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1.7 Motivation and Scope of the thesis
This thesis will argue that language ideology, as defined by Spolsky and Woolard and Schieffelin influenced language policy in Taiwan especially during the Japanese and Kuomintang periods which are two main historical periods that this thesis will focus on. Under the Japanese, it was their assimilation polices that influenced language policy in Taiwan during 1895 to 1945. When the Kuomintang arrived in 1945, they too brought with them their own language policy, and in the case of the Nationalist government Kuomintang they introduced Mandarin as a national language policy in Taiwan. Both the Japanese Colonial Government and the Kuomintang influenced language use in Taiwan by their invention, planning, and management of language in Taiwan.
1.8 Language ideology
Woolard and Schieffelin, (Woolard and Schieffelin: 1994:55-56) argue that ideologies of language are significant for social, as well as linguistic analysis because they are not only about language.
They go onto say that such ideologies envision and enact links of language to groups and personal identity, to aesthetics, to morality. Through such linkages they often underpin fundamental social institutions. They define language (Woolard and Schieffelin: 1994:55) ideology as a set of beliefs about language articulated by users as rationalization, or justification of perceived language structure and use; with a greater social emphasis as self-evident ideas, and objectives a group holds concerning the roles of language in social experiences as members as they contribute to the expressions of the group, and the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships together with their loading of moral and political interests, and most broadly as shared bodies of commonsense notions about the nature of language in the world.
Ann Heylen argues, (Heylen: 2002) that anthropologists and historians are now beginning to pay
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more attention to the role of colonial missionaries in the formation and partition of ethnic and national entities. The Taiwanese people have for some time now been struggling with their sense of nationality and identity, and Heylen’s article places that struggle in perspective quite well. The main argument in her paper is the role of missionaries in the development of writing, and eventually national identity here in Taiwan. After a careful reading of the article how Taiwan’s developed a sense of nationality and identity and its historical perspective now come closer into focus.
In his book, Imagined Communities Anderson (Anderson: 1983:7) defines nation as “an imagined political community-and imagined as both inherently limited, and sovereign.” It is imagined because most of its members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communication. “The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. Finally, it is imagined as a community, because regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. How does the imagined community affect the current situation in Taiwan?
The early Dutch missionaries established both medical and educational systems here in Taiwan.
As well, politically they formed part of the foreign colonial establishment. Linguistically, they wrote grammars, complied dictionaries and translated Christian doctrine into indigenous languages. The early missionaries introduced a western European phonetic alphabet system, and helped spread vernacular education, and engaged in programs of linguistic standardization. Heylen describes all these activities as “missionary linguistics”. Literacy according to Heylen can help in
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the formation of a people’s national identity. Heylen’s focus is that of the early missionary activity and influence in Taiwan from 1624 to 1662.
Judith Irvine writes in, When talk isn’t cheap: language and political economy (Irvine: 1989) that until recently at least, language remained firmly locked in the world of ideas. Signs, she argues stand for aspects of the marketplace they influence but are not part of it. Irvine argues that language has more roles to play in a political economy than it has traditionally held. Political economy, and its often-problematic definition may indeed offer some clues to the new role that language can play. Irvine’s focus lies in the conception of language. Irvine argues that language, and speech can play a role in the political economy, and that these roles are not mutually exclusive. Some of Irvine’s main arguments are does linguistic diversity impede social cooperation? In addition, does the variety of verbal behavior merely index social groups, divisions, or roles formed on mainly non-verbal performance, or are the variety of verbal performance a pre-condition for the social division of labor itself- or as the practice of constituting a social role, or as the object of economic activity?
