Cold War Politics and English in Southeast Asian Contexts: Sociopolitical Steps to the Formation of RELC

Abstract

On July 1, 1968, a striking move to regionally address English language teaching problems by a Southeast Asian gathering turned into the inception of the Regional English Language Centre (RELC). The foundation of RELC was the first attempt to shore up the regionwide spread of English by a group of nonnative states in the form of an intergovernmental institute. It was a result of the mounting political and economic movements in mid-1960s. It was a time in which Southeast Asia underwent drastic social change and stood at political and economic crossroads. The international institute was generally viewed as educational, but in fact, a language planning theory applied to an analysis of RELC’s formative phases favors an interpretation that the Centre was a linguistic means to attain politico-economic ends. This article explores a social rationale for the emergence of an idea to found a regional English language center in view of Cold War alignment, regionalism, and sociolinguistic particularity in the strategic geopolitical collectivity of Southeast Asia.