Sociocultural Influences on LinguisticGeography: Religion and Languagein Southeast Asia

Stefanie Siebenhütter

ContentsSociocultural and Extralinguistic Factors in Areal Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Social Function of Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Identity-Forming Function of Sociocultural Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Sociocultural Factors and Language from a Cognitive Viewpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Religion and Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Christian Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Religious Influence Through Writing Systems (e.g., Sanskrit and Pali) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Geographical Spread of Extralinguistic and Historical Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Sociocultural History and Linguistic Situation in the MSEA Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Historical Development and Language Contact on Mainland Southeast Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Sociocultural Influence on Language: Still an Overlooked Phenomena? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

AbstractThe aim of this chapter is to discuss the influences of sociocultural and historicalfactors, such as religion, on language and the development of linguistic areas. It isargued that the importance of sociocultural factors in areal linguistics is under-researched. This is the case especially for religion. This chapter discusses suchsociocultural factors on the example of the linguistic area Mainland and InsularSoutheast Asia (MSEA and ISEA). It is shown that early migration, as well as thecultural and linguistic heritage, brought to MSEA together with Buddhism,Hinduism, and Confucianism, needs to be considered. It is argued that extralin-guistic factors, such as religion and politics, greatly influence conceptualizationand consequently language usage. This can lead to linguistic areas, developed onthe basis of, for example, religious practices. As a result, extralinguistic factors

S. Siebenhütter (*)Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germanye-mail: stefanie.siebenhuetter@gmail.com; ssiebenh@uni-mainz.de

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map,https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_84-1

1

provide a rich field for future research in linguistic geography and areal studies,which holds the potential of a better understanding of the intertwined relationbetween language and nonlinguistic factors.

KeywordsLanguage areas, Sociocultural factors, Religion, Linguistic geography, ISO 639-3codes: lao, khm, tha, vie, chi, ind

Sociocultural and Extralinguistic Factors in Areal Studies

The Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) region is already sufficiently proven asa prime example of a linguistic area (Siebenhütter 2016). Siebenhütter (2017) arguedthat the semantic-conceptual level is underrepresented in areal studies. In thischapter, it is further assumed that sociocultural factors, such as religion, can havea much bigger influence on the development of linguistic geography than consideredin the past decades. Consequently, the aim of this chapter is to discuss the entwinedrelation of sociocultural factors and political ideologies on language, with a focus onreligious practices. Several linguistic parallels can be identified, when consideringlanguage contact in a designated linguistic area. In this chapter mainly extralinguisticfactors are discussed. In this section, background information is given on the socialfunction of language and its identity-forming effect. In section “Religion andLanguage,” the influence of religious practices on language is analyzed in thesense of Holt and Kinnard (2003) who sought to understand how a communityfunctions within Theravada Buddhist culture. Section “Geographical Spread ofExtralinguistic and Historical Factors” provides a short overview of the historicaldevelopment as induced by early migrations and language contact in Southeast Asia.Finally, in Section “Conclusion” the most important findings will be discussed, aswell as prospects for further research.

Social Function of Language

According to Saussure (1967, p. 18), language is social in nature: “La langue est unfait social.” Language always includes a social function, and language is social, i.e.,sociologically structured. To further explore this assumption, it is necessary toconsider first-language acquisition. A child learns the language of its social groupand thus the norms and values of its speech community (norms and values, however,are not exclusively conveyed through language) (Schulze 2012; Höhle 2010). Evennewborns and babies show a preference for listening to human speech over othersounds (Höhle 2010). This means that even if there is a biological component(language is inborn), language is as predominantly a social and cultural product,since a child is integrated into a social community partially through language.In using language, objects and processes can be named, and at the same time,specific representations of appearance and norms are also conveyed.

2 S. Siebenhütter

Identity-Forming Function of Sociocultural Practices

Personal and social natures of religion and religious experience are inextricablyintertwined (Holt and Kinnard 2003). Consequently, in order to address socioculturalpractices in a linguistic area, religious practices must be included in research.

Societies are sets of individuals that are brought together through “institutions”(in the widest sense) into a structure of behavior and knowledge using cultural normsand traditions (Schulze 2012). Some of these norms and traditions act as demarcationtoward other groups. Consequently, language can be seen as the most importantfactor for the formation of group identity (Janda 2006).

If a group differentiates itself from other groups by defining certain parameters,this group must be considered as a society, regardless of size (Schulze 2012), alsoreferred to as community of practices (Meyerhoff and Strycharz 2013). In this work,the society of a linguistic area is understood in a broader sense. Consequently,political boundaries are only of secondary importance (see Siebenhütter 2016).

The concept of society proposed here can be well illustrated with the concept ofsocial circles, according to Simmel (1858–1918) (Schulze 2012, 2014, p. 66), or themultilevel approach (Winker and Degele 2010). Thereafter, identity is constructed asan interaction of multiple social forms of social categorizations and discriminations,for example, through belonging to a certain sociocultural, religious, or nationalsociety or group. Consequently, the identity of an individual results from the typicalaccumulation of social circles on its person (Schulze 2014, p. 66) and an individualcan belong to several societies (or social circles) simultaneously (see Siebenhütter2016 for examples). Society as such can be defined as a group with identity-formingnorms and traditions demarked to the outside (Schulze 2012). Membership in certainsocial circles is synonymous with the social roles an individual fulfills within asociety and which are attributed to the individual (Schulze 2014, pp. 66–67). In thischapter, mainly the identity-forming micro-level that includes religious affiliationproposed by Winker and Degele (2010) is applied.

Bourdieu (1996, p. 25) designates group-specific forms of behavior (whichinclude the use of language) as Habitus, which he describes as “characteristicdispatching systems” of various classes (Schulze 2012). Bourdieu (1996, p. 188)addresses issues of class-specific forms of behavior, wherein the projection ofbelonging to a particular class by birth cannot be compensated (see Schulze 2012).Individuals do not change their positions in social space at random. As group-specific patterns of behavior reflect socially prescribed role expectations, the lattercan be referred to asHabitus in the sense of Bourdieu (Schulze 2012). TheHabitus isthen the active realization of social expectations into concrete action (Schulze 2012).

