Ideology formation

Processes of ideology formation are now well understood within linguistic anthropology, and encompass scholarship on the natural histories of discourse (Silverstein and Urban Reference Silverstein and Urban1996a), language ideology (Schieffelin, Woolard, and Kroskrity Reference Schieffelin, Woolard and Kroskrity1998; Kroskrity Reference Kroskrity2000), enregisterment (Silverstein Reference Silverstein2003; Agha Reference Agha2007a), and voice (Agha Reference Agha2005; Weidman Reference Weidman2014a; Schäfers Reference Schäfers2023). In this section, we synthesize the processes that contribute to the emergence of an ideology. We start by highlighting how the reuse of textual fragments from one communicative event to the next is recombined with new material to contribute to textual reformulations that become part of an emergent ideology. Within this recombination process, there are two other processes at play. The first relates to word choices that help create a sense of truth, while the second relies upon relationships between the reporting of what others have said and how such reporting creates a sense of authenticity. We end by pointing out how together all of these processes enhance or limit the possibility of voice for a certain population.

Imitation

Ideologies or what is often referred to as “common knowledge” start their life within communicative events, whether writing, everyday talk, or social media posts (Bauman and Briggs Reference Bauman and Briggs1990; Silverstein and Urban Reference Silverstein, Urban, Silverstein and Urban1996b; Schieffelin, Woolard, and Kroskrity Reference Schieffelin, Woolard and Kroskrity1998; Kroskrity Reference Kroskrity2000; Agha Reference Agha2007a). For an idea to get traction, that is to start to emerge as an ideology, it needs one or more of the following processes to occur and reoccur across time and space or “scale” (Wallerstein Reference Wallerstein2001; Blommaert Reference Blommaert2015; Blommaert, Westinen, and Leppänen Reference Blommaert, Westinen and LeppäNen2015). The idea needs to be imitated—that is replicated but not necessarily as a precise copy—in a subsequent communicative event (Lempert Reference Lempert2014). An example of this is an evaluation of the idea. If the evaluation is done by someone with some type of authority—such as a politician, government official, celebrity, or elder—then the chances of the idea being imitated elsewhere increase (Agha Reference Agha2007a).

We can refer to this group of people more generally as experts who are relied upon for categorizing and defining phenomena (Agha Reference Agha2007a, 124–132). So, if an expert in natural disaster prevention discursively categorizes a number of phenomena as natural disasters at one scale, then this category can become one that is deferred to or imitated in other communicative chains. This can be done via the creation of manuals, the reading of manuals by disaster prevention novices, conversations by lay persons about natural disasters, etc. (Agha Reference Agha2007a, 124–132).

The chances of further imitation are also impacted by the channel of communication and the types of participation that it engenders (Agha Reference Agha2007a). For example, television and radio broadcasts, lectures, and school lessons represent participation frameworks where one person is communicating with many via oral and/or oral/visual channels. In these situations, the opportunity to question or evaluate an idea is less than that afforded in a face-to-face conversation or email exchange. In short, the original idea can potentially gain a bigger audience than found in conversations between a couple of people and without peer review.

Subsequent imitation has many pathways from face-to-face conversations, school curriculum, training workshops, academic articles, comment functions (e.g., text, likes, shares, etc.), and so on. When these ideas receive uptake in state-sponsored bodies, such as education bodies and other government departments, this emergent ideology becomes a state-sanctioned one (Agha Reference Agha2007a). An example being the representation of precipitation induced flooding as one category of disaster in the Indonesian Infomedia we discuss in our section entitled, “Tidal flooding in Indonesia.”

The role of word choice in creating meaning and truth

The work of the linguistic anthropologists Hanks (Reference Hanks, Duranti and Goodwin1992) and Agha (Reference Agha2007a, 38–45) on how words gain meaning is key for our discussion of the first process too. In short, this relates to how the meaning of a word emerges through the presence of other words in ongoing discursive activity and how the use of certain words can make a text appear like a fact or timeless truth (Agha Reference Agha2007a, 38; Hanks Reference Hanks, Duranti and Goodwin1992). This is achieved by lowering the degree of “deictic selectivity” of an utterance (Agha Reference Agha2007a, 42–43), its degree of deictic anchoring to the time, place, and interpersonal circumstances of its occurrence.

