Singapore English Cover-Op2.pdf 2010/9/2 11:20:47 PM

Singapore English cover-op2.
pdf 2010/9/2 11:20:47 PM
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Asian Englishes Today

Series Editor: Kingsley Bolton

Chair Professor of English, City University of Hong Kong
The volumes in this series set out to provide a contemporary record of
the spread and development of the English language in South, Southeast,
and East Asia from both linguistic and literary perspectives. They reflect
themes related to English that cut across national and linguistic boundaries,
including the study of language policies; globalization and linguistic
imperialism; English in the media; English in law, government and
education; hybrid Englishes; and the bilingual creativity manifested by the
vibrant creative writing found in many societies in Asia.
The editorial advisory board comprises a number of leading scholars in the
field of world Englishes, including Maria Lourdes S. Bautista (De La Salle
University-Manila, the Philippines), Susan Butler (Macquarie Dictionary,
Australia), Braj B. Kachru (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign),
Yamuna Kachru (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Shirley Geoklin Lim (University of California, Santa Barbara), Tom McArthur (founding
editor of English Today), Anne Pakir (National University of Singapore),
Larry E. Smith (co-founding editor of World Englishes), and Yasukata Yano
(Waseda University, Japan).
Also in the series:
Hong Kong English: Autonomy and Creativity
Edited by Kingsley Bolton
Japanese English: Language and Culture Contact
James Stanlaw
Chinas English: A History of English in Chinese Education
Bob Adamson
Asian Englishes: Beyond the Canon
Braj B. Kachru
World Englishes in Asian Contexts
Yamuna Kachru and Cecil L. Nelson
Philippine English: Linguistic and Literary Perspectives
Edited by Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista and Kingsley Bolton
Hong Kong University Press

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Aberdeen
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Hong Kong University Press 2010
Hardback 978-988-8028-42-9
Paperback 978-988-8028-43-6
All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.
Secure On-line Ordering
http://www.hkupress.org
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound by Condor Production Ltd., Hong Kong, China
Contents
Series editors preface

Acknowledgements
List of contributors
Map of Singapore and the region
vii
ix
xi
xiv
Part I: The Ecology of English in Singapore
1 English in Singapore: Policies and prospects

Lisa Lim, Anne Pakir and Lionel Wee
2 Migrants and mother tongues: Extralinguistic forces in the

ecology of English in Singapore
Lisa Lim
19
Part II: Reconceptualizing English
55
3 Singapore Standard English revisited

Anthea Fraser Gupta
57
4 The Speak Good English Movement: A web-users perspective

Paul Bruthiaux
91
5 Hybridity in ways of speaking: The glocalization of English in

Singapore
Lubna Alsagoff
109
vi
Contents
Part III: Ethnicity and Ownership
131
6 Whose English? Language ownership in Singapores English

language debates
Wendy D. Bokhorst-Heng, Rani Rubdy, Sandra Lee McKay and
Lubna Alsagoff
133
7 Language and social capital in Singapore

Viniti Vaish, Teck Kiang Tan, Wendy D. Bokhorst-Heng, David
Hogan and Trivina Kang
159
8 Language policy and planning in Singaporean late modernity

Christopher Stroud and Lionel Wee
181
Part IV: English in Education
205
9 Problematizing the implementation of innovation in English

language education in Singapore
Rani Rubdy
207
10 Sounding local and going global: Current research and

implications for pronunciation teaching
Ee-Ling Low
235
11 English as a lingua franca: Negotiating Singapores English

language education
Anne Pakir
261
Part V: Research Bibliography
281
12 Researching English in Singapore: Bibliographic sources
283
Index
305
Series editors preface
Of all Asian societies, the role of English in Singapore at least from an

outsiders perspective has typically been regarded as most successful and
least contentious, compared to other English-using societies in the region.
In contrast to Hong Kong, for example, the societal space for English as
an interethnic lingua franca has meant that the rationale for English has
often foregrounded its utility as a neutral language of education and social
administration. Singapore has also gained a strong reputation regionally
for the relatively high proficiency of its English users, a reputation that has
risen in pace with the city-states recent branding of itself as a knowledgebased community and arts and education hub. Ironically, however, at
the same time that Singapore has worked hard to such ends, its domestic
linguistic complaint tradition has striven less to emphasize its strengths, and
somewhat more to bemoan the communitys collective mastery of English.
While linguists have been fascinated by the emergence of local varieties of
English, both educated and informal, the government has expressed much
concern about the existence of bad English, which has often been equated
with Singlish, however vaguely defined and described. Meanwhile, English
continues to spread as a language of the home in a society where mother
tongue for a number of official purposes may only refer to such
heritage languages as Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil.

This present volume, edited by Lisa Lim, Anne Pakir, and Lionel
Wee, is ground-breaking in the way in which it is able to account for and
explain at least some of these contradictions and tensions. By engaging an
ensemble of truly expert commentators on English in Singapore, this book
succeeds in providing an insightful account of the interplay of linguistic
ecology, language policies, and sociolinguistic realities of the Singapore
community, which cumulatively offers a rich and fine-grained account of
the sociolinguistics of English in this context. Part I (with a chapter from
Lim, Pakir and Wee, and another from Lim) deals with the ecology of
English in Singapore, where an integrated ecological model requires an
viii Series editors preface

understanding of the dynamics of both migration and official language
policies. Part II, with contributions from Gupta, Bruthiaux, and Alsagoff,
then highlights the need to (re)conceptualize English in the Singapore
context, with particular reference to both the Speak Good English
Movement, and the thorny issue of Singlish.

Part III with three chapters by Bokhorst-Heng, Rubdy, McKay and
Alsagoff; Vaish, Tan, Bokhorst-Heng, Hogan and Kang; and Stroud and
Wee tackle the issue of ethnicity and ownership focusing on such
topics as language debates, language and social capital, and the shifting
ground for traditional language policies, and the theorization of language
planning, in a late-modern consumer society such as Singapore. Part IV
then deals with the issue of English language education, with chapters from
Rubdy on the history of syllabuses, Low on pronunciation, and Pakir on the
implications of the world Englishes (WE) and English as a Lingua Franca
(ELF) approaches for English language education. Finally, Part V provides
an immensely useful guide to published books and articles in this field.

The level of discussion throughout is impressive, and the layering of
linguistic description and sociolinguistic commentary that is at the heart
of this volume not only serves to illuminate the Singapore situation, but
will also impact the conceptualization and discussion of the sociolinguistics
of English in Asia in the international frontline of research. This work
provides a major contribution to the Asian Englishes Today series and to the
description and analysis of English in Singapore, and, as such, it is likely
to serve a standard reference work (for both students and researchers) for
many years to come.
Kingsley Bolton
April 2010
Acknowledgements
Our appreciation extends first and foremost to all the contributors for
making this volume what it is: thank you for being part of this project. We
also express our heartfelt thanks to Kingsley Bolton, editor of the Asian
Englishes Today series, for his enthusiasm and support for a volume on
English in Singapore in the first place, his sage advice on its contents,
and his aiding and abetting throughout its incarnation. We are much
obliged to Nicole Wong, our research assistant, for the initial formatting
of chapters and checking of references, as well as for her work in the
preliminary collation of the research bibliography, and to the National
University of Singapores Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Staff Research
Support Scheme for the grant (C103-000-222-091) that funded the research
assistantship. We are grateful too to Chris Leung for his work on the
cover design and map. We thank the two anonymous reviewers appointed
by Hong Kong University Press for their constructive comments on the
chapters, and the staff at the Press for their advice, support and help
throughout the preparation of this volume.
Contributors
Lubna Alsagoff is Associate Professor and Head of the English Language

and Literature Department at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore. Her research interests include the
socio-cultural grammar of English as an international language, and the
teaching and development of pedagogical grammars of English.
Wendy D. Bokhorst-Heng has held appointments as Assistant Professor in
the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice at the National Institute
of Education, Singapore, and in the Sociology Department of American
University, Washington, DC. Her research interests include literacy,
language policy and ideology, multilingualism and multiculturalism, and
comparative education.
Paul Bruthiaux has a PhD in linguistics from the University of Southern
California. He has worked in California, Texas, Hong Kong, Singapore, and
Thailand. His research interests are English as a global language, the place
of language education in economic development, and language variation
across social settings.
Anthea Fraser Gupta is Senior Lecturer in the School of English at the
University of Leeds, England. Her main area of research is in English as a
world language, and on the language situation in Singapore.
David Hogan is Professor and Dean of the Office of Education Research
at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore.
Trivina Kang is Assistant Professor in the Policy and Management
Studies Academic Group at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore, and is presently seconded to the
Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP) there.
xii Contributors
Lisa Lim is in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong,
where she directs the Language and Communication Programme, and
teaches in that and the English Studies Programme. Her current research
areas include New Englishes, especially Asian, postcolonial varieties, with
particular interest in contact dynamics in the ecology metaphor, as well as
identity, endangerment, shift and revitalization in multilingual minority
communities.
Ee-Ling Low is Associate Professor in the English Language and Literature
Academic Group, and Associate Dean for Programme and Student
Development at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. Her
current research interests include the linguistic features of world Englishes,
language education, and research into initial teacher preparation and
teacher professional development.
Sandra Lee McKay is currently Visiting Professor at the University of
Hawaii, Manoa. Her most current works include a text on the social
context of English as an international language, as well as a text on L2
classroom research. Presently she is editing a reader on sociolinguistics and
language teaching.
Anne Pakir is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language
and Literature at the National University of Singapore. Her research
interests lie in language policy and planning, world Englishes and English
in Southeast Asia.
Rani Rubdy is Associate Professor in the English Language and Literature
Academic Group at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore. Her research interests include English
as a world language, language planning and policy, teacher education and
the management of educational innovation.
Christopher Stroud is Professor and Head of the Department of Linguistics
at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, and Affiliated Professor
of Bilingual Research in the Centre for Research on Bilingualism at
Stockholm University. His research includes multilingualism, language
and education, socio-ethnographies of literacies, and language ideological
discourses.
Teck Kiang Tan is Research Associate in the Centre for Research in
Pedagogy and Practice at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore. His research interests include school
effects, multi-level modelling, and longitudinal data analysis.
Contributors xiii
Viniti Vaish has a PhD in educational linguistics from the University of
Pennsylvania. She is Assistant Professor at Singapores National Institute of
Education, Nanyang Technological University. She teaches in the English
Language and Literature Academic Group and does research for the Centre
for Research in Pedagogy and Practice.
Lionel Wee is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of English
Language and Literature, National University of Singapore. His research
interests include the relationship between metaphor and discourse, new
varieties of English, language policy, and general issues in pragmatics and
sociolinguistics.
Map of Singapore and the region
Part I
The Ecology of English in

Singapore
English in Singapore: Policies and prospects
The Republic of Singapore, independent since 1965, makes an interesting

case study for various issues in sociolinguistics, not least because it is an
ethnically and linguistically diverse society with a strong history of attempts
at social engineering by the state. Language policies instituted by the
state, follow-up language campaigns aimed at ensuring conformity to these
policies, the ongoing tensions between what the state envisions for the
general population and their actual language practices are just some of the
phenomena that provide the grounding for a host of analyses.

A common thread throughout these phenomena concerns the role
of English. As a former British colony, Singapores leaders inherited not
only a system of government that relied heavily on the use of English, but
also a population already given to viewing the language as an important
resource for socio-economic mobility. So, rather than dispense with English,
Singapores leaders decided to retain it as an official language. This is
characteristic of the states pragmatic approach to government, where
social and economic policies have been formulated with the intention of
keeping Singaporean society open to global and regional forces, whilst
retaining a sense of stability and connection to a historic past, however
imagined. In this context, the status of the English language is an important
barometer of how successful Singapore is in its attempt to stay relevant to,
and engaged with, the world outside, even as it insists on portraying itself
in terms of a resolutely Asian identity. It is therefore no exaggeration to
suggest that English is implicated everywhere in Singaporean society, as
much by its varied manifestations as by its absence.

What we intend to do in this brief introduction, then, is to spell out
a number of the issues that are implicated by the place of English in
Singapore. To do this, we first provide an overview of Singapores language
policy. We then discuss some relevant lines of investigation before closing
with an outline of the various chapters that comprise the present volume.
Language policy in Singapore

In order to make more manageable Singapores ethnolinguistic diversity,
the state divides the population into four ethnically based categories:
Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others. The state takes it as self-evident that
the major ethnic categories (Chinese, Malay, Indian) and their relevant
members can be unproblematically identified using a mix of historical
language affiliation, cultural practices and racial characteristics. In the
case of individuals with mixed heritage, the states response is to classify
them according to the ethnic membership of the father. These moves
are motivated partly on historical grounds (see also Lims chapter in
this volume), partly on the basis of ideological assumptions, and partly
as a matter of administrative expedience. The result is that Singapores
population of approximately 3.2 million is categorized as 76.8% Chinese,
13.9% Malays, 7.9% Indians, and 1.4% Others (Census of Population 2000).

Singapore recognizes the Chinese, Malays, Indians and Eurasians as the
founding races that have contributed significantly to its independence (Hill
and Lian 1995). The decision to maintain this ethnic heterogeneity rather
than pursue a strong policy of assimilation was (and still is) motivated by
the belief that ethnic distinctiveness is a primordial fact. Consequently, any
attempt to quash this distinctiveness can only lead to unnecessary social
tensions. We see this explained in the following statement by Singapores
first prime minister and current minister mentor, Lee Kuan Yew (cited in
Han, Fernandez and Tan 1998: 1635):
The Indians have their own method. So do the Malays. The Malays: Islam
and also the kinship ties I dont think you can erase all that. Thats
for hundreds of years, or thousands of years. You cant erase it. Because
I recognised it, I decided you cannot change it. Or if you tried to change
it, youd change it for the worse In every culture, there is a desire to
preserve your distinctiveness. And I think if you go against that, you will
create unnecessary problems, whether it is with the Indians and their caste
or with the Chinese and their clans.

Despite this desire to recognize the sanctity of ethnic distinctiveness,
however, only the first three founding races are considered numerically
significant enough to be consistently accorded recognition as ethnic
communities in their own right. The Eurasians are sometimes absorbed
under the Others category because the state views their number as too
small to warrant a distinct category.1 This is especially clear with regard to
Singapores language policy, which insists that Singaporeans be bilingual
in English and their official mother tongue. The official mother tongue is
the language assigned by the state to an ethnic community as representative
English in Singapore
of that communitys identity and ethnocultural heritage. It is presented

in official discourses as a crucial cultural anchor that connects an ethnic
community to its ancestral repository of traditional values.

With the exception of the Eurasians, the other three ethnic groups
each have their own official mother tongue: Mandarin for the Chinese,
Malay the national language for the Malays, and Tamil for the
Indians. The Eurasians have no official mother tongue because the most
likely candidate would have to be English. The relatively small size of the
Eurasian community notwithstanding, English is not acceptable by the
state as an official mother tongue on the grounds that it needs to remain
ethnically neutral for a number of reasons.

First, English is the major language of socio-economic mobility. The
state actively encourages proficiency in English by instituting it as the
medium of instruction in the education system. However, it also insists on
positioning the language as ethnically neutral so that the distribution of
economic advantages is not seen as being unduly associated with a specific
ethnic group, which would otherwise raise the danger of interethnic tension.
But even as English is successfully seen as being ethnically neutral by most
Singaporeans, it is becoming clear that it is not at all socially neutral.
Speakers of good, standard or proper English are more likely to have
come from more affluent homes, have better educational qualifications,
and have access to better jobs. As a result, one might reasonably explore the
implications for Singapore of a class divide between the English haves and
have-nots.

Second, English also serves as an interethnic lingua franca. This is
needed in order to ensure that cross-ethnic communication is facilitated,
so that the different ethnic groups do not become segregated from each
other. Ethnic segregation would have highly negative consequences for
attempts at cultivating a sense of national unity. However, actual crossethnic communication sometimes makes use of languages that carry little
or no state approval. For example, military service (National Service) is
obligatory for Singaporean males. Life in the army brings together young
men of varied ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, and usefully creates
opportunities for them to (learn to) interact with each other. These men
quickly become sensitized to class differences, and, in order to neutralize
rather than exacerbate such differences, standard or proper English is
eschewed in favour of Singapore English or Singlish, the colloquial variety
of English that is denigrated by the state, or one of the Chinese dialects
such as Hokkien, which, unlike Mandarin, has no official standing (Stroud
and Wee 2007). What this means is quite simply this: the state correctly
realizes that language can serve as a key social lubricant; but there is
perhaps an unbridgeable gap between the language that the state would
prefer and the language that can most effectively do the job.

Third, English is treated as a language that essentially marks a nonAsian other, and therefore cannot be bestowed the status of official
mother tongue. This goes to the crux of why Singapores language policy
is an aggressively bilingual one. Singapore cannot do without English;
attempting this would mean disengaging itself from the global economy,
with predictably disastrous consequences. At the same time, it cannot do
with only English; attempting this would mean compromising Singapores
Asianness by allowing a Western language to play a constitutive role in
local identity politics, a role that is reserved for the mother tongues. As
a result, the language policy treats both English and the mother tongues
as equally important, though for different reasons. This situation nicely
illustrates the highly politicized status of English. A specific ethnic group
is denied the possibility of claiming English as its mother tongue, because
the language must serve the entire country. As an official language,
English is valuable because it provides access to technological and scientific
knowledge, and helps maintain economic competitiveness in an increasingly
globalized world. English can of course serve as a lingua franca, but
Singaporeans are not generally expected to develop a sense of identification
with the language. At both the national and communal levels, then, tensions
exist in the functions that English fulfils, and in how these are managed.

The foregoing description of Singapores language policy suggests rich
possibilities for investigations along various lines, and it is to these that we
now turn.
From past to present

Though the practice does little harm if we are careful to bear in mind the
inevitable oversimplifications, it is clear that it is not enough to merely
speak of English as being present at different times in Singapores history,
up to and including the present. The recurrent use of this label in different
contexts can in fact obscure significant changes and variations in actual
language use, since what counts as English that is, what kinds of usage
activities are considered to merit being categorized as English is itself
ultimately a matter of social and political negotiation.

The names that we give to languages reflect invented understandings of
language (Makoni and Pennycook 2007: 2), as the following brief example
illustrates. As Makoni and Pennycook (2007: 9) point out, Sir George
Abraham Griersons linguistic Survey of India, which was completed in 1928,
had to face the problem of deciding on the boundaries between languages
and dialects. To do this, Grierson openly admitted the need to invent
language names while ignoring the complexity of actual language use (1907:
350, quoted in Makoni and Pennycook 2007: 10):
nearly all the language-names have had to be invented by Europeans.

Some of them, such as Bengali, Assamese, and the like, are founded on
words which have received English citizenship, and are not real Indian
words at all, while others, like Hindostani, Bihari, and so forth, are based
on already existing Indian names of countries and nationalities.
The significance of this, as Makoni and Pennycook (2007: 10) observe, is

that these were not just new names for existing objects but rather the
invention and naming of new objects. The naming performatively called the
languages into being.

Returning to the case of English in Singapore, we therefore have to be
careful that we do not get too carried away with labels such as English,
Singlish or even Singapore English.2 The linguistic diversity of Singapore
means that English inevitably comes into contact with other languages
present in the sociolinguistic environment such as the different varieties of
Malay, Chinese and (to a lesser extent) the Indian languages. This clearly
points to the possibility of structural changes in the language, which tend
to occur in concert with developments in the socio-political arena (see
Schneider 2007). Given the significantly growing presence of English in
the lives of many Singaporeans, two important questions then need to be
asked. Firstly, how are the various structural features of English related to its
presence in the changing landscape of Singapores sociolinguistic history?
Secondly, does English have the potential to displace other languages (such
as the official mother tongues), and would such displacement (where it is
perceived to occur) be uniformly distributed across the society or skewed
along specific ethnic identities or cultural activities?
Revisiting key assumptions and concepts

Discussions about English, implicitly or otherwise, typically draw on various
assumptions that are all too often taken for granted in public discourses.
Such assumptions include the questions of ownership and standardization,
and the relationship between language and culture.

The question of language ownership (Widdowson 1994; Jenkins 2000)
is especially relevant for a global language such as English, whose spread
across the globe has led to the rise of different varieties New Englishes
as well as an increase in the number of non-traditional native speakers.
In the light of such developments, it has become necessary to consider the
extent to which non-traditional native speakers of English should feel that
they too have a legitimate say in what counts as grammatical or appropriate.

Related to this is the question of standardization. Here, it is not so
much standardization as the process of trying to eliminate variation (Milroy
and Milroy 1999) that is at stake, but rather, the more commonplace notion
of what sorts of standards non-traditional native speakers ought to have in
mind. For many ordinary Singaporeans as well as the state, there is often
some ambivalence in this matter, whether the choice is exonormatively
towards an American or British standard, or endonormatively towards the
variety associated with the local elite.

Finally, while many Singaporeans seem to be quite convinced that
English is essentially a Western language that serves as a vehicle for Western
values, and that they ought instead to be fluent speakers of their own
mother tongues, this remains a desideratum rather than a sociolinguistic
reality. In fact, the states promotion of English can itself be credited with
contributing to massive language shift over a period of thirty years (Li,
Saravanan and Ng 1997: 368; Stroud and Wee 2007). While the rise of
English is most pronounced in Chinese and Indian homes, Malay homes
too show a similar shift, albeit less pronounced, possibly due to the close
affiliation between the Malay language and the religion of Islam (Pakir
1993: 75; Kwan-Terry and Luke 1997: 296).

This leads to the question of whether or not it makes sociolinguistic
sense to continue positioning English as a language of the non-Singaporean
Other rather than as a language that belongs to Singaporeans themselves.
This question, of course, intersects with heated debates over what it means
to be a native speaker of English, whether ownership of the language can
only ever reside with traditional native speakers, and whether accepting
English as a Singaporean language compromises Singapores claim towards
an Asian identity. All of these developments make it imperative that
Singaporeans open up a dialogue on the ideologically loaded question of
whether English is intrinsically a Western language.
The gap between policy and practice

Consider the observation in the preceding section that English is
increasingly becoming the home language for many Singaporeans. Such a
development is perhaps not surprising since the language is the medium
of instruction in schools, which makes knowledge of English particularly
critical in considerations of socio-economic mobility. The status of English
as a home language is perhaps most clearly the case among Chinese
Singaporeans, where English has overtaken Mandarin as the primary
language used in homes of Primary 1 Chinese pupils (Ministry of Education
[MOE] 2004a). This has forced the state to acknowledge that a significant
number of Chinese Singaporeans actually have great difficulty coping with
Mandarin, despite the fact that it is supposed to be their official mother
tongue. Consequently, in early 2004, the Ministry of Education (2004a)
announced a number of changes to the mother tongue policy. Especially

interesting was the introduction of a B syllabus for the Chinese language,
to cater to students with learning difficulties.

These changes indicate that, contrary to its earlier expectations, the
state no longer believes that the majority of Chinese Singaporeans are
likely to be highly proficient in Mandarin. It is only a minority, an elite
estimated at about 10% of the student population (The Straits Times, 26
November 2004), who are expected to be fully bilingual in English and
the mother tongue. As a result, in a subsequent press release in September
(MOE 2004b), the Ministry of Education announced the start of a Chinese
Bicultural Studies Programme, aimed at the minority of students who are
able to cope with both English and Mandarin at a high level of competence.
And at the end of that same year, the government announced that it
would undertake a review of the Malay and Tamil language curricula to
see if measures similar to those taken for Mandarin are indeed called for
(MOE 2004c).

At the same time that the increased use of English has impacted
the states general expectations regarding the bilingual capacity of the
population, it has also led to growing fears that a local variety, known as
Singlish (and in scholarship usually referred to as colloquial Singapore
English), is gaining popularity and legitimacy, and that this might
jeopardize Singaporeans ability to improve their command of standard
English. Such fears were the main motivations behind the initiation of the
Speak Good English Movement, making English the only other language (in
addition to the promotion of Mandarin in the Speak Mandarin Campaign)
to have been the object of a national language campaign. In rationalizing
this campaign, the state has often made the argument that it is not possible
to go global with Singlish. A choice, it argues, has to be made between the
ghettoization (Freeland and Patrick 2004: 17) that supposedly accompanies
Singlish and the economic prosperity that comes from speaking good
English. However, supporters of Singlish, such as writer Hwee Hwee Tan,
have responded by arguing on the public stage that is Time that it is
an authentic reflection of a national identity (Tan 2002). To this, the Speak
Good English Movement has suggested that a more appropriate linguistic
expression would be a standard Singaporean English, even though it is
unclear what such an endogenous standard would or should look like.

In many ways, Singlish is an inevitable development. As a population
becomes more proficient and more comfortable with using English, it
will necessarily make the language its own. And this of course means that
a nativized, restructured variety will emerge, reflecting the populations
greater ease with and wider use of the language in the naturalistic
environments of home and informal peer interactions. But it is an
unfortunate fact that new varieties such as Singlish are all too often viewed
10 Lisa Lim, Anne Pakir and Lionel Wee

as a corrupt version of standardized ones. There is also some irony in all
this. Recall that the state has long promoted English as an interethnic
lingua franca. It might therefore seem that with the emergence of Singlish,
the role of English in cutting across Singapores ethnic mix has come
to fruition. But unfortunately, Singlish has been often disparaged by
Singapores leaders to quote the then prime minister in his National Day
Rally Speech as a type of pidgin English (Goh 1999).

Public discourses surrounding Singlish are therefore highly contested
(Fong, Lim and Wee 2002; Lim 2009). Supporters of Singlish claim it to
be a colloquial variety used mainly to reflect and build up social solidarity.
Opponents of Singlish, including the state, prefer to see it as clear evidence
of a drop in standards of usage. And in fact, the states concerns about
Singaporeans ability to speak and write standard English have prompted
the Ministry of Education to announce a slew of educational initiatives,
including greater emphasis on oral communication skills, continued
attention to grammar throughout the educational stream, and the
introduction of linguistics as a pre-university subject, among others. In
making these announcements, the ministrys decision to employ foreign
language experts has raised concerns that this represents another indicator
of the states inability to free itself of the hegemony of the native speaker
ideology. A more useful approach would be to find ways of helping students
learn the standard variety whilst not forcing them to disavow whatever
knowledge of English they already possess even if this knowledge consists
of a variety that is stigmatized. Any exploration of this particular avenue,
however, would first require putting aside deeply ingrained language
prejudices, and it is unclear at present whether the political will exists for
such an initiative.
Contributions in this volume

The issues raised in this sketch of the English language situation in
Singapore are explored in detail by the contributors to this edited volume.
The ecology of English in Singapore

This volume starts with a section which sets the stage by outlining the
ecology in which English exists, providing valuable socio-political and
historical overviews, and considering some of the more crucial factors
whereby English has evolved to reach the state it is in Singapore today.
This first and current chapter has already provided a sketch of Singapores
language policies and related issues and implications.
English in Singapore 11

Complementing this is Lims consideration of Migrants and mother
tongues, which examines the linguistic ecology of Singapore, focusing on
two external factors of migration and language policies over different eras,
and demonstrates the significance of these for a better understanding of
the development of a contact language such as Singlish (Singapore English,
SE), and the implications these hold for policy and education. In the
different eras distinguished by differing migration patterns and language
policies, different sets of languages can be seen to be dominant. In the
era dating from pre-colonial times through to early post-independence
years, characterized by natural immigration and vernacular maintenance,
two main original immigrant languages, Bazaar Malay and Hokkien,
are dominant. During early independence where there was controlled
immigration and new language and educational policies instituted, the
official languages, in particular Mandarin, gain prominence. In the era of
late modernity, with foreign manpower and a relaxation with regard to nonofficial languages, global-media languages such as Cantonese see a rise in
prominence. An examination of structural features of SE does indeed show
the influence of these various languages at different stages of SEs evolution.
Lim also examines the current era, which is replete with new practices
in immigration and language policies, and identifies other languages
which she predicts may soon play a significant role in Singapores ecology.
Combining a sensitivity to historical eras with an examination of linguistic
features in SE and those of the various contact substrate languages, Lim
suggests, allows the sources of various linguistic features of SE to be
discerned with greater precision. This then contributes to the establishment
of the more likely substrate sources, and in turn a better appreciation, not
only for the structure of SE, but also for the social forces that have shaped it.
Reconceptualizing English
Given that English in Singapore has evolved over the decades, the next
section of chapters considers what English has become in a process of
reconceptualization which involves reviewing fundamental notions which
are usually taken as given, such as standard English and good English,
as well re-evaluating what Singapore English itself entails and the
implications this holds for policy and pedagogy.

Guptas contribution, Singapore Standard English revisited, takes
as a starting point her early discussion in the 1980s with Mary Tay of the
possibility of a Singapore Standard English. At the time, arguments for an
endonormative standard for Singapore English were seen as revolutionary.
In the thirty years since, however, it has become widely accepted that
local words and local accents are necessarily part of standard English.

The concept of a local standard grammar, though, remains problematic.
In her latest thinking on the matter, Gupta suggests that it is no longer
appropriate to predetermine what is and is not standard by the methods
adopted in the 1980s. The chapter therefore considers the meaning of
standard English for Singapore in the twenty-first century, and develops
the concept of International Englishes, arguing that the main variety of
International English is ordinary standard English, which is one dialect of
English with minor regional differences (mostly in lexis). While all Englishusing communities participate in the maintenance of International English,
they also usually have local non-standard dialects of English, which are used
in specific contexts, especially informal speech, literature, and humour,
and Singlish fills this slot in Singapore. In an analysis of the way in which
Singaporeans use English in formal and informal written material, and the
language advice given online and in The Straits Times in connection with the
Speak Good English Movement (SGEM), Gupta suggests that Singaporeans
participate in the same uncertainty about standard English as users of
English from other English-using nations.

The SGEM, which has figured so prominently in recent public
discussions of English, is also the focus of Bruthiauxs chapter The Speak
Good English Movement: A web-users perspective, which examines the
campaigns claim to be based on sociolinguistic scholarship, its policy goals,
and its principal activities. Bruthiaux makes a number of key observations.
First, the campaign suggests a conflict within Singapore government
policies in that this top-down approach to language management cannot
be easily reconciled with the simultaneous encouragement of critical skills
and informed choice, especially in education. Second, far from equipping
the nation with the linguistic tools it needs to flourish in the twenty-first
century, the campaign is an outdated attempt to perpetuate increasingly
irrelevant postcolonial preoccupations with exogenous standards, suggesting
a lingering lack of self-confidence among the Singapore leadership. Third,
the publicly unchallenged claim that both international and internal
communication can only be effectively transacted through standard English
(however defined) is manifestly false given current self-reports of actual
usage. Fourth, despite the apparent academic backing the campaign
enjoys, it betrays a profound misunderstanding of the nature of language
variation and of the dynamics of language in use across a range of social
settings. Bruthiaux then argues that an appropriate policy response should
abandon the misconceived and ineffectual effort to campaign Singlish out
of existence. Instead, public resources should be devoted to helping all
Singaporeans become comfortable along the entire continuum of English
(from the colloquial to the standard) through a sustained educational effort
while letting the Singlish end to look after itself.

In Hybridity in ways of speaking, Alsagoffs target of reconceptualization
is Singlish itself. From the context of recent discussions of English in
Singapore being pulled in two opposing global-local directions, she offers a
model of variation of English in indigenized contexts. Originally conceived
as the Cultural Orientation Model (COM), which explains variation in
relation to the global-local contrast of the cultural orientations of speakers,
Alsagoff develops this further in relation to the concept of glocalization,
which emphasizes the simultaneity of the global and the local in the process
of globalization. In this light, she suggests that, given the co-presence of
features of both local and global in the speech of Singaporeans, a change
in the approach to describing language variation in Singapore is required.
Glocalization, which presents language and identity as intertwined and
fluid, offers a more dynamic orientation for understanding the ways in
which people appropriate English for their own purposes, but who are at
the same time constrained by institutional discourses and policies favouring
standardization and conformity. Singlish is thus seen more as a range of
lingua-cultural resources that speakers use in order to identify or mark a
change in cultural orientation or style.
Ethnicity and ownership

On the basis of the previous section, involving a recognition and acceptance
that English needs to be reconceptualized, in terms of what it is and how
it is used in multilingual societies such as Singapore, this section takes up
the question of where the ownership of such new varieties of English lies.
The chapters here also explore the ideologies and claims that underlie
current policies, as well as the disjuncture between this and Singaporean
sociolinguistic reality, reflecting on the potential repercussions of policy for
the status of (the varieties of) English as forms of linguistic capital.

The first chapter in this section, by Bokhorst-Heng, Rubdy, McKay
and Alsagoff, takes us straight into the debate, asking Whose English? in
considering language ownership in Singapores English language debates.
It addresses the idealization of the so-called native speaker found within
the native-speaker (NS)/non-native-speaker (NNS) dichotomy, as well as
the unwillingness to recognize the different varieties of world Englishes
as legitimate languages. Within Singapores English language debates,
this NS/NNS dichotomy and ownership discourse is evident particularly
in the governments steadfast denial of allowing Singaporeans native
speaker membership, even though more and more Singaporeans do in fact
regard English as their first language and the primary or only language
of the home. Instead, the officially preferred model is British RP, and
the Inner Circle speakers of English continue to be regarded as the true

owners of English. However, by comparing the findings of two recent
studies conducted by the authors, the chapter aims at a model of language
ownership that moves away from the limitations of NS/NNS discourses,
and focuses instead on speakers orientations towards English norms to
foreground speakers degree of ownership of the English they speak.

The chapter Language and social capital in Singapore by Vaish, Tan,
Bokhorst-Heng, Hogan and Kang focuses on language maintenance as an
outcome of social capital within particular ethnic groups. Starting with
the All Party Report on Chinese Education of 1956, language planning
in Singapore has managed to maintain mother tongues in the nations
linguistic ecology against the onslaught of global English. However, these
gains are not evenly spread across social groups. The authors therefore
ponder the following questions: What are the differences in language use
on the basis of ethnicity? How are these differences materialized in the
various socio-spatial domains? The authors hypothesize that some ethnic
groups are able to retain their mother tongue languages through social
ties, which can be conceptualized as social capital created within the group
by strengthening common cultural values and beliefs to achieve resource
sharing. The analysis is based on the ongoing Sociolinguistic Survey of
Singapore (SSS 2006), which surveys one thousand children stratified by
race and class, linked to twenty-four qualitative follow-up case studies, and
documents patterns of language use in the domains of school, family and
friends, religion, public space and media, and asks questions about attitudes
and ideology based on such language use.

In the final chapter of the section, Stroud and Wee evaluate Language
policy and planning in Singaporean late modernity. They note that
Singapores language policy attempts to manage the tension between
modernity (construed as a global orientation achieved through the medium
of English) and tradition, where each mother tongue is supposedly the
cultural repository of values for its associated ethnic group. They then go
on to argue that a sociolinguistic ordering around notions of ethnicity and
nation does not fit easily with the multilingual dynamics of late modern
societies. Societal development in late modernity is generating linguistic
hierarchies of value that are reconfiguring issues of language and ethnicity
into questions of language and class. Despite this, Singapores language
policy continues to be firmly shaped by (conventional) ethnolinguistic
frameworks. The chapter thus argues that Singapores language policy needs
to appreciate that patterns of multilingualism are increasingly constructed
around the dynamics of language choice and change in terms of a logic of
lifestyle consumption. Specifically, the sociolinguistics of multilingualism
needs to recognize the consumer as a specific type of (linguistic) identity.
Their proposal, which gives greater prominence to autonomy, choice, and
reflexivity notions that seldom figure in conventional language policies
is thus for a reconceptualization of the notion of language in terms
of sociolinguistic consumption, an understanding of identity as involving
not only processes of recognition but also of (re)distribution, and the
deconstruction of the category of mother tongue in discourses of language
planning.
English in education
Continuing the thrust of reconceptualizing English in Singapore, the final
section focuses on the domain of education, where English often faces the
most controversy. The contributions here provide an examination of the
potential for innovative methods in English language education, and also
consider the model of lingua franca, and the tension between exonormative
and endonormative practices in teaching.

The point of departure for Rubdys Problematizing the implementation
of innovation in English language education in Singapore is the intensely
proactive management of educational policies and the decisiveness and
expedience with which these policies are generally implemented. Most
studies of Singapores English language policies have, however, focused
on the what (i.e., the goals and content-based changes) rather than
the why (i.e., the pedagogical assumptions and beliefs or ideological
rationales underlying them) or the how (i.e., the means employed and
the general approach adopted in their implementation) of these reform
initiatives. Given this current state of affairs, Rubdys chapter provides a
much-needed critical review of the structures and practices involved in
the English language syllabus over the years, identifying the distinct stages
the curriculum having been revised approximately every decade
in its evolution. In so doing, she deconstructs how the assumptions and
ideological beliefs underlying them have helped create, on the one hand,
the prevailing educational culture and, on the other, a docile workforce
that serves the countrys economic targets but lacks the creativity and
critical mindset integral to the New World Order.

Low then focuses on a specific area of pronunciation in her chapter
Sounding local and going global. She provides an overview of research in
the phonetics, phonology and prosody of Singapore English, and highlights
the principle of intelligibility, following Jenkins (2000) in identifying a core
for the teaching of pronunciation. Stressing the importance of preserving
both global and local orientations in pronunciation, she then proposes a
number of principles and practices that may be adopted in developing a
pronunciation syllabus for English in Singapore.

Rounding up this section and the volume, Pakirs English as a Lingua
Franca: Negotiating Singapores English language education reflects on

English language education in the twenty-first century, drawing on current
discussions within the paradigms of world Englishes, originating first in
the US and gaining currency in Kachrus Outer and Expanding Circles
of English, and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), originating in Europe,
which have developed distinct theoretical models of lingua franca. Pakir
then looks at how lingua franca as a theoretical concept may help us
understand the range of interpretations of English in localized contexts,
including the possibility of experimentation that can and must go on as
English transplants itself into different soils. The mobility and portability
of English and its changing functions, values and meanings in localized
contexts create hybrids and mixed varieties, some desired and some less so.
These pose challenges to applied linguistics, English language education
and pedagogy, and the discussion of identity for English-knowing bilinguals.
Research bibliography
Obviously no single volume can encompass all the interests and angles
of research on a particular intellectual or geographical area. The current
volume takes as its angle an exploration of the implications which have
arisen as a result primarily of the language policies that have been instituted
in Singapore over the decades, and thus provides a very focused and
coherent collection of the most current thinking and research on issues
in this regard. 3 For those whose interests are piqued, there is a wealth
of work that has been conducted on other areas of research on English
in Singapore, and the closing chapter of this volume provides a valuable
resource for readers in this respect, comprising a selective bibliography of
such research.
Prospects
The next few decades in this era of modernity will see Singapore facing
various challenges. Among them are the following: pursuing foreign talent
and encouraging such talent to take up Singaporean citizenship, retaining
ties with those Singaporeans who have migrated overseas by cultivating a
sense of a Singaporean diaspora, and narrowing a potentially devastating
class divide between relatively well-off Singaporeans and their less affluent
counterparts. In trying to manage these challenges and others, it is clear that
discussions over the role of English in Singapore and for Singaporeans will
continue to be relevant. In this regard, we are optimistic that the chapters in
this volume have a significant contribution to make to these discussions.
Notes
1. There are occasions when the Eurasians are acknowledged as an ethnic group
in its own right (Rappa and Wee 2006). For example, the Eurasian Association
is treated as one of four ethnically based self-help groups, alongside the
Chinese Development Assistance Council, Mendaki (for the Malays), and the
Singapore Indian Development Association. These groups are all Institutions of
Public Character (IPC) and each receives dollar-for-dollar matching from the
government for funds that are raised.
2. This is not the same as saying that such labels should be ignored. They reflect
metalinguistic assumptions about how language practices cluster together, as
well as how such practices index particular in-group and out-group identities.
See also Fong, Lim and Wee (2002).
3. We would in any case like to place on record our regret that we were unable
in particular to include a section on English in Singapore literature, including
Singapore films. Scheduling conflicts and prior commitments made it difficult,
if not downright impossible, for the potential contributors who had been
invited to complete their manuscripts on time.
References
Fong, Vivienne, Lim, Lisa and Wee, Lionel (2002) Singlish: Used and abused.
Asian Englishes, 5(1), 1839.
Freeland, Jane and Patrick, Donna (2004) Language rights and language survival:
Sociolinguistic and sociocultural perspectives. In Language Rights and Language
Survival: Sociolinguistic and Sociocultural Perspectives. Edited by Jane Freeland and
Donna Patrick. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome Publishing, pp. 133.
Goh, Chok Tong (1999) First-world economy, world-class home. Prime Ministers
National Day Rally Speech 1999. Ministry of Education, Media Centre,
Speeches. Singapore: Ministry of Education. http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/
speeches/1999/sp270899.htm. Accessed January 2008.
Han, Fook Kwang, Fernandez, Warren and Tan, Sumiko (1998) Lee Kuan Yew: The
Man and His Ideas. Singapore: Times.
Hill, Michael and Lian, Kwen Fee (1995) The Politics of Nation-Building and Citizenship
in Singapore. London: Routledge.
Jenkins, Jennifer (2000) The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Kwan-Terry, Anna and Luke, Kwan-kwong (1997) Tradition, trial and error:
Standard and vernacular literacy in China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.
In Vernacular Literacy: A Re-evaluation. Edited by Andre Tabouret-Keller, Robert
B. Le Page, Penelope Gardner-Chloros and Gabriella Varro. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, pp. 271315.
Li, Wei, Saravanan, Vanithamani and Ng, Lee Hoon Julia (1997) Language shift
in the Teochew community in Singapore: A family domain analysis. Journal of
Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 18(5), 36484.

Lim, Lisa (2009) Beyond fear and loathing in SG: The real mother tongues and
language policies in multilingual Singapore. In Multilingual, Globalizing Asia:
Implications for Policy and Education. AILA Review, 22, 5271. Edited by Lisa Lim
and Ee-Ling Low.
Makoni, Sinfree and Pennycook, Alastair (2007) Disinventing and reconstituting
languages. In Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages. Edited by Sinfree Makoni
and Alastair Pennycook. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 141.
Milroy, James and Milroy, Lesley (1999) Authority in Language. 3rd ed. London:
Routledge.
Ministry of Education (2004a) Refinements to Mother Tongue language policy.
Ministry of Education, Media Centre, Press Releases. Singapore: Ministry of
Education. 9 January 2004. http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/press/2004/
pr20040109.htm. Accessed January 2008.
Ministry of Education (2004b) Nurturing a core of students with advanced
knowledge of Chinese language and culture. Ministry of Education, Media Centre,
Press Releases. Singapore: Ministry of Education. 3 September 2004. http://www.
moe.gov.sg/media/press/2004/pr20040903.htm. Accessed January 2008.
Ministry of Education (2004c) Malay Language and Tamil Language Curriculum
and Pedagogy Review Committees set up. Ministry of Education, Media Centre,
Press Releases. Singapore: Ministry of Education. December 2004. http://www.
moe.gov.sg/media/press/2004/pr20041214a.htm. Accessed 28 September 2008.
Pakir, Anne (1993) Two tongue tied: Bilingualism in Singapore. Journal of
Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 14(1/2), 7390.
Rappa, Antonio and Wee, Lionel (2006) Language Policy and Modernity in Southeast
Asia: Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand. New York: Springer.
Schneider, Edgar W. (2007) Postcolonial English: Varieties Around the World. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
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2008.
Widdowson, Henry G. (1994) The ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly, 28(2),
37789.
Migrants and mother tongues:

Extralinguistic forces in the ecology of
English in Singapore1
Lisa Lim
It has long been recognized that the history and fortunes of Singapore have
been closely intertwined with migrants and migration (e.g., Yeoh 2007).
In this chapter, I suggest that the fortunes of the various languages in the
ecology of Singapore their various rises and falls can also be seen to
be not only intertwined with migrants and migration but also very much
affected by politicians and policies. Rather than simply consider these as
distinct factors in the scenario, however, I represent them as components
of an integrated ecological model for understanding the dynamics of the
evolution of English in Singapore.2

Such an approach in linguistic study widely associated with work by
Mufwene (e.g., 2001, 2008) uses ecology for language as a metaphor
from biology and population genetics. Ecology encompasses both internal
and external aspects (or intra- and extralinguistic features): this includes
not only internal factors, such as the typology of languages in the feature
pool, from which an emerging linguistic variety draws its features through
a process of competition and selection, and the frequency of particular
linguistic features; it also includes external factors, such as power relations
between speakers of the languages, relative prestige of languages, and so
on, all of which contribute to the relative dominance of a language.

The significance of ecology in the investigation of linguistic features of
Singapore English (SE) has been demonstrated in previous work, addressing
discourse particles (Lim 2007a, 2007b, 2009a) and the presence of tone
(Lim 2008b, 2009b, forthcoming), focusing in particular on internal factors
of the ecology, namely the typological dominance of Sinitic varieties in the
feature pool Cantonese, in particular, where particles are concerned, for
their richness in number, tone and meaning. This present chapter focuses
primarily on the external factors in the ecology of Singapore, examining in
some detail what I identify as the two major forces that play a role in raising
the dominance of certain languages over others.
20 Lisa Lim

The first force, as identified at the outset of this chapter, comprises the
changing trends in immigration patterns which are an important factor in
Singapores dynamic ecology, and which are particularly significant in the
early British colonial period, in more recent decades, and in these current
and future years. The other significant force involves the implementation
of various again, swiftly changing language policies which impact
on the importance that the different languages have at different periods
of time. To some extent then, this approach can be seen to be echoing
what is expressed in Bloom (1986: 359), where up to the early part of [the
twentieth] century, the linguistic situation of Singapore, in particular the
division between English speakers and non-English speakers, was determined
largely by settlement patterns and colonial policy, or the lack thereof.

However, this chapter aims to go further than this, and not just in
terms of the time line. The first half of the chapter will provide an analytical
account of Singapores immigration patterns and policy implementation
from the (pre-)colonial era to the present day (for the period up until the
1980s, see also Bloom 1986 for a more comprehensive and critical survey
than what is possible here). What is important to bear in mind what these
patterns and policies translate to in ecological terms. By this I mean how we
can understand the policy decisions and immigration patterns in terms of
how they lead to different communities and/or their languages becoming
more or less dominant in the ecology during a particular period either
because certain languages have been given institutional support or are seen
as having certain capital (after Bourdieu 1984), or because the communities
that speak the language are more dominant because of their greater
numbers or economic strength or prestige. The identification of dominance
contributes, in turn, to explaining the dynamics of language evolution:
the more dominant a community or language in the external ecology,
the greater the likelihood that features of that language are dominant in
the competition process and are selected from the feature pool into the
emergent linguistic variety.3

Further, patterns of both immigration and policy change over time,
and indeed do so relatively swiftly and distinctively in Singapores case. This
chapter shows how, by proposing a periodization for Singapores ecology
using these two factors, we can recognize several distinct eras, each with
relatively stable characteristics. Based on this, we can then identify which
languages are dominant in the ecology in the different eras.

Finally, in the second, shorter part of this chapter, these eras of
immigration and policies are related to the linguistic ages first outlined in
Lim (2007a), and suggestions are made for the influence on SE that the
dominant languages have had in each age.4

Recognizing that migration and policies have been crucial factors in
Singapores history and development is, of course, not novel; what this
Migrants and mother tongues 21

chapter does is to show how such factors can be viewed in an integrative
model of ecology, as well as provide an illustration of the value of an
ecological approach in an analysis of the structure and evolution of a
linguistic variety.
Population and policies

In this section, I propose a periodization in which we divide Singapores
history into a number of identifiable socio-historical eras, each
distinguishable in terms of two factors: (1) the trends in immigration
patterns, and (2) the implementation of various language policies,5 both
of which impact on the importance that different communities and/or
languages have at different periods of time. The eras identified are: (a) the
colonial era (c. 1800s to 1960s); (b) independence (1960s to late 1980s);
(c) late modernity (late 1980s to 2000); and (d) a new world order (2000
to the present), which will be elaborated on in the rest of this section. It
should be noted that these eras should not be seen as coinciding precisely
with historical landmarks or incidents, and the dividing dates are meant to
indicate an approximate point in time. Further, such a division into eras
does not suggest that the eras change abruptly and are discrete, but rather
that the situations in one period transform gradually into the next. In what
follows, for each of the eras, I highlight the significant languages that would
have been spoken and been in contact, and their position in the linguistic
ecology of Singapore.
The colonial era: Natural immigration and vernacular maintenance

Long before Singapore was claimed for the British East India Company by
Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819, the ancient Indian Ocean trade routes had
already seen extensive contact in the region between sailors and traders
from south, east and southeast Asia. From as early as the fourteenth
century, Singapore known then as Temasek was a node in the trading
networks along with Riau and other islands in the archipelago. It is reported
to have been inhabited at the beginning of 1819 by a few families of Orang
Laut (sea people or Proto-Malays), pirates, a settlement of more than 30
Chinese cultivators of pepper and gambier, and about 100 Muslim Malay
fisherfolk led by the Temenggong of Johore, who had moved there in 1811
(Bloom 1986: 349).

The establishment of Singapore as a British trading post by Raffles in
1819 meant a rapidly expanding economy, which was coupled with a liberal,
open-door immigration policy (Yeoh 2007); this resulted in an even more
22 Lisa Lim
rapid influx of immigrants, the majority of them from southern China,
Malaysia, the Indonesian archipelago, and South Asia. The population
quickly grew from a few hundred to half a million by the 1931 census, and
in fact, prior to World War II, population increase was primarily due to
immigration. Already with a capitan (captain) system in place invented
pre-colonially in Malacca which divided the community into three
basic groups of Malays, Chinese, Indians and Others, whereby each
ethnic community had in effect its own legal system (Bloom 1986: 352),
the growing population continued to be settled according to Raffles Town
Plan of 1822, which, as part of the divide-and-rule policy of the British,
involved the allotment of separate areas within the central urban area to
the different ethnic communities. The Chinese were located in the entire
area south of the Singapore River, itself subdivided according to different
dialect groupings (Kwok 2000: 203). The Indians were in a small area on
the south bank of the river (which later became more scattered with several
distinct enclaves according to language, religion, caste and trade, Liu 1999:
133), and the Malays were in two areas, each around one of the leaders who
had signed the documents ceding Singapore to the British (Liu 1999: 19
20, 616). The different groups built their own temples, formed their own
religious and clan-based welfare associations, and set up their own trade
and occupational guilds (Liu 1999: 143).
Table 2.1 Percentage distribution of total population by ethnic group
(from Kwok 2000: 200)
Year
Total Pop.
Chinese
Malay
Indian
Others
Total
1824
10,683
31.0
60.2
7.1
1.7
100
1830
16,634
39.4
45.9
11.5
3.2
100
1836
29,984
45.9
41.7
9.9
2.6
100
1840
35,389
50.0
37.3
9.5
3.1
100
1849
52,891
52.9
32.2
11.9
3.0
100
1860
81,734
61.2
19.8
15.9
3.1
100
1871
97,111
56.2
26.9
11.8
5.0
100
1891
181,602
67.1
19.7
8.8
4.3
100
1901
226,842
72.1
15.8
7.8
4.3
100
1911
303,321
72.4
13.8
9.2
4.7
100
1921
418,358
75.3
12.8
7.7
4.2
100
1931
557,745
75.1
11.7
9.1
4.2
100
1947
938,144
77.8
12.1
7.4
2.8
100
1957
1,445,929
75.4
13.6
8.6
2.4
100
1970
2,074,507
76.2
15.0
7.0
1.8
100
1980
2,413,945
76.9
14.6
6.4
2.1
100
Sources: Cheng 1985; Saw 1970; Singapore Census of Population 1990; Demographic
Characteristics 1992.

The population in this era exhibited a richness and diversity in terms of
origin and multilingual repertoire. The structured outline that follows
describes the pattern of immigration and settlement of the various
communities; each numbered paragraph addresses a particular community,
distinguished by their region of origin, namely, from the Malay archipelago,
China, and (then British) India, or by their being a particular mixed group,
namely the Straits Chinese and the Eurasians. In some cases, a paragraph
about a community encompasses a number of different linguistic varieties.
a. While there was a fairly homogeneous Malay-speaking Malay community,
the Malay group also included immigrants from various parts of the
Malay archipelago who spoke other Austronesian languages such as
Javanese, Buginese, Boyanese. These early immigrants were from the Riau
Islands, Malacca and Sumatra, and later also included peoples especially
from Java and Bawean Island, as well as Sulawesi and other islands.
The Malays also included the English-speaking Jawi-Peranakans, and
a small but economically important group of Arabs (Bloom 1986: 353),
with late nineteenth-century community leaders including the wealthy
Alsagoff and Alkaff families (Liu 1999: 154). The Malays certainly
constituted the majority of the population in the first part of the
nineteenth century (60% in 1824), but their numerical dominance was
swiftly displaced by the growing Chinese population (see point b) and
decreased steadily to less than 15% by the 1900s (see Table 2.1).
b. While the Malays initially formed the bulk of the population, the
Chinese population started growing swiftly, as can be seen in Table 2.1,
and came to form the largest ethnic proportion of Singapores total
population within two decades of British colonization (45.9% by 1836).
The Chinese population continued to grow steadily and rapidly over
the century, most dramatically after the 1880s, not least as a result of
the establishment of the Chinese Protectorates in the Straits Settlements
which controlled labour abuses and freed up the labour markets (Kwok
2000: 201), to reach its current proportion of three-quarters of the
population by 1921. The vast majority of the ethnic Chinese immigrants
hailed from cities and provinces on the southern coast of China, mainly
Xiamen in southern Fujian (the Hokkiens), Chaozhou in the east of
Guangdong (the Teochews), and Guangdong itself (the Cantonese),
though there was sizeable representation of Hakkas and Hainanese,
as well as small numbers from the coastal counties of northern Fujian
and Three Rivers People from northern and central China. Although
the Teochews constituted the largest proportion of Chinese in the
early nineteenth century, being twice as numerous as the Hokkiens
in 1848 (Kwok 2000: 204), they were however economically weak,
being involved primarily in agriculture, and were also perceived to be
24 Lisa Lim
more conservative and risk-averse (Li, Saravanan and Ng 1997). The
Hokkiens by contrast were a strong economic power in Singapore,
especially from the late 1800s, establishing themselves first as traders
and go-betweens, and then as importers, exporters, manufacturers and
bankers, and virtually monopolizing commercial activities by the end
of the nineteenth century. As a result, the Hokkiens became the most
powerful bang clan, and played a leading role within the Singapore
Chinese Chamber of Commerce, set up in 1906, as well as within the
Chinese community at large (Li et al. 1997). As a consequence, Hokkien
was the most frequently understood and spoken Chinese language (note
that it is mutually intelligible with Teochew, both being subvarieties of
Southern Min), followed by Cantonese and Mandarin, up until the 1970s
(Lock 1982: 302), and, more crucially, was the de facto lingua franca
for intraethnic communication within the Chinese community (Platt
and Weber 1980), which by 1840 comprised half the population (Table
2.1). Cantonese is also suggested to be important in terms of input in
the ecology of Singapore and the development of SE (Gupta 1994: 41),
as the Cantonese are reported to have taken up English education with
more enthusiasm than the Hokkiens (Chia 1977: 160). Mandarin came
into the picture only from the 1920s in the Chinese-medium schools,
once the Chinese republic was founded (Bloom 1986: 359ff; Kwok
2000), but would still have filled the role of High (H) variety, fulfilling
more formal functions, in the diglossic situation (Ferguson 1959; or
polyglossic, Platt and Weber 1980) said to be found in Singapore then.
c. A distinct and important group of Chinese were the Straits-born
Chinese or Babas (for a detailed socio-historical account, see Ansaldo,
Lim and Mufwene 2007; Lim 2010). Descendants of eighteenth/
nineteenth-century south Chinese immigrants and local (Malay or
Indonesian) women, largely arriving in Singapore from Malacca and
Penang, their vernacular was a contact Malay variety, Baba Malay,
restructured to show in particular Hokkien elements in syntax and lexis
(see e.g., Lim 1988; Ansaldo and Matthews 1999); they also usually
spoke one or more Chinese languages, in particular Hokkien, along
with much code-mixing (Pakir 1986, 1989; Lim 1988). Moreover, the
Babas were (and are still) also noted, particularly for that time, for
having English (increasingly) in their repertoire: they held a high
regard for English-medium education and sent their children to
English-medium schools. By the mid-nineteenth century, their ability to
converse in the colonial language had strengthened their prominent
socio-economic position compared to other local communities, to the
point where they were in fact sometimes referred to as Kings Chinese
(Tan 1988: 53). Their English is a particular variety, showing influences
from (Baba) Malay, known as Peranakan English (Lim 2010; also,

English, with a Straits accent, Bloom 1986: 449). Their multilingual
repertoire comprising Baba Malay, Hokkien, and possibly one or two
other Chinese languages, plus English afforded them an important
role as intermediaries between Europeans and locals, thus allowing
closer contact with British administrators and merchants (Nathan 1922:
77); this together with their business acumen gave them predominance
in the commercial sectors (also see Ho and Platt 1993: 89). Although
they comprised a mere 9.5% of the Chinese population in 1881, their
social and economic influence was strong in comparison, and they
formed an important sector of the local elite (Kwok 2000: 202, 204),
and were seen to be the best educated, wealthiest and most intelligent
section of the Chinese community (Nathan 1922: 77).
d. Indian contact, trade and migration to Southeast Asia had been
occurring since ancient times, including significant influence of the Sri
Vijaya empire in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the region, and
the transporting of Dravidian cultural, religious and literary influence
to the Malay world (Wignesan 1995). This, however, bears less directly
on the influence of South Asian languages in Singapores contact
dynamics from the nineteenth century. At the founding of Singapore,
the first Indians who arrived with Raffles were 120 sepoys, lascars and
several assistants (Liu 1999: 82). The migration from the subcontinent
that followed involved South Asians who were geographically and
linguistically diverse, and represented a number of different castes, each
filling a niche in the early days. For example, Ceylonese Tamils tended
to work as clerks, junior civil servants and in the professions; Christian
Malayalis from Kerala were English-educated and worked mainly in the
civil service; Punjabi Sikhs were the backbone of the armed forces and
the police force, and worked as private security guards; Tamil Muslims,
Sindhis and Gujaratis were often small traders; and the Tamil Chettiar
caste from Tamil Nadu were moneylenders and currency changers.
The largest group of immigrants were South Indian, mainly from
the Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam language communities, with the
Tamils in the majority. A minority were well-educated entrepreneurs
and professionals such as those from Jaffna, many of whom were
educated in English and recruited by the British for government and
educational services (Bloom 1986: 353) who would have had some
status. The majority were, however, recruited from South India as
indentured workers in low-status jobs such as rubber-tapping (Bloom
1986: 353). Overall, given the pattern of migration and settlement, as
sketched above, the Indian community was fragmented and dispersed
unevenly along various cultural and professional lines. Apart from
prominent individuals in the form of Parsi, Tamil and North Indian
businessmen, the Indian population had no community leadership and
26 Lisa Lim
were divided in background, language and religion (Liu 1999: 82).
Furthermore, they represented in total only a small proportion of the
population, peaking in the mid-1800s at 16%, but otherwise ranging
between 7% to 9% from the 1900s onwards. Their various languages
Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Punjabi, Bengali, and so on were
used in the home domains of the respective communities, but not in
interethnic communication; nor did any of them really serve as lingua
franca between the different Indian groups.
e. By the turn of the nineteenth century, Singapore was a cosmopolitan
city, with small groups of Armenians, Jews and Japanese, and
Europeans, and growing numbers of Anglo Indians and Anglo Chinese
(Liu 1999: 164). The population of Eurasians a community from
Malacca with a complex heritage of Portuguese, British or Dutch, mixed
with Indian, Macanese, Malaccan, Burmese, Siamese, and/or Ceylonese
origins was also expanding. By 1931, there were almost three
thousand Eurasians, three-quarters of whom were born in Singapore
(Liu 1999: 242). These groups spoke a variety of vernaculars, such as
Arabic or Malay in the Jewish community in the family domain (Geoffrey
Benjamin p.c. cited in Gupta 1994: 41), and Portuguese creole for
the Portuguese Eurasians. Soon, however, most of these groups had
English as a mother tongue (Liu 1999: 164). Where the Eurasians are
concerned (Braga-Blake 1992: 1213), theirs was a particular Eurasian
English (Gupta 1994: 37, 39, 44; Wee 2010).
Thus far we have seen the main Asian communities and their vernacular
languages which would have been present and in some cases, dominant
in the linguistic ecology of Singapores colonial era. Two further issues
are important to address.

First, and very significantly, beyond each communitys own vernacular,
there was Bazaar Malay, one of the local forms of restructured Malay,
the lingua franca in the region for centuries (Holm 1988; Adelaar and
Prentice 1996; Ansaldo 2009a), which certainly served as the interethnic
lingua franca in Singapore (Platt and Weber 1980; Bloom 1986: 360). The
Chinese, for example, that came to Singapore in the 1820s and 1830s would
either have had intimate contacts with the Malay and Thai worlds across
several generations of residence in the region, or be already acquainted
with the British and Dutch administrations through sojourns in the other
trading centres in the area, or would at least have relatives with decades
of trading experience (Wang 1991), and would have had Bazaar Malay in
their repertoire (also see Ansaldo 2009a). Bazaar Malay in the Chinese
and Indian communities has certainly been documented (Khin Khin Aye
2005; Sasi Rekha 2007). Baba Malay, the vernacular of the Straits Chinese
mentioned above, has also been equated in some literature to Bazaar Malay

(see Ansaldo, Lim and Mufwene 2007 for details; but cf. Lim 1988 and
Ansaldo 2009a who explain why and how they are distinct varieties). The
English-speaking Eurasians also spoke Malay (Gupta 1994: 37). Even after
the growth of the Chinese population, Bazaar Malay was the second most
understood language, after Hokkien, in early 1970s Singapore, and was
still the most important language for interethnic communication, with all
Indians and 45% of the Chinese claiming to understand it.

The second issue is where and how English came into the picture.
Most scholars argue that it was exclusively through the schools that English
spread (Bloom 1986: 348, crediting Platt and Weber 1980 to be the first to
note this in print),6 and it is to the domain of the school that we now turn.
The school system of the Malay community was most certainly established
before Raffles arrival, and the Malays were encouraged by the British to
attend their vernacular schools (Gupta 1994: 34). Where the Chinese group
was concerned, traditional Chinese schools were funded by the community
through clans, voluntary associations or philanthropic individuals. Although
initially somewhat fragmentary, staffed by teachers from a particular clan,
who used their own dialect as the medium of instruction (Koh 2006),
they developed after the 1911 Revolution in China into high-quality
establishments, involving Mandarin as a medium of education. These Malayand Chinese-medium schools did not teach English at all in the early years,
though by the 1920s and 1930s, many were teaching English as a subject.
Meanwhile, the first English-medium school was established in Singapore
in 1834, whose enrolment, while starting small, began to rise gently in
accordance with population, towards the last decade of the nineteenth
century, and then rose steeply at the turn of the century through to the
1930s. During the nineteenth century, the pupils formed a relatively stable
proportion as follows: equal numbers of Europeans/Eurasians and Chinese
(each 40%), and smaller numbers of Malays and Indians/Others (each
10%). The enrolment of Chinese pupils increased significantly at the start of
the twentieth century to constitute two-thirds of students within twenty years.

