Native Chinese Research Articles

CONSUMERS’ PERCEPTION OF E-TAILORED FASHION MARKETING – A CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON BETWEEN CHINA AND UK

Western social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, etc are banned in China. In their places, Weibo, WeChat, Youku and more are the main social media channels in China and thus the main battlefields of social marketing for brands entering China Market. WeChat is the largest social network in China, with over 900 million users daily, for nearly all types of services, including booking flights, restaurant table reservation, shopping, paying bills, etc. To cater the needs of the new generation of Chinese digital natives, a mobile app eM++ was developed that creates new customer services and enables tailored fashion marketing. This new mobile app eM++ works well in China, will this be also well received in other countries? This research investigates consumers’ perception of this new fashion e-tailoring e-shopping concept in UK. Will this type of e-tailored services be welcome in UK? Will consumers welcome this type of e-shopping service in UK? Or they prefer the traditional way of tailoring and shopping? Which social media platforms should be used for promotion? The sample population of this research covers both male and females from China and UK aged 18 years old or above with experience of searching and/or buying clothing items online. Convenient sampling and snow-balling sampling methods are used. In UK, recruitment of volunteers for this project will be via emails to colleagues and previous students, as well as via posters of recruiting volunteers for this project posted on campus. Details of the project and experiment will be included in both emails and posters. Volunteered participants are asked to answer a pre-experiment online questionnaire. Based on their answers, suitable participants will be invited to participate the experimental part (which is trying a fashion app and then answer the post-experiment questionnaire). Participants successfully completed the experiment and post-experiment questionnaire will be given their own body measurements with a 3D model in user’s customised shape, as well as a discount coupon for future use when the app is officially launched. This research will have mainly quantitative data analysis, SPSS will be used to analyse the data. There will have a few open-ended questions that qualitative data analysis method will be employed. This research will explore the feasibility of this service in UK and formulate a cross-cultural comparison between China and UK.

Examining cultural and gender similarities and differences in college students’ value of communication skills in romantic relationships

This study assessed and compared the communication skills that native Chinese and native American college students value in the context of romantic relationships. A total of 319 Chinese and 262 American college students responded to questionnaires that assessed the values they placed on six different communication skills. The results showed that the American students valued four of six communication skills more than the Chinese students (i.e. conversational, informative, listening, and narrative skills). The men and women in both cultural groups valued affective communication skills more than instrumental communication skills. In both cultural groups, women placed greater value on affective communication skills than men. The findings also showed a significant mediating effect of gender orientation (masculinity and femininity) on the value placed on communication skills and a significant effect of self-construal, which mediated between nationality and the value assigned to communication skills.

Phonology, Orthography, and Decoding Skills Within and Across English and Chinese

ABSTRACTThe current study examined the construct of word-reading skills within and across English and Chinese. One hundred forty-three 5th graders who were native Chinese (Mandarin) speakers learning English as a second language completed 19 tasks representing phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and word decoding in both English and Chinese. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted within each language, and the results showed that the best-fitting model for both languages was the 3-factor model involving phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and word decoding. Across the 2 languages, the language-specific model fit better than other models with 1 or 2 language-general factors. These results suggest that word reading is not a unified, language-general ability within and across English and Chinese among Chinese children learning English as a second language. Instruction and intervention may need to target phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and word decoding in each language.

The influence of the native language on phonological preparation in spoken word production in a second language

Abstract Three experiments investigated the phonological preparation unit in planning English spoken words, comparing English monolinguals, native Chinese and Japanese-speakers who spoke English as their second language. All three groups named pictures in English, and the names could either share the same initial phoneme, mora, or syllable, or had no systematic commonality. A phoneme preparation effect was shown among English monolinguals but not among the two bilingual groups, suggesting that the phoneme is the phonological preparation unit for English monolinguals, but not for the two bilingual groups. All three groups showed mora and syllable preparation effects, but further analysis and a follow-up experiment suggested that Chinese-English bilinguals may treat morae as open syllables. English monolinguals showed similar phoneme and mora preparation effect sizes, possibly as a result of flexibility. Together, the selection of phonological preparation could be flexible, influenced by both the nature of the target language and speakers’ language experiences.

