This paper revisits the tension in sociolinguistics between the linguistic capital associated with languages of socioeconomic mobility, and the cultural and identity value of local languages. With Malaysia as a case study, the paper shows that although this economy-versus-culture tension may be a go-to ideological paradigm in sociolinguistics for…

Language problems and language barriers are challenges facing not only immigrants but also minorities and people in rural/semirural areas. This study examines individuals' bi- and multilingual repertoires, language practices and attitudes in a Hokkien-speaking community in Kangar, a semirural town of northern Malaysia bordering Thailand. Through…

Linguistic landscapes have proven to be intriguing foci of sociolinguistic research in and of themselves, given language in public spaces indexes broader sociolinguistic processes, struggles, and policies. This paper, however, trials linguistic landscape as a methodological tool for research that solicits and analyses metalinguistic talk --…

This paper focuses on code-switching (CS) in postcolonial (P-C) classrooms (e.g. Africa, Asia and Asia-Pacific) where the use of English has increased not only as a subject matter, but also as the language of instruction across all subjects. CS, a common behaviour among bilinguals and polyglots, refers broadly to the alternation between two or…

This article looks at language use and attitudes in Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia through a survey conducted among 88 university students for each country. The focus of the article, however, is on the expanding use of English, particularly as far as media consumption is concerned, relating this with issues of globalisation and linguistic and…

This paper reports the findings of a survey of 100 mothers of Chinese children aged between 6 and 36 months from middle to upper-middle socio-economic backgrounds in Penang, Malaysia. The findings include the language backgrounds of these mothers, their contextual uses of multiple languages and their language choices with their children. Through…

Explains individual and institutional code and style choices as locally motivated pragmatic selections within the specific contexts of the workplace settings and the larger Malaysian sociolinguistics context of English as the normative choice of Malaysian business and Malay as the lingua franca. (Author/VWL)

Examines the position of Tamil as the language of an ethnic minority in Malaysia and Singapore, placing the issue of Tamil and language maintenance within the larger sociolinguistic milieu in the two countries and drawing conclusions about the role of language policy and planning in the determination of linguistic outcomes. (SM)