In English, noun modifiers such as any, every, and all are deictically nonselective because they refer to every member of the class denoted by modified noun, but deictics like this, that, and some pick out specific members of a class, and are thus much more deictically selective. Accompanying deictic elements in verb configurations can also mark the ways in which utterances are decreasingly anchored to a specific time, place, and participant framework of utterance, and the composite effect is understood by interlocutors as a “timeless truth.” Consider, for example, the following five sentences that are adapted from Agha (Reference Agha2007a, 42–43):

1. (a) Did the rivers flood?

2. (b) The river flooded.

3. (c) A river flooded.

4. (d) A river floods.

5. (e) Rivers flood.

Text (a) has a specific referent indicated by the determiner “the.” Text (a) is also anchored to a specific time, through its discontinuous past tense interrogative—“Did …[x]… flood?” —which presupposes situated interaction with a specific interlocutor to whom a query about a particular set of rivers in a specific time and place is being posed.

As we move through the examples, some of the anchoring to person, place, and time starts to fall away. In text (b) we get a statement, which is still about a specific referent. Text (b) still potentially presupposes a situated conversation, although there is no longer an interrogative that erases any connotation of immediacy. In text (c), there is no longer a specific referent, it could have been any river and those involved in the conversation would not be able to see this referent at the time of this specific interaction. The disappearance of this anchoring is complete in text (e) where the use of a plural form and timeless present co-occur with each other to make this a statement about rivers in general, that does not provide any information about which river is at issue, when such flooding may have (or could, will, etc., occur) when, where, and among whom the statement is made, and so on. In short, the text in (e) represents an apparently “universal fact” or “timeless truth” (Agha Reference Agha2007a, 43–44).

Representing others’ talk to imply authenticity

Another area that has received sustained attention in the field of linguistic anthropology is the representation of what others have said as part of storytelling events (Tannen Reference Tannen1989; Ochs and Capps Reference Ochs and Capps2001; De Fina Reference De Fina2003; Bauman Reference Bauman2004; Georgakopoulou Reference Georgakopoulou2007). Studies of conversational narrative tell us that storytelling is a relationship-building practice, and more generally a form of sociality where participants try to understand themselves, others, and events in their lives (e.g., Ochs and Capps Reference Ochs and Capps2001; Georgakopoulou Reference Georgakopoulou2007). This work highlights the tensions between making a story tellable and making a story believable (Ochs and Capps Reference Ochs and Capps2001). To make a story tellable requires the teller to secure an audience and/or co-tellers. In general, storytelling has moral dimensions and regularly involves some form of embellishment, often just enough to keep those involved interested, while keeping the story believable (Ochs and Capps Reference Ochs and Capps2001).

The moral dimensions of a story or story-like events typically relate to accounts of the appropriateness or inappropriateness of demeanors and actions of others and involve discourse that positions one or more persons as exemplars of some moral order and those talked about as socially deviant (e.g., Briggs Reference Briggs and Briggs1996; Ochs and Capps Reference Ochs and Capps2001). Interviews have similar dimensions because they often contain multiple stories (De Fina and Perrino Reference De Fina and Perrino2011). They can afford interviewees opportunities to position themselves as certain types of people to achieve certain goals, such as convincing a researcher about their prowess in a certain activity or their moral sensibilities in relation to other events or discourses (Modan and Shuman Reference Modan and Shuman2011; Slembrouck Reference Slembrouck2011; Wortham et al. Reference Wortham, Mortimer, Lee, Allard and Daniel White2011). This interactional work can be done through some sort of performance of the event that is reported in the story (e.g., Ochs and Capps Reference Ochs and Capps2001). These types of performances, often referred to as reported talk, constructed dialogue, and represented speech (Tannen Reference Tannen, Tedlock and Mannheim1995; Clift and Holt Reference Clift, Holt, Holt and Clift2007; Agha Reference Agha2007a), make a story more believable because they create a sense of authenticity to the event being reported by implying that the person reporting the talk was there as a witness (e.g., Silverstein Reference Silverstein2005; Agha Reference Agha2007b; Perrino Reference Perrino2011). Thus, the reported talk becomes constructed as “what was actually said.”

