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Language, Education and Nation-building in Southeast Asia: An Introduction

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137455536_1

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PROOF

1
2
Language, Education and
3 Nation-building in Southeast Asia:
4
5 An Introduction
6
7 Ruanni Tupas and Peter Sercombe
8
9
10
11
12
13
14 The Southeast Asian region is home to remarkable political, cultural,
15 ethnic and economic diversity. Much of this can be traced to influ-
16 ences of immigration (especially from India and China), alongside
17 vestiges of colonialism – Dutch, British, French, Portuguese, Spanish
18 and American – that have saturated the different trajectories of nations
19 and nation-building in the region, from the imposition of artificial
20 political boundaries, to the regional consequences of World War II (not-
21 withstanding the Cold War). Barker, Harms and Lindquist (2014) claim
22 that the region ‘lacks underlying coherence’, and is host to ‘an extraor-
23 dinary array of different languages’ (Chandler et al. 2005, p. 12), to the
24 extent that that there is widespread ignorance of neighbours’ histories,
25 or national leaders across the region.
26 Despite differences, however, countries of Southeast Asia have broadly
27 shared economic and political experiences. Human mobility across the
28 region, often for transnational economic activities, in the form of
29 migrant (especially domestic) labour, and regional conflicts of the late
30 20th century, have brought the region further together, although not
31 always in equal or mutually desired ways. The postcolonial trajectories of
32 Southeast Asian countries – including that of Thailand, which was tech-
33 nically never under colonial rule (see Anderson 1977) – have revolved
34 around nation-building (inclusive of fostering a sense of nationalism)
35 and economic development. These trajectories have tended to frame
36 Southeast Asian countries’ autocratic and market-driven projects of
37 governance, nationhood and economic expansion.
38 From this backdrop of ‘cross-cutting features’ (Barker, Harms &
39 Lindquist 2014, p. 8) among Southeast Asian countries, this volume
40 emerges with a focus on issues of language, education, nation-building,
41 minority languages and their inter-relationships. The languages of the
1

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 PROOF
2 Ruanni Tupas and Peter Sercombe

1 region have been deeply intertwined with the nation-building projects

2 of individual countries, education serving as a critical infrastructural
3 feature for the implementation (or imposition) of reforms. Education
4 systems have become important tools for the institutionalization of
5 languages, as both dominant and national, with the consequent mar-
6 ginalization of less powerful local languages. Reforms have sometimes
7 come about in the name of anti-colonial resistance, social integration
8 and national identity formation (see the chapter on Myanmar, as an
9 acute example). Schools have also become loci for the (re)affirmation
10 of the role of colonial languages in society, especially English, couched
11 in market-driven ideologies and practices, resulting in changes to the
12 linguistic ecologies of the region (see the chapters on Indonesia, Brunei
13 and Singapore that illustrate these ecological shifts).
14 In short, language policy-making in Southeast Asia has been an inex-
15 tricable part of nation-building processes. This volume aims to describe
16 and track these processes through ways in which individual countries
17 have configured their languages and education systems within their
18 own settings. Of particular interest here are minority or non-dominant
19 languages, especially as they tend to reflect differing positions vis-à-vis
20 colonial and national or locally dominant languages, for example, from
21 local elite perspectives: as symbols of backwardness, anti-modernism and
22 anti-nationalism; and as instruments of potential national disunity and
23 disintegration. In contrast, they may be seen as: democratizing voices
24 of cultural preservation and ethnic identity affirmation; as tools for
25 effective teaching and learning, especially at elementary levels; and as
26 core elements of restorative justice and socioeconomic redistribution.
27 Nonetheless, Kosonen and Young (2009, p. 10) suggest that, in Southeast
28 Asia, ‘Many educational planners and practitioners around the region are
29 still not always fully aware of the issues involved in the use of minority
30 learners’ mother tongues in education.’ This volume interrogates language
31 hierarchies and ways in which nationalist language policies manage (or
32 attempt to contain or curtail) diversity in order to (re-)affirm the linguistic
33 and educational status quo of respective societies. These questions point
34 to issues of assimilation and shift in Southeast Asia (as reflected in the
35 volume’s title); and the individual chapters in this volume aim to unpack
36 these through scrutiny of individual countries in the region.
37
38 Early history and colonialism
39
40 Southeast Asia primarily refers to 11 countries, namely Negara Brunei
41 Darussalam (hereafter, Brunei), Cambodia, East Timor (or Timor Leste),

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 PROOF
Introduction 3

1 Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (or Burma), the Philippines,

2 Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. With the exception of East Timor,
3 these countries are members of the ‘Association of Southeast Asian
4 Nations’ (ASEAN), an organization that, since its formation, has become
5 central to the collective and individual trajectories of member countries,
6 including language and language education policies. The organiza-
7 tion emerged in the 1960s, at which time there was political chaos in
8 Southeast Asia, the region being embroiled in conflict. Vietnam, Laos
9 and Cambodia were involved in a war with the United States, besides
10 China being in the throes of a Cultural Revolution, with consequences
11 for the rest of the region (Kirkpatrick 1998).
12 Southeast Asia is approximately 4.3 million square kilometres in area
13 (see Map I.1), and the climate is tropical. The region has a total popula-
14 tion of around 550 million, nearly half of whom live in Indonesia (the
15 largest Southeast Asian country in terms of land area), while Brunei
16 has a population of around 400,000 (and is 5,770 sq. kms in area); yet
17 Singapore is the smallest and the wealthiest country in Southeast Asia,
18
19
20
21
22
MYANMAR
23 LAOS
24
VIETNAM
25 THAILAND
26
CAMBODIA PHILIPPINES
27
28
29
BRUNEI
30 MALAYSIA
31 SINGAPORE
32
33
34
35 INDONESIA
36
37
EAST TIMOR
38
39
40 Map I.1 Southeast Asia
41 Source: Artist: G-third Limsiaco Atanque

