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Colloquial Singapore English (CSE, commonly known as Singlish) is a linguistic variety used in Singapore, a Southeast Asian nation home to three major ethnic groups: the Chinese (74.35% of the citizen and permanent resident population), the Malays (13.43%), and the Indians (9%) (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2019). It is one of the best known post-colonial varieties of English and has been documented since the emergence of the field of world Englishes (e.g., Greenbaum, 1988; Richards & Tay, 1977). Linguistically, the grammar and lexicon of CSE are systematically imported from other non-English languages used in the island nation (Leimgruber, 2011). From a creolist perspective, it can be viewed as an English-lexifier creole that contains influences from Sinitic languages such as Hokkien, Cantonese and Mandarin, as well as Malay, Tamil and other varieties in the Singapore language ecology (McWhorter, 2007; Platt, 1975). Several distinct features across various levels of language have been investigated in CSE, including phonetics (Starr & Balasubramaniam, 2019), morphosyntax (Bao, 2010; Bao & Wee, 1999), semantics (Hiramoto & Sato, 2012), and pragmatics (Hiramoto, 2012; Leimgruber, 2016; Lim, 2007).

While World Englishes scholarship has always been concerned with different types of English varieties, Expanding Circle (i.e., non-postcolonial) Englishes have had a ‘late start’ in being added to its research remit. As a result, much important work in this area remains to be done. Expanding Circle Englishes in general and Asian Expanding Circle Englishes in particular are still neglected in many handbooks of World Englishes (e.g., inThe Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes; Schreier, Hundt & Schneider, 2020). Notable exceptions here are, for example,The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes(Kirkpatrick, 2020; including, among others, chapters on Japanese, Chinese, and Slavic Englishes) andThe Handbook of Asian Englishes(Bolton, Botha & Kirkpatrick, 2020; including, among others, chapters on Taiwanese, Cambodian, and Indonesian Englishes). While traditionally much focus has been laid on matters of language policies, education, and attitudes, corpus linguistic approaches to Expanding Circle Englishes have become more and more relevant (see, e.g., Edwards, 2016 for the Netherlands; Rüdiger, 2019 for South Korea). In this article, we present the first results from a corpus-based study of Taiwanese English, drawing on the pilot version of a spoken Taiwanese English corpus.

Few studies to date have considered the agency of readers in reinterpreting the cultural, historical, political, and social background of the linguistic landscape (LL; visible language in public space) and the ways in which individual and collective identities are discursively conceptualised through the LL. In this article, we present results from a study involving participants from three self-described sociolinguistic identities (Francophone, Anglophone, and Bilingual), reading signs found in the LL of Montreal. Using photographic prompts, we questioned participants about the probable location of signs, their languages, and the languages’ placement on monolingual (French or English) and bilingual (French–English) signs emanating from both governmental and private entities. Further discussions about their emotive responses to the signs presented and the possible responses of “others” reveal the relative degrees of importance attached to these linguistic elements in constructing, negotiating, and communicating various and (more) fluid sociolinguistic identities.

Discourse particles are among the most commented-upon features of Colloquial Singapore English (CSE). Their use has been shown to vary depending on formality, context, gender and ethnicity, although results differ from one study to another. This study uses the Corpus of Singapore English Messages (CoSEM), a large-scale corpus of texts composed by Singaporeans and sent using electronic messaging services, to investigate gender and ethnic factors as predictors of particle use. The results suggest a strong gender effect as well as several particle-specific ethnic effects. More generally, our study underlines the special nature of the grammatical class of discourse particles in CSE, which is open to new additions as the sociolinguistic and pragmatic need for them develops.

A Review of the Literature and Recommendations for Future Eye-Tracking Research Jakob R. E. Leimgruber Naomi Vingron Debra Titone The LL that surrounds us has been the subject of much recent scholarly attention. Ever since the term was coined by Landry and Bourhis (1997: 25) to cover “the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings,” LLs have expanded to include “electronic flat-panel displays, LED neon lights, foam boards, electronic message centers, interactive touch screens, inflatable signage, and scrolling banners” (Gorter 2013: 191) , or, put more inclusively, “the linguistic items found in the public space” (Shohamy 2006: 110) . The recent launch of a dedicated journal Linguistic Landscape, an addition to the several monographs, articles, journal special issues, and edited volumes (such as the present one) published on the topic, is testament to the ongoing scholarly interest...

This article reviews Negation and Contact: With Special Focus on Singapore English EUR 95.00978-9-02725-948-6

A famous element in Singapore’s food culture is the hawker centre, consisting of a large collection of individually-run stalls selling various kinds of foods and drinks. These centres, which dot the island and its public housing estates, were built on government initiative beginning in the 1970s, with the prime objective of sedentarising the large number of erstwhile itinerant street hawkers, based on a discourse of promoting ‘cleanliness’ inherent to the entire nation-building narrative of the country. The sedentarised hawkers, now divorced from their earlier way of life and often from their earlier neighbourhoods, had to start naming their businesses overtly. Some did so by including references to the geographical location of their earlier area of street hawking. The linguistic landscape of stall signboards in a hawker centre exhibits various attempts to come to terms with this immobilised itineracy.

This paper compares data from a Singaporean chit chat forum to informal spoken data. We first perform a qualitative analysis of text samples in a framework of indexicality. Then we present quantitative findings for two (sets of) features each of the contact variety Singlish (particles, thekena-passive) and spoken English in general (discourse markers, contractions). For the former some similarities are observed but we also find that the forum contributors tend to be creative and innovative in their choice of particles. In this connection we argue that they index specific subgroup identities and further point out that Singlish is a rather flexible set of resources. Our findings differ from those of previous research on Jamaican Creole as used in an internet forum, thus showing that the use of contact varieties in computer-mediated communication can take different forms. The general features of spoken English are used comparatively less in the forum data, indicating that using Singlish features in writing is not tantamount to writing down spoken language. Moreover, we draw attention to features of computer-mediated communication in in the chit chat forum data. Finally we discuss implications in terms of the Dynamic Model of the evolution of Postcolonial Englishes (Schneider 2007).

Singapore has received a large amount of scholarly interest with regards to the structural and sociolinguistic properties of its local variety of English. In contrast, there is comparatively less empirical data on individual linguistic repertoires and usage patterns. Building on previous research into the linguistic and sociological background of young Singaporean adults, our study examines 450 students recruited from three distinct educational institutions: a university, polytechnics, and vocational training schools. A detailed language background questionnaire reveals the degree of multilingualism, patterns of language use, as well as language attitudes towards different languages. We find important differences between the three student cohorts examined here and are able to relate them to their social and ethnic backgrounds.

In daily life, we experience dynamic visual input referred to as the “linguistic landscape” (LL), comprised of images and text, for example, signs, and billboards (Gorter, 2013; Landry & Bourhis, 1997; Shohamy, Ben-Rafael and Barni 2010). While much is known about LLs descriptively, less is known about what people notice when viewing LLs. Building upon the bilingual eye movement reading literature (e.g., Whitford, Pivneva, & Titone, 2016) and the scene viewing literature (e.g., Henderson & Ferreira, 2004), we report a preliminary study of French-English bilinguals’ eye movements as they viewed LL images from Montréal. These preliminary data suggest that eye tracking is a promising new method for investigating how people with different language backgrounds process real-world LL images.

Colloquial Singapore English ('Singlish') is well known, among other features, for its class of discourse particles derived from substrate languages. These particles have been ascribed to various languages, chief among them Southern Min, Malay, and Cantonese. Previous research has also shown this class to be open to newcomers, with Lim (2007) concentrating on particles of Cantonese origin appearing in the 1980s. In this paper, I present evidence of a previously undocumented particle, bah , whose origins are suspected in Mandarin, a variety that has hitherto contributed only little to the grammatical structure of Singlish. Using corpus data complemented by data from online discussion forums, as well as responses to an online survey, the paper describes bah 's pragmatic meanings and the socio-historical and sociolinguistic reasons for its emergence.

Existing models of variation for Singapore English, with the possible exception of Al-sagoff’sculturalorientationmodel,arelargelyunsatisfactoryinaccountingforthehighdegreeofSinglish–Standard alternation found in everyday speech. The occurrence, for instance, of Singlish elements inotherwise Standard speech is a challenge. An approach based on indexicality enables a less code-based,more inclusive analysis, allowing for a multitude of codes from various languages to be takenintoaccount.Thus, the clear separation of ‘varieties’ such as Singlish, Standard English, Mandarin, Hokkien, etc., is de-constructed, and their interplay highlighted. The data presented herein shows the strength of such a model,and raises questions as to the appropriateness of independent, distinct ‘varieties’ in the speech communityat hand. VARIATION IN SINGAPORE ENGLISH The problem When describing the situation of English in Singapore, authors usually take one oftwo approaches. Many (Pakir 1991; Ho and Platt 1993; Poedjosoedarmo 1995), havefound analyses based on the continuum hypothesis put forward by Platt (1975) most use-ful, whereas others (Gupta 1994; 2001), have preferred a traditional diglossic approach(Ferguson 1959). Each of these models has, of course, been adapted to suit local speci-ficities, such as Gupta’s (2006) Fergusoniandiglossiataking on a ‘leaky’ nature to explainfeatures of H in otherwise L utterances (and vice-versa). Nonetheless, there remain prob-lems with all these, stemming largely from their usage of ill-defined concepts such as‘code’ or ‘variety’: it is unclear, for instance, to which diglossic sub-variety an utterancesuch as (1) should be ascribed.(1) My brother one went there and he took the budget airline and then he come backwith the normal airline. (ii.M.3.f)Theutteranceinexample(1)containstwofeaturesthatareusuallyascribedto‘Singlish’:emphatic

