The spread of Putonghua and language attitude changes in Shanghai and Guangzhou, China

Abstract

This study measures languages attitudes of 82 college students in Shanghai and Guangzhou, where language planning has promoted Putonghua (PTH) over local varieties since 1956. Since the 1980s, industrialization, commercialization, and greater demographic mobility have changed what used to be homogeneous local variety speech communities, resulting in greater demand for PTH in cross-variety communication. Do language attitudes change with greater demand for PTH? A direct measurement shows that the Shanghainese and Cantonese are largely similar in language use but differ in language attitudes: instrumental motivation and impressions of stereotyped PTH speakers correlate differently with language use for these groups. An indirect measurement indicates that, because of low social distance, the Shanghainese and Cantonese as whole groups preferred neither PTH nor their respective local varieties, though the Shanghainese females significantly upgraded PTH on both social status and group solidarity, while the Shanghainese males upgraded Shanghainese. These findings do not conform well to the textbook-case dichotomy found in early studies between high and low varieties on the dimensions of social status and solidarity. The nonconforming language attitudes may represent attitude changes amid emerging patterns of language use in these two Pacific cities.

Cultural diversity in China: Dialect, job embeddedness, and turnover

“…When an employee speaks the dialect widely used at work place, they may receive more favorable evaluation from others than those who speak Mandarin only, making the employees easier to establish links. It was observed in several studies that speakers of Cantonese and certain other dialects (e.g., Shanghainese) held a less favorable attitude toward Mandarin than speakers of other dialects (Bai, 1994;Kalmar, Zhong, & Xiao, 1987;Tong et al, 1999;Zhou, 2001). Bai (1994) noted that it was because dialects were regarded as an important symbol of local loyalty.…”

Investigating Cantonese speakers' language attitudes in Mainland China

“…During this time, China had already established Putonghua as its official language. In a more recent study, respondents from Shanghai and Guangzhou ranked their languages as the same or lower than Putonghua (Zhou 2001). In places such as Shanghai and Guangzhou, language use and attitudes may be shifting more noticeably as there is an increasing willingness to speak Putonghua rather than the local language (Zhou 2001).…”

Lingua Francas as Language Ideologies

“…Within these large-scale varieties, however, there are also some two thousand "distinct dialects and subdialects" spoken across different parts of China (Li 2006 , p. 150). If we take a province such as Hunan, for example, which alongside various minority languages is also where the Xiang variety of Chinese is spoken, there are also many mutually incomprehensible varieties of Xiangyu (Hunanese) such that speakers from one area of the province may have great dif fi culty in understanding speakers from another region (Zhou 2001 ) .…”