[lg policy] The Stanford Linguistics Newsletter:Su-chiao Chen (National Chiayi University, Taiwan) ’s take on Multilingualism in Taiwan

[Harold Schiffman]

The Stanford Linguistics Newsletter


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Socio Rap

The last sociolinguistic rap of 2009 will be this Thursday, 10
December, in the Greenberg Room.
Come at 5:20 for snacks! Stay past 5:30 to hear Su-chiao Chen
(National Chiayi University, Taiwan)’s take on Multilingualism in
Taiwan:

This study investigates the extent to which multilingualism has been
practiced and the related factors that contribute to it. As an
immigrant country, Taiwan is composed of various ethnic immigrants,
who usurped the lands of the existing Austro-Polynesian aboriginal
populations. Those ethnic languages provided the basis for the nature
of multilingualism in Taiwan, and were exposed to the intervention of
implemented language policies throughout history. However, how those
policies affected the development of multilingualism and to what
extent is yet to be investigated. This study intends to do so. First,
it uses event-history methods of analysis to explore contact models of
the ethno-linguistic groups and concurrent interventions of language
policies. This analysis provides the background of the
multilingual-make-up of Taiwan. Then, the languages vitality in the
current verbal repertoire is investigated in terms of Taiwanese
people’s language proficiency, language use in domains, and language
attitude.
The results show that the existing multi-ethnolinguistic community
that developed from different waves of immigration in Taiwan has been
subject to a high level of intervention by the government’s top-down
language policies. The National Language Policy, which favors Mandarin
at the expense of all Taiwanese ethnic languages, has led to the rapid
shift of Taiwanese ethnic languages, but the attempts to reverse
language shift via the Mother Tongue Language Policy has not been
effectively implemented. Issues of globalization have resulted in
revisions to the English language-in-education policy with English
becoming strongly favored though not popularly used. The other ethnic
languages, although not officially restricted in use, are found to be
in the process of rapidly losing their pragmatic functional
expressions.

—Sesquipedalian; Issue 2009/12/04 (Events, Groups)

-- http://sesquipedalian.stanford.edu/2009/12/04/p1883/
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