With respect to language, this means that the symbolic content of signs is used inaccordance with social and class-specific requirements of a specific group (Schulze2012). In its concrete manifestations (individual languages), language is bound tothe existence of complex environmental and social structures; language is notconceivable without social and societal contexts (Schulze 2014, p. 42). Barthes(1994) argues similarly when he points out that there is no need to separateethnology, sociology, and history, because he believes that intelligibility as an

Sociocultural Influences on Linguistic Geography: Religion and Language in. . . 3

objective of knowledge pervades all areas and therefore no object may be excludedfrom the human sciences. Any society performs an immediate structuring of reality(Barthes 1994, pp.169–170). Barthes (1994, pp. 169–171) describes how specificbehavior of a social group provides information about how it makes use ofa structure that this particular group is based on. Thereafter, there is no objectwhich, in this sense, is not “social.”

Sociocultural Factors and Language from a Cognitive Viewpoint

To consider the hard-to-grasp phenomena of culture and language and their impacton each other, a number of questions must be answered. It is to be asked whetherlanguage contact is always culture contact. Schulze (2009) describes the “national-ization” of language and culture. The terms language and culture are often used todescribe a political power structure, the national state (Schulze 2009). Equating anational state with a specific culture and language does not describe the situationsufficiently. Firstly, bilingualism and multilingualism are widespread in Vietnam,Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand (Djité 2011, p. 11). Secondly, cultural concepts areembedded in language, and the architecture of each language contains culture-specific properties that do not necessarily dissolve at a national border, but can bequite similar in the adjacent area of the neighboring political national state. It appearsto be much more logical to conclude that geographically close societies are alsolinguistically and culturally close. This fact does not need to be limited by politicalboundaries.

These culture-specific features include lexical and grammatical characteristics.While lexical characteristics are relatively easily recognizable, specific grammaticalcharacteristics, such as syntactic constructions, are less obvious (Janda 2006).However, it cannot be claimed that language has conductive impact on culture orvice versa. Culture does not determine the structure of a language (Janda 2006).Rather, culture and language develop in a symbiotic relationship and are thuscoordinated with each other (Janda 2006).

The core of cognitive linguistics research is the study of culturally specific andsocially charged concepts differing from the assumption of universal human equip-ment (ability). Finding that language is a social phenomenon is of paramountimportance for the study. So-called cultural models can be seen as cognitive modelsthat are shared by people who belong to a social group or subgroup (Ungerer andSchmid 2006). For example, within societies, attention is systematically directedto specific aspects – known as windowing of attention (Talmy 2000) – while otheraspects are systematically ignored. The way attention is directed is specific toa society and thus language (Janda 2006, p. 26).

It is also necessary to proceed with caution to not neglect the distinction betweenthe inner and outer view of speaker and researcher. The danger in investigatingcultural differences is to overestimate the characteristics adopted from the outsideview of the researcher as cultural. For example, in Bavaria, sausages and pretzels aremerely a form of food, and outside the area, this is seen as a typical index of Bavarian

4 S. Siebenhütter

culture. Spirituality does influence people’s everyday behavior, which includes theirlanguage use. Gaston et al. (2015) revealed in their study on Buddhist Laos thatprimary contextual factors, such as social and cultural context (i.e., religious con-text), affecting information behavior among the participants, were their social andcultural environments, with the religious context embedded within the social andcultural values playing a significant role:

Religious context emerged as being a contextual factor related to both, the social and culturalcontexts, whereas Educational context emerged as being directly related to socioeconomiccontext, amongst other factors including political context. These contextual factors affectedinformation behavior among the participants, but also affected and influenced each other.This finding is consistent with Bandura’s social cognition theory, in which triadic reciprocalcausation posits that behavioural, cognitive, and other environmental influences all operateinteractively as determinants of each other. (Gaston et al. 2015, p. 16)

The following sections pay attention to these findings and continue with a closerconsideration of the religious context in Southeast Asia.

Religion and Language

Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Christian Era

That religion in Southeast Asia cannot be fully compared to Christianity and shouldbe rather taken seriously as illustrated by Holt (2009) in his study of Buddhism andLao religious culture:

[R]eligious culture need not be regarded cynically as only a disguised political ideology tolegitimate claims to power. In the West our conceptions of religion often either overlyemphasize doctrine, soteriology, or personal meaning or are aimed at asserting religions’sfunctionality in relation to political process. Consequently, these concepts of religion arefrequently too restricted in scope to grasp the profundity of sociocultural dynamics in play,especially in a religious culture like the one that has unfolded in Laos. (Holt 2009, p. 2)

Two religions have exerted a notable influence on the culture of MainlandSoutheast Asia: Buddhism and Hinduism (SarDesai 2012, pp. 18–20). WhenMahayana-Buddhism first reached Vietnam through India and China, along withthe greatest Buddhist works, Sanskrit, Pali, and Magadhi came to the SoutheastAsian mainland (SarDesai 2012, p. 18). After the eleventh century AD, Hinayana-Buddhism quickly spread throughout Mainland Southeast Asia and became thedominant religion of Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, while Vietnam contin-ued to follow a modified form of Mahayana-Buddhism (SarDesai 2012, pp. 18–20).

Holt et al. (2003) focused on the ways in which the historical, social, andphilosophical dynamics of various Buddhist communities have helped to forgeparticular apprehensions and conceptions of personal religious meaning and identity,which are at the same time collective and social.

Sociocultural Influences on Linguistic Geography: Religion and Language in. . . 5

With the beginning of the Christian era, as Indian contact with Mainland South-east Asia increased, Hindu influence also increased (SarDesai 2012, pp. 19–20). Itcan be assumed, however, that the wave of “Indianisation,” apart from religiousinfluence, was not felt permanently (Golzio 2003, p. 57). Islam influenced SoutheastAsia around the fifteenth century, when Chinese and other Muslim refugees fled toSoutheast Asia in the late fourteenth century (Wade 2010). During his reign(1181–1218), the ruler of the Khmer Empire, Jayavarman VII, expelled the Chamfrom Angkor and declared Mahayana-Buddhism as the state religion (IbbitsonJessup 2010, p. 74). On the central Southeast Asian mainland in contemporaryThailand, Laos, and Cambodia, Theravada-Buddhism asserted itself. This is stillimportant in the daily life of the local population. There is a clear and perceptibledifference to everyday life in Vietnam where Mahayana-Buddhism is predominant(Fig. 1).

