Slice-of-life, nostalgia and dialects in shaping Singaporean-Chinese identity : a historical case study of Xinyao (1980-1990)

• Main Author: Liew, Keith Yuan Fu
• Other Authors: Els van Dongen
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Humanities::History
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147253
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The idea of a “Singaporean-Chinese identity” was historically a mooted one, with the government and the Singaporean-Chinese community each having their own perceptions of what define “Singaporean-Chinese”. While it is common knowledge that the government had attempted to foster their version of a nationalistic “Singaporean-Chinese identity” through different policies during the nation-building years between 1980 to 1990, little was known about the Singaporean-Chinese community’s agency in such a major project that concerned their very own identity. As such, using Xinyao as a case study, this thesis seeks to address the gap by adopting a bottom-up approach in exploring the subject. By providing a deep analysis of the lyrics in Xinyao, this essay studies how the Xinyao Movement sought to shape its version of a “Singaporean-Chinese identity” through the elements of Slice-of-Life, Nostalgia and Dialects. This thesis hopes to shed new light on the topic by showing that the development of the “Singaporean-Chinese identity” was not merely the product of the government’s “top-down” nation-building project, but instead, it was the result of a joint effort by both the government and the Xinyao community which involved cooperation, accommodation and at times contestation between the government’s political-driven, top-down endeavour and the Xinyao’s cultural-driven, bottom-up effort in defining the “Singaporean-Chinese identity”.