The vocabulary of Southeast Asian Englishes: A sociolinguistic and cultural perspective

Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines are postcolonial Southeast Asian nations where the English language continues to play an important role as a language of intranational communication, in addition to its function as an international lingua franca in the ASEAN region. This presentation will focus on the words and phrases that characterize English as it is spoken in these countries: the vocabulary that forms the basis of what is now known as Bruneian, Singaporean, Malaysian and Philippine English. These distinct lexical features have developed as a result of many years of contact between English and Southeast Asian vernaculars, and of various other cultural, historical and social factors. They are also a reflection of the linguistic creativity of the region’s English speakers. The lexicon of Southeast Asian Englishes is the subject of a current research project at Oxford University’s Faculty of English and Oxford University Press, which aims to widen the coverage of this type of regional vocabulary in the Oxford English Dictionary.