ABSTRACT

This Coda is a reflection on my own encounters with the multilingual realities of Singapore and my reading of the fascinating studies in the present volume. As a young nation, Singapore has made miracles not only in the economic sphere, but also linguistically by turning English from a colonial language to a national lingua franca and by imposing Mandarin Chinese onto the Chinese communities effectively eliminating the so-called Chinese ‘dialects’ in public domains. Singapore has proven to the world that societal multilingualism and individual bilingualism can be planned and managed successfully. Yet the 21st century brings an era of ‘liquid modernity’ where social structures and institutions change constantly and rapidly, and individuals need to adapt to different social positions and have multiple and fragmented lives and selves. In terms of language, the world is experiencing ‘liquid multilingualism’: no single individual can claim to know, or indeed need to know, an entire language; rather, multilinguals acquire and use bits of many different languages. And correspondingly, no single nation or community can claim the sole ownership, authority and responsibility for any particular language. This Coda explores liquid multilingualism in Singapore and its implications for sociolinguistics research.