In large parts of Southeast Asia, figures of Indian deities are found in temples.Together with Buddhist deities, these are revered by the population (Golzio 2003,p. 59). The Indian influence is clearly discernable in the religiosity which permeatesall parts of everyday life of Southeast Asians. Although almost no one in thepopulation understands Sanskrit or Pali, the languages are omnipresent because ofthe importance of Buddhism in everyday life. The importance of understanding

Fig. 1 Buddhist schools, distribution on Mainland Southeast Asia (Siebenhütter 2016; based onSarDesai 2012; Wade 2010)

6 S. Siebenhütter

Holt’s (2009) arguments that common Lao knowledge of important aspects ofTheravada Buddhist thought and practice has been heavily conditioned by anindigenous religious culture dominated by the veneration of spirits whose powersare thought to prevail over and within specific social and geographical domains. Holt(2009) showed that the long-term influence of traditional spiritual cults in Laoculture and society has brought about major changes in how practices and beliefsabout Buddhist temples and rituals are used by the Lao people in daily life.

Additionally, the influence of Confucianism on the cultural development ofVietnam should not be ignored and is suggested to be investigated in further studies.

Religious Influence Through Writing Systems (e.g., Sanskrit and Pali)

As described in Siebenhütter (2016), language orthography may influence languageusage on a certain level. Initially, however, (around the eighth century) the Thai aswell as the Vietnamese used the Chinese writing system (Villers 1980, p. 183). Thiscould explain why Lao and Thai have similar alphabets and most letters are the same.Also, sentences are written in the same manner: from left to right and without spacesbetween words. The writing systems of Lao and Thai, initially adopted from theKhmer during the period of the Angkor Empire, evolved from Sanskrit. Later,Laotians and Thais developed individual alphabets (Higbie and Thinsan 2008).However, Thai writing remains closer to Sanskrit and Pali and uses many moreconsonants than Lao does (Siebenhütter 2016). Lao was revised to be more easilyreadable for non-Laotian ethnic groups and follows Sanskrit less accuratelythan Thai.

The Brahmi script is mentioned for the first time in the third century BC. In theAshoka, edicts and its origins are still unclear, but it is likely that it was created afterthe model of the Aramaic alphabet (Kausen 2013a, p. 153). A variation of southernBrahmi scriptures arrived in Southeast Asia in the fourth century AD and became thebasis of later writings in Cambodia (Khmer), Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Indonesia,and the Philippines (Kausen 2013a, p. 153). Cham speakers in Cambodia andVietnam used an orthography based on Vietnamese, although Muslim Chamspeakers in Cambodia temporarily wrote their language in Arabic letters(Grant 2005 p. xiii). The Cham writing goes back to a South Indian Brahmi variationand was used by the Cham in Vietnam and Cambodia before the introduction of theJawi alphabet (Kausen 2013b, p. 493).

Even though the influence of writing may be not fundamental, at least it canindicate the routes of influence in Southeast Asia. Considering the writing systems isfurther relevant for the classification of a Sprachbund, based on similarities andparallels on the level of dialects and written languages (Gutschmidt 1990,pp. 1705–1706). Similarities and agreements which are the result of languagecontact at the level of dialects and/or written languages may not be the resultof shared heritage with a base language or parallel typological traits. However, on

Sociocultural Influences on Linguistic Geography: Religion and Language in. . . 7

a dialectical level, e.g., the east Serbo-Croatian dialects also belong to the BalkanSprachbund, whereas written language Serbo-Croatian does not belong to theBalkan Sprachbund (Gutschmidt 1990, pp. 1705–1706).

The written languages which influenced Southeast Asia were used for religiouspractices and still do. On the entire Southeast Asian mainland, Indian influence canbe felt in everyday life. Southeast Asians are very spiritual, and religious actsare combined naturally with their daily activities. Both the widespreadMahayana-Buddhism and Hinduism originated in India. Prayers in Sanskrit andPali are integrated into everyday lives of the Southeast Asian population, even ifonly few can understand these languages. As mentioned above, Thai borrowedheavily from Sanskrit and Pali, the languages of Buddhism. Some lexemeswere taken directly, while other borrowings were introduced as part of thespread of the Khmer Empire into the Thai language (Iwasaki and Ingkaphirom2005, p. 12). In particular, most prefixes and suffixes are borrowings fromSanskrit, Pali, or Khmer as well as a smaller number of infixes (Iwasaki andIngkaphirom 2005, p. 26).

Most words in the basic vocabulary of Lao consist of one syllable. Polysyllabicwords are generally used in academic, political, or religious contexts and are mostlyborrowed from Sanskrit. These are often very similar to the high-level vocabularyof Thai, which borrowed extensively from Sanskrit (Siebenhütter 2016). Indonesianalso has numerous affixes from Sanskrit and also a large number of affixes fromDutch and Arabic (Seifart 2013). In Khmer, almost half of the vocabulary can beidentified as Indian borrowings from Pali or Sanskrit. However, for the most part,today’s Khmer speakers no longer perceive such vocabulary as borrowings (Haiman2011, p. 33). Borrowings can be recognized by their pronunciation, in suffixationand flexion, or through specific word order patterns (Haiman 2011, pp. 33–35).Language contact effects on the Mainland can be perceived, for example,through the small number of loans from Thai in the Khmer vocabulary(Haiman 2011, pp. 41–42).

Geographical Spread of Extralinguistic and Historical Factors

Sociocultural History and Linguistic Situation in the MSEA Area

It is considered that social roles, as well as the historical development of society inwhich the human being lives, affect the cultural background of the individual and areinextricably linked to the phenomenon of language. Language thus takes a historicaldimension, since the imaginary worlds and concepts of a society are built on pastexperiences and developments that led to the shaping of specific symbolic contents(Schulze 2012). This knowledge is beyond the individual level and collective,because it is included in the meaning of an utterance, independent of individualspeakers. Humans process and construct each external stimulus as a symbolicstructure. Symbols are thus beyond the individual and loaded with social content(Schulze 2012). Language itself is a symbolic system. Symbolic systems culturally

8 S. Siebenhütter

represent a structure of signs and changes, depending on society and social group, aswell as forms of behavioral change (Siebenhütter 2016). Enfield (2003, pp. 11–13)points to the role of social networks and the need to deal with the sociological andanthropological sides in depth:

