Thanks for the Tip

This sign was spotted at an alley. It probably wasn't gonna get into this blog because it seemed pretty common-place. That was so until I did a double-take.

While it was immediately apparent through some linguistic introspection as to what the act of tipping meant, what was curious was why there was a need for options. If the sign-makers had just stopped at spelling out "DUMPING PROHIBITED", wouldn't it have been enough?

To Tip or not to Tip? Hmm...

What was of interest was the "TIPPING PROHIBITED". I thought that this word was probably gonna be more common in other places that have to do with the service sector. For example, if the culture of restaurants in Japan go by the policy of having no need for tipping, then the sign I would expect would be something semiotic like this:

Or if patrons understand English, then this:

Back to the initial sign that started this post, well, I found it puzzling that this linguistic construction made its way into a Singaporean sign and I did a Google.com.sg search for "NO TIPPING" and quite naturally, the pages yielded results that fit my initial idea of tipping in the sense of offering monetary reward. Further Google.co.in, Google.com.my searches also yielded similar results.

Thinking that it was perhaps something to do variations in Englishes in the world, I pressed on and thought of Singapore's colonial history. The next step was to do a Google.co.uk search and hey hey, what do you know, it turns out that "NO TIPPING" is used in other contexts in the UK.

Specifically it means "Not To Dump (rubbish)" or "Not To Empty (rubbish)". The following signs from an image search from Google.co.uk also prove the point that "TIPPING" is used in the crappy, I mean, rubbish, sense of the word:

In Manchester

Somewhere in London

So it seems that (some parts of) Singapore have/has retained the colonial, I mean British mentality in terms of linguistic indexicality. But given that Singapore is such an avid supporter of the US of A, we need to take into account that some dumbing down is needed, thus, "NO DUMPING" is provided as an option and immediate explanation for those who have no worldly sense of what a tipper truck is like.

There you have it below, "NO DUMPING" from an American webpage:

No thanks needed for the tip.