Struggling between national pride and personal empowerment: The language ideologies held by Chinese university students towards China English

Publication date: Available online 1 July 2019Source: LinguaAuthor(s): Zimeng PanAbstractThe English used by Mainland Chinese people (henceforth ‘China English’) is inevitably influenced by L1 Chinese. This paper examines the attitudes held by Chinese university students towards China English, and explores the language ideologies leading for such attitudes. Following a discourse analysis of 30 semi-structured interviews, this paper finds that most participants held ambivalent attitudes towards China English. On the one hand, they considered China English an acceptable target for use by the Chinese population, and expressed favourable attitudes regarding its cultural features, lexical influences and the functional role for fulfilling communicative purposes. On the other hand, they regarded their own use of China English as linguistically inferior and embarrassing. The analysis suggests that these participants experienced a dilemma when strong senses of national pride and cultural identities met with a personal desire of obtaining socio-economic opportunities through the acquisition of American or British English competence.

Source: Lingua - July 2, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research