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International Journal of Bilingual Education and
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Linguistic landscape and metalinguistic talk about
societal multilingualism
Nathan John Albury
To cite this article: Nathan John Albury (2018): Linguistic landscape and metalinguistic talk
about societal multilingualism, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, DOI:
10.1080/13670050.2018.1452894
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2018.1452894
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3. multilingualism can, therefore, be subject to bottom-up ‘contentious and ideologised represen-
tations’ (Jaworska and Themistocleous 2017, 1). Investigating metalinguistic talk about societal multi-
lingualism allows for a grassroots understanding of how Malaysians engage with their complex
multilingual milieu shaped by colonialism, race relations, economy and nation-building.
However, the paper also examines whether and how linguistic landscape (LL) can be used as a
methodological tool for soliciting metalinguistic talk about societal multilingualism more generally.
In as far as LL refers to ‘the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names,
place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combines to form
the LL of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration’ (Landry and Bourhis 1997, 25), the rep-
resentation of language in public spaces indexes a plethora of sociolinguistic processes. Since its
introduction by Landry and Bourhis in 1997, semiotic LLs around the world have gained attention
as fertile topics of analysis in and of themselves (Shohamy and Gorter 2008a). For example, graffiti
can be studied as semiotic protests, identity struggles, and the formation of spaces (Pennycook
2010). Milani (2014) argues that LLs harbour seemingly mundane but implicitly hegemonic reminders
of gender binaries and heteronormativity. More recently, Thurlow and Jaworski (2017) argue that
exclusivity and privilege are hegemonically semiotic on signs within Dubai and London’s geographies
of eliteness. However, it is the public representation of multilingualism that has especially attracted
attention, whereby the presence and absence of specific languages indexes explicit or implicit pol-
icies, ideologies, and zones of contact (cf Lanza and Woldemariam 2009; Leimgruber 2017), the vital-
ity of minority languages (cf Blackwood 2010; Barni and Bagna 2010), and laws that regulate public
communication or signage (cf Sloboda et al. 2010; Berezkina 2016). LLs are also negotiated by private
enterprises such that signs become a matter of linguistic capital and exchange in Bourdieu’s (1977)
terms: they accommodate the sociolinguistic features of political economy (Heller 2003), tourism
(Kallen 2009), modernisation (Kasanga 2012), and even branding (Kelly-Holmes 2014; Leeman and
Modan 2009). LL can even be used a pedagogical tool for teaching and learning about multilingual-
ism with its opportunities for ‘multimodal/sensory learning experiences and the realization of text-to-
world connections’ (Li and Marshall 2018, 15).
For this paper, LL was used as a tool to stimulate and research metalinguistic talk in the commu-
nity by tasking Chinese-Malaysian youths to describe and explain examples of LL in which semiotic
purposes and representations of multilingualism differ. A central hypothesis was that the signs would
inspire talk about Malaysia’s linguistic diversity – laden with sociocognitive influences and the Malay-
sian sociopolitical and ethnic context – beyond simply describing the signs. That hypothesis proved
correct, and the paper analyses the discussions as historically, politically, and socially embedded talk.
The paper typologises the different conversation topics that the task inspired, and identifies narra-
tives that manifested recurrently throughout the discussions. The paper concludes with reflections
on how useful LL is as a methodological tool for researching grassroots metalinguistic perspectives.
To contextualise the analysis, the paper now begins with an overview of Malaysia’s sociopolitical and
linguistic situation.
Malaysia in context
Malaysia’s sociolinguistic milieu reflects its complex, and often tense, sociopolitical and ethnic make-
up. The Bumiputra (sons of the soil Indigenous to Malaysia) include ethnic Malays and comprise
around 67% of the population (Department of Statistics Malaysia 2016). British colonisation until
1957 welcomed workers from China and India to fill labour shortages, but in doing so stratified
society along ethnic and socioeconomic lines. The British prized Chinese business acumen and
invested in their entrepreneurship, Indian workers were largely confined to plantations, and the Indi-
genous Malays remained predominantly rural and impoverished (Andaya and Andaya 2016). Contrary
to Malay expectations, the guest workers stayed and immigration continued. Malaysia had inadver-
tently become a multiethnic and multilingual state. Today, the Chinese from around 25% of the popu-
lation, having brought a plethora of heritage languages including Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, and
2 N. J. ALBURY
4. Foochow. Indian-Malaysians make-up around 7% and have been predominantly Tamil-speaking,
although minorities brought Telugu, Punjabi, Malayalam, and others.
The Chinese and Indians negotiated their citizenship when the Malaysian federation formed, but
managing ethnic diversity still vexes Malaysian politics and society. Today, Malaysia may be best
described as a hierarchised cultural pluralism where ethnic identities are reified and life is structured
by a racial grid of being Malay, Chinese, Indian, or other (Goh and 2009). These essentialised cat-
egories are, of course, problematic and do not account for ethnic, religious, and linguistic heterogen-
eity, but index the continued salience of nativeness and foreignness in the discourses that founded
Malaysia. The solution has been to pedestalise the ethnic Malays in law, including their language,
culture, and Islam as their religion above the non-Malays (Noor and Leong 2013). Only Bahasa is
the official language, and language rights for the heterogeneous Chinese and Indian communities
are restricted to primary-level Mandarin and Tamil-medium schooling (Gill 2013). On the one
hand, this would eliminate linguistic inhibitors to Malay socioeconomic progress by ensuring
Bahasa held greatest linguistic capital in the domestic market. Much to Malay chagrin, the Chinese
minority has long held – and continues to hold – the balance of economic power aided by transna-
tional capitalism, family entrepreneurship, and investment offered by colonial authorities before
independence that relied heavily on proficiency in English and Mandarin (Nonini 1997; Von Vorys
2015). New postcolonial arrangements, therefore, provided an opportunity to restructure the linguis-
tic market in favour of Malay socioeconomic development.
