World Englishes, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 458–471, 2014. 0883-2919 English and the linguistic ecology of Malaysia AZIRAH HASHIM ∗ ABSTRACT: The Southeast Asian region is undergoing rapid social, economic and cultural change brought about by movements of capital, people and ideas within and beyond the region. The dynamics of independence, nation-building and globalization have had an impact on most of the nation-states in the region, many of which attained independence only in the second half of the 20th century. This paper focuses on the development of Malaysia’s language ecology within the context of nation-building, its embedding in the Southeast Asian region, and the global challenges it seeks to meet. Malaysia’s languages are an essential component of the nation’s ability to communicate internally in a multilingual country and externally to the region and the world. The interplay of English with Malay and other languages, and the tensions that arise and call for responses in education and other domains like the law in the wider multilingual situation are also discussed. INTRODUCTION This paper examines the emergence of Malaysia’s language ecology, its growth and trans- formations at different periods of nation-building and the more recent roles of the Southeast Asian context and the global challenges Malaysia needs to address. It looks specifically at the interplay of English with Malay and, in passing, other languages, and the tensions that arise and call for responses in education and other domains like the law in the wider multilingual situation. The socio-political history of the region, which forms the background to language development and the growth of language ecologies, suggests that there were a series of transformations of the language situation, as new languages entered into contact with Malay, especially the colonial languages and English. The sultanates did not call for a national Malayan, let alone Malaysian language policy, given that they were in a dilemma between the maintenance and expansion of local power vis-` a-vis the rakyat (people). The various colonial clusters formed by the British like the Federated States of Malaya in 1895 and the Non-federated States did not require that either. As independence was achieved in 1957 it is best to assume that partial and highly localized ecologies existed at that stage. Seen from the new national level they constituted a tapestry of languages used mainly by the respective ethnic communities and some elites. They did not form a viable pattern for the new nation. As in similar cases elsewhere in Asia (e.g. India) or in Africa (e.g. Nigeria), the first governments needed to reflect upon what a nationally viable and consensual future language policy could look like and they had to devote energies to develop to that end. The controversial issue of choosing one local language as official language or to maintain (or even shift to) English has been with Malaysia from the start of independence. The crucial ∗ University of Malaya, Humanities Research Cluster, Research Cluster Office, Level 7, Research Management & Innovation Complex, University of Malaya, 50603, KualaLumpur, Malaysia. E-mail: azirahh@um.edu.my C  2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd