How multilingual are Singaporeans really? A study of linguistic repertoires in Singapore's Institute of Technical Education.
Final Report Abstract
The present study is a follow-up to a project, in which 300 students from Singaporean universities and polytechnics were subjected to a sociolinguistic questionnaire collecting information about their language repertoire, use, proficiency, and attitudes. The primary aim of the present project was to complement this dataset with another 150 students from a vocational training school, resulting in three equally sized cohorts from different educational streams. We hypothesized that multilingualism, operationalized in terms of the number of languages commanded by an individual, depends on social class membership and tends to decrease towards the upper part of the social scale in the context of Singapore. This hypothesis is based on the results reported in the former project as well as the Singaporean government’s language policy, which heavily promotes bilingualism of English and one of the so-called ‘mother tongues’ (Malay, Mandarin, Tamil). We use the three educational institutions as proxies for social class, with university students representing the upper tier, ITE students the lower tier, and polytechnic students ranging in between. Although this far-reaching hypothesis could not be confirmed in this general form, it nevertheless holds true for the Chinese community that is still in the process of shifting from various Chinese vernaculars to Mandarin and English. The language repertoires of the other ethnic groups (Malays, Indians) are to a much lesser extent characterized by multilingualism and essentially conform to the government model of English in combination with a mother tongue. Our study also makes clear that current perceptions of Singapore as a multilingual city-state are somewhat exaggerated and need to be corrected. Even though the outsider’s impression of Singapore is that of a Southeast Asian Babel, language diversity at the individual level is considerably more restricted and boils down to handful of highly prominent language profiles. These are English in combination with Mandarin, Malay, or Tamil, with speakers of Chinese ethnicity additionally showing knowledge of one or more of the Chinese vernaculars, chiefly Cantonese and Hokkien. These findings offer the opportunity to make future empirical work – especially on Colloquial Singapore English – more precise, paying heed to these individual differences. The present study furthermore tapped into the individual language proficiencies and attitudes. Notwithstanding the fact that we measured self-assessed proficiencies, our data reveal trends suggesting an effect of degree of multilingualism on proficiency as well as an influence of social background. As far as attitudes are concerned, our study detected broad support for the Singaporean government’s bilingual model, though also widespread acceptance of Colloquial Singapore English as the local solidarity code that most prominently shows up in the assessments provided by university and ITE students.
