BOOK REVIEW - Verbal Communication: A Study of Malaysian Speakers

Jamaliah Mohd. Ali, Verbal Communication: A Study of Malaysian Speakers, Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, xi + 234, ISBN 983-100-089-7

Malaya was a British colonial state until it became independent and known as Malaysia in 1957. During the colonial rule, English was the language of instruction and the official communication. At the same time, the vernacular education of Chinese, Indian and Malay people in Malaya were maintained in line with the divide and rule policy of the British colonialists. By sustaining vernacular education, people remained divided hence governance became easy as the common thread of English communication was limited to the privileged and elite.

In the face of independence, Malay language is adopted as the national language of Malaysia. Following the Fern-Wu Report and the Razak Report, Malay became the medium of instruction in schools and gradually replaced English at the tertiary level in 1967. A lot of work has been done since 1956 to develop Malay as the national language. Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka a semi-government language body was established to oversee the use of Malay as the national language especially in print, namely in textbooks, magazines, academic references as well as terminology coinage and language engineering.

However things took a different turn in 1993 when the Prime Minister Dr Mahathir announced that Science and Technology should be taught in English at the tertiary level in line with the need to secure knowledge and to be effective in a global market. In 2002, the idea of teaching Science and Mathematics in English at the primary level in 2003 was mooted. An outcry from the Chinese community and local Malay nationalists especially people from Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka were aired in local press.

This book may be regarded as the prelude to a new English speaking community in Malaysia as it analyses seminar discussion among Malaysians in English. The notion of verbal communication a la Robin Lakoff (1973) and Tannen (1984) are presented. At the same time the author uses turn taking strategies in Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson (1974) along with Allwood’s insights in pragmatics (1992) to explicate her data.

The author offers well surveyed viewpoints on pragmatics, conversation analysis and communication maxims against the backdrop of Malaysian culture, mainly based on Malay culture that includes the concepts of face, politeness, indirectness and cooperation towards the well being of the hearer-speaker communication. There is a lack of critical analysis in terms of gender difference. The difference between men and women in the Malaysian context needs to be teased out properly as work on Malay women had been carried out in Sew (1996). Furthermore, the gender difference in communication pertaining to the advocate of Gricean maxims as opposed to Lakoff’s politeness principles might offer an interesting discussion (Sew 1997a). The power of indirectness are not examined in depth as not being assertive in Asian verbal communication does not necessary equate to a weak speaking style (Sew 1997b).

The title of this book is rather ambitious and could even be misleading, as verbal communication among Malaysians would be more complicated than a ‘domesticated’ English formal discussion by fellow Malaysians. Besides, the translation of some Malay conversations in the discussion into English has decreased the authenticity of the Malaysian talk understudied. As we know, code-switching is a common linguistic feature in a multilingual setting like Malaysia and hardly a day would go by for a Malaysian working in the city without having to use more than one language, to normalize everything into English is to give away many interesting linguistic interplays that are particular to Malaysians.

The findings of this study are in Chapters Five and Six. The author claims that duetting and philharmony are the basic ways of speaking in Malaysian communication. Both strategies are cooperative communication styles towards the attainment of joint construction of meaning. Duet is a pair effort whereas philharmony is a multiple speakers’ effort. Following the authors’ findings, Malaysians are cooperative speakers who would repair their talks to achieve common ground in verbal communication. Clark’s work (cf. Sew 1997c) is helpful to shed more light on the findings. I would qualify the findings to be valid only to the extent of public formal communication among educated speakers talking about general topics of discussions pertaining to social development in the country.

There are many settings where more sensitive topics would garner different outcomes, where speech is concerned. Debates in parliament, argument among students, lecturer-student discussion, mother-son talk, mother-daughter talk and spouse talk are some rich examples loaded with conflicts. I suspect the more intimate a discussion the more disagreement and disharmony the communication would be, especially when the speakers had known each other for a long period of time.

The quantitative analyses of the utterances are self-fulfilling since there is no standard statistics to compare with. Standard deviations are required to indicate the validity of certain claims when statistics is involved. The bibliography needs to be more organized as certain references are repeated. The latest reference cited in this book is dated 1993. More up-to-date references would add currency to the work. Despite my comments, this book is a good start to verbal communication, as the study of talk, until recently, has not had a strong following in the Malaysian linguistic scene. The author’s clear writing style makes this book a pleasant reading material for students who are interested in Malaysian English talk.

References

Allwood, Jens. 1992. The Academic Seminar As An Arena of Conflict and Conflict Resolution. Gothenburg: Gothenburg University.

Lakoff, Robin. 1973. The Logic of Politeness: Or Minding Your P’s and Q’s. Papers from the Ninth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society: 292-305.

Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel Schegloff, Gail Jefferson. 1974. A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation. Language 59:4, 696-735.

Sew, Jyh Wee. 1996. Pragmatik Komunikasi Perempuan dengan Perempuan di Malaysia: Satu Kajian Pelopor (Pragmatics of Woman-to-woman talk in Malaysia: A Pioneering Study). Jurnal Dewan Bahasa 40;2, 107-118.

Sew, Jyh Wee. 1997a. Review of Mary Crawford: Talking Difference. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16:1, 89-95.

Sew, Jyh Wee. 1997b. Power Pragmatics in Asian Languages. Language Sciences 19:4, 357-367.

Sew, Jyh Wee. 1997c. Review of Hebert Clark: Using Language. Australian Journal of Linguistics 17:1, 120-123.

Tannen, Deborah. 1984. Conversational Style: Analysing Talk Among Friends. Norwood: Ablex.