Journal of Asian Pacific Communication - Volume 30, Issue 1-2, 2020

This paper will identify the major trends that can be determined from an overall study of recent language policies across Asia. The trends can be seen across three interrelated themes, namely: the promotion and privileging of one language as the national language as part of an attempt to create a nation state, often in polities that are linguistically extremely diverse; a decrease in the promotion of indigenous languages other than the national language and the neglect of these in education in many countries; and the promotion of English as the first foreign language in education systems, often giving other ‘foreign’ languages a minimal role in education. Possible reasons and motivations for these trends will be discussed and countries where exceptions to these trends can be identified will be illustrated. The aim of the paper will be to discuss these trends and to critically evaluate selected language policies. The paper will conclude with predictions for the future linguistic ecology of the region and for the interrelationships of respective national languages, indigenous languages and English

This paper reports results from a reinvestigation of multilingualism in postcolonial Palau, conducted twenty years after the first study. The first-ever ethnographic language survey conducted in 1997–1998 highlighted the diglossic nature of Palau where English replaced Japanese as the ‘high’ language, while indigenous Palauan remained as the ‘low’ spoken language. It indicated three possible future scenarios: (a) shift from multilingualism to bilingualism after the older Japanese-speaking generation passes away; (b) stability of diglossia with a clear social division between an English-speaking elite and a predominantly Palauan-speaking non-elite; (c) movement towards an English-speaking nation with Palauan being abandoned. The restudy conducted in 2017–2018 provides real-time evidence to assess the direction and progress of change, whilst the ethnographic analysis of recent changes in language policies and the linguistic analysis of teenagers’ narratives reveal the unpopularity of Palauan as a written language and the emergence of their own variety of English.

This paper reports on the organization of Malaysia’s linguistic landscape and the implications of this situation for contacts between providers of medical service and patients. The main purpose of this study is to clarify the position of Chinese private clinics in Malaysian society and to better understand language use between Chinese medical personnel and Chinese patients. The fieldwork focused on clinics in the Klang Valley, Malaysia and was carried out between December 2016 and March 2017. The results reveal the complex linguistic situation in the medical domain reflecting the general hierarchical social structure in Malaysia. Chinese patients have different wishes as regards their preferred language environment in these clinics, but generally prefer to use Mandarin Chinese for interaction with doctors. Medical staff also tend to prefer the use of Mandarin Chinese but also understand the need for dialect based interactions to create a feeling of harmony and belonging. The data are used to clarify existing problems in doctor-patient interaction and contribute to the debate of communication discordance in the healthcare domain.

Bilingualism has always been emphasized in Singapore’s education system. Since 1959, Singapore government leaders have repeatedly stressed that bilingualism is the cornerstone of Singapore’s language policy. Scholars researching language policy and planning in Singapore have also assumed that Singapore has always maintained a consistent stand on bilingualism. This paper cites the case of Chinese language (Mandarin) education as evidence to show how “bilingual” education has undergone significant changes in Singapore by tracing the historical changes and examining how bilingual education has evolved since its implementation. The findings show that the once-compulsory bilingual requirements gave way to differentiated ones in the history of Singapore’s bilingual policy. This finding will help researchers have a better understanding of Singapore’s “bilingual education” today and its position compared to other bilingual education systems in the world.

This study examines the construction of linguistic identities at a time of significant political tension in Hong Kong, with a focus on Hong Kong’s three official languages: Cantonese, the most widely spoken variety of Chinese in Hong Kong; English, the longest serving official language of Hong Kong; and Putonghua, the official language of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which became an official language in Hong Kong after the 1997 Handover of Hong Kong to PRC rule. Given the current political tensions between Hong Kong and the PRC, particularly in light of grassroots political movements such as the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the ongoing 2019 civil unrest due to the proposed introduction of an extradition treaty between Hong Kong and mainland China, the status of Hong Kong’s three languages is particularly interesting. Past research has primarily focused on the perceived value of these three languages in terms of instrumentality and integrativeness. The current study expands previous research by focusing on how the participants construct a linguistic identity of the self vs. a national language identity for Hong Kong, particularly within or in contrast to a national language identity of the PRC.

Three contemporaneous descriptions of Guānhuà from the beginning of the 19th century collectively provide a rich and evocative representation that contains a trove of details regarding the nature of that koine and its relationship to Mandarin and local dialects in the urban linguistic milieu of the late Qīng. The descriptions are those of Gāo Jìngtíng (fl. 1800–1810), Lǐ Rǔzhēn (c. 1763–1830), and Robert Morrison (1782–1834). We find that all three note the existence of two forms of Guānhuà, a northern type, and a southern type. The three authors all present a mix of northern and southern types in their descriptions, though each also gives greater prominence to the southern type. This southern type has a close connection to the southern Jiāng-Huái Mandarin dialects, and takes the dialect of Nánjīng as a primary representative. In overall perspective, these three authors’ descriptions also reveal there was widespread acceptance of, and social accommodation for, linguistic diversity in Qīng China, within which Guānhuà served as the lingua franca that promoted easy communication across China’s vast territory.

