Different Voices: The Singaporean/Malaysian Novel

13. CONCLUSION

278 CONCLUSION A writer who constructs a novelistic hybridization must ensure that the character or narrator who uses a particular language has, in fact, the sensibility that is necessary to structure such utterances. The novels I have analysed in the preceding chapters show the writer’s awareness of this fact. Cheong, in Shadow Theatre, makes a special effort to give the background of the speakers, in order to show why they use the language the way they do. Take for instance, Malika, a servant who dropped out of school at the age of twelve. The narrator makes it a point to inform the reader that Malika has become a member of the library and reads every night. So the reader can accept the fact that she can use the English language rather creatively. Since it was half-past five in the morning, the air still bluey bluey and crisp as dead leaves and noisy with calling birds, as Malika would describe it. (Cheong 2002, p. 12) The reader accepts this description which the narrator, Lulu Mendez, says, is Malika’s language because of the 13 SMNovel.indd 278 10/2/09 5:19:23 PM Conclusion 279 prior pains taken to establish her language capability. In contrast, a character such as Abdullah in Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s Joss & Gold does not sound credible as he is a university graduate in the sixties who speaks like an uneducated man, or like someone who has no real understanding of the grammatical structure of the English language. “The politics today is not good.” Abdullah crunched on a handful of peanuts. “The Chinese not like the government so much but they make big mistake. It is this government that protect them. The Malays are very very patient. We don’t say Chinese no good. All people good. Our religion teach us this. But why Chinese say Malay no good, government no good, want to change government?” (Lim 2001, p. 69) Here the writer displays a mechanical portrayal of a low variety of English, which neither reflects the SingaporeMalayan English variety, nor the kind of language that was spoken by Malay university graduates prior to 13 May 1969 in the peninsula. Lim’s desire to represent the low variety of English in Malaysia spoken by the Malays does not fit this particular character because of his educational background and also because of his political awareness. As a person working for the media with a well developed consciousness of the politics of his country, Abdullah should at least be able to communicate in grammatically correct English. In an interview with Nor Faridah Abdul Manaf, Lim says, I’m writing a novel with a Peranakan protagonist, but the novel is a huge strategy to incorporate a Bakhtinian dialogism. I’m able to incorporate multiple points of views, something which I have willfully, deliberately planned. I have some Malay characters in the novel 13 SMNovel.indd 279 10/2/09 5:19:23 PM 280 Different Voices representing recent issues of identities, and of course I have to speak also from the Malay characters’ mouths. What comes out from the Malay characters’ mouths are statements from another point of view. (Manaf 2001, p. 307) The writer thus introduces the character Abdullah, but fails to use his speech as a tool to characterize him. Instead Lim gives a point of view without the picture of a speaking person. The artificial representation of Abdullah’s speech produces a caricature, not a character. The individualized language consciousness of a character has to reflect the historical fact and the educational level of the character for it to have any credibility. The variation in Singapore English “can be observed along one axis which is related to the educational level and the socio-economic background of the speaker” (Platt and Weber 1980, p. 46). This variation is also true of Malaysian English. In Lim’s novel, the voice of Paroo, a university graduate, is portrayed without the understanding of this variation. Paroo’s speech is that of a person with a basic English education. Even when he is speaking to an American, Chester, he keeps the register of a person with only primary school education in English. His speech has neither the camaraderie of the low variety used among close friends, nor the linguistic features of Singapore–Malayan English. My mother, she cries every day. She says she is...