Learning Putonghua, (not) becoming Chinese: “Sinicized” figures and intersectional personae on Tibetan peripheries

Abstract

Few Sino‐Tibetan bilingualisms are celebrated in Amdo Tibet. Registers like “mixed language,” “peasant language,” and vernacular Mandarins are denounced through their perceived association with Chinese colonial influence. However, Putonghua‐Tibetan “bilinguals” are revered among the same demographic. When Tibetan and Chinese language communities intersect each other, a concern for many arises as to how one calibrates one's own “bi‐ness” as a Tibetan bilingual. In this paper, I explore how “Sinicized” figures are configurated for Tibetans. I argue that language works in many ways to disrupt previously stable ethnoracial identities as well as to mediate ethnoracial alignment or a lack thereof. Intersectional personae—binding intersections of linguistic repertoires with biographic fractals like gender, class, race/ethnicity, sexuality, profession, and many more—personify such disruptions for users of languages. I also describe the affective motion—or ethnoracialized anxieties and aspirations— in adopting or sidestepping these intersectional personae for a population that feel they are going through racialization (for different publics) in many aspects of their lives. Attending to intra‐ethnoracial evaluations, I also delineate and compare vernacular colonialism and Putonghua colonialism in showing that “same but different” registers might be a vantage point to a more empirical understanding of Sino‐ as well as other forms of colonialism.