The purpose of this study was to investigate and examined the eight vowels formant characteristic of Malay language. Previous research of Malay language only investigated six basic vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /[schwa]/. The vowels /[open-mid back rounded vowel]/, /[open-mid front unrounded vowel]/ that usually exist in a dialect were not…

This paper focuses on the linguistic evolution of the Tianjin speech community in Sabah, Malaysia. From the perspective of restructuring of speech community, the paper integrates both micro and macro levels of language change into the analysis. Several methods were adopted in this study. Interviews were conducted with community leaders and various…

The use of ICT in education has benefitted both students and educators in the education field. Currently, the social networking sites are being used widely by the university students in their daily lives for various purposes such as entertainment, networking, as well as education purposes. There are many studies conducted to figure out whether the…

The religious domain has been identified as an important domain for language maintenance (Fishman 1972; Gal 1979). However, the effect of religion in language maintenance is not always positive (Spolsky 2003). This paper attempts to explore whether religion, Catholicism for this study, plays a significant role in the maintenance of Hakka in a…

The study investigated the language choices of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Chinese family business and the factors guiding their choices. Interviews were conducted with 17 CEOs of family businesses located in Sarawak, some of whom are the sons and grandsons of the founder of the business. The results showed that all the CEOs can speak their…

Previous language attitude studies indicated that in many countries all over the world, English language learners perceived native accents, either American or British, more positively than the non-native accents such as the Japanese, Korean, and Austrian accents. However, in Malaysia it is still unclear which accent Malaysian learners of English…

The study examines the influence of gender, age and socio-economic status on attitudes of Foochow and Hokkien towards their ethnic language and Mandarin. The matched guise test results of 120 Foochow and 120 Hokkien participants in Kuching, Malaysia, showed positive attitudes towards Mandarin on all the 15 traits. The Hokkien participants were…

The Appraisal Theory includes three subsystems of evaluation; Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation. This study focuses on Graduation subsystem which is used by writers to amplify or diminish the scope of these two subsystems. It consists of Focus and Force options. Focus expressions are usually non-gradable they tend to sharpen or soften the…

Language attitudes are learned and formed in our social environment through hearing others referring to certain groups or people's languages and cultures, and also by exposure to particular varieties spoken in the context. This might lead to stereotyping English and its native speakers (McKenzie, 2008). In this sense, it is pedagogically…

Social factors involved in language maintenance and language shift (LMLS) have been the focus of LMLS studies. Previous studies provide fundamental support for the theoretical development of this research branch. However, there is no discussion regarding the hierarchical order of these social factors, i.e. the degree of importance of various…

The main aims of this qualitative study are to identify and categorise the types of lexical borrowings from the three main Malaysian languages which are the Malay language, Chinese dialects and Indian languages used by 203 ESL teachers, to what extent these lexical borrowings are used and for what reasons. This study has identified a new category…

The language situation in the Malaysian Chinese community has undergone great changes in the past century. This paper aims to account for such changes in the framework of sociolinguistic realignment, which is both descriptive and predictive. The triglossic situation in the colonial period (1859-1957) is described; with the support of a language…

This paper aims to highlight the importance of teaching sociolinguistic competence to ESL learners in Malaysian schools. Sociolinguistic competence is the knowledge of socio cultural rules of language and of discourse. This type of competence requires an understanding of the socio context in which language is used. It is proposed that carefully…

Ferguson's concept of diglossia and its later extension and coupling with bilingualism is developed further into the concept of polyglossia with multilingualism by a discussion of various speech communities where these phenomena are in evidence. (Author/HP)

Reports on a study investigating how Americans respond to English as a Second Language (ESL) speech depending on the non-native speaker's accent and whether there were errors in the ESL speech. Findings indicate that Americans exhibit different cultural prejudices towards different foreign speakers depending on the accent of the speakers. (50…