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Research Focus

English Language:
Concentration

FOUNDATIONS

INTERFACES

English in Multi-lingual Settings

Language use, contact and change

Language planning and policy

Investigating language as a structural entity

Investigating language as a socio-cultural entity

Semiotics

Literary, cultural and ethnographic studies

Psycholinguistics and language acquisition

Computer application

The three areas of concentration derive from the general direction set by the theme English in
multilingual settings. Our work on use, contact, and change in this setting is from a sociolinguistic
and discourse perspective, and includes issues in multilingualism, new varieties, pidgins and
creoles, language attitudes and literacy, discourse studies, genre, pragmatics, rhetoric and stylistics.
The area of language planning and policy has direct significance for Singapore as well as the
entire region in relation to English as well as other standard languages (e.g. Bahasa). In a modern,
linked global community, it is also essential for studies of English in a multilingual setting to be
offset against studies in a comparative perspective of other languages and settings.
To support and sustain this concentration, the Department provides a strong intellectual and
research background that enables students of English Language to situate their work in
well-informed and appropriate ways. We emphasize both the sociolinguistic and discourse
foundations for the areas of concentration, as well as the tools to study them. The foundations
include the study of language varieties, language change and evolution, linguistic practices, and
issues of language, power, and identity. We also provide an understanding of the structure of
language, that is, of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, and an awareness
of how language users make choices that take account of contexts and purposes. Bringing together
theory, description, and application, we aim to ensure that introductory knowledge covers a wide
range, and that more advanced knowledge is pursued selectively and autonomously according to
purpose.
To be educated in an academic discipline is also to have more than a single interest and the key
skills to pursue it. The educated specialist needs to develop a sense of the discipline's wider
concerns and of the points of intersection with other disciplines. The Department covers in varying
degrees of detail, language use and its connections with the mind, physiology, computer
application, knowledge and ideology. Students and staff also make connections between their own
interests and other areas of intellectual enquiry beyond our immediate borders.

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