Similarities and Differences between Language Policies in Taiwan, Hongkong and Mainland China - Coursework Example

Number: Lecturer: Q1: Similarities and Differences between Language Policies in Taiwan, Hongkong and Mainland China Historical, political and socioeconomic factors shaped language policy in the greater China. Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan have a history of domination by other powers before gaining independence and this had effect on language policy. The Sino-Japanese war (1894-95) and Opium wars of 1840s to 1860s most especially played a critical role in promotion of modern standard Chinese (Guoyu, later Putonghua) in Mainland China. Hong Kong was a British colony but returned to People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1997 while Taiwan was under the Japanese concession until 1945. Language policy was also part of government projects such as nation building and democratization. Ideology also had great role in shaping policy as the countries emphasized on unity. For example, Mainland China used Herderian ideology of “one language, one nation” whereas Taiwan used both herderian and Chinaisation ideology. Hong Kong adopted monolingualism and lingusitic purism. All the three countries adopted Modern Standard Chinese language (PTH), whose standard pronunciation is Beijing Mandarin or dialect. The two conferences on script reform in 1955 simplified Chinese character writing system, promulgated spoken PTH, and developed phonetic alphabet for unification of China (Cheng, 22). The phonetics formed the basis for language policy in all the countries. In 1958, the National People’s Congress approved Hanyu Pinyin Fangan ‘scheme for the phonetic alphabet of Chinese’ leading to emergence of a phonetic script. This pinyin offered standard pronunciation for Chinese characters and did not replace logographic Chinese script (Zhang, 567). Taiwan and Hong Kong use the traditional complex Chinese character script as the official written script. In PRC, Putonghua is medium of instruction in school, official language in workplaces and broadcasting. Prior to adopting Putonghua in 1949, PRC promoted Guoyu as the national language (Cheng, 16-22). In Hong Kong, English was the official language until 1974 when the official languages ordinance was passed giving Chinese (Modern standard Chinese,) co-official status with English. English occupied a higher status until 1987 when Chinese acquired equal status with English as working official language through an Amendment to the language ordinance (Zhang, 573). The difference from PRC policy is that Hong Kong used PTH in written form and Cantonese as the spoken form whereas PRC promoted PTH in written and spoken form (Cheng, 156). Since 1997, Hong Kong uses English and Chinese as medium of instruction for secondary schools. As such, Hong Kong has biliterate and trilingual policy. It is trilingual in that it has ability in Cantonese, PTH and spoken English (Zhang, 576). The official language in Taiwan and medium of instruction from 1945 to 1987 was Mandarin (Guoyu). Taiwan considered Local and indegenous languages such as Taiwanese (Taiyu) and Hakka a threat to national unity hence suppresed them through the Chinaisation ideology of “Mandarin-only’ (Zhang, 579). This was until 1987 when Taiwan relaxed the policy to accomondate local and indegenous languages through the “Mandarin-plus” policy. It thus moved from monolingual assimilation to lingusitic pluralism and multiculturalism to cope with globalization and democratization challenges. Similar to Hong Kong, Taiwan used English for internationalization, which had higher instrumental value than Mandarin did. A notable similarity between the countries is failure in making Modern Standard Chinese to be the only official language for writing and speaking. This is dues to political and other exogenous factors such as liberalization and democratization. In PRC, the policy oscillated between acommondation and repressive assimilation depending on the government in place. For example, Nationalist government favored assimilation while liberal governmentin 1980s onwards allowed use of minority languages in government, schools and courts (571). From 1895-1945, Taiwan used assimilationist language policies to assimilate Taiwanese hence Japanese was the national language. By 1945 however, Taiwan was a bilingual diglossic society and in 2001, it embraced English in schools for internationalization purposes (Zhang, 578). The streaming policy in Hong Kong also failed due to the need for liberalization. It thus ended up being biliterate and trilingual. Q2: Compare and Contrast Modern Standard Chinese in Taiwan and Mainland China The modern standard Chinese (PTH) in Mainland China before 1949 was Guoyu and is similar to the Taiwan Guoyu or Mandarin only that the current Taiwan Mandarin has developed phonological, lexical, and syntactic features that are distinctive from Beijing Mandarin (Zhang, 577). This is because of influence from Southern Chinese varieties especially Min. After 1949, Mainland China adopted Putonghua as the PTH. Guoyu in this case, uses vernacular of Beijing as standard pronunciation (Chen, 12). Both varieties are more or less similar since they have Beijing dialect encoded in the phonetic script (Chen, 15). This was due to the National Language Movement which promoted Guayu as a standard national language and which advocated for Beijing dialect as the base of pronunciation. However, the Guoyu old national pronunciation represented by 1919 Dictionary was “an artificial language not spoken by anyone” (Chen, 18). Ninety percent of its characters follow the Beijing dialect in pronunciation. The first Roman alphabet based system Guoyu Womazi or National Phonetic Symbols revised (NPS2) created in 1928 is the popular phonetic scheme in Taiwan. This new standard pronunciation “the speech of natives of Peking who have received middle-school education” replaced old Dictionary of national phonetics (Zhang, 565). However, Mainland China simplified Chinese character and incorporated Northern Mandarin as its base dialect in addition to exemplary works of modern baihua literature as its grammatical norms (Cheng, 157). Mainland China reduced the number of strokes of characters and this became standard for all publication except for classical studies. Mainland China also developed a phonetic script for sound annotation Hanyu Pinyin published in 1964. On the contrary, Taiwan PTH emphasizes on traditional complex Chinese character script (Zhang, 578). It uses the Tong-Yong phonetic scheme comprising three roman phonetic alphabets. The