This art icle was downloaded by: [ Universit y of Macau Library] On: 23 April 2015, At : 17: 39 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK Critical Discourse Studies Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions f or aut hors and subscript ion inf ormat ion: ht t p: / / www. t andf online. com/ loi/ rcds20 INEQUALITY AS MERITOCRACY Nadira Talib & Richard Fit zgerald Published online: 23 Apr 2015. 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Term s & Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 Condit ions of access and use can be found at ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm sand- condit ions Critical Discourse Studies, 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2015.1034740 INEQUALITY AS MERITOCRACY The use of the metaphor of diversity and the value of inequality within Singapore’s meritocratic education system Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 Nadira Talib and Richard Fitzgerald This paper examines the way the metaphor of diversity provides a moral basis for inequality in Singapore’s meritocratic education system. Based upon a collection of policy texts from 2002 to 2012, our analysis illustrates that the metaphor of diversity in policy texts provides ways for systemic discrimination within the education system and that this inequality is given legitimacy as necessary through various moral discourses. The paper employs a critical discourse analysis that draws upon the relationship between language analysis, the philosophical study of valuation, and political economy as a composite formulation of values to highlight the ways in which an argument for inequality permeates policy from within a frame of meritocracy, and to analyse how changes associated with new modes of value determination serve to legitimize inequality. KEYWORDS critical discourse analysis; valuation; political economy; education policy; Nietzsche; Foucault; philosophy; metaphor; meritocracy; Singapore Introduction After Singapore gained independence in 1965, the People’s Action Party government began to examine various aspects of the education system, identifying major weaknesses in the late 1960s and 1970s (Ng, 2008, p. 114). Of major concerns were the ‘problems of ineffective curriculum, low literacy levels and high resource wastage in the system’ (Ng, 2008, p. 114). Recommendations of the review of the educational system resulted in the 1979 Goh report from which various educational policies emanate, including an early streaming system in schools (Rahim, 1998, p. 121). At the same time, within a multiracial society that could not afford ethnic discrimination, the government sought to enshrine meritocracy as a core value and promote advancement by merit (Gopinathan, 1996, p. 81). Popularized in Young’s The rise of the meritocracy (1958), the two defining features of meritocratic systems are competition and equality of opportunity. Within the context of educational meritocracy, official statistics generated by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, reveal that Malays have sustained low academic achievement from 1987 to 2011 (Ministry of Education [MOE], 1997, 2012a). This raises the possibility of a politically induced systemic inequality as a point of investigation. Furthermore, whilst researchers (Gopinathan, 1996, p. 82; Rahim, 1998, pp. 117–118; Sharpe & Gopinathan, 2002, p. 151; Soon, 1988, p. 19; Tan, 2008, p. 10) point to the role of streaming in sustaining inequality, the relationship between this system and the reproduction of inequality, particularly through education policy, remains unclear. That is, it is not clear how ability-based streaming is used as a mechanism through which inequality of © 2015 Taylor & Francis Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 2 NADIRA TALIB & RICHARD FITZGERALD educational opportunities is established, transmitted, or maintained. In this paper we set out to examine such policy discourse by tracing the historical sequence that has gone unbroken for 34 years from the initiation of streaming in 1979 to 2012. By tracing the flow of concepts of value in various policy texts, we examine the ways in which inequality is put into policy discourse. In adopting a critical discourse analysis (CDA) perspective, the research is located in exposing forms of ‘power’, of how power works through methods or techniques, or conditions, and the discourses it permeates in order to reach individual modes of subjectivity. Here though we are not so much interested in determining whether these discursive productions and these effects of power formulate truths (about the subject or social conditions), or on the contrary falsehoods designed to conceal that truth, but rather to bring out the discursive ‘will to knowledge’ that serves as both their support and their instrument (cf. Foucault, 1981, pp. 11–12) in legitimizing unequal institutional practices. This will to knowledge is expounded in the form of values and valuation, revaluation, and transvaluation (Nietzsche, 1967). This paper is concerned with the unfolding of the will to power, and simultaneously, the production of being of ideology of economic growth (cf. Heidegger, 2003, p. 141). The discussion in this paper is part of a wider project examining the conditions that have legitimized systemic inequality within Singapore’s education policies. The focus of the wider project examines Singapore Government policy documents and speeches from 1979 to 2012 to examine how specific values drive what is interpreted as desirable educational outcomes. Within this broader research context, this paper provides an initial discussion of how specific values and outcomes are made desirable within these policies. Towards this end, a historical analysis of changes affecting the 1979 streaming policy is undertaken using a selection of reports and a speech from the period 2002–2012. These are the 2002 Report of the Junior College/Upper Secondary Education Review Committee, the 2003 policy speech by Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, former Acting Minister for Education, with the theme, The next phase in education: Innovation and enterprise, and the 2012b Report of the Committee on University Education Pathways Beyond 2015 (CUEP): Greater diversity, more opportunities: Final report. Through our analysis of the data we examine how specific values raised in the texts give rise to forms of morality and desirable outcomes, in terms of how the world is organized and how one should live in it. We therefore see this paper as contributing to the process of putting the philosophical study of valuation to work in developing CDA as a theory and method to enhance its capacity to address inequality. The study of metaphors in relation to neo-liberal discourse has always been part of CDA studies (Fairclough, 1999, pp. 71–74; Fairclough & Fairclough, 2012, pp. 170–172). In this paper, we propose and employ the notion of ‘Metaphorical realism’, in order to focus attention on how the metaphor of diversity does ideologizing work to varying degrees, in the service of contributing to and sustaining systemic educational inequality through both micro and macro valuations. In its philosophical dimension, ‘Metaphoric realism’ proposes that the metaphor of diversity is an apparatus of power, where power includes forms of valuations that serve to turn idealized and politically induced images of the system into multiple organizations INEQUALITY AS MERITOCRACY of truths that support inequality. These truths shape and retain competing economic imaginaries and abstractions. Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 Political Economy as an Integrated Formulation and Complex System of Values The policy texts examined in this research reflect highly condensed, abstract, and arbitrary processes. They argue for change to be driven exclusively by changing political economies as a simple and certain way forward, executed through a high level of interdependence of different evaluations to provide coherence (Lemke, 1998, p. 43). In setting out to explore how these e/valuations are foregrounded in policy texts, we develop a threelayered analysis in order to bridge the complexity of contradictions that are constantly on the borders of the arbitrary in policy discourse and to examine how the policy texts cohere by drawing on the same value system that is connected at these three levels. This analysis provides an understanding on how inequality is inbuilt into the education system through the arbitrariness of the argumentative process in policy discourses which press forward to unity. For our purposes, here we draw on Graham and Luke’s (2011) definition of political economy as meaning how ‘values of all kinds are produced, distributed, exchanged, and exercised politically’ (p. 105). Here though, for the purposes of this paper, we argue that the perceived desirability of a process or a proposed outcome is (albeit not perfectly) synonymous to its ‘value’ (Graham, 2001, p. 764, 2002, p. 228). By this, desirability is key in evaluative meaning but it is mutually mediated by the evaluative dimension(s) of necessity/importance/significance in the process of propagation (Graham, 2002, p. 245, 2007, p. 121; italics added). As such, the analysis explores by what measure this value is determined (Nietzsche, 1967, p. 285) and the possible positions of desirability in relation to discourse that function as the formative elements for emergent forms of moralities (cf. Foucault, 1972, p. 75). Philosophical Study of Valuation and Analytical Framework In tracing the discursive developments or shifts of the metaphor of diversity in relation to policy discourse, and to expound the relation of the philosophical study of valuation to policy, the study also draws on Foucault’s and Nietzsche’s philosophical perspectives, as well as approaches to CDA. Drawing on Foucault provides an understanding of how policy narratives are constituted and reconstituted as truths in the multiple layers of the ‘games of truth’ (Foucault, 1984, p. 3). Binding themselves together into one single organic world of truth, these narratives make the overarching/ultimate conventional truth of economic growth as the only way forward possible. To understand how this truth is substantiated, we also draw on Nietzsche’s work on revaluation and transvaluation of values. Within the discursive work of games of truth, valuation is the essence of truth (cf. Nietzsche, 1967, p. 275). Valuation and truth condition each other reciprocally, and thus always exist at the same time (cf. Schopenhauer, 1907, p. 111). Furthermore, policy narratives are ‘truths’ only in the sense that they are conditions of life for us (Nietzsche, 1967, p. 278): asserting, in this instance, 3 Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 4 NADIRA TALIB & RICHARD FITZGERALD economic growth is the (only) way forward as a conditional Truth. As such, we argue that this essence is not constitutional but stands in a conditioning–conditioned relationship to a form of structured Truth based upon the principle of contradiction where each element of separated ‘truth’ is necessarily together because they are one (cf. Schopenhauer, 1907, p. 106). While Foucault and Nietzsche provide philosophical perspectives, we use CDA as a means through which the games of truth and valuations are laid bare for examination. The strength of CDA is that it not only makes transparent the relations between discourses of truth, but also makes possible the synthesis of the games of truth and valuations that create and support inequality within the system. These truths in themselves have no value: one must first be in possession of the (economic) idealism or ideology from which these truths derive their value or non-value (cf. Nietzsche, 1967, p. 141). Hence, drawing on these concepts, we set out to show how these truths derive their value discursively. Combined, the theoretical and corresponding methodological tools outlined here provide a critical, linguistic, propositional method of analysis, the main purpose of which is to challenge the taken-for-grantedness that economic growth is the (only) way forward, and examine how this ideology dominates morality. As such, in passing from the abstract to the concrete, our approach to CDA is both method-driven and theoretically framed: both theory and method work to inform each other, and are inseparable as the process of methodological shaping finds their form through the analysis. Method To explore how micro and macro values are made manifest through the use of metaphors, we draw particularly on Fairclough’s (1992, 1999, 2001) work on the relationship between discourse and political economy, on how macro-neo-liberal economic discourse is recontextualized within the micro-individual level in the field of education. These findings relate to the mode of governance and the ethics of labour appropriation, as illustrated by employing Mulderrig’s (2007) approach in which responsibility (towards self and others) becomes central to economic growth. In order to make sense of the need for structural changes and the constitution of commodifiable knowledge, the analysis also draws on Graham’s (2001, 2002, 2005), Lemke’s (1998), and Halliday’s (1994) work for analysing value-orientation-based relations among metaphors and their roles in shaping and (re)shaping political economies. These resources are employed to explore the phenomenon of moral evaluation and propagation, that is, legitimation by (often very oblique and submerged) reference to an abstract ‘value’ system of regularity – a master system which holds together conflicting elements. In