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.

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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 working 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. The first example is of a stressed subject hornz in some areas pronoun and the second of a stressed object M: horns? Sorry pronoun. L: horn you hornt F: hornt? 3 And HE has been in Singapore three times L: yeah big horn (female Burmese) M: (laugh) sorry 4 I grew up with a lot of languages around ME F: what’s a horn? (female Bruneian) L: (spells out) H...O...L...E something like this Heavy end stress, as illustrated in the examples M: holes oh you mean hole in the ground below, is also common. L: yeah F: ah hole. 5 we have the government schools and the private SCHOOLS (female Bruneian) So, when the pronunciation is so far from a 6 and very few people speak ENGLISH (male known standard pronunciation and when the Cambodian) word cannot be retrieved from the context, Turning to segmental features, the dental frica- breakdown occurs. It is, of course, very difficult tives are regularly replaced by [t] and [d]. This to determine how far from a known standard a is not surprising, as speakers of many different pronunciation has to be before it comes unin- varieties of English – including some native telligible. Context often allows participants to speaker varieties – also replace these with understand what is being said. In the next other sounds. Some London speakers actually example, the Vietnamese speaker [V] pro- replace them with [f] and [v] (Wells, nounces the past tense form of teach as 1982:328), but this is not found in the ASEAN ‘TORCH’, but it is not clear whether this causes data, although it is found in the speech of Hong problems or not or whether the other partici- Kong English (Hung, 2000; Deterding, Wong & pants, a Thai [T] and a Burmese [B] , are Kirkpatrick, 2008). adopting the ‘let it pass strategy’ (Firth, The diphthongs /ei/ and /ə↔Y/ are regularly 1996:243). replaced by monophthongs, as in the examples 8 V: …those students will be torch all the basis ‘another [ple·s]’ for ‘another place’ and ‘can rules [go·]’ for ‘can go’. As will be illustrated in the T: mm discussion of syntax, there are also frequent V: like I mean this, for the er for the sub- for occurrences where final consonant clusters are the grammar subject itself, it’s not for simplified, but this occurs in many varieties of interpreter skills B: mmm English, including native-speaker varieties (Fabricius, 2002). When an Indonesian participant [I] uses this What is interesting is that none of these fea- pronunciation of ‘taught’ it obviously presents tures appear to cause any problems of commu- no problems, not least because it occurs imme- nication among these speakers. Indeed, there diately after the Singaporean participant [S] are very few instances in the data where com- has anticipated what the Indonesian is going to

ENGLISH AS THE OFFICIAL WORKING LANGUAGE OF THE ASEAN 29 say and provided ‘taught’. Interestingly, how- lowed by the Past Simple. The table also shows ever, the Indonesian still says ‘torch’. that the use of certain tenses is very rare. Per- 9 I…we are working on the way er what’s I the haps most interestingly, however, is the rela- curriculum yeah and on the way how English tively low number of non-standard forms. er These are discussed in more detail below, but S: is to be taught they comprise, in the main, concord and non- I: is to be torch marking. Table 2 shows which of the speakers uses the Examples of where breakdown is cause by a non-standard forms. The first languages of the participant being unable to follow the conver- two Singaporean participants and the single sation are provided in the section on commu- Malaysian are also identified. Thus, in this nicative strategies. The next section provides table, SingaporeM and SingaporeP refer to selected examples of syntactic features. the Singaporean Malay and Singaporean Indian (Punjabi) participants respectively. Syntactic features MalaysianM and MalaysianC refer to the Malay Malaysian and the Malaysian Chinese In terms of the use of tense forms, which is the respectively. main focus of this section, there is remarkably Table 2 shows that the majority of partici- little use of ‘non-standard’ forms.2 Table 1 pants use very few non-standard forms. The shows the overall use of the tense forms in the only participants for whom non-standard forms speech of the twenty subjects along with the constitute more than 6 per cent are one of the number (in brackets) of non standard forms. Indonesians, both Cambodians and both Lao- Table 1 shows that the Present Simple Tense tians. It is difficult to find a scientifically satis- is by far the most commonly used tense, fol- factory way of determining between an expert user of English and a learner, but the four Table 1: Overall totals and totals by ‘tense’ with whose use of non-standard forms exceeds 15 number of non-standard forms

