SOCIAL CAPITAL AND POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN FOSTERING ETHNIC RELATIONS IN MALAYSIA AND PHILIPPINES

Social capital helps in developing relationships among people in a community or from one community to the other. The concept of social capital focuses on social relationships or individual relationship which is an important tool in building a united and progressive society. It goes without saying that in a multi-ethnic and multilingual society, social capital is necessary to help foster unity and harmony among various ethnic groups. However, such socialization and sharing of knowledge can be obstructed in multi-ethnic societies by social barriers in the form of negative preconceptions towards other ethnic groups. Stereotyping is the result of distancing due to prejudice, which is usually the result of ignorance of the values and culture of other groups. The similarities of the cultural and social values among the Malays, Chinese and Indians for instance, the use of address terms, non-verbal signs and discourse norms in interaction as politeness strategies within their ethnic groups or across the major ethnic groups foster better and harmonious relationships. Similarly, in the Philippines different ethnic groups from the various regions of the country are able to share the same culture and values when interacting with one another

Social Capital and Politeness Strategies in Fostering Ethnic Relations in Malaysia and the Philippines

Social capital helps in developing relationships among people in a community or from one community to the other. The concept of social capital focuses on social relationships or individual relationship which is an important tool in building a united and progressive society. Social capital is essential for facilitating peaceful and effective relationships among people in a modern and progressive society

Discourse of Leader in an Academic Setting: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Email Messages

The focus of this paper is to examine the discourse of an academic leader through emails. This paper will examine the micro and macro level of leadership discourse. To analyze the data, Fairclough’s (1993) framework which includes the analysis of textual practice, discourse practice, and social practice will be used. In analyzing the discourse at the micro level, the paper will examine the textual practice which includes vocabulary, grammar, and text structure. In addition, genre and style of text and social practice will also be analyzed

Language Shift and Ethnic Identity: Focus on Malaysian Sindhis

This paper focusses on the minority community of the Malaysian Sindhis to show that ethnic and cultural identities can be constructed through means other practices than solely by the heritage languages. The study draws on an open-ended question directed to 79 lady members of the Sindhi community in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The respondents were women aged 50-70 and a friend of a friend helped in obtaining further respondents. This age group was selected as they often met for kitty parties, gambling sessions, and lunch parties. Their one-word responses were recorded and returned to the facilitator helping in data collection. The question was “What do you mean when you say you are a Sindhi?”. Based on the data, we contend that the term ethnicity denotes a subjective sense of community, meaning a shared identity which results in a sense of group solidarity. Identity is rooted in actual cultural practices and experiences

Cross-cultural encounters in giving compliments and making requests through literary texts : pedagogical ramifications

People view the world according to their culture which may lead to cultural differences. However, these differences may eventually help people to learn and appreciate others. In fact, lack of awareness and understanding of other cultures may create miscommunication. To overcome this problem, it is therefore essential that people develop a better understanding of how other cultures function.peer-reviewe

Exploring Teachers’ Reflections and Narratives of Negative Language

Language is used to communicate, express feelings and emotions. In the teaching context, teachers use language to share knowledge and information with students. Teachers’ use of negative language, such as ‘duffer’, ‘stupid’, ‘lazy’, etc. may result in students feeling mistreated, discouraged and worthless. Such language can also negatively affect students’ cognitive processes, feelings and emotions and blunt their curiosity, and their interest in performing better may be reduced. The responses of students to negative language used by teachers has been documented but reasons for the use and purpose of such language by teachers has not been documented. Although much of the previous research has demonstrated the cause-effect relation between negative teacher talk and students’ unsatisfactory performance, none of the studies, to the best of our knowledge, explored teachers’ reflections and narratives of negative/positive language. Therefore, this study seeks to explore teachers’ attitudes to negative/positive language, reasons for using such language and ways of reducing the use of such language. Data collected through narrative inquiry from twenty teachers in Pakistan’s Sindh province will be qualitatively analyzed to demonstrate how negative language and its perception is shaped by teachers. Findings show that teachers tend to use negative language for a number of reasons, not always necessarily with the explicit intent of motivating students to improve. As humans, teachers do carry over to the classroom some anger, annoyance and irritation issues from the home and relationship domains. It is hoped that the findings will make teachers aware of their use of negative language and hopefully such awareness will reduce the use of such language which in many cases is detrimental to students’ well-being

Self-Repair Practices in Pharmacist-Patient Interaction and their Role in Preventing Misunderstanding and Maintaining Medication Safety

Effective communication between pharmacists and patients can prevent medication errors as it enhances patients’ understanding of their medication and increases their adherence. As misunderstanding may occur in any type of interaction and lead to communication breakdown, repair practices that speakers adopt to enhance understanding in interaction are an especially important area of research in Conversation Analysis (CA). As such, this study aims to identify and explain the self-repair practices used by pharmacists to increase patient understanding in spoken interaction. The study was conducted at the University of Malaya Medical Centre from November to December 2014. Four pharmacists and 27 patients were recruited to participate in an intervention study. A detailed sequential analysis of interaction data revealed the pharmacists’ use of replacement, clarification, verbatim repeat, and repetition with an elaboration designed to increase the clarity and accuracy of the intended message and improve patient understanding. Self-repair practices may have an essential role in increasing medication safety in the healthcare setting

Language Choice among the Punjabi Sikh Community in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia

When a minority group interacts and comes into contact with individuals from the dominant language, they tend to choose a commonly understood language. Language choice is forced to negotiate their own identity and cultural practices with their dominant culture. This can create a conflict, as in the case of the Punjabi community, who try to adopt new cultural norms and maintain their own identity when living in a dominant cultural group. With the growing number of Punjabis in Sabah, specifically in the capital city of Kota Kinabalu, East Malaysia, this situation presents an excellent case for advancing our knowledge about the challenges that the process of assimilation and enculturation may have on the Punjabi community living in a society which predominantly is of a different culture in Sabah. This study thus addresses the impact of social integration among a small population of the Punjabi Sikhs living in Kota Kinabalu. Data is collected using a questionnaire and interviews with several community members. The study draws implications on how a minority group adapts to the dominant culture and provides possible avenues for future research

Precarity Amidst ‘Ad-Hoc’ Access to Education for Second Generation of Youth Immigrants in Kudat, Sabah

While migration literature is littered with studies on stateless and undocumented children in Malaysia, there is scant focus on the second generation of stateless and undocumented immigrants who were born in Sabah. What happened to the second generation of IMM13 holders and what kind of life condition they tread since? This paper investigates the situation of children of IMM13 holders who were given access to school before 2003, though remain undocumented, and how they make sense of their lives as young adults. Based on in-depth interviews and observations from a broader study conducted in 2013- 2016, youths aged 20-30 years old from Kudat, on the west coast of Sabah, it is our contention that for the undocumented, temporary or ad-hoc access to education remains a palliative route without social inclusion of immigrants into the mainstream society. Keywords: precarity, migration, second-generation immigrants, Sabah, access to educatio