Multilingual Singapore

Language Policies and Linguistic Realities

Ritu Jain

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000386929
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This volume brings together researchers whose analysis and insights provide a comprehensive and up-to-date account of Singapore's rich linguistic diversity. Applying a combination of descriptive, empirical, and theoretical approaches, the authors investigate not only official languages such as English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil, but also minority languages such as the Chinese vernaculars and South Asian and Austronesian languages. The chapters in this volume trace the historical development, contemporary status, and functions of these languages, as well as potential scenarios for the future. Exploring the tension between language policies and linguistic realities in Singapore, the contributions in this volume capture the shifting educational, political, and societal priorities of the community through its past and contemporary present.

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Multilingual Singapore

Language policies, challenges, and responses

Ritu Jain

Introduction

Singapore offers a fascinating site for the study of language management in an ethnically and linguistically heterogenous society. In official discourse, the population comprises three – presumably homogenous – main ethnic communities (Chinese, Malays, and Indians) who affiliate with the representative mother tongues: Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. The nation’s fourth official language, English, is intended to support societal and governmental communication. However, this neat language quadrant belies a rich language diversity that has been significantly shrunk if not erased in the process of social management. The credit for this shift can be ascribed to the city state’s language policies initiated around the time of the establishment of Singapore in 1965. Previously vibrant Chinese languages (such as Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese), Malayic and non-Malayic languages (Baba Malay, Banjarese, and Javanese for example), and various South Asian languages (Sinhala, Malayalam, for instance) have been officially and societally marginalised. In the early years, the urgent need for nation building necessitated the adoption of a language policy that could accommodate the sensitivities and competing interests of an ethnically diverse population. However, over the years, this policy has been censured for an overly instrumental top-down approach that has led to the large-scale shift towards official languages at the expense of greater linguistic diversity. Various governmental measures have attempted to both sustain desirable outcomes as well as manage emergent fallouts. Migration-led demographic shifts and enhanced linguistic heterogeneity on the one hand and growing shift to English on the other, have prompted band-aid responses to patch over policy fissures. This volume attempts to illuminate the rich linguistic legacy of Singapore and offer snapshots of various policy measures, community responses, and resulting outcomes over time. This introduction sets the stage with a brief overview of the historic language situation that served as foundation of the language policy, before detailing subsequent societal and language shifts that have simultaneously motivated responses from and confounded policy. It then introduces the rationale for and structure of the volume before concluding with an introduction to the various chapters.

Singapore’s language policy

Singapore’s resident population of 4 million is categorised along three presumably primordial and homogeneous ethnic identities, Chinese (at 74 per cent of the population), Malay (13 per cent), Indian (9 per cent) and Others (3 per cent) for those who cannot be slotted into one of these categories (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2019).¹ These identities, termed ‘races’ in official discourse, form the core of the nation’s multiracial policy and serve as tools to harness and manage societal heterogeneity. Members of these groups are assumed to share a common ethnicity and cultural practices, and a common language they identify with (Benjamin, 1976). Premised on this logic, the state’s bilingual policy encourages proficiency in English, the medium of instruction, plus the officially assigned ethnic mother tongue for every school-going child: Mandarin for the Chinese, Malay for the Malays, and Tamil for the Indians. The three official mother tongues are considered on par, and state resources are utilised equitably for their maintenance and promotion. The category of ‘Others’, comprising ethnicities that cannot be accommodated in the preceding three groups, has no officially assigned mother tongue. Members of this category (for example, Eurasians) are free to select any of the official languages as a second language in education.

