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Language Diversity in the Sinophone World offers interdisciplinary insights into social, cultural, and linguistic aspects of multilingualism in the Sinophone world, highlighting language diversity and opening up the burgeoning field of Sinophone studies to new perspectives from sociolinguistics.
The book begins by charting historical trajectories in Sinophone multilingualism, beginning with late imperial China through to the emergence of English in the mid-19th century. The volume uses this foundation as a jumping off point from which to provide an in-depth comparison of modern language planning and policies throughout the Sinophone world, with the final section examining multilingual practices not readily captured by planning frameworks and the ideologies, identities, repertoires, and competences intertwined within these different multilingual configurations.
Taken together, the collection makes a unique sociolinguistic-focused intervention into emerging research in Sinophone studies and will be of interest to students and scholars within the discipline.
List of contents
Introduction: Language diversity in the sinophone world
PART I
Historical trajectories
1 What was standard Chinese in the nineteenth Century?
Divergent views in the times of transition
2 Manchu, Mandarin, and the politicization of spoken language in Qing China
3 Romanizing Southern M n:
Missionaries and the promotion of written Chinese vernaculars
4 Interactions across Englishes in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao,
and Singapore
Part II
Language planning
5 One legacy, two legislations:
Language policies on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait
6 Language policy and practice in Taiwan in the early twenty-first century
7 A tale of two Special Administrative Regions:
The state of multilingualism in Hong Kong and Macao
8 One People, One Nation, One Singapore:
Language policy and shifting identities among Chinese Singaporeans
Part III
Multilingual practices
9 Speakers of "mother tongues" in multilingual China:
Complex linguistic repertoires and identity construction
10 Multilingualism and language policy in Singapore
11 The discourses of lào yingwén:
Resistance to and subversion of the normative status of English in Taiwan
12 Conventionalized code-switching in Taiwan:
English insertions in Taiwan Mandarin
13 Ubiquitous but unplanned:
The utterance-final particle ê in Taiwan Mandarin
14 Diverse language, diverse grammars:
On quirky phenomena in Mandarin
Summary
Language Diversity in the Sinophone World offers interdisciplinary insights into social, cultural, and linguistic aspects of multilingualism in the Sinophone world, highlighting language diversity and opening up the burgeoning field of Sinophone studies to new perspectives from sociolinguistics.
Report
"...the volume's innovative approaches to language issues are a valuable contribution to Sinophone studies." - Ashley Liu, University of Maryland, MCLC
