The range and depth of English‐knowing bilinguals in Singapore

The concept ‘English‐knowing bilingualism’ is particularly worthy of exploration in Singapore because of the rapidly evolving special nature of ‘bilingualism’ there and the penetration of English into several domains. The discourse of ‘English‐knowing bilinguals’ in two main domains—at home and at school—is examined in terms of the range and depth of functional uses previously suggested. The discourse is explained with a new model, that of ‘expanding triangles’ involving an increasing English‐speaking base population and two distinctive English speech clines in Singapore, graded on formality and proficiency considerations. The instrumental, regulative and interpersonal functions of language call for the subvariety of English found at the lower ends of the English speech clines in Singapore. The representative or informative and the heuristic functions have been served by the subvariety at the upper ends of the speech clines. The imaginative or innovative function has been traditionally served by a high variety of English but the lower varieties are also increasingly being used in codified texts such as poems, short stories and plays by Singaporean writers. The concept of expanding triangles in English‐knowing bilingualism is detailed in this paper to enable some comprehension of an otherwise haphazard and infinite array of linguistic diversity involving the functions of English in Singapore.