DEARTH OF HOKKIEN

2019

This is part 1 of my FYP project

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The vision to bring Singapore to the forefront of globalisation has resulted in some cultural concessions
being made in lieu of modern progress and unfortunately, the language policy was  one of its biggest casualties. Just a few decades ago, Hokkien was considered the lingua franca  of Chinese Singaporeans, but now it is regarded as useless and insignificant in comparison to the rise of English and Mandarin (Bokhorst-Heng and Silver, 2017). While commonplace for the youth of Singapore to be bilingual, many have lost touch with their linguistic roots, causing Hokkien to  turn obsolete. 

Considering the aforementioned phenomenon, it is evident that the loss of Hokkien is possible in the
foreseeable future. The onus are on the youth, aged between 15 to 35, to revitalise Hokkien for the future generations. Being the group that went through the linguistic repression under the language policy, these youths will eventually cultivate an apathetic attitude towards dialects. Thus it is imperative to re-engage their interest
in this dying language that embodies a 1000 years worth of rich history, culture and values (Chen and Chen, 2018). For this reason, it is important for this research to examine the wicked problem, and how methods of inquiry could potentially encourage community of youths to revitalise the language within their everyday lives.