On the other hand, postcolonial nation-building has been unapologetically ethnonationalist in
favour of the Malays with the ideology of Ketunanan Melayu (Malay supremacy) (Ting 2009). A dichot-
omy between being Bumiputra and being Chinese or Indian – who are often constructed to be dis-
loyal pendatang (visitors) on Malay land – orients policy. Rather than legitimising their Malaysian
citizenship and incorporating Chinese and Indian cultures into contemporary national identity,
Malay ethnonationalism sees the pendatang as perpetual immigrants with a homeland beyond
Malaysia. As an ideology, Ketuanan Melayu is fervently espoused – and indeed taught in schools
through history textbooks (Ting 2009) – as a justification for racial inequalities. The Chinese and
Indians are subordinate to Malays, and legislation can render as seditious any challenge to the privi-
leged position of ethnic Malays, the status of Bahasa, and the moral authority of Islam (Sedition Act
1948).
The United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) has held power since independence and has
waivered little on Ketuanan Melayu. Riots between ethnic Chinese and Malays in 1969 killed some
1000 ethnic Chinese (Freedman 2001), which the government rationalised as a consequence of
the Chinese holding greater economic power. In turn, the government introduced its New Economic
Policy. This established affirmative action for the Malays – on the basis of their ethnicity alone –
including quotas to public education and employment and tax breaks (Crouch 2001). Over the
years, Chinese voices have demanded meritocracy to escape what Yow (2017) calls a gridlock
between historical formation and political hierarchy. The 2010 1Malaysia policy promises, under
the auspices of economic development, a new system of meritocracy and equality between all Malay-
sians. In the absence of tangible policy changes, however, a shift away from ethnocracy is yet to mani-
fest. Activism regarding ethnic inequalities is curtailed by Malaysia’s only semi-democratic political
system (Case 2007), but Chinese-led protests do erupt. Most recently, ethnic Chinese took to the
streets of Kuala Lumpur in 2015 and 2016 to protest against corruption within UMNO. The Malay
response was racialised whereby the Chinese were reminded of ‘their place’ under the ‘political dom-
inance of the Malay majority’ (ABC News 2015).
Malay ethnonationalism is not only still vigorous, but has acquired an Islamic tone that assumes
moral authority in interethnic affairs. Under a new wave of Islamisation (Barr and Govindasamy 2010),
politicians, finance, and classrooms are increasingly appealing to Islamic principles despite ethnic
diversity (Ghazali 2014; Joseph 2005). Islam rather than secular law, Lee (2010) explains, has
become the primary political and legal framework. This Islamisation is theorised in different ways,
such as a result of political campaigning, pan-Islamic nationalism, and feelings of displacement
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 3
5. during rapid urbanisation (Fauzi Abdul Hamid 2007; Barr and Govindasamy 2010). In any case, this
Islamic ethnonationalism is less enthusiastic about ethnic diversity, meaning non-Malays are ‘increas-
ingly browbeaten into accepting a subordinate status’ (Barr and Govindasamy 2010, 297).
This explains in part why the Chinese and Indians have not typically acculturated to the majority.
Arguably, disassociation is a consequence of Malay hegemony. Sociology tells us that by perpetually
prescribing the Chinese and Indians to be foreigners, with China and India as their perceived albeit
impractical homelands, non-Malays are unlikely to acculturate despite top-down policy (Kramer
2011). The Chinese community has instituted Mandarin as its lingua franca, although this was not a
heritage language of migration, rather than Bahasa. This may result from an epistemology of language
whereby all Chinese share Mandarin as a mother tongue on the basis of ethnicity rather than profi-
ciency (Albury 2017). However, this designation is also strategic. It streamlines political assembly
and linguistically ties the community to China’s powerhouse economy. Chinese-Malaysians are there-
fore much more likely to shift to Mandarin or English than to Bahasa (Wang and Chong 2011; Ting and
Mahadhir 2011). Also, as long as the Chinese remain relatively wealthier than the Malays, then pressure
to shift to Bahasa seems unlikely. Chinese affluence has established predominantly Chinese social net-
works and also allows Chinese-Malaysians to purchase out of hegemonic language policy. The grip of
language policy is strongest in classrooms whereby no state-funded secondary education is offered in
Mandarin. The Chinese community has instead founded its own private Mandarin-medium alterna-
tives. Although attending these disqualifies students from admission to public universities – notwith-
standing Malays receiving preferential admission – many students advance to private universities or
study abroad. The much smaller Indian community struggles with a shift away from Tamil and other
Indian languages, but to English rather than to Bahasa (Ting and Mahadhir 2011). Nonetheless, the
Indians retain a linguistic presence, especially in geographic foci including Kuala Lumpur’s Brickfields
district and Penang’s Little India, but to a much smaller degree than the Chinese.
