Keywords

1 Introduction

Extract 1 is an excerpt of an actual conversation taking place between three young Bruneian and ethnically Malay women—Amal (aged 21), Fatin (21) and Rina (22)—who were having lunch at a cafe located in a suburb of Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam’s capital city.Footnote 1 Specifically chosen as the opening to this chapter, the extract serves to illustrate the linguistic dynamism of social interactions that is prevalent among contemporary young Bruneians, in which alternations between Malay and English are the norm. The linguistic behaviour of moving from one language to another is referred to as code-switching, which we describe as language alternation in this study, and is common in multilingual communities. People code-switch for a variety of reasons, the most basic of which is for maintaining the flow of conversation. In other instances, code-switching may be a deliberate act meant to exclude people from an ongoing conversation or it may also be a strategy implemented to express feelings or ideas more clearly. It can also be interpreted as an expression of identity by the speaker (Baker 2000).

Extract 1 Conversation between three Bruneian Malay women
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What this chapter seeks to investigate is the predilection of young Bruneians to use more English than Malay, which is evident in the first extract as well as throughout the entire 35-minute conversation between the three participants. Shifting in language use from Malay to English among young Bruneians has been documented in recent research (see Salbrina 2020; Salbrina and Noor Hasharina 2021; Salbrina and Zayani 2021a). However, only one study mentions that this propensity is particularly conspicuous among Bruneian females (Salbrina and Zayani 2021b).Footnote 2 From a sociolinguistic standpoint, this is not at all surprising given the stockpile of evidence showing women as leaders of language change (see Eckert 1989; Holmes 1995; Labov 2001; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2003), with William Labov (2001: 501) making a strong assertion that ‘[a]ny theory of the causes of change must deal with the general finding that in the good majority of linguistic changes, women are a full generation ahead of men’. Extending this argument to the situation in Brunei, it could be adduced that what has been reported in recently conducted linguistic studies is evidence of a shift in language use and preference in favour of English.

What has not been discussed in the previous studies, however, are the motivations or the reasons behind Bruneians’ language preference and the impact, if any, of this reported shift in language use on young Bruneians’ perception of identity. Indeed, the second author’s investigation of teenage Bruneians and those in their mid-twenties reveals that a majority (194 or 65.8%) regard English as part of the Bruneian identity (Salbrina 2023). The study, which investigates 295 young Bruneians’ language use in a variety of settings and explores their language beliefs and ideologies, shows that English is not only their most proficient language but is the language they consider to be most important, surpassing Malay by a considerable margin. Over 90% of those surveyed claimed that using English comes naturally to them, and almost all (290 or 98.3%) are in agreement with the statement ‘Young Bruneians must know English’. That English is seen as a component of the Bruneian identity is an unusual development according to the second author (ibid.), given that in the vast literature discussing the traditional Bruneian identity English is hardly ever mentioned as relevant to their identity (Ooi 2016; Muhammad Hadi 2017a, 2017b, 2018).

