ASEAN's motto, ‘One Vision, One Identity, One Community', reflects the ASEAN aspiration for the creation of a supra-national common identity for the people in the region. This is a challenge as ASEAN countries are at different stages of nation-building and the region is home to a variety of religious traditions, languages, and political and legal cultures. A common bond is English, accepted as the common working language of ASEAN and the lingua franca of the region, and generally considered to be a language of pragmatism. This paper examines interactions among ASEAN speakers to ascertain whether ASEAN English possesses its own characteristic features that aid mutual understanding among members who come from different ASEAN societies. As there is a push towards using a form that is intelligible across all member states given increasing intra-ASEAN mobility in the workplace, this paper also looks at the implications for applied linguistics in South East Asia in terms of English language education, the changing status of English and the need to focus on mutual comprehensibility and cultural identity rather than a traditional norm-bound approach.

Azirah H., Kaur, J. and Tan, S.K. (2016). Identity regionalism and English as an ASEAN lingua franca. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 5(2): 229–247.

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