Language ideologies, language policies, and shifting regional dialect proficiencies in three Chinese cities

ABSTRACT

Governmental language policies in China have varied across recent decades, including the intensive promotion of Mandarin as a language of unification and public championing of regional varieties. Concomitantly, increasing urbanisation, regional migration, and cross-linguistic marriage have led to greater use of Mandarin in private domains. Given the varied status of regional language varieties by city, language ideologies and home practices play an increasingly important role in shaping youth language proficiencies, and maintaining dialect diversity. This paper examines links between parental language ideologies and child language proficiencies in three Chinese cities. The analysis of 167 interviews with young adult children and their parents reveals that parents tend to hold one of four ideological stances: Mandarin-dominant, dialect-dominant, bilingual diglossic, and ‘whatever works’. Furthermore, we find that location matters: families differ by region in their ideologies and support for local varieties. Moreover, parental language ideology predicted children’s current language proficiencies: parents who reported having explicit pro-Mandarin language ideology tended to have young adult children with lower levels of reported skill in the regional dialect. However, the strength of that relationship varies by city. We conclude by considering the implications of these findings for language policy and the promotion of dialect diversity.

近几十年来, 中国政府的语言政策变化很大, 既有21世纪初大力推广普通话作为全国各族人民交际用语的政策, 也有近年来维护与传承地区方言的倡议。可中国快速密集的城市化、频繁的社会流动与跨地区的通婚模式使得汉语普通话在私人语域的使用增多, 这为地区方言传承带来极大挑战。鉴于各地区方言社会声望、地位的差异, 父母语言意识与其在家庭内部的语言实践会直接影响子女方言能力的发展, 并最终影响到地区方言的传承。本文着重讨论中国三大城市父母语言意识与子女方言能力发展状况之间的联系。2019年对青少年及其父母访谈数据显示, 三个城市父母语言意识可归为四类 : 普通话主导类、方言主导类、双言主导类和模糊类语言意识 ; 城市不同, 父母语言意识类型对青少年方言能力发展的影响也不同。父母拥有普通话为主导语言意识的, 其子女普通话能力强, 地区方言能力弱。不过, 父母语言意识对子女方言能力发展的影响力度随城市不同, 也存在差异。上述研究结果, 可以为语言政策、地区方言传承和维护语言多样性等相关研究提供参考。

KEYWORDS:

• Family language policy
• language ideology
• dialect
• multilingualism
• language attitude
• language status

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This paper is supported by National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 18BYY071).