Singapore Stories: Language, Class, and the Chinese of Singapore, ...

correctly, as the group that commands the most political and economic influence on the island. Certainly, one could adopt more powerful arguments here about how Chinese dominance has led to the assimilation or marginalisation of ethnic minorities over the past five decades, as authors like Michael Barr and Lily Rahim have in their recent studies. Yet, I believe that it is important to recognise that Chinese society in Singapore is not simply a homogenous and dominant collective, and that, in fact, there are distinct cleavages along economic, linguistic, and cultural lines within the community that have yet to be mapped. Furthermore, a nuanced historical study of ordinary life among the ethnic minorities of Singapore would be sufficiently different to warrant specific treatment in any study. I could not do adequate justice to these communities if I were to attempt to include them in the claims of this book.

The logic behind the premise of this book is quite palpable. As aformer colony of the British Empire, English has always had a special place in Singapore as the language of governance and law. Yet, the importance of English in determining economic opportunity was never as overwhelming as is the case in Singaporean society today. In an older world, one where the island was nevertheless just as intrinsically bound up within the emerging global economy, those literate only in Chinese could make their fortunes often as easily as those who were literate in English. But when Singapore became a regional hub for telecommunications, finance, and banking in the 1980s, English, the lingua franca of the trading world, became fundamental in the race to determine who went to the best schools, who drove the nicest cars, who lived in the most luxurious homes, and who had the best-paid jobs in the country. It would never be the only factor, but it was arguably the most powerful and often the decisive one. What I call the “English Singapore Story” is thus the story of having—having chances in life because one has access to literacy in the right language. And this has been the focus of the national narrative of the past. But there is a twin to this story: the story of not having, the version of the Singapore Story experienced by those who are notliterate, at all or sufficiently so, in English—not having the right