Dr Siew Imm Tan

Siew Imm TAN is a sociolinguist and lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of Canberra. She obtained her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Hong Kong, and has taught in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and China in the areas of linguistics, applied linguistics, teacher education, communication and media, and intercultural communication. She speaks English, Malay/Indonesian, Mandarin, Hokkien and Teochew, a great asset in her work in transnational education. The author of Malaysian English: Language Contact and Change (Peter Lang, 2013), she has published extensively on the evolution of Malaysian and Singaporean Englishes.

Siew Imm compiled the first Malaysian English corpus and views the corpus as a fundamental tool for theorising language. She is presently engaged in a corpus-based project that explores aspects of Aboriginal worldviews through the systematic analysis of Aboriginal English literature. She is also studying the 1.9-billion-word Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE) for the influence of Chinese languages in English world-wide.

• Contact linguistics
• World Englishes
• Corpus linguistics
• Corpus-based lexicography
• Second-language acquisition

• Winner of Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning (2022)
• National Institute of Education Start-up Grant—"Linguistic evidence of contact in 19th-century Singapore-Malayan English".

Monograph

Tan, S. I. (2013). Malaysian English: Language contact and change. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Book Chapters

Tan, S. I. (In press). Cultural conceptualizations of filiality in Singapore, Malaysian, Philippine, and Hong Kong Englishes. In Alireza Korangy (Ed.), Essays in cultural linguistics and pragmatics. Springer.

Tan, S. I. (2022). Chinese languages and Malaysian English: Contact and competition. In Zhengdao Ye (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Chinese language studies, Volume 5: Transference from Chinese to English, pp. 909-933. Singapore: Springer.

Tan, S. I. (2021). A corpus-based exploration of Australian Aboriginal cultural conceptualisations in John Bodey’s The Blood Berry Vine. In Marzieh Sadeghpour, and Farzad Sharifian (Eds.), Cultural linguistics and World Englishes, pp. 37-63. Singapore: Springer.

Tan, S. I. (2016). Charting the endonormative stabilization of Singapore English. In Gerhard Leitner, Azirah Hashim, and Hans-Georg Wolf (Eds.), Communicating with Asia: The future of English as a global language, pp. 69-84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tan, S. I. (2016). Malaysian English: Evidence of contact with classifier languages. In Toshiko Yamaguchi, and David Deterding (Eds.), English in Malaysia: Current use and status, pp. 25-44. Leiden: Brill.

Journal Articles

Tan, S. I. (2014). Exploring the Malaysian English Newspaper Corpus for lexicographic evidence. Kajian Malaysia: Journal of Malaysian Studies, 32(1), 167-185.

Tan, S. I. (2013). Nativised prepositional verbs in Malaysian English from the perspective of language contact. 3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 19(3), 103-114.

Tan, S. I. (2012). Structural nativisation in Malaysian English: Prepositional verb idiosyncrasies. Southeast Asian Review of English, 50(Singapore and Malaysia Special Issue), 133-151.

Tan, S. I. (2009). Lexical borrowing from Chinese languages in Malaysian English. World Englishes, 28(4), 451-484.

Tan, S. I. (2009). Lexical borrowing in Malaysian English: Influences of Malay. Lexis, 3, 11-62.

Conference Presentations

Tan, S. I. (2016). ‘The tribe’ in John Bodey’s The Blood Berry Vine: A corpus-based study of an Aboriginal cultural category. Paper presented at the Australian Linguistic Society Annual Conference (ALS 2016), Melbourne, Australia.

Tan, S. I. (2013). The emergence of Singapore-Malayan English: 1600 to 1867. Paper presented at the 17th English in Southeast Asia Conference (ESEA 2013), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Tan, S. I. (2013). Nativised multi-word verbal constructions in Singapore English. Paper presented at the International Conference on English Language Teaching (ICELT 2013), Melaka, Malaysia.

Tan, S. I. (2012). Evidence of contact with classifier languages: Nominal classification in Malaysian English. Paper presented at the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia Conference (ALAA 2012), Perth, Australia.

Tan, S. I. (2012). Redefining grammaticality: Promoting access to English as an Asian Lingua Franca. Paper presented at English in Asia, Berlin, Germany.

Tan, S. I. (2011). Singapore-Malayan English, circa 1800-1900: A sociolinguistic-historical analysis. Paper presented at the 17th Conference of International Association for World Englishes, Melbourne, Australia.

Tan, S. I. (2011). Contact-induced change in the lexicon of Singapore-Malayan English, circa 1800-1900. Paper presented at Language Contact-Change-Maintenance and Loss, London, United Kingdom.

Tan, S. I. (2011). Structural idiosyncrasies in Malaysian English prepositional verbs. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Language Variation and Change: Asia Pacific (NWAV Asia-Pacific), Delhi, India.

Tan, S. I. (2010). Verb + preposition combinations in Malaysian English: A corpus-based study of language contact. Paper presented at the Fifth Inter-Varietal Applied Corpus Studies International Conference (IVACS 2010), Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

Tan, S. I. (2009). Reinterpretation of nominal countability in Malaysian English. Paper presented at the International Conference on English Language Teaching (ICELT 2009), Melaka, Malaysia.

Tan, S. I. (2009). Creating space for colloquialisms in the Singapore English language classroom. Paper presented at the Educational Research Association of Singapore Conference (ERAS 2009), Singapore.

Tan, S. I. (2008). Lexical borrowing in Malaysian English: Influences of Chinese. Paper presented at the Fourth Inter-Varietal Applied Corpus Studies International Conference (IVACS 2008), Limerick, Ireland.

Tan, S. I. (2005). The Malaysian English Newspaper Corpus: Construction and function. Paper presented at the Asian Association for Lexicography Conference (Asialex 2005), Singapore.

Tan, S. I. (2003). Unearthing lexical evidence of nativisation in Malaysian English: A corpus-based approach. Paper presented at the English in Southeast Asia Conference (ESEA 2003), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Corpora

Tan, S. I. (2002). The Malaysian English Newspaper Corpus (5 million words). Hong Kong, China: The University of Hong Kong.

Technical Report

Tan, S. I. (2013). Mining NewspaperSg for linguistic evidence of contact in 19th-century Singapore-Malayan English. Singapore: National Institute of Education.