The Trend of Language Use among Netizens in Instagram laslisuroboyor Account

Abstract

In multilingual communities, Surabaya-Indonesia is one of them, people commonly use at least two languages, indigenous and national languages. Due to the Javanese is the greatest ethnic group in Surabaya and Javanese is the most spoken, people still use Javanese language to communicate. However, an interesting phenomenon is detected in Instagram of "aslisuroboyo" account. Surprisingly, English is also frequently used by Netizens. Thus, this study tries to reveal the dominant language use and the reasons for the use of English in this account. Using netnography and virtual interview, the data were obtained. The results show that the Javanese was mostly used. However, the netizens were detected to use the English as well in the form of code-mixing. It is also revealed that women had a tendency to mix their languages while men did not. Some Javanese informants confessed that the use of English is for gaining prestige. This may suggest that the Javanese language has been losing its power to boost its users' self-esteem in globaldigital communication particularly in its written mode. Tactful instruction of the Javanese language should be made in order that this indigenous language can win the floor in written communication for its speakers.

Innovation on Education and Social Sciences

“…It is good that the local language is still employed by young generations on social media, especially Instagram. This phenomenon is also in line with Setiawan and Nita (2018), who stated that young netizens still often use Javanese in their Instagram accounts. Another evidence of legacy and modernity in language use is presented in (03) (Figure 1).…”