James McLellan

This paper is about migrations of communities within, into, and out of Borneo. It seeks to adding a further category, community migration, to the four original categories of labour, family, education, and forced migration proposed by Borlongan (2023). This underpins research within the sociolinguistic frameworks of Language Contact and Ecology of Language, from both historical and contemporary perspectives. The introduction provides historical background about the migration of Austronesian peoples from Taiwan through the Philippines to Borneo and beyond. The main section of the paper covers some more recent migrations within and around Borneo of both coastal Malay/Muslim and interior groups collectively termed “Dayak.” A particular focus is on the Iban community’s migration across Borneo and into Brunei and the linguistic and sociolinguistic consequences of this. The Iban are the largest indigenous ethnic group in the Sarawak region, Malaysia (28.8% of the state’s population, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sarawak). Other community migrations discussed are those of the Kayan, Bidayuh, Berawan, and Belait/Lemeting groups. A tentative four-way classification of Borneo community migration strategies is proposed: migrate and maintain (e.g., Iban, Malay); migrate and conquer/occupy other communities’ territory => conquered, enslaved group shifts to conquering the group’s language (e.g., Kayan); migrate and diversify/shift (e.g., Bidayuh); and migrate and merge (e.g., Berawan, Belait/Lemeting). The conclusion of the article critically evaluates the notion of community migration, connecting this to Borlongan’s other categories. The relevance of the Language Contact and Ecology of Language frameworks to the study of Migration Linguistics in Borneo is also addressed.

This editorial discusses workable and unworkable ethical guidelines and shares some narratives about the negotiation of ethical permissions for conducting applied linguistic research using texts from social media platforms. Some of these are from my own experience of over 35 years researching online language use, especially codemixing, alias translanguaging, and practices in language and content subject classes. Among a number of themes emerging from these narratives, the universal applicability of ethical principles and stances needs to be questioned; also, the positioning of the researcher(s): participant- or non-participant-observers, or ‘lurkers’. Another issue is the status of online texts, such as those in public online discussion forums, where participants often use pseudonyms: should they be considered as published material and referenced accordingly? Should the pseudonyms appear in cited texts where the content may be contentious? The narratives are presented as vignettes, and it is hoped that we can move beyond the basic dualities of ethical vs. unethical towards a more nuanced analysis.

This paper focuses on aspects of language contact, specifically Malay and English in the domain of social media. Key components of the theoretical framework are world Englishes being by definition code-mixed varieties, and the complementary notions of nativization (of English) and englishization (of Malay, in this case). Texts examined and analyzed are from Whatsapp chats and groups, with the consent of all participants, and from public social media sites in the Malay world, mostly Negara Brunei Darussalam (henceforth Brunei) but also Malaysia. Brunei is known for having a very high percentage of social media use per head of population, with especially high levels of use of Instagram and Facebook, as well as discussion forums such as Reddit. In their social media interactions Bruneians and Malaysians have a range of language choices, from monolingual English to monolingual Malay, and varying degrees of code-mixing or translanguaging. Many Bruneians and Malaysians are multilingual, and thus may have more than two languages as resources to draw on. Analysis of threads of discussion forum postings on the same topic demonstrate the multilingual repertoire of participants, for whom any of the available language choices are unmarked. This is in part owing to the use of English as one medium of education alongside Malay: consistently in Brunei since 1985, inconsistently in Malaysia since 1963. The conclusion of the paper raises two questions: whether it is valid to posit the language of social media as a new variety comprising both local and global influences and inputs, and whether social media is a driver of change in varieties of English in Southeast Asia.

This paper highlights the findings of a study into the language use, identity and attitudes of some Bruneian Malay government officers and students living in London. It is found that their allegiance towards the Malay language and Bruneian culture remains strong, despite their living in a largely Anglophone metropolis which requires them to communicate predominantly in English. As highly proficient bilingual speakers, the respondents are highly aware of the importance of maintaining their vernacular Brunei Malay as a marker of their identity. Through the use of observation and semi-structured interview methods, it emerges thatpredicted patterns of language shift towards the global language do not occur, and there is evidence of maintenance of strong Malay identity precisely because of their requirement to use more English in out-group communication contexts. The ‘zero-sum game’ notion, of more English equalling less Malay, is not applicable. This paper includes vignettes which show the participants negotiating between their languages in work and study contexts. It also demonstrates the need to consider how English interconnects with the other languages that are found in the repertoire of globally mobile South-East Asians.

This study aims to investigate (i) the Patani Malay (PM) and Southern Thai (ST) learners’ knowledge of English collocations, (ii) the learning strategies employed by the two groups with different levels of English proficiency and (iii) the impact of their learning strategies on their test performance. Thirty-nine student participants from each group participated in the study. All were English major students in the international program at Fatoni University in Patani, Thailand. Four types of research instruments were used to collect data: World English language placement test, collocation test, the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning or SILL questionnaire of language learning strategies (Oxford, 1990) and individual interviews with 12 informants. The analysis is based on both quantitative and qualitative methods. The findings show no significant difference for both groups in the use of learning strategies. Both groups show a preference for metacognitive learning strategies in the acquisition of English collocations. Despite there being no significant difference between the two groups in terms of learning strategies, the overall collocation test results show ST learners performing better than their PM counterparts. And although results from the SILL indicate that learning strategies may not play a significant role in the participants’ acquisition of English collocation, this indication is not reflected in subsequent findings from the interview data and a sociocultural analysis of the context under study.

This article uses a kuih lapis (layer cake) analogy to describe English as one layer contributing to the diversity of indigenous and immigrant languages used in Negara Brunei Darussalam (Brunei). We then review some previous studies of bilingualism among Bruneians before outlining three major challenges facing researchers studying English in Brunei. These challenges comprise: the balance, or imbalance, between English‐medium and Malay‐medium in the national education system since 1985, the question of whether Brunei English is a distinct variety and the issue of whether English has become part of Brunei's identity. These challenges are framed within the dualities of Malay as national and official language, and the nation's need for English for increasing international and global connectedness. The discussion of future directions draws on recent research by Bruneians; these directions include the growing number of first‐language users of English, the position of Brunei English within Schneider's () Dynamic Model, the identification of subvarieties of Brunei English, and the notion of Brunei English as a code‐mixed variety.