探索全球化的社会语言学:中国情境的“移动性”

Towards a Sociolinguistics of Globalization:Mobility in Chinese Contexts

全球化的社会语言学现象随着经济、政治、技术等方面的全球化产生,对此新现象的研究需要新的理论概念。本文讨论全球化社会语言学建设中的核心概念——"移动性",探索中国/汉语情境的相关研究课题。文章首先指出全球化社会语言学现象表现在三个方面:新媒体、移民、"大"语言的传播,然后指出此现象中的三大问题:影响的广泛性、群体和语言变体的不平等性、权力资源的多元性。文章进而讨论了"移动性"概念,提出了有待探索的两大课题——语言的移动潜势、移动的人与移动的语言。文章最后指出,由于全球化社会语言学现象具有整体性特征,相关研究需要社会语言学者的跨国合作。

With the economic, political, and technical globalization, there arise phenomena of sociolinguistic globalization. The study of such new phenomena calls for new theoretical concepts. This paper discusses one such core concept, mobility, in the building of a sociolinguistics of global- ization, and examines its related topics to be explored in Chinese contexts. First, three major domains of the phenomenology of sociolinguistic globalization are identified - the sociolinguistics of new media, migration, and the spread of big languages. Then three characteristics of sociolin- guistic globalization are discussed - inequality, the pervasiveness of impact, and multiple sources of power involved. The paper moves on to explore the concept mobility. Recent studies in Chinese contexts are reviewed with this insight, and possible issues for further studies are suggested. It is proposed that the holistic nature of sociolinguistie globalization calls for sociolinguists in various parts of the world working together in tenms