Singlish

Abstract: The increasing use of Singlish in the media, in early schooling and other everyday domains reflects its growing importance as a symbol of social identity and cohesion in Singapore. However, this trend runs counter to the country’s avowed economical goals of becoming a knowledge hub in the region, which it seeks to achieve by developing a highly skilled service sector that is proficient in (Standard) English. Thus, paradoxically, despite a new policy initiative to loosen their traditional tight grip on society in the interest of developing a nation of creative risk-takers, the authorities have recently launched the Speak Good English movement, spawning a slew of editorials, cartoons, skits and commercials in a vigorous attempt at generating awareness among the public of the need to promote the use of Standard English. This paper attempts to show that this move to stem the popularity of Singlish is yet another manifestation of the notion of “creative destruction,” currently being proposed as a strategy to improve the efficiency of corporate and industrial businesses in the country. “Creative destruction” entails the partial destruction of existing economic ideas and structures which rapidly obsolesce with the emergence of new ones. Drawing a parallel with the Speak Mandarin campaign, which has successfully resulted in the dispersal of the local Chinese dialects, the paper argues that this attempt to replace Singlish by Standard English, while throwing up valid issues of social identity and cohesiveness, which are prone to get subsumed by the more urgent pragmatic and economic rationalizations proffered, can then be seen as a triumph of the relentless, hegemonic forces of globalization.

Abstract: The concept ‘English-knowing bilingualism’ is particularly worthy of exploration in Singapore because of the rapidly evolving special nature of ‘bilingualism’ there and the penetration of English into several domains. The discourse of ‘English-knowing bilinguals’ in two main domains—at home and at school—is examined in terms of the range and depth of functional uses previously suggested. The discourse is explained with a new model, that of ‘expanding triangles’ involving an increasing English-speaking base population and two distinctive English speech clines in Singapore, graded on formality and proficiency considerations. The instrumental, regulative and interpersonal functions of language call for the subvariety of English found at the lower ends of the English speech clines in Singapore. The representative or informative and the heuristic functions have been served by the subvariety at the upper ends of the speech clines. The imaginative or innovative function has been traditionally served by a high variety of English but the lower varieties are also increasingly being used in codified texts such as poems, short stories and plays by Singaporean writers. The concept of expanding triangles in English-knowing bilingualism is detailed in this paper to enable some comprehension of an otherwise haphazard and infinite array of linguistic diversity involving the functions of English in Singapore.

Abstract: Although studies involving linguistic human rights (LHRs) have focused at length on cases of inter-language discrimination, much less attention has been given to intra-language discrimination (Blommaert 2001a; Skutnabb-Kangas et al. 2001). This paper highlights a number of theoretical issues that the LHRs framework needs to deal with once intra-language discrimination is seriously considered. It does this by analysing the case of English in Singapore, and in particular, debates surrounding the colloquial variety of Singapore English (known as Singlish). Supporters of Singlish are concerned with negotiating a space for the variety, especially in response to the Singapore government's Speak Good English Movement, which seems intent on eliminating Singlish. The implications of the Singlish case raise some very fundamental questions about LHRs, such as whether LHRs can be coherently attributed to groups (rather than just individuals), and whether LHRs can, in fact, be waived. The latter part of the paper considers these questions by drawing upon the work of scholars who have approached the issue of human rights from a more philosophical perspective (Donnelly 1989; Nickel 1987).