Malaysia’s linguistic heterogeneity is reflected only to a limited degree in its LL. Like elsewhere,
Malaysian signage is regulated by top-down policy, but also through constructions of identity,
local demography, political economy, and ideology (Blackwood 2010; Shohamy 2015; Lanza and Wol-
demariam 2009; Gorter 2006). As a matter of policy, all advertising must be at least in Bahasa. Where
signage is bilingual, the Bahasa script must be at least 30% larger than the other language. Infringe-
ments can result in fines of 2000 ringgit but are nonetheless commonplace in the absence of wide-
spread policing (Manan et al. 2015). Coluzzi, for example, found that Italian nonetheless holds a
surprisingly notable presence in a shopping area of Kuala Lumpur, especially vis-à-vis food and
fashion, akin to that Kelly-Holmes (2014) would see as fetishising Italian style. In five neighbourhoods
in Kuala Lumpur, Manan et al. (2015) found, mirroring discussions from Coluzzi (2012, 2017a), that
English holds an undoubtedly preeminent role in the LL despite policy restrictions in the interests
of economy and interethnic communication. Manan et al. (2015) also found that Arabic featured
on occasion on private signs, catering to Arab tourism in Bukit Bintang but also to index the
Islamic affiliation of shop owners. They also encountered signs that predominantly featured Mandarin
and Tamil, notionally as defiant identity constructions or ethnically-focused advertising, creating
what Stroud (2016) might call a turbulent LL in a context of identity competitions. Nonetheless,
they concluded that on the whole, individual signs in Kuala Lumpur tended to be multilingual and
inclusive. This inclusiveness is limited, however, by an essentialised view of language and ethnicity
whereby the heterogeneity of the Chinese and Indian communities is reified into Mandarin and
Tamil. It is also limited by geography, because the Indian community is largely confined to
western cities of peninsula Malaysia, and the Chinese population is relatively smaller in the eastern
peninsula (Hock 2007). The Malaysian LL must therefore also be contextualised by local demography.
Theory and method
People living in multilingual societies hold beliefs, knowledge, prejudices, ideas, and attitudes not
only in respect to specific languages, but also in respect to multilingualism as a societal phenomenon.
4 N. J. ALBURY
6. This premise is inspired by Jaworska and Themistocleous (2017) who investigated the discursive con-
struction of multilingualism through corpora in the British press on the basis that multilingualism
indeed becomes subject to metalinguistic talk. It is also inspired by Preston (2005) who argues
that the folk may offer epistemically and attitudinally informed discourses about any sociolinguistic
topic they happen to encounter, and by Shohamy and Gorter (2008a) who succinctly explain that as
much as ‘language is used by people, spoken and heard, it is also represented and displayed; at times
for functional reasons, at others for symbolic purposes’ (1). Sign makers are, therefore, agents of mul-
tilingualism whose linguistic decisions may be laden with, inter alia, local history, economy, and prag-
matic expressions of identity and power (Ben-Rafael et al. 2006; Kasanga 2012; Curtin 2009). However,
the question – and indeed the experiment of this paper – is whether examples of signage from a mul-
tilingual LL can usefully stimulate metalinguistic talk about societal multilingualism for the benefit of
research into how linguistic diversity is perceived in the grassroots.
My hypothesis was that presenting examples of multilingual signage could access rich metasocio-
linguistic awareness about Malaysia’s societal multilingualism through rich metasociolinguistic talk.
Firstly, this could be achieved by anchoring talk around a specific task. This follows Mertz and
Yovel’s (2009) detailed theoretical discussions about metalinguistic and metapragmatic awareness,
whereby awareness manifests in talk when that talk is embedded within a specific communicative
setting. Task-based work has proved successful in, for example, language portraits whereby metalin-
guistic talk about multilingual repertoires is solicited not by direct questioning, but by tasking partici-
pants to affiliate their languages to colours and body parts within the outlined shape of a body (Busch
2012; Krumm and Jenkins 2001). I also drew on Gorter and Cenoz (2008) who argue that in cultures
where language and ethnicity are synonymous – indeed such as Malaysia – the LL becomes the
primary observable semiosis of ethnic power struggles, making it ripe for metalinguistic awareness.
Secondly, I drew on the social psychology of attitudes whereby specific dispositions arise and can be
voiced by a subject when confronted with a specific stimulus (Eagly and Chaiken 1993; Garrett 2010).
Traditional sociolinguistic work has positioned a language variety or accent as a stimulus, but Baker
(2006) explains that attitudes can arise vis-à-vis other sociolinguistic stimuli. I, therefore, reasoned
that LLs can serve as such stimulus. However, I also reasoned that cognitive responses may be
more varied than attitude alone, whereby a sociolinguistic stimulus might also inspire talk premised
in shared ideologies or epistemologies, or knowledge and presuppositions (Blommaert 2006; Preston
2013; Van Dijk 2015).
LLs are laden with semiotic contentions (Ben-Rafael et al. 2006; Shohamy and Gorter 2008a), and
so too would be metalinguistic talk that is inspired by them. This would be especially true in the case
of Malaysia where ‘perceptions of, and responses from, Malaysian-Chinese about Malay political and
cultural hegemony have been intense and vigorous’ (Ho 2003, 256). This legitimises the focus of this
paper on Chinese-Malaysian metacommentary. The relationship between ethnic Malays and ethnic
Chinese has been fraught with Malay anxiety that Chinese economic power will erode Malay sover-
eignty, and Chinese anxiety that their culture is threatened by Malay hegemony. Chinese-Malaysian
experiences of activism are fresh in the community’s psyche, backgrounded by a collective memory
of the fatal 1969 race riots. As such, and taking lead from discourse analysis, the metalinguistic talk of
Chinese youths about multilingualism is seen as rooted within the history, sociopolitics, cognitive
frames, and the Chinese-Malaysian experience broadly (Wodak and Meyer 2009; Van Dijk 2015).
