From 1945 until 1987, the KMT (Nationalist)
government enforced its strict Mandarin Language Policy in schools
throughout Taiwan, and students were forbidden to speak local
languages or dialects. Recent reversal of this policy allows
schools to teach these formerly forbidden varieties. Despite
some attention from scholars, it remains to explore the impact
of these policies on successive generations of bilingual speakers.
This study explores the perceptions of parents, grandparents,
and young adults. The data show that school-based policies have
an impact on family-based speaking practices. They also demonstrate
the complex interplay between public and private histories in
the development of linguistic ideologies and language as capital.
The goal of this study is to deepen our understanding of a set of narrative practices in European‐American families in which young children's transgressions are downplayed or erased, a pattern that is cast in relief by the frequent, foregrounded narration of young children's transgressions in Taiwanese families. Evidence from the mothers'folk theories is used to illuminate these patterns, revealing that the pattern is reversed with respect to the narration of parental transgressions. The Taipei mothers treat parents' past misdeeds as undermining of adult authority and thereby not narratable to children, whereas the Longwood mothers regard parental misdeeds, including "hell‐raising," as highly repor table for their humor and their power to humanize parents. These findings are discussed in relation to contrasting ideals and understandings of the dynamics of selves over time.
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