A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. This Research Guide will be the first step in your journey with Chinese law. China grows more important every day from a global perspective. However, studying and conducting research on Chinese law can be extremely challenging, especially if you do not know Mandarin well. This book is intended as a compact but comprehensive research guide that would provide students (especially those who are preparing coursework or dissertations about Chinese law), researchers and legal practitioners with the necessary knowledge about how to conduct effective Chinese legal research.

This sociolinguistic study of the linguistic practices of bilingual couples describes the conditions, processes and results of private language contact. It is based on a unique corpus of more than 20 hours of private conversations between partners in bilingual marriages. Adding to its breadth of coverage, these private conversations are supplemented with larger public discourses about international couplehood. The volume thus offers a corpus-driven investigation of the ways in which ideologies of gender, nationality and immigration mediate linguistic performances in private cross-cultural communication. The author embraces social-constructionist, feminist and postmodern approaches to second language learning, multilingualism and cross-cultural communication. In contrast to other titles in the field which have focused almost exclusively on the socialization of bilingual children, this book explores what it means to one's sense of self to become socialized into a second language and culture as a late bilingual.