Accounts of religio-cultural identity in Singapore and Malaysia

Beng Soon Lim; Azirah Hashim; Richard Buttny

doi:10.1515/ijsl-2014-0015

Article

Accounts of religio-cultural identity in Singapore and Malaysia

Beng Soon Lim , Azirah Hashim and Richard Buttny

Published/Copyright: July 31, 2014

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From the journal International Journal of the Sociology of Language Volume 2014 Issue 229

Abstract

Singapore and Malaysia shared a similar history until 1965. They continue to share a similar spread of religions, ethnicities and languages. Even though Chinese are much the largest community in Singapore, and Malays the majority group in Malaysia, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism are widely practised in both, while Malay, English, Tamil and several forms of Chinese are widely spoken – and frequently mixed with each other. To identify the range of perceptions of culture and identity in each society, discussion was observed among an ethnically-diverse focus group of Singaporeans and compared with similar discussion among a group of Malaysians. Discursive analysis was used to examine the construction of religious and ethnic identity emerging from the spoken data. The research focus was not only on the content of the discussions itself but also on the speech strategies employed by the participants. Findings suggest the existence of competing perceptions of what a multicultural society is or should be, not only across different ethnic and religious groups but also between the two countries.

Keywords: identity; accounts; Malaysia; Singapore; politeness

Published Online: 2014-7-31

Published in Print: 2014-9-1

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2014-0015

Keywords for this article

identity; accounts; Malaysia; Singapore; politeness