The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
Issue link: https://thelinguist.uberflip.com/i/735840
thelinguist.uberflip.com OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 The Linguist 21 FEATURES CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES Most of the Chinese community in Japan's Yokohama Chinatown (left) comes from Guangzhou, where people mainly speak Cantonese if not impossible, to come to any reliable numbers of the diaspora across the globe. Estimates vary between 30 and 50 million, and these do not include those of partial Chinese descent (i.e. children of mixed parentage). What is clear is that Chinese people can be found in most countries in the world. Some are descendants of much earlier migrants, while others are new arrivals. Many congregate in large numbers in specific geographical areas, but some choose to live apart from other ethnic Chinese. They differ significantly in socio-economic status, education level and occupation. They speak different languages. Multilingualism in the diaspora Historically, it has been predominantly speakers of regional varieties of Chinese other than Mandarin who migrated beyond the Chinese borders. As a result, languages such as Cantonese, Hokkien and Hakka, which are regarded as 'dialects' in China, dominate the overseas Chinese communities. Of course, Mandarin is used. But it is used as another variety of Chinese, rather than as a national language. It is also the regional varieties of Chinese, such as Cantonese and Hokkien, that have been used traditionally as community lingua franca among the Chinese diaspora, mainly due to the numbers speaking them. These language varieties have been a key binding force for the community, with schools, townsmen associations (for people from the same town or village) and the media – the three pillars of diaspora – set up around them. More recently, with the rise of China politically and economically in the world, Putonghua (lit. 'common speech') – the standardised variety of Chinese, based on Mandarin, that is promoted as the official language of China – has gained some prominence, and Chinese heritage schools overseas have begun to teach it. The overseas Chinese have never attempted to spread their language beyond their own community. When conditions allow it, they have tried to learn the local languages and have tended to make this a priority for their children over the maintenance of their own ethnic languages. This, plus factors such as dispersed settlement patterns and involvement in service trades, means that a language shift from varieties of Chinese to the local language – be it English, French, Japanese or Spanish – often takes place within two generations. While multilingualism is a common feature among the Chinese diaspora, it means different things to different groups in different locations, and to different generations within the same family. Some are multilingual in the Chinese language varieties but not in the local languages; others are multilingual in various non-Chinese languages with only rudimentary knowledge of Chinese. Polyglossia and status In terms of the status of the various languages, a complex pattern of polyglossia has emerged. For language use outside the Chinese community, the local language (e.g English, French or Japanese) emerges as the socio- economically 'high' variety, while for language use within the community itself, the languages with high status are Putonghua for political purposes and the most common regional variety of Chinese for everyday communication. Other Chinese regional languages that do not belong to the immediate community, as well as regional forms of the local language, are seen as 'low' varieties. In talking about multilingualism, literacy remains an under-explored topic. The overseas Chinese communities have set up numerous heritage language schools across the globe, and the principal objective of these schools is to teach the younger generations to read and write the Chinese characters. Literacy in Chinese is clearly an issue of concern in the Chinese diaspora. Surveys of language attitudes and ideologies among the Chinese have confirmed that the ability to read and write Chinese is regarded as a crucial element of 'being Chinese'. 1 It often gives people a sense of maintaining their cultural heritage. 2 In the meantime, the literacy level of the first-generation adult immigrants in the non- Chinese languages of the resident place can be low. And a significant amount of language brokering takes place through the locally- born children, who act as go-betweens for the family and other institutions. As well as the effort to maintain a functional level of literacy in Chinese among the locally- born generations, there has been an increased awareness in the Chinese diaspora of the issue of how to construct and express their identities and values through non-Chinese languages. There is little evidence of distinctive varieties of local languages used exclusively by the Chinese diaspora, nor is there evidence of overseas varieties of the Chinese language. Improved and enhanced communication channels, often mediated by the internet, satellite technologies and the new media, mean that new words and expressions used in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau can be heard and replicated immediately in the Chinese diaspora. The overseas Chinese have never consciously claimed ownership of the local languages by creating distinctive language varieties of their own. Their response to the challenge of the linguistic construction and expression of identities and values seems to be translanguaging 3 and engagement with a range of flexible multilingual practices. For more information, see Multilingualism in the Chinese Diaspora Worldwide (Routledge 2016), edited by Li Wei. Notes 1 Li, W and Zhu, H (2010) 'Voices from the Diaspora: Changing hierarchies and dynamics of Chinese multilingualism'. In International Journal of the Sociology of Language, De Gruyter, 155-171 2 Francis, B, Archer, L, and Mau, A (2009) 'Language as Capital, or Language as Identity? Chinese complementary school pupils' perspectives on the purposes and benefits of complementary schools'. In British Educational Research Journal, 35,4, Wiley, 519-538 3 Garcia, O and Li, W (2014) Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education, Houndmills, Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan