CARTOON 1

QUESTION 1

Types of variations found in the comic strip.

1) Social Variation
- This variation refers to the education, socioeconomic group and ethnic group. It
focuses more on educated and uneducated speech used by the speaker or writer.
2) Variation according to Attitude
- This variation is refers to the attitude of the user of the language towards the
language.
3) Variation according to Medium
- This variation refers to the resources of the language that the speaker or writer uses
to convey information that they want to say or write.
4) Regional Variation
- This variation refers to the dialect, which is defined as a regional or social variety of a
language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar or vocabulary, especially a variety
of speech differing from the standard literary language or speech pattern of the
culture in which it exists.

QUESTION 2

The types of variation that we have found in this comic are as follows;

Social Variation
From the comic above, we can see that there is social variation of language. A guy from
Kenya came to Malaysia to further his studies and his social background is different from the
people in Malaysia. For instance, the guy from Kenya has different ethnic group from his friends.
He might be a Kikuyu ethnic group which is the largest ethnic group in Kenya. Besides that, we
can know that the Kenya guy is an educated guy who studying in university. He observes his
Malaysian friends the way they talk to others and slightly comprehend the language. His
Malaysian friends use Manglish when communicating with others. Manglish is a nonstandard
language because it is mixture of English and Bahasa Malaysia which called code switching.
For example of usage of Manglish in the comic is, That guy came into my house to gasak my
underwear. In the comic, Kenya guys friends communicate using nonstandard language. They
do not communicate with others using Standard English. This guy is adapting himself to a new
culture and environment. For example in this comic, he is learning the typical Malaysian culture
of speaking to others.

Variation according to Attitude

In this comic, it is so obvious that the Kenya guy acting as an active listener. He observes
and listens attentively to how his friends pronounce and use the words in daily life contexts. this
shows his attitudes towards the language. He interested and keen on learning the Malaysian
language without even know the difference between formal and informal way of speaking of
using the language. He has an attitude that shows how interested he is to learn the language
although it took some time to learn it. It can be clearly seen that they have informal attitude
when conversing with others. They communicate with others in a relaxed, casual and friendly
manner. This is why it creates interest in Kenya guy to learn the language as it sounds funny
and did not cause much difficulty to learn Manglish. He takes initiative and effort to learn a new
language by being one of the people in Malaysia. This shows that there is variation according to
attitude in this comic.

Variation according to Medium

In this comic, the way people communicating with each other are through verbal
communication which is spoken language. Through verbal communication, Kenya guy would
find it easier to understand how to pronounce the words by imitating them and know when to
use the words in which context. Through spoken language, he can get the idea of how the
words supposed to sound like with the help of stress, intonation and rhythm while speaking.
Kenya guy expresses his feelings and propose to his girl friend through verbal way of
expressing. Learning a new language only through written or reading form does not help.
Medium of learning plays an important role as well in learning a new language.

Regional Variation
Kenya guys friends are mostly Malaysian and he is from different country. In this comic, his
friends use Manglish in their conversation with others. Manglish is totally an alien language for
the Kenya guy. Kenya guy learns the language by bit and decided to use the language when
proposing to his girl friend. His friends uses Malaysian slang and dialects when conversing with
others for example, I tell you ah.. that guy damn kaw loser wei! the word ah, kaw, wei and lah
is widely used by Malaysian when communicating with others informally. The word lah is used
by the guy with black shirt in the comic to emphasize items in a spoken list for example, Hey,
brader! Kasi lebih sambal lah! Wei is used by Malaysian to call a close friend. kaw and loh
is also used by Malaysian and it derived from Chinese words.
In this comic, the word Syok also been used. "Syok" is from the Hokkien word for
pleasure. All those words are obviously quite alien to Kenya guy as in the comic, people around
him communicates English with adding some slang and dialects from Malay language. Hence,
the Kenya guy decided to learn their Manglish language in order to communicate with others in
Malaysia because he noticed that most of Malaysians do not speak in Standard English when
conversing to their friends.
Code switching happened because the majority ethnic population in certain areas such as
Indian ethnic in Perak state in those days. So, the Indians will use and mix some Indian words
when talking with others in Malay or English. So, non Indian will literally imitate the word and
use it as they find it fun and interesting to use. Same goes for Malay and Chinese people
depending on the area or region itself. When the Kenya guy propose his girl friend using

Manglish slang, she could not understand but to only guess through some English words that he
used. This shows the Kenya region people could not understand Malaysian slang and dialects
unless they have learnt and experienced using the language.
As with Malaysian youths of other ethnicities, most Chinese, and Indian people are
multilingual and can speak at least three languages with at least moderate fluency
- Mandarin, English, Malay and Tamil as well as their native language dialect or the
dominant language dialect in their area.

READERS POINT OF VIEW.

This Bolehland is one of the famous comics in Malaysia. It is a webcomic series that tells the
tale of an epic journey of Dan and Wai Kit in Malaysia. The comic is created and presented by
Dan Khoo and Tan Wai Kit. Dan Khoo is a famous local Youtuber and Tan Wai Kit is a Financial
Analyst by day, an artist by night. It consists of simple yet interesting drawings of the characters
however the language used is our everyday Malaysian English. The content is not too heavy but
it is indeed a fun one to read.
Through this comic, it helps Malaysian to instill togetherness and unity among the people.
This is because all ethnics that exist in Malaysia will be portrayed in the comic and not to be
separated in any course although they tease each other in funny way. Through this, the readers
feel content and fun while reading the comic as we can imagine ourselves speaking in that way
with our friends. Furthermore, this Bolehland comic helps readers to enjoy and forget their
stressful moments for a while by enjoying the comedy scenes in the story. The comic is
impressively crafted with originality.

ANALYSIS

This comic that I chose is very suitable for this Variation of English assignment question as it
has everyday life situations that everyone experiencing in Malaysia. It has made me easy to find
and relate the comic strips to the assignment as it has most of the types of variation of
language. This comic has 4 types of language variations such as Regional Variation, Social
Variation, Variation according to Medium and Variation according to Attitude.
Regional Variation is found in the comic because the guy who learning a new language in
Malaysia is a guy from Kenya country. He comes from different region and speaks different
language making him difficult to comprehend Malaysian language. Social Variation is also found
in the comic as the Kenya guy is willing to adapt to Malaysian culture of using the language. He
also uses nonstandard English language as how his friends communicate with others. As for the
Variation according to Medium, the Kenya guy learns the language through observation when
his friends use the language verbally. He also uses the language verbally which is spoken.
Verbal communication has been the medium of learning the language for him. Last but not the
least, Variation according to Attitude is also found in the comic. Kenya guys attitude to the
language can be seen clearly that he is interested and paying attention on how to use the
language and imitating the pronunciations. He is an attentive listener and putting some effort to
learn the language so that he can use the language to propose his girlfriend. The characters
mostly communicate using Manglish language which is very common among people in
Malaysia. People in Malaysia is very comfortable in using Manglish because it is fun to use and
saves a lot of time talking in full sentences.
All these variations have experienced by everyone in this world in many types of situations.
Besides that, Variation according to Field of Discourse is not listed as it is not found in the
comic. The characters in the comic did not talk or mention about career or anything to do with
education terms.