Skilling the nation, empowering the citizen
Neoliberal instantiations in Singapore’s lifelong learning policy
This paper focuses on what is referred to as the SkillsFuture initiative as the most current crystallization of the Singapore government’s lifelong learning policy, and the state-sponsored discourse associated with it. Adopting a critical discourse-analytic approach, the study examines a data set that cuts across various genres and media (i.e. political speeches, Internet website, video clips), covering both linguistic and (moving) visual instantiations, involving semiotic features like pronouns, modality, image design parameters, and importantly, metaphor. The paper seeks to provide insight into the ideological foundations of Singapore’s education-labour policies as an indication of the ideal(ized) Singaporean citizen-subject promulgated by the state, and how these are semiotically instantiated in state-sponsored discourse. In so doing, the analysis also considers the contextual specificity of the neoliberal-oriented values purveyed, as the individualizing tropes of neoliberalism discursively interact with what might be considered a post-Confucian Singaporean communitarian/collective ethos.
Keywords: metaphor, lifelong learning, discourse analysis, Singapore, neoliberal subjectivity, policy communication, policy discourse, labour policy
Published online: 03 November 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.16012.ng
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.16012.ng
References
References
Birch, Kean, and Vlad Mykhnenko
2010 “Introduction: A world Turned Right way up.” In The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism: The Collapse of an Economic Order?, ed. by Kean Birch, and Vlad Mykhnenko, 1–20. London: Zed Books.
Bound, Helen, and Peter Rushbrook
2015 “Problematising Workplace Learning.” In Towards a New Understanding of Workplace Learning: The Context of Singapore, ed. by Bound, Helen, and Peter Rushbrook, 1–16. Singapore: Institute for Adult Learning.
Brown, Roger
2011 “The March of the Market.” In The Marketisation of Higher Education and the Student as Consumer, ed. by Mike Molesworth, Richard Scullion, and Elizabeth Nixon, 11–24. London: Routledge.
Brown, Wendy
2003 “Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy.” Theory & Event 7(1). Available at: www.muse.jhu.edu/article/48659 (Accessed April 2017). 
Chua, Beng Huat
1995 Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore. London: Routledge.
Delors, Jacques
1996 Learning: The Treasure Within. Paris: UNESCO.
Eriksen, Thomas Hylland
2001 Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology, 2nd edn. London: Pluto Press.
Fairclough, Norman
2001 Language and Power, 2nd edn. London: Longman.
2002 “Language in New Capitalism.” Discourse & Society 13(2): 163–166.
Felton, George
2013 Advertising Concept and Copy, 3rd edn. London: WW Norton.
Foskett, Nick
2011 “Markets, Government, Funding and the Marketisation of UK Higher Education.” In The Marketisation of Higher Education and the Student as Consumer, ed. by Mike Molesworth, Richard Scullion, and Elizabeth Nixon, 25–38. London: Routledge.
Foucault, Michel
2008 The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–79. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gary, Stanley Becker
2002 “The Age of Human Capital.” In Education in the Twenty-first Century, ed. by Edward P. Lazear, 3–8. Palo Alto: Hoover Insitution Press
Gershon, Ilana
2011 “Neoliberal Agency.” Current Anthropology 52(4): 537–555.
Goatly, Andrew
2002 “Conflicting Metaphors in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Educational Reform Proposals.” Metaphor and Symbol 17(4): 263–294.
2007 Washing the Brain: Metaphor and Hidden Ideology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Goh, Chok Tong
1997 Speech by Prime Minister at the Opening of the 7th International Conference for Thinking, 2 June. Available at: www.moe.gov.sg/media/speeches/1997/020697.htm (accessed March 2016).
Gordon, Colin
1991 “Governmental Rationality: An introduction.” In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, 1–51. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Government of Singapore
Government of Singapore
2015b What is SkillsFuture? Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdBobyZLl7M (accessed December 2015).
Government of Singapore
2015c Your SkillsFuture Journey. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkIBjH8z3GU (accessed December 2015).
