She thinks in English, but she wants in Mandarin : differences in Singaporean bilingual English-Mandarin maternal mental-state-talk
Chinese-speaking parents are believed to use less cognitive mental-state-talk than their English-speaking counterparts on account of their cultural goals in socializing their children to follow an interdependence script. Here, we investigated bilingual English-Mandarin Singaporean mothers who associ...
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2020
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/143259 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Institution: | Nanyang Technological University |
| Language: | English |
| Summary: | Chinese-speaking parents are believed to use less cognitive mental-state-talk than their English-speaking counterparts on account of their cultural goals in socializing their children to follow an interdependence script. Here, we investigated bilingual English-Mandarin Singaporean mothers who associate different functions for each language as prescribed by their government: English for school and Mandarin for in-group contexts. English and Mandarin maternal mental-state-talk from bilingual English-Mandarin mothers with their toddlers was examined. Mothers produced more ''cognitive'' terms in English than in Mandarin and more ''desire'' terms in Mandarin than in English. We show that mental-state-talk differs between bilingual parents' languages, suggesting that mothers adjust their mental-state-talk to reflect the functions of each language. |
|---|