doing so, the analysis highlights the rules of formation or conditions of existence for e/valuation (cf. Foucault, 1972, pp. 40–45). We approach the data through a genealogical analytic approach of the 2002–2012 policies, drawing on what Foucault (1972) terms as ‘the circumstances of repetition’ of discourse that make possible the pervasiveness of the metaphor (p. 221). This is an allusion to the doctrine of eternal recurrence, which is premised in enduring and regularly recurring policy metaphors (Foucault, 1972, p. 60; cf. Nietzsche, 1967, pp. 296–298, 1974, pp. 168, INEQUALITY AS MERITOCRACY Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 273–274). This approach adds a crucial historical dimension to the positionality and development of policy discourses as conditional upon this metaphor. It is important to note, however, that we do not set out to provide a full mapping of discursive transformations in relation to the policy metaphor of diversity. Rather, we focus on a selection of policy extracts to illustrate how this metaphor is deeply connected to policy construction and the legitimation of neo-liberalism and individual/social responsibility that serves to reify and secure unequal access. In doing so, this historical inquiry serves to grasp the points where change is constructed as possible and desirable in policy discourse (Foucault, 1995, p. 316). Architectural Grid of Analysis to Examine Valuation as Power: Micro– Meso–Macro Movements In the following section, we outline a multi-movement architecture for the analysis introducing and explaining what we mean by micro, meso, and macro in terms of a conception of the political economy as a complex network system of values. This analytic structure draws on two concepts: Foucault’s notion of micro capillaries of power and valuation as a form of power. By variously using micro, meso, and macro, we set out to trace the evolution of valuations drawing on the metaphor of diversity and, in the process, propose the esoteric dimensions of this metaphor. Foucault (1980) asserts that power must be understood as ‘capillary’, that it must be analysed at its extremities (p. 96). By this, Foucault argues that power ‘does not emanate from some central source but circulates throughout the entire social body down even to the tiniest and apparently most trivial extremities’ (cf. Foucault, 1980, pp. 131–132; Fraser, 1981, p. 278). Thus, institutional power is understood as functioning at the capillary level via a plurality of micro-practices in policy discourse (Fraser, 1981, p. 279) and thus requires an analytical framework that examines ‘micro techniques’ through discursive practices. These micro techniques are integrated into what Foucault (1980) calls ‘global or macro-strategies of domination’ (p. 142) that concern the (re)production of life in modern society (Fraser, 1981, pp. 276–278). It is important to note that both ‘micro techniques’ and ‘macro strategies’ are not constituted as a dichotomy. They are interchangeable and permeable. What Foucault provides is the basis for discourse-analytic investigation of relations between the micro and the macro. However, he did not make explicit the transition or movement between the micro and the macro or provide a grid of analysis by which the apparatuses of power which underpin and drive these relations can be empirically examined. Here then we develop and employ a micro–meso–macro architecture/trajectory in order to not only elucidate the extremities of power using a historical framework (Foucault, 1980, p. 117), but also untangle and determine the global or macro strategies of domination through micro discursive practices. Without reducing them to finite relations, the meso level serves to make explicit the transitional link between the micro and the macro, and to comprehend organic change. The analytical structure is built upon the meso level, where the micro and macro are two perspectives that reveal the structural aspects of the changes in inequality that draws on the utilization of the metaphor. The most immediate benefit of 5 Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 6 NADIRA TALIB & RICHARD FITZGERALD this framework is its capacity to synthesize disparate parts of evolutionary policy discourse into a unified framework, enabling us, for example, to connect valuations with institutional coordination and change. By employing this architectural grid, we examine what we have termed ‘Metaphorical realism’ as a micro movement within which the metaphor of diversity acts as a form of translatable micro-power. As discussed in more depth in the following, this micro movement provides the analytic themes for subsequent meso and macro movements in relation to the utilization of the metaphor. Through this process, a model of power that draws on a dispersed network of metaphorical apparatuses within these three layers emerges (Foucault, 1980, p. 71). Within this study, the defining aspect of the metaphorical apparatuses as an exercise of power is their grouping of heterogeneous elements of games of truths and valuations into a common philosophical network of desirability. Here then we propose that the metaphor of diversity, as an apparatus of power, incites the development of productive forces characteristic of neo-liberalism which advocate support for competition, de/regulation, and market economies. Power as ‘Movements’ To further explicate this notion of heterogeneity, Foucault (1980) argues that ‘in order for there to be a movement (of power relations) from above to below there has to be a capillarity from below to above at the same time’ (pp. 200–201). Within the context of this research, micro–meso–macro themes are conceptualized as ‘movements’ to reflect the mobile, circulatory workings of power through metaphorical apparatuses as an open, more-or-less coordinated cluster of relations (Foucault, 1980, pp. 131, 199). Hence, through the notion of ‘movement’, this analytic framework offers a more fluid, explicit approach to the interpretation of and the interplay between micro techniques and macro strategies that supports Foucault’s argument that ‘power is everywhere’ (Foucault, 1981, p. 93). In other words, a movement is a heterogeneous moral phenomenon and not wedded to limited categories. Further, for our purposes, ‘Metaphoric realism’, as a micro discursive practice, is conceptualized as ‘movement’ to reflect the circulatory workings of internal power mechanisms of policy discourse. In this way the metaphor is a movement and also facilities movement such that the analysis examines how the metaphor of diversity transmits and puts in motion relations of domination through its successive discursive transformations (cf. Foucault, 1980, pp. 95–96). The meso theme that emerges from the analysis of the micro analysis provides the theme for the subsequent macro analysis. In so doing, the analysis shows how the micro discursive practices can provide a subsequent analysis in understanding, and exploring, how inequality is re(produced) at the macro level. As illustrated throughout the analysis, the connections and extensions of micro and macro valuations delineate general conditions of domination, and this domination is organized into a more-or-less coherent and unitary strategic form of ideology (cf. Foucault, 1980, p. 142). Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 INEQUALITY AS MERITOCRACY Each level of these metaphorical micro–meso–macro movements contains the forms of its earlier states of existence. By this we mean that the trans-substantial motion in the form of temporal metaphorical transfers (Graham, 2001, p. 770, 2005, p. 123; Lemke, 1998, p. 45) among evaluative dimensions continues throughout all stages, altogether, and all at once integrated. Working together, they contribute to the constant becoming, internal transformation, streaming towards the continuous intensification, and being of the ideology of economic growth (Nasr, 1996, p. 649; cf. Nietzsche, 1909, p. 109). As such, while a ‘movement’ is self-contained as a distinct part in each of the micro–meso– macro analytical sections, these three movements are interrelated thematically, such that even the individual movements exert a cumulative effect. What is also important to note is that although these metaphorical elements exist in one realm, and though they may interact, they are not related causally. The idea of causal sequence and linear determinism are replaced by the notion of metaphorical superfluidity that illuminates the concept of conditionality where each lives in an intrinsic movement of its own that gives way and converges to a system of value regularity. Hence, movement also indicates the transfer of a particular metaphor with a certain power from a particular extract to another, and for that reason the (neo-liberal) metaphor of diversity, as a micro-mechanism of power, can also act as the vehicle for transmitting a wider power that serves to enlarge and maximize the effects of (State) power (cf. Foucault, 1980, pp. 72–73, 101). From the above theoretical and methodological grounding, we now move to the analysis of the metaphor of ‘diversity’ to examine the way ‘diversity’ legitimizes privileged access for exceptional achievement. Micro–Meso Movement: Diverse Pathways In the following analysis from the 2003 policy speech, we examine the way the metaphor of diversity appears in this single text in such a way to build rationalities for privileged talent access through the ethical–political discourse of ‘opportunity’. The analysis of this single section illustrates how this metaphor can be seen moving through and between the micro and meso discourses of ‘ideological’ in the sense that it is ideologizing economic-material rationalities to provide legitimacy and cover for the consolidation and extension of asymmetries of knowledge access through not only institutional changes, but also a shift in cultures. Extract 1 is from a policy speech by the former Acting Minister for Education in which he mounts an argument that it is in ‘our’ interests that talents should get privileged access to knowledge because that is how ‘they’ create more jobs for the rest of ‘us’. In order to distil this construction of the narrative, the analysis focuses on the way in which he actualizes some pedagogical access and privileged access to knowledge for ‘diverse talents’ (line 1) and ‘Singaporeans who are exceptional in their own way’ (line 5) by drawing on the metaphor of ‘diverse’. Further on we examine how this ethical practice is implicated in the nexus of contractual discourse of ‘common social responsibility’ and the ethical–political discourse of ‘opportunity’. 7 8 NADIRA TALIB & RICHARD FITZGERALD Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 Extract 1. 2003 speech by former Acting Minister for Education, Shanmugaratnam Year Lines 2003 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Extract In our next phase of development, we will need more diverse talents, and Singaporeans of different moulds. We need a culture that respects exceptional achievement, whether in science research, in business, the professions, the arts and other areas of life. Only if we nurture Singaporeans who are exceptional in their own way, can we be the natural hub for talent and enterprise from all over the world, and become one of the leading cities in Asia. This is the way in which we can hold our own against other major cities and grow opportunities for all Singaporeans. (Shanmugaratnam, 2003, More diverse and flexible paths) We are therefore creating more diverse pathways, starting with the secondary school and junior college system, where we are opening up to integrated programme schools, various specialist schools and a few private schools, and to mainstream schools who wish to adopt an alternative curriculum. (Shanmugaratnam, 2003, More diverse and flexible paths) In this extract, ‘diverse talents’ (line 1) and ‘diverse pathways’ (line 10) are terms that are ideologically contested and thus become the focus of ideological struggle (Fairclough, 2001, p. 95) in the belief that ‘our next phase of development’ (line 1) should be exercised in the interest of talent investment. Here then the extract centres on the growth and development of ‘talents’ (line 1) through the educational institution, at the expense of academic equality, evident in the vocabulary for these meanings: ‘culture that respects exceptional achievement’ (lines 2–3), ‘nurture Singaporeans who are exceptional’ (line 5), ‘hold our own against other major cities’ (line 8), and ‘grow opportunities for all Singaporeans’ (lines 8–9). More specifically, this ideological struggle draws upon pre-existing classification schemes that are in part systems of evaluation (Fairclough, 2001, pp. 96–98). One is a scheme for the development of talent, ‘We need a culture that respects exceptional achievement’ (lines 2–3), which is constructed on the belief that talents should be nurtured even if such a policy creates a society of differential access to resources, that is, non-meritocratic. The second scheme is for ways of evaluating the culture of respecting exceptional achievement within the Singapore context; it is implicit in the collocations ‘hold our own against other major cities’ (line 8) and ‘grow opportunities for all Singaporeans’ (lines 8–9). The complete verbal phrase here is an idiom: grow opportunities for all Singaporeans, where ‘opportunities’ marks the desirability and ‘all’ amplifies its degree. Here, then the text proposes that there is a general acceptance that a standard discourse of meritocratic-based system of equal opportunity is in need of challenge