‘Steady lah!’ : Singlish for solidarity

Although thought to be “the ‘glue’ that binds Singaporeans together” (Cavallaro & Ng, 2009, p. 154), Singaporeans rank Singlish relatively low for solidarity in matched guise tests (Cavallaro & Ng, 2009; Cavallaro et al., 2014), and “the prestige of [Singlish] may, in fact, be entirely too c...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Nah, Vanessa Ellen Mei Yin
Other Authors: Tan Ying Ying
Format: Final Year Project
Language:English
Published: 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10356/76524
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
id sg-ntu-dr.10356-76524
record_format dspace
spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-765242019-12-10T13:42:25Z ‘Steady lah!’ : Singlish for solidarity Nah, Vanessa Ellen Mei Yin Tan Ying Ying School of Humanities DRNTU::Humanities::Linguistics::Colloquial language Although thought to be “the ‘glue’ that binds Singaporeans together” (Cavallaro & Ng, 2009, p. 154), Singaporeans rank Singlish relatively low for solidarity in matched guise tests (Cavallaro & Ng, 2009; Cavallaro et al., 2014), and “the prestige of [Singlish] may, in fact, be entirely too covert for matched-guise detection” (Cavallaro et al., 2014, p. 395). To investigate if Singlish truly marks solidarity for Singaporeans, this paper draws from past solidarity research from different academic fields and analyses conversation data to assess Singlish for its solidarity building functions. Quantitative analyses revealed Singlish is used more readily between friends than strangers, and its most salient linguistic features of solidarity are discourse particles, expletives, indirect speech acts and address terms. Qualitative analysis showed other linguistic phenomena such as humour and loanwords draw from core solidarity attributes to strengthen interpersonal bonds. Borrowings from other languages are especially significant as ethnicity was found to have no effect on the use of Singlish to express solidarity as well, suggesting Singlish is a “colourblind” language variety in Singapore. Rather than divide Singaporeans, different ethnicities and their associated languages make Singlish a powerful language for solidarity building. Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics and Multilingual Studies 2019-03-25T08:41:45Z 2019-03-25T08:41:45Z 2019 Final Year Project (FYP) http://hdl.handle.net/10356/76524 en Nanyang Technological University 43 p. application/pdf
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
country Singapore
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic DRNTU::Humanities::Linguistics::Colloquial language
spellingShingle DRNTU::Humanities::Linguistics::Colloquial language
Nah, Vanessa Ellen Mei Yin
‘Steady lah!’ : Singlish for solidarity
description Although thought to be “the ‘glue’ that binds Singaporeans together” (Cavallaro & Ng, 2009, p. 154), Singaporeans rank Singlish relatively low for solidarity in matched guise tests (Cavallaro & Ng, 2009; Cavallaro et al., 2014), and “the prestige of [Singlish] may, in fact, be entirely too covert for matched-guise detection” (Cavallaro et al., 2014, p. 395). To investigate if Singlish truly marks solidarity for Singaporeans, this paper draws from past solidarity research from different academic fields and analyses conversation data to assess Singlish for its solidarity building functions. Quantitative analyses revealed Singlish is used more readily between friends than strangers, and its most salient linguistic features of solidarity are discourse particles, expletives, indirect speech acts and address terms. Qualitative analysis showed other linguistic phenomena such as humour and loanwords draw from core solidarity attributes to strengthen interpersonal bonds. Borrowings from other languages are especially significant as ethnicity was found to have no effect on the use of Singlish to express solidarity as well, suggesting Singlish is a “colourblind” language variety in Singapore. Rather than divide Singaporeans, different ethnicities and their associated languages make Singlish a powerful language for solidarity building.
author2 Tan Ying Ying
author_facet Tan Ying Ying
Nah, Vanessa Ellen Mei Yin
format Final Year Project
author Nah, Vanessa Ellen Mei Yin
author_sort Nah, Vanessa Ellen Mei Yin
title ‘Steady lah!’ : Singlish for solidarity
title_short ‘Steady lah!’ : Singlish for solidarity
title_full ‘Steady lah!’ : Singlish for solidarity
title_fullStr ‘Steady lah!’ : Singlish for solidarity
title_full_unstemmed ‘Steady lah!’ : Singlish for solidarity
title_sort ‘steady lah!’ : singlish for solidarity
publishDate 2019
url http://hdl.handle.net/10356/76524
_version_ 1681042551319035904