This can be difficult for linguists to acknowledge, however, since it implies that to trulysolve the puzzles of language change, one must do the work of sociologist and anthropol-ogist on top of the already vast job of documenting and analysing the linguistic data. (Enfield2003, p. 14)

The problem lies in the fact that linguistic change is necessarily and primarily a ground-levelsocial process, the relevant mechanisms pivoting on identities, judgements, actions, andresponses of individual speakers in real time. (Enfield 2006, p. 267)

Speakers recognize if their speech community begins to sound different (gram-matically and phonologically), and these differences have social significance inclassical sociolinguistic understanding. However, such details are difficult to findin the history of Southeast Asia over the last two or three millennia, if possible at all(Enfield 2006, p. 267). This is why it is particularly important to examine therelationship between social history and the current linguistic situation in MSEA:

Our most urgent requirement is empirically based and fine-grained multi-disciplinaryresearch on grammar in living cases of speaker contact, since it is so difficult to reconstructin sufficient detail the ethnography of inter-group communication. (Enfield 2006, p. 268)

There might be political reasons for the differentiation of two languages in anarea, for example, the native language of ethnic Laotians in Northeast Thailand isLao, officially called “Isan” or “Thai Isan” by Thai government, even though thelanguage is the same as that in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Generally,within a linguistic area, transition zones can be identified: in Laos, most of the Laopeople who live near the Thai border understand Thai. Further inside Laos the Thailanguage skills decrease. Many Lao are familiar with the language of their neighbors,through Thai television and radio. Lao people who can speak Thai might haveworked or studied in Thailand, are married to a Thai, or originate from a Thai-Laofamily (Siebenhütter 2016).

Thai and Lao are closely linked, sharing a large part of their vocabulary andhaving similar phonological and grammatical systems. Individual words may besimilar or appear the same, but are used in different ways. Vocabulary taken fromSanskrit and Pali is usually used in the same way in both languages (Siebenhütter2016). Pronunciation and sounds vary by region within the two languages but followthe same general system. Despite their similarities, the languages are not mutuallyintelligible. Typically, Lao people understand Central Thai very well, while manyspeakers of Central Thai have great difficulty comprehending Lao, because theyhave had no contact with Lao (Enfield 2007, pp. 17–18). Even though Lao and Thaican be classified in every respect (structurally, linguistically) as dialects of a singlelanguage, this is not meant to disregard the differences between them. For a number

Sociocultural Influences on Linguistic Geography: Religion and Language in. . . 9

of reasons, they should be treated as different languages (Enfield 2002, 2007). In anycase, it is useful to consider parallels which can be drawn back on Sanskrit and Paliinfluence through the spread of religious practices on the Southeast Asian mainland.

Historical Development and Language Contact on MainlandSoutheast Asia

To understand the sociolinguistic and sociocultural situation in Mainland SoutheastAsia, it is important to note its historical development. There are several investiga-tions on the linguistic history of Mainland Southeast Asia (e.g., Sidwell 2013);therefore it is not the aim of this chapter to present all the details on it. However,it should be mentioned that language contact is known as one of the main reasons forthe evolution of typological areas (Bisang 1996, p. 520). It is assumed that contactbetween different speech communities leads to exchange of sociocultural and lin-guistic content. This can initiate culture and language change processes. Languagemay not be understood per se as part of culture, but language usage and the handingdown of language are understood as cultural (Schulze 2009). Consequently, changebecomes visible on the level of sociocultural practices, such as religious behavior, oron the level of the language which is spoken in daily life.

Concerning linguistics in MSEA, several borrowings through language contactcan be found (Matisoff 2006, p. 302). Borrowings from Sanskrit can be found inThai and Lao as both languages borrowed much of their vocabulary from Pali andSanskrit, especially in the twentieth century (Enfield 2007, p. 18). As describedpreviously, Lao and Thai use very similar script based on Indian writing systems(Enfield 2007, p. 18; Siebenhütter 2016). Another example is the numerous ancientloans from Old Chinese and Tibeto-Burman, which suggest that the proto-Hmong-Mien speakers began dispersing southward out of the Yangzi River basin around2,500 years ago, perhaps connected to the movement of Han Chinese (Sidwell2013).

This chapter, however, focuses mainly on extralinguistic factors that influence thedevelopment of sociolinguistic and sociocultural practices in a region exposed toconstant language contact. It should be mentioned that, over the years, the politicalboundaries in Mainland Southeast Asia have changed repeatedly (Sidwell 2013;Siebenhütter 2016). Mainly this happened due to migrations and emigrations ofwhich some could largely be reconstructed by linguists, for example, the proto-Cham (Sidwell 2013). Another example is the Khmer Empire which reached thepeak of its expansion in the years 1181 to around 1218 and took over large areas ofthe southern part of present Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos territory as shown in Fig. 2(Ibbitson Jessup 2010, pp. 74–75). The Khmer expelled the Cham multiple timesand had numerous military conflicts with the Champa Kingdom of central Vietnam(Ibbitson Jessup 2010, pp. 74–75).

Mainland Southeast Asia has been subject to numerous influences, from Indian inthe southwest to Sinitic in the northeast. SarDesai (2012, pp. 14–16) describesSino-Indian influences while emphasizing that Southeast Asia did not develop into

10 S. Siebenhütter

a battlefield of influences, but rather adapted to different influences without thecommunities involved losing their identity. He points out that Vietnam is differentfrom the rest of Southeast Asia: “[W]ith exception of the Vietnamese, most ofSoutheast Asia followed the Indian cultural patterns” (SarDesai 2012, p. 15). Appar-ently, the Sinitic influence on the languages of Vietnam is greater than on those of therest of Mainland Southeast Asia.

A well-written history that reaches back to the seventh century is available forKhmer (Sidwell 2009, p. 107). The Khmer, who were inhabitants of the SoutheastAsian peninsula long before the Tai, transmitted the Indian scripts into Lao andSiamese (in the literature, the term Siamese is often used instead of Thai in order toavoid the obvious confusion of Tai and Thai; see Diller 2012, p. 6), as well as someimportant lexical components into Siamese and less so into Lao (Matisoff 2006,p. 303). Indian and Khmer merchants probably transferred Indian vocabulary;inscriptions indicate that the Khmer adopted the Indian social structure (IbbitsonJessup 2010, p. 78). Gil (2015), however, states that the Southeast Asian mainlandshows less Indian or Chinese influences than the Papuan languages (Gil 2015,p. 340). It is likely that the Sinitic languages form a transition zone that coincidespartially with Southeast Asia and partially with the rest of Asia (Comrie 2008,pp. 14–15). According to Comrie, the Austronesian languages also partially coincidewith those of Southeast Asia. Furthermore, Comrie (2008, p. 15) argues that theSoutheast Asia area is internally homogeneous and separated sharply from the rest ofAsia. However, this separation is much less pronounced in the direction of Austro-nesian languages.