through it having a reactionary effect of failing to engage with national and economic needs. As Fairclough (2001) indicates, in both cases, this classification scheme constitutes a particular way of projecting some aspect of educational–ethical realities that are built upon a particular representation of ‘exceptional achievement’ in that reality (p. 98). If a diagnosis of meritocratic-based education is incurably problematic in meeting the national and economic needs of all Singaporeans (lines 8–9), then the entire strategy of providing equal opportunities in education is deeply impaired. What follows from this argument is that a Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 INEQUALITY AS MERITOCRACY system which nurtures diverse talents (lines 1–2), and therefore the creation of diverse pathways (line 10) is necessary for the pursuit of economic growth and for becoming one of Asia’s ‘leading’ cities (line 7). Further, greater attention to economic policy concerns is found in terms such as ‘development’ (line 1), ‘diverse’ (line 1), ‘exceptional’ (lines 3, 5), ‘hub’ (line 6), ‘talent’ (lines 1, 6), ‘enterprise’ (line 6), ‘leading’ (line 7), and ‘opportunities’ (line 9). This entails rendering diverse educational practices amenable to competition as a condition of progress. This form of economic model stresses competition and is motivated by profit through inequality. Within this instance, ethics is paradoxically redefined as the right to succeed in an open competition by enabling talent investment (Mulderrig, 2007, p. 143). In order to strengthen the argument for greater inequality, the extract makes categorical predictions and expert assertions about economic possibilities in the use of can (Fairclough, 1992, p. 173). That is, ‘Only if we nurture Singaporeans who are exceptional in their own way, can we be the natural hub for talent and enterprise from all over the world, and become one of the leading cities in Asia’ (lines 4–7). Here, even though the use of can expresses tentative possibility, something that is possible, this lexical choice implies doubt that Singapore will be a hub for talent and enterprise unless conditions are met. The conjunction ‘therefore’ (line 10) links the two paragraphs in terms of purpose or reason – the message that comes across is one of reassurance: more diverse pathways are there for a good reason (Fairclough, 1992, pp. 171–172). Moreover, inequality is tied to not only competitiveness but also ethical practices. In order to ‘become one of the leading cities in Asia’ (line 7) acknowledges that countries and regions in Asia are in competition for growth in measures of well-being, that is, ‘science research, in business, the professions, the arts and other areas of life’ (lines 3–4), and that inequality between countries is part of the economic order. Success in this order is realized by winning economic competition. Drawing on Foucault’s (1967) analysis, between the ‘non-talent’ and the ‘talent’, an implicit system of obligation is established: the ‘nontalent’ has the right to have employment opportunities, but they must accept the moral constraint of confinement in being denied privileged access to knowledge (p. 48). It is in this context that economic and moral demands for confinement are formulated (cf. Foucault, 1967, p. 57), and developed within an institutional character through the legitimization of unequal access. In this form of globalization then, there is nothing morally wrong in creating more diverse pathways that support and increase inequality. The grounds for the claim that Singapore will need diverse talents of different moulds (lines 1–2) contain a set of assumed goods in the economic system: through ‘integrated programme schools’ (line 12), ‘various specialist schools’ (line 12), ‘few private schools’ (lines 12–13), and ‘mainstream schools with alternative curriculum’ (lines 13–14). These schools are implicated as a means to achieving economic growth and promote conformity to the logic of the need for more diverse pathways (line 10) in the ‘next phase of development’ (line 1). Hence, ‘opening up’ (line 11) the system ‘to nurture Singaporeans who are exceptional’ (line 5) is desirable, important, and therefore morally necessary. Moreover as all countries are led to being ‘competitive’, as a virtue, then its necessary outcome, inequality, cannot be a moral wrong; nor is there a principled way within this economic system of identifying a point at which inequality becomes so extreme as to be morally wrong. And since inequality may mean that certain countries, regions, and 9 10 NADIRA TALIB & RICHARD FITZGERALD people will benefit and some will lose from this economic system, it cannot be morally wrong for the system to benefit some while impairing others. Taking away educational opportunities from some will allow improved ‘opportunities for all’ (lines 8–9). Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 Enterprise Culture and Transvaluation of the Macro Value of Competitiveness The equivalence between country, nation, and full employability is tied with a positive construction of competition. The discourse of this policy extract is unquestionably oriented towards changing the nation’s attitudes and behaviours (Graham, 2001, p. 766). In his speech, Shanmugaratnam indicated the need for a culture that respects exceptional achievement (lines 2–3). In this there is an attempt to revalue such a culture that respects exceptional achievement positively (lines 2–3) by the government aiming to identify and equip some people to succeed in the next phase of development. Transforming the culture is a part of that – through establishing positive attitudes towards nurturing those with identified talent, for instance, so that people accept unequal educational access. The orientation towards ‘development’ (line 1) foregrounds the future orientation of education policy (Graham, 2005, p. 123). Development is presented as a substance rather than a process, because it compresses an enormous amount of social and technological processes into a noun (‘whether in science research, in business, the professions, the arts and other areas of life’, lines 3–4). In this context, development is defined by particular attributes: it is about the transformation of society and involves people changing how they think (lines 2–3). Further, it is an irrealis substance, a potentiality that can only emerge at some time in the future, and only then if people adopt certain behaviours, and think in new ways. There is an overt idealist philosophy of desirability (cf. Nietzsche, 1967, p. 181) underpinning the ideology of economic growth here: people must first change how they think and what they believe for development to happen. According to this logic, underdevelopment is thus a function of people thinking incorrectly (i.e. a