Choreographing linguistic landscapes in Singapore

Abstract

This paper proposes the notion of choreographed multilingualism to describe the top-down dimension of Singapore's linguistic landscape. Using a range of examples of official multilingual discourse, including public signage, exhibition artefacts, and print texts, it identifies a quadrilingual constellation that reiterates across different modalities, stabilizing into a visual-spatial formula. As a semiotic feature, the quadrilingual formula is an indexical that calls up the trope of neat multilingualism, whereby the four official languages of Singapore (English, Chinese, Malay, Tamil) are construed in a relation of equilibrium and equitability, while nonofficial/nonstandard languages, language varieties, and Chinese dialects are relegated to oblivion. The trope of neat multilingualism in turn evokes a larger sociolinguistic ambiance shaped by the official language policy and the language education system in Singapore. The paper theorises this situation in respect of Michel de Certeau's spatial theory, arguing that official discourses in Singapore corroborate the multilingual “place” produced by technologies of choreography.