Language and Values: Angkot and Bus Language Decoration in Ranah Minangkabau

DOI

10.2991/prasasti-18.2018.3How to use a DOI?

Keywords

languages; values; angkot; popular culture

Abstract

Visitors to West Sumatra are immediately charmed and struck by the passenger vans (angkot) in the city of Padang and the buses of the province of West Sumatra because of their extensive decorations, a combination of words and phrases together with symbols and pictures. These are mobile works of art and popular culture, a culture extended through booming loud music and the racing-car style of the drivers. As a language teacher I am always interested in collecting dynamic and dramatic words used in public spaces for teaching purposes, but as I collected a corpus of the language used, I came to see that there were sets of values embodied in the corpus, expressed by the phrases and the pictures. These values are radically different to the official values proclaimed by authorities. The values expressed in the angkot language, and to a milder degree on the buses, express a youth counter-culture within Minang society. But this creative, funny and dynamic popular culture is now under threat.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - David Reeve
PY  - 2018/08
DA  - 2018/08
TI  - Language and Values: Angkot and Bus Language Decoration in Ranah Minangkabau
BT  - Proceedings of the Fourth Prasasti International Seminar on Linguistics (Prasasti 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 14
EP  - 18
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/prasasti-18.2018.3
DO  - 10.2991/prasasti-18.2018.3
ID  - Reeve2018/08
ER  -