Can a language spread from bottom upwards? A study on the spread of standard Chinese in Johor, Malaysia

Abstract

Abstract Language spread as defined by (Cooper, Robert Leon. 1982. A framework for the study of language spread. In Robert L. Cooper (eds.), Language spread: Studies in diffusion and social change, 5–36. Bloomington: Indiana University Press) became a new research branch after (Fishman, Joshua Aaron. 1989. The spread of English as a new perspective for the study of ‘Language Maintenance and Language Shift.’ In Joshua A. Fishman (eds.), Language and ethnicity in minority sociolinguistic perspective, 32–263. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters) seminal work. In literature, most of the languages in spread are European languages such as English and Spanish. (Fishman, Joshua Aaron. 1989. The spread of English as a new perspective for the study of ‘Language Maintenance and Language Shift.’ In Joshua A. Fishman (eds.), Language and ethnicity in minority sociolinguistic perspective, 32–263. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters) contended that the spread of English was a top-down process. (Garcia, Ofelia.2002. Language spread and its study: Narrowing its spread as a scholarly field. In Robert B. Kaplan (eds.), The oxford handbook of applied linguistics, 352–364. New York: Oxford University Press) also proposed that language spread started first in high societal domains. However, according to our study in Malaysia, standard Chinese undertook a different route in its process of spread. It spreads its use first in high domains such as the education domain and then in low domains such as the family domain. This paper aims to answer the research question whether it is possible for a language to spread from bottom upwards as compared to the well-known top-down spread. The empirical basis of this paper is a language survey conducted by the researcher in the state of Johor, Malaysia. In this study, questionnaires, home interviews and un-intrusive observations were used as the research methods. By comparing the spread process of English and Chinese—both transnational languages due to globalization–this paper will contribute to the theory of language spread and identify the differences between the spread of English and the spread of Chinese.

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