Introduction

This research was conducted in the immigrant Malaysian-Bengali community in Malaysia. The language behaviour of fourteen women from this community of four hundred, over a time period of 19 months, was both observed and taped. This was the first sociolinguistic study of a migrant group in Malaysia (Mukherjee 1995; for later studies see David 1996 and David 2001). Therefore a qualitative study of the language patterns of fourteen women was conducted in great detail in order to come to a deeper understanding of the motivations behind their choice of code.

The interview questions were divided into four main sections: background information, language use, language ability and group identity. For this chapter, the results of three sections of the questionnaire (namely language use, language ability and group identity), have been tabulated in order to explore how different women in the Malaysian- Bengali community report using their languages (especially the Bengali language), and how they do so in different ways to promote a sense of community within the larger Malaysian context.

Reported language use

The questions in this section all relate to the speakers’ perceptions of the languages they used inside their home as well as outside the home. Data was also elicited about the language(s) used by other family members.

In the following transcribed extracts, the capitalized sequences show stress or emphasis, spaces denote pauses and empty bracketed sequences are not clearly audible. Square brackets indicate my additions and translations. Any names beginning with the letters “P” “S” or “T” refer to the main participants in this study, and when a name beginning with any of these three letters occurs in a conversation, it refers to the same person. P refers to a person in the Primary group ( > 45 age group); S to a person in the Secondary group (26-44), and T to a person in the Third group ( < 25 age group). Care was taken that the pseudonyms were not duplicated by the names of actual persons in the community.

Reported languages used within the family and with relatives in Malaysia ( > 45 age group)

Table 8.1 describes what the women in the oldest group said about languages used at home and with their immediate relatives.