Since the colonial era, characterological figures have circulated in Singaporean discourse that have critiqued local women who are perceived as excessively Western-oriented. The most enduring of these figures is the “sarong party girl” (or SPG), a term for young women who attend social functions with angmoh (white) men. Despite considerable economic and social changes that have lessened the cachet of Westerners in Singapore, the SPG and other related satirical personae continue to circulate in local media. Our study examines the construction of two such characters originating on the satirical news television program The Noose (2007-2016), both performed by comedian Michelle Chong. We argue that in Chong’s construction of these personae, sociolinguistic features are recruited to perform characters that are at once unintelligent, overly sexualized, and excessively Western-oriented, implying that these qualities are ideologically intertwined.

The first character investigated, the newsreader Adrianna Wow, is a Singaporean who affects an American English accent and pretends to be unfamiliar with local languages. Wow is also a “bimbo” who is easily confused by wordplay and attempts to exploit her sexuality to get ahead. We find that Chong makes use of American English features (e.g., stress-timed rhythm) along with deliberate mispronunciation of local terms to index the excessive Western orientation of this persona. The second character, Barbarella, is a lower middle class, self-declared SPG who frequently expresses interest in angmoh men. In this portrayal, Chong mixes Colloquial Singapore English features (e.g., syllable-timed rhythm) together with features of American English (e.g., up-talk), along with frequent idiosyncratic malapropisms. Thus, Barbarella is mocked as someone who worships angmohs but lacks the education to speak like them.

This analysis illustrates how media is used to police the linguistic practices of women, and unpacks the process of bricolage through which features may be creatively juxtaposed to generate novel personae.