7 Reengineering ee (ort ee Current Issties and eee (asks Leite Mohamad Rashidi Pakri Nurul Farhana Low Abdullah Salasiah Che Lah© Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia, 2014 EPUB, 2015 Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Reengineering local knowledge : current issues and practices / editors Mohamad Rashidi Pakri, Nurul Farhana Low Abdullah, Salasiah Che Lah Included index ISBN 978-983-861-628-7 e-ISBN 978-983-861-835-9 1. Knowledge management. 2. Organizational learning. I. Mohamad Rashidi Pakri, 1971-. II. Nurul Farhana Low Abdullah. III. Salasiah Che Lah. 658.4038 Copy Editor: Jannatun Hidayah Umar Cover Designer: Mohammad Ridhwan Jaapar Proofreader: Norjannah Abdul Rahim Typesetter: Rosni Habib Published by Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia (Universiti Sains Malaysia Press), 11800 USM Pulau Pinang, Malaysia. A member of the Malaysian Scholarly Publishing Council (MAPIM).Contents Preface Introduction Mohamad Rashidi Pakri | Nurul Farhana Low Abdullah | Salasiah Che Lah Demystifying Standard English in Preeta Samarasan’s Evening is the Whole Day Marzban Mahdavi Tootkaboni | Mohamad Rashidi Pakri Government Efforts and Tourism Activities as Community Capacity Building Approaches: A Case Study of Pulau Langkawi, Kedah Fadina Othman | Badaruddin Mohamed | Azizi Bahauddin Learning and Adaptation of Disaster Management and Housing Provision: The Malaysian Experience Ruhizal Roosli The World Forest and Spiritual Revival: Unveiling Secrets of the Classics Lalita Sinha | Md Salleh Yaapar The Unravelling of the Malay Songket Motifs — The World of Flora Azizi Bahauddin The Oral Culture of Pontianak Malay Community: The Impact on the Scholars’ Literate Culture and the Implication to Teaching Learning Strategies Endang Susilawati Looking Back to the Past: Revival of Traditional Food Packaging Muhizam Mustafa | AS Hardy Shafii| Sumetha Nagalingam | Jason Tye Kong Chiang | Jasni Dolah The Heritage of the Malay Melaka House Azizi Bahauddin Copyrighted materialLocal Knowledge, Livelihood and Ambience of Malay Villages Nor A’zam S | Alip R The Bateq Tribe of Kampung Orang Asli Sungai Berua and Sungai Sayap, Terengganu: The Minorities of the Minority of Indigenous Group of Orang Asli in Peninsular Malaysia Alias Abd Ghani | Salasiah Che Lah | Zarina Samsuddin | Azizi Bahauddin Contributors IndexPreface The idea for this volume began with the initiative by Universiti Sains Malaysia’s Local Knowledge Secretariat to organize the inaugural Regional Conference on Local Knowledge (RCLK) which gathered together over 100 researchers, experts and scholars at Kampung Tok Senik Resort, Langkawi Island on 10th and 11th October 2011. Based upon the theme “Retracing Tradition for a Sustainable Future,” the first RCLK was premised upon three main objectives, namely: to identify and retrace local wisdom, to introduce local wisdom to the local populace besides protecting and conserving local wisdom. The conference successfully initiated a local epistemology aimed at social transformation through the highlighting of local wisdom from the Malay archipelago. The second RCLK, which took place in Jerejak Rainforest Resort in 2012 with the theme “Reengineering Local Knowledge” extends the objectives of the first inaugural conference above. Based on the understanding that local knowledge is a form of wisdom among the communities of the archipelago which has developed and become entrenched over time, its existence and practices (at times) has gone unnoticed by local communities. Aware of this gap, the RCLK Committee has taken the initiative to position local wisdom at the forefront of knowledge in the local context. Local knowledge can be divided into various disciplines under a number of domains such as history, literature, education, rural communities, traditional medicine, the spiritual realm, the arts, construction, shipping and maritime trade, management, Malay traditional customs, the world of water, wildlife and agriculture. The articles in this volume titled represent a selection from the various domains of local wisdom. The editors would like to thank the contributors to this volume for their chapters and the Local Knowledge Secretariat for their tireless support in ensuring the success of this book. A special thanks to Universiti Sains Malaysia Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dato’ Dr. Omar Osman, Patron of the Local Knowledge Secretariat and Emeritus Professor Muhammad Haji Salleh, Advisor to the Local Knowledge Secretariat for establishing local knowledge as part of the national agenda for education.We also would like to record our sincere gratitude to other key members of the Exco for the RCLK, especially Chairman, Professor Badaruddin Mohamed, Deputy Chairman, Associate Professor Saad Othman, Treasurer, Associate Professor Saad Othman who all worked closely with the editors to ensure the timely publication of this volume. Not forgetting Nur Yuhainis Amirnudin and Nur Amalina Omar, key personnel for the management of the book. We acknowledge with thanks Tourism Malaysia and the staffs of SCOMM, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), for sponsorship of the second RCLK which produced this collection of chapters. Last but not least, we to record our heartfelt thanks and appreciation to USM for funding the publication of this English volume on local knowledge. 