Multilingualism and Mobility as Collateral Results of Hegemonic Language Policy

This article shows, with Malaysia as a case study, that an ethnonationalist language policy need not have disempowering consequences for minorities. Malaysia politicizes ethnic difference between Malaysians of Malay, Chinese, and Indian descent. Ethnic Malays enjoy economic concessions unavailable to others, law defines Malaysia as Islamic and speaking Bahasa, and Malay ethnonationalism constructs Chinese– and Indian–Malaysians as perpetual visitors. Nonetheless, Bahasa has only added to the multilingual repertoires of non-Malays, rather than replaced it. This article analyses survey data about the multilingual practices of Malaysian youth and their folk linguistic talk about what guides their multilingualism. By drawing on critical language policy, it appears that policy may be so ethnonationalist that it has caused disassociation, especially amongst Indian–Malaysians, and sustained multilingualism. The Chinese–Malaysian experience, however, is better explained by a posthumanist perspective whereby language choices appear guided by material and immaterial resources within the Chinese–Malaysian community, rather than by matters of power or politics. In any case, the relative greater multilingualism of Chinese– and Indian–Malaysians was perceived as empowering non-Malay mobility despite ethnonationalist policy.