Organizer: Mary B. Rankin, Independent Scholar
The Development of a Lexical Tone Phonology in American Adult Learners of
Standard Chinese
Sylvia Henel Sun, University of Hawai'i
The categorical perception and production of lexical tone have long posed difficulty to many an American student of standard Chinese. While most students of the language can identify and articulate the four tones of Mandarin in isolation, their competence often falls dramatically in performing more complex linguistic tasks. The nature of the tonal systems that emerge and develop in the speech of Mandarin learners is an area of theoretical and practical interest. Researchers in second language phonology are investigating to what extent learners past six years of age can develop new phonemes for processing speech. Instructors of foreign languages are looking for explanations as to why their students do not learn or remember what they have so laboriously taught.
This poster presents the results of an empirical study on the acquisition of Mandarin tone carried out during the Spring of 1995 in Beijing, China. Fifty American students enrolled at four different language programs participated. The study investigates whether their processing of tone is related to certain phonological and non-structural variables. The phonological variables of interest are the tonal contour itself, the syllabic composition of a word, and the position of tones within a polysyllabic word. The non-structural variables of interest are word type, learners' academic level, and time spent studying in an intensive language program. The two sets of variables are examined from participants' performance on three types of production and two types of perception tasks elicited once at the beginning and once at the end of the semester.
Four Rivers, Six Ranges: Towards a Regional Systems Model of Kham (Eastern Tibet)
Karl Ryavec, University of Hawai'i, Manoa
This poster session examines "core-periphery" theory of regional systems important for understanding Agrarian China in terms of possible applications to the eastern Tibetan Plateau. The area of study is part of the Tibetan region of Kham and adjacent regions.
In contrast to the fertile agricultural core area of the Sichuan Basin, the eastern Tibetan Plateau is often viewed as a peripheral mountainous rim land. Based on recently available data compiled at the township level during the 1980s by counties in western Sichuan and the eastern Tibetan Autonomous Region, core areas of agricultural resources are presented in cartographic form.
The location of agricultural core areas will be compared with a historical map of Sichuan's western frontier under the Manchu Empire (1644-1911). For centuries a traditional frontier of economic exchange existed between the Tibetan regions and Agrarian China. It is misleading to assume that this frontier in eastern Tibet corresponded precisely with the geo-ecological divide between the Sichuan Basin and the Tibetan Plateau. Trade routes between Tibet and China, besides topography and agricultural productivity, significantly influenced aspects of economic and social interaction between Tibetan regions and Agrarian China.
The extent to which Tibetan regions were historically integral parts of China are matters of intense scholarly debate today. This study will address ways in which Kham may be defined as a Tibetan region, and how it may mesh with the macroregional systems of Agrarian China.
Integrating Language and Culture with Authentic Reading Materials at the
Intermediate Level
Jane Parish Yang, Lawrence University
Children's stories from China and Taiwan are a good way to teach both language and culture to intermediate-low/intermediate-mid Chinese language students. Typically containing topics on daily life, school, work, and home about which these students can speak, the stories exhibit a simple story line and limited vocabulary yet contain complex enough syntactic features to help students at this level gain more native-like discourse. Integrated with pre- and post-reading exercises, reading stories becomes a means to strengthen productive skills.
Culturally authentic story material also allows students to learn about status relationships, contemporary issues and values in the home, such as problems with the "little emperor" only children of contemporary times, and issues in the wider community of school and the nation. Students also can begin to discuss these topics in simple terms.
I will display an example lesson of pre-reading question and discussion topics, the reading selection with vocabulary gloss, post-reading exercises and discussion questions for oral and written work along with sample student writings from my Term 111 Beginning Intermediate Chinese class based on the follow-up activities.
New opportunities for contact with and study in China necessitate a new approach to train young sinologists in both the language and culture of China. Early use of connected discourse from authentic Chinese stories is helpful in producing more native-like discourse and in sustaining interest in the culture during the beginning year of rigorous language study.