14 May 2013Introduction Mohamad Rashidi Pakri | Nurul Farhana Low Abdullah | Salasiah Che Lah This collection consists of selected papers from the Regional Conference on Local Knowledge held in October 2012 at Jerejak Rainforest Resort, Penang. This was a sequel to the inaugural Regional Conference on Local Knowledge (RCLK) which gathered together over 100 researchers, experts and scholars at Kampung Tok Senik Resort, Langkawi Island on 10th and 11th October 2011. While the first conference aimed at identifying and retracing local wisdom, introducing local wisdom to the local populace and protecting and conserving local wisdom, the second conference focuses on the reengineering (or even transforming) of such knowledge into practice, making this volume complementary to the theme of last year’s conference. The contributors of this volume, needless to say came from those who are researching, teaching and practicing those local knowledge under various disciplines such as history, literature, education, rural communities, traditional medicine, the spiritual realm, the arts, construction, management and Malay traditional customs. The collection begins in first chapter with Marzban Mahdavi Tootkaboni’s and Mohamad Rashidi Pakri’s chapter entitled ‘Demystifying Standard English Language in Preeta Samarasan’s Evening is the Whole Day.’ They analyse a recent Malaysian novel which is rich with imagery of language that evokes everyday experiences that most Malaysians will immediately recognize. Unlike V.S. Naipul whose usage of English language is at the service of an imperial readership however, Preeta’s employment of local contexts in a novel written in English reminds the reader that the language is simply a medium to convey the Malaysian way of life. As such she uses local metaphors and colloquial terms liberally to emphasize that the novel is very much Malaysian-oriented despite its linguistic medium. Her Indian characters flavour their conversations with Malaysian English peppered with Tamil expressions. Throughout the novel, the language holds the imagination with its richly drawn, vivid detail. In this chapter, the localized colloquial English language which is understood by most Malaysians is examined as a means to trivialize/satirize historical contents, events and characters.In the second chapter, Fadina Othman, Badaruddin Mohamed and Azizi Bahauddin discuss the aspect of tourism as one of the world’s most important sources of employment. It stimulates enormous investment in infrastructures, most of which also helps to improve the living conditions of local people. Sentiments such as these have supported and encouraged governments and development agencies in many countries to use tourism as a key tool for development and it usually is referred to as tourism development (Hall, 2005). Government policies are crucial to community development, as community survival and sustainability largely depends on local government policies. Government efforts will determine the degree of development and eventually lead to the aspect of building community capacity. The organization of tourism planning in Malaysia is complex and influenced by the three tiers of government organization, namely the federal government, the state governments and the local authorities. As tourism is a federal responsibility, all revenues from tourism are collected by the federal government. Since land and its development is a state matter however, the State Planning Economic Unit is entrusted to formulate strategies, construct planning and policies with the regards to tourism. Finally the execution or putting the planning into action is entrusted to the local authority. Meanwhile, capacity building is a conceptual approach to community development that focuses on understanding the obstacles that inhibit people, governments, international organizations and non-governmental organizations. The findings of this chapter reveal that effort to develop the community is a continuous process and in some cases, requires collaboration between the government and the private sectors. In a nutshell, the aim of this chapter is to clarify government efforts and tourism development activities employed in developing and building community capacity on an island and the researcher has selected Pulau Langkawi in Kedah as a case study. In the next chapter, Ruhizal Roosli in the article ‘Learning and Adaptation of Disaster Management and Housing Provision: The Malaysian Experience’ presents the literature concerning studies of one part of the ‘Policy and Mechanism on National Disaster and Relief Management’ in Malaysia. The author focuses his argument on the very classic evolution of disaster planning transformation particularly in actions of land management according to the level and complexity of the disaster. The government as a social regime not only formulates a complete framework of disaster planning but also has to make sure the plan works throughout the whole cycle of disaster management. It is essential to ensure a close liaison between the bodies responsible for recovery and those concemed with disaster management. The disaster risk reduction at both local and national level should be prioritized.This includes developing strategy and action which could help raise awareness and capacity building in order to enhance the enforcement of current legislation In chapter four, Lalita Sinha and Md Salleh Yaapar examine specific literary elements in two literary classics of the East. Syair Siti Zubaidah Perang China (The Ballad of Siti Zubaidah at War with China) is a 19th century syair (Malay narrative poem) from the Riau Archipelago of the Malay-Muslim world. It is an authentic product of the Malay- Muslim world, typifying court literature. It was written by royally, Tengku Bilik binti Raja Abdullah (Mulaika, 2011). The second text is The Lost Ring of Shakuntala a Hindu-Indian drama of the 5th century written by Kalidasa, whose adherence is “remarkably faithful... to the ingenious conventions of Indian dramaturgy” (Ryder, 1959). In other words, The Lost Ring of Shakuntala typifies Indian Sanskrit poetics, and also represents Indian court literature. These texts are