The semi-formulaic nature of Balinese sociopolitical discourse

This dissertation investigates the nature of the speech produced during the sangkep, which are periodic council meetings attended by members of the banjar, a traditional sociopolitical institution in Bali, Indonesia. These meetings comprise a fundamental decision-making body within any Balinese village. Although there are several studies on both the banjar and sangkep, there has never been any linguistic examination of the language used in the sangkep . With the impetus from Duranti's (1994) seminal study on the effects of grammar within sociopolitical fora, I suggest two things: (1) sangkep language is best characterized as semi-formulaic, which allows for a degree of creativity necessary for speakers to provide appropriate material for any given sangkep; and (2) more formulaic elements of sangkep language serve as indices of assertion of one form of Balinese cultural identity.;I divide semi-formulaic language found in the sangkep into two types: language "ritualized" via the effects of high usage-frequency; and language which is deemed "ritual" not because of frequency effects, but by the relatively high level of ritual efficacy borne out by such language. The former type (ritualized language) exhibits the highest level of formulaicity via three verb roots, which also present possible construction templates which are more abstract in nature. The latter type (ritual language) primarily occurs as the opening and closing expressions Om Suasti Astu 'May All Be Well' and Om Santi Santi Santi Om 'May There Be Peace'. These two particular expressions are always associated with the opening and closing of major ritual events. Interestingly, these expressions are increasingly used in non-ritual contexts, which I argue serves as a public assertion of one form of Balinese cultural identity which can resist competing social forces such as fractured nationalism and religious fundamentalism.;I finally suggest that there are other threats that are as (if not more) pressing to the issue of preserving and transmitting Balinese cultural identity, such as the possible widespread language shift from Balinese to Indonesian, which is already happening in the provincial capital of Denpasar.