Abstract:
Since the 1978 policy of Reform and Opening-up, China has undergone dramatic economic development and population flows both externally and internally. Within China, hundreds of millions have been on the move, generally migrating to or within highly developed Eastern coastal areas. This paper explores the family language policies (hereafter, FLP) of internal migrants who move as ‘talent’ to Guangdong.
‘FLP’ refers to a family’s thinking and decisions about the languages their children learn and how they implement and manage those beliefs in practice. FLP is a consideration for the middle classes of China, including government officials and intellectuals, owners of private enterprises, and employees of high-income enterprises and Sino-foreign joint ventures. These groups consist primarily of university graduates with high status and well-remunerated careers. As internal migrants, they work with a particular reasoning and justification when bringing up their children. Moreover, they enjoy more ability than others to take their children with them or to give birth in their cities of settlement. While facing the dilemma of balancing multiple languages and dialects, these families have considerable power to choose how to plan for their children’s learning and life chances.
Guangdong is an especially interesting site of FLP. Other than the languages of ethnic minorities, the language ecology of China includes Chinese, which is categorised into its standard variety, Putonghuà (??? or Mandarin) and 10 major dialects and numerous subdialects. Southern Chinese dialects vary substantially in phonetics, vocabulary, even grammar, from Putonghuà. The Yuè Dialect or Cantonese (???) is the most widely known and influential variety of Chinese other than Putonghuà, and has garnered prestige from the remarkable economic development of Guangdong Province. The concentration of international and export-oriented businesses in the East has further complicated the language ecology. Given the global utility of English, that language, then, is an object of FLP in China, alongside Chinese in all its dialectical complexity, and the languages of minorities.
The current study presents a conceptualisation of the family as a field. It looks at struggles over language and identity within that field, and relations with agencies within the field of institutionalised education. This Bourdieusian lens enables a sociological framing of power dynamics identified by the sociolinguistic theorisations established in FLP studies.
‘FLP’ refers to a family’s thinking and decisions about the languages their children learn and how they implement and manage those beliefs in practice. FLP is a consideration for the middle classes of China, including government officials and intellectuals, owners of private enterprises, and employees of high-income enterprises and Sino-foreign joint ventures. These groups consist primarily of university graduates with high status and well-remunerated careers. As internal migrants, they work with a particular reasoning and justification when bringing up their children. Moreover, they enjoy more ability than others to take their children with them or to give birth in their cities of settlement. While facing the dilemma of balancing multiple languages and dialects, these families have considerable power to choose how to plan for their children’s learning and life chances.
Guangdong is an especially interesting site of FLP. Other than the languages of ethnic minorities, the language ecology of China includes Chinese, which is categorised into its standard variety, Putonghuà (??? or Mandarin) and 10 major dialects and numerous subdialects. Southern Chinese dialects vary substantially in phonetics, vocabulary, even grammar, from Putonghuà. The Yuè Dialect or Cantonese (???) is the most widely known and influential variety of Chinese other than Putonghuà, and has garnered prestige from the remarkable economic development of Guangdong Province. The concentration of international and export-oriented businesses in the East has further complicated the language ecology. Given the global utility of English, that language, then, is an object of FLP in China, alongside Chinese in all its dialectical complexity, and the languages of minorities.
The current study presents a conceptualisation of the family as a field. It looks at struggles over language and identity within that field, and relations with agencies within the field of institutionalised education. This Bourdieusian lens enables a sociological framing of power dynamics identified by the sociolinguistic theorisations established in FLP studies.