DeepDyve eBooks - A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore

Introduction: A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore

Pages: 1 –18

[A brief look through recent publications in sociolinguistics convinces us that the notion of identity is central. It is “sociolinguistics’ home ground” (Coupland, 2001: 18). Common identity markers include parental status, ethnicity, age, gender, job, religion, personality and political...

Available

Racial Identities: Plurality in the Making

Chew, Phyllis Ghim-Lian

Pages: 19 –36

[Race was not traditionally a part of the native psyche of Singapore or of Southeast Asia but a by-product of European encounters, which in our history became normalized with the British presence in Singapore from 1819. Edward Said (1979) has famously argued that the representations of the...

Available

Regional Identities: Distinct but Undivided

Chew, Phyllis Ghim-Lian

Pages: 37 –53

[Before the official legitimization of race by the census of 1891, identity may be said to have been more regional in nature, that is, dependent on whet her one’s language was sea-bound or land-bound (Reid, 2010).1 Hence, questions such as “Where are you from?” became common parlance, and indeed,...

Available

Religious Identities: Syncretic and Inclusive

Chew, Phyllis Ghim-Lian

Pages: 54 –69

[Religion is a key identity marker not least because almost every tribe or village that has been visited by anthropologists has testified to the fact that religious beliefs and behaviors stand at the core of every civilization. According to Reid (1993: 5) over a thousand faiths based on sacred...

Available

Orthographical Identity: Change and Ideology

Chew, Phyllis Ghim-Lian

Pages: 70 –86

[Orthography is never entirely distinct from ideology (Errington, 2008). Unseth (2008) frames his introduction on language communities and their script choices in terms of representations of identity. For example, the adoption of Roman script by a number of post-Soviet states for their national...

Available

Individual Identities: The Use of Lingua Francas and Language Choice

Chew, Phyllis Ghim-Lian

Pages: 87 –110

[While the preceding chapters have focused on collective identities which are basically top-down, such as racial, regional, religious and orthographical, the next three chapters focus on individual identities — a survey of “bottom-up” processes which argues that people are able to intentionally...

Available

Hybrid Identities: Three Case Studies of Attraction and Engagement

Chew, Phyllis Ghim-Lian

Pages: 111 –128

[The desire of the populace to forge more enduring ties with one another, in brief, to laugh, converse, entertain, make a living, fulfill cross-cultural desires of curiosity, marry and have children is given manifestation through the creation of mixed codes and their respective hybrid identities.]

Available

Intergenerational Identities: Negotiating Solidarity and Plurality

Chew, Phyllis Ghim-Lian

Pages: 129 –151

[While one may inherit one’s “race”, language is not necessarily inherited and nowhere is this more evident than migrant cities where the second and third generations begin to use languages that are vastly different from their parents and grandparents. This chapter proposes the...

Available

Language, Power and Political Identities: The 1959 Singapore Political Elections

Chew, Phyllis Ghim-Lian

Pages: 152 –169

[The focus of this chapter is on how plural identities, previously discussed under the headings of racial, regional, religious and orthographical, became progressively reordered in British Singapore into essentially two main categories, that is, whether one was “English-educated” or...

Available

National Identities: The Reordering of Pluralities

Chew, Phyllis Ghim-Lian

Pages: 170 –186

[Newly independent states are often distinguished by their socio-engineering efforts to forge an identity from above. It is believed that a strong collective identity is possible only if the governed share an “imagined” language (Edwards, 2009). Hence, certain languages are deemed “official” or...

Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore

Advanced Search

Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

A Sociolinguistic History of Early Identities in Singapore

Our policy towards the use of cookies