The widespread use of a local variety of English, Singapore Colloquial English, or Singlish, has become somewhat of a controversial issue in Singapore especially in the eyes of the Singapore government. For example, in 2002 the Singapore government launched The "Speak Good English Movement" (SGEM) with the objective of promoting the use…

Although studies involving linguistic human rights (LHRs) have focused at length on cases of inter-language discrimination, much less attention has been given to intra-language discrimination (Blommaert 2001a; Skutnabb-Kangas et al. 2001). This paper highlights a number of theoretical issues that the LHRs framework needs to deal with once…

Presents six areas in applied linguistics that might be reformed: (1) the hegemonic nature of theories; (2) dictionary-making; (3) language planning; (4) linguistic nomenclatures; (5) the treatment of standard and non-standard varieties; and (6) the delivery of second language programs. Argues that if critical realism guided applied linguistics,…