The fact that Sha and his friends enjoy learning English lessons also means that there is no fear of derision if he takes the initiative to ask the teacher questions.
Notice how adamant he is that one should ask questions (You have to ask
questions).
(16)
I: OK, now do you ask questions during English lesson?
S: Sometimes if I don’t understand or if I want an idea.
…
I: Do you think asking questions will help in learning of English?
S: Of course, definitely. If you don’t ask anything either it means you don’t understand or you are doing something too simply.
The thing is too simple, then you don’t have to ask questions.
You have to ask questions.
There is some irony to the fact that on the occasions when Sha does not ask questions, it is not because he is worried about being embarrassed. Rather, he is worried about embarrassing others whose English he feels is not quite up to
scratch. For example, during the Physics class, he tries to not ask the teacher questions in order to avoid embarrassing her because he thinks her English is not as good as his.
(17)
S: There have been certain occasions when like during Physics, lah, when the teacher is speaking, sometimes I don’t really understand what she is saying, lah.
…
I: What do you do then? Do you ask?
S: I asked her to repeat, lah, but I asked like ‘Can you write it down on the board?’ I didn’t openly ask her to repeat it properly.
I: Why?
S: Because I didn’t want to embarrass her in class or something.
Conclusion
The idea that teenagers are peer-oriented is certainly not an unexpected finding.
But what the data provide us with are specific details of the kinds of social practices that such peer-orientation demands, and consequently, how these practices may then conflict with the demands of other, non-peer-oriented identities.
Notes
1.Research for this paper was made possible by a grant from the National University of Singapore (R-1-3-000-041-112).
2.Our data are drawn from a series of interviews conducted by four research assistants from August 2003 to December 2004. The subjects of the interviews were twenty-two students, all adolescents ranging in age from 13-17 years.
Fifteen of them were females (five Chinese, two Malays, and eight Indians) and seven were males (four Chinese, one Malay, and two Indians). The topics of the interviews covered their attitudes towards English language learning in school, their preferred leisure activities, and the kinds of literacy activities they engaged in. Whilst earlier interviews were rather more structured, subsequent ones became more conversational and open-ended as the subjects became more comfortable and familiar with the interviewers. The methodology is therefore based on that of interpretive sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1982; Tannen 1984; see also Maschler 1994: 329), where data gleaned from earlier interviews or conversations are transcribed, analyzed and followed-up in subsequent ones.
References
Bell, Allan (1984). Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13(2): 145-204.
Bell, Allan (1997). Language style as audience design. In Nikolas Coupland &
Adam Jaworski (eds.), Sociolinguistics: A reader and coursebook, 240-249. London: Mcmillan.
Benjamin, Geoffrey (1976). The cultural logic of Singapore’s ‘multiracialism.’
In Riaz Hassan (ed.) Singapore: Society in transition, 115-133. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste.
Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre & Passeron, Jean-Claude (1977). Reproduction in education,
society and culture. London: Sage.
Bourdieu, Pierre & Passeron, Jean-Claude (1979). The inheritors: French
students and their relation to culture. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.Bourdieu, Pierre, Darbel, Alain, with Schnapper, Dominque. 1991. The love of
art: European art museums and their public. Trans. Caroline Beattie
& Nick Merriman. Cambridge: Polity.
Caldas, Stephen J. & Caron-Caldas. Suzanne (2002). A sociolinguistic analysis of the language preferences of adolescent bilinguals: Shifting allegiances and developing identities. Applied Linguistics 23(4): 490-514.
Cameron, Deborah (1995). Verbal Hygiene. New York: Routledge
Chew, Soon Beng, Leu, Guo-Jiun Mike & Tam, Kim Heng (1998). Values and life-styles of young Singaporeans. Singapore: Prentice Hall.
Collins, James (1993). Determination and contradiction: An appreciation and critique of the work of Pierre Bourdieu on language and education. In Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma & Mosihe Postone (eds.), Bourdieu:
Critical perspectives, 116-138. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Coupland, Nikolas (2001). Language, situation, and the relational self:
theorizing dialect-style in sociolinguistics. In Penelope Eckert & John R. Rickford (eds.) Style and sociolinguistic variation, 185-210.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eckert, Penelope (1989). Jocks and burnouts: Social categories and identity in
the high school. New York: Teachers College Press.
Eckert, Penelope (2000). Linguistic variation as social practice. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Eckert, Penelope (2001). Style and social meaning. In Penelope Eckert & John R. Rickford (eds.) Style and sociolinguistic variation, 119-126.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gee, James (2000). New people in new worlds: networks, the new capitalism and schools. In Bill Cope & Mary Kalantzis (eds.), Multiliteracies:
Literacy learning and the design of social futures, 43-68. London:
Routledge.
Gopinathan, S., Pakir, Anne, Ho, Wah Kam, & Saravanan, Vanithamani (eds.) (1998). Language, society, and education in Singapore: Issues and
trends, 2
nd ed. Singapore: Times Academic Press.Gumperz, John. 1982. Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gupta, Anthea Fraser (1998). The situation of English in Singapore. In Joseph A. Foley, Thiru Kandiah, Bao Zhiming, Anthea F. Gupta, Lubna Alsagoff, Ho Chee Lick, Lionel Wee, Ismail S. Talib, & Wendy Bokhorst-Heng, English in new cultural contexts: Reflections from
Singapore, 106-126. Singapore: Oxford University Press.
Heath, Shirley Brice. 1983. Ways with words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hebdige, Dick (1979). Subculture: the meaning of style. London & New York:
Methuen.
Heller, Monica. 1999a. Alternative ideologies of la francophonie. Journal of
Sociolinguistics 3(3): 336-359.
Heller, Monica. 1999b. Linguistic minorities and modernity: A sociolinguistic
ethnography. London: Longman.
Heller, Monica (2001). Undoing the macro/micro dichotomy. In Nikolas Coupland, Srikant Sarangi & Christopher N. Candlin (eds),
Sociolinguistics and social theory, 212-234. London: Longman.
Heller, Monica & Martin-Jones, Marilyn (2001). Voice of authority: Education
and linguistic difference. Westport, Connecticut & London: Ablex
Publishing.Ho, Kong Chong & yip, Jeffrey (2003) Youth.sg: The state of youth in Singapore. Singapore: National Youth Council.
Irvine, Judith T (2001). “Style” as distinctiveness: the culture and ideology of linguistic differentiation. In Penelope Eckert & John R. Rickford (eds.)
Style and sociolinguistic variation. 21-43. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.Jaffe, Alexandra (1999). Ideologies in action: Language politics on Corsica.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Labov, William (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lau, Kak En (1993). Singapore Census of Population 1990. Statistical Release 3. Singapore: SNP Publishers.
Li Wei, Saravanan, V. and Ng L. H. Julia. 1997. Language shift in the Teochew community in Singapore: A family domain analysis. Journal
of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 18(5): 364-384.
Luke, Allan (2004). On the material consequences of literacy. Language and
Education 18(4): 331-335.
Maschler, Yael. 1994. Metalanguaging and discourse markers in bilingual conversation. Language In Society 23(3): 325-366.
Pakir, Anne (2000). Singapore. In Wah Kam Ho & Ruth Y. L. Wong (eds.)
Language policies and language education: The impact in East Asian Countries in the Next Decade, 259-84. Singapore: Times Academic
Press.PuruShotam, Nirmala S. (1998). Negotiating language, constructing race: