Presentation+notes


 * Hannah – Orange **
 * Christina – Red **
 * Dorea - Green **

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When writing slides, please consider the following 1. what the linguistic element is (examples) 2. How this reflects Singapore socially/culturally/politically. **Context: ** Three factors have influenced all the languages of Singapore, and have let to the emergence, in this century, of SCE:

(1) Extensive contact of speakers of different languages (including domestic contact)

(2) Almost total absence of monolingual people

(3) The widespread learning of English, both formally and informally The most important of the languages that were in contact in the turn of century period which saw the origin of SCE, then, seem to have been:

(1) Standard English

(2) Assorted Southern varieties of Chinese of which Hokkien/Teochew and Canotonese are likely to be the most important

(3) Baba Malay

In Singapore, especially in the last 20 years, the spread of English was propelled by a range of factors deriving from a context formed by four cultures. It is a link language between the different ethnic groups, the language of administration and higher education, of regional and international contact, of the tecnological, financial, manufacturing and other infrastructure upon which the economy rests.


 * One significant aspect of cultural context is th written and spoken discourse of those who belong to and identify with that culture **

Local English developing its own norms, in pronunciation, vocabulary and to a lesser extent in grammar. possible conflict between official reality and actual facts eg. National Language is Malay, Official Languages are Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and English. Depending on definition of National and Official Language, some argue that English has become the //de facto// national language of Singapore (Llamzon, 1977, 39) while others belive this is not necessary the case as English is only the dominant working language (Afrendras 180: 18)
 * English in Singapore for international and intranational purposes.

The linguistic cycle in many Anglophone colonies of English moving from a foreign language to English as a second language and then back to English as a foreign language after independence has been broken in Singapore. English seems to be moving from a second language to a native language. English had colonial origin in sgp but politically neutral as no cultural community has special claim.

(arnd 1941) English was the language taught in the schools to provide clerks for offices and the lower level of the colonial administration. English although an exoglossic language and a language of the colonial end of the Second World War, a lingua franca of the more elite sections of society.

Parents in sgp wanted their children to be educated in English, if this was the sole medium for higher education and international community.

In Sgp, formal and informal english? eg. one used in official settings and then Singlish. three groups

English educated and English speaking parents. no significant ability in any other language use english in 80-90% of their communication but also fluent or competent in one or more languages. Those that use English only for simple transactions(taxi drivers, shop assistants)

Singapore English as a post creole language?


 * Sgp is a multiethnic society with 77% chinese, 15% Malays, % Indian, 2% other ethnic in 1980 census of 2.4 millio.
 * Although there are 4 official languages, in actual practice English has become the de facto national language.
 * Significant that English is not part of the cultural groups.
 * English, a non-native language, has been given the function of a superordinate language of education, administration, trade and international relations. This has produced a distinctive variety of English.

