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- Title
She Thinks in English, But She Wants in Mandarin: Differences in Singaporean Bilingual English–Mandarin Maternal Mental-State-Talk.
- Authors
Cheng, Michelle; Setoh, Peipei; Bornstein, Marc H.; Esposito, Gianluca
- Abstract
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.
- Subjects
MANDARIN dialects; BILINGUALISM; TODDLERS; MOTHERS; PARENTS; SCRIPTS; DESIRE
- Publication
Behavioral Sciences (2076-328X), 2020, Vol 10, Issue 7, p106
- ISSN
2076-328X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3390/bs10070106