Language Stereotypes in Contemporary Taiwan: Evidence from an Experimental Study

Abstract

We collected original experimental data, using the matched-guise technique, to examine the Taiwanese people's evaluational reactions to two major spoken languages in contemporary Taiwan: Mandarin and Taiwanese. Taking advantage of the effectiveness of the experimental technique in controlling for possible unobserved confounding variables, we clearly and systematically demonstrate that (1) language stereotypes do exist in today's Taiwan, and (2) there are some serious and significant implications for Taiwan's public opinion and democratic politics. Our data show that such language stereotypes are of great salience and consistently decoded for political issues, less so for socioeconomic issues, and almost insignificant for personality features. Our data also confirm that these language stereotypes are not just proxies of Taiwan's regional divisions; the Taiwanese people cognitively differentiate between the spoken languages' political and socioeconomic implications (despite some mild halo effect between the two).

Language and dialect in China

“…On the one hand, the failure to date to reach consensus on an orthographic representation weighs heavily on the continued lack of progress in normalizing its use. This factor is only one among a broader array of adverse conditions (only a small percentage of young Taiwanese today do not speak Mandarin, the other autochthonous languages have received official recognition since democratization and vie for preservation); see and Chang and Lu (2014), Dupré (2014) and Liu (2012). Nevertheless, such language status deficits and sociolinguistic imbalances that strongly tip the balance in favor of Mandarin have no effect, one way or the other, on the proposal to categorize Minnan as a language, even in the hypothetical case of future advanced erosion.…”

“…Recall that Putonghua is based on Modern Standard Mandarin, one of the Chinese languages, according to the standard method. For comparison, if we categorize Yue, Mandarin, Minnan, Wu and Hakka as dialects of Chinese, the same approach within the Indo-European family would group Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and Romanian as dialects of "Romance"; for discussion, see Cheung and Bauer (2002), Matthews and Yip (2011). Even in the case of the Romance languages, genetically and typologically very close, recent descendants from their parent, mutual intelligibility is nevertheless considerably restricted.…”

Exploring Grade 8 Khelobedu-speaking learners’ writing challenges in Sepedi Home Language in Mopani District, South Africa

“…It was interesting to note that one teacher maintained that learners should not be penalised for using Khelobedu words because if they are marked wrong they might achieve poor grades. On the contrary Lu (2014), who argues that if learners are not marked wrong for incorrect vocabulary, this could cause confusion and impede the writing progress.…”

A Pattern Recognition Framework for Detecting Changes in Chinese Internet Management System

“…Somewhere between these two political ideologies and preferences is the grey field where the Chinese government should focus its efforts into content management. Various surveys have shown that the majority of Area A themselves are in the middle point between these two extremes [24] .…”