The discursive construction of new citizen identities in Singapore

College

Br. Andrew Gonzalez FSC College of Education

Department/Unit

Dept of English and Applied Linguistics

Document Type

Article

Source Title

Language in Society

Volume

52

First Page

387

Last Page

408

Publication Date

2022

Abstract

This article investigates how new citizens reconfigure dominant indexes of citizenship to claim status as legitimate new citizens of Singapore. New citizens are expected to resolve a tension that underpins public discourses in Singapore society: while the statal narrative of multiculturalism countenances new citizens to have perceivable markers of difference, everyday discourses expect new citizens to assimilate into the ‘Singapore core’—a term used in Singapore that denotes a homogeneous understanding of what it means to be Singaporean. By adopting a metapragmatic approach, this article identifies three common indexes of citizenship that new citizens negotiate to resolve this contradiction: language, loyalty, and legacy. By reconfiguring common markers of citizenship in Singapore, new citizens are able to discursively construct a type of citizenship that they can legitimately claim and contribute to. This expands common understandings of the notion of citizenship in Singapore society.

html

Digitial Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1017=S004740452200001X

Disciplines

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Keywords

Citizenship—Singapore; Multiculturalism—Singapore

Upload File

wf_no

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS