Corpus Planning

The title of the article is “Rekayasa Bahasa dan Perubahan Sosial Budaya”. This article gives us an analysis about how language can change many things, such as social, culture, and perhaps language would be a thing that can be used to promote our country in global era. When I read this article for the first time, I think it is hard to understand what the purpose is because the author uses very scientific language to identify and elaborate the terms and I think that is on purpose because the target of this article are academicians, linguists, and all people who want to know about language more deeply.
Based on my reading and my interpretation about every term that I have read, I am very interested in some of terms of the article and of course I do agree because I think these are the important issue and the terms have connection with all problems that we face nowadays. The terms are corpus planning can change our way to see a problem because it makes the meaning of the words be vaguely and when Bahasa Indonesia wants to go international as a preparation when all things of other countries come to Indonesia.
Corpus planning (Euphemism) actually does not change the meaning of the world, but I think it can change our way to approach and catch the meaning of the word directly. According to Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary, it said that euphemism is a word or phrase used to avoid saying an unpleasant or offensive word. When the meaning of the word is vaguely, we will be forced to have many interpretations of the word and I have strong belief that it will change our perspective to see a problem. For examples, in Bahasa Indonesia “Corruption” or Korupsi (Bahasa Indonesia) has changed to “Komersialisasi Jabatan” and “Starvation” or Kelaparan (Bahasa Indonesia) has changed to “Rawan Pangan”. We are going to see the alteration meaning of these words:
1. Corruption Korupsi Komersialisasi Jabatan
In the past, when we heard “corruption”, our mind will fly to all kind of irregularity in the accounts and all people can do that. Now when corruption has changed to “Komersialisasi Jabatan”, we will think that corruption happens only in government because they have strategic position to do that. Yes, I concede the point but I think all people can do corruption for everything and everywhere. Say for example; when we join in such a regular social gathering whose members contribute to and take turns at winning an aggregate sum of money (Arisan) but suddenly the management flee with all members’ money without confirmation, should we say it as corruption or not?.
2. Starvation Kelaparan Rawan Pangan
Starvation is a big calamity. When it happens, it means that our country has failed to serve prosperity for the citizen, as we know that prosperity is a prime goal when our country was built and it had put in our constitution by the founding father of this country. And now, it has changed to “rawan” that means we
just have to prepare and try to avoid the starvation, so when it has been happening, can we still call it as “rawan pangan”? I think two examples above are the examples of using euphemism which is over and out of control.
In global era, language is very important thing to communicate with other people from overseas. We have known that English is international language which is used to communicate with all people in the world, but most of people in Indonesia cannot speak English and it will be a big problem for our country to compete with other country in global era in all sectors. The way that can we use is making Bahasa Indonesia becomes a global language, we know that there are more 15 countries which enter bahasa Indonesia in curriculum of their school, and definitely we are proud of this achievement. And when we want to make bahasa Indonesia be universal, we have to use it in right way and have capability to keep and to perpetuate the language as our culture or identity and has to be gone along with the attitude when we use it, in order to there is no misunderstanding there and the people from other country will be respect.
So, through this content, I consider that all kind of language planning has influenced social, culture and our perspective to see a meaning beyond the words but it has been over and out of control now and we have to solve this problem in order to make bahasa Indonesia go international. Over all, I agree with these terms of the article.