L Wee
Biographic Data
| ID | 8451 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L Wee |
| GIVEN NAMES | L |
| FAMILY NAME | Wee |
| SIGNATURE | WEE L |
| AFFILIATIONS | National University of Singapore |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2176-7951 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 77 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 343 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 77 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Linguistic Justice in World Englishes
This article highlights the need to better clarify what we understand by linguistic justice. Failure to do so poses the danger that the concept not only remains something we may clamour for but is also one that we are unable or unwilling to recognize should we ever encounter it. In this contribution, I do this by examining claims about cultural appropriation in the context of the spread of English. Cultural appropriation is a valuable lens with w…
Unpacking the Theatre-Religion Dialectic
In this article, we focus on the portrayal of Mary Magdalene in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar as a case study to offer insights into the dialectical relationship between theatre and religion. This allows us to better understand the difficulties and limits involved as one attempts to challenge or confront the other. Drawing on the framework of ideological sites, particularly the anthropological distinction between primary and secondary sit…
Commentary
Sociolinguistics of the Korean Wave
Samosir and Wee examine how the immensely popular Korean Wave ("K-wave") also known as Hallyu is wielded as soft power through the use of communication for persuasion and attraction on the global stage. The Korean Wave refers to the global spread and popularity of South Korean culture, particularly its pop music ("K-pop"), serialised dramas ("K-dramas") and films ("K-films"). Given the South Korean government’s involvement in providing funding an…
Acoustic Analysis of an Acehnese Dialect
This study reports the characteristics of monophthong oral vowels of an Acehnese dialect, spoken in Pidie, Aceh, Indonesia. Ten Pidienese female speakers were recorded to produce ten target vowels using a carrier sentence. Approximately 300 vowel tokens were analysed using Praat version 6.0.19. The data is also compared to the North Aceh dialect vowels. Formant plots and t-tests were done to study their similarities and differences. The results s…
Sacred Sites and Secular Sounds
Drawing on travels as performers-researchers to sacred sites including the Magdalena Institute in Magdala, the River Jordan (Israel), Kurukshetra City, and the Ganges (India), Christian-actor Nora Samosir's and Hindu-Bharatanatyam dancer Nidya Shanthini Manokara's devised performance, Wandering Women: From Kurukshetra to Magdala, investigates the influence and interactions these sacred physical environments have on corporeal and aesthetic experie…
Why linguistic entrepreneurship
This introduction builds on De Costa et al.’s (2016], [2019) notion of linguistic entrepreneurship, which is defined as “the act of aligning with the moral imperative to strategically exploit language-related resources for enhancing one’s worth in the world” (2016: 696). The four empirical studies and two critical commentaries that constitute this special issue explain the relevance of this construct and explore how it is instantiated in a range …
Rethinking agency in language and society
The notion of agency is typically understood as stemming from the goals and desires of human actors. This is an assumption that has been taken on board in the study of language in society as well. In this article, I point out the problems with this assumption as well as another: the tendency to downplay if not dismiss the roles of non-human entities. I argue that these points about agency carry serious implications for the study of language in so…
Kawaii' in the semiotic landscape
The Japanese word kawaii means ‘cute’, ‘lovable’ or ‘adorable’ and is used to express the quality of cuteness or kawaiiaesthetics in the general context of Japanese culture. This concept has become prominent in many aspects of Japanese modern culture, including clothing, personal appearance, food, toys, behaviour and mannerisms. While entities culturally characterized as kawaii are considered adorable and delicate, they also tend to appeal to peo…
TheMultilingual Citizen
In this ground-breaking collection of essays, the authors develop a notion of Linguistic Citizenship, highlighting practices whereby vulnerable speakers themselves exercise control over language, and detailing ways in which alternative voices can be inserted into processes and structures that often alienate those they were designed to support.