Nine groups of four to six ethnic Chinese-Malaysian undergraduate students at universities in
Kuala Lumpur, Kuching, and Miri – collectively totalling 40 students – were shown three different
photographs I personally took of public signs in Malaysia. The signs were chosen because they
have different purposes, envisage different audiences, are from different locations in Malaysia with
different ethnolinguistic compositions, and are, therefore, multilingual in different ways. The univer-
sities were chosen as they are a mix of private and public universities, meaning students will have
come from both the public Malay-medium secondary school system, as well as from private Man-
darin-medium education. The students were recruited with the assistance of local universities in
return for a guest lecture, and the interviews were held on campus either before, during or after
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 5
7. their classes. Linguistics students were excluded from this research so that their expert knowledge
about multilingualism in Malaysia, and theoretical concepts that would explain it, would not form
the basis of discussion. Instead, engaging non-experts – following the folk linguistic research tradition
– would amount to engaging mainstream knowledge and beliefs (Preston 2005). The students who
participated in this research were majoring in accounting, law, business, engineering, and English.
The interviews were held in English and in groups following local recommendations that the
youths would keenly participate with their friends and practice their English skills. As students at
Malaysian universities where English is the medium of instruction, they would hold sufficient profi-
ciency to express their ideas and opinions about the photographs they were shown. Group talk
would also allow the students to negotiate their ideas and interpretations. The photographs are intro-
duced in the analysis that follows.
The students were given no further instruction other than to reflect on the photographs and tell me
what they notice, with the background knowledge I am a sociolinguist. In some cases, the students
appeared perplexed by such vague instruction. However, maintaining this approach, including after
awkward silences, allowed the students’ own cognitive engagement to guide discussions. Also, the stu-
dents were not initially told where these photographs were taken, in case their metalinguistic talk might
also concern the possible locations of the signs. Generally, the students began tentatively by describing
the information in the signs, including their purpose and the languages represented. Then metalinguis-
tic talk generally ensued that either positioned the signs in their sociopolitical and ideological contexts,
or extended beyond the signs to talk about other aspects of societal multilingualism. As such, following
Landry and Bourhis (1997), analysis interrelatedly concerns what the students saw as the detail of the
signs, as well as their metapragmatic explanations and broader sociolinguistic discourses.
Photograph 1
The first photograph was taken at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur. It is a collection of signs placed on the door
to an electrical room, but are commonly seen across Malaysia. The signs all warn of danger or prohibit
specific activities. They are all multilingual in different ways. Bahasa and English appear on all signs,
however, Bahasa is always the first language and English comes second. Chinese is the next most rep-
resented language, followed by Tamil and Punjabi on two signs. This section shows that the photo-
graph especially stimulated discussion, negotiation, and explanations about (Figure 1):
. what languages are represented,
. why Tamil is less eminent in the LL,
. how the signs relate to Malaysian sociopolitics and history, and
. whether the LL is in dialectic relationship to ethnic tensions.
As a first observation, the students generally sought to identify the different languages. Identifying
the Indian languages featured on the No Admittance (Bahasa, English, Chinese, Punjabi, and Tamil)
and the Danger (Bahasa English, Chinese, Tamil, and Punjabi) signs proved problematic. The
groups all identified one of the languages as Tamil – whether correctly or not – notionally
because it is Malaysia’s fourth, and smallest non-Bumiputra, language. In one case a group argued
that one script was Hindi. In seven groups, an Indian language was identified, at least initially, as
Jawi or Arabic. The students may have presupposed that signs would use Jawi for Bahasa alongside
Latin to reflect an Islamic identity, or they may have simply considered Jawi because it is discursively
associated to Bahasa. In any case, the presence of Jawi became a point of debate, as shown in the
following exchanges about the Danger sign:
(1) Student 1: It’s Islamic
Student 4: Oh yeah, Islamic, the Jawi.
Researcher: Which one is Jawi?
6 N. J. ALBURY
8. Student 5: The last one.
Student 1: No the second last one is Jawi, and the last one is Tamil.
Student 2: Oh the second last one is Jawi?
Student 3: No.
Student1: [Pointing to the fourth script] This one is Jawi, right?
Student 3: No, no, no. That’s Tamil.
Student 5: Yeah, Jawi has dots.
Student 3: That’s not Jawi.
Student 5: And the last one is Tamil.
Student 5: Yeah.
Student 3: It’s not Jawi!
Another group contemplated whether the Indian languages were, in fact, Korean or Thai, arguably
revealing a lack of education about the prominent languages of Malaysia. This was shown in these
exchanges about the No Admittance sign:
(2) Student 4: Malay, English, Chinese, Korean, and Thai.
Student 2: 哪里来的 Korean? [Where is the Korean?]
Student 1: That’s Tamil.
(3) Student 4: Looks like Thai.
Student 2: Yeah, looks like Thai.
Student 3: Thai or another Indian language.
