A Brief Remark about Cultural Studies 197

A Brief Remark about Cultural Studies,

An Academic Analysis of Text
(A Case Study on KOMPAS’s English Advertisement of
Job Vacancies)
G. Fajar Sasmita Aji

Abstract

The rapid development of CULTURAL STUDIES as a “new

discipline” is closely related to the progress of postmodernism. It may
even be considered the real product of the era. Postmodernism opens
the paradigm of mini narratives instead of grand narratives, and
cultural studies applies the paradigm that “culture” is not an
abbreviation of “high culture”. Text, for cultural studies, is an object of
discussion, and consequently it’s not merely written, because anything
can be text. Cultural studies considers cultural text to be mode of
representation, in which cultural studies sees its form and meaning
make sense only when there is an examination of its intersections in all
complexity. Text is the product of a complex interaction of production,
response, and reception.
The phenomenon that one of KOMPAS’s issues includes the
English-language advertisement of job vacancies proves that for this
daily newspaper globalization, in which English is the identity, is the
paradigm. Some meanings play the roles: English functions not as the
language of communication, but as the identity of globalization
(Gramsci’s hegemony). According to Foucault, the relation of power
and knowledge takes place between the sender and the receiver of the
advertisement.

Key words: cultural studies, postmodernism, representation

For some Indonesian people “cultural studies” may be a new

phenomenon, though for the world it has been well known for several decades.
The term is even disturbing and, perhaps, confusing, because “cultural
studies” takes a singular form of verb and it has no appropriate Indonesian
translation for the term. This discipline is new because, beside the fact that
the current development of the world’s cultural studies only started in 1980,
there is still a problem as to whether cultural studies is a methodological
academic discipline or not1) However, considering cultural studies as a new and
popular phenomenon in the study of literary criticism, this paper will briefly
present the discussion around this field of study. This article is also completed
by demonstrating how the practice of cultural studies is applied within a
discussion that will focus on the English written text of job vacancy

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198 G. Fajar Sasmita Aji

advertisements in KOMPAS. It is hoped that this article will stimulate further

discussion and papers on cultural studies, especially by the individuals in
English literature study program.

Cultural Studies and Postmodernism

Simon During noted that cultural-studies appears as a field of study in

Great Britain in the 1950s out of Leavisism (a form of literary studies) (During,
1994: 2). From this fact, should easily understand that this study is still closely
related to the study of literature, and this consequently means that any
methods one has used with literature may be applied to cultural studies as
well. However, for one or more reasons, people are probably led into
confusion as the object of discussion in cultural studies is not merely a piece of
canonical literature. Even, in its development cultural studies tends to grasp or
to pierce into any kinds of text, because for cultural studies anything can be
text. This condition will surely remind us of the phenomenon of postmodernism
which “completes” the era of modernism.2) Therefore, we may be certain that
cultural studies stands as an extension of literary studies and develops in
accordance with the progression of postmodernism’s philosophical thought.

Postmodernism, for Jean Francois Lyotard, is. … ‘incredulity towards

metanarratives’: ‘Grand narratives’ of progress and human
perfectability, then, are no longer tenable, and the best we can hope for
is a series of ‘mininarratives’, …. (Barry, 2002: 86-87).

This idea can be more clearly understood from During’s point that, ... ‘culture’
was not an abbreviation of a ‘high culture’ assumed to have constant value
across time and space (During, 1994: 2). Modernism’s terms of grand narrative,
(high) culture or literature, canon, and so on, according to Andrew Gibson,
which had the their roots in Russian formalism, Saussurean linguistics,
structuralism, and semiotics, were to insist on the gap between narrative and
world (Gibson, 1996: 69). Since Jean Baudrillard introduced ‘the loss of the
real’ in his book Simulation in 1981, and started that a sign was a surface
indication of an underlying depth or reality (Barry, 2002: 87), there has been a
change of view of narration as representation (Gibson, 1996: 69). Important
questions that may arise are how will identify “its object of discussion,” and
what method will cultural studies apply to disclose a text? This last question is
an appropriate one given the fact that modernism did not answer it
satisfactorily.

