Chinese Pidgin English Research Articles

Englishes in China: Evolution and Recognition in World Englishes

This study offers an in-depth examination of the development of “China English” (CE) within the framework of World Englishes (WE). Tracing the historical trajectory of English in China, from its origins in Chinese Pidgin English to the contemporary manifestations of CE, the paper conducts a comprehensive analysis of its various stages. Situating CE within the broader context of WE, the study engages in debates regarding its recognition as a distinct variety of English. Moreover, it investigates the process of nativization of CE, highlighting its phonological features, lexicon enriched with cultural nuances and discourse patterns shaped by sociocultural dynamics. Despite ongoing debates surrounding the legitimacy of CE, the paper argues that its evolution conforms to established parameters of nativization, thereby establishing it as a legitimate variant within the global landscape of English. Beyond linguistic examination, the study emphasizes the significant role of CE in facilitating international English communication amidst China's expanding global influence. By delving into the intricate interplay of language, culture, and identity in our interconnected world, this research provides valuable insights into the evolving dynamics of global communication.

Sinicizing European Languages: Lexicographical and Literary Practices of Pidgin English in Nineteenth-Century China

Abstract This article reconsiders the social, economic, and literary significance of Chinese Pidgin English (CPE) in Chinese society by exploring lexicographical and literary practices of pidgin in nineteenth-century China. Resituating the history of CPE in Chinese language history, this article problematizes the concept of pidgin and pursues three arguments. First, the author maintains that CPE arose from the marginalized status of the Euro-American traders who were restricted from learning the Chinese language in Canton. Second, by exploring foreign-language glossaries, this article foregrounds the key role of sinographs and Chinese topolects in mediating and remolding foreign languages. Last, by examining the appropriation of foreign sounds in Cantonese folk songs and Pan Youdu's poetry, this article demonstrates the complex flow of these sounds among different languages and the power of pidgin in transgressing linguistic boundaries.

The creation of Chinese personae in Steinbeck’s fiction

This article discusses Steinbeck’s linguistic creation of Chinese personae in his fiction, which develops from the early practice of using silence in ‘Johnny Bear’ (1938) to chronologically progressive engagement with Chinese Pidgin English (CPE) in Cannery Row (1945) and East of Eden (1952). This change is evident from the increase of CPE dialogues in his later works and best exemplified in the turn to taking non-standard English as a key concern by investing style-shifting with stylistic and thematic meaning in East of Eden. Silence and implicatures are strategically employed in ‘Johnny Bear’ to keep the narrative suspense and broach the antinarratable subject of interracial romance and illegitimate pregnancy so as not to offend the reader. Steinbeck’s later experimentation with CPE demonstrates conformity and discrepancy with sociolinguistic observations, whilst in his representation of CPE the author uses metalanguage to guide readers towards a better understanding of this language variety and a sympathetic interpretation of the Chinese characters. Existing alongside real sociolinguistic systems, the ficto-linguistic system in Steinbeck’s fiction subtly critiques the supposedly ‘correct’ language expected of ethnic groups and skilfully denounces discriminatory racial distinctions. The author’s incorporation of Chinese presence and CPE into his writings serves the grander scheme of scrutinizing American identity and society.

Reconstructing Chinese Pidgin English phonology on the basis of written sources

"This paper is an attempt at outlining the phonology of Chinese Pidgin English, including its syllable structure, with an emphasis on the onset and the coda. Since Chinese Pidgin English is an extinct variety, the only available sources are written records such as magazine articles (e.g. in The Chinese Repository), literary works, travelogues, and letters. Reconstructing the phonology of Chinese Pidgin English on the basis of the orthography used in these sources raises the issues of the reliability of the sources and of the methodological implications. These are addressed in light of the caveats formulated by Mühlhäusler (1997), Baker and Winer (1999), Avram (2000), among others. In line with the principle of sociolinguistic accountability, all tokens in the samples of Chinese Pidgin English are included in the analysis as well as all the contexts where they might have appeared. In addition, a comparison will be made with other contemporary records of Chinese Pidgin English, with the phonology of Hong Kong English (Setter et al. 2010) and with the L2 phonology of Chinese learners of English. Such a comparison is certainly not the perfect equivalent of Rickford’s (1986) “feedback from current usage”, given that Chinese Pidgin English is no longer spoken. However, this approach is warranted by the so-called “uniformitarian principle” (Labov 1972), which posits that current patterns are similar to those that operated in the past."

