DISCOURSE STRATEGIES IN SPOKEN EDUCATED SINGAPOREAN ENGLISH

Abstract

This exercise examines discourse in order to answer the question 'What is it that makes Singaporean English distinctive?' Previous studies have pointed to the use of basilectal features and discourse markers such as la, man, or what. However, such a description characterizes only the informal varieties of Singaporean English and it does so by emphasizing the forms which are deviant from some native variety. This exercise makes the different assumptions that each subvariety of Singaporean English is a coherent variety in its own right and that uniqueness does not presuppose deviance from some standard. It works on the assumption that each subvariety may be characterized in terms of the common strategies sed by the speakers. This study is an attempt to characterize one subvariety of Singaporean English: Educated Singaporean English, spoken in a semiformal context. It examines the thematic structure Both within and across clauses in order to describe the strategies that are used to create the discourse. The unstated assumption throughout this study has been that theme or first Position in the clause is important in Singaporean English and to the extent that findings have been made, it has been shown to be justified. However, it is qualified by the fact that the Thematic structure decreases in structuredness as the speech progresses, which seems to imply an inverse relationship between the speaker's fluency and his reliance on the Theme.