Cultural Studies: Its Texts and Theories

As stated before, cultural studies is an extension of literary studies in

which it struggles not to be trapped by the canon created by the modernists,
and as a result this field of study has an extensive range in terms of objects of
discussion and, consequently, theories. Since ‘culture’ is not the abbreviation
of ‘high-culture’, the understanding of text (or narrative, in Andrew Gibson’s
term) is also developed. Simon During said that culture was broken down into
discrete messages, ‘signifying practices’ or ‘discourses’ which were distributed by

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particular institutions and media (1994: 5). Since the understanding of text (in
literary studies) is an object of discussion, cultural studies extends the
paradigm of text to that which is not only written and canonical, because text
is a mode of representation.

Cultural studies looks at various kinds of texts within the context of

cultural practice, that is, the work, production, and material stuff of
daily life, marked as it is by economics and class, by politics, gender,
and race, by need and desire (Robert Kolker, 2002: 120)

The term cultural studies itself, of course, suggests that it is the study of
culture, or, more particularly, the study of contemporary culture (During,
1994: 1).
Historically, the term ‘cultural studies’ was misunderstood as the plural
form by some people in Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies, where cultural studies was firstly accepted by intellectuals. Eventually
the singular form was officially accepted since the understanding of cultural
studies was the discussion of a text from its many aspects.

Even assuming that we know precisely what ‘contemporary culture’ is,

it can be analysed in many ways – sociologically, for instance, by
‘objectively’ describing its institutions and functions as if they belong to
a large, regulated system; or economically, by describing the effects of
investment and marketing on cultural production (During, 1994: 1).

This means cultural studies should be a (cultural) analysis of a text from some
aspects. It examines the form and structure of cultural texts as they create
meaning (Kolker, 2002: 120). Raymond William also noted that this study of
culture is interdisciplinary and broad (Kolker, 2002: 126). For example, in the
discussion of representation there can be 3 aspects covering a text: who
represents, what is represented, and who is the audience (the user). Here, the
text is viewed through different angles, and each angle can be “an idea”.
Because cultural studies sees a complex interaction of production and response
and reception (Kolker, 2002: 127), the completed ideas from those
perspectives become real descriptions of the text.
When a mode of representation simply emerges as an expression of
postmodernism, theories to analyze “a surface indication of an underlying depth
or reality” will involve those methods that are important to understand the
idea/s behind its text. According to postmodernists, such as Gramsci and
Michel Foucault,3) discussion on the representation of culture becomes a
serious activity of cultural studies. There are still many whose ideas greatly
support the base of cultural studies, such as Richard Hoggart (the idea of the
practical and critical attack on modern mass culture), Stuart Hall (the idea of
semiotics: coding and encoding), and also Jacques Lacan (psychoanalysis).
In the next part, as a case study, a simple example of cultural studies
discussion will be presented. This is based on the complex interaction behind
the representation of the following text: KOMPAS’s English Advertisements of
Job Vacancies This representation can be understood as a means of
communication which consists of the message (i.e. the content of the

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200 G. Fajar Sasmita Aji

advertisement), the sender of the message (i.e. KOMPAS for the sake of the
advertisers), and the receiver of the message (i.e. the target audience of those
advertisements). The language, i.e. English, is, in fact, the important key to
this representation, because KOMPAS is a media of communication in Bahasa
Indonesia.

A Case Study: KOMPAS’s English Advertisements of Job Vacancies

Introduction

Globalization as a system in our very modern world may be said to revive

everyone’s awareness that there are many rapid changes of all aspects of life.
This system dissolves all boundaries and limitations, and even discontinues old-
traditions, which most of the countries of the third world are perhaps very
proud to prevent. The progress of modern technologies, especially those
dealing with information, is unpredictably rapid. This enables one to
communicate with or to make contact with someone across the world, since
media technologies are able to overcome “time” and “space” limitations.
People are increasingly exposed to new horizons of possibility. Consequently,
people living in the third world, such as Indonesia, should engage with the
system as well as possible, otherwise, they will be drowned deep inside the
stream. Indeed, time is not like an ocean, but it is a stream.4) While the media
is stimulating and provides opportunities, the capability “to communicate” is
the key to the open world. To communicate means to transfer “discourse”, or
text, from the addresser to the addressee.
According to a theory devised by Roman Jacobson, this kind of text can
also be presented as a diagram of linguistic communication, the structure of
helps to identify the various viewpoints (Selden and Widdowson: 1993:3):

