Marginalization, 'Lee Kuan Yew', and a Chinese-educated class
Understanding the collective memory of Singapore's Speak Mandarin Campaign
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3537512 |
|---|---|
| Authors | L Lu (0000-0002-9558-6408, Nanyang Technological University, corresponding author), Chien Wen Kung (0000-0001-9173-1842, National University of Singapore) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Pages | 1-23 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-19 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Language in Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0047-4045 • E-ISSN: 1469-8013 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s004740452510167x |
| OpenAlex | W4414340848 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 26 |
The Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC) was launched in Singapore in 1979, promoting Mandarin among the Chinese population. An emerging prevalent narrative blames the SMC in terms of causing Chinese cultural erosion. This article seeks to understand how and why this monolithic discourse has emerged. We do this by tracing Mandarinization as a transnational ideology originating from China's founding as a republic. We draw on life history interviews with eleven individuals born between 1940 and 1966. Informants recount engagements with the SMC, from alignment to nonchalance, and fear of resistance. Accounts often invoked 'Lee Kuan Yew' as a chronotope, representing the sociopolitical circumstances of Singapore in the 1970s-80s. We argue that the current discourse surrounding the SMC might be theorized as a form of collective memory. It emerges from and is sustained by conflating prominent language policies with a perceived sense of the state's oppression and marginalization of a Chinese-educated class. (Collective memory, collective remembering, Mandarin policy, Speak Mandarin Campaign
Collective memory · Ideology · Mandarin Chinese · Narrative · Oppression · Asian Studies and History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Socioeconomic Development in Asia
The Dialogic Imagination
Rethinking linguistic relativity
Stance
Collective memory
The stance triangle
Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life
Planning for Development or Decline? Education Policy for Chinese Language in Singapore
Mass Media and Language Planning
A General History of the Chinese in Singapore
Contestations of Memory in Southeast Asia
On Collective Memory
Discourses of collective remembering
When the Researched Refused Confidentiality
Singapore's Speak Mandarin Campaign
Saving Chinese-language education in Singapore
Inclusion, exclusion, and racial identity in Singapore's language education system
Singapore's speak Mandarin Campaign
English and Language Planning
Towards a Standardization Of Personal Names
Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860-1960
Modern Written Chinese in development
Sociolinguistics, memory studies, and the dynamics of interdisciplinarity
Anonymity and Place in Qualitative Inquiry
Chronotopes, Scales, and Complexity in the Study of Language in Society
The dynamics of multilingualism in contemporary Singapore
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |