| As one of the most important areas of the Belt and Road Initiative(BRI),Southeast Asia has the largest population of overseas Chinese,who have been an indispensable force in the construction of BRI.There are a large number of overseas Chinese in northern Thailand.However,at present domestic and foreign schloars,especially from the linguisitcs,lack serious research on them.Therefore,in order to provide the targeted suggestions and useful reference to the related work on overseas Chinese and promote the “United Front” of overseas Chinese,this present study takes as an object the overseas Chinese in Mae Salong,Chiang Rai,Thailand to explore their language situation,identity and living state.After the defeat of the Kuomintang(KMT)in China’s mainland in 1949,the remnants of KMT fled to Myanmar,and merged with the rest of Chinese Expeditionary Army stranded abroad,the armed forces of the caravan and the mountain bandits who drifted away in the Golden Triangle area to form the 93 rd Division of KMT.In the following decades,they wandered in the Golden Triangle area and settled down in the mountains of northern Thailand acting as mercenaries of the Thai government.They started the process of abandoning the armor and returning to the fields and taking root in small villages.Till now there have been more than 90 Chinese villages established,and Mae Salong Village is one of them.Most of the four generations of these Chinese in Mae Salong are officers and soldiers of the 93 rd Division of the KMT,their families and their descendants.As a special product of the migration of modern Chinese ethnic groups under the military,political and historical background,the Chinese in Mae Salong are obviously different from the Chinese in other parts of Thailand because of their complicated,vagrant and fugitive experiences and the living models of these Chinese living in compact communities.In the language ecology of Thailand,they show their unique identity characteristics in the dimensions of language,culture,ethnic group,and country through their languaging such as language attitude,language use,and language code mixing.In order to reveal the state,the characters,and the causes of language and identity of the Chinese in Mae Salong,and export how they represent and construct identity through language,this study constructs a theoretical framework on the basis of the theory of hybrid identities proposed by the postmodernist Homi.K.Bhahha,the theory of Haugenian paradigm of ecolinguistics,and other theories of language and identity.The theory of hybrid identity emphasizes that identity is represented and constructed by language,and that identity especially cultural identity,should be viewed from a dynamic perspective which is called the third space(the hybrid space).Haugenian ecolinguistics emphasizes the relationship between language and environment in terms of natural environment,social environment and psychological environment.The related theories of language and identity studies believe that there is a dialectical relationship between language and identity: language is a distinctive feature of ethnic group culture;ethnic group members reflect their language identity through specific languaging,and their identities also affect their languaging.Language has its obvious sociality,and people construct their various identities through languaging to achieve the purpose of constructing their own identity.Therefore,the theoretical framework of this study underlines there is an obvious interaction between the identity of the Chinese in Mae Salong and the local linguistic ecology.Through their language use,language attitude,code-mixing and so on,their identity is represented by five major dimensions:language,culture,nationality,ethnic group and the celebrity effect.At the same time,these five dimensions also construct their new dentity——Mae Salong Chinese Identity in Thailand.This study is mainly based on the Consistent Convergence Model of the Mixed methods and is supplemented by the methods of linguistic ethnography.That means both the quantitative research and the qualitative research are carried out in parallel,and then the results are comprehensively analyzed in order to show the research findings thoroughly and carefully.This study puts the subjects in the special,complex and diverse linguistic ecology of Mae Salong in northern Thailand.By investigating the languaging of the subjects,this dissertation explores how their languaging represents and constructs their distinctive identity in the multiple dimensions.After three field investigations,nearly 600 subjects were investigated,including six classic subjects.A total of 472 valid questionnaires(380 in Chinese and 92 in Thai)had been collected.920 minutes of interviews(720 minutes in depth and more than 200 minutes of non-specific)were recorded,and 701 pictures were taken,and 37 paper books were collected.After managing,analyzing and synthesizing the data through SPSS 20.0 and Nvivo 12.0,the conclusion of this study was finally formed.This results show that after nearly 70 years,in the special ecology of the mountain area of northern Thailand,the Chinese in Mae Salong have undergone a complete transformation from the KMT soldiers,an isolated alien Army,Thai Mercenaries to overseas Chinese in Thailand.In the progress of the transformation of this identity,their languaging not only represents this dynamic process of their identity transformation from five main dimensions,namely,language identity,culture identity,national identity,ethnic identity and celebrity identity,but also plays an important role in the construction of their identity transformation.Nowadays,most of them speak Chinese(especially Yunnan dialect)and write with Chinese characters(mostly traditional Chinese characters).Most of them regard themselves as Chinese and regard the Chinese cultural heritage and the development of Chinese education as the number one issue in the village.Most of them eat Chinese food and celebrate traditional Chinese festivals,such as the Spring Festival,the MidAutumn Festival,and the Dragon Boat Festival etc.Most of them are Thai citizens,and swear allegiance to the Thai Royal family,but they call themselves Chinese.Even after more than five decades,they are influenced by many factors in the linguistic ecology of Thailand and their identity,which highlights the distinct hybrid characteristics of Chinese,Thai,and international,has changed distinctively.At present,they have formed the new identity of overseas Chinese in Mae Salong of Thailand.This identity is constructed by breaking their original Chinese identity with the help of language symbols in its local ecology in the northern mountain area of Thailand.This identity,which adapted to the new ecology,is the choice of these Chinese who immigrated to the northern mountain area of Thailand.It has typical properties such as adaptability,flexibility and practicality.The identity of the Chinese in Mae Salong is dynamic and heterogeneous,but their Chinese characteristic is obviously prevailing.At the present,their hybrid identity tends to be Thai localized in a comparatively slow speed and will exist for a long time.However,as time goes on and with the further implementation of the Thai localization by the Thai government,there will be a trend that the Chinese in Mae Salong will be Thai localized at last.Being set apart from the Chinese in other parts of Thailand or the early Chinese immigrants from northern Thailand,the highly Chineseness makes them very unusual.They are even called“Chinese” or “Yunnannese” in the mountainous area of northern Thailand.Their prominent hybrid identity is the co-variation of many factors such as its linguistic ecology and its demographic characteristics.According to the communicative situation,purpose,object,time and expectation effect,this kind of hybrid multi-identity will be presented in different forms,such as Chinese identity,Thai identity and so on.The varied presentations of the identity characteristics are the result of their subjective choice that they adapt to the unique ecology,seek maximum economic interests and political rights,and maximize the interests of disadvantaged immigrant groups,and the selected result of adapting to their ecology.In this study,this subjective choice of identity is called Preferred Identity.This study is helpful for the study on language and identity,the mixed method research,and the research of language and culture in Thailand.Besides,it is favorable to enhance overseas Chinese’s recognition of Chinese culture and our country and thereby effectively promote the BRI construction in China. |
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