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7 Language and social capital in Singapore Viniti Vaish, Teck Kiang Tan, Wendy D. Bokhorst-Heng, David Hogan and Trivina Kang Competence in EL [English Language] will be a source of competitive advantage for Singapore. Knowing our Mother Tongue Languages gives us confidence in our culture, roots and identity as a people. We have to stay an Asian society. Report of the Chinese Language Curriculum and Pedagogy Review Committee (2004) Malay is our national language and an important regional language. The learning of Malay is critical for cultural transmission in the Malay community. A sense of identity and the ability to access readily the values, history, literature and the arts of one’s own community are inextricably linked with a facility with one’s own language. The Malay language joins generations. Report of the Malay Language Curriculum and Pedagogy Review Committee (2005) The Committee’s vision is for Tamil to be a living language among future generations of Tamil Singaporeans, and vibrant part of Singapore’s identity as a multicultural, global city. Report of the Tamil Language Curriculum and Pedagogy Review Committee (2005) The opening quotes above articulate Singapore’s commitment to bilingualism and to bilingual education, and make a link between the language and the culture of an ethnic group. The statements suggest that social capital is maintained through language — as seen in the phrases which state that ‘the Malay language joins generations’, and Tamil is to be ‘a living language among future generations’, and in the Chinese report where reference is made to ‘culture’, ‘roots’, and ‘a people’. Embedded in the significance of what we call the mother tongue policy is thus the notion of identity and connectedness to other members of the ethnic group through social ties. 160 Viniti Vaish, Teck Kiang Tan, Wendy D. Bokhorst-Heng, David Hogan and Trivina Kang Despite this strong commitment regarding bilingualism, it appears that the adoption of the ascribed mother tongue has not occurred equally across all ethnic groups. Table 7.1 Language trends in Singapore Language spoken at home Ethnicity Chinese Malay Indian 1990 2000 2005 1990 2000 2005 1990 2000 2005 English 19.3 23.9 28.7 6.1 7.9 13.0 32.3 35.6 39.0 Mandarin 30.1 45.1 47.2 Malay 93.7 91.6 86.8 14.5 11.6 10.6 Tamil 43.2 42.9 38.8 Dialect 50.3 30.7 23.9 Others 0.3 0.4 0.2 0.1 0.5 0.2 10.0 9.9 11.6 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 Source: Singapore Department of Statistics (2001) Census of Population 2000, Advance Data Release, and Singapore Department of Statistics (2006) General Household Survey 2005, SocioDemographic and Economic Characteristics, Release 1. Table 7.1 shows that from 1990 until 2005 English increased as the language spoken at home in all three ethnic groups. At the same time the use of mother tongue (Mandarin, Malay and Tamil) was going down. Furthermore in the case of the Chinese, the report from the Chinese Review committee states that ‘the number of Chinese students entering Primary 1 (P1) who speak predominantly EL at home has risen from 36% in 1994 to 50% in 2004’ (Ministry of Education 2004: 4). This discrepancy between the investment that the Singapore government has made in bilingual education to preserve the mother tongue and outcomes in terms of actual language use is a major challenge for a highly globalized Singapore. The uneven success of the mother tongue policy across ethnic groups also suggests that there is more at play than mere government policy. In fact, given the annual commitment to raise the status and awareness of Mandarin within the Chinese community through the annual Speak Mandarin Campaign, one could expect the acceptance and use of the mother tongue to be highest among the Chinese, when in fact it is not. Thus, clearly more is going on. In this chapter we use Coleman’s (1988) idea of social capital as a conceptual framework. Although this concept has been used to analyze many outcomes — like the drop-out rate of students and the level of industrialization in a country — it has not been used to analyze language use in a multilingual environment. We explore whether or not the use of the mother tongue, and thereby acceptance of the mother tongue policy, is a result of strong social ties, or...

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