BAHASA SEMPADAN MALAYSIA-THAILAND: PENGEKALAN VS PERALIHAN BAHASA

Border issues can be discussed from various perspectives such as geographical, political, language or identity perspectives. Geographical perspective is related to politics because the border of a country is determined by political boundaries. Language border, however, is wider because it transcends political and geographical boundaries. This then raises the issue of identity because language does not fully reflect the identity of its speakers. The wide usage of a dominant language can also have an impact on the minority language spoken by a particular language community. If this occurs, then the language shift phenomenon takes place among the speakers of minority languages. Conversely, speakers of a minority language would also insist in maintaining and defending the existence of their language amid pressure from the dominant language. Such a case is termed as language maintenance. This paper will specifically discuss the languages used at the Malaysia-Thailand border which, subsequently, will be linked with the concept of language shift and language maintenance. This study has managed to gather data from 202 respondents representing the speaking communities from two border towns at the Malaysia-Thailand border. Respondents are from the speaker communities in Rantau Panjang and Golok. The method used to obtain information on language use is questionnaires. This study also used two other methods, namely direct observations and interviews to complement the data from questionnaires. By utilizing the domain concept introduced by Fishman (1964), this study focuses on two domains namely, business and family. The findings show that Kelantanese dialect is the most dominant language at the border. This points to the occurrence of language maintenance at the border of Malaysia-Thailand, particularly in Golok when the majority of the respondents chose Pattani Malay instead of the Thai language. These findings suggest that language can serve as a marker of identity, especially for those communities in Golok as most of them are originally from Malaysia. Based on observations and interviews conducted, it was found that the motivation that supports the communities in Golok to maintain Pattani Malay dialect is determined by cultural, political and language factors.