Chinese Language in the Communication Space of an International Campus
Authors: Mikheeva Elena, Nedopekina Ekaterina, Povalko Polina (Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, Russia)
Speakers: Mikheeva Elena, Nedopekina Ekaterina, Povalko Polina
Strand: Language Contact and Change
Session Type: General Session
Abstract
Currently, under the conditions of globalization, research devoted to language interaction is acquiring special relevance. In this context, the language situation developed at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia – RUDN University (Moscow, Russia) is rather representative and peculiar. Students from almost 160 countries around the world study at the university, and their communication is conducted both in classrooms and on campus, turning the RUDN University campus into a unique, multilingual space. Therefore, the Philological Faculty of the university is now conducting a research project, to study the campus languages and create a language map of the campus. The key research zones are: which languages interact, the reasons for their interaction, communicative and extra linguistic conditions for language code switching, the probability of language pidginization and its extent, and the volume and the specificity of borrowings and language transfer. University professors and students twill both participate in the project. The students who are native speakers of the studied languages, collect the language material through field research and complete questionnaires from the respondents and act as participants of various scientific experiments for big data collection. This paper deals with part of the project which is describing the interaction between the Chinese language and other languages represented on the RUDN campus. Chinese is the language of the majority of students living on campus (almost 10% of all foreign students) [1]. The article contains examples of the Russian language influence as the prior language of the educational process, as well as the influence of English as the language of global communication. Also, the research materials demonstrate cases of other languages’ influence (Arabic, Spanish, Hindi, Vietnamese etc.) on the Chinese students’ communication in Chinese. The research results may be of theoretical value for contact linguistics, intercultural communication, sociolinguistics, and linguoculturology. The practical applicability of the data obtained can contribute to improving the organization of the educational space of internationally oriented universities and accompanying foreign students, as well as increasing the efficiency of communication and decreasing the level of conflictogenity, in a multilingual and multicultural environment. Reference: RUDN University today: Information sheet 2021. Available at https://eng.rudn.ru/u/www/files/about_rudn/information-sheet_2021.pdf (accessed 01 October 2021)
Keywords: Language contacts, Communication, University campus, Multilingualism, The chinese language.