Epistemology of language as a cause of language shift: Chinese heritage languages in Malaysia

November 3, 2017 4 Comments latl

Epistemology of language as a cause of language shift: Chinese heritage languages in Malaysia

Nathan John Albury
Department of English
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Cite as: Albury, N. J. (2017, December). Epistemology of language as a cause of language shift: Chinese heritage languages in Malaysia. Paper presented at the Third UC Intergenerational Transmission of Minority Languages Symposium: Challenges and Benefits. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5620573

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The heritage languages of Malaysia’s Chinese community are many. Waves of migration from southern China, peaking in the late 1800s during British colonial rule, established a home for various varieties including Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew, Foochow and Hainanese. However, the Chinese community has adopted Mandarin as its lingua franca, albeit Mandarin is not a heritage language of Malaysia. This status creates pressureson families and communities to shift away from their own Chinese heritage language (Wang & Chong, 2011). However, rather than Mandarin only having a socioeconomic or political pull, this paper argues that a Chinese-Malaysian epistemology of language might also explain why Mandarin is valued and heritage language maintenance is jeopardised. Based on folk linguistic data from focus group discussions with Chinese-Malaysian tertiary students across Malaysia, the paper shows the unnegotiable connection between Mandarin and what is perceived as being authentically ethnic Chinese. Mandarin was explained to be the only bona fide mother tongue of the ethnic Chinese, regardless of actual language proficiency, and that other Chinese languages are in fact Mandarin dialects. This helps Chinese-Malaysians to construct a less heterogeneous Mandarin-led identity to legitimise their local Chinese identity (Albury, 2017).

Albury, N. J. (2017). Mother tongues and languaging in Malaysia: Critical linguistics under critical examination. Language in Society, 46(4), 567-589.

Wang, X., & Chong, S. L. (2011). A hierarchical model for language maintenance and language shift: focus on the Malaysian Chinese community. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 32(6), 577-591.

COMMENTS (4)

Amy Budrikis 6 years ago

Hi Nathan,

Fascinating research and a great presentation, thank you! The link between language proficiency and identity is so interesting. My impression from your talk was that the search for a legitimised identity was your own hypothesis for why speakers identify Mandarin as the ‘mother tongue’ (which makes sense) – have you followed-up further or were there other indications in your data that this was likewise the speakers’ reasoning?

I also wanted to clarify – did the speakers only identify Mandarin as their ‘mother tongue’, or did they also identify themselves as Mandarin speakers, regardless of proficiency? I’m thinking of some Indigenous language communities in Australia for example, where people might identify themselves as a speaker of the language for ‘symbolic’ rather than ‘proficiency’ reasons.

john m. 6 years ago

Very interesting hypothesis … definitely food for thought … thanks.

Nathan Albury 6 years ago

Hi Amy!

Thanks very much for your kind feedback and your message! Sorry I am only getting to it now – I have been overseas.

Yes, the link between legitimised identity and mother tongue was my critical take on the data. If it were a research paper I’d set out in more detail the historical and political contexts that make this seem likely. However, I am doing further field work in Malaysia in 2018 to seek community-leader opinions on that hypothesis.

No one mentioned being speakers of Mandarin per se. But I can see what you mean from an Indigenous perspective. I found similar notions amongst Maori in New Zealand. It’s interesting food for thought. I dare say the same would hold true in Malaysia re Mandarin, given the students claimed that their L1 (distinct from their mother tongue) is simply a dialect of Mandarin. More about epistemology and ideology than empirical accuracy! The difference of course being that Mandarin isn’t endangered.

Thanks for your message!

Best wishes
Nathan

Kerry Taylor-Leech 6 years ago

Hi Nathan,
Thank you for a very interesting presentation. This is a huge question and it might be difficult for you to answer here but I’m interested in what you mean by ‘epistemology of language’. From what I’ve read in your work elsewhere as well as in this presentation, I think you use the term to mean the same as language ‘ideologies’. Am I right? Could I ask you to write a little about why you use the term ‘epistemologies’ of language in particular?
Best wishes, Kerry

Epistemology of language as a cause of language shift: Chinese heritage languages in Malaysia

COMMENTS (4)

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