Minangnese Students’ Language Choice and Language Attitude at a Public University in the Northern Region of Malaysia

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-438-9_21How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Language Attitude; Language Choice; Minangnese Students; Multilingual Communities

Abstract

As global multilingualism increases, language choice becomes more prevalent, particularly among overseas students. This study investigated the language choices of 30 Minangnese Indonesian students studying at a public university in Northern Malaysia, with the factors influencing their choices and their attitudes towards these languages. Adapting frameworks from Fishman (1972), Myers-Scotton (2006), and Nalliannan et al. (2019), along with sociolinguistic and psychological theories from Holmes (2013) and Kurata (2007), this study employed a descriptive qualitative design, collecting data through questionnaires and interviews. The results indicated that Malay was the most frequently used language, particularly in public spaces, while Indonesian was preferred in family and religion domains English in educational settings, and Minang among friends. The participants expressed strong positive attitudes towards English and Indonesian, whereas attitudes towards Minang and Malay were mixed. The findings revealed that language choices were closely linked to social identity, roles, intimacy, and cultural adaptation. This study highlighted the complex relationship between language choice, attitudes, identity, and socio-cultural factors among Minangnese students abroad, illustrating how multilingual communities navigate the balance between heritage languages and global languages in new environments.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Nurul Fania Amri
AU  - Ernie D. A. Imperiani
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/07/28
TI  - Minangnese Students’ Language Choice and Language Attitude at a Public University in the Northern Region of Malaysia
BT  - Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (ICOLLITE 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 233
EP  - 248
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-438-9_21
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-438-9_21
ID  - Amri2025
ER  -