Malaysian English:
Levels of Malaysian English and the Features
Jowati binti Juhary
[presented at the Conference of Science & Social Science Research, Golden Horses Hotel, September 2003; organised by UiTM]
English language in Malaysia is treated as a second language. Though the status is second to Bahasa Malaysia, its roles are now more defined. Especially with the advancement in Information Communication Technology (ICT), English language has become a vital tool for not only communication but also commerce, medicine and education. This paper attempts to re-describe the levels of English language in Malaysia and to identify the features of the levels. It is high time that Malaysians be re-exposed to the language and its levels because people then would realise that discussion about English language may not be necessarily on the importance and values of it only rather the levels and features in Malaysian context. The methods used in the paper are twofold: text analysis and survey – an informal conversation. Findings show that in Malaysian context and for Malaysian English, there are three levels of the language – acrolect, mesolect and basilect and all these three have their distinctive features. These three can be a good source to develop teaching modules for English language in Malaysia. Therefore the paper hopes to present a new perspective on English language, especially when the society is discussing the importance of it. Perhaps, the society can claim one of the levels as Malaysian English language officially and improve the corpus of the level. This can be achieved when more in-depth researches are done on the issue.