"Mee siam mai hum" : style-shifting and code-mixing in election rallies

Abstract

This paper discusses the linguistic practices of Singaporean political leaders, Lee Hsien Loong and Pritam Singh. Specifically, it aims to look at their style-shifting and code-mixing strategies when they are performing election rally speeches. This will provide insight into how a political leader negotiates his identity in a communication site where his identity is highly correlated to his success. In similar study by Khoo (2015), it was shown that language variation is a strategy used by opposition political party members to portray themselves as ‘not too elite like the PAP , but not too uneducated’. While this study adopts a similar approach, it will instead examine speech data from Lee and Singh from the 2015 general election rallies. As they have different political allegiances, analysing their discourses will provide understanding on whether opposing politicians vary their language differently. Despite Khoo’s (2015) conclusions about the opposition’s linguistic strategies, the results in this study contradicted that. Singh, the opposition’s current leader, style-shifted between standard English and Singlish only once in approximately 52 minutes of speech. His speech was otherwise marked by a lack of variation. Conversely, Lee displayed a propensity for language variation as he style-shifted several times and in a range of situations. He occasionally code-mixed too. These had the effect of accentuating his solidarity with the people and leadership capability simultaneously.