October 25, 2016

‘The Reduplication of Chinese Names in Singapore English’ (RASK, 2003), by Dr Jock Wong, Lecturer at the Centre for English Language Communication, discusses how one can find a range of culture-specific address forms in Singapore English that are not found in any other culturally Anglo variety of English (i.e. Australian English, British English, etc.). These forms of address, which are loaded with meanings, can tell us a lot about the evolving Singapore culture and the cultural grounding of Singapore English. This study looks into the reduplication of Chinese names used in Singapore English. An example would be the Chinese name, ‘Bee Pheng’ which would be reduplicated to the name, ‘Peng Peng’. The term ‘boy boy’ is also a unique address form which draws from the same process and it is often positioned behind one’s name i.e. ‘Adam boy boy’. This study shows how meaningful this grammatical construction is, and captures its meaning in the form of a reductive paraphrase using Natural Semantic Metalanguage.

Read the full article here.