Linguistic Landscape in the Formative Period of Shanghai : A Case Study of Historical Sociolinguistics

Linguistic landscape (LL) is one of the most exciting, attractive growing branches in the realm of sociolinguistics. Since the end of the last century, many cases of LL have been reported from all over the world. In order to deepen the theoretical exploration and support the historical study on this field, we need more cases describing LL in various areas and periods from different perspectives.　In this paper, we investigate the actual situation of the LL in early modern Shanghai through the analysis of the old photographs of Shanghai shopping districts taken during the 40 years from 1890 to 1929.　First of all, we classify the shop signs into two basic types according to the kind of language, the design of the sign board, and the meaning of the words used in the LL. The one type is the Chinese traditional style which also had been used in many cities before the 19th century in China. The other is the modernized style influenced by western culture. After describing the contents of each case of the LL, we explain the characteristics of the LL from historical sociolinguistic perspectives as follows: (1) multilingual society, (2) language prestige and norm, (3) language change, (4) form of industry, (5) style of architecture, and (6) market economy

Polite Expressions in Early-modern Chinese and Their Pragmatic Strategies

It is a known fact that in early-modern Chinese there were many ways of expressing politeness, but they have not studied systematically. This paper investigates the features and the system of polite expressions in early-modern Chinese in three aspects from a pragmatic perspective. 1. Non-deictic Feature Polite expressions in Japanese have certain specific linguistic forms, such as (お, ご), but in early-modern Chinese the same politeness could be expressed by many different expressions. For instance, when calling somebody by name, Japanese will only say (お名前), but in early-modern Chinese they used “貴姓, 高姓, 上名, 大名, 賢名”etc. and polite expressions were not specified and symbolized as social deixis.2. Conversational Implicature Feature Unlike polite expressions in Japanese, those in Chinese all have clear literal meanings, such as 大(big), 小(small), 下降(descending), 登堂(ascending). The meaning of polite expressions was the conversational implicature derived from the literal meanings of these words. The author proposes an inferring process of the conversational implicatures derived from the literal meanings of polite expressions. 3. Pragmatic System The derivation of the conversational implicature of polite expressions in early-modern Chinese was governed by a set of pragmatic rules. The author proposes the maxim of evaluation which governed polite expressions in early-modern Chinese.Maxim of Evaluation: (a) give positive evaluation to the others as much as possible, (b) give negative evaluation to oneself as much as possible.The author also points out that in early-modern Chinese society, when applicable, this maxim was restrained by the following criteria as for what was positive and what was negative evaluation. 1. quality 2. nobility 3. intelligence 4. height 5. size 6. economic status For example, in the big-small criterion, one should call the interlocutor and the things belonging to him big, such as 大名(big name=your name), 大人(big person=you), 大官(big officer=you). Likewise one should call oneself and the things belonging to him small, such as 子人(small person=me), 小房(small house=my house), 小婿(small son-in-law=my son-in-law).rights:日本言語学会　著作物の原典は印刷刊行された『言語研究』に掲載されているものであ

The Polite Expressions and the Speech Act of Asking About Age in "Golden Lotus" - From the Approach of Sociolinguistics

rights:日本言語学会　著作物の原典は印刷刊行された『言語研究』に掲載されているものであ