Where teachers were concerned, until the early 1920s, the largest single
racial group of teachers was the Eurasians. Interestingly, their variety of
English was noted and frequently deplored in education reports (Gupta
1994: 43). This was followed by roughly equal numbers of Europeans and
Indians. In 1935, out of 161 European teachers, there were 12 American,
15 French, and 14 German, Portuguese or Italian; the remaining majority
were British, with not few Irish or Scottish (Gupta 1994: 43). Teachers from
then-Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India, recruited during colonial times, were
also well represented in the teaching profession (Ho and Platt 1993: 6),
though not mentioned in the reports (Gupta 1994: 44): they would have
contributed another variety of English, Indian English.7 From the 1920s, the
proportion of Chinese teachers rose rapidly, they having been the students
the decade before (Gupta 1994: 3940).
28 Lisa Lim

The significant point to note here is this: such a predominance in the
early nineteenth century of both Eurasians and Babas as teachers and/
or students in the local English-medium schools would mean that there
would also have been extensive use of Malay there (Gupta 1994: 41), since,
as mentioned earlier, in addition to English, both groups had a variety
of Malay as a dominant language in their repertoire. This is testified in
the comments in early reports on the extensive use of Malay in Englishmedium schools, not just outside but also within the classroom (Gupta
1994: 412). It should be noted that this would have been Bazaar or Baba
Malay references are to spurious Malay (Report 1874, cited in Gupta
1994: 42) and the wretched town Malay generally spoken by the Chinese
(Kynnersley Report 1902, cited in Gupta 1994: 42) and not the Malay
variety spoken by the Malay community. The presence and dominance of
Malay in the schools is evidenced by the fact that even British children in
English-medium local schools, who were not few in the nineteenth century,
are reported to have been able to speak Bazaar Malay (Gupta 1994: 38).
In other words, Bazaar/Baba Malay would have been in significant contact
with English, even within the schools. With the presence of the Straitsborn Chinese, there would also have been Hokkien, and a number of other
Chinese languages such as Teochew and Cantonese, in particular with the
increase in Chinese teachers and students in the twentieth century.

After World War II, the British still promoted English-medium
schooling among the elite, with about 32% of students enrolled in Englishmedium schools in 1947 (Tickoo 1996: 434), and, by the 1950s, education
became effectively universal and English-medium education increasingly
the norm. By 1952, 43% of school enrolment was English-medium, with the
numbers registering for English-medium education overtaking those for
Chinese-medium education by the end of that decade (Doraisamy 1969).

The period of free immigration, which lasted over a century, came to an
end when the colonial government passed the 1928 Immigration Restriction
Ordinance (Yeoh 2007). After a dwindling during the Great Depression of
the 1930s, followed by a temporary halt of migration during the Japanese
occupation of Singapore (194245) during World War II, new immigrants
came during the post-war boom years, accompanied by a new immigration
ordinance which came into force in 1953 that admitted only those who
could contribute to the social and economic development of Singapore
(Yeoh 2007). In an attempt to ensure the availability of jobs and a certain
standard of living among local residents, the inflow of manual workers was
stemmed, while priority was given to those who could contribute specialized
services in scarce supply, such as professional and managerial expertise.
In this period (194565), immigrants came primarily from Peninsular
Malaysia, since Singapore and Malaysia were part of the same political entity
then (i.e., British Malaya from 1946 to 1948, the Federation of Malaya from

1948 to 1963, and from September 1963, the Federation of Malaysia) which
allowed free movement (Yeoh 2007), and, until Singapore separated from
Malaysia and achieved independence in 1965, people from the Federation
faced no entry restrictions. However, the immigration of the earlier decades
which created the pluralist mix that formed the foundation of Singapores
population to this day was a phenomenon that was not to recur.
The independence era: Population stabilization and language institutionalization

When the Peoples Action Party (PAP) government came into power
first in 1959 with Singapore self-governed, followed by a brief period
of unification with Malaysia, and finally independence in 1965 and,
additionally, with the withdrawal of British military in 1967, economic and
socio-political insecurity called for the creating of national unity and forging
of national identity and consciousness that transcended ethnic boundaries
(Chiew 1983: 45ff). We see this manifested in both the management of the
population and the overhaul of the education system (Tickoo 1996: 436).

In this period, as a result of the new immigration laws mentioned
above, no significant immigration took place from the early 1960s (Gupta
1994: 1), and natural increase was the more dominant contribution to
population growth, as opposed to immigration in the previous era. The
immigrant communities were becoming more stable, and consequently
interacting increasingly outside their dialect groups (Bloom 1986: 359). This
was additionally aided by measures in public housing, primarily to improve
living conditions, which commenced in the late 1950s: as a consequence
of the establishing of required ethnic proportions in each set of housing
board flats, this also ensured the end of ethnic enclaves and promoted
greater interaction between groups. Where the community organization of
the various Chinese dialect groups in earlier decades was along clan lines,
this was now achieved via national bodies such as community centres, which
fostered instead a more pan-Chinese sense of community.

In the realm of education, a number of measures were implemented,
one of which was the institutionalization of English as a compulsory
language in schools. This was initially either as a first language or, in
the vernacular (Chinese-, Malay- or Tamil-medium) schools, as a second
language, in the bilingual education system advocated in the 1956
Singapore White Paper on Education. Eventually, English was implemented
as the medium of instruction in all schools in 1987. As is by now well
recognized, the economic consideration of this move was that a usable
competence in English, the language of science and technology, and of
international trade and commerce, was seen as a basic need. The political
consideration was that English, being a neutral non-native language, not
30 Lisa Lim
associated with any of the Asian cultures, and not the mother tongue of any
of the ethnic groups, gave none of the ethnic groups an advantage (Kuo
1980: 59ff). At the same time, in order to maintain Asian values, children
learnt their Mother Tongue (MT) the official language assigned to
the ethnic group that one is categorized as belonging to, the term notably
identified with initial capitals as, eventually, their Second Language.
Thus an English-knowing bilingualism system (Pakir 1991) was established.

With regard to the vernacular languages, however, the bilingual
education programme was assessed by the Goh Report (Goh et al. 1979)
as having failed, as the Chinese dialects were still being used at home.
This prompted the annual Speak Mandarin Campaign, launched in 1979,
designed to convince Chinese Singaporeans to shift from Chinese dialects
to Mandarin in all domains (see e.g., Bokhorst-Heng 1998). The four official
languages were also implemented in the mass media, again with the suppression
of all other non-official languages (see e.g., Bokhorst-Heng 1998).

Such aggressive institutionalization of certain languages over others and
active implementation of language policies and practices had an immediate
and long-reaching impact on Singapores linguistic ecology during this
period.8
a. English started displacing Hokkien and Bazaar Malay as lingua franca
from the late 1970s to early 1980s, especially among the younger and
more educated, with some 70% of Primary 1 children in 1990 having
English as a dominant language (Lim and Foley 2004: 56).
b. Mandarin became the language most frequently spoken at home for the
Chinese as a whole, increasing substantially from 10% (1980) to 30.1%
(1990) to 45.1% (2000), displacing other Chinese languages (decreasing
from 81.4% to 50.3% to 30.7% in the same years). Some 87% of the
Chinese population claimed to be able to understand Mandarin by
1988, and it became the language of choice for many younger Chinese
Singaporeans intraethnic communication in all domains (Lim and
Foley 2004: 6).9
c. The three main dialect groups out of more than twenty Chinese
dialect groups in Singapore are still the Hokkiens, Teochews and
Cantonese, who comprised 41.1%, 21% and 15.4% respectively in 2000,
making up three quarters of the Singapore Chinese population. In spite
of the shift to Mandarin outlined in (b) above, Hokkien and Cantonese
were in 2000 still dominant home languages in the Chinese community
ranking as the third and fourth languages most frequently spoken
at home in the Chinese community as a whole, after Mandarin and
English.
d. The use of Bazaar Malay as a lingua franca declined, except in the older
generation (see e.g., Khin Khin Aye 2005) and perhaps in the lower
social strata. Malay, even while Singapores national language since

independence, is really only used within the Malay speech community
itself, though in 2000 it was still by far the most frequently spoken
language at home (91.5%) for the ethnic Malays, and in some 12% of
Indian as well as Other households.
e. Tamil is spoken by a minority of the population. Some 4.2% of the total
population are Indians of Tamil-speaking origin, even if they form the
greatest proportion, of slightly more than half, within the Indian racial
grouping, with the rest of the Indian population being Hindi, Gujarati,
Malayalam and Punjabi speakers. Even with its official status, Tamil
has continued to be perceived as having little economic value, and
seen very much to be a classroom language, with very little functional
use elsewhere (Saranavan 1993; Schiffman 2003). It has been replaced
largely by English (as well as Malay) in the community in interethnic
as well as intraethnic communication, even in the home domain, with
a steady shift over the years (52.6% to 43.7% from 1980 to 1990),
particularly in the higher classes and the better educated. The situation
is similar with the other Indian languages. (See also Vaish et al. in this
volume.)
As is evident from the figures above, this is the era where the official
languages which represent the official races in Singapore (Chinese,
Malay, Indian, and Other) that is, those associated with higher-order
ethnicity (Gupta 2001: 5) attained prominence, and started displacing
the other languages which were in fact languages of actual separate dialect
groups (lower-order ethnicity, Gupta 2001: 5), and which, poignantly,
were essentially the real mother tongues of the population (see Lim
2009c). Overall, there was a large-scale shift from societal multilingualism
in a multiplicity of languages to a small number of official languages, or,
as suggested by Murray (cited in Bloom 1986: 359), the distribution of
languages was no longer to be described in terms of pluralism but rather of
heterogeneity.
The late modernity era: Foreign manpower and dialect ascendance

In the last decades of the twentieth century, to overcome the limits of local
resources, Singapore began to nurture a policy of attracting and relying
on foreign manpower at both the high and low ends of the spectrum,
a practice which has directly contributed to an increasing proportion of
the nonresident/noncitizen population in recent decades (Yeoh 2007). As
is evident in Table 2.2, while non-residents comprised a small 3% of the
total population in 1970, from 1980 this started to rise steadily through
to 20% in 2001. The average annual growth of non-residents peaked at
9.3% between 1990 and 2000, which contrasts sharply with the growth of
32 Lisa Lim
Singapore residents, which never goes beyond 1.8%. In line with population
and growth figures, we see foreigners constituting approximately 29% of
Singapores total labour force in 2000, comprising the highest proportion
of foreign workers in Asia. The most rapid increase occurred over the last
decade, an increase of 170%, from 248,000 in 1990 to 670,000 in 2006 (Yeoh
2007). Such a significant proportion of foreigners in Singapore clearly
does potentially change a nations demographics and has implications for
policy (Wee and Bokhorst-Heng 2005: 159); more crucial to this chapter, it
must be taken seriously in the consideration of the balance of languages in
Singapores linguistic ecology and the impact on the evolution of varieties
such as Singapore English. We can differentiate between two objects of
interest in this respect, namely the status and impact upon Singapores
linguistic ecology of two types of foreign manpower: foreign workers (lower
skilled) and foreign talent (highly skilled).
Table 2.2 Population and annual growth
(from Tan 2002: 2; Lee and Yeo 2003: 10)
Year
1970
Number (000)
Total pop.
Spore
residents
2,074.5
2,013.6
Average Annual growth (%)

(growth over previous decade; for
2001 and 2002, growth over previous
year)
Nonresidents
60.9
Total pop.
Spore
residents
Nonresidents
2.8
n.a.
n.a.
1980
2,413.9
2,282.1
131.8
1.5
1.3
8.0
1990
3,047.1
2,735.9
311.3
2.3
1.7
9.0
2000
4,017.7
3,263.2
754.5
2.8
1.8
9.3
2001
4,131.2
3,319.1
812.1
2.8
1.7
7.6
2002
4,171.3
3,378.3
793.0
1.0
1.8
-2.4
(a) The lower skilled (foreign workers). In the affluence of recent

decades, because Singaporeans have been reluctant to fill low-skilled
low-wage jobs, the country has had to turn to foreign workers to fill
such positions; these workers came largely from Malaysia, Thailand,
the Philippines, Sri Lanka and India. However, believing that too
much permanent, low-skilled migration is disruptive to society, the
government has imposed an immigration policy since the 1970s which
maintains low- and unskilled migrants as a transient workforce (Yeoh
2007). This is achieved via a series of measures, such as the regulation
of the proportion of foreign to local workers, and the work-permit
system, by which foreign workers are only allowed to work for the
employer and in the occupation as reflected in the work permit, with

employment contracts of a maximum of two years (subject to a oneoff renewal), and therefore cannot gain access to the local labour
market. Foreign workers are also subject to repatriation during periods
of economic downturn, or in the case of females, upon becoming
pregnant. Furthermore, they are not allowed to bring their spouses and
children with them, nor can they marry Singaporeans or permanent
residents (PRs). Consequently, while foreign workers have formed a
substantial proportion of the population approximately 86.5% of
the non-resident workforce in 2006 (580,000 out of 670,000) their
languages are in fact not likely to be dominant in Singapores ecology
for a number of reasons: (i) foreign workers are mainly concentrated
in the construction industry, in domestic maid services, and in service,
manufacturing and marine industries, and by definition hold a lower
status in the country; (ii) as mentioned above, they are not permitted
to marry Singaporeans or PRs, nor do they have their own families with
them to engage in a normal lifestyle. They tend to live in districts or
enclaves for foreign workers, and are thus relatively segregated, with
little or no intense or intimate contact with SE speakers.

One exception might be the community of Filipina, Indonesian
and Sri Lankan domestic workers who do have intensive and intimate
contact with Singaporeans one in seven households employs a
foreign maid (Piper 2005); more crucially, they are in close contact
with children, being, in many cases, the primary caregiver of children
from their birth or early years. While it has been suggested (e.g.,
Yip and Matthews 2007 for the situation in Hong Kong) that their
languages or variety of English would not have a significant influence in
the ecology, since the community would be deemed of low status and
little prestige (and we can think of the Teochews, for example, in the
first era), substantial research has yet to be conducted on this question
though it has indeed been recognized (e.g., Lim 2009d). It has been
noted nonetheless that the Filipina domestic workers, in particular, who
tend to have a reasonable proficiency in English and speak Philippine
English, often serve as English-language teaching auxiliaries to the
children of middle-class families (McArthur 2002).
(b) The highly skilled (foreign talent). Given its aspirations to become a
major player in a globalized world, Singapores main economic strategy
has been to invest heavily in information technology and human
capital, focusing on developing Singapore into the talent capital of the
global economy. To this end, immigration policies have been liberalized
for some: skilled immigrants are allowed to bring their family members
and receive permanent residency or citizenship more easily, and various
programmes aimed at attracting talent have been launched, such as
34 Lisa Lim
company grant schemes to ease costs of employing foreign skilled
labour, and recruitment missions by government agencies (Yeoh 2007).
This sector of foreign labour professional and managerial workers,
often working for multinational corporations usually referred to as
foreign talent in both government and public discourse, accounted
for 13.4% (about 90,000) of Singapores total non-resident population
in 2006. While traditionally from the United States, Britain, France,
Australia, Japan and South Korea, recent years have seen a majority of
them coming from China, India and Malaysia, due to policies instituted
in the 1990s targeting the highly skilled in non-traditional source
countries (Yeoh 2007).

A particular group of immigrants that warrants special mention
in this respect are the Chinese from China and Hong Kong, whose
immigration was encouraged in the 1980s and 1990s in order to widen
the talent pool. In 1989 in particular, Singapore mounted a campaign to
attract skilled professionals from Hong Kong, offering a Chinese cultural
environment with lower living costs, and accepted 25,000 individuals
from Hong Kong as permanent residents (translating in reality to
potentially 100,000, if one includes in the calculation the families of
these individuals, Anne Pakir, p.c. 2007), as well as an undisclosed
number from China (Kwok 2000: 201). In an opposite trend, significant
emigration occurred in the late 1980s. Between July 1987 and June
1988, some 4,200 Singaporeans emigrated to Australia, New Zealand,
Canada and the USA. This emigration was of culturally marginalized
English-speaking minority communities, mostly middle-class, including
Indians, Eurasians, Peranakans, a large proportion of them universityeducated professionals, and is seen to be the result of the bilingual
policy and the particular emphasis on Mandarin, favouring the Chinese
community. The 1990s also saw the immigration of a fairly large
expatriate Indian community of well-educated and wealthy professional
and business people; interestingly and perhaps significant to local
ecology the interaction between the local and expatriate Indian
communities is noted to be ambivalent rather than natural. Clearly,
these patterns affect the balance of proportions of the population and
subsequently the relative dominance of relevant languages.

Where language policies are concerned, while the official languages are
still upheld in official discourse and education, a phenomenon involving
increased prominence of previously non-sanctioned linguistic varieties may
be observed. Five Non-Tamil-Mother-Tongues (NTMTs), namely Bengali,
Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu, were included in the school system in
the 1990s, though it may be noted that these are largely community- and
not state-funded. In spite of the continuing official discourse on Mandarin

versus the other Chinese languages, a relaxation in the domains of use
of Chinese dialects has occurred: in the lead-up to the general elections
in 2001 and 2006, for example, ministers of the ruling political party,
including the then prime minister, gave election rally speeches not only
in the official languages (English, Mandarin, etc.) but also in Hokkien,
Teochew, and Cantonese, to better connect with their voters. In parallel,
Singlish while still played against good English in official discourse,
such as the Speak Good English Movement has similarly slipped through
the cracks to figure in supposed H domains. During the SARS epidemic of
2003, in a bid to promote healthy practices to prevent the spread of SARS,
the popular local sitcom character Phua Chu Kang who in 2000 had
been reprimanded for speaking Singlish and in subsequent episodes had to
attend grammar classes to improve his English performed in Singlish in
a music video, The SAR-vivor Rap, released by the Ministry of Health and
endorsed by the government. (See e.g., Lim 2009c for an account of such
uses of the Chinese dialects and Singlish.)
For this era then, the dominance of various languages in the ecology is
evaluated as follows:
1. Mandarin is still the language most frequently spoken at home for the
Chinese as a whole, compared to other Chinese languages (45.1% vs.
30.7% in 2000).
2. In spite of the shift to Mandarin outlined in (1) above, the other
Chinese varieties Hokkien and Cantonese are still fairly dominant in the
Chinese community, ranking as the third and fourth most frequently
spoken language at home, after Mandarin and English, in the Chinese
community as a whole. However, what is more significant and revealing
is that, when each dialect group is examined separately (see Lee 2001)
a more appropriate practice in such an investigation Cantonese
is in fact still spoken by the Cantonese at home more frequently than
Mandarin (36% vs. 32% in 2000), even if there is an overall decrease
in usage (from 51.5% Cantonese and 20.2% Mandarin in 1990). This
contrasts with both the Hokkiens and Teochews who speak more
Mandarin (46.3% and 43.4%) than their own language (29% and
25.7%) at home in 2000 than in 1990.
A new world order: Betting on work and play, and regional language recognition
This fourth era, I argue, has begun we may set the start date around
the end of the old millennium. We may view it as the continuation and
expansion of the patterns of the third era, but I suggest that there is a
qualitatively distinct thrust in immigration policy, which is in the process of
gathering momentum.
36 Lisa Lim

Singapore of the twenty-first century is generally recognized (e.g.,
Arnold 2007; Kingsbury 2007) as facing challenging economic prospects
as a consequence of competition from low-cost countries such as China in
high-tech manufacturing jobs, once crucial to economic growth as well
as shrinking population, due to numerous younger Singaporeans seeking
employment overseas and others having fewer children. These two trends
mean that the population is set to shrink in 2020, which subsequently
means stagnating economic growth and a declining standard of living. The
governments solution is to boost the population by 25% to 6.5 million over
the next few decades, through a radical increase in the foreign population.
The prime minister has been urging Singaporeans to change our mindset
towards foreign talent (Goh 2000) in his National Day Rally speeches since
2000, with the increase in population to be achieved in two main thrusts.

The first is by increasing what may be seen as the fun factor. Since
drawing in such a large number of high-income foreign talent requires
more than being one of the best places to live, which Singapore regularly
accomplishes in regional surveys (e.g., international human resource
company Mercer 2006 in their Quality of Living Survey ranked Singapore
as the most attractive Asian city for expatriates to live, work and play in), in
terms of efficient government, first-world infrastructure, solid educational
system, and clean crime-free streets. This additional buzz is being realized,
among other plans, by the following:
a. nightclubs being allowed to be kept open 24 hours from 2002;
b. gambling being legalized in 2005, and two integrated resorts (IRs)
(casino/resort developments) completed by the end of this century;
c. the running of the Formula One Grand Prix circuit and its first
night race from 2008;
d. the promotion of private banking from 2002 which has resulted in
nearly 40 private banks having regional operations in Singapore
through bolstering banking secrecy laws (already in 2001), offering
generous tax incentives, and modifying its trust laws that guarantee the
right of trust holders to determine who inherits the estate the last
especially attractive to clients from Europe and the Middle East (Arnold
2007);
e. the establishing of economic partnerships, involving attractive tax
treaties, with Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Kuwait and Oman,
numbering 56 at present (Bakhda 2007);
f. the passing of a new property law in 2006 allowing land on Sentosa
Cove (see next point) to be owned by foreign individuals without
special government clearance;
g. the development of Sentosa Cove, Singapores first waterfront property
development of 2,500 luxury homes, positioned as an international
resort community, targeted at not just wealthy locals but also expatriate
residents and overseas investors; completed in 2010, some 60% of the

buyers so far are foreigners, including those from Europe, Malaysia,
Hong Kong, Indonesia and Japan (Channel News Asia 2006; Arnold
2007);
h. the development and sale of other luxury residential projects in the
city, whose buyers, in at least one case, comprise three-quarters from
Europe, the USA and the Middle East; for prime districts landed
homes, the main buyers were UK nationals, Australians, Americans,
Malaysians and Indians (Business Times 2007).

In this sense, immigration policy has come full circle, with the thrust
in this current era being, as declared by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong,
to promote immigration into Singapore (Lee 2006). The difference from
the first era lies in the composition of the communities, and thus their
languages, which consequently make for a different composition in the
feature pool.

The second thrust is the goal of establishing Singapore as an education
hub, focusing on its strengths, including its English-speaking environment
and high educational standards as well as its reputation for public order
and safety. World-class educational institutions such as INSEAD and Johns
Hopkins University have already established Singapore campuses for some
years now. International students comprise this third group of foreigners
(the other two being foreign workers and foreign talent) which has indeed
been growing in importance. While Singapore has long attracted foreign
students from Malaysia and Indonesia, since 1997 the country has made
specific efforts to develop Singapore into an international education hub
for primary- to university-level students (Yeoh 2007), promoting Singapore
as The Global Schoolhouse of Asian school systems with Western-styled
education practices. In 2005, 66,000 foreign students (amounting to about
10% of all students in the country) came to Singapore, with the target,
as recommended by a government economic review panel, of 150,000
foreign students by 2012, being more than double the 2005 figure. This
is estimated to not only create 22,000 jobs but also raise the education
sectors contribution to the gross domestic product from the current 1.9%
(S$3 billion/US$1.9 billion) to 5% (Yeoh 2007). Since Asian students
are expected to dominate the increasing global demand for international
higher education, the main targeted markets include China and India, as
well as neighbouring Southeast Asian countries. It is estimated that there
are now approximately 36,000 students from mainland China studying
in Singapores local schools, an increase from 32,000 in 2006 (Toh
2008), making up half of the foreign students in Singapore. What is also
noteworthy is that often accompanying the students are their mothers
known locally as study mamas or peidu (Mandarin accompany study)
mamas who, estimated at 5,000, have in many cases significant contact
with the local population, working as salespersons, tutors, workers in local
38 Lisa Lim
coffeeshops, cleaners, and, in the sex trade (Toh 2008). The possibility
of (good Indian) education is also said to be a draw, even the factor for
choosing to relocate to Singapore, for the professional expatriate Indian
population (Global Indian International School 2008), which has also been
growing, as evidenced by the rapid increase in enrolment in the Global
Indian International School (from 48 students in 2002 to more than 4,000
in three campuses four years on) and DPS International (increasing from
169 students in 2004 to more than 1,700) (Ng and Sengupta 2008).

To this end, success may already be noted. Singapores population
saw a significant increase in June 2008, the biggest annual spike since the
collection of such data in 1837 (as in Table 2.1). Notably, the increase
is not due to citizens birth rate (rising by 1%) but primarily due to
foreigners (increasing by 19% to 1.2 million), with the increase in new
citizens and permanent residents increasing by about 25% (Li 2008). More
specifically, the number of new migrants from China is estimated to be
close to 100,000 (Chan 2006: 9), and Indian nationals in Singapore number
some 200,000 (Ng and Sengupta 2008); the proportion of Indians in the
population has in fact increased to 8.9% (Li 2008), a level the group has
not had for the past half century (see Table 2.1 for comparison).

Where language policies are concerned, we see continued support
for the official languages, but also new emphases. In addition to the
traditional choices of French, German or Japanese as a third language
(i.e., a foreign language) to be studied in school, another trio has
recently been introduced as third language choices this time of regional
languages Mandarin, Malay/Indonesian and Arabic an incentive to do
so being the awarding of two additional bonus points for university entry
(announced during the prime ministers National Day Rally 2007). The
continuing emphasis on Mandarin is not surprising, given the continuing
growth of Chinas economy. Mandarin has for some years now been seen
as most instrumental of all the Mother Tongues offered in education, with
other ethnic groups wanting to study it as a second language rather than
their own Mother Tongue (see e.g., Wee 2003; Wee and Bokhorst-Heng
2005). While the argument for the instrumentalism of the other Mother
Tongues is suggested to be doubtful (Wee 2003; Wee and Bokhorst-Heng
2005), the option of Malay/Indonesian may be traced back to the Indian
Ocean tsunami and other earthquakes in the Indonesian archipelago
from 2004 through 2006, when Singaporean aid teams found it difficult to
communicate with the populations in the affected neighbouring countries,
in this case, Indonesia. Singapores government then stated that measures
in the education policies would be implemented to bridge the Bahasa
gap, with Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew expressing a desire for 1015% of
non-Malays to learn Malay/Indonesian as a third language, with the Malay
language curriculum to be made more convenient and accessible.

On the basis of what we see unfolding in the fourth era in terms of neoimmigration and language policy, we may predict the following scenario.
There are languages which will continue the dominance that they have
already seen in the third age:
a. Mandarin, for its continuing status as the most instrumental of the
Mother Tongues and its position as a language that can be studied by
non-Chinese students, and as a result of the growing proportion of
Mandarin-speaking new immigrants who have been targeted and who
have arrived in Singapore in recent years and will continue to grow, due
to the luxury lifestyle and education that Singapore offers its foreign
talent; what is notable here is the fact that the new immigrants come
into everyday contact and interaction with the local population;
b. Cantonese, as a result of increased presence of Hong Kong population
for business and residential purposes.

Then there are the languages which (potentially) come into prominence
in this era:
c. Malay/Indonesian, as a consequence of the increased presence of
Indonesians, for business, education and residence, as well as its
position as one of the official third languages to be studied by nonMalay students;
d. Arabic, as a result of the various government-level agreements that have
come into being during this period, as well as residential possibilities,
both of which have attracted and continue to attract a substantial
population of Middle East individuals and families; this is also
supported by Arabic being made one of the new official third languages
available to students;
e. while the increased presence of Indians is surely significant in terms
of numbers and prestige, the significant point to note is that these
communities do not appear to have as much contact with the local
population (cf. the Chinese immigrants); for instance, they send their
children not to local schools but global Indian ones; furthermore,
the community tends to be (Indian) English-speaking; their Indian
languages are thus assumed not to have such an influence in the ecology
as a result of this. (See also Bruthiaux 2009 on the potential influence
of Indian English in the region.)

To sum up the preceding discussion, we have thus far surveyed
the patterns of immigration over time as well as the language policies
implemented, using them to identify four socio-historical eras which are
distinguishable in terms of their linguistic ecology, that is, the languages
which may be seen to be relatively more dominant in the various eras. This
is summarized in Table 2.3, which has been adapted and developed further
from Lim (2007a).
Era
early 1900s
before early
1900s
Free immigration:
immigrants from
southern China,
India, Malay
archipelago
Rapid increase in
Chinese population
Indian Ocean
trading patterns
pre-1800s
Malay
Sultanate
18191965
British colony
Immigration patterns
Time period
and
historical
circumstances
sharp rise in Chinese students in Englishmedium schools

dramatic increase in Chinese teachers in
English-medium schools (c.1927)
Mandarin replaces other languages in Chinesemedium schools (c.1912)
first English-medium school (1834)

English-medium schools: majority of Eurasian
teachers, smaller equal numbers of European
and Indian teachers; majority of Eurasian and
Straits-born Chinese students; extensive use of
contact Malay varieties
Chinese-medium schools use other Chinese
languages, not Mandarin
Language policies
contact varieties of Malay are main

lingua franca
Hokkien also serves as lingua franca
numerous southern Chinese, Malay/
Indonesian and South Asian languages
spoken by respective communities
English spoken by communities such as
Eurasians, Armenians, Ceylonese, Babas,
British, Americans, Europeans
Language situation
Table 2.3 Some landmarks in the various eras of immigration patterns and policy implementation in Singapore
40 Lisa Lim
1965
leading to
independence
and after
c.19802000
c. 2000 and
after
II
III
IV
New immigration:
banking, integrated
resorts, education
New immigration:
foreign talent, e.g.,
Cantonese
Controlled
immigration of
foreign manpower:
foreign workers and
foreign talent
Mandarin, Malay/Indonesian and Arabic as

third languages
4 official languages (1956)

English as compulsory school language (1965)
Speak Mandarin Campaign (1979)
all schools English-medium, mother tongue
taught as L2 (1987)
Cantonese used more than Mandarin in

Cantonese homes
English sees increase in literacy and

use as dominant home language, starts
becoming main interethnic lingua franca
especially in younger generation
Mandarin becomes most frequently
used home language for Chinese, and
preferred intraethnic lingua franca for
Chinese, especially in younger generation
42 Lisa Lim
Linguistic ages in the dynamic ecology of Singapore

The preceding section has provided an account of immigration patterns
and language policies over the decades, which allows us to distinguish
distinct eras of characteristic practices. In an ecological perspective, these
practices are recognized as significant factors in a communitys external
ecology, which allow us to define correspondingly a number of linguistic
ages, i.e., periods in which a (number of) language(s) can be seen to be
dominant in the ecology.10

These linguistic ages in turn provide a structured view of dominant
languages in the ecology, and thus help to account for the influences of
different languages at different times on the evolution of a contact variety
such as Singapore English. As the main aim of this chapter is the account of
the external factors of the ecology, this section will present only a very brief
illustration of the influence of different languages in different periods. 11
At the outset, it should be borne in mind that because Bazaar Malay and
southern Sinitic languages show a substantial degree of typological similarity
in terms of morphosyntax (e.g., in features such as zero copular, predicative
adjectives, topic prominence, aspect rather than tense systems, and so on;
see e.g., Platt and Weber 1980; Ansaldo 2004, 2009a, 2009b), it is at best
challenging (Ansaldo and Matthews 1999; Ansaldo 2004, 2009a), if not
completely unrealistic from a historical linguistics perspective (Umberto
Ansaldo p.c. April 2009), to identify which of these substrates is the sole or
main source of these SE features. In what follows then, for simplicitys sake,
lexical items and discourse particles are used as illustration.
The age of the immigrant languages

As already sketched above, in the first socio-historical era, the natural
patterns of immigration and settlement, including, crucially, the relative
proportions and status of the various ethnic and linguistic groups, result
in Bazaar Malay and Hokkien being prominent languages. The former
is the interethnic lingua franca not just in Singapore but in the region,
for centuries, and is possibly reinforced by the prominence of the Baba
Malay-speaking Straits Chinese. The latter is the main language of the
Chinese population due to the Hokkiens being economically and socially
most powerful. This is coupled with educational and language policies
that afforded in schools some leeway in the language of education, and in
society the possibility of vernacular maintenance. This is thus the age of
the original immigrant languages. At the same time, English, introduced
via English-medium schools as well as spoken as mother tongues of
some ethnic groups, starts spreading through the population, and starts

undergoing nativization (Schneider 2003, 2007) through contact with the
other languages.

We can find quite clear indication of which languages must have been
dominant in the feature pool in this age in three areas. The first is found
in SE lexical items that are derived from the background languages: for
example, of the fourteen words or expressions identified as typical (Platt
and Weber 1980: 835), eleven are from Malay, two from Portuguese, and
one from Hokkien, quite a convincing indication of the dominance of
(Bazaar) Malay in the era up to the 1970s. The second area in which an
indication of language influence is quite clear comprises the SE discourse
particles. The only particles documented in scholarship during this period
are lah, ah, and what, with the former two demonstrated to be from
Hokkien and/or Bazaar Malay (Platt and Weber 1980: 767; Lim 2007a). A
third area is the influence of Bazaar/Baba Malay prosody on the prosody
of SE. Unlike Sinitic-dominant Hong Kong English, in which high tones
are located on stressed syllables and low tones on unstressed syllables,
SE instead shows patterns of pitch prominence at word- and phrase-final
positions, quite likely reflecting such prosodic patterns found in Malay
varieties (Lim 2009b, forthcoming).
The age of the official languages

In the second socio-historical era starting from independence, the emphasis
is on the forging of a stable and coherent national identity of the resident
population through the institutionalization of official languages to represent
each of the three main ethnic groups, manifested in the bilingual education
policy and reinforced by the Speak Mandarin Campaign. The result is the
rise in prominence of Mandarin over all the other Chinese languages,
as well as over the other two Mother Tongues, i.e., Mandarin becomes
dominant in the ecology. English too increases in use as the language for
interethnic communication, replacing Bazaar Malay and Hokkien, especially
in the younger and more educated generation. This is thus the age of the
official languages.

As explained in Lim (2007a: 467), the role of this age is really dual.
On the one hand, it sees the damping of the original, once-prominent
substrates: where Bazaar Malay and Hokkien are replaced as languages of
inter- and intraethnic interaction (2007a: 467). Further, with (Singapore)
English having become a language with increasing numbers of native
speakers and speakers for whom it is a dominant language, this age
also means that the features which had started to develop in SE now
see frequency of usage which leads to crystallization and consolidation
(2007a: 467).
44 Lisa Lim
The age of the global-media languages

The third era of late modernity, starting from around the late 1980s,
has, as its more important force, the immigration of foreign talent, as
detailed above. One of the significant immigrant groups in this period is
that of Hong Kong Cantonese; this brings about a paradigm shift (Lim
2007a) in the Chinese population not only in terms of the demography of
immigration patterns, but subsequently of language use in the home (and
elsewhere), such that Cantonese is more dominant in the external ecology
in terms of relative number of speakers and amount of usage. Bloom
(1986: 397) also suggests that the identification with Hong Kong with its
especially modern, vital and fun brand of Chineseness could contribute
to a confident sense of Chineseness that is not threatened by English
education, resulting in a preponderance of Cantonese children in the
English stream (already in the 1970s) and their overall success in English.
Coincident with this change in population make-up are the golden years of
Cantopop (Wong 2003) and Cantonese cinema (Teo 1997; Bordwell 2000).
Bloom (1986: 397) also notes Hong Kongs lively and democratic cultural
life, in contrast to the drab ideological products of China and Taiwan
[that] are in Mandarin. As argued in Lim (2007a: 457ff), it is important to
recognize the significance of the media and pop culture in the linguistic
ecology, which in this case contributes to raising the profile of Cantonese
in the diaspora. This can be seen as dominance of Cantonese in terms of
cultural prestige. Finally, Cantonese dominance can also be seen in terms
of the internal ecology, where typologically it is rich in terms of tone and
particles. This is thus conceived as the age of the global-media languages.

Turning to SEs discourse particles once more, we see evidence for the
selection of features from Cantonese during this era. While the particles
lah and ah have been present in SE since the earliest descriptions, a larger
group of particles only start being documented from the late 1980s, which
include hor, leh, lor, ma, meh. These particles are demonstrated to show exact
matches, not only in their segmental form and meaning but most crucially
in their tone, with the same particle as in Cantonese itself (Lim 2007a,
2009b). In contrast, while similarities can be seen with Hokkien and/or
Mandarin particles at least partially in segmental form and meaning, the
neutral or weak tone that the particles have in these languages cannot
account for the full tone in the SE particles. This latter fact comprises quite
convincing evidence that these are Cantonese particles, acquired in a large
set (see Lim 2007a for a full account), and subsequently reinforces the
account of the dominance of Cantonese in the feature pool in this period.
The age of the regional languages

Finally, the fourth socio-historical era can perhaps be seen as the third
era writ large, where there is an even greater impetus on attracting
foreign talent, but of a different, more regional origin, in particular from
China and India. In addition, language policies serve to support regional
languages Mandarin, Malay/Indonesian and Arabic.

What appears in this section is naturally speculative. However, based
on what we have seen, rather convincingly, in the previous eras, how a
language that becomes dominant in a particular period in the linguistic
ecology exerts significant influence on the evolution of a developing variety
in terms of some structural features, the speculation offered here, I believe,
should be quite credible. There is a potential shift towards a renewed,
increased dominance in the Chinese languages in Singapores ecology, in
particular Mandarin and Cantonese, and this is perhaps a more effective
shift, where, for example, Mandarin is not just a top-down imposed Mother
Tongue but one that is perceived in reality as desirable, and where there is
now a real presence of Mandarin speakers. This implies a potential in their
influencing the structural features of Singapore English in the future.

For instance, there is the likelihood of the development of a more
tone-language prosody. This is a phenomenon that has only recently been
observed and documented (e.g., Lim 2008a, 2008b, 2009b, forthcoming),
and may be viewed as a possible result of the current and future dominance
of the Chinese languages. Such dominance would be both in the external
ecology, in terms of the increased proportion of speakers, and their
increased prestige, as well as in the internal ecology, since the proportion of
Chinese languages in the ecology also means typological dominance in the
feature pool which predicts greater likelihood of selection of features.

Another possibility is a renewed influence of Malay on SE. The presence
of (Bazaar/Baba) Malay in Singapores ecology from the beginning, in
particular its dominance in the first age, has already been suggested to have
had a significant and persistent influence on SE features, as predicted by
the founder principle (see Mufwene 2001) and seen in certain prosodic
patterns (Lim 2008a, 2009b, 2009d, forthcoming), also briefly mentioned
above. The resurgence of the Malay/Indonesian language, for not only the
traditional Malay speakers in the population, which may mean an increase
in prestige and dominance in the feature pool, may very well serve to
reinforce such influences.

Based on the analysis for the fourth era, we now reinforce what was
tentatively suggested in Lim (2007a: 469), in the form of a fourth age,
which takes the framework from the present into the future:
46 Lisa Lim
I. The age of the original immigrant substrates, starting from pre-colonial
centuries (pre-1800) through post-independence years (mid-1970s)
II. The age of the official languages, from the mid-1970s up until the
present
III. The age of the global-media languages, beginning around the late
1980s through to the present
IV. The age of the regional languages, beginning around the new
millennium through to the present

Figure 2.1 (adapted and developed from Lim 2007a: 458) summarizes
what has thus far been outlined, with regard to the significance in the
different ages that the various languages have in the Singapore speech
community as a whole and in the emergence of Singapore English. What
is conceptualized as the third age, that is, the age of the global-media
languages, has begun, even if the second age, that of the official languages
still continues. Similarly, the fourth age may be seen to be overlaid on
the second and third ages. This is not a contradiction in the model, but
may be seen as coherent if we understand the practices in a community as
being negotiable at different levels, or as different linguistic markets, e.g.,
a national one (in the second age) and, at least in some respects, a more
global one (in the third age). This does not only mean that the primary
language players and practices are concurrent and layered, but more
significantly, it also implies constant competition within the ecology.
Figure 2.1 Representation of the relative significance of languages
in the different ages of linguistic history in Singapore
Languages
English
------- - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - ===============================================
(Bazaar) Malay ====================--------------------------- -- -- -- -- -- ===============

Hokkien
====================- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Mandarin
- - - - - - - - - ====================================================
Cantonese
------- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ==========================
Arabic
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --=============

| The first age
| The second age

time

| The third age | The fourth age
Key:
----------
======
-- -- --
present but not dominant in the ecology

dominant in the ecology
marginal or waning in the ecology
Concluding thoughts
This chapter has focused on two significant forces in the external ecology
of Singapore, namely immigration patterns and language policy, which
have been shown to lead to the dominance of certain communities and/or
their languages, and consequently result in an impact on the development
of English in Singapore. This chapter has also demonstrated that, in
order to appreciate the evolving nature of Singapore English, both in
terms of structure as well as the status and functions it serves in society,
it is important to distinguish between different socio-historical eras in
Singapores ecology, in order to tease out the prominence of different
languages in different periods. This is not merely an exercise in intellectual
speculation. When combined with an examination of linguistic features in
SE and those of the various contact substrate languages, structural similarity
echoes the socio-historical hypotheses, and in turn is supported by the
very same socio-historical facts. Such a two-pronged investigation has been
demonstrated in the analysis, for example, of SEs discourse particles, to
show influence from Baba/Bazaar Malay and/or Hokkien in the first age,
and Cantonese in the third age (Lim 2007a).

Just as SE has evolved over the decades from a variety which had
dominant input from Baba/Bazaar Malay and/or Hokkien in the first age
and which used to be seen as similar to Malaysian English until around
the 1980s (e.g., Platt and Weber 1980), to one which saw dominance of
Cantonese in the feature pool from the late 1980s and subsequently evolved
to acquire elements of that language I suggest that it will continue in
its evolution, and continue to draw on whichever languages there are in its
ecology. As sketched at the end of the previous section, the major players
present in Singapores current ecology would appear to be Mandarin,
Cantonese, Malay/Indonesian and Arabic. The linguistic features of these
languages are thus present and potentially dominant in the feature pool
because the communities that speak them have some numerical, economic
or cultural dominance, and/or because the languages are dominant from a
typological perspective; e.g., Cantonese is still dominant for its tones and/
or particles; with Mandarin helping to reinforce them; Malay/Indonesian
is being reinforced by Bazaar/Baba Malay which has been present and
persistent in the feature pool from the earliest age (see Lim 2008a, 2009b,
2009d, forthcoming).

What specifically happens in the future with English in Singapore is
of course what nobody can predict. After all, as evidenced in all the work
on other contact varieties around the world (e.g., see Ansaldo 2009a for
examples in Monsoon Asia), ecologies and the dynamics both internal
and external that go on are complex matters. Moreover, most recent
events such as the credit crunch and subsequent falls in economic output
48 Lisa Lim
and trade across the region must certainly affect the balance of the ecology
and the make-up and dominance of the communities and languages therein
(Bruthiaux 2009). Nonetheless, what has been presented in this chapter, I
believe, provides a systematic framework which helps define more clearly
the shifting dominance of languages in such a dynamic multilingual ecology
as one that exists in Singapore. This then contributes to the establishment
of the more likely substrate sources, and in turn a better appreciation, not
only for the evolution of English in Singapore, but also for the social forces
that have shaped it.
Notes
1. I am grateful to colleagues for their comments on my paper given at IAWE in
Regensburg (Lim 2007b) in which I explore some of these ideas on ecology,
in particular: Salikoko Mufwene for his positive response to my establishing
of eras in ecology, as well as his comments on the role of the Peranakans in
the evolution of Singapore English; Rajend Mesthrie for his reminder of the
significance of the early Indian and Ceylonese English teachers; and Anne Pakir
for her more astute knowledge of the Cantonese immigration from Hong Kong
in 1989. I also thank Umberto Ansaldo for his novel takes and our constant
exchanges on issues of ecology and contact languages of Asia.
2. In previous scholarship on the evolution of Singapore English (SE) and its
structural features, the influence of the languages with which SE has come
into contact has naturally been considered. For instance, Mandarin has been
turned to as a substrate in SEs relexification process (e.g., Bao 2005); in the
examination of reduplication patterns, arguments have been made for Malay
and/or Chinese (e.g., Wee 2004) as well as Hokkien (e.g., Ansaldo 2004) as
providing the substratal source; discourse particles have been ascribed largely to
Southern Chinese varieties (e.g., Gupta 1992). I suggest that a more integrated
ecological approach provides a more comprehensive picture of the evolution
of a contact variety of English. The notion of ecology has also used previously
for the Singapore context (e.g., Gupta 2001), but only as a way of capturing the
external environment, i.e., the communities and languages in Singapore. More
specific examination of the relative dominance of one or more communities
and thus their language(s) was not made in detail, nor was there consideration
of the internal ecology and the implications of these for the evolution of SE.
3. This is of course a vast simplification of a competition-and-selection process that
is far more complex and takes into account many more factors. Dominance in
the external ecology is but one aspect influencing the outcome in the evolution
of a new variety.
4. That such an endeavour is crucial in teasing out the precise sources of structural
features of a contact language has been demonstrated for, e.g., Sranan (Arends
1989), Hawaii Creole English (Roberts 2004), Singapore English (Lim 2007a).
5. For comprehensive and critical surveys of the field, particularly rich in research
based on primary sources including census and education material, see in

particular Platt and Weber (1980), Bloom (1986) and Gupta (1994: 3247);
some of the material presented here is also drawn from Lim and Foley (2004)
and Lim (2007a).
6. Gupta (1994: 33) also argues for an additional locus of SE development
in certain racially mixed, English-focused areas, such as the districts where
Eurasians, Jews, Armenians and, in later years, Straits Chinese lived. One of
the central Eurasian enclaves of Waterloo Street and Queen Street was also the
area where the principal English-medium schools were located. Similarly mixed
English-dominant areas also developed in suburban areas later, especially in
Katong on the east coast.
7. Their input is said not to have had a significant influence on SE development
except for a few aspects of syntax and lexis (Ho and Platt 1993: 8), but given
their presence in the education system, as outlined here, this issue perhaps
requires further investigation.
8. The source of data pertaining to the specific Chinese dialect groups is the
newsletter of the Singapore Department of Statistics (Lee 2001), with all other
statistics in this section derived from the Population Census over the years
(Ng 1995; Leow 2001) unless otherwise specified. We should note that there
are problems with comparability of census results with regard to sampling,
self-report, variation in question type, terminology, categorization of ethnic
affiliation, acknowledgement of multilingualism, and so on; these are critically
evaluated by Bloom (1986: 389ff) and Gupta (1994: 2432).
9. An exception may be the use of Hokkien and Singlish by young Singaporean
males doing their National Service (see Lim, Pakir and Wee in this volume),
but there the language choice is motivated by interethnic communication.
10. The linguistic ages for Singapore were first established and outlined in detail in
Lim (2007a), with particular reference to its relevance to establishing the ages
and origins of SE particles, though the socio-historical eras were not clearly
defined there.
11. An account of the first three periods is presented in greater detail in Lim
(2007a), and thus a more summarized version of these is presented here.
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Part II
Reconceptualizing English
Singapore Standard English revisited
Anthea Fraser Gupta
In the 1980s, Mary Tay and I outlined what we thought were the features of
a Singapore Standard English (Tay 1982; Tay and Gupta 1983; Gupta 1986).
At the time, our preference for a local (or endonormative) standard for
Singapore English was seen as revolutionary, because the policy then was
that the English taught in Singapore should be British Standard English
with an RP accent. This was a policy in theory rather than one that could
actually be delivered. Delivery of an RP accent was impossible because
almost no teachers were (or ever had been) speakers of RP. In any case, it
is evident that accents of Standard English are diverse and that to impose
a particular foreign accent on a population is unnecessary, unpopular and
impossible. It was also tacitly recognized that the English of Singapore
needed words to meet the needs of expressing Singapore culture. By the
end of the century, as a result of sociolinguistic research, it had become
widely accepted that local words and local accents are necessarily part of
local Standard English, and that it is neither possible nor desirable to look
to a foreign country for all vocabulary, or for an accent.

Where grammar is concerned, even in 1986 I realized that St[andar]d
S[ingapore] E[nglish] would differ little from general St[andar]d E[nglish],
and that by and large its features would exploit possibilities within standard
which ... are ... to be found in the spoken English at times in the written
English of users ... who are thought of as standard users. No-one has
suggested that there are major grammatical differences between regional
forms of Standard English. The way in which the minor differences are
negotiated continues to be a source of discussion all over the world, and is
an area of great concern in the teaching of English as a foreign language,
especially in terms of the choice between British and American English.
In these settings, differences are often exaggerated, for example in the form
of a false belief that some forms (such as I ate already) would be wrong
in British English, or in the false belief that the present tense is always
replaced by the present continuous in Indian English.
58 Anthea Fraser Gupta

By the 1990s, school textbooks knowingly incorporated local cultural
terms, and there was a generally confident, tolerant, and empowering
approach to Singapore English. Books and websites celebrating the local
non-standard dialect, Singlish, appeared. In writing, Singlish was confidently
used in informal communication and in creative writing, especially in
dialogue and humour, in the same way as other non-standard English
dialects are used in other parts of the English-using world. Then, in August
1999, speeches were made by Lee Kuan Yew (as senior minister) and
the prime minister, Goh Chok Tong, which initiated a drive to promote
Standard English in all contexts of use. This led to the establishment of
the Speak Good English Movement (SGEM) in Singapore. Its purpose was
ostensibly to promote Standard English and discourage the use of Singlish:
one of the things it had to do was to interpret the meaning of Standard
English. It soon became clear that the SGEM was promoting a narrow
concept of Standard English, which did not allow for anything local, or
informal, rejecting even words that had been unproblematically accepted
since the 1980s. At official levels, at least, there has been a move back
to the attitude of the 1970s, when the local was seen as bad. Once again
Singaporeans are being told to look overseas for correction of their English,
and are being given advice that is often based on the strictest possible
concept of correctness. Even the notion that a Singaporean accent is wrong
has been resurrected.

Since the 1980s, my own theorization of Standard English has changed
too, but towards greater tolerance of variation, not less.

I have observed that the differences between what I used to call
Singapore Standard English and the Standard English of other regions is
minimal: the very few differences that have been suggested as distinctively
Singaporean (or British, or Australian, or Nigerian ...) are not enough to
warrant its being a distinct dialect. Most variation within Standard English
is variation due to text type. Standard English includes an element of
regional variation, especially in lexis. But when we look at non-standard
dialects (Singlish, broad Yorkshire, Jamaican Patwa, etc.) we see that there
are grammatical features that distinguish them from each other, and from
Standard English. These include substantial differences in inflectional
morphology and the construction of the verb (e.g., Merlion kena hit by
lightning; He were that punctual; mi done go a di show already). No such
grammatical features relating to major linguistic systems have ever been
suggested as distinguishing one regions Standard English from anothers.
Important areas of grammar, including inflectional morphology and the
structure of the verb, are unified in Standard English across all regions. The
division of Standard English into multiple local Standard Englishes is not
justified on linguistic grounds.
Singapore Standard English revisited 59

I no longer feel it is appropriate or possible to predetermine what
is and what is not standard, and do not accept the methods we adopted
in the 1980s. No-one can say what should or should not be Standard
English, either in Singapore or anywhere else. Standard English is an
organic and changing variety, not something fixed by fiat, and Singapore,
like everywhere else that uses English, participates in its maintenance and
development. Whatever is part of the Standard English of one region is part
of Standard English as a whole.

Standard English should be conceptualized as a single dialect that
includes a small amount of regional (and a large amount of functional)
variation. It is important to understand that this is an inclusive concept of
Standard English that places all English-using nations on the same footing
and that recognizes that there is (a little) diversity of practice from one
place to another. Because Standard English is a living dialect, controlled
by unclear consensual processes, there is dispute and negotiation within
Standard English. Areas of dispute are generally global, and only a few
relate to regional differences. Although it would be foolish to deny that
some regions have more clout within the politics of English the USA has
the most, as in other areas the way power relations work within English
are by no means straightforward. Few issues within Standard English are
regionally motivated. The concerns expressed about Standard English in
Singapore relate to areas of dispute within Standard English everywhere
it is used, and not to circumstances peculiar to Singapore. This chapter
considers the meaning of Standard English for Singapore in the twenty-first
century, and develops the concept of Standard English as a global dialect.
I examine the current public discussion of English in Singapore and argue
that it shows that Singapores concerns about correctness in English are the
same as those of the rest of the English-using world.
What is Standard English?

Varieties of English can be divided into those which differ little from one
place to another and those which are associated with specific regions of
the English-using world. The main variety of English globally is Standard
English, which is a single dialect of English with a small number of minor
regional differences, most of which are lexical. To say that a variety of
English is global or international means simply that it is used all over
the world. It does not mean that it is used only in communication across
national boundaries or between people from different countries. My stance
here is different from the more usual stance in the study of English as a
world language, and different from the stance I used to take.

It is usually argued that English is pluricentric, with a number of local
standards. Bex and Watts (1999: 5) say that they are quite clear that the
notions of Standard English vary from country to country, and not merely
in the ways in which such a variety is described but also in the prestige in
which it is held and the functions it has developed to perform. I disagree
with these claims. Notions of Standard English vary little from one country
to another, and it is held in high prestige and performs similar functions
in all the countries in which it has some official status and where it is a
widespread medium of instruction in schools. Standard English is a concept
that I regard as central to the understanding of English in a social context.
Sociolinguists have a choice whether to focus on the shared features and
uses of Standard English across the English-using world, or to focus on the
differences. There are both political and linguistic issues here. We have
spent too much time focusing on the rare features that distinguish the
Standard English in one region from that in another, and too little time
on the much more widespread features that unite Standard English all over
the world. Standard English is a single dialect of English, used all over the
world with minor regional differences. The same Standard English dialect is
used in most written text types all over the world. All over the world, some
text types require Standard English. This applies whether communication is
within a country or across national boundaries: Standard English is not used
only for speaking and writing to people from another country; it dominates
every English-using community internally as well, especially in writing. It is
in that sense local to nowhere and local to everywhere. It belongs to the
entire English-using world and in it, on the whole, the regional origins of
the writers are neutralized.
What are the linguistic features of Standard English?

What is and what is not standard is clear in some areas, especially in
orthography and inflectional morphology (e.g., when to use am vs. is, did
vs. done, teacher vs. teachers vs. teachers vs. teachers; how to build a complex
verb group). The concept of Standard English is most applicable to written
English. We still do not fully understand the grammar of speech (Carter
2004), but we do know that there is more opportunity to express the self,
more room for playfulness, and more regional and personal variation in
speech than there is in writing. All of these are expressed in writing too,
though mostly through variation within a dialect rather than across dialects.

There is no standard accent of English: Standard English can be
spoken in any accent. For example, the word dance can be pronounced
with a vowel anywhere from a mid front vowel /dns/, through /dns/, to
/dans/, and all points in between to a low back vowel, /dns/, and the

vowel can be either short or long. However, some pronunciations, not
associated with accent, are generally regarded as incorrect (for example,
starting choir with the same sound as chip, or ending picturesque with
/kju:/). There are choices in the pronunciation of some words (such as
schedule beginning with // or /sk/). Good pronouncing dictionaries will
try to reflect areas of consensus and disagreement in such issues. We may
use these and we may use other people in order to find out how to
pronounce words that we may have seen only in print. Speakers of English
will accept correction of word pronunciation in this way, but will not accept
correction of their accent. There are substantial differences among accents
of English around the world, and it is essential for all speakers of English to
understand and be tolerant of accent variation and to develop techniques
for understanding unfamiliar accents. Sensitive users of English also need to
be tolerant of the mistakes we all make, especially in the pronunciation of
words we have mainly encountered in writing.

English is welcoming to new words, which enter English all the time
from other language, from coinages, from informal English, and from other
dialects of English. Within Standard English, there are minor differences in
vocabulary from one place to another. Most of these differences are local
words for local things, so that, for example, the seat of government might
be called parliament in one place and senate in another. Such words are used
by anyone referring to that institution, regardless of where they come from
themselves. Others are what Grlach (1990) calls heteronyms: different
words for the same thing (for example, boot/trunk/dicky the same part
of a car). All English users can expect to learn a few new words when they
move around the English-using world, or when they refer to other parts of
the English-using world than their own. Food names often retain regional
associations. For example, ravioli, pirogi, and won ton (all in the Oxford
English Dictionary) are similar foodstuffs, but the cuisines of Italy, Poland
and China are sufficiently different to mean that English-speaking eaters
retain the culturally specific words: and are they all dumplings? HDB estates,
council estates, and projects might, similarly, be structurally similar, subsidized
and governmentally organized housing schemes, but the way in which social
housing is managed and its social and political associations are not the same
in Singapore, the UK and the US, and nor are the words. Governmental
institutions are one of the areas of language use where local terms have to
be used by both insiders and outsiders. But words as a whole are eminently
portable and a word regional one year can easily spread across the world
next year. I do not see Standard English as being only what every region
shares. Standard English includes a small element of regional variation.
Boot, dicky and trunk are all part of the single global dialect of Standard
English and are best seen as choices within it.

Standard English is tolerant of internal variation in pronunciation
and lexis, but there is almost no tolerance of variation in inflectional
morphology. The structure of the verb group is especially strict in Standard
English, where the ordering of auxiliaries (modal, perfective, progressive,
passive) and the forms of each word are absolute (e.g., He might have been
being pursued by the police). This is one of the most strongly definable
aspects of the grammar of Standard English. There are a handful of forms
where there is some choice (for example, the plural of appendix can be
appendixes or appendices; the past tense of dive can be dove or dived). Such
words are rare: most texts would include no words allowing choice. In
contrast, dialects of English are distinguished from one another by the
way in which they manage inflections, and by the way in which the verb is
constructed (for example, the difference between I am happy, I be happy, I
happy, mi happy). The areas of choice within Standard English are too small
to justify any dialectal divisions within Standard English.

Orthography is also very strict in Standard English, with only a small
number of words in which there is a choice (e.g., colo(u)r, jail/gaol, adviser/
advisor, caf/cafe), some, but not all, of which are the well-known differences
between the US and British traditions, mostly arising from spelling
variants of the eighteenth century. Such spellings account for less than 0.5%
of words in any given text. This small degree of difference in orthographic
practice is not sufficient to justify reference to different spelling systems:
there is one spelling system which includes some areas of choice. In speech
it is mainly the grammar that distinguishes one dialect from another, but
in written English, dialectal differences can also be signalled by using
conventional non-standard spellings that relate indirectly to features of the
accent that is associated with the dialect: this creates an especially sharp
distinction between writing in Standard English (unified orthography and
grammar) and writing in another dialect (different spellings and grammar).

In addition to ordinary Standard English, there is one set of
contextually restricted text types that I would like to exclude from
discussion here. There are a set of text types which, all over the world, use
an abbreviated form of Standard English in which structural elements (such
as be , first person subjects, articles) are routinely omitted, and in some
of which particular abbreviations and alternative spellings may be used
(such as l8, GSOH, brb, appt., gonna). Such abbreviated forms of English
have always been used where space or time are precious (such as in notes,
diaries, postcards, telegrams). In his great grammar of English, Jespersen
(1948: 124ff) said that in some of these text types, such as headlines, a
sentence is understood by transposing it into ordinary language with its
usual grammar while others, such as book titles, cannot be said to be
sentences. A skilled user of Standard English has to learn when to use
this grammar, in order to construct SMS messages, advertisements, and

so on. Despite many complaints that sending SMS messages is destroying
childrens ability to write correctly, users seem to have little or no problem
understanding when abbreviated English is appropriate or acceptable.

Communities in which English is used as part of everyday life often
have local non-standard dialects of English, which are used in specific
contexts (especially informal speech, literature, and humour). Singlish fills
this slot in Singapore. The differences between Standard English and the
non-standard dialect are generally well known, and users of English are
conscious of them. Features of the non-standard dialect seldom appear
in written texts where Standard English is the target (Qualifications and
Curriculum Authority 1999; Gupta 2006a; Rubdy 2007). This is true of
everywhere that has a well-known local dialect, such as the Singlish of
Singapore, the Cockney of London, the Geordie of Newcastle upon Tyne,
the Patwa of Kingston, and the Nigerian Pidgin English of Lagos. There is
no evidence that the presence of a non-standard dialect in a community
prevents the learning of skills in Standard English. The majority of the
lexis is shared with Standard English. The features of the local dialects are
generally salient and at a high level of consciousness and, because young
children are sophisticated shifters of style, they do not find it hard to learn
which features separate the local dialect from world-wide varieties. Local
dialects can be seen as a sign that English is a living language in a place,
with a range of cultural and stylistic expression. Even the SGEM pages
occasionally use Singlish used in this way: in August 2007 there was a link
from the SGEM pages to Sayang Singapore, the untranslatable Singlish
name of Singapores storytelling festival (it means something like Love to
Singapore sayang is a loan from Malay).

There are aspects of Standard English that are more contentious,
some of which I will discuss in this chapter. There is some variation within
Standard English in certain aspects of English. These include: the way in
which the present perfective is used (e.g., This is the first time I have seen/am
seeing this play); the use of the definite article (e.g., to have (the) flu; in (the)
university); the way in which prepositions are used in some fixed expressions
(e.g., comprise (of), different to/from/than); and the way in which the number
of certain nouns is treated (e.g., The audience was/were, accommodations).
On these features and others like them, there are differences between
regions in terms of relative frequency of one form over another, rather
than presence or absence (Gupta 2006b). Some of these differences are the
subject of public discussion and individuals may have strong feelings about
their correctness.

The discourse of correctness in English is part of a normative tradition
that goes back at least 300 years (discussed in different ways by Leonard
1962; Mittins et al. 1970; Milroy and Milroy 1985; Cameron 1995; Wardaugh
1999). I will use the term disputed usage to refer to usages that are found

in Standard English texts but that some users regard as incorrect, and whose
degree of correctness is a common topic of overt comment. In discussion
of English usage, items which are disputed usage are more visible than, and
at a higher level of consciousness than, items which are undisputed. For
example, users of English in Inner and Outer Circle countries are more
likely to be able to articulate that prepositions at the end of sentences are
wrong (which is disputed usage) than to explain why there is an s on
the verb in She likes swimming but not in I like swimming (a basic feature of
Standard English concord about which there is no dispute).

Linguists have engaged with the normative tradition for many decades.
One of the basic tenets of linguistics (stemming from desperate reiterations
by Jespersen in introductions to various volumes of his grammar) is that
linguistics is descriptive not prescriptive, from which it follows that
linguists should not be concerned with telling speakers what is right and
what is wrong, but rather should examine what speakers do and then infer
the rules of the language from the practice of its speakers. Quirk (1958)
long ago recognized that linguists had to be prescriptive in some contexts,
part of the responsibility of teachers of English being to tell their students
how to use the language, but that prescription should be firmly based on
description. Cameron (1995) emphasized that it is important for linguists to
engage with those promulgating notions of correctness: this is a debate that
must be entered.