Processes of ideology formation and the erasure of voice

Thus far, we have examined three processes that contribute towards the formation or “enregisterment” (Agha Reference Agha2007a, 84–142) of an ideology, fact, or common knowledge. The emergence of one form of common knowledge can work against the creation of other forms of common knowledge and the possibilities that they engender. This has been demonstrated in scholarship focusing on voice (Blommaert Reference Blommaert2008; Weidman Reference Weidman2014b; Schäfers Reference Schäfers2023).

In a recent critique of popular understandings of voice, Schäfers (Reference Schäfers2023) highlights how understandings of rights to having a voice and what constitutes having a voice are rarely shared between those advocating voice for a minority and members of this minority themselves. Her work neatly aligns with work on ideology formation underscoring the importance of looking at voice as a historical dialogue involving all sorts of present and non-present participants rather than a simple question of agency or authorship. In doing so, she draws upon Bakhtin’s (Reference Bakhtin1981) work on dialogism highlighting how all voice is made up of fragments of voices from elsewhere that are themselves colored by political and economic tastes from whence they came. She also draws upon Goffman’s (Reference Goffman1981) delineation of participation frameworks into animator (the person conveying the message), author (the person who formulates the message), principle (the person or institution sponsoring or responsible for the message), and figure (the person or persons described in the message) to further illustrate just how theoretically and methodologically difficult it is to determine whether someone has agency.

In sum, we can say that Schäfers’ (Reference Schäfers2023) work highlights the problem of variation in the sharedness of ideas around voice, the problem of equating voice with agency, as well as how certain pathways to voice are “erased” (Irvine and Gal Reference Irvine, Gal and Paul2000) as part of any enregistered form of common knowledge. Thus, work on voice invites us to view voice as a historically constructed language ideology whose social value is only shared and interpretable by populations who have been part of the communicative processes discussed in the previous sections.

Tidal flooding in Indonesia

Sixty percent of Indonesia’s 280 million inhabitants live in coastal areas (Warsilah Reference Warsilah, Djalante, Jupesta and Aldrian2021). In these areas, tidal flooding is a well-researched problem with estimates of those impacted ranging from four to twenty-three million (Joseph et al. Reference Joseph, Thornton, Pearson and Paull2013; Marfai, Bayu Sekaranom, and Ward Reference Marfai, Bayu Sekaranom and Ward2015; Bott Reference Bott2020; Nirmala Reference Nirmala2020; World Bank Group 2021). The reason for the large variation in estimates is unclear at this stage but may relate to the uncertainties around land subsidence rates over time, different sea-level rise projections (Irawan et al. Reference Irawan, Marfai, Munawar, Gustono, Rejeki, Widodo, Mahmudiah and Faridatunnisa2021), and projections about climate change induced extreme weather events (Irawan et al. Reference Irawan, Marfai, Munawar, Gustono, Rejeki, Widodo, Mahmudiah and Faridatunnisa2021; Triyanti et al. Reference Triyanti, Aris Marfai, Tyas Wulan Mei, Rafliana, Djalante, Jupesta and Aldrian2021). Those impacted are some of Indonesia’s most impoverished and vulnerable whose economic circumstances force them to live close to coastal waterways (Nurhidayah Reference Nurhidayah, Djalante, Jupesta and Aldrian2021; Utami et al. Reference Utami, Rum Giyarsih, Marfai and Ridho Fariz2021). For these Indonesians, tidal flooding is a daily occurrence. Even so, the scale of this problem hasn’t yet become part of national reporting on disasters. For example, Indonesia’s national bureau of disaster prevention (Badan Nasional Penanggulan Bencana or BNPB) lists 1531 cases of flooding, and just 26 seawater incursion events in its 2022 Infomedia about natural disasters in Indonesia. This under-reporting continued in their 2023 and 2024 info graphics.Footnote ¹ In other words, tidal flooding has yet to become “common knowledge” among those tasked with creating such reports. In this section, we synthesize what we know about tidal flooding and its effects on Indonesian lifeworlds while pointing to some as yet un-inundated areas of research on this topic.

