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She Thinks in English, But She Wants in Mandarin: Differences in Singaporean Bilingual English-Mandarin Maternal Mental-State-Talk.

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.

SUBMITTER: Cheng M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7408008 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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She Thinks in English, But She Wants in Mandarin: Differences in Singaporean Bilingual English-Mandarin Maternal Mental-State-Talk.

Cheng Michelle M Setoh Peipei P Bornstein Marc H MH Esposito Gianluca G

Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) 20200627 7

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 Engli ...[more]

PMID: 32605140

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