Packaging Nationalism: Chinese Advertising, Patriotic Exhibitions, and the
National Goods Movement, 1911-37
David Fraser, University of California, Berkeley
This presentation analyzes how Chinese entrepreneurs in the Republican era harnessed various forms of advertising to patriotic institutions in order to shape public opinion in the cause of economic independence, national unity against foreign aggression, and profits. By displaying pictorial advertisements-newspaper ads, posters, product packaging, cigarette cards, calendars, and trademarks-I will try to show how advertising also provided a forum for symbolic debate on China's future, a means to reflect and shape bourgeouis tastes, and a tool for public entertainment.
Shanghai entrepreneurs led the effort to commodify nationalist sentiment. Starting in 1911, they established a set of institutions and campaigns to bolster China's economy, known as the National (or Domestic) Goods Movement (guohuo yundong). Leaders arranged a series of product exhibitions in large cities to garner mass support for their ideology of commercialized nationalism. Drawing on market surveys (for example, of gender-based taste for tobacco), they used visual displays including advertising to gain hinterland markets. Like market fairs, guohuo exhibitions offered entertainment, commerce, and competition (via medals for patriotic display; I will present some).
These exhibitions were in effect institutional advertisements which mirrored and reinforced a complex of beliefs linking national salvation, modernization, and mass consumption of domestic goods.
Advertising in Republican China is not easily defined. My goal in this presentation is to provoke debate on the nature of advertising, the ways in which visual representations carry meanings and how those meanings are disseminated, and the relationship between private commodity consumption, public patriotic display, and national unity.
The Rainbow in Early Chinese Mythological Thought
Andrea Keller, University of Munich
In the oracle-bone inscriptions there appears a strange pictogram resembling a serpent or dragon in the form of a vault with a head at each end of its body. Coming from the north or sometimes from the west and drinking water from the river it is said to indicate future calamities. This being is often identified with the dragon-rainbow hong (hong), hongni or dihong in early Chinese literature. The Shijing warns the reader against pointing at the didong in the east, and the Shiming associates hong with gong, "attack" (of the Yang-energy). From these and other sources it becomes evident that at least under certain circumstances the rainbow was conceived of as a dangerous or baneful creature.
Another feature that might contribute to the frightening character of the dragon-rainbow is its double nature. Not only the fact that it is often depicted as a serpentine animal with two heads, but also its consisting of hong and ni (or di and dong) possibly betrays that it is in reality not one but two beings or a bisexual entity, a characteristic also attributed to the rainbow in many other cultures. At least this is how some Han texts like the Erya explain the name hongni : hong is male and yang, while ni is female and yin. Together they are simply called hong .
Although the disasters the dragon-rainbow brings about are manifold (among them sexual and political turbulances and disorder), yet, as its serpentine body and its fondness of drinking water suggest, originally this creature seems to be connected with the watercircle. Its relation to water and the watercircle might be further emphasized by the fact that the calamitous manifestation of the rainbow is often said to come from the north or west, a region in many traditions associated with darkness and water, sometimes even with the watery underworld.
This paper is an attempt to clarify what the original function of the dragon-rainbow in the watercircle could have been and hence where its frightening and ambiguous nature might result from.
Degrees of Hardship: Gender Boundaries in a Japanese Student Organization
James J Vincenti, Nanzan University
Despite the Allied Occupation's efforts to make Japanese education more equitable, the fork in the social track that determines the boundaries of gender roles continues to be well defined in the university setting. University clubs act as a final method of reproducing and legitimating socially prescribed gender roles for students before they enter adult society. This study explores the relationship between levels of physical and mental hardship and the parameters of the gender roles in a university club.
The sample consisted of 82 graduates of a private university in central Japan who are former members ("Old Boys" and "Old Girls") of Ôendan (the "Cheering Club"), a student athletic club that has similar chapters in most Japanese universities. Ôendan has two very distinctive sections, Leader-bu for men and Cheerleader-bu for women. Leader-bu stresses daily rigorous and physically punishing practices in a highly disciplined atmosphere, whereas Cheerleader-bu more closely resembles its North American counterpart. Employing historical, survey, and interview data, this study analyzes the subjects' perceptions of gender roles according to their section affiliation and the decade they entered university.
