This study investigates the patterns of language use among a selected group of Chinese students in a Chinese Heritage Language school in urban Montreal, Quebec. Observation and interview are used as tools for the inquiry. Language socialization and social identity theories provide a framework for the data interpretation. Classroom interactions are examined in terms of the patterns of language use between teachers and students, students to teachers, and students to students. The emergent findings in the study suggest that teachers use mainly Chinese when addressing students and students use mainly Chinese when addressing their teachers. However, the patterns change when students are addressing each other. French and English are preferred in their peer to peer social interactions. As 'Chinese language' is a broad term, covering several different regionalects and dialects, it is taken into consideration that the students' home language may be very different from the standard language, Mandarin, which is taught at the school. In addition, the age of arrival to Canada, the desire for peer recognition and identification with the mainstream culture, and the forces of socialization as factors which affect the children's language use and their maintenance of their mother tongue are examined. Finally, the concept of speech community, a sociolinguistic concept, is applied to the discussion of how the patterns of those Chinese children's language use are shaped and may be interpreted.

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published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

University of Macau / Faculty of Arts and Humanities. / Department of English

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

University of Macau / Faculty of Arts and Humanities. / Department of English

At the very heart of variationist Sociolinguistics is the notion that language has an underlying structure, and that this structure varies according to external linguistic variables such as age, gender, social class, community membership, nationality, and so on. Specifically, this study examines variation in initial and final segments, as well as sentence final particles in Cantonese in Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR). Results of this study indicate that external linguistic constraint categories play a role in the realization of how and when initial and final segments, as well as sentence final particles are used in Macau Cantonese. Finally, this dissertation illustrates that pragmatic functions in the systematic use of linguistic variables requires explanations that draw from variationist sociolinguistic research that has an ethnographic and interpretive basis. / Linguistics / M.A. (Sociolinguistics)

In part three 'Women·Song and Dance-Vernacular' (chapter 5), I deploy film textual analysis, focused on one female image--the sing-song girl, and in this part, I try to identify the differences and similarities of soft film and Li's soft songs and dances. From the perspective of women and on the basis of comparison, I try to study the hybridity of Chinese vernacular in left-wing films. / In the first part 'Poems·Music·Vernacular' (chapters 1&2), I draw upon intermediary and interdisciplinary research methods, to analyse the interrelationship between Hu Shi's vernacular poems and Li Jinhui's popular songs. Focusing on Li Jinhui's musical practices from the May Fourth to the 1920s and the 1930s, I try to analyse and summarize the two key features of Chinese vernacular modernism: intertextuality and hybridity, characterised by the mixture of different cultures and discourses (including urban popular culture, intellectual high culture, official culture, traditional folk culture and so on), and the dialectical relations between body and sense and enlightenment and education ('Entertainment with Enlightenment', Yu Jiao Yu Le). / In the second part 'Vernacular·Songs·Sound films' consisting of two chapters (3&4) , I will analyse film magazines, such as Film Magazine (Yingxi zazhi), Movie Magazine (Dianying zazhi) and Modern Cinema (Xiandai dianying), film texts, such as Street Angel (Malu tianshi, Yuan Muzhi, 1937) The Big Road (Dalu, Sun Yu, 1934), Children of Trouble Time (fengyun er nuˇ, Xu Xingzhi, 1935), The New Year's Coin (Yasui qian, Xia Yan, 1937), etc., and I draw a picture of Chinese early cinema's vernacular scene, before and after the arrival of sound. Specifically, from the perspective of the musical tune and lyrics of film songs, I attempt to analyse the hybridity of Chinese vernacular embodied especially in left-wing films. / The dissertation has three main sections. / This dissertation is focused on analysing the film culture of Chinese early cinema from the perspective of sound, from 1930 to 1937. The theoretical development of this dissertation is based around the concept of vernacular modernism, proposed by Miriam Bratu Hansen and developed by Zhang Zhen. I will not simply borrow this theory but use it within a critical framework. I attempt to rethink its meanings in the Chinese context, and on this basis, I will propose a new account of early Chinese sound film's vernacular modern history. / 魏萍. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-04, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 262-267). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Wei Ping.

At the very heart of variationist Sociolinguistics is the notion that language has an underlying structure, and that this structure varies according to external linguistic variables such as age, gender, social class, community membership, nationality, and so on. Specifically, this study examines variation in initial and final segments, as well as sentence final particles in Cantonese in Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR). Results of this study indicate that external linguistic constraint categories play a role in the realization of how and when initial and final segments, as well as sentence final particles are used in Macau Cantonese. Finally, this dissertation illustrates that pragmatic functions in the systematic use of linguistic variables requires explanations that draw from variationist sociolinguistic research that has an ethnographic and interpretive basis. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Sociolinguistics)