[lg policy] Singapore:Give Singlish a break!

[Harold Schiffman]

[image: Photo of a sign in a Tower Transit bus by Straits Times]
<https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ST-photo-signs-Tower-Transit.png>
Photo of a sign in a Tower Transit bus by Straits Times
Give Singlish a break!
 on March 16, 2017 Opinion
<https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/category/opinion/>

by Wan Tsung-Lun

Signs written in Singlish have called attention to social identity of this
language again recently. However, the debate does not have a significant
progression regarding how people stick to argue over whether Singlish
should be a pride to Singaporean people. Frankly speaking, the government
has shifted its attitude towards this so-called ‘dialect’ from the
standpoint suppressing its existence. Surprisingly, the public discourse is
going around in circles.

Linguists have agreed Singlish as a language has its importance in terms of
either social reality or academic discussion. It is worthless to insist on
the stigma in which Singlish is just a broken word-by-word translation from
Chinese into English. There is no evidence supporting this idea. So, just
give up spreading the rumour. The concern this globalized city-state has
more with Singlish is whether this would stop Singapore from receiving good
reputation for its openness. I would say the answer is an obvious ‘not’.
They are dealing with the wrong issue.

According to sociolinguistics studies, the negative linguistic attitude,
the researchers have gathered from foreigners, towards Singlish is not a
matter of this language itself. Instead, the issue is more about the social
interaction between the locals and the non-locals.

Priven (2008) points out that whether one grieves the loss of the language
of the other or not is connected to their own interest. This point is
supported by previous studies which have shown how immigrants and guest
workers from different social backgrounds have heterogeneous attitudes
towards Singlish.

For instance, Kang (2012) reports that with more and more Korean families
sending children to Singapore for learning English and Mandarin, Korean
mothers have found that Singlish is being widely used. On the one hand,
based on pragmatism, these mothers view Singlish as a useful tool, though
with some negative characteristics, in this island; on the other hand, from
the perspective of sociolinguistic competence, their children are required
to be able to switch between Singlish and Standard English because they are
positioned as global elites by their parents.

As a contrast, McKay (2013) points out that the migrant workers who go to
Singapore because of poverty in their homelands tend to marginalize
Singaporeans who can only use Singlish. Their negative attitude toward
Singlish, compared to Filipino or Indian English, becomes a strategy to
challenge their positions of social inferiority in Singapore society.

Furthermore, De Costa (2010) studies how the standard English language
educational policy is interpreted by a female student, with a
designer-immigrant identity, from China in the classroom. De Costa finds
that throughout the classroom interaction, this student shows a certain
degree of agency in using standard English and not adopting the Singlish
features employed by other students to negotiate her professional identity.

And, according to my own analysis on a spontaneous discussion in an online
group comprising Taiwanese in Singapore, Taiwanese who condemn the use of
Singlish are actually ‘relocalizing’ their negative experiences contacting
local Singaporeans. Due to a rising exclusionism, some locals try to use
Singlish to differentiate other Asians and themselves. Sometimes it takes
the form of criticizing these foreigners’ English as “incorrect English”,
since they already knew these outsiders are not English native speakers.
Taiwanese immigrants, however, see this action to be unacceptable speaking
of the cosmopolitan role of this state. Therefore, their solution is to
make strong arguments against Singlish.

All the studies above have shown one important thing—Singlish is not the
real issue. As we have known the reason why foreigners seem to not accept
Singlish is out of their own interests, attacking Singlish as a shameful
language will never answer the real question. Even if Singlish disappears
one day, as long as the contrasting relationship between the locals and
non-locals is constructed within the neo-liberalized era under the
government’s policy, the non-locals will always be able to internalize
their ideologies to something else to condemn. This is the real issue.
Singlish is a fake issue. Give this language a break.

*References*

   - De Costa, P. I. (2010). Language ideologies and standard English
   language policy in Singapore: Responses of a ‘designer immigrant’student.
   Language Policy, 9(3), 217-239.
   - Kang, Y. (2012). Singlish or Globish: Multiple language ideologies and
   global identities among Korean educational migrants in Singapore. Journal
   of Sociolinguistics, 16(2), 165-183.
   - McKay, S. L. (2013). Globalization, localization and language
   attitudes: the case of “foreign workers” in Singapore. Multilingual
   Education, 3(3). doi:10.1186/2191-5059-3-3
   - Priven, D. (2008). Grievability of first language loss: Towards a
   reconceptualisation of European minority language education practices.
   International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 11(1),
   95-106.


https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2017/03/16/give-singlish-a-break/
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