Language, Society, and Cultural Differences in Representation: The Strange Case of Malangese Boso Walikan

Abstract

This paper offers a critical response to fundamental theories of representation in the introductory section of Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, a book written by Hall, Evans, and Nixon. As of January 2023, the book had won critical acclaims and was cited 13,500 times. The writers discuss how important a system of representation operates to connect language, society, and cultural differences in Malang, East Java, Indonesia. Using a specific case of Boso Walikan, the Malangese slang language as a representational system, the writers discover that cultural differences may occur within the same society where most people share the same cultural values and speak the same language. In this case, not all Malangese people like to speak their unique slang language although they were born and grew up in Malang and can speak the slang well. In the end, the whole process of strange to familiar ideas of expressions, thus representations, matches very closely with the concept of shared meaning in any given culture or unique system of representation. For the case of Boso Walikan, it seems safe to suggest that any of its native users are just ‘more experienced’ speakers of the slang language