Language and emotions of English-Mandarin simultaneous bilinguals in Singapore : the mother tongue language, the language of emotions and the convergence of sadness expressions

Abstract

In light of the language policies in Singapore, linguistic studies in Singapore have often delved into the sociolinguistics aspects of Singapore and investigated on social issues such as the language shift and language maintenance situation (e.g. Gupta and Pui 1995; Wee and Bokhorst-Heng 2005; Vaish 2007). Thus far, the findings have unravelled interesting implications of the policy such as it resulting in English being able to reconceptualise as a Mother Tongue Language (MTL) (Tan 2014). However, no study has yet to endeavour into the other linguistic areas in light of the language policies such as the language and emotion aspect. This thesis, thus, bridges this gap of language and emotion research in Singapore by examining three aspects – the assumed “emotionally unacceptability” of the English language, the MTL qualities of the English language and the convergence of emotion concepts towards the emotion concepts of language of emotions. Through a mixed paradigm of language background questionnaire, interview and narrative retelling, the results reveal that English is an emotionally acceptable language for many of the study participants and shows support for the reconceptualization of English as a MTL. A further analysis of the semantics of emotion terms has also revealed that there is a reconceptualization of sadness emotion concepts to the language of emotion of participants.