National Language, Dialect, and Identity in Twentieth-Century China

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

In recent years, language and standardization has become an important focal point in Chinese studies. Scholars like Edward Gunn and Elizabeth Kaske show how the introduction of a standardized national language intersected with the cultural and political tumult of modern China. Introducing different layers to this narrative, this panel examines the relationship between the invention of a national language and the reorganization of identities in twentieth-century China. In particular, we investigate how the concept of the national accommodated, superseded, or replaced loyalties to and identification with localities. Drawing from linguistics, literature, folklore studies, and social, intellectual, and cultural history, this panel will explore the changing meanings of “dialect,” “standard,” “national,” and “local,” as well as the phenomena they represent in practice.

Jin Liu offers a nuanced narrative of various meanings attached to dialects (fangyan), considering the complicated relationships between local languages and the national language: between oral and written, particular and universal, and folk and high culture. Flora Shao explores these tensions by examining the rediscovery of “folksong” during the May Fourth era, focusing on how it transformed understanding of “dialect” and “dialect literature.” Gina Tam also addresses these tensions by investigating the field of fangyanxue, or dialectology, discussing how it was informed by conflicting perceptions of dialect as an ethnographic representative of both local and Chinese culture, but also a hindrance to national unity. Finally, Janet Chen sails across the strait, considering how residents of Taiwan perceived national language (guoyu) not as national, but foreign, in the early 1950s.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Gina Anne Tam, Stanford University

Individual Presentations

• A Historical Review of the Discourse of fangyan in Twentieth-Century China - Jin Liu, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Rediscovering Folksong and Dialect Literature in Early Twentieth-Century China - Flora Shao, Yale University

• The Meaning of Chinese: Scholars and the State in the History of Modern Chinese Dialect Studies - Gina Anne Tam, Stanford University

• Encounters with the ‘National Language’ from Colony to Nation: Taiwan, 1935-1955 - Janet Chen, Princeton University

Discussant

• Jing Tsu, Yale University