Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T18:24:47.545Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Chronotopes of ‘Chinese’ privilege: Class-inflected racialisation in condominium hoardings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2022

Michelle M. Lazar Open the ORCID record for Michelle M. Lazar [Opens in a new window]
Michelle M. Lazar*
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore, Singapore
*
Address for correspondence: Michelle M. Lazar National University of Singapore Department of English, Linguistics & Theatre Studies Block AS5, 7 Arts Link, Singapore117570[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores racial ‘privilege’ through the lens of temporalized landscapes. Specifically, I examine chronotopes of class-inflected ‘Chinese’ privilege on advertising hoardings for ‘Jadescape’, a condominium development in multiracial Singapore. Two chronotopic dimensions are discussed. The first, pertaining to representations inscribed on the hoardings, manifest a ‘chronotopic bricolage’, involving the fusion of a ‘traditional racial-cultural chronotope’ of a historicised ‘Chineseness’, and a ‘modern cosmopolitan chronotope’ of contemporariness and transnationalism. Embedded in this mix are further multiplicities of time, which altogether create a Sinocentric ‘neo-traditional’ aesthetic. The second dimension relates to the impermanence of the semiotic-materiality of the hoardings installed along the perimeter of the construction site only while the condominium is being built. The temporariness of hyper-visible representability of ‘Chineseness’, read against other similar media and communication practices in multiracial public spaces, secures a ‘semiotic-material immunity of privilege’, which renders racialized Chinese privilege in Singapore both elusive and normalised. (Chronotopes of privilege, ‘Chinese privilege’, ‘chronotopic bricolage’, neo-traditional aesthetic, condominium advertising, critical semiotic landscape studies)*

Type
Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 51 , Special Issue 5: Semiotic Timescapes , November 2022 , pp. 839 - 859
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Thanks to my Research Assistant, Wesley Wang, for his wonderful assistance on this project.

