Chineses in the Diaspora

Challenges simplified discourses that describe Chinese as the next global language.This book analyzes the multilingual and multidialectal practices of Chinese Americans in Los Angeles, a city with a Chinese diasporic population of around 500,000. It describes the contact between different Chineses in a diasporic setting, illustrating how non-Putonghua features are made use of to form distinct identities and speech communities. It demonstrates that localized conceptions of 'Chineseness' hold greater sociolinguistic significance than the transnational narratives of a unified global Chinese. The author argues that a homogeneous global Chinese is unlikely to arise as, analogous to World Englishes , different degrees of divergence are found in Chineses around the world. This book will appeal to scholars interested in Chinese language variation, translanguaging practices, language ideology and identity.