Saya

One of my UBD colleagues, Aznah, observed that she sometimes gets mistaken for a student by officials, and then they can be quite brusque in dealing with her. (I wish I looked young enough for people to mistake me for a student − but never mind.)

Another of my colleagues, Salbrina, said that the way she deals with a situation like this is to use the word saya ('I').

The way I interpret it (with some help from Aznah and Salbrina) is this: there are two first person singular pronouns in Brunei, the informal one aku and the more formal Standard Malay equivalent saya. By using saya, the speaker is indicating that she wants the interaction to be formal; and by exercising this choice, she is emphasising that she has the authority to determine whether the conversation should be formal or not. And this is why use of saya is effective in getting officials to show respect to a member of the academic staff at UBD. (It is, of course, a great pity that students are not shown the same respect; but that's another issue.)

It is interesting to see how the use of a single pronoun can influence an interaction in this way. But it is quite common in the languages of the world. English is unusual in having pronouns which do not generally indicate levels of formality or deference.