Introduction

Brunei is about 5765 km2 in size, and it has a population of over 450,000. It is located about 5° north of the equator, on the north coast of the island of Borneo. Its history is usually traced back to the conversion to Islam of the first Sultan in the fourteenth century. From 1888 till 1984, Brunei was a British protectorate, but in 1984 it regained its full independence. The main language spoken in Brunei is Brunei Malay, while Standard Malay is the national language and English is also widely spoken. Various dialects of Chinese are spoken, and there are a number of minority languages such as Kedayan, Tutong and Murut. In addition to providing a background to the geography, history and languages of Brunei, Chap. 1 also introduces the data analysed in this book, which, in the 2013 edition was principally obtained from the UBDCSBE corpus of spoken data, a one-hour interview with an informant named Umi, and from the two English-language newspapers, the Borneo Bulletin and The Brunei Times. The updated version contains newly procured data in the form of informal free conversations between groups of friends from different generations, recorded academic presentations delivered by UBD students, as well as informal written English found on communication and social media such as WhatsApp and Twitter.