DOI: 10.5176/2251-3566_L315.33
Authors: Debbie G.E. Ho
Abstract:
Motivated by the claim that Singlish has changed over the years, this paper seeks to explore the question of whether Singlish has indeed changed or evolved over the thirty years or more since it was first documented in the early 1970s. While the research literature on Singlish has been well-documented in terms of its structural, pragmatic and phonological aspects, there has so far been no study that looks into how much it has changed, if any, over the years. Based on data taken from two separate periods of time – the 1980s and present day – a comparison of the use of Singlish particles and code-switching was carried out. Analysis of the data yielded a number of interesting findings, all of which indicate that there may be considerable differences in the frequency, type and use of particles and code-switching between Singlish in the 1980s and Singlish today.
Keywords: Singlish, particles, code-switching, social analysis, syntactic framework
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