Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1306

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

Languages at a Crossroads: Multilingual, Multimodal ‘Speech Acts’ in Singapore

Authors: Nelson, Mark Evan
Submitted by: Nelson, Mark Evan (Deakin University, Australia, Australia)

Throughout Singapore’s forty-seven-year history, multilingualism and ‘racial harmony’ have been core elements of an all-encompassing sociopolitical design, ostensibly for achieving a local form of “productive diversity” (Cope and Kalantzis, 1997) in the small, densely, heterogeneously populated city-state. The state recognizes four official languages: Malay, Tamil, Mandarin Chinese, and English. While Malay is acknowledged symbolically as the ‘national language’, English is the principal working language of governmental institutions, including education. Still, Singapore’s ‘bilingual policy’ minimally requires all students to also undertake studies in a second language, normally the ‘mother tongue’, typically and rather ironically determined by the linguistic and/or ethnic background of an individual’s father. As Pakir (1998) notes, Singapore is singularly committed to “the ambitious aim of making its entire population bi-literate in English and one other official language” (p. 86), where English is widely regarded as “key to a share of the world’s symbolic power” and “crucial for the accumulation of cultural, political and economic capital” (Chew, 2006: p. 77) and Malay, Tamil, and Mandarin are seen as mainstays of cultural identity and memory. Mirroring the practical priority accorded to English by this bilingual policy is the relatively dominant representation of English-language messages on the surfaces and within the spaces of Singapore’s built environments, i.e. in so-called “linguistic landscapes” (Landry & Bourhis, 1997) or “semiotic landscapes” (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010). Even so, all official languages and scripts are, in general, commonly visible. But comparison of the relative visibility of different languages on signs and in other public texts only superficially explains, and may also belie, the situated semiotic work performed around these resources.

This paper details research that examined such performative potentials in a large multilingual corpus of multimodal messages observed and recorded within the semiotic landscape of a Singaporean public transport depot, understood as a somewhat neutral, liminal space. The reported mixed-methods approach integrated conceptual and analytic tools from speech act theory, audience response theory, and multimodal textual analysis. On this empirical basis, the author argues that, according to the textual representation of different official languages, respectively differential patterns of ‘illocutionary force’ and ‘perlocutionary effect’ (Austin, 1962) are evident, contradicting and counteracting asserted principles of societal and cultural harmony and equality.

References:

Austin, J. (1962). How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chew, P. (2007). Remaking Singapore: Language, culture, and identity in a globalized world. In A. Tsui & J. Tollefson (eds.), Language policy, culture, and identity in Asian contexts (pp. 73-93). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (1997). Productive diversity: A new Australian approach to work and management. Sydney: Pluto.

Jaworski, A. & Thurlow, C. (2010). Introducing semiotic landscapes. In A. Jaworski & C. Thurlow (eds.), Semiotic landscapes: Language, image, space (pp. 1- 40). London:Continuum.

Landry, R. & Bourhis, R. (1997). Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16(1), 23-49.

Pakir, A. (1998). English-knowing bilingualism in Singapore. In L. Alsagoff et al (eds.), Society, style and structure in language (pp. 82-110). Singapore: Prentice Hall.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Languages at a Crossroads: Multilingual, Multimodal ‘Speech Acts’ in Singapore