English passing off as Thai in twenty-first century Thai linguistic landscape

Abstract

With deepening globalisation and increased people-to-people contact, English is becoming more relevant in Thailand, which boasts a sizable expat community and tourists from around the world. While various scholars have explored the more overt, explicit, and obvious aspect of English glocalised in the Thai context (e.g. expressions such as ‘same same but different’), the more implicit, covert and hidden aspect has rarely been examined, that is, how the all-powerful English becomes disguised in the Thai script and becomes taken for granted and even passes off as ‘local’ in various settings in an inter-scriptal manner. In a context of change, linguistic landscape represents an important venue to observe the development and evolution of English in action. Drawing on authentic real-world data taken from Thailand’s linguistic landscape, this study points to the pervasive nature of English being disguised, through transliteration, in the Thai script in Thailand’s twenty-first century linguistic ecology. Beyond discussing the reasons and ideologies behind this interesting hybridised variety, this study also attempts to document the phonological changes and phonetic features exhibited when English is glocalised and (re)contextualised in the distant and seemingly incompatible Thai script, which symbolises a vastly different sociocultural and religious identity.