Essay On Singlish

Introduction
Singapore’s multicultural, multilingual society lends itself to the convergence of languages and related sociolinguistic ramifications such as diglossia, conflicting attitudes and the desire to define an identity. For Singaporeans, their uniqueness lies in that they differ from each other at every level, from language, customs to religion. Probably the only thing that they have in common is their creole Singlish they develop together to facilitate easier communication. If ever anybody should try to point out a most distinguished feature about a Singaporean abroad, be they of Chinese, Malay or Indian descent, it would be their unmistakable Singlish accent. And it is this very characteristic that has been acting as a bulwark in the defense of their born and bred creole against the Singapore’s authority’s relentless attempts at eliminating it from the populace. Given the

In this theory, there is no clear-cut division between a high and a low variety, but rather a gradual transition from the highest, most prestigious degree of language to the lowest. Such ideas provide grounds for describing Singlish as basilectal and SSE as acrolectal while leaving space for a medium level between these two extremes. “Mesolect”, as it is called, represents a half-way combination of the standard language and its colloquial form, resulting in a not too formal and not too casual communication device (Bickerton, 1975). In this sense, Singlish is not so much an entity independent of SSE but a case of basilectization away from the standard version of English (Mufwene, n.d.). Then, it can be said to be a variety of SSE used for daily purposes, which reinforces the argument that Singlish, at the lowest extreme on the continuum, is part of a diglossic case involving two related but quite distinct variants of the same