Taiwan's Voluntary Language Shift

Latest survey results indicate that Taiwanese will gradually decline over a period of generations. The less often that speakers use the language, the more difficult it will seem to be to use it. More and more of it will be forgotten and it will be difficult to recall some old words for things. Complex syntactic constructions will be less frequently used or lost altogether. In Taiwan’s schooling system, children’s acquisition of Taiwanese is interrupted at the very age when grammatical complexity is being acquired and they are forced to shift to Mandarin. So, ...

WHY “VOLUNTARY” LANGUAGE SHIFT?

Taiwanese is gradually fading, but not because of the classic sociolinguistic scenario, i.e. Taiwanese people would slowly be ceasing to exist. Taiwanese is experiencing language loss without population loss. The Cornish have lost their language, but they are still very much alive and have increased in number. Today they speak English rather than Cornish. Likewise, Taiwanese is declining because of a shift from Taiwanese to Mandarin.

Sociolinguistically and according to attitude-research data, Taiwan’s language shift should be described as a voluntary shift. Many might say: “But what about the KMT’s past repression against Taiwanese. Isn’t the language recovering?” The answer is that forced language shift, as attempted by the KMT’s earlier policies, has not worked elsewhere in the world. Why would Taiwan be different? Trying to make a language (Mandarin) compulsory while stigmatizing Taiwanese and Taiwan’s indigenous languages has, for the past decades, made the latter even more valuable as a form of resistance against past KMT policies. Taiwanese might be dying, not because of past, but because of current language policies and attitudes.

Voluntary language shift from Taiwanese to Mandarin happens because Taiwanese first language speakers consider that they would be better of speaking Mandarin. Such shift is gradual, with Mandarin replacing Taiwanese over a period of decades. Older speakers of Taiwanese are the most fluent and are in some cases still monolinguals or Taiwanese/Japanese bilinguals. The younger ones, like their grandchildren, have not had the opportunity to use Taiwanese across the full range of functions their grandparents did. They have, in other words, never acquired full fluency in Taiwanese, being much more fluent in Mandarin.

THE EFFECT

Taiwan’s youngsters do not have as large a vocabulary in Taiwanese and they are constantly (though unknowingly) simplifying its grammar. They rely increasingly on the language to which all Taiwanese are shifting to in order to convey what they mean. Sociolinguistic research has clearly shown the next stage to be the fatal one - one in which Taiwanese will no longer be transmitted to the next generations.

Sociolinguistic research has also illustrated that the last stage of language shift is always abrupt: a language can be tipped over the brink in a decade or two. Language shift in itself takes much longer, making it quasi imperceptible in daily life. Yet, Taiwanese is still in its “shifting” stage (to Mandarin). But judging from current survey results, it might well tip over that brink within a generation or two.

Linguistic research is unanimous: people making a free choice to shift to another language will cause the death of a language. As Taiwanese people are rational beings who may reasonably be expected to know where their self-interests lie, I cannot condemn such choice. From an economic point of view, languages are just another free market in which the wane of a language is simply a side effect of individual choices. Taiwanese disappearing would thus be no more or less morally significant than a change in the price of rice.

THE CAUSES

I have argued in previous posts that in Taiwan’s case, the decline of Taiwanese is caused, not by an increase in choices, but by a decrease in choice brought about by the government’s failure to clearly inform people on the value of first language education. Education resources have been diverted into resources to support the economy, while inhibiting the educational and social success of, in particular, the poorer Taiwanese and Aborigines alike.

Linguists generally agree: measures most likely to preserve declining languages are the very ones which will help increase their speakers’ standard of living in a long-term, sustainable way. Taiwan’s market of possibly competing languages has been undermined, first (but arguably) by decades of KMT’s linguistic and cultural repression, then by over a decade of the DPP’s linguistic limbo and missed educational opportunities.

Yet, education is not the ultimate goal of a possible revival of Taiwanese. Without safeguards for the use of Taiwanese by young people at home to ensure transmission, attempts to prop up Taiwanese outside the home will be like blowing air into a punctured tire. It will be impossible to achieve a steady proto-state based on the incoming air due to the continual losses resulting from the unmended puncture.

Currently, Taiwanese is in the unenviable position of having outflow exceeding inflow. Still at the same time, some groups are spending large sums of money on projects without sufficient justification. Spending years on devising grammars and a writing system is an artificial environment for Taiwanese. It reflects only a fraction of the diversity of the language in its everyday use and cannot capture its ever-changing nature. It is like arguing that we should concentrate our efforts on preserving the whale by building museums where we can display whale carcasses, but do nothing to preserve the mammal in its natural habitat.

Building more museums or embarking upon artificial projects, poetry or literature competitions will not save the Taiwanese language: they do not address the root causes of the decline of Taiwanese. People’s sympathies are more easily aroused about the plight of the whale than about the oceans they live in, even though preservation of the oceans is a prerequisite to the whale’s existence.

What startles me about the last “pro-Taiwan” administration of 8 years is that it did not successfully implement new language policies as a means of resistance and reaction to the encroachment of the preceding nationalist administration. It is naive to delude oneself that a laissez-faire approach represents absence of policy. It is instead a policy not to have an effective language policy.

Erik Allardt’s well-known and often-quoted study of 46 linguistic minorities in 14 European countries showed that a minority language which is not taught will decline. That was 1980 and Europe's education authorities have heeded this advice. Consequent studies of language shift have shown time and time again that schools are a major agent of cultural and linguistic assimilation because formal education is often the first point of contact children have with the world outside their own community.

They very fact that the government does not allow for a significant presence of Taiwanese in the school is a signal to the Taiwan public that it is seen as a useless language. Denied the opportunity of learning in Taiwanese, and expected to assimilate to the norms of a Mandarin education, children get caught in a vicious circle. Even under a “pro-Taiwan administration”, schools failed to support the home language of over 70% of the population, and youngsters’ skills in it are often poor and were allowed to deteriorate further.

GOVERNMENT VS. COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

The failure of schools to let children develop in the language they speak at home can and I fear will be used by a future nationalist-dominated legislature to legitimize further oppression of Taiwanese.

Provision for schooling in Taiwanese would not automatically safeguard its future. As I hinted at before, language movements cannot succeed if schools are expected to carry the primary burden of revival. Language revival must first begin in the communities themselves through voluntary efforts. They have to be financed from the bottom-up through community resources, much like the initial mother tongue immersion schools in Spain’s autonomous regions.

Dependence on government resources undermines the community’s responsibility and right to control its own affairs. In Taiwan’s highly centralized political environment, requests for bilingual Taiwanese/Mandarin (or Aboriginal/Mandarin) education may be seen as threats to Taiwan’s cohesiveness. As soon as the Quebec Francophones devised legislation to protect French, they lost whatever good will they had among Anglophones in Canada. In contrast, securing funds for education in Taiwanese through the community and not the government does not rely on cooperation from those reluctant to do so, nor does it involve major costs.

This is not to clear a future Taiwan government of responsibility, but financial aid does come at a price: the right to control the state of affairs regarding the Taiwanese language. After the upcoming elections, requests for bilingual Taiwanese/Mandarin education may represent a great threat to the powers that be.

THE ‘IDENTITY’ ISSUE

It has become fashionable in Taiwan to talk about multilingualism and multiculturalism as if they were recent discoveries instead of what they really are: a condition of life as old as Taiwan’s recorded history. Bilingualism has for a long time suffered from a misinformed Taiwan press. The overwhelming majority of references to it in the media still stress Mandarin/English “bilingualism”. In the best case, “Taiwanese/Mandarin” bilingualism is presented as void of social functions and human value, a divisive setup, confusing, and a stumbling block to the kind of language education a child “really” needs.