‘Tenses’ Tokens Non-standard Table 2: Tense use and non-standard forms by forms participant Total 1831 107 Participant Tokens ‘Non %age of Present Simple 1109 59 -standard’ non-standard Past Simple 321 33 Filipina1 92 0 – Modals 228 1 Brunei 228 2 1 Present Passive 47 4 SingaporeM 154 2 1 Present Perfect 43 4 SingaporeP 101 2 2 Present Continuous 26 3 Vietnam 42 1 2 Past Passive 16 2 Indonesia1 133 3 2 Present Perfect Continuous 10 1 MalaysianM 86 2 2 Present Perfect Passive 4 – Thai 58 2 3 Imperative 5 – Burma 89 4 4 Infinitive Passive 4 1 MalaysianC 200 10 5 Past Continuous 3 1 Filipina2 125 8 6 Past Perfect 3 – Indonesia2 206 22 11 ‘Going to’ 2 – Cambodia2 76 10 15 Please + Vb 2 – Cambodia1 118 18 15 Present Continuous Passive 1 – Laos1 57 10 18 Other 5 – Laos2 66 14 21

30 ENGLISH TODAY 94 June 2008 per cent might be classified as learners of Eng- These non-standard forms contrast strik- lish, especially when the types of non-standard ingly with those used by more fluent speakers. forms they use are considered. The fact that all In example (12) below, the Indonesian (I2) four also come from Laos and Cambodia, coun- uses a number of non-standard forms, but tries where, as mentioned earlier, English has these are almost all accounted for by the non- only relatively recently become the second lan- marking of the past tense. guage, might also support this. An example is 12 I2: I waited for the official who PIK me up provided in excerpt (10), which shows one of OK and then I tried to look for the official the Laotian speakers (L1) in conversation with but because ere r the plane you know the Singaporean Punjabi (SP) and Burmese (B). landed early so early so the official hadn’t come yet 10 L1: ehm last NAI we went there by walking B2: what a pity SP: eh huh I2: I had to stay in the airport and then did L1: I enjoy walking [yeah nothing just sit and I check the placard of S: you] mean all the way from [here RELC ok and I couldn’t see that’s why I B: yes yes just sit and take a rest…what about you L1: yeah] what time SP: oh ok C2: how long have you waits for them? L1: some of my friend hurt his feet (Kirkpatrick 2007a:160) SP: oh ok L1: (laugh) he can’t {M: yes} walk and he is In this extract, I2 marks the past tense in her just stand and sit (quiet laugh) first turn with ‘waited’, ‘tried’ and ‘landed’ (it is While L1’s use of concord is non-standard not clear what she meant by PIK here, but pos- (‘some of my friend hurt his feet’) she also uses sibly something like ‘who was to pick me up’). forms that cannot be explained by the non- She also marks a past perfect form (hadn’t marking of present or past tenses. For exam- come’). In her second turn, however, after ple, in the final line of this extract she says ‘… marking the initial past tense forms (‘had’ and he is just stand and sit’. She thus chooses to use ‘did’) she does not mark the past tense on sev- the third person of the copula alongside two eral verbs that occur later in the utterance (‘sit’, bare infinitives, where we might reasonably ‘check’, ‘sit’ and ‘take’). expect ‘he just stood and sat’. In the next exam- This shows that, while she clearly knows the ple, she is explaining that she is on her first standard rule and is able to apply it, she often overseas trip and that is why she just follows does not do so. It is possible that the non-mark- along. ing of ‘check’ may have a phonological cause (checked is difficult to say and non-marking 11 SP: he’s your tour guide] (laugh) here would be common in the speech of native B: politically our our leader (general speakers), but the non-marking of ‘sit’ and laughter) and tour guide ‘take’ cannot be explained in this way. It seems SP: eh hm more likely that this is a case where the time B: and so SP: please begin has already been established and marking for it L1: er for me er I just follow her (laugh) appears redundant. This type of non-standard because I (laugh) don’t know anything use is common and I argue that it is not neces- it’s my first time to er go in on another sarily the sign of a learner of English, but can country be part of the performance variety of expert SP: oh ok so what so [what was your users of English, especially of those whose first L1: it’s hardly] for me to er doing everything languages do not mark for tense (as is the case SP: what was your first impression? with Malay, this speaker’s first language). The L1: yeah non-marking of past tense forms in this way SP: when you came to Singapore may also be part of the historical shift to syn- L1: I can’t get ?or new meaning? from Singapore yet tactic regularization and simplification, mani- festations of which are a tendency for irregular Some half-way thought this extract, L2 says forms to become regular (from ‘wrought’ to ‘it’s hardly for me to er doing anything’. She ‘worked’, from ‘slew’ to ‘slayed’, for example) uses this form ‘it’s hardly to’ in two other con- along, with the related phenomenon of new texts and here also combines an infinitive ‘to’ verbs into the language always adopting regu- with the gerund form ‘doing’. lar past tense forms) (Lieberman et al., 2007),

