She thinks in English, but she wants in Mandarin : differences in Singaporean bilingual English-Mandarin maternal mental-state-talk

• Main Authors: Cheng, Michelle, Setoh, Peipei, Bornstein, Marc H., Esposito, Gianluca
• Other Authors: School of Social Sciences
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Social sciences::Psychology; Bilingualism; Socialization
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/143259
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

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.