Language Standardisation and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts: Asian Perspectives 9781800411562

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Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Series Editors: John Edwards, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada and Dalhousie University, Canada and Leigh Oakes, Queen Mary, University of London, UK. Multilingual Matters series publishes books on bilingualism, bilingual education, immersion education, second language learning, language policy, multiculturalism. The editor is particularly interested in ‘macro’ level studies of language policies, language maintenance, language shift, language revival and language planning. Books in the series discuss the relationship between language in a broad sense and larger cultural issues, particularly identity related ones. All books in this series are externally peer-reviewed. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS: 171

Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts Asian Perspectives Edited by

Nicola McLelland and Hui Zhao

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Jackson

DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/MCLELL1555 Names: McLelland, Nicola, editor. | Zhao, Hui, editor. Title: Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts: Asian Perspectives/Edited by Nicola McLelland and Hui Zhao. Description: Bristol; Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, [2022] | Series: Multilingual Matters: 171 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book breaks new ground in the study of language standards and standardization through its focus on Asia and in the attention paid to multilingual contexts. The chapters add to our understanding of the ways in which multilingualism is implicated in language standardization, as well as the impact of language standards on multilingualism”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021032490 (print) | LCCN 2021032491 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800411555 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800411562 (pdf) | ISBN 9781800411579 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Oriental languages—Standardization. | Oriental languages—Variation. | Multilingualism—Asia. | Language policy—Asia. Classification: LCC PJ84 .L36 2022 (print) | LCC PJ84 (ebook) | DDC 306.44/6095—dc23/eng/20211012 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021032490 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021032491 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-80041-155-5 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: Ingram, Jackson, TN, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2022 Nicola McLelland, Hui Zhao and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by SAN Publishing Services.

Contents

Contributors

vii



Note on the Use of Original Scripts in this Volume

xi

Introduction: Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts – Asian Perspectives Nicola McLelland and Hui Zhao

1



Part 1:  Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts

1

Language Codification: Coloniality, Society and History S. Imtiaz Hasnain

2 Linguistic Variation in Late Qing Western Sources: An Analysis of Edkins’ Grammar of Shanghainese Mariarosaria Gianninoto

21

40

3 Teaching Mandarin Pronunciation to Mongolian Learners in Early Republican Period China: The Case of the Mongolian Han Original Sounds of the Five Regions (Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin, 蒙漢合璧五方元音) 56 Jiaye (Jenny) Wu

Part 2: Standardization and Variation in Multilingual China: Implications for Education, Testing, Policy and Practice

4 Reconciling Multilingualism and Promotion of the Standard Language in Education in China Anwei Feng 5 Language Standards in Language Testing: The Case of Variation in Written Chinese Proficiency Tests for Second Language Learners Lian Luo 6 Social Meaning and Variation in Perception: Beijingers’ Attitudes Towards Beijing Mandarin Hui Zhao v

83

104

128

vi  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

7 Global Chinese and Malaysian Mandarin: Transnational Standards for the Chinese Language Wang Xiaomei

147



Part 3: Standardization and Minoritized Languages in Multilingual Contexts

8

How Standard Zhuang has Met with Market Forces Alexandra Grey

163

9

Is Sibe a Linguistic Continuation of Manchu? Ying Sargin

183

10 Language Standardization for Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China Rigdrol Jikar (Rouzhuo)

203

11 Politeness Strategies, Language Standardization and Language Purism in Amdo Tibetan Tsering Samdrup and Hiroyuki Suzuki

223

12 Erasure and Revitalization of an Endangered Language: The Case of Jejueo in South Korea Moira Saltzman

241

13 Standardizing Indigenous Languages in Thailand Through Orthography Development and Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education: The Case of Patani Malay Suwilai Premsrirat

258

Part 4: Negotiating Standards and Variation: Case Studies From Japanese

14 After Language Standardization: Dialect Cosplay in Japan Patrick Heinrich

281

15 Negotiating ‘Standard’ Gendered Speech in Japanese: The Case of Transgender Speakers Hideko Abe

298

16 Between Standardization and Localization: Changes in Tôhoku Dialect as Spoken in Hawai‘i Mie Hiramoto

315

Index

335

Contributors

Hideko Abe is Professor of East Asian Studies Department, Colby College, USA and a linguistic anthropologist who is engaged in research projects related to language, gender and sexuality. She is the author of Queer Japanese: Gender and Sexual Identities through Linguistic Practices (Palgrave, 2010). Anwei Feng is Professor of Language Education at the University of ­Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC). He has had teaching and research experience in many countries and regions including China, Qatar, Hong Kong, Singapore and the UK. His research areas include multilingualism, multilingual education, and intercultural studies in education. Mariarosaria Gianninoto holds a PhD in Asian Studies from Naples Oriental University (Italy) and a Habilitation to supervise research (HDR) in Linguistics at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris, France). She is currently a full professor of Chinese Linguistics at the Université Paul Valéry-Montpellier 3. Her research focuses on the history of Chinese linguistics and Chinese language learning. Alexandra Grey researches language policies in practice, combining legal, sociolinguistic, and ethnographic approaches. She focuses on the governance of linguistically diverse societies in the People’s Republic of China and Australia and received the international Joshua A. Fishman Award for the best dissertation on the sociology of language in 2018. She is a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology Sydney. S. Imtiaz Hasnain holds a PhD from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and has been an EWC Fulbright Scholar. Currently, he is a professor of Sociolinguistics, Department of Linguistics at Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh and an Adjunct Faculty in Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad. His research interests include sociolinguistics, critical discourse studies, language planning, language endangerment and minority language rights. He was an Editor-in-Chief, Indian Linguistics (Volumes 73–75).

vii

viii  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

Patrick Heinrich is Associate Professor at the Department of Asian and Mediterranean African Studies at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. His present research interests focus on sociolinguistics and urban studies in Japan. Recently edited books in English include The Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics (Routledge, 2018) and Urban Sociolinguistics (Routledge, 2017). Mie Hiramoto is Associate Professor in the Department of English ­Language and Literature at National University of Singapore. Her research interests are sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, in particular contact linguistics (e.g. Japanese spoken outside Japan, Colloquial Singapore English) as well as language, gender and sexuality (e.g. Asian masculinity, ideologies in media). Rigdrol Jikar (Rouzhuo) is a PhD candidate in Education at the Victoria University, Australia. His research interests include the divergence and integration between traditional Tibetan education and modern education, traditional pedagogy, and the development of the Tibetan language. Lian Luo is Associate Professor at the Minzu University of China. Her research interests include Chinese international education, language assessment and language teacher training. Nicola McLelland is Professor of German and History of Linguistics at the University of Nottingham. Her research on the history of language standards and language variation, and of language learning and teaching, has led to her interest in multilingualisms past and present, and to a growing interest in the language varieties of China and of Asia more widely. Suwilai Premsrirat (PhD, Monash University) is the founding director of the Resource Center for Documentation and Revitalization of Endangered Languages and Cultures at Mahidol University, Thailand. Her research into ethnic minority languages spans Southeast Asia. She directed the Patani Malay-Thai Bi/Multilingual Education Project, which received UNESCO’s 2016 King Sejong Literacy Prize. Tsering Samdrup is a PhD candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His research mainly focuses on the languages and textual traditions of Tibet. Moira Saltzman is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the University of Michigan. Her academic interests lie in the phonological and morphological aspects of language change in contact environments. Moira’s recent research includes the development of a multimedia talking dictionary of Jejueo, an endangered language of Jeju Island, South Korea. Ying Sargin is a DAAD-funded PhD student at the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen. Being a Sibe herself, she focuses on studying this speech community from a sociological perspective.

Contributors ix

Hiroyuki Suzuki holds a DLitt in Linguistics from Kyoto University (2007) and is currently a research fellow at the Institute of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Fudan University, China. His principal research interests are descriptive linguistics, geolinguistics, dialectology and sociolinguistics of languages in the Tibetosphere. Wang Xiaomei is Professor of Linguistics at the Department of Chinese Studies, Xiamen University Malaysia. Her main research interests include Malaysian Mandarin (global Chinese) and sociolinguistics (language maintenance and shift, language spread, multilingualism, linguistic landscape and language policy). Jiaye (Jenny) Wu is a PhD student at the University of Nottingham. Her research, which is part of the Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies (MEITS) project, is about teaching standard ­Mandarin Chinese to Mongolian learners since 1912, in order to examine how national language standard, national identity, and citizenship are promulgated within a multilingual society over time. Hui Zhao is currently an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of ­Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham, where she previously worked as a postdoctoral research associate on the Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies (MEITS) project. Her research interests include variationist sociolinguistics, language attitudes and perception, and bilingualism, particularly in the contemporary Chinese context.

Note on the Use of Original Scripts in this Volume

For the wide range of languages and scripts covered in this volume, we have cited works in the reference lists in their original scripts (when appropriate), with an English translation, rather than using romanizations. This ensures readers are able to identify these non-English works in their original. For languages with more than one possible script (e.g. Simplified Chinese vs Traditional Chinese for Mandarin, Cyrillic vs traditional Mongolian for Mongolian) and different transcription conventions (e.g. pīnyīn with or without tone marks), we have trusted our contributors to choose the script and convention most appropriate for the linguistic and social contexts they work in.

xi

Introduction: Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts – Asian Perspectives Nicola McLelland and Hui Zhao

This volume breaks new ground in studies of language standardization and language variation, both in its theoretical starting point and in the languages of its case studies.1 Conceptually, our starting point is the conviction that processes of standardization and negotiation of variation are often profoundly and decisively affected by the multilingual context in which they occur, as we argue more fully below. All the chapters of this volume illustrate that in different ways. New too is that all these case studies concern languages of Asia: especially Chinese or other languages used in and around China (Mongolian, Tibetan); Japanese and languages of other neighbouring countries: India, South Korea, Malaysia and a Malay variety used in Thailand. Hitherto, work in sociolinguistics has tended to be dominated by European or English-language case studies: Asia is given little more than half of the page budget accorded to Europe in Ball’s Handbook of Sociolinguistics Around the World (2010), despite the fact that Asia is, as Roche and Suzuki (2018: 1227) note, the ‘world’s most linguistically diverse continent’. The general tendency is no less true of standardization studies: in the otherwise valuable collection by Lane et al. (2017) devoted to standardization of minority languages, Europe dominates, and Asia is entirely absent. Within Europe, comparative approaches to the ideologies and practices of standardization have only begun in the past 20 years (Ayres-Bennett & Seijido, 2013; Deumert & Vandenbussche, 2003; Linn & McLelland, 2002; Percy & Davidson, 2012). Our Chinese and other Asian case studies are, then, an enrichment of the field in their own right. More than this, though, as will become clear below, they also invite us to test established models and assumptions against new data, and 1

2  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

to enhance them with new perspectives, in spanning two closely related but traditionally rather separate areas of sociolinguistics, each with their own preferred methodological paradigms: broadly, standardization studies and studies of language variation. Standardization studies are typically concerned with the qualitative analysis of collective and often explicit understandings of language. Work in language variation, by contrast, is more often quantitative in approach, primarily concerned with interpreting the raw data of the linguistic practices and attitudes of individuals. As we ourselves have learned, shared attention can be fruitful, especially at the points where these two approaches meet, in highlighting how individuals negotiate their own language practice in the context of standardized languages (e.g. Zhao, this volume; see also below), or where aspects of standardization are shaped by the practices of the language’s speakers (e.g. Rigdrol Jikar, this volume; Samdrup & Suzuki, this volume). Language standardization has tended to be viewed as a one-language matter, often assumed, especially within Europe, to take place in a monolingual nation state and/or with prototypically monolingual individual speakers. Recent work has begun to recognize that such a model was at most only ever a convenient fiction (contributions in Tieken-Boon van Ostade & Percy, 2017, especially Ameka, 2017; Coulmas, 2017; Klöter, 2017; Smakman & Barasa, 2017; see discussion in McLelland, 2021a: 110–112; the overlooking of multilingual speakers was noted outside linguistics too, e.g. de Swaan as early as 2001). 2 As multilingualism is increasingly acknowledged and studied, even for such monocentric states as China (e.g. Grey, 2021; Klöter & Söderblom, 2020; Liang, 2015), the chapters in this volume help bring to light the ‘hidden multilingualisms’ (Vogl, 2018) that play a role in language standardization – and indeed, not least for China and Chinese. Multilingualism is a red thread running through the entire history of language standardization and much language variation, both in the grammaticographical and lexicographical work through which language codification and elaboration occur (McLelland, 2021b) and in the ways in which people use, negotiate, or respond to the standard in their own linguistic repertoires. 3 First, the grammaticographical and lexicographical traditions of many languages have their origins in multilingual encounters, often motivated by missionary, colonial and/or commercial ambitions (see, e.g. Gianninoto, this volume; Hasnain, this volume). For anyone seeking to convert, conquer, govern or trade, it was first necessary to communicate, and that meant both studying and learning new languages and imposing one’s own language among at least some proportion of target population, who could in turn become more or less eager to master the language of the institutions they were subject to. The practical desire of learners (or their teachers) to know what to ‘aim for’ as the target language (see, e.g. Wu, this volume) has motivated the desire not merely for adequate documentation of languages, but for clear and recognizable rules in the form of grammars and

Introduction 3

dictionaries. The convergence of those different but sometimes productively converging interests in language standardization is exemplified both in the 19th-century grammar of Shanghainese by the Protestant missionary Edkins which is examined by Gianninoto in this volume, and today in the work of the Summer Institute of Linguists’ involvement in the project on Patani Malay in Thailand, reported on by Premsrirat (this volume). (On the faith-based Summer Institute of Linguistics, founded in 1934 and now known as SIL International, see Olson, 2009 for an insider view, and Thomas, 2008 for a view from outside.) Once the notion of a standardized language has been encountered, its ideological force may be used to grant to minoritized languages, or to claim for them, the institutional recognition, validation and prestige associated with standardized majority languages. The decision, in the mid20th century, of the new People’s Republic of China to standardize the writing systems of its recognized minorities was a top-down attempt to do just this, though with mixed results (Zhou, 2003, 2021: 179–190). Newly produced codifying texts that are often inspired by such contacts typically remain indebted ideologically, conceptually and terminologically to other grammaticogaphical or lexicographical traditions. They are a sociolinguistic instance of ‘how ideas travel’4 and how ideas are disseminated through bilingual or multilingual cultural contacts (see Gianninoto, this volume; Heinrich, 2021 on the role of script in the spread of ideas in the ‘Chinese Character Cultural Sphere’; and Makihara & Schieffelin, 2007 for case studies from Pacific societies of how cultural contact conditions the transfer of language ideologies to new contexts). Between them, the chapters in this volume add to our understanding of all of these ways in which multilingualism is implicated in language standardization. Several of the chapters demonstrate how language standardization is crucial to real-world language planning and policy (LPP), in education, and in language activism, adding to our knowledge, not least of Chinese languages, where much of the existing literature is in non-English languages and is inaccessible to other audiences (e.g. Chinese: Bo & Lai, 2009; Li, 2010; Yao, 2006). Luo examines judgements made in Chinese language testing about standard and variation. Several other chapters illustrate how for minoritized languages, standardization – including the choice of script – is a live issue both for identity (Tibet) and for literacy and education of minorities (Thailand). Some of our contributors are themselves language activists, as members of, or allies of, the language communities they are researching (see below, our discussion of our third section, Standardization and Minoritized Languages), Premsrirat most explicitly so in her work helping endangered language communities to develop standardized orthographies and other materials to support their language revitalization goals. Feng also consciously adopts a ‘critical stance that values promotion of social justice in research and in language policy and planning’ (Feng, this volume: 84). Other contributions in this

4  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

volume report on research conducted by cultural and linguistic ‘insiders’ (Banks, 1998), especially on topics related to minoritized languages, linguistic activism and LPP (e.g. Sargin; Rigdrol Jikar; Samdrup & Suzuki; also see below on decolonizing multilingualism). Meanwhile, our contributors who have offered an ‘outsider’s’ perspective (e.g. Abe; Grey; Wu; Zhao) do so by emphasizing the respective language users’ experience and providing details on the historical and contemporary contexts. The chapters also highlight the different roles played by different actors in language standardization, whether top-down, as in the case of Zhuang (Grey, this volume) or (partially) bottom-up (Premsrirat, this volume), and different aspects of language codification, including grammaticography (Gianninoto, this volume) and pronunciation (Wu, this volume); lexicographical elaboration (Rigdrol Jikar, this volume); the choice of script in the cases of Zhuang in China (Grey, this volume) and of Patani Malay in Thailand (Premsrirat, this volume). It is not possible here to do justice to the current state of research in the fields of multilingualism, language standardization, and variation in Asia, or even for those relatively few in South, East and South-East Asia that are examined in this volume. Nevertheless, we note here some key points and indicative developments and suggestions for further reading. India is a well-known, indeed iconic, exemplar of the sociolinguistic complexity of multilingualism. The practical and ideological challenges involved in even describing it have been acknowledged at least since Grierson’s famous Linguistic Survey of India (Grierson, 1903–1927; Majeed, 2018a, 2018b) and still remain (Dasgupta & Sardesai, 2010). Standardization is implicated already at the level of description of this multilingual landscape: speakers in India may use standardization as a criterion to decide whether a variety merits the label of language or not (Groff, 2017: 144). Ideological and political dimensions are perhaps most obvious in how Hindi and Urdu emerged as two separate standardized languages at the expense of the ‘middle ground’, Hindustani (Rahman, 2011), as well as in the largely unsuccessful attempt in the 1960s to implement a three-language policy (English, Hindi and a regional vernacular), which met with resistance to Hindi in India’s South. In contemporary India, Abbi (2021) argues against ‘excessive’, ‘monolithic’ standardization of Hindi, and for acceptance of more inclusive ‘near-standard’ Contact Hindi varieties. Beyond India, the sociolinguistics of multilingualism in other parts of Asia is less widely known, though there is every reason to expect it to be just as rich. For example, recent work on Tibet is revealing the sociolinguistic complexity of a region where support for Tibetan, in the face of pressure from (at least) English and Chinese, comes at the cost of numerous minority languages that are neither Chinese nor Tibetan (Roche, 2019; Roche & Suzuki, 2018; see Rigdrol Jikar and Samdrup & Suzuki, this volume). The prominence of the ‘multilingual ecology’ in Heinrich and Ohara’s (2019) handbook illustrates progress made in

Introduction 5

recognizing linguistic diversity within Japan, which, like Korea, has historically been an ideologically monolingual state (Gottlieb, 2010) – note for example the contributions of Maher (2019); Otsuji (2019); FujitaRound (2019); Kubota (2019); Matsumoto (2019); Shoji (2019). Heinrich and Ohara’s collection thus directly challenges the long-held belief of monolingualism in Japan and highlights the multilingual and metrolingual (Otsuji, 2019) reality of contemporary Japanese society (see also Heinrich & Galan, 2010). As for China and Chinese, the Handbook of Chinese Applied Linguistics (Huang et al., 2019) includes chapters on Chinese as a heritage language (Duff & Doherty, 2019), variations in World Chineses (Lin et al., 2019) and sign languages in the Chinese context (Li et al., 2019). Yet there is comparatively little attention paid to variation within China. Just one chapter is devoted in general terms to Chinese sociolinguistics (Xu & Zhang, 2019), while Kurpaska’s overview of ‘Varieties of Chinese’ presents the familiar tension between the Western view of these varieties as a family of Sinitic languages and the traditional Chinese insistence on the unity of Chinese linguistic identity, heavily relying on extralinguistic factors (Kurpaska, 2019). The relatively scant coverage reflects the fact that there is, globally, still surprisingly little work on the extent of variation within Mandarin Chinese and the languages of China, though the contributions in Klöter and Söderblom Saarela (2020) are a welcome addition to the field. Welcome too is the variationist journal Asia-Pacific Language Variation (since 2015), which frequently features studies on Chinese languages. A recent special issue on Regional Chinese in Contact (ed. Walker, 2019) seeks to redress the problem that the ‘study of variation and change has generally focused on a small set of world languages’ and has ‘tended to focus on monolingual speakers’ (Walker, 2019: 1). With four papers on Cantonese and one on Chinese-Australian, however, that special issue also illustrates that while there is relatively strong interest in the sociolinguistics of heritage and other varieties of Chinese outside China, especially Cantonese (e.g. Ganassin, 2020; Huang, 2021; Lin et al., 2019), many other Chinese varieties and languages within China remain rather understudied. It is significant, therefore, that seven of the 16 contributions in this volume deal with languages and varieties spoken within the borders of China, including, besides Mandarin itself, Shanghainese, Sibe, Zhuang, Tibetan and Mongolian (the latter three also spoken beyond China’s borders). We have organized the chapters in this volume into four themes: Histories of standardization in multilingual contexts; Standardization and variation in multilingual China: implications for education, testing, policy and practice; Standardization and minoritized languages and Negotiating standards and variation: case studies from Japanese. For a part of the world where language standardization is often primarily viewed first with an eye to practical implications for contemporary policy and

6  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

practice in its linguistically complex societies, we are pleased that our first three chapters deal with Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts. Hasnain’s study presents the nexus between language ideologies, the linguistic activities that they legitimize, and the colonization of India. Hasnain examines how an epistemology that assumed languages exist as bounded entities was imposed on the linguistic diversity of India and helped to ‘legitimize the project of imperial domination’. This ‘project of colonial knowledge production’, although based on European principles of ‘essentialism, difference and hierarchy’, was, as Hasnain points out, not carried out merely by the colonizers (Hasnain, this volume: 36). Rather, the colonized themselves – or the literate among them – participated in both the linguistic classification work and the applied language work of translating and editing that was necessary to construct and sustain the bureaucracy of the colony. Hasnain’s study is thus, at the macro-level, a study of ‘how ideas travel’ (Oergel, 2019), as Western language ideologies were ultimately adopted by those on whom they were imposed. It is worth noting, of course, that the colonial enterprise also allowed linguistic knowledge to flow in the reverse direction: Pytlowany and Van Hal (2016) have pointed out the ‘pivotal’ role of the Dutch East India Company in the circulation in Europe of first-hand linguistic information on Asia. While Hasnain’s chapter deals with the macro-level of knowledge creation, transfer and systematization, Gianninoto’s historical study of an early Chinese grammar is an instance of that process in operation at the micro-level. Although China has an ancient philological tradition, the first grammars and dictionaries of Chinese were produced only from the 17th century onwards, with European learners in mind (see, e.g. Chappell & Peyraube, 2014; Klöter, 2010). They thus continue in China a long European grammatographical tradition, dating back at least as far as Latin learners of Greek (Law, 2003: 58), in which the needs of L2 learners provide the impetus for the first grammars of a language (McLelland, 2017: 94). The focus of Gianninoto’s study, J. Edkins’ Grammar of Colloquial Chinese: as Exhibited in the Shanghai Dialect ([1853] 1868), one of several works by Europeans to focus on a spoken Chinese vernacular, is a reminder of the long history of multilingualism within China. It is striking for the attention paid to how certain sounds differ both from Mandarin and from the English phoneme inventory of Edkins’ audience. In grammatical analysis, Edkins – like many predecessors dating back to the 18th century – productively combined both Western and Chinese knowledge frameworks, though he was unusual in drawing on the important treatize of Bì Huázhēn, a work rarely quoted in other contemporary Western sources. 5 Edkins combined familiar Western grammatical categories and divisions (such as the familiar tripartite structure of a European grammar into ‘sounds’, ‘parts of speech’ and ‘syntax’) with insights from Chinese philology such as the fundamental division between ‘full’ and ‘empty’ words.

Introduction 7

Gianninoto’s study of Edkins’s grammar contributes to a well-­ established body of scholarship of the history of describing Chinese varieties for European learners, often also in a missionary context (Klöter, 2010; Snow, 2020), but the history of presenting the Chinese language for the benefit of L2 learners within China itself remains almost entirely uncharted territory. This is a significant blind spot, as the monolingual ideology of present-day China (albeit in tension with lip-service, at least, to minority language rights)6 encourages not only the erasure of the multilingualism today, but also an invisibilizing (Langer & Havinga, 2015) of multilingualism and of minoritized languages in China’s past. Wu’s chapter is therefore a significant contribution to uncovering that hidden history, with an analysis of a rhyme dictionary written for Mongolian-speaking learners of Chinese, the 1917 Mongolian-Han Original Sounds of the Five Regions (Menghan Hebi Wufang Yuanyīn, 蒙漢合璧五方元音). Rhyme dictionaries – a tradition dating back to the medieval period – served as a guide to pronunciation; Branner (2006: 14) considers them ‘practical, prescriptive tools’, though individual compilers’ motivations were more or less prescriptive or scholarly. As Wu shows, the main challenge for the author, Khaisan, in adapting a much older rhyme dictionary to his Mongolian-speaking readership, was to indicate the pronunciation of Chinese by transliterating into the Mongolian alphabet, working around the fact that certain phonological distinctions in Chinese were not made in Mongolian. Wu finds evidence of possible influence from Manchurian transcriptions of Chinese (the author was a fluent speaker of Manchu) and further evidence of the multilingual influences on how languages are codified. Published at a time when the basis for a standard Chinese was still debated, Khaisan’s work also reflected the trend away from the Nanjingbased (southern Mandarin) norm to a more eclectic pronunciation, chiefly based on northern Mandarin with vernacular Beijing Mandarin features as well as features from southern Mandarin. Our second section contains four case studies from China and Chinese: Standardization and Variation in Multilingual China: Implications for Education, Testing, Policy and Practice. Feng, whose expertise lies especially in trilingual education in China (i.e. education in Mandarin, English and a local variety), tackles head-on the ideological tension between multilingualism and assimilation. Feng advocates a resolution of that tension by recognizing the pluricentric nature not just of Chinese, but just as much of English and local varieties in China, thus providing a way to put all these on an equal footing within a framework of trilingual education. Both Feng and, later in this section, Wang tackle how to conceptualize the relationship of other varieties of Chinese with Mandarin. Feng draws on the hierarchical model of Li (2017) which presents a continuum (and a hierarchy) from a Dahuayu or ‘greater Chinese’ (defined as ‘the common language of all ethnic Chinese on the globe’), to the national variety: Putonghua in China, Guoyu in Taiwan and ‘other

8  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

Chinese concentrated areas in Europe and North America’ (Feng, this volume: 90). Under these sit local varieties of Putonghua, then topolects, dialects and the most local dialects. Li’s Dahuayu model is reminiscent of models that have a long pedigree in European linguistics and which capture the notion of a continuum from standard to dialect, via a varying number of (more or less distinct) intermediary steps (see Löffler, 2005 for an overview and problematization with reference to German). There are, however, two notable differences in this model. First, the pluricentric model (developed within German sociolinguistics by Clyne, 1984; see also Clyne, 1992) assumes that each nation has its own standard variety. Such a model is fundamentally at odds with a hierarchical model in which a single shared standard is an ‘umbrella’ language (or Dachsprache, lit. roofing language, overarching language). Yet Li’s approach in effect combines the two. Dollinger (2019: 40) has suggested that to posit such a model for English would be considered unacceptably ‘colonial’. For while such a model acknowledges areal variation, it is monocentric in assuming a single standard that is in effect set for all by one dominant nation. Second, Li’s model allows for topolects (fangyan) that are not genetically related to the overarching standard to sit below it. That too seems ‘colonial’ or imperialist to someone trained in a different t­ radition.7 It is worth noting too the parallels between Li’s model of Chinese and a rather different but no less hierarchizing model, Kachru’s three-circle model of English, which is, like Chinese, a ‘central’ language in the ‘global language system’ (Kachru, 1986; De Swaan, 2001). Kachru’s model has been critiqued and reconceptualized by Park and Wee (2009) to reveal the ideological assumptions that underpin the ‘prevailing structure of the global linguistic market’ (Park & Wee, 2009: 403) and the value in it of named varieties such as ‘Indian English’ or, indeed, in the Chinese language context, Malaysian Chinese. While there is no space here to pursue these differing approaches further, such reflections illustrate the value of comparing and contrasting European models and conceptualizations with those of other major language paradigms that may operate within different ideological frameworks. Even if Li’s Dahuayu model provides, as Kachru’s model has done for English, conceptual space to talk about variation within written and spoken Chinese, there are ideological difficulties in imposing the notion of Dahuayu, which explicitly privileges China’s standard, on communities outside China such as Chinese Malaysians, whose own separate history goes back several hundred years. Wang instead builds on previous work that has argued for the recognition of a standard Malaysian Mandarin alongside Putonghua (Khoo, 2017); Wang tackles the task of identifying what can be incorporated into a Malaysian standard of Chinese, arguing that ‘All in all, as long as a grammatical structure is accepted in written language extensively, it should be regarded as a standard form and accepted in school textbooks’ (Wang, this volume: 155).

Introduction 9

Luo’s chapter is a pioneering case study of the real-life consequences of a strong standard language ideology and strictly codified standard in language testing. China arguably has a testing regime for its standard language that is unparalleled elsewhere in the world. Not only is there a language test for foreign learners, the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) or the test of Chinese proficiency for foreign learners, which can be used as a gatekeeping test for access to study and work opportunities in China (comparable to the International English Language Testing System [IELTS] and other such language testing regimes); there is also the Minzu Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (MHK) or the test of Chinese proficiency for minorities in China, some of whom also learn Chinese as a second language, and for whom the test has a similar crucial gatekeeping role. There is, since 1994, furthermore, a spoken Mandarin proficiency test for native speakers (Putonghua Shuiping Ceshi [PSC]) to promote standard pronunciation, which serves as a further gatekeeper to certain professions (teaching, broadcasting, etc.). These tests are important tools in LPP, as Luo emphasizes. Within this highly regimented testing regime, the notion of a Dahuayu, which recognizes and legitimizes variation within Chinese, is a challenge, as Luo notes, and a potential disruptor. Against this background, Luo investigates both the extent of non-standard language in HSK and MHK written tests, and the responses of the test markers, as actors within that LPP regime, to such non-standard variants. Luo finds, first, that there is a gap between state pronouncements and practitioners’ decisions. Second, there is a gap between practitioners’ beliefs and their own practice. Third, Luo draws attention to the (not unexpected) gap between current legislation and the more variation-tolerant work of recent academic interventions in the field. Finally in this section, Zhao continues the real-world examination of the standard language in action, with her study of how ‘non-standard’ features of Beijing Mandarin are used, perceived and assigned social meaning. Used as the basis of Putonghua, Beijing Mandarin therefore shares many similarities with the standard variety while having local features prescriptively deemed ‘non-standard’ in Putonghua. Zhao investigates the use of three ‘non-standard’ features to understand how social meanings such as ‘localness’ and ‘casualness’ are established in perception and how prescriptive language standards (or the lack thereof) affect the social attributes associated with speakers in social interactions. Zhao finds that the presence of ‘non-standard’ Beijing features are, as we might expect from variationist studies in other language contexts, associated with localness and casualness. More unexpectedly, however, local ‘nonstandard’ usage is not perceived as different from standard usage in terms of status, solidarity, or occupation suitability – aspects where sociolinguistic judgements can often bring real-life consequences (e.g. linguistic discrimination); the only exception is an overt violation of standard language grammar (classifier omission). Zhao suggests that Beijing Mandarin

10  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

enjoys similar prestige to the standard variety, as well as being used to signal local affiliation. In our third section, Standardization and Minoritized Languages in Multilingual Contexts, six Asian cases studies contribute to a growing body of work on standardizing minority languages, complementing Lane et al. (2017), from which Asian case studies are absent. The six chapters explore and, in some cases, advocate for how the tools of language standardization, and associated language ideologies, may have an impact on minoritized languages. Often explicitly attempting to confer legitimacy and status on them by making them resemble more powerful, majority languages in a multilingual context, standardization efforts can be risky, for example, coming at the expense of the diversity inherent within the minoritized varieties (Costa et al., 2017: 1). Grey opens the section with her study of Zhuang, a ‘cautionary tale of the limits of standardization to future-proof a minoritized language’ (Grey, this volume: 164). Zhuang is the language of a people in Southern China, the largest among the 55 official minorities recognized by China. It was one of many newly-recognized languages standardized in the 1950s. However, Grey argues that Zhuang standardization created ‘an icon rather than a lingua franca’, for Zhuang is not valued in the linguistic market. In that market, if language competence in any language in addition to Mandarin is valued, priority is given to English, with its gatekeeping role in education and in employment opportunities. Furthermore, because Zhuang is now written in the Roman alphabetic script used both for standard Mandarin (Putonghua pinyin) and for English (as the traditional writing system was rejected in the 1950s), even its iconic use in the public linguistic landscape (for example, in street signage) can be easily mistaken for pinyin or English. Even the minimal, emblematic function of Zhuang is, then, ironically weakened by a decision ostensibly intended to bolster its linguistic capital. In the spirit of Phipps’ manifesto for Decolonising Multilingualism (2019), it is worth noting that the next three chapters examining minoritized contexts are authored by scholars from within the linguistic communities themselves. Ying Sargin presents the case of Sibe, a language with nearly 30,000 active speakers settled in Xinjiang and which is, on purely linguistic grounds, generally recognized as a variety of Manchu. Ying Sargin examines the ways in which many speakers of Sibe strive to establish its separateness and its status as a language in its own right. It is evident that Sibe is a further demonstration, from within the Chinese multilingual context that is less familiar to Western scholarship, of the common observation that how languages are delineated is as much determined by political and other ideological (national and group) loyalties as by linguistic criteria. The next two chapters deal with Tibetan. Rigdrol Jikar examines the work to establish, promote and maintain the standard of Tibetan ‘in the context of the domination of Han Chinese culture and language’, including considerable activity to develop and promote

Introduction 11

replacement terms for Chinese loanwords. Striking here is the role of linguistic purism as an element of corpus planning and its potential either to strengthen or endanger language revitalization efforts, depending in part on acceptance. Again, the presence of English in the linguistic space is notable, seemingly bolstering Tibetan by association in two ChineseTibetan-English dictionaries of new vocabulary. Samdrup and Suzuki also deal with Tibetan, focussing in part on humilific expressions, an aspect of sociolinguistics that has received little attention in language standardization and variation to date. They suggest that the trend – driven by both bottom-up and top-down initiatives – towards a norm based on a more literary variety of Amdo Tibetan is marginalizing the use of certain kinds of humilifics, because they have the potential to be misinterpreted as derogatory by those who do not use them. Saltzmann draws on recent work on language ideologies, language revitalization and language policies in South Korea to examine the case of Jejueo, a minoritized language indigenous to Jeju Island in South Korea. While only about 10% mutually intelligible with Korean, Jejueo has typically been viewed as a dialect. A recent reframing of Jejueo by UNESCO as an ‘endangered language’ (Moseley, 2010) provides impetus and legitimization for language revitalization efforts and language activism, but such efforts still take place against an ideology of linguistic homogeneity in South Korea. Yet again, too, English is a complicating factor, competing with the minoritized language for space both in school curricula and in individuals’ decisions about their linguistic repertoires (cf. also Hanks, 2017). The final chapter in this third section deals with a self-reported success story, as Premsrirat presents the case for community-based bottomup standardization to revitalize Patani Malay, a language spoken in southern Thailand, especially to improve literacy education in schools. Premsrirat emphasizes the need not merely for language documentation to support revitalization, but for a standardized written language as a mark of prestige for the community of speakers to accept it. Just as the traditional writing system of Zhuang was replaced with a Romanized alphabet, in line with the use of pinyin for Mandarin Chinese, so in the case of Patani Malay, educators and community leaders chose a Thai script that closely matched contemporary pronunciation over a traditional (Arabic-based) script for use in early grade literacy classes. Premsrirat is optimistic, but it remains to be seen whether, in contrast to the cautionary tale of Zhuang discussed by Grey in the first chapter of this section, the revitalization of Patani Malay through standardization of the Thai-based script will succeed in the long term. Our final section is Negotiating Standards and Variation: Case Studies From Japanese. While the dissemination and acceptance of standard Mandarin (Putonghua) is still underway in China, where it is still promoted by an annual Speak Putonghua week (Luqiu, 2018: 669),

12  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

Japanese is an instructive case study of what happens once standardization has ‘succeeded’ at the expense of locally-rooted varieties. By some accounts at least, Japanese standardization is very advanced, and there is a high degree of homogeneity (Heinrich, 2012). How variation within uniformity is negotiated by speakers of Japanese to convey desired social meanings and to construct social identities is the subject of the three studies in this section. Heinrich describes what he calls ‘dialect cosplay’ (hōgen kosupure; see Tanaka, 2011) in Japan. Heinrich suggests that the adoption of s­ tandard language by speakers was initially akin to ‘passing’ (Renfrow, 2004); speakers seek to ‘pass’ as standard language speakers, by ‘linguistic selfmonitoring and self-censure and correction in order to produce standard language’ (Heinrich, this volume: 286). However, Heinrich suggests, with the standard widely accepted and used, most young speakers no longer need to work to ‘pass’ as standard language users. Freed of that linguistic insecurity, they seek new ways to construct their social personæ in different contexts. While in other countries, migrant languages are often the source of linguistic creativity, in Japan – which has only small migrant population – linguistic transgressions draw not on migrant languages but instead use tokens from regional dialects to index roles (‘costumes’) and values of ‘warmness’, ‘cuteness’, ‘coolness’, etc. Heinrich’s case study is an example of third-wave sociolinguistics (Eckert, 2012) in action: understanding language variation now has less to do with identifying particular varieties associated with specific speaker groups and domains, than with the repertoires of individual speakers adopted in particular contexts. Abe’s work on queer speakers in Japan similarly makes clear some of the limits of earlier approaches to sociolinguistics, including the assumptions behind using binary categories such as gender based on studies on cis-gender speakers (Calder, 2020; Hall et al., 2021). Abe argues that ‘standard-ness’ is a construct that, crucially, marginalizes non-hetero individuals. This is particularly the case for a language such as Japanese. Speaker gender is encoded in grammatical and lexical forms of the language, but flexibly and performatively so – that is, speakers may make choices (consciously or otherwise) in specific contexts (Hiramoto, 2021). Abe explores how the equation of standardness with heteronormativity may be negotiated flexibly by Japanese transgender speakers in their use or avoidance of particular features, in different ways in different contexts. Abe shows that these speakers and their linguistic representation of their ‘womanhood’ do not merely mirror the idealized ‘standard’ women’s speech but rather challenge and rework heteronormative linguistic practice to index their own transgender identity (Cashman, 2018; Gray, 2018; Konnelly, 2021). In the final chapter in our collection, Hiramoto examines diversity within the Japanese migrant population in Hawai‘i, specifically between two waves of migration, and reactions to that diversity. Just as multilingual settings result in language hierarchies, so here we find hierarchization

Introduction 13

within the dialects of Japanese in Hawai‘i. As an earlier wave of migrants stigmatized Tôhoku dialect features of the ‘latecomers’, those speakers sought, sometimes consciously, to avoid the stigmatized phonological features, but with only partial success. Nevertheless, the result is, Hiramoto, finds, a significant degree of dialect change and mixing of features among Tôhoku dialect speakers, which ultimately halted with the onset of the war. This change may be evidence of progress towards a Japanese koine in Hawai‘i. It is, incidentally, a further instance of diversity within migrant populations that are often assumed by the majority population to be linguistically homogeneous (see Harrison, 2019; McLelland, 2021a for discussion). The chapters in this collection use a diverse range of theoretical frameworks, methods and data to examine the multilingual sociolinguistics of variation and standardization in Asia. They offer examples of both majority and minoritized language standardizations, of apparent standardization successes and failures, as well as of cases where the ultimate outcome still remains to be seen, and where the implications for individual identity, and for institutional policy and practice are still being worked through. Importantly, they also show how variation persists in tension with even the most standardized language settings, and how that variation is negotiated and re-negotiated, both by individuals in their linguistic repertoires, and by the self-appointed authorities that codify, legitimize, or stigmatize language varieties. We trust that readers will appreciate, as we have in preparing this volume, both the contribution of these new Asian case studies to the field, and the range of perspectives and the ways in which they expand our understanding of the sociolinguistics of standardization, variation and their points of intersection, in Asia and beyond. Notes (1) This volume is the result of a conference at the University of Nottingham Ningbo in December 2017, ‘Language Standardization and Linguistic Variation in Asia’, as part of a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant number AH/ N004671/1], Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies. We gratefully acknowledge additional funding from the University of Nottingham Ningbo. (2) This presumption of monolingual nation states was not restricted to Europe, but also carried weight in Asia: ‘attempts to build a monolingual nation was the overriding policy in the Southeast Asian region even though the inhabitants in all the countries spoke a variety of languages’ (Guan & Suryadinata, 2007: 1). De Swaan (2001: 176) already noted that sociolinguists had had a tendency to ‘overlook […] that all these languages are connected to one another, linked by multilingual persons who hold the various groups together’. (3) Not all grammar- and dictionary-making is by definition part of language standardization; those genres can have their own discourse tradition that is not identical with that of a standard language ideology, though typically at some point the two cross paths and, often, merge. See McLelland (2021b: 272–274) for discussion. (4) We adopt the notion of ‘how ideas travel’ from Oergel’s (2019) study of the spread of the notion of Zeitgeist.

14  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

(5) On the interactions between Western and Chinese linguistic traditions, see now also McDonald (2021). (6) Luqiu (2018: 671) points out that while ‘many proposals and suggestions for protecting dialects are submitted each year during the National People’s Congress in China; however, as of 2016 and 2017, no bill has been submitted by legislators’. The position remains unchanged today. Note that the term ‘dialects’ – here rendering the Chinese term fangyan – also covers varieties that are not mutually intelligible with Mandarin. See also Feng’s account of the tension between recognition of the languages of ethnic minorities and the promotion of a standard Chinese (Feng, this volume). (7) The complex co-existence of fangyan and standard Mandarin has a long history, in China and Chinese nationalism; see Tam (2020).

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Introduction 15

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Huang, J. (2021) A shifting standard: A stratified ideological ecology in a Birmingham Chinese complementary school. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 42 (2), 165–177. Kachru, B. (1986) The Alchemy of English: The Spread, Functions and Models of Nonnative Englishes. Oxford: Pergamon. Khoo, K.U. (2017) Malaysian Mandarin variation with regard to Mandarin globalization trend: Issues on language standardization. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 244, 65–86. Klöter, H. (2010) The Language of the Sangleys: A Chinese Vernacular in Missionary Sources of the Seventeenth Century. Leiden, Boston: Brill. Klöter, H. (2017) ‘What is correct Chinese?’ Revisited. In I. Tieken-Boon van Ostade and C. Percy (eds) Prescription and Tradition in Language: Establishing Standards across Time and Space (pp. 57–70). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Klöter, H. and Söderblom Saarela, M. (2020) Language Diversity in the Sinophone World. Historical Trajectories, Language Planning, and Multilingual Practices. London: Routledge. Konnelly, L. (2021) Nuance and normativity in trans linguistic research. Journal of Language and Sexuality 10 (1), 71–82. Kubota, R. (2019) English in Japan. In P. Heinrich and Y. Ohara (eds) Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics (pp. 110–126). London: Routledge. Kurpaska, M. (2019) Varieties of Chinese: Dialects or Sinitic languages? In C.-R. Huang, Z. Jing-Schmidt and B. Meisterernst (eds) Routledge Handbook of Chinese Applied Linguistics (pp. 182–195). London: Routledge. Lane, P., Costa, J. and De Korne, H. (2017) Standardising Minority Languages. Competing Ideologies of Authority and Authenticity in the Global Periphery. London: Taylor & Francis. Open access at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/ books/9781138125124 (accessed July 2021). Langer, N. and Havinga, A. (eds) (2015) Invisible Languages in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Peter Lang. Law, V. (2003) The History of Linguistics in Europe from Plato to 1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Li, Y. (2010) 中国语言规划论 [Theories on Language Planning in China]. Beijing: Commercial Press. Li, Y. (2017) 大华语：全球华人的共同语 [The Greater Chinese: Lingua franca of the global Chinese]. Applied Linguistics 1, 2–13. Li, J., He, J. and Tang, G. (2019) Investigating sign languages in the Chinese context. In C.-R. Huang, Z. Jing-Schmidt and B. Meisterernst (eds) Routledge Handbook of Chinese Applied Linguistics (pp. 748–772). London: Routledge. Liang, S. (2015) Language Attitudes and Identities in Multilingual China. A Linguistic Ethnography. A Critical Introduction of Chinese Language Policy and Language Education to an International Audience. London: Springer. Lin, J., Shi, D., Jiang, M. and Huang, C.-R. (2019) Variations in world Chineses. In C.-R. Huang, Z. Jing-Schmidt and B. Meisterernst (eds) Routledge Handbook of Chinese Applied Linguistics (pp. 1–18). London: Routledge. Linn, A.R. and McLelland, N. (eds) (2002) Standardization. Studies from the Germanic Languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Löffler, H. (2005) Wieviel variation verträgt die deutsche Standardsprache? Begriffsklärung: Standard und Gegenbegriffe. In L.M. Eichinger and W. Kallmeyer (eds) Standardvariation. Wie viel Variation verträgt die deutsche Sprache? (pp. 7–27). Berlin: de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110193985 Luqiu, L.R. (2018) Counter-hegemony: Grassroots use of the Internet to save dialects in China. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 39 (8), 663–374.

