Source: CIA World Factbook, 2005 In this book, our goal is to understand how the language policies of various nation-states in Southeast Asia grapple with the challenge of modernity. Our focus will therefore be on language policies as these are explicitly articulated either in the form of constitutions or public proclamations made by political leaders. We do not RAPPA AND WEE: LANGUAGE POLICY AND MODERNITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 2 deny that language policies can be implicit (Spolsky, 2004: s) since ideologies about language are prevalent regardless of whether these lead to overt policy...