A Multi-dimensional Investigation Of English Variation In Chinese Cultural Contexts

With the rapid pace of globalization, English has now become a multinational, multicultural, and multifunctional language. English globalization results in its localization and nativization, the localization and nativization of English reflects different local and cultural characteristics, as a result, the concepts of World Englishes and World English varieties have been proposed and further caused multicultural localized context. In the multicultural context, the acculturation and localization of English has aroused many scholars’enthusiasm of English variation study all over the world. However, these researches most concern are Outer Circle situations (Singapore, India, Malaysia), and chapters devote to the Expanding Circle (China, Japan, Poland), especially English in China, are proportionally fewer. Scholars have been engaging in the research of English in China for a long time and researches are productive, current researches rely heavily on insights from describing linguistic features respectively from the perspectives of historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, intercultural communication, English teaching, translation and so on. However, few researches have been devoted to expounding the acculturation and localization of English in China in term of its indispensable historical background and social-cultural context, the scattered academic exposition are more covered in phonological and lexical levels, whereas the profound and brilliant exploration are seldom covered in syntactical and discourse levels. Current studies concerning the acculturation and localization of English variations in Chinese cultural context are relatively fewer at home. This thesis makes a multi-dimensional investigation into English variations in Chinese cultural context by exploring acculturation, localization of English variations.On the basis of the sociolinguistic theories on variation studies and the achievements and in view of the limitations of previous studies on English variation in Chinese cultural context, applying the correlation between language, thought and culture and the acculturation theory on linguistic variation to conduct a further research, this thesis will purport to analyze the acculturation of English variation in Chinese cultural contexts by reflecting on the changes of English used in China within the three-dimensional contextual network, namely, from the temporal, spatial and functional dimensions proposed by Pan Zhangxian(2005) as the first analytical instrument. The distinct linguistic features of English variation in Chinese cultural context and in what senses are these localized has been described and analyzed within the framework covers three dimensions, i. e., areas of manifestation (involving linguistic features at different levels), the extent of variation from native-speaker use, and effects of communication (i e., intelligibility and acceptability) in the international context proposed by Yu Xi and Wen Qiufang (2011), as the second analytical instrument.The primary and invaluable sources of data the author uses to exemplify the features of English variation in Chinese cultural context are collected from Chinese Translators Journal, The Translator’s Guide to Chinglish, The Third Wave of Loanwords in Standard Chinese, English Translation of Chinese Neologisms and C-E Translation Studies:A Contrastive Approach. As well as presenting a wealth of fascinating data that has been accumulating from diverse situations by the author in the way of daily reading, etc. The author of the thesis selects3categories (i.e. lexical, syntactic and discourse) of Chinese English expressions, and illustrates them by typical examples, see appendixes.The findings indicate that English variations in Chinese cultural context have deeply affected by Chinese culture and Chinese ways of thinking and mainly revealed at lexical level as well as at syntactic and discourse levels. At the lexical level, they are revealed in borrowings, coinage, and semantic change reflects by Chinese culture. At the syntactic level, they are revealed in parataxis and the topic-prominent sentence structure. At the discourse level, they are revealed in spiral, inductive and paratactic discourse structure. The variations in cross-cultural communication are the results of user’s conscious or unconscious choices, which are influenced or partially governed by Chinese linguistic and cultural transfer. In addition, the localized English must conform to the two fundamental standards:intelligibility and acceptability.As to the significance of this thesis are as below:three aspects are involved. First of all, the theory foundation is mainly correlative to sociolinguistics of language variation, the correlation between language, thought and culture and the acculturation theory on linguistic variation. This thesis will be a creative contextual network from two three dimensional frameworks, which is more sophisticated to study the acculturation the localization of English in China. Secondly, English used in Chinese cultural context and the distinct linguistic features of English variation in Chinese cultural context are illustrated from the relationships between language and culture, language and social change, language and thinking, as well as language and intercultural communication with a view to achieving a more comprehensive understanding of the sociolinguistic, cultural and stylistic motivations for innovations, i,e, nativising and acculturating English in its new environment and providing insight in the complex issues involved in linguistic variation studies. Thirdly, the paper investigates the English variation in more explicitly global and local contexts, reflecting the dynamic development of variation study, which can reveal how global and local factors impinge on language variation in diverse situations, with a view to deepening and enhancing variation studies.