Institutional and Learners’ Discourses of English
In order to examine the Chinese government’s views of English, which I term in this article as a form of ‘institutional discourse’, the study began with an analysis of reports and articles in the People’s Daily from 2000 to 2008 on pages other than people’s forum and discussion. This study adopted the so-called Q methodology in investigating the attitudes of overseas mainland Chinese students, which I refer to as learners’ discourses about English. Q methodology is a tool for studying and representing a range of opinions on a particular topic (Stephenson, 1953; Brown, 1980). It links qualitative and quantitative analyses and follows a rather standardised set of research procedures. For more information about the methodology, readers can refer to Stephen-son’s (1953) and Brown’s (1980) work on the theoretical and Tag Heuer Carrera Replica Watches statistical foundations of Q methodology, and Dryzek (1994) and Davis (1997) for applications of the method. The aim of adopting the method in this study was that not only could it reveal participants’ opinions on a particular issue, but also the beliefs that helped shape those opinions. The major concern of Q methodology is not with how many people believe such-and-such, but why and how they believe what they do (Brown, 1980).
This is the reason why the sample size of any Q methodology is fairly small with the ideal number between 30 and 60 participants. As this was an initial study, I interviewed 10 overseas students from Mainland China only. The interviews with the participants consisted of two phases. In Phase 1, in a pattern of quasi-normal distribution, participants were asked to rate how strongly the statements about English taken from the People’s Daily represent their viewpoints on a scale of -4 to +4, with 0 as neutral, and the results were then analysed with statistical software. Phase 2 comprised follow-up interviews and the questions asked were based around the results of the analysis of the People’s Daily. Participants were also asked about the roles of Mandarin Chinese and English for China and themselves. Due to the scope of the paper, only the findings of Phase 2 are discussed in this paper.
Institutional discourses about English are Replica Tag Heuer more associated with the ascribed roles of English. When efforts were made to clear any signs of ‘unauthentic’ and ‘nonstandard’ English before the Olympics, the question that arose was “what variety of English is preferred in China’ The following extracts’ remarks from the People’s Daily are indicative of official attitudes to this issue.
These two excerpts and many others in the data indicate that American English is the most preferred variety. American English is praised many times as ‘standard’ and, as in the first remark, as clear and euphonious, while in the second quote, the Indian accent of English is described as ‘strange’. The preference for ‘standard’ American English and negative perceptions about other varieties of English may be explained by the institutional roles of English in China today.
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