ABSTRACT
While there are extensive theories on how work in the twenty-first century has changed (for example, Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Gee, 2000), few studies have empirically explored how linguistic proficiency is engaged in the multilingual workplace. This is particularly true for the region investigated in this study, where most research on workplace literacies in Malaysia are solely based on employers’ perceptions (Koo, Pang, & Mansur, 2008; Pandian, Azman, & Haroon, 2010; Shah, 2008; Wye & Lim, 2009) and the dominant ideology of the role of an idealized form of Standard English as the basis of economic success in the Malaysian workplace (Nair-Venugopal, 2013) is rarely questioned.
