English In Singapore

A semantic, pragmatic and cultural interpretation of Singapore English, offering a fascinating glimpse of Singaporean life.

This book offers readers a new way of thinking about the unique syntactic, semantic and phonological structure of Singapore English.

Over the past few decades, Singapore English has been emerging as an independent variety of English with its own distinct style of pronunciation, grammar and word usage. All the findings presented in the book are illustrated with extensive examples from one hour of recorded conversational data from the Lim Siew Hwee Corpus of Informal Singapore Speech, as well as some extracts from the NIE Corpus of Spoken Singapore Speech and recent blogs. In addition, usage patterns found in the data are summarised, to provide a solid foundation for the reported occurrence of various features of the language. A full transcript of the data is included in the final chapter of the book.

In Singapore, multilingualism is the norm, and English (often the local variety) is widely acquired and used. This book examines the social and historical context of children's English in Singapore, and traces the development of four Singaporean children who have English as a native language. The implications for education and speech therapy are discussed.

This volume challenges the monolingual mindset by highlighting how language-related issues surround us in many different ways, and explores the tensions that can develop in managing and understanding multilingualism. The book features analysis and discussion on the use of languages across a range of contexts, including post-migration settlement, policy, education, language contact and intercultural communication.

Essay from the year 2018 in the subject Speech Science / Linguistics, grade: A, , language: English, abstract: The paper discusses the English language in Singapore. In the context of British colonization, English speakers moved around the world, carrying and spreading the English language. This is how the English language also reached Singapore when it was acquired by the British in 1819. When Singapore gained independence in 1965, four official languages were recognized. Mandarin, Malay and Tamil, which were the “mother tongues” of the people of Singapore, along with English, as an additional official language.

Combining the World Englishes framework with First Language Acquisition methodology, this book investigates children’s acquisition of L1 English in the context of multilingual Singapore, one of the traditional Kachruvian Outer Circle or ESL countries. The book investigates language choice, use, and dominance in Singaporean families, identifies common linguistic characteristics of L1 Singapore English, as well as the acquisitional route that Singaporean children take. It discusses characteristics at the different levels of language organization, i.e., phonological, morphosyntactic, lexical, and pragmatic features, drawing on a variety of systematically elicited data and Praat-based acoustic analyses. Comparing the results to similar data obtained from children living in England (both mono- and bi-/multilingual), the book also sheds light on how the acquisitional steps taken by Singaporean children differ from or are similar to traditional native speakers of English and children from immigrant families in England.

English in Singapore provides an up-to-date, detailed and comprehensive investigation into the various issues surrounding the sociolinguistics of English in Singapore. Rather than attempting to cover the usual topics in an overview of a variety of English in a particular country, the essays in this volume are important for identifying some of the most significant issues pertaining to the state and status of English in Singapore in modern times, and for doing so in a treatment that involves a critical evaluation of work in the field and new and thought-provoking angles for reviewing such issues in the context of Singapore in the twenty-first century. The contributions address the historical trajectory of English (past, present and possible future), its position in relation to language policy and multiculturalism, the relationship between the standard and colloquial varieties, and how English can and should be taught. This book is thus essential reading for scholars and students concerned with how the dynamics of the English language are played out and managed in a modern society such as Singapore. It will also interest readers who have a more general interest in Asian studies, the sociology of language, and World Englishes.