References

REFERENCES

Adam, Barbara (2002). Perceptions of time. In Ingold, Tim (ed.), Companion encyclopaedia of anthropology, 503–26. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Agha, Asif (2007). Recombinant selves in mass mediated spacetime. Language & Communication 27:320–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ang, Ien (2022). On the perils of racialized Chineseness: Race, nation and entangled racisms in China and Southeast Asia. Ethnic and Racial Studies 45(4):757–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arendt, Hannah (1998). The human condition. 2nd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baas, Michael (2018). Longing and belonging in a global city: Skilled migrants in Singaporean urban space. In Rita Padawangi (ed.), Routledge handbook of urbanisation in Southeast Asia, 135–45. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Ed. by Holquist, Michael. Trans. by Emerson, Caryl & Holquist, Michael. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Barni, Monica, & Bagna, Carla (2015). The critical turn in LL: New methodologies and new items in LL. Linguistic Landscape 1(1/2):6–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borkhorst-Heng, Wendy (2003). Singapore's Speak Mandarin Campaign: Language ideological debates and the imagining of the nation. In Harris, Roxy & Rampton, Ben (eds.), The language, ethnicity and race reader, 168–87. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Channel News Asia (2021). Celebrated architect for a celebrated home (Advertorial). Online: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/advertorial/celebrated-architect-celebrated-home-2058926.Google Scholar
Cho, Anjie (2021). How to use lucky bamboo for feng shui. The Spruce. Online: https://www.thespruce.com/lucky-bamboo-use-for-good-feng-shui-1274635.Google Scholar
Chua, Beng Huat (2009). Being Chinese under official multiculturalism in Singapore. Asian Ethnicity 10(3):239–50.Google Scholar
Cirlot, Juan Eduardo (1995). A dictionary of symbols. New York: Barnes & Nobles.Google Scholar
Crang, Mike (2001). Rhythms of the city: Temporalized space and motion. In May, Jon & Thrift, Nigel (eds.), Timespace: Geographies of temporality, 187–207. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Crang, Mike (2012). Commentary. Temporal ecologies: Multiple times, multiple spaces and complicating space times. Environment & Planning A 44:2119–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daud, Sulaiman (2021). “Chinese privilege not as appropriate to use in Singapore” says Chan Heng Chee, but minorities face ‘institutional racism’. Mothership, 19 January 2021. Online: https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/docs/default-source/ips/mothership_chinese-privilege-not-as-appropriate-to-use-in-spore-says-chan-heng-chee-but-minorities-face-institutional-racism_190121.pdf.Google Scholar
de Backer, Mattias (2019). Regimes of visibility: Hanging out in Brussels’ public spaces. Space & Culture 22(3):308–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Department of Statistics Singapore (2021). Population trends 2021. Singapore: Department of Statistics.Google Scholar
Dong, Jie (2021). Labor is the most glorious: Chronotopic linguistic landscaping and making of working class identities. Language & Communication 80:1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eberhard, Wolfram (1988). A dictionary of Chinese symbols. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Goh, Daniel, & Chong, Terence (2022). ‘Chinese privilege’ as shortcut in Singapore: A rejoinder. Asian Ethnicity 23(3):630–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guissemo, Manuel (2019). Orders of (in)visibility: Colonial and post-colonial chronotopes in linguistic landscapes of memorialisation in Maputo. In Peck, Amiena, Stroud, Christopher, & Williams, Quentin (eds.), Making sense of people and place in linguistic landscapes, 29–48. New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Hagenbjörk, Linnea (2011). An analysis of Chinese urban public space. Karlskrona: Blekinge Institute Technology.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael, & Hasan, Ruqaiya (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Johnson, Allan (2018). Privilege, power and difference. 3rd edn. New York: McGraw-Hill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kress, Gunther (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kress, Gunther, & van Leeuwen, Theo (2021). Reading images. 3rd edn. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ladin, Jay (1999). Fleshing out the chronotope. In Emerson, Caryl (ed.), Critical essays on Mikhail Bakhtin, 212–36. New York: G. K. Hall.Google Scholar
Lazar, Michelle M (2000). Gender, discourse and semiotics: The politics of parenthood representations. Discourse & Society 11(3):373–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levi-Strauss, Claude (1966). The savage mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lyons, Kate, & Karimzad, Farzad (2019). Chronotopography: Nostalgia and modernity in South Delhi's linguistic landscape. Sociolinguistic Studies 13(1):83–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Machin, David (2007). Introduction to multimodal analysis. London: Hodder Arnold.Google Scholar
McIntosh, Peggy (1989). White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women's studies. Working Paper 189. Wellesley, MA: Wellesley Centers for Women.Google Scholar
Ong, Justin (2021). National day rally 2021: ‘Entirely baseless’ to claim there is Chinese privilege in S'pore, says PM Lee. The Straits Times, 30 August 2021. Online: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/national-day-rally-2021-all-races-treated-equally-in-spore-with-no-special.Google Scholar
Pietikainen, Sari (2014). Spatial interaction in Samiland: Regulative and transitory chronotopes in the dynamic multilingual landscape of an indigenous Sami village. International Journal of Bilingualism 18(5):478–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Probyn, Elspeth (2001). Anxious proximities: The space-time of concepts. In May, Jon & Thrift, Nigel (eds.), Timespace: Geographies of temporalities, 171–86. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sai, Siew Min (2021). Why there is Chinese privilege in Singapore, but it's not analogous to White privilege. Academic Views, 17 June. Online: https://www.academia.sg/academic-views/why-there-is-chinese-privilege-in-singapore-but-its-not-analogous-to-white-privilege/.Google Scholar
Scollon, Ron, & Scollon, Suzie W. (2003) Discourses in place: Language in the material world. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shan, Jun (2018). Importance of jade in Chinese culture. ThoughtCo, 6 December. Online: https://www.thoughtco.com/about-jade-culture-629197.Google Scholar
Tomlinson, Alan (2010). A dictionary of sports studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Velayutham, Selvaraj (2017). Races without racism?: Everyday race relations in Singapore. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 24(4):455–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, C. A. S. (2012). Chinese symbolism and art motifs: A comprehensive handbook on symbolism in Chinese art through the ages with over 400 illustrations. 4th rev. edn. Tokyo: Tuttle.Google Scholar
Wise, Amanda, & Velayutham, Selvaraj (2014). Conviviality in everyday multiculturalism: Some brief comparisons between Singapore and Sydney. European Journal of Cultural Studies 17(4):406–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wunderlich, Filiipa (2010). The aesthetics of place-temporality in everyday urban space: The case of Fitzroy Square. In Tim Endensor (ed.), Geographies of rhythm: Nature, place, mobilities and bodies, 45–56. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar