Weird language and culture attitude from the social context in Taiwan

Chingheng Chang

Are you proud of your languages, identities, and cultures? How would you think of the crystallization of wisdom and brilliant civilization from your ancestors? I believe most of you are so proud of yourselves because the invaluable assets passed from generation to generation have made what you are today. However, negative attitude toward local Taiwanese dialect and self-identity can be obviously reflected through the social contexts, and I think many of my compatriots are not even aware of it from what they say and think.

People in Taiwan once experienced a forced visible language planning, which is a plan by Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist government) that all local Taiwanese people were forced to learn Mandarin and abandon Taiwanese dialect. The reason for the state to implement such “cultural purification” is to “de-Japanize¹” and “make the once colonized Taiwanese people great citizens with Chinese culture²” (Hsiau, 1997, p.305).

Now, it seems like such “cultural purification” has paid off in some ways. Most of the TV programs and broadcast use Mandarin as the main language just like before (though today, Taiwanese dialect can be heard much more than it could before ). In educational settings, almost no teacher teaches a class in Taigi, which would be considered unusual. In the majority part of Taiwan, Taigi is not usually spoken among younger generations’ interaction. Rather, young people (and sometimes even some old-generation people) would avoid speaking Taigi and make fun of something by saying something such as 好台, meaning so Taiwanese. When people say someone or something “so Taiwanese,” it has a combination of negative meanings- (e.g., old-fashioned, low-class, impolite, and somewhat related to images of gangsters. The list goes on). This phenomenon makes me wonder: why would people use the name of a place where they are supposed to be proud of in such a negative way? Is it a kind of unwitting sense of inferiority resulted from the long-term influence that Mandarin is the high-class (H) language while Taigi is a low-class (L) one?

So much for Mandarin as an H language, while Taigi an L one, I guess there is an “H⁺” language: English, which is another weird language and culture attitude in the Taiwanese context. The reason why English is considered an H⁺ language might have resulted from social reproduction: children from the wealthy family have a chance to gain access to a variety of resource for learning the language, while children from the needy family or remote area do not. Being able to speak English is thought of nothing in English-speaking countries; however, in Taiwan, it seems like a high socio-economic status and/or a privilege in the eyes of some people. So, the weird phenomenon from my language learning experience is this: we can always see those who would speak English or deliberately fake accent in his/her first language in a conversation. In Taiwan, these people are often referred to as “the fake ABCs (American born Chinese) or referred to as the fake CBCs (Canadian born Chinese).” They are often considered rude, proud, and arrogant (they are indeed damned annoying sometimes and actually their English is not that good). Again, this is another corrupted attitude toward language and culture.

After a series of social changes, the younger generation has lost the opportunity to know more about their language and culture.

Discussion Questions

1. Do you know any example of using various means to shape the target linguistic and cultural identity by demeaning or even suppressing another language?
2. How do you think of the phenomenon that people use the name of a place, where he/she grew up, as a negative expression without being consciously aware of it?

Note

1. Taiwan was once invaded by Japan and thus under Japanese occupation. During World War II, Japan was at war with China. After the takeover of Taiwan, the Chinese Nationalist government launched a series of oppression on the use of Taiwanese dialect, which is referred to as Taigi by most people.
2. Students who spoke Taigi would have been punished by schoolteachers. Taigi used to be the mother tongue for most of the local Taiwanese people. Learning Mandarin was basically like learning a “foreign language” for most local Taiwanese people.

References

Hsiau, A. (1997). Language ideology in Taiwan: The KMT’s language policy, the Tai-yu language movement, and ethnic politics. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 18(4), 302-15.