English in Singapore, a city of migrants: Standard dialect ideology and attitudes towards Singlish

Abstract

Singapore is a city state whose location and history as a trading post and a British colony has made it a wealthy multiethnic and multicultural country. The history and current trends of migration have resulted in four official languages: English, Mandarin Chinese, Malay and Tamil. In addition to Standard English Singaporeans use an informal code known as Singlish, which is generally based on English but draws on lexical, grammatical and phonological resources of multiple languages spoken by Singaporeans. This paper investigates negative attitudes towards Singlish expressed by government-related sources such as websites and educational campaigns held in the late 2010’s. It begins with defining language prestige and prescriptivism. Then, it describes the sociolinguistic context of English in Singapore, the local Standard English and selected features of Singlish. The main part of this paper is the analysis of texts and videos expressing prejudice against Singlish. The discussion attempts to explain the sources of linguistic ideology in Singapore by referring to ethnolinguistic vitality, historicity and so-called purity. The paper concludes that Singlish is a unique mode of expression for Singaporeans.