6 - From miracles to classrooms: changing forms of erasure in the learning of ritual speech

Summary

This final chapter examines the changing forms of erasure employed in the teaching and learning of ritual speech, changes that contribute to the ways in which ritual speech as a register has shifted in its uses. By selectively ignoring (“erasing”) the diversity of speech varieties, the ideologies of language learning – both colonial and post-colonial – create an image of what ritual speech is ideally. Learning ideologies contributed to the shift in these ideals from “angry” to “humble,” from exemplary to marginal, from sacred to secular. The practice of learning ritual speech was once described as a totalizing experience involving miraculous inspiration, an experience that designated the learner as central and exemplary. Ability to perform verbally alone was seen as an act of spontaneous anger and boldness that was central to one's identity as competent, but which did not acknowledge the contributions of teachers, nor did it recognize the gradual and systematic process by which learning was (and is) interactively accomplished. Classroom schooling, on the other hand, requires not solo performance or anger so much as respectful response; one must learn active audiencing practices. Teachers occasionally code-switch, and borrow between Indonesian and Weyewa, sending subtle messages to the children about the relative merits of each. When they switch into Indonesian they are implicitly suggesting to students what kinds of things are “better said in Indonesian.” Ritual speech, seen as a variety of the local language, is relegated to a marginal area of the curriculum devoted to sports, regional folklore, and local arts.