Introduction 17

Maher, J.C. (2019) Metroethnicity: From standardized identities to language aesthetics. In P. Heinrich and Y. Ohara (eds) Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics (pp. 129–142). London: Routledge. Majeed, J. (2018a) Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. New Delhi: Routledge. Majeed, J. (2018b) Nation and Region in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. New Delhi: Routledge India. Makihara, M. and Schieffelin, B.B. (2007) Consequences of Contact: Language Ideologies and Sociocultural Transformations in Pacific Societies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Matsumoto, K. (2019) Language variation and change. In P. Heinrich and Y. Ohara (eds) Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics (pp. 199–217). London: Routledge. McDonald, E. (2021) Grammar West to East. The Investigation of Linguistic Meaning in European and Chinese Traditions. Singapore: Springer. McLelland, N. (2017) Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages: A History of Language Education, Assessment and Policy in Britain. London: Routledge. McLelland, N. (2021a) Language standards, standardization and standard ideologies in multilingual contexts. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 42.2, 109–124. McLelland, N. (2021b) Grammars, dictionaries and other metalinguistic texts in the ­context of language standardization. In W. Ayres-Bennett and J. Bellamy (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Language Standardization (pp. 263–293) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moseley, C. (2010) UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (3rd edn). Paris: UNESCO Publishing. See www.unesco.org/languagesatlas/index.php. Oergel, M. (2019) Zeitgeist - How Ideas Travel. Politics, Culture and the Public in the Age of Revolution. Berlin: de Gruyter. Olson, K.S. (2009) SIL International: An emic view. Language 85, 646–652. Otsuji, E. (2019) Metrolingualism in transitional Japan. In P. Heinrich and Y. Ohara (eds) Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics (pp. 143–157). London: Routledge. Park, J.S.Y. and Wee, L. (2009) The three circles redux: A market–theoretic perspective on world Englishes. Applied Linguistics 30 (3), 389–406. Percy, C.E. and Davidson, M.C. (eds) (2012) The Languages of Nation: Attitudes and Norms. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Phipps, A. (2019) Decolonising Multilingualism: Struggles to Decreate. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Pytlowany, A. and Van Hal, T. (2016) Merchants, scholars and languages: the circulation of linguistic knowledge in the context of the Dutch United East India Company (VOC). Histoire Épistémologie Langage 38 (1), 19–37. Rahman, T. (2011) From Hindi to Urdu: Social and Political History. Karachi: Oxford University Press. Renfrow, D.G. (2004) A cartography of passing in everyday life. Symbolic Interaction 27 (4), 485–506. Roche, G. (2019) Articulating language oppression: Colonialism, coloniality and the erasure of Tibet’s minority languages. Patterns of Prejudice 53 (5), 487–514. Roche, G. and Suzuki, H. (2018) Tibet’s minority languages: Diversity and endangerment. Modern Asian Studies 52 (4), 1227–1278. Shoji, H. (2019) Japan as a multilingual society. In P. Heinrich and Y. Ohara (eds) Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics (pp. 184–195). London: Routledge. Smakman, D. and Barasa, S.N. (2017) Defining ‘standard’: Towards a cross-cultural definition of the language norm. In I. Tieken-Boon van Ostade and C. Percy (eds) Prescription and Tradition in Language: Establishing Standards across Time and Space (pp. 23–38). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

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Snow, D. (2020) Romanizing southern Mǐn: Missionaries and the promotion of written Chinese vernaculars. In H. Klöter and M. Söderblom Saarela (eds) Language Diversity in the Sinophone World. Historical Trajectories, Language Planning, and Multilingual Practices (pp. 60–79). London: Routledge. Tam, G.A. (2020) Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tanaka, Y. (2011) 方言コスプレの時代 [The Age of Dialect Cosplay]. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten. Thomas, M. (2008) Gender and the language of scholarship of the Summer Institute of Linguistics in the context of mid twentieth-century American linguistics. In G. Hassler and G. Volkmann (eds) History of Linguistics 2008: Selected Papers from the Eleventh International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS XI), 28 August – 2 September 2008, Potsdam (pp. 389–397). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Tieken-Boon van Ostade, I. and Percy, C. (eds) (2017) Prescription and Tradition in Language: Establishing Standards across Time and Space. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Vogl, U. (2018) Standard language ideology and multilingualism: Results from a survey among European students. European Journal of Applied Linguistics 6 (2), 185–208. Walker, J.A. (ed.) (2019) Regional Chinese in Contact (Special issue of) Asian-Pacific Language Variation 5 (1). Xu, D. and Zhang, J. (2019) Chinese sociolinguistics. In C.-R. Huang, Z. Jing-Schmidt and B. Meisterernst (eds) Routledge Handbook of Chinese Applied Linguistics (pp. 691–708). London: Routledge. Yao, Y. (2006) 中国语言规划研究. [Language Planning Research in China]. Beijing: Commercial Press. Zhou, M. (2003) Multilingualism in China: The Politics of Writing Reforms for Minority Languages, 1949-2002. Berlin: de Gruyter. Zhou, M. (2021) Standardization of minority languages. Nation-state building and globalization. In W. Ayres-Bennett and J. Bellamy (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Language Standardization (pp. 170–197). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1 Language Codification: Coloniality, Society and History S. Imtiaz Hasnain

Introduction

‘The number of indigenous languages in the German colonies is immense. They are not known in their entirety yet, although missionaries, civil servants and scholars diligently contribute to their investigation’.1 This observation not only allows us to understand the relation of language and colonialism but also informs us how, despite the involvement of missionaries and several other professional groups in the exploration of the languages in the dominion or colony (what Stolz & Warnke, 2015, referred to as Schutzgebiete ‘protectorates’), the ‘knowledge about the linguistic diversity of Germany’s colonial empire’ (Stolz & Warnke, 2015: 4) still remained incomplete. Similarly, the new European masters of South Asia failed to comprehend the linguistic and cultural diversity of their newly colonized South Asian subjects. South Asian multilingual society bewildered their imagination. 2 The complexities of language represented ‘a land of Babel brought to perpetual chaos by the sheer perversity of its natives’ (Washbrook, 1991: 187). It required a taming of the wilderness, which was effectively realized through the drive towards classification. Since the indigenous conceptual framework surrounding language was far removed from that of the 19th-century Europeans, colonization of language occupied the centre stage. This chapter traces the role of language – especially language codification and classification – in the process of the colonization of India. In the first section, ‘Coloniality and Language’, I briefly show the interconnections between language and the process of colonialism. Language was used as a tool of empire-building by the colonizers, who perpetuated hierarchies and classifications using linguistic schematization. The second section, ‘British Colonial engagement, Scientific Philology and the Classification of Indian languages’, provides a historical perspective on

21

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the British colonial presence in India, highlighting the conditions under which the colonial engagement with Indian languages began and their insistence on the use of philology, providing the method for establishing the doctrine of monotheism and homogenizing the natives’3 sociocultural and linguistic diversity in line with a particular ideology of what a language should be like. Plurality and multiplicity, whether of language or of cultural traditions, seemed chaotic and irrational to the colonizers. Thus, they not only lacked Asian sensibility to language, but at times were also insensitive to the nuances of India’s diversity. The final section looks into the linguistic conundrum and the lack of sensitivity of the colonials in their understanding of the newly colonized society and situates language standardization in history. The Conclusion section focuses on the problematics and consequences of the classification and translation of indigenous knowledge systems into English, in ways that removed the finer distinctions and subtle nuances of the native tongue altogether. A larger aim of this exercise was, I argue, to appropriate the multiplicity of the local populations’ worldviews and belief systems and subsume it within a colonial metanarrative. Coloniality and Language

Meinhof (1920) sets the tone for looking into the dynamics of coloniality and language. The colonial narrative finds its expression in the myth surrounding the Tower of the Babel, which represents the West’s confrontation with linguistic diversity and, thus, serves as a ‘foundational text of post-Enlightenment European culture’ (Bhatti, 2015: 4). In the Tower of the Babel’s ‘confusion of tongues’, a language ideology is expressed which perpetuates ‘the modernities’ glorification of homogeneity and uniformity […] and [positions] monosemy in opposition to polysemy and homogeneity in opposition to heterogeneity’ (Kulkarni-Joshi & Hasnain, 2020). Colonial language ideology glorified the unity of languages as good and normal while abhorring linguistic multiplicity as hellish and abnormal and thus looked at the non-completion of the Tower of the Babel as ‘God’s curse on the nations of human kind for their sin of pride’ (Errington, 2008: vii). Colonization of language already had its roots in the late 15th century, with the expansion of the Spanish and the Portuguese colonial empires. In a colonial language situation, much work on colonial linguistics has already shown the contribution of missionaries in the field of descriptive linguistics, illustrated through the production of dictionaries, grammars and lexicons. According to Stolz and Warnke (2015: 6), ‘during the First European Imperialism (late 15th to early 19th [centuries]) missionaries were the driving force behind the vast majority of the descriptive linguistics projects conducted throughout the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empire – and also beyond the boundaries of these’. Nebrija’s grammar of Castillian (1492), which he recommended to Queen Isabel

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with the infamous observation that ‘[l]anguage was always the companion of empire […] language and empire began, increased and flourished together’ (Trend, 1994, cited in Errington, 2008: 18), marks the beginning of histories of colonialism and linguistics. Inspired by the science of philology and nationalist movement, the colonial rulers succeeded in pushing ‘the authority of the Queen Empress into every village corner and [bringing] the word of the Gospels to the proverbially poor and benighted heathen’ (Washbrook, 1991: 189). British Colonial Engagement, Scientific Philology and the Classification of Indian Languages

The East India Company became a territorial power after the military victory of Robert Clive at Plassey in 1757 over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies. It was a defining victory for the Company and finally led to its emergence as ‘a state in the guise of a merchant’ (Burke, cited in Dalrymple, 2019: 3), marked by a transformation ‘from an almost exclusively commercial organisation into a colonial power that ultimately brought about change’ (Steadman-Jones, 2007: 29). One such important change was learning Indian languages, and a substantial revenue from Bengal was appropriated to provide avenues for teaching vernaculars to British civilians and military officials. This was the spirit of Act 29 of 1837, which prescribed provincial-level governance through vernacular languages. In 1880, the Fort William College was established in Calcutta by the Governor-General, Marquis Wellesley, to train a civil service elite recruited by the Company ‘with a general linguistic and cultural background of the India they were called upon to administer’ (Kopf, 1961: 297).4 The British colonial engagement with Indian languages began with this Fort William College and, later, the College of the Fort of St. George in Madras. As Cohn (1996: 20) puts it, ‘The British success at Plassey and the subsequent appropriation of the revenues of Bengal were to provide the impetus for more and more British civilians and military officers to learn one or more of the Indian languages’. The late 18th and early 19th centuries, thus, saw ‘a considerable increase in the attention paid to Indian languages by the British in South Asia’ (Steadman-Jones, 2007: 3). The Company had understood that for the sustenance and further consolidation of their authority over the new territory, servants of the Company had to engage with Indian polity, for which knowledge of Indian languages was essential. William Carey was appointed to teach Bengali and Sanskrit at the Fort William College in 1801. Besides conducting a course on History and Antiquities of Hindustan and the Deccan plateau with support from the Royal Asiatic Society, the College also engaged in the study of modern Bengali history. Engagement with modern Bengali history had a far-reaching effect on writing, particularly in the context of the existing ‘chaotic state of Bengali

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writing’, which was aptly captured by James Marshman, Carey’s Serampore colleague, in the following report: If they [the civil servants] can write at all, each character, to say ­nothing of orthography, is made in so irregular and indistinct a manner, that comparatively few of them can scarcely wade through that which has been written by themselves after any lapse of time. If they have learned to read, they can seldom read five words together, without stopping to make out the syllable […] even when the writing is legible. (Friend of India article referred to in Calcutta Review, Vol. XIII, 1850: 132, cited by Kopf, 1961: 298)

What became clear from this engagement with Bengali history was the recognition that no vernacular language could be taught ‘unless there was one codified sufficiently to be called a language’, and one cannot teach a language ‘unless there were textbooks, grammars and dictionaries’ (Kopf, 1961: 298). This engagement opened up an opportunity to develop an understanding of ‘a language’ and, by default, the notion of ‘standard’ or codification. The activities of the Fort William College were not just devoted to teaching Indian linguistic studies or building up of vernacular tongues, unearthing the history and antiquity of India, but also to teaching Greek, Latin, English classics, political economy, history and philosophy. The College thus unwittingly promoted the Bengal renaissance during the 19th century. Besides contributing significantly during the formative period in the history of Bengal renaissance, the work done at the College in the early 19th century, particularly under the guidance of John Gilchrist, also impacted the development of Hindi, Urdu and Hindustani. Gilchrist, whose fame as an acknowledged expert on ‘Hindustani’5 had already preceded his becoming the first professor of ‘Hindustani’ at the Fort William College in 1800, was reputed ‘the second-best scholar among the English teachers of the College […] next to Carey [and] second to none at the College’ (Kopf, 1961: 300–301). As an ‘Assistant Surgeon on the Bengali Establishment’, as he described himself, Gilchrist accumulated immense experience of difficulties of communication on account of lack of knowledge of the multilingual colonized groups, which often even verged on miscommunication. Overcoming the failure of communication was of the utmost priority. Gilchrist’s decision to study ‘Hindoostanee’ not only ‘transformed him from a lowly surgeon […] into a well-known orientalist scholar [but also] resulted in the institutionalisation of “Hindustani” as an important administrative language within the colonial state’ (Steadman-Jones, 2007: 2). The Company understood the importance of learning Indian vernaculars for practical communication, but also the importance of the classical languages of the east, Persian and Sanskrit, the language of dharma for their Hindu subjects, for political considerations and pragmatics of

Language Codification: Coloniality, Society and History  25

governance. The categories of ‘Classical’ and ‘Vernacular’ languages and knowledge of Latin and Greek as classical tongues were already part of the consciousness of the servants of the Company, and Persian and Sanskrit were taken up instantly. Among the modern Indian vernaculars, Bengali had a regional advantage, as the British colonial power was first established in Bengal.6 As a widely spoken language in the areas of northern India as a lingua franca in the Indian army, Hindustani gained acceptability, and John Gilchrist’s The Oriental Linguist (1798) assumed a significant position in the history of Hindustani scholarship. Underlying the political and administrative considerations that motivated early colonial language study and strongly advocated by two prominent British champions of the use of modern Indian vernaculars – Gilchrist for Hindustani, and Halhed for Bengali7 – were dynamics of the relationship between power and knowledge. Political forces were not the only motivations behind colonial language learning. In his theorization of Foucault’s conception of power and knowledge, Cohn argues that colonial engagement with Indian languages also facilitated the invasion of ‘an epistemological space’ in which the native speakers of those languages also became willing accomplices (Steadman-Jones, 2007: 28) and active agents in the production of a large number of texts – grammars, dictionaries, treatises, translations produced in conformity with expectations of western linguistic scholarship (Steadman-Jones, 2007: 32). They also allowed their Asian reality to be shaped and mastered by the colonizers, as western understandings of languages were translated into the Indian context: languages were assumed to be bounded entities, as separable from each other, susceptible to classification as ‘Classical’, ‘Vernacular’, ‘Polite’, ‘Jargonic’ and sufficiently potent to evolve as a marker of nationality (SteadmanJones, 2007: 25). While the western understanding of language constituted a means for reshaping the Asian reality, it also got in the way of effective engagement with the languages in the South Asian linguistic context. For example, binary classification as ‘Classical’ and ‘Vernacular’ valorized the classical Persian and Sanskrit at the expense of modern vernaculars. Meanwhile, the equanimity of the relationship between master-servant was disturbed: Many of the gentlemen who embarked on the grand tour would have been accompanied by servants who were native speakers of English and who would, to some extent, have provided insulation against contact with native speakers. The colonial agent, in contrast, would have employed servants who were themselves native speakers of Indian languages, and so the master-servant relationship was itself a space in which exchanges with the ‘natives’ were transacted. (Steadman-Jones, 2007: 25)

The texts that came with the textualization of Indian reality also had an influence when native speakers seized the agency, coming out of the

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prisons of the western norms of writing grammars of modern Indian vernaculars. Many native scholars, perceiving the norms of western linguistic scholarship, dedicated to capturing the unity of ‘languages’, proceeded to write their own grammars to bring ‘order’ to their linguistic varieties and classify them as ‘languages’.8 Dadoba Pandurang’s (1836/1850) justification for writing his Marathi grammar Maharashtra Bhasheche Vyakaran not only illuminates specific shifts in local experience, a practice and perception, but also suggests natives’ engagement in the critical examination of the practices of the colonial state: The main purpose (of writing this grammar) is to regulate, as far as possible, Marathi Language, which is very much cluttered because nobody ever tried to regulate her till date, and which is matted with lots of tangles, since nobody did a coiffure for her with a comb of grammar and bring her in a state of resolution by untangling some layers of tangles that were entangled for a long time. (Translated by Damle, 2012, cited in Pandey, 2016: 163)

Motivated by the faith in the doctrine of monotheism and the original unity of human races, the European enterprise proceeded with establishing the unity of relatedness between far flung, ethnically and linguistically disparate population groups. In this enterprise, philology provided both impetus and method for establishing the underlying unity. The science of philology initially had an apolitical orientation, carrying out legitimized academic agendas that ‘seem quite detached from Europe’s colonial projects’ (Errington, 2008: 83). The works of these philologists, particularly Friedrich von Schlegel (1772–1829) and Franz Bopp (1791–1867), placed greater emphasis on the grammatical elements of languages for developing ‘a more abstract notion of linguistic form, isolating part-for-whole relations between roots and grammatical elements as the core of the true organism of a language’ (Errington, 2008: 78). In the Indian context, William Jones (1746–1794), the English philologist and a judge in British Bengal, who observed the similarity between Sanskrit and the European classical languages, anticipated the beginning of historical and comparative linguistics, their classification and construction of language families. This seemingly innocuous exercise of classification became instrumental for the colonial agendas. Philology gave ideological and intellectual support to the colonialists in creating print-literate forms of colonial languages. The linguists living in the larger colonial world appropriated their philological images of the past and techniques ‘in order to devise strategies of descriptive selection and simplification’ (Errington, 2008: 84). The conditions of social and linguistic complexities which Europeans encountered in their recent South Asian conquests were too confounding and perplexing; devising strategies of descriptive selection and

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simplification became an immediate necessity for the conquerors. It was at this time that Hindustani emerged not just as an example of linguistic simplification but also as a model for British language of command in northern India (Cohn, 1994). The philological images of language gave an organic and natural conception of history that helped the colonial to ‘naturalize its ongoing civilizational advancement, and frame linguistic difference as human inequality in a colonial world’ (Errington, 2008: 84) and to explain the superiority of Europe in a colonial present. It was against the background of this ideology of an organic and natural conception of history that the colonial drive towards classification and schematization was initiated. Workings of colonial language ideology become more visible in colonial situations because of power differentials. In fact, nothing is more basic to any linguistic ideology than the process that defines what is and what is not ‘a language’. Linguistic Conundrums and Asian Sensibility to Language

The idea that Indians in pre-colonial times displayed imprecisely defined ‘fuzzy’ communities with overlapping cultural practices, minimal self-awareness and a non-existent consciousness of the details of their differences from other communities had already existed, as Tharoor (2016) reports in the context of British Empire in India: British effort to understand ethnic, religious, sectarian and caste differences among their subjects inevitably became an exercise in defining, dividing and perpetuating these differences … colonial administrators regularly wrote reports and conducted censuses that classified their subjects in ever-more bewilderingly narrow terms, based on their language, religion, sex, sect, caste, sub-caste, ethnicity and skin colour. In the process of such categorisation and classification, not only were ideas of community reified, but entire new communities were created by people who had not consciously thought of themselves as particularly different from others around them. (Tharoor, 2016: 122)

Why was the diversity of languages in the South Asian subjects perceived as a linguistic conundrum by the new masters? They were perplexed by the distinctive ‘Asian sensibility’ of the region primarily located in the pre-colonial space in India, articulated in enactments around scholarship on language, culture and society. In the context of language, the definitive proof of the distinctiveness of this Asian sensibility comes from the ways in which it was used and identified in the pre-colonial and early colonial periods. The monolithic view of ‘common culture’ and ‘national character’ and the notion of separate languages bounded by specific linguistic features were not at all in keeping with the linguistically heterogeneous

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environment of the colonized world, which was already rich with ideas and discourses about language. Lelyveld (1994), in the context of polyglossia in northern India under the Mughals, and Mitchell (2009), in the context of pre-colonial southern India languages, have shown how languages were seen in pre-colonial India as the attributes of persons rather than as tools to accomplish particular tasks. According to Mitchell, who examines the growth of Telugu nationalism during the colonial and postcolonial eras, language as a legitimate basis for collective identity and as an object of ‘intense form of attachment’ (2009: 5) was unthinkable in pre-colonial India. Practices of multilingualism were not only regarded as features of the landscape with instrumental value, but even the ‘complementary use of more than one language for specialised roles’ and use of ‘more than one writing system for the same language in one space’ contributed to building ‘the edifice of linguistic plurality in the Indian subcontinent’ (Khubchandani, 1997: 95–96; emphasis in original). The various languages in a linguistically heterogeneous region were easily deployed according to different social contexts and specific communicative needs without any invisible cultural power or established linguistic hierarchies. Fluidity characterized language and society in pre-colonial India, in contrast to the colonial propensity for hierarchy. Canagarajah (2011: 3) points to ‘evidence that translanguaging 9 has been practiced in pre-colonial communities and in rural contexts’ in South Asia, as in Africa and South America, and that ‘rural life featured considerable heterogeneity and multilingualism’. The Asian sensibilities and values towards language in pre-colonial India were quite different from those brought by the European colonizers. Officials of the English East India Company reacted with bewilderment when faced with their recent South Asian conquests at the turn of the 19th century. These officials had never witnessed linguistic diversity of this magnitude and came from a cultural background that viewed linguistic differences as sinful humanity’s common heritage from Babel. They were not able to appreciate the Asian sensibility towards language and, thus, failed to understand that despite the seeming perpetual chaos and perversity of South Asia, there was still a logic to its confusion. Language in the system of communication from the colonial perspective was both more, as well as less, crucial than logos, which associated words with reason and viewed language as a means of reasoning. Europeans failed to comprehend that the notion of sharedness in language, which they encountered in South Asia, represented ‘just one and a relatively minor medium through which social information was conveyed’ (Washbrook, 1991: 179). The concept of logos, which they inherited from the Greek tradition, convinced them to assign a privileged position to language, both spoken and written, among the systems of communication. Yet they failed to appreciate that there were ‘other conventions of understandings which gave meaning and order to its

Language Codification: Coloniality, Society and History  29

diversity’ (Washbrook, 1991: 187), where the reference to ‘commonalities of words’ (Washbrook, 1991: 179) had no importance. For instance, writing gained authority from the substance of the writer (usually male), quite apart from the rational import of his words. The ‘style and script which he or she used, the materials which were written upon, even the container in which the manuscript was kept, possessed significance for the reader and for illiterate audiences to whom manuscript in an otherwise obscure language might be read. The spoken language, too, signified much more than ‘words could say’ (Washbrook, 1991: 187–188), for instance, in the kind of attention given to nada10 and nadabrahma in the classical Indian tradition11, the oral incantation and the aural impact of Sanskrit mantras. India has a unique tradition of sound according to which the recitation of certain mantras is known to ensure healing, peace, abundance and prosperity. These sounds or vibrations quieten the mind and address the basic question of our existence. While in traditional Indian thinking, these concepts are the source of both language and music, and, thus, often equated with God himself, no clear equivalence associated with such concepts can be found in the European or Western classical tradition, where logos dominated. The ‘invention’ of languages by the colonial ethnographers, through the process of classification and naming, further contributed to the perplexity of the European colonizers. This is reflected in the following observation: Dialects they [‘natives’] know and understand. They separate them and distinguish them with a meticulous, hair-splitting subtlety, which to us seems unnecessary and absurd; but their minds are not trained to grasp the conception, so familiar to us, of a general term embracing a number of interconnected dialects. It is as if we, in England, spoke of ‘Somersetshire’ and ‘Yorkshire’ dialects, but never used the term ‘English language’. It thus follows that, while the dialect names have been taken from indigenous nomenclature, nearly all the language-names have been invented by the Europeans. Some of them, such as ‘Bengali’, ‘Assamese’, and the like, are founded on words which have received English citizenship, and are not real Indian words at all; while others, like ‘Hindostani’, ‘Bihari’ and so forth, are based on already existing names of countries or nationalities. (Imperial Gazetteer of India, 1909, Vol. 1: 350–351, cited in Kulkarni-Joshi & Hasnain, 2020: 27)

This excerpt also informs us about the assertion of imperial acts involved in ‘language-names’ given to the ‘invented’ language by the colonial ethnographers, although there were exceptions. Unlike James Wise, Herbert Risley, J.H. Hutton, etc. and L.S.S. O’Malley and many other colonialadministrators-turned-ethnographers, George A. Grierson’s commitment to multiplicity set him apart; he was not rigidly official in ‘fully

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subscrib[ing] to such a supremacist discourse’ (Majeed, 2019b: 70) implicit in the colonial project. In fact, in his Linguistic Survey of India (1903– 1928), the British civil servant Grierson brought a certain autonomy of thought in his analysis of languages, differing from the existing practices of the colonial state. For instance, he did not follow the colonial state’s process of naming languages by assigning authoritative anglicized names to them (Bengali instead of Bangla, Kannada instead of Canarese, Telugu instead of Telinga, etc.); rather, he foregrounded the proliferation of titles used by Indians to describe common tongues and complicated this process by writing local names in addition to the official ones of the same languages. Grierson’s Introduction to his Bihar Peasant Life (1885/1975) provides clinching evidence of his commitment to follow both indigenous and anglicized naming processes when he writes: ‘every native word is written twice over – once with accuracy in the native character for those who are able to read it, and once in the English character for those who are not acquainted with Indian vernaculars’ (Grierson, 1885/1975: 2). Much against the colonial agenda to standardize grammatical terminology for the ease of comparison between English grammar and vernacular grammars using the same terms and concepts, Grierson argues for the acceptance of Indian difference against such universalizing imperatives (see Majeed, 2019a, 2019b for further discussion). The colonial ethnographers not only ‘invented’ the ‘language-names’ but also created ‘an ideology of languages as separate and enumerable categories’ (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007: 2). ‘Bengali’ and ‘Assamese’, ‘and the like’, thus, emerged as ‘the construction of new objects’ (2007: 10) based on an ideology of languages as discrete entities, bounded, impermeable, autonomous and countable institutions, and often assumed to be associated with a nation-state, quite unlike ideas about language in pre-colonial India, which was not predicated upon a nation-state, and with no consciousness of Indian identities formed on the basis of language, religion and race. The colonial masters were not only unappreciative of the Asian sensibility towards language; they also demonstrated insensitivity towards their understanding of the society. This was clearly evident in the way the colonial ethnography perceived the idea of change in the context of the colonized world. Although the colonial ethnography itself was predicated upon the notion of progress and change, their treatment of ‘progress’ offered a different perspective in the context of South Asians. Consciously or inadvertently, colonial ethnography believed that in the world of the Indian peasant, material and mental worlds do not change. In his editorial introduction to both William Crooke’s A Glossary of North India Peasant Life (1879) and Grierson’s Bihar Peasant Life (1885/1975), which was published before the Linguistic Survey of India, Amin comments: The presentation of the material culture of the peasantry is here informed by a prior notion of the changelessness of the physical world of the Indian

Language Codification: Coloniality, Society and History  31

peasant. The Glossary has a lot to say about implements, crops, animals, and even insects – objects which are fashioned or which grow but which do not essentially change. With Crooke the emphasis on the production process has the effect of putting exchange relations in parenthesis. [With reference to rice crops] there is much more here on dhaan [unhusked rice], less on chaawal [husked rice]11; the cane crop receives detailed consideration […] whereas gur and raab,12 the commodity form of this valuable crop, are noticed only in passing. (Amin, 1989: xxxiv; emphasis in original)

The colonial era produced several Handbooks, Glossaries, References, etc. in the colonized languages with the intent to provide stability within the world of its object. These had a very strictly controlled structure, meaning, pronunciation, translations, grammar, examples, etc. Their authors believed that stability is the inherent requirement of these standardized publications, but in the process, they selectively glossed over the fact that no Handbook or Glossary can stem the tide of change in the social life of things. There are several instances suggesting how the real native life and other signs of change remained ‘wilfully ignored’ by both Crooke and Grierson. For example, kal ‘machine’ is a generic Hindi term with many collocations associated with the wooden mill. But in Grierson, one finds mention of only ‘English-made iron crushing mill’. Kolhu – a typical indigenous appliance for ‘mortar and pestle’, which is said to have ‘first arrived in China from India at the time when new crystallisation techniques were introduced by the so-called technological mission to India in + 647’ (Needham, 1996: 290) – is not catalogued either in Crooke’s Glossary or Grierson’s Bihar Peasant Life. If one were to believe what Reddy (1986) proposed in the context of commercial dictionaries compiled before and after the French revolution that ‘when change reaches a certain pace, reference work becomes impossible’ (cited in Amin, 1989: xxxiii), then how does one explain the omission of the colonial masters, other than insensitivity, in not taking into cognizance the inevitability of changes in the material and mental world of the Indian peasant? One also finds wilful ignorance of naturalized or adopted English words in peasants’ speech. Just as there are cases of adopted Persian terms, such as taajaa for the Persian word taazeh ‘fresh’, jhaaRuu for Persian word jaaru ‘broom’ and bekuuph/bekuub for the Persian word bewaquuf ‘unintelligent’ in peasant speech, there are examples of local dialects peppered with ‘peasantized’ English words (Amin, 1989: xxxii), for instance, bumpulis – a compound word (‘bamboo’ + ‘place’) for ‘an enclosed privy’; conphuaize – a complex word (‘confusion’-ize) for ‘causing confusion’; tiisan for ‘station’ and otiyar – for ‘volunteer’. Both Crooke and Grierson, however, failed to provide indication of naturalization or adoption of English words in peasants’ speech in their works. How does one explain the wilful ignorance of English words found in the local speech? Perhaps

32  Part 1: Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts

the answer lies in the way the colonial ethnographers constructed the episteme, which reflected an insensitivity towards the society inhabited by their recent South Asian conquests. Understanding Language Standardization in History

Premised on the projection of Western ‘universal’ categories onto the ‘Other’ tradition, colonial engagement with the Indian languages began with standardization and regimentation of languages. The colonial ‘official apparatus of language study emerged in the form of a barrage of texts – grammars, dictionaries, treatises, class books and translations, which resulted in the refashioning of Indian forms of knowledge […] into European objects’ (Cohn, 1996: 21–22). The span of work on the regimented languages had been quite prolific. It ranged from producing a glossary of frequently used judicial and revenue terms (Wilson, 1855); standardizing the use of agricultural, technological and raw materials (Crooke, 1879) within the WesternEuropean classification and conceptual framework; listing the names of things surrounding the daily life of the colonial world; providing a ‘discursive catalogue’ describing ‘more or less […] life […] of its character and incidents’ (Grierson, 1885/1975: 1); and conducting a survey of the languages of the land (Grierson, 1903–1928). The period between the 1850s and the late 1880s witnessed a spurt in the activities related to codification of colonial knowledge, mostly with a view to integrating the Indian knowledge system of agriculture, etc. into the world economies. William Crooke’s Materials for a Rural and Agricultural Glossary of the North-western Provinces and Oudh, published in 1879 (edited and reprinted as A Glossary of North Indian Peasant Life in 1989 with Shahid Amin’s Introduction and Appendices), followed a detailed system of classification and, in this respect, it is, according to Amin, ‘a pioneering systematization of colonial knowledge about the everyday life of the Hindustani peasant’ (Amin, 1989: xix). Crooke imposed ‘an authoritative order’ for providing a systematic arrangement, and not a description (nor an explanation) of ‘rustic words and phrases’ obtained from the native informants and local officials. This shift from description to classification provides clear evidence of what Cohn (2012) calls the construction of ‘official’ knowledge of colonial India.13 In the colonial situations, classification, schematization and translation counted most. Classification allowed investment and exercise of power manifested in the form of inclusion and exclusion, recognizing or derecognizing native words wherever possible. For instance, H.H. Wilson, in his Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms and of Useful Words Occurring in Official Documents (1855), included the term chaukii ‘station of police or of customs, a guard, a watch or a place where they are placed’ but derecognized bharaai, ‘replenishment of material’, ‘wages’ (Amin, 1989: xxiv).

Language Codification: Coloniality, Society and History  33

Consequences of Classificatory Presentation

Translation is not only a source of knowing the unknown but also an important instrument of power. The conquest of India was not just a territorial victory by the British but also, as noted above, an invasion of the epistemological space. As Cohn puts it: ‘The British believed they could explore and conquer this space through translation: establishing correspondences could make the unknown and the strange knowable’ (Cohn, 1994: 325). Translation not only bridges the gap between the unknown and the knowable, but also legitimizes and transforms the colonial regime by reorganizing ‘a field of knowledge according to other modes of understanding and other textual conventions [that have been] brought into existence by a new order of things’ (Steadman-Jones, 2007: 32). Classificatory presentation precluded the scope for developing native systems of classification of indigenous terms according to indigenous knowledge and created the possibility of creating the power of a master language through translation. Alphabetically arranged English glosses and phrases further reduced the knowledge of rich and varied vocabulary and gave a limited picture of the worldview of the local population, as they could not adequately represent the finer distinction and subtle nuances of the native expressions. Just as translations such as ‘a mess of pounded vegetables’, ‘a thin sweet pastry’ or ‘a thick cake of bread’ lumped together distinctions drawn between wheat and rice-based food items, similarly, the glossing of Indian words ‘hoes and harrows’, ‘rakes’ and ‘pickaxes’ failed to represent finer shades of meaning associated with indigenous tools and implements such as pharuaa (or phauraa), kudaarii (or kudaalii), hengaa, gaitaa (or gaintaa), bilnaa and dantaaoli in the world-view of the native users (Amin, 1989: xxxvi). In the context of standardization, especially of terminology, one finds strange perplexity and queer ambivalence. The Glossary (by Wilson, 1855), Bihar Peasant Life (by Grierson, 1885/1975) and Materials (by Crooke, 1879) did give a sense of completeness and have also been effective in the proliferation of terms geographically. Their positivist orientation, in fact, helped in providing detailed description of the native reality in tangible form. Further, not only did they capture various linguistic facets of variation in speech14 but also identified differences in terms of caste, lineage and class. But in spite of their consciousness of heterogeneity in form and structure, the classificatory procedure adopted in the presentation and description of terms produced a homogenized representation of native life. In their zeal for classification, the attempt was made to show variation only in terms of linguistic dissimilarities, not to understand or explain it. For instance, the equivalent of the English word ‘plough’ is shown to have two variant forms of [l] and [r] sounds15 hal and har, the former ordinarily used in the western part of Uttar Pradesh and the latter in the eastern part. However, at no stage was an attempt made to explain the factors behind the difference.16

34  Part 1: Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts

Based on what philological science already told them, ‘the British rapidly set out to “discover” the root forms and standard structures of the Indian vernacular languages’ (Washbrook, 1991: 188) to provide training manuals to teach future generations of British administrators. They did succeed in ‘discovery’ which generated ‘a huge defining literature of grammars, dictionaries and lexicographies’ (Washbrook, 1991: 189), but at the cost of ignoring real and overlapping forms of communication. Since their classificatory and taxonomic energies were more dedicated to making languages become ‘autonomous and, therefore, negotiable among classes and communities of people who claimed to represent them’ (Bhatti, 2015: 5), the linguistic consequences were inevitable. This can best be exemplified by taking the case of Hindustani, which shows how inner shared social space can become a site of contestation. Under colonial rule, the ecumenical sphere of Hindustani usage acquired religious and political connotations.17 The British colonials had realized the need to tame or structure the various diverse languages that they saw as constituting the linguistic wilderness in India. Grierson was persuaded by the British colonial government in India to conduct a survey of India’s diverse languages for enumerating and classifying India’s languages. Backed by their training of philology, they adopted the linguistic strategy of finding the root and ‘standard’ forms of the vernaculars for enumeration and classification. However, this became a problem for those British required to learn the vernaculars for governance and administration before stepping into colonized India. As Cohn points out, there have been many young colonial authorities who, in their eagerness to converse in the ‘native language’, discovered that the natives found their ‘colonial competence’ unintelligible, despite having spent several years learning. In some cases, authorities settled matters of linguistic dispute either by deferring to the opinion of particular ‘natives’ who they liked or by following arbitrary procedures, as the extent of variation in the ‘native’ language was virtually intractable to objective principles of categorization. For instance, the first Telugu dictionary of C.P. Brown (1866) illustrates how language was in effect invented to suit the idiosyncratic practices of the author: C.P. Brown […] assembled a group of learned assistants and collected upwards of a dozen manuscript versions of the [Telugu] texts. These manuscripts, he wrote, ‘swarmed with errors’, which his assistants ‘adjusted by guess as they went along’. Brown had copies made of each manuscript, leaving alternate pages blank with the verses numbered. […] The verses were then read out, discussed by the pundits, with Brown deciding which version was correct, ‘just as a judge frames a decree out of conflicting evidence’. (Cohn, 1994: 328)

Grierson was aware of all this. He was also aware that the classification of mother tongues into ‘languages’ was not a straightforward task. That

Language Codification: Coloniality, Society and History  35

the language scene in India puts the colonial surveyors in a quandary, and that the ultimate language boundaries were tentative, becomes evident from the following anecdote shared by Grierson: While I was working at Eastern Hindi Dr. […] Sten Konow was simultaneously working at Marathi. Each working independently, we finally met at the junction point where the curious mixed dialect called Halabi is spoken. From the point of view of Eastern Hindi, I considered that it was a form of Marathi. On the other hand, Dr. Konow, looking at it from Marathi spectacles, maintained that it was a form of Eastern Hindi. As the last word remained with me, the dialect appeared in the Marathi volume of the Survey, but had it been put in the volume for Eastern Hindi I could not have said that it was wrongly put. (Grierson, LSI, Vol. I, Part I: 30) Conclusion

Modernity is generally identified with westernization, and identifying the forces that caused it attributes to the modern West an almost exclusive agency. Since development or progress in forms of language and linguistic expression represented the ushering in of rational thought and scientific temper, it suited the colonizers to appropriate this process, but not the colonized. It is for this reason, as I have argued in this chapter, that in the emergence of global modernity, the Asian world was often treated as ‘the oriental’, a passive object, a hapless victim or an unwitting beneficiary of the initiatives and drives emerging from the modern western world. Of course, the origins of these arguments go back to Whig historiography, and utilitarian thought, but even the more mature, politically sensitive strands in historical writing have often served to support them. Indeed, Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) is the most well-known case in point. In arguing that the modern forms of knowledge were a product of a European post-enlightenment epistemic system, tied to the project of imperial domination, Said denies agency to the colonized peoples in the articulation of modernity. This position is now increasingly contested. David Washbrook and Rosalind O’Hanlon (1992), in an effective rejoinder to the work of Gyan Prakash (1990) among others, argue that modern European knowledge was not passively imbibed by the colonized subjects, but that they interacted creatively with modern western thought to produce authentic, and organic linguistic categories, discourses of knowledge and forms of historical experience. In seeking to restore the agency of the colonized subjects to the mutual shaping of global modernity, C.A. Bayly has pointed out that just as Western imperial forces influenced the Asian world, the Western world was similarly influenced by Asian knowledge and communication systems (Bayly, 1996, 2004). The argument is taken forward in a number of empirically rich and theoretically nuanced studies by South

36  Part 1: Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts

Asian historians, in particular Sanjay Subrahmanyam (2017), that seek to develop a framework of comparative and connected histories between the Asian and European cultural and intellectual exchanges and cross-overs. This chapter too reiterates the arguments articulated by various scholars mentioned above especially within the framework of the Orientalist construction of Asian knowledge. The entire project of the classification and translation of indigenous knowledge systems into English had the pretence of positivism, being based on principles of scientific verification, objectivity and neutrality. However, its main aim was to legitimize the project of imperial domination, presenting the European race as superior to the Asian world. This project of colonial knowledge production, based on principles of essentialism, difference and hierarchy, was largely a project of collection, addition and translation of Indian historical literature, a project whose agents were always the Indian intellectual classes (see Wagoner, 2003). This is very evident from the translation and editing activities going on in the Fort William College, Fort of St. George in Madras, etc. where the project of the construction of Indian laws, customs and practices had to be a collaborative enterprise between the colonizers and local inhabitants. The colonizers depended to a degree on the Indian literate communities, and therefore the imposition of the European perception, values and even the frameworks of knowledge onto Indian history and culture was always complicated, compromised, modified and even ruptured by the agency of the colonized. Notes (1) This is the translation by Stolz and Warnke (2015: 4) of Carl Meinhof (1920: 387). (2) The multilingualism of South Asia is, according to Washbrook (1991: 187), ‘as much by cultural design and social intention as by accident’. (3) Throughout this paper, I use the word ‘native’ to convey a sense of people originating in/belonging to a particular place. The term ‘native’ as I use it here has no negative connotation. (4) Such attempts by the Company to transform the supposedly arrogant and greedy servant into a responsible civil servant, familiar with the language and customs of the people to be administered go as far back as Warren Hastings, the first Governor of the Presidency at Fort William (Bengal) and also the first de facto Governor-General of India from 1774 to 1785. According to Kopf (1961: 296), ‘The India Acts in Parliament, the foundation of the Calcutta Madrassa in 1781, the Royal Asiatic Society in 1784 […] were all steps in this direction’. (5) The spelling of the original term ‘Hindoostanee’ has been simplified here and represented as ‘Hindustani’ in inverted commas for emphasis (a la Steadman-Jones, 2007). (6) Nathaniel Halhed’s A Grammar of Bengali Language (1778) was the first important grammar of Bengali Language. (7) This has been discussed at length by Steadman-Jones (2007). (8) Mir (2006) provides yet another aspect of engagement in the textual practices in colonial Punjab. Selection of Urdu as the official administrative language in a province inhabited by Punjabi clearly contravened the spirit of Act 29 of 1837, which

Language Codification: Coloniality, Society and History  37

prescribed provincial-level governance through vernacular languages. Despite this denial, textual and cultural production in the Punjabi language flourished throughout the late 19th century, thus reflecting the limits of colonial power (Mir, 2006: 398).   (9) The term translanguaging verges on the proposition that language is not a separate bounded entities but ‘a social resource without clear boundaries, which places the speaker at the heart of the interaction’ (Blackledge & Creese, 2014: 2). (10) According to Kaviraj (2009: 315), ‘nada is the ordinary meaningful sound which is given great ceremonial significance in two of its cultural forms, the intelligent power of words and the sound of music, its aesthetic side’. (11) Nadabrahma means the entire universe was created by the energy of the sound. (12) According to Glossary, the unhusked Rice is called dhaan; when husked, it is called chaawal; when boiled plain, it is called bhaat or khushkaa; when boiled with spices, it is called khichrii (listed in VII division titled ‘Agricultural Product’ in the Glossary under section ‘Rice’ iv). (13) According to Glossary, raab is the undrained raw sugar, and when it is boiled down for a longer time, it is called gur (listed in VII under section xii ‘Sugarcane’). (14) For a general discussion, see Cohn’s essays ‘Notes on the History of the Story of Indian Society and Culture’ and ‘The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia’, in Cohn (2012). (15) In their presentation, they provided instances of variations on account of spelling that are ‘local, arising from dialectic peculiarities, and the inability of one alphabet to express the letters of another:’ Jamiin for Zamiin (‘land’), Jamiindaar, or even Jamidar for Zamiindaar (‘landlord’) (Wilson, 1855: xviii); barshaa for varshaa ‘rain’ (Wilson, 1855: xvi); variations on account of phonemes, e.g. t vs. T (as retroflex) alteration causing differences in meaning between paat for ‘a leaf’ in Hindi ad paaT for ‘a plank’ in Marathi, etc. (Wilson, 1855: ix). (16) Sociolinguistically, the phonetic differences [r] and [l] correspond to caste and regional differences. For instance, in some villages and localities, upper-caste Muslims would use the form hal, and the rest would call it har. Similarly, Holi, ‘Festival of colour’, has two variant forms, hori and holi, the former used by lower caste speakers of Hindi, the latter by upper-caste speakers. (17) The dissimilarity between hal and har is not merely phonological but is also on account of difference in the use of iron content and weight of the object which is inversely proportional to the size and strength of the cattle used for the purpose of ploughing (for detail, see Amin, 1989: xxxviii). (18) Hindustani is a natural outcome, both written and spoken, constructed to resolve the fight between Urdu and Hindi. It is a terminological compromise describing an overlapping linguistic continuum encompassing both Urdu and Hindi (Hasnain & Rajyashree, 2004; Lelyveld, 1993).

References Amin, S. (ed.) (1989) Introduction. In W. Crooke (1879/1989) A Glossary of North Indian Peasant Life. Edited with an Introduction, Notes and Appendices by Shahid Amin (pp. xviii–xii). Delhi: Oxford University Press. Bayly, C.A. (1996) Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780-1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bayly, C.A. (2004) The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Bhatti, A. (2015) Language, heterogeneities, homogeneities and similarities. In R.K. Agnihotri, C. Benthien and T. Oranskaia (eds) Impure Languages: Linguistics and Literary Hybridity in Contemporary Cultures (pp. 3–28). New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.

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Blackledge, A. and Creese, A. (eds) (2014) Heteroglossia as Practice and Pedagogy. Berlin: Springer. Brown, C.P. (1866/1895) Some account of the literary life of Charles Philip Brown, written by himself. In C.P. Brown English-Telugu Dictionary. Madras Canagarajah, S. (2011) Translanguaging in the classroom: Emerging issues for research and pedagogy. In W. Li (ed.) Applied Linguistics Review 2 (pp. 1–28). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Cohn, B.S. (1994) The command of language and the language of command. In R. Guha (ed.) Subaltern Studies IV. Writings on South Asian History and Society (pp. 276– 329). Delhi: Oxford University Press. Cohn, B.S. (1996) Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cohn, B.S. (2012) An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays. With an Introduction by Ranajit Guha (pp. 224–254). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Dalrymple, W. (2019) The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire. London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi: Bloomsbury Publishing. Damle, M. (2012) Coiffuring Marathi: Politics of Language in 19th and 20th century Maharashtra. Talk delivered in Linguistics Department, University of Mumbai. Errington, J. (2008) Linguistics in Colonial World: A Story of Language, Meaning and Power. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Gilchrist, J. (1798) The Oriental Linguist: An Easy and Familiar Introduction to the Popular Language of Hindoostan. Calcutta: Thomson, Ferris, and Greenway. Grierson, G.A. (1885/1975) Bihar Peasant Life: Being a Discursive Catalogue of the Surroundings of the People of that Province. Delhi: Cosmo Publications. Grierson, G. (1903–1928) Linguistic Survey of India. Reprinted 1968. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Hasnain, S.I. and Rajyashree, K.S. (2004) Hindustani as an anxiety between Hindi-Urdu Commitment. In R. Singh (ed.) The Yearbook of South Asian Languages and Linguistics (pp. 247–265). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kaviraj, S. (2009) Writing, speaking, being: Language and the historical formation of identities in India. In A. Sarangi (ed.) Language and Politics in India (pp. 127–166). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Khubchandani, L.M. (1997) Revisualizing Boundaries: A Plurilingual Ethos. New Delhi: Sage. Kopf, D. (1961) Fort William College and the origins of the Bengal Renaissance. Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 24, 296–303. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/44140769; Accessed: 05-01-2020 08:16 UTC Kulkarni-Joshi, S. and Hasnain, S.I. (2020) Northern perspectives on language and society in India. In A. Deumert, A. Storch and N. Shepherd (eds) Colonial and Decolonial Linguistics – Knowledges and Epistemes (pp. 25–45). New York: Oxford University Press. Lelyveld, D. (1993) Colonial language and the fate of Hindustani. Comparative Studies in Society and History 35 (4), 665–682. Majeed, J. (2019a) Nation and Region in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. London and New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group. Majeed, J. (2019b) Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. London and New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group. Makoni, S. and Pennycook A. (eds) (2007) Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Meinhof, C. (1920) Sprache. In H. Schnee (ed.) Deutsches Kolonial-Lexicon, III. Band P-Z. (p. 387). Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer.

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Mir, F. (2006) Imperial policy, provincial practices: Colonial language policy in nineteenth-century India. The Indian Economic and Social History Review 43 (4), 395– 427. SAGE New Delhi/Thousand Oaks/London. Mitchell, L. (2009) Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Needham, J. (1996) Science and civilisation in China. In C. Daniels and N.K. Menzies (eds) Vol. 6. Biology and Biological Technology. Part III Agro-Industries: Sugarcane Technology and Forestry (pp. xxvii, 740). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pandey, A. (2016) A pragmatic study of ‘Parushi’ as a linguistic variety used by the Nath Panthi Dauri Gosavi people. In N. Ostler and P. Mohanty (eds) Proceedings of the 20th Conference of the Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL) (pp. 162–169). Hyderabad: University of Hyderabad. Pandurang, D. (1836/1850) Maharashtra Bhasheche Vyakaran (A Grammar of the Marathi Language), 2nd revised edition. Bombay: American Mission Press. Prakash, G. (1990) Writing post-orientalist histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian historiography. Comparative Studies in Society and History 32 (2), 383–408. Reddy, W.M. (1986) The structure of a cultural crisis: Thinking about cloth in France before and after French Revolution. In A. Appadurai (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspectives (pp. 261–284) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Said, E.W. (1978) Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Steadman-Jones, R. (2007) Colonialism and Grammatical Representation: John Gilchrist and the Analysis of the ‘Hindustani’ Language in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. Oxford UK & Boston USA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Stolz, T. and Warnke, I.H. (2015) From missionary linguistics to colonial linguistics. In K. Zimmermann and B. Kellermeier-Rehbein (eds) Colonialism and Missionary Linguistics (pp. 3–25). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Subrahmanyam, S. (2017) Europe’s India: Words, People, Empires, 1500–1800. London: Harvard University Press. Tharoor, S. (2016) An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India. New Delhi: Aleph Book Company. Wagoner, P.B. (2003) Precolonial intellectuals and the production of colonial knowledge. Comparative Studies in Society and History 45 (4), 783–814. Washbrook, D. (1991) ‘To each a language of his own’: Language, culture and society in India. In P.J. Corfield (ed.) Language, History and Class (pp. 179–203). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Washbrook, D. and O’ Hanlon, R. (1992) After orientalism: Culture, criticism and politics in the Third World. Comparative Studies in Society and History 34 (1), 141–167. Wilson, H.H. (1855) Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms and of Useful Words Occurring in Official Documents Relating to the Administration of the Government of British India, from the Arabic, Persian, Hindustaanii, Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengaali, URiya, MaraaThi, Guzaraathii, Telugu, KarnaTa, Taamil, Malayaalam and Other languages. London: W.H. Allen and Co.

2 Linguistic Variation in Late Qing Western Sources: An Analysis of Edkins’ Grammar of Shanghainese Mariarosaria Gianninoto

Introduction

One of the earliest records of dialectology in the world was compiled in China during the Han dynasty (206BC–220AD): the Fāngyán 方言1 [Local languages] by Yáng Xióng 楊雄 (53 BCE–18 CE). This work was a glossary of geo-synonyms collected through informant surveys (Hú, 1987: 72–73), as indicated by its full title Yóuxuān shǐzhě juédài yǔ shì bié guó fāngyán 輏軒使者絕代語釋別國方言 [Local Expressions of Different Kingdoms and Explanations of Words from Previous Eras collected by the Light Chariot Envoys], making reference to the envoys in charge of inspection tours in the various regions, who were Yáng Xióng’s main informants (Guō, 1998: 60–63). It can be regarded as ‘the earliest known study in linguistic geography’ (Wang, 1989: 197). However, dialectology and the study of local languages were destined to represent a marginal trend in the excellent tradition of imperial philology, which was characterized by a focus on written and standard language (Hú, 1987: 7–9). This relative neglect of Chinese dialectology and the focus on written and standard language were probably connected with the constitution of the Confucian canon (Peyraube, 2000: 55), an evolving corpus of authoritative texts, known as the ‘Classics’, and with the imperial examination system, essentially based on knowledge and exegesis of those canonical texts, while the study of ‘the vernacular languages and dialects of China did not have a place, nor any relevance’ in the formation of Chinese literati (Chappell & Peyraube, 2014: 131). The role played by Literary Chinese (wényán 文言), the ‘common script in the domain of officialdom and education’, deserves also to be underlined according to Chappell (2001: 4), who claims that ‘despite the fact that this literary ­language – wényán 文言 – is quite distinct from any spoken form of 40

Linguistic Variation in Late Qing Western Sources  41

Chinese […], its unifying use as a written medium has reinforced the belief that the spoken varieties in China are dialects of the one language rather than related languages’. Moreover, geopolitical, institutional and cultural factors were crucial. The coexistence of local vernaculars within one unified empire limited the interest in Chinese linguistic variation, as these vernaculars were not associated with a political entity (Ramsey, 1987: 17). Handel (2015: 34) also points out that, even though many varieties are not mutually intelligible, ‘the different regional varieties of Chinese are spoken by people who identify as a single nationality and ethnicity, with a shared cultural history’. This ‘neglect’ of vernaculars also characterized a proportion of the linguistic works compiled by Western missionaries based in China, in particular those written by the Jesuits (Klöter, 2011: 42–46). Conversely, other missionary orders paid more attention to Chinese vernaculars and devoted important linguistic works (dictionaries, grammars, manuals) to different varieties. The first Western works on the Chinese varieties appeared in the 17th century, but it was in during the 19th century that their description underwent significant development. This was due to the presence of an increasing number of Westerners living and working in Southern Chinese regions after the Opium Wars (1836–1842; 1856–1860) and the ensuing establishment of legal and territorial concessions. Despite de facto Western control over several regions of the country, China was never colonized in the way that India was, leading to projects of ­systematic description and classification of the languages of India (see Hasnain, this volume). However, Westerners active in the European concessions in China did take an interest in the local languages. For here too, the study of local languages was useful for foreigners’ needs in everyday life, but also functional to missionaries’ Christianization aim as well as to the administrative work of foreign civil servants, just as in other geographical and linguistic contexts (Auroux, 1989: 10; Zimmermann, 2014: 14). Moreover, it is worth noting that the second half of the 19th century saw an increasing interest in the description of local varieties and the rise of dialectology in Europe, where missionaries and civil servants were educated (Branca-Rosoff, 1989: 45–50). In particular, as we shall see, Westerners were interested in the varieties spoken in the ‘Treaty ports’, open to foreign trade after the Opium Wars. These regions, concentrating the economic activities and the commercial and geopolitical interests of the Westerners, were localized in southern and south-eastern China (Branner, 1997: 236), while the political centre of the country was in the north. The sociolinguistic situation during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) was indeed variegated and complex. The Qing Empire was a multilingual state, where non-Chinese ­languages were spoken and, in the case of Manchu, used as language of state (Söderblom Saarela, 2020: 2). Among the Chinese languages, the standard forms were Literary Chinese (wényán 文言), ‘a purely written

42  Part 1: Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts

language’ (Norman, 1988: 245), and Mandarin (guānhuà 官話 lit. officials’ language), the ‘informal lingua franca’ among Chinese officials (Ramsey, 1987: 4). In the late Qing dynasty, this administrative koine was essentially based on northern idioms, Beijing being the political and administrative centre of the country since in 1421 (see Branner, 1997: 236). However, the southern Mandarin, which was the standard during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) when the seat of the court was Nanjing (Paternicò, 2013), was still used in the Qing dynasty period (Coblin, 2000: 540–541; 2003: 237–239; Edkins, [1857] 1864: 278–279). Literary Chinese and Mandarin coexisted with a large range of local varieties. Among these, the varieties spoken in important cities, ‘centers of administration, education and commerce’, ‘were frequently learned by people living in the outlying areas and took the role of regional koines’ (Norman, 1988: 246). In the historical context of the creation of the Treaty ports, Cantonese and Shanghainese therefore gained an important linguistic status, enjoying linguistic prestige. It is important to emphasize that this prestige is still associated with these varieties in contemporary China. As stressed by Zhao and Liu (2020: 3–4), ‘in affluent areas such as Guangzhou and Shanghai, local varieties (Cantonese and Shanghainese) are strong competitors with Putonghua in all traits […]. This affiliation with regional variety is positively related to social-economic development of the area’. The authors compare here the two varieties with the contemporary standard, Mandarin Chinese (pǔtōnghuà 普通話 lit. ‘common language’), the official language of the People’s Republic of China (see Feng, this volume; Luo, this volume). Shanghainese, which is nowadays a prestige variety (Zhao & Liu, 2020), acquired this status at the end of the Qing dynasty, replacing the Suzhou dialect as prestige form of the Wú group, 2 thanks to Shanghai’s development (Gu, 2008: 219). As a variety spoken in a Treaty port, central for Western economic and geopolitical interests, Shanghainese began to become the object of linguistic description in 19th-century Western sources. The Grammar of Colloquial Chinese: as Exhibited in the Shanghai Dialect ([1853] 1868), 3 by the Protestant missionary Joseph Edkins (1823–1905), was a pioneer work for the description of this variety (Hé, 2010; Pǔ, 1996). It was the first grammar of Shanghainese and a representative work of Western studies of the Chinese varieties. Thanks to the accuracy of Edkins’ linguistic description and to his ability to combine European and Chinese linguistic knowledge (Branner, 1997: 244, 255), this work can be considered one of the main contributions of 19th-century missionary linguistics to Chinese grammar studies, putting linguistic variation at the core of the history of linguistics. This paper provides an overview of Western studies on Chinese dialectology during the Qing period, before focusing on Edkins’ grammar of the Shanghai vernacular, and stressing its importance in the history of Chinese dialectology, language learning and grammar studies.