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 PROOF
4 Ruanni Tupas and Peter Sercombe

1 with a population of around 5½ million and a land area of just over 700
2 sq. kms. As mentioned, Southeast Asia is also ethnolinguistically diverse
3 (cf. Brown 2009), with languages from the Austronesian, Austroasiatic
4 and Sino-Tibetan families having a high presence. The world’s major
5 religions are well represented, with Indonesia’s population including
6 more Muslim citizens than any other country on earth. In addition,
7 there are high numbers of Buddhists (the religion most widely distrib-
8 uted across the region, see Table I.1), Christians and Hindus (Watson
9 2011), reflecting extensive immigrant and colonial influences.
10 The early history of Southeast Asia, as suggested by Bellwood (1993),
11 has significance for the current era in that it provides evidence of
12 human expansion into the region from northern and western parts
13 of Asia and the gradual evolution of cultural and linguistic diversity
14 that is a regional hallmark. From the 16th century, western influences
15 began to gain a purchase, with the arrival of European colonialists
16 from Portugal, Spain, Holland, England, France and, later, the United
17 States, invading and colonizing various parts of Southeast Asia (Paul
18 2010), up until the 20th century. Christianity was also an excuse for
19 invasions by the Portuguese and Spaniards (Kramer 2002; Paul 2010).
20 Exceptional in this pattern of incursion was Thailand, which avoided
21 occupation. It was otherwise considered to be ‘ruled indirectly by the
22 British and the French’ (Paul 2010, p. 128), and arguably as well, by
23 the Americans (Anderson 1977), as a bulwark against Anglo-French
24 mutual enmity and imperial ambitions, these being underpinned by
25 their sense of racial superiority (over local people) and an appetite
26 for riches.
27 The overall result has been a considerable colonial imprint left on
28 Southeast Asia, impacting considerably on language and language
29 education (as discussed further below). Invasions by foreign nationals
30 were driven mainly by imperialist ambitions, a demand for spices and
31 monopolization of the spice trade. The arrival of the Portuguese, in the
32 16th century, as well as subsequent disputes between the Dutch and
33 the British (Watson 2011) were explicitly linked to the lucrative spice
34 trade. Some argue that colonialism probably had a singularly less
35 violent impact on Southeast Asia than on certain other parts of the
36 world, e.g. South America (see, for example, Stannard 1992). But, as
37 can be seen in the chapters that follow, the colonial impact on lan-
38 guage, education and society has been both broad (affecting the whole
39 region) and deep (in terms of the strength and duration of its effects).
40 Today, Southeast Asian nations continue to grapple with (remnants
41 and continuities of) colonialism – English as a clear example, but also

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 9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1

41
40
39
38
37
36
35
34
33
32
31
30
29
28
27
26
25
24
23
22
21
20
19
18
17
16
15
14
13
12
11
10
Table I.1 ASEAN nations 2009: statistical indicators

9781403997463_02_intro.indd 5
Country Land area Population Main religion Main/official GDP* HDI Life expectancy**
(km2) (2012) language (2012)
(2007)***

Brunei 5,765 434,320 Islam Malay**** $38,801 0.885 Female Male

Cambodia 181,035 15,254,000 Theravada Buddhism Khmer $934 0.543 77.8 75.2
East Timor 14,874 1,119,000 Roman Catholicism Tetum $3,766 0.567 64.9 58.6
Indonesia 1,904,569 244,468,000 Islam Indonesian $3,660 0.629 71.5 67.5
Laos 236,800 6,376,000 Theravada Buddhism Lao $1,454 0.543 65 62.3
Malaysia 329,847 29,038,000 Islam Malay $10,579 0.769 76.5 71.7
Myanmar 676,000 63,672,000 Theravada Buddhism Burman $849 0.498 64.6 58.1
Philippines 300,000 97,737,000 Roman Catholicism Filipino $2,462 0.654 71.6 66.1
Singapore 724 5,366,000 Buddhism English, Mandarin, $49,936 0.895 82.9 78.2
Tamil, Malay
Thailand 513,120 64,460,000 Theravada Buddhism Thai $5,848 0.690 75.1 68.2
Vietnam 331,210 90,388,000 Buddhism Vietnamese $1,523 0.617 71.3 71.3

* This is per capita, in US dollars, for 2012.