The major problem with the definition of Standard English is that we
have to engage both with usage and with form. My starting point is to look
at edited written texts in which Standard English is required. How do such
texts compare formally from one region to another? Do they share criterial
linguistic features that are central to Standard English? But all users of
Standard English make mistakes. When I write accomodation or concensus,
it does not become Standard English because I have written it. There are
processes of monitoring, self-correction, correction by others and editing
that writers of Standard English do in order to keep what they write in line
with the prevalent practice in Standard English. There is a circularity here
that cannot be avoided: it is the writing practices of writers of English all
over the world that determine what is and what is not Standard English;
but those writers respond to notions of correctness based on tradition and
wider practice. But we are not in an anything goes situation, and there
are specific linguistic features that can be used to identify the dialect, and,
other than in lexis, choices are made and change occurs within linguistically
specific confines.

There is very substantial variation within Standard English related
to text type. Bhatia (2004: xiv) describes the real world of discourse as
complex, dynamic, versatile and unpredictable. Variation linked to text
type is far greater than variation linked to regionality. Some text types are

prone to be playful, especially literary writing, which is the main domain
in which non-standard regional dialects can be found. Although there is
large variation relating to text type in Standard English, with the exception
of the abbreviated texts, the variation does not relate to what I regard as
the core areas of Standard English: dialect is consistent across text types.
Differences generally relate to differences in degree or frequency (such
as sentence length, proportion of passives, amount of nominalization,
particular organizational features) rather than to qualitative differences in
orthography, grammar or lexis. In this chapter the term Standard English
should be understood as referring to Standard English other than in its
grammatically reduced abbreviated variety.

Standard English is of great importance. It is accepted as the norm for
written English, and the overwhelming majority of all written texts are in
Standard English, and have been in a single shared standard dialect since
around 1500 (the form has changed a little since then). Writers go to great
lengths to correct errors. Schoolchildren are examined on their skill in it. It
is essential, and universally accepted, that Standard English is what is taught
in schools and that editors should do their best to make sure that edited
texts are written in Standard English (except in the case of those rare texts
that deliberately use a non-standard dialect). Standard English is not some
distant and unreal kind of English, but something present and immediate for
all of us who learn or use English, at any level. I have made calls for realism
in the teaching and assessing of the use of Standard English (Gupta 2001).

The concept of Standard English is strongest in writing, and
English users vary in their skills. There is no English-using community
in which everyone has a high level of skill in Standard English. While
all Singaporeans (like residents of all English-using countries, and many
others) need to have some skill in speaking, reading and writing Standard
English, the production of high-quality written text requires input from
specialist editors. High-prestige printed and electronic text is edited: this
means it has been looked at by several skilled writers who work together to
eliminate as many errors in Standard English as possible. Not every user of
English can be expected to have these high-level skills.

Everything I have said about Standard English applies to all Englishusing countries, including the United Kingdom, the USA, Australia, Nigeria,
India, Jamaica and Singapore. Increasingly, it is coming to apply to speakers
of English in countries where English has had little internal use in the
past, such as Japan and France (some of the issues of English in these areas
are discussed by Jenkins 2007). As I will show in this chapter, the way in
which Singaporeans use English in formal and informal written material,
and the language advice given in connection with the Speak Good English
Movement, suggests that Singaporeans participate in the same uncertainty
about Standard English as do users of English from other English-using
nations.

There is no tradition in English of any central control of the standard.
As is well known, there has never been an academy for English, and it
is hard to imagine how there now could ever be one, given the range of
countries that have made English one of their own languages. Even those
languages ostensibly policed by academies have to face the onslaught of
usage (Schiffman 2002). And in English, usage is all. What is and what
is not Standard English is maintained by a mysterious process of worldwide consensus. There are important agencies, especially newspapers and
publishing houses, but even these agencies are participants in a wider
world and have to respond to innovation from many quarters, both social
and regional. Change in English can take place rapidly. New words enter
English constantly and become part of Standard English. Sometimes,
when new technology comes along, the same word is used all over the
world (e.g., DVD); on other occasions regional differences develop (e.g.,
cell, mobile, handphone). No-one makes a decision. When a word is used
enough in texts written in Standard English, it becomes part of Standard
English. Dictionaries and grammars react to English: they do not control it.
However, dictionaries, grammars, and usage all participate in the feedback
loop by which means users of Standard English monitor their usage and
thereby maintain a unified Standard.

When Samuel Johnson planned his dictionary, the first on scientific
principles, he thought English could be fixed and perfected. But the
process of writing his dictionary taught him that language change was
inevitable: hoping to enchain syllables was like wanting to lash the wind
(Johnson 175556: 10). This has not prevented many of us, including
myself, from trying to say what should and should not be regarded as
correct. Jenkinss (2000, 2007) promotion of a more tolerant approach to
the pronunciation of English as a Lingua Franca that is, English as used
between non-native speakers has been criticized by those who still hope
to enchain syllables (the reaction to the earlier book is discussed in the
later one). I feel that Jenkins does not go far enough because she makes
recommendations that learners of English are taught some specific features
that appear to make English more comprehensible. Among other things,
she recommends that ELF speakers maintain a distinction between long
and short vowels, and pronounce /r/ everywhere it appears in the spelling.
Neither of these features is shared by all dialects of English. It seems to me
that varieties of English in places like Germany, Japan, China and Thailand
are also part of the organically unpredictable nature of English and we
cannot expect to require specific features from speakers there any more
than we can require it of speakers of English in London or Singapore.

The unclear way in which English is maintained applies to English as a
whole, and also to English locally. When I came to live in the UK in 1996
after over 20 years absence, one of the many words I had to learn was

manky, which was then an informal word meaning bad, inferior, defective;
dirty, disgusting, unpleasant (Oxford English Dictionary). OEDs first example
of this word is from 1958. Although OED labels it as British colloquial,
this word has been moving into Standard English over the years. Whereas
the earlier examples in OED are all from representations of speech, the
most recent two are in contexts that predict Standard English (a fishing
handbook and a newspaper). The word has also spread beyond the UK: by
2007, Solomon Lim, writing in Singapores Electric New Paper was sitting
in soft, slightly-manky swivel chairs. In 1999 bling spread around the world,
moving in twelve months from Black slang (in the form of bling bling) to
global Standard English one company in Singapore is even selling fridge
bling. Why these words and not others? Decisions like this are made by the
unclear process of the interaction of the gatekeepers (such as newspapers)
with the body of users. Standardness emerges; it is not predetermined.

The whole world participates in the maintenance of Standard English.
It is as much the property of Singapore and Nigeria, and perhaps even of
Germany and Thailand, as it is of Australia and the United Kingdom. We
need to understand that Singapore is not a passive recipient of Standard
English but participates in the process of shaping Standard English, both
locally and globally.
International assessment of standard English

Whenever the attainment of schoolchildren in Singapore is compared to
the attainment of children of the same age in other regions, Singapore
comes out top or near top (Dixon 2005: 626). In 2003, Singapores children
were, as usual, the best in the world in maths and science (TIMSS 2003).
In 2006 (Mullis et al. 2007: 42) [t]he Russian Federation, Hong Kong SAR
and Singapore were the three top-performing countries of those countries
that took part in tests of literacy in schoolchildren aged 9 to 10 years. The
tests were administered in the local language or languages of education,
which means that in five countries (England, Scotland, Singapore, Trinidad
and Tobago and the United States) they were administered only in English
(Mullis et al. 2007: 2878). The results mean that Singapores primary
schoolchildren could reasonably be said to be better at Standard English
than children in the other four countries. Whereas over 70% of children
in all the other four countries spoke only English at home, in Singapore
only 21% spoke only English at home (only 5% spoke no English at home):
bilingualism is clearly no handicap to excellence. Nor is bidialectalism: it
can be assumed that the Singaporean children were competent in Singlish
as well as in Standard English.

In all English-using countries, there are people who do not develop
sufficient skill to write in Standard English. In both Singapore and the UK
national examinations are taken at around the age of 16 years: in England,
Wales, and Northern Ireland these are GCSEs and in Singapore they are
O-Levels. In 2007, 62% of those taking the GCSE examination in English
(taken by all children in England, Wales and Northern Ireland) attained a
grade AC (BBC News 2007). In Singapore, the success rate in the equivalent
examination (O-Level) is much higher, at 87% in 2006 (Ellis 2007), but the
examination is taken by an estimated 80% of the age group (Dixon 2005:
627). The proportion of the age group who pass is still slightly higher (at
around 70%) in Singapore than it is in the UK, as one would expect from
the 9-year-olds better performance. We need to remember those 37% of
children in the UK who did not pass at the required level. The vast majority
of those children are British born and bred, native speakers of nothing but
English, who have not developed much skill in producing Standard English.
There is no reason why Singapore should expect that the proportion of
children who can reach this level in Singapore should be any more (or
less) than the proportion who succeed in the UK. The figures, the baseline
for proficiency in Standard English, are similar in these two countries,
and probably reflect the proportion that could be reasonably expected
to succeed in learning to read and write Standard English to a societally
agreed threshold for adults in any English-using country where education is
effectively delivered.

Producing Standard English is a skill, like playing the piano or
designing furniture: it has to be learnt and it is tested. We should see and
promote it as a desirable skill, but one that some will succeed at better than
others. Singapore is doing rather well at teaching it to its children.
The idea of a local standard

When Mary Tay and I looked at Singapore Standard English in the 1980s,
we were using the old technology of paper and the old theory of deviance
from an imagined Standard English. The methodology that I used in 1983
was to identify in texts published in Singapore those features that I believed
would not be used in the English of the USA or UK, and then to indicate
which of those features could be said to be standard. There were two
problems with this methodology:
(a) It is possible to say that something is used in a given variety. Attested
use is concrete and important. It is much harder to say that something
is not used in a variety. I identified this as a problem fairly early (Shields
1977) and discussed it further in 1986, but I persisted in using the
expression nonstandardism as though I knew what it meant. I applied

this term, in some cases, to features attested in Singapore English that
I later found to be also used in other varieties, such as British and/or
American English (including accommodations, This is the first time I am
doing , and less workers). I thus identified as Singapore English many
features that are geographically widespread, some of which are disputed
usage. At least I made the right predictions that some of the features I
identified as Standard Singapore English would spread to other varieties.
(b) It is not possible to pick and choose what should and should not be
standard. This can only be established retrospectively by the test of time
based on the pattern of usage. Something becomes Standard English if
it is often used in Standard English texts.

Since the 1980s, the internet has made it possible to scrutinize the
English of the world as a whole. This has made it even clearer that (a)
Standard English is one dialect and remarkably uniform; (b) most written
English, of all text types, is in Standard English, while writing in local nonstandard dialects is rare and is severely restricted in terms of text type; and
(c) the patterns of usage are complex and no single person can rely on
personal judgement to determine what is and what is not Standard.

It is not appropriate to take texts from Singapore and compare them to
some idealized, fictitious, Standard British (or American, or Australian )
English. Meaningful comparison of the English of different countries has
to be based on the comparison of real texts of the same sort. So Singapore
newspapers could be compared to newspapers from New Zealand; university
essays by Singaporeans could be compared to university essays from the
USA; charity websites from Singapore could be compared with charity
websites in India; and so on. When this sort of comparison is done (Tottie
2002; Gupta 2006b; Paulasto 2008), we see that there is very little difference
from one place to another in the features of English used in text types in
which Standard English can be expected, and that most differences are
differences of relative frequency of forms rather than qualitative differences.

There are few categorical differences (things that occur in one region
but not in another), but there are regionally patterned differences in
preference, where there are alternatives within Standard English (such as
dont have/havent/havent got). All writers make errors in writing Standard
English: where the criteria for what is and what is not standard are clear,
we should not be afraid of identifying errors. Texts that are edited (such as
newspaper articles) have very few errors, though they do have some errors,
everywhere in the world. When it comes to unedited texts, there are more
errors, but not noticeably more in one place than in another. We do start
to see individual difference, however, and evidence that individuals vary in
skill in writing Standard English. Some make more mistakes than others.

All users of English interact with English both locally and transnationally.
Even if all face-to-face contact were with people from ones own country,
reading and viewing is likely to include material from other countries.
Enclosure within an exclusively Singaporean world is impossible. Pedagogy
and policy need to be based on the real Standard English and not on some
imagined perfection. The reality of Standard English is that it crosses borders.
It does not make sense to talk about discrete local standards: there is one
Standard English which incorporates some regional differences. Singapore
needs to accept that its local words are part of Standard English as a whole,
as are the local words of the USA, UK, Australia, Nigeria, and so on.
Kiasu
English is porous and global. I would like to give an example how a word
can move into the mainstream. In Singapore, the word kiasu moved from
informal use into Standard English when it started to be used in parliament
and newspapers and is now in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Kiasu has
already gone through the early stages of global spread that manky and bling
went through a decade earlier, but its starting location was Singapore.

The Dictionary of Singlish and Singapore English documents this movement
into standardness. In the early days, its spelling was uncertain. Its first
attestation, in the erroneous form kian su, is in 1978, in the glossary of a
sociological study of national service which presents it as Army Slang. It was
little known then: it did not appear in the early studies of Singapore words
(including my own, Shields 1977), but soon moved to general colloquial
use. Then it moved towards the standard: it was first used in the official
report of parliament in 1990 (I wish that the Government Ministers do not
become infected with the same kiasu syndrome that they themselves have
advised other people against), quickly followed by multiple appearances
in the Singapore press. Early examples are often glossed, but later ones are
less likely to be.

The next step for kiasu is use outside Singapore, with reference to
Singapore. The closely related English-using neighbours of Singapore,
Malaysia and Brunei, start to use it, and when they do it is often, but
not only, with reference to Singaporeans. In 2001, only a decade after a
Singaporean newspaper used it for the first time, it begins to appear in
the British press. The British newspaper, The Guardian, first used kiasu in
2001 (7 September), quoting, without any gloss, a Singaporean speaker
(This pursuit of material wealth combined with the constant need to be
No. 1 has created the Singaporean we hear so much about the kiasu
Singaporean). In 2002 (27 August) The Guardian got it slightly wrong,
making it an abstract noun:

The answer is simply that there are not enough hours in the day if a
child wants to have a remotely successful adulthood in what is such an
incredibly pressurised society that the fear of losing or failing, known as
kiasu, is all-pervasive. Indeed, it so [sic] ubiquitous that there is a popular
cartoon character named Mr Kiasu.
In 2004 (7 August) it got it right:

Risk aversion, a bureaucratic imperative, is valued in Singapore. It makes
the place reassuringly predictable for businesses. Singaporeans have a word
for it: kiasu (afraid to lose out).

And in 2007 (2 June) when Kiasu, a restaurant selling Singaporean
food, opened in London, and by which time kiasu had made it to the Oxford
English Dictionary, there was even more publicity for the word:
As part of the ongoing, industry-wide drive to appeal to the widest possible
demographic base, todays review is targeted at those of you who hope one
day to be a guest on Call My Bluff [a television show in which contestants
have to guess which is the correct definition of an unusual word]. I dont
think its actually on telly at the moment, but when it is next revived, kiasu
will probably be one of the thrice-defined words.

We can trace this process, but the nature of the agency of standardization
is obscure. Who made the decision to use kiasu in parliament? Who decided
it could appear in The Straits Times? These decisions initiated the move
towards Standard English. What was the process by which its spelling
became finalized? When will it move the next step, of being used far from
Singapore without reference to Singapore? This final step has been taken by
many words that once were regionally restricted. For example, amok came
into English (from Malay via Portuguese) meaning a frenzied Malay in
the sixteenth century (OED), but by the eighteenth century a person of any
ethnicity, anywhere in the world, could run amuck.
The Speak Good English Movement

Singapore launched the Speak Good English Movement (SGEM) in 2000,
following speeches attacking Singlish made in August 1999 by two senior
political leaders, Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong. This movement was
supposed to focus on spoken English, and to promote Standard English
at the expense of Singlish. However, it was not supposed to attack the
Singapore accent. Rubdy (2001), writing in the early stages of the campaign,
predicted success. Seven years later, Singlish continues to flourish, and
the SGEM remains as an arena for information on English, and a place

where the linguistically insecure can seek answers. It has been associated
with attacks on the Singapore accent, and has dealt with written as well as
spoken English.

Singapore has a long history of active and successful language planning,
summarized with balance and clarity by Xu and Li (2002). Its strong
interventionist approach, or linguistic dirigisme (Xu and Li 2002: 275)
has been applied (from time to time) to promoting Malay, English, and
Mandarin. Promoting a specific dialect of English is the latest challenge. But
managing a change in speech is difficult. One reason for this is that speech
is immediate and contingent: we speak to real people in a real situation.
Most of the SGEM materials ask Singaporeans to imagine a foreign
interlocutor, who cannot understand Singlish, and who may perceive its
rapid fire delivery as signalling rudeness, but in real life most Singaporeans
principally use English to speak to other Singaporeans, who can understand
Singlish and who perceive it as informal and warm.

Promoting change in speech is difficult because when we speak we
are doing our best to project a sense of personal identity (Le Page and
Tabouret-Keller 1985). Some of the scenarios from the early years of the
Speak Good English Movement promoted a stilted, colourless, over-formal
kind of English, in situations where the Singaporean expected something
more informal. Indeed, the Standard English alternatives promoted are
typically very formal for anywhere. There are a set of recommendations for
phrases to use in service situations, such as:
Avoid:
Say:
Avoid:
Say:
No more blue colour.

Im sorry, we have run out of blue.
You want to try?
Would you like to try that?

The alternatives, like the downloadable lessons on the SGEM site,
promote a textbook English of full sentences and extreme formality. To
anyone from a community where English is a living daily language, as it is in
Singapore, they seem stiff, like the English that learners of English, rather
than speakers, might use in the classroom (but not, of course, in real life,
as Jenkins has shown). It is as if the SGEM wants Singaporeans to speak
as if they have learnt English only at school, from a rather old-fashioned
teacher. And as if they have learnt only one, very formal style of speaking
it. In real life Singaporeans are more sophisticated users of English than
this. Like speakers of English in all societies where there is a daily use of
English in a range of domains, they need to have different styles of English
in their repertoire.

The idea that a Singaporean accent is acceptable has also not been
maintained in the SGEM materials. The SGEM website includes exercises

in pronunciation which address some of the core features of the Singapore
English accent, such as the conflation of the vowel of pat and the vowel of
pet. Website readers are invited to practise the distinction, as in:
My cousins name is Ellen.
My cousins name is Allan.

Sometimes recommendations are given for how to pronounce specific
words. Generally, where there are alternatives, the one recommended is
always the most old-fashioned kind of British English that can be found. For
example, when one questioner asks how many syllables vegetable should have,
the answer is three, while the correct pronunciation of Wednesday is said to
be with two syllables (and no /d/). Cross-checking OED and pronouncing
dictionaries will show that there is variation in both these words, even
within British English. When there are alternative pronunciations, the
SGEM always seems to promote the one that has maximal reduction. The
high-prestige British accent, RP, is at one extreme of English accents, with
a great deal of reduction, while Singapore English is at the other extreme,
with very little. In RP, many unstressed syllables use a reduced vowel (// or
//) where other varieties, including Singapore English, have a full vowel.
This applies both in words (as in the first syllables of consider and exam)
and in sentences (in an RP rendition of I gave it to him it is likely that
only gave will have a full pronunciation). There is little doubt that as far as
world-wide intelligibility is concerned (the supposed aim of the SGEM), the
fuller pronunciations are clearer (Jenkins 2000, 2007; Gupta 2005): the only
motivation for recommending these extremely reduced forms is to promote
a rather old-fashioned type of RP.

The Phone-in Lessons (developed by the British Council in association
with the SGEM), which have been part of the SGEM from the start, are
built around a scenario of a Singaporean company employing foreign
staff. In the first lesson, a worker from Britain is met at the airport by a coworker from India. They speak together in the usual SGEM textbook style
of English, with a slow and careful delivery:
Jane: Hello, Im Jane. Are you Jaya by any chance?
Jaya: Yes, I am. Hi, Jane. Im Jaya from HotDotCom. Pleased to meet you.
Jane: Ah yes. Youre the webmaster, arent you? Pleased to meet you too.

When they get into a taxi, however, Jaya and the driver have a
discussion about the route in more natural-sounding Singlish:
Jaya: This way can.
Driver: No lah, this way cannot.

Jane thinks Jaya and the driver are speaking Chinese and wonders
how long it will take her to learn. It is true that on hearing a new nonstandard dialect of English for the first time, a hearer might think it is
another language. I was once asked by a visiting American in Singapore
what language a woman behind us on an escalator was speaking to her
child (it was Singlish), but a Botswanan visiting Newcastle also once asked
me what language the revellers in the streets on a Friday evening were
speaking (the Newcastle dialect, Geordie). Tuning in to other dialects is
part of what we have to do as English speakers, and foreigners who come
to live in Singapore learn to understand Singlish easily enough. And most
Singaporeans who encounter foreigners can adapt their English too. It is
not clear why this dialogue is built around a non-Singaporean speaking
Singlish: Are the writers suggesting that Indians are more able than British
people to pick up the local dialect? Or that they are more likely to be
corrupted by it? It is all rather neo-colonial. It is foolish to expect that
stilted, unreal English, of a kind associated with foreign learners, could
replace a living dialect. Even if Singlish does diminish in use over the years,
it will be replaced by a form of speech that allows its users to express a
Singaporean identity, and to express degrees of formality.

It is generally accepted that all English-using countries need their own
vocabulary to deal with elements of local culture. But the commentary on
the first SGEM phone-in lesson attacks even this, giving ERP as an example
of something to avoid. Instead of using ERP, should Singaporeans say
Electronic Road Pricing every time? Or should they perhaps adopt the
London expression, Congestion Charge, even though Singapore had this
idea many years before London? Local cultural terms are essential for all
communities.

Much of this is a return to the old days of the 1980s and before, when
Singapore looked to Britain (an imagined, unreal Britain) for a model of
excellence in English. The world has moved on, and the colonial cringe
is over. Singapore is one of the success stories of the world, and can be
confident about its English as well as about other areas of its success.

Singapores SGEM movement seems to have given the world the
impression that the standard of English in Singapore is poor, and that, as
the current (March 2009) Wikipedia entry on the SGEM says:
The Speak Good English Movement is a program launched by the
government of Singapore. Singaporeans usually speak a variant or dialect
of English known as Singlish, which has heavy influences from Chinese
and Malay in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, and can be
incomprehensible to non-Singaporeans. According to the government[citation
needed]
, this causes problems when Singaporeans need to deal with people
from other countries in business and trade, so the campaign aims to
discourage the use of Singlish and encourage the increased use of a more

standardized form of English (i.e. generally modelled on the British
standard). The launch of the program has been reportedly[citation needed] unable
to effectively change the diglossia (two parallel languages for formal
and informal situations) among Singaporeans. Singlish still remains as a
common language among Singaporeans, and is mostly used in informal
communication, while a more standardized form is used for formal
communication.
Note that this entry assumes that even in formal communication, Standard
English is not actually achieved in Singapore. Singapore should be
attacking, not fostering, the erroneous view, still sadly widespread, that
while people from the UK and USA (etc.) are perfect at Standard English,
people in places like Singapore and India (etc.) never quite make it. Such a
view is not supported by linguistic analysis.

Of course, criticizing the Standard of English (or maths, or behaviour)
in a country is perennial. No country in the world is immune from this selfflagellation. Here, for example, is a claim from Clive James (Australian by
birth, long-time resident in the UK, writing in an Australian magazine):
In which English-speaking country is the English language falling apart
fastest? Britain. Are things as bad in Australia? I hope not. In Britain, in
2006, the Labour government is still trying to fix Britains education system,
but surely one of the reasons its so hard to fix is that most of the people
who should know how are themselves the systems victims, and often dont
even seem to realize it. They need less confidence. Even when they are
ready to admit there might be a problem, few of them realise that they lack
the language to describe it. (The Monthly, May 2006, repr. on Clivejames.com)

The rest of the world is not very conscious of Singapore and does not
know the extent to which it is an English-using country. When I came to
work at the University of Leeds from the National University of Singapore,
one of my colleagues commented that it must be nice for me to be teaching
students whose English was better: the truth is that the English of the
students I taught in Singapore and the students I teach in Leeds is very
much the same. Foreigners reading official sources will not get a good (or
an accurate) impression of the real standard of English in Singapore. They
might not realize that the notion that standards are falling is a myth as old
(at least) as Plato Bolton (2003) discusses the same myth in the context
of Hong Kong.

I fail to understand why the very real successes of generations of
Singaporean politicians and teachers have not been recognized. It is time
for Singaporeans to understand that Singapore is no longer a British
colony, and that the standard of English in Singapore has risen steadily
since independence, is still rising, and has, for some years, been excellent
by any reasonable measures. Singapores school students regularly top

international tests of educational excellence, and of English. It is hard
to understand what is to be gained by wrongly presenting Singapores
education system as a failing one, and by wrongly presenting Singapore as a
place where people speak bad English. People unfamiliar with Singapore
are likely to believe it.
Areas of uncertainty
The traditional areas of disputed usage continue to give rise to uncertainty
and insecurity in most of those who use English, and continue to be the
focus of diatribes from the language police. These areas loom large in
the minds of users of English, and are the subject of a disproportionate
amount of attention in schools and in the media. Most overt discussion of
Standard English takes place not around those areas where the Standard
is strictest (spelling, inflectional morphology, structure of the verb), but
around these peripheral areas, where there is dispute about alternatives
within Standard English.

The better style guides address the issues and explain the disagreement,
but there are also pundits who set themselves up as experts in judging the
disputes, often making capricious decisions not based on the linguistic or
social facts. Such people are sometimes called language mavens. Language
mavens do not refer to reputable dictionaries in their pronouncements, or
to usage, or to history. They foster insecurity in ordinary users of English
without any serious effort at improving their English, something that has
been attacked by linguists for half a century (for example, Leonard 1962).
Unfortunately, the SGEM appears to have fostered a maven culture for
the English of Singapore, rather than empowering people to extend and
develop their English. All over Singapore, there are advertisements for
classes to improve English, many with a focus on pronunciation or phonics.
Writing in The Straits Times on 21 October 2007, Janadas Devan reported
that, at that time, bad English was the second most popular topic of
discussion on the Straits Times Interactive website.

The SGEM invites the public to ask questions of their language experts.
Questions are answered on the SGEM pages, in a weekly English as it is
broken column in Singapores leading newspaper, The Straits Times, and in
the Straits Times Online Mobile Print (STOMP). The credentials of those who
answer the questions are not on display, unlike the credentials of those who
publish dictionaries, grammars, and style guides. Some of the SGEM answers
appear to be provided by 938LIVE, a radio station, and others are reprinted
from The Straits Times. The STOMP answers are provided by the Ministry of
Educations English language specialists, who do seem to be much better
informed than the respondents from 938LIVE. I looked in detail at the

four months of questions and answers in STOMP (MarchJune 2007), when
members of the public asked 198 questions (some people covered more
than one topic in a single posting, which is why the figures below add up to
more than this). Answers can be grouped into 17 categories, the first 2 of
which are not so much questions as jokes and complaints.
1. Look at this (44).

Members of the public send in photographs of notices that they
believe include errors in English (e.g., FOR EMERGENCY USED ONLY,
figurine for a life-size statue) or that they find funny (e.g., GM FOOD
CENTRE). The supposed peculiarity is not always identified, and some
of them seem to me to be just ordinary notices (e.g., STOP BEWARE
OF CHILDREN). In one case a notice is photographed that is likely to
have been a knowing use of Singlish (INSIDE GOT MORE DRINKS AND
BEER). One of these pictures begins every page of questions.
2. This is appalling (6).

Members of the public complain about English they have seen in
textbooks that they regard as wrong, about features of Singapore
English they do not like (using t for th and pronouncing w
wrongly), and, sometimes, about previous answers to questions. For
example:
Many adults above 45 years pronounce the letter w as dub-dew which
should be pronounced as double-u (quickly). I hope the younger
generation is taught correctly. I am not talking about American
pronounciation [sic] of z as zee and British slang as zed or h as
pronounced as hedge or edge. Go and ask those over 40+ yr teachers
how they pronounce w. THE LIST GOES ON!
The answers to these complaints, especially those on pronunciation,

were generally tolerant of the feature that caused the complaint.
3. Analysis and convention (10).

Three questioners ask for technical terms to assist in linguistic analysis,
one asks whether off is a part of the word offer (relevant to the rules of a
game), two questioners ask what full sentence means in the context of
comprehension questions, and four ask whether other school tests were
correctly marked.
4. American and British English (3).

British English (or English English) is referred to occasionally as a
reference point in both questions and answers, but only twice does the
question put this at the centre of concern. One questioner asks for
information on where to learn American English, while another shows
a clear sense of British English as the model, asking whether spellings

such as subsidised and criticised, believed by the questioner to be
American, are allowed as we need to follow the trend. The answer
comes down firmly in favour of British English: Both are acceptable
as both are British, not American. A third questioner asks about the
past tense of dive, and the answer addresses the US/UK difference. In
other categories, most of the other issues raised are irrelevant in terms
of the British/American differences, though some of the questions on
pronunciation suggest that pronunciation differences between British
and American English are behind them. The extent to which the
answers address this is variable.
5. Concord (10).

Six of the questions about subject-verb concord relate to unclear areas
of concord in which there is some mismatch of notional and strict
concord, as in collective nouns (troupe, pair, team), each, and X as well as Y
structures. One questioner was puzzled by the subjunctive (If he were ...)
while one asks a much more basic question, apparently thinking that
if always occurs between a singular noun and a verb concord will be
plural (Mary likes vs. Mary always like). There was an additional question
on the choice of pronoun after someone (the answer promoted the oldfashioned and controversial singular he).
6. Determiners (5).

Three of these are about the choice between a and an (an unusually
regular feature of English). Two of the questions relate to an earring
and reveal a belief that earring begins with a consonant (like year).
The answer corrects this (unexpected) assumption. The third, more
predictably, relates to a useful answer. The answer says that the usual
rule does not apply to u rather than saying that useful really does
begin with a consonant like year. The other two questions about
determiners relate to the idioms on (the) air and (a) sense of humour.
7. Prepositions and particles (11).

These questions all relate to the choice of one or another preposition
or particle, usually where choice is possible within Standard English (in/
on the bus (twice); run over/down/into/out; (to) home; through/across the
underpass; prefer tea to/or coffee; between 9 to/and 5; go to/for lunch; good at/
in; upon in fractions).
8. Singular and plural nouns (10).

Of these, five relate to uncertainty about mass nouns (lingerie(s), flurry of
activity/-ies, discrepancies, nuclear plant(s), water(s,) translation(s), feeling(s)),
and one to the plural of fish. The other five are all about the choice
between singular and plural in noun modifiers (Academy Award(s)
Nominee, goody/ies bags, 2-room(s) flats, Aesthetic(s) department).

9. Tense (12).

Some of these are very broad. The majority of the specific ones relate
to the use of either will/would, can/could or the use of tense in reported
speech, especially in minutes of meetings.
10. Other inflections (17).

As with the questions on concord, with one exception (about obsoleted)
these are questions about areas where there is choice or variation
within Standard English, or where the structure gives cause of
confusion (let it begin(s)). Three questions relate to the comparative,
with two questioners checking that double comparatives (more cheaper)
are incorrect, and a third querying the comparative adverb faster. One
question addresses you are welcome(d). Three are about the possessive
(goat(s) milk; the possessive of James; choice between inflectional and
periphrastic possessive) and six are concerned with pronouns. The
areas of uncertainty in pronouns are whom (the answer promoted it);
the comparative (taller than he/he is/him) and the choice of I/me in
coordinated subjects and objects (John and I/me).
11. Word order (2).

Both relate to the placement of adverbials (the answers drew attention
to choice).
12. Other grammatical (9).

The questions relate to other assorted aspects of grammar, including
two on the reflexive, four relating to idioms that affect the choice of
verb form in structures such as saw C shout(ing) and our mission to bring/
of bringing, one asks about the use of But although One is about the
use of both with not (the answer approves it), and one just puts down
a sentence (with errors of concord and punctuation) and asks if it is
correct.
13. Orthography (5).

There are few worries about spelling, it seems. Of the five questions
about orthography, two are about apostrophes, one about the choice
of words or figures for numbers, one about the placement of full stops
when a sentence ended with a quotation that was a full sentence, and
one about stationary/ery.
14. Words (6).

There are six questions about the use of specific words. Concerns
include whether impact can be a verb (yes) and whether reservist can be
used to mean reservist duty (the answer is that this is a grammatically
incorrect shortening which has become commonly accepted). The
expert is less modern in the case of email:

Language grow and develops so e-mails may emerge as a plural of e-mail
just as electronic mail become e-mail (now an accepted word) which will
probably in time lose the apostrophe and become email (Did you know
fortnight was originally fourteen nights?)
15. Confusing words (31).

A stunning 31 questions deal with words that either have similar
meanings (e.g., speak/talk, fetch/take/bring, lend/borrow, prohibition/ban)
or are similar both in meaning and form (e.g., among(st), orient(ate),
ironic(al)). Two questions are about What/how about. Answers to these
questions often draw attention to the presence of choice in English,
but sometimes come out in favour of one alternative or another,
not necessarily for good reasons. Which alternative is unpredictable.
Sometimes the answer comes out in favour of the more Singaporean
alternative:
Question: Can I eat my dinner? Or should it be take my dinner?
Answer: I would rather use take for meals.

In other cases, answers make a spurious distinction between words
with substantial overlap, as in this answer, which defines chicken in a way
not supplied by OED:
Chick would refer to the cute, fluffy, yellow baby chicken. In fact, the
young of any bird can be called chicks.
Chickens are the fully matured females which taste so good when they are
fried.
16. Pronunciation (9).

All of these relate to specific words. Three of them are linked questions
about the vowel in the first syllable of colleague. Other issues are: the two
pronunciations of the; the number of syllables in itinerary (the answer
said there should be four, going as usual for a maximally reduced
alternative), the initial sound of Thailand, the pronunciation of film,
tuition and laboratory. It is surprising that the answer to laboratory does
not address the large US/UK difference in this word, especially as a
much smaller US/UK pronunciation difference is addressed in one of
the answers on colleague.
17. Miscellaneous (11).

Eight questions relate to specific issues about particular idioms, mostly
to do with collocation or idiom: Should a worst tyrant really be a best
tyrant? (Back) home? Is it tautologous to say someone is a dishonest liar?
Can meat be freshly frozen? Two questioners are concerned with ways of
talking about colours (red colour(ed), colour red). One questioner raises

the Singaporean invariant tag is it asking whether it is true that native
speakers are now using it. The answer is Personally, I havent heard
native speakers follow suit. In fact invariant tags are common in a
range of Englishes, and there is an invariant (negative) tag used by
some speakers in colloquial British English, usually spelt as innit.

The topics of these questions suggest that those who send questions in
association with the SGEM are not confused about the difference between
Singlish and Standard English. There are no questions about well-known
features of Singlish such as pragmatic particles (such as lah), or about
omission of the verb be (He so stupid) or about the use of the base form
of the verb where standard English required some inflection (Fatimah
finish already). No translation is invited of any sentence in Singlish. These
questions are questions from within Standard English, and the vast majority of
them deal with areas of difficulty and dispute that beset all users of English.
They address areas that are intrinsically difficult or irregular in English, or
where English users do not agree on what is and what is not correct.

These topics are the subject of advice directed at the insecure all over
the English-using world. Clive James gives examples from the British (and
American) press to illustrate his claim about the poor standard of English
in Britain and elsewhere among people who have learned English as a first
language. These are the usages he regards as appalling, attached to the
numbers in my list of the STOMP issues:
dangling participles (not mentioned by any of the STOMP questioners);
mixed and dead metaphors (mentioned by some questions in 17);
confused words: hone it/home in; solecism/solipsism (15);
concord in complex subjects (5);
determiners (6);
lower case in name of a magazine (not mentioned by any of the STOMP
questioners).

The areas of disputed usage that worry the STOMP participants (and
James) are covered by usage notes in dictionaries and style guides published
and online. They are among the areas discussed by the linguists who have
attacked prescriptivism for decades. What we see here are Singaporeans
attempting to negotiate those areas of Standard English about which there
is uncertainty. The presence of dispute and uncertainty within Standard
English is part of the essence of Standard English as an organic dialect:
these are the areas where the linguistic features of Standard English are
not firmly defined. The features associated with the normative debate do
not divide Standard English into multiple dialects: they are a debate about
notions of correctness within a dialect in which concepts of correctness are
central because it is a Standard and is required in certain domains. Engaging

in areas of dispute is part of what advanced writers of English have to do,
making informed decisions through the process of feedback and monitoring
that is the agent of maintenance and change in Standard English.
Deciding whats right

It is quite a challenge to answer some of the questions in a non-technical
way, briefly, and accurately. While it is easy enough to tell a questioner (for
example) the difference between its and its, it is much harder to explain
the subtle difference between bring and take. We have seen that some of
the STOMP answers are sensible, and some are capricious. None of them
refer to any source of authority, either in works of reference from reputable
sources, or in usage.

The answers on the SGEMs website are even worse. Of the 16 answers
to questions in August 2007, only 5 could be verified as valid by checking
against appropriate sources. Among errors in answers were the following
very obvious ones:
learnt/learned. The SGEM answer claimed that learnt is past tense, while
learned is the adjective. It is true that the form of the rare adjective can
only be learned (pronounced as two syllables, as in a learned doctor of
the church). However, any good dictionary (such as OED) will show
that the past tense (and past participle) can be either learnt or learned.
inquiry/enquiry. The SGEM answer says In British English, used here in
Singapore, if you make an enquiry, you are asking for information. An
inquiry is an investigation conducted by an organization, the police for
example. However, in American English, it is common that the word
inquiry is used for both instances. Most dictionaries (like OED) state
that the two spellings are interchangeable, though some writers may try
to make the distinction that SGEM wrongly claims is generally made by
British English.
in/on a bus. The SGEM answer says it should be on a bus. OED has
examples of both.

Most of the erroneous recommendations in the SGEM site give a
clear answer to an area of language where there is actually choice within
Standard English. In many cases, they are not even disputed usage. These
answers misrepresent English. They would constrain anyone who took them
seriously, but would not result in someone saying or writing non-standard
English. This is true of other answers to do with (e)specially, bring/take, fell for
you/fell in love with you, and pressured/pressurized. The only damage done to a
reader would be to make them feel insecure because they cannot trust the
evidence of their instinct or what they read or hear.

But there is one answer where the recommended choice would take
Singaporeans away from what is now considered best practice in writing
formal English. This is an area where there has been change since the 1980s.

Over the whole of the English-using world, the use of he to refer to a
referent of either gender (If a student submits his essay late, he will be
penalized) became progressively less acceptable over the course of the last
two decades of the twentieth century. Most reputable publishers (including
Hong Kong University Press) do not allow authors to use this generic he.
If you see this usage in a printed book from a major publisher now, you
can guess it is pre-1985. This change was accompanied by a great deal of
discussion. Style guides suggest alternatives to the use of he where referents
might be of either gender or both, such as making the whole thing plural
(e.g., If students submit their essays late, they will be penalized). The
use of the singular they has become more acceptable than it used to be,
especially with pronouns such as someone, but is still disputed because of an
incongruity in number with verb concord (If a student submits [not submit]
their essay late, they will be penalized). The STOMP and SGEM answers
promote the singular he with someone and no-one, as in this SGEM answer:
Question: Everyone wants to change the world but no one wants to change
themselves.

Should it be themselves or himself?
Answer: It should be himself because no one is singular.
This recommendation flouts all mainstream style guides and usage advice
in modern dictionaries. Using he to refer to someone and no-one looks at best
old-fashioned and at worst offensive. The Online Style Guide of The Times
(London) takes the most traditional stand now possible without giving
offence to anyone. It bans singular they, but does not even consider generic
he as a possibility, recommending instead a compromise alternative
complete pluralization that no-one objects to:
they should always agree with the subject. Avoid sentences such as If
someone loves animals, they should protect them. Say instead If people
love animals, they should protect them. (Times Online)
In the SGEM response we find an example of Singapore not following the

current trend in usage found in most countries, but holding out for the
traditional maven-favoured alternative. On the same lines, the SGEM website
identifies Professor Koh (a woman) as the Chairman, something that would
be proscribed in edited texts from many publishers around the world.

The SGEM has, as might be expected, been criticized from a number
of quarters. The hardline approach to correctness lays the SGEM open to
criticism from other mavens, who comb through its site and the speeches

of its leadership for real or imagined errors. Among those who have done
this are the anonymous blogger The Grammar Terrrorist in his (Unofficial,
Unauthorized) English as it is Broken column, where he responds to The Straits
Times column, and Mr Brown (real name, Lee Kin Mun), in another blog,
who on 26 July 2006 corrected a speech by Koh Tai Ann, the chair of the
Speak Good English Movement. Many of the corrections seem designed to
render Kohs elegant and idiomatic speech into the bland kind of English
the SGEM seems to promote. The whole pernickety approach of the SGEM
lends itself to the same response in others this is how the SGEM is hoist
by its own petard.
Solutions
This focus on correctness, and the promotion of one alternative as right
when there is in fact choice, has long been known to be damaging to
insecure users of English (Mittins et al. 1970; Milroy and Milroy 1985;
Wardaugh 1999). Instead, those promoting excellence in English would
do well to look at how English actually operates in the world. Those who
pronounce on usage should, before pronouncing, first check established
and up-to-date dictionaries, grammars and style guides from major
publishers, and then, if the information is not available from reputable
published sources, they should investigate, by using internet searches
intelligently, what the prevalence and the social and geographical pattern of
usage of a given item is.

There cannot be recourse to the native speaker. The idea that the
native speaker is the sole and reliable source of judgement on Standard
English is a damaging myth. There are many ways of defining native
language, and the definition of the native speaker of English has
been especially politicized. Any definition of native speaker that has
recourse to race, ethnicity or citizenship is invidious and unjustifiable. Any
definition that requires different criteria to be applied to native speakers
of English than to native speakers of other languages also seems to me to
be linguistically unjustifiable. Any definition that denies native speakerness
to speakers of dialects other than the standard one, or to people who have
more than one native language, is politically and linguistically unjustifiable.
The most usual definition among linguists is that you are a native speaker
of a language (any language, any dialect) if you acquired it naturally in
childhood (Li 2000: 497). We could make this stricter by saying it must be
a language spoken by the age of three years. Let us take that definition and
see what facts it leads us to:
1. Many Singaporeans (and most of those under 40) are native speakers of
English, including Lee Kuan Yew, Singapores first prime minister.

2. Not all native speakers (in any region) are native speakers of Standard
English.
3. Not all native speakers of English (including native speakers of Standard
English) can write Standard English skilfully. This applies whether
the native speakers are Singaporean, British, or whatever (remember
the GCSE failures in English in the UK). Success in writing Standard
English is societally defined and is measured by educational attainment
in English.
4. Some non-native speakers of English are better at writing Standard
English than are nearly all native speakers (e.g., Koh Tai Ann, Mary
Tay, professors of English in Poland).
5. The high-prestige edited texts that set the standard for English
are produced by people skilled in the writing of Standard English,
regardless of whether they are native speakers or not.

What matters is skill in performing Standard English, and we
have traditional means of assessing this in the form of examinations,
qualifications and ad hoc tests. These are the tests that should be applied,
rather than any test based on accidents of birth. But any user of English
with a high level of skills recognizes the need to use reference works, to
keep in touch with trends in usage and to recognize personal limitations.

My appeal for a realistic approach to Standard English is not to be seen
as anything goes. Because this is not how Standard English works. Skill
in writing Standard English is a central part of validation in English-using
societies. Getting it right matters societally: Standard English has cultural
capital (de Swaan 2001; Blommaert et al. 2005). But it is not the property of
any one region: it is a truly global brand. English is not a classical language
with clear rules that exist outside practice. It is a living language with all
the areas of choice and flexibility that that implies. The use of English
takes place in real social situations where negotiation of communication is
what matters.

Learning to use Standard English well can be thought of as progressing
in stages:
1. Speak some English (any dialect/dialects).
2. Learn to read and write English. This is a process ideally, and usually,
undertaken throughout childhood, assisted by teachers who are
sensitive to the stage of the learner. Literacy is always developed in
Standard English.
3. Develop skill in producing and understanding Standard English,
especially by intensive and attentive reading of and listening to a
wide variety of texts from many times and places, and by collaborative
writing. This is a lifelong task.

4. Develop skill in producing a range of varieties of English, as appropriate
to where you live, who you are, and what you do with English. Over
your life you may live in different places and do different things with
English: you will need to extend your range. Another lifelong task.
5. Develop skill in understanding the spoken English of other regions.
Learn about non-standard dialects as well as about variation in Standard
English. This is also a lifelong task.

All users of English progress through these stages but the levels of
skill attained in Standard English are variable. There is no evidence that a
vigorous local non-standard dialect is detrimental to the development of
strong skills in Standard English. There is every evidence that using English
in a range of domains, making societally appropriate adaptations in style
depending on context, interlocutor and text type, and taking pleasure in
the use of English, promotes the development of strong skills in Standard
English. A normative maven culture that promotes a judgemental approach
to language is likely to create insecurity, possibly leading to less use of
English, and a concomitant reduction in skill. The promotion of a single
style is unrealistic and, if obeyed, would lead to a deterioration in the use
of English.

Especially in speech, all users of English need to be tolerant of a range
of proficiency and to negotiate the construction of communication in reallife situations. We need to be prepared to adapt vocabulary, grammar and
pronunciation to the needs of those with whom we speak face to face.
There is immediate feedback from interlocutors to help us do this. We
need to be tolerant of the differences between the way we speak and the
way others speak, and hope this is mutual. When speaking to an unknown
or mixed audience we need to assess the audience and do our best to meet
their needs. There are different levels of skill at doing this. There are also
different levels of skill in listening (Gupta 2005). We understand best the
accents we hear most often. This means that for a Singaporean the easiest
accent to understand is almost certainly a Singaporean accent. In the world
as a whole, the most heard accent is almost certainly the accent known as
General American, thanks to the popularity of American mass media. But
that does not mean we should all strive to speak it. Variety is something to
celebrate rather than deplore.

In writing, things are simpler, because in many respects Standard
English really is essentially monolithic. In any given text of Standard English
(such as a newspaper article) more than 99.5% of words will be words
spelled, inflected and used in the same way by Standard English everywhere.
Standard English is so much a given that it is almost invisible. And it is
not something remote and unattainable. It is something that Singaporeans
are as good at as anyone else indeed, possibly better than anyone else.

Singaporeans anxieties about English are shared by English users in the
rest of the world.
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The Speak Good English Movement:

A web-users perspective
Paul Bruthiaux
There was a knock at the door.

Come in.
A Chinese clerk, very neat in his white ducks, opened it.
Mr Crosbie is here, sir.
He spoke beautiful English, accenting each word with precision ... Ong
Chi Seng was a Cantonese, and he had studied law at Grays Inn. He was
spending a year or two with Messrs Ripley, Joyce, and Naylor in order
to prepare himself for practice on his own account. He was industrious,
obliging, and of exemplary character.

The Letter: W. Somerset Maugham (1927/2001: 117)
Set in Singapore, the meeting place of a hundred peoples (Maugham

1927/2001: 116), this scene from one of Maughams Malayan stories has a
curiously modern ring despite the colonial trappings that would be hard
to spot in todays city-state. Introduced to set the scene for the skulduggery
that is to come, the suggestion that speaking beautiful English correlates
with good character would probably have seemed entirely plausible to many
of Maughams readers. Attitudes have of course changed, in postcolonial
settings as elsewhere, and not least in Singapore, a country now promoting
itself as a model not only of rapid socio-economic growth but also of the
successful integration of a hundred peoples into a social grid in which the
benefits of that growth can be shared by all.

From pre-colonial times when those hundred peoples began to
interact, language has played a key part in that social integration or
in social division, as the case may be. Since it was ejected from newly
independent Malaysia in 1965, Singapore has implemented a number of
major language-related policies, including designating one language as the
mother tongue of each of three official ethnic groups (Chinese, Malay,
Indian), promoting Mandarin to replace Chinese dialects among Chinese
Singaporeans, and making English the dominant medium of instruction. In
92 Paul Bruthiaux
2000, policymakers turned their attentions to English as it was being used (or
not used, or, as they saw it, misused), not only within the relatively easily
controlled institutional framework of education but also in the daily lives
of Singaporeans. This resulted in one of Singapores trademark campaigns,
the Speak Good English Movement (henceforth SGEM), a systematic
attempt to influence the English language as used locally by steering it
away from indigenized adaptations and closer to something internationally
recognizable as standard English.

SGEM now broadcasts its exhortations to Singaporeans to modify
their linguistic behavior in the desired direction through a combination of
booklets, billboards, public events, speeches by politicians, media coverage,
and in particular a substantial website (Speak Good English Movement
2007). This website offers (among other things) word games, a story-telling
competition, and a narrative competition in which successful efforts are
promised an animated film version. It even boasts Be Understood e-cards,
with rulings such as Wrong: Why you so like that? Right: Why are you
behaving in such a manner?1 replacing the inspirational poems and risqu
jokes normally favoured by users of these products, an initiative that will
surely redefine birthday fun in Singapore.

In this chapter, I propose to evaluate SGEM not as an academic might
analyze it but as a web user might experience it through the content
and the subtext of its website. Surveying the website, five major themes
emerge. These are: intelligibility, the validity of linguistic descriptions, the
prescriptivist tradition, the role of evaluation, and the role of government
in language matters. I will review each of these themes in turn. Although
the website stresses that SGEM is a movement and not a campaign, it does not
elaborate on what this distinction might mean and why it might matter. To
avoid taking sides unwittingly, I refer to SGEM as a project throughout this
chapter.
SGEM and intelligibility

The thinking behind SGEM is articulated on its website (as of 2007) in two
speeches. One was given in 2006 by Minister of State for Education Lui
Tuck Yew, the other in 2007 by SGEM Chair Professor Koh Tai Ann. Given
the prominence given to these two documents on the website, it is fair to
assume that they jointly represent SGEM philosophy, and I will refer to
them collectively as SGEM without further distinguishing between the two.

The two documents restate what has been a central SGEM tenet since
its inception, namely that Singaporeans will gain collectively from being
able to plug into an increasingly globalized world (for a discussion of some
possible motivations some overt, others less so underlying this belief,
The Speak Good English Movement 93

see Rubdy 2001). Singapore will make itself more attractive to international
investment, trade, and tourism if its population can communicate effectively
with outsiders. This implies the ability to speak a variety of English broadly
intelligible across English-speaking communities including the largest of all,
that of non-native speakers. This, in a nutshell, is the message behind the
SGEM slogan: Be understood. Not only in Singapore, Malaysia, or Batam.
(the last being the Indonesian island closest to Singapore, now undergoing
rapid development as a result of investment from Singapore).

One problem with slogans is that they often do all too well what they
are meant to do, which is to galvanize through simplification. It is obvious
from the moment a conversation between a Singaporean and a nonSingaporean starts that Singapore English sounds different. Today, a solid
corpus of research details where phonological differences lie, especially
at the segmental level (see, for example, Lim 2004a; Deterding 2005).
Research also shows that differences affect suprasegmental aspects of
Singapore English, including the prosody of given versus new information
(Low 2006). However, difference does not entail unintelligibility, though it
will figure among prima facie causes of unintelligibility when this occurs. As
Low (2006) argues, intelligibility can be tested and its causes investigated.
Whether SGEM pronouncements on how Singaporeans should speak
are grounded in research of this type or in the untested hunches of its
promoters is not clear from the website.

Second, it is not immediately clear why an internationally intelligible
variety of English should become the norm internally. Not only should
Singaporeans speak grammatically correct English that is universally
understood. They should also speak English with confidence at work,
at home, and at play. This implies that communication across a range
of settings in a highly multilingual society can be ordered in such a
way that it will only take place in one of (for most Singaporeans) two
approved languages, the designated ethnic mother tongue and standard
English. At no point shall the twain meet, which of course it is in the
nature of languages in contact to do, an aspect of bilingualism which
SGEM concedes but sternly advises against. In this, SGEM appears to
have softened its earlier position, at the cost, it seems to me, of greater
confusion. On the one hand, SGEM states that it now accepts a Singapore
accent as legitimate. Confusingly, however, it also urges Singaporeans to
pay attention to accurate pronunciation, by which, judging by a number
of items on the website, would appear to mean adhering to standard
English in distinguishing between tense and lax vowels such as /i/ and //,
avoiding consonant cluster reduction (dont want, not don wan), avoiding
the devoicing of final stops (log in should not be homophonous with lock
in), and adhering to standard stress placement (purchase, not purchase).
Sensibly, SGEM is happy to sanction lexical imports denoting specifically
94 Paul Bruthiaux
Singaporean entities and practices, as in HDB [public] housing or
handphones. In matters of morphosyntax, however, the original prohibition
stands. Singaporeans, we learn, should resist the temptation to slip into
inattentive, sloppy usage, lapse into hybridized English, or blame on
pressure of time a tendency to cut corners with tense or agreement
markers. They should, as I read it, emulate Maughams Ong Chi Seng and
through their use of language prove themselves to be industrious, obliging,
and of exemplary character.

In practice, Singapores hundred peoples have always had a range of
interconnected speech forms that allowed them to transact business and
bind themselves together as a regional community and more recently as a
nation. As successive generations of immigrants settled in Singapore, they
blended their own linguistic heritage with Malay, the dominant indigenous
language, and Hokkien, the dominant tongue of the fast-growing Chinese
immigrant community, into a patchwork of unregulated hybrids, with
Bazaar/Trade Malay the main vehicle for interethnic communication.
Gradually, English came to displace Bazaar/Trade Malay as the dominant
lingua franca, especially after it was granted privileged status in the newly
independent nation in 1965 and a privileged role as the sole medium
of instruction in 1987 (for overviews of Singapores multi-ethnic and
multilingual history, see Gupta 2007; Lim 2007, this volume; for a detailed
study of the early ethnolinguistics of Singapore, see Miksic 2004). This,
however, could not prevent (or perhaps even encouraged) continued crosshybridization between English and other local languages, with the resulting
creole, popularly known as Singlish, settling increasingly comfortably into
the role of preferred linguistic vehicle for informal communication as well
as identity construction.

In effect, this diglossic state of affairs created the raison dtre for
SGEM, despite statements that SGEM is not about Singlish. In the very act
of promoting standard English, SGEM aims to demote the competition, that
is, Singapore English. This insistence that Singaporeans distance themselves
from their home-grown variety of English in all areas of their lives implies
that the linguistic kaleidoscope of Singapore must be reduced to a
monochrome of English plus mother tongue, with no room for blending.

The case for this view of multilingualism in action is not helped by
justifications recycled from the stock in trade of colonial racism, as in certain
mispronunciations can lead to unintelligibility, for example, wishing
someone a pleasant fright instead of a pleasant flight. But apart from avoiding
unfortunate statements such as this, SGEM needs to publicly address the
nature of intelligibility beyond repeating that standard English is more
intelligible than Singapore English.

Evidence that departures from standard English do not necessarily
hinder but may in fact enhance multilingual communication is offered by

Deterding and Kirkpatrick (2006). In a study of interactions across ASEAN
nationals speaking English, they found no evidence that departures from
standard English such as the avoidance of reduced vowels in unstressed
syllables led to unintelligibility provided the feature was shared among
speakers. As Deterding and Kirkpatrick suggest, even native speakers
unfamiliar with emerging contact varieties of this type may find that
willingness on their part to depart from standard features may well
assist intelligibility, not only in phonology but also (I would add) in
morphosyntax.

The grammar of standard English requires relatively frequent
inflections, many of which add little or nothing to semantic content. For
example, it seems entirely reasonable as well as empirically testable
to suggest that yesterday she go may be more readily intelligible than
yesterday she went since the stem-changing inflection adds nothing to the
temporal reference already carried by yesterday while the morphologically
unrelated lexical item went adds to the comprehension (and acquisition)
load. Similarly, it is not self-evident that the item OK is by itself any more
intelligible than the item can, a favorite Singaporean strategy for indicating
ability and willingness to do something (Today cannot, tomorrow can,
Sunday also can). What makes OK the preferred response is not inherent
intelligibility, especially given its obscure etymology (discussed at length in
numerous websites), but simply the fact that it has now passed into standard
practice, first in US English, then more widely among other varieties of
English, and now in many languages worldwide. Whatever SGEM is about, I
suggest, it is not primarily intelligibility.

Further, the notion that only one variety of English is acceptable in
Singapore is at odds with the everyday reality of how multilinguals order
their affairs, which is by shifting across codes as circumstances require (for
a review of the vast literature on shift and accommodation, see Coupland
2007). What SGEM at no point addresses is the possibility that multilingual
Singaporeans might be behaving entirely rationally by speaking standard
English (with local characteristics) in some contexts, Singlish in others, and
something in between in the rest. In other words, raising the competence
of Singaporeans at the standard end of the continuum need not imply
obliterating it at the other. The case for Singaporeans speaking standard
English in multinational professional settings is obvious. But a rationale for
insisting on standard English in private domains is missing, if only because
informal spoken language cannot be controlled to this degree (Bruthiaux
2006). But this insistence is also absurd because if it were to succeed it
would generate possibly the first recorded case of single-code, variation-free
speakers of a language.

I am not, of course, recommending that Singapore schools teach
Singlish for academic purposes. But I am stressing that language policy
96 Paul Bruthiaux
in Singapore needs to follow practice and recognize that there is room in
Singapore for standard English, Singlish, and shades of Singapore English
in between. Meanwhile, the suspicion remains that the main concern of
SGEM is not intelligibility but respectability. Singaporeans, SGEM seems to
be suggesting, need to see themselves and be seen as industrious, obliging,
and of exemplary character, and this is incompatible with speaking
Singapore English, let alone Singlish. In brief, SGEM needs to come clean
in this respect and provide a coherent rationale for its activities beyond
largely unsubstantiated claims that Singapore English is a major impediment
to the involvement of Singaporeans in internal as well as international
communication. What is at stake is that all Singaporeans and not just an
elite should enjoy a range of codes that spans the entire continuum from
standard English to Singlish (in addition to the mother tongue). Once this
is in place, a quasi-instinctive human ability to choose from the full range
to suit each communicative setting should be trusted to operate without
institutional intervention.
SGEM and descriptive linguistics

Despite being implicitly supported by a range of academic figures of
impressive pedigree, some of the materials on the SGEM website betray an
alarming lack of awareness of elementary descriptive linguistics. Recycling a
ruling from an online source2 that the words although and but can be used
interchangeably (on the vague grounds that they both aim to connect two
ideas inside the same sentence), the website warns that but can only be
used in the middle of a sentence whereas although can be used either at
the beginning or in the middle of a sentence. While this is syntactically
true, the statement entirely misses the fact that the two conjunctions
connect clauses with radically different types of dependence. In the
examples provided by the website, substituting although for but in She likes
him but [*although] doesnt want to get married leads to nonsense (as well as
ungrammaticality since the subordinate although- clause requires a subject
whereas the coordinate but- clause does not), as does substituting but for
although in They did not eat although [*but] they were hungry.

Even if these elementary issues had been spotted, understood, and
explained in terms intelligible to most Singaporeans, this would still ignore
the important issue of register variation. That is, but is a high-frequency
item that covers the entire range from formal to informal discourse whereas
although is less frequent and generally confined to formal, typically written
contexts (Francis and Kuera 1982). In the unlikely event of Singaporeans
taking any notice of the ruling in question, its application would result
in some very odd discourse indeed: ungrammatical, semantically obscure,

socially inappropriate, or some combination of the above: in short, precisely
the opposite of what SGEM aims to achieve, which is to promote Englishlanguage communication in Singapore.

Linguistic descriptions should of course be helpful in practical ways to
those who consult them, and, as in all pedagogy, a degree of simplification
is to be expected. In this sense, it is reasonable for SGEM to state, for
example, that learnt is the past tense of learn and is used as a verb (she only
learnt about the news yesterday). By contrast, learned is used as an adjective
to refer to someone who has much knowledge (we consulted the learned
professors). However, an opportunity is missed to add two key specifications.

One concerns dialectal variation. Given the growing presence of USsourced material in TV, music, media, and IT in Singapore, it seems
probable that the user who posed the question (assuming it is authentic),
Is there a difference between these words learnt and learned? When do
we use each of them?, will have been exposed to variation between the past
verbal inflections learned (predominantly US) and learnt (predominantly
UK). Warning users that variation of this type is rife in the Anglo-American
twilight of Singapore English the SGEM chair herself goes for the learned
variant would have done genuine service to the advancement of linguistic
awareness among SGEM users.

The other missed opportunity concerns phonology as no warning is
given regarding the bisyllabic pronunciation of the adjective learned, a relic
incidentally from the eighteenth-century shift from two syllables to one
in verbal derivations of this type. This change caused Jonathan Swift a great
deal of spleen and led him to denounce the resulting consonantal clusters
(which he blamed on poets looking to drop inconvenient syllables, and
which later spread from poetry to everyday speech) as harsh unharmonious
Sounds, that none but a Northern Ear could endure ... [and] so jarring a
Sound, and so difficult to utter, that I have often wondred [sic] how it could
ever obtain (1712/2007).3 If objections from no less a literary figure than
Swift could not prevent or redirect phonological shift in eighteenth-century
England, what hope is there that SGEM might do any better?
SGEM and prescriptivism

Over the past two and a half centuries, attempts to prescribe language use
in detail have tended to focus on randomly selected features on which to
issue absolute rulings (for a review, see Finegan 1980; for an analysis of
the role in this process of Bishop Lowth, every anti-prescriptivists bte noire,
see Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2008). Evidently, the SGEM website is firmly
anchored in this tradition. Usage is prescribed on an odd set of items SGEM
prescriptivists appear to harbour special animus towards, often regardless of
98 Paul Bruthiaux
actual usage. Indeed, an additional reason for doubting that intelligibility is
a primary concern for SGEM is that much of its website is devoted to ruling
on minute details of usage that will likely be missed by most even in writing
(except perhaps by professional proofreaders). This is especially true since
variation across written varieties of English is limited, often trivial (learned
versus learnt, for example) and generally inconsequential in communication
(Bruthiaux 2006).

An example of this concern with the minutiae of written usage affects
a verb that ends in the highly productive -ize derivational morpheme. For
some reason, SGEM selects incentivize for special denunciation, claiming
that there is no such word. However, a Google search, a ready and
reasonably reliable measure of current usage by large numbers of users of
English, yields over half a million hits for this verb in the -ize spelling alone,
a further 360,000 in the -ise variant, and over half a million again for the
combined -iz/sing, -iz/sed, and -iz/ses inflected forms. Disturbing, for a word
that does not exist.

