A Social View on the Chinese Language is intended to be a general linguistic introduction to the Chinese language for the general reader and can be used in beginning-level Chinese linguistics courses. It is different from other Chinese linguistics surveys because, in addition to the usual areas of interest (such as the Chinese dialects, the history of the language, the characters and the grammar), it offers a view into linguistic phenomena that are also related to human behavior and society, such as how Chinese children and US college students learn Chinese, how the brain processes Chinese, the genetic origins of Chinese, language disorders and language loss in Chinese, differences in Chinese language use in different social groups, studies of Chinese reading and psycholinguistic aspects of Chinese language use.
"A Social View on the Chinese Language is a timely and broadly framed introduction, which presents basic and diverse information from the evolution of our species, the sources of the languages and peoples of China, ... down to the complex kinship systems and the demographic effects of the recently discontinued one-child policy. The volume is useful toward understanding China, especially from linguistic and social perspectives. I recommend it highly not only for university coursework, but to the general public as well."-William Shiyuan Wang, Professor Emeritus, University of California at Berkeley







