HUMSS - Azirah Binti Hashim

English in Southeast Asia: Transcending National Boundaries

Southeast Asia is a complex region with high levels of linguistic diversity as well as convergence. Historically, the region has been a site of cultural developments, migrations, cooperation, conflicts, colonial powers and foreign governments which have all left their traces especially their languages. Ethnic mobility from India, China, the Middle East and other countries and regions has been a common phenomenon bringing with it high levels of contact and change in the region’s language habitat. With the formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Southeast Asia has become a large regional political body striving to form a more integrated polity resting on ‘three pillars’, the political, economic and sociocultural. As this dynamic geopolitical entity has made English its foremost working language and as Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and the Philippines have been Anglophone colonies, the region and ASEAN raise a range of linguistics issues which are of interest in themselves, for the geo-political region and globally and contribute to the study of English and other languages. This presentation will focus on the status and growth of English within different national environments and the developing regional or ASEAN context. It will outline the history of English in the context of existing habitats, highlight linguistic developments which unite or distinguish different varieties of English in the region and attempt to develop a regional angle of English in which national varieties are bound together by regional features across countries.