Language attitudes towards Singapore mandarin and putonghua : a comparison between Singaporean chinese and Chinese nationals.

With the stabilisation of the Chinese diaspora all over the world and the rapid spread of Mandarin with the rise of China, many new varieties of Mandarin have emerged outside of China, but such “new Chineses” have hardly been researched upon in terms of language...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ho, Yen Yee.
Other Authors: Francesco Paolo Cavallaro
Format: Final Year Project (FYP)
Language:English
Published: 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10356/51249
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author Ho, Yen Yee.
author2 Francesco Paolo Cavallaro
author_facet Francesco Paolo Cavallaro
Ho, Yen Yee.
author_sort Ho, Yen Yee.
collection NTU
description With the stabilisation of the Chinese diaspora all over the world and the rapid spread of Mandarin with the rise of China, many new varieties of Mandarin have emerged outside of China, but such “new Chineses” have hardly been researched upon in terms of language attitudes. With the increasing ties between Singapore and China, it seems useful and important to understand how people of these two countries view each other by examining the dynamics of the interactions between them. Thus, this study aims to uncover the attitudes that Singaporean Chinese and Chinese nationals have towards each other’s Mandarin variety in relation to their own Mandarin variety. To do so, 64 participants were recruited to take part in a matched-guise and verbal guise test to evaluate their language attitudes towards two varieties of Singapore Mandarin, Singapore Standard Mandarin (SSM) and Singapore Colloquial Mandarin (SCM), as well as Putonghua (PTH), on a 7-point Likert scale with respect to status and solidarity traits. This was followed by several optional open-ended questions which were aimed at uncovering possible reasons for their attitudes. Findings from this study revealed that both Singaporean Chinese and Chinese nationals view PTH as highest in status among the three varieties. However, their attitudes towards SSM and SCM differ, with Singaporean Chinese rating SSM higher than SCM on all traits and Chinese nationals rating SCM higher than SSM on all traits. Furthermore, interestingly, all three varieites of Mandarin, even the standard ones, are rated higher in terms of solidarity than status, suggesting that Mandarin is now seen as a language of solidarity.
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spelling ntu-10356/512492019-12-10T10:48:26Z Language attitudes towards Singapore mandarin and putonghua : a comparison between Singaporean chinese and Chinese nationals. Ho, Yen Yee. Francesco Paolo Cavallaro School of Humanities and Social Sciences DRNTU::Humanities With the stabilisation of the Chinese diaspora all over the world and the rapid spread of Mandarin with the rise of China, many new varieties of Mandarin have emerged outside of China, but such “new Chineses” have hardly been researched upon in terms of language attitudes. With the increasing ties between Singapore and China, it seems useful and important to understand how people of these two countries view each other by examining the dynamics of the interactions between them. Thus, this study aims to uncover the attitudes that Singaporean Chinese and Chinese nationals have towards each other’s Mandarin variety in relation to their own Mandarin variety. To do so, 64 participants were recruited to take part in a matched-guise and verbal guise test to evaluate their language attitudes towards two varieties of Singapore Mandarin, Singapore Standard Mandarin (SSM) and Singapore Colloquial Mandarin (SCM), as well as Putonghua (PTH), on a 7-point Likert scale with respect to status and solidarity traits. This was followed by several optional open-ended questions which were aimed at uncovering possible reasons for their attitudes. Findings from this study revealed that both Singaporean Chinese and Chinese nationals view PTH as highest in status among the three varieties. However, their attitudes towards SSM and SCM differ, with Singaporean Chinese rating SSM higher than SCM on all traits and Chinese nationals rating SCM higher than SSM on all traits. Furthermore, interestingly, all three varieites of Mandarin, even the standard ones, are rated higher in terms of solidarity than status, suggesting that Mandarin is now seen as a language of solidarity. Bachelor of Arts 2013-03-15T03:38:57Z 2013-03-15T03:38:57Z 2012 2012 Final Year Project (FYP) http://hdl.handle.net/10356/51249 en Nanyang Technological University 69 p. application/pdf
spellingShingle DRNTU::Humanities
Ho, Yen Yee.
Language attitudes towards Singapore mandarin and putonghua : a comparison between Singaporean chinese and Chinese nationals.
title Language attitudes towards Singapore mandarin and putonghua : a comparison between Singaporean chinese and Chinese nationals.
title_full Language attitudes towards Singapore mandarin and putonghua : a comparison between Singaporean chinese and Chinese nationals.
title_fullStr Language attitudes towards Singapore mandarin and putonghua : a comparison between Singaporean chinese and Chinese nationals.
title_full_unstemmed Language attitudes towards Singapore mandarin and putonghua : a comparison between Singaporean chinese and Chinese nationals.
title_short Language attitudes towards Singapore mandarin and putonghua : a comparison between Singaporean chinese and Chinese nationals.
title_sort language attitudes towards singapore mandarin and putonghua a comparison between singaporean chinese and chinese nationals
topic DRNTU::Humanities
url http://hdl.handle.net/10356/51249
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