Seeing the unseen: discourse analysis of a Kristang ghost story in Singapore

Abstract

“Seeing the Unseen” is part of "Making Oral Languages Visible", a cross-disciplinary project that aims to preserve minority languages by adapting oral folktales into bilingual storybooks. The “unseen” in the title indexes (i) the Kristang language, a critically endangered Malay-Portuguese creole in Singapore and (ii) a ghost seen only by the story’s protagonist. Though ghost stories are perennially popular in Singapore, they comprise a nascent genre of study. While previous iterations of this project have focused on the artistic process, this paper offers a close textual analysis of the chosen Kristang folktale. In sum, the paper explores this question: what roles do ghost stories play in a storytelling medium?

A bilingual Kristang native speaker narrated the story, which was recorded, transcribed and translated via anthropological linguistic field methods. Subsequently, each line of the story was classified according to guidelines set forth by Labov’s narrative categories and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar. These linguistic theories lend an interdisciplinary perspective to the predominantly literary field of storytelling analysis. Most saliently, it was found that the story focused on setting up its historical background over plot-driving actions. Its thematic emphasis on historicity and cultural tradition suggests that ghosts serve memory-making functions. In Singapore’s evolving urban landscape, ghost stories help endangered community members to reanimate and remember their cultures. Crucially, this opens up further discussions on growing language revitalisation efforts, while serving as a reminder that past and personal narratives are indelibly tied to current and collective ones.

Keywords – Kristang, ghost stories, discourse analysis, oral folktales, narrative analysis, Systemic Functional Grammar, language revitalisation, Singapore