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English As the Official Working Language of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): Features and Strategies

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English As the Official Working Language of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): Features and Strategies English as the official working language of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): Features and strategies Author Kirkpatrick, Andy Published 2008 Journal Title English Today DOI https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078408000175 Copyright Statement © 2008 Cambridge University Press. The attached file is reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal's website for access to the definitive, published version. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/41911 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au English as the official working language of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): Features and strategies ANDY KIRKPATRICK English as a lingua franca: a specific example Introduction: English in ASEAN gested the adoption of Malay as a second work- ing language. The suggestion was not even dis- The Bangkok Declaration of 8 August 1967 cussed. heralded the formation of the Association of The de facto adoption of English as the sole Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). While today working language of ASEAN is about to be for- all ten nations of Southeast Asia are members, malized. At the ASEAN Summit in November the number of founder member states was only 2007, the ASEAN Charter was introduced. Arti- five: Indonesia; Malaysia; the Philippines; Sin- cle 34 ‘Working Language of the ASEAN’ reads: gapore; and Thailand. Brunei joined in 1984, ‘The working language of ASEAN shall be Eng- Vietnam in 1995, Laos and Burma (Myanmar) lish’. This is the only mention of working or in 1997 and finally, Cambodia, in 1999. In official languages in the entire charter. To what may strike members of the European become legally binding, all ten member states Union as particularly remarkable, the use of must ratify the Charter before the next ASEAN languages was not stipulated in the Bangkok Summit, to be held in December 2008 and to Declaration. English has always been the sole date, Brunei, Laos, Malaysia and Singapore official and working language of the group. In have done so. There is no indication that any of her study of the process behind this adoption of English as the only official language, Okudaira interviewed a number of key ASEAN figures and received answers, of which these are rep- ANDY KIRKPATRICK is Professor of English at the resentative: Hong Kong Institute of ‘the idea of English as the common language Education and Director of the came out automatically’ … ‘there has been no Institute’s Research Centre for regulation for the use of English but it has been Language Education in used in all the actual situations’ … ‘we took it Multilingual Societies. He has for granted’ (1999:95–6) previously taught in Australia, Burma, China, England, There have only been two attempts to intro- Singapore and Taiwan. He is duce other working languages and both failed author of ‘World Englishes: Implications for (Okudaira, 1999). The first attempt took place International Communication and English when Vietnam’s membership was under dis- Language Teaching’ (CUP, 2007). He is currently cussion and the Vietnamese asked whether working on a book on English in ASEAN for Hong French might be adopted. The second attempt Kong University Press Asian Englishes Today series occurred in 1997 at the meeting of the ASEAN and is editor of Routledge’s planned ‘Handbook of Committee on Culture and Information when World Englishes’. He has also published widely on aspects of Chinese discourse and rhetoric. the Malaysian Minister for Information sug- doi: 10.1017/S0266078408000175 English Today 94, Vol. 24, No. 2 (June 2008). Printed in the United Kingdom © 2008 Cambridge University Press 27 the member states will refuse to ratify so it become member states. These countries have would appear that, by the end of the year, the witnessed an urgent shift from French to Eng- position of the English as the sole working lan- lish, but levels of English even among the elite guage of ASEAN will be legally enshrined. – particularly in Laos and Cambodia – remain ASEAN provides a particularly interesting comparatively low. English in these countries site for the study of English as a lingua franca is therefore at different stages of development because the member states, following Kachru’s (Bolton, 2002). ‘circles’ classification (1985), fall into distinct categories. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines Lingua franca: form or function? and Singapore can be classified as ‘outer circle’ countries, where, because of their colonial This means that English is used as a lingua past, English continues to play a major role and franca by people ranging from those who speak where it is possible to talk about the Brunei, a local variety of English such as Malaysian to Filipino, Malaysian and Singaporean varieties those whose proficiency in English remains rel- of English. Yet, the history of English in these atively low. There has recently been some countries since their independence has been debate, concerning definitions of English as lin- anything but similar. For example, Malaysia’s gua franca and the extent to which it refers to a National Language Act of 1967 mandated the single variety of English (Seidlhofer, 2004; gradual shift from English to Malay as the Jenkins, 2007; Prodromou, 2007b). It is impor- medium of instruction in all government tant to clarify here, therefore, that ASEAN ELF schools and universities. As this act was passed is not a single variety. It is perhaps helpful to in the same year that Malaysia became a see lingua franca more as a functional term founding member state of ASEAN, this makes rather than a linguistic one. In the ASEAN con- it all the more surprising that English was tac- text described above, it is clear that the English itly accepted as the sole working language. used by speakers is likely to be characterized by Malaysia’s policy has since shifted back to the variation and variety. This gives rise to two use of English so that it is now used as the related questions. First, ‘How do people who medium of instruction for maths and science speak different varieties of English and people subjects in schools. whose level of English may be low communi- While Burma seems to fit into the ‘outer cir- cate with each other using English as a lingua cle’ category in the sense that it was once a franca? Second, ‘Notwithstanding the different British colony and where English played a varieties being used, are there any shared or major role, the inward-looking zenophobic distinctive linguistic features in the Englishes policies initiated by U Ne Win from 1962 led to used by these people?’ the marginalization of English, a marginaliza- In the remainder of this article, I shall first tion that there has been some attempt to describe a small selection of linguistic features reverse in recent years, but with little success. – phonological and syntactic – that, are shared Indonesia is a different case, representing a by speakers of these different varieties1 and hugely diverse range of languages and cul- then consider some of the communicative tures. After freedom from first the Dutch and strategies – including the lack of use of ‘local’ then the Japanese, Indonesia has sought to use lexis – the speakers adopt to ensure that their a local language, Bahasa Melayu (Malay), to communication is successful. The data comes act as a national lingua franca. In this, it has from twenty English teachers, two from each been remarkably successful, so that the great country in ASEAN, recorded in conversation in majority of Indonesians are now able to com- groups of three for four. As English teachers, municate through what is called Bahasa their proficiency levels are, in the main very Indonesia. English is the second language of high – many are expert users (see Rampton, the educated urban elite and is also the first 1990) – although there are some – tellingly foreign language taught in schools, but with from Laos and Cambodia – whose level of pro- limited success (Dardjowidjojo, 2000). In Thai- ficiency is markedly lower than the others. land, the only country within ASEAN that has never been colonized, English is also the first Some shared phonological features second language. More recently, the countries that made up the French colony of Indo-China, Perhaps the most striking phonological feature namely Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam have that is shared by these speakers is their 28 ENGLISH TODAY 94 June 2008 tendency to use syllable-timing caused, at least munication breaks down, and this appears to in part, by the avoidance of reduced vowels. be caused by the participants whose level of This may well be because so many of the speak- English is comparatively low either pronounc- ers’ first languages have a tendency to syllable ing words in such a way that the hearers can- timing. In any event it is a characteristic of not make them out, or by themselves not being almost all the speakers in the data. It is also able to follow the conversation. An example of interesting to note that this feature is also char- the first is presented below. This conversation acteristic of many other new varieties of Eng- is between a Malaysian male [M], a Filipina lish (cf. Gramley & Patzold, 2004). [F] and a Laotian male [L]. It is the Laotian’s Here are just two of many examples of the pronunciation of the word ‘hole’ that causes use of full vowels in unstressed syllables (see the problem (see Kirkpatrick, 2007b for this Deterding & Kirkpatrick, 2006:395–401, for and further examples). these and further examples). 7 L: you know at the time that ehm tsunami 1 It’s OFficially launched (male Indonesian) occurs they there were some problem in my 2 When I first came TO Singapore (male Thai) country M: what problem? Speakers in the data also regularly stress pro- L: yeah we’ve some problem we have big nouns.
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