張愛玲的“姘”字練習：《桂花蒸阿小悲秋》的文學實驗

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.
 以張愛玲短篇小說《桂花蒸 阿小悲秋》爲主要文本，分別從“語言姘合”、“男女姘合”、“翻譯姘合”三個面向，可以探討語言文字、性別關係與跨語際翻譯實踐所可能展現的交織力量。首先，小說中上海話的此起彼落，洋涇浜英文的翻來覆去，以及各種古典小說詞語的摻雜，是新與舊、中與西、高與低之間的“姘”字練習與文學實驗。其次，重新歷史化與政治化的“上海女傭”的出現，結合阿小與阿小男人的關係，展現出城市空間中男女社交、婚姻形態、家庭組合、經濟生活所給出的一種新形態可能。再次，聚焦於張愛玲自譯該小說的英文版本“Shame, Amah”，並從此翻譯文本中擇選出幾個字作爲“文本表面”，可以展現帝國殖民主義在不同地理區域的文化流動，如何將“根源”化爲“路徑”。透過此三個部份的分析，能夠有效揭示張愛玲文學書寫中語言姘合、性別姘居與文化翻譯彼此之間互文交織的變化與不確定性。
 This essay studies Eileen Chang’s short story “Steaming Osmanthus Blossoms: A Xiao’s Lament for the Autumn” as a central text, in an attempt to explore the potential power of language. It is interwoven with gender relationships and the translingual practice of translation through three aspects of pin (“pairing up”), namely, “linguistic assemblage,” “male-female cohabitation,” and “translative complication.” Part I will focus on the mixture of Shanghai dialect, Chinese Pidgin English, and expressions from classical Chinese novels in this short story as a pin exercise of linguistic assemblage and a literary experiment between old and new, Chinese and Western, high and low. Part II will highlight the context of Shanghai urban modernity to re-historicize and re-politicize the emergence of “Shanghai Housemaid.” It will take the relationship between A Xiao and her man as a new form of cohabitation by which we redefine the social, marital, familial, and economic life between the sexes in urban space. Part III will focus on the English version of this short story, “Shame, Amah,” translated by Chang herself. It will highlight several words in the English version and treat them respectively as “textual surfaces” to map out various complications created by the cultural flow of colonial imperialism among different geographical areas, and thus to explore how the “root” becomes “routes.” Through these analyses, the present paper aims to effectively explore the changing and indeterminate intertextuality of language, gender relationships, and cultural translations disclosed in Chang’s literary writing.

"China English" and ELT in China: Global Vision and Local Spirit

"China English" is an objective reality, which is an English variety in China. It is different from other varieties such as "Cantonese English", "Chinese Pidgin English", "Chinglish". In China, "China English" needs to be integrated into ELT, which not only helps to make up for the gap in the cultural exchange between China and the West, but also is conducive to the spread of Chinese culture. It is the best English carrier for Chinese culture. Although "China English" is not yet a national variety of English, its importance is self-evident. Meanwhile, it also brings some enlightenment to ELT in China.

Consonant Alternations of Chinese Pidgin English in The Chinese and English Instructor (1862)

Consonant Alternations of Chinese Pidgin English in The Chinese and English Instructor (1862)

The emergence ofso-complementation in Chinese Pidgin English

AbstractSentential complementation is generally unmarked in Chinese Pidgin English (ChnP). However, around the middle of the 19th century, the wordsobegan to be used as a complementizer. This paper focuses on the origins ofsoas a complementizer in ChnP. An examination ofsoand another closely related expressionso fashion(‘so, like this’) shows that their meanings and functions can largely be attributed to the corresponding expressions in the source languages, namely Cantonesegam2(‘so, like this’) and Englishsoin its anaphoric function. As Cantonesegam2and Englishsoare not complementizers, it is hypothesized thatso-complementation is the result of reanalysis by which the anaphoricsois reinterpreted as a complementizer. It is further argued that the emergence ofso-complementation is facilitated by a common grammaticalization pathway whereby deictic expressions acquire grammatical functions such as that of complementizer.

