Public Talk: New Citizens and the Negotiation of the English/Singlish Interface

19. Januar 2022, von JH

Foto: rf

Hamburg Talks on Current Trends in World Englishes

Public talk - all are welcome

New Citizens and the Negotiation of the English/Singlish Interface: A Metapragmatic Approach  
Dr. Raymund Vitorio, Manila
Tuesday, Jan. 25 2022, 2.15 pm - 3.45 pm CET, webinar

Sign up here: https://bit.ly/3A9dFeO


This talk explores the discursive construction of new citizen identities in Singapore. Despite having proven their worth as deserving recipients of citizenship, new citizens continue to face discrimination and othering because of their transnational connections and visible racial and linguistic differences from local-born citizens. Using a metapragmatic approach (Silverstein, 1993; Gal, 2016) to linguistic ethnographic data, Dr. Vitorio analyzes how new citizens claim status as legitimate citizens through their statements about English and Singlish. He demonstrates how statements about the necessity of English and the optionality of Singlish enable new citizens to reconfigure the indexicalities of English and Singlish which results in the expansion of the semiotic range of the notion of (new) citizenship in Singapore.