Shangeetha Rajah Kumaran

• University of Malaya

Chapter 3 has established that Syrian parents in Malaysia value the Malay language but their primary emphasis is on learning English for education, career prospects, and global integration.

In this book, we delve into the lives of 10 Arab Syrian Muslim families now residing in KL, Malaysia. Their exodus from their homeland, Syria commenced with the onset of the war in March 2011.

The concept of language maintenance occupies a pivotal position in the study of linguistic dynamics within diverse societies. This chapter embarks on a comprehensive exploration of the intricate terrain of language maintenance and shift, with a specific focus on the Syrian community in Malaysia.

As discussed in Chap. 1, Syria and Malaysia exhibit significant disparities across various dimensions such as the ethnic composition of their populations, geographical location as well as linguistic and cultural attributes.

The domain of employment constitutes one of the four domains that are to be examined. Analysing language choice within the context of employment can offer valuable insights into parents’ perceptions of language in the workplace, potentially influencing their language choices in other domains.

Chemmeen (1956), a Malayalam novel by Thakazhi, narrates a love story set in a fishing village. Its first English translation was done by Menon in 1962. This translation became the source text for a French translation in 1965. The French translation, being an indirect translation from Malayalam through English, mirrors largely the English version....

This study aimed to investigate the languages used in shop signs in three different areas in Semenyih, Selangor, Malaysia. Using a mixed-method approach, this paper identified the preferred language for shop signs in the town of Semenyih, Pelangi Semenyih, and Setia Ecohill, as well as examined the relationship between the language choice in signag...

Usage of code-switching in the scene of stand-up comedy is one of many creative strategies for comedians to deliver jokes and connect with a multilingual audience. However, not many employ this strategy, especially in Malaysia. Malaysian standup comedians rarely use code-switching in the delivery of their jokes as many use the local variety of Engl...

Translators' ideology permeates all non-technical translations, and the need to study the extent to which ideology plays a vital role in the manipulation of literary texts with a political edge is undoubtedly important. As of Iran, the state ideology has been changed from secular to religious (Islamic) after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This shift...

This article presents a glimpse into the literary writings emanating from a community that has, at best, remained at the margins of global South Asian diasporic literary scholarship: that of the Indian diaspora in Malaysia. It begins with a brief historical overview of the Malaysian Indian community together with an overview and cartography of Mala...

This paper aims to present the linguistic heterogeneity of the Malaysian Indian community that is often thought to be homogenously “Indian” through a comparison of the socio-linguistic signifiers in four English-language Malaysian novels. The variety of real-life speech patterns and code variations in K. S. Maniam’s The Return, Rani Manicka’s The R...

Coming from a community born primarily out of the indenture experience, the creative writings that have emerged from the communal compound of the Malaysian Indian diaspora almost inevitably touch on the poetics of loss of homeland and the struggle to reinvent identity in a new land. While there are the inescapable signifiers of trauma in the disill...