An outline of Macau Pidgin Portuguese

In the early stages of the China trade European traders knew nothing of Chinese, while the Chinese traders were equally ignorant of European languages. It was in this setting that pidgin languages developed for interethnic communication. While the role of Chinese Pidgin English in the China trade is fairly well-understood (see Baker 1987; Baker & Mühlhäusler 1990; Bolton 2003; Ansaldo 2009), the use of pidgin Portuguese is poorly documented and our understanding of it is correspondingly limited (Tryon, Mühlhäusler & Baker 1996). In this article we discuss what can be learnt from a newly transcribed phrasebook — theCompendium of Assorted Phrases in Macau Pidgin. We first review the use of contact varieties of Portuguese in the China trade. We then introduce the contents and layout of theCompendiumand explain the transcription practices adopted for the phrasebook. Grammatical features contained in the phrasebook are examined and illustrated. We conclude with an examination of the significance of theCompendiumin enriching our understanding of pidgin Portuguese and its relationship with Macau Creole Portuguese as well as Chinese Pidgin English.

Trade Pidgins in China: Historical and Grammatical Relationships

AbstractSino‐western contacts began in the sixteenth century when Europeans started open trade with China. Two trade pidgins, Macau Pidgin Portuguese (MPP) and Chinese Pidgin English (CPE), arose during the Canton trade period. This paper examines the historical and grammatical relationships of these two pidgins by drawing data from nineteenth century phrasebooks. This study argues for a close connection between MPP and CPE with reference to three grammatical features which go beyond shared vocabulary: locative copulas, form of personal pronouns, and prepositional complementisers. While these grammatical properties find little resemblance in the recognised source languages for CPE, parallel uses are attested in MPP, which therefore appears to provide the model for these properties in CPE.

Origins of a Preposition: Chinese Pidgin English long and its Implications for Pidgin Grammar

Abstract This paper examines the origins and grammatical properties of a preposition in Chinese Pidgin English – long – which has not received much discussion. The significance of long is that it is highly multifunctional and semantically versatile. Long is used to indicate a range of semantic roles: comitative, benefactive, malefactive and source. A second function of long is to mark coordination. It will be shown that a substantial part of the syntax and semantics of long can be attributed to substrate transfer of a corresponding Cantonese morpheme tung4 'with'. The creation of long does not conform to the traditional thesis of simply taking the phonetic form from the lexifier language and deriving the grammar from the substrate language. It will be argued that the emergence of long is a case of multiple etymologies which involves the recombination of phonological, syntactic and semantic features from both English and Cantonese. Findings from new CPE sources also suggest a need for re-examining the historical connections between CPE and other Pidgin English varieties of the Pacific region.

China Coast Pidgin

In this paper we revisit some long-standing questions regarding the origins and structure of China Coast Pidgin (CCP), also known as Chinese Pidgin English. We first review the historical context of the China Trade which formed the ecology for the development of CCP. We then review the available sources, focusing on newly transcribed data from Chinese-language instructional materials. These sources provide fresh evidence for grammatical structure in CCP, and demonstrate strong influence from Cantonese as the major substrate language. Comparison with English-language sources shows systematic contrasts which point to likely variation between Anglophone and Sinophone lects, as in the case of wh-questions which show regular wh-fronting in English sources and pervasive use of wh-in-situ in Chinese sources. This conclusion helps to resolve the debate over the Sinitic features of CCP.

