The effects of mother tongue language choice on cultural identity of Chinese-Malay individuals in Singapore

• Main Author: Tan, Kimberly Xing Yi
• Other Authors: Stefanie Stadler
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/73694
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

With an increasing number of interracial marriages in Singapore, there is a greater need to understand the growing biracial community. Identity development of an individual with mixed heritage can tell us more about how these biracial individuals negotiate their identity and the factors involved in this process. Previous studies on biracial identity largely focused on biracial individuals with a single ethnic language, living in a largely monolingual English speaking community. This is different from Singapore’s multilingual and multiracial society. This study aims to investigate how the mother tongue language learned impacted the way Chinese-Malay biracial Singaporeans identified themselves. 14 Chinese-Malay Singaporeans aged 20-27 years of age participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to obtain detailed responses from participants about their thoughts and feelings about how language participated in their choice of a particular cultural identity. The paper illustrates the complexity of identity formation and the extent of a mother tongue language’s impact. It also elaborates on the findings of other major influences of cultural identity, depicting that language was not the primary deciding factor of one’s identity.