Singapore English

• Main Authors: Cavallaro, Francesco, Ng, Bee Chin, Tan, Ying Ying
• Other Authors: Bolton, Kingsley
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2021
• Subjects: Humanities::Linguistics; Singapore English; Multilingualism
• Online Access: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Handbook+of+Asian+Englishes-p-9781118791653; https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146477
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

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.