Multilingual Audio Announcements, Identity and Power

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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://tkuir.lib.tku.edu.tw/dspace/handle/987654321/115370

Title:	Multilingual Audio Announcements, Identity and Power
Authors:	Hu, Ying-hsueh
Keywords:	linguistic landscape, Taiwan, MRT announcements, power and identify
Date:	2016-04-04
Issue Date:	2018-10-23 12:12:46 (UTC+8)
Abstract:	With the recent historical meeting between two leaders of China and Taiwan, Xi and Ma, the issue of Taiwan independence has been once again thrust to the international spotlight. Although both China and Taiwan share key historical, cultural, and linguistic ties, Taiwan has set itself apart from China by asserting its own identity. One very important construct of this identity is in fact a practice of language and cultural diversity to establish its separateness. This “separateness” derives from the fact that Taiwan has always been an island of immigrants, though from various parts of China, in the past three hundred years. The two dominant groups of immigrants are Fukien and Hakka speakers from southern part of China. A third group came over in 1949 from a myriad of geographic locations in China who spoke Mandarin Chinese as a lingua franca. This study examines the means and policies Taiwanese government has been engaging in over the years to promote the issues of linguistic and cultural diversity. Instead of studying the written signs in public spaces (Blommaert, 2012; Pennycook, 2010), we need to observe the audio public announcement, as there is only one written script (Chinese characters) for Fukienese, Hakka, and Mandarin Chinese. Whoever steps into the Taipei Massive Rapid Transit System (MRT) would be either amused or annoyed by the multilingual public announcement of each approaching station in the order of Mandarin Chinese, Southern Min (SM, or Fukienese), Hakka, and English. On buses in Taipei, the capital city, announcements are depicted and spoken in Mandarin Chinese and English only. These audio announcements and signs are the efforts of the government in “Glocalization,” by promoting respect for the different ethnic groups that inhabit the island, while forging a global perspective at the same time. This policy is also meant to maintain the language diversity, especially that of the SM and Hakka; it is further maintained and promoted with language classes in public schools and language certificate tests organized by the governmental agencies. The importance of maintaining SM and Hakka, in particular, is to ensure that Mandarin Chinese, which is often associated with China, does not dominate the linguistic landscape thus the cultural identity of Taiwan. The promotion of English, similarly, is to indicate that Taiwan is a part of an international community that encourages free trade, free ideas and openness. In recent years there have been a sizable new migrant workers coming from abroad, notably, the Philippines and Indonesia. With street signs and public announcements in English arguable help migrants navigate their way in a new environment. However, critics of the policy claim that such diversity is only superficially portrayed and more divides and confusion have been in fact created rather than integrated and resolved. Ethnographic research methodology will be employed in the study to investigate the process and tension of constructing a Taiwanese identity through interviewing people of various ethnic groups in Taipei.
Relation:	book of abstract
Appears in Collections:	[Graduate Institute & Department of English] Proceeding

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