For classes on Week 9, we were given an assignment on the article Mother Tongue and Languaging in Malaysia by Nathan John Albury.
Part 1 (The Basics)
1. What is Albury’s main argument? (or, think of it as: What does he seek to
discover and prove through his article?
This paper sought to place the shift of critical linguistics (from essentialised
views of language to complex linguistic repertoires and meaning-making
through languaging in our analyses of linguistic practice) under a critical lens
by examining it face-to-face with what the paper termed the local-knowledge
turn in sociolinguistics. This paper also investigate to what extent essentialised
views of mother tongue, and the postmodern ideas inherent to languaging,
hold clout in local linguistic cultures and epistemologies of language.
2. What is/are Albury’s theoretical framework(s)?
This paper uses Pennycook’s Mother tongues, governmentality, and
protectionism in International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2002
(2002), in which it mention that despite the recent theorising, we need to work
‘contextually’ because ‘the notion of the mother tongue’ might nonetheless be
‘shared across communities but related in different ways to different contexts’
(p. 23).
3. How does Albury define the following:
a. Language
Language is a resource, and communication may be characterised by
meaning-making and ‘linguistic practices that exploit a multilingual mix
and syncretism of form and function’ (Stroud 2003).
Language is a communicative resource held by individuals. Because
language is a social phenomenon, language behaviours tend not to comply
with the ideological notion of mother tongues and are instead more
creative, boundless, and complex (Gumperz and Hymes 1972) and
(Silverstein’s 1996).
b. Mother tongue
Mother tongues are commonly viewed as a language spoken by an ethnic
collective, regardless of individual language proficiency, to locate
speakers in contemporary Malaysia. It is argued that because the term
mother tongue structures local sociolinguistic realities, and is
‘contextually produced’ (Pennycook 2002:23), it should remain at the
forefront of holistic studies in Malaysian sociolinguistics, and indeed
perhaps more broadly, parallel to languaging that may be observed in
practice.
Mother tongue discourses are intrinsically connected to the monolingual
ideology, which Ag and Jørgensen (2013) define as the belief that every
person must have a particularly ‘close relationship to one language’ (p.
527).
c. Languaging
Polylingual languaging, for example, argues that ‘the specific linguistic
feature, and not the specific language, better characterises a given
production’ (Jørgensen 2008:165).
Translanguaging is ‘an approach to bilingualism that is centred, not on
languages as has often been the case, but on the practices of bilinguals
that are readily observable in order to make sense of their multilingual
worlds’ (García 2009:140).
4. What is/are Albury’s research methodology(ies)? Explain in detail (e.g.
number of participants, demographics, etc.).
To investigate the research objective that is to better understand local
sociolinguistic phenomena in Malaysian society, Albury applied a folk linguistic
approach in his research to examine the metalinguistic talk of a cohort of Malay,
Chinese and India youth in peninsula Malaysia. Specifically, the research was done
through a series of 24 focus group discussions, which were held at public and private
universities in Kuala Lumpur, Bangi, Penang, Kota Bharu, and Kuala Terengganu.
Through this analysis, Albury explored the nature of language, societal as well as
individual multilingualism and how epistemologies inherent to language, mother
tongue and languaging hold relevance in metalinguistic talk in Malaysia.
The focus group discussions consisted of undergraduate students as volunteer
participants, who were all in their early 20s. They all came from various majors other
than linguistics, including business, accounting, English, Malay literature, and
forensic science. They were then grouped by self-identified ethnicity and each group
comprised four to six students. A total of ten focus group discussions were held with
Malay students, nine with Chinese students and five with Indian students. All
participants were recruited with the assistance of host institutions.
The discussions were semistructured, held in English. Firstly, the students were
asked to generally describe the language institution in Malaysia. Then, they were
required to elaborate and define the terms of Manglish and Bahasa Rojak as linguistic
phenomena. This led to descriptions of ethnic diversity and its corresponding
languages. The students were also asked about a language policy in Malaysia, which
included responses mentioning the government’s provision of primary-level Mandarin
and Tamil-medium education. The excerpts from the discussions used in the research
are literal and have not been edited for grammar.
Part 2 (Critical Engagement)
1. How would you improve on Albury’s methodology(ies)? Explain.
a. How would your improvements impact the findings of his research?
Albury can improve his methodologies by including students not only from the
Malaysian peninsula. Since his research topic is ‘Mother tongues and languaging in
Malaysia’ it would be more rational to include university students from Sabah and
Sarawak as well. Albury did mention ‘The Bumiputera’ comprises of Malays and
non-Malays indigenous to Malaysian peninsula and Malaysian Borneo. Therefore,
instead of just including Malays and non-Malays indigenous to Malaysian peninsula,
Albury should also consider including Malays and non-Malays who indigenous to
Malaysian Borneo.This addition in Albury’s methodology might impact Albury’s early result, as
students who live in Sabah and Sarawak might not converse through Bahasa Rojak to
communicate across ethnolinguistic divides and this conclusion may only be
applicable to Malay, Chinese and Indian students or students in Sabah and Sarawak
who are exposed to another language (Tamil, Mandarin etc.). Not only that, maybe
Bahasa Rojak is more commonly used among Malaysians in the Peninsula compared
to those in Borneo, and even if that’s true, something else (like their mother tongue,
languaging) might be used to nurture interethnic inclusiveness in Malaysia.
2. Using Albury’s methodology(ies), identify a different theoretical framework
that you would like to pursue.
In this research, Albury has used the folk linguistic approach to examine the
metalinguistic talk of a cohort of Malay, Chinese and India youth in peninsula
Malaysia. The key content of this study is the importance of metalinguistics, where it
studies languages and its relationship to other cultural behaviors. A different
theoretical framework that is suitable to pursue this research is by using Jakobson's
model of linguistic communication where he defined six functions of language
according to which an effective act of verbal communication can be described.
a. Provide five (5) primary resources (these are the main theorists of your
framework)
- Research articles of the theory
- Research data from surveys done related to the framework
- Interviews with the founder and writer of the framework
- Technical reports related to the framework
- Autobiography of the framework’s founder that is related to his studies
b. Provide five (5) secondary resources (these are more recent articles/books
that expand on the works of the main theorists)
- Reference books that analyses the study
- Analysed data of the studies done related to the framework
- Review articles that criticized the study
- Text books that analyses and reviews the study
- Journal articles that uses the study
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