Examining the construction of a Singapore identity from 'self' and 'other' positioning in online forums

From a corpus of comments in online forums, this exploratory study investigates the underlying ideologies and language ideologies that surround the issue of Singaporean online commentators navigating their professed national identity amidst the changing linguistic landscape caused by flows of people of other nationalities. Two questions that guided my analysis through this research are:

1) How do forum participants position Chinese nationals or Singaporean Chinese regarding national or ethnic identity? and 2) What language ideologies underpin online commentators’ English, Singlish and Mandarin language use and comments on language use in Singapore?

I primarily used a theoretical framework assemblage of positioning theory and othering as I identified the language ideologies underpinning the commentators’ posts. In their posts, they not only position themselves as subjects but Chinese nationals as the relative ‘other’. Online Singaporean commentators were seen to take up positions such as ‘locals in Singapore should have more power compared to Chinese nationals who are expected to plug gaps in the job market and pander to the needs of Singaporeans’.