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Article published In: Multilingualism and Mobility in the Twenty-First Century: New Trajectories and Possibilities in Migration Linguistics
Edited by Ariane Macalinga Borlongan and Lisa Lim
[AILA Review 37:1] 2024
► pp. 137–155

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Chinglish as border languaging

ORCiD logo with link | University of California, Irvine
 | University of California, Irvine
Published online: 6 June 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/aila.23012.du
Abstract
In an era where migration across borders is increasingly the norm, how are our understandings of language and the ways we talk about language being reimagined along the way? This article examines this question by attending to the shifting metadiscourses of “Chinglish,” a colloquialism referring to Chinese-English hybridizations. Chinglish, originally used to describe an incompetent interlanguage, has come to be invoked as a means of establishing “China English” as a legitimate world English variety, or more recently even as an innovative form of translingual practice. This article presents Chinglish as a form of “border languaging,” which enables us to take stock of the shifting meanings of Chinglish in relation to the linguistic “border” between English and Chinese upon which such metadiscursive framings hinge, and how the shifting orientations to such linguistic borders invite new ways of conceptualizing Chinglish and historically marginalized language practices more generally.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Chinglish as border languaging
  • Chinglish, Chinese English, and the metadiscourses of incompetence
  • China English and the metadiscourses of legitimacy
  • Chinglish as translingual practice
  • Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
References (56)
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Cited by one other publication

[no author supplied]
2025. Translanguaging and Semiotic Resources. In The Handbook of Linguistic Landscapes and Multilingualism, ► pp. 85 ff. DOI logo

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