The Use of Fillers by Malaysians in Intracultural and Intercultural Communication Abroad

Malaysian English carries a small set of discourse particles, among them lah, meh, lor, ah, kan and sia, which add little to the propositional content of an utterance but a great deal to its interpersonal texture. This qualitative study asks what becomes of those particles once their speakers leave Malaysia. Six Malaysian students in the United Kingdom took part in semi-structured interviews, and recorded conversations between a Malaysian participant and two non-Malaysian peers, one Emirati and one Welsh, were collected as naturally occurring talk. The interview transcripts were examined thematically, while the recordings were read through a discourse-pragmatic lens framed by Communication Accommodation Theory. Two particles, lah and sia, were observed directly in the recorded interaction; participants additionally reported using meh, lor, ah and kan. The central result is a gap between what the students believed they did and what they were recorded doing. In interview they described holding their particles back when speaking to non-Malaysians. In the recordings they did no such thing. Particles were retained with Malaysian and non-Malaysian interlocutors alike, and no instance of divergence was found. What the participants restrained was register rather than culture: lah was set aside for professional and academic settings, not for foreign listeners. In peer talk the particles worked as convergence devices, softening a response, carrying affect and shortening social distance. Filler use therefore indexes Malaysian identity in a habitual and largely unremarked way rather than a performed one, and the intracultural and intercultural distinction predicts far less about particle use than register does.

Malaysian English, discourse particles, Communication Accommodation Theory, cultural identity, intercultural communication

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