksakan segala macam kaidah bahasa yang belum tentu berlaku pada bahasa Melayu; mereka menggunduli warisan budaya Melayu yang terbonceng dalam bahasanya. Maka, jadilah bahasa Melayu Tinggi versi gubahan Belanda, yang, setelah diawetkan oleh orang-orang seperti Mees, STA, dan Slametmuljana, menjelma menjadi sesuatu yang kini kita kenal dengan nama “bahasa baku”. Dari konsep bahasa baku inilah dirumuskan suatu pemeo tentang tata-cara penggunaan bahasa dalam karya tulis ilmiah: kekerapan dalam penggunaan kalimat pasif, penghindaran dwi-makna, pembunuhan ironi, pemangkasan selera humor, dan pemberhalaan “objektivitas” dengan orang-orang yang acap kali menjauhi kata ganti orang pertama tunggal semacam “saya”. (Sweeney: xv - xviii).
***

Kini saya sampai pada titik puncak pembahasan utama pada sub-judul ini: Mengapa PEMUDA memilih bahasa Melayu? Bahasa Melayu mana yang PEMUDA pilih? Anda tidak harus mati-matian mempelajari paham pascakolonialisme untuk mengerti kenapa Belanda memilih bahasa Melayu Tinggi, meskipun kemudian diobok-obok sedemikian rupa, dan untuk memahami mengapa bahasa yang satunya, Melayu Rendah (sering disebut Melayu Pasar), dikucilkan habis-habisan; bahkan karya sastra yang menggunakan bahasa tersebut dijuluki “sastra liar”.

Perlu diingat bahwa kaum bumiputera terdidik, pada dasawarsa terakhir abad ke-19 dan awal abad ke-20, menimba ilmu pengetahuan dengan gaya barat lewat pembentukan sekolah dasar semacam Eerste Klass Inlandsche Scholen (Sekolah Rakyat Angka Satu) dan Tweede Klass Inlandsche Scholen (Sekolah Rakyat Angka Dua) pada 1893. Sekolah Rakyat Angka Satu adalah sekolah yang muridnya berasal dari anak-anak kaum priyayi dan kaum “berada” bumiputera, sementara Sekolah Rakyat Angka Dua murid-muridnya berasal dari anak-anak rakyat “kebanyakan”. Menariknya, kedua sekolah dasar ini menggunakan bahasa Melayu sebagai bahasa pengantarnya.

Lalu, tragedi itu terjadi. Pada 1914, Belanda mendirikan Hollandsche Inlandsche School (HIS) sebagai pengganti Sekolah Rakyat Angka Satu, yang konsep pendidikannya dihubungkan dengan sistem sekolah lanjutan Belanda. Mereka yang bersekolah di sini, nantinya dapat melanjutkan pendidikan ke sekolah lanjutan semacam ELS (Sekolah Lanjutan Eropa), STOVIA (Sekolah Pendidikan bagi Dokter Bumiputera), dan OSVIA (Sekolah Pendidikan bagi Pegawai Bumiputera). Sekolah ini menggunakan bahasa Belanda sebagai bahasa pengantar dalam setiap kelasnya. Kelanjutannya bisa ditebak: kaum intelektual bumiputera ini, yang menyebut diri mereka “kaoem moeda”, menjadi sangat fasih berbahasa Belanda; menerima pendidikan gaya barat dengan lahap; berwawasan modern; meniru kebiasaan-kebiasaan yang dilakukan orang Belanda agar terlihat berbeda dari generasi orang-tua mereka (memilih menonton bioskop daripada wayang dan mendengarkan musik klasik daripada klenengan); dan gemar sekali menyelipkan kosakata Belanda dalam tutur bicaranya. Bahkan, seorang Mas Marco Kartodikromo, seperti yang tersua dalam novel karangannya Student Hidjo, menyebut “kaoem moeda” sebagai “mereka yang mengerti bahasa Belanda.” (Dua paragraf terakhir ini, acuannya dapat disua ada buku Zaman Bergerak karya Takashi Shiraishi, 1997: 37 – 40.)

Pada masa pergerakan revolusi kemerdekaan, kaum intelektual bumiputera dari berbagai daerah sering berkumpul untuk berbagi pengalaman dan pengetahuan cendikia mereka – persinggungan inilah yang menjadi cikal-bakal terbentuknya sebuah konsep, meminjam istilah Ben Anderson, komunitas terbayang yang bernama bangsa Indonesia. Kesadaran nasionalisme mendorong kaum intelektual bumiputera untuk menemukan semacam alat-ucap dan cara-ucap mereka sendiri untuk mengumandangkan pergerakan revolusi kemerdekaan dan menyebarkan ilmu pengetahuan. Dan mereka menemukannya: alat-ucap itu adalah bahasa Melayu, dan cara-ucap itu adalah mediamassa cetak bernama suratkabar!

Tak dapat kita pungkiri bahwa peran suratkabar tidak bisa dilepaskan dari pergerakan pemuda Indonesia dalam memerangi penjajahan dan pembodohan. Shiraishi mencatat bahwa pada masa dasawarsa akhir abad ke-19 dan dasawarsa awal abad ke-20, khususnya setelah undang-undang pers yang baru mengganti sensor preventif menjadi sensor represif, “jumlah dan peredaran terbitan berkala berbahasa Melayu dan daerah meningkat dari 8 judul pada 1890 menjadi 18 judul pada 1905, dan 36 judul pada 1910,” (1997:42). Kalau kita cermati cara Shiraishi memilih kosakata pembangun kalimatnya, ada sesuatu yang menggelitik. Perhatikan frasa “terbitan berkala berbahasa Melayu dan daerah”. Bukan tanpa alasan kata “Melayu” dan “daerah” muncul. Ini dengan jelas bernalar bahwa suratkabar berbahasa Melayu sangat dominan, mungkin masih sebatas dalam hal jumlah, dibanding dengan bahasa “daerah” lainnya. Agak lucu juga ketika Shiraishi membedakan bahasa Melayu dengan bahasa Jawa, Batak, Minahasa, Dayak, dll, yang dianggapnya “bahasa daerah”.