examined as the basis for a comparative study, by identifying and examining certain principles and practices that embody the traditional worldview in the texts. A vast range of elements can be found in the texts, but for purposes of this chapter, only those related specifically to the forest setting are explicated. Close analysis of events in the forest setting is carried out to show the significance of the forest and the trees within the forest in functioning as a ‘healing place’, from the lenses of the individual milieus and socio-cultural traditions of the two communities in question, Continuing with the flora motif, Azizi Bahauddin’s chapter, ‘The Unravelling of the Malay Songket Motifs - The World of Flora’ unravels motifs found in the Malay textile art of songket that are derived from flowers. The woven patterns oi songket motifs harbour hidden meanings found in the world of flora amongst other motifs of spices and fruits. These two-dimensional patterns strongly evoke the essence of Malay traditions and religious beliefs. The motifs are shown to be laced with animism as well as religious influences that came to Malaysia, namely Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. This mixture of beliefs poses a distinctive issue for the investigation. The analysis undertaken employs a qualitative method, involving the collection of data through ethnographic documentation, contextual analysis through visual data collection and interpretation of the importance of these flowers. The chapter reveals that seven types of flowers are considered sacred. These flowers are small to medium in size and white or cream in colour. The analysis leads to the understanding of religious beliefs that lend depth to the cultural exploration while emphasizing the amalgamation between traditions, customs and religious belief in alocal craft. This is further elaborated by the historical background and the Malay culture and the motifs that support the interview activities. More importantly, these motifs also portray traditional established political, economic and ultimately social systems in the Malay context. They are described in the oral traditions, the essence of Malay art that features so much of the Malay cultural identity. Thus the chapter concludes that songket motifs derived from flowers actually unravel beliefs that are unique to the Malays. In chapter six, Endang Susilawati presents her findings on ‘The Oral Culture of Pontianak Malay Community: The Impact on the Scholars’ Literate Culture and the Implication to Teaching Learning Strategies’ where she argues many students of Teacher Training and Education Faculty of Tanjungpura University in Pontianak do not fulfill their reading and writing tasks satisfactorily. To some extent, the students’ social cultural background might affect students’ practices on campus. Therefore, it is necessary to trace back their social and cultural background in terms of their work habits in the practice of speaking, reading and writing from which they represent the tradition of both orality and literacy. It has been recognized that those students are primarily from the Malay ethnic community. The Malay community has been living in traditionally primary orality (Ong, 1982). Oral tradition or oral culture is not only its one particular identity but also the medium for transferring and internalizing of social cultural values (Effendy, 2006). Besides, oral practices like chatting, gossiping and joking or more serious talk about business, family and work-related matters cannot be separated from people’s daily lives. In the meantime, the needs of modern society has been changing over the past few decades, resulting in the shift from the oral tradition to literacy or literate culture (Kramsch, 2008) to which the people must be exposed. Such traditions should be reflected in the campus environment because it is already common for tertiary level students to be exposed to the routines of literate culture as it is compulsory for them. However, as revealed in this article, such an expectation has not yet totally materialized. To investigate what really happened, a_ participant observation was conducted for this research and questionnaires were administered to 50 students of the faculty. At the same time, 10 students were selected randomly to be interviewed and assigned to keep a diary to note down their daily practices on speaking, reading and writing both within and outside of campus. As a result, it was discovered that speaking practices were still more dominant than reading or writing in the students’ daily activities. This implied that the students still maintain their oral tradition (orality). On the one hand this is meaningful to maintain the students’ social values such as solidarityand togetherness; however while literacy practices were actualized these were only limited to fulfilling the requirements of school assignments. To build and develop the academic literate culture of the students whose cultural background is grounded in orality, lecturers have the responsibility to mediate both valuable traditions through the appropriate teaching learning strategy. In this case, the author recommends Contextual Teaching and Learning as it can facilitate or accommodate both kinds of practices. Muhizam Mustafa et al. in their chapter entitled ‘Looking Back to the Past: Revival of Traditional Food Packaging’, states that packaging is born out of necessity meant to preserve food and make it easily portable, made of whatever material found at hand in the rural areas of their origin. As such, traditional forms of packaging in Malaysia mostly incorporate natural materials such as bamboo, rice straw, hemp twine, paper and leaves. This chapter surveys Malaysia’s traditional food packaging design and materials