Title: Singlish: an illegitimate conception in Singapore’s language policies?
Abstract: Singapore, like many post-colonial states, longs for a common language to unite its linguistically heterogeneous population. Singlish, which comprises primarily elements of English, Malay, Hokkien, Mandarin-Chinese and Cantonese, is a language spoken by almost every Singaporean, and can be considered to be Singapore's common language. Unfortunately, this common language, Singlish, is also a language that the authorities are eager to get rid of. The Singaporean state holds the belief that Singlish is a corrupted and incorrect form of English, and is detrimental to the image and development of the nation. Singlish, has therefore, since 2000, been the subject of a large scale, state-run language campaign, the purpose of which is to delegitimise and eliminate this language. This paper traces the development of Singlish and argues that the birth of Singlish would not have been possible without the socio-political and historical factors that have created it. Applying, for the first time, Mufwene's (2001) theory of language ecology and evolution to the field of language planning and policy, I will show that Singlish is in fact an inevitable but unwelcomed conception of state language policies.
Publication Year: 2017
Publication Date: 2017-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 28
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