THE LANGUAGE OF SINGAPOREAN STREET NAMES: A LINGUISTIC APPROACH TO TOPONYMY

Abstract

This study is an analysis of a corpus of Singaporean street names aimed at investigating Peter Tan’s (2011) idea that toponymic practices can reflect and propagate the state’s ideology and are telling of the time periods in which naming occurs. This is done by examining how the language choice in the naming of streets and the content chosen to be encapsulated in street names reinforce or contradict the prevailing ideologies of the period of naming. The analysis in this study comprises of two parts. The first part deals with language choice in street-naming and how the trend concerning English, Malay and Chinese, the three main languages used in street-naming relate to Singapore’s official languages. The second part covers the relationship between language choice and the content of street names in relation to ideologies about language. The results of the study affirm the idea that street-naming practices are largely accurate manifestations of the political ideologies of particular time periods, though upon deeper analysis, some street-naming practices contradict these political ideologies.