A Communicative Pedagogical Grammar for English in Singapore

概要

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The variety of English used by Singaporeans has been labelled one of the "New Englishes" and has been the subject of a lot of debate, both popular and academic. Many of the discussions, however, including those by academic linguists, tend to generate more heat than light due to a tendency to conflate together the many different aspects of language use which actually need to considered separately. The complexity of the issue ultimately has to do with the complexity of the linguistic ecology in Singapore, as well as with the general, multi-level, multi-faceted nature of language itself. This paper seeks to review the arguments for and against the recognition, codification and standardization of "Singapore English," with particular reference to the pedagogical consequences of such recognition for the Singapore educational context. The discussion will briefly go down some well-trodden paths such as the problems surrounding notions such as "native/non-native" and "Standard English/International English," but the main focus will be on a discussion of where many debates on Singapore English and other New Englishes tend to go wrong, and on what a communicative pedagogical grammar of English that recognises and takes full account of the local variety of English could look like.