Brunei English in the World

The current status of Brunei English can be considered from the perspective of the five-phase model of the development of postcolonial Englishes proposed by Schneider (Postcolonial English. Cambridge University Press, 2007). In 2013, it was suggested that Brunei English may be in phase three of nativisation, which means it was at an earlier stage in the process of evolution than Singapore English. However, recent findings indicate that Brunei English is in an active state of change in which feature stabilisation is evident and a distinctive Brunei English accent is also said to be emerging. Sociopolitically, the status of English is no longer simply that of a second language; to the rising generation of Bruneians, English is their first go-to language for everyday communication and some even claim to have picked it up as their mother tongue. Many young Bruneians also believe that English is now an intrinsic part of the Bruneian identity, which we believe, based on evidence, is not referring to the language of the west, but rather, to a localised variety that has evolved to create its own niche as a widely-used code of communication in Brunei. While many of the trends observed in Brunei English are shared by other varieties of English around the world, there are some which are not readily predictable and which appear to be context-bound. Alluding to Schneider’s (Language change: the impact of English as a lingua franca. Cambridge University Press, 2020) call to assess language change and development through a “novel (suitable) framework from the sciences” (p. 16), this chapter summarises the latest findings on Brunei English, making reference to the Complex Dynamic Systems theory. The changing sociolingua-demographic and the multiple contact scenarios have catalysed and continue to catalyse the evolutionary process of this emerging English variety.