Identity construction on shop signs in Singapore’s Chinatown: a study of linguistic choices by Chinese Singaporeans and New Chinese immigrants

ABSTRACT

Chinatowns, as neighborhoods for overseas ethnic Chinese, have garnered considerable scholarly attention from linguistic landscape (LL) researchers in recent years. These investigations tend to treat old immigrants who have been tied to the neighborhoods for generations as the key text producers of LL, with far too little attention paid to the LL practices of new Chinese immigrants in Chinatowns, who are often associated with transnationalism and the rise of China. Focusing on Singapore’s Chinatown, the present study attempts to explore Chinese Singaporean and new Chinese immigrants’ linguistic choices concerning the Chinese-language signs displayed in the LL. Drawing on 326 instances of signs collected during site visits, the study found that Chinese Singaporeans and new Chinese immigrants make different linguistic choices when projecting their respective authenticities and identities. These findings suggest that there is indeed a linguistic basis for previously expressed arguments that Chinese Singaporean authenticity is threatened by new Chinese immigrants, shedding light on the need to examine the heterogeneity of Chinatown from the perspective of LL. This study enriches the scholarly understanding of LL practices within Chinese diasporic settlements in the East.

KEYWORDS:

• Linguistic landscape
• Singapore
• Chinatown
• identity construction
• Chinese Singaporeans
• new Chinese immigrants

Acknowledgments

The first author would like to acknowledge Nanyang Technological University (NTU) for the NTU Research Scholarship.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

¹ Singapore is a multiracial and multicultural country. Singapore’s demographics are encapsulated by the CMIO model, representing its major ethnicities: Chinese, Malays, Indians, and Others. According to the population census data released in 2020, the Chinese ethnicity accounts for 74.3% of the Singaporean population, making it the largest ethnic group in Singapore.

² In the CMIO model, Singapore’s Chinese ethnicity is simply seen as a monolithic group with Chinese descent. In the present study, drawing on Ho (2006), we refer to those local Singaporean nationals of Chinese who are the descendants of early Chinese immigrants, were born and raised in Singapore and have a strong sense of belonging to Singapore as “Chinese Singaporeans”.

³ There is a dramatic difference between pinyinized names and dialect transliteration names. Take the name of Goh Keng Swee, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore for example. The Chinese characters of the name are. Based on the dialect transliteration, the name is written as Goh Keng Swee; and the pinyinized name is written as Wu Qing Rui.

⁴ The present study is part of an ongoing project which seeks to conduct ethnographic linguistic landscape analyses of Singapore’s Chinatown. The project has been approved by the institution’s IRB review.

⁵ Ben-Rafael et al. (2006) make a distinction between top-down signs and bottom-up signs according to LL actors. “Top-down signs” refer to signage issued by the government and public bureaucracies, such as road signs, building names, street names, and public announcements. “Bottom-up signs” are initiated by individuals, such as shop-owners and commercial companies.