Throughout the Indonesian archipelago, tidal flooding is caused by both climate induced sea-level rise and land subsidence (Bott Reference Bott2020; Irawan et al. Reference Irawan, Marfai, Munawar, Gustono, Rejeki, Widodo, Mahmudiah and Faridatunnisa2021; Nurlatifah, Martono, and Suhermat Reference Nurlatifah, Martono and Suhermat2021). In places like the northern coastline of Java, subsidence is the main reason for settlements sinking by between 6 and 26 cm per year (Marfai and King Reference Marfai and King2008; Bott Reference Bott2020; Ley Reference Ley2021; Widiyaningtyas Reference Widiyaningtyas2022). The main reason for this subsidence is the excessive extraction of ground water which reduces water pressure in artesian systems and reduces water in soil pores contributing to soil compaction (Marfai and King Reference Marfai and King2008, 99).

This extensive water extraction is undertaken by citizens (typically who don’t have access to clean water), public water companies, and industry. There are other reasons for this subsidence, including the compacting of alluvial soils via building loads, such as the construction of roads and buildings (Marfai and King Reference Marfai and King2008; Bott Reference Bott2020; Ley Reference Ley2021); coastal erosion which itself is caused by the destruction of mangrove forests for ports, seawalls, land reclamation, and fish ponds (van Bijsterveldt et al. Reference van Bijsterveldt, Herman, van Wesenbeeck, Ramadhani, Heuts, van Starrenburg, Tas, Triyanti, Helmi, Tonneijck and Bouma2023); changed river pathways and depths due to upstream damming, sand mining, and deforestation (Suyarso and Diah Setiawati Reference Suyarso, Diah Setiawati, Chatterjee, Shaw, Bhunia, Setiawati and Banerjee2023); and (failed) technological solutions to tidal flooding since colonial times (Ley Reference Ley2021).

Indonesian municipal governments are often reported as ineffective or contributing to the problem (Bott Reference Bott2020; Ley Reference Ley2021), and the lack of mention about tidal flooding in Infomedia suggests some sort of communication blockage. If we look at the group of participants consulted and the methods used in Bott’s (Reference Bott2020) and Ley’s (Reference Ley2021) studies, there is actually little evidence of the accuracy of claims about municipal governments. For example, participants were not municipal workers who dealt with daily reporting and record keeping, but rather locals impacted by daily tidal flooding, neighborhood heads, NGO workers, policymakers, and academic experts. In this paper, we thus want to start to get an understanding of how municipal governments communicate about tidal flooding focusing on the Kendal Regency municipal government (pemerintah kabupaten or PEMKAB) website communiques about flooding events.

Data collection and Kendal regency

Our data set consists of 86 short web-based communiques that were published by the Kendal regency level government (PEMKAB) between February 2016 and January 2023. We obtained these stories through the search function on PEMKAB’s website with the keyword banjir “flood.” From our initial reading of these stories, we found several themes and we coded the stories for these themes as well as whether those being represented were male or female, their age, their occupation, and their education credentials. In our second reading, we checked these themes coming up with the following themes: the role of locals in flood mitigation; the building and/or maintenance of flood mitigation infrastructure; jurisdiction and interjurisdictional cooperation; government officials seeking input from locals on infrastructure needs; victim blaming; extreme weather and disaster planning; and a tendency to represent locals as passive recipients of aid whose voice was only used to say thanks; and the framing of flooding as a natural event.

