Abstract
Regional varieties of language, often a result of language contact, possess various characteristics, such as borrowed words, and often structures, sounds, and meanings transferred from one or more languages. The variety of English used in informal contexts in Malaysia known as Malaysian English contains localized features resulting from contact with languages spoken by the local indigenous populations as well as the Chinese and Indian diaspora in this Southeast Asian nation. A prominent feature of Malaysian English is the presence of discourse particles (such as lah, meh, and lor) that are not found in the standardized form of English and that are often unintelligible to people unfamiliar with them. Using communication on Facebook by Chinese Malaysian young adults as data representing real-life, informal talk in a computer-mediated environment, this article examines the multiple functions of Malaysian English discourse particles and proposes a framework for interpreting their meanings when used in communication.
Highlights
Ok lah ... forgive you lah! An utterance such as this may sound strange to people who are not familiar with the English spoken in Malaysia and its neighbour Singapore, but this is an example of the type of English commonly encountered in informal social interactions among Malaysians
Malaysian English, a variety of English spoken by Malaysians, contains localized features that differ from the standardized form of English and, is largely unintelligible to people who are not from this geographic region
While in the past and to some extent the present, too, Malaysian English has been ‘vilified’ by many educationalists as a ‘non-ideal’ form of English attributed to a poor command of the language, sociolinguists, on the other hand, have held that regional varieties of language evolve to fulfil purposes of communication that are meaningful to people experiencing interaction between languages in the local environment
Summary
Ok lah ... forgive you lah! An utterance such as this may sound strange to people who are not familiar with the English spoken in Malaysia and its neighbour Singapore, but this is an example of the type of English commonly encountered in informal social interactions among Malaysians. Hassan and Hashim’s (2009) extensive work on Malaysian English, based on a corpus of two million words derived from blogs, chats and instant messages, e-mails, and text messages, highlights the use of four particles: bah, meh, ler, and la These particles are said to have originated from Malay, Chinese, and the local Sabahan languages, and they carry out specific functions to convey emotive attitudes. Kuang (2002)—with her description of the functions of the three particles lah, ah, and hah, based on observed informal conversations in different settings—further adds to existing knowledge about how Malaysians use the particles She concludes that discourse particles play an important role as useful resources that enable speakers to convey their intentions in different ways, such as to get their messages across without appearing too direct, intimidating, or aggressive. This is not inconceivable, as the understanding of pragmatic meanings is determined by one’s interpretation of the contextual variables connected with each unique interaction
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