Attitudes to Vietnamese/English language mixing in Australia

Language mixing (LM) in multilingual settings has cultural, social and pragmatic functions, but attitudes to LM can vary widely, influencing language use and maintenance. While Vietnamese in Australia has been studied from several perspectives, research on attitudes toward English–Vietnamese LM remains limited. This study explores how Vietnamese Australians perceive LM in their community. Adapting the matched-guise technique, we created artificial stimuli based on natural speech, featuring monolingual Vietnamese (VN) and code-mixed (CM) guises. In a between-subjects experiment, 124 listeners recruited through online community groups reacted to guises using a five-point rating scale, with a “Don’t Know” (DK) option. Analysis revealed nuanced perceptions depending on context and the trait being evaluated. CM guises were perceived more positively for professional traits but less positively for personal traits, while VN guises were perceived positively for personal traits. These results reflect English’s prestige and Vietnamese’s association with the community, informality and family values. Attitudes were influenced by content or topic, individual speaker differences, and the perceived purpose of the utterance. The high DK response rate for some traits underscores the complexity of attitude evaluation and its discursive nature. We recommend that future research on attitudes to LM incorporate broader rating tasks beyond linguistic factors.