Our third reading focused on the last three themes and the texts that were imitated within these communiques, which we reported in Goebel and Dewi (in press). In our most recent re-reading of these communiques, we focused on the theme of natural disasters. We interpreted these texts as speakers of Indonesian and Javanese (one of Indonesia’s regional languages). We have each been learning these languages for thirty or so years, with Goebel doing this initially as a student in Australia and then as a researcher of language use in Indonesia, and Dewi doing this as a citizen of Indonesia and researcher of language use in Indonesia.

Located in the province of Central Java, Kendal Regency is primarily an agricultural area with 26 percent of land being used for wet rice farming, another 20 percent for dry land farming, 8 percent for plantations, and 46 percent for other land use (Firdaus et al. Reference Firdaus, Nugraha, Sukmono and Valdika2019). We assume the latter would cover settlements, land used for aquaculture, and the recently established industrial estate, itself a potential pathway to future subsidence. Much of the literature on flooding in Kendal highlights precipitation-induced flooding (Firdaus et al. Reference Firdaus, Nugraha, Sukmono and Valdika2019) without even mentioning subsidence and tidal flooding, or if it does, this is often also linked to the waste disposal practices of locals (Widiyaningtyas Reference Widiyaningtyas2022). This discursive construction of victims as responsible can also be found in discourses about tidal flood mitigation interventions, such as Kota Tanpa Kumuh (KOTAKU) “A city without slums” (Widiyaningtyas Reference Widiyaningtyas2022, 7250; Diskominfo Kendal/Heri 2022), and in Ley’s (Reference Ley2021) work on tidal flooding in Semarang.

Representing voices in times of seawater inundation

According to a 2017 news broadcast (Satu Reference Satu2017), tidal flooding has been occurring regularly in Kendal since 2007. Even so, the PEMKAB website only hosted one communique directly reporting on tidal flooding in 2018, one in 2021, and five further communiques in May 2022. In addition, flooding and tidal flooding were framed as examples of natural disasters (bencana alam) in twenty-seven communiques, while a further four communiques blamed extreme weather (cuaca ekstrem) or weather anomalies for flooding. Appendix 1 summarizes the communiques that had some of the elements required for the formation of common knowledge about flooding as a natural disaster.

In the rest of these communiques, just four linked flooding to human causes such as the construction of a toll road and global warming. In the remaining communiques “disaster” (bencana) was used to categorize flooding. While flooding was not framed as a natural disaster, it wasn’t framed as one caused by humans either. In what follows we provide example analysis of five of the communiques from Appendix 1 by presenting an excerpt from these communiques accompanied by an English gloss. We follow this with our analysis of the text which demonstrates how forms of common knowledge emerge in one social domain. We can start our analysis by noting that all communiques have authority by way of their principle/sponsor being the Kendal local government.

The excerpt in Table 2 is the first communique that mentioned flooding and natural disasters. Excerpt 2 is taken from a communique published on the 17th of February 2016 and is entitled Kendal punya Bupati baru “Kendal has a new Regent.” It reports on the swearing in of the new regent and vice-regent of Kendal after their direct election by those living in the regency. The communique represents the governor’s speech which included an invitation for the Regent of Kendal, her vice-Regent and other regents and mayors to take action in a wide range of areas leading to the development of Central Java as a province. Like almost all the represented speech in the Kendal regency communiques that we examined, their speech is represented as spoken in Indonesian. Indonesian is represented in plain font and capitalization and quotation marks are in the original. Text in square brackets in the right column are meanings that emerge from prior text.