This shows that the students assumed that Jawi, or Thai as the language to Malaysia’s north and of
the Indigenous Orang Siam, would more likely feature than Punjabi. This is reasonable, given Punjabi
is not a significant minority language in Malaysia. However, the dialogues collectively showed that
Figure 1. Photograph on door to electrics room in a Kuala Lumpur hotel.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 7
9. recognition of languages in which they themselves were not proficient – even if it was a script of the
national language or the language neighbouring Malaysia – was limited. This also suggests that the
students, while proficient in Bahasa, have not acquired Jawi.
Most groups noted the absence of Tamil in some of the signs. Some explained this omission as
unproblematic for instrumental, sociolinguistic, and demographic reasons. For example, two
groups explained that Tamil is often omitted from signs that do feature Chinese because ‘there
are more Chinese in Malaysia compared to Indians’ and ‘less people speak Tamil now. Even Indian
people speak it less, or they don’t speak it’. This revealed awareness that many Indian-Malaysians
have shifted to Bahasa or English. Similarly, some argued that Tamil is omitted because Indians
are often not literate in their heritage language given its complicated script. They explained:
(4) Student 2: Um, actually if you go and ask most Indians, normally they can speak [their language] but they
can’t really write.
Student 1: Yeah, because Tamil is very complicated.
Two groups offered instrumental arguments, void of critical concerns about ethnolinguistic power
relations that result from excluding Tamil, arguing ‘as long as they can understand it’s ok to simplify
it into three languages’. However, two groups did reflect critically on the status of Tamil, explaining
‘they always focus on the majorities. The Tamil minority they just neglect’. Here, Mandarin was per-
ceived as one of the majorities. The neglect the students referred to concerns the limited capital
associated with Tamil compared to Bahasa, English, and Mandarin, plus a shared presupposition
that Indian-Malaysians are multilingual meaning their language need not be represented.
In two cases, groups argued that Mandarin is shown in warnings and instructions specifically to
cater to Chinese tourists, not to Chinese-Malaysians. Three groups argued that that the Chinese
are not proficient in English, and two groups added that Chinese tourists do not follow instructions
– such as non-smoking symbols – meaning their language is included on signs to reinforce specific
messages. For example:
(5) Student 2: This will particularly be for the Chinese people.
[Group laughter]
Student 4: Yeah, sometimes you hear a lot of news about what the Chinese people do in the airport. They
actually do some things very bad, against the rules.
[Group laughter]
Student 4: Like for example, when it comes to very specific not-to-do lists, like no smoking, not doing this
and that, there must be Chinese for them to know not to do this. Even though there is a sign,
they will still do it. You can just see from the newspaper and the news online. Yeah, you can see
something strange everyday, like they can actually wash their legs at the basin and they actually
want to dry their clothes at the airport.
This dialogue is brimming with presupposition and ideology. It firstly implies that unlike their peers
from China, Chinese-Malaysians are multilingual and do not need Chinese signage, rendering them
more internationalised. Secondly, the pronoun they constructs a cultural chasm between Chinese-
Malaysians and Chinese tourists whose behaviours they mocked as unsophisticated and unlike the
modern and obedient behaviours of Chinese-Malaysians. This likely finds its genesis in the Malay-
sian-Chinese disassociating themselves from Chinese nationals with whom they share an ethnicity
but who are subject to intermittent media reports about misbehaviour when travelling in the
region (cf The Star Online 2017, 2015). This disassociation can be seen as a discursive attempt to legit-
imise and delineate Chinese-Malaysian ways of being in the face of discourses that define Chinese-
Malaysians as pendatang and therefore holding a diasporic view of China.
Three groups took an epistemologically instrumental view of language, arguing that signs are
unrelated to ethnic affairs. The imperative point for two groups was that diversity is not a necess-
ary consideration and that passers-by would have sufficient linguistic resources to understand the
signs. They argued that practical constraints mean sign posters probably thought ‘oh, I can’t find a
sign that has all the languages. I will just use this one then’. This may hold clout to explain, for
8 N. J. ALBURY
10. example, why Punjabi featured in this photograph, as these particular Danger and No Admittance
signs are found across Malaysia. Another group explained that the signs are not important as they
do not reflect a sociolinguistic practice of language-mixing through Manglish (Bahasa/English code-
switching) and Bahasa Rojak (languaging across ethnic divides vis-à-vis communicative resources)
(Albury 2017). As such, they claimed that the signs were arbitrary because ‘actually, we just mix the
languages around’ and in day-to-day conversations ‘you don’t use one language. It can be rojak
[salad]’. A critical perspective might see these students as tacitly resisting the hegemony of
Bahasa and Malaysia’s linguistic hierarchy by rendering the signs unrepresentative of actual inter-
ethnic language practices.
Indeed, in all groups the signs provoked some discussion about a hierarchy of languages and eth-
nicity embedded in history and race relations. Some recited that signs are usually multilingual
because of the success of a ‘social contract’ between Malays and non-Malays at the time of indepen-
dence. One group added that Bahasa once held prestige as a lingua franca in the Straits of Malacca,
and this legacy is the only reason Bahasa remains so visible. Most groups explained that ethnic Malays
are monolingual or generally less educated than non-Malays, meaning they need Bahasa in the LL.
Implicit in such argumentation is an interplay of ideology and colonial history. Ethnic Malays were
largely monolingual, undereducated, and impoverished under British rule and therefore socioecono-
mically less mobile than the Chinese. This motivated ethnocratic policy reforms. However, this narra-
tive has been carried forward into an ideology that monolingualism, under-education, and
socioeconomic immobility are not only dialectically related, but a typically Malay phenomenon.