Linguistic Variation in Late Qing Western Sources  43

Western Missionary Works on the Chinese Languages

Western missionaries arrived in China in the late 16th century (Brockey, 2008; Klöter, 2011: 34). Since the end of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and throughout the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) periods, Western missionaries made an important contribution to Chinese language studies (Lǐ, 2011; Wáng, 1996: 202). Missionaries introduced the first Latin letter transcriptions for the Chinese characters (Luó, 1930; Raini, 2010)4 and largely contributed to the development of grammar studies (Chappell & Peyraube, 2014) and vernacular language studies (Klöter, 2011). The first Western works on the Chinese languages were compiled between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century and were primarily designed as tools for missionary language training, knowledge of the local languages being considered of great importance for missionary work (Masini, 1993: 5). Jesuit missionaries, whose achievements were pivotal in the fields of sinology and linguistic studies (Luó, 1930; Masini, 1993: 5), mostly focused on Literary Chinese (wényán 文言) and Mandarin, the ‘court language used (with immense variation) by officials everywhere’ (Branner, 1997: 249). This was coherent with Jesuits’ ‘top-down’ conversion strategy and ‘accomodationist’ approach5 but was also linked with the ‘immediate social environment of missionary work’ (Klöter, 2011: 38), requiring a good mastery of wényán and Mandarin. However, Jesuits’ early linguistic documentation did include Chinese vernaculars (Masini, 2000). The Dictionarium Sino Hispanicum (1604), considered the earliest existing dictionary of a variety of Southern Min or Hokkien (labelled Early Manila Hokkien by Klöter, 2011: 19), was the work of a Jesuit missionary, Pedro Chirino (1557–1635). Nevertheless, it is important to stress that this work was composed in the Philippines, not in China, and its compilation was tied to the proselytizing activities of Catholic missionaries in the Chinese community who had settled there (Chappell & Peyraube, 2014: 115). This was also the case for the Arte de la lengua chio chiu (1620), which can be regarded as the earliest existing linguistic treatise on a variety of Chinese. The authorship of this treatise is controversial, 6 but its composition is tied to the missionary activities of Dominicans in Manila (Chappell & Peyraube, 2014: 112; Klöter, 2011: 34). However, it was in the late Qing (1644–1911) period that Western studies on Chinese vernaculars flourished. After the first Opium War (1836–1842), Treaty ports open to foreign residents were established, in accordance with the clauses of the Treaty of Nanjing (1842). The increasing presence of foreigners eager to learn the Chinese languages promoted the compilation of different kinds of language-learning and teaching materials, such as pedagogical grammars, language textbooks and phrasebooks, intended for Western learners. It was in particular the Protestant missionaries, who arrived in China in the early 19th century, who played an important role in the second half

44  Part 1: Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts

of the century (Latourette, [1929] 1970: 209–215, 357–465). As the majority of these Protestant Missionaries were British and Americans, English became the main metalanguage for these pedagogical materials. Branner (1997: 235) affirms that ‘the Protestant missionaries and consular officials who began pouring in changed completely the direction of Western study of China’. They compiled grammars, dictionaries, primers of southern dialects, first of all of the varieties spoken in the five Treaty ports (the port cities of Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningbo and Shanghai), but also of other varieties. The richest documentation can be found for Cantonese.7 The first description can be found in a section (pp. 259–267) of the Grammar of the Chinese Language (Serampore, 1815) by Robert Morrison (1782–1834), who was the first Protestant missionary in China (Paternicò, 2017: 234). A few years later, Morrison published A Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect (1828). The publication of this bilingual dictionary was supported by the East India Company and was mainly designed for the employees of the company based in Canton (Kataoka & Lee, 2008: 80). Numerous works devoted to Cantonese were published in the subsequent decades. Various works were also devoted to varieties spoken in the other Treaty ports: first of all, Shanghainese, 8 but also the ‘Amoy’ dialect (Xiàménhuà 廈門話), 9 the ‘Foochoow’ dialect (Fúzhōuhuà 福州話)10 and the Ningbo dialect (Níngbōhuà 寧波話).11 The Western works on Chinese dialectology were not limited to the varieties spoken in the Treaty ports. We find dictionaries, grammars and manuals on other vernaculars, for instance, on Hakka (Kèjiāhuà 客家話)12 and on Swatow dialect (Shàntóuhuà 汕頭話).13 It is important to underline that some Protestant missionaries produced studies on both vernacular and standard languages (Branner, 1997: 249), and works taking into account different varieties, being the first to do systematic dialect comparisons (Branner, 1997: 244; Klöter, 2011: 46). Robert Morrison, author of the abovementioned dictionary of the Canton dialect (1828), also compiled A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in Three Parts (1815–1823), devoted to the standard language, which was the first printed dictionary of Chinese in a Western language. Another example is represented by the American missionary Samuel Wells Williams (1812–1844), who wrote a dictionary of Cantonese (A Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect, 1856), a dictionary of Mandarin (An English and Chinese Vocabulary, in the Court Dialect, 1844) and a dictionary taking into account different varieties (A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language, arranged according to the Wu-fang Yuen Yin, with the pronunciation of the characters as heard in Peking, Canton, Amoy, and Shanghai, 1874). The British missionary J. Edkins represented another important example of a Protestant missionary dealing with Chinese standard and linguistic variety, and doing dialect comparisons. Edkins elaborated pedagogical tools devoted to both Mandarin and Shanghainese. His grammar

Linguistic Variation in Late Qing Western Sources  45

of Shanghainese was a first systematic and detailed linguistic description of this variety, particularly relevant not only from the point of view of the history of Chinese dialectology but also in the history of grammar studies (Hé, 2010). Edkins’ Grammar of Shanghainese

Joseph Edkins arrived in Shanghai in 1848, appointed as a missionary by the London Missionary Society. Edkins spent 57 years in China, first in Shanghai, where he stayed until 1860, then in Yantai, Tianjin and Beijing. He was one of the first Protestant missionaries to live in Beijing and ‘was part of the team in the capital that produced a Mandarin version of the New Testament’ (Covell, 1998: 194). From 1880 onwards, he worked as translator for the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs. In 1893, he settled again in Shanghai, where he lived until his death in 1905. Edkins is the author of several works on China14 and Chinese languages. The first work he devoted to a Chinese language was his grammar of Shanghainese, A Grammar of Colloquial Chinese: as Exhibited in the Shanghai Dialect, first published in 1853, followed in 1869 by A Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect, ‘intended as a brief manual to accompany a grammar of the Shanghai dialect recently republished’ (Edkins, 1869). Besides these works on Shanghainese, Edkins also published A Grammar of the Chinese Colloquial Language Commonly Called the Mandarin Dialect (1857) and the Progressive Lessons in the Chinese Spoken Language, with Lists of Common Words and Phrases, and an Appendix containing the Laws of Tones in the Peking Dialect (1862). His Grammar of Colloquial Chinese: as Exhibited in the Shanghai Dialect is a pioneer work on Shanghainese, as underlined by the author: No one has yet written on the speech of the rich and populous province of Kiáng-nán. On Missionary and Commercial grounds, it is time that some attempts should be made to supply this want. (Edkins, [1853] 1868: vi)

In his Preface, Edkins also pointed out that his work represented ‘an attempt to elucidate colloquial Chinese, by taking a limited field of inquiry, that of a dialect of a single district’ ([1853] 1868: iii). This is particularly interesting from the point of view of both sociolinguistics and the history of language teaching and learning. Edkins, like other missionaries during the 19th century, describes a regional spoken language, usually neglected in the native linguistic tradition, focused on the written standard. This reveals how important was learning the local spoken languages for Western expatriates in China in the late Qing period. Moreover, the question of the relationship to the standard is addressed by Edkins. In this grammar of Shanghainese, we find frequent references to the standard: not just to the ‘Literary Chinese’ (wényán, the written standard), but above all to

46  Part 1: Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts

Mandarin, the officials’ lingua franca. In the appendix devoted to the ‘the Higher Colloquial’, the ‘style of conversation prevailing among literary men’ (Edkins, [1853] 1868: 215), he referred to these two ‘standards’: A common knowledge of the books and the existence of a universal mandarin colloquial, have given rise to an enlarged vocabulary of phrases bearing this name. The consideration of their etymological and syntactical peculiarities belong to the grammar of the books and of mandarin, the two sources from whence they are derived. (Edkins, [1853] 1868: 215)

The author also pointed out that ‘this part of the colloquial medium is common ground to all dialects, where no distinction remains, but of pronunciation’ (Edkins, [1853] 1868: 215). According to Edkins, it was ‘in sounds that the greatest variation’ existed ([1853] 1868: vi). Hence, great attention was dedicated to the description of the phonological system of Shanghainese15 in the first part of the Grammar (pp. 1–57), with numerous comparisons with Mandarin as well as with local languages. Actually, the author made reference to the ‘Northern Mandarin 北音 [lit. northern pronunciation’], described as ‘the pronunciation of the Emperor’s court, and professedly of the government officers throughout the empire’, as well as to the ‘Southern pronunciation 南音’, which was ‘mainly the pronunciation out of which the mandarin grew and which is followed in the Dictionaries, from K’ang-hí [Kāngxī zìdiǎn 康熙字典 “Dictionary of the Kāngxī era”, 1716] upwards’ (Edkins, [1853] 1868: 6). While northern Mandarin was the new standard in the Qing era, the influence of southern Mandarin, based on the former capital Nanjing, was still strong (as explained by Edkins, [1857] 1864: 279). This would be the case until the beginning of the 20th century (on this point, see Klöter, 2017; on the establishment of a northern standard for pronunciation, see also Wu, this volume). Moreover, it is important to stress that until the 20th century, ‘the concept of standard pronunciation was rather vague since the standard was […] a koine for practical purposes of interdialectal communication’. (Wu, this volume: 56). Edkins provided detailed comparisons of the phonological differences between the Chinese varieties. For instance, in describing the consonants of the Shanghainese, Edkins underlined the differences between Shanghainese and northern Mandarin, writing that ‘The Shánghái dialect is deficient in the sh, ch and soft j of Mandarin and of Sú-cheú [Sūzhōu 蘇州] pronounciation’ ([1853] 1868: 4). Besides these comparisons with Mandarin and with other Chinese vernaculars, we also find contrastive remarks for English speaking learners. For instance: Of the above sounds, those foreign to English and therefore needing particular attention, are the following: […] Of consonants, note well the ­sibilants sz, tsz, dzz, with rh and the nasals m, n, ng, also the strong aspirate h’ ; also the three aspirated mutes p’, k’, t’, and ng at the beginning of a syllable. (Edkins, [1853] 1868: 4)

Linguistic Variation in Late Qing Western Sources  47

Reference to the ‘standards’ (Mandarin and wényán) as well as to other regional languages can be found also at lexical and grammatical levels. For instance, in the paragraph devoted to the ‘instrumental case’, comparisons are made with both Mandarin and wényán: With, of (instrumental case) is expressed by the verb, tan (also nan west of Shánghái) or nó, to bring, preceding a noun and a verb following it (M. [Mandarin] 將 tsiáng, 把 pa ; in books以 ‘i) and by the suffix個 kú, which usually takes a verb between it and the noun. (Edkins, [1853] 1868 :77)

Moreover, in the description of the possessive markers, we read that ‘the possessive pronouns are expressed by the personal pronouns, with the auxiliary particle 個 kú’ (Edkins, 1869: 104). Edkins noted that this corresponded to the ‘mandarin, 的 tih’ and added a comparison with ‘southern Fúh-kien [Fújiàn福建] dialect’, where the ‘intervening particle個’, ‘rendered unnecessary by the existence of a separate possessive forms for the three persons, is however often used’ (Edkins, [1853] 1868: 105). It is important to stress that besides offering a valuable description of the Shanghainese, A Grammar of Colloquial Chinese: as Exhibited in the Shanghai Dialect deserves an important place in the history of Chinese grammar studies (Hé, 2010). Edkins’ work followed the tripartite division of Western grammar books, consisting of a first section ‘on sounds’ (pp. 1–57), a second ‘on the parts of speech’ (pp. 58–162) and a third on ‘Syntax’ (pp. 162–214), even though in his grammar of the ‘Mandarin dialect’ (A Grammar of the Chinese Colloquial Language Commonly Called the Mandarin Dialect, [1857] 1864), he pointed out some difficulties in applying these divisions to the Chinese languages: ‘I still feel some uncertainty as to the distinction to be preserved between etymology and syntax; but such deviations as are here observable, from the plan of a former work on the Shanghai dialect, will probably be regarded as improvements’ (Edkins, [1857] 1864). Nevertheless, Edkins largely adopted Western categories, such as the parts of speech and the cases, in the description of Shanghainese (but also of Mandarin, cf. Edkins, [1857] 1864). As Linn (2013: 369) underlines, ‘there was always a danger that typologically very different languages would be described as if they were Latin, but […] this is no different to the early fate of the European vernaculars’. However, the adoption of categories familiar to their intended readers, the Western learners, can be also be considered a didactic device, common to most of the missionary grammars (Zwartjes, 2011: 14). Edkins’ work was conceived as a didactic tool for Shanghai-based Western (in particular, English speaking) learners, and this didactic aim was combined with a thorough linguistic description. The link between foreign language learning and linguistic description deserves to be stressed: ‘from the very beginning of vernacular grammatical tradition […] ­explaining the language to the non-native speakers was a spur to analysing

48  Part 1: Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts

the grammar of languages’ (McLelland, 2017: 94). Furthermore, Edkins’ grammar also integrated elements of Chinese philological tradition, borrowing the traditional Chinese categories of empty and full words (xūzì 虛 字 and shízì 實字), dead and living words (huózì 活字 and sǐzì 死字). The distinction between empty words and full words can be defined as ‘the most fundamental and important grammatical distinction in Classical Chinese’ (Harbsmeier, 1998: 88) and can be traced back to the 13th century. The terms xūzì 虛字 and shízì 實字 were used in a treatise on poetics, the Cíyuán 詞源 [Fundamentals of Ci poetry] by Zhāng Yán 張炎 (1248– 1320), and were later adopted in the Xūzìshuō 虛字說 [Treatise on Empty Words], a dictionary of empty words compiled by Yuán Rénlín 袁仁林 in 1710. The distinction between living words and dead words was attested in one of the first dictionaries of grammatical particles, the Yǔzhù 語助 [Grammatical Particles] by Lú Yǐwěi 盧以緯, which appeared in 1324 (Pellin, 2009: 59). These categories had already been merged with the Western grammatical classes in one of the first Western grammars of Chinese, the Notitia lingua sinicae (1732, published in 1831) by the French Jesuit J.H.M. de Prémare, which was quoted several times in Edkins’ grammar (for instance, Edkins, [1853] 1868: 80, 90, 211). Moreover, it is important to note that Edkins quoted extensively from a Chinese treatise, the Yǎn xù cǎotáng bǐjì 衍緒草堂筆記 [Notes of the Brush from the Abundant Beginnings Hall] by Bì Huázhēn 畢華珍 (fl. 1807–1848). This is one of the most important autochthonous grammatical treatises, particularly relevant for the description of syntactic categories and rules (see Peyraube & Xiao, forthcoming; Uchida, 2017: 95–104). This treatise was inaccessible until recently, and Edkins’ description and quotations represented for decades the main source for this work (Peyraube & Xiao, forthcoming; Uchida, 2017). In his grammar of Shanghainese, Edkins ([1853] 1868: 59) praised Bì Huázhēn for having ‘approached so nearly […] to a Western classification and […] defined with precision all the principal parts of speech’. Hence, Edkins, following Bì Huázhēn’s classification, associated the substantives to the Chinese category of full words and quoted Bì’s definition: ‘凡有形有質有氣有聲 […] all things that have form, material substance, breath and sound’ (Edkins, [1853] 1868: 66). Again following Bì Huázhēn’s classification, Edkins considered adjectives and verbs as empty words: The adjectives were associated to Bì’s category of dāixūzì 呆虛字 (lit. ‘static empty words’) and the verbs to the huóxūzì 活虛字 (lit. ‘living empty words’). This point is specific to Bì’s classification, as adjectives and verbs are generally classified among the full words in Chinese philological studies. In the section devoted to the verbs, we read: Pih Hwá-tsun [Bì Huázhēn] says, ‘One use of the verbs is to connect the parts of a proposition’16 活虛字之用, 一以聯綴上下 […]‘Another use is to express actions’17 一以寫出人事. (Edkins, [1853] 1868: 111)

Linguistic Variation in Late Qing Western Sources  49

On one hand, Edkins incorporates elements of the Chinese philology (such as the categories of empty and full words); on the other hand, he was strongly influenced by the Western linguistic tradition (for instance, the terminology for the parts of speech) as well as by contemporary comparative grammar (Hé, 2010), making comparisons between Shanghainese and other Chinese varieties in the attempt to identify ‘the most ancient forms of speech, the primitive words of the Chinese race’ (Edkins, [1853] 1868: 62). According to Hé (2010), this mixture of Western and Chinese influences, a ‘synthesis of Western and Chinese’ elements (‘东西结合’), can be considered one of the main features of this work. The importance accorded by Edkins to word formation is also worth stressing. The author wrote that ‘attention has been paid throughout to the mode of composing words, as subject second to none in interest and importance’ (Edkins, [1853] 1868: vi). The analysis of word formation and compound words should be considered a crucial concern in the development of Chinese grammar studies. This topic has been analysed by Chinese linguists of the 20th century as a distinctive feature of Chinese morphology (Zhōu, 1995: 44–50). Edkins underlined the practical usefulness of ‘compound forms’ for learners, stressing once more the pedagogical aim of his work: There is an advantage to the foreigner in using the compounded forms, because a mispronunciation of the tone of a single word is nearly compensated by the repetition of the idea. (Edkins, [1853] 1868: 112)

In his analysis of word formation, Edkins was influenced by the French sinologist Antoine Bazin (Edkins, [1853] 1868: v). Bazin (1799–1862) was the author of the Mémoire sur les principes généraux du chinois vulgaire, published in Paris in 1845, where he tried to establish a systematic analysis of Chinese word formation, identifying 15 categories (see Gianninoto, 2014a). Hence, as in Bazin’s work, Edkins’ analysis was not limited to nouns and adjectives, but also included various categories of verbal compounds. Moreover, the analysis of word formation was not limited to the second section (on the parts of speech), but can also be found in the third section (devoted to syntax), where we read of the ‘government of words in groups or in combination’ (Edkins, [1853] 1868: 170). Furthermore, Edkins made comparisons between Chinese word formation and the word formation rules in English and German, highlighting the fact that the latter languages can compose words ‘by simple apposition’, like the Chinese languages, and unlike flexional languages such as Latin (Edkins, [1853] 1868: 72). The emphasis put on the word order in the Chinese sentence is another point worth stressing (Hé, 2010). This aspect, which had already been mentioned in early grammars of Chinese language (like Martino Martini’s Grammatica sinica, 1652, see Martini [Bertuccioli ed. and transl.], 1998: 409; Paternicò, 2013: 176), had become central in the Elements of Chinese

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Grammar (1814) by the Protestant missionary Joshua Marshman (1768– 1837), who affirmed that ‘the whole of Chinese grammar turns on Position’ (Marshman, 1814: viii). This aspect was analyzed by Edkins in the section entitled ‘Interchange of the parts of speech’, where he explained: Under this heading will be exhibited examples of the manner in which words by a change in position must be constructed as included in parts of speech, different from those to which when alone, they obviously belong. (Edkins, [1853] 1868: 165)

In this section, Edkins analyzed examples of ‘Adjective as Substantive’, ‘Verb as Adjective’ ‘Substantive as Adjective’, etc. (Edkins, [1853] 1868: 166 and following). In conclusion, Edkins’ work represents an interesting attempt to describe the specific features of a Chinese vernacular for a Western audience. It can be considered central in the history of Chinese dialectology for its description of 19th-century Shanghainese, but it is also important in the history of Chinese linguistic studies, provided that it inserts the Chinese linguistic categories in the framework of Western-inspired grammatical description and makes an extensive use of the Chinese philological sources (in particular, Bì Huázhēn’s treatise) (Gianninoto, 2014b: 58–59; Peyraube & Xiao, forthcoming; Uchida, 2017). Concluding Remarks

The 19th century witnessed a significant development of Western language studies on Chinese dialectology. While the first works on Chinese vernaculars were compiled by Catholic missionaries during the late Ming period, it was in the late Qing period that a rich linguistic documentation (dictionaries, grammars, primers) of Chinese vernaculars appeared, mainly due to Protestant missionaries and linked to the increasing presence of foreigners in southern and south-eastern China. It is worth stressing that most of these works provided comparisons between standard and local languages, as well as among local varieties. These works, which represent important sources for studies in historical linguistics and Chinese dialectology, can also be analyzed from the perspectives of history of linguistics and history of language learning, focusing on the analytical categories and the pedagogical approaches they used to describe these vernaculars for Western learners. Edkins’ grammar of Shanghainese can be considered a representative example of this production of Western missionary works on Chinese varieties. This pioneering work in the description of Shanghai vernacular has made an important contribution to the development of missionary dialectology. It is also an important work in the history of the Chinese grammar studies, largely integrating

Linguistic Variation in Late Qing Western Sources  51

Chinese philological sources and combining Western and Chinese ­linguistic concepts and analytical categories. Furthermore, from a socio-­ linguistic point of view, it is worth stressing that one of the most important 19th Western studies on Chinese grammar was dedicated to a local variety. Notes (1) In the body of the text, the pīnyīn transcription, i.e. the official transcription system adopted in the People’s Republic of China, is used. The original transcriptions are maintained in the quotations. The traditional forms of Chinese characters are used for quoting all imperial sources (precedent to the adoption of the simplified forms). Otherwise, for contemporary sources, the choice between traditional and simplified forms of the characters is determined by the source itself. (2) Shanghainese is the most prominent member of the Wú 吴 group, which is the ‘second largest Sinitic language after the Northern Chinese group’ (Chappell, 2001). ‘Wu area covers nearly 140,000 square kilometers with about 70 million speakers’ (Zhengzhang & Zheng, 2015: 189). On the status on Shanghainese as a variety of the Wú group, see also Feng (Chapter 4). (3) This work has recently been translated into Chinese by Qián Nǎiróng 钱乃荣 and Tián Jiājiā 田佳佳 under the title of Shànghǎi fāngyán kǒuyǔ yǔfǎ 上海方言口语语 法 (published in 2011 by the Wàiyǔ jiàoxué yǔ yánjiū chūbǎnshè 外语教学与研究出 版社). (4) The analysis of transcription systems goes beyond the purposes of the present paper. On this topic, see Raini (2010). (5) According to Jesuits’ ‘top-down’ conversion strategy, ‘the conversion of the masses should follow the conversion of the emperor and literati officials’ (Klöter, 2011: 38). The Jesuits followed an accommodationist approach and ‘adapted themselves to the lifestyle and etiquette of the Confucian elite of literati and officials’ (Standaert, 1999: 352). (6) According to Chappell and Peyraube (2006: 976), this work was compiled by the Dominican Melchior de Mançano (1580–?1630). This attribution is called into question by Klöter (2011: 6–8, 41), who considers that Melchior de Mançano ‘may have signed the Arte as a sign of approval for usage, or as the owner of the manuscript’. (7) The best-known member of the Yuè 粤 group. The description of Chinese dialect groups is not included in the present paper. On the history, classification and geographical distribution of Sinitic languages, see Chappell (2001). See Paternicò (2017) for a detailed account of Western sources on Cantonese. (8) Beside Edkins’ A Grammar of Colloquial Chinese, as Exhibited in the Shanghai Dialect ([1853] 1868) and A Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect (1869), we can quote works due to French Jesuit missionaries, such as the Dictionnaire français-chinois, dialecte de Chang-hai, Song-kiang, etc. (2 vols, 1894), by P. Rabouin (1828–1896) and the Petit dictionnaire français-chinois, dialecte de Chang-hai (1905) by C. Pétillon. (9) For instance, the Anglo-Chinese Manual with Romanized Colloquial in the Amoy Dialect (Canton, 1853) by E. Doty and the Chinese-English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy, with the Principal Variations of the Chang-Chew and Chin-Chew Dialects (London: Trübner & Co., 1873) by C. Douglas. (10) We can quote An Alphabetic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Foochow Dialect (Fuzhou: Methodist Episcopal Mission Press, 1870), by R.S. Maclay and C.C. Baldwin; the Manual of the Foochow Dialect (1871) by C.C. Baldwin and An English-Chinese Dictionary of the Foochow Dialect (1891) by T.B. Adam.

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(11) Among the sources on the Ningbo dialect, we can quote An Anglo-Chinese Vocabulary of the Ningpo Dialect (Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1876) by W.T. Morrison, The Ningpo Syllabary (Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1901) and the Ningpo Colloquial Handbook (Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1910) both by P.G. von Möllendorff (1847–1901). (12) The first work devoted to this variety was Het Loeh-Foeng-Dialect (Leiden, 1897) by S.H. Schaank. On Basel Mission works on Hakka, see Lamarre (2002) and Chappell and Lamarre (2005). (13) For instance, the Handbook of the Swatow Dialect with a Vocabulary (Shanghai, 1877) by H.A. Giles, the First Lessons in the Swatow Dialect (Swatow: Swatow Printing Office Company, 1878) and A Pronouncing and Defining Dictionary of the Swatow Dialect, Arranged According to Syllables and Tones (Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission, 1883), both by Adele M. Fielde. (14) J. Edkins wrote on diverse topics: among the titles of his works we find, for instance, Chinese Buddhism: a Volume of Sketches, Historical, Descriptive, and Critical (London: Trübner & Company, 1880), Opium: Historical Note (American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1898), The Revenue and Taxation of the Chinese Empire (Presbyterian Mission Press, 1903) and Banking and Prices in China (Presbyterian Mission Press, 1905). (15) On this point, see Pǔ (1996). (16) This definition refers to the verb as connecting subject and object. According to Peyrabe and Xiao’s (forthcoming) translation of Bì’s example: ‘If we say wén chuán shì (the text has been transmitted through several generations), wén (text) is the subject, shì (generation) the complement and chuán (transmit) connects the two’. (17) Uchida (2017: 98) proposes a slightly different, more literal translation of Bì’s text: ‘verbs are used to link what comes before with what comes after […] Verbs are also used to write down one person’s activities’.

References Auroux, S. (1989) Introduction: Émergence et domination de la grammaire comparée [Introduction: Emergence and prevalence of comparative grammar]. In S. Auroux (ed) Histoire des idées linguistiques : l’hégémonie du comparatisme [History of Linguistic Ideas: The Hegemony of Comparativism] (pp. 9–22). Brussels: Mardaga. Branca-Rosoff, S. (1989) Normes et dialects [Norms and dialects]. In S. Auroux (ed.) Histoire des idées linguistiques : l’hégémonie du comparatisme [History of Linguistic Ideas: The Hegemony of Comparativism] (pp. 45–53). Brussels: Mardaga. Branner, D.P. (1997) Notes on the beginnings of systematic dialect description and comparison in Chinese. Historigraphia linguistica [Linguistic Historiography] XXIV (3), 235–266. Brockey, L.M. (2008) Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579‒1724. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chappell, H. (2001) Synchrony and diachrony of Sinitic languages: A brief history of Chinese dialects. In H. Chappell (ed) Sinitic Grammar: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives (pp. 3–28). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chappell, H. and Lamarre, C. (2005) A Grammar and Lexicon of Hakka: Historical Materials from the Basel Mission Library. Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Chappell, H. and Peyraube, A. (2006) The diachronic syntax of causative structures in Early Modern Southern Min. In D. Ho (ed) Festschrift for Ting Pang-Hsin (pp. 973– 1011). Taipei: Academia Sinica. Chappell, H. and Peyraube, A. (2014) The history of Chinese grammar in Chinese and Western scholarly tradition. Language & History 57 (2), 107–136.

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Coblin, S.W. (2000) A brief history of Mandarin. Journal of the American Oriental Society 120 (4), 537–552. Covell, R. (1998) Edkins, Joseph. In G.H. Anderson (ed.) Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions (pp. 194–195). New York: Macmillan. Coblin, S.W. (2003) A sample of eighteenth century spoken Mandarin from North China. Cahiers de linguistique - Asie Orientale 32 (2), 195–244. Edkins, J. ([1853] 1868) A Grammar of Colloquial Chinese: As Exhibited in the Shanghai Dialect (2nd edn). Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press. Edkins, J. ([1857] 1864) A Grammar of the Chinese Colloquial Language Commonly Called the Mandarin Dialect (2nd edn). Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press. Edkins, J. ([1862] 1864) Progressive Lessons in the Chinese Spoken Language; with Lists of Common Words and Phrases, and an Appendix containing the Laws of Tones in the Peking Dialect (2nd edn). Shanghai: London Mission Press. Edkins, J. (1869) A Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect. Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press. Gianninoto, M. (2014a) Western grammars of the Chinese language in the 18th and 19th centuries. In V. Kasevich et al. (eds) History of Linguistics 2011 (pp. 53–61). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Gianninoto, M. [莎麗達] (2014b) Shíqī dào shíjiǔ shìjì zhōngwén yǔfǎshū: Zhōng-Xī yǔyánxué chuántǒng de rónghé 十七到十九世纪中文语法书: 中西语言学传统的融合 [Chinese grammars between the 17th and 19th centuries: The interaction between Western and Chinese linguistic traditions], Lìshǐ yǔyánxué yánjiū 历史语言学研究 [Studies in Historical Linguistics]. 8, 255–262. Gu, Y.G. (2008) Chinese. In K. Brown & S. Ogilvie (eds) Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World (pp. 213–220). Amsterdam, Oxford: Elsevier. Guō, C.T. 郭成韬 (ed) (1998) Zhōngguó gǔdài yǔyánxué míngzhù xuǎndú 中国古代语言 学名著选读 [Selected Texts of Ancient Chinese Linguistics]. Beijing: Zhōngguó rénmín dàxué chūbǎnshè. Handel, Z. (2015) The classification of Chinese: Sinitic (The Chinese language family). In W.S.Y. Wang and C.F. Sun (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics (pp. 34–44). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harbsmeier, C. (1998) Language and Logic. Science and Civilization in China (Vol. VII: 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hé, Q.X. [Ka Gunʾyū ] 何群雄 (2010) 19 Shìjì Jīdūjiào Xīnjiào chuánjiàoshì de hànyǔ yǔfǎxué yánjiū—yǐ Àiyuēsè wéi lì 19 世纪基督教新教传教士的汉语语法学研究—以 艾约瑟为例 [The Study of Chinese Grammar by Protestant Missionaries in the 19th Century: the Case of Joseph Edkins] (Ruǎn X. 阮星 and Zhèng M. J. 郑梦娟 transl.). Chángjiāng xuéshù 长江学术 [Yangtze River Academic], n. 1. Hú, Q.G. 胡奇光 (1987) Zhōngguó xiǎoxué shǐ 中国小学史 [History of Chinese Linguistics]. Shanghai: Shànghǎi rénmín chūbǎnshè. Kataoka, S. and Lee, C. (2008) A system without a system: Cantonese romanization used in Hong Kong place and personal names. Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics 11 (1), 79−98. Klöter, H. (2011) The Language of the Sangleys: A Chinese Vernacular in Missionary Sources of the Seventeenth Century. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Klöter, H. (2017) ‘What is correct Chinese?’ Revisited. In I. Tieken-Boon van Ostade and C. Percy (eds) Prescription and Tradition in Language: Establishing Standards across Time and Space (pp. 57–70). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Lamarre, C. (2002) Early Hakka corpora held by the Basel Mission Library: An introduction. Cahiers de linguistique -Asie Orientale 31 (1), 71–104. Latourette, K.S. ([1929] 1970) A History of Christian Missions in China. Taipei: Ch’engwen.

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Lǐ, Z. 李真 (2011) Zǎoqí lái Huá Yēsūhuìshì duì hànyǔ guānhuà yǔfǎ de yánjiū yǔ gòngxiàn— yǐ Wèi kuāng guó, Mǎruòsè wéi zhōngxīn 早期来华耶稣会士对汉语官话语法的研究 与贡献—以卫匡国、马若瑟为中心 [The Contribution of Early Jesuits to the Study of Mandarin Grammar: Focusing on M. Martini and J. de Prémare]. Wakumon 或問 20, 59–67. Linn, A. (2013) Vernaculars and the Idea of a Standard Language. In K. Allan (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics (pp. 359–374). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Luó, C.P. 罗常培 (1930) Yēsūhuìshì zài yīnyùnxué shàng de gòngxiàn 耶稣会士在音韵学 上的贡献 [The Contribution of Jesuits to Phonology]. Zhōngyāng yánjiùyuàn lìshǐ yǔyán yánjiūsuǒ jíkān 中央研究院历史语言研究所集刊 [Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Linguistics of Academia Sinica] 1 (3), 267–388. Marshman, J. (1814) Elements of Chinese Grammar, With a Preliminary Dissertation on the Characters, and the Colloquial Medium of the Chinese, and an Appendix Containing the Ta-hyoh of Confucius with a Translation. Serampore: Mission Press. Martini, M. (Bertuccioli G. ed. and transl.) (1998) Martino Martini S.J. Opera Omnia [Complete Collection of Martino Martini’s Works], vol. II: Opere minori [Minor works]. Trento: Università degli Studi di Trento. Masini, F. (1993) The Formation of Modern Chinese Lexicon and its Evolution Toward a National Language: The Period from 1840 to 1898. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, Monograph VI. Berkeley: Cambridge University Press. Masini, F. (2000) Materiali lessicografici sulla lingua cinese redatti dagli occidentali fra ‘500 e ‘600: i dialetti del Fujian [Lexicographic materials on the Chinese language written by Westerners between the 16th and the 17th century]. Cina [China] 28, 53–79. McLelland, N. (2017) Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages. A History of Language Education, Assessment and Policy in Britain. London and New York: Routledge. Norman, J. (1988) Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paternicò, L.M. (2013) When the Europeans Began to Study Chinese. Martino Martini’s Grammatica Linguae Sinensis. Leuven Chinese Studies XXIV. Leuven: Leuven University Press. Paternicò, L.M. (2017) Studiare il Punti: I materiali linguistici per l’apprendimento della lingua cantonese compilati a cavallo tra XIX e XX secolo [Learning the Punti: Cantonese language learning materials between the 19th and the 20th century]. In T. Pellin and G. Trentin (eds) Atti del XV Convegno AISC [Proceedings of the 15th Conference of the Italian Association of Chinese Studies] (pp. 223–243). Venice: Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina. Pellin, T. (2009) Lessico grammaticale in Cina (1859–1924) [The Chinese Grammatical Lexicon]. Milan: Franco Angeli. Peyraube, A. (2000) Le rôle du savoir linguistique dans l’éducation et la société chinoise [The role of linguistic knowledge in Chinese society and education]. In S. Auroux et al. (eds) History of the Language Sciences: An International Handbook on the Evolution of the Study of Language from the Beginnings to the Present (pp. 55–57). Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Peyraube, A. and Xiao L. (forthcoming) Bazin, Edkins and Bi Huazhen’s Yǎnxù cǎotáng bǐjì (Notes on the abundant heritage of the thatched cottage). In B. Meisterernest (ed.) When the West Met the East: Early Accounts of the Languages of the Sinophere and their Impact on the History of Chinese Linguistics. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. de Prémare, J.-H. (1831) Notitia linguae sinicae [An Examination of the Chinese Language]. Malacca: Cura Academia Anglo-Sinensis. Pǔ, Y. H. 朴允河 (1996) Lùn Àiyuēsè (J. Edkins) de Shànghǎi fāngyīn yánjiū 論艾約瑟 (J. Edkins) 的上海方音研究 [Joseph Edkins’ studies on Shangainese phonology]. PhD dissertation, Guólì Táiwān Shīfàn dàxué guówén yánjiūsuǒ, Taipei.

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Raini, E. (2010) Sistemi di romanizzazione del cinese mandarino nei secoli xvi-xviii [Romanization systems of Mandarin Chinese during the 16th and 17th centuries]. Unpublished PhD. dissertation, Sapienza-Università di Roma, Rome. Ramsey, R.S. (1987) The Languages of China. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Söderblom Saarela, M. (2020) The Early Modern Travels of Manchu: A Script and Its Study in East Asia and Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Standaert, N. (1999) Jesuit Corporate culture as shaped by the Chinese. In J.W. O’Malley et al. (eds) The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540-1773 (Vol. 1) (pp. 352– 363). Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press. Uchida, K. (2017) A Study of Cultural Interaction and Linguistic Contact: Approaching Chinese from the Periphery. Goettinghen: V&R. Wáng L. 王力 (1996) Zhōngguó yǔyánxué shǐ 中國語言學史 [History of Chinese Linguistics], Taipei: Wǔnán túshū. Wang, W.S.-Y. (1989) Language in China: A chapter in the history of linguistics. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 17 (2), 183–222. Zhao, L. and Liu, H. (2020) (Standard) language ideology and regional Putonghua in Chinese social media: a view from Weibo. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2020.1814310 Zhengzhang, S. and Zheng, W. (2015) Wu Dialect. In W.S-Y. Wang and C.F. Sun (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics (pp. 189–202). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zhōu J. 周荐 (1995) Hànyǔ cíhuì yánjiū shǐgāng 汉语词汇研究史纲 [An Historical Outline of Chinese Lexical Studies]. Beijing: Yǔwén chūbǎnshè. Zimmermann, K. (2014) Translation for colonization and christianization: The practice of the bilingual edition of Bernardino de Sahagún. In O. Zwartjes et al. (eds) Missionary Linguistics V: Translation Theories and Practices (pp. 85–112). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Zwartjes, O. (2011) Portuguese Missionary Grammars in Asia, Africa and Brazil, 1550– 1800. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

3 Teaching Mandarin Pronunciation to Mongolian Learners in Early Republican Period China: The Case of the Mongolian Han Original Sounds of the Five Regions (Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin, 蒙漢合璧五方元音) Jiaye (Jenny) Wu

Introduction

This chapter examines an early example of materials used for teaching Mandarin Chinese to non-native speakers in Inner Mongolia. It is thus, like Gianninoto’s study of Edkins’ grammar of Shanghainese (this volume), a contribution to the history of how varieties of Chinese have been codified and presented to learners. In this case, the work is aimed not at foreigners, but at the Mongolian ethnic group within the empire of China. In the early 20th-century text that I examine here, the focus is on describing the pronunciation of Mandarin at a time when norms for pronunciation were still emerging, with competition between Beijing-based (Northern) and Nanjing-based (Southern) norms. The chapter is also an early insight into introducing Mandarin Chinese to minority ethnic groups, a once niche activity that has expanded greatly over the past century, ultimately leading to the development of the so-called MHK test of Chinese proficiency for minorities (Minzu Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi) ­discussed by Luo (this volume). 56

Teaching Mandarin Pronunciation to Mongolian Learners in China  57

The standard language ideology, as a modern Western concept originating from the 18th-century nationalist movement in Europe, is largely assumed to apply to the written language, while there was no strict rule for pronunciation (Milroy, 2007: 134). Chinese language standardization, which began at the turn of the 20th century, was also initiated in tandem with nationalism, but, in contrast, standardizing pronunciation was accorded the same importance as the written form. This process begins with the phonetic Chinese movement (1892–1900) and simplified characters movement (1900–1911), launched by the reformers and intellectuals who called for an alphabetical writing system in order to increase the national literacy rate against the background of the first Sino-Japanese war in 1894, when China had been heavily defeated by Japan. The logographicity of the writing system in all its complexity was associated by reformers at the time with the backwardness of the country compared with the phonetic alphabets of Western countries. Within the attempts to develop new Chinese phonetic characters in the early 20th century, a number of problems were confronted by scholars trying to deal with the task. The first problem was the diversity of the Chinese language: What was the ‘standard’ Chinese pronunciation upon which it should be based? Was it to be a single dialect or a number of representative dialects integrated in a comprehensive fashion, as an ecumenical standard (a term borrowed from Weng, 2018)? Until the 20th century, the concept of a standard pronunciation in China was rather vague since the standard was more of an attitudinal stance on what was supposed to be the standard language in a refined society or a koiné for practical purposes of interdialectal communication (Chen, 1999: 12). In the history of Mandarin Chinese, there are two main different pronunciation ‘standards’ for different purposes: the literary reading pronunciation for poetic reasons in civic exams and a vernacular spoken pronunciation for practical official communication since the Ming dynasty (1368–1644 AD) (Kaske, 2008: 47). The Mandarin rhyme dictionaries, a tradition dating back to ancient China (ca. 601AD), provided a guide to the literary reading pronunciation. In their codification of how to pronounce the characters in these dictionaries, compilers needed to consider both temporal differences (continuity with previous influential rhyme dictionaries) and regional differences (southern Mandarin versus northern Mandarin). Therefore, the literary reading pronunciation as recorded in the rhyme dictionaries is actually a mixed ‘standard’. In terms of the vernacular spoken pronunciation, Coblin (2000: 33) points out that the phonological basis of Mandarin shifted from Nanjing-based southern Mandarin to the Beijingbased northern Mandarin from the mid-1800s, 430 years after the move of the political centre from the old capital Nanjing in the Jiang-Huai area to the northern capital, Beijing. The British diplomat and sinologist Herbert A. Giles, in his Chinese–English dictionary published in 1892, for example, defined Mandarin as ‘the language of the district in which the court is

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situated; in former times, that of Nanking; in modern times, that of Beijing’. However, the Nanjing-based Jiang-Huai Mandarin still remained a prestigious southern Mandarin dialect. Even in 1907, the customs officer and scholar Karl Hemeling (1878–1925) commented that Nanjing Mandarin was ‘no longer a serious rival for supremacy of that of Peking’ but ‘retains a certain superiority over its sister “Mandarin” dialects, on account of, in some respects, purer and more consistent preservation of the old Chinese pronunciation’ (Hemeling, 1907: 2, cited from Kaske, 2008: 415). Aside from the choice of norm, a second problem was how to present the sounds to language learners. Should they adopt the traditional so-called cutand-splice quasi spelling (fanqie, 反切) (based on the term being translated by Mair, 1992), a method that defined any character’s pronunciation by matching it to two other, reference characters, one with the same initial sound and one with the same final?1 Should they borrow the Romanization system being developed by Western missionaries? Should they render Chinese pronunciation into transliterations of other alphabetic writing systems such as Manchu and Mongolian? All of these approaches had their advantages and disadvantages. One major weakness in the homegrown fanqie approach was that it could not dictate the exact sound of each character, but rather only the degrees of similarity between abstract categories of character rhymes. While this was helpful in composing rhyming poetry, it remained ineffective for teaching oral communication (Weng, 2018: 620). This limitation had become clear as early as the 16th century, when Western missionaries began to operate in China and the learning and teaching of Chinese became a major priority for them as they sought to transmit Christianity and Western knowledge. Efforts to Romanize Chinese scripts were made, instead, using the spelling conventions of languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French. The British missionary Robert Morrison (1782–1834) first devised an orthographically English-based system to transcribe spoken Chinese. Coblin (2003b) examined the system in Morrison’s dictionary (Morrison, 1815–1823), focusing on syllable initials, finals and tones, seeking clues about the pronunciation of early 19th-century standard Chinese. Coblin concluded that the type of Chinese pronunciation Morrision used as his point of reference was that of a Nanjing dialect (Southern China). In fact, transcribing the Chinese language into alphabetic writing systems has a longer tradition than these Western Romanization systems. Already in 1269, the Yuan emperor Kublai Khan had thought to charge the Tibetan Lama ‘Phagas-pa with creating a script that could be implemented as an official system to render Chinese and other major languages of the Mongolian empire into one and the same script (Cassel, 2015: 38). In the Qing dynasty (1636–1912), the Manchu alphabet was the major imperial form used to transliterate Chinese characters. Coblin (2003a) analyzed the Manchu transcriptional forms for the Chinese dialogues in a Manchu primer An Introduction to Manchu (Qingwen Qimeng, 清文启蒙) published in 1730, compiled by Uge Seoping (Wu-ge shouping, 舞格寿平)

Teaching Mandarin Pronunciation to Mongolian Learners in China  59

(1633–1690), examining the phonological, lexical and syntactic features of the language, and concluded that the Chinese presented in the textbook is a ‘general’ Mandarin which is a mixture of the standard southern Ming/ Qing Mandarin (based on Nanjing pronunciation), received northern koiné varieties, and local northern dialects of Beijing (Coblin, 2003a: 239). Based on Wade and Hillier’s (1886) textbook for English-speaking learners, Cassel (2015) has shown that the Wade–Giles system, the first to Romanize Chinese based on the Beijing vernacular, has a Manchu origin, because forms of Manchu transliterations can be seen to have been borrowed in the English counterpart. For example, in the preface, Wade and Hillier (1886: 6) stated ‘In the final ao I have followed the Manchu spelling, against Morrison and Williams, who write aou, áu’. Despite these advances in our understanding, few studies have yet explored how standard Mandarin pronunciation was presented in materials for ethnic minority learners in the past century before a series of linguistic standardization efforts regarding pronunciation was launched in 1913 (Weng, 2018: 12). This study seeks to help fill that gap, therefore, by analyzing how one such text, the Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin, modified Fan Tengfeng’s (樊腾凤) rhyme dictionary the Original Sounds of the Five Regions (Wufang Yuanyin), originally compiled between 1654 and 1664, to suit the needs of Mongolian learners of Mandarin Chinese, and in doing so adapted the fanqie approach to a second-language learning context. Below, I examine the Mongolian transliterations of the Chinese characters, specifically considering: what was presented to Mongolian learners as correct; how Khaisan chose between the Beijing-based northern Mandarin as the potential lingua franca of his time and the prestigious Nanjing-based southern Mandarin and how Mandarin pronunciation was transcribed, using the Mongolian transliteration alphabet. My research shows that Khaisan glosses the Mandarin pronunciation in a way that suggests his model was an eclectic pronunciation, mainly based on the Beijing-based northern Mandarin, but with some features from Nanjing-based Southern Mandarin, and some forms influenced by Manchurian transcriptions. The Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin, its Author and its Source A profile of Khaisan (1862/1863–1917)

The Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin was compiled by a Mongolian nobleman, Khaisan in 1912 and published in 1917 in Beijing. Khaisan was born around 1862 in Kharchin, Inner Mongolia, to a wealthy Mongolian family (Onon & Pritchatt, 1989: 120; Tatsuo, 1980: 108); a photographic portrait of him can be seen in Figure 3.1. Later in his life, he worked as the Kharchin ‘right banner’2 official in north-eastern Inner Mongolia and representative of the Khalkh (the largest Mongolian group in Mongolia), stationed in Beijing. Little is known about Khaisan’s own Chinese learning

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Figure 3.1  Portrait of Khaisan Source: Image reproduced from Meng Han ho pi wu fang yüan yin, held at the Ancient India and Iran Trust, Cambridge, UK.

experience, though rather more about his leading role in the Mongolian independence movement in 1911 (e.g. Onon & Pritchatt, 1989; Tatsuo, 1980). In other words, he is more frequently studied as a Mongolian nationalist than as a linguist or a language educator. However, these studies can still provide some clues to the linguistic background of Khaisan. According to the memoir of the Mongolian revolutionary writer G. Navaannamjil (1968) (cited in Onon & Pritchatt’s (1989: 122) study of the 1911 Mongolian independence revolution), Khaisan became the righthand man of Da Lam Tserenchimed in planning the task of achieving Mongolian independence from the Manchu empire, because he had mastered political affairs but also because he knew the Manchu, Chinese and Mongolian languages fluently. Khaisan reported in his own work that he had learned Chinese for 14 years and followed eight teachers (see Khaisan, 1917: 8). In later life, Khaisan made Vice-President of the Bureau of

Teaching Mandarin Pronunciation to Mongolian Learners in China  61

Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs and the high rank of beise3 (贝子) by Yuan Shikai in 1917 but passed away the same year in Beijing. Contemporary evidence suggests that Khaisan’s Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin was a very important Mandarin learning textbook for Mongolian learners in the Republican period. A preface by Prince Gungsungnorbu, who had been appointed President of the Bureau of Mongolian and Tibetan affairs in 1912, precedes Khaisan’s own preface to the work. In his preface (pp. 1–2), Gungsungnorbu commended the dictionary highly to Mongolian learners of Chinese. It could be inferred from this that the dictionary was likely used in the Mongolian Tibetan school in Beijing, which Gungsungnorbu’s bureau received approval to build in 1913, and which provided stipends for Mongolian and Tibetan students to study. The dictionary was still being advertized in 1932 at the front-end paper of the fourth volume of a Han-Mongolian bilingual textbook series issued by the Ministry of Education for primary school Mongolian students. This indicates that the dictionary was at least still in print two decades since its first publication. However, we have no information about how large the print run was. The Source of Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin

Khaisan wrote in his preface that his dictionary was based on Fan Tengfeng’s (樊腾凤, 1601–1664) Original Sounds of the Five Regions (Wufang Yuanyin, 五方元音), which in turn had modified Lan Mao’s (兰 茂) 1442 rhyme dictionary titled An Introduction to Phonology (Yunlue Yitong, 韵略易通). Fan’s dictionary itself had been expanded by following generations over the period 1700 through 1949 in eight further versions (Li, 2008). Studies of the phonology base of Fan’s Wufang Yuanyin concur that it represents northern Mandarin of the mid-17th century (e.g. Li, 2008; Wang, 1981). Fan categorized the initials of Chinese characters into 20 categories (Table 3.1) and finals into 12 categories (Table 3.2). Please see Tables 3.1 and 3.2 below for more details, and the phonetic values of initials and finals are given following Li’s (2008) study. The 20 initials and 12 finals generate 12 rime tables of final groups in Fan’s dictionary, further subdivided into four groups (Lin, 2001: 31): • ‘Open-mouth finals’ (kaikouhu, 开口呼) that begin with a non-high vowel (i.e., a, e, o), or in other words, they have no [i], [u], [y] in their finals. An example is the word kan, (‘look’, 看). • ‘Close-teeth finals’ (qichihu, 齐齿呼) that begin with the high front unrounded vowel [i], such as the word tian (‘sky’, 天). • ‘Close-mouth finals’ (hekouhu, 合口呼) that begin with the high back rounded vowel [u] such as the word huan (‘happy’, 欢) • ‘Tense-lip finals’ (cuokouhu, 撮口呼) that begin with the high front rounded vowel [y] such as the word xue (‘blood’, 血)

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Table 3.1  List of 20 initials of Fan’s Wufang Yuanyin The initials of Fan’s Wufang yuanyin (1841–1913) Initial (with pinyin transliteration)

Phonetic value

梆 b(ang)

[p]

匏 p(ao)

[pʰ]

木 m(u)

[m]

風 f(eng)

[f]

斗 d(ou)

[t]

土 t(u)

[tʰ]

鳥 n(iao)

[n]

雷 l(ei)

[l]

竹 zh(u)

[tʂ]

虫 ch(ong)

[tʂʰ]

石 sh(i)

[ʂ]

日 r(i)

[ɽ]

剪 j(ian)

[ts]

鵲 q(ue)

[tsʰ]

系 x(i)

[s]

雲 y(un)

zero initial

金 j(in)

[k]

橋 q(iao)

[kʰ]

火 h(uo)

[x]

蛙 w(a)

zero initial

Source: Adapted from Li (2008: 81–82).

