Cover not available

Article published In: Developments in Diglossic Settings in the Asian Pacific Region:
Edited by Marinus van den Berg
[Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 30:1/2] 2020
► pp. 172–216

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required
Special issue articles

Natives, migrants and communication practices in the Xi’an speech community

The role of discourse communities and the Putonghua koine community in China

 | Shaanxi Normal University
Published online: 30 June 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.00049.ber
Abstract
This paper reports the results of direct observations of language use and sociolinguistic interviews in Xi’an city, Shaanxi province, China. The data were collected in the autumn of 2018. Direct observations were done in four vegetable and fruit markets providing a data set of 1,708 cases. A sample of market customers was also interviewed resulting in 168 interviews. The interview data made clear that in migrant families, home-town dialects are well maintained, but that for interactions in the city, PTH is preferred as it is for work-related interactions. The observation data showed that ninety percent of interactions between customers and salespeople were performed in either the Xi’an dialect or PTH. These two varieties were used in various combinations confirming wide-spread use of multilingual exchanges. These exchanges are further specified as speech-community-internal interactions, home-dialect exchanges and lingua franca exchanges. Community integration of migrants is clarified through the concept of the discourse communities. The latter structure the modern Xi’an speech community and connect to the national level PTH Koine Community.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The reseach area: Xi’an city
  • The Xi’an language situation
  • Method
  • Unobtrusive measurement
  • Sociolinguistic interviews
  • Procedure
  • Language use in the market
  • Language use and interaction type
  • Language use in conversations
    • Customers
    • Salespeople
  • Business transactions
  • Dialect use across markets
  • Single channel communication
  • Multichannel communication
    • BT-C exchanges
    • BT-S data
  • Market interviews
  • Language behavior profiles
  • Language across dialect groups
  • Speech, discourse and koine communities
  • Speech communities
  • Discourse communities
  • The PTH koine community
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (63)
References
Bach, J. (2010). “They Come in Peasants and Leave Citizens”: Urban Villages and the Making of Shenzhen, China. Cultural Anthropology. 25 (3): 421–458. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beyari, C. (2018). Economy and Market in China: The State, Wage Labour and the Construction of the ‘China Price’. Business Management Review 14/11: 13–36.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bourhis, R. Y., H. Giles, W. E. Lambert. (1975). Social consequences of accommodating one’s style of speech: a cross-national investigation. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 61: 53–71.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bubenik, V. (2007). “The rise of Koiné”. In A. F. Christidis (ed.). A history of Ancient Greek: from the beginnings to late antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 342–345.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cai, Y. and Yew-Kwang Ng. (2014). Part-Peasants: Incomplete Rural-Urban Labour Migration in China. Pacific Economic Review 19/41: 401–422. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cao, Zhiyun. (2010). Chinese Dialect Preservation Project in Modernization: A Brief Introduction of Linguistic Atlas of Chinese Dialects. In, M. van den Berg and Daming Xu (Eds.), Industrialization and the Restructuring of Speech Commu- nities in China and Europe. (pp. 73–91). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge S cholars Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
CASS. (1987). Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Australian Academy of Humanities, Atlas of Chinese Language, Hong Kong Longman Publishing (Far East) Ltd.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chang, Daniel. (2002). Classrooms as Discourse Communities. Teachers.Net Gazette 3/71. [[URL]]
Chao, Y. R. (1967). My linguistic autobiography. In Anwar S. Dil, (Ed.). Aspects of Chinese Sociolinguistics, (pp. 1–20). Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cooper, Ian. (2016). Segmented social exclusion and rural-urban migration in China; a case study of Xi’an. Ph.D. dissertation. Ottawa: Carleton University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cooper, Robert L. (1980). Sociolinguistic Surveys: The State of the Art. Applied Linguistics 1/21, 113–128. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cooper, R. L. (1989). Language planning and social change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cooper, Robert L. and Susan Carpenter. (1976). Language in the market. In, Language in Ethiopia, M. L. Bender et al. (eds), pp. 244–255. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
CSY. (2018). China Statistical Yearbook. National Bureau of Statistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cui, Rong and Cohen, Jeffrey H. (2015). Reform and the Hukou system in China. Migration Letters 12/31: 327–335. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Falkenheim, Victor C. and Denis C. Twitchett. (2019). Shaanxi province, China. Encyclopedia Britannica.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Finnis, K. (2013). Creating a new space: code-switching among British-born Greek- Cypriots in London. Pragmatics and Society 4/21.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua. (1972). Sociolinguistics. A brief Introduction. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giles, H. (2016). Communication Accommodation Theory: Negotiating Personal Relationships and Social Identities Across Contexts. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giles, H. & Johnson, P. (1987). Ethnolinguistic identity theory: A social psychological approach to language maintenance. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 681, 69–99.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gu, Yueguo. (2009). “Chinese”. In Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1966/2006). The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, Paul Siu-nam. (1994/2006). Mass Communication and National Development in China: Media Roles Reconsidered. Journal of Communication, Volume 44/31: 22–37. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Li, Xiaoguang, Zhan Ju, M. E. van den Berg. (2016). Urbanization, education, and language behavior: The case of Jilin University students. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 26/11: 87–118.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Li, Yuming. (2010). Language Planning in the People’s Republic of China. In, M. van den Berg and Daming Xu (Eds.), Industrialization and the Restructuring of Speech Communities in China and Europe. (pp. 24–35). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liu, Yuting, He, Shenjing, Wu, Fulong, Webster, Chris. (2010). Urban villages under China’s rapid urbanization: Unregulated assets and transitional neighbourhoods. Habitat International 341, 135–144. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miao, Ruiqin and Li, JIaxuan. (2006). Urban migration and functional bilingualism in Guangdong Province, China. Journal of Asian pacific Communication 16/21: 237–257. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nordquist, Richard. (2019). The Difference Between a Speech and Discourse Community. ThoughtCo, Jul. 20.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Norman, Jerry. (1988). Chinese. Cambridge Language Surveys; Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nystrand, M. (1982). What Writers Know: The Language, Process, and Structure of Written Discourse. New York: Academic.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pogner, Karl-Heinz. (2003). Writing and interacting in the discourse community of engineering. Journal of Pragmatics 351: 855–869. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Qian, Nairong. (2010). The Spread of Shanghainese to Nanqiao Fengxian District. In, M. van den Berg and Daming Xu (Eds.), Industrialization and the Restructuring of Speech Communities in China and Europe. (pp.184–191). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Riskin, Carl (Ed.). (2000). United Nations Development Programme, China human development report 1999; transition and the state. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shah, Dhavan V., McLeod, Jack M., Lee, Nam-jin. (2009). Communication Competence as a Foundation for Civic Competence: Processes of Socialization into Citizenship. Political Communication 26:1,102–117. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shadian, Jessica Michelle. (2000). Globalization in rural Xi’an: The socio-economics of female rural-return migration in China. M.A. Thesis. Berlin: Humboldt University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Song, Jing and Zhu, Yingmei. (2016). Attitude, maintenance, and use of Beijing dialect and Putonghua among younger generation Beijing-born residents. Journal of Asian pacific Communication 26/11: 38–62.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Swales, J. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1998). “Discourse community, genres and English as an international language”. World Englishes 7/21: 211–220.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tang, Chaoju and Van Heuven, Vincent J. (2010). Predicting Mutual Intelligibility in Chinese Dialects from Subjective and Objective Linguistic Similarity. In, M. van den Berg and Daming Xu (Eds.), Industrialization and the Restructuring of Speech Communities in China and Europe. (pp.91–120). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tang, Zhixiang. (2016). Language choice and language attitude among different social segments in Shenzhen. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 26/11: 143:160.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tu, Xinhui and He, Tingting. (2019). Survey of Weibo language usage. In, Li, Yuming and Li, Wei (Eds.), The Language Situation in China Vol. 5. (pp. 315–30). Berlin: Mouton, De Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van den Berg, Marinus E. (1986). Language Planning and language Use in Taiwan: social identity, language accommodation, and language choice behaviour. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 591, 97–116.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1988). Long term accommodation of (ethno)linguistic groups toward a societal language norm. Language and Communication 8/3,4: 251–270. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1992). Ethnolinguistic Identities and Accommodation across Generations in Taiwan. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 3/11, 145–164.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2005). Vitality, Identity, and Language Spread: The Case of Shanghainese. Journal of Chinese Sociolinguistics 5/21, 225–235.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2010). Socio-economic Stratification in the Guangzhou Speech Community: Language Behaviour in Shopping Areas of Yuexiu and Tianhe Districts In, M. van den Berg and Daming Xu (Eds.), Industrialization and the Restructuring of Speech Communities in China and Europe. (pp.236–268). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2015). Industrialization and Long-term Accommodation toward a National Language Norm: Network Density, Dialect Vitality and the Restructuring of the Shanghai Speech Community. China Language Strategy 3/21: 1–17.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2016). Modernization and the restructuring of the Shanghai speech community. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 26/11: 119–148.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2019). The Restructuring of Chinese Speech Communities: The Case of Xi’an City, Shaanxi Province. China Language Strategy 5/11: 1–22.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Walcott, Susan M. (2010). Developing Western China: Xi’an’s Maturing Economy and the Role of Producer Services. China Currents 9/11 [retrieved 2/2/2019 chinacenter.net].Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wang, William S-Y. (2015). The peoples and languages of China: Evolutionary background. In, Wang, W. and Sun, Chaofen (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wenger, Etienne. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wenger, Etienne, McDermott, Richard, Snyder, William M. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice. Harvard Business Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wu, X. and Zhang, Zhuoni. (2014). Household Registration, Occupational Segregation and Income Inequality in Urban China. Social Sciences in China 222/61: 118–140.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
XJTU (2013). 西安流动人口发展报告 Xi’an liudong renkou fazhan baogao 2011–2012. (Report on population mobility in Xi’an). Xi’an Jiaotong University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
XTN. (2017). 西安统计年鉴 Xi’an Tongji Nianjian. Xi’an Statistical Yearbook. Xi’an Municipal Bureau of Statistics; China Statistics Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Xu, Daming. (2006). Nanjing language survey and the theory of speech community. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 16/21: 175–196. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2010). The Development of the Baotou Speech Community: A Quantitative Study of Nasal Variation in Mandarin Chinese. In, M. van den Berg and Daming Xu (Eds.), Industrialization and the Restructuring of Speech Communities in China and Europe. (pp.120–141). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2016). Speech community theory and the language / dialect debate. Journal of Asian pacific Communication 26/11: 14–38.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Xue, Caide. (2010). A Study of the Language Behaviour of Shanghai Residents In, M. van den Berg and Daming Xu (Eds.), Industrialization and the Restructuring of Speech Communities in China and Europe. (pp.164–183). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yerrick, R. K., & Gilbert, A. (2011). Constraining the discourse community: How science discourse perpetuates marginalization of underrepresented students. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 6/11: 67–91. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
You, Rujie. (2010). Language Competition in Contemporary Shanghai. In, M. van den Berg and Daming Xu (Eds.), Industrialization and the Restructuring of Speech Communities in China and Europe. (pp.141–164). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Lee, Cher Leng
2024. Singapore hawker centres. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 34:1 ► pp. 23 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue