In Taiwan, Southern Min is the most common vernacular language, compared with Hakka and other native languages, such as Amis and Atayal. Although at present, Mandarin has been made our official language, Southern Min still has a great number of speakers. Because of the change of Taiwan’s socio-political circumstance5, in recent years more and more people speak Southern Min in public domains. Oftentimes people switch between Mandarin and Southern Min in their daily conversations. Concerning the status of these two dialects6 in Taiwan, Mandarin is considered the standard language while Southern Min is the
5. From 1945 to 2000, Taiwan was ruled by the Chinese Nationalists, or Kuomingtang (KMT), for over 50 years, which is a regime from Mainland China. KMT has been promoting Mandarin as the national language of Taiwan. Since 2000, Taiwan’s ruling party is changed to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which is mainly composed of local Taiwanese people. After winning the political power, DPP strongly proposes Taiwan’s localization and advocates the use of Southern Min, the language originally spoken in Taiwan. DPP argues that Taiwan’s primary language is not Mandarin, but Southern Min. Therefore, Southern Min is used by more and more people nowadays.
6. Holmes (1992a) remarks, “In order to define a language, it is important to look to its social and political functions, as well as its linguistic features. So a language can be thought of as a collection of dialects that are usually linguistically similar, used by different social groups who choose to say that they are speakers of one language, which functions to unite and represent them to other groups” (pp.141-142).
Similarly, according to Cipollone, Keiser and Vasishth (1998), “when a group of speakers of a particular language differs noticeably in its speech from another group, we say that they are speaking different dialects…. One criterion used to distinguish dialects from languages is mutual intelligibility. If speakers of one language variety can understand speakers of another language variety and vice versa, we say that these varieties are mutual intelligible…. Your variety of speech and theirs are mutually intelligible but differ systematically, and are therefore dialects of the same language” (p.368).
nonstandard7.
According to Cipollone, Keiser and Vasishth (1998), standard dialect relates to
“overt prestige”, which “defines how people should speak in order to gain status in the wider community.” Yet, nonstandard dialect signifies “covert prestige”, which defines how people should speak in order to be considered a member of some particular communities… In this sense, language becomes a marker of group identification (p.377). Therefore, when people make certain linguistic choices, they are affected by “social identity”. The language they choose to speak depends on how they identify themselves, how they want to be identified and show solidarity with the addressee (Cipollone, Keiser and Vasishth, 1998; Holmes, 1992a).
Holmes (1992a) remarks that vernacular language is considered “the most colloquial variety in a person’s linguistic repertoire. In a multilingual community, this variety will often be a nonstandardized ethnic or tribal language. The vernacular is the variety used for communication in the home and with close friends. It is the language of solidarity between people from the same ethnic group” (p. 80). What’s more, Holmes also points out that vernacular dialects “lack public or overt prestige, though they are generally valued by their users, especially as means of expressing solidarity and affective meaning” (1992a: 146).
In the same way, Hudson (1996) argues that the main reason for people to preserve more than one language is because of the social distinction which people want to be symbolized. For bilingual speakers, their language represents the
7. As Holmes (1992a) suggests, “To avoid the implication that nonstandard languages are somehow deviations from the standard, some sociolinguists use the term vernacular as an
community and their language has social function which can’t be accomplished by other languages.
Holmes (1992a) suggests that women tend to use more of the standard forms than men do. In her point of view, “In every social class men use more vernacular forms than women... When men use a form more often than women, it is usually a vernacular form” (pp.168-170). Accordingly, women use more standard forms when they speak. According to Holmes’ (1992a) explanation, women use more standard forms than men because of the following reasons: (1) they are more status-conscious, (2) their roles are viewed as guardians of society’s values, and (3) they are subordinate. So they choose to speak as carefully and politely as they can. Besides, vernacular forms convey the meaning of masculinity. Thus, different genders prefer different forms of language.
Gumpers (1982) remarks that code switching is frequently found in informal speech; however, the present study has found that the speakers in TV talk shows switch from Mandarin to Southern Min repeatedly. Table 4.16 presents the average characters of Southern Min use of each male and female speaker. It shows that men speak more Southern Min than women do. In the total data, a man’s average use of Southern Min is 70.8 characters whereas a woman’s average is just 6.9. In other words, men speak approximately 10 times more Southern Min than women.
If Southern Min use is compared in soft or socio-political talk shows, men speak more Southern Min than women do in both types of programs. As Table 4.16 shows, in soft talk shows, a man on the average speaks 11 times more Southern Min than a woman (11:1). Similarly, in socio-political talk shows, on the average a man speaks 5.8 times of Southern Min more than a woman. On the average a man speaks 130.6
Table 4.16 The overall and average characters switching to Southern Min (overall characters/ average characters)
Male speaker (N=28) Female speaker (N=29) Program type overall
characters
average characters
overall characters
average characters Soft talk shows
(14 males; 21 females) 154 11 22 1
Socio-political talk shows
(14 males; 8 females) 1828 130.6 179 22.4
Overall 1982 70.8 201 6.9
Nevertheless, Southern Min is unequally distributed in male and female speech in the present study. Table 4.17 shows the distribution of total characters of Southern Min in male and female speech.
