Is English an Asian Language? 9781107134683, 9781316471166

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Is English an Asian Language?

Asia is now home to some 800 million multilingual speakers of English (more than the total number of native English speakers), and how they use English is continually evolving and changing to reflect their cultural backgrounds and everyday experiences. Can English, therefore, be considered an Asian language? Drawing upon the Asian corpus of English, this book is the first comprehensive account of the roles, uses and features of English in Asia, encompassing several different varieties of Asian English. Chapters cover the distinctive linguistic features of English in different settings, such as in law, religion and popular culture, as well as the use of local rhetorical, pragmatic and cultural styles and its use as a lingua franca among Asian multilinguals. It also examines the role of English in education – from primary through to higher education – and consider the implications of this for other languages of Asia. andy kirkpatrick is Professor in the Department of Languages, Humanities and Social Sciences at Griffith University. Publications include World Englishes (CUP 2007), English as a Lingua Franca in ASEAN (2010), Trilingual Education in Hong Kong’s Primary Schools (2019). He is co-editor of The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Asian Varieties of English (2020), and co-editor of the Routledge International Handbook of Language Education Policy in Asia (2019). wang lixun is Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies at the Education University of Hong Kong. Publications include Introduction to Language Studies (2011), Academic Writing in Language and Education Programmes (2011), Trilingual Education in Hong Kong Primary Schools (2019), and Identity, Motivation, and Multilingual Education in Asian Contexts (2020). He is co-editor of the Springer book series ‘Multilingual Education’.

Is English an Asian Language? Andy Kirkpatrick Griffith University

with Wang Lixun The Education University of Hong Kong

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107134683 DOI: 10.1017/9781316471166 © Andy Kirkpatrick with Wang Lixun 2021 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2021 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-107-13468-3 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

To Iris, For Lucy and Cody

Contents

List of Figures and Tables Introduction

page viii 1

1 How English Came to Asia

12

2 The Asian Corpus of English

30

3 Asian Varieties of English vs English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in Asia

53

4 What Do Asian Multilinguals Talk about When Using English as a Lingua Franca?

71

5 The Transfer of Features and Communicative Strategies

90

6 Borrowing Words and Writing Asian Englishes

111

7 Non-standard Forms in Asian Englishes and ELF

128

8 English in Law, Religion and Popular Culture

148

9 English as a Language of Education in Asia

162

10 Implications for English Language Teaching in Asia

179

11 Conclusion

196

References Index

202 217

vii

Figures and Tables

Figures 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 3.1

Screenshot of ACE online homepage page 38 Screenshot of the Browse Corpus interface 39 Screenshot of transcript of a speech event 40 Screenshot of playing sound recordings in ACE online 41 Screenshot of the Contact Us page 42 Screenshot of Search ACE Online page 42 Screenshot of concordances for ‘so’ in the Leisure sub-section of ACE 43 Word Right collocation pattern of the search word ‘so’ 44 Further contexts of a concordance line shown on the screen 46 Screenshot of the Web concordancer for searching the tagged ACE corpus 47 Screenshot of the concordances for the verb ‘record’ in the Malaysian sub-corpus of ACE 48 The identity-communication continuum 54

Tables A B 1.1 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 5.1 6.1 6.2 7.1 viii

Knowledge of English in outer circle Asian societies Knowledge of English in expanding circle Asian societies English in China Sample topics of speech events in ACE Top twenty most frequent action/mental verbs in ACE everybody/everyone/nobody/he/she/it + verb (non-marking vs marking of third person singular in ACE) The semantic domains of Arabic loans Communicative strategies of ELF users in ACE Examples of Gayspeak Examples of changes between loanwords and the source words Case endings for stan (stone) in OE

10 11 17 34 49 50 59 109 118 119 129

Figures and Tables

7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 9.1 9.2 10.1

Common core of non-standard forms Features of Texan Southern English Top candidates for morphosyntactic angloversals Instances of marking and non-marking of English tense among L1 speakers of Malay/Indonesian Marking or non-marking in formal/informal contexts Verb forms in a subset of ACE The national language and English in education in ASEAN Proportion of population aged five and over able to speak selected languages by year The national language and English in education in ASEAN

ix

131 132 135 138 138 142 163 168 180

Introduction

A few years ago, I was standing on a landing of the fire-escape stairs of the hotel where I was staying in Bern. It was the evening of Swiss National Day, 1 August, and the fire escape provided an excellent vantage point for viewing the fireworks. I was not alone, as many of the hotel guests were taking advantage of the view that the fire-escape stairs offered. Next to me were two women in their early twenties and judging by their conversation, they had only recently met as they were asking each other which country they came from, how long they had been in Switzerland and what their immediate plans were. I gathered from overhearing their conversation that one came from Tokyo and the other from Shanghai. What was remarkable about their conversation was not so much what they were talking about but that they were conducting the conversation in English. They were using English as a lingua franca, as this was the language common to both of them and the one in which they therefore chose to communicate. A couple of years before that, I was looking around a Thai temple or Wat in Bangkok and stopped to listen to a group of monks chanting their prayers. Just as I was about to move on, the monks finished their prayers, stood up and strolled out of the hall in which they had been praying. Despite each of the monks being Asian, they were chatting to each other, not in Thai, as I had assumed they would be, but in English. They were also using English as a lingua franca, the language that these monks shared in common, suggesting that at least some of these monks came from outside Thailand and were not speakers of Thai. These two vignettes of the use of English as a lingua franca between Asians exemplify how the use and roles of English across Asia has been growing. In this book, I want to briefly trace the history of how English has developed in Asia and then to discuss and illustrate how English is being shaped and reformed to suit the cultures and needs of these Asian users of English. I will therefore consider how new Asian varieties of English such as Indian, Filipino and Singaporean have developed and give examples of the distinctive linguistic and cultural features of these new Englishes. I shall also discuss how the use of English as a lingua franca has grown across Asia and indicate how the use of 1

2

Introduction

English as a lingua franca differs from the use of a particular variety of Asian English. Typically, the use of a specific variety of Asian English is more about the speaker’s wish to present their identity among people who share the same linguistic and cultural backgrounds, while the use of English as a lingua franca is more about communication between people who come from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. I will also consider how the perceived need for English throughout Asia has influenced the curriculum of schools and universities throughout the region and ask whether this increase in the teaching and learning of English is not endangering a number of local languages. I hope that by the end of the book the reader will have an answer for the question posed in the title of the book. Before proceeding, let me explain how I came to be interested in Asia and in how English has developed there. I had, I believe, an idyllic childhood. I arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,1 when I was eighteen months old, in the company of my mother. We had travelled from England to be reunited with my father, who had taken a job as a mining engineer with a company called Harper Gilfillan. We lived in a bungalow at 208 Ampang Road, then set in spacious grounds shared by the ‘big’ house at the far end of the driveway. This is unrecognisable now as 208 Jalan Ampang is now heavily built up and just up the road from the twin structures of the Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur’s main landmark, visible from miles away. I spent the next few years playing unhindered and unshod in the wonderful gardens with the children of the compound. These comprised the two expatriate children of the big house, Richard, a year older than me, and Sarah of about my age, and the children of the servants. It was a carefree existence as we explored the gardens – which seemed like jungle to us – and which contained more than fifty coconut palms – and we communicated in an odd mix of Malay, Hokkien – the dialect of Chinese spoken on the compound – and English. This idyllic life continued until I was seven when I was sent home to boarding school in England, where life was somewhat different. I remember hating wearing the school uniform – which required, not surprisingly, socks and shoes, items of clothing I was not used to, having spent most of my childhood to that date running around in bare feet or flip-flops. The food served up at the school was, to me, mainly inedible. I was given special dispensation against porridge after I threw up after the first two times I was required to eat what to me was a foul, congealed, lumpy mess of goo. The ‘knowledge’ expected of a boy (it was an all-boys preparatory school) was not knowledge I had acquired. For example, on being asked in class who the Prime Minister was, I replied ‘Tunku Abdul Rahman’. This answer was treated with disbelief. ‘No, I was told. It’s Harold Macmillan.’ At that age I did not possess 1

It was still Malaya then as I arrived in 1951, and Malaya received independence to become Malaysia in 1957.

Introduction

3

the wit to say that he was not the Prime Minister merely the Prime Minister of Great Britain. My man was the Prime Minister of newly independent Malaysia. I then spent the eight weeks of each summer holidays in Malaysia and then Singapore, which is where my father had later been posted, until his untimely death in 1964, whereupon my mother decided to return to live in England. While only lasting for eight weeks a year, my annual trip back out to the Far East kept me familiar with the languages and the ways they were used, often mixed together, as is the natural way with multilinguals. Thus when it came to wanting to choose what to study at university, I first wanted to opt for Thai and Malay, but there were no undergraduate courses of that type in the United Kingdom in 1968, so I ended up studying Chinese at Leeds University. As a postgraduate student, I went on to study Chinese literature at Fudan University in Shanghai and did my doctorate in Chinese Rhetoric at the Australian National University. In addition to working at Australian universities, I have worked in tertiary institutions in Myanmar, Singapore, China and Hong Kong. So, my interest in languages in Asia and how English is being reshaped by its Asian speakers is almost certainly a product of my upbringing. I have been studying Asian varieties of English and the use of English as a lingua franca in Asia for many years, and this book is an attempt to pass on, in an accessible style, what I have learned in the hope that it will be of interest and use to the reader. As a way of introducing the idea of English as an Asian language, I shall start by reviewing an article written by the person whom most see as the founder of the discipline of World Englishes, Braj Kachru. In his article ‘English as an Asian Language’ (Kachru 1998), he starts by pointing out that English is usually discussed as being a language that is in Asia but not of Asia. He uses the metaphor ‘hydra-headed’ to describe English and notes that it is not uncommon to be asked ‘Whose language is English anyway?’ (1998: 91). He goes on to say that ‘initiatives in planning, administration and funding for the acquisition and spread of English are primarily in the hands of those Asians who use English as an additional language’ (1998: 95). In taking this position, he opposes the proponents of the theory of ‘linguistic imperialism’ (e.g., Phillipson 1992) who argue that the increasing spread of English is the direct consequence of a plot hatched by the governments of English-speaking countries and their allies, such as the British Council and Voice of America, in spreading the gospel, as it were. It is Kachru’s belief, however, that world Englishes have a ‘plurality of centres’ (Kachru 1998: 97) which provide the grammatical norms and models for their acquisition. In the context of Australasia, Kachru argues that first language varieties of English (Australian and New Zealand English, for example) and second language varieties of English (Singaporean and Filipino, for example) provide the norms and models

4

Introduction

for their speakers. These speakers use an institutionalised variety of English as a result of their colonial histories of having been ruled and/or settled by English-speaking countries. In contrast, speakers of English in countries which were not ruled by English-speaking colonial masters use a performance variety of English and they take their norms and models from institutionalised varieties of English. They are, in Kachru’s terms, ‘normdependent’ users of English. I shall later argue that the extraordinary increase in the use of English in countries such as China means that they may become norm providers of their own variety of English rather than being normdependent upon an external variety such as British English. Kachru then asks if there is an Asian canon of English. He believes that there is and he lists five uses of English in Asia (1998: 102–3): (i) as a vehicle of linguistic communication across distinct linguistic and cultural groups; (ii) as a nativised medium for articulating local identities within and across Asia; (iii) as one of the Pan-Asian languages of creativity; (iv) as a language that has developed its own subvarieties indicating penetration at various levels; and (v) as a language that continues to elicit a unique love–hate relationship that, nevertheless, has not seriously impeded its spread, function and prestige. Kachru further argues that once a language has established its autonomy, it is actually liberated, and its ‘liberated’ uses and functions have to be separated from its non-liberated uses (1998: 103). We must shift the focus of enquiry, he proposes, from a monolingual paradigm to ‘paradigms relevant and appropriate to multilingual and multicultural societies’ (1998: 104). And citing the example of African and Asian writers of literature in English such as Soyinka, Rao and Thumboo, he concludes that one major strategy is to ‘acculturate the language in our contexts of use on our terms, on Asian terms’ (1998: 105). In this book, I shall investigate the development of English(es) across Asia, consider their roles and illustrate ways in which they have ‘acculturated’ English. I hope to show that the Englishes of Asia have indeed fulfilled each of the five uses identified by Kachru. Chapter 1 will provide an introduction to how English was introduced and then developed in various settings across Asia and how distinct Asian varieties of English were formed. Chapter 1 will also provide an account of how English came to be ratified in the 2009 Charter of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as the sole working language of the group. Chapter 2 will introduce the Asian Corpus of English (ACE) (http://corpus .ied.edu.hk/ace/), a corpus of naturally occurring English as spoken as a lingua franca by Asian multilinguals. A wide range of speech events have been included in ACE: interviews; press conferences; service encounters; seminar

Introduction

5

discussions; working group discussions; workshop discussions; meetings; panels; question-and-answer sessions; and conversations. The transcribed speech events are categorised under five major settings: education (25 per cent), leisure (10 per cent), professional business (20 per cent), professional organisation (35 per cent), and professional research/science (10 per cent). The ACE corpus was collected to act as a complementary corpus to the Vienna Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) (www.univie.ac.at/voice/), collected by Barbara Seidlhofer and her team at the University of Vienna. VOICE is a corpus of naturally occurring English being used as a lingua franca in primarily European settings. The ACE corpus data have been tagged following the transcription conventions originally developed by the VOICE project team. These tags enable us to obtain a clear picture of the transcribed data (e.g., pauses, overlaps, pronunciation variations & coinages), and make ACE and VOICE comparable. Users can browse the corpus data according to the five types of setting (as listed previously) or according to the various data collection sites (Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Japan, Mainland China and Taiwan). A Web concordancer has been developed which allows users to search any word/phrase in ACE, and collocation information of the search word/phrase will be illustrated. Other than searching the corpus, users can also listen to the sound recording of certain ACE files, and the transcripts are shown line by line on screen synchronously with the sound played. These functions have made it possible for researchers and teachers/learners to explore the ACE data for various research and pedagogical purposes. Chapter 3 discusses and contrasts Asian varieties of English with the use of English as a lingua franca in Asia. Examples from selected varieties of Asian Englishes are presented. These examples will show how Asian varieties of English are typically code-mixed varieties as speakers use their shared linguistic resources as markers of identity. It must be underlined that the great majority of users of Asian varieties of English have learned English as an additional language and are speakers of other languages. Their variety of English will include linguistic features and items from their speakers’ other languages. For example, the colloquial variety of Singaporean English typically consists of English mixed with linguistic items and features from local languages such as Malay and varieties of Chinese. An Asian variety of English is used by people who share the same cultural and linguistic repertoires. These Asian varieties of English are then compared and contrasted with the use of English as a lingua franca in Asia, illustrating, for example, how code-mixing from other languages is reduced as the primary function of the use of a lingua franca is communication across cultural and linguistic boundaries. Chapter 4 provides empirical evidence for the claim that English is an Asian and Asia-centric language. Using data from ACE, topics that Asian multilinguals typically talk about when using English as a lingua franca are

6

Introduction

described and illustrated. A preliminary study into this, using a small subset of the ACE corpus, found that common topics were, perhaps not surprisingly, Asia-centric. The topics discussed ranged from the relatively light-hearted – such as comparing in a jokey fashion the various qualities of different brands of Thai and Malaysian rice and the importance of coffee to the Vietnamese – to more serious topics such as the treatment of Burmese refugees, ways of raising Islamic finance and the prejudice shown towards ethnic minorities in Hong Kong (Kirkpatrick, Patkin & Wu 2013). This chapter will also introduce the fundamental concepts of register and levels of formality by illustrating how different topics call for different speech styles and types of interaction. The chapter will include a critical discussion on the implications of the topics commonly discussed by Asian multilinguals for English language teaching, in particular their implications for relevant materials and curricula. It will be argued, for example, that topics found to be commonly discussed by Asian multilinguals could provide excellent materials for Asian multilinguals who are learning English to use with their fellow Asians. Chapter 5 will provide further evidence that English is an Asia-centric/Asian language. Again using empirical data from ACE and from a selection of Asian varieties of English, how local and regional cultural and pragmatic norms are realised in the English being used by Asian multilinguals will be illustrated. Questions to be considered include ‘Do Asian multilinguals use their own cultural and pragmatic norms when using English?’ For example, I will show how discourse markers can be transferred from the speakers’ first languages to mark levels of formality and informality while using English. I also investigate whether there is empirical evidence for the idea that there is an ‘Asian’ way of communication which is marked or characterised by dialogue and consensus (the English translations of two key words in Malay, namely musyawarah and muafakat [Curley & Thomas 2007: 9]). It so happens that ACE has recordings of consular officials discussing this very issue and this will be analysed and discussed. The presence or otherwise of local or regional cultural conceptualisations (Sharifian 2010) in the English as a lingua franca of these interactants will also be considered. For example, Kirkpatrick and Xu (2012) have shown that Chinese speakers typically prefer to preface requests with reasons or justifications for such requests. This contrasts with native speakers of American English who typically prefer to make the request early in the interaction (usually softened with some form of moderation) and then provide reasons if required. So, a question to be examined is whether request patterns in ACE tend to follow a ‘reasons for request ➜ request’ pattern or a ‘request ➜ reasons for request’ pattern. This chapter also provides a description and discussion of the communicative strategies of Asian multilinguals. Questions to be addressed include whether there is evidence to support the claim that users of English as a lingua franca seek cooperation and strive to ensure

Introduction

7

communicative success. Is there evidence to support the existence of an Asian/ ASEAN way based on dialogue and consensus? Is there evidence to support the existence of face-threatening and face-challenging behaviour in certain contexts? In an earlier study which used a subset of the ACE corpus, Kirkpatrick (2010b) identified fifteen speaker and listener strategies adopted by Asian multilinguals while using English as a lingua franca. Speaker strategies included spelling out the word, repeating the phrase, being explicit, using paraphrase and the avoidance of idiomatic references. These findings supported other findings using more European-based data, illustrating that English as a lingua franca is characterised by ELF speakers’ adoption of specific communicative strategies to ensure successful communication and the preservation of their fellow interlocutors’ face. The editors of a review of trends in ELF research conclude that these trends ‘evidence the supportive and cooperative nature of interactions in ELF where meaning negotiation takes place at different levels’ (Archibald, Cogo & Jenkins 2011: 3). House has spoken of the ‘solidarity of non-native ELF speakers’ (2003: 569). Findings pointing to the cooperative nature of ELF interactions have also been reported by Firth (1996) and Meierkord (2012). Firth identified strategies such as the ‘let it pass’ principle, whereby speakers, instead of seeking immediate clarification when they did not understand what a speaker was saying, would let it pass, hoping, often correctly, that the meaning would become clear later. Meierkord’s findings indicate that ‘the conversations are characterised by their participants’ desire to render the interactions normal and to achieve communicative success’ (2012: 15). Once again, it will be argued that context is the crucial variable, as, in a more recent study, Kirkpatrick, Subhan and Walkinshaw (2014), it was found that there were occasions when speakers, far from seeking to preserve the face of their fellow interlocutors, were happy to threaten their interlocutors’ face. For example, in the courtroom exchanges in the ACE data, perhaps not surprisingly, direct, confrontational questioning and bald-on-record disagreement are common currency, where winning the argument supersedes the desire for interactional comity. Chapter 6, using data primarily from Asian varieties of English, will describe, illustrate and analyse the use of words and idioms from the speakers’ first languages when they use English. It thus considers further evidence for English used in these contexts being an Asia-centric or Asian language. Questions to be considered when dealing with distinctive lexical features include the role of words/idioms from the speakers’ first language and/or code-mixing and a comparison of their use when speakers are using their Asian variety of English and when English is being used as a lingua franca. If code-mixing is used, what might the reasons for this use be? If code-mixing is not used, what might the reasons for the lack of use be? It is generally expected that, as with varieties of English everywhere, speakers will use words

8

Introduction

from local languages which reflect local phenomena of one sort or another. Developing the arguments presented in Chapter 3, I shall consider the hypothesis that, when English is used as a specific Asian variety among people who belong to the same or similar speech communities, it will be natural for them to code-mix and use many words from their respective languages as these languages are shared and interactants can be expected to understand them. This use of language is also a key marker of identity. On the other hand, when English is used as a lingua franca, it might be expected that speakers would use fewer words and expressions from their first languages because these might not be known by their fellow interactants. A preliminary study using ACE data (Kirkpatrick & McLellan 2012) supported this hypothesis, but work on the VOICE corpus showed a frequent use of the speakers’ first languages (e.g., Pitzl 2012). Chapter 6 will further investigate the possibility that, when the speakers’ languages are cognate and belong to the same language families – as is the case with many European languages – there may be more of a tendency to use words from a variety of first languages. But where the languages are not cognate and belong to different language families – as is the case with many Asian languages – this tendency may not be so prevalent. Chapter 6 will also provide examples from Asian literatures written in English to show how Asian writers have ‘stretched’ and ‘adapted’ English to reflect their cultural values and lived experiences. Chapter 7 will investigate the use, environment and frequency of nonstandard morphosyntactic forms in English when used (i) as a specific variety of Asian English and (ii) as a lingua franca by Asian multilinguals. Major questions to be considered when dealing with distinctive morphosyntactic features include an investigation into the role of the speakers’ first languages in the creation of distinctive/non-standard forms or whether there is evidence for the existence of vernacular universals. In a preliminary study based on a subset of the ACE corpus, Kirkpatrick and Subhan (2014) considered the hypothesis that the speakers’ first language or substrate would be significant in their use of non-standard forms. The specific question addressed was whether those speakers whose first language was Malay, a language which does not mark for tense, would therefore tend not to mark for tense when using English. A study of a group of speakers of varieties of Malay did not support the hypothesis. On the contrary, it was found that, in formal occasions, first language speakers of Malay very seldom failed to mark for tense; and even in more informal situations, they marked for tense more often than not in a ratio of 3:2. This illustrates the importance of corpora for investigating the comparative frequency of distinctive morphosyntactic features and the crucial significance of context and levels of formality. The results here supported recent findings of scholars such as Sharma who has argued convincingly that ‘the degree and distribution of a given feature must be understood in relation to the

Introduction

9

substrate before any universal claims can be made’ (Sharma 2009: 191). The findings also supported those of Hall, Schmidtke and Vickers (2013: 15), who, in their study of the occurrence of countable mass nouns, concluded that the first language substrate influence was not high and that the countable use of mass nouns, while being widespread and attestable across speakers of different languages, was also infrequent, with a maximum occurrence rate of only 3.5 per cent. Chapter 8 considers a selection of functions that English is playing in Asian countries. I first consider the role that English is playing in the legal systems of many post-colonial countries, even though these countries have been independent for several decades. The recent widespread protests in Hong Kong against a proposed law that would allow the extradition of people from Hong Kong to face the court system of Mainland China is a prime example of how people may still regard the colonial legacy of English law to be more transparent and just than local systems of law. This chapter also looks at how English has been adopted for use in religion. For example, I report on how certain schools attached to mosques in Indonesia now teach courses in ‘English for Islamic Values’, providing further evidence of how its new users are adopting English for their own cultural practices and purposes. Chapter 8 concludes with examples of how English is being used in popular culture across Asia. Chapter 9 will consider the role of English as a language of education across the region, including brief reviews of its role in primary, secondary and higher education in selected settings. It will review and critically consider language education policies that have been adopted in selected countries. The second half of the chapter will turn to a review and critical discussion of the increasing use of English as the medium of instruction in higher education across universities in the region. The chapter will conclude by arguing that language education policies need to be considered holistically and be coherent from primary to tertiary education. Otherwise there is a danger of English replacing local languages as languages of education and scholarship. Chapter 10 will present a proposal based on the findings and data discussed earlier for a lingua franca approach to English language teaching for the region. This will extend the proposal made by Kirkpatrick (2014 & 2018) in which principles of the lingua franca approach to English language are presented and discussed. The lingua franca approach is proposed as a way of ensuring that English is successfully learned by Asian multilinguals while, at the same time, ensuring the preservation of local languages as languages of education. The concluding chapter will first draw together the empirical findings and return to the five uses of English in Asia identified by Kachru. I will argue that English is developing new domains of use and that an increasing number of Asians are becoming highly proficient speakers of English and are shaping English to their own uses and cultures, allowing them to develop a sense of

10

Introduction

ownership of the language. English is now an Asian language, both in and of Asia. This conclusion comes with no sense of triumphalism. On the contrary, the chapter will conclude with the prediction that, unless regional governments develop holistic and coherent language education polices, it is likely that English will continue to increase its range at the expense of local and regional languages. The region needs to find a way in which English can co-exist with regional languages. As argued in Chapters 9 and 10, delaying the introduction of English while students develop literacy and fluency in their respective national language and, where practical, their home language, is a possible solution. It may seem counter-intuitive, but delaying the introduction of English will result in a win-win solution through which students can graduate from secondary school, proficient in English and fluent and literate in their respective national language and their home language. Before moving to Chapter 1, I need to first to add a caveat and then indicate just how many users of English there are in Asia today. First, the caveat: Asia is a vast area and I cannot cover all of it. I shall focus on selected countries of South Asia, East Asia, and on Southeast Asia, in particular the ten countries which comprise the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Second, just how many users of English are there in Asia today? Estimating numbers of speakers of English in Asia is an inexact science, but the most accurate figures are provided by Bolton and Bacon-Shone (2020). Using census and language survey data they compiled figures for speakers of English in specific countries of Asia. Tables A and B below are adapted from Bolton and Bacon-Shone (2020). Outer circle countries are those which were previously colonies of English-speaking nations and where English retains some institutional role. Expanding circle countries are those countries where English has traditionally been learned in school as a foreign language. The third circle, the

Table A Knowledge of English in outer circle Asian societies Society

Current estimates

Approx. total of English speakers

Singapore Philippines Brunei Hong Kong Malaysia Pakistan Sri Lanka† Bangladesh India Total

80% 65% 60% 53% 50% 25% 25% 20% 20%

3.1 million 66.7 million 0.2 million 3.9 million 15.5 million 50.9 million 5.3 million 32.6 million 260.0 million 438.2 million

Introduction

11

Table B Knowledge of English in expanding circle Asian societies

Society

Current estimates

Nepal Macau China Myanmar (Burma) Japan South Korea Taiwan Thailand Vietnam Cambodia† Indonesia Laos Total

30% 28% 20% 10% 10% 10% 10% 10% 10% 5% 5% 5%

Approx. total of English speakers 8.5 million 0.2 million 276.0 million 5.2 million 12.5 million 5.1 million 2.4 million 6.5 million 4.6 million 0.8 million 13.0 million 0.3 million 335.1 million

inner circle countries, are those where English is the main language and where it is spoken as a first language, as in the United States or the United Kingdom. This ‘circles classification’ was made by Kachru (1992) and we shall be referring to it throughout the volume. Adding the number of people who know English from both tables, we get a total of 773.3 million. This figure vastly exceeds the number of first-language users of English in the United Kingdom and the United States, with populations of 66 million and 324 million respectively. And it needs to be remembered that many British and Americans do not speak English as a first language. So, while stressing that it is difficult to obtain accurate figures of the number of Asians who use English, we can safely conclude that there are more Asian users of English than there are native speakers of it. I now turn to consider the development of English in Asia.

1

How English Came to Asia

In this chapter, I shall first look at how English came to the two major population centres of Asia, India and China, and show how the development of English in these two countries differed and why. I shall then look at how English spread through Southeast Asia and explain how it was that, in 2009, the Charter of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – the ten countries comprising, in alphabetical order Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam – officially made English the sole working language of the group, thereby choosing an ‘outside’ language to be the sole working language of it. I shall argue that one reason why it was possible for ASEAN to adopt English was because it was actually felt to be, in some sense, a language of the group and not necessarily external to it. The British presence in India has been divided into three phases (Gilmour 2018: 3). The first, from around the beginning of the seventeenth century, consisted of scattered settlements dealing with trade. The second phase, which lasted from the 1740s to the 1850s, was characterised by conflict – the Seven Years’ War took place between 1756 to 1763 – and expansion, and was the period when the East India Company became the major power in India. The third and final phase ended with the independence of India in 1947 (and the establishment of Pakistan) and Britain’s subsequent withdrawal. The impetus for the first phase came when, towards the end of her reign in the early years of the seventeenth century, Queen Elizabeth I gave a trading monopoly to a group of British traders who formed the East India Company (EIC). The EIC first started trading at settlements (known as factories) in Calcutta, Bombay and later Madras (Gilmour 2018). It is important to note that the British were just one of several European nations trading in India. For example, the French had a settlement at Pondicherry, a settlement which remained under French control until as late as 1954. The presence of the EIC did not mean that many British people went to India during the first phase. In 1700, there were only some 100 British people in Bombay. The period of conflict during the second phase when the EIC was fighting local wars against ‘Indian princes and French colonists’ (Gilmour 12

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2018: 16) saw an increased British presence in India, but this was primarily comprised of soldiers; by 1790 there were 18,000 British soldiers stationed in India. Missionaries, who normally followed hard on the heels of traders and which was the case in China as shall be related, were banned from India until 1813, as the EIC felt they would cause ‘trouble with their zeal and their enthusiasm for conversion’ (Gilmour 2018: 17). In 1813, however, the British House of Commons passed a motion to promote ‘useful knowledge and religious and moral improvement’ among the ‘native inhabitants of India’ (Kachru 1983: 20). By 1850, the numbers of British people in India who were unconnected to the military and the EIC had risen to 10,000. This may seem a lot, but, compared to the population of India, represented a tiny blot. As Gilmour notes, ‘So sparsely were they spread that many Indians seldom saw an Englishman unless they happened to live in a city or near a barracks’ (Gilmour 2018: 20). It is worth remembering that, at this time, India included Burma – now independent Myanmar. A frontier officer stationed in Burma reported that there were only two people with whom he could speak English, an Indian doctor and his Burmese clerk. Many of the civil servants who worked for the British government in the Burmese part of India were from India itself and this is reflected in the Burmese word for chair, kalahtain, which literally means ‘foreigner sit’. The term foreigner, or kalah, originally referred to Indian civil servants, as these were people who sat on chairs. As indicated, the British House of Commons and Government had started to take more notice of India by the early 1800s. In 1833, the charter of the EIC was renewed but altered its position significantly from being primarily concerned with trade to becoming administratively responsible for the governing of India on behalf of Britain (Graddol 2010). The Education Act of India redirected funds that the EIC had been required to spend on education from supporting Hindu and Muslim education and the promotion of local literature to supporting Western education and the teaching of English. The Education Act was a key stage in the adoption of English as an official language of India, as it became the language of administration and the law courts. The division between the ‘Anglicists’ – those who argued for the teaching of English and a Western education – and the ‘Orientalists’ – those who favoured the teaching of local languages, philosophies and literatures – remains to this day. An early promoter of the Anglicist position was the British politician Thomas Babington Macaulay. It is worth quoting at some length from his 1835 Minute on Indian Education: To sum up what I have said, I think it is clear that we are not fettered by the Act of Parliament of 1813; that we are not fettered by any pledge expressed or implied; that we are free to employ our funds as we choose; that we ought to employ them in teaching

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How English Came to Asia

what is best worth knowing; that English is better worth knowing than Sanskrit or Arabic; that the natives are desirous to be taught English, and are not desirous to be taught Sanskrit or Arabic; that neither as the languages of law, nor as the languages of religion, have the Sanskrit and Arabic any peculiar claim to our engagement; that it is possible to make natives of this country thoroughly good English scholars, and that to this end our efforts ought to be directed . . . Whoever knows [English] has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth, which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations. It may be safely said, that the literature now extant in that language is of far greater value than all the literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together. The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language, we shall teach languages, by which, by universal confession, there are not books on any subject which deserve to be compared to our own; whether, when we can teach European science, we shall teach systems which, by universal confession, whenever they differ from those of Europe, differ for the worse; and whether, when we can patronise sound Philosophy and true History, we shall countenance, at the public expense, medical doctrines, which would disgrace an English farrier, – Astronomy, which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school, – History, abounding with kings thirty feet high, and reigns thirty thousand years long, – and Geography, made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter . . . In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general views I am opposed. I feel with them, that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population. (Sharp 1920: 57 ff.)

In short, Macaulay proposed the teaching of English and a Western education to a select elite group of Indians, who would then govern the country on behalf of Great Britain. And this is more or less what happened. The importance of English in administering the country was recognised in independent India’s 1950 constitution which made English an associate official language. The constitution also put a time limit of fifteen years on this use of English, however. It had been a fervent wish of Ghandi and many others of the independence movement, including Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, that English would eventually be removed from India and that Hindi – or rather Hindustani (contemporary Hindi is formed from a number of Hindustani vernaculars spoken across north India) (Graddol 2010: 52) – would become the national language. But this was viewed with great concern by speakers of Indian languages other than Hindi who campaigned fervently for the retention of English (Kirkpatrick 2016). For example, students at Bangalore University adopted the slogan of ‘Kill kill Hindi. Kiss kiss English’ (Nault 2012: 80). In response to these widespread protests, the 1967 Official Languages Act

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allowed English to continue to be used ‘for the purposes of the Union, business in parliament and centre regional communications involving a non-Hindi speaking region’ (Nault 2012: 80). The current so-called three-language formula, a formula which has seen several iterations over the years, calls for Hindi-speaking children to also learn English and one other Indian language, and for non-Hindi speaking children to learn their first language, Hindi and English. In fact, most Hindi speakers learn only English as well as Hindi, and most non-Hindi speakers prefer to learn English ahead of Hindi. But, as Mohanty points out, English has become ‘the most common second language in all the states’ (2019: 333). Thus, while English had only been taught to an elite during colonial times, local demand for English has burgeoned for many reasons, including its perceived necessity for obtaining decent employment. Arguments about which language should be used as a medium of instruction (MoI) in schools mirror the arguments presented by the Orientalists and Anglicists. And, as noted previously, the Anglicists have the upper hand. The national knowledge curriculum (NKC) in 2009 recommended the teaching of English from the first year of primary school in order to ‘democratise English among the masses’ (Mohanty 2019: 333) and only 30 out of more than 617 universities or institutions of higher, technical or postgraduate-level education provide instruction in or allow students to use a language other than English (Mohanty 2019: 334). This is despite serious concerns that most students’ currently low level of English proficiency means that they are unequipped to benefit from an Englishmedium education (Graddol 2010). An example of its democratisation, has been the adoption of English by the Dalit (or so-called untouchable class), which sees English as a tool for uniting the class and presenting a united front, ‘a parallel perhaps with the role that English played for those who originally fought for India’s independence’ (Graddol 2010: 65). Yet, despite this move to democratise access to English across India, the divide between those who have access to English and those who do not is probably increasing because the private schools which offer EMI are affordable only by the relatively wealthy. Access to English can magnify the gap between the rich and the poor (Graddol 2010: 25). As will be shown, this is not restricted to India alone. I conclude this section of the chapter by quoting from Graddol’s Afterword in his book English Next: India. Throughout India, there is an extraordinary belief, amongst almost all castes and classes, in both rural and urban areas, in the transformative power of English. English is seen not just as a useful skill, but as a symbol of a better life, a pathway out of poverty and oppression . . . How can the benefits of English be enjoyed without damaging the potential that India’s multilingualism brings, as a source of unique identity in

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How English Came to Asia

a globalised world, of cultural richness, and an important future economic resource? (Graddol 2010: 124)

There is no doubt that English is in India and of India. It is impossible, however, to accurately say how many people in India speak English. The figure suggested by Bolton and Bacon-Shone quoted in the Introduction was 260 million, but other estimates range from 55 million to 350 million (Graddol 2010). It is indeed possible that China, despite having no colonial institutional legacy of English, has more speakers of English than India (Bolton & Bacon-Shone’s [2020] figure for English speakers in China is 276 million). It is China to which I now turn. English in China As Bolton (2003) notes, the first recorded contact between the British and the Chinese took place sometime in the first half of the seventeenth century and was described by an English trader of the time in a book entitled The Travels of Peter Mundy. After this early contact, a Chinese pidgin English developed as Western traders and Chinese compradors or middlemen conducted business. After the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century, trade increased, conducted around Canton and the other treaty ports and so, therefore, did the use of this pidgin English. The arrival of English in China is also closely linked to developments affecting the Chinese language and changes in attitudes towards it which took place during the twentieth century. A number of scholars were critical of the classical form of the Chinese language, arguing that its complexity made it difficult for ordinary people to become literate. Indeed, it has been estimated that only 5 per cent of the population were literate at the beginning of the twentieth century (Woodside & Elman 1994). The early years of the twentieth century and then the coming to power in 1949 of the Chinese Communist Party saw a number of changes to the language. First, the classical wenyan style was discarded in favour of the colloquial baihua, thereby making the language far more accessible. This was followed by a number of major language reforms including the simplification of certain characters (Taiwan and Hong Kong still retain the traditional characters) and the introduction of a romanisation system, pinyin, designed to be used in primary schools to help Chinese children learn to read Chinese. These reforms have proved overwhelmingly successful with some 80 per cent of the population now literate. The understanding that language reform was necessary was linked to developments in Japan. At the turn of the century, Japan was seen by China as a modern and powerful nation. China had been defeated in the first Sino–

English in China

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Japanese war of 1894–5. One reason given for Japan’s comparative modernity and power was believed to be Japan’s introduction of syllabaries, katakana and hiragana, to complement the Chinese characters in use in Japanese writing (Li & Lee 2004). Hence the Chinese move to the simplification of their own writing system. China’s earlier painful defeat in the Opium Wars of the 1860s underlined to them how technologically weak China was (Hsu 1976). As well as the need to reform Chinese itself, reformers realised that English was also important as it was seen as the language of technology and scientific knowledge. Thus, the 1860s saw the establishment of the government-sponsored Tongwen Guan (School of Combined Learning), where English and other subjects considered useful for modernisation were taught. Missionaries also established schools and universities and English became seen as a passport for lucrative employment (Feng & Adamson 2019). This led to English (or the West) being seen as providing access to practical knowledge while Chinese provided access to Chinese cultural roots or essence, as summarised in the slogan, zhongxue wei ti, xixue wei yong (learning from China for the essence, learning from the West for practical knowledge). This was commonly shortened to the ‘ti-yong’ debate and still underpins the learning of English and Chinese in China today, as illustrated in Table 1.1. Schools and universities which taught English were established towards the end of the nineteenth century, primarily by missionaries, often with the support of forward-looking Chinese reformers (Hu & Adamson 2012). Adamson (2002, 2004) has described the more recent history of English education in China. Table 1.1 shows key dates in the twentieth century of the history of English in China. It should be noted that, with the setting up of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, Russian, the language of the PRC’s major ally, became the first foreign language taught. But with the collapse of the Sino–Soviet alliance in the mid-1950s, English resumed the place of the first foreign language taught, until

Table 1.1 English in China 1911–23 1923–49 1949–60 1961–6 1966–76 1976–82 1982–present

Intellectual revolution; English for ideas/philosophy English for diplomacy and interaction English for science and technology First renaissance – English for modernisation and international understanding Cultural Revolution; English speakers are suspect Slow recovery; English for modernisation English highly desirable and strongly promoted in school curricula (Adamson 2002: 232).

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How English Came to Asia

the time of the Cultural Revolution when English was regarded as the language of the enemy, the language of the ‘running dogs of imperialism’, in the colourful PRC terminology of the time. This message did not get through to most Chinese however. I was a student in China in the mid-1970s, and was constantly approached by Chinese students asking whether we could speak together in English so that they could practice theirs. These requests became so frequent that they became an irritation, and I developed a strategy of apologising and saying that I was Albanian – Albania at that time was one of China’s few ‘foreign friends’ – and that I did not speak English well. Demand for English intensified with the re-ascendancy of Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s and the subsequent opening up of China.1 In 2001, the Ministry of Education promulgated the New English Curriculum Standards document which stipulated that English should be introduced in all primary schools from grade 3. In the same year, the government also announced that between 5–10 per cent of all undergraduate programmes should be taught through the medium of English. This caused controversy as it seemed to run counter to the Language Law, which stated that Putonghua2 should be the primary teaching medium. The arguments about which medium of instruction should be used echoed some of the arguments between the Orientalists and the Anglicists. Possibly in response to the criticism that English was being given too much importance, the Chinese recently released plans to reduce the weighting given to English in the college entrance exams, the gaokao, and increase the weighting given for Maths and Chinese. These three ‘core’ subjects are currently given the same weighting. Some provinces have acted on this (Feng & Adamson 2019). In fact, however, the demand for English appears to be growing. English is often introduced earlier than primary 3 and given more class hours than suggested in the curriculum guidelines. There has been an exponential increase in the number of Chinese learning English, from kindergarten through university to language institutes where adults go to improve their English. As Feng and Adamson note, ‘In major cities such as Shanghai, parents use every means to get their children into schools with reputable English programmes. Furthermore, they seek extra curricula classes and activities at whatever cost to improve their children’s English’ (2019: 53). But, as noted in the case of India, access to English magnifies the gap between the rich and the poor. Access to English is very limited in underdeveloped rural areas of China, for example. 1

2

Actually, this was Deng’s third ascendancy after two previous political ‘deaths’ through purges. He once quipped to US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, ‘You know, I am the only man who was twice resurrected’ (Packer 2019: 182). Literally ‘common speech’ and the term given to the national language, based on dialects of Mandarin. It is also referred to as Modern Standard Chinese.

English in China

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Wen (2012) has estimated that in 2008 there were some 165 million school and university students learning English in China and one can confidently predict that there are significantly more than this today. For example, following the demand that universities provide 5–10 per cent of their courses in English, an increasing number of universities are offering English-medium courses (Kirkpatrick 2014). So, the numbers of Chinese learning English will grow. As Hu and Adamson note, ‘the survival and expansion of English in the school curriculum mirrors the process of China’s modernization and globalization – from a closed to an ever-widening door of international collaboration and from periods of political revolutionary action to intense economic modernization’ (2012: 15). There is, however, a difference between the number of Chinese learning English and the number of Chinese using it in their daily lives. In a summary of a study entitled the Survey of the Language Situation Across China, Wei and Su (2015), considered the reported use of English in seven major Chinese cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Dalian and Shenzhen. Wei and Su asked a number of questions, two of which were: What were the averages of the nation and the selected cities with regards to the use of English, English reading proficiency and spoken proficiency? Was there a statistically significant difference between the national average and the city average in each of the three areas addressed in the first question? (2015: 178 ff.)

Some interesting findings to the research questions were as follows: With regard to the use of English, on a scale between 1 (seldom), 2 (sometimes) and 3 (often) the national average was 1.265. Tianjin had the highest average at 1.874 and Chongqing the lowest at 1.355. With regard to reading proficiency, on a scale between 1 (able to recognise a few words), 2 (able to understand simple sentences) and 3 (able to understand simple reading passages), the national average was 1.9821. Again, Tianjin had the highest average at 3.063 and Chongqing the lowest at 1.082 (lower than the national average). With regard to spoken proficiency, on a scale between 1 (able to utter a few words), 2 (able to say some greetings) and 3 (able to conduct daily conversations), the national average was 1.9263, with Tianjin again the highest at 2.547 and Chongqing the lowest at 1.956. The results suggest that, while English is being learned by millions of Chinese, it is not yet being used by quite so many. But, as Wei and Su (2015: 184) themselves note, ‘Future research needs to collect more comprehensive data so as to achieve a better understanding of how Chinese people use English in their daily lives.’ In just such research, Bolton and Botha (2015) investigated the use of English at Sun Yatsen University (SYSU) in Guangzhou. The authors found, in general, only postgraduate students studying business and medicine

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How English Came to Asia

needed English in class. They also discovered that only 37 per cent of students reported using English for social purposes, usually for online socialising, and then only reported the use of single words. Despite this relatively low use of English, the authors noted that the students viewed English as important in terms of ‘internationalism’ and that they saw English as being the language of virtual mobility beyond ‘the great firewall of China’ (2015: 207). Putonghua, the national language, was seen as the core language of education while regional dialects were seen as ‘increasingly irrelevant as the heritage languages of parents and grandparents’ (2015: 207). In line with the call made by Wei and Su, Bolton and Botha conclude with a call for ‘more empirical field-based research on the current impact of English’, and ‘a more detailed, finer-grained body of sociolinguistic research in this area’ (2015: 208). Demand for English in China is also seen in the number of private Englishlanguage schools being bought by Chinese interests and the establishment of campuses of famous English private schools and universities within China itself. A recent edition of The Times newspaper reported there are now some thirty-six branches of English private schools in China (The Times, Wednesday, 10 July 2019). At the same time, more than 100,000 Chinese are studying at universities in Britain. There is also some evidence that a Chinese variety of English (CE) is developing (Xu 2010; Xu, He & Deterding 2017); the linguistic and sociocultural features of CE will be discussed later in the book. The Countries of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Only Thailand of the ten countries of ASEAN has never been a colony and in that sense it is unique among the countries of ASEAN. English was introduced to Thailand by the then king, King Mongkut (aka Rama IV, r 1851–68), as it was seen as a passport to modernisation. Part of the story, where an English governess was installed in the palace to act as an English teacher, has been dramatised (and romanticised) in the novel by Margaret Landon, Anna and the King of Siam which later became the foundation for the musical, The King and I. The Education Act of 1892 made English an elective subject in secondary school. By the 1920s it had become a compulsory subject in secondary school (Draper 2019). English became popular during the course of the Vietnam War, after which, however, the policy was to emphasise ‘Thainess’. While continuing to promote the Thai language and Thainess, the 1999 Education Act made English the principal foreign language. As the then-President of the Privy Council, General Prem Tinsulanonda, stated in 2006, ‘The country is Thai and the language is Thai’ (Draper 2019: 239). Yet, English is needed, not least because it is the sole working language of ASEAN.