Breda O’Hara-Davies (2017), however, acknowledges the increasing influence of English as a potent identity marker for modern Bruneians and has carried out in-depth research on this very topic. Her findings, among others, reveal that young Bruneians ‘have created and activated their own voices in English, voices on and in the world that simultaneously construct Bruneianness in their locality’, in which the English language is very much an integral component of their linguistic repertoires (ibid.: 240–241). Noor Azam Haji-Othman and James McLellan (2000) note that whenever Bruneians use English, they employ a variety of strategies to signal their local identity. This is illustrated in their analysis of complaint letters written to the local newspaper, the Borneo Bulletin. Their investigation reveals that despite writing in English, the contributors incorporated elements of Malayness, such as Malay discoursal patterns, in order to reflect their Bruneian identity. Buffering, an act of politeness, as opposed to being direct with the complaints, is one of the ways in which this was achieved. Taking our cue from this, the present study aims to explore further the concept of identity and its association with language use in Brunei. While Noor Azam and McLellan looked at evidence in the form of writing, our investigation entails analysing audio-recorded mealtime conversations between a group of young women to see how social identities are constructed and negotiated in their verbal interactions. Women were chosen because, as mentioned above, they appear to be at the forefront of using English in Brunei, and as this is highly prevalent among the younger generation (the participants of this study are born in or after 1997), that is, those who constitute the so-called Generation Z (Seemiller and Grace 2019). Also known by a variety of other monikers—Gen Zers, iGeneration, net-gen, digital natives and zoomers (Turner 2015; Dimock 2019; Strzemein 2019; Sung 2019; Willoughby 2020)—Generation Z Bruneians (henceforth zoomers) not only profess to using only, or at the very least mostly, English in their peer-to-peer communication, but have also claimed to have limited linguistic ability in Malay (Salbrina 2023). This generation is the product of the revolution in information technology, has ‘never experienced life before the Internet’ (Turner 2015: 104), and many do not remember a time of pre-social media (Williams 2015). They have seamlessly integrated technology into their lives, so much so that Generation Z youth are reported to be exposed to online media more than any other activity other than sleeping (Rideout et al. 2010: 1). That English is the most used language on the web, surpassing Chinese by close to a million (Internet World Stats 2021), and that zoomers spend most of their waking moments online, could explain why the Generation Z Bruneians in the second author’s research claim English to be their most proficient language (Salbrina 2023). On the linguistic and communication front, Generation Z have been described as ‘the “cut and paste” generation’ due to their propensity to include in their interactions ‘phrases they’ve picked up from movies, YouTube clips and other media they consume’ (McCrindle 2012). While it has long been established that young people are one of the main drivers of language variation and change (Chambers 1995), the innovations associated with zoomers have been said to be occurring at such a rapid pace that it has been a challenge for the other generations to keep up with them (Ledbetter 2018).

Drawing on insights from language and social interaction (LSI) research and utilising a sociolinguistic- and discourse-oriented approach, this study investigates the link between identity and language use in Brunei among zoomers through an analysis of the structure of conversations and the social context of Malay–English interactions. Before that, we briefly discuss what constitutes LSI research followed by an overview of the fundamental concepts underpinning the present study.

2 Language and Social Interaction (LSI)

LSI research is an umbrella term for a distinct and developing field of study that examines the intricacies of interactions as a means of understanding everyday human communication (LeBaron et al. 2003). LSI scholars come from diverse academic backgrounds, most notably from the field of communication, but research in LSI has always been known for its interdisciplinary nature including linguistics, sociology, psychology, philosophy and anthropology (Tracy and Haspel 2004). From the linguistic strand, LSI investigations have covered a wide area, ranging from language pragmatics to conversation and discourse analyses, and sociolinguistics to the ethnography of speaking. The common theme of this linguistic-oriented LSI research are analyses based on naturally occurring language samples. Through natural language use, a multitude of sociocultural cues can be discerned, including but not limited to who the interlocutors are, what they do and how they live their lives. To put it differently, the choice of language and how the language is used ‘signal important information about aspects of speakers’ social identity’ (Eckert 1997: 64), which ‘refers to a person’s sense of belonging to a group and the attitudes and emotions that accompany this sense of belonging’ (Vedder and Virta 2005: 319). Penelope Eckert (2008) posits that sociolinguistic variables, be they phonetic, lexical or syntactical, index a range of possible sociolinguistic meanings, and that when a speaker repeatedly indexes the same social meaning to a particular variable, the variable then becomes a permanent marker of the social attribute. An example of this can be seen in the discourse particle ‘lah’, which, in the context of Singapore, is linguistically associated with Singlish and the use of which signals that the speakers belong to the ‘social type’ of ‘being Singaporean’ (Gupta 1992; Wee 2004).

