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Language Or Dialect—Or Topolect? a Comparison of the Attitudes of Hong Kongers and Mainland Chinese Towards the Status of Cantonese

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Language Or Dialect—Or Topolect? a Comparison of the Attitudes of Hong Kongers and Mainland Chinese Towards the Status of Cantonese SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS Number 179 February, 2008 Language or Dialect—or Topolect? A Comparison of the Attitudes of Hong Kongers and Mainland Chinese towards the Status of Cantonese by Julie M. Groves Hong Kong Baptist University Victor H. Mair, Editor Sino-Platonic Papers Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305 USA [email protected] SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS is an occasional series edited by Victor H. Mair. The purpose of the series is to make available to specialists and the interested public the results of research that, because of its unconventional or controversial nature, might otherwise go unpublished. The editor actively encourages younger, not yet well established, scholars and independent authors to submit manuscripts for consideration. Contributions in any of the major scholarly languages of the world, including Romanized Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM) and Japanese, are acceptable. In special circumstances, papers written in one of the Sinitic topolects (fangyan) may be considered for publication. Although the chief focus of Sino-Platonic Papers is on the intercultural relations of China with other peoples, challenging and creative studies on a wide variety of philological subjects will be entertained. This series is not the place for safe, sober, and stodgy presentations. Sino-Platonic Papers prefers lively work that, while taking reasonable risks to advance the field, capitalizes on brilliant new insights into the development of civilization. The only style-sheet we honor is that of consistency. Where possible, we prefer the usages of the Journal of Asian Studies. Sinographs (hanzi, also called tetragraphs [fangkuaizi]) and other unusual symbols should be kept to an absolute minimum. Sino-Platonic Papers emphasizes substance over form. Submissions are regularly sent out to be refereed and extensive editorial suggestions for revision may be offered. Manuscripts should be double-spaced with wide margins and submitted in duplicate. A set of "Instructions for Authors" may be obtained by contacting the editor. Ideally, the final draft should be a neat, clear camera-ready copy with high black- and-white contrast. Contributors who prepare acceptable camera-ready copy will be provided with 25 free copies of the printed work. All others will receive 5 copies. Sino-Platonic Papers is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. Please note: When the editor goes on an expedition or research trip, all operations (including filling orders) may temporarily cease for up to two or three months at a time. In such circumstances, those who wish to purchase various issues of SPP are requested to wait patiently until he returns. If issues are urgently needed while the editor is away, they may be requested through Interlibrary Loan. N.B.: Beginning with issue no. 171, Sino-Platonic Papers will be published electronically on the Web. Issues from no. 1 to no. 170, however, will continue to be sold as paper copies until our stock runs out, after which they too will be made available on the Web. _______________________________________________ Language or Dialect—or Topolect? A Comparison of the Attitudes of Hong Kongers and Mainland Chinese towards the Status of Cantonese Julie M. Groves 1 Hong Kong Baptist University ABSTRACT Is Cantonese a language or a dialect? If linguistic factors were the sole criterion, it would most likely be thought a language, while political and cultural considerations would determine it to be a dialect, and Bell’s (1976) sociolinguistic typology would place it somewhere in between. The attitude of the speakers themselves is usually said to be the deciding factor, but no direct surveys of Cantonese speakers have ever been undertaken. This study reports on a comparative survey of three groups of Chinese: 53 Hong Kong Cantonese speakers, 18 Mainland Chinese Cantonese speakers, and 72 Mainland Chinese Putonghua speakers. It was found that the Putonghua speakers held more ‘classic’ views, the majority seeing Cantonese as a dialect. In contrast, only just over half the Hong Kongers and two-fifths the Mainland Cantonese speakers considered it clearly a dialect, while one-third of all respondents favoured a mid-point classification. The differing perspectives held by the groups can be traced to their different political and linguistic situations, which touch issues of identity. The uncertainties in classification also reflect a problem with terminology. The Chinese word usually translated dialect, fangyan (方言), does not accurately match the English word dialect. Victor Mair (1991) has proposed adoption of the more neutral, mid-point term topolect as a literal English translation of the word fangyan. This study recommends adoption of topolect to classify both the major groupings and the representative varieties of each of the major groupings of the Chinese dialects. 1 This paper is based on a thesis completed as part of the requirements for the MA in Linguistics degree at Chinese University of Hong Kong, and published in Sino-Platonic Papers by permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to my supervisor, Dr Fu Baoning, for his friendly and professional guidance and advice; Mari Uni for her timely and cheerful office help; and my parents Bob and Val Groves for their unfailing behind-the-scenes support. ‘A language is not simply a tool of communication or national unification; it is also a very powerful symbol of the cultural and social identity of the man or woman who speaks it.’ (Bauer 2000:55) ‘Language-making involves much more than merely the construction of systems of signs. It is also the essential process by which men construct a cultural identity for themselves, and for the communities to which they see themselves as belonging.’ (Harris 1980:Preface) TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................................................i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................................................... ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................................ iii 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 THE ‘DIALECT MYTH’ ................................................................................................................. 1 1.2 BACKGROUND .............................................................................................................................. 1 1.3 PURPOSE ......................................................................................................................................... 5 1.4 IMPLICATIONS .............................................................................................................................. 5 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................................................ 6 2.1 DEFINITION OF DIALECT ............................................................................................................ 6 2.2 MUTUAL INTELLIGIBILITY ........................................................................................................ 8 2.3 BELL’S SOCIOLINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY ................................................................................. 15 2.4 OTHER IMPORTANT FACTORS ................................................................................................ 25 2.5 PROBLEMS WITH TERMINOLOGY .......................................................................................... 31 2.6 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... 34 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................................. 36 3.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ............................................................................................................. 36 3.2 RESEARCH DESIGN .................................................................................................................... 36 3.3 RESPONDENTS ............................................................................................................................ 39 3.4 DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURE AND ANALYSIS ............................................................. 40 4 FINDINGS .................................................................................................................................................... 41 4.1 THE STATUS OF CANTONESE—BELL’S SOCIOLINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY ....................... 41 4.2 THE STATUS OF CANTONESE—LANGUAGE OR DIALECT? .............................................. 51 4.3 LANGUAGE VERSUS DIALECT/FANGYAN ............................................................................ 55 5 DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................................................... 60 5.1 THE CLASSIFICATION OF CANTONESE ................................................................................
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