In-group identity construction in informal conversation : a conversation analytic study on Singaporean youth.

With the rise of Singlish being acknowledged by Singaporean youth as a marker of the Singaporean identity – supported by a Language Background and Attitudes Survey (LBAS) and literature on Singlish – this thesis seeks to explore how Singaporean youth negotiate identities in informal interaction among close friends of similar cultural and socio-economic background using Conversation Analysis (CA). Although Singlish has been a language of interest to many academics, little attention has been given to how Singaporeans negotiate identity in conversation. A gap is also present in studying how within in-group membership of the same ethnicity, nationality and shared experiences, identities are prevalently marked and rejected, which this thesis has demonstrated and found to be often built around humour and solidarity. Singaporean youth seem to orientate towards constructing an identity that is uniquely Singaporean, such that their inseparable ethnic identities are sometimes rejected or distanced, creating an identity paradox. Furthermore, code switching is found to be a tool to realise the need to affirm in-group members’ common identity and build solidarity in interaction. As such, this thesis also evince the importance of CA as a methodology to elucidate essential nuances pertaining to identity and code switching that otherwise may be lost.Bachelor of Art