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Of the other nine countries of ASEAN, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam formed French Indo–China, Indonesia was colonised by the Dutch, while Brunei, Malaysia, Myanmar and Singapore were British colonies and the Philippines a colony of the United States. Despite being colonised by the British, the history and status of English in the four nations colonised by Britain are remarkably different. Myanmar, which was annexed by the British in 1886, gained independence in 1948. Before independence, English was the language of government and administration. After independence, however, Burmese became the main language and the medium of education in schools, but with English being the main foreign language. In 1962, however, U Ne Win seized power in a military coup and the army continued to exercise power for the next fifty years. During this fifty years of dictatorial and army rule (1962–2015), the country was virtually closed and English was not systematically taught in schools. The Burmese government has only recently started to promote the use of English once more, making it a subject from primary 1, a medium of instruction for maths and science subjects in upper secondary, and the medium of instruction in higher education. However, the lack of English over so many years has meant that its use as a medium of instruction is meeting severe problems, as Drinan’s (2013) report on the use of English as a medium of instruction in upper secondary shows: Using English as a Medium of Instruction (MoI): this is fundamentally not working for teaching Maths and Science as few teachers can use English, let alone, teach another subject in English. Students are not learning or understanding important concepts in Maths and Science. They merely remember the technical terms in English for the tests. Most teachers use a mix of Myanmar (for explanation) and English (for technical terms). (2013, cited in Kirkpatrick 2015)

In the context of university teaching, ‘English textbooks are usually read aloud in English and then explained in Burmese’ (McCormick 2019: 249). Yet despite these low levels of proficiency in English, the colonial experience means that English remains a language of influence and prestige. As an example, Burmese passports, while using Burmese script on the cover, use English inside, including even for the person’s name (McCormick 2019). In contrast to Myanmar, where levels of English are low, in Singapore English is the dominant language. Singapore was one of the three settlements, along with Penang and Malacca, known as the Straits Settlements, established by the British in 1824. English was always taught during the colonial period and after independence in 1965, the country’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, made English one of the four official languages (Malay, Chinese and Tamil are the others, with Malay also being the national language). In effect, however, English is the de facto national language. It is

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the medium of instruction in schools and is the lingua franca for Singaporeans. The national bilingual policy aims to see Singaporeans learn their respective mother tongues and English. In a policy that recalls the historical ti-yong debate in China previously mentioned, the mother tongue is supposed to give citizens access to their cultural roots, while English provides access to technology and participation in globalisation. There are two comments to make about the current bilingual policy. The first is that the government rules that a person’s mother tongue is determined by their ethnicity. Thus, the mother tongue of all ethnic Singaporean Chinese, is Mandarin, no matter whether this was indeed the language spoken by their mother, which may well have been another Chinese dialect such as Cantonese or Hokien. Similarly, Tamil is the mother tongue of Singaporean Indians, and this is the language they will learn at school, even though they may be speakers of another Indian language such as Hindi. For Malays, the situation is a little easier as most ethnic Malays will have Malay as a mother tongue. The second point to make about the bilingual policy is that it has resulted in English becoming the first home language of the majority of children. A report in the Straits Times newspaper of 10 March 2016 (Lee 2016) noted that 36.9 per cent of children aged five and older now use English most often at home. This compares with the 34.9 per cent who reported they used Mandarin most often at home. This contrasts with the 2011 figures which showed that Mandarin was the most common language used at home by children aged five and above (35.6 per cent), compared with 32.3 per cent for English. What this suggests is that English is not only playing the role of the international language but also becoming the ‘ti’ language, the language of the home and of Singaporean identity. One reason why the Singapore government is so keen to ensure the people speak ‘good English’ as opposed to ‘Singlish’, the local colloquial variety of Singaporean English (as evidenced in countless recent campaigns), is that they recognise that the local variety of English is taking on the role the government had assigned to the mother tongues. The same Government Survey also reported a decline in the use of Chinese dialects and Malay, but the use of Tamil (albeit at a mere 3.3 per cent of the population) had remained stable. English is now the lingua franca of Singapore. It is clearly both in and of Singapore. As Jain and Wee argue: Given the demand for the English-educated in the workforce and the role of the language globally, the shift to English can safely be expected to escalate across the population. However, there is no sign that Singlish is decreasing in popularity. On the contrary, a nascent but burgeoning local film industry and other cultural activities provide domestic and international markets for cultural products where the use of Singlish and other local languages such as the various Chinese dialects are considered

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valuable markers of cultural authenticity The government therefore has to come to terms with the fact that Singlish is in all likelihood here to stay. (Jain & Wee 2019: 283)

Brunei and Malaysia were also British colonies, and in both Malay was the language spoken by the majority of the population. As noted, the Malay cities of Penang and Malacca were part of the Straits Settlements and Malaysia became independent in 1957. Brunei became a British protectorate in 1888, and achieved independence in 1984. In both places, the debate was (and is) over the respective roles English and Malay should play. In Brunei, the proposal was to adopt Malay as the sole medium of instruction (Malay was made the national language in 1959 and in the same year a report proposed Malay as the sole medium of instruction [Jones 2000]), but for a number of reasons – including a diplomatic row between Brunei and Malaysia – this policy was never implemented. Brunei did implement a bilingual policy, the ‘dwibahasa policy’ (Jones 2000). Initially, this policy saw Malay used as the medium of instruction (MoI) for all subjects for the first three years of primary school, with English talking over from primary 4 as the MoI for maths, science, geography, history and technical subjects. Malay remained the MoI for Malay literature, Islamic knowledge, civics, arts handicrafts and physical education. However, and in stark contrast to Malaysia as will be explained, the policy has been changed to a new education system (SPN-21) so that English is now used as the medium instruction for maths, science, social studies, ICT, music, drama and English itself in primary school, with Malay only being used for Malay, Islamic religious knowledge, Malay Islamic monarchy and physical education (HajiOthman, McLellan & Jones 2019). This means there is more English than under the dwibahasa system. But it should be noted that Malay is used as the medium of instruction at religious schools, attendance at which is compulsory for all Bruneian Muslim students. Classes are held in the afternoon and students between the ages of seven and fourteen must attend (Haji-Othman et al. 2019). The history of English in Malaya/sia is complex (Kirkpatrick 2010b). During the colonial period, as in India discussed previously, English was taught, but only for the elite. The British did not want the majority to learn English as this quote from Maxwell, the Chief Secretary of the Federated Malay States between 1920 and 1926, makes clear The aim of the government is not to turn out a few well-educated youths, nor yet numbers of less well-educated boys; rather it is to improve the bulk of the people and to make the son of the fisherman or peasant a more intelligent fisherman or peasant than his father had been, and a man whose education will enable him to understand how his own lot in life fits in with the scheme of life around him. (Maxwell 1983: 408)

As Malaya was rich in rubber and mineral resources, the British needed to import labour, and they imported Tamils from India to work on the rubber plantations and Chinese to work in the tin mines. This, of course, added to the

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linguistic diversity of the colony, and vernacular schools were established which taught in Tamil and Chinese. The history of Malaysian language policy has been about how to balance these languages with English and Malay in order to keep their respective users happy. As we have seen, Brunei has moved to make English the MoI for maths and science from primary 1. Malaysia did the opposite. In 2002, it introduced English as the MoI for maths and science from primary 1, but, after experimenting with this for seven years, decided to revert back to Malay as the MoI for these subjects (Gill 2012). The reasons given for this reversal of policy included the fact that children from lower socio-economic areas were failing in maths along with a shortage of maths teachers able to teach the subject in English (Gill 2012). And in 2016, in recognition of declining proficiency in English, the government introduced a Dual Language programme, to be piloted in 300 schools. This gives the schools the choice of which medium to use – English or Malay – for the teaching of maths and science (Gill & Shaari 2019). As these schools need to meet criteria including having teachers who can teach in Malay and English and parental support for the scheme, people have argued that this will further increase the divide between the urban ‘haves’ and the rural ‘have-nots’, an argument that can be heard in each of the countries under discussion here. Language policy in Malaysia has been characterised by ‘flipflopping’ between whether to promote Malay or English as the medium of instruction. According to Gill and Shaari, ‘Presently, in 2016, Malaysia is pretty much in the same position it was a decade ago – standards of English are increasingly declining with terrible impact on the students and youth and their employability opportunities and also a decline in the human capital essential for industrialisation and technological development’ (Gill and Shaari 2019: 268). While the history of English in these post-colonial countries is varied, the heritage of English in Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore has led to the development of respective varieties of English, Brunei, Malaysian and Singaporean and these will be discussed later in the book. Here it is enough simply to state that the presence of these varieties is now accepted and that there are grammars and so forth of these varieties of English. The same can also be said of the Philippines, to which I now turn. This too was a colony of an English-speaking empire, although in the case of the Philippines, it was of the American empire. The Treaty of Paris of 1898 ceded the Philippines to America from Spain after the American defeat of the Spanish in the Spanish– American war. The Philippines remained a colony of the United States until independence in 1946. The decision to adopt English as the medium of instruction in schools was made in 1901 – and here we see significant differences from Brunei and Malaysia. Although all are multilingual societies, both Malaysia and Brunei had a language, namely Malay, that was spoken by the majority of the

The Countries of ASEAN

25

population and which could easily be identified as the national language. The Philippines, on the other hand, has more than 170 languages, none of which were spoken widely enough to be considered an obvious choice for the national language. In 1941, Tagalog, the language of the capital, Manila, was made the national language, but this was unpopular, as Tagalog is spoken only by some 5 million people living in and around Manila. To deflect this criticism, in the early 1970s, the National Language Institute was given the task of creating a national language (Gonzalez 1996a). The result was Pilipino, rechristened Filipino in 1987.3 It is an artificial construct, based heavily on Tagalog, with features from certain other Filipino languages added. Nevertheless, the majority of Filipinos today now accept Filipino as their national language (Tupas 2007). The advent of a national language led to a bilingual education policy (BEP) for the Philippines which, with some changes, remained in place from 1974 until 2011. Filipino was used for the teaching of all subjects with the exception of maths, science and English itself, for which English was used as the MoI. The BEP drew many critics over many years who argued for the use of more local languages in education. To cut a long and complex story short, the Philippines government eventually legislated in 2009 for a multilingual education policy and the adoption of mother tongue–based multilingual education (MTBMLE). This policy currently allows for nineteen languages to act as the MoI for the first three years of primary school. While those who supported MTBMLE feel that this is not enough, wanting MTBMLE to encompass more languages and to last throughout primary school, MTMBLE represents a significant departure from the bilingual education policy. The Philippines is the only nation of those being reviewed here that has systematically adopted a policy of MTBMLE. The other nations basically run bilingual policies with the respective national language and English being the primary languages of education (Kirkpatrick & Liddicoat 2017, 2019). Yet, there remains a strong pro-English lobby who want to reinstate English as the primary medium of instruction, not least because the Philippines derives so much wealth from its role in the business processing outsourcing (BPO) sector, which includes call centres, and for which a population with high levels of proficiency in English are essential (Young & Igcalinos 2019: 180). The long use of English in the school system has led to the development of a local variety of English, Filipino English, and this will be discussed later. Indonesia was also a colony, but of the Dutch. Indonesia is one of the most multilingual and culturally diverse nations on earth with more than 700 languages and 400 ethnic groups (Ethnologue 2019). After independence from the 3

This switch from Pilipino to Filipino was to make the name of the national language sound less like Tagalog as Tagalog has no [f] sound.

26

How English Came to Asia

Dutch in 1945, Indonesia chose a form of Malay, to be called Bahasa Indonesia, as the national language. Although the language was spoken as a first language only by about 3 per cent of the population at the time of its choice, its development as the national language has been remarkably successful (Montolalu & Suryadinata 2007) and it is now the MoI in all schools and at all levels of education. Indonesia is the only nation of those reviewed here that does not make English a compulsory subject at primary schools. Nevertheless, English is far and away the first foreign language taught: it is compulsory in secondary schools and at universities. In a marked contrast to the other countries under discussion here, English was first introduced into Indonesian education at the university level. In 1949, an English language programme was set up at the Universitas Nasional Jakarta (Kohler 2019). It was nearly twenty years later, in 1967, that English was introduced into secondary schools and not until 1990 was it introduced into primary schools. In 2015, the government announced that English would become a required medium of instruction at all universities, beginning with state universities. It is not yet clear to what extent this policy has been implemented (Kohler 2019: 292). Despite being taught for some forty years in secondary schools, the teaching and learning of English has not been successful. A recent study which used the TOEIC test to measure the proficiency levels of Indonesian senior high school students showed that more than 55 per cent tested as novices, 37 per cent tested as elementary, and only 5 per cent tested as having even intermediate proficiency in English (Hamied 2011). Dardjowidjojo (2000) offers a number of reasons for this – many of which can be heard across the other countries of Asia – such as a lack of suitably proficient and trained teachers, a lack of appropriate and relevant materials, and demotivated students, especially in rural areas (Kirkpatrick 2012). ‘Yet parental and community demand for English are likely to continue and exert pressure for English to remain at least in its current form, if not with an increased presence in future in all levels of education’ (Kohler 2019: 294). The demand for English in Indonesia can also be seen in perhaps unexpected contexts. For example, some of the boarding schools attached to mosques, the pesantren, have introduced courses in English for Islamic purposes (Fahrudin 2013). A study of attitudes towards English among staff and students across a selection of universities in the city of Yogyakarta which included Muslim, Christian and secular institutions, found that Muslim participants felt that English could have a positive effect on religious identity. Sample quotes were ‘English helps the development of my religion’, ‘English can deliver information about my religion’, ‘It is also necessary for us to master English for proselytising’ (Dewi 2012: 22; Kirkpatrick 2015: 8). Even then, in a country with no institutional history of English, English can be seen as of Indonesia as well as in it. I return to a discussion of the role English is playing in religion in Chapter 8.

The Countries of ASEAN

27

Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam all inherited French as their colonial language and each country also saw Russian as a major language of education as each fell under the influence of the then Soviet Union. Despite this history, all three countries today have chosen to make English the first foreign language to be studied in schools. That English is the sole official language of ASEAN and as all three countries are ASEAN member states is just one reason why English has been promoted. Its importance for use in ASEAN settings should not be underestimated. As a Cambodian Minister reported: We need to know English so that we can defend our interests. You know, ASEAN is not a kissy-kissy brotherhood. The countries are fiercely competitive, and a strong knowledge of English will help us protect our interests . . . You know when we use English we don’t think about the United States or England. We only think about the need to communicate. (Clayton 2006: 230–3)

English has thus displaced French as the first foreign language in Cambodia and in 2014, government policy decreed that it should be taught from the fourth grade of primary school. However, this has met with problems as many teachers have low or even no English skills. So, while English may officially be on the curriculum, it is not actually taught in most primary schools, and as Kosonen 2019 argues, ‘Given the available human and other resources for education in Cambodia, the hurried attempts to promote English language teaching seem to reflect the perhaps over-ambitious goals of political leaders’ (2019: 223). But, as Kosonen (2019) goes on to say, given English’s role as the sole working language of ASEAN, its importance for Cambodia is likely to increase. The same can be said for both Laos and Vietnam. In Vietnam, after the end of the Vietnam war and the unification of the nation in 1975, a surge of nationalism led to the policy ‘of burning and binning English and French textbooks and other related materials in an effort to get rid of colonialist and imperialist legacies in the early 1980s’ (Nguyen & Nguyen 2019: 188). Then, after several years of relative isolation, a unified Vietnam opened up to the world in 1986 under the Doi Moi policy. As happened when China opened up, this led to a surge in demand for English, as vividly captured by Ho and Wong: When Vietnam embarked on economic reforms in 1986 . . . it prompted a nationwide rush to learn English . . . English classes were crammed with not just students but also professionals such as doctors and engineers as well as retired government officials, senior police, army officers and diplomats. (cited in Ho & Wong 2004: 1)

English thus became reincarnated from being the language of the enemy to the language of ‘amity, hope and aspiration for the majority of the Vietnamese people’ (Nguyen & Nguyen 2019: 189).

28

How English Came to Asia

English is now the most taught and learned foreign language in the school curriculum with some 90 per cent of students choosing to take it (Baker, Poly & Giacchino-baker 2003). It is increasingly used as a medium of instruction in private schools and in certain subjects at state universities. The Vietnamese government is currently implementing Project 2020 – recently extended by five years to 2025 in recognition of the hugely ambitious nature of the project – whereby Vietnamese university graduates will be proficient in a foreign language, specifically English. Laos gained independence from France in 1948 but only became truly independent with the French defeat by the Vietnamese at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 (Keyes 2003). As with the other countries I have described, English is the first foreign language taught in schools, introduced from Primary 3, although the scarcity of materials and suitably qualified teachers means that the level of English is low. English is the ‘mandatory first foreign language’ at lower secondary level, while French is the ‘optional second foreign language’ (Meyers 2019: 211). Conclusion This brief summary of the development of English in the countries under review shows similarities and differences between them. The similarities are that English is the first foreign language taught in each country. In Singapore, it is the medium of instruction; in some other countries, it is used as a medium of instruction for certain subjects, typically maths and science. Common to all is also an apparently widening gap between those who have proficiency in English and those who do not. This divide is often seen between the rich and the poor and the urban and the rural. As Graddol remarked in the context of India, ‘We are fast moving into a world in which not to have English is to be marginalised and excluded’ (2010: 10). The differences include the levels of English that are spoken. In those countries which were colonies of English-speaking empires and which Kachru (1983) has classified as ‘outer circle’ countries in which new varieties of English have developed and provided their own linguistic norms, English has gained an institutional role and has been learned and taught for many decades. Brunei, India, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore are examples. These countries have developed their own varieties of English and I shall discuss these further later in the book. Myanmar provides an exception to this rule, so there the levels of English are relatively low. In those countries that were not colonised by English-speaking empires and where English has traditionally been learned as a foreign language in schools and which Kachru (1983) classified as ‘expanding circle’ countries, English plays less of an institutional role. Even in these countries, however, the uses and roles of

Conclusion

29

English are increasing to the extent that English is the first foreign language learned. And, as noted, there may now be more speakers and users of English in China, an ‘expanding circle’ country, than in India, an ‘outer circle’ country. Indonesia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam are all seeing an uptake in the learning and teaching of English and the educated elite in these countries now all speak high levels of English and an increasing number of people now have access to English of some sort and level within the school systems. Even in those countries with no English colonial past, English is being adapted for the purposes of its new speakers, as the example of English for Islamic purposes in Indonesia demonstrates. A further motivation for the learning of English in ASEAN is that English is the sole working language of ASEAN and attendance and participation at ASEAN meetings and so forth requires a facility in English. This means that, in addition to the development of regional varieties of English, English is also being increasingly used as a lingua franca by speakers from these countries and beyond. As I shall illustrate in the following chapters, English is both being adapted by its new speakers for their own purposes so that it reflects their cultural needs and, at the same time, being used as a lingua franca, as a common medium of communication, between the peoples of Asia. Chapter 2 provides an overview to the Asian Corpus of English (ACE), a corpus of the use of English as a lingua franca by Asian multilinguals.

2

The Asian Corpus of English

Overview This chapter provides an introduction to the Asian Corpus of English (ACE) – how it was collected and why and how it will be used in this book. As such, this chapter is relatively technical and will be of particular interest to those readers who wish to undertake research using the Asian Corpus of English. ACE was designed to be comparable with the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) (Seidlhofer 2011). The participants recorded in ACE are primarily, but not exclusively, first-language speakers of Asian languages, while the participants in VOICE are primarily, but not exclusively, first-language speakers of European languages. ACE contains some one million words of naturally occurring, non-scripted face-to-face interactions (around 120 hours of recorded speech) of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in Asia. A wide range of speech events have been included in ACE. These include interviews, press conferences, service encounters, seminar discussions, working group discussions, workshop discussions, meetings, panels, question-and-answer sessions and conversations. The transcribed speech events are categorised under five major settings with their percentage of the corpus data in brackets: education (25 per cent); leisure (10 per cent); professional business (20 per cent); professional organisations; (35 per cent); and professional research/science (10 per cent). The corpus data have been tagged following the transcription conventions originally developed by the VOICE team. These tags enable users to obtain a clear picture of the transcribed data (e.g., pauses, overlaps, pronunciation variations & coinages), and make ACE and VOICE comparable. In October 2014, ACE was officially launched online. Users can browse the corpus data according to the five types of setting (previously mentioned) or according to the various data collection sites (Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Japan, Mainland China and Taiwan). A Web concordancer has been developed which allows users to search any word/phrase in ACE. Other than searching the corpus, users can also listen to the sound recording of certain ACE files. These functions have made it possible for researchers and teachers/learners to explore the ACE data for various research and pedagogical purposes. 30

Introduction

31

Introduction As noted earlier, English is the most widely spoken language in the world, and people speaking English as a second or foreign language far outnumber people speaking English as a native language (Crystal 2012). As a result, English is commonly spoken as a lingua franca in international communication (Jenkins 2007). English as a lingua franca (ELF) can be thought of as ‘any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option’ (Seidlhofer 2011: 7). In recent years, ELF related-research has gained momentum (Seidlhofer 2011). As Mauranen (2006: 147) points out, if we want to understand the use of English in today’s world, ‘ELF must be one of the central concerns in this line of research’. To assist research into how English is developing and being used, a number of corpora have been created over the years. These include the British National Corpus (BNC, www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk), the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA, http://corpus.byu.edu/coca); and a learner English corpus (the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE), https://uclouvain.be/en/resear ch-institutes/ilc/cecl/icle.html); there are also parallel corpora comparing different languages. An example is the English-Chinese Parallel Corpus developed by Wang Lixun (https://corpus.eduhk.hk/paraconc). Corpora of English as a lingua franca (ELF), however, are still relatively rare. One of the pioneers in developing ELF corpora, Mauranen, has compiled a one-million-word corpus of spoken academic English as a lingua franca, the Corpus of English as Lingua Franca in Academic Settings (ELFA) (www.helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/corpora/ELFA) (Mauranen 2003; Mauranen & Ranta 2009). From 2005 to 2013, Professor Seidlhofer and her research team in the University of Vienna compiled the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) (www.univie.ac.at/vo ice), the first one-million-word spoken corpus of European ELF (Seidlhofer 2011, 2012). In order to create a counterpart to VOICE in Asia, Kirkpatrick and Wang formed a research team and, in 2009, started compiling the Asian Corpus of English (ACE), the first corpus of Asian ELF (Kirkpatrick, 2010a). The creation of a corpus requires careful planning and decision-making to ensure that language data are recorded and presented as an accessible resource. The processes and targets of data-collection, transcription and corpus balance or representation have to be methodologically coherent in design, and, as in any serious corpus project, the infrastructure and implementation of the IT systems have to be compatible. From the perspective of the supporting and corpus infrastructure, the requirements of ACE and VOICE are to a great degree overlapping, as the kind of data and the targeted representations are similar. Both corpora feature spoken, interactive and naturally occurring ELF data. In this chapter, details of the ACE corpus design will be discussed and different features of the ACE online platform (https://corpus.eduhk.hk/ace/in

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The Asian Corpus of English

dex.html) will be illustrated. Research possibilities using ACE data will also be briefly explored. The results of research using ACE inform consequent chapters. ACE Corpus Design To compile a large-scale and representative spoken Asian ELF corpus, many aspects had to be considered: first, data collection sites in Asia needed to be identified and sub-teams for data collection to be established; second, the subjects of data collection had to be selected carefully; third, efficient and reliable recording and data transcription tools had to be sought and developed; fourth, types of settings of spoken data needed to be decided; fifth, types of speech events to be included in the corpus had to be classified; sixth, archiving of recorded data needed to be done systematically; and seventh, transcription conventions needed to be established to mark up the corpus data. In the following sections, these various aspects of ACE corpus design will be discussed. Data Collection Sites In order to collect authentic spoken ELF from different Asian contexts, nine sub-teams were established in different countries/regions: The Hong Kong Institute of Education in Hong Kong (retitled The Education University of Hong Kong in 2016), where both Kirkpatrick and Wang were working at the time, was the lead team. The remaining teams were based at the University of Malaya; the National Institute of Education in Singapore; the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization Regional Training Centre (SEAMEO RETRAC) in Vietnam; Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines; the Universiti Brunei Darussalam in Brunei; Chukyo University in Japan; Guangxi University in China; and the National Taipei University of Business in Taiwan. Each sub-team was responsible for collecting corpus data at their own sites and then transcribing the data. To make the corpus data representative, the teams endeavoured to include speakers from all the countries of South East Asia and those from China, Korea and Japan. Speakers from South Asia are also included. Here we need to acknowledge funding support from the Education University of Hong Kong and Griffith University, Brisbane, where Kirkpatrick currently works.1 We would like to thank two particular researchers who were 1

We also need to record our thanks to the teams in different parts of Asia who participated in this project, especially the leaders of these sub-teams: Azirah Hashim and Jagdish Kaur of the University of Malaya, Low Eeling of the National Institute of Education of Singapore, David Deterding and Salbrina Shabawi of the University of Brunei, Isabel Martin of Ateneo de Manila University, Ji Ke of Guangxi University, James D’Angelo of Chukyo University, Do Kieu Anh of SEAMEO RETRAC, Ho Chi Minh City, and Lee Hsing-chin of the National Taipei University of Business.

ACE Corpus Design

33

crucial in ensuring the successful completion of the project namely: John Patkin of the Education University of Hong Kong, who acted as chief transcriber and who provided training to the transcribers of the different sub-teams; and Sophiaan Subhan of Griffith University, who provided a great deal of transcription, data quality assurance and research assistance during the later stages of the project. The Participants When recruiting subjects for the data collection, it was decided that multilingual speakers of English from the ten countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, along with Chinese, Japanese and Korean multilingual users of English would comprise the main cohort of subjects from whom to collect data. As far as possible, native English speakers (such as British or American native speakers) were excluded. Recording and Data Transcription Tools It was obviously crucial to use high-quality sound recording devices to capture clear speech and other sounds. Typically, two recorders were used for each event, in case one of the recorders failed for some reason. The painstaking and time-consuming task of transcribing the data was achieved using the excellent software, Voicescribe, developed by the VOICE team. Voicescribe is an easy-to-use highlighting editor with an attached audio player. A colour scheme in the Voicescribe text editor shows different transcription tags in different colours. The Voicescribe tool can be downloaded freely from the VOICE website: www.univie.ac.at/voice/page/voicescribe. Types of Settings of Recorded Data Following the VOICE data sets, the ACE corpus data were collected across five settings, namely: education (25 per cent); leisure (10 per cent); professional business (20 per cent); professional organisation (35 per cent); and professional research/science (10 per cent). Speech Events Included in the Corpus Again, following the VOICE data sets, the speech event types included in ACE comprise conversations, interviews, meetings, panel discussions, press conferences, question and answer sessions, seminar discussions, service encounters, working group discussions and workshops. Table 2.1 shows some sample topics of these various speech events in ACE.

34

The Asian Corpus of English

Table 2.1 Sample topics of speech events in ACE Speech event type

Sample topics of speech events in ACE

Conversations

Tourist sights and Asian food; discussing Singapore; favourite Asian cities; Asian cultures; music and dance in Asia; Hong Kong English; communication problems which occur for Japanese people doing business; comparing language issues in Thailand and Taiwan; international students from Vietnam; learning and teaching English in ASEAN countries; jobs and professions in Vietnam; Restaurants in Vietnam; tour guide introducing Vietnamese tourist sites; an English speaking club in Vietnam; teacher training; teaching and assessment Asian multilinguals comparing experiences; Taiwanese and Indonesians living and working abroad; bilateral ties between China and Malaysia; bilateral ties between China and Mongolia; China-Japan territorial disputes; China-Saudi Arabia bilateral relationship; development and use of gene technologies; development in India; Islam and secularisation; Muslims in the contemporary world; Pakistan – the road ahead; reducing and preventing disasters; Singapore’s development model; Sino-Thai ties and diplomacy in Asia; South China sea dispute; South Korea’s first female president; tourism in the Maldives; treatment of women in India; legal cases in Hong Kong; Police interviews in Hong Kong. Ethnic minority issues in Hong Kong; windsurfing; sports programs in Hong Kong. A university panel meeting in Hong Kong. Press conference briefings. Hong Kong English phonology; writing strategies; language testing; Shariah courts; written legislation; surgical techniques; curriculum development in the Philippines; TESOL1 classroom negotiation processes; innovation in English teaching. Migrations in Asia; reflections on migrations; book sharing; internationalisation of Vietnam’s higher education; jobs and employment issues. Help desk at an English language centre in Hong Kong. Intercultural communication in consular settings.

Interviews

Meetings Panels Press conferences Question–answer sessions

Seminar discussions

Service encounters Working group discussions Workshop discussions

1

Facebook versus face-to-face interactions; university degrees not fit for the real world; methods of assessment; use of Asian folk tales in the classroom.

TESOL Teaching English to speakers of other languages.

As shown in Table 2.1, a wide range of mainly Asia-centric topics are covered by the different speech events. It is worth pointing out that topics such as these rarely, if ever, occur in English-language teaching materials developed for the region. We return to the implications of ACE and ELF in Asia for English

ACE Corpus Design

35

language teaching in later chapters. Here we just note that ACE has great potential for English textbook and materials design for Asian learners of English. Archiving of Recorded Data When a large number of recordings is collected, it is essential that the recorded data are archived systematically, so that it is easy to search for specific information in different data files. The ACE corpus system allows users to see what content each file contains. For example: in the filename HK_ED_qas_writing strategies. txt, HK means Hong Kong (data collection site), ED means education (type of settings), qas means question–answer session (speech event type), and writing strategies is the topic of the speech event. Excel files are used to keep a record of all the recordings and transcripts. The Excel files use the following headings: source (e.g., UM, meaning University of Malaya), date, no. of speakers, mother tongue (e.g., chi meaning Chinese, vie meaning Vietnamese), sex, type of setting, filename and total time length of recording. The following are the abbreviations/acronyms we used for archiving the corpus data: Data collection sites: BN (Brunei), CN (Mainland China), HK (Hong Kong), JP (Japan), MS (Malaysia), PH (Philippines), SG (Singapore), TW (Taiwan), VN (Vietnam). Organisations: UM (University of Malaya, Malaysia), NIE (National Institute of Education, Singapore), UB (University of Brunei, Brunei), AMU (Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines), GXU (Guangxi University, Mainland China), CU (Chukyo University, Japan), SEAMEO-RETRAC (Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization Regional Training Center, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), and NTUB (National Taipei University of Business, Taiwan). Types of settings: ED (education), LE (leisure), PB (professional business), PO (professional organisation), PRS (professional research/science). Speech events: con (conversation), int (interview), mtg (meeting), pan (panel), prc (press conference), qas (question–answer session), sed (seminar discussion), sve (service encounter), wgd (working group discussion), and wsd (workshop discussion). Transcription Conventions Spoken corpus data needs to be tagged using transcription conventions which illustrate, as accurately as possible, what has happened during the conversations. To make ACE comparable with VOICE, the transcription conventions established by the VOICE team were adopted. The following are examples

36

The Asian Corpus of English

of the key transcription conventions created by the VOICE team and adopted by the ACE team (source: www.univie.ac.at/voice/page/ transcription_general_information). ➢ Speaker IDs: Speaker ID markers include using S1, S2, etc. to indicate speaker 1, speaker 2; SS to indicate several speakers speaking together; SX to indicate that the speaker cannot be identified. ➢ Intonation: A question mark ‘?’ follows words spoken with rising intonation, while a full stop follows words spoken with falling intonation. ➢ Emphasis: If a syllable, word or phrase is written in CAPITAL letters, it means that the speaker has given emphasis to this syllable/word/ phrase. ➢ Pauses: A full stop in parentheses (.) indicates a brief pause in speech (up to a full half second). Longer pauses are marked with the number of seconds in parentheses, e.g., (2) means a pause of two seconds. ➢ Overlaps: Whenever two or more utterances happen at the same time, the overlaps are marked with numbered tags: , , . . . Everything that is simultaneous gets the same number. ➢ Other-continuation: The marker ‘=‘ is used whenever a speaker continues, completes or supports another speaker’s turn immediately without a pause. ➢ Lengthening: A colon ‘:’ is used to mark lengthened sounds. ➢ Word fragments: A hyphen ‘-’ is used to mark where a part of a word is missing. ➢ Laughter: The @ symbol marks all laughter and laughter-like sounds (e.g., hahaha = @@@). Utterances spoken laughingly are put between tags. ➢ Pronunciation variations & coinages: The markers are used to mark variations at the levels of phonology, morphology and lexis as well as ‘invented’ words. ➢ Non-English speech: Utterances in a participant’s first language (L1) are put between tags indicating the speaker’s L1, e.g., Zhong Guo means the phrase was spoken in Chinese, which is the first language of the speaker. Utterances in languages which are neither English nor the speaker’s first language are marked LN with language indicated, e.g., Tsing Yi . ➢ Spelling out: The tag is used to mark words or abbreviations which are spelled out by the speaker, i.e., words whose constituents are pronounced as individual letters, e.g., j a r g o n jargon. ➢ Speaking modes: Utterances which are spoken in a particular mode (fast, soft, whispered, read, etc.) and which are notably different from the speaker’s normal speaking style are marked accordingly, e.g., , , , etc.

ACE Online

37

➢ Breath: Noticeable breathing in or out is represented by two or three h (hh = relatively short: hhh = relatively long). ➢ Speaker noises: Noises produced by the current speaker which seem relevant are transcribed and marked, e.g.: , , , , , , , , , , etc. ➢ Non-verbal feedback: Non-verbal feedback such as nodding and shaking the head is transcribed and marked, e.g.: , . ➢ Anonymisation: To protect privacy, names of people, companies, organisations, locations, products, etc. are replaced by aliases which are put into square brackets [], e.g.: [S1], [org1], [place1], [thing1], etc. ➢ Contextual events: Contextual information is added between curly brackets {} only if it is relevant to the understanding of the interaction or to the interaction as such. If it is deemed important to indicate the length of the event, this can be done by adding the number of seconds in parentheses, e.g., {S2 gets up and walks to blackboard (7)}. (Source: www.univie.ac.at/voice/documents/VOICE_markup_conventions_v2-1.pdf) ACE Online Having discussed the details of the ACE corpus design, the following sections will focus on illustrating the ACE online platform, which hosts the ACE corpus and the online concordancing programs that allow users to search ACE online free of charge. Figure 2.1 shows a screenshot of the ACE online homepage (https://corpus.eduhk.hk/ace/index.html). The ACE online homepage contains four major sections: basic information, objectives, corpus information, and search ACE. The search ACE section will be discussed in detail. Browsing the ACE Corpus Data Online After clicking on the Browse ACE Files tab on the homepage, users will see an interface as shown in Figure 2.2. On the top of the webpage, there are two drop-down lists: ‘filter by region’ and ‘filter by domain’. Users can choose to browse ACE data according to the domains (Education, Leisure, Professional Business, Professional Organization, and Professional Research/Science) and/or regions (Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Japan, Mainland China and Taiwan). After clicking on a particular filename, users can get access to the transcript of a speech event, as shown in Figure 2.3.

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The Asian Corpus of English

Figure 2.1 Screenshot of ACE online homepage

Listening to ACE Recordings Online A limited number of ACE sound recordings have been made publically available online. The recordings can be played using an audio playing program, as shown in Figure 2.4. When listening to the sound recording, the transcript can be shown on the screen at the same time. Searching ACE Online In order to promote research into ELF, the ACE corpus has been made freely available to all. If users want to search ACE online, they can do so anywhere and at any time. Users can also contact ACE team members to enquire about ACE by clicking on the Contact Us tab on the homepage, and filling in an online enquiry form, as shown in Figure 2.5. After clicking on the Search ACE tab on the homepage, users will be able to get access to two different online concordancing programs which allow users to search the ACE online. Figure 2.6 shows a screenshot of the Search ACE Online page. Using this self-developed online concordancing program, users can search for any words/phrases in ACE. When inputting the search string, they can choose ‘Exact’, ‘Starts with’, ‘Contains’, and ‘Ends with’ in the ‘Match Mode’ drop-down list. After inputting the search string in the Search Keyword textbox, by choosing different options in the ‘Corpus’ drop-down list, they can choose to search the

Figure 2.2 Screenshot of the Browse Corpus interface

Figure 2.3 Screenshot of transcript of a speech event

Figure 2.4 Screenshot of playing sound recordings in ACE online

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The Asian Corpus of English

Figure 2.5 Screenshot of the Contact Us page

Figure 2.6 Screenshot of Search ACE Online page

whole ACE corpus, or sub-sections of ACE. Figure 2.7 shows a screenshot of the concordance of the word ‘so’ in the Leisure sub-section of ACE. As shown in Figure 2.7, the concordance lines of ‘so’ are presented in the keyword-in-context format. The collocation pattern of the search word can be shown as well. For example, if the user clicks on the ‘Word Right’ link, all the concordance lines will be re-ordered, with the word immediately to the right of the search word displayed in alphabetical order, as shown in Figure 2.8: As shown in Figure 2.8, the Word Right collocation pattern of the search word ‘so’ can be seen clearly on the screen: so good, so great, so grown, so happy, so hard, so harmful, etc. This is a useful function for users who wish to study the collocation patterns of the search words. Other than viewing the collocation

Figure 2.7 Screenshot of concordances for ‘so’ in the Leisure sub-section of ACE

Figure 2.8 Word Right collocation pattern of the search word ‘so’

Possible ACE-Based Research

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patterns, users can also see the Category type, such as Leisure, and the filename showing the source of each concordance line. A user wishing to see more contexts of a particular concordance line can simply click on that line, and more contexts of that concordance line will be shown on the screen (see Figure 2.9). As shown in Figure 2.9, a further context of a concordance line of ‘so’ is shown on the screen. Again, this is a useful function, as the keyword-in-context presentation format of the search word only allows the viewing of short and often incomplete concordance lines, but in many cases users need to see further contexts of a particular concordance line so as to obtain a fuller understanding of how the particular word is used in various contexts. Web Concordancer for Searching the POS-Tagged ACE Corpus The VOICE team tagged the VOICE corpus using Part of Speech (POS) tags which have made the tagged corpus searchable. In order, therefore, to make ACE and VOICE truly comparable, the ACE team also tagged the ACE corpus using POS tags, and has made the tagged ACE corpus searchable online. Figure 2.10 shows a screenshot of the Web concordancer for searching the tagged ACE corpus. As shown in Figure 2.10, users can first input a search keyword, and then choose the POS tag. For example, the user can input the search word ‘record’, and choose the POS tag ‘Verb’, and then choose the Malaysian sub-corpus of ACE. Figure 2.11 shows a screenshot of the concordances for the verb ‘record’ in the Malaysian sub-corpus of ACE. With the various tools provided on the ACE online platform, it is hoped that users can carry out a wide range of research using the ACE data. Possible ACE-Based Research Having discussed the ACE corpus design and introduced the ACE online tools, this section discusses the type of research that can be carried out using ACE data. First, as VOICE and ACE have been made comparable, comparative studies between the two corpora can be conducted. In order to assist in research into how Asian multilinguals use English as a lingua franca, two software packages were used. These are WordSmith Tools (Scott 2016) and ConcGram (Greaves 2009). WordSmith is an integrated suite of programs for searching and examining how words behave in various contexts (Scott 2016). The WordList tool allows users to create a wordlist (a list of all the words or word-clusters in a text); the concordancer, Concord, allows users to create concordances of words (any word or phrase in context); the KeyWords tool allows users to find the key words in a text.

Figure 2.9 Further contexts of a concordance line shown on the screen

Figure 2.10 Screenshot of the Web concordancer for searching the tagged ACE corpus

Figure 2.11 Screenshot of the concordances for the verb ‘record’ in the Malaysian sub-corpus of ACE

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The second software package, ConcGram, is a phraseological search engine, which is able to automatically identify up to five co-occurring words, irrespective of either constituency or positional variation, in a text or corpus (Greaves 2009). It allows users to identify frequently appearing language-use patterns in a corpus. As an example of comparing the data in VOICE and ACE, word frequency of the top 20 most frequent action/mental verbs in their base form, third person singular form and past form are listed in Table 2.2. To find out if the non-marking of the third person singular with ‘-s’, a feature identified in VOICE also exists in ACE, the ConcGram program was used to look for such non-marking of third person singular of the top 20 most frequent action/mental verbs in the ACE corpus. As mentioned earlier, ConcGram can automatically identify up to five co-occurring words, irrespective of either constituency or positional variation, e.g., ‘he take, he not take, he go and take’, etc. We used ConcGram to identify non-marking of the third person singular of 12 of the top 20 most frequent action/mental verbs, and Table 2.3 shows the comparison of non-marking versus marking of third person singular of these verbs in ACE.

Table 2.2 Top twenty most frequent action/mental verbs in ACE

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Verb base form (occurrence)

Third person singular (occurrence)

Past tense (occurrence)

know (5,291) like (4,544) think (2,906) say (1,314) want (1,300) see (1,277) go (1,398) mean (1,036) get (917) need (776) come (769) use (703) make (595) take (581) ask (539) thank (492) talk (465) give (448) speak (411) eat (332)

knows (55) likes (29) thinks (10) says (40) wants(75) sees (4) goes (54) means (266) gets (33) needs (84) comes (86) uses (9) makes (59) takes (50) asks (4) thanks (48) talks (35) gives (24) speaks (78) eats (3)

knew (21) liked (6) thought (244) said (695) wanted (96) saw (160) went (254) meant (18) got (729) needed (19) came (184) used (253) made (149) took (102) asked (117) thanked (1) talked (31) gave (63) spoke (25) ate (8)

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Table 2.3 everybody/everyone/nobody/he/she/it + verb (non-marking vs marking of third person singular in ACE)

know like make get need say see take talk think use want

Non-marking of third person singular (frequency)

Marking of third person singular (frequency)

know (14) like (7) make (18) get (15) need (20) say (70) see (4) take (18) talk (12) think (8) use (10) want (27)

knows (40) likes (22) makes (41) gets (21) needs (86) says (47) sees (4) takes (45) talks (11) thinks (18) uses (7) wants (63)

As shown in Table 2.3, for only a small minority of verbs (say/talk/use), are there more cases of non-marking of the third person singular than marking with ‘-s’. Although marking of the third person singular was more frequent than nonmarking on most verbs, we identified a large number of examples of nonmarking of third person singulars in ACE, such as she say, he see, he take, he talk, he think, he use, he want, as illustrated in the following. she + say 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

pretty cannot cannot do S2: ah she say she say as long as cannot do S2: ah she say she say as long as you can sing then she tell at the forum lah she say say ah actually ah i- if you plastic surgery one S1: oh S4: oh S2: then she say oh then she went to she must sleep with him more one lah h then she say like actually er sir no accident at all S2: ah ah S3: she say lie S1: she said lie S3: so she doesn‘t want to work she say no and went xx S3: she say no she say no and went xx S3: she say no S2: oh S2: very has a problem about the class size she say and she can’t really ah S1: not really but S2: she say yeah h S1: because i- in china she’s half ang moh ah (.) then she she say that she’s er [first name7] ah [first name15] S2: ah she she say that that china people you said that S2: huh S1: you say or she say S2: i say S1: YEAH then she kept replying then she say how can you erm sue

he + see 1 my dog after my brother come when he see me he don’t look happy

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2 aha can we remark aha cos he see he give comment he + take 1 right S1: ah oxygen S3: oxygen S1: if he take it‘s mean die but if 2 want to go by himself S2: no oh he: not take a shower yet @@@@ 3 then he very perasan he go and take screenshot he + talk 1 so he has only one friend so he talk yeah yeah yeah yeah 2 when we start talking with telephone (.) he talk anything S2: mhm he + think 1 whether he got girlfriend or not h she eh he think er very 2 he said no ah i prefer to be toned he think his body is toned eh he + use 1 f word then all look how he use f 2 use S2: indonesia S1: okay S2: if he read he use the english he + want 1 i think. iran(.) the iran president(.) he want to sit face to face 2 very lazy but then [first name5] said that he want then hh S2: no 3 cos i remember you said he told me that he want t- he want to 4 okay @@@ h S2: what S3: he want to poop 5 divorce the wife and after second thoughts he want to marry her 6 S1: but even though he enjoyed and he want to go S2: @@ 7 wants something and he cannot do when we stop he want to kick 8 test that’s the reason why he want to study 9 lazy but then [first name5] said that he want then h S2: no ah 10 SX-f: (4) [first name2] S2: (9) he just want to play now S1: yeah 11 then he ask me about where is the party he really want party 12 classmates S2: mm S1: yeah (.) and he always always want to Based on the data analysis, we can conclude that the non-marking of the third person singular with ‘-s’, identified in VOICE, also exists in ACE, although we stress that the marking of the third person singular, with the exception of the verbs ‘say’, ‘talk’ and ‘use’ is more common than the non-marking of it. Chapter 7 contains a discussion of the use of non-standard forms in some detail, where the need to distinguish between a non-standard feature that may

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occasionally occur with a non-standard form which is used systematically is also considered. With regard the use or non-use of the present third person ‘s’, we can say that this occurs, but it is not used systematically in all cases. A study using data from VOICE reported similar findings (Breiteneder 2005). This is just one illustration of how a comparative study of the VOICE and the ACE data can be conducted through a corpus linguistic approach. Other research that has been conducted using ACE data includes the study of the dynamic identity construction in English as lingua franca intercultural communication (Gu, Patkin & Kirkpatrick 2014), the investigation of mutual face preservation among Asian speakers of ELF (Walkinshaw & Kirkpatrick 2014), and a discussion of the implications of ELF for diplomatic and intercultural communication (Kirkpatrick, Subhan & Walkinshaw 2016). A special edition of the Journal of English as a Lingua Franca (2016: 5, 2) is devoted to ACE-based research; and other ACE-based research is discussed in later chapters. Conclusion Corpus-based ELF research is gaining momentum. The compilation of the ACE corpus was a complicated process, requiring the identification of data collection sites, the formation of sub-teams in different countries/regions, the selection of participants, the utilisation of efficient and reliable recording and data transcription tools, the categorisation of types of settings for the spoken data, the classification of the types of speech events to be included in the corpus, the systematic archiving of recorded data, and the transcription conventions to be used to mark up the corpus data. A series of computer tools were developed to assist users to browse and search the ACE online effectively and efficiently, and with the help of these tools, researchers and practitioners can use ACE to investigate how Asian multilinguals are using English as a lingua franca and to see if, and if so how, these users are shaping English as an Asian language. The subsequent chapters in this book refer to ACE-based research into how Asian multilinguals are using English as a lingua franca. The notation conventions which were used in ACE and which indicated interruptions and overlapping speech and such like have been removed from the examples presented in the following chapters in order to make these easier to read. Occasionally, however, some conventions are retained. A number within brackets [e.g. (2)] means that there is a two second pause. A colon within a word or sound [ e.g. e:r] means the sound is lengthened.

3

Asian Varieties of English vs English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in Asia

I noted in Chapter 1 that English arrived in Asia following different paths. In those countries which had been colonised by the English-speaking empires of Great Britain and the United States – and these include the current-day nation states of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines – English became institutionalised and took root, with the result that new Asian varieties developed. These Englishes, Kachru called Englishes of the ‘outer circle’ to distinguish them from those Englishes he termed ‘inner circle’; Englishes such as British, American and Australian where English was the first language of the majority of the population. The third circle, the ‘expanding circle’ referred to countries where English traditionally was only taught as a foreign language in the school system, and these included countries such as China and Japan. In this chapter, I shall first look at examples from some of the outer circle varieties of English to exemplify how these have developed so that they reflect the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of their speakers. These varieties of English are, by definition, used by speakers who share the same linguistic and cultural backgrounds. I shall then look at how the roles of English across Asia have increased and illustrate how, even in the expanding circle countries, English now acts as an important lingua franca, as the common language of communication between peoples of Asia. This role of English as a lingua franca differs in important ways from the role the local varieties play. In a previous book (Kirkpatrick 2007a: 82) I proposed, in the context of the continuum between cultivated Australian English (CAE) at one end and broad Australian English (BAE) at the other, that the different roles, namely to communicate or to act as an identity marker, could be plotted on a continuum which I called the identity-communication continuum (ICC). I reproduce the original figure, with minor modifications, below. My suggestion was that broad Australian English, while obviously communicative among its speakers, also acted as an identity marker and that people from outside the speech community might have difficulty understanding what was being said. Cultivated Australian English, while also acting as a marker of identity, was likely to be more widely understood. In other words, the broad variety of 53

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Asian Varieties of English vs ELF in Asia Language Function

Identity Communication Language Variety

Broad AE

AE

Cultivated AE

Figure 3.1 The identity-communication continuum

Australian English is used to communicate within the group and the cultivated variety is used to communicate beyond the group. The concept behind the identity-communication continuum can be applied to the different roles a specific variety of English plays when compared to the role of English as a lingua franca. Specific varieties of English – such as Singaporean or Filipino – can be placed towards the identity end of the continuum, while the role of English as a lingua franca can be placed towards the communication end of the continuum. That is to say, local varieties of English act as identity markers among people who share the same linguistic and cultural background (although they are, of course, also communicative within the group) while the major role of English as lingua franca is as a medium of communication across and between people of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. As I shall illustrate later, this does not mean that, when English is used as a lingua franca, it is devoid of cultural nuance, but simply that, when used as a lingua franca, the speakers’ primary goal will usually be to communicate rather than to mark an identity. In the next section of the chapter we shall illustrate how Asian varieties of English reflect the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of their speakers. We shall not here focus on the potential influence of grammar upon Asian varieties of English. Many of the non-standard grammatical features of different varieties of English are shared, and the extent to which they occur and are, in fact, characteristic features of the variety, is open to question (Hall, Schmidtke & Vickers 2013; Kirkpatrick & Subhan 2014). I discuss this further in Chapter 7. Here I want to illustrate how these Asian varieties of English reflect their speakers’ everyday experiences and cultural backgrounds. Asian Englishes and Asian Cultures I begin with examples from different varieties of Indian English. Indian English itself comprises a ‘network of varieties’ with standard Indian English existing

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alongside several regional and occupational varieties (Hosali 2005: 34). One reason for these different varieties is that, as we saw earlier, India is highly multilingual, with eighteen major languages and, literally, hundreds of others. It is also multicultural. The examples (3.1–3.4) of four different varieties of Indian Englishes are taken from Kirkpatrick 2007a: 85 ff). 3.1

3.2

3.3

3.4

Happy that British time that very happy madam. Now no (laughter) . . . on that time very nice. British time. Money is controlled time. Now rice is at a 1 kilo – 2.50. That time get 1 rupee 8 kilo. British time . . . lot of money that is all cheaper. Take eh ones any clothes take 10 rupees you get 1 shirt 1 pant. Now 1 shirt 1 pant you take 100 rupees –no. (Sample of ‘Butler English’; Hosali 2005: 36) Two rival groups are out to have fun . . . you know generally indulge in dhamal and pass time. So, what do they do? Pick on a bechaara bakra who has entered college. (From a teenage journal; D’Souza 2001: 152) She bent her head to receive her mother-in-law’s blessing. ‘Sat Sri Akal’. ‘Sat Sri Akal,’ replied Sabhrai lightly touching Champak’s shoulder. ‘Sat Sri Akal,’ said Sher Singh. ‘Live in plenty, live a long age,’ replied Sabhrai taking her son’s hand and kissing it. ‘Sleep well.’ (From the novel I Shall not Hear the Nightingale by Kushwant Singh quoted in Kachru 1991: 301) Years ago, a slender sapling from a foreign field was grafted by ‘pale hands’ on the mighty and many-branched Indian banyan tree. It has kept growing vigorously and now an organic part of its parent tree, it has spread its own probing roots into the brown soil below. Its young leaves rustle energetically in the strong winds that blow from the western horizon, but the sunshine that warms it and the rain that cools it are from Indian skies; and it continues to draw its vital sap from ‘this earth, this realm,’ this India. (Naik & Narayan 2004: 253)

Example (3.1) is known as ‘Butler English’, the variety which was spoken by servants with their English-speaking masters (Hosali 2005: 34) but, according to Hosali, is still spoken today by people such as hotel staff and domestic servants. The second example (3.2) is of two adolescent girls. They are most likely Hindi speaking as bechaara bakra is Hindi for ‘poor goat’. Dhamal has Sanskrit origins and meant a type of Sufi dance but its meaning has shifted to mean dance more generally. The code-mixing here shows that the speakers share the same linguistic and cultural backgrounds and that, by using words from local languages, the variety is able to reflect the speaker’s culture and traditions. Example (3.3) is a literary text, taken from a novel written by a Sikh author. The author is able to cloak his writing in Sikh culture by using the traditional Sikh greeting of Sat Sri Akal, which means ‘God is truth.’ But, as Yamuna Kachru (1991) points out, the use of this traditional greeting indicates to those steeped in Sikh culture that the mother-in-law’s relationship with her

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daughter-in-law is not close, as she chooses to use this traditional formulaic greeting. Readers from outside the culture are unlikely to interpret this use of the greeting as aloofness. The final example here, (3.4), is from an academic book on Indian literature written in English. The style would probably be considered a little over-garlanded with metaphor by readers familiar with academic writing in British or American English, but it is precisely this use of an extended metaphor that gives the passage its Indian flavour (Kachru 1983). The second extract from the book, which follows, also exemplifies the typical use of what Kachru has termed ‘phrase-mongering’ (1983: 40). In defending the writer who chooses to write in Indian English, the authors say, ‘The regional writer need not debunk his Indian English brother as a rootless wretch, a bastard booby, fattened by British butter or a bat on the banyan bough’ (Naik & Narayan 2004: 253). Far from being ‘rootless wretches’ or ‘bastard boobys’, local writers have adapted English so that it reflects their experience. As the Pakistani novelist, Sidhwa (1996), noted more than twenty years ago: ‘English . . . is no longer a monopoly of the British. We the excolonised have subjugated the language, beaten it on its head and made it ours’ (1996: 231). The Filipino poet, Abad, has expressed almost exactly the same sentiments in saying that ‘English is now ours. We have colonized it too’ (Abad 1997: 170). In ‘colonising’ and ‘subjugating’ English, Sidhwa continues, ‘We have to stretch the language to adapt it to alien thoughts and values which have no precedent or expression in English, subject the language to a pressure that distorts, or, if you like, enlarges its scope and changes its shape’ (1996: 240). In expressing these convictions, Sidhwa echoes the comments made in 1963 by the great novelist and poet of Indian literature in English, Raja Rao (1908–2006) who said, ‘We shall have English with us and amongst us, and not as our guest or friend, but as one of our own, of our castes, our creed, our sect and of our tradition . . . We cannot write like the English. We should not. We can only write like Indians’ (cited in Srivastava & Sharma 1991: 190–205).It is important here to note that we are not including literary figures of Asian descent who have moved to inner circle countries, such as the towering literary figures of Salman Rushdie and Kazuo Ishiguro, who more accurately represent a new breed of British writer. Our focus is on Asian writers of literature in English who have remained in their home countries. These examples show not only how Asian varieties of English have been shaped and adapted by their speakers so that they reflect the speaker’s cultural and linguistic backgrounds, but also show that Indian English is not a single standard variety but comprises a range of different varieties as is also evident in other Asian varieties which have been established for some time. Schneider

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(e.g., 2010: 381) has proposed five stages of development that varieties of English that have their origins in colonial settings go through: (i) the foundation stage. English arrives in the new territory; (ii) the exonormative stabilisation phase. The English spoken by the educated classes of the colonial power (Britain or the United States) provides the linguistic standards for the local English; (iii) the nativisation stage. A new variety of English emerges shaped by the phonology, grammar and culture of the indigenous languages; (iv) the endonormative stabilisation phase. The new variety starts to be recognised as a legitimate variety in its own right; (v) the differentiation phase. Increasing dialectal differences reflect local identities and groups. My view is that Indian English has reached the final differentiation phase, as it comprises a range of varieties. A number of other Asian varieties have also reached the differentiation stage, as the examples taken from other Asian varieties will exemplify. Before moving to those, however, I shall briefly review other models of how varieties of develop. Kachru, who can justifiably be called the father of the discipline of World Englishes, proposed three stages though which outer circle varieties of English pass. The first phase, which is similar to Schneider’s phase of exonormative stabilisation, is when the local variety is not recognised as a legitimate variety. Locals believe that the imported inner circle variety is superior and should be the model for classroom teaching. The second phase occurs when the imported inner circle variety exists alongside the developing local outer circle variety, but the inner circle variety is still considered superior. The third phase, which parallels Schneider’s phase of endonormative stabilisation, is when the local outer circle variety is recognised and accepted. A somewhat different approach has been proposed by Butler (1997: 10). She posits five criteria against which to measure the emergence of a new variety of English: (i) a standard and recognisable pronunciation handed down from one generation to another; (ii) particular words and phrases which spring up to express key features of the physical and social environment and which are regarded as peculiar to the variety; (iii) a history – a sense that this variety of English is the way it is because of the history of the language community; (iv) a literature written without apology in that variety of English; (v) reference works – dictionaries and style guides – which show that people in that language community look to themselves, not some outside authority, to decide what is right and what is wrong in terms of how they speak and write their English.

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I shall argue that many Asian varieties of English meet at least the first four criteria specified by Butler. I also argue, however, that the fifth criterion will only be met after the variety has been established. After all, one only receives a birth certificate after one’s birth, not before it. And it is worth noting that the Macquarie Dictionary, recognised as the dictionary of the Australian language (and of which, incidentally, Butler was the executive publisher), was only published in 1981, more than 200 years after Captain Cook set foot in Australia. In the next section, I consider how selected Asian varieties of English have met Butler’s second criterion and how they have been adapted by their speakers to meet their cultural needs and to reflect their cultural values through a process which Kachru has termed acculturation. A common way of acculturating a variety to its new speakers’ needs is through vocabulary. Vocabulary can allow for acculturation in a number of ways. First, by borrowing terms from the local languages, the new variety of English can express what Butler terms key features of the physical and social environment. To take Malaysian English as an example, borrowing words such as kampong (village), sarong (item of clothing), bomoh (traditional doctor), towkay (boss), dhobi (laundry) khalwat (close proximity) into the local variety of English all help Malaysians talk about their daily lives in English. It is important to note that these words come from different languages, with the first three being Malay words, while towkay comes from Cantonese, dhobi derives from Hindi and khalwat from Arabic (Leitner, Hashim & Wolf 2016). This underlines the multilingual nature of most Asian societies. In Malaysia, various Chinese and Indian languages are spoken as is Arabic, if only for religious purposes. As a result, outsiders would find it difficult to understand people speaking colloquial varieties of Malaysian English. As ethnic Malays are Muslim, an extensive range of Arabic loanwords have been borrowed into Malay and from there into the local variety of English. The table below showing examples of these is taken from Hashim and Leitner (2016: 95). Similar phenomena can be seen in Bruneian English where many Islamic religious terms have been borrowed from Arabic into Malay and thence into Bruneian English. Examples include zikir (purity in adherence to Islamic ideals), da’wah (Islamic propagation), fardhu (religious duty) and puasa (fasting) (Deterding & Sharbawi 2013: 92–3). Bruneian English also includes many Malay words for everyday items such as clothing and food. Examples include kueh lapis (layer cake), ambuyat (sago paste, a Bruneian delicacy) and nasi katok (‘rice knock’, referring to a small packet of rice with spicy chicken which was traditionally given to those who knocked on doors asking for food); also baju kurung (long, loosefitting Malay women’s dress) and songkok (Malay headgear worn by males) (McLellan 2020).

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Table 3.1 The semantic domains of Arabic loans Islam, religion,

Quran Festivals/Sacred Days Law Titles Administration Banking Greetings, wishes Ethics, values

terawih (prayer performed at night during Ramadhan), mufti (deliverer of legal opinion), halal (permissible according to religious law), haram (prohibited by religion), imam (priest), khalwat (close proximity) al-Anfaal ‘The Spoils of War’ (eighth chapter of Koran), Al-Asr ‘a section of the Quran’, al-fatihah ‘prayer’, al-Maa’un ‘110 surah of the Quran’ Aidiladha (festival to celebrate the Haj), Maulidur Rasul (birth of the Prophet), Maulud Nabi (birth of the Prophet), Maal Hijrah (new year of the Muslim calendar) fiqh (jurisprudence), hudud (Islamic criminal law), hukum (judgement), mutaah (contractual marriage), nafkah (maintenance) almarhum (deceased), Khalifah (caliph), bin and binti (signaling male and female descent), sultan or Sultan tadbir (administration, management, governance) (The Star, 5 May 2009, Tadbir in the Quran) khazanah (possessions), takaful (Islamic insurance), sukuk (deed), musharakah (joint venture/agreement to provide funds) selamat raya ‘Welcome [at the time of Raya]’ etc. wajib ‘compulsory’, halal ‘permissible’, adab ‘courteous’

A second way that vocabulary can acculturate a new variety of English is simply by translating local phenomena from a local language into English. While the existence of a Chinese variety of English is under debate and is a question considered later, Xu (2010: 285 ff.) gives several examples of Chinese terms translated into English. These include ‘barefoot doctor’ (a type of paramedic) and ‘iron rice-bowl’ (a job for life). Words from Chinese that have been directly borrowed into English include fengshui (geomancy), guanxi (relationship) and maodun (contradiction). Words from English can also be borrowed into the local variety of English but given a different meaning. Examples from Malaysian and Singaporean Englishes include ‘alphabet’, which means a letter of the alphabet so that there are 26 alphabets in Singapore English. A fourth way that vocabulary aids acculturation is through a process Kachru has called ‘hybridisation’ (1983: 38) where words of English are ‘added’ to words from local languages. An example of this from Indian English he gives is tiffin carrier (a food container, a term also found in Malaysian English). Suffixes from local languages and English can also be used to create hybridised vocabulary. Police-wala and Patelship are examples. Discourse markers from the local languages also commonly occur in Asian varieties of English. The rich range of Brunei Malay particles are often found in

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the English speech of Bruneians, where they act as identity markers (McLennan 2020). The example (3.5) below comes from the Asian Corpus of English (ACE) and is of a female Malaysian who is ethnically Chinese. The discourse markers are underlined. There are five instances of ‘lah’ and one of ‘mah’. 3.5

S1: then he said erm if the if I was younger lah and then I would think about leaving school lah I say why give it to your mother or father to take care lah I might have done that lah cos my parents then he said then he said no lah the most important time for a child is four years mah and I want to bond with my child. (Kirkpatrick & Subhan 2014)

There is considerable debate over which local language provides these discourse markers, as Malay and Chinese both use them. The point is, however, that speakers of Asian varieties of English commonly use local language discourse markers when speaking English with people who share their linguistic and cultural backgrounds, primarily as a marker of identity. This concept of hybridisation can be extended to sentence level where two or more languages can be used alongside each other in a phenomenon known as code-mixing. The mixing of Malay and English is so common in Bruneian English that McLellan has argued that Bruneian English is, by definition, a code-mixed variety (McLellan 2010). In a study of social media he notes that the main pattern of code-mixing is ‘Brunei Malay with a fairly “standard” variety of English’. Example (3.6) is taken from McLellan (2020: 410). 3.6

/1Hari bulan kurang lebih 27-Nov-08: Ada satu \2 (airline) pilot caught /3 Day month more less have one ia punya \4 Wife in bed (in her 40’s) /5sama \6 married Filipino/7 (iatu 3s POSS with 3s-DEM \8supposedly her dancing instructor /9lah) dan \10 stabbed him /11dgn DM and ABBR-with pisau, \12subsequently pilot /13ni pun terus \14 reported himself /15 ke \16 knife DEM DM straightaway to police, /17dan Filipino ni \18 was admitted /19 ke RIPAS\20 ICU! / 21Ia \22Wife and DEM to (hospital) /23 ni \24has been well-known /25 d \26 local community as well as /27d DEM ABBR-in ABBR-in Belait \28 District/29 jua \30, for ‘man-izing’. Despite /32 banyak Also many berapa \33 occasions /34 udah \35 indecent affairs being caught, /36 how many already unfortunately /37 tak \38 taken as lessons learnt /39 lah.\40 NEG DM

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Free translation Date more or less 27 November 08. There was one (airline) pilot caught his wife in bed (in her 40s) with a married Filipino who was supposedly her dance instructor and stabbed him with a knife, subsequently this pilot straightaway reported himself to the police, and the Filipino was admitted to RIPAS (hospital) Intensive Care Unit! Now this wife has been well-known in the local community as well as in Belait District for ‘manizing’. Despite the many occasions when she was caught having such indecent affairs unfortunately these were not taken as lessons learnt.

In his analysis. McLellan (2020) notes that there are mixed nominal and prepositional phrases. ‘Satu (airline) pilot’, ‘Ia punya wife’ and ‘pilot ni’ have English heads and Malay pre- or post-modifiers. The prepositional phrases ‘sama married Filipino’, ‘ke police’ and ‘despite banyak berapa occasions’ show switches between the prepositions and noun phrases they govern. The adverbs ‘jua’ and ‘udah’ are Brunei rather than standardised Malay. The very high frequency of switching – forty in this relatively short extract – is evidence of a high level of bilingual proficiency.’ A further example of code-mixing (3.7) is provided by this passage of Colloquial Singaporean English. We have noted earlier that many Asian varieties of English are themselves made up of different varieties and Singaporean English exemplifies this, where Colloquial Singapore English can be compared with educated or standard Singapore English. The example and ‘translation’ are both taken from Cavallero, Ng & Tan (2020: 422). 3.7

Pulau Ubin zuo mo?1 makan seafood or phatoh? Emails he takes like 2 days later. Then when I reply to ask further, lagi 2 days gone. Merng so much of bun tuay, but neh cor-mit if can make it for sebben Low-vember also. Yah, you ganjiong also bo pian. Den just now kar chiew dian give her two time bo lang answer. So tua pai one hor. When eventually answer, tone like kanna stone tiok . . . then a bit enthu. Aiyoh, I also blur. Sekali, fly our pigeon, then how?

‘Why Pulau Ubin? Is he there for seafood or a date? He takes two days to answer his emails and when I replied with more questions, another two days go by. He asked so many questions but still is unable to commit to the 7th November date. There is no point your getting anxious, nothing to do. He is up himself. When he eventually called back, he first sounded lost and then he got excited, it got me confused. What if he stands us up? What are we going to do?’

As can be seen from this example, Colloquial Singaporean English is characterised by code-mixing and is unintelligible to people who speak other varieties of English. The other varieties of English exemplified thus far – especially those of a more colloquial nature – are also mutually unintelligible to speakers of other varieties. The main point here is that these varieties of English act as identity markers and can be placed towards the identity end of the identitycommunication continuum. They are used by people who share the same

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linguistic and cultural backgrounds. I shall give further examples of and evidence for this in Chapter 5 when I look at how pragmatic norms and ways of speaking can be transferred into these varieties of English and the possible implications of this for cross-cultural communication. In the next section of this chapter, I discuss how English is being used as a lingua franca in Asia. When used as a lingua franca, many of the identity markers – and thus much of the code-mixing – is not evident, as the primary motivation for using English as a lingua franca is for communication between people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The section starts with a review of how English came to be adopted as the lingua franca, the sole working language, of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). English as a Lingua Franca in Asia In Chapter 1, the various ways in which English arrived in Asia were described. English was uninvited. It arrived as the language of traders, missionaries and empires. In those countries which had a colonial past under English-speaking empires, English became institutionalised and local varieties of English developed. In this section of Chapter 3, the story of how English came to be the major lingua franca of Asia is briefly related. In particular, how English came to be the sole working language of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a group of ten nations, will be considered. Far from being uninvited, English has been chosen by the group to be its sole working language. Article 34 of the ASEAN Charter, signed in 2009, simply states ‘The working language of ASEAN shall be English.’ ASEAN was formed in 1967, with the signing of the Bangkok Declaration. There were only five founding member states, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The motivation for its establishment was the uncertain regional political situation. As Rajaratnam, the then Foreign Minister of Singapore and one of the signatories to the Bangkok declaration, explained, ‘Regional countries were faced with managing the effects of decolonisation, confrontation with the forces of communism, and separatism. These newly independent countries were also pre-occupied with building their economies and national identities’ (cited in Kesavapany 2005: 1). Given that they were preoccupied with building their national identities, it is surprising that the question of language received no mention in the Bangkok Declaration. The Japanese scholar, Okudaira, interviewed delegates about the language question and was told that it was not discussed as it was assumed that English would be the working language. Delegates made remarks like: ‘the idea of English as the common language came out automatically’,

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‘there has been no regulation for the use of English but it has been used in all the actual situations’, and ‘we took it for granted’ (Okudaira 1999: 95–6).

This de facto use of English as the working language of ASEAN received official blessing with the signing of the ASEAN Charter in 2009, which, as noted, legislated English as the working language of ASEAN. By the time of the signing of the Charter, a further five nations had joined the group. These were, in the order of and dates of joining: Brunei (1984); Vietnam (1995); Myanmar and Laos (1997); and Cambodia (1999). Given the preoccupation of these newly independent countries with establishing identity, it was surprising which language to be used as a working language did not cause debate or controversy. It is important to point out first, that, three of the five original members had been colonies of English-speaking empires (Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore) and where English had taken on an institutional role. Second, many of the countries of ASEAN are linguistically and culturally extremely diverse. More than 700 languages are spoken in Indonesia, for example, and some 170 in the Philippines. Both Indonesia and the Philippines were involved in the creation and promotion of a national language, Bahasa Indonesia and Filipino respectively. These were languages that were not originally spoken by the majority of the population. As noted earlier, Bahasa Indonesia, which is based on Malay, was only spoken as a first language by 3 per cent of the population. Filipino is based on Tagalog, a language only spoken by people who lived in and around the capital, Manila. While the promotion of Bahasa Indonesia and Filipino has been remarkably successful in both countries, it is only relatively recently that the majority of the population have become proficient in these languages (Montolalu & Suryadinata 2007). Neither Indonesia nor the Philippines would have been able to push for the adoption of their respective ‘national’ languages at the time of the signing of the Bangkok Declaration. A final point to make in explaining why English was chosen without apparent controversy was the very linguistic diversity of the group. On being asked in 2006 whether other languages had been considered as working languages, Edilberto de Jesus, the then Secretariat Director of the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organisation (SEAMEO), which comprises the ten countries of ASEAN along with Timor Leste, replied: ‘No, English only. Otherwise it would have been like opening Pandora’s box’ (pc). English has also become the working language of extended regional groups including the so-called ASEAN + 3, comprising ASEAN and China, Japan and Korea, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) comprising twenty-one countries, the thirteen of ASEAN + 3 along with Australia, Canada, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russia and

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the United States. In 2003, the APEC Ministerial Meeting issued a statement urging member countries ‘to undertake measures to provide adequate knowledge and practical use of English as a working language within the APEC region’ (Lazaro & Medalla 2004: 278). As part of its role as the sole working language of ASEAN, English is also being adopted as a tool to help the integration of ASEAN and the creation of an ASEAN identity (Stroupe & Kimura 2015). This role was emphasised in 2013 by the then Secretary General of ASEAN, Le Luong Minh: With the diversity in ASEAN reflected in our diverse histories, races, cultures and belief systems, English is an important and indispensable tool to bring our Community closer together. . . . Used as the working language of ASEAN, English enables us to interact with other ASEAN colleagues in our formal meetings as well as day-today communications. . . . In order to prepare our students and professionals in response to all these ASEAN integration efforts, among other measures, it is imperative that we provide them with opportunities to improve their mastery of the English language, the language of our competitive global job market, the lingua franca of ASEAN. (ASEAN 2013)

The recognition of the importance of English can be seen in surprising quarters. Cambodia, in 1999, was the last country to join ASEAN. Having been part of the French colony of Indo-China, French was the first foreign language taught in Cambodian schools until the four years of the murderous Pol Pot regime (1975–9) when the teaching of all foreign languages was proscribed. Cambodia was then occupied by the Vietnamese (1979–93), when Vietnamese and Russian were the two main foreign languages. These were replaced in 1989 by French and English (Clayton 2006). In a remarkably short period of time, English has become the first language taught in schools, after the national language, Khmer, itself. Two quotes – the first from a Cambodian Government Minister (and which was also cited in Chapter 1), the second from a Cambodian English teacher – capture the perceived need for English. If we don’t know English, how can we participate? [In ASEAN] We need to know English so that we can defend our interests. You know ASEAN is not some kissy-kissy brotherhood. The countries are fiercely competitive, and a strong knowledge of English will help us protect our Cambodian interests. You know, when we use English, we don’t think about the United States or England. We only think about the need to communicate. (Clayton 2006: 230–3; Kirkpatrick 2010a: 57) In the future I hope that more and more Cambodians will speak English because we understand about the advantages of English. We cannot live without English because we have to make contact with the world. We have to do business with the world. (Kirkpatrick 2010a: 57)

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From these quotes, it can be seen that English is playing vital roles across Asia. Its role as a lingua franca has increased the use of English in countries that were traditionally regarded as Expanding Circle countries. Far from being taught solely in schools as a foreign language, English is encroaching across many domains of use in many of these countries. This has led to the early introduction of English in primary school curricula, typically at Grade 3, and to the increased use of English as a medium of instruction in higher education (Fenton-Smith, Humphreys & Walkinshaw 2017; Kirkpatrick & Liddicoat 2017; Murray & Scarino 2014). I return to the role of English in education in Chapters 9 and 10, where I also consider how the promotion of English is having an impact, often negative, on the teaching and learning of many local languages. Here I simply underline that, in addition to the Asian varieties of English which were considered in the first section of this chapter, English has now become the major lingua franca of Asia. In the final section of this chapter, some examples of English as a lingua franca being used by Asian multilinguals for whom English is an additional language are provided. These examples are all taken from the Asian Corpus of English (ACE) (see also Kirkpatrick, Patkin & Wu 2013) and illustrate the role that English is playing in the lives of the interactants. Chapter 4 will contain many more examples of English being used as a lingua franca across a wide variety of topics. The first example of ELF use (3.8) is of an ethnically Chinese Bruneian female (S2) talking about her linguistic background and the role of different languages in her upbringing. The other participants are a Filipina (S1), a Thai male (S3) and a Vietnamese female (S4). SX indicates that it is not possible to determine who is speaking. SX-f means it is a female speaking, but not possible to determine which one. 3.8

S2: my first language when i fam- when i’m at home in the family are actually dialect chinese dialects i speak a few languages well i speak to my father in a different dialect i speak to my mother in a different dialectkay so that is when i am at the age of one one to three one to four SX -family S3: chinese dialect S1: growing S4: mhm S2: so two dialects growing at the same time and at the same time our neighbours spoke malay S4: mhm S3: mhm S2: we live in an area where there were a lot of malays there were a lot of malays li- living in the area as well S1: your mother’s chinese S2: my father’s chinese my mother is chinese S4: mhm

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Asian Varieties of English vs ELF in Asia S2: erm so but we spo- i spoke dialect chinese: so i had so i grew up with a lot of languages around me S1: that’s interesting S2: and i don’t i don’t actually remember SX -f: (laughter) S2: how i i only knew that i was drilled in grammar but erm i felt for a vevery long time that even when i was i can still think back and i was in kindergarten i could understand the teacher SX -f: okay S1: uh-huh S4: hm S2: and she spoke erm english SX -f: hm S2: at that time so it wasn’t a major difficulty because i was so small and so young S1: eah yeah so what would you say is er what is your first language now S2: definitely english now i mean english has become i think in english i S3: English english SX -f: (laughter) S4: so you have so you have your mo- mother tongue father tongue SX -(laughter) S2: in the language i use most S1: neighbourhood tongue

In this conversation, S2 describes the languages she used during her upbringing in what is a typically multilingual environment. She used different dialects of Chinese with her parents, one with her mother, another with her father (and she also speaks Mandarin, a third Chinese dialect/language). She spoke Malay with her fellow villagers and learned English from an early age at school. On being asked by the Filipina what she feels her first language to be now, she answers ‘definitely English’. This is important as it shows how a language learned later than a mother tongue can become the speaker’s strongest language. In S2’s case, English, a language learned first at school, has become her strongest language. The second example of ELF use (3.9) is of an Indonesian male (S1) talking to a Chinese-Malay female (S2). They are talking about the daughter of mutual friend who has gone to England to train as an English teacher. 3.9

S2: and she’s she is been:: er: england before or not she’s been in england before or not S1: yes: been S2: yah been she has been in england before or not S1: before yes she’s stu- er: she was study there S2: uh-huh you sure S1: yah:

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S2: er i just last time we go to her room then i saw her daughter’s picture daughter daughter’s S1: she graduated in england S2: hh S1: for the undergraduate S2: o:h that’s why she’s: S1: yah for the degree program that’s why S2: yah she speaks S1: she can speak S2: a lot yah S1: english properly S2: mhm S1: and then even she cannot speak malay (laughter) S2: she cannot S1: she cannot er i mean she can but not fluently yah S2: just a few oh S1: she cannot speak engli- er:: malay fluently S2: she’s still here or she’s already S1: she’s still here she she’s: she teaches the: english course

In their conversation, they note that their friend’s daughter can speak English ‘properly’ but that she is now not fluent in Malay. By ‘properly’ we can assume they mean that their daughter’s friend’s English approximates a British native speaker variety, given that she has been to England to study. The participants seem to feel that their friend’s daughter’s proficiency in English has been acquired at the expense of fluency in Malay and this provides another example of where a learned language, English, rather than the mother tongue, has become the dominant language of the speaker. It is interesting to note that they themselves use non-standard forms of English. For example, in the second line S2 omits the subject and states ‘been’ rather than ‘she has been’ and then does not mark for the past tense when he says, ‘last time we go to her room’. Both the omission of subject and the non-marking of tense have been noted as features in the colloquial variety of both Malaysian and Singaporean English (Hashim 2020). A possible reason for the omission of the subject is that both Chinese and Malay are pro-drop languages, which means that they do not require a subject, as exemplified in the brief exchange a: ‘Can do it or not? b: Can lah!

The non-marking of tense is also accounted for by the fact that neither Chinese nor Malay mark the verb for tense but indicate time through the use of time adverbials or aspect marking. However, as will be shown in Chapter 7, and was seen in Chapter 2, when using English as a lingua franca the first-language

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speakers of Malay in the Asian Corpus of English mark for tense far more frequently than they do not (see also Kirkpatrick & Subhan 2014). The third and final example of participants using English as a lingua franca in a discussion about language is provided in (3.10). S1 is a Vietnamese female and S2 is a Filipina. They both live in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, and referred to in the dialogue by S1 as ‘KL’. They are talking about how compatriots are identifiable from the variety of English they speak, especially from their accent. 3.10

S1: for those for e- tsk the chinese for those who study abroad to: their accent is very different S2: very different yeah but for me er when i heard someone speaking filipino speaking english i can i can identify even i did i don’t look at them S1: of course S2: i can identify S1: because every every non-native speakers speak with an accent S2: yeah S1: i even myself if i’m in a train S2: mm S1: if some filipino: speaking english i can recognise about fifty or sixty per cent ah okay they are from philippine S2: wah is it like yesterday i went to a photo ce- photocopy center S1: mm S2: to photostat a book so the lady said the the owner said erm y- give to the ser- servant there and she was like okay can i do i need to copy the back cover something like that S1: ah S2: she’s from S1: she sound so filipino (laughter) S2: yeah and then when she came to me to keep all the book sh- she heard me talking to my husband in the back room S1: uh huh S2: she said excuse me maam are you from philippines S1 (laughter) S2: yes S1: (laugh) S2: h then i talk in tagalog S1: ah S2: then she’s very surprised because it’s been two years she haven’t S1: haven’t talked to any filipino in KL S2: talked to filipino yeah but she know how to S1: o:h S2: saturday sunday she’s stays at home S1: mm mm i see S2: so i said okay you want me to give a number so i can h maybe you can like come to our house or h maybe you go to church

Conclusion

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In this conversation, S2 describes how she has been identified as a Filipina by a fellow Filipina from the ways she speaks English. On having this confirmed, they switch to talking in Tagalog, the language spoken around metro Manila but also the language which forms the basis of Filipino, the national language. When speaking in English, both participants occasionally use non-standard forms. For example, the excerpt below taken from towards the end of the dialogue shows S2 not marking the past tense in ‘I then talk’, and not marking concord ‘she haven’t’. The use of non-standard forms such as these is not infrequent, but, as was the case in the excerpts, their presence goes without remark and without causing any problems or misunderstandings. s2: s1: s2: s1: s2: s1: s2:

h then i talk in tagalog ah then she’s very surprised because it’s been two years she haven’t haven’t talked to any filipino in KL talked to filipino yeah but she know how to o:h saturday sunday she stays at home

These three excerpts (3.8, 3.9 & 3.10) all illustrate Asian multilinguals using English as a lingua franca and show how central English is in the life of these multilinguals. Not only are they using English as a lingua franca in order to communicate with each other, they talk about English and indicate ways in which it is important to them. The Bruneian speaker in (3.8) explains that English is now her first language. The speakers in (3.9) talk about how a friend’s daughter has developed proficiency in English but at the expense of her first language, Malay; and the Filipina in (3.10) shows how the Filipino variety of English and accent acts as an identity marker. Conclusion This chapter started with a description of how Asian varieties of English have developed in certain Asian countries and some examples from these were provided. I argued that Asian varieties of English act as primarily, but not exclusively, markers of identity and are typically therefore used with people who share similar linguistic and cultural backgrounds. For this reason, codemixing between English and relevant Asian languages is a feature of such varieties and this often makes them, especially the colloquial varieties, unintelligible to speakers from outside. I then described how English came to be adopted as a lingua franca across Asia, giving the example of its role as the sole working language of regional groupings such as ASEAN, ASEAN + 3 and APEC. When using English as a lingua franca, speakers focus primarily, but not exclusively, on communication and thus code-mixing is less likely, as such

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code-mixing would not be understood. Having said that, it is important to underline the essential multilingual nature of ELF, even though its surface form may appear largely monolingual (Schaller-Schwaner & Kirkpatrick 2020). All users of ELF have, by definition, other languages in their linguistic repertoire. The use of the discourse markers from the speaker’s other languages is shown in example (3.5), and further examples will be provided in later chapters. In this chapter, the focus has been on examples of English which not only demonstrated its use as a lingua franca but also showed how important English is in the life of these Asian multilinguals. These two strands of English – as represented by Asian varieties of English and as a lingua franca – have quite different origins. Asian varieties of English developed in countries that were colonised by English-speaking empires. In these cases, English was, as it were, thrust upon them. In the case of English as a lingua franca, however, English has been chosen by its speakers to act in this role. In this case, English has, as it were, been invited in. I thus argue that English is now not only a language in Asia but of Asia. In the following chapters, I provide more evidence and examples to support the argument.

4

What Do Asian Multilinguals Talk about When Using English as a Lingua Franca?

This chapter contains a number of examples of the topics that Asian multilinguals discuss when using English as a lingua franca. These are all taken from the Asian Corpus of English. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the topics are Asiacentric and provide a very wide range of subject matter. They also illustrate different levels of formality, from the relatively formal style of the first excerpt (4.1) to more colloquial informal styles. In also discussing the actual language used by the participants I shall illustrate how different levels of formality can affect the language that the speakers choose to use and indicate how levels of formality influence the way the speakers use language. The speakers’ use of non-standard linguistic forms is also briefly discussed in this chapter, but discussed in more detail in Chapter 7. In the first excerpts (4.1a–4.1c), the then Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak (S2), is being interviewed by Tian Wei, (S1) the female Chinese host of a Chinese current affairs programme. Prime Minister Razak’s first language is Malay and Tian Wei’s is Mandarin Chinese. The interview, which is aimed at a predominately Chinese audience, is conducted entirely in English, providing further evidence of the spread of English use within China. I have included this example partly because of its topicality as, at the time of writing, ex-Prime Minister Najib is on trial in Malaysia, accused of embezzling hundreds of millions of US dollars from the Malaysian sovereign fund. Readers will notice that both speakers have very high levels of proficiency in English and that the level of formality here is high. There are no examples of any code-mixing from either of the speaker’s first languages, Chinese and Malay. The one area of likely transfer from the speaker’s first language is the interviewer’s use of the term ‘Mister’ both to address Prime Minister Najib and, as in (4.1b), in referring to a previous Prime Minister of Malaysia, a previous Premier of China and Zhou Enlai, the long-serving Chinese Foreign Minister, who died in 1976. This use of ‘Mister’ looks like the translation of the Chinese term of address, Xiansheng (literally first born), which would be seen as suitably polite and deferential in Chinese. The use of ‘Mister’ might not appear so polite and deferential in certain native-speaking varieties of English. In the following contexts, the use of the person’s title alone (Prime Minister, Premier, 71

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Foreign Minister) would probably be considered a more appropriate way to address or refer to such people. In the opening excerpt, the speakers are discussing the establishment of the China–Malaysia Qinzhou Industrial Park, work on which began in 2014. (4.1a)

S1: Mister Prime Minister welcome to our dialogue S2: thank you S1: well you are here to attend the official launching ceremony of the China– Malaysia Qinzhou Industrial Park what do you think about the significance of the specific official launch of it? S2: I think it is an iconic project because it symbolises the how far we’ve come since nineteen seventy four when we when we became the first southeast Asian country to do to establish diplomatic relations with China the relationship with China has improved by leaps and bounds in so many areas that er: this this project indicates er: in the sense how far we’ve come (.) and the potential that relationship in in real tangible terms S1: tell me about the potential then S2: well that park alone in the first phase of it er will attract something like three hundred million US in terms of investment it’s actually building a township er: in our case it will be like a city but in China’s context it’s probably just a township but you know it already has a population of a half a million and we expect er: in a few years’ time it would exceed a million and beyond and the entire area is fifty five square kilometres and you can imagine that you know a fifty five area square kilometres with er new modern factories commercial buildings a real estate development.er

In this excerpt, Prime Minister Najib and Tian Wei are talking about the establishment of a special industrial park. The initial point to be made here is that they choose to discuss this using English as a lingua franca. As noted, the speakers’ level of English proficiency is very high and there are no misunderstandings or breakdowns in communication. In the next excerpt, (4.1b) they move on to discuss the general state of the bilateral relations between the two countries. This involves recalling the meeting in 1974 between the then Prime Minister of Malaysia and Najib’s father, Abdul Razak Hussein, and the then Chinese Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai. This is interesting as it shows how much economic influence China is amassing in Malaysia. Recalling this meeting of 1974 reflects how important the notion of guanxi (relationships) is in China. By recalling the meeting between Zhou and Najib’s father, Tian Wei is displaying another key Chinese cultural value in that she is giving Najib ‘face’ (Xu 2010). Even though English is the medium of communication here, the key Chinese cultural conceptualisations of guanxi and ‘face’ are being realised through English. Cultural conceptualisations refer to the ways people from a particular culture categorise phenomena and how they view them (Sharifian 2011; Wolf 2020).

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S1: But Mister Prime Minister besides the trade and economic ties (.) what do you think about the overall situation of the bilateral relations what about the strategic trust the political ties the people’s relations? S2: yeah i i think it’s never been stronger i mean today the the r- relationship with China is all encompassing er it’s it’s it’s broader er it’s not only strategic broader and deeper er in all significant areas i mean the er bilateral trade with China is is touching a hundred billion almost a hundred billion US and er with with er in is set to to increase even further and then the er the investment Chinese investment into Malaysia and vice versa it is also er set to grow very significantly and er people-topeople contact is I think er China is our our erm big resource of tourist one point five million a year erm Chinese tourists visit Malaysia and we are improving the connectivity with China and er Chinese er companies are operating in some of the er: exciting high-tech fields like providing us with with new trains modern trains S1: hm S2: telecommunication er in many new new areas and the erm political understanding also is very good between our leaders S1: right interesting to talk about political understanding because it really reminded me of the year nineteen seventy four in which your father then the second Prime Minister of Malaysia did sign a very historical document with the Chinese Premier of that time Mister Zhou Enlai a significant document signifying the establishment of relations between the two countries and I understand during your state visit to China the Chinese Premier Mister Wen Jiabao presented you with one of those historic photos of that moment but that is really the question how can your generation of leaders both in China and in Malaysia strengthen further the relations between the two countries and bring it to a higher level?

In the final excerpt of this conversation (4.1c), the Chinese interviewer suggests that putting aside intractable problems by simply not mentioning them is an aspect of Asian culture. Prime Minister Najib initially agrees, but then qualifies this by saying it is also a practical way of dealing with negotiation. Further examples of a so-called ‘Asian way’ in dialogue and negotiation are provided in the excerpts following this one. (4.1c)

S2: I agree with you I think er if there are some rather intractable problem or seemingly intractable problems then we should put those problems aside put those problems on the back burner for a while you know and and work on things that can lead to: results S1: is it in Asian culture?

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S2: yeah it’s part of Asian cul but it’s it’s a very pragmatic way of looking at things ‘cos if you can’t solve the problem er you know put it aside and and look at into other areas that you can really build on and build on that relationship and if the relationship gets stronger and stronger and stronger er you know the problem that you wanted to attend to earlier probably would not be so unbearable or so un- insurmountable when you look at it sometime in the future.

That avoiding potentially awkward topics to ensure smooth negotiations is part of Asian culture has been noted within the overall context of ASEAN itself in the term ‘The ASEAN way’. As noted in the Introduction to this book, the essence of the ‘ASEAN way’ can be captured in two key Malay concepts, namely musyawarah (dialogue) and muafakat (consensus) (Curley & Thomas 2007). In the next two examples (4.2a & 4.2b), the ‘Asian way’ is explicitly referred to. The three participants are consular staff from Bruneian, Malaysian and Indonesian embassies who are undertaking a professional development course at the University of Brunei. S4 is a Bruneian female, S5 a Malaysian male and S6 an Indonesian female. (4.2a)

S4: S6: S5: S6: S4:

no problem so that was about visa as well you know yeah visa mhm: mhm but but is there is there particular Asian way to say it what they want us to say hh e:r you go with S6: the thing is i’ve never like refuse any Asian countries you know when they come to us to for visa maybe other countries but not Asians so far so that’s why when in case of Nigerian yes i once S4: mhm

In response to the Bruneian (S4) speaker’s question about whether there is an Asian way, the Indonesian (S6) says that she has never refused a visa to anyone from an Asian country but suggests that she has refused visas to people from other countries, and Nigeria is mentioned. In (4.2b), the dialogue continues. s4: s6: s4: s5: s6: s4: s6: s4: s6: s4: s5:

that’s that’s Asian lah you know yeah yeah ah but sometimes i suspect yeah we don’t we don’t be like it’s it’s nice ah to refuse you know yeah people when they come and ask you for a favor or something like that and then th

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s4: especially you know with phone calls like that s6: yeah and s6: yeah especially if you know them s5: i think i think in the western i think in the western culture they will totally follow the s6: yeah s5: the procedure right if tomorrow means tomorrow if you cannot means cannot s4: yeah s6: i don’t know s5: erm but because we: you know being Asian we want to . . . we we don’t like to hurt others s6: yeah s5: and (laughter) s6: (laughter) hh we like to be nice (laughter) (Kirkpatrick, Subhan & Walkinshaw 2016)

Here the participants seem to agree that there is an Asian way, exemplified by not liking to refuse favours for people. The Malaysian participant contrasts this directly with what happens in ‘Western culture’ where the procedure will be followed to the letter of the law. The excerpt concludes amidst laughter with them agreeing that ‘being Asian . . . we don’t like to hurt others’. A further point of interest in these excerpts is the use of Malay discourse markers. For example, in the opening line of (4.2b) the Bruneian participant says, ‘that’s that’s Asian lah you know’. ‘Lah’ is a very commonly used discourse marker in both Malay and Malaysian English. The fact that all the speakers in this excerpt are first-language speakers of Malay (Indonesian is very closely related to Malay) means that the Bruneian knows that this use of the discourse marker will be understood and will probably also signal closeness and identity with fellow Malay speakers. A similar phenomenon was noted in example 3.5 in Chapter 3. The next selection of excerpts (4.3a–4.3c) is taken from a similar programme to the one in which the then Prime Minister of Malaysia was interviewed. In this case, the Chinese host and interviewer, Yang Rui, (S1) is talking to a Malaysian, Jawhar Hassan, the Chief Executive Officer, Director-General and Chairman of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia (S2). They are discussing the potential threat of Muslim terrorists. In (4.3a) Yang Rui asks whether Hassan thinks the killing of Osama bin Laden will signal the end of ‘an ideology against Western culture’? (4.3a)

S1: do you think with the death of this hh leader of Taliban er leader of Al-Qaeda erm we saw the disappearance of an ideology against the western culture (.) S2: there is no ideology against western culture hh it’s all political. hh they may use these things to strengthen their course but er you know it it it’s political in the end freedom from something or other or to establish certain things but maybe we want to come back to the subject now i-incidentally er i think Al-Qaeda is badly more decimated er to find itself very difficult to get back on it’s feet but terrorism will not end

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What Do Asian Multilinguals Talk About? S1: Mister Jawhar S2: yes S1: there is a huge population of one point five billion Muslim around the world with the Indonesian to the biggest number of Muslims but er i’m afraid er Muslims are not very united there are so many schools of thoughts and so many different the religious groups look at the Shiites and Sunnis they fight each other in the middle east and er when you say there is not er any ideology against the west i’m afraid those Muslims in the middle east may not see eye to eye with you S2: take Indonesia take Turkey are the Muslims there terrorists? take Malaysia are the Muslims there terrorists? no er so er this is why an and how how many people in the Middle East or west Asia i like to call them west Asia. are terrorists how many are not so and how many are militants how many are freedom fighters how many are just insurgents who sometimes use terrorist tactics just likes some states do when you kill civilians innocent civilians S1: there is no doubt that- a a vast majority of Muslims er hh are friendly and polite well well very well-educated but er what do you think er it is behind the hotbed for terror

In this excerpt, English is being used as a lingua franca between a Chinese journalist and the head of a Malaysian think tank in a talk about the potential threat of terrorism. The audience is primarily made up of Chinese. In the next excerpt (4.3b), in an apparent contradiction to an Asian way of avoiding potentially awkward topics, the Chinese host raises the question of the imprisonment for sodomy of Anwar Ibrahim, then the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia during Dr Mahathir Mohammed’s first stint as Prime Minister (1981–2003). Many felt the sodomy charge was trumped up and orchestrated by Dr Mahathir as a way of removing a person he had come to see as a rival. In an extraordinary turn of affairs, Dr Mahathir is currently serving his second stint as Prime Minister of Malaysia and Anwar Ibrahim is serving again as his Deputy.1 It is interesting that Jahwar appears to equate the notion of a ‘strongman’ with a military dictator, in this instance Suharto, who was President of Indonesia from 1967 to 1998. Jahwar denies the epithet of ‘strongman’ to Dr Mahathir, despite him being Prime Minister of Malaysia from 1988 to 2003, when he ruled with an iron fist, and again since 2018. (4.3b)

1

S2: yes er i think going back to Malaysia i think er i- Malaysia become a became a democracy before Mahathir Malaysia began a democracy from the day it regain its independence from the British this was in nineteen fifty seven so Malaysia has been a democracy all along since nineteen fifty seven hh erm mah-

In yet another turn of affairs, Mahathir was deposed as Prime Minster in March 2020 and replaced by Muhyiddin Yassin.

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S1: you don’t think Doctor Mahathir was a strongman? S2: er no er i i wouldn’t describe him as a strongman i think he was a strong prime minister but he’s not a strongman in the sense of undemocratic er person no (.) S1: what about President Suharto? S2: Suharto? yes yeah Suharto at that time Indonesia was not a democracy so if you want to use this with a strongman as in a you know military and powerful and undemocratic Suharto yes but not Mahathir Mahathir completely different S1: but i- but his assistant was thrown into prison on charges of sodomy S2: but that’s not because Mahathir was strongman i mean nothing to do er with whether Mahathir was strongman or not S1: he’s part of the power struggle is it S2: ah well i think er as far as er Mahathir was concerned it was er sodomy er some people think it was a power struggle but er up to you decide but going back to er er west Asia your question was on west Asia or er on foreign intervention . . .

