This study investigates to what extent the minority languages of Taiwan have been used through the lens of linguistic landscape. Taiwan is a multilingual country, in which many languages have been used. However,... [ view full abstract ]
This study investigates to what extent the minority languages of Taiwan have been used through the lens of linguistic landscape. Taiwan is a multilingual country, in which many languages have been used. However, after Mandarin has been promoted as the national and official language 50 years ago, the rest of other local languages, including Southern Min, Hakka, aboriginal languages, and newly joined "foreign brides" immigrant languages from Southeast Asia, became de facto minority languages. Due to the awareness of minority language shift in late of 1980, Taiwan began to implement a Mother Tongue Language Policy in 2001 in order to repair Taiwan’s decaying ethnic languages (Chen, 2010). In addition, the Ministry of Educatiom has recently aligned the status of the new immigrant languages from Southeast Asia with other local languages, and will make the languages to be learned in schools in 2018. These policies reflect a fact that the Taiwan’ government has paid attention to the language rights of the minority groups at the policy level. However, what is the visibility of those minority languages in the linguistic landscapes in Taiwan has been ignored in traditional minority language research. As linguistic landscape is an approach to display the ethnolinguistic visibility on public signs, the investigation of it will contribute to our understanding of the extent of the discrepancy between policy and practice, and of relative power and status of the languages in Taiwan. This study attempts to do such a contribution, and guided by the following research questions:
1. What is the visibility of the minority languages on public signs in Taiwan’s Ethnic and immigrant communities?
2. What is the discrepancy between language policy and minority language practices on public signs in those communities?
3. What are the influential factors affecting the visibility of the minority languages on public signs in those communities?
Answers to these questions will be drawn from analyzing the data collected through fieldwork photographing at several typical ethnic and immigrant communities. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are adopted.The results can document the discrepancy between language policy and minority languages practices in linguistic landscapes.
