Errington explores linguistic evidence of social change among the traditional priyayi elite of Surakarta in south-central Java. Employing data from texts, interviews, observed speech, and questionnaires, he shows a progressive leveling in the language used to denote traditional status differences, and he demonstrates how perceptions of speech styles reflect etiquette and the views of the users.
Errington suggests that a reciprocal assimilation process changes the way members of Java's traditional elite deal with each other in a modern urban milieu. The argument and the material on which it is based will be of interest to historians, linguists, anthropologists and other concerned with social and political change in southeast Asia.