When applied to a multilingual setting, the contention is that a bi- or multilingual speaker’s language preference signals their social identity, is based on the society’s structure (Milroy and Li 1995), and that alternating from one code to another is an instance of ‘symbolic action’ (Myers-Scotton 1993), which the speaker utilises to make meaning in interaction. An alternative approach that has been proposed is to consider code-switching as sequential positioning and that meaning-making is due to ‘the contrast of the code-switch itself’ (Cashman 2008: 276). The seminal work of John J. Gumperz (1982) is often quoted in studies on code-switching, notably his usage of the ‘we code’ and ‘they code’ terms, which he inextricably links to the concept of identity:

The tendency is for the ethnically specific, minority language to be regarded as the ‘we code’ and become associated with in-group and informal activities, and for the majority language to serve as the ‘they code’ associated with the more formal, stiffer and less personal out-group relations. (ibid.: 66)

This view treats the ‘we code’ as the informal and familiar code that references closeness while the ‘they code’ is linked to formality, unfamiliarity and social distance. However, this perspective has been contested by other scholars who argue against simplifying the association between language choice and the social values attached to particular languages (see Auer 1984; Sebba and Wootton 1998; Li 1998). Mark Sebba and Tony Wootton (1998), for instance, show that in a group of London-based Caribbean youth, both London English and Caribbean Creole have the potential to function as a ‘we code’ and that it all depends on the situation or the context of interaction. In other words, the link between a language and an identity is not a straightforward one-to-one relationship and when it comes to analysing language alternation, researchers should attempt to do so from the speakers’ points of view, that is through the emic or participant-centred approach. As Joseph Gafaranga (2005: 292) succinctly puts it, the choice of the language used in a bi- or multilingual conversation is ‘an activity that bilingual speakers purposedly accomplish while talking’ (emphasis in original).

The current prevailing view in the field of interactional sociolinguistics regarding identity and language is that language is not a direct reflection of social identities, but rather it is used to establish them, and that ‘identities arise in interaction among people’ (Jørgensen 2010: 4). Multilingual speakers thus utilise their readily available multilingual resources and ‘go between and beyond different languages in a dynamic and flexible way’ (Zhu 2015: 109) to not only showcase their multiple identities but also to develop new sociocultural ones. Five principles are upheld in the study of identity in sociolinguistics, the common points of which are that identity is not static but malleable, that it undergoes construction and reconstruction throughout the interactional processes, and that a variety of social identities can materialise in a stretch of discourse (Bucholtz and Hall 2010: 19). In other words, rather than locating one’s social identity in the use of a particular linguistic feature, language and identity are described to be ‘co-constitutive’, with identity being the product of ‘language use in combination with other social practices’ (Drummond and Schleef 2016: 53–54). Thus, when an individual code-switches, what they are doing is constructing and negotiating their identity, drawing on one or more social groups of which they are a member. In the analysis of interactions vis-à-vis identity, rather than viewing the codes (or languages) as separate entities, ‘it is far more productive analytically to focus on the very variable ways in which linguistic features with identifiable social and cultural associations get clustered together whenever people communicate’ (Blommaert and Rampton 2011: 4, emphasis in original). The postulation is that stereotypical social identities are associated with a set of emblematic features, be they linguistic or corporeal, and that in interactions, speakers orientate their discourses to signal their positions as either affiliating with or distancing from relevant identities. These positioning processes are dynamic and ‘involve conflict and contestation’, and the ‘emblematic features’, as posited by Jan Blommaert and Piia Varis (2013: 146–147), ‘rarely occur as a random or flexible complex’ but encompass distinct structures. What has been described thus far is an approach dubbed ‘linguistic ethnography’ where language is regarded as ‘communicative action functioning in social contexts in ongoing routines of people’s daily lives’ (Blackledge and Creese 2016: 277), which strives to explain why people do, say and think as they do while taking into account the impact of such acts on the social processes and vice versa.

