Why China English should give way to Chinese English
Authors: Li David C. S. 
Published: September 2023

China English or Chinese English? To my mind, the time is ripe for Chinese English to be adopted as the preferred term, or banner, for characterizing the variety of English of a country which has the largest number of users and learners of English in the world. There are sound linguistic and sociolinguistic reasons for this important terminological choice and decision. There is little research on the naming of the multiplicity of Englishes to date. After discussing the theoretical underpinnings of the acts of naming, Seargeant (2010) provides a taxonomy consisting of six clusters of name labels categorized by function (e.g., ESL, EFL, EAL, EIL, ELF), community (e.g., native vs. non-native varieties; immigrant Englishes), history (e.g., indigenized varieties; language-shift Englishes), ecology (e.g., three concentric circles of world Englishes; new Englishes), and structures (e.g., pidgin English, creolized English). The sixth category, which he calls multiplex, is much broader in scope, featuring English as a link language between specific groups transnationally (e.g., World English). After conducting a meta-analysis of 100 research articles written in Chinese by mainland authors between 1980 and 2013, Xu (2017) found that compared with Chinglish and Chinese English, China English is preferred by the majority, but there are signs that change is in the offing:

Although the term China English has dominated the literature on Chinese English research in the past three and a half decades, there has been an increasing awareness and a change of attitude towards Chinese variety of English, and people start disassociating Chinese English with Chinglish. The current literature points to the direction that Chinese English should be used as a term to refer to the Chinese variety of English on a par with other members of World Englishes. (Xu, 2017: 241; cf. Xu, He & Deterding, 2017)

Linguistically, for a name label with the structural pattern ‘xxx English’, there is a fine semantic distinction between a premodifying noun (e.g., China English, Singapore English) versus its adjectivized form (e.g., Chinese English, Singaporean English). Let us first examine the semantics of the ‘N1 + N2’ noun phrase (NP). The premodifying N1, a common noun or possessive noun, typically gives the meaning ‘a type of’ N2. Just as a music therapy is a type of therapy while therapy music is a type of music, a summer school takes place only in summer while a girls’ school is for girls only. There is no shortage of contact varieties of English named after the ‘N1 + N2’ pattern. For instance, for hundreds of years the governance and presence of British colonizers in the Indian subcontinent resulted in the spread of English demarcated along vocational lines, such as Butler English, Kitchen English (domestic helpers), and Babu English (used by babus, especially lower-level officials and clerks [McArthur, 2002: 317]). Likewise, in West Africa, sustained contact between English-speaking colonizers and the peoples of Liberia, notably the Kru and Mande, gave rise to Settler English (McArthur, 2002: 272) and Soldier English (McArthur, 2002: 276). In Japan, frequent contact between US forces of occupation and local people after the Second World War popularized a patois called Bamboo English (McArthur, 2002: 370), while the creolized variety used by Aboriginals in Australia was self-mockingly labeled Blackfella English (McArthur, 2002: 386). Interestingly, some varieties whose labels are derived from the names of islands or peninsulas simply have the words ‘island’ or ‘peninsula’ truncated (e.g., Bequia English spoken on the Bequia Island in the Caribbean [Williams et al., 2015]; Samaná English, spoken by a black community in the Samaná Peninsula of the Dominican Republic [McArthur, 2002: 240–241]). This seems to be a rather productive naming pattern of new Englishes spoken by inhabitants living on islands, seaports, or other seaborne territories; no attempt is made to adapt an adjectivized form.