** Adapted from: ASEAN Finance and Macro-economic Surveillance Unit Database 2011, viewed 20 January 2013, <http://www.asean.org/archive/
stat/Table1.pdf>.
*** Figures for life expectancy in Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar and Singapore are for 2006.
**** ‘Brunei is the only SEAMEO country where the use of local languages in education is legally proscribed’ (Kosonen 2009, p. 25).
Source: ASEAN Community in Figures
5
PROOF

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 PROOF
6 Ruanni Tupas and Peter Sercombe

1 Portuguese in East Timor and French in Vietnam, although perhaps to

2 a lesser degree – reminding us, as many Southeast Asian scholars have
3 repeatedly claimed, that ‘certain things are really not so new’ (Hannerz
4 2014, p. xiii).
5 Nevertheless, the chapters here chart the courses of minority and
6 non-dominant languages in the region, providing fresh insights arising
7 from, for example, documentation of alliances between cultural minor-
8 ity groups, NGOs and government institutions, and innovative local
9 responses to the influences of globalization. This is the volume’s con-
10 tribution to the study of language, education and society in Southeast
11 Asia (see Rappa & Wee 2006; Lee & Suryadinata 2007). While ongoing
12 patterns of authoritarian and strong state rule continue across the
13 region (Yeung 2000; Heryanto & Hadiz 2005) in the midst of increasing
14 influence of market-driven (language) ideologies (Hadiz & Robinson
15 2005), cracks emerge from all these in the face of renewed interest in
16 the role of local, minority or non-dominant languages in improving
17 and democratizing learning, challenging dominant languages through
18 hybrid language practices, and promoting language rights (see, for
19 example, Mühlhaüsler 1996; Ricento 2006).
20
21 ASEAN in the postcolonial period
22
23 ASEAN was founded in 1967, the five original members being Indonesia,
24 Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. ASEAN’s constitu-
25 tion was only formally and finally adopted in 2007. A notable feature of
26 ASEAN has been the designation of English as the official language
27 of communication among member countries. English was embraced
28 without question ‘as the sole working language of ASEAN’ (Kirkpatrick
29 2007, p. 7). Subsequently, there was brief mention of the inclusion of
30 Malay, as ASEAN’s second official language, but this was rejected, there
31 being no further calls for the use of other languages (ibid.).1
32 There have been considerable challenges common to the countries
33 of ASEAN, all but one being a relatively newly emerging postcolonial
34 country, with the challenges this entails – language policy being one
35 dimension, i.e. where matters of language meet politics (Wright 2003);
36 and one can see how the creation of official and national languages
37 has been ‘an indispensable part of nation building’ (Tsui 2007, p. 122).
38 Language planning in the region has included ‘deliberate efforts to
39 influence the behavior of others with respect to the acquisition, struc-
40 ture, or functional allocation of their language codes’ (Cooper 1989,
41 p. 45; see also Blommaert 1996).2 Policies have inevitably impinged on

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 PROOF
Introduction 7

1 relations among and between the many ethnolinguistic groups (Brown

2 2009), across all Southeast Asian countries. At the same time, a corol-
3 lary has been that some national governments within ASEAN have not
4 always been willing to reveal the ethnolinguistic make-up of their citi-
5 zenry, at least partly in order to impose top-down illusions of national
6 uniformity and homogeneity as a means to absorb, and or stifle, minori-
7 ties, reflecting Gellner’s (1983, p. 1) claim that ‘nationalism is primar-
8 ily a political principle that holds that the political and national unit
9 should be congruent’ (see, for example, chapters on Brunei, Myanmar
10 and Laos in this volume).
11 Policy trends of the last and current century, Ricento (2006) argues,
12 have tended to unfold in three stages: the first corresponds to the post
13 World War II era at a time language policy and planning can be asso-
14 ciated with an age of postcolonialism and nation-building (see also
15 Fishman et al. 1968; Rubin & Jernudd 1971); the following period was
16 marked by realization of the limitations of the preceding stage during
17 which language policies had tended to prolong social inequality (see,
18 for example, Tollefson 1991); while more recent times have been over-
19 shadowed by issues of language rights (e.g. Mühlhaüsler 1996). Brown
20 and Ganguly (2003, pp. 4–5) suggest that significant language-related
21 issues for policy-makers in ASEAN include:
22
23 • National language
24 • Minority language issues
25 • Education, especially medium and/or media of education
26 • Levels of autonomy for parts of a country especially in relation to
27 language issues
28 • How to deal with democracy?
29
30 Monolingualism and assimilation in ‘postcolonial’ language
31 policies
32 These points are closely interconnected as well as being core aspects of
33 the chapters that follow. Each point can be seen in relation to Ricento’s
34 (2006) suggested policy stages, the first being the initial and, for policy-
35 makers, perhaps the most critical period (i.e. that of nation formation
36 and the role of languages in supporting this), while the second and
37 third points reflect the challenges inherent to stage one, including reac-
38 tions among populations to implementation of policies (of uniformity)
39 by local elites. There is some variation in language policies across the
40 region, especially with reference to non-majority peoples and their lan-
41 guages. However, a general tendency in language selection across ASEAN

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 PROOF
8 Ruanni Tupas and Peter Sercombe

