FASS Staff Profile

DR PETER K W TAN
SNR LECTURER
DEPARTMENT of ENGLISH, LINGUISTICS & THEATRE STUDIES

Appointment:
SENIOR LECTURER
Office:
AS5/06-04
Email:
PeterTan@nus.edu.sg
Tel:
+65 6516 6038
Fax:
+65 6773 2981
Homepage:
http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elltankw
Tabs

Brief Introduction

I am a senior lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore. I obtained my BAHons (Class 1) in English from the University of Malaya in 1985, and my PhD from the Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh in 1989. I am officially in the English Language section of the Department which offers three subjects (English Literature, English Language and Theatre Studies). My main research areas are names (onomastics), the New Englishes including Singapore English and stylistics. I offer a module within Theatre Studies and often make use of literary texts in my English Language modules: this stems from my belief that there should be more cross-fertilisation between the subjects.


Teaching Areas

My teaching in the Department has been in these modules:

  • EL2111 Historical Variation in English
  • EL4252 Interactional Discourse
  • TS4213 Stylistics of Drama [in the process of being recoded as an EL module]
  • GEM1031/GEH1054 Names as Markers of Socio-cultural Identity

Graduate Supervision

I am happy to supervise students working on topics on discourse, stylistics and names. Two students whom I supervised graduated in July 2015:

  • Muhammad Ali Haikal bin Khalid, 'For Expedience's Sake: Teacher Expections and their Impact on Classroom Interaction' (MA thesis)
  • Adeline Ann Koh, 'The Customer is (Not) Always King: Impoliteness in the Service Encounter' (PhD thesis)

Current Research

My current interest is on onomastic styling and its significance from a sociolinguistic perspective. I continue to be interested in Singapore English, discourse studies and stylistics.


Research Interests

My research, in broad terms, has focussed on the notion of linguistic hybridity in relation to language use in Singapore and Malaysia. Specifically, I have been interested in the following areas:

  • Singaporean and Malaysian English as various norms have acted upon them;

  • Singaporean and Malaysian prose writing in English where the tensions are exacerbated by having to contend with the local as well as the international readership

  • Computer-mediated communication (Netspeak, E-language) as a relatively new medium, needing to decide if it is more like spoken language or written language

  • I have also begun to become more interested in language planning issues and the issue of personal names (onomastics) in this part of the world because these too exemplify the kinds of tensions that I have been looking at.


Publications

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

  • Tan, Peter K W (1998), ‘Advice on doing your stylistics essay on a dramatic text: An example from Alan Ayckbourn’s The Revengers’ Comedies’, in Jonathan Culpeper, Mick Short and Peter Verdonks (eds), Exploring the Language of Drama: From Text to Context (London: Routledge), pp. 161–171.

    Tan, Peter K W (2001), ‘Melaka or Malacca; Kallang or Care-lang: Lexical innovation and nativisation in Malaysian and Singaporean English’, in Vincent B Y Ooi (ed.), Evolving Identities: The English Language in Singapore and Malaysia (Singapore: Times Academic), pp. 140–167.

    Tan, Peter K W (2003), ‘Is that how we really talk? Speech reporting in Singaporean English writing’, in Chitra Sankaran et al. (eds), Complicities: Connections and Divisions – Perspectives on Literatures and Cultures of the Asia-Pacific Region (Berne: Peter Lang), pp. 347–356.

    Tan, Peter K W; Vincent B Y Ooi; and Andy K L Chiang (2004), ‘Signalling spokenness in personal advertisements on the Web: The case of ESL countries in South East Asia’, in Karin Aijmer and Bengt Altenberg (eds), Advances in Corpus Linguistics (Amsterdam: Rodopi), pp. 151–167.

    Tan, Peter K W; Vincent B Y Ooi; and Andy K L Chiang (2006), ‘World Englishes or English as a Lingua Franca? A view from the perspective of non-Anglo Englishes’, in Rani Rubdy and Mario Saraceni (eds), English in the World: Global Rules, Global Roles (London: Continuum), pp. 84–94.

    Tan, Peter K W (2006), ‘English’, in Tommy Koh, et al. (eds), Singapore: The Encyclopedia (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet; National Heritage Board), p. 178.

    Tan, Peter K W (2006), ‘Singlish’, in Tommy Koh, et al. (eds), Singapore: The Encyclopedia (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet; National Heritage Board), p. 504.

