A Chinese yuppie in Beijing: Phonological variation and the construction of a new professional identity

INTRODUCTION

In a September 1997 issue of the Chinese magazine

[Image omitted. See Article Image.]

'Consumption Guide', an article entitled Zájiao Zhongwén 'Hybrid Chinese' claims there is a "new" language, "hybrid Chinese," in fashion among Chinese professionals working for foreign companies and Sino-foreign joint ventures. Characterizing it as Mandarin mixed with English, Cantonese, and Taiwanese expressions, the writer observes: "For those who frequent office buildings of foreign and Sino-foreign businesses, even when dealing with local professionals, if they don't understand English, they look like country bumpkins." Following their superiors, many of whom are from Hong Kong and who mix Cantonese and English when speaking Mandarin, the local employees are used to this kind of language practice and incorporate it in all aspects of their own lives. The article concludes:

The phenomenon of hybrid Chinese has caused distress and anguish among linguists who call for standardization of Mandarin Chinese. But as more and more people join such hybrid entities - working in joint ventures, eating hybrid Chinese-style fast food - it's inevitable that they regurgitate this kind of hybrid language.

The article provides a glimpse at the effects of recent socioeconomic change on language use in the People's Republic of China. It attributes a linguistic phenomenon, "hybrid Chinese," to a specific social group, Chinese professionals working for foreign businesses. This emergent professional group is the focus of the present study. I use the magazine article as a springboard for presenting a study of the relation between linguistic variation and socioeconomic changes in urban China.

In this article, I present a quantitative analysis of the use of four phonological variables by two professional groups in Beijing: an emergent group consisting of professionals working in foreign businesses, and an established group of professionals employed in state-owned enterprises. Comparing the linguistic practices of the two groups demonstrates significant intergroup variation in the use of all four variables. I draw on the construct of the linguistic market originally developed in the works of Bourdieu (e.g. Bourdieu & Potaski 1976; Bourdieu 1977, 1991) to explain the sharp intergroup variation. Differences between the two groups are shown to be intimately related to the emergence of a transnational Chinese linguistic market in which a cosmopolitan variety of Mandarin Chinese...