Chinese Signs An Introduction to China's Linguistic Landscape

Highlighting stylistic and rhetorical characteristics, this fully illustrated book explores the written form of Mandarin Chinese in a range of everyday settings. Taking examples from Chinese public writing across a variety of textual genres, such as signs, banners and advertisements, it prepares students for navigating 'real world' Chinese, not only in terms of its linguistic and stylistic characteristics, but also its social and cultural context. Drawing over 500 pictorial examples from the linguistic landscape, it explores the signs from a variety of perspectives, for example by highlighting elements of classical Chinese that are still used in the modern language, showing the most popular rhetorical patterns used in Chinese, and presenting the interactions between both Standard Mandarin and dialect, and Chinese and other languages. Detailed annotations are provided for all signs, in both Chinese and English, to accommodate readers of all proficiency levels in Chinese.

Part I. General Characteristics: 1. Why signs?; 2. Stylistic traits; 3. Rhetorical devices; 4. Non-uniform format; Part II. Essential Signs; 5. Airport and arrival; 6. Hotels; 7. Basic services; 8. Getting your bearings; 9. Getting around; 10. Eating; 11. Shopping; 12. Schools and offices; 13. Culture and entertainment; 14. Alerts; 15. Health; Part IV. Other Signs; 16. Advertising; 17. Civic signs; 18. Dialetical elements; 19. The Chinese diaspora; 20. Foreign infusion; 21. Mistranslation.

Zheng-sheng Zhang is Professor at the Department of Linguistics and Asian/Middle Eastern Languages, San Diego State University. Recent publications include Dimensions of Variation in Written Chinese (2017) and Introduction to Chinese Natural Language Processing (co-authored, 2009).