| In a culturally and linguistically diverse society, two or more languages and cultures can come into contact both within a society, and among its members. Pidgin is a simplified, reduced, and hybridized language used by people who come into contact with two or more languages. Pidginization is a process of simplifying and reducing the second language, and of hybridizing different languages. In research discussed here, pidginization is regarded as a sociocultural phenomenon. The ways in which the process of pidginization interfaces with complex sociocultural factors were uncovered by constructing a qualitative study of six Taiwanese speakers who have experience with pidginization, based on three underlying philosophic theories---ethnography, symbolic interactionism, and critical theory.;Taiwanese speakers' sociocultural distance from native speakers of American English or mainstream American society intertwined closely with sociocultural matters they perceived, and their sociocultural status. These sociocultural factors either promoted or inhibited their pidginization. My research concluded that the sociocultural distance strongly affected pidginization. The interdependent sociocultural matters perceived by Taiwanese speakers affected their sociocultural distance from native speakers of American English. Chinese Pidgin English consequently declined with the process of decreasing sociocultural distance. The goal for exploring the interface between sociocultural distance and pidginization in their lives in Happy Valley can be achieved through discovering the following sociocultural dimensions: cultural differences and cultural integration patterns, power structure, intra- and inter-group dynamics and pidginization, interactions, and sociocultural meaning.;All of the Taiwanese speakers feel varying degrees of marginalization. Their pidginization often goes along with sociocultural marginalization. They usually reach a double crisis---the crisis of pidginization and marginalization, and try painfully to pass them.;A pidgin is widely regarded as a deficient language and related to lower ability or intelligence and the lower class. I found that pidginization has nothing to do with linguistic myth. Instead, pidgin is a language useful in communication which set as a bridge between Taiwanese and American speakers. Moreover, Chinese Pidgin English is rich in the characteristics of Chinese usage and viewpoint. Pidginization conveys rich sociocultural meanings, and needs to be explored in a view of society and culture. |
