Socio-Pragmatic and Discursive Constructions of Chinese English: A Critical Review of Cultural Identity, Hierarchical Structures, and Pragmatic Practices

Abstract

Lexical and grammatical localization has been more well documented in the research literature on Chinese English than the pragmatic and discursive research that has been carried out through the variety. What this critical narrative review aims to do is to address the topic of ChE from the complementary lenses of World Englishes and intercultural pragmatics. It brings together scholarship on five related fields: hierarchy, face, relational communication, collectivism, and new ideological and creative applications in media, diplomacy, literature, and gender language. In these settings, ChE does not just reflect transfer from Chinese; it is also a repertoire that speakers and institutions use to negotiate authority, affiliation, cultural identity, and audience alignment in regard to each other. The main critical point of the review is the identification and questioning of the overgeneralization of ChE features. Too frequently evidence from a specific genre, institution, or historical period is used as evidence of the stable features of Chinese culture or ChE as a whole. These extrapolations can risk essentializing Chinese communication and overlook regional, generational, mediumistic, audience and communicative purpose variation. A more defensible account now regards socio-pragmatic nativization as context-sensitive, contested, and empirical-qualifiable. In the context of English language education, it promotes contrastive pragmatic awareness, audience-sensitive adaptation, and critical examination of the ideological implications of discourse, instead of the blank teaching of native speaker norms or fixed local norms.