Abstract
Language problems and language barriers are challenges facing not only immigrants but also minorities and people in rural/semirural areas. This study examines individuals’ bi- and multilingual repertoires, language practices and attitudes in a Hokkien-speaking community in Kangar, a semirural town of northern Malaysia bordering Thailand. Through questionnaire surveys and interviews, we investigate how these notions can be used as a means to understand/reflect bilingualism and multilingualism and, more importantly, the potential disparity between what people want to do/say and what people eventually manage to do/say. While there is a shift in language practice from a local- and ancestral origin-induced pattern towards a more “global” and “pan-Chinese” paradigm, the findings also reveal the linguistic “dislocations” of the Hokkien-speaking community across ALL generations regardless of ethnicity. The language issues in the community reflect—and are likely to be reflections of—society at large. The vast contrast between individual/societal linguistic aspirations and the actual linguistic repertoire/communicative competence among the locals indicates the need to redress an absence of major efforts to close urban-rural/city-town/dominant-dominated social divides across the (language) education landscape at the national level.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- “What I want to do I do not do”: on bi- and multilingual repertoires and linguistic dislocation in a border town
- Framing variation and intersectional identities within Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority
- Language shift and language (re)vitalisation: the roles played by women and men in Northern Fenno-Scandia
- Negotiation of resources in everyday activities of a multilingual Berlin street market: a linguistic ethnography approach
- Polish language of the Polish minority in Daugavpils, Latvia. Comparative analysis of two idiolects
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- “What I want to do I do not do”: on bi- and multilingual repertoires and linguistic dislocation in a border town
- Framing variation and intersectional identities within Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority
- Language shift and language (re)vitalisation: the roles played by women and men in Northern Fenno-Scandia
- Negotiation of resources in everyday activities of a multilingual Berlin street market: a linguistic ethnography approach
- Polish language of the Polish minority in Daugavpils, Latvia. Comparative analysis of two idiolects