Language Evaluations of Chinese University Students from Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Hangzhou

Abstract

This study is based on a survey conducted of 601 university students from four areas of China. The purposes of this study are: (1) to elucidate what kind of evaluations and images these students have of standard Chinese and local dialects; (2) to investigate what factors influence the formation of these images; and (3) according to factor analysis, explore the latent factors behind each evaluation item. The results indicated that almost all of the informants evaluated standard Chinese highly; and that the informants from Shanghai had a different image of Shanghai dialect to students from other areas.