Chinese Under Globalization

The following sections are included:

• CONTENTS

In the history of the Chinese language, there have been numerous instances where rapid changes took place in the forms of expansion of vocabulary, development of new grammatical markers and syntactic structures, appearance of new phonological features, and emergence of new writing styles. Typically, these rapid and sometimes radical changes correlate with the heightened interaction between indigenous and non-Chinese cultural elements. Thus, during the late Han period (2nd century AD) through the Tang Dynasty (10th century AD), the introduction of Hindu Buddhism brought to China not only Buddhist doctrines and practices but also an expanded vocabulary (such as loanwords from Persian, Sogdian, Sanskrit, Mongolian, Manchu, and other Asian Languages) (see Gao and Liu, 1958, esp. Chap. 2) and novel syntactic features (as exemplified by the disposal construction, see Cao and Yu (2000)). The best known example, however, belongs to the period from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, leading to the May Fourth New Culture Movement. During this period, severance of ties with traditional Chinese culture (as represented by the Confucian tradition) along with major influxes of Western ideas and thoughts resulted in a near total reconfiguration of the landscape of the Chinese language. Not only were writing styles changed, literary forms invented, and syntaxes increasingly Europeanized but even some basic vocabulary forms and a large number of neologisms were added (especially Sino–Japanese–European loanwords) (Gunn, 1991; Liu, 1995). In the Mao’s era, partly following the former Soviet Union’s model in symbolic and ideological control, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), after it won power in 1949, launched a massive revolutionary program of linguistic engineering, formalization, and orthodoxization, which culminated in the Cultural Revolution (Schoenhals, 1992; Wagner, 1999; Ji, 2004; and Wang, 2011). This seems an especially apt piece of evidence for Bourdieu’s prediction: political crises are conducive to verbal explosion (Bourdieu, 1977,p. 663).

With its ever increasing popularization, computer-mediated communication (CMC) has become a progressively well-documented research area (e.g., Baron, 1984, 1998a, 1998b, 2000; Crystal, 2006; Danet and Herring, 2007; Herring, 1996). The linguistic aspects of CMC in the Chinese context have also been examined (e.g., Gao, 2006, 2007; Liu, 2010, 2011; Yu, et al., 2001a, 2001b). In this chapter, an analysis of emergent language usages in CMC in Chinese, which covers the lexical, syntactic, as well as the discourse dimension is presented. Applying the construct of apparent time change (Labov, 1963, 1966), it is argued that some of the online usages may stay as part of the Chinese language. In other words, the use of Internet expressions in the Chinese CMC may signify diachronic linguistic change in progress.

Entertainment news is one of the most popular forms of online news in contemporary China (cf. Yu, 2007). It serves not only to convey information about the entertainment industry and its products but also to entertain readers. Metaphor, a salient linguistic feature of this news genre, is the object of investigation in this study. The findings are based on the exploration of a general corpus of Chinese online entertainment news: 1,016 fulllength news items, totalling 856,374 Chinese characters, collected during May to June in 2007 from online news sources in China. Popular source domains of metaphors (war, martial arts, fire, wind, food, etc.) and target domains (conflict, celebrity, etc.) are identified, as well as the patterns of interaction and the functions of metaphors in Chinese entertainment news. These findings demonstrate that metaphors are powerful linguistic means of explaining and embellishing abstract concepts, an ideological tool for describing and evaluating people and situations in discourse, and a conceptual force that both reflects and potentially influences people’s perception of their world. The findings also show that China’s changing media ecology has aff ected the way that metaphors emerge into discourse, are communicated, and interact with each other.

This chapter examines recent proliferation of the use of Chinese local dialects on the Internet among the Chinese urban educated youth. With a close analysis of dialect texts parodying the standard Mandarin and the Chinese writing system, so-called standard tests on dialect competence that mimic the formats of the official English exams, and Internet-mediated rap songs rendered in dialects and their hosting websites. This study explores how the Chinese educated youth promote dialect on the Internet to challenge the hegemonic languages, either the standard Mandarin or English, how the conventionally stigmatized dialects have been explored as a fashionable, edgy youth language in China, and how Internet-savvy Chinese youth employ local dialect to articulate a distinct local identity in their negotiation with a dramatically globalizing culture.

This chapter examines the circulation (Spitulnik, 1996) and recontextualization (Bauman and Briggs, 1990) of a Chinese advertisement slogan “wode dipan, wo zuozhu,”, 我的地盘,我做主 (my turf, I decide), and its variants in the form of “my noun phrase, I decide” in youth online discourse. The slogan was originally created in 2004 by China Mobile to promote its M-Zone mobile phone service, targeting consumers aged between 15 and 25. It has become immensely popular since 2004 along with the hip-hop song “My Turf,” created for the advertisement campaign and performed by the Taiwanese pop culture icon Jay Chou. The slogan, the song and Chou’s persona project a stance of individuality and rebellion. Over 12,000,000 instances obtained from Google search, including blogs and social-networking websites, demonstrate that the wide circulation of the intertextual series (Hanks, 1986) is facilitated by: (1) the connotations of the word dipan, and (2) the productive syntactic structure, i.e., “my noun phrase, I decide.” Drawing on Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism, we show that the intertextual series index a set of stances that position speakers away from models of traditional Chinese cultural values. The circulation of such stances in youth online discourse mediates the construction of a Chinese youth style that highlights individuality, rebellion, and independence. The intertextual series have become a salient linguistic resource for Chinese youth to take stances in their endeavor to establish their own social space.