In the third and final excerpt from this conversation (4.3c), the interviewer asks Jawhar whether he sees a harmonious future between Muslims and Christians. (4.3c)

S1: so you do foresee a harmonious world between Christians and Muslims, between Chinese and the rest of the world S2: many many countries are multi ethnic multi culture multi religions and they can live together fine and some the best examples are actually Muslim history in Spain for instance Christians and Muslims live very well together incidentally your question of industrialisation tenet of Koran that is no contradiction whatsoever the in the Koran for instance you are asked to pursue knowledge you are asked to engage in economic activity and that includes all you know as time proceed the modernised economic activities S1: er at the height of the cold war bi polar international political order had somehow helped stabilise the world but with the end of the cold war it’s necessary for one superpower to police the world hh so that there will be no regional conflicts no ethnic strife no religious crusade against each other S2: let me say this hh er i happen to think that as far as hegemonies go the American hegemony have been the better ones it has been one of the least you know erm bloody and it has been er relatively compared to other hegemonies er among them more benign now having said that i do not believe in all hegemonies i believe? that we should learn to live? with one another without having to impose er: you know some kind of order and if order has been imposed it shouldn’t be imposed by one country it must be imposed by the international community acting through a united nations which is rendered more effective efficient and productive. not that kind of united nations now which is held hostage to the five groups which includes incidentally China S1: (laughter) Ok, thank you very much

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In these excerpts, English is being used as a lingua franca among Asian multilinguals to discuss topics that are important to them. Even though the audience for the discussions on the setting up of the China–Malaysia Industrial Park and potential Muslim–Christian conflict is predominately Chinese, the discussions are conducted in English. The level of English among the participants is high and there are no breakdowns in communication or misunderstanding, despite these people operating in a language that is not their first. There are, however, occasional uses of non-standard forms, but, again, these cause no misunderstandings and appear to go completely unremarked. For example, in (4.3a), Hassan says, ‘I think Al-Qaeda is badly more decimated er to find itself very difficult to get back on its feet.’ This is ungrammatical but the message is clear. Hassan also occasionally makes slips with regard concord and agreement. For example, in (4.3c) he says, ‘I happen to think that as far as hegemonies go the American hegemony have been the better ones’ where one might expect something like ‘as far as hegemonies go, I think the American hegemony has been one of the better ones’, but again, no misunderstanding ensues. We return to the implications of the use of non-standard forms for communication in general and language teaching in particular in Chapter 7. In the next excerpts (4.4a & 4.4b) a female Bruneian student (S1) at the University of Brunei is in discussion with a female student from China (S2). The Chinese student’s first language is Cantonese, but she also speaks Mandarin. In the opening exchange, the Chinese student explains her reason for choosing the University of Brunei. (4.4a)

S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2:

so how long have you been in Brunei? five months five months? yeah so you’re from China are you? yeah which part of China are you from? the: south part of China the south hh okay so your first language would be: Cantonese hh ah okay yeah all right so erm: why did you choose to come to Brunei? because at that time there are lots of competitors to we we all want to exer to be exchange students abroad and i think at that time i think Brunei is easier to S1: really? S2: yeah to study S1: okay

What Do Asian Multilinguals Talk About? S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2:

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in yeah yah i remember two years ago we had two students from China o:h yeah one of them was actually from Hong Kong? oh yeah but she studied in China. yeah. and both of them came here to do erm English ah yeah wha-er: what are you taking? er here? yeah er communication and English

This brief excerpt indicates that Brunei is considered a place where people can go to study English. It is obviously understood by this Chinese student that going to an inner circle native English-speaking country such as the United Kingdom or the United States is not an essential requirement for the learning of English. The Bruneian student recounts that two students from China had also studied in Brunei in the previous year and both had studied English. The next excerpt (4.4b) gives a reason why Brunei is thought to be a good place to study English. (4.4b)

*

S1: all right.so er:m can you k- er can you try to compare ubd* to your own university is it different here than is it over there S2: yah i think it’s quite different because er in my university even i’m English major er most of time oh no not most of time sometimes my lecturers they don’t speak English even S1: o:h S2: they are yeah. English teachers but here you have to speak English all the time. S1: yeah. S2: yeah. S1: i think that’s the best way to learn ubd S1: so er:m what’s the status of English in China? it’s not commonly used is it? S2: er: i think lots of people are studying English but because we study lots of grammar since er we: were junior high school so just study and i we listen to teachers but we seldom speak so maybe lots of us we are we don’t dare to speak so: it’s hard to improve our English S1: right S2: yeah S1: yeah i think you need to be in an environment where people speak English more often S2: yeah S1: so you can improve your English

University Brunei Darussalam

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What Do Asian Multilinguals Talk About? S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2:

yeah yeah hm okay so erm you’ve hm i wouldn’t ask you to: say which you prefer but er:m if you compare university here and there. hm where do you actually prefer to study? hm:: English English? of course here

This excerpt concludes with the Chinese student saying that Brunei is ‘of course’ a preferable place to study English rather than China, as it is an environment ‘where people speak English more often’. I noted in Chapter 1 that there are probably more learners of English in China than there are native speakers of it, but that the extent to which these learners of English actually use it is open to some debate. I shall return to this later, but here simply note that, in the eyes of this Chinese student, Brunei offers a good place in which to learn and study English. By saying ‘learn and study’ we mean that the student is not just learning English but also studying it as a subject. In other words, an Asian setting is seen as a sensible place to learn and study English. The next example illustrates how English is used in Asia in what may seem to be surprising contexts. Excerpt (4.5) is of an Indian businessman (S2) in Hong Kong being interviewed under caution by two Hong Kong police officers (S1 & S3). S1 runs the interview and starts by noting the Indian’s first language is Hindi. Both police officers are male and their first language is Cantonese. The Indian is a resident of Hong Kong. The names of the companies mentioned along other information such as dates have been removed to preserve anonymity. (4.5)

S1: our record of interview the which have been er paused er at er eight er forty five er today today is er [date]er i will i will i will i want to remind you that er you are er still under caution er you are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so but what you say may be put into writ- er may be er will be all recorded in the tapes and may be put into writing and given in evidence do you understand do are you willing to continue the record of S2: continue interview S1: continue and now the time is er ten er ten past seven in the evening and i reco- i continue er now i er produce another document to you this is a a funding agreement er that is er in in these er document er there’s a company called er [Company Name] er limited and another company is er [Company Name] er these two company have been er shown that in the hh er term sheet that is er is in same as er seven the annex seven this have you seen this er funding agreement er have been made er between these two companies before

What Do Asian Multilinguals Talk About? S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1:

S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S3: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1:

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i don’t remember you don’t remember you can have a look i don’t remember you don’t remember and there’s no witness to to so hm er according to er this agreement that is er this er the [Company Name] er access the the lender to lend er u- United State dollar six millions and five hundred thousand to: the borrower the [Company Name] er it’s just similar to the term sheet in this er agreement there’s er two signature in each (.) yeah term sheet what term sheet term sheet er this is the term sheet the term sheet the the amount of loan is the same isn’t it what date is it dated yeah what date is the agreement pa- pardon the date of this agreement uh yeah the agreement is [date] how can the agreement be before and term sheet later you mean there’s a er all these agreem- er these things should be the term sheet before the f- agreement of course yeah i think anybody would understand that there’s er two signature have been shown in this agreement in each page do you recognise these two signature yeah i would like to see the original pardon the original original the original this is photocopy i think so yeah i don’t have the original i just have these that’s why i don’t remember really i don’t remember this you don’t remember this how about these two signature i don’t remember this entire agreement is this your this looks similar but i don’t think i have signed that er it’s similar to your signature isn’t it it looks looks similar but you have no idea that you have signed this it’s similar no idea how about this signature no idea no idea (2) which one is similar to your signature no idea erm this one i think so but this one is similar to your signature but you haven’t seen

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What Do Asian Multilinguals Talk About? S2: er this is something i would prefer to see the original i think you should see the original S1: you want to see the original

After reminding the Indian businessman that he is under caution and not obliged to say anything, S1 starts asking questions about a document he proceeds to produce. The Indian claims to have no memory of the document which indicates one company has offered to loan another company 6.5 million US dollars. He then points out a discrepancy in that the term sheet – the document that lists the terms and conditions of an agreement – is dated after the agreement has apparently been signed. This is the relevant extract of the interview. s2: how can the agreement be before and term sheet later s1: you mean there’s a er all these agreem- er these things should be the term sheet before the agreement s2: of course s1: yeah s2: i think anybody would understand that

The Indian businessman then goes on to say that the document is a photocopy, he doesn’t recognise the signatures (although he admits one of the signatures is similar to his) and that he wants to see the original document. Throughout these high stake exchanges, the participants are using English as a lingua franca and they sometimes use non-standard forms. For example, in the short extract just cited, the Indian businessman asks, ‘How can the agreement be before and term sheet later?’ meaning ‘How is it possible for an agreement to have been signed before the term agreement has been signed?’ Yet the Indian’s point is perfectly understood by the interviewer. S1 sometimes fails to add the plural ‘s’ as in ‘two signature’ in ‘you don’t remember this how about these two signature’ and in ‘the lender to lend er u- United State dollar six millions and five hundred thousand to: the borrower the [Company Name] er it’s just similar to the term sheet in this er agreement there’s er two signature . . .. ’ He also drops the ‘s’ of ‘United States’ and adds an ‘s’ to ‘six millions’. In other places, however, he does use the plural ‘s’ as in, ‘have you seen this er funding agreement er have been made er between these two companies before’. But, the lack of marking or the presence of idiosyncratic marking does not affect the communication in any way. Here we have an example of English being used as a lingua franca in Asia and in a context where the stakes are high. The stakes are not high in the next excerpts (4.6a–4.6e). Five university students in Vietnam are discussing job prospects. The first point to make is that they choose to use English as a lingua franca even though four of the five

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participants are first-language speakers of Vietnamese and the fifth, although Chinese, is also able to speak Vietnamese. The four Vietnamese (S1, S2, S3, S5) are all female. The Chinese participant (S4) is male. Here excerpts have been selected which indicate how the need for languages other than their first language is accepted without question, as being obviously important for securing good employment. Excerpts that show the participants’ ability to joke and tease each other when using English as a lingua franca have also been selected. The Vietnamese participants are all multilingual. In addition to Vietnamese and English, S1 speaks Korean, S2 speaks Chinese (Mandarin), S3 speaks Spanish and is learning Japanese and S5 speaks Spanish. The Chinese male is also multilingual, speaking Chinese (Mandarin), English and Vietnamese. It is interesting, given Vietnam’s colonial background under French rule, that none of the Vietnamese claim French as one of their languages. In the first excerpt from this discussion (4.6a), S3 underlines how important languages are if you want to get ahead in real estate, for which you also ‘have to have a big money’. Note that the meaning of this non-standard form is perfectly clear and its use goes unremarked. (4.6a)

S2: so how about you guys S3: now er i’m prepare for English and er Spanish and someday i have to learn more about Japanese S1: oh S3: yeah S2: for real estate S3: er be- before i become i work for real estate my mother said that i should have known more foreign language as i can so i have to to learn more and someday i want to learn about er law S2: law S3: yah yeah i i really like law S2: so what er what do you do to S3: er law for for the procedure of er real estate S2: er S3: er yah S2: procedure S3: yah S2: procedure erm how about the erm the the money you know you want to invest in real estate you have to have a big money S3: yeah

In (4.6b), S1 says she is learning Korean and English as she wants to be a translator. (4.6b)

S3: what what what are you doing to er prepare for your ideal job oh no not ideal job right? S1: (laughter)

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What Do Asian Multilinguals Talk About? S3: just for your future job S1: yes for my future job i’m learning Korean now and English too and i’m also contact some publishers to ask for translator permission huh nothing work yet S3: really you did? S1: yah nothing work yet no just forget about that

In (4.6c), S3 seems to take the importance of learning as many languages as possible for granted. By learning a language she means attaining mastery of it. In answer to S5’s question, ‘You want to learns master in Japanese?’ she replies, ‘Of course, so, if I don’t master what do I learn it for?’ Note again that the nonstandard form of S5’s question causes no problems in communication. (4.6c)

S3: oh maybe i’ll try to learn to master my languages and er when i graduate i will apply for jobs in er some publish companies S4: so you’re just studying English or: anything else S3: English and Japanese S2: Japanese S3: Japanese S5: you want to learns master in Japanese S3: of course so if i don’t master what do er what do i learn it for S5: that’s mean you will learn master English and Japanese S3: Japanese and when i can master them maybe i can er i will learn another language S2: another one too S5: another one S3: another one of course

In (4.6d), they move on to talk about what they would do if they had the ‘big money’ mentioned in (4.6a) and joke about what S4, the Chinese male, classifies as a ‘fabulous death’. (4.6d)

S1: use money to buy some diamond some jewels and comfortable than money and money can rot right? S3: i i would buy er a big diamond S1: to swallow it if you to want that you have a problem when you get down there S3: i near die i near die so i wish SX -f: (Laughter all) S1: so you die because you you swallow a diamond SS: (Laughter all) S1: that’s what you die (laughter) S4: that what it mean do have a fabulous death you know (laughter) S2: (laughter)

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There are numerous instances of the use of non-standard forms here, but, again, these do not interfere with understanding. The participants joke about how swallowing a diamond might lead to a fabulous death. The joking tone continues in (4.6e) when S5 raises the idea of spending money on a freezer in which to preserve one’s dead body. (4.6e)

S5: how about spending er your money in a freezer i heard some rich guys said that when he is near death er so people put him in a freezer until they find a cure way (laughter) S2: freezer really S4: yes S5: i yah yah i know that SS: (laughter) S5: i heard about it S4: like pushing a fish in a freezer and it won’t rot (laughter) S2: what for S4: it won’t rot S5: oh right yah S4: it stops your illness (laughter) S5: to keep his er to keep his body till they find a cure for his illness then he can live again S3: really S4: yes (laughter) S2: oh my god S1: no S2: oh who’s know S5: no i don’t S4: but i don’t know he is dead or alive now (laughter) S2: (laughter) S3: (laughter) or maybe he’s still in a freezer S4: (laughter) S5: do you want to be in a freezer S4: nope S5: (laughter) how about you S2 :okay freezer just for food S3: no freezer just for food S5: what kind of you can become food too S3: and you S2: okay stop that

Again, there are several uses of non-standard forms (‘spending your money in a freezer’, ‘like pushing a fish in a freezer’) but the conversation rattles along with everyone apparently following and enjoying the idea, although it appears the topic might have got a little too much for S2 as she says, ‘Okay, stop that.’ This conversation between these five people, four of whom are firstlanguage speakers of Vietnamese and the fifth a Chinese who knows

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Vietnamese, is remarkable in that they choose to use English despite being in Vietnam and all of them knowing Vietnamese. It is even more remarkable that there is no evidence of any code switching into Vietnamese here. The next excerpt (4.7a) involves people from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. The level of formality is higher here than in the immediately preceding excerpt (4.6). The recording was made in the Philippines and was of a church group discussing the history of migration. S1 and S3 are both Indian priests; S2 is a female teacher from Bangladesh and S4 is a female teacher from Thailand; S5 is female, an Australian researcher and a native speaker of English; and S6 is a Catholic sister from Vietnam. (4.7a)

S1: I can share about India India the great migration was in 47 when ah when they got independence there was a war and then the countries divide into two Pakistan and er India all the Muslims has to go to Pakistan and the ah the Hindus has to stay back in India so those who are that sided the Pakistanis and Hindus came this side and from this side they went to that side and lot of killing took place so lot of people lost their house and lands and ah thousands and millions of people were became . . . there was no place to stay that was a high grade in India during the independence then the second one one was when when we had ah what do you call this the war with the Pakistan ah then again also in Kashmir we had a lot of problem so the people from Kashmir itself during the Hindu Muslim fights were going on so ah ah so many has to move from here to there and lost their lives and houses and so the then maybe the Bangladeshi when they became Bangladesh also a lot of problems from both sides of so these are the ah three main incident which we you know then the other thing the economical source when the according to the economic growth always the government will select the places where all the what do call that ah select some place and those people has to move there so that way migrants inside the inside the country that’s only i can know about the ending S3: i can share about Bangladesh nineteen seventy one S1: mhm S3: there was a war and nine months we go and then Pakistan divided the two S1: Yeah S3: Bangladesh and then West Pakistan S1: oh S3: That were many people Muslims or Christians or Hindus no? S1: mhm S3: these kind of the people they migrated from Bangladesh to ah India and nine month they were there and there then after nine month they came back to Bangladesh on ah independent S1: yeah S3: on nineteen seventy one S1: seventy one yeah

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S3: december sixteenth yes so that’s two months ah yes the situation was very bad but many people died you know ah Pakistani soldiers they killed lot of people i remember something still now I never forget saw the people about that and then ah drag after drag the dead body they used to take on other side

In (4.7a), the two Indian priests, using English as a lingua franca, dominate the discussion, which is about the separation of India into India and Pakistan and then the separation of Pakistan itself into Pakistan and Bangladesh. It’s a sombre topic involving the displacement of millions and the deaths of thousands. The next short excerpt (4.7b) shows a rare example of when there is misunderstanding and the participants have to work hard to make the message understood. (4.7b)

S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2:

then next to that, economic zone source zone zone ah source source or zone? zone zone zone ZONE ZONE economic zone economic zone

Here, the female teacher from Bangladesh is clearly unsure whether the Indian priest is saying ‘source’ or ‘zone’ and checks back to ask ‘source or zone?’ After repeating the word a few times, the Indian priest then adopts the strategy of spelling out the word letter by letter to make it clear, saying Z O N E, and this solves the misunderstanding. I consider the strategies users of ELF adopt to ensure understanding and/or repair misunderstanding in the next chapter, where this strategy of spelling out the word as a way of facilitating understanding is further exemplified. The examples illustrate a variety of topics which Asian multilinguals choose to discuss using English as a lingua franca. They range from high-stakes contexts such as a suspect being interviewed under caution in Hong Kong to people dreaming of what they might do if they had the money. In all cases, however, they choose to use English as the preferred medium of communication. I shall end this chapter with a few shorter, more light-hearted examples. (These are taken from Kirkpatrick, Patkin & Wu 2013). In (4.8) a Malaysian male (S1), (an ethnic Indian and first-language speaker of Tamil) is wearing slippers that do not match. This is noticed by the Vietnamese participant (S2). S1 jokingly laughs this off by using the Confucian metaphor of yin and yang.

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The assumption is that the metaphorical reference to yin and yang representing an unmatched pair will be understood. Also note that the Malaysian speaker uses discourse particles from Malay (‘lah’ and ‘mah’) indicating the informal nature of the exchange. (4.8)

S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1:

are you wearing different slippers same lah i have only one slipper here in the office but why are the colors different it’s a style mah black and white yin and yang (laughter) is that a new style for now yeah i see you see the match between black and white uh huh here right here the two this front pair right but this one pair it’s actually one pair S2: so you’re saying one of you wear only black S1: yes S2: okay

In the final excerpt for this chapter (4.9), a Burmese female (S1), a Vietnamese male (S2) and a Thai female (S3) are chatting. All three were living in Malaysia at the time of the recording. They use the metaphor of the relative heat of the local chillies when jokingly discussing the likelihood of the local women being jealous. (4.9)

S2: S1: S2: S3: S2: S1: S2: S3: S1: S3: S1: S3: S1: S3: S1: S3: S1: S3: S1: S3: S1: S3:

good be careful wah when: this country the the chilli (laughter) the chilli very hot hm so women very jealous right right or not (laughter) huh? hot hot he say if the country chilli is so hot hm the woman are very jealous (laughter) so he say like this (laughter) i think this is the [place5] chilli if the [place3] or [place2] chilli ooh very hot very hot (laughter) very hot small but hot huh yeah small small too small and too hot ha too small too hot so he say that’s mean a- our peo-woman are very very jealous (laughter)

Conclusion S2: S3: SS: S1: S3:

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right or not (laughter) not necessary ah doctor (laughter) not necessary (laughter) (laughter)

The informal nature of this dialogue is not only evidenced by the tone and the laughter, but is also evidenced by the use of the local variety of English. Although none of the participants are first-language speakers of Malay, they have all been living in Malaysia for some time and have picked up some aspects of Malaysian English. Examples include the Vietnamese’s use of the Malaysian discourse marker ‘wah’ in the first line of the excerpt and his use of the tag question form ‘right or not’ in line 5. Conclusion In this chapter, I have selected samples representing a range of topics and registers of the use of English as a lingua franca. The examples all come from the Asian Corpus of English and are examples of naturally occurring discussions. My aim has been to give some indication of the extraordinarily wide range of topics that Asian multilinguals discuss and the myriad contexts in which ELF is used in Asia. I hope these examples give an insight into the widespread use of English as a lingua franca among Asian multilinguals, thereby providing further evidence that English is both in and of Asia. I consider the implications of this for language teaching in Chapters 9 and 10.

5

The Transfer of Features and Communicative Strategies

This chapter is divided into two sections. The first considers the transfer of linguistic features and pragmatic norms – the rules of speaking (Wolfson 1989) – from one language to another. The transfer of pragmatic norms can lead to possible misunderstandings and breakdowns in communication as hearers may interpret what has been heard against their own pragmatic norms. A simple example comes from the influential work of Anna Wierzbicka (1985 & 2005). In Slavic languages, it is normal to use the imperative when asking for something from friends. At a family dinner, one member of the family might say to another the equivalent of, ‘Pass the salt.’ If a Slavic speaker were to transfer this way of speaking to English, s/he may well be regarded as rude or abrupt, as the ‘request’ would be interpreted by native speakers of English as a command. In native speaker varieties of English, it is more normal to modify such a request with what Wierzbicka has called ‘whimperatives’ and say something like ‘Could you pass the salt, please?’ If English speakers were to transfer this pattern into a Slavic language, they could, in turn, be interpreted as rude because the use of the question form would imply to native speakers of, say, Russian, that there was a possibility that the listener would not pass the salt. Wierzbicka argues that ‘whimperatives’ are used in English as they respect the autonomy of the individual, a value highly prized in Anglo-culture as their use gives, theoretically at least, the hearer the right to refuse the request. This section of the chapter gives some examples of code-mixing where speakers transfer words or grammatical items from their first language into English. The second section describes the use of the strategies used by speakers of Asian languages when speaking English to ensure a smooth flow of communication or to repair communication when a misunderstanding or breakdown in communication has occurred. Transfer of Pragmatic Norms Some forty years ago, when I was a postgraduate student in China, I predicted, entirely wrongly as it turned out, that when Chinese spoke English they would not use ‘How are you?’ as a greeting but would rather use expressions such as 90

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‘Have you eaten yet?’ and ‘Where are you going?’ as these were common Chinese forms of greeting. Indeed, enquiring whether someone has recently eaten is a very common form of greeting in many Asian languages. In fact, however, the opposite has happened, and, not only do Chinese tend to use ‘How are you?’ as a common greeting when speaking English, they have also adapted this into Chinese as ‘Ni hao?’, so this English-derived greeting has now become a common greeting in Chinese. The ‘have you eaten?’ greeting remains common in many Asian languages. It has, for example, been observed that in intercultural contexts when Vietnamese communicate with speakers of other languages using English as a lingua franca (ELF), they have a tendency to use greetings transferred from Vietnamese such as ‘Where are you going?’, or ‘Have you eaten yet?’ (Sundkvist & Nguyen 2020). Sundkvist and Nguyen (2020) also report that Vietnamese speakers transfer other Vietnamese pragmatic norms or cultural conceptualisations (Sharifian 2011) into their English communication. For example, the Vietnamese cultural conceptualisation of tôn người hạ mình, or ‘elevating others while lowering oneself’ can be transferred into English as in example (5.1). NES is a native speaker of English and VSE is a Vietnamese speaker of English. NES compliments VSE’s car, a compliment that the Vietnamese feels culturally obliged to deflect or tone down. (5.1)

NES: Very nice car actually. VSE: Oh I don’t think so. Uhm It’s very cheap. It’s alright but sometimes it has problems. (cited in Sundkvist & Nguyen 2020: 695)

The possible implication for misunderstanding and stereotyping which could develop from the transfer of pragmatic norms or cultural conceptualisations from a speaker’s first language was studied by the American sociolinguist, John Gumperz (e.g., Gumperz 1982; Gumperz & Roberts 1980). A major insight Gumperz had was the realisation that a mistake in grammar or pronunciation by a second-language speaker could be identified by the hearer. It would be noticed and the hearer could make allowances, knowing that a mistake had been made. In contrast, however, the transfer of a pragmatic norm (Odlin 1989) from the speaker’s first language into English would not be identified or noticed as coming from the speaker’s first language or culture, but would instead be interpreted by the hearer against the pragmatic norms of English rather than against the norms of the speaker’s first language. As Gumperz showed, this could lead to prejudice and stereotyping of non-native speakers of a language by first-language speakers of it. To return to the examples from Wierzbicka noted in the previous section, English speakers might stereotype speakers of Russian or Polish as rude, as they use the imperative when making requests; while speakers of Russian or Polish might stereotype speakers of English as rude or even insulting as the use of ‘whimperatives’ suggests that the hearer might not fulfil a perfectly straightforward request. The cross-cultural

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realisation of requests has since been studied in some depth (e.g., Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper 1989; Young 1980). An example of an Indian English pattern being used within a British English environment and causing communication difficulty comes from a transcript of a student participating in a role play at the London-based National Centre for Industrial Language Training (NCILT 1978). In (5.2) the Indian student explains to his supervisor why he wants to take the following day off from work. (5.2)

Two months ago, somebody accident on the road but I am a witness but I received a letter yesterday because my address change but I am going to court in the morning but I day off tomorrow, but I am sorry I can’t working tomorrow I want to leave for tomorrow.

In this context, the explanation proves to be an awkward example of communication in British English because it apparently lacks focus and the information is expressed in what is, to speakers of British English, an unusual order. The misunderstanding comes not from the incorrect use of grammar as such but from the order in which the information is presented. British English would prefer the following sequence of information (5.3): (5.3)

Focus: I’m sorry I can’t come to work tomorrow. Reason (i): I have to go to court, because two months ago there was an accident on the road and I was a witness. Reason (ii): I couldn’t let you know before because I only received the letter today, because I’ve changed my address. (NCILT 1978: 11)

Some forty years ago, I first encountered comparable problems associated with the transfer of a speaker’s first language pragmatic norms into English when I was working in Hong Kong for the Professional and Company English (PACE) unit of the British Council. The Director of PACE at the time was Celia Roberts. Roberts had worked closely John Gumperz and he came to Hong Kong to give lectures to us at PACE on the potential for this type of stereotyping of second-language speakers by first-language speakers. I soon encountered this stereotyping first hand at work. At the time, I was working with the Hong Kong police. The police force had been beset by a number of embarrassing incidents involving breakdowns in communication. For example, a routine exercise dealing with a mock attack on one of Hong Kong’s police stations had had to be aborted as communication between the senior and junior officers broke down. As a result of these breakdowns, the Hong Kong government asked the British Council to look into their possible causes. This task was contracted to PACE and I was lucky enough to be part of the team given the job. One obvious problem was that, at the time, the great majority of senior officers were from Great Britain, and while some had learned Cantonese, the Chinese

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language spoken by the overwhelming majority of the population of Hong Kong, they were a minority. On the other hand, the junior officers, from station sergeants down to constables were all locals whose first language was Cantonese. Few had much proficiency in English. That there were frequent breakdowns in communication among the Hong Kong police was therefore not too surprising. However, in order to conduct a proper needs analysis, first-hand experience was essential so I spent six months visiting police stations to observe police-with-police and police-with-public interactions, and going out on the beat. On one visit to a police station, I was in the office of a superintendent when a police constable knocked on the door and was invited by the superintendent to come in. The ensuing dialogue started as follows (5.4) (see also Kirkpatrick 2007a: 25). The S is the superintendent and the PC is the constable. (5.4)

S: PC: S: PC: S: PC:

Yes? My mother is not well sir Yes She has to go into hospital sir uh huh On Thursday sir

It is clear that the constable was building up to ask for leave, in ways similar to the Indian’s pattern, by prefacing the reasons for his request before making it. This was clear to the Superintendent who spoke excellent Cantonese and did grant leave. However, the Superintendent stressed to me after the constable had left that the way the constable had approached asking for leave presented, in his view, a problem. He wanted the constable to learn to be more upfront about his requests by directly asking for leave as in, ‘Could I have a day’s leave on Thursday please, sir?’ It was this and similar interactions that led me to investigate the pragmatic and rhetorical norms of first-language speakers of Chinese. I eventually ended up some ten years later doing my doctorate (entitled ‘Information Sequencing in Modern Standard Chinese’) at the Australian National University. The Chinese police constable’s way of asking for leave in English followed Chinese rhetorical norms which typically place the reasons for any request before the request itself. This has been called a ‘because-therefore’ or a frameto-main sequencing pattern (Kirkpatrick 1993, 1995). In contrast, Anglo rhetorical norms typically place the request, softened by the use of ‘whimperatives’ or internal modification (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989) and then provide reasons for justifications for the request. These sequencing patters are not rigid, of course, and both languages can sequence requests in many ways. Native speakers of different varieties of English have been shown to use different request patterns (Kasper 1992). Yet the normal unmarked sequence of Chinese is a marked

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unusual sequence in native speaker varieties of English and vice versa. A result of this has been for native English speakers to stereotype Chinese speakers as being vague and taking a long time to get to the point; while Chinese speakers may stereotype English speakers as being too direct. This ‘because-therefore’ sequence has also been noted in the rhetorical patterns of Thai speakers’ English, as in ‘Because it is flooded, so I cannot go to class’ (Hammond 2020: 640). The normal unmarked Chinese sequence of placing the reasons and justifications for the request also allows for smoother social relations. The requestee of the Chinese constable’s request in (5.4) can always indicate that the request will be granted before the request is actually made. For example, after hearing the constable explain that his mother is ill, the requestee can then say something like ‘Please take a day’s leave if you need to look after your Mum.’ This means that the request can be granted before the constable has to undertake the facethreatening action (Brown & Levinson 1987) of making a request. By the same token, the requestee can signal that the request is unlikely to be made before the requestor actually makes the request. Again, in the example the requestee, after realising that the constable was leading up to a request to take some leave, could say something like ‘I’m sorry but we are so busy at the moment, we are not granting any extra leave.’ This allows the constable to preserve his face by not forcing him to ask for a request which will then be denied. In earlier chapters, I made the distinction between a world English and the use of English as a lingua franca, saying that a world English was likely to be characterised by references to and reflections of local cultures, often realised through code-switching into the first language of the speakers. In contrast, I have argued that ELF is not a variety of English but a mode of communication where interactional norms are jointly negotiated on a pro tempore basis for each interaction (Seidlhofer 2011; Walkinshaw 2019). Participants in ELF are likely to come from a variety of different cultures with their potentially different cultural norms. This raises a point of contention – to what extent is a speaker’s home culture reflected in their use of English when using English as a lingua franca? I have argued that, when using an Asian variety of English with speakers of the same variety within a shared speech community, the English will, of necessity, reflect the cultural norms and values of its speakers. The question is, how much of this ‘culture’ is reflected when speakers use ELF? Baker (2017: 27) argues that ELF is, by definition, deeply intercultural, as ELF communication typically involves people from different lingua cultures. That ELF typically involves people from different lingua cultures is no doubt true. But the questions is, ‘To what extent do they reflect their different linguacultures when using ELF?’ Walkinshaw (forthcoming) identifies three phenomena associated with the pragmatics of ELF. The first is that the participants suspend their linguistic and cultural norms. Instead, they adopt ad hoc norms

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that are negotiated on the spot, as it were, as they go along. This ability to negotiate ad hoc norms has been noted by other scholars of ELF (e.g., Canagarajah 2013; Meierkord 2000; Seidlhofer 2004). Meierkord suggests that this ad hoc approach is occasioned by the speakers’ shared status as secondlanguage users of English. They are therefore more tolerant of the use of nonstandard forms and are will not negatively evaluate the use of pragmatic norms against their own first languages (Meierkord 2000). A similar argument is made by House (2003, 2009) who argues that users of ELF tend to avoid conflict. This leads to the second phenomenon of ELF pragmatics identified by Walkinshaw, which is the ‘let it pass’ principle first noted by Firth (1996), whereby users of ELF will allow something they do not understand to pass in the hope that it will become clear later in the course of the conversation. The third phenomenon identified by Walkinshaw, and which is linked to the first two, is that ELF speakers are cooperative and use strategies that aim to ensure smooth communication and strategies of repair that serve to resolve any misunderstandings. As will be shown later and as documented elsewhere, there are contexts in which ELF speakers do not observe the cooperative principle. These include the police interview in Chapter 4, courtrooms and high-stakes encounters (Kirkpatrick, Subhan & Walkinshaw 2016; Walkinshaw & Kirkpatrick 2014). In this context, in a comparative study of extended pieces of discourse taken from varieties of Asian English and speakers using ELF in Asian settings, Kirkpatrick and McLellan (2012) investigated three hypotheses, namely: (i) Any variety of world English (WE) is, by definition, primarily concerned with establishing an identity and membership of a particular speech community. As such, it will be characterised by lexical items and idioms that refer to specific items and beliefs that are of particular importance to the local culture and environment. As the great majority of speakers of a particular world English are multilinguals who have learned English as an additional language and who share a linguistic repertoire (that is to say, they speak the same languages), a WE may also be characterised by frequent use of code-mixing and code-switching. (ii) As the major function of English as a lingua franca (ELF) is to act as a common medium of communication between people who do not share the same first language and culture, its role is primarily one of ensuring successful communication between people of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. As such, ELF will be characterised by the relative absence of lexical items and idioms that refer to culturally and locally specific items and beliefs – for the simple reason that such lexical items and idioms are unlikely to be understood by people from outside the culture. As mutual communication is the goal of English as a lingua franca, the latter will also be characterised by a lack of code-mixing and code-switching.

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(iii) In world Englishes and in English as a lingua franca, communicative success does not depend on the use of standard native-speaker forms. They concluded: (i) The WE data (based on texts from Malaysia and Brunei) supported the hypothesis that WE varieties are, by definition, code-mixed varieties on account of the availability of languages other than English as resources on which writers and speakers can draw, knowing that their readership or audience share similar multilingual capabilities. (ii) The ELF examples analysed showed a strong orientation towards communication rather than expression or negotiation of identities. The relative absence of both idiomatic expressions and of recourse to other languages (i.e. code-switching) supports this contention. (iii) The third hypothesis related to ‘native speaker’ or ‘inner-circle norms’, and is supported by both the WE and ELF examples. At this stage, a word of caution is needed. As noted in Chapter 3, scholars working on the European equivalent of the Asian Corpus of English (ACE) and the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) have found more instances of code-switching in VOICE than in ACE (e.g., Pritzl 2009, 2012). In explaining this difference, I suggested two possible reasons: first, many European languages are linguistically related and share a large number of cognates, that is words that have the same derivation such as ‘table’ in both English and French; and, second, that the speakers in VOICE are more likely to be multilingual in European languages than speakers of ACE are likely to be multilingual in Asian languages. European schools teach European languages as well as English. The aim is for students to have their first language plus two others. In Asia, on the other hand, local languages, other than the respective national languages, are not typically taught in the school system (Kirkpatrick & Liddicoat 2017, 2019). This, coupled with the typological distance between many languages of Asia – to say nothing of the fact that many have different scripts – means that few Asians speak the languages of their neighbours. The language most promoted and privileged after the respective national languages in Asian school systems is, typically, English. I return to these issues in Chapters 9 and 10. But to summarise the main points so far, when using English, speakers of other languages may transfer linguistic features and pragmatic norms or cultural conceptualisations from their first language or culture into their English. This is an inevitable, indeed necessary, condition for an Asian variety of English. Any variety of English must reflect the cultural norms and lived experiences of its users. This type of transfer may also occur when speakers are using English as a lingua franca. When this happens, ELF users cooperatively negotiate ad hoc norms of communication and tolerate different and non-standard norms of use. The argument is that ELF users are more

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tolerant and accepting of difference and variation when communicating with fellow second-language speakers of English than are native speakers. A related argument is that Asian users of ELF are less likely to use idioms and words from their first languages than are European users of ELF. This is, first, because Asian languages represent a wide variety of different language types and, second, because the respective school systems give different prominence to the learning of languages. Asian users of English are less likely to be familiar with Asian languages other than their own, than Europeans are with European languages other than their own. This is not to say that there is no transfer or code-mixing in ACE as the following examples show. In the first example, (5.5) the speaker is a female Malaysian Chinese who speaks Malay as well as Chinese dialects. She uses a series of discourse particles that are common in Malaysian English. There is some debate about whether these particles are transferred from Malay or Chinese as both these languages use discourse particles of this type. The presence of several potential substrates influencing a variety of English makes determining which substrate is acting on the variety of English complicated (Ansaldo 2009) and this is discussed in more detail in Chapter 7. What is clear here, however, is that these discourse particles have been transferred from the speakers’ other languages. The transferred discourse markers are underlined. (5.5)

then he said erm if the if i was younger lah and then i would think about leaving school lah i say why give it to your mother or father to take care lah i might have done that lah cos my parents then he said then he said no lah the most important time for a child is four years mah and i want to bond with my child.

The speaker’s audience here all also speakers of Malay, so the use of the discourse markers could indicate that the speaker is using a Malaysian variety of English rather than English as a lingua franca. In (5.6), however, the speakers do not share the same first language. S1 is a Vietnamese female and S2 is a Thai female. The Thai speaker uses a Thai discourse marker ‘kah’. This signals politeness. (5.6)

S1: [first name1] how are you today? S2: i’m fine thank you kah how about you? S1: i’m: good doing well do you have your lunch mhm?

Hammond (2020: 640) also notes the presence of Thai polite particles in the English use of Thais. As she notes: the polite particles, namely ‘ka’ (used by females), ‘krup’ (males), ‘na ka’ (females), and ‘na krup’(males) are retained to various degrees when Thais revert to English and they are evident both in speaking and writing. Polite particles could then be described as an

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instinctive display of etiquette which Thais are born into, although polite particles can also be viewed as conscious strategy to help emphasize a request or a favour. This ‘conscious strategy’ is apparent in written English and, as an example, it would not be unusual for an e-mail written by a female Thai university student addressed to a native English speaking instructor requesting an assignment deadline extension, to be liberally punctuated with ‘ka’ and ‘na ka’.

These two examples show the transfer of discourse markers from the speakers’ first languages. Example (5.7) illustrates the transfer of a single word from the first language of one of the speakers. Kampung is a Malay word meaning village. The three speakers are all female: S1 is Burmese, S2 is Malay and S3 is a native speaker of Arabic. (5.7)

S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S3: S1:

er: i think insya Allah friday another two yah his his she’s going to kampung yah i’m going to kampung

Two points are of particular interest here. The first is the use of the Arabic term insya Allah meaning ‘God willing’. This is used by the Malay speaker – and being a Malay of Malay ethnicity she will, by definition, be a Muslim. The extent to which this is an instance of code-mixing or one of borrowing is debatable as this expression is very commonly used by Muslims (and others) when speaking English. The second point of interest is the Arabic speaker’s use of the Malay word kampong. This shows an example of ad hoc negotiation of interactional norms whereby the Arabic speaker signals closeness with the Malay speaker by choosing to use a word from her language. In (5.8), three Thai females (S1, S2, S3) are in conversation with a Burmese female (S4). S1 reverts to Thai to consult her Thai colleagues about a word in English she does not know. She asks, in Thai, ‘How do you call it? The staff that they hire.’ Her Thai-speaking colleague, S3, provides the English word ‘agent’, which S1 happily accepts. This is an example of ‘exclusive’ code-switching, as S4, not being a speaker of Thai, is excluded. (5.8)

S4: S1: S4: SS: S1: S3: S1:

ah busy for that line busy line mm because er {(in Thai) how do you call it? the staff that they hire?} agent oh the the agent can can handle

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In (5.9), S2 and S5 are both female Vietnamese and S3, S4 and S7 are speakers of Malay. S7 is male. This is another example of ‘exclusive’ code-switching, but one which seems ruder than the previous example where the switch to Thai was to help the communication flow, as S1 sought the word in English she needed in order to make her meaning clear. In (5.9) however, the Vietnamese speakers take up another topic in their first language, asking each other how late they can park their bikes on Saturday night. They do not seem to be that interested in hearing that Malaysia imports rice from their country. (5.9)

S7: S3: S7: S4: S5:

even we import from Vietnam huh huh wow the rice? sometimes we import from Vietnam yeah we import rice (in Vietnamese) {until what time are we allowed to park our motorbikes on saturday} S2: (in Vietnamese) {nine at night}

The tone in the next example, (5.10), is more typical of most informal ELF communication in that it is cooperative. It is also further evidence of the multilingual nature of ELF. The interesting aspect of this example is that the Vietnamese speaker coaches the Malay speakers how to pronounce two expressions in Vietnamese, the first meaning ‘see you again’ and the second ‘thank you’. S5 is the only first-language speaker of Vietnamese. The others are all Malay. S4 and S1 try and say the Vietnamese expression hen gap lai (see you again) and then S5 models it for them. (5.10)

S4: so i studied there that there that this there is a goodbye erm t- er hen gap lai hen gap lai S1: hen gap lai S5: hen gap lai S4: hen gap lai S7: hen gap lai S4: ah that is and then

In (5.11) the Malay speakers also try to say ‘thank you’ in Vietnamese (cam on). The Vietnamese speaker (S2) listens to the Malays trying it and then models it for them, after which they all repeat the phrase several times. (5.11)

S1: S4: S3: S4: S5: S4: S5: S4:

cam on and then cam cam en cam en cam en er::m cam cam en thank you cam en cam en

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Transfer of Features and Communicative S1: cam en S2: cam en {all speakers repeat the Vietnamese expression many times}

In the final example of co-operative modelling (5.12), two Vietnamese females (S5 and S2) are helping an Indonesian female (S3) pronounce words in Vietnamese. (5.12)

S5: S4: S5: S2:

when you are in danger you say help me yeah that is cuu giup cuu cuu{S3 repeats the word many times} e:r if you erm carry something heavy and you need the help just say giup giup yeah (laughter) S3: giup S2: it’s a difficult sound

These examples of code-switching all come from ACE. They include examples of the transfer of discourse markers, the use of single words or ‘islands’ from the speaker’s first language, exclusive code-switching, and even the use of code-switching to model the speaker’s first language. However, as noted, the instances of code-switching in English as a lingua franca in the corpus is rare. In the next section of the chapter, I move to look at the communicative strategies that speakers using English as a lingua franca from ACE adopt to ensure communication. At the outset, I stress that these strategies are not necessarily unique to ELF speakers, but can be found in all intercultural communication (Baker 2017). I do suggest, however, that native speakers of English who have little experience in communicating in English with people for whom English is an additional language would benefit from becoming familiar with these strategies. Communicative Strategies of ELF Speakers First, I look at formal situations and how turns are assigned and then analyse more informal ‘spontaneous’ situations to describe and exemplify the communicative strategies adopted. An example of a formal situation was a meeting of ASEAN Centre directors held in Bangkok (see also Kirkpatrick 2010a). This was a large meeting as thirty-seven representatives from various ASEAN Centres were present.1 They were seated around a large horseshoe-shaped table. I had been invited to be present and record the meeting. The meeting was held over two days. It was 1

ASEAN funds specialist centres to conduct research and training in various fields. They include, for example, a Centre for Tropical Biology (based in Indonesia), a Centre for Educational Innovation and Technology (based in the Philippines) and a Centre for Archaeology and Fine Arts (based in Thailand).

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chaired by the Director General (DG) of ASEAN, a Malaysian. On each side of him, sat a Deputy Director General (DDG). The Director General opened the meeting by greeting those present, first in Malay, his own first language, and then in Thai, the language of the country in which the meeting was being held. This was the only time that languages other than English were used by those present when addressing the meeting as a whole. After his welcoming remarks, the DG, now speaking in English, urged delegates to make sure they attended the sessions on time and used a golfing metaphor saying how inconvenient it was for the other three players if the fourth member of a foursome was late on the tee. I was not sure how many of the assembled delegates understood this golfing reference. Seidlhofer (2009) has noted that ‘unilateral idiomaticity’, the use of idioms from one’s first language, can impede communication when using English as a lingua franca, as the idioms are unlikely to be understood. There was only one other use of an English native-speaker idiom. This was when a native speaker of English – the only one present –who was a member of the ASEAN Centre for Archaeology and Fine Arts, said that ‘the whole organisation needs to be on an even keel’. I was unable, after the meeting, to canvass all the participants about whether they understood the idiom, but the three I did manage to consult said that they had not understood it. The meeting was conducted by the DG and the two DDGs and followed a pattern that was strictly adhered to. The DG or one of his deputies would invite the lead representative of each of the Centres to make their report. No one interrupted the speakers when they were making their reports. The only people who questioned the individual speakers after they had given their reports were the DG or DDGs. Thus the first part of the meeting was very ordered and controlled, consisting of each of the Centre Directors giving their report in turn to a silent audience. This orderliness and acceptance of the rules of the meeting was challenged by one agenda item. The DG announced that the Centres would be required to complete a new common form when submitting their annual reports. In the past, Centres were able to submit their reports using their own templates. It was clear that this was unpopular with the delegates, but no one was explicitly critical of the DG’s request. In their response to the request, the delegates typically stressed that the Centres were very different from each other, but no one actually went on to say that therefore the DG’s proposal was unworkable. Indeed, delegates went as far as to conclude that they were not criticising the DG’s proposal. The concluding remarks of an Indonesian and Singaporean delegate were typical. The Indonesian delegate concluded his remarks by saying, ‘I just want to comment on some of the question [sic] with due respect to the Secretariat.’ The Singaporean concluded, ‘They are just my thoughts, with no attempt to criticise.’ I noted in Chapter 4 that the so-called ASEAN way of communicating can be captured by two key Malay

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terms, musyawarah (dialogue) and muafakat (consensus) (Curley & Thomas 2007) and illustrated how these were realised in conversations between immigration officials about the issuing of visas. It would appear that these two terms also underpinned the discussions and ways of speaking in this two-day meeting. These concepts of ‘dialogue’ and ‘consensus’ are also strengthened by traditional Asian values which accord deference to age and authority. Explicit criticism is frowned upon, a sentiment voiced by the Singaporean delegate. Further evidence of this desire for dialogue and consensus and a wish to avoid explicit criticism comes from a comparative study of how academic seminars were conducted in Australia and Indonesia (Rusdi 1999). Rusdi found that Australian seminars were characterised by interruptions and apparent attempts at stealing turns. Speakers would be constantly interrupted by participants in a sort of free for all. In contrast, Rusdi summed up the Indonesian style as follows: Each seminar session is opened by a moderator. In his/her opening remarks, the moderator greets the participants . . . introduces the topic of the seminar, introduces the members of the presentation team, sets the house rules for the activity and invites the presenter to give a presentation. After the presentation, the moderator summarises the main points of the presentation and calls for additional information from other presentation team members. The moderator then summarises the additional information and calls for questions from the audience. (Rusdi 1999: 71)

Rusdi goes on to report that, in the calls for questions, turn-taking was determined by age or seniority and sex. This meant that the moderator would inevitably invite the eldest male present to ask the first question or make the first comment. This might not always be taken up by the eldest male present, but he would always be asked first. The moderator would then choose other people to ask or comment, based on their seniority. It is important to note, however, that the moderator would ensure that everyone who wanted to ask a question or make a comment would be allowed to do so and in an orderly fashion. Thus, Indonesian seminars were conducted in an orderly way, following a pattern understood by all. Everyone who wanted to had a chance to speak, uninterrupted by others. As Rusdi concluded, it was not surprising that Indonesian students studying in Australia found it very hard to contribute to seminars, as they were used to the presence of a moderator who would orchestrate who could ask a question and when. The desire for dialogue and consensus and creating a cooperative atmosphere is also evident in the communicative strategies adopted by speakers on ACE in less formal situations. I will illustrate these by using examples from ACE (see also Kirkpatrick 2010a: 126 ff). The strategies are in bold and listed together at the end of the chapter in Table 5.1. I again highlight that the use of

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non-standard forms, or what have been traditionally regarded as grammatical errors, do not interfere with understanding in these examples. The only nonstandard form that does cause misunderstanding is the mispronunciation of ‘holes’ as ‘horns’ in (5.13). The first strategy used to ensure a smooth flow of conversation is lexical anticipation. In (5.13), a Filipina (S1) is talking to a Bruneian female (S2). The Bruneian anticipates and provides the words ‘school’ and ‘income’. (5.13)

S1: S2 S1: S2: S1:

and the parents are well educated whereas those coming from the public school really come from lower er income income families

Later, in the same conversation (5.14), the Filipina provides ‘better’ in an example of lexical repetition to facilitate cohesion in the conversation. (5.14)

S2: . . . these people who are from the government er the private school usually do better and they will continue doing better S1: better S2: better until . . .

In (5.15), the Bruneian female (S2) offers a lexical suggestion to the male Thai speaker (S1), a suggestion which he readily accepts. (5.15)

S1: right, but actually we can share some experiences right because teaching grammar is a continuation continual process S2: continuous S1: right

A further example of lexical suggestion is illustrated in (5.16), where a Singaporean female (S2) suggests the word ‘benefits’ to the Cambodian male (S1). Again, as with the Thai in example (5.15), the Cambodian appears to happily accept the suggestion, with no sign of irritation. As noted earlier, the fact that the participants in these English-as-a-lingua-franca conversations are all speakers for whom English is an additional language and who feel ‘the solidarity of non-native ELF speakers’ (House 2009: 94) may mean that they tolerate non-standard forms and feel comfortable with help and suggestions more readily than they might if such help or suggestions were provided by a native speaker. (5.16)

S1: . . . i will tell cambodians i will them about about the advantages advantages of english and motivate them to learn english because i know the good things of english S2: the benefits S1: yeah, the benefit . . .

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In addition to these examples of lexical anticipation, repletion and suggestion, there are also examples of lexical correction. Here in (5.17) the Singaporean female (S2) offers the correct word ‘stay’ to replace the ‘sit’ that the Indonesian male (S1) has used. (5.17)

S2: now, i mean how many years do students have to sit S1: stay S2: to stay in the junior high school

The next strategy (5.18) is the don’t give up strategy and is a strategy in direct opposition to the let it pass strategy suggested initially by Firth (1996: 243). This example is necessarily rather long as it exemplifies the don’t give up strategy. The speakers here are all female and comprise a Vietnamese (S1), a Thai (S2), a Bruneian (S3) and a Malaysian (S4). (5.18)

S1: S2: S1: S3 and S4: S1: S3 and S4: S1: S3: S1: S4: S1: S3 and S4: S1: S4: S1: S4: S1: S2: S1:

S4: S3: S1: S4:

uhm uhm i think that the western people when they come to the come to vietnam they like nam pho nam pho yeah pho it is very very traditional you know Ve.. P H O (spelling it out) P H O (repeating the spelling) but you pronounce [it [what] is it actually? pho, pho No no no she is she is just saying what is the dish actually is it fish is it what what is it rice? ehn nam you know nam? nam nam yes there are many kinds of nam what is nam? it is some kind of made of pork? yes it’s made of pork and some green bean no not green bean just some kind of bean sprout yes maybe bean sprout and er some noodle (er i mean) you mix eggs you er mix them (ehm) and you use er some kind of it is also made from rice round a little and you pack it (yeah) and then you put in the oil (eh huh) and fry them oh it must be very nice but minus the pork of course (laughter) put it in the packet and then you fry it no no no no not the package not the noodle

Communicative Strategies of ELF Speakers S1: S4: S1: S4: S1: All: S3 and S4:

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you use them i mean the package here it is made of rice sorry made of rice it is er ehm always circle or square you is it something like only use only only little and then you pack it so it is usu usually very small just yeah round maybe our version of popiah yeah popiah popiah yeah popiah popiah [loud laughter/shouting] at least we find something that we know

Here the Vietnamese speaker is trying to explain a traditional Vietnamese dish to the other interactants. This is particularly interesting as I think she is, initially, trying to describe a traditional Vietnamese soup, pho, but which is usually made of beef, beansprouts and noodles, rather than pork. But during the discussion, the dish seems to switch to a different one, popiah, a type of fresh spring roll. After a great deal of negotiation and not giving up, the group seem to agree that they are describing popiah, with the Bruneian and Malay participants triumphantly announcing, ‘at least we find something that we know’. In another strategy that runs counter to the let it pass strategy, participants can signal they have not understood and signal a request for repetition. In (5.19) a Burmese female (S2) simply says, ‘pardon’ in response to a question from a Singaporean (S1). (5.19)

S1: but how did you manage to cope when you were taught english at the very later stage? (1.4 second pause) S2: pardon? S1: how how are you all able to cope you know when in your during your time, you were taught english only at secondary level?

(5.20) provides an example of the let it pass strategy. The Vietnamese speaker (S1) pronounces the word ‘taught’ as ‘torch’. This is not understood by either the Thai or Bruneian participants (S2 & S3, respectively) but both provide a backchannel ‘mmm’ to indicate that the speaker should continue. (5.20)

S1: on the first year, um . . . those students um will be taught (‘torch’) all the basic er rules S2: mmm S1: like . . . i i mean this, for the er for the sub- for the grammar subject itself, it’s not for interpreter skills. S3: mmm S1: so, er . . .

In addition to strategies adopted by the person who is being directly addressed, other participants can also employ strategies to help ensure smooth

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communication. In (5.21), the Singaporean (S1) addresses a question directly to the Laotian (S3). The Burmese participant (S2) realises that the Laotian has not understood the question so paraphrases the question in the hope that this will allow the Laotian to understand. This strategy of participant paraphrase is successful. (5.21)

S1: do they] do they write essays do they write essays do the pupils do the pupils write compositions? S2: can your students write an essay or paragraph writing {S2: eh hm} a composition? S3: yes I think they can because er as i ask them to write er the story they can write and some mistake i think that’s ok for them because they have never learned english before.

