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     Dialect is viewed as a variety of a language, indicating where a person comes from. Also, a dialect is chiefly distinguished from other dialects of the same language by particular features of speech.

     China is a monolingual but multi-dialect country. Based on linguistic features of different speech communities (among the language of Hans, the largest ethnic group in China), linguists divided, and still divide, regional areas into different dialect areas. One main dialect division by linguists is two main groups of dialects, the northern dialect and the south dialect. The northern dialects can be subdivided into six or seven sub-groups while the southern dialects can be subdivided into six sub-groups (Harrell, 1993). Another prevalent division divides Chinese dialects into sever main dialect areas according to phonetic varieties (Wang, B. Y. & Liao, X. D).

 

   

 

   

     What is the difference between Mandarin and other dialects?

     Linguistics like to use the prevalent saying that “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.”  The process of Mandarin standarization in China, is a good example for interpretation of this sentence.

     Literacy, stability and advancement, are three main goals which language policies focused on (Lam 2007). In China, the establishment of official language Mandarin is closely connected to political demand. Promotion of a standard language has often been considered a key component to China’s nation-building efforts by associating the whole nation with a lingua franca (Wei & Hua, 2010). Also, when the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, one target in education was to promote literacy among the majority ethic group (the Han Chinese) with the objective of achieving national revival.

​     Therefore, in 1955, National Conference on Language Reform, stipulated that Putonghua (also known as Mandarin or Standard Chinese) as the standardized language of the nation, adopting northern dialect as basic dialect and Peking phonetic system as standard pronunciation, which was officially confirmed in 1959 (Guo, 2004). Since then, the official and prestigious position of Putonghua has been confirmed and other “languages” have become dialects.

 

     The confirmation of standard Mandarin was followed by a series of corresponding language regulations, to standardize the characters and phonetic notation in order to promote Putonghua to Chinese citizens nationwide. Specifically, the Chinese script was simplified and standardized. Meanwhile, to better propagate Putonghua as the standard dialect, a Romanized script, hanyu pinyin, based on Roman Alphabet, was adopted in parallel (Wang & Liao, 1997). The second measure is especially significant for successful promotion of Putonghua because of the great dialectal variation in the pronunciation of Chinese characters by people in different regions. The language policies were initiated in the mid-1950, they have been periodically reaffirmed by the state.

 

 

   

Sign: Please speak Putonghua, grandma.​

Grandma: WHAT?! (in Cantonese)

The orange sign: Promoting Putonghua.​

The sign on children's mouth: Not allowed to speak dialect.

     However, the ‘up-scaling’ of one language variety always scales down the other varieties (Dong 2010). Though the Law on Language Use of the People’s Republic of China states that Putonghua is to be the official language of China, without hindering minority language development (Lam 2007), the wide spread of Putonghua has predominated while limited space for the development of dialects. The development of local dialects in China was limited and constrained to some degree.

     Gradually, the diglossia situations (Ferguson, 1959) are formed in China. Putonghua should be used in formal situations while dialect should be used among family and friends in informal situations. People would shift to appropriate languages automatically, which demonstrates that the choice of language use is constrained by the social context. The language attitude can be revealed in many aspects of life. Here, I would like to reveal the existing language ideology in China from mass media perspective.

Distribution of Chinese dialects

​"官话" means Mandarin (in brown)

     From 1950s to 1970s, although the policies of standardization and promotion of Putonghua have already been carried out, the implementations and outcomes varied in regions. Moreover, the Culture Revolution from 1960s to 1970s has led to the severe irregular in educational field. Thus, during 1950s to 1980s, the process of Putonghua standardization did not successfully spread out nationwide, and the majority of people in China still mainly spoke their own regional dialects.

     

     Things were getting better till the late 1980s, since the Chinese society has been more stable after the Cultural Revolution and beginning of opening-up policy. According to Wang et al. (1995), throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the popularization of Putonghua has been strictly implemented in every field. The promotion of Putonghua was reaffirmed with directives on its use in: teacher training colleges and universities (1987), primary schools (1990), public transportation (1991) and secondary schools (1993). 

 

     Since Putonghua is imposed as the language of instruction in schools, Putonghua is more or less perceived to be a means of increasing one’s value in the educational and also other fields. Gradually, Putonghua is “up-scale” to be a prestige linguistic resource that indexes a prestige identity (Dong, 2009; Dong and Blommaert, 2009). Over a billion or 53% of the population of China was considered fluent or nearly fluent in Putonghua in 2004. Obviously, Putonghua was derived from what used to be a regional vernacular, but over time through institutional standardization it had become official language, the national model for pronunciation, a semiotic capital, associated with linguistic “correctness” in China (Dong 2010). The language policy was obviously producing positive effects for the wide spread of Putonghua in China.

​Reference:

Dong, J. (2009). ‘Isn’t it enough to be a Chinese speaker’: language ideology and migrant identity construction in a

    public primary school in Beijing. Language & Communication 29 (2), 115–126.

Dong, J. (2010). The enregisterment of Putonghua in practice. Language & Communication, 30(4), 265-275.

Dong, J., Blommaert, J. (2009). Space, scale and accents: constructing migrant identity in Beijing. Multilingua 28

    (1), 1–24.

Fishman, J. A. (Ed.). (1974). Advances in language planning (Vol. 5). Walter de Gruyter.

Guo, L. 2004. “The Relationship between Putonghua and Chinese Dialects.” In Language Policy in the People’s

    Republic of China: Theory and Practice since 1949, edited by M. Zhou and H. Sun, 45–54. Boston, MA: Kluwer

    Academic Publishers.

Harrell, S. (1993). Linguistics and hegemony in China. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 103(1),

    97-114.

Wang, B. R. & Liao, X. D. (1997). Contemporary Chinese Language (the first volume) [in Chinese]. Beijing: Higher

    education press. Vol. 251: 256.

Zhan, B. H. (2000). The analysis of Chinese dialects in 20 years. Dialect. (4), 317-324).

 

 

Website:

http://yys.moe.edu.cn/77/2007_6_11/3_77_2415_0_1181551842250.html

https://www.britannica.com/topic/dialect

Photos:​

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B1%89%E8%AF%AD%E6%96%B9%E8%A8%80

http://www.weidu8.net/wx/1000148006496770 

https://www.amazon.com/Colloquial-Cantonese-Putonghua-Equivalents-Taiwanese/dp/9620408969​​​

http://news.xinhuanet.com/video/sjxw/2016-11/21/c_129371785.htm

​Mandarin as official language in China

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