Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

11-2022

Abstract

Language is one of the quintessential markers of ethnicity. It allows co-ethnics to easily identify one another and underscores in-group and out-group boundaries. Recognizing this, politicians frequently employ ethnic tongues to enhance their political appeal. To what extent does this shape the opinions of their audiences? Utilizing a survey experiment, I test the impact of an ethnic tongue against that of the common political language among the Javanese in Indonesia, the Tagalog in the Philippines, and the Isan people in Thailand. The experiment demonstrates that the ethnic language has a significant impact in both Thailand and Indonesia, but there appears to be little effect of using Tagalog over Filipino English in the Philippines. The findings suggest that ethnic tongues have the potential to significantly enhance political appeals, both among dominant (Javanese) and marginal (Isan) ethnic groups, but when the ethnic group is already the linguistic hegemon (Tagalog), such effects may be limited.

Keywords

Ethnicity, Language, Political communication, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Javanese, Tagalog, Isan

Discipline

Asian Studies | Political Science | Social Influence and Political Communication

Research Areas

Political Science

Publication

Journal of East Asian Studies

Volume

22

Issue

3

First Page

457

Last Page

479

ISSN

1598-2408

Identifier

10.1017/jea.2022.20

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2022.20

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