Between 1945 and 1987, as part of its efforts to impose a Chinese identity on native-born Taiwanese and to establish and maintain hegemony, Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) government pursued a unilingual, Mandarin-only policy in education. This thesis studies the changing meaning of “becoming Taiwanese” by examining the school experiences of four generations of Taiyu speakers who went to school during the Mandarin-only era: 1) those who also went to school under the Japanese; 2) those who went to school before 1949 when Taiwan was part of KMT-controlled China; 3) those who went to school during the 1950s at the height of the implementation of KMT rule; and, 4) those who went to school when Mandarin had become the dominant language. Two data types, interviews and public documents, are analyzed using two research methods, focus group interviews as the primary one, and document analysis as the secondary one. This research found that there is no direct relationship between how people negotiated language, hegemony and Taiwanese identity. First, as KMT hegemony became more secure, people’s links to their home language became weaker, so their view of Taiwanese identity as defined by Taiyu changed. Second, as exposure to hegemonic forces deepened over time, people were less able to find cultural spaces that allowed escape from hegemonic influences, and this, along with other life-course factors such as occupation, had an impact on their contestations of language and identity. The study recognizes the role of human agency and highlights the interactive and performative aspects of identity construction. The results reflect the different possibilities of living with hegemony in different eras, and also show that Taiwanese identity is not fixed, nor is there a single, “authentic” Taiwanese identity.

This research examines how competing factors determine the articulation of English stop-stop sequences across word boundaries in both native (L1) and nonnative (L2) speech. The two general questions that drive this research are 1) how is consonantal coordination implemented across English words? And 2) is this implementation different in L1 versus L2 speech? A group of 15 native English (NE) speakers and a group of 25 native Mandarin speakers (NM) who use English as a foreign language (ESL) participated in this study. The stimuli employed in this research were designed along four major parameters: 1) place of articulation, 2) lexical frequency, 3) stress, and 4) speech rate. The release percentages and closure duration ratios produced by English and Mandarin speakers were measured. The results showed that place of articulation had different effects on English and Mandarin speakers in their English stop-stop coarticulation, especially in heterorganic clusters. Specifically, a place order effect (i.e., more releases and more overlap in front-back clusters than in back-front clusters; POE) was only partially supported in native speech but not shown at all in nonnative speech in the current research. The results also confirmed a gradient lexical frequency effect, finding a significant correlation between self-rated frequency and overlap. A group difference was observed in the interaction between the effects of place of articulation and categorical frequency (real words vs. nonwords). In addition, the results showed, unexpectedly, a stronger stress effect for the NM group rather than for the NE group. Further analyses showed that increased speech rate did not systematically induce increased temporal overlap, because speakers from both groups varied in their behavior, having either more or less overlap at the fast speech rate than at the slow rate. Lastly, the analyses found no correlation between closure duration ratio and perceived accent in L2 speech. This finding was not predicted, given that timing features had always been considered critical to foreign accent perception. / Graduate

Bilinguals have the sole option of conversing in one language in spite of knowing two languages. The question of how bilinguals alternate between their two languages, activating and deactivating one language, is not well understood. In the current study, we investigated the development of this process by researching bilingual children's abilities to selectively integrate lexical tone based on its relevance in the language being used. In particular, the current study sought to determine the effects of global conversation-level cues versus local (within-word phonotactic) cues on children's tone integration in newly learned words. Words were taught to children via a conversational narrative, and word recognition was investigated using the intermodal preferential-looking paradigm. Children were tested on recognition of words with stimuli that were either matched or mismatched in tone in both English and Mandarin conversations. Results demonstrated that 3- to 4-year-olds did not adapt their interpretation of lexical tone changes to the language being spoken. In contrast, 4- to 5-year-olds were able to do so when supported by informative within-word cues. Results suggest that preschool children are capable of selectively activating a single language given word-internal cues to language.

The motivation for this thesis stems from my own personal decade long struggle learning Mandarin Chinese. The inherent difficulty of mastering this intricate language too often will leave students feeling bewildered, confused, frustrated, and even hopeless. Having walked down this path myself, I was inspired me to investigate how the Chinese language educational landscape could be improved. What are its shortcomings? What are its strengths? How can the journeys of future Chinese language learners be made easier? The research investigates the ongoing discussion of native and non-native speaking teachers. Teacher surveys, student surveys, student classwork, and classroom observations are utilized to glean up close and firsthand insight into the advantages and disadvantages of a native Chinese speaking teacher versus a native English speaking teacher. The research involves native and non-native speaking Chinese language teachers in an effort to elicit organic, accurate data about teachers’ classroom habits. The results of the experiments are not intended to “reveal the better teacher” among native and non-native speakers, rather they aim to contribute to an important discourse on the roles a native tongue plays in a foreign language classroom; a discourse that is still in its infancy. This contribution could be used by those who employ, evaluate, and administer Chinese language teachers and programs, and in turn improve the quality of Mandarin Chinese academic programs.