Tied to this approach is the concept of membership categorisation device (MCD) that was formulated by Harvey Sacks (1972) and which theorises the ways members ‘package commonsense knowledge about category members and their actions’ (Stokoe 2012: 300). In short, ‘categories’ are how members name people while ‘predicates’ imply the categories even without explicitly stating them. Social relations between interactants are therefore expressed and reaffirmed through and by their talk, and through certain categories aspects of identity are invoked. One way of invoking a category is to explicitly name it, but another is to imply the category through mentioning its predicate, an activity that is definitive to members of that particular category (Vallis 2001). So, for example, when person A sees a hijab-wearing person, B, reading the Qur’an in a mosque, it would be justifiable for A to assume that B is a Muslim woman given that the activity the person is involved in is bound to the categories ‘Muslim’ (reading the Qur’an and being in a mosque) and ‘woman’ (wearing a hijab). ‘Students’ is another example of a broad category, which is related to the category-bound activities such as completing assignments and sitting for examinations. In the context of bi- and multilingual interactions, language preference is also claimed to function as an MCD (Gafaranga 2001; Torras and Gafaranga 2002) as ‘participants constantly categorise themselves and one another along language preference lines’ in their bid to attain ‘relevant-category bound activities’ (Gafaranga 2005: 294). To put it differently, in choosing the language that they are using, the speakers are actually claiming membership to the categories associated with or defined by the language concerned. Having discussed the concepts that we utilise in analysing our data, the next section provides background information on the subjects of the study and the methodology.

3 The Speakers and the Data

As briefly mentioned in the introduction, this study is based on an analysis of face-to-face social interaction between three young Bruneian women: Amal, Fatin and Rina. Born between 1999 and 2001, the three participants are of Malay ethnicity with Brunei Malay as their first language, that is, the first language they picked up as children. All three, who are close friends, are fluent in English. They are currently in their second year of undergraduate study in English-medium programmes at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD).

The recording took place at a relatively quiet cafe where the participants could interact comfortably while enjoying their meals. Prior to the recording of their interactions, they were informed that the recording would solely be for research purposes and that their information and any identifying markers would be kept confidential. Once their consent was obtained, the recording began using a Zoom H4n Handy Recorder. The recording’s duration was 50 minutes but the transcribed conversation lasted 35 minutes of which the transcription of their interactions started at the 28-second mark. While transcribing and analysing the audio recordings, we paid close attention to instances of talk-in-interaction in which the interlocutors used language alternation to express certain aspects of their identities. The first author carried out the initial transcription, which was then checked by the second author for accuracy. In cases of unintelligibility and uncertainty with particular terms or phrases, assistance was sought from a zoomer who had no associations with the subjects of this study. We then verified our zoomer consultant’s input by reaching out to Amal for her feedback and confirmation.

Given that the three women are friends, the interaction can be characterised as informal, which is also confirmed by the topics they discussed. The participants talked about a range of topics, beginning with an issue Amal had in one of her university assignments. The topic quickly shifted when Rina pointed out a familiar person in the cafe who she believed to be her former English teacher. From that point on, the conversation took on a more playful tone that is characteristic of talk-as-play (Holmes and Hay 1997), with laughter in most of the conversation. We begin the analysis by looking at the transcript data as a whole in order to present a general overview of the language use of young Bruneian women and how the interactions reveal certain aspects of their identity. We then delve into their language alternation practices to assess the interactants’ demonstrations of localised understanding of self and other through situated talk.

4 General Observations and Salient Features

A general overview of the transcript reveals that the social interaction between Amal, Fatin and Rina involved three languages: English, Malay and Arabic. Out of the 5,410 words transcribed, 4,060 (75.0%) were identified as English and only 1,365 (25.2%) Malay. The remaining were identified as either Arabic (such as ‘Astaghfirullah’, the Islamic supplication for redemption, and ‘Subhanallah’, a general expression of praise), fillers such as ‘hmm’ and ‘wah’, or elements which we have labelled hybridised. The latter pertain to a word that has both Malay and English elements, some examples of which are ‘tedelete’, ‘testuck’, ‘teclick’ and ‘berlicence’ which comprise the Malay prefixes te(r)- and ber- and the English words ‘delete’, ‘stuck’, ‘click’ and ‘licence’.

