Abstract
Abstract Since independence in 1965, the Singapore government has established a strongly mandated education policy with an English-first and official mother tongue Mandarin-second bilingualism. A majority of local-born Chinese have inclined toward a Western rather than Chinese identity, with some scholars regarding English as Singapore’s “new mother tongue.” Other research has found a more local identity built on Singlish, a localized form of English which adopts expressions from the ethnic mother tongues. However, a re-emergent China and new waves of mainland migrants over the past two decades seem to have strengthened Chinese language ideologies in the nation’s linguistic space. This article revisits the intriguing relationships between language and identity through a case study of Chineseness among young ethnic Chinese Singaporeans. Guided by a theory of identity and investment and founded on survey data, it investigates the Chinese language ideologies of university students and their agency in choosing for themselves a Chinese imagined identity and community. Our survey found that ethnic Chinese Singaporean university students still possess a strong affinity for Mandarin and a desire to develop this aspect of their identity, in the context of Singapore’s multiracial national identity. There exists a high propensity for imagined futures in Chineseness, with a majority of survey respondents who claimed English-speaking and bilingual identities also expressing the desire to become more bilingual and more Mandarin-speaking. This paper also deciphers the external and internal factors contributing to this development and suggests some areas of future research.
Highlights
While English has long been seen as the first global language, international media and academics since the late 20th century have come to appreciate the growing global role of Mandarin, China’s designated official language since 1956 (Ding and Saunders 2006; Gil 2011; Kamaravadivelu 2012; Sharma 2018)
Chinese diasporas have been affected by a rising China which in turn prompted a re-think of existing language ideologies and identities
Bearing in mind that Wang (1988) had observed both cultural and ethnic identities developing in the later periods in Southeast Asia, this article aims to explore, after multi-layers of Chinese identities had been deposited in the local ecology, what imagined identities and communities could be precipitated, as an increasingly Sinicized global political economy acts as catalyst in the twentyfirst century
Summary
While English has long been seen as the first global language, international media and academics since the late 20th century have come to appreciate the growing global role of Mandarin (putonghua), China’s designated official language since 1956 (Ding and Saunders 2006; Gil 2011; Kamaravadivelu 2012; Sharma 2018). Well-educated, and mobile Chinese citizens are increasingly emigrating: 4.1 million in 1990, 5.5 million in 2000, 9.3 million in 2013, and 10.7 million in 2019 (International Organization for Migration 2019; Xiang 2015) Their numerical presence and activities in various transnational spaces have been increasingly visible, especially in the developed West (such as the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe) and Japan, at 53.4 percent in 1990 and 58.6 percent in 2013 (Xiang 2015; see Li et al 2015; Zhou 2017). All these could potentially contest the linguistic practices of diaspora Chinese, triggering a re-positioning of their identities as interlocutors of Mandarin versus other languages, versus the languages of their host countries, since language is not merely a mirror of pre-existent identities, and active in creating, re-creating, and changing identities (Rosa and Burdick 2018; Wang and van de Velder 2015)
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