using indigenous resources from various aspects and reveals that traditional Malaysian food packaging fulfils several functions besides the practical and aesthetic as it helps to preserve the freshness of the food besides imparting a delicious aroma to whet the appetite of potential consumers especially when local leaves such as pandan (screwpine) or banana leaves are used in the packaging of local confectionaries and other delicacies. Thus the authors argue that it is worthwhile for local food manufacturers to return to local wisdom and rethink the use of modern non- biodegradable forms of packaging such as plastic in the production of local foodstuff in favour of more eco-friendly material as this has been the local practice for generations. Another chapter by Azizi Bahauddin provides an insight into the heritage of the Malay Melaka House. The traditional Malay Melaka house is viewed as a design that takes nature and the environment into consideration. It is the only traditional Malay house that has an attic, tiled staircase and colourful exterior, and is found only in villages in Melaka. This house form is derived from the requirements of Malay communal activities, Islamic teachings and climatic conditions. It is distinctly recognizable by the shape of its roof whereby the shape of the main house is usually higher than the roof of the veranda. Hence, most of the structure is seen as an expansion of the smaller structure. Its construction is related to nature and its settings. The cultural beliefs associated with the house present a new design understanding which is reflected in its carvings, building components and interior finishes. The Melaka house exemplifies how house builders of yesteryears were adept at designing a house suited for the climate and the locationsaccording to traditional wisdom. Above all, these builders knew how to construct a sustainable habitation that functions as a shelter from the elements, fulfils religious requirements and keeps inhabitants safe from wild animals. In chapter nine, Nor A'zam S and Alip R discuss aspects of local knowledge in relation to the livelihood and ambience of Malay Villages. The authors argue that local knowledge developed in Malay villages relates with the production and consumption spheres of the community and the spatial dimension of place, territory and environment. In addition, the physiological needs, safely and security requirements, affiliation, esteem and self-actualization further enriched the realm of the local knowledge. It has evolved in close contact with Malay culture and the environment, institutionalized under local social organization, utilized and informally transferred from generation to generation. Accumulation of Malay local knowledge can be found in dances, syair, pantun, puisi, folk song, simpulan bahasa, peribahasa, bidalan, adat, adab, hikayat, boria, wayang kulit and ghazal. The wealth of this information rests with the local power structure such as imam and other religious leaders, medicine man, local mid-wife, village head, penghulu, pawang, panglima, theatre and story teller and normally centered within the village genius loci, the mosque. Translating local knowledge into action in context with production and consumption activities, the associated usage of rural spaces such as the settlement pattern, the house form, the design of physical form, the rural landscape, the lived space and hence the conception of space must be given priority by Malaysians as this is crucial for sustaining the identity and heritage of communities and society. To date the colonial mentality has not been exorcised and as such, the standards used in planning and design of physical form and space fail to acknowledge local knowledge practical experience, obscuring local identity and local needs. The loss of Malaysian identity is clearly seen in our urban and rural landscape where rows and rows of faceless modern housing projects with western sounding names are mostly modified to meet the needs of the inhabitants. It is important that local knowledge be incorporated in addressing environmental problems and issues of sustainability, development and place making, including the decision making process, governance and local participation, creation of identity and sense of place, and as cultural capital to manage resources. There is also a fear of diminishing of local knowledge attributed from internal and external factors infringing on the community couple with low interest among the generation Y to understand the local knowledge of their forefathers.In the last chapter, Alias Abd Ghani, Salasiah Che Lah, Zarina Samsudin and Azizi Hj Bahauddin report on a study on endangered indigenous groups of Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia with the main focus on the Negrito Bateq sub-group of Orang Asli of Hulu Terengganu. This study is a synchronic study and employs an ethnographic qualitative research design involving interview technique with native speakers as an instrument to elicit data on language and culture aspects of the Bateq community under investigation. The Negrito also known as Semang (also known as Semang-Negrito) are the smallest group of Orang Asli subgroups in Peninsular Malaysia. They are the minorities among the minority of indigenous people or Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia. They comprise only 3.2% of the Orang Asli population (JHEOA, 1994). Statistics by JHEOA (now JAKOA since 2008) show that the total number of the population has decreased to 2.6%. The Semang-Negrito Bateq sub group of Orang Asli are mainly found in the north east of Pahang, north west of Terengganu and south Kelantan. The prime focus of this chapter is the Semang- Negrito Bateq of Kampung Sungai Berua, Hulu Terengganu and Kampung Sungai