Fig. 2 Khmer Kingdom to itsmaximum extent around1182–1218 (Siebenhütter2016, based on IbbitsonJessup 2010, p. 74)

Sociocultural Influences on Linguistic Geography: Religion and Language in. . . 11

In contrast to the neighboring Southeast Asian languages, which are imbued withChinese loanwords, Chinese culture and language itself was surprisingly resistantagainst cultural and linguistic influences from outside:

[S]everal neighboring countries [. . .] have absorbed Chinese culture and language on a vastscale. Compared to them, China has indeed seemed like an impermeable nucleus from whichcultural and linguistic influences have flowed outward, but which, with a very few minorexceptions, has not been affected by the inflow of foreign elements. [. . .] Virtually all thelanguages spoken on the periphery of China are permeated with Chinese loanwords, whileChinese itself has seemingly remained immune to outside influence. (Norman 1988, p. 16)

The Southeast Asian mainland is geographically bounded by the South ChinaSea, which forms a natural border to the Austronesian languages, to the east and tothe south. However, at least two smaller groups of Austronesian influences can befound on the Mainland, mainly in Vietnam and partly also in Cambodia:

These are the Moken (also known as Sea Gypsies or Sea Nomads in English, Selung inMyanmar/Burma, Chao Ley in Thailand) who live among the islands off the west coast ofthe isthmus of Kra; and the speakers of Aceh-Chamic including the Chamic languages ofIndo-China and Hainan, and (somewhat controversially) the Acehnese spoken in northernSumatra. Austronesian speakers (probably radiating from northwest Borneo, and moreclosely related to Malayic tribes than other groups) began settling the coasts of Indo-Chinaand the Gulf of Thailand sometime before the 5th century BCE. The sequence of thisprehistoric migration, and its specific ethnic makeup, may never be known, but someinferences can be made. (Sidwell 2013)

Figure 3 shows assumed movements of Austronesian speakers toward the SoutheastAsian mainland. The successors to the Cham Empire, which in its peak periodbetween the ninth and the twelfth century, were a strong competitor of the Khmer(Kausen 2013b, p. 523), live in today’s Vietnam and Cambodia. Speakers of theEastern Cham branch were mainly in Vietnam, and Western Cham speakers werefound predominantly in Cambodia. The Chamic languages on the Mainland includethe Cham (99,000 in Vietnam, about 100,000 in Cambodia around Kampong Cham),Jarai (242,000 in Vietnam, about 20,000 in Cambodia), Rhade (in Vietnamese Ede,177,000, about 5,000 more in Cambodia), Northern and Southern Ríoglai (together72,000; about 55% northern) and Chru (15,000) ethnic groups of Vietnam, and theHaroi (15,000 in Vietnam, not recognized as a separate ethnic group but included inthe Jarai total) (Bradley 2007, p. 369). Around 1500 BC, Cham speakers from theisland of Borneo came to Vietnam (Overy et al. 2010, p. 46; see Fig. 3). In the sixthcentury AD, Cham became the lingua franca of the Cham Empire in the south ofpresent-day Vietnam and Cambodia (Adelaar 2005, p. 17; see Fig. 3). The ChampaKingdom (seventh to fifteenth century) once covered large parts of MainlandSoutheast Asia: “This kingdom was regularly at war with the Vietnamese kingdomof Annam in the north and the Khmer in the west” (Steinhauer 2005, p. 83).Currently, a considerable number of Cham speakers can still be found in Vietnam,Cambodia, and China (Hainan). The history of these migrations can largely bereconstructed, which allows inference on Chamic history (Sidwell 2013). However,

12 S. Siebenhütter

the Cham do not form larger cohesive language areas (Kausen 2013b, p. 524). TheseAustronesian-born minorities lived adjacent to Vietnamese minorities also during thecolonial period (Steinhauer 2005, p. 83). In MSEA Austronesian Cham languagesand Austroasiatic languages, such as Vietnamese and Khmer, can be found situatedclose to each other (Kausen 2013b, p. 496).

Fig. 3 Some migrations in Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia and Champa Empire at the time ofits maximum size. (Based on Adelaar 2005, pp. 29–31; Bradley 2007; Kausen 2013b, pp. 523–524;Sidwell 2013; Siebenhütter 2016; Steinhauer 2005, p. 83)

Sociocultural Influences on Linguistic Geography: Religion and Language in. . . 13

The influence of contact with the Sino-Tibetan languages in the north andnortheast early movements as well as colonization in Mainland Southeast Asia aredescribed in detail in Glover and Bellwood (2006). During the cold climate period(Pleistocene), the indigenous peoples were moving mainly from the north to thesoutheast (Glover and Bellwood 2006, p. 7). Even though it is unclear when thepresent-day Tibeto-Burmese language groups came to Southeast Asia, their countryof origin is assumed to be farther north, in western or central China (Glover andBellwood 2006, p. 9). Tai speakers migrated around 3000–1500 BC, probably alsofrom the territory of present-day China toward the central Southeast Asian mainland(Bellwood 2006, p. 22, 27). Chinese are the largest minority in all Southeast Asiancountries (SarDesai 2012, p. 11). Between China and Southeast Asia, there wasflourishing trade both by land and by sea (Wade 2010). During the Ming Dynasty,China enjoyed special status in sea trade: “By maintaining a nominally ‘imperialmonopoly’ trade relationship during the 15th century with the major Southeast Asianpolities of Annam, Cambodia, Champa, Java, Melaka, Palembang, Samudera andSiam, as well as with a host of smaller polities, and an associated ban on non-statemaritime commerce, the Ming created new economic interlinkages throughout thearchipelago” (Wade 2010, p. 31). In addition, there have been continuing contactswith groups of Chinese origin, such as individual Yue tribes who moved from theterritories of contemporary China on the lower Yangtze River into contemporaryVietnamese areas (Villers 1980, p. 235). The amazing structural proximity ofVietnamese to Thai despite the lack of current immediate vicinity could thus bebased on earlier contact in North East Asia. Influence of the Tai languages onVietnamese is highly probable, since in the thirteenth century Tai people fleeingfrom the Mongols expanded into the middle Mekong course and mixed with theinhabitants in this area (Giesenfeld 1988, p. 40). Also, Enfield (2003, p. 66) mentionsthe influence of Tai languages on Vietnamese, not only on Lao and Khmer, as directneighboring languages.

