Doctoral Dissertation Research: The semiotics and social practices of constructing a "proper" Singaporean identity

拟议的论文研究调查了“适当”的语言身份是如何在新加坡颁布的，这是一个位于全球公民身份和当地存在方式的更广泛的社会政治话语中的讨论。本研究将“适当”身份的实践视为符号包或曲目的组成部分-一套流动的符号资源，人们必须平衡这些资源，以在新加坡制定适当水平的“全球性”和“地方性”。语言实践通过新加坡英语（SgE）的变化进行调查，新加坡英语（SgE）是一种复杂的语言库，包括新加坡英语，最本地和口语化的英语，以及标准新加坡英语（SSE），这通常表明高等教育和非本地的。将招募20名新加坡人进行人种学参与者观察，并记录从正式访谈到非正式社交聚会的各种会话环境。随意的场合会引出新加坡式英语的使用，新加坡式英语与SSE的基本区别在于它融入了汉语的语篇小品和句法。相反，SSE用于正式场合。SgE在会话语境中的不同使用不仅揭示了说话者内部的差异，也揭示了说话者对语言及其使用方式的潜在信念。本研究项目的社会语音学方面侧重于语音开始时间（VOT）的变化，VOT是一种用于分类停止辅音的声学测量，如/p/和/b/之间的差异。50名新加坡人将参加一系列的语音感知任务，测试如何对SgE停顿进行分类感知。这些任务将提供SgE中VOT的社会语音学概况，并调查VOT是否有助于作为声音线索的说话者社会身份的感知。通过结合定性和定量方法，本研究确定了社会价值产生和感知的变化模式，并关注了与全球流动性或地方根源相关的变量和实践的过程。这项研究也将有助于现有的SgE文献提供VOT的社会语音学解释。最后，探索SgE的微观和宏观变化有助于揭示全球化、后殖民社会语言学和新英语中更广泛的语言问题。

The proposed dissertation research investigates how "proper" language identities are enacted in Singapore, a discussion situated within broader sociopolitical discourse of global citizenship and local ways of being. This study treats the practices of a "proper" identity as constitutive of a semiotic package or repertoire - a fluid set of semiotic resources which people must balance to enact appropriate levels of "globalness" and "localness" in Singapore. Linguistic practices are investigated through variation in Singapore English (SgE), a complex linguistic repertoire encompassing Singlish, the most local and colloquial English, and Standard Singapore English (SSE), which typically indicates higher education and being extra-local. Twenty Singaporeans will be recruited for ethnographic participant observation and recorded in various conversational contexts ranging from formal interviews to casual social gatherings. Casual settings will elicit the use of Singlish, which most basically differs from SSE via the incorporation of Chinese discourse particles and syntax. Contrastively, SSE is used in formal settings. The varied use of SgE across conversational contexts reveals not only intra-speaker variation but also a speaker's underlying beliefs about language and how it should be used. The sociophonetic aspect of this research project focuses on variation in voice onset time (VOT), an acoustic measure used to categorize stop consonants, like the difference between /p/ and /b/. Fifty Singaporeans will participate in a series of speech perception tasks testing how SgE stops are categorically perceived. These tasks will provide a sociophonetic profile of VOT in SgE as well as investigating whether VOT contributes to the perception of a speaker's social identity as an acoustic cue.By combining qualitative and quantitative methods, this work identifies patterns of variation in the production and perception of SgE, paying attention to processes through which variables and practices come to be associated with global mobility or local rootedness. This study will also contribute to existing SgE documentation in providing a sociophonetic account of VOT. Finally, exploring micro- and macro-variation in SgE sheds light on broader issues of language in globalization, post-colonial sociolinguistics, and New Englishes.