Talking Taiwanese: Flemish reflections on Taiwanese language education

[Harold Schiffman]

Talking Taiwanese: Flemish reflections on Taiwanese language education



12/15/2007
The Difference between Bilingualism and Diglossia: why it matters.
BILINGUALISM AND WHAT IT IS NOT

Many people say that the government in Taiwan should promote
bilingualism, without having a clear idea of what they mean. Some
people seem to believe this implies being proficient in Mandarin and
English. At the present time English in many countries throughout the
world constitutes the 'learned' language, as did Latin many centuries
ago in Western Europe. But it is only when the 'learned' language
begins being used within the country itself, and outside educational
and restricted contexts, that we can begin describing a society as
bilingual. It is societal and not individual bilingualism (a person
speaking perfect English and Mandarin, for instance) that I want to
concentrate on in this post. I will then compare it with 'diglossia',
a term I often hear or read people use for the linguistic relationship
between Mandarin and Taiwanese.

Bilingualism in Taiwan is mainly, though not exclusively, a
Mandarin/Taiwanese one: according to our 2004 island-wide survey data,
64% of Taiwan's university students in major urban areas (aged 18 –
24) stated to speak both Mandarin and Taiwanese on a daily base.
'Bilingual' usually implies the equal usage and equal fluency in two
languages. So a Mandarin speaker who can only manage a few sentences
of Taiwanese (and vice versa) cannot be accounted 'bilingual'. As for
those aspiring for Taiwan to become a 'Mandarin/English bilingual
society' in the near future: even The Netherlands and Norway, where
the adoption of English as a 'learned' language has progressed the
furthest in Europe, do not call themselves 'bilingual' societies.

CONFUSION CONCERNING DIGLOSSIA

Simply put, where bilingualism is where one knows two different
languages used extensively within a society, diglossia involves the
languages you switch between when you speak to others. Contrary to
what some believe, Taiwan is not a diglossic society. In Taiwan's
context, bilingualism refers to a person individual skill used for
communicating in, for example Taiwanese or Mandarin. Many people in
Taiwan 'code-switch' between Taiwanese and Mandarin: one might speak
Taiwanese to one's neighbors (considered as a 'low domain' of language
use – 'low' here not standing for 'less significant'!), Mandarin to
one's university teachers (considered as a 'high domain of language
use')

So it would seem that in Taiwan, societal (Mandarin/Taiwanese)
bilingualism is possibly coexisting with diglossia. For this to be
true, Mandarin would have to be reserved exclusively for the 'higher'
domains of language use (government, school, media), Taiwanese for the
'lower' domains (family, marketplace, friends). Daily observation as
well as research data show that this is not the case: increasingly,
Taiwanese first-language parents are speaking Mandarin to their
children ('lower' domain), even in previously Taiwanese-speaking
strongholds like Kaohsiung and Tainan counties (Gijsen et al. 2004,
and 2007-unpublished). On the other hand, Taiwanese is increasingly
spoken, for example, by Mandarin-first language politicians ('higher'
domain), making the separation between language domains in Taiwan
blurred.

It is widely accepted that multilingual societies having both
diglossia and bilingualism are the most stable for all languages
involved. Without diglossia, however, Mandarin in Taiwan would replace
Taiwanese since the roles of each language that separates it from
Mandarin is merging and becoming ever more vague. Teenagers and
adolescents from Taiwanese-only speaking parents switching to Mandarin
is one vital example of such blurring.

For local languages other than Mandarin to survive, they need
substantial numbers of native speakers who do not speak the language
from which it is under threat (Fishman), and who are concentrated
together in secure geographical location. Yet in Taiwan, most people
do speak Mandarin, though not 'fluently': according to our data, 96%
of over 900 respondents said they 'could speak Mandarin'; but less
than 70% declared to be able do so 'proficiently' – 2004 own survey
data. This can be seen as a remnant of previous nationalist language
policy to make Mandarin education compulsory by threat of punishment.

It remains to be seen whether proficiency in Mandarin can increase to
more 'normal' levels. Similar research data from Belgium, for example,
showed that just over 90% of Flemings said they could 'speak Dutch
proficiently' (Gijsen et al. 2004). Keeping in mind that the language
situation in Taiwan is not unique and that similar language shift
processes have occurred elsewhere (e.g. Belgium, Spain, Wales,
Ireland, Frisia), I believe Mandarin proficiency levels in Taiwan will
gradually increase, accompanied with a decrease in Taiwanese language
levels. Taiwan is thus moving from societal bilingualism to a more
monolingual society in which only the elite (since government language
education is failing) will be able to achieve a sufficient degree of
individual Mandarin/English skills to call themselves 'bilingual'.

THEORETICAL EVIDENCE TAIWAN IS NOT DIGLOSSIC

I use a combination of Romaine, Fishman and Ferguson's (similar)
theoretical frameworks to apply to Taiwan's language situation.

Pivotal to establish whether Taiwan is diglossic or not is the concept
of domain. As I mentioned above, the 'high' and 'low' domains in
language use are used to distinguish in which situations the two
(competing) languages, in this case Mandarin and Taiwanese, are used.
The more these domains can be separated, such as 'Mandarin used in
higher education, Taiwanese in elementary schools', the more stable
the language situation can remain.