The arguments also revealed an implicit chauvinism about the socioeconomic successes of the
Chinese-Malaysian community. This speaks to what Ooi (2003) describes as unfavourable Chinese dis-
courses of the Malays that describe them as ‘rather lacking in ambition’ whereby ‘this not-always-
subtle arrogance has fanned Malay resentment’ (234). More commonly, however, the students
spoke critically and in reference to Malay ethnonationalism. The predominance of Bahasa was com-
monly explained as a subtle ‘confirmation for everyone that they must know this language’ despite
ethnic diversity. They reproduced Malay discourse that ‘the dominant race is more important’ and
argued that the predominance of Bahasa ‘is like doing marketing’ to the majority. They invoked
the narrative of Ketuanan Melayu to explain that Bahasa is always dominant because the ‘Malays
were, like, born here and are, like, the originals. Then the Chinese came’. That is to say, the signs
inspired explanations of history in Malay terms and the students were cautious about not contradict-
ing the official narrative.
Photograph 2
The second photograph was taken in an industrial zone of Kuching and was chosen as it indexes the
prominent status of the Chinese community in that area. The sign hangs above a small private
business and is obviously void of Bahasa, despite language policy. The name of the business is
English monolingual, whereas the description of the business – as a shoe repair service – is
English/Chinese bilingual. The logo on the left is monolingual Dutch translating to Shoe repair is
craftsmanship! This is taken from the Dutch SMW Holland wholesaler for shoe repair products (see
https://www.smwholland.nl), indexing that the shop’s equipment is sourced from that company.
This section shows the photograph inspired talk about:
. sociopolitical resistance in the LL,
. the ongoing suppression of Indian-Malaysians,
. the normativity of English in Malaysia, and
. the prestige of European languages in advertising.
The photograph inspired initial talk in all groups about authorship and the sociopolitical and econ-
omic ideologies of the shop owner (Figure 2). Firstly, the students generally suggested that the photo
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 9
11. must have been taken in a Chinese-majority community. They also reflected on the absence of
Bahasa and commented, for example, ‘it’s pretty obvious that the owner is Chinese’ and
(6) Student 2: Was it opened by a Chinese?
Researcher: I don’t know.
Student 3: Most likely.
Student 4: Yeah. If there is Chinese without Malay, It’s most likely a Chinese shop.
Woven into these discussions was a presupposition that Chinese businesses owners may contra-
vene signage regulations in order to express a Chinese identity and engage the Chinese commu-
nity to the exclusion of others. The students also reflected metapragmatically on the sociopolitical
implications of the bilingual signage and the intentions of the owner, whereby three groups
argued that this shop ‘is only for Chinese customers’. Such metapragmatic awareness speaks to
the students experiencing the fragmentation of society on ethnic lines and the undercurrent of
tension between the Malays and the Chinese. Indeed, the students suggested this fragmentation
is normative by explaining ‘it’s just like how we determine whether this is an Indian shop, a Malay
shop; normally they just put it in their own language’. However, five groups added that as a savvy
business owner, English was included ‘because he wants to attract more customers. Because if you
only put the Chinese words, you won’t really get Indian and Malay customers because they won’t
know what it’s about’. That is to say, while the shop owner would not bow down to Malay
language politics and include Bahasa on the shop signage, he/she would conceivably reach out
to Malay customers through a third language. These critical deliberations suggest that their
own consumer experiences include surmising the ethnic and sociopolitical affiliations of the
businesses they engage. The immediacy and richness with which the students offered these obser-
vations suggest that ethnic expression through shop signs – at least among small businesses – is
indeed commonplace in Malaysia.
Three groups claimed some knowledge about Malaysian language policy. They pondered
whether policy requires all signs to be in English, noting, for example, ‘they said that if you
have a company, it’s not going to be in Chinese, it’s not going to be in Malay. It must be in
English’. These comments are contrary to Malaysian language policy as discussed earlier.
Instead, they constitute a myth with a genesis in the ubiquitous presence of English as a
means of communication between the ethnic groups and Malaysian commerce (Coluzzi 2017b).
One group explicitly explained that all shops signs must by law ‘have three languages, and the
Malay language must be the biggest compared to the others if you want to use other languages’.
Figure 2. Photograph of a small shoe repair business in Kuching.
10 N. J. ALBURY
12. This knowledge is indeed closer to current policy, and led to hypotheses that this shop owner
decided not to follow state language policy, perhaps because ‘it was established decades ago’
or because ‘Leo is his name’. Another two groups added that language policy includes suppressing
Indian languages. They explained
(7) Student 4: The Indians are a bit neglected. I will say that.
Researcher: What do you mean?
Student 4: Indians in Malaysia, um, are kind of a third citizenship. First you have the Malay people.
Student 1: Bumiputra.
Student 4: Like, Muslims. Malays. They are entitled. After that, going down, it’s the Chinese. Then going
down, it’s the Indians.
Student 5. For me personally, it’s a bit unfair. But it goes back to history, so we can’t comment on that
much.
Student 3: If there is a choice to choose a language to be neglected among the three, the Indians will be
the first one to be neglected.
Researcher: Yeah?
Student 1: It’s a political thing.
Of interest here is the Chinese sociolinguistic self-reflection and the concern the students held for
Indian-Malaysians vis-à-vis language policy and ideology. Even though it is not their own heritage
language, the absence of Tamil sparked critical commentary about a hierarchy of ethnicities and
languages. The students expressed awareness that Mandarin enjoys a more comfortable domestic
status than the languages of their fellow non-Bumiputra, and that Indian-Malaysians are particularly
suppressed under Malay ethnonationalism.