The fluidity of the language alternation in the conversation signals the hybridity of the young Bruneians’ cultural and social identities. The prevalence of English in the 35-minute interaction is just one of many pieces of evidence of how dominant English is now in the linguistic repertoires of Bruneians, notably young adults, and demonstrates that English has acquired the function of indexing the modern Bruneian identity, specifically that of the young and educated (see Salbrina 2020; Salbrina and Noor Hasharina 2021; Salbrina and Zayani 2021b). English is associated with the identity ‘educated’ because it is acquired through the education system and a person’s proficiency in the language more often than not reflects their level of education (Salbrina and Jainatul 2020; Salbrina and Zayani 2021a). While Amal and her friends’ Malay identities are indexed through their use of Malay, their identity as Bruneians is reinforced through the use of words and particles which are known to be markers of membership of the Brunei speech community. These include words such as ‘palui’ (literally ‘stupid’) and ‘tuli’ (literally ‘deaf’) and the widely acknowledged Brunei Malay particle ‘bah’ (Conrad et al. 1990). The occasional insertions of Arabic phrases, on the other hand, are taken to signal their identity as Muslims.

Various instances of ‘Englishisation’, which Lian-Hee Wee (2009: 47), in his analysis of Singapore English, defines as ‘a bi-directional process where English is indigenized and where non-English elements are Anglicized’, point to an emerging localised English identity in Brunei. In the current data, Englishisation occurs at the morphological level, such as in ‘tedelete’ and ‘teclick’ mentioned earlier, as well as at syntactical and phonetic levels. Examples of Englishisation in which Malay syntactic structure is shaping the English of the Bruneians are shown in Extract 2.

Extract 2 Grammatical Englishisation
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In pronunciation, one instance of Englishisation is exemplified when Amal uttered a Malay phrase ‘kurang ajar’ (very rude) stylised with an English-like pronunciation in which the second component, ajar, was realised as [hædʒəɹ] (Extract 3, line 4). The pronunciation is identified as having been Englishised because of the English-like quality of the final [ɹ] as well as the presence of initial [h], which is not a phonological characteristic of Brunei Malay (Clynes 2001; Deterding and Ishamina 2016). This English-styled pronunciation of the Malay word ‘ajar’ can be explained as an attempt by Amal to downplay the harshness associated with the phrase, traditionally used as derogatory, and consequently to signal to the intended recipient (Rina) that it was not to be taken seriously, and that she (Amal) was being humorous. The second occurrence of ‘kurang ajar’ (Extract 4, line 15), however, was not realised in the same manner, but would still be construed as a joke due to the mock taunting tone followed by synchronised laughter by all three interactants.

Extract 3 Englishisation of pronunciation
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Extract 4 In-group humour
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The playfulness of their interactions is undoubtedly the most striking feature to come out of the analysis. This is evidenced throughout the entire conversation, from their shared laughter to the overlapping speech, none of which hindered the flow of their communication and all of which were indicative of group solidarity (Coates 2007). Also to be taken as an indicator of their status as more-than-casual friendship is the spontaneous conversational humour that relies on shared in-group knowledge (for example, from Extract 4, ‘embarazzing’ in lines 1–3, ‘Subway shirt’ in lines 6 and 9); the jibes and the trading of mock insults (for example, Rina calling Amal ‘arrogant’ in Extract 4, line 12 and Amal returning the insult by calling out Rina’s ‘rudeness’ in Extract 4, line 15) and the entertaining gossip (Morreall 1994), which is to be differentiated from moral gossip that is associated with norm enforcement and maintenance (Acuña Ferreira 2014). Entertaining gossip is when interlocutors criticise the affairs and personality traits of a third party in a joking manner and this is seen in their discussion of a common friend named Mirah (see Extract 5) whom the interactants repeatedly referred to as someone who is nonsensical. Another contextual cue of their close friendship can also be seen in the interactants mirroring of each other’s verbal responses through repetition of elements from preceding discourse, some of which are shown in bold in Extract 6.

Extract 5 Entertaining gossip on Mirah
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Extract 6 Repetitions and mirroring of preceding discourse
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There are also frequent allusions to various aspects of contemporary youth culture in the conversation, from the topics to their choice of vocabulary, and together these markers point to their shared identity as Generation Z youth. For instance, there are three separate instances in which they mentioned the word ‘thrift’ and talked about ‘thrifting’, an activity that is now synonymous with being trendy and is characteristic of the zoomers (Huber 2020; Hoffower 2021). To some of the older generations, however, thrifting, or second-hand apparel shopping, is stigmatised, mainly for hygienic reasons but also for its association with people from a low-income background (Nair 2019; Buckner 2019).