Chinese Pidgin English in Southeastern Australia

More than 38,000 Chinese came to Australia to prospect for gold in the second half of the 19th century. Most of them originated from the Canton region of China (now Guangdong), where Chinese Pidgin English (CPE) was an important trading language. This article describes a recently discovered source that throws light on the nature of CPE used in Australia during that period — a 70 page notebook written in a form of English by a Chinese gold miner, Jong Ah Siug. The article presents some background information about Chinese immigrants in the region where Jong worked (Victoria), and evidence that some CPE was spoken there. It goes on to describe Jong’s notebook and the circumstances that led to him writing it. The main part of the article examines the linguistic features of CPE and other pidgins that are present in the notebook, and discusses other lexical and morphosyntactic features of the text. Some features are typical only of CPE, such as the use of my as the first person pronoun. On the other hand, some features are more characteristic of Australian or Pacific pidgins — for example, the use of belong in possessive constructions. Still other features have not been recorded for any pidgin, such as the use of been as a locative copula. The analysis shows that Jong’s text contains a mixture of features from CPE and other pidgins, as well as features of interlanguage, including some resulting from functional transfer from Jong’s first language, Cantonese.

California Chinese Pidgin English and its historical connections

California Chinese Pidgin English and its historical connections

Chinese Englishes: A sociolinguistic history (review)

Reviewed by: Chinese Englishes: A sociolinguistic history by Kingsley Bolton Liwei Gao Chinese Englishes: A sociolinguistic history. By Kingsley Bolton. (Studies in English language.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xviii, 338. ISBN 0521811635. $37.99. This book investigates the history of English in China from the early seventeenth century to the present. Kingsley Bolton gathers together and examines an extensive amount of historical, linguistic, and sociolinguistic research on the description and analysis of English in China, particularly in Hong Kong. He explores a variety of sources in order to unearth the somewhat forgotten history of English in China and to demonstrate how contemporary Hong Kong English derives from Chinese pidgin English. This book also discusses the varying status of English in mainland China over different historical periods and its recent developments since 1997. The book consists of five chapters. In Ch. 1, B critically reviews current approaches to research in Asian Englishes and World Englishes, which include corpus linguistics, applied linguistics, the sociology of language, pidgin and creole studies, and critical linguistics, among others. He then discusses the relevance of these perspectives to the study of English in Hong Kong and China. Ch. 2 provides a sociolinguistic description of English in Hong Kong. B first examines the sociopolitical history of Hong Kong from approximately 1980 to 1997, the year when Hong Kong was handed over to China. He then, from a historical as well as a contemporary perspective, introduces the language background in Hong Kong to highlight the dynamics of the multilingual Hong Kong society. In Ch. 3, B focuses on revealing the ‘forgotten past’ of the English language in southern China, which starts with the arrival of the first English-speaking merchants in the early seventeenth century, continues with the ‘Canton jargon’ of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and reaches into the current ‘Hong Kong English’. To do so, B employed the research methodology of the ‘archaeology’ of English, which is historical and textual in nature. As the author claims, this approach assumes an essential role in research on the history of World Englishes. Ch. 4 deals with the status, functions, and features of English in contemporary Hong Kong. In this chapter, B addresses the recognition of Hong Kong English, the ideologies of English in Hong Kong, and the creativity of Hong Kong English in both literary and less formal contexts. In the last chapter, Ch. 5, B attempts to associate the history of English in Hong Kong and southern China with that of mainland China. In so doing B surveys the teaching of the English language in China from the late Qing to the present. The survey shows that mainland China has its own history of English to tell, from the late Qing dynasty, through Republican China and the post-1949 era, to the present. With its interdisciplinary perspective, this book will prove a very helpful reader not only to linguists, but also to all those working in the fields of Asian studies and English studies, including those concerned with cultural and literary studies. [End Page 455] Liwei Gao Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center Copyright © 2007 Linguistic Society of America

:Borrowed Gods and Foreign Bodies: Christian Missionaries Imagine Chinese Religion.