Table 2. The governor framing flooding as a natural disaster

The excerpt in Table 2 is a clear example of an authoritive figure categorizing floods as natural disasters. In the first paragraph of the communique (not reproduced here), the governor’s academic qualifications are mentioned, in this case his law degree (SH, Sarjana Hukum) which adds educational authority to his political authority. This authority and the authenticity and factualness of the report itself is bolstered through the representation of what the governor said through the use of menurut Gubernur Jateng “according to the Governor of Central Java” on line 2, where the governor is represented as the principle and author of this message. Just as importantly, this bit of language use directly ties an authoritative figure with his acts of categorizing floods as a natural phenomenon (line 5). The absence of descriptions of other types of floods and their causes, the anchoring of flooding to a large territory (Central Java on line 5) rather than a specific territory, and the fact that both bencana and banjir can mean one or multiple floods contribute to the creation of our first instance of a “fact” or “timeless truth” (Agha Reference Agha2007a).

Many of the conditions necessary for subsequent imitation are thus in place, and these possibilities increase when we look at the participants. There are 16 Mayors, Regents, and their respective second in charge, as well as any interested public. The former all have authoritative status and can thus become origins for future imitations of facts about natural disasters. This large one-to-many participation framework also increases the possibilities of fragments of the governors’ speech being imitated at another scale by other social actors.

The emerging fact that all floods are natural disasters is imitated on the 8th of March 2016. This time it is by a high-ranking civil servant, the secretary of Kendal. The communique entitled Siap hadapi bencana, Kendal gelar gladi menejemen bencana “Preparing to face disasters, Kendal holds disaster management rehearsals” (Table 3) reports on the District Bureau of Disaster Prevention, Kendal Regency’s running of a closed coordination meeting.

Table 3. The Kendal area secretary framing flooding as a natural disaster

As with the excerpt in Table 2, in the excerpt in Table 3 the person who is being represented has authority, this time bureaucratic as well as educational authority. The outlining of his authority is done in the opening paragraph (not reproduced in Table 3) where his education (Ir. “engineer” and MT “Masters of Technology”) and civil service rank (sekretaris “secretary”) are mentioned in the phrase Sekretaris Daerah Kabupaten Kendal Ir. Bambang Dwiyono MT “the Secretary of Kendal regency Engineer Bambang Dwiyono, Master of Technology.” The authenticity and factualness of the report itself is bolstered through the representation of what the secretary actually said through indirect and direct quotation. As with the excerpt in Table 2, there are principles/sponsors, authors and animators. In the first instance, sponsorship and authorship is achieved through the use of menurut sekda “according to area secretary” (line 2), while sponsorship, authorship and animation is achieved through the use of quotation marks on lines 6–8, where Bambang is directly tied to his acts of categorization.

Significant rainfall is categorized as a natural disaster on lines 1–3, as is banjir “floods” on line 7. Note too, that in the second act of categorizing some of the text that anchors flooding to a particular time and event is no longer present. For example, while the earlier sentence Kabupaten Kendal yang masih dilanda musim hujan dengan curah yang cukup tinggi “Kendal regency which is currently being impacted by significant rainfall” includes time masih “still/in the process of/currently” and musim hujan “wet season,” and event curah yang cukup tinggi “significant rainfall,” the second one on lines 6 and 7 only contains the category flooding and the place Kendal. When viewed in relation to the excerpt in Table 2, the presence and absence of certain words helps to create the emerging fact that flooding is a natural disaster.

The participants and participation framework are also important here. The meeting involved representatives from the army, the national police, and presumably representatives of the District Bureau of Disaster Prevention, Kendal Regency, who host the event. As with the excerpt in Table 2, all have authoritative status and can thus become origins for future imitations of facts about natural disasters. Just as importantly, while the participation framework was smaller than that described in relation to Table 2, it was still a one-to-many participation framework. When considered together, we have the construction of another piece of text that can be imitated in the future and potentially figure in the creation of common knowledge about flooding as a natural phenomenon.

There were no more communiques linking flooding to natural phenomena until the 18^th of September 2016. On this occasion, Indonesia’s National Disaster Prevention Bureau (BNPB) was reported as holding a public forum in Kendal (Kendal miliki tiga Desa Tangguh Bencana “Kendal has three Disaster Resilient Villages”). The excerpt in Table 4 examines some of the common knowledge being created in this communique.