ENGLISH AS THE OFFICIAL WORKING LANGUAGE OF THE ASEAN 31 and a historical tendency for the gradual sim- speaking different varieties of English and plification of verbal morphology so that the some having different levels of proficiency in highly complex system of verbal conjugation English, paradoxically, there is actually less that operated upon Old English has become variation than might have been expected. reduced, in the context of the simple present Indeed, there is far greater variation both tense, to the single marked form of the third among and between established and new vari- person singular ‘-s’, for example. While this ‘–s’ eties of English than there is here (Kirkpatrick, represents the standard form, there is consid- 2007a). A useful list of non-standard features erable variation in its use in British dialects of varieties of English is provided in Hickey (Ihalainen, 1994:228). This ‘instability’ of use (2004:586-614). One possible explanation of has led Mesthrie to suggest that it is not sur- this relative lack of variation is that, by defini- prising to find that it ‘is quite frequently absent tion, the speakers in these interactions are in L2 varieties’ (2004:1135). focusing on communication and this may lead In other words, by not marking these tense them to ensure they do not use features, words forms, the Indonesian speaker may be assuming and idioms which they feel might not be under- they are simply not needed in the context, as stood by other participants. they are redundant and she may also be, unwit- The next section therefore describes a selec- tingly of course, anticipating syntactic change. tion of communicative strategies adopted by This use of non-standard forms is common in these speakers. These include the non-use of the data and it does not necessarily signal a local idioms, as this represents a strategy to learner. The use of non-standard forms of the ensure mutual cross-cultural understanding. type used by the Laotian speaker, however, cannot be explained by redundancy and may signal Communicative strategies a learner. The Cambodian speaker in example (12) might also fit this category, as she asks A detailed list of ten listener strategies and five ‘how long have you waits for them?’ Far from speaker strategies is provided in Kirkpatrick non-marking because of redundancy, this (2007b). Here three strategies are considered, speaker has added the –s; inflection. It is not including the use of paraphrase and the ‘let it needed either for concord or for tense marking. pass’ strategy. The first strategy to be consid- This, together with the number of non-standard ered is the speakers’ non-use of local idioms or forms she uses, also suggests a learner. lexis. Seidlhofer (2001:16) has argued that To sum up this section, there is relatively lit- what she calls ‘unilateral idomaticity’ is likely tle syntactic variation in the marking of verb to cause cross-cultural understanding, as forms in the speech of these ASEAN speakers, speakers will not be familiar with the idioms with the exception of those who could be clas- used in other cultures. It is true that the use of sified as learners. A major source of non-stan- culturally specific idioms is a striking feature of dard forms among the majority of these local varieties of English. For example, the Chi- speakers comprises the non-marking of third nese writer, Ha Jin uses memorable expres- person present simple and past tense forms, sions derived directly from Chinese in his and this non-marking can be explained by the writing in English. Examples include a ‘flow- redundancy of these forms in specific contexts. ered pillowcase’ to describe someone who may Finally, the relative lack of the use of complex look attractive, but has no depth, and ‘they tense forms needs to be noted. More data from breath through the same nostril’ to describe more contexts is needed, but these findings people who are always in agreement with each support Mesthrie’s conclusion that complex other. Honna (2006) has argued that this tenses tend to be avoided in East African vari- adoption of the local idiom into the local varieties of English (2004). They also support ety of English gives the local variety its distinct Meierkord (2004), who found that 94 per cent flavour, and such creativity and distinctiveness of the utterances of the outer-circle speakers in should be encouraged. And the Japanese her data were regular. She was surprised by expression ‘a son will chew on his parents’ this, as ‘it contradicts the assumption that shins’ is a visually arresting image of a son who speakers would carry the characteristics of remains financially dependent on his parents their nativised varieties into the English lingua well into adulthood. Prodromou (2007a:37) franca interactions’ (2004:119). cites the Serbian expression ‘one should not Therefore, despite some of the interactants mix frogs with grandmothers’ as being likely to

