This study hypothesises that dubbing performance in Taiwan is greatly different from daily speech. The situation that caused the discrepancy actually resulted from a string of language contacts and shifts that happened in Taiwanese history. A brief review of relevant studies will help describe the academ background needed for this study.
Ascoli (1882) first developed the notion of stratto, which means layer, to refer to a language that either influences or gets influenced by another in language contact.
Ascoli believes the Romance languages originated from the contact between Latin (spoken by the Roman settlers) and Etruscan or Celtic languages (spoken by the local people). Each of these languages interacts in the contact as either superstratum or substratum, which means respectively the more advantageous and the weaker layer
in the contact. Specifically, when there is a language that can be obviously defined as intrusive, Fishman (1985) in their study on language maintenance concludes 3 different possible resolutions arising from the intrusion of a foreign language. The first outcome is the loss of intrusive language, due to legal requirements of the native language, prohibitions of the intrusive language, fostering of social dependency on the native language, cooperation between the two groups, or, in the most doable case, revival of the native language. Fishman believes however that this resolution is not a moral imperative. The second possible resolution is the loss of native language.
It is the case with most indigenous people in North America, Australia and New Zealand after the arrival of Anglo-Franco-Hispanic settlers. A third possible resolution is the coexistence of the intrusive and the native languages, which are used in combination in different further patterns depending on the societal and political circumstance.
As discussed in the previous chapter, Taiwan has undergone several introductions of foreign languages as well. With the background provided, it is possible to conclude several language shifts that occurred in Taiwan. The first one was the shift from native Austronesian languages towards the Sinitic languages of the settlers. In late 19th century, only less than 6% of Taiwan’s population was Austronesian (Chiung, 2004). As a result, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan became Holo, a Sinitic dialect spoken in Fujian province, where most settlers came from (Scott, 2007). The position and diversity of Austronesian has since then been hugely compromised. A considerable proportion of the plains aborigine language even went extinct due to commonly practiced marriage with the settlers (Pan, 1996).
Following the settlement was the Japanese colonisation which started in 1895.
The attempt was made to promote Japanese as the national language. Although a
complete language shift did not happen, Japanese did become the language of the educated people in written and formal contexts (Chen, 2001). Overall, Huang (1995) points out that by the end of colonisaiton, as much as 71% of the population was able to understand the language.
The third language shift happened since the arrival of KMT regime. With a political agenda of controlling the majority of the population (Cheng, 1990), the authority practically banned other local languages in social and pedagogical contexts (Huang, 1995). The notorious school regulation that penalises a local language-speaking student by hanging a signboard from their collar saying “I spoke dialect” was made in this period. Indeed, as Gold (1986) points out, the language policy in this period was rather discriminative against the local people. The strict policy resulted in the shift of official language to a version of Mandarin called Guoyu (‘National Language’) as exalted by the regime, and also had other consequences
Other several shifts in a more minor scale have been occurring as well. Contacts between languages that both belong to a relative substratum also result in considerable consequences in the overall language ecology. For an example, Liu (2015) surveyed how the Kanakanavu and Saaroa underwent an in-immigration of Bunun people, another Austronesian group. Equally in substratum facing Mandarin, Bunun language supersedes Kanakanavu and Saaroa as a language with higher prestige and takes up most of the remaining petty space for an Austronesian
language to survive in an environment that can be roughly defined as diglossic but actually consists of much more elements. Indeed, there have always been minor shifts of not only language but also identity in the society, which, viewed as consisting of small units of community of practice, actually has great potentials for language communities to form (Eclert, 1992; Bucholtz, 1999)
Back to a scale of national language policy and ecology, currently the third interaction of various forces discussed above, along with variation in individual spoken language (as in Taiwanese being of more and more interest to even non-native speakers), results in a situation that can no longer be defined as diglossia but closer to what Fishman (1967) describes as diglossia with bilingualism, and the distinction between high language and low language also begins to dissolve.
Also, as Wu (2011) points out, there are three new emerging factors that will continue to affect the language ecology and relevant policy in Taiwan: Southeast Asian immigrants, English education and future political wrestling of parties running for presidency. Firstly, the population of Southeast Asia immigrants has been increasing since late 20th century. Many of the immigrants arrived through marriage and it will eventually require new policies to accommodate these multicultural children in school. Also, there has been an increasing emphasis on English education.
Certain local institutes have been attempting to build English-only environment modelled after Korean precedents of education institutes that embrace immersion
language learning. Able parents have been sending their children to schools opened for foreign residents only, sometimes having to obtain non-Taiwanese citizenship in advance, to enjoy the benefits of education conducted in English. Finally, different two major Parties, namely KMT and DPP (Democratic Progressive Party), have rather different political inclination. KMT tends to exhibit more pro-Mainland China attitude and still acts within 92 consensus, the agreement reached in a meeting held in 1992, between Mainland China and Taiwan’s official institute that are in charge of affairs related to each other. The agreement contains a political ideology promoting “one China with different interpretations”. DPP, on the contrary, does not recognise the consensus and tends to be more vocal about Taiwanese sovereignty. The difference will definitely be reflected in their language policy, in that DPP can be expected to be more supportive of the implementation of the revival of local languages other than Guoyu.