Ansaldo (2010) advocates the proximity of southern Chinese varieties – witha focus on Cantonese – to non-Sinitic languages of Southeast Asia. Within the Siniticlanguages, the southernmost languages are most similar to the languages of theSoutheast Asian mainland area (de Sousa 2015). This is not surprising, since theregions, which now form the southwestern part of China, were originally settled byTai-Kadai, Miao-Yao, and Mon-Khmer speakers (Ansaldo 2010, p. 920). Hightonality and SVO word order are, among other things, common to the centralMSEA languages and the southernmost modern Sinitic languages. The Siniticlanguages in the far south have been influenced by the central MSEA languages’left-headed features. The southern Sinitic languages seem to be more stronglyinfluenced by the central MSEA languages than by other Sinitic languages in thenorth (de Sousa 2015, p. 396). De Sousa (2015, p. 428) describes this in detail: “Wehave also seen that other than the Mandarin dialects that are SOV, the Siniticlanguages with the most OV-associated traits are not the Northern Sinitic languages,but the Southeastern Sinitic languages. The strong prevalence of verb-final clauses inthe Southeastern Sinitic languages is probably an internal development. It cannot be

14 S. Siebenhütter

a direct influence from North Asia, as North Asia is so far away, and the Central andNorthern Sinitic languages in between are in general not as strongly right-headed asthe Southeastern Sinitic languages.”

It can be said that Southeast Asian languages share very few linguistic featureswith the South Asian languages (Tibeto-Burmese languages among others) (Post2015, pp. 247–248). However, this conclusion is based on the data available.Overall, the southern Sinitic languages share more features with the central MSEAlanguages than other Sino-Tibetan languages such as Burmese or Southern Min(de Sousa 2015, p. 428). However, at the same time, there are numerous othertypological features such as lexical patterns and grammaticalization paths thatshow a strong relationship between the central MSEA languages and languagessuch as Burmese and Southern Min (Min Nan). De Sousa (2015, p. 428) thereforepoints out that, although there are similarities, at the same time parallels of the centralMSEA languages with the southern Sinitic languages must be considered. Hedescribes both the Burmese languages and the southern Sinitic languages as beingon the periphery of the MSEA area and stresses that it would be ill-advised toexclude the Sinitic languages completely from an investigation of the MSEA area:

This is unwise, as the centres of diversity for the Kra-Dai and Hmong-Mien families are stillin Southern China and the Southern Sinitic languages have many MSEA linguistic traits.Studies of the MSEA linguistic area would benefit immensely if the Southern Siniticlanguages, the Far-Southern Sinitic languages in particular, are included in the MSEAlinguistic area. (de Sousa 2015, p. 429)

Certainly, the languages of Myanmar have not received the attention they deserve(Jenny 2015, p. 203). Jenny (2015) sees the territory between the Salween andthe Chindwin valleys as a transition zone between Southeast and South Asia.Nonetheless, many languages of Myanmar share strong connections to the centralSoutheast Asian languages (Jenny 2015, pp. 203–204). However, still more isknown about the Southeast Asian mainland than about maritime Southeast Asia(Heng 2011). Throughout history there were lots of migrations on the Mainlandleading to numerous contact situations throughout the past (Sidwell 2013;Siebenhütter 2016).

Conclusion

Sociocultural Influence on Language: Still an OverlookedPhenomena?

This chapter aimed to discuss several sociocultural and historical factors whichinfluence language and play a role in the development and spread of linguisticareas. In this sense, the chapter highlighted the following:

Language is social in nature, and sociocultural practices are involved in groupidentity-forming processes. A society is formed by group-specific behavior, withlanguage being one of the main means for identification for groups. Considering that

Sociocultural Influences on Linguistic Geography: Religion and Language in. . . 15

culture is a symbolic system, language and culture are always interrelated. Bothdevelop in a symbiotic relationship and cannot be separated from each other.

Several reasons for sociocultural impact could be illustrated with a focus onreligious practices like spirituality and its influence on people’s every day behavior.The religious context also affects information behavior, e.g., of Lao people. MSEAwas notably influenced by Buddhism and Hinduism, but also Islam, Christianity, andConfucianism can be found throughout history on the Mainland. Still, the dominantreligion is Buddhism: Theravada in Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia and Mahayana inVietnam. Thai and Vietnamese used the Chinese writing system before adoptingSanskrit from the Khmer. Later, Thai and Lao people developed their individualalphabets. The high amount of borrowings from Sanskrit is still perceivable. Sanskritand Pali are integrated in daily life religious practices. Religion is a sociocultural andhistorical influence factor on language and the development of sociolinguistic/sociocultural areas. It was argued that political reasons are mainly used for thedifferentiation of two languages, even though they might be understood as dialectsof each other.

In this short approach, it was asked, which sociocultural and historical influencescan be found in the MSEA region, especially with a focus on religious historyand practices, particularly extralinguistic factors. Early migrations and long-termlanguage contact influenced the ethnic composition of the Mainland. The situationof the northern and northwestern transition zones toward the southern Sinitic and theTibeto-Burmese languages still remains unclear regarding their inclusion into thelinguistic area MSEA. Where religious practices like Buddhist traditions play animportant role in daily life, they influence language, as language serves the needsof its group of speakers. To include sociocultural extralinguistic factors for thedefinition of linguistic areas might bring interesting facets into areal linguistics.The linguistic area MSEA might appear somewhat different when including theinfluence of extralinguistic factors such as religious practices into research.