The Singlish Controversy
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 withou…
Linguistic entrepreneurship as affective regime
Diversity management and the presumptive universality of categories
Increasing societal and linguistic diversity poses significant challenges to formative categories of language policies. We make this point via an examination of Singapore's management of its most linguistically diverse ethnic group, the Indians.While heterogeneity has always been Singapore’s defining feature, the nature and scale of recent immigration have resulted in an unprecedented societal complexity. The government’s appreciation of this com…
World Englishes, Second Language Acquisition, and the linguistic system conundrum
Despite the good reasons why WE and SLA ought to be establishing a dialogue with one another, this has yet to be the case in any substantive manner. This paper argues that a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed if the gap between world Englishes (WE) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is to be bridged is ‘the linguistic system conundrum’, or how references to distinct L1s and L2s (common in SLA) can be coherently related to sociolingui…
Nation-state, transnationalism, and language
This chapter offers a critical review of the relationship between language, nation-state, and transnationalism, and its implications for the research on migration and language. It begins with an overview of the concepts of nation-state and transnationalism, how they both become crucial issues and sites of tension in the context of globalization. The chapter reviews the issues surrounding the debate on whether and how transnationalism undermines t…
Global Cities
The concept of a global city, primarily defined in terms of a city's centrality to the global economy, has in recent times also become a status symbol. The fact that the concept contains an aspirational dimension means that there are significant conceptual and methodological implications that have to be carefully distinguished from the earlier use of the term. “Softer” criteria such as a city's buzz, creativity, cultural diversity, and livability…
Cartographic mismatches and language policy
Language Learning as Linguistic Entrepreneurship
Situating affect in linguistic landscapes
Preview this article: Situating affect in linguistic landscapes, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/ll.2.2.01wee-1.gif
The Cultural Production of Consumption as Achievement
In this article, we identify two models of consumer culture: the more familiar appeasement model where the “customer is king,” as well as a less established and recently emergent achievement model where the consumer’s efforts in consummating the act of consumption are lauded and celebrated. This raises the question of how the two models might be related to each other. Here we argue that the spread of neoliberal ideology, where the neoliberal subj…
Language policy, homelessness and neoliberal urbanization
One example of the impact of neoliberalism on urbanization is that of the Business Improvement District (BID), where business and property owners collectively manage a district to ensure that it has an appropriate 'business climate'. The responses of BIDs to the language practices of the homeless, such as panhandling, tend to be ambivalent because homelessness is an issue that requires sensitivity. Nevertheless, overly aggressive panhandling can …
Adding insult to inquiry
While compliments are usually intended to give credit and insults offense, the latter cannot simply be treated as opposites of the former. For example, a speaker can give credit to others as well as himself/herself. But while a speaker can offend others, it is less clear that a speaker can offend himself/herself. Understanding why this should be so provides us with a key insight into the nature of insults, namely, that it is predicated on the pre…
The Language of Organizational Styling
The ways in which commercial organizations and service providers 'style' themselves – creating the image they wish to portray to their potential consumers – is a long-established area of research in the fields of sociology and business studies. However language also plays an important role in organizational styling, something which until now has been largely overlooked in the literature. This is the first book-length study of the linguistics of o…
Language politics and global city
The state in Singapore has long insisted that Singaporeans be bilingual in English and an officially assigned ethnic mother tongue. English is to serve as the inter-ethnic lingua franca and facilitate economic competitiveness. The official mother tongue (Mandarin for the Chinese, Malay for the Malays, and Tamil for the Indians) is to serve as a cultural anchor for all the members of its associated ethnic group. Singapore's recent desire to establ…
Lauren Zentz
Personal Branding and the Commodification of Reflexivity
Reflexivity as a concept has produced theoretical debates which have explored the relationship of social actors to agency and identity. Less attention has been paid to reflexivity as a commodity, that is, to the forms of reflexivity that different actors display and to the appropriateness of these forms. Actors who display appropriate forms of reflexivity are likely to be treated differently from actors who do not display such forms, thus resulti…
Linguistic Instrumentalism in Singapore
10.1080/01434630308666499
The semiotics of language ideologies in Singapore1
As an ethnically and linguistically diverse society, Singapore has had to grapple with the problem of how to manage this diversity across a range of contexts, thus making it a particularly interesting case study for language ideologies. This paper examines three particular cases taken from the history of Singapore's language policy. In the first situation, the policy remains largely unchanged, varying only in its lexical and textual realizations;…
