‘Know know married’: playfulness of Manglish in social media platforms

• Published in: Asian Englishes
• Main Author: Serip Mohamad N.H.; Shafie H.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2024
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85161595889&doi=10.1080%2f13488678.2023.2216862&partnerID=40&md5=594bab71e64d8bff6bb4bdb5c2e7e476

Manglish is often associated with negative prestige, such as broken English that arises out of inappropriate direct translations from the Malay language into English. In recent years, however, Manglish has evolved into a range of different functions, particularly in computer-mediated interactions among users of Manglish, and this innovative usage is referred to as ‘modern’ Manglish. The use of modern Manglish expressions shows certain degrees of ‘playfulness’ as a common feature. In this article, we adopt a World Englishes perspective and unpack modern Manglish, comparing it with a number of other named colloquial varieties, particularly Chinglish, Singlish, and Taglish, and we argue that certain usages of Manglish may serve a positive function, so they are worth researching and analysing. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.