The SGEM website recycles from other websites similar pronouncements
on arcane points of usage widely ignored by modern speakers of English
worldwide. Farther, we are informed, is an adjective used to refer to
a greater distance or a more distant place. It is only used when we are
speaking of real places and distances The adjective further is used to mean
more, extra or additional. Leaving aside the fact that further/farther would
be more accurately described primarily as adverbs and only secondarily as
adjectives, a Google search quickly reveals the inaccuracy of this description,
with further scoring 669 million hits compared to 28 million for farther. To
modern web users, further is the term of choice, covering distance (How
much further apart at the top are the support pillars of the Akashi Kaikyo
Bridge in Japan than they are at the base due to the curvature of the
earth?), addition (Bush announces further Myanmar sanctions), and the
metaphorical gray area in between (Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer says
his 15th-ranked Volunteers are further along than he expected going into
the season opener). The efforts of prescriptivists notwithstanding, farther
looks destined to follow farthermore into oblivion, a form already described
as obsolete in the 1913 revision of Websters 1828 dictionary (Webster
1828/1913/2007) and today scoring a measly 9,600 Google hits, mostly
tangentially but intriguingly thanks to a lingering fondness for this term
among computer programmers (Converted figures are inserted into HTML
without additional scaling, because they are properly scaled at conversion.
Farthermore, avoiding additional scaling noticeably improves image
quality). Pronouncements to the contrary, which any Singaporean with
online access can challenge on the basis of usage, suggest an alarming lack
of awareness of current developments in English usage among authorities
on language within SGEM.

In fact, rather than being a case of good English versus bad, the
unequal co-existence of further and farther in modern English appears
to be a leftover from earlier pronunciations of the stressed vowel as
// versus //, as in words such as university, with the // variant for the
-ver- syllable now obsolete except in the linguistic fossil varsity. This earlier
competition between phonological variants also remains audible in the US
(//) versus UK (//) pronunciations of terms such as Berkeley, Derby, or
clerk. Judging by current preferences, the fate that befell varsity will before
long afflict farther, SGEM notwithstanding. Competition between variants
is simply a manifestation of the inherent messiness of natural language,
which, to the prescriptivists dismay, no amount of rationalization can affect
substantially. In the unlikely event of Singaporeans taking notice of such
rulings, promoting obsolete forms repackaged as Good English would
lead to Singaporeans being not more but less widely understood. A more
likely outcome is that the SGEM watchdogs will meet with the fate of earlier
prescriptivists: ignored in their time and forgotten soon after.
SGEM and evaluation

Singapore is perhaps one of the most planned and monitored societies
in the world, with little escaping the attention of the city-states vast
governmental machinery. In addition to uncontroversial areas such as
the economy and investment, housing, transport, or education, areas of
Singapore life considered legitimate targets for government intervention
have included courtesy in the service sector, flushing etiquette in public
restrooms, or the matrimonial (dis)inclinations of Singaporeans (Romancing
Singapore 2007). Best known among policy initiatives targeting language
is the Speak Mandarin Campaign, initiated in 1979 to encourage Chinese
Singaporeans to speak Mandarin at the expense of Chinese dialects. As
in all policy implementation, it is to be expected that a policy tool such
as SGEM will be the object of meticulous research, leading to continuous
adjustments as results are processed and progress evaluated. What does the
SGEM website, therefore, offer in this respect?

In a section on Background, the website reports having been especially
successful in reaching out to Singaporeans with the help of partner
organizations, and to have enabled Singaporeans to learn from a wide
range of activities and courses. Reaching out to targeted participants and
beneficiaries is of course a key step in any social program, but it does not
guarantee that the program will be taken up, much less that it will be
effective in bringing about the desired change. Yet, the effectiveness of
SGEM goes unreported on the website.
100 Paul Bruthiaux

Under the heading Over the Years the website does review the first
six years of the projects existence in some detail. It reports that, a year
into the project, a survey found that 9 in 10 Singaporeans agreed that
it was important to speak good English, with perhaps a hint of a causal
relationship between the project itself and this happy outcome. In 2002, a
survey by The Straits Times, a habitual government mouthpiece, found that
66% of Singaporeans who were aware of the Movement were motivated to
speak good English, a finding for which the line of causality if indeed
there was one could have gone either way. Nothing further is reported
regarding the effectiveness of the project for the rest of the period covered
(200005). Given that, as mentioned above, the project can hardly have
unfolded over this period without careful evaluation, this lack of publicly
available information is puzzling, and it is left to an anonymous Wikipedia
contributor to suggest, in the absence of hard evidence, that the project
may have failed to substantially alter the diglossic character of language
use in Singapore (Speak Good English 2007). If this view is in error, the
SGEM promoters are silent on the issue. Admittedly, it would be unfair to
expect a project of this type to report its own ineffectiveness on what is in
effect a promotional website. But if demonstrable evidence that the project
is succeeding is available, it is reasonable to suppose that it would be given
pride of place on the website. After seven years of SGEM fanfare, the jury
cannot still be out. In the absence of a public statement of outcomes, there
will remain a suspicion that the news is not all good.
SGEM and the role of government

In an attempt to bring religious practices among Tibetans under tighter
control, the Chinese government recently created a reincarnation management
programme, in effect a requirement that announcements regarding the
divine succession line must be pre-approved by Beijing (Haines 2007).
Though not quite matching this development in ambition, the SGEM
project betrays a fear of uncontrolled social behaviour, especially if that
behaviour is undergoing change. In Singapore, it often appears, nothing
is too unimportant to be left unplanned and unmonitored, and language
form and language use are no exceptions.

Evidence abounds on the website of a view of English in Singapore as
a problem, to which, naturally and at government initiative, a solution will
be found and implemented top-down among the population. Indeed, the
fact that a localized, non-standard variety persists and is even associated
with identity construction seems to frustrate those in charge given that the
problem appears to them have a ready solution. Making standard English
the norm in Singapore should not be difficult as all Singaporeans who

have attended English medium schools or learned [sic] English as a second
language will have been taught standard English. All it should take is a
willingness among Singaporeans to apply what they were taught. Speaking
good English among younger and all-English-speaking Singaporeans ...
[is] mainly a matter of attitude, conscious effort, and attentiveness to the
language that we have all learned at school. In this naively mechanistic
view of teaching and learning, the blame for any failure rests squarely with
the intended beneficiaries of the policy because they will not apply what
they learned.

To attack the problem at the source, government intervention reaches
not only into schools but also into family life: Take the time to help your
child be sensitive to common mistakes made in spoken English. You can
have him or her tell you about the things that happen in school. This will
help sharpen his/her senses to spot common mistakes made in everyday
conversations. One difficulty with this recommendation is that it rests on
the questionable assumption that the older generation will have a better
command of English than the younger. Given that English was made
the sole medium of instruction in Singapore only in 1987 or less than a
generation ago (Pakir 2004), it is likely that English language input within
families will flow not from parents, many of whom may have missed out on
English medium education, but from children, who will bring home greater
exposure to the language and a confidence to communicate in it across the
range of daily activities.

To its credit, SGEM recognizes that some parents may not be up to the
task of tutoring their children in standard English. However, the proposed
solution is a non sequitur, and the result is conceptual incoherence: If ...
[parents] are not comfortable with English, they can speak their mother
tongues with their children so that their children will develop the ability to
communicate well in their mother tongue. Quite how this is supposed to
help with the acquisition and use of standard English is not specified, an
omission that does little to raise the overall credibility of the SGEM project.

Another difficulty is that even if most parents feel sufficiently
knowledgeable and confident regarding standard English (thanks, perhaps,
to their regular perusal of SGEM output) to act as home tutors to their
children and turn SGEM recommendations into family routines, this may
further raise anxiety levels on both sides as the relentless testing culture
that characterizes Singapore education penetrates further into the home.
No matter: the British Council is at hand, the SGEM website informs us,
to deal with any emotional side-effects through workshops designed to
get Singaporeans to speak up and talk about their feelings and emotions
creatively, as though creativity were a matter of training. In practice,
postings on countless blogs show that Singaporeans need no encouragement
to speak creatively. All they need is space. The problem is that they tend
102 Paul Bruthiaux

to do it in a variety of English that has become strongly localized. The
difficulty for SGEM is that the proposed solution cannot simultaneously
give free rein to creativity and tighten the monitoring required to steer
Singapore English closer to standard English.

The suggestion that Singaporeans should monitor their language
output closely targets the language behaviour not only of families but also
of individuals: Put yourself on the spot and audit the things you say daily.
Once youve identified the non-standard English phrases you usually use,
think of how you can rephrase them in Standard English. Here too, the
underlying assumption seems to be that Singaporeans are conversant with
standard English but are not making the effort to speak it. There are no
short cuts in speaking English well. Even if you are in a hurry, you need
to remember that slipping into non-standard English out of convenience
is unacceptable. In fact, far from being unacceptable, the ability to shift
across varieties to suit different social settings is a sine qua non of inclusion
in social networks. It is an ability that very young children, second language
learners, and severely asocial individuals typically lack. But for well-adjusted
adults, to slip into another variety, as SGEM censoriously puts it, is an
entirely appropriate response to shifts in the social context, especially in
a linguistically complex society such as Singapore. Indeed, its absence
would be evidence not only of lack of competence (you cannot switch into
a variety you are not competent in) but more importantly, among fluent
speakers, of social maladaptation bordering on pathology.

In brief, Singaporeans know what they are doing when they shift across
varieties. This communicative strategy is so fundamental that it should be
regarded as a defining characteristic of every socially well-adjusted human,
which no amount of intervention by language planners will suppress or even
modify substantially. Moreover, the very existence of SGEM and many of the
items on its website betray a mindset of condescension on the part of the
Singapore leadership. Singaporeans, it seems, cannot be trusted to decide
for themselves what is appropriate in language use, as though without
benefit of governmental guidance a typical Singaporean might launch into
a job interview with the words Eh, gimme job, leh? By SGEMs own (unwitting)
admission, a population that, judging by two items selected for remediation,
is familiar with words such as alleviate and ricochet but expects governmentsponsored instructions on how to pronounce them has a problem not with
English but its own passivity in the face of hyperactive government.

Yet, not content with tweaking the minutiae of English phonology,
SGEM also sets itself the task of equipping Singaporeans with a language
that is not just a tool for passing examinations and conducting business.
Many Singaporeans, we learn, lack the ability to connect with another
human being at a deeper level We need emotional literacy to create the
social glue that holds us together as a people and as a nation. The language

of the heart, of feelings and emotions is the key to connecting with our
parents, children, colleagues, our neighbours and especially, our loved ones.

Many Singaporeans would retort that Singapore already has always had
such tools in the shape of local languages: mother tongues, dialects, and
of course Singlish, a localized hybrid that many Singaporeans including
teachers cheerfully admit adequately meets every one of the social
and emotional needs listed above. Singaporeans need no instruction in
expressing sadness, anger, fear and love, and neither Singlish nor any of
the mother tongues are known for lacking expressive potential.

What SGEM presumably means is that English in Singapore cannot yet
compete with Singlish or with local languages across the functional range
but that the situation can be altered through policy. However, provided
Singaporeans have access to standard English for communicative settings
where it is appropriate, there is no reason why other languages or varieties
of English should not coexist and fulfil more interpersonal needs, as
individuals and groups may choose. If our children tell us they are OK
without specifying further, it is not, I suspect, because the term OK is the
only tool in their linguistic kit though it may at times seem that way. If a
teenager were to stray far beyond OK and whatever in response to parental
inquisitions over where the afternoon was spent and instead launched
into a full report in standard English adorned with expressive terms, that
teenager would soon run out of friends to, like, hang and do cool stuff
with. The ubiquitous reliance by teenagers on responses such as OK is not a
linguistic issue but a socio-developmental one. It is after all in the nature of
teenagers to communicate with parents reluctantly and minimally, especially
when pressured to do this along norms they associate with authority and, in
particular, with school. This may be regrettable, but it is probably beyond
the capabilities of even the Singapore government to re-engineer the
teenage mind.

To be sure, a sense of omnipotence is not unusual in rulers. But for
rule to be effective, rulers must temper this side effect of power and
especially of near-absolute power with the ability to remain in touch
with the ruled. To the extent SGEM policymakers seriously hope to achieve
anything of substance in the matter of language in Singapore, they appear
curiously out of touch. If they really believe that a valid model for standard
English is the lyrics of all kinds of music, it is time they took an interest in
the songs their children download to their iPods. If they really believe that
communication with the friend from Prague or Peru encountered online
is conducted in standard English, it is time they looked at what goes on in
chat rooms, instant messaging, blogs, forums, Facebook, Twitter, and the
like. Clearly, it is an advantage for authority figures to be convinced of their
own infallibility since it eliminates the need to regularly test the validity
of their beliefs against public perceptions. Whether it makes their policies
104 Paul Bruthiaux

effective is another matter, which is perhaps just as well since the best that
can be hoped of the SGEM project is that it do no harm while implemented
and quickly fade from public view once its irrelevance is recognized.
Conclusion
This chapter has reviewed the Speak Good English Movement website (as
of 2007), which is devoted to promoting standard English in Singapore.
It has noted that five broad themes emerged from the claims and
language-related activities on display. It argued that (1) a concern for
respectability, not intelligibility, is a major driving force behind SGEM;
(2) the linguistic descriptions used in support of SGEM aims are often
incomplete, unconvincing, and occasionally plain wrong; (3) much of
the detailed advice on usage harks back to a tradition of prescriptivism
that takes little account of actual practice and in particular of linguistic
hybridity in multilingual societies; (4) little evaluation appears to have been
carried out (or is reported) on the effectiveness of the project; and (5) the
project fits into a pattern of intervention by government in all spheres of
Singapore life including language matters. In brief, the SGEM project is a
slick but confused, confusing, outdated, and ultimately irrelevant case of
governmental overreach.

If not SGEM, then, what would be an appropriate policy response to
English as it happens to be spoken in Singapore? First, the widely held view
that both international and internal communication can only be effectively
transacted through standard English should be publicly challenged. SGEM
promoters may not like the Singapore variant, but if it did not work, it
would have disappeared long ago. If English in Singapore needs to be reengineered, that aim should be backed up by a rationale based on evidence
of language in use, not by unsupported assertions that too often rely for
effect on awed references to former prime minister and SGEM initiator
Goh Chok Tong that echo Swifts reverential nods to the Most Honourable
Robert, Earl of Oxford (Swift 1712/2007).

Second, facile dichotomies between correct versus incorrect English
need to be finessed. Language, and especially language in Singapore,
cannot be reduced to a vertical, good versus bad representation even for
pedagogical purposes. English in Singapore is probably best understood
(and explained) along an acrolectal-mesolectal-basilectal, English-Singlish
continuum. In the mesolectal range, a growing body of research (for
a theoretical framework, see Gupta 1998) shows that far for being an
unseemly deviation from standard English indulged in by sloppy speakers,
Singapore English is highly rule-governed (for a demonstration of this
key point, see the collection of papers in Lim 2004b; also Alsagoff and Ho

1998a for syntax, and Wee 2003, Wong 2004, and Lim 2007 for discourse).
Towards the basilectal end of the continuum, there is even a case for
believing that the speech form in question is not primarily English but a
contact variety built upon a Chinese substratum (Alsagoff and Ho 1998b;
Bao and Wee 1999; Ansaldo 2004; Bao 2005; Bao and Hong 2006).

At the practical level, the fallacy whereby standard English is the
only appropriate linguistic vehicle for effective communication within a
multilingual society should be exposed (Bruthiaux 2008). It is reasonable
to assume that all Singaporeans will wish to enjoy the potential benefits
provided by standard English in terms of increased employment
opportunities, for example, provided those can be demonstrated and not
simply believed in. Indeed, given that acrolectal English now functions
as the prestige variety in Singapore, it would be highly reprehensible
for a government to deliberately deny ownership of it to sections of its
population. However, Singaporeans also bond with each other in endlessly
shifting alliances, a process that takes place linguistically somewhere
within the basi- to mesolectal range on the continuum even as a distinctly
Singaporean identity emerges linked in part to non-acrolectal language
use. (For a summary of seminal and recent research on language variation
and identity, see Coupland 2007; for a detailed analysis of the mechanisms
underlying these identity shifts in the specific context of Singapore, see
Gupta 2000.)

Since humans are generally adept at deciding for themselves (mostly
subconsciously) where on the lectal continuum to pitch each message for
optimal communicative effect, the issue becomes one of access to the lectal
range. Those who are fluent across the entire continuum will glide along
it effortlessly as each communicative setting requires. By contrast, given
the linguistic makeup of modern Singapore, those whose lectal range is
confined to the basilectal end of the continuum will most likely suffer. If,
as Bao and Hong (2006) argue, more than mere register variation is at play
and the basilectal end of the continuum owes more to a Chinese substratum
than to an English one, those finding themselves confined to that end of
the range face the added burden of having, in effect, to learn an additional
language (that is, English) if they are to escape sociolinguistic isolation.

The appropriate policy response is to abandon a misconceived and
ineffectual attempt to subtractively campaign basi- to mesolectal English
out of existence in Singapore and to devote public resources instead
to additively helping less privileged or less lucky Singaporeans become
comfortable at the acrolectal end of the continuum. As SGEM itself notes,
many Singaporeans are extremely proficient speakers and users of the
English language despite the fact that they come from non-English
speaking homes. Speaking standard English is clearly not the preserve of
an elite but is achievable by large numbers of Singaporeans whose socio-
106 Paul Bruthiaux

economic background would not have predicted success (Dixon 2005).
Against the odds, thanks to lucky interactions with inspirational teachers
or access to intensive reading, perhaps, these Singaporeans extended their
linguistic range to the point where they can operate equally comfortably in
settings where acrolectal resources are called for and in those where shifting
to the meso- to basilectal range is not just preferable but socially required.
For Singapore language policymakers, therefore, the challenge is to find out
through research how these Singaporeans were able to extend their original
range and then help all disadvantaged Singaporeans equip themselves with
the acrolectal end of the range, not to deprive them of the basilectal end
on the ground that it does not conform to some officially sanctioned variety
or other, real or imagined.

As the dnouement of Maughams story (featuring Ong Chi Sengs
complicity in blackmail and corruption) makes clear, speaking beautiful
English is no guarantee of respectability. Singaporeans fluent across the
entire lectal continuum routinely demonstrate their ability to distribute
their linguistic resources as each setting requires. In response, policymakers
should accept that a wide lectal range is part of modern Singapore and
work to enable disadvantaged Singaporeans to extend their own lectal range
to include the acrolectal end. Policymakers should then trust Singaporeans
to know where on the continuum to place each utterance, and leave
Singlish to look after itself. Regrettably, in minutely planned Singapore,
the notion that trust in the peoples ability to make sensible choices with
little or no governmental guidance appears to be alien to the policy-making
mindset. This predicts that, regardless of its apparent ineffectiveness, the
SGEM project has a long and well-resourced future ahead of it.
Notes
1. In this chapter, single quotes are used in the conventional manner to indicate
text taken verbatim from academic or literary sources as well as to indicate text
taken verbatim from the SGEM website itself. Italics indicate technical terms,
individual lexical examples, or emphasis.
2. The SGEM website relies primarily for information of this type on www.
stomp.com.sg, an online offshoot of The Straits Times, and the English@work
Newsletter, an online creation of Mediacorp, a local media provider offering
(among other things) thirteen radio stations with output in four languages.
3. Whatever his musical tastes, Swift would have been heartened, a full thirty years
later, by Georg Friedrich Hndels conservative setting of the libretto of Messiah,
in which the aria He was despised, rejected, ... has both words sung trisyllabically.
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Hybridity in ways of speaking:

The glocalization of English in Singapore
Lubna Alsagoff
English in Singapore has been described as serving both as a global

language of trade, commerce, science and technology, as well as a
local language for interethnic communication. Given the ideological
incongruence and often conflicting histories and goals associated with
these roles, researchers such as Pakir (1994, 1999, 2001), Rubdy (2001),
Wee (2003), Bokhorst-Heng (2005), and Chew (2006) have talked about
English in Singapore as being pulled in two opposing directions. Pakir, for
example, discusses the competing norms that these divergent ideologies
assume: the global orientation necessitates the adoption of an English that
is internationally standardized, while the local advocates the development of
an indigenized English.

In this chapter, I extend the discussion of the global-local tension
to offer a model of variation of English in indigenized contexts such as
Singapore.1 The model, originally introduced as the Cultural Orientation
Model (COM) in Alsagoff (2007), explains variation in relation to the
global-local contrast of the cultural orientations of speakers. The discussion
here develops the model further by looking at the global-local interactions
in relation to the concept of glocalization as originally formulated
by Robertson (1995, 1997). Key to Robertsons conceptualization of
glocalization is the emphasis of the simultaneity of the global and the
local in the process of globalization. Expanding on this concept, I discuss
how the co-presence of features of both local and global in the speech of
Singaporeans necessitates a change in the approach to describing language
variation in Singapore.
Variation as glocalization
The use of the notion of glocal or glocalism in characterizations of
Singapore English is not new: both Pakir (e.g., 2000, 2001) and Bokhorst-
110 Lubna Alsagoff

Heng (2005) have used the term in their discussions of Singapore English.
Pakirs (2000: 18) use of the term specifically relates to the ways in which
English as a global language of international communication has taken root
in different soils, and is therefore subject to the forces of localization
as a result of which English is said to be glocal. The idea of English as
glocal can, in fact, be found in Widdowsons characterization of the spread
of English as an International Language (EIL) as English being actualized
in diverse ways, subject to local constraints and control (Widdowson 1997:
13940). Bokhorst-Heng, on the other hand, uses the term glocalism to
refer to the juxtaposition of two perspectives. In speaking of the global,
Bokhorst-Heng (2005: 185) refers to internationalism as perspectives of
the nation looking outside from itself at the world and global economy,
and defining itself and its needs in relation to its position within the
world. This is in contrast with the local, or what Bokhorst-Heng (2005:
185) describes as issues relating to national identity, viz. the nation looking
within itself at its societal structure and composition, defining its needs in
relation to national identity.

In an effort to present an even more fluid and dynamic understanding
of language variation, the model explored here, to which I will refer as the
Glocalization model, develops COM as a more articulated conceptualization
of variation in terms of glocalization. The concept of glocalization, as
a global-versus-local tension, is a well-established one (e.g., Block and
Cameron 2002; Canagarajah 2005, 2006; Rubdy and Saraceni 2006;
Pennycook 2007), although the actual neologism may be less frequently
used. Instead, related terms and phrases such as local globalization,
global localization or hybridization (Pieterse 2006: 280) that offer a view
of the two-way flows between the local and the global are more common.
In adopting the term glocalization, I wish to emphasize an interpretation
originating from Robertsons (1995, 1997) formulation of the term, which
characterizes the process as one in which both local and global exist in
simultaneity, creating a fluid push-pull effect. Robertsons use of this
neologism reflects his understanding of globalization as a process which is
grounded in the local even while taking into account global perspectives
and actions. Robertson describes glocalization as the simultaneity
the co-presence of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies
(Robertson 1997). In other words, the term glocalization foregrounds
the understanding that in the dichotomies of the global-local, universalistparticularist, homogeneity-heterogeneity, indigenization is [simply] the other
side of the coin of the homogenizing aspects of globalization (Robertson
1997, italics as in original).

To offer insight into what such simultaneity of the global-local means,
we look to the original Japanese term dochakuka that Robertson draws on in
formulating an understanding of globalization as the meeting of global and
local forces:
Hybridity in ways of speaking 111

Now, very briefly, to the term glocalization, as I derive it from the
Japanese term dochakuka. As it is used in Japanese business practice, this
term actually refers to the selling, or making of products for particular
markets. And as I think most of us here know, Japanese business people
have been particularly successful in selling their products in a variety of
different markets But the basic idea of glocalization is the simultaneous
promotion of what is, in one sense, a standardized product, for particular
markets, in particular flavors, and so on. (Robertson 1997)
The success of many Japanese multinational corporations has depended on

their ability to take a standardized product globally to new markets by
adapting that product to the local needs of the users of the new markets,
yet keeping to standard processes of manufacture, quality and customer
service hence, dochakuka re-frames our understanding of the process of
globalization as glocalization to emphasize the local existing simultaneously
with the global. In applying glocalization to a study of variation, I
embrace two key features: the co-presence of the global-local, and the
multidimensionality of the process of glocalization.

The process of globalization and its effects relate particularly to
the spread of English globally to a multiplicity of speech communities.
Pieterse (2006: 278) suggests that there are essentially three paradigms for
understanding the cultural effects or outcomes of globalization. I apply
them here to the discussion of the different ideological perspectives on
the international spread of English. The first is where the spread is seen as
a homogenizing force that results in cultural sameness. This perspective,
known as linguistic imperialism (Phillipson 1992), argues for a view of the
globalization of English as hegemonic and destructive of local cultures
and practices. Thus, proponents of this paradigm would see the spread
of English as eroding local languages and cultures. While valid in many
respects, I would argue that this position is not entirely tenable for a
description of the use of English in Singapore, and other such contexts
where English is spoken in a multilingual environment, and maintained
as a working language because it is seen by its speakers (and not just by
the government) as economically and instrumentally useful. Erosion, as I
will argue shortly in my discussion of the third paradigm of globalization,
is often accompanied by an accommodation of English to its new speakers
and circumstances.

The second paradigm described by Pieterse (2006) is where the spread
is seen as surface deep, meaning that its adoption as an additional language
by speakers does not deeply affect the lingua-cultural practices of the speech
community. Consequently, such a spread is seen as non-assimilationist,
since English is seen as existing separately and apart from the indigenous
cultures, and it is in this sense that the spread is seen as surface deep
not interfering with or impinging on the cultural differentiation and
112 Lubna Alsagoff

variety in the local contexts. It is this perspective that is at the heart of the
Singapore governments attempt to differentiate the roles of the mother
tongue languages such as Chinese (Mandarin), Malay and Tamil from that
of English, where the former are to serve as local languages and the latter
as a global language. As Wee (2003: 211) points out:
In Singapore, this move towards a more pragmatic view of language can
be seen in how the relationship between the endogenous Asian languages
and English is constructed. The former, officially known as the mother
tongues, are tasked with preserving ethnic cultural traditions while the
latter is presented as the language of economic development.
In line with Singapores pragmatism in economic policy, and the critical

recognition of the importance of English to making Singapore an
international banking and finance centre, language policy in Singapore
necessarily depicts English in purely pragmatic and economic terms. It is
thus seen as cultureless in the sense of it having no significance or role
in the cultural traditions of Singapore (Ho and Alsagoff 1998; Alsagoff
2007). Such a position is clearly untenable, given what we know of the close
relationship between language and culture, and our understanding of the
ecological co-existence of languages in a speech community. Consequently,
and not surprisingly, the Singapore governments attempt to quell the
growing popularity and use of the Singapore English vernacular, Singlish,
through the Speak Good English Movement (Rubdy 2001) has given way
to a quieter, qualified acceptance of it, with even the minister mentor Lee
Kuan Yew conceding it as a de facto lingua franca:
Up to the 1970s in our markets and hawker centres, Bazaar Malay was
the lingua franca. Everybody could understand and speak some Malay.
Because of our bilingual policy, today the lingua franca is English, or
Singlish. (Lee 2005)
The third paradigm, which I argue is the most appropriate perspective in

which to understand English in Singapore, is where the spread of English
is seen as a force that leads to cultural mixing and hybridity. Closely
aligned to this view is Kachrus Three Circles Model of English (Kachru
1992, 1997). Typically, Englishes such as Singapore English, Nigerian
English, and Indian English, i.e., those Englishes which have taken on an
institutionalized role in the country, are seen as indigenized Englishes.
However, while Kachrus model emphasizes the pluralization of English
through appropriation by local cultures, it is hybridization only in a limited
sense (Bhatt 2005). Instead of a cultural mixing, the Three Circles model
emphasizes the separateness and autonomy of these different Englishes,
and presents the interaction between the local and the global as primarily a

one-way flow from the local to the global, whereas cultural mixing entails a
fluid bidirectional flow, in which heterogeneity encompasses the multiplicity
of identities, its fluidity and interactions with discourse, and of a fluid
bidirectional flow between the local and the global.

Such a bidirectional flow is what glocalization seeks to emphasize in
the translocal spread of language and culture. Just as local cultures change
English, so does English change local cultures. The two, while in contrast,
are co-existent forces. Whether one is a stronger force than the other is a
point that can form the focus of debate. What is not debatable, however,
is the two-way flow and interaction that is at work. It is not simply a case
of there being a hegemonic domination of the global over the local, or an
appropriation of the global by the local, but rather the co-existence and
intermingling of both of these perspectives and cultures. Glocalization is
useful in conceptualizing the interplay between the global and the local
because it articulates a two-way flow of the local as a transformative force
on the global, just as the global is seen to transform and shape the local.
In representing the heterogeneity of the local and the homogeneity of the
global as interwoven and co-present, glocalization is able to provide a richer
basis for understanding the subtlety and fluidity of language variation.
Previous models of Singapore English

In advocating glocalization as a perspective, my intention is to develop a
more current model of language variation in Singapore. Previous models
such as the lectal continuum model, and the diglossia model which
have generally depicted variation as dialect shift or code-switching, while
historically accurate, do not adequately describe contemporary patterns of
use of English in Singapore. Patterns of acquisition and use of English in
Singapore have continued to change at a rapid pace, and it is necessary to
present a model of variation that more accurately reflects current patterns
of use in todays Singapore.2

The lectal continuum model developed by Platt and associates (Platt
and Weber 1980; Ho and Platt 1993) was the first well-known model
proposed for Singapore English. It described the variation of English
in Singapore as a continuum of English that ranged from the standard,
educated acrolectal variety to the mesolectal and the non-standard
basilectal, and was an accurate depiction of English patterns of use
during the 1950s to 1970s. During the time of British colonial rule, and
for some years after that, it was clearly the case that the kind of English
spoken depended on the socio-economic status (SES) and education of
the speakers. The higher the SES of the speaker, the better educated they
were, and thus the more likely their English approximated to the standard
114 Lubna Alsagoff

dialect, and vice versa. But as English became more widespread and access
to it more democratized, the language situation in Singapore changed. The
use of non-standard English was no longer confined to the non-English
educated, and was now also being used by the educated in a wider range of
domains (Lim and Foley 2004: 5). These speakers commanded a standard
variety of English Standard Singapore English (SSE) but also spoke
a non-standard variety (Colloquial Singapore English CSE) when the
context moved from formal, institutional settings to more informal ones
oriented around family or friends, suggesting that variation was changing to
one patterned along function rather than education or SES.

The diglossia model (Gupta 1994a, 1994b) succeeded the lectal
continuum model as the more widely referenced model for Singapore
English it focused on the use of English among educated Singaporeans,
and presents the variation of English use in Singapore as register variation,
in which speakers switch between two varieties, and in particular, use the
non-standard dialect, not because they are constrained by their social
positions (education and SES), but because of function or domain. 3
Diglossia gave a different ideological status to the non-standard local variety,
because Singlish is presented as a language of choice, rather than constraint.

Pakirs (1991) expanding triangles model presented what was to be
a more comprehensive model by combining the predictive scope of the
lectal continuum model with the diglossia model, in which English is seen
as varying along two clines education and register. Pakirs model is thus
able to account for the type of English used by the significant percentage of
the population of speakers in Singapore which still does not use English as
a primary home language, something which the diglossia model omits in its
theoretical span. However, even though the expanding triangles model talks
about clines of variation, it still describes the use of English in Singapore
in relation to two more or less well-defined varieties: SSE and CSE, the use
of which is contextually determined by register or function. The primary
difference between the expanding triangles model and the diglossia model
lies in the former models development of the notion of the range of register
that speakers with different educational backgrounds can command.
The Glocalization model

In presenting the Cultural Orientation Model (COM) as an alternative
to previous models, I have (Alsagoff 2007, forthcoming) argued that in
modern Singapore, language variation cannot be simply determined by
a matching of the social background of the user, and/or the function or
register of the context. The profile of speakers in Singapore has changed
in the last twenty years, with most Singaporeans now receiving at least ten

years of education in English and an increasing number speaking English
as their native language.4 In addition, as the range and domains of English
spread to more personal and less institutional settings, English has taken on
an increasingly local flavour, with speakers appropriating the language for
their own communicative ends. This increased sense of ownership over the
language has inevitably moved the language further away, even in formal
contexts, from an acrolectal exonormative standard modelled on Standard
British English. Consequently, the choice over what code to use is not
simply one determined by function or domain. How and why people use
language is, I believe, more adequately explored as style variation in relation
to identity construction and cultural orientations. In COM, I therefore
explored ideas of the global-local contrast as a tension between the forces
of the global and the local in shaping the use of English in Singapore.

Similarly, in the glocalization model presented here, variation in the
form and use of English in Singapore is expressed as resulting from the
different kinds of cultural demands made on English one oriented
towards global perspectives, the other towards the localist perspective; these
are congruent and co-variant with the constructed identities of Singapore
speakers who also see themselves in relation to local concerns versus global
aspirations. On the one hand, the local(ist) perspective is separatist in
nature. As such, its concern is separateness. As Singaporeans exert their
national and their personal identities, there is an accompanying desire
for a uniqueness of the English that belongs to Singapore that must set
its citizens apart from other English speakers. The local orientation is a
result of Bakhtins centrifugal force, which pushes speakers away from the
centre towards the periphery, emphasizing divergence (Bakhtin 1981). The
globalist perspective, on the other hand, is assimilationist consequently
as Singaporeans forge identities that are global because of economic needs
and aspirations, there is a tendency to foreground less differentiation
and more congruence with perceived international norms. Thus, such an
orientation is represented by the use of an English which is exonormatively
defined, whose form and substance emphasize same-ness with the rest
of the world (Phillipson 1992), pushing speakers towards the centre. This
idea is akin to the Bakhtinian concept of the centripetal force exerted on
language by political and institutional forces that try to impose a standard
variety over other varieties, so as to enforce the adoption of a unitary
linguistic identity (Bakhtin 1981).

For Singaporeans, the global and the local are counterpoised, and
it is in the negotiations of identity between the global and the local that
result in speakers varying their use of English to reflect such concerns.
This variation, as I have argued in COM and as I argue here, is more aptly
described in terms of stylistic shifts, where movement is not simply a binary
shift between two well-defined varieties, but much more fluid and hybrid in
116 Lubna Alsagoff

nature.5 Thus, in expressing the interplay and tension between global and
local, speakers can vary their ways of speaking along a multidimensional
continuum, which is defined by a range of variables. Table 5.1, modified
from Alsagoff (2007), lists some of these variables.
Table 5.1 The globalist and localist orientations

Globalism
Localism
Economic capital
Socio-cultural capital
Authority
Camaraderie
Formality
Informality
Distance
Closeness
Educational attainment
Community membership
Relating the global and local identity orientations to stylistic variations along
a specific set of social variables, as set out in Table 5.1, offers more concrete
ways of understanding how language variation can be understood in terms
of identity and culture, and is intended to obviate possible criticisms that
identity as a sociolinguistic variable is too subjective and vague, something
that has been levelled at Le Page and Tabouret-Kellers (1985) model which
explained code-switching in terms of linguistic acts of identity.

Although COM attempts to present variation as style or more broadly
ways of speaking, it does not go far enough in one respect like previous
models, COM still describes variation in relation to two distinct varieties, an
international variety of English (SSE) that represents a globalist orientation,
and a local variety of English (Singlish) that represents a localist orientation.
Even though the intention was to present these two varieties as referential,
i.e., idealized extremes of a multidimensional continuum of variation,
rather than de facto codes between which speakers switched, their presence
nonetheless weakens the explanatory force of the model. Clearly, if we are
to offer a perspective of variation as style-shifting rather than dialect or
code-switching, we need to move away from speaking in terms of varieties,
and speak instead in terms of linguistic features.6

Hence, while both COM and the glocalization model presented here
posit that speakers of Singapore English vary their style of speaking by
exploiting the multidimensional space defined by the contrast between
these two counterpoised cultural perspectives, a critical distinction between
COM and glocalization lies in the way in which the variational space is
linguistically defined. In COM, linguistic variation is described in relation
to the contrastive use of referential varieties associated with contrasting
macro-cultural perspectives, the glocalization model, on the other hand,
references variation through the use of linguistic features which serve to

index aspects of a speakers cultural orientations and identity orientations
in the global-local spectrum. The use of linguistic and pragmatic features
associated with establishing group or community membership and rapport,
emphasizing solidarity as well as rootedness in indigenous culture, is aligned
with a symbolic movement towards a local(ist) orientation that stresses
socio-cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986, 1991). Contrastively, the use of
features associated with formality, educational attainment, institutionalism
and authority indicates a symbolic shift towards a global(ist) orientation,
stressing economic capital (Bourdieu 1986, 1991). Speakers are seen
as continually and constantly negotiating between the two contrastive
cultural perspectives of the global and local, resulting in speech which
displays degrees of variation, rather than poles of separation between two
clearly defined varieties. The degree to which speakers vary their use of
such features to reflect the different cultural orientations depends on the
degree to which speakers wish to signal the associated ideologies, values or
practices. Table 5.2 presents an example of the possible features that can be
used to articulate the global-local variational continuum.
Table 5.2 Globalist and localist features of Singapore English
Globalism
LexicoGrammar
Localism
Use of interrogative mood for

expressing questions
Use of declarative mood for

expressing questions
Fronted wh-question words in

interrogative clauses
In-situ wh-question words in

interrogative clauses
Use of verbal inflections (tense) to

indicate time of event
Reliance on adverbs or contextual

information to indicate time of event
Conditional clauses linked by

subordinating conjunctions
Conditional clauses expressed

without subordinating conjunctions
Use of disjuncts and parenthetic

comments to express interpersonal
meanings
Use of pragmatic particles to express

interpersonal meanings
Absence of endogenous lexical items Inclusion of endogenous lexical

or meanings, etc.
items or meanings, etc.
Phonology Presence of interdental fricatives in
phonemic inventory
Absence of interdental fricatives in

phonemic inventory
Consonant clusters present in

careful speech
Final consonant clusters reduced

even in careful speech
Stress-timed rhythm, etc.
Syllable-timed rhythm, etc.
Pragmatics Use of Western forms of address,

etc.
Use of ethnic Asian forms of address,

etc.
118 Lubna Alsagoff

In re-presenting the stylistic variation of language use in terms of features,
we are able to model variation as multiple-layered and incremental, i.e., as
thick variation (Geertz 1973), where speakers indicate or index degrees or
dimensions of change in their ideological cultural orientations by selecting
features associated with a localist or globalist orientation. Linguistic and
pragmatic features associated with a particular orientation may cluster,
or be used singly, depending on the degree to which the orientation is
indexed, and on the feature used. For example, the pragmatic particle lah
is an emblematic marker of community membership, and is often used
at the end of utterances even in formal contexts to index Singaporeanness. Linguistic and pragmatic features may also not necessarily align in
orientation. That is to say, speakers may choose features associated with a
globalist orientation to indicate authority and yet include other features
with a localist orientation that signal them as members of the community.
For example, a speaker may choose to use the interrogative mood to ask
a question, perhaps indexing educational attainment, but also append a
pragmatic particle at the end of it to indicate closeness of the speaker to
the addressee.

The simultaneity or co-presence of linguistic and pragmatic
features associated with both globalist and localist orientations is key to
understanding variation in Singapore English. Kwek (2005), for example,
shows that classroom teacher talk is the product of multiple forces at play,
where the interconnectedness of possibly conflicting forces such as the need
to maintain authority yet achieve rapport or the need to weave formality
and informality as the moment necessitates, results in an English not easily
cast as either standard English or Singlish because it contains both standard
and non-standard forms within the same stretches of discourse (see Alsagoff
2007 for a fuller discussion). Such subtle and fluid shifts in ways of speaking
can be explained only if we view variation in relation to the interweaving and
co-presence of features associated with the two contrastive orientations, which
give rise to differential degrees of variation within a multidimensional space.
What is Singlish?
Moving away from speaking about variation in terms of a contrastive switch
between a standard and non-standard variety offers insight into what
Singlish is, and is not. In the lectal continuum model, Singlish is associated
with the basilect, i.e., it is seen as the uneducated variety of Singapore
English. In contrast, Singlish became associated with the colloquial or L
variety in the diglossia model. Clearly, while the two entities basilectal
Singapore English and CSE might exhibit similarities, I agree with
Chews (1995: 165) observation that it is unlikely that a Singaporean

would mistake an educated English speaker speaking informally from an
uneducated speaker, and that while they [educated English speakers]
might use some lexical items associated with people with lower levels of
education, they will never use others. They also use expressions which are
only found in an educated repertoire. Kandiah (1998: 101) makes a similar
point that CSE and basilectal Singapore English are neither identical
entities nor ideologically homogeneous. Basilectal Singapore English refers
to a variety that has little value, spoken only because of a lack of ability
of the speaker, seen as a passive victim of social circumstances, while CSE
refers to a variety valued as a functional variant, spoken as a consequence of
active choice.

In the glocalization model, we clearly present the speaker as an active
agent. However, in doing so, we should not confine the scope to educated
speakers, but extend it to a whole wide spectrum of people in society
(Kandiah 1998: 100) for whom English may not be a L1 in terms of
acquisition, but a primary language of communication because of school
or work. In developing variation as style, rather than code-switching, and
in including educational attainment as well as register as part of the social
variables that define the global-local variational space, the glocalization
model is able to accommodate both the type of speech associated with the
basilect as well as the colloquial variety, since these are able to exist in the
global-local variational space.

The idea that variation of English in Singapore is dynamic and fluid,
and more fittingly described in terms of style-shifting rather than codeswitching is congruent with the idea that Singlish is less aptly characterized
as a well-defined variety with clearly delineated boundaries, and more
appropriately conceptualized as ways or styles of speaking that serve to
foreground the localist orientations of the speaker. The lack of agreement
among researchers investigating the structure of Singapore English as to
what counts as acceptable or grammatical in Singlish lends support to this
view. In the research literature on Singapore English, there have been a
number of disagreements about grammaticality judgements and data, e.g.,
Wees (2002) critique of Gupta (1992) in discussing the acceptability and
interpretations of the discourse particle lor; Wee and Ansaldos (2004)
critique of data in Alsagoff and Ho (1998a) on the non-marking of number
in bare noun phrases. There have also been differences in opinion in
identifying the range of grammaticality of certain constructions, such as
the relative clause (see Alsagoff and Ho 1998b; Newbrook 2003; Wee and
Ansaldo 2004). Clearly, the dispute centres on what Singlish actually is.
Before continuing, I necessarily digress on the following point.

While I have no doubt that the data I have collected is valid, I am
even more aware of the ways in which recent research relying on corpora
has somehow assumed that what exists in the corpora presents a complete
120 Lubna Alsagoff

picture of Singapore English. We must bear in mind that corpora are not
incidental collections of data, but are designed and focused collections of
data based on assumptions as to what counts as representative of Singlish,
and who counts as representative speakers of Singlish. The corpora of
Singapore English currently available focus primarily on the educated
speaker, very much in line with the diglossia model. For example, both the
NIE Corpus of Spoken Singapore English (Deterding and Low 2001) and
the Grammar of Spoken Singapore English Corpus (Lim and Foley 2004)
focus on the language of university student teachers and (largely) university
undergraduates respectively. Evidence of the narrowness of corpus-based
descriptions can, in particular, be seen in Deterding (2007), which is an
entire book describing Singapore English based almost exclusively on a
corpus comprising one single speaker.7

What these disputes show is that the assumption that Singlish is a
single stable language variety should be re-examined. Rather than try (and
fail) to draw definitive boundaries around Singlish as a clearly distinct
and well-bounded variety, we should acknowledge it for what it actually is
hybridized, creative ways of speaking that embody the local by tapping
into an expansive set of linguistic resources for the expression of sociocultural meanings, identities and practices. Instead of trying to delimit
the boundaries around what Singlish is, it might perhaps be more fruitful
for researchers to investigate the meanings behind such constructions,
and focus not on just how something is said, but why. The different ways
of saying the same thing crucially elaborate on the socio-cultural content
of the message, as well as the identities of speakers and participants.
Appropriating different ways of speaking, for example, allows speakers to
consciously identify with certain social groups or to express their different
roles in a communicative event.8

An example of the way in which Singapore English is a subtle and
complex integration of the global and local, where, for example, there is
a careful interplay of features which index authority with those signalling
closeness between the interlocutors, can be found in teacher talk in
Singapore classrooms (Kwek 2005; Rubdy 2007; Doyle 2009). In her analysis
of teacher talk in two Singapore classrooms, Kwek (2005) shows how deftly
the two teachers in her study weave standard and non-standard English
features in their facilitation and delivery of lessons. The use of Singlish
features in complex communicative performances such as teacher talk
highlights the way in which language choice is a delicate balance that shifts
and varies as speakers construct, on the fly, representations of their identity,
negotiate their role and relation with their interlocutor and context, as well
as respond to the fluid and changing demands of the communicative event
(Li 2005).

To give a more specific illustration as to how Singapore English can
best be seen as style-shifting in which speakers select, from their linguistic
resources, features from both the globalist as well as the localist, we examine
teacher talk from Kweks (2005) study of two Singaporean English language
teachers. Lisa teaches English in a neighbourhood secondary school to 13and 14-year-olds. According to Kwek, Lisa is a highly skilled user of English,
and thus her use of non-standard features does not stem from a lack of
fluency, ability or competence. Lisas unmarked socio-stylistic orientation in
the classroom is a standard variety of English, i.e., the globalist. However,
as we shall see, Lisa constantly shifts to and from the localist orientation,
through the inclusion of non-standard forms of English, as she purposefully
negotiates her lesson delivery and classroom management. The following
transcript from Kwek (2005: 1267) is a single contiguous turn at the
beginning of Lisas lesson. For ease of readability and discussion, however, it
has been broken up and presented here as separately numbered paragraphs
(1) to (5). Singlish features are marked in italics to more easily indicate
switches in the focus of the pedagogical discourse, which as we shall see, are
congruent with the switches between the globalist and localist orientations
in language use.

Lisa begins the turn with what Kwek (2005) refers to as organizing,
where she does some housekeeping, and spells out what the tasks are for
the particular lesson. Other than the two instances of the pragmatic particle
ah, Lisa keeps to a more or less standard variety of English:
(1) No, guys, enough is enough, shsss. Ok, look here. Hurry up! Thank
you very much. This is what were going to do ah. Todays theres
going, its double period. Theres quite a bit to do. Guys, I am serious
ah! If you are going to go into your own little conversation while I am
teaching or whatever, I am going to I know some of you have lost
your file ah, your CMF file but I can still book you. That means that
if I dont have your CMF file, it goes direct to the yellow form or pink
form. I am very sorry because I dont have a file. And at this level, I
shouldnt have, so if I give you warning, once, twice, third time, I am
very sorry. Because sometimes, you all go too much. Okay, rules for
today, simple, we have two tasks. I am going to first recap, task one,
task two, then we will sum up. Ok, so actually only two things to do
today, task one, task two, then a group presentation.

Interestingly, however, as she transitions and starts a discussion of
the content of the lesson, many more Singlish features appear in Lisas
speech, marking her shift away from a globalist orientation towards a more
localist orientation. The speech is less formal and contains a noticeably
larger number of localist features such as bald noun phrases without plural
inflections (text, a number of situation, certain word, adjective, adverb), the non-
122 Lubna Alsagoff

inverted form of the embedded question (we went on to see what is narrative),
verbs without tense inflections (talk), as well as the expression of a
conditional clause without the subordinating conjunction if (Sometimes [ ] you
want, you may have LITTLE excitement goes down). What is interesting to note
is that this is in contrast to (1), where Lisa uses standard forms of many of
these very same constructions, e.g., she clearly uses the subordinator if as
well as because ( so if I give you warning, once, twice, third time, I am very sorry.
Because sometimes, you all go too much) and she marks plural nouns with the -s
suffix (rules, things, tasks):
(2) Ok, recap, last lesson what we did was we began to, we went on to see
what is narrative and then we saw some movies and videos and we
talk about narrative text and I told you that part of it what we were
doing of different types of narrative ah. Instead of action stories, we
are going into suspense stories. Whats so different between action
stories and suspense stories? The only thing is that, certain things
that you need to, in your story, somewhere down the line, you need
to build up tension in a particular situation, sometimes in a number
of situation. That means you have to write so that you bring in certain
suspense, tension ok, certain scenarios using certain word, adjective,
adverb to describe so that it brings the reader up to a level. Ok, you
dont have to, you know, do many situations; you can do one. Sometimes
[ ] you want, you may have little excitement goes down; ok you saw the
roller coaster one right, they thought they went in; and they thought
that part of it is just to go up and then the thing fell down and they
thought it was the end; that was not the end ok. It was the ride.

In excerpts (3) and (4), this same sort of style shift is seen: when Lisa
switches back to organizational discourse in (3), much of her discourse
is clearly in standard English, apart from the use of the particle ya, which
means yes. However, as she moves towards the end of her organizational
talk in (3), to a subject-specific content focus in (4), the shift towards the
localist orientation is quite apparent, with an increase in the occurrence
of non-standard features. Thus, at the tail end of (3), Lisa again marks her
localist orientation through the use of several conditional clauses without
subordinating conjunctions ([ ] you want to act it out, [ ] you want to film it,
film it, [ ] you want to make an audio tape out of it, make an audio tape out of it, [
]you want to write it, script it, go ahead; [ ] You want to make a comic script out of
it, go ahead):
(3) So you can do things like this ok ... [Long pause] Ya, I dont want
to keep mentioning your name here. Ya, Go blush. Ok, structure. This
is about the same structure as we did for action story. Recap, you are
going to be given a template later. A template will be given; I am not
going to reprint the template. This template is given to you as a model

and this template, youll be using for all your work from now on from
all the other passage Ill be giving, for all the writing that you are
going to do, for even the production that you are coming. What is our
end result of this production here, ya, Ian? That means our end result
in two, three weeks time, instead of coming up with a commercial you
will be given a choice to come up with a production of your suspense
story. Ya, but this time it need not be; [ ] you want to act it out, [ ] you
want to film it, film it, [ ] you want to make an audio tape out of it, make an
audio tape out of it, [ ]you want to write it, script it, go ahead.[ ] You want to
make a comic script out of it, go ahead, but we will lead on to it and well
show you different types, ok.

As Lisa moves into a focus on content in (4), more non-standard
features appear in her speech, including the increased use of discourse
markers (ah, eh, then how), expressions of clauses without overt subjects or
objects (e.g., we mark [ ]; [ ] Very hard ok to have [ ]; [ ] Cannot leave the, the
reader hanging up there ah; Can [ ] remember [ ] or not?), as well as the use of
dont have in place of the existential construction there isnt:
(4) Scaffold () always ah, in any writing. You it, eh, Band B, you need
to know all this, you know, because when we mark [ ] ah, well check
ah. Intro, that one, you all know ah, introduction, how you start. Very
important, when I pick up a story, the first thing that does is the intro.
[ ] You go and buy a story book, the intro doesnt always start, long time
ago, once upon a time, far, far away in a long lost land ter ra ra ra. Dont
have. Theme? What theme? Although its a suspense story, but what
you doing, which theme are you going about? (Announcement on
loudspeaker). Eh, 4G. Ok, the, whatever theme you set, the setting
must match ok. If you want to do a theme of ok, maybe eh, where
there are knights and castles or whatever [ ] ok, Peters favourite, then
the setting must be there. You want to talk about the pirates and
everything at that time, then the setting must be there. You want to
talk about eh say the, what we did, we watch the roller coasters and its
about a fair and the modern times, then the setting must be there. So
it must come down. Then comes your characters ok. [ ] Very hard ok to
have [ ], you can have one character, but that means you must really
write the persons inner feelings, the surroundings, the atmosphere
and everything. Normally, average two to three ok. Action. You need
to add in a bit; that means you need to use a lot of verb, adverb because
you need to describe [ ]. Settings, character is adjective to describe the
person. Conflict, complication, what happened, what led to it. [ ]You
always have little, little complication, then have ONE MAJOR complication
that climaxed. Always have [ ] resolution; how its solved ok. Then you
can conclude. [ ] Cannot leave the, the reader hanging up there ah.
Climax, and then you put the all the dots there, dot, dot, dot, dot ok.
Or some of you who wrote the chatasahib the trap I finished, later
I give it back to you and then you end up with hah and then dot,
124 Lubna Alsagoff

dot, dot. Then I go back, then how? Ok, so, know this, anytime you do
narrative you need this. Can [ ] remember [ ] or not?

Finally, at the end of this very long turn, Lisa goes back to organizing
the class activity, and her use of English once again becomes standard in
grammatical form, as shown in (5):
(5) No, because if you miss any of these, especially when you write and you
plan, youre going to have trouble trying to link the thing up. No need
to write it down; I am giving you a scaffold. Ok, [Pause] The scaffold is
this one ah (opening scaffold). I tell you, I told you all these ah guys,
intro, theme, setting, characters, action, conflict, climax, resolution.
You are going to get these. Group leader, come, take one. I need to
take a pencil out first. 3, 4, 5. 1, 2, 3, 4. How many?

The analysis of this excerpt clearly shows the teacher using globalist, i.e.,
standard, features of English, when she is organizing the lesson, alongside
localist features when she focuses on teaching content. What is even more
interesting is that the same construction can appear, even within the same
turn, both in the standard form as well as the non-standard form. As we
have seen, in one part of the turn, verbs may show past tense marking (e.g.,
did, went, edited, climaxed) and subject-verb agreement (e.g., the only thing is,
you have, it brings ...), while in another, they appear without such inflections
(e.g., we talk). Nouns, too, appear both in the inflected plural form (e.g.,
knights, castles) as well as uninflected bare forms (e.g., a number of situation;
certain word, adjective, adverb). There is also the use of sentence connectors
in conditional clauses (e.g., because, if), and yet, further on in this same
turn, similar structures appear without sentence connectors. This to-ing and
fro-ing between localist and globalist is a feature of all the four lessons in
Kweks (2005) transcripts.

The co-presence of both standard and non-standard features is
deliberate and purposeful, with the shifts between a more standard globalist
style and a more colloquial localist style clearly aligned to the pedagogical
objectives and the role the teacher wishes to construct and present. In a
delicate weaving of language, Lisa moves back and forth, from a formal
style which signals her authority, giving instructions about the organization
to the lesson and attending to classroom management, to a more colloquial
and casual style which purposefully marks her not as distant and superior in
status, but as close and an equal. Lisa balances her authoritarian role and
her facilitative roles in the classroom much through her use of language. In
explaining concepts, Lisas style eases the students into a more participatory
and collaborative mode of interaction, but at the same time, she ensures
that discipline is kept, and the class is on task by demonstrating her
authority and position through her use of a distinct global style, which she

occasionally punctuates, nonetheless, with indexical markers of localism,
such as the ubiquitous ah and even the occasional lah to soften the tone of
her discourse.

Teachers like Lisa use English in creative ways that allow them to be
responsive to the needs of the classroom, to enable them to build rapport
with their students so as to be able to teach more effectively. Their use of
English is standard, and yet deliberately includes many features that are
non-standard. The inclusion of such features is not a result of the teachers
lack of awareness. Kwek (2005) also demonstrates how both the teachers
in her study are skilled and deliberate in varying the kind of English
they use; for example, they increase their use of Singlish features when
there is small group teaching, and move towards a more standard form of
English in whole class lectures or discussions. Explaining the interlacing
of standard and non-standard grammatical features as the simultaneous
presence of both globalist and localist structures enables us to understand
how teachers use the linguistic resources of Singapore English in a complex
play of identity construction and negotiation, which, for example, would
allow both the presence of standard features as well as non-standard ones.
While there is variability, such use should not be seen as inconsistent. If
we think of variation as fluid, and of users as selecting resources in the
form of linguistic features as the need arises, we are better able to see
such variation in the context of use. We should not need to see Singlish
as a homogeneous and well-structured linguistic system. Rather than focus
on the linguistic environment of the variable, the focus of research into
Singapore English should centre on what the inclusion of such variables
means. Such an approach will also be able to account for the co-presence of
features of both globalist and localist orientations.

The variation of English in Singapore is clearly shaped by forces
intricately bound with negotiations in identity formation and presentation.
These negotiations are too complex and subtle to be characterized simply
in terms of the use of particular varieties. I concur with Pennycooks (2007:
85) observation that use of language represents sites of struggle in which
meanings are always in flux and in contention. The focus on features such
as pragmatic particles, or bare verbs or nouns is common in the Singapore
English research literature. However, the argument that language and
culture are inextricably linked suggests that global-local cultural orientations
may also be linguistically realized in a multitude of ways, and not restricted
to discrete phonological, grammatical or lexical features. Shifts in identity
construction and presentation could, for example, instead be signalled by
more subtle pragmatic aspects of talk. Thus, ways of speaking could also
encompass how politeness is negotiated in accepting compliments, for
example, or in terms of address, or in asking a question of the teacher.
Thus, a speaker may use grammatical features that are globally oriented, but
126 Lubna Alsagoff

choose to signal his or her ethnic membership of the local community by
enacting pragmatic acts grounded in the endogenous cultures (Ho 2001).
Conclusion
Glocalization has been used here to offer an alternative means to
understanding variation of English use in Singapore. It presents language
and identity as intertwined, and as fluid just as language is used to
present, re-present and construct and re-construct identity, it, in turn, is
similarly constructed by its speakers in the service of identity and cultural
representations, communication and interactions. Glocalization has
presented variation within Singapore English as style-shifting, suggesting
a fluidity of movement within a dynamic multidimensional space, rather
than as diglossic code-switching between two well-bounded varieties. Such a
model also offers a more dynamic orientation in which to understand the
ways in which people appropriate English for their own purposes, but are at
the same time constrained by institutional discourses and policies favouring
standardization and conformity (Bhatt 2005).

In a move towards a more holistic understanding of the indigenization
of English in a context such as Singapore, it is imperative that language
be seen as a means of identity formation and representation, where local
appropriations of global forms by speakers to construct and represent
their thought, practices and culture are realized as fluid variations in a
multidimensional discursive space. Singlish is thus more aptly presented in
the glocalization model as a range of lingua-cultural resources speakers use
in order to identify or mark a change in cultural orientation or style. More
importantly, a model of variation of the use of an indigenized English in
multilingual, multicultural speech communities such as Singapore must be
developed from a perspective that allows us to see language as a meaningmaking and identity-creation resource in a culturally grounded manner.
Notes
1. Glocalization can, as a model, clearly be applied to other contexts in which
New Englishes are spoken (e.g., the Philippines, India, Nigeria, etc.) since it
offers an understanding of language variation in relation to the global and local
interactions resulting from processes of globalization. See Pakir (2000) for a
discussion of language teaching in relation to glocal Englishes.
2. Evidence of this fast-evolving language situation is captured in MOEs statistical
information on the number of English speakers among Primary One students
(age 7) entering school. In 1996, pupils who spoke English numbered only 1 in
3, whereas in 2006, they numbered 1 in 2 (MOE 2006: 4).

3. The account here is necessarily simplified because of space constraints. The
lectal continuum does in fact discuss variation along functional lines, though in
a limited manner.
4. See Lim and Foley (2004: 27) for a more detailed discussion of the changing
profile of the Singaporean English speaker.
5. I am aware that Gupta does discuss the leakiness of diglossia, though her
reasons for suggesting this in fact lend support to the argument that variation
should not be discussed as a code-switch but rather as a continuum of change.
See Alsagoff (2007, forthcoming) for a more detailed discussion of the issues
relating to Guptas description of Singapore English variation as diglossia.
6. I am grateful to Anthea Fraser Gupta for her suggestions in relation to this
point.
7. Interestingly, Deterdings reason for using a single speaker on which to base his
description is to obviate the need to explain the variation of Singapore English
(2007: 6).
8. This does not detract from previous arguments in the literature that Singlish
is autonomous and rule-governed. It clearly is a highly organized system.
However, it may be the case that we need to look at this organization not just
in terms of whether features appear consistently in a linguistic environment,
but of organizing principles that enable speakers to exercise choice of linguistic
features to index global-local orientations. An example of such principles is
seen in Table 5.2 where I describe differences between the global and local in
relation to systemic choices. For example, instead of speaking about whether
Subject-Auxiliary Inversion is used in question formation, I present this as a
contrast between the use of the interrogative mood to indicate questions in
globally-oriented speech, versus the use of the declarative for locally-oriented
speech.
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Part III
Ethnicity and Ownership
Whose English?
Language ownership in Singapores English
language debates
Wendy D. Bokhorst-Heng, Rani Rubdy, Sandra Lee

McKay and Lubna Alsagoff
Language ideological debates (Blommaert 1999) are a common feature of

Singapore politicking, and are centrally implicated in much of the social,
economic, and political constructedness of the nation. As articulated by
Blommaert (1999: 12), language debates are organized around issues of
purity and impurity of languages, the social value of some language(s)
as opposed to (an)other(s), the socio-political desirability of the use of
one language or language variety over another, the symbolic quality of
languages and varieties as emblems of socio-cultural notions of nationhood,
cultural authenticity, progress, modernity, and so forth. At the core of such
debates are struggles over definitions of social realities, or the politics
of representation (Blommaert 1999: 9). With respect to the politics
of representation within the context of Singapores English language
ideological debates, the notion of ownership becomes relevant how
speakers of different varieties of English are positioned and represented.
Such institutional positioning involves value judgements (often negative)
about languages and speakers of languages, often through the idealization
of the native speaker found within the native speaker(NS)/non-native
speaker (NNS) dichotomy, as well as an unwillingness to recognize the
different varieties of world Englishes as legitimate languages.

What is interesting in the Singapore context is how government
leaders have appropriated much of this NS/NNS discourse in their own
English language ideological debates. In broad strokes, English has
been ideologically constructed as a purely instrumental and functional
language within the context of nation building and the global economy.
In this context, the officially preferred model is British RP, and the Inner
Circle speakers of English continue to be regarded as the true owners
of English. At the same time, speakers of the local variety of English,
especially the colloquial form Singlish, are portrayed as uneducated,
uncouth, and unworldly (Bokhorst-Heng 2005; Alsagoff 2007). One of the
consequences of this ideological construction is that there is no discursive
134 Wendy D. Bokhorst-Heng, Rani Rubdy, Sandra Lee McKay and Lubna Alsagoff
space in Singapores language ideological formation to label English as a
mother tongue or to allow Singaporeans the acquisition of native speaker
membership even though more and more Singaporeans do in fact
primarily use English (Wee 2002) and English is the medium of instruction
in all schools. According to the 2000 Census (Statistics 2000), 71% of the
population is literate in English, and 23% report using predominantly
English at home. Lim and Foley (2004: 6) maintain that there is a growing
body of English users for whom English has gone beyond the lingua
franca stage, who are native speakers of the language, following the simple
definition that a native speaker is a fluent speaker of the language, typically
after having learnt the language as a child. While the Singapore census
does not ask questions about bilingual language practices, data from an
ongoing Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore (see Vaish et al. in this volume)
involving 10-year-old Singaporeans indicate that 14.2% report using
predominantly English at home and 53% report bilingual practices,
saying they use both English and their (ethnic) mother-tongue (the
official language associated with ones fathers ethnicity) habitually at home.
According to a survey administered by the English Language Curriculum
and Pedagogy Review Committee in 2006, only 12% of Primary 1 students
indicated they hardly or never use English at home (Ministry of Education
2007: 4). English clearly has a significant place in the everyday lives of many
Singaporeans, and, contrary to the official diglossic discourse that separates
language use (English is for the purposes of meeting the nations functional
and economic needs) and language ownership (mother tongue languages
are for cultural and personal identity), operates in dynamic and interactive
relation with the mother tongue languages.

