The Phenomenology of Ethnicity: A Singapore Case-Study

Siddique, Sharon

doi:10.1355/sj5-1b

Cited by 48 publications

(27 citation statements)

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“…This bilingual policy is not without problems of its own (Siddique ; Pakir ; ; Stroud and Wee ), but the key point, as far as the SGSM is concerned, is the lack of internal consistency. If the government is encouraging Singaporeans to be bilingual in English and an official mother tongue, then it must either not be too concerned about interference between these two languages or it must be confident that any interference effects can be dealt with.…”

Section: Rebuttals From the Sgsmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic chutzpah and the Speak Good Singlish movement

Wee

2014

World Englishes

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This paper discusses the Speak Good Singlish Movement, which was started as a response to the Speak Good English Movement, the latter having been initiated by the Singapore government. The Speak Good Singlish Movement represents a good example of linguistic chutzpah, where speakers demonstrate confidence in their language choices while also having the metalinguistic awareness and sophistication needed to articulate rationales for these choices. The paper argues that linguistic chutzpah is especially important in relation to the global spread of English, where speakers are often confronted with the need to make decisions about language while not being able to rely on traditional sources of authority (such as the speech community or prescriptive grammars). Under such circumstances, speakers need to be able to adopt confident stances about their language choices, even while knowing that these choices may be met with criticism. To make this point, the paper also describes two cases involving anxieties about appropriate language use.

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Section: Rebuttals From the Sgsmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic chutzpah and the Speak Good Singlish movement

Wee

2014

World Englishes

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“…Moreover, despite the constraints and confines of the multiracial framework, intimate racial boundaries were crossed with increasing frequency in the last two decades of the twentieth century. In 1988, only 4.3 per cent of marriages under the Women's Charter and 16.4 per cent under the Muslim Law Act 3 were registered as interethnic, potentially due to the practice of masking complexity by classifying children as the race of their father -making it impossible to know how many marriages involved individuals of mixed descent (Siddique 1990). By 1998, rates had climbed to 8.7 per cent and 20.0 per cent respectively, and in 2008, 13.8 per cent and 30.9 per cent (Singapore Department of Statistics 2008: 7).…”

Section: Promoting Asian Values and National Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiplicity within Singularity: Racial Categorization and Recognizing “Mixed Race” in Singapore

Rocha

2011

Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs

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“Race” and racial categories play a significant role in everyday life and state organization in Singapore. While multiplicity and diversity are important characteristics of Singaporean society, Singapore's multiracial ideology is firmly based on separate, racialized groups, leaving little room for racial projects reflecting more complex identifications. This article explores national narratives of race, culture and belonging as they have developed over time, used as a tool for the state, and re-emerging in discourses of hybridity and “double-barrelled” racial identifications. Multiracialism, as a maintained structural feature of Singaporean society, is both challenged and reinforced by new understandings of hybridity and older conceptions of what it means to be “mixed race” in a (post-)colonial society. Tracing the temporal thread of racial categorization through a lens of mixedness, this article places the Singaporean case within emerging work on hybridity and recognition of “mixed race”. It illustrates how state-led understandings of race and “mixed race” describe processes of both continuity and change, with far-reaching practical and ideological impacts.

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“…Its main population primarily consists of Malays, Chinese and Indians. Although Malaysia has been independent for more than six decades (since 1957), identification based on ethnic categories remains significantly relevant right through the Malaysian bureaucratic system (Siddique, 1990), especially in its macrostructures such as the economy (Lee, 2005;Lee, 2012;Lee & Khalid, 2015), politics (Shamsul, 1986;Mohamad, 2008;Brown, 2007) and education (Ting, 2010;Gill, 2014). Living in a context in which ethnicity is consistently important in its macrostructures (Crouch, 2001) has consequently influenced decisions made by or for Malaysians in everyday life (micro-processes), such as the choice of primary and secondary school (Santhiram & Tan, 2010); friendships (Santhiram, 1995;Tan et al, 2013) and marriage (Hew, 2010;Pue & Sulaiman, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethnic boundaries and everyday understanding: The case of Malay and Chinese parental choice of National and National Type School in Peninsular Malaysia

Ismail

2018

GEOGRAFIA

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Since the pre-independence era, the Malaysian schooling system has remained ethnicized by two cultural boundaries: language and religion. To explain this situation, this article focuses on how these ethnic boundaries work within Malay and Chinese parents' decisions for National and National Type of Schools, respectively. Thirty Malaysian Malays and 25 Chinese students born between the 1970s and the 1990s were interviewed in this research. The data showed that the majority of them had been enrolled in a primary and secondary school which could be associated with their ethnic identity. Analysis of the findings also suggested that despite the importance of future career planning, regionality and family socioeconomic background in the choice of schooling, it was the language and religious factors which had determined their parents' final decision. It also suggested that a schooling pattern based on the factors of language and religion has been sustainably maintained for three decades. The parental decision was not a simple action as it is also related to the 'everyday' understanding of what kind of school is appropriate to a particular ethnic group. The results of this study offer a theoretical explanation of ethnicity in everyday life from the constructivist perspective. This study also highlights how ethnic boundaries are the endproduct of a social process rather than a taken-for-granted, natural and primordial fact of life ascribed through birth.

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The Phenomenology of Ethnicity: A Singapore Case-Study

Cited by 48 publications

References 1 publication

Linguistic chutzpah and the Speak Good Singlish movement

Linguistic chutzpah and the Speak Good Singlish movement

Multiplicity within Singularity: Racial Categorization and Recognizing “Mixed Race” in Singapore

Ethnic boundaries and everyday understanding: The case of Malay and Chinese parental choice of National and National Type School in Peninsular Malaysia

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