Table 4. Reporting the head of daily operations of BPBD Kendal

As with the excerpts in Tables 2 and 3, the persons being represented in this excerpt have authority. The establishment of this authority is achieved in the opening paragraph (not reproduced here) and on lines 1 and 2. This is done by listing their ranks in the civil service (head of the district level disaster prevention bureau, and head of daily operations in the same bureau), education (Slamet SE “Slamet Economics Graduate”), and area of expertise (disaster prevention). Slamet’s speech is indirectly quoted on line 2, Slamet SE mengungkapkan “Slamet SE said” making him principle and author of the message, but not its animator who is the author of the communique. Slamet is directly quoted later, on lines 8–10 making him author, principle and animator of the message. Both instances contribute to the authenticity and factualness of the account by directly tying Slamet as an authoritive figure to his acts of categorization. In this case banjir “flooding” is initially categorized as a bencana “disaster” (line 7), but then disasters are (re)categorized as natural disasters (bencana alam) on line 9.

There are other linguistic mechanisms at play too which contribute to the construction of an emerging fact that floods are natural disasters. In this case, the erasure of place and actors. For example, while Village Kebondalem is constructed as one prone to flooding disasters in lines 6 and 7, in the next paragraph this anchoring to this specific village and its inhabitants falls away (lines 8 and 9). This is achieved by first referring to the program and villages that participate in general (line 8) rather than a specific village, and then referring to masyarakat sekitarnya “locals” or the “public who live nearby” (line 8) rather than the inhabitants of a specific village.

The meeting was a relatively small one-to-many participation framework that was attended by around 20 participants including two capacity building specialists from BNPB who had been working in two villages in Kendal for the last six months implementing BNPB’s its Desa Tangguh Bencana “Disaster Resilient Village” program. Even so, as with the prior excerpts, each of these participants are potential origins for subsequent imitations of the emerging fact that floods are natural disasters.

The following Thursday (22/09/2016) the BNPB, and their provincial and regency level peers (BPBP and BPBD) held an open forum disseminating the Disaster Resilient Village program. This was reported in the communique entitled BNPB Kendal gelar sosialisasi DESTANA “The National Bureau of Disaster Prevention Kendal holds a forum on the Disaster Resilient Villages program.” In addition to two representatives from the provincial government, there was a subdistrict head and representatives from three villages. In comparison to the participation frameworks discussed in relation to the excerpt in Table 4, here the number of participants increased as did the potential for the imitation of fragments of this discourse in their respective villages. On this occasion, the head of daily operations of BPBD, Kendal opened the forum by animating a speech by the Kendal Regency Secretary (Sekda). In this speech, landslides, drought, earthquakes, and floods were all categorized as natural disasters common to the Kendal Regency. No specific villages were mentioned nor actual flooding events. As with the last few extracts, the erasure of contextual information about a specific flood in a particular place and the use of direct quotation helps construct the factualness of flooding as a natural disaster, while the resultant message, the participants and participation framework afford future imitations.

Tidal flooding only started to be mentioned in a communique published on the 27th of November 2018 (Hadapi banjir dan longsor, Kendal satukan pemahaman tanggulangi bencana “Dealing with floods and landslides, Kendal synchronizes understandings of disaster management”). This communique reports on a closed coordination meeting involving authoritative representatives from different levels of government. These included the area secretary (SEKDA) who animated a speech sponsored and authored by the regent, the section head of the emergency and logistics section of the area Disaster Prevention Bureau (BPBD, Kendal), a speaker from the provincial level Disaster Prevention Bureau (BPBD, PEMPROV JATENG), and around 60 representatives from the provincial-level public works, water, and town planning bureaus. In contrast to earlier stories, the area secretary categorized floods as disasters rather than natural disasters. The section head of the emergency and logistics section of the BPBD Kendal also categorized flooding, landslides, and tidal flooding (referred to as gelombang pasang instead of banjir rob) as the majority of hydrological disasters (90%) in Kendal which were caused by climate change and human activity.

