Attitudes towards Literary Tamil and Standard Spoken Tamil in Singapore

Saravanan, Vanithamani; Lakshmi, Seetha; Caleon, Imelda S.

doi:10.2167/beb366.0

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…For this reason, it has been ‘the most popular technique used to elicit people's evaluative reactions' (Giles et al 1983: 84). This technique was adapted for numerous other studies, such as Young's (2003) study on Macanese students' attitudes towards English, or Saravanan, Lakshmi, and Caleon's (2007) study on teachers' attitudes towards varieties of Tamil in Singapore. The main disadvantage of the matched‐guise method is the difficulty in finding a speaker capable of producing utterances in an authentic matter.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attitudes towards non‐standard English in Singapore¹

Tan¹,

Tan²

2008

World Englishes

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This paper examines the problem of a curriculum which promotes a standard linguistic variety in a context where non-standardisms are common in the learners' milieu. There have been curricula which try to incorporate the non-standard and have its function discussed; some have considered the nonstandard a stepping-stone towards the standard; and yet others have tried to keep the non-standard out of the school context. We examine the Singaporean context with reference to English in the classroom, where the last option seems to be the implicit one. We focus in particular on the views of 260 upper secondary pupils in five non-elite schools, elicited through survey questionnaires. The results show that there is clear appreciation of the value of Standard English; it is, however, also clear that that the non-standard, Singlish, plays an important social role in the community; and we suggest that it might be possible to harness the non-standard in a curriculum that promotes the standard. STANDARD ENGLISH AND THE EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTCommenting on the National Curriculum (in England, Wales and Northern Ireland), 2 the well-known British linguist David Crystal expresses much optimism:In the 1990s I thought we were entering an era where a more flexible attitude to language was becoming routine. I could sense it in the way the new National Curriculum was reintroducing formal language study into schools, but with an emphasis on explanation rather than prescription. Grammar was back, but now kids were being asked to explain grammatical variations, not to blindly condemn them. For the first time in English linguistic history, there was hope of a rapprochement between the study of the standard language, which is so important for promoting universal intelligibility, and the study of non-standard language, which is so important for promoting local identity. (Crystal 2006: 142-3) He sees this in contrast to the school system (and the associated exams) of his own time, which would not countenance any variation to the prescribed standard. Clearly, the school curriculum has moved on in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Whilst the curriculum clearly stresses the importance of Standard English, it also calls for an appreciation of variation. The programme of study calls for students to be taught about how language varies, including . . . the vocabulary and grammar of standard English and dialectal variation; the development of English, including changes over time, borrowings from other languages, origins of words, and the impact of electronic communication on written language. (National Curriculum Online: English, key stage 4; emphasis original) This represents a solution to the problem of how schools can provide training in Standard English in a context where pupils encounter non-standard varieties around them. The

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attitudes towards non‐standard English in Singapore¹

Tan¹,

Tan²

2008

World Englishes

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“…The ascendance of English is even more pronounced among the Indian population, which comprises speakers of at least a dozen different Indian languages. Tamil, the home language of 43% of Indians in Singapore (Saravanan et al ., 2007), who constitute the largest ethnic group among the Indians, is the only Indian language accorded official language status in Singapore and is taught as a second language in almost all public schools, alongside Mandarin and Malay. Whereas there is strong institutional support for maintaining the use of Tamil in the domains of school, media, home, and community, the use and prominence of the other Indian languages depends on the size of the community using them; and since mainstream schools currently do not offer instruction in these languages, community groups have been running weekend classes in the five non‐Tamil languages − Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali, and Urdu − in a few selected schools.…”

Section: Background To the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Saravanan et al . (2007) provide two main reasons for the diminished usage and status of Tamil within the Tamil community itself: first, the advent of globalization, in which English reigns as a language of prestige and status, and second, a puristic over‐reliance on Literary Tamil (referred to as Written or Formal Tamil in syllabuses and curriculum materials), which, as a recent survey (Seetha Lakshmi, 2001) has shown, has created a lack of fit between the language of the school and home.…”

Section: Background To the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consequently, in the last two decades since English‐medium education was introduced in Singapore, there has been a sharp increase in the use of English as the principal language in Indian households, from 24.3% in 1980 to 35.6% in 2000; and this was at the expense of Tamil, which dropped from 52.2% to 42.9%. This language shift from Tamil to English, referred to as ‘subtractive bilingualism’ (Gopinathan and Mani, 1983; Gopinathan et al ., 2004: 204), has resulted in lack of confidence among Tamil children, as well as their parents, in speaking Tamil, a reduction of interaction of young Tamils with extended family members, and strong parental preference for English (Saravanan et al ., 2007: 61). The ascription of high prestige and status to English accompanied by the diminished valuation of Tamil drives a wedge between the English‐educated and the non‐English‐educated, as also in the case of the Chinese community.…”

Section: Background To the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many Tamil speakers who could speak English therefore preferred to use English because of its prestige value (Kwan-Terry, 2000: 91, citing Gaudart, 1985. Saravanan et al (2007) provide two main reasons for the diminished usage and status of Tamil within the Tamil community itself: first, the advent of globalization, in which English reigns as a language of prestige and status, and second, a puristic over-reliance on Literary Tamil (referred to as Written or Formal Tamil in syllabuses and curriculum materials), which, as a recent survey (Seetha Lakshmi, 2001) has shown, has created a lack of fit between the language of the school and home. Consequently, in the last two decades since English-medium education was introduced in Singapore, there has been a sharp increase in the use of English as the principal language in Indian households, from 24.3% in 1980 to 35.6% in 2000; and this was at the expense of Tamil, which dropped from 52.2% to 42.9%.…”

Section: The Dominance Of English Among Singapore's Ethnic Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Enacting English language ownership in the Outer Circle: a study of Singaporean Indians' orientations to English norms

Rubdy¹,

McKay

Alsagoff

et al. 2008

World Englishes

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Singapore is unique in that it has not only embraced English as one of its official languages, but has made the language of its colonizers the de facto working language of the nation and the sole medium of instruction in all its schools, while assigning its other three official languages, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil, an L2 status in the school curriculum. With the use of English institutionalized in almost all domains of life, present-day Singaporeans grow up as 'English-knowing' bilinguals, acquiring English in the process of its use and interaction in school, in the playground, in the workplace, and increasingly in the home as well, making them native speakers of their variety of English. This raises interesting questions with regard to the ownership and authority of Singaporean speakers, and as to their legitimacy as mother-tongue speakers of the language. Drawing on Higgins' (2003) study on speakers' orientations towards English norms of Inner and Outer Circle countries, we examined Singaporean speakers' degree of ownership of their English norms along the dimensions of age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class. In this paper we discuss some data from this ongoing study relating specifically to the language use of Singapore's Indian community, with a focus on how they positioned themselves in the process of articulating their orientations to English norms.

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