Journal of Asian Pacific Communication - Volume 16, Issue 2, 2006

A theoretical model, managed community second language acquisition (SLA), is proposed to provide a comprehensive view of nine studies of language contact, spread, variation, and attitudes of Chinese, which are shaped by nearly a century of language planning. The model has been reformulated on the basis of the individual SLA modle and it is intended to make the notions of macroacquisition and planning acquisition operational. It has two linguistic factors (input and output) and two sociolinguistic factors (language identity and language marketability) that can be managed or manipulated in status planning. The two sociolinguistic factors, language identity and marketability, appear to have played the most significant roles in language spread, variation, and attitudes in status planning, at least in China. This model also serves as the basis to make a theoretical distinction between interference and borrowing, a distinction that helps to sort out the consequences of language contact and provides indexes of language shift under status planning conditions.

One of the central issues in the theory of speech community is whether speech community is a naturally-existing entity or a research construct without any restricted empirical basis. The issue is attacked here by way of a language survey. The survey was on language-choice behavior in public places, conducted in the city of Nanjing in 2002. The survey results show: (a) Nanjing residents’ verbal behavior exhibits a specific order of social convention and the urban population thus makes up an effective body of social communication. (b) The ordered behavior reflects a community-wide evaluative system that governs linguistic heterogeneity. (c) The thinning-out of the regularity among the individuals’ behaviors is typically found both in the spatial and the temporal marginals of the urban population. The study supports the hypothesis that a speech community is a naturally-existing entity. An attitudinal-behavioral and impactal unity is the core of such existence. With the approach taken here, a speech community can be discovered with certain well-defined empirical procedures. The wider significance invoked is that the organizational system of speakers is an important linguistic system alongside the other linguistic systems.

In spite of a widening acceptance of attenuated retroflexed initials (zh‑, ch‑ sh‑) in Taiwan Mandarin today, there is a parallel movement in seemingly the opposite direction: a growing use of the retroflexed initials in certain contexts. A conflict between the two trends often surfaces in the form of hypercorrection, that is, incorrect substitution of the retroflexed initials for the corresponding dental initials (z‑, c‑, s‑). Labov (1973) observed a trend toward a similar kind of phonetic hypercorrection in New York City English, mainly among the upwardly-aspiring lower middle class. Though this group is also especially susceptible to the use of hypercorrect forms in Taiwan, people in all walks of life with all levels of education have been observed to use hypercorrect forms. This demonstrates, first, that the textbook forms of the retroflexed vs. dental initials are learned imperfectly by a wide spectrum of speakers of Taiwan Mandarin; second, that the retroflexed initials retain a certain cachet in marking speech as more prestigious and authoritative; and third, that retroflexion, hypercorrect or otherwise, has for many people taken on the function of simply marking formal discourse, in addition to its use for disambiguation, highlighting, and stylistic effect.

China’s participation in the global economy has brought about a new professional group — Chinese professionals working for foreign businesses (waiqi). Focusing on the linguistic practice of a group of waiqi professionals in Beijing, this study compares their speech with that of professionals working for state-owned enterprises. Both groups are natives of Beijing. Based on quantitative analysis of three Beijing Mandarin features and a tone feature revealing an influence from non-Mainland Mandarin varieties, the study shows that the waiqi group overwhelmingly used the non-local features much more frequently than the state professionals. It is argued that the waiqi professionals’ speech cannot be described simply as speaking a more standard variety of Putonghua. They are constructing a cosmopolitan Mandarin style through selectively combining features from both regional and global sources. This non-local style of Mandarin does not strictly conform to the standard of Putonghua. Explanations for the differential practice of the two groups are sought through differences in the linguistic markets in which they participate. This study demonstrates that the traditional territorially-based approach to sociolinguistic variation on a local–standard dimension is inadequate in examining practices that employ linguistic resources from both local and supra-local sources.

Massive population movement across dialectal boundaries in contemporary China leads to increasing bilingualism in Putonghua (Standard Chinese) and regional dialects. This study investigates the functional distribution of Putonghua and Cantonese as spoken by immigrant residents in Guangdong Province. Results from questionnaire surveys in Guangzhou and Shenzhen reveal different patterns of Putonghua-dialect bilingualism in the two cities. For immigrants in Guangzhou, Putonghua and the local dialect (Cantonese) have comparable strength and functions, whereas in Shenzhen, Putonghua serves as the dominant language. To account for the differences between Guangzhou and Shenzhen, we argue that demographic structure is an important factor regulating the standard-dialect relationship in the urban communities of China. We propose that social network features correlate with the respective instrumental and integrative values of the languages or dialects in contact. This research provides insights into the dynamic interaction between the standard language and dialects in multilingual societies that are experiencing profound social changes.

