This interdisciplinary paper shows that investigating community language beliefs, as a pillar of language policy research, can be enriched by the principles of theory of mind. The case study is Malaysia where ethnonationalist law and policy elevates the language and culture of the Muslim Malay majority above those of citizens of Chinese and Indian ethnicity, but where a seismic political shift is underway. The re-election of Dr Mahathir Mohammad as prime minister in May 2018, but now standing for Pakatan Harapan, broke decades of rule by the traditionalist United Malays National Organisation. Promises are being made to bring an end to Malaysia’s race-based politics and foster equality. The situation is ripe for producing contentious and politically-embedded talk in the community about Malaysia’s linguistic diversity and ethnonationalist language policy. In that context, this paper analyses how youths from different ethnic groups feel about Malaysia’s societal multilingualism. However, the innovation is in then soliciting and analysing the hypotheses of these same youths about how their own heritage languages, as well as societal multilingualism and language policy, are perceived by the other ethnic groups. As Malaysia embarks on political change, exploring beliefs in these interethnic multidirectional terms reveals fissures and alignments between beliefs that are articulated by different youths and the beliefs that are attributed to them. This methodological approach can support language policy processes and research by more richly investigating language beliefs and ideological positioning from multidirectional vantage points.

中文翻译：

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语言政策、思想澄清与心理理论

这篇跨学科论文表明，作为语言政策研究支柱的社区语言信仰调查可以通过心理理论的原则加以丰富。案例研究是马来西亚，那里的民族主义法律和政策将马来穆斯林占多数的语言和文化提升到高于华裔和印度裔公民的语言和文化，但那里正在发生巨大的政治转变。Mahathir Mohammad博士于2018年5月作为总理的重新选举，但现在驻帕卡坦哈帕潘，由传统主义团结的马来语国家组织破坏了数十年的统治。马来西亚正在承诺结束基于种族的政治并促进平等。在社区中就马来西亚的语言多样性和民族主义语言政策进行有争议的和政治嵌入的讨论的时机已经成熟。在此背景下，本文分析了来自不同族裔群体的青年对马来西亚社会多语制的感受。然而，创新在于征求和分析这些年轻人关于其他民族如何看待他们自己的传统语言以及社会多语言和语言政策的假设。随着马来西亚开始政治变革，探索这些跨种族的多向术语的信仰揭示了不同青年表达的信仰与归因于他们的信仰之间的裂痕和一致性。