A Multi-dimensional Approach to Register Variations in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

Multi-dimensional Analysis (MD) is a quantitative corpus-based approach which describes and interprets patterns of register variations through factor analysis of a set of linguistic fea-tures across text varieties, and reveals their systematic relationships with communicative purposes. The model has been employed to explore language variation in many languages (e.g., English, Somali, Nukulaelae Tuvaluan, Korean, and Spanish), yet insufficient research has been carried out on register variation in Mandarin Chinese on a full scale. In this research, 88 linguistic features are tagged in a balanced corpus composed of 20 Mandarin Chinese spoken and written registers. Through factor analysis, five dimensions which consist of 65 linguistic features are identified and interpreted from linguistic and functional perspectives. The first two dimensions, interactive vs. informational discourse and narrative vs. non-narrative concern, are similar to dimensions that have been claimed to constitute universal parameters of register variation in previous MD studies. The exist-ence of two potential universal dimensions suggests that the basic communicative purposes and functions underlying the different languages are markedly similar, given the existing social, cultural, and linguistic dissimilarities. Dimension 4, casual real-time speech with stance, is identified as a distinctive dimension in Mandarin Chinese. Dimension 3, explicit-ness in cohesion and reasoning, and Dimension 5, abstract information, are found to be as-sociated with foreign influence, and their register variation patterns illustrate how foreign contact affects Chinese register variation in a quantitative manner.