Full Description
Language policies in Southeast Asia have been shaped by the process of nation-building on the one hand and by political and economic considerations on the other. The early years of nation-building in Southeast Asia generated intensive language conflicts precisely because state policies privileged the idea of a monolingual nation and thus endeavoured to co-opt or even do away with troublesome ethnic identities. In recent years, language policies are increasingly influenced by pragmatic considerations, especially globalization and the awareness of a linkage between language and economic development, such that Southeast Asian states in varying degrees have become less insistent on promoting monolingual nationalism.This book evaluates the successes and drawbacks of language policies in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar, especially the ways in which these policies have often been resisted or contested. It is an invaluable primer on this linguistically complex region and a resource for scholars, policy-makers, civil society activists and NGOs in various parts of the world facing equally challenging ethnic/language issues.
Contents
Preliminary pages with Introduction by Lee Hock Guan and Leo Suryadinata; 1. Language, Nation and Development in the Philippines by Andrew Gonzalez; 2. Go Back to Class: The Medium of Instruction Debate in the Philippines by T Ruanni F Tupas; 3. National Language and Nation-Building: The Case of Bahasa Indonesia by Lucy Ruth Montolalu and Leo Suryadinata; 4. Diverse Voices: Indonesian Literature and Nation-Building by Melani Budianta; 5. The Multilingual State in Search of the Nation: The Language Policy and Discourse in Singapore's Nation-Building by Eugene Tan Kheng Boon; 6. Ethnic Politics, National Development and Language Policy in Malaysia by Lee Hock Guan; 7. The Politics of Language Policy in Myanmar: Imagining Togetherness, Practising Difference? by Kyaw Yin Hlaing; 8. The Positions of Non-Thai Languages in Thailand by Theraphan Luangthongkum; 9. Vietnamese Language and Media Policy in the Service of Deterritorialized Nation-Building by Ashley Carruthers.
