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.

She thinks in english, but she wants in mandarin: Differences in singaporean bilingual english-mandarin maternal mental-state-talk / Cheng, Michelle; Setoh, Peipei; Bornstein, Marc H.; Esposito, Gianluca. - In: BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES. - ISSN 2076-328X. - 10:7(2020), pp. 106.1-106.11. [10.3390/BS10070106]

She thinks in english, but she wants in mandarin: Differences in singaporean bilingual english-mandarin maternal mental-state-talk

Setoh, Peipei;Bornstein, Marc H.;Esposito, Gianluca
2020-01-01

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.
2020
7
Cheng, Michelle; Setoh, Peipei; Bornstein, Marc H.; Esposito, Gianluca
She thinks in english, but she wants in mandarin: Differences in singaporean bilingual english-mandarin maternal mental-state-talk / Cheng, Michelle; Setoh, Peipei; Bornstein, Marc H.; Esposito, Gianluca. - In: BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES. - ISSN 2076-328X. - 10:7(2020), pp. 106.1-106.11. [10.3390/BS10070106]
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11572/333560
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