Explore the contemporary culture and traditional customs of Singapore and Malaysia in a volume that belongs on shelves in every high school and public library. Culture and Customs of Singapore and Malaysia examines all aspects of contemporary life in these two geographically close and historically and culturally connected nations, starting with the people fighting to maintain a balance between the new and the traditional. The book shows how religion has evolved through time in the two nations and examines how literature and traditional crafts thrive today. It highlights the performing arts and entertainment, noting how Western culture has influenced and shaped new customs. Housing and architecture, both modern and traditional, are discussed, along with cuisine and fashion. Students can use the book to analyze gender roles and family life. They can also read about the ways in which festivals are celebrated and can compare and contrast leisure activities of Singapore and Malaysia with their own. The volume concludes with a look to the future of these two evolving countries, both moving toward modernity, but still holding on to the traditions of the past.
Singapore has been taken by many researchers as a fascinating living language policy and planning laboratory. Language and education policy in Singapore has been pivotal not only to the establishment and growth of schooling, but to the very project of nation building. Since their inception, ‘mother tongue’ policies have been established with two explicit goals. Firstly there is the development and training of human and intellectual capital for the expansion and networking of a Singaporean service and information economy. Secondly there is the maintenance of cultural heritage and values as a means for social cohesion and, indeed, the maintenance of community and regional social capital. These tasks have been fraught with tension and contradiction, both in relation to the conditions of rapid cultural, economic and political change in Asia and globally, but as well because of the tensions between the so called ‘world language English’ and Singapore’s three other official languages, Tamil, Malay and Mandarin. This has been complicated, of course, by the challenges of vibrant regional dialects and the emergence of Singlish as a powerful medium of community life.
Singlish is the colloquial variety of English spoken in Singapore. It has sparked much public debate, but so far the complex question of what Singlish really is and what it means to its speakers has remained obscured. This important work explores some of the socio-political controversies surrounding Singlish, such as the political ideologies inherent in Singlish discourse, the implications of being restricted to Singlish for those speakers without access to standard English, the complex relationship between Singlish and migration, and the question of whether Singlish is an asset or a liability to Singaporeans. These questions surrounding Singlish illustrate many current issues in language, culture and identity in an age of rapid change. The book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of World Englishes and sociolinguistics. Its detailed analysis of the Singlish controversy will illuminate broader questions about language, identity and globalization.
This book brings Anglophone Singapore literature to a global audience for the first time, embedding it within literary developments worldwide. Drawing on postcolonial studies, Singapore studies, and critical discussions in transnationalism and globalization, essays introduce neglected writers, cast new light on established writers, and examine texts in relation to their local-historical contexts while engaging with contemporary issues in Singapore society. It sets new directions for further scholarship on a body of writing that has much to say to those interested in issues of nationalism, diaspora, cosmopolitanism, neoliberalism, immigration, urban space, and literary form and content.
Over the past few decades, Singapore English has been emerging as an independent variety of English with its own distinct style of pronunciation, grammar and word usage. All the findings presented in the book are illustrated with extensive examples from one hour of recorded conversational data from the Lim Siew Hwee Corpus of Informal Singapore Speech, as well as some extracts from the NIE Corpus of Spoken Singapore Speech and recent blogs. In addition, usage patterns found in the data are summarised, to provide a solid foundation for the reported occurrence of various features of the language. A full transcript of the data is included in the final chapter of the book.
Discovering Singaporean identity through cooking and cuisine While eating is a universal experience, for Singaporeans it carries strong national connotations. The popular Singaporean-English phrase "Die die must try" is not so much hyperbole as it is a reflection of the lengths that Singaporeans will go to find great dishes. In Eating Her Curries and Kway: A Cultural History of Food in Singapore, Nicole Tarulevicz argues that in a society that has undergone substantial change in a relatively short amount of time, food serves Singaporeans as a poignant connection to the past. Eating has provided a unifying practice for a diverse society, a metaphor for multiracialism and recognizable national symbols for a fledgling state. Covering the period from British settlement in 1819 to the present and focusing on the post–1965 postcolonial era, Tarulevicz tells the story of Singapore through the production and consumption of food. Analyzing a variety of sources that range from cookbooks to architectural and city plans, Tarulevicz offer a thematic history of this unusual country, which was colonized by the British and operated as a port within Malaya. Connecting food culture to the larger history of Singapore, she discusses various topics including domesticity and home economics, housing and architecture, advertising, and the regulation of food-related manners and public behavior such as hawking, littering, and chewing gum. Moving away from the predominantly political and economic focus of other histories of Singapore, Eating Her Curries and Kway provides an important alternative reading of Singaporean society.
This book is one of the first few books written in English on Chaozhou culture and history. It compiles information from Chinese and English sources including archive material, newspapers, academic works and publications. It presents a panorama view of the Teochews in Singapore. The book is divided into three sections. The first section covers the history of Chaozhou, the Chaozhou culture, the Teochew ethnicity and the migration of the Teochew people to Southeast Asia. The second section covers the history, activities and contributions of the Teochews in Singapore from the 19th century. The third section covers core elements of the Chaozhou culture, including customs and practices, cuisine and tea culture, performing arts and craftworks. With carefully selected photos, pictures and comprehensive accounts, this book takes the general readers on a fascinating journey of the Teochew heritage. For those who wish to continue learning more about Chaozhou culture and history, a selected bibliography is provided at the end of the book.
Explores the vibrant relationships between theatre, cultural politics and social attitudes in a country whose history has many lessons for Western scholars.