There has been a surge of exciting work in the form of empirical studies of how language is spoken in various social contexts, or how different factors bring about language variation. As a multiethnic and multilingual society,... [ view full abstract ]
There has been a surge of exciting work in the form of empirical studies of how language is spoken in various social contexts, or how different factors bring about language variation. As a multiethnic and multilingual society, Malaysia is a good example of a contact situation where languages play different roles in the various domains. In presenting findings of an investigation into the variants among Hakka Chinese in Sabah, East Malaysia, this study intends to demonstrate how other languages (for example English and Malay) and other Chinese topolects may contribute to the changes in the Hakka language. The study adopted Fischer’s (1958) model of velar nasal variants. The general frameworks of Thomason (2001) and Zuckermann (2003) were also employed to show the process of change through language contact. Data were gathered via interviews and questionnaires over a period of two months in Kota Kinabalu, the state capital of Sabah. In the first stage, 14 senior Hakka speakers were identified for the interview. In order to enhance interaction among the interviewees and establish a more natural setting, usually more than one respondent was interviewed at a time. During the second phase, based on the interview findings, a questionnaire was designed. More than 150 Hakka speakers of different age, socio-economic, educational and religious background responded to the questionnaire. The method of ‘snowballing’ (Denscombe, 1998) based on referrals of informants and respondents was employed to obtain this sample. Different features comprising phonological, morphological, lexical, and syntactic data were collected. Combining qualitative findings with quantitative data, the study presents a state of the sociolinguistic variation in the Hakka-speaking community, emphasizing the need to go beyond treating variation as located along a linear dimension of standard and vernacular (Zhang, 2005). In other words, we are not only interested in investigating the language variation, or determining which variants are used and deemed more appropriate for use in the social contexts of Sabah, but also in highlighting that variation, or the rise of the ‘new standard’, can also be used to discuss the negotiation of identities within the Sabah Chinese community.
