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Adeng Chaedar Alwasilah: Guardian of Sundanese language
Courtesy of Adeng Chaedar Alwasilah At a time when most Indonesian scholars are paying little attention to the survival of the country’s local dialects, Chaedar Alwasilah stands as a fervent guardian of the Sundanese language
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Courtesy of Adeng Chaedar Alwasilah
At a time when most Indonesian scholars are paying little attention to the survival of the country’s local dialects, Chaedar Alwasilah stands as a fervent guardian of the Sundanese language.
The scholar’s noble aim is to reinvigorate Sundanese cultural heritage and to propose the renaissance of Sundanese culture. This idea has emerged since he was appointed chairman of the organizing committee of the International Conference on Sundanese Culture, pioneered by renowned poet Ajip Rosidi in Bandung in 2001.
He was also the driving force behind the establishment of the Center for Sundanese Study, in which he served as vice chairman in 2002.
Alwasilah, who was born in 1953 in Garut, West Java, and raised in a pesantren (Islamic boarding school) environment, is known as one of the country’s most prolific scholars, having devoted most of his academic career to researching Sundanese culture and language.
According to Alwasilah, the 40 million people in West Java, most of whom are native Sundanese, do not really care about their native tongue.
“Language is our medium of culture, so mastering it is tantamount to preserving our cultural identity,” he told The Jakarta Post.
The major obstacles in the preservation of Sundanese, he said, are the dominant use of Indonesian in the mass media and the educated elite’s lack of commitment to maintaining the dialect.
“I get the impression that our local government is not at all serious about empowering the Sundanese language,” he said.
“They have no visionary policy on the conservation of local languages here. And in general, West Java politicians have no strong cultural foundation.”
Many of his brilliant ideas on the revitalization of the language are contained in his book Pokok-nya Sunda: Intepretasi untuk Aksi (Nothing but Sunda: Interpretation for Action), a masterpiece that spells out practical strategies for preserving the Sundanese cultural heritage without encouraging readers to overlook the significance of other cultures.
The more than 400 articles he has written and published, mainly in The Jakarta Post and Pikiran Rakyat, position language, culture and education as central and inseparable issues.
Other important related works include Dari Cicalengka sampai Chicago (From Cicalengka to Chicago), Politik Bahasa dan Pendidikan (The Politics of Language and Education), Pokoknya Menulis (Nothing but Writing) and Filsafat Bahasa dan Pendidikan (The Philosophy of Language and Education).
Alwasilah’s concern with the survival of Sundanese also prompted him to co-edit and publish Jejak Langkah Orang Sunda (Footsteps of the Sundanese People), an anthology of Sundanese culture.
Among his laments is that preservation of Sundanese is neglected in education, with neither students nor teachers interested in using it as a medium of communication at school, let alone including it on school curricula.
This, Alwasilah observes, stems from the emphasis on a linguistic approach to language pedagogy rather than on a functional–cultural one.
“Most of our school teachers here don’t really understand the functional–cultural approach to teaching Sundanese, which results in students being afraid to communicate in the language and in the impression that Sundanese language doesn’t make its speakers smart,”
he said.
“The teaching of local languages has been marginalized for a long time, and has even been suspected as distorting stability in politics.”
Alwasilah believes that the use of Sundanese as a medium for cultural expression and rituals can effectively help save Sundanese from extinction. A written record of cultural heritage is also one of the best ways of documenting Sundanese, he added.
Now a professor in education and applied linguistics at the Indonesian University of Education in Bandung, West Java, Alwasilah earned his Ph.D. in language education in 1991 from Indiana University in the United States, where he won the Indiana University School of Education’s 1990–1991 Award for Outstanding Achievement for the best dissertation of the year.
In 2003, he was awarded the Satyalencana Karya Setia 20 Tahun from the then Indonesian president. This year he received The Soka University Award for his dedication to education.
As a staunch critic of literacy pedagogy in the country, Alwasilah is constantly voicing his apprehension about Indonesian scholars’ lack of literacy culture. He has lambasted language education here for being overly concerned with grammar rules and spoken language, and for failing to inspire young Indonesians to become writers.
“My dissertation in 1991 showed our scholars’ low productivity in writing, and even now the majority of our intellectuals are not prolific writers despite their extensive experience in studying overseas,” he said.
His slogan “Bangsa yang besar adalah bangsa yang menulis” (A great nation is the nation that writes), which was also the title of his speech at his professorship inauguration, sends the clear message that a great nation should be proud of having a cultural heritage that is well preserved via writing.
“Our language education is still far from empowering our nation,” he said. “It is my hope that we revamp it so that our academics come to recognize that without writing, they are not true scholars.”