A perceived difference in physical strength and tolerance for hardship coupled with a strong sense of tradition persist as major variables in the delineation of gender roles within the club. Men continue to reinforce the importance of hardship-based traditions year after year because they believe that they are benefiting, both personally and socially. In contrast, women's attitudes have shifted from subordination to a pragmatic antagonism to such beliefs.
Meta-utterances and the Structure of Japanese Conversation
Sayo Tsutsui, University of Minnesota
Previous studies of Japanese metalinguistic expressions by Sugito (1983), Sugito and Tsukada (1991) and Furubeppu (1993) have focused primarily on their types and effects. I demonstrate that conversations in which metalinguistic expressions are used have a two-tiered structure composed of two parallel conversations; the "primary conversation" is composed of non-metalinguistic utterances and the "meta-conversation," metalinguistic utterances.
Based on an analysis of the relation between these two conversation types and differences in their topics, and the use of discourse markers at transition points, I demonstrate that these two conversations proceed parallel to one another. The topic of the meta-conversation relates to the appropriateness of the conversation and is thus both dependent on and co-existent with the topic of the primary conversation.
Discourse markers that develop topic are not used when there is a transition from the primary to the meta-conversation or vice versa even though there is a change in topic. Transitions between the two conversation types are not made by closing the topic of one and opening the topic of the other, but rather both the primary conversation and meta-conversation are always in an open state, making it is possible to change the topic from one conversation to the other at any time. I demonstrate that by analyzing Japanese conversation in terms of this two-tiered structure, it is possible to explain the role of conversations containing meta-utterances, the intentions of the speaker who uses a meta-utterance and the influence of meta-utterance on the flow of the conversation.
South Asian Supranationalism in Popular Media
Nirmaljeet Sandhu, University of British Columbia
This paper will explore the construction of the supranational identity of the "South Asian" as it manifests itself in different popular ethnic media forms, including newspapers, magazines, television and electronic newsgroups on the Internet. This media, based in urban India and in major cities of the Asian diaspora such as London, Vancouver, Toronto and New York, demonstrates the multiple forces at play in the construction of the "South Asian" self. Be it for an alienated Gujarati newspaper vendor in America longing for his cultural roots, or a "modern" Indian living in Bombay and doing business with British multinational corporations, the constuction of the Asian self becomes a dialogic process between various Western and Eastern cultural elements which give rise to a new multifaceted supranational South Asian/Indian identity.
The Institutionalization of Political Parties and the Consolidation of Asian
Democracies: Comparative Perspectives
Hans Stockton, Texas A&M University
This study explores the prospects for continued entrenchment of democratic politics in South Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan by drawing upon the growing body of analyses of democratic consolidation in Latin America.
As we have learned in the past, the installation of a democratic regime does not guarantee its continuation. As a result of the proliferation of democratic transitions over the last decade, scholars are now increasingly addressing issues concerning the consolidation of new democratic regimes. Two crucial factors in the consolidation of new democracies are the institutionalization of a competitive party system and the presence or absence of institutionalized political parties.
Following from above, this paper tests two propositions: (1) as the degree of party system institutionalization increases, the quality of democratic consolidation increases; and (2) as the degree of political party institutionalization increases, the quality of democratic consolidation also increases. Thus, countries that have exhibited constant improvements in systemic and party level variables after the new democracy was established should also exhibit greater chances of consolidation.
The methodology of this paper follows that used by Dix (1992) and Mainwaring and Scully (1995). Election, case study, and when available, survey data, will be collected for South Korea (1985-1995), Thailand (1992-1995), and Taiwan (1986-1995) in order to measure the following indicators for party system institutionalization: stability in the rules of interparty competition, the development of societal support for parties, and emphasis on elections as the means of selecting rulers. Indicators of party institutionalization are adaptability, complexity, autonomy, and coherence. These scores are then compared to Latin American polities of varying degrees of consolidation to assess the probabilities of continued democracy in the selected Asian cases.