Jock Wong

The particles of Singapore English: a semantic and cultural interpretation

Abstract The Singapore English particles constitute one of the most distinctive features of this cultural dialect. These highly interactive particles play a major role in the integrity and cohesiveness of the Singapore English speech community and offer invaluable insights into Singapore culture. The semantic study of these particles could therefore pave the way for a better understanding of this culture. This study investigates the meanings of several of these particles—three particles la which come in different lexical tones (but are otherwise homophones), the particle wut (commonly spelt as what ), and the particle meh —within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage framework. The meaning of each of these particles is stated in the form of a reductive paraphrase couched in simple and universal human concepts so that it can be readily understood by both insiders and cultural outsiders. This study shows that the Singapore English particles are loaded with interactional or pragmatic meanings. It also suggests that the high frequency of use of some particles, including wut and the particles la , is motivated by a cultural norm of interaction.

Cultural scripts, ways of speaking and perceptions of personal autonomy: Anglo English vs. Singapore English

Abstract Every language variety embodies a set of culture-specific ways of thinking that can be articulated with maximal clarity and minimal ethnocentrism in the form of ‘cultural scripts’ using natural semantic metalanguage (NSM). In this study, perceptions of ‘personal autonomy’ in Anglo culture and in Singapore culture are explored on the basis of linguistic evidence using NSM. These Anglo and Singaporean attitudes to personal autonomy are articulated in the form of cultural scripts, and are thus compared and contrasted. The proposed cultural scripts show that even though Anglo English speakers and Singapore English speakers can both be said to speak the same ‘language’, the cultural values reflected by the two varieties can be radically different from and even at odds with each other.

A Critical Look at the Description of Speech Acts

John Searle says that the aim of studying the philosophy of language, which the area of speech acts originally fell under, concerns universality: “The philosophy of language is the attempt to give philosophically illuminating descriptions of certain general features of language (…) and it is concerned only incidentally with particular elements in a particular language” (1969, p. 4). The aim is, of course, a good one. However, to understand the “general features of language,” it follows that one would have to use a metalanguage that contains general features of language; a metalanguage that contains “particular elements” associated with “a particular language” or, in other words, an ethnocentric metalanguage would obviously not do. Yet, this is precisely how the study of speech acts is often conducted—with an ethnocentric metalanguage. It seems paradoxical that while scholars who study speech acts directly or indirectly engage in the pursuit of language universals, the metalanguage they use often effectively prevents them from reaching that goal. This chapter argues that we need to employ a minimally ethnocentric metalanguage, such as natural semantic metalanguage (NSM), as the analytic tool, if we want to fruitfully study speech acts in world languages. NSM could help us recognize speech acts from any language, even if there is no English word for it, and allow us to understand them from the inside. This chapter also argues that we should refrain from “comparing” speech acts by asking how people in various cultures perform the same speech act because this would necessitate the use of a language-specific speech act verb (e.g., request, apologize). A more fruitful way might be to formulate a generic situation using NSM and ask how people in various cultures respond in/to that situation.

Child-raising Values and Practices: Looking from the Inside

This introduction to the special forum on the linguistic aspects of child-raising practices discusses the ethnocentric bias inherent in every natural language and proposes a way to minimize this bias. English is not culturally neutral. Words like ‘love’ and ‘happy’ are not suitable for cross cultural description because they reflect an English-specific perspective. However, while most words in any language are language-specific, research suggests that a small number of words and various combinations of these words to form clauses are universal. These words, called semantic primes, and their universal combinations constitute a meta-language that is minimally ethnocentric.

The ‘emes’ of Linguistics

The three formal ‘emes’ of linguistics, phonemes, morphemes and lexemes are among the things first year linguistics students learn. However, while most linguistics students know what the formal emes are, the idea of a pragmeme, a concept conceived by preeminent scholar Jacob Mey, may be less familiar. A pragmeme has been defined as ‘a situated speech act’ by Alessandro Capone but one may ask whether it is a pragmatic analogue to the formal memes and how helpful the concept is for our understanding of pragmatics. This paper explores the notion of a pragmeme and argues that it is indeed a helpful notion for analytical and pedagogic purposes but it must first be expressed in irreducible semantic elements and given a cultural interpretation before it can be of any significant use.

The Academic Practice of Citation

One of the features of academic writing is reporting what other scholars or studies say or, in other words, citation. In many academic writing courses, students are taught how to cite sources in terms of using a particular citation style (e.g. APA style vs. Chicago style) with the purposes of teaching them how to write a literature review and protecting them from plagiarism. However, what most academic English courses, books and teachers seem to neglect is how one could formulate a report on what other sources say (i.e. the wording of the citation), regardless of the citation style.

The Culture of Language

This paper examines several English forms and their interconnectedness in a cultural context. It describes the cultural values or ways of thinking they embody in the form of cultural scripts. The focus is on words, phrases and grammatical forms (especially the pragmeme usually but inaccurately referred to as a ‘request’) that express the Anglo respect for personal autonomy. It is argued that these English forms should not be taught separately to English learners, as is the norm, but collectively as a set of forms that express a certain value. Language users are cultural beings and the understanding of the culture underlying a language and the cultural interconnectedness of forms is crucial to anyone learning the language, especially the English language, given that it is the lingua franca of the world. The relationship between language and culture cannot be over-emphasized.

The Pragmatics of Kéyĭ (“Can”) in Singapore Mandarin

The object of study in this chapter is the pragmatics of the non-Standard Singapore Mandarin equivalent of the English can (可以; keyĭ). This chapter describes some of the speech acts it is associated with and represents some of these speech norms in the form of cultural scripts formulated using the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM). It is hoped that the cultural scripts will facilitate a better understanding of the cultural values underlying the use of this word. This chapter also contrasts some of these speech norms with their English counterparts to highlight their culture specificity and further examines examples from standard Mandarin to explain their cultural significance. This chapter additionally shows that speech acts are often culture specific, and speech acts specific to one language (in this case, English) cannot adequately describe speech acts specific to another (Singapore Mandarin, in this case). The proposed solution is NSM, a metalanguage that comprises semantic primes and universal combinations of the primes, which is also what the previous chapter advocates for the study of speech acts. As this chapter tries to show, NSM can clearly explain Singapore Mandarin speech acts associated with the word keyĭ and, in doing so, clarify the language-specific use of the Singapore Mandarin semantic equivalent of the English can.