Promoting regional Chinese variety as a lever of (dis)citizenship in kindergartens? A poststructural policy analysis of the Shanghainese Heritage Project

Recent language policy studies have adopted an integrated approach to the exploration of language use, educational practice, (dis)citizenship, global mobility and so forth. While they enhanced interdisciplinary understanding... [ view full abstract ]

Recent language policy studies have adopted an integrated approach to the exploration of language use, educational practice, (dis)citizenship, global mobility and so forth. While they enhanced interdisciplinary understanding of language policy, the conventional view of policies that address problems has not been explicitly challenged, especially in China. In our study, we adopt Bacchi and Goodwin’s WPR approach to examine problem representations in public debates over the Shanghainese Heritage Project (SHP), which promotes the use of Shanghainese, the local Chinese variety, in kindergartens. Our dataset consists of 279 news articles, 98 online forum threads and 800 social media postings covering a period from January 2013 to June 2017. The findings suggest that the problem for SHP was officially represented as the declining vitality of Shanghainese, while unofficial online discourses constructed the problem as the conflicts between “locals” and “non-locals.” As a result, children from migrant families may risk being discitizened. It is important for language policymakers and educators to be aware of the limitations associated with SHP so that both Shanghainese and other regional Chinese varieties can be maintained in schools.