Linguistic entrepreneurship as affective regime
When English is Not a Mother Tongue
The spread of English as a global language has led to the question of 'ownership'. Who, it is often asked, really owns English? The answer to this question, it is suggested, has implications for a variety of issues such as what standards of English are acceptable, how it should be taught, and how problems of intelligibility ought to be approached. In this paper, I first point out some of the different ways in which linguistic ownership can be man…
Lor in colloquial Singapore English
The Passive in Singapore English
Singapore English has two passive or passive-like constructions which exhibit substrate influence from Malay and Chinese. They are the kena passive and the give passive. Of the two constructions, the Malay-derived kena passive is more widely used among Singaporeans regardless of ethnic origin. By contrast, the Chinese-derived give passive is much rarer. In this paper, we present an analysis of the two passives, and show that while the substrate l…
Consuming identities
Extreme communicative acts' and the boosting of illocutionary force
Appropriating the language of the other
Language policy and nationalist ideology
In this paper, we aim to anticipate a potential challenge to Singapore’s language policy, which privileges a distinction between Asian ‘mother tongues’ on the one hand and English on the other. The challenge to this policy will arise as Singapore embarks on a foreign talent policy, where the goal is to ultimately attract talented foreigners to take up Singaporean citizenship. This other policy, if successful, could drastically change the nation’s…
Negotiating Gendered Subjectivity in the Enterprise Culture
An enterprise culture is one in which ‘certain enterprising qualities — such as self reliance, personal responsibility, boldness and a willingness to take risks in the pursuit of goals — are regarded as human virtues and promoted as such’. Work is not seen as a constraint upon the individual but rather as an opportunity for self‐fulfilment. The pervasiveness of enterprise culture has led to observations that it influences aspects of social life b…
Linguistic chutzpah and the Speak Good Singlish movement
This paper discusses the Speak Good Singlish Movement, which was started as a response to the Speak Good English Movement, the latter having been initiated by the Singapore government. The Speak Good Singlish Movement represents a good example of linguistic chutzpah, where speakers demonstrate confidence in their language choices while also having the metalinguistic awareness and sophistication needed to articulate rationales for these choices. T…
Why linguistic entrepreneurship
This introduction builds on De Costa et al.’s (2016], [2019) notion of linguistic entrepreneurship, which is defined as “the act of aligning with the moral imperative to strategically exploit language-related resources for enhancing one’s worth in the world” (2016: 696). The four empirical studies and two critical commentaries that constitute this special issue explain the relevance of this construct and explore how it is instantiated in a range …
The birth of a particle
The discourse marker you know has been widely noted and analyzed in different varieties of English. However, it is less widely recognized that Colloquial Singapore English (CSE), in addition to the marker you know, has also developed the particle know. This paper provides data showing that know has distributional and collocational properties that distinguish it from you know, even though their discourse-pragmatic functions are similar. The differ…
Metadiscursive convergence in the Singlish debate
Reflexivity and the Transformation of Gender Identity
It has been claimed that the conditions of modernity create the opportunities as well as the need for social actors to take greater responsibility for their own identities. Feminist theorists have responded to such 'celebratory' views of identity transformation with caution, emphasizing instead the situated nature of critical reflexivity and arguing that the opportunities for transformations in gender identity are far more limited than has been s…
Kawaii' in the semiotic landscape
The Japanese word kawaii means ‘cute’, ‘lovable’ or ‘adorable’ and is used to express the quality of cuteness or kawaiiaesthetics in the general context of Japanese culture. This concept has become prominent in many aspects of Japanese modern culture, including clothing, personal appearance, food, toys, behaviour and mannerisms. While entities culturally characterized as kawaii are considered adorable and delicate, they also tend to appeal to peo…
The particle ya in Colloquial Singapore English
It has been recently argued that the particles in Colloquial Singapore English (CSE) constitute a grammatical category that actively draws new members to it. Drawing on distributional and collocational evidence, this paper establishes that CSE has a new particle, ya. The paper then proceeds to analyse the discourse pragmatic function of the particle. It shows that a speaker uses the particle ya to (weakly) boost the illocutionary force of a state…
Burdens’ and ‘handicaps’ in Singapore’s language policy
Singapore’s language policy has no place for either the various dialects of Chinese (the exception is Mandarin), or Singlish (a colloquial variety of English). These have been the targets of government campaigns that aim, as far as possible, to ensure that Singaporeans stop using them. However, it is interesting to observe that government officials themselves have been known to use these ostensibly denigrated varieties, as has happened in the cou…
