A Research On The Pragmatic Variation Of OK Under Language Contact In Spoken Chinese

Language is never an isolated and closed system, which always contacts with otherlanguages on different levels and in different forms. As the externally influential factor oflanguage change, language contact causes and fastens the speed of language variation, whichis reflected in the various linguistic aspects such as phonetics, vocabulary, syntax, semantics,etc. Inevitably, the globalization of English leads to the localization of it. English is involvedin local features consequently. Due to the high degree of contact between Chinese and English,OK is a frequently used word in spoken Chinese and undergoing the pragmatic variation inChinese context.Based on researches on language contact, the study analyzes the pragmatic variation ofOK guided by the variation theory. Subjects in this study are130people who are living orstudying in Xiangtan. Firstly, the tape-recording and observing method in sociolinguistics areadopted to collect a great number of sentence data of the pragmatic variation of OK fromnaturalistic speech in people’s daily life.In addition, a questionnaire is designed to reflectpeople’s attitude towards the pragmatic variation of OK as a supplement. Finally, with thehelp of GoldVarb X and Excel (2007) software, all the data obtained from the research areanalyzed quantitatively.The questions involved in the research are as follows:1) the types of pragmatic variationof OK in Chinese context;2) the sociolinguistic pattern on the use of pragmatic variation ofOK in daily speech;3) people’s attitude towards the pragmatic variation of OK.Greatly influenced by extensive Chinese-English contact, OK appears more and moreand it is frequently used in spoken Chinese nowadays. It is found that the appearance and thewide use of pragmatic variation of OK are caused by both linguistic and social factors. OKhas undergone the following four kinds of pragmatic variations, that is, OK referring to thesense of being good/acceptable, OK referring to certain action completed, OK used to act as amorpheme of a word, OK used to moderate the tone of conversation respectively. Amongthese four types,OK referring to the sense of being good/acceptable is the most frequentlyseen, while OK referring to certain action completed is much less, and the two types includingOK used to moderate the tone of conversation and OK used to act as a morpheme of a wordare of the same-level use. The social variables such as age, gender, occupation andeducational level are found to affect the use of pragmatic variation of OK and people’sattitudes towards its use. In contrast to men, females are more likely to use it and people at the age of15-25use it much more and show a higher level of acceptance. Moreover, people whoare civil servants or managers in company use the lower proportion of pragmatic variation ofOK owing to their status awareness. And speakers’ educational level turns out to beinsignificant when compared with other social variables. The appearance and diffusion ofpragmatic variation of OK are caused by linguistic and social factors. In detail, linguisticfactors are the influence of Memetics and the negative transfer of Chinese, while socialfactors include social environment and social psychology. To be specific, social environmentrefers to extensive degree of Chinese-English contact and the media influence; Socialpsychology includes pursuit of originality, force of the crowd and the economy principle oflanguage.English-Chinese contact inevitably leads to mutual influence. The pragmatic variation ofOK is the phenomenon of loanwords localization. The sociolinguistic study of OK can helppeople have a comprehensive understanding its local use in local context of China; meanwhileit also enriches language variation study and provides references for the loanwords study.