All groups referred, to some degree, to the use of English and of other European languages aug-
menting the attractiveness of businesses. Speaking to literature about linguistic globalisation – or
imperialism depending on one’s viewpoint (cf Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas 1996) – the students
explained that Malaysian shop owners ‘will sound cool if they have an English name’. They reflected
on the normativity of English-medium advertising, adding that English names ‘are just easier’ and ‘it’s
just kind of common’. The groups also referred to the Dutch logo. They were unable to identify the
language, but agreed it was European. Some suggested the shop owner simply ‘copied the logo’ and
that its presence ‘doesn’t matter’, but most suggested that the European language indexes quality
and class. These students reasoned that the shop owner included the Dutch logo because ‘like Mer-
cedes, BMWs, luxury … he wants to leave the message of its quality! Come!’, and because ‘we have
this idea that [products] are much better from the West’. This is reminiscent of what Kelly-Holmes
(2014) calls the fetishising of language whereby foreignness is alluring and implies quality.
Photograph 3
The last photograph was taken in Kota Bharu in the state of Kelantan and is the signage of The
Store, a national supermarket and department store chain. While The Store’s webpage is
English monolingual (see https://www.tstore.com.my), this sign shows English, Chinese and
Bahasa. This sign was chosen because here Bahasa is written in Jawi. Latin is the official script
of Bahasa, but Jawi is strongly associated with indexing a Muslim identity (Kratz 2002). Kelantan
is indeed a predominantly Malay state with only a small Chinese population. In Malaysia’s federal
system, individual states have legislative functions and Kelantan has especially referred to Islam as
its political model, reflecting its conservative Muslim constituency (Stark 2004). Accordingly, Jawi is
especially prominent in Kelantan, and in neighbouring Terengganu, compared to other states. This
section shows that the photograph especially solicited talk about (Figure 3):
. the greater linguistic mobility of Chinese-Malaysians vis-à-vis Chinese nationals,
. whether nor not using Jawi indexes Islamic political conservatism, and
. the suppression of Tamil.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 11
13. All the groups offered observations about which languages are represented and why. Firstly, they all
noted that the Chinese text is not a translation of The Store but reads as huang-qiu, meaning global. The
company’s website does not clarify this discrepancy, but the students felt that ‘it’s quite common for
the English of the company to be different from the Chinese name’. They also hypothesised that
‘perhaps they started with Chinese, then they wanted to go global, so they thought of a name, an
English name, which is different from the original name’. The sign inspired others to reiterate
another linguistic difference between Chinese-Malaysians and China. They explained that Chinese-
Malaysians use simplified Chinese but are also literate in traditional Chinese, unlike Chinese nationals
who only use simplified Chinese. They scoffed that ‘if you used this word in China, they wouldn’t under-
stand it’ and that apart from Malaysians, ‘only Hong Kong and Taiwan would understand this word’,
implying that Chinese-Malaysians enjoy greater mobility in the Chinese-speaking world than the main-
land Chinese. Conceivably, this implies commentary about the international orientation of the Chinese-
Malaysian community and the success of its education system.
Secondly, two groups again noted that Tamil is omitted from the sign. Kelantan hosts a much
smaller Indian community compared to other states, which might justify not including Tamil. None-
theless, the sign was once again a catalyst for the youths’ concern that Indian languages are system-
atically suppressed. On the one hand, they described this suppression, and the absence of Tamil in
the LL, as normative. For some, this was the fault of the Indian community itself for not maintaining its
languages and affording English prestige. They commented, for example, ‘actually, I never see it
[Tamil]’, that Tamil is ‘seen as unimportant’, and ‘even the Tamils, like my friend, he is an Indian,
but he has English to the same standard as US. It’s not that he learned through Internet or whatever,
it’s just how he speaks. Indian people speak less Tamil’. On the other hand, they argued that in this
case the sign implies that the shop owner is racist and wishes to exclude Indian-Malaysians. To this
end, the students joked in solidarity with Indian-Malaysians that ‘Tamil people should go inside and
speak in Tamil, and they’ll be like I don’t understand, I’m sorry!’
Figure 3. Photograph of the front signage at the Store, Kota Bharu.
12 N. J. ALBURY
14. All the groups, however, debated the relationship between Islam and using Jawi. Most discussions
were religiopolitical concerning the preeminence of Islam, and Islamic-inspired politics, in specific
Malaysian states. Almost all groups correctly hypothesised that the photograph is from Kelantan.
Most immediately conflated the representation of Jawi with Islamic conservatism, and interdiscur-
sively affiliated Jawi with the increasing Islamisation of life and law in Kelantan. This, they explained,
includes the segregation of the sexes in some arenas whereby ‘they separate you even if you are
husband and wife’, and cultural isolation in that ‘they are not open to other religions, language
and all that’. Others affiliated Jawi with ultra conservative political separatism whereby Kelantan is
seeking to pedestalise Sharia law above Malaysian civil law (Stark 2004). In doing so, the students con-
structed Jawi as indexing not simply orthography or faith, but an unwelcome Islamisation of public
life in a multifaith society. They explained
(8) Student 2: Kelantan is very different from the other states.
Student 5: They are more Malay.
Student 4: Conservative.
Student 2: Religious.
