Multilinguals in a Monolingual Community

Abstract

Multilinguals who live in their native multilingual communities are constantly switching between languages, whereas those who live in monolingual communities need to constrain their code-switching. Malaysia is a multilingual country in which people mix languages on a daily basis, whereas, in Taiwan, Mandarin is predominately used and people are more cautious about code-switching. Therefore, in the current study, we investigated what factors might facilitate Malaysian-Chinese students to reduce the unintentional switching between languages to adapt to the language environment in Taiwan. Malaysian-Chinese who live in Malaysia (MIM) and Taiwan (MIT) were recruited to investigate whether and how non-linguistic code-switching and their awareness of language environment (ALE) influence their intentional and unintentional code-switching experiences. Participants' non-verbal code-switching was measured by a color/shape switching task, whereas ALE and code-switching experiences were measured by questionnaires. The multiple regression analyses of MIT's responses showed that the moderation of non-linguistic switch cost and ALE significantly predicted MIT's unintentional code-switching. Moreover, the simple slope analysis showed that MIT with high executive control have a dynamic unintentional switch in which the higher level of ALE is associated with lower unintentional switch. However, MIT with low executive control have a static unintentional switch, uninfluenced by their level of ALE. These results suggested that multilinguals' executive control along with their awareness of the language environment help them adapt to living in a community with a predominant language.

Keywords

• Code-Switching
• Multilingual
• Executive Functions
• Awareness of Language Environment