‘Macao has died, traditional Chinese characters have died’: a study of netizens' comments on the choice of Chinese scripts in Macao

ABSTRACT

Local people's sense of place identity might feel threatened in the midst of rapid social change or at a time of crisis, they come into collective consciousness and are particularly likely to assert and highlight their local place identity. Languages (including scripts) become one way for them to maintain an authentic claim to a place and give it a social meaning that in turn authenticates their status as ‘true’ residents of this place. The use of a simplified Chinese sign by McDonald's in Macao in May 2012 has sparked a debate on the protection of traditional Chinese characters against simplified Chinese characters. With the application of the ideology of linguistic authenticity to netizens' comments, this study reveals the sociolinguistic imagination of a homogeneous Macao speech community and illustrates how Macao people discursively negotiate and construct their identities under the tension of ‘One Country’ and ‘Two Systems’. It also discusses some of the contextualizing factors that help situate the debate in a broader sociopolitical context. Small as it is, Macao serves as an illustration of the ways in which local–national tensions play out in languages and has wider resonance beyond the site under investigation.

KEYWORDS:

• The ideology of linguistic authenticity
• simplified Chinese characters
• traditional Chinese characters
• Macao

Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to Professor John Edwards, Professor Joseph Sung-Yul Park, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful suggestions. I would also like to extend my sincere gratitude to Professor Andrew Moody and Professor Xu Daming for their support of various kinds. The present author is solely responsible for possible errors or mistakes of facts or viewpoints herein.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Social Science Fund of Fujian Province (Grant Number: FJ2015B247) and The Scientific Research Fund of Huaqiao University (Grant Number: 15SKBS103).