When compared to the 1728 edition of Fan’s dictionary, we can see that Khaisan strictly followed Fan’s groupings and character segmentations, but with a few changes. Some characters in Fan’s version were substituted with other characters of the same pronunciation. For example, the word ‘lie’ (騙, pian) in Fan’s dictionary is replaced with ‘piece’ (片, pian) in Khaisan’s dictionary although we do not know why this substitution was made. One of Khaisan’s own innovations was to provide written Mongolian transliterations below each character segmentation to help Mongolian learners with the exact Chinese pronunciation (see Row E and Row K in Figure 3.2). Within the 12 rime tables, the Chinese characters with the same segmentation share the same Mongolian transliteration, even if their tones are different, as there is no tone system in Mongolian. For example, the four characters 偏 ‘bias’, 便 ‘convenient’, 騙 ‘to lie/cheat’ and 片 ‘piece’, in squares A3 to D3, belong to the 匏 p(ao) initial group

Teaching Mandarin Pronunciation to Mongolian Learners in China  63

Table 3.2  List of 12 finals of Fan’s Wufang Yuanyin The finals of Fan’s Wufang Yuanyin (1841–1913) Finals (with pinyin transliteration)

Phonetic value

天 (t)ian

[an], [ian], [uan], [yan]

人 (r)en

[ən], [in], [un], [yn]

龍 (l)ong

[əŋ], [iŋ], [uŋ], [yŋ]

羊 (y)ang

[aŋ], [iaŋ], [uaŋ]

牛 (n)iu

[ou], [iou]

獒 ao

[au], [iau]

虎 (h)u

[u]

駝 (t)uo

[o], [io], [uo]

蛇 (sh)e

[iɛ], [yɛ]

馬 (m)a

[a], [ia], [ua]

豺 (ch)ai

[ai], [iai], [uai]

地 (d)i

[ɪ̈ ], [i], [uei], [y]

Source: Adapted from Li (2008: 85–86).

and 天 (t)ian final group and hence are all pronounced as ‘p+ian = pian’ and share the Mongolian script ᠫᠢᠶᠠᠨ (piyan, phonemically /pijan/). The above examples show that Khaisan presented Mandarin pronunciation in a way that would better support the Mongolian learners with the Mongolian transliterations. Khaisan’s Mongolian Transliterations of Chinese Characters and Sounds

One of the major challenges facing Khaisan at the time was transliteration of Mandarin pronunciation. He chose to do this using in classical Mongolian script, today also known as the ‘Old Script’. An adaption of the Semitic script used by the Ancient Uighurs in the 13th century, it still serves as an official script in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region in China.4 Generally, written Mongolian from the early 20th century can be viewed as modern Mongolian, although some slight changes, including standardizing orthographical and morphological simplifications, have been made since 1949 (Bao, 1980: 77). 5 Mongolian script has a fully alphabetic system of writing, with separate letters for both consonants and vowels, and it is written vertically from top to bottom. However, because of the diversity of Mongolian dialects, the actual pronunciation by native Mongolian speakers varies. For example, ᠴᠠᠭᠠᠨ (‘white’) could be transliterated as chagan but variously pronounced as [tsaga:n] in

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Figure 3.2  The 天 (t)ian final group; the characters heading the first 10 initial groups (of 20 in total) can be seen along the top Source: Khaisan (1917: 12).

Khalkha, [tʃaga:n] in Inner Mongolia and [saga:n] in Buryat (Bayasgalan, 2016: 31). Khaisan’s Mongolian transliterations function in a similar way to Romanization systems developed by missionaries. Xiao (2011) transcribed Khaisan’s Mongolian transliterations into pinyin. However, for the purposes of phonological analysis in this study, I have transcribed the Mongolian using the Romanization conventions widely used in linguistic works on Mongolian (e.g. Qinggeertai et al., 1999: 27; Svantesson et al., 2005: 41). Qinggeertai et al.’s (1999) Mongolian-Han dictionary served as

Teaching Mandarin Pronunciation to Mongolian Learners in China  65

my reference for the transcriptions; the corresponding International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcription is given between slashes //. Before proceeding to the detailed phonological analysis, one caveat needs to be stated. The IPA transcriptions are at the level of underlying phonemic representation rather than the surface phonetic representation, because we lack the details of how to pronounce the Mongolian scripts in textbooks. For example, the Mongolian word ᠮᠥᠷᠢ (‘horse’) can be transliterated as and spoken as [mœr] in Khorchin dialect in Inner Mongolia (Bayasgalan, 2016: 32). That is, while the Mongolian letter ᠥ o is transcribed phonemically as /o/, the actual spoken sound may vary regionally. In the following subsections, I present a detailed analysis of Khaisan’s Mongolian transliterations. I show where Khaisan’s transliterations diverge from Fan’s original categorization and highlight key differences between the Beijing-based northern Mandarin and Nanjing-based southern Mandarin in Khaisan’s time. I first examine how Khaisan treats syllable initials, looking in particular at the cases of zero initial, retroflex fricatives and affricates, and palatalization. I then examine finals and, lastly, tones. The analysis shows that Khaisan seems to follow a mixed literary reading pronunciation, mainly based on Beijing-based northern Mandarin, but with some features of Nanjing-based southern Mandarin and with influence from some Manchurian spellings of Mandarin. Variation in Initials: The Case of Zero Initial vs. Velar Nasal Initial

The list of Mandarin initials and Khaisan’s transcription of them in Mongolian included is shown in Table S3.1 in the appendix to this c­ hapter. Khaisan seems to have followed Beijing Mandarin to transcribe some characters of the 蛙 w(a) initial group, which originally also have openmouth vowels in Middle Chinese during Sui (591–619) and Tang (618– 907) dynasties, with initial zero, such as ᠠᠢ ai/ai/ (‘love’, 愛, ai), ᠡ e/ə/ (‘hungry’, 餓, e) and ᠧᠥ eo/əo/ (‘I’, 我, wo). They present similar pronunciation to Beijing Mandarin, as presented in Wang’s (1921) dictionary, published within a few years of Khaisan’s 1917 dictionary. In contrast, corresponding readings of /ai/, /ə/, /əo/ in Southern Mandarin have a velar nasal initial ŋ. For example, according to Coblin (2003b: 345), Morrison’s 1815 textbook that follows a southern Mandarin pronunciation based loosely in the Nanjing area, glossed the word ‘hungry’ (餓) as /ŋɔ/. Today, velar nasal initial ŋ is still used in Southern dialects of China, including Wu, Canton and Hakka (e.g. Shen, 2006: 85). But it should also be noted that there is no obvious Mongolian letter to transcribe an initial nasal, since the Mongolian nasal ᠡᠭ ng /ŋ/ can only be used in the finals of Mongolian syllables.

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Table 3.3  List of initial retroflex sounds and Khaisan’s transliterations Initial

Khaisan’s Mongolian transliteration

Romanized Mongolian transliteration

IPA

[tʂ] as in 竹 zh(u)

ᠵ

j̆

/dʒ/

ᡁ

zh

/tʂ/

ᠴ

c̆

/tʃ/

ᡂ

ch

/tʂʰ/

ᠱ

š

/ʃ/

[tʂʰ] as in 虫 ch(ong)

[ʂ] as in 石 sh(i)

Retroflex Fricatives and Affricates

If we turn to examine the retroflex sounds, we can see that Khaisan also followed Beijing Mandarin. For the retroflex Mandarin sounds /tʂ/, /tʂʰ/ and /ʂ/ of the groups 竹 zh(u), 虫 ch(ong) and 石 sh(i), respectively, as listed in Table 3.3, Khaisan used the native Mongolian postalveolar affricates ᠵ j̆ /dʒ/, ᠴ c̆/tʃ/ and fricative ᠱ š /ʃ/ as the Mongolian equivalents, as in ᠵᠧᠩ j̆ eng /dʒəŋ/ (‘quarrel’, 争, zheng), ᠴᠦ c̆u /tʃu/ (‘initial’, 初, chu) and ᠱᠢ ši /ʃi/ (‘teacher’, 师, shi). In several cases, Khaisan used the non-native Mongolian letters ᡁ and ᡂ but strictly followed the rule that they are used only when followed by /i/, as in ᡁᠢ zhi /tʂi/ (know, 知) ᡂᠢ chi /tʂʰi/ (eat, 吃). According to Coblin (2003a), the three words, ‘quarrel’ (争), ‘initial’ (初) and ‘teacher’ (师), were presented with the initials of /tʂ/, /tʂʰ/ and /ʂ/, respectively, in the Beijing Mandarin textbook for English speakers compiled by Edkins (1864a, 1864b) and Parker’s materials (dates from 1870; cited from Coblin, 2003a: 200), and we find the same in Wang’s (1921) dictionary of Beijing Mandarin. However, according to Coblin the same words had been transcribed with dental sibilants initials /ts/, /tsˈ/ and /s/ in southern Mandarin-based textbooks compiled by Varo (1703), Prémare (1730) and Morrison (1815–1823). Similarly, the corresponding Mandarin initials in the imperially commissioned Manchu primer Qingwen Qimeng (1730) are transcribed as dz, ts, s or š, following the southern readings of the 18th century (Coblin, 2003a: 200). However, no dental sibilant equivalents are found in Khaisan’s Mongolian transcription of the three groups under discussion. Therefore, it seems more likely that Khaisan follows the retroflex of Beijing-based Mandarin rather than the sibilant counterpart in southern Mandarin. Both /dʒ/, /tʃ/, /ʃ/ and retroflex /tʂ/, /tʂʰ/, /ʂ/ involve articulation in the postalveolar place, and no dental sibilants are included in the corresponding Mongolian transcription. Palatalization

In the area of palatalization, Khaisan included linguistic features from both Beijing Mandarin and Nanjing Mandarin. Both the originally

Teaching Mandarin Pronunciation to Mongolian Learners in China  67

sibilant initials /ts, tsʰ, s/ and the originally velar-laryngeal initials /k, kʰ, x/have been palatalized by their following vowels /i/, /y/ into /tɕ, tɕʰ, ɕ/ in modern standard Mandarin. However, the distinction between sibilant and velar initials is maintained in the artificial phonology of Beijing opera and in many southern dialects of Chinese, including Nanjing Mandarin (Branner, 2006: 220). For example, jian (‘arrow’, 箭) and jian (‘sword’, 剑), which are today pronounced with the same initial /tɕ/ in the Beijing-based standard Mandarin, are pronounced differently in Nanjing-based Mandarin, with the sibilant /ts/ and velar /k/ as initials, respectively. In literary composition, as in Beijing opera, the distinction between sibilant and velar initials not only has an aesthetic function but also helps differentiate words when reciting, given the very succinct, elliptical style of poetry compared with the spoken language. According to Li (2008: 54), the distinction between sibilant and velar initials has been blurry in most northern dialects in China at least since the 18th century. Indeed, the imperially commissioned dictionary Correct Pronunciation of Sibilant and Velar Initials (Yuanyin Zhengkao, 圆音正考), published in 1743 by Xylograph, was intended to help Manchu learners of Mandarin to distinguish the two type of sounds. In Khaisan’s 1917 dictionary, characters with originally sibilant initials appear under the initial groups of 剪/(ts)ian/ 鵲/(tsʰ)yə/ 系/(s)i/. Their contrasting velar initials come under the groups of 金/(k)in/ 橋 /(kʰ)iau/ 火/(x)uə/. This follows the original arrangement of Fan, but Khaisan’s Mongolian transcription presents some differences. The Mandarin sibilant affricate initials /ts/ and /tsʰ/ are spelled with Mongolian palatals letters ᠵ j̆ /dʒ/, ᠴ c̆ /tʃ/. The fricative initial /s/ is spelled using the Mongolian sibilant letter ᠰ s /s/. Meanwhile, all three Mandarin sibilant initials can also be spelled using Mongolian gutturals ᠬᠢ g /g/, ᠬᠢ k /k/ and ᠾ h /x/. The Mandarin velar initials /k/, / kʰ/ and /x/ follow the same pattern as the sibilant initial counterpart, where /k/ and /kʰ/ are spelled using Mongolian palatals ᠵ j̆ /dʒ/, ᠴ c̆ /tʃ/. The Mandarin /x/ is spelled with the Mongolian sibilant ᠰ s /s/. The Mongolian gutturals ᠬᠢ g /g/, ᠬᠢ k /k/ and ᠾ h /x/ also gloss all the Mandarin velar initials. More details can be found in Tables S3.3 and S3.4 in the appendix. Although Fan distinguished the sibilant and velar initials, Khaisan’s use of Mongolian palatals in both sibilant and velar initials categories reflects the trend of palatalization in northern Mandarin. However, the use of Mongolian gutturals to transcribe both the Mandarin sibilant and velar initials seems peculiar, as the sibilant and velar initials either remain distinct or palatalized into /tɕ, tɕʰ, ɕ/. From this perspective, Khaisan does not follow Beijing-based Northern Mandarin, because in his transcription, the distinction between the sibilant and velar initials is merged into palatal initials. On the other hand, it is also not purely Nanjing-based Southern Mandarin, since both sibilant and velar groups are spelled by Khaisan with a mixture of Mongolian sibilants, gutturals and palatals.

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Interestingly, the similar pattern is also reflected in Coblin’s (2003a) study on the 1761 Manchu textbook for Chinese readers Qingwen Qimeng, 6 where Manchu palatals j and c and gutturals g, k, h both appear in sibilant and velar initial group. Comparably, in Wang’s 1921 dictionary of Beijing pronunciation, all the characters of the sibilant and velar groups are to be pronounced as palatals /tɕ, tɕʰ, ɕ/. Considerable similarity between Khaisan’s Mongolian transcription and the Manchu counterpart may suggest that Khaisan chose a Manchu–Chinese pronunciation as his model and probably used this Manchu textbook for Chinese learners. This can possibly be explained by the fact that he himself spoke fluent Manchu. Finals

I turn now to how Khaisan deals with the finals, the second element used to describe the pronunciation of a character and categorized by Khaisan into 12 groups (see Table S3.2 in appendix for details). Like his treatment of velar and sibilant initials, Khaisan’s Mongolian spellings of Mandarin finals show some similarities with Manchurian spellings of Mandarin. For the /y/ vowel in Mandarin, there is no corresponding letter in Mongolian, and Khaisan uses the Mongolian letters ᠵᠦ j̆ u /jʊ/, ᠢᠦ iu /iʊ/ and ᠢᠦᠢ ioi /iɔi/ to transcribe it. He uses /jʊ/, /iʊ/ for the sound in the initial or medial of a syllable, as in yong (‘use’, 用), juan (‘roll’, 卷). The form / iɔi/ is used as the final of a syllable such as ju (‘orange’, 橘), a form parallel to the Manchurian spelling of /y/ (Coblin, 2003a: 214). Approximants such as ‘w’ and ‘j’ are frequently inserted by Khaisan between two vowels in Mongolian transliterations, as a pronunciation aid, as in ᠦᠸᠠ uwa /uwa/ and ᠢᠶᠠ iya /ija/ for the diphthongs /ua/ and /ia/. For example, the Chinese character bian (‘side’, 邊) is pronounced monosyllabically in Mandarin as [pʲæn] but transcribed di-syllabically by Khaisan as ᠪᠢᠶᠠᠨ biyan /bijan/. Equivalent ‘VwV’ and ‘VjV’ transcriptions also appeared in the Manchu transcription of Chinese pronunciation in the 1761 bilingual Manchu–Chinese textbook Qingwen Qimeng (Coblin, 2003a: 205–206), as in for 强 (qiang, ‘powerful’), 缺 (que, ‘lack’) and in the 1743 Manchu–Chinese dictionary Correct Pronunciation of Sibilant and Velar Initials such as in 軒 (xuan, ‘lofty’) (Luo, 2014: 19). Considering the widespread influence of those Manchurian learning materials (see note 6 above), the Manchu transliterations may have left a mark on Khaisan’s Mongolian transliteration. It was noted above that Khaisan’s transcription of Mandarin sibilant and velar initials departs from Fan’s original groupings. The same is true of the vowel finals. Whereas Fan had followed the categories in the Guangyun and grouped them separately, Khaisan merged the finals of the characters under the 蛇 (sh)e group, such as 借 (‘borrow’, jie), 且 (‘and’, qie) and 謝 (‘thank’, xie), with the counterparts 解 (‘solve’, jie), 楷 (‘wood’,

Teaching Mandarin Pronunciation to Mongolian Learners in China  69

jie), 鞋 (‘shoes’, xie) of the 豺 (ch)ai group into ᠢᠶᠧᠢ iyei /ijəi/. This merger is in accord with Beijing Mandarin, where the finals of the two groups have also been merged into /iɜ/ (Ye 2017: 189), as already in the Beijing Mandarin presented in Wang’s (1921) dictionary. By contrast, in Morrison’s (1815–1823) Nanjing Mandarin-based dictionary, the characters of the 蛇 (sh)e and 豺 (ch)ai groups are transcribed with different finals, as ‘EAY’ and ‘EAE’, respectively. Likewise, the historical distinction of the finals for the characters belonging to the 駝 (t)uo and 蛇 (sh)e groups also disappear in Khaisan’s Mongolian transcription, again in contrast to Fan (Li, 2008: 108–109), all sharing the final ᠢᠦᠸᠧᠢ iuei /iʊəi/ in Mongolian spelling. All are /yɛ/in Beijing Mandarin but are spelled differently in Morrison’s dictionary of Nanjing Mandarin, with finals ‘EO’ for the characters of the 蛇 (sh)e group and ‘UE’ for those of the 駝 (t)uo group. It could be concluded that Khaisan followed the new Beijing pronunciation in his time, thus diverging from Fan’s original version, which followed Nanjing Mandarin. The Mongolian spellings of the Mandarin velar nasal finals also differ from Fan’s categories. The characters with initials /p-/, /m-/, /f-/, as in 烹 (‘cook’, peng), 蒙 (‘cover’, meng) and 風 (‘wind’, feng) with close-mouth final as /uŋ/ in Fan’s dictionary (Li, 2008: 100), are transcribed by Khaisan with open-mouth final ᠧᠩ /əŋ/, as in Beijing Mandarin. In contrast, the pronunciation of these characters in Nanjing-based southern Mandarin remained the close-mouth final /uŋ/, to judge by Morrison’s (1815) textbook and Coblin’s (2003b: 350) study of Samuel Wells Williams’ (1896) syllabic dictionary of the Chinese language. Here too it seems Khaisan followed the Beijing Mandarin pronunciation. In yet other regards, Khaisan’s transcription accords with Fan’s version. Khaisan follows Fan by transcribing 拖 (‘drag’, tuo), 多 (‘many’, duo) and 搓 (‘rub’, cuo) with open finals: ᠲᠥ to /tɔ/, ᠳᠥ do /dɔ/ and ᠼᠥ tso /tsɔ/. In contrast, the corresponding new Beijing pronunciation has the closemouth final ‘uo’ (Ye, 2017: 189). In Morrison’s (1815–1823) Nanjing Mandarin-based English–Chinese dictionary, all three characters are still spelled with ‘o’. In this instance, then, Khaisan’s Mongolian spelling agrees with the Nanjing Mandarin variety. To summarize, although Khaisan mainly followed the Beijing Mandarin pronunciation, he also included several linguistic features of Nanjing Mandarin pronunciation in the analysis of both initials and finals. This suggests that the correct Mandarin pronunciation in Khaisan’s eyes address both the communicative and literary aspects. Tones

Let us turn lastly to Khaisan’s discussion of tones. Like Manchu and many Western languages, Mongolian lacks a tone system, so Khaisan was faced with a challenge that others had faced before him. Like Fan, Khaisan

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identified four tones in his introduction: level tone (平, ping), falling-rising tone (上, shang), falling tone (去, qu) and entering tone (入, ru) (now lost in standard Mandarin). In his rime tables, characters are grouped by their tones. For example, in Figure 3.3, we can see that the characters in Row B and C have level tone, which can be further divided into the categories of high-level tone (in Row B) and low-level tone (today’s rising tone) (in Row C). Characters in Row D, E and F have falling-rising tone, falling tone and entering tone, respectively. The only explicit treatment of tones is in a pronunciation tip (Duyinjue, 讀音訣) adapted from the Ming period Buddhist monk Shi Zhenkong (释真空), titled jade key in a versified formula (Yuyaoshigejue, 玉钥匙歌诀), with parallel Mongolian translation. The Chinese version is as follows: 平聲平道莫低昂 上聲高呼猛烈強 去聲哀哀音漸道 入聲短促急收藏

Figure 3.3  The characters of initial groups of 梆 b(ang), 匏 p(ao), 木m(u) Source: Khaisan (1917: 12).

Teaching Mandarin Pronunciation to Mongolian Learners in China  71

Figure 3.4  The palm mnemonic for marking the four tones Source: Adapted from Fan (1841–1913: 3) supplied by the Chinese Text Project (https://ctext.org/zhs)

(‘Level tone is flat and should not be low. Falling-rising tone is highloud and strong. Falling tone is gentle and slowly released. Entering tone is short and ends with an abrupt closure’) (Khaisan, 1917: 11). In Fan’s work, the tones are presented using a traditional palm mnemonic dating from the Ming dynasty (see Figure 3.4), which was essentially a reminder of how to mark each of the four tones by placing a circle at one of the four corners of a character. It shows the level tone in the lower left; falling-rising tone in the upper left; falling tone in the upper right and the entering tone in the lower right. In comparison, the description of tones in Khaisan omits the palm mnemonic but, in using Shi Zhenkong’s verse, gives more detail of pronouncing the tones, even if the terms used – such as ‘flat’, ‘high-loud’, ‘gentle’ and ‘short’ – remain imprecise. It is striking that the so-called entering tone (actually a final voiceless stop of a syllable, ending in /-p, -t, -k/) is included in Khaisan’s dictionary, despite the fact that it is believed to have already merged with the other three tones in Beijing-based Northern Mandarin since Fan’s dictionary was compiled in mid-17th century. Indeed, already in Fan’s work,

72  Part 1: Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts

the entering tones were only intended to help Northern Mandarin learners composing rhyming proems (Li, 2008: 30). In Wade and Hillier’s (1886: 8) textbook, the entering tone is ‘now ignored in the practice of the spoken language of Beijing’. In contrast, entering tone remains in Nanjing-based southern Mandarin to the present day, despite the fact that the original conditioning syllable-final consonants /-p, -t, -k/ have merged into a glottal stop /-ʔ/ since the late 17th century (Ye, 2017: 123).7 However, no further details are included in Khaisan’s dictionary about pronouncing the entering tone besides the pronunciation tip. In describing the tones, then, it seems Khaisan does not simply follow the Beijingbased northern Mandarin but, like Fan before him, also takes into account the literary purpose that information about the entering tone serves. This would imply that Khaisan perceives Mandarin not only as a tool of vernacular communication but also as a way to serve its important literary purpose. Conclusion

This chapter has examined an early example of a guide to spoken Mandarin Chinese for minority ethnic learners, in this case, Mongolian. It is of particular interest because it appeared at a time when standard Mandarin Chinese was still emerging, and at a time when methods for promulgating a spoken standard, in line with nationalist aspirations, were still the subject of debate. It is in that context that we have examined both what Khaisan presents, and how he does so. To summarize the findings of the analysis presented here, the Mandarin pronunciation that Khaisan transcribes seems to follow an eclectic literary reading pronunciation, chiefly based on the Beijing-based northern Mandarin, but with some features from Nanjing-based southern Mandarin. Compared with Fan’s rhyme dictionary, Khaisan’s Mongolian transcription includes more vernacular Beijing Mandarin features, reflecting both the communicative purpose of his approach and a shift away from a Nanjing Mandarin influenced pronunciation that was the norm in Fan’s time. There is evidence of the northern pronunciation in four aspects of pronunciation as transcribed by Khaisan: (i) not including nasal initial, (ii) clearly differentiating retroflex from sibilant initials, (iii) open-mouth nasal finals after initials /p-/, /m-/, /f-/ and (iv) shared finals /ijəi/ and /iʊəi/ for certain originally distinct characters of the 蛇 (sh)e, 豺 (ch)ai and 駝 (t)uo groups. This finding is not surprising, given that Mongolia is in the north of China and that the book was perhaps intended for, and used in, a Beijing school. However, Khaisan also included some southern pronunciation features: First, he retains the entering tone and differentiates between the sibilant and velar initials, two features that had disappeared in most northern Mandarin by his time but remained in southern Mandarin. Second, he transcribes certain characters of the 駝 (t)uo group, which had the close-mouth final ‘uo’ in Beijing

Teaching Mandarin Pronunciation to Mongolian Learners in China  73

Mandarin, with the southern, older open-mouth final ‘o’. These southern Mandarin features are arguably relevant to rhyming in literary composition, which is also the tradition that rhyme dictionaries served. It is likely that Manchurian transcriptions of Mandarin also influenced Khaisan in some regards: (i) spelling Mandarin sibilant initials with Mongolian velars, which, as Coblin (2003a) has shown, are absent in southern Mandarin, as is the case for the Manchurian spellings of Mandarin pronunciation; (ii) spelling the Mandarin /y/ as /iɔi/; (iii) inserting /w/, /j/ between Mandarin vowels to help indicate diphthongs.8 It suggests that the Mandarin learning materials compiled by the previous Manchu rulers9 and the variety of Mandarin spoken by Manchus might have also served as a model for Khaisan. Therefore, the correct Mandarin pronunciation in the Mongolian perspective appears not to be owned solely by the Han group. Although Khaisan’s dictionary was intended for Mongolian beginners of Mandarin as a second language, he still chose to transcribe a literary reading pronunciation rather than an entirely vernacular spoken counterpart. This suggests that the literary aspect still outweighed the communicative aspect in his perception of correct Mandarin pronunciation to teach. It suggests that Khaisan took an elite view of Mandarin, since the high culture that the literary pronunciation entails meets the interests of a very narrow subset of population in society, to which Khaisan belonged. Khaisan’s innovative approach of transcribing the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation with Mongolian reveals what kind of Mandarin Chinese pronunciation is presented as correct to the Mongolian learners in the early 20th century. His approach seems to be highly influential; in the decades after the publishing of Khaisan’s dictionary, Mongolian transliterations of Mandarin pronunciation, albeit in slightly different forms, continued to appear in Mandarin textbooks for Mongolian learners issued by the Han dominant Republican government and, later, the People’s Republic of China government. Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Professor Nicola McLelland, Professor Sarah Dauncey and Dr Hui (Annette) Zhao of the University of Nottingham, who have given me invaluable advice and generous help to guide me through the writing process. I also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. All errors are my own. Funding

This work was supported by the Multilingualism: Empowering individuals, transforming societies (MEITS) project and China Scholarship Council.

74  Part 1: Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts

Notes (1) A Mandarin syllable consists of an initial and a final. The final of a syllable can itself have up to three parts, the ‘head’ yùntóu (韵头) (or the ‘medial’ jièyīn 介音), which may be variations of the three glides [i], [u], [y]; the ‘middle’ yùnfù (韵腹) and the ‘tail’ yùnwěi (韵尾). See Lin (2001: 31). The fǎnqiè spelling first appeared in the late second century (Branner, 2000: 37; Pulleyblank, 1984: 105). It was for the first time used in rime tables from the composition of the rhyme dictionary Segmenting rhymes (Qièyùn 切韵) (601 AD) and was expanded in the so-called Broad rhymes (Gǔeangyùn 广韵) (1008 AD). The officially sanctioned rhyme dictionaries published later were all deeply indebted to the Qièyùn and the Gǔeangyùn, which flourished during the Tang (618 AD – 906 AD) and Song eras (960 AD–1279 AD) (Kaske, 2008: 42). (2) Right banner is an administrative division in Inner Mongolia, corresponding to the county level. (3) Beise was the fourth rank of the eight privileges in the Qing dynasty, entitling the bearer to participate in state councils and share the spoils of war. (4) By contrast, Khalkha Cyrillic orthography, known as the ‘New Script’, has been the official written form of Mongolian in Mongolia since the 1940s. (5) For example, specific characters, such as ᠸ (w or e), ᠹ (f), ᠺ (k), ᠽ (ts), ᠾ (h), ᡁ (zh), ᡂ (ch), ᠿ (ž), were standardized to transliterate foreign words. (6) This book was the first comprehensive grammatical introduction to Manchu written for Chinese readers. It enjoyed great popularity and saw numerous printings. The Harvard-Yenching Library owns six copies, published by three different houses, all in Liulichang (Elliot & Bosson, 2003: 85). (7) Accordingly, Morrison (1815) transcribes Nanjing-based southern Mandarin with /-ʔ/ in these contexts, a feature that demonstrate its difference from Beijing-based Mandarin (see Coblin, 2003b: 354). (8) We cannot of course exclude the possibility that other factors might also be relevant to explaining some aspects of Khaisan’s Mongolian transcription, including the possible influence of local dialects in the Inner Mongolia region. However, to consider this goes beyond the scope of this study. (9) Although the Manchu-ruled Qing dynasty had been replaced by the Republican China under the Han nationalist slogan ‘Expel Tatar barbarians, revive Zhonghua’ (1911), the Manchus seem still to have had an influence on the Mongolian nobleman Khaisan’s attitude to correct pronunciation. For further research, it would be interesting to compare these findings with the presentation of Mandarin pronunciation in other materials for Mongolian learners authorized by the Han-dominant Republican government in the same period and later, to trace the underlying competition between the old and new regimes.

References Bao, L.G. (1980) 蒙语文 [Mongolian]. Minority Languages of China 2, 75–78. Bayasgalan, B. (2016) 中蒙两国蒙古语差异研究 – 兼谈汉语等语言的影响 [A comparative study of Mongolian in China and the Mongolia-with discussion of the influence of Han and other languages]. PhD thesis, Heilongjiang University. Branner, D.P. (2000) The Suí–Táng tradition of Fǎnqiè phonology. In A. Sylvain, K. Konrad, N. Hans-Josef and V. Kees (eds) History of the Language Sciences (pp. 36–46). Berlin: De Gruyter. Branner, D.P. (ed.) (2006) The Chinese Rime Tables Linguistic Philosophy and HistoricalComparative Phonology. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Teaching Mandarin Pronunciation to Mongolian Learners in China  75

Cassel, P. (2015) ‘Spelling like a state’: Some thoughts on the Manchu origins of the WadeGiles system. Central Asiatic Journal 58 (1–2), 37–47. Chen, P. (1999) Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coblin, S.W. (2000) A brief history of Mandarin. Journal of the American Oriental Society 120 (4), 537–552. Coblin, S.W. (2003a) A sample of eighteenth century spoken Mandarin from North China. Asie Orientale 32 (2), 195–244. Coblin, S.W. (2003b) Robert Morrison and the phonology of mid-Qing Mandarin. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series 13 (3), 339–355. Elliot, M. C. and Bosson, J. (2003) Highlights of the Manchu-Mongolian collection. In H. Patrick (ed.) Treasures of the Yenching (p. 85). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Kaske, E. (2008) The Politics of Language in Chinese Education, 1895–1919. Boston: Brill. Li, Q.H. (2008) 五方元音音系研究 [An Investigation of the Phonology System in the Original Sounds of Five Regions]. 武汉: 武汉大学出版社 [Wuhan: Wuhan University Press]. Lin, H. (2001) A Grammar of Mandarin Chinese. Muenchen: Lincom Europa. Luo, S.J. (2014) 清朝满文避讳漫议 [An discursive discussion of Manchurian spelling taboo in Qing dynasty]. Machu Studies 2, 17–23. Mair, V. (1992) A hypothesis concerning the origin of the term fanqie (‘Countertomy’). Sino-Platonic Papers 34, 1–13. Milroy, J. (2007) The ideology of the standard language. In C. Llamas, L. Mullany and P. Stockwell (eds) The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics (pp. 133–140). London and New York: Routledge. Onon, U. and Pritchatt, D. (1989) Asia’s First Modern Revolution: Mongolia Proclaims its Independence in 1911. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Pulleyblank, E.G. (1984) Middle Chinese: A Study in Historical Phonology. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Qinggeertai, S., Buhe, X., Wuda, C.N.X., Jiabu, S., Zhen, L. and Wei, H. (1999) 蒙汉词 典 [Mongolian-Han Dictionary]. Hohhot: Inner Mongolia University Press. Shen, Z.W. (2006) Syllabic nasals in Chinese dialects. Bulletin of Chinese Linguistics 1 (1), 81–108. Svantesson, J., Tsendina, A., Karlsson, A. and Franzén V. (2005) The Phonology of Mongolian. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tatsuo, N. (1980) The minority’s grouping: Further light on Khaisan and Udai. Asian and African Studies 20, 106–120. Wang, L. (1981) 汉语音韵学 [Chinese Phonology]. 北京: 中华书局 [Beijing: Zhonghua Press]. Weng, J. (2018) What is Mandarin? The social project of language standardization in early Republican China. Journal of Asian Studies 77 (3), 611–633. Xiao, C. (2011) 蒙汉合璧五方元音研究 [A study of Mongolian Han original sounds of five regions]. 满语研究 Manchu Studies 2, 59–64. Ye, B.K. (2017) 近代汉语语音研究-叶宝奎自选集 [Contemporary Han Chinese Phonology Study-Ye Baokui Monologue]. 厦门：厦门大学出版社 [Xiamen: Xiamen University Press].

Textbooks Edikins, J. (1864a) A Grammar of the Chinese Colloquial Language Commonly Called the Mandarin Dialect. Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press. Edkins, J. (1864b) Progressive Lessons in the Chinese Spoken Language (2nd edn). Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press.

76  Part 1: Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts

Fan, T.F. (1841–1913) 新纂五方元音 [Original Sounds of Five Regions Expanded Edition]. Unknown: 文秀堂 [Wenxiutang Press]. Khaisan (1917) 蒙漢合璧五方元音 [Mongolian Han Bilingual Original Sounds of Five Directions]. 北京: 恒升号 [Beijing: Hengshenghao Press]. Ministry of Education. (ed.) (1932) 漢蒙合璧国语教科书第四册 [Han Mongolian Bilingual Primary School Textbook Vol. 4]. 北京: 蒙文书社 [Beijing: Mongolian Press]. Morrison, R. (1815–1823) A Dictionary of the Chinese Language in Three Parts. Macao, China: Honorable East India Company’s Press. Prémare, J.H. (1831) Notitia linguae Sinicae. Malaccae. Varo, F. (1703) Arte de la lengua mandarina. Canton [publisher not identified]. Wade, T.F. and Hillier, W.C. (1886) A Progressive Course Designed to Assist the Student of Colloquial Chinese in Three Volumes. Vol 1 (2nd edn). Shanghai and London: Kelly and Walsh Limited. Wang, Z. (1921) 國音京音对照表 [A Comparative Dictionary of National Pronunciation and Beijing Pronunciation]. 北京: 商务印书馆 [Beijing: The Commercial Press]. Wugeshouping. (1730) 清文啟蒙 [A Manchu Primer]. Preface by Cheng M.Y. 英華堂 [Yinghuatang Press]. Uge Seoping (1730) 清文啟蒙 [A Manchu Primer]. Preface by Cheng M.Y. Unknown: 英 華堂 [Yinghuatang Press]. Xylograph, W.T. (ed.) (1743) 圆音正考 [Correct Pronunciation of Sibilant and Velar Initials]. 北京: 三槐堂 [Beijing: Sanhuaitang Press].

Appendix Table S3.1  List of initials in Khaisan’s Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin Initial

Khaisan’s Mongolian transliteration

Romanized Mongolian transliteration

IPA

[p] as in 梆 b(ang)

ᠪ

b

/b/

[pʰ] as in 匏 p(ao)

ᠫ

p

/p/

木 m(u)

ᠮ

m

/m/

風 f(eng)

ᠹ

f

/f/

[t] as in 斗 d(ou)

ᠳᠠ

d

/d/

[tʰ] as in 土 t(u)

ᠲ

t

/t/

鳥 n(iao)

ᠨ

n

/n/

雷 l(ei)

ᠯ

l

/l/

[tʂ] as in 竹 zh(u)

[tʂʰ] as in 虫 ch(ong)

[ʂ] as in 石 sh(i)

ᠵ

j̆

/dʒ/

ᡁ (It is only used when followed by /i/)

zh

/tʂ/

ᠴ

c̆

/tʃ/

ᡂ (It is only used when followed by /i/)

ch

/tʂʰ/

ᠱ

š

/ʃ/

Teaching Mandarin Pronunciation to Mongolian Learners in China  77

[r] as in 日 r(i)

ᠷ

r

/r/

[ts] as in 剪 j(ian)

ᠿ

z̆

/ʐ/

ᠵ

j̆

/dʒ/

[tsʰ] as in 鵲 q(ue)

ᠽ

z

/dz/

ᠴ

c̆

/tʃ/

[s] as in 系 x(i)

ᠼ

ts

/ts/

ᠰ

s

/s/

雲 y(un)

ᠶ

y

/j/

[k] as in 金 j(in)

ᠵ

j̆

/dʒ/

ᠺ (ᠺ and ᠻ below are originally used for transcribing foreign words, which are consistently adopted by Khaisan when they are followed by a. The same case also applies to the 橋 q(iao) group)

k

/k/

ᠻ

kʰ

/kʰ/

   ᠬᠢ (It is used before non-pharyngeal vowels:  e, i, ö, ü)

g

/g/

ᠭ (It is used before the pharyngeal vowels u, o)

γ

/g/

ᠻ

kʰ

/kʰ/

[kʰ] as in 橋 q(iao)

[x] as in 火 h(uo)

蛙 w(a)

ᠺ

k

/k/

ᠬᠢ (It is used by Khaisan in the groups of 金 j(in), 橋q(iao), 火h(uo). As /g/ and /x/ sounds share the form    ᠬᠢ in modern Mongolian before non-pharyngeal vowels, it is tentatively identified also as /k/ in Khaisan’s transliteration.)

k

/k/

ᠴ

c̆

/tʃ/

ᠾ (It is originally used for transliterating foreign words, is adopted before a, e, i by Khaisan)

h

/x/

ᠬ (It is used before pharyngeal vowels: o, u while   ᠬᠢ is used before non-pharyngeal vowels: ö, ü by Khaisan)

q

/x/

ᠬᠢ

k

/x/

ᠰ

s

/s/

ᠸ, zero initial

w

/w/

78  Part 1: Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts

Table S3.2  List of finals in Khaisan’s Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin Final 天 (t)ian

人 (r)en

龍 (l)ong

羊 (y)ang

牛 (n)iu

獒 ao

Khaisan’s Mongolian transliteration

Romanized Mongolian transliteration

IPA

ᠠᠨ

an

/an/

ᠢᠶᠠᠨ

iyan

/ijan/

ᠦᠸᠠᠨ

üwen

/uwən/

ᠢᠦᠸᠠᠨ

iuwan

/iʊwan/

ᠡᠨ

en

/ən/

ᠢᠨ

in

/in/

ᠤᠡ

un

/ʊn/

ᠦᠨ

ün

/un/

ᠢᠶᠦᠨ

iyün

/ijʊn/

ᠸᠡᠭ

eng

/əŋ/

ᠢᠡᠭ

ing

/iŋ/

ᠦᠩ

üng

/uŋ/

ᠢᠥᠨᠭ

iung

/iʊŋ/

ᠣᠩ

ong

/ɔŋ/

ᠠᠩ

ang

/aŋ/

ᠢᠶᠠᠩ

iyang

/ijaŋ/

ᠦᠸᠠᠩ

üweng

/uwəŋ/

ᠡᠦ

eü

/əu/

ᠢᠦ

iö

/io/

ᠣᠣ

oo

/ɔ:/

ᠢᠶᠥᠦ

iyoo

/ijɔ:/

ᠠᠥ

au

/au/

虎 (h)u

ᠦ

ü

/u/

駝 (t)uo

ᠥ

ö

/o/

ᠡ

e

/ə/

ᠡᠦ

eü

/əu/

蛇 (sh)e

ᠢᠥᠸᠡᠢ

iuwai

/iʊwai/

ᠢᠶᠡᠢ

Iyei

/ijəi/

ᠡ

e

/ə/

ᠢᠤᠧᠡᠢ

iuwei

/iʊwəi/

Teaching Mandarin Pronunciation to Mongolian Learners in China  79

馬(m)a

豺 (ch)ai

地 (d)i

ᠠ

a

/a/

ᠥᠸᠡ

üwa

/uwa/

ᠢᠶᠠ

iya

/ija/

ᠠᠢ

ai

/ai/

ᠢᠶᠡᠢ

iyei

/ijəi/

ᠦᠸᠠᠢ

üwei

/uwəi/

ᠢ

i

/i/

ᠡ

e

/ə/

ᠡᠢ

ei

/əi/

ᠤᠢ

ui

/ʊi/

ᠦᠢ

üi

/ui/

ᠢᠦᠢ

ioi

/iɔi/

Table S3.3  List of Mongolian transliterations of characters with Mandarin sibilant initials in Khaisan’s Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin Mandarin sibilant initial /ts/

Mandarin sibilant initial /tsʰ/

Mandarin sibilant initial /s/

Mongolian sibilants

None

None

先 ᠰᠢᠶᠠᠨ siyan /sijan/, 宣 ᠰᠢᠥᠸᠠᠨ siowan /sijʊwan/, 信 ᠰᠢᠨ sin / sin/, 旬 ᠰᠢᠶᠦ᠋ᠨ siyun /sijun/, 星 ᠰᠢᠩ sing /siŋ/, 相 ᠰᠢᠶᠠᠩ siyang / sijaŋ/, 羞 ᠰᠢᠦ siu /siu/, 消 ᠰᠢᠶᠥᠦ siyuo/sijʊo/, 些 ᠰᠢᠶᠧᠢ siyei/ sijəi/, 西 ᠰᠢ si/si/

Mongolian palatals

煎 ᠵᠢᠶᠠᠨ j̆ iyan /dʒijan/, 浸 ᠵᠢᠨ j̆ in /dʒin/, 精 ᠵᠢᠩ j̆ ing / dʒiŋ/, 將 ᠵᠢᠶᠠᠩ j̆ iang/ dʒiaŋ/, 酒 ᠵᠢᠦ j̆ iu/dʒiu/, 焦 ᠵᠢᠶᠥᠦ j̆ iyuo /ijɔ:/, 借 ᠵᠢᠶᠧᠢ j̆ iyei /dʒijəi/

千ᠴᠢᠶᠠᠨ c̆ian /tʃian/, 親 ᠴᠢᠨ c̆in /tʃin/, 青 ᠴᠢᠩ c̆ing/ tʃiŋ/, 槍 ᠴᠢᠶᠠᠩ c̆iyang/ tʃijaŋ/, 秋ᠴᠢᠦ c̆io /tʃio/, 俏 ᠴᠢᠶᠥᠦ c̆iuo /tʃiɔ:/, 切 ᠴᠢᠶᠧᠢ c̆iyei /tʃijəi/, 沏 ᠴᠢ c̆i/ tʃi/

None

Mongolian gutturals

爵 ᠭᠢᠦᠸᠧᠢ giuwei /giuwəi/ 沮 ᠭᠢᠦᠢ giui /giui/

碏 ᠭᠢᠦᠸᠧᠢ kiuwei /kiuwəi/, 取 ᠭᠢᠦᠢ kiui /kiui/

削 ᠾᠢᠥᠸᠠᠢ hiuwei /hiʊwəi/, 雪 ᠾᠢᠥᠸᠧᠢ hiuwei /hiʊwəi/, 徐 ᠾᠢᠦᠢ hiui /hiʊi/

80  Part 1: Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts

Table S3.4  List of Mongolian transliterations of characters with Mandarin velar initials in Khaisan’s Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin Mandarin velar initial /k/

Mandarin velar initial /kʰ/

Mandarin velar initial /x/

Mongolian sibilants

None

None

熏 ᠰᠢᠶᠦᠨ siyun /sijun/, 向 ᠰᠢᠶᠠᠩ siyang /sijaŋ/, 學 ᠰᠢᠥᠸᠧᠢ siuwei /siʊwəi/, 鞋 ᠰᠢᠶᠧᠢ siyei /sijəi/, 虚 ᠰᠢᠦᠢ siui / siui/

Mongolian palatals

角 ᠵᠢᠦᠸᠧᠢ j̆ iuwei /dʒiuwəi/, 皆 ᠵᠢᠶᠧᠢ j̆ iyei /dʒijəi/, 居 ᠵᠢᠦᠢ j̆ iui /dʒiui/

羣 ᠴᠢᠶᠦᠨ c̆iyun /tʃijun/, 腔 ᠴᠢᠶᠠᠩ c̆iyang /tʃijaŋ/, 却 ᠴᠢᠥᠸᠧᠢ c̆iuwei /tʃiuwəi/, 阙 ᠴᠢᠥᠸᠧᠢ c̆uwei /tʃuwəi/, 揩 ᠴᠢᠶᠧᠢ c̆iyei /tʃijəi/, 去 ᠴᠢᠦᠢ c̆iui / tʃiʊi/

None

Mongolian gutturals

間 ᠭᠢᠶᠠᠨ giyan /gijan/, 娟 ᠭᠢᠦᠸᠠᠨ giuwan /giʊwan/ 巾 ᠭᠢᠨ gin /gin/, 京 ᠭᠢᠩ ging / giŋ/, 鳩 ᠭᠢᠦ giu /giu/, 交 ᠭᠢᠶᠥᠦ giuo/giɔ:/, 結 ᠭᠢᠶᠧᠢ giyei /gijəi/, 加 ᠭᠢᠶᠠ giya / gija/, 幾 ᠭᠢ gi /gi/

欠ᠭᠢᠶᠠᠨ kiyan /kijan/, 圈 ᠭᠢᠦᠸᠠᠨ kiowan /kiʊwan/, 禽 ᠭᠢᠨ kin /kin/, 卿 ᠭᠢᠩ king / kiŋ/, 傾 ᠭᠢᠥᠩ kiung /kiʊŋ/, 丘ᠭᠢᠦ kiu /kiu/, 敲 ᠭᠢᠶᠦᠥ kiyuo /kijɔ:/, 茄 ᠭᠢᠶᠧᠢ kiyei /kijəi/, 恰ᠭᠢᠶᠠ kiya /kija/, 溪ᠭᠢ ki /ki/

