Production and evaluation of sociolinguistic variation in Mandarin Chinese among children in Singapore

Abstract

Singapore Mandarin is traditionally characterized by non-standard features arising from southern Chinese dialect influence. However, as English expands as a home language in Singapore, children’s Mandarin exposure is increasingly limited to formal school settings. The situation is further complicated by rising immigration from Mainland China and the presence of Mainland teachers in the education sector. This study investigates how local and expatriate children in Singapore acquire and evaluate Mandarin variation in this complex landscape. Expatriates attending international schools are found to orient towards Mainland varieties, while expatriates in local schools acquire more local usage patterns, but do not demonstrate sociolinguistic knowledge comparable to Singaporean peers. These findings suggest that transnational migration and language shift are prompting changes in Singapore Mandarin.

Language-specific distributional learning advantages in Singapore English-Mandarin bilingual adults

“…For instance, Chen et al, (2016) found that primary schoolaged children displayed more consistent use of the retroflex feature in their production of Mandarin speech as compared to older generations of Singapore Mandarin speakers. Similarly, using a word reading task, Starr (2022) found that only a minority of Singapore Mandarin speaking children produced retroflex sibilants as alveolar instead. This shift is likely related to the increase in the levels of exposure that young Singapore Mandarin speakers have to the standard variety of Mandarin in formal education (i.e., at school as well as in extracurricular language enrichment centres), and through mass media in standard Singapore and Mainland Mandarin (Starr & Kapoor, 2021).…”

“…The intergenerational influence of this linguistic divide can still be seen in the 2020 census of Singapore which shows that 30% of ethnically Chinese residents report using Mandarin Chinese as their dominant home language, while 48% report using English as their dominant home language (DOS, 2021). Thus, it is likely that we will find a variety of (Starr, 2022). Similarly, it is also common for Singapore Mandarin speakers to produce Mandarin palatal frication /ɕ/ as the alveolar /s/ due to the lack of a palatal /ɕ/ in the phonology of Hokkien (Starr, 2022;Starr & Wang, 2021).…”

“…Thus, it is likely that we will find a variety of (Starr, 2022). Similarly, it is also common for Singapore Mandarin speakers to produce Mandarin palatal frication /ɕ/ as the alveolar /s/ due to the lack of a palatal /ɕ/ in the phonology of Hokkien (Starr, 2022;Starr & Wang, 2021). However, one clear example of this Southern Min influence that has likely begun to change over the years can be seen in the presence of the Mandarin alveolar-retroflex phoneme contrast which we will focus on in this project.…”

“…This shift is likely related to the increase in the levels of exposure that young Singapore Mandarin speakers have to the standard variety of Mandarin in formal education (i.e., at school as well as in extracurricular language enrichment centres), and through mass media in standard Singapore and Mainland Mandarin (Starr & Kapoor, 2021). In their recent studies, Starr and colleagues have also suggested that the increase in the use of the Mandarin alveolar-retroflex contrast may be linked to the reduction in exposure to the vernacular Chinese home languages that were common only a few decades ago, coupled with the increasing influence of English as a home language which contains similar post-alveolar phoneme contrasts (e.g., /s/-/ʃ/, Starr, 2022;Starr & Wang, 2021). At the same time, young adult Singaporeans' perceptions of standard Mandarin have also begun to change from perceiving the alveolar-retroflex contrast as an undesirable "foreign" feature, to a marker of a more desirable, high prestige variety of Mandarin (Chong & Tan, 2013;Lock 1988).…”

“…At the same time, recent studies indicate that an increase in the perceived prestige of the standard variety of Mandarin appears to be resulting in an increase in the frequency of clear retroflexion in the speech of speakers of contemporary Singapore Mandarin (Chen et al, 2016;Chong & Tan, 2013). Familiarity with the feature of Mandarin retroflexion is likely to be associated with higher levels of Mandarin understanding abilities amongst contemporary Singapore Mandarin speakers as retroflexion is common in the standard variety of Mandarin used in the formal education system, as well as in commonly consumed forms of Chinese media where standard Mandarin articulation is favoured such as the news on television as well as the radio, and mass media from Mainland China (Chong & Tan, 2013;Starr, 2022;Starr & Kapoor, 2021). Mandarin proficiency in Singapore is strongly linked to intergenerational transmission of the language (Curdt-Christiansen & Sun, 2016; Xie & Cavallaro, 2016) such that individuals from primarily Mandarinspeaking households are more likely to have higher proficiencies in Mandarin as compared to individuals from primarily English-speaking households.…”