Voicing singlish from the “middle”: Indexical hybridities of class, race, language, and Singaporeanness

Abstract

The long-governing People's Action Party in Singapore, cautious of the appeal of Marxist-type class analyses, recognizes political mileage in promoting the myth of a homogenous “class blind” society. Popular uptakes of this perspective are seen online in parodic uses of new terms high SES and low SES to counter the suggestion that socioeconomic status (SES) is a relevant distinction in Singapore. Such parodies are nevertheless deeply classed, as middle-class subjectivity emerges through the negation of class-based extremes (Hall, 2021). This article argues that Singlish has become a powerful instrument for sustaining middle-class normativity. Its positioning by invested listening subjects (Inoue, 2006) as a hybrid language that equally encompasses speakers of diverse linguistic backgrounds obscures not just class relations but also the central linkage that lies at the heart of a raciolinguistic perspective (Rosa and Flores, 2017). Once class and race are co-naturalized in this way, speakers can use Singlish to perform an “authentic Singaporeanness,” but this performance is in turn facilitated by a metapragmatic narrative that motivates which forms become enregistered as Singlish.