Bayangkan! Istimewa sekali kiranya bahasa Melayu ini sampai-sampai ia dijadikan satu unit khusus yang berlingkup lebih luas, dan yang tidak perlu diberi embel-embel yang bersifat “menyempitkan” semacam “bahasa daerah”.

Setelah masa suratkabar-suratkabar yang diterbitkan oleh jurnalis indo dan orang-orang Tionghoa; dan setelah masa “magang” jurnalis bumiputera, muncullah pada 1903 seorang pewarta muda bernama R.M. Tirtoadhisoerjo yang mendirikan suratkabarnya sendiri, Soenda Berita. Inilah suratkabar pertama yang “dibiayai, dikelola, disunting, dan diterbitkan oleh orang bumiputera,” (1997:44). Tak lama berselang, pada 1907, Tirtoadhisoerjo mendirikan Medan Prijaji, yang begitu bena (signifikan) pengaruh bahasa yang digunakannya sebagai pengantar sampai-sampai Shiraishi harus menyebut Tirtoadhisoerjo sebagai “…bumiputera pertama yang menggerakkan ‘bangsa’ melalui bahasanya, yaitu bahasa yang ditulisnya dalam Medan Prijaji,” (1997:45-46 dan 81). Bahasa apa yang ditulisnya dalam Medan Prijaji? Dalam buku Sang Pemula, Pramoedya Ananta Toer memaparkan bahwa Tirtoadhisoerjo menyebut bahasa itu sebagai “bahasa bangsa-bangsa yang terperintah di Hindia” alias Melayu basantara (lingua franca). Muhidin M. Dahlan, dalam kata-pengantar-dari-penerbit-nya untuk buku Pram, bahkan merasa perlu untuk mengorek kembali paparan sejarah tentang Sarikat Priyayi (1904), yang dibentuk oleh Tirtoadhisoerjo, dan menghubungkannya dengan bahasa Melayu sebagai alat komunikasi nasional. Berikut kutipannya, “[d]ibandingkan dengan BU (Budi Utomo), semangat wawasan SP (Sarikat Priyayi) jauh lebih luas… Kalau BU menggunakan bahasa Jawa dan Belanda sebagai bahasa pengantar organisasi, maka SP, karena berwawasan seluruh Hindia tanpa memperhitungkan bangsa-bangsa (suku-suku) di dalamnya, menggunakan lingua-franca ¬ sebagai ‘bahasa bangsa-bangsa yang terperintah’. Dengan demikian, secara sadar, SP menjadi peletak dasar bahasa Melayu sebagai alat komunikasi nasional,” (2003:7-8).

Berulang kali kita bertemu denga frasa “bahasa Melayu sebagai lingua franca” dan “Melayu lingua franca”. Untuk lebih jelasnya, agar bisa menalar masalah ini dengan tidak terpenggal-penggal, ada baiknya kita jernihkan dulu nalar-makna lingua franca. Wardhaugh, dalam An Introduction to Socioliguistics, menjelentrehkan bahwa lingua franca adalah sebuah sistem sambung-wicara yang muncul karena “orang-orang yang berbicara dengan bahasa berbeda harus menemukan satu sistem komunikasi yang umum.” Ia kemudian mengutip makna istilah tersebut, dari sebuah definisi yang dirumuskan oleh UNESCO: “sebuah bahasa yang digunakan secara terbiasa oleh orang-orang yang bahasa-ibunya berbeda…” (1992:56). Sementara itu, Kamus Bahasa Inggris Internasional Grolier Webster memberi fitur-makna yang menarik tentang istilah ini: “any language, often hybrid, serving as a means of communication, esp. in commerce and trade, between peoples of different tongues,” (1973:556). Perhatikan fitur-makna ‘hybrid’! Sebuah bahasa, apa pun itu, ketika telah menjadi lingua franca memang seringkali tidak lagi “murni”, artinya bahasa tersebut mendapat asupan lema dari bahasa-bahasa lain – ia menjadi bahasa hibrida (baur). Yang dimaksud dengan bahasa-bahasa lain di sini adalah bahasa-bahasa yang digunakan oleh orang-orang yang bukan penutur asli bahasa yang disepakati menjadi lingua franca tersebut. Contohnya, katakanlah di satu daerah bertemu manusia-manusia berbahasa masing-masing: Swahili, Sanskerta, Latin, Mandarin, dan Arab. Ketika bahasa Sanskerta, misalnya, disepakati sebagai lingua franca komunitas tersebut, maka bahasa Sanskerta mendapat banyak sumbangan kosakata dari bahasa Swahili, Latin, Mandarin, dan Arab pula. Seperti ini jugalah bahasa Melayu berubah-rupa menjadi lingua franca (baca: bahasa pemersatu) Nusantara.

Sebelum saya melanjutkan lebih jauh lagi, saya akan membuat pernyataan yang berbunyi demikian: bahasa Melayu yang dipakai sebagai bahasa pemersatu Nusantara adalah (mungkin) gabungan antara bahasa Melayu Tinggi dan bahasa Melayu Rendah.

Pernyataan ini saya ajukan dengan memakai acuan yang saya temukan dalam buku, yang sekarang tidak lagi menjadi favorit orang, karangan Marwati Djoened Poesponegoro dan Nugroho Notosusato yang berjudul Sejarah Nasional Indonesia V. Tersua dalam buku itu catatan tentang gambaran bahasa yang dipakai oleh salah satu suratkabar, bertajuk Soerat Chabar Betawie (1858): “…bahasa yang dipakai sebagai ‘bahasa yang tiada terlalu tinggi, tetapi tiada lagi terlalu rendah, supaya segala orang boleh mengerti, siapa juga yang mengerti bahasa Melaijoe, adanya.’” Lanjut lagi, “[b]ila ada satu karangan mengenai pengajaran, diharapkan memakai ‘bahasa Melaijoe tinggi’, tetapi dengan memberi daftar kata-kata dalam ‘bahasa Melaijoe rendah’, sebagai penjelasan kepada pembaca, “ (1984: 295).

