Taiwan's

[Harold Schiffman]

Taiwan's Voluntary Language Shift

Latest survey results indicate that Taiwanese will gradually decline
over a period of generations. The less often that speakers use the
language, the more difficult it will seem to be to use it. More and
more of it will be forgotten and it will be difficult to recall some
old words for things. Complex syntactic constructions will be less
frequently used or lost altogether. In Taiwan's schooling system,
children's acquisition of Taiwanese is interrupted at the very age
when grammatical complexity is being acquired and they are forced to
shift to Mandarin. So, ...

WHY "VOLUNTARY" LANGUAGE SHIFT?

Taiwanese is gradually fading, but not because of the classic
sociolinguistic scenario, i.e. Taiwanese people would slowly be
ceasing to exist. Taiwanese is experiencing language loss without
population loss. The Cornish have lost their language, but they are
still very much alive and have increased in number. Today they speak
English rather than Cornish. Likewise, Taiwanese is declining because
of a shift from Taiwanese to Mandarin. Sociolinguistically and
according to attitude-research data, Taiwan's language shift should be
described as a voluntary shift. Many might say: "But what about the
KMT's past repression against Taiwanese. Isn't the language
recovering?" The answer is that forced language shift, as attempted by
the KMT's earlier policies, has not worked elsewhere in the world. Why
would Taiwan be different? Trying to make a language (Mandarin)
compulsory while stigmatizing Taiwanese and Taiwan's indigenous
languages has, for the past decades, made the latter even more
valuable as a form of resistance against past KMT policies. Taiwanese
might be dying, not because of past, but because of current language
policies and attitudes.

Voluntary language shift from Taiwanese to Mandarin happens because
Taiwanese first language speakers consider that they would be better
of speaking Mandarin. Such shift is gradual, with Mandarin replacing
Taiwanese over a period of decades. Older speakers of Taiwanese are
the most fluent and are in some cases still monolinguals or
Taiwanese/Japanese bilinguals. The younger ones, like their
grandchildren, have not had the opportunity to use Taiwanese across
the full range of functions their grandparents did. They have, in
other words, never acquired full fluency in Taiwanese, being much more
fluent in Mandarin.

THE EFFECT

Taiwan's youngsters do not have as large a vocabulary in Taiwanese and
they are constantly (though unknowingly) simplifying its grammar. They
rely increasingly on the language to which all Taiwanese are shifting
to in order to convey what they mean. Sociolinguistic research has
clearly shown the next stage to be the fatal one - one in which
Taiwanese will no longer be transmitted to the next generations.
Sociolinguistic research has also illustrated that the last stage of
language shift is always abrupt: a language can be tipped over the
brink in a decade or two. Language shift in itself takes much longer,
making it quasi imperceptible in daily life. Yet, Taiwanese is still
in its "shifting" stage (to Mandarin). But judging from current survey
results, it might well tip over that brink within a generation or two.
Linguistic research is unanimous: people making a free choice to shift
to another language will cause the death of a language. As Taiwanese
people are rational beings who may reasonably be expected to know
where their self-interests lie, I cannot condemn such choice. From an
economic point of view, languages are just another free market in
which the wane of a language is simply a side effect of individual
choices. Taiwanese disappearing would thus be no more or less morally
significant than a change in the price of rice.

THE CAUSES

I have argued in previous posts that in Taiwan's case, the decline of
Taiwanese is caused, not by an increase in choices, but by a decrease
in choice brought about by the government's failure to clearly inform
people on the value of first language education. Education resources
have been diverted into resources to support the economy, while
inhibiting the educational and social success of, in particular, the
poorer Taiwanese and Aborigines alike.

Linguists generally agree: measures most likely to preserve declining
languages are the very ones which will help increase their speakers'
standard of living in a long-term, sustainable way. Taiwan's market of
possibly competing languages has been undermined, first (but arguably)
by decades of KMT's linguistic and cultural repression, then by over a
decade of the DPP's linguistic limbo and missed educational
opportunities.

