Marketplace communication between Africans and Chinese in Guangzhou : an emerging pidgin?

Abstract

With the rapid growth of bilateral trade between China and Africa in the past decade, more and more Africans are coming to China to seek what they see as appealing business opportunities. Guangzhou, the economic centre in Southern China, has become the largest enclave for Africans. It is estimated that there are about 100,000 Africans living and doing business in Guangzhou. This large number of Africans in Guangzhou has drawn the attention of many researchers. However, current research on Africans in Guangzhou focuses predominantly on sociological and ethnographic aspects. Although the issue of communication problems has been brought up frequently, little has been investigated in depth about actual communication, especially the actual language use between Africans and Chinese.

This thesis analyzes the English-based contact language used in the marketplace between Africans and Chinese in Guangzhou. It has two main focuses: first of all, by analyzing the results from a questionnaire survey, it provides a socio-cultural and linguistic profile of the Africans in Guangzhou as well as the Chinese who has constant contact with the Africans; second, it examines several major language features based on actual language data collected from real-world communication in the marketplace. On the basis of these socio-cultural and linguistic features, I argue that the speech form between Africans and Chinese in the marketplace in Guangzhou could be regarded as a rudimentary pidgin, which has the potential of developing into a pidgin in the future.