Criticism
Since the onset of the SGEM, reaction to the movement has been mixed, and its strongest opponents have included linguists and social commentators. In response, Liew Choon Boon, Director of the Arts & Heritage Development Division from the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts and Ho Peng, Director of Curriculum Planning and Development from the Ministry of Education wrote in a letter published in The Straits Times on 12 December 2008:
While Singlish may be a fascinating academic topic for linguists to write papers about, Singapore has no interest in becoming a curious zoo specimen to be dissected and described by scholars.
Read more about this topic: Speak Good English Movement
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (18211867)
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
—Rebecca West (18921983)