A Social View on the Chinese Language is intended to be a general linguistic introduction to the Chinese language for the general reader and can be used in beginning-level Chinese linguistics courses. It is different from other Chinese linguistics surveys because, in addition to the usual areas of interest (such as the Chinese dialects, the history of the language, the characters and the grammar), it offers a view into linguistic phenomena that are also related to human behavior and society, such as how Chinese children and US college students learn Chinese, how the brain processes Chinese, the genetic origins of Chinese, language disorders and language loss in Chinese, differences in Chinese language use in different social groups, studies of Chinese reading and psycholinguistic aspects of Chinese language use.
"Provocative and wide-ranging, A Social View on the Chinese Language, written by a well-known scholar in field of Chinese linguistics, presents all important aspects of Chinese, its origin, regionalects, writing, reading, learning, cognition, grammar, culture and history. It is an excellent handbook, superbly organized and compact, with all current discoveries in the field, and is the finest Chinese linguistics textbook I've seen. The explanations are very clear with rich examples and detailed illustrations. It will be beneficial for students and for anyone who wants to learn Chinese as a communicative tool or preserve it as a culture heritage."-Shengli Feng ( ), Emeritus Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong