Semiotic Processes Of Interpreting Beijing Hutong: A Case Study Of Western Tourist Reports

The variationist sociolinguistic research in the “third wave” locates the concept of language ideology at the center of the study of social meanings engaged in the use of linguistic variables.In this process,some scholars draw on Pierce’s semiotic theory and investigate the nature of signs and sign relations,focusing on the process of iconicity of sign relations.This thesis,drawing on the new outcomes of variationist sociolinguistics and language semiotics,takes Beijing hutong as a sign of Chinese traditional culture,and via exploring the semiotic processes of interpreting Beijing hutong in western reports,discusses such academic issues as the social meanings of signs and the transformations from one sign-object relationship to another.From the perspective of sociolinguistics,this thesis illustrates the social meaning of Beijing hutong in western reports and analyzes hutong’s environment and locals’ dispositions to seek out how language ideology is worked in the differentiation of inside/outside hutong.The analysis of Peter’s Hutong Karma leads to three findings that are:(1)Beijing hutong’s architectural features,residents’ lifestyle and character dispositions are similar to the “conjecture” of “oldness” through rhematization,fractal recursivity,and erasure,which constructs the iconic relation between them,leaving other features that do not fit the schema erased;(2)with the dynamic changes of the narrator’s perspectives and stances,the inside/outside hutong differentiation axis can conflated into a higher West/East axis and be subdivided into a fractal inside/outside hutong axis and an old/new hutong axis,in which new signs and particular objects combine to form new signs indexing new objects;(3)through the alignment with Chinese readers,Peter Hessler established his “Chinese” persona in Hutong Karma,but this persona disappeared when his ideological attention moves back to the West,which is evident in his fondness for certain Americans’ talking style,constructing himself a more complex persona.By taking the abstract qualities of hutong as a starting point,the thesis holds that language ideology emerges in every comparison and interpretation and is affected by the speaker’s preexisting knowledge and present social background.At the same time,the association between linguistic form and social meaning is constructed through differentiation processes,but one that is ideologically mediated and would be transformed in continuous conjectures.