References to social media applications, such as to Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, are characteristic of their identity as youth of the zoomer generation, as are their references to Netflix (for example, mentions of television programmes such as Nymphomaniac in Extract 5, line 5), a media streaming platform that has been touted as the replacement of traditional television. The references to Instagram and Snapchat are substantial as these two social media platforms have been highlighted in a recent Pew Research Center study as having the most users from the zoomer generation (Auxier and Anderson 2021).

The three women’s identity as social media users from Generation Z is also manifested by their persistent use of slang terms and phrases, some of which are references to popular contemporary internet memes. Memes, coined originally by Richard Dawkins (1976) as an idea, behaviour or style transmitted from one person to another via imitation, is defined in modern-day English as an internet terminology of ‘an image, a video, a piece of text, etc. that is passed very quickly from one internet user to another, often with slight changes that make it humorous’ (Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries n.d., definition 2). In the data, there are several instances of meme-derived slang terms and phrases (see Extract 7), many of which proved problematic during the process of transcribing as the terms were not familiar to the researchers. Initially transcribed as ‘unintelligible’, the slang terms and phrases were eventually identified after we consulted a zoomer. What is intriguing is that the zoomer whose help we sought had not participated in the conversation between Amal, Rina and Fatin; yet, upon listening to the audio recording, she was instantly able to identify the terms and phrases we had earlier deemed unintelligible. This appears to show that the zoomers have a shared ‘we code’ which may not be readily understood by ‘outsiders’, that is, those not from their generation.

Extract 7 Slang terms and phrases
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The most puzzling of the slang terms was ‘embarrazzing’ (Extract 7, lines 1–3), which was initially transcribed as ‘amber razi’. The word was in actual fact ‘embarrazzing’, as pointed out by our zoomer consultant and confirmed by Amal in a post-recording interview. ‘Embarrazzing’ is a play on the word ‘embarrassing’ that has been made popular through a YouTube clip that went viral at the end of 2020 (African Meme Center 2020). Another term which caused some confusion was ‘deadass’, which at the outset appeared vulgar but turned out to simply mean ‘seriously’. ‘Cray-cray’, which means ‘crazy’, and the phrase ‘I’m alive but I’m dead’ also did not make much sense at the beginning. Like ‘embarazzing’, these two started out as memes, were popularised through the American mass media and were then picked up by Generation Z as markers of their generational speech and youth identity. In addition to corroborating Mark McCrindle’s (2012) claim that the zoomers are the ‘cut and paste’ generation, their utilisation of slang is an act of solidarity that affiliates them to their generation, and the meme-derived slang terms and phrases are features of their in-group language. Their use is a reflection of their awareness of the latest cultural, mainly American, catchphrases.

While this section has provided a general analysis through the realisation of identities according to social categorisation, we turn to a conversation analytic approach and examine language alternation as signalling and contextualisation cues (Auer 1984). As explained in Section 14.2, we use conversational analysis to identify social interaction and identity formation, by viewing codes or languages simultaneously operating at multiple levels.

5 Language Alternation: Malay to English

LSI research shows us that regularly ‘displaying prior shared experiences’, knowledge and a ‘degree of familiarity’ are part of how friends and peers perform relationship maintenance (Pomerantz and Mandelbaum 2003: 165). As explained by Anita Pomerantz and Jenny Mandelbaum (ibid.: 162), it is through news updates that friends enact involvement in each other’s lives, maintain relationships and achieve closeness. A general observation of the three women’s conversation shows that all three were maintaining relational ties by updating each other on the latest news (see Extracts 8 and 9). In the first segment of Extract 8, for instance, Amal was updating her two friends about a problematic assignment which she had, on another occasion, told them about.

