1.5. Additional Sources
1. Most Recent Controversy Surrounding Beauty Pageant Contests in Indonesia
The 2013 Miss World contest was scheduled to take place in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, with a series of preliminary events in the month of September and culminated on September 28, 2013. Unfortunately, this event was then moved to the resort island of Bali after weeks of protests by Indonesian Muslim hardliners around several cities in Indonesia, calling on the government to revoke the permit for the contest.
Chanting “Allah akbar” (God is great), the protesters, mostly women, waved banners reading “Miss World Culture Liberalisation Campaign” and “Reject Miss World”, as reported by the Guardian on 5 September 2013.
The organiser, MNC media group, said it was not possible to cancel the contest or move the venue, and said the government had given assurances that it would provide security and protection for the event.
According to Hary Tanoesoedibjo, head of MNC group that organized the event, there was a misunderstanding that the pageant included a bikini show even though the chair of the Miss World Organisation, Julia Morley, had earlier confirmed that none of the contestants would wear a bikini.
Rejection of the event has come not only from hardline groups but also from the country’s most influential group of clerics, the Indonesia Ulema Council, whose fatwas are followed by many devoted Muslims.
Last week the council urged the government to cancel the event, saying the exposure of skin by women in such a competition violated Islamic teachings.
Most Muslims in Indonesia are moderate, but a small extremist fringe has become more vocal in recent years.
Source: This is a summary of the article “Indonesians protest over Miss World contest” by the Associated Press, published in Jakarta on September 5, 2013.
2. Reduplication: Word-forming Processes
Various types of reduplication can be differentiated as follows:
a. Full Reduplication
Full reduplication in Indonesian repeats an entire word (base) to form a new word that carries the meaning of plurality or intensity. This type of reduplication is very productive and can be applied to different word categories (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs). For example, repeating a free noun or adjective gives a plural or collective sense. For instance: guru-guru (teachers), and rumah-rumah (houses). Similarly, complex words with affixes can be reduplicated. For instance, peringatan (warning) becomes peringatan-peringatan (warnings or various warnings). Even derived stems with affixes can be doubled. For example: kehijau-hijauan (from kehijauan) meaning “various shades of green,” sebanyak-banyaknya (from base banyak) implying “bluish things,” and mencoret-coret (from the base coret) meaning “scribbling.”
b. Partial Reduplication
Partial reduplication is much more limited and only occurs with certain nouns whose base begins with a consonant. The pattern is to prefix the first consonant + e to the base. In other words, if the base starts with c-…, the reduplicated form is ce-…. For example, pohon (tree) becomes pepohonan (trees or varieties of trees), rumput (grass) → rerumputan (weeds/varieties of grass), and daun (leaf→ dedaunan (leaves). This process almost always also adds the plural suffix -an to express a plural or collective meaning. Partial reduplication is not productive in modern Indonesian. It survives only in a few fixed words (mostly botanical or general terms) and cannot be applied to new words.
c. Imitative Reduplication
Imitative reduplication or pseudo-reduplication refers to words that look like they were reduplicated but are single lexicalized items. In these words, each half often has no independent meaning in context, and the form is not built by a general rule. Common examples include animal or object names. For example: mata-mata (spy), laba-laba (spider), kupu-kupu (butterfly), and kuda-kuda (squatting/ready stance).
Often, with this type of imitative reduplication, neither part of the word can occur alone to express the same meaning: bolak-balik (to and from), asal-usul (origin, descent), ramah-tamah (hospitality), and teka-teki (riddle).
