A Movement Away From Colloquial Singapore English

A Movement Away From Colloquial Singapore English

‘The need for intelligibility and the need for identity often pull people – and countries – in opposing directions. The former motivates the learning of an international language, with English as the first choice in most cases; the latter motivates the promotion of ethnic language and culture’ (David Crystal, 1997).

Language planning policies in Singapore have often been characterised by the ‘desire to achieve a balance between the national pride of linguistic ownership and the need for international intelligibility’ (Khoo 1993: 67). This is evident, for instance, in the state’s current move to promote the use of Standard English (particularly the variety known as Standard Singaporean English, or SSE) and to discourage that variety known as Colloquial Singapore English (CSE, or Singlish as it is popularly known), although in this case, the state’s ‘desire to achieve a balance’ between intelligibility and identity appears to be one involving conflict rather than compromise – one in which these two principles (embodied by SSE and CSE respectively) appear to be opposing linguistic forces, and in which the former appears to be espoused and the latter (at least in the case of CSE, though not that of the ethnic ‘mother tongues’) denigrated. This essay will study whether (and if so, why) these two principles are truly opposed to each other, as seemingly implied by both the David Crystal quotation and the English language policy in Singapore, and in what way the application of these principles may result (as stated in the Crystal quotation) in the ‘pulling apart’ of people and countries, especially in the sense of socio-economic inequality and marginalisation on both international and intra-national levels; and all these will in turn be related to the present-day situation in Singapore.

At first sight, the need for identity and intelligibility appear to be irreconcilable on a linguistic level, the former requiring the adherence to a dominant language variety (such as Standard English) as well as its set of linguistic norms in order for speakers to maintain mutual comprehension, and thus implicitly demanding the non-usage or even abandonment of alternate varieties (Leith and Graddol, 1996: 139); the latter demanding, by contrast, the use of languages or varieties apart from this dominant variety as a way of identifying with one’s culture and distinguishing it from the rest (Crystal 1997: 133–134) – languages and varieties that are, however, incomprehensible to a large proportion of the world population and will therefore (as some perceive: e.