culture that respects equal, rather than diverse, opportunities for achievement). A moral discourse is also combined with contractual-conditional discourse of ‘only if’ (line 4), ‘can we be’ (lines 5–6), and ‘This is the way in which’ (lines 7–8). Such expressions draw attention to assumed incompatibilities while at the same time denying them – they go against the expectations of a conventional egalitarian discourse while at the same time conflating it through such phrases as growing opportunities for all (lines 8–9). The principle of opportunities for all is extended through policy discourse to making all success (individual and national) conditional on the implementation of essential reforms. Through this, the meaning of ethics shifts through the omission of equality, in the sense of equality of educational access and outcomes and its substitution by opportunities. Here then the ideology which underlies policies for ‘inclusion through opportunities’ relies upon the ideology of an irretrievable slide into division, and thus sustaining a regime of equal opportunity is constructed as a way that will not meet the diverse national and economic needs of the nation (lines 5–7). The INEQUALITY AS MERITOCRACY notion of talent investment as a form of ethical practice in which the broader society is implicated is explored further in the following section. Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 Meso–Macro Movement: Diverse Pathways Having examined the work of the metaphor of diversity as it moves within and through the micro–meso level of a single text, we now turn our attention to this theme within and through the meso–macro level of policy as it appears and reappears in the 2002 and 2012 policy documents. In doing this we highlight the way the theme of diverse pathways for exceptional achievement evolves in a policy discourse around the necessity of diversity for nurturing talent in curriculum design needed for the future economy. Drawing on Graham (2001) in the following extract, the effects of evaluative transfers from claims of warrantability, to the implied necessity for certain actions (pp. 770–771) are made apparent. Extract 2. MOE (2002), Report of the Junior College/Upper Secondary Education Review Committee Year Lines 2002 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Extract The Committee’s proposal for the JC curriculum to place greater emphasis on thinking and process skills addresses the need for a more innovative outlook and greater adaptability among our young. By providing a stronger multi-disciplinary grounding, the new JC curriculum will also widen the intellectual horizons of our students. The introduction of greater diversity into the education landscape recommended by the Committee is also timely. The move towards a less uniform system will open up new options and opportunities to cater to the different talents and strengths of our students. Greater diversity will also be a source of strength and innovative ideas for the education system. (MOE, 2002, Report of the Junior College/Upper Secondary education review committee, address to Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry & Education and Chairman, Junior College/ Upper Secondary Education Review Committee by Radm Teo Chee Hean, Minister for Education, n.p.) Following Graham (2007, p. 121), Extract 2 is concerned with propagating the significance of ‘a less uniform system’ (lines 7–8) by proposing that an institutional structure that embraces differences not only strengthens the system but also supports innovation. The evaluative semantic of significance suggests that there are two forms being evaluated in this extract: a less uniform system is both a proposition – statements that can be tested for truth, and a proposal – a request for action. A high-modality truth claim is being made for a curriculum imperative which ‘addresses the need for a more innovative outlook and greater adaptability among our young’ (lines 2–3), the desirability of which is presupposed. According to Lemke’s (1998) rank-shifted probe, various evaluative dimensions of the proposition become condensed in these processes (p. 37): the statement might sensibly be expanded as it is necessary, important, and 11 Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 12 NADIRA TALIB & RICHARD FITZGERALD obvious for the Junior College curriculum to ‘place greater emphasis on thinking and process skills’ (lines 1–2). An evaluation for warrantability and truth can be construed because not only is the whole text agentless, but an explicitly evaluative (axiological) justification for the proposition is also given, which is also cast as a statement of fact: ‘will also widen the intellectual horizons of our students’ (lines 4–5). While the predicate of truth would seem to belong to the broader semantic domain of warrantability, in this context it is an evaluation for desirable outcomes which the text deploys to propagate the significance of a ‘less uniform system’ (lines 7–8). This is further evidenced when the text deploys the resource of significance that semantically embraces necessity by claiming that this system is responsible for opening up new options and opportunities (line 8). The evaluative chain deployed here is underpinned by the assumption that students from the JC have different talents and strengths, and that it is therefore important to institutionally regulate their intellectual development. This importance feeds into the necessity of systemic change. The phrasal verb open up (line 8) appears to function as a material process, a singular doing (Halliday, 1994 as cited in Graham, 2001, p. 768). This process metaphor relates to two highly condensed, extremely abstract nominal groups that compress myriad, complex, and massive processes into static things: ‘new options and opportunities to cater to the different talents and strengths of our students’ (lines 8–9). Following Graham (2001), the metaphorical scope of ‘open up’ can be substituted by other processes that retain the semantic sense of the proposition (pp.768–769): ‘The move towards a less uniform system will open up’; (i.e. promises, offers, brings, or creates) ‘new options and opportunities’ (lines 7–8). These choices that retain the original semantic sense of the proposition would occupy positions on the verbal [promises]; abstract-material [offers]; and material [brings, creates] planes of Halliday’s (1994) process typology. In other words, process metaphor lets an abstract and highly compressed nominal group actor-like thing ‘The move towards a less uniform system’ (lines 7–8) grammatically loose by having for its object an irrealis, highly compressed nominal group, ‘open up’ (line 8). The evaluative dimension of factuality is further expressed in positive, high-degree evaluations for probability or