Cheng Xianghui:a Linguist With Progressive And Innovative Spirit

As one of the most famous linguists in China, Professor Cheng Xianghui has made outstanding achievements in his field of research. This article combs through Cheng’s research approach, academic experience, theories and academic contributions in order to extract learnings for other researchers.The thesis is divided into five parts. The first part is an overview. The author introduces a comprehensive list of Cheng’s research, lays out the current research context, and explains the reason for this current paper, the methodology and approach taken, and its value.Chapter two is an overview of Cheng’s academic activities, including his education, research and other academic work. One section describes Cheng’s social contributions and applications of his theories after he settled in Macao; namely, his activist work to promote the political status of the Chinese language, his research on languages in Macao, his work to build Macao as a central exchange of academic research, and his attempts to promote research and cultural dialogues in Macao.Chapter three talks about Cheng’s main achievements and contributions to Linguistics, including his work on Chinese ontology, Chinese Stylistics, and Social Linguistics. His major research in Linguistics includes:Confucius’s view on language, dialects in Qinghai, Chinese phonetics, and Chinese philology. His main contributions to Chinese Stylistics include:formulating the "Colloquialism First" theory, pointing out the difference between colloquial styles and written forms, systematically cataloging different literary styles, and advocating for the empirical method in Linguistics research. His main contributions to Social Linguistics include: coming up with a dialectical view of the relationship between norm and variations, building a scientific explanation of bilingualism, promoting the co-existence of Mandarin and dialects, advocating for a rational approach to influences from foreign languages, and establishing the "Freedom of Character" (i.e., simplified vs. traditional Chinese characters) movement.Chapter four argues that the reasons for the Cheng’s accomplishments are multifold. The reasons listed are:passion and perseverance, pragmatism, ability to synthesize and combine disparate theories and thoughts, independent thinking, and lastly, constant renewal to keep up with the times.Chapter five recaps the work done in this paper, points out why this work is important, acknowledges the deficiencies of this research, and states the research direction in the future.