Scripting English in Jawi: English disguised in Arabic-based ‘Tulisan Jawi’ in Brunei’s linguistic landscape

Abstract

Although Brunei has historically been influenced by various cultures, languages and religions, Islam is an important defining feature of Brunei, and Malay represents a salient marker of the country’s religious, sociocultural and linguistic identity. Traditionally, the Arabic-based Jawi system was the go-to script for writing Malay in the Malay world. Now, while Jawi is considered ‘endangered’ in parts of the Malay-speaking world, Jawi is alive and well in Brunei, representing a (co-)official script. This linguistic landscape (LL) study points towards a ubiquitous phenomenon in twenty-first-century Brunei, where elements written in the Arabic-based Jawi script tend to be phonetically transliterated from English in a context of postcolonialism, modernity, business and globalisation. This is in contrast to the common practice/expectation that Arabic-based scripts are supposed to write local languages (e.g. Malay, Urdu, Wolof). This study shows the inroads made by English in Brunei’s twenty-first-century LL, where the traditional Islamic identity and local Malay-ness are mixed with overriding global influences. This study provides insights into the nature and status of Jawi in twenty-first-century Brunei. The study offers further evidence on the existence of ‘multiscriptal English’ that has been increasingly documented in recent years, where the powerful English is disguised/(re)contextualised in various languages/scripts.

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