Paradox of the periphery: Postcolonial and postvernacular (re)positionings in 21st-century Asia

Keynote lectureThis paper presents an alternative perspective on the postcolonial condition in our considerations of situations of language shift, endangerment and vitality in the context of Asia in the global knowledge ecology. To this end I use in a close study two communities that are interesting to examine for points of comparison and contrast: the Malays of Sri Lanka, brought from various parts of the Malay archipelago by the Dutch and British colonial powers, and the Peranakans of Singapore, descendants of southern Chinese merchants who settled in Malaya and intermarried with local women. Both were formed in the time of, and as a consequence of, the development of European exploitation colonies in Asia. Both are considered creole communities, and have seen language shift and endangerment of their ancestral languages – respectively Sri Lanka Malay, a mixed language of trilingual base (Malay, Sinhala, Tamil), and Baba Malay, a restructured variety of Malay with southern Sinitic influences. I first explore how such communities, rather than being marginalised groups, used their position as cultural and linguistic brokers in their colonial contexts to their advantage to negotiate a position of relative privilege. I unpack how what is normally couched in a language shift scenario may instead be viewed as the strategic (re)alignment of repertoire and of identity within colonial, postcolonial and global contexts. This happened during colonial rule, when a community like the Peranakans, with pro-British tendencies and access to English-medium education, shifted early and swiftly to English. It also occurred later with post-independence language policies, when, with Sinhala being made Sri Lanka’s sole official language and thus also the language of instruction in schools, urban Sri Lankan Malays shifted to English in the home domain to continue to provide the resource to their children. It even manifested in community revitalisation efforts when the Malays chose to introduce Standard Malay (of Malaysia) (StdMal), which is not mutually intelligible with SLM, rather than their original vernacular. Finally I suggest how, in the most recent years, the situations would appear to have advanced beyond postvernacularity, the symbolic use of the ancestral languages in various traditional cultural practices. With the production and distribution of knowledge that new media afford, minority, endangered language and transnational communities have infinite opportunities to engage in the vernacular and participate in collective intelligence via social media. Equally significantly, in both the SLM and Peranakan communities, the linguistic and cultural vitality being experienced is embodied through all their language practices – that is, not only in their postvernacular languages of SLM and BM respectively, but also in their emergent languages of Sri Lankan English and Peranakan and Singapore English. This would appear to challenge traditional views on the link between the ancestral language on the one hand and the community’s identity and vitality. In all I query if situations of ‘shift’ – to a language of wider communication or an emergent variety – are in fact instances of empowerment and evolution in response to change, where a repositioning of the periphery in the new global economy brings greater accessibility to and participation in the Centre, and better adaptation for surviving and thriving