Englishization of Oral and Written Mandarin in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Chao Hui Wei, 魏肇慧
• Other Authors: Miao Hsia Chang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/67804063802716524580

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 100 === Abstract The Englishization of Mandarin has been a hot issue since 1950s. Previous studies have pointed out plenty of Englishized syntactic structures in Mandarin. However, the latest linguistic study of Englishization of Taiwan Mandarin was conducted in 1994. Considering the rapid development in these twenty years, it is interesting to observe the development of Englishization nowadays. In addition, since Englishization of the oral Mandarin has never been systematically studied before, the present study aims to investigate the frequency and distribution of Englishization of Taiwan Mandarin in writing and also speaking. The written data used in the current research are from two magazines, 新新聞Xinxinwen ‘The Journalist’ and天下Tienxia ‘Common Wealth’. The oral data are collected from four talk shows, 今晚誰當家Jinwan shei dangjia ‘Who Hosts Tonight’ and 王牌大賤諜Wangpai da jiandie ‘Top Spy’, 關鍵時刻Guanjian shike ‘Crucial Moment’ and夢想街57號Mengxiangjie 57hao ‘No.57 Dream Street’. The results reveal that the Englishized structures suggested in the literature have already localized as part of Chinese grammar at least early since twenty years ago. Thus, the comparison between the writing in 1988 and in 2010 does not show significant difference. As for the Englishized structures in oral Taiwan Mandarin, it is found that they are popular in speaking, revealing that the use of Englishized structures is not limited to translation or writing but extends to the speech as common expressions. Comparing the results of the written data and oral data, there is significant difference of the distribution of Englishized structures between two language modes. The causes of difference can be attributed to the diverse linguistic features in spoken and written languages. Moreover, the distribution of examined Englishized structures in the written and oral data corresponds to the literature of written and spoken English respectively, giving supports to the proposal of these structures as Englishized ones.