Macau’s Languages in Society and Education: Planning in a Multilingual Ecology

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This book examines the role of English within education and society in the quickly changing city of Macau. Macau’s multilingual language ecology offers the unique opportunity to examine language planning and policy issues within a small speech community. The languages within the ecology include several Chinese varieties, such as Cantonese, Putonghua and Hokkien, European languages like Portuguese and English, and a number of Asian languages that include, among others, Burmese, Filipino languages, Japanese, Timorese, etc. As the smallest city in South China’s Pearl River Delta, Macau has sought to maintain cultural and linguistic independence from its larger neighbours, and independence has been built upon an historic commitment to multilingualism and cultural plurality. As economic development and globalisation offer new opportunities to a growing middle class, the sociolinguistics of a small society constrain and influence the language policies that the territory seeks to implement. Macau’s multilingual and pluralistic response to language needs within the territory echoes historical responses to similar challenges and suggests that small communities function sociolinguistically in ways that differ from larger communities.