Shaping Communities Through Language Practices, Ideologies, and Mobility: The Diaspora language of the Arab-descent Communities in Surakarta, Surabaya, and Jakarta.

Shaping Communities Through Language Practices, Ideologies, and Mobility: The Diaspora language of the Arab-descent Communities in Surakarta, Surabaya, and Jakarta. Luigi Sausa - Ph.D. Student l.sausa@unior.it Supervisors: Antonia Soriente - University of Naples “L’Orientale” Aurora Donzelli - Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna Riccardo Contini - University of Naples “L’Orientale” Abstract Amid extensive scholarly discussions on Indonesia's Islamization and Arabization, the semiotic articulation of these indexical relationships has remained largely uncharted. This dissertation fills this gap by providing an ethnographic account of the semiotic register of Arab descendants in Indonesia, focusing on how language practices shape identity within this diasporic community. This work explores the diverse identities within this community, which have been shaped by a history of migratory waves and interactions that have fostered connections among various local and transregional actors. Engaging with broader discussions on cultural and linguistic transformations related to South-to-South migration, religious language, and standardization processes, this study challenges prevailing views that often limit the Arab diaspora in Indonesia to associations with prominent religious figures. Instead, it highlights a neglected aspect of Arab-Indonesian identity: the semiotic registers and language practices of Arab descendants. Additionally, it brings into academic discussion the impact of more recent migration flows that follow older genealogical ties and new transnational opportunities. This dissertation is guided by the following key research questions: How do the language practices of Arab descendants—situated at the crossroads of Indonesia's complex linguistic ecology and the historical and ideological fabric of the Arabic language, which ties it closely to Arab identity—shape their diasporic identity? More specifically, how do these practices, particularly in relation to Arabic—a language highly valued in the national context and considered sacred, yet often regarded as non-native—contribute to social cohesion and self-representation within this community? Based on long-term fieldwork in the urban Arab districts of Jakarta, Surakarta, and Surabaya, this research explores how people construct, build, and imagine a collective belonging to a distinctive locality through verbal interaction in informal gatherings, ceremonies, and music performances across various urban settings, where a constellation of signs associated with Arabic linguistic elements plays a significant role. The people of Arab descent in Indonesia use the term jamaah (group) to refer to their community. Although they are often described as Hadrami, reflecting their ancestral origins in the Hadramawt Valley in Yemen, the jamaah rarely use the label Hadrami themselves, as it anchors a dynamic community to a fixed geographical origin, imposing a specific connotation that clashes with the diasporic nature of the community. This labeling process compels the community to conform to an idealized notion that a group must inherently be tied to a specific location and language, whether Indonesia or Hadramawt. By contrast, jamaah—which indexes descendants of the diaspora in Indonesia but is also used to refer to newer arrivals of Arab ethnicity—emphasizes self-identification through mobility and community engagement, core aspects of this group’s diasporic identity. The core idea of this work is that an indexical relationship exists between a language variant, the Hadramawt region, the Arab world, Islam, and a distinctive urban diasporic Indonesian locality. This relationship is unsteady, as it is continually negotiated in each conv