Increasing societal and linguistic diversity poses significant challenges to formative categories of language policies. We make this point via an examination of Singapore's management of its most linguistically diverse ethnic group, the Indians. While heterogeneity has always been Singapore's defining feature, the nature and scale of recent…

Three-quarters of Singapore's population consists of ethnic Chinese, and yet, learning Chinese (Mandarin) has been a headache for many Singapore students. Recently, many scholars have argued that the rhetoric of language planning for Mandarin Chinese should be shifted from emphasizing its cultural value to stressing its economic value since…

This paper discusses Singapore's bilingual policy and looks at how the government's top-down and structured language policy has transformed the country into an English-knowing society. Education and language-in-education planning in Singapore are linked closely to the country's economic development and nation-building process. This pair of…

Singapore's leading literacy policy is affected by a tension between the ideologies associated with English and those attached to Singapore's mother tongues. Singaporeans must safeguard their heritages, keeping themselves open to the places where their ancestors came from by learning their designated mother tongues. At the same time, Singaporeans…