Table 4.17 The distribution of Southern Min use between male and female speakers (total characters)
Male speaker (N=28)
Female speaker (N=29) Program type and topic
total characters of Southern Min
Program 1 soft talk show (health) 9 0
Program 2 soft talk show (career) 0 16
Program 3 soft talk show (expense) 0 0
Program 4 soft talk show (horoscope) 16 0
Program 5 soft talk show (horoscope) 85 0
Program 6 soft talk show (education) 44 6
Subtotal 154 22
Program 7 socio-political talk show (politics) 20 36 Program 8 socio-political talk show (politics) 164 75 Program 9 socio-political talk show (politics) 1472 65 Program 10 socio-political talk show (politics) 34 0 Program 11 socio-political talk show (social issues) 115 0 Program 12 socio-political talk show (politics) 23 3
Subtotal 1828 179
Total 1982 201
What’s more, the frequency of Southern Min use of males and females is also unequally distributed in the programs. In half of all the programs (TV Programs 1, 3, 4, 5, 10 and 11), no women produce any Southern Min, as shown in Table 4.17. By contrast, also as Table 4.17 presents, males do not produce any Southern Min only in
the 12 programs, the amount of Southern Min used by males even exceeds 100 characters. These three programs are programs about socio-political and social issues. Additionally, a male speaker in TV Program 9 keeps speaking Southern Min in all his turns without switching back to Mandarin because of his ethnic identity and political stance. This male speaker is a member of Democratic Progressive Party, which strongly proposes Taiwan’s localization and advocates the use of Southern Min.
Moreover, he works as National Policy Consultant and he speaks Southern Min to display his political stance and ethnic identity. Therefore, this program has a large amount of Southern Min use.
The unequal distribution of Southern Min is also obvious between political talk shows and soft talk shows. Compared with socio-political talk shows, very little Southern Min is spoken by males and females in soft talk shows. On the average, each male speaks 11.9 times more Southern Min in socio-political talk shows than in soft ones (130.6:11). Similarly, each female also speaks much more Southern Min in socio-political talk show. On the average, a female speaks 22.4 characters of Southern Min in socio-political talk shows whereas just one character in soft ones.
Please see Table 4.16.
As mentioned above, in the present study males use much more Southern Min than females do. As previous studies suggest, males use more vernacular language while females use more standard dialect. In addition, the degree of using Southern Min depends on the speaker’s ethnic identity and political stance. Social and political factors can strongly influence the attitudes to language. If the speakers belong to DPP (Democratic Progressive Party), they tend to speak Southern Min in the TV programs to exhibit their ethnic and political identity. Just as Holmes (1992a)
Besides, men and women speak Southern Min also in a different way. In the data of the present study, men use more code-switching but women use more code-mixing8. By Bokamba’s definition (1989), code-switching is intersentential and code-mixing is intrasentential. That means, in the present study men tend to continue speaking Southern Min for several sentences in a turn, but women only speak several characters within a sentence. Some male speakers in TV Program 9 (兩代電力公司 liang dai dian li gong si ‘Two-generation power company’) even keep speaking Southern Min for a whole turn when they switch to Southern Min, but none of the female speakers do so. Women usually only speak several vernacular words or may stop in a few sentences. The following are two examples of Southern Min use:
(14) TV Program 12, Male speaker 28:
你 去 看 三 場, 他們 都 贏 三 場, ni qu kan san chang tamen do ying san chang you go watch three period they all win three period 贏 兩 場 就 說, 哎 喲,
ying liang chang jiu shuo aiyou win two period say ouch
<台 @ 阿扁 阿 真 正 很 厲害 喔, 不是 帶賽 喔 @台>.
abin a jinjian jin lihai o msi daisai o PN PR really very great not unlucky PR
8. Bokamba (1989) defined code-switch as the mixing of words, phrases and sentences, from two distinct grammatical (sub)systems across sentence boundaries within the same speech event.
He defines code-mixing as the embedding of various linguistic units such as affixes, words, phrases and clauses from two distinct grammatical (sub)systems within the same sentences and speech event. In other words, code-switch is intersentential and code-mixing is intrasentential
但是, 但是 你 明明 就是…
danshi, danshi ni mingming jiushi…
but but you obvious are
‘You go to watch 3 periods and they win 3 periods, if they win 2 periods and say, ouch, A-Ban is really mighty, not out of luck but, but you obviously are... ’
(15) TV Program 12, Female speaker 29:
他 比較 講說, <台 這 邊 選- 台>, 這 邊 要 加強, ta bijiao jiangshuo ji bing xuan zhe bian yao jiaqiang
he comparatively say this side elect this side need strengthen
這 邊 要 加強, 都 是 選票 的 考量…
zhe bian yao jiaqiang dou shi xuanpiao de kaoliang this side need strengthen all are ballot consideration
‘He tends to say, this side elect-, this side should be reinforced, and this side should be reinforced, which are all the consideration of ballots.’
Example (1) is a type of code-switching whereas example (2) is of code-mixing type. Example (1) is the pattern that most male speakers in the present study use when they are speaking Southern Min, which contains more than one Southern Min sentence. By contrast, example (2) is the pattern that more female speakers are apt to use, which includes just several Southern Min characters.
In brief, as previous studies (Holmes, 1992a; Hudson, 1996) have suggested, the present study observes that males prefer vernacular language while females tend to use standard forms. The males speak a greater amount of Southern Min than females do though Southern Min is considered a nonstandard form in the public domain, (for example, TV programs). As a whole, males still use more Southern Min than females to show their political stance and represent their political and social