軒 ᠾᠢᠶᠠᠨ hiyan /xijan/, 喧 ᠾᠢᠥᠸᠠᠨ hiuyan /xiʊjan/, 欣 ᠾᠢᠨ hin /xin/, 幸 ᠾᠢᠩ hing / xiŋ/, 兄ᠾᠢᠥᠩ hiong /xiɔŋ/, 休 ᠾᠢᠦ hio /xio/, 孝 ᠾᠢᠶᠥᠦ hiyuo /xijɔ:/, 頡 ᠾᠢᠶᠧᠢ hiyei /xijəi/, 霞 ᠾᠢᠶᠠ hiya /xija/, 希 ᠾᠢ hi /xi/

4 Reconciling Multilingualism and Promotion of the Standard Language in Education in China Anwei Feng

Introduction

In the broad spirit of the open-door policies uninterruptedly implemented in China for rapid economic development, various forms of English language education have mushroomed in the past three decades or so, not only in higher education institutions but also in schools and pre-schools. This has especially been the case in sociopolitical and economic powerhouses such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai and many other metropolitan areas (Feng, 2011). In higher education, for example, it is commonplace to see transnational programmes (officially called ­Sino-Foreign Cooperative Programmes) in which students normally study for joint degrees entirely or primarily in English. In addition, other strong forms of English as additional language education such as English for Academic Purpose (EAP), English for Specific Purpose (ESP), ContentBased Instruction (CBI) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approaches are also widely practised in universities. In the same decades, however, we have also witnessed increasingly vigorous government-­ led promotion of Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese) and the standard w ­ ritten form of Chinese throughout the country. This dual promotion is believed to be due to the policymakers’ perception that, while the communicative and economic value of English can never be underestimated, national unity, stability and identity through the promotion of standard Chinese are of vital importance (Li & Li, 2015). In regions and areas where ethnic minority groups dominate or are concentrated, the parallel development described above has had a strong impact on minority languages and language provision for schools and the 83

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public in general. Speedy economic, sociopolitical and technological advancements have led to increasing mobility and interactions between ethnic minority groups and the Han majority in which Putonghua is the lingua franca. As a result, ethnic minority languages, which are in most cases the first language (L1) of minority groups, are in the process of being further devalued in ethnic minority communities and in education (Feng & Adamson, 2018). Despite this, as ethnic minority groups are granted constitutional rights to use and develop their languages and cultures, there have been voices to argue for multilingualism and multilingual education from sociocultural, cognitive, affective and economic perspectives. Many official or non-governmental organizations, researchers and individuals have made tremendous efforts to support and promote trilingual education in minority schools where minority pupils’/students’ L1, L2 (standard Chinese) and L3 (usually English) are taught and/or used as media of instruction (Feng & Adamson, 2015). There are, however, obvious tensions between language variation and standardization in general (Zhou, 2017) and between the development of multilingual education and promotion of the standard language in particular. Many of the issues are undeniably ideological in nature, but some are conceptual and practical. These issues and tensions caused by the parallel development are underresearched and underdiscussed, which gives the major impetus for this chapter. In the following pages, an overview is provided of the scholarship on standardization of language, with particular reference to concepts such as pluricentricity, language planning ideologies and linguistic protectionism that are most relevant to multilingual education. The question this paper focuses on is, thus, how the debates on ideological, theoretical and practical dimensions of language standardization relate to multilingualism in education in China. By adopting a critical stance that values promotion of social justice in research and in language policy and planning contexts (Lin, 2015), the chapter draws on recent research and insights into these two seemingly unrelated fields, with the aim to inform key stakeholders, particularly policymakers and educators, for setting more theory-based and realistic targets than before in language policymaking and implementation. An Ideological Continuum

It is commonplace observation that political agendas usually override other concerns in making language education policies in multilingual contexts like China. Key stakeholders have different political agendas about language use and language education. Some desire to retain linguistic diversity, while others wish to assimilate language groups to a homogenous whole (Baker, 2011). According to Bourhis (2001), these political agendas can be placed on a continuum from pluralist, civic, assimilation to ethnist ideologies. Pluralist ideology asserts individual liberty in

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learning and using two or more languages. Civic ideology is toleranceoriented, expecting individuals to respect values of the public majority while enjoying freedom to live their own cultural life. While assimilation stresses uniformity, ethnist ideology is repression-oriented. On this continuum, multilingualism could be seen as grounded on pluralist ideology within which linguistic diversity, language as right and resource, multiculturalism and ethnic-cum-national identities are celebrated and promoted. Under such beliefs, individual bilingualism or multilingualism is taken as both attainable and desirable (Schmidt, 2000) and a linguistic mosaic in a society is viewed positively. The ideological agenda of language standardization, on the other hand, could fall on any point between civic and assimilation ideologies, according to Bourhis’s (2001) continuum, depending upon the degree of imposition that the dominant group exercises over the lesser groups. As one of the pioneers to examine ideology of standard language, Haugen (1972: 97) states that the principal characteristics of a standard language include that it is determined, superposed and taught by national institutions. Such a language is viewed not only as a functional tool but also as a marker of national identity. Joseph (1987: 14), in a similar tone, sees language standardization as ‘planned and centralized regulation of language’. This centralized regulatory process depends heavily upon discourses of nationalism by elevating one dialect as the unifying ‘language’ of a nation-state (Paffey, 2012: 43). In China’s recent history of language policymaking, key documents at the state level, notably the language law (Law of the PRC on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language, 2000) and the Regional National Autonomy Law (Law of the PRC on Reginal National Autonomy, 1984), would always make robust calls for promoting Mandarin Chinese as the country’s common language. However, as state-level documents, they would also include the article stating the constitutional rights for minority groups to use and develop their own languages and cultures. In the first three decades of the PRC era, China at least in theory followed the antiHan-Chauvinistic stance often explicitly expressed by the then paramount leader, Mao Zedong. This stance was particularly explicit in his speech ‘On ten major relationships’ delivered in 1956 (cf. Di, 2017). By Han Chauvinism, Mao referred to superiority and ethnocentric attitudes and mentality held by many Han Chinese over ethnic minority groups, and he called for the Party to place emphasis on fighting Han Chauvinism in their work related to minority groups. The state-level policies in early years of the PRC could, thus, be seen as following a civic ideology in Bourhis’s (2001) continuum. However, the political agendas often implicit in many regional and local policies on language use and education for minority groups had, most of the time, been of assimilation or even ethnist ideology with national uniformity and unity as the political discourses in public and official documents, particularly during times of political turmoil such

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as the Anti-rightist movement that climaxed in the late 1950 and the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 (Zhou, 2003). The post-Mao era witnessed a revival of promoting multilingualism and civic ideology, particularly during the decade when Hu Yaobang1 was in power. In the past few decades, however, assimilation ideology has been reinvigorated, more explicitly and robustly in recent years than before in publications. Some claim that assimilation is compatible with Marxist–Leninist theories and argue that while forced assimilation may not bring about positive outcomes, natural assimilation (自然同化) or ethnic merging (民族融合) are both desirable and achievable (Yang, 2014). Others go so far as to state that Sinification/Hanification in the past was driven by the desire to sustain and expand Han civilization, but in the future, Hanification should be seen as the Chinese style of modernization (Duan, 2018). In other words, whether individuals from minority groups accept assimilation into the Han majority should not be a matter of choice, but a matter of whether they can move on for growth and modernity. It is hardly difficult to imagine the impacts of this assimilation ideology on ethnic minority languages in minority concentrated regions or areas. Coupled with the rapid development in economy, mass and social media, modern transportation, mass migration of ethnic minority groups into metropolitan areas in search of work and, conversely, increasing economic and sociopolitical penetration by the state into ethnic minority regions driven by the state policy of Developing the West (西部大开发) since the turn of the century, the promotion of standard Chinese has advanced even more speedily in the 21st century, and minority languages have experienced more serious imperilment than ever before. Even an historically powerful language such as Mongolian, which is widely considered ‘safe’ owing to strong ethnolinguistic vitality, at least statistically, is showing indications of being threatened, particularly in cities and towns (Tsung, 2009). Empirical evidence has also shown that in merely two generations, Dong, a minority language that was actively used verbally in some parts of Guizhou, has exhibited signs of becoming seriously endangered since its use has been discouraged and suppressed in formal domains (Finifrock, 2017). In such a context, where assimilation ideology is pervasive, voices are also heard from influential individuals as well as scholars and researchers, to argue for languages as state resources and individual rights and for the sociopolitical significance to maintain and develop minority languages. Li 2 (2015b), former deputy director in the national language planning committee, points out that minority languages as well as the standard Chinese are natural language resources of China. Thus, Li (2014b: 5) states that ‘building a harmonious language life means what the government manages is not only language, but a language life. The management of such a language life should not only solve the social issues concerning language, but also protect and develop the country’s language resources

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and guarantee the citizens’ language rights enshrined in the country’s Constitution’. With similar arguments for language rights and language as resource, Teng and Hai (2013) maintain that linguistic assimilation contradicts the Constitutional mandate on the freedom to use and develop minority languages and cultures. Conceptual and Practical Relevance of Pluricentrism and Purism

Of the concepts that researchers and scholars in language standardization study and discuss, the most relevant for multilingual education and language planning are arguably pluricentrism and purism. There is evidence to suggest that these concepts have drawn attention from researchers, scholars and educators in China and exerted significant influence on reflecting and conceptualizing what standard English and standard Chinese mean, how tensions could arise in attempts to set up a universal standard for a pluricentric language and what implications the conceptualization and tensions would have for practice in teaching and learning English and Chinese. In the case of ethnic minority groups, all these debates could potentially inform teaching and learning of L2 and L3. And, in turn, these insights can help ethnic minority groups reflect on whether and how their home language (L1) could and should be taught, maintained and developed in their communities. Pluricentricity of English, Chinese and ethnic minority languages

A pluricentric language is usually defined as a language with several varieties, each of which has at least some codified norms that correspond geographically to a different country or region. A language, according to this view, is pluricentric when it is spoken as a native language across boundaries of individual political entities, which implies that the language does not usually coincide with a single national identity of its native speakers. Many of the world’s major languages are, by this definition, pluricentric, including English, Spanish, German, French, Arabic, Portuguese, Urdu, Chinese, Korean and Malay (Clyne, 1992; Muhr, 2012). While some pluricentric languages such as German, Korean and Malay form a contiguous region of their own, others such as English, French, Spanish and Portuguese are dispersed for various historical and sociopolitical reasons. Some languages such as Russian and Japanese, despite having local varieties, are defined as monocentric languages because they appear to have only one formally standardized and codified version used as the official language in one single country. Some researchers on pluricentricity of languages maintain that in reality it is not as easy as it appears to distinguish a monocentric language from a pluricentric one. Take Russian for example. Kamusella (2018)

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points out that scholars rarely take note of the fact that Russian is employed in an official capacity in Israel and in many post-Soviet states such as Belarus and Kazakhstan, though many of these states have been revisiting their language planning and policies, especially since Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea in 2014. Because of the difficulties of labelling a language pluricentric or monocentric in some circumstances and the ever-changing nature of languages, some researchers and scholars propose a continuum to allow for flexibility in describing pluricentricity of a language according to its developmental stages (Muhr, 2012), or according to whether a strict or loose conception is adopted to examine dominant or non-dominant varieties of a pluricentric language (Augusto, 2014; Kristiansen, 2014). From the ideological point of view, it is important to determine how pluricentric a language is and what implications that has for language p ­ olicymaking and nation building. Clyne (1992: 1) states that a highly pluricentric language could be a unifier, uniting all people using the same language, or a divider, separating them through the development of their own norms and codified linguistic variables with which the speakers of the varieties identify. The ideology behind monocentricity, on the other hand, could be a high degree of influence and control over culture and language use in the regions where the language is official (Kamusella, 2018). In attempts to standardize a language in a state or a speech community, therefore, a thorough examination of the degree of pluricentricity of the language is crucial as it has important implications for language planning and language education. Pluricentricity of English is universally acknowledged. It could be argued that the three concentric circle model proposed by Kachru (1985, 1992) catches the pluricentric nature of English most cogently. The model categorizes the varieties of English used and/or taught/learned in different countries in the world into three circles, namely, the inner circle, outer circle and expanding circle. The inner circle consists of countries where English is employed as the native language, including the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. The model puts countries such as India, Nigeria, Singapore and Zambia under the outer circle, representing postcolonial Anglophone contexts where English is used as an official and/or second language. Lastly, the label of expanding circle captures all others that make huge investment in teaching and learning English as a foreign language (EFL). This circle includes a large number of countries, notably China, Brazil, Japan, Korea and Russia. Although the three-circle model is sometimes criticized as over-simplistic (e.g. Jenkins, 2003), it has undeniably contributed to discussions on how pluricentric English is, who owns it and what native speakers of English mean, and, crucially, for expanding-circle countries, how the language should be taught and learned as a foreign or additional language (this issue will be taken up in more detail later). The model has also led to influential academic journals such as World Englishes.

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By definition, the Chinese language is pluricentric in all aspects (Bradley, 1992). In greater China including mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore, the Chinese language differs significantly both in terms of written script and speech among them. In writing, for example, while the ‘simplified’ script is used in Mainland China and Singapore, the traditional ‘full’ script is the norm in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Within Mainland China, people in Chinese-speaking regions speak various Fangyan (topolects3) including Mandarin (a group of related varieties, including most notably the Beijing-based dialect, spoken across northern and south-western China), Yue (Cantonese in particular) and Wu (dialects spoken mostly in Eastern China). It is worth noting that the term Fangyan is often inappropriately translated as ‘dialect’, inappropriate because different Fangyan are usually mutually unintelligible (Clyne & Kipp, 2011). Some Fangyan such as Yue have even developed their own written scripts (Bauer, 1988). Fangyan speakers such as those from Guangzhou or Hong Kong normally converse in Yue among themselves, such that non-Yue speakers would find it difficult to understand. In situations when they converse with speakers of non-Yue topolects, they would usually switch to Difang Putonghua or localized Putonghua, i.e. Putonghua with Yue accents, as a lingua franca for communication. Furthermore, for geographical, historical, socioeconomic and political reasons, people belonging to a Fangyan group may speak Cifangyan (dialects), a ­sub-variety of Fangyan, or Tuyu, the ‘most earthy dialect’ used often among village folk in rural areas. Varieties of Wu spoken in Eastern China, including Shanghainese, Suzhounese, Wenzhounese and Ningbonese, are typical examples of Cifangyan (see Gianninoto, this volume for a historical account of an early grammar of Shanghainese). Cifangyan and Tuyu, particularly those in Southern China, may differ from each other to such an extent that, even populations within the same Fangyan or Cifangyan group may struggle to communicate with each other if they live a significant distance apart. The popularly described phenomenon ‘十里不同音’ (differing accents in five kilometers) is a vivid portrayal of numerous Cifangyan and Tuyu found, particularly, in provinces to the south of the Yangtze River (Liu, 2004). Although evidence of (forced) assimilation of topolect/dialect groups and ethnic minority groups into the mainstream Mandarin linguistic group is not rare (Tsung, 2009), an increasing number of scholars and stakeholders in language planning and education show awareness of the extent of pluricentricity of Chinese and its implications for language use and language provision for different groups. One of the most interesting discussions relevant to pluricentric Chinese is the rise of the concept of Dahuayu, apparently as an attempt to be inclusive in conceptualizing the language in a global perspective (see Wang, this volume, for a discussion of Global Chinese and Malaysian Mandarin). The concept was first discussed by Lu (2005) and drew increasing attention recently. Influential

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Dahuayu Putonghua, Guoyu Local Variees of Putonghua Fangyan (Topolects) Cifangyan (Dialects) Tuyu (Most earthy dialects) Figure 4.1  Hierarchy of Contemporary (or Future) Chinese (Li, 2014a, my translation)

scholars including Li (2014a, 2017) have started to conceive Dahuayu as the common language of all ethnic Chinese in the world, integrating common features of all varieties. Li’s (2014a) attempt to conceptualize pluricentric Chinese proposes a model that places all the varieties as described above in a pyramid hierarchy (Figure 4.1 from Li, 2014a: 556). At the top, Dahuayu is defined as the common language of all ethnic Chinese on the globe, based on Putonghua spoken in mainland China, and Guoyu, the national language mainly employed in Taiwan and other Chinese concentrated areas in Europe and North America. Putonghua and Guoyu form the second layer of the pyramid hierarchy. The third layer of the hierarchy is made up of local varieties of Putonghua, that is, Putonghua with local accents, which are the natural outcomes of promotion of Putonghua in various speech regions. The vast majority of the population in China speaks localized Putonghua that functions effectively as the lingua franca for communication. Further down the ranking is Fangyan, then Cifangyan and finally Tuyu. In this hierarchy, the most noticeable is certainly the concept of Dahuayu placed at the top as it is a clear attempt to standardize the Chinese language on a global scale. From the point of view of language use and language education, however, the acknowledegement of local varieties of Putonghua, Fangyan and so forth is immensely meaningful because these varieties which are inadequately discussed are clearly valuable language resources China could tap into. Local varieties of Putonghua, in particular, have apparently become the lingua franca that bridges the gap between Putonghua and Fangyan to enable Fangyan speakers to communicate easily in the country. Unlike major world languages, many ethnic minority languages are relatively monocentric for the obvious reason that they only have a small population of native speakers. Some spoken by larger numbers of people such as Tibetan and Mongolian are pluricentric in various degrees. Geographically and demographically, these languages spoken by millions spreading over large stretches of land in western or northwestern China,

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and even across borders, include mutually unintelligible varieties. For example, speakers of the three major varieties of Tibetan, each of which contains several Tuyu, would struggle to communicate with each other, if they do not share a Tibetan lingua franca. For historical reasons, written Mongolian (using the traditional Monogolian scripts) used in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region differs from that used in Mongolia across the border, predominately written in Cyrillic (Svantesson et al., 2005). Debates on Teaching Pluricentric and Minority Languages

I now turn to how English and Chinese are traditionally taught and learned in school and university classrooms and how educators and scholars are beginning to reflect on the practice, before turning to the situation faced by minority languages. In China, British English was traditionally seen as the most authentic, prestigious and useful, and thus was aimed at as the standard in the majority of English language classrooms. This deeply-entrenched perception and traditional practice were most evident in curriculum designing and textbook writing for schools and universities (Zhang, 1998). Recently, however, this traditional view has been challenged as strategically unwise and theoretically problematic. For teaching pronunciation, for example, Gui (2010) points out that there is hardly any country in the world that stipulates a particular variety of English as the sole phonetic standard in its English curriculum. Due to the growing international debate on pluricentricity of English (Seidlhofer, 2001; Widdowson, 2003), scholars and researchers in China are also beginning to question the concept of English native speakers, varieties and ownership of English and, hence, approaches to teaching and learning it. To set more achievable objectives to enable learners to communicate with speakers of English from all concentric circles, Sheng and Yuan (2013) and Wen (2014) reflect on the legitimacy of Chinese English and advocate teaching English as a lingua franca (ELF) or in a pluricentric approach as conceptualized by Jenkins (2006) and Kirkpatrick (2008). In either approach, English teaching no longer aims to focus solely on ‘standard British or American English’ for the purpose of developing ‘native-like proficiency’ among ESL/EFL learners. It has attached more importance to raising students’ awareness of the varieties of English, to promote intercultural mindfulness and to enhance learners’ confidence in their own English variety (Xie, 2014). For Chinese language teaching, the Language Law (2000) mandates that Putonghua and the standard Chinese characters be taught and used in schools and other educational institutions, except for minority groups. Other varieties including topolects and dialects have no legal place in such formal domains, though there are individual stakeholders who exercise agency in the hope of preserving them (Gao & Ren, 2019). Recently, some educators and scholars of language education have begun to reflect on the

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relationship between the Beijing-based Putonghua and localized Putonghua for the obvious reason that it is relevant to language policy making and teaching pedagogy. Li (2015a) and Shi and Zou (2013) argue that it is neither realistic nor strategically wise to target a single variety of spoken Chinese and the simplified Chinese written script as the sole standard in all situations and for all forms of Chinese language education. They contend that other varieties and standards have been taught and used in the long history of Chinese teaching and learning. To facilitate language learning and acquisition and to internationalize Chinese teaching, multiple standards should be considered and multiple forms of the Chinese language be recognized and employed to address the needs of diverse learners in different learning contexts. With regard to the teaching of spoken Chinese, the Beijing-based Putonghua as the national standard is questioned as researchers and critics have identified issues in terms of linguistic equality and dignity as well as teaching effectiveness. Cao (2014) points out that although 70% of China’s population can now understand and speak Putonghua as a result of vigorous nationwide promotion, only about 14% (0.18 billion) could be said to speak it as their mother tongue. A small percentage of Fangyan speakers (about 0.01%) are reported to have reached Level 1 (the highest) of Putonghua standard according to official criteria (Xu & Dong, 2013), but the vast majority speak it with Fangyan accents. The localized varieties of Putonghua spoken by the majority of the population contain Fangyan characteristics in accent, vocabulary and syntax. Traditionally, many adopt a deficit ideology to view localized Putonghuas as sub-­ standard, using the Beijing-based version as the benchmark to identify deviations. However, voices are now being heard challenging the traditional ideology. Conceptually, Gui and Liu (2011) point out that even though Putonghua is based on the Beijing accent there are substantial differences between them (see Zhao, this volume, on features of Beijing Mandarin). This is due to the fact that for strong vitality of the country’s lingua franca, Putonghua has absorbed many elements from local dialects, traditional Chinese and even borrowed words from abroad (Jiang, 2019). From the point of view of communication, language scholars such as Peng and Liu (2017) maintain that the localized Putonghuas are normally mutually intelligible. Therefore, Xu and Dong (2013) argue cautiously that to promote Chinese inside China and globally, the stipulation of Beijing-based Putonghua as the standard should be adjusted to treating it as the basis for pronunciation teaching, but without imposing uniquely Beijing-based Putonghua sounds, which have proved difficult to acquire for Fangyan speakers and international learners. Such an adjustment would put the majority who speak localized Putonghuas on an equal footing with Beijing-based Putonghua speakers. In a similar line of argument, Shi and Zou (2013) propose that both the Beijing-based Putonghua and localized Putonghuas be made the national languages, with the former

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being the ‘ideal’ standard and the latter the common standard. Li (2015a) emphatically advocates ‘double-rail standards’, suggesting that Beijingbased Putonghua be aimed at as the venerated standard and localized Putonghuas as the standard for qualifications (see Luo, this volume, for a discussion of tolerance of variation in Mandarin testing). For literacy teaching, three major scripts of Chinese are used and/or taught in differing contexts. While simplified Chinese is the mandated form for teaching and assessing the language in Mainland China, traditional Chinese characters are used and taught in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and many overseas Chinese communities in Europe and North America. Apart from these two major scripts, a third writing system is extremely important but less discussed in Chinese teaching literature: Hanyu Pinyin (Pinyin for short), literally Chinese spelled sounds, developed in the 1950s by the PRC government as the official Romanization system for Standard Chinese. One of the primary objectives of Pinyin development was to facilitate teaching standard Chinese pronunciation and codification of Chinese characters. Nowadays, Pinyin is frequently employed in situations where Chinese characters do not function effectively, such as compiling dictionaries and designing computer keyboards (Feng, Z.W., 2004, 2005). More recently, an increasing number of educators have become aware that Pinyin plays a vital role in internationalization of Chinese teaching (Zhao, 2013). It greatly facilitates the acquisition of Chinese among learners studying Chinese as a foreign language. Feng (2005) points out that, as Pinyin is specified in the Language Law as a legitimate Chinese writing system, it remains to be seen whether it could lead to synchronic digraphia, simultaneous use of two writing scripts, that is, simplified Chinese and Pinyin in mainland China. Pinyin could be even more relevant in the digital age when Romanization systems have an advantage over characters for use in computers. With the advent of the discussion on Dahuayu in the past decade, efforts have been made to develop the concept into a system that would aid the establishment of a common Chinese language on a global scale (Xing & Wang, 2012). Li (2017) conceptualizes Dahuayu as an umbrella term to recognize the legitimacy of all existing varieties of Chinese language with strong vitality. In the past decade, Chinese lexicographers have compiled dictionaries that analyze and itemize differences between Putonghua, Guoyu and other varieties for global reference. Among them, the most notable one is ‘全球华语大词典’ (Grand Dictionary of Global Chinese) (Li, 2017b). Proposals were also made to compile grand grammar manuals of global Chinese (Xing & Wang, 2012). Despite such efforts to encapsulate and codify major varieties of Chinese in terms of vocabulary and grammar, the question of how Dahuayu could be developed into a globally accepted common language and used and taught in Chinese language education has been little explored.

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Instead of adopting the Dahuayu concept which embraces varieties, some government agencies apparently pay more attention to linguistic purism in language planning. Purism is defined in various ways, sometimes narrowly, to refer only to negative attitudes of a speech community towards foreign linguistic elements (Trask, 1999), or more broadly to include rejections of any variations from the standard. A widely cited definition is given by Thomas (1991: 12) who takes it as: the manifestation of a desire on the part of the speech community (or some section of it) to preserve a language from, or rid it of, putative foreign elements held to be undesirable (including those originating in dialects, sociolects and styles of the same language). It may be directed at all linguistic levels, but primarily the lexicon.

Purism thus defined implies two levels of ideological concern: first, the fear of threat or influence from, usually, a more powerful foreign language, and thus the need to protect the purity of its own language; and, second, acceptance of a coercive power relationship between the prestigious variety of a language and less preferred ones in a country (Jernudd & Shapiro, 2011). The former is often the case with speech communities such as an ethnic minority group who speak a language with less geopolitical and economic power. Even a potent community may take purist measures to protect its language. French purists, for example, do so actively through both the government and private organizations and societies to protect purity of the language (Walsh, 2016). In China, sanitary purism seems to be most prevalent in recent years. Sanitary purism, as defined by Milroy (2005), aims at eliminating linguistic elements regarded as corrupt or vulgar in usage, but its practice is mostly politically and ideologically driven. In recent years, the Xinhua News Agency, China’s official press agency, has published a series of forbidden word lists, banning or ordering cautious use of lexis the agency claims to be incorrect or inappropriate with regard to societal morality, law, state sovereignty, religion, and international relations4 (Henan Daily, 2018). Much has been done in education to impose the Beijing-based variety on textbooks used by pupils all over the country, but such purist efforts may sometime backfire. Before the summer of 2018, a change was made in a primary-school textbook in Shanghai to a kinship term, Waipo (maternal grandma) used widely in southern China, into Laolao used in the north. It caused uproar, resulting in a rare apology by the authorities and a reversal of the change. Even the government’s flagship newspaper, People’s Daily, carried a commentary calling for respect for Fangyan (Yao, 2018). As far as ethnic minority groups are concerned, all the discussions thus far is relevant, especially for pupils and students in schools and universities who have to acquire and use Chinese as the lingua franca and to learn English as a foreign language for international communication. However, as minority groups differ from one to another linguistically,

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socioculturally, geopolitically and economically, the challenges they experience also vary tremendously. Some minority groups such as Tibetan, Mongolian and Korean still exhibit ethnolinguistic vitality in their home language. These groups have traditionally been able to learn, maintain and use their home languages and thus their children face the challenge of learning and using three languages in schools and communities. For some other groups such as Manchu, She and Hui who already speak (localized) Putonghua as their home language 5, however, their linguistic undertaking would be similar to that for Han Fangyan speakers when it comes to learning Chinese and English. Most other groups fall into the third category; their languages are endangered to a lesser or greater degree (Huang, 2013) and their children face the issue of whether they have the opportunity to use, learn and maintain their home languages in situations in which assimilation ideology prevails (Feng & Adamson, 2015). In ethnic minority regions where their home languages are seriously or critically endangered, there are voices to protect the heritage and the linguistic rights for minority groups. Linguistic protectionism, i.e. attempts to safeguard linguistic rights, to construct policies and action plans to protect ethnic minority groups and to preserve their cultures and mothertongue languages (cf., Li, 2017a; Pennycook, 2002) seems to have drawn attention from policymakers and researchers since the mention of ‘scientifically protecting minority languages and scripts’ at a high-profile Party congress in 2011 (Dai, 2019: 1). From the point of view of protecting linguistic rights, Li (2017a) argues for the development of an ethnic minority language law based on the broad spirit of the Constitution and other state laws and rulings. Such a law would align state decrees to protect all languages with international standards, to ensure the basic rights of ethnic minority groups and regulate practices in key areas such as government, mass media and education. Since the 2011 Party congress, many government sponsored projects have been carried out to record live language data in the field, in various ethnic minority groups, yielding huge digitalized language corpus banks (Zhang & Li, 2018). Efforts are also being made by some local governments to run public workshops to raise awareness of endangered languages, to translate or even create vocabulary for contemporary or political terminology for some major languages such as Tibetan so as to standardize usage and maintain purity of the language (China Tibetannet, 2017; see also Rigdrol Jikar, this volume). However, there appears to be lack of educational policies, measures and strategies to maintain and enhance the vitality of minority languages that are still alive. Discussion

With insights from latest discussions on pluricentricity of English and Chinese and from recent work in standardizing and codifying ethnic minority languages, this chapter presents that, rather than binary

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opposites, debates on language standardization inform and benefit multilingual education policymaking and execution. Conceptually, multilingualism is not normally associated with language standardization, since the former is seen to value diversity while the latter suggests desire for uniformity and imposition. Chen (2015) states that currently language education exhibits a strong tendency for monocentrism and monolingualism, which does not resonate with the ecology and principles of multilingualism in China. The overview presented above, however, has made it clear that the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. With increasing acceptance of multicultural and multilingual realities and the recognition of English and Chinese as pluricentric languages, a growing number of stakeholders in language education see possibilities to formulate and apply language policies that respect linguistic and cultural diversity while promoting Putonghua, the lingua franca of China. Policies and measures informed by research and debates on pluricentricity and multilingualism will not only have the potential to address ideological concerns and language inequality issues, but also determine what to teach and how to teach them in schools in general, and in ethnic minority schools in particular. For English language teaching and learning, there is growing consensus among scholars and educators that teachers and curriculum designers should expose learners to multiple varieties of English, including Englishes used by people from outer and expanding circle countries or territories as well as those in other inner circle countries. To that end, insights are increasingly drawn from discussions on the notion of English as a lingua franca (ELF). Jenkins (2006) notes agreement among scholars on the following key issues. First, awareness raising of pluricentricity of English among both teachers and students is agreed to be crucial as a first step to teaching and learning English for international communication. Second, learners’ exposure to more varieties is likely to encourage them to question ownership of the language and empower them to challenge the coercive power relationship in using English as a lingua franca for global communication. Third, even more relevant to English language education is the recognition of the importance of international intelligibility and hence accommodation skills training in English language teaching and learning (Jenkins, 2000). Indeed, the ultimate purpose of the ELF approach is normally to enable learners to ‘adjust their speech in order to be intelligible to interlocutors from a wide range of LI backgrounds’ (Jenkins, 2006: 174), though what international intelligibility really is and how it could be achieved in education remains largely theoretical. For teaching English as a lingua franca in China, it can be argued that there should, first of all, be active involvement of Chinese EFL researchers in studying, theorizing and standardizing international intelligibility of English. The criteria set on the basis of valid theory and empirical evidence would in turn inform analyzing and assessing degrees of (un)intelligibility of Chinese English, perhaps more precisely Chinese Englishes, as

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a legitimate variety or varieties of English spoken in China. Only on that basis could effective measures be taken to realize the paradigm shift (Wen, 2014) from focusing on only one ‘standard’ variety to teaching, learning and assessing the pluricentric language in an EFL approach. Most of what has said above about English teaching is equally applicable to the teaching of Chinese, since both languages are extraordinarily pluricentric. In a similar way as the ELF approach is supported, in teaching phonology in mainland China, it makes great sense for a gradual paradigm shift to take place, as suggested by educators such as Li (2015a) from following rules of a single variety, the Beijing-based Putonghua, to adopting a lingua-franca approach to teaching, learning and assessing a diversity of mutually intelligible Putonghuas employed by Fangyan speakers in different regions. This paradigm shift is justifiable from multiple perspectives, including attainability of Putonghua standards, equality in language use and status, and internationalization of Chinese language education. In teaching Chinese literacy, as discussed in the text, all varieties, including the simplified script, the traditional script and Pinyin, have their own role to play in language use in different domains, and thus would be relevant in different contexts for facilitating literacy teaching and acquisition. The nuanced analyses of the pluricentricity of Chinese from historical, regional, diasporic and assessment perspectives in some of the other chapters in this volume (including Gianninoto, Luo, Wang and Zhao) further highlight the relevance of a lingua-franca approach to Chinese teaching and learning. Conclusion

This chapter aims to address tension arising from multilingual education for ethnic minority students in the context of the nationwide promotion of Putonghua, the standard variety of Chinese. The theoretical and critical analyses above enable us to make the arguments below for the three languages most ethnic minority students have to face in schools. First, for these students, there is agreement in the literature that the importance of their L1 can never be understated from cognitive, affective and economic perspectives (Baker, 2011; Feng, 2019). In multilingual education, we would thus hope to see more minority regions adopt strong trilingual education models (Feng & Adamson, 2015) like that practised in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture (Zhang et al., 2015). In Yanbian, Korean is not only offered as a school subject but also used as the medium of instruction for teaching many school subjects. With such a strong model, Korean students are empowered not only with strong competences in all languages, including L1, L2 and L3 (for some, even L4 Japanese), but with positive school performance in general. Second, we would argue for a lingua-franca approach to teaching Chinese as L2 to minority students. In teaching Chinese as L2, teachers

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could be confident to teach the phonology, lexis and syntax of the local variety of Putonghua as a legitimate form of standard Chinese. Despite minor linguistic differences from the Beijing-based variety, the localized variety would ensure smooth communication, thanks to mutual intelligibility with other varieties. More importantly, it would be much more attainable for ethnic minority students, as they are exposed to it on a daily basis. Furthermore, they can confidently negotiate their linguistic and cultural identities in communication. Thirdly, decades of English language education and its authentic use in workplaces in many major cities have already helped Chinese English evolve into a legitimate variety. Even further, English learned and used in different regions have shown local features. With the same logic, while exposing learners to the major varieties of English used in countries of the inner circle in the classroom, English teachers could feel poised to teach the phonology, lexis and syntax of the local variety of English as a legitimate form to minority students, as long as international intelligibility is not undermined. Meanwhile, learners could be encouraged to develop intercultural awareness and bring their own culture into relationship with cultures embedded in Chinese as L2 and English as L3. A lingua-franca approach to teaching Chinese and English, as argued for in this chapter, is built upon the huge literature and research on pluricentric languages in general and English and Chinese as lingua francas in particular. However, as cautioned above, teaching English and Chinese as lingua francas in a pluricentric approach implies a paradigm shift (Seidlhofer, 2011) that may require concerted efforts from stakeholders such as policymakers, researchers and teachers. This shift has to be a gradual process. Immediate theoretical and practical questions include the following: (1) what international intelligibility or mutual intelligibility actually means, and (2) how a lingua-franca approach could possibly be implemented by a teaching workforce trained to teach the ‘most standard’ variety, which is British English in the case of English, or the Beijing-based Putonghua in the case of Chinese. Before any serious reform can possibly take place, researchers and educators face the challenge of addressing these fundamental questions and convincing stakeholders of the necessity to reconcile tensions between language standardization and multilingual education. Notes (1) In the 1980s, Hu Yaobang held the top office in China, first as Chairman from 1981 to 1982 and then as General Secretary of the CPC from 1982 to 1987. While in power, he made a series of policies empowering minority groups and advocated multilingualism and multilingual education (Bass, 1998). (2) Li Yumin, a professor at Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU), has been an influential figure in language policy and planning in China. He was formerly Deputy Director of China’s National Committee of Languages and Party Secretary

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of the BLCU. Among his multiple high-level positions, he is the Director of the Research Society of Chinese Language Policy and Language Planning and Editor of the Journal of Language Strategy Research, a newly established academic journal with a focus on China’s language policy and planning. (3) In a paper critiquing the usually inappropriate translation of Fangyan as dialect, the American sinologist Victor Mair (1991) proposed the term topolect as a more neutral, midpoint concept to refer to major groupings of Chinese speech regions (between 7 and 12 such regions have been identified by different Chinese scholars using various criteria; Liu, 2004), usually mutually unintelligible. Each topolect or major grouping may consist of several varieties, i.e. dialects (called Cifangyan in Chinese) that are more mutually intelligible. The term topolect is increasingly seen as closer to what Fangyan really means and is used to characterize Chinese speech varieties where an identification as either ‘language’ or ‘dialect’ would be controversial. (4) A large number of words and expressions banned or ordered to be used with caution by the Xinhua News Agency are claimed to be related to state sovereignty, particularly with regard to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. 中港 (China-Hong Kong) and 中澳 (China-Macau), for example, are banned as they put China in parallel with Hong Kong or Macau. When officials from the Central government visit these places, the visit should be called 视察 (inspection), not 出访 (implying a visit to a foreign land). Some lexis is banned for the sake of international relations such as 北朝鲜 (North Korea) (in its stead, 朝鲜 (Korea) or its full name, 朝鲜民主主义人民共和国 (DPRK) are to be used) and 前苏联 (former Soviet Union) (instead, 苏联 (Soviet Union) is recommended for use in normal circumstances). Other words banned for use are related to social morality, law and religion, including 回回 or 蛮子 (derogative terms to refer to 回族 (Hui Muslims)), 黑非洲 (literally ‘black Africa’ to refer to Africa), 傻逼 (a vulgar term for ‘stupidity’), 罪犯 (‘criminal’ often wrongly used in legal discourse to refer to a suspect (犯罪嫌疑人)) and even 老板 (‘boss’ banned for use to refer to state officials of all ranks). (5) Some ethnic minority groups such as Manchu and Hui speak Chinese as their home language for various historical reasons. Manchu, the fourth-largest ethnic minority group, for example, gradually lost their first tongue, though they ruled China for more than three centuries (Tong, 2009). Hui mostly speak Mandarin Chinese while maintaining some Arabic expressions (Gladney, 1996).

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5 Language Standards in Language Testing: The Case of Variation in Written Chinese Proficiency Tests for Second Language Learners Lian Luo

Introduction

It is widely accepted that ‘variation is a characteristic of language: there is more than one way of saying the same thing’ (Meecham & ReesMiller, 2001). Society is constantly evolving and changing, and everyday language changes with it. This process produces many language variants, in pronunciation, lexicon, morphology and syntax (grammar). Some of these variants are non-standard, i.e. not recognized by relevant authorities (see Wang, this volume, on a similar context in Malaysia). Yet this linguistic variety offers speakers a range of richer and more vivid expressions. In the case of language tests, variants might either appear in the tests set or be produced by test candidates. Since language tests have been regarded as an important tool to implement language planning and language policy (hereafter referred to as LPP), it is commonly believed that standard language is the best choice among different variations for such tests. Some people argued that authentic linguistic materials should be used, but variants in these authentic materials are usually removed or modified in language tests. They have seldom been used in language test materials or mentioned in language rubrics in China or in other countries in the past. On the other hand, researchers have been discussing the nonstandard variants used by candidates in language proficiency tests, and whether the variations or variants used by candidates are acceptable in writing or speaking tests, because how raters evaluate variant use in 104

Language Standards in Language Testing  105

high-stake language tests is important for candidates, test designers and concerned authorities. In China, there are many studies of different dialects, popular idioms, lexical variants, etc., but little research has been done concerning variant use in Chinese language tests. Do Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) learners use non-standard variants, specifically, in essay writing in language proficiency tests? To what extent do they use them in these tests? How do essay raters judge variants used in high-stake proficiency tests? To answer these questions, this chapter examines grammatical and lexical variants in the writing part of two language tests, the HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, Test of Chinese proficiency for foreign learners) and the MHK (Minzu Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, Test of Chinese proficiency for ethnic minorities), from the perspectives of language learners and essay raters. The research findings may offer some suggestions for writing task evaluation and test design which may contribute to the fairness of CSL test evaluation. Moreover, since raters are minor agents carrying out a government’s language policy, this research can offer some suggestions for language test rater training and propose a new research perspective for language planning authorities. Language Proficiency Tests: The HSK Test of Chinese Proficiency for Foreign Learners and the MHK Test of Chinese Proficiency for Minorities

In 1984, China began to design its first Test of Chinese proficiency for CSL learners, i.e. the HSK. It was introduced in China for foreigner learners in 1990 and was soon used for ethnic minorities. In 1992, it was administered overseas.1 In 2002, the MHK was developed specifically for ethnic minorities, since researchers and authorities thought that the target examinees of two tests are different. In 2010, a revised version of the HSK replaced the old HSK. The new HSK tests were considered to be easier than the old HSK of the corresponding level, though more writing tasks and an independent speaking test were included. In short, both the HSK and MHK tests were designed for speakers of other languages, but little research has been done to compare them. A brief overview of the HSK test of Chinese proficiency for foreign learners

The new HSK test was launched by Hanban, an agency of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. The HSK is a ­standardized test of Chinese language proficiency for non-native adult Chinese learners using the Chinese language in their daily, academic and professional lives. It is a series of tests with six levels. According to the official website, the test could be used in decision making, assessment or evaluation by

106  Part 2: Standardization and Variation in Multilingual China

educational institutions, employers, Chinese learners and Chinese language training institutions. It is now also used by the Chinese government to issue work permits – the HSK is listed as one of the alternative items to calculate credits for foreign applicants. The HSK test is administered in Mandarin, in simplified Chinese characters, either based on paper and pencil or online. However, if the exam is paper-based, test takers can choose to complete the writing assignments in simplified or in traditional characters, at their discretion. This practice was agreed and implemented by the testing agency, reflecting a recognition of the pluricentric nature of Chinese language, at least as far as the use of traditional script is concerned, especially outside China (see Feng, this volume, for more discussion about pluricentricity.) The HSK test’s writing tasks involve Chinese character writing and essay writing. Its sample tests present a range of writing tasks, from Level 3 and up, as follows (no writing is required at Levels 1 and 2): character writing with given Pinyin (only a few characters to be examined, Level 3), sentence making with given pictures and words (a few sentences to be examined, Level 4), essay writing (one 80-character essay with five given words, and another 80-character essay with a given picture, Level 5) as well as essay rewriting (summarizing a 1000-character essay into a 400-character essay, Level 6). A brief overview of the MHK test of Chinese proficiency for minority learners

The MHK is a national standard exam to test the Chinese proficiency of ethnic minority learners whose mother tongue is not Chinese and who are taught in minority languages (e.g. Uyghur, Mongolian, Korean, etc.). In 2001, the Ministry of Education funded a research project to experts at the Beijing Language and Culture University to develop the MHK in order to meet the needs of Chinese teaching in ethnic minority areas, to establish a scientific evaluation system suitable for ethnic minorities to learn Chinese, and to promote the reform of Chinese teaching in these areas in a comprehensive way. The test has been administered in Jilin, Qinghai, Sichuan, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and other provinces since 2003. It is now used in senior high school entrance examinations, college entrance examinations, preparatory course matriculations at universities, academic quality monitoring and other fields. It also plays an important role in primary and secondary education. The MHK has similar purposes to HSK, such as decision making for different organizations, course exemption for students, teaching evaluation and learners’ self-monitoring. Other purposes involve monitoring bilingual education quality and assessing the Chinese proficiency of ethnic minority teachers who instruct students in Mandarin. In 2018, 462,024 candidates sat the MHK (National Language and Script Committee, 2019: 26).

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Unlike the HSK, the MHK test has writing parts from Levels 1 to 4, and the writing tasks are different. Taking sample tests as examples, the writing tasks range from describing hobbies (150 characters, Level 1), to composing a letter (250 characters, Level 2), composing a narrative essay (350 characters, Level 3) and rewriting a more-than-1000-charater essay into a 500-character essay (500 characters, Level 4). As Zhang et al. (2015) stated, though both HSK and MHK have writing sections, research on the writing part is scant. China’s LPP and Chinese Language Standardization China’s LPP

Laws and language tests are two important ways to implement LPP, and China is no exception. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the Chinese government has taken an active role in language planning. In 1956, the government published the first simplified traditional Chinese characters and a system of phonetic symbols for Mandarin. At the same time, the government also made efforts to promote Mandarin, especially after 1998. A Mandarin proficiency test for native speakers (普通话水平测试, Putonghua Shuiping Ceshi) was designed in the 1980s and introduced in 1994 to promote standard pronunciation. In 2001, the ‘Law of the People’s Republic of China on the National Commonly Used Language and Script’ (Legal Affairs Committee, the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People’s Congress of People’s Republic of China, 2000) was enacted, the first law concerning language and script. The new law stipulated that only Mandarin should be used for activities such as the official activities of government, educational instruction, radio and television broadcasting, as well as films and TV dramas, with some special exceptions. Discussion of language standards and standardization in CSL

It was about 30 or 40 years ago that very few people came to China to learn Chinese, and the discipline of CSL was not yet established. However, at that time, researchers had already begun to discuss the issue of whether ‘standard Chinese’ should be taught in CSL or not. Some researchers held the opinion that teachers could teach dialects in order to facilitate communication between Chinese learners and native Chinese speakers. However, Shuxiang Lü, then one of the most famous and authoritative linguists, believed that Putonghua (lit. ‘common language’, i.e. Mandarin) should be taught, while CSL learners could learn some dialects if they had other special needs, and had plenty of time (Xingjian Li, 1987). In 2000, Article 20 of the Law mentioned above stipulated that ‘Putonghua and the standard Chinese characters shall be taught in classes for foreigners who

108  Part 2: Standardization and Variation in Multilingual China

are learning Chinese’. Although it does not mention teaching Putonghua to ethnic groups in China, one could infer that Putonghua should also be taught in these contexts. The 21st century saw changes in research concerning ‘standard Chinese’. In 2005, Jianming Lu and Xi Guo, respectively, developed the concept of ‘Dahuayu’ (‘Cosmopolitan Chinese’, 大华语 in Chinese; see Feng, this volume, for further information and discussion), suggesting that all Chinese language users should be taken into this big language community all over the world (Wang, 2005). Yuming Li, who used to work in the National Language and Script Committee (a branch of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China since 1998), called for the relations between Putonghua, ‘National language (Guoyu, 国语)’ and ‘Community Chinese’ in Hong Kong and Macao, as well as different ­varieties of Chinese to be studied. He suggested that studies should be conducted concerning adjustments of new standards in language education (Li, 2006). Since then, more and more researchers have begun to talk about ‘Dahuayu’. Quan Li (2015) proposed standards that show a very flexible principle in international Chinese language teaching (Table 5.1) (see Feng, this volume; Wang, this volume, for further discussion). However, the discussion continues among scholars, and it is expected that people should observe the law enacted in 2001. Generally, CSL teachers follow the regulations in the compilation of teaching materials and classroom teaching. Teachers are expected to instruct using Mandarin in classrooms, and Putonghua should be taught in Teaching CSL. Although the law does not specifically mention the CSL tests, it could be inferred that Mandarin and standard Chinese characters are also required in these Table 5.1  Standards of Mandarin Chinese (following Li, 2015)

Language （语言）

Orthography （文字）

Mandarin Chinese Learning in China （国内汉语教学）

Overseas Chinese Learning （海外汉语教学）

Standard （标准）

Nature （性质）

Standard （标准）

Nature （性质）

Putonghua （普通话）

Legal standard （法定标准）

Putonghua （普通话）

Ideal standard （理想标准）

Dialectic Putonghua （地方普通话）

Qualified standard （合格标准）

Huayu （华语）

Qualified standard （合格标准）

Standard characters （规范汉字）

Legal standard （法定标准）

Standard characters （规范汉字）

Ideal standard （理想标准）

Pinyin （拼音）

Qualified standard （合格标准）

Pinyin （拼音）

Qualified standard （合格标准）

(Cited from Li, 2015: 9)

Language Standards in Language Testing  109

tests. In both the HSK and MHK, traditional Chinese characters are not usually used in the tests. Putonghua is used in speaking and listening tests, and variants are screened out during reviewing. Until now, little research has been done to compare these two tests. No research has been done to investigate these two tests’ standardization of writing part from a sociolinguistic point of view. Definition of Lexical and Grammatical Standardization and Variants

Although linguistic standardization of Chinese involves pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and characters, this paper focuses on the ­standardization of vocabulary and grammar in the writing part of the HSK and MHK tests. To discuss standard words and grammar, one must first specify what are standard words or grammar. Compared with vocabulary, the syntactic structure of Chinese is more stable (Huang & Liao, 2017: 3), and it is easier to tell standard from non-standard grammar. However, to define the standard in vocabulary is quite difficult. As a matter of fact, ‘standard language is itself a slippery concept’ (Coupland & Kristiansen, 2011: 11), and so too is linguistic standardization. Since variants are changing, and some of them have been widely used, this study takes the most authoritative dictionary Modern Chinese Dictionary (6th edition, 2012) in China as the standard. The dictionary’s consistent purpose is to promote the standardization of modern Chinese (Dictionary Editing Branch, Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 2012: 5). That is to say, this study defines any lexical variants not in ‘Modern Chinese dictionary’ (6th edition) as non-standard variants. The Investigation

Do language learners use non-standard variants in their writings in language proficiency tests? Since the mainstream voice of the Chinese international teaching community is that teachers should teach standard Chinese, learners should learn standard Chinese and examiners should test standard Chinese, the author expected that most teachers would act accordingly, and most candidates would be careful not to use variants in their writing. However, this does not mean that candidates take an absolutely negative view of non-standard variant use. As far as the author knows, most Mandarin teachers believe that advanced language learners use some popular non-standard variants, and these learners might view variants more positively. Is it possible for us to collect data in test papers so as to describe variant use in both MHK and HSK tests? From the author’s point of view, it might be a ‘Mission Impossible’. First, since papers are scanned pictures instead of typed text, it is time-consuming to gather these variants, and the task is

110  Part 2: Standardization and Variation in Multilingual China

like looking for a needle in a haystack; second, test papers are considered confidential and are kept private except for the test organization’s intended research work; third, even if permission is given to collect variants, it is hard to distinguish standard from non-standard variants. For example, some learners might write a sentence such as *你有说过这句话 (‘You have said that’), where ‘有’ is not used in standard Chinese. Yet this is also a variant used by young people in China. Therefore, a better method is to investigate the language learners’ and raters’ ideas and attitudes. The author hypothesized the following: (1) Candidates of both tests are unlikely to use non-standard lexical or grammatical variants when taking tests; (2) test raters will give very low scores to these non-standard variants and (3) raters of both tests will have similar attitudes towards these non-standard variants. To test these hypotheses, questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data. Research Design

There are altogether five groups of participants, including HSK candidates (96), HSK candidates in the pilot study (33), MHK candidates (256), HSK raters (52) and MHK raters (57). The HSK candidates are from various countries, while all the MHK candidates were university preparatory course students in Xinjiang Autonomous Region. The HSK raters were from different provinces of China (they grade papers online). Most MHK raters were postgraduate students from the Xinjiang Region, with some from Beijing. Four individuals were also interviewed (two candidates and two raters, one each for HSK and MHK). Two questionnaires were designed and distributed to the four groups of participants online. Questionnaire 1 was for the HSK and MHK candidates, and Questionnaire 2 was for the raters. The structure of Questionnaire 1 is described in Table 5.2. Part 2 has six multiple choice items involving lexical variants, in order to assess candidates’ mastery of or familiarity with common non-standard lexical variants (e.g. 萌萌哒 ‘cute’). Language learners who scored less Table 5.2  Structure of Questionnaire 1 (for HSK and MHK candidates) No.

