World Englishes, Vol. , No. , pp. 492–496, 2016. 0883-2919
Introduction: English in Brunei Darussalam
JAMES MCLELLAN∗AND GRACE V. S. CHIN∗∗
ABSTRACT: This special issue of World Englishespresents new research perspectives on English
in Brunei Darussalam, a small oil-rich Islamic monarchy in Southeast Asia. It comprises a number of articles on language in society and on literature, as well as a comprehensive bibliography a comprehensive bibliography listing published studies on English in Brunei Darussalam. Most of the contributors are based in the country, including a number who are Bruneian citizens, and are thus able to offer insiders’ perspectives on the subject.
Brunei is located in northwestern Borneo, on the South China Sea with land borders on three sides with the Malaysian state of Sarawak. It is a plural society with a population of 422, 675 (Index Mundi 2015), with Malays as the majority (about 66%), followed by Chinese (11%), indigenous groups (3%) and others (mostly expatriate workers 20%). This varied composition is reflected in the linguistic diversity that belies its very small land size of 5,765 km², with over 20 indigenous and immigrant languages being spoken, includ-ing Brunei Malay, ‘Standard Malay’, English, Kedayan, Tutong, Belait, Dusun, Bisaya, Murut (Lun Bawang), Iban, Penan, Mandarin, Hakka, Hokkien, Cantonese, Hainanese, Teochew and Foochow. Despite its ethnolinguistic plurality, the state officially recognises only Malay (Bahasa Melayu) as the national language. The national religion is Islam, with approximately 80 per cent of the population identifying as Muslim. The country is governed as an absolute monarchy. The current head of state, the 29th Sultan of Brunei, is directly descended from a line of rulers dating back to the fourteenth century. As head of state, the Sultan is also the head of Islamic affairs in the nation, as affirmed by the 1959 Constitution. The official national ideology is Melayu Islam Beraja (MIB), or Malay Islamic Monarchy, wherein the values and ideology of the state are based on a foundation of Malay culture and language, Sunni-Shafie’e Islam, and an understanding of the monarch as head of state, answerable to God in the carrying out of his duties. Formalised through state policies and institutions, particularly in the education sector, MIB is intended to foster bonds of loyalty and attachment to the nation and the Sultan, and to promote national integration, identity and culture. The privileging of Malay Muslim identity has resulted in a monocultural vision of nationhood, seen in the active homogenising ‘processes of both Islam-ization and Malay-icization’ (Noor Azam 2012: 176) which has come to dominate the sociopolitical landscape. Language, which defines one’s identity and place, has thus become a subject of anxiety among some of the more conservative sections of Brunei
∗Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Jalan Tungku Link, BE1410 Gadong, Brunei Darussalam. E-mail: james.mclellan@ ubd.edu.bn
Figure 1. Brunei and Southeast Asia
Source: Courtesy of David Deterding.
Figure 2. Map of Brunei
Source: Courtesy of David Deterding.
society, especially at a time of resurgence and reinforcement of Malay Islamic values in the Sultanate. Although Malay is upheld as the premier language andlingua franca, English has long been a contender in terms of popular usage.
494 James McLellan and Grace V. S. Chin
with recent reforms establishing English as a medium of instruction for subjects such as science and mathematics from as early as Primary Year One (Ministry of Education 2009; Jones 2012). Even before these recent innovations, English was used from 1985 onwards as a medium of instruction for these and other subjects starting from Primary Year Four, and as a result, the majority of the population of Brunei have received a bilingual education and are, in varying degrees, bilingual speakers of Malay and English. Most degree, certificate and diploma programmes at Brunei tertiary institutions are delivered through the medium of English, except for those offered at the Islamic university, Universiti Islam Sultan Sharif Ali (UNISSA), and the Islamic religious teachers’ training college, Kolej Universiti Perguruan Ugama Seri Begawan (KUPU-SB).
Nevertheless, English is not an official language of Brunei, a status that is reserved for Malay (Bahasa Melayu). The position of English in Brunei is thus problematic if we reserve the status of Outer Circle countries for those where English has an official role. In practice, however, the use of English in education and in legal domains, the widespread knowledge of English and the use of English as alingua francato communicate with the large expatriate worker community, and inter-ethnically between Malay and non-Malay Bruneians, all support English in Brunei as ESL rather than EFL. As a direct consequence of the high level of Malay-English bilingualism, code-switching has become a common linguistic phenomenon, both in informal interactions and in social media domains. For many Bruneians, Brunei Malay-English code-switching is an unconscious and unmarked feature of their language, as in many bi- and multilingual communities elsewhere (Li 2007; Ng & Wigglesworth 2007).
