The study of language spread has received attention from sociolinguists since the 1970s (Cooper 1976, Fishman 1977, Lieberson 1981, Cooper 1982, Ferguson 1982, Wardhaugh 1987, McConnell 1991, Garcia 2002, among others). With the recent trend of globalization, this sub-field of sociolinguistics has re-emerged especially with regard to the spread of English in the world. However, neither theoretical nor empirical studies on this language phenomenon are adequate. In the context of Malaysia, most of the studies on language spread have focused on Malay. However, Mandarin has spread its use in various domains in the Chinese community in Malaysia, but this has not been addressed in the current literature. In this book, the author describes the spread of Mandarin in Malaysia, and proposes a new theory of language spread based on the empirical data obtained in Malaysia.
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