OutlookIn conclusion, research on linguistic areas needs to include disciplines like

sociology, social psychology, cultural studies, cognitive science, ethnology, andintercultural communication into a unified approach. Therefore, it becomes obviousthat further investigation of extralinguistic factors such as religious practices holdsa rich field for a better understanding of the intertwined relationship betweenlanguage, culture, and society. In this respect, Holt’s (2009) overview of LaoBuddhism and his analysis of how shifting political power, from kingdom todemocracy to communism, has impacted Lao religious culture offer an integratedaccount of the intertwined political and religious history of Laos from the fourteenthcentury to the contemporary era. Equivalent investigations for other Southeast Asianareas or other parts of the world as well as for other religious directions such asConfucianism, which was not considered in this chapter, are desirable. Equally,research on how spirituality influences everyday flow of information as investigatedby Gaston et al. (2015) would bring additional aspects on language usage underspecific conditions. Certainly, there is a need for more corresponding work, whichbrings to light the fascinating aspects of less studied religious practices and beliefsand their influences on language.

16 S. Siebenhütter

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims inpublished maps and institutional affiliations.

References

Adelaar, A. (2005). The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar. A historical perspective.In A. Adelaar & N. P. Himmelmann (Eds.), The Austronesian languages of Asia andMadagaskar (pp. 1–42). London: Routledge.

Ansaldo, U. (2010). Surpass comparatives in Sinitic and beyond: Typology and grammaticalization.Linguistics: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences, 48(4), 919–950.

Barthes, R. (1994).Das semiologische Abenteuer (3. Aufl.). Frankfurt amMain: Suhrkamp (EditionSuhrkamp, 1441: Neue Folge; 441).

Bellwood, P. (2006). The origins and dispersals of agricultural communities in Southeast Asia.In I. Glover & P. Bellwood (Eds.), Southeast Asia: From prehistory to history (1st ed.,pp. 21–40). London: Routledge Curzon.

Bisang, W. (1996). Areal typology and grammaticalization: Processes of grammaticalization basedon nouns and verbs in East and Mainland South East Asian languages. Studies in language:International Journal Sponsored by the Foundation ‘Foundations of Language’, 20(3),519–597.

Bourdieu, P. (1996). Die feinen Unterschiede. Kritik der gesellschaftlichen Urteilskraft (Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft, 658, 8. Aufl.). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Bradley, D. (2007). East and Southeast Asia. In C. Moseley (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the world’sendangered languages (pp. 349–390). London: Routledge.

Comrie, B. (2008). Arealtypologie von Sprachen anhand des Weltatlas linguistischer Strukturen(Sitzungsberichte der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig,Philologisch-Historische Klasse, 140, 3). Leipzig: Verl. der Sächsischen Akad. der Wiss.

de Saussure, F. (1967). Cours de linguistique générale. Ed. critique par Rudolf Engler. Wiesbaden:Harrassowitz.

de Sousa, H. (2015). The far Southern Sinitic languages as part of Mainland Southeast Asia. InN. J. Enfield & B. Comrie (Eds.), Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia: The state of the art(pp. 356–439). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. (Vol. 649 von Pacific Linguistics [PL]).

Diller, A. (2012). Introduction. In A. N. van Diller, J. A. Edmondson, & Y. Luo (Eds.), TheTai-Kadai languages (Routledge language family series, pp. 3–8). London: Routledge.

Djité, P. G. (2011). The language difference. language and development in the Greater Mekongsub-region (Multilingual matters, Vol. 144). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Enfield, N. J. (2002). How to define ‘Lao’, ‘Thai’, and ‘Isan’ language? A view from linguisticscience. Tai Culture, 7(1), 62–67.

Enfield, N. J. (2003). Linguistic epidemiology: Semantics and grammar of language contact inmainland Southeast Asia (p. 1). London: Routledge Curzon.

Enfield, N. J. (2006). On genetic and areal linguistics in Mainland South-East Asia: Parallelpolyfunctionality of ‘acquire.’ Problems in comparative linguistics. In A. Y. Aikhenvald &R. M. W. Dixon (Eds.), Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance (pp. 255–290). Oxford [u. a.]:Oxford University Press, 1.

Enfield, N. J. (2007). A grammar of Lao (Mouton grammar library, Vol. 38). Berlin: de Gruyter.Gaston, N. M., Dorner, D. G., & Johnson, D. (2015). Spirituality and everyday information

behaviour in a non-Western context: Sense-making in Buddhist Laos. Information Research,20(2), paper 665, 1–27. Retrieved from http://InformationR.net/ir/20-2/paper665.html(Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/6Z1Ewu9XF).

Giesenfeld, G. (1988). Land der Reisfelder. Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea; Geschichte undGegenwart (Kleine Bibliothek, Band 218, 3. Aufl.). Köln: Pahl-Rugenstein.

Sociocultural Influences on Linguistic Geography: Religion and Language in. . . 17

Gil, D. (2015). The Mekong-Mamberamo linguistic area. In N. J. Enfield, & B. Comrie (Eds.),Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia: The state of the art (pp. 266–355). Berlin/Boston:De Gruyter (Vol. 649 von Pacific Linguistics [PL]).

Glover, I., & Bellwood, P. (2006). Introduction. In I. Glover & P. Bellwood (Eds.), Southeast Asia:From prehistory to history (1st ed., pp. 1–3). London [u.a.]: Routledge Curzon.

Golzio, K.-H. (2003). Geschichte Kambodschas. Das Land der Khmer von Angkor bis zurGegenwart (Beck’sche Reihe, 1516). Orig.-Ausg. München: Beck.

Grant, A. (Ed.). (2005). Chamic and beyond: Studies in mainland Austronesian languages.Canberra: Pacific Linguistics Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies Australian NationalUniversity. (Pacific linguistics, 569).

Gutschmidt, K. (1990). Zur Typologie von Sprachbünden. In J. S. Werner Bahner, & D. Viehweger(Eds.), Proceedings of the fourteenth international congress of linguistics (pp. 1704–1706).Berlin/GDR, August 10–August 15, 1987. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

Haiman, J. (2011). Cambodian. Khmer (London Oriental and African language library, 16).Amsterdam [u.a.]: Benjamins.

Heng, D. (2011). Review of Southeast Asia in the fifteenth century. 10 November 2011. In Bookreviews, China,Nm-Tlc Reviews, Trans-Border Issues. http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2011/11/10/review-of-southeast-asia-in-the-fifteenth-century-tlcnmrev-xxix/. Accessed 03 Dec2015.