In this carefully crafted multidisciplinary work, Eric Reinders has attempted to answer such crucial questions as what did the nineteenth‐century Christian missionaries to China think of Chinese religion and the customs of the Chinese? He addresses these intriguing questions by looking at such diverse topics as the meaning of obeisance, Chinese pidgin English, vegetarianism, how properly to translate God into Chinese, and opium, among others. Reinders concentrates on British missionaries, particularly those of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), and begins his account by describing the Great Missionary Exhibition of 1909, which “recreated” Africa and Asia in an exhibit hall in London to promote mission work and, it was hoped, to bring in contributions. The ersatz China thus created featured Britons dressed up as Chinese so the visitors could better understand where their mission funds were being spent. This was China as understood by the Victorian missionary, and as Reinders explains, that understanding was greatly colored by the missionaries' own prejudices. The anti‐Catholicism of the British Protestants, and particularly their views of obeisance in the Catholic Church, led the missionaries to view Chinese who bowed to their ancestral tablets, superiors, and temple gods with the same contempt they had for Catholics. Drawing on contemporary writings such as those of the extreme Anglophile John Macgowan, Reinders argues that the missionaries were predisposed to view with contempt many Chinese customs. Because Chinese, sometimes even monks, could not explain the details of their religious beliefs, the missionaries characterized them as “mentally deficient, in a stupor,” to use Reinders's words (p. 46).

Sociolinguistics

05–566Abu-Rabia, Salim (U of Haifa, Israel), Social aspects and reading, writing, and working memory skills in Arabic, Hebrew, English, and Circassian: the quadrilingual case of Circassians. Language, Culture and Curriculum (Clevedon, UK) 18.1 (2005), 27–58.05–567Bao, Zhiming (National U of Singapore, Singapore; ellbaozm@nus.edu.sg), The aspectual gsystem of Singapore English and the systemic substratist explanation. Journal of Linguistics (Cambridge, UK) 41.2, (2005), 237–267.05–568Barwick, Linda (U of Sydney, Australia; Linda.Barwick@arts.usyd.edu.au), Allan Marett, Michael Walsh, Lysbeth Ford & Nicholas Reid, Communities of interest: issues in establishing a digital resource on Murrinh-patha song at Wadeye (Port Keats), NT. Literary and Linguistic Computing (Oxford, UK) 20.4 (2005), 383–397.05–569Berns, Margie (Purdue U, USA; berns@purdue.edu), Expanding on the Expanding Circle: where do WE go from here?World Englishes (Oxford, UK) 24.1 (2005), 85–93.05–570Bolton, Kingsley (Stockholm U, Sweden: kingsley.bolton@english.su.se), Where WE stands: approaches, issues, and debate in world Englishes. World Englishes (Oxford, UK) 24.1 (2005), 69–83.05–571Carter, Julie A. (The Wolfson Centre, London, UK; j.carter@ich.ucl.ac.uk), Gladys M. Murira, Joseph Gona, Brian G. R. Neville & Charles R. J. C. Newton, Issues in the development of cross-cultural assessments of speech and language for children. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders (London, UK) 40.4 (2005), 385–401.05–572CoetzeeVan Rooy, Susan (Potchefstroom, S. Africa; basascvr@puk.ac.za) & Bertus Van Rooy, South African English: labels, comprehensibility and status. World Englishes (Oxford, UK) 24.1 (2005), 1–19.05–573de Haan, Mariëtte & Ed Elbers (U of Utrecht, the Netherlands; m.dehaan@fss.uu.nl), Reshaping diversity in a local classroom: communication and identity issues in multicultural schools in the Netherlands. Language & Communication (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 25.3 (2005), 315–333.05–574Dogançay-Aktuna, Seran (Southern Illinois U Edwardsville, USA; saktuna@siue.edu) & Zeynep Kiziltepe, English in Turkey. World Englishes (Oxford, UK) 24.2 (2005), 253–265.05–575Hiraga, Yuko (Keio U, Japan; nene_terada@hotmail.com), British attitudes towards six varieties of English in the USA and Britain. World Englishes (Oxford, UK) 24.3 (2005), 289–308.05–576Joseph, Clara A. B. (U of Calgary, Canada; ejoseph@ucalgary.ca), Language in contact and literatures in conflict: text, context, and pedagogy. World Englishes (Oxford, UK) 24.2 (2005), 131–143.05–577Lai, Mee-Ling (Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong, China; mllai@ied.edu.hk), Language attitudes of the first postcolonial generation in Hong Kong secondary schools. Language in Society (Cambridge, UK), 34.3 (2005), 363–388.05–578Moraa Michieka, Martha (Purdue U, USA; michieka@purdue.edu), English in Kenya: a sociolinguistic profile. World Englishes (Oxford, UK) 24.2 (2005), 173–186.05–579Nickerson, Catherine (Radboud U Nijmegen, the Netherlands; c.nickerson@let.ru.nl), English as alingua francain international business contexts. English for Specific Purposes (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 24.4 (2005), 367–380.05–580Ouhiala-Salminen, Leena, Charles Mirjaliisa & Anne Kankaanranta (Helsinki School of Economics, Finland; leena.louhiala@hkkk.fi), English as alingua francain Nordic corporate mergers: two case companies. English for Specific Purposes (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 24.4. (2005), 410–421.05–581Planken, Brigitte (Radboud U Nijmegen, the Netherlands; b.planken@let.ru.nl), Managing rapport inlingua francasales negotiations: a comparison of professional and aspiring negotiators. English for Specific Purposes (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 24.4 (2005), 381–400.05–582Rajagopalan, Kanavillil (State U at Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil), Language politics in Latin America. AILA Review (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 18 (2005), 76–93.05–583Seargeant, Philip (U of London, UK; pseargeant@ioe.ac.uk), Globalisation and reconfigured English in Japan. World Englishes (Oxford, UK) 24.3 (2005), 309–319.05–584Smith, Geoff P. (University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China), Chinese language sources for Chinese Pidgin English: what we know and what we need to know. Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics (Hong Kong, China) 9.2 (2004), 72–79.05–585Sweeting, Anthony & Edward Vickers (U of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; sweetone@mac.com), On colonizing ‘colonialism’: the discourses of the history of English in Hong Kong. World Englishes (Oxford, UK) 24.2 (2005), 113–130.05–586Tanaka, Hiroko (U of Essex; htanaka@essex.ac.uk), Grammar and the ‘timing’ of social action: word order and preference organization in Japanese. Language in Society (Cambridge, UK), 34.3 (2005), 389–430.

