Social Practices and Linguistic Markets

(1)

Yan: You have to know [English] otherwise people will laugh at you.

...

I: What happens if the shop assistant is a Malay?

Y: Then I will speak in Malay

I: Will you attempt English first?

Y: No. They will say I am like this spoiled girl. I mean, like, they will know, they can sense that I know they are Malay. Then if, like, I am speaking English, then it is like I am boasting my .. you know.

I: Really?

Y: I know some people think that way.

The above is an extract taken from an interview with Yan. Yan is a Malay female, about 16 years old, who is growing up and studying in Singapore. In the extract, Yan points out that knowledge of English is crucial in Singapore (otherwise people will laugh at you). As the inter-ethnic lingua franca and prestige variety in Singapore (and, of course, in many other societies as well), English serves an important gatekeeping function by allowing selective access to social and economic goods, thus influencing in important ways the social trajectories of those who may (or may not) be considered to speak the language well. This gatekeeping function creates a strong motivation for Yan to improve her English. Yet, one of the problems that she faces comes from the kind of identity she projects if she insists on using English instead of Malay, which is the official mother tongue of her ethnic group. In interactions with her co-ethnics, insistence on using English is associated with snobbery (They will say I am like this spoiled girl; it is like I am boasting). Because of this, Yan feels that she has no choice but to use Malay when interacting with a Malay shop assistant. In this way, Yan is responding to what she sees as pressure from a particular social group to privilege ethnic identity even in the context of a commercial transaction (I know some people think that way).

Young adolescent Singaporeans, of course, do not deny that there are people and institutions (such as their parents, their teachers, their potential future employers) that deeply value academic qualifications. But it is also the case that for many of these adolescents, the activities involved in acquiring such credentials may sometimes conflict with the activities required to maintain or gain localized peer recognition. In some cases, any formal recognition by school authorities may even mean a loss of popularity or credibility amongst one's peers. And if the two forms of recognition happen to be in conflict, it may sometimes be peer credibility that gets to be prioritized over official recognition by the school.

Yan is therefore most certainly not alone in the kinds of predicaments that she faces and in this book, we focus on a number of other Singaporean adolescents who have to deal with similar dilemmas as well. Our goal here is threefold. First, we are interested in how the micro-interactional identity work performed by our adolescent informants contributes to a macro-sociolinguistic paradox. The paradox is this. Despite the espousal of a multilingual language policy on the part of the state – a policy that recognizes four official languages (English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil) – Singapore society appears to be moving largely toward a situation that favors the reproduction of English language hegemony. How the collective experiences of adolescents such as Yan can lead unequivocally toward the privileging of English – despite the fact that there exists social pressure to continue using other languages like Malay – can contribute to a broader understanding of the kinds of constraints and pressures that multilingual societies have to cope with, especially in the context of globalization and late-modernity. The main answer to our first question is presented in the following chapter, where the indexical values of different languages in the Singapore landscape are discussed. Here, we see that despite the Singapore government's attempts at arguing for the equal value of English and the official mother tongue, its own policy formulations seem to clearly favor the former over the latter. And these signals of language valuations are picked up by adolescents such as Yan, who then face the challenge of reconciling an official commitment to the equal value of English and the official mother tongue, on the one hand, with a social reality where English seems to be particularly privileged, on the other.

This need to reconcile conflicting linguistic demands leads to our second goal. That is, we also wish to understand how attempts at learning English in Singapore may implicate particular kinds of identities among adolescents, thus possibly creating for them conflicts of various sorts, both inside and outside the classroom. We will see, in Chapters 5 through 7, that there are times when these adolescents resolve conflicting identity demands by favoring their desire to preserve peer-oriented relationships, even though they are aware that this might undermine the very activities that they themselves believe could help them improve their English. But in order to even begin making sense of the data presented in these three chapters, some preliminary remarks about the relevant analytical concepts and the methodology involved in our data collection are pertinent. These preliminary issues are addressed in Chapters 3 and 4.

And third, we are aware that it is not enough to merely note the language-learning problems faced by these adolescents. Because of this, we also wish to explore some of the ways in which identity concerns can be beneficially harnessed by educational institutions so as to develop teaching strategies that can help them acquire a more standard variety of English. In other words, the challenge is to find ways of getting these adolescents to learn standard English while not simultaneously requiring them to compromise on the kinds of identities that they are already heavily invested in (Norton, 1995). We do this in Chapter 8.

