Analysis Of Language Acquisition Attitudes, Motivation And Cultural Identity In Yuenren Chao's Autobiography: First 30 Years

The theoretical study of autobiographies in the world became prevalent in 1970s, while our sholars and experts began the research in 1990s. Among many kinds of autobiographies, cross-cultural autobiographies demonstrate a clear picture of the long process of language acquisition. The exciting experiences of the writers in the language acquisition process and the contents which can resonate with readers are worthy of our attention.Among many language-acquisition autobiographies, Yuen Ren Chao's Autobiography: First 30 Years, is mainly about his experiences of acquiring different dialects in his first thirty years and his successful acquisition of English as a young man. That he became an universally recognized master of linguistics is naturally inseparable from his gift for languages, but the more important reason is that he followed the universal principles of language acquisition. He could balance the various positive factors and negative factors and then constantly improved his language proficiency in language learning. At the same time, he embraced lofty ideals and deep patriotic feelings. All these factors of prompting Zhao Yuanren to success in language acquisition will be analyzed in this thesis. With the help of appraisal theory of Halliday's functional linguistics, this thesis will analyze the appraisal language in the autobiography to reveal the characteristics in language acquisition attitude, language learning motivation and cultural identity construction.By using the three subsystems of appraisal theory, affect, judgement and appreciation, this thesis analyzes Zhao's language acquisition process in his first thirty years. His interest and sensitivities to dialects in his childhood helped him acquire many dialects and the remarks on various dialects clearly reflect his sociolinguistic attitudes. The author's remarkable accomplishments in sociolinguistics are also manifested through his accurate judgements about the dialects. As for the evaluation about his self-sentiment as a teenager, the writer highlighted interest which is an important factor of his great linguistic achievements. He mentioned his upbringing environment in his autobiography, and it had an important influence on his interest cultivation. In a word, this autobiography presents us nearly all the necessary qualites of a successful language learner and it also helps broaden learners'learning mentalities and methods, deepen learners'self-understanding and evaluation about their language acquisition.Zhao Yuanren's motivation of language acquisition is characterized with compound motivation, the co-existance of integrative motivation and instumental motivation as a boy. In his youth it was the integrative motivation that promoted his language progress. After he arrived in America and generated great interest in linguistics, the internal incentive motivation became his main force to realize his life dream. As language is closely linked with culture, language acquisition has the effect of establishing the cultural identity of a learner. In his language acquiring process, Mr. Zhao read a lot of western novels, biographies and books on Amerian history and after arriving in America he often watched western dramas, took part in various social activities. All these activities gave him a full understanding of western culture and bestowed him double identities with Chinese and western culture.This thesis traces the whole learning process of a successful language learner and basically analyzes various factors affecting his learning achievements. This kind of case study towards cross-cultural autobiographies is of great significance and offers some enlightenments for language acquisition research. Analyzing the learning experiences of autobiographical writers can widen and deepen language learners'self-assessment.