Spiaking Singlish: The politics of ludic English in Singapore

Abstract

This paper is a case study on how Singaporean intellectuals articulate resistant language ideologies by enregistering the local vernacular, Singlish. The case in point is Gwee Li Sui’s 2018 companion Spiaking Singlish, lauded as the first book to be written in Singlish about Singlish. It is argued that in tactically leveraging Singlish in a folk-lexicographical project, Gwee takes the vernacular to the third indexical order; and in so doing, he performs a ludic and extreme form of Singlish through which an everyday tongue turns into a fetish object. Contextualising Gwee’s polemics within his tension with the language establishment in Singapore, the paper highlights the ethical dilemma implicit in the celebration of languages speaking to an egalitarian ethos, suggesting that in enunciating a vernacular on the order of reflexive performance, intellectuals may inadvertently fashion it into a more elitist language than that which is spoken on the streets.