The potential for Taiwanese and other local languages to persevere into the future depends entirely on the younger generations in Taiwan. Ultimately, they are the ones who will have to decide how important it is to preserve Taiwan’s native languages. Unlike their parents’ and older generations, the Taiwanese youth are disconnected from Taiwan’s oppressive past, and they rely on different elements to create their identity. While the young are extremely open-minded culturally, they are not as driven as the older generations to promote a distinctive Taiwanese identity.
A collective identity for a group of people is often determined based on ethnic, linguistic or national terms. However, there are many other factors that influence the range of who belongs within the context of the identity. One of the most important factors in Taiwan is having common historical roots. Taiwanese all share the same modern history, but there are generational gaps in how the historical events are perceived. These perceptions are based largely on whether or not an individual experienced a historical event first-hand. Those who did, specifically the older generations (40 years of age and older), have much stronger convictions in their desire to promote a Taiwanese identity. The younger generations (people under 40 years of age) grew up under more open conditions, giving them a relaxed attitude towards expressing a Taiwanese culture.
It is this very attitude that is influencing the younger generation’s opinion on promoting the Taiwanese language. While they feel a cultural connection to the language, they seldom feel a necessity to seek to preserve and promulgate its usage. To them, Mandarin is the common language of today, and English is the language that will bring them into a prosperous future. Taiwanese and the other local languages are only important for communicating with the older generations, and the vast majority of youth are not that proficient in these languages. This lack of enthusiasm towards local language usage is the key issue that could lead to their demise.
According to a survey performed by Li-li Huang, James H. Liu and Maanling Chang, which analyzed Taiwanese attitudes towards their identity and historical events, there were pronounced differences when the responses were broken down along generational lines. They suggest that people’s attitude towards their national history directly influences their evaluation of their own identity:
Examination of the correlations for older adults in the general population compared to students revealed that Chinese and Taiwanese identity was less compatible among older adults than among younger adults. This suggests that history is involved in the negative correlation, as older adults would have had more direct experience of the events nominated [by the people surveyed] than younger ones.
Because the younger population of Taiwan did not live through the periods of suppression, they are more open to accepting the Chinese part of their identity. This factor is directly related to language attitudes, since the youth are not only satisfied with being Taiwanese Chinese, but are also satisfied with having a shared national language with the Communist mainland. It is the older generations who have the desire to promote a de-sinicized Taiwanese identity, and with it the local languages and cultures of Taiwan.
The most direct way to evaluate the young people’s attitude towards local languages is to look at their favored language for communication. Without a doubt, the vast majority tends to have a preference for Mandarin, although they do maintain a capacity, in varying degrees, to code-switch to Taiwanese if the need arises. Unfortunately, local language usage among the younger people is very similar to that of second or third generation immigrants. They use the dominant language (here this is Mandarin) in their outside environment and their parents’ mother tongue (Taiwanese or another local languages) when at home. There are some slight variations on this pattern, but as the young start to create their own households and have children, what will the language of their home be? Based on this model, we would assume it would become Mandarin, the language they are most comfortable speaking.
Looking at the Taiwanese youth of today, is there any domain in which they prefer to use a local language as their voice? One of the most obvious places to look would be their own cultural products, such as those in the entertainment industry. The feel of pop music in Taiwan today is very different from that of the late 1980s–early 1990s, which focused more on local languages and singers with a local heritage.15 Today’s pop music is dominated by Mandarin, and a large proportion of the singers are not even Taiwanese; instead, they are overseas Chinese. This change in trend can help us further understand how the youth want to be perceived.
The music industry has a great influence over popular culture, especially that of the younger generations of Taiwanese society (approximately 10–30 years of age). Some of the trends in the music industry are reflective of attitudes in their fans. Today’s pop music is almost exclusively performed in Mandarin, although there is some code-mixing involved, and some singers opt to sing the occasional song in their mother tongue. The mainstream of the music industry works in accord with general attitudes of young Taiwanese. Mandarin is the language of their voice, although there are still some concepts that are better defined using Taiwanese or English, and that is where the code-mixing fits in. English is generally used for the purpose of adding prestige and an element of trendiness to a song, while Taiwanese is used to express an idea that Mandarin is incapable of expressing.
