Singapore English
Singapore English is one of the best‐researched varieties of English in Asia, given Low’s (2014) calculation that – at that time – there were over 200 studies of various aspects of Singapore English, and many more have been published since then. It is not the aim of this chapter to rehash well‐re...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Book Chapter |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Handbook+of+Asian+Englishes-p-9781118791653 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146477 |
| Summary: | Singapore English is one of the best‐researched varieties of English in Asia, given
Low’s (2014) calculation that – at that time – there were over 200 studies of various
aspects of Singapore English, and many more have been published since then. It is
not the aim of this chapter to rehash well‐rehearsed arguments or repeat wellestablished
facts about Singapore English, though we will provide details and
summaries where necessary. It is timely, and even crucial, however, to now look at
Singapore English in this new language world of Singapore, in which Singapore
English is not merely a curiosity in an environment of multilingual diversity, but a
variety that has taken root and taken over the linguistic psyche of the society and
the people. We will begin by providing a snapshot of what Singapore English is.
We will then give a description of Singapore’s past around the turn of the twentyfirst
century, which is characterized by the type of superdiversity reported by
present‐
day scholars working on Europe (Vertovec, 2007; Blommaert & Rampton,
2016), to show a form of “reverse‐superdiversity” at work in the past five decades
which has resulted in transforming present‐day Singapore into a country where
English holds the predominant place in the linguistic repertoire of all Singaporeans. |
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