Lagi-lagi, perhatikan klausa “tetapi… daftar kata-kata dalam ‘bahasa Melaijoe rendah’, sebagai penjelasan kepada pembaca,”! Nah, timbul satu pertanyaan: siapa pembaca yang dimaksud? Poesponegoro dan Notosusanto mencatat, saat memaparkan ciri-ciri pers Melayu, bahwa “…lingkungan pembacanya terutama ialah penduduk bumiputra,” (1984:291). Meskipun agak cemas, namun saya beranikan diri menyimpulkan bahwa yang dimaksud dengan “penduduk bumiputera” adalah mereka yang tidak menguasai bahasa Belanda, artinya, mereka yang bukan dari golongan cerdikpikirnya Nusantara. Logika kalimat yang terjabar dalam kutipan Poesponegoro dan Notosusanto ini memberi kecenderungan suasana makna bahwa, pada akhirnya, demi setia terhadap pembaca utamanya, yaitu penduduk bumiputera, suratkabar tetap menomorsatukan bahasa Melayu Rendah. Maka itu, berangkat dari cara nalar ini, saya ralat pernyataan saya di atas: bahasa Melayu yang dipakai sebagai bahasa pemersatu Nusantara adalah bahasa Melayu Rendah.

Pun begitu, saya masih ragu dengan dikotomi biner tinggi-rendah ini. Saya teringat pada sebuah tulisan Ajip Rosidi, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Kita, yang dimuat KOMPAS edisi Sabtu, 1 Januari 2000. Ajip dengan lantang mengatakan bahwa pembelahduaan nama Melayu Tinggi dan Melayu Rendah adalah sebuah tindakan angkuh yang melecehkan. Melayu Tinggi adalah sebutan untuk bahasa Melayu hasil rekayasa ahli bahasa Belanda. Sementara itu, Melayu Rendah adalah nama untuk menyebut bahasa Melayu yang “hidup dengan sehatnya” di masyarakat. Sebuah nama lain untuk Melayu Rendah, yaitu Melayu Cina, juga tidak sahih. Meskipun banyak karya tulis yang dihasilkan oleh etnis Tionghoa dengan menggunakan bahasa Melayu, baik sastra maupun tulisan di koran, tetap harus diingat bahwa penutur bahasa tersebut bukan hanya orang-orang Tionghoa. Akhirnya, tersisalah sebuah istilah yang lebih tepat: bahasa Melayu Pasar. Istilah ini tepat karena selama berabad-abad bahasa Melayu digunakan sebagai alat sambung-wicara di Kepulauan Nusantara yang memang “hidupnya di lingkungan pasar antar bangsa.” Maka itu, saya sependapat dengan Ajip Rosidi, dan memilih untuk menggunakan istilah bahasa Melayu Pasar.

Rupa-rupanya, para cendikiawan bumiputera pada masa itu melihat peluang untuk menjagokan bahasa Melayu sebagai alat komunikasi politik, atau, katakanlah, sebagai bahasa pergerakan. Belanda sendiri gentar juga menyadari penyebaran informasi lewat suratkabar berbahasa Melayu, yang tidak lagi sekedar sebagai alat pewartaan bagi dunia niaga semata. Mereka resah karena “kekhawatiran penggunaan bahasa Melayu yang dipahami oleh penduduk bumiputera,” (1984:281). Pihak penjajah pun gemar sekali mengenakan pers-delict, yang memberangus penerbitan brosur dan pers. Teringatlah kita pada satu contoh pematilemasan ini: risalah yang ditulis oleh Soewardi Soerjoningrat bertajuk Als Ik eens Nederlander was (Seandainya Saya seorang Belanda) yang ditulis dalam bahasa Belanda, namun diterjemahkan ke dalam bahasa Melayu. Mengingat keradikalan isi tulisan ini, dan fakta bahwa ia kemudian diterjemahkan ke dalam bahasa Melayu, Belanda kalang-kabut dan langsung membredel penerbitan serta penyebarannya, bahkan membuang penulisnya dari Hindia Belanda, karena akan banyak bumiputera yang dapat dengan fasih mengerti isi pemikiran subversif yang maktub dalam risalah protes tersebut.

Semangat cerdik-pikir bumiputera untuk menggunakan bahasa Melayu sebagai alat komunikasi politik juga dapat kita lihat dari pidato tentang gagasan Sarikat Islam yang dibawakan oleh Tjokroaminoto dalam sebuah vergadering di Semarang, yang juga dimuat oleh Sinar Djawa. Shiraishi menekankan bahwa “Tjokroaminoto berbicara dalam bahasa Melayu bukan hanya kepada hadirin vergadering, tetapi juga kepada pembaca Sinar Djawa yang bumiputra serta kepada pemerintah Hindia,” (1997: 81-83). Dua contoh barusan adalah sedikit dari bejibun contoh lain: orasi-orasi yang dilakukan partai-partai politik pada masa pergerakan awal, misalnya.

Kemudian, bagaimana bisa bahasa Melayu menjadi Bahasa Indonesia? Tentunya, perubahan istilah ini tak lari dari sebuah konsep komunitas terbayang bernama “bangsa Indonesia”. Dari mana pula muncul istilah “Indonesia”? Pertanyaan ini penting dijawab agar dapat mempertegas benang merah yang menghubungkan diangkatnya bahasa Melayu menjadi bahasa yang diamini secara luas sebagai bahasa nasional: bahasa Indonesia.
Dari sebuah majalah bertajuk Indonesia Merdeka, tersua sebuah artikel tanpa-nama-pengarang yang merunut kisah ditemukannya pertama sekali istilah “Indonesia”. J.R. Logan, seorang redaktur Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, pada tulisannya yang diterbitkan majalah itu (1850) telah mengajukan nama “Indonesia” dalam konteks geografis, yang mengacu pada “pulau-pulau atau kepulauan Hindia”. Tiga puluh empat tahun sesudah itu (1884), seorang etnolog bernama A. Bastian menggunakan istilah Indonesien dalam bukunya Indonesien oder die Inseln des malayischen Archipels. Arti kata Indonesien, seperti yang dimaksud oleh A. Bastian, adalah “kepulauan Melayu (Hindia),” (1984:285-287).

Para pemuda senasib-sepenanggungan Nusantara jelas-jelas memerlukan sebuah nama yang menjadi identitas mereka. Dipakailah istilah “Indonesia”, yang lantas berimbas pada pemberian nama baru bagi bahasa yang digunakan sebagai lingua franca (Melayu), yakni Bahasa Indonesia: satu bahasa yang digunakan sebagai bahasa pemersatu berbagai suku bangsa yang lebur menjadi bangsa Indonesia.

