(De)coupling race and language: The state listening subject and its rearticulation of antiracism as racism in Singapore

Vincent Pak

doi:10.1017/s0047404521000373

Vincent Pak

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404521000373

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Abstract

AbstractHarmonious multiracialism is one of Singapore's national values, yet race in Singapore is almost always precariously managed. In 2019, race once again became the centre of public debate when a government-sanctioned advertisement featured a Chinese Singaporean actor ‘brownfacing’ as an Indian Singaporean, incurring public outcry. Local entertainers Preeti and Subhas Nair responded with a rap music video that criticised the advertisement and included the line ‘Chinese people always out here fucking it up’, which drew flak from the government and the Chinese community in Singapore. This article considers the state's response to the antiracist practices of the Nair siblings, and the subsequent labelling of their behaviour as racist. The article also introduces the concept of the state listening subject and describes its role in the semiotic process of rearticulation to elucidate how the Singaporean state selectively (de)couples race and language to maintain the national racial order. (Raciolinguistic ideology, multiracialism, rearticulation, state listening subject, race, Singapore, antiracism)*

Highlights

In service of antiracism, sociolinguists have long investigated the intersection of race and language and its relation to broader systems of inequality and power structures
Since the poststructural turn in the social sciences, linguists have explored identity construction processes facilitated by linguistic practices (Bucholtz & Hall 2005), which has allowed scholars to examine the use of language as a means of racialisation (Chun 2001; Chun & Lo 2016) and the concomitant maintenance of racial and linguistic ideologies and inequality (Barrett 2006; Subtirelu 2015; Hiramoto & Pua 2019)
The process of racialisation is put forth by Omi & Winant (1994:13) as ‘the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group’; to racialise something or someone is to imbue them with meanings associated with race as a category of social difference

Summary

Introduction

Sociolinguists have long investigated the intersection of race and language and its relation to broader systems of inequality and power structures. While the Nair siblings’ video features significant metapragmatic elements that characterise it as parody and as antiracist discourse, it is the aftermath of the incident that evinces complex rearticulation processes undertaken by the state listening subject to maintain racial harmony in Singapore.

Results

Conclusion