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Neoliberal recontextualizations and legitimations in a post‐Confucian state
Author(s) -
Ng Carl Jon Way
Publication year - 2020
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/weng.12500
Subject(s) - ethos , neoliberalism (international relations) , trope (literature) , authoritarianism , individualism , sociology , context (archaeology) , corporate governance , governmentality , situated , political science , political economy , gender studies , politics , democracy , law , linguistics , paleontology , philosophy , finance , artificial intelligence , computer science , economics , biology
While neoliberal ethos has seen a consistent spread and reterritorialization beyond its Anglo‐American roots, the specific inflections of neoliberalism and its discourse have had to be recontextualized to fit with context‐specific values and structures of government/governance. Adopting a critical discourse‐analytic approach, this paper looks at the case of Singapore to probe the discursive moves and tropes deployed to communicate and legitimate a neoliberal‐oriented, authoritarian governance in a wealthy society marked by a high level of inequality. It shows how Singapore's ‘Asian’ sociopolitical context and its post‐Confucian heritage are amenable to a strategic discursive melding of a more conventional self‐interested, neoliberal individualism with a more locally‐situated traditionalist collective/communitarian ethos, with the latter functioning as a discursive‐moralizing trope to encourage acquiescence to a market‐fundamentalist agenda for ‘the greater/common good’.