Language and imagining the nation in Singapore

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis is about the relationship between language and the imagining of the nation, with a particular focus on Singapore. The view I put forward is that we need to think of this relationship as being discursive. "Discourse" allows us to focus on the dynamic process of this relationship, embedded in real historical, socio-political and economic moments. Singapore offers a particularly interesting analysis. On its own, the national language plays only a peripheral role in the nation; however, language and language ideologies are no less central to the imagining of the nation than elsewhere. Language ideologies concur in very significant ways with the particular image of the "ideal society" that the government leaders seek to achieve. In particular, we see language intricately involved in the nation's attempt to understand itself and itself in relation to the world. On the one hand, there is the need to locate itself globally, as an international hub of trade, commerce, information technology, tourism and so forth. On the other, there is the need to authenticate itself locally. The story thus becomes one of balancing authenticity in the imagining of the nation in and through language ideologies. Much of this balancing authenticity has occurred by means of the ' Speak Mandarin Campaign' and the policy of "English-knowing bilingualism". The policy of bilingualism is premised on the role of English to meet the pragmatic needs of the nation (globalisation, economics and technology, inter-ethnic communication), and the mother-tongue languages (Mandarin, Malay, Tamil) to meet the cultural needs of the nation. Two main dichotic arguments have been given: dialects versus Mandarin, and English versus Mandarin. How these debates have been argued, the language ideologies inherent to these debates, and their implication in the imagining of the nation is the topic of much of this thesis. Paradoxes, voices of resistance, and challenges to these ideologies and the government's response are examined as part of these language ideological debates. One of the most accessible places to see this discursive construction of language ideologies is in government leaders' speeches as published in largest daily newspaper, 'The Straits Times'. Thus, in order to see the ways in which these ideologies are constructed and their interaction with the imagining of the nation, much of this analysis is anchored on such speeches. I suggest that textual analysis is a useful means by which to establish a premise for comparative analyses of "nationalisms" in their various manifestations around the world.Ph.D