A Diachronic Register Variation Study Of Modern Written Chinese

Modern Chinese,gradually taking shape since the beginning of the twentieth century,develops over time,be it fast or slow,macroscopic or microscopic.Many previous studies of modern Chinese focused on the diachronic changes of words and sentence patterns,but little has been done on the evolution of discourse features over the last 100 years.This study attempts to explore the register change of modern written Chinese over the past century and examine the textual and rhetorical dimensions behind the diachronic change.Many studies on the diachronic change of modern written Chinese registers have been based on one or a few linguistic features.However,the evolution of language variety is multidimensional.Single-feature-based studies are relatively effective when just one or several linguistic features are of interest.However,they are inadequate for multidimensional studies on diachronic register variation.Many previous studies used multi-feature and multidimensional techniques to investigate the register variation in English texts,but there have been very few applications to the diachronic variation of textual and rhetorical dimensions in modern written Chinese,and the characteristics behind them.The diachronic corpus of modern written Chinese in this study covers five periods:1900-1911,1919-1930,1931-1949,1950-1966,and 1978-2012.The two research aims of this thesis are:1)examining the diachronic register variation of modern written Chinese,2)uncovering the textual and rhetorical dimensions,and exploring the trends behind the diachronic variation.Through factor analyses of the texts in the five periods,this study aims to examine the diachronic change of textual and rhetorical dimensions associated with modern Chinese registers.For the first period from 1900-1911,we obtained three dimensions:"narration interspersed with persuasion","persuasion with logos",and "comprehensive persuasion".Factor analysis of texts in the second period(1919-1930)generated the same dimensions as the first period,but in a different sequential order:"narration interspersed persuasion","comprehensive persuasion",and "persuasion with logos".The third period(1931-1949)included:"narration interspersed with persuasion" and "persuasion with ethos".Then from 1950 to 1966,Chinese writings became more interactive and colloquial,and the dimensions for this period were:"narration interspersed with persuasion","interaction",and "persuasion with pathos".Textual dimensions for the last period(1978-2012)were:"interaction","comprehensive persuasion",and "narration".Synthesizing the analyses of textual and rhetorical dimensions in five periods,this study discovered that first,there is a trend of register explicitation as new textual and rhetorical dimensions continued to emerge over time.Besides,"narration" and "persuasion" divorced themselves from "narration interspersed with persuasion" and became independent textual and rhetorical dimensions over time.Second,modern written Chinese became increasingly interactive and colloquial.Finally,the diachronic variation of textual and rhetorical dimensions was closely connected with the social and historical events in each period.Adopting multi-feature statistical techniques,this study provided a comprehensive analysis of the diachronic variation of textual and rhetorical dimensions.Moreover,this study has also made detailed contextual analysis on the most prominent linguistic features in each period.