In the first part of our chapter we will unpack the key parameters of
this debate, drawing on speeches given by various government officials
and documents related to the Speak Good English Movement (SGEM).
In the second half of this chapter, we propose a model that nuances the
meanings of English language ownership in Singapore, taking us away
from the native/non-native speaker binaries and replacing the idea of
native speaker. Drawing on research by Alsagoff, Bokhorst-Heng, McKay,
and Rubdy (Bokhorst-Heng et al. 2007; Rubdy et al. 2008), we consider
speakers orientations towards English norms to foreground speakers
degree of ownership of the English they speak. While the study involved
Chinese, Malay, and Indian participants, our discussion here focuses on
the Malay and Indian dyads. Malays and Indians are both ethnic minority
groups in Singapores population pool. English is routinely used the most
by members of the Indian community, where 36% report using English
as their dominant home language. English is used the least by the Malays,
with only 8% indicating using English routinely at home. Yet even among
the Malays, the bilingual education policy, coupled with the socio-economic
Whose English? 135

forces that highlight the prestige and instrumental value of English, have
led to an increase in the number of English users (Kamsiah and Bibi 1998).
This is especially true among the educated, the well-off, and the younger
school-going population across all ethnic groups. In our conclusion,
we summarize our discussion, and note the contributions that a view of
language ownership has to Singapores language ideological debates.
English language ideological debates
Some background to Singapores language ideological debates

Singapore is a multi-ethnic and multilingual society, representing three
main racial groups (about 76% Chinese, 14% Malays, and 9% Indians, and
1% others) and four official languages: three associated with the nations
main racial groups (Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil), and English. The current
education system supports these languages through what is commonly
referred to as English-knowing bilingual education, with all children educated
in English and taught their ethnic mother tongue languages. However,
bilingualism has very particular meanings in this multilingual context.

The following excerpt from then prime minister Lee Kuan Yews 1972
speech to the Singapore Teachers Union captures the essence of language
constructedness in Singapore. While he is talking about English and
Mandarin bilingualism, it is important to note that the same arguments have
been applied to the other mother tongue languages as well. Here, he first
presents his view of Mandarin:
Please note that when I speak of bilingualism, I do not mean just the
facility of speaking two languages. It is more basic than that, first, we
understand ourselves, what we are, where we came from, what life is, or
should be about, and what we want to do ... And it is not just learning the
language. With the language goes the fables and proverbs. It is the learning
of a whole value system, a whole philosophy of life, that can maintain
the fabric of our society intact, in spite of exposure to all the current
madnesses around the world.
He then goes on to talk about English:

Then the facility of the English language gives us access to the science and
technology of the West. It also provides a convenient common ground on
which everybody competes in a neutral medium.
There is a very strong constructed dichotomy between ones mother

tongue language and English. Ones ethnic mother tongue language
is the language of identity, culture, values, rootedness, and of self. In
contrast, English is defined in pragmatic and utilitarian terms, to be
used for the economic and global connectedness that English provides.
English is something external, something to be accessed and tapped into
for pragmatic and instrumental purposes. English is also the language of
interethnic communication. However, Lee Kuan Yew significantly does not
suggest that this means English is a language of pan-ethnic national identity.
Rather, somehow, by each of the different ethnic groups rooted through
their own languages, a national multicultural identity will emerge. Thus,
while the ethnic languages are owned, English is used. This distinction
becomes even more transparent later in his speech:
Whilst we may speak English, whilst we may use the English language,
whilst we may watch what the English-speaking world in America and
Canada, in Britain, in Australia and New Zealand, are doing, much of it
is not us.

Only when we first know our traditional values, can we be quite clear
the Western world is a different system, a different voltage, structured for
purposes different from ours.
And therefore, English cannot be regarded as a mother tongue. In his

speech at the launch of the 1984 Speak Mandarin Campaign, Lee Kuan Yew
asserted:
One abiding reason why we have to persist in bilingualism is that English
will not be emotionally acceptable as our mother tongue.
By not allowing English to be given the status of mother tongue in the

ideological constructedness of language, English remains a utilitarian
language to be accessed and to access.

While these speeches were given over two to three decades ago, the
views expressed continue to inform Singapores language ideological
debates today. In the next section, we examine the current English
ideological debates more closely as they are articulated in the current
SGEM, with a particular focus on the parameters of ownership.
Singapores English ideological debates

Current English ideological debates are primarily concerned with the
kind of English Singaporeans should be using. In broad strokes, they
pivot on the tensions emerging from globalism the competing needs of
internationalism and identity (Crystal 1995: 110; see also Bokhorst-Heng
2005) with internationalism being the primary concern of government
Whose English? 137

leaders, and the view of identity promoted primarily by the more educated
and yuppie sector of society (who are able to speak both standard English
and Singlish). The debate somewhat mirrors that of Quirk and Kachru, two
key figures in the growing debate over standards in international English
(Quirk 1985 and Kachru 1985, discussed in McKay and Bokhorst-Heng
2008: 1401). Quirk argues for the need to uphold a common standard of
English in all contexts of English language use. Kachru argues that there
needs to be acceptance and understanding of the linguistic creativity that
occurs in multilingual situations, and an adoption of a pluricentric model
of standards. Quirks view maintains a native-speaker model, with those
in Inner-Circle countries as the true owners of English, whereas Kachrus
model suggests co-ownership or multiple-ownership.

The governments concern for internationalism has to do with the
particular nationalist agenda that it has pursued. Claiming to be a small
country with limited natural resources, the government has actively pursued
a development model that positions Singapore firmly within the global
community. Furthermore, all policy initiatives are guided by the logic of
pragmatism which prioritizes continuous economic growth. As we have seen
in the above discussion, such rationale lies at the core of the ideological
constructedness of English. And it continues to be at the centre of the
governments rationale, as evident in the SGEM politicking. The SGEM was
first launched in 2000 by then prime minister Goh Chok Tong who was
concerned that Singapores aim to become a first world economy would
be affected by poor English standards among Singaporeans (Speak Good
English Movement 2007). The movements initial message was Speak Well.
Be Understood. The current 2006/2007 slogan (originally taken from the
popular Phua Chu Kang sitcom)1 expands this a bit: Be Understood. Not
only in Singapore, Malaysia and Batam.

While the NS/NNS dichotic discoursing is evident in most government
speeches, for the purposes of discussion, we will examine two SGEM
speeches: Prime Minister Goh Chok Tongs speech at the first launch of
the SGEM in 2000 (Goh 2000) and Professor Koh Tai Anns (SGEMs then
chairman) speech given at the launch of the 2006 SGEM (Koh 2006). While
Goh concentrates on denying ownership by invalidating Singlish, Koh focuses
on the global purposes of English, thereby maintaining a NS/NNS divide.
Goh Chok Tong: Good English versus corrupt English

In his speech at the launch of the 2000 SGEM, Goh Chok Tong immediately
establishes the illegitimacy of Singlish as a language and as a marker of
Singaporean identity. He defines Singlish as ungrammatical and truncated
and incomprehensible. Consider the following excerpt from his speech:
The ability to speak good English is a distinct advantage in terms of doing
business and communicating with the world. This is especially important
for a hub city and an open economy like ours. If we speak a corrupted
form of English that is not understood by others, we will lose a key
competitive advantage. My concern is that if we continue to speak Singlish,
it will over time become Singapores common language.

Poor English reflects badly on us and makes us seem less intelligent or
competent all this will affect our aim to be a first-world economy.
In this excerpt, Singlish is defined as a corrupted form of English, as

a sign of less intelligence and less competence, as something that is a
bad reflection of the nation. Singlish is presented as the lowest common
denominator, which over time will become Singapores common
language. And, bringing us back to the ideological constructedness of
language discussed earlier, to speak Singlish has national consequence as it
undermines the governments economic objectives to be an economic hub
and first-world economy. Later in his speech, he makes this last argument
even stronger:
They [younger Singaporeans] should not take the attitude that Singlish is
cool or that speaking Singlish makes them more Singaporean. They have
a responsibility to create a conducive environment for the speaking of good
English If they speak Singlish when they can speak good English, they
are doing a disservice to Singapore.
Speaking good English thus has national merit and is connected to notions
of good citizenship. But note that the national value of English comes not
through ownership, which the users of Singlish sought to establish, but
rather, through use through its economic utility.

Throughout his speech, Goh continues to invalidate Singlish as a
language of ownership through a dichotic structuring between Singlish
and English. As noted by Bokhorst-Heng (2005: 203), Goh uses the word
English in his SGEM speech 40 times: almost half of these references (19)
were used in the expression good English (rather than standard English);
an additional four references were used in the phrases proper English,
excellent English and elegant English. In all other instances, the phrase
was used in contrast with Singlish with the obvious connotation of Singlish
thus being bad English. Goh illustrates his argument with an example of a
conversation he had with a Zimbabwean caddy:
Some years ago, I played golf in Zimbabwe when I had some spare time
before my meetings. I was impressed by the excellent English spoken by
my African caddy. For example, when he found me putting badly ever so
often, he asked me politely, Would you permit me to test your putter? He
Whose English? 139

tried it and advised me that it was too heavy. In Singlish, we would have
said, Can try your putter or not? After the game, he asked me, Would
you have some used balls to spare me? I was so impressed by his elegant
English that I gave him all my used golf balls, and some new ones too. In
Singlish, it would be, Got old balls give me can or not? My Zimbabwean
caddy did not complete his secondary school education. He picked up his
English from the white Zimbabwean golfers.
The example of course does not work (Fong, Lim and Wee 2002); the
caddys speech was most likely influenced by the fact that he was in the
company of a prime minister, as it would also be for most Singaporeans.
However, his illustration does a number of things, in addition to
demonstrating the perceived benefits of speaking good English (i.e., you
get free golf balls from a prime minister). First, note the use of his words
to describe the caddys speech: excellent English, politely, and elegant
English all of which he contrasted with samples of Singlish which, by
implication and position, would be the opposite. Second, he demonstrates
the benefits of speaking good English by suggesting his giving of the golf
balls was a reward for the caddys standard of English.
Koh Tai Ann: Discourses of NS/NNS

The themes raised in Gohs speech continue with Koh. However, she places
greater emphasis on the discourse of global instrumentality, and spends
less time on invalidating Singlish. The global position of English frames her
opening line:
This year, the Speak Good English Movement continues with its mission
to encourage Singaporeans to speak Good English English that is
intelligible to English speakers all over the world.
She then immediately clarifies what is meant by intelligible English, which is:
It is not about accent. It is about speaking grammatically correct English, so
as to be understood, as our tag line this year puts it, not only in Singapore,
Malaysia and Batam.
Good English, global English and intelligibility are all intertwined.

Intelligible English is defined firstly as an issue of grammatical correctness
which, in the context of Singapores exonormative practices, is
determined outside of Singapore, primarily the United Kingdom. Accent
is considered separate from issues of intelligibility although some, like
Bamgbose (1988), define intelligibility based on various linguistic features,
including phonology. Second, intelligible English is defined by what is
globally understood. In keeping with the pragmatic legitimization for
English as needed to access the global economy, if the English used by
Singaporeans is not globally understood, then there is no reason for English
to have a presence in Singapore. This stance comes through even stronger
in her next comment:
In an increasingly complex, knowledge-based global economy, the better
our command of English, the greater will be our ability to comprehend
and communicate in contexts where English matters. (our emphasis)
In her speech, Koh also makes it clear that the centre of English is outside
of Singapore, and that Singaporeans are not native speakers of English.
Consider the following two excerpts:
Anyone who learns a second or foreign language will learn the standard
form, not a dialect or a non-standard variety. We too must learn and use
English in the standard form.
Indeed, native English speakers have said that in the region, the standard
of English in Singapore is comparatively high.
Her first excerpt is curious. What she is suggesting is that everyone is

learning English, making English a second language for all when in fact
many Singaporeans would regard English as their first language. She is also
suggesting that those who speak Singlish (which is what is implied here
by the dialect/non-standard variety) are non-native speakers of English.
The second excerpt is unequivocal in its statement that Singaporeans are
non-native speakers of English in her reference to exonormative native
speakers (speakers from Inner Circle countries) who are apparently the
authority on the standard of English spoken in Singapore. The choice of
an exonormative model perpetuates the division of language users into
native and non-native speakers. What we see in the discourse of government
leaders is thus a steadfast rejection of any possibility of Singaporeans to take
up ownership of either standard English or Singlish.

As we argue elsewhere (Bokhorst-Heng et al. 2007), one of the main
criticisms against the NS/NNS dichotomy has been how it suggests negative
assumptions regarding English speakers in the Outer Circle with respect to
their general proficiency level, the credibility of their intuitive judgements,
and their overall authority over the language in terms of their confidence
and sophistication in using it. It does not take into account how the Outer
Circle speakers themselves feel about their sense of ownership, belonging,
or identity towards English. And it ignores the complexities emerging from
the manner in which particular historical, socio-cultural, economic, and
Whose English? 141

political factors have shaped the realities of these speakers as reflected
in their use of the language. Finally, such a dichotomy assumes a single
uncontested linguistic norm within which English operates in Outer Circle
countries. Yet, as the debates around Singlish and English indicate, there
are competing standards and measures at play in Singapore English (Pakir
1998), whereby the government and some members of the population
accept an exonormative standard of English, while others embrace the
development of indigenous endonormative standards.

These two speeches by Koh and Goh illustrate the dynamics of the
English ideological debates, anchored on discourses of NS/NNS and
ownership. The net result of such discourses is that English remains a
language to be used and to provide access to the benefits that come with
proficiency in English; however, it is not to be owned. And therein lies a
key threat to the legitimacy of Singlish, for, as a home-grown local variety,
it threatens to emerge as a language of identity. For many in Singapore
who see a place for both standard English and Singlish, Singlish offers
uniqueness in an English-dominant globalized world; while English is
used by everyone, Singlish is owned by Singaporeans. As put by one
contributor to The Straits Times forum page, Singlish is a mark of how we
have evolved as a nation and should surely have a place in our culture (Lee
1998). However, by denying a place for Singlish in the official discourse,
English remains a language of the so-called native speaker, and a language
to only be used denying Singaporeans ownership (both in usage and
positioning) of both standard English and Singlish.

In the remaining section of this chapter, we examine ways to think
about these issues of NS/NNS and nuance notions of ownership.
Language ownership
Background to the study

Drawing on Higgins (2003) comparative study on speakers orientations
towards English norms of members of Inner and Outer Circle countries,
we examined Singaporeans degree of ownership of their norms of
English. By ownership, we do not mean indigenization in which speakers
appropriate English for their own needs (as in, for example, Widdowson
1994), although that is part of it. Rather, along with Norton (1997) and
Higgins (2003), we take ownership to mean the degree to which speakers
of English in Singapore project themselves as legitimate speakers with
authority over the language (Higgins 2003: 615). That is, in contrast to the
governments institutional stance, which focuses on the degree of English
language use, we focus on speakers own subjective stand. Norton implicitly
makes this distinction in her conceptualization of ownership in reference to
second language acquisition among immigrants in Canada, by establishing
a relationship between ownership and language acquisition. Furthermore,
through her research she demonstrates how speakers investment in the
language they were learning ultimately leads to ownership through a sense
of the right to speak (that is, their legitimacy as a speaker): [i]f learners
of English cannot claim ownership of a language, they might not consider
themselves legitimate speakers of that language (Norton 1997: 422).
In her work, Norton saw legitimacy as being constructed and revealed
through discourse.

Higgins extends Nortons argument to speakers of English in the Outer
Circle: If these speakers [in the Outer Circle] are invested in their local
varieties and view them as forms of symbolic capital, it follows that their
standard (i.e., target) variety is a local variety, and hence, that they view
themselves as legitimate speakers of English (Higgins 2003: 621). She notes
as well that the situation is often complicated by various varieties of English
co-existing in a community (for example, a local variety and an Inner Circle
variety), and that not all speakers of English have equal access to the claim
of ownership. In her words, [g]iven the inequitable social, economic,
and political histories of certain groups in colonial and postcolonial
contexts, relatively few populations have achieved full access to English via
English-medium schooling, the primary setting for acquisition of English.
Furthermore, she notes (and as we have seen in our earlier discussion),
governments may block claims to ownership.

Building on Nortons conceptualization of legitimacy as discursive,
Higgins developed an Acceptability Judgement Task (AJT) to elicit
conversation that would reveal variation in degree of ownership through
participants responses to a series of English sentences. The AJT (see
Appendix 6.1) consisted of twenty-four English sentences, some of which
were taken from real data of Englishes around the world, and others that
were deliberately made ungrammatical (Higgins 2003: 6268). The AJT
was administered to dyads. The task of eliciting their intuitive responses
was accompanied by a recording of their conversation, reflecting the way
these speakers positioned themselves in the process of articulating their
orientations to English norms. In our view, this also reflected the way they
were enacting their sense of ownership towards English.

Using the tools of conversational analysis, Higgins measured the degree
of ownership in terms of criteria such as the certainty, confidence, and selfreliance in their own linguistic intuitions about what was deemed correct
usage with regard to the AJT sentences. Central to Higgins analysis is the
concept of footing a term from Goffman (1981), referring to the position
or alignment an individual takes when using a given linguistic expression.
Goffman distinguishes three senses of a speaker: animator, as someone
Whose English? 143

who is only involved in the production; author, as a speaker who creates
and owns the production; and principal, the party to whose position, stand
and belief the words attest (Goffman 1981: 226). To further elaborate
Goffmans concept of footing, Higgins introduces Scollons (1998) receptive
roles receptor, which mirrors animator; interpreter, the counterpart of
author; and judge as the receptive role in relation to the speaker role of
principal. The receptor receives the communication, but does not evaluate
it; the interpreter construes a meaning from the communication; the judge
evaluates and validates the communication.

In replicating Higgins study, we introduced a further complexity to
the analysis by focusing on degrees of ownership in terms of age, ethnicity,
and socio-economic class. Twelve dyads were formed on the basis of (a)
ethnicity: Malay, Chinese and Indian (Tamil) dyads; (b) age: old (around
50 years of age) and young (between 25 and 35 years of age), each having
received their education during different language-in-education policy
eras; and (c) socio-economic status: upper middle class and lower middle
class. 2 Each of the twelve dyads consisted of persons of the same raceage-SES category. Paralleling the national census data, none of the Malay
participants use only English at home; three indicated using Malay and
English. And of the Indian participants, two use only English at home;
four use English and Tamil; and two (the lower-middle class, older dyad)
use only Tamil. While participants of different ages had received their
education during different language-in-education policy eras, nonetheless,
they all had received English language instruction either in schools
that had English as a second language, with maths and science taught in
English, or in schools that used English as the medium of instruction and
taught English as a first language. They all use English on a daily basis, as
their primary language at work, and in other public domain interactions.

In an unaccompanied recorded conversation, dyads were asked to
read each sentence one at a time and then together decide if they thought
the sentence was acceptable, not acceptable, or if they were not sure.
If they thought the sentence was not acceptable, they were to revise the
sentence and asked to indicate how they determined their decisions. In
attempting to gauge the degree of English language ownership felt by the
participants, we used three linguistic markers to determine their changes of
footing: (a) references of legitimization; (b) the use of pronouns; and (c)
modal use. In relation to the first marker, we focused on the use of external
sources versus references to their own English usage. The participants use
of grammar was most often used in reference to an external authority,
with no relational value to themselves or to other members of the speech
community, and was used to legitimize their decisions in their role as
judges or principals. The use of grammar is thus seen as an impersonal
concept as opposed to the use of concepts where the footing is clearly as
judge. This distinction is further made by the second linguistic marker, the
use of pronouns, whereby we focused primarily on the differences between
a choice of using personal pronouns such as I and you in contrast to the
more general statements such as (it) sounds wrong/correct. Statements
involving verbs of perception and belief such as I think and I hope were
also seen as indicative of a strong sense of solidarity and community, and of
a sense of ownership. The third linguistic marker used to indicate changes in
footing are modality markers, which range from the use of a variety of modal
verbs to adverbials such as definitely. Such usage reflects the position of the
speaker, particularly in the sense of being judge. In our view, in a country
like Singapore, where many people feel that they are first-language speakers,
the issue of confidence is an important indicator of ownership (although
this is not to suggest that all confident speakers necessarily claim ownership).

There are of course various reasons that could explain the different
uses of modals and pronouns and the references to grammar rules in
the data. However, at the same time, this mode of analysis is in line with
Goffmans (1981: 126) stand that change in footing is very commonly
language-linked. And as indicated by Higgins (2003: 629), these linguistic
features can be related to shifts in footing from being receptor (if they
read the sentence aloud) to interpreter (offering their understanding of
the sentence) to being judge (when they determined whether the sentence
was acceptable or not and then offered their basis for their judgement).
The focus of our analysis was thus on changes of footing in the data
and not directly about the actual words used. By weaving together these
various linguistic strategies, a picture begins to emerge as to the different
orientations the various participants held towards English and their
comparative degree of ownership.
Findings
Our discussion here focuses on the Malay and Indian dyads. Looking at
the decision strategies these dyads reported using in making their decisions
(Table 6.1), we find that overall, the Malay dyads were much more
exonormative in their judgements than were the Indians. That is, apart
from the lower-middle class, older (LM-O) dyad, the Malay dyads were more
inclined to reference grammar rules to substantiate their decisions.

And for both ethnic groups, the upper-middle class, older (UM-O)
dyad relied on grammar most frequently in justifying their judgements
compared to the other dyads. Furthermore, for both ethnic groups, the
lower-middle class, younger (LM-Y) dyad relied most on their own intuition,
on whether or not it sounded right or wrong although the Indian
dyads, apart from the lower-middle class, older (LM-O), were markedly
Whose English? 145

Table 6.1 Decision-making strategies of acceptability judgements (%)*
Dyad**
It sounds right/
wrong
Malay
Grammar rule
Guess
No answer
Indian
Malay
Indian
Malay
Indian
Malay
UM-O
8.3
45.8
91.7
54.2
0.0
0.0
0.0
Indian
0.0
LM-O
25.0
4.2
10.4
12.5
0.0
4.2
64.6
79.2
UM-Y
25.0
43.8
70.8
35.4
0.0
2.1
4.2
16.7
LM-Y
39.6
61.9
54.2
38.6
6.3
0.0
0.0
0.0
* Where dyad members disagreed in their recorded strategies, the average of their responses
is used.
** UM-O = Upper-middle class, older; LM-O = Lower-middle class, older; UM-Y = Uppermiddle class, younger; LM-Y = Lower-middle class, younger
more inclined to use this strategy than the Malays. This intuitive strategy
suggests a stronger sense of ownership among young Singaporeans, as
they position themselves as able to make judgements without any external
authority. For both Malays and Indians, the LM-O dyad included far more
no answers in their written judgements than any other dyad. This suggests
that, overall, this dyad demonstrated far less confidence in their judgements
than did the other dyads.

The actual judgements made by the dyads also suggest patterns of
ownership. For both the Malay and Indian dyads, the UM-O dyad had the
greatest number of not OK judgements, which then required negotiation
and discussion as to the basis for their decision and a revised version of
the sentence. However, the Malay dyads across all groups had the greatest
number of not OK judgements compared with the Indian dyads. It appears
that a lack of sense of ownership leads to more not OK judgements. The
Malay dyads also gave the greatest number of not sure judgements.
Table 6.2 Acceptability judgements of target sentences (%)
Dyad
OK judgements
Not OK judgements
Malay
Indian
Malay
Indian
UM-O
4.2
25.0
87.5
LM-O
25.0
54.2
58.3
UM-Y
20.5
16.7
LM-Y
29.2
18.7
Not sure judgements

Malay
Indian
75.0
8.3
0.0
41.7
16.7
4.2
70.8
4.2
8.3
4.2
66.7
4.2
4.2
0.0
Among the Indian respondents, the LM-O gave the greatest number of
sentences OK judgements, which suggests their overall hesitancy in making
judgements as to the correctness of a sentence, finding it easier to accept a
sentence than to find a basis for judging it correct.

According to Goffman (1981), pronouns index the source of authority,
or judge. Higgins (2003: 635) takes up this view in her discussion of the
syntactic frame you + can say/use, which, she argues, indexes ownership
among speakers who use it in their judgements. One is reminded too of
Faircloughs (1989: 88) observation that the pronoun you has relational
value (in contrast to one), being used to register solidarity with the
others presumably in the same community. The use of the pronoun we
has the same value. And the use of I think indicates personal assurance
of judgement. In this way, the participants use of pronouns reveals their
degree of reliance on external authority to determine their footing as judge
(see Table 6.3). What is striking here is the high percentage of the use of I
think by the Indian LM-Y dyad, in contrast to the others. And, overall, the
Indian dyads made greater use of I think than the Malays, again suggesting
a pattern we are beginning to see of greater confidence by the Indian dyads
in their judgements and ownership than the Malay. The greater use of you
and we by the older Indian dyads than their Malay counterparts again
suggests a greater awareness of the speech community to which they belong,
and hence, a stronger sense of ownership. However, the younger Malay
dyads showed slightly greater solidarity with the speech community than did
their Indian counterparts.
Table 6.3 Use of pronouns (% of turns)
Dyad
you (generic)
I think
we (generic)
Malay
Indian
Malay
Indian
Malay
Indian
UM-O
4.7
7.9
0.5
2.2
1.3
3.2
LM-O
0.8
0.6
0.4
2.4
0.0
3.0
UM-Y
2.8
3.2
2.3
0.7
1.6
0.2
LM-Y
0.0
16.6
0.9
0.5
1.8
1.4

Finally, in Table 6.4, we see how the participants differ in their use of
modals. The use of these terms signals someone who has authority over
English and is able to assert what is possible and not possible to say in
English. What is notable here again is the greater use of these modals by
almost all of the Indian dyads compared with the Malay dyads, and, for both
ethnic groups, the generally lower use of these modals by the LM-O dyads.
Table 6.4 Use of modals (% of turns)
Dyad
can/cannot (emphatic)
should
is (emphatic)
Malay
Indian
Malay
Indian
Malay
UM-O
2.1
0.2
2.1
4.0
6.1
Indian
22.3
LM-O
0.4
0.2
2.4
3.7
3.2
6.7
UM-Y
0.5
0.7
2.1
2.3
13.1
9.9
LM-Y
0.5
7.6
6.8
3.8
9.9
17.1
Whose English? 147

Taking these figures together, the general pattern that emerges is thus
one that suggests the LM-O dyads as being the least confident of their
judgements, and reflecting the weakest sense of ownership; and the younger
dyads showing a greater inclination to draw upon their own intuition rather
than follow exonormative rules. Finally, the Indian dyads overall indicate a
greater sense of confidence and ownership compared with the Malay dyads.

To nuance these patterns, we turn to a detailed discussion of the
discourse patterns used by the dyads, demonstrating how their discourse
positions their orientation towards their sense of ownership. Due to the
limitations of space and for clarity, we focus here on their responses to just
one of the sentences (more detailed analyses for each set of dyads can be
found in Bokhorst-Heng et al. 2007 and Rubdy et al. 2008):
Sentence 8: I picked up a rice from the floor and threw it away.
The first two excerpts (1 and 2) are from the UM-O dyads (speaker A and
speaker B in each), both are concerned with grammar rules as they negotiate
their decisions.
Excerpt 1: UM-O-Malay
A: Im not talking about the rice, er, rice as uncountable noun. A grain of
rice and threw it away? Or I pick up the rice on the floor? And threw
it away?
B: That could be collective noun.=
A: =Um, um.
B: But I think maybe, both can lah, huh?
A: Um. A grain of rice? Pick up.=
B: =A grain of rice.
A: [I picked up THE grain of rice from the floor, <the grain of rice from
the floor.>
B: [The grain, because its er, SPECIFIC.
A: Yah.
Excerpt 2: UM-O-Indian
A:
B:
A:
B:
A:
B:
Okay. I picked up a rice from the floor and threw it away.

A rice, wrong.
A rice is actually uncountable.
Um.
We dont usually, erm, the article there.
A grain of rice.
B: No, no, I, a.
A: We, we, I picked up rice from the floor and threw it away.
B: A GRAIN of.
In both excerpts 1 and 2, the dyads make reference to grammatical terms
such as countable nouns, articles, and collective nouns. And both identify
grammar as their means of justification for their judgements. For the
Indian dyad, the fact that they were teachers may have played a role in
their frequent references to grammar in justifying their judgement. In
addition, their discourse is also reflective of the attention given to grammar
in language teaching during their time in school. However, in addition
to reliance on the exonormative principles of grammar, members of the
Indian dyad also position themselves within the wider speech community
through their pronoun use in we dont usually and we dont use, and
after beginning their deliberation with the firm assertion that A rice IS
ACTUALLY . They also move very quickly from receptor to judge, as was
evident in almost all of their exchanges (Rubdy et al. 2008). There were
no similar assertions or rapid judgements in the Malay dyads deliberation.
Instead, there is the use of that COULD BE and I think but then
followed by maybe, with a rising tone suggesting uncertainty and the need
for affirmation.

In contrast to the UM-O dyads, the LM-O dyads in excerpts 3 and 4
indicate no strategy for their decisions made, and indicate no positioning in
relation to ownership.
Excerpt 3: LM-O-Malay
B:
A:

B:
A:

Ok. I pick up a rice from the flour, floor, and threw it away. Hah.
Lagi tak ok:
Even worse:
Not ok eh?
You pick abih you throw ni apa? Ok lah peduli lah apa-apa ah:
You pick then you throw this what? Ok lah anything lah dont
care:
B: Not ok. (pause). Abih?

Not ok. (pause). Then? (Then in this instance is used to signal a
move to the next sentence for discussion.)
Excerpt 4: LM-O-Indian
A:
B:

A:
B:
A:
I picked up a rice and throw it.

Straight fowarded thaana athu. I pick up a rice from the floor.
Straight foward that one. I pick up a rice from the floor.
Very (.) clear, where did they pick it up=
=Ah.
From the floor not ___ Fine.
Whose English? 149

Throughout the task, the LM-O dyads provided very little discussion, and,
as we noted earlier, tended to leave many decisions blank. They were the
only dyads to use their mother tongue in their discussions (Malay and
Tamil respectively above), and it was evident that the task was difficult for
them. At one point, one of the Malay participants in this dyad said, apa-apa
lah. Mata naik kelabu asap, eh, Anything lah. My eyes are turning gray, eh.
And very similarly, one of the Indian participants in this dyad expressed,
enakku appadi thala kanamaa irruku, kaacha vara poothu, My head is very
heavy, going to get fever. In excerpts 3 and 4, while the Malay dyad felt
the sentence was incorrect, there was a sense of just wanting to get through
the exercise (Ok lah peduli lah apa-apa ah ,Ok lah anything lah
dont care ). The Indian dyad felt that the sentence was correct and was
more concerned about the location of the rice. These dyads systematically
showed the least confidence in their judgements and were the least willing
to commit to a position, ultimately indicating little sense of ownership.

Excerpts 5 and 6 come from discussions by the two UM-Y dyads. Both
dyads throughout the task demonstrated confidence in their responses,
making frequent use of the emphatic is, and often relying on their own
intuitions and membership in the speech community that adheres to
the conventions they were arguing for to support their answers. But the
Malay dyad was also particularly concerned with getting it right. They
were careful to revise a sentence so that it was correct in every aspect, and
even while relying on their own intuitions, they would also wonder about
the appropriate grammar rule associated with their decision as if seeking
further validation. At one point, they even turned on the computer they
had with them and used Microsoft Words grammar and spelling check to
confirm their decision. This is evident as well in excerpt 5, when one of the
partners comments on the need of Singaporeans to have things right. This
exchange also suggests a view that there must be one correct form, a single
set of norms.
Excerpt 5: UM-Y-Malay
A:
B:

A:
B:
A:
Its a grain of rice right? Not the something else of rice

Ill hope not. (laughter)
Can we know the correct answer _____.
Like taking exam (laughter).
Singaporeans has this mentality.
Have to get it right.
Excerpt 6: UM-Y-Indian
A: I picked up=
B: =A rice from the floor and throw it away.
A:
B:
A:
B:
A:
I picked up rice from the floor and throw it away.=

=Yes.
[So, its definitely grammar rule.
[Like that lah.
Okay.
Unlike the Malay UM-Y dyad, the Indian dyad demonstrated a very strong
intuitive sense of ownership. They actively and often at great length
engaged in the role of interpreter by discussing their interpretations
of particular sentences. However, they also frequently, as in excerpt 6,
moved quickly from receptor to judge, with very little discussion. They also
displayed a great deal of authority in reaching their decision, as is evident in
their frequent use of the emphatic is (9.9%), and in their lexical choices
such as, in this example, the use of definitely.

Both the LM-Y dyads spent very little time discussing their answers or
interpreting the various possible meanings of a sentence, and both very
quickly moved from receptor to judge. For the Indian dyad, for example,
in the course of eight turns, they reached a judgement on three target
sentences. Both dyads also displayed a great deal of authority in reaching
their decisions, relying on their own intuitions. In 40% of their answers,
the Malay dyad determined their answers by it sounds right/wrong. They
made frequent use of modals, as in excerpt 7, cannot, in addition to the
emphatic phrases it is either, and no need to. In their discussion, there is
no explicit reference point; they simply assume what is to be true. Neither
was there any sense of belonging to a wider speech community; they made
very little use of the relational pronouns we and you the use of we
here being one of only two instances.
Excerpt 7: LM-Y-Malay
A:

B:
A:
B:
A:
B:

A:

B:
I picked up a rice from the floor and threw it away.

I picked up the rice from the floor and threw it away.
The rice. A rice.
Let say, I picked up rice from the floor and threw it away because rice
cannot be, is either one what, a ___ is one.
:mmm
We cannot count rice.
So its the right?
Its either the a or none; no need to put the.
__________ I picked up rice, ah?
If I put the here.
I picked up the rice from the:Mmm
Whose English? 151

Excerpt 8: LM-Y-Indian
B:

A:

B:

A:
B:

A:
B:
A:
B:
A:
B:
I picked up a rice from floor and threw it away.

Usually rice.
Yes. No count lah.
So, I picked up rice from the floor unless I picked up a grain of rice
from the floor and threw it away.
:Mmm (0.5)
I would just put a=
=Picked up rice
Ya. Picked rice from the floor and threw it away.
Ah okay.
[ ___ grain of rice?
How is it if its not a grain?
:Mmm
If its not a grain of rice or lump of rice.
If its a lump of rice of rice we use rice, lah. But if its like one single
piece thats then you use a grain.
Ya. (0.5)
The Indian dyads discussion in excerpt 8 similarly shows strong confidence

in their judgements. Their reference to no count also indicates an
awareness of the grammar rule at play. But more frequently evoked in
this exchange and throughout the exercise is their own intuition and
membership of the speech community: usually, indicating an awareness
of what is the accepted norm among other users of English, and the use
of relational pronouns in if its a lump of rice WE use and if one single
piece then YOU use indicating membership. One of them even evokes
her own norms as valid rationale: I would just put.
Summary and discussion

The purpose of our analysis was to examine speakers orientations towards
their English norms, and the ways in which they positioned themselves in
the process of articulating their orientations. What distinguished the UM-O
dyads was their reliance on exonormative grammatical rules to justify their
judgements. This may in part be accounted for by the pedagogical emphasis
on grammar when they learned English. For both the Indian and the
Malay dyads, the LM-O dyads demonstrated the least confidence in their
judgements, suggesting little ownership with their norms of English usage.
And what distinguished the Malay dyads overall was their greater reliance on
exonormative rules (the UM-O showing the greatest tendency, but evident
in all four dyads) compared to the Indian dyads, rather than relying on
their own patterns of language use or that of the larger speech community.
The younger Malay dyads did show a slightly greater sense of ownership
than did the older ones; however, there was a clear friction between the
exonormative government-sanctioned and school-taught norms of standard
English and their acceptance of norms as they occur in everyday speech.

That the younger dyads exuded a greater degree of certainty about
their judgements on the correctness of particular sentences and the rapidity
with which they reached their judgements demonstrates the degree to which
Singapore English has undergone endonormative stabilization. The Indian
dyads were particularly confident in this stabilization. Why the (younger)
Indian dyads showed the greatest sense of ownership of their English norms
might have to do with the degree to which they have appropriated English
in their everyday speech, thus maximizing their sense of English ownership.
Recall that only 8% of Malay Singaporeans speak English predominantly
at home, and so it is very much a school-learned (and assessed) practice,
whereas 36% of those in the Indian community habitually use English.
Conclusion
We began our chapter with a discussion of language ideological debates,
and Blommaerts view that language ideological debates have to do with the
politics of representation (1999: 9). In the Singapore English language
debates, one key aspect of the politics of representation has to do with
ownership, and the NS/NNS divide. The NS/NNS discourse followed
by the Singapore government leaders serves to keep English at a level
of use, rather than ownership. In their view, the wider use of English by
Singaporeans is merely the confirmation of English as an ethnically neutral,
interethnic lingua franca, and does not bear on the question of language
ownership. Yet, as we examine Singaporeans own orientations towards
their English language norms, we do see a growing, albeit uneven, sense
of ownership, in the way they position themselves as judge and arbitrators
of English usage, and their willingness to rely on their intuitions, and the
way they identify themselves with a broader community of English speaker.
Their subjective speaker ownership thus stands in direct contrast to the
governments position on the mother tongue (which, as we have noted, is
not aligned with patterns of language use). This is particularly true of the
younger dyads who come from a generation where being a native speaker of
English is increasingly the norm. What this suggests is that, as Singaporeans
increasingly use English habitually in their everyday home and work lives,
this sense of ownership and intuitive authority over their English norms will
increase. It also suggests a growing endonormative stabilization of English in
Singapore, and with it a sense of there being a community of speakers with
which to identify. We thus see an increasing tension between government
policy and Singaporeans own relationship with the English language.
Whose English? 153

This study is limited in its analysis of ownership because it involves
only language identities expressed in an experimental setting. Participants
may orient to English very differently in different contexts with different
speakers. The study also only involved a small number of dyads, thus
limiting the scope of analysis. However, this discussion adds another layer to
the English language debates in Singapore, making transparent the need
to reconsider the parameters of the ideological constructedness of English,
particularly in replacing the notion of native speaker with the concept of
ownership.
Notes
1. Phua Chu Kang, the lead character in a local sitcom by the same name, has
been at the heart of English debates. A Singlish-speaking contractor, Phua Chu
Kangs use of English prompted a heated debate in late 1999 about Singlish.
At the prompting of then prime minister Goh Chok Tong, Phua Chu Kang
was sent to English language school to improve his English and to set an
example for all Singaporeans on the importance of good English.
2. SES was determined by housing type (small apartment versus house), income
level (less than S$4,000 versus over S$5,000), and highest level of education
attained (less than a university degree versus at least one degree). Full details of
the participants and the methodology used can be found in Bokhorst-Heng et
al. (2007) and Rubdy et al. (2008).
Transcription conventions:

(.)
(0.5)
[
-
=
:
CAPS
?
< >
___
micropause
half-second pause
talk in overlap
cut off
latched talk
sound stretch
loud volume
rising contour
slowly enunciated speech
inaudible
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Appendix 6.1
Acceptability Judgement Task Sentences
Type and sentence
Country where attested
Neologism
1. If a passenger on a preponed flight shows up at the time
written on his ticket and finds that the plane has already
left, he should be entitled to a refund.
2. I am sorry for the botheration I have caused you.
India
India, Malaysia, United

Kingdom
3. The gloriosity of the sunset made us wish that we had our

camera.
Invented
4. The perfectity of a new computer program can only by

tested by running it.
Invented
Countability of nouns
5. The school was able to buy new computer equipments for
the students last year.
6. Many researches have shown that smoking cigarettes is
dangerous.
India, Malaysia,
Philippines, Singapore
Ghana, India,
Malaysia, Singapore,
United Kingdom
7. The children fell in the muds near the swamp behind the
house.
Invented
8. I picked up a rice from the floor and threw it away.
Invented
Topic-comment structure
9. English they have declared the official language of Kenya.
India, Nigeria
10. TV I dont usually watch because I have too much

homework.
Malaysia
11. Outside the boys they like to play even if it is extremely

cold.
Invented
12. For research papers, the students, they use computers to

type them.
Invented
Tense/aspect
13. She was having a headache and could not concentrate on
the lecture.
14. I have read this book yesterday.
India, Nigeria,
Kenya
India
15. Jones breaks the record for the highest number of

invented goals per game this season.
Invented
16. Every time we go to the movies, my father bought

popcorn for us.
Invented
Whose English? 157

Type and sentence
Country where attested
Prepositions
17. It is difficult for me to cope up with all the work that my
boss gives me.
18. The student requested about an extension for her
research paper because she was sick for five days.
Malaysia, Singapore
India, Nigeria,
South Africa
19. After you have read the instructions, please fill the form
so that your request can be processed.
Invented
20. After the meeting, the managers discussed about the

possibility of raising their invented employees salaries by
10%.
Invented (possibly
undergoing
codification)
Distractors
21. Although many students have studied English for
more than five years, many of them have not mastered
punctuation skills.
22. One of my instructor told me that when a person learns
a language, he or she also learns the culture of that
language.
23. In the presidential election last year, he won by substantial
majority.
24. Your daughter will attend the University of Wisconsin
next year, isnt it?
India, Kenya,
Nigeria, Singapore,
South Africa
Malaysia
India, Malaysia,
Singapore, United
States, United Kingdom
India, Malaysia,
Singapore, United
Kingdom
Note: Except for the distractors, the first two sentences in each category are attested. The
second two are invented based on productive morphological rules in English (neologisms
and countability of nouns), misplacement of the topic in topic-comment structure, violation
of punctual/nonpunctual distinction in tense and aspect, and unattested combinations of
prepositions with verbs. Distractor sentences include variation in subject-verb agreement,
articles, and tag question concord. The attested forms may occur in additional Englishes to
those listed.
Language and social capital in Singapore
Viniti Vaish, Teck Kiang Tan, Wendy D. Bokhorst-Heng,

David Hogan and Trivina Kang
Competence in EL [English Language] will be a source of competitive

advantage for Singapore. Knowing our Mother Tongue Languages gives us
confidence in our culture, roots and identity as a people. We have to stay
an Asian society.
Report of the Chinese Language Curriculum and Pedagogy Review Committee (2004)
Malay is our national language and an important regional language.
The learning of Malay is critical for cultural transmission in the Malay
community. A sense of identity and the ability to access readily the values,
history, literature and the arts of ones own community are inextricably
linked with a facility with ones own language. The Malay language joins
generations.
Report of the Malay Language Curriculum and Pedagogy Review Committee (2005)
The Committees vision is for Tamil to be a living language among future
generations of Tamil Singaporeans, and vibrant part of Singapores identity
as a multicultural, global city.
Report of the Tamil Language Curriculum and Pedagogy Review Committee (2005)
The opening quotes above articulate Singapores commitment to

bilingualism and to bilingual education, and make a link between the
language and the culture of an ethnic group. The statements suggest that
social capital is maintained through language as seen in the phrases
which state that the Malay language joins generations, and Tamil is to be a
living language among future generations, and in the Chinese report where
reference is made to culture, roots, and a people. Embedded in the
significance of what we call the mother tongue policy is thus the notion of
identity and connectedness to other members of the ethnic group through
social ties.
160 Viniti Vaish, Teck Kiang Tan, Wendy D. Bokhorst-Heng, David Hogan and Trivina Kang

Despite this strong commitment regarding bilingualism, it appears that
the adoption of the ascribed mother tongue has not occurred equally across
all ethnic groups.
Table 7.1 Language trends in Singapore
Language
spoken at
home
Ethnicity
Chinese
1990
2000
Malay
Indian
2005
1990
2000
2005
1990
2000
2005
6.1
7.9
13.0
32.3
35.6
39.0
93.7
91.6
86.8
14.5
11.6
10.6
43.2
42.9
38.8
English
19.3
23.9
28.7
Mandarin
30.1
45.1
47.2
Malay
Tamil
Dialect
Others
Total
50.3
30.7
23.9
0.3
0.4
0.2
0.1
0.5
0.2
10.0
9.9
11.6
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
Source: Singapore Department of Statistics (2001) Census of Population 2000, Advance Data
Release, and Singapore Department of Statistics (2006) General Household Survey 2005, SocioDemographic and Economic Characteristics, Release 1.
Table 7.1 shows that from 1990 until 2005 English increased as the language
spoken at home in all three ethnic groups. At the same time the use of
mother tongue (Mandarin, Malay and Tamil) was going down.

Furthermore in the case of the Chinese, the report from the Chinese
Review committee states that the number of Chinese students entering
Primary 1 (P1) who speak predominantly EL at home has risen from 36%
in 1994 to 50% in 2004 (Ministry of Education 2004: 4). This discrepancy
between the investment that the Singapore government has made in
bilingual education to preserve the mother tongue and outcomes in
terms of actual language use is a major challenge for a highly globalized
Singapore. The uneven success of the mother tongue policy across ethnic
groups also suggests that there is more at play than mere government
policy. In fact, given the annual commitment to raise the status and
awareness of Mandarin within the Chinese community through the annual
Speak Mandarin Campaign, one could expect the acceptance and use of
the mother tongue to be highest among the Chinese, when in fact it is not.
Thus, clearly more is going on.

In this chapter we use Colemans (1988) idea of social capital as a
conceptual framework. Although this concept has been used to analyze
many outcomes like the drop-out rate of students and the level of
industrialization in a country it has not been used to analyze language
use in a multilingual environment. We explore whether or not the use of
the mother tongue, and thereby acceptance of the mother tongue policy, is
a result of strong social ties, or social capital of an ethnic group. Specifically
Language and social capital in Singapore 161

we ask: What are the differences in language use on the basis of ethnicity?
How are these differences materialized in the various socio-spacial domains?
What is the relationship between funds of social capital and language across
domains of language use?

The term language maintenance needs to be problematized at the
outset. This term best describes language use in the Malay community as
the governments ascription of Malay as their mother tongue aligns with
their actual patterns of language use. As Table 7.1 shows, in the Indian
case there is a gradual language shift, though it is not as pronounced as in
the case of the Chinese community. For the Indian ethnic group, we only
present data on Tamil as we do not have any data on Non-Tamil-MotherTongues (NTMLs). Finally, the term language maintenance is problematic
for the Chinese, as embedded in their stories is a tale of language shift
and the acceptance (or rejection) of government policy regarding an
ethnically determined mother tongue a policy to which we refer as the
mother tongue policy. Thus, top-down institutional support and bottom-up
language loyalty have not been for the maintenance of the Chinese dialects,
which have, to some extent, been replaced by Mandarin and English. For
the Chinese, when we speak of language maintenance, we are referring to
Mandarin and not the Chinese dialects.
Social capital and language: A review of literature
Definitions
Social capital is a slippery concept. Though this concept has been known
to scholars from the time of Durkheim and Marx, it is through the work of
Bourdieu and Coleman that it gained popularity both in and outside the
field of sociology. According to Portes (1998), the first clear definition of
social capital was supplied by Bourdieu (1986 [1980]) who defined it as the
aggregate of the actual of potential resources which are linked to possession
of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of
mutual acquaintance or recognition or in other words, to membership
in a group which provides each of its members with the backing of the
collectively owned capital, a credential which entitles them to credit, in
the various senses of the word (Bourdieu 1983: 249). Portes points out that
this definition actually did not catch on until Colemans (1988) influential
paper on this topic.

Coleman does not provide a statement that would clearly define
social capital but elaborates on the nature of this concept in great detail.
The closest he comes to a definition is when he writes the consensus is
growing in the literature that social capital stands for the ability of actors to
secure benefits by virtue of membership in social networks or other social
structures (Coleman 1988: 6). Social capital is intangible because it inheres
in the relationships of trust between community members. In this sense
it is different from other forms of capital like economic capital (money),
physical capital (machines and tools), and so forth. Thus, he argues for a
definition of social capital based on its function. In his view, social capital is
productive and has concrete outcomes that can be measured quantitatively.

As an illustration of what is social capital, one of the examples that
Coleman offers is that of Jewish diamond merchants in Brooklyn. He
emphasizes the high level of trust amongst these merchants: a seller could
leave a bag of diamonds with a colleague for evaluation without fear that
his diamonds would be substituted for fakes. This level of trust is based
on specific attributes of social structure like high frequency of interaction
and degree of intermarriage, membership in the same synagogues in the
Brooklyn area, and residence in specific neighbourhoods in Brooklyn: these
close ties, through family, community, and religious affiliation, provide
the insurance that is necessary to facilitate the transactions in the market
(Coleman 1988: 99).

Coleman, like Bourdieu, sees social capital as an essentially positive
concept that benefits all individuals between whom it exists. Like economic
and physical capital, social capital is fungible in that it can be exchanged
for other goods for the mutual benefit of parties. The premise behind the
notion of social capital is rather simple and straightforward: investment in
social relations with expected returns in the marketplace (Lin 2001: 19).
Portes (1998) extends this idea to also include negative consequences of
social capital and emphasizes that these negative aspects of social capital
must be acknowledged to give a more nuanced understanding of the
concept. Recent studies have, according to Portes, identified at least four
negative consequences of social capital: exclusion of outsiders, excess claims
on group membership, restrictions on individual freedoms, and downward
levelling norms (Portes 1998: 15). Putnam (1995) and Fukuyama (1995)
take social capital even further to be the characteristic of entire nations and
talk about its positive outcomes, for instance, democracy or industrialization.
Despite the fact that Portes (2000) has pointed to the problems inherent in
measuring social capital at macro-social levels (for instance, the level of a
nation), this concept is popular in current literature.

The slipperiness of the term social capital is also apparent in the
different ways it is interpreted, for instance, by Putnam (1995) and
Fukuyama (1995). In his renowned essay on the topic, Putnam (1995)
explains declining social capital in the US on the basis of lack of trust
amongst people, apathy with regards to the government (based on poor
voter turnout), poor attendance at public meetings on town/school affairs
or political rallies and lack of interest in serving on a committee of some

local organization like the Parent Teacher Associations (PTA). Putnams
point, which created a stir in political circles, is that this lack of social
capital undermines the very principle of democracy on which America is
founded. He clearly sees social capital as a positive ideal that leads to better
schools, faster economic development, lower crime, and more effective
government (Putnam 1995: 667).

Whereas Putnam (1995) thinks that Americas social capital is
declining, Fukuyama (1995) places both Japan and USA in the same basket
of countries with high trust societies in which there are large funds of social
capital. In contrast, China, according to Fukuyama, is a low trust society
because kinship ties take precedence over ties amongst unrelated people.
In his view, China is essentially a country of small businesses and cannot
create large efficiently run corporations precisely because of this low social
capital. However, both Putnam and Fukuyama are agreed over one aspect
of social capital: that it can be depleted. We will see important parallels
between the characteristics of social capital in China and those of the
Chinese community in Singapore when we talk about the shift from the use
of dialects to Mandarin.

Castells (2004) disagrees with Putnams and Fukuyamas notion
of declining social capital. Though Putmans (1995) focus is only on
America and Castells (2000, 2004) is global, the latters view is that the
era of globalization is marked by the rise of the local resulting in the
strengthening of social ties at the level of community. He writes, [p]eople
resist the process of individualization and social atomization, and tend to
cluster in community organizations that, over time, generate a feeling of
belonging, and ultimately, in many cases, a communal, cultural identity
(Castells 2004: 64). Castells also points out how religion and membership in
religious organizations are the main form of cultural identity in an age of
globalization. In this chapter we will explore how in the case of Singapore,
religion, and its link with language, is an important identity marker and
source of social capital for the Singaporean, though with differences across
ethnic groups.

In concluding this section we wish to acknowledge the other, and
amongst applied linguists, more popular concept: linguistic capital. A
comparison of social and linguistic capital is not the focus of this chapter,
however; for an in-depth look at the way linguistic capital can be applied to
the Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore, see Vaish and Tan (2008).
Language as an outcome of social capital

What is clear from Putnams and Fukuyamas analyses is that there are
outcomes of social capital, such as membership in voluntary organizations,
high voter turnout, and so forth. However, the idea of language use
as an outcome of social capital has not been explored in depth. An
exception is Milroys (2002) work whose social network theory has made
important contributions to the field of sociolinguistics. Social network
theory was developed in the 1960s and 1970s, based on the assumption
that the relationships between speakers have important implications
for language maintenance or loss. The key point in this theory is that
[n]etworks constituted chiefly of strong (dense and multiplex) ties support
localized linguistic norms, resisting pressures to adopt competing external
norms. By the same token if these ties weaken, conditions favorable to
language change are produced (Milroy 2002: 550). We note the difficulty
in discussing language maintenance in the pan-Singapore context where
government policy has endeavoured to ascribe a mother tongue to each
of the three main ethnic communities, because the term maintenance is
not as appropriate for the Chinese ethnic group as it is for the Malay and
Indian groups. However, we find Milroys social network theory useful as a
way to theorize this relationship between language and social capital.

Granovetter (1973) developed an argument about the strength of weak
ties, which has had direct influence on the work of sociolinguists such as
Milroy. The crux of Granovetters argument is that even weak social ties can
have positive outcomes because they create bridges between diverse social
groups and members thus have a larger pool of information to draw from.
Granovetters thesis is based on the labour market, and how job seekers
gather information that leads them to a new job. He found that in most
cases it was through a friend of a friend, or through a weak tie, that the
subject found a new job. More importantly, when a person changes jobs, he
or she moves from one network of ties to another, thus creating a bridge
between two weakly connected communities.

Milroys social network analysis draws on both variationist
sociolinguistics and the work of sociologists like Granovetter. Milroy defines
a social network as a boundless web of ties which reaches out through a
whole society, linking people to one another, however remotely (2002:
550). The key finding of Milroys study of language shift/maintenance
in Belfast was that a close-knit network is interpreted as an important
mechanism of dialect maintenance (Milroy 2002: 556). Milroy also suggests
that weak social networks can create innovations in language which one
does not find in dense and multiplex social ties. This is because members
of weak social networks are mobile and might live in numerous locations
becoming influenced by different dialects.

Though Milroys work was on monolingual speakers in Belfast, social
network theory has been applied to bilingual contexts by Zantella (1997)
who studied the Puerto Rican Community in New York City, and Li (1994)
who did the same with the Chinese immigrant community in Tyneside, UK.

Both these studies found that strong social ties support minority languages
and resist the pressure to shift towards monolingualism in English. They
also found that, when these networks weaken, language shift is likely to take
place. Our chapter presents a different multilingual situation in that both
Zantella and Li were looking at immigrant communities in a monolingual
English environment. In contrast, the Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore
2006 is located at a site where bilingualism is the norm and a relatively
stable condition of the linguistic ecology.
The Singapore context

Language planning in Singapore is both interventionist and egalitarian.
Sociolinguists in Singapore acknowledge the fact that language planning
in this country is interventionist in nature (Gopinathan et al. 1998), and
see the promotion of Mandarin over dialects among the Chinese (to the
point of even attempting to infiltrate the home) as an illustration of this.
At the same time, there have been egalitarian moves towards allocation of
resources to minority languages like the inclusion of five Non-Tamil-MotherTongues (NTMLs) into the school system in the 1990s through a bottomup demand from the Indian community (Tan 1998). Tan shows how it was
a demand from the non-Tamil speaking communities of Singapore that
led to the inclusion of Hindi, Gujerati, Urdu, Bengali and Punjabi in the
Primary School Leaving Exam (PSLE). Even though there remains limited
state funding for these NTMLs and they are largely community-funded, the
heterogeneous Indian community values the move to include languages
other than Tamil into the national school system. In these interventionist
and egalitarian policies, we thus see efforts that lead to language loss, shift
and maintenance.

Sociolinguists in Singapore are concerned about mother tongue
language loss (in the conventional sociolinguistic sense of the word) (Gupta
and Siew 1995; Li et al. 1997; Saravanan 1999, 2001) and the implications
this has for Asian culture and identity. For instance, Gupta and Siew (1995)
point to the language gap between dialect-speaking grandparents and
Mandarin- and English-speaking grandchildren in the Chinese community,
with the result that cultural and family traditions are being lost. This
illustration of language shift has the potential for weakening social ties
amongst family members along with the concomitant loss of cultural
practices linked with language. Government leaders have repeatedly
defended their position that this language gap is a necessary sacrifice for
the good of childrens education and for the successful implementation
of the language policy, and have presented Mandarin as a more viable
and desirable basis for the creation of social networks and social cohesion
among the Chinese.
Methodology
The Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore 2006

Part of the data for this chapter come from a project called the
Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore 2006 (SSS 2006), undertaken by the
Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP) in Singapore. The
research question for SSS 2006 is: Who speaks what language to whom
in what context with what attitude with what level of fluency and to what
end? The survey has a sample size of 716 students from the Grade 5 cohort
of Singaporean schools, who were randomly selected on the basis of race
(Chinese, Malay and Indian) and socio-economic status (SES). The children
are between 10 and 11 years of age. The sample of students includes only
Singapore citizens. Due to small cell sizes, it does not include non-Tamilspeaking Indians and Singapore Permanent Residents.

Though the Census of Singapore does not have a separate category
called socio-economic status (SES), it does have questions on income,
housing type, occupation and highest qualification attained, all of which
are items in SSS 2006. We take household income rather than housing
type to be the main surrogate to classify SES since, in Singapore, families
with extremely high household incomes live mostly in private housing and
household earnings have a close tie with housing type in public housing.
The SES factor structure shows that occupation is less related to SES and
hence not considered for the classification. More importantly, it would be
operationally convenient to rely on one single most important factor for the
selection of students in the qualitative follow-up study.

The following is the way SSS 2006 defines the four levels of income in
Singapore dollars (S$):
SES 1: more than S$5,001/month
SES 2: S$3,5015,000/month
SES 3: S$1,5013,500/month
SES 4: less than S$1,500/month
The survey examines language use in five domains: school, family and
friends, religion, public space and media. It also includes sections on
language attitudes, ideology and proficiency. The language attitudes section
is based on a variation of the matched guise method, involving a set of three
recordings or guises. In this part we play a set of three recordings for each
child. In each recording a 10-year-old speaker is talking on the phone to a

friend asking him/her to come over to do homework together. Recording
1 is in English, 2 is in a mother tongue (Tamil, Malay or Mandarin), and 3
is in English and a mother tongue with code-switching. Participants listen
to the set of recordings that corresponds to their mother tongue (thus
each participant listens to a total of three recordings). The script is the
same in all three recordings. After listening to each of the three recordings,
respondents are asked a series of questions designed to reveal their attitudes
towards the use of English, their mother tongue, and code-switching.

The items on proficiency are all based on self-report and are divided
into sections on literacy (reading and writing on a four-part scale) and
fluency (speaking and understanding on a five-part scale) for both English
and Mother Tongue. This section ends with questions on what marks the
children received in the last language/s test they took in school.

SSS 2006 has a funnel-shaped design, with the large-scale quantitative
survey described above leading to small-scale follow-up studies that are
planned as summarized in Table 7.2.
Table 7.2 Design of follow-up studies in SSS 2006
Chinese
Malay
Indian
Total
SES 1
SES 2
SES 3
SES 4
Total
12

As shown in Table 7.2, there are twelve follow-up studies, with
participants chosen on the basis of their race and SES. These twelve
children have been observed for about two weeks in the five domains of the
survey. Data collection includes audio-recording and video-taping of family
and other domain interactions, observation and participant-observation,
and unstructured interviews/conversations. Artefacts such as emails,
photographs, journals and activity logs with a focus on language and literacy
are also collected. The project emphasizes the child as participant in and
leader of data collection. Thus one tape recorder is left with the children
and they are asked to record what they think is typical language use in their
lifeworlds.
The CRPP Panel 6 Survey

The SSS 2006 data are subsequently merged with the Centre for Research
in Pedagogy and Practices Panel 6 survey (henceforth CRPP Panel 6 2006).
CRPP Panel 6 2006 is a multi-cohort, cross-classified, longitudinal survey
with an aim to study the class, school and student effects on various social
outcomes. It is an ecological study of some 30,000 students over a five-year
period, a longitudinal survey designed to capture and measure changes
and growth of students demographics, life experience, patterns of social
participation, social attainment and performance, social attributes, life goals
and choices, pathways and beliefs. Three different cohorts were identified
for the survey: the primary, secondary and the post-secondary cohort. The
same Grade 5 cohort, the first wave of the CRPP Panel 6 carried out in the
year 2003, is thus the source of participants for both SSS 2006 and Panel
6, and the data are merged. CRPP Panel 6 is currently at the third wave of
the study.
Measures of social capital in Panel 6

Seven variables are identified as items of social capital characteristics. They
are categorized under two main subheadings, namely family social capital
and personal social capital. The former, bonding in nature, measures
the family functioning and attachment, whereas the latter is of bridging
characteristics including friendship skills, number of close friends, social
and leadership skills, trust in persons and social participation in religious
practices. Family climate measures the level of relationship between student
and family members. Family attachment refers to the emotional attachment
of respondents to parents, grandparents and siblings. Friendship skills
and social leadership skills, shown under B 3 and 5, measure students
socializing skills with friends, organizing skills and working relationships
with friends. Number of close friends is the extent of a students social
network. Trust in persons measures the trust level between students and
family members/friends. Participation in religious practices is the frequency
of visits to religious institutions.
A.

B.

Family Social Capital

1. Family Climate
2. Attachment
Personal Social Capital
3. Friendship Skills
4. Number of Close Friends
5. Social Leadership Skills [Application of Social Skill]
6. Trust in Persons
7. Participation in Religious Practices [Social Participation]
Measures of social capital in SSS 2006

On the following topics, there are items in the SSS 2006 instrument that
can be used to measure social capital:
1. Household structure (single parent/multi-generation/nuclear family/
extended family/other)
2. Household size
3. Interaction with grandparents:

Does the child stay with his/her maternal/paternal grandparents?

