Singapore Colloquial English (SCE) or ‘Singlish’ is a variety very distinct from Singapore Standardised English (SSE), and its use is a polarising issue in Singaporean society. In stark contrast to the results of most language attitude studies in which non‐standardised varieties are rated positively along solidarity dimensions, participants of matched‐guise studies investigating Singaporean attitudes toward SCE have assigned lower solidarity ratings for SCE than for SSE. This is in stark contrast to anecdotal and public opinion that SCE is a language of solidarity and identity for most Singaporeans. By including participants from non‐tertiary sectors and a wider range of stimulus guises as well as supplementing matched‐guise results with interview data, this study seeks to reveal the covert prestige that SCE does, in fact, appear to enjoy in Singaporean society. While the matched‐guise results of this study largely conform to previous findings, the interview data suggest that many participants were basing their ratings on perceptions of SCE use in the public domain rather than the private domain. The study has implications for the extent to which we can extrapolate results from matched‐guise studies, a widely used instrument for the study of language attitudes in the last 50 years.

Numerous studies have shown that some speech accommodation in interactions with the elderly can aid communication. Overaccommodaters, however, employing such features as high pitch, exaggerated prosody, and child-like forms of address, often demean, infantilize, and patronize elderly interlocutors rather than facilitate comprehension. According to the Communicative Predicament of Aging model, communication practices are determined by stereotypes of aging that are triggered in the minds of those interacting with the elderly. These stereotypes vary from culture to culture, and in Singapore, negative stereotypes of aging are prevalent, existing alongside traditional Confucian-influenced positive stereotypes. To date, no studies have examined whether or how stereotypes of aging might be manifested in interactions between younger and older Singaporeans. This investigation involved participant observation in a Singapore eldercare facility. Overaccommodation was indeed found to be employed by carers and varied qualitatively depending on the physical and cognitive abilities of the elderly, with healthy elderly addressed as one one might address school-aged children and those with dementia addressed as infants. These results provide some initial insights into an issue that is of extremely relevant to Singaporean society, given the city state's rapidly aging population.

Although applied linguists have long asserted that individuals who have learned English as an additional language can rightly claim ownership of the language, this willingness on the part of academics to grant ownership to all users of English is ultimately of little consequence to the users themselves, who more often than not consider linguistic ownership to be determined solely by ethnicity or place of birth. This paper outlines a framework comprised of three aspects of language ownershipprevalent usage, affective belonging, and legitimate knowledge-and subsequently applies these concepts to a multi-case ethnographic study of English ownership (and lack thereof) among a group of Taiwanese English learners/users who privileged different ownership dimensions. Prevalent usage was found to be very important for achieving any degree of ownership, and the ability to make overt ownership claims ultimately depended on confidence and agency.

With English use extremely prevalent in Singapore, young Singaporeans are increasingly abandoning the use of their ethnic languages. The Singapore Malay community, however, is frequently depicted as an exception to this trend, proudly keeping Malay as their dominant language and an integral part of their cultural identities despite the overwhelming dominance of English in present day Singaporean society. This study seeks to obtain a sense of whether this is indeed the case by investigating the relationships Singaporean Malay university students (ages 18–26) have with Malay along the dimensions of language expertise, language inheritance, and language affiliation. Fifty survey participants reported on their proficiency in, use of, and perceptions of Malay and English. The results indicate that participants’ relationships with Malay are indeed strongly characterized by all three dimensions – expertise, inheritance, and affiliation – despite their prevalent use of English in all but a few domains and, by the majority, identification of English as the language that best defines them as Singaporeans.

This study aims to shed light on the attitudes of Chinese Singaporeans and Chinese nationals residing in Singapore to varieties of Mandarin Chinese. 64 Singaporean Chinese and Chinese national participants took matched and verbal-guise tests, evaluating recorded speakers of two varieties of Singapore Mandarin (standard and colloquial) and the variety spoken in the PRC on status and solidarity traits. These evaluations were followed by optional questionnaire items intended to probe for additional more insights into the participants’ attitudes and perceptions of one another. Both Singaporean Chinese and Chinese national participants assigned higher status to the PRC’s variety of Mandarin. Attitudes toward the two varieties of Singapore Mandarin, however, varied, with Singaporeans rating the standard variety higher than the colloquial variety on all traits and Chinese nationals favouring the colloquial variety. Interestingly, for all three varieties of Mandarin, solidarity traits were rated higher than status traits by all participants, suggesting that, in Singapore, Mandarin Chinese is now viewed more as a language of solidarity than status.