He, Yingyue; (2022) Pragmatic borrowing between English and Chinese: A comparative study of two-way exchanges. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Through centuries of cross-cultural communication, English has been enriched by elements from other languages around the world, including Chinese; meanwhile, English has also exerted considerable influence on the Chinese language. Lexical exchanges between the two languages have been studied in previous research, and yet are mostly restricted to the lexical items themselves. This thesis particularly explores the pragmatic aspect of this language contact, examining items that are used to convey attitudinal or interpersonal meanings. I conduct a series of case studies on bi-directional pragmatic borrowing between English and Chinese, using a variety of data sources, which include dictionaries, corpora, social media data, and other online resources. I take a broad view of what constitutes pragmatic borrowing: I not only investigate the borrowing and integration of discourse-pragmatic items that are transferred between the two languages, but also examine the pragmatic motivations for the borrowing of other lexical items and even grammatical units. The items discussed in the thesis range from parts of words, specifically affixes, to individual words to longer structures, and contextual analysis shows that all of these have been used to achieve pragmatic effects. The study demonstrates the important role of cultural context, speaker creativity, and sociolinguistic factors in the borrowing, integration, and innovative use of linguistic items.

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