Student 4: Yeah, religious and conservative. And the state itself is managed by a different political party
instead of the government.
Student 2: They’ve got PAS [Malaysian Islamic Party].
Student 4: Yeah and PAS is very religious and traditional and they are very firm on their status, their laws,
their culture. Geez, they’re trying to implement Hudud [Islamic punishments]. You’ve shown us
this sign, and the first thing that comes to is that you took this in Kelantan because that’s the
only state that will do this.
Others misidentified Jawi as Arabic, on the basis that Kelantan Malays are oriented towards the
Qur’an and the Middle East. They explained that ‘this is about religion. Malays are usually Islamic,
and for Islam the language is Arabic’, and Malays are happy to ‘put in language that doesn’t represent
their race, just so they will know, like, oh that store must be halal’. In any case, the choice of language
was still associated with Islamic conservatism. Not all agreed with this association, however. Three
groups explained that Jawi is the normative script of Kelantan with no relationship to Islam. They
commented that ‘how religious they are has nothing to do with Jawi … the people might not be reli-
gious’ and even local Chinese-Malaysians would expect Bahasa to be written in Jawi. They explained:
(9) Student 3: They know how to read it, but we don’t.
Researcher: How come they know?
Student 3: It’s culture, because they live there.
Student 4: They mixed around with people who actually read that.
Student 1: Maybe they actually need it, actually need to know it. It’s taken for granted that they know how
to read Jawi.
In any case, a discursive association between Jawi and Islam already existed, such that the legitimacy
of this association could be debated.
Conclusion
LL, a field of inquiry in and of itself, has proven to also be a lucrative tool for soliciting rich metaso-
ciolinguistic talk about societal multilingualism in a heterogeneous society. Showing photographs of
authentic signs where multilingualism is presented in different ways stimulated discourse and debate
about Malaysia’s linguistic diversity. This talk was firmly embedded within local histories and socio-
politics that shape intergroup relations in Malaysia’s ethnically fragmented society. That is to say,
the youths had dynamic metasociolinguistic awareness about societal multilingualism in its extralin-
guistic context, and that awareness manifested in robust talk stimulated by the visual representations
of multilingualism. The topics that transpired can be typologised whereby the students almost always
described the signs, including the languages represented and their communicative goals, as LL
theory predicts (Landry and Bourhis 1997). The students also discussed and debated
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 13
15. other sociolinguistic themes, including the pragmatic implications of language choices, the relation-
ship (or lack thereof) between LL and ethnic expression, language policy, sociolinguistic history,
dominant ideologies, the instrumentality and prestige of different languages, and the relationship
between language, ethnicity, and religion. Such typologies are, of course, specific to the discussions
that transpired from these photographs with these participants. They show nonetheless how fertile a
multilingual LL can be for soliciting metacommentary about linguistic diversity, and they offer an
illustration of the possible themes that can underpin sociocognitive engagement with that LL.
Compellingly, for the Malaysian context, two specific and recurrent ideological discourses
emerged across the typologies and discussions. The youths reiterated their critical concern for the
ethnolinguistic and sociological status of their Indian-Malaysian peers. They lamented that Tamil
lacks prominence in the LL and is suppressed in language ideology and policy. They showed aware-
ness that Mandarin is seemingly valued above Tamil, despite both languages and ethnicities notion-
ally being non-Bumiputra and equally supressed in law. Their awareness, therefore, included how
they perceive the experiences of the Indian minority and that Mandarin has, in practice, been some-
what hierarchised. They partnered these perceptions with empathy, self-reflexivity, and a critical
disdain for linguistic inequality. Secondly, these Chinese-Malaysians youths hastened to exploit socio-
linguistic phenomena to define and demarcate their identity and practices as non-mainland Chinese.
Although China was not at all a focus of the task, the discussions nonetheless veered towards com-
parisons between Malaysian-Chinese and China. The students constructed their own literacy as com-
paratively more complex and international, their language repertoire as more multilingual, their
linguistic resources as offering greater mobility, and their social behaviours as more sophisticated
and refined. From a sociological perspective, these students discursively shed the diasporic immi-
grant status that Malaysian authorities perpetually prescribe them. They distanced themselves
from China and sought to legitimise a uniquely Chinese-Malaysian identity.
Above all, the hypothesis proved correct: a multilingual LL can stimulate rich and robust metalin-
guistic talk about societal multilingualism, in a society where multilingualism is omnipresent, beyond
the LL itself. Awareness about language in public spaces seemingly existed in symbiotic relationship
to awareness about societal multilingualism, and was indeed retrievable through conversations
anchored by the LL. This Malaysian case study shows that LL can be a fruitful methodological tool
in researching and analysing the many sociocognitive engagements of a community with its
languages and diversity. This, I believe, expands the LL academic scenery (Shohamy and Gorter
2008b) even further.
Acknowledgements
I give my sincerest thanks to the Chinese-Malaysian students who participated in this research and graciously took time
out of their busy schedules to so eagerly share their ideas and experiences. I also would like to thank the Professor
Dewaele and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback, as well as Professor Jacob Mey for encouraging
this paper, Dr Maimu Berezkina for introducing me to the fascinating world of linguistic landscape, and the Centre for
Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan for financing the beginnings of this project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Nathan John Albury is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His
research interests include critical multilingualism and multiculturalism, language policy, and linguistic diasporas in eth-
nically diverse societies. His work especially seeks to give voice to marginalised groups and local epistemologies of
language.
14 N. J. ALBURY
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