    Tan, Peter K W (2008), ‘The English language as commodity in Malaysia: the view through the medium of instruction debate’, in Peter K W Tan and Rani Rubdy (eds), Language as commodity: global structures, local marketplaces (London: Continuum), pp. 106–121.

    Tan, Peter K W and Rani Rubdy (2008), ‘Introduction’, in Peter K W Tan and Rani Rubdy (eds), Language as commodity: global structures, local marketplaces (London: Continuum), pp. 1–15.

    Tan, Peter K W (2009), ‘Not quite first language, not quite second language either: dictionary entries for leaners caught in between’. In Vincent B Y Ooi et al. (eds), Perspectives in lexicography: Asia and beyond (Tel Aviv: K Dictionaries Ltd), pp. 193–201.

    Tan, Peter K W (2009), 'Building names in Singapore: multilingualism of a different kind', in Wolfgang Ahrens, Sheila Embleton and André Lapierre (eds), Names in Multi-Lingual, Multi-Cultural and Multi-Ethnic Contact (Toronto: York University), pp 929-942.

    Tan, Peter K W (2011), 'Literary discourse', in James P Gee and Michael Handford (eds), Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis (London: Routledge), pp 628-641

    Vincent B Y Ooi and Peter K W Tan (2014), 'Facebook, linguistic identity and hybridity in Singapore', in Rani Rubdy and Lubna Alsagoff (eds), The Global-Local Interface and Hybridity: Exploring Language and Identity (Bristol: Multilingual Matters), pp 225-244

EDITORIAL WORK ON BOOKS

  • Peter K W Tan and Rani Rubdy (eds) (2008), Language as commodity: global structures, local marketplaces (London: Continuum).

    Vincent B Y Ooi, Anne Pakir, Ismail Talib and Peter K W Tan (eds) (2009), Perspectives in lexicography: Asia and beyond (Tel Aviv: K Dictionaries Ltd).

ARTICLES IN JOURNALS

  • Tan, Peter K W (1990), ‘Falling from Grice: The ideological trap of pragmatic stylistics’, Edinburgh Working Papers in Applied Linguistics 1: 1–11.
    Tan, Peter K W (1991), ‘A vista through pragmatics to A room with a view: Conversation in literature and pragmatic stylistics’, Parlance: The Journal of the Poetics and Linguistics Association 3(2): 7–25.
    Tan, Peter K W (1994), ‘Key concepts: pragmatics’, English Language Teaching Journal 48 (1): 100.
    Tan, Peter K W (1998), ‘Malay loan words across different dialects of English’, English Today 14(4): 44–50.
    Tan, Peter K W (1999), ‘Speech presentation in Singaporean English novels’, World Englishes 18 (3): 359–372.
    Tan, Peter K W (2000), ‘Does bad English make bad economics?’, NUS Economic Journal 36: 145–150.
    Tan, Peter K W (2001), ‘Englishised names? An analysis of naming patterns among ethnic-Chinese Singaporeans’, English Today 17(4): 45–53.
    Tan, Peter K W (2001/02), ‘Conversation and poetics: A response to Neal R Norrick’, Connotations 11(2–3): 301–309.
    Tan, Peter K W (2004), ‘Evolving naming patterns: anthroponymics within a theory of the dynamics of non-Anglo Englishes’, World Englishes 23 (3): 367–384.
    Tan, Peter K W (2005), ‘The medium-of-instruction debate in Malaysia: English as a Malaysian language?’, Language Problems and Language Planning 19(1): 47¬–66.
    Tan, Peter K W (2006), ‘Towards a standardization of personal names: the case of the ethnic Chinese in Singapore’, Names: A journal of onomastics, 54(4): 291–319
    Tan, Peter K W (2007), ‘The struggle for a standard: evidence from place names’, Names: A journal of onomastics, 55(4): 387–396
    Tan, Peter K W and Daniel K H Tan (2008), ‘Learners’ attitudes towards non standard English in Singapore’, World Englishes, 27 (3/4): 456–479.

    Tan, Peter K W (2011), 'English in Singapore, International Journal of Language, Translation and Intercultural Communication 1(2): 123-138

    Tan, Peter K W (2013), 'Mixed Signals: Names in the Linguistic Landscape Provided by Different Agencies in Singapore', Onoma: Journal of the International Council of Onomastic Sciences 46(1)

    Tan, Peter K W (2014), 'Singapore's Balancing Act, from the Perspective of the Linguistic Landscape', Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in South-east Asia 29(2): 438-466

Other Information


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