The concept of authenticity has received some attention in recent academic discourse, yet it has often been left under-defined from a sociolinguistic perspective. This volume presents the contributions of a wide range of scholars who exchanged their views on the topic at a conference in Freiburg, Germany, in November 2011. The authors address three leading questions: What are the local meanings of authenticity embedded in large cultural and social structures? What is the meaning of linguistic authenticity in delocalised and/or deterritorialised settings? How is authenticity indexed in other contexts of language expression (e.g. in writing or in political discourse)? These questions are tackled by recognised experts in the fields of sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and contact linguistics. While by no means exhaustive, the volume offers a large array of case studies that contribute significantly to our understanding of the meaning of authenticity in language production and perception. The concept of authenticity has received some attention in recent academic discourse, yet it has often been left under-defined from a sociolinguistic perspective. This volume presents the contributions of a wide range of scholars who exchanged their views on the topic at a conference in Freiburg, Germany, in November 2011. The authors address three leading questions: What are the local meanings of authenticity embedded in large cultural and social structures? What is the meaning of linguistic authenticity in delocalised and/or deterritorialised settings? How is authenticity indexed in other contexts of language expression (e.g. in writing or in political discourse)? These questions are tackled by recognised experts in the fields of sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and contact linguistics. While by no means exhaustive, the volume offers a large array of case studies that contribute significantly to our understanding of the meaning of authenticity in language production and perception.

International audience

Colloquial Singapore English, or Singlish, exists in an environment characterised by strong language planning aimed at demoting it in favour of Standard English, as well as in a linguistic ecology featuring a number of languages that have had an impact on its current form. An actual definition of Singlish, beyond scholarly linguistic analyses, is less than straightforward, and this article sets out to address this. Chinese Singaporeans were asked to define Singlish, and elements of Hokkien (one of the major substrate languages involved in the emergence of the contact variety) in conjunction with Singlish were subjected to attitudinal ratings. The results call for a redefinition of Singlish not in terms of a clear set of features that set it apart from other varieties, but rather as a combination of linguistic resources that combine to create a stylistic repertoire appropriate for the expression of, among other stances, local identity.

Early models and diglossia The continuum hypothesis In his seminal 1975 article, John T. Platt introduces two important concepts into the way in which SgE is viewed. Firstly, he applies the concept of a post-creole continuum, championed by DeCamp (1971), to the SgE speech community. His is a much more dynamic model than Ferguson and Stewart's formulae. Secondly, he introduces the term creoloid to describe a particular type of contact variety. I will first examine the concept of the post-creole continuum, before explaining the reasons for Platt's choice of the term creoloid . The Jamaican continuum Much of Platt's inspiration for the post-creole continuum analysis comes from DeCamp's work on Jamaican English, which considers ‘post-creoles’, i.e. creoles that ‘gradually merge with the corresponding standard language [that is, their lexifier]’ (1971: 349). This is not always the case; similar situations may result in quite different outcomes: Haitian Creole French, for instance, has continued co-existing with Standard French in a diglossic situation without any sign of merger (Ferguson 1959; DeCamp 1971: 351). DeCamp (1971: 350) defines a post-creole situation as one where he says there is ‘no sharp cleavage between creole and standard’. Rather, ‘there is a linguistic continuum, a continuous spectrum of speech varieties ranging from … “bush talk” or “broken language” … to the educated standard’ (De-Camp 1971: 350). This continuum, made up of its extremes, the basilect and the acrolect, and the intervening mesolects, presents a seamless succession of subvarieties: it is in fact so fine-grained that it cannot be subdivided into discrete lects.

In recent years the study of English and its global varieties has grown rapidly as a field of study. The English language in Singapore, famous for its vernacular known as 'Singlish', is of particular interest to linguists because it takes accent, dialect and lexical features from a wide range of languages including Malay, Mandarin, Hokkien and Tamil, as well as being influenced by the Englishes of Britain, Australia and America. This book gives a comprehensive overview of English in Singapore by setting it within a historical context and drawing on recent developments in the field of indexicality, world Englishes and corpus research. Through application of the indexicality framework Jakob Leimgruber offers readers a new way of thinking about and analysing the unique syntactic, semantic and phonological structure of Singapore English. This book is ideal for researchers and advanced students interested in Singapore and its languages.

As the previous chapters have shown, the variation in Singapore English between what has, traditionally, been called ‘Standard English’ on the one hand and ‘Singlish’ on the other hand is less than straightforward. The diglossia approach, presented in Section 2.1.3, took a domain-based distribution of two relatively clearly identified varieties as its premise, in which the choice of one variety over the other was motivated, essentially, by the nature of the exchange: university lectures, all but the least formal writing, public speaking, school and church settings, all called for the high (H) variety, Standard English, whereas everyday conversations, peer-group interaction in the playground, and generally all informal speech was carried out in the low (L) variety, Singlish. That this view of variation in Singapore English is unsatisfactory was subsequently explained at length, drawing mostly on data showing the problematic interplay of features ostensibly ‘belonging’ to both H and L in the same utterance. Alternatives were found in Alsagoff's cultural orientation model (see Section 2.2.1), a view of the Singlish–Standard variation that takes into account the potential social meanings encoded in ‘switches’ from H to L and/or vice versa. Still, the view there was largely one that took a supposed ‘variety’ of English (either Standard or Singlish) as its unit of analysis (a point further addressed in Chapter 6), and was also largely concerned with cultural orientation (thence the name of the model), rather than with an overarching theory that could explain all of the social meanings potentially indexed through the various features used.