CRADLE @ NTU
Kastoori is a postdoctoral fellow at the NTU-Cambridge Centre for Lifelong Learning and Individualized Cognition (CLIC). Her research at CLIC mainly involves studying cognitive flexibility (CF) across adolescence and adulthood and understanding how CF is harnessed in the real-world context. In addition, she also works on bilingualism and investigates its relation to executive functioning, language learning and creativity.
Communication Accommodation Theory and dynamic language use in multilingual contexts
In highly diversified multilingual contexts, decisions about what language(s) to use and when it can be used are often contextually determined. Several CAT studies have examined language choice and use in specific contexts. However, there has been no such study in Asia. The present study is the first large scale study in the field to use a street-style survey to gain a comprehensive overview of the language use pattens of Singaporeans from various ethnic and age groups. Surveyors of Chinese, Indian and Malay ethnicities approached respondents of their same ethnicity in several language conditions (Standard Singapore English [SSE], Tamil, Malay or Mandarin Chinese). In total, 2316 respondents were approached. Chi-square tests, correspondence analyses and logistic regressions revealed marked differences in the language accommodation patterns across the various age and ethnic groups. For the SSE condition, ethnicity is a driving force determining whether respondents use SSE or Singapore Colloquial English (SCE) to respond. Indian Singaporeans had the greatest tendency to converge by using SSE; the Malay Singaporeans showed a two-way split by using both SSE and SCE to respond. Chinese Singaporeans show the highest tendency to diverge by using SCE, significantly more than the Malay and Indian respondents. Older respondents choose to diverge or code-mix more frequently than younger respondents. In the vernacular condition, the Indian Singaporeans showed the greatest tendency to diverge away from Tamil, often responding in English, with this effect being strongest in younger Indians. The Malays showed the greatest tendency to converge in Malay while the Chinese favoured code-mixing. The findings are discussed in light of Singapore’s language planning and policy changes over the decades, the power imbalance across the various ethnic groups, and how these factors influence the language choices of Singaporean bilinguals.