1 countries has been towards monolingualism (cf. Dorian 1998), with a

2 clear trend towards assimilation. Minority languages may well come to
3 be classed as dialects of the national (and official) language (with a con-
4 comitant erosion of social prestige), Brunei being an example of this.
5 Singapore is unusual for having four official national languages, but its
6 English-dominant bilingual education policy has resulted in home lan-
7 guage shifts where English (and Mandarin to a lesser extent) appears to
8 be replacing other languages spoken in Singaporean homes. Moreover,
9 while in ‘all Southeast Asian countries except Brunei Darussalam, the
10 Lao PDR, and Singapore, non-dominant languages are used in educa-
11 tion to some extent’ (Kosonen 2009, p. 38), the main kinds of education
12 open to non-dominant first language speaking Southeast Asians are
13 largely forms of transitional bilingualism which (intentionally or not)
14 aim at language shift, as ‘many children in Southeast Asia are taught
15 in languages that are not spoken in their immediate community …
16 are over-represented among the out-of-school population’ (Kosonen &
17 Young 2009, p. 8). In this respect, a useful consideration is the extent to
18 which Southeast Asian language policy can be seen to match UNESCO’s
19 (2012) eight development goals for the millennium, among which the
20 role of language is seen as central.
21 While none of the aims has been explicitly opposed, little effort
22 appears to have been put into supporting or implementing these aims.
23 This may be, as suggested by Kosonen and Young (2009, p. 10) that, in
24 Southeast Asia: ‘Many educational planners and practitioners around
25 the region are still not always fully aware of the issues involved in the
26 use of minority learners’ mother tongues in education.’ It is this which
27 is more likely a barrier to UNESCO’s goals (in Table I.2), but which
28 remains unresolved.
29
30 Dominant national languages in ‘nationalist’ language policies
31 As mentioned at the beginning of this introduction, the postcolonial
32 trajectories of Southeast Asian nations – despite differences between
33 them – essentially revolve around ‘nationalist’ nation-building, char-
34 acterized primarily by anti-colonial politics (initially at least) and a
35 ‘one nation’ ideology. The processes of nation-building have been
36 saturated with essentialist language ideologies, unfortunately, with
37 brutal consequences for many cultural minorities who do not speak
38 or subscribe to the central/dominant national languages and their
39 associated ideologies. In different shades but of the same ideological
40 mould, the language policies of Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and
41 Cambodia are anchored on such essentialist language ideologies, with

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 PROOF
Introduction 9

1 Table I.2 UNESCO’s eight development goals for the millennium and their
2 links to language
3
1. Eradicate pov- ‘poverty reduction plans should include a strong emphasis
4 erty and hunger on engaging with local languages. The authors noted that,
5 “Language … has a very influential role in fostering the pro-
6 cess of an informed public dialog and debate”.’ (ibid., p. 5)
7 2. Achieve ‘A growing body of research worldwide demonstrates that
8 universal primary instruction in the mother tongue, beginning in the first
9 education years of school and continuing for as long as possible, helps
10 girls and boys in numerous ways’ (ibid., p. 12)
11 3. Promote gender ‘Research into bilingual education in Africa and Latin
equality and America has found that girls who learn first in familiar
12
empower women languages stay in school longer and are more likely to be
13 identified as good students. They do better on achievement
14 tests and repeat grades less often than girls who do not get
15 instruction in their mother tongue’ (ibid., p. 20)
16 4 & 5. Reduce ‘Research in South-East Asia found that many ethnic minor-
17 child mortality ity people identified language as a major constraint to
and improve accessing health services. For many highland minorities,
18
maternal health the national language was in effect a “foreign language”.
19 The research concluded that, “In the health sector, patients
20 and providers need to be able to communicate … A health
21 provider who does not speak the same language as the
22 patient may have difficulties in diagnosing and curing a
health problem, or in sharing health information. And with-
23
out communication, it is difficult for patients to develop a
24 sense of trust. This has negative effects on the health-seeking
25 behavior of the ethnic minority population”’ (ibid., p. 26)
26 6. Ensure sustain- ‘Language has an important part to play in minorities’
27 able development participation in the development process. Researchers
28 who focused on the importance of language for sustain-
able development in communities in Ivory Coast, Namibia
29
and Indonesia have pointed out that failure to engage
30 with the minority languages only increases minority
31 peoples’ exclusion. They highlight the positive aspects of
32 “communicative sustainability” over the negative results
33 of “communicative dependency” and conclude that local
languages are a key resource’ (ibid., p. 38)
34
7. Combat HIV ‘People in ethnolinguistic minority communities are
35
and aids, malaria especially vulnerable to HIV and AIDS, malaria and other
36 and other diseases health challenges due in part to the lack of essential
37 information provided in their own languages, in a cultur-
38 ally sensitive manner and by people they trust’ (ibid., p. 32)
39 8. Foster global ‘Developing and providing materials and software in local
40 partnerships for languages fosters participation and inclusion of minori-
development ties’ (ibid., p. 44)
41
Source: UNESCO (2012)

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10 Ruanni Tupas and Peter Sercombe

