English in Southeast Asia and ASEAN

Transformation of Language Habitats

Azirah Hashim, Gerhard Leitner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351590273
• Subtopic: English Language
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

English in Southeast Asia and ASEAN embeds English in its various regional Southeast Asian and political ASEAN language habitats. Addressing the history, developmental stages and contacts with other languages, it provides in-depth information on the region and its political organization. In doing so, it analyzes the geo-political division of the region between former Anglophone and non-Anglophone colonies and shows that this distinction has led to considerable differences in the status and texture of English. This analysis includes the role and impact of American English in mainland and maritime Southeast Asia to highlight the linguistic properties of English and its linguistic and sociopolitical development, English used in specific domains, language policies and concludes with the future of English and future challenges. This book therefore provides an integrative survey of the various roles of English in ASEAN member states and studies the transformation of entire language habitats, including the major national and regional languages that participate in this process. It also explains how new societies emerge with their conflicting identities and their aspirations to act regionally or even globally and is a valuable resource for scholars and students in the fields of World Englishes, Asian Studies and those interested in language contact, policy and planning.

1 English and local languages in Southeast Asia and ASEAN

Southeast Asia (SEA) extends over a large maritime and continental area with diversity in demography, religions and languages. The continental part is situated on the east coast of the Bay of Bengal, on the one hand, and the west coast of South China Sea, on the other. It forms a considerable landmass south of China with the countries of Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia and Singapore. Further south, in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea is a chain of several thousand islands comprising from west to east Indonesia, and further east another chain from north to south, the Philippines. Indonesia’s largest island is Sumatra in the west, then Java and a series of smaller islands eastward. Borneo – with Eastern Malaysia and Brunei, the final SEA country to be named here – is situated in the north of Java. East Timor is at the eastern tip of the island of Timor and acquired independence from Indonesia in 2002. Politically, there are the ten countries just mentioned, all of which belong to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), except for East Timor (see Map 1.1). Some geo-political and linguistic accounts of the region include Hong Kong in SEA or, reciprocally, SEA is seen as a part of East Asia. The reasons for this refer to colonial European history in Asia. We will treat SEA as a geographic and geo-political term for the ten countries and ASEAN as its contemporary geo-political term for the region.

Map 1.1  Southeast Asia and ASEAN

In this Introduction, we will deal with both SEA and ASEAN to outline the major themes of this book. Given the history of the region, one should expect a tremendous amount of multilingualism (that will be surveyed in the next chapter) and be intrigued that so many outside languages have played a considerable role in the development of the various languages and the (national) language ecologies or habitats. English is the most powerful external language today, though it will be considered an ‘Asian’ language in this book (see Kirkpatrick 2014). It is natural to focus on English – its roots, its development, the rise of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and its future along with its potential impact on global English. We will highlight the role of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) as this regional organization is so relevant to the spread and future of English.

SEA has always been at the crossroads of migrations, religions, trade and politically powerful countries. A succession of migrations several thousand years ago created the ethnic, religious and, above all, linguistic landscape with five language families that overlap in different parts of the region and connect it with other regions of Asia and Oceania. That geo-political and linguistic landscape accounts for the language base that colonial languages and English have entered and will be described in the following chapter. From the 4th to the 13th century, Java and coastal areas along the South China Sea were part of an extensive Asian economic, political and cultural network that connected southern China with Southeast and South Asia, the Middle East and East Africa (Wade 2009, 2010). Indian kingdoms such as the Srivijaya kingdom, whose centre is believed to have been in eastern Sumatra, and religions like Buddhism and Hinduism expanded into SEA and the Pacific. Along with migrations they created Indian minorities in, e.g., the Malay polities, and majorities like in Fiji. Indian languages and especially Sanskrit and Pali became important in a number of countries across SEA. Indian influence continued till modern times and impacted on Laotian, Thai, Khmer and Malay. The Sanskrit writing system was used and adapted locally from the early 8th century. In Malaya it was replaced by a modified Arabic script called Jawi in the early 14th century. Indian inscriptions are scarce but are the few sources that testify to the old form of Malay and the pervasive Indian influence on Malaya (Asmah 1982).

Chinese political power, its religions and languages expanded from two directions. One is very old and was a southward movement into SEA. China controlled a good part of Vietnam for nearly 1,000 years. Southern Chinese languages such as Hokkien made inroads into that part of SEA. China also gained influence through its participation in the Asian trade network referred to later and through migrations that led to minorities in a number of coastal regions on the way.

Arabic is another incoming Asian language though it came much later. Its first influence came during the pre-Islamic period as Arabs controlled a good deal of the trade and the ports on the way back to the Middle East. Arabs constituted ethnic communities such as in Singapore and Indonesia. The spread of Islam added a second dimension to its use in SEA’s south which is still important today: the religion. Its influence went deep and a modified Arabic script called Jawi replaced the earlier Indian script of Malay in the 14th century. It was superseded by the Roman script in the 17th century.

