Tan Ying Ying

Tan Ying Ying

Associate Professor, Linguistics and Multilingual Studies

Tan Ying Ying works on issues pertaining to language use and perception in bilingual and multilingual communities within the frameworks of sociophonetics and sociolinguistics. Her initial research focused on the phonetic and prosodic features of Singapore English, inquiring into what these features can say about Singapore English as a legitimate variety of English that has some form of global status and recognition. Her concern with seeking legitimacy for languages in Singapore has also led her to examine policy and social issues that shape and affect language planning and policies in Singapore and internationally. For her work on language planning and policy, she is particularly interested in understanding and unveiling how the Singaporean state manages ethnolinguistic diversity and engineers multilingual individuals through language, education and media policies.

Her research interests include: Sociophonetics, Acoustic phonetics, Language Planning & Policy, Contact phonology 

Her research languages are: Singapore English, Chinese languages such as Mandarin Chinese, Teochew (Southern Min), Hokkien and Cantonese, Malay.

To visit Tan Ying Ying’s website, click here.

Publications

Forthcoming/In press/In prep

Tan, Ying Ying. (in prep, 2019). Illegitimate Tongues: Contesting Language Policies in Singapore. London and New York: Routledge. (contracted)

Tan, Ying Ying and Pritipushpa Mishra (eds). (in prep, 2019). Language, Nations and Multilingualism: Questioning the Herderian Ideal. London and New York: Routledge. (contracted)

Tan, Ying Ying. (in prep, 2019). “The Myth of Multilingualism in Singapore”. In Tan Ying Ying and Pritipushpa Mishra (eds). Language, Nations and Multilingualism: Questioning the Herderian Ideal. London and New York: Routledge.

Tan, Ying Ying and  Pritipushpa Mishra. (in prep, 2019). “Questioning the Herderian Ideal”. In Tan Ying Ying and Pritipushpa Mishra (eds). Language, Nations and Multilingualism: Questioning the Herderian Ideal. London and New York: Routledge.

Tan, Ying Ying (2018, in press). “The use of surveys and questionnaires in World Englishes research”. In P. De Costa, Crowther & Maloney (Eds.). Investigating World Englishes: Research Methodology and Practical Applications. London and NY: Routledge.

Tan, Ying Ying (2018, in press). “On attitudes, intelligilibilty, and perception: Cases of studies in World Englishes using surveys and questionnaires.” In P. De Costa, Crowther & Maloney (Eds.). Investigating World Englishes: Research Methodology and Practical Applications. London and NY: Routledge.

Tan, Ying Ying (2018, in press). “What’s our mother tongue?: Answers from language habits of Singaporeans”. In Mathew Matthews (ed.) Language, Race, and Religion in Singapore. Singapore: NUS Press.

Cavallaro, Francesco, Bee Chin Ng, and Ying Ying Tan. (2018, in press) “Singapore English”. In Kingsley Bolton and Andy Kirkpatrick (eds.), Handbook of Asian Englishes, Blackwell-Wiley. 

Foo, Amanda and Tan Ying Ying. (2018, under review). “On Linguistic Insecurity and Linguistic Ownership: Feeling Insecure about Owning English in Singapore”. 

Kalaivanan, Kastoori, Firqin Sumartono, and Tan Ying Ying. (2018, under review). “The Homonogenization of Ethnic Differences in Singapore English?: A Consonantal Production and Perception Study”. 

Peer-reviewed Journal Papers & Book Chapters 

Sumartono, Firqin and Tan Ying Ying. (2018). “Juggling Two Languages: Malay-English Bilinguals’ Code-switching Behaviour in Singapore”. The Linguistics Journal 12(1): 108-138. 

Tan, Ying Ying. (2017). “Singlish: An Illegitimate Conception in Language Policies?”. European Journal of Language Policy. 9(1): 85-103.

Wong, Kevin and Tan Ying Ying. (2017) “Mandarinization and the Construction of Chinese Ethnicity in Singapore”. Chinese Language and Discourse 8(1): 18-50. 

Wong, Kevin and Tan Ying Ying. (2017) “Being Chinese in a global context: Linguistic constructions of Chinese ethnicity”. Global Chinese 3(1): 1-23. 

Tan, Ying Ying. (2016). “The Americanization of the phonology of Asian Englishes: Evidence from Singapore.” in Gerhard Leitner, Azirah Hashim and Hans-Georg Wolf (eds.), Communicating with Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 120-134. 

Tan, Ying Ying. (2015). “’Native’ and ‘non-native’ perception of stress in Singapore English”. World Englishes 34(3): 355-369. 

Tan, Shanna and Tan Ying Ying. (2015). Examining the functions and identities associated with English and Korean in South Korea: A linguistic landscape study. Asian Englishes 17(1): 59-79. 

Tan, Ying Ying. (2014). “English as a ‘mother tongue’ in contemporary Singapore”. World Englishes. 33(3): 319-339. 

Chong, Rachael and Tan Ying Ying (2013). “Attitudes toward accents of Mandarin in Singapore”. Chinese Language and Discourse. 4(1): 120–140. 

Tan, Ying Ying and Christina Castelli (2013). “Intelligibility and attitudes: how American English and Singapore English are perceived around the world”. English World-Wide. 34(2): 177-201. 

Tan, Ying Ying. (2012). “To r or not to r: social correlates of /ɹ/ in Singapore English”. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 218: 1-24. 

Tan Ying Ying. (2012). “Age as a factor in ethnic accent identification in Singapore”. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development.  33(4): 1-19. 

Tan, Ying Ying and Irving Goh. (2011). “Politics of Language in Contemporary Singapore Cinema: The Films of Jack Neo, or Politics by Cinematic Means”. Interventions: Journal of Postcolonial Studies. 13(4): 610-626. 

Tan, Ying Ying (2010). “Singing the same tune? Prosodic norming in bilingual Singaporeans” in Madalena Cruz Ferreira (ed) Multilingual Norms. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, pp.173-194. 

Wee, Lionel and Tan Ying Ying. (2008). “That’s so last year! Constructions in a socio-cultural context”. Journal of Pragmatics. 40(12): 2100-2113. 

Goh, Irving and Tan Ying Ying. (2007). “Singapore Pharmakon”. Social Identities. (Special issue on Derrida’s Monolingualism and the Other.) 13(3): 393-410. 

Tan, Ying Ying. (2006). “Is the stressed syllable stressed?! The perception of prominence in Singapore English”. In Azirah Hashim and Norizah Hassan (eds.) Varieties of English in Southeast Asia and Beyond. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press. pp. 133-152. 

Tan, Ying Ying.  (2005). “Observations on British and Singaporean perception of prominence”. In: David Deterding, Adam Brown and Low Ee Ling (eds). English in Singapore: Phonetic Research on a Corpus. Singapore: McGraw Hill. pp. 95-103. 

Tan, Ying Ying. (2003). “Reading the census: language use in Asia”. In: Lindsay, Jennifer and Tan Ying Ying (eds.). Babel or Behemoth: Language Trends in Asia. Singapore: Singapore University Press. pp.175-210.