1 the sole national languages usually determined by central governments

2 driven by dominant ethnolinguistic groups. The language policies of
3 Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Singapore exhibit a wider range of
4 ideological directions, under which bilingual models of instruction are
5 more widely accepted (generally a local language plus English; see, for
6 example, Kirkpatrick 2010, for a detailed analysis of problems related to
7 the privileging of English across ASEAN), but remain largely essentialist
8 and reductionist, as in ‘one country, one culture, one people’, exempli-
9 fied by Brunei’s explicitly stated ethnically nationalist ideology: Melayu,
10 Islam Beraja, i.e. ‘Malay, Islamic Monarchy’.
11 It is important to highlight this pattern of a dominant ‘nationalist’
12 ideological stance, in language policy-making in the region, in order to
13 understand the purposes underlying political, educational and devel-
14 opment projects. There have been inroads in multilingual minority
15 language use education in the region (e.g. the Philippines), but
16 resistance even from central governments against the use of indig-
17 enous languages remains strong, as the chapters in this volume show.
18 Cognitively, sociocognitively and socio-politically, mother tongues are
19 almost universally endorsed because of evidence of their efficiency and
20 usefulness as languages of learning, but are still seen often by state insti-
21 tutions as contributing to a nation’s disintegration, thus posing a threat
22 to national unity and identity.
23
24 English and ‘development’
25 Another aspect of nation-building in Southeast Asia that merits high-
26 lighting is the association of English with national development.
27 Not only have decolonized nations tended to define themselves vis-
28 à-vis their erstwhile colonial masters, and have attempted to push
29 citizenries into the so-called modern, developed world. Within this
30 notion of ‘development’ in nation-building, of which formal educa-
31 tion can be seen as a significant component, Appleby et al. (2002)
32 differentiate between purposes of language: language ‘as’ develop-
33 ment, whereby language teaching is an outcome in itself; while
34 language ‘for’ development emphasizes language as an instrument
35 in the development of different fields, such as commerce, or media.
36 Language ‘in’ development relates to roles languages play in national
37 development and the support they can offer. Language(s) ‘of’ develop-
38 ment is concerned with the discourse which attaches itself to devel-
39 opment issues. ASEAN countries have come to mandate the teaching
40 of English at primary school level and/or as a medium of instruction
41 (often trumping the role of the local national language, indigenous

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Introduction 11

1 minority languages and those of other ASEAN members, e.g. Brunei

2 and Singapore). English and its history in the region can be explicitly
3 linked to colonialism and the rationales that underpinned it: com-
4 merce (more generally commercial exploitation), religious prosyletiza-
5 tion and political colonization were undertaken through the conduit
6 of English. A consequence has been a decline in use of minority group
7 languages (see also Watson 2011), except perhaps where people have
8 remained physically isolated and where national media may not be
9 available. Still, some remote areas have been brought under central-
10 ized control (e.g. outlying parts of Indonesia, such as central parts
11 of Borneo). Since colonization came about (or protectorate status,
12 in the case of Brunei) and was later rejected, or dismantled, there
13 has emerged an assured role for English in Malaysia, Singapore and
14 Brunei (cf. Jones 2003), as economies have gradually industrialized –
15 or ‘developed’ – and rurally located citizens have moved to urban
16 areas to benefit from the expansion of work opportunities and cash
17 economies.
18
19 English, neoliberalism and self-colonization
20 With the post-World War II global expansion of the USA, knowledge
21 of English has brought with it certain economic advantages. As indicated,
22 English has had an especially important role in ex-British and ex-American
23 colonies Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines (where US
24 forces were already starting to teach English by 1898, gradually banning
25 Tagalog and introducing American literary works with a colonial mes-
26 sage [Martin 2002]). Overall, as David (2005, p. 124) suggests: ‘English …
27 appears to have a disproportionately high economic value compared
28 to other languages’ and an increasing role in Asian language educa-
29 tion contexts. In fact, there are not many ‘countries where govern-
30 ments (correctly or incorrectly) do not espouse the belief that English
31 is essential in socio-economic development’ (Kennedy 2011, p. 4). Ho
32 (2003a) suggests that English facilitates communication among Asian
33 nations and Ferguson (2006) has attempted to deconstruct Philippson’s
34 (1992) linguistic imperialism argument as a top-down theory of lan-
35 guage spread, proposing it is easy to overlook the agency of speakers
36 in a linguistic periphery (cf. Kachru 1982), as well as overemphasize
37 tensions arising between perceptions of English and other local lan-
38 guages. Ferguson questions the extent to which the increasing spread
39 of English hazards cultural and linguistic diversity resulting in further
40 social inequalities (cf. Phillipson 1992; Kirkpatrick 1998), noting that
41 there are wider issues of general access to educational resources. Thus,

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12 Ruanni Tupas and Peter Sercombe

