Local Bodies, Foreign Language

Abstract

This paper describes how "Good English" in Singapore is covertly positioned as the linguistic patrimony of a "Caucasian" raciolanguage community. Institutionalized through language policy, media, artifacts, and professional activity, "Good English" —or Standard Register English—has long been contrasted with Singlish—or Singaporean Colloquial English—the latter framed as both a "uniquely Singaporean" identity-marker, and a threat to Singapore's economic advancement and global reputation (Wee 2018). Emergent out of Singapore's institutionalized multiracialism—recognizing Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Other—the raciolanguage community is constructed as a nexus of standardized denotational codes, bodily difference, geographic origins, and cultural forms. I trace the covert projection of a "Caucasian" raciolanguage community across media reportage; submissions to a crowdsourced series, "English As It Is Broken"; and particiant-observation at a Singlish awareness class. Although "Good English" invites Singaporeans to adopt white listening subject-positions (Rosa and Flores 2017) in policing their own and others' English, "the Singaporean" is nevertheless constructed as always-already doomed to fail in this aspiration by virtue of their nonwhiteness.