Thus far, we have provided examples of communicative strategies employed by listeners. Speakers can also employ strategies to ensure smooth communication if they feel that they are not being understood. Example (5.22) is of the same three participants as (5.21). Again the Singaporean (S1) is addressing the Laotian female (S3). It is clear that the Laotian does not understand, so the Singaporean paraphrases her question no fewer than 5 times in an attempt to help her understand. She adopts the strategy of speaker paraphrase. The numbers in brackets indicate the length of the pause in seconds between S1’s paraphrasing. At no time during this exchange does the Singaporean indicate any sense of impatience or irritation with the Laotian, thus providing an excellent example of the cooperative atmosphere surrounding the exchange. This example also illustrates the strategy of participant prompt when the Burmese (S2) offers a potential answer to the question for the Laotian. (5.22)

S1: eh huh ehm do the do the children you know in er in your country those who come from a very poor families are they given financial assistance? S3: ehm S1: are they in in terms of money? S3: ehm S1: i mean does the government support them? (2) ok is there is there like you know those children who are very poor and their parents cannot afford to send them to school? (3) does the government actually given them assistance? (4) S2: yeah the government will assist i think so your government will assist S1: example you know like buying uniform for them or textbooks and paying for their school fees S3: i th i think they don’t do like that yes only the family or parents S1: can afford S3: yes afford them er for example in the er countryside some studen cannot learn because er it’s hardly for them to er go to school

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On occasion, when the listeners simply cannot make out what the speaker is saying, they request repetition or clarification as in (5.19). In (5.23), neither the Burmese female nor the Malaysian male nor the Filipina participants (S2, S3 and S4 respectively) have any idea what the Laotian male (S1) is saying and explicitly indicate this by requesting repetition and clarification several times. Eventually the Laotian speaker adopts the strategy of spelling out the word, a strategy also illustrated in the previous chapter in (4.7b). Only then do the listeners realise that the speaker has been pronouncing the word ‘holes’ as ‘horns’. (5.23)

S1: you know at the time that ehm tsunami occurs there were some problem in my country S2: what problem S1: yeah we’ve got some problem we have big horns in in some areas S3: horns? sorry S1: horn you know horn S4: what horn S1: yeah big horn S3: (laugh) what S4: what’s a horn S3: sorry S1: H-O-L-E something like this S3: holes? S1: yeah

It is worth noting at this stage that, despite the Laotian’s extended nonunderstanding in (5.22) and the initial bewilderment of the listeners in (5.23), both conversations are repaired by the adoption of appropriate communicative strategies. A further speaker strategy is to make explicit the topic to be discussed. In (5.24) an Indonesian female (S1) asks the participants what they think of their rooms (they have recently arrived in Singapore). The Burmese female (S2) hears ‘rooms’ as ‘food’ and answers accordingly. The Indonesian listens patiently to her answer before repeating that what she is talking about is the rooms. (5.24)

S1: S2: S1: S2:

what about your rooms? er you feel ok any [problems i find the taste er quite ok but er like yours is i think er the rice a little bit sticky in our country we don’t er eat er rice as sticky as that rice here and then ehm how shall i say er and then vegetables er maybe er the same vegetables we eat in our country but er the price for them is also expensive i think because i prefer eating vegetables i prefer vegetables er to meat er S2: ok what i’m asking is about room ok er do you feel cold?

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The great majority of examples which have been provided both in this and earlier chapters have confirmed ‘the supportive and cooperative nature of interactions in ELF where meaning negotiation takes place at different levels’ (Archibald, Cogo & Jenkins 2011: 3). Exceptions include the police interview discussed in Chapter 4. We conclude this chapter with further examples which show an unfriendly atmosphere from courtroom discourse in Hong Kong. Both speakers are first-language speakers of Cantonese but are using, English, which still remains the primary language of the higher courts. These examples show that, when the stakes are high, the cooperative nature which typically frames the use of English as a lingua franca may disappear and be replaced by confrontation. Indeed ‘Direct, confrontational questioning and bald-onrecord disagreement are common currency in these exchanges, where winning the argument supersedes the desire for interactional comity’ (Kirkpatrick, Subhan & Walkinshaw 2016: 87). Example (5.25) shows S2 repeating several times that he cannot grasp the point that S1 is making. In a way, S2 is adopting the strategy of requesting repletion or clarification, but at the same time suggesting, in an aggressive way, that S1 is being unclear. (5.25)

S1: that is the distance from the top of the retaining wall to the surface of the berm S2: then what’s your point? S1: okay S2 what’s the point? S1: now okay my point is with that figure in mind . . . A few lines later S2 continues: S2: sorry i can’t catch your point S1: really i can’t catch your point S2: okay (Kirkpatrick, Subhan, & Walkinshaw 2016: 87)

The tone here is quite different from that in (5.19). Far from being cooperative and preserving the face of the participants, this exchange illustrates an attack on a speaker’s face. Such exchanges are common in the courtroom and police data. This serves to underline the importance of context. Typically, ELF use is characterised by cooperation and ELF users share a commitment to ensure smooth communication and adopt a variety of communicative strategies to achieve this. But, in high-stakes contexts such as the courtroom or police station, the context will determine the speech styles and motivation of the interactants, which may well be to threaten ‘the other’s’ face and undermine their arguments. These examples show that code-mixing and transfer of features from a speaker’s first language do occur when Asian multilinguals use English as a lingua franca, underlining that ELF is a multilingual phenomenon. However,

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Table 5.1 Communicative strategies of ELF users in ACE Strategy type (Listener) Lexical anticipation Lexical repetition Lexical suggestion Lexical correction Don’t give up Request repetition /clarification Let it pass Strategy type (Participant) Participant paraphrase Participant prompt Strategy type (Speaker) Spell out the word Be explicit Paraphrase

Illustration [5.13] [5.14] [5.15, 5.16] [5.17] [5.18] [5.19] [5.20] Illustration [5.21] [5.22] Illustration [5.23] [5.24] [5.22]

the use of these features seldom appears to cause communicative breakdown or misunderstanding. Instead, generally speaking, ELF users adopt a series of ad hoc communicative strategies to help them negotiate meaning in a cooperative way. A number of these communicative strategies were illustrated. These might be useful for native speakers of English when they are communicating with ELF users and second-language speakers of English. Table 5.1 provides a summary of the communicative strategies identified in this chapter and indicate which of the examples illustrates which strategy. The strategies are divided into listener, participant and speaker strategies. (The Table is adapted from Kirkpatrick 2010a: 141.) Conclusion The first part of this chapter considered the transfer of pragmatic norms from the speaker’s first language into their use of English and then illustrated how this transfer might cause speakers of English to incorrectly ascribe negative personality traits to the speaker. Then, while arguing that world Englishes are, by definition, characterised by code-mixing, the chapter also exemplified the transfer of words and grammatical items from a speaker’s first language into their use of English as a lingua franca, thereby illustrating the essential multilingual nature of ELF. The chapter concluded by illustrating the types of

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strategies adopted by speakers of English as a lingua franca in order to ensure successful communication. These strategies were listed in Table 5.1. In the next chapter, I look at the borrowing into English of words from the speakers’ first languages in more detail and also give examples from Asian writers writing in English.

6

Borrowing Words and Writing Asian Englishes

In Chapter 3, I quoted a number of Asian authors who write in English, explaining how they had adapted English so that it could reflect and represent the cultural values of these authors. In this chapter, I first look at examples of how words from Asian languages and English words have been adapted by selected Asian varieties of English. I then illustrate how Asian authors writing in English have made the language theirs, noting at the same time, however, how some Asian writers have seen writing in English as a form of cultural betrayal. All varieties of English need to be able to reflect and represent the cultural values and everyday experience of their speakers. A common way of doing this is to borrow words from local languages and incorporate them into the new variety. Typically, these words from local languages will describe items of food, clothing, artefacts, and cultural concepts for which there are no words available in English. It is important to note that inner-circle varieties of English also do this. For example, Australian English has borrowed a host of words from a variety of Australian Aboriginal languages to describe uniquely Australian phenomena. Kangaroo, koala, didgeridoo and boomerang are among the best known internationally, but there are many other words of Australian English that come from Australian Aboriginal languages. Here I provide examples from selected Asian varieties of English, starting with Indian English. As noted earlier, when using the term Indian English, it is as a cover term which refers to ‘a number of varieties of English used as a second language in India’ (Gargesh 2008: 231). Indian English is of particular interest as many words which were borrowed from Indian languages have since entered many varieties of English to become internationally understood. Words of Indian origin have been in English ever since towards the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth in the early seventeenth century, many brought into English through trade. Calico, chintz and gingham are examples (Teltscher 2013: 11). Here I list some examples alphabetically which will be known to speakers of varieties of English other than Indian, although I have added meanings in brackets for those words that might not be familiar to some readers. These examples come from Hobson-Jobson, the first 111

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dictionary or glossary of Indian English and which was compiled by Colonel Henry Yule and Arthur C Burnell and first published in 1886 (www.bbc.co.uk /news/magazine-18796493) (accessed 7 May 2019). Its title is itself an example of what Hobson-Jobson itself calls one of those ‘jingling doublebarrelled phrases in which Orientals delight even more than Englishmen’ (Teltscher 2013: 377). It derives from the distorted, anglicised version of the mourning cries of ‘Ya Hassan! Ya Hosain!’ at the Shia festival of Muharram’ (Teltscher 2013: xi). Many of the words included in Hobson-Jobson went directly into the New English Dictionary (now the Oxford English Dictionary, OED). ‘The entry of words of Asian origin into the national lexicon is a striking example of the manner in which India remade British culture’ (Teltsher 2013: xii) atoll, avatar, bandana, bangle, bazaar, Blighty (a reference to England), bungalow cashmere, catamaran, char, cheroot, cheetah, chintz, chit, chokey (gaol), chutney, cot, cummerbund, curry dinghy, doolally (temporarily deranged), dungarees guru, gymkhana hullabaloo jodhpur, jungle, juggernaut, jute khaki, kedgeree loot nirvana pariah, pashmina, polo, pukka (ripe and then ‘proper’, ‘real’), pundit, purdah, pyjamas sari, shampoo, shawl, swastika teak, thug, toddy, typhoon veranda yoga One problem about listing words from Asian varieties of English is that there is a lack of serious dictionaries of these varieties (Lambert 2020). As Lambert (2012) noted earlier the fact that Hobson-Jobson, which has 2,455 headwords, remains the major source dictionary of Indian English represents a huge gap, although there is a wiki Samosapedia which provides many examples of the inventiveness of the Englishes of the sub-continent (www.samosapedia.com/) (accessed 16 May 2019). Lambert notes that more recent attempts to provide a dictionary of Indian English are unsatisfactory as they define words in Indian English in terms of their deviance from British English. As an example, he cites the preface of a recent dictionary (Nihalani et al. 2004: viii) where the authors advise that they have ‘refrained from marking any of these usages as wrong, as they did not wish to appear to be laying down the law. But Indian users of this

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book will do well to note the peculiarities in their English and avoid those which may damage communication with other speakers of the language’ (Lambert 2012: 10). The etymology of certain words is also problematic as so many languages may have provided the original term. ‘Coolie’ just one example from Yule’s Introductory Remarks to Hobson-Jobson. ‘Its origins may derive from the name of a people, the ‘Kolis’, a hill tribe of Guzerat and the Western Ghats. Tamil, however, also has a kuli which means ‘daily hire or wages’. In Turkish kol means a male slave; khol is also Tibetan for slave or servant’ (Teltsher 2013: 21). Many of the words listed in Hobson-Jobson were contributed by languages such as Portuguese and Malay. Examples from Portuguese include gram, plantain, caste and peon. Examples from Malay include paddy, rattan, durian and prow. In including these words in its glossary, Hobson-Jobson legitimated ‘a bastard, hybrid, colloquial English’ (Joshi 2002: 255) and made the vernacular available for literary use (Teltsher 2013: xxviii). I shall be considering literatures in English later in this chapter but here provide an example of the use of words of Indian English in a play, Indian Ink, by the British playwright, Tom Stoppard. As Teltscher notes (2013: xxix), the characters, Flora and Nirad, are playing a Hobson-Jobson game and striving to use as many words as possible from Hobson-Jobson. (6.1)

Flora: While having tiffin on the veranda of my bungalow I spilled kedgeree on my dungarees and had to go to the gymkhana in my pyjamas looking like a coolie. Nirad: I was buying chutney in the bazaar when a thug who had escaped from the chokey ran amok and killed a box-wallah for his loot, creating a hullabaloo and landing himself in the mulligatawny.

While seen as a quintessentially English playwright, Stoppard, born in what is now the Czech Republic, was a first-language speaker of Czech and grew up in India and Singapore. This diverse linguistic and cultural background is shared by many of the authors I refer to later in this chapter. As noted, there are few reliable dictionaries of Asian varieties of English. In the 1990s, Susan Butler, the publisher of the Macquarie Dictionary, the dictionary of Australian English, worked on a project to develop a dictionary of world English in an Asian context, feeling that her experience in developing a dictionary of Australian English allowed her to empathise with Englishspeaking communities in Asia. It should be stressed that the Macquarie Dictionary was only published some 200 years after Captain Cook arrived in Australia in 1770 and it was not until the late twentieth century that Australians were able to overcome their so-called cultural cringe which saw everything that came from England as being innately superior to everything Australian. This included looking down on the Australian variety of English. A key figure in the

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development of the Macquarie Dictionary, Arthur Delbridge, cites the Director of Education in New South Wales saying in 1920, ‘It is sad to reflect that other people are able to recognise Australians by their speech’ (Delbridge 1999: 260). Delbridge also records that it was only when a champion of Australian English, Arthur Mitchell, became Chair of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in 1952 that the ABC started to accept Australian English (Kirkpatrick 2007a: 70). It was this background that made Butler feel that she could empathise with English-speaking Asians. As she pointed out, ‘Our English was as good as any. Perhaps the English-speaking communities in Asia felt the same way. Perhaps there was a chance to play a part in their (i.e., SE Asia) liberation, benefiting from the experience we had gained in liberating ourselves’ (Butler 1996: 350). To establish a dictionary of Asian English, a corpus would be needed. Butler’s team decided, in the first instance, to concentrate on ‘standard accepted words and phrases’ so the corpus they built was of fairly formal written texts – fiction, non-fiction, newspapers – with ‘standard’ meaning ‘items that are accepted as perfectly normal in formal writing’(Butler 1996: 351). Here follow examples of words that made this first dictionary. These, together with their citations, are taken from Butler (1996: 351 ff). These words all reflect the local cultures. An explanation of their meaning when this is unclear from the context is provided in italics. Citations from the authors and works from which the words were taken are also given when known. The first group comprises words for everyday items. lallang (a type of rough course grass) Singaporean English Citation: Army Daze, Michael Chiang, 1992. Some soldiers have an inborn flair for camouflage. With a few deftly applied sprigs they recede into oblivion. I do not have this facility. I tend to radiate when placed beside lallang. bamboo snake Hong Kong English Citation: Hong Kong. Hugh Witt (ed.), 1993. The bamboo snake is bright green and less venomous than others, but it is not easily seen and strikes readily if approached. belukar (a thicket, thick bush) Malaysian English Citation: Haunting the Tiger, KS Maniam, 1991. At first, he merely wanders around, then hearing snorts and belukar startled into shivers, he decides to take up wild boar hunting. tuk-tuk (a three-wheeled form of transport) Thai English Citation: Bight of Bangkok, Michael Smithies, 1993. He asked – words did not come out easily – what happened to the person who was travelling with him. ‘He told me he was going to take tuk-tuk when we got to Sida’. sala (living room) Philippine English Citation: Telling Lives, Christina PantjoaHidalgo, 1992.

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I see myself smiling at my reflection in the mirror in the sala, knowing I have never looked prettier.

The second group comprises words for food. laksa (spicy coconut-based noodle soup) Singaporean and Malaysian English Citation: Stand Alone, Simon Tay, 1990. She cooked only Peranakan food although she was not Peranakan herself. She learnt from Ah Neo, who was from Penang, my father’s home town, and she picked it up well . . . the hot sour laksa of that island. lechon (stuffed rolled pork belly) Philippine English Citation: Gems in Philippine Literature, Solomon V Arnoldo, 1989. No feast in the Philippines is complete without a lechon. In fact this national delicacy is the sine qua non of any gathering that has any epicurean pretension at all. field chicken Hong Kong English Citation: Insights Guides: Hong Kong, 1992. In autumn, restaurants serve rice birds, those tiny winged creatures which frequent paddy fields at harvest time. These are quite often eaten in concert with succulent Shanghai hairy crabs. Frogs are also found in the rice paddies – and these ‘field chickens’ are often served at banquets in South China.

The third group comprises culturally-specific names for institutions. kongsi (a company or Chinese clan organisation) Singaporean and Malaysian English Citation: The Towkay of Produce Street, Lim Thean Soo, 1991. She remembered kneeling only once as a bride before Sey Kim at a clan kongsi and that was the only time that they ever came together. minor wife Thai English Citation: Bight of Bangkok, Michael Smithies, 1993. Montana asked no questions, and was given enough to keep her happy. She invested not only in chit funds but also, more sensibly, in jewels. She was not prepared to be an impoverished first wife if Saiyud took a mistress, or a minor wife in the local parlance.

The fourth group describes local customs or ceremonies. bomoh (a traditional Malay doctor) Singaporean and Malaysian English Citation: Tales from a Headhunter, Kris Jitab, 1991. A bomoh was consulted and from whom all manner of potions and amulets and talismans were obtained. red packet (gift containing money in a red envelop usually given at the lunar New Year), Singaporean and Malaysian English Citation: Malaysian Customs and Etiquette, Datin Noor Aini Syed Amir, 1991. A gift of the red packet is also popular when celebrating a birth or a marriage. This is a most practical gift when you are undecided or do not know what present to buy. farang (foreigner) Thai English Citation: Mekong, Paul Adirex, 1995. I don’t think Supoke will recognize me with this farang look.

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The final group are examples of abstract ideas or expressions which reflect local cultures. utang na loob Philippine English Citation: Mew from the Middle, Asuncion David Maramba, 1991. Is the Filipino self-reliant or indolent? Innovative or imitative? What have operated in our lives – negative values like a never-ending utang na loob (debt or gratitude) etc., or positive values like kasipagan, katapatan, (industry, honesty) etc., or are they two sides of the same coin, now up, now down, like cara y cruz? sanuk Thai English Citation: Bight of Bangkok, Michael Smithies, 1993, Foreword. That fatalistic streak – of accepting things as they are and making the best job of them – accounts for both maipenrai (not to worry) and the search for sanuk (fun). For, if one just looked on the gloomy side, life would indeed be intolerable. lah (discourse marker signalling informality) Singaporean and Malaysian English Citation: Scorpion Orchid, Lloyd Fernando, 1992. Some of the other patients were laughing and they mocked at her, and some nurses – young things lah, you know. dai yat ho Hong Kong English Citation: Hong Kong in Depth: An A-Z Guide, Chris Pomery, 1993. Note the phrase dai yat, number one, which you’ll see in restaurant names and other places. If you want to agree emphatically with a proposition, particularly the quality of food, you can just say dai yat ho! wai (a type of bow from the waste) Thai English Citation: Bight of Bangkok, Michael Smithies, 1993. Salaya tried to give him the traditional mark of respect, the wai, but with one hand handcuffed to another holding a grenade, she gave up the attempt and just curtseyed.

Readers will notice that these terms comprise words of English on the one hand (field chicken, minor wife, red packet are examples) but which refer to culturally specific phenomena, or are words borrowed from the local language on the other (dai yat ho, laksa and kongsi are examples). Examples (6.2–6.4) show some examples of both these methods of adaptation by Chinese speakers of English. The first (6.2), taken from a news article, comes from Xu (2010: 285). Xiaokang is a Chinese word meaning something like ‘having a reasonably comfortable standard of living’. It is borrowed into English in this example. (6.2)

In his keynote speech addressing the conference, Hu Jintao, GeneralSecretary of the CPC Central Committee, pointed out that ‘if the benefits of xiaokang cannot be attained by rural people, China will fail to live up to its dream of a xiaokang society.

The second two Chinese examples are taken from the works of Ha Jin, a Chinese short story writer and novelist who writes in English (Xu 2010: 286).

Borrowing Words and Writing Asian Englishes (6.3)

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‘Your name?’ the chief asked, apparently reading out the question from a form ‘Chiu Maguang’ ‘Age?’ ‘Thirty-four’ ‘Profession?’ ‘Lecturer’ ‘Work unit?’ ‘Harbin University’ ‘Political status?’ ‘Communist Party member’.

In this dialogue (6.3), the term ‘work unit’ is a direct translation of the Chinese term danwei. It is more than a place of work as a person would both work and live at their work unit, which would provide housing, health care and education for the children. Political status is another term infused with a specific Chinese meaning. A person’s political status can be as a Communist Party Member, a Youth League Member, a Young Pioneer or simply a member of the masses (Xu 2010: 286). In this third example (6.4), Xu is talking, in English, to two Chinese postgraduate students (PGS1 and PGS2) at a university in Beijing. (Xu 2010: 286) (6.4)

Xu PGS1: PGS2: PGS1 Xu: PGS1:

You mean the farmers are busier during the spring and autumn. Now, what do they usually do in winter or the hot summer? Take a rest and do some . . . how to say? Fuye Yeah. Fuye Fuye. That’s an interesting word. How do you explain it in English, the fuye It’s a kind of work they do in their spare time.

As Xu explains, the closest translation of fuye is sideline or side occupation. And, as Xu further explains, ‘What makes fuye a characteristically Chinese concept is that fuye was once officially forbidden or discouraged in the days of people’s communes. Those who undertook fuye had to keep it quiet. However, since China’s opening up and reforms, when “getting rich is glorious”, people have been encouraged to practice fuye’ (Xu 2010: 286). Li Wei (2014) looks at new forms of Chinese English through a translanguaging lens. ‘A translanguaging lens posits that bilinguals have one linguistic repertoire from which they select features strategically to communicate effectively’ (Garcia & Li 2014: 22). In this context, translanguaging allows Chinese–English bilinguals to reconstitute and resemiotise English. To do this requires sophisticated linguistic proficiency across the two languages and the results can be extremely witty and often represent rebellion against authority (Kirkpatrick 2015). Examples where Chinese speakers ‘play’ with

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English words to give them a Chinese flavour and one which is punningly critical of the government include: ‘freedamn, harmany, democrazy, gunvernment, goveruption and departyment’ (Li 2014: n.p.). These are examples of local words being co-opted into the local variety of English and English neologisms derived from direct translations into English are a local phenomenon. English words can also undergo a shift in meaning when they are adopted by a new variety (Kirkpatrick 2007a). As mentioned in Chapter 3, a good example of this is the word ‘alphabet’. Instead of referring to the entire range of letters that make up an alphabet, in Singaporean English, alphabet refers to each individual letter of the alphabet. Hence, one can say that English has twenty-six alphabets. In Singaporean English, if you are seeing someone off at the airport you say you will send them there. The word ‘confident’ has been borrowed into Brunei Malay as konfiden but has only negative connotations meaning something like over-confident or arrogant. Hence ‘confident’ in Brunei English carries this negative meaning. As also noted in Chapter 3, a further way that new varieties of English develop new words or neologisms is using words from both English and a local language to form a hybrid compound in a process known as ‘hybridisation’ (Kachru 1983: 38). Examples from Indian English are ‘lathi charge’, where ‘lathi’ means the baton carried by police and ‘tiffin carrier’ where ‘tiffin’ means lunch or a meal. As is the case with many words of Indian English, this use has extended beyond India. Expatriates in Malaysia would look forward to a curry tiffin. Hybridisation can also involve suffixes to produce neologisms such as ‘patelship’ (being Indian) and ‘policewala’ (meaning policeman), ‘Policewala’ is also the title of a well-known Indian film made in Hindi and released in 1993. Table 6.1 Examples of Gayspeak Gayspeak

Translation

• . . . couldn’t do anything else but to sit down and Crayola Khomeini . . .

. . . couldn’t do anything else but to sit down and cry . . . How I wish I could go to the party. To Chaka’s amazement, his shabby outfit transformed into a golden barong tagalog.

How I wish I could Robina Gokongwei-Pe to the party. To Chaka’s amazement, his shabby outfit Optimus Prime into a golden barong tagalog.

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Users of these new Englishes can display great creativity and humour on developing neologisms to suit their experience. These examples are of Gayspeak and were collected in the Philippines by Casabal (2008: 100). Table 6.1 shows how speakers co-opt the names of local celebrities to describe an emotion or action. Words of English have also been borrowed into Japanese and, as such, are very likely candidates for Japanese English. Harris’ study (2019) showed that Japanese learners taking vocabulary size tests (VSTs) of English were able to select the correct answer more easily when a question used a common loanword, regardless of its frequency. These loan words, or gairaigo in Japanese, constitute about 10 per cent of all Japanese words, some 80 per cent of which derive from English (Stanlaw 2004). On entering the Japanese lexicon, they undergo five potential modifications, namely orthographical, phonological, morphological, semantic and syntactic. Table 6.2, taken from Harris (2019: 2), gives examples of each of these modifications. Later in this chapter, I discuss how Asian authors have adopted and adapted English in their writings. Here, I refer back to the work of Ha Jin, an example of which was cited at (6.3). Ha Jin is a Chinese writer who writes in English. In discussing his adaptation of Chinese idioms in his English writing, he is careful to point out that he does not directly translate Chinese idioms into English but rather paraphrases them. For example, instead of using the direct translation of the Chinese idiom referring to a man dreaming vainly of a beautiful woman which would be ‘a toad who wants to eat a swan’s flesh’ he used ‘a toad dreaming of nabbing a swan’. Instead of using the direct translation of the Chinese idiom referring to an ill-advised business venture which would be ‘to hit a dog with a pork bun’ Table 6.2 Examples of changes between loanwords and the source words Type of change

Loanwords

Meaning

Addition of vowel sounds between consonant clusters Addition of vowel sounds after final consonants Consonant differences Reduction / Clipped compounds Loanblends (of two or more languages) Syntactic change

sutandaado

standard

raido

ride

burabou terebi haburashi

bravo television toothbrush (Japanese ha meaning tooth + brush) stylish + Japanese -na adjectival ending

Semantic shift / False cognate

sutairisshuna Peepaa doraibaa

paper driver – a person who has a driver’s license, but who does not drive

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he used ‘to hit a dog with a meatball’ (Ha 2010: 466). He makes these changes in order ‘to suit the context, the drama and the narrative flow’ (Ha 2010: 466). This is interesting as the use of what has been called ‘unilateral idiomaticity’ (Seidlhofer 2009: 201) can lead to misunderstandings in the use of English as a lingua franca; the avoidance of using idioms is therefore a successful communication strategy when using ELF. In the previous chapter, we noted how the use of the native-speaker idiom ‘the whole organisation needs to be on an even keel’ was not understood by at least some of the delegates at the ASEAN Centre Directors’ meeting. In his conscious attempts to alter the original Chinese idioms when writing in English in order to ‘suit, the context, drama and the narrative flow’, Ha Jin appears to be engaged in a process of what Pitzl has called ‘remetaphorisation’ (2009: 317), but with one important distinction. Pitzl’s remetaphorisation is expressed through innovative expressions, ‘with a metaphorical image being created ad hoc by a speaker’ (2009: 317). In Ha Jin’s case, the re-metaphorisation is not ad hoc, but carefully constructed, illustrating the difference between spontaneous speech and planned writing. It would be unfortunate, however, were people, when using ELF, to feel that they always had to avoid the use of translations of idioms from their respective first languages, as these can often be extremely colourful and their meanings can often be determined by context. If not, they can be explained by their user. Here are just two examples, the first from Japanese, the second from Chinese. ‘He is still chewing on his parents’ shins’ is a Japanese idiom meaning that a son is still dependent upon his parents for money and is not yet earning his own keep – and that this is a circumstance that does not meet with parental approval. ‘They are so close that they breathe through the same nostril’ is a Chinese idiom which usually refers to two people who work together but who are up to no good – who are ‘in cahoots’ one might say.

I conclude this section of the chapter by focusing on Philippine English, as the best example of a recent dictionary of a local Asian variety of English is the Anvil-Macquarie Dictionary of Philippine English for High School compiled by Susan Butler with the Filipina scholar Ma Lourdes Bautista and published in 2000. The brochure introducing the dictionary to teachers and other potential users explained the motivations behind the dictionary in the following way: The words that are peculiar to a particular variety of English are developed from the contexts, both physical and social, of the language community. They are significant because they go to the heart of the local culture and mark out that community as different from others in its history, its way of life, its attitudes and its traditions. (cited in Bolton & Butler 2004: 100)

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The following examples are all taken from the Anvil-Macquarie Dictionary. I have chosen these to illustrate how Philippine English has borrowed from other languages including Spanish, the colonial language from 1565 to 1898, Tagalog, upon which the national language Filipino is based, and other local languages of the Philippines. I cite the entries in full, in the way they are presented in the dictionary. bedspacer noun Philippine English. Someone who stays in a dormitory or shared room of a boarding house but does not take meals there. calachuchi noun Philippine English. Frangipani also kalatsutsi. NOTE This word is borrowed into English from Tagalog carless adjective Philippine English. If you are carless you are without your car in accordance with Manila’s United Traffic Scheme by which cars are banned from the roads on certain weekdays according to the digit in which their registration number ends. despedida noun Philippine English. A farewell party for someone who is about to go overseas or leave a job or company. dirty kitchen noun Philippine English. A kitchen for everyday use or use by maids, as opposed to a kitchen used for show or by the owner of the house. ipil noun Philippine English. A Philippine and the Pacific Island tree which provides a valuable dye and has a hard dark wood. NOTE This word is borrowed into English from Spanish and ultimately Tagalog. pinakbet noun. A Philippine dish of vegetables sautéed in fish or shrimp paste and sometimes garlanded with pork crackling. NOTE This word is borrowed into English from Illocano.

The following words from Philippine English were added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in 2018. These words were provided by Filipinos in answer to the OED’s on-line call for words of Philippine English. To quote from the relevant website (https://public.oed.com/blog/philippine-english-in-theseptember-2018-update/ (accessed 7 May 2019), This crowdsourcing appeal resulted in an interesting selection of words representing different aspects of Philippine life and culture. Many of the words are related to Filipino food items, whose varied linguistic origins reflect the diverse international influences that have enriched Filipino cuisine.

And, as the site goes on to say: But perhaps no other word is more quintessentially Filipino than the word trapo – a derogatory term for a politician perceived as belonging to a conventional and corrupt ruling class. Trapo is a combination of the two words that make up the English phrase traditional politician, but it is also the Spanish word for a cleaning cloth, which has also been borrowed into Tagalog and other Philippine languages. This elevates trapo from a simple portmanteau to a clever and provocative play on words that equates a corrupt politician to a dirty rag, and from a mere loanword to a five-letter distillation of centuries of Philippine political, cultural, and linguistic history.

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The full list of the twenty words of Philippine English that were added to the 2018 edition of the OED is given here. Several illustrate the multilingual nature of Asian Englishes. • ambush interview, n. an unscheduled interview or when someone is tricked into giving an interview • accomplish, v. Filipinos accomplish questionnaires and forms rather than fill them out • bagoong, n. a condiment made mainly from fermented fish • bihon, n. a noodle dish (from the Chinese language, Hokien) • bold, adj. – this means erotic or sexually explicit • bongga, adj. impressive, elegant, stylish • carinderia, n. (‘Kari is Tagalog for curry, but is itself borrowed from India with the Spanish-deria suffix, representing an excellent example of hybridisation). • cartolina, n. thick coloured cardboard • dirty ice cream, n. local ice cream (see also sorbetes) • ensaimada, n. a pastry snack (from Catalan) • holdupper, n. someone who commits a robbery or hold up • palay, n. unmilled rice • panciteria, n. noodle stall (‘Pancit’ is Tagalog for noodle, with the Spanish suffix –teria, another excellent example of hybridisation.) • querida, n. defined by Lito Monico C. Lorenzana in the Manila Times of 20 April 2017 as ‘an arrangement where a married man takes in a mistress more often leading to the establishment of another family, keeping this undisclosed from the legitimate wife and family’ (www.manilatimes.net/o f-queridas-and-governance/323065/ (accessed 11 May 2019) • rotonda, n. a roundabout • sorbetes, n. local ice cream • trapo, n. a corrupt politician, (from traditional politician but trapo also means ‘rag’ in Spanish) • turon, n. a banana snack (from Spanish) • viand, n. and meat or vegetable dish accompanying rice By soliciting these words from Filipinos themselves, the OED avoids the criticism levelled by Bolton and Butler at Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. They say, ‘Not only is the institutionalised Webster’s lexicon hopelessly archaic, but also totally inadequate to capture the vibrant creativity of a hybrid and irreverent tropical English in full flight’ (Bolton & Butler 2004: 99). I hope that the examples of words from the variety of Asian Englishes listed here give readers a sense of the ‘vibrant creativity’ of these Englishes. In the next section of the chapter, I further exemplify this creativity by reviewing a selection of Asian literature in English and the debate about the

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use of English as an ‘Asian’ language by local authors. As Lim et al. (2020: 789) have noted: For much of the twentieth century, the role of English as a communal and cultural language in Asian societies embroiled academics, journalists, politicians, scholars, students and writers, almost all sections of the population, in various forms of debate about the English language.

Ha Jin, the Chinese writer from whom examples were taken earlier has acclaimed, ‘One unique glory English has is a body of literature created by writers to whom English is not a given but an acquisition’. In Chapter 3, I cited a number of writers from the sub-continent who argued that English could and should be adapted by local writers so that the language was able to reflect the everyday experiences and cultural values of the writers. Here I repeat the Indian author, Raja Rao’s, position on this issue. In the foreword to his piece Kanthapura, a novel which was first published in 1938, he wrote, ‘English is not really an alien language to us . . . our method of expression has to be a dialect which will someday prove to be as distinctive and colourful as the Irish or American . . . we shall have English with us and amongst us, and not as our guest or friend, but as one of our own, of our castes our creeds, our sect and tradition’. The question of what roles English might play in postcolonial settings has vexed authors for decades. What is English? Is it a conduit through which colonial and Western influence and power can be maintained or is it a medium of liberation from colonial power and influence? Can English be used to introduce the values espoused by its new users to the world? Is it a language of scientific and technological advance or can English be used to proselytise local religions? Can English be adapted to Islamic values? Or is it rather a conduit through which ‘Western’ ideas and values inimical to ‘Asian’ values can be passed? Is it a democratising language through which people can address each other as equals without the use of linguistic markers for respect as required in many Asian languages? I shall return to some of these questions later, but here focus on whether English can be adapted as a literary medium for Asian writers writing in English. The quotes from Asian authors that I have so far cited, all express the view that English can indeed become their language. To repeat the Pakistani novelist, Sidhwa’s, memorable image cited in Chapter 3, ‘English . . . is no longer a monopoly of the British. We the ex-colonised have subjugated the language, beaten it on its head and made it ours’ (1996: 231). This would certainly seem to be the case in Pakistan where there are numerous authors writing in English. Rahman identifies four major themes being explored by contemporary Pakistani novelists writing in English, namely: the degradation of the human condition in Pakistan; the political and social consequences of General Zia Ul Haq’s Islamisation policies which were

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introduced between 1978 and 1988; the increased criminalisation of large cities, most notably Karachi; and the political and personal consequences of 9–11, both on the lives of Pakistanis in the West as well as in Pakistan itself (Rahman 2020). Braj Kachru exhorts both writers and scholars of world Englishes to turn away from ‘genres’ of ‘linguistic guilt and atonement’ in the new millennium and to ‘acculturate the [English] language in our contexts of use, on our terms, Asian terms’ (Kachru 1998: 105). Thus Saraceni (2020: 713) notes that, ‘this was the concept of appropriation of the English language by postcolonial writers, underpinned by the conviction that on the one hand ‘English has become an Indian language’, and on the other, ‘To conquer English may be to complete the process of making ourselves free’ (Rushdie 1992: 17). However, not all writers felt as positively about the role that English could play in reflecting local cultural values. A well-known opponent to writing in English is the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o. He writes primarily in his native language, Gikuyu. He reports that, when at school, children who used the local language, Gikuyu, were forced to wear signs around their neck proclaiming ‘I am stupid’ or ‘I am a donkey’ (Kirkpatrick 2007a). This recalls the treatment dished out to children who spoke Welsh in school who were forced to wear the ‘Welsh knot’. Children in the North East of Scotland who spoke the local language, the Doric, while at school, had their knuckles severely rapped. Schools have traditionally been the promoters of the standard or national language. The idea that writing in English was a form of alienation or of ‘psychological amputation’ (Schmied 1991: 119) was most forcefully expressed by the Sri Lankan poet, Lakdasa Wikkramasinha. He died by drowning at the tragically early age of thirty-six. He wrote in English but felt an inner turmoil for doing so. I have come to realise that I am writing the language of the most despicable and loathsome people on earth: I have no wish to extend its life and range, enrich its totality. To write in English is a form of cultural treason. I have had for the future to think of a way of circumventing this treason. I propose to do this by making my writing entirely immoralist and destructive (cited in Canagarajah 1994: 375).

Perhaps ironically, his beautiful poetry, written in English, is an illustration of how English could be adapted by local writers to capture their experiences. Here is his poem ‘The Cobra’. Your great hood was like a flag hung up there in the village Endlessly the people came to Weragoda watched you (your eyes like braziers) standing somewhat afar

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They stood before you in obeisance. Death, The powers of the paramitas, took you to heaven However. The sky, vertical, is where you are now shadowing the sun, curling round and round my mind They whisper death stories but it was only my woman Dunkiriniya, the very lamp of my heart that died.

This poem has received criticism from Sri Lankan scholars such as Arjuna Parakrama and D. C. R. A Goonetilleka, in part for suggesting a dead cobra’s hood could look like a flag and its dead eyes look like braziers. But, as Dissanayake points out, the cobra is still alive when the villagers come to view it, which is why they stand ‘somewhat afar’ from it. It is his view that ‘The Cobra’ ranks among Wikkramasinha’s best poems, and one which ‘illustrates his linguistic/cultural affiliations’ (Dissanayake www.island.lk/2007/08/11/sat mag2.html) (accessed 16 May 2019). And this is the central point: this poem, written in English, illustrates the author’s linguistic and cultural affiliations. A second Sri Lankan poet who has expressed resentment about having to use English is Yasmine Gooneratne. There is still a deep-seated resentment in countries such as India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, perhaps in Africa, too, but certainly in regions that possess an ancient and written literature and a creative literary tradition of their own – against English, which was the principal tool used by nineteenth century rulers in the process of their deracination. (cited in Bailey 1996: 40)

Here we also see the view that the use of English is part of a process of ‘deracination’ recalling the idea of ‘psychological amputation’ noted earlier. But here is a poem, ‘Menika’, by Gooneratne herself, which brilliantly captures the essence of Sri Lankan culture, despite being written in English. Menika Deft-handed, swirling rice-grains in clear water, pouring the white stream from pot to pot she said: I would like to go back to the village next week There is a court case I am reclaiming my children, two daughters, from their father He has another woman. Neat-handed, kneading coriander and cumin On the smooth stone she said: My father made the marriage There were good fields and much fine property

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Borrowing Words and Writing Asian Englishes My father inspected the fields, my brother went with him They all agreed it was a good match Two weeks after the marriage he brought her back to the house

The pestle rising, falling, in her practised hands the grain in the mortar crumbling to powder she said: We lived eighteen years in that house My children with me in one room, she with him in the other One day a relation of his came in, asking for a measure of rice I did not think to refuse it That night he came home drunk, and said I was giving away the household goods Spreading the grain in the sun to dry she said: When he beat me before the neighbours I sent for my father He came and took me away When we signed the register at the Police Station The Sergeant said: What a man is this To make such a shameful to-do over a measure of rice! She looks after my children well, they tell me But they are daughters, can I allow them to become women And far away from me? On the day of the court case, her skin smoothly powdered, A crimson sari knotted at her neat waist, her hair Combed into shining coils on her slender neck she said: He is a good man There is no fault in him

The descriptions of the way food is prepared, of the patriarchal nature of the society and the associated subordinate role of women, of the way the woman uses make-up and dresses, of everyday life, all have an intensely local flavour despite the poem being written in English. This is a further illustration of how English can capture local experience and be owned and shaped by its users. Indeed, not only have these writers successfully re-shaped English to suit their own literary needs, they have also contributed immeasurably to the development of literature in English. As the Malaysian writer, Tash Aw, argues, the language is more than an imperial remnant, because Asian writers who write in English have undoubtedly been reshaping the landscape of the novel and contributing to the ‘evolution’ of literature in the late twentieth and twentyfirst centuries. In this, how Asian writers not only write about the local but are also embracing the intercultural, the transnational can be seen. This is wellcaptured by Varughese who feels that cultural and linguistic hybridity is less of an outcome and more of a springboard for ‘writers who are less and less interested in their putative subalternity to a former colonial power and more

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and more interested in what constitutes . . . the identity of the culture from within which they write’ (Varughese 2012: 20). A distinction can be drawn parallel to the distinction I have made between the ‘internal’ use of local variety of English and the ‘external’ use of English as a lingua franca with writers writing in English for their local community and those writing in English and dealing with transnational and intercultural themes. To quote once more from Lim et al. (2020: 806): While it is undeniable that the English language is a legacy of British conquest and colonialism, and English is often regarded in Asian societies as a language of commerce and technology, Asian literature in English shows the critical and creative potential of the language beyond such instrumental uses . . . these writers . . . use English within their own terms to recollect histories, remember journeys, and represent conflicts within and between the communities and nation-states situated in the vast expanse of Asia.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have shown how local Englishes have adapted English to reflect the everyday experiences and cultural phenomena and values of their speakers. I illustrated this with examples of how these varieties develop words that allow their users to talk about their lived experiences. I also argued that local authors have been able to adapt English, and illustrated how they have made it ‘theirs’ so that they can write about what is important to them and their communities; but I also showed that these authors are expanding the range of English literature in general by writing in English about transnational issues within Asia and between Asia and others. It is English as a literary language and its ‘vernacular transformations’ (Ashcroft 2016: 126) that has been a major factor in making it a language, not only in, but of Asia. In Chapter 8, I show further ways in which English and its vernacular transformations function in Asian settings, including law, religion and popular culture. But next, the presence of non-standard grammatical forms in all varieties of English and potential explanations for their development is considered.

7

Non-standard Forms in Asian Englishes and ELF

Introduction In this chapter, I discuss the presence or otherwise of non-standard forms in Asian Englishes and in the use of English as a lingua franca in Asian settings. The focus will be on morphosyntactic forms. The chapter starts with a brief historical overview showing how the morphosyntax of English has changed over the centuries and how the two processes of simplification and regularisation have operated on English over the years. The aim is to see whether these two processes can also be seen at work on the morphosyntax of new Asian varieties of English. As will be illustrated, all vernacular varieties of contemporary spoken English contain morphosyntactic forms that differ from those found in standard varieties of English. I shall then move to look at the nonstandard forms in Asian varieties of English and the use of English as a lingua franca and shall argue that trying to unearth a grammar of English as a lingua franca is something of a fool’s errand as ELF occurs in so many disparate contexts and is, by definition, used by people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. What might be more interesting in the analysis of ELF is to see whether speakers from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds use the same non-standard forms irrespective of these backgrounds. In other words, it would be interesting to see if the idea of morphosyntactic universals can be supported. Early Englishes To begin, then, at the beginning of English. English has always been a mongrel language not a thoroughbred, and has been influenced and altered by contact with other languages over many centuries. ‘The notion of purity was as mythical then as it is now’ (Crystal 2004: 10). Where did English spring from? It is an Indo-European language whose ancestry can be traced back to Sanskrit and which has been influenced by Classical Greek, Latin, Germanic languages, Norman French, French, Scandinavian languages and, as illustrated in the preceding chapter, a host of Asian languages such as Hindi and Malay. 128

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The languages spoken by the Angles, Jutes and Saxons as they arrived in Britain around the middle of the fifth century were themselves diverse and vastly different from the Englishes of today. In the context of morphosyntax, a significant change that took place gradually between Old English (from around 450–1150) and Modern English (from around 1750) was the simplification of the inflectional system. English nouns and verbs today have far less complex inflectional systems than in the past. The examples come from Blake (1996: 65). Table 7.1 shows how the noun stan (stone) inflected for case in Old English (OE). Today, the only inflection English takes for the noun ‘stone’ is to add the suffix ‘-s’ to show the plural, ‘stones’. The addition of the ‘-s’ suffix is the normal way of indicating the plural of nouns in English. The only other plural marking on nouns is the irregular plural suffix ‘-en’ as in children and brethren. There are no inflections to mark the case of nouns in the Englishes of today, with the exception of the accusative form of the relative pronoun ‘who’, as ‘whom’, but even this is becoming used less frequently and sounds somewhat pedantic and archaic. The genitive is also marked with the possessive ‘-s’, as in the ‘boy’s toys’ and in the ‘boys’ toys’, where the boy’s toys means the speaker is talking about one boy, whereas the speaker is talking about more than one boy in the ‘boys’ toys. But readers will probably agree that this use of the possessive marker is also becoming neglected and often incorrectly used. There are also no markings for gender, other than ‘she’ and ‘he’.1 As a consequence, the system is much simpler today than it was. This is also the case with verbs. There are two ways of marking the past tense forms in English: a weak form and a strong form. The weak form is marked by adding a suffix. The strong form is marked by altering the internal vowel sound of the verb. An example of a strong form in OE is ‘sprecan’ (speak) the past tense of which was ‘spraek’. This vowel shift is retained today in ‘speak’ and ‘spoke’(Blake 1996: 68). An example of a weak form in OE is ‘cysson’ (kiss), the past tense of which was ‘cyssed’(Blake 1996: 69). This ‘-ed’ ending is retained today in ‘kiss’ and ‘kissed’. Table 7.1 Case endings for stan (stone) in OE

1

Case

Singular

Plural

Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative

stan stan stanes stane

stanas stanas stana stanum

Some nouns do have a feminine form (actress, for example) but they are falling into disuse for being seen as sexist.