Bridging Ethnic Diversity through Service-Learning on Teaching Chinese Characters for Surabaya-Indonesia Toddler

This social activity is to give low-income children a chance to let the, understand the evolution of Chinese characters, hope through this activity, can attract the group of children to have more interested in other language, especially Chinese language. To understand the Chinese culture, no longer discriminate against the Indonesian Chinese culture. Evidence of discrimination against Chinese Indonesians can be found throughout the history of Indonesia, although government policies implemented since 1998 have attempted to redress this. Due to this discrimination, Chinese Indonesians have suffered an identity crisis, unable to be accepted by both native Chinese and native Indonesians. With this program, there is a hope to bridge the differences that exist with the introduction of the Chinese character on poor children in Surabaya, to let them more understand about Chinese language and the culture behind. And create a better relationship for the next generation in Indonesia. After the progress, we asking the children about this program, and they said they love it and wish to know more about China and their culture.

City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965 by Kelly Lytle Hernandez

Reviewed by: City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965 by Kelly Lytle Hernandez Natalia Molina CITY OF INMATES: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965. By Kelly Lytle Hernandez. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 2017. Lytle Hernandez's Cities of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles is a study of the rise of imprisonment, broadly speaking, and the [End Page 124] buildup of Los Angeles's prison system, which by 1950 was the largest of any US city. The book makes significant contributions to US history, urban history, the study of race and ethnicity, and carceral history. Incarceration is foundational to Los Angeles; the city was literally built by convict labor, which was perfectly legal under the Thirteenth Amendment's dual provisions of ending black slavery while allowing the use of unfree labor as criminal punishment. As a scholar exploring race as a relational concept, I am fascinated by Lytle Hernandez's account of how the history of incarceration affected racialized groups differently over time—and how the development of Los Angeles remains, in the aggregate, a story about power, domination, and race. Each chapter unfolds a story that explains how the carceral complex in Los Angeles expanded and shape-shifted in order to control whichever population had resources of labor or land that were needed at the time. The book spans three centuries, examining the workings of imprisonment at different historical moments, including Native American imprisonment beginning in the 1700s, immigrant detention of Chinese and moral panics over homeless white men in the late 1800s, the first cases of Mexican imprisonment and their connection to the Mexican Revolution, the growth and entrenchment of Mexican incarceration in the 1920s and 30s, and its overlap with the origins of black incarceration in the city. Starting with the first prison established during the founding of Los Angeles, and connecting the histories and experiences of racialized groups not traditionally examined together (including Native Americans, Chinese, Mexicans, blacks, and poor whites), Lytle Hernandez deftly demonstrates that imprisonment is much more than punishment—it is also a way of subjugating, plundering, and even disappearing groups not part of the settler colonial ruling class. Scholars have traditionally studied these histories separately, grouping them by time period, by distinct racial and ethnic groups, or by forms of imprisonment (convict leasing, immigrant detention). Lytle Hernandez's interdisciplinary approach, however, makes a compelling argument that they should be examined together, as all fall within the rubric she terms "caging" and the long history of white settler colonialism. Reading this book at times felt like stepping through the looking glass. Through her painstaking research and capacious theoretical framework, Lytle Hernandez has an uncanny ability to take what we think we know and turn it on its head. The story of Los Angeles, for instance, is commonly told as one of four distinct time periods with little connection made between them: indigenous society, Spanish conquest, the Mexican period, and the US conquest in 1848. Using her carceral lens, Lytle Hernandez fills in those gaps, demonstrating how legal systems in one period were transferred to the next in ways that kept the racial hierarchy of the region intact. For example, the use of public order charges (e.g. vagrancy laws) during the Mexican period (1810–21) solidified the control and racialization of the indigenous population that begun decades earlier, while expanding that control to include Africans, mulattos, and mesitzos. As these populations were racialized and marked as unworthy of citizenship, the category of "criminal" was neatly mapped onto the racial categories of the time. Under American rule, these same vagrancy laws increasingly justified a captive native population who could be auctioned to the highest bidder or used for work on a chain gang. That this all occurred in California, a supposedly free state, is staggering. By connecting the time periods, a unique move, Lytle Hernandez uses a wide lens to demonstrate how the creation and enforcement of laws through policing and imprisonment was central not just for the policing of racialized and landless groups, but also for the...