**What is Singlish? ** > SCE associated with prestige groups (but is not prestigious itself) >  **Deletions of Words: ** __Omitted Tenses __ > a. //She// shop //here yesterday// (CSE) > e.g. My mum she come (came) from China many years ago > Oh, I see (saw) him last week > Not random but structurally conditioned by what follows the verb. E.g verb omitted when preceding an adjective phrase > This house very big > However, used when the following complement is a noun phase (John___ my lecturer) or a preposition phrase indicating location (The girl___ in school) > (Influence of substratal languages – Chinese, Malay) > Must refer to present time (the girl is in school) > Past time – adverbial to indicate past time (the girl in school just now) > > b. My baby has started to speak (SSE) > > (parallel to //le// in Mandarin) **Linguistically difficult to define ** >> ..the educational disadvantage and opprobrium which accrues to many creole speakers does not to the native SCE speakers, who, quite the opposite, hve in general a social and educational advantage. >>
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Vital lingua franca for children
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">SCE is characterised by its syntax (formation/arrangement of grammatical sentences), not it’s lexis (vocab)
 * <span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Purpose is for communication amongst 4 official languages and therefore requires simplicity.
 * <span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Words pertain to cultural significance, do not require further explanation amongst its speakers
 * <span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Mirror Chinese – reflect hierarchy of languages
 * <span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Eg. The cupboard hit. The scratch dry part off, then got blood come out of it. (Explaining why his leg is bleeding – ‘he’ is the subject of ‘scratch’)
 * 1) <span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">b. //She// shopped //here yesterday// (SSE)
 * <span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Even no difference in past and present tense forms in subclass of strong verbs (go-went, see-saw)
 * __<span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Utterances with no verbs __
 * <span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Copular verbs, although use in CSE, are not obligatory to the clause. The difference therefore is that British English requires all its clauses to have verbal predicates, while CSE distinguishes between clauses that describe states from those that describe actions.
 * //__<span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Perfective aspect: __//<span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Common way to express perfective aspect is to use ‘already’. //<span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Already //<span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;"> likely to be linked to //liau// in Hokkien used to mark completion. Inchaotive aspect (change of state)e.g ‘already in inchoative aspect’
 * 1) <span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">a. My baby speak already (CSE)
 * <span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Should not dismiss language as bad English because it is a highly ordered and structured system.
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Diverse nature - multicultural/multiracial
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Lacks pidgin as its predecessor – should not be considered as a creole
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Systemization of a creole may be based on the speech of those who have adequate knowledge of the norms, but choose the creole in order to identify with a community. **Similarly SCE has not emerged from those weak in English, but from those who use it habitually as a language of primary expression**
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Multilingualism is the norm in Singapore, and even domestic multilingualism is the norm rather than the exception. Creoles emerge out of multilingual situations and Singapore can be regarded as a laboratory in which an English contact variety is emerging. **First generation native SCE speakers are being created in Singapore now, very few of them monolingual. In these children growing up with SCE, SCE has become a native language, not an interlanguage.(pg 49)**
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">What does make Singapore somewhat unusual among creoles is that those who use SCE domestically..tend to be of high prestige.
 * The question arises as to the linguistic status of the whole speech continuum and of perhaps the most interesting sub-variety of it, the basilect, at times half-jokingly referred to as 'Singlish'. Background of extremely complex language situation in Singapore arising from a mixture of ethnic, socioeconomic and educational factors past and presenT
 * SCE, the basilectal form of SE warrants particular attention as it bears some resemblance to the basilectal ends of some creoles, and especially some post-creoles.SCE can be the first language of osme speakers, or acquires soon after acquisition of a chinese dialect - producing near-native speakers. for most it is a second language.
 * SE did not develop out of a pidgin. Even the Basilect, singlish, differs from a pidgin like Bazaar Malay or local pidgin English in that i is not drastically reduced in lexicon or syntax.
 * used for intra ethnic and inter-ethnic communciation. incompatible with the usual concet of creole
 * share certain features of post creoles
 * There has been much research on what constitutes Singapore English as a foundation to codify this variety of English (eg. "Towards a Description of Standard Singapore English, Tay and Gupta, 1983). no problem at the intra-communication level within Sgp but may be problematic in the wider inter-communication at an international level.