Friedman (1994) writes that for half a century from the 1930s to the 1980s starting first with the Japanese and then the Kuomintang waged aggressive campaigns promoting the use of a national language policy. The Japanese, he writes thought that the Taiwanese should be assimilated into the newly forming Japanese society. This policy was in effect until the 1930s when the war in the Pacific needed loyal citizens of the empire who could speak Japanese. After the war ended, and the Kuomintang came to Taiwan they believed they were the true and only government of China, and that Taiwan was merely a province of China. They dreamed of returning to the mainland to govern. The KMT held onto to this belief until 1978 when the United States formally recognized
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the government in Beijing and the PRC government. The official language of the Republic of China is Mandarin and the KMT government promoted its use especially after the 1950s in Taiwan.
Other languages were not permitted especially in schools and the uses of other forms of communication languages other than Mandarin were severely restricted especially in the broadcast media. The younger generation of Taiwanese may understand Hoklo (or sometimes referred to as Taiwanese or Southern Min) but do not speak it.
1.9 Outline of the thesis
In Chapter Two this thesis will discuss Japanese language policy. Following Spolsky, Woolard and Schieffelin this chapter will argue that the new Japanese colonial government influenced language policy in Taiwan by introducing Japanese as the language of instruction in schools and in the media. The Japanese were eager to set up a model colony in Taiwan, this was their first overseas colony and wanted to be seen like there European predecessors as a colonial power. This chapter will include the Korean Colonial experience for comparison purposes, the Korean experience was completely different from the Taiwanese colonial period and many see this experience in a very different light, the Korean colonial experience was not as successful as the Taiwanese one. The measures taken in Korea were far more severe than those of the Taiwanese colonial experience and will be developed further in that chapter. The Japanese implemented several educational changes in Taiwan, the first being the establishment of common schools on the island. The use of Japanese was to become the language of instruction in Taiwan during the latter Japanese colonial period. The Japanese not only colonized Taiwan but they e Japanese also colonized other areas in South East Asia during this same period. They Japanese wanted to be an imperial and great power like many of the European nations before them and saw the acquisition of Taiwan as an opportunity to expand their territory and become one of the great colonial nations
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like England, France and Germany. The Japanese had travelled to Europe, and to America, and saw that education was to be an important element in the countries modernization process and wanted to implement educational changes in Taiwan as well.
The focus of this and all the other chapters is the language policy of Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period and the Kuomintang regimes. Once again, language ideology will be used to explain the shift in language policy that was introduced into Taiwan after the Japanese colonial period. The Kuomintang influenced language policy by their introduction of Mandarin as a national language in Taiwan, to the exclusion of Japanese, and other languages that were present on the island before the new government Japanese arrived in 1895. After 1945, Taiwan once again came under the political control of the Republic of China, and the Kuomintang and set up a military style government on the island with the hope of returning to the mainland and taking back their rightful place as the government of China. The Kuomintang government thought that the Taiwanese had taken on too many Japanese traits, including language, culture and religion, become too Japanized and needed to be reeducated after over 50 years of Japanese rule on the island. With that in mind, Mandarin became the official language on the island. Mandarin became the one and only language that was to be used in education, and in government and became the official or national language of Taiwan.
In the final chapter, this thesis will offer some conclusions about language planning and policy as found in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period and the Kuomintang rule here in Taiwan.
Shortcomings and ideas for further research will be discussed. I hope to pursue the idea of language in further studies and look at the situation of language preservation here in Taiwan, and more
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specifically look at Southern Min as a language group and look at some of the current research into that language, and how it might be preserved. Southern Min is an important language group in Taiwan, and in my further research; I hope to add to the discussion of its preservation as a language group.
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CHAPTER II
THE BEGINNING OF JAPANESE COLONIALISM AND JAPANESE LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION IN TAIWAN 1895
TO 1945
Introduction
As outlined previously in the last chapter this one in the last chapter, this one will argue will argue that language ideology and belief as set out by Spolsky, Woolard and Schieffelin’s theory of ideology, and a speech community that any specific effort to modify or influence language policy by any kind of language intervention, planning or management is a form of language ideology.
The Korean colonial experience will be included in this chapter for comparison purposes; the two experiences could not have been different and, and this concept will be developed further later in the chapter, the two colonial experiences though similar had completely different outcomes.