Epistemic stance in Chinese heritage language writing – A developmental view
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Yang Xiao-Desai
Yang Xiao-Desai is an assistant professor of Chinese at San Francisco State University, USA. Her research pertains to second language acquisition, heritage language education, and world language teacher education. She is particularly interested in issues related to learner’s affective factors and the role of technology in language learning/teaching.
and
Ka F. Wong
Ka F. Wong is associate professor of Asian Studies and director of Chinese at St. Olaf College. His research interests and publication cover a wide range of topics including language learning and pedagogy, cultural studies, as well as transnational cinema and literature.
Abstract
Drawing on data from a learner corpus of blogs, this study explores epistemic expressions used in Chinese heritage language (CHL) writing from a developmental perspective, and aims to provide a better understanding of pragmatic development in heritage language learning context. A total of 6,511 blog entries written by 266 heritage learners from four different proficiency levels were analyzed cross-sectionally. The findings revealed three notable developmental patterns in CHL learners’ use of epistemic markers (EMs): 1) a rapid increase in the frequency and diversity of EMs at the beginning of CHL curriculum, 2) a period of stability from the second quarter onward, and 3) a divergence of frequency and diversity at the advanced level, whereby the diversity of EMs increased again, but the overall frequency of EMs remained unchanged. Significant developmental variability was also found between grammatical sub-groups of epistemic markers. Overall, the study shed light on the development of CHL learners’ pragmatic competence, and demonstrated the effectiveness of learner corpora as a research tool for studies of pragmatics learning.
About the authors
Yang Xiao-Desai is an assistant professor of Chinese at San Francisco State University, USA. Her research pertains to second language acquisition, heritage language education, and world language teacher education. She is particularly interested in issues related to learner’s affective factors and the role of technology in language learning/teaching.
Ka F. Wong is associate professor of Asian Studies and director of Chinese at St. Olaf College. His research interests and publication cover a wide range of topics including language learning and pedagogy, cultural studies, as well as transnational cinema and literature.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Dr. Naoko Taguchi and Dr. Shuai Li for their extensive and insightful feedback on this article, and thank you to Dr. David F. Huynh for his support and assistance in the learner corpus development. Any errors remain our own.
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