Title

Number of items

Contents/purpose

Part 1

Demographic data

11

Gender, nationality, ethnic group, age, etc.

Part 2

Variant quiz

6

Lexical variants, to identify qualified candidates

Part 3

Sentence usage

40

To what extent will they use these non-standard variants in tests?

Part 4

Attitude/Statements grading

22

Facts + view on non-standard variants in general

Language Standards in Language Testing  111

than three points were removed from the investigation. Part 3 is a 5-point Likert scale with 20 sentence pairs, one containing a non-standard variant, is the other a sentence with similar meaning to the first sentence, e.g. 她颜值很高 (Her ‘appearance value’ is high, where ‘appearance value’ is a non-standard variant) vs. 她长得很漂亮 (She looks pretty). The candidates were asked how likely they were to use them in the writing part of Chinese language proficiency tests, while raters were asked how they would grade the sentences in a test. Part 4 is a 5-point Likert scale with 22 statements concerning candidates’ language ability and their attitudes towards variant use in general. The variants in Part 2 and Part 3 are new colloquial phrases or sentences used in people’s daily life. The lexical variants were carefully chosen, ensuring that they are not in the Modern Chinese Dictionary (6th edition, 2012). They were determined by checking their frequency of occurrence in Baidu search engine, which is the most popular search engine in China. Variants with fewer than 10,000,000 occurrences were deleted from the list. The variants obtained are listed as in Table 5.3. Table 5.3  Occurrence of non-standard variants by Baidu Search Engine Item no.

Non-standard variants 

Meaning

Frequency of occurrence

q1

悲催(sad)

A new word meaning ‘so miserable that tears fall down (悲惨得催人泪下)’.

15,400,000

q2

斑竹 (website Moderator)

Literal meaning is a kind of bamboo (斑竹), homonym of ‘版主(website Moderator)’.

13,000,000

q3

打酱油 (none of my business)

Literal meaning is ‘buy soya source (买酱油)’, and new meaning is ‘none of my business’.

14,800,000

q4

萌萌哒 (cute)

A borrowed word from Japanese ‘萌え萌えだ meaning ‘cute’.

19,100,000

q5

忽悠 (deceive)

Literal meaning is ‘flicker’; it means ‘deceive’ in Northeast China dialect.

28,400,000

q6

出柜 (disclose one’s own sexual orientation)

A direct translation of the English phrase ‘out of the closet’.

16,400,000

Q1

房奴 (mortgage slave)

A new word meaning ‘mortgage slave’, a person who has to pay loans for their house or apartment.

12,700,000

Q3

囧(embarrassed)

A character looking like an emoticon of ‘embarrass’, with frowning eyebrows and a mouth. Its pronunciation and meaning are the same as the character ‘窘’.

18,600,000

Q5

颜值 (appearance value)

A new word meaning ‘appearance value’ or ‘face value’.

20,600,000

Q7

涨姿势 (gain new knowledge)

Literal meaning is ‘rise (涨)’+ ‘pose (姿势)’; it is a homonym of ‘gain knowledge (长知识)’.

16,200,000

Q9

美眉 (beautiful girl)

Literal meaning is ‘beautiful eyebrows’; it is a homonym of ‘younger sister (妹妹)’.

18,700,000

112  Part 2: Standardization and Variation in Multilingual China

Item no.

Non-standard variants 

Meaning

Frequency of occurrence

Q11

神马 (what)

Literal meaning is ‘god (神)’+ ‘horse (马)’; it is a homonym of ‘什么 (What)’ in Chinese.

21,800,000

Q13

白骨精 (white collar, backbone, elite, i.e. white-collar women)

Originally refers to White Bone Demon (‘白骨 精’) in the novel ‘Pilgrimage to the West’ (《西游 记》), and has gained a new meaning ‘successful professional women (white-collar workers (白 领), backbones (骨干) and elites (精英))’.

17,000,000

Q15

极品 (very annoying person)

Literal meaning is ‘the best quality’; it now refers to any very annoying person who behaves very differently from other people. For example, an extremely stingy person.

31,700,000

Q17

潜水 (only reading posts without expressing opinions on line)

Literal meaning is ‘dive’ or ‘submerge’; it now means ‘only reading posts without expressing opinions on line’.

29,000,000

Q19

卡哇伊 (lovely)

A borrowed word from Japanese ‘可爱い(かわ いい)’ meaning ‘lovely’.

17,700,000

Q21

APP (application)

A borrowed abbreviation from English ‘application’.

100,000,000

Q23

萝莉控 (lolicon)

A borrowed word from Japanese and English ‘ ロリータ・コンプレックス’ (Lolita Complex), its abbreviation is ‘ロリコン’. It refers to eroticizing young girls (e.g. in manga or anime).

16,400,000

Q25

无厘头(Refers to a person’s words and deeds meaningless)

Cantonese, referring to a person’s words and deeds meaningless.

13,500,000

Q27

心水 (like)

Cantonese, meaning ‘like’.

16,200,000

Q29

泡妞 (pick up hot chicks)

Literal meaning ‘soak (泡)’ + ‘girl (妞), meaning to ‘pick up hot chicks’.

18,600,000

Q31

他的长相很中国。(His appearance is very China.)

‘很(very)’is a adverb, and ‘中国 (China)’ is grammar a noun. Usually ‘很’ should not precede a noun.

Q33

他毕业后没找到工作， 后来被就业了。(He did not find a job after graduation and was later counted as employed).

‘就业’ is a verb meaning ‘get a job’. The passive structure of ‘被’ sentence is ‘Object + “被” + Subject + Verb’. ‘被就业’ means ‘counted as employed’.

grammar

Q35

我有说过让你走吗?(Did I say let you go?)

Usual expression is ‘我说过让你走吗？’ ‘有’ is added here between the subject ‘我’ and verb ‘说’.

grammar

Q37

给我一个理由先。(Give me a reason first.)

Usual expression is ‘先给我一个理由’(‘First give me a reason’). The adverb ‘先’ usually precedes the verb. In Cantonese, it is placed at the end of the sentence.

grammar

Q39

请你把这个问题说说清 楚。(Please explain this question clearly.)

Usual expression is ‘请你把这个问题说清楚’. Here the verb ‘说’ is repeated.

grammar

Note: Part 2 is a quiz (q1-q6), Part 3 is the sentence judging part, where Q1–Q29 involve nonstandard vocabulary (popular colloquial phrases, involving newly created words, homonyms, old words with new meanings, borrowed words, and dialect words) and Q31–Q39 involve non-standard grammar.

Language Standards in Language Testing  113

Table 5.4  Structure of Questionnaire 2 (for HSK and MHK raters) No.

Title

Number of items

Contents/purpose

Part 1

Demographic data

11

Gender, nationality, ethnic group, age, etc.

Part 2

—

—

—

Part 3

Sentence usage

40

To what extent will they grade these non-standard variants in tests?

Part 4

Attitude/Statements grading

19

Facts + What do they think about non-standard variant using in tests in general?

Questionnaire 2 was for raters of both tests; there was no qualifying quiz, and the questions in Part 4 are different from Questionnaire 1 (see Table 5.4). After a questionnaire with 33 Mandarin learners was piloted and refined in September 2017, 2 the survey was put on a website specialized in questionnaire investigation. Survey links were sent to the participants by WeChat or email, or WeChat public accounts. The procedures were approved by the universities and two test organizations concerned. For the HSK candidates, and raters from both tests, participants could choose freely to fill out the questionnaires or not. For the MHK candidates, the teachers from three universities required preparatory students to fill out the questionnaire, and students could either choose to do so or refuse to. Data were collected in November 2017. After survey data analysis, four interviews were conducted in November and December 2017. Results and Discussion The quiz

On the 6-item quiz data analysis, it was found that HSK candidates outperformed MHK candidates on four items. This could be attributed both to the concentration and better performance of ethnic Chinese students, postgraduates and doctoral candidates in the HSK group. In addition, some of the HSK candidates have longer Chinese learning experiences. Due to the limited space, the data of the quiz are not presented here. The aim of the quiz was to remove those unqualified participants, scoring less than three out of six points. Some other participants’ data were also removed after checking their responses in the sentence grading part or statement part. For example, if a respondent filled in the questionnaire with the same ‘neutral’ option ‘3’ on the Likert scale in five successive questions, their data were excluded. Altogether, 150 MHK candidates and 35 HSK candidates were removed.

114  Part 2: Standardization and Variation in Multilingual China

Test candidates’ demographic data

Among all the participants, there are 61 HSK candidates, including 20 males (32.79%) and 41 females (67.21%); 106 MHK candidates, including 35 males (33.02%) and 71 females (66.98%). Tables 5.5 and 5.6 list their ages and years of learning Chinese, respectively. HSK candidates are from Southeast Asia (46, 75.41%, of whom 33 are ethnic Chinese), Central Asia (3, 4.92%), East Asia (2, 3.28%), West Asia (1, 1.64%), Europe (6, 9.84%), the Americas (2, 3.28%, of whom 1 is ethnic Chinese) and undefined (1, 1.64%). The HSK candidates from Southeast Asia are mainly from the following countries: Myanmar (16, of whom 13 were ethnic Chinese), Vietnam (10, 5), Thailand (9, 6), Malaysia (5, 5), Indonesia (3, 2), Laos (2, 1) and Cambodia (1, 1). However, 11 of the ethnic Chinese reported that they did not speak Chinese in their families; a further six chose ‘not certain’ when asked if their family members speak Chinese with them. The ethnic groups of MHK candidates include Uyghurs (65, 61.32%), Kazakhs (36, 33.96%) and Kirgiz (5, 4.72%). Table 5.5  Candidates’ age Age

HSK

MHK

16–20

2

3.28%

103

97.17%

21–25

24

39.34%

3

2.83%

26–30

27

44.26%

0

0.00%

31–35

5

8.20%

0

0.00%

36–40

1

1.64%

0

0.00%

41–45

1

1.64%

0

0.00%

More than 46

1

1.64%

0

0.00%

61

100.00%

106

100.00%

Total

Table 5.6  Chinese learning time Learning time (in years)

HSK

MHK

0–2

1

1.64%

0

0.00%

3–5

17

27.87%

2

1.89%

6–10

24

39.34%

62

58.49%

11–15

8

13.11%

35

33.02%

16–20

4

6.56%

7

6.60%

21–25

3

4.92%

0

0.00%

More than 25

4

6.56%

0

0.00%

61

100.00%

106

100.00%

Total

Language Standards in Language Testing  115

Table 5.7  t test of candidates’ sentence judgement (combined group) Sentences

Paired t test of mean Mean difference

SD

Non−1.7 0.96 standard – (2.475–4.175) standard

t SE

0.07

df

95% Confidence interval Lower limit

Upper limit

−1.85

−1.55

Sig. (bilateral)

Effect size

Cohen’s d −22.82

166

 0.05, two-tailed, effect size Cohen’s d = 0.18), and both groups prefer to use sentences without non-standard variants (M HSK  =  4.13 vs. M MHK  =  4.20, SD HSK  =  0.59 vs. SD MHK  =  0.58, t(165) = −0.78, p = 0.55 > 0.05, two-tailed, effect size Cohen’s d = 0.12). Candidates’ attitudes based on the Likert scale

There are altogether 22 statements in Part 4. Some data were reverse coded, and nine questions were removed to achieve internal validity. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the candidates’ attitude part (13 items) is 0.816. The means of all 13 remaining statements (M = 3.82, SD = 0.92, n = 167) rated by HSK and MHK candidates are above three points on the 5-point scale. The difference between the HSK group (M = 3.71, SD = 0.62, n = 61) and MHK group (M  =  3.94, SD  =  0.50, n  =  106) is small. The

116  Part 2: Standardization and Variation in Multilingual China

independent  sample t test shows that this difference is significant (t(165) = −2.57, p=0.01  0.05, two-tailed, and the effect size Cohen’s d = 0.01). In a word, both groups of candidates think they should write standard sentences rather than non-standard sentences. Overall, both groups display similar attitudes. Besides the 54th statement, the t test shows that HSK and MHK candidates hold similar attitudes to the other 7 statements in this part, and we summarize as follows: first, both groups report that their social circles include native Chinese speakers or high-proficiency speakers who speak Chinese with them; second, their teachers believe they have comparatively good writing abilities in Chinese; third, others think they have a relatively large Chinese vocabulary; fourth, both groups of candidates take similar stands, that teachers should teach standard Chinese in classrooms, regardless of writing genres; fifth, when non-standard usage appears in the composition in the test, both groups hope that raters make their own judgements based on the specific contexts. The t test also shows that the HSK and MHK candidates differ significantly on their responses to 5 of the 13 statements (Table 5.8), but only Q60 (It is very important for me to pass HSK/MHK. p = 0.00  F)

y

y

Y

y

y

4. Jibun2 (M > F)

y

y

Y

y

y

5. Atakushi3 (F > M)

y

?

?

y

y

6. Atashi4 (F > M)

y

?

Y

y

y

7. Ore5 (M > F)

y

y

Y

y

y

8. Washi (M > F)

y

y

y

y

y

9. Uchi7 (F > M)

y

?

?

y

y

6

Source: Miyazaki (2004); Abe (2000); Shibamoto (1987); Ide (1979).8

1.1% for second-person pronouns. The use of second-person pronouns is a status-sensitive linguistic feature that means that speakers can use them only with someone equal or lower status. Like the use of first- and second-person pronouns, the use of sentencefinal particles/forms is often categorized by two genders. The stereotypical use of feminine sentence-final particles includes ‘wa, da-wa, da-wa-ne’, ‘noun + yo’ and ‘desho’, whereas men’s use of ‘zo’ and ‘ze’ is often claimed to be ‘standard’ men’s speech (see Abe, 2000 for more detail discussion). We have to keep in mind that it is the ‘standard’ Japanese language that has been historically studied and analyzed putting the local languages on the periphery. And in the study of language and gender for Table 15.2  Second-person pronouns List of second-person pronouns

Non-queer speakers

Queer speakers

Women

Men

Lesbians

Gays

Transgender

1. Anata (F = M)

y

y

y

y

y

2. Anta (F = M)

y

y

y

y

y

3. Kimi (M > F)

y

y

y

y

y

4. Omae (M > F)

y

y

y

y

y

5. Temee (M > F)

?

y

y

y

y

6. Omee (M > F)

?

y

y

y

y

7. Kisama (M > F)

?

y

?

?

?

Source: Kobayashi (2016); Abe (2017).

300  Part 4: Negotiating Standards and Variation: Case Studies From Japanese

Japanese, it is this standard-ness that is considered valuable to study and analyze. Thus, for a long time, studies on Japanese gendered speech have focused on standard Japanese speakers (Tokyoite) that claimed that women’s speech is indirect, soft, non-assertive and lacks logic. Furthermore, they studied only hetero speakers, marginalizing non-­ hetero speakers. My study examines how the notion of hetero-speech as standard and/or norm/and or unmarked is navigated by a few Japanese transgender speakers. Studies since 2000 have revealed that not only do speakers negotiate such gendered speech, but they also manipulate it in such a way that guarantees the speakers’ social, gender and sexual identities and advantages. The field of Japanese language and sexuality, though very small, has explored different aspects of queer speakers including lesbians (Abe, 2004), gay men (Abe, 2010; Claire, 2013; Ogawa & Smith, 1997) and transgenders (Abe, 2010, 2017). In these studies, the binary system has been problematized and debated with the argument that such a system is the core cause for the marginalization of non-hetero individuals. This chapter is the continuation of my decade old study on queer speakers, from lesbian to onee (queen) to transgender. In this new study, I will explore (1) how transgenders’ identities are signaled in gendered speech; (2) how they manipulate and/or maneuver with such gendered speech and (3) how such gendered speech may guarantee their unstable subjectivity. The notion of ‘standard-ness’ in speech is interpreted in two phases for this study: (1) men’s (standard) vs. women’s speech (non-standard); and (2) hetero (standard) vs. non-hetero speech (non-standard). I will argue that the notion of ‘standard-ness’ is an idealized, fictionized, imagined, misunderstood and/or even discriminatory category of speech, and thus, my study will criticize the core aspect of ‘standard-ness’ (see Heinrich, this volume, for a discussion on standardness, and Hiramoto, this volume, for use of ‘non-standard’ Japanese outside of Japan). In my case study, it has nothing to do with location (Tokyo ‘standard’ speech) and/or government policy (all Japanese can speak ‘standard’ Japanese through education) but has more to do with gender dichotomies and/or heteronormativity associated with gendered speech. Standard speech presumably spoken by men and hetero people indexes unmarkedness, whereas non-standard speech most probably spoken by women and queers indexes markedness. For my study on linguistic practices of transgender speakers, I interviewed about 30 individuals, most of whom are trans women. In this chapter, I will focus on one particular transwoman with whom I was able to spend more time than any other interviewee (10 months in 2016 and 2017) and from whom I collected naturally occurring speech data. Her name is Yuna Hirasawa, a manga artist, who indexes her performativity of gender by adopting various types of linguistic strategies and approaches. This is the very first study on Japanese transwoman with rich data and micro-level linguistic analysis.

Negotiating ‘Standard’ Gendered Speech in Japanese  301

The Field of Language, Gender and Sexuality

The field of language and sexuality moves away binary systems that claim gender and sexuality are natural and unquestionable. Jagose (1996: 3) argues that queer theory challenges unproblematic terms such as ‘man’ and ‘woman’ and that it demonstrates ‘the impossibility of any “natural” sexuality’. Butler who claims the sex binary system (female/male) is historically and culturally constructed relentlessly denaturalizes sex and sexuality. Researchers in this field contest heteronormative assumptions and institutions and argue that gender subjectivity is not a preexisting social fact but that it is co-constructed and co-negotiated in interactions. It was the late 1990s when the field of language and sexuality had started producing much interesting research, which has explored the complexly interconnected, yet separate categories of gender and sexuality. Gender and sexuality are linked experiences, but they represent the root of two distinct grounds of social practice (Rubin, 1999). These studies have moved ‘beyond the analytically and conceptually rigid boundaries imposed’ (Davies, 2010: 41) by a gender dichotomy and investigated the dynamics occurring among diverse genders and sexualities. Initial studies were limited to the linguistic practices of gays and lesbians, but more recently, we have started seeing studies about transgender speakers in various languages. For instance, Bershtling (2014) examines how queer speakers who are between two genders negotiate their use of person pronouns to reflect their fluid identities and concludes that they are not ‘passive’ speakers in terms of their power to free themselves from the restricted usage of grammatical gender in Hebrew. Bershtling further argues that it is the ‘binary linguistic reality that granted their innovative practices meaning and hence performative power’ (2014: 42). The ‘uniqueness’ of their linguistic usage includes: (1) the avoidance of the present tense that reflect gender; (2) the avoidance of the use of person pronouns by using passive forms and (3) the replacement of ordinary family terms with new ones (momdad of their children, wifeband or parent instead of father/ mother) (Bershtling, 2014: 38). These are great examples of how queer speakers negotiate their linguistic resources to fit their gender identities, desires and needs. Choice of address and reference terms is one of the most discussed areas of grammar in the field of language and sexuality. Some languages in Asia have a complicated set of rules for reference and address forms, such as Thai, which has 27 first-person reference forms (Siewierska, 2004: 228). In Indonesian, all person pronouns are gender-neutral, as is Vietnamese (but formality dependent), but tombois (FtM transgender) in Blackwood’s study prefer the Minangkabau masculine second-person pronoun, wa’ang, to a gender-neutral Indonesian second-person pronoun, anda (formal) or kamu (informal), to show solidarity among in-group members ‘through mutual acknowledgement and substantiation of their

302  Part 4: Negotiating Standards and Variation: Case Studies From Japanese

self-positioning as men’ (2014: 85–86). Another more visible transgender group, waria (MtF), addresses each other by kau (you-feminine) when they are in dispute, but they sometimes use wa’ang (you-masculine) when they address their tomboy friends, again the indication of solidarity. Hindi also shows gender differences in the choice of second-person pronouns (Hall, 2002: 150). Hall finds that hijras, or MtF transgender people, usually use feminine reference among themselves after they join the hijra community, as well as toward a superior or inferior member of the community. At the same time, they shift to masculine reference when ‘status is a point of emphasis’ (2002: 151). Hall argues that the use of masculine reference by hijras is comparable with the use of tū, the intimate second-person pronoun used to address a god (higher) and a servant (lower) by Hindi speakers. Moreover, Hall analyses how the use of masculine first-person pronouns by hijras is strongly related to their physical and emotional transition process as well as their notion of hierarchy and identity. Hijras use the masculine first-person pronoun to indicate (1) their transition period – they use the masculine one when talking about their past as boys (pre-hijra state); (2) their disagreement and (3) their emotional anger in the community. Another study on reference terms (Kulick, 1998: 214–221) discusses how MtF transgender prostitutes, travestis in Brazil, use the masculine pronoun ele (he) and adjectival endings that agree with the grammatically masculine term travesi when talking about travestis as an objective group. However, they avoid using the term travesi (instead they use bicha9 and mona10) when they talk about themselves and their in-group members. Furthermore, these travestis manipulate the grammatically (and socially) feminine term maricona (passive homosexuals) to refer to their clients in order to assert power (which means getting more money). A more recent study on travesties (Borba & Ostermann, 2007) reveals that they use masculine forms when discussing their own and other’s past (as men); reporting verbal interaction by others on travesties; talking about themselves within their family relationships and separating themselves from other out-group travesties. For the French language, Livia (1997) illustrates how the protagonist in her biography, Georgine Noel, an MtF transsexual doctor, manipulates the adjectives and past participles of the grammatical gender system to signal her feelings in specific contexts. Noel’s use of the feminine forms as a transsexual woman is associated with feelings of love toward a boy, happiness and sisterhood, whereas the masculine forms are used to show her self-concept as a scout member, superiority and power as a medical authority, frustration toward the foreign bureaucracy and fear (of homosexuality). It is quite significant that Noel uses feminine forms when she feels love and happiness and uses masculine forms when she needs to exhibit her authority and power. As Livia claims, the grammatical gender system may restrict how we play

Negotiating ‘Standard’ Gendered Speech in Japanese  303

our gender roles, but it can also provide ‘linguistic devices to express gender fluidity (1997: 365). For the English language, Zimman (2018), who analyzes coming out stories by transgender people, criticizes researchers’ tendency to treat coming out as something homogenous among sexual minority groups. Based on the interviews with nine transgender individuals in 2007, Zimman argues that the notion of ‘processuality’ as a central part of the generic coming out narrative genre is lacking among transgender speakers. Instead, the author divides coming out narratives into two types, declaration and disclosure, as ‘discrete processes’ found in linguistic practice of transgender speakers (2018: 130). The former often shared with lesbians and gays, is the initial claiming as transgender, and the latter is the sharing of their transgender history after their transition (‘the other kind of coming out’) (2018: 130). The author concludes by saying that transgender speakers do not conceptualize coming out as an event but ‘rather an ongoing process’ (2018: 135). My informant Hirasawa claims that coming out is the very start of becoming a transgender. These studies are critically engaged with queer theory. Not only do they try to deconstruct the gender binaries, but they also try to defy and contest heteronormativity. They include the diverse discursive research sites from literary texts to online dating sites including the varieties of data collection strategies (interviews, video- and audio-recorded conversations). Background of the Study Changes in transgender community in Japan

During the past 20 years, there have been three crucial changes in Japanese law regarding the lives of transgenders. First is the legalization of sex reassignment surgery (SRS) in 1996. The following year, the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology introduced SRS as a treatment for people with gender dysphoria. Before SRS was legalized in Japan, many sought the surgery in the United States, Thailand or other countries. However, there had been a few cases of SRS before the legalization in Japan (Mitsuhashi, 2008: 202). Second is that in 2003, the Japanese government passed a law to allow people with gender dysphoria to change their sex in their family registry11 if they met five conditions: (1) older than 20 years old; (2) currently single; (3) no children (this was changed to no children under 20 years old in 2008); (4) no reproductive organs and (5) have the appropriate sexual organ of the desired sex (Nomiya et al., 2011: 187–191). The number of people who changed their sex in the family registry is 6909 in 2017.12 Third is, starting in 2018, SRS are covered by Japanese national insurance though there are some strict regulations.

304  Part 4: Negotiating Standards and Variation: Case Studies From Japanese

Methods

The fieldwork for this study was conducted between July of 2016 and May of 2017 in Tokyo. My informant in this study, Yuna Hirasawa, was introduced to me at a party organized by Ran Yamamoto, the representative of gid.jp, the support group for the transgender community in Tokyo. Before the year of 2016, I had already visited Okayama University which is the headquarters for Japanese Society of Gender Identity Disorder to meet a few medical doctors who provide surgeries and other medical treatments for transgender people. I was also introduced to their support group at the gender institute and participated in their meetings. I managed to meet with some of the group members outside of the regular meetings. Altogether, I interviewed about 30 transgender people but could not obtain naturally occurring speech data before I met Hirasawa. All the transgender people in Tokyo, Okayama, Nagoya and Osaka whom I met before Hirasawa did not give me permission to record our conversations because they wanted to be anonymous. Like the time I conducted research on Japanese lesbian speech at bars in Tokyo, I could only made notes at the interviews and/or conversations. For those of us who conduct research in queer communities, it is important to keep in mind that the majority of queers are in the closet and that coming out is a very sensitive and difficult choice for them. Thus, it was impossible for me to collect natural speech data until I met Hirasawa. She was the very first transgender woman who agreed to be both audio- (Panasonic IC recorder) and video-taped (FiLMiC-Pro) of our conversations. Audio- and/or video-recording is one of the most important methods of collecting sociolinguistic data, and it is especially crucial for me to analyze (1) the phonological aspects of linguistic structure; (2) the body language and (3) the voice quality.13 In addition to the recordings, I carefully wrote fields notes especially on the speaker’s lexical, grammatical and rhetorical forms. Hirasawa came to my apt in Tokyo once or twice a month for a few hours for the duration of 10 months to tell me about her ‘gender history’ (Zimman, 2018: 125). For the first two times, I had prepared specific questions to ask her, but in the later conversations, we simply talked about topics Hirasawa was interested in discussing. Topics of our conversations range from political issues (e.g. elections), social concerns (e.g. national pension), gender subjects (e.g. gender roles at her previous company) and personal concerns (e.g. clothes and makeup), to medical matters (e.g. hormone treatment). Sometimes we had guests in our conversations. Hirasawa once brought her female former co-worker whom she has known for 10 years. In addition, I invited a few other trans people to join Hirasawa in our conversations. All conversations were audio- and video-recorded. Hirasawa and I sometimes went to an event or went out for meals at restaurants. The most recent meeting with her was June of 2019 when we had lunch and went to a karaoke bar to talk about her recent life as a manga artist.

Negotiating ‘Standard’ Gendered Speech in Japanese  305

Hirasawa has completed all the medical and legal processes and lives as a woman. Born in 1985 in Tokyo, she is a manga artist who has an MA in physics and worked for a major Japanese company for three years. She received a prestigious Chiba Tetsuya Prize for her manga Wasuresokonai (Failed to forget) in 2015 and published her first manga Boku ga watashi ni naru tameni (in order to become ‘watashi’-women’s preferred firstperson pronoun, from ‘boku’-men’s preferred form) in 2016 by Kodansha. In this manga, she describes the detailed process of SRS in Thailand. Data Analysis and Discussion: Discursive Construction of Hirasawa’s Transgender Identity Affective stance

We sociolinguists argue that speech is performative manipulated and negotiated in specific contexts and that ‘identity does not represent a set of preexisting, static truths but is rather an emergent, contextual, and intersubjective phenomenon’ (Davis et al., 2014). Hirasawa talks about her performativity of gender in relation to her speech. She said, ‘speech should not be performative. It has to come naturally’. 1 Shizen de, engi o shinai, engi de attewa ikenai. ‘Be natural, don’t perform, don’t act’. For her, performativity of female gender can be guaranteed through the use of ‘naturally’ sounding feminine linguistic features. Until she gets to the point where she sounds ‘natural’ in terms of producing feminine acts, she keeps working on it as Butler argues. Performativity is not a singular act, but a repetition and a ritual, which achieves its effects through its naturalization in the context of a body, understood, in part, as a culturally sustained temporal duration. (Butler, 1999: xv)

During my conversations with Hirasawa, I heard the term, shizen (natural), so many times when she talked about her linguistic acts. I will show how this notion of naturalness can be examined through her performativity of feminine gender. In order for her to sound natural, she navigates linguistic femininity in Japanese very deliberately and consciously. Like many queer theorists, I view language as a social act and ‘as central to the construction of subjective reality and the foundation for human experience’ (Barrett, 2014: 197). The notion of naturalness is persuasively connected to the theory of normalization (Foucault, 1990) that relies on making and preserving norms. Normalization refers to social processes through which ideas, actions, and behaviors are seen as ‘normal’. For Hirasawa, she has been in these processes where she hopes to be viewed as ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ in

306  Part 4: Negotiating Standards and Variation: Case Studies From Japanese

everyday life. ‘Women’s language’ is naturalized as something innate for Hirasawa who wants to sound ‘normal’ linguistically. By speaking in particular ways, Hirasawa is bringing into being her gender. Hirasawa’s technique of normalization (Foucault, 1990: 89) relies on her intentional linguistic practice. The most crucial linguistic practice is not to be assertive sounding in speech. In order for her not to sound too assertive as a ‘normal/idealized’ woman, she uses four indexical techniques: (1) refraining from the use of da (an auxiliary verb) alone; (2) using tag questions; (3) using hedges and (4) avoiding strong imperative forms. She claims that she tries to avoid the use of da, a stereotypically more masculine sounding auxiliary verb. For her, da indexes assertiveness and roughness in speech. However, when she cannot avoid using da, she adds ne or yo, a sentence-final particle after da (e.g. Sō da ne, or sō da yo ‘That’s right’ instead of Sō da ‘That’s right’). Interestingly, she does not add wa (as in sō da wa), the most feminine sentence-final particle; instead, she adds yo (da yo), which has been historically categorized as a masculine form (see Okamoto & Sato, 1992). The avoidance of da wa indicates how Hirasawa is deconstructing the gender binaries attached to linguistic features. Indexicality of the sentence-final particle ‘wa’ is repudiated by her sense of gender. She further argues that the use of ne in da ne more or less guarantees femininity (Pasudo ga agaru ‘you can pass as a woman’). Another linguistic strategy to avoid assertiveness is the use of tag questions (e.g. Sō yo, ne? or Sō, desho? ‘It is right, isn’t it?’). It is quite interesting that Robin Lakoff (1975) claimed that the use of tag questions in English was one of the characteristics of women’s speech which brought a huge debate later in the field of language and gender. Hirasawa also suggests the use of hedges (e.g. think, wonder) to sound more unassertive and/or indirect (e.g. Sore wa chigau to omou ‘I think it is wrong’.), another claim Lakoff argued. There have been many studies on the use of hedges, but the most recent study (Engstrom, 2018) on the use of hedges supports Lakoff’s (and Hirasawa’s) claim. As for the strong command, she replaces an imperative form with a suggestion (e.g. Ittara? ‘How about going?’) instead of a direct command (e.g. Itte ‘Go’). Hirasawa told me that she was teased by her high-school classmates (boy’s school) for being too cute as a boy (e.g. Omae kawaii na ‘You are cute’), while her family pointed out to her that she had been using okama14 kotoba, ‘the speech of effeminate men’. Before the transition, she used mainly boku (‘I’) but occasionally used ore (I) (the more masculine sounding pronoun), both of which are the most commonly used first-person pronoun among men. She stopped using ore claiming that the use of ore was a performance (unnatural) and that she did not want to perform. After the transition, she stays in watashi, the neutral form, the most commonly used one among transwomen I have interviewed since it can be used by any gender and any age. Watashi is the right performative formula for Hirasawa.

Negotiating ‘Standard’ Gendered Speech in Japanese  307

Epistemic stance

Hirasawa argues that the crucial aspect of naturalness in her speech acts does not stay within the feminine side of the linguistic territory but rather crosses gender boundaries in a different way to hetero women – her way of language negotiation. One of the surprising findings about Hirasawa’s linguistic life is that she claims that she has been constantly negotiating her speech in order to sound ‘natural’ as a woman. Such language negotiation (Auer, 2002: 8) is utilized when a speaker does not agree with the default language-of-interaction in the immediate context (e.g. heteronormative in this case) and wants to change it in the discourse (e.g. gender-inclusive). As Edelman (2014: 150) argues, in terms of transgender communities of practice, ‘incongruities between one’s past and present gender identity, practice, or presentation may operate as a primary point of relation’. She has two separate linguistic practices (present and past) depending on whom she talks to. When she talks with someone who does not know her as a transwoman and who thus, treats her as a woman, she avoids certain terms and/or expressions. This section illustrates how she as a transwoman negotiates her identity in specific contexts in which she may manipulate the indexical power or meaning of language. 2 Watashi o josei to shite sesshite kurete iru hito-tachi to hanasu toki wa dansei tokuyū no iimawashi ya kitanai kotoba o sakemasu. ‘When I talk with people who do me the favor of treating me as a woman, I avoid specific expressions men tend to use. I also avoid dirty words’. One of the examples Hirasawa gave me is the avoidance of ga (but). 3 Sore wa sō da ga, kocchi mo kō da ro?    Sore wa sō da kedo, kocchi mo kō janai? ‘That is true, but this one is also true.    Though that is true, isn’t this also true?’ But when she talks with people who treat her as a transwoman (i.e. former male), she has a longer list of conscious linguistic strategies. 4 Watashi ni seibetsu-ikō shita moto-dansei toshite sesshiteiru hitotachi to hanasu toki wa, josei o wakatta yōna kotoba ya naiyō wa sakemasu. ‘When I talk with people who treat me as a former male, I avoid phrases and topics which might give an impression that I know all about women’. She claims that she would not use certain phrases (e.g. Onna wa sō yo. ‘Women are all alike;’Onna wa sō iu no iyagaru kara nee. ‘Women would hate such things;’ and Onna wa sō iu ikimono dakara. ‘Women are such creatures’) because she is concerned or worried that some people might

308  Part 4: Negotiating Standards and Variation: Case Studies From Japanese

say to her ‘You can’t say such things because you are not a woman (Onna janai omae ga iu na)’. She also avoids an excessive gesture that might give an impression of being a burikko (a woman who acts as if she is cute and innocent). Her list goes on: (1) don’t flatter men too much (dansei o muda ni hometari); (2) don’t speak in a cute-talking manner (‘wakaranaai’ toka nekonadegoe de iu); (3) don’t touch one’s hair too much and (4) avoid specific terms and linguistic styles only women would use. Hirasawa’s Performativity of Gender in Her Linguistic Acts as a Transwoman Avoidance of otoko-no-hito (male person/man)

One of the most important discoveries of Hirasawa’s conscious linguistic behavior is her avoidance of a noun, otoko-no-hito ‘male person/ man’. In Japanese, we have three ways of expressing ‘man/men:’ otoko, otoko-no-hito, and dansei. The first two are Japanese native words while the third is a Sino-Japanese term. The first, otoko, is the most casual and direct term with some sexual nuance while the other two are more formal and neutral. Hirasawa talks about the use of otoko-no-hito. 5 Saisho no uchi, seibetsu-ikō shitate no koro wa, kekkō ki o tsuketeta waado desu ne…’Otoko-no-hito’ to iu kotoba wa ishiki ga todoku han’i de amari tsukawani yō ni shiteimasu ne. Seibetsu-ikō mae no shiriai ya yūjin no mae dewa, ‘otoko’ ya ‘dansei’ ‘dansei no kata’ nado o tsukaimasu. ‘Otoko-no-hito’ to iu kotoba wa josei ga yoku tsukau kotoba de, dansei wa jibuntachi no koto o ‘otoko-no-hito’ to wa koshō shinai karadesu….Watashi ga seibetsu-ikō o suru mae kara no, shiriatte iru, tatoeba, konomae ni Fukushima san to ka no mae de, tsurutto deteshimau to ‘a shimatta’ to omou koto wa arimasu ne. Sei-ikō shite kara shiriatta kata wa, amari ishiki shinai desu kedo, suru mae no hito ni wa, e, ‘otoko-no-hito toka mitai na, icchau no?’ toka sō iu fū ni omowaretara, chotto iya ka, toka omotte, ….imamo ‘otoko-no-hito’ toka iu baai wa, jibun ga mazu ‘ josei de aru’ to iu tachiba o daizentei to shita uede iuwake janai desuka.‘Onna to shite mita otoko-no-hito’ tte iu noga, sugoi tsuyoi imeeji janai desuka. ‘Watashi wa onna dakara, kō mimasu’ tokatte iu noga an’ni fukumareteiru yōna ki ga shite. Seibetsu-ikō mae no yūjin niwa, watashi wa tonikaku, ‘omae..nani, onna butteru no!’ toka omowareru no ga iya desushi, kowai desu node, narubeku dansei-jidai to chigau kotoba o tsukawanai yōni ishikishiteiru, toiu koto desu. Gyakuni seibetsuikō-go ni shiriatta hito towa ‘otoko-no-hito’ wa tsukaimasu shi, onna-dōshi de hanashi ga moriagatta toki niwa, ‘otoko nante nee‘ to  tsukaimasu. Kekkyoku, sono toki mo ‘—to moto-otoko ga iu nomo nandesu kedo’ toka, ekusukyūzu o ushironi irete shimaimasu kedo ne.

Negotiating ‘Standard’ Gendered Speech in Japanese  309



‘I was quite careful with the word right after my transition to a woman. I consciously try not to use otoko-no-hito, instead I use otoko, dansei, dansei-no-kata. The term, otoko-no-hito is used by women but men do not use it. When I used it by accident when talking to people like Fukushima who knew me as a man, I felt shitty. I am not conscious with the term when talking to people whom I met after my transition. But I am scared of being told, ‘you can’t use that being a former man.’ The thing is there is a precondition for the use of the term. Only women can use it. The term implies the women’s point view. I do not want to use the term with my old friends because they might think I pretend too much like a woman. But when talking with people whom I met after my transition, I do use otoko-no-hito. When I am having a good time with female friends, I say things like ‘otoko nan te ne (My! Those men!!)’, but I often add a sentence saying, ‘from the point of view of a former man’.

I did not realize that men do not use the term, otoko-no-hito until Hirasawa’s comment. Since then, I have asked Japanese males, including linguists about this and none of them admit that they use the term. The norm that men would not use the term proves Hirasawa’s high level of cognitive linguistic practices as a transwoman. Terms for non-hetero in Japanese

Issues of categorization have been debated in many ways in queer studies. There are advantages of categorization: (1) it is simpler, clearer and easier to comprehend the distinctions among each category as a group; and (2) we do not have to think of the complexities of individuals who belong to each category. However, we recognize disadvantages in which we force individuals to fit into a category and ignore (and/or invalidate) people who do not belong to any of the categories. In the Japanese queer world, we recognize these disadvantages, but listing different categories for non-hetero people might help us see the historical and social process of such categorization. For non-hetero individuals, we recognize many Japanese native terms; sei-dōitsusei-shōgai-sha ‘people with gender identity disorder’ or seibetsuiwa-sha ‘people with gender dysphoria’,15 nyu-haaf ‘new half’ (MtF),16 josō ‘cross dressing’ (MtF), onee ‘queen’, o-kama ‘rice pot’ (effeminate gay men), o-nabe ‘cooking pot’ (FtM),17 tachi ‘sword’ (butch), and neko ‘cat’ (fem), and ekkusu jendaa ‘x-gender’ (gender queer). We also have English borrowed terms: gei ‘gay’ (male gay), rezubian (lesbian), rezu (lesbian), bian (lesbian), toransu-man ‘transman’, toransu-uuman ‘transwoman’, toransu-jendaa (transgender), toransu-sekusharu (transsexual), and sisu-jendaa (cisgender). This categorization, of course, does not imply that a queer-identified individual belongs to only one category. The

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distinction among these categories is always blurred, unstable, and negotiable depending on the contexts. Hirasawa usually uses two labels for herself, sei-dōitsusei-shōgai (gender dysphoria) and toransu-jendaa (transgender), and never uses toransu-sekusharu ‘transsexual’ or ‘transexual’ (Valentine, 2012) arguing that the distinction between transgender and transsexual is not important. She also has her way of referring to hetero people: (1) futsuu-no-hito ‘normal person’, (2) kissui-no-hito ‘native person’, (3) ippanteki na katagata ‘ordinary/average people’ and (4) hetero ‘hetero’. She argues that she used the first term quite frequently until recently, but that the term can be quite offensive since it might imply that non-hetero people are abnormal. 6 Baai ni yotte tsukaiwake masu kedo, saikin, chotto aa, hontō wa ‘futsū no hito’ tte iu noga ichiban tettoribayai n desu kedo, yappa, ano, chotto, yappa, ‘futsū’ to iu to, ‘kōgekiteki’ ni natte shimaunde. ‘Depending on the context. I use a different term. In fact, futsū is the simplest term, but when you say ‘futsū’, it can sound offensive’. Her favorite one is the second one. 7 Kissui edochōmin’ toka-tte iu janai desuka. Nanika, hokorashigeni. De, sore o seibetsu ni atehamaruto, ano, to iu noga, omoshirokatta no to igaide. Iwarete, tashikani. Maa, ano fukai ni omouka dōka wa betsu ni shite, hiteiteki niwa jijitsu dewa aru janai desuka. ‘Watashi wa kissui dewa tashikani nai’ to. De, yappa, ano, sō iu imi dewa, ‘futsū’ ka ‘futsū de nai’ tte ittara, shukan no bubun ga hairimasu kedo, kissu ka kissui de naika, to ittara, kyakkansei ga kanari tsuyoi node, sō iu imi de sono kotoba o tsukau toki wa kekkō arimasu ne. ‘If you are a native of Tokyo, you call yourself ‘kissui no Edo (Tokyo) citizen’ with pride. We can apply this to gender. I am certainly NOT a native. In this sense, the term (saying one is futsū or not futsū), sounds subjective, but if we say, kissui or not kissui, it sounds more objective. This is why I use this word more often’. Among the four linguistic areas in the study of Japanese language and gender, I mentioned earlier, I did not hear Hirasawa’s use of honorifics as often except that she often stays in desu/masu forms. In general, her speech is polite with occasional use of casual phrases and terms (e.g. yappa ‘after all’). Another transwoman I met, on the other hand, makes frequent use of honorifics. When she was asked about her make-up, she responded by saying, Kebakeba shita yōna katachi ni narazu ni shizen na katachi de dekirudake, maa naturaru to iu koto o kokoro gakete orimasu (I am careful not to be garish. I try to look as natural as possible). The use of polite speech (humble form), orimasu ‘do’, here clearly indexes refinement, which is more expected of women.18

Negotiating ‘Standard’ Gendered Speech in Japanese  311

Discussion and Conclusion

Hirasawa’s performativity of gender is observed on varying proportions of femininity (e.g. skinny body, soft skin, size of breast, facial shape, voice quality); thus, her notion of gender is concrete and she has completed her femininity with medical treatments (hormone, SRS). Linguistically, Hirasawa negotiates her subjective experience by manipulating a specific indexical value and/or meaning attached to linguistic features (e.g. the use of soft-sounding sentence-final forms and the avoidance of the term, otoko-no-hito ‘man’). In other words, the indexicality of grammar can pinpoint a transgender’s dynamic status (some the temporal in-between status; some, permanent) of selfhood. In this paper, I have shown how we can locate a transgender speaker’s linguistic practice on the gender-binary maps. The question is, is Hirasawa’s linguistic practice the same or similar to commonly described stylistic characteristics of Japanese women’s speech? I argue that her linguistic practice as a transwoman does not represent a set of preexisting static facts about Japanese gendered speech but that she constantly renegotiates such gendered speech by contextualizing her subjectivity. But does her subjective position show the imitation and/or obedience of the imagined and idealized models of linguistic womanhood (e.g. the use of ne, tag questions, hedges)? Yes, to a certain degree, but at the same time, Hirasawa tries to deconstruct the notion of shizen ‘natural’ and futsū ‘normal’. Hirasawa’s desire to be seen as a woman and her conflicting desire and/or pride to be a transwoman, a balancing act (Edelman, 2014), can be observed through her linguistic practice. Her linguistic practice is not a reproduction of linguistic heteronormativity but a reframing of the binary system which she sometimes feels that she cannot escape from. For instance, the non-use of otoko-no-hito ‘man’ by Hirasawa gives ‘the potentially subversive space between normative identity discourses and actual identity performances’ (Motschenbacher, 2010: 6). Hirasawa’s agency clearly gives people alternative possibilities as a gendered person, and she is constantly reworking and challenging such established, fixed truths about ‘standard’ gendered speech. She gives a space for flexibilities between futsū ‘normal’ and contested gender models. Notes (1) It is one of the two common first-person pronouns among men, but recent studies have shown the use by girls and lesbians (see Abe, 2004; Miyazaki, 2004). (2) Often used among men in military. But jibun is one of the favorite terms among lesbians. The term can be used as a second-person pronoun in Kansai (Osaka) area (see Abe, 2004). (3) Usually used by women, but commonly used by male traditional rakugoka (storytellers) as well. (4) Usually used by women as well as male traditional storytellers, but some gay men and transgenders use it as well.

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(5) The term represents more masculinity compared to boku. The most recent study shows the increased use of the term even in more formal contexts such as a business meeting (Kobayashi, 2016). It can’t be used toward someone higher than the speaker. Until Meiji era, the term was commonly used among women. Even now women in Tohoku area use it. (6) Believed to be used among older men, but it is commonly used among younger men in the Western part of Japan. Abe’s study on lesbians (2010) finds the use of washi by older lesbians. (7) Used mainly by women in Kansai area as well as men by Hōnichi dialect in Kyūshū. (8) The table is based on the studies of the first-person pronouns by many scholars, including some films. (9) Meaning an effeminate gay man. Many gay men reject the term. This term can be used as an insult if used to refer to heterosexual men. (10) Originally means a dreaming girl, innocent, pure and loveable. (11) The family registry in Japan is the most important legal document which is used for getting a job, entering a school, getting married/divorced, receiving a pension, etc. (12) Private conversation with Ran Yamamoto in 2017. (13) Voice training is one of the most important aspect of transitions. Recording her actual speech helped me to compare with other trans women in terms of feminine sounding voice. (14) The term, okama, is a derogatory word. Should be avoided. (15) More commonly used term is sei-doitsusei-shogai-sha. The direct translation is gender identity disorder, the term eliminated since 2012 in the United States, but it is still commonly used in Japan. (16) The term was created by a singer, Kuwata Keisuke in 1981 when he interviewed a transwoman, Betty Haruyama, the owner of pub in Osaka. Half (haafu) implies half man and half woman. The term has been used in the context of interracial marriage in Japan (e.g. a child with a Japanese mother and a foreign father). (17) Both o-kama and o-nabe are kitchen utensil metaphor. O is an honorific prefix. (18) See more of this transwoman’s linguistic practice in Abe (2017).