Yet, education is not the ultimate goal of a possible revival of
Taiwanese. Without safeguards for the use of Taiwanese by young people
at home to ensure transmission, attempts to prop up Taiwanese outside
the home will be like blowing air into a punctured tire. It will be
impossible to achieve a steady proto-state based on the incoming air
due to the continual losses resulting from the unmended puncture.

Currently, Taiwanese is in the unenviable position of having outflow
exceeding inflow. Still at the same time, some groups are spending
large sums of money on projects without sufficient justification.
Spending years on devising grammars and a writing system is an
artificial environment for Taiwanese. It reflects only a fraction of
the diversity of the language in its everyday use and cannot capture
its ever-changing nature. It is like arguing that we should
concentrate our efforts on preserving the whale by building museums
where we can display whale carcasses, but do nothing to preserve the
mammal in its natural habitat.

Building more museums or embarking upon artificial projects, poetry or
literature competitions will not save the Taiwanese language: they do
not address the root causes of the decline of Taiwanese. People's
sympathies are more easily aroused about the plight of the whale than
about the oceans they live in, even though preservation of the oceans
is a prerequisite to the whale's existence.

What startles me about the last "pro-Taiwan" administration of 8 years
is that it did not successfully implement new language policies as a
means of resistance and reaction to the encroachment of the preceding
nationalist administration. It is naive to delude oneself that a
laissez-faire approach represents absence of policy. It is instead a
policy not to have an effective language policy.

Erik Allardt's well-known and often-quoted study of 46 linguistic
minorities in 14 European countries showed that a minority language
which is not taught will decline. That was 1980 and Europe's education
authorities have heeded this advice. Consequent studies of language
shift have shown time and time again that schools are a major agent of
cultural and linguistic assimilation because formal education is often
the first point of contact children have with the world outside their
own community.

They very fact that the government does not allow for a significant
presence of Taiwanese in the school is a signal to the Taiwan public
that it is seen as a useless language. Denied the opportunity of
learning in Taiwanese, and expected to assimilate to the norms of a
Mandarin education, children get caught in a vicious circle. Even
under a "pro-Taiwan administration", schools failed to support the
home language of over 70% of the population, and youngsters' skills in
it are often poor and were allowed to deteriorate further.

GOVERNMENT VS. COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

The failure of schools to let children develop in the language they
speak at home can and I fear will be used by a future
nationalist-dominated legislature to legitimize further oppression of
Taiwanese.

Provision for schooling in Taiwanese would not automatically safeguard
its future. As I hinted at before, language movements cannot succeed
if schools are expected to carry the primary burden of revival.
Language revival must first begin in the communities themselves
through voluntary efforts. They have to be financed from the bottom-up
through community resources, much like the initial mother tongue
immersion schools in Spain's autonomous regions.

Dependence on government resources undermines the community's
responsibility and right to control its own affairs. In Taiwan's
highly centralized political environment, requests for bilingual
Taiwanese/Mandarin (or Aboriginal/Mandarin) education may be seen as
threats to Taiwan's cohesiveness. As soon as the Quebec Francophones
devised legislation to protect French, they lost whatever good will
they had among Anglophones in Canada. In contrast, securing funds for
education in Taiwanese through the community and not the government
does not rely on cooperation from those reluctant to do so, nor does
it involve major costs.

This is not to clear a future Taiwan government of responsibility, but
financial aid does come at a price: the right to control the state of
affairs regarding the Taiwanese language. After the upcoming
elections, requests for bilingual Taiwanese/Mandarin education may
represent a great threat to the powers that be.

THE 'IDENTITY' ISSUE

It has become fashionable in Taiwan to talk about multilingualism and
multiculturalism as if they were recent discoveries instead of what
they really are: a condition of life as old as Taiwan's recorded
history. Bilingualism has for a long time suffered from a misinformed
Taiwan press. The overwhelming majority of references to it in the
media still stress Mandarin/English "bilingualism". In the best case,
"Taiwanese/Mandarin" bilingualism is presented as void of social
functions and human value, a divisive setup, confusing, and a
stumbling block to the kind of language education a child "really"
needs.

