The roles of education, age of child, and perceptions towards the importance of personal expression through language in the production of Singlish discourse markers from parents to children

Singlish discourse markers are small words that Singaporean speakers use to perform specific functions in an utterance, such as denoting a speaker's attitude, epistemic stance or emotions. However, while researchers have conducted observational research between demographic variables such as eth...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ho, Eze Ee Jie
Other Authors: Suzy Styles
Format: Final Year Project (FYP)
Language:English
Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/172846
_version_ 1811695501859356672
author Ho, Eze Ee Jie
author2 Suzy Styles
author_facet Suzy Styles
Ho, Eze Ee Jie
author_sort Ho, Eze Ee Jie
collection NTU
description Singlish discourse markers are small words that Singaporean speakers use to perform specific functions in an utterance, such as denoting a speaker's attitude, epistemic stance or emotions. However, while researchers have conducted observational research between demographic variables such as ethnicity and discourse marker use, other demographic variables such as educational or socioeconomic status have not been investigated, and existing observational research has been conducted in a context-free environment. In particular, the context of child-directed speech has not been investigated despite its importance in a child’s cognitive and linguistic development. To investigate differences in Singlish discourse marker use in child-directed speech (as exploratory research) and any relationships between the rate of discourse markers produced, age of child, educational status and parents' belief of the importance of personal expression through language, a corpus of picture-book activity recordings was analysed through statistical and conversation analysis. While no significant relationships between educational level, age of child, parents’ belief of the importance of personal expression and the rate of discourse markers produced, the study has found differences in the distributions of Singlish discourse marker use between this corpus and a corpus of everyday Singlish conversation and the function of certain Singlish discourse markers. In particular, “lah” was underrepresented and “orh” and “hor” were overrepresented in the distribution compared to a corpus of conversations among Singaporean adult speakers, and “leh” has a function that is closer to “lah” in informal Singlish contexts between adult speakers. Limitations and implications of these findings and future directions investigating the use of Singlish discourse markers in child-directed speech are discussed.
first_indexed 2024-10-01T07:24:29Z
format Final Year Project (FYP)
id ntu-10356/172846
institution Nanyang Technological University
language English
last_indexed 2024-10-01T07:24:29Z
publishDate 2023
publisher Nanyang Technological University
record_format dspace
spelling ntu-10356/1728462023-12-31T15:31:42Z The roles of education, age of child, and perceptions towards the importance of personal expression through language in the production of Singlish discourse markers from parents to children Ho, Eze Ee Jie Suzy Styles School of Social Sciences suzy.styles@ntu.edu.sg Social sciences::Psychology Humanities::Linguistics::Psycholinguistics Singlish discourse markers are small words that Singaporean speakers use to perform specific functions in an utterance, such as denoting a speaker's attitude, epistemic stance or emotions. However, while researchers have conducted observational research between demographic variables such as ethnicity and discourse marker use, other demographic variables such as educational or socioeconomic status have not been investigated, and existing observational research has been conducted in a context-free environment. In particular, the context of child-directed speech has not been investigated despite its importance in a child’s cognitive and linguistic development. To investigate differences in Singlish discourse marker use in child-directed speech (as exploratory research) and any relationships between the rate of discourse markers produced, age of child, educational status and parents' belief of the importance of personal expression through language, a corpus of picture-book activity recordings was analysed through statistical and conversation analysis. While no significant relationships between educational level, age of child, parents’ belief of the importance of personal expression and the rate of discourse markers produced, the study has found differences in the distributions of Singlish discourse marker use between this corpus and a corpus of everyday Singlish conversation and the function of certain Singlish discourse markers. In particular, “lah” was underrepresented and “orh” and “hor” were overrepresented in the distribution compared to a corpus of conversations among Singaporean adult speakers, and “leh” has a function that is closer to “lah” in informal Singlish contexts between adult speakers. Limitations and implications of these findings and future directions investigating the use of Singlish discourse markers in child-directed speech are discussed. Bachelor of Social Sciences in Psychology 2023-12-26T07:50:19Z 2023-12-26T07:50:19Z 2023 Final Year Project (FYP) Ho, E. E. J. (2023). The roles of education, age of child, and perceptions towards the importance of personal expression through language in the production of Singlish discourse markers from parents to children. Final Year Project (FYP), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/172846 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/172846 en application/pdf Nanyang Technological University
spellingShingle Social sciences::Psychology
Humanities::Linguistics::Psycholinguistics
Ho, Eze Ee Jie
The roles of education, age of child, and perceptions towards the importance of personal expression through language in the production of Singlish discourse markers from parents to children
title The roles of education, age of child, and perceptions towards the importance of personal expression through language in the production of Singlish discourse markers from parents to children
title_full The roles of education, age of child, and perceptions towards the importance of personal expression through language in the production of Singlish discourse markers from parents to children
title_fullStr The roles of education, age of child, and perceptions towards the importance of personal expression through language in the production of Singlish discourse markers from parents to children
title_full_unstemmed The roles of education, age of child, and perceptions towards the importance of personal expression through language in the production of Singlish discourse markers from parents to children
title_short The roles of education, age of child, and perceptions towards the importance of personal expression through language in the production of Singlish discourse markers from parents to children
title_sort roles of education age of child and perceptions towards the importance of personal expression through language in the production of singlish discourse markers from parents to children
topic Social sciences::Psychology
Humanities::Linguistics::Psycholinguistics
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/172846
work_keys_str_mv AT hoezeeejie therolesofeducationageofchildandperceptionstowardstheimportanceofpersonalexpressionthroughlanguageintheproductionofsinglishdiscoursemarkersfromparentstochildren
AT hoezeeejie rolesofeducationageofchildandperceptionstowardstheimportanceofpersonalexpressionthroughlanguageintheproductionofsinglishdiscoursemarkersfromparentstochildren