As we tackle these three questions, it will become clear that there are broader issues at stake that are being implicated as well. One of these is how assumptions about the nature of language and literacy affect language education policy. For example, it becomes difficult to ignore the fact that much of language education policy is predicated on the unquestioned assumption that language is an ontologically stable and delimitable phenomenon. This kind of assumption tends to encourage a view of language and literacy skills as decontextualized technology that ought to be easily transferred across contexts. And of specific concern to the theme of this book, it also tends to de-emphasize the influence that considerations of identity can have on the successful acquisition of literacy practices. We discuss this issue inChapter 8 also.

Another issue concerns the broader nature of policy-making in a late-modern society such as Singapore. Language education represents just one aspect of a larger set of policies that the state is aggressively pursuing as it aims to ensure the continued economic growth and wellbeing of the country. The state, for example, is concerned about the low fertility rate and outward migration of Singaporeans, and because of this, has attempted to attract 'foreign talent' to consider taking up Singaporean citizenship. The resulting situation consequently presents a number of challenges for Singapore, as the social and linguistic order that the state has so carefully constructed on the basis of clear historically inherited ethnolinguistic affiliations and boundaries has to come to terms with a society that is opening up economically, socially and culturally. Our assessment of this situation is that the very nature of language education policy itself needs to be reevaluated at a more fundamental level. The challenges posed by the rapid and unpredictable nature of social, political and cultural changes in late-modernity require that greater room be given to notions such as autonomy, individual choice and reflexivity – notions that have not generally been given due consideration when language policy is formulated. We deal with this issue in Chapter 9.

We have chosen in this book to explore these various questions through an in-depth, ethnographic, account of the English language literacy practices and events that the students partake of, both within the classroom and across their activities in peer groups and individually outside of the classroom. In order to do this, we need a theoretical framework that is able to integrate literacy-based practices with nonliteracy-based ones, and further able to relate literacy to the notion of identity. As pointed out by a number of scholars (see especially Moje, 2000: 655), freely broadening the notion of literacy to encompass all forms of representation (including activities such as dancing and drawing) runs the risk of making the concept so vacuous that it begins to hold little or no analytical value. Furthermore, while such a broadening may be motivated by the well-intentioned desire to challenge the hegemonic status of print literacy – a status especially prominent in 'folk theories of literacy' (Carrington & Luke, 1997) – in fact, it serves only to reinforce the status quo. This is because by asserting too loosely the variegated nature of literacy practices, print literacy then retains its position as the prototypical point of reference against which other forms of literacy become understood and evaluated (cf. Moje, 2000: 655). Consequently, in our discussion, we limit the term literacy to specifically language-related practices such as speaking, reading and writing around texts in the sense of Heath (1983, 1994), namely, literacy events and literacy practices. We, of course, want to be able to recognize that language-based practices do not necessarily occur in isolation from other modalities. Therefore, in talking about how both literacy-based and nonliteracy-based practices come together, we find it useful to draw upon recent sociolinguistic theorizations of the notion of style (see the collection of papers in Eckert & Rickford, 2001; see also Coupland, 2007) and performance (e.g. Bauman & Briggs, 1990). Style has been conceptualized as a form of semiosis, one where disparate elements from different modalities, both literacy- and nonliteracy-based modalities, may be drawn upon in order for the stylist to create and project particular identities, often in response to locally negotiated situations. Style, conceived in this manner, is essentially a form of social practice that partakes of bricolage (Bucholtz, 2002). That is, while individuals may create relatively unique combinations, the particular elements that make up an individual's style are usually drawn from generally shared macro-social categories. It is this that allows each individual to signal his/her uniqueness while still being recognized as affiliated with a particular group or groups.

