Hafiz, Mohamed and Hiramoto, Mie and Leimgruber, Jakob R. E. and Gonzales, Wilkinson Daniel Wong and Lim, Jun Jie (2025) Sociolinguistic variation in Colloquial Singapore English sia. WORLD ENGLISHES, 44 (1-2). pp. 218-236. ISSN 0883-2919, 1467-971X
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)Abstract
Colloquial Singapore English (CSE), also known as 'Singlish', features a wide range of sentence-final particles (SFP) influenced by local languages such as Hokkien, Cantonese, Mandarin and Malay. This study focuses on the SFP sia, a relatively new and less-explored particle with Malay roots. We examine sia and its variants (sia, sial, siak and siol) using data from the Corpus of Singapore English Messages, a 6.9-million-word text-message corpus from 2016 to 2022. While previous research has associated sia and its variants with strong illocutionary contexts, particularly among young male Singaporeans due to its vulgar and masculine connotations, our data indicate that sia is now used more broadly among CSE-speaking youth. It is employed in both strong and weak illocutionary contexts, suggesting a shift away from its negative/vulgar associations. Sia and its variants are emerging as general phatic markers reflecting the identity of CSE-speaking youth.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | DISCOURSE PARTICLES; Colloquial Singapore English; language variation; language and identity; Malay; sentence-final particles |
| Subjects: | 400 Language > 420 English |
| Divisions: | Languages and Literatures > Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Gernot Deinzer |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Mar 2026 10:14 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Mar 2026 10:14 |
| URI: | https://pred.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/64574 |
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