| Status | 已發表Published |
| Code switching and language games in contemporary China; or Convergence and identity construction on WeChat | |
Sandel, T. L.  ; Qiu, P.
| |
| 2020-11-01 | |
| Source Publication | Communication Convergence in Contemporary China: International Perspectives on Politics, Platforms, and Participation |
| Publication Place | East Lansing, MI, USA |
| Publisher | Michigan State University Press |
| Pages | 175-205 |
| Abstract | China has been described by some scholars as an undifferentiated whole, held together by a unified culture and language. Jared Diamond, for example, claimed that when challenged by European powers in the nineteenth century, China “lost” because it was encumbered by its “single writing system” and “substantial cultural unity.” On the other hand, when the linguist John McWhorter described China, he wrestled with how to describe a place where people speak a range of mutually unintelligible codes: “[W]hat are called the dialects of Chinese are as different from one another as are the Romance languages, and speakers of one must learn the others as foreign tongues.” Yet because Chinese is written using “symbols” and not an alphabet, McWhorter argued, this “means that all of the Chinese varieties can be written with the same script.” This feature of written language, combined with the “unifying effect of Chinese culture,” means that Chinese varieties should be counted as dialects and not distinct languages. A vision of China as a “unified whole,” however, may look different when considering everyday speaking practices. When meeting someone from China for the first time it is commonplace to ask: Where are you from? What is your hometown? What “fangyan is spoken there”? This can then lead to an interesting discussion about differences between how words and phrases are uttered in that person’s fangyan (dialect/local language) and how they are pronounced in Standard Chinese (also called Mandarin or Putonghua). The picture that emerges from a local point of view is that China is not a unified whole but an amazingly diverse patchwork of regional dialects, local language norms, and overlapping cultures. Beginning from this understanding of the rich complexity of languages, this chapter examines how China is both unified and diverse, and how the languages used within China and both being brought together and diversified in new ways as they mix and evolve in the new world of communication convergence. To unpack this claim, we look at online communication shared among China’s youth, members of the so-called “post-1980s generation” born after the implementation of the one-child policy. Most are well educated, have ready access to media, and, as we demonstrate, use a variety of linguistic forms to communicate online, notably when using WeChat, China’s most popular smart phone application. The context for this study is Macao and those who interact regularly with people in the adjacent city of Zhuhai. This is a rapidly modernizing region of China where Cantonese is the most commonly spoken fangyan and, similar with how youth in Shanghai use mixed online communication, youth of this region mix Cantonese with Standard Chinese, English, and other representational (including especially visual) forms, thus making for a remarkably rich stew of communicative practices. |
| Keyword | Cantonese code switching online communication WeChat Macao voicing Chinese dialects |
| Language | 英語English |
| ISBN | 9781611863765 |
| The Source to Article | PB_Publication |
| PUB ID | 46308 |
| Document Type | Book chapter |
| Collection | DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION |
| Corresponding Author | Sandel, T. L. |
| Recommended Citation GB/T 7714 | Sandel, T. L.,Qiu, P.. Code switching and language games in contemporary China; or Convergence and identity construction on WeChat[M]. Communication Convergence in Contemporary China: International Perspectives on Politics, Platforms, and Participation, East Lansing, MI, USA:Michigan State University Press, 2020, 175-205. |
| APA | Sandel, T. L.., & Qiu, P. (2020). Code switching and language games in contemporary China; or Convergence and identity construction on WeChat. Communication Convergence in Contemporary China: International Perspectives on Politics, Platforms, and Participation, 175-205. |
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