The so-called “lettered words” 字母词 zimuci are a significant part of Modern Chinese vocabulary. Lettered words are foreign words and their abbreviations, spelled in Modern Chinese texts with foreign alphabets’ letters. There are also abbreviations of Chinese words transcribed in pinyin, and a variety of their combinations with Chinese characters. This kind of graphic blend, which is evident in the Chinese language today, is actually a surface representation of integral phonological and morphological processes. This indicates a series of transformations in Chinese native speakers’ perception of what a written sign is: how it corresponds to the phonetic and semantic appearance of a word; how it assists Chinese native speakers in expressing themselves in the most updated manner and in due correspondence with the native language’s typological and logical nature. These phenomena are analyzed in the chapter in terms of linguistic integration: phonetic, morphological, and communicative. This analysis, along with the supporting examples, is aimed at better understanding the origins of the topic proposed, its scale and spread degree.

English as second language (ESL) mania has swept the Chinese nation, especially for young adults seeking to study and work abroad or accept better-paying positions in foreign companies within China. Urban Chinese students begin English instruction in grade school and must demonstrate proficiency throughout college. Some feel that the push for English endorses Western hegemony or emigration. Others, however, like celebrity ESL mogul Li Yang 李阳, capitalize on the profitable ESL industry and purportedly promote Chinese nationalism, as exemplified in Li’s slogan “Conquer English to make China stronger! 征服英语, 让祖国更强大!” (Zhengfu yingyu, rang zuguo geng qiangda!). Li’s “Crazy English” (Fengkuang Yingyu,疯狂英语) method requires confidently and quickly shouting English while blasting techno music or gyrating. The pedagogical gains made through Li’s emphasis on properly pronouncing English are dubious, though his insistence on forgoing fear and embracing confidence may be successful in positively transforming students’ psyches. Although Li’s incorporation of nationalism (and racism) into his Crazy English program may ease anxieties over the disadvantages of English promotion in China, it is uncertain how long these political and hate-inducing messages will be tolerated by the international community or even by the Chinese government.

This chapter deals with Chinglish as Chinese–English translations found on public bilingual signage in the People’s Republic of China. It traces back the origin of the term Chinglish and summarizes existing academic and nonacademic commentaries on the phenomenon. In Chinese academia, Chinglish is regarded as a deficiency that needs to be corrected whereas among the non-Chinese commentators, Chinglish enjoys a slightly Orientalist reputation of belonging to the “charming side of China.” This chapter further focuses on Chinglish in four fields, i.e., history, sociolinguistics, sociology, and political science. These four methodological approaches highlight Chinglish as a useful tool of analysis, which helps to shed light on the existing relationship between China and the English language. Chinglish research also enables researchers to critically reflect official administrative processes and the Chinese government’s efforts of positioning the nation in a global English-speaking context.

This chapter reports on part of a larger sociolinguistic study based on a written survey conducted on 116 Cantonese–Mandarin bilingual speakers in Guangzhou who are biliterates in Standard Written Chinese (SWC) and Vernacular Written Cantonese (VWC). Both quantitative and qualitative analysis is conducted in this chapter to explore how and to what extent of the Guangzhou regional identity is reflected in the everyday writing in Guangzhou local community. The findings of the correlation analysis between Cantonese lifestyle in Guangzhou and VWC elements reveal that VWC is positively viewed as an indicator of Guangzhou regional identity. In addition to the correlation analysis, the critical discourse analysis on the use of VWC as Cantonese lifestyle suggests that mass media and Hong Kong culture play important roles in strongly promoting the use of VWC in Guangzhou area. Everyday lifestyle other than using VWC in Guangzhou community also plays a key role in the maintenance of VWC.

In its long history, China has rarely faced, as it does today, under globalization and modernization, such a multitude of problems with regard to language choice and linguistic identity. This chapter outlines some of the major issues in Chinese language and identity. These issues include: (1) challenges imposed by global English from the outside world; (2) the dynamics between the national and the local as represented by the dominance of the national language, standard Mandarin, and the preservation of local linguistic resources and cultural heritages based on regional dialects; and finally, (3) a collective identity of Chineseness as a result of the rapidly ascending status of the Chinese language worldwide. These evolving issues, though not completely unique to China, provide rich materials for research in globalization, identity, multiculturalism, and multilingualism.

The following sections are included:

• ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)

• INDEX