Language Use And Language Identity In The American Chinese Folk’s Community

Purpose of study.This study aims to discuss the relationship between language use and external social factors in the American Chinese folk’s community,reveals how the global Chinese community evolve.Results of this thesis are as follows:(1)bilingual people occupied the great proportion in the Chinese community;(2)language use in different domain has its graded structure:English,as the high level language,generally used in the internal and external association circumstance,especially is the communication means with supreme frequency in the formal language communication occasions.The range of use of the standard Chinese language,considered as the middle-level language of Chinese community,weigh against English,used with the highest use frequency in relatively informal.The scope of using Cantonese less than English and the standard Chinese and English,but has the largest number of speakers among many kinds of Chinese dialects.At the same time,some other dialects such as Hakka,which are identified as low languages in Chinese community,theirs opportunities are obviously limited and appear atrophy in the Chinese family;(3)Chinese mingled with English words is a prevalent Phenomenon in American Chinese community;(4)Chinese people show marked intergenerational differences in their language ability,language use and language to varying degrees,the older Chinese are,the more likely that they master the higher degree of dialects and use them with more frequency than younger Chinese,On the contrary,the lower degree of English and the standard Chinese and use them with less frequency.(5)In addition,such as sex,age,mother language,ancestral home,cultural degree,the length of Chinese’ stay in the United States,immigration age,time they spend with the languages,the type of living in the U.S.and so on that influence their use of language;(6)there are relationships between language use,language attitudes,language ability and competence,subjective assessment about the social influence of their language family and ethnic identity,and they make Chinese community present some "consistency" and "difference" within limits.Meaning of study.The research has some practical value to rich the theory of Speech community and the spread of the Chinese planning.At the theoretical aspect,this paper can not only enrich the research content on the American Chinese immigrants,but also can accumulate the original material and provide a case of comparison on multilingualism and language identity of overseas Chinese,especially a supplement about research on the layer of structure and evolution mechanism of speech community.In the application part,this paper reveals the status of language life and the problems about native language maintaining and cultural inheritance of American-born Chinese reflects different language competition situation of overseas Chinese society.It is helpful to offer theoretical foundation for the government’s supervision department to make relevant policies corresponding spreading Chinese overseas.Main ideas of study.This paper argues that,"Huayu identity" not only means speaking and give a very positive evaluation on mandarin or other Chinese dialects,but it also should be understood as an awareness of Chinese identity,community members,and acknowledge the status and value of different ethnic group with Huayu as the representative in political,economic status and ethnic culture.Consequently"Huayu Identity" should be regarded as the practice of community members rather than fixed social definitions of category;it is a reflection of the relationship built by speakers’ using Chinese languages in the process of social interaction.And it actually is a kind of dynamic stereoscopic structure model,which presents using Huayu by some speakers,aiding by the interaction between the Chinese language and social elements.The synopses of the 7 chapters in this thesis are as follows:Chapter 1 gives an outline of the thesis and introduces the background,research issue,the meaning of this research,research methods and innovations,finally definitions of specific key words.Chapter 2 is a systematic review of all the literature about the development of theory of Speech Community and empirical study,as well as research hypothesis.Chapter 3 centers around five key elements of Speech community,on the history of the Chinese community in the United States and developing status.Chapter 4 provides significant findings of the survey on language use and language identity of American Chinese Community.Chapter 5explores the influence factors of language use and language identity reveals the relationship between language use,language attitudes and language identity,so as to demonstrate consistency of the Chinese community.Chapter 6 reconstructs a new Global Chinese Community Model on the theoretical basis of summary the meaning of "Chinese language identity",and gives a prediction its evolution mechanism.Chapter 7 is conclusion,mainly limitations of the study and prospection.