How often does the child visit his/her maternal/paternal
grandparents?
Results and discussion

Table 7.3 shows the dominant language across the three ethnic groups for
each of our five domains in SSS 2006 with a focus on English and Mother
Tongue (MT).
Table 7.3 Dominant language across domains and ethnic groups in SSS 2006
Table 7.3a Family/friends
Chinese (%)
(n=400)
Malay (%)
(n=206)
Indian (%)
(n=92)
English
Mother Tongue (MT)
41.7
31.8
24.4
46.0
41.3
32.8
36.2
36.3
Language
Race
Total (%)
(n=716)
English-MT
15.9
18.3
13.9
16.4
Other
N.A.
0.4
10.4
0.1
11.2
2.2
9.8
0.5
10.6
Total
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
Table 7.3b School

Chinese (%)
(n=400)
Malay (%)
(n=206)
Indian (%)
(n=92)
Total (%)
(n=716)
English
Mother Tongue (MT)
68.5
19.9
60.4
30.1
72.4
19.4
66.5
23.0
English-MT
N.A.
11.3
0.2
9.4
0.1
7.1
1.1
10.2
0.3
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
Language
Total
Race
Table 7.3c Media
Language
Race
English
Chinese (%)
(n=400)
Malay (%)
(n=206)
Indian (%)
(n=92)
Total (%)
(n=716)
69.2
57.7
66.5
65.2
2.7
4.6
1.1
3.1
English-MT
7.2
12.6
4.7
8.6
Other
0.7
0.5
0.3
0.6
Mother Tongue (MT)
N.A.
20.2
24.6
27.4
22.5
Total
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
Indian (%)
(n=92)
69.4
20.8
Total (%)
(n=716)
63.7
23.3
Table 7.3d Public space

Race
Language
English
Mother Tongue (MT)
English-MT
N.A.
Total
Chinese (%)
(n=400)
65.3
20.2
Malay (%)
(n=206)
58.2
30.1
14.5
0.0
11.7
0.0
9.5
0.3
12.9
0.1
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
Indian (%)
(n=92)
26.1
58.1
Total (%)
(n=716)
26.1
52.2
Table 7.3e Religion

Race
Language
English
Mother Tongue (MT)
English-MT
Chinese (%)
(n=400)
38.7
35.5
Malay (%)
(n=206)
3.7
79.5
4.8
2.6
5.6
4.2
Other
N.A.
0.7
20.1
12.2
2.0
9.1
1.1
5.5
12.0
Total
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0

In the domains of school, media and public space, English is clearly the
dominant language for Singaporean children across all ethnic groups. In
these three domains, 66.5%, 65.2% and 63.7% of the children respectively,
reported English as their dominant language. However, the domains of
family and friends and religion tell a different story. In the domains of
family and friends, Malay is the dominant language for the Malay ethnic
group. As many as 46% of the Malay children reported that Malay is their
dominant language in this domain, whereas only about a quarter, or 24.4%,
reported English. In the domain of religion, the Mother Tongue (MT) is
dominant for both the Malay and Indian ethnic groups, though English
is dominant for the Chinese ethnic group. Comparing across all three

ethnic groups, then, we can see that English has the least presence in the
religious domain: amongst the Malays only 3.7% of the children reported
that English is dominant for them in the religious domain whereas 79.5%
reported that Malay is dominant. The Malay community has the highest
levels of mother tongue language use, and in their case, maintenance,
across all five domains. Table 7.3 implies use of code-switching between
English and mother tongue in all cells, which is not the purpose of this
chapter to explore. For information on the implications of code-switching,
see Vaish (2007a and b) and Bokhorst-Heng (forthcoming).

Does MT dominance for Malays in the domain of family and friends
point to stronger social ties for Malay families leading to Malay language
maintenance in this domain? The story here is confounded by Panel 6 data.
In this database, Family Climate is a construct that includes the following:
I feel loved by my family.
My parents listen carefully to what I have to say in important family
discussions.
We show care and concern for our family.
In our family everyone listens to and respects each other.
As such family climate is highest for the Indians: 21.3. It is roughly the same
for the Malays and Chinese: 19.5 and 19.8 respectively. Thus family climate
is not the highest for the Malays. Also, statistically, the number 21.3 for the
Indians is not significantly higher than that for the Malays and Chinese.
This key finding suggests that we cannot make a simple link between
stronger family ties amongst the Malays with stronger mother tongue
maintenance in this community. We will come back to this point in detail
when we discuss language maintenance in the Indian community.
Measures of social capital in SSS 2006

On many measures of social capital in the SSS 2006, all the three ethnic
groups show similar characteristics. For instance, in terms of household
structure, 76.3% of Chinese children, 73.9% of Malay children and 80.6%
of Indian children in our sample live in nuclear families, thus showing
that the predominant household structure across all three ethnic groups
is similar. On the basis of these numbers, it is not possible to hypothesize,
for instance, that multi-generation families maintain language more than
nuclear families do. Similarly, the majority of the children do not live
either with paternal or maternal grandparents. Also, there are similarities
across ethnic groups regarding how many times the children visit the
grandparents. About 6% of the children in our sample visit their maternal
grandparents every day, with most of them evenly spread out between the
once a week or once a month category. Again, the point to note here is
that there are no glaring differences between the practices of the children
across the three ethnic groups which could point to increased social capital
leading to language maintenance.

In terms of household size, the Malay families tend to be somewhat
larger than the Chinese or Indian families. On average, 40% of the Chinese
and 39% of Indian families are four-person families. However, 37% of Malay
families are five-member families, and as many as 23% have six members.
Though it may be possible to hypothesize that a larger number of siblings
leads to increased language maintenance, again the data do not appear
strong enough to warrant this claim.
Measures of social capital in Panel 6

As shown in Table 7.4, except for family climate and participation in
religious practices, there are no statistical differences between the three
ethnic groups in the other measures.
Table 7.4 Measurement of social capital by race (means)
Social Capital Measurement
Family Social Capital
Family Climate*
Attachment
Chinese
Malay
Indian
19.8
19.5
21.3
20.6
21.1
22.0
Personal Social Capital

Friendship Skills
17.3
17.9
18.1
Number of Close Friends
5.5
6.0
4.9
Social Leadership Skills
5.9
6.0
6.5
Friendship Attachment
4.6
4.2
4.4
18.3
3.9
21.5
6.0
18.8
5.1
Trust in Persons
Participation in Religious Practices*
* Significantly different p<.05
Thus it is to domains of family and friends and religion that we now turn.
Religion as social capital: Language maintenance in the Malay community

What are the reasons for a high level of MT maintenance in the domain
of religion among the Malays and Indians? It is our hypothesis that social
capital reinforced by homogeneity of religion is one of the main reasons
for the high level of language maintenance amongst the Malays. Table 7.5
shows religion and ethnicity in the sample for SSS 2006.

Table 7.5 Religion by ethnic group in SSS 2006
Religion
Race
Chinese (%)
(n=400)
Malay (%)
(n=206)
All (%)
(n=716)
No religion
22.5
Buddhism
52.0
0.2
61.3
8.0
22.0
12.9
13.9
3.3
1.8
100.0
100.0
Islam
Hinduism
Christianity
Taoism
Total
100.0
Indian (%)
(n=92)
12.6
1.1
29.2
100.0
24.7
34.5
100.0

All the Malay respondents in our sample reported that their religion is
Islam. This homogeneity is not evident amongst the Indians where about
25% are Muslim, 61.3% are Hindu and the rest Christian. The Chinese
ethnic group is the most heterogeneous with regard to religion with large
numbers falling into three main groups: no religion (many declaring
themselves to be free thinkers), Buddhism and Christianity.

Johnston and Soroka (2001) consider two types of social capital in their
research: one is primary ties of kinship and the other formal membership
in secondary groups. This chapter follows suit. Our assumption is that
active membership in secondary organizations is indicative of increased trust
for each other and the organization to which the members belong. Similarly
Narayan and Prichett (2000) find that associational life is in fact social
capital (or a good proxy for social capital). In their research in Tanzania,
they found that increased associational life of households, or increased
membership in secondary organizations, leads to greater household income.
We make a similar claim for increased language maintenance as a result of
the dense network of social ties through religion for the Malay community.
In keeping with the results of our follow-up studies, we take religion as
indicative of membership in a religious organization. Our follow-up studies
show that families across the three ethnic groups, if they practise a religion,
are affiliated with a church/temple/mosque or related organization.

Panel 6 data show that the Malays have the highest rate of participation
in religious activities. Participation in religious activities ranges from 1 to 8.
The overall mean participation for all three ethnic groups is 4.6. The Malays
have the highest religious participation rate (6.0), followed by Indian (5.1)
and Chinese (3.9). The differences between the three ethnic groups are
statistically significant.

In keeping with Milroys (2002) link between language maintenance
and dense social networks, we take active group membership and
participation, in this case in religious organizations, as key to language
maintenance. This is particularly so because the Malays, who demonstrate
the highest rate of participation in religious activities, are also the most
homogeneous with respect to religion. This then opens up the possibility
for more multiplex and stronger social ties. Even if the Chinese community
reported similar rates of religious participation, their heterogeneous
religious participation would not facilitate the same degree of social ties
within their ethnic group. The fact that about a quarter of the Chinese
sample reported that they have no religion and the follow-up studies
indicate that such families are also not affiliated with religious organizations
gives even stronger contrast to the Malay experience. This lack of group
membership leads to looser social networks unlike the dense multiplex ties
Islam creates in the Malay community. In the Indian group, the majority
are Hindu, but as many as a quarter of the sample is Muslim, thus creating
two main social networks around religious affiliation which are not linked
to each other through group membership.
Re-aligning social capital: Language shift amongst the Chinese

Much has been written about language shift within the Chinese community
as being an example of successful government policy (Li et al. 1997;
Gopinathan et al. 1998; and discussion in Bokhorst-Heng forthcoming).
In the 1957 census, the founding generation of Chinese Singaporeans
represented eleven mother tongue Chinese dialects. As put by Lee Kuan
Yew, We were a tower of Babel, trying to find a common tongue (The
Straits Times, 18 April 1997). This linguistic diversity was manifested in
the many clan schools set up by immigrant Chinese (Li et al. 1997). As
described in the Singapore Encyclopedia (Koh 2006), [t]he schools were
originally staffed by teachers from a particular clan, who used their own
dialect as the medium of instruction and were modelled on schools in
China. One of the key strategies to unify the Chinese community, as well
as the heterogeneous population as a whole, was to introduce a national
and bilingual education system Mandarin, Malay, Tamil and English
with English as the common denominator in all schools. Most clan schools
switched to Mandarin, and some to English, as the medium of instruction.
However, the 1979 Goh Report, which gave the first thorough assessment
of the bilingual education system, found that while schools had transitioned
from the use of dialects to Mandarin, the home had not:
The majority of the pupils are taught in two languages, English and
Mandarin. About 85 percent of these pupils do not speak these languages
at home. When they are home, they speak dialects. As a result, most of
what they have learned in school is not reinforced.

This report was the impetus to the Speak Mandarin Campaign, which
has continued until today. Under the auspices of the Speak Mandarin
Campaign, the government intervened in virtually all areas of life to
convince Chinese Singaporeans to alter their language use patterns from
dialects to Mandarin even to the point of encouraging them to give their
children Mandarin names rather than dialect ones (which would result in
parents and children having different surnames), and requiring all Chinese
children in school to use their Mandarin names (and if they did not have
one, giving them one) (see Bokhorst-Heng and Wee 2007).

Language shift has been pronounced. According to the national census
(Table 7.6), while almost 77% of Chinese households used a Chinese
dialect as their dominant household language in 1980, only 31% did in
the year 2000. At the same time, in 1980, only 13% used Mandarin as their
dominant household language, which increased in 2000 to 45%.
Table 7.6 Dominant household languages in Chinese homes over three decades
Language
1980
1990
2000
English
10.2
19.3
23.9
Mandarin
12.8
30.1
45.1
Chinese dialects
76.6
50.3
30.7
0.4
0.3
0.3
100.0
100.0
100.0
Other
Source: Singapore Census of Population (1980, 1990, 2000)
Following Fukuyamas earlier comment that China is a low trust/low social

capital society because of the prominence of kinship ties, we can get a
glimpse of what this shift from dialect to Mandarin might mean with respect
to social capital. Dialect clan associations had a paramount role to play in
the early settlement of Chinese immigrants in terms of jobs, housing,
support, and as we discussed earlier, education. Thus, when then prime
minister Goh Chok Tong argued in his 1991 Speak Mandarin Campaign
Speech that [f]or the Chinese community, our aim should be a single
people, speaking the same primary language, that is Mandarin, possessing
a distinct culture and a shared past, and sharing a common destiny for the
future, he was calling for the re-alignment of the basis of social network
ties within the Chinese community. Rather than being dialect (clan/
kinship-based), it was to be Mandarin (pan-Chinese). Along the same vein,
in his 1984 Speak Mandarin Campaign speech, then prime minister Lee
Kuan Yew argued:
Mandarin is emotionally acceptable as our mother tongue. It also unites
the different dialect groups. It reminds us that we are part of an ancient
civilization with an unbroken history of over 5,000 years. This is a deep
and strong psychic force, one that gives confidence to a people to face up
to and overcome great changes and challenges Therefore I can state
that its psychological value cannot be over-emphasised. Parents want their
children to be successful. They also want their children to retain traditional
Chinese values in filial piety, loyalty, benevolence, and love. Through
Mandarin their children can emotionally identify themselves as part of an
ancient civilisation whose continuity was because it was founded on a tried
and tested value system [sic].
Where the language shift within the Chinese community has been from a
variety of dialects to Mandarin then, it can be seen as a re-alignment of social
capital from kinship to pan-Chinese with access to an ancient civilization,
ancient values, the means by which to ensure success, and, more recently,
with the increasing emphasis on Chinas burgeoning economy (BokhorstHeng 1999), economic opportunity.

In keeping with the idea of depleting social capital introduced in the
review of literature, the existing social capital in the Chinese community
from dialects has been depleted. Though this is supposed to be replenished
by Mandarin, that has yet to be achieved. Mandarin has enormous
instrumental value; however, it has not yet become the shared cultural
capital of a linguistically unified ethnic group with links to a larger Sinitic
civilization. As such, Mandarin does not provide social ties within either
the domains of family and friends or religion, as Malay does for the Malay
ethnic group.
Language maintenance and shift in the Indian community

Table 7.1 shows that, though from 1990 to 2000 Tamil had not dropped
significantly as the language most frequently spoken at home, from 2000
to 2005 there was a dip. Vaish (2007a) links language trends from the 1990
and 2000 census with data from SSS 2006 to show that in the domains of
religion, family and friends and media there are processes of language
maintenance going on that contribute to the stability of Tamil in the Indian
community. At the same time, she points to other domains like school
where there are clear signs of language shift from Tamil to English.

Data from SSS 2006 presented in Table 7.2 show that in all the domains
except religion, English is more dominant than Tamil for the Indian
community. In religion, on the other hand, Tamil is dominant for 33.6% of
the Indian children and English for a lower 23.1%. The high percentage in
the Other cell, 27.18%, merits some clarification. These other languages

are Sanskrit for the Hindus and Arabic for the Muslims, which are actively
used by Indians in the temples and mosques respectively.1 Thus if we take
Tamil and Other together, 60.78%, or a majority of the Indian children,
are using languages other than English in religion.

As pointed out earlier in this chapter, Panel 6 data show that Indians
have a high participation rate in religious organizations. The rate of
participation for Indians is 5.1, which is above the average of 4.9. The
follow-up studies also show that in both temples and mosques Tamil
is actively used along with Sanskrit and Arabic. These practices have
maintained social ties within religious networks contributing to Tamil
language maintenance in the Indian community in the domain of religion.
This is despite the fact that the Indian community is split mainly between
the Hindus and Muslims leading to two discrete social groups. Though
there is larger use of English in the Indian Christian community, this group
is still relatively small, 13% in the SSS 2006 sample, and has not significantly
affected Tamil.
Conclusion
This chapter has explored the strong and weak relationships between
language maintenance and social capital across domains of language use.
We have shown that in the domain of religion Malay and Indian ethnic
groups show the strongest signs of MT maintenance which are linked
to strong social ties through membership and attendance in secondary
organizations. We have demonstrated that one of the reasons for this is the
dense and multiplex social networks that are available to the Malay due to
the homogeneity of religion. This network is not available to the Chinese
because of heterogeneous religious practices leading to looser social ties. In
the case of the Chinese there is the depleting of the social capital of dialects
due to state intervention and the need to replenish this through Mandarin.

In the case of the Indian community the story is one of both language
maintenance and shift depending on which domain we focus on. Though
the overall language trend from 1990 to 2005 is that there is some loss for
Tamil and gains for English, an in-depth look at specific domains shows
internal variability. As in the case of the Malays, the Indians maintain Tamil
in the domain of religion. This is despite the fact that there are two major
social groups in the Indian community, the Hindus and Muslims. However,
these are connected through active use of Tamil in both temples and
mosques.

For the authors of this chapter, one of the most interesting findings
in this research has been the similarities of funds of social capital amongst
the three ethnic groups of Singapore. When we started writing this chapter,
our hypothesis was that the Malay group would come out strongest in all
the measures of social capital across the five domains. However, this was
not the case except in the domain of religion. Though this was somewhat
predictable, what was not so counter-intuitive were the similarities of social
capital and ties in the domain family and friends. For instance, both family
structure and relationship with grandparents are not significantly different
across the three ethnic groups.

The overall story of this chapter is the predominance of religion over
family and friends as the main domain for both language maintenance
and strong social capital. That the domain of religion should provide the
opportunity for stronger social ties compared to family and friends is itself
food for thought for any society, though outside the scope for this chapter.
However, the strength of religion is, according to Castells (2000, 2004),
one of the main aspects of our globalizing era. As such, a highly globalized
nation like Singapore is in keeping with Castells thesis.
Note
1. One of the reviewers has rightly pointed out that if Arabic and Sanskrit are the
languages of the mosque and temple respectively, then what is the role of Malay
and Tamil in the religious domain? Arabic-Malay in the mosque and SanskritTamil in Hindu temples are in a diglossic relationship. For instance, in one of
our Indian follow-up studies we observed that the Hindu priest recites verses in
Sanskrit that the children repeat after him. However, the explanation of these
verses is entirely in Tamil. Thus one of the ways in which Malay and Tamil
are used in mosques and temples is to understand and interpret Arabic and
Sanskrit respectively.
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Language policy and planning in

Singaporean late modernity1
Christopher Stroud and Lionel Wee
In todays global world, extant language policies are increasingly inadequate

for managing and regulating the complex sociolinguistic dynamics of
highly transforming communities characterized by pervasive transnational
mobility and an extensive domestic reconstruction of social, political and
economic life. This is the case for Singapore, whose late modern structure,
we argue, requires an approach to the management of multilingualism that
departs radically from that of the founding years of the nation. Grounded
in a politics of national (re)construction and mobilization, and a concern
with ethnolinguistic harmony, Singapores language policy was designed as
a strategy for managing a multiethnic society, via a mother tongue policy
that encouraged Singaporeans to be bilingual in English and an official
mother tongue (i.e., a language assigned by the state as representative of
a communitys ethnic identity). This policy, which is still in effect today, is
based on a historically and culturally context-specific theory of governance
that defined national construction and ethnic/racial harmony in terms
of a particular idea of linguistic justice and the priorities that language
policies ought to address, based on a specific conception of language and
its relationship to individual and group identities.

In this chapter, we suggest that a radically different approach to policymaking is required in late modern, multilingual societies such as Singapore.
This is because the twin-poles of such societies, rescaling and consumption,
are rapidly transforming the local socio-economic and linguistic landscape
in ways that cannot be accommodated by conventional state-driven
language policies. Rescaling refers to the process whereby socio-political
units undergo various forms of realignment, giving rise to new relations
between scales, thus affecting the organization of social activities and
patterns of interaction (Fairclough 2006: 167). Processes of consumption,
similarly, are leading to reconceptualizations of social value, especially since
consumption is increasingly becoming a key channel for the construction
and communication of identity (Baudrillard 1988; Giddens 1991; Beck
182 Christopher Stroud and Lionel Wee

1992). The effect of these processes on the sociolinguistics of late modernity
is of such magnitude that it necessitates a shift in our understanding of
linguistic justice.

We have chosen to illustrate our argument for a transformed language
policy with details from the Singaporean context. Singapore presents an
especially pertinent case study as it has a consumer culture comparable
to that of advanced developed nations and all the characteristics of a
society in late modernity (Chua 2003), but is coupled with a highly explicit
language policy tailored to a modern nation-state. We are therefore able
to point to a range of issues that the Singaporean context raises that we
suspect are common to late modern societies in general. A core concern
is reconciling a consumer-oriented and diasporic, mobile population with
more traditional, liberal and sedentary notions of citizenship. This concern
carries implications for a (re)theorization of language policy.

In the concluding section, we suggest that considerations of linguistic
justice in the Singaporean context require greater reference to autonomy,
choice, and reflexivity notions that seldom figure in conventional
language policies. More specifically, our proposal centres around: (i) a reconceptualization of the notion of language in terms of sociolinguistic
consumption; (ii) an understanding of identity as involving not only
processes of recognition but also of (re)distribution (Fraser 1998); and
(iii) the deconstruction of the category of mother tongue in discourses of
language planning.

Following a short presentation of the fundamental design characteristics
of contemporary Singaporean language policy in the next section, the
following section presents some of the problems that this policy is currently
encountering under conditions of Singaporean late modernity.2 The third
section develops the conceptual framework, and the final section concludes
the chapter.
Singaporean language policy

Since independence in 1965, Singapore has grappled with the problem of
how to manage its ethnolinguistically heterogeneous population across a
range of socio-political contexts, and its mother tongue policy represents
an ingenious attempt in this regard. This policy recognizes four official
languages: English and three mother tongues: Malay for the Malays,
Mandarin for the Chinese, and Tamil for the Indians. By recognizing three
mother tongues, the policy goes a long way towards establishing a principle
of interethnic parity. English is not acceptable by the state as a mother
tongue on the grounds that it is a Western language, marking a non-Asian
Other. 3 English is deemed necessary, however, both as an interethnic
Language policy and planning in Singaporean late modernity 183

lingua franca and for global economic competitiveness. This makes it
particularly vital that English be seen as ethnically neutral, so that any socioeconomic advantages that come with proficiency in the language will not
be associated with a specific ethnic community, which might otherwise
raise the danger of interethnic tension. The mother tongue, on the other
hand, is needed to ensure that Singaporeans remain rooted to their Asian
heritage even as they compete globally. In this way, the policy encourages
the learning of English as well as the official mother tongue.

To all intents and purposes, these design characteristics manifest one
possibility in a particular brand of policy framework. De Schutter (2007:
5) has noted how the philosophical bases for appropriate (and just) state
reactions to linguistic diversity have traditionally been formulated in terms
of: (1) a tension between liberalism and communitarianism (that is, the
trade-off between ideas of atomistic individual rights and the importance of
socio-cultural contexts for the development of a self), or some attempted
reconciliation of both (Kymlicka 1995); and (2) multiculturalism, which
centres on the importance of identity (group or individual) for politics.
Importantly, these distinctions are fundamentally about types of citizenship
in multicultural polities, but they are also pertinent to one of the most
fundamental questions of contention in language politics, namely what
the value of linguistic membership the value of being part of a linguistic
community amounts to on a political level (De Schutter 2007: 4).

In the Singaporean context, citizenship is complexly rooted in both
a private traditional sphere and a modern public arena. Subsequently,
Singaporean language policy conceives of mother tongues as entities owned
by their speakers, tied to specific locales, inherited across generations,
and thus steeped in tradition (cf. Gellner 1983; Anderson 1991). Also,
each mother tongue is constituted as the cultural repository of values
and traditions for its associated ethnic group, thereby thought to figure
importantly in identity construction. English, in contrast, is supposedly a
purely instrumental language by virtue of the socio-economic advantages
it offers. In this way, the policy argues, both English and the mother tongue
are equally essential, but for different reasons. Where the three mother
tongues are concerned, the state also intends that they be of equal status so
that no single ethnic group is privileged over any other. This policy accords
rights and obligations to the citizen in respect of access to and acquisition
of the designated mother tongues, as well as the right (and obligation) to
access and acquisition of English. Notice that by denying English the status
of a mother tongue, the state is trying to pre-empt claims that the language
might be seen as belonging to a specific group of Singaporeans. However,
as we shall soon see, the state did not anticipate that Singaporeans might
want to claim some nativized variety of English, such as Singlish (see
Bruthiaux this volume, for further discussion) as belonging to the nation as
a whole, that is, as a marker of national identity.

More crucially, this policy is built around a specific understanding of
language, the idea of linguistic distinctness, which takes the world to
be a neat patchwork of separate monolingual, geographical areas almost
exclusively populated by monolingual speakers (De Schutter 2007: 3).
Singaporean language policy conceives of multilingualism precisely as (a
limited set of) serially compounded monolingualisms: it recognizes only
English plus official mother tongue bilingualism, and the state expects
Singaporeans to ideally be equally proficient in both English and their
official mother tongue (Lee 1983: 43). Such a view of multilingualism
does not officially recognize cross-fertilization between ethnic groups (e.g.,
Malays speaking Mandarin, or Indians proficient in Malay), nor does it
acknowledge the flux and flexibility of multilingual, hybrid economies of
communication. And it certainly does not take into account the possibility
that, as generations of Singaporeans continue to acquire English, some
nativized version of the language will emerge. Such a development will pose
serious problems for the states refusal to consider English a mother tongue
of Singaporeans in general.

In the following sections, we provide data that show how sociolinguistic
practices and ideologies no longer fit comfortably into policy frameworks
constructed along such lines.
Singapore and the challenges of late modernity

Singaporean language policy was formulated against the background of
historical concerns about cohesive citizenship in an evolving multi-ethnic,
bounded, nation-state in a situation of perceived crisis (see Rappa and
Wee 2006). The sociolinguistic landscape has since undergone radical
transformation due to socio-economic and geopolitical developments,
namely the growth of a consumerist society, on the one hand, and a new
territorial permeability brought about by transnational mobility and other
processes of rescaling.
Consuming Singapore
Bauman (1998: 24), writing about advanced Western democracies, notes how:
Ours is a consumer society in a similarly profound and fundamental sense
in which the society of our predecessors used to deserve the name of a
producer society The way present-day society shapes up its members is
dictated first and foremost by the need to play the role of the consumer,
and the norm our society holds up to its members is that of the ability

and willingness to play it The difference is one of emphasis, but that
shift does make an enormous difference to virtually every aspect of society,
culture and individual life. The differences are so deep and ubiquitous
that they fully justify speaking of our society as a society of a separate and
distinct kind a consumer society.4
This statement in fact admirably depicts the contemporary Singaporean

condition (cf. Chua 2003).

One salient aspect of consumption in late modern societies is its
importance for individuals identity constructions, and since a consumer
society is defined largely by the wide variety of goods that can serve as
markers of identity, the notion of choice (Giddens 1991: 197; Bauman 1998:
30) becomes of utmost importance. The consumer can be held responsible
for the choices he or she makes in the kinds of objects or activities he or
she consumes regardless of whether or not such choices are freely exercised
(Warde 1994: 881). With responsibility and choice comes the need to be
reflexive. For Beck (1992: 131) and Giddens (1991: 81), reflexivity is an
important feature of modernity since the outcomes of socio-cultural (as
well as scientific-technological) practices involve risks, and therefore need
to be constantly monitored and fed back into the conduct of the practices
themselves. Thus, actors who are more reflexively-oriented can be said to
have an advantage over actors who are less so. The emphasis on choice
also makes it a rational strategy for the consumer to avoid being overly
committed to a particular commodity or identity since this might preclude
future choices. As Bauman (1998: 28) puts it:
Identities, just like consumer goods, are to be appropriated and possessed,
but only in order to be consumed, and so to disappear again. As in the case
of marketed consumer goods, consumption of an identity should not
must not extinguish the desire for other new and improved identities,
nor preclude the ability to absorb them.
Adapting an example from Chua (2003: 5), we might note that a consumer
could freely choose to buy either a Nike t-shirt or a batik shirt. The former,
however, is less preclusive because it is an everyday thing everywhere
whereas the batik shirt, outside of Indonesia ... is exotic and is worn only
occasionally, almost ceremonially. The difference in quantum sales between
t-shirts and batik shirts can be readily imagined (Chua, ibid.). In other
words, the batik shirt indexes an ethnic/exotic/traditional identity which
limits the occasions on which the shirt can be worn. In contrast, the t-shirt
indexes a casual approach to modern life, and imposes fewer restrictions on
its wearability.

Language is also increasingly an object of consumption, where the
choice of what language to learn and/or to pass on to children is less

determined by traditional ethnic linguistic heritage, and more by the
calculated decision on what purchase knowing a particular language may
bring to a range of symbolic and material markets.5

English, as noted earlier, has been promoted by the state as a modern
language with significant economic value, and because of this, it has
become strongly associated with educational achievements and material
wealth, making it a desirable and important language in the minds of
Singaporeans.6

Furthermore, the languages people choose to consume on a dayby-day basis are impacting upon (traditional) macro-level sociolinguistic
ordering of languages, to the extent that the states energetic and
encompassing promotion of English is leading to massive language shift
despite the fact that this was not its intention over a period of
thirty years (Li, Saravanan and Ng 1997: 368). The rise of English is most
pronounced in Chinese and Indian homes. Chinese homes citing English
as the home language rose from 10.2% (in 1980) to 23.9% (in 2000). For
Indian homes, the corresponding figures are 24.3% (in 1980) and 35.6%
(in 2000). Malay homes show a less pronounced shift to English, possibly
due to the close affiliation between the Malay language and the religion of
Islam (Pakir 1993: 75; Kwan-Terry and Luke 1997: 296). Nonetheless, these
still show a discernible movement towards the English language, from 2.3%
(in 1980) to 7.9% (in 2000). The increased use of English in the homes
has even resulted in a number of cases where Singaporeans are describing
themselves as literate in only English, which obviously contradicts the states
desire to promote bilingual proficiency in both English and the official
mother tongue. Table 8.1 (adapted from Leow 2000: 75) shows that a
significant number of Singaporeans in their mid-forties or younger claim to
be monolingual in English.
Table 8.1 Resident population aged 15 years and above: Literate in only English
Age (years)
1524
2534
3544
4554
5564
above 65
% of population
12.6
18.1
28.9
26.0
9.1
5.3
Total = 353,801
One interpretation of these developments is that Singaporeans tend to put

the instrumental value of a language above the sentimental or symbolic
value (Li, Saravanan and Ng 1997: 380). It is true that English, especially
in its manifestation as the nativized variety known as Singlish, is also of
great symbolic value for many Singaporeans as a marker of their national
identity. But the observation by Li et al. still holds because supporters of
Singlish have suggested, contrary to the states position on this matter, that

the presence of Singlish does not jeopardize or compromise Singaporeans
ability to acquire standard/good English (Wee 2005). They see no
reason why the two varieties of English cannot co-exist, and therefore
reject the states argument that continued use of Singlish will only lead to
ghettoization (cf. Freeland and Patrick 2004: 17).

Even the Chinese dialects, which in Singapore commonly refer to
Chinese languages other than Mandarin, are seen as valuable linguistic
resources in todays consumerist context of late modernity. In spite of their
use still being discouraged by the Speak Mandarin Campaign,7 Singaporeans
have not eliminated them from their linguistic repertoire. Rather, they have
created a space to re-signify these languages as instrumental or practical.
For example, Leeling, a medical social worker in her early twenties, finds
Cantonese extremely useful, even though she comes from a Hakka rather
than a Cantonese background. Leeling values Cantonese because it helps
her to communicate with many of the elderly patients she encounters in
her work (Hing 2004: 56). Interestingly enough, the use of dialects may
even have no relevance at all for these speakers sense of ethnic Chinese
identity, as seen in the remarks of Justin, a Hainanese male, whose attitude
towards Hainanese seems to echo that of Leelings towards Cantonese.
Justin does not see Hainanese as a part of my identity, it is just Chinese
and it just happens Im Hainanese (Hing 2004: 64). In other words, the
dialects are seen as neither crucial to the speakers ethnic identity nor
to the preservation of tradition, and their continued use provides a nice
illustration of how the prime effect of the Speak Mandarin Campaign has
been to de-link dialects from local identities.

In all these cases, socio-economic and pragmatic considerations
determine choice of language or how languages are conceived, more so
than issues of identity or ethnicity. Even where identity is highlighted, as
in the case of Singlish and its supporters, it is on the basis that this can be
maintained without threatening economic growth. This development is also
apparent in the emergence of widespread (unofficial) bilingualism that
cuts across ethnic boundaries, resulting in speakers acquiring languages
(other than English) that bear no official association with their designated
(ethnolinguistic) identities. In one sense, this is an outcome of state-funded
housing and school policies, which, aimed at preventing the creation of
ethnic enclaves, provide structural and institutional encouragement for
spontaneous language acquisition across ethnic groups. Edwin, a young
Chinese student, illustrates this well when he indicates that, in addition to
English and Mandarin, he also speaks some Malay:
(1) Edwin:
My friends, most of them are Malays.

Interviewer: All from other classes?

Edwin:
Yes, sometimes I can converse with them in a bit of Malay.

However, the converse desire to acquire Mandarin among Malay
families also results in patterns of unofficial bilingualism. This is illustrated
by Fandi, a Malay teenager, whose multilingual home environment is
underscored by the fact that, in addition to using English and Malay, he
and his family enjoy watching Chinese [Mandarin] television programs.
(2) Fandi: Cause they are ... I mean compared to Malay and some English
sitcoms, lah, I find it Chinese ... Chinese sitcoms or [VCDs],
lah, quite better cause there are better actor, actresses, actors
all sometimes like that. Then the scripts they do then the jokes
they make, the comedy all, I think Chinese are better, lah ...
Actually the whole family watch, lah. Then the volume is up
then I will understand some of the Chinese words. Then I will
bring them to school, talk to the Chinese friends in Chinese,
like that, lah.

Another example of how Chinese dialects are used as productive
linguistic resources in social interactions across linguistic and ethnic
groupings is that many male Singaporeans have found knowledge of
Hokkien to be extremely valuable during National Service, where young
men of extremely varied socio-economic backgrounds are forced to work
and interact together. National Service therefore provides for many young
Singaporean males (mainly Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Malays and
Indians) a set of experiences in which the Chinese dialects, in particular
Hokkien, are resignified as important lingua franca for getting along
with fellow soldiers as well as for simply getting things done. Hokkien
is considered especially valuable when the speaker wants to avoid being
perceived as a snob or elitist. Hing (2004: 52, 54) describes the experiences
of two such young men, Justin and Delvin, who explicitly point to the use of
Hokkien as neutralizing class differences even amongst co-ethnics (you tell
them that you are at the same level as them, so theres no airs between you
and your other army friend). The desire to avoid drawing attention to class
distinctions even between co-ethnics is a further indication that status may
be attaining a more fundamental role in Singapore society than ethnicity.

The foregoing examples suggest that Singaporeans are making
primarily instrumental choices in matters of language. The dynamics of
Singaporean multilingualism is no longer simply organized along the lines
of ethnically determined local identities, nor regulated in terms of linguistic
ownership and authenticity. Languages have become hierarchically ordered
in economic systems of value even where official policy explicitly tried to
rule this out. Speakers now learn and acquire languages for a variety of
reasons that have more to do with their perceived use-value than inherent
ownership or the performance of ethnic identities.

These developments are also reflected in respect of state-sanctioned
language practices. In response to the rise of English, the growing demand
for Mandarin among a broad spectrum of ethnic groups and the rise of
new, heterogeneous populations, the state is having to rethink the kinds
of linguistic practices it expects of Singaporeans, by offering freedom of
linguistic choice. As we have noted, the high degree of importance and
prestige attached to English by many Singaporeans has led it to displace
the official mother tongues from the home environment, which means
that more Singaporean students are entering the school system with their
official mother tongue effectively a foreign language. Instead, for many
Singaporeans, it is English (including Singlish) that is the language of the
home (and as we will see later, this carries significant implications for the
states policy that English is unacceptable as an official mother tongue).

Thus, the state has had to acknowledge that a significant number of
Chinese Singaporeans actually have great difficulty coping with Mandarin
(Today, 17 November 2003) and, in early 2004, the state implemented a less
demanding version of the Chinese language syllabus a B syllabus for
the Chinese language (similar initiatives are being considered for Malay and
Tamil) (press release, 9 January 2004). In general, having to accommodate
those English-speaking students who face difficulties in learning Mandarin
meant making a number of changes to the mother tongue policy, which
predictably led to the concern that the state was compromising on the
standard of Mandarin, a concern that Goh Chok Tong himself, then prime
minister, felt compelled to address (speech at the Chinese High Schools
85th anniversary, 21 March 2004, italics added):
(3) But those who have suggested that CL B was introduced to satisfy
the demands of a small group of English-speaking Singaporeans are
wrong. What we have is a real learning problem. And we want to try and
help those with this learning problem to at least have some proficiency
in Chinese ... A 1999 survey commissioned by the MOE [Ministry of
Education] found that Primary 5 students who were weak in Chinese
spent almost twice as much time studying Chinese than Maths and
English. A balance should be maintained so that our students can
continue to receive a well-rounded education ... The CLB syllabus
emphasizes practical communication skills to facilitate the learning
process. Far from wanting to lower the standard of Chinese, this is
in fact a salvage operation. It is to help those who cannot cope with
Chinese not give up totally. MOE hopes that the easier CL B will
sustain their interest in the language.

As a result, in a subsequent press release (3 September 2004), the
Ministry of Education announced the start of a Chinese Bicultural Studies
Programme, aimed at the minority of students who are able to cope with

both English and Mandarin at a high level of bilingual competence an
estimated elite of 10% of the population (The Straits Times, 26 November
2004).

Tamil also has little support as an intraethnic language of communication
within the Indian community, which consists of speakers of other languages
such as Malayalam, Hindi, Punjabi, and Gujerati. The position of Tamil
is even more severely affected due in part to the fact that Spoken Tamil
has little or no prestige amongst Tamil speakers themselves, who tend
to treat Literary Tamil as the only correct variety (Saravanan 1994: 86).
Consequently, many Indians have, with some success, lobbied to offer
Malay or other Indian languages (Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali) as the second
language in the schools.

And finally, conceding that instrumental value is an important
motivating factor in language choice, the state has recently argued that, in
addition to heritage reasons, Mandarin should also be learnt in order to
take advantage of Chinas growing economy. As a result, Mandarin is now
becoming so popular that a growing number of non-Chinese parents want
schools to allow their children to study the language (The Straits Times, 30
April 1994), which, of course, creates further difficulties for the state, since
this potentially threatens the equal status that all three mother tongues
(Mandarin, Malay and Tamil) are supposed to enjoy (Wee 2003).
Rescaling Singapore
Not only is life in late modernity a world of consumption, it is also a world
of objects in motion. These objects include ideas and ideologies, people
and goods, images and messages, technologies and techniques. This is a
world of flows (Appadurai 2001: 5). And as Giddens (1990: 64) observes, a
key characteristic of such constant flows is the intensification of worldwide
social relations which link localities in such a way that local happenings
are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa. The
inevitable result of such flows is rescaling, since entities defined at one
level of abstraction no longer necessarily interact with entities defined
at corresponding levels (as would be in a Westphalian framework that
envisages international interactions as primarily state-to-state). Instead, an
entity such as the state may have to deal (simultaneously) with concerns
that manifest themselves at the supra-state, sub-state as well as cross-state
levels. Jacquemet (2005: 261) observes that, as a result:
Sophisticated technologies for rapid human mobility and electronic global
communication ... are advancing a process of constructing localities in
relation to global sociopolitical forces ... Three of the most significant

outcomes of this process are: (1) the sustained development of diasporic
social formations, in which people bear multiple linguistic allegiances and
cultural belongings; (2) the emergence of media idioms (such as the use of
global English in news broadcasting, advertising, or electronic mailing lists);
and (3) the formation of global power elites and locally based semiotic
operators that use knowledge of international languages as commodities
and tools to secure, in the former case, a dominant position in the world,
and for the latter, to engage in a process of social and geographical (mostly
south-north) mobility.
Clearly, in such a world, social trajectories are increasingly unpredictable

in the sense that individuals can neither expect to be doing the same job
nor live in the same society for much of their lives. New skills will need to
be acquired, often in new environments, with concomitant implications for
the kinds of registers or social languages that are deemed relevant (Gee
2001; Agha 2007). In Singapore, the states acknowledgement of this can be
seen in how it has emphasized to the general population the importance of
constant job retraining, where older workers need to be willing to shift into
a second career as new jobs in new growth sectors arise (The New Paper, 2
May 2007).

The state has also recognized that many Singaporeans are now
travelling and working abroad, and even emigrating. In 1997, Goh Chok
Tong, then prime minister, therefore spoke of Singapore communities in
other cities (quote 4 below).8 Since Singaporeans are no longer defined in
terms of being located on the island, Goh appealed to a sense of national
loyalty and familial ties they will (hopefully) feel regardless of where they
may be.
(4) In a very mobile world, more Singaporeans will go abroad to work ...
There are ... sizeable Singapore communities in other cities Sydney,
Perth, London, Paris, Tokyo, Beijing, Bangkok, Manila ... It is a facet
of globalization and regionalization that we need to reflect on and
address ... Abiding bonds to family and friends and deep loyalties to
Singapore are crucial in this new situation. We must never forget that
Singaporeans owe one another an obligation, and the more able ones,
in whom Singapore has invested the most, have a special obligation to
society. We must all join hands to keep Singapore together.
As a response to such global flows, the state has decided to reposition itself
as a cosmopolitan, global city in order to attract talented foreigners as
potential new citizens, thus replacing those Singaporeans who may decide
to emigrate permanently.
(5) Our ... strategy to meet future competition is to gather talent and
make Singapore a cosmopolitan city ... Attracting global talent is

essential for creating the best for Singaporeans ... Singapore must
become a cosmopolitan, global city, an open society where people
from many lands can feel at home.
With respect to transnational mobility, we have an implicit admission by the

state that Singapores national identity may need to be reconstructed into
one less dependent on an Asian us versus Western them dichotomy.
(6) Therefore we must incorporate into our society talent from all over
the world, not just Chinese, Malay or Indians, but talented people
whatever their race or country of origin East Asians, Southeast
Asians, South Asians, Arabs from the Gulf and Middle East, North
Americans, Europeans, Australasians, even Latin Americans and
Southern Africans ... Some will integrate into our society and settle
here. For them we hope this spirit will eventually evolve into one of
loyalty and rootedness to Singapore ... We must therefore welcome the
infusion of knowledge which foreign talent will bring.
However, at the same time that the state recognizes choice and autonomy,
and formulates policy around mobility, flux and change in many areas, it
also wishes to keep a sense of a bounded Singaporean Asian community,
apparent in Gohs assertion that this very same strategy of becoming a
cosmopolitan city is also part of how Singapore can maintain our Asian
heritage.
(7) Our strategies to maintain sound macroeconomic policies, to
welcome talent, to maintain our Asian heritage, to be cosmopolitan
city, and to involve everyone in building our best home will only
succeed if we become one people, one Singapore.
Even as Goh argues that Singapore society must be more open, he insists
on maintaining the societys Asian heritage. In this way, arriving at a
judicious balance between a thoroughgoing cosmopolitanism one
informed by more pragmatically oriented responses to the challenges of late
modernity and the retention of a robustly Asian national identity remains
an ongoing challenge for Singapore.

Rescaling, as noted earlier, occurs when relations between demographic
or political units are realigned, often in complex and unpredictable ways.
This in turn affects activities and interactions because it necessarily involves
the re-contextualization within [an] entity of social practices, forms of
discourse, forms of institution and organization, forms of governance and
styles and genres which are operative elsewhere (Fairclough 2006: 167).
Rescaling will clearly impact upon the organization of multilingualism
in Singaporean society. To take one example, the success of the foreign

talent policy will eventually impact upon Singapores language policy,
especially the mother tongue policy, because the foreign talent policy
aims to persuade such talent to take up Singaporean citizenship, and the
success of this policy could well change the nations demographics (Wee
and Bokhorst-Heng 2005; and see Lim this volume for the implications for
linguistic ecology). Japanese, Korean, French or American foreign talent
who become citizens obviously cannot be expected to embrace Mandarin,
Malay or Tamil as their official mother tongues. Rather, the concept of
mother tongue will have to be broadened to include many more languages
than the current three, including crucially English. This means that the
state will need to abandon its stance that English is unacceptable as a mother
tongue and, instead, recognize that its insistence on opposing this Western
language to the Asian mother tongues is no longer tenable (see below).

The other side of the coin is that language practices among
Singaporeans themselves are increasingly likely to be transidiomatic, as
Singaporeans located across the globe communicate amongst themselves as
well as with individuals of other nationalities. This is because (d)iasporic and
local groups alike recombine their identities by maintaining simultaneous
presence in a multiplicity of sites so that groups are using different
languages and communicative codes simultaneously present in a range of
communicative channels, both local and distant (Jacquemet 2005: 2645).
In other words, language practices will typically involve mixed codes and
multiple communicative frames rather than occur within the (monolingual)
boundaries of delimited languages (Jacquemet 2005: 274). Because these
transidiomatic practices take place in diasporic transnational contexts, they
are much harder for the state to police despite the fact that their very
hybrid nature puts them at odds with the mother tongue policy favoured by
the state.

The mother tongue policy has also had to be more flexible because the
children of Singaporean expatriates returning to Singapore would probably
not have been studying their official mother tongue while studying abroad.
This has led the Ministry of Education to acknowledge that these children
might need to be exempted from the mother tongue requirement (The
Straits Times, 20 March 1998), significantly putting the lie to early nationbuilding ambitions of full bilingualism in an Asian language and English.

From the preceding, we see that Singaporean late modernity has
involved a shift in the meaning of notions such as ethnicity, nationhood,
and identity in constructions of citizenship, with a resulting tension between
local, nation-centred and ethnically shaped citizen identities, on the one
hand, and transnational diasporic identities of consumer citizenship, on the
other. This shift and tension is also reflected in the workings of Singaporean
language policy. The original intention of Singaporean language policy as
a tool in ethnolinguistic management is unable to accommodate a class

dynamics that crosscuts and undermines ethnicity, and that transforms
the field of policy into an arena for the negotiation and contestation
of consumption. At the same time, there is a need to reconcile global
developments and influences with local conditions (and national ambitions)
that is, issues are raised that require attention to a sociolinguistics of scale.
As noted, these developments have important implications for how we need
to conceive of linguistic justice. The problem in late modern societies is
to balance the ongoing attention to these more traditional concerns with
the less widely recognized challenges posed by the language-consumptionmobility nexus. Linguistic justice involves ensuring mechanisms for access
and acquisition of a wide range of languages that were earlier not possible.

What current language policy solutions show is an orientation towards
reflexivity and choice, and a growing recognition of language as (a type
of) commodity (and even lifestyle product). However, these practices also
highlight the tensions inherent in reconciling such choices with equitable
(linguistic) citizenship. In the next section, we will explore one possible
avenue of the (re-)theorization of language policy that may go some way
towards accommodating these tensions.
Revisiting language policy in late modern consumerist Singapore

In the pursuit of linguistic justice in a transnational consumerist world,
one guiding principle behind a new Singaporean language policy could be
to attempt to increase choices in consumption open to different classes.
Its core design features should therefore be built around consumption,
choice/autonomy, and reflexivity, which then raise a number of questions.
First of all, how can Singaporean language policy better be aligned with
developments in society in general? How can we reconcile an instrumental,
consumption-oriented and (re)distributive notion of language with a
role for language in recognition and identity work? And what are the
implications of a plural and autonomous linguistic choice for narratives
of national (linguistic) unity? We suggest that these three issues can be
approached through the notion of sociolinguistic consumption.
Sociolinguistic consumption
What, then, does it mean to claim that language is an object of
consumption? How does language as an object of consumption differ
from other forms of consumption? How should access to and regulation
of linguistic consumption be regulated if at all and by whom? What
is the role of individual choice? The notion of sociolinguistic consumption

suggests how answers to these questions require a reconceptualization
of language in terms of how it functions in different social domains. For
example, in understanding sociolinguistic consumption, it is important to
distinguish language as the direct object of consumption from language
that one is socialized into indirectly. In the case of the former, consumers
directly seek to learn a language; in the case of the latter, consumers
learn (bits and pieces of) a language in the course of engaging in various
activities. An example of the former might be the desire to learn English
because the language itself is seen to bestow strong socio-economic
advantages on its speakers (cf. Phillipson 1992: 271ff). An example of
the latter might be the acquisition of some French in the course of winetasting activities. In the former, the intended targets are the autonomous
denotational systems themselves (Silverstein 1998) while in the latter,
particular registers might be acquired in the context of specific activity
types (Levinson 1992). This distinction is useful because it suggests that
even languages that are perceived to be relatively valueless qua denotational
codes may acquire renewed relevance when associated with activities that
are considered important or worth engaging in.

Combining the aforementioned distinction with that of choice, we
arrive at the following four-way typology of sociolinguistic consumption in
Figure 8.1.
Consumption of language:
More direct
More constrained
Less direct
Choice of language:

Less constrained
Figure 8.1 Typology of sociolinguistic consumption
Though the dimensions are clearly continua, for ease of exposition, we

will discuss four types of examples, where each might be placed in the
quadrants we have numbered from 1 to 4.

Singapores explicit language policy in all essentials addresses only
language in quadrant 1. In Singapore, the state expects its citizens to
be proficient in both English and an officially assigned mother tongue.
Quadrant 1 therefore describes the states mother tongue policy, which
requires Singaporeans to learn English and the mother tongue. Quadrant
2 describes a situation where the individual voluntarily decides to learn a
language, which in Singapore, would typically be in addition to English

and the official mother tongue. Quadrant 3 refers to cases where a
register is learnt in the context of activities that the individual is obligated
to participate in. These might include working and, for Singaporean
males, spending at least two years in the army as part of National Service.
Quadrant 4 refers to cases where a language is learnt in the context of
activities that the individual freely participates in, for fun or entertainment.
Typical examples include playing soccer, computer games or viewing
certain programs. Consumption of these activities may then lead the actors
to acquire the associated registers.

It should be clear from our discussion above that the states language
policy cannot be considered in isolation from its other policies and
initiatives, since language figures in all domains of social life. In other
words, language policy and planning is not just limited to what can be
found in explicit language policies or public proclamations of the state
regarding what it sees as a desirable sociolinguistic situation (that is,
quadrant 1). Language policies can be implicit and they occur in a variety
of social domains, since ideologies about language are prevalent regardless
of whether these lead to overt formulations or not (cf. Spolsky 2004). Thus,
we also need to pay attention to how the states policies outside of language
policy proper already show the impact of sociolinguistic consumption, in
response to the challenges of late modernity.
Language groups as bivalent collectivities

The question of how to reconcile an instrumental and consumptionoriented view of language with recognition and identity work can be
answered partially by way of reference to Frasers (1998: 27, italics in
original) notion of bivalent collectivities, which are groups that are
differentiated
by virtue of both the political-economic structure and the culturalvaluational structure of society. When disadvantaged, they may suffer
injustices that are traceable to both political economy and culture
simultaneously. Bivalent collectivities, in sum, may suffer both socioeconomic maldistribution and cultural misrecognition in forms where
neither of these injustices is an indirect effect of the other, but where both
are primary and co-original.
Advantaged bivalent collectivities enjoy both a valorization of cultural

resources and access to socio-economic goods. For disadvantaged
collectivities, the core of the problem lies in the mutually reinforcing
problem of linguistic non-recognition coupled to the lack of access to
resources and distribution. In the Singapore context, an advantaged bivalent

collectivity might be exemplified by the fact that Chinese Singaporeans have
a culture that is officially recognized as well as an official mother tongue
(Mandarin) that has been gaining in economic value due to the influence
of China (as noted earlier). In contrast, while the Indian Singaporeans also
have official recognition of their culture, it has been difficult to sustain the
argument that their official mother tongue (Tamil) carries any significant
economic cachet (Wee 2003).

The notion of bivalent collectivities suggests that attempts at
redistributive justice that merely affirm inherited cultural affiliations will
always end up privileging some collectivities over others despite the
best of intentions. A better direction to pursue would be to aim for a
deconstruction of how individuals membership in group categories are
construed, so as to open up the possibility of multiple socio-economic and
cultural pathways that are minimally constrained by the provenance of ones
group membership (Stroud 2001).9

This clearly does not mean that ethnic or national identities cease
to be important, since decisions regarding sociolinguistic consumption
often implicate dimensions of identity work. But there is a need for the
language policy to facilitate individual choices that are as unfettered
as possible by broader socio-cultural obligations. For example, Fandis
reference (see example 2) to picking up some Chinese words and using
them with his Chinese friends in school is an indication of how his
instrumental-pragmatic language choices interact in important ways with
ethnic identity considerations. As a Singaporean studying in the Englishmedium educational system, Fandi is all too aware that competence in
English carries great symbolic value as a marker of prestige. And being
Malay, Fandi knows that there is a social expectation that he speak Malay
since it is supposed to mark his ethnic identity. But because Chinese has no
bearing at all on either his identity as a Singaporean or as a Malay, Fandi
can afford to dabble in Chinese without worrying about being marked
as an unsophisticated Singaporean or as a Malay who has lost touch with
his ethnic roots. In this sense, the use of Mandarin also allows Fandi to
liminally slip between established and regulated categories and identities.

In the case of English, it is ironic that the state seems unwilling or
unable to appreciate that the emergence of a nativized variety can be
considered an encouraging sign, since it is possible to suggest that true
competence in English cannot be divorced from a sense of ownership in
the language. This means that a sine qua non of effective use of English is
the willingness of speakers to consider themselves native speakers of their
own dialectal variant, which has been hailed as a viable marker of a national
identity. With this in mind, appropriations of English by speakers for various
social activities including its manifestation in the form of Singlish can
and probably should be seen as encouraging signs that English is taking root
to the point where speakers are becoming comfortable with the language.

Singapores language policy, then, needs to be more explicit
in recognizing and catering to the kind of unofficial sociolinguistic
consumption that Fandis acquisition of Mandarin exemplifies. It also needs
to adopt a more realistic and tolerant view of the sociolinguistic dynamics
of English, since nativization is likely if not inevitable once a society starts
using the language with enthusiasm.
National identities and the deconstruction of mother tongues

We have noted an increasingly autonomous and fluid construction of
a language-identity link, and a reconfiguration of identities in terms
of consumerist, lifestyle choices. Furthermore, what was already a
heterogeneous Singaporean population to begin with looks set, in the
context of late modernity, to become even more increasingly varied in
its sociolinguistic profile, as new technologies and industries emerge, as
citizens who have lived overseas return to the country, and as foreign talent
from different parts of the world take up Singaporean citizenship. In this
context, the notion of mother tongue loses much of its appeal for language
politics. The states mandatory assignation of a specific mother tongue,
or even a limited set of mother tongues, onto this kind of ethnolinguistic
diversity is simply unrealistic. Expanding the set of mother tongues
available for adoption means that the number of mother tongues will
need to be increased to the point where the privileging of Asian mother
tongues over Western ones including English will be impossible to
sustain. That is, if the state were still intent on retaining some form of
mother tongue policy, this would probably have to include acknowledging
English as an official mother tongue for many Singaporeans (including
the Perakanans, the Eurasians, returning Singaporean expatriates and
foreign talent who have decided to take up Singaporean citizenship).
The alternative is that the official mother tongue policy will have to be
eventually abandoned. As Wee and Bokhorst-Heng (2005: 1767) observe:
This might mean that, in so far as the state is still intent on encouraging
Singaporeans to keep in touch with their mother tongues, this will have to
be done softly, via persuasion but accepting that the final choice lies with
the individual. Furthermore, once the mother tongue issue is ceded more
toward the personal domain, then it becomes clear that what language
a particular Singaporean may consider his or her mother tongue is also
something that can no longer be mandated by the state; this, too, will be a
matter of personal choice Thus, it seems to us that the most reasonable
option for the state is for it to shift away from the current mother tongue
policy with its Asian-centricity towards a more open bilingual policy. By
this we mean that, in addition to English, students ... can learn whichever

language they want for any number of reasons: either because they
consider this other language interesting, they see it as a part of their
heritage, or simply because they think it is economically useful. The state
may then still want to encourage Singaporean citizens to learn their various
mother tongues, but this would no longer be part of an official policy
which would be mandatory in the schools. Instead, Singaporeans would be
able to exercise their own choice in deciding what language they consider
to be their mother tongue.
Deconstructing the notion of mother tongue from one that is tied to

specific ethnic identities to one that is more reflective of an individuals
lived experiences would allow the language policy to better accommodate
the growing diversity of the population. It would require dispensing with
narratives that insist on positioning English as a purely instrumental
language that should, purely by state fiat, have no place in the Singaporean
identity. All of this suggests that new nation-state narratives constructed
around an idea of linguistic cosmopolitanism need to be formulated. The
spatially situated mother tongue that for so long has been indexical of
nation-states and their borders can poorly serve such a function in late
modern Singapore.
Conclusion
In many respects, Singapore is already responding to the conditions of
life in late modernity by embarking on a variety of initiatives. In this wider
social policy context, the states ethnolinguistically oriented language
policy stands out as something of an anomaly, especially since language
policies in general cannot be isolated from broader social concerns. A
discussion of the language policy proper also shows how sociolinguistic
reality significantly diverges from what the state intends to achieve. Such
divergences, we suggested, illustrate the overriding weight of socioeconomic considerations and the critical state of ethnolinguistically based
language policy models. In this context, we have noted that a sociolinguistic
ordering around notions of ethnicity and nation does not fit easily with
the multilingual dynamics of late modern societies. Societal development
in late modernity, we have argued, is generating linguistic hierarchies of
value that are massively reconfiguring issues of language and ethnicity into
questions of language and class.10 Singapores language policy thus needs
to appreciate that patterns of multilingualism are increasingly constructed
around the dynamics of language choice and change informed by a logic of
lifestyle consumption and mobility.

We also argued that one important principle suggested by the notion
of sociolinguistic consumption is that language policy needs to move

towards giving greater space to autonomy, such that individuals are allowed
to decide for themselves many linguistic matters that are currently the
purview of the state. The role of the state would then be to ensure that
choices are made in a critically reflexive environment, one characterized
by a sophisticated appreciation of language dynamics and their possible
consequences. In this connection, it is encouraging to note that Singapores
Ministry of Education is currently exploring the introduction of a preuniversity programme, envisaged to cover basic topics in sociolinguistics,
grammar and psycholinguistics. This initiative can be expected to raise the
general level of metalinguistic awareness amongst younger Singaporeans.
The impetus at present, however, is less due to a desire to enhance
autonomy and critical reflexivity in language choices than to the desire to
improve students learning of the English language. Be that as it may, this
is certainly an important if tentative step in the right direction, since the
states top-down approach in deciding for its citizens what should properly
constitute a politics of language, based on its own conceptual division
between (ethnic) identity and instrumentalism, between a private, noneconomic sphere of action and a public, economically suffused sphere, is
no longer a tenable project.
Notes
1. This chapter builds on a number of themes that are discussed in greater detail
in Stroud and Wee (2007). The aim of that paper was to provide a critique
of Singapores language policy by developing the notion of sociolinguistic
consumption. The present chapter continues this project, by suggesting what
the outlines of Singapores language policy might look like once sociolinguistic
consumption has been taken into consideration.
2. The term late modernity is often used to emphasize that some highly
developed societies represent continuing developments of modernity rather
than a completely distinct stage of postmodernity (Giddens 1991; Beck 1992).
And as Giddens (1990) observes, modernity is inherently globalizing, by which
he means that the social transformations associated with modernity lead to the
exacerbation of the characteristics associated with globalization.
3. In this regard, it is perhaps ironic that English has been the de facto working
language of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and, with the
signing of the ASEAN Charter, has become its sole working language.
4. To accept this is not to deny that societies may differ in the kinds of
consumption available and acceptable to members (Savage et al. 1992).
5. Such an observation problematizes the distinction between integrative and
instrumental motivations in language learning, which have typically been
treated as clearly demarcated so that learners are usually characterized as
being impelled by a commitment to one form of motivation or other. Rather,
both integrative and instrumental motivations interact in complex ways so

that even considerations of community affiliation are not easily divorced from
more pragmatic factors. Norton (2000: 101) makes a similar observation
when discussing her notion of investment: The conception of instrumental
motivation presupposes a unitary, fixed, and ahistorical language learner who
desires access to material resources that are the privilege of target language
speakers. The notion of investment, on the other hand, conceives of the
language learner as having a complex social history and multiple desires. The
notion presupposes that when language learners speak, they are not only
exchanging information with target language speakers, but they are constantly
organizing and reorganizing a sense of who they are and how they relate to the
social world. Thus an investment in the target language is also an investment
in a learners own identity, an identity which is constantly changing across time
and space.
6. See Gupta (1998) and Lu (2005) for discussion of corroborating statistical data.
7. This is an ongoing annual language campaign, initiated in 1979. It is aimed
at encouraging Chinese Singaporeans to speak their official mother tongue,
Mandarin. In attempting to do this, the campaign, especially in its early years,
aggressively called for the elimination of all other Chinese dialects.
8. All quotations from Goh in this section are from his 1997 National Day Rally
Speech.
9. One possibly useful model in this regard might be the European Unions
language policy of plurilingualism, which recognizes that a persons functional
proficiency in various languages will involve a range of levels dependent upon
different needs. We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out (see
also Beacco and Byram 2003).
10. Since access to, and distribution of, goods and practices are highly correlated
with socio-economic standing, we treat consumption as an indicator of class. It
is of course possible to approach class as an objective macro-structural category
with attention given to the social trajectories of relatively large populations.
However, it is also possible to conceive of class in more interactional terms
(cf. Bradley 1996), and instead treat it as a social category which refers to the
lived relationships surrounding social arrangements of production, exchange,
distribution and consumption (Bradley 1996). Where such relationships
implicate inequalities or even differences, it is plausible to speak of an incipient
sense of class consciousness and, in this way, considerations of class can mediate
other characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, age and sex to the extent that
these are also part of the complex set of social categories indexed by differential
access to social goods (cf. Rampton 2006; see also Abercrombie and Warde et
al. 2000; Archer and Francis 2006).
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Part IV
English in Education
Problematizing the implementation of

innovation in English language education
in Singapore
Rani Rubdy
Much has been written about Singapores successful implementation

of its syllabus reforms and carefully monitored innovations in English
language education in the course of its 45-year-old history. Yet the history
of educational change has shown that in spite of large and expensive
campaigns undertaken at the national level, 75% of them fail to survive
in the long term or die out (Adam and Chen 1981), that disappointingly
few proposed improvements catch on (Fullan 1982). Indeed, the success
of curriculum innovations is more often than not determined by their
contextual validity and the extent to which they are perceived to be
relevant, appropriate, empowering and owned rather than imposed.

In the case of Singapore, one reason for the governments continued
investment in English language education is the critical role it has come to
play in building the human and social capital necessary for harnessing the
global economy. Education is largely under the control of the government,
with a centralized curriculum. The Ministry of Education (MOE) takes
the initiative for syllabus design, development, revision and review, usually
in response to policies motivated by social, economic and political forces
and changing trends in mainstream ELT theory and practice. Changes to
the syllabus are centrally mandated for nationwide implementation and
teachers are expected to faithfully implement them at the classroom level.
Such reform initiatives are generally accompanied not only by changes
in textbooks but massive efforts at teacher training. Indeed, the MOEs
emphasis on training and re-training is a recognition of the important
role that teachers play in helping to sustain change, and appears to be
favourable to curriculum reform and educational change. It also reflects
how in Singapore, belief in planning as a guiding ideology leads to
proactive government intervention in the domain of education and is met
with unanimous acceptance and little overt resistance. However, this chapter
argues that despite these well-intentioned attempts at curriculum renewal,
208 Rani Rubdy

real change at the level of the classroom has been problematic. It suggests
that the reason for this might well be that central government control
such as that found in Singapore necessarily stifles innovation and impedes
ownership of the reform by its recipients. It contends that while such
syllabus renewal initiatives may, to some extent, help achieve the countrys
economic targets and nation-building projects through the socialization of a
skilled but docile workforce, their full potential is not likely to be realized,
given that they fall short of fostering the creativity and criticality necessary
for young Singaporeans desiring to integrate into the New World Order.
Towards educational excellence: The evolution of English

language education in Singapore
The English language curriculum that has evolved in Singapore has
been revised several times, roughly every ten years or so, mainly in
response to a range of educational and pedagogical influences in the
West and the changing perceptions of national goals and needs. Three
or four distinct stages of innovation have been identified since the first
major syllabus revision in the 1960s, much in line with Singapores
larger educational reform agenda: a survival-driven education system
(196578); an efficiency-driven education system (197990); and an
ability-driven education system (19912000) (Pakir 2004). The current
phase (2001 onwards), driven by a Knowledge-Based Economy, aims
to nurture talent and develop individual potential to the fullest in
enhancing Singapores business competitiveness, and English language
education plays a pre-eminent role within it. Indeed, standards of English
have remained a continuing concern at the highest levels of decisionmaking, strongly influencing the nature and direction of these reforms.

In delineating the what of these syllabus reforms, I will briefly review
these stages, touching only on the essentials, since much scholarship exists
already on the nature and content of these reforms, tracing important
developments in the English syllabus from the 1950s to the present (Cheah
1997, 1998, 2004; Gopinathan et al. 1998; Ang 2000; C. Lim 2000, 2003,
2004; Lin 2003; Chew 2005, 2006, 2007a, 2007b; Zhang 2006). This will
enable me to focus more on the how and why of these reforms and to
gain a critical understanding of how the structures and practices embodied
in the Singapore educational system reflect the values, priorities and
ideological assumptions held by the educational authorities.
Problematizing the implementation of innovation in English language education in Singapore 209
A survival-driven educational orientation (195978)

In the 1950s and 1960s, when Singapore was still struggling with economic
survival, English was taught and learnt in order to turn out a better
educated and suitably equipped workforce to meet the new manpower
needs of an industrializing and modernizing economy (Yip et al. 1997:
67). The exodus from vernacular to English-medium schools in the 1970s
reflects the growing demand for English engendered by the needs of the
workplace. Yet, the English syllabus remained much the same as under
British colonial rule, reflecting a prescriptive skills-based grammar approach
which emphasized the written text, canonical literature and explicit
instructional procedures.

The first two new syllabuses for English (1959 for Primary and
1961 for Secondary English School) reveal the continued dominance
of prescriptivist grammar, the explicit teaching of parts of speech, and
grammatical correctness in writing. But with the influence of structural
linguistics, the importance of correct speech and oral work began to
be highlighted. Recommended teaching methods comprised sentence
pattern drills and substitution tables, reflecting a behaviourist orientation
to learning, associated with audiolingualism and structural linguistics
(Lim 2003: 138). Phonetics was considered important for correct
speaking, and developing reading largely meant the reading aloud of
words and sentences in acquiring correct intonation and expression.

A basic inadequacy in these syllabuses was the separation between the
study and practice of idealized language forms at the word and sentence
level and experience of real uses of language at the text level. The pupils
ability to apply one to the other was assumed to arise naturally without
attempts to make any explicit links between language study and language
use, in terms of interpreting or producing texts in real life (Lim 2003).
Similarly, whether the other components such as reading, written English,
speech training, poetry, drama, story-telling, spelling and dictation and
oral English activities for the primary level were linked in any way to the
language study and practice was a matter left to the teachers (Lin 2003).

The 1971 Syllabus for English (Primary) (Ministry of Education [MOE]
1971) that was to follow was essentially similar, if theoretically more firmly
structuralist: with an emphasis on speech as primary, and the teaching
of grammatical items through repetition, drills and reinforcement ... to
ensure mastery of grammar and syntax (Lim 2003: 140). The emphasis on
literary texts continued under the guise of enrichment, arguably, as Lin
(2003: 227) states, further emphasizing the divorce between learning about
the language, and learning to use the language.
210 Rani Rubdy
An efficiency-driven educational orientation (197990)

This period marks the beginning of English as a medium of instruction
from Primary 1 onward in all Singapore schools. The syllabus, however, was
still grammar-based and highly prescriptive, characterized by a bottom-up,
part-to-whole approach where pupils were taught discrete grammar items
and vocabulary before they were exposed to sentences and short passages
(Cheah 2004: 354).

The aims of the 1981 English Language syllabus were rather narrow,
restricted to the acquisition of the minimum core skills of listening,
speaking, reading and writing, to help pupils achieve the sort of functional
literacy necessary for learning the content of other subject areas in the
curriculum. Referring to the change in focus almost entirely away from
literature, Lim (2003: 143) calls this a reductive syllabus. And as Lim
points out, while for the first time there appeared to be a balance of the
four skills to be taught, what it failed to do was identify what specific uses
of each, in terms of genre, would constitute the basic functional literacy it
sought to teach. It also failed to make any useful links showing how learning
the language core could contribute to learning the necessary skills: the
unsatisfactory separation of form from function continued (Lin 2003: 229).

By the mid-1980s, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) had
become a force, and began to have an increasing influence in Singapore
in spite of the stronghold of a structurally-oriented syllabus. Language
began to be taught as a means of communication in meaningful context,
characterized by an integrated approach to the teaching of the four skills,
whole person learning, and the introduction of process writing in schools.
Cheah (2004: 356) credits the introduction of CLT and the ground work
done by the Reading Skills Project (Ng 1980; Khoo and Ng 1985) for
subsequently paving the way for the implementation of the high-profile
ministerial supported programme, Reading and English Acquisition
Programme (REAP) and its sister project, Active Communicative Teaching
(ACT). REAP introduced beginning readers to an enjoyable experience
with books through the Shared Book Approach (SBA), and reading was
integrated with writing, listening and speaking activities through the
Language Experience Approach (LEA). According to Cheah, the focus
on reading brought to the attention of teachers, probably for the first
time, the importance of developing literacy skills instead of just language
skills at the primary level. The ACT programme, in particular, instituted a
communicative, activity-based approach to language learning, with group
and pair work becoming regular features in the language classroom, while
immersing the learner in a print-rich and stimulating environment.

Key words that appeared during this period are fluency, authenticity
in materials, and context, and typical activities (as opposed to exercises)

included language games, role plays and other mind-engaging tasks (Chew
2005: 5). The impact of these projects in bringing about a new wave in
thinking about English language teaching in Singapore has been well
documented (Mok 1994; Cheah 1997; Ang 2000). Many of these changes
were subsequently incorporated into the 1991 syllabus (MOE 1991) and a
decade later into the 2001 syllabus (MOE 2001).
An ability-driven educational orientation (19912000)

The 1990s is viewed as the period of the big bang in Singapores educational
reforms (Gopinathan 2001), during which the seeds for a new vision for
Singapore education were sown with A Vision of an Intelligent Island (NCB
1992). The Thinking Schools, Learning Nation (TSNL) initiative (1997)
soon followed, with the aim of promoting a critical and creative thinking
culture (Goh 1996). This was to be achieved through the explicit and
systematic teaching of thinking skills, the use of information technology (IT),
the introduction of multidisciplinary project work, and a new emphasis on
the process of learning instead of the product. Any innovation in ELT must
be seen against this larger backdrop of educational change in Singapore.

The 1991 syllabus has been considered highly innovative. For one
thing, it was much less prescriptive and structured (Ang 2000) and it
represented a major paradigm shift away from an obsession with formal
accuracy (Lin 2003). Chew writes that [t]rue to the communicative
and functional spirit then in vogue, it emphasized fluency rather than
accuracy and function rather than form. Language was viewed as a system
of meaning making and the importance of purpose, audience, context
and culture in the acquisition of language was taken into consideration
(Chew 2005: 6). Themes or topics now provided the organizational
framework and the contexts for the performance of meaningful tasks
and activities. Group work was emphasized and more creative types of
activities were encouraged, such as the use of drama, role play, storytelling, poetry, songs and language games, as a means of inspiring students
to express themselves while enabling them to acquire the language
skills indirectly. Accompanying this trend was the reconceptualization
of the teachers role as facilitator rather than a repository of knowledge.

Key features of the syllabus were learner-centredness, integration, a
process orientation, contextualization, interaction, literature and culture
(Lim 2000). The ideals espoused in the syllabus, however, were far from
achieved. One area that was not addressed was culture. Indeed, Cheah
contends that cultural literacy is likely to go unrealized as long as the focus
remains on technical literacy, that is, the orientation to language learning
as a tool for economic purposes alone. Another inadequacy was the neglect
212 Rani Rubdy

of basic literacy skills. Varghese (1998), for instance, points to the lack of
focus on strategic reading-writing skills in secondary schools, whereas in the
primary school syllabus, beginning reading instruction was not mentioned
at all (Cheah 2004: 358). The curriculum was also characterized by a lack of
genre awareness and the persistence of a narrow range of discourse patterns
both in oral classroom talk as well as in reading and writing (Gopinathan
2005: 7).

Yet another problem was posed by the element of choice, introduced to
teachers for the first time in the syllabus: this very flexibility to choose
pedagogic approaches and select themes and topics proved to be
both a nightmare and a challenge (Lim 1995) since a large number
of English teachers had little specialized training and education in
linguistics or language teaching and either did not know or did not
want to know how to make informed choices (Lin 2003: 2301).
Teachers in general were unhappy with what they perceived to be a
lack of authoritative direction in the implementation of the syllabus.
With little help provided on how particular grammatical items might be
used for specific communicative functions, they either resorted to tried
and known structuralist ways, or neglected any attention to the role of
grammatical form (Lin 2003: 2301). Not surprisingly then, what was
intended as a feature of choice and variety became a burden rather
than the gateway to teacher autonomy and freedom (Lim 2000: 9).

The 1990s was also a period when the so-called worksheet or
workbook syndrome had reached its peak, with the worksheets driving
the English instruction programme rather than supporting it (Sullivan
1997: 45). This was often compounded by the mismatch between the
Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore (CDIS)-produced
worksheets and textbooks and the examinations which remained fairly
traditional and very much skills- and accuracy-based. Consequently, as
Cheah points out, [t]eachers found themselves sandwiched between
the need to complete the school worksheets and to prepare children
for examinations which tested skills that the worksheets did not always
cover. The end result was that schools resorted to developing their own
worksheets, all of which added to intensify the worksheet syndrome
(Cheah 2004: 361). The decline of approaches such as the SBA and LEA
and the curtailing of multiple drafts in process writing in many schools
can be attributed to the competition for time from the worksheets.
Thus while the syllabus initiated new approaches to ELT, teachers
practices were very much governed by the demands of the examinations.

Overall, there appears to be a surfeit of innovative initiatives in
the 1990s crowding the school curriculum despite the reduction of the
curriculum content, with new subjects (e.g., 30% of curriculum time
devoted to IT in the language classroom, in addition to process writing,

extensive reading and the use of literature introduced in the 1980s)
promptly taking the place of those removed, with this resulting in little
change (Cheah 2004: 364).
The English Syllabus 2001: Education for a Knowledge-Based Economy (KBE)

In keeping with the nations new emphasis on developing a Knowledge-Based
Economy (KBE) for the New World Order, Syllabus 2001 serves not just
English language aims. It is envisaged as a vital means to help pupils become
independent lifelong learners, creative thinkers and problem solvers. The
syllabus thus includes for the first time a focus on both communication
and literacy development instead of just linguistic proficiency. Recurring
themes include: an emphasis on variety of discourse, context and purpose,
critical and analytical abilities, meaning and effect, and linguistic creativity,
reflecting larger societal and educational concerns (Lin 2003: 2323).

Informed by recent linguistic theories connected with discourse, genrebased approaches, and the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) of Michael
Halliday, this syllabus moves away from themes to a language use model, which
seeks to teach pupils to communicate fluently, appropriately and effectively
as well as to understand how the language system works and how language
conventions vary according to purpose, audience, context and culture (Lim
2000: 9). Grammar is no longer taught deductively through the structural or
grammar-translation approach but in context through the use of texts.

A distinctive feature of this syllabus is the specification of different
Text Types, the specific genres used for different purposes with different
audiences, classified under categories, such as Recounts, Narratives,
Instructions, Information Reports, Explanations and Expositions. A
distinction is also made between genres to be taught only for receptive
(listening and reading) purposes, and those to be taught for productive
(speaking and writing) purposes as well. The syllabus further lists the
Grammatical Features of Text Types, that is, the grammatical exponents
conventionally associated with each particular text type. Thus, it not only
provides teachers with explicit guidance on the selection of authentic texts
but also on the specific language points to be highlighted in their teaching.

In terms of classroom pedagogy, the principles of learner-centredness,
process orientation, integration of the four skills, contextualization of
language work, spiral progression and interaction take precedence. In
addition, it re-introduces components that were inadvertently left out in the
1991 syllabus, for example, phonics and the explicit teaching of grammar.
Because of this element of continuity, it has been called an evolutionary
rather than a revolutionary syllabus (Lim 2000), an indication that change
is not just constant but also cyclical.
214 Rani Rubdy

The 2001 syllabus departs from the SFL-based model in two important
ways. First, instead of employing Hallidays functionally oriented categories
of grammar, it chose to adopt traditional terminology, arguably for purely
pragmatic reasons. While rendering the genre-based approach more
teacher-friendly, the use of traditional grammatical categories has also had a
potentially negative effect: because the categories are associated with a more
prescriptivist, rule-driven paradigm rather than a meaning and purpose-driven
or choice-driven one, their use encourages an extension of prescriptive rigidity
to the text level (Lin 2003: 241), thus paving the ground for a new orthodoxy.

Secondly, it does not quite emphasize the socio-cultural processes and
principles that characterize the Australian model of genre-based pedagogy
on which it is based, with its strong underpinning of cognitivist and
constructivist learning theories, associated with scholars such as Vygotsky
and Bruner, particularly as realized in the notion of scaffolding (Derewianka
2003). The downside of these modifications is that for most teachers the
curriculum has become content-less, with text types, one of its heavily
foregrounded innovative concepts, turning into its sole organizing principle.

As the MOE readies itself for yet another phase of curriculum
renewal, plans for English Syllabus 2010 suggest an emphasis on oracy,
multiliteracies, the explicit teaching of grammar, and the continued use of
text types tempered by a focus on learning processes. It is predicted that
the competitive edge Singapores workforce enjoys because of its reputation
as an English-speaking society means there will be no let up in the pursuit
of excellence in Singapores English language education. Indeed, as Cheah
notes, Singapores penchant to keep abreast of world developments will
mean that the EL curriculum will continue evolving in keeping up with
worldwide trends while keeping a tight rein on standards (Cheah 2004: 370).
Problematizing the implementation of English language

curriculum innovation in Singapore
Curriculum innovation is a complex phenomenon, given the social,
economic, political and cultural factors that impinge on the teachinglearning process. Although there is no foolproof formula for guaranteeing
the successful implementation of an innovation, certain factors have been
identified as contributing to a climate that is conducive for it to endure.
One crucial requirement is that all participants in the innovation process
are involved and consulted. A recurring theme in the literature is that
channels of communication have to be carefully maintained, and feedback
regularly given and obtained from all participants so that all are aware of
the reasons for different courses of action (Kennedy 1988: 336), and for

this communication to be open as opposed to being covert (De Lano et
al. 1994: 491). Another important concept is the gain/loss calculation.
Individuals are more likely to support a change when they perceive the
direct benefit as outweighing the cost (Brindley and Hood 1990). Violations
of such principles can hinder sustained commitment to the project, as will
be discussed below.
Importation of Western models and the derivative nature of educational

innovation
Ever since the early 1950s, ELT pedagogy in Singapore has been modelled
on the forcefully promoted paradigms of ESL in the English-speaking West.
Singapores long history of borrowing educational ideas and practices
from countries such as the UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand, albeit in
modified form, renders these innovations derivative in nature, at best, and
questionable, at worst. Questionable, because in unabashedly espousing
imported models of educational practice, it marginalizes local teachers
and downplays local knowledge and practices, aside from encouraging
continued dependency on Western ideas (Phillipson 1992). Yet, despite
Phillipsons vociferous cautioning of how the centre states have promoted
these pedagogies in the peripheries under the unchanging belief of
their universal applicability, [a]t the receiving end, in the Third Worlds
periphery states, an inherited belief in the superiority of imported models
motivates the planners and programme developers to encourage their
adoption in ELT curricula, courses and methodologies (Tickoo 1996b:
2323). A fundamental problem with this centre-periphery model of
development is that failure to take full account of the social, cultural and/
or educational needs of the recipients of the innovation can result in
a conflict with what Holliday (1993: 3) terms the local rhythms of the
profession, leading to tissue rejection (Holliday 1992), namely, the
failure of the innovation to take root in the target context. Yet, this trend
continues into the twenty-first century, despite the fact that a number
of these approaches were invented as logical solutions for contingencies
that arose in these countries of the West that were historically unique and
context-specific.

Three such paradigms are: (a) the oral-aural method, an offshoot of
successful efforts at teaching foreign languages to allied armed personnel
in World War II; (b) the notional-functional or communicative approach
which came into existence with the emergence of the European Economic
Community and the Council of Europes (Van Ek 1975; Wilkins 1976)
efforts to help adults learn modern European languages for need-based
216 Rani Rubdy

and limited purposes; and (c) the negotiated syllabus (Breen 1984;
Candlin 1984) which sought to empower teachers and learners towards full
autonomy in a resurgence of progressivism in educational thought (Dewey
1910). Clearly, each of these pedagogical approaches came about mainly
in response to North American or European needs in ESL, and, as Tickoo
contends, are at odds with the ecological realities of Asian contexts:
First, [they] ... are products of a monolingual world where English is
taught to speakers of languages which the teacher does not know. Second,
that they have been put to use in contexts where migrant workers or
foreign students learn English for interaction with its native speakers and
in particular for social survival in a world different from their own. Third,
the primary aim in most such cases is social survival through effective oral
communication. (Tickoo 1996b: 233)

This is not to say that ideas cannot be transferred across cultures, but
it does mean that ideas generated within a particular culture, however
good or logical, cannot automatically be applied to another culture
which may have different values (Kennedy and Kennedy 1998: 458). For
instance, as Kennedy and Kennedy point out, different cultures vary in their
interpretation of collaboration or its goals: from a Western perspective,
collaboration implies equality and some degree of power over decisionmaking; but in some cultures it is seen as a way of consensus building from
the top where the ultimate decisions are made and where open conflict
or disagreement is discouraged. Jin and Cortazzi (1996) have shown
how Chinese students expectations of their tutors role clash with the
British tutors own views of their roles, and relate the clash partly to the
collectivist-individualist dimension of national culture. Similarly, referring
to teachers perceptions of CLT in the Singapore context, Chew (2006:
89) suggests that Western methodologies which stress student initiatives at
the expense of the teacher are not likely to succeed. Her findings accord
with Hus (2002), that the relevant classroom methodology in Southeast
Asian countries is a goal-oriented one where knowledge is something to be
attained rather than something that one discovers by process, intuition
and reflection. In other words, the classroom is more comfortably viewed
as a place where knowledge can be amassed rather than for experimenting
and rediscovering what one implicitly knows. Sripathy likewise points
out how critical thinking or critical engagement with texts is not the
lived cultural experiences of most Singaporeans the cultural scripts
reverence for texts, learning and teachers, notions of hierarchy and face
show very clearly why engagement of this nature is difficult (1998: 89).

Even if we submit that Western societies are becoming a lot more
multilingual in the present era of globalization, the fact remains that the

assumptions and ideologies underlying their educational policies and
practices reflect an inherently monolingual world-view that is fundamentally
Anglocentric as opposed to one that is rooted in linguistic and cultural
diversity. Thus, based on a meticulous discourse analysis of three
generations of English-teaching textbooks in Singapore for cultural bias
and cultural and linguistic hierarchization, Toh (2001) has shown that the
language pedagogy of these textbooks has its origins in a Western vision of
the world and is irredeemably Anglocentric, and hence incompatible with
the contemporary social realities of Singapore and the wider world.

It is true that Singapores very public move towards the adoption of
Asian values in the 1990s would seem to suggest that these Western ideas
were not uncritically adopted. For instance, tracing the extent of exogenous
influence on Singapores English language curriculum development from
the 1950s to the present, Ho (1997, 1998) maintains that in more recent
years an eclectic compromise has been achieved and that it may be more
useful to argue that the theories and ideas from mainstream education
have been selectively indigenized. As an instance, he contends that with
the establishment of the Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore
(CDIS), Singapore is now very much less dependent on Western publishers
for teaching materials and textbooks, while admitting that inevitably
curricular perspectives from overseas have been adopted (1998: 236). It
is important to note Chews (2007b) point though, about the narrative of
Western science, Asian values, prevalent in the 1990s in Singapore, giving
way more recently under the pressures of globalization, to one that views
culture and identity as commodities tradable in a volatile market. She
suggests that the old politics of culture and identity have been abandoned
in favour of new pragmatic positions in present-day Singapore, and argues
for the need to debunk what she sees as the rhetoric about the value of
language and culture that actually serves to hide Singapores propensity for
material advantages (Chew 2007b: 90). These trends have relevance for the
new English language syllabus scheduled for 2010.

Another argument forwarded in defence of borrowed pedagogies is
that since Singapore is more cosmopolitan than other Asian countries
with English increasingly becoming a home language, the importation of
these models may actually be less problematic in the light of these societal
developments. But the fact is, as long as the perception prevails of a oneway transfer from a culturally superior (Western) curriculum developer
to its culturally inferior counterparts, it is still potentially patronizing
(Flew 1995: 76), aside from its rabidly discouraging homegrown initiatives
grounded in local realities. This is very different from mutual learning
between people from different cultures (Flew 1995: 81), which would be
quite another matter.
218 Rani Rubdy
Exonormative standards and native speaker norms as target

The pedagogical model for teaching and learning English in Singapore is an
exonormative one, with standard British English as the officially preferred
model (Tickoo 1996a) and the University of Cambridge Local Examinations
Syndicate widely regarded as the ultimate authority on how English ought to
be spoken and written. More recently, two factors have combined to reaffirm
the emphasis on standard English: (i) the growing popularity of Singlish
in the media and among young Singaporeans which has whipped up
disproportionate anxieties at the ministerial level (deconstructed by KramerDahl as a discourse of crisis), foregrounding the sorry state of the nations
English grammar; and (ii) the massive need for economic restructuring
as the country braced itself for serious hardship during the economic
recession following a euphoric period of Asianization. As Kramer-Dahl
(2004: 73) notes, in a move to set itself apart from the other wounded East
Asian tigers, a sudden premium was placed on gaining membership in the
western industrialized community, and any improvement of the national
economy was seen as intimately linked to the production of a globally, no
longer just regionally, competitive Singapore. To this end, the notions
of international intelligibility and the native speaker ideal are consistently
evoked, linking them explicitly to economic interests to justify insistence
on this variety of standard English to be learnt and used by all. Indeed,
the alleged decline in the quality of the nations grammar and its supposed
impact on the nations economic competitiveness has been made the basis
for a nationwide campaign, called the Speak Good English Movement
(Rubdy 2001; Chng 2003). Speaking good English thus has national
merit and is connected to notions of good citizenship. As Bokhorst-Heng
et al. (this volume: 133) state, In this context ... the Inner Circle speakers
of English continue to be regarded as the true owners of English. At the
same time, speakers of the local variety of English, especially the colloquial
form of Singlish, are portrayed as uneducated, uncouth, and unworldly.

However, as numerous studies on Singapore English (Platt and Weber
1980; Gupta 1989, 1994; Pakir 1991, 1998; Foley et al. 1998; Alsagoff 2001;
L. Lim 2004) have shown, not only has English in Singapore become
indigenized, taking on new forms to serve new socio-cultural needs and
express new realities, but there exists a local standard variety that is widely
used by educated Singaporean speakers in formal environments, in addition
to a colloquial variety. Yet, although these realities make the upholding of
an exonormative standard an unattainable objective, as Tickoo contends,
the true believers among policy planners have not seen the need to
redefine their target (Tickoo 1996a: 449). The result is a debilitating
dependence on native speaker models, a dependence that suspiciously
smacks of what Skutnabb-Kangas (1988) calls colonized consciousness.

As Kramer-Dahl notes, obviously, what the policy makers refuse to admit
is that, at a time when the worlds non-native speakers comprise by far the
majority of its users, the authority to create standard English no longer
resides solely with its native speakers (Lowenberg 2000: 81), and indeed
that such categories as native and non-native speaker are themselves
being increasingly destabilized. Therefore she suggests, [t]o have ... an
entire educational policy underpinned by such a narrow, simplistic notion
of standard seems to be less about preparing young Singaporeans to live
productively in a radically unstable, post-colonial, networked globalized
world the professed major aim of all the newly launched educational
initiatives than about ameliorating its effects (Kramer-Dahl 2004: 83).
A highly centralized top-down approach to implementing innovation

Since the MOE directly regulates the implementation of educational
reforms in Singapore, any policy decision tends to be introduced and
disseminated in a highly centralized top-down manner, with little input
from or involvement on the part of teachers (let alone the students)
working at the frontline of the implementation process. This means that
feedback from teachers, teacher trainers or students, if collected at all,
is rarely incorporated into revision of materials; indeed feedback from
implementation is seldom asked for and is unlikely to reach upwards to the
adopters. Even when faculty members at the National Institute of Education
are supposedly being consulted for feedback on the reform initiatives to
be put in place by the MOE, this is by and large done in a nominal fashion,
leaving little space for real negotiation or modification of predetermined
plans. Hence, the MOE represents authoritarian ways of implementing
change, giving teachers little freedom to explore or experiment on their
own or for innovative initiatives to emerge from the bottom-up, and
so denying them their essential role as central change agents. Where
centralized control is so strong, the degree of innovation which can be
expected is likely to be limited, merely leading to resistance, or surfacelevel acceptance. Teachers are likely to acknowledge the innovation
without actually playing an active role in implementing it (Morris 1988).

On the contrary, several studies in both general education and second/
foreign language teaching (Fullan 1982; White 1987, 1988; Hargreaves 1989;
Fullan and Steigelbauer 1991; Clandinin and Connelly 1992; Munn 1995,
Markee 1997; Karavas-Doukas 1998) attest that teachers involvement as well
as change in teachers are both indispensable to the success of curriculum
reform. All too often in the installation of a centralized and mass-produced
curriculum package externally imposed upon the school, ownership of
the reform tends to remain with the originators. If the logic of the new
220 Rani Rubdy

programmes, and the learning theory that informs them, is not made
explicit to the teachers, they will not feel intellectually in control of the
innovation but remain in service to ends formulated by others. The absence
of teachers ownership can lead to their not buying into the innovation.
As Rudduck points out, in the privacy of the teachers classroom it is all
too easy to fall back on past practices and familiar routines and thus muzzle
the innovation, with the result that too often the new content is conveyed
in the baggage of traditional pedagogy (Rudduck 1991: 27). Thus we are
left with the paradoxical situation of having introduced innovation without
change. The subversion of process writing in favour of concentrating
on worksheets, the recourse to traditional approaches to teaching
grammar instead of its contextualization through text and discourse, the
prescriptive rigidity in dealing with text types in a way that runs counter
to the spirit of genre theory, are all clear examples of this paradox.

In a paper examining the reasons why implementation of innovation
fails, Schiffmans (2006) incisive analysis of the way educational planning
operates in Singapore is on the mark here:
Internal criticism is not tolerated in Singapore, so internal critics have
to pussyfoot around and couch criticism in coded terms.
Foreigners can critique things, but are mostly ignored.
Academics such as those at NIE are aware of the problems, but are
ignored.
MOE and the Curriculum Development Board live in a world
untouched by reality.
Failure of teacher training

Seeing education and training as vital investments indispensable for
economic growth, the MOE has always given a great deal of emphasis
to teacher preparation and the promotion of teachers professional
development. However, it is well known that training can sometimes
create a lopsided view of priorities in language teaching, if members
of the project team fail to clarify the different preoccupations and
preconceptions and values they hold and do not reach a mutual
understanding (White 1987: 213). A clear example of this is the highprofile mandatory Singapore-Cambridge Certificate in the Teaching of
English Grammar course targeted at some 9,000 teachers in preparation
for teaching the new National Syllabus. On the face of it, it appeared that
the measures taken to ensure that the purposes, agendas and philosophy
of the 2001 syllabus were truly shared by all had been carefully and
coherently thought out, with the trainers themselves being required
to undergo mandatory briefings and training sessions. However, quite

contrary to its objective of introducing teachers to the way the system
of the English language works as a (functional) resource for meaning
making in different social contexts, the kind of (formal) subject knowledge
teachers were exposed to on the grammar course only served to revive
dogmatic notions of grammar rules and a back-to-basics interpretation.
As Kramer-Dahl points out, rather than treating grammar as a resource,
as advocated by the syllabus, the grammar courses take on it, along
with the pedagogy it taught teachers to adopt, seemed more a retreat
to normativity and prescriptivism (Kramer-Dahl 2007: 61). Worse still,
the concept was extended to the level of the text so that a rigidity with
regard to generic structure and grammatical features of particular genres
prevailed. This was, in some cases perpetuated by the course trainers
themselves, who either did not fully subscribe to or understand the
thinking and approach inscribed in the 2001 syllabus (Lin 2003: 242).

But an even more endemic reason for the failure of training to support
innovation is the tendency for teacher preparation in Singapore to manifest
a strong commitment to a philosophy of training a tradition that
emphasizes the technical and immediately practical aspects of classroom
pedagogy over education, so that something fundamental is lost in the
process (Deng 2005: 123). As Deng points out, overall, applied subjects
concerned with the instrumental use of theory, such as instructional
design and technology and classroom management, are given more
curriculum space over subjects concerned with a wider cultural, historical
and philosophical view of educational issues and problems. As a result of
adopting a narrow training model, teachers acquire competence in a limited
set of skills, behaviour, and habits of mind. Most of them are able to repeat
or demonstrate the skills they have learnt in contexts closely resembling
those in which they learnt them, but often cannot use this information in
novel circumstances or to connect ideas across lessons (Kramer-Dahl 2007),
whereas teacher preparation is more than just the acquisition of a repertoire
of pedagogical skills and techniques. As Deng states, it is also quite crucially
a matter of acquiring a certain kind of character, attitude and conduct of
becoming, as it were, a particular sort of professional. This role of teacher
preparation has neither been fully recognized nor realized, not to mention
the role concerning empowering pre-service teachers to be active agents for
educational reform (Deng 2005: 127).
Inadequate understanding of key concepts and principles on the part of teachers

and administrators
Teachers understanding of the principles and practices of the proposed
change is also indispensable in contributing to or impeding long-term
222 Rani Rubdy

success (Carless 1998). Any mismatches between the anticipated teacher
cultures and their working context can create problems for successful
change. For instance, Kramer-Dahl (2007: 62), investigating teachers
implementation of EL Syllabus 2001, found that teachers understanding
of curricular goals rested on old-fashioned static notions of language and
literacy, resulting in highly limiting ways of handling key principles such
as text types: [w]ith the classroom talk around the texts rarely exploring
them as particular meaning creations but instead as exemplars of a
predetermined type akin to a pigeon hole into which the students had
to fit the text (citing Watkins 1999: 124), the understanding promoted
among the students was rather shallow. Further scrutiny of literacy teaching
in the classroom revealed that the back to basics discourse, along with
heavy emphasis on product presentation, severely constrained teacher and
student practices. Often, lengthy and inordinately complex instructions
reinforcing aspects of task performance preceded, and cut across talk
about far more vital cognitive enabling strategies (Langer 2000) needed
for the effective execution of the literacy task. Similarly, reading tasks
were conceptualized in a highly limiting way as straightforward decoding
exercises rather than as opportunities for serious intellectual engagement,
with the text, usually abridged, a mere machine to excavate information.
When on top of that, the discourse of instrumentalism and good habits
is deployed, the exercise is delimited even further, dwelling as it does
on superficial matters of procedure and at times stripping out literacy
(citing Comber and Nichols 2004) altogether (Kramer-Dahl 2007: 55).

There is thus a clear gap between the kind of curriculum envisioned
by the English language syllabus and the way teachers construct their
subject day by day. Whereas the current syllabus, with its emphasis on
flexibility, adaptability, infusion and skills integration, definitely
envisions a curriculum that promotes a wide range of literate activities
and competences to be concurrently taught and learnt, its effective
enactment assumes teachers who have the expertise and necessary
pedagogic repertoires to put it into meaningful practice. On the
contrary, the notion of English as a formulaic, prescribed domain seems
to persist among teachers and administrators (Kramer-Dahl 2007: 49).

In addition, as Chew cautions, real change may be hindered because,
sometimes, changes have been too swift, too top-down and too shortlived (Chew 2005: 13). If the teacher encounters too many changes in the
curriculum and is constantly confronted by the demands of new teaching
approaches, this can be unproductive, leading to confusion as well as
teacher burn-out, or to the possibility of the innovatory process turning
into a mere routine. Skepticism creeps in and becomes the order of the
day (Chew 2006: 9).
Inadequate understanding of the constraints of the local educational context

The impact of contextual variables on the design and implementation
of innovation is another important issue. Fullan, for instance, cautions
that attempts at innovation in the past failed because of faulty and
overly abstract theories not related or relatable to practice, limited or no
contact with and understanding of the school, ignorance of the lessons
of experience of the reformers ... and above all the failure to consider
explicitly the relationship between the nature of the proposed innovations
and the purposes of the schools (Fullan and Stiegelbauer 1991: 223).

A clear case in point is the decline of CLT which formed the core of
the 1991 EL syllabus. Based on a recent survey, Chew (2006: 56) sums up
the reasons for Singapore teachers waning interest in CLT as follows: (i)
lack of time owing to too many continuous assessments and examinations,
combined with the perception that a pedagogy which mirrored the outline
of the exam paper would benefit the students more; (ii) the belief that the
amount of time taken up by multiple drafts in process writing would be
better spent on the acquisition of grammatical knowledge which students
could use to edit their own work; (iii) lack of good management techniques
demanded by huge class sizes (40 students); (iv) the loss of control felt by
many teachers in having to focus on students work rather than teachers
knowledge with some teachers feeling obviously stressed (and threatened)
by this; and (v) reluctance to adopt CLT wholeheartedly because the
ranking of teachers meant constantly having to prove themselves as
hardworking by assigning work that could be ostensibly seen and was
easily quantifiable (written compositions, project work, assignments, test
papers, etc.) as opposed to the arguably more effective pair and group
work activities that were however relatively ephemeral and unseen (Chew
2006: 56). Interestingly, none of these reasons have anything to do with
the inherent merits or otherwise of the principles of CLT itself, but largely
relate to the exigencies and constraints of the Singaporean educational and
institutional context.

Yet another example of local contextual constraints operating against
change is provided by teachers negative reactions towards process
writing. In Chews survey of 120 primary and secondary school teachers,
only 20% of the teachers favoured it. A majority felt that although
pedagogically useful, given the size of the classes and an exam-oriented
culture, its implementation was often unrealistic because: (i) examining
and commenting on drafts of student writing was too time-consuming; (ii)
teachers could find even less class time to incorporate techniques such
as peer group conferencing; (iii) since the competitive atmosphere in
Singapore classrooms did not encourage genuine sharing, pupils tended
to be distrustful of peer comments, preferring feedback from teachers; (iv)
224 Rani Rubdy

teachers too remained suspicious of peer-group evaluation, believing it to
be basically the job of the teacher. Not surprisingly, a significant number of
teachers confessed to implementing process writing in the first six months
of the year and then switching to exam-directed writing in the second half.
Others maintained that they were duty bound to teach in a way that would
most benefit their students, namely, by training them to get their essay
perfect the first time round since examination conditions did not provide
the luxury of writing more than one draft. Overall, it appears that an
approach that tends to play down authoritative knowledge and focuses on
the process rather than the product is not something that Singaporean
teachers are comfortable with and is inimical to them (Chew 2006: 79).
An assessment-driven, or exam-driven, curriculum

Despite the governments intention to move away from the emphasis on
examinations, Cheahs (1998) characterization of Singapores education
system as driven by examination type literacy is broadly viewed as on
the mark. It is a well-known fact that students in Singapore are heavily
dependent on private tuition so as to keep up with the paper chase (Quah
1990). Statistics show that the number of tutorial schools registered with
MOE increased by 86% in the last five years (Tharman 2004). More
tellingly, 50% to 60% of students in the upper primary schools receive
tuition in subjects that they already excel in. And as Tan (2005: 8) notes,
it is not just teachers and students who exhibit this fixation with academic
success but the preoccupation with academic excellence is transferred to
parents as well a point poignantly brought home in the locally produced
film I Not Stupid, in which EM3 stream student Guo Bins artistic talent is
held to naught by his over-anxious mother who sees no future in it for him.

This examination culture clearly militates against the successful
implementation of innovative practices. Chew, for instance, maintains
that the emphasis on examinations in Asian-Confucian cultures such as
in Singapore may not be conducive to the implementation of a CLT type
of methodology: for Singaporeans, what is really important is how
they eventually fare in the job market. And what is important for the
job market is the marks in the examination. It is the examination which
determines which programme and school a particular student is eligible
for and more importantly, what and how a subject will be taught (Chew
2006: 8) no matter what the syllabus may dictate. Her study confirms Tans
(2001) findings that experienced teachers tended to endorse activities
that promote memorization rather than creativity and cooperation,
contrary to the recommendations of the 1991 and 2001 syllabuses.

The pressure of school examinations is exacerbated by the
intensification of competition created by the ranking of schools, causing
some schools to focus narrowly on outcomes that are relevant for public
ranking and for attracting students and parents, while marginalizing others
(Tan 2006). A telling example is the decision of several reputable secondary
schools to make the study of English literature optional for their graduating
students, in view of the potential consequences that students less-thanideal performance in English literature might have on their position in the
annual ranking exercises (Nirmala and Mathi 1995; Nirmala 1997). Hence
Tan rightly asks, [a]midst this climate of risk-averse behaviour, what then
are the prospects of wide-ranging and sustained change triggered by policy
initiatives, such as the teaching of creative and critical thinking skills? (Tan
2006: 67). He argues that intense inter-school competition over the past
decade has worked as a powerful centralizing influence on all schools,
and has worked against the promotion of diversity and innovation (Tan
2006: 68).
Concluding remarks
Singapore is a society that, since the Peoples Action Party (PAP) came
into power in 1959, has been committed to catching up with the West
economically through interventionist social and educational policies
indeed through social engineering (Wee 2006). Realizing that, being a
land-scarce nation, Singapores economic growth and competitiveness
would depend less on its natural resources and more on the resourcefulness
and resilience of its people (MOE 1995: 7), education was primarily
driven by imperatives of economic development and nation building a
relentless effort at human resource development ... to maintain Singapores
economic standing in Southeast Asia and the world (MOE 1995: 89).
Against this backdrop, the implementation of curriculum innovation in
EL education has been complex and often contradictory, with competing
forces and mixed agendas operating to inhibit real educational change.

On the one hand, self-congratulations abound in relation to
Singapores educational and economic link as when the MOE proudly
proclaims: Our heavy investment in education has borne fruit; it has
enabled our young to be agile in mind and bodies and have loyal hearts.
We will continue to prepare our young to meet the challenges of today
and tomorrow ... and to contribute meaningfully to society (1995: 7).
Bisnette points out that this grand ambition is not without external support,
as in Sharpe and Gopinathans (1997: 369) endorsement that economic
success has been due to effective human resource development through
schooling. Thus Singapore has indeed survived on its human resources,
226 Rani Rubdy

carefully blending and transforming human capital into social capital and
will continue to invest heavily in human resources (Bisnette 200405: 17).

When matched against a broader conceptualization of education,
however, these achievements seem to fall short of the desired goals.
Academics, political leaders, and visiting specialists alike express concern
about a lack of interest among younger Singaporeans in aspects of learning
which do not promise tangible results (see also Sankaran and Chng 2003;
Rubdy 2005). Government leaders are united in lamenting the apparent
lack of creativity and thinking skills among students and members of
the workforce. While the Singapore school system has attained worldclass standards in mathematics, computing and other sciences, experts
have pointed out the relatively poor performance in the development
of leadership and managerial skills and its capacity to encourage the
emergence of creative and entrepreneurial talent (Johnson 1989: 12).

These limitations should come as no surprise when we examine the
ideological setting against which educational reforms are mooted. The
governments interventionist hand in educational planning is part of the
strong state hypothesis that Singapore has followed since its foundation.
The underlying assumption is that the states ability to achieve a tight
coupling between education and the economy will minimize the slippages
between them and thus produce conditions for more direct impact
of schooling on economic activity (Gopinathan 1997: 44). In such an
environment, docility, obedience to authority and acceptance of hierarchy
are encouraged not only within the classroom context (Pang and Lim
1976/1979), but also outside schooling in the wider society. Sharps
study of two neighbourhood secondary schools showed that though
the students live in a culture that self-evidently values education, they
nevertheless needed to be convinced of their academic worth (Sharpe
2001: 106). As Gopinathan states, given these set of attributes, the new
Singaporean is perhaps being rather well socialized for the reality of adult
socio-political life in Singapore since, as he suggests, this ties in neatly
with Chans (1976) observation of a political culture that discourages
conflict, confrontation and bargaining (Gopinathan 1997: 4950).

In the meantime, in line with Singapores vision to establish Singapore
as a world-class education hub, internationally known for its intellectual
capital and creative energy, proposals are afoot for integrating schools
into the corporate agenda. Essential to the realization of this vision of a
Knowledge-Based Economy (KBE) is the need for a culture that encourages
creativity and entrepreneurship as well as an appetite for change and risktaking (Economic Development Board 1999: 1). But, as Bisnette (200405)
points out, Singapore is a society noted for its careful planning and caution,
not its risk-taking.

Given the single-minded push for economic growth and the intensely
pragmatic approach towards its realization, it is highly unlikely that
centralized control over the educational realm will ever be relaxed. The
question is, will Singapores educational ecology remain forever inimical
to providing a climate and culture conducive to fostering the kind of
individual autonomy and creativity required for effective participation in the
New World Order, or will young Singaporeans of the future be allowed to
break free of the control and constraints of these structures and practices?
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10

Sounding local and going global:

Current research and implications for
pronunciation teaching1
Ee-Ling Low
This chapter summarizes recent research on the pronunciation of Singapore

English, which has provided empirical support for earlier impressionistic
observations made by the first-generation scholars in the 1980s on
Singapore English such as Tongue (1979), Platt and Weber (1980) and Tay
(1982). These empirical studies appear to have two distinct trends. One
essentially still uses auditory analysis but is backed up by empirical evidence
provided by collection of speech corpora (Lim 2004; Wee 2004; Brown
and Deterding 2005; Deterding 2007). The other set employs acoustic and
statistical analyses to either validate or offer new perspectives about previous
auditory research (e.g., Low and Grabe 1999; Brown, Deterding and Low
2000; Low, Grabe and Nolan 2000; Deterding 2001, 2003, 2005; Deterding,
Brown and Low 2005). An exploration of the intelligibility of Singapore
English worldwide will then be discussed by making reference to recent
studies on perceptual experiments to speakers from outside Singapore.
The reason for exploring the intelligibility of Singapore English worldwide
is to consider the issue of how viable it is for Singaporeans to maintain
local features of pronunciation while remaining competitive in a globalized
world. Finally, recommendations for a realistic pronunciation teaching
model will be offered based on insights given by scholars working on world
Englishes. An achievable target for classroom teachers in Singapore, given
their own pronunciation patterns, will also be discussed.

Any attempt to describe Singapore English needs to take into account
the variation that exists in this variety of English. In order to understand
variation in Singapore English, I will highlight the main theoretical models
designed by different scholars to account for the variation observed in
Singapore English. However, it is not my intention to evaluate here which
model is best for describing the pronunciation of Singapore English;
rather, this is meant to provide a context on which the description of the
pronunciation of Singapore English can be based.
236 Ee-Ling Low

One of the earliest models for the description of Singapore English is
the lectal continuum model first suggested by Platt (1977) (also described
in Platt and Weber [1980]). At the opposite ends of the continuum lie the
lowest variety, known as the basilect, and the highest variety, the acrolect.
In between these two varieties rests the middle variety known as mesolect.
The division of speakers into different lects is based solely on educational
criteria. Speakers using the basilectal variety have received only primary
or, at best, a few years of secondary education while the speakers using the
mesolectal variety have either O or A level qualification.2 Speakers using
the acrolect possess tertiary education.

Another approach is the diglossic model suggested by Gupta (1986)
which acknowledges the existence of a high (H) and a low (L) variety of
English in Singapore. Both varieties have distinct functions. The low variety
is generally used for speaking to young children outside of a classroom
context and during informal situations while the high variety carries
prestige and is used for literary expression and formal domains.

Pakirs (1991) model may be considered as one of the most widely
adopted models by scholars wishing to describe variation in Singapore
English. According to Pakir, English in Singapore varies according to two
clines: the formality and proficiency clines which in turn determine the
type of variety spoken, viz. Singapore Colloquial English (SCE) or Standard
Singapore English (SSE). In other words, the level of formality of the
situation coupled with a speakers proficiency level (defined in terms of
years spent on studying English) define which triangle of expression a
speaker uses. Her model is represented by the idea of concentric triangles,
in which smaller triangles are encased within a large triangle and the
difference between each triangle is determined by the size of their base.
In her model, the speaker with the highest proficiency in English has the
largest triangle of expression and is able to move effortlessly between the
colloquial and standard varieties of English, depending on the formality
of the communicative domain. Conversely, the lowest educated have the
smallest triangle of expression since they are constrained, by virtue of their
proficiency level, from moving upwards to speak standard Singapore English
even when the occasion calls for it.

Deterding and Poedjosoedarmo (2000) consider a model of inverted
triangles of ethnic variation in Singapore English. In their model, all
inverted triangles share a common inverted base but they each have
different vertices. They suggest that, based on the results of their perceptual
research on the ethnic identification of speakers, ethnic features of
Singapore English only appear in informal situations and this leads to each
inverted triangle possessing a distinct vertex. In formal situations, however,
ethnic variation disappears and therefore the inverted triangles share a
common base.
Sounding local and going global 237

Alsagoff (2007) suggests the cultural orientation model (COM) to
explain language variation in Singapore (see also Alsagoff in this volume).
Her model views language variation in terms of the language having to
fulfil two functions: as a global language and as an agent of intraethnic
communication and social networking. Consequently, to remain globally
competitive in economic terms, Singaporeans speak a variety which she
terms International Standard English (ISE), which is used purely for
utilitarian and pragmatic purposes. On the other hand, Singaporeans also
speak Local Singapore English (LSE) which is meant for the expression
of Singaporeans local identities. As stated by Alsagoff, COM posits that
speakers of Singapore English vary their style of speaking by negotiating
fluidly within a multidimensional space framed by bipolar cultural
perspectives, one that is global and the other local. The use of ISE is
associated with formality, distance, authority and symbolizes educational
attainment and economic value. Conversely, the use of LSE has associations
with informality, camaraderie, equality, membership within a community
and has value as socio-cultural capital. The use of ISE or LSE is determined
by the speakers competence in the language and also out of choice, that is,
whether they choose to use English for global or local purposes.

In the rest of the chapter, the description of the latest pronunciation
research on Singapore English is based broadly on Standard Singapore
English (SSE) and Singapore Colloquial English (SCE) since these
terms (SSE and SCE) have been used widely in the past few decades prior
to Alsagoffs framework. However, it does not imply that I am ignoring
the important insights offered by COM; instead, as this chapter reviews
previous research done on pronunciation, it is important to adopt the same
terminology that most previous research has alluded to. Consequently,
it becomes important to define what I mean by SSE and SCE. These two
terms will be defined according to a definition provided by Low and Brown
(2005: 11): SSE is the variety of English (spoken and written) used by
educated Singaporeans for formal purposes, that is, for education, law
and the media, and SCE is the informal, colloquial variety of Singapore
English with its own unique linguistic features, used whether by those who
have limited proficiency in the language or by proficient speakers who
choose to use it for informal purposes (Low and Brown 2005: 12). In many
ways, the definition I have chosen to adopt corresponds closely to Alsagoffs
ISE and LSE varieties. As for ethnic variation in Singapore English, studies
which focus specifically on particular ethnic subvarieties of English will be
highlighted. Note also that, as a convenient reference point, features of
British English may sometimes be referred to in the discussion of features
of SSE and SCE. This variety of British English is Southern Standard British
English (SSBE) and is defined according to Low and Brown (2005: 13) as
the variety of British English used by educated speakers mainly residing
238 Ee-Ling Low

and working in the south of England. The comparison is not meant to
place any normative judgement on what Singaporeans ought to sound like,
but is included as a reference point for comparative analysis.

The report on the acoustic findings will rely, as far as possible, on
published works rather than unpublished dissertations and theses.
Research on SE pronunciation
Segmental research: Vowels

In providing a phonemic inventory of vowels of Singapore English, I will be
using Wells (1982) standard lexical sets. This approach has also been used
in Schneider et al. (2004) for describing the vowels of varieties of English
around the world. I will contrast the lexical sets provided by Lim (2004),
Wee (2004), Low and Brown (2005) and Deterding (2007), together with
the lexical sets for British English in Lim (2004).

Note that the dashes for some of the lexical items for Low and Browns
(2005) inventory indicate that they have not commented on the realization
of the vowels in these words. From Table 10.1, we can surmise that the
variety that Deterding (2007) was investigating is closer to SCE than SSE.
This is evident as the phonemic inventory he has listed closely matches that
of the CSE features listed by Lim (2004) and Wee (2004).

Deterding (2005) talks about the emergent patterns in some vowels
in Singapore English which are more representative of SSE since subjects
were recorded reading carefully prepared sentences. Interestingly, he found
that there were at least two different realizations of the vowel in DRESS
based on his acoustic measurements of the first and second formants of the
vowels, one which rhymed with the diphthong in FACE and another which
rhymed with the vowel found in TRAP. This same vowel is represented by
Lim (2004) in SSBE as [], i.e., a vowel quality close to cardinal vowel 3, a
representation also used by editors of the new Oxford Pronouncing Dictionary
edited by Upton et al., but otherwise, it is far more commonly denoted by
the symbol matching cardinal vowel 2 [e]. Based on the results of his study,
Deterding (2005) groups the following words together: vague, made, grade,
egg, bed, dead (which are realized with the diphthong in FACE in SSBE),
while another group comprises the following words: peg, beg, fed, bread, bag,
bad (which are realized with the vowel in TRAP in SSBE).

Adopting Low and Browns (2005) proposed vowel inventory as a
starting point, I will highlight acoustic studies that are focused on the vowel
pairs which have been observed to be conflated in previous auditory studies.

On the conflation of the long and short vowels for the lexical sets
FLEECE and KIT, Deterding (2003) measured the first two formants
(F1 and F2) for the conversational vowels of five male and five female

Table 10.1 Phonemic vowel inventory of Singapore English
SSBE
SSE
SCE
(Lim 2004) (Lim 2004) (Lim 2004)
SCE
(Wee
2004)
SE
(Low and
Brown
2005)
Spoken SE
(Deterding
2007)
Keywords
KIT
DRESS
TRAP
LOT
STRUT
BATH
CLOTH
NURSE
FACE
PALM
THOUGHT
GOOSE
ai
ai
PRICE
i
au
i
au
i
au
i
au
CHOICE
NEAR
SQUARE
START
NORTH
FOOT
FLEECE
GOAT
MOUTH
FORCE
Similar
to poor
Similar
to poor
Similar
to poor
CURE
POOR
HAPPY
LETTER
COMMA
Singaporean student teachers. All were below 35 years of age. It is likely

that the students were trying to use SSE since they were communicating
with their lecturer of British nationality. Deterding found that there was
evidence of conflation for the long/short vowels /i:/ and // and /e/ and
//. He showed evidence of this by plotting the F1F2 scatter plots of each
of these vowel pairs for the male subjects. There were clear cases of overlap
for these vowel pairs. For the long/short vowel pair // and //, while
there were some overlapping areas, the two vowels were generally distinct
240 Ee-Ling Low

from each other. Deterdings (2003) findings on the conflation between the
/e/ and // vowels further confirm an earlier acoustic study conducted by
Suzanna and Brown (2000). They measured these vowels in citation form,
in both formal and informal conversations produced by eight Singaporeans
(four Chinese, two Malays, one Indian and one Eurasian). Their results
suggest that all subjects made a distinction between the two vowels in
citation form, but the distinction was not as significant in conversational
data, whether formal or informal. The Indians and Eurasians showed the
greatest differentiation between the two vowels, the Malays the least and the
Chinese were in between.

In a study comparing Singapore English with Malaysian English
speakers of Malay ethnicity, Tan and Low (forthcoming) found that in
citation form, while the scatter plots for the vowel pairs /i:/ and // and
/e/ and // showed some degree of overlap, the vowel pairs // and // and /
u:/ and // showed some evidence of being differentiated in terms of having
minimal overlap in their scatter plots. When the vowels were produced
in a read text, there appeared to be a very clear distinction for the vowels
// and //. This finding concurs with Deterdings (2003) study.

In summary, acoustic evidence shows conflation between the vowel
pairs /i:/ and // and /e/ and //. However, the conflation of the other
long/short vowel pairs // and //, /u:/ and // and // and // is not
supported by acoustic analysis.

As far as the monophthongization of diphthongs are concerned, studies
by Deterding (2000) and Lee and Lim (2000) found evidence that the
closing diphthongs /e/ and // were significantly more monophthongal
when produced by Singaporeans compared to their British counterparts.
They proved this by measuring the rate of change (ROC) of the formants
which is the difference in the formant values at the end of the vowel
compared to the beginning and dividing it by the duration of the vowel.

Lim and Low (2005) studied triphthongs in Singapore English. The
status of triphthongs is highly debatable since there is little consensus about
whether vowel sequences with three phonetic symbols, for example /e, a,
, a, /, are regarded as single phonemes or as diphthongs followed
by a schwa. Their perceptual experiment showed that the respondents
perceived the Singaporean subjects to be producing triphthongs with a
glide insertion between the diphthong and the schwa.
Segmental research: Consonants

A convenient reference point to talk about latest research on consonants in
Singapore English is Low and Browns (2005: 143) consonantal inventory
for initial and final positions (see Tables 10.2a and 10.2b below). Note that

the lines linking different consonants are meant to indicate conflation of
these sounds in Singapore English.
Table 10.2a Inventory for consonants in initial position
(adapted from Low and Brown 2005: 143)
Bilabial
Plosives
Labio Alveolar Dental Palato Palatal

dental
alveolar
pb
td
Fricatives
Approximants
Glottal
kg

Affricates
Nasals
Velar
n
f v
sz
l
h
j
Table 10.2b Inventory for consonants in final position

(adapted from Low and Brown 2005: 143)
Bilabial
Plosives
Labio
dental
pb
Alveolar Dental
td
Fricatives
Approximants
Velar
Glottal
kg

Affricates
Nasals
Palato Palatal
alveolar
n
f v
sz
l
h
j
Low and Brown (2005) agree with Baos (1998) analysis that at the acrolectal
level, the consonantal inventory hardly differs from SSBE but for informal
purposes of communication and for basilectal speakers, conflation between
consonantal sounds as illustrated in Tables 10.2a and 10.2b are highly likely.
Note also that the conflation between the voiced and voiceless plosives is
indicative of the lack of aspiration for voiceless plosives in Singapore English.

Lim (2004) describes final nasal deletion and the preceding vowels
being nasalized. For example, time is pronounced as [ta ] . All three scholars
(Lim 2004; Wee 2004 and Deterding 2007) mention final consonant cluster
simplification, for example, brand being pronounced as [brn]. However,
Lim (2004) also mentions final consonant deletion or replacement.
She observes this to be restricted to obstruents, normally plosives; for
example, not is pronounced as [n]. The replacement of final consonants
is described by both Wee (2004) and Deterding (2007) as the final glottal
stop. The replacement of final consonants with glottal stops appears to be
most common with voiceless final plosives, a pattern also noted by Brown
and Deterding (2005). All three scholars also note that presence of the
242 Ee-Ling Low

vocalization of [l] where dark [l] is often vocalized, i.e., turned into a vowel
instead. For example, school is pronounced as [sku].

Deterding (2007) notes the presence of extra final [t] and is found
most commonly after words ending with [n] and may be related to the
release of this nasal stop. He also hypothesizes that the extra final [t] may
be a means of including a spurious -ed suffix which is not meant to be
present. Deterding also notes the occurrence of non-prevocalic [r] where [r]
does not occur before vowels as one would expect but is clearly pronounced
in a rhoticized fashion; for example, for is pronounced as [fr].

Both Lim (2004) and Deterding (2007) describe different realizations
of the palato-alveolar realization of [r]. Lim (2004) describes its realization
as a voiced alveolar tap, most commonly found among Malay Singaporeans.
For example, rod is pronounced as [d]. Deterding (2007) talks about the
labiodental [r] which is represented by the symbol [] where very is realized
as [ve].

Moorthy and Deterding (2000) investigated the use of dental fricatives
in Singapore English but found it very difficult to establish the exact
acoustic correlates of the realization of [t] compared to []. Apart from
the higher overall intensity for the plosive compared to the dental fricative
and the period of silence indicative of the closure for an aspirated voiceless
plosive, the acoustic correlates were extremely difficult to pin down
particularly because of the lack of aspiration common for Singaporean
speakers for initial voiceless plosives.

Gut (2005) conducted a detailed study on the realization of final
plosives in Singapore and investigated whether all final plosives were
realized in the same way, i.e., as unreleased or replaced by glottal stops as
documented by different studies. Her findings confirmed that word-final
plosives were either unreleased or replaced by glottal stops as noted by
previous researchers. The realization of a single coda plosive was found to
be influenced by its phonetic environment. Final plosives tended to have
a higher chance of realization if they were preceding a word beginning
with a vowel compared to a consonant. When the final plosive preceded
words beginning with non-sibilant fricatives, their chance of being realized
was also higher. Consonant clusters with two consonants tended to be
reduced to just one. When a plosive was followed by /s/, it was less likely
to be simplified. Furthermore, lateral + plosive clusters also experienced
consonant cluster simplification. Three-consonant clusters tended to be
reduced to either two or one consonant. Non-Chinese speakers retained
final plosives more than their Chinese counterparts and two-consonant
clusters were never reduced in entirety for non-Chinese speakers.

Lim and Deterding (2005) showed that the extra final [t] occurred
mostly in formal conversations. When they did occur, they posited that
its realization appeared to be motivated by the fear of missing out the

pronunciation of the -ed suffix. There also appeared to be no logical
articulatory reason for its appearance in formal conversations.

Tan (2005) investigated the vocalization of [l] in Singapore English.
His perceptual test confirmed that Singaporeans did vocalize dark /l/.
The tendency to vocalize dark /l/ appeared not to be affected by gender
or differences in speaking style. There was a marginal effect of speaking
rate where faster speech inspired more realizations of vocalized versions of
dark [l]. The differences in vocalization frequency appeared to be speakerdependent, where some speakers simply used this feature more than others.
Suprasegmental research: Lexical stress placement

In terms of lexical stress placement, Bao (1998) notes that the following
phonological rules govern word stress placement in Singapore English:
(i) Heavy syllables (those containing a long vowel/diphthong or a coda)
tend to be stressed.
(ii) Stress occurs on alternate syllables.
(iii) If a word has more than one stressed syllable, it is the last syllable that
carries primary stress.

Low and Brown (2005) further point out, in agreement with Tay
(1982), that stress occurs one syllable later than one would find in British
English. For example, while SSBE has stress on the first syllable for calendar,
Singapore English stresses the second syllable.

Previous researchers have also noted that stress appears to be on final
syllables of polysyllabic words like carefully and hopelessly (Tongue 1974;
Platt and Weber 1980; Tay 1982; Deterding 1994). Low (2000), testing
this claim acoustically, designed test sentences which placed the words in
both final and medial positions in order to test whether the perception of
stress on the final syllables was a result of sentence position. Her subjects
were considered to be speakers of SSBE and SSE since they were all
undergraduates speaking in a very formal situation. Both durational and
fundamental frequency (F0) measurements were taken for all syllables of
test words. The durational results showed that there was significantly more
phrase-final lengthening in SSE compared to SSBE. However, when the
words were placed in medial position, this lengthening effect disappeared.
F0 measurements corroborated the durational measurements since there
was a substantial drop in F0 for SSBE for the initial syllable compared to the
following syllables which was absent for SSE. However, in medial position,
this difference was not found between the two varieties. Collectively, the
duration and F0 measurements showed that SSE speakers marked phrase
boundaries more prominently compared to SSBE speakers.
244 Ee-Ling Low

In terms of words distinguished only by a difference in stress placement
to indicate a change in grammatical category, it is observed that SSE does
not show this distinction via stress placement. Thus, there is no difference
for stress placement for a word like convert pronounced as a noun or as
a verb. Low (2000) further tested whether Singaporeans distinguished
between stress placement for compounds and phrasal nouns. It was found
from the duration and F0 results that while the British speakers clearly
distinguished between stress placement for compounds and phrases, the
Singaporeans did not.

Deterding and Poedjosoedarmo (1998) note that the effects to stress
placement of adding suffixes to words in Singapore English are different
compared to British English. For example, -ic is stress-shifting in SSBE but
stress-preserving in SSE, and -ism is stress-preserving in SSBE but stressshifting in SSE.
Suprasegmental research: Rhythm

Traditional classification of rhythmic variation in the worlds languages
has tended to classify languages as being syllable-timed (where syllables are
nearly equal) or stress-timed (where stresses are nearly equal). It is now far
more common to talk about languages being more stress-based or syllablebased or mora-based (as one would classify Japanese) or even rhythmically
mixed. In Browns (1988) work, he suggests some features of Singapore
English that might lead to the perception of a staccato-effect or a machinegun rhythm of Singapore English:
(i) absence of features associated with stress-timed rhythm such as reduced
vowels in unstressed words;
(ii) absence of linking between words;
(iii) absence of a distinction between long and short vowels.

There has been evidence in recent acoustic studies supporting earlier
observations made by Brown and other researchers, who have labelled
Singapore English as syllable-timed. Based on suggestions by Taylor
(1981) and Brown (1988), Low et al. (2000) measured vowel durations in
Singapore English and compared them with British English for two sets of
specially designed sentences. One set of sentences contained only full vowels
while the other contained full and potentially reduced vowels as they would
be realized in a stress-timed language like British English. Using the Pairwise
Variability Index (PVI) which measures the difference in variability between
successive vowels in a sentence and which is normalized for speaking
rate, their study showed that Singapore English had a significantly lower
PVI compared to British English. This finding provides acoustic evidence

to validate the perception of there being more nearly equal duration in
successive vowels in Singapore English, thus contributing to the perception
of syllable timing in Singapore English. To provide further acoustic evidence
for the nearly equal vowel timing found in Singapore English, Low et al.
(2000) went on to measure first and second formants of all the potentially
reduced vowels found in the sentence sets for both Singapore English and
British English. Their measurements showed that potentially reduced vowels
in Singapore English were significantly further from the central point (the
centroid) compared to those vowels in British English.

The lack of reduced vowels was further investigated by Heng and
Deterding (2005). They studied the occurrence of reduced vowels in
the first syllable of polysyllabic words in Singapore English. Based on
a perceptual experiment, it was found that Singaporean speakers used
fewer reduced vowels than British English speakers. For words with o in
the spelling, for example, words beginning with com or con, Singaporeans
tended to produce full vowels. Unfortunately, the presence of a following
nasal in many of the test words made the acoustic measurements of the first
and second formants highly unreliable.

