The grammatical features of English in a Chinese Internet discussion forum

Abstract

Recent research in world Englishes shows that the lexis-grammar interface, or lexicogrammar, constitutes an important area for investigating structural nativisation of local varieties of English (Schilk 2011). While most studies of lexicogrammar have focused on Inner Circle and Outer Circle varieties, the study presented in this paper focuses on an Expanding Circle variety, China English, and explores some of its patterns of structural nativisation. Utilising large-scale corpus data collected from an online discussion forum, this study examines several locally emergent linguistic patterns in China English, including new ditransitive verbs, verb-complementation, and collocation. The results suggest that there exist certain associations between specific lexical items and grammatical constructions in this local variety.

The nativization of English in Taiwanese magazine advertisements

“…Though some of the features observed in this study, such as the use of few articles for measure nouns, variable concordance of tenses in producing sentences, variable third person singular marking, and null subject parameter are shared by Chinese speakers of English (Yan, , p. 231) and Chinese university students, newspaper articles and fiction writers (Xu, , p. 9), this study showcases other nativized English features derived not only from the transfer of Chinese grammar but also from Taiwanese copywriters’ linguistic ingenuity and resourcefulness, including exploiting foreign and local socio‐cultural‐linguistic resources. While Mandarin Chinese is becoming internationally prominent and Chinese English is being studied extensively, it would be revealing to investigate the nativization of English in the advertising discourse in Mainland China, ‘the largest Expanding Circle country’ (Ai & You, , p. 226), as a response to the growing impact of globalization. In other words, it will be worthwhile to explore if, how, and to what extent differences in socio‐cultural contexts and local copywriters’ linguistic creativity may contribute jointly to variation in the employment of advertising strategies and linguistic characteristics embodied in the nativized English patterns.…”

“…On nativization of English in China, Pei and Chi () address the absorbing of several types of Chinese culture words into English via loan words such as ‘silk’ while Ma and Xu () provide an overview of the current functional use of English in China and a review of Xu's works (, ) as one of the first systematic attempts to codify the linguistic features of Chinese English on phonetic, lexical, syntactic, discourse, and pragmatic levels. On the other hand, studies under the category of ‘Chinese English’ or ‘China English’ have been conducted extensively in recent years regarding the status, functions, sociolinguistic profile, linguistic features, second language learning issues, and translation, among others, of this newly emerging English variety (Ai & Yu, ; Deterding, ; Eaves, ; Gao, , ; He & Li, ; Kirkpatrick & Xu, ; Liang & Li, ; Niu & Wolff, ; Pastor & Calderón, ; Xu, , ; Yang, , to name just a few). For example, Xu (, ) identifies thirteen major Chinese English features as a result of the transfer to English from some Chinese syntactic properties in the data drawn from interviews with university students, newspaper articles, and short stories.…”

“…For example, Xu (, ) identifies thirteen major Chinese English features as a result of the transfer to English from some Chinese syntactic properties in the data drawn from interviews with university students, newspaper articles, and short stories. Ai and Yu () examine some newly emergent ditransitive verbs, verb‐complementation, and collocation in Chinese English. Liang and Li () use two corpora, the Chinese English Corpus vs. the British National Corpus, to compare the collocational patterns of ‘all‐round’.…”

Digital communication, social media, and Englishes

“…The journal World Englishes has previously published several articles related to the Internet and computer‐mediated communication including Pandey (, the Ebonics debate on an electronic bulletin board); Dimova (, computer‐related English loanwords on Macedonian business websites); Hardy and Friginal (, Filipino and American opinion columns and blogs); Troyer (, English in Thai online newspapers); Zhang (, multilingual creativity in Chinese microblogging); Ai and You (, syntactic features of English on an online discussion forum); Daud and Mclellan (, linguistic choices in Bruneian Facebook status updates); and Ong (, Singlish textese in multiparty chats). However, more contemporary social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube are hardly discussed as a main topic in the journal.…”

Non-pronominal uses of it: a case study in women’s fashion magazines

“…The current importance and prestige of the English language, linked to its global dominance and power, have contributed and facilitated the so-called "Anglicization" of European (see Görlach 2001Görlach , 2002aGörlach , 2002bFischer & Pulaczewska 2008;De Houwer and Wilton, 2011;Furiassi, Pulcini, & Rodríguez González, 2012, p. 3) and other world languages (Anderman & Rogers, 2005;Crystal, 2012;Price, 2014;Ai & You, 2015), as the continuous, increasing and unstoppable incorporation of English borrowings has affected the morphological, lexical, semantic, syntactic and even pragmatic levels of those languages. The lexical component is by far the most commonly affected, probably because vocabulary items are the part of the language that evolves most quickly.…”