Language Shift, Language Death and Language Maintenance in Singapore

This is a mini-research project which focuses on the issues surrounding language shift, language death and language maintenance.

There are three main steps to the assignment:

Interview two members of an ethnic minority group on the topic of language shift and language loss in Singapore. If you have a friend or acquaintance who belongs to an ethnic minority with a distinct language, they may be willing to share their family history with you. It is, however. very important to be polite and not to put any pressure on someone who is reluctant. They may have good reason to feel unwilling to share experiences which may have been painful. Ifthey are willing to talk to you, find out whether they themselves migrated to Singapore, or whether it was their parents or grandparents who made the journey. 

Examine when they arrived and where they came from. Trace the language history of each generation. Discuss the languages that grandparents/parents and sisterslbrothers speak in different domains. Examine whether your friend still speak the same ethnic language. If so, to whom, and in what contexts. Evaluate what languages in Singapore have vanished or are in the process ofvanishing.

The interview can last for about 10-15 minutes in total. You may either take field notes or audio record the interview. lf you are planning to audio record the interview, note that you do not have to transcribe everything that is recorded. Select only those extracts that are interesting or relevant from the point of view of the particular issues that you may wish to focus on in your discussion.

Evaluate your findings and provide intelligent, thoughtful or critical comments in relation to the issue under discussion. This can be done by analysing relevant extracts from the interview data and by reflecting on issues of interest in relation to your data from the perspective of language shift, language loss and language maintenance, with the aim of problematising the issue.

Critique the literature on language shift, language maintenance and language death. You may like to suggest some concrete and specific solutions for the maintenance of ethnic minority languages in Singapore, appraising its implications for classroom practices.

The assignment is based on Chapters 5, 8 and 9 of Mesthrie et al (2009). You should complete all three steps of the assignment systematically. You should be able to reflect on your own individual analysis of the topic and be able to express your thoughts in your own words.