Deterding (2001) measured syllable durations in Singapore English
compared to British English. He devised the variability index (VI) to
the successive syllable durations and found that British English had a
significantly higher VI compared to Singapore English.
Suprasegmental research: Some intonational features

Lim (2004) has provided a corpus-based description of the main forms
and functions of intonational tones in Singapore English, phrase-final
prominence, the intonation of discourse particles, focus and prominence.
Wee (2004) makes very brief mention about the lack of pitch variation
and syllable-final lengthening. Low and Brown (2005) talk about the
difficulty of applying the British model of intonation to the description
of Singapore English as there is great difficulty in locating a nucleus of
greatest prominence since many syllables are perceptibly prominent. This
is a view that is shared by Levis (2005) who calculated the number of
prominent syllables to be 46% more in Singapore English compared to
American English. Goh (2005) notes that the level tone which normally has
little communicative value in British English is, in fact, used for a variety
of important communicative functions in Singapore English, such as tonic
syllables in terminal position. Deterding (2007) mentions the tendency to
assign prominence to pronouns, the lack of deaccenting, the presence of
the early booster and some functions of intonational tones that he observes
to be different from British English. In particular, he also mentions the
246 Ee-Ling Low

characteristic final rise-fall tone which indicates an extra degree of emphasis
in Singapore English.

Two intonational features have been the subject of close acoustic
measurement and analysis: the presence of an early booster in utterances
and the lack of deaccenting in Singapore English.

Low (2000) measured the pitch range of the early booster in Singapore
and compared this with the early marker found in British English. In both
varieties, there is evidence of a syllable or lexical item, rather early on in an
utterance, which is produced at an extremely high pitch compared to its
surrounding. Normally, this syllable or lexical item signals a new topic. Low
(2000) found that there was a significantly larger pitch excursion for the
early booster compared to the early marker found in British English.

Low and Brown (2005) and Low (2006) report on acoustic
measurements that provide empirical evidence for the lack of deaccenting
in Singapore English for old or given information. The data comprised
three main categories of given information, namely, repeated lexical items,
anaphoric reference, and sentences that cued deaccenting by inference.
Results indicate that in Singapore English, there appears to be no acoustic
evidence of prosodically attenuating (weakening) given information either
in terms of duration (length) or pitch (fundamental frequency), unlike
what one finds in British English. In fact, there is evidence for reaccenting
given information in Singapore English.
Pedagogical implications
The previous sections have provided a summary of the latest research
on the pronunciation of Singapore English. It is clear that Singapore
English pronunciation has very distinctive characteristics compared to an
Inner Circle variety such as British English. This section will explore what
this means for pronunciation teaching in the context where speakers of
Singapore English need to function in the global arena but at the same
time are constrained by the need to maintain a local identity.
One guiding principle: Intelligibility

Since Jenkins seminal work (2000) on the phonology of English as an
international language, in which she studied exactly which phonological
features caused a breakdown in communication when two non-native
speakers were communicating with each other, the notion of a lingua franca
core (LFC) comprising minimal features of pronunciation required for
international intelligibility has sparked off much interest. However, it has

also generated much debate and controversy in the field. Jenkins advocates
that the goal of intelligibility ought to be towards fellow non-native speakers
rather than native interlocutors as traditional pronunciation syllabi have
implicitly assumed. Based on this goal, she has sketched the minimal
features of pronunciation necessary to preserve international intelligibility
in communication amongst non-native speakers of English. These features
are shown in Table 10.3, and have been adapted from Jenkins (2002: 9). I
have only selected those features which we have discussed with reference to
Singapore English earlier in this chapter.
Table 10.3 What a Lingua Franca Core pronunciation syllabus should focus on
Pronunciation feature
Lingua Franca Core syllabus
1. Consonantal inventory
All sounds except for /, , l/
2. Phonetic realizations
Aspiration after /p, t, k/

Appropriate vowel length before fortis/lenis consonants
3. Consonant clusters
Preserve word initially and medially
4. Vowel quantity
All long-short vowel contrasts
5. Vowel quality
Consistent regional qualities can be preserved
6. Weak forms
Not necessary
7. Stress-timed rhythm
Unnecessary
8. Word stress
Hard to teach
9. Nuclear (tonic) stress
Critical

Based on Jenkins list, one can predict the areas where distinctive
features of Singapore English pronunciation might pose a problem to
international intelligibility. Such a list is drawn up in Table 10.4.

Looking at Table 10.4, it appears that the potential pronunciation
features that may cause unintelligibility are rather few; they are, namely,
lack of aspiration for voiceless plosives, lack of long/short vowel contrasts
and the fact that it is difficult to identify tonic stress in Singapore English.
It is important to consider what recent research has shown about the
intelligibility of Singapore English worldwide.

Four recent studies were conducted on the intelligibility of Singapore
worldwide and here is what they found. 3 Gupta (2005) compared the
intelligibility of the recording of a male British and a male Singaporean
subject during an informal interview by a British interviewer. It was found
that listeners found it much easier to understand their own varieties
respectively. However, when British subjects were asked to listen to
Singaporean speech and vice versa, it was the Singaporean speech that
was more intelligible cross-varietally. Setter (2005) set out to examine how
differently Singaporean speech was perceived by two British listeners and
248 Ee-Ling Low

Table 10.4 Possible areas causing problems for international intelligibility based on
research on Singapore English pronunciation
Pronunciation feature
Lingua Franca Core Syllabus
Problem for international

intelligibility in Singapore
English
1. Consonantal inventory All sounds except for /, , l/ No.

Yes, since /p, t, k/ tend to
be conflated with /b, d, g/
respectively.
No, as there is evidence
Appropriate vowel length
before fortis/lenis consonants provided at least for a
distinction in vowel length
between seize and cease shown
by Deterding (2005).
2. Phonetic realizations
Aspiration after /p, t, k/
3. Consonant clusters
Preserve word initially and

medially
No, although no acoustic

study has validated this.
4. Vowel quantity
All long-short vowel contrasts
Yes.
5. Vowel quality
Consistent regional qualities

can be preserved
No, as Singapore English has

rather consistent regional
qualities.
6. Weak forms
Not necessary
No.
7. Stress-timed rhythm
Unnecessary
No, even though Singapore

English is clearly syllabletimed.
8. Word stress
Hard to teach
Arguable.
9. Nuclear (tonic) stress Critical
Yes, since tonic stress is simply

the last stress in Singapore
English.
to what this difference was attributable. They were also asked to point out
factors which helped to make Singaporean speech intelligible. The results
showed that final consonant clusters appeared to be missing in Singapore
English and that this posed a problem for intelligibility. Suprasegmental
features were also rated to be the most different from British English. What
helped intelligibility was the context of the utterance. Kirkpatrick and
Saunders (2005) played six excerpts of Singapore English speech (three
males and three females) to listeners from Australia, Norway, Bhutan,
Canada, Ireland, Israel, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, England, Germany,
Iraq, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, South Africa, Singapore, Taiwan and
the USA. Using Smiths (1992) benchmark of intelligibility at 60%, the
listeners who scored less than 60% were from Bhutan, Norway, Iraq, Japan,
Taiwan and China. What is extremely interesting about these results is that
listeners from the Inner Circle countries like Australia, Canada, Ireland,

England and the USA had little problem understanding Singapore English,
while those from geographically closer regions to Singapore (with the
exception of Norway) found it far harder to understand Singapore English.
Their findings are corroborated by Date (2005), a Japanese phonetician,
who identified the main features of Singaporean speech that hampered
his ability to understand Singapore English both at the segmental and the
suprasegmental levels. Segmentally, the following features posed a problem
for him: replacing dental fricatives with alveolar plosives, reduction of final
clusters, absence of linking following final plosives, conflation of vowel
length and monophthongization of the diphthongs /e/ and //. In
the suprasegmental realm, these were the absence of a nuclear syllable,
different stress placement, lack of deaccenting, the use of a narrow pitch
range, and the functions of some intonational tones such as the high-level
tone in place of a falling tone and the use of a falling tone in a question
tag like right rather than a rising tone. What is interesting is that Date
lists many more features that posed problems for intelligibility compared
to Jenkins proposed list shown in Table 10.3. This suggests that non-native
speakers from the Expanding Circles appear to require more adherence
to a standard native speaker pronunciation model than native speakers of
English when attempting to understand Singapore English. Another reason
why Expanding Circle speakers find Singapore English difficult to understand
may be because of their own relative lack of proficiency in English.
Beyond intelligibility
Hung (2007) argues for a pragmatic approach to the teaching of
pronunciation and his approach is defined mainly by the following framing
questions:
(i) How useful is the feature in distinguishing between words?
(ii) How frequent is its occurrence?
(iii) How difficult is it for speakers to acquire?
(iv) How appropriate is it in terms of either enhancing or impeding
intelligibility?

I would argue that most of his questions except for (iii) are still
ultimately linked to the notion of intelligibility. This was the approach
also adopted by Low and Deterding (2002) and Low and Brown (2005).
Questions (i) and (ii) were represented by the notion of functional load
and frequency of occurrence respectively. Questions (iii) and (iv) were
indirectly represented by the question occurrence elsewhere, meaning that
a particular pronunciation feature also occurs in other standard varieties
of English; it is probably not worth fussing about. I would like to propose
250 Ee-Ling Low

here a pronunciation model that is sensitive to the socio-cultural identity of
its speakers. In discussing the socio-cultural identity of speakers, one needs
to take cognizance of the dual roles that English plays in Singapore as
documented in Alsagoff (2007) (also mentioned earlier in this chapter). In
order to stay globally competitive, Singaporeans need to speak international
standard English (ISE), but for expressing our local identities, Singaporeans
have to speak local Singapore English (LSE). Alsagoff (2007: 39) further
talks about the different orientations between globalism and localism.
While globalism represents economic capital, authority, formality, distance
and educational attainment, localism represents socio-cultural capital,
camaraderie, informality, closeness and community membership. Applying
Alsagoffs cultural orientation model for pronunciation modelling, I would
argue that the desire to be internationally intelligible caters to the globalist
orientation, and for a long while, researchers have concentrated their
efforts on how pronunciation norms must ultimately allow Singaporeans to
compete in the global arena educationally, economically and commercially.
However, in considering the local orientation in relation to pronunciation
norms, it is then necessary to consider issues beyond the realm of
intelligibility.

In line with accommodation theory or accommodative processes as
it is sometimes referred to, as espoused by Giles and Coupland (1991),
speakers often manipulate language styles in order to maintain integrity,
distance or identity (Giles and Coupland 1991: 66). It should be noted that
accommodative processes may be both convergent or divergent depending
on whether speakers choose to associate or disassociate themselves from
their interlocutors. One example where divergence may take place when
Singaporeans are expressing their localist orientation is described by Low
and Deterding (2002) and Low and Brown (2005) as the shibboleth
value of pronunciation features. This refers to a pronunciation feature
that speakers may want to avoid as it carries a certain stigma; for example,
it may give rise to the perception that a teacher is not able to speak
English well. One such feature in Singapore English is the replacement
of dental fricatives with alveolar plosives. Harking back to Tables 10.3
and 10.4, I would like to propose in Table 10.5 features of Singapore
English pronunciation which should be preserved in order to maintain a
distinctively Singaporean identity.

This preliminary listing of features can be further refined to include
examples of structural inclusivity, as advocated by Alsagoff (2007); ethnic
and educational barriers are broken down when one uses particular
features. For example, Deterding and Poedjosoedarmo (2000) showed that
more ethnic-like features appeared in the speech of Chinese, Malays and
Indians during informal speech situations. There might be a conscious
choice to reduce these ethnic features if Singaporeans want to truly express
a localist orientation in their speech.

Table 10.5 Combination of features of Singapore English that
might compromise intelligibility and those that need to be maintained for
the expression of a local identity
Pronunciation
feature
Lingua Franca Core

syllabus
Problem for international Needed to preserve

intelligibility in Singapore local identity
English
1. Consonantal All sounds except for No

inventory
/, , l/
All regional qualities

to be maintained.
2. Phonetic
realizations
Aspiration after /p, t, Yes, since /p, t, k/ tends All regional qualities
to be conflated with /b, to be maintained.
k/
d, g/ respectively.
No, as there is evidence
Appropriate vowel
length before fortis/ provided at least for
a distinction in vowel
lenis consonants
length between seize and
cease shown by Deterding
(2005).
3. Consonant
clusters
Preserve word
initially & medially
No, although no acoustic All regional qualities

study has validated this.
to be maintained.
4. Vowel
quantity
All long-short vowel

contrasts
Yes.
5. Vowel
quality
Consistent regional
qualities can be
preserved
No, as Singapore English All regional qualities

to be maintained.
has rather consistent
regional qualities
6. Weak forms
Not necessary
No.

to be maintained,
i.e., relative absence
of weak forms in
Singapore English.
7. Stress-timed
rhythm
Unnecessary
No, even though

Singapore English is
clearly syllable-timed
Syllable timing to be
preserved.
8. Word stress
Hard to teach
Arguable.
Phrase-final
lengthening,
different lexical stress
placement, etc.
Yes, since tonic stress is

simply the last stress in
Singapore English
Lack of clear tonic

stress, reliance
perhaps on particles.
9. Nuclear
Critical
(tonic) stress

to be maintained.
Implications for pronunciation syllabus implementation

So far, I have argued why it is very important for Singaporeans to preserve
both their global and local orientation in their pronunciation. However,
what does this mean for a pronunciation syllabus? How can pronunciation
curriculum designers take cognizance of such sensitivities?
252 Ee-Ling Low

1. Teaching of two varieties and factors governing their use
It is of absolute importance that a pronunciation syllabus includes both
varieties of English discussed above, one that can enable students to
function in a global arena (Standard Singapore English) and another
that allows them to express their local identities (Singapore Colloquial
English) if they so wish. Starting off with a table such as Table 10.5 above
is important. However, translating this into teachable materials is of prime
importance since good theoretical concepts are very often lost in actual
classroom practice simply because they are too difficult to implement.

One practical method I have used in class is to play a recording of a
Singaporean using SSE and another of a Singaporean using SCE. I then
elicit responses from the students by asking what they perceive of the two
speakers in terms of intelligence, pretentiousness, sincerity, friendliness,
etc. I also include a question asking students for the circumstances in which
they would want to project an identity associated with one speaker versus
the other. Another variation of the same task is especially useful for student
teachers as I make them moral judges of the two varieties and ask them to
decide on which variety they would want their students to speak, to whom,
when, where and why. After this simple attitudinal exercise, I then hand
out a checklist of pronunciation features (as listed in Table 10.5 but drawn
up with greater specificity). For instance, as a regional feature, initial //
is replaced with initial /t/. I then ask students to pick the pronunciation
features associated with the two speech samples played to them, one
representing SSE and the other SCE. The purpose of this second exercise is
to help students to identify pronunciation features associated with SSE and
SCE respectively.

What is of utmost importance is spending time discussing when students
might want to express their global identity and when they would want to
express their localized selves. The teacher should bear in mind the official
governmental stance as expressed in the Speak Good English Movement
launched in 2000. The movement is meant to encourage Singaporeans to
speak grammatically correct English that is universally understood (SGEM
2008). The main aims of the movement, as outlined in the movements
official website (SGEM 2008), are to get Singaporeans to:
1. Speak in Standard English so as to be understood by all English
speakers in this globalized and highly-interconnected world.
2. Pay attention to accurate pronunciation. However, this is not about
acquiring a new foreign accent.

This further reinforces the argument I have raised earlier about the
preservation of all local features of pronunciation to express our local
identities.

2. Focus on communicative competence
The goal of a forward-looking pronunciation syllabus must, at the heart,
lie in the development of communicative competence of its learners. By
communicative competence, I am referring first of all to Hymes (1972)
original definition, i.e., the ability to use language not just grammatically
but appropriately as well. I am also talking about the elaboration of the
concept by Canale and Swain (1980) which proposes four competence areas
that make up communicative competence: (a) grammatical: knowledge
of linguistic rules of a language; (b) sociolinguistic: how to use language
appropriately according to whom one is communicating with, when, where,
etc.; (c) discoursal: where both cohesion (how a text links) and coherence
(whether the text is logical) are important; and (d) strategic: how to
appropriately use communicative strategies to achieve communicative goals
or to help repair breakdowns in communication.

I should point out that both the 1991 and the 2001 English Language
syllabi do, at their core, advocate a model for teaching oral communication
that generally embraces communicative competence. However, what
is noteworthy is Goh et al.s (2005) finding that the time allocated for
listening and speaking activities were the least compared to that allocated
for the other language skills. Their study surveyed 2,681 primary and
secondary English language teachers. Thus, even before we can talk about
the approach to pronunciation instruction, the need to focus on the
development of what Goh (2005) calls oracy competence is most urgent.
3. Exemplification of each pronunciation feature via sound files
Since the arrival of the interactive digital media age, it has become
commonplace to play sound files of different pronunciation features
to international audiences when giving public lectures, seminars and
conferences. However, what I would advocate is that teachers should play
particular features in both ISE and LSE to students so that they get to hear
and understand how different they sound. Resources for such files can be
found either online or in CDs accompanying books on Singapore English,
such as Deterding, Brown and Low (2005) and Deterding (2007). It is
one thing to provide a technical description of a particular pronunciation
feature such as syllable timing and quite another to play an example to
students immediately after describing that feature. After this awarenessraising practice on the different features of ISE and LSE, the discussion
about which variety to use for which communicative situations (as described
under points 1 and 2 in this section) should then be carried out.
254 Ee-Ling Low

4. Conduct attitudinal surveys on students
Suppiah (2002) surveyed eight pupils each from two primary schools (total
of sixteen) and asked them about whether they wanted to sound like
their teacher who was a local Singaporean and who exhibited features of
Standard Singapore English. In School A, there was 100% agreement and
in School B, there was 75% agreement showing that these pupils do indeed
want to sound like their teacher.

Such a survey is useful as it can ascertain the type of pronunciation
model to which pupils themselves aspire, instead of imposing a particular
standard on them. Such a survey can be adapted considerably for older
students in secondary schools and include questions that help to elicit their
attitudes towards other established varieties of English (such as British and
American English) and other regional varieties of English (such as Hong
Kong and Philippine English). The findings can inform teachers as to which
variety of English is highly regarded, and why. However, finding out the
variety that students prefer is just the beginning of the journey. The idea is
not to simply pander to the model to which students aspire, but to explore
in greater depth with them why they look up to certain models. Again, a
class discussion, a web forum discussion or a reflective essay can be used
for this purpose. As a follow-up activity, the teacher can expose students
to a range of literature about attitudes towards accents, particularly those
done on Singapore English, and summarize some key findings for further
discussion. For example, Lee and Lim (2000) found that their British
subject was consistently rated highly on traits such as unpretentiousness,
sincerity, class, intelligence, naturalness and friendliness. However, their
Singaporean subjects, who spoke with diphthongal guises (a pronunciation
feature that is considered non-Singaporean), were judged to be more
pretentious, insincere and unnatural than when using monophthongal
guises. Lee and Lim (2000) conclude that while Singaporeans may look
up to British model of pronunciation, they also feel that locals who speak
in that manner are pretentious. It is therefore important to highlight
such studies to students as the discussion would give them opportunity to
reflect on the model they wish to adopt and the image they associate with
particular models of pronunciation. The teacher should not be adopting a
normative stance but allow students to reach conclusions on their own.
5. Adopting a realistic model
Suppiahs (2002) close acoustic comparison of the vowel spectral patterns
and rhythmic properties of speech between teachers and their pupils
showed that pupils in School A produced similar vowel spectral patterns
compared to their pupils for all vowels except for //. However, one

can argue that the value of this back vowel is variable even in British
English and may not be a real difference. School Bs pupils pronounced
six out of the eight vowels in the same way as their teachers did. In the
rhythmic domain, no significant differences emerged in the PVI readings
for pupils and their teachers. Also, the PVI value was closer to syllabletimed language rather than a stress-timed one. Because of the absence of
more data and investigation, we are unable to surmise whether the pupils
in Suppiahs (2002) study were accommodating to their teachers speech
or vice versa. However, we can conclude that pupils and teachers exhibit
similar pronunciation features and that these features are characteristic of
Standard Singapore English. Given that the majority of the 28,500 teachers
(Shanmugaratnam 2006) in Singapore are local and the majority of the 2,500
student teachers in Singapore are also local, it is therefore only realistic that
the pronunciation model, for pragmatic reasons at least, has to be local.
Concluding remarks
Research on appropriate methodologies for teaching English as an
international language points towards the need for local teachers to take
ownership of designing and implementing the curriculum and to decide
on pedagogies that are culturally appropriate to adopt according to the
teachers own sense of plausibility (Canagarajah 2006; McKay 2006).
Sense of plausibility is defined as the teachers own reflection of what is
appropriate based on reflection of their own practice (Prabhu 1990).

Considering the arguments I have put forward in this chapter, which
subscribe to Alsagoffs (2007) globalist and localist orientation to English
language use in Singapore, it is clear that the pronunciation syllabus to be
designed by local teachers has to clearly delineate the features which pose
a problem for international intelligibility and those local features necessary
for maintaining a local identity. Whichever model is used, it should be one
that helps negotiate and reflect the multiplicity of roles and identities that
Singaporeans need to adopt for communicative purposes.
Notes
1. The author gratefully acknowledges two sources of funding for this chapter. At
the point of writing the chapter, she was a visiting Fulbright research scholar at
the Lynch School of Education, Boston College, USA, under the funding of the
J.W. Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. She would also like to acknowledge
the research funding provided by the Academic Research Fund from the
National Institute of Education, Singapore, entitled RI 01/3 Theoretical Speech
Research and its Pedagogical Applications.
256 Ee-Ling Low

2. The examinations referred to here are the General Certificate of Education
(GCE) Ordinary (O) level examinations taken at the end of Grade 10, and
the GCE Advanced (A) level examinations taken at the end of Year 12. Both
examinations are set by the Cambridge University Local Examinations Syndicate
and used widely in Britain and other Commonwealth countries.
3. Note that the speaker sample size for Guptas (2005) study and the listener
sample size for Setters (2005) study are extremely limited, both being very
small.
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11

English as a lingua franca:

Negotiating Singapores English language
education1
Anne Pakir
English as a lingua franca, however we define the term, has become a

communicative tool of immense political, ideological, and economic power.
Kachru (1996: 910)
Several discussions on English as a lingua franca have taken place in the

early years of the twenty-first century (Pakir 2001; Seidlhofer 2004; Modiano
2005; Canagarajah 2006; Jenkins 2006a), within a decade of Kachrus
(1996) seminal article. The English as Lingua Franca (ELF) movement
in Europe and the world Englishes (WE) paradigm originating first in
the US and gaining currency in Kachrus Outer and Expanding Circles of
English have each developed distinct theoretical models of lingua franca
with not too dissimilar pedagogical and educational implications. This
chapter first explores the research in WE, a paradigm established in the
mid-1980s onwards, and in ELF (first labelled as a movement but in this
chapter seen as an emerging paradigm) at the turn of the century. It also
explores International English (IE), a notion much assumed in discussions
surrounding the emergence of English as an international language and,
as a consequence, the nature of the language as it has to be taught to
speakers of other languages. Second, it looks at how lingua franca as a
theoretical concept applied to the sociolinguistic realities of English use
in Singapore may assist us in negotiating Singapores English language
education. Applied linguists, language educators and second language
acquisition teachers in Singapore are already familiar with traditional and
imported English Language Teaching (ELT) pedagogy for English-knowing
bilinguals (Pakir 1992, 2000). However, this discussion of WE and ELF
research has implications for English language education in Singapore and
may challenge such well-established practices. The standard English and
language standards debate, the assessment of English proficiency in the
Outer Circle, as well as role modelling by native versus non-native teachers
will all need to be re-examined. It is certain that the mobility and portability
262 Anne Pakir

of English and its changing functions, values and meanings in localized
contexts create hybrids and mixed varieties, some desired and some less so,
posing challenges to language education and pedagogy, especially in the
context of teaching English in Singapore.
Continuity, innovation and diversity in Singapores English

language education (ELE)
The way English is being used and taught today in several regions of the
world, implicated by the spread of English as a global language, shows
two opposing forces at work affecting its development: conservation and
innovation (Seidlhofer, Breiteneder and Pitzl 2006: 6). With the special
power given to English in Singapore as the premier co-official language, by
virtue of its being the countrys working language and the main medium
of instruction in the multiracial and multilingual country, educators in
Singapore in particular have to constantly seek the fine balance between
conservation and innovation in their various approaches to the English
language and the ELT profession, especially when the English language
teaching and learning landscapes have been dramatically altered.

My topic is that of English as a lingua franca a communicative tool
of immense power (as we are reminded by Kachru 1996). The discussion
of what is meant by the term lingua franca, what is represented as lingua
franca and what the debates are about English as a lingua franca will be
taken up with a view to understanding how to relate these issues to the
negotiation of Singapores English language education especially when it
has become established as the countrys main international lingua franca as
well as a de facto national lingua franca for Singaporeans.

My chapter will analyze the concerns of researchers and teachers in
Europe, in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and also in Britain, North
America, Australia and New Zealand. Holliday (1994) in seeking to examine
the British, Australasia and North American (BANA) model of English
language teaching methodologies from the West speaks of the possible
hegemony of the received ELT model. What does English as a lingua
franca imply in terms of cultural and pedagogical development and
how does one teach English as a lingua franca? Scholars may dispute the
proposition here that International English and WE as presented here
are lingua francas but the term is used here to refer to this fully fledged
language, English, that is used by diverse populations, across diverse
settings, for diverse purposes as a common medium of communication.
Current research on the term English lingua franca conveys a strong sense
of a highly controversial and highly contested topic (Holliday 2005; James
2005; Mauranen 2005; Deterding and Kirkpatrick 2006; Elder and Davies
English as a lingua franca 263

2006; House 2006; Mollin 2006a, 2006b; Jenkins 2007; Kirkpatrick 2008;
Saraceni 2008). It has been pointed out that the mainstream discussions
of ELF are not congruent with a world Englishes outlook, and this chapter
tries to bring out the non-congruency of outlook and approach of both
paradigms.

It is hoped that this chapter will raise questions rather than offer
definitive answers to a very complex emergent phenomenon, that of the
character and traits of English as lingua franca or English as a lingua franca
in the twenty-first century (the use of the indefinite article in the second
phrase implies the possibility of considering other lingua franca languages,
e.g., European lingua francas as discussed by Wright (2006) regarding
French, Darquennes and Nelde (2006) vis--vis German, Pavlenko (2006)
regarding Russian, and Godenzzi (2006) vis--vis Spanish).

Going beyond the politics and the economics of English as a lingua
franca, and addressing only the ideological and educational aspects, I pose
three questions. The first question is: Are the current paradigms of teaching
and learning English sufficient for todays world, or do we need to radically
re-think, re-formulate and re-examine our assumptions about what we do
as researchers and practitioners in the enterprise of teaching English? A
second question is: What can the current controversies among scholars
working in different paradigms tell us about international English language
education? The third and final question is: How can we apply the answers
to specific contexts, such as those found in the Expanding Circle of English
(ECE countries, e.g., China, Korea, Japan, Indonesia), the Outer Circle of
English (OCE countries, e.g., the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei,
Nigeria, Zimbabwe), and the Inner Circle of English (ICE countries, e.g.,
the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand)?

In pursuit of answers, we will need to examine the following: (1) theory
and research in IE, WE and ELF; (2) cultural and pedagogical implications
of IE, WE, and ELF; and (3) English as a lingua franca in Singapore, and
the policy challenges the country faces.

My particular focus is on the theory, research and pedagogy arising in
the new contexts of using English as a world language, even if it is assumed
that all of us language teachers and practitioners have used, are using,
and will continue using much of the established works and findings by
BANA researchers in the Inner Circle of English-using countries.

The BANA axis of influence in English language teaching and
methodology is certainly accepted as reality in the Outer and Expanding
Circles, but it might be useful to look at emerging paradigms for teaching
English in the twenty-first century. With a focus on English as a lingua
franca in the world and particularly in Singapore, this chapter will also,
by considering the implications of the IE, WE and ELF positions on the
English language teaching and learning landscape, create connections
between the discourses taking place in various domains of IE, WE and ELF.
264 Anne Pakir
Theory and research in IE, WE and ELF: Paradigms and definitions

This section on the theory and research in different paradigms begins with
the notion that there are currently three paradigms in the study of English
as a lingua franca for the world: International English (IE), world Englishes
(WE) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). All three paradigms are briefly
presented in this chapter, albeit with an emphasis on examining the areas
of similarity or dissimilarity between WE and ELF.

The first paradigm is International English (IE), as discussed within
BANA (or ICE) communities and still dominating current ELT pedagogies
and related practices. Trudgill and Hannahs (1994: 1) definition (updated
in 2002), as accepted as representing IE, is the variety of the English
language which is normally employed in writing and normally spoken by
educated speakers of the language. It is also, of course, the variety of
English that students as Foreign or Second Language (EFL/ESL) are [sic]
taught when receiving formal instruction. It is also the variety that is tested
in post-secondary school circles where students compete for entry into
prestigious Ivy League universities in the United States, Oxbridge and others
in the United Kingdom, or sandstone ones in Australia and Canada, by
sitting for examinations such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language
(the US-based TOEFL) or International English Language Testing System
(the UK-based IELTS). Implicit in the notion of IE is that it is the form
that is taught and tested and bears all the hallmarks of uniformity and
consistency of a gold standard.

The second paradigm that tries to examine English as a lingua franca
is world Englishes (WE), a label that is today accepted in sociolinguistics
and applied linguistics and adopted in all the three circles of English but
especially within Outer Circle English countries. As Bolton (2004: 367)
notes, WE is generally an umbrella term for all varieties of English world
wide (World English and international Englishes) but particularly refers to
new Englishes (institutionalized ESL varieties, nativized, indigenized).
The nativization of English in transplanted soil is a major linguistic claim
of the adherents to this paradigm. In an attempt to recognize the newly
established paradigm of world Englishes (established by Kachru and Smith
since 1985), AILA 2005 at Wisconsin-Madison convened a special panel
on The Assessment of World Englishes. It was conceived as an effort, as
its abstract states, to bring together researchers from different areas of
applied linguistics and language assessment to consider the implications of
the WE and IE positions on English language testing/assessment. It was a
timely featured symposium since the linguistic capital of English as a world
language in a globalizing and IT-driven world had increased exponentially.
The commodification of the English language has its parallel in the
commodification of English language testing. To test in English today

raises huge questions regarding the linguistic marketplace aside from the
pragmatic, pedagogic, empirical, and sociolinguistic realities of English as
an international lingua franca.

The third and newly emerging paradigm is that of English as a
Lingua Franca (ELF) as discussed in the Expanding Circle of English,
with research and discussions currently led by European scholars such
as Seidlhofer (2004), citing Firth for the definition of ELF in its purest
form: English as a lingua franca (ELF) is a contact language between
persons who share neither a common native tongue nor a common
(national) culture, and for whom English is the chosen foreign language of
communication (Firth 1996, cited in Seidlhofer 2004: 211). More recently,
Canagarajah (2006: 198) describes it a transnational contact language
specifically in the ELF paradigm.

The newly established paradigm (WE) and the emerging and evolving
paradigm (ELF) can be contrasted with the old established one (IE) as
illustrated in Tables 11.1 to 11.3, using Pennycook (2002: 222) as the
departure point and adding to his original observations. According to
Pennycook, the global spread of English suggests different viewpoints
and perspectives, including that of colonial celebration, modernization,
laissez-faire liberalism, imperialism, linguistic hybridity, and postcolonial
performativity. Appreciating the cultural and pedagogical implications
that Pennycook (2002) suggests, I attempt to fit them into the three
paradigms of IE, WE, and ELF as illustrated in Tables 11.1 to 11.3 (with my
modifications in italics and with apologies to Pennycook):
Table 11.1 Pennycooks views of the global spread of English
IE Paradigm
Implications for culture and

development
BANA point of view (POV)
Colonialcelebratory
English an inherently useful

language
Teach English to those who can

appreciate it
Modernization
English a crucial tool for

modernization
Teach English to modernize the

world
Laissez-faire
liberalism
English a functional tool for

pragmatic purposes
Business as usual: give people

what they want
Imperialism
Homogenization, destruction of
other cultures and languages
Language rights, instruction in

mother tongues, protectionism
Postcolonial
performativity
in OCE-using
countries
Cultural politics of change,

language, knowledge and
difference
Critical language education for

struggle, appropriability
266 Anne Pakir

As presented in Table 11.1, the five views within the IE paradigm
colonial celebration, modernization, laissez-faire liberalism, linguistic
imperialism and postcolonial performativity suggest that the worlds
users of English desire and demand IE against the current backdrop of
globalization and economic development in metropolitan centres and
urbanized sectors in the twenty-first century. In Pennycooks postcolonial
performativity framework, a critical linguistics or critical discourse approach
is advocated to understand new developments arising from this excessive
desire and demand for English.

Truncating the linguistic hybridity aspects and fitting them into the
next table (Table 11.2) allows us to appreciate a differentiated point of
view, that of Kachrus.
Table 11.2 Pennycooks views of the global spread of English (truncated)
WE paradigm

development
Kachruvian POV
Linguistic hybridity
in OCE-using countries
Languages and cultures

change and adapt
World Englishes, multiple

standards, assume change;
Pluricentric Englishes

To add on to Pennycooks views, I posit a new table (Table 11.3) explaining
how the ELF paradigm could be conceived within the global spread of English
discussions and the ELF proponents advocacy of connectivity in English for
short-term transnational and transitional exchanges.
Table 11.3 Pakirs view of the ELF paradigm
ELF paradigm

development
Modern-day
connectivity in ECE
using countries
English as a language of
communication in ECE, no
linguaculturae from ICE-using
countries
Pluricentric Englishes but with

ELF core

Views of the global spread of English and their implications for culture
and development as well as pedagogical implications (Pennycook 2002: 222)
can thus be usefully categorized into two sets of views as seen from, e.g., the
IE paradigm or the WE paradigm, with the addition of a third set of views,
from the ELF perspective.

Examining the relevance of the three paradigms for the ELT profession,
we can also highlight the focus, name the exponents, unveil the objectives and
outline the research and practices within each (as illustrated in Table 11.4):

Table 11.4 Paradigm and approaches of IE, WE and ELF
Approach
IE
ELT EFL
Focus: language
proficiency
WE
ELT ESL
Focus:
sociolinguistic
realities
ELF ELT EFL
Exponents
Objectives
Research and
practice
Prator
Quirk
Honey
Davies
To teach established BANA-based

varieties of English approaches to
curriculum,
methodology,
materials and testing
Organizations:
TESOL, IATEFL
Based on TOEFL
To test standard
and IELTS
American English
and British English constructs
Kachru (1982, 1983,

1986)
Smith (1981, 1987)
Lowenberg (1984)
Bautista (1997)
Pakir (1994, 1997)
To promote the
pluricentricity
of English and
bilingual creativity
of English-knowing
bilinguals
Description,
codification
of features of
new Englishes;
legitimization of
varieties of English;
sociolinguistic,
ideological and
cultural dimensions
To promote a
new concept
of English as a
contact language,
for groups of
English speakers
having different
first language
backgrounds
Definition and
parameter setting
House (1999)
Seidlhofer (2001,
2004, 2006)
FOCUS:
connectivity and Jenkins (2000, 2006)
communication Breiteneder (2005)
for short-term
exchanges
minus the
lingua-cultural
aspects of IE
Description and
codification

Comparing the established (IE) vs. emerging and evolving Englishes
(WE/ELF) paradigms, it is obvious that the old kid on the block is IE
and the new kids on the block are WE and ELF. Being the most recent,
ELF has had to undergo exactly what WE underwent to emerge and evolve
into its current paradigm. WE proponents in the mid-1980s up to the late
1990s had to explain what they were about, differentiating themselves
from the earlier and mightily established paradigm of IE. ELF proponents
in the early years of the present century are explaining, establishing, and
differentiating themselves and their approaches in order to gain the hardwon recognition that their predecessor WE has now attained.

The WE group of scholars influenced by the Kachruvian view of the
pluricentricity of English over three main blocs of English users in the
world has had their battle royal with those in the Inner Circle who espoused
strongly English as a native language (ENL) practices and approaches to
268 Anne Pakir

the teaching of English. The scholars working in the ELF paradigm starting
about twenty years after the WE studies are beginning to look at English
differently. Much of the debate within the two camps and indeed even of
the earliest camp, the Inner Circle, focuses on their interpretation of the
role of English as a lingua franca. One new role for English is that of a reconfigurer of multiple cultures and identities, and of an emergent status
as a glocal language. We will return to a discussion of the rise of glocal
languages in the Outer Circle of English later.
Competing paradigms
The questions remain to be asked are the following: Are these newer
paradigms competing or complementary ones? Do we in the twenty-first
century English language teaching and learning landscape draw upon an
eclectic use of the pedagogical implications, for instance? In the descriptions
and codification attempts in WE and ELF, the same attention has to be
paid to distinctive features of new Englishes, supra-features, e.g., discourse
analysis, genre analysis, pragmatics, and to the legitimization process citing
sociolinguistic, ideological, cultural, and ideological dimensions. In terms of
research and practice, definitions and parameter setting are important and
are a major focus for the time being in ELF.

WE and ELF are similar in that they have four common working axioms:
emphasizing the pluricentricity of English, seeking variety recognition,
accepting that language changes and adapts itself to new environments, and
explaining the discourse strategies of English-knowing bilinguals.

WE and ELF differ in that while WE includes all users of English in the
Three Circles of English-using countries, ELF does not, choosing instead
to focus on ECE users, who have no language in common because of their
other first languages and who thus choose English as the default language.

Owing to the transient and incipient nature of the interactions in
English, users in ECE have no stake in the indigenization or identitymarking processes of users in the OCE where English is used in greater
depth and over a larger range of functions. The emergence of new creative
literature and new canons is an assumption in WE that ELF does not make. The
similarities and differences are better captured in table form (see Table 11.5).

Thus, in the three paradigms although the language components
of phonetics and phonology, syntax and semantics, and pragmatics are
very much commonalities in the teaching and learning landscape the
polarities are evident (see Figure 11.1). IE is drawn towards a standard
ideology; WE focuses on the importance of sociolinguistic realities and the
concern in ELF is with connectivity in English but minus the lingua-cultural
material that comes with the language.

Table 11.5 Areas of similarity and dissimilarity between WE and ELF
Focus of attention
WE
ELF
Pluricentricity of English
Variety recognition
Language change and adaptation
+
+
+
+
+
+
Discourse strategies
Inclusive of all users of English
Indigenization
Identity-marking
Creative literature
Figure 11.1 Polarities for IE, WE and ELF
270 Anne Pakir

In a Quadrant Analysis, as shown in Figure 11.2, we can recapitulate the
main points of the foregoing discussion.
Q1
Q4
NS NS (Inner Circle to ICE)

NS NNS (Inner Circle to OCE, ECE)
NS NS
NS NNS
NNS NNS (All 3 Circles)
IE: monocentricity of English
WE : pluricentricity of English
liberation linguistics
identity ideology (contestation)
modern celebratory
deficit linguistics
standard ideology (compliance)
colonial celebratory
Q2
Q3
NNS NNS (Expanding Circle)
NNS NNS (Outer Circle to OCE,

ECE)
EFL/EFL:
ESL/EFL:
ELF: contact nature of English
WE: indigenized nature of English
Figure 11.2 Quadrant analysis of the three paradigms

Quadrant 1 representing the IE position has a native speaker (NS)
starting point: native speakers (however defined) using English to
communicate with other native speakers and with non-native speakers.
The monocentricity or, at most, duo-centricity of English, is paramount. A
number of scholars have documented the colonial-celebratory position that
trumpets the benefits of English (Pennycook 2002: 218) based on a long
tradition of glorifying the English language. In the great Quirk-Kachru
debate of the early 1990s, Kachru labelled Quirks approach as deficit
linguistics because the latter did not see the merit of teaching other than
standard English to those who in Quirks words, paid good money to learn
the language. The standard language ideology in Q1 demands a compliant
response in teaching, learning, and testing.

Quadrant 4, on the other hand, along with Quadrant 3, represents
the WE position of how a language of wider communication changes and
adapts. WE has, at its core, the tenet that English is pluricentric with many
new Englishes showing hybrid forms as a result of a modern and different
kind of celebration of the English language as a lingua franca with
multiple identities, as one medium with multiple voices, and a multiplicity
of canons. This approach espoused by Kachru was labelled liberation
linguistics by Quirk. An identity ideology demands a contesting response in
teaching, learning and testing.

Quadrant 2, capturing the newest paradigm to emerge in the study of
English as a lingua franca, focuses on ECE users trying to connect in the
contact language English. As an evolving paradigm, ELF can be predicted
to run two courses, one closer to the IE position of compliance (establishing
new standard forms for ELF interactions) or the other closer to the WE
contesting position of language change and adaptation. With a focus on
this second possibility, scholars like Modiano (2005) and Canagarajah
(2006) have recently emphasized the negotiation of the local in English as
a lingua franca.
English as a lingua franca in Singapore: International and national

I come now to the third section of my chapter, with a focus on English as
a lingua franca in Singapore, a country that clearly demonstrates a case
of English-knowing bilingualism over an entire population and one that is
becoming an ascendant English-knowing bilingual community. The issues in
English language teaching and learning in Singapore are examined, vis--vis
a focus on the strong standard language ideology that pervades the teaching
of English and begs the question of teacher modelling in Singapores
classrooms as well as the measurement of proficiency in English. Many
English language professionals and second language acquisition teachers
in Singapore have consistently used familiar traditional ELT pedagogy for
English-knowing bilinguals in OCE countries (Pakir 1992, 2000). However,
the discussion on the implications of WE/ELF research for English language
education in Singapore may alert them to the possibility of challenging wellestablished practices.

A full decade ago, David Graddol (1997: 33) posited a view of two
models of English as a lingua franca (Pakir 2001: 85). There was the
traditional import-export model and the post-modern/globalized model.
One major implication for the first model was that key intermediaries
(negotiators/interpreters) with English language skills provided the
interface with local language speakers. This model hints at a static, clearlybounded situation where a standard or at most two standards of
English existed, and the key intermediaries had to be given training in it/
them. In the second model, all (or most) team members need English
language skills. The second model hints at the modelling of language and
culture in terms of flow: communication flow and counter-flow, producing
a tension between the global and the local. This tension between the local
and the global resolves itself, in the emergence of Glocal English, one that
is internationally oriented, but locally appropriate (Pakir 2000). Global yet
local, Glocal English can be viewed as an international as well as national
lingua franca.
272 Anne Pakir

Being a country within the Outer Circle, and keeping in view all of
the cultural and pedagogical implications and paradigms described earlier,
Singapore has a crucial role to play in manifesting to the rest of the world
that English can be negotiated for language education. It can be open
to the approaches offered by the IE and ELF paradigms, but, as Kachru
would ask: Does IE or ELF provide any interesting insight for our better
understanding of the contexts of institutionalized world Englishes?

Kachru reminds us that the functions of English in diverse sociocultural, political, educational contexts, and types of identities with the
language, demand a shift in the study of the diffusion and impact of
English. The shift entails reconsideration of theoretical and methodological
approaches and due consideration of sociolinguistic realities and attitudes
appropriate to all the dimensions of the uses of English (Kachru 1996).

I have alluded earlier to the possibility of English playing a dual role of
English as an international lingua franca (especially for the Outer Circle)
and as a national lingua franca (especially in the Outer Circle). This has
happened for Singapore, with the attendant implications for its English
language teaching and learning landscape.

Four decades of instilling English-knowing bilingualism in Singapore
have resulted in the rise of a new phenomenon: that of an ascendant
English-knowing bilingual community drawing from its local values and
multilingual identities. An ascendant bilingual as defined by Li Wei
(2000) is someone whose ability to function in a second language is
developing due to increased use. If we go beyond the individual and look
at their society, we begin to see that a whole community can shift over to
ascendancy in English-knowingness, functioning more and more in the
second language, but because of their collective association with their other
languages and cultures, the issue of identity will remain a recurrent theme.
Ascendant English-knowing bilingual communities offer a good site to study
the emergence of what I have termed Glocal English.

Let me posit this example of Glocal English, A poem not too obiang
by Leow (1995), first cited by Pakir (2003: 812):
A Poem Not Too Obiang

From fiddlesticks and By Jove
I pick my words to find
Alamak
Stirring spicily on my tongue
Like the first bite
Of green chillies that sends
Tentative excitement
Popping out of their seeds
Why should I not drink

Teh tarik and discuss
Lee Tzu Pheng
(without putting them in italics)
Among friends who read but
Tread on the trappings of blind
Milton and Shakepearean worship?
Like the prata mans
Flips and flaps of the dough
Taking shape with each dose
Of local flavour,
I look for my place
In a Singaporean life.
My place in the sun
Is certainly not too LC
For some others meringue pies
And afternoon tea.
The issue of identity resonates in speakers of English who use English

as a national lingua franca as well as an international one. Leow (1995),
cleverly using a distinctly standard English form, injects local references
and expressions to maintain a clear identity of someone who pens English
poems but from the Outer Circle. But the national lingua franca can also
be a colloquial type of English rather than formal standard English. Among
undergraduates at the National University of Singapore, there is the distinct
need to identify with the national lingua franca of a rather colloquial type.
A brief exchange during my tutorial with a group of six linguistics students
illustrates this point. One of them reported that she overheard a speaker
saying to a friend:
You want go Singapore Swing, is it? Say so lah.
I asked my students whether that was acceptable undergraduate English

speech. Oh yes, said one of them, otherwise she would have had to say
If you want to go to the Singapore Swing (party), why dont you say so?
But, all of them then responded that such a formal utterance would have
prompted disbelief, concern or even distancing in the circle of friends.
Typical comments following such an utterance would be Whats your
problem?, Whats wrong, or a even a humorous Dont say until like that!

This notion of informal Singapore English (sometimes referred to
as Singlish) is increasingly being foregrounded in the consciousness
of English users in Singapore. Made in Singapore plays have rapidly
become popular here: the sell-out performances of Emily of Emerald Hill,
Army Daze and Beauty World and the appreciative audiences attending the
local productions attest to the consciousness of the people that they can
274 Anne Pakir

laugh together and listen together to stage performances which tell the
language situation vis--vis Singapore as is. Poems written by locals, for
example, Arthur Yaps 2 Mothers in a h.d.b. playground, and Kirpal Singhs
Two Voices, tell us in no uncertain terms that colloquialism and code-mixing
and switching are the norm in English use in Singapore. The imaginative/
innovative function in non-native varieties of English is part of the possible
functional range; in fact, it is a sign to the policy planners to take heed
of the invisible planning that is going on. Among the youth of Singapore
especially, Singlish is a marker of identity, even while formal and standard
English is the language that they learn in school, as exemplified by yet
another example from English-speaking Singaporean undergraduates:
[From a phonetics tutorial, while student (S) is talking to her tutor]
S: Sir, what is the difference between Cardinal Vowel Three and Cardinal
Vowel Four? I cant hear the difference.
[Immediately after the tutorial is over, S asks her friend):
S: Eh! What did he say, ah? Did you get the difference between CV Three
and Four?
[Her friend nods]
S: You understand, ah? Eh good! Tell me, lah!
Where English is used as a national lingua franca at the same time as it is

used as the international lingua franca, there are several implications for
ELT and learning. Teacher models are best found in those who are highly
proficient in the language, but at the same time, excellently prepared to
teach the language. In the list of attributes or features under the rubric of
excellent teacher preparation is the dimension of heightened awareness
of the complicated sociolinguistic realities that English encapsulates today.
In terms of role modelling, teachers may want to exhibit their remarkable
mastery or competence of the language, while at the same time, not denying
their students a glimpse of their use of English for solidarity, familiarity and
intimate purposes. The measurement or assessment of English language
proficiency in Singapore needs to take into account the local flavour in the
usage of English while still not violating the expected norms of intelligible,
international communication in English.
IE, WE and ELF: Implications for the Singapore situation

Returning to the questions posed at the beginning, I offer some very
tentative conclusions. In asking whether current paradigms are sufficient
for todays world, we could perhaps acknowledge that they may not be;
however, there is sufficient material within those paradigms to set us

thinking through our roles as teacher-practitioners and teacher-scholars
in an era of English as a lingua franca. English language educators in
Singapore have to understand the nuances and textures of each of the three
paradigms, keeping in clear view, the consequent practices in adopting any
or all of the views advocated by the adherents of the paradigms.

The next question asked whether the current controversies tell us much
about international English language education. I do not believe that we
know much more than we did before, but we can recognize that ELE is
a wide-open field for investigation and we should not be deterred by the
open semantics besetting it with many definitions and descriptions possible.
Finally, with English established fully as a lingua franca for the world, how
can we find answers to ELE in the Singapore context and perhaps other
Outer Circle contexts? A foolproof method is to always seek to check our
everyday assumptions about what we do when we teach language(s). One
of our everyday assumptions as teachers and researchers is best checked
by the wise words of Joshua Fishman (1968: 1): Languages do not really
exist except as part of a matrix of language varieties, language behaviors
and behaviors towards language. Fishmans quotation harks back to earlier
scholars who established earlier on that when we speak of languages, we are
referring not to those entities but to the speakers of those languages.

Continuity, innovation and diversity are themes certainly reflected in
the ELT methods and practices of Singaporean teachers of the English
language, who benefit somewhat from the fact that English is the only
medium of instruction in schools. Continuity implies conservation of
the status quo in our English Language Teaching (ELT) practices, while
diversity suggests innovation and change of that status quo. As suggested
by Maley (2008) the interactive process of English used globally focuses
our attention on the need for a process-based rather than a product-based
approach in ELT, and the importance of the use of the language rather
than the teaching of a model: with the user rather than the code (2008: 11).

In closing, English as a lingua franca has raised some serious issues
of who teaches what to whom, why, when, where, how, and why. In the
negotiation of English language education against the backdrop of the
universal presence of English in an interconnected world, the emphasis
on linguistic and cultural hybridity and a critical approach to language
education cannot be stated often enough. As Modiano points out (2004:
225, cited by Canagarajah 2006: 197):
Retaining our indigenous cultures and languages(s) while reaping the
benefits of large-scale integration via a language of wider communication is
the challenge many of us will not doubt have to come to terms with in the
years to come.
276 Anne Pakir

The global spread of English has led to Crystals observations:

It is difficult to know what to expect, when a language develops a worldwide
presence to the extent that English has. There are no precedents for such
a geographical spread or for so many speakers. Moreover, the speed at
which it has all happened is unprecedented. (1995: 110)
It may well be the case that the English language has already grown to be
independent of any form of social control. There may be a critical number
or critical distribution of speakers beyond which it proves impossible for
any single group of alliance to stop its growth, or even influence its future
It may be that English, in some shape or form, will find itself in the
service of the world community for ever. (1997: 13940)
With a vast geography, a compressed history, and undergoing accelerative

speeds of development, English as a world-wide presence is not the same
phenomenon everywhere. In fact, its hybrid and mixed nature is evident
in lingua franca communication whether within a national community
of speakers or across transnational communities. The challenge to policy
making is that of accepting the reality of English as a heterogeneous
language with a plural grammatical system and norms, accommodating
the expression of diverse local values and identities (Canagarajah 2006:
211). With such an acceptance, a different perspective on English language
education can be brought about, leading to a more realistic planning of its
goals and achievements in a modern world where English will serve local and
international communities for quite a while longer.
Note
1. A version of this chapter was first presented at the 2nd International Symposium
organized by the Centre for English Language Communication Skills (CELC),
National University of Singapore (NUS), Hilton Hotel, Singapore (30 May1
June 2007) and subsequently submitted for the Conference Proceedings. I
thank CELC NUS for its kind invitation to present the invited lecture and for
its permission to use the paper for inclusion in this volume. The internal and
external reviewers of this chapter are deeply acknowledged for their helpful
suggestions and comments but all faults that remain are those of the author.
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Part V
Research Bibliography
12

Researching English in Singapore:

Bibliographic sources1
This volume has had, as a primary thrust, the various policies and practices
with regard to language that have been implemented and manifested
over the past decades, crucially in how these have been managed in the
modern multilingual and multicultural ecology that is Singapore. The
various contributions have explored the implications of this for a number
of issues: a consideration of the evolution of the emergent English variety,
its glocalized features, its status vis--vis a standard or good English; a
reflection on how this translates or should be translated to nativeness,
ownership, and capital; a deliberation for what this means in the realm of
educational policies and practices and curriculum design. This collection
has brought together some of the most current thinking and research on
issues in this regard.

There is of course an abundance of research in numerous other areas
on English in Singapore, and this final chapter is intended as a resource
for readers in this respect, comprising a selective bibliography of such
research.2
English in Singapore: A selective bibliography
Classics, overviews and introductory resources

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Brown, Adam (1999) Singapore English in a Nutshell: An Alphabetical Description of Its
Features. Singapore: Federal Publications.
284 English in Singapore

Crewe, William J. (ed.) (1977a) The English Language in Singapore. Singapore: Eastern
Universities Press.
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Awareness. Singapore: Eastern Universities Press.
Foley, Joseph (ed.) (1988) New Englishes: The Case of Singapore. Singapore: Singapore
University Press.
Foley, Joseph A., Kandiah, Thiru, Bao Zhiming, Gupta, Anthea Fraser, Alsagoff,
Lubna, Ho Chee Lick, Wee, Lionel, Talib, Ismail and Bokhorst-Heng, Wendy.
English in New Cultural Contexts: Reflections from Singapore. Singapore: Singapore
Institute of Management/Oxford University Press.
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Notes
1. We thank Nicole Wong for her help in the initial stages of collating the
bibliography for this chapter.
2. Obviously, many of the works span a number of areas, but for the sake of
simplicity are listed in what maybe considered their primary categorization.
Index
accent, 25, 5762, 913, 139, 2459

Acceptability Judgement Task, 142, 156
accommodation, 95, 111, 250
acoustic analysis, 240
Arabic, 26, 389, 41, 457, 177
attainment, 678, 85, 1169, 168, 250
attitudinal survey, 254
autonomy
see choice
consonants in Singapore English, 240

consumption, 6, 181, 185, 194
sociolinguistic consumption, 15, 194
continuum, 12, 956, 116
lectal continuum, 1046, 113
creativity, 15, 1012, 137, 208, 2247
Cultural Orientation Model, 13, 109,
1148, 237, 250
curriculum, 15, 38, 63, 134, 219
Babas
see Straits Chinese
bilingual education, 29, 43, 134, 159, 174
bilingualism, 93, 135, 165, 18793, 271
demography, 44, 1923

descriptive linguistics, 64, 96
dialect, 2931, 589, 834, 103, 116
diaspora, 16, 44
diglossia, 75, 1134, 118, 120
Cantonese, 23, 2830, 3941, 448, 187

see also Chinese (language/dialects)
China, 3640, 66, 163, 1746, 190
Chinese (ethnicity), 218, 34, 1746
Chinese (language/dialects), 49, 30,
35, 425, 15961, 18790, 197, 240
see also Cantonese, Hokkien, Mandarin,
Teochew
choice, 5762, 78, 140, 185, 212
citizenship, 33, 84, 138, 191, 218
obligations, 183, 191, 197
class, social, 16, 31, 143, 188, 254
classroom talk, 118, 1201, 1245
code-switching, 113, 119, 126, 167, 171
colonization, 23
commodification, 264
communication, 5, 24, 75, 96, 181
communicative competence, 253
ecology, 1921, 32, 428, 165, 193

endonormativity, 8, 57, 141, 152
English as an International Language,
110, 246, 255, 261
English as a Lingua Franca, 15, 66, 261
English Language Teaching, 33, 211,
2613, 275
error, 65, 69, 823, 100
ethnicity, 31, 84, 134, 187, 240
Eurasian, 45, 268, 34, 49, 198, 240
evaluation, 92, 99100, 104, 162, 224
examination culture, 224
exonormativity, 8, 15, 115, 139, 218
Expanding Circle 16, 249, 2615
family climate, 168, 1712
foreign manpower 11, 324, 367
functional literacy, 210
306 Index
globalization, 10913, 11527, 163, 1914,
2169
glocalization, 13, 10916, 126
grammar approach, 209
group membership, 162, 1734, 197
heritage, 45, 26, 94, 183, 190
Hokkien, 23, 28, 40, 94, 188
Hong Kong, 33, 37, 44, 75
Hong Kong English, 43, 254
hybridity, 94, 1034, 109, 1102, 120,
2656
identity, 94, 1157, 1256, 136, 185, 2501
ethnic identity, 159, 181, 1878,
1978, 200
national identity, 29, 110, 1823,
186, 1926
ideology, 10, 14, 207, 268
immigration, 11, 206, 289, 314, 401
India, 6, 23, 27, 34, 378, 65, 75
Indian English, 27, 39, 57, 112
Indian (ethnicity), 22, 257, 34, 389,
14452, 1767
Indian languages, 7, 256, 31, 34, 39,
165, 190
see also Tamil
indigenization, 94, 110, 126, 141, 2689
inflections, 62, 79, 95, 121
Inner Circle, 133, 137, 218, 246, 267
instrumental value, 135, 176, 190
intelligibility, 15, 139, 218, 235, 249
internationalism, 110, 1367
intonation, 209, 2456, 249
see also prosody, tone
language shift, 8, 1615, 186

language variation, 12, 105, 110
lexical items, 43, 95, 119, 238
lexical stress placement, 243
lexis, 12, 24, 625
lingua franca, 2430, 94, 112, 134, 188
linguistic capital, 13, 163, 264
localization, 1003, 110, 164, 252, 262
Malay (ethnicity), 214, 31, 134, 14452,
1704, 184, 1868, 240
Malay (language), 268, 301, 3841,
43, 45, 478
Baba Malay, 246, 28, 423, 45, 47
Bazaar Malay, 268, 30, 427, 112
Malaysia, 289, 324, 37, 70, 91
Malaysian English, 47, 240
Mandarin, 24, 30, 345, 3841, 438,
135, 1601, 18790, 1978, 165
matched guise method, 166
media, 30, 44, 76, 92, 166, 218
medium of instruction, 27, 60, 924,
101, 262
mobility, 5, 16, 181, 261
modernity, 16, 133
late modernity, 21, 44, 182
morphosyntax, 42, 945
mother tongue, 30, 389, 936, 1013,
15961
multiplex social networks, 177
native speaker/non-native speaker, 68,
935, 152, 2169, 246
orthography, 62, 79
Outer Circle, 64, 1402, 261, 272
justice, 181, 194

knowledge-based economy, 140, 208,
213, 226
language attitudes, 166
language debates, 13, 1336, 152
language maintenance, 14, 161, 164,
1713, 1768
language ownership, 7, 134, 133
language policy, 39, 95, 106, 165, 181
particles, 434, 479, 81, 125, 245

Peranakan
see Straits Chinese
Peranakan English, 245
Philippine English, 33, 254
phonology, 15, 935, 979, 102, 268
pidgin, 10, 63
pragmatic approach, 3, 227
prescriptivism, 814, 979, 104, 20911,
214, 2201
Index 307
prestige, 19, 85, 105, 189, 236
process writing, 210, 212, 2204
proficiency, 33, 68, 1667, 213, 236
pronunciation, 612, 734, 80, 934,
979, 23556
prosody, 15, 435, 47, 93
see also intonation, tone
public discussion/statements, 59, 63, 76,
104, 196
Tamil, 2531, 143, 149, 15961, 1768,

18990
see also Indian languages
Teochew, 234, 28, 35
text type, 58, 62, 64, 213, 222
thinking skills, 211, 225, 226
tone, 19, 437, 148, 2456, 249
see also intonation, prosody
Received Pronunciation, 13, 57, 73

reflexivity, 14, 182, 194, 200
register, 96, 105, 119, 146, 191
rescaling, 181, 190
vowels in Singapore English, 238, 245
schools, English-medium, 24, 279,

403, 142, 209
Singapore English, 1920, 35, 429
see also Singapore Standard English,
Singlish
Singapore Standard English, 11, 57,
689
see also Singapore English, standard
English
Singlish, 946, 11826, 13641, 133, 183,
1867, 273
see also Singapore English, Singapore
Standard English, Speak Good
English Movement
social capital, 14, 159, 207, 226
social engineering, 3, 225
social integration, 91
social networks, 102, 162, 174, 237
Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore, 134,
163, 166
socio-spatial domains, 14, 161, 196
Speak Good English Movement, 58,
7184, 91, 139, 252
see also Singlish, standard English
Speak Mandarin Campaign, 9, 43, 99,
160, 187, 1746
standard English, 5870, 847, 1016,
1205, 273
see also Singapore Standard English
standardization, 7, 71, 126
stigma, 10, 250
Straits Chinese, 236, 28, 34, 42, 49
substrate, 11, 428

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Asian Englishes Today

Hong Kong University Press

Printed and bound by Condor Production Ltd., Hong Kong, China

Series editors preface

Part I: The Ecology of English in Singapore

1 English in Singapore: Policies and prospects

2 Migrants and mother tongues: Extralinguistic forces in the

Part II: Reconceptualizing English

3 Singapore Standard English revisited

4 The Speak Good English Movement: A web-users perspective

5 Hybridity in ways of speaking: The glocalization of English in

Part III: Ethnicity and Ownership

6 Whose English? Language ownership in Singapores English

7 Language and social capital in Singapore

8 Language policy and planning in Singaporean late modernity

Part IV: English in Education

9 Problematizing the implementation of innovation in English

10 Sounding local and going global: Current research and

11 English as a lingua franca: Negotiating Singapores English

Part V: Research Bibliography

12 Researching English in Singapore: Bibliographic sources

Series editors preface

Of all Asian societies, the role of English in Singapore at least from an

viii Series editors preface

Lubna Alsagoff is Associate Professor and Head of the English Language

Map of Singapore and the region

The Ecology of English in

English in Singapore: Policies and prospects

Lisa Lim, Anne Pakir and Lionel Wee

The Republic of Singapore, independent since 1965, makes an interesting

Lisa Lim, Anne Pakir and Lionel Wee

Language policy in Singapore

of that communitys identity and ethnocultural heritage. It is presented

Lisa Lim, Anne Pakir and Lionel Wee

From past to present

nearly all the language-names have had to be invented by Europeans.

The significance of this, as Makoni and Pennycook (2007: 10) observe, is

Revisiting key assumptions and concepts

Lisa Lim, Anne Pakir and Lionel Wee

The gap between policy and practice

announced a number of changes to the mother tongue policy. Especially

10 Lisa Lim, Anne Pakir and Lionel Wee

Contributions in this volume

The ecology of English in Singapore

12 Lisa Lim, Anne Pakir and Lionel Wee

Ethnicity and ownership

14 Lisa Lim, Anne Pakir and Lionel Wee

16 Lisa Lim, Anne Pakir and Lionel Wee

18 Lisa Lim, Anne Pakir and Lionel Wee

Migrants and mother tongues:

Migrants and mother tongues 21

Population and policies

The colonial era: Natural immigration and vernacular maintenance

Migrants and mother tongues 23

Migrants and mother tongues 25

Migrants and mother tongues 27

Migrants and mother tongues 29