Kelanjutannya sudah jelas. Pada Kongres Pemuda Kedua (1928), pemuda-pemuda Indonesia berkumpul dan mengikrarkan sumpah mereka. Tiga butir sumpah dirumuskan: salah satunya adalah “Menjunjung bahasa persatuan, bahasa Indonesia”. Para pemuda yang berasal dari beragam golongan suku, yang mereka sebut Jong, seperti Jong Java, Jong Sumatera, Jong Celebes (Sulawesi), dan Jong Ambon, telah melengkapkan status bahasa Melayu sebagai lingua franca sejati – dari asupan lema yang disumbangkan bahasa-bhinneka Nusantara itulah bahasa Melayu menjadi bahasa yang hibrida, yang digunakan sebagai alat sambung-wicara insan-insan dengan identitas bangsa Indonesia tidak hanya dalam lingkup niaga-komersil saja, tapi juga sebagai bahasa ilmu dan pergerakan kemerdekaan (sepertinya Kamus Bahasa Inggris Internasional Grolier Webster perlu memperbaharui fitur makna untuk entri lingua franca).
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Bahasa Indonesia: Riwayatmu Kini

Apa yang ada di benak Anda ketika menemukan kata semacam improvitatif dalam sebuah liputan suratkabar? Atau ketika membaca istilah serupa dinusakambangkan dalam sebuah judul berita koran? Tidak hanya, meminjam istilah Remy Sylado, kenes dan (terlalu) kreatif dalam menggunakan dan mengutak-atik kata serapan asing (utamanya dari bahasa Inggris), penutur bahasa Indonesia sekarangpun banyak yang salah kaprah dalam menggunakan bahasa Indonesia sendiri.

Kegemaran menyelipkan kosakata bahasa Inggris (lengkap dengan lafal Inggris pula) dalam tutur bahasa Indonesia ini memang sudah lagu lama. Gejala ini mirip kelakuan “kaoem moeda” bumiputera yang fasih bahasa Belanda itu. Tidak hanya untuk bahasa Inggris, penutur bahasa Indonesia yang mahir berbahasa asing lainnyapun gatal jika tidak memasukkan satu, minimal, kosakata dari bahasa yang diketahuinya. Silahkan bertungkus-lumus dengan tulisan Robert Bala, Narasi dan “Dogmatisasi” (KOMPAS, Sabtu 25 Oktober 2008). Saya tak tahu pasti, mungkin si Bala ini bukan orang Indonesia. Namun, karena ia menulis dengan bahasa Indonesia, tetap saja tulisannya tak luput dari kegatalan menyelipkan bahasa asing. Contohnya, “[b]aginya, sebuah bangsa yang besar ditandai keberanian untuk bertanggung jawab (coraje de responsabilidad).” Saya bisa paham kalau Bala sedang mengutip dari sumber bacaan yang berbahasa Spanyol. Namun, untuk frasa sesederhana “keberanian untuk bertanggung jawab”, mengapa pula harus diselipkan istilah Spanyolnya? Kalau dilihat dari cara penyampaiannya pun, meletakkan istilah asing itu dalam tanda kurung, seakan-akan pembaca tidak akan mengerti arti “keberanian untuk bertanggung jawab” kalau tidak dilengkapi dengan coraje de responsabilidad.

Akh! Terlalu banyak contoh kegenitan yang lain.

Saya tidak sedang memberontak untuk dengan mutlak menolak asupan kosakata bahasa asing ke dalam perbendaharaan bahasa Indonesia. Tidak! Saya setuju dengan pernyataan bahwa pekembangan bahasa dalam sebuah kontinum dialek tidak dapat menyangkal pengaruh bahasa asing. Bukankah sejak lama bahasa Indonesia itu sendiri memang hibrida (terbuka terhadap sumbangsih bahasa lain)? Bahasa Inggris yang, konon, sangat mapan sekalipun sangat diperkaya oleh bahasa lain. Bahkan, dengan tidak bermaksud menafikkan kemungkinan lain, hanya kosakata bahasa Inggris yang bersuku-kata satu dan dua saja yang masih masuk dalam rumpun Jermanik. Kata dengan suku-kata banyak adalah sumbangan dari bahasa Latin (lihat Verdonk, Stylistics, 2002).

Akan tetapi, dalam menyerap istilah asing, penutur bahasa Indonesia seharusnya, dengan penuh kesadaran, tetap berhati-hati dan penuh pertimbangan. Apa perlunya menggunakan istilah asing kalau padanannya sudah terang-terangan dimiliki oleh bahasa kita?

Berhubungan dengan kemampuan bahasa Indonesia sebagai bahasa ilmu, saya kadang-kadang sering kasihan mendengar pengakuan seorang mahasiswa teknik elektronika yang merasa resah gelisah ketika diberi bahan bacaan yang ditulis dengan sebuah kesetiaan sungguh-sungguh pada bahasa Indonesia. Mahasiswa tadi merasa lebih “nyaman” dengan buku yang menggunakan istilah serapan asing untuk menyebut kosakata-kosakata teknis. Belum lagi kalau saya sedang terlibat percakapan dengan mahasiswa ilmu komputer. Wah, meskipun mengerti, tapi ngenes juga karena hampir tak ada istilah teknis dalam ranah komputer yang ada terjemahannya.

Sangat menarik untuk dinalar: rasa “nyaman” atau “nyambung” yang dirasakan kebanyakan penutur bahasa Indonesia sekarang ketika menyelip-nyelipkan bahasa asing dalam tatatuturnya. Parahnya, kalau kita perhatikan dari gejala berbahasa-campur ini, saya khawatir, dan mungkin memang terjadi, bahwa ketika berbicara (mencoba mencari kosakata untuk menyampaikan nalar, atau pesan) orang Indonesia saat ini, untuk banyak konteks, cenderung terlebih dahulu menemukan kosakata bahasa Inggris dalam pikirannya daripada bahasa Indonesia. Ini gawat! Ini sudah gejala berbahasa dalam alam bawah sadar. Bahasa Indonesia benar-benar terancam posisinya, sama seperti ia yang mengancam posisi bahasa daerah.

