Rani Rubdy

Creative destruction: Singapore’s Speak Good English movement

The increasing use of Singlish in the media, in early schooling and other everyday domains reflects its growing importance as a symbol of social identity and cohesion in Singapore. However, this trend runs counter to the country’s avowed economical goals of becoming a knowledge hub in the region, which it seeks to achieve by developing a highly skilled service sector that is proficient in (Standard) English. Thus, paradoxically, despite a new policy initiative to loosen their traditional tight grip on society in the interest of developing a nation of creative risk-takers, the authorities have recently launched the Speak Good English movement, spawning a slew of editorials, cartoons, skits and commercials in a vigorous attempt at generating awareness among the public of the need to promote the use of Standard English. This paper attempts to show that this move to stem the popularity of Singlish is yet another manifestation of the notion of “creative destruction,” currently being proposed as a strategy to improve the efficiency of corporate and industrial businesses in the country. “Creative destruction” entails the partial destruction of existing economic ideas and structures which rapidly obsolesce with the emergence of new ones. Drawing a parallel with the Speak Mandarin campaign, which has successfully resulted in the dispersal of the local Chinese dialects, the paper argues that this attempt to replace Singlish by Standard English, while throwing up valid issues of social identity and cohesiveness, which are prone to get subsumed by the more urgent pragmatic and economic rationalizations proffered, can then be seen as a triumph of the relentless, hegemonic forces of globalization.

Research in applied linguistics and language teaching and learning in Singapore (2000–2007)

In this review of research in applied linguistics and language teaching and learning in Singapore, more than one hundred national publications for the period 2000-2007 will be reviewed. Since this period encompasses certain changes that were introduced in Singapore schools at the start of the new millennium, it would be appropriate to take stock of the studies that showcase these changes. These studies fall under five main areas of local research: norms, standards and models; English language curriculum and policy; reading and writing instruction and research; mother tongue teaching and learning; and the teaching of English to international students. In this review, representative work under each research area will be discussed, and this will be done within the broad historical and sociopolitical context of research in Singapore. The results of the review suggest that practical concerns assume priority over theoretical issues, which are relegated to secondary importance. This can be explained in terms of the role of the state in education reform and governance and its top-down decision-making processes, the impact of globalization on education, and the role of education in the management of race relations in the country.

“Foreign workers” in Singapore: conflicting discourses, language politics and the negotiation of immigrant identities

Abstract Singapores status as one of the most globalized nations in the world rests primarily on its reliance on cheap immigrant labor. However, with foreign workers now comprising 36 percent of Singapores population, resentment is fast building up among local Singaoreans, as evidenced in the public discourses on migrants which contruct largely negative identities for them. In the context of Singapores language policy, where English is deemed necessary not only as an interethnic lingua franca but for global economic competitiveness, anti-immigrant discourse frequently comes to be couched in terms of language politics and language ideologies that strongly smack of monolingual/monolithic attitudes in relation to English. Thus, paradoxically, despite a large proportion of Singapores current population being the descendants of early immigrants, the “foreign workers” hired today for jobs Singaporeans themselves are unwilling to take up, are castigated for their English language skills, among other things. Because numerous studies dealing with the implications for language shift and maintenance in relation to Singapores language planning initiatives already exist, our article refocuses issues to allow grassroots subjectivity to come in by examining how immigrant identities in Singapore are negotiated through the personal narratives of the everyday experience of these foreign workers, framed within the contraints of language politics and language ideological understandings prevalent in Singapore.

Review of Doctoral Research in English Language Education in the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia (2007-2010).

This review highlights recent doctoral research in English language education and related areas completed between 2007 and 2010 in three countries in Southeast Asia: Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Out of sixty dissertations initially chosen from major universities in these countries, five from the Philippines, four from Malaysia and three from Singapore were selected for review, the selection being based mainly on their quality of work and representation of key areas of intellectual work in the field in these countries. This review shows how the shared postcolonial identities of these countries and their unique sociohistorical locations help explain the coalescing and diverging agendas and trajectories in English language education doctoral research in the region. Much of the work affirms the dominant intellectual position of the West as the producer of knowledge, so there is a need to reposition the intellectual stance of research in English language education in the region within and emerging from its multilingual but unequally globalizing landscapes. Thus, there is an urgent need for more nuanced attention to socio-cultural factors that impact on English language education in the three countries under review, which, in turn, can help scholars produce new knowledge that can contribute to academic conversations in the field.

A Review of “Linguistic landscape: expanding the scenery”

The book charts new territory in expanding the boundaries of this rapidly growing field, intriguingly labelled ‘linguistic landscape’ (LL) by Landry and Bourhis (1997), who first drew scholarly attention to language in public space as a significant domain of research. In aiming to take the powerful construct of LL further, the book forms a fitting sequel to an earlier collection of papers published in a special issue of The International Journal of Multilingualism (2006), titled, ‘Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism’, and addresses several aspects of the LL in a comprehensive and competent way. Thus, although the study of LL in its own right is a new development, the contributions on public signage representing a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives in this edited volume by Shohamy and Gorter have clearly placed the study of LL on solid ground. The book has 20 chapters. These are divided into five parts, each focusing on a specific issue: (1) theoretical perspectives; (2) methodological issues; (3) language policy issues; (4) identity and awareness; and (5) extensions and the way forward. The editors’ introduction to the book and the theoretical chapters are particularly illuminating. The chapters in the other sections articulate theoretical and methodological approaches that reveal many practical and political implications. The six chapters in Part I discuss multiple theoretical perspectives within which to research the emergent field of LL. The different theoretical approaches to the study of LL proposed in these chapters seek to widen its scope along historical, sociological, economic, ecological and sociolinguistic dimensions and contribute to a multidisciplinary cross-fertilization in the study of LL. The opening chapter by Coulmas takes a historical perspective in tracing the functions that writing has displayed in the public sphere since its origin. Noting that linguistic landscaping is perhaps as old as writing, whose origins, he argues, coincided with urbanization and the complex forms of social organization and economic activity that characterize city life, Coulmas uses the concept of public sphere in Habermas’ sense of an urbanized society in stressing the point that linguistic landscape is really linguistic cityscape, particularly in multilingual settings. He looks at six famous ancient inscriptions: the Codex Hammurabi from Babylon, the Rosetta Stone, the Behistun trilingual inscription, the Menetekel-parsin, the calligraphy on the Taj Mahal and the obelisks from Egypt. All these landmarks are a defining feature of city life and relate to the issues of readership. Spolsky sees the study of public signage as a tool for exploring and characterizing the multiliterate ecology of cities and a valuable way to study language choice. He critiques the lack of a clear consensus regarding the development of a theory or methodology for investigating this sub-field of language policy. He clarifies several conceptual issues regarding the choice of language in public signage in multilingual settings, such as the definition of the