References Abe, H. (2000) Speaking of Power: Japanese Women and Their Speeches. Munich: Lincom Europa. Abe, H. (2004) Lesbian bar talk in Shinjuku. In S. Okamoto and J.S. Smith (eds) Japanese Language, Gender and Ideology (pp. 205–221). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Abe, H. (2010) Queer Japanese: Gender and Sexual Identities through Linguistic Practices. New York: Routledge. Abe, H. (2017) Queer linguistics: Linguistic practices of Japanese transgender speakers. Gender Studies 21 (7), 8–33. Auer, P. (2002) Code-Switching in Conversation: Language, Interaction and Identity. London: Routledge. Attaviriyanupap, K. (2015) The linguistic representation of gender in Thai. In M. Hellinger and H. Motschenbache (eds) Gender Across Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men (Vol. 4, pp. 369–400). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Barrett, R. (2014) The emergence of the unmarked: Queer theory, language ideology, and formal linguistics. In L. Zimman, J.L. Davis and J. Raclaw (eds) Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality (pp. 170–194). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

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Bershtling, O. (2014) ‘Speech creates a kind of commitment’: Queering Hebrew. In L. Zimman, J.L. Davis and J. Raclaw (eds) Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality (pp. 35–61). Oxford and New York: Oxford University press. Blackwood, E. (2014) Language and non-normative gender and sexuality in Indonesia. In L. Zimman, J.L. Davis and J. Raclaw (eds) Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality (pp. 81–100). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Borba, R. and Ostermann, A.C. (2007) Do bodies matter? Travestis’ embodiment of (trans)gender identity through the manipulation of the Brazilian Portuguese grammatical gender system. Gender and Language 1 (1), 131–148. Cameron, D. and Kulick, D. (2003) Language and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davies, S.G. (2010) Gender Diversity in Indonesia: Sexuality, Islam and Queer Selves. Oxford and New York: Routledge. Edelman, E.A. (2014) Neither in nor out: Taking the ‘t’ out of the closet. In L. Zimman, J.L. Davis and J. Raclaw (eds) Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality (pp. 150–169). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Engstrom, A. (2018) I’m sure women use more hedges, I think. Unpublished BA thesis, University of Gavle. Foucault, M. (1990) The History of Sexuality. New York: Random House. Vintage Books Edition. Hall, K. (2002) ‘Unnatural’ gender in Hindi. In M. Hellinger and H. Bußmann (eds) Gender Across Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men (Vol. 2, pp. 133–162). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Hall, K. (2005) Intertextual sexuality: Parodies of class, identity, and desire in liminal Delhi. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15 (1), 125–144. Ide, S. (1979) Onna no kotoba, otoko no kotoba [Women’s Language, Men’s Language]. Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Tsushinsha. Kobayashi, E. (2016) Use of first person pronouns in ‘daily life.’ In O. Endo, M. Kobayashi, K. Satake and M. Takahashi (eds) Japanese Daily Interaction: Transcripts and Analysis (pp. 41–72). Tokyo: Hitsuji shobō. Kulick, D. (1998) Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, R. (1975) Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper and Row. Leap, W.L. and Motschenbacher, H. (2012) Launching a new phase in language and sexuality studies. Journal of Language and Sexuality 1 (1), 1–14. Livia, A. (1997) Disloyal to masculinity: Linguistic gender and liminal identity in French. In A. Livia and K. Hall (eds) Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender and Sexuality (pp. 349–368). New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maree, C. (2013) O-nee-kotoba ron [Thought About Queen’s Speech]. Tokyo: Seidosha. Matsumoto, Y. (1989) Politeness and conversational universals: Observations from Japanese. Multilingua 82 (2–3), 207–221. Miller, L. (1989) The Japanese language and honorific speech: Is there a Nihongo without keigo? Penn Linguistics Review 13, 38–46. Mitsuhashi, J. (2008) Josō to nihonjin [Cross Dressing and Japanese]. Tokyo: Kodansha. Miyazaki, A. (2004) Japanese Junior high schools girls’ and boys’ first-person pronoun use and their social world. In S. Okamoto and J. Shibamoto-Smith (eds) Japanese Language, Gender and Ideology (pp. 256–274). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Motschenbacher, H. (2010) Language in its socio-cultural context: New explorations in gendered, global and media uses. In M. Bieswanger, H. Motschenbacher and S. Mühleisen (eds) Language in its Socio-Cultural Context: New Explorations in Gendered, Global and Media Uses (pp. 9–19). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

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Nomiya, A., Katsuki, H. Ōshima, Y., et al. (2011) Sei-dōitsusei-shōgai tte nani [What Is Gender Dysphoria?]. Tokyo: Ryokufuu shuppan. Ogawa, N. and Shibamoto-Smith, J. (1997) The gendering of the gay male sex class in Japan: A case study based on Rasen no sobyo. In A. Livia and K. Hall (eds) Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender and Sexuality (pp. 402–415). New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Okamoto, S. and Sato, C. (1992) Less feminine speech among young Japanese females. Paper Presented at Women and Language Conference at Berkeley. Pastre, G. (1997) Linguistic gender play among French gays and lesbians. In A. Livia and K. Hall (eds) Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender and Sexuality (pp. 369–379). New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosenhouse, J. and Dbayyat, N. (2006) Gender switch in female speech of an urbanized Arabic dialect in Israel. Anthropological Linguistics 48, 169–186. Rubin, B. (1999) Thinking of sex: Notes for radical theory of the politics of sexuality. In R. Parker and P. Aggleton (eds) Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader (pp. 150– 187). New York: Routledge. Shibamoto, J. (1987) Japanese sociolinguistics. Annual Review of Anthropology 16, 261–278. Siewierska, A. (2004) Person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tobin, Y. (2001) Gender switch in modern Hebrew. In M. Hellinger and H. Bußmann (eds) Gender Across Languages: The Representation of Women and Men (Vol. I, pp. 177– 198). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Valentine, D. (2012) Sue E. Generous: Toward a theory of non-transexuality. Feminist Studies 38 (1), 185–211. Valentine, D. (2017) Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of Category. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Zimman, L. (2018) ‘The other kind of coming out’: Transgender people and the coming out narrative genre. In T.M. Milani (ed.) Queering Language and Sexuality (pp. 124–150). South Yorkshire: Equinox Publishing Ltd. (previously published in 2009).

16 Between Standardization and Localization: Changes in Tôhoku Dialect as Spoken in Hawai‘i Mie Hiramoto

Introduction

This chapter investigates changes in the Tôhoku dialect (TD) of Japanese as spoken in Hawai‘i. The study draws on the concepts of second dialect acquisition (SDA) and koineization to understand these changes. SDA is a useful framework in contact situations where there is a clear target dialect for immigrant speakers; it usually focuses on the dialect use of first-generation immigrants. On the other hand, koineization usually refers to new dialect formation where there is no clear target variety and typically takes place across multiple generations. This study is based on data from a group of first-generation adult immigrants who spoke a minority dialect in a contact situation. Although the setting was in a classic koineization context, the speaker population in this study is limited to the first generation. Therefore, the analysis is largely within the SDA framework, but koineization is considered in the conclusion. At the time that Japanese plantation-worker migration to Hawai‘i was at its height, the Meiji government was dominated by politicians from Chûgoku region. This new administration systematically attempted to eradicate rural regional dialects including TD, resulting in the dialect’s strong stigmatization. The oral histories that form the data of this study make it clear that many TD-speaking immigrants who actively interacted with non-TD speakers in Hawai‘i. This means that the immigrants from Tôhoku region avoided using overt dialect features (e.g. intervocalic voicing) due to the stigma, by making conscious efforts to select the alternative forms from Standard Japanese (SJ) and Chûgoku dialect (CD). A popular belief in Hawai‘i is that CD became a sort of default dialect among Japanese immigrants because CD speakers outnumbered all other dialect speakers during the plantation period. However, this claim is not 315

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supported by the linguistic evidence. SJ phonology is widely shared across much of Honshû island, the main island of Japan, including the Chûgoku region. Given the similarity of CD and SJ phonology, the data do not allow sufficient differentiation to conclude that CD was the specific acquisition target of TD speakers. Historical Background of the Japanese Immigration to Hawai‘i

Commercial cultivation of sugarcane began at Koloa Plantation on the island of Kaua‘i in 1835 (Alexander, 1937). The demand for Hawaiian sugar was the result of two events on the US mainland: the Gold Rush in the 1840s, which led to dramatic population growth in California, and the Civil War in 1861–1865, which led to a severe shortage of sugar from the American south (Chinen & Hiura, 1997: 9). Although Hawai‘i’s native population was in decline, the sugar economy was booming and so was the demand for manpower, leading plantation owners to look overseas for immigrant workers. In 1854, Japan’s xenophobic Tokugawa regime started to collapse, ending the long period of seclusion that had begun in 1639 and opening Japan’s ports to the world. The Meiji Restoration in 1868 saw powerful feudal leaders, mainly from today’s Yamaguchi prefecture, taking over the Tokugawa Shogunate and organizing a new government. Meiji leaders quickly established relations with Western powers as they focused on modernizing Japan by accepting ideas and technology from the West. Due to the long period of seclusion, contexts of Japanese-speaking communities outside Japan were relatively limited until recently. Investigating existing records of earlier Japanese-speaking communities outside Japan presents unique features of the interdisciplinary link between migration and language variation (see Matsumoto & Britain, 2020). This is especially the case for Japanese immigrants’ language use in Hawai‘i since the Japanese language standardization processes have not yet been fully completed at the time. On his way to England in 1881, King David Kalākaua of Hawai‘i stopped in Tokyo to encourage the Meiji Emperor to send labourers to Hawai‘i, thus initiating the government-administered migration in 1885. Workers from the Hiroshima and Yamaguchi prefectures were the first to arrive. According to Hawaii Hochisha (2001: 52–54), more than 60% of those who migrated before 1894 returned to Japan with considerable wealth. However, due to some political reasons, fewer than 30% of them returned to Japan after 1894, and from that time the Japanese resident population rose steadily until 1924, the last year of plantation immigration (United Japanese Society of Hawai‘i, 1964: 98). In 1900, the Japanese numbered 61,111, or 39.7% of the total population. In 1930, to 139,631, or 37.9% of the population (Odo & Shinoto, 1985: 18–19). The rapid rise of the Japanese population, particularly after the turn of the century, was due to the insular nature of Japanese marriage. Unlike other plantation immigrants, who intermarried with other immigrant

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groups or native Hawaiians, the Japanese did not encourage interracial marriage. During the early years, when many Japanese workers managed to return to Japan at the end of their contracts, plantation work was considered dekasegi, or temporary labour, and mainly single men were employed. According to records, prior to 1900, men outnumbered women four to one (Hawaii Hochisha, 2001: 53; Hiroshima City, 2002: 1). As the length of their stays grew longer, many men began to send for brides from their hometowns, especially between 1908 and 1923 (Hawaii Hochisha, 2001: 61). This practice contributed to maintaining the proportions of Japanese dialects brought to Hawai‘i throughout the sugar plantation period. During this period, some specific areas in Japan became centres of emigration to Hawai‘i. Even after the official ending of plantation immigration and World War II, many Japanese remained in contact with their families in their hometowns (Hiroshima City, 2002: 6). Japanese in Hawai‘i

Many first-generation Japanese immigrants to Hawai‘i, or issei, were uneducated farmers and fishermen from rural areas who did not speak English. In his 1935 thesis on linguistic diversity in Hawai‘i, John Reinecke (1969/1988: 124–125) observed that in 1910, among Japanese aged 10 or older, 49,750 (79.0%) were monolingual. That number dwindled to 41,730 (54.2%) in 1920 and 28,150 (29.8%) in 1930, as did the literacy rate among the Japanese: 46.4% in 1896, 46.2% in 1900, 35.0% in 1910, 20.8% in 1920, and 12.7% in 1930. But although the second generation, or nisei, gained English, they did not stop using Japanese. The language remained strong because of the reluctance of Japanese immigrant workers to marry non-Japanese. The overwhelmingly large numbers of Japanese residents became a major concern, especially after a series of labour strikes in the early 1900s (Kotani, 1985: 33ff). A movement to Americanize immigrants and their children that started in 1900 on the US mainland soon spread to Hawai‘i (Fujiwara, 1998: 159; Okihiro, 1991: 66), where efforts focused on the Japanese, as they were considered ‘the largest and most conspicuous Asian group’ (Tamura, 1994/2001: 49). Tamura also reported that anti-Japanese sentiment that began on the US west coast spread nationally and seriously affected the Japanese in Hawai‘i (2002: 24). As noted earlier, many issei parents educated their nisei children in the American e­ ducational system while also sending them to Japanese language school in order to retain their original language and cultural values. Reinecke recognized the persistence of Japanese immigrants’ native language use and cultural identity: ‘The Japanese language, at least as a spoken tongue, will probably be one of the last, if not the very last, to be displaced by English’ (1969/1988: 130–131). Consequently, prior to WWII, the Japanese language was kept alive at home by many of the issei immigrants and their children in Hawai‘i (Hawaii Hochisha, 2001: 66–67).

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The social status of Japanese began to rise after the war. The achievements of the nisei soldiers from Hawai‘i in the US military fighting regiments became legendary. Most issei plantation workers continued to stress the importance of education so their children would have a better life; accordingly, many nisei Japanese and the following generations left the plantations and entered skilled and professional positions (Kotani, 1985; Okihiro, 1991). Between 1960 and 1970, Hawai‘i shifted rapidly from a plantation-based economy to tourism and military-based markets (Yamamoto, 1974: 23). During this time, Hawai‘i-born Japanese represented 33.2% of the managerial/administrative workforce, 23.7% of the service industry workforce, and 22.7% of the farming, forestry and fishing workforce (Kotani, 1985: 160). Japanese intermarriage with other ethnic groups continued to remain low compared to other groups until the 1980s (Okamura, 2000/2001: 78). The post-war recovery of Japan’s economy in the early 1970s also contributed to fast economic growth in Hawai‘i, resulting in an increased use of Japanese language, the most-used second language in the state (Yamamoto, 1974: 67). Unlike the pre-war Japanese language schools, post-war Japanese language instruction was based on modern SJ, due to the development of second language pedagogical materials and teaching methods. Thus, younger generations became more familiar with SJ than the locally spoken Japanese dialects brought by plantation immigrants. The expansion of Japanese media, which used SJ exclusively, also greatly influenced the language use of many plantation-heritage Japanese speakers. In 2001, the Japanese constituted the second largest ethnic group in Hawai‘i: 291,674, or 24.5% (including part-Japanese). Despite this history, variation in Japanese as spoken in Hawai‘i has not been fully studied. Much of the previous research focuses on the Chûgoku dialect’s strong influence and is limited to loanwords and other lexical-level analyses (e.g. Higa, 1975). Few studies have explored phonology, dialectal variation or dialect shift; for instance, although Smith (1980) noted the adoption of non-TD features by TD speakers, the analysis is based on a small number of speakers and is limited to the Natural Phonology framework. This chapter begins to address some of these gaps by investigating phonological features in the first-generation TD-speaking immigrants. Second Dialect Acquisition

SDA is an approach to the analysis of dialect contact. In an important SDA study, Chambers (1992) discussed the results of a dialect contact situation involving Canadian English speakers in England. Chambers claimed that there are limits to the acquisition of second dialects, especially at the phonological level, whereby not all the phonological rules in the target variety are acquired by older speakers. In summary, a number of scholars

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(e.g. Chambers, 1992; Kerswill, 1994; Siegel, 2003; Trudgill, 1986) have suggested some general principles regarding SDA processes. I focus on two of these: (1) a second dialect’s ‘simple’ forms are easier to acquire than ‘complex’ forms when they are in competing distribution in a speaker’s two dialects, and (2) older speakers show more limits in SDA than younger speakers, particularly in the acquisition of phonological features. Following previous studies of SDA, this paper investigates patterns of adoption of non-TD phonology by TD speakers. In such a study, it is important to remember the complexity of the contexts of dialect contact, which have multidimensional linguistic, cultural, and sociohistorical backgrounds and tend to resist simple explanation. This study therefore draws on notions relevant to dialect contact studies beyond the SDA approach, particularly the founder principle and koineization, to understand its overall findings. Issei Japanese Dialects Spoken in Hawai‘i

The largest number of immigrants to Hawai‘i came from Hiroshima and Yamaguchi in western Honshû, where CD is spoken (Hiramoto, 2010). Large numbers also came from Kyûshû island in western Japan, primarily from Kumamoto and Fukuoka, where the Kyûshû dialect (KD) is spoken, as well as from the southwestern most islands of Okinawa, where various Okinawan languages and dialects are spoken. As Table 16.1 shows, the majority of immigrants came originally from western Japan. Most of those who did not came from Fukushima and northern Niigata in northeastern Honshû island. The areas covering northern Honshû, including most of Niigata and Fukushima, constitute the TD region (e.g. Kanno & Iitoyo, 1967/1994; Kato, 1958). Therefore, I refer to those from Niigata and Fukushima as TD speakers in this study. Japanese immigrants seem to have been distributed more or less evenly across the Hawaiian islands and to have had relatively high mobility (see Table 16.1 and Figure 16.1). The physical geography of Japan, with its many mountainous islands, most definitely contributed to rich regional dialectal diversification (Shibatani, 1987: 860). Traditional dialectology considers many of these regional dialects, and several particular sub-dialects, to be mutually unintelligible (Shibatani, 1987: 860). In modern days, language standardization movements and the pervasiveness of mass communication have promoted greater inter-dialectal intelligibility (see SturtzSreetharan 2017 or Okamoto 2021: 280-281 for inter-dialectal communication examples). However, the differences among the dialects were still strong during the plantation immigration period, and mutual intelligibility among immigrants proved problematic (e.g. Kimura, 1988). Previous studies mentioning the Japanese language variety in Hawai‘i to be heavily influenced by CD, with borrowings from English and

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Table 16.1  Distributions of Japanese immigrants and their numbers in the capital city and different islands across Hawai‘i in 1929 (Iida, 1998: 297) Honolulu

Oahu

Maui

Kauai

Big Island

Total

 1

Hiroshima (3461)

Hiroshima (1095)

Hiroshima (1182)

Hiroshima (1032)

Hiroshima (2492)

Hiroshima (9384)

 2

Yamaguchi (3306)

Yamaguchi (925)

Okinawa (905)

Yamaguchi (868)

Kumamoto (1841)

Yamaguchi (7481)

 3

Kumamoto (1947)

Okinawa (823)

Kumamoto (760)

Kumamoto (400)

Yamaguchi (1543)

Kumamoto (5763)

 4

Okinawa (1104)

Kumamoto (668)

Yamaguchi (747)

Okinawa (391)

Okinawa (1124)

Okinawa (4468)

 5

Fukuoka (929)

Niigata (419)

Fukushima (366)

Fukuoka (191)

Fukuoka (569)

Fukuoka (2160)

 6

Niigata (435)

Fukushima (373)

Fukuoka (232)

Niigata (188)

Niigata (360)

Niigata (1519)

 7

Fukushima (349)

Fukuoka (20)

Niigata (108)

Miyagi (34)

Fukushima (190)

Fukushima (1334)

 8

Wakayama (216)

Miyagi (69)

Wakayama (53)

Ehime (31)

Miyagi (113)

Wakayama (393)

  9

Okayama (138)

Okayama & Chiba (23)

Miyagi (37)

Okayama (30)

Wakayama (80)

Miyagi (378)

10

Miyagi (115)

______

Toyama (22)

Fukushima (29)

Kagoshima & Kôchi (43)

Okayama (247)

Figure 16.1  Origins of the four largest Japanese immigrant groups in Hawai‘i (based on 1924 data; Nagara, 1972, Appendix II)

Between Standardization and Localization  321

Hawaiian (e.g. Higa, 1975; Lind, 1946; Nagara, 1972). This is reasonable, as CD speakers (from Hiroshima and Yamaguchi) were the first immigrants to arrive after 1885. On the other hand, TD speakers (from Niigata and Fukushima) were among the last groups of settlers, and they were a minority. The first group of Fukushima immigrants arrived in 1898, but their population did not significantly increase until after a devastating famine in Fukushima in 1905 (Kimura, 1988: 33). While immigrants from Niigata also arrived in 1885, there were only 77 of them; Niigata settlers did not arrive in large numbers until around 1909 (Kimura, 1988: 24–25). In considering the dialect contact situation, it is important to remember that the Meiji government’s language reform movement caused nationwide stigmatization of TD (Sakai, 1991: 17). Even in modern Japan, the stigma is still strong among the general public, and TD is often ridiculed for its unique features and derisively referred to as zûzû-ben (‘zûzû dialect’, an onomatopoeic term referring to a distinctive sound of TD; Sakai, 1991; also see Heinrich, this volume). The arrival gap of 13 years between Chûgoku and Fukushima immigrants made ‘a great difference in social and economic status between the old-timers and newcomers’ (Kimura, 1988: 23). It is no surprise that the first and foremost point of encounter [between the dialect groups] was the language, and that the earlier Chûgoku immigrants discriminated against the Tôhoku latecomers. This point will be revisited in the conclusion’s discussion of the founder principle. Tôhoku Dialect Speakers in Hawai‘i

The Meiji government’s attack on TD coincided with the timing of immigration to Hawai‘i. This section presents some conversation data to illustrate TD speakers’ feelings about their dialect. Many speakers mentioned instances of dialect discrimination by non-TD speakers and explained that they consciously attempted to alter their speech in order not to sound like TD speakers. The first excerpt is from a male speaker named Chôzaburô from Fukushima who described his impression of TD to an interviewer (my translation): Excerpt 1: Chôzaburô from Fukushima who came to Hawai‘i in 1915 at the age of 15. (data recorded in 1973) Ê, are dagara zûzûiwareruno yo, hatsuonnga tsungauno yo, mina Tôhoguno monowa, ê ..., wasura dagara nô, ano zubunno kendôsude hanasutara, hondô kono hidora omosuroigoto syaberuwaido omôyôna yo. Hatsuonnga warui gara no? Well, that’s why it’s called zûzû. Pronunciation is different, for us from Tôhoku. We, therefore, well, when speaking to people from our own prefecture, other people must think these guys speak very funny. Our pronunciation is bad, right?

322  Part 4: Negotiating Standards and Variation: Case Studies From Japanese

In the next excerpt, Rie, a female speaker from Niigata, recollects being constantly teased about her TD by CD-speaking colleagues at work (my translation): Excerpt 1: Rie from Niigata who came to Hawai‘i in 1917 at the age of 22.

(data recorded in 1975) Sokoni hachinen orimashita. Sonotokini, ma, hazukashii koto ni ne, ... chotto wakarinikukatta desu ne. Maa, onnashi nihonjin dakara sugu naraimashitanga ne..., Yamaguchi-kenno kotoba sokkuri naraimashitano yo. Âja kôja warawarerukara narawannya ikemasen ne? ...teakano tsukezô tokanantokatte warai masun. Ê kusôtto omotte ne, sô bakani saretewa komarû yûte... I stayed there for eight years. At that time, well, I was ashamed but, ... I did not understand their dialect. Well, because they are Japanese, too, I learned [their dialect] right away. I learned all about Yamaguchi-dialect. Because they made fun of me, it had to be learned... Country bumpkin or something, they laughed at me. Oh, shit, I said, don’t tease me so much... These comments are fairly representative. Overt dialect stigmatization led to the TD speakers’ adoption of CD for acceptance in the local Japanese communities. The immigrants formed insular groups on the plantations, where they worked and lived together, married each other, practised the same religion(s) (whether Buddhism, Shintoism or protestant Christianity) and socialized with one another (Kokushô, 1998: 47–51). In short, regardless of their regional origins, the Japanese as an ethnic group largely shared the same traditions and values and maintained pan-Japanese cultural practices in weddings, funerals, etc. throughout Hawai‘i (Kokushô, 1998: 47). As a result, speakers of different dialects interacted on a daily basis, which gave rise to a local Japanese variety. Data and Methods

The data of this study are from a corpus collected between 1973 and 1975, under the direction of Dr Edward Smith at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (hereafter, ‘the Smith Project data’). The entire corpus comprises recordings from 37 issei, of which this study uses only a subset of the recordings of the TD speakers. The data were collected by students as a semester project for an upper division Japanese language class, whose purpose was to study Japanese regional dialects. The students were instructed to find a fluent speaker of a Japanese dialect other than SJ and then record the speakers for comparative analysis with SJ. Most of the students asked family members (grandparents, granduncles, grandaunts) or family friends (usually grandparents’ friends) to participate in their project. The interviewers spoke SJ, but because the interviewers and interviewees were familiar with each other, they speak in a casual register in the recordings. The Smith Project data provide a rich source for speakers’

Between Standardization and Localization  323

memories of plantation days, the various dialects spoken in Hawai‘i, and the speakers’ personal feelings towards dialect use among Japanese immigrants. In other words, the Smith Project dataset is not only amenable to quantitative analysis but also provides ethnographic information as well as information about language attitudes among Japanese plantation immigrants (see Zhao, this volume). The data for this study consist of recordings of six male and nine female adult TD speakers in three different groups. The first two groups are issei speakers who moved to Hawai‘i prior to 1924 as sugar plantation labourers. The following criteria were used for selecting these speakers: All conversations and monologues were casual; speakers hailed from a common rural farming environment and had minimal education; none had returned to Japan for extended periods since their immigration; all speakers had been married to other issei TD speakers for at least 30 years; and the conversation topics were limited to the speakers’ memories of immigration and plantation life, visits to Japan, and their family members. The speakers in the first group interacted with non-TD speakers daily, while those in the second group did not. An important observation is that it was mostly the speakers in the first group who mentioned dialect discrimination by non-Tôhoku immigrants. These speakers also pointed out their conscious efforts to ‘alter’ their speech in order to conform to non-Tôhoku immigrants. The recordings of these speakers are from 15 to 40 minutes long. The third group is a control group consisting of two Tôhoku residents (one male, one female) who had never lived outside their hometowns. The speakers in this group are in the same age range as the first two groups, and the data were collected in 1975 by a trained field worker. The speakers talked about the history of their hometowns and famous people or incidents related to their hometowns. Information about the speakers is summarized in Table 16.2 in order of the speaker’s group, gender, name, hometown, year of arrival (YOA), age of arrival (AOA), year of recording (YOR), age at time of recording (AOR), and occupation (PLT = plantation, HSMD = housemaid/nanny, HW = housewife, RTL = retail, LNDR = launderer). In selecting features for analysis, I focused on traditional TD features described by Japanese dialectologists. Major dialectology research started after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Since the early 1900s, Japanese dialectologists focused on creating a linguistic atlas for different regional dialect areas as part of the language standardization movement (Yasuda, 1999: 196). Some of this research is based on data gathered after 1924. However, all of the features selected for this analysis are recognized as classic TD characteristics by multiple Tôhoku and/or Japanese dialect specialists and have been shown to be used in the Tôhoku area at the time of the plantation immigration, and in Hawai‘i by issei immigrants from the area. These features were all used in the Tôhoku area at the time of the plantation

324  Part 4: Negotiating Standards and Variation: Case Studies From Japanese

Table 16.2  TD speakers Grp

Gen

Name Kuni

Fukushima

1921

22

1973

74

PLT, HSMD

F

Matsu

Fukushima

1917

adult

1975

70s

PLT, HSMD

Rie

Niigata

1917

22

1975

80

RTL, HW

1 M

F 2

M

3

Hometown

YOA

AOA

YOR

AOR

Occupation

Genkichi

Fukushima

1920

20

1972

72

PLT, Carpenter, Gardener

Itsutarô

Niigata

1907

15

1972

80

PLT, Barber, RTL

Torajirô

Fukushima

1917

adult

1973

70s

PLT, RTL

Fuyu

Fukushima

1915

18

1975

78

PLT, HW

Iki

Fukushima

1915

adult

1975

70s

PLT, HW, LNDR

Mai

Niigata

1923

20

1975

72

PLT, HW

Maya

Fukushima

1912

19

1975

82

PLT, HW

Haruno

Fukushima

1920

20

1973

76

PLT, HW

Yone

Fukushima

1916

23

1973

80

PLT, HW, LNDR

Chôzaburô

Fukushima

1915

15

1973

73

PLT, Hotel cleaner

Kumatarô

Niigata

1899

19

1973

93

PLT, Construction

Tsunezô

Fukushima

1913

adult

1975

80s

PLT

F

Kimie

Fukushima

n/a

n/a

1975

75

Farmer, HW

M

Toshio

Fukushima

n/a

n/a

1975

83

Farmer

immigration, and the plantation immigrants originally used such features. In the next section, I discuss the five features coded and quantified for the analysis, which are considered to be traditional Tôhoku forms used in Fukushima and northern Niigata, or in the hometowns of the Tôhoku issei speakers (Kanno & Iitoyo, 1967/1994; for detailed analysis of phonological features between typologically related varieties, see Wu, this volume). Intervocalic Changes

The first two features are the intervocalic voicing of /t/ and /k/, referred to here as T-Voicing and K-Voicing, respectively. This correspondence can be seen in Non-TD [hata] ‘flag’ and [kaki] ‘persimmon’ as compared to TD [hada] and [kaɡi]. The third feature occurs in the same environment, when /ɡ/ is pronounced as [ŋ] in TD. Compare CD [kaɡo] ‘basket’ with TD [kaŋo]. This intervocalic nasalization is referred to here as G-Nasalization. These intervocalic features are considered to be synchronic rules in this study, because they apply to non-Japanese words used in the data. For example, the speakers in the Smith Project pronounced English loanwords such as /baketsɯ/ ‘bucket’ as [baɡedzɯ], /boːto/ ‘boat’ as [boːdo], and a Hawaiian loanword, /happaiko/ ‘carrying sugarcane’ as [happaiɡo].

Between Standardization and Localization  325

All instances of these three intervocalic sound changes were quantified individually. Note that K-Voicing and G-Nasalization are separate processes that do not necessarily follow a feeding order. That is, when /k/ undergoes K-Voicing and becomes [ɡ], the [ɡ] does not change to [ŋ] across the board, for example, in an alternation of [saki~saɡi] ‘tip, edge’, [saɡi] does not always become [saŋi]. Therefore, G-Nasalization should not be taken to be an obligatory rule. In addition, it is not clear that intervocalic instances of [ɡ] in TD are allophones of /k/ for monodialectal speakers. According to Timothy Vance (personal communication, 14 May 2019), a usual assumption in phonological analyses of TD is that the underlying forms are like those of SJ, and perhaps this is the case for speakers who can switch back and forth between SJ and TD. However, there is no reason to make this assumption for speakers in the Smith Project data, who were born around 1900 and had little education. Such speakers might very well have identified intervocalic [ɡ] with word-initial [ɡ], which occurred, for example, in Sino-Japanese words. In this study, only tokens whose underlying forms are /t/ for T-Voicing, /k/ for K-Voicing, and /ɡ/ for G-Nasalization were examined. The ‘total’ column for G-Nasalization does not include instances of [ɡ] that are derived by K-Voicing. Tables 16.3, 16.4 and 16.5 show the results of the analysis of intervocalic changes used by the three groups of TD speakers. As the three tables show, T-Voicing and K-Voicing were eliminated more or less to the same degree in Groups 1 and 2. A major difference Table 16.3  Group 1: Tokens of intervocalic changes (%) Name Kuni Matsu Rie Female Total

T-Voicing

Total

K-Voicing

Total

G-Nasal

Total

50 (45.5)

110

64 (60.4)

106

11 (50.0)

22

153 (64.8)

236

128 (69.6)

184

60 (90.9)

66

1 (0.8)

118

3 (2.9)

102

9 (33.3)

27

204 (44.0)

464

195 (49.7)

392

80 (69.6)

115

Genkichi

3 (1.6)

193

45 (17.3)

260

27 (100.0)

27

Itsutarô

72 (38.7)

186

195 (90.3)

216

58 (82.9)

70

Torajirô

76 (35.2)

216

136 (49.5)

275

34 (37.4)

91

Male Total

151 (25.4)

595

265 (35.3)

751

119 (63.3)

188

Grand Total

355 (33.5)

1059

460 (40.2)

1143

199 (65.7)

303

Table 16.4  Group 2: Tokens of intervocalic changes (%) Name (F) Kimie

T-Voicing

Total

17 (65.4)

26

(M) Toshio

220 (66.9)

Total

237 (66.8)

K-Voicing

Total

24 (85.7)

28

329

369 (81.5)

355

393 (81.7)

G-Nasal

Total

18 (94.7)

19

453

155 (93.9)

165

481

173 (94.0)

184

326  Part 4: Negotiating Standards and Variation: Case Studies From Japanese

Table 16.5  Group 3: Tokens of intervocalic changes (%) Name

T-Voicing

Total

K-Voicing

Total

G-Nasal

Total

Fuyu

25 (32.1)

78

18 (24.0)

75

22 (71.0)

31

Haruno

82 (24.1)

340

108 (42.0)

257

41 (62.1)

66

105 (49.3)

213

65 (37.6)

173

32 (71.1)

45

41 (29.3)

140

45 (33.6)

134

31 (83.8)

37

200 (51.5)

388

207 (50.4)

411

104 (81.9)

127

Iki Mai Maya Yone

51 (14.1)

362

44 (11.0)

400

78 (97.5)

80

504 (33.1)

1521

487 (33.6)

1450

308 (79.8)

386

Chôzaburô

87 (29.4)

296

82 (26.2)

313

149 (99.3)

150

Kumatarô

106 (58.9)

180

83 (43.9)

189

25 (44.6)

56

66 (64.7)

102

104 (78.8)

132

47 (78.3)

60

Female Total

Tsunezô Male Total

259 (44.8)

578

269 (42.4)

634

221 (83.1)

266

Grand Total

763 (36.4)

2099

756 (36.3)

2084

529 (81.1)

652

between these groups is that Group 1 eliminated G-Nasalization more than Group 2. The speakers in the control group, Group 3, showed the highest percentage of use of all three intervocalic features. Alternations Involving Alveolar and Palatal Obstruents

The other two features involve TD non-front high vowels that correspond to non-TD high front vowels, and TD alveolar obstruents that correspond to non-TD palatal obstruents; the two features produce the characteristic sound of TD that led to the label zûzû-ben. Both the high front vowel [i] and the high back vowel [ɯ] merge to a central vowel [ɨ] in some environments, although not obligatorily. That is, TD preserves a distinction between phonemic [ɯ] and [ɨ], but the distinction may be neutralized in certain environments, particularly following alveolar obstruents. In general, in non-TD Japanese, consonants are palatalized before a high front vowel, as in words such as /sɯsi/ [sɯʃi] ‘sushi’, /ɯti/ [ɯtʃi] ‘house’, and /kazi/ [kadʒi] ‘fire’. However, when the high front vowel /i/ is realized as something other than [i] in TD, the alveolar consonants of the aforementioned words are not palatalized, leading to TD /sɯsi/ [sɯsɨ] ‘sushi’, /ɯti/ [ɯtsɨ] ‘house’, and /kazi/ [kadzɨ] ‘fire’. Also in non-TD, generally speaking, phonemic palatal obstruents /ʃ, tʃ, dʒ/ remain [ʃ, tʃ, dʒ] before a high back vowel as in /ʃɯmi/ [ʃɯmi] ‘interest, hobby’, /tʃɯːi/ [tʃɯːi] ‘attention, caution’, and /dʒɯːi/ [dʒɯːi] ‘veterinarian’. However, in TD, phonemic palatals /ʃ, tʃ, dʒ/ are realized as alveolar [s, ts, dz] before high back vowels; this along with the vowel merger, then, produces TD [sɨmi] for /ʃɯmi/ ‘interest, hobby’, [tsɨːi] for / tʃɯːi/ ‘attention, caution’, and [dzɨːi] for /dʒɯːi/ ‘veterinarian’. Therefore,

Between Standardization and Localization  327

there are two apparent mergers in certain environments in TD. First, the two high vowels /ɯ/ and /i/ can merge to [ɨ] following an alveolar obstruent. Second, phonemic palatal obstruents become alveolars before high back vowels, and because phonemic alveolar obstruents are not palatalized in this environment, they are both realized as alveolar obstruents. Thus, TD can realize /si/, /ti/, /zi/ and /ʃɯ/, /tʃɯ/, /dʒɯ/ as [sɨ], [tsɨ], [dzɨ], where SJ would realize them as [ʃi], [tʃi], [dʒi], and [ʃɯ], [tʃɯ], [dʒɯ]. As with the intervocalic features, I will treat these correspondences as synchronic phonological applications as they also apply to non-Japanese vocabulary. For example, the speakers in the Smith Project pronounced English loanwords such as /wasinton/ ‘Washington’ as [wasɨndoŋ] and /sisɯtaː/ ‘sister’ as [sɨsɯdaː]. Tables 16.6, 16.7 and 16.8 show the results of the analysis of the three groups’ use of alternations related to alveolar and palatal obstruents, displayed in the same manner as the results of the intervocalic features. The speakers in the control group show the highest percentages of use of these alternations involving alveolar and palatal obstruents. The results for the issei speakers are similar to those of G-Nasalization; Group 1 employed less TD phonology than Group 2. Overall, the issei speakers used these five features of TD phonology less than the control group. Even though the degree of fading of the TD phonology varies among the issei speakers, the speakers in Group 1, who interacted with non-TD speakers daily, seem to show greater acquisition of the non-TD phonology than the speakers in Group 2. A number of speakers in Group 1, including Rie, quoted above, mentioned that they tried hard not to sound so zûzû when interacting with non-Tôhoku immigrants, meaning that they were consciously trying to mask their TD pronunciation. Nonetheless, the data suggest that the Tôhoku immigrants were only partially successful at controlling their original phonology. Table 16.6  Group 1: Tokens of mergers (%) Name

[sɨ, tsɨ, dzɨ] for non-TD [ʃi, tʃi, dʒi]

Total

[sɨ, tsɨ, dzɨ] for non-TD [ʃɯ, tʃɯ, dʒɯ]

Total

Kuni

37 (64.9)

57

7 (38.9)

18

Matsu

71 (86.6)

82

24 (57.1)

42

Rie

19 (20.4)

93

3 (13.0)

23

127 (54.7)

232

34 (41.0)

83

Genkichi

72 (45.6)

158

18 (52.9)

34

Itsutarô

32 (28.3)

113

21 (35.0)

60

Torajirô

47 (39.2)

120

62 (77.5)

80

Male Total

151 (38.6)

391

101 (58.0)

174

Grand Total

278 (44.6)

623

135 (52.5)

257

Female Total

328  Part 4: Negotiating Standards and Variation: Case Studies From Japanese

Table 16.7  Group 2: Tokens of mergers (%) Name Fuyu Haruno Iki Mai Maya

[sɨ, tsɨ, dzɨ] for non-TD [ʃi, tʃi, dʒi]

Total

[sɨ, tsɨ, dzɨ] for non-TD [ʃɯ, tʃɯ, dʒɯ]

Total

22 (44.0)

50

8 (36.4)

22

133 (65.8)

202

86 (61.0)

141

77 (84.6)

91

92 (97.9)

94

112 (91.1)

123

40 (93.0)

43

50 (86.2)

58

42 (91.3)

46

Yone

224 (94.9)

236

73 (93.6)

78

Female Total

618 (81.3)

760

341 (80.4)

424

Chôzaburô

128 (80.0)

160

69 (63.9)

108

Kumatarô

59 (72.8)

81

34 (63.0)

54

Tsunezô

53 (81.5)

65

43 (76.8)

56

Male Total

240 (78.4)

306

146 (67.0)

218

Grand Total

858 (80.5)

1066

487 (75.9)

642

[sɨ, tsɨ, dzɨ] for non-TD [ʃɯ, tʃɯ, dʒɯ]

Total

Table 16.8  Group 3: Tokens of mergers (%) Name (F) Kimie

[sɨ, tsɨ, dzɨ] for non-TD [ʃi, tʃi, dʒi] 6 (60.0)

Total 10

17 (100.0)

17

(M) Toshio

153 (90.5)

169

148 (97.4)

152

Total

159 (88.8)

179

165 (97.6)

169

However, this type of conscious effort to avoid overt TD features, phonological features in this case, seems to have contributed to the different degrees of elimination of TD phonology between Groups 1 and 2. In other words, the variation among the issei speakers regarding the use of TD phonology may be due to the speakers’ deliberate efforts to control their phonology in order to avoid dialect discrimination by non-TD speaking immigrants. Analysis Intervocalic features and alternations involving alveolars and palatals

This section attempts to analyze the degrees of attrition and acquisition of the issei speakers by comparison to the control group’s speech. Although the control group is small (only two speakers), their data are almost certainly adequate for the comparative analysis here. Table 16.9

Between Standardization and Localization  329

Table 16.9  Summary of the shift of TD phonology in the issei groups in comparison to the homeland speakers (%)

Intervocalic Features

Alveolar/ Palatal Alternations

TD rules

Group 3

Group 2

G3-G2

Group 1

G3-G1

T-Voicing

66.8

36.4

30.4

33.5

33.3

K-Voicing

81.7

36.3

45.4

40.2

41.5

G-Nasal

94.0

81.1

12.9

65.7

28.3

[ʃ, tʃ, dʒ] before /i/

88.8

80.5

8.3

44.6

44.2

/ʃ, tʃ, dʒ/ before /ɯ/

97.6

75.9

21.7

52.5

45.1

displays the comparative results of the three groups of speakers. The numbers presented in the columns represent the overall percentages of the phonological rule applications, and the highlighted columns show the differences between the issei speakers and the homeland speakers. For example, the number in the top row under (G3-G2) means that Group 2 applied T-Voicing 30.4% less than Group 3, and under (G3-G1), the number in the top row means that Group 1 applied T-Voicing 33.3% less than Group 3. The Group 2 speakers’ results indicate a greater shift in the adoption of non-TD forms for T/K-Voicing than for the alveolar/palatal changes. Among the intervocalic features, G-Nasalization shifted the least in Group 2 data. Group 1’s results show a greater shift in the adoption of the alveolar/palatal features than the intervocalic features; however, G-Nasalization again showed the smallest amount of change for this group as well. G-Nasalization should be the simplest rule among the intervocalic features, because the acquisition of the non-TD form means a total replacement of [ŋ] with [ɡ]. However, the elimination of the voicings showed more progress than that of the nasalization by all groups. Even though there are many instances of intervocalic [ɡ] in TD, the fact remains that all a Tôhoku speaker has to do in order to achieve the non-TD norm is to replace every instance of [ŋ] with [ɡ]. There is no question that this is easier than figuring out which instances of TD [d, ɡ] correspond to non-TD [d, ɡ] and which correspond to non-TD [t, k]. In terms of frequency of the token occurrences among the intervocalic features, the total numbers of the possible environments for G-Nasalization were lower than those of T/K-Voicings for all groups. Nonetheless, the frequency effect cannot explain the pattern of elimination of these features. One possible reason for the different rates of non-TD [t, k] and non-TD [ɡ] could be that the [t, k] merged pronunciations might cause misinterpretation of an intended lexical item for Tôhoku speakers when interacting with nonTôhoku speakers. On the other hand, regardless of Tôhoku speakers’ retention of [ŋ] or its replacement with [ɡ], a non-TD-speaking listener

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will usually interpret it as a realization of [ɡ]. Thus, the chance of misinterpretation of an intended lexical item involving [ŋ] would not be high. Comparing the results of Groups 1 and 2, there is a clear difference in degrees of acquisition of non-TD features for the alveolar/palatal alternations when compared with the control group’s results. Group 1, those speakers who interacted with non-TD speakers on a daily basis, showed a greater amount of alveolar/palatal alternations than Group 2, those speakers who did not interact with non-TD speakers on a daily basis. The numbers tell us that against the control group (Group 3), Group 1 shows a 44.2% difference for alternations involving alveolar obstruents before a high front vowel and a 45.1% difference for alternations involving palatal obstruents before a high back vowel (see G3-G1 in the table). In comparison, Group 2 shows differences of 8.3% and 21.7% for these features, respectively (see G3-G2 in the table). The gaps in intervocalic features for Group 1 speakers are 33.3% for T-Voicing, 41.5% for K-Voicing, and 28.3% for G-Nasalization compared to the control group (see G3-G1 in the table). This suggests that Group 1 speakers eliminated the alternations involving alveolar and palatal obstruents more often than the intervocalic features. All in all, both Groups 2 and 3 used the alternation features at much higher rates than Group 1. Trudgill’s (1986, 2004) notion of salience may provide an explanation for the higher degree of acquisition of non-TD features in the alternations involving alveolars/palatals by Group 1. I interpret the effects of salience to be two sides of the same coin when analyzing the TD speakers’ data. On one hand, the speakers accommodated to the non-TD forms that were noticeable; on the other hand, the TD speakers noticed that some of their original dialectal forms were stigmatized and accommodated to the non-TD forms. As for the elimination of phonological features, the alternations involving alveolar/palatal obstruents may be examples of the latter sense of salience. The term zûzû-ben refers to TD’s alternation features as described above (Kobayashi, 1995: 34). These TD pronunciations are considered stereotypical TD phonological features in general and were made a point of language discrimination in both Japan and Hawai‘i (Kimura, 1988: 30; Kobayashi, 1995: 34). Progress in the elimination of TD alternation features was more evident in Group 1 than in Group 2. As Rie described, TD speakers faced open criticism and ridicule by non-TD speaking immigrants. Thus, both the quantified data and Group 1 speakers’ comments suggest that the elimination of the stereotypical features in Group 1 could reflect speakers’ conscious efforts to avoid the use of their original TD forms in daily interactions with non-TD speakers. However, the TD speakers in the data did not entirely avoid TD forms. This suggests that however motivated the speakers were to avoid the social stigma attached to their dialect, they did not manage to completely acquire the non-TD forms used in Hawai‘i.

Between Standardization and Localization  331

Conclusion

Dialect contact situations tend to be complicated, and simple explanations may not suffice for their linguistic consequences. SDA, the founder principle, and koineization all help cast light on the dialect contact and linguistic change phenomena discussed in this study. Here, I provide an overview of discussions of various ideas related to dialect contact studies that are relevant to this analysis. These ideas are not independent of each other; rather, they provide different perspectives on linguistic changes that take place simultaneously. Concerning age differences in SDA, Chambers (1992, 1995), Kerswill (1994) and Trudgill (1986) presented evidence that younger speakers (i.e. 7 years of age and under) are able to master a new dialect perfectly while older speakers (i.e. 14 years of age and over) have limits in their acquisition of a second dialect. Chambers (1992, 1995) suggested that gaining pronunciation and lexical variants may be independent processes with respect to SDA in different varieties of English. Kerswill (1994), in his study of Norwegian dialects, reported that older speakers acquired morpholexical features more successfully than they did phonological features. In the case of Japanese spoken in Hawai‘i, the issei speakers showed limited acquisition of non-TD phonological features. This finding seems to confirm previous findings from SDA studies on phonology. It is important to remember that these speakers’ SDA took place in a ‘naturalistic’ context ‘in the absence of institutional support’ (Milroy, 2002: 10). The community dialect acquisition setting for SDA, ‘when people who speak one dialect migrate to a region where another is spoken and acquire the informal dialect of their new community’ (Siegel, 2003: 198), seems to describe the situation of the Japanese plantation immigrants. In language/dialect contact situations, according to the founder principle (Mufwene, 2001), the initial settlers in a new community form the language subsequently used by the following settlers. Thus, the number and proportion of earlier settlers may be crucial to the formation of a contact language. In their research on Japanese spoken in Palau, Matsumoto and Britain (2003: 14) noted the effect of the founder principle. In Palau, the largest number of Japanese immigrants came from Okinawa; however, the dialectal forms in Palau employ predominantly eastern Japanese features. According to Matsumoto and Britain, ‘the top five districts from which most immigrants came were Okinawa, Kanto, Kyushu, Tohoku, and Hokkaido’ (2003: 45). The dominance of eastern Japanese features in Palau may be due to the early settlement of eastern Japanese speakers from the Kantô area. Similarly, a large number of CD speakers began arriving from the first year of plantation immigration in 1885, and their population steadily increased throughout the immigration period. In the case of TD speakers, a very small group arrived in

332  Part 4: Negotiating Standards and Variation: Case Studies From Japanese

1885, but considerable numbers did not arrive until after 1906 (Kimura, 1988: 24–25, 33). Given this sequence of arrivals, the founder principle makes sense of the adoption of CD forms by the TD immigrants in this study. Finally, the concept of koineization in conjunction with standardization may help us understand this study’s findings. The formation of a koine takes place across multiple generations (Siegel, 1985, 1987); koineization has a great deal of variability in ‘time-depth’, and the initial stage involves wide-ranging dialectal mixing (Kerswill, 2002: 679). Trudgill (1998) called this first stage of koineization Stage I; Siegel (1985: 373) referred to it as a ‘pre-koine,’ and explained it thus: This is the unstabilized stage at the beginning of koineization. A continuum exists in which various forms of the varieties in contact are used concurrently and inconsistently. Levelling and some mixing has begun to occur, and there may be various degrees of reduction, but few forms have emerged as the accepted compromise.

The findings in this study are based on data from only first-generation TD speakers; information from second-generation speakers or other dialect speakers is lacking. As second-generation data are crucial for evaluating cross-generational koineization processes (Kerswill, 1994; Kerswill & Williams, 2000; Siegel, 1987; Trudgill, 2004), there is no way to know if the TD speakers’ dialect shift was actually part of the formation of a prekoine. In light of this lack of second-generation data, some may suggest that the dialect shift observed in the data is due to the standardization of Japanese as the national trend following the Meiji Restoration. Because SJ and CD phonology are so similar for the features investigated in this study, it is a logical assumption that the TD speakers’ acquisition of decidedly non-TD features is due to both standardization and koineization. This study demonstrates a high degree of dialect change among TD speakers, providing evidence for extensive mixing of TD and non-TD features. The possibility of some sort of pre-koine in Hawai‘i cannot be ruled out and should lead to further research on this topic. Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the editors and to two anonymous reviewers for their immensely helpful comments and suggestions. I am especially indebted to Jeff Siegel, Timothy Vance, and Andrew Wong for invaluable feedback on various aspects as well as encouragement at different stages of this project. I thank Vincent Pak and Aura Eden for their careful editorial assistance. Finally yet importantly, my sincere aloha and mahalo go to late Ed Smith and William O’Grady for making the Smith Project data available to me.

