Language and Culture Conflict in the Conversation amongst Malaysian Children

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Language and culture conflict exists when the rise of the opposition in comprehension of language and culture between two community groups. Conflict in language and culture is experienced by Malaysian children in relation to contemporary lifestyle and also the living environment and culture. With this matter, each civilised society has and complies with rules involving their language and culture. Culture includes arts, belief, custom, institution, creation, language, technology and value. A requirement of language and culture is to understand society in order to behave according to what the community wants and follow the language and culture patterns which has been prescribed. With the understanding of the language and culture in a community, conflict could be avoided. Hence this paper will discuss the language and culture conflict experienced by children in Malaysia. Second, to describe the language and culture aspects that can be obtained from the conflict raised among childrens with the Malaysian community. The study sample comprises 30 pupils studying in primary school. Data were gathered using recording, interview, and questionnaire. Data will be analysed by using socio-pragmatic approach. The outcome of the research also indicated that aspects of context and cognition have also played an important role in Malay children’s communication. Children provide the information that is inherent in their cognition to the relevant context. The contexts inherent functioned to provide meanings to the utterances concerned.

Stream: Ethnicity, Difference, Identity

Paper: , Language and Culture Conflict in the Conversation amongst Malaysian Children

Zaitul Azma Zainon Hamzah is a lecturer in the Malay Language Department, Faculty of Modern languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia (UPM). She holds a Certificate of Education in Teaching Young Children, Bacelor of Education in Teaching Malay Language , Master Degree in Malay Studies (Semantic and Pragmatic) and her Doctoral Degree in Semantic and Pragmatic. Her area of interests are Semantic and Pragmatic, Sosiopragmatic, Semantic Cognitive, Teaching Malay Language, Translation and Qualitatif Research in the Malay Studies . Currently supervising Masters and Ph.D students in mastering the qualitative research in Malay Linguistic and the Teaching and Learning of Malay Language

Dr. Normaliza Abd Rahim is currently the coordinator for the Translation and Intepretation and Language Technology Lecturer at Universiti Putra Malaysia. Due to her keen interest in language technology in teaching and learning, and her wide experience in teaching the English language courses, she was appointed as the consultant for curriculum development for private universities and colleges in one of the states in Malaysia. As such, she provides assistance in developing activities to enhance the usage of English language by using the computer amongst the students in the university. She is also interested on special educational needs children where at present she is the consultant for one of the states in Malaysia. She involves voluntarily in giving advice to parents and teachers of the special needs.