This paper attempts to present a comprehensive review about various aspects of an important concept in language policy studies, language loyalty. Having been treated as a composition of language attitudes, it plays a vital role in language identity for a multilingual in a multilingual society. Language loyalty as a phenomenon is typically seen in immigration community and to some extents manifested in all three levels of supranational, national and semi-national establishments. Language loyalty also works in different registers and functional domains. There are a number of factors that can have an impact on language loyalty and it has a complex embodiment in the three dimensions of nationality, culture and state. When it comes to categorization, language loyalty forms a loyalty continuum that consists of a number of types. ‘Language Loyalty’ should be seen as a neutral concept that should not be oversimplified as good or bad. Its positive or negative role should be analyzed with relative views against the interest of a specific party and evaluated at different levels and from different perspectives in a specific context.
Based on a survey of almost 300 respondents in Guangzhou with follow-up interviews, the study fi nds that Cantonese is no longer the primary language of the people in Guangzhou, manifesting language shift across generations. Over ninety percent of the people in Guangzhou are bilinguals (or multilinguals). Their positive evaluation towards Cantonese is much higher than Putonghua or English, indicating strong affective and integrated orientation towards this regional language. Nonetheless, more than half of the respondents are pessimistic about the future of Cantonese. It is also found that the attitude towards English is higher than Putonghua and English language education is showing a younger-age tenden cy. Cantonese main tenance is being challenged in certain communities such as those among females, with higher education and immigrants. With reference to the evaluation criteria of ethnolinguistic vitality, Cantonese can be taken as “a strong language under threat and showing some signs of declining vitality”. The paper concludes that Cantonese maintenance relies on the synergy of various aspects of the society. Dialect is a key component of the cultural identity and the values of Cantonese maintenance should be better and fully understood.
Chinese Malaysians have thrived to maintain their language and culture through Chinese schools including both Independent Chinese Secondary Schools and National-type Chinese Secondary Schools, which is an indication of strong Chinese identity. This paper adopts the models of identity management and language management to discuss the relationship between Chinese identity, the management of Mandarin, and Chinese education, taking four Chinese schools in Penang as examples. The main purpose is to analyze how these Chinese schools strengthen students’ Chinese identity through language management (mainly Mandarin). The results of interviews administered among school authorities, teachers and students show that the Chinese identity in both types of schools is closely associated with language planning towards Mandarin. Moreover, teachers and students hold similar views towards the importance of Mandarin and its significance to Chinese identity. Besides, the management of Chinese identity through Mandarin by Chinese schools complies with the norm of identity in Malaysian Chinese community.
This study attempts to examine the differences of the language policy formulation and implementation during the two significant early periods of Ming dynasty (1368-1644). It uses a historical comparative perspective to understand the processes involved in language change. In order to deal with the relationship between Mongolian and Chinese and to develop a system to regulate language use for Chinese, the early Ming government enacted a series of language policies. There were both similarities as well as differences in the policies made by Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di, the two paramount rulers of the Ming dynasty. Whereas the policies during Zhu Yuanzhang time manifested in repression of Mongolian through implementing acculturation measures such as intermarriage between Mongol and Chinese, Zhu Di paid more attention to language harmony characteristic of liberalism toward Mongolian language. Zhu Yuanzhang standardized written language based on then authoritative Nanjing speech. He set up an education system to propagate both a national lingua franca and a vernacular with latter playing important role in promoting the technological advancement. Zhu Di’s regime was also remembered for its efforts in promulgating foreign language education policies, thus on the one hand to establish a rapport with neighboring countries in East Asia,Southeast Asia and the inner Western Asia, and on the other hand, to promote the international spread of Chinese language in these regions.
The book under review systematically examines the role of transnational factors in Estonian language policy implementation. These factors include institutions and individuals such as transnational corporations, multilingual migrants and families, speech communities, scholars, teachers, and employees. The papers included in the book cover topics of national security, multilingualism, transcultural institutional languages, family language planning and policy, reginal language varieties and so on. By adopting multiple research methods, including corpus analysis, case study and ethnography, this book unveils the changing framework of time and space in a global and transnational era, which in turn underpins the languages' political and emotional features and the implicit dimensions of language planning.