So let us presume, for the sake of argument, that the language
situation in Taiwan, if not one of a stable bilingualism, could (at
least) be described as diglossic-bilingual Taiwanese-Mandarin.

Sociolinguistic theory then distinguishes two criteria to validate such claim:

1. If in Taiwan bilingualism and diglossia coexist, Mandarin and
Taiwanese are learned separately: Taiwanese is learned at home and is
used in the family and in familiar interactions. Mandarin is never
learnt at home and is only related to educational, government and
religious institutions. Almost everyone in Taiwan knows both Mandarin
and Taiwanese.
2. If in Taiwan diglossia would exist without bilingualism, only the
'ruling group' speaks Mandarin. The other group, usually a much bigger
one, has no power and only speaks Taiwanese, not Mandarin.

Both criteria do not match the language situation in Taiwan. Mandarin
is increasingly learned at home and not restricted to the 'higher'
domains (and Taiwanese not to 'lower' domains), while Taiwanese
speakers can nowadays hardly be considered as being powerless.

Sociolinguistics therefore distinguishes another criterion:

3. Bilingualism without diglossia. This is the result of the lack of
compartmentalization between the high and low domains of Mandarin and
Taiwanese. Such situation leads to the two languages competing in some
of the same domains. The outcome, and research data clearly validates
this, is the gradual replacement of the language with the lowest
prestige (Taiwanese) by the other language (Mandarin).

CONCLUSION

The only way to believe that, somehow, Taiwanese will survive the 21st
century without ample societal and government support is to indulge in
a bout of wishful thinking.

There has been an exaggerated expectation by some in Taiwan that,
since the Taiwanese language is not so stigmatized at present as it
was 20 years ago, it can be revived in education and in those areas
where Mandarin has made large linguistic inroads. The increasingly
popular misconception by some that people should speak Taiwanese
because it is their 'heritage' misses a fundamental point: people
mainly speak a language because it is in their surrounding
environment. And if an environment for a language disappears or
changes drastically, then the natural trend is for them to neglect
that language. Hence, parents are increasingly talking Mandarin to
their offspring, because Taiwanese holds little value for their daily
pragmatic/economic environment.

The current co-existence of Taiwanese, Mandarin, Hakka and Aboriginal
languages in Taiwan is not due to sentiments of heritage, but because
these languages were the ordinary means of communication, even during
nationalist repression of local languages. A sense of 'national
identity' would go a long way in preserving these local languages. Any
such sense in Taiwan, however, is clearly segregated into opposing
political views further dividing an already dichotomized society.

Still, local languages might be promoted as practical tools of
communication by convincing the public that their children can prosper
in education - and thus, later on in life, economically - if allowed
to receive education in their heritage language, at least throughout
elementary school. Because the government fails to inform the public
on the proven advantages of first-language education, one should have
no illusions: speaking Taiwanese will increasingly become a struggle
that many young speakers will decide to abandon as an unnecessary
complication to an already over-complicated life.

You may agree or disagree with the public's sentiments, but this is a
matter of individual choice. If Taiwanese-first language parents
choose to change the language of their children, this is – and should
be – their right. But we should not cease to condemn or try to improve
unfair governmental language education policies that are upholding
certain societal prejudices towards Taiwanese. Such policies, after
all, often dictate how the public's 'choice' in languages is arrived
at.

The burden of being 'bilingual' in both Taiwanese and Mandarin seems
to prevail over any regret at the gradual loss of Taiwanese in favor
of a so-called preferred Mandarin/English bilingualism (which, as
mentioned above, even Norway and The Netherlands have not achieved
though most people there speak English quite effortlessly).

Taiwanese speakers have to resign themselves to a world where other
languages – Mandarin and English – are dominating through sheer
economic considerations. What Taiwan urgently needs is a well
thought-through 'real' bilingual policy, rather than ad hoc compromise
policies that pass themselves off as bilingual policies. It is the
government's obligation to reflect Taiwan's multilingual and societal
bilingual status through the instrument of education, without unduly
disadvantaging anyone by favoring one language above the other.

REFERENCES

1. Ferguson, Ch. Diglossia. Word 15: 325-337. 1959.

2. Fishman, J. A. Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999.

3. Fishman, J. Do not Leave Your Language Alone: The Hidden Status
Agendas Within Corpus Planning in Language Policy. Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 2006.

4. NSC-project 92-2411-H-214-001; Gijsen, Liu, Tsai, 2004.

5. Romaine, S. Bilingualism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.

6. Romaine, S. Linguistic diversity and language standardization. In
Hellinger, Marlis & Pauwels (eds.) Language and Communication:
Diversity and Change. Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Volume 9.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Chapter 22. pp. 685-715, 2007.

7. Wmffre, I. Is Societal Bilingualism Sustainable?: Issues of
Cultural Identity in Europe. The Coimbra Group Working Party for
Folklore and European Ethnology, 121-42. In Eberhardt &Wolf-Knuts
(eds.), Brussels, Belgium, 2001.

http://johangijsen.blogspot.com/2007/12/difference-between-bilingualism-and.html

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