Pidgin and Code-Switching: Linguistic Identity and Multicultural Consciousness in Maxine Hong Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey

A recurring theme in Maxine Hong Kingston’s works is the search for a linguistic identity of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans, and this theme receives the fullest treatment in her fourth book, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1987). In representing the social, cultural and linguistic reality for the Chinese American community living in the multicultural United States, Kingston’s fundamental strategy is to use pidgin expressions and code-switching in the characters’ speech to present a truthful picture of languages used in the Chinese American community. A close analysis of the patterns and functions of pidgins in Tripmaster Monkey reveals that while Kingston records actual linguistic features of Chinese Immigrants’ Pidgin English (CIPE) in dialogue to preserve the linguistic individuality and identity of the Chinese American community, she draws on stereotypical features of the past Chinese Pidgin English (CPE) to combat negative stereotypes of Chinese Americans’ languages. Furthermore, Kingston uses code-switching in the characters’ speech to reinscribe her multicultural consciousness into her writing. This article examines the thematic significance of pidgin expressions and code-switched utterances in the characters’ speech in Tripmaster Monkey.

Using English in China

SINCE ITS introduction in the 18th century, English in China has gone through three stages: partial colonization and Chinese Pidgin English (CPE); a Chinese-influenced variety often called Chinglish; and a more recent indigenization that has resulted in a variety known as both Chinese English and, more recently (with a subtle change of emphasis), China English. This paper discusses these stages and calls for more attention to be paid to the nativization of English in China in the 21st century.

Englishes in Sydney Around 1850

Court reports from cases heard mainly at the Sydney Police Office in the mid-nineteenth century were taken down and published around 1850 in two Sydney newspapers, The Empire and Bell's Life in Sydney, by the newspaper reporter Charles Adam Corbyn, and republished in 1970 by Cyril Pearl. The aim of this paper is to see to what extent these texts can throw light on the various Englishes spoken in Sydney at the time, including London English, American English and Chinese Pidgin English, among others. Corbyn's reports give a good indication of the varieties in use but are less helpful in identifying features of a non-standard Australian English.