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An Evaluation of the Speak Mandarin Campaign Within a Dialect-Speaking Community

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An Evaluation of the Speak Mandarin Campaign Within a Dialect-Speaking Community An evaluation of the Speak Mandarin Campaign within a dialect-speaking community Patrick Ng Chin Leong, Master in English Studies (National University of Singapore) Thesis submitted as part of the requirement for the degree of DOCTOR OF EDUCATION University of Leicester January 2006 I certify that this work is entirely my own and has not been accepted as part of a submission to another degree course.” Word length: (53 224) UMI Number: U601303 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U601303 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Speciallydedicated to the Sion <Pres6yterian Church Singapore Glory Be to God! Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr Peter Martin, for his advice and guidance throughout the writing of this thesis. His comments and suggestions have been a great source of strength and inspiration for completing most of my assignments as well as this thesis. I am truly indebted to Dr Peter Martin for his constant words of encouragement and I would really like to say, “Peter, I’m really pleased to have you as my course tutor and supervisor. Thanks so much for guiding me!” I would also like to thank Reverend Ong Doo Ying for his permission to carry out the study within his church, and I’m truly grateful to the church members who took their time off to participate in this study. To all the church members who participated in this study, “Thanks for your time, patience and efforts in answering the survey questions and the interview questions!” I believe it is through the prayers and support of the church that I am able to complete this study. I would like to thank Fong Pheng for her statistical support for this study. I would like to specially mention Dr Svalberg for offering to be my supervisor after Dr Peter has left. I am grateful to her for guidance before the viva. I am indebted to Chico and his family for providing accommodation while I was in UK. The trip to UK will not be possible if Chico and his family have not provided the logistics support that enables me to travel to Leicester. I also want to thank Siongyang for his help rendered to me while I was in UK. Last but not least, I am also grateful to my wife, Rachel, and my son, Jedidiah, for their love and encouragement throughout my study. Abstract Scholars have observed that most literature on language planning is framed in the context of government involvement. Fishman (1989) in his landmark work, ascribes language planning to the work of the government by suggesting that language planning be viewed from the societal approach, one that points in societal directions and deals with the authoritative allocation of resources to the attainment of language status and language corpus goals. This study casts the spotlight on a deliberate language planning initiative by the Government in Singapore, the Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC). The SMC was initiated in 1979 by the then Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. The specific objective of the campaign was to persuade all dialect- speakers in Singapore to discard the habit of speaking Chinese dialects and to speak Mandarin as a common language. The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of the Speak Mandarin Campaign as a deliberate language planning effort by the Singapore government within a dialect-speaking community. It attempts to examine whether individuals in the community have adopted Mandarin in different domains of language use, and whether they have positive attitudes towards the use and status of Mandarin. In addition, the study also examines whether individual dialect-speakers have positive attitudes towards the SMC as a planned effort by the government to influence language usage. The tools for data collection consist of a sociolinguistic survey and a semi­ structured interview. The results from the survey questionnaire and the semi­ structured interview converge to show that the deliberate language planning by the government has indeed been effective in changing the linguistic habits of the dialect-speaking Chinese within the researched community and in embracing Mandarin as a language of preference and use. CONTENTS Page Dedication i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Chapter One Introduction 1.1. Background of research ................................................................. 1 1.2. Issues in the Speak Mandarin Campaign..................................... 2 1.3. The community under study..........................................................4 1.4. The scope and objective of the study............................................5 1.5. The research questions ...................................................................6 1.6. The research design ........................................................................7 1.7. Evaluation of the SMC ...................................................................8 Chapter Two Review of literature on Planning for Language 2.1. Sociolinguistics of language use .................................................... 10 2.2. Language planning: work of government ......................................15 2.3. Language planning by government in new and emerging states ............................................................. 18 2.4. Forces against government intervention in language planning.............................................................................19 2.5. Two perspectives to language planning: the macrosociological and the microlinguistic ....................................21 2.6. Language planning and language management ............................24 2.7. Language policies that arise from language planning 25 2.8. Implementation of language planning policy: top - down versus bottom - up....................................................... 27 2.9. Evaluation of language planning....................................................28 2.10. Conclusion .....................................................................................29 Chapter Three Singapore : the contextual background 3.1. The sociopolitical background of Singapore............................. 31 3.2. The sociolinguistic situation in Singapore .................................... 32 3.3. Language planning in Singapore....................................................34 3.4. The Multilingual Policy .................................................................. 35 3.5. The Bilingual Policy ........................................................................37 3.6. Conclusion ........................................................................................41 Chapter Four Review of literature on the Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC) 4.1. Organisation of the SMC ................................................................43 4.2. Implementation of the SMC...........................................................44 4.3. Critiques of the official arguments of the SMC......................... 47 4.4. Resistance towards the SMC strategies ..................................... 50 4.5. Conclusion .................................................................................... 52 Chapter Five Methodology 5.1. Research Paradigm: positivist versus interpretative.....................53 5.2. The case study as a research design ...............................................55 5.3. Method of data collection ................................................................58 5.3.1. The self-administered survey questionnaire(SAS) ................................. 59 5.3.2. The semi-structured interview (SSI).............................................................64 5.4. Data Analysis....................................................................................69 5.5. Data Management..............................................................................71 5.6. Ethical Considerations ......................................................................73 5.7. Conclusion ......................................................................................... 74 Chapter Six Quantitative analysis : Reported Language use and attitudes 6.1. Language use ...................................................................................75 6.2. Attitudes towards Mandarin ........................................................... 79 6.3. Attitudes towards the status and functions of Mandarin ............. 82 6.4. Comparison of Attitudes towards English and Mandarin ........... 84 6.5. Attitudes of respondents towards Chinese dialects....................... 85 6.6. Attitudes towards the official arguments of the SMC ...................88 6.7. Attitudes towards the planned language efforts ............................. 92 6.8. Discussion on the results of the SAS ...............................................93 Chapter Seven Qualitative analysis : Views towards SMC 7.1. Informants’ views on the goals of the SMC ..................................97 7.2. Informants’ views on the continuation of the SMC ..................... 107 7.3. Informants’
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