Investigating the relationship between language and ethnic identity construction amongst youth in the Singaporean-Tamil speech community

Singapore’s bilingual education policy has been shaped largely by the government’s belief that the mother tongue languages (mainly Mandarin, Malay and Tamil) are essential ‘cultural ballast’ to give Singaporean youth a firm grounding in Asian values at a time of increasing globalisation. However, gi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Sathrin Kaur Saggi Karamjit Singh
Other Authors: Kingsley Bolton
Format: Final Year Project (FYP)
Language:English
Published: 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10356/69648
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author Sathrin Kaur Saggi Karamjit Singh
author2 Kingsley Bolton
author_facet Kingsley Bolton
Sathrin Kaur Saggi Karamjit Singh
author_sort Sathrin Kaur Saggi Karamjit Singh
collection NTU
description Singapore’s bilingual education policy has been shaped largely by the government’s belief that the mother tongue languages (mainly Mandarin, Malay and Tamil) are essential ‘cultural ballast’ to give Singaporean youth a firm grounding in Asian values at a time of increasing globalisation. However, given the noticeable language shift from Tamil to English within the Singaporean Tamil community (as indicated by recent census data), there is an increasing need to investigate how language and identity is now being constructed within the Tamil community. This research examined the connection between language and identity within the Singaporean-Tamil youth speech community. This project focussed on how current usage and proficiency of Tamil influences the identities of Singaporean Tamil youth as Tamils. This research also explored additional issues linked to being a ‘Tamil’, such as other competing identities and the relationship of these identities to language choice within the Singaporean Tamil speech community. This research indicates that although Tamil youth declare that the maintenance of the Tamil language is an important part of Tamil identity, the actual results of investigation indicate a rather more complex reality.
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spelling ntu-10356/696482019-12-10T12:37:58Z Investigating the relationship between language and ethnic identity construction amongst youth in the Singaporean-Tamil speech community Sathrin Kaur Saggi Karamjit Singh Kingsley Bolton School of Humanities and Social Sciences DRNTU::Social sciences Singapore’s bilingual education policy has been shaped largely by the government’s belief that the mother tongue languages (mainly Mandarin, Malay and Tamil) are essential ‘cultural ballast’ to give Singaporean youth a firm grounding in Asian values at a time of increasing globalisation. However, given the noticeable language shift from Tamil to English within the Singaporean Tamil community (as indicated by recent census data), there is an increasing need to investigate how language and identity is now being constructed within the Tamil community. This research examined the connection between language and identity within the Singaporean-Tamil youth speech community. This project focussed on how current usage and proficiency of Tamil influences the identities of Singaporean Tamil youth as Tamils. This research also explored additional issues linked to being a ‘Tamil’, such as other competing identities and the relationship of these identities to language choice within the Singaporean Tamil speech community. This research indicates that although Tamil youth declare that the maintenance of the Tamil language is an important part of Tamil identity, the actual results of investigation indicate a rather more complex reality. Bachelor of Arts 2017-03-16T03:18:04Z 2017-03-16T03:18:04Z 2017 Final Year Project (FYP) http://hdl.handle.net/10356/69648 en Nanyang Technological University 48 p. application/pdf
spellingShingle DRNTU::Social sciences
Sathrin Kaur Saggi Karamjit Singh
Investigating the relationship between language and ethnic identity construction amongst youth in the Singaporean-Tamil speech community
title Investigating the relationship between language and ethnic identity construction amongst youth in the Singaporean-Tamil speech community
title_full Investigating the relationship between language and ethnic identity construction amongst youth in the Singaporean-Tamil speech community
title_fullStr Investigating the relationship between language and ethnic identity construction amongst youth in the Singaporean-Tamil speech community
title_full_unstemmed Investigating the relationship between language and ethnic identity construction amongst youth in the Singaporean-Tamil speech community
title_short Investigating the relationship between language and ethnic identity construction amongst youth in the Singaporean-Tamil speech community
title_sort investigating the relationship between language and ethnic identity construction amongst youth in the singaporean tamil speech community
topic DRNTU::Social sciences
url http://hdl.handle.net/10356/69648
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