Reviewed by Malcolm Ross, The Australian National University

Jennifer Wei’s slim volume discusses the language choices of politicians in Taiwan in the democratization period of the last two decades and their implications for building and manipulating group identities, examined against the background of language policy since Taiwan became a part of the Japanese empire in 1895. This is a somewhat postmodernist work on the sociology and politics of language, illustrated by analyses of portions of political speeches. It is not a sociolinguistic work and includes no quantitative analysis.

There are six chapters. Ch. 1, ‘To -er is to err: Acts of identity in Chinese’ (1–17), focuses on the social significance of (originally diminutive) -r suffixation in Beijing Mandarin. The author also discusses whether Chinese is one language with dialects or a language family with member languages, pointing out that both answers are laden with ideological meanings.

Ch. 2, ‘Language choice in Mandarin and Tai-yu’ (19–32), discusses the social meanings of language choice and codeswitching in public discourse between the two major forms of Chinese spoken in Taiwan. Tai-yu (‘Taiwanese speech’) is a Southern Min dialect of Chinese spoken natively by perhaps eighty per cent of the population. Its use was generally frowned upon by the Japanese administration (1895–1945) and the autocratic Kuomintang government but has acquired ideological significance since democratization.

Ch. 3, ‘Chen Shui-bian’s language choices’ (33–53), discusses the presidential candidate’s use of Tai-yu as an ideological instrument and marker of Taiwanese identity during the 2001 election campaign, in which he was elected Taiwan’s first non-Kuomintang president. The second half of the chapter is devoted to descriptive analyses of short passages from his speeches.

The fourth chapter, ‘Language choice and politics’ (55–79), is a further examination of candidates’ uses of Mandarin and Tai-yu, in which public language choice reflects whether the candidate stands nearer the China-centred or the Taiwan-centred extreme of the Taiwanese political spectrum. In her analysis of short excerpts from 1995 television debates, W emphasizes that these choices entail a good measure of ambiguity and subtlety.

In Ch. 5, ‘From nationalism to multiculturalism: Making choices in language policy’ (81–101), W deals with more general issues of language policy, both before and since democratization. They centre on the recognition that Taiwan is a multicultural society that includes the Tai-yu-speaking majority, the large Mandarin-speaking minority, a significant Hakka-speaking minority, and a number of indigenous minorities who traditionally spoke Austronesian languages. She touches on legislation regarding indigenous language rights and on bilingual education (i.e. education in Mandarin and another language of Taiwan).

Ch. 6, ‘A hybrid Chinese for the twenty-first century’ (103–20), is explicitly ideological, arguing against the equation of language and nation-state. On the one hand, W presses for continuing Taiwanese multiculturalism; on the other, she expresses a desire for a form of Mandarin that will express a broader Chinese identity rather than an identity linked to a political entity. She recognizes, however, that this will entail a shift in attitudes towards both language and ethnicity for many Taiwanese.

Although this book is written in English, it seems aimed at educated Taiwanese, not at an international audience, not only from the content of the final chapter but from the book’s organization. If it were aimed at the interested outsider, one would expect an introductory survey of Taiwanese history, language use, and language policy. In its absence the general reader is left to cull what background he can from passages scattered through the book.