Standards and Linguistic Realities of English in the Malaysian Workplace

Abstract

When researching into the word ‘standards’, I typed in the search term ‘standards’ in the computer at the university library and when the ‘enter’ key was pressed, I obtained the following impressive list:

• Accounting — standards

• Air-pollution — standards

• Health personnel — standards

• Auditing — standards

• Blood banks — standards

• Library bindings — standards

• Building materials — standards

• Data processing — standards

• Material publications — standards

• Computer industry — standards.

It is obvious from the above listing that standards are an essential component and permeate every aspect of our lives. They provide a point of reference so that one journeys through life with a clear and purposeful sense of direction. Without standards in all these fields, there would be no benchmark to measure against — no yardstick to compare levels of achievement or required sets of criteria. Unfortunately in the long list of items, there was no listing for the category ‘standards and language’.

This chapter is based on publication in Symposium on ‘Standards, Codification and World Englishes.’ Edited by Saran Kaur Gill and Anne Pakir. In World Englishes, Vol. 18: 2, 215–31, July 1999. The author would like to thank Blackwell Publishing Ltd. for allowing her to reprint part of the article in this chapter.