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As indicated earlier, two processes have been at work over time. The first is simplification in that the inflectional system today is much simpler than it was. The second is regularisation. This means, for example, that, over time, some verbs have moved from the strong form to take the weak form to show past time. The OE past tense form of the verb ‘work’ was ‘wrought’, a form which is retained as an adjective meaning ‘worked’ as in ‘wrought iron’. This move to regularisation is constant. The more mature among us might use ‘slew’ and ‘besought’ as the past tenses of ‘slay’ and ‘beseech’, while the younger generation might prefer ‘slayed’ and ‘beseeched’. High-frequency irregular verbs such as ‘say/said’ and ‘sit/sat’ retain their strong past-tense forms, but new verbs coming into English all take the weak form ‘-ed’ suffix to mark the past tense. What has caused these changes? Fisher argues that pidginisation was one major cause, brought about by contact with Scandinavian languages which ‘led to a process of pidginisation, with the concomitant loss of morphological structure’ (Fisher 1992: 207). As Davis notes, ‘English has always been heterogeneous and has always involved extensive language contact’ (Davis 2010: 31). This is as true, if not more so, today than it ever has been. In considering the morphosyntax of Asian varieties of English, I shall investigate whether simplification and/or regularisation can explain the presence of so-called non-standard morphosyntax. But first, non-standard forms in vernacular varieties of inner circle varieties of English will be illustrated, taking examples from British, American and Australian Englishes, three ‘inner circle’ varieties. Vernacular Varieties of Inner Circle Englishes The first example comes from the Doric, a variety of English spoken in and around Aberdeen in the northeast of Scotland and use of which in school would have resulted in a rap over the knuckles only a generation ago. I aye likit tae rake aboot ither folk’s places. It’s just winnerfae fit ye can learn. Eence fin I wis hame frae Cambridge I bikit over tae see a freen o mine (Fenton 2005: 23) I have always liked looking around other people’s places (homes). It’s just wonderful what you can learn. Once when I was home from Cambridge, I biked over to see a friend of mine

There are clearly a large number of non-standard forms used here, not least in the pronunciation, with ‘wh’ sounds being replaced by ‘f’ sounds, for example, as in ‘fit’ for ‘what’ and ‘fin’ for ‘when’. But what is interesting is the past tense endings on the verbs ‘like’ and ‘bike’ as ‘likit’ and ‘bikit’. I noted previously that Fisher had listed pidginisation as a cause for language change. A second

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cause she listed was phonology, explaining that the initial stress patterns on words in Old English ‘must have contributed to the neutralisation of vowel qualities in inflectional endings and in their almost total subsequent demise’ (Fisher 1992: 207). The past tense endings in standard English of like and bike are ‘liked’ and ‘biked’ and these endings are consonant clusters (‘kt’) and are physically difficult to articulate. Native speakers of English will not sound these consonant clusters in natural speech and this may be one reason why past tense endings such as these which are realised by consonant clusters may be dropped in new varieties of English. What is interesting in the Doric example, is that these verbs are made bi-syllabic, which avoids the ‘kt’ consonant clusters of ‘liked’ and ‘biked’, and makes the past tense ending noticeable in speech. Here the Doric is making the past tense explicit. It is also worth noting that the Doric uses the simple past tense ‘I aye likit . . . ’, whereas standard British English would use the present perfect ‘I have always liked . . . ’. This use of the past simple is also evident in Asian varieties of English. In his survey of non-standard forms in vernacular varieties of the Englishes of England, Britain (2010: 38) listed nine non-standard forms that appear to be used across dialects and by most people in the country. This common core of non-standard forms is listed in Table 7.2. Britain also notes variation in the marking of present and past tenses. In many parts of England, the ‘-s’ is ‘variably applied across the whole verbal paradigm and is not restricted to third-person singular contexts’ (2010: 39). As an example, he gives, ‘We eats there most Sundays’ (2010: 39). But in other parts of England, East Anglia in particular, ‘present tense verbs traditionally lack any marking at all’ as in ‘She love going up the city’ (2010: 40). With regard past tenses, Britain notes that some past tense forms are ‘weak in the non-standard variety but strong in Standard English’ (2010: 41). Examples include the use of ‘growed’ in place of ‘grew’ and ‘drawed’ instead of ‘drew’. Britain lists a whole host of other non-standard forms that are commonly found in vernacular dialects of England including double negation (‘I didn’t do Table 7.2 Common core of non-standard forms Them as demonstrative [Can you see them birds sitting in that hedge? 2010: 51] Absence of plural marking on nouns of measurement [That’s five mile from the farm. 2010:47] Never as a past tense negator [I met her last week and she never told me about that. 2010: 46] Regularised reflexive pronouns [The fans did theirselves no good at all. 2010: 49] There’s/there was with notional plural subjects [There’s crumbs all over the floor. 2010: 40] Present participles using the preterite rather than continuous forms [I’m sat at a desk all day and I don’t even have a window. 2010: 41] Adverbs without –ly [It happened real fast. 2010: 46] Ain’t/in’t [It ain’t my book. 2010: 45] Non-standard was [There was piles of rotten apples everywhere. 2010: 42]

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Table 7.3 Features of Texan Southern English Feature

Example

a-verb-ing plural verb ‘-s’ perfective ‘done’ you-all, y’all fixin’ to multiple modals past simple ‘dove’ past simple ‘drug’

he left a-running folks sits there she’s done left we saw yall I’m fixin’ to eat we might can make it they dove in he drug it.

nothing’), non-standard prepositional uses (I’m going up my friend’s house’) and the use of ‘double’ comparisons (It’s more fuller than what it was last week’). He concludes by saying, every corner of the country demonstrates a wide range of grammatically non-standard forms, reminding us that such forms are the rule rather than the exception in spoken English English – research has shown that there appears to be a common core of nonstandard elements found very widely across the country, alongside more local grammatical forms. (2010: 53)

Comparable non-standard forms are also found in other ‘inner circle’ varieties of English and here I simply list a few examples, first from American vernaculars and then from Australian vernaculars. The list above is drawn from Bailey (1997: 259–60). Table 7.3 shows features of Texan Southern English speakers (Kirkpatrick 2007a: 66). The following examples of the use of non-standard forms by native speakers of English come from speakers on radio in Australia (Kirkpatrick 2007a: 74 ff). The first one shows the use of an adjective (good) rather than an adverb (well). ‘He does not play as good as before’ The second example comes from a happy football supporter (Australian Rules Football). ‘If you had have said to me that by the twenty second mark we’d be up by two goals I’d have laughed at you, fair dinkum’

This use of ‘had have’ in the if clause of a third conditional is common. Other examples include ‘If he had have made that tackle . . .’, ‘ If he hadn’t have gone there . . . ’ and ‘If he had have been . . . .’ A further example of non-standard forms in Australian vernacular shows the use of ‘less’ rather than ‘fewer’ with a countable noun. This use of ‘less’ with countable nouns is also attested in many vernacular varieties of English

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English, to the extent that it may soon be viewed as unremarkable and standard. Note also the use of an epenthetic or unnecessary ‘what’ in this example. The chief is saying that we may have to run on less resources than what we have before. (Kirkpatrick 2007a: 75)

Having illustrated that non-standard grammatical forms are characteristic of vernacular varieties of inner circle Englishes, I now turn to look at these in Asian varieties of English, remembering that the presence of non-standard forms is both common and natural in vernacular varieties of English. Non-standard Forms in Asian Varieties of English This section of the chapter opens with a review of the debate between scholars who feel that the first language(s) of speakers – the substrates – is a major cause of non-standard forms in their variety of English and those who feel that many of the non-standard forms noted in vernacular varieties of English are universal or are at least common to the majority of English vernaculars.2 We have seen, for example, how certain non-standard features of English English vernaculars formed a common core. Are these non-standard forms also attested in second language varieties of English? In other words, do varieties of English spoken by people for whom English is a learned or additional language exhibit the same non-standard forms as those spoken by people who speak English as a first language? Non-standard forms exist in all varieties of English. The question is whether the non-standard forms which occur in Asian varieties of English differ from those which occur in vernacular first-language varieties and/or whether there are different non-standard forms in different Asian varieties of English. If there are differences in the use of non-standard forms across Asian varieties of English, this would suggest that the first language(s) of the speakers of those varieties might be a cause of those differences. If the differences are comparable, this would suggest that there is a common core of non-standard forms that are attested in many, if not all, English vernaculars. In short, is a key difference between first-language Englishes and second-language Englishes the substrate influence upon second-language varieties? A proponent of the existence of vernacular universals is Chambers. Among the vernacular universals he proposed (2004: 129) were: conjugation regularisation or levelling of irregular verb forms (as in ‘yesterday John seen the eclipse’; ‘Mary heared the good news’) default singulars or subject-verb non-concord (‘they was the last ones’) multiple negation of negative concord (‘he didn’t see nothing’) copular absence or deletion (‘she smart’; ‘we going as soon as possible’) 2

This section of the chapter draws on Kirkpatrick and Subhan (2014: 386 ff).

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The existence of vernacular universals has, however, been questioned by other scholars. For example, Kortmann (2010) investigated whether it was possible to postulate morphosyntactic universals for all non-standard varieties of English. Using data from the World Atlas of Morphosyntactic Variation in English (WAMVE)3, which investigated seventy-six morphosyntactic features across forty-six spoken vernacular varieties of English from across the world, Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi (2004) identified the most likely candidates for what they called ‘morphosyntactic angloversals’ (Kortmann 2010: 407). These are listed in Table 7.4. In noting that the top four angloversals listed are the top four in every variety of English, Kortmann points out that none of Chambers’ candidates for universals is at the top of the list. At the same time, while the most common angloversal occurs in forty-one of the forty-six varieties investigated by Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi, none of these morphosyntactic features can be called universals. It is also worth noting that many of the features listed in Table 7.4 also occur in the list of common core non-standard features of English Englishes listed in Table 7.2. What we can say, is that many of the same nonstandard forms occur in many different varieties of English, but there is none that occurs in all. Based on these findings, it can be argued that the influence of the substrate in the non-standard morphosyntactic forms of many varieties of English may not be as strong as some scholars have argued. A key supporter of the ‘typological matrix approach’ is Ansaldo (2009: 145) who contends that the grammar of Asian Englishes can only be understood by referring to the grammar of the substrates underlying these varieties of English. However, it is often not clear which substrate is exerting influence (if any) on the grammar of the particular variety. As Ansaldo himself notes, a variety of substrates may be shaping the grammar of Singaporean English, namely Bazaar Malay, Baba Malay, standard Malay and a number of Chinese languages such as Hokien, Cantonese and Mandarin. In proposing substrate influence, Ansaldo investigated three linguistic features of the basilectal variety of Singaporean English. The three features were copula deletion, topicprominence and predicative adjectives. While these three features can all be seen in bascilectal or colloquial Singaporean English, the problem for the substrate influence argument is that these forms also occur in many other varieties of English. As noted, copula deletion is a candidate for being one of Chamber’s vernacular universals, and although Kortmann has shown it is less common than other features that he has termed ‘angloversals’, it nevertheless occurs across a range of varieties. Britain also notes copula deletion in varieties 3

Interested readers can access the Electronic Wave Atlas of Varieties of English. Kortmann, Bernd, & Lunkenheimer, Kerstin (eds.). 2013. The Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://ewave-atlas.org (Accessed 27 November 2019).

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Table 7.4 Top candidates for morphosyntactic angloversals (Kortmann 2010: 407)

Feature lack of inversion in main clause yes/no questions me instead of I in coordinate subjects never as preverbal past tense negator adverbs same form as adjectives lack of plural marking after measure nouns lack of inversion/lack of auxiliaries in wh- questions multiple negation/negative concord degree modifier adverbs lack –ly special forms or phrases for the second person plural pronoun levelling of differences between present perfect and simple past double comparatives and superlatives

Number of varieties where feature is attested (N=46) 41 40 40 39 37 36 35 35 34 34 34

of vernacular English Englishes. It is also unfortunate that Ansaldo chose the basilectal form of Singaporean English for his data and compared it with standard English. Copula deletion was found in the mesolects of fourteen of the fifteen pidgins and creoles surveyed in the WAMVE. Like needs to be compared with like. After all, when comparing vernacular varieties of English Englishes with standard British English in the manner undertaken by Britain (2010), a whole host of non-standard forms can be identified, many of which also occur in Asian varieties of English. The lesson is not to use an idealised, standardised variety against which to compare any vernacular variety. Vernaculars need to be compared with vernaculars, not standard varieties. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that Ansaldo found copula deletion in the basilectal variety of Singaporean English. The level of formality is also clearly of significance. In a study that aimed to test the hypothesis that the substrate influenced the morphosyntactic forms of an Asian variety of English, Kirkpatrick and Subhan (2014: 394 ff) looked at interactions from the ACE corpus that involved speakers whose first languages were Indonesian or some form of Malay. As Indonesian and Malay do not mark for tense, the hypothesis was that the Englishes of these speakers would show a tendency not to mark for tense, or at least mark it less often than speakers whose first languages were tensed languages. The first extract (7.1) involves two male students (S2, S4)

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and two female lecturers (S1, S3). All are speakers of Brunei Malay. They are discussing a new medium of instruction policy. As the conversation is taking place at the University and is relatively formal, they choose to speak in English. The tense markings are in bold. (7.1)

S1: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2:

S1: S2: SS: S2: S3: S2: S4: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2:

S4: S2:

SS: S2: S1: S2: S1: S2:

medium of instruction the medium of instruction was English English it still is right now in the secondary school mhm but ehm so I think ten or twelve years ago they started something new they ehm the medium of instruction from primary one to primary three is now dialect basically Malay Malay and they’ve only English one hour of English every day uh I see but when they reach primary four there’s a certain switch mhm the medium of instruction is basically English er so students especially are poor yes they have a hard time especially understanding logic when it comes to mathematical problems they all this while while they have done it in Malay and then when they go to primary four they had to do maths in English mhm the figures were not the figures are not a problem by erm what is a problem is sorry the problem mathematical problems they have difficulty in that mhm because they don’t understand they are weak in English they are weak in English they are they are not foundation yes not that they are weak in English they’re weak in mathematical English

There are a number of points worth making about the grammar of this excerpt. The first is that the hypothesis that speakers of a non-tensed language would show a tendency not to mark tenses when they speak English is clearly overturned. All tenses are marked and show no non-standard forms. The second is that there is no evidence here of copula deletion. All copulas are provided and in standard forms. It is the level of formality that is crucial

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here. Students are talking to their lecturers about an academic subject. The setting is relatively formal and this demands an acrolectal or educated variety of English, which all participants find easy to provide. The second example comprises two short excerpts (7.2 & 7.3) and also involves speakers whose first language is a variety of Indonesian or Malay, but is slightly less formal, although the topic is serious as it concerns how to care for an unplanned child. The main speaker, S1, is a Malaysian female of Chinese descent. (7.2)

S1: ah eh the men getting girls pregnant then about twenty-five years below ah than I ask a lot of people lah then I ask my friends so my first three of my friend when I first ask ah they say oh I’ll ask her to abort the baby

In this excerpt it appears that the speaker does not mark the past tense of ‘ask’, noted here in italics. However, there may be a phonological explanation for this as the pronunciation of ‘asked’ includes a triple consonant cluster (skt), a sound very difficult to articulate. Indeed, as noted earlier, native speakers would only articulate this consonant cluster in very careful speech and would also simply say ‘ask’ in normal speech. That this speaker knows the past tense rule and applies it is evident in the next short excerpt (7.3). The tense markings are in bold. (7.3)

(see also 5.1) S1: then he said erm if the if I was younger lah and then I would think about leaving school lah I say why give it to your mother or father to take care lah I might have done that lah cos my parents then he said then he said no lah the most important time for a child is four years mah and I want to bond with my child.

Here, all the tenses are marked and in standard forms. In all, the data of this subset of ACE comprising first language speakers of a form of Malay or Indonesian comprised 11 people talking over 16 hours across 43 interactions. The total number of occasions when a past simple or present simple would have been marked in standard English was 413. In the data, 306 instances are marked and 107 are not. But, taking into account the relative formality in which the interactions were conducted shows that there are only 7 instances of nonmarking in formal contexts as opposed to 152 of marked instances. Even in the more informal contexts, marking is more common than unmarking with 153 tenses being marked and 107 that were not. These findings are shown in Tables 7.5 and 7.6. These results show that the hypothesis was not confirmed and that the nonmarking of tense is not a characteristic feature of the Englishes spoken by those for whom Malay or Indonesian is a first language. It occurs in more informal contexts, but even there marking was more common than non-marking by

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Table 7.5 Instances of marking and non-marking of English tense among L1 speakers of Malay/Indonesian Total possible occurrences

Marked

Unmarked

413

306

107

Table 7.6 Marking or non-marking in formal/ informal contexts Contexts

Marked

Unmarked

Formal Informal

152 154

7 100

a ratio of 3:2. These findings also stress the importance of distinguishing between noting a specific feature in a particular variety of English and quantifying how often it actually occurs. Other studies that question the influence of the substrate on morphosyntactic forms include Hall, Schmidtke and Vickers (2013), who studied countability using data from a range of varieties of English taken from web sources and from data contained in the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE). They were careful to ensure that their data included varieties of English whose substrates used countable grammar (for example, Sinhala and Swahili) and those that did not use countable grammar (for example, Filipino and Japanese). Their findings showed that, while the countable use of mass nouns was widespread across the varieties, its use was not frequent, with a maximum occurrence rate of only 3.5 per cent (Hall et al. 2013: 15). They therefore concluded that the influence of the substrate was not significant, as speakers of all varieties only made mass nouns countable in a very small minority of cases. In ACE, the only uncountable nouns occasionally treated as plural are ‘advice’ ‘bread’, ‘equipment’ and ‘food’. But again, the occurrences of their treatment as countable nouns are far fewer than their occurrences as uncountable nouns. The first number in brackets after the noun is the number of instances it was used as a countable noun; the second number represents the number of times it was used as an uncountable noun: ‘advice’ (2/9); ‘bread’ (1/ 13); ‘equipment’ (3/21); ‘food’ (3/258). These were the only examples in ACE of uncountable nouns being used as countable nouns and even here their use is far less than their use as uncountable nouns.

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The danger of incorrectly classifying the occasional presence of a nonstandard feature as a regular feature of the variety is also stressed by Van Rooy (2013). In his study on the non-standard features of Black South African English, he concludes that many of the features which have been classified as features of the variety are in fact ‘occasional performance errors’ (2013: 14). Further findings which suggest a minor influence of the substrate upon the particular variety of English come from the study by Hundt, Hoffmann and Mukherjee (2012) who showed that there was a ‘gradient’ of use of the hypothetical subjunctive in South Asian varieties of English. They explained the presence of this gradient by suggesting that, ‘influence from American English, the different degrees of institutionalization and, potentially, different grades of exonormative pressure from British English on the individual varieties may be at the root of the gradient we observe’ (Hundt et al. 2012: 163). I stress that I am not arguing that the substrate exerts no influence upon a variety, only that explaining the presence of non-standard morphosyntactic forms solely or mainly by reference to the substrate seems ill-advised, as so many of the same non-standard morphosyntactic forms occur in so many different varieties of vernacular English. But the substrates clearly exert influence in other ways. As shown in Chapter 3, Asian varieties of English are codemixed varieties, and the code-mixing in these varieties can move beyond the assumed assymetrical relationship between the matrix language and the embedded language as proposed by Myers-Scotton (2006) where the matrix language provides the syntactic frame and the embedded language the content words such as nouns and verbs. Several scholars (e.g., Jacobson 2001; McLellan 2010) have illustrated that both languages can supply a more-orless equal share of the code-mixed variety, as illustrated in Chapter 3 by the examples of Brunei English in McLellan (2020) and Singaporean English in Cavallero et al. (2020). As we have also seen in Chapter 5, the transfer can involve pragmatic functions and strategies. Lim (2012) has shown that Malaysian English has politeness strategies transferred from Malay which can cause misunderstandings among speakers of British varieties. In example (7.3), we see the transfer from the speaker’s first language of the discourse particles ‘lah’ and ‘mah’. And, as noted earlier, the use of first-language discourse particles in Bruneian, Malaysian and Singaporean English is well documented (see, for example, Low et al. [2014]: 376 ff., for a list of references). Again as noted earlier, the debate is over which of the potential substrates the discourse particles come from, as Malay and Chinese languages all use similar discourse particles. ‘The more diversity there is in the features for selection, the more potential there is for innovative replication’ (Ansaldo 2009: 163). But, aside from the transfer of content words such as nouns and verbs, it is hard to determine which of the potential substrates is responsible for the presence of non-standard or innovative replication. Botha (2020) provides

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an inventory of non-standard morphosyntactic forms from five varieties of Asian English and cautions, ‘the influence of a substrate language upon a variety of English is a complex one’. We shall leave this section on the relative influence of substrates upon Asian varieties of English with the words of Thomason (2010) in discussing causes of language change. ‘In most cases, no cause can be firmly established . . . because of the real possibility that multiple causes are responsible for a particular change’ (2010: 131). In the next section, we turn to considering the presence of non-standard forms in English as a lingua franca when used by Asian multilinguals and whether the presence of such non-standard forms constitute some sort of grammar of ELF. Non-standard Forms in the Use of English as a Lingua Franca by Asian Multilinguals As has been illustrated, the presence of non-standard forms is commonplace in vernacular varieties of English including those of England itself. Non-standard forms should therefore be expected when Asian multilinguals use English as a lingua franca. But, as Seidlhofer (2017) has observed, ELF is a special case as it is ‘used by speakers from all walks of life in all continents, with hundreds of different first languages and varying degrees of proficiency and in a way that demonstrates very clearly that communicative effectiveness is frequently a function of variability, of the destabilisation of linguistic norms’ (2017: 85). Given this great variability among its users and in its contexts of use, the search for some form of grammar of ELF would seem to be something of a fool’s errand. As Mauranen (2017) has noted, ELF encounters can vary from being one-off transient and ad hoc to regular, as in workplace meetings, to long-term, as with couples who use ELF as their primary means of communication. In the context of Asia, the region’s extraordinary linguistic diversity also serves to underline how unlikely it might be to identify an underlying grammar of ELF. The most recent figures from Ethnologue’s Languages of the World show that the world is currently home to 7,111 languages and that Asia, with 32 per cent or some 2,400 languages is linguistically the most diverse region (www .ethnologue.com/guides/how-many-languages) (accessed 27 May 2019). More than 700 languages are spoken in Indonesia alone. Yet, what is interesting is the number of shared morphosyntactic features in ELF, many of which mirror the non-standard forms identified in vernacular varieties of English, despite this vast range of speakers’ first languages. This further undermines the theory that substrates are responsible for the non-standard forms in ELF speech (Bjorkman 2017). Unlike varieties of Asian English which can identify where the speaker comes from – Tommy Koh, when he was Singapore’s Ambassador to the United Nations, once remarked that when he spoke English, he wanted the

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world to know that he was Singaporean – ELF speech will not necessarily explicitly identify the speaker’s linguistic and cultural backgrounds. As noted earlier, varieties of English often serve as identity markers and are used between people of the same speech community, while ELF acts primarily, though not exclusively, as a medium of communication among people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. ELF is therefore a multilingual practice which has a largely monolingual surface form, at least when compared with vernacular varieties of Asian Englishes. Yet, the potentially vast number of languages and contexts with which and in which ELF can operate means that it is potentially subject to unbounded variation (Kirkpatrick & SchallerSchwaner 2020). This has led Firth to describe ELF as being ‘inherently, chronically, irremediably variable’ and ‘inherently hybrid in nature’ (Firth 2009: 163). Seidlhofer suggests that it is not ‘fanciful to think of “lingua franca” as “free language” . . . a means of intercultural communication not particular to countries and ethnicities, a linguistic resource that is not contained in, or constrained by traditional (and notoriously tendentious) ideas of what constitutes a “language”’ (Seidlhofer 2011: 81). And yet, despite this extraordinary potential for variation, ELF shares many non-standard forms with many vernacular varieties of English. ELF, as shown in Tables 7.5 and 7.6 and will be further shown later, uses vastly more standard forms than non-standard forms. The relatively infrequent use of non-standard verb forms was also illustrated in Chapter 2 (Tables 2.2 and 2.3). Table 7.7 shows the use of verbs in a sub-set of ACE and identifies and compares the number of standard forms (SF) and nonstandard forms (NSF) of the verbs which were used. This subset of ACE comprised twelve English teachers from across the ASEAN region who were undertaking a professional development course at the regional Language Centre in Singapore. Table 7.7. is adapted from Kirkpatrick (2010b). The first thing to notice is the relative infrequency of the non-standard forms. Looking at the two most common verb forms used, the present simple and the past simple, we see that only 5 per cent of the present simple forms and 10 per cent of the past simple forms were realised as non-standard forms. The great majority of the verb forms used were standard forms. This holds true of all the verb forms listed. While this might be explained by the fact that the subjects here were all English teachers and thus more likely to use standard forms, comparable findings were reported by Meierkord (2004). Her analysis of twenty-two hours of recorded informal speech involving students from outer and expanding circle countries who were studying at British universities, showed that 94 per cent of the morphosyntactic forms used by outer circle speakers were standard as were 95 per cent of those used by expanding circle speakers. Further evidence that ELF speakers use fewer non-standard than standard forms comes from Bjorkmann’s study. In analysing the ELF used by Swedish engineering lecturers and their students she concluded that ‘non-

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Table 7.7 Verb forms in a subset of ACE Verb form type

SFs

NSFs

Total

present simple past simple present passive present perfect present continuous past passive present perfect continuous present perfect passive infinitive passive past continuous past perfect present continuous passive

1050 288 43 40 23 14 9 4 3 2 3 1

59 33 4 4 3 2 1 4 1 1

1109 321 47 44 26 16 10 4 3 3 1

standard features were found to have low frequency in the total number of occurrences throughout for all features’ (Bjorkmann 2017: 257). Further analysis of the subset of ACE provided by the English teachers show that the two teachers from Laos contributed the highest use of non-standard forms. The example (7.4) includes one of the teachers from Laos (S1) and teachers from Singapore (S2), Myanmar (S3). They are all female. (7.4)

S1: S2: S1: S2: S3: S1: S2: S1: S2: S1:

last NAI (night) we went there by walking eh huh I enjoy walking yeah you mean all the way from [here yes yes yeah] oh ok some of my friend hurt his feet oh ok (laugh) he can’t walk and he is just stand and sit (Kirkpatrick 2010b: 108)

The Laotian’s use of English suggest that her proficiency is lower than the others’. She fails to provide the final consonant sound for ‘night’, saying ‘nai’ with a rising intonation. In recounting that one of her friends had hurt his feet and was unable to walk, using non-standard verb forms, she says ‘some of my friend hurt his feet’, ‘he can’t walk and he is just stand and sit’. These nonstandard forms do not occur among the non-standard forms identified in vernacular varieties of English and we therefore suggest that the speaker’s use of these indicate that she is a learner of English with relatively low

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proficiency. The same can be said of the non-standard forms used by one of the Cambodian speakers. The non-standard forms are underlined. ‘I will go next years I am glad to be there . . . ’ ‘how long have you waits for them?’ ‘so we should makes any plan . . . ’ ‘the one thats pick me up said . . . ’ (Kirkpatrick 2010b: 109)

Again, these non-standard forms appear different from the non-standard forms attested in vernacular varieties of English. The speaker adds an ‘-s’ to a singular noun (years), to two base verb forms (waits/makes), when the expected standard forms would be ‘have you been waiting’ and ‘should make’ respectively and to relative pronoun (thats). The presence of these particular non-standard forms suggest a learner of English. Caution is required in identifying or distinguishing learners of English from ELF users, but the use of idiosyncratic or unusual non-standard forms may be one criterion for a learner of English. So far in this chapter, the focus has been on the use of non-standard morphosyntactic forms in vernacular varieties of English, including native speaker varieties and ELF. I now turn to look at other aspects of grammar. It would be impossible to provide an inclusive list of non-standard forms across all aspects of the grammatical system. Interested readers are again referred to the Electronic Wave Atlas of Varieties of English (WAMVE) referred to previously and Hickey (2004: 586–620), where a wide-ranging list is provided. Here I first look at topicalisation, a common phenomenon in many Asian varieties of English. The first examples come from Sri Lankan English (Ekanayaka 2020: 344) Manel, I knew she would get the job. Nihal, who would have thought the bloke could be so unscrupulous. Vimali, you know the idiot thinks she is going to be elected president

Ekanayaka explains topicalisation as involving identifying the ‘nominal’ of a sentence, associating it as its ‘topic’, moving it to the front of the main clause from its subject, object or post-prepositional position in the sentence’s main or subordinate clause/s and leaving a nominal trace in its place (2020). But she also says that this is a feature that defines Lankan English. Still, as is the case with so many non-standard forms, we find topicalisation is also a common feature in many other varieties. It occurs, for example, in Chinese varieties of English. This is perhaps not surprising as Chinese itself is a topic–comment language (Li & Thompson 1981) with a preference for sentence structures such as ‘That tree, its leaves are very big’ (Nei-ke shu, yezi hen da), where ‘the tree’ is the topic and the comment about the tree is that its leaves are very big. While topic–comment structure is a preferred Chinese sentence structure, Chinese

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also allows subject–predicate constructions such as ‘That tree has very big leaves’ (Ne-ke shu you hen da-de yezi). The examples from Lankan English are also examples of pronoun copying, where the ‘topic’ is the same as the subject of the comment clause. In the tree/leaves examples, on the other hand, the subject of the comment clause (leaves) is different from the topic (tree). The differences can be seen in the next two examples from Chinese English. The first example is of subject pronoun copying and the second is of a topic– comment structure (Kirkpatrick 2007a: 148) Some of my college classmates, they like to dress up very much and they don’t like to study very much You know, I think this society (topic), the people get more and more practical (comment)

These two further examples, the first of pronoun copying, the second of a topic– comment structure in Chinese English, come from Xu (2010: 291). I’m the youngest in my family, so I think my parents, they have no interest in me You know, I think Beijing, there are many old buildings

Chinese English provides an example of a sentence structure which also occurs in other varieties of Asian Englishes, which is a preference for ‘because– therefore’ sequencing. I noted this in Chapter 5 in discussing the Chinese police constable’s request for leave when he prefaced the reasons for his request before the request itself. As was noted there, this ‘because–therefore’ sequence is the normal unmarked order for cause-and-effect sentences in Chinese. This means that a sequence of connected apparently ‘equal’ clauses such as ‘He fell over, he broke his ankle’ must mean in Chinese that ‘Because he fell over, he broke his ankle’. It cannot mean, ‘He fell over because he broke his ankle’. This sequence is exemplified in the following example from Xu (2005: 318): ‘Because many farmers lack adequate knowledge and experience to distinguish counterfeit goods, they are generally more vulnerable’.

In Classical Chinese these ‘because–therefore’ sentences would have need no conjunctions as Chinese would know that the first clause provided the cause and the second the effect. However, when they did use conjunctions, they would prefer to use two. This redundancy was for stylistic reasons and balance. This stylistic preference for two ‘balancing conjunctions’ is also a feature of Chinese English. This example is from Xu (2010: 290), where B’s answer to A’s question includes three uses of ‘because’ and one of ‘so’ a: When you first got on to the Great Wall, how did you feel? b: Some stranger feelings because I couldn’t get the same feelings as others because always feel powerful and happy or others, because I don’t have some special feeling, so I think it’s very strange.

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This listing of several reasons before the effect clause mirrors the Chinese constable’s request pattern in Chapter 5. Those who need to converse and negotiate with Chinese speakers of English would be well advised to make themselves familiar with this common Chinese sequencing pattern and understand that Chinese prefer to provide reasons for any course of action before suggesting the course of action itself. Kirkpatrick and Xu (2012) provide many more examples of Chinese rhetorical tropes and methods of argument and persuasion. This sequence, along with the tendency to use two conjunctions for stylistic balance, also occurs in other varieties of Asian English. Hammond (2020: 640) explains this for Thai English. Examples of how Thai expressions do not transfer coherently into English would be the repetitive use of the concessive discourse marker ‘although . . . but . . . ’ as evident in ‘Although I don’t have a lot of money, but I am happy’. This type of repetition when conveying views can be located in the use of transitional markers ‘because . . . so . . . ’ as exemplified by ‘Because it is flooded, so I cannot go to class’. Similarly, ‘in my opinion, I think’ is used instead of ‘in my opinion’ or ‘I think’. I conclude this chapter by briefly looking at how preposition usage differs across Asian varieties of English and ELF. ‘The use of prepositions in different contexts’ was one of the features that Seidlhofer (2004: 220) predicted would be found in the Vienna–Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE). Non-standard use of prepositions is also common in vernacular varieties of English, as these three example show. These are all from Britain (2010: 47) and the first example was also cited earlier in the chapter. I’m going up my friend’s house He knocked his hat off of his head My Dad needs to go the opticians

The following examples of the ‘use of prepositions in different contexts’ comes from the ASEAN Centre Directors’ meeting which was discussed in Chapter 4. The examples are listed with the speaker’s first language noted in brackets and the non-standard uses of the preposition underlined. This list is taken from Kirkpatrick (2010b: 114). p1: ‘and the second purpose is to seek for a discussion’ (Thai) p2: ‘we tell about opportunities for each SEAMEO centres’ (Thai) p3: ‘thanks for the World Bank who supports this programme’ (Indonesian) p4: ‘I’m querying about the profitability issue right now’ (Indonesian) p5: ‘Can I just add on to that’ (Singaporean) p6: ‘ . . . discuss on the branding’ (Malay) p7: ‘ . . . discuss about . . . ’ (Malay) p8: ‘Let’s sleep over the issue of liberties because a lot of things are complex’ (Malay)

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p9: ‘I can inform to you you need to make a research from now on to early next year’ (Indonesian) p10: ‘I just want to know how you organise about membership fee’ (Brunei) p11: ‘We can discuss about that’ (Indonesian) p12: ‘We want to explore about the possibility of the (Indonesian)

One point of interest from this is how speakers appear to have extended the use of ‘about’ as a sort of all-purpose preposition to be used with verbs of saying and explaining. Other examples from ACE of the use of ‘about’ with discuss include: last time we discuss about all programme the the plans sum yeah you discuss about each of the guide lines and we also discuss about it you can discuss about it (3) um an:d in: next year: let’s discuss: about our bikes discuss about the topic for the argumentative today we going to discuss about the Malaysian politics so we discuss about this

The increased use of ‘discuss about’ has been noted in many varieties of English, including Australian English (Kirkpatrick 2007a). These examples would suggest that ‘about’ is becoming much more commonly used with verbs of saying/explaining. These ‘different’ uses of prepositions do not seem to cause any misunderstandings in these contexts. Conclusion By way of concluding this chapter, I stress two main points. First, the use of the non-standard forms illustrated in this chapter do not seem to cause problems in communication or understanding. Second, many of the nonstandard morphosyntactic forms which have been identified in Asian varieties of English and in the speech of those using English as a lingua franca are mirrored in the vernacular varieties of English English. In her study of Chinese users of ELF, Ji Ke (2016) noted that many of the nonstandard forms used by Chinese ELF users are ‘also found in other varieties of English and different ELF contexts’ (2016: 288). That is to say, the use of non-standard forms in vernacular varieties of English is, as it were, standard. Further research is needed to investigate how many of these are ‘angloversals’ and how many are caused by influence from substrate languages. My feeling is that the processes of regularisation and simplification that have been operating on English for several centuries are continuing to operate on vernacular varieties of English today. The only reason these forms are classified as non-standard is that they are

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being compared against an idealised and unreal variety of English based on a standard grammar. Investigating vernacular varieties as varieties in their own right and comparing them with each other rather than against an idealised ‘norm’ might allow us to view non-standard forms in a different light and see them for what they are – as normal language behaviour.

8

English in Law, Religion and Popular Culture

Introduction In this chapter, I look at some of the functions English is playing in Asian societies. It is playing an increasingly important – and in some cases dominant – role in education in many Asian educational systems and this will be the subject of Chapter 9. In this chapter, the roles that English is playing in aspects of life such as law, religion and popular culture are described, starting with the role English is playing in some legal systems in Asia. English and the Law In Chapter 5, I related how the then Royal Hong Kong Police required even junior police constables to use English in certain circumstances, most typically with English-speaking senior officers or members of the public and tourists, and how this led to breakdowns in communication or misunderstandings. It was perhaps not surprising, however, that English was a requirement, given that Hong Kong was a crown colony of Britain at the time. Yet Chapter 4 also contained an example of how Hong Kong police, more than twenty years after the Handover of the former colony to China, interviewed a suspect in English. When Britain took over as coloniser, it introduced a legal system based on British law. Indeed, many of the arcane laws that are still on the books in many postcolonial societies owe their existence to being introduced by the British. These included the laws which made homosexuality illegal in many parts of the postcolonial world. It was, for example, only in 2018 that the Indian courts overturned the ban on consensual gay sex. And in 2008, in what looked like a political trial, the then leader of the opposition, Anwar Ibrahim, was charged with sodomy or ‘carnal intercourse against the laws of nature’. This was the topic of a discussion in Chapter 4. The legal system has been an enduring legacy of British colonial rule. As Powell (2020) has shown, Asia remains home to several legal systems based on Common Law introduced under British colonialism and these include the legal systems of Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan and Singapore. Although, as Powell also 148

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points out, English is not the only language of these courts, but part of a multilingual legal ecology. English was the language of the law and the courts in Hong Kong until just before the Handover of 1987, despite only a tiny minority of residents having English as a first language. The use of English was seen by some as an advantage as it offered a legal system where a London barrister would feel at home (Ng 2009). Hong Kong became a lucrative posting for British barristers, giving rise to the acronym FILTH (Failed in London, try Hong Kong) being attached to some such, unfairly it must be said, and as entertainingly and movingly recorded in the trilogy written by Jane Gardam.1 Two years before the Handover, the 1974 Official Languages Ordinance was altered to allow courts to use Chinese. Since then, the number of criminal cases heard in Chinese has increased from less than 10 per cent at the time of the Handover to 40 per cent in 2015 (Ng 2016). Powell (2020) places the figure higher, saying that the majority of cases were heard in Cantonese by 2006. This may seem a substantial increase in cases being heard in Chinese (primarily in Cantonese), but when one recalls that only a tiny minority of the population speak English as their first language, the resilience of English as the language of the law is remarkable and we will consider some of the reasons for this. As with many other Asian Common Law jurisdictions, there is a correlation between language and court level (Powell 2020) so that the cases heard in Cantonese were mainly in the lower courts. In Hong Kong today, all legislation is enacted in English and Chinese, with both being accorded equal status (Bolton, Bacon-Shone & Luke 2020). However, as Bolton et al. point out There are hundreds of thousands of reported cases which form the basis of the common law, and it would obviously be impractical to attempt to translate these into Chinese. While in future there is likely to be an increasing number of judgments in Hong Kong delivered in Chinese, English will continue to be the only medium in which the majority of judgments from overseas is reported. (460)

The current question hanging over the legal system in Hong Kong is the extent to which it will become subservient to the legal system of China itself. As a sign of how China is exerting increasing control over Hong Kong, as I write, the Hong Kong Government is facing widespread protests against a proposed extradition bill which would allow both citizens of and visitors to Hong Kong to be extradited to China to face trial. In the face of the fervent opposition to it voiced both by the legal profession in Hong Kong and the general public, the Hong Kong government has said that the bill is dead and has since been withdrawn. In any event, that the bill has been proposed signals the chipping away of the British legacy of English law in Hong Kong and the 1

The three novels comprising Jane Gardan’s trilogy are Old Filth, The Man in the Wooden Hat, and Last Friends.

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gradual emergence of Chinese law. The mass protests in Hong Kong and the recent success of the pro-democracy candidates in the district council elections is evidence that the great majority of Hong Kong people want to retain the colonial legacy of British law rather than be subject to Chinese law.2 In Singapore, English is the authoritative language of legislation and also the medium of court proceedings. Utterances in any other language must be interpreted (Powell 2020). In Malaysia, different practices are seen in Peninsular Malaysia and the two provinces, Sabah and Sarawak, that make up East Malaysia, where English remains the sole official language of the courts. In Peninsular Malaysia, Malay has been allowed in courts since 1967, and in 1990, Malay was instituted for all courts, but the use of English was still allowed ‘after considering the interests of justice’ (Powell 2020: 868). This has meant that English remains extensively used in the high courts. This is not to say that English is the sole language used. English legal texts and proceedings all around Asia incorporate lexis referring to local practices or titles. Malaysian laws contain untranslated references to penghulu (headman) and takaful (insurance), for example, while judges there are usually referred to as Yang Arif (Your Honour) even when addressed in English. Malay also frequently occurs in code-mixing, as this example from the High Court of Kuala Lumpur exemplifies: That’s my concern, My Lady. It’s stated plaintiff tidak sihat [not well]. (Powell: 877)

Malaysia, being a Muslim country, also practices shariah law and the proceedings there are, naturally enough, overwhelmingly in Malay. But even here, English occasionally appears as in this example, also from Powell (2020: 877) Satu elemen surprise. I pohon mereka mengfailkan afidavit balas [An element of surprise. I request that they file the reply affidavit]

English law was introduced to India and remains today. English is the sole language of the Supreme Court and is also a language of the High Courts, along with Hindi and the official state languages. The situation in neighbouring Pakistan is slightly different. Although English is the official language of the law, the national language, Urdu, may also be used in the Supreme Court. The Philippines had a colonial history quite different from the other countries referred to here, having been under Spanish rule for more than 300 years (from 1521 to 1898) after which it became a colony of the United States. Although there has long been an official commitment to the use of Filipino in the courts, English may also be used and, in practice, English is the 2

In July 2020 the Chinese Government passed ‘The Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’, thereby further eroding, if not completely excising, the legacy of British law.

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predominate language. Local languages are used for minor issues which are heard in the so-called customary courts, the punong barangay (Martin 2012: 11). This example illustrates a judge switching to Filipino to aid a witness. Prosecutor: Do you and your husband have a loving relationship? Witness: Bakit po kailangan tanungin itan? [Why is it necessary to ask that question?] Judge: Importante poi yon, kasi lailangan natin malaman. [We need to know whether your husband confides in you] (Benitez 2009, cited in Powell 2020)

I earlier noted that, while Malay was the predominant language of shariah law in Malaysia, snatches of code-mixing with English also occurred. In the Muslim part of the Southern Philippines, shariah law was codified in English rather than Filipino. So English can play a crucial role in Asia even in the prosecution of shariah law. And, as will be shown, English is becoming increasingly important as a medium for proselytising Islam in countries such as Indonesia. It also plays an important role in the law associated with other religions as English is frequently the medium in which customary laws are preserved. Pakistan’s 1997 Zakat and Ushr (Amendment) Act is in English. Bangladesh regulates Hindu and Muslim marriage and inheritance through enactments in English (Powell 2020). In terms of Asia as a whole, English is, by default, the pre-eminent medium of cross-border collaboration in most of Asia. As noted earlier, it is the sole official and working language of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is the world’s largest regional organisation by population and holds its meetings in English. Free trade agreements, such as those signed between China and Australia, and Korea and Australia, frequently specify English as the language for arbitrating disputes. To conclude this short section of the role that English plays in the legal systems of Asia, not only does it remain the predominant language of the law in countries that were previously colonies of the United Kingdom and where English is widely spoken such as Singapore and Brunei, it is also the preferred language of the higher courts in countries and places where English is not so widely spoken, as in Hong Kong and much of South Asia. It may seem extraordinary that the role of English remains so resilient in the legal systems of countries which have been independent for decades. A major reason for the retention of English is that it comes with the retention of English law and that this is seen as providing justice. One example is the importance of the citing of precedents. The increasing use of English as a lingua franca across Asia has also led to the increased use of English in

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cross-border legal matters. These are strong reasons for retaining English in law. As Powell (2020: 881) points out, while ‘the neutrality and impartiality of the language may be questionable, we should not discount the sincerity of practitioners who fear that changing the established language of the law may open up legal practice to inadvertent ambiguities or weaken public confidence’. And, as we saw in the case of Hong Kong, the current move there to place Hong Kong more under Chinese law is viewed with great concern and unease. And, in Myanmar, where Burmese is the language of the law, it would be hard to argue that the judicial system there offered more fairness and transparency than those countries where English remains the main language of the higher courts. In the next section of this chapter, I turn to look at the role English is playing in the religions of Asia. English and Religion In the opening chapter of this book, I recounted an experience I had when visiting a Buddhist temple or wat in Thailand. A group of thirty or so Buddhist monks had just finished praying and were leaving the prayer hall and chatting with each other. The striking thing about this was that the monks, all of whom were of Asian origin, were chatting to each other in English. English was acting as their chosen conversational lingua franca. This is not an isolated example as English is playing a major role in religions across the region. For example, English has an increasingly important role in Islamic schools – it is part of the curriculum of state madrasas in Bangladesh, for example – and it can also be a medium of Islamic legal instruction. International Islamic University (UIA) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, teaches both sharia and Common Law in English. The Multimedia University in Melaka, Malaysia, also teaches Islamic law in English (Powell 2020). Madrasas are schools which specialise in Islamic instruction, of which there are a large number in Bangladesh, comprising both state and privately run madrasas. In a 2009 report on secondary school madrasas in Bangladesh (Asadullah, Chaudhury & Josh 2009), the authors note that these, at least those run under the guidelines of the State Madrasa Education Board, are relatively modern, offering subjects such as maths and English as well as Islamic instruction. They offered both maths and English in response to government demands that their curricula be modernised. Uniquely for madrasas generally, they are also co-educational, with 50 per cent of the pupils being girls. However, the authors note three major areas of concern: (i) they may produce skills incompatible with a modern economy; and their educational standards are seen as being much lower than other types of schools;

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(ii) they may not produce civic values vital for a functioning democracy; (iii) an unknown number remain outside the state system so it is not known what is being taught. In fact, this third concern proved to be overstated as the authors discovered that fewer than 2 per cent of madrasas were operating outside the Madrasa Education Board, but the first two concerns proved justified as student scores in maths and English were significantly lower than the scores achieved by students in regular education. The authors of the report also noted that the madrasas operating outside the Madrasa Education Board (called Quomi Madrasas) offered little or no English or maths; and that where these subjects were offered, they were taught by untrained teachers. In Pakistan, there are some 4,000 madrasas, each operated by different sects of Islam, but with the majority being Sunni. With madrasas in general, the main purpose of education is to learn about the type of Islam espoused by the relevant sect. Classical Arabic is taught but the medium of instruction is mainly Urdu. English is taught in only a few madrasas, but the government has long been trying to encourage madrasas to include it in their curricula, but with little success, as fewer than 3 per cent of students learn it (Rahman 1998). The military governments of both Ayub Khan (1958–69) and Zia Ul Haq (1977–88) attempted to reform the madrasa curricula and emphasised Urdu and English, but the Ulema – the body of Muslim scholars – resisted English as they saw this as a threat to their view of the world (Rahman 1998). The result has been that ‘the average madrassa student still has a medieval perception of the world’ (Rahman 1998: 5). This medieval view is shaped by the texts that are in use. The texts on Arabic Grammar date from the eighteenth century and Persian texts are still used, as these are conservative and do dovetail with the Ulema’s view of the world. As Rahman argues, ‘Language teaching in the Pakistani madrassas is part of indoctrination’ (1998: 9). The teaching of English could undermine the Ulema’s authority. That is why English is resisted and ‘why the Madrassas continue to uphold their traditional ways in the teaching of languages’ (1998: 9). The link between the use of Arabic and conservatism and the use of English and modernisation in madrasas has been illustrated in a study by Chew (2014a) of three madrasas in Singapore. Her study showed that the most conservative of the three madrasas favoured the use of Arabic, the moderate madrasa favoured Malay, while the most forward-looking and liberal madrasa favoured English. The madrasa that taught in English also used more contemporary language teaching methodologies such as group discussions, while the conservative Arabic-using madrasa used more traditional methodologies, including memorisation and dictation. In a comparison of the madrasas of Pakistan and Bangladesh, the madrasas of Bangladesh are more forward looking than those of Pakistan, in that most

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teach English and maths and accept girls as students. The levels madrasa students reach in these subjects is significantly lower, however, than the levels attained by their counterparts in the secular state system. English is also taught in some madrasas of Indonesia. It is not easy to generalise about madrasa education in Indonesia because there are so many of them (about 40,000), and because some 90 per cent of them are private and thus have their own curricula. The private madrasas tend to be more conservative than those under the Ministry for Religious Affairs. Indonesia’s madrasas also include boarding schools, known as pesantren. In an account of his ten years teaching English at an Indonesian madrasa situated in Cirebon in West Java, Nashruddin (2015) argues that students in the madrasas need to learn English because, due to the incidence of terrorist attacks, many view Islam as an intolerant religion. ‘Muslims can counter this untruth by telling people embracing different religions that Islam does not support terrorism’ (2015: 69). Muslims need to master English, as English is used to communicate ideas across cultures and boundaries. Nashruddin adds that a major goal of learning English is to ‘provide students with adequate knowledge and skills in using English language in their daily lives (e.g., in conversation)’ so that, for example, ‘students are able to explain how to perform shalat, how many pillars of Islam are, and what Islam is’ (2015: 76). Some pesantren are also teaching English. Fahrudin (2013) reports that parents support the teaching of English as long as the curriculum does not incorporate the teaching of Western values. It is never made clear either what is meant by ‘Western’ or what these so-called Western values are in these contexts, but one can safely assume that they refer to what are considered negative aspects of Western values, such as disrespect for elders and liberal sexual mores. Thus the English course taught at pesantren is labelled ‘English for Islamic values’. As a simple example of what this means in terms of the actual English language curriculum, in the lesson on discussing future plans, students are taught to append Insya’Allah (God willing) to sentences to give ‘Insya’Allah, I will come tomorrow.’ Fahrudin also reports that some mosques in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, now use English – particularly in Friday sermons – in order to cater to the large number of foreigners who attend. Further evidence that one role of English in Indonesia is to promote Islam comes from a study by Dewi (2012). She surveyed the attitudes of staff towards English across several universities in Yogyakarta. The universities included Islamic, secular and Christian institutions. Her results show a high level of sophistication in the respondents’ understanding of the roles of language. Generally speaking, they felt that it was not the language per se that was important, but what was said in the language. English was seen as useful for presenting arguments and points of view. The three quotes below are representative of the general feeling.