Categorical Perception of Mandarin Chinese Tones 1-2 and Tones 1-4: Effects of Aging and Signal Duration.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the aging effect on the categorical perception of Mandarin Chinese tones with varied fundamental frequency (F0) contours and signal duration. Both younger and older native Chinese listeners with normal hearing were recruited in 2 experiments: tone identification and tone discrimination on a series of stimuli with the F0 contour systematically varying from the flat tone to the rising-falling tones. Apart from F0 contour, tone duration was manipulated at 3 levels: 100, 200, and 400 ms. Results suggested that, compared with younger listeners, older listeners performed with shallower slope in the identification function and smaller peakedness in the discrimination function, particularly for Tones 1 and 2, whereas for Tones 1 and 4, comparable categorical perception was found between younger and older listeners. The current study suggested that longer duration facilitated categorical perception in the flat-rising tones for the older listeners. Such an aging effect was not found with the flat-falling tones, suggesting that the aging-related deficit in categorical perception might relate to different tone types. Aging resulted in less categoricality of Mandarin tone perception for the flat-rising tones with short duration like 100 ms, possibly due to the aging-related decline in temporal processing.

Language experience-dependent advantage in pitch representation in the auditory cortex is limited to favorable signal-to-noise ratios

Long-term experience enhances neural representation of temporal attributes of pitch in the brainstem and auditory cortex in favorable listening conditions. Herein we examine whether cortical pitch mechanisms shaped by language experience are more resilient to degradation in background noise, and exhibit greater binaural release from masking (BRM). Cortical pitch responses (CPR) were recorded from Mandarin- and English-speaking natives using a Mandarin word exhibiting a high rising pitch (/yi2/). Stimuli were presented diotically in Quiet, and in noise at +5, and 0 dB SNR. CPRs were also recorded in binaural conditions, SONO (where signal and noise were in phase at both ears); or S0Nπ (where signal was in phase and noise 180° out of phase at each ear), using 0 dB SNR. At Fz, both groups showed increase in CPR peak latency and decrease in amplitude with increasing noise level. A language-dependent enhancement of Na–Pb amplitude (Chinese > English) was restricted to Quiet and +5 dB SNR conditions. At T7/T8 electrode sites, Chinese natives exhibited a rightward asymmetry for both CPR components. A language-dependent effect (Chinese > English) was restricted to T8. Regarding BRM, both CPR components showed greater response amplitude for the S0Nπ condition compared to S0N0 across groups. Rightward asymmetry for BRM in the Chinese group indicates experience-dependent recruitment of right auditory cortex. Restriction of the advantage in pitch representation to the quiet and +5 SNR conditions, and the absence of group differences in the binaural release from masking, suggest that language experience affords limited advantage in the neural representation of pitch-relevant information in the auditory cortex under adverse listening conditions.

SWOT Analysis and Related Countermeasures for Croatia to Explore the Chinese Tourist Source Market

Abstract Croatia is a land endowed with rich and diversified natural and cultural tourist resources. Traveling around Croatia, I was stunned by its beauty. However, I noticed that there were few Chinese tourists in Croatia. How can we bring more Chinese tourists to Croatia? How can we make them happy and comfortable in Croatia? And, at the same time, how can we avoid polluting this tract of pure land? Based on first-hand research work, I make a SWOT analysis of the Chinese tourist source market of Croatia and put forward related countermeasures from the perspective of a native Chinese. The positioning of tourism in Croatia should be ingeniously packaged. I recommend developing diversified and specialized tourist products, various marketing and promotional activities, simple and flexible visa policies and regulations, and other related measures to further explore the Chinese tourist source market of Croatia.

