Multilingual Reality Versus Monolingual Mindset: A Study on Malaysian Linguistic Rights / 单元下的多元——马来西亚的语言权利状况

Abstract

摘要
二战后，帝国主义迅速消退，殖民国家纷纷独立。然而，后殖民国家依旧对于民 族国家（前殖民者）仍抱有无限想象，在政策上延续着前殖民者的单元思维，强 调族群同化与整合，以建立“想像的共同体”。同时，饱受战火蹂躏的欧洲各 国皆已反思单元主义所导致的社会资源分配不均，而引发族群冲突与战争的发 生。为了避免悲剧重演，各国政策趋向包容差异与多元开放，语言权利与少数族 群权利遂获国际社会所重视。国际与区域性组织也已制定各类公约与协议，以保 障基本人权、语言权利以及少数族群权利。本研究藉以梳理国际语言权利的发展 概况，并以马来西亚国内相关文件进行比较研究，从而了解语言权利对马来西亚 社会所带来的影响。同时，初步探讨马来西亚落实多元文化语言政策之局限与可 能。综观而言，少数族群语言在国际上的地位有着巨大的转变，从早期宿命式的 冲突观，到如今对差异的包容，提倡多元主义，共存共荣的想法。然而，马来西 亚的语言政策乃依据三大因素，即经济、民族主义、全球化而制定，少数族群的 语言权利并不在此考量之中，徘徊在语言同化与消极性语言权利保障之间。
关键词：国族打造、语言权利、少数族群权利、多元文化主义

Abstract
After WWII, the retreat of imperialism has ignited the independent movement. Nevertheless, the post-colonial countries are still inherent the nostalgia of nation-building that emphases the nationalist ideology. By using assimilation or building the common identities, to establish an imagined community. In the meanwhile, the painful experience of war destruction has pushed European countries to review the cause of the conflicts and wars have occurred. From that, they learned the cultural exclusivism has resulted in the socioeconomic inequality and making the social instability. Therefore, European countries have undergone series of policy revamping, for creating a diversified and inclusive society. As a result, the linguistic rights and minority rights become the focus of the international community, hence numerous conventions and declarations were ratified and enforced ever since. The study will use the international documents and Malaysian language policies to conduct a comparative study, as to understand the influence of the linguistic rights to the Malaysian society. Besides that, the study will evaluate the possibility of implementing the inclusive multicultural language policies in Malaysia. Overall, the status of minority languages is having a tremendous shift internationally, from the cause of conflict to the inclusive multiculturalism. Nevertheless, the Malaysian government is considering 3 factors: economy, nationalism and globalization in the language policymaking, minority linguistic rights are never in the picture and hovering in between language assimilation-orientation and passive linguistic rights-orientation. Keywords: nation building, linguistic rights, minority rights, multiculturalism