| This dissertation examines local beliefs in the Mandarin Phonetic Alphabet, known as BO-PO-MO, by exploring actual teaching and learning practices at the Chinese Language Schools in Hawai'i. After two years of ethnographic fieldwork in six of the eleven local Chinese language schools in Honolulu, Hawai'i, we find that many teachers and parents have insisted in teaching local children "BO-PO-MO" instead of romanized systems because they believe "BO-PO-MO marks the most accurate/authentic pronunciation" and "BO-PO-MO facilitates the learning of Chinese literacy."; The study reviewed the historical development of "BO-PO-MO", conducted phonological analyses of BO-PO-MO spellings, and observed BO-PO-MO teaching and learning in local Chinese classrooms. Our research indicates that there are many exceptional and confusing spellings in "BO-PO-MO" and there is no evidence that "BO-PO-MO" has helped children "avoid accents". Moreover, rather than using "BO-PO-MO" or any established romanized systems, children are found to be inventing their own Chinese "literacies".; Observations in the classrooms also show that teachers have relied enormously on "shape associations" when teaching "BO-PO-MO". This strategy echoes teachers' emphasis on the "pictographic nature" of the Chinese writing system. It also helps explain many "native" phonetic distinctions made by local teachers among sounds represented by "BO-PO-MO". Such distinctions would have remained incomprehensible without identifying "shape association" as a recurrent strategy in the Chinese classrooms.; We suggest that "shape association" may be closely related to the beliefs in "BO-PO-MO" as well as in the "pictographic nature of Chinese" by many Chinese adults. Although "shape-association" may not be unique in teaching and learning Chinese, the Chinese teachers and parents are, relatively speaking, more inclined to rely on such a pictographic strategy. This can perhaps be associated with the thesis of "linguistic relativity" (Gumperz & Levinson 1996) and open a new arena for further investigation.; Finally, the study concludes that "practice" may be the key to interpret beliefs in "BO-PO-MO", in the "pictographic nature of Chinese", as well as the reliance on "shape association". Reasons given by parents and teachers in supporting "BO-PO-MO" are only "logical" to them as a result of their extensive practices with the Chinese characters. |
