25.4634, Review: Lang Acquisition; Socioling; Text/Corpus Ling: Tan (2013)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-25-4634. Tue Nov 18 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.4634, Review: Lang Acquisition; Socioling; Text/Corpus Ling: Tan (2013)

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Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 16:25:55
From: Steffen Schaub [schaubst at staff.uni-marburg.de]
Subject: Malaysian English

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-5033.html

AUTHOR: Siew Imm  Tan
TITLE: Malaysian English
SUBTITLE: Language Contact and Change
SERIES TITLE: Duisburger Arbeiten zur Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft
PUBLISHER: Peter Lang AG
YEAR: 2013

REVIEWER: Steffen Schaub, Philipps-Universität Marburg

Review's Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

‘Malaysian English: Language Contact and Change’ by Siew Imm Tan is Volume 98
in the ‘Duisburg Papers on Research in Language and Culture’, a series of
monographs and edited volumes dedicated to providing a platform for
interdisciplinary research on the connection between language and culture. The
volume’s main objective is to uncover changes to the lexical and structural
inventory of Malaysian English (ME) induced by contact with other languages
spoken in Malaysia. It argues that the dynamic multilingual situation found in
Malaysia triggers complex processes of contact-induced changes to the
linguistic system of ME. The book includes six chapters and four appendices,
as well as two indices. The first two chapters set the scene for the corpus
study and provide historical background. Chapters 3 to 5 describe the
methodology and results of the study. Chapter 6 goes beyond the corpus and
presents a theoretical model of contact-induced change in ME (with the intent
to be more generally applicable to other postcolonial Englishes).

Chapter 1, ‘English in Malaysia’, sets the scene for the corpus study
presented in chapters 3 to 5. In the first part of chapter 1, the current role
of English in Malaysia is assessed in light of national-language movements and
political debates. The author argues that although English has been removed as
the official language, a consequence of the 1967 National Language Act, “[it]
remains a vital element of the linguistic landscape of Malaysia” (3). This is
in part due to the role of English in Malaysia’s educational policy, which,
however, is subject to ongoing change. The second part of the chapter is a
critical discussion of previous research on ME, in which Tan points out
potential benefits of a contact-linguistic approach to the study of
postcolonial Englishes.  

Chapter 2, ‘The Historical Background of Malaysian English’, is a concise
summary of the linguistic and cultural history of Malaysia. It draws the
picture of a linguistically diverse region, in which intensive contact between
Malay, Chinese, Tamil and other languages had been commonplace long before the
arrival of the English language. It is this “hybridity of the languages” which
has fostered the emergence of, and continues to shape, “a localized variety of
English that reflects the influences of the diverse cultures and languages of
its speakers” (38). 

Chapter 3, ‘The Malaysian English Newspaper Corpus’, describes the compilation
of the database (henceforth: MEN corpus). The author chose to analyze
newspaper language because the bulk of information on ME is based on the
basilectal variety and because little is known about codified Malaysian
English. She argues that newspapers are “a rich source of institutionalized
lexical and morphosyntactic adaptations [...] [which] have become entrenched
in the linguistic system of ME as a result of widespread use” (39). Two
newspapers, the New Straits Times and The Star, were selected due to their
daily publication rhythm and wide coverage in terms of topics. As further
criteria, the articles selected for the MEN corpus had to be written by
Malaysians, and had to be predominantly in prose. In order to widen the range
of topics, articles were never taken from both newspaper editions of the same
day. With this procedure, the final corpus size of approximately 5 million
words (2.5 for each newspaper) is reached using a six-month period of
publication.

Chapter 4, 'Lexical Borrowing and Lexical Creation', presents the results of a
lexical analysis of the MEN corpus. It is a survey of loans and creations from
Malay and Chinese, in Tan’s opinion the two main influences on ME. At the
outset of the chapter, we find a brief discussion of the concepts of lexical
borrowing and lexical creation, in which two criteria found in earlier
definitions are called into question: One, borrowing does not only take place
in strictly monolingual communities that are in contact with a single external
language, and two, those individuals borrowing the terms need not be native
speakers of the external language. The resulting (broad) working definition
defines the different types of lexical borrowing and creation based on Haugen
(1950) with some adaptations by Winford (2003). Tan argues that there is
little phonemic alternation of the imported loanwords, as most speakers are
bilingual and thus proficient in both languages. Also, loanwords often change
their semantic range during the importation process: “Malay words do not
always retain their original meanings in the process of being imported into
ME” (75). The examples discussed throughout the chapter showcase the
complexity of lexical borrowing in Malaysian English and make it obvious that
the exact origin of a borrowed lexical item is not always easily ascertained.
The contact-intensive multilingual situation which has been in place in
Malaysia for centuries has led to borrowings being transferred across several
languages. For instance, the word ‘ikan bilis stock’ (‘stock made by boiling
dried anchovies in water’) is “a lexical item that is modelled on an existing
Chinese term but whose form is a hybrid comprising a Malay loanword and an
English word” (87). With regard to creations, Tan finds that the majority of
neologisms “appear to be motivated by the need to express a local object or
concept using English words” (93). Among the examples presented as evidence we
find words such as ‘paddler’ (‘table-tennis player’) and ‘steamboat’ (‘a pot
of simmering broth with small pieces of seafood’). An important conclusion of
the lexical survey is that borrowings and creations differ with regard to
their attitudinal meanings: While borrowings, especially loanwords, signal
group identity and solidarity with the local cultures, lexical creations,
especially those consisting of only English morphemes, enhance communicative
efficiency with an international audience. Both borrowing and creation are
considered the linguistic outcomes of language maintenance of English by a
multilingual community.

