-Zoe Yu
In my hometown, one distinctive feature of our dialect is that we pronounce all the /h/ in pinyin of Mandarin as /f/ and we tend to omit the consonant in between. For example, when we say /huā/ (花，flower), we would say /fā/; when we say /huì/（会，can），we say /fèi/; we say /huí/（回，go/come back）as / féi/; we say /huī/（灰，grey）as / fēi /; and we say /huài/（坏，bad）as /fài/, etc. When we say words like this, we feel natural and comfortable as it is long practiced in the history of dialect here.
However, since the mandatory popularisation of Putonghua, i.e., Mandarin Chinese, many people, especially young people who work outside the hometown in urban areas and children study at schools started to shy themselves away from speaking so when they were uttering their dialect at home with neighbours and relatives or on campus with classmates. For some of them, it has even become a sign which is so outstanding that might divide a person into the category of “uneducated and less civilised”. It is the “linguistic insecurity” that pushed them towards a more standardised and generalised language that is spoken officially in the context of economic development and urbanisation. Whereas for me, it has been a difficult choice till today. I stuck to speaking the dialect with /f/ substituting /h/ and consonant dropping when I was in the town I grew up and with whoever that lived in and near that area; and when I went to high school in the county center, I would speak with /h/ and the consonant in case that some peers from the downtown mock me of coming from some rural area and cause unwanted conflicts between us. That is to say, I switched my speech depending on the “speech community” I was in. For a long time, I considered the close-to-Putonghua dialect as a “borrowed prestige” that I didn’t own and shouldn’t manifest in front of my folks from the same roots.
- Personal Connection with the Local Community Affects the Extent of Assimilation in Language Socialisation.
From this perspective, if someone I encounter in my hometown changes his/her /f/ into /h/ when he/she says 会/huì/, I would immediately have the gut feeling that this person is going to leave the hometown in the future and their affection and attachment to the local area is not strong or at least half gone. And as a matter of fact, that happens as predicted as always. Whereas for me, I always have this sense of shame if I ever had the thought of changing my /f/ into /h/, because subconsciously it means a betrayal of me of the local community. I still feel so on this issue although I have worked, studied and lived in two foreign countries and several remote cities from home. And I suppose it is never going to change as my attachment to the home society is so deep. When I recall the reality where they raised me up with so much love, support and attention, I would feel intensely that how could I just leave them behind like nothing had happened? Language is the last stream of link between us, and it is something that has to and can be maintained easier than anything else as we’re already put into a huge wave of social changes in the historic course of national modernisation and globalisation.
- Economic Development Shapes A Person’s Choice of Language
In a smaller picture is a phenomenon I noticed among me and my childhood friends. It has been a tradition that we spoke local dialect when we communicated in the Wechat groups about our daily issues or when we met face to face during the Chinese New Year holiday—the Spring Festival, and most of them spoke with /f/ instead of /h/ and mid-consonant dropping except one who had moved to live in the county center since the second year of middle school. However, as time went by, each one of them started to settle down in a city far away from home. Gradually, it is noticeable that the longer they resided in the new place, the more their dialect shifted away from what it originally was. And then I was the one who’s still sticking to the authenticity of our local speech. It struck me inside annually as I noticed these changes being the one with parents and most of relatives deeply rooted in the locality and the one who’s most in love with this land. Yet those who I grew up with have departed spiritually and will soon physically as time goes by and their cellular families in the new “hometown” begin to flourish.
However, it is still relieving that they were speaking the dialect among us when meeting offline, although it became incredibly difficult since the pandemic and awkward when the Putonghua interrupted the dialect frequently in our chat in typing or videocalls. At this last moment of dilemma where the connections among us became something heavy but ineffective, I decided to break the loop. I moved to Canada, and that was when they started to feel comfortable to speak Putonghua with me instead of the dialect which is somehow restrained lexically and semantically as many thoughts and emotions were compromised due to the candour and timidity born by a mother tongue and its conservative cultural connotations. The bond among us seemed to be strengthened again, and I also freed myself from the choices of languages I speak with my fellows.
- Political Appeals Impacts Individuals’ Linguistic Preference
Yet I have also noticed that, those who had complained a lot about the local area and the neighbours, tend to change their tone and accent of speaking sooner than others. As I think, maybe for them, it is a way of rebellion against what they disliked and liberate themselves from that context so that they could devote themselves into the new arena.
Take myself for an example, I don’t like to speak Chinese so much if the condition allows me to speak English or even to banter in Spanish or German. I had long come to the realisation that speaking English allows me to express my feelings and opinions more freely and logically than Chinese. And I had thought about the reasons.