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‘I learn English because I want to be heard’, ‘English can boost our confidence as a nation’ and ‘English makes me more confident I do not feel inferior anymore’. (Dewi 2102: 16–17)

In terms of the lecturers’ attitudes to the role of English and religion, Dewi concluded, ‘Regardless of their religions, the participants do not perceive English as a threat’ (2012: 18). The Muslim participants felt that English has a positive effect on their Muslim identity. Representative quotes from Muslim participants were: ‘[English] is also necessary for us to master English for proselytising’, ‘English helps the development of my religion’ and ‘English can deliver information about my religion’ (2012: 22). I have here focussed on the role English is playing in Islam, but, as evidenced in its use as a lingua franca among Asian Buddhist monks described earlier, English also plays a role among other Asian religions. Many temples across Asia have even set up an on-line internet presence in English as a way of attracting and keeping young people as part of the flock (Chew 2020). Anyone who has recently visited major Buddhist or Taoist temples in China and Hong Kong cannot but be struck by what appears to the commercial activities of these temples, many of which are tourist sites which employ Englishspeaking tour guides. Some are even listed on the Chinese stock exchange (Chew 2014b). In the context of Singapore, the government’s promotion of the Speak Mandarin campaign along with the rise of English has led Chew (2020) to argue that the loss of other Chinese languages, such as Cantonese, Hokkien, Hainanese and Teochow (all traditional languages of worship) has led to an associated loss of discursive practices essential in the maintenance of these religions. The Singapore censuses of 1990, 2000 and 2010 would suggest that many young people are shifting from Buddhism and Taoism to Christianity, seen as an ‘English’ religion. But loss of language does not necessarily equate with loss of religion. Sankar (2011) described how the Iyer Hindu community of Malaysia, despite shifting to the use of English as their language of worship, have maintained their Hindu faith and identity through the use of traditional dress, food and religious rites. So far in this chapter, I have looked at the roles English is playing in Asian law and Asian religions. I now turn to look at the role English is currently playing in popular culture across Asia. Moody (2020) suggests that popular culture in Asia can be divided between the popular culture that has arisen in outer circle countries – that is, in those countries that have a colonial legacy of English and where English continues to play an institutional role – and the popular culture that has arisen in expanding circle countries – that is, where English is primarily learned as a foreign language in the school system. As will be seen in Chapter 9, and we have noted earlier, the roles English is currently

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playing in expanding circle countries are increasing, not least in higher education where it is becoming increasingly used as a medium of instruction. Nevertheless, Moody’s argument that English in the popular culture of expanding circle countries plays a decorative rather than communicative role is interesting. As an example, he gives the lyrics from a song recorded by a Japanese duo called Love Pyschedelico. (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f)

Published Lyric: Phonemic Reading: Phonetic Reading: Word Translation: English Translation: Ambiguated Meaning:

泣きたい /nakitai [nEkt’ai want to cry ‘Like I want to cry’ ‘I want to cry, cry’

くらい kµrai/ k’rai] like

Moody explains that (a) and (b) are the actual lyrics as they appear within the CD’s liner notes and the phonetic pronunciation of these two words in ‘Standard Japanese’. However, (c) illustrates how far from standard Japanese the singer, Kumi’s, pronunciation strays by altering Japanese nakitai kurai into something that sounds more like necktie cry. This Englishised pronunciation of Japanese is a clever play on words, where the pronunciation of kurai ‘feels like’ as cry echoes the meaning of nakitai ‘want to cry’. This stylised Japanese pronunciation, along with the frequent mixing of English into the lyrics, is not typical of Japanese speech communities, although it is indexical of Japanese ‘returnees’ of whom Kumi is one (Moody 2020: 774). Moody also notes that two influences operate on the lyrics of Love Psychedelico. The first is the mix of English words into the Japanese lyrics which suggests that the singer, Kumi, is a returnee – that is, someone who has spent some of her life in an English-speaking country. In Kumi’s cases, this is true, but she actually only spent her ‘infancy’ in San Francisco. The second influence is the Englishised pronunciation of Japanese which further suggests Kumi is a returnee. Moody concludes by arguing that, in this Japanese context, English represents an overseas experience and some contact with a Japanese ‘other’. Moody contrasts this with the outer circle example of a Singaporean television programme showcasing high-end fashion and hosted by two Singaporean women, Rosalyn and Wendy, whose accents represent two distinct varieties of Singaporean English. Rosalyn’s English represents an educated variety of Singaporean English and one that would be easily intelligible to nonSingaporeans. Wendy’s English, on the other hand, represents a colloquial variety of Singaporean English characterised by syllable timing, glottalisation of most intervocalic stops, and ‘pure’ vowels that are produced within onset or glide (Moody 2020: 776). The Singapore example shows that Singaporeans are confident in their varieties of English and are happy to use them to express identity. This was

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also evident in a ‘competition’ between Hong Kong and Singapore which Kirkpatrick and Moody (2009) called ‘A Battle of the Songs’. Hong Kong and Singapore have long been vying for the title of best ‘world city’. When a Singaporean group called Eskewme (Excuse me) released, on YouTube, a song called ‘Singapore is a Better Place than Hong Kong is’, (www .youtube.com/watch?v=VpjNgIwyrbE), a Hong Kong Group (Wokstars) replied with the song ‘In Hong Kong, Our Hearts are Strong’. Here I select excerpts to argue that the Singaporean song, the outer circle song, shows great self-confidence and humour – and the ability to laugh at itself – in the use of Singaporean English, while the Hong Kong song is much more conservative and written in standard inner circle English. Example (8.1) is an excerpt from the Singaporean song. (8.1)

Singapore is a better place than Hong Kong is We got more art and culture, all they got is biz We so stylo, they just vile-o We speak Singlish, awmost English-lah Singapore is a smarter place than Hong Kong is We keep more of our history than Hong Kong did We so good tase, they jus’ gone case We speak Singlish, awmost English-lah Can or not? OK-lah

Features of the colloquial variety of English abound and include the use of clipping (‘biz’ for business and ‘stylo’ for stylish, then inventively rhymed with ‘vile-o’). The frequent use of the informal discourse particle ‘lah’ and the deletion of final consonants in ‘taste’ and ‘just’ are further features of colloquial Singaporean English. There is also the use of the common Singaporean tag question ‘Can or not?’ In a later verse, we find further final consonant deletion and ‘izzit’ as a tag question as in ‘I doe no, Cantonese izzit? (line 22) The use of the discourse marker ‘wa’ expressing surprise or exaggeration also occurs in ‘Our shophouses- wa! So pretty’ (line 14). Malay words are also code-mixed into the song as in these two examples. Ayam means sour in Malay and Alamak is an all-purpose gentle swear word. (8.2)

We so WHAM BAM They so ayam (lines 26–27) We pick leaders Alamak – but not much choice! (lines 36–37)

The self-mocking tone of the Singaporean song is evident in (8.3) where the song suggests freedom of thought and action is not necessarily present in Singapore.

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(8.3)

Okay, so the choice at newsstands is a bit limited But the choice at the hotel buffets is not Please discard your chewing gum, durians and independent way of thinking on your way in (lines 42–44)

Comparing the Hong Kong song and its lyrics with the Singaporean one is instructive (8.4). The opening of the Hong Kong song is humorous, but not selfmocking in the way of the Singaporean song. (8.4)

A typical day at our house I was eating chewing gum Dad was reading the Far Eastern Economic review Mum was moaning about the government Good thing we don’t live in Singapore [We’d all be arrested]

But then the song starts and all humour evaporates and there is no attempt to include any typically Hong Kong English expressions or features. Example (8.5) is representative of the theme and mood of the song. Lo Wu is the name of the Hong Kong border village with China and Lam Kwai Fong is a popular bar area on Hong Kong Island. (8.5)

Hong Kong is perched on the water’s edge, standing in the sunrise Our home’s a place of eternal change, like its ever-changing skies Hong Kong is mountains and valley lakes, mostly green and rural Outside the cities are forest walks: step into a new world Chorus In Hong Kong, our hearts are strong we all sing one song From Lo Wu to Lan Kwai Fong here’s where we belong (lines 8–18)

This is standard English. Apart from the place names, there is nothing, linguistically, to suggest that the song is about Hong Kong. What is interesting though is that, rhetorically, the song suggests a standard Chinese form of landscape painting known as shan-shui (literally mountain-water) (Kirkpatrick & Moody 2009). The chorus echoes the slogan for the 2008 Beijing Olympics: ‘One world, one dream’. The song therefore also rhetorically brings to mind a group of people standing together – the diversity of the group represented by those in the bars of Lan Kwai Fong and those on the border with China. Hong Kong people are tough survivors as shown in a later verse (8.6).

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Once refugees or just wanderers now our home is Hong Kong We are survivors so come what may: history has made us strong (lines19-22)

A further rhetorical device which can be found in the Hong Kong song and which echoes Chinese style is the use of balance and parallelism as in (8.7). (8.7)

Hong Kong, Hong Kong, it’s east, it’s west, it’s old, it’s young Though once it was so tragic but now it’s really magic, it’s home, it’s home

In their conclusion, Kirkpatrick and Moody (2009) suggested that the Singaporean song, with its use of Singaporean English and self-humour, represented a confident independence. In contrast, the Hong Kong song, with its use of standard English and the adoption of Chinese rhetorical tropes and styles, might be seen to represent a polity still cautiously finding its way as it moves from the control of a British master to its new Chinese master. There seems to be a lack of self-confidence in the Hong Kong song for all its talk about ‘our hearts being strong’. We must, of course, not make too much out of just two songs. But they do provide a further example of how English is being used in popular culture to reflect the values and lived experiences of its users. To turn now to South Korea, where K-pop has emerged as a highly popular form of music and entertainment. I start with a single word, baglnye, which, according to Lee (2013), is formed from the combination of two English words, ‘baby’ and ‘glamour’ with the Korean feminine marking morpheme, -nye. As seen in Chapter 6, words borrowed from English into another language can shift their meaning and this has happened in Korean English with the word ‘glamour’, where it describes a woman with a voluptuous figure. K-pop provides an excellent example of English being used ‘decoratively’ in popular culture in an expanding circle context. The huge international hit by PSY, ‘Gangnam Style’ only has three words of English throughout: ‘Eh sexy lady’. Examples of what Lee (2020) calls Koreanised English in Korean hip hop include ‘B-bomb dropper’ (skilful hip-hop artist), ‘overground’ (mainstream music) and ‘hiphoper n.rocker’ (a musician skilled at both hip-hop and rock). ‘Decorative’ Koreanised English also appears in Korean advertising. The following are all examples of cosmetic products: ‘water manager system’, ‘air light twin cake’, ‘orange sunrise’, ‘water bank essence’ (Lee 2020: 596). But not all the English in K-pop is purely decorative. A minority of K-pop songs have lyrics that are entirely in English. An example is ‘Breathe Again’ by Amber Liu, which starts: I’m feeling like the weight’s off my shoulders, I can breathe again I’m livin’, let it last, let go like this moment never ends So if you wanna go downtown, fool around, I’m with it

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Another traditionally expanding circle country where English is beginning to be widely used is Mongolia. Since its move in 1990 from being a Russian satellite to a free-market economy, the government has endorsed linguistic diversity (Dovchin 2017). In effect, English has replaced Russian as the first foreign language, but other languages are also promoted. It is English, however, that is the language most evident in popular culture. The names of Mongolian pop bands illustrate a decorative use of English as in these examples: A-Sound, Click Click, Boom, Lipstick, Sweetymotion, Spike, and Kiwi. As in South Korean popular culture, the use of English is not merely decorative, however, as this example from the Mongolian rap artist, Range, demonstrates. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

I ’on kid if askd to do this thin’ If only one person is needd to brin’ Foreign rap influence, it is gotta be me Underground in its language U know what I mean Hi, my name is Range, gettin’ trusted on da stage Lettin’ busted ones be in rage, n makin’ Lost & Found on a page And I will type the names of da gangstas in those frames Leanin’ against the wall of ma bedroom. (Dovchin 2017: 12)

In his analysis of this song, Dovchin notes that the English used represents a translocalised variety which is heavily influenced by African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and rap. In the first two lines alone, the use of I’on for ‘I won’t’, ‘askd’ for ‘asked’, ‘needd’ for ‘needed’ and ‘thin’ and ‘brin’ for ‘thing’ and ‘bring’ are all AAVE or ‘pseudo AAVE’ features (Dovchin 2017: 12). As is the case with the English in much popular culture, the English used is not a standard English and not the English of the classroom. English here is a locally developed vernacular variety, which is, in effect, being used as a rebellion against standard English and, as such, is very different from the English used in law, for example. This is further evidence of English not only being in Asia, but also of Asia and shaped by its new users. Conclusion In this chapter, I have looked at the roles of English in Asia in three disparate fields – the law, religion and popular culture – to exemplify how widely English is being used by its Asian users. In addition, it is, of course, the major lingua franca of business in Asia. Sergeant (2020) reports that a small number of Japanese companies have even introduced a policy of making English the company’s official working language. Rakuten, one of the world’s top ten internet companies and Fast Retailing (the owner of Uniqlo) are examples. Sergeant also notes however, that when Honda made English the official

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language for international meetings, senior Japanese executives promptly hired interpreters. Making English the working language of a Japanese company seems a little extreme – and I shall argue in the next chapter how making English the medium of instruction in Asian universities is also likely to backfire unless carefully planned – but it provides further evidence of the wider and increasing roles English is now playing across Asia. In Chapter 9, I consider the roles English is playing in Asian education.

9

English as a Language of Education in Asia

This chapter looks at the role English is playing in education in Asia, but with a particular focus on East and Southeast Asia. It starts by reviewing when and how English is introduced in state-run schools, especially at the primary level, and later in the chapter it looks at the increasing role English is playing in many higher-education institutions across the region. The chapter concludes by considering the implications the increasing presence of English has on other languages of education. Many of the countries under discussion here were colonies – Mongolia, Nepal, Thailand and Japan were exceptions – and have only relatively recently achieved independence. Japan was itself a coloniser, briefly occupying Manchuria in North East China and, from 1895 to 1945, Taiwan. It is not surprising then that these newly independent nations prioritised the development of a national language, believing that a national language was essential to creating a sense of nation. As will be shown, prioritising the national language often meant neglecting other local languages. A second motivation which has led to the neglect of local languages, has been the perceived need for English, seen as essential if the nation was to participate in and benefit from modernisation and globalisation. This desire to establish and promote a national language, along with the perceived need to teach English, have been the main driving forces of much of the regional language education policy (Kirkpatrick & Liddicoat 2019). In Chapter 1, I cited the following quotation from David Graddol describing the belief across India in the importance and power of English. Throughout India, there is an extraordinary belief, amongst almost all castes and classes, in both rural and urban areas, in the transformative power of English. English is seen not just as a useful skill, but as a symbol of a better life, a pathway out of poverty and oppression . . . How can the benefits of English be enjoyed without damaging the potential that India’s multilingualism brings, as a source of unique identity in a globalised world, of cultural richness, and an important future economic resource? (Graddol 2010: 124)

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Table 9.1 The national language and English in education in ASEAN Country

Medium of instruction

First foreign language (year of introduction)

Brunei* Burma Cambodia** Indonesia** Laos Malaysia Philippines Singapore Thailand Vietnam**

Malay and English Burmese Khmer Bahasa Indonesia Lao Malay and Vernaculars Local languages (until p3) English Thai Vietnamese

English (primary 1 as MoI) English (primary 1) English (primary 5; French also offered) English (secondary 1) English (primary 3) English (from primary 1) English (from primary 1 as MoI) Malay/Mandarin/Tamil (primary 1) English (primary 1) English (primary 3 in selected schools)

* The Arabic script, jawi, is introduced from primary 3 ** Some bilingual education for minority groups in early primary (Table adapted from Kirkpatrick & Liddicoat 2017)

A similar belief is held by parents and most governments of the region, with the result that English is being introduced earlier and earlier into the primary curriculum. Table 9.1 shows when English is currently introduced into the curriculum of the ten nations that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as well as which language is used as the medium of instruction (MoI). It can be seen from Table 9.1 that the only country within ASEAN that does not make English a compulsory subject in the primary school is Indonesia and that Singapore has English as the medium of instruction from the beginning of primary schooling. It will also be noted that the Philippines is the only country within ASEAN which promotes the learning of local languages, and, for this reason, I shall give a brief overview of language policy there and the role English has played and is playing. For the same reason I shall also review the language policies of Hong Kong as there, too, the government is promoting a form of multilingual education, promoting local languages alongside English. The Philippines is linguistically extremely diverse with eight major language groups comprising a total of more than 170 languages. The population of The Philippines is about 110 million, some 90 per cent of which are Christian, primarily Roman Catholic. The country has had a complex colonial history having been a colony of both Spain (1521–1898), explaining the high percentage of Catholics among the population today, and the United States (1898– 1946). As discussed in Chapter 5, the Spanish influence can be seen in the many words of Spanish origin that occur in the languages of the Philippines and Filipino English. On assuming control of the Philippines in 1901 (won as a ‘prize’ by the United States after victory in the Spanish–American war of

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1898), the Americans opted to make English the medium of instruction in schools rather than Spanish. This decision to favour English over Spanish was supported by the Filipino revolutionaries who had opposed the Spanish occupation, but it meant that there was an urgent need for English teachers (Kirkpatrick 2010a), 500 of whom were thus imported from the United States. They became known as the Thomasites, after the ship, The Thomas, which transported them to the Philippines. While 500 teachers may sound a large number, it was merely a fraction of the number needed. When they arrived, they constituted only 30 per cent of the English teachers, and local teachers have been the mainstay of the English teaching profession in the Philippines – as is the case with almost all countries of Asia. That English has been taught primarily by Filipinos has made the development of Filipino English inevitable (Gonzalez 1996a). English remained the sole medium of instruction in schools until 1939 when local languages were introduced as ‘auxiliary media of instruction’ (Galang 2000: 271). In 1941, following the establishment of the National Language Institute (Komyson sa Wakang Filipino) in 1936, Tagalog, the language spoken in and around Manila, the capital, was mandated as the national language. This was not a popular choice, as it privileged people who lived in the capital and spoke Tagalog over speakers of the other languages. There followed a fascinating piece of language planning, even manipulation. The National Language Institute was tasked with creating a new language, initially to be called Pilipino, which was to use Tagalog as the base language but add words and linguistic features from the other languages of the Philippines. To quote from the 1973 Constitution, the ‘language needed to be formed from all existing Philippine languages’ (Gonzalez 1996b: 328). Not surprisingly, this proved impossible and the national language remains primarily Tagalog with ‘ethnic additions’ (Kirkpatrick 2010a: 37). In 1987, the new constitution renamed the national language Filipino in an attempt to distance itself from Tagalog as Tagalog has no [f] sound. Calling the national language ‘Pilipino’ betrayed its Tagalog heritage. The development of a national language saw it being installed as a medium of instruction, alongside English. The official bilingual education policy (BEP) came into effect in 1974 and had become fully implemented across all primary schools by 1982. The BEP ruled that English was to be used as the medium of instruction from primary 1 upwards for maths, science and English; and Filipino was to be used for all other subjects. Here we see an example of how the move to promote the national language and English led to the neglect of local languages as languages of education. The BEP obviously seriously disadvantaged children who spoke a language other than Tagalog, as it meant that they would find themselves having to learn in two new languages when they went to primary school. Not surprisingly, therefore, the following years

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saw several attempts by advocates of the other languages to introduce these as media of instruction, particularly for the first years of primary school. None of these attempts proved successful until 2009, when the Ministry of Education issued a decree entitled ‘Institutionalising Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education’ (MTBMLE), which recognised the importance of using the learner’s mother tongue as a language of education (Kirkpatrick & Liddicoat 2017). MTBMLE was strengthened with the passing of the Enhanced Basic Education Act in 2013, Section 4 of which reads, in part, as follows: For kindergarten and the first three years of elementary education, instruction, teaching materials and assessment shall be in the regional or native language of the learners. The Department of Education shall formulate a mother language transition program from Grade 4 to Grade 6 so that Filipino and English shall be gradually introduced as languages of instruction until such time when these two languages can become the primary languages of instruction at the secondary level.

Initially, twelve languages were designated as media of instruction for the first three years of primary school but this number has recently been increased to nineteen. Children are now expected to transition to the use of English and Filipino as media of instruction in the later years of primary school. Despite this apparent success for advocates of the use of Filipino vernaculars as media of instruction, many proponents are disillusioned as the law only requires the use of these languages for the first three years of primary, not the full six years they had called for. A prominent proponent of MTBMLE, Ricardo Nolasco, in an article to the Philippine Enquirer, has therefore called the new policy ‘a castrated policy’ (http://opinion.inquirer.net/61025/castrated-mtb-mle). Nolasco has also drawn attention to the addition of an introductory clause to the law which reads, ‘The curriculum shall develop fluency in Filipino and English, provided that the learners’ first and dominant language shall serve as the fundamental language of education’. Nolasco’s view is that this means the government’s policy is MTBMLE in name only (Kirkpatrick & Liddicoat 2017). A pilot project in 2011 involving 921 schools across 17 districts and 12 languages (Young & Igcalinos 2019) was undertaken. Criticisms of the new policy include the lack of teaching materials and resources, poor training and preparation of teachers and the top-down nature of the policy implementation. And while the introduction of 19 vernaculars might seem a large number, it is a mere fraction of the more than 170 languages spoken in the Philippines and there has been no word as to whether further languages will be added (Young & Igcalinos 2019). Despite these criticisms, the Philippine government has officially recognised the value of local languages as languages of education and this represents a marked shift from the former bilingual education policy. Then-President Aquino’s hope was for Filipinos to become trilingual as a country:

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Learn English well and connect to the world. Learn Filipino well and connect to your country. Retain your dialect and connect to your heritage.’ (http://philbasiceducation .blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/languages-in-philippines-challenge-for.html)

This echoes the rhetorical questions raised in the earlier quote by David Graddol, questions also raised by the Filipino scholar Sibayan (1999: 1) when he asks: How shall we learn English so that we may partake of the world’s knowledge that is made available in it? How shall we learn Tagalog (Pilipino) so that we as a people will speak with one language and identify ourselves with it? How shall we preserve the languages of our ancestors in the regions where we come from so that our children will understand the treasures they contain? These are questions that all governments in the region are faced with. And as elsewhere, as we shall see, demand for English remains very strong in the Philippines as competence in English is seen to be inextricably related to the Philippines’ global competitiveness. English is a particularly important skill for the large Filipino overseas workforce and the Filipino call-centre industry (Young & Igcalinos 2019). This helps explain why, despite the move to MTBMLE, many primary schools are persisting with the use of English as the medium of instruction and why many parents are so keen to ensure that their children have access to education in English as early as possible. It is too soon to judge whether the Philippines has been successful in creating a system whereby its children can retain knowledge of their mother tongue as well as learning the national language and English. It is a noble effort, but the negative attitude towards regional and local vernaculars displayed by the current President Duterte has proponents of MTBMLE worried that he might rescind the order and revert to a bilingual English and Filipino policy. But it is worth stressing that the Philippines is unusual in pursuing a multilingual education policy involving the child’s first language, the national language and English. The great majority of states are pursuing a bilingual policy and promoting only the national language and English. A place that is pursuing a trilingual policy is Hong Kong and it is to Hong Kong that I now turn. This section draws on Wang and Kirkpatrick (2019). Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on the occasion of its ‘handover’ to China from the British in 1997. It is a multilingual society with three principal languages: Cantonese, English and Putonghua, each of which ‘carries different political, economic, social and cultural values locally’ (Chen 2005: 528). While we can say that Hong Kong is indeed multilingual, it is nothing like as linguistically diverse as the Philippines and other Asian countries. In 2018, the population was estimated at 7.42 million.

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According to the 2016 by-census, 92 per cent of the Hong Kong population is ethnic Chinese, and 8 per cent comprise other ethnic groups, including a large number of Filipino and Indonesian foreign domestic helpers (Census and Statistics Department 2017: 29). Cantonese is the socially preferred and most commonly used language at home. As shown in Table 9.2, in 2016, 94.6 per cent of the population aged five and over reported being able to speak Cantonese. Another 5.7 per cent claimed that they could speak Cantonese as a second or further language, while their first language was another Chinese language, either Putonghua, Hakka, Fukienese, Chiu Chow or Shanghainese (Census and Statistics Department 2017: 31; Wang & Kirkpatrick 2019: 1–2). Although the mother tongue of the great majority of the Hong Kong population is Cantonese (Sze 1997), the written Chinese taught in school is Modern Standard Chinese (MSC), the written equivalent of Putonghua (Tse 2009), the national language of Mainland China. Cantonese and Modern Standard Chinese or Putonghua are mutually unintelligible, differing greatly in their pronunciation. As an example, the Mandarin for goodbye is zaijian, (literally ‘again see’) but in Cantonese the characters for ‘again see’ 再見 are pronounced dzoi geen. So, while Modern Standard Chinese and Cantonese use more or less the same characters – more or less because, as Snow (2004) points out, there are several characters that are unique to Cantonese – they pronounce them quite differently. There are also syntactical differences between the two languages. The complex nature of Chinese characters has meant that it takes time to learn to read and write Chinese. In a bid to make Chinese characters easier to learn and to make the language easier to read, the Communist government undertook language reform resulting in a large number of simplified characters and developed a romanisation system, known as pinyin, based on Putonghua pronunciation. Almost all the schools use pinyin to help children learn to read. To make matters even more complicated, Hong Kong and Taiwan still use the traditional characters, while the Mainland uses the simplified forms. When the Hong Kong government talk about Chinese, they use the ambiguous term zhong wen, understood to mean Modern Standard Chinese (MSC), written in the traditional, unsimplified script, and spoken Cantonese. This all makes learning of the two languages, Cantonese and Putonghua, along with the writing system, complex. As was seen when discussing the role of English in the Hong Kong legal system, English retains important roles despite the fact that only 4.3 per cent of the Hong Kong population reported using English as a usual language/dialect (Census and Statistics Department 2017: 31). Part of the colonial legacy is that English is dominant in the domains of the legislature, administration, the judiciary and education (Luke & Richards 1982; Poon 2010). Indeed,

Table 9.2 Proportion of population aged five and over able to speak selected languages by year Proportion of population aged five and over Percentage Year Language Cantonese English Putonghua Hakka Fukien Chiu Chau Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) Filipino (Tagalog) Japanese Shanghainese

2006

As the usual language 2011 2016

2006

As another language/dialect 2011 2016

2006

Total 2011

2016

90.8 2.8 0.9 1.1 1.2 0.8 0.1

89.5 3.5 1.4 0.9 1.1 0.7 0.3

88.9 4.3 1.9 0.6 1.0 0.5 0.3

5.7 41.9 39.2 3.6 2.1 3.2 1.5

6.3 42.6 46.5 3.8 2.3 3.1 2.2

5.7 48.9 46.7 3.5 2.6 2.9 2.4

96.5 44.7 40.2 4.7 3.4 3.9 1.7

95.8 46.1 47.8 4.7 3.5 3.8 2.4

94.6 53.2 48.6 4.2 3.6 3.4 2.7

0.1 0.2 0.3

0.2 0.2 0.3

0.4 0.1 0.2

1.3 1.1 0.9

1.4 1.4 0.9

2.3 1.7 0.9

1.4 1.2 1.2

1.7 1.5 1.1

2.7 1.8 1.1

Source: Census and Statistics Department. (2017). 2016 Population by-census: Main results. HKSAR Government: Government Logistics Department.

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Chinese only became a co-official language alongside English in 1974 when the government enacted the Official Languages Ordinance. To a great extent, however, English remains the major medium for intra-governmental written communication and records. English is also the preferred medium of instruction, assessment and examination for most educational institutions at secondary and tertiary levels. After the 1997 Handover of sovereignty, the Hong Kong government has promoted a language policy by which citizens are to be trilingual in Cantonese, English and Putonghua and biliterate in Chinese and English. While such a policy is to be applauded, there are concerns that the national language, Putonghua, will start to make inroads into Cantonese, seen very much as the language of identity for Hong Kongers. Putonghua is now taught as a subject in all Hong Kong secondary and primary schools and is being trialled as a medium of instruction for the Chinese Language subject in selected schools. Cantonese is used as the medium of instruction in the great majority of primary schools and in those secondary schools which use Chinese as a medium of instruction (Pan 2000). English is the medium of instruction in selected secondary schools and in all but two of the eight government-funded universities and in all private universities. The fact that English is the medium of instruction in six of the eight government-funded universities – and in all private universities – naturally means that parents are keen to ensure that their children develop sufficiently high proficiency in English while at school in order to be able to enter the university system. This has put great pressure on the Chinese-medium secondary schools to increase the number of subjects that they teach in English. A brief review of the history of the medium of instruction in Hong Kong schools is needed here to contextualise the current situation. Before the 1997 Handover, primary schools used Cantonese as a medium of instruction but secondary schools were allowed to choose the medium of instruction they wished to adopt. Given that the majority of universities were Englishmedium, this meant that most schools advertised themselves as Englishmedium schools, even though, in many, neither teachers nor students had adequate proficiency in English to learn or teach in English. When working as a trainer of English teachers in Hong Kong in the late 1970s, I spent time observing so-called English-medium classes in which the teachers translated the English textbooks into Cantonese and the students noted the translations in the margins of their textbooks. This was common practice and christened the ‘textual-translation’ method (Luke & Richards 1982). After the 1997 Handover, the government became much stricter and insisted that only schools which met certain criteria, which included having teachers with high English proficiency and students with good English grades, could be English-medium schools. As a result, only 25 per cent of secondary schools were classified as

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English-medium. And, as a consequence of this, parents of children in Chinesemedium schools started to pressure the government to allow Chinese-medium schools to teach more subjects in English. After more than a decade of withstanding such pressures, the government finally acceded to parental demand and with the ‘fine-tuning’ of the policy, allowed Chinese-medium schools to teach more content classes in English (Kan et al. 2011). This provides an excellent example of where university medium of instruction policy has a washback effect on secondary education. Even the Chinesemedium university, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has increased the number of classes it teaches through English because it sees this as essential in developing international links and rising up the ranks of university ranking systems. I will discuss higher education in more detail, but this review of Hong Kong shows how the best intentions of a government policy can be undermined by university language policy. Because the universities privilege English, the schools and parents naturally feel they need to as well. The current situation in Hong Kong is that, while Cantonese remains the medium of instruction in most primary schools, the use of Putonghua as a medium of instruction is increasing. Many Chinese-medium secondary schools are now teaching content classes in English, and the great majority of universities are English-medium. Yet, despite these changes, many local firstlanguage-Cantonese Hong Kong students in Hong Kong graduate with strong Chinese language skills and literacy and high proficiency in English. Having considered the situation in a special administrative region (SAR) of China, Hong Kong, in some depth, I now turn to China itself. The two languages taught in Chinese schools are Putonghua and English. The Chinese Language Law actually proscribes the teaching of other Chinese languages – and these include Shanghainese (or Wu to give this language group its official name), Cantonese (or Yue), and the Min, Xiang, Hakka and Gan language groups – as languages of education (Kirkpatrick & Xu 2001) (see also www.gov.cn/english/laws/2005–09/19/content64906.htm). Hong Kong and Macau are the only places under CCP jurisdiction where Cantonese is retained as a language of education. English is officially introduced into the national curriculum at Primary 3. In actual practice, it is often introduced earlier and there is an increasing market in English-medium kindergartens throughout China (Feng & Adamson 2019). The importance China attaches to English means that it is one of three core subjects that all students have to take in the national secondary school graduation exam, the gao kao or high exam. Chinese itself and maths are the other two core subjects. The only languages used in education other than Putonghua and English are the languages of the national minority groups, of which there are, officially, fifty-five, but, in fact, there are more than this. The aim is for members of

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specific minority groups, such as Mongolians, the Zhuang and the Miao, to become trilingual in their home language, Putonghua and English. This programme, however, has not been successful. As Feng and Adamson note in their 2019 survey of language policy in China: of more than a hundred minority languages, only six of them, including Uyghur, Kazak, Tibetan, Korean, Mongolian, and Yi, could be seen as ‘safe’; four have already become extinct; but all the other languages are found either evidently endangered, severely endangered, or critically endangered. (2019: 45)

China represents a prime example of an Asian nation promoting English along with the respective national language as the two major languages of education. If we take into account the number of English learners and users there are in China and the development of Chinese English considered in Chapter 6 and described in detail by Xu (2010), we can see how English is becoming a language both in and of Asia. This is also reflected in the increasing use of English as a medium of instruction in Asian institutes of higher education and universities, to which I now turn. More than a decade ago, Coleman noted that ‘it seems inevitable that English, in some form, will definitely become the language of education’ (Coleman 2006: 11). This comment was partly in response to the increase of English-medium courses and programmes in higher education across Europe, brought about by the Bologna Declaration of 1999 which saw the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) established. Through this, universities across Europe ensured their degrees articulated with each other’s, thereby allowing staff and student mobility. The arrival of staff and students from universities across Europe led to the establishment of English-medium degree programmes and courses. Scholars in Europe and Australia have expressed some concern about this move to EMI courses. Phillipson (2006) asks, ‘How can one go along with the use of English without exposing oneself to the risk of being anglicized in one’s mental structures, without being brainwashed by the linguistic routines?’ (2006: 68–69). Trevaskes, Eisenchlas and Liddicoat (2003) note, in similar vein, that internationalisation has become little more than an entrenchment of the English language as an instrument of power and of an English-speaking world view as the only legitimate perspective through which the world can be viewed and interpreted. In short, will the increase in English-medium courses lead to Englishisation? (Kirkpatrick 2017). Two recent developments have further encouraged the use of Englishmedium courses across Asian universities. First, in 2012, the Asian Pacific Economic Group of Countries (APEC) agreed to encourage staff and student mobility among the universities of the region.1 Second, the thirty or so 1

APEC group countries are listed in Chapter 3 and comprise the 13 of ASEAN + 3 along with Australia, Canada, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russia and the United States.

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universities that make up the ASEAN universities network are also encouraging staff and student mobility. Any significant and large-scale increase in staff and student mobility requires the setting up of English-medium programmes to ensure courses can be taught in a common language. As noted, six of the eight government-funded universities in Hong Kong are English-medium as are all the private universities there. And, again as noted, the only Chinese-medium university, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has increased its English-medium courses in an attempt to attract international staff and students and rise up the university ranking charts. Students took the university to court arguing that it had breached the terms of its charter by increasing English-medium courses but the courts ruled in favour of the university (Li 2013). China has also seen an increase in the number of Englishmedium courses taught in its universities. As long ago as 2001, the then Prime Minister of China, Zhu Rongji, in a speech to his alma mater, the Department of Economics and Management at the prestigious Tsinghua University of Beijing, said that he hoped all classes would be taught in English as China needed to be able to share its ideas with the world. China’s Universities College Admissions Schemes (UCAS) lists all courses taught in English. These include the prestigious East China Normal University in Shanghai which aims to attract 5,000 international students and to have 100 courses taught in English. In addition to Chinese universities teaching courses in English, a number of overseas universities have established campuses in China where the degrees are taught in English. The English universities, Liverpool in Suzhou and Nottingham in Ningbo, are two examples. Malaysia has been a forerunner in the offering of English-medium courses at university level and was one of the earliest Asian countries to encourage transnational private higher educaion as far back as the 1980s, when Malaysian educational entrepreneurs responded to a local need for cheaper international degrees by creating a system whereby students did two years at a Malaysian private college and then, through credit transfer, could enter the third year of US universities (Kirkpatrick & Gill 2020). Malaysia was also one of the pioneers in establishing twinning programmes with British and Australian universities in the late 1980s. As a consequence, Malaysia has come to have some hundred private colleges and private university colleges, which have partnership programmes with universities in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and other English-speaking countries. Malaysia also has more than a dozen private universities, including universities set up by public utility corporations. Several universities from the English-speaking world have set up branch campuses in Malaysia. For example, EduCity, a development just outside the city of Johore Bahru, is home to three UK universities, namely Newcastle, Reading and Southampton. The number of British universities offering degree courses through English in

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Malaysia has led the Economist to report that, ‘Malaysia now has more students studying for the British qualification than any country bar Britain itself’ (Economist 2018). Japan is also embracing international education and introduced the Global 30 Project, which was designed to attract international students to Japan to study in one of thirty universities. The aim of the Global 30 project was to recruit 300,000 international students; to date, however, results have been disappointing, with less than 22,000 international students enrolled in 2011 (Kirkpatrick 2017). The Global 30 Project has since been replaced by the Super Global Universities Project under which thirteen of Japan’s top universities have been given extra funding to help them compete internationally and a further twentyfour universities have been identified whose role is to show Japan in a more global light McKinley (2015). There are 225 private universities listed on the Philippines’ website www .4icu.org/ph/private/ (accessed 14 June 2019), all of which are Englishmedium. One of the most prestigious universities in the Philippines is the state university, the University of the Philippines itself. Some years ago, in an attempt to promote Filipino as an academic language, the university started to offer some courses in Filipino and to encourage staff to publish in Filipino. Staff and students resisted these attempts, so the university reverted to English (Kirkpatrick 2017). In Myanmar, all institutes of higher education are expected to teach in English, even though serious reservations have been expressed about the use of English as a teaching and learning medium in a country where levels of English declined rapidly after the military, under General U Ne Win, seized power in 1962. As Drinan (2013) notes in her account of English-language provision in Myanmar: Using English as a Medium of Instruction (MoI): this is fundamentally not working for teaching Maths and Science as few teachers can use English, let alone, teach another subject in English. Students are not learning or understanding important concepts in Maths and Science. They merely remember the technical terms in English for the tests. Most teachers use a mix of Myanmar (for explanation) and English (for technical terms). However even if they were taught totally in Myanmar, students would still find understanding concepts difficult because of the teacher-centred methodology. If English is going to be used as a MoI, teachers need training and support in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). (2013: 8)

It should be stressed that Drinan is here talking about the situation in uppersecondary schools. The situation at the tertiary level is equally, if not more, problematic. An increase in the number of tertiary programmes and courses taught through English is thus being seen across Asia, even in countries where the

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levels of English are not yet high enough to be able to render such programmes successful. A cautionary tale comes from the experience of the extremely prestigious Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). In 2006, in a top-down decision, KAIST ruled that the university would become an entirely English-medium institution and that all courses would be taught in English. This led to great stress and anxiety among professors and students alike, and it was the suicide of four students that persuaded KAIST to review its English-medium only policy and reinstate some courses in Korean (Kim 2017). Given that the move to provide English-medium courses at universities throughout Asia is going to be impossible to resist and that the number of English-medium courses is set to increase, Kirkpatrick (2017) suggested five points that need to be considered before the implementation of such courses. These were: 1. The development of a coherent and consistent university language education policy. Such a language policy needs to take into account any national language policy so that it articulates with it. Any university language policy also needs to be developed in consultation with those whom it is going to effect (Xu 2014). Thus staff, both academic and administrative, need to be involved, as, of course, do students. No top-down policy is likely to be successful. 2. Guidelines for the implementation of EMI need to be an integral part of the university language policy. In particular, it needs to be stressed that an EMI course does not necessarily exclude the use of other languages. As Saeed, Varghese, Holst and Ghazali (2018) report, respondents in their study were highly positive about instructors mixing English and the students’ own language in lectures; mixing was seen as less challenging than using only one language as the medium of instruction. The multilingual nature of the university, its staff and students thus needs to be reflected in any EMI course. In other words, staff and students should always be encouraged to use whatever linguistic resources they have at their disposal in order to get across meaning, especially when the cognitive load is high. One approach can be to encourage students to use their linguistic resources in the process of preparing a task – whether this be an oral presentation or a written assignment of some kind – while insisting that the final product be in English. Allowing students to use their linguistic resources in the process of task completion can heighten the cognitive sophistication of the final product (Behan, Turnbull & Spek 1997). Students can be encouraged to consult sources in whatever language they can access and not be restricted to consulting only those available in English. In this way, the multilingual abilities of staff and student can be allowed to flourish. The university and classroom ethos should be about the development of multilinguals who have

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English as an additional language, not one which promotes the use of ‘English only’ at the expense of other languages. 3. The language policy needs to define what is meant by the ‘E’ in EMI. Is the model a native-speaker variety of English such as American or British? Are staff expected to have native-speaker varieties of English? Such expectations are both unnecessary and unrealistic in the context of an Asian institution of higher education, where the great majority of staff and students will be multilinguals for whom English is an additional language and who use English as a lingua franca. A sensible benchmark for required language proficiency in terms of oral English is that staff and students need to use an English that is easily intelligible. Intelligibility is the key. In terms of writing, staff need to be able to adhere to the conventions of academic writing in their particular disciplines and students need to be trained in these conventions. Everyone needs conscious training in how to write. Unlike speaking, there are no first language writers. Writing has to be taught. It can’t be caught. 4. The language policy needs to recognise the importance of specific professional development for staff who are to deliver cognitively complex content through the medium of English. Professional development courses should be made available for all EMI staff. Systematic professional development courses have to be available if EMI programmes are to be implemented successfully. 5. Finally the language policy needs to set linguistic benchmarks for students to meet before they enrol in EMI courses, recalling that speakers of Asian languages may take longer to acquire the necessary proficiency in English than do speakers of typologically similar European languages. Relevant English courses thus need to be available for students on an ongoing basis. All language learning is developmental; there is never an ‘end stage’. To conclude this chapter, I return to Malaysia to review the decisions concerning the teaching of English in the primary sector. Malaysia presents an interesting case because it reversed its policy of using English as a medium of instruction to teach maths and science from Primary 1. In the years after independence from Britain in 1957, Malaysia’s language-in-education policy saw several shifts, but eventually settled on the promotion of the national language, Malay, as the medium of instruction. A Malay medium university, the Universitii Kebangsaan Malaysia was set up in 1970, while other state universities were required to switch from using English to using Malay as the medium of instruction. In 2002, however, it became apparent that, because many ethnic Malay graduates of Malaysian universities were graduating monolingual in Malay, they were finding it hard to get jobs outside government agencies, not least because they were in competition with Malaysian Chinese,

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who, in addition to Malay, spoke Chinese and English, often as a result of attending private rather than government universities. In 2005, the former Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad, summed up his view of the need for English: Everybody realizes the importance of English, but in Malaysia, it is countered through the extreme form of nationalism which concentrates on being a language nationalist only, not a knowledge nationalist, not a development oriented nationalist. I feel that we should be a development oriented nationalist. We want our people to succeed, to be able to stand tall, to be respected by the rest of the world. Not to be people with no knowledge of science and technology, very poor, very backwards, working as servants to other people. If we have no knowledge we will be servants to those with knowledge. (Gill & Shaari 2019: 262)

The government then reintroduced the policy of using English as a medium of instruction for maths and science subjects from the first year of primary school. However, it became apparent that this policy was also not successful for two major reasons. First, children from poorer and rural areas of the country were finding it difficult to learn maths and science in a language they had very little proficiency in; and second, it proved difficult to find enough maths and science teachers whose English was sufficiently proficient for them to teach these subjects in English. This led to what Gill has called ‘a re-reversal of language-in-education-policy’ (Gill 2012: 45). The national language, Bahasa Malaysia/Melayu, has now been reinstated as the medium of instruction. Tamil and Mandarin can also be used as teaching media in certain schools. But there remained concerns that the levels of English were declining, leading then Minister of Education, Muhyiddin to state in 2009: The policy of dignifying Bahasa Melayu and strengthening English language usage or ‘Memartabatkan Bahasa Melayu dan Memperkasakan Bahasa Inggeris’ (MBMBI) will be implemented in 2011, a year earlier than scheduled . . . meeting the objective would require the full commitment of teachers, school heads and principals, and the Education Ministry as this was a big responsibility. . . . We should now be focusing on efforts to raise the standard of our education system, and from 2011 we will be implementing the new (MBMBI) policy. (Gill & Shaari 2019: 264)

This quote nicely encapsulates the dilemma facing many Asian governments about how to balance the teaching of the respective national language and English. In Malaysia, the decision has been to use Malay as the medium of instruction but to require proficiency in English. The government tried to ensure this by making it compulsory for students to pass English in the secondary school SPM exam, a ruling that was to be implemented in

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2016. But the Ministry of Education announced in 2015 that this policy would be ‘put on hold’ until there were enough teachers proficient enough in English to teach the subject at this level. The announcement occasioned irritation and frustration among many. The education journalist, Leanne Goh, wrote: Just as it was for the implementation of Science and Maths in English, we’re now doing the same for English. We want to bring everyone down to the lowest denominator. We are always holding back the strong so that the weak can catch up – while the rest of the world leapfrogs over us. (Gill & Shaari 2019: 265)

Yet another new policy was rolled out in 2016. This will see the implementation of the Dual Language Programme (DLP) and the Highly Immersive Programme (HIP). Under the DLP, schools will be given the option of teaching maths and science in either Malay or English. The HIP will see English-language enrichment activities designed for the classroom. These switches in policy reflect the previously mentioned dilemma about the role English should play in education. Gill and Shaari (2019) quote Farish Noor, a Malaysian political historian, in addressing this dilemma: Linguistic nationalism has become a favourite tool of many an ethno-nationalist politician who favours a return to the pre-colonial past . . . but refusal to wake up to the realities of the global age we live in means that we are in danger of condemning the future generation of our societies to a marginal position. (2019: 268–9)

Conclusion This chapter has reviewed the role of English in education in countries across Asia. It is clearly not possible to give a detailed account of what is happening in each country with regard to the teaching of English (and other languages). Interested readers are referred to Kirkpatrick and Liddicoat (2019) where the language education policies of Asian countries are treated in detail. What is clear, however, is that the trend across Asia is to promote and privilege the teaching of the respective national language and English, while, at the same time neglecting other regional and local languages and other ‘foreign’ languages as languages of education. I feel that this choice of English or local language is a false and unnecessary choice. I have argued elsewhere (e.g., Kirkpatrick 2010, 2012) that if the primary curriculum were to focus on the home language and the national language, and if the teaching of English was delayed until the children were age eleven or more, then it would be perfectly possible for children to leave school as functioning multilinguals in at least three languages.

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In the next chapter, I develop this theme further and suggest innovative ways in which English could be taught that would reflect its roles in Asia. It is clear English is both in and of Asia and will remain so, but is this necessarily at the expense of local languages? Chapter 10 will look at how this new Asiancentred English might best be taught and co-exist with indigenous languages.

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Implications for English Language Teaching in Asia

Introduction The aim of this chapter is to set out key issues surrounding the teaching of English in Asia given its role as a language in and of Asia, and to note the challenges that need to be faced. The focus will be on the teaching of English in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as this group of ten countries has made English the sole working language of the group. However, I believe that the arguments made and proposals suggested also hold for Asia as a whole. The chapter comprises four major parts. The first presents the background and roles of English in ASEAN, repeating some of the information presented earlier in the book, included to remind readers of the context. The second section discusses the issues and challenges associated with the role of English as the sole working language of ASEAN and its place in the school curriculum. The issues here will include: (i) when English should be introduced into the curriculum; (ii) whether it should be introduced as a subject or as a medium of instruction (MoI) (and see Table 10.1); (iii) how English should complement local languages; and (iv) which English should be taught. The third part of the paper will consider the issues and challenges associated with the qualifications and proficiencies required by English teachers and the critical role of assessment. The final section of the chapter presents some proposals for English language teaching in ASEAN and across Asia more generally. I start this chapter by repeating two statements made by a Cambodian official from Chapter 1. If we don’t know English, how can we participate? We need to know English so that we can defend our interests. You know, ASEAN is not a kissy-kissy brotherhood. The countries are fiercely competitive, and a strong knowledge of English will help us protect Cambodian interests. (cited in Clayton 2006: 230–1) 179

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Table 10.1 The national language and English in education in ASEAN Country

Medium of Instruction

First Foreign Language (Year of Introduction)

Brunei* Burma Cambodia** Indonesia** Laos Malaysia Philippines Singapore Thailand Vietnam**

Malay and English Burmese Khmer Bahasa Indonesia Lao Malay and Vernaculars Local languages (until p3) English Thai Vietnamese

English (primary 1 as MoI) English (primary 1) English (primary 5; French also offered) English (secondary 1) English (primary 3) English (from primary 1) English (from primary 1 as MoI) Malay/Mandarin/Tamil (primary 1) English (primary 1) English (primary 3 in selected schools)

* The Arabic script, jawi, is introduced from primary 3 ** Some bilingual education for minority groups in early primary (Table adapted from Kirkpatrick & Liddicoat 2017)

You know, when we use English, we don’t think about the United States or England. We only think about the need to communicate (cited in Clayton 2006: 233).

With these two statements, the Cambodian minister has captured the essence of the role of English in Asia. It is to be used to defend Cambodia’s interests in negotiations with other ASEAN and Asian nations; it is a language for communication and not a language owned by American and British speakers. The history of English in ASEAN ASEAN was first formed in 1967 with the signing of the Bangkok Declaration. ASEAN originally comprised only five countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.1 Since then, ASEAN has grown to include five further countries of Southeast Asia, namely, with the year they joined ASEAN in brackets: Brunei (1984); Vietnam (1995); Laos and Myanmar (1997); and, finally, Cambodia (1999). Surprisingly, the Bangkok Declaration of 1967 made no mention of languages at all. Apparently, delegates simply assumed that English would be the common language (Okudaira 1999: 95). Thus English became the de facto lingua franca of ASEAN (Krasnick 1995). It was not until the signing of the ASEAN Charter in 2009, however, that this de facto use of English became officially sanctioned. Article 34 of the Charter 1

This section is an updated summary of Kirkpatrick (2012). See also Kirkpatrick, A. (2015) English in Myanmar Education and Society. Report commissioned for UNICEF Myanmar Project, Towards a Peace Promoting National Language Policy for Myanmar, The University of Melbourne.

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states, ‘The working language of ASEAN shall be English’. The official establishment of English as the sole working language of ASEAN increased the motivation of ASEAN governments to ensure their citizens could operate in English and this is reflected in when English is introduced into the schools’ curricula across ASEAN. This information was presented in Table 9.1 in the previous chapter, but repeated here as Table 10.1 for ease of reference.2 The Role(s) of English in ASEAN What makes the role of English unique in the ASEAN context is the fact that the ASEAN Charter legislates English as the sole working language of the group. In other words, a language whose origins stem from outside the region has been voluntarily adopted by the member states of ASEAN to be their sole working language. A major reason for this, as we have illustrated throughout the book, is that English has taken on institutional roles in those countries which were once colonies of Great Britain or the United States. In these countries, local varieties of English have developed. Thus the region is home to Brunei English, Malaysian English, Filipino English and Singaporean English. Myanmar provides an exception as its self-imposed decades of isolation and the promotion of Burmese and the removal of English from the curriculum has meant that an equivalent variety of Burmese English has not developed. English played no institutional role in Myanmar for at least the years from 1962–86. As a result, the role and development of English in Myanmar has more in common with ASEAN’s ‘expanding circle’ countries, namely Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Yet, even in these countries, English is fulfilling increasingly important roles. For example, as we saw in Chapter 9, some boarding schools (pesantren) attached to certain mosques in Indonesia teach courses in ‘English for Islamic Purposes’ (Fahrudin 2013). Far from being solely a language which reflects and represents ‘anglo’ cultures, English is increasingly becoming a language which can reflect the cultures and norms of its new users. As we have shown, English is being shaped by the Asian-centric cultures, values and lived experiences of its multilingual speakers. The major role of English across ASEAN and much of Asia is as a lingua franca for Asian multilinguals for whom English is an additional language. That is to say, that most speakers of English in the Asian region are ‘Englishknowing’ multilinguals (Pakir 2000) who are more likely to use English with fellow English-knowing multilinguals from within the region, than they are with people who speak native-speaker varieties. We noted in Chapter 1 that it was very difficult to give an accurate estimate of the numbers of English users across Asia, but it is sobering to reflect that there are significantly more Asian 2

See also table 1 in Zein (2017: 199).

