Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Introduction: Language Policies at Variance with Language Use in Multilingual Malaysia
- 1 The Importance of Ethnic Identity when Language Shift Occurs: A Study of the Malaysian Iyers
- 2 Ethnic Identity in the Tamil Community of Kuching
- 3 Do Exogamous Marriages Result in Language Shift? Focus on the Sindhis of Kuching, Malaysia
- 4 Malaysian-Filipino Couples and Language Choice: Heritage Language or International Language?
- 5 I am not English but my First Language is English: English as a First Language among Portuguese Eurasians in Malaysia
- 6 Language and Identity: Children of Indian Bidayuh Mixed Marriages
- 7 The Impact of Language Policy on Language Shifts in Minority Communities: Focus on the Malayalee Community in Malaysia
- 8 My Son has to maintain his Language because that is his Culture: The Persistence and Adaptation of the Bengali Community in Malaysia
- 9 Intercultural Communication in Sarawak: Language Use of the Chinese-Speaking Communities
- 10 Malay Javanese Migrants in Malaysia: Contesting or Creating Identity?
- 11 Conclusions: Multilinguality in the Malaysian Context of Nation-Building and Globalisation
- Contributors
- Bibliography
- Index
- Publications Series
1 - The Importance of Ethnic Identity when Language Shift Occurs: A Study of the Malaysian Iyers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 January 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Introduction: Language Policies at Variance with Language Use in Multilingual Malaysia
- 1 The Importance of Ethnic Identity when Language Shift Occurs: A Study of the Malaysian Iyers
- 2 Ethnic Identity in the Tamil Community of Kuching
- 3 Do Exogamous Marriages Result in Language Shift? Focus on the Sindhis of Kuching, Malaysia
- 4 Malaysian-Filipino Couples and Language Choice: Heritage Language or International Language?
- 5 I am not English but my First Language is English: English as a First Language among Portuguese Eurasians in Malaysia
- 6 Language and Identity: Children of Indian Bidayuh Mixed Marriages
- 7 The Impact of Language Policy on Language Shifts in Minority Communities: Focus on the Malayalee Community in Malaysia
- 8 My Son has to maintain his Language because that is his Culture: The Persistence and Adaptation of the Bengali Community in Malaysia
- 9 Intercultural Communication in Sarawak: Language Use of the Chinese-Speaking Communities
- 10 Malay Javanese Migrants in Malaysia: Contesting or Creating Identity?
- 11 Conclusions: Multilinguality in the Malaysian Context of Nation-Building and Globalisation
- Contributors
- Bibliography
- Index
- Publications Series
Summary
Introduction
The population of Malaysia is ethnically and linguistically heterogenous. It is made up of Bumiputra (65.1%) of whom the Malays are the majority, Chinese (26%), Indians (7.7%) and other ethnic groups (Table 1.1). The Malaysian Iyers are a part of the Malaysian Indian community and make up approximately 0.09% of the Indian population in Malaysia. Their mother tongue is Tamil, although they speak a variety known as Iyer Tamil (see Bright & Ramanujam 1981: 2; Karunakaran & Sivashanmugam 1981: 59; Varma 1989: 188).
Research shows that there is a significant shift to English and Malay among minority Indian communities in Malaysia from different linguistic backgrounds, such as with the Tamils (David & Naji 2000), Sindhis (David 1996), Punjabis (Kundra 2001), Bengalis (Mukherjee 2003) and Malayalees (Govindasamy & Nambiar 2003).
In a recent study conducted on the language shift and maintenance of the Malaysian Iyers (Sankar 2004), it was found that the Malaysian Iyers have moved away from the use of their mother tongue (Tamil) in the home. Social and formal domains of reading and writing have included English and Malay in their linguistic repertoire. Tamil is retained in the religious domain for the purposes of prayer. The extensive shift away from their ethnic language is probably largely due to external pressures such as government language policies and the influence of English as the language of business. The results also showed that the Iyer identity is not completely dependent on their ethnic language, as their identity is expressed more through their cultural practices (see David 1998). This chapter describes the research conducted to try and understand the relationship between language shift and ethnic identity.
Methodology
A two-pronged emic and etic approach was used so that respondents’ views could be balanced with the researcher's views. A domain-based questionnaire was administered to 291 respondents to obtain a macro picture of the community's language shift and language maintenance patterns. However, such an analysis by itself will not reveal individual language choice, nor can it provide an ethnography of communication. Therefore, the questionnaire content was complemented with micro methods that would reveal actual language maintenance and shift. Intra community conversations (of 115 respondents) were audiotaped and analysed using Hymes’ Ethnography of Communication (Hymes 1977) which helped to investigate in greater detail the ethnography of speaking by investigating speaker rules of interaction and the dominant languages that were actually spoken by respondents.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- National Language Planning and Language Shifts in Malaysian Minority CommunitiesSpeaking in Many Tongues, pp. 23 - 42Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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