Language Maintenance and the Transmission of Ideologies among Chinese-Malaysian Families

It is commonly assumed that impacts of globalization are mostly economic. Nevertheless, the lifestyle and culture of communities around the world are also impacted. In Malaysia, cultural and linguistic practices have been scrutinized when discussing how language shift takes place among small communities. Community languages began disappearing under the hegemony of global languages, such as English and Mandarin Chinese, raising questions and bringing to debate issues relating to the language management of small communities. Among Chinese-Malaysians, a pronounced shift has taken place from community languages to global languages. While this change in language practices may be attributable to economic factors, it is causing the disappearance of Chinese community languages. Seeking to understand community language ideologies, this qualitative and interpretative study examines language practices of different generations of Chinese-Malaysians with the aim of unravelling the ideologies behind these language uses. Data consisted of interviews gathered from two Chinese-Malaysian families living in Penang, a city influenced by Chinese settlement. The results reveal that ideologies from older generations are more linguistically conservative, while recent generations are characterized by a focus on educational achievement. These findings bring forth additional insights and understandings into current debates on language maintenance in countries of the Global South.