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users of English than there are native speakers of it. This has significant potential implications for local English language curricula, which will be discussed further. Issues and Challenges: Three Myths of Language Education In this section, the optimum age of the learner and when to introduce English into the curriculum and why are addressed. Benson (2008: 2 ff.) has identified the following three tenets (which she terms ‘myths’) as being, at least in part, the cause of current government policy in language education across much of Asia: (i) the best way to learn a second language is to use it as a medium of instruction; (ii) to learn a second language, you must start as early as possible; and (iii) the home language gets in the way of learning a second language. With regard the first tenet, a number of arguments suggest that this needs to be carefully questioned. There is a substantial body of research, exemplified by the work of Jim Cummins at the University of Toronto (e.g., Cummins 1981, 1992, 2008), that shows that learners need at least five to seven years of instruction in a second language before they develop high enough proficiency in the language to learn complex subjects through it. The language needs to be learned as a subject before it can be used as a medium of instruction. This is particularly the case when the content matter to be learned includes maths and science, subjects which contain complex concepts. It places an unrealistically heavy cognitive load upon children to ask them to learn maths and science through English from Grade 1, especially when English comes from a different language family from the child’s first language and/or the national language. As reported in the previous chapter, the major reason for the Malaysian government’s recent decision to rescind their policy of teaching maths and science through English from Primary 1 is that it has resulted in too many children failing the subject because they do not have the English language proficiency to be able to learn cognitively complex subjects through the language; and, when in force, the English-medium policy widened the gap between rural and urban children, between the haves and the have-nots. Questioning the First Myth Maths and Science as ‘Neutral’ and Modernising Two reasons why maths and science are commonly chosen as subjects to be taught through English are that they are seen to be culturally ‘neutral’ and that, as they are crucial to development and modernisation, they should be taught

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through the language of modernisation, almost universally seen to be English. The Filipino scholar, Bernardo (2000), has argued: there seems to be no theoretical or empirical basis . . . to obligate the use of English in teaching mathematics [and] There are clear and consistent advantages to using the student’s first language . . . at the stage of learning where the student is acquiring the basic understanding of the various mathematical concepts and procedures. (2000: 313)

As Bernardo stresses, the stage where the student is acquiring basic understanding is particularly important. In other words, children would benefit if maths and science were taught in the child’s first language, especially at the early stages. The other argument promulgated in favour of teaching ‘culturally neutral’ subjects such as maths and science is that they can be taught through a culturefree language such as ‘scientific’ English. Putting aside the idea that maths and science somehow live in a cultural vacuum, far from being used to teach supposedly culture-free subjects, English should be used to teach culture-rich subjects such as cross-cultural communication. In the Asian context, the English curriculum could include materials discussing the diverse cultures of the region. We will return to this. The first tenet could therefore be rephrased to read: a child needs at least five years instruction in a second language as a subject before it can be used as a medium of instruction to teach complex concepts.

Questioning the Second Myth To turn now to the second of Benson’s ‘myths’, namely, ‘to learn a second language you must start as early as possible’. All things being equal, this may be true. Cenoz (2009: 189) reports that research in ‘natural language environments’ supports the notion of ‘the earlier the better’. However, we need to note that Cenoz is referring to ‘natural language environments’. The great majority of learners of English in Asian primary schools are not learning in natural language environments. On the contrary, they are typically learning in contexts where the teachers are not adequately proficient in the language, and where there are insufficient and inappropriate materials (Kirkpatrick 2012). The UNESCO report, Education for All by 2015 (UNESCO 2015) notes that a major cause for the early drop-out rates from primary school education across many countries in Asia is that the children’s home language is not used as a language of education. The UNESCO report goes on to state that the only way to prevent children dropping out of school is to provide bilingual and mother-tongue education. In order for successful language learning to take place at an early stage, a number of conditions need to be met. These include access to resources, the

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availability of competent, qualified and linguistically proficient teachers, a supportive language learning environment and a motivated learner who has already developed proficiency and literacy in the first language. These conditions are not always met. The only children fortunate enough to meet these conditions will be members of the elite, who speak the national language as their first language and who live in urban centres. The overwhelming majority of Asian learners of English do not fall into this category. Instead, they come from the poorer socio-economic classes, only have access to limited resources and are taught by overworked teachers whose own levels of proficiency may be low. These children may also be learning two or more local languages as they acquire a regional lingua franca as well as a national language alongside their mother tongue. To force children from these backgrounds to learn English, even as a subject, from Grade 1 is to condemn them to cognitive overload and failure. Start Early or Start Late? While there is research evidence to show that starting young is particularly valuable if you want to master the phonology of the language in the sense that you want to sound like a native speaker, this is the only area of language acquisition where starting early offers a clear advantage. However, for a pluricentric language such as English with its myriad varieties, both traditional and new, all with native speakers with significantly and noticeably different pronunciations, and with the countless billions of multilingual speakers using English as a lingua franca worldwide, typified by Asian multilinguals, the need to sound like a native speaker needs to be seriously questioned. To put this another way, why would an Asian multilingual speaker of English want or need to sound like a native speaker of standard American or standard British English? If no reason can be found, even the phonological reason for an early start is removed. This is significant because, along with the research evidence showing a possible advantage of an earlier start for the acquisition of a native-speaker accent, there is abundant research evidence to show that late learners can learn languages extremely successfully. Age needs to be considered alongside other variables such as motivation and aptitude (Lambelet & Berthele 2015; Zein 2017). In a review of classroom-based studies of age and second-language learning, Abello-Contesse (2009) concludes that not only is there a lack of direct correlation between an earlier start and more successful/rapid L2 development ‘but also for a strong tendency for older children and teenagers to be more efficient learners’. He goes on to cite research which showed that ‘learners whose exposure to the L2 began at age 11 consistently displayed higher levels of proficiency than those for whom it began at 4 or 8’ (2009: 171). All this means that the second tenet or myth can be reformulated in the following way:

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to learn a second language, you don’t have to start as early as possible; indeed a later start has proved to be beneficial.

Questioning the Third Myth ‘The home language gets in the way of learning a second language’. It is hard to know the origins of this belief, as all research shows that the opposite is true. In other words, far from getting in the way, the first language acts as a bridge to second and third-language learning. What is important, however, is to ensure that the child first develops fluency and literacy in the first language. As Benson (2008: 4), points out, building a strong foundation in the first language helps the learning of a second language more than too much early exposure to the second language. Children are able to transfer the first-language skills they have developed to learning later languages (Cummins 2008). In order to facilitate second and later-language learning therefore, governments would do well to invest in children’s first-language learning. The initial focus should be on developing fluency and literacy in the child’s first language. Once this has been achieved, the child’s readiness and ability to learn second and later languages will be greatly enhanced. This also argues for a later introduction of English in the Asian school curricula. As Wong has argued in her study of teachers of minority languages in Myanmar, ‘local languages should be used in early primary education’ (Wong 2017: 222). Reformulating the Tenets/Myths To sum up this section, Benson’s three tenets/myths can be reformulated in the following way: (i) only use a second language as a medium of instruction after at least five years learning it as a subject; (ii) to learn a second language, you don’t have to start early; indeed a later start has shown to be beneficial; and (iii) developing fluency and literacy in the first language will help the learning of second and later languages. I now turn to the issue of teacher standards and qualifications. Teacher Standards, Qualifications and Assessment Some form of agreed-upon minimal standards and qualifications for English language teachers is needed across ASEAN for two major reasons. The first is

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to ensure that English teachers in each of ASEAN countries reach these minimum qualifications and standards; the second is to encourage English language teacher mobility across ASEAN. Setting these standards is likely to be an extremely complex task and, as will be argued, best met by ASEAN (or SEAMEO3) establishing a regional committee of experts to work together to develop these qualifications and standards. Currently, several ASEAN countries are attempting to establish minimum qualifications and standards separately. A joint ASEAN-wide approach is more likely to lead to outcomes that are accepted by all. A major problem at the outset concerns the wide range of proficiency of English teachers across ASEAN currently. For example, English teachers in Singapore both have high levels of proficiency in English and are all well qualified having received degrees through the National Institute of Education. This is to be contrasted with the very low levels of proficiency in English in other countries of ASEAN, as the following examples from Myanmar and Vietnam will show. Recent surveys of English language teachers in Myanmar (Drinan 2013) make sobering reading. In Myanmar, the government policy is that all institutes of higher education are to use English as a medium of instruction. This is despite the fact that levels of English proficiency among both staff and students have been found to be inadequate for the successful teaching of content through English. A recent survey of staff across a number of universities in Myanmar (Thant 2016) showed that they overwhelmingly favoured a system of bilingual education, reporting that it was impossible for them to teach and for students to learn solely in English. The use of Burmese was therefore essential. A further study (Khaing 2016) showed that a great number of English language teachers in Myanmar scored A0 (the lowest possible level on the Common European Framework of Reference, CEFR, bands) when being tested on their Englishspeaking skills, with the majority scoring only A2. The teachers themselves reported that they could not use EMI, as their own levels of English were so poor. Drinan has summarised the situation with regard EMI in Myanmar. I cited an excerpt from Drinan’s report in Chapter 9. I cite it gain here along with two further excerpts from her report. (Drinan 2013: 8): Using English as a Medium of Instruction (MoI): this is fundamentally not working for teaching Maths and Science as few teachers can use English, let alone, teach another subject in English. Students are not learning or understanding important concepts in Maths and Science. They merely remember the technical terms in English for the tests. Most teachers use a mix of Myanmar (for explanation) and English (for technical terms). Teachers’ language is fossilised, meaning they seldom develop further than the grade they are teaching. More worrying is that teachers are not even at that level, as many have just memorised the textbooks they are ‘teaching’. 3

SEAMEO stands for the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organisation.

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Likewise students’ proficiency levels remain very low – possibly reaching preintermediate by Grade 11 but most leaving school with elementary English.

Vietnam is working to establish its own assessment and teacher competency frameworks. The National Foreign Language 2020 project (FNL 2020) aims to introduce English at Grade 3 rather than at Grade 6 in the near future. FNL 2020 is also creating unified language proficiency benchmarks for students and teachers. These benchmarks are based on the Common European Framework for Reference (CEFR).4 The aim is for all primary and lower secondary English teachers be at the B2 level while upper secondary and university teachers should attain the C1 level (Dudzik & Nguyen 2015: 47).5 Here are examples of speaking tasks that people who have attained B2 and C1 levels should be able to perform: B2 Can give clear, systematically developed descriptions and presentations, with appropriate highlighting of significant points, and relevant supporting detail. Can give clear, detailed descriptions and presentations on a wide range of subjects related to his/her field of interest, expanding and supporting ideas with subsidiary points and relevant examples. C1 Can give clear, detailed descriptions and presentations on complex subjects, integrating sub themes, developing particular points and rounding off with an appropriate conclusion.

As noted, Vietnam’s goal is to ensure that all its English teachers are at B2 level (primary and lower secondary) and at C1 level (upper secondary and university). To what extent is this a realistic or achievable aim? The results of nationwide testing indicate that the aim is unrealistic in the extreme. For example, in 2011 testing of English language teachers, 97 per cent of primary teachers and 93 per cent of lower secondary teachers fell below the B2 level; 96 per cent of upper secondary school teachers fell below the C1 level (Dudzik & Nguyen 2015: 48). In further tests in 2013, 83 per cent of primary school English teachers fell below the B1 level, 87 per cent of lower secondary ELTs were below the B2 level and 92 per cent of upper secondary ELTs fell below the C1 level (Dudzik & Nguyen 2015: 48). Given these results it is not surprising to learn that the founding director of NFL 2020, Nguyen Ngoc Hung, has stated that the English language teaching

4 5

The recently announced Malaysia English Assessment scheme is also using the CEFR bands as benchmarks. For the latest version of these scales, see online: https://rm.coe.int/common-europeanframework-of-reference-for-languages-learning-teaching/168074a4e2.

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targets cannot be met without international investment and cooperation. The end date of the FNL 2020 project has also had to be extended to 2025. As Dudzik and Nguyen (2015) argue, there is an overwhelming need for an overall ASEAN approach to these issues, particularly with regard the issues of teacher and student assessment. They call for ASEAN-wide proficiency benchmarks and ELT competency frameworks to be developed, which would include creating a ‘common regional proficiency assessment framework’ (2015: 61) and ‘regional English teacher competency assessment tools’ (2015: 62). They also call for the development of relevant curricula (such as SE Asian cultures) and that the teaching of English should ‘no longer be by teaching and assessing only NS (native speaker) varieties of English, but also by introducing those spoken in neighbouring countries and by other regional multilingual speakers such as Singaporeans and Malaysians’ (2015: 60). ASEAN-centred curricula is also recommended by Widiati and Hayati (2015). In their review of teacher professional education in Indonesia, including the one-year Pendidikan Profesi Guru (PPG), they acknowledge that ‘there needs to be more explicit integration of the ASEAN curriculum so that the PPG students have adequate knowledge and skills on how to educate their future students about ASEAN identity and ASEAN integration through their English classes’ (2015: 138); and they recommend the ASEAN Curriculum Sourcebooks as providing examples of relevant materials. To conclude, therefore, it is suggested that any assessment tools of English language teachers and students should be regionally developed. Similarly, benchmarks for teacher competencies should be developed by a regional ASEAN–SEAMEO group. Assessment must also be matched to the curricula and it is recommended that new curricula be developed so that ASEAN students of English can develop knowledge about, and intercultural competence in, ASEAN cultures. The ASEAN Curriculum Sourcebook recommended represents an excellent example of what can be achieved. In short, capacity building of all English language teachers and student teachers is needed at all levels of the education sector, initially and specifically at the institutes providing pre-service and in-service training to teachers (Institutes of Education, Education Colleges and the National English Language Centre). Above all, capacity building needs to be undertaken with the understanding that English is now an Asian language. Capacity building needs to encompass the development of: The training of trainers (instructors); teacher training at pre-service and in-service; quality ELT materials with an Asian focus; quality teaching practice with supported observation and feedback provided; and equitable and authentic formative and summative assessment.

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Capacity building for English language trainers and teachers should not be conceptualised as one-off refresher courses but as part of an integral comprehensive framework for continuing professional development which is linked to teacher competencies and learner outcomes. Incentives for teachers who have successfully completed professional development courses need also to be developed; for example, in terms of salary increases and/or promotion. An adequate salary is essential. Too many English teachers across Asia are currently being forced to work a series of jobs in order to earn enough to support themselves and their families. This obviously has a negative impact on their availability to attend professional development courses and their ability to develop innovative materials, to say nothing of the impossibility of establishing good teacher–student rapport under such burdensome conditions. Capacity building is also necessary for all university lecturers who either teach English as a subject or use it as a medium of instruction. All universities have English departments which, in the medium to long term, will have a more crucial role to play in terms of teaching and learning as more subjects are taught through the medium of English. Whilst many instructors pride themselves on having advanced language skills, it will be important to ensure they know how to transfer their knowledge to their students (i.e., know how to teach). Capacity building is thus needed across the education sector. The creation of a holistic English language-in-education policy that tackles teachers’ proficiency, academic qualifications, teaching experience and professional support is essential (Zein & Hiang 2017: 238). In the final section of this chapter, I present five proposals for an innovative approach to English-language teaching within ASEAN and Asia more generally. Five Principles of the Lingua Franca Approach Principle#1 The native speaker of English is not the linguistic target. Mutual intelligibility is the goal. Principle#2 The native speaker’s culture is not the cultural target. Intercultural competence in relevant cultures is the goal. Principle#3 Local multilinguals who are suitably trained provide the most appropriate English language teachers. Principle #4 Lingua franca environments provide excellent learning environments for lingua franca speakers Principle #5 Assessment must be relevant to the ASEAN/Asian context Principle#1 Mutual Intelligibility Is the Goal The role of English as a lingua franca in Asia means that English is primarily used between multilinguals whose first languages comprise a variety of Asian

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languages and who have learned English as an additional language. There is no need for people to approximate native-speaker norms. As argued in the discussion of whether to start early or late, there is no need for people to sound like native speakers of English (Jenkins 2000, 2007; Walker 2010). Apart from the obvious point that there are many varieties of nativespeaker English, all of which are distinguished by different accents and pronunciation so that the notion of a native-speaker pronunciation is fuzzy at best, the development of new varieties of English across the world has added to the range of pronunciation and accents. In addition to the Englishes of Britain and the United States, for example, I have described in this book the presence of several varieties of Asian English, such as Indian, Filipino and Singaporean. The increasing role of English as an international lingua franca also means that more and more multilinguals who have learned English as an additional language are using English internationally. This inevitably means that the number of different accents and pronunciations of English are legion. In such circumstances, it is not sounding like a native speaker which is important, it is mutual intelligibility. Mutual intelligibility means that the interactants in any communicative activity are able to understand each other, despite the possible use of non-standard forms (Deterding 2013). And being a native speaker is no guarantee of mutual intelligibility (Kirkpatrick, Deterding & Wong 2008; Smith & Rafiqzad 1979). In any ELF context, what is therefore important is for multilingual users of ELF to be mutually intelligible when communicating with their fellow multilingual ELF users. In Chapter 5, I described and itemised a range of communicative strategies used by ELF speakers in order to ensure successful communication and/or repair breakdowns in communication or misunderstandings. Such strategies could become an integral part of the language-teaching curriculum. I noted in earlier chapters how the use of non-standard morphosyntactic forms did not necessarily cause problems in communication. I also stressed that vernacular varieties of English in native-speaking inner-circle countries were also characterised by their use of non-standard forms. Non-standard forms are a natural part of all English vernaculars. If mutual intelligibility is to be the major goal of English teaching, then the curriculum needs to focus on linguistic features that may cause misunderstanding. In discussing phonological features, Jenkins (2000) has called such features ‘the lingua franca core’ or LFC. The LFC comprises phonological features which have been empirically shown to be important for intelligibility when English is being used as a lingua franca among non-native speakers. The suggestion is that these core features be included in the languageteaching curriculum. What the LFC does is ‘reduce the number of pronunciation features to be learnt to those who opt for an ELF pronunciation syllabus, and thus reduce the size of the task while increasing teachability

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(Jenkins 2000: 27). Other less problematic phonological features (in terms of ELF intelligibility) are classified as non-core. These non-core items will vary, being largely dependent upon the linguistic background of the speakers. The classroom model therefore ‘is not the LFC but the local teacher whose accent incorporates both the core features and the local version of the noncore items’ (2000: 25). ELF proficiency levels are thus not determined by their degree of closeness to native-speaker norms, but are derived from ELF speakers themselves. Adapting an ELF-approach to the teaching of English will meet with initial resistance from teachers. ELF is not a stable variety; it is a use of English that is constantly being negotiated and its surface features will depend on the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the speakers in any given interaction (Kirkpatrick & Schaller-Schwaner 2020). But by an ELF approach, I mean a shift of classroom emphasis from an adherence to an idealised set of nativespeaker norms to a curriculum that will help learners communicate successfully using English. Principle#2 Intercultural Competence Is the Goal The cultures traditionally associated with English, such as British and American cultures, are not necessarily directly relevant to ELF users of English. In the ASEAN context, the curriculum needs to focus on the cultures that comprise ASEAN (Honna 2008). This is all the more important as government schools in ASEAN typically do not offer courses in any of the national languages of the group, other than their own, of course. The English curriculum therefore could provide these students with the opportunity of at least learning about the cultures of their region. The importance of this can be gauged by noting that ASEAN is culturally extremely diverse. Not only are the major religions of Buddhism (Thailand, for example), Islam (Indonesia, for example), and Christianity (the Philippines, for example) worshipped across the group, there are also literally hundreds of ethnic groups represented within the nations of ASEAN. The ELT curriculum therefore provides an opportunity to develop ASEAN intercultural competence in the citizens of ASEAN countries. The same holds true for Asia as a whole. The cultural curriculum can be enhanced by including local literatures in English and popular culture. As we saw in Chapter 6, there is an abundance of literature written in English by Asian authors. In ASEAN itself, there are numerous writers who have produced a wide range of literature in English. Reading these authors not only gives the reader an insight into local cultures, but also into ways in which English can be adapted to reflect local cultural values. Films, popular music/culture and social media are also rich sources for this type of material.

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This is, of course, not to say that native-speaking cultures should necessarily be excluded from an ELF-aware curriculum. Materials and curricula must be sensitive to specific contexts and the real needs of the learners. For example, students preparing to go and study in English-speaking countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom or the United States will obviously need to become familiar with the cultural norms of those countries. Even here, though, it should be stressed that these countries are all home to extraordinary linguistic and cultural diversity. For example, many university academics are multilinguals for whom English is an additional language. You are as likely to be taught by a lecturer for whom English is an additional language as by a nativespeaking lecturer in universities in the anglophone world. Principle#3 Well-Trained ELF Teachers Make Good English-Language Teachers There has been a long struggle to promote and validate the non-native-speaker teacher of English. Many scholars, themselves non-native speakers of English, have argued that a prejudice against non-native-speaker teachers of English exists (e.g., Braine 2010; Moussu & Lurda 2008). The lingua franca approach really requires non-native-speaker teachers of English. Remembering that the language learning goal is not to approximate native-speaker norms, but to be able to interact successfully with fellow ELF users, it follows that a multilingual who is proficient in English and who has the relevant teaching qualifications represents the most appropriate teacher. Being multilingual provides ELF-aware teachers with obvious advantages as language teachers, especially if they also speak the language(s) of their students. First, they will have successfully accomplished what they are setting out to teach and thus have empathy with and an understanding of the problems that their students face (Medgyes 2002). Second, being multilinguals who are proficient in English and who come from the same or similar linguistic backgrounds as their students, they not only represent good role models for their students, they also provide the most appropriate linguistic models for them. The local multilingual teacher can provide the linguistic target for their students. Third, local multilingual teachers with intercultural competence can offer cultural insights for their students. It has traditionally been assumed that a great advantage of native-speaker teachers is that they can offer students a guide to the target culture (Moussu & Lurda 2008). But, as previously argued, the cultures the ELF learners need to know are the cultures found within specific ELF contexts. Thus the ELF-aware English language teacher needs intercultural competence in relevant cultures, coupled with the ability to transmit or instil this intercultural competence in the learners.

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The fourth reason why the local multilingual and ELF-aware teacher is an appropriate English language teacher is the ability to use the language of the students to help them learn English. That is to say, that a bi- or multilingual pedagogy can be applied in the classroom. There are many ways in which the first language of the students can be exploited in the learning of the second language and these have been documented by several language-teaching professionals and scholars (e.g., Littlewood & Yu 2009; Swain, Kirkpatrick & Cummins 2011). The fundamental principle to be adhered to is that the first language must be used in such a way as to help the student learn the second language. The fifth reason why the multilingual ELF-aware teacher is the preferred English language teacher is that an obvious goal of language learning is to develop multilinguals. It is important to establish a classroom philosophy through which the English language learner is not judged against nativespeaker norms and thus constantly evaluated as falling short of the mark, but is judged as a language learner who is developing multilingual proficiency. The students should be seen as becoming linguistically sophisticated multilinguals. They should not be seen or judged as failed or deficient native speakers. As Garcia (2009: 386) has argued, we must ‘avoid the inequities in comparing bilingual children to a monolingual child in one of the languages’. Principle #4 ELF Environments Provide Excellent ELF Learning Opportunities It is commonplace to assume that the best way to learn a language is to go to where the language is spoken as a native language. In many cases, this may well be true. However, in the contexts with which we are dealing, sending students to learn English in native-speaking countries may not be the most effective way of developing English proficiency among the learners. Rather, sending them to countries where English is used as a lingua franca may be far more beneficial. An example may help make this clear. A tertiary institution in Asia has a relationship with a British university and routinely sends its third-year students there for ten weeks to develop their proficiency in English. The British university in question is in a part of England where the local variety of English is heavily accented and difficult to understand – even for English speakers from other parts of England. The Asian students are unlikely to make much progress in their English by communicating with the locals. At the British university itself, if placed in tutorial or seminar groups with native-speaker students, the exchange students often find themselves unable to participate fully as they are not familiar with native-speaker turn-taking and turn-stealing conventions (Rusdi 1999). They also feel awkward as they assume that their

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English will be evaluated against native-speaker norms. This may well lead them to remain silent observers rather than active participants. This type of situation is common. A finding of research into the experience of international students in anglophone centres is that their multilingual backgrounds tend to be seen as a problem rather than a resource, and that they tend to mix more easily with fellow international students rather than with local students (Liddicoat, Eisenchlas & Trevaskes 2003; Preece 2011). Instead, therefore, of sending students to anglophone centres such as Australia, England or the United States with the aim of improving their English proficiency, consideration should be given to sending them to places where English is naturally used as a lingua franca. Within Asia, countries such as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and the Philippines all provide examples of sites where English is regularly used as a lingua franca and as a language of interethnic communication. The great advantage of such sites for Asian learners of English is, paradoxically, that the native speaker is absent. Instead, English is being naturally used as a lingua franca between Asian multilinguals. Students will find the linguistic environment less threatening and will feel more comfortable using English. At the same time, of course, they will develop greater understanding of the cultures in which they are living. Not only will their English language proficiency improve, so will their intercultural proficiency. Principle #5 ELF-Aware Teaching Needs ELF Assessment There is no point adopting the principles outlined here and then assessing the students against native-speaker norms and cultures. Assessment must be closely aligned with what is being taught. This means that students need to be assessed on how successfully they can use English in ELF settings. This, in turn, means developing measures of functional proficiency – whether students are able to perform certain tasks in the language – as opposed to measuring how closely the students’ English conforms to native-speaker norms. For example, a pronunciation benchmark that only awards the top level to speakers whose accent betrays no first-language influence is precisely the type of benchmark that needs to be discarded. Such benchmarks need to be replaced with criteria that measure how successfully students can get their messages across and perform certain linguistic tasks. As previously argued, in the context of ASEAN, there is an overwhelming need for an overall ASEAN approach to these issues, particularly with regard to the issues of teacher and student assessment (Dudzik & Nguyen 2015). Conclusion In this chapter, I have reviewed the current situation with regard to the teaching of English across ASEAN and raised a number of issues and challenges. These

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concern when best to introduce English, whether it should be introduced as a medium of instruction or as a subject, and what type of English should be taught. I have also presented five proposals for the teaching of English within ASEAN, one of which recommends delaying the teaching of English until students have developed literacy in their home and national language(s). It may seem odd that, while arguing throughout the book that English is a language both in and of Asia, I should here be arguing for students to delay learning English until they have developed literacy and fluency in their home and national languages. But this proposal is based on the belief, backed up by research, that by delaying English until this time, students are likely to be more successful at learning it. As we have seen, the current language education policies in the great majority of Asian educational systems are for children to learn the respective national language and English. Belief in ‘the earlier the better’ also means that English is being introduced earlier and earlier into the language curriculum. But, has been indicated, this seldom results in better learning outcomes. Indeed, introducing English too early, as the UNESCO Report shows, results in children dropping out of primary school. Instead of learning English, they fail to learn it, and also are in danger of failing in other subjects. By delaying English, children can develop fluency in their home and national languages – and thus a sense of identity – while later being able to add English to their multilingual repertoire. Delaying English is not necessarily denying English; it is facilitating it. In the next chapter, I summarise the arguments presented throughout the book and draw conclusions.

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Conclusion

In this book, I have argued that English is a language both in Asia and of Asia. English is an Asian language. In Chapter 1, I reviewed the development of English in selected countries of Asia, including India, China and the ten nations which make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), drawing comparisons and noting the differences and similarities between them. I used Kachru’s ‘circles’ classification but argued that, even in those countries classified as ‘expanding circle’ countries in which English was restricted to being taught in schools as a foreign language, it is now playing far greater roles. Not only are different varieties of Asian English developing in many countries of Asia, English is now also being increasingly used as a lingua franca between Asian multilinguals across Asia. Chapter 2 introduced the Asian Corpus of English (ACE), a corpus of naturally occurring English being used as a lingua franca by Asian multilinguals and from which examples are drawn throughout the book. In Chapter 3, I contrasted Asian varieties of English with the use of English as a lingua franca, arguing that local varieties of English act primarily, but not exclusively, as markers of identity for speakers who share similar linguistic and cultural backgrounds. As an example, Singaporeans use Singaporean English as a marker of Singaporean identity. In contrast, when English is used as a lingua franca, its primary, but not sole, function is as a medium of communication between people who come from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. I also noted that Asian varieties of English developed in countries that were colonised by English speaking empires and where English was, as it were, thrust upon them. In the case of English as a lingua franca, however, English has been chosen by Asian multilinguals to act in this role. In this case, English has, as it were, been invited in. Chapter 4 then gave examples of English being used as a lingua franca by Asian multilinguals and illustrated the diverse range of topics they discuss when using ELF. Not surprisingly, these topics are Asian-centric and the contexts in which they are discussed range from formal to informal. In Chapter 5, I looked at how the speakers’ first languages can influence their English. I showed how Asian varieties of English are characterised by the use of code-mixing and the transfer of pragmatic norms. I also showed that English 196

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as a lingua franca is essentially a multilingual phenomenon. Even though the use of code-mixing is not as much in evidence in ELF use as it is in local varieties of English, it does occur. ELF can be influenced by any of the languages in its speakers’ repertoires (Schaller-Schwaner and Kirkpatrick 2020). The chapter concluded with an illustration of the types of communicative strategies that ELF users adopt to ensure successful communication. Chapter 6 extended the discussion of code-mixing and exemplified how words from local languages have entered Asian varieties of English to allow their speakers to discuss their everyday lived experiences and local cultural phenomena. I extended this discussion to include Asian literatures written in English to illustrate how Asian writers have stretched and adapted English. Its adoption as a literary language and its ‘vernacular transformations’ (Ashcroft 2016: 126) has been a major factor in making English a language, not only in, but of Asia. Chapter 7 focussed on the use of non-standard morphosyntactic forms in Asian varieties of English, while stressing that the use of such forms are also common in vernacular varieties of inner circle and native-speaker Englishes. I argued that the fact that many of the non-standard morphosyntactic forms which occur in Asian varieties of English also occur in other vernacular varieties of English suggest that the speakers’ first languages may not play as important role in explaining the presence of these non-standard morphosyntactic forms as has been thought. Influences from the speakers’ first languages are more evident in code-mixing and the transfer of discourse markers and pragmatic norms. In any event, the presence of non-standard forms is common and natural in all vernacular varieties of English. In Chapter 8, I looked at the roles English is playing across Asia within the fields of law, religion and popular culture. I noted that in many countries English law is still used despite these countries having been independent for several decades. It remains the preferred language of the higher courts in countries and places even where English is not so widely spoken, as in Hong Kong and much of South Asia. English also plays a key role in religions across Asia, with, for example, ‘English for Islamic purposes’ being taught in many countries. I quoted an Indonesian Muslim scholar saying that English ‘is also necessary for us to master English for proseletyising’. The chapter concluded with examples of how English is being used in popular culture in contexts as different as South Korea and Mongolia. English is being used in traditional fields such as law, culturally embedded fields such as religion and, at the same time, it is being creatively adapted by young people across Asia. Chapters 9 and 10 looked at how English is being taught and used in education across Asia. With limited exceptions, such as in the Philippines where some local languages are being used as media of instruction in the early years of primary school, English is becoming increasingly important as a language of education.

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There is a discernible trend for countries across the region of making their respective national language and English the two major languages of education, and of introducing English earlier and earlier into the school curriculum in the belief of ‘the earlier the better’. I argued that this policy was unlikely to result in the successful learning of English and that English would be better delayed until children have achieved fluency and literacy in their mother tongue and the national language. I also argued that the role of English as a lingua franca across Asia should be reflected in the way English was taught, and presented proposals for adopting a lingua franca approach to the teaching of English, whereby the major goal would be to be able to use English for successful communication with fellow multilinguals, rather than striving to approximate idealised native-speaker varieties of English such as British or American. The title of this book is Is English an Asian language? I hope I have been able to show that it is indeed an Asian language and that it is both in Asia and of Asia. In the Introduction, I cited Kachru’s list of uses of English (1998: 102–3). They were: (i) as a vehicle of linguistic communication across distinct linguistic and cultural groups; (ii) as a nativised medium for articulating local identities within and across Asia; (iii) as one of the pan-Asian languages of creativity; (iv) as a language that has developed its own subvarieties indicating penetration at various levels; (v) as a language that continues to elicit a unique love–hate relationship that, nevertheless, has not seriously impeded its spread, function and prestige. To address these in turn, the use of English as a lingua franca across Asia makes it a vehicle of linguistic communication across distinct linguistic and cultural groups. Its position as the sole working language of ASEAN is just one example of how it fulfils this function. The development of Asian varieties of English such as Indian, Singaporean and Filipino illustrates how English has become a medium of articulating local identities; and that these varieties comprise subvarieties. As Gargesh (2008) noted more than a decade ago, the term Indian English refers to ‘a number of varieties of English used as a second language in India’ (2008: 231). I have also shown how English in Asia functions as a pan-Asian language of creativity, with examples from Asian literatures written in English and its role in popular culture. And that it elicits a love–hate relationship can be seen by requoting from Chapter 6 the contrasting views of the Pakistani novelist Sidhwa and the Sri Lankan poet, Wikkramasinha. English . . . is no longer a monopoly of the British. We the ex-colonised have subjugated the language, beaten it on its head and made it ours. (Sidhwa 1996: 231)

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I have come to realise that I am writing the language of the most despicable and loathsome people on earth: I have no wish to extend its life and range, enrich its totality. To write in English is a form of cultural treason. I have had for the future to think of a way of circumventing this treason. I propose to do this by making my writing entirely immoralist and destructive. (cited in Canagarajah 1994: 375)

So, English in Asia fulfils all the five uses enumerated by Kachru. I have also shown how it retains colonial-period roles – as a language of law, for example – and has developed new roles – as the working language of ASEAN, for example. And its ever-increasing role as a language of education across all levels from kindergarten to tertiary institutions offers further evidence of its importance as a language both in and of Asia. In his erudite and stimulating book, The Last Lingua Franca, Ostler (2010) predicted that English is likely to decrease in significance, as its roles will diminish, along with the number of people who speak it as a first language. Instead, new nations will embrace ‘multilinguality’ (2010: 285). I disagree with Ostler. In Asia, far from diminishing, the roles of English are growing, with new roles being found both locally and regionally. I also question Ostler’s claim that the numbers of people who speak English as a first language are diminishing. In parts of Asia, English is becoming the first language. In Singapore, for example, in the thirty years between 1980 and 2010, the numbers of Singaporeans, no matter of which ethnicity, Chinese, Malay or Indian, who reported that English was the predominant language of the home increased. In 1980, only 10 per cent of Chinese Singaporeans reported English as the dominant home language. This figure had increased to 32.6 per cent by 2010. The comparable percentages for Malay Singaporeans were from 2.3 per cent in 1980 to 17 per cent in 2010 and, for Indian Singaporeans, from 24.3 per cent in 1980 to 41 per cent in 2010 (Jain and Wee 2019: 280). At the same time, the numbers of Asian multilinguals who speak English as an additional language and who have gained ownership over the language with their ability to shape and adapt it to reflect their own cultural values has increased exponentially. There are now many times more multilingual users of English than there are native speakers of it. English is therefore likely to remain both the main lingua franca of Asia and to continue to develop localised roles in Asia for the foreseeable future. In this sense, Anglicists who promote the teaching and learning of English over local languages, have, generally speaking, been more influential than Orientalists who promote the teaching and learning of Asian languages. But the English promoted by the Anglicists is a standard English. This is an English that is neither in Asia or of Asia. The English which is of Asia is represented not by a standard English, but by the many vernacular varieties of Asian English, including creatively reshaped literary Englishes and the Englishes of popular culture. English plays the role of a lingua franca, as the medium of

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communication, among Asian multilinguals. These are the Englishes and functions of English that will continue to develop, as they express the cultural needs and lived experiences of their users. These are the Englishes that are in and of Asia. ‘The spread of English is inescapably related to the resistance to Standard English’ (Ashcroft 2016: 112). I have described how Englishes and the use of English as a lingua franca have developed across Asia but I record this with no sense of triumphalism. As I have argued, the priority being attached to English as a language of education and its resultant increasingly early introduction to the primary school curricula in most nations across Asia is misplaced. Introducing English too early into the primary curriculum creates at least two unwanted consequences. The first is that English often replaces a local language in the curriculum, which deprives those children who are not speakers of their respective national languages the opportunity to learn in their home language. As the Indonesian scholar, Hadisantosa observed: With the emerging and mushrooming demand for English, schools then drop the local language in order to give more time to the English teaching. As a result, in the long run, children and the younger generation can no longer speak the local language. This is culturally and linguistically pitiful. (Hadisantosa, 2010: 31)

The second unwanted consequence of too-early an introduction of English is that it leads to many children dropping out of primary school, meaning that they not only fail to learn English, but, tragically, fail to complete even primary education. Given the crucially important roles that English is playing across Asia, it clearly must be a language of education. No Minister of Education would last long in her or his portfolio if they were to announce that English would be removed from the school curriculum. But I argue that the primary school curriculum should prioritise the teaching of the home language and the respective national language and that the teaching of English can be delayed until the children are at least eleven. In this way, Asian children have more chance of being able to graduate from school multilingual in their home language and their national language – and thus be self-confident in their own identity – while having a high level of proficiency in English. I have suggested a new ‘lingua franca approach’ to the teaching of English. In short, this recognises that English is now a language in and of Asia and is being shaped and developed by Asian multilinguals. English should be taught as an Asian language, with Asian multilinguals acting as teachers and models for the students, with Asian-centric teaching materials, and with communicative success as the major goal, rather adherence to native-speaker norms. English is now a language in and of Asia. But this English is many things. It includes varieties of Asian Englishes and all their subvarieties. It includes the use of English as a lingua franca by Asian multilinguals. I would like to think it

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can become a companion Asian language alongside other languages of Asia, rather than be in competition with them. This will require policy makers to consider altering the direction of current language-in-education policy across most of Asia (Kirkpatrick and Liddicoat 2019) and make the primary school a nurturing environment for local languages while delaying the teaching of English and then teaching it as an Asian language, recognising its many roles in Asia. In this way, I believe, a pan-Asian answer can be provided to the question raised by Graddol in the context of India: How can the benefits of English be enjoyed without damaging the potential that India’s multilingualism brings, as a source of unique identity in a globalised world, of cultural richness, and an important future economic resource? (2010: 124)

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Index

‘A Battle of the Songs’, 157 ‘because-therefore’ sequencing, 93, 144 ‘textual-translation’ method, 169 ‘The earlier the better’, 183, 195 ‘whimperatives’, 90, 91, 93 Acculturation, 58, 59 Ad hoc norms, 94, 96 Anglicists, 13, 15, 18, 199 ASEAN Charter, 62, 63, 180, 181 ASEAN Curriculum Sourcebook, the, 188, Asia-centric, 5, 6, 7, 34, 71 Asian Corpus of English (ACE), 4, 30, 31, 60, 65, 196 Asian English, dictionary of, 114 Asian Englishes, 5, 122, 128, 134, 141, 144, 200 Asian Englishes, linguistic features of, 5 Asian multilinguals, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 29, 34, 45, 52, 65, 69, 70, 71, 78, 87, 89, 108, 140, 181, 184, 194, 196, 199, 200 Asian varieties of English, 1 Asian way / ASEAN way, 7, 74, 76, 101 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), 171 Assessment, 34, 169, 179, 187, 188, 194 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 4, 10, 12, 62, 151, 163, 179, 196 Australian Aboriginal languages, 111 Australian English, 54, 111, 113, 114, 146 Bahasa Indonesia, 26, 63 Bangkok Declaration, 62, 63, 180 Bilingual education, 165, 186 Bilingual education policy (BEP), 25, 164 Bilingual policy, 22, 23, 166 Bologna Declaration, 171 Breakdowns in communication, 72, 78, 90, 92, 93, 148, 190 Brunei, 5, 12, 23, 24, 30, 35, 37, 63, 79, 118, 151, 180, 194 Bruneian English/Brunei English, 58, 59, 60, 139, 181 Butler’s 5 criteria, 58

Cambodia, 12, 21, 27, 63, 64, 180, 181 Cantonese, 22, 58, 78, 80, 93, 108, 134, 149, 155, 157, 166, 167, 169, 170 Capacity building, 188, 189 China’s Universities College Admissions Schemes (UCAS), 172 Chinese characters, 17, 167 Chinese English, 117, 144, 171 Chinese Language Law, the, 170 Chinese law, 150, 152 Chinese University of Hong Kong, 172 Chinese variety of English, 20, 59 Clipping, 157 Code switching, 86 Code-mixing, 5, 7, 55, 60, 61, 62, 69, 70, 71, 90, 95, 97, 98, 108, 139, 150, 151, 196, 197 Colloquial Singaporean English/Colloquial Singapore English, 61, 134, 157 Common European Framework for Reference (CEFR), the, 187 Communicative strategies, 6, 7, 100, 102, 106, 107, 108, 190, 197 Communicative strategies, table of, 109 Co-operative modelling, 100 Cooperative principle, the, 95 Copula deletion, 134, 135, 136 Countability, 138 Court proceedings, 150 Cultural conceptualisations, 6, 91, 96 Cultural Revolution, 17, 18 Discourse markers, 6, 59, 60, 70, 75, 97, 98, 100, 197 Discourse particles, 88, 97, 139 Doi Moi policy, 27 Doric, the, 124, 130, 131 Dual Language Programme (DLP), the, 177 Dwibahasa policy, 23 Early Englishes, 128 East India Company (EIC), 12 Education Act of India, 13

217

218

Index

Education for All, 183 ELF-approach, 191 Endonormative stabilisation, 57 English and popular culture, 148, 156, 160, 198, 199 English and religion, 26, 152, 155, 197 English and the law, 149 English as a lingua franca, 1, 5, 6, 7, 30, 53, 71, 91 English as an additional language, 3 English as an Asian language, 3 English for Islamic values, 9, 154 English proficiency, 15, 72, 169, 186, 193, 194 English speakers in China, 16, 17 English speakers in India, 12, 13 English, early introduction of, 65 English, institutionalised variety of, 4 English, performance variety of, 4 English, roles of, 1, 29, 53, 160, 179, 199 Englishes of England, 131 Etymology, 113 Exonormative stabilisation, 57 Expanding Circle countries, 10, 53, 65, 141, 155, 156 Filipino, 1, 3, 25, 54, 56, 63, 69, 138, 151, 164, 165, 166, 173, 183, 190, 198 Filipino call-centre industry, 166 Filipino English, 25, 163, 164, 181 Fine-tuning, 170 Formality, levels of/level of, 6, 8, 71, 86, 135, 136 Gao kao, 170 Gayspeak, 119 General U Ne Win, 173 Global 30 Project, the, 173 Greeting, forms of, 91 Guanxi, 59, 72 Ha Jin, Chinese author, 116, 119, 120, 123 Handover of 1997, 148, 149, 166, 169 High stake exchanges, 82 High stakes contexts, 87, 108 Higher education, 9, 21, 34, 65, 156, 162, 170, 173, 175, 186 Highly Immersive Programme (HIP), the, 177 Hobson Jobson, 111, 112, 113 Hong Kong, 3, 5, 6, 9, 16, 30, 32, 34, 35, 37, 79, 80, 87, 92, 108, 115, 148, 149, 151, 155, 157, 158, 159, 163, 166, 167, 169, 170, 172, 197 House of Commons, 13 Hybridisation, 59, 60, 118, 122

Identity marker, 53, 62, 69, 141 Identity-communication continuum (ICC), 53 Idioms, use of, 101 India, Constitution of, 14 Indian English, 54, 56, 57, 59, 92, 111, 112, 113, 118, 198 Indonesia, 12, 21, 25, 26, 29, 62, 63, 76, 102, 140, 151, 154, 163, 180, 181, 188, 191 Inner Circle countries, 11, 56 Inner circle Englishes, 133 Intercultural competence, 188, 191, 192 International education, 173 Japanese English, 119 Jawhar Hassan, 75 Komyson sa Wakang Filipino, 164 Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), 174 Koreanised English, 159 K-pop, 159 Lakdasa Wikkramasinha, 124 Language Law (China), 18 Language of education, English as a, 9, 200 Language policy, 24, 163, 169, 170, 171, 174, 175 Language proficiency benchmarks, 187 Language reform, 16, 167 Laos, 12, 21, 27, 28, 29, 63, 142, 180, 181 Last Lingua Franca, the, 199 Legal systems, 9, 148, 151 Lingua franca approach, 9, 192, 198, 200 Lingua franca approach, principles of, 189, 191, 192, 193, 194 Lingua franca core, the (LFC), 190 Linguistic diversity, 24, 63, 140, 160 Linguistic features, transfer of, 90 Literary Englishes, 199 Literatures in English, 113, 191 Local languages, 2, 5, 8, 13, 22, 55, 58, 59, 65, 96, 121, 162, 163, 164, 165, 178, 179, 184, 197, 199 Local languages as languages of education, 9, 25, 164, 185, 197 Love Pyschedelico, 156 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 13 Macquarie Dictionary, the, 58, 113, 114 Madrasas, 152, 153, 155 Mahathir Mohammed, 76 Malaysia, 5, 12, 23, 24, 28, 30, 35, 37, 53, 58, 62, 71, 72, 75, 76, 96, 118, 148, 150, 151, 152, 155, 172, 175, 176, 180, 194

Index Malaysian English, 58, 59, 75, 89, 97, 139, 181 Mandarin, 18, 22, 66, 71, 78, 83, 134, 155, 163, 167, 176, 180 Matrix language and embedded language, 139 Medium of instruction/medium of instruction policy, 9, 15, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 65, 136, 153, 156, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176, 179, 182, 183, 185, 186, 189, 195 Minute on Indian Education, 13 Mongolia, 34, 160, 162, 197 Mongolian rap, 160 Morphosyntactic forms, 8, 128, 134, 135, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 146, 190, 197 Morphosyntactic universals, 128, 134 Mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTBMLE), 25 muafakat (consensus), 74, 102 Multilingual education, 163, 166 Multilingual pedagogy, 193 musyawarah (dialogue), 74, 102 Mutual intelligibility, 189, 190 Myanmar, 3, 11, 12, 13, 21, 28, 63, 142, 148, 152, 173, 180, 181, 185, 186 Myths of language education, 182 Najib Razak, 71 National Foreign Language 2020, the, 187 National language, 10, 14, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 63, 64, 69, 96, 121, 150, 162, 164, 166, 167, 169, 171, 174, 175, 176, 177, 182, 184, 191, 195, 198, 200 Natural language environments, 183 Newly independent nations, 162 Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 124 Non-native speaker teachers of English, 192, Non-standard forms, viii, 8, 51, 67, 69, 78, 82, 85, 95, 103, 103, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 140, 141, 142, 143, 146, 147, 190, 197 Orientalists, 13, 15, 18, 199 Outer Circle countries, 10, 155 Pesantren, 26, 154, 181 Philippines, the, 5, 12, 21, 24, 25, 28, 30, 35, 37, 53, 62, 63, 119, 150, 163, 164, 165, 166, 180, 191, 194, 197 Pinyin, 16, 167 Pluricentric language, 184 Popular culture, 9, 127, 191 Postcolonial settings, 123 Postcolonial writers, 124 Pragmatic norms, 6, 62, 90, 91, 92, 95, 96, 197 Pragmatic norms, transfer of, 90, 91, 109, 196

219 Preposition usage, 145 Primary curriculum, 163, 177, 200 Primary school, 15, 16, 18, 23, 25, 26, 27, 65, 163, 165, 166, 169, 170, 176, 183, 187, 195, 197, 200, 201 Pronoun copying, 144 Putonghua, 18, 20, 166, 167, 169, 170 Quomi Madrasas, 153 Raja Rao, 56, 123 Regularisation, 128, 130, 133, 146 Religion, 9, 14, 59, 77, 123, 154, 155, 191 Re-metaphorisation, 120 Rhetorical norms, 93 Second language learning, 184 Secondary school, 10, 20, 26, 152, 169, 170, 176, 187 Shan-shui, 158 Shariah law, 150, 151 Sidhwa, Bapsi, 56, 123, 198 Simplification, 16, 128, 129, 130, 146 Singapore, 3, 5, 12, 21, 24, 28, 30, 35, 37, 53, 62, 63, 113, 141, 142, 148, 151, 155, 157, 163, 180, 186, 194, 199 Singaporean English/Singapore English, 1, 3, 5, 21, 22, 54, 59, 61, 67, 118, 134, 135, 139, 156, 159, 181, 196, 198 Singaporean English/Singapore English, 190 Singlish, 22, 157 Stereotyping, 91, 92 Substrate influence, 9, 133, 134 Tagalog, 25, 63, 69, 121, 164, 166 Teacher standards, 185 Tense, mark for, 68 Tense, non-marking of, 67, 137 Thailand, 1, 11, 12, 20, 29, 34, 62, 86, 152, 162, 180, 181, 191 Thainess, 20 Thomasites, the, 164 Three language formula, 15 ti-yong debate, the, 17 Tommy Koh, 140 Tongwen Guan, 17 Topicalisation, topic prominence, 143 Topic-comment, 143 Translanguaging, 117 Trilingual policy, 166 Twinning programs, 172 Typological matrix approach, 134 Ulema, 153 University of the Philippines, 173

220

Index

Varieties of English, stages of development, 57 Vernacular universals, 8, 133, 134 Vietnam, 5, 12, 21, 27, 29, 30, 32, 35, 37, 63, 82, 83, 86, 180, 181, 186, 187 VOICE, 5, 8, 30, 31, 33, 35, 45, 49, 51, 52, 96, 138, 145

Word, borrowing from other languages, 58, 59, 111, 116, 118, 119, 121 Yasmine Gooneratne, 125 Zhu Rongji, 172