Tidal flooding got no further mention until a story entitled Kepala DPUPR Kendal bersama Dico kunjungi desa terdampak Ba[n]jir “” that was published on the 29th of January 2021. As with the communiques described thus far the participants were authoritative, the participation frameworks were one-to-many, and categorization work was undertaken. In this case, tidal flooding was distinguished from precipitation-induced flooding in a direct quote by the candidate for the Regent of Kendal (Dico), while the head of the Kendal Regency public works department was indirectly quoted when he categorized seawalls as the solution to tidal flooding.

While tidal flooding was a daily occurrence, it got no further mention in communiques until the 23rd of May 2022. In this communique entitled Pemkab Kendal Fokus Tangani Persoalan Banjir Rob di Wilayah Pesisir, “The Kendal government is focusing on handling the problem of tidal flooding in the coastal regions” the participants were not listed, so the categorization work being undertaken can be seen as less authoritative (this communique is thus not listed in Table 1). This work described tidal flooding in general as caused by sea levels that were higher than coastal lands.

The following day another communique was published entitled Kunjungi Lokasi Banjir Rob, Bupati Dico Pastikan Kebutuhan Warga Tercukupi “Visiting tidal flooding locations, Regent Dico determines whether locals’ needs are being met.” This communique was in a more familiar format (Table 5).

Table 5. Severe tidal flooding caused by a weather anomaly

As with the excerpts in Tables 2-4, in the excerpt in Table 5 the persons being represented have authority, this time bureaucratic, educational, and militaristic. The outlining of this authority is done in the opening paragraph where their post, qualifications, and ranks are listed as they are introduced (lines 1–2 and 4–8). The authenticity and factualness of the report itself is bolstered through the representation of what the regent said through indirect quotation, using the words menurut “according to” (line 9) and mengunkapkan “said” (line 15). Both these words also serve to identify sponsorship and authorship of the message and in doing so directly tie the regent to his acts of categorization.

Note that the technical authority of the Bureau of Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics is invoked too (line 10) as part of his first act of categorization where tidal flooding is accredited to a weather anomaly (line 10), helping to erase any association with human activity or causes. In his second act of categorization, he distinguishes tidal flooding from flooding caused by sedimentation build-up in rivers (lines 15–18). The one-to-many participation framework is also important here. As noted above, the meeting involved many authoritive representatives who can become origins for future imitations of facts about tidal flooding.

Seven months later on the 24th of January 2023, the political and citizenship office (KESBANGPOL) convened a government coordination meeting around the safety of the region in the face of extreme weather. This story entitled Rakor Pamwil [Pengamanan Wilayah] dalam Rangka Antisipasi Cuaca Ekstrim “A neighbourhood watch coordination meeting to anticipate extreme weather.” involves an important step in the formation of an emergent ideology about tidal flooding.

The excerpt in Table 6 imitates much of the emerging common knowledge found in the excerpts in Tables 2-5. Of note, is the Regent’s categorization of tidal floods as part of the general class of floods (Table 6, line 6). This direct quotation of an authoritive figure in a one-to-many participation framework doing categorizing work as a principle, author and animator essentially erases important context about the causes of flooding. At the same time, it lumps tidal flooding into a category of events caused by extreme weather (line 2). Similarly, the listing of just flooding events rather than a figure disaggregated for precipitation induced flooding and tidal flooding as well as their classification as a natural disaster (lines 9 and 10) solidifies this categorization work, especially because its origins are cited as the Bureau of Disaster Prevention Kendal. In another communique published on the same day, this solidification continued as tidal flooding was categorized as a natural phenomenon by the regent of Kendal in another report about a meeting with all of Kendal’s village heads (Mitigasi dan Penanganan Bencana di Wilayah Kecamatan Kendal “Mitigation and disaster management in the Kendal Regency area”).

Table 6. Tidal flooding as a natural disaster