Mengapa ini dapat terjadi? Jawabannya adalah karena banyak sekali penutur bahasa Indonesia yang kehilangan keakrabannya dengan perbendaharaan kosakata bahasa Indonesia. Para penutur inipun tak bisa disalahkan sepenuhnya. Ada sebuah sistem yang menjebak mereka sehingga berada dalam pusaran gejala bahasa seperti sekarang. Sistem tersebut bisa jadi sistem pendidikan dan sistem pemasyarakatan istilah asing yang sudah diindonesiakan. Komisi Istilah seharusnya sudah sejak lama menyaring istilah-istilah khusus keilmuan lalu memasyarakatkannya, terutama yang berkaitan dengan dunia teknologi, karena teknologilah yang perkembangannya paling pesat, dan tentu naga-naganya berujung pada penambahan kosakata baru. Namun, paling baru setahun belakangan ini kita memiliki terjemahan untuk istilah download.

Mungkin akan muncul seorang pengkritik, yang juga termasuk dalam kelompok orang yang gemar menyelipkan bahasa Inggris (asing) ketika berbicara dalam bahasa Indonesia, yang akan menyangkal dengan mengatakan bahwa, “Selama pesan tersampaikan, saya kira tidak ada masalah. Bukankah nalar-makna-inti dari bahasa adalah alat komunikasi?” Ya, memang benar. Manusia, siapapun itu, pasti mengalami perjalanan-dialek. Dia yang berumur 50 tahun akan berbeda dialek-bicaranya dengan dia yang dulu masih 17 tahun. Perubahan dialek ini pulalah yang kiranya terjadi pada penutur bahasa Indonesia yang (maaf) kenes tadi. Maka, kita tidak usah lagi heran ketika dalam sebuah acara obrolan di teve, yang isi obrolannya adalah wacana berbahasa Indonesia, sang pembawa acara bertanya dengan kalimat demikian: “Kenapa kita meninggalkan kebiasaan berbahasa Indonesia yang baik, padahal orang asing saja sangat interest dengan bahasa kita?” (lihat wawancara PARIWARA di TV ONE, tgl 26 Okt 2008). Inilah gejala psikolinguistik yang saya maksud (gejala bahasa alam bawah sadar) – ala “kacau” karna biasa. Gejala ketidaksadaran ini acap kali muncul dalam tabiat berbahasa kita yang cenderung latah dan ikut-ikutan, sebelum dengan cermat memperhitungkan makna kosakata “baru” yang kita temui. Saya tanya: siapa yang tahu arti kata “secara” dalam kalimat “[s]ecara, gitu, loh. Gua kan udah lama tinggal di Jakarta. Wajar, dong, bahasa gua berubah,”?

Saya tekankan, untuk kasus ini, kita tidak bisa hanya bergantung pada esensi bahasa yang paling hakiki. Tentunya ada kerumitan lain yang harus dipertimbangkan. Apalagi kalau kita berniat mengkaitkannya dengan semangat memperpanjang umur dan martabat budaya bangsa, dll. dsb. Saya akan kembali menyanyikan lagu lama tentang tanggung jawab mediamassa (cetak dan elektronik) sebagai “monumen” bahasa kita. Ini mengingat, secara umum, tradisi belajar bahasa lewat sastra di Indonesia sangat minim. Padahal, sesungguhnyalah sastra dapat dijadikan taman belajar bahasa yang asyik. Di situ banyak sekali terdapat dwi-makna, ironi, lawakan, makna-makna pragmatik, kiasan, metafora, dsb., yang kesemuanya kita temui dari kebiasaan bertutur kita sehari-hari – sangat jarang orang berbicara dengan bahasa laporan ilmiah!

Perhatian pemerhati bahasa Indonesia sekarang memang banyak terkonsentrasi pada kekerapan penggunaan bahasa Inggris, beserta versi pematian-lafal-dan-ejaannya, yang sering kali serampangan itu, dalam tabiat berbahasa penutur bahasa Indonesia. Sudah tidak aneh lagi ketika kita bersilat-lidah tentang anggapan tak masuk akal bahwa bahasa Inggris “lebih” dalam banyak hal dibanding bahasa Indonesia. Suasana seperti ini perlu dihentikan. Mengapa? Karena jika dibiarkan berlarut-larut, mental manusia Indonesia akan terbentuk dari cetakan ini: bahkan sampai mental politiknya sekali pun.

Saya ambil satu contoh mengerikan, yang terjadi di India. Di akhir tahun 1999, 3000 warga desa mendatangi ibukota India untuk memprotes rencana pembangunan proyek waduk raksasa di tanah tinggal mereka. Mereka berangkat ke Delhi dengan kereta malam, dan, karena tak punya tempat penampungan di Delhi, mereka terpaksa tinggal di jalanan. Saat ingin menemui Presiden pada saat itu, mereka terpaksa kecewa karena sikap sang pemimpin yang tak mau menemui mereka sebab banyak dari rombongan itu terserang infeksi mata. Mereka tidak putus akal. Sang Menteri Keadilan Sosial dan Pemberdayaan, Maneka Gandhi, diajak bertemu. Menteri inipun tak kalah pelit, ia menolak bertemu, namun sedikit berbaik hati dengan mengizinkan rombongan membuat pernyataan tertulis, bunyinya kira-kira demikian: “Maneka yang baik, tolong jangan bangun waduk. Tertanda: Rakyat.” Anda tahu apa yang terjadi? Menteri Keadilan Sosial yang tak adil itu mencela mereka. Tahu kenapa? Karena mereka tidak menulis dalam bahasa Inggris! (baca esei “Kepentingan Umum yang Lebih Besar”, Arundathi Roy, “The Cost Of Living”, 2004: 65). Mengerikan kalau sampai ada yang bermental seperti ini.
***

Saya mengutip pernyataan Remy Sylado sebagai pembuka tulisan ini bukan hanya sekedar numpang keren. Tapi, saya mempunyai sebuah “jangan-jangan” yang sama seperti Remy. Semoga saja penutur bahasa Indonesia selalu sadar dan paham dengan kata-kata yang meluncur dari alat lafal (mulut) mereka. “Sadar dan paham” berarti tahu dengan jelas tentang makna dan tujuan pemilihan kosakata dalam berbicara. Akh! Sudah terlalu sering kita tidak sadar-sadar juga; sudah terlalu sering kita bersembunyi di balik ketidaksadaran.

