A Study On The Formation Of China English Lexis From The Perspective Of Ecolinguistics

Ecolinguistics,also known as linguistic ecology,is a newly emerging interdiscipline and a new branch of linguistics,which combines ecology and linguistics and studies the interaction between language and ecology.Ecolinguistics begins with Haugen's metaphor,in which he makes the analogy between any given language and its ecology to biological species and their ecology.This new discipline has established its theories after many years' development.Based on Haugen's notion about two key factors of language ecology,the people who use and transmit language in China English ecology refer to Chinese people or those with Chinese backgrounds and the society refers to the Chinese society.Consequently,there will be many new concepts and things rooted in the unique Chinese socioculture and Chinese peculiar cognitive patterns.The major English linguistic form of the concepts and things unique to China is China English lexis.It is maintained that China English lexis can be divided into two levels.The first level refers to the widely-accepted loanwords,loanshift words and loanblends included to various dictionaries domestically and abroad.The second level refers to all the loanwords,loanshift words and loanblends which are used in international communication but have not been included to dictionaries yet.The current study in the thesis includes all the lexis at those two levels.In the current study,an interpretative qualitative research method is employed through combining literature analysis and examples analysis.Based on the entirely new theoretical perspective of ecolinguistics,this thesis chiefly studies the formation of China English lexis,including transliteration,loanshift and loanblend from three dimensions of language ecology,namely symbolic ecology,sociocultural ecology and cognitive ecology.More specifically,the thesis studies how the critical factors in symbolic,sociocultural and cognitive ecology interactThe study on China English lexis is of great significance to the study on China English.This study explores the formation of China English lexis from the perspective of ecolinguistics with the expectation that it may broaden the approaches of China English lexis study and provide some theoretical basis to the translation of vocabulary unique to China and inspiration for Chinese culture transmission.