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Speech presentation in Singaporean English novels
Author(s) -
Tan Peter K. W.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
world englishes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.6
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-971X
pISSN - 0883-2919
DOI - 10.1111/1467-971x.00149
Subject(s) - presentation (obstetrics) , variety (cybernetics) , context (archaeology) , standard english , linguistics , newspaper , history , literature , sociology , media studies , art , computer science , philosophy , medicine , archaeology , artificial intelligence , radiology
Speech presentation has attracted much attention by scholars of literary texts, and more recently attention has been focused on academic, political and newspaper texts. Hardly any attention has been focused on the context of the New Englishes. In this paper therefore, I examine speech presentation in Singaporean fiction in English in an attempt to establish if and how the various modes and styles of speech presentation are altered in the context of a new variety of English. These contexts are multi‐lingual and multi‐cultural; there is also frequently a range of different kinds of Englishes: from creole varieties, through ‘interlingual’ varieties, various non‐standard varieties to standard national varieties or even standard international varieties. Creative writers in English need to resolve the tension of how to reflect this context, yet be able to communicate beyond a parochial fashion. I examine three recent novels in English by Singaporean writers, published in the last two years, and examine short extracts in this light. These are Hwee Hwee Tan's Foreign Bodies (1997), Catherine Lim's The Teardrop Story Woman (1998) and Rex Shelley's A River of Roses (1998).