32 ENGLISH TODAY 94 June 2008 cause puzzled stares when used as an English Burmese participant understand the Viet- expression. But, as Prodromou points out, the namese speaker’s pronunciation of ‘taught’, but use of local idioms is rare in lingua franca they make use backchannels to encourage her usage and this is supported in the data. In the to continue (Kirkpatrick, 2007b). ASEAN data there is no use of local idiom here A strategy of particular note is the use of at all. This may be because the speakers are all speaker and participant paraphrase in order to educated multilinguals who are consciously ensure that a member of the group does even- aware that the use of language or variety spe- tually understand. In excerpt (14) below the cific lexis and idiom would be likely to cause Burmese participant rephrases the Singa- misunderstanding and they therefore do not porean’s question to help the Laotian partici- use them. When multilinguals of the same lin- pant understand the original question. guistic backgrounds communicate with each 14 L: every month in Lao, we hap (have) to test other, the use of frequent code mixing is com- B: weekly er monthly test mon (Li, 2002; McLellan & David, 2007), as all L: monthly test parties share the same linguistic resources. B: monthly test yes [so When, however, the speakers come from dif- S: do they] do they write essays do they ferent linguistic backgrounds and are using write essays do the pupils do the pupils English as a lingua franca, code-mixing ceases. write compositions? There is only one occasion in the data when a [L remains silent so the Burmese participant speaker uses a lexical item from his L1. This is intervenes] when the Singaporean Malaysian speaker uses B: can your students write an essay or paragraph writing, a composition? the Malay word ‘rojak’ (literally ‘mixed’ and L: yes I think they can because er as I a them which refers to certain type of Indonesian to rai er the story they can write and some salad) to refer to the colloquial English of Sin- mistake gapore. This will be understood by the Indone- sian participant but not by the third member of Later in this conversation the Singaporean the group, a Cambodian. For a moment then, and Burmese patiently paraphrase and repeat the Indonesian and Singaporean speakers a question five times before the Laotian finally appear to forget that the Cambodian will not understands it (Kirkpatrick, 2007b). There is understand them. Even so, their discussion no raising of volume or pitch level, no indica- allows the Cambodian to come to some under- tion or exasperation or irritability in the standing of the term. repeated rephrasings of the question. This suggests that the overarching goal in this type of 13 SM: …all the English and Singlish are all lingua franca conversation is to ensure com- mixed together like rojak munication on the one hand, while preserving I: oh like rojak like that the face of the participants on the other. The SM: yes you know rojak right I: yes, it’s fruits mixed focus on communication means that the partic- SM: all up together ipants consciously edit linguistic usage, such as (Kirkpatrick, 2007a: 168) local idioms of lexis, which might not be understood by the other participants. The Moving from the strategy of the avoidance of focus on preserving face means that partici- localised lexis and idiom, other communicative pants are prepared to adopt specific strategies, strategies adopted by the speakers lend sup- including repeated paraphrase, to ensure that port to Firth’s finding that speakers in lingua no-one feels left out or gets left behind. franca conversation often adopt a ‘let it pass’ strategy (1996:243). Example (8) above, reproduced here, illustrates this. Conclusion 14 V: …those students will be TORCH all the In this article a selection of linguistic features basis rules and communicative strategies which occur in T: mm the lingua franca use of English of nationals V: like I mean this, for the er for the sub- for from ASEAN has been described. It must be the grammar subject itself, it’s not for stressed that the data set is small and the interpreter skills speakers, although they represent each of the B: mmm ten countries of ASEAN, are all themselves It is not clear whether either the Thai or the English language teachers and this might also

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