Creative destruction: Singapore’s Speak Good English movement

Abstract

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.

Colloquial features in Word Englishes

“…More specifically we shall seek to determine whether there are correlations between our findings on the one hand, and on the other hand Kachru's (1985) 'Inner Circle' (IC) vs. 'Outer Circle' (OC) distinction and the evolutionary stages posited by Schneider (2007). Kachru's (1985) 'three circles' model of World Englishes provides the basis for the distinction drawn in the present study between one set of varieties as IC Englishes (BrE, AmE, Canadian English (CanE), Australian English (AusE), and New Zealand English (NZE)), and a second set as OC Englishes (Singapore English (SingE), Philippine English (PhilE), Hong Kong English (HKE), Indian English (IndE) and Kenyan English (KenE)).…”

“…In this section we briefly discuss two influential models of World Englishes - Schneider's (2007) 'dynamic-evolutionary' model and Kachru's (1985) 'three circles' model -that are invoked as potential sources of explanation for the intervarietal findings of the study. More specifically we shall seek to determine whether there are correlations between our findings on the one hand, and on the other hand Kachru's (1985) 'Inner Circle' (IC) vs. 'Outer Circle' (OC) distinction and the evolutionary stages posited by Schneider (2007).…”

“…For example, while Singapore is an ESL/OC country insofar as English continues to co-exist with strong indigenous languages, as an increasing number of families and groups adopt English as their first language it stakes a claim to IC status (Pakir 2001). Schneider's (2007) dynamic-evolutionary model of variety-formation assumes that a uniform underlying process has operated across the diversity of contact situations in which postcolonial Englishes have developed. The process centrally involves identity reconstruction, shaped by interaction between the indigenous inhabitants and the colonists, and manifested in 'structural nativization'; that is, "the emergence of locally characteristic linguistic patterns and thus the genesis of a new variety of English" (Schneider 2007: 6).…”

“…Mukherjee & Gries 2009;Collins 2008Collins , 2009aHundt & Gut 2012), and there has emerged a general consensus that such variation is not simply a matter of the absolute presence or absence of linguistic features in a specific variety, but is more typically of a relative nature. In many cases, quantitative differences can be ascribed to the linguistic process of structural nativization, and the emergence of locally distinctive forms and structures (Schneider 2007). In this paper we shall investigate a quite different kind of explanation, arguing that a number of the quantitative differences found have a discourse-stylistic basis.…”

Norms and varieties of English and TESOL teacher agency

“…Traditionally, national language policy actors have proscribed local innovations in English (e.g. Rubdy, 2001Rubdy, , 2007, either explicitly or implicitly. However, it appears from our work that collectively teachers are in a position to exercise their agency and provide appropriate judgments on the issues of errors and innovations, taking goals of communication, curricular and educational requirements and the sociolinguistic reality of English into consideration.…”