Singapore English and styling the Ah Beng

Abstract

This paper explores stylized renderings of Singapore English as such 'verbal art' is used by Singaporean youth in popular online forums. In order to analyze these stylizations, this study uses corpora collected from two forums frequented by Singaporean students. The data suggests that posters often use stylized representations to perform or to ventriloquize the identity of an Ah Beng (a kind of hustler or gangster). Implicated in such performances are sometimes complex negotiations of class, gender, and ethnicity. The relationship among the linguistic features central to our study and the social meanings signaled by those features suggest the value of approaches that emphasize the range of pragmatic and metapragmatic meanings or indexicalities that accrue to features in modeling variation in Singapore English.

Interpretasi partikel wacana ‘Lah’ berdasarkan ilmu Balaghah

“…Di samping itu, pengakuan penutur terhadap kelemahan diri sendiri dilihat mengendurkan desakan pendengar munkir yang inginkan maklumat tambahan. Situasi mengendurkan pendengar munkir ini juga menunjukkan persamaan dengan makna 'gesaan agar pendengar menerima atau berfikir seperti penutur fikirkan' dalam Brown & Jie (2014), Deuber, Leimgruber, & Sand (2018), Lim (2007), Wee (2010) dan Wong (2004). Dapatan ini menunjukkan interpretasi partikel wacana 'lah' berpandukan ilmu balaghah tidak hanya dilihat dalam ruang lingkup penutur sahaja, iaitu menguatkan penyataan, atau pengkhususan pada maklumat yang dinyatakan tetapi turut melibatkan interpretasi pada pihak pendengar dan berdasarkan konteks ujaran.…”

Singaporean internet chit chat compared to informal spoken language*

“…Particles and other Singlish features are also seen in Ooi and Tan's (2014) more recent qualitative examination of Singaporean Facebook data; these, as the authors show, combine with Standard English and Netspeak features, as well as code-switches to non-English varieties. Brown and Teo (2014) have compared the use of four discourse particles (ah, lah, leh and lor) in data from Singaporean online forums and spoken data, while their main focus is on the use of nonstandard spellings and certain specific lexical features for a particular type of identity stylization in the forums they analyzed. Leimgruber (2016) uses CMC data to investigate the previously undocumented discourse particle bah.…”

Textese and Singlish in multiparty chats

“…However, none of them explored the textese features used in a different Internet Table 3. Collated textisms of Singaporean online users according to Brown and Jie (2012), Hadfield et al (2007) and Ooi et al (2007) Textism types Textism findings (standardized English translations in parentheses)…”

“…Singlish‐based phonological representations were found, including the neutralization of the distinction between /l/ and /r/ such as English → Engrish , and the consonant cluster reduction ‘never mind’ → neh mine and the use of Singlish lexical features such as pragmatic particles lah, leh, liao x, and sia . Similarly, Brown and Jie () documented Singlish stylized renderings in online forums used by Singaporean youths, such as Hokkienized respellings ‘what’ → huat and neutralization of the distinction between /l/ and /r/ such as ‘rubber’ → lubber . Their findings are collated in Table as follows.…”