Chinese Language and Discourse - Current Issue

Abstract

The emergence of “translanguaging” as a concept referring to bilingual practices has challenged the appropriateness of “code-switching” – the term that has been most influential in studies of bilingualism and language mixing. Reassessing the literature on Cantonese-English mixing in Hong Kong, this paper suggests that the kind of spontaneous code-switching in peer talk, largely intra-sentential (or intra-clausal) and intra-turn, can indeed be recast as translanguaging, where speakers transcend language boundaries between Cantonese and English for the purpose of meaning-making. Nevertheless, Hong Kong speakers do constantly draw language boundaries by marking words as English or Cantonese, both in metalinguistic judgment and in real-time language production. Revisiting an unpublished dataset of radio talk, this paper further illustrates a number of sequences in which Cantonese speakers may “languagise” the code-switched words or expressions as “English”. It is concluded that, in a Conversation-Analytic understanding, the difference between “translanguaging” and “code-switching” boils down to “languagising”, and the contrast between the two notions may have been overstated.

Abstract

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) has been broadly applied to understand the social implications of discourse, yet few studies have compared different forms of discourse in Chinese media, especially on the topic of race. Referencing the CDA framework, this study compares two sample news items from Mainland China and Taiwan about the killing of George Floyd and the associated social movements, analyzing their presentational forms, sourcing patterns, headlines, lexical and syntactic choices. A racial analysis is also conducted to better comprehend how racism is constructed and potentially reproduced in Chinese media. The results suggest that the two media sources bifurcate in reporting styles – due to respective journalistic environments and regulations – and their attitudes towards the cause of the reported event. However, they both explicitly identify the issue of racism in the US. This study applies CDA in a non-US context to uncover the reporting styles and racial connotations in Chinese news discourse from Mainland China and Taiwan, identifying future directions for racial discourse analysis in Chinese media.

摘要

本研究基于70小时约30万字的自建湖南吉首方言口语语料库，首先从句法位置、句子功能及韵律特征三个维度归纳句中小品词“呔”的核心句法功能及基本语法意义；然后对7个不同会话场景中句中小品词“呔”的分布进行定量统计，并对相关语料展开会话分析。研究发现，句中小品词“呔”是一个标示说话人抱怨和责备情绪的“负面情感立场标志”。受到高频效应和语言使用者心理认知等因素影响，加之与韵律、句法、会话序列位置、会话参与者交际目标及语境等诸多因素产生互动并衍生出反讽、惊奇和同情等情感立场标示功能，但说话人抱怨和责备的情绪仍然不同程度存在。 基于上述分析，本研究尝试从理论层面对小品词本质作出重新认识，即“小品词的具体义项、话语功能和句法结构以互动方式形成一个紧密联系的整体，且三者均为交互过程中所“浮现之物”，在会话互动过程中又与多种因素产生互动而不断被塑造。小品词作为一种语言资源，同时又为交际参与者提供与同类协作管理、相互评价等工具，以保证会话交互的顺利推进。

Abstract

Why do speakers choose the Mandarin Chinese unmarked passive construction (UP) in conversation when they have other grammatical alternatives with roughly the same semantics? From the perspective of subjectivity, this study identifies the Factuality lens, a lens through which a situation is presented as a “fact” or a “truth” regardless of reality. My analysis of a video corpus of spontaneous talk show conversations using the discourse adjacent alternation method reveals that speakers tend to choose UP over other constructions to present a transitive event through the Factuality lens by emphasizing the factuality of a fact or making a non-fact appear as a fact – either deceivingly or openly in a fictitious narrative or a joke. The findings reveal that grammatical constructions can linguistically recreate a situation different from reality. The conclusion that Factuality lens is a factor that could influence speakers’ grammatical choice casts light on pragmatic consequence of grammatical choice and subjectivity in language use.

Abstract

As a result of contact between mutually unintelligible Southern Chinese varieties like Hokkien and Cantonese, Colloquial Singapore Mandarin (csm) 有 yǒu ‘have’ has extended its semantic functions to include that of realis modality marker. This paper will demonstrate how a framework of ambiguity and semantic continuity can allow us to determine the associative links between different synchronous functions of the 有 yǒu ‘have’ construction. The ambiguous context that links the existential and realis modality functions of 有 yǒu ‘have’ is [没有méi yǒu ‘not have’ + vp]. This ambiguous context allows 有 yǒu ‘have’ to be reanalyzed as a realis modality marker with méi ‘not’ as the negator. Additionally, the semantic continuity between the existential and realis modality marker functions further confirms such an association. While [yǒu + np] affirms the existence of someone or something, [yǒu + vp] affirms the existence of an event.

Abstract

This paper presents a corpus-based perspective on the phonetic fusion of disyllabic words in a Chinese conversational speech corpus. Four categorical types that reflect the phonological features of reduction degrees are automatically derived from gradient, acoustic properties. A transcription experiment is conducted with the most common disyllabic words. Both automatic derivation by acoustic signals and human transcription by perceptual judgment refer to the same sound inventory. We have shown that the complete form of fusion occurring in conversation need not be legitimate syllables and it appears consistently in the form of syllable merger that represents a group of phonetic variants.

This article reviews Kingdom of characters: The language revolution that made China modern9780735214729