1 English may be seen as part of the language (education) policy problem,

2 not ‘the’ problem itself, being emblematic of broader policy tendencies.
3 Nevertheless, English is being used increasingly as a medium of
4 instruction at all educational levels. Economically more successful
5 countries have been inclined to cling to English as an essential means
6 to maintain their competitive edge (Ho & Wang 2003), for example
7 Singapore, while emerging economies have been apt to see English as a
8 means to economic progress (e.g. Cambodia and Vietnam). Kumar and
9 Hill (2009, p. 1) argue that the euphoria of ‘education for all’ is being
10 undermined by the decreasing role of the state and its reduced expendi-
11 ture in education and that the so-called free market model is not free
12 at all, the current system being created to suit the global corporate
13 market, based on capitalism, which needs ever more workers and con-
14 sumers, as forms of ‘human capital’. The production of these is part of
15 the role schools play, with Piller and Cho (2013, p. 31) suggesting that
16 regional language education policy has led to a rise in academic capital-
17 ism through the ‘marketization and corporatization of education’, one
18 dimension being the adoption of English medium education as a form
19 of self-colonization (Choi 2010); and that this neoliberal tendency is
20 fundamentally opposed to regulation (Piller & Cho 2013).
21 Nonetheless, ASEAN is currently moving towards closer language inte-
22 gration in some respects, building on the role of English as a regional
23 lingua franca; and the trend of privileging English looks set to continue.
24 In 2012, a US$25 million Brunei-US English Language Enrichment
25 Project was implemented. This initiative was shared jointly by Universiti
26 Brunei Darussalam and the East-West Centre, in Honolulu. The overall
27 aim was to further efforts to unify ASEAN members linguistically, as well
28 as boost opportunities for diplomacy, education and teaching in the
29 region (Guardian 2012). Language courses and skills training have been
30 specifically tied to professional needs.
31 As a follow-up, a ‘Forum on English for ASEAN Integration’ was held
32 between 11 and 14 November 2012, in Brunei (http://bruneiuspro-
33 gramme.org/forum/), at which Brunei’s Deputy Minister of Education
34 (Brunei Times 2013) stated: ‘The use of the English language will serve
35 to unite all ASEAN member countries as a common working language.’
36 This kind of view fails to take account of the varied roles of English in
37 ASEAN. English has not had, for example, a central role in Cambodia,
38 Thailand or Vietnam, in the same way as Singapore, Malaysia or the
39 Philippines. In essence, English remains the language of the educated
40 and the elite, not people in general, a sentiment rarely considered by
41 ASEAN language education policy-makers.

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Introduction 13

1 Assimilation and shift: individual chapters in this volume

2
3 Thus, what the chapters in this volume aim to show are the following:
4
5 • First, how perpetuation of current trends is likely to result in growing
6 social inequalities; less opportunity for social mobility as a result of edu-
7 cational choices made by those in power; and increasing numbers of
8 dropouts, especially at primary level (see, for example, Sercombe 2010);
9 • Second, how ‘postcolonial’ nation-building projects deployed (and
10 continue to do so) assimilationist language and education policies
11 which have an ongoing daily impact on many people’s lives in sig-
12 nificant ways and transform language ecologies into highly tiered
13 multilingualisms;
14 • Third, how English remains to be perceived as a (or the) language of
15 development, globalization and modernity; and
16 • Fourth, how pockets of initiatives to promote the use of mother
17 tongues and other non-dominant languages are often resisted but,
18 at the same time, are also increasingly being seen as tools integral
19 to the facilitation of learning, besides addressing inequity in society.
20
21 Each of the chapters in this book shows how one, or generally more,
22 of these four key features of language policy-making in the region are
23 intermeshed with the specific geopolitical and cultural systems of each
24 Southeast Asian country under consideration.
25 In Chapter 1, about Brunei, Sercombe discusses the impact of lan-
26 guage policy and bilingual education on the ethnolinguistic diversity
27 in the country. It shows how the nation’s dominant ideology which
28 hinges on the belief in one nation (in the sense of one dominant ethnic
29 group), one religion and one ruler, is deeply entwined in its language
30 policy which established Bahasa Melayu as the only official language of
31 the country in 1959, and one of the two (along with English) languages
32 of instruction in the country’s bilingual system of education, since
33 1985. This makes language policy essentially assimilationist with the
34 aim of incorporating all citizens into a single (Muslim Malay) commu-
35 nity. English in the bilingual system affirms the privileged status of the
36 ethnic Malay ruling elite but further marginalizes those from minority
37 groups whose first languages are neither English nor Bahasa Melayu.
38 Such consolidation of linguistic power accruing to Malay and English,
39 coupled with inter-marriage between Malays and non-Malays, has led to
40 the decline of minority languages and a shift among many non-Malays
41 towards the dominant ethnic Malay ethos.

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14 Ruanni Tupas and Peter Sercombe

1 In Chapter 2, Frewer problematizes the notion of Cambodia as a lin-

2 guistically homogeneous country, arguing that this myth can be traced
3 to Khmerizing tendencies of nationalist narratives which exclude, in
4 varying degrees, cultural upland communities, Chinese and Vietnamese
5 groups, as well as the Muslim Cham. They have been subject to sys-
6 tematic assimilationist projects, and have suppressed their identities
7 in favour of an essentialized Khmer version. The past decade has wit-
8 nessed NGO-driven and state-supported projects in bilingual education
9 among minority communities, with linguistic diversity as the focus of
10 development work, but overlapping agendas have been impediments to
11 common conceptualization and implementation of these programmes.
12 Local languages are used as a bridge to Khmer and to a national curricu-
13 lum that espouses a Cambodian identity linked with distinctly Khmer
14 traditions, histories and perspectives. Development-driven work that
15 has addressed problems of inequity and justice, through literacy in local
16 languages, may well have also participated in constructing an image of
17 Cambodia as solely Khmer.
18 In Chapter 3, which focuses on Timor Leste, Curaming and Kalidjernih
19 track the various swings in language-in-education debates in the country
20 prior to and since its independence from Indonesia more than a decade
21 ago. Post-independence East Timor has seen shifts between politics-
22 driven sentimentalism and pragmatism as ideological driving forces in
23 language policy debates. Portuguese and Tetum, as official languages,
24 are inextricably linked with the country’s resistance and independence
25 movements against Indonesia(n), but English and other local languages
26 also animate the politics of language and identity in the country fol-
27 lowing the onslaught of globalization and the persistence of widespread
28 poverty. The recent push for multilingual education to improve learning
29 among disadvantaged children – made possible in the first place by a
30 change in the political leadership – is fraught with challenges. Smaller
31 languages, potentially effective media of instruction, are fought over in
32 the linguistic marketplace, dominated of course by English, Portuguese
33 and Tetum as languages of power.
34 Regarding Indonesia, in Chapter 4, Musgrave charts the general pat-
35 terns of multilingualism in the country where, first, there has been an
36 increasing shift towards Bahasa Indonesia since it was made the national
37 language in 1945, and the medium of instruction from kindergarten
38 to college level in 1990; second, this shift has been accompanied by
39 movements from smaller languages to local regional languages; and
40 third, different varieties of Bahasa Indonesia have actually arisen from
41 different social and geographical domains, with some emerging as more

