A Study On The Ecosystem Of Chinese Lettered Words From The Perspective Of Ecolinguistics

In the late Qing Dynasty,foreign languages have already appeared in China.Especially after the reform and opening up and with the arrival of the information age,the interaction between Chinese and foreign languages has become closer and more frequent.Subsequently,Chinese language system changes,and new elements are gradually born,one of which is the Chinese lettered words,an indispensable part of modern Chinese,such as “KPI”,“B 超”,“SCI”,or “HSK”.In the ecolinguistic view,they are deemed as the result of the interaction between exotic species(foreign words),indigenous species(Chinese characters)and Chinese local ecological environment.The ecological system of Chinese lettered words,as a subsystem of Chinese ecological system,is composed of two parts: one is Chinese lettered words,and the other is the ecological environment where they are produced and used.However,by literature review,it still lacks the study on Chinese lettered words in the revelation and analysis of their ecological system to grasp their overall state in modern Chinese.Under the theoretical framework of ecolinguistics of Haugenian Approach,this thesis adopts the theory of ecological contact of language,ecological state of language,and ecological environment of language in ecosystem,in order to reveal the overall state of the ecosystem of Chinese lettered words.To achieve the goal,the following research questions will be answered one by one: 1)what are the causes,types and tendency of the ecological contact between Chinese and foreign languages for Chinese lettered words? 2)what is the comprehensive ecological state of Chinese lettered words in their ecosystem? And what characteristics of Chinese lettered words does it reflect? 3)what is the ecological environment in their ecosystem and its impact on Chinese lettered words? To answer these questions,the present study employs both qualitative and quantitative,synchronic and diachronic approaches to describe and analyze the data which is acquired from the corpus BCC(Beijing Language and Culture University Corpus Center)from 1946 to 2015 and The Dictionary of Practical Chinese Lettered Words(Hou,2014),under the guidance of Liu’s(2002)definition and Hou and Teng’s(2016)stratification of Chinese lettered words.It is found that,firstly,the two main causes of ecological contact for the generation of Chinese lettered words are the socio-culture and the language users.The types of ecological contact between English and Chinese for Chinese lettered words mainly contain superficial and deep contact,indirect and direct contact,individual and group contact,multidirectional contact,active contact and short-term contact.The tendency of ecological contact is towards the language mixture of Mandarin Chinese with English in the mainland,while Hong Kong and Macao regions have already formed multilingualism.Secondly,the ecosystem of Chinese lettered words is composed of Chinese lettered words and their ecological environment where they are situated,including the natural,social,cultural,and human environment.The present ecological state of Chinese lettered words demonstrates their lexical diversity and dynamics in sources,forms and meanings at the synchronic and diachronic level.Thirdly,the impact of the ecological environment on Chinese lettered words indicates a complicated and close relationship between the internal components of the ecosystem.The thorough study on the ecosystem of Chinese lettered words contributes to the understanding and monitoring of the internal states and changes within the ecosystem of Chinese lettered words,and even the potential influence on the whole ecosystem of Chinese.The significance of the present study lies in two aspects.First,theoretically speaking,it provides a new perspective for the study of Chinese lettered words,a hybrid by the ecological contact of Chinese and foreign languages,and in turn,the study of the ecosystem of Chinese lettered words adds the description of a lexical ecosystem in Chinese to the research of ecolinguistics by language interaction.Second,practically speaking,the study affords certain implications for the Chinese language protection,language diversity,language regulation and language policy-making.