Language related differences of the sustained response evoked by natural speech sounds.

In tonal languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, the pitch contour of vowels discriminates lexical meaning, which is not the case in non-tonal languages such as German. Recent data provide evidence that pitch processing is influenced by language experience. However, there are still many open questions concerning the representation of such phonological and language-related differences at the level of the auditory cortex (AC). Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we recorded transient and sustained auditory evoked fields (AEF) in native Chinese and German speakers to investigate language related phonological and semantic aspects in the processing of acoustic stimuli. AEF were elicited by spoken meaningful and meaningless syllables, by vowels, and by a French horn tone. Speech sounds were recorded from a native speaker and showed frequency-modulations according to the pitch-contours of Mandarin. The sustained field (SF) evoked by natural speech signals was significantly larger for Chinese than for German listeners. In contrast, the SF elicited by a horn tone was not significantly different between groups. Furthermore, the SF of Chinese subjects was larger when evoked by meaningful syllables compared to meaningless ones, but there was no significant difference regarding whether vowels were part of the Chinese phonological system or not. Moreover, the N100m gave subtle but clear evidence that for Chinese listeners other factors than purely physical properties play a role in processing meaningful signals. These findings show that the N100 and the SF generated in Heschl’s gyrus are influenced by language experience, which suggests that AC activity related to specific pitch contours of vowels is influenced in a top-down fashion by higher, language related areas. Such interactions are in line with anatomical findings and neuroimaging data, as well as with the dual-stream model of language of Hickok and Poeppel that highlights the close and reciprocal interaction between superior temporal gyrus and sulcus.

Age of Acquisition Effects on Word Processing for Chinese Native Learners' English: ERP Evidence for the Arbitrary Mapping Hypothesis.

The present study aimed at distinguishing processing of early learned L2 words from late ones for Chinese natives who learn English as a foreign language. Specifically, we examined whether the age of acquisition (AoA) effect arose during the arbitrary mapping from conceptual knowledge onto linguistic units. The behavior and ERP data were collected when 28 Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to perform semantic relatedness judgment on word pairs, which represented three stages of word learning (i.e., primary school, junior and senior high schools). A 3 (AoA: early vs. intermediate vs. late) × 2 (regularity: regular vs. irregular) × 2 (semantic relatedness: related vs. unrelated) × 2 (hemisphere: left vs. right) × 3 (brain area: anterior vs. central vs. posterior) within-subjects design was adopted. Results from the analysis of N100 and N400 amplitudes showed that early learned words had an advantage in processing accuracy and speed; there is a tendency that the AoA effect was more pronounced for irregular word pairs and in the semantic related condition. More important, ERP results showed early acquired words induced larger N100 amplitudes for early AoA words in the parietal area and more negative-going N400 than late acquire words in the frontal and central regions. The results indicate the locus of the AoA effect might derive from the arbitrary mapping between word forms and semantic concepts, and early acquired words have more semantic interconnections than late acquired words.

Chinese Immigrant Wealth: Heterogeneity in Adaptation.

Chinese immigrants are a diverse and growing group whose members provide a unique opportunity to examine within-immigrant group differences in adaptation. In this paper, we move beyond thinking of national-origin groups as homogenous and study variation among Chinese immigrants in wealth ownership, a critical indicator of adaptation that attracts relatively little attention in the immigration literature. We develop an analytical approach that considers national origin, tenure in the U.S., and age to examine heterogeneity in economic adaptation among the immigrant generation. Our results show that variations among Chinese immigrants explain within-group differences in net worth, asset ownership, and debt. These differences also account for important variation between Chinese immigrants, natives, and other immigrant groups and provide important, new insight into the processes that lead to immigrant adaptation and long-term class stability.