Higbie, J., & Thinsan, S. (2008). Thai reference grammar. The structure of spoken Thai. Reprint.Bangkok: Orchid Press.

Höhle, B. (Ed.). (2010). Psycholinguistik. Berlin: Akad.-Verl. (Akademie StudienbücherSprachwissenschaft).

Holt, J. C. (2009). Spirits of the place. Buddhism and Lao religious culture. Honolulu: University ofHawai’i Press.

Holt, J. C., & Kinnard, J. N. (2003). Introduction. In J. C. Holt, J. N. Kinnard, & J. S. Walters(Hrsg.), Constituting communities. Theravāda Buddhism and the religious cultures of South andSoutheast Asia (SUNY series in Buddhist studies, S. 1–8). Albany: State University ofNew York Press.

Ibbitson Jessup, H. (2010). Südostasien: Die Khmer (802–1566). In J. Masselos (Ed.), ImperienAsiens. Von den alten Khmer zu den Meiji. Stuttgart: Theiss.

Iwasaki, S., & Ingkaphirom, P. (2005). A reference grammar of Thai. (1. Aufl.). New York [u.a.]:Cambridge University Press (Reference grammars).

Janda, L. A. (2006). From cognitive linguistics to cultural linguistics. Slovo a smysl/Word andSense, 8, 48–68.

Jenny, M. (2015). The far west of Southeast Asia. ‘Give’ and ‘get’ in the languages of Myanmar. InN. J. Enfield & B. Comrie (Eds.), Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia: The State of the Art(pp. 155–208). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. (Vol. 649 von Pacific Linguistics [PL]).

Kausen, E. (2013a). Die Sprachfamilien der Welt. Teil 1: Europa und Asien. Hamburg: Buske.Kausen, E. (2013b). Die Sprachfamilien der Welt. Teil 2: Afrika – Indopazifik – Australien –

Amerika. Hamburg: Buske.Matisoff, J. A. (2006). Genetic versus contact relationship: Prosodic diffusibility in south-east Asian

languages. Problems in comparative linguistics. In A. Y. Aikhenvald & R. M. W. Dixon (Eds.),Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance (Vol. 1, pp. 291–327). Oxford [u. a.]: Oxford UniversityPress.

Meyerhoff, M., & Strycharz, A. (2013). Communities of practice. In J. K. Chambers, &N. Schilling-Estes (Hrsg.), The handbook of language variation and change (Blackwell hand-books in linguistics, 2nd ed., S. 428–447). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Norman, J. (1988). Chinese. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.Overy, R., Harper, T., Hynd, S., Lewis, C., Pennell, C., & Reiss, M. (2010). Southeast Asia before

civilization. In R. J. Overy (Ed.), The Times complete history of the world (8th ed., pp. 46–47).London: Times Books. (Mapping history).

Post, M. W. (2015). Morphosyntactic reconstruction in an areal-historical context: A pre-historicalrelationship between North East India and Mainland Southeast Asia. In N. J. Enfield &

18 S. Siebenhütter

B. Comrie (Eds.), Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia: The state of the art (pp. 209–265).Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. (Vol. 649 von Pacific Linguistics [PL]).

SarDesai, D. R. (2012). Southeast Asia: Past and present. 7. Edition (2013) Boulder:Westview Press.

Schulze, W. (2009). Zwischen Sprachkontakt und sprachlicher Segregation: Ethnizität, kulturelleHarmonisierung und Kulturkonflikte in Aserbaidschan. http://schulzewolfgang.de/material/azerb.pdf. Accessed 03 June 2017.

Schulze, W. (2012). Cultural linguistics. http://wschulze.userweb.mwn.de/CL/CL/CL2.htm.Accessed 03 June 2017.

Schulze, I. (2014). Sprache als fait culturel: Studien zur Emergenz, Motiviertheit und Systematizitätdes Lexikons des Minderico (Portugal). Hamburg: Kovač. (Schriftenreihe Philologia, 191).

Seifart, F. (2013). AfBo: A world-wide survey of affix borrowing. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute forEvolutionary Anthropology. http://afbo.info. Accessed 03 Dec 2015.

Sidwell, P. (2009). Classifying the Austroasiatic languages: History and state of the art (LINCOMstudies in Asian linguistics, Vol. 76). München: LINCOM EUROPA.

Sidwell, Paul (2013). Southeast Asian mainland: Linguistic history. In: P. Bellwood & I. Ness(Eds.) The encyclopedia of global human migration (pp. 259–268). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

Siebenhütter, S. (2016). Raum-Konzeptualisierungen im südostasiatischen Areal – Laotisch, Thai,Khmer und Vietnamesisch. Dissertation, Faculty for Language- and Literature Sciences, LMUMunich.

Siebenhütter, S. (2017). A conceptual and semantic approach to the study of linguistic areas.Evidence from cultural words, semantic maps and spatial reference. In S. D. Brunn &R. Kehrein (Eds.), The changing world language map. Springer (referencing her other chapterin this volume).

Steinhauer, H. (2005). Colonial history and language policy in insular Southeast Asia andMadagascar. In A. Adelaar & N. P. Himmelmann (Eds.), The Austronesian languages of Asiaand Madagaskar (pp. 65–86). London u.a.: Routledge.

Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics (Volume I: Concept structuring systems (Language,speech, and communication)). Cambridge, [u.a.]: MIT Press.

Ungerer, F., & Schmid, H.-J. (Eds.). (2006). An introduction to cognitive linguistics (Learning aboutlanguage, 2. Aufl.). Harlow/Munich [u.a.]: Pearson Longman.

Villers, J. (1980). Südostasien vor der Kolonialzeit. Aus d. Engl. übers. Orig.-Ausg., 51. – 55.Tsd (Fischer-Weltgeschichte, 18) Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verl.

Wade, G. (2010). Southeast Asia in the 15th century. In G. Wade & S. Laichen (Eds.), SoutheastAsia in the fifteenth century. The China factor (pp. 3–43). Singapore/Aberdeen/Hong Kong:NUS Press; Hong Kong University Press.

Winker, G., & Degele, N. (2010). Intersektionalität. Zur Analyse sozialer Ungleichheiten(Sozialtheorie: Intro, 2., unveränd. Aufl.). Bielefeld: Transcript-Verl.

Sociocultural Influences on Linguistic Geography: Religion and Language in. . . 19