This article examines how portrayals of Javanese and Indonesian in language policy, the media, and educational settings might lead to enregisterment. This process of association of context to language over time and across space represents knowledge that Indonesians can appropriate in talk. A multi-disciplinary approach is used to examine audio and video recordings of Javanese-Indonesian bilingual talk conducted in meetings held in a government office in Central Java, Indonesia. Although the findings are contrary in some ways to earlier descriptions of Javanese and Indonesian usage - for example, in talk containing code alternation there is no one-to-one relationship between hierarchical social relations and code - nevertheless such contradictions can be accounted for by viewing the enregisterment process as merely providing '' constituting possibilities '' to speakers in situated interaction. (Appropriation, enregisterment, Indonesian, Javanese, social action, social structure).