A critical discourse study of Indigenous language revitalisation policy in Taiwan

Currently, Taiwan has 16 officially recognised Indigenous 'nationalities', and each has its unique language. However, even with a great deal of legislation currently aimed at revitalising these languages, Taiwan is struggling... [ view full abstract ]

Currently, Taiwan has 16 officially recognised Indigenous 'nationalities', and each has its unique language. However, even with a great deal of legislation currently aimed at revitalising these languages, Taiwan is struggling to keep these languages alive.  The central focus of this study is a qualitative investigation, using critical discourse studies (CDS), of how ideology and societal power imbalances are related to Indigenous language revitalisation policies in Taiwan.  Unlike conventional research in Taiwan that looks at resources for language revitalisation, I investigate the impact of dominant ideologies on language revitalisation. This paper follows Fairclough’s (1989, 2003, 2010) dialectical-relational approach to CDS and explores the linguistic features such as choice of terms for groups as well as discourse strategies such as presupposition in the legislation. This paper views these features and strategies in terms of their contextual functions, thus clarifying the influence of the dominant ideology.  In addition to the textual data, interviews with members of the Indigenous communities investigate the dominant versus dominated ideologies.  This study seeks to uncover how ideology emerges from discourse such as Taiwan’s Indigenous language policy and the potential conflict between Indigenous ideology and government ideology.  This study also demonstrates how CDS can be a useful tool to investigate language policy and its impact on Indigenous language revitalisation.