Women and Politeness

This book is an account of two generations of Chinese
Indonesian women in their language behavior of
politeness seen from their educational and cultural
backgrounds. They were born and have been living in
Indonesia, yet each would carry with her the unique
blend of her Chinese, Indonesian, Dutch, and Western
cultures. As women, they often bear an important role
of generating and mediating their cultures to the
next generation. Yet their presence is often silenced
and neglected.

The data that have been collected, presented and
discussed here have been a unique contribution to an
ethnographic socio-cultural-linguistic study of
female language. Compared to the previous
ethnographic studies conducted on Javanese or
Indonesian language studies by non Indonesians, this
study has taken a different perspective in which the
writer, being a Chinese Indonesian woman herself like
the participants' background, allowed her as a
participant observer, to put herself inside them.
This study can therefore be an insider account of
their language behaviors, in particular their
politeness behaviors.