warrantability; that is, that this ‘Greater diversity will also be a source of strength and innovative ideas for the education system’ (lines 9–10) (Graham, 2001, p. 770). There is clearly a colonizing imperative in all of this as opening up the system ‘to cater to the different talents and strengths of our students’ (lines 8–9) is desirable, important, and therefore necessary as a source of strength for the education system (line 10). That is to say, new options and opportunities are desirable traits that will enable new kinds of education. Following on from the 2002 extract, in the following two extracts taken from the 2012 policy documents, there emerges a struggle to restructure hegemony within the discourse of higher education through the transvaluation of the macro values of market economies and de/regulation. Firstly, in Extract 3 an emphasis on ‘diverse workforce profile’ (lines 5–6) is central to the argument in providing privileged access for a certain segment of the student population, legitimizing increasing inequality for access to higher education. INEQUALITY AS MERITOCRACY Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 Extract 3. MOE (2012b), Report of the Committee on University Education Pathways Beyond 2015 (CUEP): Greater diversity, more opportunities: Final report Year Lines 2012b 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Text An increase in publicly-funded degree places will cater not only to a growing number of students who are able to benefit from a degree education, but also to students from a broader range of educational backgrounds, with different aspirations, abilities and learning preferences. This will also better meet industry’s requirements for a diverse workforce profile. In providing Singaporeans with more opportunities to fully actualise their potential, we will enable them to contribute to the country’s development and provide them with a greater stake in the nation’s success. (MOE, 2012b, Executive summary, Rationale for the Review, p. 4) Here, the main theme of the paragraph draws attention to the needs of market economies. Focusing on this part of this extract, even though the use of the adverbial ‘but’ (line 3) (Asher, Benamara, & Mathieu, 2009, pp. 284–287) acknowledges that a degree education will benefit a growing number of students, practical considerations involving the ‘industry’s requirements for a diverse workforce profile’ (lines 5–6) within the context of market economies left policy-makers with no other choice but to provide certain segments of the student population ‘from a broader range of educational backgrounds, with different aspirations, abilities and learning preferences’ (lines 3–4) with ‘more opportunities … to contribute to the country’s development’ (lines 6–8). The use of the modal verb ‘will’ in ‘This will also better meet industry’s requirements’ (line 5) and ‘we will enable them to contribute to the country’s development’ (lines 7–8) gives the suggestion a validity and a high-degree evaluation for warrantability that are synonymous with almost a status of fact. Providing a certain segment of Singaporeans with ‘more opportunities’ (line 6) is desirable, important, and therefore necessary ‘to contribute to the country’s development’ (line 7). The argument signals an ideological struggle and the true situation brought about by the ‘industry’s requirements for a diverse workforce profile’ (lines 5–6). The objective is to argue that the public cannot expect an increase in publicly funded degree places to cater to a growing number of students, for the industry’s requirements would only negate that pursuit. As such, the society that practices this system of allowing an indiscriminate increase in publicly funded degree places that does not cater to ‘students from a broader range of educational backgrounds … preferences’ (lines 3–4) is misguided of reality. This argument hence establishes a common ideological ground in which streaming students’ educational opportunities and outcomes through diverse pathways is conceptualized as being highly desirable within the context of industry’s requirements and where the absence of such a regulation may result in severe consequences to national interests, in ensuring the ‘country’s development’ (lines 7–8) and the ‘nation’s success’ (line 8). Here then we see the interrelatedness between the metaphor of diversity for realizing opportunities and the function of policy expressed as necessity: to better position Singapore for economic success. This argument is further reinforced in the following extract 13 14 NADIRA TALIB & RICHARD FITZGERALD Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 where policy-makers put forth ways for a certain segment of the population to receive more opportunities to realize their and Singapore’s potential. Configured around a discourse of diversity and choice, Extract 4 draws on notions of ability, curriculum, and opportunity to examine further the discursive positioning of ‘talent’ in relation to educational privileges. Extract 4. MOE (2012b), Report of the Committee on University Education Pathways Beyond 2015 (CUEP): Greater diversity, more opportunities: Final report Year Lines 2012b 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Text To better cater to students from a broader range of educational backgrounds, with different aspirations and learning preferences. The pretertiary education system has diversified its options to better cater to the spread of talent and preferences over the years, with the introduction of the Integrated Programme (IP), specialised schools such as the Singapore Sports School (SSS) and School of the Arts (SOTA), NUS High School for Mathematics and Science, and the School of Science and Technology (SST). While more choices have also been introduced in the tertiary landscape, more can be done to increase the diversity of articulation pathways for young Singaporeans to develop their full potential, through introducing different degree pathways that would provide a better fit with their learning preferences and interests. (MOE, 2012b, Chapter 2A: Rationale for the Review, p. 17) This extract is preoccupied with growth and development of the ‘spread of talent’ (line 4) through the educational system, evident in the vocabulary of these meanings: ‘more choices’ (line 8), ‘more can be done to increase the diversity’ (line 9), ‘to develop their full potential’ (line 10), and ‘provide a better fit with their learning preferences and interests’ (lines 11–12). Specifically, this ideological struggle draws upon what Fairclough (2001) argues as pre-existing classification schemes which are in part systems of evaluations (pp. 96–98). One is a scheme by which ‘talent’ may be harnessed, ‘While more choices have also been introduced in the tertiary landscape, more can be done’ (lines 8– 