Extract 8 Language switch as topic of conversation changes
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Extract 9 Language switch to show attachment and detachment
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According to Peter Auer (1988), topic change is a type of discourse-related switching. This occurs when interactants switch between languages depending on the setting, message and, to some extent, the topic of conversation (Genesee 2000, 2002). As the participants updated each other on their news (Extracts 8 and 9), their topics of conversation changed as well as their language preference. In Extract 8, Amal’s choice of switching from Malay to English may be due to the words in bold (‘modules’ [line 1], ‘coursework’ [line 1], ‘assignment’ [lines 2 and 10], ‘web design’ [lines 3 and 8], ‘website’ [lines 9 and 10], ‘log in’ [line 15], ‘deadline’ and ‘links’ [line 17]), which are commonly used among students when talking about their university experience and education. Hence, these words not only prompted her to speak in English more than in Malay but also manifested her educational background. When she was praising herself on her academic achievement (line 10), she then downplayed it by referring to herself using a third person pronoun ‘she’ (line 12). That her self-compliment was meant as a joke and not to be taken seriously was signalled by the laughter accompanying her utterance. Fatin understood Amal’s intention and responded by imitating Amal’s use of ‘she’ (line 13) to praise Amal indirectly. Accommodating to Fatin and as a cue of their close friendship, Amal echoed ‘she was out there’ (line 14), referring to herself in the third person.

When the conversation turned to the topic of social media followers (Extract 8, lines 19–25), which is popular among Generation Z (Turner 2015), the women switched their language to English exclusively and retained the use of English throughout the topic of conversation. In line 23, Amal is teasing Rina about her supposed popularity on Instagram but she distanced herself from Rina by referring to her friend indirectly as ‘she’s’ instead of ‘you’re’. In doing this, Amal was both complimenting and mocking Rina, the latter of which was achieved through jest. That Amal was able to address Rina as ‘she’ even when they were talking directly to each other is another key indication of their close friendship, particularly since the flow of the conversation was not interrupted at all by Amal’s teasing remark.

In Extract 9, the trialogue turned its focus to Rina’s mother. In this exchange, Rina was entertaining Amal and Fatin with her mother’s witty yet hilarious act of sulking. Although Rina was imitating her mother’s words in Malay to tell her story to Amal and Fatin, Rina switched to English to express her feelings towards her mother and her view of the event (‘cons of being the only child’ in line 3; ‘I was like, just go without me’ in lines 5 and 6; ‘just go with my dad or something’ in line 8). Her switches from Malay to English to express her own feelings may be interpreted as the right thing to do. Since it is clear that Rina and her mother speak Malay to each other, she used English to simultaneously detach herself from her mother’s disappointment and to connect with Amal and Fatin.

6 Language Alternation: English to Malay

Languages learned later in life are associated with instructed contexts of learning and formal relationships between speakers. Due to the formality of language learning, only a fraction of human emotions can be experienced, perceived and expressed (Ivaz et al. 2015). In contrast, mother tongues are acquired during childhood, in emotionally rich familiar contexts, where familiarity and intimacy provide security and understanding. All of these strengthen the attachment and emotional reactivity of the mother tongue or L1 (Pavlenko 2006; Dewaele 2010). In the context of language alternation, switches to L1 are observed when a speaker intends to display strong emotional or heartfelt responses.

Referring to Extract 9 when Rina was talking about her mother, her conversation initially started out in English (line 1) but it immediately switched to Malay, particularly when Rina was recapping her mother’s utterances the night before. The use of Malay in her reported speech can be taken as the language Rina prefers whenever interacting with her mother. This also shows language preference as a categorisation device, specifically, the categorisation of parents as predominantly Malay speaking. That Rina used Malay instead of English in the familial setting is also indicative of Rina’s emotional attachment to her L1 (that is, Malay), in addition to signalling her close relationship with her mother. The following extract is another example of Malay serving as the language of primary emotional attachment for young Bruneian speakers (Extract 10).

