2012/01/21 by Ying-Ying Tan, Yingying Tan · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Multilingual Education and Policy
paper · doi:10.1515/ijsl-2012-0057
openalex publication_date 2012/01/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
This paper seeks to determine the correlation between the occurrences of postvocalic- r , intrusive- r and linking- r in Singapore English (SgE) and the users’ education levels and socioeconomic status. This paper will also investigate the attitudes that SgE speakers hold toward the use of postvocalic- r and intrusive- r in the language. The results show that there is a direct correlation between the education level and socioeconomic status of the speaker and the production of postvocalic- r and intrusive- r in SgE. Speakers of higher education levels and socioeconomic status have a tendency to produce the postvocalic- r ; speakers of low education levels and socioeconomic status have a tendency to produce the intrusive- r . The attitudes test also shows that users of postvocalic- r are viewed more positively as compared to users of intrusive- r . The results suggest that postvocalic- r and intrusive- r are not simply concrete, categorical phonological processes, but that their uses are motivated by social factors.