To understand language choice and development in the process of industrialization it is essential to study how the children of workers (the second generation) in a rising industrial community choose their language/dialect for daily communication. The coexistence of three speech communities: dialect, dialect-and-Putonghua mixed, and Putonghua, in three urban districts of Luoyang City, Henan Province, since the 1950s is representative of language development during China’s industrialization. Based on a large-scale survey, this article compares language and dialect use in these three urban districts and some special danwei (work-unit) language islands in Luoyang. This study shows why and how the second generation in a rising industrial community have chosen or not chosen Putonghua as their major language for daily communication. It concludes with a discussion on the characters and underlining principles of language choice in the course of industrialization under the planned economy in China.

How dialectal lexis may interfere with Putonghua spoken in a region has long been talked about but has rarely received much attention in scholarly literature. The issue is often complicated by the fact that there is a lack of a set of commonly recognized criteria with which to define regional Putonghua varieties vis-à-vis the regional dialects. Against this background, I have in this paper first argued for taking Putonghua education and use at, after and beyond school as the bench mark for defining regional Putonghua varieties either as true linguistic entities or as conceptual entities. Then, I have examined how question words and interrogative particles in the Chengdu dialect find their way into the Putonghua spoken in that region, attributing the lexical interference to two main factors. The first is the salient linguistic connection between Putonghua and the Chengdu dialect, which is a major southwestern branch of Mandarin, and the second is more sociolinguistically related, being associated with the speaker’s education and need for using Putonghua at work against a rapidly developing regional economy.

Hong Kong written Chinese is the register used in government documents, serious literature and the formal sections of printed media. It is a local variation of Standard Chinese and has many special features in its lexicon, syntax and discourse. These features come from three distinctive sources: English, Cantonese and innovation. The main concern of this paper is which features come from English and how they are adopted. It is shown that Hong Kong written Chinese has a large number of English loan words, both localized and semi-localized ones, and quite a few calque forms from English. Some of its lexical items have undergone semantic shift under the influence of English or Cantonese. The most interesting characteristic of Hong Kong written Chinese is that a number of its words have changed their syntactic behavior due to English influence and a few syntactic structures are apparently adopted from English. This particular form of written Chinese thus provides an excellent case to study the impact of bilingualism and multilingualism on language use and language change induced by language contact.

Xining, the capital of Qinghai province, is an especially valuable location for observing the spread and influence of Standard Chinese, or Putonghua, for at least two reasons. First, the dialect’s history of contact with non-Sinitic languages, mostly Tibetan and Mongolic languages, created an older linguistic stratum that differs markedly from other Mandarin dialects, indeed with most all Chinese dialects, in clearly identifiable ways, so that comparisons between Standard Chinese and variations within the Xining dialect reflect unambiguous cases of standard cum dialect language contact. Second, the demographic history of the region, including large-scale migrations of Chinese-speaking people from other provinces, created a socio-cultural context in which the promotion of Standard Chinese would likely find fertile ground. This paper will show that the combination of these two factors has created a situation in which the old Xining dialect is rapidly disappearing. In its place is not Standard Chinese, per se, but an interdialect, a compromise variety stripped of the most obvious dialect features but clearly distinct from Standard Chinese. The differences will be shown to exist in the phonology, lexicon and syntax of the dialect and that the more highly educated members of the community are leading the changes toward the New Xining dialect. While Standard Chinese is shown to have been a powerful force in the creation the New Xining dialect, it has not completely replaced the local dialect.

This sociolinguistic study focuses on a phonological variation of [u] in the “Town Speech” of Lishui County (Jiangsu Province, China) in the apparent-time paradigm with four age cohorts. The (u)-variation in the Town Speech of Lishui is a change-in-progress toward Putonghua and is unevenly distributed in the phonological and the lexical systems and across age cohorts. As a change-in-progress, it redistributes high-back vowels and glides in some word classes. While no Putonghua phonemes have been imported, the changes have been going through a series of approximations toward the phonological system of Putonghua. Consequently, the changes are transforming the Town Speech of Lishui into a localized Putonghua, or more precisely, a Putonghua-like dialect. It is an intermediate variety closer to the original local dialect than to Putonghua on a scale with Putonghua on one extreme and the dialect on the other.