The youth desire a capacity for English to prove they are modern and members of the global society. This desire is strongly rooted in the historical events they have lived through. Throughout most of their lives, Taiwan has lacked a presence on the international stage, and their desire to attain knowledge of English could represent their wish to gain some international recognition. They are no longer concerned with finding a voice for their native cultures, which has been done by the previous generations. The freedom to express themselves in their local languages is taken for granted by the vast majority of young Taiwanese, and they seem disassociated from the element of cultural heritage these languages provide.
However, there are still two sections of the music industry that do utilize local languages, and they are significant factors in helping to increase the prestige associated with local language. These are the rap and underground music industries. Perhaps because Taiwanese is the language most closely tied to the cultural roots of the Taiwanese people, it has become the main voice of the rap industry. Mandarin is unable to provide the gritty, urban slang associated with rap, while Taiwanese fits the bill perfectly. Like Ebonics, the voice of American rap, Taiwanese is currently a purely spoken linguistic form, lacking a standardized written form. It also closely parallels Ebonics in that it is the “lower” language functioning in a system of diglossia (where standard American English is the “higher” form). Although acting as the voice of rap music is fairly limiting in range, this facet of Taiwanese has helped to secure its position and remind the young generations that it is a major piece of their cultural legacy.
The other section of the music industry that relies on local languages for its voice is the underground section. While the mainstream pop industry caters to teenagers relating such culturally “empty” topics as love and relationships, underground music tends to deal with more culturally relevant issues. Underground bands tend to draw on their own experiences to create their song lyrics, and this, in conjunction with the lack of restrictions that dominate the mainstream music industry, allows them to create true cultural reflections of the Taiwanese consciousness. Many underground bands still opt to sing in Mandarin, but in order to express the correct “mood” or “feeling” others choose Taiwanese or one of the other local languages. Code-mixing is also more heavily used, and the language of underground music is more reflective of colloquial speech than that of its mainstream counterpart. Underground and rap music may not have as many followers as mainstream pop music, but in many ways they are more culturally accurate portrayals of the young generation, and they still rely heavily on the local languages of Taiwan.
The last topic relevant to determining the future for local languages is the technical world. Today, all fields and industries are dependent on technical support to function. Without an accurate and feasible inputting system, a language is not going to be usable for communicating data via computers, and I strongly question the ability of such a language to survive into the next century. The younger generations of society have grown up in a world ruled by computers and microchips, where playing video games and surfing the Internet dominates free time. If a language is not capable of having a presence on the Internet or lacks an inputting system, it will be devalued in the eyes of this technically savvy generation.
This is not to say that there are no websites that utilize Taiwanese as their script and voice. To the contrary, there are a growing number of Taiwanese websites, but the crucial question is, what information are they used to convey? Unfortunately, most Taiwanese websites are limited to teaching Taiwanese language or the culture of Taiwan. Relatively few Taiwanese websites hold information that would interest the younger generations, who already lack an interest in studying their native languages and cultures. A further hindrance is that these websites all use different written orthographies, and often visitors to a website must first become oriented to the script before they can discover what information there is to learn. People tend to prefer to explore Internet sites that are not so complicated.
This situation is a vicious cycle that goes back to the Taiwanese national government. If the government would work faster towards standardizing written and spoken Taiwanese, there is a greater chance that people would begin to depend on Taiwanese as a language in more domains. However, because people are still reluctant to use Taiwanese, especially without a standardized form, the government doesn’t realize how dire the situation really is.
The younger generations still acknowledge the cultural value of their local languages, as can be seen by their presence in various art forms, such as music lyrics. In order for them to become an intrinsic part of the daily life of young people, local languages must be given a larger domain of potential uses. It is the responsibility of the generations that currently hold political power to urge the government to work towards incorporating local languages into more functional roles in society. If no one actively seeks to increase the usage of local languages, then they will continue to become more and more marginalized as generations go by.
Abstracted from “The Outlook for the Preservation of Taiwanese Language” Sino-Platonic Papers, 172 (August, 2006) by Deborah Beaser
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http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp172_taiwanese_language.pdf
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