Numerous studies have shown that some speech accommodation in interactions with the elderly can aid communication. "Over"accommodaters, however, employing features such as high pitch, exaggerated prosody, and child-like forms of address, often demean, infantilise, and patronise elderly interlocutors rather than facilitate comprehension.…

Increased use of English in Singapore, a multiracial, multilingual country, especially its use for cultural purposes, has met with some controversy. This article traces the historical development of Singaporean literature in English and the sociocultural and political problems such literature faces in a country where the official languages and…