CONTEXT
ADDRESSER MESSAGE ADDRESSEE
CONTACT
CODE

Clearly seen, this text in fact consists of many aspects, and each element is
vital to the representation of the communication. In other words, the above
communication will be successful if the text, the preferred reading from the
sender, is understood by the receiver, either in dominated, negotiated, or
oppositional reading. Here, language, representing the code of text, plays the
main role. Therefore, we may assume that all rapid changes of human aspects
of life are closely related to globalization, the media, and the world’s
languages.
Based upon the above phenomena, this analysis examines one out of
many realities occurring in Indonesia, namely: the English job-vacancy
advertisements in KOMPAS. Here are the examples:5)

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In analyzing the elements of these advertisement, Roman Jacobson’s

diagram of linguistic communication may be applied in the following way. The
addresser, or the sender, is the company or the employment provider, and this
element is PT. Altelindo Karyamandiri, asb_jkt@yahoo.com, and Lazuardi—GIS.
The second element, the addressee, or the receiver, is surely the audience, or
those readers, (of KOMPAS) seeking employment. The next elements deal with
the physically visible written text. The message is the information, i.e. what is
literally written: the kinds of employment, the requirements, and any other
information. Besides the information, Jacobson’s structure also identifies the
code (the English language, i.e. a language which is familiar to both sender
and receiver), the context (the employment and economy: between the
provider and the (future) worker), and the contact (the media, i.e. KOMPAS).
Though the English language is common to Indonesian students, due to it
being one of the subjects in schools, this language remains foreign. English has
been taught in class, but it never replaces the daily local languages. Every day
Indonesian people talk in their mother tongues, and English is only used on
particular occasions by limited number of persons as well. One may even say
that without English he/she still can live his/her life. However, recently the
globalized system seems to have stimulated changes within Indonesian people.
Many are willing to speak and read internationally. Since to learn language is
to live with it, English seems still foreign because the opportunities to live with
it, or to use it are absolutely limited. Therefore, English is still an elite
language for most Indonesian people. As for English advertisement, the
language which functions as the code (see Jacobson’s diagram of linguistic
communication) certainly gives an elite identity to the advertisement because
it includes only elite individuals in the communication, both the sender
(addresser) and the receiver (addressee).
As many can easily understand, finding jobs or employment has become
the most critical problem faced by most Indonesian people, because during the
economical crisis many people have lost their jobs recently and are competing
for the same the employment opportunities. The globalized system, which is
mainly concerned with economic and cultural aspects, may be able to provide
a solution to help them, because positively thinking, we may assume that the
opportunities for employment are certainly wider. On the other hand, the
candidates that compete also grow in numbers and, surely, the criteria for
selecting the chosen employees are more highly standardized. The resolution
of the conflict of interest between the employment providers and the
employment seekers is an important issue to discuss. Though ideally there
should be mutual cooperation, the providers of employment who manipulate
the function of “language”, that is English, ere in a higher position.
The role of media, KOMPAS, is also stimulating because it plays a role as
an agent and contributes greatly to the globalized system. As it is well known,
KOMPAS is one of the biggest media resources in Indonesia. To communicate
the messages/news, it uses the Indonesian language, because the target
market is Indonesian people and, therefore, usually all news and articles are in
the Indonesian language. This newspaper has become important due to the
scope of its distribution area, since KOMPAS is a daily national newspaper.
Also, compared with other media, KOMPAS seems to be the only newspaper
issuing English job-vacancy advertisements in bulk.6)

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Discussion: Data and Facts

This is the first fact.7) It shows that the job-vacancy advertisements,

written in English, in KOMPAS do not have a particular space/page but they
appear, together with those written in the Indonesian language, in the spaces
provided for job vacancy advertisements. This phenomenon may lead
readers into the consciousness that the English language, for KOMPAS, is not
so special, and consequently readers should treat it so. As Paul Ricoeur
suggested, it is not reality creating discourse, but discourse, or text, creates
reality. The reality is that globalization exists. The following are other
examples8) of the above fact.