The institution of representative languages for the communities has not only served the education system but also as the foundation for nation-building and consolidation. Historically, the three languages facilitated in forging intra-ethnic homogeneity from the widespread linguistic diversity prevalent prior to the formation of independent Singapore in 1965. Data from the pre-independence census of 1957 (Chua, 1964) show that the Malays were the most homogeneous community with 69 per cent predominantly using Malay while the rest used languages such as Javanese and Boyanese. Among the Chinese, the most linguistically diverse, Hokkien was the majority language followed by others such as Teochew and Cantonese. Among Indians, the majority (60 per cent) spoke Tamil while the rest used languages such as Malayalam, Gujarati, and Punjabi. Presumed a hurdle to the task of nation-building, the harnessing of this diversity was foundational to the young nation’s language policy. The recognition of a singular representative language for each community, shaped through a consideration of social, political, and economic needs, ensured the consolidation of community identities and relatedly, the suppression (if not erasure) of linguistic heterogeneity. The policy’s bilingual commitment also formed the foundation of the nation’s education policy (for overviews on the history and development of Singapore’s language policy, see Leimgruber, 2013; Jain & Wee, 2019; Silver, 2002).

However, over time, government and community concerns over language developments – some desirable and others not so – have prompted a series of measures to manage expectations and contain fallouts within the bilingual framework. The initiation of various national language campaigns and movements has further helped support policy objectives and maintain the predominance of the official languages. For example, the Speak Mandarin Campaign was launched to encourage the economically advantageous language Mandarin and discourage alternate Chinese languages (officially termed ‘dialects’), has facilitated large-scale shift among the Chinese to Mandarin (Bokhorst-Heng, 1998, 1999; Bokhorst-Heng & Wee, 2007; Kwan-Terry, 2000; Li, Saravanan, & Ng, 1997; Teo, 2005). Recent census data (Wong, 2011) indicates the success of the policy in engineering a shift from Chinese languages spoken by 99 per cent of the community in 1957 (Chua, 1964) to Mandarin which currently serves as the predominant home language of 48 per cent of the community. Similarly, even as Malay remains the predominant home language of 83 per cent of the community, the escalating shift to English (Cavallaro & Serwe, 2010; David, Cavallaro, & Coluzzi, 2009) demonstrates a potential threat to the official language policy. Likewise, despite the official status accorded to Tamil, the language is gradually losing its dominance with only 38 per cent of Indians using it predominantly at home. The diglossic nature of the language with variance between the spoken and written forms (Schiffman, 1998, 2003) and competing attraction of English (Saravanan, 1993, 1999; Lakshmi, 2016; Vaish, 2008) has thwarted policy attempts to reinforce Tamil. Furthermore, managing the linguistic diversity among the Indians has time and again challenged policy. While 54 per cent of the Indians identify with Tamil, the rest claim affinity to a variety of alternate languages belonging to both Dravidian and Indo-Aryan language families. The educational difficulties of students from non-Tamil backgrounds, especially those from Indo-Aryan language backgrounds, have required special policy accommodations. Since 1990, five languages (Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu) have been accepted as second language subjects in education (Jain & Wee, 2015, 2018, 2019).

Alongside support for the mother tongue languages, policies have been harnessed to promote and protect the status and standard of English and discourage the popularity of the colloquial variant Singlish. The initiation of the Speak Good English Movement in 1979 has continued to bolster the status of the language as the medium of instruction and inter-ethnic communication. However, the prevalence of English across expanding domains and communities highlights policy frustrations in calibrating an equilibrium for societal bilingualism. As the Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, highlighted in his address at the Speak Mandarin Campaign’s 40th anniversary celebration, 71 per cent of Chinese, 67 per cent Malay, and 70 per cent Indian households with Primary 1 children spoke mostly English at home (Zhou, 2019). While competence in English has been desirable, the shift in its favour has raised fears that Singapore may be losing its bilingual competitive edge (see Alsagoff, 2007; Dixon, 2009; Gupta, 1994, 1998; Pakir, 1998; Rubdy, 2001, 2007, on standard and colloquial English in Singapore).² In addition, these community-specific difficulties have been significantly exacerbated by demographic shifts in recent decades. In order to position itself as a ‘global city’, Singapore has actively wooed skilled professionals or ‘foreign talent’ to promote growth while simultaneously importing cheap immigrant labour for its growing infrastructure. These measures have contributed to an overall population increase from 2.1 million in 1970 to 5.7 million in 2019 (Department of Statistics Singapore, 2020). The 1.7 million non-resident population (on various employment and stay permits), contributing to 44 per cent of the overall population increase, has dramatically altered the linguistic landscape of Singapore. This has also meant an expanding number whose identities and languages defy Singapore’s essentialist ethnic categories but who must be coerced into the bilingual policy. These policy-related triumphs and constraints have been the subject of much of the scholarly work in – and on – Singapore. However, attention has largely focused on language and community specific issues while summative commentary on the sociolinguistics and sociology of language in Singapore has been relatively limited. Volumes on wider language networks and community responses to language planning in Singapore have been limited to Alfrendas and Kuo (1980) and Gopinathan, Pakir, Ho, and Saravanan (1998). Both volumes address relationships between sociolinguistic aspects such as religion, media, and education, as well as outcomes of language management on the four official languages of Singapore.