In today’s global village, increasing bilingualism in English is working at making the majority of Taiwan’s indigenous languages in effect minority languages. This in itself is no cause for alarm. When diglossia is stable, each language in Taiwan can have its own set of functions and space without threatening the other. A decade ago Sweden, for example, introduced the study of English as a second language into the earliest stages of primary education in order to secure high levels of proficiency. Yet Swedish and many other small national languages such as Dutch (in Belgium and The Netherlands), Icelandic, and Danish are in no danger of not being transmitted inter-generationally.

The countries just mentioned control their own polities at all levels from home to school to government. The learning of English will continue to take place at school and not at home as long as they retain control of the education system and use their own languages among themselves at home and in communities as markers of in-group identity. This is why Taiwan’s rather complex issue (or at times sheer lack) of identity does make Mandarin/English bilingual education a cause for alarm.

Taiwanese first language speakers with a strong sense of identity would not consider abandoning their first language (or mother tongue, if you like), because it is an essential and vital part of “being Taiwanese”. Most Americans have no choice but to speak English since it is the only language they know, and they have not learned foreign languages because it was sufficient to know English. If we imagine instead, that a Swede, Fleming, Dutchman, or Dane were to suggest that all Americans should be taught to speak with a British accent, most would object. Even though British English is not a completely different language, most people would feel that British English was not the right language with which to express their American identity.

Isn’t it odd, therefore, that quite some Taiwanese first language speakers do not have second thoughts to speak Mandarin to their children, or that some (upper-class) Mandarin speakers in Taiwan do so in English? Even those Taiwanese most proud of their “Taiwaneseness” do not seem to hesitate in confining their language to the living room.

Globalization does not change the fact that Taiwanese people will still live their lives in local settings and feel the need to develop and express a local identity to pass on to their children. Language is an all-important marker of identity. When language or identity is not clearly defined or given up, another will replace it, but something important will be lost: the way to pass on cultural content that preserves and transmits meanings shared by people who have/had Taiwanese as first language.

Many are still trapped in the mistaken idea that all people have only a single identity – that the French are only French, the Spanish only Spanish, the Irish only Irish and so on. We all have overlapping and intersecting identities. The Taiwanese might want to think locally but act globally: local languages for expressing local identities and global languages for communicating beyond local levels and expressing their identity as citizens of the world. Without the former, there would be much less left to express to the world.

Still, before any meaningful decisions can be taken to start saving Taiwanese, its speakers must believe that it is worth doing. This decision is a subjective one and carries with it values about the kind of Taiwan people want to live in and pass on to their children.

Cultural and linguistic uniformity is undesirable: nothing will more quickly decrease Taiwan’s people creativity or impoverish the richness of Taiwan’s cultural diversity than a single Mandarin-oriented culture. One culture for Taiwan is not likely to bring lasting peace either; it is much more likely to bring a new form of totalitarianism. As has been proven across the Taiwan Strait, a unitary system is easier for a privileged few to dominate.

REFERENCES

Allardt, E. 1979. Implications of the Ethnic Revival in Modern Industrialized Society: A Comparative Study of the Linguistic Minorities in Western Europe. Helsinki: Societas Scientariarum Fennica.

Fishman, J. 1991. Reversing language Shift: Theory and Practice of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon, Multilingual Matters. Special Edition.

Fishman, J. 2006. Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change. In: Contributions to International Sociolinguistics. Clevedon, Multilingual Matters, pp.126-176.

Gijsen J. 2008. Taiwan: Pedagogical and Methodological Challenges in Language Teaching. Presentation at VALS-ASLA Conference 2008, Switzerland.

Nettle, D. & Romaine, S. 2003. Ces langues, ces voix qui s'effacent. Menaces sur les langues du monde. Paris: Editions Autrement. (Translation from “Vanishing Voices” 2000).

Romaine, S. 2007. The impact of language policy on endangered languages. In Koenig, Matthias and De Guchteneire, Paul eds. Democracy and Human Rights in Multicultural Societies. Aldershot:Ashgate/UNESCO. Chapter 10. pp. 217-236.