In today's global village, increasing bilingualism in English is
working at making the majority of Taiwan's indigenous languages in
effect minority languages. This in itself is no cause for alarm. When
diglossia is stable, each language in Taiwan can have its own set of
functions and space without threatening the other. A decade ago
Sweden, for example, introduced the study of English as a second
language into the earliest stages of primary education in order to
secure high levels of proficiency. Yet Swedish and many other small
national languages such as Dutch (in Belgium and The Netherlands),
Icelandic, and Danish are in no danger of not being transmitted
inter-generationally.

The countries just mentioned control their own polities at all levels
from home to school to government. The learning of English will
continue to take place at school and not at home as long as they
retain control of the education system and use their own languages
among themselves at home and in communities as markers of in-group
identity. This is why Taiwan's rather complex issue (or at times sheer
lack) of identity does make Mandarin/English bilingual education a
cause for alarm.

Taiwanese first language speakers with a strong sense of identity
would not consider abandoning their first language (or mother tongue,
if you like), because it is an essential and vital part of "being
Taiwanese". Most Americans have no choice but to speak English since
it is the only language they know, and they have not learned foreign
languages because it was sufficient to know English. If we imagine
instead, that a Swede, Fleming, Dutchman, or Dane were to suggest that
all Americans should be taught to speak with a British accent, most
would object. Even though British English is not a completely
different language, most people would feel that British English was
not the right language with which to express their American identity.

Isn't it odd, therefore, that quite some Taiwanese first language
speakers do not have second thoughts to speak Mandarin to their
children, or that some (upper-class) Mandarin speakers in Taiwan do so
in English? Even those Taiwanese most proud of their "Taiwaneseness"
do not seem to hesitate in confining their language to the living
room.

Globalization does not change the fact that Taiwanese people will
still live their lives in local settings and feel the need to develop
and express a local identity to pass on to their children. Language is
an all-important marker of identity. When language or identity is not
clearly defined or given up, another will replace it, but something
important will be lost: the way to pass on cultural content that
preserves and transmits meanings shared by people who have/had
Taiwanese as first language.

Many are still trapped in the mistaken idea that all people have only
a single identity – that the French are only French, the Spanish only
Spanish, the Irish only Irish and so on. We all have overlapping and
intersecting identities. The Taiwanese might want to think locally but
act globally: local languages for expressing local identities and
global languages for communicating beyond local levels and expressing
their identity as citizens of the world. Without the former, there
would be much less left to express to the world.

Still, before any meaningful decisions can be taken to start saving
Taiwanese, its speakers must believe that it is worth doing. This
decision is a subjective one and carries with it values about the kind
of Taiwan people want to live in and pass on to their children.

Cultural and linguistic uniformity is undesirable: nothing will more
quickly decrease Taiwan's people creativity or impoverish the richness
of Taiwan's cultural diversity than a single Mandarin-oriented
culture. One culture for Taiwan is not likely to bring lasting peace
either; it is much more likely to bring a new form of totalitarianism.
As has been proven across the Taiwan Strait, a unitary system is
easier for a privileged few to dominate.

REFERENCES

Allardt, E. 1979. Implications of the Ethnic Revival in Modern
Industrialized Society: A Comparative Study of the Linguistic
Minorities in Western Europe. Helsinki: Societas Scientariarum
Fennica.

Fishman, J. 1991. Reversing language Shift: Theory and Practice of
Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon, Multilingual Matters.
Special Edition.

Fishman, J. 2006. Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change. In:
Contributions to International Sociolinguistics. Clevedon,
Multilingual Matters, pp.126-176.

Gijsen J. 2008. Taiwan: Pedagogical and Methodological Challenges in
Language Teaching. Presentation at VALS-ASLA Conference 2008,
Switzerland.

Nettle, D. & Romaine, S. 2003. Ces langues, ces voix qui s'effacent.
Menaces sur les langues du monde. Paris: Editions Autrement.
(Translation from "Vanishing Voices" 2000).

Romaine, S. 2007. The impact of language policy on endangered
languages. In Koenig, Matthias and De Guchteneire, Paul eds. Democracy
and Human Rights in Multicultural Societies. Aldershot:Ashgate/UNESCO.
Chapter 10. pp. 217-236.

http://johangijsen.blogspot.com/2008/03/taiwans-voluntary-language-shift.html

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