Pillai, Stefanie Shamila and Surinderpal Kaur, Chanan Singh and Chau, Meng Huat (2021) The ideological stance of multilingualism in education in Malaysia in the press 2000-2020. Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 14 (2). pp. 173-193. ISSN 19992521, DOI https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0058.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
The past 20 years have witnessed major shifts in language and education policy in Malaysia. This reflects a range of social, economic, and political forces that influence and shape the policymaking in this multi-ethnic and multicultural country. Past research has suggested that language and education policies in Malaysia tend to have two main stances and are generally related to Malay (the national language), English, Mandarin, and Tamil. One stance is related to issues of globalization and employability, and the other is related to national and ethnic identities. In view of these stances, this paper seeks to contribute to the discussion and debates on these issues by empirically investigating inherent ideological positions in official statements published in two newspapers in the past 20 years. Specifically, it adopts concepts from critical discourse studies, and uses methods from computational linguistics to examine official statements from a total of 30,508 Malaysian newspaper articles published between 2000 and 2020. The findings indicate that the role of Malay and national ideology, and the global positioning of English continue to be central concerns in the discussion of language and education in Malaysia. In addition, the importance of learning Mandarin is also emphasized. However, indigenous and minority languages are largely absent in the discourses on education policies in the country. The effects of this exclusion are already apparent in the shift to languages like Malay, Mandarin, and English as a first language, and the increasing number of languages considered to be under threat in Malaysia. © 2021
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Funders: | UNSPECIFIED |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Education Policy; Indigenous and Minority Languages; Language Policy; Malaysia; Multilingualism |
| Subjects: | L Education > L Education (General) P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics > Communication. Mass media |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Languages and Linguistics |
| Depositing User: | Ms Zaharah Ramly |
| Date Deposited: | 28 Nov 2023 13:13 |
| Last Modified: | 28 Nov 2023 13:14 |
| URI: | http://eprints.um.edu.my/id/eprint/36140 |
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