Sayap, Besut, Terengganu. The findings reveal that the Negrito Bateq group of Orang Asli in Terengganu is under threat of physical, cultural and language extinction. Some of the Orang Asli are experiencing a demographic crisis while others are reported to have been assimilated with other Orang Asli communities. The present volume provides a selected overview on how local knowledge has been practised whilst highlighting important issues related to the current state of the art of local knowledge, chief amongst which is the urgent need to re-engineer local knowledge to translate it into new knowledge. As Nor Azam and Alip in chapter nine suggest, the demise of local knowledge and local culture can be attributed to internal and external factors impinging on the community, where changes in the sphere of production and the consumption no longer support the generation and utilisation of local knowledge and local culture. The question is thus posed: Can local knowledge and local cultural values survive into the future? Groenfeldt (2003) has suggested the possibility that ‘Western’ culture will eventually overwhelm all the primitive, traditional societies in the world as well as all other major cultural competitors such as Islamic, Hindu, and Confucian traditions. In the face of such challenges there is therefore an urgent need to systematically study and document local cultural visions and goals as an initial step which can facilitate the survival of local knowledge and values. This is an important measure in re-establishing a cultural identity and reconstructing a worldview increasingly at threat from modernization and globalization. It is the hope of the editors of thisvolume that its publication will promote awareness of the richness of local knowledge and practices in our community from which our country could gain much benefit, in line with our belief that our quest for a better future must also take into consideration our best practices of the past. References Effendy, Chairil. (2006). Sastra Sebagai Wadah Integrasi Budaya. Pontianak: Stain Pontianak Press. Groenfeldt, D. (2003). The future of indigenous values: cultural relativism in the face of economic development. Futures, 35, 917- 929. Kramsch, Claire. (2008). Language and Culture. China: Oxford University Press. Mulaika Hijjas. (2011). Victorious Wives: The Disguised Heroine in 19th Century Malay Syair. Singapore: NUS Press/Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, MBRAS Monograph 44. Ong, Walter J. (1982). Orality and Literacy the Technologizing of the Word. New York: Methuen. Ryder, A.W. (1959). “Introduction” in Shakuntala and Other Writings. New York: E.P Dutton & Co., Inc.Demystifying Standard English Language in Preeta Samarasan’s Evening is the Whole Day Marzban Mahdavi Tootkaboni | Mohamad Rashidi Pakri Introduction The motivation to learn English in post-colonial nations like Malaysia, according to Subramaniam (2007), is no longer the compulsion of imperialistic colonialism. Current motivation is partly directed by politics, and primarily driven by the growth of information technology in science and technology and world economics. Crystal (1995) suggests six reasons for the spread of the English language; historical (as a result of a colonial legacy); internal politics (the maintenance of English as a neutral language of communication between different ethnic groups); extemal economic reasons (to participate in international trade and business); practical reasons (for international utilitarian functions); intellectual reasons for acquisition of information on science, technology and on academic subjects); and entertainment (to be part of the mainstream popular culture). The apparent difference between the present-day spread of the English language with that of the colonial period is that it is “natural, neutral and mutually beneficial” (Pennycook, 1994): natural, as it is the result of globalization; neutral, for it is considered a transparent medium of communication; and mutually beneficial, because of the assumption that international communication occurs on a co-operative and equitable footing. This heterogeneous situation gives rise to comparison and evaluation between the varieties which “ghettoises” (Rushdie, 1991: 21) some while elevating others to the position of standard. The debate among linguists is whether to preserve a primary standard of English, or to acknowledge the numerous varieties of English as legitimate forms. This debate is epitomized by the arguments between Kachru (1982, 1985, 1992) and Quirk (1985). Kachru (1985: 30) asserts that “native speakers of this language seem to have lost the exclusive prerogative to control its standardisation”. For his part Quirk (1985: 5-6) states that “the existence of standards...is an endemic feature of our mortal condition and that people feel alienated and disorientated if a standard seems to be missing from any of these areas”. This is why the“indigenization” (Pennycook, 1994) and “nativisation” (Kachru, 1992) of English is detested by purists who believe in a monomodel of English. The standard-non-standard debate has been taken up and discussed at length in two publications: Language is Power, The Story of Standard English and Its Enemies (Honey, 1997) and The English Languages (McArthur, 1998). In post-colonial contexts, to argue that all Englishes show some form of affinity to a standard, that forms the bridge across which the different varieties are comprehensible, is to reinforce linguistic imperialism. Many feel that the issue of standard is in itself a controversial one. Subramaniam (2007) believes that the term standard can be interpreted in two ways. Firstly, it may suggest the target towards which a language may strive, but not necessarily want to achieve. Secondly, it may be considered as a dichotomy that differentiates between right and wrong. The latter implies a standard (native-speaker language model) that is correct and superior compared to the variety (non-native speaker model) which is inferior and incorrect.The resistance against such imperialistic attitudes and the need to establish personal as well as communal identities in post-colonial nations results in a series of transformations to the adopted language. Consequently, the new varieties cultivate their own sociological, linguistic and literary expressions. The basic issue in this debate concerns difference and deviance. Difference may be viewed as a neutral concept explaining and describing the variations that are present in the many varieties of English. Deviance, on the other hand, carries negative value, implying that the varieties of English have subverted and devalued the standard. As Labov (1974: 11) explains, the traditional view of non-standard speech as a set of isolated deviations from standard English is often countered by the opposite view: that non-standard dialect should be studied as an isolated system in its own right. This reasoning is based on the fact that new Englishes display a diversity of form and function, the result of linguistic variation and change occurring on a great scale around the world. These variations are products of the interaction between the language and the society in which it is used, the different social needs it serves, the new cultural and ideological load it carries, and the features of the contact languages it assimilates (Platt & Weber, 1980; Kachru, 1982, 1992; Cheshire, 1991; Asmah, 1992). To understand the diversity of new Englishes in post-colonial contexts, it is first necessary to understand certain integral features of these Englishes such as: “what were the historical reasons for initiating bilingualism in English; what factors motivated the retention of Englishafter the end of the colonial period; what is the sociolinguistic profile of each variety; and what parameters resulted in the nativisation of English” (Kachru, 1992: 6). It is likely that each variety will be found to be unique. English in post-colonial societies may have served two purposes: as language of imperialism and language of resistance. As an instrument of resistance, English could then be seen not merely as “a means to engage in struggle, but as a principal site of the struggle, and thus to take up a cultural political project must require a battle over the meanings of English” (Pennycook, 1994: 264). ‘The process of writing back in English as part of resistance against imperialism and colonialism involved “taking the language and reusing it, for shaping realities” (Pennycook, 1994: 262) as seen and experienced by the writers and the language community which is non- native. Writing back does not necessarily mean fighting political battles for freedom, but the taking up of “cultural battles and counter discursive positions, and thus involves the broader question of cultural politics” (Pennycook, 1994: 270). Alternately, the recalcitrant position of writing back also means that the “use of standard English, in writing at least, spells certain disaster to the Commonwealth writer whose primary responsibility is to be faithful to (native) experience” (Avadhesh, 1981). Achebe (1975: 223) addresses this issue when he says “the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new surroundings”. Recreating the language to communicate different cultural experiences is not an immediate process; neither is it an easy one. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin (1989: 41) determine two stages in the post-colonial nativization process: ‘abrogation’, a denial and refusal of the colonial and metropolitan categories, its standard, and of normative or ‘correct’ usage, its claim to fixed meanings inscribed in words; and ‘appropriation’, whereby the language is seized and replaced in a specific cultural location. “Post-colonial writing abrogates the privileged centrality of English by using language to signify the difference while employing a sameness which allows it to be understood” (Tiffin, 1983: 51). By inscribing meaning, writing releases it to a ‘dense proliferation’ of possibilities, and the ‘myth of centrality’ embodied in the concept of a standard language is forever overturned. It is at this moment that “English becomes english” (Tiffin, 1983: 87). In essence, the argument is that new Englishes are linguistically systematic and culturally autonomous. The above position may also be explained using a linguistic paradigm.Functional linguists led by Halliday (1978: 387, 1985: 7) have underlined two main operations of English; ‘pragmatic’ and ‘mathetic’. The ‘pragmatic function’ refers to the language used as ‘action’ or ‘a resource for doing with. The ‘mathetic function’ refers to the language used as mode of ‘reflection’, ‘a resource for thinking with’ and ‘the construction of reality’. The ‘pragmatic function’ is vital in the context of global communication and the use of English as an interactive medium in information-transfer, material and economic marketing. The fulfilment of this function is connected to the use of an internationally intelligible English, often more inclined to ‘Standard English’ or native-speaker variety of English. The tilt towards Standard English in the ‘pragmatic function’ is subverted in the ‘mathetic function’. The mathetic function allows the speakers the freedom ‘to construct modern reality’, through “linguistic patterns and discursive practices which systematically construct reality for their users and the meaning associated with that reality” (Kandiah, 1995: xxii). The language that performs this function reflects the ‘users’ model of reality (Kandiah, 