從社會語言學的觀點看台灣幼兒英語混雜化的現象

On the Pidginalization of the Children's English in Taiwan: From the Sociolinguistic Perspective

林寬明(Kuan-Ming Lin)

《中華人文社會學報》 3期 (2005/09) Pp. 118-130

摘要

幼兒英語教育在台灣早已蔚成一股風潮，然而最近學者注意到這些過早學習英語的孩童他們所說的英語很多是「中式」或「台式」英語（李櫻，2004）。本文以一所全英語幼稚園為對象，記錄並分析園內孩童用以溝通的英語，經從音韻、詞彙、及句法層次分析所蒐集的語料後，我們發現他們所犯的「錯誤」和「涇濱語」(pidgin)的語言特徵十分相近。以社會語言學的觀點來看，這種因輸入不足的環境所生成的英語，可以視為是一種以英語為上層，國語為下層的「混雜語」。本文以「混雜語」的廣義定義及其在語言上的特徵，將個案語料的中英混雜的特點解釋為一種「混雜化」(pidginalization)的現象，孩童們處在一個輸入條件明顯受限的語言社區裡，塑造他們自己的語言。而父母或老師對他們在語言上的影響，如同社會學家(Harris, 1995)所觀察到其他的社會行為一樣，遠不如同儕之間的認同感來得顯著。以語言學習的觀點來說，如何改善台灣英語輸入不足的環境，以避免中英混雜語的生成是應該正視的問題。

關鍵字

社會語言學 ； 洋涇濱 ； 兒童語言 ； 第二語言習得 ； 中式英語

並列摘要

English education has become a trend among pre-schools in Taiwan. However, it is reported that children, at an early age, often produce ”Chinese style” English. Observing an English-only pre-school taken as the object of a case study, we find out the ”errors” that are made in the spoken English among children in the kindergarten are somewhat similar to some linguistic characteristics of ”pidgins.” From a socio-linguistic perspective, the ”English,” generated from the environment of inadequate input, can be deemed as a pidginalized English-superstrated by the prestige language, English, and substrated by the local language, Chinese. A further analysis at phonological, morphological, and syntactic levels shows that the ”errors” made are subject to ”principles of the creation of pidgins”. The paper concludes that the mixed English studied in our case is undergoing the process of pidginalization, in terms of a broad definition of ”pidgin” and its related linguistic features. To survive in a linguistic community with obvious limited input of English, children manage to create ”a kind of English” with which they can communicate. The influence of parents and teachers' corrections, like those in other social behavior, is here shown to be no competing with the ”solidarity” among peers. A final word from the viewpoint of language teaching and learning suggests that issues concerning improving the inadequateness of exposure to English to fight the spread of ”Chinese Pidgin English” should be dealt seriously.

並列關鍵字

Sociolinguistics ； Pidginalization ； Creolization ； Child Language ； Second Language acquisition ； Chinese Pidgin English