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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1067

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Graciousness in the City: Language, Interdiscursivity and Social governance

Authors: Lazar, Michelle
Submitted by: Lazar, Michelle (National University of Singapore, Singapore)

Public education campaigns are a key mode of governance in Singapore by which the conduct of citizens is constantly regulated.  Campaigns are so prevalent in Singapore that they have become a hallmark of social life in the city-state for more than forty years.  One of the longest running national campaigns is the Courtesy Campaign, instituted in 1979, which aims to cultivate graciousness in the citizenry, by targeting its message to a different sector of the society every year.  The public transportation sector, in which commuters of public buses and the mass rapid transit (MRT) trains are targeted, is one such example.  Boorish behavior of commuters on public transportation has been a perennial concern of city-dwelling in densely populated Singapore, as noted by the Minister for Transport more than a decade ago: “even a short journey can turn into a nightmare when people are rude and aggressive to each other” (The Straits Times, 17 July 1999). 

This paper examines the recent 2009-2010 campaign launch in this sector, focusing on an innovative approach used in the campaign communication. This approach is based on ‘media interdiscursivity’, which may be described as a mixing of discourses and genres that entail a shift of frames, in which the media constitute a significant element.  The media interdiscursivity in the present study involves the appropriation of a popular local television character, ‘Phua Chu Kang’ (PCK), to address a public education message through a courtesy-themed rap music video titled ‘A happy journey starts like that!’  The video was played from time to time on board the MRT trains, while large cut-out stickers of the character ‘speaking’ via speech bubbles were pasted on the doors and glass partitions of the trains and the buses. 

Media interdiscursivity, I argue, is based on an attempt to engage the public via a discourse of the ‘lifeworld’, which is analysed in terms of a combination of two processes -- ‘informalization’ (the use of informal and conversational modes of address (Fairclough 1992, 1995)) and ‘communitization’ (the semiotic construction of a community of people (Lazar 2003)).  The dual processes are examined in relation to the choice of the fictional character, PCK, for his ordinariness and almost ‘real’ personhood status; his informal register and speech style; his appeal of ‘community’; and his use of Singlish, the colloquial variety of Singapore English. The latter, in particular, is interesting because although the government has banned its usage in public media, it was apparently allowed as part of PCK’s linguistic repertoire in his public performance of the lifeworld. The paper concludes by considering how this form of media interdiscursivity brings to bear issues of language, discourse, and social governance in the urban cityscape of Singapore.

References:

Fairclough, N. 1992. Discourse and social change. London: Polity.

Fairclough, N. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman.

Lazar, M. 2003. Semiosis, Social Change and Governance: A critical semiotic analysis of a national campaign. Social semiotics, 13, 3, 201-221.