Singapore English is one variety among New Englishes, a term established by Platt et al. (1984), which refers to the varieties used in the areas formerly colonised by the UK or the US (ibid.). The postcolonial background has affected all of the varieties uniquely and their development is characterised by multilingualism, language contact situations and recent and innovative change (Mukherjee and Schilk 2012, 190). Therefore, Singapore English should prove a fruitful context for studying intensifiers, which also strive because of constant change, as discussed in 2.3. The development of Singapore English since colonization is presented briefly with the help of Schneider’s (2003) dynamic model of dialect development, which centres on the idea that New Englishes are expected to proceed through five universal development stages, each characterized by certain patterns of language use, which, furthermore, are associated with the changes in the social identities of speakers in the community (ibid., 242).
Singapore was under the colonial rule of the British Empire from the early 1920s to the 1960s, so naturally English was, during the time, needed for various purposes. In the foundation phase (Schneider 2003) the ‘founder effect’ of British English features (Mufwene 2001 in Schneider 2003, 241) on the developing variety was prominent, as no strong national identity of being Singaporean existed. The exonormative stabilization phase to follow soon after in the development, with British English as the stable norm, laid the basis for regarding skills in English as a possibility for social advancement and therefore “a positive attitude towards the use of English” in the Singaporean community (Schneider 2003, 246, 263).
The third phase, nativization, according to Schneider (2003), began with the aspirations for an independent Singapore after the short Japanese occupation during World War 2. By the post war period many indigenous Singaporeans had acquired English as a second language alongside another mother tongue such as Chinese or Malay, spoken at home (ibid.). However, these local forms of English were in contrast with the normative mother variety, causing discussion about the correct language use (Schneider 2003, 248). In 1965 Singapore became an independent republic separate
from both Great Britain and the Federation of Malaya formed in 1957. At the point of departure the city-state decided to keep English as the language of education and business (Bautista and Gonzales 2006, 130). Even though Singapore English is in Kachru’s Three Circles model (see Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008, 30) placed as an Outer Circle variety, characterized by having English is as the second language, it is also today acquired by many as the first language (Schneider 2003, 243; Alsagoff 2010, 342). By the 1960s and 70s, with over a hundred years’ presence of English, the Singaporean community had advanced to the fourth phase of endonormative stabilization (Schneider 2003) and the emerging local forms of English had become more acceptable as norms in their own rights, instead of just relying on external norms (ibid., 249, 266).
Singaporean language politics has been and still is characterised by a pro-English attitude encouraging Singaporeans to use English for the benefit of global competitiveness in business and academic success (Bautista and Gonzales 2006, 131). This, however, entails various Government campaigns for using Standard English over the Colloquial Singapore English, or Singlish (Schneider 2003, 265; Alsagoff 2010, 342; Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008). However, Schneider (2003) and Alsagoff (2010) argue that Singlish is the true lingua franca of the speech community, and all in all closely linked to the feeling of national identity, which means that it is unlikely to be replaced entirely by standard forms in everyday language use.
Singapore Standard English (SSE) does not differ notably from Standard British English. The different sociolects of the colloquial usage, of which the strongest form is Singlish, however, make frequent use of a wide array of features on all levels of structure (phonological, lexical, and syntactic) that differ from the standard usage (Bautista and Gonzales 2006, 132). Many of them are transferred features and the product of contact between the substratum languages, mainly Cantonese and Malay (ibid., 133) and English. Some of the features are, as exemplified below (all except (4) from Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008, 47, 58, 91, original sources parenthesized), (1) indefinite article deletion, (2) loss of past tense morpheme with verbs, (3) subject or object dropping and perhaps the most frequently recognized feature, (4) the use of discourse particles, such as la in requests, invitations, promises etc.
(1) I want to buy bag. [Platt et al. 1984; 52-9]
(2) We stay there whole afternoon and we catch one small fish. [Platt et al. 1984; 69]
(3) Ө must buy for him; otherwise he not happy. (‘We must buy…’) [Wee, 2004; 1062]
(4) Charles and Keith has nice shoes, but without sales cannot buy la, expensive man. And their shoes hurtssss. [PTT321102*motoway*2009]
Many utterances in real-life language use switch between SSE and Singlish features, which is a phenomenon found to correlate with the social background of the speaker (Platt and Weber, 1980) but in more recent accounts also with the orientation of the speaker’s cultural identity (Alsagoff 2010).
All in all, Singapore English is a cline where one end represents frequent use of colloquial features (basilect), and the other is close to standard usage (acrolect).
It is clear that Singapore English has advanced as far as the fourth phase just described in Schneider’s dynamic model (2003, 263). Singapore English with its unique features is both the means for expressing national identity and reaching outwards into the world globally, which reflects the Singaporean culture with both European and Asian orientations (ibid., 264). Whether Singapore English has achieved the fifth stage, differentiation, characterized by the emergence of a new language variety and its increasing division into sub-identities of language users based on for example age, gender, ethnicity, social status (ibid., 253), is still under debate. This question is significant also to the subject of this thesis, as the purpose is to find precisely this type of variation in the use of intensifiers.