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 formulations or not. However, our interest is in the attempts by Southeast-Asian nation-states to maintaidlegitimize particular 'nationalist imaginations' (cf. Anderson, 1991), and such attempts are best seen in the kinds of explicit declarations made by agents of the state. It seems clear that our objective includes the question of how these nation-states manage the spread of the English language, since English is often seen as the language of modernity par excellence (May, 2001). This volume considers the ways in which modernity challenges and informs the language policies of various Southeast Asians nations.  Using case studies from Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, the authors examine language policies that are explicitly articulated either in the form of State constitutions or in the public proclamations of political leaders.  Particular attention is paid to the ways in which English, often seen as the language of globalization, impacts the status of indigenous Southeast Asian language. Language Policy and Modernity in Southeast Asia will be of interest to researchers in both language policy and contemporary political theory.