Features of Language Communication in a Multicultural Community: Russian Texts of Advertising Signboards in the Border Cities of China

Abstract The article explores outdoor advertising in Russian in Heihe and Hunchun, which are located in north-eastern China that borders Russia. The article examines Chinese advertizing signboards and advertisements made in the Russian language by the native Chinese, and their compliance with the Russian language standards of graphics and spelling. The purpose of the article is to analyze errors in the graphical form of Russian words and non-compliance with Russian spelling rules in texts of Chinese outdoor advertising in Russian. The authors find typical errors in graphics and spelling in Chinese advertising texts in Russian and explain their reasons.

Unsuccessful letter–sound integration in English reading by native Chinese speakers: evidence from an event related potentials study

Integrating letters and sounds are essential for successful reading in alphabetic languages. It remains unclear if native speakers of non-alphabetic languages integrate letters and sounds in reading an alphabetic language in the same way as native alphabetic readers do. Chinese is a morpho-syllabic system (each character corresponds to one syllable) and contrasts sharply with alphabetic languages such as English. Several fMRI studies have shown that native Chinese speakers apply their native language system to read English words. By using the cross-modal mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm, we directly investigated letter–sound integration for reading in English among native Chinese speakers. To investigate the effect of native language background on letter–sound integration in second language reading, a group of native Korean English learners served as a comparison group. We compared MMN responses between an auditory only condition (only vowels presented) and two audiovisual conditions (AV0, vowel presented synchronously with the corresponding letter; AV200, the letter presented 200ms before the corresponding vowel) for both native Chinese and native Korean speakers. Native Chinese speakers demonstrated significantly attenuated MMN amplitudes in audiovisual conditions compared with the auditory only condition, regardless of their phonological decoding speed. In contrast, native Korean speakers showed amplified amplitude MMN in AV200 compared with that in the auditory only condition. The results suggest that native language may shape the brain responses of second language learners to reading a second language in the early stages. Native non-alphabetic language speakers may be unable to use visual information to facilitate their phonological processing in the early stage while native alphabetic language speakers are capable of integrating letter sounds automatically.

Migration, Regionalism, and the Ethnic Other, 1840-1870

This article shows accounts of Norwegian immigrants and their encounter with various ethnic groups in America including Native Americans, African-Americans, Chinese, Irish, and Yankees in the period between 1840 and 1870. The article presents several regions in the United States, namely the Upper Midwest, Texas, and California. The use of primary source material including newspapers, guidebooks and letters provide good insights into thoughts and attitudes, and not the least prejudice, among this Old immigrant group toward the ethnic “Other.” The Norwegian immigrant group aimed at becoming good citizens through a negotiating process between the group, the dominant native-born American group and other ethnic groups in the United States. By characterizing several other ethnic groups based on race, Norwegian-Americans employed whiteness in a double negotiation, both tied to the creation of a Norwegian-American identity and in finding their place in the social hierarchy in America.

Nation, Face, and Identity: An Initial Investigation of National Face in East Asia

This research investigates a key concept in East Asia, face, and represents the first attempt to empirically examine the concept of face at the national level. Controlling for the level of national identification, Study 1 employed the scenario experiment method among samples of native Chinese and Taiwanese populations and revealed that national face exhibits patterns reverse of personal face. Using the experimental method, Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1 and provided support for the different mechanisms underneath national face and personal face. Study 3 replicated the findings of Study 2 and additionally showed that national face exerts a significant inhibitory effect on face process. Findings are discussed in terms of possible implications for intergroup and international relations. Expanding on extant scholarship on face and across three studies with different experimental paradigms, this research turns our attention from face at the personal level to face at the national level by introducing the construct of national face and examining its manifestations in East Asia. The results advance our understanding of the psychological mechanism driving face concern in East Asia. They make a strong and unique case for the psychological existence of national face as an empirically distinct construct and an important psychological resource for East Asians.

