Imaginaries, Desires, and Koneksi (Connections): English Language Proficiency for Indonesian Accountants

摘要

This study investigated Indonesian accountants’ imaginaries and desires for English language proficiency in accounting education and workplace contexts. These are framed through the lenses of social imaginary of global education (Rizvi, 2006; Rizvi & Lingard, 2009), social imaginary of globalisation (Steger, 2009, 2010), and desire for foreign language from both social and individual perspectives (I. Piller & Takahashi, 2006). This study used a qualitative research design in which document analysis and semi-structured interviews with accountants, employers, higher education policy makers, English-for-accountancy educators, and accounting educators comprised the data set. The data analysis was interpretive, and made use of both reflexivity of the researcher as an Indonesian English-for-accountancy educator and Bourdieu’s framework of field and capital (1984, 1986b; 1992). Together, these allow for an understanding of the complex relationship between capital and English proficiency played out in real and imagined accounting tasks in both education and workplace contexts.This study reiterates the well-established link between globalisation and the desire for English learning (Coleman, 2016; Pavlenko & Norton, 2007; I. Piller & Pavlenko, 2007). This study also makes the case that there is a mismatch between the English programs in higher education and the English needs required in accounting workplaces. While educators provide students with accounting skills and generally limited and disconnected English communication skills, employers require well developed higher-order skills such as critical thinking, due to the demands of global accounting markets. In addition, this study found that in some cases the symbolic capital of English language proficiency was used as a proxy connoting employment, status, confidence, power, and critical thinking skills, which, sometimes locally associated with globalisation, are rather different constructs. For this reason, English language was much in demand by employers, whether or not there was a genuine communicative need in local accountancy workplaces. Further, as hierarchical norms of Javanese society constrain those with lower social and economic standing, some participants were found to lack confidence to express their thoughts and feelings. It seems likely that the accountants who lack cultural and social capital use koneksi (connections) to mobilise professional opportunities and to elevate their socioeconomic status.