A study of attitudes of dialect speakers towards the speak mandarin campaign in Singapore

摘要

This book presents the history of the long-running Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC) in Singapore and examines attitudes held towards it within the Chinese dialect-speaking community. The SMC was first implemented in 1979 and has been running continuously in the nearly 40 years since its initiation. This provides an interesting and unique case study on language planning and policy due to the campaign's longevity combined with the multilingual and multiethnic nature of the research site. The data collected is qualitative in nature which is appropriate given the direction of the study; while people may share the same or similar attitudes towards the SMC, their experiences or reasoning behind their attitudes can vary. In addition, while attitudes may be grouped together as similar, there would be nuanced differences in opinion from person to person which a purely quantitative study could not capture. This book could have possibly been improved by presenting the literature and context using a more critical method, however, the study presented is done so in a thorough and well-structured manner. As such any presence or lack of a critical method is purely a stylistic observation and does not negatively impact on how the study is presented or understood. This book is suitable in terms of content and readability for a wide audience encompassing the general public, university students, and teaching staff across multiple social sciences, academics, and government departments.