Language Prestige: A Case Study

2.2 Language and Prestige

In line with the seventh code-switching reason mentioned in the previous point, code switching could also be used to show prestige. In sociolinguistics, “prestige” is defined as “the level of respect normally accorded to a specific language or dialect in a speech community, relative to other languages or dialects” (Project Gutenberg). In general, a language or dialect associated with upper class member of society is considered to have positive prestige, while the language/dialect spoken by lower class member of society is considered to have negative prestige.

This practice is prevalent in communities where more than one language/dialect is spoken. For example, in Malaysia (a country with two official languages, Bahasa Melayu and English), English is deemed to have positive prestige because it is associated with high social class, where Melayu Pasar is deemed to have negative prestige because it is spoken in marketplace. Thus, many sellers in Malaysian market chose to speak English when communicating with their customers (Lau, 2013).

Language prestige is also a widely-discussed topic in sociolinguistics, mainly because it is also related to a lot of language phenomenon, such as language maintenance and language shift. Language shift is defined as “as "the change from

According to Carroll (n.d), human-computer interaction (HCI) is a branch of study that emerged in 1980s, embracing cognitive science and human factors engineering. This study was made necessary since 1970s, when computers were no longer the domain of scientists. Personal computing movement, which were fueled by microcomputers such as Altair 8800s, has enabled everyone to use computer. As such, there were a need to research how human could interact with computer efficiently, and the gap was filled by