But while treating style as social practice is valuable because it allows us to link particular behaviors and attitudes to identity work, if we want to go on and further understand how such identity work is differentially valued, we need to be able to place our analyses of style in relation to a theory of power. As Coupland (2007: 82) points out, styling involves 'constrained freedom' since the performance of sociolinguistic resources is not totally up to the idiosyncrasies of individuals, but instead takes place 'within certain tolerances'. The exact nature of these tolerances, however, remains theoretically controversial. For both Bell (1984, 2001) and Labov (1966, 1972), the main constraint on individual style is the speech community. Coupland, however, suggests that such a view of style is both too apolitical – since it does not pay sufficient attention to the ideological implications of variation – and also too restrictive – since it does not sufficiently acknowledge that speakers are 'not limited to recycling pre-existing symbolic meanings [but] can frame the linguistic resources available to them in creative ways, making new meanings from old meanings' (Coupland, 2007: 83–84). To accommodate Coupland's observations about style, constraint and creativity, we find Bourdieu's (1977, 1984, 1990, 1991) social theory (which is also a theory of practice) particularly valuable since it recognizes the existence of multiple fields or markets, multiple forms of capital, and rules of convertibility that allow actors to strategically trade in one form of capital for some other. The existence of institutional structures and the inculcated habitus of individuals speak to the restrictions that operate on possibilities of styling. At the same time, as we explain inChapter 3, because actors inhabit multiple markets, this inevitably leads to ambivalence and reflexivity. Actors become critically aware of how their own stylistic performances are constrained and may as a consequence, work actively to exploit or subvert these constraints (see also Coupland, 2007: 99).

With the foregoing in mind, adolescents can therefore be seen as participants in multiple markets, among which include families, peer groups and schools. While schools traffic mainly in cultural capital (such as the awarding of academic qualifications and credentials), peer groups traffic mainly in symbolic capital (informal prestige and recognition). And as we shall have occasion to note in the rest of this book, it is the conflict between these forms of capital and the different markets they characterize that often lead to the creation of English language-learning dilemmas for our adolescent subjects.

For now, however, in the rest of this introductory chapter, our aim is to elaborate on some of the issues that serve as a backdrop to our study of Singaporean adolescents.

Language, Gatekeeping and Monolingual Ideologies

Multilingual societies like Singapore are typically characterized by great social and linguistic heterogeneity, and managing both kinds of heterogeneity across constituencies of speakers is an important part of all civil and political activities. In the specific case of Singapore, the management of multilingualism is accomplished by the state's explicit recognition of the country's ethnic and linguistic diversity. The result is that Singapore is an officially multilingual country with a language policy that equates ethnic identity (and political role) with one of four official languages (see Chapter 2).

But despite this official commitment to multilingualism, one overriding focus of this book is on how language and literacy education in Singapore contributes to the social reproduction of a macro-linguistic order based on a monolingual ideology of multilingualism (see below), thus linking an account of the sociolinguistic practices of individuals in their day-to-day lives with the performance and consolidation of a particular modernist order of ethnicity. This relationship between 'macro' and 'micro' levels has constituted one of the central problems of social theory, and as Heller points out, 'the macro/micro dichotomy is not the most helpful way in which to understand how the observable dimensions of social life in the here and now are linked to durable patterns which lie beyond the control or the awareness of individuals ...' (Heller, 2001: 212). Instead, Heller (2001: 212, citing Giddens, 1982) suggests that it is more appropriate to reconceptualize the 'problem of linkage between macro- and micro-levels' as a 'problem of linkage among social interactions over time and (social) space'. Heller elaborates:

In practical terms, this means identifying the nature and social significance of the communicative resources people bring to interactions and call into play there, how they draw on them in the course of interactions, and with what consequences, for them and for others, immediately and over time. (Heller, 2001: 213)

In this book, our focus is on the specific kinds of interactions that our adolescent informants engage in and in the closing chapter (Chapter 9), we take up this issue of the relationship between the 'macro' and 'micro' levels via the concept of sociolinguistic consumption. The notion of sociolinguistic consumption, we suggest, provides a useful way of understanding the linkage between particular 'micro' social interactions, and how their cumulative force can lead to a particular 'macro' social order. But because we are concerned with exploring the implications of the macro-linguistic order for the multilingual practices of the individuals involved in our study, especially in the ways in which reproducing the social order also means reproducing social and ethnic identities that are associated with differential access to valuable symbolic and cultural capital, one question that interests us, then, is how multilingual practices are able to function as a proxy for socially and ethnically based inequities, or expressed differently, how language can serve as a gatekeeper.