The Prevailing Letter Words In Chinese And The Changing Attitude Of The Chinese Language Toward Loan Words: Explorations, Exemplifications And Implications

With the profound change of the Chinese society since China's reform and opening up, a large number of loan words, also called "alien words" or "borrowed words" which are borrowed mainly from English nowadays, are finding their way into the Chinese language system at a high speed. Letter words (those words directly written in Latin or Greek letters, also including a very small part of abbreviations made up of Chinese Pinyin letters) have attracted the attention of the society, in particular that of the sociolinguists.Research on loan words in the Chinese language has always been an important problem in the linguistic field since the 1950s. The growing number of loan words in the Chinese language, on the one hand, has enriched the Chinese vocabulary to make it more expressive and more colorful than ever before. On the other hand, such a phenomenon has caused worry and fear among the Chinese people who regard it as cultural invasion or cultural imperialism.Based on China's socio-linguistic background mentioned above, this thesis, as a supplement to loan-word study, is divided into six chapters.Firstly, beginning with a brief review of loan words research in China, the paper makes a discussion on the borrowing means of loan words in the Chinese language, that is, phonetic loans, translation loans, hybrids, loanshift and graphic loans, from which we can not only learn about each aspect of socio-cultural communication but also perceive the language attitude of Chinese toward loan words.Secondly, this paper lays emphasis on the sociolinguistic phenomenon of the widespread use of letter words in the Chinese language. Special consideration will be given to its definition, classification, distribution field, characteristics and influences upon the Chinese language and standardization principles.Next, a brief historical review of the changing attitude of the Chinese language toward loan words will be discussed. From repulsiveness to acceptance, and finally to dialectics toward loan words, the process of the attitude change of the Chinese language toward loan words has undergone a gradual diachronic evolvement.Lastly, the thesis explores the reasons for the attitude change of the Chinese language toward loan words from four aspects: socially, culturally, linguistically and psychologically. As to the social reasons, according to the Theory of Covariance of Language with Society, social development inevitably causes language development. The popularity of letter words is the linguistic reflection of social changes taking place in almost all the social fields of China. Culturally, on the one hand, for the outcome of cultural imbalance between English and Chinese, Chinese as the recipient language is influenced greatly by English as the donor language and its culture; on the other hand, the attitude change is determined by one of the characteristics of traditional Chinese language civilization—tolerance and opening-up to other language civilizations. Linguistically, loan words, particularly letter words, are concise and vivid which is in accordance with the Principle of Economy in language use. Meanwhile, they also have semantic ambiguity function and euphemistic function when used in communication. More importantly, they have international acceptability because of its written form in Latin or Greek letters. Psychologically, the psychology of pursuing new and exotic things as well as liking multiform styles and individual expressions is reflected in the popularity of letter words in China nowadays. In the final analysis, the reasons for the attitude change of the Chinese language toward loan words are the result of these four factors interacting with each other.