The articles in this special issue present current research into developments within and around Brunei English. They also reflect the fact that despite the conservative forces of MIB, Brunei, like its Southeast Asian neighbours, is experiencing a time of flux and change brought about by the forces of modernisation and globalisation. Cable television and the Internet can be found in most Bruneian homes, while tech-savvy youths navigate the cyber-world of social networking, blogging and YouTube with ease. To provide a comprehensive understanding of Brunei English and its different dimensions, the articles have been grouped under four sections: (1) the sociolinguistic background; (2) the linguistic features of Brunei English; (3) discourse features; and (4) creative writing. Finally there is a bibliography, compiled by the co-editors, which offers a comprehensive listing of previous studies on English in Brunei.
Under ‘Sociolinguistic background,’ the articles by Paolo Coluzzi and by Gary Jones, offer both an update and new information on Brunei English. Coluzzi’s article breaks new ground by using a linguistic landscapes approach and methodology for analysing language choice and use in signs found in one of the main streets in Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital city. Jones provides an update on the role of English in the Brunei education system. He compares government and private schools and reports on the attitudes of teachers, parents and other stakeholders.
other article in this section is Ulrik Gut’s article is on suprasegmental features, specifically the intonation patterns found in questions asked by Bruneians in conversations with other Bruneians. Her findings are of wider interest since she investigates whether the prosodic features reflect the influence of Brunei Malay through L1 transfer, whether they are closer to British English as the purported target model for Bruneian learners of English, or whether they resemble the patterns found in neighbouring Englishes such as Malaysian English.
The two articles in the section ‘Discourse features’ both contain analysis of textual data from the social media domain, in which English and Brunei Malay coexist. According to Clynes (2014), Brunei Malay (cakap barunay, kurapak barunay) is a vibrant, rapidly expanding variety which expresses the dominant Brunei Malay ethnic identity in the country. This variety of Malay language is referred to in Alex Henry and Debbie Ho’s article, which investigates code-switching in interactions between local buyers and sellers on Facebook, and in the article by Nurdiyana Daud and James McLellan, whose data come from Facebook status updates. These two articles complement each other without over-lapping: both use data from Bruneians’ Facebook pages, and both investigate patterns of language choice and code-switching, but they differ in terms of the analytical frameworks used. Henry and Ho’s analysis draws on a combination of genre-based move structure and systemic textual analysis (under the umbrella of systemic functional linguistics) which is applied to a corpus of sales transactions conducted through Facebook. In the article by Nurdiyana and McLellan, Bruneians’ Facebook status updates are analysed in terms of relational maintenance strategies and cross-gender variation in code choice, emotive language and emoticons, and the use of abbreviated spellings in Malay and English.
The study of Brunei English would be incomplete without an analysis of its aesthetic and literary dimensions. Bruneian literature in English is still at a nascent stage (Chin 2007; Kathrina, Chin & Jukim 2016), but there are ongoing developments that contribute significantly to our understanding of the language situation. After all, as social and cultural texts, literature is revealing of the negotiations and transformations in the linguistic landscape that include resistance against the hegemonic narratives of the nation. This is seen in the last two articles in the final section, ‘Creative writing and literature,’ which offer new research on the intersections between language and literature. Grace V. S. Chin’s analysis of Bruneian women’s creative writing in English as an emergent minor literature connects gender and language, showing how women’s writings in English potentially resist the state imperatives of MIB in works of fiction that employ bilingualism, or multilingualism, to convey ‘an alternative vision of heterogeneous diversity’. Kathrina Mohd Daud, on the other hand, examines the growing genre of Bruneian horror stories in Cyberspace and how their use of colloquial language undermines the rigid boundaries of MIB with their ‘disengagement of the religious from both the cultural and the political’.
For all the authorities’ attempts to preserve Malay identity and culture through exclusionary tropes, the articles here reveal ongoing linguistic negotiations and practices in the social spaces that go beyond MIB prescriptions, demonstrating that Brunei is a dynamic and vibrant ‘glocal’ space that is ever-evolving. We thus invite readers to make further connections between the local Brunei context and the wider global context.
Finally we would like to express our sincerest thanks to the Editors ofWorld Englishes
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