Submitted by
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
at The
University of Hong Kong
in April 2000
| The definition of Modern Standard Chinese (MSC)
has long been a disputable issue since the language became the national
common language of the PRC from the 1950s. The most controversial area
lies in that of lexical use. Hong Kong is a dialectal region of the Chinese
Language. People traditionally speak the local dialect (Hong Kong Cantonese)
for everyday communication, but still have to adopt the standard written
Chinese for written communication. The discrepancy between the spoken form
and the written form is distinct, and is particularly marked in the use
of words and phrases. For the last few decades, Hong Kong has gone through
a period of tremendous economic growth and rapid socio-cultural changes.
Newly generated words parallel to such changes enlarge the lexical discrepancy
between Hong Kong Cantonese and MSC. Whether these words can be used or
not in writing is a critical issue in local language education as well
as in the standardization of written MSC. Within this context, the perceptions
of the language teachers are very crucial. This study therefore aims at
investigating the perceptions among Hong Kong school teachers of Chinese
Language on the use of local dialectal words in written medium. The findings
not just reveal a clear picture of these teachers' general attitude and
in-depth perceptions on this issue, but also contribute to the study of
the problems presented by local dialectal words entering the written MSC,
as well as the study of the trend of language change of Chinese within
the context of Hong Kong influence.
Survey research was chosen as the methodology for tackling the research questions of this study. Controlled observations (using attitude inventories), questionnaires and in-depth interviews were used for data collection. Among these, 199 items of local words were carefully selected for usage and attitude investigation. Teachers were asked to choose one out of five options to indicate their attitude when they came across those local dialectal words in their pupils' essays. 215 valid questionnaires were received and intensive interviews with 8 teachers were conducted. The findings revealed that local words fulfilled
the basic conditions, including needs, tactics and channels, of entering
the written language. Altogether 93 words (out of 199), meaning 46.7% of
the total number listed were accepted by more than 50% of the respondents.
And the principles governing teachers' choices included the standardization
principle, the pragmatic principle, the regional principle and, the most
important of all, the de facto norms principle. The findings also suggested
that the standardization of the words of written MSC might take the following
directions:
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