Following explorations in the 15th century, European trade and colonization began in the 16th century when Portugal conquered Malacca in 1511. Portuguese was now used in various locations. In the 17th century, the Netherlands created numerous trading posts on Indonesian islands and wrought control from the Portuguese. That introduced Dutch even though it was largely confined to Dutch enclaves. Its wider spread came later. Missionary activities were often carried out alongside trade and colonization. That brought Catholicism to Spanish, Portuguese and French occupations and Protestant denominations to British and American colonies. Malacca is a case in point. It was a Portuguese possession up to 1641, when the Dutch took over. In 1824 it became British and was amalgamated with Penang and Singapore in the Federated States of Malaya. Java changed hands between the Dutch and British twice before the Dutch-British Treaty of 1824 ended the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. In the 19th century, English (as well as other European languages) were firmly implanted in SEA (see Chapter Three). The northern region, i.e., Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, formed French Indo-China, while former Burma became British after three Anglo-Burmese Wars in the19th century. The Philippines was Spanish until after the Spanish-American War in 1898 when it was taken over by the United States of America. Their role was larger in East and Southeast Asia and will be referred to in Chapter Three. Thailand was the only country that could avoid colonization thanks to successful policies with regard to Britain, the Netherlands, France and the United States. It was also the first country where English played a role as a foreign language in the 19th century.

SEA became a war site in the two World Wars to obstruct and end Germany’s activities there and in the 1940s, those of Japan. The role of Great Britain largely ended temporarily with the British defeat in Singapore. SEA became an anti-Communist buffer during much of the Cold War and a site of numerous local conflicts. The Chinese Revolution and the Soviet Union created fear and Russian and Mandarin became important foreign languages in Indo-China. Opposition, independence movements and decolonization created the countries of today. Indonesia was the first country to become independent at the end of World War II in Asia in 1945. East Timor is the last country when it could secede from Indonesia in 1999. While some countries maintained close ties with former colonizing countries like Great Britain, others entered partnerships with, for instance, China and the Soviet Union. Over the years such partnerships weakened as independence movements and global institutions like the UN, the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund became more prominent. Moreover they are partly responsible for the growth of the English Language Teaching (ELT) industry across SEA. Some of the developments referred to are very old and some have influenced English in the 19th century and are recorded in, for instance, the Oxford English Dictionary, Hobson-Jobson (1886) or in the records of the East India Company (EIC), which are housed in the British Library (n.d.) (see Chapter Seven). That leads into the last period to be mentioned presently.

Before the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines had formed ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN 1967). Like the European Union, ASEAN was founded as a peace and development project open to other SEA countries. When wars had ended, all remaining SEA countries were gradually admitted as members. SEA nations and ASEAN soon entered into global interactions which strengthened the integrative pull especially when one of its pillars, the sociocultural one, was focused on. ASEAN opted for English-only as its working language without discussion, a decision that was formalized in its charter in 2007. No SEA language or other former colonial languages like French were ever seriously discussed as alternatives or additional options for widening the language regime.

From a contemporary European (or, possibly, global) perspective, interest in SEA ranks well behind that in China and Japan politically, economically and educationally. Until the end of the 20th century, SEA countries were considered developing countries while China and Japan had already achieved high growth rates and had become members of the developed world. Some countries have traditionally been of interest. As for Germany, Indonesia attracted attention because half of the early government ministers had been educated at German universities and some spoke German. While this is no longer the case, a traditional focus on that country can easily be seen, for instance, in the statistics of student and professorial mobility with German universities. For the Netherlands, Indonesia was a former colony and tens of thousands of Indonesians came as immigrants. Singapore has attracted a lot of attention as the most successful SEA country. And so has Malaysia now. Malaysia has been sending many government-sponsored students to the UK for further studies since the 1970s and many Malaysians have their children educated in schools there or in the USA, New Zealand and Australia. In France, the descendant countries of Indo-China have retained attention and led to current political and cultural activities. And so have the former British colonies in Britain and the Philippines in the United States.

On a very different level, tourism and the export of raw materials have become major promoters of contacts and activities that spread knowledge about the region worldwide. The rising middle-income classes and a highly educated elite, of course, also continue to generate contacts. Thailand has ranked high in trade since the early 18th century. Now, Myanmar and Cambodia are picking up. Vietnam became successful after the Vietnam War (1955–1975) and so did Laos and Myanmar after the defeat of nationalist movements. The region as a whole, however, was not on the agenda and it took up to the 1970s for the European Union to intensify its links with ASEAN (see Ziegenhain 2018). Formal relations between the EU and ASEAN go back to 1977 and have continued to deepen ever since. ASEM, the Asia-Europe Meeting founded in 1996, includes SEA and is a cornerstone in intergovernmental relations between these two continents. ASEF, the Asia-Europe Foundation, followed in 1997. The economic and the higher education domain are central domains of cooperation. And while English is the accepted working language, a number of European countries are making efforts to promote their national languages in a multiplicity of ways. France, for instance, has created French cultural agents with Alliance Française, especially in former Indo-China. Germany has its Goethe Institutes and a number of party political foundations which became active in various SEA countries. Together, they support the use of English in bilateral and European-ASEAN interactions and promote other European languages in education. Very important are the spin-offs of ASEAN into the societies of member states as they are deepening its relationships with ASEAN’s programs. The ASEAN University Network and the ASEAN Regional Forum are two such examples. Beyond a European angle, we must mention a global angle related to China’s increasing assertiveness and its OBOR program. Its dubious claim that the entire landmass bordering the South China Sea belongs to it makes SEA a critical area for the security of and free trade with the region and threatens SEA and ASEAN’s regional development. English will no doubt be further advanced and strengthened.