difference also occurs in written and spoken standard Chinese. According to Kubler, “the official standard language of Taiwan in school texts and broadcasting in theory is peking dialect” (Kubler, 27). National Phonetic Symbols revised (NPS2) is the phonetic scheme of Taiwan. Peking dialect represents written language and forms the bases of written Mandarin. However, Kubler argues that the spoken Mandarin is different from standard Peking due to influence by native southern min dialect and southern Mandarin in general. This is not the case with Mainland China as it promoted Putonghua in written and spoken form. The difference also arises in that there are varieties of Mandarin spoken in Taiwan: Taiwan Mandarin spoken by younger generation of native Taiwanese and mainlanders; and Pekin Mandarin in written texts (Kubler, 27). Written and spoken Mandarin differs in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. Kubler argues that the retroflex initials zh-, ch-, and sh- are merged with dental sibilants Z-, C-, and S- manking pronunciation difficult. For example, Zhu (pig) sounds like Zu (rent) (Kubler, 29). It also does not maintain the distinction between finals –in and-ing and –en and –eng and suffix –r is very rare. Another difference is that neutral tone for Taiwan Mandarin occurs less frequently than Peking Mandarin or Mainland China variety. The difference in grammar is evidenced by different verbal constructions. For example, double le construction with simple unmeasured objects is not common in Taiwan Mandarin (Kubler, 31). The verb suffix Zhe is also uncommon in Taiwan. In conclusion, Taiwan Mandarin differs from Mainland Chinese in that Taiwan Mandarin is based on traditional Chinese complex characters. It is also influenced by other dialectical varieties especially Soiuthern Min which is now frequently and subconsciously used by Taiwan Mandarin speakers. Q3. Language and Gender There is a high correlation between language and gender (Moser, 1). Although Chinese language is idiographic or gender-neutral and free of sexism, studies show that language still plays a big role in creating and reinforcing gender differences although in a covert maner. Language is also a means to access opportunities and fulfill different gender expectations as well as means of fulfilling communication needs. This paper will show that sexism is still ripe in China despite the gender-neutral language. According to Yan, language is socially constitutive and as such “it helps to sustain and reproduce social status quo and transform it as well” (Yan, 32). This results in unequal power relations between gender categories hence creating and reinforcing gender differences. One way language creates gender differences is through gender assymetry. This can be in form of addresses, word-formation, syntactic ordering, idiomatic expressions and proverbs and vocabulary gender marking. Chinese language does not distinguish genders in spoken form. However, this is not the case in written form, as it has to distinguish third person singular pronoun (Yan, 32). Just as ‘he’ refers to both male and female in English, ‘ta’ in Chinese refers to both sexes especially as pronunciation is the same. However, while addressing someone in daily life, language diffferentiates he and she. For example, by saying ‘he is a lawyer’ or ‘she is a nurse’. Language in this case is not only a means of communication by speakers but also creates gender differences. Moser argues that the gender-neutral ren equivalent to person in English is not gender-neutral after all (Moser, 6-8). He argues that in regular Chinese discourse, sentences carry male default character but one has to specify female sex at onset by gender-specific description term. Gender discrimination and communication is also through word-formation. In this case, the female character nu when used as radical compund is associated with negative meanings and inferior position (Moser, 13; Yan, 33). This according to Moser is covert sexism. A research he conducted on software produced 275 female characters and no radical for male (Moser, 13). These radicals had negative meanings such as evil, wicked, promiscous, and traitor. For Yan, even the positive connotations such as charming, loving, beautiful, were traits required by men to adjust to men’s expectations (Yan, 35). They are stereotypical expectations of men in the highly partriarchal society and serve to reinforce gender differentiation. Language is a form of gender role stereotyping. Men occupy high status occupations such as doctor and lawyer while women occupy low status occupations like teaching and nursing. In this sense, when a female engages in a male dominated occupation, gender-referent terms such as nu jizhe (female journalist) or nu faguan (female judge) instead of simply judge (Moser, 15) is used. This relegates women to secondary or special status in society and categorizes men as ‘self’ and women as ‘other’ thus creating gender differences. Sometimes, language serves as socializing or communication needs such as when women use gender-marked words among themselves to refer to or address close female friends and vice versa for men (Moser, 14). For example, use of ‘older brother’ and ‘older sister’. Speakers of different languages set different sets of expectations and different means of accessing them. Research by Zhang indicates that male and female waiqi (foreign business) professionals and state professionals have different career paths and identities propagated by linguistics. The Waiqi professionals are required to have a cosmopolitan identity characterized by use of English, non-Mainland and Mandarin languages (Zhang, 407). Females need to be proficient in foreign languages if they want to work in private sector as they often represent the corporate image. Language and gender in this case are symbolic assets or capital the labor market can tap. This means those who expect to be waiqi professionals need to access many languages while state professionals only need to access Putonghua or standard Chinese. Works Cited Cheng, P. Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Kubler, Cornelius C. Some Difference between Taiwan Mandarin and Text Book Mandarin, 1979. Moser David. Covert Sexism in Mandarin Chinese. Sino-Platonic Papers, 74. 1997. Yan. Gender-Specific Asymmetries in Chinese Language. MP: An Online Feminist Journal, 2008. Zhang, Qing. Cosmopolitan and Linguistic Capital in China: Language, Gender and the Transition to Globalized Market Economy in Beijing. Mouton De Gruyter, 2007. Zhang, Qing. Language Policy and Ideology: Greater China, 2013. Read More