Multilingualism in the social networks of university students in Singapore

In the context of multilingualism, there is still a dearth of research on the multilingual language practices of individuals and the social factors that interplay with their linguistic behaviour. This presentation discusses... [ view full abstract ]

In the context of multilingualism, there is still a dearth of research on the multilingual language practices of individuals and the social factors that interplay with their linguistic behaviour. This presentation discusses the dynamics underlying a particular feature of Singapore Colloquial English—language mixing—and how such mixing practices form part of the social identity of the interactions between speakers in their respective social networks. The research approach for this current study was adapted from Milroy’s (1980) research on social networks in order to provide access to subjects’ most natural use of languages – that is, their ‘vernacular’ in the Labovian sense. The sample draws on naturalistic conversations between Chinese, Malay and Indian students and their respective first- and second-order social networks and the results analyze a spoken corpus of some 70,000 words. This presentation considers various aspects of the multilingual language practices of students in Singapore and reports on the social motivations of language mixing in the personal lives of these speakers in the contexts of multilingualism and language variation. Although the research presented in this talk focuses on Singapore, the research methods, data analysis and findings is of particular relevance to other multilingual contexts, not least of which concern the multilingualism of university students in such contexts.