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The companies sending the advertisements can be grouped the foreign

and domestic companies. This is from a foreign company.9)

As the fact before, this phenomenon seems to strengthen the idea that text
can create reality, and the reality is that the globalized system pierces
boundaries and limitations. For KOMPAS, in this case, there is no difference
between foreign and local companies.
Nevertheless, unfortunately there can be found English advertisements
which do not use the correct English grammar. The examples are10)

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The fact that not all the English advertisements are grammatically correct may
prove that the main reason the advertisements communicate in English is not
to use English as a language, but English as the sign of international
(Gramsci’s) hegemony. English gives identity to the world of globalization.
Dealing with KOMPAS as the element of contact, the grammatically
incorrect grammatical English advertisements may prove that KOMPAS has no
influence on the written message. As a well-known national and popular form
of mass-media, KOMPAS expresses the identity of Indonesia, and certainly it
will do the best to preserve this “dignity”. Therefore, we may conclude that
for KOMPAS it is not the English language (of those advertisements) which is
the main concern, but probably the number of them, because this is about
gaining revenue paid by the companies posting those advertisements. It seems
the quality of language does not define the cost of issuing an advertisement.
Further, let’s examine the meanings brought by those English
advertisements of job vacancies. As “text” those advertisements surely have
two “meanings” which are encoded, by the provider, and decoded, by the
seeker. In the design process preferred readings are encoded (Hall, p. 270).
There must be some reasons why an advertisement should be issued in English
and by the media KOMPAS. As the identity of globalization the English language
is important, and, therefore, English competence is absolutely normal. It is
taken for granted, that those trying to apply for the vacancies are people who,
at least, are able to read English advertisements. By this assumption, we may
assume that this is the first step (out of many) by which the employment
provider minimizes the cost of testing the English competence of the job
seekers. It could be the way to discouraged those who speculatively apply for
the vacancy, because they would certainly think twice before applying if their
English was bad. This means that the advertisements aim at selected
candidates, i.e. those who can understand English text. Clearly, here
Foucault’s bright idea of the relationship between “power” and “knowledge”
plays a role. The provider has the power to define the knowledge that the
seeker must posses. Also, this fact leads the seeker to the reality (created by

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the advertisement) that the knowledge (in English) of the provider has defined
his/her power, such as company status.

Conclusion

English is an amazing tool for the sake of globalization. Though the

concept of the system is to dissolve national and local boundaries and to
discontinue “the old traditions”, the use of English as the globalized system
creates local spaces since the language is foreign for some local people. Even,
the globalized system exercises hegemony, not through content but form. The
function of language as a tool of communication may shift because of the use
of English. The language uplifts the dignity of the users by creating a “status”,
and the language also maintains it. Though the role of media is only one of 6
aspects (in Jacobson’s diagram), it greatly supports the point that is signified
by the message of the addresser.

_______________________

Notes

1. Simon During, in his introduction, even said that, “Yet, as will become clearer after
the essays have been read, cultural studies is not an academic discipline quitelike
others. It possesses neither a well-defined methodology nor clearly demarcated
fields for investigation..” (Simon During, 1994)
2. The term ‘postmodernism’ was used in the 1930s, but has only become current since
1980s (Peter Barry, 2002: 81-86). Where the project of modernity is defended, this is
in the face of the leading contentions of postmodernism …(Raman Selden and Peter
Widdowson, 1993: 174).
3. From the early 1970s, culture was analyzed through the concept ‘hegemony’ (by
Antonio Gramsci). Hegemony describes relations of dominations which are not
visible as such. Meanwhile, Michel Foucault was to think of as a form of
‘governmentality through the educational system (During,1994: 5).
4. adapted from the quotation in Hyllus Maris and Sonia Borg’s Women of the Sun
(1985: 140). It is about the Aboriginal people facing the reality of the white intruders
into their land.
5. KOMPAS, Dec. 31, 2005
6. KOMPAS, Jan. 14, 2006, issued 133 out of 825 English job-vacancy advertisements.
7. KOMPAS, Dec. 31, 2005
8. KOMPAS, Dec. 31, 2005
9. KOMPAS, Jan. 14, 2006
10. KOMPAS, Jan. 7, 2006

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References

Barry, Peter. Beginning theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural

Theory. Second Edition. New York: Manchester University Press, 2002.
During, Simon (ed). The Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1994.
Gibson, Andrew. Towards A Postmodern Theory of Narrative. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1996.
Kolker, Robert. Film, Form, and Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
Selden, Raman and Peter Widdowson. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary
Literary Theory. Third Edition. Kentucky: The University of Kentucky
Press, 1993.

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