Book reviw of Chinese Englishes A Sociolinguistic History.docVIP

Message 1: Chinese Englishes: A Sociolinguistic History Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 11:34:04 -0400 (EDT)From: Liao Kaihong Subject: Chinese Englishes: A Sociolinguistic History AUTHOR: Bolton, Kingsley TITLE: Chinese Englishes SUBTITLE: A Sociolinguistic History PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press YEAR: 2003 Announced at /issues/14/14-614.html Liao Kaihong, College of Foreign Studies, Jinan University, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, Peoples Republic of China This book aims to examine the history of the English language in China from the early seventeenth century to the present. The author gathers together and makes sense of an accumulated body of historical, linguistic and sociolinguistic research on the description and analysis of English in Hong Kong and China. Chinese Englishes have been approached from the perspective of socioliguistic history and a wide range of various disciplines: anthropology, history and sociology. The author reveals the forgotten history of English in China and points out how contemporary Hong Kong English possesses its historical roots in Chinese pidgin English. The book is designed to appeal not only to linguists, but to all those showing interests in the fields of Asian studies and English studies, involving those concerned with cultural and literary studies. The book consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 attempts to associate the study of World Englishes and new Englishes with a number of related disciplines -English studies, English corpus linguistics, the sociology of language, applied linguistics, pidgin and creole studies, lexicography and critical linguistics, with the purpose of providing a critical overview of current approaches to research with these disciplines and exploring how far the World Englishes paradigm may facilitate clarifying research on English in Hong Kong and China. In the past two decades, the term new Englishes has been employed to refer to the localised forms of English found in different parts of world.