Volume 1, Issue 1 -

From the 1870s into the 1920s, Baptist and Presbyterian missionaries in the Chaoshan region devoted a substantial amount of time and effort to creating a body of Christian texts in written forms of Chaoshanese, and also educating Chinese Christians in this written language. However, the strategies used by these two Protestant groups differed sharply, with the Baptists taking a culturally conservative approach and the Presbyterians adopting a much more radical one. This paper reconstructs the story of written Chaoshanese as used by Protestant missionaries, examining what these “written Chaoshanese” varieties consisted of, and the degree to which they differed from other written forms of Chinese. It also considers what insights this case study may contribute to our understanding of the factors that drive or retard the growth of written vernaculars.

The Hong Kong speech community distinguishes itself from others in China by predominantly speaking Cantonese, a South China regional variety which is mutually unintelligible with Putonghua (or Mandarin), China’s official, national language. While Hong Kong is officially (but ambiguously) bilingual in 中文 ‘Chinese’ and 英文 ‘English’, yet simply in terms of its numbers of speakers, social domains in which it is spoken, and deliberate choice by the broadcast media, Cantonese unquestionably serves as Hong Kong’s de facto official spoken language. Other Chinese varieties (or dialects) and non-Chinese languages are spoken in the community, although the numbers of their speakers are relatively small. For both pedagogical and political reasons, schools have been switching from Cantonese mother-tongue instruction to Putonghua. Other language-education issues being addressed by the authorities are demands by Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities to learn to read and write standard Chinese through a comprehensive curriculum for Chinese as a second language and an end to segregated schools.

This paper examines the language practices among speakers of Hakka in Hong Kong, a minority Chinese variety still found in the territory. These speakers were largely monolingual a few decades ago but are now primarily bilingual in Hakka and Cantonese as the community shifts towards the latter, the dominant societal language. To explore the process and dynamics of this language shift, the present study adopted an ethnographic approach for observing the actual bilingual behaviours of individuals and families in the community. The informant sample comprised 32 speakers aged between 9 and 82 from nine separate families across Hong Kong. Data was collected through a combination of participant observation, informal interviews and conversational exchanges in the informants’ homes. Examination of their patterns of language choice and language use shows that most of the speakers use Cantonese-dominant patterns, and are ‘shifters’ rather than ‘maintainers’ of the Hakka language; the shift is clearly generation and age-related. The paper also illustrates how bilingual speakers make use of code-switching between Hakka and Cantonese to achieve various discourse purposes in their everyday conversations, suggesting that even among the ‘language shifters’, Hakka remains an important linguistic resource.

A question which is frequently asked in discussions about the future roles of English and Chinese (Modern Standard Chinese or Putonghua and often also referred to as Mandarin) in the Asia-Pacific region is whether Chinese will replace English as the primary regional language or lingua franca. In this article, I shall first consider the roles that each language is playing in China itself and within the Asia-Pacific region. I shall argue that it is important to take these languages together, as the combination of Modern Standard Chinese and English is threatening regional languages, including other major Chinese languages such as Cantonese. In dealing with these two major languages in combination, I shall also consider how each language has influenced and continues to influence the other linguistically, illustrating this with examples at the levels of lexis, syntax, rhetoric and pragmatic norms. I shall conclude by tentatively suggesting how the roles of these two languages may develop in future, and the potential sociolinguistic consequences of this.

As globalization presses on in China a market economy and democracy have been developed, and ordinary people obtained opportunities at many levels. One of them is their tangible access to media networks, computer facilities, online technologies, and global information exchange, which leads to the rise and expansion of Chinese Internet Language (CIL). Drawing on theoretical perspectives from globalization research, such as globalization and transformation (Steger 2009), as well as globalization and language (Fairclough 2006, 2009), this study intends to examine the emerging CIL and its role in social change. Taking a globalization and language approach, this study seeks to answer questions such as: What characterizes the CIL? How does the CIL reflect the changing social conditions in contemporary China? And how does the cyber community generate new public discourse that drives the changing China? Data used for this study are from three major sources: (1) The corpus-based annual national reports entitled The Language Situation in China 《中国语言生活状况报告》 Zhongguo Yuyan Shenghuo Zhuangkuang Baogao from 2005 to 2013 (English version in Volumes 1 and 2 of Language Policies and Practices in China , Yuming Li and Wei Li, 2013, 2014), (2) the Semi-Annual Report on International Development in China by CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center), and (3) recent Chinese publications, online or printed. Collectively, the data indicate that, with globalization rapidly changing and seriously challenging China, its social conditions and people’s life chances are radically changing, which are measured, evaluated, and reflected on by the language use of grassroots people that is marked with innovations, catch words, and novel forms. Officially branded as low standard and crude, CIL binds together a Chinese-speaking cyber community that generates new public discourse as the pushing hand and uncompromising challenger of the social change “from below.”

