Style, Identity and Literacy

Style, Identity and Literacy: English in Singapore is a qualitative study of the literacy practices of a group of Singaporean adolescents, relating their patterns of interaction - both inside and outside the classroom - to the different levels of social organization in Singaporean society (home, peer group and school). Combining field data gathered through a series of detailed interviews with available classroom observations, the study focuses on six adolescents from different ethnic and social backgrounds as they negotiate the learning of English against the backdrop of multilingual Singapore. This book provides social explanations for the difficulties and challenges these adolescents face by drawing on current developments in sociolinguistics, literacy studies, English language teaching and language policy.

Christopher Stroud is a Senior Professor at the University of the Western Cape and Professor of Bilingual Research at Stockholm University. He has researched and written widely on multilingualism, language planning and policy and language education in contexts as diverse as Papua New Guinea, South East Asia, Scandinavia and Southern Africa. He is currently working on elaborating the idea of linguistic citizenship.
Lionel Wee is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of English Language & Literature at the National University of Singapore. He is the author of Language Without Rights (Oxford University Press, 2011), and is currently working on a book about organizational styling.