As a child growing up in a typical Chinese family, or stricter family than average, I was rigorously limited in my speech at home by my father. He’s the one who speaks in the family despite that my mom rivals with him on most occasions and issues. However, as a younger generation, I had never earned the right to speak equally or at least mutually respectfully. Therefore, at the first stage, I started to prefer staying away from home at my grandparents’ or living in the cities speaking Chinese Mandarin with other people outside. However, as I grew older, I realised that lack of speech is not happening only in some Chinese families. It happens in the society as a whole and at numerous workplaces too. Although gender equality has been advocated for decades in China, and women’s rights have indeed been enhanced largely compared to the situation before 1949, it still hasn’t come to a stage where women as a half of the population can speak for themselves and for public issues in the wider range of the society and at the administrative level. As I have noticed, the female leaders in the administrative bureaus of my hometown are actually distinctively higher than where I had studied for my bachelor’s and first master’s and worked—Changsha, Hunan Province. I reckon that, it is probably greatly attributed to the fact that in my hometown, education has been persistently valued and has been a famous landmark of the province and all over the country. That is why women are more politically awakening and dare to dream big and not feel ashamed to maneuver in the political field. Whereas in Hunan Province, where the social atmosphere is more reserved and less democratic despite that they’re famous for the entertainment industry in the country, women are more likely to be a second sex as illustrated by Simon Beauvoir and tend to depend themselves on males in different ways. And when they see a female with ambitious thoughts and behaviours, for example, attempting to compete with men and seniors in administrative and professional scenarios, they tend to judge her as being aggressive and unlikely a proper woman. Therefore, in such kind of sociopolitical environment, women have to seize the power and strive for their benefits in ways that are disdained by the advanced civilisation: jostling against each other instead of standing up for the same gender at work, being a third person in two other people’ marriage for the sake of money and materials, rely on male seniors to climb up the stairs of managerial and hence economic and social status as well as becoming someone who’s iron-handed and harsh in social life in order to achieve her own benefits.
It is not unpathetic that the community hasn’t come to a consensus that women need more respect and say in the whole scope.
- Sociocultural Context Interferes the Progress of Language Socialisation
One more phenomenon I noticed in this specific capital city of the province is that, local people who work even in the sectors of higher education tend to speak their local dialect at workplace when there are no outsiders, or rather no prominent outsiders, on the spot. It is on one hand understandable that many local and senior employees are used to speak dialects and haven’t received professional training and test of Mandarin as it’s something initiated in a more recent China. While on the other hand, it somehow shows their superiority and lack of inclusiveness towards the emerging discourse of workplace where more and more young and immigrant personnel are coming to work in their place of origin. And this delay of progress in thoughts leads to more delays in their actions. They treat young and higher-educated talents in a manner of disciplining and managing factory labour of old times, with not enough respect or listening ears to their creative and critical ideas or initiatives. Meanwhile, they complain that the work hasn’t been upgraded or yielded any breakthroughs on a yearly basis. Such linguistic habit sustains in the wider community in such cities too and causes various kinds of difficulties in daily communication and interactions between the locals and immigrant workers.
Comparatively, in more developed and civilised metropolis like Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing, residents pay more attention to their speaking of language. It is rare in my memory that I had come across people who spoke their dialects that others didn’t understand at the times I went for traveling in Beijing, Shanghai and the time I worked in Guangzhou. And it is obvious that in these cities, it is much easier for a newcomer to navigate around the town and search for whatever place and service they need. More importantly, when they see a novice on the road, it is more likely for them to offer a helping hand, exactly like what I had experienced on the subway of London where two unknown passengers helped carried two of my huge suitcases out of the carriage when they saw me about to get off and waved goodbye before I could say a “thank you”. Therefore, I may conclude here that the sociocultural setting is also an essential factor that impacts the direction of language socialisation: whether it goes more localised or more popularised.
To sum up, I like the idea of language socialisation and to expose myself into diverse languages. However, I still hope that in the process of language socialisation, we do not get lost in our ties with people that were precious to us and the communal culture that nurtured us to be who we are.
References
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[2] Guardado, M. (2009). Speaking Spanish Like a Boy Scout: Language Socialisation, Resistance, and Reproduction in a Heritage Language Scout Troop. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 66 (1): 101-129. University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.66.1.101
[3] Kim, J., & Duff, P. A. (2012). The language socialization and identity negotiations of generation 1.5 Korean-Canadian university students. TESL Canada Journal, 29 (6), 81–102. https://mcgill.on.worldcat.org/oclc/826378680
[4] Van Herk, G. (2012). Language and Society & Place & Social Status. What is Sociolinguistics? John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
