National Language Planning and Language Shifts in Malaysian Minority Communities: Speaking in Many Tongues

Malaysia has long been a melting pot of various cultures and ethnicities, including the three largest populations, the Malay, Chinese, and Indians. Despite this, efforts to implement multilingualism, advocated by language educators and policy makers, have been marred by political and religious affiliations. Drawing on two decades of field research, this timely analysis of language variation in Malaysia is an important contribution to the understanding not only of linguistic pluralism in the country, but also of the Indian Diaspora, and of the effects of language change on urban migrant populations. The research presented here will be of interest to scholars of Southeast Asian and South Asian Studies.