Vowel and tone identification of Mandarin Chinese: Comparison between native Chinese and Korean listeners

Speech in tone languages requires listeners to identify not only phonemes but also tones. As non-tone language users, Korean-native speakers may have difficulty in identifying tones and vowels and processing both tonal and phonemic information at the same time, which are not presented in their mother tongue. The goal of the present study was to investigate the identification of Mandarin Chinese vowels and tones for both native Mandarin Chinese and native Korean speakers with medium and high Chinese proficiency. Results showed that for the identification of Mandarin vowel-plus-tone, vowel, and tone, there was no difference between Chinese- and Korean-native listeners with high Chinese proficiency, whereas Chinese listeners significantly outperformed Korean listeners with medium Chinese proficiency, particularly for tones 1, 3, and 4 and vowel /y/. For Korean listeners, there was no significant correlation between the onset age of Chinese learning and identification scores, while the identification performance significantly correlated with the length of Chinese learning. Moreover, for both Chinese and Korean listeners, identification scores of vowel-plus-tone, tone and vowel are comparable, suggesting that both groups may process dual cues (vowel and tone) as efficiently as individual cues (vowel or tone).

Informational masking of six-talker babble on Mandarin Chinese vowel and tone identification: Comparison between native Chinese and Korean listeners

The goal of this study was to investigate the informational masking (IM) of Mandarin six-talker babble on Mandarin vowel and tone perception for native Chinese and Korean speakers with high and medium Mandarin proficiency. Mandarin Chinese speech sounds (vowel plus tone) were presented in quiet and two noises: six-talker babble and babble-modulated noise, which was spectrally and temporally matched with babble. The IM was computed as the difference in the identification scores between the two types of noises. Overall, all the four factors (listener group, noise type, vowel-plus-tone category, and SNR) significantly affected participants’ identification of Mandarin stimuli. Particularly, in both quiet and noisy conditions, Chinese listeners had comparable performance with Korean listeners with high Mandarin proficiency, while Chinese listeners significantly outperformed Korean listeners with medium Mandarin proficiency. However, no significant difference was found in IM among the listener groups. In conclusion, at the syllabic level, highly-proficient Korean listeners had native-like performance of Mandarin vowel and tone identification in quiet and noise, whereas Korean listeners with medium proficiency had greater difficulty, specifically in noise, likely due to their lower capacity to process phonemic and tonal information, rather than the IM of babble.

Interlanguage Features of Chinese EFL Learners in the Communicative Act of Refusal

The purpose of the present study was to determine how the refusal strategies and linguistic forms used by Chinese EFL learners vary from those of American English speakers. Data was obtained by the elicitation method of open role plays and subsequently, the responses based on the interlocutors’ social status were analyzed. Participants were composed of four groups: 12 native speakers of Chinese (NC), 12 Chinese EFL learners with intermediate proficiency level (CE-I), 12 Chinese EFL learners with higher proficiency level (CE-H), and 12 native speakers of American English (NE). In general, the results indicated that EFL learners differed from native speakers of English in terms of L2 language use. Regarding the content of the semantic formulas, the native Chinese and Chinese EFL learners both chose more specific, family-oriented reasons to mitigate the face-threatening power of refusals, while native English speakers preferred vaguer reasons in the speech act of refusals. Regarding the linguistic forms employed by the participants, native English speakers tended to use hesitators, the modal verb ‘could’, and down toners more frequently than Chinese EFL learners. The Chinese EFL learners, on the other hand, employed the cajoler ‘you know’ and minus committers more frequently than native English speakers.

The developmental relationship between bilingual morphological awareness and reading for Chinese EFL adult learners: a longitudinal study

The present research aimed to explore the developmental relationship between bilingual morphological awareness and reading for Chinese natives learning English as a foreign language (EFL learners). Pre- and post-tests were conducted with in an interval of 9 months. Morphological and reading measures in Chinese and English were administered to 139 participants. The results confirmed the intra-language correlations between morphological awareness and reading. The study also demonstrated that the contribution of English derivational awareness to English reading was higher than that of English compound awareness. Chinese compound morphology was found to explain a greater amount of variance of English reading in posttest than pretest. The results indicate the relationship between bilingual reading and morphological awareness was subjected to the similarities between the two languages in terms of morphological features as well as language proficiency.