Ruth completed her BA (Hons) in Linguistics and Multilingual Studies at Nanyang Technological University, with a minor in Malay Language. She aims to further explore language attitudes in Singapore, particularly within the Malay community. 

Singapore’s Ethnic Groups’ Trust in Singapore’s English accents

Previous work on the relationship between accent and trust revealed that people are inclined to trust speakers of an accent that is 1) their ingroup accent, 2) more comprehensible, and 3) higher in status. Singapore presents a highly diverse yet integrated linguistic and ethnic environment which renders unclear the extent to which these factors are applicable. Thus, this study explores if and how Singaporean-Chinese, Singaporean-Malays, and Singaporean Indians vary in their trust of Singapore’s various English accents (namely the Singaporean-Chinese (SC) accent, the Singaporean-Malay (SM) accent, the Singaporean-Indian (SI) accent, and the ethnically-unmarked (EU) accent. 30 Singaporean-Chinese, 30 Singaporean-Malays, and 30 Singaporean-Indians were asked to listen to audio recordings from speakers of the four Singaporean accents before engaging in the Trust Game, which is a measure of trust through monetary exchange. The results show that the Singaporean-Chinese and the Singaporean-Malay groups exhibited comparable levels of trust in the four accents (tokens given to the speakers of each accent did not differ greatly), while the Singaporean-Indians displayed more trust in the SI accent (significantly more tokens given to the speaker of the SI accent). This suggests that Singaporean-Chinese and Singaporean-Malays consider all Singaporeans, rather than just their respective ethnic groups, as part of their ingroup. On the other hand, Singaporean-Indians exhibit ethnic ingroup favouritism. We speculate that this could be due to a stronger sense of solidarity attributed to their status as a minority group that is less represented in Singapore than the other ethnic groups.