Chinglish as a developing ELF variation. From globalizing perspectives to glocalizing tendencies

Abstract

Abstract – Since China has emerged first as a global manufacturing hub and gradually as an economic power, Chinese people have adopted English as a lingua franca, namely Chinglish, in their intercultural interactions and transactions. Nevertheless, the investigation of the historical and social context in which Chinglish has evolved will show a controversial relationship of Chinese speakers with their ELF variation. Despite being widespread among users that interact with foreigners for socio-economic reasons, Chinglish is generally considered by political power and Chinese governmental representatives as a primitive and backward language, to be deleted and replaced with a more pure Standard English. In this conflicting perspective, the paper will explore how some pragmalinguistic elements, derived from L1 cognitive schemata, regularly affect the texts spoken and written by Chinese speakers in English. Hence, a number of case studies will illustrate the extent to which Chinese native speakers – acting as ELF users and interacting within a global communicative setting – promptly activate native lexico-grammatical processes, consciously appropriate English language, creatively manipulate it to fulfill pragmatic needs, and, in the meanwhile, preserve L1 cognitive, semantic, rhetorical and socio-cultural dimensions. This would provide further insight not only into the current debate about World Englishes, but also into the challenging and ongoing shaping of intercultural communication in China where innovation and global attitudes constantly conflict with tradition and cultural resistance.