The sudden appearance of a new epidemic disease in China created the need for names identifying that disease. Between December 2019 and January 2020, a variety of severe pneumonia-related disease names suddenly appeared, and more name varieties kept coming up afterwards. To better understand the introduction and spread of these names, 16 different COVID-19-related name varieties were selected covering the period from the end of December 2019, when the epidemic started, to mid-March 2020, a moment at which the term competition had stabilized. By way of big data analysis, the initiation and distribution of the 16 names across the media landscape was traced with regard to the impact of different media platforms, while the distribution frequency of each of the selected terms was mapped, resulting in a distinction of three groups of disease names, each with a different media and time profile. The results were discussed based on the hypotheses of disease confusion by name variety and management failures in absence of clear language governance at the national and global levels. The analysis of the data led to a refutation of both hypotheses. Based on this discussion, the study offers empirically based suggestions for the WHO in their naming practices and further research.

As a crucial element of China’s political and cultural life, “banners”, or biāoyǔ, have been around for decades, in support of national-level policies such as family planning and the governing mottos of Presidents. The banners that have emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic which was also the subject of a national-level driven policy, have been involved in a nation-wide public debate over the language styles of banners used to urge people to stay indoors. Based on the analysis of the early COVID-19 banners and the related online comments, this article analyzes the language style patterns of the banners and the mode of banner circulation. The study found that the manner in which the banners are circulated goes beyond a unidirectional path of on-site instant communication. This process is facilitated by social networks and mass media, which, during circulation, twice created a banner upgrade. The upgrades created decontextualization and function extension of the banners, whereas audience feedback triggered an adaptive adjustment of the language style of the banners. This article suggests that the study of the use and spread of banners, especially the early COVID-19 banners, sheds light on the study of mass communication and discourse style, and also how measures to contain pandemics such as COVID-19 can be communicated.

The presence of Africans in China has been phenomenal since the late 1990s. In recent years, there has been a dramatic uptick in people from Africa coming to the major cities of China such as Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau, Yiwu, Shanghai, and Beijing. They are in the process of building linguistic, cultural, and economic bridges between their source communities and their host communities. In this process, communication problems are inevitable, since Africans and Chinese do not share a common lingua franca in most cases. However, these communities have succeeded in devising some interactive strategies that turn out to be quite effective, especially in market situations, one of them being calculator communication (CM). This paper looks at these strategies in the context of contact linguistics and the emergence of some hybrid language that has elements of African languages, Chinese, and English.

Abstract This article provides information of language behavior practices and identity change of members of the Fangshang Hui community in Xi’an, China. The study explores how differences in residential space influence language behavior as well as the way in which community identity is perceived. Two areas were studied, the traditional Hui community area “around the mosque” and the new area of modern flats. Data were collected via two-hundred questionnaires and forty sociolinguistic interviews. The survey was administered in 2016. Aspects of language behavior and language choice were related to residential area. The findings show that change of residential area has a significant effect on language choice behavior. Language choice was calculated according to the extent of use in community internal and external interactions. The varieties involved were the Fangshang Hui variety, the Xi’an dialect and Mandarin Chinese. Divergent linguistic behavior is related to altered Hui identity, which divides the community into home-dialect oriented and official-language oriented members. ‘Differential recurrence’ is introduced as the mechanism that creates language and identity change and is presented as contribution to sociolinguistic theory.