Cultural values and ‘cultural scripts’ of Malay (Bahasa Melayu)

Preferences of Malaysian Cancer Patients in Communication of Bad News

“…Most Malaysian people are more reserved in display of emotions (Goddard, 1997;Kim et al, 2001). Thus, it is not unexpected that expression of their emotional reaction was rated lower than other items.…”

English and Malay Text Messages and What They Say about Texts and Cultures

“…In the L1 LR situations, concern is also expressed about making the receiver wait (twice), but also about disturbing the receiver (twice), about the receiver's whereabouts (once) and generally about the receiver's well-being (once). This increased attention to the receiver's feelings in the L1 Malay situations over the L2 situations appears to correspond to Goddard's (1997) observation that in Malay culture it is important to be considerate towards other people's feelings without having to be alerted to these: "Part and parcel of being brought up Malay is learning to anticipate others" wishes and, as far as possible, to accommodate them (Goddard, 1997: p. 194). The increased attention to other people's feelings is what would be predicted if texting in Malay evoked Malay cultural values for the NSMs in a way that texting in English did not.…”

“…However, closer examination reveals that the pragmalinguistic realisations of these strategies did differ, sometimes in important ways. For example, while the difference did not reach significance, NSEs did not express concern or empathy as often as NSMs; and more importantly, the NSMs expressed concern or sympathy significantly more often in L1 Malay than they did in L2 English, in ways that corresponded well to the cultural scripts that Goddard (1996Goddard ( , 1997 has articulated to characterise Malay culture. This suggests that the Malay native speakers were, consciously or not, tailoring their responses to the perceived norms of two different cultures.…”

“…Notably for the current discussion, Goddard (1996Goddard ( , 1997) has carried out a careful analysis of a number of Malay "cultural scripts", based on his own data and on a re-analysis of data reported by a range of Malay and non-Malay researchers of the culture, using Wierzbicka's (1996) Natural Semantic Metalanguage framework. This means that there is a solid foundation for reflecting on possible cultural influences on Malay NNSE apologies.…”

“…", "Erm, pls ignore it"; there were also some instances of humour and of offers of unrelated gifts or favours ("I will buy you dinner", "aku belanja makan"). The Malay users' extensive use of distraction strategies relates well to Malay cultural scripts as described by Goddard (1997). Firstly, all of these ways of distracting allow the apologiser to avoid making direct reference to the offence, which is highly preferable in Malay culture to avoid loss of face for the apologiser.…”