This paper reports the results of direct observations of language use and sociolinguistic interviews in Xi’an city, Shaanxi province, China. The data were collected in the autumn of 2018. Direct observations were done in four vegetable and fruit markets providing a data set of 1,708 cases. A sample of market customers was also interviewed resulting in 168 interviews. The interview data made clear that in migrant families, home-town dialects are well maintained, but that for interactions in the city, PTH is preferred as it is for work-related interactions. The observation data showed that ninety percent of interactions between customers and salespeople were performed in either the Xi’an dialect or PTH. These two varieties were used in various combinations confirming wide-spread use of multilingual exchanges. These exchanges are further specified as speech-community-internal interactions, home-dialect exchanges and lingua franca exchanges. Community integration of migrants is clarified through the concept of the discourse communities. The latter structure the modern Xi’an speech community and connect to the national level PTH Koine Community.

As one of the industrial centers of Western China, Xi’an is undergoing a process in which surrounding “urban villages” are incorporated into the urban area. This paper reports on the contact situation between the Xi’an dialect of Beishan Menkou “urban village” and Mandarin Chinese. Data collection started with traditional dialect survey methodology which assumes the dialect to be homogeneous and shared across village members. It requires respondents to read a standard list of Chinese characters. The assumption that the dialect is homogeneous is generally agreed upon for older generations but is doubtful for the younger generation who are exposed to modern education and modern life. We therefore stratified the survey across three generations with six informants, a male and female informants for each generation. The results show that the dialect among the two older generations was still homogeneous and shared, whereas the youngest generations showed influence of Putonghua on the dialect. This resulted in a new dialect variant “Dialect with Putonghua features”, which is recognized by urban village members as such. Female respondents generally were conceived of as speaking the New Dialect more clearly than their male counterparts. We also investigated the impact of the dialect on Putonghua and concluded that among the younger generation, a form of “Local Putonghua” developed, whereas the accented forms used by older generations are a variety of intermediate forms of this “Local Putonghua”. The paper further provides details of the changes taking place in the New Dialect in terms of tones, initials and finals, vocabulary and grammar. Words in local Putonghua were also listed.

This article provides information of language behavior practices and identity change of members of the Fangshang Hui community in Xi’an, China. The study explores how differences in residential space influence language behavior as well as the way in which community identity is perceived. Two areas were studied, the traditional Hui community area “around the mosque” and the new area of modern flats. Data were collected via two-hundred questionnaires and forty sociolinguistic interviews. The survey was administered in 2016. Aspects of language behavior and language choice were related to residential area. The findings show that change of residential area has a significant effect on language choice behavior. Language choice was calculated according to the extent of use in community internal and external interactions. The varieties involved were the Fangshang Hui variety, the Xi’an dialect and Mandarin Chinese. Divergent linguistic behavior is related to altered Hui identity, which divides the community into home-dialect oriented and official-language oriented members. ‘Differential recurrence’ is introduced as the mechanism that creates language and identity change and is presented as contribution to sociolinguistic theory.

The current study reports a quantitative investigation of the linguistic landscape (LL) in Singapore’s Chinatown. The database of the study comprises a total of 831 instances of signs in the form of photographs that were collected in Chinatown. The study finds that English dominates the LL while Mandarin Chinese is ranked as the second frequently used language. The study also identifies significant differences in LL features between top-down and bottom-up signs. Specifically, these differences include what languages are used; monolingual, bilingual and multilingual compositions; code preference; and forms of Chinese scripts. The present study suggests that English now dominates the linguistic landscape of Chinatown. Even though many scholars have described the sociolinguistic situation in Singapore as being ‘English-knowing’, the data shows a shift towards being ‘English-dominant’, suggesting a gradual but sustained dilution of its multilingual ethos. The study also complicates our understanding of the dominance of English in multilingual societies such as Singapore, where a competing dominant language (Mandarin Chinese) may be seen to continue to exert considerable influence on the dynamics of English-dominant language use but, at the same time, whose main function is shifting towards the symbolic rather than communicative.

Cyberbullying refers to aggression that is intentionally and repeatedly carried out in an electronic context (e.g., e-mail, blogs, social networking sites, instant messages, text messages, etc.) against a person who cannot easily defend him- or herself. Cyberbullying is an important phenomenon to research for many reasons. First, although varying prevalence rates have been reported, cyberbullying victimization has been found to occur at frequencies that are cause for concern. Second, many victims of cyberbullying have been found to experience a range of negative outcomes as a consequence. Third, previous studies found that increased Internet usage has led to increased involvement as perpetrators, victims or witness in cyberbullying. It is alarming that a survey conducted by Anis, Rahim and Lim (2012) in Malaysia revealed that 60% of the cases took place in social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. This study aims to examine the coverage of cyberbullying by The Star, which is the English-language daily newspaper with the largest circulation in Malaysia. Framing theory was employed as the theoretical framework, while content analysis was used as the research methods. This study revealed that coverage on cyberbullying in The Star was dominated by the “prevention and intervention strategies” frame. The social problem was also presented as an individual-level problem (episodic framing) as well as societal-level issue (thematic framing). Implications of the findings to the understanding of cyberbullying and framing research were discussed.