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Andrew Moody is Professor of English at the University of Macau where he teaches courses in sociolinguistics and world Englishes. Before beginning his PhD at the University of Kansas (USA) he taught English for two years at the Beijing Second Foreign Language Institute (China). His PhD dissertation in English (1997) was a corpus examination of English writing styles found in e-mail messages from Hong Kong students, a dissertation one of the earliest examinations of Hong Kong English. After completing the PhD and while working in Japan he began investigating the role of English in Japanese popular culture generally, and especially in J-Pop music. Since then he has developed research and teaching specialisations in ‘world Englishes’, ‘English in Macau’ and ‘English in popular culture’. He is the author of Macau’s Languages in Society and Education: Planning in a Multilingual Ecology (2021) published by Springer Press and the editor of The Oxford Handbook of South East Asian Englishes (2023). Since January 2018 he has served as the editor of the journal English Today (Cambridge University Press) and more recently as an Associate Editor of The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes (Wiley).
English in Macau and the relationship to Southeast Asia
This paper will survey and offer novel insights about the role of English in Southeast Asia through a more detailed examination of the role of English in Macau. Macau and Hong Kong both have strong ties to the region, although they are not geographically in Southeast Asia. Historical ties highlight shared colonial histories and trad across the region. This is especially visible in similarities between Macau and Manila, two colonial cities of Iberian (i.e., Spanish and Portuguese) colonialism. In addition to the Philippines, the historical experience of English in Macau reverberates throughout most of the other countries of Southeast Aisa. Special attention will be given to three recent trends and developments related to English. First, designation of a standard variety of English, especially, American, British or Hong Kong Englishes, has been slowly shifting over time within the territory, and this is closely related to Macau’s nearly 30-year status as a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. Second, demographic, commercial and educational changes have strengthened the claim that English is a de facto official language of the territory (although there is not legal status for the language). Finally, the continued use of English (and, indeed, other languages) within Macau appears to rely increasingly upon national support of local initiatives. While much of the experience of English in Macau is unique to the territory, the paper will draw many connections and similarities to experiences throughout Southeast Asia.
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