The Hunger Strike as a Communicative Act
Judgments of actor responsibility usually depend on attributions of actor intentions. In some circumstances, though, actor intention or even both intention and responsibility may be considered irrelevant. This raises the question of whether it is possible for an intentional actor to not be held responsible for the consequences of his or her act. This article claims that the hunger strike represents just such a possibility, mainly because (i) the …
A practice-based critique of English as a Lingua Franca
This paper identifies several key issues that have emerged through the debate over English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), and suggests a practice-based perspective-which treats language not as a fixed system but as an emergent product of speakers' practices-as a guide for reconsidering some fundamental assumptions of the ELF research project. In particular, this paper suggests viewing ELF not as a variety, but as an activity type, where the goal of in…
Language Planning in Singapore
Singapore's annual Speak Mandarin Campaign has been largely successful in shifting the language patterns of its Chinese citizens from Chinese dialects to Mandarin in all sectors. However, there has been a notable exception: the effort to have Chinese Singaporeans give their children Mandarin names, rather than dialect ones. In this paper, we analyse this ‘blip’ in government policy implementation, arguing that it provides important insights into …
Diversity management and the presumptive universality of categories
Increasing societal and linguistic diversity poses significant challenges to formative categories of language policies. We make this point via an examination of Singapore's management of its most linguistically diverse ethnic group, the Indians.While heterogeneity has always been Singapore’s defining feature, the nature and scale of recent immigration have resulted in an unprecedented societal complexity. The government’s appreciation of this com…
Resolving the paradox of Singapore English hor
In this paper, we present paradoxical properties of the discourse particle hor in Singapore English and attempt to resolve them. Hor has been described as an attenuator of illocutionary force, which is used to convert statements and commands into questions and requests. We provide a new observation that it can also be used as a booster of illocutionary force to make strong statements and demands. We claim that these paradoxical properties are con…
The Semantic Development of Ter
Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session Dedicated to the Contributions of Charles J. Fillmore (1994)
Verbal Prefixation in Malay
Proceedings of the Twenty-First Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Historical Issues in Sociolinguistics/Social Issues in Historical Linguistics (1995)
Why You Talk Like That
In this paper, we examine one wh-construction in Singapore English, which signals a demand for justification, and show that there is a systematic correlation between its structural and pragmatic properties. We suggest that this wh-construction is based on the imperative, and inherits the structural properties associated with the relatively more polite version of the imperative. In Singapore English, this is the version that makes explicit mention…
Until in Singapore English
This paper investigates the syntax and semantics of one word, until, in Standard British English and Singapore English. We show that while until is used in similar fashion in both varieties of English, it has uses in Singapore English which are not available in Standard British English. After having analyzed the syntax and semantics of one particle in Chinese, namely dao, we show the parallel between until in Singapore English and dao in Chinese,…
The Passive in Singapore English
Singapore English has two passive or passive-like constructions which exhibit substrate influence from Malay and Chinese. They are the kena passive and the give passive. Of the two constructions, the Malay-derived kena passive is more widely used among Singaporeans regardless of ethnic origin. By contrast, the Chinese-derived give passive is much rarer. In this paper, we present an analysis of the two passives, and show that while the substrate l…
Divorce before Marriage in the Singapore—Malaysia Relationship
This article looks at how a particular metaphor, the Marriage metaphor, is used in the discourse concerning the Singapore-Malaysia relationship by tracking the metaphor through discourses concerning political merger, separation and possible re-merger. It shows how the details of the metaphor may be differentially mapped in order to achieve competing political aims. The article also observes that while the Marriage metaphor was productively used i…
On So-Called Triplication in Colloquial Singapore English and Thao
On So-called Triplication in Colloquial Singapore English and Thao: A Response to BlustIn Memory of Stan Starosta Rajendra Singh and Lionel Wee Abstract A morphological pattern originally exemplified by forms from Thao, an aboriginal language of Taiwan, finds further exemplification in Colloquial Singapore English, and resultant theoretical clarification. 1. Introduction. In his richly documented analysis of aspects of the semiaffixal1 morphology…
“Singlish”
The term “Singlish” figures prominently in local discussions of English in Singapore. But because the term has been used by different people to mean different things, this has resulted in (undetected) confusion, leading to discussions where not much progress is being made. In this paper, we first attempt to tear apart the various meanings of “Singlish”. We then discuss how these different uses of “Singlish”, and, by implication, its contrast with…
When English is Not a Mother Tongue
The spread of English as a global language has led to the question of 'ownership'. Who, it is often asked, really owns English? The answer to this question, it is suggested, has implications for a variety of issues such as what standards of English are acceptable, how it should be taught, and how problems of intelligibility ought to be approached. In this paper, I first point out some of the different ways in which linguistic ownership can be man…
Lor in colloquial Singapore English
Linguistic Instrumentalism in Singapore
10.1080/01434630308666499
The birth of a particle
The discourse marker you know has been widely noted and analyzed in different varieties of English. However, it is less widely recognized that Colloquial Singapore English (CSE), in addition to the marker you know, has also developed the particle know. This paper provides data showing that know has distributional and collocational properties that distinguish it from you know, even though their discourse-pragmatic functions are similar. The differ…
Reduplication and discourse particles
Reduplication and Discourse Particles
Extreme communicative acts' and the boosting of illocutionary force
Intra-Language Discrimination and Linguistic Human Rights
10.1093/applin/amh038
Language policy and nationalist ideology
In this paper, we aim to anticipate a potential challenge to Singapore’s language policy, which privileges a distinction between Asian ‘mother tongues’ on the one hand and English on the other. The challenge to this policy will arise as Singapore embarks on a foreign talent policy, where the goal is to ultimately attract talented foreigners to take up Singaporean citizenship. This other policy, if successful, could drastically change the nation’s…
Class-inclusion and correspondence models as discourse types
Psycholinguistic attempts to model metaphor processing can be broadly classified as correspondence or class-inclusion in orientation. This article develops a framework for approaching metaphorical discourse by reconstructing these processing models as discourse types that are associated with particular activity types. In doing so, it treats these discourse types as particular strategies of recontextualization, where, depending on the discourse ty…
Constructing the source
This article discusses various metaphorical texts where the authors construct or ‘make up’ their own sources. Such data contrast with the kinds of examples usually found in studies of metaphor, where the source is typically one that is ‘pre-given’. From a discourse perspective, it becomes interesting to ask under what circumstances a speaker/writer would attempt to create a brand new source instead of simply drawing upon pre-existing entities and…
Language Policy and Modernity in Southeast Asia
Responding Responsibly
Skutnabb-Kangas, Kontra, and Phillipson's response to Wee (2005) only serves to highlight a whole new set of problems with the LHRs paradigm while failing to make any inroads towards resolving the earlier ones. For example, they adopt a ‘legal perspective’ in relation to Singlish that is at odds with the way they would presumably wish to deal with linguistic discrimination elsewhere. The three authors also assume that levels of disadvantage can b…
The cultural basis of metaphor revisited
Just how foundational metaphor is to cultural understanding has been a matter of considerable debate, manifested in the question of whether cultural models are, at bottom, based on conceptual metaphors (Gibbs 1994; Lakoff 1993; Lakoff and Johnson 1999; Quinn 1991). This paper revisits this debate by examining a new set of metaphorical expressions involving proper names, which are widespread in Singapore society. These expressions indicate that Si…
Proper names and the theory of metaphor
Metaphorical expressions involving proper names have been discussed only sporadically. This paper demonstrates that there are in fact interesting things to be said about such metaphors, and makes two key points, one general and one specific. The general point is that their behavior accords more with the class-inclusion model of metaphor than the correspondence model. Having established this, I make the more specific point that there are cultural …
The semiotics of language ideologies in Singapore1
As an ethnically and linguistically diverse society, Singapore has had to grapple with the problem of how to manage this diversity across a range of contexts, thus making it a particularly interesting case study for language ideologies. This paper examines three particular cases taken from the history of Singapore's language policy. In the first situation, the policy remains largely unchanged, varying only in its lexical and textual realizations;…
Consuming identities
Language Planning in Singapore
Singapore's annual Speak Mandarin Campaign has been largely successful in shifting the language patterns of its Chinese citizens from Chinese dialects to Mandarin in all sectors. However, there has been a notable exception: the effort to have Chinese Singaporeans give their children Mandarin names, rather than dialect ones. In this paper, we analyse this ‘blip’ in government policy implementation, arguing that it provides important insights into …
Sociology (65 works) · Linguistics (63 works) · Philosophy (52 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (47 works) · Political science (43 works) · Computer Science (31 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (27 works) · Epistemology (26 works) · Law (26 works) · Philosophy (26 works)