Mother tongues and languaging in Malaysia: Critical linguistics under critical examination

Abstract

This article brings the critical turn in linguistics—with its current scepticism towards essentialised languages and bias for languaging—under critical evaluation. It does so by bringing it face-to-face with the local-knowledge turn in sociolinguistics that investigates local knowledge and local epistemologies, held by language users themselves, to understand sociolinguistic phenomena. This article analyses whether and how the epistemologies inherent to language, mother tongue, and languaging hold relevance in local metalinguistic talk in Malaysia. Focus group discussions with ethnic Malay, Chinese, and Indian youth reveal that languaging through Bahasa Rojak is already firmly embedded in local epistemologies for communicating across ethnolinguistic divides and fostering interethnic inclusiveness. An essentialised view of language, however, remains vital to any holistic sociolinguistic research in Malaysia in culturally specific ways that do not conflict with languaging. The article therefore supports arguments that we ought not to disregard mother tongues in the interests of critical linguistics. (Critical linguistics, mother tongue, languaging, linguistic culture, Malaysia, folk linguistics)*

Beyond economy and culture: language-in-education preferences of Malaysian youth

“…The ideological tension between economy and culture is a critical one in the sense that it, and its associated discourses, hosts power relations, power negotiations, as well as potential, actual and perceived inequalities and stratifications between societal groups (Fairclough, 2013). Questioning whether this tension is indeed at the heart of grassroots discourse, and whether it holds clout outside the realms of dominant discourse, is therefore to be critical of it in terms of being skeptical of its ubiquity (Albury, 2017b). In essence, this amounts to enacting a deliberate caution against assuming that matters of power and inequalitysuch as the economy-versus-culture tension at handare pervasive in actual lived experiences and community perspectives.…”

“…Introducing it as the national languageor indeed as the sole language of Malaysian educationwould be contrary to building the Malaysia nation in quintessentially Malay cultural terms. More than just an ideology, this Malay-centric nation building in the face of ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic diversity became, and has remained, a defining feature of Malaysian political discourse (Albury, 2017b;Noor & Leong, 2013). This discourse includes a narrativealbeit somewhat simplifiedof a social contract whereby the Chinese and Indian pendatang (visitors) would be granted Malaysian citizenship, and therefore unlimited right of abode, in return for accepting political control by ethnic Malays.…”

Language policy, ideological clarification and theory of mind

“…Despite efforts for unity, Malaysia remains fragmented. The Chinese community needed a lingua franca parallel to its many Chinese heritage languages, and the community chose Mandarin rather than Malay (Albury 2017). Tamil is the most commonly spoken language in the Indian community, however, the Indian community sooner experiences shift to English than to Malay (David 2017).…”

Why bother maintaining languages?

“…That is, we need to take action to ensure the continuity of using these dialects in Malaysian society so they do not disappear. Recent studies (Albury, 2017;Ting, 2018;Wang, 2017) have demonstrated favourable attitudes towards Mandarin Chinese as the language representing the Chinese ethnic identity, despite Mandarin Chinese not being a heritage dialect brought by the Chinese when they migrated to Malaya. The question today should not be about which language (Chinese dialects or Mandarin Chinese) the Chinese should speak in Malaysia, as that i s up to the individuals.…”

“…This means that language rights are given to all ethnic groups, including the Chinese, to speak their own dialects and mother tongues. Mandarin Chinese has been used as the language of instruction in Chinesemedium primary schools since the early 20th century and was offered as a subject in secondary schools in the 1960s, which reflects the status of Mandarin Chinese as the Chinese community's lingua franca (Albury, 2017;Wang, 2017) . In recent years, the enrolment rate of Chinese and non-Chinese students in Chinese-medium primary schools has also steadily climbed (Gill, 2014;"Government to present Chinese schools", 2013), which indicates that Chinesemedium education is gaining popularity in Malaysia.…”