Extract 10 Malay as the language of attachment
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The above conversation involved emotions such as fear, exasperation and aversion as Rina and Amal were talking about their mutual friend Amir, who had caused them to experience driving through a forest in the middle of the night. Rina’s switch to Malay when she described her fearful experience (lines 4–6) again signifies that Malay is the language of emotional attachment. Amal’s use of ‘buduh’ to describe Amir (line 10) further strengthens this claim, while her reference to him as ‘urang atu’ (that person) instead of simply using the pronoun ‘he’ not only indexes her reaction to Amir’s rashness, but also dissociates her as Amir’s friend and from Amir’s actions.

Extract 11 is a segment of the interaction that had taken place at the start of the recording. The repetitions made by the speakers, which we earlier pointed out were contextual cues of their strong rapport, are also indications of them accommodating to each other’s way of speaking and language choice. Their language accommodation is apparent when the ‘first speaker reveals their language preference through language choice and [the] next speaker follows suit and adopts the proposed language’ (Gafaranga 2001: 1919). We can see from the extract that because the interactions in lines 1–4 were in English, Rina maintained her convergence to Amal’s and Fatin’s use of English as she asked her question ‘why do you keep on cleaning after me?’ (line 5). Fatin displayed divergence as she responded to Rina’s question by switching to Malay (‘basah ah’ in line 6) which was repeated by Amal (‘basah ah’ in line 7). When her question was answered by Fatin and Amal in Malay (lines 6 and 7), Rina also code-switched to Malay (‘thank you, banar’ in line 8).

Extract 11 Repetition as language accommodation
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7 Conclusion

In this chapter, we analysed the language interaction practices of female Brunei Malay zoomers. The participants in this study know each other very well, share common languages and have a common social background. The results show that whether the alternation was discourse- or participant-related (Auer 1988), the interactional approach demonstrates how identity is negotiated and constructed through switching between languages and that multilingual Bruneian zoomers creatively and strategically draw on one or more social situations or memberships. They perform and maintain identity at multiple levels: as Bruneians, as Malays, as English-educated multilinguals and, to a lesser extent (insofar as the conversation was analysed), as Muslims. This study also reinforces Joseph Gafaranga’s (2001: 1918) and Maria-Carme Torras and Joseph Gafaranga’s (2002) views that ‘language preference is a categorisation device’ in which participants in interaction identify themselves and others in terms of language preference. Language alternation is a social activity which reveals the speakers’ variety of identities such as friends, daughter, university students and Generation Z youth. The alternation in both content and language is a reflection of the Bruneian zoomers living in a ‘globalised’ environment drawing on English, Malay and the internet (in contrast to the older generations such as the researchers) to express themselves and embody the variety of their life experiences. For these young Bruneians, identity is multifaceted and constantly negotiated in content, language and situation.

The second author’s contention that modern-day young Bruneians are highly competent English-leaning multilinguals in which language alternation is the norm rather than an exception is also supported by the data from this study (Salbrina 2023). Collectively, the dominance of English in the interaction is evident in that English has acquired the function of indexing the modern identities of young and educated Bruneians (Salbrina and Jainatul 2020; Salbrina and Zayani 2021a). The English used by them, however, exhibits features that are localised, which are indicative of an emerging Bruneian variety of English. Perhaps this is what the young Bruneians mean when they claim that English is now part of the Bruneian identity (Salbrina 2023). They are not referring to the language of the West, but rather to a localised variety that has evolved to create its own niche as a widely used code of communication in Brunei. In other words, there is a sense of ownership of English among young Bruneians.

While ethnic Malay identity is indexed through the use of Malay words, the specifically Bruneian identities are showcased in the words and particles known to be markers of membership to the Brunei speech community. The occasional insertions of Arabic phrases, on the other hand, are taken to linguistically signal the interlocutors’ Muslim identities. Individually, this study supports that the subjects’ language preference is a cue of their attitudes and behaviour (Ladegaard 2000), emotions (Pavlenko 2006; Lindquist et al. 2015), and attachment to member(s) of a group in the course of interaction (Hazan and Shaver 1994; Cassidy 2008). Using the LSI approach, it is possible to flesh out the particularities of Bruneian society and culture, through the interplay between languages, discourses, interactions and social contexts, and demonstrate how these elements are utilised by the speakers to construct and alternate between multiple identities.