My idiolect, a Xin’an idiolect, belongs to the Wuxi dialect, which is the northern Wu dialect. It carries most of the characteristics of the Wuxi dialect, such as the tripartite division of the manner of articulation of initial stop consonants. However, with the special geographic position, on the bounty of Wuxi dialect from the northwest area to southeast area and connected with Suzhou city, my idiolect shows its unique features, such as the condition of the retroflex. This study analyzes the phonological system of the idiolect and discusses the features. Since the dialect of the suburban area of the Wuxi is rare, it was only documented in the local chronicles; therefore the study is a good supplemental material to the Wuxi dialect. Moreover, using the idiolect is like to use the phonological material with the specific area and social identity. It is well known that the variation of the language is related to the area, to the speaker’s social identity and to the situation, therefore the specific idiolect definitely will benefit researchers to analyze the dialect. Furthermore, idiolect is also a good sample to study the language diversity among the different social classes, which need to get more attention from scholars. With the influence of the Mandarin and the surrounding dialects, some phonological features of my idiolect are in the variation, such as the sharp and rounded sounds. In the thesis, the theory of the language contact is applied to explain my idiolect.

As one of the most prominent Taiwanese film director, Wei Te-sheng’s films have been the focus of attention from publicity and film prize committees. Most of his film works focus on Japan-Taiwan theme. Based on auteur theory, this thesis examines the colonial and postcolonial relationship between Japanese and Taiwanese by analyzing the Taiwanese film director Wei Te-sheng’s three films, Cape No.7 (2008), Seediq Bale (2011), and Kano (2014). From the historical view in terms of the colonial relationship between Taiwan and Japan, this thesis reveals the Taiwanese’s ambivalence toward its ex-colonizer and explores the reasons behind the particular and complex relationship between Taiwanese and Japanese colonists. Since decentralization is the most noticeable manifestation of such colonial and postcolonial relationship, this thesis also probes into the reason why decentralization evokes nostalgic feelings among Taiwanese. This thesis interprets Wei’s film based on auteur theory. Auteur’s imprint is to be found both in style and basic motifs in Wei’s films as following three distinguished features: non-linear narrative, voiceover, and the use of allusion. There contain two aspects of the colonial relationship reflected on Wei Te-sheng’s films, the oppressor and the oppressed, and the emotional bond. Explanations of paradoxical pro-Japan attitude are manifested in the following two aspects: ineffectiveness of the KMT government, and contribution of Japanese colonial government, including improvement of infrastructure, promotion of economics growth, and colonial education. Three major films directed by Wei have all set in the rural areas. The praise for the energy and enthusiasm of rural dwellers is indicative of the shift in focus from urban to rural areas. Cape No.7 and Kano, reveal that Taiwanese hold a deep emotional appeal for building warm and harmonious communities in a society constantly shaped by industrialization and urbanization. Cape No.7 and Kano have brought a familial sense of community back to the audience. On the island’s mad rush toward modernization, these two films presented what was lost and sacrificed during this process: harmony with nature, a sense of community, time-honored cultural traditions and local cultures and ways of life. The popularity of the two films reflects the audience’s romantic imagination toward the irretrievable rural life, and reveals that they were nostalgic for the close-knit, intimate, direct interpersonal relationships in rural areas. The atomization of existence is associated with the current situation of cities, where each individual human beings is increasingly isolated. Under such circumstances, two films featuring a sense of community evoked a historical retrospection of the urbanization. The seemingly conservative rural areas preserve the precious complex that people aspire to retain, though it might be spotlighted through a reminiscing filter, the close-knit community with intimate, direct and simple interpersonal relationships.

Legalism, as one of the most useful philosophies of government, has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. The work of Han Fei—one of the most influential proponents of Legalism—has been scrutinized and critiqued for centuries as immoral. I intend to show Legalism, especially the Han Feizi, is moral through focusing on four aspects of Han Fei’s work. First, his understanding of human nature. Han Fei states people are born with a hatred of harm and a love of profit. This understanding of human nature can never lead to a cognitive distortions in governing. So it is a moral basic of a philosophy. The second element is a focus on the context of Han Fei’s writings. If his works are read in detail back to his age, one cannot reach an immorality conclusion. Then, based on his understanding of subjects and his correspondingly suggested strategies, his goal is moral because he wants to built a peaceful and stable society, which was unobtainable at that time. Finally, Han Fei’s conception of punishment, which has been thought of immoral, actually is a moral tool to protect the majority of subjects who are innocent.

In the Anglophone world, the Nanjing Massacre is also known as “the Rape of Nanjing,” which represents gender-based violence directly and inspires fictional writers to depict the tragedy of women. Yan Geling’s novel The Flowers of Warand Zhang Yimou’s film adapted from that novel are examples. In this thesis, through a comparison of Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nankingand two versions of The Flowers of War, I examine how Yan and Zhang apply the historical materials to portray the interaction between women and calamity. In The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang displays “rape” from a transnational perspective. First, patriarchy rapes women. The East Asian male-dominated society exposed women to extreme danger. Society taught women to be gentle and meek, but men surrendered and fled when the war did happen. Another meaning of “rape” is that the stronger nation abuses the weaker nation. During the war, stronger countries ignored the call for help from China and forgot the Nanjing Massacre afterward. By contrast, when adapting the Nanjing Massacre into fictional works, both Yan and Zhang interpret “rape” from a single point of view and manage to find out “hope” in the war. In the novel The Flowers of War, Yan Geling details the problems with patriarchy without adequately illustrating the bigger global picture. She narrates how women use mature female organs to bring out (re)birth. Zhang Yimou, meanwhile, emphasizes the transnational context in his film. He expresses the idea that the Western religion is able to save the fallen Oriental civilization. In this thesis, I argue that in the novel The Flowers of War, Yan narrates how the inner strength of Chinese women’s bodies gets to solve the crisis of death; however, in the film version, Zhang seeks the external power – Western cultures – to cure the Chinese trauma. Nevertheless, both these two narrative strategies expose several problems: Yan represents the abjection of women, and Zhang shows the self-Orientalism tendency.

The thesis is an examination of the history of the Chinese community in Portland, Oregon, with special emphasis on the mutual support organizations developed by this community. The study is primarily descriptive in nature. It includes background information on social, economic, and political conditions in China in the nineteenth century; an account of the history of the Chinese and Chinese organizations in Portland, and an examination of the issues involved in providing social services to Asian communities.

In the past century, grammar instruction has aroused debate among scholars and instructors in the field of second language teaching and acquisition without absolute consensus. However, for the acquisition of Chinese grammar by adult L2 learners, there is wider acceptance that grammar should be taught due to the unique Chinese grammatical features. The issue in question is merely on how to teach Chinese grammar effectively. Hence, inspired by many other comparative studies on explicit and implicit instruction methods for teaching Western languages such as English, French, Spanish and so forth, the researcher conducted an empirical study to investigate the effectiveness of the two instruction methods on Chinese grammar acquisition. The current study consisted of two experiments, involving two target forms: Affirmative-Negative Questions (A-Not-A Questions) and the perfective aspect particle LE (了). The participants were beginning level Chinese language learners who studied Chinese as a second language in two class sections of the Elementary Non-intensive Chinese Class at a large public university. They formed two comparative groups naturally. During the two experiments, the explicit group was provided with explicit knowledge of grammar patterns, examples carrying the patterns and opportunities to practice with the teacher’s explicit corrective feedback, while implicit group received input without any grammatical knowledge or explanation. The teacher would give recast feedback (implicit) if students made mistakes in their practice. Importantly, the explicit and implicit teaching groups were reversed in the second experiment, in order to enable each group to be exposed to both the explicit and the implicit teaching conditions. Analysis of the results obtained from immediate-tests and delayed post-tests yielded three main findings: first, learners who had received explicit grammar instruction treatment overall gained greater improvement in their knowledge of, and their ability to use the target forms in the short term; second, when it comes to longer-term effects, both groups in the two experiments showed loss, in varying degrees, in the knowledge of and the ability to use the target forms; third, explicit instruction was of more advantage for L2 Chinese learners when they are learning more complex rules.

