Bilingual
Semantic Merging and Socio-Political Environment
R. Hoosain |
In
bilingual semantic merging, subjective meanings of concepts in the
respective languages become more alike, with increased bilingual
experience. This has been taken to be the result of acculturation,
and was reported in the mid-1960s with Chinese-English bilinguals
in Hong Kong. The present study compared the affective meaning of
twenty concepts in Chinese and in English, using the semantic differential.
Chinese-English bilingual undergraduates did not show any semantic
merging, when compared with junior secondary school students. The
lack of semantic merging is attributed to the socio-political environment
in Hong Kong, with the preparation for transfer of sovereignty from
Britain to China. When the present data were compared with similar
data from the mid-1960s, indications of generational difference in
affective meaning of a number of concepts were found.
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