Indian languages in Singapore

Discussing the representation of the linguistic identity of Singapore‘s Indian community in social policies, this chapter explores the implications to maintenance and shift of the unrepresented languages. While only the majority language Tamil has been given official status in the language policy, o...

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Main Authors: Jain, Ritu, Rai, Rajesh
Other Authors: R. Mesthrie
Format: Book Chapter
Language:English
Published: Edinburgh University Press 2024
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/173714
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1737142024-04-06T16:56:14Z Indian languages in Singapore Jain, Ritu Rai, Rajesh R. Mesthrie S. Kulkarni-Joshi School of Humanities Arts and Humanities Indian languages Singapore Discussing the representation of the linguistic identity of Singapore‘s Indian community in social policies, this chapter explores the implications to maintenance and shift of the unrepresented languages. While only the majority language Tamil has been given official status in the language policy, other community languages have not been discouraged either. In fact, languages such as Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu have been accepted as optional subjects in education for students of Indian heritage. Yet others (e.g., Malayalam), with no support from governmental or institutional policies, are taught in after-hours community schools. Given the variance of support, this chapter uses an adaptation of the feature-factor matrix offered by Moag (2003) to evaluate factors considered significant in the loss/retention of non-official languages. While the 31 demographic, political, socio-cultural, and sociolinguistic factors have been proposed to predict the likelihood of survival for assessed languages, here they serve as a framework to assess both community attitude and ethnolinguistic vitality among the Indian speech communities in Singapore. The chapter draws on data from interviews with 29 families of diverse Indian language backgrounds to assess if these factors are facilitative of language use and the extent to which this indicates the likelihood of intergenerational language transmission. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the impact of language status and institutional recognition on the uptake and use of the institutionally non-recognised languages. Submitted/Accepted version 2024-04-03T02:34:18Z 2024-04-03T02:34:18Z 2024 Book Chapter Jain, R. & Rai, R. (2024). Indian languages in Singapore. R. Mesthrie & S. Kulkarni-Joshi (Eds.), Language in the Indian Diaspora: Sociolinguistic Perspectives (pp. 125-142). Edinburgh University Press. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/173714 9781474478359 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/173714 10.1515/9781474478373-013 125 142 en RG70/17 (NS) Language in the Indian Diaspora: Sociolinguistic Perspectives © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Edinburgh University Press. All rights reserved. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the copyright holder. The Version of Record is available online at https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781474478373/html?lang=en#contents. application/pdf Edinburgh University Press
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Arts and Humanities
Indian languages
Singapore
spellingShingle Arts and Humanities
Indian languages
Singapore
Jain, Ritu
Rai, Rajesh
Indian languages in Singapore
description Discussing the representation of the linguistic identity of Singapore‘s Indian community in social policies, this chapter explores the implications to maintenance and shift of the unrepresented languages. While only the majority language Tamil has been given official status in the language policy, other community languages have not been discouraged either. In fact, languages such as Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu have been accepted as optional subjects in education for students of Indian heritage. Yet others (e.g., Malayalam), with no support from governmental or institutional policies, are taught in after-hours community schools. Given the variance of support, this chapter uses an adaptation of the feature-factor matrix offered by Moag (2003) to evaluate factors considered significant in the loss/retention of non-official languages. While the 31 demographic, political, socio-cultural, and sociolinguistic factors have been proposed to predict the likelihood of survival for assessed languages, here they serve as a framework to assess both community attitude and ethnolinguistic vitality among the Indian speech communities in Singapore. The chapter draws on data from interviews with 29 families of diverse Indian language backgrounds to assess if these factors are facilitative of language use and the extent to which this indicates the likelihood of intergenerational language transmission. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the impact of language status and institutional recognition on the uptake and use of the institutionally non-recognised languages.
author2 R. Mesthrie
author_facet R. Mesthrie
Jain, Ritu
Rai, Rajesh
format Book Chapter
author Jain, Ritu
Rai, Rajesh
author_sort Jain, Ritu
title Indian languages in Singapore
title_short Indian languages in Singapore
title_full Indian languages in Singapore
title_fullStr Indian languages in Singapore
title_full_unstemmed Indian languages in Singapore
title_sort indian languages in singapore
publisher Edinburgh University Press
publishDate 2024
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/173714
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