Just Like Conversation?: Speech and Thought Presentation in Indonesian Adolescent Fiction

This chapter examines a remark by an observer of Indonesian adolescent literature that the language in Indonesian Teenlit novels resembles “spoken language,” implying that it is conversational in style. Drawing on approaches to speech and thought presentation initially applied to the study of English language texts, the chapter shows that direct speech and free direct speech are the main techniques employed by Indonesian authors to represent the speech and thought of adolescent characters. It is argued that the observer’s remark is not an indication that the language in Teenlit is indeed like conversational language. Rather, it represents an intuitive judgment that attests to the authors’ effective use of the techniques.