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**<span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Code Mixing ** <span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">- <span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;"> SCE -> identity marker rather than half-learnt version of English <span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">- <span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">(pg 50) SCE, the Low variety of English, is used to express solidarity functions, which gives it a particular role in inter-ethnic contacts. SCE is a means of expressing national, rather than ethnic, identity, and is not the major inter-ethnic link language. > Mostly loans from southern varieties of Chinese, which are used to indicate the attitude of the speakers to what they are saying. > “La” > “Semantically empty” > Kind of has an assertive emphasis? Used to show commitment to what he has said? > “mah” and “what” – contradictory particles. Eg. Her price is too hard for me lah > > > >  **<span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Diglossia ** - <span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">– The use of English in Singapore’s highly competitive educational system is a further incentive to ambitious parents to develop the use of English in the home. For individuals who had established SCE as an informal variety, that was what was transmitted to the children. This then gave rise to a normal transmission of SCE which has helped it to develop a stability, in the sense that variation is dialectically and socially meaningful, rather than resulting from different degrees and types of interference in the individual’s use. > >  **<span style="color: red; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Colloquial ** > - Particularly food and cultural items > - Difficulty in spelling (English or hanyu pinyin for chinese) > - Eg. Sgp English terms appear as understatements of their general English equivalents > || Very nice || Excellent || > || Can do || Good || > || Not so good || Satisfactory || > || Lousy || Bad || > a) Words often considered as slang, whose use is mostly in colloquial speech > - Chinese or Malay stems with English suffixed and inflectional endings (eg. Heowsified, tidakpathy) > b) Idioms, idiomatic and figurative expressions – expressions fall into four groups: > (i) English : no head no tail, father’s scholarship > (ii) Malay : china bukit, potong jalan > (iii) Chinese (hokkien) : chiak chua, ngeow > (iv) English/local languages : (malay/English – make noise/bising bising) (Chinese/English – catch no ball/liak boh kiu) > - Dress : > (i) Chinese: samfoo, cheongsam > (ii) Malay: baju kurong > (iii) Indian: Sari > (iv) English: orchid dress, Japanese slippers
 * <span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Code switching denotes the distinct functional contexts in which a multilingual makes alternate use of two or more languages; code mixing refers to"the use of one or more languages for consistent transfer of linguistic units from one language into another, and by such as language mixture developing a new restricted or not so restricted coe of linguistic interaction.
 * <span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Constant interaction among the different speech communities (Malay, Chinese, Indian) has resulted in a great number of loanwords from these languages into English.
 * <span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Integrated syntax and lexicon
 * <span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Cultural respect that some words cannot be replicated into another language.
 * <span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Pay tribute to the origin of words (food etc)
 * <span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Form Identity-
 * <span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Eg. Use of pragmatic particles.
 * <span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Speakers also introduce lexical items from other languages, and code-shift, depending on their perceptions of the interlocutor’s repertoire (person they’re talking to)
 * <span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">There has been some cross borrowing between English, Hokkien, Cantonese and Malay, so that certain lexical items (eg ‘roti’ bread from Malay, ‘koon’ sleep in hokkien)
 * <span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">SCE is learnt in an atmosphere of extreme linguistic tolerance, where many languages are (quite casually) acquired and lost, and where there is little emotional attachment to any language.
 * <span style="color: #e36c0a; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Items of local reference: There are often words of non-English origin, for which there is no English equivalent, and which express a concept, or refer to an item which is locally but not (or not yet) internationally relevant
 * ** Constant interaction among the different speech communities (Malay, Chinese, Indian) has resulted in a great number of loanwords from these languages into English.
 * (90) syntax of English modified, similar to chinese eg. SE (Why do you want to go?), SGPE (Why you want to go?) Madarin (weisehnme ni yao qu?) Trend towards word for word translatability of codes explains many of the syntactic changed which Singapore English has undergone. Lexical items and phrases (loh, lah) have been frequently borrowed to fill gaps in English.
 * (91) beneath the random and confusing mass of language variation, there is actually some sort of patterning of language behaviour which is guided along sociolinguistic rather than purely linguistic grounds.
