Review of Literature on the Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC)

Abstract

The SMC is the longest campaign held in Singapore, spanning more than 30 years since it was initiated in 1979. In an attempt to persuade dialect speakers to embrace Mandarin, the Singapore Government proposed three official arguments for the implementation of the campaign: the education, communicative, and cultural argument. Various campaign strategies were adopted to promote Mandarin. In the first phase of the campaign, from 1979 to 1989, the main strategy adopted by the SMC was to eradicate Chinese dialects in Singapore. Chinese dialects were banned in mass media such as television. The campaign also made use of several campaign slogans such as “Speak More Mandarin and Less Dialect” to persuade Chinese Singaporeans to discard dialects and switch to speaking Mandarin. This chapter reviews the literature on the SMC. The chapter opens with an explanation of the organization of the SMC. Next, it describes the measures undertaken by the government to implement the campaign. It then proceeds to examine some impacts of the SMC.