Harvey, David
2005 A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hook, Derek
2007 Foucault, Psychology and Analytics of Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hookway, James
2017 “Dumped by Trump, remaining TPP nations vow to forge ahead.” The Wall Street Journal, 21 May. Available at: www.wsj.com/articles/dumped-by-trump-remaining-tpp-nations-vow-to-forge-ahead-1495345559 (accessed May 2017).
Jessop, Bob
2003 “Changes in Welfare Regimes and the Search for Flexibility and Employability.” In The Political Economy of European Unemployment: European Integration and the Transnationalization of the Employment Question, ed. by Henk Overbeek, 21–50. London: Routledge.
Kochan, Thomas A.
2016 Shaping the Future of Work. New York: Business Expert Press.
Kövecses, Zoltán
2002 Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kress, Gunther, and Teun van Leeuwen
2006 Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson
1980 Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Lee, Hsien Loong
2009 Keynote address by Prime Minister of Singapore at APEC CEO Summit 2009, 13 November. Available at: www.pmo.gov.sg/mediacentre/keynote-address-mr-lee-hsien-loong-prime-minister-singapore-apec-ceo-summit-2009-13 (accessed March 2016).
2011 Speech by Prime Minister at EDB 50th Anniversary Gala Dinner, 1 August. Available at: www.pmo.gov.sg/mediacentre/speech-prime-minister-lee-hsien-loong-edb-50th-anniversary-gala-dinner-01-august-2011 (accessed March 2016).
Leong, Grace
2016 “Singapore still 2nd freest economy in the world but gap with top-ranked Hong Kong widens.” The Straits Times, 2 February. Available at: www.straitstimes.com/business/economy/singapore-still-2nd-freest-economy-in-the-world-but-gap-with-top-ranked-hong-kong (accessed March 2016).
Liow, Eugene Dili
2012 “The Neoliberal-developmental State: Singapore as Case-study.” Critical Sociology 38(2): 241–264.
Low, Donald, and Sudhir Vadaketh
2014 Hard Choices: Challenging the Singapore Consensus. Singapore: NUS Press.
Machin, David, and Theo van Leeuwen
(eds.) 2016 Journal of Language and Politics 15(3) (Special issue: Multimodality, politics and ideology).
Marginson, Simon
2011 “Higher Education in East Asia and Singapore: Rise of the Confucian Model.” Higher Education 61(5): 587–611.
Mautner, Gerlinde
2010 Language and the Market Society: Critical Reflections on Discourse and Dominance. New York: Routledge.
Ministry of Education
2014 Applied Study in Polytechnics and Institute of Education Review Report. Singapore: Ministry of Education.
Ministry of Finance
2010 Economic Strategies Committee Report. Singapore: Ministry of Finance.
Ministry of Trade and Industry
1998 Committee on Singapore’s Competitiveness Report (Executive Summary). Singapore: Ministry of Trade and Industry.
Mitsikopoulou, Bessie
(ed.) 2008 Journal of Language and Politics 7(3) (Special issue: Branding political entities in a globalised world).
Mok, Ka Ho
2006 Education Reform and Education Policy in East Asia. London: Routledge.
Mulderrig, Jane
2016 “Reframing obesity: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the UK’s First Social Marketing Campaign.” Critical Policy Studies. .
.Ng, Carl J. W., and Veronika Koller
2013 “Deliberate Conventional Metaphor in Images: The case of Corporate Branding Discourse.” Metaphor and Symbol 28(3): 131–147.
Ng, Naomi
2017 “Hong Kong Crowned World’s Most Competitive Economy, Beating Singapore.” South China Morning Post, 1 June. Available at: www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/economy/article/2096456/hong-kong-crowned-worlds-most-competitive-economy (accessed June 2017).
Ong, Aihwa
2006 Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Overbeek, Henk
2003 “Globalization, Neo-liberalism and the Employment Question.” In The Political Economy of European Unemployment: European Integration and the Transnationalization of the Employment Question, ed. by Henk Overbeek, 13–28. London: Routledge.
Pereira, Alexius A.
2008 “Whither the Developmental State? Explaining Singapore’s continued developmentalism.” Third World Quarterly 29(6): 1189–1203.
Read, Jason
2009 “A genealogy of Homo-economicus: Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity.” Foucault Studies 6: 25–36.