 * Several words in colloquial English of Singapore has been cross-borrowed. That is, they appear as loanwords in more than one language. An important issue is the use of items of Hokkien origin in Baba Malay, many of which are used in SCE (food names, cultural references). Words of Malay origin are also used in Chinese carieties. Coversely, items of Malay origin which have been borrowed into general English may be treated differently in Singapore English because the recognition of their origin prevents their full assimilation.
 * A loanword into English which has an ultimate source in Language A may have entered English through mediation of Language B.
 * <span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Singapore’s current situation
 * <span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Cycle
 * <span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Different varieties of English – the H variety is StdE, L variety is SInglish
 * <span style="color: #00b050; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">SCE is more suitable as an element of solidarity than is StdE because while StdE is ethnically neutral, ability in it is a class marker (pg 51)
 * In 1956, a bilingual primary and secondary education policy was implemented but constant increase in choice of English as first language.
 * ** All spoken usage in Singapore by Singaporeans with Singaporeans is subject to complex constraints on variety choice and certainly SgE should not be seen as a single variety
 * The situation is further confused by the presence of a colloquial variety which can be described as creolised to the extent that is syntax is virtually a calque on Hokkien, spoken b speakers of very diverse personal linguistic backgrounds, and which is similar to, but not the same as, varieties spoken by persons whose English proficiency can be described as rudimentary. Indeed in Singapore, the usage of English can be seen as diglossic for speakers who are highly proficient in the most standard variety of English.
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Concern that it is of a lower standard
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Government fears stigma
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">In may 1993: SCE banned from television (including comedy) because Singaporeans thought that television had an educational function. Std English and in an Singaporean accent was okay.
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16pt;">Diversity among generations. Since Sgp's political independence, the move towards economic development, urban renewal, social regress and national defence has led to the introduction of many policies, schemes, campaigns and concepts which has generated a whole new crop of terms and expressions in the last twenty years or so. Fresh words, the Sgp's colloquiallisms constantly emerge among the younger generation, the older gen may be at a loss in understanding the new patios (rural, colloquial language)
 * //This 'national identity' by which a Singaporean identifies himself as 'Singaporean' rather than as 'Chinese', 'Malay' or 'Tamil' is best expressed through the use of English.....The use of English as a language for the expression of one's national identitty also explains why the English of some SIngaporeans is considered 'near-native' rather than 'native'. Their speech is characterized by stress and intonation patterns which do not conform to those of the 'well established' varieties of English such as British English and American English.//
 * On the whole, in Singapore, it is seen as very undesirable, by both government and educators
 * ** __Locally Stigmatised__: British StE is accepted in Singapore to such an extent that any usage which was pointed out as being different from that mode would be immediately stigmatised.
 * __Difficulty in controlling Std__: In case of schools, textbooks and teaching material are controlled bt teaching remains in hands of teachers
 * Mainly derived from oral sources since it is the oral medium that exhibits the widest divergence from General English usage. As many of the entries are colloquialisms, they have seldom or never appeared in print…spellings of words have appeared in written medium have been idiosyncratic.
 * Malay and Chinese words crop p frequently in SCE because they are so expressive and for which no English equivalents can be found with the same force of emotion.
 * 1) Words or senses currently used in General English but which originated from the countries where the early immigrants came from. These words can normally be found in any standard English dictionary as they have been accepted as part of the English language.
 * 1) 2. Words used in General English but which have a different meaning in Singapore usage.
 * SE || GE ||
 * 1) 3. Words used in SE but are not part of the English language outside SGP and Malaysia
 * 1) 4. Words/Expressions used to depict local practices, customs, campaigns, sports, crafts, local foods, housing, education, the environment etc, - in short, the folk ways and lifestyles of Singaporeans.
 * (p. 115) Colloquialisms by their very definition do not belong to print except when used in dialogue, and by virtue of not being recorded soon end up in the dust heap of forgotten words.

//(A Term) is an expression that is something more than just a description, one that carries a certain degree of public recognition, an official status awarded by the speech community in general or at least claimed by the speaker. There are two halves to a term: forma and meaning. It is necessary that both have official status: the meaning must be recognized as familiar and nameworthy and the form must be acknowledged as a standard way of designating that meaning. Contrast this with made-up expressions or nonce forms, which lack such official status, either because the meaning has not been recognized as nameworthy and requires an ad hoc description, or because the meaning is referred to in an unfamiliar way//
 * Terms – common usages, ‘familiar ways of expressing familiar ideas’