9), which is constructed on the belief that talents have an immense capacity to acquire knowledge. Another scheme is for ways of evaluating ‘diversification of options’ (line 3); it is implicit in the collocations, ‘diversity of articulation pathways for young Singaporeans to develop their potential’ (lines 9–10), ‘introducing different degree pathways that would provide a better fit with their leaning preferences and interests’ (lines 11–12), the desirability of which is presupposed. The thrust of these policy extracts as movements draws the metaphor of diversity to create e/valuations for high degrees of necessity in relation to institutionalizing not only diverse, but also privileged pathways for talents. The general result of these metaphorical evaluative transfers as they move within and through the meso–macro and above the micro–meso in the policy texts is to create evaluations for high degrees of necessity in relation to institutionalizing diverse pathways for talents, which is almost invariably transferred – quite directly – from high degrees of warrantability, importance, and intertextually from expressions of high-degree evaluations for desirability for given outcomes in relation to economic growth and development (Graham, 2001, p. 770). INEQUALITY AS MERITOCRACY Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 Summary The analysis in the paper has been concerned with the question of how inequality is inbuilt into Singapore’s meritocratic education system. The conceptual apparatus used in this study draws on a theoretical–philosophical and/or methodological value in developing a critical analysis of language as part of the contemporary critique of morality through the philosophical study of valuation. In order to explore the subtle complexity of the metaphor and how its work is threaded through Singapore’s education policy, we employed the notion of ‘Metaphorical realism’, indicating the work of the metaphor in establishing a current state of affairs and projecting a desirable future. We then placed this within a conceptual three-level fluid interactional grid in order to examine the interconnections within movements and to give a dynamic account of the intersecting constructions of macro– micro valuations to generate desirable outcomes. Through this framework, our analysis demonstrates that and how value determination through the use of the metaphor of diversity is used in creating the inter-osculation of realities and legitimizing inequality. Specifically, our analysis highlighted that this metaphor, as an apparatus of power, promotes the development of productive forces characteristic of capitalism which advocate support for macro-neo-liberal values that propagate inequality (cf. Foucault, 1980, p. 158). Economically considered, the transliteration of meritocratic discourse into the metaphor of diversity pinpoints how the appeal of development for all necessarily also demands the advance of inequity for the sake of the whole (cf. Nietzsche, 1967, pp. 155–157). The connections and extensions of micro and macro valuations through metaphorical apparatuses of power within the meso–macro movements are seen to delineate general conditions of domination, reflected in relatively stable configurations that give form to a unitary strategic form of value regularity. Our analysis highlights that value judgements are continually at work in the policy discourse and that despite the strong discourse of meritocracy that the Singapore education system promotes, it is argued that it is in the interests of the Singapore people that ‘talents’ should get privileged access to knowledge as it is through this that more opportunities for the rest of the population are created. Finally, in setting out to explore how these e/valuations are foregrounded in policy texts, the three-layered analysis provided a methodological frame by which to bridge the complexity of contradictions that are constantly on the borders of the arbitrary in policy discourse and to examine how the policy texts cohere by drawing on the same value system that is connected throughout these three levels. By framing the analysis through movements between, through, and within the micro–meso–macro levels, we mean to retain the essential point that temporal metaphorical transfers continue throughout all stages where they contribute to the constant becoming. Thus, while our approach allows for an analysis where a ‘movement’ is self-contained as a distinct part in each of the micro–meso–macro analytical sections, it also provides a constant reminder that these three movements are inextricably entwined such that individual movements exert a cumulative effect. This does not mean that they are or are not related causally, but rather that causal sequence and linear determinism are replaced by the notion of metaphorical superfluidity that illuminates the concept of conditionality where each exists in an intrinsic movement of its own but that which also gives way and converges in ways amenable to description and analysis. 15 16 NADIRA TALIB & RICHARD FITZGERALD Acknowledgements This paper was first presented at the CADAAD Conference 2014. The authors would like to thank those present for helpful feedback on the ideas developed in the paper and the anonymous reviewers for their incisive comments. The authors would also like to thank Natalie Collie for her insightful comments and questions on earlier drafts of the paper. Disclosure Statement Downloaded by [University of Macau Library] at 17:39 23 April 2015 No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. References Asher, N., Benamara, F., & Mathieu, Y. Y. (2009). 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Nadira Talib (author to whom correspondence should be addressed) is a Ph.D. candidate at School of Communication and Arts, The University of Queensland. Her research looks at developing a method of combining Foucault’s and Nietzsche’s philosophical concepts with discourse analysis in the analysis of Singapore’s education (streaming) policies. She is particularly interested in how policy discourses are used to construct and legitimate inequality and economic-neo-liberal practices in the education system. School of Communication and Arts, Level 2, Joyce Ackroyd Building 37, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia. E-mails: nadira.talib@uqconnect.edu.au; nadiratalib@ gmail.com Richard Fitzgerald is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Macau. His research and publications are on methods of discourse analysis including Critical Discourse Analysis and Membership Categorisation Analysis. He is co-editor with William Housley of Advances in membership categorisation analysis (2015), Sage. Department of Communication, University of Macau, Macau (SAR), People’s Republic of China. E-mail: rfitzgerald@umac.mo