Rodan, Garry
2016 “Capitalism, Inequality and Ideology in Singapore: New Challenges for the Ruling Party.” Asian Studies Review 40(2): 211–230.
Rose, Jacqueline
1996 States of Fantasy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Rose, Nikolas
1999 Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Seow, Joanna
2016 “New Statutory Boards to Focus on Skills, Employment.” The Straits Times, 13 January. Available at: www.straitstimes.com/singapore/manpower/new-statutory-boards-to-focus-on-skills-employment (accessed February 2016).
Shanmugaratnam, Tharman
2014 Speech by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance at the Official Opening of the Lifelong Learning Institute, 17 September. Available at: www.mof.gov.sg/news-reader/articleid/1426/parentId/59/year/2014 (accessed March 2016).
2015 Singapore Budget Speech, 23 February. Available at: www.singaporebudget.gov.sg/budget_2015/BudgetSpeech.aspx (accessed March 2016).
Sim, Soek-Fang
2005 “Social Engineering the World’s Freest Economy: Neo-liberal Capitalism and Neoliberal Governmentality in Singapore.” Rhizomes 10. Available at www.rhizomes.net/issue10/sim.htm (accessed March 2016).
Steen, Gerard
2008 “The Paradox of Metaphor: Why we Need a Three-dimensional Model of Metaphor.” Metaphor and Symbol 23(4): 213–241.
2011 “What Does ‘Really Deliberate’ Really Mean? More Thoughts on Metaphor and Consciousness.” Metaphor and the Social World 1(1): 53–56.
Steger, Manfred B.
2009 Globalisms: The Great Ideological Struggle of the Twenty-first Century, 3rd edn. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Sum, Ngai-Ling, and Bob Jessop
2013 Towards a Cultural Political Economy: Putting Culture in its Place in Political Economy. Edward Elgar: Cheltenham.
Tan, Kenneth P.
2008 “Meritocracy and Elitism in a Global City: Ideological Shifts in Singapore.” International Political Science Review 29(1): 7–27.
Teo, You Yenn
2012 “Neoliberal Morality in Singapore: Institutionalising the Logics of Neoliberalism.” ISA eSymposium for Sociology 2(2). Available at: www.sagepub.net/isa/admin/viewEBPDF.aspx?&art=EBul-Teo-Jul2012.pdf&type=2
The Heritage Foundation
2016 “2016 Index of Economic Freedom: Global economic freedom expands; nearly 100 countries improve.” Available at: http://www.heritage.org/index/pdf/2016/press-releases/THF-2016-Index-Overview.pdf (accessed March 2016).
Thibodeau, Paul H., and Lera Boroditsky
2011 “Metaphor we Think with: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning.” PLoS ONE 6(2), e16782. .
.
2013 “Natural Language Metaphors Covertly Influence Thinking.” PLoS ONE 8(1), e52961. .
.Tsoi, Grace, and Tessa Wong
2016 “What are Hong Kong’s Localists Angry About?” BBC News, 11 February. Available at: www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35547186 (accessed March 2016).
Wee, C. J. Wan-ling
2007 The Asian Modern: Culture, Capitalist Development, Singapore. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press.
Wembridge, Mark
2015 “Singapore Ruling Party Takes Flak over Wealth Gap.” Financial Times, 10 September. Available at: www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9cfa3000-560f-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.html#axzz43lWYdxM7 (accessed March 2016).
Cited by
Cited by other publications
E, Marissa K. L.
2020. Discourse of future-orientedness as neoliberal ideal: metaphor scenarios as a means of representing neoliberal logics.
Critical Discourse Studies ► pp. 1 ff.
Jalalian Daghigh, Ali & Hajar Abdul Rahim
2020. Neoliberalism in ELT textbooks: an analysis of locally developed and imported textbooks used in Malaysia.
Pedagogy, Culture & Society ► pp. 1 ff.
Park, Joseph Sung‐Yul
2019. Linguistic Anthropology in 2018: Signifying Movement.
American Anthropologist 121:2 ► pp. 403 ff.
Savski, Kristof
2020. Local problems and a global solution: examining the recontextualization of CEFR in Thai and Malaysian language policies.
Language Policy
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 june 2020. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.