TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF SINGLISH AS A STEREOTYPE

Abstract

In this exercise, it is proposed that 'Singlish' is the stereotyped variety of Singapore English (SE). The study attempts to identify the syntactic and lexical features that make up 'Singlish'. Chapter One reviews the definitions of 'Singlish' that have been offered in linguistic studies. Some of the proposed divisions of SE into subvarieties were reviewed in relation to the possible status of 'Singlish'. Chapter Two looks at the definitions of 'stereotype' in the field~ of linguistic, drama, and psychology. Labov's definition of the linguistic stereotype was too narrow for this study, which relied mainly on the psychological concept of schema. Chapter Three briefly explains the methodology, which involves analysis on three levels: sentence-level (syntax), word-level (lexis) and text-level. 20 texts from 4 areas of creative writing were analysed. Chapter Four presents the results of the syntactic analysis. It was discovered that the categories and labels used in previous study imposed exonormative standards on SE. It is suggested in this exercise that 'Singlish' has its own syntactic rules. Chapter Five presents the categories of lexical items that have been found to occur across the texts. Chapter Six looks at the text as a whole, in a text-based analysis. It is proposed here that Pakir's dimensions of formality and proficiency be charted into a grid which accounts for any combination of these two qualities. 4 texts, each representing one combination were analysed. The findings and the implications of this study are summarised in Chapter Seven.