Yogyakarta, 27 Oktober 2008

Men’dunia’kan Diri

Men’dunia’kan diri adalah ciri-khas AS yang paling menonjol. Gejala ini terlihat dari pencitraan lewat frasa-frasa berbau superlatif, yang menjadi mantera-aji bagi AS agar dapat menciutkan dunia dan menyeragamkan pemaknaan atas pencitraan dirinya. AS sering ditokohkan sebagai the world’s most powerful country dan menyebut musuhnya the world’s most dangerous regime. Tidak asing lagi di telinga ketika mendengar ambisi AS menjadi ‘polisi dunia’. AS punya hak veto di PBB, yang membuat ‘dunia’ tak berkutik menghentikan serangkaian agresi yang dilakukan negara yang didukungnya.

Ideologi usungannya pun turut di’dunia’kan, meskipun harus lewat gempuran dan tumbal nyawa manusia. AS menjadi guru demokrasi ‘dunia’. AS adalah patokan. Banyak negara harus belajar pada tegaknya demokrasi di tanah impian itu. Untuk itu, tak usah kita takjub: betapa terpilih dan dilantiknya Barack Hussein Obama sebagai Presiden AS dihikayatkan sebagai sebuah kisah kanonikal yang universal, tak-peka-waktu, dan ‘untuk kesejahteraan seluruh umat manusia’.

Sihir Mediamassa
Kuatnya pencitraan AS bukan sebuah pencapaian tanpa olahnalar yang terperinci dan terencana. Sejak era PD I, kaum intelektual tangan kanan penguasa AS sudah menemukan ramuan yang mampu meraup dukungan kolosal: mediamassa! Noam Chomsky, dalam Media Control: The Spectacular Achievement of Propaganda (1997), memaparkan bagaimana pemerintah AS, dalam usahanya ikut-serta di PD I, lewat propaganda di mediamassa, berjaya membelokkan warga AS, yang anti-perang, menjadi segerombolan massa haus-perang. Proses ini menjadi kisah sukses yang terus diterapkan sebagai tata-cara politik pencitraan sampai sekarang.
Di Indonesia, sihir mediamassa ini terendus kental baunya saat Pilpres AS lalu. Berita tentang AS memang hampir tak pernah absen di ruang berita mancanegara. AS ibarat garam yang, kalau tak ada, membuat kabar dari mancanegara terasa hambar. Narasi pemberitaan Pilpres AS yang dibuat oleh para pewarta mediamassa cetak maupun elektronik secara gamblang membentuk dan menguatkan politik pencitraan AS, paling tidak dalam konteks kehidupan demokrasinya. Ini juga berujung pada karakterisasi Obama sebagai tugu perwujudan demokrasi AS dan harapan bagi, lagi-lagi, ‘dunia’.

Sihir Obama
Menurut P. Ari Subagyo, ‘obamalek’ dan ‘obamateks’ adalah dua unsur penting yang “menyumbang bagi kemenangan Obama”. Obama adalah seorang pewicara handal: ada orang yang terpesona oleh caranya berbicara meski tak suka pandangan politiknya. Obama, dengan dialek, idiolek, dan idiosinkrasi yang dimilikinya, tampil dengan penguasaan emosi-diri penuh, sehingga tampak tenang bersahaja. Sebagai sebuah teks, ia adalah simbol kesetaraan yang sudah lama disepakati namun sering terbentur ‘langit-langit kaca’ yang menyekat ruang hidup masyarakat kulit-putih dan kulit-berwarna (Kompas, 24/01/09). Obama mendayagunakan bahasa sebagai alat pengukuh eksistensi dan alat mempengaruhi nalar orang lain secara rinci.
Namun, karakterisasi Obama tak hanya terletak pada kualitas moral, mental, dan kecendikiaan saja. Mediamassa ikut memompa kesohorannya. Tak sulit menemukan kisah unik (aneh?) tentang penduduk daerah bernama Obama (Jepang) yang merayakan terpilihnya Obama sebagai presiden AS; atau penduduk Kenya yang berpawai-pesta, mengingat ayahnya seorang pria Kenya; atau berita dikumandangkannya Indonesia Raya di Hotel The Ritz Carlton, Jakarta, oleh para tamu saat merayakan pesta pelantikan Obama, mengingat ia pernah tinggal di Menteng dan dengan bahasa Indonesia yang fasih pernah bilang ke SBY, “Saya kangen nasi goreng, bakso dan rambutan.” Semua cerita ini tak akan ada tanpa sihir mediamassa. Dan Mang Usil (Kompas, 22/01/09) sudah mengomentarinya dengan cerdas: “Politik itu panggung, panggung itu bisnis!”

Fakta hidup Obama bahkan dijadikan lambang kekayaan perspektif dan penerimaan ‘dunia’ atas dirinya: berkulit-hitam (diterima di Afrika), pernah tinggal di Indonesia (diterima di Asia), bernama tengah ‘Hussein’ (diterima di Timur Tengah). Padahal, kalau mau berpikir sedikit cerdas dan masuk akal, ketiga fakta itu sama sekali tak ada hubungannya dengan ‘kekayaan perspektif’ atau ‘penerimaan dunia’. Kembali terlihat ciri khas politik pencitraan (pembodohan?) yang biasa diterapkan: narasi yang cenderung memetonimikan unit-makna kecil ke unit-makna besar (contohnya: narasi semakin banyaknya mobil mewah di Jakarta bermakna tingkat kemiskinan menurun; narasi bahwa tempat liburan di Jakarta tetap penuh pada hari libur bermakna daya beli masyarakat Indonesia stabil).
***

Narasi, lewat pemberitaan berulang, dapat menjadi ‘fakta’. Mediamassa adalah sumur informasi yang bukan tanpa ideologi. Teknik narasi penyampaian berita sering sarat pencitraan. Kemampuan kritis membaca gejala narasi metonimis pencitraan AS dan Obama, juga pencitraan para peserta Pemilu dan Pilpres Indonesia, akan membuat kita mampu menyatakan sikap atas gejala. Sekaligus menamengi diri dari sihir a la ‘obamakadabra’! Selamat membaca gejala.

Bunga rampai cerita pendek ini disekat menjadi tiga ruang cerita: (1) Penembak Misterius: Trilogi; (2) Cerita untuk Alina; (3) Bayi Siapa Menangis di Semak-Semak?. Ada lima belas cerita maktub dalamnya. Semuanya adalah karya Seno yang ditulis antara tahun 1985 sampai 1990, dan mulanya diterbitkan lewat ruang-ruang di suratkabar dan majalah. Di bagian akhir buku, terselip sebuah pembacaan kritis atas apa yang disebut sebagai trilogi Seno tentang ‘petrus’: Keroncong Pembunuhan, Bunyi Hujan di atas Genting, dan Grhhh. Tulisan itu karya Budiawan, dosen Kajian Ilmu Religi dan Budaya, Program Pasca Sarjana, Universitas Sanata Dharma.

Ulasan

Seno, Sastra, dan Jurnalisme

Seno pernah membuat pernyataan, yang semoga saja kian hari tidak menjadi sumbang, ‘[k]etika jurnalisme dibungkam, sastra harus bicara.’ Dan Seno memang tidak mengumbar nada sumbang ketika melafalkan pernyataannya itu. Seno, seorang jurnalis, betul-betul memberdayakan sastra untuk membuncahkan sesuatu yang tidak lagi dapat dikoarkan lewat mulut jurnalisme. Budiawan, dalam analisis ringkasnya terhadap trilogi ‘petrus’, mengungkapkan, ‘…ketika dunia-dunia perbincangan lainnya sudah (hampir) sepenuhnya berada dalam kontrol kekuasaan yang dominan, sastra – dalam batas-batas tertentu – mampu keluar dari jangkauan kontrol itu.’ Setidaknya sampai sekarang, dalam batas dan kasus tertentu pula, seperti itulah yang sahih terjadi.

Kekuasaan dominan yang represif kerap melakukan tindakan pengawasan terhadap peredaran informasi. Jurnalisme, yang terejawantahkan lewat mediamassa, adalah wahana peredaran itu. Sudah lazim dan acapkali terjadi penguasa menata sesukanya lalu-lintas, jenis, dan isi informasi yang beredar dalam masyarakat. Penataan itu diwujudkan, kebanyakan, dalam bentuk sensor dan, yang paling puncak, pembredelan.

Pengendalian arah haluan mediamassa berarti, salah satunya (mungkin satu-satunya), pengamanan posisi dan citra penguasa. Ini karena yang paling banyak dikendalikan adalah informasi seputar peristiwa yang dapat memancing terbentuknya, sebutlah, ‘sifat kritis’ memandang kebijakan-kebijakan yang dibuat penguasa, dalam hal ini, pemerintah. Peristiwa-peristiwa yang terjadi di Timor-Timur, NAD, kasus pembantaian Tanjungpriok, dan, seperti yang akan dibahas oleh ulasan ini, penembak-misterius, adalah sedikit contoh peristiwa yang dengan sengaja dihilangkan dari ruang pikir publik. Itu dia kuncinya! Khalayak harus dibuat lupa!

Perjuangan yang dilakukan Seno, yang jurnalis itu, dengan merekam sekaligus membeberkan peristiwa-peristiwa, yang ‘tabu’ diketahui masyarakat, lewat sastra dapat ditemui di kumpulan cerita pendek Saksi Mata dan Penembak Misterius, untuk menyebut dua contoh saja. Dengan tidak mengabaikan gaya khas cerita sastra, bau gaya reportase masih dapat diendus dari cara-ucap yang ditawarkan Seno dalam cerita-ceritanya. Bahasa yang lugas, metafora yang sederhana dan dekat namun mengena, dan struktur kalimat yang tidak bertele-tele, sebenarnya dengan gamblang menelanjangi cadar kiasan yang lumrah ditemukan dalam sastra. Hampir tidak ada susunan kata yang akrobatik. Banyak terjadi pengulangan-pengulangan frasa atau kalimat. Tapi, itu semua terbaca sebagai cara Seno menonjolkan niat utama dari ceritanya.

Dan begitulah jurnalisme, ia dihadirkan dengan gaya ucap yang mudah dimengerti orang (ke)banyak(an). Ini karena tujuan dari jurnalisme adalah ‘memberitahu’, bukan, tidak untuk memukulrata apa yang hadir dalam sastra, menciptakan labirin kata yang ujungnya menghidangkan pesan utama.

Petrus: Antara Lupa dan Trauma

Coba saja cari kisah ‘petrus’ (penembak misterius) dalam buku-buku sejarah yang diedarkan di sekolahan. Sama saja dengan berbagai peristiwa-peristiwa lain, kemisteriusan ‘petrus’ tetap di kawal untuk tidak diketahui oleh manusia-manusia dini dalam sebuah paparan yang adil. Kisah ‘petrus’, yang gegar dari tahun 1983-1985, mungkin rata-rata hanya hadir di benak orang-orang hidup setelah periode itu dalam bentuk dongeng atau ‘cerita-silat’.

Gaya pembasmian kejahatan a la pendekar-penumpas-kejahatan ini pada awalnya memang disambut dengan gegap gempita oleh masyarakat, yang resah dengan naik-drastisnya tingkat kejahatan, khususnya di kota-kota besar, karena merosotnya laju pertumbuhan ekonomi saat itu. Sudah lumrah: laju ekonomi merosot, kejahatan melonjak. Namun, pertanyaan yang sesungguhnya harus dijawab adalah mengapa laju ekonomi merosot dan kejahatan macam apa yang merebak?

Penembakan misterius juga merupakan bukti dari penggunaan kekuatan militer dalam mengatur peri kehidupan masyarakat. Militer, sebagai pemegang kekuatan bersenjata, dengan giat dan ligat menumpas orang-orang (yang dicurigai) pelaku kejahatan. Uniknya, seperti yang tersua dalam cerita Bunyi Hujan di atas Genting dan Grhhh, ciri khusus pelaku kejahatan yang salah satunya dijadikan acuan adalah ciri yang kini bolehlah disebut dangkal: tubuh bertato.