In chapter 5, ‘Group second language acquisition’, the focus is directed
towards syntactic and lexical features of ME that are frequently interpreted
by language purists as results of imperfect learning of English. In an attempt
to bridge the paradigm gap between second language acquisition (SLA) theory
and World Englishes research, Tan chooses to make use of the group SLA
framework developed by Winford (2003), which considers innovative features as
socioculturally motivated choices made by a bi- and multilingual community,
rather than errors, “a sign of incomplete mastery” (102), made by an
individual speaker. In this framework, SLA features are manifested through
“the continuing use of the second language in a sociolinguistic milieu”
resulting in “a common set of localized norms that sets the contact variety
apart from native-speaker varieties” (104). The discussion focuses on two
syntactic types of variation, noun reclassification and multi-verb
constructions, and one lexical type of variation, namely cases of semantic
modification. Her analysis involves a two-fold strategy: One, identifying
instances of variation and mapping them to analogous constructions in the
local languages, and two, investigating the sociocultural factors that
underlie the variation.

In chapter 6, ‘A Theoretical Model of Contact-Induced Change in Malaysian
English’, Tan argues that SLA theory fails to account for a large number of
features found in New Englishes in general, and in ME in particular. She
proposes a model that unites the two processes discussed in the preceding
chapters, “the communal acquisition of the former colonial language, and the
maintenance of the language by a multiethnic, multilingual community” (134).
Both processes, while related, differ fundamentally with regard to their
linguistic outcomes, intent and motivations, agentivity, and historical and
social settings. For instance, the linguistic outcomes differ with regard to
the explicitness of their origin: While outcomes of language maintenance, such
as the introduction of lexical borrowings and lexical creations into a
continuously maintained language (like English), are overt influences of the
substrate languages, the outcomes of group SLA, such as syntactic changes, are
less obviously the result of language contact. Another difference lies in the
agentivity of the features: In language maintenance, the agents are usually
English-dominant individuals, whereas they are typically speakers of local
languages in group SLA. The chapter closes with an outlook on future research
possibilities, such as the application of the model to other postcolonial
Englishes, and investigating the influence of other local languages (such as
Tamil).  

EVALUATION

This book is a compelling study of contact-induced changes in Malaysian
English which contributes to our understanding of the relationship between
language and culture in contact-intensive multilingual communities. Tan
identifies various types of lexical and structural changes to the linguistic
system of Malaysian English induced by contact to Malay and Chinese. One of
the fundamental contributions of the book lies in the detailed discussions of
individual examples taken from the MEN corpus, which demonstrate the
complexity underlying the contact process.

Especially the appendices are a considerable enrichment to the text proper, as
they include two lists of lexical items borrowed in ME, one for each of the
two major influential languages (Malay, and Chinese). Furthermore, they
include two more lists of neologisms, one based entirely on English morphemes,
the other including hybrid creations. Each lexical entry comes with its
etymological origin (i.e. the lexical item in the source language), a
description of its meaning in ME, and at least one example sentence from the
MEN corpus. All in all, the appendices contain about 270 lexical entries.

A further contribution offered by the book is the model of contact-induced
change presented in chapter 6, which, although based on ME, has great
potential for application to other postcolonial Englishes. The integration of
contact-linguistic theory in the study of New Englishes is desirable, and the
framework provided here facilitates the study of Englishes in
contact-intensive multilingual situations.

Although the core of the book is a corpus study, the text contains only
indirect information on how frequent the features are in the overall corpus.
With regard to lexical items, for instance, we are provided with the type
list, i.e. the ca. 270 borrowings and creations identified in the corpus.
However, the token frequencies of these lexical items are not indicated, and
so it is difficult to ascertain whether a certain lexical item is used
commonly, or very rarely, in the news texts. The same can be said about noun
reclassification, one of the two types of syntactic variation discussed in the
book. In a comparative study, Hall et al. (2013) find that the phenomenon of
noun reclassification, despite its prominence in the World Englishes
literature, is highly infrequent overall, and “there is little evidence [...]
that countable usage is emerging as a new norm across or within [Outer Circle]
or [Expanding Circle] varieties” (18).  Nevertheless, although their
importance in everyday use may be debatable, both phenomena - lexical
innovations and noun reclassification - serve as examples of the kinds of
contact-induced change which the author set out to find. Apart from the issue
of frequency, there is also little indication of the pervasiveness of the
features under investigation. Although it is indicated that the lexical and
structural adaptations found in ME are “unevenly distributed across the
various domains of language use” (53), this point is not taken up again in the
in-depth discussion. It would have been desirable to show how the features
distribute across the various text types encountered in the newspaper corpus.

Overall, the study is an important addition to Malaysian English studies, and
exemplifies how contact-induced changes can be accounted for in postcolonial
Englishes. The book will be of interest to scholars of varieties of English,
particularly those focusing on Southeast Asia. More generally, the book is of
relevance to contact linguistics as well as scholars working at the
intersection of language and culture.

REFERENCES

Hall, Christopher J. Daniel Schmidtke and Jamie Vickers. 2013. Countability in
World Englishes. World Englishes 32(1). 1–22.

Haugen, Einar. 1950. The Analysis of Linguistic Borrowing. Language 26(2).
210-231.

Winford, Donald. 2003. An introduction to contact linguistics (Language in
Society 33). Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Pub.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Steffen Schaub is a Research Assistant in the Department of English
Linguistics at Philipps University of Marburg, Germany. He holds a degree in
English Linguistics, Linguistic Engineering and American Studies, and is
currently working on his PhD thesis on noun phrase variation in New Englishes.
His research interests include variation in World Englishes, English as a
global language, corpus linguistics and language typology.








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