Can a language spread from bottom upwards? A study on the spread of standard Chinese in Johor, Malaysia
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Wang Xiaomei
Abstract
Language spread as defined by (Cooper, Robert Leon. 1982. A framework for the study of language spread. In Robert L. Cooper (eds.), Language spread: Studies in diffusion and social change, 5–36. Bloomington: Indiana University Press) became a new research branch after (Fishman, Joshua Aaron. 1989. The spread of English as a new perspective for the study of ‘Language Maintenance and Language Shift.’ In Joshua A. Fishman (eds.), Language and ethnicity in minority sociolinguistic perspective, 32–263. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters) seminal work. In literature, most of the languages in spread are European languages such as English and Spanish. (Fishman, Joshua Aaron. 1989. The spread of English as a new perspective for the study of ‘Language Maintenance and Language Shift.’ In Joshua A. Fishman (eds.), Language and ethnicity in minority sociolinguistic perspective, 32–263. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters) contended that the spread of English was a top-down process. (Garcia, Ofelia.2002. Language spread and its study: Narrowing its spread as a scholarly field. In Robert B. Kaplan (eds.), The oxford handbook of applied linguistics, 352–364. New York: Oxford University Press) also proposed that language spread started first in high societal domains. However, according to our study in Malaysia, standard Chinese undertook a different route in its process of spread. It spreads its use first in high domains such as the education domain and then in low domains such as the family domain. This paper aims to answer the research question whether it is possible for a language to spread from bottom upwards as compared to the well-known top-down spread. The empirical basis of this paper is a language survey conducted by the researcher in the state of Johor, Malaysia. In this study, questionnaires, home interviews and un-intrusive observations were used as the research methods. By comparing the spread process of English and Chinese—both transnational languages due to globalization–this paper will contribute to the theory of language spread and identify the differences between the spread of English and the spread of Chinese.
摘要
库伯（1982）所定义的语言传播在费希曼（1989）的文章之后成为一个新的研究领域。现有的文献大多是关于欧洲语言的传播，例如英语和西班牙语。费希曼（1989）认为英语的传播是一个自上而下的过程。加西亚（2002）也提出语言传播往往从较高的语言使用域开始。然而，根据我们在马来西亚的研究，华语的传播走了一条不同的路线。它首先在较高的语言使用域扩展其使用，然后又在较低的语言使用域如家庭扩散。本文主要的研究问题为：鉴于自上而下的语言传播早已为人熟知，语言是否有可能自下而上传播呢？本文的实证基础是作者于马来西亚柔佛州所进行的一项语言调查，主要的研究方法为问卷调查、访谈以及非干预式观察法。英语和华语的传播都因全球化而有跨国界的特点，本文通过比较二者传播过程的异同，冀对语言传播理论有所贡献。
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