Tapi tetap saja setiap kali hujan reda, di mulut gang itu tergelataklah mayat bertato. (Bunyi Hujan di atas Genting)

Reserse Sarman memperhatikan bahwa di tubuh yang mulai mencair itu masih terlihat sisa-sisa tato. (Grhhh)

Mungkin memang benar bahwa kebanyakan pelaku kejahatan (kecil) adalah orang-orang yang bertato. Tapi apa semua orang bertato adalah penjahat? Sepertinya dari titik peristiwa ini pula semakin kuat citra stereotipikal tentang tato yang beredar di masyarakat luas. Perlu diingat, sampai sekarangpun masih dengan terang tersisa jejak trauma tato itu di mata publik.

Yang menarik dan harus diperhatikan dari penumpasan kejahatan gaya Batman ini adalah bahwa, dari sekitar 10.000 korban yang bergelimpangan akibat timah panas petrus, dapat dikatakan semuanya adalah pelaku kejahatan ‘kecil’. Mereka adalah orang-orang yang dicurigai sebagai perampok, pencuri, preman, bandar judi, dsb, bahkan banyak sekali yang ternyata sudah menyandang gelar ‘mantan penjahat’. Lagipula, belum pernah ada terdengar seorang anggota DPR yang korup menjadi korban petrus.

***

Sebenarnya, karena keresahan yang terjadi, pemerintah sudah melarang pers untuk meliput hal-hal yang bersangkutan dengan petrus pada Agustus 1983. Padahal, sampai 1985 petrus masih merajai jalanan. Inilah usaha pemerintah untuk menghilangkan ingatan masyarakat akan petrus. Mediamassa, sebagai sumur informasi paling populer, adalah target yang jitu untuk dibungkam. Pada titik tertentu, penghilangan sesuatu isu dari mediamassa berbanding lurus dengan hilangnya perhatian khalayak terhadap sesuatu isu tersebut. Dengan cerdik, pemerintah dapat membaca relasi-berbanding-lurus ini. Dan dengan picik dibungkamlah jurnalisme.

Walau bagaimanapun, kecaman bertubi-tubi tetap berdesing datang dari berbagai pihak: kalangan DPR, pembela HAM, orang-orang peduli penegakan hukum, dan masyarakat sendiri, yang ternyata menjadi resah dan ketakutan karena mencekamnya situasi yang diciptakan oleh petrus. Dari segi penegakan hukum, misalnya, ada Adnan Buyung Nasution yang dengan keras menentang pelecehan yang dilakukan pihak militer secara terang-terangan terhadap supremasi hukum. Seno juga tidak lupa menyelipkan hal ini dalam kebimbangan tokohnya di cerita Keroncong Pembunuhan. Si juru-tembak-tepat yang dibayar untuk membunuh seseorang itu bahkan dengan jelas mempertanyakan,

Aku menatap lagi matanya, pengkhianat yang bagaimana?
“Pengkhianat yang bagaimana? Kenapa tidak diadili saja?”

Lebih lagi, tidak dapat dipungkiri, situasi mencekam memang benar-benar meruak dan menghantui kehidupan masyarakat pada saat itu. Masyarakat, yang tadinya mendukung karena tingkat kejahatan menurun drastis, berbalik menghujat petrus karena kengerian yang diakibatkannya dan kealpaannya memberantas kejahatan secara adil dan menyeluruh. Petrus memang berhasil menciptakan trauma di tengah-tengah masyarakat. Mayat yang bergelimpangan menjadi pemandangan yang selalu menemani matahari menyapa bumi. Kondisi apa ini? Seakan-akan tidak ada masalah lain saja. Seakan-akan kejahatan (kecil) yang meningkat pada masa itu datang dengan sendirinya. Petrus adalah sebuah program yang dilaksanakan dengan eka-sudut-pandang. Tidak disadari bahwa kepelikan masalah ini adalah (hanya) sekepul asal akibat dari suatu bara yang menyala dalam sekam. Trauma ini digugat oleh Seno dalam Grhhh:

“Pembantaian itu kesalahan besar, Pak! Generasi kita kena getahnya! Orang-orang itu tidak rela mati, Pak! Mereka membalas dendam!”

Cerita Lainnya dan Sedikit Blurb untuk Seno

Dalam bunga rampai cerita pendek tersebut, maktub pula dua belas cerita lainnya, yang mengambil suasana yang umumnya muradif dengan trilogi petrus: Jakarta, atau kehidupan perkotaan yang sesak. Di bagian Cerita untuk Alina, kejenuhan, kepunahan, kenangan, dan macam-macam tetek-bengek kehidupan perkotaan dinarasikan dengan lugas. Seno cukup cerdik untuk memakai tokoh-tokoh ‘tak penting’, tokoh-tokoh yang tidak ‘elit’, sebagai mata pusaran ceritanya (tukang becak, karyawan biasa, pelacur, penari telanjang, sersan polisi, dll. dsb. adalah sedikit dari banyak contoh). Lagi-lagi, ibarat seekor ayam yang tak bosan mengingatkan manusia untuk bangun di pagi hari, meskipun tidak jelas apakah ayam memang bermaksud membangunkan manusia dengan kokoknya, cerita-cerita Seno selalu memukul gong ingatan pembaca akan hal-hal kecil yang terancam punah karena sudah ‘terlalu biasa’ hadir di seputaran hidup khalayak. Ambillah contoh Becak Terakhir di Dunia (atawa Rambo) yang mengingatkan kita tentang punahnya becak di Jakarta. Atau, Sarman, yang menggaruk-garuk kesadaran orang tentang kehidupan nada-mutlak khas kaum pekerja di kota besar. Dengan kekhasan cara-tutur yang minim akrobat kata, Seno menghadirkan cerita yang sederhana, tapi mengena.

Kutipan Berkesan:
Aku selalu mengatakan pada diriku sendiri bahwa aku tidak menembak orang, aku hanya membidik dan menekan pelatuk.

Yogyakarta, 10 Desember 2008

(dimuat di mediasastra.com)