Abstract
What makes a variety of English distinct from others lies not only in its phonology, lexis, syntax, discourse, and pragmatics, but also in the distinctive ways that its speakers encode their cultural conceptualisations. There has been considerable research on different varieties of English at both linguistic and cultural levels. In particular, over the last three to four decades, researchers have investigated features of Chinese English, perceptions of and attitudes towards Chinese English, as well as implications of Chinese English for English language teaching and intercultural communication involving Chinese speakers of English. However, a review of the literature reveals little research on cultural conceptualisations in Chinese English. ‘Cultural conceptualisations’ encompass cultural schemas, cultural categories, and cultural conceptual metaphors. In this chapter, we adopt a Cultural Linguistics approach to researching Chinese English, using cultural conceptualisations as a framework to analyse empirical data, including interviews, newspaper articles, textbooks, literary works by Chinese English authors, and online media articles in English about China. Towards the end of the chapter, we also explore implications of researching cultural conceptualisations in Chinese English for English language teaching (ELT) in China.
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Appendix
Type | Quantity | Details | Code |
|---|---|---|---|
Interviews | 3 | Informant 1: female, in her early 50s; born in Hubei province, China; translator. | I-1 |
Informant 2: female, around 20 years old; born in Heilongjiang province, China; an exchange student in a university in Australia. | I-2 | ||
Informant 3: male, in his late thirties; born in Shanghai, China; a visiting scholar/professor in a university in Australia. | I-3 | ||
Newspaper articles | 3 | 1: State gifts give new look at China, by Zhao Shengnan, 01/09/2014, China Daily | N-1 |
2: In Chinese marriages family still comes first, by wpywood, 04/09/2014, China Daily | N-2 | ||
3: Cover Story: All in the family, 15–21/08/2014, by Krishna Kumar VR, in New Delhi, for China Daily Asia Weekly | N-3 | ||
Textbooks | 5 | New Senior English for China, Student’s Book 1–5, 2007, Liu Daoyi, Gong Yafu, Zheng Wangquan, Dodie Brooks, Rick Sjoquist, and Sandra L. Richley (Eds.) People’s Education Press | T-1 |
T-2 | |||
T-3 | |||
T-4 | |||
T-5 | |||
Works by Chinese authors written in English | 3 | 1: Moment in Peking, by L. Y. T. (Lin Yutang), 1999, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. | W-1 |
2: Waiting, by Ha Jin 2000, Vintage. | W-2 | ||
3: The Unwalled City: a Novel of Hong Kong, by Xu Xi, 2001, Chameleon Press. | W-3 | ||
Media websites | 2 | 1: English version of the Chinese government website (http://english.gov.cn/). | M-1 |
2: An Australia based ‘China Story’ website (http://www.thechinastory.org/) containing Yearbooks of the ‘China Story’ (e.g., Yearbook 2012: Red Rising, Red Eclipse, and Yearbook 2013: Civilizing China). | M-2 |
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Xu, Z., Sharifian, F. (2017). Cultural Conceptualisations in Chinese English: Implications for ELT in China. In: Xu, Z., He, D., Deterding, D. (eds) Researching Chinese English: the State of the Art. Multilingual Education, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53110-6_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53110-6_14
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