This study examined classroom routine and interactional patterns of Grade 5 English Language reading comprehension lessons through delineating the speech act functions of instructional discourse that was based on Malcolm's sociolinguistic model (Malcolm, 1979a; Malcolm, 1979b; Malcolm, 1982; Malcolm, 1986). It also evaluated the classroom…

This paper draws on a Linguistic Ethnography (Blommaert & Rampton 2011) of a group of academically elite students in Singapore. The group comprises locals born in Singapore, as well as immigrants from China and Vietnam. My informants all attended a top-ranked secondary school in Singapore. I present data from interviews and a focus group…

Extending earlier research on the concept of Willingness to Communicate (WTC) (e.g., MacIntyre et al., 1998), this paper tests the WTC concept on a secondary school in Singapore where English is used as a lingua franca. In doing so, a layer of complexity is added to the WTC concept. By focusing on classroom interactions involving one immigrant…

It has been recently argued that the particles in Colloquial Singapore English (CSE) constitute a grammatical category that actively draws new members to it. Drawing on distributional and collocational evidence, this paper establishes that CSE has a new particle, "ya". The paper then proceeds to analyse the discourse pragmatic function…

The Linguistic Human Rights (LHRs) paradigm is motivated by the desire to combat linguistic discrimination, where speakers of discriminated languages find themselves unable to use their preferred language in society at large. However, in an increasingly globalised world where speakers may feel the need or the desire to travel across state…

Examined the use and importance of lectal power among candidates interviewed for admittance to a teacher education college in multilingual Singapore. At the syntactic level, the competent or incompetent use of syntactic features such as tag nouns chosen by the interviewees revealed the extent of the lectal power in their possession. (27…

Provides a brief account and explanation of the phenomenon of language use among the Baba community, which uses Hokkien, Malay, and English in the process of code selection and code mixing/switching. Data are drawn from recordings of conversation of the Babas and Nyonyas. (Author/OD)

Examines how code switching and mixing are used as communication strategies in multilingual communities and discusses how to establish solidarity and rapport in multilingual discourse. Examples from the main languages spoken in Singapore--English, Mandarin, Hokkien, and Teochew--are used. (Author/OD)