eprintid: 35640
rev_number: 21
eprint_status: archive
userid: 8582
dir: disk0/00/03/56/40
datestamp: 2024-11-18 10:44:56
lastmod: 2024-11-28 14:43:01
status_changed: 2024-11-18 10:44:56
type: doctoralThesis
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Yuan, Xin
title: THE TALE OF TWO CHINESE CITIES:
SOCIOLINGUISTIC THEORIZATION OF CHINESE PIDGIN ENGLISH IN SHANGHAI AND CHINESE PIDGIN RUSSIAN IN HARBIN
1850-1940
subjects: ddc-400
divisions: i-72140
adv_faculty: af-07
keywords: Chinese Pidgin English (CPE)
Chinese Pidgin Russian (CPR)
Language contact
Pidginization
Fossilization in language learning
Cooperation Theory
Socio-linguistic distance
Functional multilingualism
Instrumental motivation in language learning
Linguistic acculturation
cterms_swd: Pidgin-Sprachen
cterms_swd: Sprachkontakt
cterms_swd: Akkulturation
cterms_swd: Motivation
cterms_swd: Fremdsprachenlernen
cterms_swd: Harbin
cterms_swd: Shanghai
abstract: This thesis explores the origins, social functions, and linguistic characteristics of Chinese Pidgin English (CPE) and Chinese Pidgin Russian (CPR) in China’s intercultural contact zones of Shanghai and Harbin from the 1850s to the 1940s. By examining how CPE and CPR facilitated communication across diverse social strata, this study challenges traditional views of pidgins as simplistic or incomplete forms of language. This study shows that CPE and CPR were widely used across language and social boundaries in both Shanghai and Harbin, with neither ethnicity nor social hierarchy limiting their application. In addition, this study reveals that learners’ age, language-learning environments, and fossilization greated shaped CPE and CPR. The lack of structured language education fostered user-driven, context-dependent learning. As a result, both learners’ cognitive process and communication strategy lead to interlanguage fossilization. It is the learners’ pragmatic choice that when mutual intelligibility serves functional purposes of communicaiton, language acquisition stops. Thus the case of CPE and CPR reflect intentional, cooperative strategies rather than language learning deficiency. In addition, this study proposes a dual-layered Cooperation Theory of pidgin genesis, highlighting the mutual motivations and acculturation factors including social dominance patterns, duration of contact, and instrumental motivation. Ultimately, the study redefines CPE and CPR as adaptive, competent communication tools that met the needs of diverse users in the communication setting. This research contributes to our understanding of pidgin languages and provides new perspectives on language acquisition and intercultural communication, with implications for contemporary language contexts in China.
date: 2024
id_scheme: DOI
id_number: 10.11588/heidok.00035640
ppn_swb: 1909806943
own_urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-356403
date_accepted: 2013-04-16
advisor: HASH(0x55e83af653f0)
language: eng
bibsort: YUANXINTHETALEOFT
full_text_status: public
place_of_pub: Heidelberg
citation:   Yuan, Xin  (2024) THE TALE OF TWO CHINESE CITIES: SOCIOLINGUISTIC THEORIZATION OF CHINESE PIDGIN ENGLISH IN SHANGHAI AND CHINESE PIDGIN RUSSIAN IN HARBIN 1850-1940.  [Dissertation]     
document_url: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/35640/1/20240615_Dissertation_Yuan.pdf