Language teaching usually focuses on linguistic knowledge, such as vocabulary and grammar, but that is not the whole picture for language learning. To build effective intercultural communication networks, language and culture study is fundamental. Language is the medium of cultural messages. This paper explores Chinese learners’ culture learning through their language courses. Based on cultural information provided in the textbooks (Integrated Chinese Level I & Level II), I designed a cultural knowledge questionnaire to collect data and analyze learners’ culture competence and problems when learning culture. After multiple rounds of modifications, the questionnaire was distributed to different levels of Chinese language learners, Chinese native speakers, and other language speakers at a public university in western Massachusetts. The questionnaire was also distributed to intermediate level Chinese students at a public university in Virginia. The results show differences among different levels of students and different questions, but no difference in heritage students’ performance nor in different universities. The data analysis of the questionnaire also provides insights for textbooks editors, Chinese instructors and educators. Culture learning is a continuing process that requires enough accurate and up-to-date cultural knowledge in textbooks as well as effective and appropriate teaching by instructors.

Khitan Language, as being used as an official language in Liao Dynasty during 10th to 12th century in Northern China contains some features of influence of Chinese Language. By studying the Sino-Khitan transcription, features of Sino-Khitan phonology can be found. These features include: Voiced initial consonants had been devoiced into voiceless aspirated for ping tone, voiceless unaspirated for non-ping tone; Chinese labial-dental initials had been differentiated from Chinese bilabial initials; Alveolar affricates does not exist in Khitan language but were borrowed from Chinese. Unaspirated [ts] was represented by new-invented YZ graph, while aspirated [tsʰ] was merged into [s] and represented by the same YZ graph as [s]; Nasal initial [ŋ] and finals with nasal coda [-ŋ] in Khitan language are borrowed from Chinese; Chinese final [ɨ] is a not a native sound in Khitan language and new YZ graph was specificly invented for this acquired sound. It is mostly used to transliterate zi-si (资思)rhyme of Middle Chinese. By comparing Sino-Khitan phonological features with that of Northern Mandarin, it is to be found that the two system share many phonological characteristics. However, Tangut language, which was used in northwestern China and its geographic area is currently belong to Northern Mandarin speaking area, has many different features in some essential perspectives. The relation between the Sino-Khitan and Chinese language is very close which suggests that the development of Khitan language may be one of the important steps of Northern Mandarin development.

Although the field of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL) is still a relatively emerging one, its history runs much longer than we expect. As early as the mid to late 19th Century, Chinese was being shown in way that had not been done before – as textbooks. More importantly, these textbooks were created by non-native speakers. Yet their value as historical documents and as foundation pedagogical resources has not yet been fully recognized. The present study is an initial conversation of four late 19th century textbooks and how they pioneered presenting Chinese to a Western audience. After discussing the theoretical differences between China and the West that led to the need for textbooks, the four textbooks will be compared on how they addressed the aspects of pronunciation, tones, characters and the skills of reading, writing and speaking to their respective audiences. Such comparisons should reveal that by understanding the learner’s perspective and utilizing non-native knowledge, these textbook authors were able to teach Chinese as a pedagogically progressive, learnable language. This study should not only add depth to our knowledge of the historical foundations and teaching precedents, but will also highlight the ways Chinese was instructed and how this can positively impact our modern teaching.

There are four major patterns of the plural forms of personal pronouns in Modern Chinese, which are: Same Wording, Suffixation (Multisyllabic and Monosyllabic Suffixations), Sound Combination (Coda Suffix and New Wording), and Tonal Changes. Same Wording was the original plural pattern since the singular form was also used as plural form in Old Chinese. Suffixation was already appeared in Middle Chinese. Author suspects that Suffixation was a concept inspired by non-Han languages such as the Buddhist Sanskrit. Each Chinese dialect chose a way to represent this concept based on its dialectal characteristic, thus there are many dialects in China. For example, the [men] suffix in many northern dialects are phonologically and semantically related to the Tang dynasty suffixes, while the m- initial might has been originated in Tang dynasty dialects, the -n ending might be a result of Altaic language influences. Northern dialects have a simpler pattern due to the influence of Altaic languages, in comparison, the plural pattern of southern dialects are more complex due to the contact with Miao, Yao, Zhuang languages.