Book

Taming Babel : language in the making of Malaysia

Leow, Rachel, author

Overview

\"Taming Babel sheds new light on the role of language in the making of modern postcolonial Asian nations. Focusing on one of the most linguistically diverse territories in the British Empire, Rachel Leow explores the profound anxieties generated by a century of struggles to govern the polyglot subjects of British Malaya and postcolonial Malaysia. The book ranges across a series of key moments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in which British and Asian actors wrought quiet battles in the realm of language: in textbooks and language classrooms; in dictionaries, grammars and orthographies; in propaganda and psychological warfare; and in the very planning of language itself. Every attempt to tame Chinese and Malay languages resulted in failures of translation, competence, and governance, exposing both the deep fragility of a monoglot state in polyglot milieux, and the essential untameable nature of languages in motion\"-- Provided by publisher.

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: Language policy Malaysia History 19th century. / Language policy Malaysia History 20th century. / Multilingualism Political aspects Malaysia History. / Malay language Political aspects Malaysia History. / Chinese language Political aspects Malaysia History. / Postcolonialism Malaysia History. / HISTORY / Asia / Southeast Asia. / Malaysia Politics and government 19th century. / Malaysia Politics and government 20th century.
• ISBN: 9781107148536, 9781316602607

Item info:

1 item available

1 item total in all locations

Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
P119.32.M4 L46 2018	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE