Language Choice in Multilingual Organisational Settings: The Case of Sarawak, Malaysia

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the key factors that determine language choice in multilingual organisational settings. The focus is on the participants' reasons for language choice to find out how much they are influenced by situational, motivational and sociostructural factors in their language choices. A combined sociolinguistic and social psychological framework is adopted for explaining the language choice phenomenon. The Communication Accommodation Theory is used as the basis, but with a greater emphasis on the impact of situational factors on language choice.The study was conducted in Sarawak, a Malaysian state where the official use of English is maintained for a longer duration than the rest of Malaysia, and where there is great ethnolinguistic diversity. The field study was carried out in two organisations, chosen for their multilingual work environments. A total of 96 participants were interviewed for their reasons of language choice. The language use questionnaire was completed by 158 participants who reported their language choice patterns in the organisation, and their attitudes towards the use of English and Bahasa Malaysia.The results show the existence of strong norms governing language choice, as indicated by the consistency in the language choice patterns, and their shared expectations as to what constitute appropriate and inappropriate language choice behaviour. The interview results further indicate that situational norms gain primacy in formal situations, and the language choice favours the use of either English or Bahasa Malaysia. On the other hand, in informal interactions, there is evidence of sociocultural norms prescribing language choices for communicative efficiency and positive intergroup relations. To achieve these outcomes, the strategies extensively used are convergence and interpretability.For the interpretability strategy, the social categorical membership cues most commonly used to infer the interlocutors' language proficiency are ethnicity and hierarchical status, suggesting that these are more salient social identities for the participants. Interactions across hierarchical status boundaries are characterised by the use of the complementary language choices for maintaining the status quo, because communication in East Asian countries influenced by Confucianism are often marked by status relationships (Yum, 1988). The participants' tendency to switch from official languages to dialects for the purpose of establishing rapport with clients reflects an overlap of personal and public relationships, another characteristic of East Asian communication. In this respect, these findings extend the explanatory power of the Communication Accommodation Theory framework to cultural settings different from the ones on which the original model was based.The influence of sociostructural factors is most clearly seen in language choice for interethnic communication. The participants are more inclined to choose English over Bahasa Malaysia, although they report having positive attitudes towards the use of both languages. In fact, when proficiency in Sarawak Malay is not a limitation, the participants favour the use of Sarawak Malay over Bahasa Malaysia. These results indicate that the participants' language choices are clearly not in tandem with the aims of language planning, which seek to make Bahasa Malaysia, not only the official language but also the common language for the ethnically diverse population. Implications of the findings of this study on language planning are discussed.