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 PROOF
Introduction 15

1 prestigious than others. This polyglossic situation is complicated by a

2 linguistic divide between the western part of the country, where major
3 local languages such as Javanese are maintained by huge populations,
4 and eastern parts where smaller indigenous languages have become
5 vulnerable to the power of Ambonese Malay, the common language
6 of the region, and Bahasa Indonesia. Thus, the trajectories of language
7 maintenance are hugely divergent between these main regions.
8 Chapter 5 about Laos by Cincotta-Segi tracks the tension between
9 the state’s discourse of multiethnicity (enacted through pageantry and
10 parades) and its discourse against multilingualism (enacted through a
11 language policy that has institutionalized the Lao language as the sole
12 official language and medium of instruction in the country). The pos-
13 sibility of multilingual education continues to be minimal considering
14 the state’s strong support for Lao as the only language for nationaliza-
15 tion and unity, thus affirming the dominance of ethnic Lao lowland
16 culture and marginalizing ethnic minorities whose highland cultural
17 practices have been systematically affected through projects of assimila-
18 tion such as relocation and education. However, the state’s project of
19 harnessing dominant Lao culture and linguistic practices, in classrooms,
20 has been only partially achieved as teachers and pupils have resorted
21 to hybrid communicative practices through use of their first languages
22 (to access and scaffold curriculum content). In this sense, multiple or
23 hybrid ethnic identities of teachers and pupils constantly reappropriate
24 and challenge the official assimilationist discourse of Lao-ization on the
25 ground.
26 In Chapter 6, about Malaysia, David and McLellan describe directions
27 of language shift in four minority groups in the country. These shifts
28 are generally towards Bahasa Malaysia, English or both, as these two
29 languages have taken on privileged statuses in Malaysian society.
30 The elitist status of English can be traced to the country’s colonial
31 past, its use among the elite, current trends towards English-speaking
32 globalization, while the dominance of Bahasa Malaysia can be linked
33 to constitutional safeguards accorded to the Bumiputera, or the ‘sons of
34 the soil’, defined as those who profess Islam, speak Malay and practice
35 ‘the Malay way of life’. However, there are differences in the patterns of
36 language use and shift in these communities. The Bidayuhs’ local lingua
37 franca may well be Sarawak Malay, standard Malay and/or English (in
38 their otherwise relatively unvalued linguistic diversity and multilingual-
39 ism); while among the Kelantan Chinese, situated in a distinctly rural
40 Malay state in Malaysia, the shift has been towards Kelantanese Malay,
41 and not Mandarin, standard Malay or English.

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16 Ruanni Tupas and Peter Sercombe

1 In Chapter 7, Khin and Sercombe describe the paradoxes in language

2 policy-making and practice in Myanmar, foremost of which is the
3 role of Bamar as an anti-colonial language, purportedly encompassing
4 a national identity among all Burmese against a backdrop of British
5 colonial influence, and Bamar’s role in consolidating the power of the
6 majority (Bamar-speaking) political elite. Thus, the institutionalization
7 of Bamar as the national language and medium of instruction was
8 inextricably part of the project of Myanmarization, a nationalization
9 campaign of the State after the military take-over in 1965. On paper,
10 minority rights have been safeguarded by three successive constitutions
11 of the country, but in practice insidious ethnic conflicts between the
12 state and minority groups continue to reveal an institutionalized system
13 of forced assimilation through monolingual and monocultural policies.
14 The possibility of a more democratic language policy is enmeshed in
15 complex problems, those of foremost urgency being ceasefires between
16 the state and ‘rebel’ groups, which may yet happen in the light of recent
17 changes in the country’s political landscape.
18 In Chapter 8, Tupas and Lorente outline a ‘new’ politics of language
19 in the Philippines where the use of the mother tongues in educa-
20 tion has entered the debate about medium of instruction. In the fight
21 against English, Tagalog or Filipino has been discursively packaged as
22 the ‘mother tongue’ of Filipinos from which follows that it should
23 be the country’s medium of instruction. The combined official use
24 of this ‘mother tongue’ and English, as media of instruction, has
25 shaped bilingual education in the country for around four decades
26 now. However, as research on local/community languages as media of
27 instruction has shown the positive effects of these on student learning
28 and community development, the multiple mother tongues of Filipino
29 children have reconfigured the structure of debates on language in edu-
30 cation, with the view that these mother tongues (and not just Tagalog)
31 should be the media of instruction. This is the central tenet of multi-
32 lingual education in the country which has recently been institutional-
33 ized, thus replacing English and Tagalog as media at least in the early
34 years of formal education.
35 In Chapter 9, Wee describes the processes of minoritization of lan-
36 guages in Singapore which have accompanied the institutionalization
37 of its brand of bilingual education. Singapore’s language policy requires
38 the use of English as the medium of instruction, and one of the official
39 mother tongues – Chinese, Malay or Tamil – as a separate and required
40 subject. In the process, however, this policy has led to clines of linguis-
41 tic minoritization. State support of English has also made it greater than

