1.0 Introduction
The English language has been widely spoken and used in Malaysia over the decades. Malaysian English originated from the British English during British colonialism in Malaya far back before the Second World War. In the first half of the 20th century, Malaysian English was exactly similar to British English (BrE) (albeit spoken with a Malaysian accent).
However, after Malaysia gained her independence in 1957, Bahasa Melayu claimed its status and replaced English as the official language of the nation. Since there is no official language board, council or organisation to ensure the correct and standard usage of Malaysian English, a special variety of English, which is now referred as Manglish, evolved in Malaysia and prevailed across different ethnics.
Manglish refers to the colloquial, informal spoken form of Malaysian English. It is the most common form of spoken English on the street and is used in daily interaction. Nevertheless it is not encouraged in schools where only Malaysian Standard English is taught. Loan words (code-switching) included non-English nouns and verbs from indigenous languages in Malaysia into the authentic language, has been a common phenomenon which resulted in the emergence of Manglish. The use of Manglish or Malaysian English is therefore a style-based regional variation and it is often used in informal context to show solidarity and affecting meaning.
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Agheyisi, Rebecca and Joshua A.Fishman(1990) in their books “Language Attitude Studies” argued that “People’s styles of speech and written communication reflect and express not only aspects of their identity, age and gender, they also indicate the context in which language is being used”. Thus, the emergence of Malaysian English must have some relations with some variables mentioned above. This study intends to find answers to the implication of factors like languages of different ethnics on the emergence of this special form of language.
In addition, it will also look at how strong the influence of this indigenous languages and cultural aspects is on this special variety of language and the usage of informal variety according to age and gender. Finally, this study seeks to find out whether the special linguistic features like grammar and morphology indicate the solidarity between the interlocutors. Janet Holmes cited that the better you know someone, the more casual and relaxed the speech style you used to them (p.236).
Janets argued that relative social distance/ solidarity is one important dimension reflected in the greeting of the members in a particular speech community.
In order to find out the answers to the questions above, an observation was carried out on the greeting in English among Malaysian because greetings is the most obvious speech style in Manglish among Malaysian L2 speakers of English. The reason which accounts for these greetings are an essential part of the communication of any speech community and is the context in which informal variety being manifested broadly. For half a century, ethnolinguists like Hymes (1962) have suggested that beyond syntax and phonology, cultural differences is another dimension that needs to be given due consideration. According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, people’s perception of reality, and the way they see the world are determined by their ideology, emotion and the social-cultural values.
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Unfortunately, the speech style of Manglish greetings language have not been much consideration in the development of Malaysian national curriculum , leading to misunderstandings and negative feelings towards the different speech style of greetings. In the context of a foreign language, “the more speakers understand the cultural context of greetings, the better the society appreciates them, and the more they are regarded as well behaved” (Schleicher 1997:334).
Failure to fulfill one’s obligatory role during greeting exchange may consequently result in a social disappointment, which may vary from dismay to a more serious breach of social relations and perhaps cause to be in a physical danger as in Tuareg greetings in the Sahara desert (Youssouf et al 1976).
. Therefore, more studies need to be conducted to look into the problems and to accumulate more findings in order to alert the multiracial community of the importance of mutual understanding and tolerance in the effort towards realization of the 1Malaysia ideology.
The purpose of this study will be to understand the influence of indigenous culture of different ethnics on the greetings discourse and the influence of age ,gender and the solidarity between speakers and addressees on the greeting discourse in English among Malaysians. It is also meant to say this topic was identified as being important to the field of Sociolinguistics in specific, and generally to Malaysians to investigate the phenomenon of polyglossia in our speech community. The study is equally important to the leading political party leaders in providing them the necessary background to handle with ethnically sensitive issues and to design courses promoting the proper usage of English.
2.0 Methodology
The study methodology aims to collect and record about the way Malaysians greet each other in their daily interaction. For each greeting, variables like gender, age , ethnic group and receiver will be taken into account. An observation was carried out on a number of 35 randomly picked subjects who are of Malaysian of diverse ethnics , age and of both genders .Data of their greetings will be recorded in the form of a data collection sheet as raw materials.
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All the subjects being observed are multilingual and are speakers of English at least at the beginning level. This criterion is employed to assure basic speech competence and auditory comprehension. The subjects are being observed in a spontaneous situation and are unconscious of being deliberately perceived. This rule is strictly observed in order to gain the natural and unplanned discourse. A mobile phone recorder device is used to record the utterances of subjects who are engaged actively in interlocution in spontaneous manners.
The observation is be carried out in several different venues by the same researcher. One of the place is a recreation park where many joggers flock in in the morning. The other spot is a secondary school (SMK ULU TIRAM ) where students in the range of early teens to late teens. 45 subjects are selected randomly but only 16 of the subjects and their receivers who served the requirements are chosen after the analysis. Greetings which are not in English will be discarded. The research is also carried out in a renowned local Mamak roti canai stall. All the walk-in customers would probably be greeted by the boss and some will give response passionately to him. Some 23 customers of different ethnics ,out of all only two ladies , are observed and only 17 of them are selected to be the fulfilling subjects
Another challenging spot to carry out the research is at the STORE Supermarket, Taman Johor Jaya, Johor Bahru. A small scale study carried out has identified some subjects who are not easy to identify due to the shopping nature.(Music being played all the time and was not easy to eavesdrop shopper’s interlocution )Two sophisticated ladies were spotted greeting each other in English but their demography data were unknown. By appearance they were Indian ladies and were in their late 30s. Demography data was collected in relation to their ethnic, age, gender and occupation after the observation by using different channel including interview ( subjects which were passers-by or customers to a famous Mamat store), drawing inference on appearance ( two female subjects who looked unfriendly and too sophisticated to deal with) and enquiring ( students and teachers of a school ).