The growing body of research on Chinese as an international (or “global”) language examines linguistic, psycholinguistic, social-psychological, and orthographic aspects of acquisition primarily. There has been relatively little critical discussion or analysis of the larger social context and discourses in which Chinese language education is embedded. However, recently sociocultural, discursive, and critical aspects of the teaching, learning, and use of Chinese as an additional language have begun to receive more attention. This study analyzes circulating discourses, ideologies, and tropes related to Chinese in news media, as one means by which information and perspectives are spread by media and by which public attitudes and policy decisions are (recursively) shaped or reproduced. To this end, a large sample of English-medium news reports of Chinese language education in three Anglophone countries was created and analyzed for the years 2004 to 2012. The findings revealed that reports dealing with Chinese education tended to fall into one of several major tropes, which we have roughly classified as “hope,” “hype,” and “fear,” distinctions that parallel existing models of cyclical or amplified media coverage of innovations or otherwise newsworthy events. The sociopolitically and socioeconomically motivated occurrence of these tropes in the media, combined with the novelty of the Chinese language itself, a historically less frequently taught language in comparison with various European languages, constituted a consistent and recurring narrative. Thus, the shifting representations of Chinese learning in the media tended to appear as corollaries or “side stories” servicing the needs of larger geopolitical events and perceived or desired changes in public sentiment. These trends and their significance are illustrated and discussed in relation to Global Chinese.

This paper examines the compliments and compliment responses of Singapore Chinese university students from naturally occurring data. Both Mainland China and Taiwan have received more attention in compliments research. Unlike China and Taiwan, Singapore is in the outer circle (Kachru 1992) of the Mandarin speaking community. Although the population of Singapore comprised of three-quarters of ethnic Chinese, Mandarin is taught in school as a second language with the medium of instruction of all other subjects being English (see Lee 2012). The different language environment and cultural bearings from the Mainland Chinese and Taiwan Chinese are reflected in this study. This study shows that unlike Taiwan college students (Wang and Tsai 2003) whose preferred compliment topic is Appearance, Singapore Chinese students prefer to compliment on Ability/Performance. Contrary to all other studies on Chinese compliment responses which show that Chinese are more modest and therefore tend to Reject compliments, this study shows that there are overall more Accept compliment responses especially between close friends. This is due to the predominant English-speaking environment in Singapore. In addition, Appreciation Token which is known to be a western response to compliments is also used more frequently by Singapore Chinese students. The linguistic features of code-switching to English and the presence of local discourse particles (from southern Chinese dialects and Malay language) are unique features of the diasporic colloquial Mandarin spoken in Singapore.

The arrival of around 100,000 Chinese male workers, in Peru between 1849 and 1874 as indentured labor created particularly difficult conditions for the emergence and development of a Chinese community. Arriving without women, the majority of the Chinese founded families in Peru. To conserve a blood link with their Chinese identity, many sought to marry young mixed blood Chinese-Peruvian girls. However, to make up a Chinese community, a Chinese education was considered essential for the transmission and preservation of cultural values and language. There were several attempts to create a Chinese school for the children of the Emperor’s subjects, first by the church in 1882 and later by Chinese officials as early as 1885, following the model of San Francisco and Havana. This article examines the historical development between 1870 and 1930 of the efforts the Chinese community in Peru made in setting up Chinese language education and community associations and the institutions that supported the development.

摘要 关于各地对华语的不同称名，大致有两种意见，一种认为是同名异实，另一种则视之为同一语言在不同言语社区的变体。对于华语本身，人们的认识有广义狭义之分，另外不同国家和地区的人的理解也不完全相同。华语有历史和现实两个基础。所谓历史基础，是指各地华语均是由大致形成于清末民初的传统国语分化发展而来的；所谓现实基础，则是指中国大陆地区的普通话，这一点可以从与基础方言的关系、普通话的国际地位、汉语国际传播的实际和海外华语的现实及发展等方面找到充分的依据。基于这一认识，文章提出一个口号：尊重历史，正视现实。另外文章还指出，观察和分析华语，应该有历史和现实两个视角，或者说华语有历时和共时两个维度。

摘要 汉语/中文/华语将逐渐成为各国学习的热门语言, 今后汉语教学在全世界范围内将会有更大的发展。汉语教学, 无论是语音、词汇、语法教学, 要不折不扣地完全按普通话标准来要求, 事实上难以做到。汉语教学所教、所学的汉语/中文/华语, 在理论上可以明确规定 “要以中国本土的普通话为标准”, 但是实际教学中应允许有一定的弹性, 而不必过于死抠。“大华语” 虽然是一个抽象概括、人为设定的假想性的概念, 但是将这一概念引入汉语教学中有好处, 有助于增强世界华人的凝聚力和认同感, 有助于建立和谐的华人社会, 更有助于推进世界范围的汉语教学。

摘要 本文讨论汉语的国际形象问题。语言形象是由语言所属国家的形象、语言的有关状况和人们有意识的塑造等因素相互作用形成的。这些因素造就了法语 “优美” 、 “文明” 的形象、英语 “国际化” 、 “现代化” 的形象, 而英语在国际应用中逐步超越法语, 表明了 “实用性” 的国际语言选择趋势。汉语现在的国际形象可概括为 “神奇、经济红利、难学”, 应在此基础上采取各种举措, 使其嬗变为 “经济红利+魅力文化” 的形象, 且要破除 “汉语难学” 的印象。一种合适的、正面的语言形象, 对于汉语的国际传播具有十分重要的意义。

摘要 双语政策长期以来是新加坡教育制度的基石。身为新加坡的开国元首，李光耀在新加坡语言政策的制定上扮演着关键性的角色，他在其回忆录和其他相关著作中的重要讲话，论述了新加坡华语政策与规划背后的硬道理。随着新加坡华族家庭常用语出现 “脱华入英” 的趋势，华语教学正面临巨大的挑战，但同时因中国崛起成为全球第二大经济体，华语教学也迎来新机遇。