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 PROOF
Introduction 17

1 the three other languages, reflecting the primacy of fiscal pragmatism in

2 policy-making, English being viewed as the language of money, while
3 overlooking diversities on the ground, such that Singapore is, indeed,
4 ethnolinguistically diverse, that English as a nativized language can and
5 does function as a mother tongue (with the rise of local variants), and that
6 children from mixed ethnic backgrounds are growing in number.
7 Kosonen and Person, in Chapter 10, unpack the monoculturalist and
8 assimilationist assumptions of language policy-making in Thailand
9 through the lens of the evolving ethnolinguistic identities of Thai peo-
10 ple. Through the process called ‘Thai-zation’, standard Thai has been
11 the sole national language of Thailand since 1940 and the almost exclu-
12 sive medium of instruction at all school levels for about one hundred
13 years. Recent tensions between nationalization and globalization con-
14 firm the hegemony of standard Thai, as well as that of English which
15 is perhaps more socially prestigious (as a supranational code) despite
16 its limited use, especially away from urban and tourist areas. Recently,
17 however, violence in Thailand’s Pattani Malay-speaking south, the for-
18 mation of ethnic networks (primarily in the north), the influence of
19 Bangkok-based United Nations agencies, and the role of Thai academics,
20 have together highlighted the importance of non-dominant languages
21 in education and society. This led The Royal Institute to craft a National
22 Language Policy in 2010, recognizing linguistic diversity as a fact of life
23 in Thailand. This provided at least a legal framework for mother tongue-
24 based initiatives and projects for the purpose of redressing educational,
25 political and socioeconomic inequities.
26 Lastly, Phan, Vu and Bao Dat, in Chapter 11, describe the politics of
27 language in Vietnam, focusing on the dynamics between Vietnamese
28 and English and the role that other local languages play in this. Since
29 1945, the powerful status of Vietnamese as the national language and
30 medium of instruction in schools has been unassailable. The powerful
31 but complex globalization–nationalism nexus in contemporary Vietnam
32 makes the dual embrace of English and Vietnamese almost inevitable,
33 thus significantly affecting ethnic minorities, while English is projected
34 to remain a ‘foreign language’ despite its exclusionary potential as a lan-
35 guage of use among those of a high social status in Vietnam. Through
36 a nationalist language policy that affirms Vietnamese as the language
37 of national unity, the functions and status of other ethnic languages
38 encounter systematic challenges to do with access, equity and quality,
39 gaps between policy and practice, and integration into mainstream edu-
40 cation, rather than being solely for purposes of language maintenance
41 (as part of minority education initiatives).

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18 Ruanni Tupas and Peter Sercombe

1 Conclusion
2
3 In pulling together the collection’s themes, Giordano’s epilogue draws
4 connections between Southeast Asia and Europe, arguing that much of
5 linguistic nationalism that has underpinned past and present nation-
6 building projects of Southeast Asian countries has been influenced by
7 Western tendencies. This is not difficult to understand given that these
8 countries directly or indirectly have been shaped by colonial experi-
9 ence: the British in Malaya, Brunei and Burma/Myanmar, the Spanish
10 and Americans in the Philippines, the French in Vietnam, Cambodia
11 and Laos, the Dutch in Indonesia and the Portuguese in East Timor.
12 Of course, such experience, Giordano reminds us, has been in no
13 way uniform, but the epilogue solidly makes the point that language
14 politics in the region is deeply embedded in much larger processes and
15 discourses of colonization, nationalism and globalization, thus both
16 perpetuating stark and subtle linguistic violence on marginalized groups
17 in the name of nation-building, and engendering practices and acts of
18 resistance from these groups in the name of ethnic identity, political
19 autonomy or political and socioeconomic empowerment. Thus, while
20 each chapter in the volume contributes to painting a complex picture of
21 language politics in Southeast Asia, it is likewise the case that language,
22 education and nation-building in the region, and more specifically the
23 phenomena of assimilation and shift, envision continuing political
24 projects of democratization and de-marginalization shared with mar-
25 ginalized people in other parts of the world. These projects are deeply
26 linguistic in nature but in no way can be pursued by merely reassem-
27 bling languages alone.
28
29 Notes
30
1. This provides a stark contrast to the situation of the European Union,
31
with ‘twenty-three official and working languages’ (Kirkpatrick 2010, p. 7).
32 However, see the following note in relation to European higher education.
33 2. Doiz et al. (2011, pp. 345–346) say that ‘European higher education institu-
34 tions have crossed the linguistic Rubicon … offering courses, modules or
35 complete degrees taught in English, which has become the language of higher
education’.
36
37
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Introduction 19

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