Indonesian vocational secondary education reflects the increasingly
multilingual demands of globalized education and labor market. This study
focuses on two orders of multiple languages that are present in vocational high
schools in Semarang, Central Java. It aims not only to describe the different
orders of languages, but also to suggest that each order represents differing
strategies of dealing with the demands of globalization. One order represents
the state-backed institutional approach, which views multiple languages as
distinct entities and demands students to have monolingual competence in
English, Indonesian, and Javanese to engage in globalization, cultivate nationalism and preserve tradition. The other order represents the market-oriented
way vocational schools meet the demands of globalized industries and labor
markets by directly adopting the multilingual industry register into local
learning processes.