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Abstract
Over the last century, the small Malay Islamic Sultanate of Brunei Darussalam, on the northern coast of Borneo, has moved away from an oral tradition, to a print culture and towards mass literacy. Discovery of oil in the early part of the 20th century transformed the economic situation in the country, and led to major changes and developments in the country. This paper explores one of the major transformations in Brunei, the development of education and the rise of literacy. The introduction to the paper briefly describes the multilingual ecology of Brunei, an ecology which is much more complex than official discourses would suggest. The paper then provides an historical contextualisation of language and education discourses in Brunei, specifically the discourses around the promotion of dwibahasa (‘two languages’) in the education system, following independence in 1984, as well as literacy in two languages, Malay and English. The final part of the paper focuses on microethnographic analyses of classroom literacy practices, and these practices are linked to the broader sociopolitical and educational transformations in Brunei.