Linguistic Enfranchisement

Abstract

Drawing on sociolinguistic research, this article introduces the concept of 'linguistic enfranchisement' (LE). Large one-to-many participation frameworks, such as schooling, mass media, and bureaucratic institutions, help populations to comprehend a particular variety of language by providing access to written and spoken forms of an emerging 'standard' language of the nation. We refer to this process as LE, while pointing out that LE can be seen as a product. This is so because LE also refers to the linguistic forms that are modelled as a language within these nation-building infrastructures. Nation-building infrastructures also engender LE in other languages, which can ultimately come into competition with the language of the nation-state. We refer to this as 'latent enfranchisement', with 'latent' being used to indicate potential LE. In theorizing LE, we focus on the languages used in political campaign posters from three parts of Indonesia: West Java, Papua, and Manado.