This dissertation, entitled Utopia Refracted through Mandarin Lenses, examines the legacy of Thomas More's Utopia (1516) in three aspects: translations, paratexts, and afterlives. It explores how Utopia - as a book and as a construct - has been appropriated into the Mandarin context during the process of linguistic and cultural transfer in the acts of translation. Employing close reading, instrumental case study, and the concept of paratexts to survey fourteen standalone Mandarin translations of Utopia, this study aims to fill in the gap of a previously neglected aspect of utopian studies, especially its paratextual apparatus, which has been almost entirely overlooked (with only one exception in 2003) since its first translation in 1935. This dissertation is structured into four chapters: the first chapter contextualises Utopia in the original Renaissance context by providing its early publication history (Latin and English) and by analysing the modes of narrative - fiction and dialogue - in which More's self-fashioning is manifest and where his hypothetical heterocosm is materialised. All this substantiates how fiction, dialogue, and paratexts are integral to the shaping of Utopia, without which a holistic reading is not feasible. The second chapter examines the introduction of the concept of...

Pinyin, the romanization system of Standard Chinese released in 1958 in China, is used to transcribe Chinese orthography, to facilitate reading comprehension and is used as a tool in general Chinese language education. Both in and outside of China and for both Chinese and foreign students, pinyin has also been used as an aid in Chinese language education for teaching Standard Chinese pronunciation and annotating Chinese texts in Chinese characters. While the related research mostly concerns the effects of pinyin on students’ abilities, research on the beliefs and practices of pinyin by Chinese language teachers in Swedish schools is scarce. The present study aims to explore Chinese language teachers’ perceptions about the importance of pinyin, and to investigate the teachers’ practice with pinyin in teaching. While the didactics of the teachers is coherent with parts in the literature describing teachers’ communicative focus, findings in the study entail that the teachers employ a method of presenting new characters involving showing the combination of a Chinese character, pinyin, and translation all at once. The balance between pinyin and Chinese character reading comprehension, a theme identified in the analysis, is a fact that the study’s respondents find hard to balance. The respondents also report positive mental effects of pinyin, such as increased confidence and an increased desire for learning Chinese in general. Lastly, the respondents emphasized the importance of pinyin in an expanding, digitalized era.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the preliminary validity of a newly developed dynamic assessment of narrative language in Mandarin Chinese. Two studies are reported in this thesis. Study 1 included 31 second grade participants and Study 2 included 43 first grade participants. All participants were enrolled in a Chinese immersion program in an elementary school in Utah. A dynamic assessment of narrative language was administered to each participant in Mandarin Chinese. A teacher rating was also included in Study 1. Results indicated that the dynamic assessment investigated in this thesis demonstrated some similar characteristics with other valid dynamic assessments of narrative language. As hypothesized, participants in Study 1 made gains from pretest to posttest after the teaching phase. Gain score from pretest to posttest and static teacher rating did not significantly correlate with modifiability rating. Modifiability rating and posttest score were significantly correlated in both studies. There is also no significant group difference between the participants in Study 1 and Study 2 on modifiability rating. These results are promising. However, more research will need to be conducted to further examine the dynamic assessment due to the limitations of the current studies.

This study analyzes the syntactic structure of motion predicates in Mandarin, with a specific focus on how the language expresses paths of motion and telicity. It adopts a generative-constructionist model called the Exo-Skeletal Model. Data were gathered from three native speakers of Mandarin living in Taiwan, using video prompts depicting various types of motion events. Upon seeing a prompt, the speakers produced a sentence or sentences describing the event in the prompt. Based on the data, this study points out a number of syntactic patterns unique to Mandarin, and it proposes an explanatory account of these patterns.

L2 proficiency gains during study abroad vary widely across individuals and programs, and much of the research in the study abroad literature attempts to identify the causes of this variance. Social network data has proven useful in explaining some of the variance in oral proficiency gains (Baker-Smemoe, Dewey, Bown, & Martinsen, 2014; Isabelli-García, 2006), and the current study builds on those findings by applying the same methodology to listening and reading proficiency in addition to speaking. Proficiency gains in listening, reading, and speaking were measured for 17 students from a US university studying abroad in Nanjing, China for one semester. Social network measures focused on interaction with native speakers (NS) were taken at the beginning, middle, and end of the study abroad program using the Study Abroad Social Interaction Questionnaire. Linear regression analyses showed that social network measures accounted for nearly 46% of the variance in listening gains, nearly 82% of the variance in reading gains, and nearly 46% of the variance in oral proficiency gains. These findings make a strong case for applying social network methods to understand listening and reading proficiency gains in study abroad.

The current study aims to explore how PMI instruction and other psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic factors that might affect the production of Mandarin consonants by Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong. A total of 63 participants were invited to participate in a Mandarin consonant production test in which they had to pronounce words starting with these three pairs of Mandarin consonants /ts/-/tʂ/, /tsh /-/tʂh / and /s/-/ʂ/. 6 participants were invited to a post-experiment interview. Results of the Mandarin production tests showed that secondary school students who had completed PMI instruction had the highest Mandarin production score. However, no significance could be found between the use of PMI instruction and the production of Mandarin consonants by Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong. Results of the interview showed that age, length of exposure to Mandarin, instrumental motivation were the factors that led to a higher accuracy in Mandarin production whilst a lack of motivation, low social acceptance towards Mandarin, high social distance towards mainland China and political factors are the factors that led to a lower accuracy in Mandarin production. To improve Cantonese speakers' Mandarin consonant production accuracy, the government should introduce Mandarin to the curriculum starting from kindergartens and improve the image of Mandarin among Hong Kong people.