From vulgar to mainstream: the evolution of <em>sia</em> in Colloquial Singapore English in a decade — The Association Specialists
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  2. SESSION 2: Corpus linguistics, and Historical sociolinguistics
  3. From vulgar to mainstream: the evolution of sia in Colloquial Singapore English in a decade

From vulgar to mainstream: the evolution of sia in Colloquial Singapore English in a decade (20205)

Mohamed Hafiz 1 , Mie Hiramoto 1 , Jun Jie Lim 2 , Wilkinson Daniel Wong Gonzales 3 , Jakob R. E. Leimgruber 4
  1. National University of Singapore, Singapore, SINGAPORE
  2. Department of Linguistics, University of California San Diego, San Diego, California, United States of America
  3. Department of English, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong
  4. Department of English and American Studies, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany

Colloquial Singapore English (CSE) exhibits a diverse set of Sentence-Final Particles (SFP) influenced by Singapore’s local languages. Utilizing data from the Corpus of Singapore English Messages (CoSEM)— a 6-million-word text-message corpus— this paper investigates contemporary usage of CSE SFP sia, a relatively understudied yet immensely popular particle of Malay origin.

Sia and its variations were once linked to strong illocutionary contexts, characterized by vulgar/masculine implications stemming from its Malay root word (Khoo, 2012). However, CoSEM data indicate that sia is now more widely employed by general CSE-speaking adolescents in both strong and weak illocutionary contexts, suggesting a departure from its previous vulgar/masculine connotations (illustrated below)

(1)   The whole clique Damn good looking Sia  

       “The whole clique is really good looking!” (strong)

       <COSEM:17CF08-6020-22IIF-2015> 

 

(2)  She coming over to my house at 11 later sia 

      “She is coming over to my house at 11 later.”  (weak)

      <COSEM:19MM01-6688-19MAM-2017> 

Scholars have examined the usage of SFPs throughout the history of CSE studies, including stable ones like lah, leh, hor, and mah. New additions such as bah (1337 tokens) and wor (148 tokens) have been mentioned (Leimgruber, 2016; Botha, 2018), however none of these newcomers are as ubiquitous as sia (9927 tokens), which has rapidly established itself as one of the most representative CSE SFPs today (Hiramoto et al., 2022). Our findings also indicate that as age increases, the likelihood of using sia decreases— whereby younger speakers, regardless of ethnicity and gender, use more sia than older speakers (β=-0.1, p <0.001).

We conclude that: (1) there exists a generational divide between younger and older CSE speakers possibly attributing to younger speakers' preference for sia over other SFPs to project their youth identity; (2) sia and its variants are evolving as a widespread general phatic marker rather than as a marker of vulgarness/masculinity.

  1. Khoo, V. (2012). Conversation Analytic Approach to the sia Particle in Singapore Colloquial English [BA Thesis]
  2. Gonzales, W. D. W., Hiramoto, M., Leimgruber, J. R. E., & Lim, J. J. (2021). The Corpus of Singapore English Messages (CoSEM). World Englishes, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/weng.12534
  3. Hiramoto, M., Choo, J. X. M., Gonzales, W. D. W., Leimgruber, R. E., & Lim, J. J. (2022). From Malay to Colloquial Singapore English: A case study of sentence-final particle sia. In A. Ngefac, H. Wolf, & T. Hoffmann (Eds.), World Englishes and creole languages today existing paradigms and current trends in action (pp. 117–130). Lincom.
  4. Leimgruber, J. R. E. (2016). Bah in Singapore English. World Englishes, 35(1), 78–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/weng.12175
  5. Botha, W. (2018). A social network approach to particles in Singapore English. World Englishes, 37(2), 261-281