‘Oh No, The Poem is in Malay’: Examining Student Responses to Linguistic Diversity in Two Multicultural Asian Classrooms

ABSTRACT

Hitherto, student responses to ethically oriented pedagogies in Literature classrooms have rarely been studied in non-western, multicultural contexts, and often assume monolingual text selections in English. As an Outer Circle English-using society, Singapore presents a multicultural Asian context worth studying where students connect aesthetic analysis with ethical issues. In this paper, I extend theorisations of ethical criticism concerned with constructing ethical meaning to interpretive discourse in classroom settings. I draw upon Derek Attridge’s notion of responsible readings to examine students’ responses to linguistic diversity in two multicultural Asian Secondary Four (Grade 10 equivalent) Literature classes from a co-designed unit on race and identity in Singapore in a larger study. Focusing on their translingual dispositions, I analyse how students express receptive and resistant responses in comparing three English translations of the Malay poem ‘Di Tengah Alam’ by Hadijah Rahmat, when minority-race students are linguistically privileged and majority-race students are linguistically disadvantaged.

KEYWORDS:

• Literature education
• student responses
• Asian multicultural classroom
• linguistic diversity
• translingual dispositions
• responsible reading
• multicultural literature
• ethical criticism

Acknowledgement

The author expresses his gratitude to Associate Professor Suzanne S. Choo for permission to use the data in this article and the Special Issue guest editors for their generous and incisive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Education Research Funding Programme from the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore under Grant [OER 22/17 CSL].The author also received financial support from the Nanyang Technological University Research Scholarship during the authorship of this article. The views expressed in this chapter are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of the NIE or NTU.

Notes on contributors

Dominic Nah

Dominic Nah is a PhD candidate at the English Language and Literature Academic Group, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His doctoral thesis examines student responses to ethically oriented pedagogies of teaching Literature in secondary schools. He has taught English Literature to undergraduates and worked as a research assistant on a grant project concerning Literature education in Singapore. He has also co-written both teachers’ guides and study companions for Literature teachers in Singapore.