[Linganth] Fang Xu on her book, Silencing Shanghai

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear Colleagues,
Fang Xu discusses her book, S*ilencing Shanghai: Language and Identity in
Urban Chin*a in an interview with Andy Zhengzhou Tan.

https://campanthropology.org

Best,
Ilana

Press blurb:
Silencing Shanghai investigates the paradoxical and counterintuitive
contrast between Shanghai’s emergence as a global city and the
marginalization of its native population, captured through the rapid
decline of the distinctive Shanghai dialect. From this unique vantage
point, Fang Xu tells a story of power relations in a cosmopolitan
metropolis closely monitored and shaped by an authoritarian state through
policies affecting urban redevelopment, internal migration, and language.
These state policies favor the rich, the resourceful, and the highly
educated, while alienate the poorer and less educated Shanghainese
geographically and linguistically. When the state vigorously promotes
Mandarin Chinese through legal and administrative means, Shanghainese made
the conscious yet reluctant choice of shifting from the dialect to the
national language. At the same time, millions of migrants have little
incentive to adopt the vernacular given that their relation to the state
has already firmly established their legal, financial, and social standing
in the city. The recent shift in the urban linguistic scene that silences
the Shanghai dialect is ultimately part of the state-led global
city-building process. Through the association of the use of national
language with realizing the "China Dream," the state further eliminates the
unique vernacular characters of Shanghai.
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