1995). The participation in this language function allows speakers of new Englishes to take control of the language, reshape its linguistic medium and advance new messages aligned with reality as they see, experience and believe it to be. The process of ‘domesticating’ English for localized purposes demands that the non-native bilingual post-colonial writer is able to express his thought patterns in a culture-specific language within the context of situation. Achebe (1969) says that this process is solely achieved based on instinct than formal judgement. Kachru (1987: 128) in setting up some hypotheses concerning bilingual grammar, states that it has to be captured in terms of what sociolinguists call ‘verbal repertoire’ or ‘code repertoire’, with specific reference to each speech community. These repertoires include characteristics of code mixing, code switching and the adaptation of stylistic and discoursal strategies available to the bilingual. These distinctive features may be seen as limiting or extending the text, depending on how one looks at it and what one considers as linguistic innovation. The interpretation of such creativity demands “an identification with the literary sensibility of the bilingual tune with ways of saying and levels of new meaning” (Kachru, 1987: 130). Therefore, English in acquiring international identities also acquires “multiple ownership” (Kachru, 1986: 31) and the international identities that it has procured are manifested in the form of distinct features in each new variety. These features reside in linguistic choiceexhibited by idiosyncrasies of lexis, syntax, or style arbitrated by culture, religion, race, nationality, history, politics and a whole range of other socioeconomic conditions. English in Post-Colonial Malaysia Post-colonial nations have normally adopted one of three main approaches with regards to the colonial language. First, there are nations such as Singapore who have fully and whole-heartedly embraced the colonial language as their language of commerce, administration and communication. Second, there are nations such as Japan who chose to completely discard the colonial language and ascertain national consciousness and identity through an indigenous language. Finally, there are countries such as Malaysia who have been often enough at the crossroads of decision making as to the role and status that should be accorded the English language. The discussion on the role and status of English in Malaysia has highlighted some of the problematics of English in the Malaysian context. It also emphasized that English has been used for varying purposes and with varying degrees of significance in Malaysia for over two centuries. As such, it is not difficult to see why English in Malaysia has acquired local/native flavours. Malaysian English, as a variety, has been discussed and described by many linguists and researchers (Tongue, 1979; Platt & Weber, 1980; Nalliah & Thiyagarajah, 1981; Wong, 1983; Platt, Weber & Ho, 1984; Lowenberg, 1984, 1991, 1992; Baskaran, 1987; Benson, 1990; Vethamani, 1996; Josephine Leela, 1998). English is not the native language of any of the ethnic groups in Malaysia, which puts the writers in the language at odds with the country’s diverse cultural traditions. Yet it is their choice of medium, and their efforts to ‘replace’ it in the local context, through a process of appropriation and infusion of local blood, which makes their consciousness cross-cultural and introduces a dynamism and dialecticism in their understanding and interpretation of the local culture. It liberates them from the mono-centrism and essentialism inherent in adhering to a single culture and puts them in the privileged position of negotiating between cultures and envisaging the new future of ‘Bangsa Malaysia’, or a collective soul and an encompassing identity for the newly emergent nation. Discussion In the last 50 years, despite increasing globalization, novels in English from Southeast Asia have struggled to make an international impact. Incontrast to the worldwide exposure and sales of novelists from South Asia, such as Amitav Ghosh or Aravind Adiga, writers of prose fiction from Southeast Asia have generally been read in small local or regional markets. Poetry and short stories from Southeast Asia have recently obtained an increasing transnational exposure through publication in literary journals, many of which have now moved wholly or partially online. The novel, however, for a long time remained stubbornly restricted to national or specialist markets: major Filipino writers such as Dean Francis Alfar or Vicente Groyon, for instance, have made little impact outside the Philippines, and even major writers from Singapore such as Suchen Christine Lim are not widely distributed internationally. There has, of course, long been a tradition of novelists who have migrated from Southeast Asia and who write about migrancy — in addition to the many first generation Filipino-American writers, one thinks of Australian authors Hsu-Min Teo and Lau Siew Mei, Canadian Lydia Kwa, and Shirley Geoklin Lim, an American citizen who still retains close contact with Malaysia. Yet novels written by Southeast Asians in English of Southeast Asia for a long time achieved little recognition. This is as true of a previous generation of writers as it is of the current one: Lloyd Fernando, K.S. Maniam, and Goh Poh Seng, for instance, while they may have received critical attention from some Commonwealth Literature and later post-colonial literary studies scholars, they have not achieved the international recognition showered on their South Asian contemporaries. In the past decade, however, the pattern of neglect has been broken by two developments. First, the increasing pace of globalization has made