Epistemology of language as a cause of language shift: Chinese heritage languages in Malaysia
http://latllab.canterbury.ac.nz/epistemology-language-cause-language-shift-chinese-heritage-languages-malaysia/
Nathan John Albury
Department of English
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
nathan.albury@polyu.edu.hk
Abstract
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.
