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In this talk, the speaker will explore processes of stereotype formation as they relate to Indonesian bureaucrats. His data is made up of commentaries found in an Indonesian newspaper between June 2003 and January 2004. The time period he has chosen is significant because it occurred during the early phases of major political change in Indonesia. Indeed, apart from a period in 1950s, genuinely democratic elections had only become part of the political landscape since 1999, as had politically accountability in the form of civil society, uncensored news reporting, and the voting out of unsatisfactory political office holders. Just as importantly, this period was also the start of a new phase of decentralization in Indonesia. With the making of the 1999 regional autonomy law, partly as means of quelling separatist sentiment, significant financial and human resources were placed in the hands of regional politicians and bureaucrats. As the 2004 presidential elections loomed, these people and their handling of these resources increasingly became the focus of the media gaze. Indeed, calls for cleaner and transparent governance became a daily newspaper topic in a number of Indonesian newspapers with reportage seeming to peak in December 2003. For example, by this time the Central Javanese newspaper had one in five of its daily front-page stories reporting about bureaucrats and their amoral practices. Drawing upon work on semiosis and language ideology formation, the speaker focuses on these reports to explore how commentaries about morality and social activity – such as receiving bribes, laziness, collusion, et cetera – combine to form stereotypes of amoral Indonesian bureaucrats.