Turning to languages, independence and nation-building required the selection and codification of one or more languages as national ones and the development of acquisition strategies in educational policies. ASEAN as a regional body took different decisions from the European Union and avoided a conflict with and between national languages by not taking one language for each member as an official or working language. ASEAN chose English as the only official and working language and its practices have created a push inside its member states to promote English for all citizens. This has led to a language hierarchy significantly different from the European Union. We will return to that topic in several chapters, especially Chapter Eight. But let us anticipate by saying that some languages like Thai, Malay or Burmese have had a long history in their environments, have writing systems of their own, and have interacted with other SEA languages, with Chinese, Indian languages and, of course, with colonial languages in modern times. Local languages reflect the intricate patterns of the changing political and cultural climates in which they have developed.

Very different forms of English have emerged in SEA from the ones it inherited from its colonial past (see Chapter Four). English has had, we have said, a history going back to the early 17th century when the British East India Company set up factories on its route from South Asia to Southern China and Japan. English was implanted but the British merchants and administrators preferred Bazaar Malay, a pidginized form of Malay, in the ports and in negotiations. A standardized form of Malay was used with the sultans and in official contacts. In order to compare the development of English between the countries of SEA and to have an understanding of the ASEAN region, Kachru’s Three Circle Model is normally used. None of the ten countries in question counts as a native English-speaking country and so none are in the norm-developing Inner Circle. Former Anglophone colonies, i.e., Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei (British) and the Philippines (American), are located in the Outer, potentially norm-developing Circle. The remaining ones, i.e., Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand, are in the Expanding Circle where English is taught as a foreign language. But ASEAN is not a conglomerate of varieties in two circles, as many authors have argued time and again (see Leitner 2014). It is a region where a lingua franca variety of English is emerging (Azirah, Tan and Kaur 2016; Azirah 2019; Kirkpatrick 2011; 2012), in conjunction with localizing strategies. One can recognize the gradual emergence of a regional and expanding variety due to the increasing contact between speakers of English and institutions in the region (more on that in Chapters Five and Seven).

Our study will attempt to embed the implantation of English in the local habitats of SEA. Chapter Three will describe the history of English in the region. Subsequent chapters will look at its manifestations, but will distinguish localization (in various countries) proper from its use as a lingua franca in ASEAN. We will return to sociopolitical issues in Chapter Eight. We will be selective in that we emphasize more on Malaysia and its vicinity. We draw on published research and the body of research is largest on English in Singapore, followed by Malaysia. Brunei is picking up; though with a population of below 500,000 it cannot acquire the impact of Malaysia or of the Philippines.

2 The transformation of local language habitats

Southeast Asia (SEA) is a complex region, we stated above, and it is hard to see that it has a natural geographic unity of a sort. The ten countries of SEA (with East Timor 11) have both a high level of linguistic diversity and convergence, and have sometimes been separate, almost isolated polities. There were conflicts, wars and alliances in conflict. Today, all countries are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which aims to develop a ‘socio-cultural pillar’ by 2025 to complement economic and security integration. Language is not mentioned there explicitly but can be inferred from statements about cultural pluralism as SEA hosts several thousand languages that are spoken by a current population of over 600 million people. After independence each country chose one language (like Malaysia, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand) or up to four languages (like Singapore) for national or official functions, which amounted to creating an asymmetry in linguistic space for the sake of nation-building. That topic will be dealt with more extensively in Chapter Seven.

To describe the linguistic diversity in detail is impossible here. There are some comprehensive linguistic studies of the mainland part (Vittrant and Watkins 2019) and of the maritime area (Enfield 2011). There is none of the entire region. Concepts like language family and Sprachareal (language areal) have been suggested and they may help bring some order for an overview of local language habitats. Vittrant and Watkins (2019) discuss the concept of Sprachbund (or Sprachareal) at some length in relation to language contact in the first chapter of their book. The concept was first introduced by N.S. Troubetzkoy to describe similarities between languages with no common origin but which were located in a common geographic region. It is not merely a linguistic concept as Thomason (2001) pointed out:

[Linguistic areas] arise in any of several ways – through social networks established...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of maps
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 English and local languages in Southeast Asia and ASEAN
• 2 The transformation of local language habitats
• 3 History of English in Southeast Asia
• 4 Texture and features of English
• 5 Language contact and the development of English in Southeast Asia
• 6 English in specific domains
• 7 English as a lingua franca in ASEAN
• 8 Language policy and language education
• 9 Future of English and future challenges
• Bibliography
• Index