Is Preserving Hainanese Hai Nan [Still Difficult]?: Studying Singapore Hainanese Speakers’ Evaluation of Changes in Language Policy Through Their Style Variation

Abstract

The Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC) is one of Singapore’s most renowned national campaigns; it boasts aiding the language shift of the Chinese community from their respective “dialects” towards Mandarin. In this paper, by “dialects” or “Chinese dialects,” I refer to varieties of Chinese other than Mandarin in Singapore. With campaigns such as the SMC and other policies in place, the Singapore government made their unsupportive stance towards the use of Chinese dialects clear. However, in recent years, the government’s language policy regarding Chinese dialects seems to be softening; they seem to be encouraging the preservation and revitalisation of Chinese dialects now. But, previous studies (Bokhorst-Heng and Wee 2007; Wee 2006) have shown that the Singapore Chinese community needs to be convinced by the reasoning behind a policy implementation to support it. Hence, this study aims to investigate whether this seeming encouragement of use of Chinese dialects will garner the Chinese community’s support. Specifically, this study investigates whether it will garner the Singapore Hainanese community’s support, as Hainanese in Singapore is an endangered language that stands to benefit from the government’s seeming support. To do so, a speech production experiment, designed based on sociolinguistic theory, is conducted with Hainanese speakers in Singapore. Results show that Hainanese speakers are likely to support this seeming shift in language policy, but more needs to be done by the government for effective preservation and revitalisation of Chinese dialects. This study also shows that Hainanese speakers vary their use of implosives, and implosive voice onset times, especially sentence medial implosives, to regulate the performance of their Hainanese identities.