it more difficult to make a neat division between ‘local’ and diasporic texts. Second, a number of Malaysian novels have been published in the United Kingdom and the United States, and several have achieved considerable international recognition and sales well beyond a community of scholars or specialists; thus, outselling canonical texts appeared in the Malaysian Literature in English canon such as Preeta Samarasan’s Evening is the Whole Day. The novel narrates the story of a rich Indian immigrant family, the Rajasekharan and it shows how lies and secrets affect destroy its household. The novel as quoted in first chapter is set “springless summerless autumnless winterless land” (p. 1), that is, Malaysia, the story starts with the departure of the family’s servant girl, Chellam, after which a chain reaction of past secrets is unleashed and gradually exposed as the novel opens up. Although the story is chronologically set in the 1980s, the novel makes liberal temporal leaps in order to prescribe a sense of historical continuity. Samarasan deploys an omniscient narrator, her non-linear narrative structure (flashbacksdominate the narrative) enables the withholding of secrets so that their eventual revelations are exposed in a shocking and unexpected manner.The intended message is that the present can never supersede the past, because the former is premised on the latter. On a metafictional level, Samarasan’s narrative can be read as a metaphor for the intricate nature of Malaysia’s search for identity (Chalil, 2012). Evening is the Whole Day tries to give an honest reflection of Malaysian society. Samarasan’s novel bears many experimental qualities, chief of which is the way it parodies the English language. There is much wordplay and words spelt in curious ways throughout the text, which are intermixed with untranslated Tamil and Malay words. Such a strategy situates the novel neatly within a post-colonial context: here, a colonial legacy is paradoxically used to mock and construct, while native voices are reclaimed in the midst of this. The hybridization and localization of the English language further attest to the narrative’s post-colonial dimension. Speech patterns of Indian-Malaysians are vibrantly articulated alongside slangs and dialects used by the diverse ethnic groups in the country. In this way, Samarasan’s depiction of Malaysian culture and social order is convincing and resonant. “Tt is the rich imagery of the language that grabs the reader’s attention with experiences that most Malaysians will recognize: eating Sunshine bread, Marie biscuits and Milo (straight from the tin); raffia string around a suitcase; the skirt zipper that works its way to the hip; whining drunken man at the gate...Preeta’s rich, multi-layered approach soaks into the language, characters, situations and events, creating a novel that is uniquely Malaysian but not overly nostalgic” (Saras Manickam, 2008). Her characters flavour their conversations with Malaysian English peppered with Tamil expressions, easily understood within context. This seems to show the ability of the writer in employing a different range of words and structures in her novel. She employs English language as a medium to convey her thoughts and dreams in a localized manner so that the language appears to be drastically local. Her usage of the English language, despite her mastery, is not at the service of imperial readership rather it shows the loyally of the language to the natives. Bibliography Achebe, C. (1969). Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays 1965— 1987. London: Heinemann. Achebe, C. (1975). “English and the African writer”. In A. Mazrui, Theimage not availableimage not availableimage not availableGovernment Efforts and Tourism Activities as Community Capacity Building Approaches: A Case Study of Pulau Langkawi, Kedah Fadina Othman | Badaruddin Mohamed | Azizi Bahauddin Introduction Tourism has been seen as a particularly useful option for developing countries, and in rural and or peripheral regions all over the world. Substantial resources have been invested in tourism by communities, governments and aid and development agencies. In Europe, for example, the European Union claims to have spent more than €7 billion in 5 years on tourism projects. It specifically aimed at creating alternative employment and revenue options for rural regions facing challenges in sustaining traditional agricultural practices (Pastorelli, 2003). The Australian government spent AUS$31 million in 2 years on regional tourism development projects (AusIndustry, 2005), while in Africa, the World Bank alone has US$3 billion invested in tourism development projects (World Bank, 2006). In a typical tourist destination, the tourism system stresses the importance of the relationship between supply and demand (Gunn, 2002). In order to create a demand, it is essential that the provision of well-planned attraction be fully developed to match the ever increasing needs. However, several factors influence the tourism functioning system: amongst them are the competition of the destination, availability of natural resources and governmental policies. It provides governments with substantial tax revenues. Most new tourism jobs and business are created in developing countries, helping to equalize economic opportunities and keep rural residents from moving to overcrowded cities. The island of Langkawi has received special attention from the federal and state government through various incentives in order to welcome more tourists. Total of 106 tourism projects have been implemented which cost almost RMI billion. The physical development includes sectors of, accommodation, transportation, public facilities and infrastructures which will be enhanced through upgrading activities.