The current volume not only contributes to that scholarship, but also offers an up-to-date picture of Singapore’s rich linguistic diversity, focusing on the relationship between the bilingual policy and societal multilingualism. It is motivated by a desire to assess the wider linguistic landscape of Singapore that includes both official as well as minority (numerically and politically) languages. Even as the predominance of English and Mandarin³ indicates reduced multilingualism, various languages that contributed to historical linguistic diversity, continue to thrive and yet others have nearly disappeared. In drawing attention to the legacy, status, and prospects of these languages, this volume remains oriented to language policies and their impact on ethnolinguistic vitality. Focusing on official languages as well as some of the languages beyond the scope of the language policy, the chapters collectively offer insights into the country’s rich linguistic heritage, an intricate tapestry that has been reworked by policy into a quadrilingual patchwork (Bokhorst-Heng & Silver, 2017). As various contributors demonstrate, while English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil have been given prominence, the linguistic landscape of the country still contains shades of various community languages. Some of these, such as Baba Malay, Hokkien, Teochew, and Malayalam, may be fading under pressure from the education policy but others such as Hindi, Bengali, and Filipino are gaining vibrance as a result of growing immigration. Expected to serve as a scholarly reference on the sociolinguistics of Singapore, the volume is intended to be accessible to language specialists and administrators as much as to community leaders and members of the public. As a result, while many of the chapters are underpinned methodologically by linguistic and sociological data, some present a summary of previous research and update on particular languages, and yet others offer critical perspectives on the exclusionary nature of language policies.

The organisation of this volume

In this volume, various chapters cluster around Sinitic, Austronesian, and South Asian languages, while others address various aspects of societal multilingualism. The first three chapters highlight the exclusionary nature of Singapore’s language management. The contributors demonstrate the growing frustrations of societal multilingualism, both inherited and enhanced by immigration, to language policy. They spotlight communities of practice that fall beyond state-drawn ethnic and language boundaries. The use of Tagalog among Filipinos, or that of Singlish among university students, or even vernaculars among the Chinese illustrate alternate language ideologies than those espoused by the government.

In Chapter 2, Lionel Wee questions the inapplicable and irrelevant rationale of pragmatism and intended inclusivity of Singapore’s language policy. Drawing attention to foundational education and language related concepts (or ‘sacred cows’ as they are termed in the chapter), he demonstrates that in practice they exclude sec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Series Editor’s preface
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Map
• 1 Multilingual Singapore: Language policies, challenges, and responses
• 2 The fetishization of official languages
• 3 Singapore English, language mixing, and vernacular speech
• 4 Spoken Tamil in Singapore
• 5 The other mother tongues of Singaporean Indians
• 6 The changing status of Malayalam in Singapore
• 7 Singapore’s other Austronesian languages
• 8 Baba Malay
• 9 Pronouncing the Malay identity: Sebutan Johor-Riau and Sebutan Baku
• 10 The curious case of Mandarin Chinese in Singapore
• 11 Chinese dialects in Singapore: Context and situation
• 12 Unpacking ‘multilingualism’: Filipinos in Singapore
• 13 Coda: Towards a liquid-multilingual Singapore? An outsider’s view
• Index