The Native English Speakers' View Of Ha Jin's English, Presented In An Entrepreneour's Story

As English has been accepted as the most widely used language in the world, the concept of'World Englishes'has come into view in the academia. Accordingly,'China English'has been discussed in relevant research areas as well. Previous researches have focused more on a contrastive study between'Standard English'and'China English', with the result of the distinctive difference between the two'Englishes'. Among the bilingual creative Chinese writers who conduct their writing in English, which is not their native language, Ha Jin is the one that has been claimed as the most successful and distinctive writer of this kind. Some research has been done concerning Ha Jin's English, mostly through the angle of how the native Chinese would think of Ha Jin's English, as well as its influence upon the standard English. However, little research has been done to see how the native English speakers think of Ha Jin's English, and whether they find China English as positive or negative in terms of its potential influence upon the native English. This paper aims at providing the answers to the above questions through a small-scale qualitative research by means of questionnaire. The research result has shown that Ha Jin's English is the most distinctive in terms of its Chinese cultural imagery, but in the meanwhile Ha Jin's English shows non-native awkwardness, which tends to cause difficulty and confusion for the native English speakers to fully understand the content of his writing. The paper has the conclusion that a balance needs to be made between the nativeness and the distinctiveness of Ha Jin's'China English'in order to gain acceptance by the native English speakers with a better mutual understanding.