Between Standardization and Localization  333

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Matsumoto, K. and Britain, D. (2020) The contact varieties of Japan and the North-West Pacific. In U. Ansaldo and M. Meyerhoff (eds) Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Languages (pp. 106–131). London: Routledge. Milroy, L. (2002) Introduction: Mobility, contact and language change—working with contemporary speech communities. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6, 3–15. Mufwene, S. (2001) The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nagara, S. (1972) Pidgin English of Japanese in Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Odo, F. and Shinoto, K. (1985) Pictorial Record of Japanese Immigrants in Hawaii. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press. Okamoto, S. (2021) Japanese language and gender research: The last thirty years and beyond. Gender and Language 15 (2), 277–288. Okamura, J. (2000/2001) Race relations in Hawai‘i during World War II: The non-internment of Japanese Americans. In J. Okamura (ed.) The Japanese American Historical Experience in Hawai‘i (pp. 67–89). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. Okihiro, G. (1991) Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movements in Hawaii, 1865–1945. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Reinecke, J. (1969/1988) Language and Dialect in Hawaii: A Sociolinguistic History to 1935. Honolulu: Social Science Research Institute and University of Hawaii Press. Sakai, N. (1991) Voices of the Past: The Status of Language in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Discourse. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Shibatani, M. (1987) Japanese. In B. Comrie (ed.) The World’s Major Languages (pp. 855–880). New York: Oxford University Press. Siegel, J. (1985) Koines and koineization. Language in Society 14, 357–378. Siegel, J. (1987) Language Contact in a Plantation Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siegel, J. (2003) Social context. In C. Doughty and M. Long (eds) The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition (pp. 178–223). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Smith, E. (1980) Natural phonology of Japanese. PhD thesis, University of Hawai‘i. SturtzSreetharan, C. (2017) Language and masculinity: The role of Osaka dialect in contemporary ideals of fatherhood. Gender and Language 11 (4), 552–574. Tamura, E. (1994/2001) Americanization fever. In J. Okamura (ed.) The Japanese American Historical Experience in Hawai‘i (pp. 39–66). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/ Hunt. Trudgill, P. (1986) Dialects in Contact. Oxford: Blackwell. Trudgill, P. (1998) The chaos before the order: New Zealand English and the second stage of new-dialect formation. In E.H. Jahr (ed.) Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics (pp. 1–11). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Trudgill, P. (2004) New-Dialect Formation: The Inevitability of Colonial Englishes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. United Japanese Society of Hawaii (1964) A History of Japanese Immigration in Hawaii. Honolulu: United Japanese Society of Hawaii. Yamamoto, E. (1973) From ‘Japanee’ to Local: Community Change and the Redefinition of Sansei Identity in Hawaii. BA thesis, University of Hawai‘i. Yasuda, T. (1999) 国語と方言の間：言語構築の政治学 [Between a National Language and Dialects: The Politics of Language Planning and Policy]. Kyoto: Jinbun Shoin.

Index

Page numbers followed by n refer to notes. Abbi, A. 4 Abe, H. 299, 300 accents see also pronunciation Chinese 89, 90, 92 social meanings 129 accomodationist approaches 43 Adamson, B. 84, 95 address terms 301–2 adverbial postposition 150, 155 advertising 164, 174, 176 affective stance 305–6 affricates 66 Ager, S. 170 Agha, A. 227, 282 Aizawa, M. 282, 288 Alexander, A. 316 alphabetic writing 58, 267 see also script, choice of alveolar and palatal obstruents 326–8, 329–30 Amdo dialect 204, 206, 211, 216, 217, 223–40 see also Tibetan Amin, Shahid 30–1, 32, 33 Amoy dialect 44 see also Hokkein An, J. 187, 196, 197 anglicized names of languages 30 Anti-rightist movements 86 Arabic 99n5, 261, 262 ‘Asian sensibility’ 27–8 Asia-Pacific Language Variation 5 assimilation 84, 85, 86, 89, 95, 204 attitudes, speaker see also linguistic purism Amdo dialect 230 Beijing Mandarin 128–46 Chinese proficiency tests 115–16 Japan 289–90 Jejueo 244, 253

Malaysian Mandarin 153, 156 Sibe 194, 199 Thailand 275 Auer, P. 307 Augusto, S. 88 Auroux, S. 41 authentic materials 104, 125 Ayres-Bennett, W. 225–6, 269 Babcock, R.D. 129 Bahasa Malay 262 Baidu search engine 111 Baird, J.A. 120 Baker, C. 84 Baldauf, R.B. Jr. 125, 242 Ball, M.J. 1 Bamgbose, A. 126 Banks, J. 4 Banner system 186 Bao, L.G. 63 Barrett, R. 305 Barth, F. 184, 185, 199 Bass, C. 215 Bauman, Z. 281 Bayasgalan, B. 65 Bayly, C.A. 35 Bazin, Antoine 49 Becker, M. 134 Beifanghua see Mandarin Beijing Language and Culture University 106 Beijing Mandarin as basis of Putonghua 9, 42, 148 Beijingers’ attitudes to 128–46 classifier omission 131, 133, 134–41 linguistic purism 94 Mongolia 56–9, 65–9, 71 neutral tone 131, 133, 134–41 335

336  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

Beijing Mandarin (Continued) speaker population 130 te intensifier 131–2, 133, 134–41 tones 131 Beijinghua see Beijing Mandarin Bell, D.A. 183 Bengali 23, 25, 30, 36n6 Benson, C. 259, 269, 275 Benson, E.J. 129 Bershtling, O. 301 Beyer, S.V. 223 Bhatti, A. 22, 34 Bì Huázhēn 48, 50 bilingual education 169, 173, 174, 262 Blackledge, A. 37n9 Blackwood, E. 301 Bloomfield, L. 235 Bopp, Franz 26 Borba, R. 302 Bourdieu, P. 164–5, 168, 179, 183, 185, 199 Bourhis, R.Y. 84, 85, 167, 176, 184 Bradley, D. 89 Branca-Rosoff, S. 41 Brandist, C. 166 Branner, D.P. 7, 41, 42, 44, 67 Brazil 302 Brenzinger, M. 252 Britain, D. 316, 331 Brockey, L.M. 43 Brotain 331 Brown, C.P. 34 Brown, P. 223 Bucholtz, M. 128 Buddhism 205, 227, 234, 262, 322 Bum, L. 211 Burarungrot, M. 272 Butler, J. 301, 305 Callan, V.J. 140 Campbell-Kibler, K. 129, 139 Canagarajah, S. 28 Cantonese 42, 44, 65, 89, 130, 150, 154, 156, 195 Cao, W. 131 Cao, Z.Y. 92 Carey, William 23, 24 case (grammatical) 47, 191, 247 Cassel, P. 58 caste differences 27, 33, 37n16 see also India

Catholicism 43 Chabchal 192–3 Chambers, J.K. 318, 319, 331 Changsheng 187, 196, 197 Chao, Y.R. 131, 152 Chappell, H. 40, 43, 51n6 Chen, C.Y. 149 Chen, H. 170 Chen, J.L. 96 Chen, P. 57 Chen, Q. 224 Chen, Y. 131 Chengzhi 187, 198 Chew, C.H. 148, 151 China Beijing 42, 45, 57–9 Guangxi Zhuangzu Autonomous Region (GZAR) 168 Inner Mongolia 56, 59, 63, 65, 106 Macau 89, 93, 108 multilingualism 5 Nanjing 42, 46 Shanghai 42, 44, 45, 83 Sibe in 183–202 standard language in education 83–103 Tibetan in 203–22 writing system standardization 3, 41–2 Xinjiang Autonomous Region 10, 106, 110, 123, 184, 186 Zhuang in 183–202 China Linguistic Strategy 149 China minority/minoritized languages see also Dong; Mongolian; Tibetan; Zhuang language planning 149, 195–6 language rights 7, 197 MHK test 106 multilingualism 83–7, 89–90, 91–8 perception of language variation 129 prestige 204, 208, 217–18 standardization 163, 165–6, 168–71, 173, 175, 231 Chinen, K. 316 Chinese see also Beijing Mandarin; Beijinghua; Community Chinese; Cosmopolitan Chinese; Dahuayu model; Difang Putonghua; Fúh-kien; Global Chinese; Hakka;

Index 337

Hong Kong Mandarin; Indonesian Mandarin; Jiang-Huai Mandarin; Malaysian Mandarin; Mandarin; Nanjing Mandarin; Ningbonese; Putonghua; Shandong Mandarin; Shanghainese; Singaporean Mandarin; Standard Chinese; Suzhounese; Swatow; Taiwan Mandarin; Teochew; Wenzhounese; Wu; Wú in China 5 Chinese as a Second Language 9, 105, 107–8 Classical Chinese 48, 149–50, 151, 156 Edkins’ grammar of Shanghainese 40–55 empty/full words 48, 49 Global Chinese 89, 93, 147–60 language testing 104–27 lingua-franca approach 97–8 Literary Chinese 40, 41, 43 Mandarin in Mongolia 56–80 multilingualism 83–103 Pinyin 10, 11, 62–4, 93, 97, 106, 178 pluricentricity 89, 97, 106 standard Chinese 83 standard Chinese in education 89, 92 varieties of 5 World Chineses 5 Wu 65, 89, 195 Wú group 42 Chinese Englishes 96–7, 98 Chinese Journal of Language Policy and Planning 149 Chinese-Australian 5 Chirino, Pedro 43 Chong, R.H.-H. 129, 130, 140 Choo, W.Y. 153, 157 Chöphel, Gendün 205, 216 Christianity 41, 43, 58, 322 Chûgoku dialect (CD) 315–16, 318, 319, 321, 324, 332 see also Japanese Chun, E. 129 Cifangyan (dialects) 89, 90, 99n3 see also dialects - Chinese civic ideologies 85 civil servants 23, 24 Classical Chinese 48, 149–50, 151, 156

Classical/Vernacular designations 25 ‘Classics’ 40 classification of knowledge frameworks 32, 33 classification of languages 26, 27, 34–5 classifier omission in Beijing Mandarin 131, 133, 134–41 Clyne, M. 8, 87, 88, 89 Coblin, S.W. 42, 57, 58, 59, 65, 66, 68, 69 codeswitching 217 Cohn, B.S. 23, 25, 27, 32, 33, 34 Cohn, D. 166 collective identity 28, 185–6 Collier, V. 269 colloquial language 45–6, 217, 231, 232–3, 235–6, 292 colonialism China 8, 41 and classification 32 coloniality and language 22–3 and essentialism 36 India 21, 23–7, 30–1, 32, 33–4 and Orientalism 35 and standardization in history 2, 6, 32 and translation 33 commodification 164, 178, 179 Community Chinese 108 comparative grammatical structures 150–1 comparative linguistics 26, 49 compound words 49 Comprehensive Dictionary of Global Huayu 148–9, 155 computer keyboards 93 Comrie, B. 195 Confucian canon 40 Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) 83 Content-Based Instruction (CBI) 83 cool language 287–92 Cooper, R.L. 125, 203, 214 corpora 95, 158n5, 322, 324–5, 327 Corpus of Southeast Asian Mandarin 150 corpus planning 11, 151, 208, 213 Correct Pronunciation of Sibilant and Velar Initials (Yuanyin Zhengkao) 67 Cosmopolitan Chinese see Dahuayu model

338  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

Costa, J. 10 Coulmas, F. 157, 184, 195, 281, 283 Coupland, N. 109 court languages 43, 46 Covell, R. 45 Creese, A. 37n9 critical sociolinguistics 164–5, 179–80 Cronbach’s α test 135 Crooke, William 30, 31, 32, 33 Crossley, P.K. 186, 187, 195 Crystal, D. 259 Cukor-Avila, P. 243 cultural capital 176, 178, 180 Cultural Revolution 86, 166, 168 Cummins, J. 157, 269 cut-and-splice quasi spelling (fanqie) see fanqie (cut-and-splice quasi spelling) Cyrillic 74n4, 91, 166, 167, 171 Dachsprache (‘umbrella language’) 8 Dahuayu model 7–8, 89, 90, 93–4, 108 Dai, Q.X. 95 Dalrymple, W. 23 Dasgupta, P. 4 Davies, S.G. 301 Davis, J.L. 305 Dawa Lodoe 216 Dawa Lodro 231 De Korne, H. 203 de Prémare, J.H.M. 48 De Swaan, A. 2, 8, 13n2 deficit ideologies 92 DeLancey, S. 227 delegitimization 165 description versus classification 32 de-standardization 281–2, 286–92 dialect areas see also specific dialects; fangyan (topolects) Chinese 40–1 Hawai‘i 315–34 India 29 Japan 282, 284, 285–6, 287–92 South Korea 244–5 dialect contact 318–19, 321, 331 dialect continua 35, 195, 205 dialect cosplay 12, 281–97 dialect-language distinction 184, 254n3, 293 dialectology 40, 41 Diao Yanbin 147, 149, 151, 156–7

dictionaries China 44 Chinese 41, 46, 58, 69, 93, 109 Chinese vernaculars 43 Chinese-English 57–8 Global Chinese 148 India 34 Jejueo 247 Manchu-Chinese 68 Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin 61 and the pace of change 31 Patani Malay 263–4, 266–7, 270 Pinyin 93 rhyme dictionaries 7, 57, 59, 61–3 Tibetan 210, 213, 217, 225, 227, 228, 234 Difang Putonghua 89 see also Putonghua diglossia 188, 242 dignity 92 digraphia 93 diphthongs 68 ‘discovery’ of language 34 discrete entities, languages as 30 Doerfer, G. 195 Dolezal, F. 148–9 Dollinger, S. 8 Dondrub Lhargyal 216, 217 Dong (minority language) 86 see also China minority/minoritized languages Dong, S.C. 92 Dong, X. 131, 139 Dorian, N.C. 208 Dorje, Sangda 223 Dörnyei, Z. 194 double-rail standards 93 Drager, K. 139 Du, Y. 131, 139 Duan, Z.Q. 86 Dungkar, L.T. 206 Dutch 156 Dwyer, A.M. 204 East India Company 6, 23, 25, 28, 44 Eckert, P. 128, 129, 282, 293 Edelman, E.A. 307, 311 Edkins, J. 6, 42, 45–51, 66 ‘educated speech’ 284–5 education bilingual education 169, 173, 174, 262

Index 339

China 91–5 Global Chinese 148 Jejueo 249–51, 253 multilingual education 84, 87, 96–8, 274 Patani Malay 269–73 Patani Malay-Thai Multilingual Education (PMT-MLE) Programme 260–1 Putonghua 170 South Korea 243–4, 245, 248 Standard Zhuang 170 Thailand 261–2 Tibetan 206, 207, 213, 214–15, 217, 232, 234 Zhuang 168–9, 175, 179 employability 164, 173, 175, 179, 204 empty/full words (Chinese) 48, 49 endangered languages China 86, 95 Jejueo 11, 165, 241–57 Sibe 184 Thailand 259 Tibetan 204–5, 213 English in China 44, 46, 83, 91, 96, 98, 180 in Chinese education 176 Chinese Englishes 96–7, 98 employability 175 gender (of speaker) 303 Hawai‘i 317, 324, 327 in India 24, 31 influence on Chinese 149, 150, 153, 156 on Jeju Island (Korea) 248 as L3 84, 98 pluricentricity 88, 97, 148 South Korea 11, 248, 254 in Thailand 262 three-circle model of English 8, 88, 98 in Tibet 4, 213 varieties of 96 Zhuang mistaken for 178, 180 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) 88, 91, 97 English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) 96, 97, 98 English for Academic Purpose (EAP) 83 English for Specific Purpose (ESP) 83

Engstrom, A. 306 enregisterment 282, 291 epistemic stance 307–8 Errington, J. 22, 23, 26, 27 essentialism 36 ethnic construction 195–6 ethnic minorities and assimilation ideologies 86, 89 Chinese 83–4, 90 concept of ethnicity 185 iconization 171 and language varieties 41 linguistic purism 94–5 MHK test 106 protecting language rights 95 and Putonghua 108 Sibe 192, 196–8 Zhuang 163–82 ethnist ideologies 85 ethnography 29, 30–1, 164, 184, 193–4 ‘ethno-linguistic angst’ 262 etymology 47 Eurocentricity 1, 8 exclusion of words/concepts 32 Fan Tengfeng 59, 61–3, 67, 69, 71–2 fangyan (topolects) 8, 13n14, 40, 89, 90, 91, 92, 95, 97 fanqie (cut-and-splice quasi spelling) 58, 59 Fei Xiaotong 166 Feifel, K.-E. 129, 130, 140 Feng, A.W. 83, 84, 95 Feng, Z.W. 93 Finifrock, J.E. 86 Fishman, J.A. 183, 184, 185, 195, 198, 199, 204 focus particles 154 Foochoow dialect 44 see also Chinese formality 135–6, 139, 155, 195, 235 see also colloquial language Fort of St. George, Madras 23, 36 Fort William College, Calcutta 23, 24, 36 Foucault, Michel 185, 305–6 founder principle 331 Fox, S. 129, 139 Framework Act on Korean Language 245 Freeland, J. 165 French 302 fricatives 66, 67

340  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

Fu, Q. 131 Fúh-kien 47 Fujiwara, T. 317 ‘full’ Chinese script 89, 93, 97, 109 Gal, S. 171, 242, 252 Galan, C. 287 Gallois, C. 140 Gan (Chinese dialect) 195 Gao, X.S. 91 Gao Mingkai 151 gatekeeping 9 gender (grammatical) 298–9 gender (of speaker) 12, 131, 290, 298–314 genre 150 Gianninoto, M. 49, 50 Gilchrist, John 24, 25 Giles, Herbert A. 57–8 Global Chinese 5, 89, 93, 147–60 Global Chinese Grammar 155 global linguistic market 8 glossaries 31, 32, 33 Goffman, E. 282 Goldstein, M.C. 205, 227 Gorelova, L. 186 Graded Inter-generational Disruption Scale (GIDS) 204 grammars China 43, 44 Chinese 41, 43, 48, 93 Edkins’ grammar of Shanghainese 45–51 India 26, 31 Japanese 283, 285 Patani Malay 265 Tibetan 206 Western grammars of Chinese 48 Zhuang 166 grassroots movements 210–14, 226, 233–5, 258–77 Greater Chinese see Global Chinese Greek 24, 25 Green, R.J. 235–6 Grenoble, L.A. 253 Grey, A. 164, 169, 172, 173, 175, 177, 179 Grierson, G.A. 4, 29–30, 31, 32, 33, 34–5 Groff, C. 4 Gu, Y.G. 42

Guangxi Zhuangzu Autonomous Region (GZAR) 168 Gui, M.C. 92 Gui, S.C. 91 Gungsungnorbu, Prince of Inner Mongolia 61 Guō, C.T. 40 Guo, R. 163 Guo Xi 108, 147, 149 Guoyu 90, 93, 108, 147, 151 see also Putonghua gutterals 67, 68 Gyal, Tagla 212 Haarmann, H. 183, 184, 185 habitus 165 Hai, L. 87 Hakka dialect 44, 65, 195 Hale, K.L. 259 Halhed, Nathaniel 25, 36n6 Hall, K. 128, 302 Han, A. 150 Han Chauvinism 85 Han Chinese 10–11, 40, 73, 86, 192 Hanban agency 105 Handel, Z. 41 Hanification 86 Hanyu 170 see also Putonghua Hanyu Pinyin see Pinyin Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) 9, 105–26 Hao, J. 131, 139 Harbsmeier, C. 48 Harris, R. 186, 187 Hasnain, S.I. 22, 29, 41 Haugen, E. 85, 184, 195, 254n3, 268–9 Havinga, A. 7 Hawai‘i 12–13, 250, 315–34 Hawaii Hochisha 316, 317 He, L. 187 Hé, Q.X. 42, 45, 47, 49 He, Y. 149, 153–4 Hebrew 214, 301 hedges, linguistic (Japanese) 306 Heinrich, P. 4–5, 12, 281, 282, 284, 285, 287, 289, 321 Heka Tibetans 234–5 Heller, M. 165 Hemeling, Karl 58 hidden multilingualisms 2 Higa, M. 318

Index 341

higher education China 83 Jejueo 250 Putonghua 175 Tibetan 217 Zhuang 169, 174 high-stakes testing 105 Hill, N.W. 216 Hillier, W.C. 59, 72 Hindi 4, 24, 302 Hindustani 4, 24, 27, 34 Hinton, L. 259 historical linguistics 26 Hiura, A, 316 Hokkein 43, 150, 154, 156 see also Amoy dialect Holm, D. 163, 166, 167, 170 homogenization 33 Hong, F. 207 Hong Kong 89, 93, 108, 130 Hong Kong Mandarin 150 honorifics xref, 224, 227, 298, 310 see also humilifics Hoshi, I. 227 HSK see Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) Hu, M. 130 Hú, Q.G. 40 Hu Yaobang 86 Huang, B. 109 Huang, C.-R. 5 Huang, C.T.J. 140 Huang, J. 131 Huang, L. 150 Huang, Q. 163, 166, 170 Huang, T. 149 Huang, X. 95 Huayu community 147, 148 Hui people 95, 99n5, 195, 196 see also China humilifics 11, 224, 225, 227, 228–30, 231, 232, 235, 236–7 see also honorifics Hummel, A.W. 186 Hyslop, G. 205 icons 171–2, 173–8, 179 Ide, S. 298 ideas, spread of 3, 6 identity affective stance 305

Beijing Mandarin 140 collective identity 28, 185–6 cultural identity 261, 262 gender (of speaker) 301–3 Japanese 284 linguistic transgressions 282 national identities 25, 85, 87 sexuality 300, 301–3 Thailand 261 Tibetan 207, 211 Zhuang 172 Iitoyo, K. 319, 324 indexicality 128–9, 165, 176, 293, 306, 310, 311 India 4, 218 indigenous knowledge 33, 269 indigenous writing systems 167 Indonesian 301 Indonesian Mandarin 156, 157 initial consonants in Mandarin 65–6 initial nasals in Mandarin 65 Inner Mongolia 56, 59, 63, 65, 106 Inoue, F. 286, 287, 289, 291 institutionalization 203 interactional particles 291 intercultural communications 91 interdialectal communications 57 intergenerational language transmission 247, 332 international intelligibility 96, 98 International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) 65, 166, 167 interrogatives 154 intervocalic voicing 324–6, 329–30 invisibilization of multilingualism 7 Irvine, J. 171, 242, 252 Isajiw, W.W. 185 Jaffe, A. 265 Janchitfah, S. 262 Janhunen, J. 184, 187, 195 Japanese 5, 11–13, 87, 281–97, 298– 314, 315–34 see also Chûgoku; Kyûshû; Tôhoku dialect character particles 291 hedges, linguistic 306 Jawi script 261, 263, 264–5, 275 see also Patani Malay Jehe Tai 262 Jeju Research Institute (JRI) 247 Jejueo 11, 165, 241–57 see also Korean

342  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

Jejueo Conservation and Promotion Act 249 Jenkins, J. 88, 91, 96 Jeon, L. 243 Jernudd, B.H. 94 Jesuits 41, 43 Jiang, S.Y. 92 Jiang-Huai Mandarin 58 Jigmed Rgyaltsan 218 Jin (Chinese dialect) 195 Jin, W. 244 Jing, S. 130, 131 Joll, Christopher 262 Jones, William 26 Joseph, J.E. 85 Ju Kalsang 212, 218 Jugaku, A. 285 Jung, H.-W. 244 Jurchen 184 Kachru, B. 8, 88 Kamusella, T. 87–8 Kang, J-H. 246 Kangas, T.S. 204 Kanno, H. 319, 324 Kansai dialect 291–2 see also Japanese Kaplan, R. 242 Kaske, E. 57, 58 Kataoka, S. 44 Katō, H. 283 Kaup, K. 166 Kaviraj, S. 37n10 Kerswill, P. 319, 331, 332 Khaisan 59–61, 64–73 Kham dialect 204, 211, 216, 231, 233, 235 see also Tibetan Khenpo Tsultrim Lodrö 204 Khoo, K.U. 8, 148, 155 Khorchin dialect 65 see also Inner Mongolia; Mongolian Khubchandani, L.M. 28 Kim, S.-U. 241, 242, 246, 247 Kimura, Y. 319, 321, 330 Kinsui, S. 292 Kipp, S. 89 Kirkpatrick, A. 91 Kizu, M. 291 Klöter, H. 5, 7, 41, 43, 44, 46, 51n5 Kobayashi, E. 298 Kobayashi, T. 330 koineization 315, 332 koines 42, 57, 59, 288

Kokonor group of dialects 228, 231 see also Tibetan Kokugo Chōsa I’inkai 283, 285 Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyūjo 286, 289 Konchog Gelek 217 Kopf, D. 23, 24 Korea minority/minoritized languages 241 Korean 241 see also Jejueo Kosonen, K. 259, 269, 275 Kotani, R. 317, 318 kotoba no yure (swaying of language) 287 Krauss, M. 259 Kristiansen, G. 88 Kristiansen, T. 109 Kublai Khan 58 Kulick, D. 302 Kulkarni-Joshi, S. 22, 29 Kurpaska, M. 5 Kyogston Lotsawa Rinchen Tashi 205 Kyûshû dialect 319 Labov, W. 128, 139, 282 Lai, M.L. 130 Lakoff, R. 298, 306 Lambert, W.E. 129 Landry, R. 176, 184 Lane, P. 1, 10 Langelaar, R.J. 224 Langer, N. 7 language activism 3, 4 language crossing 282, 287 language ideologies Japanese 285 Jejueo 252 Korean 242–3 monolingual ideologies 2, 5, 96, 241, 242 Western language ideologies 6, 25, 26, 32, 41, 43–5, 57, 281, 283 zero-sum language ideology 175 Zhuang 165 language laws China 85, 91, 93, 107, 125 Putonghua 174, 176 Tibetan 204 language negotiation 307 language planning and policy (LPP) actors 125 China 3, 85, 88, 89, 92, 95, 104, 107 Huayu community 147

Index 343

Jejueo 243–50 language resources, capital and symbolic power 165 linguistic strategy 149 local attitudes to variations 153 overt versus covert policies 165 Putonghua 149 Sibe 199 South Korea 242, 243–8 and testing 104, 107–9 Thailand 259–60, 274 Tibetan 212 Zhuang 164, 166, 174–5 language resources 165 language revitalization 11, 208, 247–8, 252–5, 259–60, 268–9, 275 language rights 85, 87, 95, 187, 197, 199, 204 language shift 242, 246 language-dialect distinction 184, 254n3, 293 Latin 24, 25, 43, 47, 49 Latin alphabet 166–7 see also Romanization Latourette, K.S. 44 Law, V. 6 Law of the People’s Republic of China on the National Commonly Used Language and Script 107 Law of the PRC on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language, 2000 85, 91, 93, 125, 174 Leckie, G. 120 Lee, C. 44 Lee, Y. 285 Lelyveld, D. 28 Levine, J. 134 Levinson, S.C. 223 Levon, E. 129, 139 Lhasa 216 Li, C.N. 130, 131 Li, F. 163, 166 Li, J. 149 Li, M. 93, 95, 97 Li, Q. 92, 93 Li, Q.H. 61, 62, 67, 69, 72 Li, S. 187 Li, W. 83 Li, X. 163, 166, 170 Li, Y.M. 7–8, 83, 86, 90, 108, 147, 148 Lǐ, Z. 43

Li, Z.H. 95 Li Quan 108, 147–8 Liang, W.X. 120 Liao, X. 109 Lin, A.M.Y. 84, 194 Lin, T. 130 Lin, Y. 130 Lin, Y.-C. 129 lingua francas Beijing Mandarin 42 China 42, 46, 59, 84 English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) 91 Hindustani 25 markets for 173–8 Putonghua 84, 89, 90, 96, 97, 98, 147, 163, 169, 170–1, 173 Sibe 194 Standard Zhuang 168–9 Thailand 259 Tibetan 91 Zhuang 173 linguacentric classifications 184 linguistic capital 10, 157, 164, 168 linguistic description 47–8 linguistic discrimination 9, 321–2, 323 linguistic equality 92 linguistic geography 40 linguistic landscape 176, 194 linguistic markets 10 linguistic protectionism 95 linguistic purism China 11, 94 Korean 241 Tibetan 207–14, 225–6, 230, 233–5 linguistic repertoires 2, 170, 286, 293, 301 linguistic stereotypes 289–92, 330 linguistic transgressions 282 Linn, A. 47 Lippi-Green, R. 243 literacy rates 171, 178 literacy teaching 93 literary language Japanese 284 Literary Chinese 40, 41, 43 Tibetan 206, 224, 226–30, 235, 236 literary reading pronunciations 57, 73 Liu, D. 131 Liu, H. 42 Liu, T. 92 Liu, X. 131 Liu, Z.F. 89, 92

344  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

Livia, A. 302 living/dead words in Shangainese 48 loanwords 11, 123, 167, 188, 207, 226, 233, 235, 318, 324, 327 logos 28, 29 Lu, H. 163, 166 Lu, J. 89, 108, 149, 153, 155 Lu, Y. 131 Lú Yǐwěi 48 Luó, C.P. 43 Luo, H. 68 Luo, Y. 166, 167 Luqiu, L.R. 11 Lv, S. 107, 153 Ma, J.T. 120 Mabzhi dialect 228 see also Tibetan Macau 89, 93, 108 Machida, K. 281 Maher, J.C. 287 Mahidol Model 258, 259, 267, 274, 275 Mair, V. 58, 99n3 Majeed, J. 4, 30 Makihara, M. 3, 208 Makoni, S. 30 Malay 153, 156, 261, 263 Malaysian Mandarin 8, 89, 147–60 de particle 153–5, 156 passive structures 152–3 retroflex pronunciations 148, 156 tones 148, 149, 154 Malone, D. 271 Malone, S. 271 Manchu 41–2, 66, 67, 68, 73, 99n5, 165, 183–202 Manchu alphabet 58, 59 Mandarin see also Beijing Mandarin; Putonghua attitudes to 130 China 9, 10 dialect continua 195 initial consonants in Mandarin 65–6 initial nasals in Mandarin 65 Mongolia 56–80 palatalization 66–8 retroflex pronunciations 66 Shanghainese 42, 46, 47 as standard Chinese 85 tones 62, 69–72 velar initials 65–6, 67, 68

velar nasals 65 manga 292, 300, 305 Mannheim, K. 199 mantras 29 Mao Zedong 85 Marathi 26 marketization 164, 172, 173–8 Marshman, James 24 Marshman, Joshua 50 Martin, E. 125 Martini, Martino 49 Marxist-Leninist theories 86 Masiko, H. 285 Masini, F. 43 mass literacy 166, 170 master-servant relationships 25 matched-guise studies 129, 132–3, 157 Matsumoto, K. 316, 331 Matsumoto, Y. 298 McLelland, N. 2, 6, 13, 48, 265 media/press/TV Chinese proficiency tests 123 Japan 289–90 Japanese 286–7, 318 Jejueo 241, 253 linguistic purism 94 Malaysian Mandarin 155 Sibe 188 Tibetan 206, 210, 229–33, 235–6 Zhuang 173 Meecham, M. 104 Meiji Restoration 283, 290, 316, 321, 323, 332 Meinhof, C. 22 Melchior de Mançano 51n6 Meng, R. 188 Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin 59–63 metrolingualism 5 MHK test see Minzu Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (MHK) migration China 45, 86 Hawai‘i 12–13, 315, 316–17 Japan 12, 282 Japanese 318–21, 331–2 Miller, L. 298 Milroy, J. 57, 94, 128, 331 Milroy, L. 128 Min (Chinese dialect) 195

Index 345

Ming dynasty 42, 43, 50, 57, 59, 71 minority/minoritized languages see also China minority/ minoritized languages; Jejueo; Korea minority/minoritized languages; Patani Malay; Sibe; Tibetan 204, 205, 217, 218; Zhuang 163–82 iconization 171 MHK test 106 monocentric languages 90 protecting language rights 95 and Putonghua 108 minzu (ethnic) construction 195–6, 197, 199, 208 Minzu Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (MHK) 9, 56, 105–26 Mir, F. 36n8 missionaries 2, 7, 22, 41, 43–5, 58 Mitchell, L. 28 Mitsuhashi, J. 303 mixed languages 262, 287, 332 Modern Chinese Dictionary 109, 111 modernization 86 Mongolia 56–80 Mongolian 86, 90, 186 Mongolian ‘New’ script 74n4 Mongolian ‘Old Script’ 63–5, 91 Mongolian-Han Original Sounds of the Five Regions (Menghan Hebi Wufang Yuanyin): see Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin monocentric languages 87–8, 90, 96 monolingual ideologies 2, 5, 96, 241, 242 monotheism 26 morphology Chinese 49 Sibe 191 Tibetan 223, 226–8 Morrison, Robert 44, 58, 59, 66, 69 Moseley, C. 184, 195, 196, 198, 252 mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) 269, 270–2, 274 Motschenbacher, H. 311 Mufwene, S. 331 Muge, Samten 218 Muhr, R. 87, 88 Mullaney, T. 166

multilingual ecology 4–5 multilingualism China 41–2, 84–5, 96 dialect switching 157 India 28 multilingual education 84, 87, 96–8, 274 Thailand 259 Tibetan 229–30 multiple standards 92–3 Murata, K. 282 music 29 mutual intelligibility China 89, 92, 97, 98 Jejueo 242, 254n3 Shanghainese 41 Sibe 188, 190–1, 195 Tibetan 206, 218, 223 names (Tibetan), transliteration in Chinese 209 naming of languages 29–30 Nanjing 42, 46 Nanjing Mandarin 56, 57–8, 59, 65, 66–7, 69, 72 nation building 88, 183, 195, 199 national identities see identity National Institute for Korean Language (NIKL) 243, 244–6 National Language and Script Committee (PRC) 108 nationalism 57 native speaker proficiency 34, 91 Natural Phonology 318 naturalized English words 31 naturalness 305–6 Navaannamjil, G. 60 Needham, J. 31 neo-dialects 287 neologisms 209, 233 see also loanwords neutral tone Beijing Mandarin 131, 133, 134–41 Putonghua 148, 156 New Village Movement 242, 248 Nga’ri dialect 206 Ningbo dialect 44, 89 Ningbonese 89 Nomiya, A. 303 Nomura, T. 283, 284 Norman, J. 42, 130, 131 Noro, K. 281

346  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

Oergel, M. 6, 13n4 official languages 42, 43, 85, 248 see also Putonghua Ogawa, N. 300 O’Grady, W. 247 Oh, S. 249 O’Hanlon, Rosalind 35 Ohara, Y. 4–5 Okamoto, S. 285, 286, 306, 319 Okamura, J. 318 Okihiro, G. 317, 318 Old Tibetan 216 see also Tibetan Onon, U. 59, 60 opera 67 Opium Wars 41, 43 oral incantation 29 oral literature 269 Orientalism 35, 36, 281 Orientalism (Said, 1978) 35 orthography see also writing systems codification of indigenous languages 260 Patani Malay 260–75 Sibe 186, 188–9 Tibetan 206, 216 Zhuang 166, 167 Zhuàngwén (‘Zhuang writing’) 166 Ostermann, A.C. 302 otoko-no-hito (male person/man) 308–10 Ou, S. 150 Paffey, D. 85 palatal obstruents in Tôhoku dialect 327, 329–30 palatalization in Mandarin Chinese 66–8 Palau 331 palm tone mnemonic 71 Pandey, A. 26 Pandurang, Dadoba 26 Park, J.S.Y. 8, 247, 248 ‘passing’ as standard language speakers 12, 286, 292 passive structures in Malaysian Mandarin 152–3 pastoralists 228, 229–30, 231, 238n1 Patani Malay 11, 258–77 tones 265 Patani Malay-Thai Multilingual Education (PMT-MLE) Programme 260–75

Paternicò, L.M. 42, 49 Patrick, D. 165 ‘peasantized’ English words 31 Pellin, T. 48 Peng, J.G. 92 Pennycook, A. 30, 95 Persian 24, 25, 31 Person, K.R. 262 Peyraube, A. 40, 43, 48, 50, 51n6 Pharao, N. 129 Philippines 43 philology 26, 34, 40, 48–9 Phipps, A. 10 phonemic representations 65 phonetic Chinese movement 57 phonology Chûgoku dialect (CD) 318 Patani Malay 265–6 Shanghainese 46 Tôhoku Dialect 324–30 phrasebooks 43 Pia Lane, J.C. 203 Ping (Chinese dialect) 195 Pinyin 10, 11, 62–4, 93, 97, 106, 178 Pituswan, S. 261 Pizziconi, B. 291 pluralism 84–5 pluricentricity 8, 84, 87–95, 97, 98, 106, 148 Podesva, R.J. 129 poetry recitations 67, 210, 269 politeness 223–40, 246, 310 politics 41, 84 see also language planning and policy (LPP) polyglossia 28 polynomie 265 pop songs 211 positivism 33, 36 possessive markers 47 postcolonial contexts 28, 88 Potowa, Geshé 205 Pountain, D. 288 power and classification 32 and colonialism 27 and knowledge 25 Manchu 187 symbolic power 164, 165, 167, 174, 178, 180, 199, 285 and translation 33 pragmatics 153 Prakash, Gyan 35

Index 347

Premaratne, D. 166, 170 Prémare, J.H.M. de 66 Premsrirat, S. 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 269 prestige Beijing Mandarin 133, 140–1 Chinese varieties 42, 129–30 and dialects 195 English 91 Japanese 285 Korean 242, 243 linguistic capital 164 Malaysia 154 Mandarin 167–8 Mongolia 58 Tibetan 204, 213, 217 Zhuang 167 Preston, D.R. 133 primers 44, 66 Prins, M. 215, 217 Pritchatt, D. 59, 60 pronouns 47, 298, 301–2, 306 pronunciation Chinese 46 Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin 61–73 Patani Malay 265 Pinyin 93 Putonghua 176 rhyme dictionaries 7 standard Mandarin 46 testing in China 9 Tibetan 215–17, 231–2 Tôhoku Dialect 324–8 Western standard language ideologies 57 Protestant missionaries 43–4, 45, 50 Pǔ, Y.H. 42 Punjab 36n8 ‘Pure father-tongue’ movement 233–5 Putonghua see also Guoyu; Hanyu; Mandarin Beijing Mandarin as basis of 9, 42, 148 bilingual education 169 character for ‘Zhuang’ 168 and colonialism 8 comparative grammatical structures 151 de particle 153–4 Difang Putonghua 89

in education 91–2 education in China 83, 90, 97, 98 literacy in 171 as mother tongue 92 neutral tone 148, 156 passive structures 152, 153 Romanization 167 as standard Chinese 9, 42, 92–3, 107–8, 130–1, 147, 148, 155, 204 street signage 177–8 and Tibetan 207 tones 131 Putonghua Shuiping Ceshi [PSC] 9, 107 Pytlowany, A. 6 Qi, S. 131, 139 Qián Nǎiróng 51n3 Qing dynasty 41–2, 43, 45, 50, 58, 59, 186, 187, 198 Qinggeertai, S. 64–5 Qingwen Qimeng (Manchu primer) 66, 68 qualifications, standards for 93 queer speakers 12, 298–314 Rahman, T. 4 Raini, E. 43 Rampton, B. 282 Ramsey, R.S. 41, 42 Rawski, E.S. 186, 187 rebus characters 167 Reddy, W.M. 31 Rees-Miller, J. 104 reference terms 301–2 Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law of the P.R.C. 197 Regional National Autonomy Law (Law of the PRC on Reginal National Autonomy, 1984) 85 Reinecke, John 317 religion 34, 322 Ren, W. 91 Renfrow, D.G. 12, 286 retroflex pronunciations Malaysian Mandarin 148, 156 Mandarin 66 Rgyaltsan, Jigmed 214 Rhoads, E.J.M. 187 rhyme dictionaries 7, 57, 59, 61–3 Rinpoche, Gungthang 206

348  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

Robins, D. 288 Roche, G. 1, 4, 204, 205, 208, 211, 218, 231 Rohsenow, J. 166, 170 role indexation 12 role language 292 Romanization Chinese 58, 64 education in China 93 Korean 255n4 Malaysia 263 Tibetan 217 Zhuang 166, 176, 179 Zhuang mistaken for English 178, 180 Rta’u 217 Rubin, B. 301 Rumi script 263 Russian 87–8, 188 Ryukyuan languages 288 see also Japanese Said, Edward 35 Sakai, N. 321 salience 330 Sallabank, J. 265 Saltzman, M. 246, 247, 259 Samoh, U. 261, 262, 275 Sanada, S. 281, 286, 287 Sangdag 205 sanitary purism 94 Sanskrit 23, 24, 25, 26, 205 Sardesai, M. 4 Sato, C. 306 Sawndip 167, 172, 179 Schieffelin, B.B. 3, 165 Schleicher, August 283 Schmidt, R. 85 script, choice of Mandarin 170 Patani Malay 11, 261, 263–75 Sibe 188–9, 196 simplified Chinese script 89, 92, 93, 97, 106, 107, 167, 170 Tibetan 205 Zhuang 166–8, 171 second dialect acquisition (SDA) 315, 318–19, 331 segmentation 62 Seidlhofer, B. 91, 98 Semitic script 63

sentence-final particles Japanese 299, 306, 311 Malaysian Mandarin 153–5, 156 Seth, M. 241 Shakya, T. 206 Shandong Mandarin 129 Shanghai 42, 44, 45, 83 Shanghainese 45–51, 89 Shapiro, M.J. 94 Shen, Z.W. 65 Sherten 211 Shi, D. 150 Shi, J.G. 92 Shi Zhenkong 70 Shibamoto-Smith, J. 285, 286, 298, 300 Shibatani, M. 319 Shioda, T. 287 Shitamachi dialect 284 see also Japanese Shohamy, E. 165 Sibata, T. 282, 285 Sibe 10, 165, 183–202 sibilants 67, 68 Siegel, J. 319, 331, 332 Siewierska, A. 301 sign languages 5 signage 10, 176–7, 194, 264 Silverstein, M. 128 simplified Chinese script 89, 92, 93, 97, 106, 107, 167, 170 Singapore 89, 148 Singaporean Mandarin 140, 149, 153 Sino-Foreign Cooperative Programmes 83 Sino-Japanese wars 57 sinology 43 Smalley, W.A. 260, 267 Smith, E. 318, 322 Smolicz, J. 185 social capital 164 social justice 3, 84, 92, 165 social meaning 9, 128–46 social media 210–11, 293 social status Beijing Mandarin 133, 135, 136–7, 139–40 dialect cosplay in Japan 287–92 Japanese 284, 321 Korean 243 Sibe 199 South Korea 242–3

Index 349

Tibetan 226–8, 246 Zhuang 176 sociolects 236 Söderblom Saarela, M. 5, 41 Sohn, H.-M. 241 solidarity 130, 133, 135, 137, 139–40, 183, 199 Sonam, L. 208, 210, 211 Sonam L. 217 Song, J.-J. 241, 244, 247, 249 Song, Y. 153 South Korea 11, 88, 241–57 Southcott, D. 247, 250, 253 Speak Putonghua week 11 speech community consensus 153, 156 spelling systems 58 Standaert, N. 51n5 Standard Chinese 7, 57–8, 83–103, 107–10, 116, 120, 124, 131, 141, 204 see also Putonghua Stary, G. 186, 187–8, 195 Steadman-Jones, R. 23, 24, 25, 33 stigma 13, 217, 230, 232, 282, 290, 291, 315, 321, 322, 330 Stolz, T. 21, 22 street names 177–8 street signage 10, 194 SturtzSreetharan, C. 319 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay 36 Sugimoto, T. 284 Sun Duk Mun 247 Suzhounese 89 Suzuki, H. 1, 4, 205, 223, 224, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232 Svantesson, J.-O. 91 Swatow dialect 44 symbolic power see power syntax Chinese 49–50 grammatical variation in Chinese 149, 150–5 standard Chinese 109 tag questions 306 Tai languages 163 Taiwan 89, 90, 93, 126n1 Taiwan Mandarin 140 Tamminga, M. 129 Tamura, E. 317 Tan, Y.-Y. 129, 130, 140 Tanaka, A. 284

Tanaka, Y. 12, 282, 286, 287, 289, 290, 291 Tang, Z. 149 Tao, L. 131 Tapp, N. 166 Tatsuo, N. 59, 60 te intensifier in Beijing Mandarin 131–2, 133, 134–41 teacher proficiency 106 Telugu 28, 30, 34 Teng, X. 87 Teochew 150 Teoh, S.Y. 156 terminological standardization 32, 33, 109, 208–9, 214, 218, 233, 270 Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language (TOCFL) 126n1 textbooks acceptance of variation 155 China 43, 94 Chinese 59, 67, 68, 72 Jejueo 250 Meng Han Hebi Wufang Yuanyin 61 Patani Malay 270 Tibetan 214–15 Thai 259, 261–2, 263, 264 Thailand 11, 157, 258–77 Tharoor, S. 27 Thien, C. 150 Thomas, G. 94, 207, 226 Thomas, W.P. 269 Thompson, S.A. 130, 131 three-circle model of English 8, 88, 98 three-language policies 4, 7 Thupten Jinpa, Geshé 206–7, 218 Tian, X. 149 Tián Jiājiā 51n3 Tibet 4 Tibetan 10–11, 90–1, 203–22, 223–40 see also Amdo dialect honorifics 224, 227, 298, 310 humilifics 11, 224, 225, 227, 228–30, 231, 232, 235, 236–7 Tôhoku dialect 13, 315–34 palatal obstruents 327, 329–30 tone sandhi 148 tones Beijing Mandarin 131 Malaysian Mandarin 148, 149, 154 Mandarin 62, 69–72 Patani Malay 265 Zhuang 167

350  Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

Tong, K. 187 Tong, S. 188 Tongjia, Q. 187, 189, 190, 198 topolects (fangyan) 8, 13n14, 40, 89, 90, 92, 97 tourism 164, 177, 290 Tournadre, N. 204, 205, 216, 218, 223, 224, 228, 230–1, 233 Tower of Babel 22, 28 traditional Chinese script 89, 93, 97, 109 transcription 43 transgender speakers 12, 298–314 translanguaging 28 translation and colonialism 32 in education 271 Putonghua-Zhuang 173 Tibetan 205, 208–9, 210, 226, 233, 234 transliteration 58, 59, 62, 63–5, 68, 209 transnational standards 147–60 Trask, R.L. 94 Treaty of Nanjing 43 Treaty ports 41, 42, 44 Trudgill, P. 128, 319, 330, 331, 332 Tsering Dhondrup 232–3 Tsering Samdrup 224, 228, 229, 230, 232 Tsering Tashi 214 Tseringthar 216, 217, 218 Tseten Puntsok, Chapel 216 Tsewang Lhamo 211 Tsultrim Lodrö, Khenpo 213, 218, 234 Tsung, L. 86, 89 Tuyu 89, 90, 91 typology 47 Uchida, K. 48, 50 Udo Middle School 251 Ueda Kazutoshi 283 Uge Seoping 58–9 UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger 184, 195, 196, 242, 252 UNESCO factors of Language Vitality and Endangerment 11, 204, 252 UNESCO’s King Sejong Literacy Prize. 274 university entrance exams 175 Urdu 4, 24, 36n8

utlilitarianism 35 Uyghur 188, 192 see also China Valentine, D. 310 Van den Berg, M. 195 Van Hal, T. 6 Vance, T. 325 Varennes, F.D. 204 variationist sociolinguistics 128, 130, 139, 293 Varo, F. 66 velar initials in Mandarin 65–6, 67, 68 velar nasals in Mandarin 65 Vietnamese 301 vocabulary Jejueo 242 Malaysian Mandarin 155 Patani Malay 265, 270 Sibe 191 terminological standardization 33, 109, 208–9, 214, 218, 233, 270 Tibetan 207, 213, 214, 224, 226, 233 Vogl, U. 2 von Schlegel, Friedrich 26 vowel finals 68 Wade, T.F. 59, 72 Wade-Giles Romanization system 59 Walker, J.A. 5, 139 Walsh, M. 260 Walsh, O. 94 Wang, G. 93, 149, 155 Wang, Li 43 Wang, Ling 108 Wang, Liping 170 Wang, S. 204, 215 Wang, W.S-Y. 40 Wang, X. 148, 149, 150, 153–4, 156, 157 Wang, Z. 65, 66, 68, 69 Wang Bo 152–3 Warnke, I.H. 21, 22 Washbrook, David 21, 23, 28, 29, 34, 35 WeChat 113 Wee, L. 8 Wells Williams, Samuel 44, 69 Wen, Q.F. 91, 97 Weng, J. 58, 59 Wenzhounese 89

Index 351

Western language ideologies 6, 25, 26, 32, 41, 43–5, 57, 281, 283 Westernization and modernity 35 Whaley, L.J. 253 White Paper 1999 (Information Office of the State Council of the P.R.C.) 195–6 Widdowson, H.G. 91 Williams, A. 332 Wilson, H.H. 32, 33, 37n15 Wolfram, W. 128 word formation 49 word order 49 World Chineses 5 World Englishes model 8, 88, 96, 98 writing systems China 3, 41–2 Chinese 43, 57 Chinese in education 93 Chinese proficiency tests 104–27 comparative grammatical structures 150 Japanese 284 Mongolian script 63–5 Patani Malay 263–75 pluricentric Chinese 89 Romanization 58 Sibe 188–9, 194, 196 Tibetan 205, 206, 216, 229, 231 Western standard language ideologies 57 Zhuang 166–8, 171–2, 178 Wu 65, 89, 195 Wu, Y. 131 Wú group 42 Xiang (Chinese dialect) 195 Xiao, C. 64 Xiao, L. 48, 50 Xie, J.P. 91 Xing, F.Y. 93, 149, 155 Xinhua News Agency 94 Xinjiang Autonomous Region 10, 106, 110, 123, 184, 186 Xu, D. 5, 156 Xu, J. 92 Xu, S. 130 Xu, Y. 131 Yamamoto, E. 318 Yamashita, H. 281

Yamashita, R. 284, 292 Yang, C.-Y. 242, 252 Yang, H. 174 Yang, M. 207 Yang, S.-J. 243, 246, 249, 250, 251, 253 Yang, X.A. 86 Yao, Q.G. 94 Yarimizu, K. 287 Yasuda, T. 323 Ye, B.K. 69, 72 Yuan, Y. 153 Yue (Chinese dialect) 89 see also Cantonese Yuna Hirasawa 300, 304–10 Zang, X. 195, 199 Zenz, A. 215 zero-sum language ideology 175 Zgusta, L. 263 Zhang, D.B. 91, 107 Zhang, J. 5, 95, 130, 140 Zhang, Q. 130, 131, 139, 141 Zhang, Y. 227 Zhao, C. 150 Zhao, H. 2, 130, 139 Zhao, J. 195 Zhao, L. 42 Zhao, Q.F. 120 Zhao, S.H. 125 zhe sa Tibetan system 226–8 Zhongqian 187 Zhou, C. 131 Zhōu, J. 49 Zhou, M.L. 3, 84, 86, 166, 167, 169, 171 Zhou, Y. 130 Zhouxiang, L. 207 Zhu, X. 149, 213, 214 Zhu, Y. 130 Zhuang 10, 163–82 tones 167 Zhuàngwén (‘Zhuang writing’) 166 see also orthography Zikmundová, V. 186, 187, 195 Zimman, L. 303, 304 Zimmermann, K. 41 Zou, Q.P. 92 Zuckermann, G. 260 see also Tôhoku dialect Zwartjes, O. 47